ACTION 68k&PPC@ - AVI (Video for Windows) and MOV (QuickTime) player for AMIGA

      (Support AGA/OCS/ECS/CGFX/p96, PowerPC w. WarpOS/PowerUP)




 Features                     Supported codecs & other stuff
 Requirements                 Required hard & software
 Shell parameters             The shell parameters description
 PPC related stuff            Some PPC related thoughts
 GUI Usage                    Some info about the GUI
 Good AVI/MOV sites           Where can you find AVI/MOV files?
 Questions & Answers          FAQ
 Used things                  Used hard & software
 Author                       Who did it?
 To do & known bugs           Things to do
 History                      Revision history
 Thanks                       The author wishes to thank..
 Copyright & Warning          Legal mush

If you have PPC board, then please read the 'PPC related stuff' first!


I wrote this AVI/MOV player because I tested many avi/qt players and I couldn't find any that could play AVIs/MOVs decently on AGA/ECS/OCS Amigas. (and on my PicassoIV ;)
 
Because all other AVI/MOV players on the Amiga are very slow, even on a 060/50!
This program was developed in nearly 100% assembly language resulting in an extremely high playback speed!
(yes, the PPC codecs are coded in assembly too!)


Features:
---------

PPC support (WarpOS and PowerUP) 

100% assembly code (short & fast)

Support for AVI and MOV files in a single executable.

Support for INTEL INDEO 3.1 & 3.2 (IV31/IV32)

Support the video overlay of CV64/3D, PicassoIV, CV/BVPPC.

A nice and well integrated GUI with volume control, playback speed control, play/pause button, LCD, next/previous file select, etc.

Handles multiple files, you can step back/forth between files during playback!

Extremely fast playback speed, far superior to any other AVI/MOV player on any other computer platform!!!

Fast and buffered I/O handling (direct playback from CD-ROM or HDD)

FAST Chunky to planar algorithms for smooth ECS/AGA playback (the very best c2p code available today!)

Fast timer-based frame skipping method, the finest frame-skipping method known today!

FULL AGA support (256 colour, ham8, 18-bit and the FAST 18-bit STORM) NOTE: STORM dither gives very fast 18-bit playback on AGA without the ugliness of HAM modes and the slowness of the 18BIT mode.

ECS Support (16 grayscale)

16-shade grayscale Window playback

Full support for the CD32 akiko chip

Synchronized audio playback. ACTION has the very best asynchronous audio/video playback, audio playback remains completely smooth and uninterrupted even when most of the video frames are skipped on slower processors.

Adjustable playback speed.

Intelligent buffersize calculation to achieve the highest performance on your Amiga!

Completely system friendly. No hacks, nice, clean OS-friendly code.

Fast Window Playback on ANY public screen (32 color screen recommended)

Automatic audio frequency scaling when needed (allows 44Khz audio playback on PAL/NTSC)

Direct Picasso96 support (no CyberGraphics emulation)

Direct CyberGraphics support

Optimized video decoders for individual graphics boards (for PicassoII/PIV, CV64 & CV64/3D, CVPPC, BVPPC, Spectrum/Piccolo, RetinaZ3, Domino, Merlin... )

Special fast grayscale playback

Special playback mode for ZorroII graphics boards to achieve much higher speeds (like PicassoII, PicassoIV or CV64/3D in ZorroII mode)



About the supported codecs:
---------------------------

Video for Windows (.avi)

Supported video codecs:

AccuPak (PalomAVI) (CLJR)       24 bit
Microsoft RGB      (RGB)         8 bit
Microsoft RGB      (RGB)        16 bit
Microsoft RGB      (RGB)        24 bit
Microsoft Video 1  (CRAM/MSVC)   8 bit
Microsoft Video 1  (CRAM/MSVC)  16 bit
Radius Cinepak     (CVID)       16 bit (+)
Radius Cinepak     (CVID)       24 bit (+)
Radius Cinepak     (CVID)       32 bit (+)
Run Length Encoded (RLE)         8 bit
        
Supported audio codecs:

PCM             MONO/STEREO     8/16 bit
MS-ADPCM        MONO/STEREO     4 bit (16 bit)
DVI-ADPCM       MONO/STEREO     4 bit (16 bit)

QuickTime (.mov, .qt)

