Lyon Lamb \ PC-VAS?
15 messages in this thread
Is the PC-Vas a good choice compared to the Diaquest equivalent boards?
Vern Shurtz
vern:
I bought a Lyon Lamb Pcvas several months ago. Complaint list: 1.The back has
a bunch of jumpers going to the dipswitch that selects which com port it
emulates. This was sold at sale price as "Beta" (Translation: Dump defective
production run ) 2. No documentation. Even though I called every one or two
weeks, they were not able to print a manual until after my 3 month warrenty
expired. I had to pay shipping. 3. Com ports. It was promised to configure as
Com 1-4. With no manual, I called for help. The same person gave me two
different descriptions of the settings, both of which were wrong. They got it
right on the third try, when they sent me a xerox of the engineer's hand
written notes. When the manual was finally printed, it was incorrect. Anyone
who buys this should insist on hand written notes!
The customer support person has given several different answers on different
occasions as to why it won't work as Com 3 and 4. Once he told me that it that
it was never intended to work as 3 and4. Another time he told me that as
hardware it answers as 3 and 4, but is not supported by software. I
believe that it does not work. Not only will it not operate as 3 and 4 but it
will not allow me to use Com 3+4 for anything else. I checked it under msd and
several other diagnostics. It appears intermitantly as one or two ports. 4.
Software. The board requires use of a driver. The installation of this driver
is incorrectly described. The Vasmagic program is graphical shell that looks
like a VCR console. It was extremely buggy. 5. Support BBS. Same version of
VASmagic was posted that shipped with the board. I called them. They told me
that the version I had was 2 revs old. Why isn't it on the BBS? What kinda Beta
test is this? They didn't know. The new revision didn't work either.
The good news: It did insert frames correctly, when I sent manual commands
through the terminal emulator. I have not been able to capture with it, due to
sync problems. Lyon Lamb says it is because an external black burst generator
is needed. Why didn't they mention this before?
It seems that they have finally found a way to reduce the amount of
complaints. Their 24 hour service BBS has been ofline for about a month.
Can anyone tell us about the Diaquest ?
joseph
It looks like were booth shopping for a diaquest.
thanks for the input. I have some pretty good cumputer dealers who are trying
to get me good deals on this equipment, if you want I will let you know what
they come up with.
Vern
Vernon – Not knowing the current pricing on the Lyon Lamb but having had
experience with the PRO-VAS and Lyon Lamb in general as well as experience with
the Diaquest, my vote is resoundingly for the Diaquest. Soft VTR is another
excellent alternative. Many reasons why, support is a big one, Diaquest has one
of the best support teams around and has worked closely with Autodesk as you
may know. My experiences with Lyon – Lamb go back many years with first the
Mini VAS and then the PRO VAS, in those days they were really the only game in
town and EXPENSIVE. Diaquest came along and quickly established an outstanding
reputation and also the ability to put the controller in the PC. If your
interested in the hardware solution I would recommend them. If your interested
in a software solution SoftVTR is the answer. Is there any particular reason
you wanted to go the hardware route? -JE
John
I'm still trying to find out what route to take. I'm an extreme novice at
computer graphics and have only had my computer and 3d studio for 10 months and
I want to do frame accurate renderings. I have approx. $5000 to work with and I
dont want to end up with junk. If you have any input it would be extremely
helpful. I'm planning on renting or leasing the vtr for the time being so I'm
more interested in the frame buffer\ntsc converter ie:targa+, and the
controller board ie:diaquest or lyon lamb.
I also put in the question about the sanyo gvr-s950 and got huge response on
that that is why I'm asking about controller cards.
Vern
P.S. do you know what the targa+ 64 can do for me vice the 16\32 model?
The targa+ 64 has no 3D Studio advantages. Other than that I don't know what
the exact difference is between that and the 32 other than lots of bucks. As
far as the Sanyo goes, wait untill some people get their hands on them. I will
be checking the unit out personally, and have recieved some good reviews from
people who played with it and currently own or deal with the Panasonic AG7750.
While no one outside of Sanyo really believes this deck will replace, or even
be in the same category as the 7750 rugged endurance wise, it promises to offer
great (equal?) output at less than half the price. Even if it only lasts half
as long as the 7750, for someone with $5000 bucks to spend, it seems like a
good solution.
As far as controllers are concerned, there is another product out there called
the Animation Commander, that is manufactured in Canada. It was supposedly
designed as part of a larger system (I'm not sure of the details), then the
company decided to market it as a VTR controller for the PC. It comes with
software, and supports many packages (animation and VTR's), and will do
Quickpass for PC when that comes out. The reviews on that are thumbs way up so
far, though I only know of three people who use it. I don't know the name of
the manufacturer off hand, but I'm sure someone will jump in and post it.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
john
thank you for the support.I would be real interested in what you find out
about the sanyo deck. so far I've been given alot more avenues to go then I
have dreamed of. thanks again will be in touch.
vern
Vernon – I appreciate you situation, there is alot going on in this area and
things are changing fast. You have some other options available to you which we
can explore but first lets answer your questions directly. If your going to go
the video frame accurate route, I would recommend the software approach ie:
SoftVTR and by-pass the hardware approach. SoftVTR is about $1000. When you buy
the software is supports a wide variety of machines. Good especially if you're
going to be renting a VTR or plugging your system into a production house for
frame accurate transfer. Another approach is to go with an image compression
for real-time playback off the hard disk. DPS has an engine called the Personal
Animation Recorder which allows you to put your animation to hard disk and then
play it back in real-time with S Video, NTSC and Component output. This runs
around $2500 and the cost of a compatible 500 MB hard disk (add approx $1000).
