XAnim 2.80.121Mar99
COMPILING ON UNIX Systems (And all Unix derivatives)
Please also read the following files:
README.dll
README.zlib
If you can't go the dll route, then you need to read
the "cinepak.readme", "indeo.readme" and the "creative.readme" files.
If you have Imake on your system, Read and edit the Imakefile
and then you can type
xmkmf
which should produce a Makefile from the Imakefile. Then
you can type:
make xanim
If this doesn't work you can copy Makefile.unx to Makefile.
Read and edit the Makefile(that you just created). Make
any necessary changes for your particular machine or preferencs
and the type:
make xanim
NOTE: That in the Imakefile, XCOMM is used as a comment. This
is recommended by X11R6, but may break older revs. To fix,
simply replace every occurence of "XCOMM" with "#" in the
Imakefile. See top of Imakefile for more details.
COMPILING ON VMS/AXP Systems
The files make.com and xanimXX.opt are provided for VMS users.
make.com should correctly detect wether you're running
DECWindows XUI or DECWindows MOTIF(revs 1.1 and 1.2) and use
the appropriate xanimXX.opt file.
If you use the VMS MMS (or "make") facility, then a descript.mms
file is provided.
NOTE: since VMS is case insensitve, all options to xanim must be
enclosed in double quotes in order for them to be proper recognized.
Example:
xanim "+f -Cn" anim1 anim2
HOW TO USE XANIM
The following is a copy of the man page with examples at the end.
SYNOPSIS
xanim [ +Vnum ] [ +Aaopts ] [ +Ccopts ] [ +Ggopts ] [
+Mmopts ] [ +Ssopts ] [ +Wwopts ] [ +Zzopts ] [ +opts ] animfile
[ [ +opts ] [ animfile ] ... ]
DESCRIPTION
XAnim is a program that can display animations of various
formats on systems running X11. XAnim currently supports the
following animation types:
+ FLI animations.
+ FLC animations.
+ IFF animations.
+ GIF87a and GIF89a files.
+ GIF89a animation extension support.
+ a kludgy text file listing gifs and what order to
show them in.
+ DL animations. Formats 1, 2 and most of 3.
+ Amiga PFX(PageFlipper Plus F/X) animations. DISABLED TEMPORARILY.
+ Amiga MovieSetter animations(For those Eric Schwartz
fans).
+ Utah Raster Toolkit RLE images and anims.
+ AVI animations.
+ Quicktime Animations.
+ SGI Movie Format Files.
+ WAV audio files may have their sound added to any
animation type that doesn't already have audio, by
specifying the .wav file after the animation file on
the command line.
+ JFIF images. NOTE: use XV for single images. This is more
for animation of a sequence of JPEG images.
+ MPEG animations. NOT FULLY SUPPORTED. NO AUDIO.
And currently only Type I Frames are displayed.
Type B and Type P frames are currently ignored,
but will be added in future revs.
+ AU audio files may have their sound added to any
animation type that doesn't already have audio, by
specifying the .wav file after the animation file on
the command line.
+ any combination of the above on the same command
line.
Please see the file Formats.doc for specific support details
on each format.
XAnim also provides various options that allow the user to
alter colormaps, playback speeds, looping modes and can pro-
vide on-the-fly scaling of animations with the mouse.
OPTIONS
A + will generally turn an option on and a - will turn an
option off. This can be reversed at compile time. (see
xanim_config.h).
In each SubMenu, the options can be run together with no
intervening spaces. In the list of SubMenu options presented
below, the first letter given is the letter that specifies
the SubMenu and should NOT be repeated if several SubMenu
options are to be run together.
For example, "+Cn +Cs10 +CF4" can also be written as
"+Cns10F4" or "+CF4s10n".
A + or a - within a SubMenu will be an exit from that sub-
menu. Options will affect all animations following the
invocation of that option. Some options may be changed in
between animations without affecting previous animations.
In the following sections, an "num" represents an integer
number and an "fnum" represents a floating point number. Don't
include the double quotes. If a floating point number is of an
integer amount, the "." need not be specified. There should be
no spaces between the option and the numbers.
aopts SubMenu for Audio Options
+AeAudio Enable. On by default.
+AkThis option allows XAnim to skip video frames
in order to help keep video in sync with audio.