Supported video codecs:

Apple Animation    (RLE)         8 bit (color/gray) (+)
Apple Graphics     (SMC)         8 bit (color/gray) (+)
Apple Video        (RPZA)       16 bit
Radius Cinepak     (CVID)       16 bit (+)
Radius Cinepak     (CVID)       24 bit (+)
Radius Cinepak     (CVID)       32 bit (+)

(+) = PPC Accelerated

Supported audio codecs:

RAW             MONO/STEREO     8/16 bit
TWOS            MONO/STEREO     8/16 bit
IMA-ADPCM       MONO/STEREO     4 bit (16) bit
MACE 6:1        MONO/STEREO     8 bit
MACE 3:1        MONO/STEREO     8 bit


Required hardware:

Without a graphics card:
Kickstart 3.0+ (AKIKO requires Kick3.1)

An AGA Amiga (for ham8, 256 color, 18BIT, STORM and 16 grayscale)
ECS/OCS (16 grayscale)

MC68020 or Faster

about 1Mb of Free memory (Fast recommended)

Graphics card users:
Same as above (AGA not required, of course!) plus: 
A graphics card supported by Picasso96
Installed P96 system

or:
A graphics card supported by CyberGraphX
Installed CGFX system (CGFX V4 recommended)

PPC board for PPC support (with WarpOS or PowerUP system, both kernels supported)

Required software:
reqtools.library v38 or newer (included)
asyncio.library v39 or newer (included)

AVI or MOV files to play ;)

Recommended minimum configuration:

68030/50 Mhz and approximately 0.5 - 1 Mb free Fast memory and a fast drive (1Mb/s or faster) example:  HDD or 4x Speed or faster CD-ROM drive.

On a 68030/50 MHz almost all AVI/MOV files can be played at very enjoyable speeds.
Now ACTION can play 320x240 CVID encoded AVIs/MOVs on 030/50 at a very acceptable speed
about 12FPS in gray and about 8-10FPS in color (with STORM dither)

To get faster playback speed, a 030/040/060 and gfxcard are highly recommended!



The usable tooltypes are (check for the description below):

NOSOUND, NOSKIP, FPS, LOOP, NOVIDEO, PUBSCREEN, WINX, WINY, MABFIX, NOSURROUNDMONO, WINDOWPLAY, AKIKO, NOGUI, SDBL, FORCE16, LORES, HIRES, SHIRES, ZORRO2, DITHER, NOCENTER, MONITOR, AUTOPLAY, NOAUTOEXIT, GFXBOARDSCREENWIDTH, GFXBOARDSCREENHEIGHT, BUFSIZE, DEFAULTPATH, COLORKEY, NOPPC

The Shell parameters:

FILES
The AVI/MOV file(s) that you wish to play. If you don't specify a file, a file-requester appears, and you will be able to select files there.

DITHER 
You can select the dither type here (example: dither gray for grayscale playback)
You can get help using dither ?

Available dither types:

DITHER HAM8
AGA ham8 dithering for 15/24 bit AVIs/MOVs (slow and ugly)

DITHER GRAY or DITHER GREY
AGA 256 grayscale
(fast but only grayscale - recommended on slow systems - like bare A1200 with/without fastmem)

DITHER ECS
16-shade grayscale (available on AGA and ECS/OCS as well.) This is the only dither type available on ECS/OCS Amigas without a graphics card.

DITHER 18BIT 
super-hires AGA HAM8 (real 18bit quality on AGA)
(gives perfect colours, but might be too slow with bigger anims)

DITHER STORM
a hires AGA HAM8 mode - gives almost perfect colours with extremly high speed! (for 15/24 bit) Default dither type on AGA.

On a 68060/50 this dither type achieves playback of 320x240 24-bit anims at up to 15 fps without any frame skipping!

DITHER p96
Picasso96 8bit/hi/truecolor 
(default when a graphics card with Picasso96 is detected)

DITHER CGFX
CyberGraphics 8bit/hi/truecolor 
(default when a graphics card width CyberGraphics detected)

DITHER OVERLAY or DITHER PIP
This option enables the overlay playback mode (this is a window only playback mode, with HW accelerated YUV conversion, and HW scaling & smoothing (smoothing is not available on all cards)
Supported cards and systems till now:

CV64/3d (P96 v2.0+, CGX) Under CGX you need to enable MULTIMEDIAMEM tooltype.
CVPPC and BVPPC with CGX, you need to set the following tooltype into the monitordriver:

VLAYER=DESTRUCTIVE

You need the cgxvideo.library in LIBS: too.

