gregf@crg2.uucp (Greg Fuller) (08/23/90)
I'm looking for hardware to interface a video camera to a mac. I would like to be able to digitize people's faces, and save them in either mac paint or PICT format. Color is not a necessity. I currently know of two products, "Computer Eyes" by Digital Vision, and "MacVision" by Koala. Has anyone had any experiences with any of these products, or can anyone recommend others? Both Computer Eyes and MacVision claim that scanning time is about 6 seconds, or longer for higher resolution scans. Does this mean that the person being digitized would need to sit perfectly still for 6+ seconds? Thanks! Greg Fuller gregf@sequent.UUCP uunet!sequent!gregf
carlo@eagle.cvs.rochester.edu (Carlo Tiana) (08/23/90)
In article <41073@sequent.UUCP> gregf@crg2.uucp (Greg Fuller) writes: >I'm looking for hardware to interface a video camera to a mac... This seems to be a subject that is coming up more and more these days. It seems like many people (including myself!) are trying to find out ways of interfacing video equipment to macs and macs to video equipment, of all sorts. Since this is relatively new technology (as applied to the Mac), I guess lots of people have questions, but few - who actually have already purchased the equipment - have answers. Would any of those people who are doing video-related work with their Macs, please be so kind as to give a short description of what they are up to, what equipment they are using and how they like it? I am prepared to summarize if this stuff is e-mailed to me, as well as collect postings (in any of the comp.sys.mac hierarchy) for future reference (ie to send to future posters asking these questions). I envisage collecting tips of all sorts - from "how to get NTSC out using a Apple video card" to "my favorite jumper settings on the ColorSpace IIfx" (I just made these up - I don't even know if there are jumpers in that board ;-). Carlo. PS - rec.video seems to apply more to "home video" issues than what I would call "computer-aided video" and I therefore think it would be a waste of bandwidth to cross-post there, for now. carlo@cvs.rochester.edu
wilcox@hydra.unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox) (08/23/90)
In article <9037@ur-cc.UUCP> carlo@cvs.rochester.edu (Carlo Tiana) writes: >future reference (ie to send to future posters asking these questions). > >I envisage collecting tips of all sorts - from "how to get NTSC out using a >Apple video card" to "my favorite jumper settings on the ColorSpace IIfx" I am just now getting started on a multimedia project funded under a fedederal grant. Our goal is to develop a videodisk-based American Sign Language (ASL) dictionary. We plan to store lexical entries, definitions, and example sentences in ASL on the videodisk, then develop a front end which will allow users to look up words based on ASL formational properties. One of our requirements was to show the ASL words, sentences, etc on the Mac monitor. We have decided to implement the system on a Mac IIci with the Rasterops 364 Colorboard and MacroMind Director. I have been using both of these products only for a week, so I am barely knowledgeable, but from I have seen so far they are both excellent products. The Rasterops board produces excellent, clear live-action video in a moveable, resizeable window. Although our product will use the display from within Director, the software supplied with the 364 allows you to do some nice things such as grab single frames and save them as 24- or 8-bit PICT files; do timed grabs of frames to disk; and do timed grabs of frames to memory. The timed grabs to memory feature is especially nice, allowing you to specify the grab interval (0 = continuous grabs, 1 = 1 sec intervals between grabs, etc.), an initial delay before the grabs start, and the number of grabs. The latter is of course limited by your available memory and the size of the window. Using an 8-meg Mac and the live-action window set at what Rasterops calls "half" (seems to be about a 3" by 4" window), I can grab 10 frames. By making a fairly small window, the maximum number goes up to 40+ frames. These frames can then be reviewed, selectively saved to disk, etc. Very nice. The board has NTSC (RCA connector) and S-VHS inputs. So far, I have only used it with VCR as a source (my Pioneer laserdisk is on order), and a Canon RC-470 Still Video camera. Both work like a charm. Although I should get better quality with the S-video input, I seem to get drop outs ("dirt" on the screen) when I use it with the Canon source. I cannot say for sure whether this is a problem with the 364, the cable, or what. I plan to try to isolate the problem and could re-post my results if anyone is interested. I'd be happy to answer any other questions about either the 364 board or MM Director (although I am *far* from conversant with it yet).
