brian@sdcsvax.UUCP (08/11/87)
Postulating that I'm unlikely to be making another version of The Mechanical Universe, it seems likely that what I really want to be able to do is get decent single-frame video for shots lasting, oh, 30 seconds or so at a time. 900 frames isn't that many. Here is the classic el-cheapo trick: Assuming I can redisplay generated frames at a rate of about 10 seconds apiece, then I can simply let my U-matic recorder run in record mode and put a tick on one of the audio tracks when I've got the next frame up and it's stable - probably by hitting one of the async lines coming out of whatever beast is driving the frame buffer - like tty-B on a Sun, for example. When I'm through, I've got zillions of copies of each frame in order on a 3/4" tape. I should be able to take this to a post-production house or local TV studio that has one of those "instant-replay" video disk systems (or a deep digital framestore) and have each frame inserted one-at-a-time onto the disk (or framestore) at the tick. Maybe I could even rent time someplace that has a BVH-2500 single-frame 1" machine and save a generation. If it turns out that the recorder needs more than 10 seconds to get ready for the next frame, then I just record it on the original tape for longer. Making the next frame take longer to appear is NEVER a problem. :-) Then all I have to do is have the disk (or framestore) played back in real time onto a tape, which will become the edit master. Voila! Single-frame video, a generation or two down, at a fraction of the cost of owning a BVH-2500. Of course, if I really need high-quality video for broadcast or something, I could rent a 1" machine for a day or three and put all the frames on it, then go single-frame it. Note: I haven't done this. I was chatting with the chief engineer of one of the video post-houses in Burbank at the Siggraph course lunch, and he seemed to think it would work reasonably well. Maybe it's worth a try, as soon as I get our NTSC encoder working. Sigh. Brian Kantor UCSD Computer Graphics Lab c/o B-028, La Jolla, CA 92093 "Pretty pictures on a shoestring."