scotth@harlie.SGI.COM (Scott Henry) (01/10/89)
I have decided that I want to get a digitizer to play with. My current
interest would be to primarily digitize off of video-tape or (eventually)
laser-disk. Which ones are good for that? From an old article in Amiga
World, I think that the Live! digitizer is slightly preferred, both
for price and performance (plus, I know it should work with a 1000).
I am interested in comments, experiences, recomendations, etc, including
a good mail-order place to buy it. Please e-mail the responses, and I
will post a summary if desired.
thanks,
scott henry <scotth@sgi.com>
--
Scott Henrycharles@hpcvca.HP.COM (Charles Brown) (01/11/89)
> From an old article in Amiga > World, I think that the Live! digitizer is slightly preferred, both > for price and performance (plus, I know it should work with a 1000). > scott henry <scotth@sgi.com> I bought a LIVE! for a discount from a store which was moving. Since I did not own a VCR or camera, I decided to hook it to the camera and VCRs owned by the company of a friend. These are professional instruments (The VCRs were rack mount Sonys) in excellent condition. The LIVE! could not sync to the VCR when the frame was stopped and synced poorly when the frame was not stopped. It did better with the camera. The picture was very jerky but recognizable as a picture. The software was worse. Most attempts to save a picture did not save anything but merely resulted in the modes changing to low resolution non-ham. The remaining attempts caused the Amiga to Guru. I called the company. They sent me a newer revision of the software. (The software is at home so I cannot tell you what version it is.) That improved the odds of successfully saving a picture considerably. A low resolution picture could then be saved about two-thirds of the time. In high resolution the odds were still poor. The sync was not improved (no suprise there). The software still Guru'ed, tho not as often. I was hoping to show off some of the capabilities of the Amiga to these video professionals. They could really use the power of video titling and editing. Instead they say exceptionally poor video capture and a computer which Guru'ed repeatedly. My Amiga was a totally stock (except for the PAL grounding modification) Amiga1000 with 512K RAM and one external 3.5 inch floppy. (I also tried it without the extra floppy.) Their hardware was poor. Their software just did not work. I will NEVER buy anything from them again. -- Charles Brown charles%hpcvca@hplabs.hp.com Not representing my employer.
koo%loki.edsg@hac2arpa.hac.com (frances koo) (01/13/89)
I also have a LIVE! and it is quite satisfactory for my personal use. I have an Amiga 1000 with 1.5 Meg RAM (Michigan Insider) and I have had 100% successful saves (so far). I also managed to capture the HAM images and manipulate them with Butcher. When I try to capture pictures from the TV, the quality of the pictures depend on: the station (the higher frequency, the better), the amount of action on the screen (if the objects are moving quickly, one gets a blur), and the capture mode (black & white is best, followed by low-res color, which is to be expected). I get some interference noise when I connect the TV to the LIVE! and this also affects the quality of the pictures. There is no interference when I capture pictures from a video camera, especially when the subjects stay still. Frances Koo koo%loki.edsg@hac2arpa.hac.com Not representing my employer.
terry@braille.UWO.CDN (terry cudney) (01/13/89)
Is it possible to digitize single frames from an NTSC source like a VCR
or camcorder?
I don't necessarily want to get successive frames from an animation,
just good quality single frames that could be manipulated with a paint
program like Photon Paint or DPaint, to be displayed as single frames
on the monitor, or printed on a printer.
What hard/software is available for this sort of thing. I have only heard
of Digi-View and Live!. Are there others? with what features/capabilities?
TO: Scott Henry
Unable to reach your address I'm posting this with a note to you,
I would appreciate either email or a posted summary of whatever you get
on this subject.
Thanks,
Terry
/******************************************************************************
** UUCP: terry@deepthot. {UWO.CA || UUCP} **
** BITNET: cudney@UWOVAX.BITNET **
** Post: Terry Cudney 9 Durham Street, LONDON, Ontario, Canada N5Y 2H9 **
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.charles@hpcvca.HP.COM (Charles Brown) (01/14/89)
> I also have a LIVE! and it is quite satisfactory for my personal use. > I have an Amiga 1000 with 1.5 Meg RAM (Michigan Insider) and I have had > 100% successful saves (so far). > Frances Koo koo%loki.edsg@hac2arpa.hac.com Perhaps LIVE! was running out of memory when I was using it. If so The documentation with the product is wrong. It clearly states that LIVE! runs in 512K. Also the product is incorrectly designed. The Amiga1000 is designed to have one (1) device at most attached to the side. LIVE! plugs in the side, so it is that one device. Insiders are not a recommended configuration. (You had to void your warrenty to install your insider.) If not The product did not work anyway. This only means that the bugs in the software were somewhere else. Another possibility is that the version I got was an early production unit. If so Any company which sells a product which clearly does not work is behaving unethically at best and possibly fraudulently. This is independent of whether the product is version 1.0 or not. If not I don't know what the problem was but it didn't work. I recently sold my Amiga 1000 (the 2000 is on order). I included the LIVE! for free. That's what it is worth. -- Charles Brown charles%hpcvca@hplabs.hp.com Not representing my employer.
ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) (01/15/89)
In article <322@braille.UWO.CDN> terry@braille.uwo.ca (terry cudney) writes: > Is it possible to digitize single frames from an NTSC source like a VCR >or camcorder? I have DigiView and a digital VCR; with this setup you can digitize black and white (actually 16-gray) images from the VCR when in the "pause" state. You have to make sure your recording is of good quality; if you have any distortion or snow it appears in your final digitized picture in glorious detail. You can digitize in low or high-res, and, with DigiView 3.0 software, in overscan. With Perfect Vision you can digitize black and white low-res images from a VCR or live source without having to pause. The digitizing takes less than 1/30 secs. I've used it; works fine. With the color splitter you should be able digitize color images, but I have no experience with that... Ali Ozer, aozer@NeXT.com
hrlaser@pnet02.cts.com (Harv Laser) (01/16/89)
Regarding digitizing from a camcorder or a VCR/tv tuner - I have a
Progressive Peripherals & Software "FrameGrabber." Real nice unit.
I don't have a camera or camcorder but I just ran a cable from the
"video out" on the rear of my VCR into the NTSC-in on the front of
the FG. I get spectacular results if the signal being sent to the FG
is of good quality. It likes bright steady well saturated input.
The software is very flexible and lets you grab and store in just
about any of Amiga's standard IFF modes - lo/med/interlace/hi res,
full or quarter screen, overscan on or off, etc. The software also
has a "time lapse" feature and can make anims out of multiple frames.
Black and White grabs are accomplished in 1/60th of a second... color
takes 1/30th of a sec.
The software is very well thought-out and has a real PIXmate-y feel
to it, which is to be expected since Justin McCormick, who wrote
PIXmate also did the FG's software.
All in all a real slick unit.
Harv Laser, Sysop, The People/Link AmigaZone. Plink: CBM*HARV
UUCP: {ames!elroy, <backbone>}!gryphon!pnet02!hrlaser
INET: hrlaser@pnet02.cts.com
<---open Push down while turning close tightly--->lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) (01/17/89)
In <5660029@hpcvca.HP.COM>, charles@hpcvca.HP.COM (Charles Brown) writes: >> I also have a LIVE! and it is quite satisfactory for my personal use. >> I have an Amiga 1000 with 1.5 Meg RAM (Michigan Insider) and I have had >> 100% successful saves (so far). >> Frances Koo koo%loki.edsg@hac2arpa.hac.com > >Perhaps LIVE! was running out of memory when I was using it. Perhaps it was. > If so > The documentation with the product is wrong. It clearly > states that LIVE! runs in 512K. Not necessarily. My Live! ran on my 512K Amiga just fine. They clearly stated a fact. That it did not run on your Amiga is not an indication that it would run on no other similarly equipped Amigas. If it was running out of memory, it may have been for other reasons (other things you were running, etc.) > Also the product is > incorrectly designed. The Amiga1000 is designed to have one > (1) device at most attached to the side. LIVE! plugs in the > side, so it is that one device. Insiders are not a > recommended configuration. (You had to void your warrenty to > install your insider.) So what? Thousands of Amigas ran Insiders, warranty considerations aside. True, there were/are many peripherals out there in violation of the spec saying that you are only allowed 1 PIC on the bus. Many are being used in stacks of more than one. Many are being used with the Insider. > If not > The product did not work anyway. This only means that the > bugs in the software were somewhere else. Do you know of any software that didn't have bugs, not counting trivial programs? The software worked. I have seen it work, and in versions right from the earliest versions to go out to developers (remember those? You paid $1500 for a hand-made unit, and fairly buggy software that worked, mostly), to the latest versions. There have been no versions since the first I saw that didn't work. Please note the difference between 'buggy' and 'does not work'. >Another possibility is that the version I got was an early production >unit. > If so > Any company which sells a product which clearly does not work > is behaving unethically at best and possibly fraudulently. > This is independent of whether the product is version 1.0 or not. Well, it 'clearly' did not work for you. What did you do about it, besides bottling up anger and venting it on the net. A-Squared was extremely helpful to me, as well as to others who asked questions or had problems. > If not > I don't know what the problem was but it didn't work. Right. You don't know what the problem was, but don't let that stop you from making the definitive condemnations you seem wont to make. >I recently sold my Amiga 1000 (the 2000 is on order). I included the >LIVE! for free. That's what it is worth. Let's hope the recipient has the good sense to investigate the problem, rather than puking all over the net. Anyone who knwingly buys an 'improperly designed' unit, knowing full well that it _is_ in violation of the bus spec, doesn't have much cause for complaint when there are problems. > Charles Brown charles%hpcvca@hplabs.hp.com > Not representing my employer. He is probably glad. -larry -- Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca or uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+