midkiff@portia.Stanford.EDU (Neil Midkiff) (08/23/90)
In article <41073@sequent.UUCP> gregf@crg2.uucp (Greg Fuller) writes: >I'm looking for hardware to interface a video camera to a mac. I would >like to be able to digitize people's faces, and save them in either mac >paint or PICT format. Color is not a necessity. > >Both Computer Eyes and MacVision claim that scanning time is about 6 >seconds, or longer for higher resolution scans. Does this mean that >the person being digitized would need to sit perfectly still for 6+ >seconds? I bought MacVision (version 2.1) recently and have found it pretty good at some things and a bit problematic in other respects. It works perfectly with still frames from VCR or camcorder...which is probably your best solution for portraits: record the subject and digitize from a freeze frame. But it takes 20 seconds for a full-size (640x480 pixels of eight bits (256 grays)) scan, not 6 seconds. The quality is as good as I can detect since I currently have only a four-bit grayscale monitor. Currently I have not been able to make it recognize a "live" signal from the camcorder's camera (even a still life with the camera on a tripod). Does anyone have any suggestions as to why it won't recognize the "live" signal? -Neil
dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) (08/23/90)
In article <41073@sequent.UUCP> gregf@crg2.uucp (Greg Fuller) writes: >I'm looking for hardware to interface a video camera to a mac. >I currently know of two products, "Computer Eyes" by Digital Vision, >and "MacVision" by Koala. >Both Computer Eyes and MacVision claim that scanning time is about 6 >seconds, or longer for higher resolution scans. Does this mean that >the person being digitized would need to sit perfectly still for 6+ seconds? Yes. I can speak a little about the "Computer Eyes" product--I have their color version. One reason why it's so cheap is that there isn't any memory on the board. It's really designed for use with a still video camera, or a VCR with a good (probably digital) freeze frame control. You'd undoubtedly have to sit very still with a video camera. -- Steve Dyer dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer dyer@arktouros.mit.edu, dyer@hstbme.mit.edu
ostroff@Oswego.EDU (Boyd Ostroff) (08/27/90)
In article <41073@sequent.UUCP> gregf@crg2.uucp (Greg Fuller) writes: >I'm looking for hardware to interface a video camera to a mac. >I currently know of two products, "Computer Eyes" by Digital Vision, >and "MacVision" by Koala. Has anyone had any experiences with any of >these products, or can anyone recommend others? Was just playing with our (newly upgraded) MacVision today. I like it. It's pretty easy to use, the software offers lots of features and the quality is surprisingly good for an inexpensive unit. I have only used it for grayscale (and black & white) scans - haven't tried color. The 256 gray shade images are impressive. Black and white images can be dithered and saved in MacPaint format if desired, and there are several other compatible formats available too. The full grayscale (or color) scans require about 300K of disk space each. >Both Computer Eyes and MacVision claim that scanning time is about 6 >seconds, or longer for higher resolution scans. I've never seen this claim for MacVision. On my IIcx it takes about 30 seconds to scan a complete frame. On a Mac Plus it's more like 50 seconds. There is a "preview" mode which gives you a small image to view while setting the controls and this scans more quickly, but you can't save or print one of these images. There's only one resolution supported: 640 x 480. >Does this mean that >the person being digitized would need to sit perfectly still for 6+ >seconds? You got the idea, but (like I said) it's more like 30 seconds! Actually, if they move you can get some really interesting Salvador Dali-style effects! I've had good results videotaping something and then freezing the action (on a 4-head VCR it should be pretty steady). ||| Boyd Ostroff - Tech Director - Dept of Theatre - SUNY Oswego ||| Sys Admin - "The CallBoard" - (315) 947-6414 - 1200/2400 baud ||| ostroff@oswego.oswego.edu - cboard!ostroff@oswego.oswego.edu