Default is on.
+AmTake the audio from the next audio-only file
and use it with the video file previous to it.
Any audio already existing in that video file
will be discarded. NOTE: XAnim by default will
add audio from an audio-only file to a previous
video only(ie not audio) file. This option just
forces the issue if the previous file already
has audio. Default is off.
+AM Take the audio from the next audio-only file
and use it with the video file previous to it.
And in addition, scale the timing of that video
file to be of the same duration of this audio
file. Any audio already existing in that video
file will be discarded. Default is off.
+Ap"num"This turns a hardware specific Audio port on or off.
Port 0 - main speaker (on by default)
Port 1 - headphones (off by default)
Port 2 - line out (off by default)
+As"fnum"Scale Audio playback speed by "fnum". Only the
range 0.125 to 8.00 is allowed.
NOTE: CURRENTLY VIDEO DOESN'T SCALE WITH AUDIO.
+Av"num"Sets the inital Audio Volume(0-100) with 0
the lowest. default is 40. See xa_config.h
copts SubMenu for Color Options
+C1Create a colormap from the first frame of a
TrueColor anim and then remap the remaining
frames to this colormap. This can potentially
add significant time to the startup of an ani-
mation but usually results in better colors.
The animation needs to be buffered for this
option to work. Not valid for TrueColor or
DirectColor displays(nor is it needed).
+C3Convert TrueColor anims to 332(StaticColor).
TrueColor anims are animations that provide
separate RGB info for each pixel, rather than
each pixel being an index into a global color-
map. AVI(16bit CRAM), QT(RPZA and RLE depth 16
and 24) and URT RLE 24 bit anims are examples
of TrueColor anims. This option is ignored for
TrueColor or DirectColor displays.
+CA Create a colormap from each frame of a
TrueColor anim. This can be useful if the
colors radically change during the course of
the animation. This can take a VERY,VERY long
time at start up. Animation must be buffered.
This option is ignored for TrueColor or
DirectColor displays.
+Ca Remap all images to single new cmap created
from all of the colormaps.
+Cd Use Floyd-Steinberg dithering if needed for
non-monochrome displays. This will cause a
reduction in playback speed.
+Cf Forcibly remap to all frames to 1st frame's
cmap.
+CF0 Turns off CF4 option.
+CF4 This option samples the colors of true color
animations ahead of time and forms a color
lookup table. Beats the just truncating to a
RGB 332 color table and IMHO beats dithering.
See the +s option below(also in copts submenu).
Currently ONLY Work with unbuffered animations
+Cg Convert TrueColor anims to gray scale. This
option is ignored for TrueColor and DirectColor
displays.
+Ch Use histogram to aid in color reduction. His-
trogramming is only done on frames that are
buffered.
+Cm This option is currently needed if you want to
dither TrueColor anims to a 332 colormap. Ani-
mation must be buffered. Typically +bC3dm is
the option to use. This can take a VERY long
time at start up.
+Cn Don't create new colormap but instead allocate
colors from the X11 Display's default cmap.
+Cs"num"This is the number of frames the +CF4 option looks
at ahead of time. More frames potentially yields
better colors results, but takes more time at
start up. default is 5.
gopts SubMenu for Gamma Options
+Ga"fnum"Set gamma of animation to be displayed.
+Gd"fnum"Set gamma of display. 1.0 is no change. gamma's
greater than 1.0 typically brighten the anima-
tion.
mopts SubMenu for Median-Cut Quantization Options
+Macompute box color from average of box.
+Mccompute box color as center of box.
+Mb"num"Truncate rgb to "num" bits before quantizing.
sopts SubMenu for Scaling Options
+SiHalf the height of IFF anims if they are
interlaced.(Not completely reliable since not
all IFF anims correctly identify themselves as
interlaced).
+SnPrevents X11 window from resizing to match
animations's size.
+SrAllow user to resize animation on the fly.
Enlarging an animation can greatly reduce play-
back speed depending on the power of the cpu.
+Ss"fnum"Scale the size of animation by "fnum" before
displaying.
+Sh"fnum"Scale the horizontal size of the animation by
"fnum" before displaying.
+Sv"fnum"Scale the vertical size of the animation by
"fnum" before displaying.
