Home » News » Development » MSX Screen Conversor 0.7

MSX Screen Conversor 0.7

by snout on 27-02-2007, 17:13
Topic: Development
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Source: MSXBR-L Mailinglist

Rafael Jannone has released a new version of the MSX Screen Conversor - an online toolkit to convert JPG, PNG and GIF files from up to 400kb to SCREEN 2, 5, 6, 8 and 12. This version adds support for SCREEN 6 and an option to prescale the image in order to compensate distorted aspect ratios.

Relevant link: MSX Screen Conversor

Comments (14)

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6933)

ARTRAG's picture

28-02-2007, 01:45

well, now version is 0.8

By snout

Ascended (15187)

snout's picture

28-02-2007, 01:51

again: newspost when changelog comes in (and when some MRC crew member's got the time to post about it).

By pitpan

Prophet (3155)

pitpan's picture

28-02-2007, 12:30

It works like a charm! Thank you. Would it be possible to create a stand-alone conversor? Or, at least, have a peek at your dithering / colour reducing algorithms? I'd like to have such a tool as a local application.

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6933)

ARTRAG's picture

28-02-2007, 16:58

I was proposing to Rafael a standalone application too.
As local compiled application should work even faster.

In addition I was also proposig to develop a differential encoding for animated gif or multiframe images
The encode should produce only the PNT and the tile that canged w.r.t. the previous frame.
Providing an output format like

frame 0
VRAM address, Data len, raw data
VRAM address, Data len, raw data
VRAM address, Data len, raw data
ect.
endframe 0
frame 1
VRAM address, Data len, raw data
VRAM address, Data len, raw data
VRAM address, Data len, raw data
ect.
endframe 1
ect.
endframe X
end frames

should lead to a strigthforward decoder for SCR2 animations.
Using this solution something like D&D demo would be possible even
on MSX1, as you move only areas where there are changes.
Moreover the fix palette should help to not change too much
the still graphics around the animated part of the screen.

By Unicorn

Master (138)

Unicorn's picture

03-03-2007, 21:56

I love it, great tool! Thanx!

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6933)

ARTRAG's picture

04-03-2007, 00:27

http://ragozini.googlepages.com/showPreview.php.png/showPreview.php-full.jpg

excellent converter for scr2 and mexs1 palette

Why not releasing the converter as standalone application?

By jltursan

Prophet (2619)

jltursan's picture

04-03-2007, 16:24

Truly astouding image!; the zoomed pixels helps a lot when dithering, the color is great!. Time to do a MSX1 slideshow? Smile

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6933)

ARTRAG's picture

05-03-2007, 11:27

Like this ?
http://ragozini.googlepages.com/CRAB.ROM

;)
(it doesn't respect the i/o timings of msx1, only for emulators and msx2)

By jltursan

Prophet (2619)

jltursan's picture

05-03-2007, 16:17

Hahaha!, not a slideshow; but a real animation!, great! Big smile

Btw, the crab is one of the bosses from SM2, isn't it?

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6933)

ARTRAG's picture

05-03-2007, 17:58

It is from one of the many Metal Slug XXX
It comes from a web page, so I do not know which one

By jannone

Expert (103)

jannone's picture

06-03-2007, 00:23

I'm working on a standalone version as we speak.
It will be GPL'ed, as I have hope that people may improve the conversor.
When I finish it, please people, send patches... don't hide your custom version from other MSXzers, it would be very discouraging for me and a bad sign for the community.

By SLotman

Paragon (1242)

SLotman's picture

08-03-2007, 13:16

Jannone, you're the man! Smile

Congrats, budy!

By dvik

Prophet (2200)

dvik's picture

09-03-2007, 03:15

Very cool animation ARTRAG Smile And really great conversion tool. I'm looking forward to the pc version. Think that will be a bit easier to use and to customize to different needs. Great work Cool

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6933)

ARTRAG's picture

09-03-2007, 12:19

@dvick
what about my proposal to do a sort of differential encoding between adjacent frames ?
This could reduce the amount of tiles to be transferred.
It could work updating tiles only partially (e.g. only half a tile Smile
There are two ways to do this encoding:

1) encode each frame independently, find the differences between VRAM dumps and store them in "player ready" format

2) try to encode couple of frames, in order to maximize the common tiles between frames, and than find the differences between VRAM dumps and store them in "player ready" format

Option 2) can work well even without suboptimalities. I mean,e.g., that in case of a 8x1 area you can have two equivalent
representation with the same result by reverting foreground/background and bits in the shape.

For differential encoding, this is an unusefull waste of bandwidth that could be avoided with joint encoding.

Moreover, introducing some suboptimalities, you could "control" the datarate to the VRAM