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Thread: New ILDA format

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
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    Pflugerville, TX, USA
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    Default New ILDA format

    I would like to get your feedback on a new ILDA format. For now, I will call it Format X. FormatX would be useful as the first header in an ILDA file and would contain a table of contents for all frames. For example, if there were 1000 frames in the ILDA file, their would be 1000 entries in the table. So, if you wanted to immediately skip to frame 899 you could find the offset value for frame 899 in the table of contents and skip everything in the ILDA file up until that point. I would propose that Format X would only be compatible with ILDA files that contain only Format 4 & 5 frames due to possible color table issues with the other frame types. Since ILDA file readers are supposed to skip headers that have format types that aren't recognized there should be no backward compatibility issues. Additionally, Format X could also contain additional information such as the number of points in each frame, a description of the ILDA file, and any other user defined information that might be considered useful. This format would be very useful to laser show software because it would allow identifying a lot of stuff about the ILDA file without having to read it all in.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
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    Akron, Ohio USA
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    Default

    If the objective is to leave most of the file on the hard drive and only load those frames that you want, then this seems like an OK idea. However, if you load the whole file into ram and then want to find a particular frame, what's the big deal? Just go to that frame by its index.

    James.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
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    Default

    Yes, you are right. The more I think about it the less useful it seems. It is good to bounce ideas off of people.

    I do still think it would be a useful way to add more statistical/descriptive information about the file, however.

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