kim@amdahl.amdahl.com (Kim DeVaughn) (10/07/87)
[ Everything in this line may be wrong! (with apologies to Richard Bach) ]
WARNING: The following article may offend some people as being too
"commercial", in that it talks about some up-and-coming
new (and not-so-new) products, mentions some prices, etc.
You have been warned; if such postings offend you, hit your
"n" key now ...
First, here in the Valley, Mimetics is reported to be making the first
production run of their Frame Buffer. This will be a Zorro II board (they're
also doing a PClone version), and will have broadcast quality NTSC output.
I am not sure of the resolution, but it provides 24 bits/pixel, for a
palette of over 2 million colors (only 21 bits/pixel effective). Price will
be about $700, and they will have an add-on real-time Frame Grabber available
later (NTSC input). When not being used as a Frame Buffer, the ram can be
used as a ram-disk. BTW, Sculpt-3D already supports 24 bits/pixel rendering.
They (Mimetics) are also adding a considerable amount of filtering circuitry
to their ImaGen genlock product, to get it up to broadcast quality NTSC.
Next, I just received a press release from Aegis describing AudioMaster,
which "lets you manipulate any digitally sampled sound, mix sounds together,
alter their waveform, and save them as instruments". A few of the highlights
mentioned are: waveform displayed on screen for editing, special effects
(echo, reverse, low-pass filtering), cut-and-paste a marked segment to any
other part of the segment, and display the "waveform" of *anything* in memory.
Sample lengths up to 2 mins. on a 512K machine, and up to 5 mins. on an 8M
machine (?). Retail is $59.95
Lastly, here's a fellow named Brian's look at what was at the CBM show that
was recently held at Disneyland. I picked it up off of a local BBS ...
> Thought you all might be interested in news from the Commodore Show
> being held at the Disneyland Hotel this weekend.
>
> The best news (to me, anyway) is that Amiga Live! is now shipping!
> Really! I swear! And it is a really nice product, too. Given the
> amount of BS that has gone around on this, and given how quickly
> Arthur & Wendy have brought the thing to market AFTER they got it back
> from CBM, I have little doubt that they (A-Aquared) are NOT to blame
> for the looooo delay and, as they (and RJ Mical) say, it was
> Commodore's fault but they (A2) are the ones who took the heat.
>
> Anyway, the prod is quite nice. You can use any video camera
> (auto-focus cameras are NOT reccomended unless you can turn it off).
> It will digitize in real-time direct to the Amiga's memory. It will
> sample at the following rates:
>
> B&W - 15 frames per second
> LORES/HIRES - 12 and 7 frames respectively (this can be toggled)
> HAM - 4 frames per second
>
> That's right folks! It will digitize in HAM mode.
>
> Now the fun part. It comes with software that allows you to capture
> images direct to RAM as a series of 'animation frames' and then save
> them is a compressed form. They hav a PD player program that allows
> these files to be played back (it uses a subset of the ANIM IFF form
> that is really a type of RIFF file which is better for video imagery.)
> Of course, as you are capturing the images you can also be doing all
> the fiddling with the color to create all sorts of effects. It was
> most impressive!!! Wendy was successfully imaging text on business
> cards being held up in front of the camera!
>
> Also, they are providing the SOURCE and an Amiga Library that will
> allow programmers to make use of all this in their own programs!! The
> source to the player program is also available (PD).
>
> Another nice feature - If you run up DPaint FIRST and then do an image
> capture with LIVE!, the captured image will be left in DPaint's
> buffer! Nice, eh?
>
> So, at $295 it is a really nice little box. It fits on the A1000's
> expansion port (no problem with pass-throughs.) It is ONLY available
> for the A1000 at this time. But the A2000 is next (only because
> A-Squared has a contract for some security systems using that version)
> and then the A500.
>
> Believe me when I tell you that if you are into video stuff, this is
> one item you _WILL_ want.
>
> Fact - RJ Mical is NOT associated with A-Aquared Systems. It seems
> that he was 'associated' with them long enough to help wrestle the
> digitizer away from CBM and then that was that. This is straight from
> both RJ and Arthur Abraham.
