CompuServe Messages

Alan, The Personal Animation Recorder(PAR) is a Gift of the Gods! The Perception Video Recorder (PVR) is the follow-on gift! The PAR is a ISA bus board that take the place of a framebuffer. I used to use a Matrox Illuminator Pro framebuffer to record individual Targa (TGA) frames to video tape. This required an expensive Video Tape Recorder (VTR) that was "frame accurate" meaning you could position the tape to individual frames. This tends to wear out those $5000 or more pieces of equipment fast. The VTR rewound, recorded, and stopped for each individual picture. For 30 seconds of video this means the VTR rewinds 900 times. The PAR records the TGA's that 3DS renders to a dedicated hard drive for it. Most people have a Micropolis 2217A 1.7gig IDE hard drive, the largest possible. The PAR assembles those frames into a "sequence". The sequence can then be played back at real time, 30 frames per second. Wow! This revolutionized the way computer animation was done. After looking at the completed sequence, its a simple matter of hitting record on a consumer VCR, and play on the PAR software, and voila! your animation is on a VCR tape, ready to play! The PAR outputs in a variety of formats life SVHS and Beta. I use SVHS for my purposes. Next In:sync developed Razor Pro which allowed PAR seqences to be strung together with cross fades and sound files (.wav) to produced finished videos. Non-linear editing had come to the PC. Long live Razor! I have Adobe Premiere alos but its on the shelf because of software bugs right now. Razor is rock solid. The PVR builds on the PAR by improving quality to the point where Beta SP and D1 quality video is possible. Plus the PVR has its own SCSI interface allowing up to 7 SCSI-2 hard drives to be attached. You could conceivably have 56 gigs (7 Micropolis 9 gig A/V drives) online, about 2 hours worth of video. The PVR will replace the PAR so only get a PVR now if you buy new. However some good deals on used PARs will come. I can give a name of a distributor I trust if your interested. Without the PAR its nearly impossible to do 3DS to tape in a reasonable amount of time. I take that back, it IS impossible to do 3DS without the PAR or PVR. I can't imagine going back to the Illuminator Pro or to a Targa 2000 board. The PAR is just too fun! Drop me a note! Bye!