CompuServe Thread

#Sanyo GVRS-950

5 messages in this thread
#172952From: Bradley J. ArtigueMay 31, 1995 11:17 PM
I know a bunch of you use the Sanyo GVRS-950, so I have a question. I noticed some stuff about the device on another thread, but I am wondering about output to the device through Visual Basic. 3D Studio doesn't do a real great job of controlling the unit. When it works, it really works great, but doing Disk-To-VTR is more of a pain that anything else (and Disk-To-VTR is where I start making money, if you know what I mean!). What I am wondering is if there is a utility that will allow me to do frame-by-frame control of the unit through Visual Basic (or whatever, but VB would be nice and customizable). Anyone heard of this?
#173076From: Jim LammersJun 1, 1995 12:30 PM
>>>3D Studio doesn't do a real great job of controlling the unit. When it works, it really works great, but doing Disk-To-VTR is more of a pain that anything else (and Disk-To-VTR is where I start making money, if you know what I mean!). What I am wondering is if there is a utility that will allow me to do frame-by-frame control of the unit through Visual Basic (or whatever, but VB would be nice and customizable).<<< I haven't had any trouble controlling the unit with 3DS, but it would be easy to do it with any other program. To control the deck, you simply send it commands over the COM port, just like a modem. For instance, "REWD" sent in ASCII over the com port will cause the deck to rewind. All the commands are there in the user's guide. I have done a lot of batch mode xfer to tape, using a little program I wrote to create a script that uses the "SAN" program to send single commands to the deck. I do this to put multiple animation sequences to multiple places on the tape overnight.
#173164From: Bradley J. ArtigueJun 1, 1995 7:10 PM
I figured I could make it work with a little programming, but come on! I'm lazy. What is you batch file sending to tape? Targas? Do tell…
#173187From: Jim LammersJun 1, 1995 9:07 PM
>>I figured I could make it work with a little programming, but come on! I'm lazy. >>What is you batch file sending to tape? Targas? Do tell… Here is an example of my program's output when I wanted to grab lots of segments of frames from different parts of a videotape. TGRAB5P's parameters set the input to SVHS and specify an exact frame (as in f2910) and the output filename prefix (in this case, TEMP). After each frame was grabbed with the TGRAB5P utility from my BBS, I converted it to a much tighter, single field version and deleted the original. Alchemy was used for image conversion to compressed TIFF with a resolution of 315×243 (this deletes the odd field and sets the correct aspect ratio for 1:1). tgrab5p /S f2910 temp alchemy -X315 -Y243 -t1 temp0001.tga del temp0001.tga rename temp0001.tga bmov0001.tif tgrab5p /S f2911 temp alchemy -X315 -Y243 -t1 temp0001.tga del temp0001.tga rename temp0001.tga bmov0002.tif tgrab5p /S f2912 temp alchemy -X315 -Y243 -t1 temp0001.tga del temp0001.tga rename temp0001.tga bmov0003.tif etc…. And here's an example of the batch file created by my program when I was laying frames to tape. I use the excellent TTOOLS TTSHOW utility to put frames from the disk to the T+ card. The SAN commands specify edit in and edit out frames. ttshow finl0001.tga san edin 6300; edot 6301; edit ttshow finl0002.tga san edin 6301; edot 6302; edit ttshow finl0003.tga san edin 6302; edot 6303; edit ttshow finl0004.tga san edin 6303; edot 6304; edit Pretty simple, eh? Jim Lammers
#173190From: Mike KelleyJun 1, 1995 9:17 PM
I have a program that controls my Sanyo from VB for 3DS animation, but the bad news is that it only works with the Fast Video board. That's because I load each frame for animation using the calls for the Fast board. I haven't been able to find something similar for my Targa+ board, although I'm told there is a Windows program somewhere that will at least control frame grabs. If there is such a Windows program, then controlling it with VB is a piece of cake, as my program (which also contains VCR like controls for the Sanyo) can just make a call to the other Windows program which will load the frames into the Targa+. If there isn't, or you have some other video board, you're out of luck.