#Ill Pro and NT
9 messages in this thread
I recently discovered why no drivers are being written for capture boards such
as the Ill Pro or Targa… (No thanks to the respective companies who would be
developing such drivers…)
Curious thing… NT has no facility to capture video. What is most curious
about this is that you would think with all its extensive networking capability
TCP/IP et al that someone would have thought, "hmmm… gee I wonder if people
are going to want to teleconference?"
This much I do know. Win 95 does have some kind of interface which does allow
for this… so the question is… if you have Win 95 running under NT can you
use a capture board in that mode? Seems like a rather odd arrangement but at
this point I'll settle for anything that works. NT will allow for a two monitor
arrangement but I'm wondering how this would work running a framebuffer in Win
95 as the primary device… unless Win 95 is very different, it won't work…
So if anyone has any insight on this or a perspective I'd be interested in
hearing it. NT is going to have a hard time being accepted by the Multi-Media
community not having the facility to transfer images into and back out of the
system. Does anyone know if 3.52 will have this capability?.
Needless to say I'm disappointed. Because this looks to be a major oversight
but being an eternal optimist on these kinds of things, I have to think that
this will be addressed somehow… as it really doesn't make any sense. I will
post a query on MSL in the hopes that something is already in the works… I
really don't understand though, why or how something this significant could
have been overlooked. And I see more and more graphics applications and cards
etc. being written for the Mac and PowerMac and I think what is that they know
they we don't know?
What are your thoughts… do you think this is important to the kind of work
you do or not? I really don't see how multi-media applications can be written
or produced without this facility. I think it will be very interesting to see
how DPS handles this issue. Has anyone got a bead on that as well? Recently I
saw an ad from DPS regarding the PAR and claiming NT compatibility… has
anyone seen drivers for it?
John
>>NT has no facility to capture video
John,
I am not sure exactly what this means. What facility are you looking for? Are
you implying that some feature of the system -like the multitasking -interferes
with the smooth transfer of motion video data to the hard disk, or what?
I know that you are aware of products like the DPS PVR, DVision and Avid MSP
that target NT specifically, so what more could you want.
I really think that I am missing a nuance here.
-Paul
Paul,
>> I know that you are aware of products like DPS PVR, DVision and Avid MSP
.. so what more could you want. <<
Is this a trick question or are you just testing me to see how much I'm willing
to reveal on the subject? <G>
I don't know Paul what more could I want? How about simply being able to
rotoscope in NT with a paint package like Ron Scott, which if NT had the calls
for, he'd be able to write an interface for so that "frame grabbing" and paint
would be possible… Then we could talk about teleconferceing with live video
source intermixed with multi-media… and incorporated into a Web page… or
what have you… The problem is, the more I go on about it the more it looks
like I'm complaining, but the fact is these are real world applications that
need to be addressed in order to make NT competitive with even simple systems
like the Indeo or the PowerMac…
So as far as I'm concerned its a rather silly question… no offense.
John
I think he meant that there are already many rotoscoping systems available for
NT, such as the PAR and PVR cards, which do excellent Video Capture under NT.
Are you talking about general software hooks such as Video for Windows.
-Peter
Hi Peter,
>> Are you talking about general software hooks such as Video for Windows.
That's one example. The problem with the term rotoscoping is that it has
several different definitions. One of which is to texture map a moving image on
to an object, another of which is acquisition, and the one that I had in mind,
was grabbing an image and painting on it (rotoscopeing) and then save it out
and then repeating the process. As NT doesn't allow direct access to a frame
buffer, I suppose one has to go through the clip board and link it, which can
be a rather exasperating time consuming procedure… I don't really know as I
haven't been able to grab any video…
The way things are shaping up, a typical scenario will be to grab a stream of
digital video, open up an application like Razor Pro, then go in and edit the
file save out images to the clipboard and then in another package pull the
images in to paint on…
Frankly this is way to time consuming an effort, just because NT hasn't sought
to implement direct support for frame capture devices… which is really
strange as Win 95 appears to have at least the same capability that Win 3.1
had…
I don't know… you tell me? Does this work in an evolvingly more complex
multi-media environment…
FWIW I envisioned a memory scheme of device and image independence very
similiar to the way 3DS operates, but on a more global scale… but the fact is
I won't even be able to use my Targa or my Ill Pro in this environment and that
really does frustrate me and that's because apparently NT can't support a
framebuffer. The new solutions are hardware based, the way they get around it
is, the capture video and then pump it through the RGB matrix of the display
card and output it as a file… kinda just like what 3DS does with its little
internal grab utility…
Now seriously this is a major step backwards… we should be able to do live
video in a window system based not hardware specific. Which is how standard
Windows allows you to operate presently… so we're not talking about anything
new here…
Could be all wrong about this but that is what appears to be the case, and has
been substantiated by the available NT "solutions".