The advantage here is no tape drop-out etc, and no wear and tear on a VTR. This
is something well worth looking into! With regard to the Targa 32+ and 64+ the
difference is the 64+ has two 32 bit frame buffers. But unless the software is
written to use both buffers it maybe a useless feature. The best application I
know of which fully utilises the 64+ is Inscriber which is a character
generator/titler program which has built in dissolves and transitions. Great
for speaker support and Broadcast or industrial credit rolls.
Now here is what I would recommend for the best of all worlds with the
caveat there is no single answer. If we bypass the image compression approach
which we can get into later, I would buy an Illuminator Pro with the CCR-601
specification for Broadcast, and the SoftVTR for my controller. This will give
you better resolution than the Targa for a few hundred dollars more. I think
the going price is about $1750 for the Matrox and you get 720×486 lines of
resolution for D1. This board should keep you in good stead for awhile. From
here you can buy an EXABYTE 8650 and go digital all the way to D1 with the ADG
driver. This is another $3000 for the combination but you will be able to go D1
total digital and with the SoftVTR you can use most any other deck on the
market to put your animations to tape. -JE P.S.
john
I'm currently using the truevision videovga 16 but the frame rates for a semi
complex .flc are real slow so you get alot of screen tear that is why I want to
go frame accurate. I will definatly look into your recommendations. would you
mind if after I get a prospective system figured out if I run it past you to
see what you think of it?
Thank you for your time.
vern
Vern – No problem, glad to help you get started on the right track, feel free
to drop me a line. Happy hunting 🙂 -JE P.S. if you're happy with your Video
VGA you might just want to consider going the Image compression route, which
will give you as I said S VHS, NTSC, and Component output to tape. Then you
could use a consumer deck for your tests and output to whatever other format
you choose for final production in realtime. If your interested in a company
that does this for $2500 plus the cost of a compatible hard disk you might want
to call Digital Processing Systems Inc. at 606-371-3729. You wouldn't need a
controller then. And you get really good output for an excellent
cost/performance ratio.
john
Does the compression system speedup the frame rates? My videovga is extremely
slow with complex .flc's. If I can speed up my video output with compression
equipment that may solve my problem. Please let me know what you think.
vern
Vern – The DPS system is a total system unto itself. It is designed to record
animation sequences directly to hard disk and then play them back in real time.
So basically you render your animation to disk in say a targa format, then push
it through the DPS board which puts it in their format which can then be played
back in realtime. This also give you the opportunity to do an unlimited number
of first generation dubs. These animations can then be archived on standard
tape backup like the Colorado. And as I said it has S-Video, NTSC and Component
out. And the good thing is you don't have to burn tape until your ready to,
don't have to rent a deck to test your animations, and because it plays back in
real-time, you can pop into a production house for 10 or 15 minutes and quickly
lay your animation to tape and get out fast. This can save you big bucks!
Typically each frame takes 7 seconds or more to put to tape the conventional
way, this may not sound like a long time but it adds up fast. Plus you don't
need a controller. They also have a Time Base Corrector with which you can do
rotoscoping should you be interested in the future. And their board gen-locks
to house sync so you'll have a stable picture when transferring to tape. This
may be a really good way for you to go for the type of things you're doing, and
would be a useful tool regardless of the direction you may decide to go in the
future. Call them up and have them send you some literature. I think you'll get
excited! -John PS. It has variable speed playback and can hold 3 to 5 minutes
of animation!
I would be glad to give you my input on any system you put together, as long as
I am familiar with the components.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
I would like to invite any readers of this topic to seriously try and compare a
single dedicated controller (hardware and/or software) with a V-LAN based
solution. There are more V-LAN units used by professionals than all of the
competitors combined…. no brag just fact. V-LAN is cost effective (a V-LAN
express lists for $750) V-LAN units also have downloadable drivers (no charge)
for many more transports that the others don't even acknowledge. V-LAN is
standard on most SGI workstations and Indigo boards. V-LAN compatible products
are sold and manufactured by other companies such as Grass Valley, Chyron, RGB,
AVID, etc. There is a reason why it is the standard of the industry. Support is
second to none—-world wide. The controllers you have mentioned don't even
provide multi-machine synchronization, nor can they ever effectively be used or
upgraded to A/B roll editing or even implemented into Microsoft's MCI drivers.
Boy are you on some kind of trip! I'd like to see you back that one up! -JE