#q's from the underland
12 messages in this thread
If you want to make life simple for yourself, please get the Diaquest.
Otherwise, you've got to depend on an ADI driver, which will most likely
not be as robust as the internal 3DS Diaquest code.
Pluse, their time-saving thingamabob is pretty incredible!
– G
I no longer make the purchasing decisions in my life. Right now the dealer
is working with me to solve the problem with the SoftVTR. Gone are the
days when I can call someone up and say, "Take your lousy piece of
software/ hardware and …" I have to say, "Hello, this is Michele calling
from the ABC. How are you today? I have this eensy beensy little problem
…" *Sigh* The joys of the steady paycheck heralds the loss of the
renegade software cowgirl…
Michele:
Heck, you need to go to the JSH school of corporate tongue-lashing. With a
little practice, working for ABC can work to your *advantage* in "dealing
with dealers."
So SoftVTR's been giving you some grief, eh? I've always been intrigued by
the product, but never had any direct exposure to it. Having apparently
missed the beginning of this thread, would you mind regurgitating your
problem for those of us to poor to d/l all the threads? <g>
Good luck,
Jeff
Thank you Jeff, for your offer to teach tongue-lashing. I seem to recall
that in the not-too-distant past, you won the hardware sweepstakes while I
cleaned up on the software end. So maybe this is your area of expertise,
although I would never admit it. <g>
When I record, things are not happening well. (1) a frame or two will
sometimes get dropped, (b) white noise seems to get dumped on the tape at
the beginning and end of the animation and (c) sometimes, instead of
recording a frame, I find the VTR is whizzing along to the end of the tape
where it either hangs up or rewinds and starts all over again.
The videotape people say it's the deck. The maintenance people, who are
responsible for the deck, say the tape is not properly striped. (I'm on
striping #3 right now.) I think it's the controller. The dealer says it
could not possibly be the controller. I am at my wit's end.
What I really need is for Diaquest to send me a controller so I can try it
out. If all goes well with the Diaquest, we know it is the controller.
Diaquest will also have an instant sale. If all does not go well, we know
that something is wrong with the deck. And maybe I will be able to get a
little bit of sleep.
SO, Mr. Hardware America, how do I get a Diaquest? Remember I am in
Sydney. A little puzzle for you today. <g>
xxoo Michele
Sheesh! It sounds like they're turning you into some sort of beaurocrat
down there…
Naw…. must just be my imagination!
– G
I look at it as a new challenge. Dealing with 87 different people every
day to accomplish 2 things… it's a brain exercise, like a crossword
puzzle. It's still fun, for now…
Gary:
Can you (or someone) go into more details on the Diaquest "time saving
thingamabob" you and Michele are referring to. I missed it at the show.
Sounds significant.
Thanks
Ken
Sure. Diaquest showed a revolutionary new technique for laying down 24-bit
frames to frame-accurate decks WITHOUT having to do ANY pre-roll. The
technique is basically built around doing multiple passes in real time,
with the time between frames equivalent to the amount of time it takes to
load in the next image. Works very well, saves massive wear-and-tear on
the deck, and is FAST. Requires a deck that does inset edits (won't work
with just assemble editing, so the Hi8 9650 is out). I expect a PC version
of it to be out by the end of the year, but you should call Diaquest for
more info.
– G
Gary, as soon as I read Michelle's and your message about the Diaquest time
saver device, it immediately clicked in my head and made perfect sense!
What a (seemingly) simple idea, with potential for excellent results.
I would imagine the user specifies a "frame increment" for single pass
edits, ie. that if it takes 4 seconds for your frame buffer to load, you
might specify the "frame increment" to 5 seconds to be safe?!? The
controller would then edit every 150th frame in the single pass up to the
limit on the animation length??
Obviously, this system would only be beneficial if your animation is ~8
seconds or longer, but this makes it more feasible to attempt longer
animations!!
Fabulous idea!!
Is this "device" a software system that will work with existing DQ hardware
controllers? Such as the DQ50P?
-Jeff
Yeah, it is a pretty incredible idea. I've seen it work and… it really
works! It's a software-based system (currently only on the Mac, but
they're now working on a PC implementation) and will work with at least
_some_ of their existing hardware. (I'm not sure what the hardware
limitations will be yet, and I don't think they're sure at this time
either.)
– G
Gary,
Checkerboard editing on the fly, like putting your diaquest into CMX
auto-assemble mode, way cool, that definitly comes under the heading of,
Why didn't I think of that ! The faster your drive and the longer your
animation the greater the total time savings. BTW, the Venice has a neat
trick, since it can be configured with up to 9 frame buffers you can lay
off targa files to tape in multiframe chunks.
Bruce
It's pretty impressive to see those Targa frames going down to tape so
quickly. I can't WAIT till they get that on the PC… it makes
single-frame editing to tape even faster than going to the CRV!
– G