dirish@math.utah.edu (Dudley Irish) (06/03/91)
It has been a couple of days since I received the last reply to my message requesting information on what people are using to do video animation so I thought it was time to post the summary. Especially since it has come up again as a topic. Here is my original request: We are in the process of re-evaluating how we do our video recording. To this end I would like everybody who is doing video recording to drop me a note describing the hardware you use. We are primarily interested in animation recording, but I will happily collect any information you are willing to send to me. Here is the summary. There were 11 responses and each response can be broken down into two parts. The video generation and what it is recorded on. There were basicaly three options for video generation, a computer system that could generate RS170(5), an add-in card that generates video(3), or a scanline converter(3). There were five options for video recording, Beta(1), S-VHS(2), 1" video(2), optical disk(3), magnetic disk(3). Those are the numbers, here are my impressions. From reading the responses, my impression is that the best setup was a Chromatek scanline converter to a Abekas magnetic video disk recorder. Then you record from the Abekas to whatever final media you want. The reason for the scanline converter is that it could be used with all of there systems instead of having to use the one system that could generate video. Also, it requires no cooperation from the rendering software. The main reason given for the magnetic video disk recorder was the speed at which it could record the image once it is rendered. With a Sony U-matic format recorder each frame takes almost a minute to record with the disk it takes a fraction of a second. I hope that you find this information useful and thanks to all the people who responded. FYI: we are probably going to try to get a scanline converter, but we will be sticking with our u-matic tape recorder and animation controller. -- Dudley Irish / dirish@math.utah.edu / Manager Computer Operations Center for Scientific Computing, Dept of Mathematics, University of Utah The views expressed in this message do not reflect the views of the Dept of Mathematics, the University of Utah, or the State of Utah.