Using Animator to create video clips for Cybiko

This guide shows how to create a Cybiko compatible video clips such as these from an AVI or MPEG video file.

What you will need

• VirtualDub by Avery Lee.

• Animator for Java

• Java Runtime Environment 11+

• An AVI or MPEG1 video file.

Step 1 - Reformatting the video clip

As Animator can only load certain AVI files (uncompressed and MSVC1), we need to make our video compatible. We may also need to resize and crop the image size so it better fits the Cybiko screen. To do this we will use VirtualDub.

Note that unlike Avi2Cvc, Animator can resize AVI's, but while we are in VirtualDub, we may as well have it to do the work.

• Go File > Open video file to load your AVI or MPEG.

• Select the section you want to make a clip of. Move the slider at the bottom of the window to the start and click on the 'Mark In' button, then move the slider to the end of the range and click the 'Mark Out' button.

• Go Video > Filters > Add > Resize, change the width and height to 160x100. Click Ok and Ok (to return to the main screen).

  Or

  To preserve the aspect ratio of the picture (so images don't look fatter), you can also crop the AVI first and then resize. The steps would be for example:

  Go Video > Filters > Add > Null. Click on the cropping option and then trim the picture e.g. 320x240 -> 320x200.
  
  Go Video > Filters > Add > 2:1 Reduction. This will then half the resolution e.g. 320x200 -> 160x100.

• Go Audio (menu) > No Audio

• Go Video > Frame Rate... Select 'Convert to fps' in the Frame Rate Conversion box. This is to lower the amount of frames in the clip. Around 8 fps is good.

• Go Video > Compression, Select 'Uncompressed RGB'. As mentioned above, Animator can load MSVC1 compressed video but there is no advantage to doing this here.

• Go File > Save as AVI, give the clip a name and hit save.

Make sure you give the file a new name so you do not overwrite the original file!

Step 2 - Creating the CVC file

Now that we have our AVI file in the correct format, we need to run it through Animator to compress it and reduce the colours.

• Load the AVI file created above.

• Select Export Cybiko from the File menu

• You should now have a .CVC file you can put on your Cybiko and play!

Updated 22/11/2024