20th of March 2022 – Bad Apple again 2!

Since a couple of people actually tried using the MovieGen… I am “forced” to release an updated version to make things clearer and cleaner :-).

If you are still interested in this, pls download Version 2:

Changes:

• Compatibility added to Vide player and generator
• generator player and creator updated to my latest Mac version
• it now supports autotrace (seperate batch files)
• examples:
  BadApple -> Potrace
  BlaBla -> autotrace
• Instructions on how to play on
  VecFever
  PiTrex
  VeXtreme
  Vide
  added
• added Readme:

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For more information “in general” pls look at: 16th-of-march-2022-bad-apple-again and the links it may provide.

Windows only!

START with either batch file, the batch file MUST be provided with a MP4 file name, like:

POTRACE
convert_potrace.bat Bad_Apple.mp4

AUTOTRACE
convert_autotrace.bat BlaBla.mp4

Change settings

a) POTRACE

If you want to change parameters in the conversion process, fiddle with lines:
in file: convert_p.sh line
For possible changes in the conversion from png to pnm, to e.g. adjust image brightness, dithering, despeckle etc and line:

../bin/ImageMagick_8bit.win64/magick.exe $x ../pnm/${x%.png}.pnm;

for possible parameters for the potrace conversion to vectors:

../bin/potrace.win64/potrace.exe -a 0 -O 1 -b geojson -o ../vec/${x%.pnm}.vec $x

b) AUTOTRACE

If you want to change parameters in the conversion process, fiddle with lines:
in file: convert_a.sh line

for possible changes in the conversion from png to pnm, to e.g. adjust image brightness, dithering, despeckle etc and line:

../bin/ImageMagick_8bit.win64/magick.exe $x ../pnm/${x%.png}.pnm;

for possible parameters for the autotrace conversion to vectors:

../bin/autotrace.win64/autotrace.exe -error-threshold=0.2 -background-color=000000 -centerline -line-reversion-threshold=1000 -line-threshold=1000 -output-format=svg $x >../svg/${x%.pnm}.svg

OUTPUT/TESTING

Vide

To play these files in Vide, pls follow the instruction provided at the end of following Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7FEBMScUA0

VecFever

To play these files on a VecFever:
What you need to do…
– Start Vide
– go to the menu “Tool”
– go to sub menu “Utilities”
– activate menu item “File Utility” (last item)
– go to TAB 3
– in the subsection “ExtremeVectrex to V4EB” chose the generated vec.bin
– press the button V4EB
in the same directory a vec.bin.V4E will be created, that is playable on a vecfever.

The player vide provides should be compatible with the generated binaries, if in doubt use the binary which comes with this distribution, namely ExtremePlayer_VecFever.bin

The player, that the conversion tool uses is located under: Vide/template/ExtremePlayer.bin
The sourcecode can also be found under “Vide/projects/ExtremePlayer”.

If you overwrite (rename the above file) the one in “Vide/template/ExtremePlayer.bin” with the above mentioned file…
the movie generated with above procedure will play correctly on the VecFever.

PiTrex

The generated bin files are compatible to the PiTrex player. The only thing is, on PiTrex for the time being the player can not be started with different bin files than the ones provided. The only reason why that is – is because there no is dynamic system to provide parameters while calling the movie player.

If you want to play your own generated movie file, you have to rename it to one of the already configured movies… and the player will load that now renamed file and play it. The movie files are located on the SD card:
SD_CARD:\vectrex\movies

Vextreme

Until someone makes the menu system of the Vextreme more dynamic – you also have to “juggle” while using the VeXtreme card.
Depending on the version of your current VeXtreme menu system and file system layout:

With this package comes a “new” VeXtreme player called: ExtremePlayer_VeXtreme.bin,
copy this one over to your VeXtreme “player” directory.

Hardcoded VeXtreme (firmware) will allways try to load the file “vec.bin”.
So, if you want to run different movies – you have to exchange that file with the “last” vec.bin file
created by the MovieGen.

Above for VeXtreme is not TESTED, because I managed to somehow render my VeXtreme not working anymore. (Soldered a bit on it – and than it stopped working…)