Path: news.uh.edu!barrett From: keithc@library.welch.jhu.edu (Keith Christopher) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MainActor 1.52 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.graphics Date: 2 Jul 1994 02:16:08 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 455 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <2v2il8$elc@masala.cc.uh.edu> Reply-To: keithc@library.welch.jhu.edu (Keith Christopher) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: graphics, animation, shareware Originator: barrett@karazm.math.uh.edu PRODUCT NAME MainActor 1.52 BRIEF DESCRIPTION MainActor is a modular animation package. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Markus Moenig Address: Im Johannistal 36 52064 Aachen Germany Telephone: (49)-241-71844 FAX: Not listed E-mail: moenig@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de FIDO: 2:242/7.13 LIST PRICE There are two types of registration on this product: Package 1: $50 (US) which gets one a packet containing: A TeX set, printed/bound handbook, the latest version of the program. A keyfile Two free updates (author must be contacted for them) additional updates are 20$ with and 10$ without a printed handbook. Package 2: $25 (US) which gets a packet consisting of The latest version of MainActor A key file. Additional updates cost the same as above. No free updates here. but do not advertise for any particular store!>> SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE While no substantial ram is required, more is better. While it is not required to run, a hard drive should not be considered optional. (how long can an animation be on a floppy?) Worked great on my 2500/020 and on my 4000/040 ! A faster CPU will mean increased performance, but it not necessary to run this SW. SOFTWARE Minimum OS 2.x or higher Flawless operation under Os 3.0 (even has OS 3.0 specific functionality. [see later in review section.]) COPY PROTECTION None. However a nasty and VERY bothersome requester will popup during saving/loading of animations. This is very annoying. A .key file is required for registration. The program installs on a hard drive buy simply un-archiving it on the partition you wish. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Test Machine(s): Amiga 2500 68020/881 OS 2.05 Amiga 4000/040 OS 3.0 The amiga 2500 used C= 68020 daughter board. It has a 52MB hard drive and 8MB of FASTRAM and 1MB CHIPRAM The 4000/040 is a stock 040 4000. REVIEW Even when searching through the archive sites on the internet, one still becomes surprised when he or she stumbles upon a program that fills ones needs completely; with a few extras! I was browsing through the Aminet archive looking for a way to convert my Dpaint anim to an fli format. while looking through the archive site I stumbled upon a program called MainActor. It was defined to do exactly what I needed. Sure I could convert pictures all day long into another format, after all I did get a copy of ADPro when I bought my 4000, however taking my animation and separating it into its different frames and then getting them to my PC to put them into fli format was to say the least, unthinkable! I could not even imagine the boredom and time needed to sit through separating and saving 332 frames ! I needed an animation conversion tool. Sure I could've used ARexx, (more on this later) but I am a little bit of a net junkie, so I thought that before I put a lot of work into an ARexx script I would take advantage of the resources available on the internet. Always the skeptic I ftp'd the file and decided to see what it had to offer (the readme sounded very nice.) The archive is a smallish one, around 600K and compressed in lha format. It is obvious that the author took the time to make installation a breeze, simply un-lha the file . The file creates a home directory along with a drawer icon and places it in your current directory. Eager to get my animation converted I opened the MainActor drawer and was greeted by some VERY professional looking icons. I was beginning to think that I had ftp'd and downloaded a expensive and very disabled piece of shareware. The layout is well done, the window opens to accommodate the icons in the drawer. There is a drawer for documentation (dvi, guide, text formats.,) a preferences drawer, ARexx scripts drawer and an anim example drawer. There are two main icons in the parent drawer that one is sure to notice, the MainActor icon and the MainView icon, the icons are very similar but the programs do vastly different things. The main actor icon launches the main program, while the Mainview icon launches a "player like" utility to play animations in any of the supported formats. Quickly double clicking on the MainActor icon I started the program, an information requester pops up about the author and his recommended fee. The screen opens there are several windows the open shortly thereafter. Project Window This window is where you select which type of anim or pic to load and what format to save to. The listview in the window will display each individual frame or picture. This will also be followed by the timecode of the frame. Once a file is loaded the loader type cycle gadget becomes ghosted. This window will allow you to select a few frames or all of them from an animation. So saying that I wanted to get 10-15 frames from the middle of an FLI animation, I would simply load the anim and select the frames I want. (This can be done by selecting a frame and hitting the "show" button in the project control panel.) Once you know you start and end frame you simply select the entire range, then select your output format type, and from the project control panel select "save" and the frames will be stored in the area you choose in the format you selected. To save even more time one could select append and simply append the frames to an existing anim. The project control panel is a small window that lies next to the project window, this panel of buttons controls all the action