tope@enea.se (Tommy Petersson) (02/02/89)
I recently saw a short note about SuperPic, a digitizer using a colour video camera. It grabs in 32768 colour for conversion down to any Amiga display format. It takes 15 seconds. The unit includes a genlock and cost 458:85 pounds including VAT. Is this a good buy? Does anyone have any experience with it or any other digitizer using a colour video camera? How is the quality compared to Digiview? Any faster? All info will be welcomed
jgary@ms.uky.edu (James E. Gary) (02/03/89)
In article <4290@enea.se> tope@enea.se (Tommy Petersson) writes: <stuff deleted> >Is this a good buy? Does anyone have any experience with it or any other >digitizer using a colour video camera? How is the quality compared to >Digiview? Any faster? > >All info will be welcomed I use a LIVE! on my 1000 that works fine with a color camera. The quality is not as good as digiview, although if you are very careful you can get some stuff that looks about as good as the early Digiview stuff. It captures something like 4 HAM frames/second and has some post-processing steps to improve quality of individual pictures. It doesn't capture HAM in interlace, but you can capture 32 colors or b/w in interlace. 32 color and b/w work faster (something like 15 frames/second in b/w -- don't quote me) and can capture successive frames (limited by total memory, i.e. chip+fast) and save them in their own 'anim like' format called riff. They include a riff playback program (freely distributable) and a program to break up and reconstruct riff files (so you can touch up individual frames). The 500 version is the same as the 1000 version (I think), but the 2000 version is supposed to have some changes to the hardware to support some special effects and dual cameras (imagine real time 3-d!), but I don't know if it is available yet. I am quite happy with it. No color wheels, can use a VCR as input, etc., but you don't get the quality of digi-view or overscan (maybe overscan on the 2000?). Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with A-Squared (makers of LIVE!) other than that of a satisfied customer. That should be obvious from the nebulous references to details in the above message. -- +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | James Gary jgary@ms.uky.edu | You Klingon sons, you've killed| | University of Kentucky | my bastard! -Kames Jirk | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
NETOPRHM@NCSUVM.BITNET (Hal Meeks) (02/03/89)
I'm using a Live for the 2000. While it will do color, I find HAM mode to only useful for still shots, and even then it takes a fair amount of fiddling in Pixmate to get presentably good results. It has an option to accept an RGB inputs; I will be testing this in about a week or so. Since you are talking a fair amount of money here, you very well may want to look at Progressive Peripheral's framegrabber, which is currently the best for one-shot image capture. Image quality is, in many cases, equal or better than Digiview. Of course, Commodore has been showing off it's Genlock/Framegrabber board for the 2000, but has made no committment to production. I hope they do come out with it. It would go a long way towards making the 2000 "THE Desktop Video Solution" (the 2500vi?). Some companies who are used to dealing with video, but not computers, would feel a lot more comfortable about buying a already configured "box" that could handle their titling/animation needs, versus putting something together themselves from several suppliers, and hoping it all works together. --hal ------- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hal Meeks "I'm living in a condo, netoprhm@ncsuvm.bitnet with Henry Thoreau" hgm@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu --Reagan Years, Part II