Low-res VGA video player w/audio

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

I've been working on the conversion of the Deepfry video player to make it work on VGA.

With the help of some great objects, and a quick rewrite of the Video converter tool (Thanks Karl) it works.

Grab the files from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qwhixzvtlrvp1u1/nrUFCH9zPm/PropellerBASIC/Useful%20Binaries/Videomaker

• Extract the Videomaker_converter.zip files to an empty folder
• Copy your source .AVI file to the folder, calling it video.avi
• Run convert_AVI.bat to begin conversion
• Copy the resulting \convert\out.dat file to your SD card
• Adjust the Spin code to the correct name and enjoy.

(A sample video is included in the Spin archive)

If someone sees a way to get the clicking out of the audio track, please post up!

Credits for this whole thing go to:

Trodoss (Based on the VGA version of SLUG)
Andy Schenk (The original video driver)
James Hughes (The original Deepfry video player)
Roadster (The new conversion utility, correcting the colors for VGA)

Forgive the really bad cellphone shots. It looks much better in VGA.

Jeff

Dr_Acula

I played around with Floyd-Steinberg dithering to get more colors http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev7kKXGybEA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLBJDYoKNts&feature=channel&list=UL

Much of it was experimental but all the code is in that vb.net program I sent you (along with lots of other things you won't need). I never got the audio working, and re your clicks, a lot of optimising the video revolves around balancing color depth and screen refresh rate, so you go for less frames per second and then have to adjust the audio to suit - which probably is what introduces the clicks. The framerate is probably more limited by the SD data transfer rate than anything else - somewhere between 6 and 10 a second.

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

I see you've discovered the other rule to making low-res videos work well... small screens.

I suspect there may be an answer in some of the more modern wav players (I'm studying the code now) to getting rid of the clicking. This was a problem with some the early wav players as well.

Jeff

Dr_Acula

He he - yes small screens. On a touchscreen 160x120 pixels is almost "retina display" resolution. Looks great ... with a microscope

Re wav players, I guess you need to get the video and audio off the SD card as one file, split it into audio and video and run both into buffers. To keep those with perfect pitch happy, I guess the audio playback rate is the constant, and the video changes to suit? eg as a multiple of whatever the original framerate was - say it was 25/second then you divide by 5 for 5 frames a second and add in a precise delay between each frame?