[sac-forum] Re: HandyAvi, ToUcam, and RegiStax

Hi Jeff,
I can't believe the first response to my program is a request to make it
work on some other system  :-)  

HandyAvi is in Visual C++ and is essentially an MFC application.   Many
calls to MFC/Windows-specific routines are involved. The system
also makes calls to "Windows Multimedia" functions to handle AVI file 
operations.
"Windows Multimedia" is again very specific to the windows environment 
and is
not portable.  Gcc in a UNIX environment for example would be completely 
unable to render
anything usable.  I believe the same would be true for Mac compilers.

I looked for a cross-compiler on the net and found this which presumably
would allow you to use HandyAvi.  No guarantees though...
http://spiderman.novit.no/dahls/Velo/mac.html.

However, it looks like Microsoft may have plugged this "hole" though:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/faqs/virtualizationfaq.mspx.

When Motorola was just about to enter the Gate Array market, Xilinx 
bought Neocad.
Neocad was a small software house and had created all of Motorola's
software for the Motorola Gate Arrays.  That Xilinx purchase then 
created an insurmountable
obstacle for Motorola.  Strategic buying of "enabling" companies is 
apparently
common and perhaps the cheapest way to disable competitors.  If Connectix
had continued to sell software allowing PC software to run on Macs then 
more
Macs would presumably come into use?

In the 70's, when I worked at Strategic Air Command Headquarters in Omaha,
a highly-placed IBM official told me that the 360-series machines had 
microcode
that could be programmed so that their CPUs could be programmed to be ANY
machine in existence at that time, i.e., with some effort, they could 
make their
machines work EXACTLY like a Honeywell 6180 for example, or a Burroughs
B5500, or a CDC7600, etc.  I asked him why they were not saying much about
that and he said the Telex lawsuit was creating enough difficulty 
already and they
didn't need the heat...  Sure would have solved some of our major problems
though.  I used to spend 80% of my time writing conversion software to make
things work on other types of machines.  I have no desire to return to 
that era.
The "Brooks Bill" required the government to buy computers from everyone
making them.  Mix and match was total chaos and a major disaster.

Anyway, bottom line is that I am quite certain that you would have to do a
complete rewrite in any case.  If you are a Mac guru but not a Windows guru,
very little would be gleaned from the source code.  I generally do not 
provide
source code.

Thanks,

Howard

Jeff Hopkins wrote:

>>Hi,
>>
>>I have written a utility program that I named "HandyAvi" (other cuter
>>names I
>>thought up were all in use, e.g., MonAvi, AviUtil, etc.)
>>I just placed it out in my web pages at:
>>http://www.astroshow.com/handyavi/handyavi.htm.
>>
>>It allows you to do preprocessing of an AVI file to crop the images,
>>select the "best" images, create a new AVI file from any set of selected
>>images in the source file.  Easy to use and handy for working with
>>the sorts of AVI files that the ToUcam and other webcams produce.
>>
>>I am using it to crop, sort, and select the best images for subsequent
>>processing by RegiStax.  Speeds everything up significantly and
>>allows control over the images that RegiStax has to deal with.
>>
>>Best part is that it is totally free...
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Howard
>>
>>--
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Howard     (in Tempe, Arizona)
>>http://www.astroshow.com
>>    
>>
>
>
>What language did you use? If it's C++ can I get the source code so I 
>can compile if for a Mac?
>
>Jeff
>
>  
>

-- 

Thanks,

Howard     (in Tempe, Arizona)
http://www.astroshow.com

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