#Desktop Video
41 messages in this thread
Hi all,
I live in England and my computer set up at the moment is Apple IIGS. I want
to start DTV and have sidled over to this forum because I keep hearing how good
the Amiga is at DTV. I need advice.
I have a budget of $2000+ and want to know which is the best Amiga machine to
go for, what monotor will give me photo quality resolution and what software,
addons etc I will require to produce a good Video production easily. It is only
the computer side I need as I have all the Video gear.
Any help or advice would be appreciated.
-=<<<<<< Delivered by Co-Pilot v. 1.4 >>>>>>===-Andrew Letchford=–=UK=-
Andrew,
Greetings from the yanks here on CIS!
If you could describe a bit more in detail exactly what type of DTV projects
you have in mind, I'll have a better idea of which Amiga models and peripherals
will suit your needs. Things such as genlock and software may be different in
costs because your TV standards are different (PAL vs NTSC) so the info I give
might be slightly out of whack regarding pricing. Incedently, are we talking
dollars or pounds?
Frank
Frank,
Lets keep it in dollars. I buy most of my stuff from the USA anyway as it is a
better deal even after my tax man has taken his import duty and VAT.
There are two main areas that I am interested in:
Post production of video footage. Family, weddings and school projects.
Video tape production of educational topics for classroom use, incorporating
computer generated graphics, text and sound mixed with live video.
Last but not least .. Pure fun.
-=<<<<<< Delivered by Co-Pilot v. 1.4 >>>>>>===-Andrew Letchford=–=UK=-
For post-production tape assembly: If it's available for PAL, a
really nice Amiga package is Gold Disk Video Director. Runs about
$130. It lets you control two frame-accurate VCRs via your Amiga. You
can log the tapes, create edit lists and then let VD run the editing
session. It'll ask you for tapes to insert. Comes with an infrared
hookup to one deck and a Control-L interface for the other. It's not
accurate to within 1 frame but with a Sony V-Box it comes very close.
It'll also work with a genlock so you can add titles and effects
during the assembly process. Excellent product for the money.
Gold Disk also makes a nice genlock (G-Lock) which runs about $350.
It handles sound as well as video and has on-screen faders and other
bells and whistles. It should work with Video Director. G-Lock isn't
the best genlock, and has its limits, but it's good enough for
semi-professional work. — Ron Legro, Milwaukee
Ron,
I have a chance of a seemingly good educational deal on a Mac Centris
650 8meg RAM with a 230 HD and internal CD-ROM. Also with Video
Spigot installed plus Adobe Premiere and some other software tools.
Cost less monitor and keyboard is UK#2300 ($3450). As you have some
MAC experience could you say if this looks like a good deal. How does
VideoSpigot compare with Amiga equivalent if such a beast exists? I
know I can't output from the Spigot card but it is a start.
Any advice would be appreciated.
-=<<<<<< Delivered by Co-Pilot v. 1.4 >>>>>>===-Andrew Letchford=–=UK=-
PMFJI, a Centris 650 8/230 with an internal CD-ROM (Apple's 300i which
is Photo-CD capable, I presume?), Video Spigot/Adobe Premiere can be
had around here for about… $3500. Yeah, you got a great deal! <g>
The spigot is merely a quicktime video capture board. You plug in
your NTSC source into the board and, with the software, clip video
segments. It's just like the Live! board for the Amiga. Of course,
the quality is alot better than Live!.
I have a Spigot at work and it's fun for starters. With Premiere, you
can take a bunch of segments and then "edit" or compose a quicktime
movie.
Any other questions? I'll be glad to help to the best of my
abilities.
What are the VideoSpigot's capture specs? I wonder if it is really much
different than the Amiga LIVE! board, which has been around for at least
six years.
With LIVE! hooked up to my lowly, unaccelerated A500 (also six years
old!), I can capture and display in real time overscanned full-screen
greyscale video at around 15 frames per second (I can play it back from
disk faster than that, but of course the action speeds up). With the
associated Invision Plus software, I can tile such an image up to 16 times
on a full screen at the same frame rate.
Of course, employing color, LIVE! doesn't handle anything better than
4,096-color HAM at single-digit frame rates, but HAM was the Amiga top of
the line when LIVE! came out. Plus, I can do real-time effects on the
incoming image (mosaic, mirror, Venetian blinds, etc.) and save the result
as an ANIM that'll play back about as snappily as a Quicktime movie, based
on what I've seen. I wonder how many true colors a VideoSpigot type board
can display in full screen at and at what frame rate.
