[LBA Prequel] .BMP-to-.FLA Converter by MGLC

[MBN Bot]

Spatarel Dan Constantin ('MGLC') has been developing a .BMP to .FLA converter for our project for months now, and we are pleased to announce that it is complete and ready for release. This converter is now integrated into the LBA Screen Viewer and it should be released withinin the next few days to the public.

With this tool, we will now be able to fully integrate 3D models and CGI into cutscenes and a slew of other great uses, so we are grateful that Sparatel was able to help us out. Now more than ever, this sort of contribution from the LBA community shows that this truly is a fan project, and everyone can help! He saw on our website that we did not have such a converter as of yet, and took the time and the initiative to construct one for us.

Once again, thanks to Spatarel for his hard work, and bringing us a program that will not only help make our game better, but will be a wonderful addition to all LBA fan projects.

Read more...

[Kobold]

I don't get it. A .BMP is an image. A .FLA is a movie. How to you convert? Image by imaqe and putting it together?

[Jast]

Originally Posted by Kobold

I don't get it. A .BMP is an image. A .FLA is a movie. How to you convert? Image by imaqe and putting it together?

That's what I thought

[elmuerte]

FLAs are the movie format in LBA1. You can't simply convert a movie to FLA. So you render a movie to a series of BMPs which you can now convert to a FLA.

[Kobold]

I see.

Btw, good going fixing both of the Bot's issues.

[LBAWinOwns]

eh, It's not the same FLA as Macromedia Flash I hope?

[xesf]

Originally Posted by El_Muerte

FLAs are the movie format in LBA1. You can't simply convert a movie to FLA. So you render a movie to a series of BMPs which you can now convert to a FLA.

Exactly!

[elmuerte]

Originally Posted by LBAWinOwns

eh, It's not the same FLA as Macromedia Flash I hope?

Of course not. Just because the extensions match doesn't mean they're the same.

[xesf]

Originally Posted by El_Muerte

Of course not. Just because the extensions match doesn't mean they're the same.

People already know about it, they just need to say something.

[elmuerte]

no they don't

[Quetch]

it's like a GIF format ... anyway, I'm curious where did this guy come from cause the name is romanian

[LBAWinOwns]

I thought there is about 0 percent from a technical view, but who did really choose .FLA for the LBA move file? Ain't that really confusing, .FLA is quite huge.

[Kobold]

Flade was invented for LBA 1.

[LBAWinOwns]

Makes sense, anyway, who decided the extension for the LBA files?

* LBAWinOwns makes quick Google search for Flade.

Bah I'll just have to wait for Alexfont I guess...

[elmuerte]

flade came from FLA DEcoder

[xesf]

Indeed, flade isn't the original name as El said.

I already try to know about what FLA means and didn't get any answer, but FLA should mean something like FMV. But like HQR (High Quality Resource) files, it also should have his meaning.

[Kobold]

I had this vaguely in my mind, and it seems I got it wrong.

[elmuerte]

I think all used extensions are a French acronym and not English.
Like "ile" or île is used for the islands

The F could be film
The A could be animation

although that would be weird since animation is a type of film

[xesf]

I thought about something like Full Length Animation

And don't know if all the names could be in French, like HQR isn't, but ILE could also be from isle.

[elmuerte]

it's not really full length, now is it?
I don't think HQR stands for High Quality Resource
But since island or isle in French is île the extension is a dead giveaway

[MGLC]

I have no idea what FLA stands for but I don't think it matters too much.

First of all, I'd like to thank the person(s) that wrote the FLA player (decoder), that inspired me to write the encoder.

Second, I'd like to give you a few recomandations on how to get the best out of the convertor. (Technical details follow - skip the rest of the post if you're not interested)

Let's assume you have a very-high quality AVI and you want to get a FLA out of it. First, the AVI has to be:
320x200 resolution
24 color deepth
12 fps
with no sound

Once you have the right AVI, you should do the following conversions in the exact order:
1) AVI -> BMP with Virtual Dub - Dirtual Dub can handle easily any AVI format and can expot it into BMPs;
2) BMP -> GIF with Aheah GIF Animoator - you must get an animated GIF out of the AVI, because GIFs use 256 colours palettes;
3) GIF -> PNG with Aheah GIF Animoator - GIF Animator can not export BMPs;
4) PNG -> BMP with IrfanView - my program knows only the BMP file format;
5) BMP -> FLA with my program - now that the BMPs have only 256 different colors, the pallete can be calculated and you've got the FLA.

The steps presented and the programs I mentioned are just recomandations. You may skip some of the steps and you may use other programs to get a better quality. However, I must stress that it's essntial to obtain an animated GIF at some point because you can only convert BMPs with 256 diffrent colors.

Multiple keyframes:
By default, the convertor creates a FLA with only one keyframe (frame 0). However, you can tell the convertor to insert additional keyframes by specifing their index.
Every keyframe marks the beginning of a new scene. Every scene uses a single palette thus all the frames that form a scene must use the same 256 colors. To achive this, you must create an animated GIF for every scene.
After you convert the animated GIFs into BMPs and rename the files as required, you must calculate the indexes of the first frames of every scene and feed them to the convertor as keyframes.
Using multiple keyframes may be quite complicated but it can make a diffrence in terms of image quality without increasing the FLA's size too much.

Samples:
Unfortunetly I have little knowledge about the samples. I added support for them blindly. I haven't tested them. Perhaps alexfont may be able to give more information on how to add sound to a cutscene. All I know is that you have to tell the convertor to link the FLA to a certain sample by specifing its index and a few ohter things. Moreover, you can link only one sample.

Here, you can find a sample AVI, an animated GIF, the final BMPs used by the convertor and the FLA file.

http://download2.spatarel.ro/LBA/

You may notice the FLA is 6 times smaller than the fully decompressed AVI and that the animated GIF is quite smaller than the FLA. This is due to the performances of the GIF and FLA compression algothms. I stived to get the best compression possible using the FLA format but it seems that GIFs use a better encoder (they use a diffrent decoder too).

Meaby I should have made a GIF to FLA convertor but I did'nt have a GIF decoder .

I hope this post will help some of you while working with the convertor! Good luck!

[LBAWinOwns]

FLA movie has a own palette for every movie or every frame?

[MGLC]

Originally Posted by LBAWinOwns

FLA movie has a own palette for every movie or every frame?

Every scene has it's own palette. A scene starts with a keyframe and ends just before the next keyframe or when the movie ends. The palette itself is recorded within the keyframe.

The first frame (frame 0) is alwais a keyframe. You may not add any other keyframes and have only one secene and one palette for the whole movie (as I did in the sample) or you may add as many keyframes as you like to improve image quality but you will increase the filesize too.

To actualy see how the paletts work, open a longer FLA with LBA Screen Viewer, press Play and keep your eyes on the palette. You will notice it changes from time to time! Every time it changes you're witessing a keyframe that marks the beginning of a new scene.

I hope this clears things out.

[Quetch]

Spatarel, are you from romania ?

[Quetch]

.fla = flash ( french ) btw
.obl = obliterer ( french for gradually erasing ) I think it's cause of the way the islands' exteriors are gradually fading away and erasing themselves from the memory