+Sx"num"Scale the animation to have width "num" before
displaying.
+Sy"num"Scale the animation to have height "num" before
displaying.
+ScCopy display scaling factors to display buffer-
ing factors.
+SS"fnum"Scale the size of the animation by "fnum" before
buffering it.
+SH"fnum"Scale the horizontal size of the animation by
"fnum" before buffering it.
+SV"fnum"Scale the vertical size of the animation by
"fnum" before buffering it.
+SX"num"Scale the animation to have width "num" before
buffering it.
+SY"num"Scale the animation to have height "num" before
buffering it.
+SCCopy buffer scaling factors to display scaling
factors.
wopts SubMenu for Remote Window and Control Options.
(See "Remote_Window.doc" )
+W"id"Specify X11 Window "id" of window to draw into.
+WdDon't refresh window at end of anim.
+WnxUse property x for communication.
Default is XANIM_PROPERTY
+WpPrepare anim, but don't start playing it.
+WrResize X11 Window to fit anim.
+Wx"num"Position anim at x coordinate "num".
+Wy"num"Position anim at y coordinate "num".
+WcPosition relative to center of anim.
zopts SubMenu for Special Options
+ZeXAnim will exit after playing through command
line once.
+Zp"num"XAnim pause at frame "num" and then wait for user
input. Several pauses may be specified. Each
group of pauses will only affect the animation
immediately following them on the command line.
Pauses will occur at least once.
+ZpeXAnim will pause on the last frame of the anim.
+ZrThis option pops up the Remote Control Window.
This overrides the default condition set in
xanim_config.h. Remote Control support must be
compiled into XAnim for this to work.
+ZvThis option cause XAnim to exit prior to even
displaying the animation. This is useful in
conjunction with the +v option if you just
want to obtain info about the animation without
actually playing it.
Normal Options
+bUncompress and buffer images before displaying.
This only applies to AVI, QT, IFF, FLI, FLC,
JPEG, MPEG and DL animations. The rest(GIF87a,
GIF89a, PFX and RLE) are currently always
uncompressed and buffered. This is cleared by
the +f option.
+BUsed X11 Shared Memory(if present)for unbuffered
animations only.(This is mutually exclusive with
+b above).
+DUse X11 Multi Buffering (if present) to smooth
animations by double-buffering. Default is on.
+fDon't load anim into memory, but read each sec-
tion only when needed. This is supported only
for AVI, QT, IFF, FLI, FLC, JPEG, MPEG and DL
animations. This option is cleared by the +b
option. This saves memory at the cost of
speed.
+clet xanim know that iff anim is a nonlooping
one.
+d"num"debug switch. "num" can be from 0(off) to 5(most)
for level of detail.
+FFloyd-Steinberg dithering when needed.
+j"num""num" is the number of milliseconds between
frames. if 0 then the time specified in the
animation is used for timing purposes.
+l"num"loop animation "num" number of times before mov-
ing on to next animation.
+lp"num"ping-pong animation "num" number of times before
moving on to next animation.
+Ndon't display images. Useful for benchmarking.
+oturns on certain optimizations. See
xanim.readme.
+pUse Pixmap instead of Image in X11. This option
has no effect if the animation is
buffered(either by default or with the +b
option).
+qPrevents XAnim from printing out the title header.
Useful for when XAnim is called by other programs
where no tty output is desired(doesn't affect +v
or +d# options).
+rootTiles animation/video onto X11 root screen.
+rAllow color cycling for IFF single images.
+RAllow color cycling for IFF anims. (default
should be off)
+T0Title option 0. Title is just XAnim.
+T1Title option 1. Title is current anim name.
When anim is stopped, the current frame number
is included.
+T2Title option 2. Title is current anim name and
current frame number.
+vVerbose mode. Gives some information about ani-
mation such as size, number of frames, etc.
+V"num"Select X11 Visual to use when displaying anima-
tion. The "num" is obtained by using the +X
option of xanim.
+VclassSelect the best X11 Visual of Class class when
displaying the animation. class can be anyone
of the following strings and is case insensi-
tive. (ie StaTicGraY is same as staticgray).
staticgray Select best StaticGray Visual.
grayscale Select best GrayScale Visual.
staticcolor Select best StaticColor Visual.
pseudocolor Select best PseudoColor Visual.
truecolor Select best TrueColor Visual.
directcolor Select best DirectColor Visual.
