pynuvie

A pure-Python library and command-line tool to read, write, encode and document Commodore 64 NUVIE REU video files — no emulator and no original tools required.

A NUVIE is a 16 MiB REU image holding a sequence of NUFLI still images, an optional SID soundtrack, and a playlist that scripts playback. NUVIEs are normally produced on a real C64 (or in VICE) with Crest's NUVIEmaker; pynuvie reads, builds and documents the same files in pure Python.

Showcase

30 seconds of a VIC-20 ad, encoded by pynuvie's FLI-aware encoder and rendered as the C64 would show it — full colour and greyscale, 16 colours, 320×200:

colour	greyscale

Install

pip install pynuvie          # core library + CLI
pip install pynuvie[image]   # also decode/encode images (needs Pillow + numpy)

numba (in the dev extra) is an optional accelerator for the encoder; it is not required and does not change the output.

Library

from nuvie import Nuvie

movie = Nuvie.read("zardoz.reu")
print(movie)                         # <Nuvie valid=True frames=256 music=False>
print(movie.control)                 # music flags, borders, infoscreen, charset
for tok in movie.playlist:           # decoded playback script
    print(tok.describe())

slot = movie.frame(0)                # one frame as its 21840-byte slot
movie.set_frame(0, slot)
movie.write("out.reu")               # losslessly round-trips

Decode a standalone NUFLI .nuf image to a picture, and encode one back:

from PIL import Image
from nuvie.nufli import NufliImage

NufliImage.from_prg(open("000.nuf", "rb").read()).to_image().save("000.png")

# FLI-aware encode: per-8x2 ink/paper + the sprite-underlay third colour,
# co-designed with a 2px-pair error-diffusion dither.
nuf = NufliImage.from_image(Image.open("photo.png"))   # backend="clean" (default)

Encode a video into a player-ready NUVIE:

from nuvie.encode import encode_video
encode_video("clip.mp4", "clip.reu", fps=12.5)

from nuvie import build_movie                          # or from a list of images
build_movie([img0, img1, ...], "out.reu")

The encoder and the byte-exact packer are described in research/ENCODING.md.

CLI

nuvie info movie.reu                       # signature, frame count, music, playlist
nuvie playlist movie.reu                   # full decoded playlist
nuvie extract movie.reu -o frames/         # dump each frame as a .slot
nuvie build frames/*.slot -o out.reu       # pack frame slots into a NUVIE
nuvie encode clip.mp4 -o clip.reu          # video -> NUVIE (parallel; --workers N)
nuvie music clip.reu --csv tune.csv        # attach a SID soundtrack from a CSV
nuvie testpattern -o test.reu --style colour   # gradient showcase, no video needed

SID music from a CSV

NUVIE stores its soundtrack as a stream of SID register dumps — 25 register values ($D400..$D418) for every 1/50 s tick. That maps onto a CSV with one row per tick and 25 integer columns (0..255, decimal or 0x hex; a non-numeric header row is ignored):

nuvie music clip.reu --csv tune.csv             # add/loop music in place
nuvie music clip.reu --csv tune.csv -o out.reu --restart   # write a copy, restart per loop
nuvie encode clip.mp4 -o clip.reu --music tune.csv         # encode + score in one step

from nuvie import Nuvie, read_sid_csv
movie = Nuvie.read("clip.reu")
movie.set_music(read_sid_csv("tune.csv"))       # or flag=MUSIC_RESTART
movie.write("clip.reu")

Music grows down from the top of the REU, so a scored movie holds fewer than the 768 frames a silent one can.

See it run

Generate a showcase test pattern (no video file needed) and play it on the C64:

nuvie testpattern -o test.reu --style colour -n 64    # or --style greyscale

Play test.reu in VICE's x64sc with Crest's nuvieplayer1.0.prg (from the NUVIEmaker 0.1e release):

# VICE wipes the REU image on exit, so play a copy:
cp test.reu test-play.reu
x64sc -warp -reu -reusize 16384 -reuimage test-play.reu -reuimagerw \
      -autostart nuvieplayer1.0.prg

The byte format is documented in docs/FORMAT.md. The leftmost ~24px is NUFLI's "flibug" edge, an FLI sprite trick that pynuvie generates deterministically so it follows the picture (see docs/FORMAT.md).

License

Apache-2.0. NUVIE, NUVIEmaker, NUFLI and the reference player are the work of Crossbow & DeeKay of Crest.