Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!agate!eris!doug
From: doug@eris (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Video Products
Message-ID: <8715@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 14 Apr 88 01:56:47 GMT
References: <4834@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> <8379@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <2038@cadovax.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: doug@eris.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 57
Keywords: desktop video reviews perfect vision
Summary: More DigiView critique

In article <2038@cadovax.UUCP> keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) writes:
>And while I find PerfectVision useful, I would not give up my DigiView
>for still art.  I find them each useful, according to what they're 
>best at.  DigiView for still art, PerfectVision for multi-frame capture
>from videotape.

Makes sense. I guess that leaves the question: how about PerfectVision
versus LIVE! ???
>
>I believe it's an entire grayscale (4 bits) image in 1/60th a second,
>with 3 shots to get RGB.  Since it takes a couple of seconds to upload
>the image from the box, color grab must be done from a still image, while
>B&W is realtime.

Huh? If it takes a "couple of seconds" to upload an image, how could even
B&W be realtime??? It doesn't actually have megs of memory in it, does it?

[quoting me:]
>>quite disappointed in the lack of flexibility in fine tuning the results.
>> [...] To get really high quality results depends far more on
>>how well you pick the subject matter, and how carefully you adjust
>>lighting conditions, than it does on any software adjustments.
>
>I think that's a fact of life.  Lighting is EXTREMELY important
>and something image processing only becomes a band-aid for.

Maybe I put that badly...yes, lighting is extremely important, and my
results got 200% better when I switched from normal incandescent (yuk!)
to photoflood bulbs.

I'm still having problems sometimes with bright spots, though. Got a tip
for that? They could fix *that* in software. First you shoot a grey
background, which shows up the irregularities. Then DigiView could use
that background map to adjust the image you shoot later to normalize
the brightness. Easy, and useful.

But you really *need* more processing than they give you...for instance,
lasso an area and tell it, "use 8 extra colors just for this region",
(useful for accurate rendition of, e.g. hair) lasso another and say "make
this a uniform shade rather than trying to smooth shade it with dither"
(useful for backgrounds).  I guarantee you this feature would allow
significant improvements to any picture you shoot. There are lots of
other image-processing oriented features that would help, too. About
the only spatial filter they include is "sharpness", which appears to
be a high spatial frequency filter.

>Sounds like you haven't figured out how to use it yet.  I thought it
>was quite flexible in tuning the results.

I appreciate the suggestions about strategy, but I still want more features
like the above. The problem still remains that all they really give you
are global tuning controls that act like camera controls; it always helps
to have some local selectivity for particular regions. I agree with you
that what they provide is very useful, so far as it goes.

	Doug Merritt		doug@mica.berkeley.edu (ucbvax!mica!doug)
			or	ucbvax!unisoft!certes!doug