7yuv 2.2 released

Today another update is released, version 7yuv V2.2 with added support for Raw Bayer surfaces (7yuv homepage), as produced by digital camera sensors.

7yuv can view all 4 byte ordering modes RGGB, GRBG, GBRG, and BGGR, and up to 16-bit per channel. Most Bayer formats use only 10, 12, or 14 bits per channel, which are packed into the low bits. To configure this a new UI field has been added (see picture).

7yuv showing 14-bit raw Bayer RGGB

For now Bayer is supported only via the OpenGL rendering mode. Hint: When looking at down-scaled Bayer it is advisable to enable interpolation from the View menu to prevent scaling artifacts.

New in 7yuv V2.2 (2014-04-21)

* Add support for Bayer 16-bit (OpenGL mode only)

7yuv 2.0 released

A major update to Datahammer 7yuv Image Viewer and Hex Editor is out today. All image rendering was migrated from CPU-based software rendering to OpenGL. The largest advantage is the possibility to zoom in and out of the images. This was long overdue with the increased image sizes in recent time.

In our testing on different PC hardware, scrolling and zooming is overall faster than before. However changing image dimensions and formats is much slower, because internally it requires to download new textures to the graphics card. Depending on your OpenGL driver this may be very slow, so we kept the original CPU-rendering engine as a fall-back option in the application settings. Overall we think it is a good tradeoff.

New in 7yuv 2.0 (2014-04-14)

* Json-format config files
* OpenGL HW rendering
* Scaling in graphics mode
* RGB channel filtering
* Color schemes for graphics mode
* YUV411 support
* RGBA raw palette format support
* "Screen copy" for text modes (render to text buffer) 

Download Windows or Linux versions at http://datahammer.de/7yuv_downloads.html

7yuv 1.8 released

A new release 7yuv V1.8 has just been uploaded to the Datahammer website. Apart from small bug fixes and tweaks, a new feature for graphics formats conversion has been added. In this version most YUV and RGB format pairs can be converted to each other, however a few exotic combinations are still missing. Missing combinations will be added in the next version.

Also it is now possible to configure mode colour schemes, this will become more useful as we add more text-based edit modes in future versions.

7yuv 1.7 released

A new release V1.7 of Datahammer 7yuv has been posted to the website. It now features tabbed editing and a built-in file explorer. Also the video frame rulers in the graphics mode have been graphically overhauled. For the file open and save dialog boxes it is now possible to choose between  native OS and QT style dialogues.

In addition to the Window version, we now also have Debian installer packages for Linux.x64 (64-bit) and Linux.i386 (32-bit).

7yuv v1.6 released

Version 1.6 of the Datahammer 7yuv Raw Image Editor has just been released.

The biggest visible addition is a RawText mode, which allows to edit a binary file as ASCII or UNICODE text. Other than that text and hex string search has been added in the hex editor mode.

The biggest actual change however is a complete overhaul of the code base - everything has been ported from native Win32 API to QT. This was done to compile Linux and MacOS versions in addition to Windows, so stay tuned for those ports. A lot of video codec and camera development is done on Linux these days, so I hope a good YUV viewer like 7yuv will come in handy here.

You may notice that some of the dialogs look more modern now, this is due to the QT rewrite.

The New QT look in 7yuv v1.6

The Old Win32/QT hybrid look in 7yuv v1.5

7yuv v1.5 with YUV 12-bit and 16-bit support

Just released a minor new version v1.5 of Datahammer 7yuv, it adds support for planar YUV 4:2:0 images in 12 and 16-bit depth. Download Link.

Introducing 7yuv - YUV Viewer and Raw Graphics Editor

It has been some time, since I last updated about the Datahammer Editor. After some months pause due to other projects, development is now back to speed.

Things are coming along quite well, as you may see in below screenshot. We decided to release a graphics and hex editor first, and enable text editing later. You can download it here. The graphics editor/viewer will go by the name "7yuv", because it turned out to be really helpful as raw YUV viewer for video codec development. Hopefully it will be useful to other video engineers, too.

The biggest change is that we migrated the underlying UI framework to QT4, which now has a license option for closed source projects. Previously we have been using our custom cross-platform UI framework, which was much more light-weight but also more cumbersome. The switch to QT dramatically increased productivity, and the UI is prettier, too. On the downside the editor's executable size grew from 200 kB single file to 400 kB plus 10 MB for QT DLLs. We are still undecided which is better, but thanks to proper abstraction we can switch back the UI framework anytime.

KC85 Attic Project

I put up a little KC85 website.

I got into computing about 20 years ago, one of the computers my daddy bought for me back then was the KC85/4. (Yes, he bought several, and I love him for laying the foundation that got me into computing.) It was the last model of East Germany's state planned homecomputer range.

The Kc85 series is a U880 CPU-based 8-bit system, U880 being the GDR's clone of the Zilog Z80. As usual for homecomputers it came with built-in BASIC interpreter and memory monitor, it connected to a standard PAL TV set.

With the built-in BASIC interpreter it was a great system for learning! Computer education was taken important in East Germany, the government put a lot of effort in deploying KC85's and programming classes into schools and community centers. I have once read that about 200.000 East Germans could "speak" BASIC - that is 1% of the population! Imaging if today's kids would start their computing experience with BASIC instead of World of Warcraft or Instant Messaging.

I still have a lot of cassette tapes containing KC85 software. I believe most of this data hasn't made it into the information age. So I decided to gradually digitise and publish it on the kc85.datahammer.info subdomain.

So far the Datahammer Editor with its powerfull hex-mode has come in very handy to edit all the binaries ripped off the tapes.

Welcome

This place is to dump thoughts around the ongoing development of the Datahammer Editor.


So, why making another editor?

Computing has become high-level in recent years. Over are the days where you had to have assembly or BASIC programming skills to be able to use a computer. Fortunately, this has enabled many to get access to information technology, but on the downside people forget how things work.

People use photo managers, web browsers, word processing. But if you ask the average computer user about file formats, memory layout, or his file system, he will give you a strange look at best.

Now the thing is, software has become high-level, too. After years of user-suffering everything just works! You can open large files, drag and drop pictures between applications, print out what you see on the screen, connect computers over a network! Gone is the need for low-level utilities such as disk editors, memory monitors to tweak stuff.

This is a problem.

Knowledge about how computers work is getting lost. I am not saying people should learn to code, but a minimum level of technical education gained through playing around with software would help to slow down this knowledge drain.

Especially kids, who use to explore things, don't have the software tools anymore that teach them things. As a result fewer and fewer young people get into an IT career, and those who go that way, aren't educated as profound as the 80's 8-bit computer kid.

Sure, there are still low-level tools, most Win32 or Unix command line tools are low-level, but the good old feel of software from the 8 bit days of being 'close to the silicon' and its educative value is gone.


That is one of the reasons for developing Datahammer.

While any text or hex editor can be used to look at data, with Datahammer we are trying to be smart about it. You can look at a file in text mode, hex dump, disassembly, graphics dump, audio dump, and thanks to mode-plugins many more. It has no filesize restrictions, is fast, it does no hidden changes to an opened file, and it tries to make sense and be complete. It is meant to juggle data around, easily look at it from many different angles, ultimately leading to a better understanding for both, beginners and professionals.