+XX11 verbose mode. Display information about the
support X11 visuals.
WINDOW COMMANDS
Once the animation is up and running there are various com-
mands that can be entered into that animation window from
the keyboard.
q quit.
Q Quit.
g Stop color cycling.
p Toggle ping pong flag for looping.
r Restore original Colors(useful after g).
w Restore original window size(useful after resizing).
z This pops up or removes the Remote Control Window.
Remote Control support must be compiled into XAnim
for this to work.
<space> Toggle. starts/stops animation.
, Single step back one frame.
. Single step forward one frame.
< Go back to start of previous anim.
> Go forward to start of next anim.
m Single step back one frame staying within anim.
/ Single step forward one frame staying within anim.
- Increase animation playback speed.
= Decrease animation playback speed.
0 Reset animation playback speed to original values.
AUDIO RELATED WINDOW COMMANDS
1 Decrement volume by 10.
2 Decrement volume by 1.
3 Increment volume by 1.
4 Increment volume by 10.
s Toggle. Audio Volume(MUTE). on/off.
8 Toggle. Main Speaker. on/off.
9 Toggle. Headphones. on/off.
MOUSE BUTTONS
Once the animation is up and running the mouse buttons have
the following functions.
<Left_Button>
Single step back one frame.
<Middle_Button>
Toggle. starts/stops animation.
<Right_Button>
Single step forward one frame.
BUFFERING, PIXMAPS and READ_FROM_FILE Options
XAnim by default will read the entire animation into memory.
PFX, Moviesetter, GIF or URT RLE type animations are always
uncompressed and stored in memory as individual images.
For the AVI, QT, IFF, FLI/FLC, JPEG, MPEG and DL animations,
only the compressed delta is stored. These deltas are then
uncompressed each time they need to be displayed. The buffer
option(+b) may be used to potentially speed up playback by
uncompressing and storing these images ahead of time. But
more memory is used up in the process.
When an XPutImage is called, the image typically gets copied
twice, once to memory and then from there onto the display.
A pixmap is directly copied onto the display without the
first copy. This is why it is sometimes much faster to use
the pixmap option(+p). Each image isn't converted into a
pixmap until the first time it is displayed. This is why the
first loop of an animation using this option is sometimes
slower than subsequent loops. While the pixmap option may
improve playback speed, it will slow things down if on-the-
fly scaling needs to be performed. This is because XAnim no
longer has direct access to the image and needs to get a
copy of it before it can be scaled.
The read from file option(+f) causes XAnim not to store the
compressed deltas in memory. Instead as each image is to be
displayed, XAnim reads the corresponding compressed delta
from the file, expands it and then displays it. While this
can dramatically cut down on memory usage, the necessary
reads from disk(or whatever) can slow down playback speed.
XAnim still needs to allocate one to three image buffers
depending on the type of animation and the scaling options
used. This option is only supported for AVI, QT, FLI/FLC,
IFF, JPEG, MPEG and DL animations. The BODY chunk of IFF
animations is not included in this. As a result, an IFF ani-
mation that is made up of several BODY chunks will not
currently benefit from this option.
SCALING Options
There are two sets of scaling options. One set, the display
scaling factors, affects the size of the animation as it is
displayed. The other set, the buffer scaling factors, affect
the size of the images as they are stored in
memory(buffered). The buffer scaling factors only affect
animations that are buffered and can greatly increase or
decrease memory usage.
These two sets are completely independent of each other. You
can set the buffer scaling factors to 20 times the normal
animation size and not affect the size at which that anima-
tion is displayed. The images are stored at 20 times the
normal size(and at 400 times the memory usage), but then get
scaled back down to normal size before being displayed.
NOTE: that an animation must be buffered in order for the
buffer scaling factors to have any affect on it. The display
scaling factors affect all animations.
You can create pixellation like affects by buffering the
animation at 1/8 it's normal size, but keeping the display
scaling factors at the original size. (IE "xanim +bSS0.125
anim.anim").
Many times it's faster to store and display an animation
with large dimensions at half-size. The option "+bSS0.5C" or
"+bSS0.5s0.5" both will accomplish this. To save memory, you
could even store the animation at half size and yet display
it at full size. "+bSS0.5" will accomplish this.