Please note, for some unknown reason normal WarpOS termination disables the overlay feature of CGX (maybe it is a bug in CGX or WOS, I do not know). To avoid this, please use the BVPPCfix program from AmiNET. (I never tried personally, because I do not have PPC, nor BV/CVPPC)
The actual CGX (4.2) has some bugs in the CV/BVPPC overlay support. Please do not blame me for the bugs, because the overlay code is 100% perfect. It was tested on 'real' HW overlay. (PicassoIV, CV64/3d)

PicassoIV is supported under p96 and CGX (4.2)+ too. 

MODEID
This option allows you to specify a modeid to use for the display (default is pal-lores or ntsc).
example: modeid 00029000 
you must always use the full 8 digit hex value,
i.e. displaymode 29000 won't work... 
If you want to select a screenmode from a requester then use: modeid ?
Note: On graphics cards you can also select graphics card modes of course !

NOSOUND
Disables audio playback (audio playback is enabled by default)

NOSKIP
Plays all frames without frame skipping.
This is especially useful on very slow systems where too many frames would be skipped.
(example on standard A1200) 
(try it if your processor is too slow, when it's too fast, you won't see any difference, except if you use this option with the FPS parameter)
Use only when really needed, because ACTION has VERY GOOD frame skipping algorithms. 

FPS
Frames per second: Allows you the specify the playback speed. The value describes how many frames are played each second.
(the framerate is read from the AVI/MOV file by default)
usage: fps value (values between 1 - 120 are preferred)
example: fps 10 - sets the framerate to 10frames/s
If you set this too high (60 or above), you are likely to get only a black
screen, because the player skips too many frames and is unable to display the frames at the requested rate... in this case It's a good idea to copy the AVI/MOV to ram: ... or onto a device that is able to read 4-5 MB/s without much CPU usage.. (okay.. maybe on SCSI-II ;)
Hint: try some AVIs/MOVs from ram: at frame rate 50 or faster on your 060 and show it to your pC friends ;)

LOOP
Turns on the animation looping (default off) This will make ACTION repeat the movie until it is stopped by the user.

VERBOSE
Gives information from the file being played (audio/video format, frame rate, played/skipped frames, playback frame rate).

NOCENTER 
No centering of the animation on the screen. (By default ACTION will attempt to centre the screen horizontally.

WINDOWPLAY or WINP
Enable window playback on the active public screen. The animation will be played in 16 grayscale. For best results use a screen with enough pens available (ie. at least 32 colours)
Hi-/TrueColor when you play CinePak/Indeo compressed animation on Hi-/TrueColor GFX-Board screen.
This option without the AKIKO/GFXCARD parameter works fast on native Amiga chipset, and uses highly optimised assembly routines.
(I use 32 bit c2p, so the animation width will be rounded to a multiple of 32)
Don't blame me if it runs too slow on 6+ planes, because it's not my routines that are slow, only the Blitter and the AGA chipset.

FORCE16
Force the chunky converter to convert 16 chunkypixels at a time.
This c2p conversion recommended for 020/030. (the default c2p is for 040/060)

AKIKO or WRITECHUNKYPIXELS
With this option ACTION will use the CD32's Akiko chip for faster playback speed on AGA machines. This option also enables graphics card support (for the windowplay, and for 256 color/gray and for 16 gray)
This feature requires KickStart 3.1 (or any patch that can use the writechunkypixels() feature of the OS3.1)
I don't recommend using this option on standard AGA (ie. no AKIKO or graphics card) because a slow chunky-to-planar will be used by the OS, instead of the highly optimised 32-bit c2p routines of ACTION.

SDBL or DOUBLEHEIGHT
This option will cause the screenheight to double.
With the 18BIT, this option also doubles the width, so it plays the anim at twice the size. This option is great for playing smaller anims at full screen! For instance those 160x120 AVI/MOVs can be played in fullscreen!
This option now works on KICK3.0, but I still recommend 3.1 because it provides such screenmodes (ie. PAL 320x128), making it considerably faster than the 3.0 approach).
Some hints:
To play 160x120 anims on PAL in full screen on an AGA machine, use something like this: 'ACTION DITHER 18BIT SDBL <filename>'
For faster playback, try: 'ACTION DITHER STORM LO SDBL <filename>'

NOVIDEO
Disables video decoding. (useful for testing)
With this option, no graphical output will be produced.

