#PAR CRASH?
12 messages in this thread
I having been putting a 10 minute animation onto the PAR drive through the VP
of 3D Studio. It had put down 4 minutes of animation with no problems. I
periodically play the animation to check for errors. It had been perfect!
After around 4 1/2 minutes put down I checked again. And at around frame 8200
it starts to go crazy. Colors all over the place and you can barely see the
images. You can see the images perfectly if single framing through the
animation. I then split the animation at frame 8180 and played the animation
that was split. I play from frame 8180 to 8500 and it does not mess up. Does
anybody know why this is happening? I have a 1.7 gig Micropolis that came with
the PAR board.
Jay Savill
Cyber Simulations, Inc.
The problem is that PAR.EXE cannot play more that 8192 frames at a time. DPS
knows about this and they will have a solution when they ship version 2.0.
Thanks for the reply! I was going crazy trying to figure this one out. I
really appreciate the info.
Jay Savill
Cyber Simulations, Inc.
FYI, the longest video segment that the PAR can play back is 4:30 or 8192
frames. This is because of memory constraints and the 640K dos limitation. The
next version that we are working on now using a dos extenterd to make the
software limitation 36 minutes of continuous play back in one segment. Now if
we can only find a software program that can render that much. 🙂
David White
Computer Product Manager
DPS
David,
When will the new version of the PAR software be out? Other than this little
problem, the PAR SYSTEM is great system to work with! Thanks….
Jay Savill
Cyber Simulations, Inc.
> When will the new version of the PAR software be out?
About 60 days I hear.
Dave White
Digital Processing Systems
>> Now if we can only find a softwar program that can render that much. <<
Ever hear of 3D Studio, its all the rage! And it can easily render 36 minutes
of animation, in two minutes! (With a render farm of 36 stations. <g>) But keep
working on it though. How about 36 hours, now that might take some time to
complete. <g>
P.S. How difficult would it be to write the code to make the PAR 720×486 for
CCIR 601. I understand you are working on a dual drive setup as well, will this
be downwardly compatible? ie: a software upgrade?
Thanks,
-JE
>P.S. How difficult would it be to write the code to make the PAR 720×486 for
CCIR 601. I
>understand you are working on a dual drive setup as well, will this be
downwardly compatible?
>ie: a software upgrade
The CCIR 601 standard was brought about by manufactures looking to build one
product to sell in pal and ntsc. To do this you have to LOWER the sample rate
from 14.318 Mhz to 13.25 Mhz.
A lot of work went in to NTSC video and it was found that if you divid the band
width by the samples rate you can get 768 samples per line ( 4 times
subcarrier). Some of these are blanking leaving you with 752 ACTIVE samples
(pixels) per line (D2). This has been time honored until some devices got so
expensive that they could only afford to design one version (D1). In D1 they
found that lowering the data rate 5% also made the device much cheaper at the
same time, therefore more $ for Sony.
For analog video 4:2:2 is better plain and simple. Does it fit in with the
rest of the world, maybe not as well as you would like. We may be forced to go
to it but we will be kicking and screaming all the way.
The PC PAR has a crystal on the board which will always make that unit 4:2:2
(ie 752), so no CCIR 601 ever for that board. But since it is analog, it works
with everything still. If this was a serial D1 ouput device ($$$$) you could
make a case to make it compatable. We felt that what our customers really
needed was a great encoder and spent the money to give them that. CCIR 601 does
not make better looking video. We may be forced one day to go to this standard
but it will be kicking and screaming.
>I understand you are working on a dual drive setup as well, will this be
downwardly
>compatible? ie: a software upgrade
The dual drive stuff is just a software update scheduled for June.
Thanks for your lucid description of the situation.
Is the dual drive setup for rendering to different drives or will we be able to
split up frames into fields for higher data transfer and hence higher quality
images?
-JE
>Is the dual drive setup for rendering to different drives or will we be able
to split up >frames into fields for higher data transfer and hence higher
quality images?
No, it is for different drives. Stripping drives with different fields would
slow down the data rate not speed it up for the DMA EISA B mode in the drives
we use.
Dave
DPS
Thanks David,
I look forward to the upgrade non-the-less, especially if I will be able to
combine and split ANI files across drives.
-JE
David
Your contributions to the forum are appreciated. And as John Ellis noted,
"Thanks for your lucid description of the situation"!
Nik