Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!think!husc6!sunfs3!kent
From: kent@sunfs3.camex.uucp (Kent Borg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac Video to video tape (NTSC boards)
Message-ID: <530@sunfs3.camex.uucp>
Date: 11 Oct 89 15:55:39 GMT
References: <10598@claris.com>
Reply-To: kent@lloyd.UUCP (Kent Borg)
Organization: Camex, Inc., Boston, Mass USA
Lines: 42

In article <10598@claris.com> peirce@claris.com (Michael Peirce) writes:
>[from a friend who isn't on usenet right now...]
>I'm looking for information about getting animations off a Mac IIcx to 
>videotape. I don't know much about video but I've got a customer who 
>wants video and I've got to learn quick.   The quality has to be pretty good.
>
>The animations have been built with VideoWorks II and MacroMind Director.  
>I've tried using the MassMicro ColorSpace II board.  The image it produced 
>wasn't that good.  The flicker caused by the interlace was pretty annoying 

The NTSC you get from a Macintosh is never going to look very good
because NTSC does not look very good.

Because of the interlace and low bandwidth of NTSC, single pixel
features will either disappear or flicker.

To get reasonable results you will need to adjust what you try to
display:

= Do any antialiasing you can.  This will help a lot.
= Avoid 1-pixel wide or tall features.
= Keep things rather big.
= Keep things away from the edges of the screen.
= Avoid black-blacks, gray them a little.
= Run like hell from white-whites, dirty them some.
= Avoid 100% saturated colors, calm them a bit.

In general, don't try to do things which are not possible and then
blame the Macintosh for failing.

To see what is possible, look at what is on TV.  To see that this is
not what you are use to looking at on your Mac screen, find a good TV
and put it near your Macintosh color monitor, tune the TV to a network
program doing the weather (or something else with graphics) and
compare.  The TV set will look *terrible* by comparison, but that's as
good as it gets.  You will not be able to do any better than that.
That's NTSC for you.

-- 
Kent Borg				"Then again I could be foolish 
kent@lloyd.uucp				 not to quit while I'm ahead..."
or					     -from Evita (sung by Juan Peron)
...!husc6!lloyd!kent