     fiasco(3)                         FIASCO                          fiasco(3)
     Fractal Image And Sequence COdec           Fractal Image And Sequence COdec

                                     April, 2000

     NAME
          fiasco_coder - compress image files to a FIASCO file

     SYNOPSIS
          #include <fiasco.h>

          int
          fiasco_coder (char const * const * image_names,
                        const char * fiasco_name,
                        float quality,
                        const fiasco_c_options_t * options);

     DESCRIPTION
          The fiasco-coder() function compresses the image file(s) given by the
          list of image_names and creates the new FIASCO output file
          fiasco_name. Besides the approximation quality, several compression
          parameters can be adjusted by the class options (see
          fiasco_c_options_new(3)).

     ARGUMENTS
          image_names
               NULL terminated array of image filenames to process. If the first
               array element is "-" or a NULL pointer then FIASCO reads the
               image from standard input. Each array element either has to be an
               image filename or a template of the form:

                               prefix[start-end{+,-}step]suffix

               Templates are useful when compressing video streams: e.g., if the
               template "img0[12-01-2].pgm" is given as array element, then
               FIASCO compresses the images img012.pgm, img010.pgm, ...,
               img002.pgm (in this order).

               If a filename is a relative path then the images are searched for
               in the current directory and in the (colon-separated) list of
               directories given by the environment variable FIASCO_IMAGES.

          fiasco_name
               Name of the FIASCO output file. If the name is "-" or NULL then
               the file is produced on standard output.

               If fiasco_name is a relative path and the environment variable
               FIASCO_DATA is a (colon-separated) list of directories, then the
               output file is written to the first (writable) directory of this
               list. Otherwise, the current directory is used to store the

                                        - 1 -       Formatted:  February 9, 2001

     fiasco(3)                         FIASCO                          fiasco(3)
     Fractal Image And Sequence COdec           Fractal Image And Sequence COdec

                                     April, 2000

               output file.

          quality
               Defines the quality of compression. Quality has to be a positive
               value, its typical range is 1.0 (worst) to 100.0 (best). Larger
               values are also allowed - at the cost of exploding encoding
               times.

          options
               This "class" encapsulates the various coding and decoding
               parameters. Use the functions fiasco_c_options_new(3) and
               fiasco_c_options_delete(3) to create and delete an object of this
               class. Several member functions (see fiasco_c_options(3)) are
               available to change the default values.

     RETURN VALUE
          The function fiasco_coder() returns 1 if the FIASCO file has been
          successfully written. If an error has been catched during compression,
          0 is returned - use the function fiasco_get_error_message(3) to get
          the last error message of FIASCO.

     ENVIRONMENT
          FIASCO_IMAGES
               Search path for image files. Default is "./".
          FIASCO_DATA
               Search and save path for FIASCO files. Default is "./".

     SEE ALSO
          fiasco_c_options_new(3), fiasco_c_options_delete(3),
          fiasco_c_options(3), fiasco_get_error_message(3)

          Ullrich Hafner, Juergen Albert, Stefan Frank, and Michael Unger.
          Weighted Finite Automata for Video Compression, IEEE Journal on
          Selected Areas In Communications, January 1998
          Ullrich Hafner. Low Bit-Rate Image and Video Coding with Weighted
          Finite Automata, Ph.D. thesis, Mensch & Buch Verlag, ISBN 3-89820-
          002-7, October 1999.

     AUTHOR
          Ullrich Hafner <hafner@bigfoot.de>

                                        - 2 -       Formatted:  February 9, 2001