Re: [Fractint] Fractint Disk Video Mode Problems
If you want a giant image, you should use the divide-and-conquer feature. Take the image you want to render, go to the save parameters screen, and at the bottom it will say "this is for generating the image in pieces." Choose a videomode and how many pieces you want. For example, if you want a 4096x3072 image, set x_multiples = y_multiples = 4 and vid_mode = SF7. It will make a .par file and a .bat file that will draw 16 1024x768 images and piece them together. The spliced together .gif is like an animated .gif (as near as I can tell), and you can use the program simplgif.exe to convert it to a regular one. However, I just tried this a few days ago, and simplgif didn't work. It made the .gif fine, but when I opened the simplified .gif, there were problems. Paint Shop Pro said something like "wrong lzw format" and SEA (a dos image viewer) opened it but it was really screwed up. This method has worked for me before, but that was on my old computer. Suggestions anyone? Jon K. On Sun, 30 Dec 2001 21:36:45 -0500 "Tony Parker" <tgparker@worldnet.att.net> writes:
Call me stupid, but I seem unable to get my present configuration of Fractint to save gif image files in disk video mode larger than the configured standard video card settings. I know I've forgotten something and am missing the obvious....
For instanse assume I'm using a Matrox Millenium AGP G-200 video card in Fractint 1024 x 768 x 256 Vesa Mode, and say I want to generate an image 5x or 10x that standard size in "disk video mode".
Would someone please walk me through with even the most obvious baby steps of <v> mode settings and any other settings so that I can access the "disk video mode" and save my images to larger, denser, files in fractint?
Would any other configs or settings interfer with why the disk video mode isn't working?
Pleas advise Thanks
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Well, it looks like I recovered from my recent case of amnesia and I finally remembered what my problem was. I've switching between different video cards and running makefcfg.exe overwrote some of my pervious settings in an older fractint.cfg. I coded in the disk video table sttings for image pixel file sizes from 1024 x 768 x 256 all the way up to 30720 x.23040 x 256. I've been running video disk saves at 10240 x 7680 x 256 resolution, which will render up a 41 Meg *.gif file. On a Pentium 2 x 450Mhz It's a little slow. Unfortunately my 'hot" P4 x 1Gighz is running Win2000. Does the size of the video disk save affect the size of the video disk save cache buffer and the speed of rendering the pixels? Is there anyway to either increase the size of the Fractint of Disk Save Mode Cache buffer 64k??? Since RAM is cheap these days I'm running 768 Meg of Ram. Are there any improvements to the Dos config.sys and autoexec.bat and msdos.sys setting that might either enlarge or improve the Fractint performance. Talk to you all again.... By the way are Spanky and the other "official" Fractint Websites Down for Good? TG ----- Original Message ----- From: <the_juggernaut@juno.com> To: <fractint@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Monday, December 31, 2001 2:40 PM Subject: Re: [Fractint] Fractint Disk Video Mode Problems
If you want a giant image, you should use the divide-and-conquer feature. Take the image you want to render, go to the save parameters screen, and at the bottom it will say "this is for generating the image in pieces." Choose a videomode and how many pieces you want. For example, if you want a 4096x3072 image, set x_multiples = y_multiples = 4 and vid_mode = SF7. It will make a .par file and a .bat file that will draw 16 1024x768 images and piece them together. The spliced together .gif is like an animated .gif (as near as I can tell), and you can use the program simplgif.exe to convert it to a regular one.
However, I just tried this a few days ago, and simplgif didn't work. It made the .gif fine, but when I opened the simplified .gif, there were problems. Paint Shop Pro said something like "wrong lzw format" and SEA (a dos image viewer) opened it but it was really screwed up. This method has worked for me before, but that was on my old computer. Suggestions anyone?
Jon K.
On Sun, 30 Dec 2001 21:36:45 -0500 "Tony Parker" <tgparker@worldnet.att.net> writes:
Call me stupid, but I seem unable to get my present configuration of Fractint to save gif image files in disk video mode larger than the configured standard video card settings. I know I've forgotten something and <SNIP>
Any tips as how to improve the processing & rendering speed of the Fractint's Video Disk Save Mode? Does the size of the video disk save affect the size of the video disk save cache buffer and the speed of rendering the pixels? Is there any way to increase the size of the Fractint of Disk Save Mode Cache buffer 64k??? Since RAM is cheap these days I'm running 768 Meg of Ram. Are there any improvements to the Dos config.sys and autoexec.bat and msdos.sys setting that might either enlarge or improve the Fractint rendering performance. TG
Tony,
Any tips as how to improve the processing & rendering speed of the Fractint's Video Disk Save Mode?
Make sure it is using either expanded or extended memory, instead of your hard disk. This requires setting the value in the properties/memory section of the shortcut (up to 65535 KB). That will let you generate an image about 8000x8000 in memory. A divide and conquer approach using this size of image would speed things up a bit. Using "Auto" is supposed to give you an unlimited amount of extended/expanded memory, but it doesn't on my machine (with 256 MB). Maybe the help message was written when 64 MB *was* an unlimited amount of memory. 8-))
Does the size of the video disk save affect the size of the video disk save cache buffer and the speed of rendering the pixels?
Not as far as I know.
Is there any way to increase the size of the Fractint of Disk Save Mode Cache buffer 64k???
Yes, and no. You would need to download the source and look in the diskvid.c file. Change the value of the cache size and recompile. Which won't work at present because we are using the medium memory model which limits the maximum size of a structure to 64 KB. It would work for Xfractint... I have no clue as to how this section of code works. I have managed to break it several time, however. This section of code is a bit delicate. You might have noticed that if you start the generation of your image over a couple of times, the cache actually gets smaller. I haven't been able to track this down.
Since RAM is cheap these days I'm running 768 Meg of Ram. Are there any improvements to the Dos config.sys and autoexec.bat and msdos.sys setting that might either enlarge or improve the Fractint rendering performance.
As stated above, increase the amount of available expanded or extended memory. If you run in DOS-mode it is possible that himem.sys and emm386.exe don't have the same limitation as the DOS box under Windows. It appears to me that Fractint can handle much larger amounts of expanded and extended memory than 65535 KB (look in memory.c and general.asm). Jonathan
IIRC, the maximum amount of extended memory DOS can see, period, is 64MB? And Expanded memory was limited to 16MB? David just guessing around in this wool he calls a brain gnome@hawaii.rr.com On 1 Jan 02 at 21:44, Jonathan Osuch wrote:
Using "Auto" is supposed to give you an unlimited amount of extended/expanded memory, but it doesn't on my machine (with 256 MB). Maybe the help message was written when 64 MB *was* an unlimited amount of memory. 8-))
participants (4)
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David Jones -
Jonathan Osuch -
the_juggernaut＠juno.com -
Tony Parker