#Video Centering Blues
5 messages in this thread
Nick,
Use the program called "Preferences" on your Workbench disk. In the middle
of the Preferences screen is a square box with an "L" shaped gadget in it.
Position the mouse pointer over it, hold down the left mouse button, and move
it around slowly. The display will follow your movements.
DO NOT use the Amiga monitor as a guide for the centering. One reason is
that the monitor has a horiz and vert centering control, and may be
misadjusted. Center the display according to your VCR monitor (which is more
likely to be accurate), then adjust your Amiga monitor to be centered.
BTW, that's why in video there is a "safe title area" and "safe action area".
Safe title is about the size of the non-overscan Amiga display, and safe action
is a little larger. TV programs (normally) keep the titles within that area so
that even people with mis-adjusted TV's can see them.
—Mike
Mike,
Guess I overlooked the obvious regarding Preferences! I use The Director
and since it boots to a cli the idea of using Preferences didnt occurr to me.
BTW, another thing that is driving me crazy is the inability of my genlock
to lock on to the signal of an image that has been recorded with the source VCR
on pause. My idea was to pause the source image and record that still image on
VCR #2, then to use the recording from VCR #2 as a source over which I would
overlay graphics from the Amiga (A sort of poor man's Perfect Vision). Trouble
is, the computer generated graphics jump all over the screen when genlocked to
the still image. The VCR I use for source is a 4-head model (Sylvania
VC4040AT01). Do you know of a way around this? Would using a video camera to
tape the still image directly from the monitor screen give me a stable enough
image that I could use a genlock with it (assuming the quality of such an image
would be acceptable)? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Thanx, Nick Moore
The problem is that the video rate in pause is no longer 29.97 because the
heads are running at the same rate but the tape is stopped. My VHS home VHS
machine (NEC-5000) has a digital freeze, which works great.
You will need either a digital freeze (which is what Perfect Vision has
built-in, but not DigiView), or pointing a camera at the screen will sort of
work. Again, since the pause rate is different from the camera rate, you will
get a thin white line rolling (slowly) through the monitor image. If you are
just lining up the Amiga graphics with the video, that should work OK. —Mike
Thanks for the information, Mike. The effect I am trying for is to introduce
the subjects of a video by freezing a frame with their faces prominent and
genlocking their names underneath. I guess to do this properly I am going to
have to spring for a frame-grabber of some sort, probably PerfectVision. I can
see where a VCR with digital freeze would definately be an asset in this sort
of thing.
Nick Moore
Nick,
Sounds like a frame-grabber is the way to go. There are a few out now, so
shop around, and ask opinions about them in this forum. —Mike