comb1@lut.ac.uk (Marius Bergan) (05/24/91)
Organization : Loughborough University, UK. Keywords: I have a request for information from you netters: In our research project a multi-media interface to process-control systems is being developed. To evaluate this interface in two real process control environments we need to record amongst other things the state of the display the operators see at any time. The simplest way, we reckon, is to record the video output from the sparc before it reaches the monitor. 1. Is it feasible to use some sort of 'splitter' to intercept the rgb & sync sigals coming out of the sparc and feed the signals into both the monitor and a video recorder ? 2. Do video recorders exist which can take input directly from a sparc station, record it and then pass the signals on to a monitor (sony) ? 3. If both of the above is possible, what is best (cheapest) ? Since the interface is multi-media we also need to record output from a speech synthesiser and a sound sampler in sync with the display recording. 4. Is it possible to record the sound directly onto the video with a microphone placed beside the operator ? This would take care of problems of syncronising the audio and video recording. As the video and sound recordings will be used in conjunction with a log of process-, control system- and interface events (which are recorded separately) by the experimentors to deduce errors and problem solution times etc., it is absolutely necessary to accurately timestamp the video (and sound) recordings. 5. Do video recorders exist which can overlay a timestamp in, say the top left corner, of the video frames ? You will have noticed that this request does not contain a single technical term. This is due to my complete ignorance of video technology. I have browsed through some spec sheets for video recorders and must admit to being baffled by the technicalities. Any hints as to what the problems with the setup described above might be (incompatibilities between video signals from sparcs and video recorders etc) would be appreciated. If anyone has done this before I'd be extremely grateful for some help. Please reply by email directly to me. If anyone else has similar problems contact me and I'll summarise directly to them or on the net. Thanks in advance, - marius. -- Marius Bergan Loughborough University of Technology (Computer Studies) Loughborough Leicestershire LE11 3TU