MONITOR Parameters: 
PAL,NTSC,VGA=MULTISCAN,EURO36,EURO72,SUPER72=SUP72,DBLPAL,DBLNTSC
For easier video-mode selection.

Some more parameters for video mode selection: 
LORES=LO,HIRES=HI,SHIRES=SHI
(the modeid option will override these options)

NOGUI
Disable the nice GUI ;) This can increase playback speed. Sometimes you need just that little extra speed ;-)

PUBSCREEN or PS
Use this parameter to set the Windowplay / GUI screen.

WINX and WINY
These parameters let you specify the X and Y positions of the window to be opened in the Windowplay mode.

MABFIX
Fix to play the buggy AVI output from MainActorBroadCast.
(MAB saves Uncompressed Highcolor AVI's in 15bit (Big Endian) format, instead of the normal 15bit PC (Small Endian))

NOSURROUNDMONO or NSM
Disable the surround (fake stereo) audio playback of AVI's & MOV's with mono sound. It is really amazing when you have a good amplifier & speakers!
(It's enabled by default)
If you have problems with audio (echos, metallic sound) then please use this option. (use this one as well, when you have mono audio equipment connected to your Amiga)

ZORRO2 or ZORRO2GFXBOARD
This option speeds up the playback on ZorroII boards (especially on CV64/3D)
Try it! (it provides a slight speed increase on Zorro-III systems as well)

AUTOPLAY or AP
Enables automatic playback at startup. (Default autoplay is disabled)
This is irrelevant when the NOGUI option is used as there's no start/stop control in that case.

NOAUTOEXIT or NAE
Don't exit after the playback is finished (ACTION will seek to the beginning of the file after the end of the animation is reached)

GRAPHICBOARDSCREENWIDTH or GBSW
Use this option to force the screenmode to a specified width.

GRAPHICBOARDSCREENHEIGHT or GBSH
Use this option to force the screenmode to a specified height.
For example; when you want to play all AVI/MOV files on a 800x600 screen then use:
GBSW 800 GBSH 600

BUFSIZE
This option allows you to set the buffer size to a specified amount.
Eg: BUFSIZE 100000 - sets the bufsize to 100000 bytes.
Use this option only for testing, because ACTION has internal bufsize calculation, which selects the correct bufsize for all files.

DEFAULTPATH
This is a tooltype-only parameter to set the default path for the filerequester.
(in shell mode, simply use ACTION [path] parameter, and that have same result as this option)

COLORKEY
With this option you can turn on the colorkey during overlay playback. Default is off, because it has problems on some gfx-boards. (under CGX)

NOPPC
With this option you can turn off the PPC codecs. Useful for testing.




First I would like to say a big thanks for Asys KFT/Hungary for the PPC board, which I used for 2 months during the PPC version development. (I sent it back some days ago, so I'm again PPC-less...)
And thanks to lmos Rajnai for the additional PPC code.

Second:
I do not really like the so called 'PPC kernel war'. ACTION PPC supports both kernels, but the WOS version is faster by about 30%. It is simply due the different PPC<->68k communication code.
I prefer (as a developer) WarpOS, because it's far more AmigaOS like, but the users prefer mostly PowerUP, at least I recieved far more letters from PowerUP users.

About the actual version of ACTION in a PPC oriented view:
ATM the following stuff is accelerated for PPC:

QuickTime RLE codec 
QuickTime SMC codec
QuickTime/AVI CinePak codec (ARGB32, BGR24, GRAY, Overlay modes)
c2p routines (so all grayscale playback is faster)
18bit storm routines in true/hicolor modes (I recommend to use the Storm dither on AGA)

All codec/dither routines are coded in asm, just try to imagine the work behind... (ACTION PPC is NOT a 'just grab a C source & compile for PPC' program, it is 100% hand optimized in assembly)

So, for example a CinePak animation is 100% accelerated for PPC when you play it on gfx-card (screen/overlay), or on AGA using Storm dither or grayscale dither.