— Ron Legro, Milwaukee
via AUTOPILOT (the only way to fly)
Well, I can tell you that since Quicktime is frame-size relative, the
smaller your quicktime frame size, the easier to capture 30-FPS. At it's
smallest size, (about the size of a postage stamp) I could swear I got
about 30 fps, no problem. This was also at 8 bit. When I switched over
to 24 bit, it slowed a bit.
Keep in mind though, that what you're talking about is the frame rate that
QUICKTIME can produce, something that the spigot has no part in. If I
were to buy one of those $5000 quicktime accellerator boards, I could get
near 30 FPS, full screen (in the mac, that's a 16" full screen, I
believe), 24-bit on any nubus capable mac. (II series, centris, quadra,
etc)
Going back to something the spigot DOES do, its 24 bit capture was
FANTASTIC! It seemed to all depend on the quality of camera you employed
(or LD, VCR, etc). For $300 (what the spigot costs approx.), I would buy
it simply for that capability.
Miguel ——– AP, AP, and away!
Andrew, I haven't seen the Video Spigot hands on so I can't really
comment on its performance. It makes use of Quicktime, for which
there is no system-level equivalent as yet on the Amiga. Although
individual Amiga packages that can outperform QT in terms of sheer
quality, C= hasn't yet offered up something quite as transparent to
the Amiga operating system as QT is on the Mac; expect something in
the coming year, however. As for video digitizers, there are a number
of reasonably priced models for the Amiga, most of which save imagery
in the standard Amiga IFF-ANIM format.
The overall system price you quoted seems reasonable for a Mac, given
retail pricing these days. I would guess that with Commodore
educational pricing, you could get a comparably equipped A4000 for
somewhat less. The A4000 would offer better graphics out of the box
and probably run faster in many respects. A barebones A4000 with half
the RAM of that Centris 650, half the HD and no CD-ROM drive retails
now for around $1500 with keyboard and mouse but without monitor.
An Emplant board to run Mac II stuff very speedily on the 4000 will set
you back less than $400.
But the real question is what you need to do with your computer and what
you plan to do with it. From there you can begin to judge the value (not
just the price) of the gear you're looking at. Are you going to do
multimedia? Desktop video? (there's a difference in those two categories).
General productivity stuff? Games? What's your focus likely to be?
— Ron Legro, Milwaukee
via AUTOPILOT (the only way to fly)
Ron,
I guess my main focus is DTV. What I want to do is to use the computer to
control my VCR harware, both in and out; Utilise the computers graphic
capability to seamlessly add computer generated graphics(bullet lists, Clip
art, Titles etc) and animations to the same video footage. Produce a final copy
of "The Presentation" on Video tape for use by my client. (School, Wedding,
Sport). I am trying to improve on my production overhead in time and dexterity.
At the moment I must look like a "one armed paper hanger" as I manipulate two
source machines, a AV mixer and the record VCR. I know I could buy an edit
controller but a good one would cost as much as a computer and I would still
need the Computer generated stuff. Why pay twice!
However I like to be creative and there may be a devlopment into multi
media in the future. I want to keep my options open (and also have fun).
The only reason I have been looking at the MAC line is because my computer
now is an Apple IIGS. (A very nice stable platform) and I would be able to
network it to a MAC easily. I did not know that the C4000 could emulate a MAC.
Does this emulation read ProDOS disks? Could be that this config would get me
the best of all worlds.
Thanks again for your help.
-=<<<<<< Delivered by Co-Pilot v. 1.4 >>>>>>===-Andrew Letchford=–=UK=-
Andrew,
Hope you don't mind if I jump in on this thread.
You might want to check out two Mac based edit controllers, Sunrize systems
(which requires V-Lan Xmitter/Receivers) and a new Mac version of the Editizer
which is currently offered only as a PC-Windows package.
With the street cost of a color Mac Classic down to $1050 and it's capability
to emulate IIGS (through an internal emulator card) it might answer your needs
nicely.
There are several reviews of the Editizer in print at the moment, check out the
one in the last issue of Video Toaster User for a run down of it's features in
detail.
