Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions. Be sure to read this information before sending e-mails.
Q: I get 'Out of memory' for every script I start!?
A: Select 'Play animations from disk' in the preferences. If you still get 'Out of memory' errors, there is no other possibility than to upgrade your RAM.
Q: Why are animations so slow?
A: Every frame has to be converted from planar format to true colour. This takes some time and therefore playback can be slow but there is no other way to do this. Try to view an animation with MultiView; it will be very slow too.
Q: Why does it take so long to load animations?
A: This is the same problem as the previous question. Hollywood has to convert every frame and if it uses many colors and a high resolution then it will take some time.
Q: Malibu cannot load my animations.
A: Check if there is a datatype for the animation. Sometimes Scala uses a special animation format (ANIM8) which is not supported by the animation.datatype and therefore cannot be loaded by Malibu.
Q: Why does anti-aliasing look so bad?
A: Scala offers anti-aliasing on bitmap and intellifonts using some clever dedicated algorithms. Hollywood, however, only supports antialiasing for TrueType fonts. Thus, Malibu emulates Scala's antialiasing using edge blurring but this of course doesn't look as good as Scala's dedicated algorithms.
Q: Why don't you emulate the Scala schedule feature?
A: This would be too difficult currently because Malibu needs much more time for preparing each page than Scala needed. Therefore a schedule support would not make much sense here. But it is planned for PPC versions where page preparation is fast enough to support it.
Q: Is ARexx support planned?
A: Yes, I'm working on it. However, Hollywood needs to offer commands for this first before I can implement it.
Q: What about Scala EX's?
A: This is not emulated and will not be emulated in the future because it is almost impossible. Scala EX rely heavily on external hardware and it is not clear to me how all the stuff works because I have none of that hardware. You will have to live without it.
Q: What about the cool cycle effect of Scala?
A: This is also almost impossible to emulate. You would need a very fast processor to calculate all the different cycles in 24-bit. Color cycles are tricks that can only be done very fast on palette-based displays. In 24-bit mode you would have to modify every pixel. 68k processors are far away from doing that at an acceptable speed.