AGABlaster - 68K Commodore Amiga CDXL Video Player

Recent Updates

You can follow release updates on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AGABlaster
You can follow videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@AGABlaster

• 11-JUN-2023: agablaster 0.9.92 released
• 02-JAN-2023: agablaster 0.9.91 released
• 22-FEB-2022: agablaster 0.9.90 released
• 21-FEB-2021: agablaster 0.9.83 released
• 17-JAN-2021: agablaster 0.9.82 released
• 15-NOV-2020: agablaster 0.9.81 released
• 31-OCT-2020: agablaster 0.9.80 released
• 29-MAR-2020: agablaster 0.9.71 released
• 26-JAN-2020: agablaster 0.9.70 released
• 28-JUL-2019: agablaster 0.9.65 released

Overview

AGABlaster is a video player for the Amiga Commodore computer. It uses a customized version of the CDXL format supporting the AGA chipset with 24 bit colors and variable length frames. Customized CDXL files can be generated with AGAConv. AGABlaster is written in 68K Assembly and runs on native Amiga hardware (no gfx card or sound card required). It is currently in alpha testing stage.

The CDXL format was created primarily for the Commodore CDTV, to permit playback of video from CD-ROM in the early 1990s. The original (standard) CDXL format was a simple streaming format, consisting of linear concatenated chunks (packets), each with an uncompressed frame and associated audio data. It did not contain video timing information, additional command line arguments had to be provided to the CDXL player.

AGABlaster can play the original CDXL format (see Current Limitations), but can also play custom variable length CDXL frames. For example, frames can have have a different number of bitplanes. The custom headers in each chunk contain all information necessary to display each frame (audio frequency, etc.), such that no additional command line parameters need to be provided. However, command line arguments are available to set all parameters manually to play also original CDXL videos.

AGABlaster has been tested on an A4000/60 with a Fast ATA 4000 MK-III disk controller (expansion card) and different PIO settings. AGABlaster can play videos with 24 FPS, 320x256 Lores resolution, and 8-bit stereo sound at 22050 Hz directly from disk, with the MK-III in PIO3 setting. Only chip memory is required. Alternatively, playing from an USB 2.0 memory stick connected to a DENEB USB 2.0 expansion card is also fast enough.

AGABlaster is designed to only require chip memory and to display videos in full screen on original Amiga hardware. Graphics cards and/or sound cards are not required (and not supported). AGABlaster can skip frames if disk I/O is too slow. Video data is skipped by seeking on disk to the next frame without loading it into memory. Audio data is always read. All data is read asynchronously from disk, allowing it to read ahead if I/O is fast enough.

Overview of supported video/audio modes:

• Lores, Hires, Superhires, AGA0 - AGA8, HAM8, HAM6, EHB.
• 0-8 bitplanes, 0-256 colors (variable length video chunks)
• 8-bit mono/stereo sound (variable length audio chunks)
• 12 bit and 24 bit colors.
• Tested on Amiga OS 3.9
• On AGA systems the border is set to black utilizing the AGA Border-blank hardware feature (this ensures that the border is black, even when color 0 is used in the video (since version 0.9.70)).

Recommended Hardware

• AGA system, 68040 processor, 2MB Chip memory
• Original graphics and sound hardware (no graphics card required)

If you run AGABlaster on an OCS/ECS system, use the additional option 'FMODE=0'. Standard CDXL files should run similar to other CDXL video players on OCS/ECS systems. AGABlaster only supports standard CDXL files or AGABlaster specific extensions. It is designed to get the best out of AGA systems, there is no OCS/ECS specific mode - however, some of the features (e.g. dropping of frames) are also beneficial on OCS/ECS systems.

Amiga Forum AGABlaster Release Threads

• English Amiga Board: AGABlaster - New CDXL Player Released
• A1K.org: AGABlaster - Neuer CDXL Player mit Videos verfuegbar - 24 FPS mit stereo Sound

CDXL Video Converter AGAConv

AGAConv is a tool to convert MPEG4 and other video formats to custom 24-bit CDXL videos and standard 12-bit CDXL videos.

• AGAConv Webpage

Downloads

The original video is available on Vimeo - external link: original video in full HD

• Original HD test video from examples above (17 secs): zoraia_short.mp4
• Original HD test video from examples above (17 secs, cropped): zoraia_short_cropped.mp4

The 16:9 scaled videos require an LCD monitor to stretch the picture to HD size. This way one can get a correct HD sized video with the Amiga 5:4 PAL output ratio. For display with an original PAL 5:4 screen ratio the cropped videos are provided.

(*) shown on YouTube (named zoraia_lo_aga8s.cdxl in video)

Other Available CDXL Videos (12 bit Colors/HAM6)

The following webpages offer standard CDXL videos that are known to work with AGABlaster 0.9.64+.

