Review of APEX Media Animator

by Raymond Lohengrin

The full power of the Falcon is easily realized when programs like Apex Animator are used. It is difficult to realize and appreciate the power that this fine computer has. Most of the programs I run on my Falcon (and they are very fine) were written for the ST models.

The earlier programs for ST models do not take full advantage of the Falcon's advanced features like: 8 Channels Digital Audio, True Color, Faster Motorola 030 Processor, DSP Motorola 56001.

However, there are a few programs that were specifically designed for the Falcon 030 (now C-Lab Falcon Mark I and mark II). These Falcon specific programs (like Cubase Audio, Logic Audio, Apex) show that the Falcon 030 is capable of using high end graphics resolutions, can contains a nice user interface, and has many dedicated features including 16 bit 8 channel digital audio.

Graphics on Atari:

A few years ago I got CyberPaint for my ST. It was when I studied the FX ADO functions that I realize the tremendous potential of CyberPaint. It could rotate, enlarge, reduce, paste an animation or clip over a selected number of frames and preselected paths automatically.

When I got my Falcon, I could only think of the possibility of having a CyberPaint like program working in the upper resolutions capable on the Falcon (True Color).

Apex Animator:

Apex animator's layout reminds me very much of CyberPaint. Unlike CyberPaint, Apex has the capability to work with 24 bit and 16 bit color graphics. It also has a virtual canvas capability and can work in true color, 256 colors or Black and White.

Like CyberPaint, Apex is very easy to use and its menus and dialogs are very elegantly layed out in marble and gold. Cyber dials are spinning dialogs boxes. These will spin and will grow in size from very small to the front of the screen. While this is only for looks, it is a nice feature that will impress even a visiting Amiga user.

The Program:

Apex comes on two High Density floppy disks and can be installed on your had drive. It loads very fast from a hard drive. It's layout is very impressive. The menus, dialogs, and function boxes, look like grey marvel stone. The main screen frame is composed of three sides. The eight workstation selectors are placed at the top, the tools menu on the left side, and the frame selector is composed of three sides.

All workstation modules and their related tools are represented by easy to understand icons which have keyboard equivalents. A short description of the tool or module icon appears on the top right side of the main screen window. As the mouse glides over an icon or button, the function of that icon or button is displayed on the upper right hand menu bar.

The bottom half of the tools menu is displayed vertically on the left side of the work screen and displays seven icons which are visible at all times.

There is an animation slider speed control, and below it there is a memory bar which displays graphically the amount of memory consumed. Clicking on it brings a dialog box with the programs memory status. A diamond looking icon is used when right clicking to swap out of the program temporarily to the desktop. Left clicking or pressing "Q" will exit the program.

The Monitor icon is used to access the VIDEO OPTIONS MENU, and the available resolutions are: 320x200, 640x200, 320x400, 640x400, and Page or canvas size are user selectable.

Video Modes:

Video modes include True Color, 256 Colors, Grey Scales, PAL or NTSC Grey Scales, PAL or NTSC. Other modes include 512 Colors, 4096 Colors, 262,144 Colors, 16.7 Million Colors.

Because the Falcon can switch video modes on the fly, when you select the new video mode and exit the dialog box, the screen will go dark for an instant and the new mode will take effect.

The Disk icon selects the DISK OPTIONS menu. This menu offers a variety of files to load and save and options.

Formats supported:

PC1, IFF, SPU, PCS, TGA, MTV, JPG, GIF, FLC, SEQ, ANN, APX, CFN, DAC,
FWR. PC1, IFF, SPU, PCS, TGA, MTV, JPG, GIF, FLC, SEQ, ANN, APX, CFN,
DAC, FWR.

CFN are Calamus fonts. FWR is used to save the Apex morphing vectors or Warp lines. APX is used for saving any size image, clip, or brush (they load very fast). The CFG button, saves information about Apex current configuration as for example the screen resolution, canvas size, and number of colors.

One of the powerful features of Apex animator is its ability to load an image or animation sequence over an existing animation any number of times. This means that animations can be overlaid and pasted to compose very complex animations.

Let's say that you had a video clip of someone playing the guitar in front of a 'blue screen", using the paste file or paste animation you could (after converting the blue background to transparent) paste the clip over a mountain scene. Now your guitarist is performing on top of your favorite mountain.

Animation files can be pasted under or over an image and at the beginning, middle or end of an existing animation. The AMR icon selection(like CyberPaint) can determine whether the operations are to affect a frame, sequence or full animation. NOTE: at the moment only a few functions can be applied automatically over a sequence of frames.

I have received news that more automatic multiframe functions will be incorporated on the coming APEX 3. The brushes and pencil icons works like the ones found in most graphics programs.

A clip can be stored in memory and used as a brush. There can be 4 clips or brushes in memory at a time. These can be saved as APX files.

The "I" icon activates the Preference menu. Here options like cyberdials, upgraded CPU, and compression method can be selected. Clicking a second time on the dialog box while clicking the left mouse button displays program version and user registration information. Clicking a second time on the dialog box will give
you a pleasant surprise. This will show you the quality level, detail and work that has been put into Apex Animator.

FRAME POSITION SLIDER.

This lower bar displays the number of the current frame. Pressing and holding the left mouse button on this bar works like the shuffle function on a VCR. Buttons to add and clear frames are placed on both sides of the Frame Position Slider. The Color Palette is located below the Frame Position Slider, and it displays a palette of 256 colors.

