sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu (scott sutherland) (11/10/89)
FOR ALL OF YOU WHO RESPONDED TO MY COLOR BLEEDING IN VIDEO PROBLEMS, PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ARTICLE IS ASKING FOR HELP ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PROBLEM. The problem I am having is difficult to describe (kinda has to be seen, I think), but I will try my best. First, let me describe what it is I am trying to do. I am using 2 pieces of software, Impulse's Video Page for titling, and Aegis' AniMagic for video transition effects. The video I am trying to put together consists of about 3 minutes of scrolling text and other transitions between text pages (all done with Video Page) followed by a 2.5 minute slide show of video effects from AniMagic. The VP stuff is fairly straight forward and I have had NO problems with it. Now, for the AniMagic stuff, what I am doing is the following. For an example, I have 3 images and 3 transitions. So, I create my first AniMagic anim starting with a blank screen and use transition I to bring in Image1 (e.g. spin it in), leaving the Image1 on the screen for 4 seconds. Thus Anim1 is about 6 seconds. Now, for Anim2, I use Transition2 to go from Image1 to Image2, leaving Image2 on screen for about 4 seconds. Thus, Anim2 is about 6 seconds. Finally, I create Anim3 by using Transition3 to go from Image2 to Image3, leaving Image3 on the screen for 4 seconds. Thus, Anim3 is about 6 seconds. I now record my 3 minutes of text onto a VHS video tape (high quality) using my Zenith 4 head stereo VCR. I am using the CMI VI500 video encoder. I hook the composite out to the video in of my VCR. I hook the video out of the VCR to the video in on my 2002 Amiga monitor. This is so I can see what I am doing. I load AniMagic, load in my Anim1, turn on my VCR recording function, wait 3-4 seconds for the recording heads to engage, and press the play button of AniMagic. (Yes, I could use ShowAnim, but the effect would be the same) The text and all the anims look great when I play them back either on my monitor or on my TV. Having done this for all 3 Anims on separate parts of the tape, I am now ready to go to the editing room of the video club I am in to ASSEMBLE edit the pieces together. The equipment in the editing room is all JVC. There are 2 industrial editing decks, with all the bells and whistles, including jog/shuttle, flying erase heads, and various editing switches. I do not recall the model numbers at this time. There is also an edit controller with buttons for play, ff, rew, stop, pause, and a jog/shuttle for EACH of the 2 VCR's. Thus, all editing is done using the controller. There are also buttons for ASSEMBLE editing and INSERT editing of video and L & R audio. ******FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DO THIS ALL THE TIME, PLEASE FORGIVE MY DETAIL. I AM TRYING TO BE COMPLETE SO THAT THE PROBLEM MAY BE FOUND***** I put the source tape I recorded at home in the source deck, and the blank target tape in the target deck. Both are in play mode, but the shuttle dials are set to pause the images. I shuttle to the beginning of my VP stuff, set the entry in point on both decks, shuttle to the end of the VP segment, set the entry out point, and perform the edit. NO PROBLEMS. HOWEVER, when I try to ASSEMBLE in the AniMagic footage, I encounter my problem. Normally, with recorded TV video, or even with the VP segment, when I set the SOURCE shuttle dial to PAUSE in order to set the entry in or out, the image on the source monitor is rock steady. I was told that if it is not (e.g. I don't pause it quite right and get a little snow on the screen) that it can cause glitches in the target recording. Well, this is not my problem. Whenever I try to pause on any part of any of the AniMagic anims, the image is steady EXCEPT for the top 1/5 of the screen. This part of the screen looks as if it is being pulled off to the left. This problem is extremely noticeable. Thus, I cannot get a steady freeze frame to set my Entry In or Out point. What this does is cause severe glitches in my target tape, ranging from white streaks over the picture to what looks like loss of vertical hold to having the whole image move eratically up/down or left/right. I have seen all of these. They tend to appear at the assemble points between Anims. I think that the inability to freeze frame and set entry points is the cause of this. Thinking that perhaps the wires connecting the equipment might be shorting out or something, I borrowed another tape (the person was right there) with both title graphics (not from an Amiga) and video camera footage on it. I tried pause on both parts of this tape and got a perfect freeze. I then put my tape back in and still had problems with the freeze. Therefore, it is not the equipment, per se, but it is how the equipment views my tape and what is recorded on it. Frustrated, I went home to try some things. I thought that it might be a problem with the Zenith VCR, so I put in my tape and tried to freeze frame on it, but the "pulling" was evident here to. I do realize that the freeze frame on my Zenith is not going to be perfectly steady (since its not an industrial deck, nor an expensive commercial deck), but the pull was the same. I then replaced the Zenith deck with my RCA mono deck (old, not fancy) and got the same effect with the pause on it. I tried to re-record the Anims on the RCA VCR, but when I play back these and use pause I still get the problem described above. Now, I was finally able to reduce the pull as viewed ON THE MONITOR in 2 different ways.First, while in pause, with the pulling evident, if I use the horizontal positioning knob on the monitor to move the image to the right, I can make the pulling disappear. If I move it back to the left, BINGO, I get the same pulling effect. So, I thought I would check the preferences setting of my screen. What I found was that the "position marker" for the screen in the preferences window was all the way to the right side of the little box, but centered up/down. I thought that this might be my problem. I set it to the center and, when I played one of the anims and paused it, I did not have to adjust the horizontal positioning of my monitor as far to the right to remove the pulling. So, leaving preferences this way (clicking on the USE button), I cd'd to df1: and typed in "animagic" to load the program, loaded an anim, played it while recording, and them played back the newly recorded anim. No luck! I still get the pulling on pause. It is especially evident when I play the tape on the Zenith VCR while it is hooked up to my RCA colortrack TV through a coax. There is no control on this TV to adjust the horizontal positioning and fix the problem. I realize that this is a lot of text to describe my problem. If I were showing someone in person, I could do it in a couple of minutes. Ah, well. Radio sports announcers have the same problem. I hope that I have included enough details and described the problem clearly enough that you have a feel for the problem I am having. Does anyone have suggestions on what is going on, or how to remedy it? How about ideas just to try? Anyone encountered similar problems? Is there something special about the screen setting in Preferences that I have to be wary of when encoding the RGB signal to NTSC?? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Scott Sutherland sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu PLEASE EMAIL ALL RESPONSES TO ME AT THE ADDRESS JUST BELOW MY NAME.
addison@pollux.usc.edu (Richard Addison) (11/10/89)
Make sure that you are running with interlaced video. A public domain program called SetLace will set your Amiga up to open all screens with interlaced scanning. Richard Addison