John
>>a rather silly question… no offense
John,
I'm not sure that I quite achieved silliness. . .maybe, if I try again. . .<G>
I'm used to DOS systems where there is no support for anything. Windows has
video capture support through VFW and the Mac has Quicktime. The attraction of
NT to developers like Ron Scott is partly hardware independence, so of course
it would be great if any application could use any video input device.
Now, until either RazorNT or Avid MSP show up on my doorstep I won't have used
my NT system for much of anything except networking, QFX, Photoshop, and OpenGL
screen savers -certainly not as a video input device.
So, yes I am trying to trick you into revealing anything that you know
regarding NT and video capture, because I am still working to clarify the
issues involved.
-Paul
Paul,
Actually your question I decided was not silly at all. Having reflected on it
at some length, it occurred to me that what might seem obvious to me may not at
all be apparent to others. And when I got back I intended to outline what
scenario I envisioned as being possible, but which is apparently not.
As far as tricking goes… that is apparently a matter of interpretation. <G>
I wrote Peter Richards a rather long explanation as I recieved his post
first… but the long and the short of it appears to be that there is no "hook"
for video directly. Therefore framebuffers as we know them are obsolete.
What appears to be happening emerging on the hardware side, is some clever
tactics to get around this apparent short coming. The PVR never dealt with this
issue because you could never access its framebuffer to begin with. So writing
drivers was a matter of writing drivers to control it, and that is all. We
still talking about a two monitor arrangement because for the output side you
need a second monitor. But its not like in the DOS days when you had an VGA
card running text and framebuffer doing the grabbing working directly with the
OS.
As far as the D/Vision thing goes, it remains to be seen, but I suspect, that
the Ill Pro in that configuration as well will be as an independent device
supported through the D/Vision interface directly as part of a two monitor
arrangement where the Ill Pro will essentially have no relation to NT
whatsoever… therefore no NT driver required.
I've seen many many technical and scientific frame "grabbers" as they are
called, which are clever work arounds. The way they work is, they grab the
video usually YUV and pump it into the RGB output of the display device and
write out a file very similar to if you did a screen capture in SVGA. These
scientific solutions by the way do not require a visible interface and require
the device to programmed by the user. They do provide NT drivers just as any
of the other display cards that support NT do as that is what they are
essentially, display devices. (albiet with a clever way or converting a stream
of video into yuv and then RGB into a file which NT will accept.)
That is the extent of video support in NT. To quote Laurie McIntosh, I'd be a
happy girl if it were otherwise. <G>
John
PS the direct approach always works best with me, too much room for
interpretation of motive otherwise… <G>
John,
>>the Ill Pro will essentially have no relation to NT whatsoever
DVision is still promoting the hardware independence of their new system. Who
are they kidding?
-Paul
>> Who are they kidding… <<
Everybody and nobody depends on how you want to look at it… If *their*
software is hardware independent it doesn't necessarily mean that the hardware
is globally independent, anymore than 3DS's present image indendence is
global… (except within 3ds)
NT apparently allows you to hook up whatever external device you want, provided
you design the interface, but that doesn't necessarily mean that NT will
support it, in many cases like with framebuffers it won't. So D/Vision can
claim hardware independence with thier software, but its another thing to say
that the hardware is hardware independent via NT.
I suspect that the D/Vision Online product will use the SVGA monitor which is
tied into NT through a display driver (something NT does provide for), and the
Ill Pro will operate as an external device much like the PAR, it will have
independently accessible drivers and run through software independently…
other software won't be able to access it directly or in a shared or common
way… and the feature connector on the display card could be used in
conjunction with the Ill Pro to provide a window of live video as seen on the
Ill Pro…
This means that 3DS could also have a driver for the Ill Pro, but again it
would be independent of NT, and not accessible to other programs like paint
etc. One remote possibility is that the clipboard could grab a rendered frame
from 3DS on which you could paint in say QFX. This wouldn't allow framebuffer
access to the Ill Pro but it would allow for a fairly direct link between 3DS
and a paint program running in SVGA. This capability is available in Windows
but I don't know how its implemented in NT. The clipboard does seem to be the
key to making all this work, because with a frame "grab" board as I've
described, being able to clip it to the clipboard, you could then paint, but
there won't be any real time video scheme present in the system from which all
sources can access it.
So hardware seems to be the key and link to allowing a video based system to
operate with NT. A fully integrated solution would be the best approach, which
brings up back to Tom and the Alladin… he was on the Win 95 beta team… that
tells me something right there. <G> Hi Tom!
John