Each frame can have its own palette in 256 color mode. Coordinates are displayed to the left and below the Color Palette. There are four small cycles that flash and give feed back on Apex busy activity. Coordinates are displayed at the same level on the right side.

THE WORKSTATIONS:

There are eight workstations. The Standard Drawing workstation Tools available are: Free Hand Lines, Curves with Bezier, B Curve, B Spline and PolySpline. Polyspline allows you to define any number of control points to produce a smooth curve. Other choices include Polygons, Box, Circle Box, Circle Fill, AirBrush.

CELL MANIPULATION WORKSTATION:

Here a block or clip of any size can be rotated, scaled, repositioned, in real time.

There is also a Perspective tool. Blocks can be cut manually with rubber box and blade (for regular and irregular shapes) and also automatically.

THE COLOR WORKSTATION:

This is where palettes are created and colors are mixed using RGB, CMY or HSB.

THE DIGITIZING INTERFACE:

With the addition of the Expose' digitizing hardware, the Digitizing Interface can be utilized. Your choices w/the Expose' hardware include 24 bit (16,777,216 colors per image) and 16 bit images (65,536 colors per image ) in True Color. These same images can be imported into Apex World. There are settings in the Digitizing Interface portion of the program to allow for Photographic grabs, with several shutter speeds and Cinematic grabs with Interlaced, non Interlaced and wide screen options.

Expose' permits the digitized image to retain a 16-bit plane true color palette. In other words, a picture containing 65,536 colors per image, thereby retaining near photographic quality. In addition, the supporting software, APEX Media (sold separately), further boosts this capability to realize even higher resolutions in 24 bit color (16,777,216 colors per image).

Using Expose' and APEX Media to capture live video in real time allows a sequence of images to be compiled into an animation, which can then be played back within APEX Media or stored as FLC/FLH file.

NON LINEAR DRAWING TOOLS:

Realistic airbrush with flow control (ink and mask), Fill, Draw, Analog Mask Options. This is used to define a color or area for processing.

FILM AND IMAGE FILTERS:

These are tools that can be applied over a selected area on any number of frames automatically. Noise Suppression, Image Dejag, Motion Suppression, and much more.

MORPHING AND DISTORTION WORKSTATION:

Apex Animator contains a very powerful morphing module. Here an image can be morphed into another over a sequence of frames to produce a smooth effect. Defined warp lines can be saved on disk for later use.

TEXT INTERFACE:

This allows the use of Calamus vector fonts. Character space and size can be defined. I would like to see in future updates the support for truetype fonts.

MEMORY (RAM):

Apex works very well with 4 megabytes of RAM, but 16 megabytes of RAM will be needed if you plan to do any video digitizing for animation. Another option will be to use OUTSIDE, a virtual memory program, that will allow virtual memory to expand up to 540 Meg.

MANUAL:

Apex comes in a nice box with a well written manual. The manual has overview and in depth sections describing each module and tools. It also describes image and compression formats as well as some tips on creating neat effects using the available tools. The sample disks contains sample images and small FLC animation files created with Apex.

Apex Media Animator is a professional program for the creation of graphics, animation and video editing. The program is easy to use, fast and incredible stable. I can't wait until the day that Audio and all the ADO functions of CyberPaint are incorporated into Apex Media. I believe if that happened then Apex would become the FALCON VIDEO TOASTER. This could make the Falcon a complete audio and video workstation. This would create great demand for Falcons in the video editing business. Titan Design has indicated to me that they are working on a new version of Apex Media that will icnorporate some Cyber like features and possibly even the addition of audio.

My advice is: If you are into graphics get Apex Media Animator.

MAIN FEATURES:

The main features of Apex Media are its drawing ability, filtering and masking functions. Other program assets include animation with Delta Film and direct from disk sequence and editing facilities. Features like software controlled live video or still frame capture using capture hardware such as Expos make this software a winner. In addition, there is fast and versatile morphing.

Editing tools include standard pens and shapes, as well as a stipple and an extremely realistic airbrush and graduated tints.

Apex allows you to change definable areas with hue, saturation, and brightness, as well as darken, saturate, fade, and watercolor. For animation, Apex has smooth image transformations and a range of powerful block manipulation functions. Blocks can be rotated at any angle, rescaled, stretched, skewed, and mirrored.

Using capture hardware such as Expose', Apex allows real-time frame capture of up to 512 x 320 at a 16-bit true color or 24-bit from a Rostrum stills camera.

Apex also has dejagging, motion blur, and two levels of noise reduction, as well as advanced delta film compression capability for animation.

Apex uses a virtual canvas of up to 2048 x 1024 and real-time zoom is available at all times, during animation replay and when editing, and there is smooth scrolling in any resolution. Supports: PC1, IFF, SPU,TGA, MTV, JPG, GIF, FLC, SEQ, ANM, APX, CFN (Calamus Fonts), Import and Export of Animations w/Color reduction, Supersampling, pasting over/under existing images, Genlock capability.

Apex Media
Retail $149.00
Lite Version $59.95

About the Author:

Raymond Lohengrin was born in Manhattan and moved to Cuba at an early age. He studied the guitar at the music conservatory in Havana. He also studied the guitar with Eli Kassner professor at the University of Toronto. He has been teaching the guitar for more than 17 years. His works for flute and guitar are published by L. PIPER Publications. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.

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