Frank
Andrew: For the DTV work you're considering, I highly recommend the Amiga.
While there are other packages that might suit you, here are my three
reactions to your needs:
1. For a high-end setup, a Toaster 4000 setup would do very nicely
everything you want and then some. "High end" means about two grand for
the A4000 and another $2500 for the Toaster itself. You'd probably end up
investing some amount beyond that for other nicieties or necessities, of
course. But the Toaster is pretty well self-contained, with a frame
buffer, genlock, etc. already on board. All it's missing is a time base
corrector, and that's not always needed depending on how good your VCRs
are. Figure a grand if you need one.
2. For low-end stuff, you could get in very cheaply with Gold Disk Video
Director, a simple genlock and a cheap titling program — perhaps an
investment of $400 above the computer's cost. I use Video Director myself
for editing home movies; it fully controls my two decks (one via a Ctrl-L
"LANC" port and the other via an infrared adaptor), lets you log tapes,
made an edit list and use a genlock to add titles, fades, etc. Very cheap,
very efficient, though not quite pro-quality (that depends on your decks,
but even with a Sony VBox added to the above, you don't get zero-frame
accuracy; close, but not quite).
3. For medium-level, pro-quality work of the type you suggest, an
unbeatable Amiga software package is Scala Multimedia 210. It's big
brother version, Infochannel, is used by some TV stations, but that would
probably be overkill. Scala is a mouse-driven program with a nifty
interface that does almost everything. E.g., it's a scrolling CG titler,
presentation system, image cataloger, DVE generator, sound editer, etc.
Street price of around $300, but it outclasses anything on the Mac or PC.
You'd have to add a pro-quality genlock to that (starting at around $500)
and some add-on Scala software modules (see below). Other features:
1. Integrates stuff from laserdiscs, still video, MIDI or CDTV into
presentations.
2. Has more than 80 software-based wipes and transitions.
3. Handles voice-over, music and sound effects, with complete record and
playback control.
4. Preview up to 112 pages of any presentation and shuffle them around in
thumbnail mode.
5. "Snapload" feature to load pictures and animations from disk at fast
speeds.
6. Can be used to create interactive presentations, complete with hotspot
buttons, like Hypercard only better.
7. Takes full advantage of the A4000's native AGA graphics (262,000 colors
from 24-bit palette in high resolution).
8. Lingua and AREXX multimedia languages for advanced scripting and links
to other Amiga software, which can multitask, allowing you to customize a
setup.
9. AnimLab, to fine-tune animated graphics and play them back four times
faster than normal on an Amiga 4000 (fast already).
Two drawbacks: Scala currently comes with a hardware dongle, as a form of
copy protection. It's a plug you put in the spare joystick port on the
Amiga. Not a problem, really, unless you lose the dongle, but I do have a
philosophical hangup about that sort of thing. Obviously they're just
trying to protect themselves, as Scala is a software-only package that's
otherwise not copy-protected.
Also, for full 24-bit on-screen graphic support (not just a 24-bit
palette) and VCR control, you have to buy optional modules which add to
Scala's price. But that is reasonable to begin with, given the power of
this package, so maybe it's not a problem. I don't know the cost of these
modules.
Amigavision Professional is much like Scala with a different approach to a
user interface (uses an iconized timeline system, whereas Scala uses a
highly stylized edit-list type interface). AV Pro is also a bit cheaper.
However, it's better suited to interactive presentations than to DTV.
I like the Apple IIgs, and think it's been passed over unfairly. You may
not know that numerous programs written to run on Apple IIgs also were
issued for the Amiga, such as Electronic Arts' Instant Music and Graphics
Studio. So they are kindred, to an extent!
I don't know much ProDOS — that's the disk format you use, right? Well,
if a standard Mac drive can be made to read ProDOS format in some fashion,
I would expect that to be achievable with the Emplant board on the Amiga
(when in Mac mode, Emplant uses the standard Amiga 3.5" drives as Mac
floppies). The Emplant also has standard Appletalk ports, so you probably
could network to a IIgs through it, presumably.
I'd fax Scala Inc. at 703-709-8242 for more info on Scala. I don't have
the number handy for Utilities Unlimited (which makes the Emplant
Mac-emulator card) but probably could round it up for you.
Good luck in your investigations!
