CompuServe Messages

Andrew, you have a few choices and I'll list them in order of expense, more or less, least to most: 1) have someone render and/or lay your animations to tape. Figure around $0.25 – $1.00 per frame depending on whether they render the images or not and what type of equipment they are using. Consider a minimum of svhs if you are going to need to do any editing, 3/4"SP and BetacamSP are better still and will hold up better over generations of editing. 2) buy a vga-ntsc converter with which you can create 8-bit, 256 colour .flc files and play them back and record them in realtime to any deck of your choice. Could be a lowly consumer vhs. The converters cost anywhere from $300 to $1600+ depending on quality and features. 3) buy a motion jpeg card (such as the DPS Personal Animation Recorder) which does similar to #2, but in much higher quality full-colour (24-bit more or less), 30 frames per second (fixed), full-screen (752×480 res.) directly off a dedicated hardrive. This is a great option, IMHO, as you can get better than svhs quality without the hassle of frame-by-frame recording. Price is around $2500. 4) buy a frame accurate vtr, a framebuffer, and a vtr controller. Probably best quality depending on components you select but definetly most expensive. Figure a minimum of $5k up to $20k+. Ouch! Considering you're a student you're probably not rolling in dough – when I was at University I hardly had 2 pennies to rub together <g>. Good luck! Martin