- Filmer.doc and ReadMe.txt are the same.                        
			
			FILMER VERSION 1.1 BETA
			====== ======= === ====
		- A program for creating fractal movies -
 
Hi.  For years, we have been playing with Fractint.  We think it's one 
of the only truly well written programs 'on the market' today.  Better 
still, it's free.  Thanks to all the programmers that work on it.

We have sent this program to the authors for inclusion in fractint itself.
However, they are busy people and we are waiting to here if they want to
use it, so we are releasing this beta version to get some feedback on it 
before we hear from the folks from fractint.  Feel free to drop me a line 
at JXH165@Email.psu.edu or call (814) 238-9633 and leave mail for 
me (Julian).

Our program generates a series of frames, using Fractint, and then puts 
them together into a movie (FLI format).  The DTAX program is
shareware and not written by us.  It is the program responsible for 
putting all the .GIFs into .FLI format.

QUICK START        
===========
	Here's how to try it out:
1.      Put all the files from this zip in your fractint directory.
2.      Make sure aaplay and dtax are in your path (put the fractint 
		directory in your path).
3.      Make a directory named TEMP in your root directory.
4.      Go to the fractint directory and type FILM TRYIT and press enter
5.      You will see a setup screen - Just press ENTER to use defaults.

After step five, it will go into an automated mode, it'll take about 5-
10 minutes on a 486DX-33.  When you get done, you should have 
PROJECT.FLI in your temp directory.  Note: this and all animations will 
take considerable disk space (10MB+)

NEW IN THIS VERSION
===================

Changed the parsing of .par files in filmer.bas to accept different fractal
types (other than mandel).

Modified film.bat to include two dtax entries.  One for .fli and one for
.flc

TO CREATE YOUR OWN MOVIE
========================

1.      Go into fractint.
2.      Find the first frame you would like to have in your movie.
3.      Save it to a new parameter file.
4.      Find the next step in the movie.  In other words you want the
previous parameters to 'zoom' or 'pan' into these.  

For example, if the second parameters you chose are a much smaller 'box' 
within the first, you will get a movie that zooms from the first image to
the second.

5.      Save it to the same parameter file - but this time, put a number 
in the main comment.  This number is the number of frames you want
leading up to this step.  (between this step and the one before it.)
6.      Reapeat steps 4 and 5 as many times as you like.
7.      Exit fractint
8.      Type Film <parameterfilename>
9.      You will get the same opening screen.  To find out how 
to use these options, read on.

OK, so how does it work?  You may have guessed most of this, but here 
goes:

There are two .EXE programs.  The first one, filmer, is a BASIC 
program that provides the user interface.  The second one, newfilm is a 
Zortech C++ program that does the math and spawns Fractint.  Filmer 
writes a file, INTERNAL.SCR which is in a format that's easy for newfilm 
to read.

Here's a copy of FILM.BAT, the top-level control file.

@echo off
filmer %1                       ' OK, call filmer with the command line
newfilm                         ' Run newfilm 
				(this is where all the .GIFs are generated)
if errorlevel 1 goto end        ' Quit on error
cd \temp
dtax fract???.gif /oproject.fli /ff /r1 /s5 ' Compile the .FLI with DTAX
:end

	Filmer reads data from a regular .PAR file.  It requires an 
external .MAP file - at the moment, we don't read colors from the .PAR 
file.  It will look for a .MAP with the same name as the .PAR.  Filmer 
takes several options.
	.PAR File:      This one's obvious.  The input .PAR file.
	
	.MAP File:      "
		Caution: if you use pallete rotation, this file will
		be modified - not always for the better.  Keep a backup.
	
	Start Step:     This is the number of the parameter set to start on.  
for example, it you created a file, test.par that had ten parameter sets 
in it, but you wanted the animation to start on the third one, this is 
where you would enter it.
	
	End Step:       Ditto from above.
	
	Rotation:       There are three options.  NONE just keeps the same 
palette through the whole film.  REGULAR increments the palette, but 
doesn't add any new colors.  SMART tries to make the palette change with 
some new, cool colors each frame.  This has not been tested - we're 
working on a smarter smart palette.
WARNING:  Rotation changes and possible destroys your original .MAP 
file.  We usually make a new .MAP file for each new animation.  For 
instance, tryit.map is really just chroma.map
	
	Speed:  How many colors to rotate through each frame.  Must be
positive at this time.
	
	Aspect: This is the parameter set in aspect.par to use.  The 
default is normal:

normal          {
GIF87A=YES
SOUND=OFF
VIDEO=F3
SAVENAME=\temp\fract001.GIF
FLOAT=YES
viewwindows=2/0.75/yes/0/0
batch=yes
INSIDE=0        }

There are three other aspects in aspect.par, but at the moment, only fscreen 
and normal work.  Fscreen is to generate a full screen .FLI instead of a 
preview window.  We decided to use the preview window because it's 
faster to calculate, it takes less disk space, and the animation speed 
is faster.

Anyway, when you hit ENTER newfilm starts to generate frames.  Each frame, 
it re-writes a .par file: Respfile.par.  Next, it calls the batch file 
addit.bat with the map file as a parameter.  Addit.bat has already been 
created by filmer:

fractint @aspect.par/<ASPECT> @respfile.par map=%1 type=<TYPE>

When it's done, newfilm exits with errorlevel 0.  If it can't open 
Internal, or if Fractint exits with an error, it terminates with 
errorlevel>=1.

Next, DTAX is run to compile all the .GIFs into a single .FLI file.  

There are various options for DTAX that you can play with by editing 
film.bat.  Also, you can create an aspect in aspect.par for almost any 
occasion - using background mode, different calculation parameters 
etc...