The Indeo anim is different stuff: because only the Storm dither is (or the grayscale c2p) accelerated, but all codec will be supported in native PPC mode, when I see enough interest for that.

About the speed:
It will reach the speed of 68060/50 easily on the slowest PPC board, and with a  gfx-card the only limitation is the relative slow gfx-board bus, it means near 100FPS (!) playback with 320x240 CinePak animation on 603 boards with BVPPC. 

Some technical facts:
The main code is still 68k, but it is does not mean any slow down because there are no context switches needed, and the computing intensive parts are running on PPC. ACTION PPC uses few context switches: 2 switches on AGA, and 1 switch/frame on GFX-boards.
The ACTIONPPC.library contains mixed code, it is a 68k library with PPC code too, with different codes for WarpOS and PowerUP, so you need just change the library (and the .elf file in PowerUP version) to change the supported kernel.

Due to some unknown reason the dither overlay/pip is not working (unable to open pip window message appears) when you terminate the PowerUP in  the normal way. To avoid this problem please use the the BVPPCfix program from AmiNET to terminate PowerUP.

A schematic "pic" from the GUI:

+---+--------------------------------+---+-+-+
| 1 |================|2|=============| 3 |4|5|
+-+-+--------------------------------+-+-+++-+
|6|7|   |=====8|      *|=====9|        |10|11|
+-+-+----------------------------------+--+--+

 1. Play/Pause button. 

 2. AVI/MOV playback status. You can use mouse to control the playback.
    If you play big AVI/MOV files from your FFS Harddisk and you want to
    use this button to skip a part of the AVI/MOV then I recommend at least
    300-400 buffers for your harddrive. From CD-ROM and from AFS/PFS
    formatted harddisks it's no problem (FFS is not ideal for seeking in
    big files).

 3. This number shows the currently SET playback speed (It's not always
    the same as the ACTUAL playback speed, because ACTION is unable to play
    AVIs/MOVs faster than about 300FPS (Due to Zorro-bus limitations) :)

 4. Decrease Framerate (you can use cursor left key for that too)

 5. Increase Framerate (same as cursor right key)

 6. Previous AVI/MOV from filelist

 7. Next AVI/MOV from filelist

 8. Volume control slider

 9. Brightness (Not yet implemented)

10. Loop on/off gadget (or 'l' key)

11. Frameskip on/off gadget (or 's' key)

Some other functions:

'r' - Reset to original framerate & audio/video sync (use this function if you change the framerate, and afterwards want to return to the default, because the MOV files can have a different frametime)

'ESC' - Exit

'Space' - Toggle Play/Pause




First you can try pC Magazine cover CD-ROMs, but nowadays almost all AVIs on PCs are compressed with the new INDEO (IV4x/5x) which is currently not supported by ACTION.

Or better, try the following websites:
http://www.imdb.com/ - Internet Movie Database Homepage, from there you can find many links pointing to filmtrailers.

and another one:
http://www.hollywood.com/ - I think its name says it all ;)

Or try any other film-maker company's website (Warner, Sony Pictures, etc.)




Question: 
Is ACTION really fast?

Answer:
Yes. But I recommend a GFX-board for optimum performance. (on 060/50 with ZIII GFX-Board 320x240 CinePak AVI/MOV playback is more than 70-100FPS!!!)


Question: 
Will there be DUCK (TrueMotion) codec support?

Answer:
No. TrueMotion refused to give licence/docs.


Question: 
Will be there SVQ1 (Sorenson - new in QT3/4) codec support?

Answer:
Maybe. But it will be illegal, because Apple is not really interested in an Amiga version of QT3/4.


Question:
Will there be "new" Indeo support (IV4x and IV5x)?

Answer:
Yes, but only on PPC. (because only the PPC objects are available)


Question:
Will there be MPEG1 or MPEG-2 support? 

Answer:
Good news: There is a new MPEG player in progress (called RiVA) which will initially support MPEG-1, then MPEG-2, DVD, and CD-i as development progresses. Audio playback is also planned. It is currently being developed by Stephen Fellner <sfell@xtra.co.nz> and myself (now that I've finally completed ACTION ;-)


Question: 
I've heard something about a special PicassoIV version of ACTION. Where can I get it from ?

