torch@portia.Stanford.EDU (Michael Conte) (06/03/90)
Hi there. I'd like to hear all of your opinions on which hardware and software would be best for my specific task. I am creating an educational history video, primarily consisting of animation. The basic screen is a world map, and I want to show empires all over the globe as they expand, contract, meld into one another. A clock counter would tick in the corner, showing the year. Occasionally I will stop to focus on one empire, mixing in still pictures and perhaps moving video. The entire tape will have a voice overlay. I created a demo tape using an Amiga 1000 and DeluxePaintIII. The Amiga is nice because I can download to video easily. Unfortunately, large-scale animation on DPaint is a chore. Additionally, I would like more than the 16 colors that DPaint supports on meduim-res. The still pix and voice overlay I dubbed in using video equipment ( a less-than-ideal setup.) Features in an IDEAL hardware/software package: - can download to video without major flicker, distortion, or expense - enough memory for ~20 minutes of animation - stencil (ability to "lock" colors to prevent drawing over them) - ability to handle digitized pictures and a voicetrack as well as animation - can copy an element to a specific frame or a specific range - tweening (automatically filling in frames of movement and change between two pictures) - ability to reuse the frames in a future expansion to interactive videodisk (where the users can click on an empire to get more information about it) The first three are requirements, or else must be designed to obviate the need for such things. The next three would make my life much simpler. The last is simply a pipe dream. Please suggest any setups that you think would work easier than my own. Don't worry about expense: I have access to a lot of different types of equipment. Of course, a Cray is out of the question, but everything will be considered (cheaper alternatives moreso!) Thanks for your time. - mjc Please reply by email. I'll post if there is enough interest. ---------- Michael Conte torch@portia.stanford.edu "Gosh, what a boring .sig!..."