#Pinnacle Alladin
19 messages in this thread
I am evaluating the Pinnacle Alladin for Video Pro. Anyone had experience on
it? Even experience with other Pinnacle DVE's would be helpful. Thanks!
Stu,
I have played around with the Alladin and find it to be a pretty awesome little
device. The quality of the DVE/Paint/CG software is just awesome. (I have
already learned the one 3D program that I will have time for in my life
(lightwave) so I haven't played around with Topas that much, although I
understand it to be very good :-).
Combined with a decent editor, the Alladin is the ultimate in DTV today, IMHO.
-John
Just the other day I got the "trade in your Toaster for $1000 credit" flyer
from Pinnacle. So they bundle Topas with the card? Can you use Topas to make
3D shapes for transitions, or are all the transitions pre-made? I was curious
about any angle I might exploit with InterChange, if they had any other 3D file
formats in there.
..
John,
Yes they do bundle Topas with the Alladin and their is a market potential their
for Interchange/3D-Roms. What you can do on the Alladin is to use Topas to
render a frame (of any object in any perspective), save it to disk, call it up
into Alladin Paint and create an alpha channel (basically making a
_FromSource(0), _ToSource(255), and _Visible(128) layer), then use the
Alladin's DVE with a "Genie" key enabled, and create your own transitions.
They have some very effective demo genie wipes that use Topas created Images
including a TV Set, some gold rings, a candle, etc.
-John
So you're just using the 3D rendered image as the key silhouette for the
transition – it's not wrapping video to the 3D shape or anything impossible
like that… 🙂
Nope… BTW, I have a customer getting real slow response times off the 3D ROMs
vols. 1,2 and 3. I sold him a cheap NEC single speed and we are using a
MacroSystems WARP 040 in a 4000 for the SCSI interface. I think he gets O.K.
speed (we are talking things like directory lists taking minutes) with some of
the other CDROMs I sold him (texture heaven etc.,). Any ideas?
-John
Some of the directories on Volume I had hundreds of files. If you do an
AmigaDOS 'dir', it has to read all the filenames from disc, (slow because
you're single-speed) then sort them in memory, then display the sorted list
after all that is finished. Use 'list' instead. It may be that the CDROM
driver software is slow, too – which one are you using?
We reduced the number of files per directory on Volume II. Volume III isn't out
yet. If you have it, please send it to me, it would save me a lot of work.
🙂 Oh, did you mean the Avalon disc? Again, that's just a snapshot of the
Internet site, and some directories might have hundreds of files.
That is probably it then John. I will have him try using the list command.
-John
Strangely, we had the same sort of problem report from users on SGI machines,
particularly under-powered Indies. The file dialogs they'd use to browse the
CDROM would only display a certain number of files, and they'd call to say that
some of the files were missing from the CDROM. They'd show up just fine from a
shell window, using 'ls'.
So do you think they're going to sell or otherwise unload all those Toasters
they take in trade-in, or will they dumpster them?
_If_ they get many takers, I think they want to have a tower of discarded
Toasters at NAB. 🙂
-John
John, You CAN use the 3D shapes to make transitions. What's more, you can use
them to make "cookie cutter" mattes for key effects.
Basically, the main effects screen of the Alladin is actually a set of buttons
that pertain to charcteristics of an effect you design =- like level of shadow,
highlights, speed, direction, axis and point of rotation…. Very powerful,
very impressive.
The drawbacks come down to the CG. It is a special version of Inscriber. It
can't do roll or crawls. Fonts have to be in the inscriber format. (There is a
module to convert TT and PS to inscriber formats. No decorative font support,
though). Also, text placement and sizing is by numeric requesters rather than
mouse drag and stretch. And the requesters come up on top of the title layout
area so you have to render and look at the progam out to tell if you are
"there" yet.
Basically it is CCIR 601 instead of NTSC composite. So it looks much cripser
than the Toaster. However, the Toaster interface lends itself to making you
more productive. A sad example is that the poor girl demoing the Pinnacle was
wearing wrist brace due to all the "mousing around". Not much in terms of key
equivs, and in the CG the mouse is used to open requesters, pull menus down etc
and keyboard input is used to size/place text and graphic elements (go
figure!).
Also, I'm told (even buy Pinnacle dealers and reps) the manual sucks. It is
basically useless to the point that one person I found tossed it out! He said
it took less time to find out by experimenting then trying to follow the manual
on any given topic.
But, once you learn it, it does make some pretty video. The ideal would be to
have one Alladin and one Toaster.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne,
Hi! Haven't seen you around in awhile!
>> The drawbacks come down to the CG. It is a special version of
>> Inscriber. It can't do roll or crawls.
Not until the next release, but then they'll become available, I'm told.
>> Fonts have to be in the inscriber format. (There is a module to
>> convert TT and PS to inscriber formats. No decorative font support,
>> though).
Whaddaya mean by "decorative font support?"
>> Also, text placement and sizing is by numeric requesters rather than
>> mouse drag and stretch.
Actually, you CAN do a form of mouse drag. Holding down <CTRL> and dragging on
a line of text will move it. If TAB is selected in the constraints menu, it
will only move up and down; else you can move it freely about the page. If you
bring up the TYPE SPECS menu, place the mouse pointer into any of the numeric
requesters, then click and drag up or down, the numbers will change rapidly.
If you're in the text size boxes, you'll see the brackets around the text
change in size to preview the text's eventual size. Click on Apply to snap the
text to the new size.
>> And the requesters come up on top of the title layout area so you have
>> to render and look at the progam out to tell if you are "there" yet.
Though you CAN move the requesters up or down so you can see the text
underneath.
>> Also, I'm told (even buy Pinnacle dealers and reps) the manual sucks.
That's because it's the manual for an early release of software, so it's very
incomplete. They tell me it's being rewritten.
Pete
If I won the lottery I'd get one. But right now another switcher is not at the
top of my list :^}
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne,
Just thought I'd clear some of the stuff up for the benefit of lurkers.
We own an Alladin, and I've been amazed by the quality of its output, even when
compared to higher-end stuff like the ADO-100. The Alladin has more
sophisticated effects, too.
Pete
Stu, Talk to Frank Vanella. He is on CIS here and has a suite up in the bay
area with Alladin, Toaster and God knows what else.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Stu,
What John Sobernheim said.
Truly, it's an unbelievable device for the money.
Pete
thanks for your input and suggestions. we are wraping up our evaluation and i
will post my findings here. unfortunately we also have to wrap the unit up and
return it to pinnacle.