A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

It's sad to see that two amiga ppc demos from Madwizards, Cruel Karma Forms and Till i feel you, still can't be watched by the majority of non-ppc owners (including me). Especially Cruel Karma Forms seems to be rated very highly by those lucky few who have seen it.

So i'm wondering: can we do something about it? Somewhere out there, somebody must still have a ppc and someone must have experience with capturing demos on video...

Before i start searching on other sites, any opinions or ideas would be welcome.

Best solution would be a VGA grabber, but I do not have a PPC or a framegrabber. Since I know some people working for TV I could ask them. But still I have no PPC.

Someone here who wants to get rid of his PPC? :-)

I posted this on Amigaworld, Frog did the same on another forum but without much result so far. It seems that few people have the lucky combination.

I'm not surprised though. Cruel Karma Forms was released 7 years ago and still no video. That must mean something...

Hi,

i find some ppl with PPC hardware but they don't know how to capture the demo to video.

It must exist a solution as several PPC demos are available in AVI.

If you can help : http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=34013

Looks like this quest may lead to result after all. Fingers crossed :o)

Keep in mind that you'll need a 604 cpu to make ppc demos running with an acceptable framerate. I've got a 603 on my 1200 and most ppc demos run under 10fps.

But the "main" problem is HOW to record those demo ?

Sorry, none of my friends has access to a frame grabber.
Hottest tip from a TV guy is a very dark room, a beamer and a good camera.
He said, he converted some very old movies this way.... :-(

actually I made a "screener" from these 2 productions of madwizards but I don't know a way where to upload them...
its a "beta" release of the video and I'm sure I can get AT LEAST twice the quality for video.. audio is recorded via line in, so its as best as it can be.
any thoughts of where I can upload them?
beware are files about 100Megs each.

please consider youtube as well

@Stormlord:

Big thanks for the work! Are you planning on doing the higher quality version any time soon? I'm asking because if you are considering it, maybe you should consider not spreading this version (i admit, i want to see it now though :o))?

As for file hosting, i can probably host it ONCE i have the file (untergrund doesn't allow anonymous uploading, i think). If they are under 100Mb, rapidshare allows uploading without any registration, i think. Once i have downloaded it from there, i can host it.

Anybody else has any ideas or upload space to share?

I'm hoping that today I will have a good camera to get a much much better quality but then I can't be sure... also it needs some time to make the timings in music perfect, and because I'm too busy these days nothing is sure.. but I will try to have the HIGH quality uploaded to rapidshare next weekend. for now and for everyone thats not patient the link to "Till I feel you" 60MB : http://rapidshare.com/files/88623294/Till_I_feel_y ou.m4v.html

@stormlord: i just watched the video. I was wondering: why are the borders flashing (white/black)? Other than that, the colors/details seem to get lost in the capture process but it's not bad at all. Makes me really happy to see the demo moving. Seems to be a lovely demo with extremely neat graphics (madwizards!). For reference, load the A.D.A. till i feel you page in your browser and put the video on top of it.

I really do hope that you will go for the better quality version! Please know that the work you're doing is really appreciated!!

as for appreciation... I own to the demoscene too much.. thats nothing..
I try to get cruel carma form a little bit more compressed because its 108MB!!! and can't sent it via rapidshare..

as for high quality, I will do it for sure, maybe it will take a week, but the result will be unbelivable, just imagine that these videos were taken with a digital camera for photos! tommorow I will have a pro beta cam at my hands to play a little, also I found some technics to make the video have more clarity when grabbing it via a beemer. I hope next revision will have better quality even from grabbing a composite signal directly via digitizer ( as all aga demos are captured in video). Target result is at minimum 2x both at clarity and brightness and upper limit 4x.

bytheway, don't judge the demos by these preliminary videos, especially CKF has a lot of moving and FX in screen that with that camera I'm using its lost. So FOR VOTERS: PLEASE DON'T VOTE TILL FINAL VERSIONS!

as for borders flashing... maybe its a trick from madwizards to make grabbing with camera this demo a hell difficult! (because ccd opens and closes brightness all the time with blurry result), and also it kill eyes especialy watching it in beamer!!!

@Stormlord: is there any way to cut out the flashing borders with a video processing program? (don't know anything about such things).

Btw, you can always split files (don't ask me how though but i think there are splitter programs) to get the filesize down to 100Mb.

Anyway, i'll think of a better upload solution by next week.

edit: hjsplit should do the trick

Just one last thing: if you have the final high(er) quality versions, maybe you should consider uploading it to scene.org. It's the best place for any demoscene related file.

Cruel Karma Form 71MB : http://rapidshare.com/files/88695993/Cruel_Karma_F orm.m4v.html

but why I can't login into ADA?? I have the same pass and user name with that on forum, but it doesn't let me log in...

@StormLord, good work, thanks!

but why I can't login into ADA?? I have the same pass and user name with that on forum, but it doesn't let me log in...

Stormlord: never had any complaints about ppl not able to login. Remember that the site login isn't the same as the forum login. Maybe you have a different password. I'll check this out today but i can't retrieve your password (its encoded).

effectively the flashing border are annoying, anyway thanks for the "screener" and even if the quality isn't the best, it handle to see the demo.

@z5_

DOH!!! sorry my mistake!
it was different password! I forgot it did had a different registration..

I tried to capture CKF with a Digital 8 Sony Video cam but the result was WORST!!! I can't belive that a photo camera can have better results than a dedicated digital camera..
I tried to find a better equipment but till now I havent. so I corrected some preferences to projector and my photo cam and now the result is WAY better but not perfect.. its the best I can do with that equipment.
As in first video you will see that the picture is flashing (and I don't mean borders from "till I feel you") especially in light and white objects, thats not correctable for now, its because my projector is a DLP with a colorwheel, and eventhough eye can't see that in reality, but cameras are capturing it. So for that kind of job it needs a projector with 3xLCDs or even better a projector with 3xDLP without colorwheels.
If you complain about a liiiitle jerkiness of the video, its because the demo was played in 603@266 + 060@60 +scsi. eventhough 603 and 604 cpus are on par in the same Mhz, 604 has DOUBLE bandwidth on memory bus (64bit vs 32bit).
But I think enough with technicalities and excuses!
There will be no new version of this video till I find both apropriate beemer and a pro camera. Except for the fixed video version of "Till I feel You".

I have splitted the zipped movie in 2 files, you have to join them and then unzip the resulted file.
LINKS:
http://rapidshare.com/files/90218775/CruelFixedL.z ip.001.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/90223003/CruelFixedL.z ip.002.html

The fixed version is a bit less dark, hence you see more details in some scenes. However, it looks a bit more "washed off" or "grainy" (if that's the correct name for it). It depends on what you prefer. I actually preferred the original version (better richer colors).

In any case, you did a great job. In the end, it gives a very good impression on what the demo is about. One has to wonder if it's even possible to have better quality with a projector + camera. So thanks a lot.

If nobody does it before, i'm going to upload it to scene.org in a week or so (i'm past my isp limit again this month).

actually even the first version was grainy but because it was too dark the grains are not so visible.. and the colors was VERY wrong.
in the last video the colors are almost matched the real production colors, and you can see every FX thats happening on the screen.
As for better quality.. if I manage to borrow a beta cam , or even a 2MP digital camera (and not 0.8MP thats the majority) you will not belive how it will be.. LCD beemer is easy to find but without a good cam only the flashing will be better and maybe the contrast will be worst.
if you can/want , upload the second video on scene.org