av2play

Players for AVF / AVF2 video on the Atari 8-bit, with first-class GTIA2RGB true-colour support.

Companion to the avi2atari AVF Suite

• converter, web UI, PC player, validator and metadata editor.

Experimental release. This drop ships the bin/AVFPLAY binary only (v1.13). The full source will be published once the menu player (AV2PLAY.XEX) also works on hardware.

AVFPLAY - the card-native player

AVFPLAY is a headless drop-in for the stock player in the AVG CART / SUB CART root (native mode): copy it to the card, pick an .avf, it plays. Same proven beam-raced movplay core (Avery Lee / tmp / Jakub Husak smooth-sound), plus:

• AVF-C80 true-colour playback (GTIA2RGB COL80 Mode 4) - real RGB video on a stock A8 with a GTIA2RGB: classic 80x48 RGB444, plus the new C80/BTC variant with 160x96 subpixel detail at the SAME bitrate (AVF2 v2; --profile c80btc in the converter). (new, working)
• APAC playback - the classic profile, plays on every Atari.
• AVF2 info screen (I, while paused or playing): title, author, length, system, profile - 80-column COL80 when a GTIA2RGB is present, 40-column text otherwise.
• Help screen (H): full key reference.
• Runtime sound device: POKEY or one of six Covox addresses, selectable in ONE binary via av2play-config (no more per-device builds).

Keys: START pause, SELECT / OPTION volume (POKEY), I / H screens (any key returns to the frozen frame, START resumes), ESC exit to the cart menu.

AVF-C80 files also play in the legacy players, but the colours will be wrong - they need a GTIA2RGB and this player for true colour.

Screenshots

Install

Copy bin/AVFPLAY to the root of your AVG / SUB CART SD card. Selecting an .avf launches it automatically. Write the .avf to the card the usual raw way (the player skips the 8 KB header and streams the frames).

av2play-config - set the boot defaults

bin/av2play-config patches the A2CF settings block inside the binary, so you can bake in defaults without rebuilding - one binary covers every sound device. Three equivalent front-ends: .bat (Windows, PowerShell inside, no Python), .ps1 (PowerShell) and .sh (POSIX).

Run with no arguments for an interactive menu (shows the current values), or pass them positionally:

av2play-config.sh bin/AVFPLAY <UI> <SOUND> <PLAYBACK> <STORAGE>

Slot	Values	Meaning
UI	auto ui40 ui80m3 ui80m4	info/help screen mode (auto = COL80 when a GTIA2RGB is present)
SOUND	pokey d280 d300 d500 d580 d600 d700	PWM output: POKEY, or a Covox address
PLAYBACK	playapac play80m3 play80m4	video profile the player expects
STORAGE	auto off	IDE storage probe

. (or -) leaves a slot unchanged. Example - default to the $D500 Covox, leave everything else as-is:

av2play-config.sh bin/AVFPLAY . d500 . .

AV2PLAY.XEX - the menu player (in development - not available yet)

AV2PLAY.XEX targets SIDE2-class devices (and AVG / SUB in SIDE emulation): a file browser with metadata and poster preview, then playback. It boots, browses FAT16 / FAT32 and reads real AVF2 metadata - but playback is not working on hardware yet.

Progress here is hardware-blocked: it needs a real SIDE2-class cart to test the streaming path. I'm trying to get one; until then development stays at its current point. The full av2play source ships once this build plays.

Credits and thanks

• Rusty Bits - this player, the AVF2 metadata format and the AVF-C80 true-colour profile.
• Jakub Husak - the smooth-sound AVFPLAY rework this build vendors (every PWM sample played cycle-exact, so no hiss or hum). Source and details: github.com/jhusak/avgcart_avfplay.
• Avery Lee (phaeron) - the original AVF concept and the original MOVPLAY streaming player.
• tmp - the AVG / SUB CART implementation.
• AcidMaker - the GTIA2RGB and the explanations that made AVF-C80 work.

Not affiliated with lotharek.pl in any way. The image and link are shared purely as a courtesy and a thank-you for help preparing this program; no benefit of any kind is derived from them.