in the project window. The items in this window are: load, unload, play, show, append, and save. All operations that take place in the project window are launched with a click of a button in this window. The project window is the "meat and potatoes" of this program. There can be more than one project window open at a time, however one can only operate within 2 of these windows at any given time. There will be a "source project", a "destination project" , and a "Deactive project." These can be changed at any time by selecting the cycle gadget at the top of the window. One can see how loading and manipulating animations in MainActor can become quite intense, and varied. For example: I open 3 project windows, I have an FLI in my source project window, DL animation in my second or destination project, and a non looping anim in my third project window or my Deactive window. (We of course assume that the animations have the same depth and resolution.) I select 4 frames from my FLI and append them to my DL anim. I then click on my anim and change it to source project, then insuring that my DL file was the destination I click on the dl animation and my anim is now the destination and my DL file is the source. Selecting the last 10 frames from the DL will include 6 frames from the DL and 4 frames from the FLI. I then select append and 'voila' the 10 additional frames are added to the anim. Selecting save, I save the anim in the format of my choosing (detailed later in the review.) Now I can play it back. Of course if you have different depth/resolution for each anim one will need to extract the frames and convert them and then append them together. A lot of work but easily done via the ARexx port on the program. Project View Settings This window sets the "environment" for the animation(s). In this window one can select the screen type by clicking on the "Select Display" button, then selecting from their favorite screen type. There are an X and Y offset that allow one to set the offset of your viewing. This option is only enabled if the center object is disabled and one is not in "window" mode. There is a cycle gadget in the center bottom of the window which will switch between displaying your anim on a screen or in a window! Note: The window is an option only in OS3.0 or greater. This is a great feature, on my A4000 I run all the animations I load in a window. At first I was VERY disappointed with the window output, after reading the documentation I discovered that I had to set my amount of screen colors available from the default of 4. (I set the to 256 always.) This is done by selecting "system preferences" under the "windows" menu. Even on my 040 A4000 the animation still played MUCH slower than opening its own screen, but being in a window is very nice to watch the output from the development screen. Making for easier edits. The repeats is a value telling MainActor how many times to repeat the playing of the animation. Values from 1 to 9999 are accepted. Checking the frame info button causes MainActor to display information about the current frame. There are a few items of interest here but they are well covered in the documentation. Items such as what to do if no information appears in the screen. Center, checking this option will cause MainActor to center your animation in the display screen or window. (opposite of X and Y offsets.) Checking the bblank will cause the borders surrounding the anim to be set to black. (BorderBlank.) Project Information Window This window contains information about your anim/picture. Clicking the various gadgets will display information about the project, like colors, number of frames, frame pixel size. . . The time profile and size profile buttons open windows that have a graphical display that depicts the time needed to decompress the frames of your anim and the sizes of the individual frames in your anim. The bitmap time shows the time required to decompress your animation into bitmap format. Chunky time does the same function but only works with chunky formatted anims. i.e. FLI. Text Buffer window This window display messages that MainActor wants to "share" with you about the operation you've selected. If your animation type was not one of the types supported, the error message will be displayed here. As well as success messages. This window is controlled from the menu bar. Menus (the list goes on. . .) The menu(s) contain all of the basic menu stuff, like "open a new project", save, close. . . basically any item that can be clicked in the screen below can be selected from the menu. There are, however, a few exceptions that are menu specific. The first is "text windows", this will allow one the clear, print or save the messages in the text buffer window. The second is the ARexx support. This will allow one to start an ARexx script from the menu and will install an ARexx script in the directory with the others for easy usage. This can be a script you've written or one that is sent as an update. Under the "misc menu" there is an option for SOUND support ! This is done by selecting the "set sound" option and selecting the module of your choice. (currently MA only supports .snd format.) So add a little spice to your animation, add some noise ! The last is the windows menu, this contains 2 items not found in the screen, system preferences, and MainActor prefs. These two windows allow one to change the color depth for the screen. (Very important for viewing 256 color anims in a window.) Select the font type and select which module is the default loader and saver module. While these windows are fairly self explanatory, and the documentation fully covers them. Modules (What anims/pic formats you can and can't load.) The following modules are available in MainActor. Animations Loaders Savers *********** ******* ****** AVI Y N DL Y N FLI Y Y FLC Y Y Anim types: Y Y 3, 5, 7_16,7_32, 8_16,8_32 Animbrush Y N AnimJ Y N Picasso Y N Real3D Y N Universal types: Y N EGS,Merlin, PicassoII, Retina