— Ron Legro, Milwaukee
via AUTOPILOT (the only way to fly)
Ron,
WOW! Thank you very much for all that info. It has given me more to think
about. I guess what I must do is try to find someone in UK who is running this
stuff and go see.
I am beginning to like the soud of the Amiga 4000. Will all of the stuff you
talked about run on the A4000-030 (the cut down version of the A4000-040)?
When I have found out more I will itemise 'my' ideal system for your comment.
Thanks for the addresses and all your help.
-=<<<<<< Delivered by Co-Pilot v. 1.4 >>>>>>===-Andrew Letchford=–=UK=-
Most users will give away very little in the short run by going to the
A4000/030 over the standard A4000, in my opinion. The 68040 is a more
powerful chip than the 68030, but most current software is written to a
lower common denominator. Beyond that, the main difference is that the
'030 CPU in the cheaper model does not have a Memory Management Unit, for
now important only if you're a programmer or the user of an AMAX Macintosh
emulator. The lack of a MMU and the cheaper overall price of an '030 chip
account for much of the pricing differential.
Besides, the A4000 machines including the 030 model have the CPU on a
card, not the motherboard, so they're easily upgradeable. I suspect third
parties eventually will offer super-accelerator '040s and beyond for these
machines. Buy the card, pop it in, and away you go.
— Ron Legro, Milwaukee
via AUTOPILOT (the only way to fly)
I sure wish C= would bite the bullet and just license Quicktime. Why
re-invent the wheel? There would be far more opportunity, in the video/DTV
world with QT on the Amiga than some other one-off single platform
capability. If C= creates a new "standard", I'd put it in the same league
as selecting Compugraphic fonts over Adobe, dumb!
QT makes sense for video as it keeps up in real time by skipping frames if
the system thru-put is too slow. Think how good this would be on a 4000 in
HAM8 mode!
-Steve
Quick Time in my opinion does not make sense for "video". Nobody in their
right mind can call quicktime video. Quicktime is good for computer
playback of digitized images in a very low resolution/low speed format.
It is very limited in the "video" sense of the word.
JG
John,
You have to admit, however, that QT does provide many Mac products with a
nice interface to do video with (i.e, import your source video as
Quicktime, do you edits on the Mac, let it do the editing on the decks).
It might not be the amazing breakthrough that Apple thinks it is, but it
has its uses.
//Jonathan,
\\//via AutoPilot
Quicktime is a standard. Given the proper hardware, QT can be broadcast
quality, check out the new Digital Film board (24-bit 60 fields/sec.)
That, combined with Adobe Premier 3.0 can make a low-cost offline/online
non-linear editor that competes with Avid's best. QT isn't the limitation,
hardware is, and the Amiga pretty much has the hardware to implement QT
as-well-as or better than the Mac.
The two important things about QT is that it skips frames to keep up in
real time (only on slow hardware) and audio is tightly integrated into it.
-Steve
Quick Time is not a resolution "Thing". It is a standard for protocol. One
product that was dependant on Quicktime is a critter that reads all your
video tapes and grabs a short burst of frames of every single cut and
clip. You now have a storyboard type diary with a beginning and ending of
every thing that was recorded on each tape. It also logs where the clip is
and how long it is.
This kind of stuff is priceless for a videographer and would be impossible
with out Quicktime. That is why you will NEVER see a product like this for
the Amiga. Quick Time is more like a Buss standard than a resolution
specific format.
–Paul < Motorola Inside >
Thanks Paul.
I understand. What gets my goat is when people try to tell me that
Quictime _IS_ desktop video and that their computer does 'video' and then
they show me a quictime movie that is 2 inches across and not running in
realtime.
The future is digital video all over and I wouldn't necessarily say that
it will never come to the Amiga…
JG
John,
Quicktime always runs in realtime. It will skip frames, as necessary,
to keep up. This is what allows a QT movie to run on any Mac from the
lowliest B&W Classic to a full-blown Quadra w/a high-speed video display
board. The timing holds up across these platforms, and it displays in the
best the platform has to offer. You have probably only seen QT movies on a
native Mac CX or equiv. display (not too exciting!) Also the 2 inch
limitation has been removed with the most recent version of QT.
What I've always hated was that Macs don't/can't(?) double-buffer and
you see the wipe from frame to frame… very ugly. I love showing Mac
people Amiga animations and how smooth they are (even though I'm limited
to lo-res HAM.)
