Girls Aloud - Something Kinda Spectrum

[bverstee]

I'm trying to find some time to compress video somehow.

Till now I found that refreshing not 6912 bytes of a frame, but only a third (2048 + 256 bytes) still gives a great picture, but already only needs a third of the original size of the video.

I would like to talk to other MB02 developers on a forum, if there is any about this specific theme: playing video on a Spectrum.

Are you sure there are enough people in need of KMT? Then I will create some again.

Where can I annouce this?

[mrdkaaa]

You can play it at this speed only under emulator, because of too slow disc access on real speccy, right?

[zxspectrum128]

Natxcross was the one who programmed this. It can work in the real Speccy 128K but it has to read video+audio from an IDE interface (data is in CF card, SD card, HD, etc.). This could not be done if we were reading data from a Plus D or 3" disk. But yes, in the emulator it's faster than in real hardware (for now, read natxcross's comments below).

[yerzmyey]

Not exactly.

1) file structure

It should work on MB-02+ and divIDE with DMA. However it's still not confirmed enough.

2) sector structure

It will work without any problem if You save the movie not as file/files but directly on disk's sectors (like Gasman did). Then it work on any HDD/CF drive.

[bverstee]

INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!

Never knew this was already possible! Wow!

I'm owner of a MB02+IDE, fabricer of the PC Keyboard Interface (designed by Miguel Angel Rodriguez Jodar) and fabricer of Kempston Mouse Turbo (Velesoft).

At the moment I'm working on getting these devices to work together and putting them all in a transparent PC case.

After that, I will start programming again.

I'm astonished about this video!

[zxspectrum128]

There's more videos like these on the net. Just search for zx digitized or zx digitised video.

You should announce your work on WOS. A lot of people don't know you have the keyboard and K-Mouse turbo interfaces available for sale, and some of them are desperate looking for it.

[zxspectrum128]

This was a reply to mrdkaa.

[natxcross]

Yup, DMA really is needed for real hardware. With the Rick Astley vid, I rewrote the player to use fewer frames per second and load in more audio data per frame, and it was *almost* watchable... I might give it another go at some point, and try compressing the data.

[yerzmyey]

Let me know when the new version is ready. ;)

[zxspectrum128]

Miss you in the WOS forums!

Let's forget DMA for a second, because the DivIDE is more popular and more accessible than the MB02. Where does the problem lie? Is it the audio that slows down the video or the opposite? Thanks!!

[yerzmyey]

As F6 said, there is some DMA add-on to divIDE so there should be no problem.

[yerzmyey]

YAREK ADAMSKI:

"CPU can read 2 bytes in time of 15 tacts, Z80DMA requires only 2 tacts for a byte".

[yerzmyey]

I asked Yarek Adamski. He said it should work on MB02 diskdrive (it has built in Z80DMA) or divIDE with added Z80DMA.

However he mentioned the player would have to be re-written for Z80DMA.

Then it will work.

I hope it helps.

[zxspectrum128]

Please ask Yarek if he could figure out a way of reading video (or audio+video) from any Speccy IDE interface without needing machine code to read data from a hidden partition.

Hmmm, it seems my posts didn't appear next to the ones I was replying too. Oh well...

[yerzmyey]

zxspectrum128: Well, Yarek isn't a good person in this subject-matter, I suspect. Gasman would be better, prolly.

[yerzmyey]

So - I've tested it right now.

Well, considering the divIDE is the fastest drive for ZX Spectrum - direct transfer is still too slow sadly. The movie works much too slow.

However if one would make a player with buffer - it surely should work.

I wish You luck with the development!

[yerzmyey]

It's not any fake, it's simply work in progress. I do similar thing by myself (of course worse but theoretically available to all BASIC users).

My question is - does it work with divIDE and if not - when it WILL be? :)

Cheerz for da stuf.

[kalateur]

incredible!!!!

[JohnJTraston]

Is this FAKE? What kind of Spectrum is that? Even hacked turbo version can't do chunks so fast. IDE, at least Beta128 can't stream that fast. Original tape interface neither.

[natxcross]

It's not fake, it's running on FUSE. It's a little slower running on the real thing, but I'm pretty confident about getting it up to speed (just as soon as I have enough time).

[JohnJTraston]

If so then it is cool. What kind of drive is that (on a real thing). I guess it is not TR-DOS. Is it?

[BrunoFlorindo]

It can be done with the DivIDE or MB02, but like natxcross said, it's slower on the real thing. It's even slower on the +3e, but I'm hoping to see it working soon. The speed issue also has to do with the fact that we don't have direct access to FAT32 yet. For now everything is done via a layer and running a virtual tape or disk.

[zxspectrum128]

Things are changing. When this video was converted we had to load complete screens. Soon we should have a new compression scheme which will allow for better video playback. Natxcross, we need you back m8!

[madderscientist23]

Awesome!

[zxspectrum128]

Impressive!! All we need now is a way to playback these videos using one the the new IDE interfaces! The only problem is that AY samples push the Z80 to the limit.