CompuServe Messages

I like your company name Polygone Cafe – your business card should read "come in for an animation and an espresso" <g>. Anyway, I digress. You have several options, most of which are controlled by your budget. For $3000 retail you could get a Sanyo GVS950 s-vhs which _includes_ a controller. For $4000 retail you could get a Sony SVO9600 s-vhs and you'd need a controller – I like Diaquests dq422 but they are outrageously expensive ($2500 or so) and everything is extra – I've only ever used _other_ people's. There are other controllers for around $1000, namely Animax by Videomedia and SoftVTR (software only controller). Look for a new feature called Quickpass, Fastpass or similar which can lay down more than one frame per preroll sequence. Make sure it can be done on the deck you intend to buy. At the high-end of vtr's you are looking at $9-$10k for a Sony UVW-2800(?) which is a low-end betaSP deck and would need a controller, also. For $16k you could get the Sony PVW-2800, a tried and tested industrial strength betaSP deck which I like a lot. My personal choice under $20k would be a Sony PVW-2800 ($16k), and a diaquest dq422 with Quickpass. To make the best use of the bandwidth available on this deck you'd probably should get a framebuffer which supports higher horizontal resolutions than the targa+64. The AT-Vista and the Matrox Illuminator pro come to mind ($4600 and $3700 respectively). Now I've woken up and realise I don't have that much money to spend _another_ alternative would be a high-quality JPEG card (like the DPS Personal Animation Recorder for about $2500 with dedicated hardisk) for high-quality previews and possibly final output; and, an Exabyte tape backup for transfer of your rendered images to Abekas (a digital disk recorder of D1 quality) and then to your choice of D1, D2 or BetaSP. This would give your the best quality for the least money, but you'd still have to deal with a service bureau or post production house in most cases. Phew! Take you pick….