NETOPRHM@NCSUVM.BITNET (Hal Meeks) (10/15/87)
Now that I have the disclaimer out of the way, these are my experiences
doing single framing on a VHS machine.
VHS is an okay format, despite what some people will tell you. S-VHS,
from the specs and block diagrams I have seen, and from talking to a
Panasonic field technician, should be much nicer.
What is boils down to is the transport. It is very difficult (and
expensive) to build a _frame accurate_ VHS machine. The best I have seen
is a 3 frame accurate machine, which is great for insert editing, but
terrible for animation. I have managed to do single frame animation on
a VHS machine (a NV 6500, I believe). This an VHS edit deck, a pretty
nice piece of equipment. The professor I was working with said it couldn't
be done, and so I did it. Well, the good news--it works. The bad news--
the video is not stable. Glitches between some of the frames. It looks
okay on some machines, breaks up on others. This was a result of odd/odd
field edits, which is something I have no control over in VHS.
3/4 inch machines fair a lot better, or so I am told. Beta _could_
have potential to be good, considering it is based on 3/4 inch drives.
An alternative to all this would be a frame buffer (such as the
one Mimetics will be selling) and lots of internal memory with a 68020.
With such a setup it could be possible to to do several frames inside
the machine, dumping to tape in, say, 30 frame increments (30 frames =
1 sec). Overlap the dumps, and then sit down and edit the segments
together.
The other alternative is to do it a nice simple way, film it a
frame at time with either a Super-8 or 16 mm camera. Don't laugh--
this is what I think I will be doing, since I ready access to such
equipment. Then get someone who is _knowledgable_ (not 1 hour quik photo)
to transfer the whole thing to tape.
Hal Netoprhm@ncsuvm.bitnet