Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.multimedia
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From: wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Art Warner)
Subject: Re: video digitizing
Message-ID: <1991May27.225746.15236@en.ecn.purdue.edu>
Keywords: video digitizing, xapshot, dctv
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
References: <4342@pluto.dss.com> <10022@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Mon, 27 May 91 22:57:46 GMT

In article <10022@star.cs.vu.nl> amorsin@cs.vu.nl (A.W.Morsink) writes:
>In article <4342@pluto.dss.com> dave@pluto.dss.com (Dave Monachello) writes:
>> 
>>  The dctv slow scan digitizer will take any fairly stable composite video
>> input.
>
>How stable does it have to be? Has anybody ever tried digitizing (slow-scan)
>still pictures from their VCR? (With ANY digitizer.) With a digital screen 
>memory that shouldn't be a problem, but what if you don't have that feature? 
>Is that a hopeless situation? My VCR (Panasonic J35 - it's got 4 heads) 's
>still picture LOOKS pretty stable (but a digitizer might think otherwise of 
>course).
>Any information you've got would be welcome - please post or mail.
>
I just got through doing a fairly good video digitization using a consumer
Sony Super-beta VCR that has a better mechanical still frame than most S-VHS
decks in the $1000 range.  I should know, I have both.  I never liked VHS.
S-VHS isn't much better.  The only problems that we encountered was with
dropouts, but that was due mostly to a poorer quality tape than what I should
have been using.  We did about 3 seconds (about 78 stills) and played them
back REALTIME on DPAINT3 in uncompressed mode.  BOY! Looked GREAT!  Absolutely
NO stability problems.  I even turned off the TBC option to see how it looked.
It did a fair job, but not quite as good.

As I mentioned earlier, I also have a NEC S-VHS top-of-the-line (hah!) deck.
It does happen to have a GREAT digital freeze frame.  It is definately a field
though, not a complete frame (odd and even fields).  If you have a digital
freeze and would like to know if yours is the cheaper version (almost all are)
then just catch your local cable channels FLICKERING reveiw channels.  I say
flickering because these channels are produced on a computer displaying pixel
thin lines. (only show on one field).  Just "freeze" this channel and watch to
see if some parts of the characters in the words disappear, like an "E" turns
into an "F" because that bottom line was on the opposite field.
The Digital freeze also did a great job and since it was not actually
interlaced information, only half of the file size was necessary for storage.

This DCTV stuff is FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-- 
William "Art" Warner                 //\
CBM Amiga Student Rep.             \X/--\miga makes it happen..........
wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu          IBM, Apple, Sun, & Next make it expensive!


-- 
William "Art" Warner                 //\
CBM Amiga Student Rep.             \X/--\miga makes it happen..........
wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu          IBM, Apple, Sun, & Next make it expensive!