#Cardinal SnapPlus
15 messages in this thread
I am considering purchase of a system which uses the Cardinal SnapPlus as a
video capture board. It is my understanding that this board also has a VGA
video board included in the design. I will be mainly capturing stills. Does
anyone have any experience with this product ?
Thanks
Rob
>I am considering purchase of a system which uses the Cardinal SnapPlus as a
video capture board. It is my understanding that this board also has a VGA
video board included in the design. I will be mainly capturing stills. Does
anyone have any experience with this product ?<
No personal experience, but I can't say I've heard anything good about it–and
when I asked Cardinal to send me a SnapPlus! board so I could review it for
VIDEO, they never got back to me… What I *do* know is it captures video at
320 x 240 pixels, which ain't real good for still capture, then extrapolates it
up to 640 x 480.
If you want still capture mainly (w/some motion video capability for .AVI
files), try getting the Intel Smart Video Recorder Pro–it captures 640 x 480
at 2 fps, and can capture 240 x 180 at 30 fps. Also, the Miro DC1 or Fast Movie
Machine sound like good, inexpensive choices if you'd like video capture
capability in and output…
Hope this helps,
Tim Liebe
And the $200 Snappy from Play, Inc. for stills. Connects to parallel port
and give very very hi res results. What I've heard from a couple of users
is two thumbs up, way up. Just now shipping. I understand Tiger has it.
-jts
John:
>
And the $200 Snappy from Play, Inc. for stills. Connects to parallel port
and give very very hi res results. <
Good one! I had intended to suggest it myself, but the post I was responding to
(it seemed) mentioned the motion video option as well as stills, so I didn't
want to recommend a piece of equipment that could do one but not the other…
Best,
Tim
There was kind of an exciting announce about Snappy at NAB. Play has
given the distribution of Snappy to Minolta. I think that is a
pretty good endorsement of the the Snappy product. Minolta says they
expect to sell 25,000 in the first year.
For Play this creates a cash stream very much necessary for their
continued development of Trinity. It also removes a marketing and
distribution burden that could easily have drained their resources to
either inoperability or ineffectiveness.
As you may know, Snappy was really an unexpected off-shoot of the
Trinity development. As they were developing the custom ASICs to
make Trinity, they realized the one of them could do this fantastic
still frame processing. They were not expecting to market that kind
of product so the Minolta deal really works well.
Thanks for the report, Jeff! Where do you figure Minolta is going to
market the Snappy, Retail Computer Stores, Computer Supermarkets,
Camera Stores?
I don't know, but those would be my bets.
Hi Again Jeff –
Actually, I believe that the Snappy card is the results of NewTek's
DigiView capture card for the Amiga, released in 1985. The Play, Inc
people are mostly ex-NewTek members, combined with Digital Creations
and Progressive Image Technologies. DC and PIT have video experience
producing the DCTV, SuperGen and promised VMachine for the Amiga.
Since the Snappy can't do realtime capture, it won't figure in the
Trinity system, which Play announced would be a Dec'95 release.
NewTek funded it's Video Toaster development on the DigiView.
Hank
Videology, Inc Where service is our product
Hank:
>Since the Snappy can't do realtime capture, it won't figure in the Trinity
system, which Play announced would be a Dec'95 release.<
Any idea how it works, then? Do you have to use a freeze-frame for still
capture (like you do w/the Studio Magic board), or can it at least "grab" a
single frame on the fly and digitize it later?
Best,
Tim
The only part of the Trinity system I remember seeing demo'd was the
great paint package they had. Like the Toaster, they showed an
integrated system giving rapid access to all the funtions, but many
of the functions were not finished yet.
Since I'm not familiar with the Studio Magic board, I can't comment.
I do know that the Flyer captures video in full flight, at 30fps, and
lets you extract single frames from the video clips later for single
frame image processing. That would be the way I expect the Trinity
to work. The resolution of the Snappy is really too high for video
work, anyway.
Hank:
>The resolution of the Snappy is really too high for video work, anyway.<
Yeah, but it's a pretty good bet for desktop publishing, which I also do.
Grabbing a 640×480 image (which I currently do) and altering the resolution to
225 dpi results in a 2.5" x 3.25" picture, which is a bit small…
Thanks!
Tim Liebe
>>Actually, I believe that the Snappy card…<<
Snappy is not a card but rather a custom ASIC inside a dongle that
does the image processing. You may be right that it will not have a
role in Trinity, but that is what I was told by Mark Randall (one of
those who came from New Tek). Mark is a shrewd marketeer and may
have "enhanced" the Snappy story, but on the surface it makes sense.
What I saw of Trinity at NAB was some incredible image processing in
both a paint program and a couple DVEs. They seem to have plenty of
work left to do, but image processing they seem to be doing quite
well.
If you know some of the technical specifics of about what they are
doing, I'd love to hear them.
Jeff –
You're right! I'd forgotten. Since the Snappy is like the Digi-View, it is a
box that plugs into the PC parallel port and captures still stores that way.
I picked up one of the Trinity brochures, and haven't seen any other specs.
Hank
Videology, Inc Where service is our product
Robert,
In this world of "but it and its obsolete" I would receommend staying
away from a capture board that combines as your video display card.
Something like the $199 Snappy board from Play, Inc. plugs into your
parallel port and does a nice job at capturing still frames (only).
er, "buy it and its obsolete"