Hollywood forums

It would be nice to have better support for ANIMs, similar to the way that Videos are handled.
Currently, we can either:

• Load and start playing an anim but then we have no way of updates (e.g. progress slider), events or canceling it while it's playing. We have to wait until it's finished.
  Or
• Load the anim and display one frame at a time, on an interval. This allows for updates, handling of events and canceling playback.

Finally, although both the above methods work fine (with their limitations) on non-Classic systems with plenty of horsepower, I haven't been able to find a method to playback an Anim (even 320x200) on a Classic (060 with PicassoIV for example) at speeds faster than a slideshow. Is there any hope of addressing this?

This is all possible already. Just don't use PlayAnim() but draw the frames manually using DisplayAnimFrame() or, if you use layers, NextFrame(). If you absolutely want to use PlayAnim(), you can set the "Async" tag to TRUE and then use AsyncDrawFrame() to advance to the next frame. See the AnimPlayer example for example code on how to asynchronously draw anims.

Concerning the playback speed on 68k: I'm afraid but this won't get faster because it's just not worth the effort to optimize this. Graphics on 68k are generally slow, especially when it comes to graphics that have to be updated at short intervals.

Thanks for the reply.
I am aware of the methods you mentioned, indeed I am using them in my test application already.

I was mostly looking for a way to make things faster (if possible) for 68k, though I realize it's probably not going to happen as you say.
I tried different methods, but none produced a fast enough playback, so I'll just give up on 68k.
Of course, 68k already has several native Anim players already which are quite fast so it's no big deal.