FORWARDS, BACKWARDS and OPTIMIZATION.
Many type of animations(FLI/FLC/IFF/some AVI and QTs) are
compressed with forward playback in mind only. Each delta
only stores the difference between the current frame and the
previous frame. As a results, most of these animations don't
display correctly when played backwards. Even when buffered
up, these may not work, since XAnim only stores the smallest
rectangle that encompasses the changes from the previous
frame. You can force XAnim to store the entire frame by
specifying the "-o" option to turn this optimization off.
This will most likely use more memory and slow down the ani-
mation, since more of the image needs to be stored and/or
displayed.
COLOR OPTIONS
Most of this will be a TBD for a future rev and what's here
might be sketchy, incomplete or just plain confusing.
TrueColor and DirectColor displays don't need to worry about
most of these options, as the animations can be displayed in
their original colors(ignoring monitor variations etc). How-
ever, TrueColor and DirectColor displays can't display
animations that employ color cycling techniques where the
colormap changes from frame to frame. DirectColor could
potentially support this, but not TrueColor.
For the rest of the displays, the problem becomes matching
the colors in the animations to the available colors of the
Display. For most PseudoColor displays this means 256
colors. Many of which are already in use by various other
programs. XAnim defaults to creating it's own colormap and
using all the colors from that. The window manager then
installs this new colormap, whenever the mouse pointer is
inside the XAnim animation window(Sometimes a specific
action is required to change the ColorMap Focus, like click-
ing in the window or pressing a specific key). In any case,
this action usually causes all the other colors on the
screen to be temporarily "messed-up" until the mouse is
moved out of the animation window. The alternative, is to
use the "+Cn" option. Now XAnim tries allocating all the
colors it needs from the current colormap. If it can't get a
certain color, then XAnim choose one that is "close" to this
certain color. Close is completely arbitrary. The animation
is now displayed in colors that are different than the ori-
ginal colors. This difference may or may not be noticeable.
Another big problem is when the animations are what I called
TrueColor animations. Where each pixel is stored as RGB tri-
plets. For example, AVI 16 bit CRAM animations. Each pixel
has 5 bits of Red, 5 bits of Green and 5 bits of Blue info
associated with it. This means there can be up to 32768
unique colors in each image. And on most PseudoColor
displays we can only display 256 unique colors. Beside get-
ting better displays, what can we do? XAnim defaults to
truncating the RGB information from 555 to 332. That is to 3
bits of Red, 3 bits of Green and 2 bits of Blue. Less on
Blue because the human eye is more sensitive to Red and
Green than Blue. This 332 colormap happens to be 256 colors
in size, which nicely fits in with our display. If our
display only had 64 colors, then XAnim is smart enough to
truncate things down to 222. Now the problem is the colors
of the displayed anim are noticeably different than the ori-
ginal colors. Typically you can see color banding etc.
While this is fine to get a feel for the animation, we can
do better. One of the solutions XAnim currently offers is
the "+bC1" option. What this does is choose the the best 256
colors from the first image of the animation. Then each
pixel of each subsequent image is remapped to one of these
256 colors. This takes up some CPU time up front and more
memory since each image needs to be buffered, but results in
a colors that are closer to the originals. Another option,
"+bCA", chooses the best 256 from each image, then 256
colors from all these colormaps are chosen as the final
colormap. This is useful if the colors in the first image
aren't representative of the rest of the animation. This can
be very slow. Another option that is supported, but not
really optimized for yet is "+bC3dm". This causes XAnim to
use a 332 colormap and then apply a Floyd-Steinberg dither
algorithm to each image. Currently this is very slow. Dif-
ferent dithers(like Ordered) and better optimizations might
speed this up in future revs. In general, handling of
TrueColor animations in XAnim needs to be improved.
Another scenario where colors need to be remapped, is when
several images or animations with different colormaps need
to be displayed. Changing the colormap usually results in
an annoying flicker. One solution to this is to remap all of
the images/animations to the same colormap. The "+Ca" option
chooses the best colors from all the colormaps and then
remaps all the images to it. The "+Cf" option, simply remaps
everything to the first colormap. The "+Ch" option is use-
ful when an animation's colormap specifies a lot of colors
that aren't used. XAnim looks through each buffered image of
the animation and makes a histogram of the useage of each
color. This information is then used to weedout unused or
rarely used colors.
