mcohen@nrtc.northrop.com (Marty Cohen) (01/13/89)
> From: Charles Brown <charles@hpcvca.hp.com> > Subject: Re: Which digitizer should I buy? > 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. My experience was the opposite - LIVE works fine for me. My configuration is a Amiga 1000 with 1.5 meg (Insider), CLtd SCSI controller (with passthrough), and LIVE. An Olympus 8mm camcorder's video out connects to LIVE. Both tapes and live action record fine. I usually pause the tapes, and jitter is >>>not<<< a problem. For live action, the subjects cannot be moving too fast. I find that gray scale works better than color. I have >>>never<<< had any problems saving images. Perhaps 512K is not enough memory. Next step - Invision! Marty Cohen (mcohen@nrtc.northrop.com, 128.99.0.1)
stevel@tybalt.caltech.edu (Steve Ludtke) (01/14/89)
In article <6599@louie.udel.EDU> mcohen@nrtc.northrop.com (Marty Cohen) writes: >> From: Charles Brown <charles@hpcvca.hp.com> >> Subject: Re: Which digitizer should I buy? > >> 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 ... >> 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. > >My experience was the opposite - LIVE works fine for me. >My configuration is a Amiga 1000 with 1.5 meg (Insider), >CLtd SCSI controller (with passthrough), and LIVE. An Olympus 8mm >camcorder's video out connects to LIVE. Both tapes and live action >record fine. I usually pause the tapes, and jitter is >>>not<<< >a problem. For live action, the subjects cannot be moving too fast. > >I find that gray scale works better than color. I have >>>never<<< >had any problems saving images. Perhaps 512K is not enough memory. ... I have had a Live for a little over a year now. I have a stock A1000 with a 2 meg expansion, no pass thru so I use it with 512k. I have had absolutely no problems with it, I found a couple of minor (very minor) bugs and the company immediately sent me an updated sofware version at no charge. I use it with 2 different JVC vcr's a HRS10-U and a HR-D120U. I can almost always get a jitter free still frame (this suprised me, since the still frame function of both VCR's is not that good), and moving objects work fine as long as they're not moving too fast. In fact I even put a partially descrambled sattelite signal into it that my TV couldn't even sync to, and it displayed it better than the TV. Nor have I ever had any problems with saving pictures or animations. Overall, an excellent product. I'd hate to see Live get a bad rep just from one bad incident... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Ludtke stevel@tybalt.caltech.edu ..!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!stevel stevel@citiago (Bitnet) OBS949 (Amer PPl lnk) 72335,1537 (Compuserve) XJM16487 (Genie)