-Steve
It's kinda sad but Hollywood is run by Macs, and PC's do the dirty work.
Anyone that KNOWS video knows Quicktime Sucks, now. But its the standard
thats important. Some day it will be good and it will be like they just
invented Video, on the mac.
They don't have LW though, and their Jealous :^)
….John
Sorry to Butt in here but ARE YOU DAFT? While Quicktime is a NEAT idea, it
still don't cut the Salami as far as DTV is concerned IMHO. Now your
concept of DTV and mine probably vary as well. I believe DTV's MUST end up
on a Video Format such as Tape or Laser Disk to be Considered a DTV
project. Watching a Anim/Movie on my Computer DOES NOT Qualify IMHO.
Now if QT could do Video Rez Overscan Anim/Movies at 24-30FPS in NTSC
Compatable Color Scheme(several million colors) then I'd consider QT. Till
then it's a nice Novelty format or good for Compuer based presentations.
Again, QT is only a standard. It makes best use of the hardware it is
running on. If you have a Mac with the new Digital Film card and
DigiDesign's AudioMedia card, you _will_ have 24-bit 60 fields per second
and 44.1 khz 16 bit stereo audio! If that ain't video, IYHO, are you the
first on the block with HDTV?
Granted, QT on a Mac LC is pretty crummy, so is any anim on my A2000 HAM
display.
I would think you'd want to create movies on your Amiga that could be
distributed to play on Macs and PCs. It could only enhance your business
and gain wider acceptance of the Amiga.
-Steve
Steve,
With a Digital film card, what is the resolution of quicktime?
JG
As far as I know (my partner didn't bring the specs home, but compared it
to 3/4SP) it is the standard Mac video resolution w/overscan 640×480 @ 24
bit color, 60 fields per second.
If you've seen how Macs utilize multiple screens, you just drag you movie
over to the Digital Film screen. QT senses what your output device is and
adjusts accordingly. Sorta like RTG, right?
-Steve
I for one, would second your vote for QT on the Amiga!
It would only help our platform, and it would save lots of buck in R&D
trying to re-invent the wheel.
(And, QuickTime is a very nice _standard_ as you say. The hardware is
finally beginning to catch up.)
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
Thanks …
I was feeling lonely 🙁
-Steve
Just a general comment to those who've been saying they want Quicktime on
the Amiga. Commodore is not who you need to talk to. As far as I can
tell, they can't liscense it for the Amiga because *Apple* isn't
liscensing it out to other platforms. Quicktime for Windows is an *Apple*
product, lock, stock, and barrel. You want it for the Amiga, you'll need
to convince Apple to do the job.
Personally I see little reason to get Quicktime over here. We can
probably develop our own standard for doing the same thing, better and
faster. Nothing Quicktime does is particularly difficult to do in similar
fashion, nor particularly innovative. (Their biggest innovation was to
make it part of their operating system…)
–>Steve Bennett
Erik,
let me add my voice! Quicktime, with all its flaws, is growing faster than
fungus in the Everglades. If we don't jump on the wagon, we'll be left in a
cloud of dust. As others have said, Quicktime is a _standard_ which depends on
various compression routines to do its work; as time goes by, we're seeing more
efficient software routines show up, _and_ compressors which use hardware
add-ons to do the work. It's only a matter of time before the high-end hardware
comes down in price, and when that time comes, Quicktime will be ready for it;
Amiga owners will still be scrambling with an assortment of proprietary,
incompatible formats.
Blaq!
That Digital Film Card sounds nice. I'll have to get more info on it.
As to me distributing QT movies, I'll do them if a Clients PAYS me to make
them a Quicktime movie otherwise I doubt it.
It sure makes CDROM development easier (on the Mac!) When compression gets
better, we'll be able to get more than 6 minutes of full-screen,
full-motion video on one! We have clients paying us for CDRoms, and we use
QT on them… when we have no other way, otherwise, we make Director
Movies (Macromind.)
-Steve
>Now if QT could do Video Rez Overscan Anim/Movies at 24-30FPS in NTSC
>Compatable Color Scheme(several million colors) then I'd consider QT.
Say hello to the Truevision Bravado 24 for the Macintosh.
Keep in mind that QuickTime is kind of an interface guideline for manipulating
video streams and synchronizing video and audio streams, not an application.