Picture GIF Y N IFF Y Y PCX Y N Universal types: Y Y EGS,Merlin, PicassoII, Retina Workbench-Icon Y Y Did I say something about ARexx ? Why, yes I did! MainActor support 33 commands via ARexx and interfaces very well. In testing, I wanted to convert an anim7 format to mpeg. The anim I created was 332 frames and to convert it into an mpeg each frame needed to be 24bit . This would mean converting these by hand after separating them by hand via MainActor. Since I was going to create this mpeg on my UNIX workstation at work, I also needed to upload the files. The ARexx script was simple, call MainActor, load in the anim, select all, save the output as iff pictures and then call ADPro(tm) and convert the iff files into 24bit and then calling Terminus upload them to my workstation. Having this save me hours of work! MainActor's ARexx portname : MAINACTOR How does it stack up ? Not that there aren't any other utilities out in the wide world that can do what MainActor can do, I have however, not run across another. MainActor is alone in what it does. I would have to classify MainActor as the ADPro(tm) of animations ! For anyone who wishes to convert his or her animation to another format this is without a doubt the software of choice. The documentation is well done, and comes in several flavors, the two I used are the TeX printed manual and the amigaguide docs. They are well written and very clear and concise. The icons are excellent and look professional. (NOTE: the icons were created by: Norbert Bogenrieder) The archive is approximately 800K lha compressed (the original version I received on floppy, fit on one disk. I've received subsequent releases via email.) Using lha it decompresses into its own directory and after adding a MainActor assign pointing to where MainActor resides the program is ready to go. If it is registered the .key file needs to be placed in the T directory on your workbench disk. For those who wish to try the software before considering purchasing it, will be pleased to know the unregistered version is not "crippled" in any way. There is however a VERY bothersome requester when loading and saving animations, (approximately every 5 frames.) The software is very well laid out and has an easy to use interface, I especially like the ICONIFY option, the ability for software to iconify has long been one of my favorite options that a programmer could put in his or her programs. This one does so very nicely. Another nice thing is MainActor is modular, all the loaders and savers are modules, very similar to ADPro(tm) savers and loaders. I reviewed this software since version 1.2x, and this is a product that has gotten better with age ! Each release has needed enhancements and new file formats! Overall I rate this program as a must have if you do any animation work. There are many more options I did not cover in this review that await discovery, one of them being the ability to read a picture format in and save it out to a workbench icon! Very nice indeed. DOCUMENTATION MainActor comes in two different versions, one of the differences being one version has printed documentation and one does not. The printed documentation is in TeX format and is very clear and concise in describing the features on this software. It is also an attractive manual, that is printed on a good bond paper so one doesn't have to worry too much about tearing. The font size is easy to read and the manual is very well laid out. The disk based documentation comes in 3 different formats: Amiga guide: Very well organized and detailed, well done! ASCII: The icon defaults to call more and is the ASCII version of the guide documentation. DVI: Didn't look at it. (no need to really. I had the printed and guide docs !) LIKES AND DISLIKES I most liked the modular programming, this will make upgrades/updates easy and painless. New modules, copy then in the respective drawer(s) (loaders/savers) done. I have to mention the ICONIFY menu option (A. <- keystroke option) it worked flawlessly! I am always a fan of this option. Dislikes are none, a wish list is more like what I have in mind here: A loader and saver for: Mpeg, Quicktime, AVI (a saver.) I would also like to see an option to make the animation one has just saved into an executable file. i.e. an fli output would be a .exe on a pc. As well as the ability to restructure an animation to fit another's resolution/depth when appending to different animations. Also removing the loop at the end of an animation and appending the frames requested and then putting the loop back. More graphic picture file formats. Mostly savers. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS MainActor is alone in what it does and shines like a bright star! ASDG's ADPro(tm) is the only package that I've see to come close, and we all know how much it costs ! I think ASDG should take a look at markus's SW! While ADPro(tm) is the best of the best, I feel that MainActor ranks up there. I use it to do with animation what I use ADPro(tm) to do with image files. BUGS None found. VENDOR SUPPORT I emailed Markus about the above problem and he responded quickly and hammered out some suggestion which worked. Rating: A+. Markus knows his software and its limitations and high points! WARRANTY Author is not responsible for misuse or damage caused by MainActor. (Taken straight from the documentation.) CONCLUSIONS The final word is MainActor is a hard hitting performer. This program performs as well as many of the commercial programs out there. It is programs and efforts like this program that make the amiga the machine that it is. Supporting this program will continue to make this program get better. It is indeed, in my opinion, money well spent. Thanks to Markus Moenig for the concept and release of this program, keep up the good work! ***** (5 out of 5 stars!) COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1994 Keith Christopher. All rights reserved. --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews