DV 557

Instructions

Demo Disk Files

These are demostration disk files
  • Cross - Something from another assignment
  • Arc Over Sun *
  • TwinkleTwinkle *
  • DotDotBling *
    • *Created with the DV 557 using the Add Disk and Keep feature of Create Disk File!
  • Big T - Big Test, Contains about 250 disk lines. Used for testing. Will bog down some machines. Slow to render movies
  1. Select a Demostration file
  2. Click View UDF: Displays a static GIF is displayed in the DV 557's display window.

Upload Disk File

You may upload a properly formated disk file of one or more lines in the following format:
disk {x 30 y 30 size 39 red 0.5 green 0.5 blue 0.8 filter hat operation max_weight}(\n-a newline)
  • 1. Change the maximum resolutions xRes and yRes to smaller values, if necessary.
  • 2. Click Browse button to select a disk file.
  • 3. Click View UDF: Displays a static GIF is displayed in the DV 557's display window.

Create Disk File

  • 1. Change the maximum resolutions xRes and yRes to smaller values, if necessary.
  • 2. Input x, y, and Size. x and y are Cartesian coordinates with (0,0) being lower left corner of viewer.
    Size is the radius of the disk as measured from (x,y). Input the color values Red, Green and Blue in the range [0,1].
    Select Filter and Operation using the drop-down selections.

    User input error handling has not been implemented

  • Create Disk File Features

  • - Add Disk: Adds a new empty row to fill in.
    - Delete Row: Deletes the bottom row / last row.
    - Revert: Returns the form to its default setting of only one row
    - View CDF: Displays a static GIF in the DV 557's display window.
    - Keep: Allows user to view the disks while keeping what was added. You and create your own!
    DV 557 does not Save.

Image Viewer

  • Click one of the following image formats to view the image in that format:

    • Static GIF Animated GIF AVI FLASH MOV MPG
    Start Over
    Starts a new Session. I still have to manually delete files off the server for now though.

Notes:


These are somewhat random and at a later date should be organized
1. The DV 557 was tested on three Windows PC laptops, one Mac laptop and my Ubuntu desk top. I do not have the exact configurations of this machines. To get the most machines to work, a lot of experimenting with various embed and object tags was done to get the right combination of of those tags.

The Mac was most finicky about its embed and object tags. The Mac would not play its own .MOV or .AVI movies The Windows and Ubuntu systems were more flexible. In other words, the Mac would not always play movies that were embed or objects of MicroSoft or opensouce players such as the AVL player. But Microsoft and Unbuntu played the Quicktime embeds and objects. So most of the movies have Quicktime embed and objects in an attempt to make the Macs play more of the movies. Sometime the Mac would not play MOV files or the AVIs. The Ubuntu machines plays nicely with Macs and Windows. They play more consistently any of the movie formats, AVI, FLASH MOV and MPG
  • When a Windows machine fails to play a quicktime AVI, it claims you need a Quicktime plugin. But I have not found that to be true. You will go in a circle looking for plugins and reinstalling Quicktime
  • Ubuntu plays the AVIs but will not loop. Plays once and quits. Macs will not play .AVI or .MOV.
    Windows will not play .AVI but will play .MOV
  • Ubuntu plays all the movies better and consistently the Mac or Windows. It may stall on MPGs and plays the movies too fast to see depending on the disk file size.
Ubuntu will play Flash but the conversion from MPG to FLV probably requires experimenting with the frame rate. The file size may have something to do with the speed at with images play in the various players.
I have run DV 557 from wireless machines, Windows and Macs including the Macs in Hodges Library
But running DV 557 on EECS's Ubuntu lab machines gives the best results. Those machines play all the image formats.
2. There was a lot of very interesting program interfacing
  • C - All of that code was written
  • PHP - I was more familiar with PHP than CGI. I did run into the permission issues
    • Php built command files containing ffmeg and convert commands to convert to various image format wrote them to my area and then ran the command file
  • JavaScript - Handled the client side such as adding and deleting rows from forms
  • ffmeg - There are so many options for conversions. I only used the plain and simple. So the movies are played (avi, mov, mpg flv) they may go too fast, their color may be off or pixelization occurs
  • HTML - Not programming but still interesting when combined with everything else

Acknowledgments

  • Jingyuan CS577 TA for his help throughout the class period
  • Labstaff, particularly Morgan Brackett.
  • Dr Banks, teaching, leading, helping me to visualize the stories images tell