Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!labrea!rocky!ali From: ali@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Ali Ozer) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: Re: Real time video animation Keywords: consider an Amiga! Message-ID: <951@rocky.STANFORD.EDU> Date: 11 Jan 88 00:53:46 GMT References: <159@abvax.UUCP> Reply-To: ali@rocky.stanford.edu (Ali Ozer) Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department Lines: 59 In article <159@abvax.UUCP> gfs@abvax.UUCP (Greg F. Shay) writes: >Does anyone know if there are systems/boards/companies for INEXPENSIVE >real-time video animation for, for example, the PC? > You might want to consider the Amiga --- An Amiga 500 with one or more megs of memory will serve you quite nicely. Software to do animations at rates of 30 frames a second for upto 10 seconds or so is already available. Even with a $600 VHS recorder (3 or 4 heads, and a flying erase head) one can create some wonderful movies (pasted together from 5-10 second animations). The Amiga 500 has RGB and composite B&W out; you'll need to get composite color (either through a cheap RGB->composite converter, or a genlock unit, which will cost a bit more ($150 for AmiGen, by Mimetics) but also provide genlocking capability (mixing an external video signal with Amiga generated graphics --- like the cereal commercials with Tony the tiger, for instance!)). The Amiga is specially suited for desktop video, because: - The output signal provides overscan, avoiding the fixed-color border around the image. Such a border (present on most computer outputs) is rather distracting when recorded on tape. - High resolution, color: You can get 704 x 470 (16 colors out of 4096) or 352 x 470 (all 4096 colors). - In all modes can animate upto 30 frames/second. - The output is NTSC compatible. (Or PAL, is you're using an European Amiga. Then you also get more lines, 704 x 600 or so, I think.) - Several software packages to do what you want is already available: -VideoScape 3D does full 3D animation, provides several output resolution choices, and can render wireframe. -Sculpt 3D does ray-tracing, and Animate 3D or PageFlipper can be used to animate ray-traced (4096 color!) images. -Aegis Animator and Deluxe Video provide 2D animation. These are older and more limited programs (low-res, etc). But, as a tradeoff, they can usually play back animations for long periods of time (5-10 minutes easily possible). -The Director provides a scripting language which can play back animations, sounds, images, etc, combining the various forms of output possible. -A good choice of very low priced digitizers (video and audio) exist. DigiView digitizes 640x400 images at upto 2^21 colors, and the camera and the software will cost you under $350. -Also available are languages (if you wish to do you own programming) and many high-quality public domain utilities... - All Amiga software uses the "IFF" standard to save images/sounds/animations, which makes going between software packages easy. - As mentioned above, the Amiga signal can also be easily genlocked, meaning you can easily (and cheaply!) add titles & so forth to videos. - Finally, the price is reasonable: Amiga 500 with 1 Meg of memory and single 880K drive will cost you under $700, add to that a hires RGB color monitor and you're talking under $1000. With more memory (upto 9 Megs is possible) and a harddisk, you can of course generate animations that run for more than 5-10 seconds. Of course, from experience, being able to generate 5-10 second animations is good enough in most cases; with a flying erase head VCR putting them together is painless and clean. I'm not associated with Commodore-Amiga, by the way, I'm just a very happy Amiga owner. Ali Ozer, ali@rocky.stanford.edu, ali@score.stanford.edu