I like Eikon's suggestion but wonder about the practicality. It is going to be a large file even as a PNG on disk but when loaded into memory (if possible) it is going to be stored as a BMP anyway so bingo the PNG doesn't save you anything except disk and maybe disk to memory transfer time. Most likely it just won't fit in graphics memory.
I'm not sure but I understand that B+ can use system memory for graphics and move them on demand to graphics card memory which might get you across the line. Some optional flag for "managed" memory ?
If the memory isn't a problem but there is a limit of 1024 frames then use two AnimImages and switch at the appropriate point.
How about questioning the whole approach rather than looking for a solution to the perhaps impossible.
Could you show a frame or two to give a feel for the nature of the graphics ?
If frame to frame differences aren't great then a custom approach to recording the differences might work. Good old "run length encoding of the delta" might give enough compression and you can just read enough bytes to build a frame before it is displayed. Depends upon how much compression you'll get on the images from a simple algorithm.
What about streaming it continuously from disk ? You just might be able to read and display frames quickly and smoothly enough.
What else has to be going on at the same time ? Is it just a movie or do you need other animation to be running over it ?
Perhaps you need to compromise on the dimensions or number of frames.
Maybe the answer is to use some method external to Blitz invoked through a DLL.
Depends upon what the aim really is.
I'm not sure but I understand that B+ can use system memory for graphics and move them on demand to graphics card memory which might get you across the line. Some optional flag for "managed" memory ?
If the memory isn't a problem but there is a limit of 1024 frames then use two AnimImages and switch at the appropriate point.
How about questioning the whole approach rather than looking for a solution to the perhaps impossible.
Could you show a frame or two to give a feel for the nature of the graphics ?
If frame to frame differences aren't great then a custom approach to recording the differences might work. Good old "run length encoding of the delta" might give enough compression and you can just read enough bytes to build a frame before it is displayed. Depends upon how much compression you'll get on the images from a simple algorithm.
What about streaming it continuously from disk ? You just might be able to read and display frames quickly and smoothly enough.
What else has to be going on at the same time ? Is it just a movie or do you need other animation to be running over it ?
Perhaps you need to compromise on the dimensions or number of frames.
Maybe the answer is to use some method external to Blitz invoked through a DLL.
Depends upon what the aim really is.