peter@aucs.uucp (Peter Steele) (11/28/89)
The Audio/Visual department is thinking of getting into computerized
video editing and that sort of stuff. They realize that the Amiga is
probably the best out there for this purpose, but they would rather
not be the *only* department on campus with such a machine. So, my
question is what is out there for Macs and PCs in the world of video?
Any and all comments appreciated. Are there any recent magazine
articles that summarize what's available? Thanks!
--
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}!cs.dal.ca!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia Internet: Peter@AcadiaU.CAportuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) (11/28/89)
I'm posting this to the net because sending to .UUCP sites usually
barfs on me, and this could prove educational for a few people.
>>>>> On 27 Nov 89 19:43:57 GMT, peter@aucs.uucp (Peter Steele) said:
peter> The Audio/Visual department is thinking of getting into computerized
peter> video editing and that sort of stuff. They realize that the Amiga is
peter> probably the best out there for this purpose, but they would rather
peter> not be the *only* department on campus with such a machine.
I think this fear is a bit irrational. When you purchase a particular
piece of video gear, say a tape deck, do you worry about being the
"only" department on campus with such a machine? If you look upon the
Amiga as being a piece of video hardware instead of a computer system,
suddenly being the only computer of its kind isn't so much of a
problem.
If you need compatibility with PC's and Macs, the Amiga 2000 provides
PC/AT emulation on a plug-in card along with an AT-compatible
expansion bus in the box. With the AT-on-a-card, a PC Clone runs in
an Amiga window. Many dealers provide this card free as incentive to
get you to buy the system. Even without the AT-on-a-card, the Amiga
can read MS-DOS media directly on its own drives, and even mount an
MS-DOS compatible filesystem. Inexpensive products exist to allow you
to directly read and write Macintosh-format floppy disks.
Regarding its performance as a low-cost video workstation, the Amiga
currently has the biggest selection of video hardware and software
available, including paint programs, several types of animation
programs, 3D rendering and animation, character generators,
presentation programs, video special effects packages, frame grabbers,
genlocks, etc. Deluxe Paint III, for example, was designed for video
applications and offers built-in cel animation capabilities and many
Paintbox-like features. Products for the Amiga tend to be much less
expensive than similar products for the Mac and PC markets.
The Amiga's graphics chipset is oriented towards video, with many
features aimed at creating special effects such as double-buffered
animation, smooth pixel-level scrolling, and the ability to
synchronize operations to specific points of the raster scan. It can
support multiple display buffers and video modes on the screen at
once. It has direct support for genlocks. It offers support for
overscanned borderless displays via software control. The upcoming
revision of the Amiga chipset will provide even more direct hardware
support for video/genlock effects, 35 ns pixel resolution for
professional-quality graphics and titling, as well the ability to
control the frame rate of the display via software. The new chipset
will drop into current models and will be compatible with current
software.
The Amiga is really worth checking out. You'll be lucky to find these
features as options for the Mac or PC, let alone find them as standard
features with wide software support.
--M
--
__
\/ Michael Portuesi Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Inc.
portuesi@SGI.COM Entry Systems Division -- Engineering
He says, "Take me to your leader" -- and I say, "Do you mean....George?"
"I just want to meet him" -- and I say, "Come on, I don't even _know_ George!"