CompuServe Messages

Neil.. If you want *very* detailed information, please private e-mail me, and I'll be more than happy to send you a ton o' informaiton.. In a nutshell, PVR is the "Perception Video Recorder" — it's made by Digital Processing Systems, Inc. It's a fantastic PCI card that lets you record digital video to a dedicated Fast SCSI-II drive (yes — it plugs into the card, and it provides drivers that make it look like a drive on your system..) Once you get your data there, you can use programs like In:Sync's Razor/Razor Pro/Speed Razor, or Adobe Premiere to do your special f/x and transitions, etc.. Then (this is the kicker..) you can record your animations on a "standard" VCR, in real-time! That's right, no single-frame VCR! This thing actually does CCIR -601 (720×480), 30 frames per second (60 fields) out to either component (Betacam/MII), S-video, and composite video output.. See, it can do that because it's not going across your CPU & bus with the data, since the HD is controlled by the board, it remains on the board until it goes out to the VCR! But, the outstanding thing about it is that the quality you get out of this thing is incredible, and it's extremely easy to use.. The video output section utilizes 10 bit, 2x oversampled encoding, and provides better than D1 scaling.. Also, it integrates completely with your existing Windows/Windows NT software, using a way-cool file system.. Video clips appear simultaneously in many different file formats! See, a video sequence called "explosion" can appear in one program as "D:\explosion.tga" and in another as "D:\explosion.bmp".. Let me make it clear that there is no conversion needed! Since you can connect seven SCSI devices, your recording time is only limited by the total capacity of the drives connected.. The PVR hardware is capable of providing *uninterrupted playback* from multiple video segments, even if they span multiple hard drives!! You can usually expect about 4 minutes of video playback per gigabyte.. That's an estimate, since it depends on the scene, and the quality/storage ratio that *you choose*.. The hard drives certified by DPS as of August are: Micropolis 4221AV 2.0GB 8 Minutes 3243AV 4.0GB 16 Minutes 1991AV 9.0GB 36 Minutes Seagate ST-32550N 2.1GB 8 Minutes ST-15150N 4.3GB 16 Minutes (Again, the times above are approximate recording times..) There's one other major feature I can't leave without telling you about.. It has an optional daughtercard that allows for live video capture. This full-length daughtercard adds component, composite, and S-Video inputs for *real time* recording!! This card turns the PVR into a versatile component video disk recorder.. A very sophisticated, automatic entropy prediction circuit is used to determine the optimum amount of video compression on a frame-by-frame basis.. Even during real-time recording!! Think about taking live video shots and using them for rotoscoping inside your favorite 3D package.. You'd think this thing would cost a fortune, right? Well, forum rules prohibit mentioning prices, but you'd be extremely shocked at how *low* the price is.. Remarkable! (Pst.. If you want to know, just e-mail me..) If I sound familiar with this card, it's because I build workstations (high end Windows boxes) that use 'em.. Hope this information is useful!