AmiTube MorphOS streaming
just a little video showing off the upcoming direct download and stream function of AmiTube
AmiTube direct download/play
As I wrote before, It makes not much sense to use AmiTube on NG Amigas because the could in principle just use the original movie files without conversation. I started to work on this a bit.
On the first picture it’s AmiTube in the back with the new Button „Get Original“ (better name needed 😉 ) which opens a new window. There you can select one of the available resolutions () and formats (should print more there about the codecs maybe). Then when an entry is chosen and „Download to HD“ is pressed it invokes wget to actually get the movie directly from YouTube. A classical YouTube downloader then. (I saved it to ram and used MPlayer to see if the file is ok)
The second try was to directly stream the movie from YouTube, that would be even more cool, it first failed because my MPlayer had no SSL build-in, but a new one (1.4) has, so now that works as well.
So I guess that works somehow, I will play around a bit with it, maybe it will make it to next release. Then it would make a lot of sense to release a MorphOS and AmigaOS4 version I guess, as YT downloader.
AmiTube for AROS
I got some request for AmiTube for AROS because with the MPEG feature it is nicely possible to download and view videos in AROS. In AOS4 and MorphOS you can easily just use the m68k Version because of the seamless integration of 68k Emulation. But in AROS this is no possbile, therefore I compiled a special version for i386 AROS ABIv0 and ARM AROS.
Download at the AmiTube Page
Don’t forget to set a MPEG as default and a suitable MPEG player like mplayer, in principle a simple downloader would be enough for AROS (and AOS4, MorphOS for that matter) i386/arm should be fast enough to play the original format, so no conversation is needed at all.
AmiTube 0.5
After some beta testing today I release the Version 0.5 of AmiTube. Most important news:
- As described before, 3 different quality settings for the movies, CDXL OCS, CDXL AGA, MPEG1
- Share your most favorite videos with other AmiTube users
- Load list of shared videos from internet
- type a YouTube URL to search bar to directly get a video description
- observe clipboard for YouTube URLs
- parameter for CDXL and MPEG Player
- special Version for 68000 processors (normal Version needs at least a 68020)
I also created a dedicated page where always the most recent AmiTube Version can be downloaded.
Download: AmiTube Page
Have Fun.
AmiTube Multi-format
the next Version of AmiTube will give the choice which format you want your youtube video converted to, here are the specs for each format and an estimated size for a 30 seconds video:
- standard CDXL Video 160px 32 colors 12 fps Audio: mono 11040 kHz 8 bit; for OCS Amiga (e.g. 4.4 Mbyte)
- enhanced CDXL Video 160px 256 colors 12 fps Audio: mono 11040 kHz 8 bit; for AGA Amiga (e.g. 8.8 MByte)
- VCD MPEG1 Video 320px, 24 bit colors 24 fps, Audio: stereo 44100 kHz 16 bit; for fast RTG Amigas (e.g. 5.0 Mbyte)
One can easily see, how the quality increases which each setting and how much better MPEG1 is in comparison with CDXL, but of course for a standard Amiga such Video CD MPEG1 is much too slow to play and thats the power of CDXL to play even on such slow hardware.
AmiTube 0.3 First Release
Just to finish that (for me the program and services around are now more or less finished) I will publish this AmiTube program which you can use to watch short YouTube videos on your ordinary Amiga 68k.
As one can notice in the last video I changed my setup from MultiView to AGABlaster, which is much better to play the CDXL videos, faster and smoother, also the palette switching works better. (you can change the default player in Preferences)
Download: AmiTube 0.3
If you use that program, remember the conversation is done on my Server, please do not overdo it (try to convert a 2 hour video or convert hundreds of videos) other (and myself) need that Server for other things as well 😉
And please do not share or publish this program, anywhere! If one want to have it, here its free download it from my page. Thanks!
m68k Amiga plays YouTube videos
You thought it would be impossible to let an m68k Amiga play YouTube videos, you are surely mistaken, lets have a look:
You remember the CDXL stuff I showed before? Of course with that you can create a relatively low quality video from an YouTube video, and if you do that on a server and just download the converted video file you can watch youtube videos on your amiga.
The search and downloading is done via youtube_dl the conversation to CDXL using the docker container I showed earlier.
Sorry for the bad sound, but it seems to be my UAE setup is a bit strange in sound settings, never really used the sound there, also other sounds sounds a bit crackly. I should try that video on a real Amiga and with other players than Multiview to see, or better hear, if its better, or the conversation is so weak.
I remember I had some problems with the sound in big bug bunny movie as well, the sound was not loud enough and the 8 bit conversation made it really bad.
Chess GUI
Maybe you remember when I improved the TProcess implementation for MorphOS using a Chess GUI and an uci chess client. The Author of that chess client contacted me to ask if I could publish the Chess GUI. I did not plan to publish it because it was really just a test, but ok, why not. It also includes the Source (LGPL) and some engines (also the mentioned predateur, which works nicely)
Download MUIeschecs with Source and engines
Hardware programming on Amiga with Free Pascal
It’s very common on 68k Amiga to turn off the operating system and directly write to hardware registers to get maximum speed. Many games and demos does it this way. Usually they are written in assembler, but of course this is also possible with Free Pascal for Amiga.
I got that idea because Charlie did a little test how small a program in Free Pascal on Amiga can be. (I guess it can be even smaller than that, when replacing the DosWrite(Output()) by PutStr() and compile for 68020).
So I took his source and tried to make a little bit more useful example out of it and remembered my time doing Amiga 68k Assembler (in ASM-One, I was never good with that, but hey I can learn a bit now)
So I did a little copper list example and it’s 700 bytes long, not bad, as second I tried some bit-plane manipulation. The program became around 3kbyte (most of that is because of the huge sinus table included).
And it runs very nicely on my A1200.
The Source with compiled executable is available on Gitub.
Free Pascal 3.2.2 Release
New Release of Free Pascal is done. It’s a bug fix release for 3.2.0 it has also some bug fixes for the Amiga systems, especially structures and functions are checked against official SDKs (especially for MorphOS with its latest SDK Version). For changes that break compatibility you can check official changes document.
Downloads
- FreePascal 3.2.2 for m68k-amiga
- FreePascal 3.2.2 for i386-aros ABIv0
- FreePascal 3.2.2 for arm-aros
- FreePascal 3.2.2 for powerpc-amiga
- FreePascal 3.2.2 for powerpc-morphos
or you go directly to the Free Pascal home page and download from one of the mirrors. Have Fun.