Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!gatech!ncsuvx!ccvr1!hgm
From: hgm@ccvr1.uucp (Hal G. Meeks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: LIVE! digitizer
Message-ID: <3557@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Date: 1 Aug 89 15:58:35 GMT
References: <4810@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM> <5660048@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM>
Sender: news@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu
Reply-To: hgm@ccvr1.ncsu.edu (Hal G. Meeks)
Organization: NCSU Computing Center
Lines: 43
Keywords:The right tools for the job.


In article <5660048@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM> charles@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM (Charles Brown) writes:
>> The frame grabber from Progressive Peripherals looks real nice,
>> but 600 bucks is too much to spend right now.  I was wondering if the
>> LIVE! digitizer would do the same (or similar) thing for me.
>>	Rick Forrest.
>
>I had a LIVE.  In my opinion it is worthless.  It never produced a
>stable image.  HAM did not work at all.  The colors were exceptionally
>bad in all modes.  The software FREQUENTLY caused gurus.  Save your money.
>--
>	Charles Brown	charles@cv.hp.com or charles%hpcvca@hplabs.hp.com
>			or hplabs!hpcvca!charles or "Hey you!"

I've had a Live!2000 for about 6 months. It was stable until I added my
autoboot roms and KS1.3 (I have the "old" GVP scsi card). I suspect it's the
autoboot roms, and lately have been tempted to go back to a non-autobooting
state.

I like mine a lot. It's possible to get reasonably clean 32 color and
grayscale images out of it. You have to supply a clean video signal. It also
helps to buy a "TV-VCR signal attenuator" from Radio Shack (about $5.00).
The live! is very picky about input levels. It the video is too hot, green
streaks (signal overload) appear. The software only will do a general guess
at the input video's "pallette". I have to tweak it a fair amount to get
something that looks good. 

I bought it to capture video for special effects and to aid in animation. It
does a great job at this. I didn't buy it to primarily grab still images. If
I had wanted to do that, I would have bought Progressive Peripheral's
Framegrabber. 

I showed my amiga once to a confirmed PC'er. He was mildly impressed at the
Amiga's windowing enviroment. Then I fired up Live!. I spent the next hour
convincing him that my Amiga was really digitising motion in real time. He
couldn't believe it. 

--hal

---------------
hgm@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu       "Things have changed, things will change, 
netoprhm@ncsuvm.bitnet     and it breaks down."
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