Answer:
From my homepage: http://www.dfmk.hu/~torokl
The PIV-ACTION is faster than the standard ACTION (due to the video layer optimized decoders), and can play AVI/MOV files in a fullscreen window without slowdown!
(it is a bit faster than ACTION's overlay code, and PIV's have special HW compressed video overlay mode, which is supported by the PIV-ACTION too.)


Question: 
Will there more PPC codec in ACTION?

Answer:
Yes, but please note, I do not have PPC board...


Question: 
I got strange bugs during overlay playback on my CVPPC/BVPPC board with ACTION, it is a bug in ACTION?

Answer:
No, ACTION is not buggy. Sadly the overlay emulation under the actual CGX is not perfect, and some gfx corruption is possible. I hope the next CGX versions will be better.


Question:
Will there be RealVideo support?

Answer:
Maybe. (But they do not want to answer my mail...)


Question:
Does ACTION work on Draco?

Answer:
Yes. But there's (still) no audio playback.


Question:
Will there be a standard MC68000 version from ACTION (to play AVI/MOVs on A500)?

Answer:
No. Because ACTION uses many 020+ instructions, and the MC68000 does not have enough power to decode animations at acceptable speeds anyway.


Question:
I have problems with swapping screens when I use ACTION on CGFX V2/3. (ACTION overwrites other screens, etc.)

Answer:
Hmmm... use Picasso96 or CGFX V4!


Question:
On my ZorroII GFX-Board the videoplayback is slower than on AGA with STORM DITHER (I have an 060). Why?

Answer:
Because for truecolor playback to work on a graphics board, at least 3 bytes/pixel need to be transferred. ZorroII is not fast enough to move such large amounts of data through.
Use the ZORRO2 option to speed up the video playback! (Espec. on CV64/3D) Because in this case it will use hicolor video (which is just 2 bytes/pixel), instead of truecolor (which is 3 or 4 bytes/pixel)



Hardware:

First:
A1200-68030/50 (Blizzard1230-III) 2meg Chip + 16 meg Fast (to version 0.983)

after:
A1200-68040/40 (Blizzard1240T-ERC) 2meg Chip + 16 meg Fast
C=1942 multisync monitor.... (up till version 0.9993)

after: 
A4000-68ec030/25 + PicassoIV 2 meg chip + 16 meg Fast
and Eizo 7040 12 col color monitor

after: ;)
A4000-68040/25 + PicassoIV with Paloma, 2 Mb chip + 16 Mb Fast
Samsung 15GL monitor

Now:

A4000 (REV D) - with 030/882 on the Motherboard (!)
& CyberStorm MKII (060/50) & 2meg Chip + 16 meg Fast on MB, 128 MB fast on MKII
PicassoIV + Paloma (proto) A/V module + PabloII + Concierto
A2091 SCSI controller (with oldie C= 6.6 ROMS ;)
Buddha&CatWeasel Z2 controller (6x IDE & 2 Drive)
FastLane Z3 SCSI board (w. 16MB ram)
Samsung SyncMaster 15GL
2x120watt audio (B&W DM 603 audiophile speakers).... (it's VERY important... :)
CDTV as Audio CD Player :)

PPC version was developed on A4000 (the config above - yeah, i wrote it on 060/50, without PPC board ;), and tested on A1200 + BlizzardPPC 603/240 + 040/25, thanks for the loan-board to Asys KFT/Hungary!

Software:

Asm-one/Asm-Pro         (68k version main code)

VBCC (for PPC init codes), Pasm (for PPC asm routines), PhxAss (for 68k asm codes (68k parts of PPC/68k mixed library code))

TapAVI 1.2, XAnim, CyberAVI/CyberQT for the speed comparisons...

Other: 
About 4 years of development time.... (I used almost all of my spare time...)

ACTION was tested on (on some) of the following machines:
First, my machines:
A4000/060/PicassoIV
Amiga CD32 (with Akiko parameter too)
A1200 w. loan PPC 603/240 too.