QUICKTIME ANIMATIONS
Quicktime animations are usually stored in two separate
files. One is call a data fork and ends with a ".data". The
other is a resource fork and ends in a ".rsrc". Sometimes
these animations are in a "flattened/merged fork" format,
where everything is put into one file. There's no standard
naming format for these types of files although usually
.qt or .mov is used.
For example, if you have a quicktime animation made up of
two files named: "spin.rsrc" and "spin.data", you can
display them using Xanim with either of the following com-
mands "xanim spin" or "xanim spin.rsrc". XAnim is smart
enough to add/modfiy the ".rsrc" and ".data" endings as
needed.
If you use AUFS from the Columbia Appletalk Package, then
Macintosh files have their data fork stored in the expected
place, and the resource fork is in a file with the same name
in a .resource subdirectory. Therefore, if the data fork is
in "spin", and the resource fork isin ".resource/spin", the
movie can be displayed with "xanim spin".
For "flattened/merged fork" quicktime animations, you need
to specify the entire file name.
NOTE: XAnim doesn't support 100% of the quicktime format.
EXAMPLES:
To display a single animation with Audio:
xanim +Ae car_race.avi
To display a audio animation on Sparc. main speakers off
and headphones on:
xanim +Aep1 -Ap0 car_race.avi
To display a single animation:
xanim iff3.anim
To display a nonlooping IFF animation:
xanim +c iff3.anim
To display A.fli 3 times, B.anim and C.movie 2 times each and D.fli
once before repeating:
xanim -l3 A.fli -l2 B.anim C.movie -l1 D.fli
To see A.anim real slow(2 seconds for each frame):
xanim +j2000 A.anim
To display title image for a while then run an animation at
normal speed:
xanim +j2000 title.gif +j0 anim.gifanim
A series of GIF's can be displayed as:
xanim im_0.gif im_1.gif im_2.gif ... im_36.gif
or
xanim im_*.gif
or
xanim im.txt
or
xanim im.gifanim
where im.txt is a txt file(a list of images, see anim.doc for more details).
and im.gifanim is one gif file composed of im_0.gif through im_36.gif.
(see txtmerge to create a single gif file from a txt file).
X11 Notes:
--------------------------------------
I. X11 Server Options
When XAnim opens the display it passes the argument list to X11 which
then filters off the arguments it recognizes. XAnim won't even see these
arguments(which is sometimes a problem). For instance
xa -geom =+100+100 skier.fli
will play the anim skier.fli at pos <100,100> on the X11 screen. Or
xa -display nantucket:0.0 skier.fli
will display the anim skier.fli on the machine nantucket's display.
Sometimes this is a problem, because a valid XAnim option is stripped by the
X11 server. For instance if +r was being stripped, then use ++r instead.
Same goes with -r. Use --r instead if you believe it's being filtered
by X11.
Machine Specific and Compiler Notes:
--------------------------------------
Some PC's need you to uncomment the line below in Makefile.
#XA_INET_LIB = -linet
Depending on your window manager(mwm,uwm,olwm,twm etc), you might
want to have XAnim do a XInstallColormap. This shouldn't be necessary
for most workstations and can cause core dumps on some PCs.
There are usually user selectable options for each window manager
that selects the colormap focus policy(pointer,fixed,explicit etc).
Use -DNO_INSTALL in Makefile if you DON't want XAnim to install
the colormap.
Some X11's don't have support for multiple visuals. An executable
compiled with such an X11 will not be able to correctly run on a
machine that does supports multiple visuals even if they're binary
compatible.
Hugh D.R. Evans has supplied make.com, xanim.opt and added VMS defines
so that VMS users may compile and run XAnim. Rick Dyson has provided
the descript.mms file and some VMS fixes. John Kneitz has also
provide some VMS fixes and suggestions.
And Yet More Notes about Quicktime Animations
---------------------------------------------
NOTES ON QUICKTIME ANIMATIONS WITH XANIM
(these are just my notes and may contain some inconsistencies.
