8088 corruption encoder... a new one

[pearce_jj]

Absolutely. The ROM is even socketed and contains the two CGA fonts (selectable by a jumper), and the MDA font as well. Cards might have localized font ROMs from IBM, for example a font including the Nordic letters Ø and ø.

The type of ROM is however not of the typical 2764 kind, but rather the uncommon MK36000 kind.

Thanks, forgive my lack of knowledge but how is the ROM used? I guess it's private to the card, so we can't just drop in a custom ROM on a separate ISA card and pull the chip?

 

[per]

Thanks, forgive my lack of knowledge but how is the ROM used? I guess it's private to the card, so we can't just drop in a custom ROM on a separate ISA card and pull the chip?

It's hardwiered to the render logic yeah, and not present in main memory at all.

But the encoding is simple. Every character of the CGA font is stored as a 8x8 monochrome bitmap, and the layout of a font character table starts with character 0 and ends on character 255. The ROM starts of with the two halves of the MDA font, then the two CGA fonts follow. (The MDA font is divided into two tables, one with the upper half of each character and another with the lower half.)

 

[chjmartin2]

17 Frame Per Second TMV Encoder

17 Frame Per Second TMV Encoder

Something I've been working on recently. I did that really terrible VB6 encoder that I posted here years ago, but this new one is in C and is light years beyond it. I actually based it off Trixter's lecture this time. The quality is really close to his original encoder, which was unfortunately never released.

I used the ffmpeg libs for source input, so it can accept practically any video file format and turn it into a TMV file. It can use up to 12 processing threads to speed things up on a multicore system. It's not that fast, I get about 5 FPS on my overclocked core i7-4930k but it does a pretty good quality encode. Two screenshots of it's encode of the Tron disc scene, and one of the Enterprise from the Star Trek TNG intro:

Hi. I'll go ahead and hi-jack this thread as this is on topic. Mike - nice work on the encoder - I wish I had your GUI and C skillset. Attached is a frame encoder for TMV files that needs BMP files as an input. It can convert to DMP files suitable for Jim's encoder. I have been laboring (for two years) trying to figure out how to optimize two CGA text frames using temporal color and character effects. I was successful in getting the right frames, but the result was somewhat disappointing to me, not by anybody's fault but my own. The playback pauses quite a bit at 60 frames per second and although the flicker effect is good, the pausing takes away from the illusion. In my desire to make lemonaid from lemons I realized that in my need for a really fast character matching algorithm (imagine 256*256 letter combinations and 16*16*16*16 color combos [I know you don't need to search all of them - now]) that could be repurpoosed to make standard TMV files. I also realized that I had a pretty rich feature set, so I spent the last few days of my vacation getting the converter release ready. There are many interactive options that you can observe their effects of in real time. I wrote this in Freebasic.

(Martin - would love to share all of the formula's with you if you'd like, your interface is way, way, way better.)

Controls:

1/2, 3/4, 5/6 Linearly controls the input RGB balance
D,F - Dither or Dither OFF
O,P - Contrast Multiply each RGB inputer by this value
K,L - Bright Subtract or add a value to each RGB input
Q - Matrix Adjust through many dither settings
G -Gamma Turn on or off Gamma correction
T,Y - Adjust Gamma correction value
N,M - alpha Value to Multiply By Bayer Matrix
U,I - beta Value to add/subtract after Bayer Matrix addition
H,J - This value is cool. H prefers characters with matching
total pixel/color counts. J prefers total block color
distance. [the "sharper" result is actually close in
8x8 block matching but not by matching block]

Screenshot of Encoder Running


Encoder
View attachment 8FLEXFAST.zip

TMV Videos: Blurred Lines, Greatest American Hero, Ginger Lynn (NSFW), Gorillaz Clint Eastwood, Raiders of the Lost Ark

Gorillaz

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Trixter]

Really flattered to see all the work done on this, an idea I had 10 years ago that is still kicking I'll add this to the 8088 Corruption page when I release my TMV encoder in a bit (hopefully no less than a week).

 

[chjmartin2]

I will make one running some new things I work on - certainly. This is my new dev rig!

Here is my Vendex Headstart II running Jim Leonard's 8088 Corruption using a 60 Hz flicker to provide a wider range of characters and colors (85). The video is very true to life when synced.

I will post another video from a Dosbox output capture, as that really does capture what you see on the RGB monitor better than the above.

Here is HEMAN.ZIP containing the .TMV file for use with 8088 Corruption.

 

[Trixter]

Very nice You could actually watch an entire episode that way.

 

[chjmartin2]

Very nice You could actually watch an entire episode that way.

Here is a link to an AVI file with uncompressed frames at 320x200 with Dosbox output. The RGB true life output is the best, but I try to give you the effect here.

 

[sutekh]

There aren't words for how awesome this is. Your encoder is great, Mike. I have noticed that it struggles with several input formats though (e.g., many MPEG4 streams I've tried render with too-fast video and no sound, many motion jpeg streams generate data alignment warnings, etc.) I've have had the best luck transcoding to H.264 with PCM audio.

I wish I had the skills to contribute anything meaningful, but the best I can do is post a couple humorous TMVs:

Lemon Demon's Ultimate Showdown (rendered with -slide): showdown.tmv
Homestar Runner's Techno: hsrtecno.tmv

I have a 5160 with a 5153 in my office, and have blown the minds of too many colleagues to count with Corruption and Domination. :inlove: