CompuServe Thread

Hello Joseph, I am quite familiar with the Video Machine. It is a neat product for sure. We just got a Two Channel DP/R here to play with and now are anxiously awaiting our 2x2GB Seagate Drives to go along with it. Are you using Inscriber's CG with the FAST or someone else's software? We have been trying to use applications like Word Perfect and Corel Draw but find it very hard to create good looking titles. Just recently we purchased Prime Time from Inovision Technology so we could use a "real" CG with the FAST to create titles, but, it is not windows based and cannot render directly to either of the FAST's Framebuffers, so, we don't find it very convenient either. Looks like we are going to have to plunk down the money and go for Inscriber or find some other package that makes creating impressive titles as easy as it is to display them with the FAST. Thanks for introducing yourself, look forward to talking to you more! -John

Hi Hilary! I am quite familiar with your A4K (bad Power Supply and all :-). The Flyer is an amazing piece of equipment. We have had one here for about two weeks now and what amazes me is how it lets the user be so much more creative with their production, sequencing edit after edit, without a pre-roll time, or a need to review the edits. It's good to see you here and we sure hope that this will become the "ONE" place for DeskTop Video. -John

Hi Kurt! There are a number of ways you can go to begin producing video with your IBM Compatible. You could add an "overlay genlock" device, which will allow you to add any title or graphic that you create on your IBM to a incoming video source, and then you record the combined output. Or you could add a digital video recorder/editor/player device that will record a stream of video to your hard drive, allow you to edit it, digitally on a frame by frames basis, and then output the result to video tape. The advantage of the overlay genlock is that you will typically maintain a higher quality through the system when compared to today's consumer level digital video editing products. The advantage of the digital editing products is that you have complete control of your output including special effects, switching between multiple clips, editing audio with the video, etc. It sounds to me like you are favoring the digital route, and if so, you might take a look at the November issue of New Media magazine where they reviewed some 20 odd devices that do this function. The FAST Movie Machine with MJPEG option came out quite highly rated, and you might call around and see if you can find a local dealer with one of these on display. Regarding the Camera as it is your input and "garbage in = garbage out" you probably want to buy all you can afford here. Hi-8 or SVHS recording formats are considered to be a minimum in semi-professional video editing applications. I prefer SVHS in most environments because I think it stands up to editing better. However, in the coming non-linear age, Hi-8 will provide an excellent source as there will be less tape based editing, it will all be done on the hard drive. -John

Kurt, Hello! My name is Shelby Zavoral and I am the Marketing Manager at TouchVision Products. All you need is CineWorks Software. It uses the Action Media II (AM2) boards from IBM/Intel. They do capture and compression of both video and audio and also allow you to record out of your computer directly to tape. CineWorks (CW) software enables you to edit the video and audio once you have it on your hard drive. You can cut and paste audio and video together or separately. CW also comes with a CD-ROM of music and sound effects to add to your program as well as Crystal Flying Fonts!, a 3-D animation/titler package. You can add titles, create flying logo effects or animations and lay them over your videos. It plays full-screen, 30 frame per second video. You can use it to create video clips and .wav files for importing into word documents or other authoring programs as well. It works with a standard IBM/PC 486/33 or higher, EISA, ISA or VLB compatible. Requires at least 8 MB of RAM and an internal feature connector for the AM2 boards to the video card (we can supply). To get the highest quality images, you should use a SCSI drive with 9 millisec or less access time but an IDE drive will work to create videos. On 270MB IDE drive, you could put 15 minutes of video to play with… CW is $995 for the software and the AM2 boards are $1,685 altogether. TouchVision offers a total package for $2,395 and there is a 30-day money back guarantee. For more info, call our 1-800-8DVISION number for sales support. Good luck!

Hi Bob! That is quite the setup! What Character Generator do you use with the Video Machine Lite? I have been trying to use programs like Corel Draw, etc. and it seems like to much work to create good looking titles. I am know thinking that plunking down the ~$1k to get Image North's Inscriber CG is the best solution to the problem. Comments? -John

Hi, Need a camera man? <big grin> Mike, who is this video tape going to be prepared for? Is this going to be a commercial venture for you, or is it just for fun? We need this sort of information to make good recomendations. Thanks! -John

Aloha! Wow. Hawaii. Cool. Your Intel board is a good idea. I'm from TouchVision Systems. We produce editing software compatible with that particular board. Your best bet would be to have ir running on an EISA bus for future upgradability…any chance of that? CineWorks may be what you are looking at already; but if not, you should be considering it. It's a digital non-linear editing software which edits 4 channels of audio, video (up to 5 layers), graphics and animations. It's very easy to use, flexible and HI-8 stuff looks great in the CW highest resolution called SupeRTV. It comes bundled with 3D titling and animation software and a royalty-free music and sound effects library which would be fun to use under game fishing scenes… I'm an editor-turned-marketer for this product and the editor in me would love to see your footage. I'll bet it's beautiful! Call TouchVision at 1-800-8DVISIOn or 1-312-714-1400 for further info. Best regards, Shelby

Hi Alex! What you might consider is holding off of the "non-linear" or hard drive based digital editing solutions for now, and opt for a good quality overlay genlock board. That in conjunction with some good character generation, painting and possibly 2D animation software can provide a very high quality, professional look to your videos. -John

Daniel, Welcome to the forum! Way back when ('68) I did a daily rock show on AFN (only back then it was called AFRTN) in Iwakuni, Japan. -sja

Hi Daniel! There are a number of real good training tools out for the NewTek Video Toaster. One recommendation I would have are the RAVE VIDEO series of video tapes from DeskTop Images on using the toaster. They still have titles specifice to the 2.0 version of the toaster. In the U.S. they can be reached at 800-377-1039. You might also consider subscribing to Video Toaster User magazine. It is an excellent source of tutorials and will keep you up to date on all the new and neat stuff. One other thing, the tutorials in the manual really aren't that bad… dunno if you have checked them out, but if not, do! -John

Richard, There isn't a Desktop Video Vendor Forum (yet). We hope there will be one (or more) in the not too distant future … however, it requires vendors! If there are vendors participating here who would like to have their own message section and library to provide technical support to their customers, send a message to *Sysop (me), or an email to myself or John Sobernheim. Once there is a certain number (I believe it's 10) CompuServe will agree to open a dedicated Desktop Video Vendor Forum. -sja

Richard, Some vendors – like us – will be frequenting this forum with great regularity. We do have a support area on CIS already (in the ANVENA forum) so I'm not certain that it would be appropriate to also have one in a DTV area, though we could certainly support it if we had it. 🙂 Our software is a _perfect_ fit for those doing DTV under Windows or Windows NT – that's why we're here. Ben Williams for Black Belt Systems

Paul – Pardon me for jumping in. Video Driector actually provides a great deal of value for the money, and if you want to do simple cuts-only edits it works quite well. If you want to add titles and/or effects, you will have to buy add-on boxes and control them manually. Bob

Hi Paul! You might consider getting something like the GVP Personal Suite Plus which includes an "Overlay Genlock", allowing you to add any titles or graphics that you can create on your 486 over video, the Video Director software for machine control, and a package called Curtain Call that lets you create graphics and text. It is a good deal, bundled together, and retails for about $550. -John

Hi Richard. Glad to have you here! You might get some discussion about Premiere started by leaving some messages in the editing and editors section. -John

Happy Holidays Bill! It will be nice having someone who can give us input into creativity and capturing the perfect visual. BTW, one of my friends has a TR-101 that he took with him, down to the South Pole. 🙂 -John

Hi Robert! It sounds to me like you are going to be a "logger". You are going to capture "clips" of video and then create a "log" describing the content of individual frames, frame sequences, or entire clips. In my opinion you would be best served by moving directly into the digital domain, where the clips you capture will be stored directly on a hard drive and be accessed randomly. You might contact the various "non-linear" editor manufacturers and ask them extensivly about their logging and import/export capabilites. It would also be advantagous to have the capture card have an external control "language" where your programmers could command it to "go to frame" and "play from frame for frames", etc. Platforms are a matter of personal preference, IMHO. I don't think you can go wrong with an IBM compatible because one way or another, you can do just about anything with it. The MAC is probably the prettier, smoother system, however I think you pay a premium power/performance wise compared to a clone. The Amigas and Atari TTs are probably just for the user who knows exactly what they want and how they want to do it. -John

Robert, Hi, I am interested in your content and may be able to help on the enabling technologies and marketing aspects of your idea. I am President of Aussoft Inc. in Alberta, Canada. We have have contacts within the emerging Multimedia industry including Producers, Developers, Publishers, Content Providers and Enablers. I am a consultant to a number of these and we are always looking for the opportunity to explore new types of content and consumers. If this interests you then email me personally with your phone number and I will call you. Regards Peter Molloy

Hi, I'm UK based, and new to the world of DTV, but learning fast. In response to your query, 2 vendors products spring to mind for low cost video capture and editing. The first is VideoLogic and their products including the 928-Movie or PCI-Movie cards for video display. Both allow add-on cards e.g. video capture, MPEG decoder etc. to be connected via the VESA Media Channel. The second is a small, but growing company called SAI Technologies based in London. They are just about to release an MPEG based video acquisition, editing, compression and playback product onto the market at just under L2K (-camera). It will work up to 30fps and provides a host of features. Video output is a composite/S-Video source. They can be contacted on +44-181-578-5668 (fax: 578-1603). Good luck

Hey Paul! The FAST Video Machine is available for both the MAC and IBM Compatibles. It offers the Digital/Player Recorder board for two simultaneous streams of live, digital video and audio at 60fps. I think a complete system, not including the hard drives or the cpu itself can start as low as about $9500 or so. The NewTek Video Toaster Flyer is only available for the Amiga at this time. As I understand it the Flyer portion is not machine specific. I know that NewTek has some agreements with companies that typicalyy work in the IBM world, "Xaos Tools" or something, so maybe that is what that company is doing… generating a PC interface to the Flyer's non-linear input and output. Welcome aboard! -John

Hi Peter! Welcome to the Forum! We anticipate that this will become the central place for DTV on CIS, and will do our best to make it so. We appreciate your support! -John

Hi John! Welcome to the forum. I am afraid that you have got me with the Cineworks question. I have seen some of the folks from Touchvision on here and perhaps they can help. From one of their previous messages they state that you can have five layers of video output simulaneously. My guess that what you would want to do is use a paint package with decent text support, or a true Character Generator to generate a title with an alpha key, if supported by Cineworks, or with a black/white background for a luma or chroma key. Anyway, I think it will involve a "key" of some sort, either alpha, luma, or chroma, whatever Cineworks can handle. Good luck and welcome to the forum! -John

Hi Oliver! Get a full genlock setup!! As far as I know, plain old encoders are going to start about $300 or so and I think you can find a decent quality overlay genlock for about $500. Anyway, that's my 2 cents, and welcome to the forum! -John

I think Unilearn's answer to DTV or Multimedia is the combination of the following: 1. 486 based PC to drive the unit 2. Microsoft Windows based software for vast applications 3. SVHS or PAL for high quality and dual audio track. What Unilearn has put together is a courseware development system that allows trainers to create interactive video courseware. By making it interactive and having full motion 30fps video, the quality is high. By placing testing questions in the course, the retention, testing, and branching is also great. This might be difficult to explain, so I'll send you info and a tape if you return address me. Curt Tueffert National Sales Manager – Unilearn

Hi Fremer! Welcome to the forum! I agree with you. There are so many products out there for producing video that hopefully this forum will be a great "melting pot" where lots of ideas, tips and applications can all come together. -John

Hi Henry, I have seen an ISDN connection in operation only once, at a local phone companies office. It seems to me to be mired in a "gosh, it's expensive to put in all these fiber-optic (?) lines and switches", but maybe I am missing the stories about it getting installed. Seems like if the phone companies want a chance at getting in on the "distribution" of digital information to the mass market, they better get going. Welcome to the forum, Henry… and be talking to you! -John

Frank, perhaps you would be interested in interactive video for training purposes. Most trainers I speak with are interested in 3 things 1. Decreasing the training costs 2. Increasing student/employee retention 3. Having a changable and flexible product that offers this. Unilearn, here in Portland can do this. Send me you address and I'll send you the info. Curt Tueffert National Sales Manager – Unilearn

Hi Frank! re: chestnuts… think GREEN! You don't need a smokey old fire place, you can roast chestnuts on the sidewalk! <grinning> Regading resolution of the video coming from digital sources. There are products out there that can play back >400 lines of resolution from digital sources in real-time, and they are getting less expensive every day. You should not see a "pixelization" when using these as sources unless your projector does its own sampling and displaying instead of working in an analog format. -John

Hi Al! Congratulations on getting your work out in lights and welcome to the DTV Forum! -John

Thanks Iain! Welcome to the Forum! -John

Jesse, I would say that you have all of the areas of video production covered and what your upgrades should concentrate on is making it easier (faster) for you to edit video. You might consider a computer based edit controller that integrates well with your existing video and audio equipment, something like a Future Video 3300, or if budget allows move into something like the FAST Video Machine Lite. Both of these solutions can use Time Code for more accurate and reapeatable editing, and the Future Video can add more and better transitions to your arsenal.

Ken, Sounds like a very nice setup you have there. I don't have any specific advice for you right now but that you should play with it all, and do read the manuals. Welcome to the forum, Ken! -John

Hi Lauren! Welcome to the forum. That is a good question about drivers for PCs that aren't "multi-media". I am afraid that I don't know the answer but maybe someone else will have some ideas. I think that all "windows" configured machines today with the "media player" program can at least handle .avi files, and that should be a pretty good start. I do think that pretty soon now the market of multi-media based systems will be so large that the percentage of non-multimedia ready machines will be insignificant. -John

Vince, Thanks for the grettings and welcome to the forum! -John

Welcome Chris! Have you all gotten into 3D layout and animation yet? I imagine "walking" through the great pyramids or maybe even animating a TRexx could potentially be a lot of fun. 🙂 Welcome to the DTV Forum! -John

Welcome, Guy! re: Actually having to produce something, yup isn't life a b*tch 😉 -John

Hi Benzi, welcome to the DTV Forum! I think you have found a good place to start your search for DTV information here on the DTV Forum. Another good source of "educational" material would be magazines like Video Pro, Digital Video World, New Media, Video Toaster User, etc. -John

Hi John, Welcome to the DTV Forum! I have seen some video shot with the TR2000 that looked quite good to me but I am not really familiar with the device and haven't had any hands on work with it. Maybe someone else will jump in with more. -John

John, I know I'll get a lot of hate mail for this, but I would suggest that you stay away from Hi-8. It is not as stable as S-VHS for editing, and its smaller size is a minus, not a plus. There are many other reasons I would recommend another format but it would take too much space here. Since you were asking about Hi-8, I assume your budget would not allow considering the UVW series of Beta-SP. It's not as costly as you might think. Another option would be a used 3/4" system. If you look around, you could probably find one for a steal right now. And 3/4" will still be around a while despite what anyone will tell you. Hope these comments will help. Bill I.

Benny, thanks for introducing yourself and welcome! I am familiar with the title of master control operator, but can you give me a brief description of what your duties/functions were? Thanks. -John

Mark, Hi, welcome to the forum. I'm afraid that I am not very familiar with the stand-alone verision of Inscriber. What sort of magic box did you upgrade from and what do you have now? -John

Hi. I come from one of your colonies – Canada. I have been using Inscriber since it came out as we are in the Toronto area and Inscriber is produced by Image North Technologies out of the Kitchener – Waterloo area. We are still using the original Targa card, and find that it works well for us. My 2 sons Noel and Karl were creating graphics on the Targa with Inscriber that Image North were asking "how did you do that?" As far as crawls are concerned, we never had any problems with them. We are using vs3.0, and have no problems. Respond, and maybe we can provide some info. Regards, Rick

Simon, If you enter the forum, type "hi;0" at the forum prompt, then "rt;n", and after the first message is displayed, "ns", then the forum will dump every message thread in order. Have your capture buffer open… -John

Welcome to the Desktop Video Forum, Matthias. Sounds like you have a lot of experience and we'll be looking forward to any comments or experiences that you relate. -John

Welome to the DTV Forum, John -John

Hi John – Welcome to the forum. I saw the Video Cube at NAB and was most impressed with it. Could you give me an overview, pros, cons, etc. Hope we make you feel welcome and look forward to your input. Hank Videology, Inc Where you always get P.O.M.P. and Service under all circumstances