#Real-time 3DS playback?
15 messages in this thread
I'm reading an ad for the new Matrox Illuminator Pro board (back cover of the
July/August issue of Computer Pictures.) It says "Record & Playback True
Color, full frame rate 3D Studio animations from hard disk in real time." Is
this saying what I think? And…if so, does this mean I should buy the Matrox
board in lieu of an animation controller? If I understand this right, one
would not need to lay animations a frame at a time (w/ an animation controller)
they could simply be recorded in real time from the hard drive via the
Illuminator Pro. Is this correct or am I missing something here? Anyone with
experience on this product??
Rick,
>> It says "Record & Playback True Color, full frame rate 3D Studio
animations from hard disk in real time." Is this saying what I think? >>
You got it. I have seen the Matrox Ill Pro combined with the Movie Express JPEG
board and I was quite impressed. (A Matrox booth was sadly and inexplicably
absent at Siggraph, although they did send the friendly and always helpful
Alain Legault to answer questions). This is not a cheap combination, though,
listing at around $4-5k depending on the version of the Ill Pro that you buy.
My personal show favourite in the JPEG cards was the DPS personal animator for
the PC (shipping in October, already available for the Amiga). This is a $1995
JPEG card (add a $995 TBC card if you want capture as well) that you put in
your PC and then attach a dedicated, direct connect 500mb IDE hard drive giving
3 to 5 minutes of video capacity. Inputs and outputs are composite, s-video,
and switchable BetaSP/MII. Software is included for playback/recording and
rudimentary editing of the animation. This product has been a big hit on the
Amiga platform and is selling like hot cakes and discounts seem to be
available. They were showing actual animations (756×486 true colour) as well as
live-video off the disk drive. The quality was great, although on close
examination I could see a little tearing during fast object motion. It was hard
to tell whether this was in the animation itself or was a motion JPEG artifact
– I suspect the latter. My feeling is that this would make great final output
for many clients, and if not good enough for final output then at least it
would make a far superior motion and colour testing method than creating a .fli
or .flc file. I'm seriously interested in this card, since I already have a
targa+ and don't really want to cough up for another similar framebuffer, like
the Ill Pro.
I saw a couple of other cards which seemed to be claiming a lot but not
necessarily delivering. One interesting one was by ASL in Irvine, CA and the
board offered capture and playback at 640×480 or in multiple windows all for
$1200. They couldn't show me anything they had captured to disk and were only
showing laser disk output of "the Empire Strikes Back" in one or more Windows.
Guys get a grip! This product seemed more geared to the Video in a Window
multimedia crowd, rather than serious animators.
I feel high quality capture and output is going to require a fully dedicated
hard-drive, probably bypassing the ISA or VL-Bus entirely – such as in the case
of the DPS personal animator card.
Martin
Martin,
I hope to get the ASDG Abekas drivers when they start shipping. The drivers are
quoted as supporting JPEG. Do you know if these files will play directly on
something like the DPS card.
One of my local video studios is looking at purchasing either an Avid or Matrox
non-linear editing system. As the Matrox is JPEG and the Avid presumably Mac
QuickTime am I correct in assuming that I can convert 3DS files to a suitable
format through ASDG onta an Exabyte, plug plug Exabyte into the video system
SCSI port, download my animation file and record at whatever quality/speed the
non-linear system will produce. If this theory works then I will also be able
to pull live video into 3DS by the reverse route.
Martin Bowring
M,
>> I hope to get the ASDG Abekas drivers when they start shipping. The drivers
are quoted as supporting JPEG. Do you know if these files will play directly on
something like the DPS card.>>
I don't think so – you'd need to "compile" them into the DPS personal
animator's native file format (.PAR I think – this doesn't take much longer
than copying from one disk to another). The DPS personal animator uses "a
highly modified, proprietary, motion JPEG" scheme (loosely quoted from the
staff of DPS at Siggraph) and has it's own file format. It does not store a
sequence of JPEG files which would be what you would want for the
ASDG-Exabyte-Abekas scenario. Also, to get the best from the Exabyte-Abekas
combo you would almost certainly be better off with a lossless compression
scheme, such as used in targa files.
>>One of my local video studios is looking at purchasing either an Avid or
Matrox non-linear editing system. As the Matrox is JPEG and the Avid presumably
Mac QuickTime am I correct in assuming that I can convert 3DS files to a
suitable format through ASDG onta an Exabyte, plug plug Exabyte into the video
system SCSI port, download my animation file and record at whatever
quality/speed the non-linear system will produce. If this theory works then I
will also be able to pull live video into 3DS by the reverse route.>>
3ds r3 will read and write JPEG files so your scheme sounds feasible, but a
direct SCSI connection might work much faster, if the hardware supports it. I
have an external hard drive which I can attach to any system with an Adaptec or
ASPI-based controller. I think the Exabyte really comes into its own to
communicate with Abekas digital disk recorders (DDR) because these are D1
quality and not lossy like Avid and Matrox.
Martin.
If all these transfers are possible I hope to work regularly with the video
company providing TV adverts and special effects. By pulling in live action
sequences or stills, adding graphics, titling, etc. and outputting to
Abekas/D1, I should be able to prepare short final edits and master to any
broadcast format. In return they will be able do good quality real time
recording of my animations for those that don't want to pay for D1.
What they are investigating at the moment is whether the output from a non
linear system such as Avid will be acceptable to the local TV engineers. The
discussions on this forum suggest that real time playback is still borderline.
Martin Bowring
M,
I thought the output of the DPS personal animator, in particular, was very good
but possibly not good enough for national (network in USA) broadcast. I had to
look very hard to see artifacts (the ones I found were minor and might have
been in the animation itself) and engineers are pretty critical, but then your
target audience probably aren't. I might use it for corporate/sales/product
visualizations for final output because of the speed. This would be suitable
for people who see realtime recorded .fli and .flc files and think they are
good enough for final output. In this case the output is many times better
than any 8-bit or 16-bit flics I've seen and, of course, you get absolute 30fps
output.
More testing and scrutiny is necessary, methinks <g>.
Martin
Martin,
Have any "video houses" with an Abekus "stepped forward" offering the tape-out
service yet?
Ang
Ang,
the ADSG people have a whole list of them apparently. I know of the Post Group,
of which there are several and then there's the one in SF which Gary used for
the Siggraph reel.
Martin,
Maybe ADSG would do us the favor of uploading the list for our reference <hint
.. hint… g>
Ang
Angelo,
well here's one courtesy of the Yoster:
>>Pacific Video Resources… 415/864/5679. Ask for Dana.
Their rate is $200/hr (which will give you around 40 seconds), including
the cost of transfering to D1, D2 or BetacamSP. It's _very_ inexpensive,
considering what they're doing.>>
Thanks Gary <g>.
Martin
Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who said, "Here's one for the Yoster!" ?
Yeah, he must have stolen that phrase from me <g>.
Martin:
Is that rate for the transfer from Exabyte (sp?) tape? (Pac Vid $200).
C <Sorry, I've missed alot of messages lately…> #
Craig,
>> Is that rate for the transfer from Exabyte (sp?) tape? (Pac Vid $200).
Yes, that's what GaryY said. Sounds like a good price, eh?
BTW… liked your stuff on the Siggraph tape. In fact, anybody who's watching
(sherwood, greg, richard, michael, etc…) you all did some GREAT work over the
last year.
C#