• Amiga Anime CD Project (use option 'FR=24000' to select correct speed; tested with Akira videos, AGABlaster 0.9.64)

Benchmarking: Measured Frames per Second

For the provided custom CDXL videos the following values are reported by AGABlaster with the STATS option (default behavior) for my A4000/60:

FAQ

1. Why was AGABlaster written in 2019? This player is a just-for-fun project for exploring the limits of my Amiga AGA system from 1992.
2. Any attempts with other video players? Previous attempts with other video players showed that ViewTek can play an ANIM7 video from memory at 25 FPS, but does not support audio. AnimFX can play SND-ANIMs at 25 FPS when pre-loading the entire video (with audio) into the processor card's memory (approx. 1 minute), but becomes very slow when loading from Zorro memory (beyond 1 minute). It is also very slow from disk at 320x256/8 with biganim. Several videos also had some flicker, so I eventually gave up. The RIVA MPEG-1 player runs at around 20 FPS without sound, which is impressive considering that it's decompressing an MPEG-1 stream with an MC 68060 at 50Hz, but with native sound it's choppy on my system. However, the small file size of the MPEG-1 videos is very convenient.
3. Why CDXL? Because it is a simple video format (released for the CDTV/Amiga) which can be scaled down to low-spec Amiga models as well. It's also supported by ffmpeg.
4. Why all these different variants of the same video? Mostly for testing. There exist many different Amiga configurations and the idea is to provide CDXL variants that allow to max out the respective Amiga hardware without unnecessarily large files. However, if the CDXL file contains data for a frame rate that is higher than can be displayed on a given system, AGABlaster should still properly skip frames, giving similar results as with smaller files.
5. How Amiga OS-friendly is AGABlaster? It uses OS interrupt routines (AUD0, VERTB), OS memory allocation, and OS I/O routines. It uses its own copper list. It does not use the audio device, the audio registers are set by the CPU.
6. Which video converter did you use? AGAConv (can generate 24-bit CDXL videos, fully utilizing the 24-bit colors space of AGA systems).
7. Is the CDXL customization documented? Yes (see below).
8. Why variable length frames? This allows filtering of empty bitplanes, reducing file size.
9. So how about compression? Currently only filtering of empty bitplanes is supported by AGAConv. A simple RLE encoding/decoding might be added at some point.
10. Is AGABlaster finished? Almost. It currently is in alpha status, version 0.9.xx, for testing I/O band-width and frame rates with different Amiga hardware configurations. AGABlaster will be eventually released open-source with a GPL license. Currently it is distributed with a freeware license (not as public domain). The license is included with the binary distribution.

AGABlaster Supported Standard and Custom CDXL Format

Supported AGABlaster extensions are marked with ' [extension]'. If the standard CDXL format is used the following default values are assumed: frequency=11025 Hz, video mode: Lores, fps: implied by frequency. Command line options allow to set parameters explicitly for standard CDXL videos. No command line parameters are necessary for AGABlaster custom CDXL videos.

bits 0-3: Video encoding
bit  4  : Audio mode (stereo flag)
bits 5-7: Plane arrangement

bits 0-3: Resolution
bit  4  : Color mode
bit  5  : Kill EHB
bit  6  : Frame length mode (AGAConv 1.1+)
bit  7  : 0                 
                

bits  0- 3: Audio padding
bits  4- 7: Video padding                  
bits  8-11: Palette padding
bits 12-14: Padding mode
bit     15: 0
                

Other Amiga Video Players

• CyberAVI (CyberGraphX/AGA AVI Player, requires RTG)
  • You can convert a video with ffmpeg and play it with CyberAVI on an RTG Amiga as follows:
    ffmpeg -y -i INPUTVIDEO.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v] fps=20,scale=w=192:h=-1:sws_flags=sinc" -qscale 0 -c:v mjpeg -acodec pcm_u8 -ar 22050 OUTPUTVIDEO.avi
  • scale=w=192 sets the width of the video, -ar 22050 defines the audio frequency in Hz.
  • I have tested this on my A4000/60 with a Picasso IV card.
• AnimFX 2.3 (Sndanim, Anim, and CDXL player)
• RiVA 0.54 (MPEG-1 Player)
• CDXLPlay (CDXL player, OS 4.1, gfxcard required)
• V.A.M.P. (several video formats)
• AnimPlayer (ANIM5/7/8/16/32, YAFA, FLIC (FLC) / OS3, OS4, MorphOS, Linux, MacOS, Win32)

CDXL Video Players for Non-Amiga Platforms

• VLC media player (plays standard CDXL videos)
• ffplay (plays standard CDXL videos) - comes with ffmpeg.