[HN Gopher] MacFlim: Full-motion video on B&W Macs
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MacFlim: Full-motion video on B&W Macs
Author : smagoun
Score : 84 points
Date : 2021-05-05 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macflim.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macflim.com)
| gcanyon wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand what's new here: I remember watching
| early QuickTime video on my SE30 and marveling that it managed to
| convert on the fly to dithered B&W.
|
| Still: love to see this!
| pcdoodle wrote:
| This is so cool
| lostgame wrote:
| What a bizarre, mostly useless; yet absolutely neat utility.
|
| Of course, disk space is the immediate reason why it's so
| impractical.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm sure Apple has an ADB->USB dongle for $19.99 that you can
| use to connect a larger bit of storage.
|
| Actually, did these guys have SCSI ports on the back? SCSI->USB
| or SCSI->TB4 would be an fun cable.
| sp332 wrote:
| Not ADB, but AppleTalk might have handled it.
| klodolph wrote:
| ADB -> USB is third-party only, somewhat rare, and they only
| support input devices like mice and keyboards (no storage). I
| don't think Apple ever made them. The only one I know of is
| the Wombat ADB-USB converter. (You can find plenty of
| converters that go the opposite way around, letting you plug
| ADB devices into USB.)
|
| You can theoretically put anything you want on ADB, but you'd
| need drivers to do anything but mouse/keyboard, and Wikipedia
| lists the "actual" bitrate as 10 kbit/s.
| rideontime wrote:
| The link itself has the answers to your questions.
| wvdk wrote:
| A fantastic off-the-shelf solution is already available:
| https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/
|
| It can emulate a floppy or hard drive. I tend to use a 2GB
| hard drive image which makes hacking on classic Mac a
| delight.
| fstark wrote:
| The floppyemu is awesome for floppy emulation or for old
| HD20-like hard drives. But they are too slow for macflim.
|
| As I say on the link, you need either a real scsi disk, or,
| better an scsi emulator, like a SCSI2H
| https://store.inertialcomputing.com/SCSI2SD-s/100.htm, a
| RaSCSI https://www.tindie.com/products/landogriffin/rascsi-
| macintos..., a BlueSCSI https://gumroad.com/l/bluescsi-1b
| or a MacSD http://macsd.com/
|
| The Mac(s) on the video have a SCSI2HD v5.5, with 4 2Gb
| partitions on a microsd. I can mount the first partition on
| my linux to copy stuff onto it (in general via the minivmac
| emulator).
| fstark wrote:
| Hi. I am the author of macflim.
|
| This is the old video, I am finishing the techdemo that have
| sound, there is a video on youtube
| (https://youtu.be/YRe6I5AICJ0). I'll update the macflim.com
| website later today.
|
| And yes, diskspace is one of the reason why it is impractical,
| but with a SCSI2SD, one can get 4 2Gb partitions on you mac for
| around $100.
|
| And yes, it is bizarre and useles, hence absolutely necessary. If
| you have time, try the app, it is full of inside time-correct
| jokes.
| VeejayRampay wrote:
| flim sounds like a strange way a French person would pronounce
| "film" for fun
| fstark wrote:
| It is an inside joke about a French movie made from barely
| legal cuts of hilariously dubbed Warner Bros extracts. I
| found th3e concept weirdly suitable for a tongue-in-cheek
| artistic experiment that will probably mostly be used to
| display extract of other people movies...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Classe_am%C3%A9ricaine
| VeejayRampay wrote:
| George Abitbol, etc.
|
| I thought it was!!
|
| very nice job anyway
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Super cool! How are you handling the dithering? The website
| examples look a bit 'swimmy,' with dots wandering around a lot,
| but looks a bit better in the bit of the tech talk I looked at.
| Did you find a nice improvement to the dithering technique?
|
| In both cases, there's lines of dots in wide dark spaces, as
| one would expect from an error-diffusion dither. Did you look
| into other approaches?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| THAT is a labor of love!
|
| Kudos!
| hyakosm wrote:
| I love it! (And George Abitbol would be proud of you)
| [deleted]
| azinman2 wrote:
| Congrats. This is a massive technical feat. Are you going to
| publish the source, and/or give a technical talk on how all of
| this is achieved?
| fstark wrote:
| Source code of the silent version is at
| https://github.com/fstark/macflim (Mac app source code, C++
| encoder source code and instructions). The sound version (the
| new demo from yesterday's video https://youtu.be/YRe6I5AICJ0
| is massively more complicated and I will release the binaries
| over the week-end and the source code later next week,
| probably).
|
| I'd love to do a video with the explanations (or a talk), but
| I am still think about how to present this is a
| understandable and entertaining way.
| tyingq wrote:
| I really liked this writeup where someone found a way to
| push an old Kaypro into running their game at a much higher
| framerate than expected:
| http://www.chrisfenton.com/dd9-kaypro-edition/
| ddingus wrote:
| Impressive! That is all really. Makes me wish I had an old Mac.
|
| Had a big grin watching your video.
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| Old Apple II's and Macs will never truly die, they're just too
| much fun. Emulation and FPGA solutions exist and once gone over,
| the hardware is very robust. Replace the old caps with tantalum,
| align the screen, and you're set.
| fstark wrote:
| Yep. Emulation is good, but using the real hardware is magical.
|
| Fun fact: the reason why macflim had no sound originally is
| that my SE30s have bad caps (like most), and no sound. So many
| people asked for sound that I had to recap those surface mount
| caps (ouch my eyes!) so I could actually hack a version with
| sound :-)
| ddingus wrote:
| That is the good fight!
|
| I love it too. Simple, fun, pretty robust hardware.
| glhaynes wrote:
| I first read "B&W Macs" as meaning "Blue & White Power Mac G3s"
| and couldn't figure out why full-motion video would be
| impressive.
|
| Anyway, this is awesome!
| tyingq wrote:
| Ah, full justification for me to now upgrade my Mac Plus with an
| accelerator board:
| https://www.micromac.com/products/multispeed.html
|
| Surprised these are still ~$100-200 ... that's a bargain.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| If the scanout is at 60Hz you can probably get shades of grey in
| there by a temporal dither.
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(page generated 2021-05-05 23:00 UTC)