Those jerky postage stamp QT animations you have seen are because of slow hard
drives and no hardware decompression. With hardware decompression and fast
drives, you can do better. And since QT is a standard, any Mac software can
manipulate video and audio streams almost as easily as they can issue a beep
sound. Microsoft has come out with AVI for Windows to do the same thing.
Commodore is rumoured to be defining their own audio/video stream standard.
QuickTime and AVI are cool because they are standards, not because of the
current implementations.
-Jerry Thompson
Truevision Developer Marketing
Thanx for the QT info.
You are quite right Jerrry. The importance of Quicktime and AVI is the fact
they are OS level support for intergrating digital media in an organized
fashion. The most obvious application is precisely synced audio and video
clips. When people say they think Quicktime or AVI are too small or too slow or
not true color, what they should be commenting on is the software player for
these formats is not robust enough to handle the files. The beauty of these
things is one drops in some hardware decompression card (which is what we all
really need) and software that was working in postage stamp frames at 15 fps is
now running at 60 fields per second, full screen in 32 bits. And that is where
we need to be and where digital video is going. Lou
I agree with you about the future of digital video. BTW, I chewed out Keith
for not introducing us when you were here for the Art Contest judging. Perhaps
you will be at Siggraph.
-Jerry Thompson
Truevision Developer Marketing
Andrew,
It appears as though some other like minded folks here on the forum have jumped
in to help you out with your questions. Let me know if you have any more
specific questions I can answer for you.
(before somebody else beats me to it) <g>
Frank
Frank,
Thanks. See my input to Ron. I will keep in touch.
-=<<<<<< Delivered by Co-Pilot v. 1.4 >>>>>>===-Andrew Letchford=–=UK=-
Any AGA-equipped Amiga will give you photorealistic capability. The
256-color modes are very impressive, and the HAM8 modes (hundreds of
thousands of colors in high resolution) are even neater. You'll be
able to run animations in all these colors and resolutions at
relatively high frame rates, right out of the box.
In the US, that $2,000 of yours would about be enough for the newest
AGA machine, the A4000/30. I don't know about Europricing, though.
This box has lots of capability for DTV work plus has good
expandability if your needs change later. As for software and
peripherals, that depends on exactly what you plan to do. The British
Amiga mags are worth browsing for a sense of what's available. I
think an indispensable package for doing DTV work is Scala
Multimedia, a European product that is even used by some commercial
TV operations. It's a couple of hundred dollars but well worth the
money: Handles titles, multimedia presentations, special effects, you
name it! Also, external devices like laserdisc players and VCRs. Very
easy to control.
For a lot of DTV work, an A1200 might suffice. It carries the latest
AGA graphics (16.7-million-color palette), comes equipped with a
color composite output (so you can record stuff directly to a PAL VCR
or display it on a PAL TV; you'd have to buy an external encoder for
the 4000 series) and starts at under $600. It's main disadvantage
over the 4000 series is that it's not as expandable and it's a bit
slower. Again, though, a lot of machine for the money!
For overlaying Amiga graphics on video (e.g., for doing titles or
special effects), you'll need to get an Amiga-based genlock, of
course. Reasonably good ones are available starting at around $300
US.
You'll need a SCART-capable monitor of course, but SCART isn't used in
the USA, so model numbers may be different. However, in general,
Amigas work with VGA, trisync and multisync monitors. The Commodore
A1960 is a trisync and a solid product. It should be discounted soon
as a new line of Commodore monitors is arriving.
I use PCs, Macs and Amigas, Andrew, and for my money nothing beats the
Amiga for DTV work. Especially at the price!
— Ron Legro, Milwaukee
via AUTOPILOT. (the only way to fly)
Ron,
Thank you for your help. It has given me much to think about before I do take
the plunge. The A1200 is availabel in UK for #349 about $523. The A4000 030 is
#999 ($1500). How does this compare with USA pricing.
I'll keep in touch on this subject. I am in no hurry and I want to
look around before I commit any money.
Again many thanks. I thought I had hit the right forum.
Those prices appear almost identical to the US prices. Given that
most Amiga gear is marked up decidedly in Great Britain (by almost
100%, far as I can tell from the Euro magazines), the A1200 and A4000
prices you cited constitute a real bargain. Write anytime.