CompuServe Thread

The following is a pre-recorded message 🙂 ASDG has been a leading resource to the television and motion picture industry for several years, providing color imaging and digital special effects solutions. Our more outwardly visible guise has been as the supplier of the dominant image processing/special effects system for the Commodore Amiga. Some time ago we began developing for the Silicon Graphics family of workstations and have since ported some of that technology to the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. Our Abekas Driver for Windows is a utility which makes it possible for PC users to read, write, and browse 8mm tapes written in the Abekas digital video standard. The actual tapes used are Hi-8 metal tapes (but again, the information stored on them is not analog video but *digital* video). The tape drive used is the Exabyte EXB-8500 (or compatibles – many drives with other names are actually Exabytes in disguise). Our driver allows you to interactively read, write, and browse the tape. It also provides a powerful file cataloger which allows you to assemble huge batches of images to be written or read as a batch process. This can be performed in the background, as well. The driver is NTSC and PAL compatible, and supports writing fields as well as frames. The driver also incorporates an advanced RGB to CCIR 601 encoding scheme which actually increases the apparent bandwidth of video (smoother handling of RGB colors [both hot and cold] for which there are no NTSC/PAL equivalents). Service centers are available around the country which will convert other formats to Exabyte tape (for bulk loading of digital video ONto a PC) or will convert Exabyte tape to any format (for delivery of digital video FROM your PC). Prices generally average $200 for about 1200 frames of transfer. What it allows PC users to do is transfer BULK video to or from your PC at broadcast (D1) quality. Being digital devices, they never show dropouts and are perfectly field (let alone frame) accurate. They also do not wear out as quickly as single frame video decks and cost a lot less, to boot. In fact, they cost A LOT less than a single frame video solution. Such solutions (single frame) require a single frame accurate recorder/player, an animation controller, a frame buffer/NTSC/PAL converter, and possibly a TBC and other video gear just to get started. And, when all is said and done, you will still not have the same recording quality as D1. The down side is that Abekas tapes cannot be played back in real time. Therefore you must motion test your animation using something other means before writing it to Abekas/Exabyte tape. Exabyte EXB-8500 tape drives can be purchased for as little as $2100. When not in use as a video device, it makes a splendid 5 gigabyte backup device. ASDG's driver is $495. The Windows version supports many file formats including TIF, JPEG, TGA, Wavefront, Alias, IFF, X Windows, QRT, Rendition, BMP, and a bunch of others. Please feel free to ask if I haven't answered all of your questions. We can be reached at (608) 273 6585. Oh, I should add that Mac, SGI, and Amiga versions of the driver are also available.