>
> Other news:
>
> The Amiga version of JET is finished (so they say. They were demoing
> it) and they are waiting only on the packaging. Look for it to be
> available December 1st (which I believe. They had FS2 out in time for
> last Xmas.)
>
> Byte-by-Byte has a new thing called the Byte-Box. It is a nice little
> memory expansion box for the A500. What's nice about it is that it
> comes unpopulated, it can be configured up to a full 2 megs and, the
> nice part, it is about 1 inch tall and has the exact footprint of the
> Amiga's external drive. So you can just stack your drive on top of it.
> Nice! No wait state, auto-config, true fast memory with it's own power
> supply.
>
> BbB also has Animate 3D in their promo literature but it was NOT
> there. Look for their new Demo Anim file (done with VideoScape 3D). It
> is an animation of a desktop with one of those toys that has chrome
> balls that swing back and forth. The balls are ray-traced chrome and
> it is very nice. It will be a PD release.
>
> There were a LOT of video hardware & software folks present. A company
> called GlennLoc Corporation has a NICE sync-generator/Genlock that
> converts the Amiga's output to a very fine "broadcast quality" signal.
> It runs $3000, however, so it is not for the 'hobbyist'. They showed
> me a tape that they had made by using TWO such systems and two Amigas
> to create a dual overlay of graphics onto a live video. Degradation
> was very low. So, even though the majority of us are in no position to
> deal with such items, we can all take heart in the fact that folks are
> MAKING such things. They are also working on a box that will allow the
> output from multiple Amigas (up tp 5) to be 'layered' and to have full
> control over the 'depth' priority of each one.
>
> [ Just had another nice earthquake, folks - a 5.5 Richter. Sheesh. A
> least my computer stayed up this time. 3:59 am ]
>
> Another VERY nice product was a thing called "Video Effects 3D" from
> Innovision Systems in Hayward, Ca. This a software system that will
> generate effects 'sequences' using keyframes ( much the same way that
> the big video effects system do things. ) It is 'object oriented'
> allowing you to use up to 99 'objects' at the same time. You create
> the objects, place them where you like for each keyframe and the
> software will interpolate the 'tweens' for you, writing them out to
> disk at the rate of about 1 minute per frame. The playback can be at
> rates of up to 60 frames per second. It also allows you to extrude a
> 2D object to a 3D object (fast) and animate it. Full animation of the
> objects' paths, rotation, spin, size, speed. This is a very nice
> product, folks. Nice quality. $249 list.
>
> Interesting tidbits:
>
> Spent some time chatting with Dale Luck. He said that it is pretty
> much a given that the Workbench code that is currently in ROM will be
> moved off to disk under 1.3. This will free up approx 50K in the ROMS
> for new graphics calls (Xwindows ???? and bug fixes. He was also
> actively soliciting ideas for the 'next' machine and was freely
> discussing video output options on such a machine.
>
> RJ said that there will, indeed, be an upgrade to a ONE meg chip ram.
> This will be available for ALL the Amiga models but it will require a
> hardware modification (ie., soldering, clipping, etc.) The TWO meg
> chip ram will not be available due to hardware limitations (something
> about the way the RAS/CAS addressing works - Dale also discussed
> this.) But the 'next' Amiga will have up to FOUR megabytes of CHIP ram
> (!) - maybe with the ability to map different blocks of ram to either
> chip or fast ram addresses so you can customize the system to make the
> best use of a given program's memory needs. This is all very
> speculative of course. RJ said that of course there will be a future
> Amiga but don't expect it for 2-3 years.
>
> The new chips will NOT alter the resolution as that is an entirely
> different ball of wax.
>
> I'm sure that a lot of this will be repeated at the New York show.
>
> Things continue to look up. An interesting quote from RJ:
>
> "While it is easy to poke fun at Commodore, they did have the
> foresight to see the Amiga for what it is. And, when they have the
> money, they have shown marked tendencies to spend it wisely."
>
> Brian
Interesting Christmas season we're in for, eh?
No, I don't have any connection with any of the companies mentioned above,
though I might have some of their products ... but you knew that, didn't you?
/kim
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