Beta testers' machines:

Draco (no sound)
A1200/FastRAM
A1200/020/28
A1200/030/50
A1200/040/25 (and PPC) AGA
A1200/040/25/BVPPC (603/200)
A1200/040/40
A1200/040/40/Merlin
A1200/060/50 
A1200/060/50/CV64/3D
A1200/060/50/BVPPC (603/240)
A1200/060/66
A2000/030/25/PicassoII
A2000/060/50/PicassoIV
A3000/040/40 (and PPC) with Domino
A3000/040/40/CVPPC
A3000/060/50/CVPPC+PicassoIV
A4000/040/25/Piccolo
A4000/040/25/RetinaZ3
A4000/040/40/RetinaZ3

UAE020 (Unix Amiga Emulator) on P300Mhz (was verrryyyy slow!)

etc ;)



If you have any problems, suggestions, or bug reports then write to:

snail mail:             Lszl Trk
                        H-8900 Zalaegerszeg 
                        Cserfa 31.
                        Hungary

phone:                  +36 30 268 3734 (mobile phone, for SMS, voice, etc.)


EMAIL:                  torokl@alpha.dfmk.hu
WWW:                    http://www.dfmk.hu/~torokl
                        (PalomAVI, PalomaPEG, ACTION, PIV-ACTION, Savage homepage)

iRC (mostly mornings) : pH03N1x@iRC (mostly #amigahu channel)
(sometimes on #amigager, but my German is very limited ;)

My old account (phoenix@master.fok.hu) is out of order... so use my new email address only!

I'm still working on a so called:  "Secret Project" ;) , and it will be at least as good as the Savage drivers or ACTION...




To do: (when I see enough interest for ACTION)
AHI support (but AHI eats lots of CPU power)
More PowerPC codec
Floyd-Steinberg dithering for 16/24bit avi's (maybe)
QuickTime3/4 and QuickTime3/4 Stream/compressed header support
QuickTimeVR support (not so hard)

Maybe to do: (when I get enough E-mail ;)
An AVI/MOV -> CDXL converter
avi.datatype/mov.datatype (avi/mov playback with multiview)



The author wishes to thank:

lmos Rajnai                    for PPC/68k mixed code library init codes 
                                (both WOS and PUP version)
                                PPC<->68k CPU communication code
                                CinePak codec C code fix

K-P Koljonen                    for Hippoplayer

Pawel Hernik                    for the 16bit->ham8 routine

Peter McGavin                   for the fastest c2p routines on Amiga

Alan/United Force               for the system friendly audio playback routine and for
                                GUI design (and GUI init code)

Stephen Fellner                 For the STORM dither and for criticism/betatesting

EFT/Impulse and Zak/Forcers     for the 32bit c2p... (which I've speeded up about 20% :)

Tobias Abt & Alexander Kneer    for the great Picasso96 system

Village Tronic                  for the great PicassoIV

Apple computers                 for the worst QuickTime documentation, dirty QT3/QT4 tricks

To authors of TapAVI, CyberAVI/CyberQT, XAnim 

Thanks to my beta testers:

Alessandro Gerelli
Csaba Imre
Flemming Steffensen
Gregory Donner
Jens Langner
Krisztin Sinka
Pavel Narozny
Pter Horvth
Pter Kovcs
Stefan Werner
Viktor Vrs

Last, but not least: the Developers of the Amiga and AmigaOS (yes, this is a real OS--okay, it has some bugs & missing features--but it's really fun to develop on!!)


The software is provided "AS IS" without a warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. Unauthorized copying, reproduction, hiring, or lending is prohibited. By using the 'ACTION' software in this archive you accept the entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program.

You are not allowed to disassemble/resource or modify this program.

This program is COMMERCIAL; NOT a PD or SHAREWARE product.

Other Copyrights:

Amiga is trademark of Amiga International

MC68000/MC68020/MC68030/MC68040/MC68060 and PPC is a trademark of Motorola

CinePak is a trademark of Radius

Indeo is a trademark of Intel Corporation in the USA and other countries.

QuickTime is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.

Video for Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

All other product names mentioned in this software are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

                                **  Warning! **

The current version of ACTION has no special protection against software piracy; however future versions (including PPC version) will depend DIRECTLY on the number copies sold. If you give ACTION to other people, it means that far fewer people will buy it. This, in turn, will lead to a small number of sales. When this happens, the author will assume that there is no significant interest in this product, and future development will be stopped! Please take software piracy VERY seriously, it is the DIRECT cause of discontinuation of the development of many high quality Amiga software products.

