BMF Read Errors!!??

[brispuss]

Trying to compress/convert some bmp files using bmf. But getting read errors when actually trying to compress bmp files!?

bmf program has been installed and environment variables set, so the system does recognize and run the bmf program. Typing just bmf in an elevated command window brings up the command syntax for bmf. But typing in bmf -s trava.bmp gives read error!? Why?

The enclosed trava.bmp file was originally a png file converted to bmp using imagemagick (command - magick trava.png trava.bmp).

[Shelwien]

I think imagemagick used some unsupported version of bmp format there.
I'd suggest to convert to tga instead, imagemagick can't mess up there.

>convert.exe trava.bmp tga:trava2.tga


>BMF.exe trava2.tga
BMF lossless image compressor, v.2.01 (C) 1998-1999, 2009 by Dmitry Shkarin
File       trava2.tga, image 267x194x32, size - 207192:17.429 bpp

[brispuss]

Thanks for that.

On checking trava.bmp with another non-converted bmp image using MediaInfo, the difference is in the "Format" type.

Trava.bmp has the Format as being "bitfield", but the other bmp image has the Format as being RGB.

The other bmp image with RGB Format DOES convert when using BMF!

So it appears ImageMagick is outputting the wrong "Format", bitfield, instead of RGB.

Can this bmp output Format be set to RGB under ImageMagick? I had a look at the command options but couldn't find any definite command option to set bmp Format to RGB, unless I missed something?

[brispuss]

Update:

I managed to get ImageMagick to output the proper bmp format that bmf recognizes by using the command -

magick convert trava.png bmp3:trava.bmp

Apparently bmf ONLY recognizes bmp's in the version 3 standard of bmp's. By adding the "bmp3" in the command line, forces the image conversion to process the bmp as per 3 standard of bmp's.

There is a 2 standard option as well by entering bmp2 in the command line.

By default I think ImageMagick uses 1 standard for conversion to bmp's, and that's what was happening initially. So bmf doesn't recognize the earlier bmp standards (1 and 2).

EDIT: I did try using tga instead of bmp, but bmf compresses bmp images much better than tga images. So my preference is to stay with bmp images at this time.