CompuServe Messages

>>how closely does RazorPro work with files on the PAR?… Karl, since I'm in the typing mood I'll jump in with my impressions. I've haven't used it with sound yet, but have been playing with the RazorPro/PAR a little. RazorPro works very well with the PAR files. You do not have to convert the files to TGAs before using them. I understand the extra $100 chip you have to buy for the PAR contains data decimation logic – this in effect allows the software to read just a tiny thumbnail image from the PAR hardware instead of the entire file. The RazorPro docs claim a 2500% speed improvement over reading the images as TGAs. Once you have the clips in RazorPro, you can cut and paste as well as apply a variety of transitions and effects. It is very easy to drag clips around and apply effects. Once the composition is complete, the final step creates a new ANI on the PAR drive. To do this, RazorPro steps thru each frame and extracts the appropriate frames from the PAR or elsewhere, calculates the effects and transitions, composites the images together as necessary, and writes a new frame on the PAR. This takes a few seconds per frame depending on the processing involved. It can be time-consuming for long files, but it's not much different from normal reading and writing to the PAR. >>is this a massive advantage?… In my opinion, besides the sound issue, using RazorPro is a big advantage over PAR.EXE if you need to do a lot of cutting and pasting with transitions and effects. It is quicker and easier to be creative than the previous way I had of doing this – Video Post in 3DS. It is also much easier then VP when working with video clips captured with the TBC-IV and pieces of ANI files, since this requires a lot of dancing with IFL flies. There may not be a clear advantage over VP/PAR.EXE if all the transitions are cuts or simple dissolves, animation segments are rendered to the length required, or if you do a bunch of compositing with the alpha channel. BTW, I use QEMM on a Gateway P5/66 with 36Megs & 1.7gig SCSI. JKJ