There's currently some question about the true meaning of
"flatten". It might just mean taking a quicktime file and
replacing a references to another files with those files
themselves. But lately many people use it to mean collapsing
the *.data and *.rsrc forks into one *.data fork for export
to a non-mac computer. - Mark)
EXTRACTING Quicktime Animations
Typically you will obtain the quicktime animations that have
been archived and then binhex'd. If the file you have ends
in a .hqx, then you need to run hexbin on it ("hexbin anim.hqx").
This will create a *.bin file(not necessarily anim.bin, it
could be anything.bin. The actual name is contained within
the *.hqx file).
If the file you have ends in a .bin or you've just hexbin'd a file,
now you need to unpack it. In other words extract the files that
are contained within it. These files can be programs/documents/
animations/images etc. They're not necessarily quicktime animations.
There is a program called macunpack that should be used to
accomplish this. You need to use the -f option, I recommend
the -lv options as well. (ie "macunpack -flv file.bin")
Macunpack doesn't support certain DiskDoubler or Stuffit Deluxe
archives. There is no unix/pc program that I know of that does(except
for the Mac). In this case your only choice is to get a hold of a
Macintosh computer and someone who knows how to use it and
hopefully some method of transferring files to/from it.
Once you've unpacked everything, you should have three files,
a *.info, a *.rsrc and a *.data. You can delete the *.info file.
XAnim doesn't need or use it.
The quicktime animation is made up of BOTH the *.rsrc and the
*.data files and therefore XAnim needs BOTH the *.rsrc and the
*.data in order to recognize and display the animation.
The only exception to this is if the animation has been "flattened".
Essentially, all that this means is that the .rsrc and .data files
were merged into one file for export to a non-mac computer.
This file doesn't have any real naming conventions, but it is
usually something like .mov, .mv, .qt, etc(it is never .bin or .hqx).
And it is rarely .data. If XAnim can't play it, then it's 95%
likely to be a *.data fork(that's missing a *.rsrc fork) and not
a flattened quicktime animation.
Macunpack and hexbin can be found in the macutil archive. They
are available at the following locations:
sumex-aim.stanford.edu:/info-mac/unix/macutil-20b1.shar
ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/macutil2.0b3.shar.Z
solaris.ims.ac.jp:/pub/unix/mac/macutil-20b1.shar
Use archie to find other sites.
Here's a quick blurb on macutils from the readme.
o hexbin - a program to convert BinHex 4.0 to MacBinary;
it also converts uuencode (and UULite) files to their
native binary format; support for .dl, .hex, and .hcx
formats (all predecessors of BinHex 4.0) also exists
o macunpack - a program to unpack PackIt, StuffIt,
Diamond, Compactor/Compact Pro, most StuffIt Classic
and StuffIt Deluxe, DiskDoubler, Zoom and LHarc/MacLHa
archives.
It also decodes BinHex 5.0, MacBinary, uuencode, and
UNIX compress (ie: .Z suffix) files (as well as variants
of compress implemented by various Macintosh compress
programs).
TRANSFERING DIRECTLY FROM A MACINTOSH
If you are transferring a quicktime animation directly from a
Macintosh(ftp/fetch/gator/etc), you need to use the MacBinary mode.
This will archive all three resource forks(.info,.rsrc and .data)
into a .bin file and transfer that. You must then use "macunpack -flv"
as described above.
If you use Binary mode(as opposed to the MacBinary mode), ONLY the
*.data file will be transferred. This *.data file is useless without
the *.rsrc file, unless it happens to be "flattened". If you don't
absolutely know this to be true, then use the MacBinary mode and
extract with macunpack.
OTHER PROGRAMS
mcvert is also capable of extracting the *.rsrc and *.data files
form a MacBinary file(*.bin). It doesn't support all of the
archival compression formats that macunpack does and I'm not
as familiar with it. Archie should be able to find it.
CREATING A QUICKTIME FOR EXPORT ON A MACINTOSH
Movieconverter, part of Apple's Quicktime Starter Kit (a commercial product)
can do this. Save the movie as BOTH "Make self-contained" and "Playable
on non-Apple computers."
If you have any other questions or problems trying to run
quicktime animation using xanim I might be able to answer
them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Podlipec - podlipec@ici.net
http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html
http://smurfland.cit.buffalo.edu/xanim/home.html
http://www.tm.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/xanim/