Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mailrus!wasatch!utah-gr!uplherc!wicat!meph!gsarff
From: gsarff@meph.UUCP (Gary Sarff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Video frame-grabbing card needed for Next/Nubus
Message-ID: <00294@MEPH.UUCP>
Date: 21 Oct 88 18:14:40 GMT
References: <6614@pyr.gatech.EDU>
Organization: WICAT Systems Inc. Orem, Utah
Lines: 40

In <6614@pyr.gatech.EDU> cmpbsdb@pyr.gatech.EDU (Don Barry) writes:
>
>We are very shortly to specify a computer system to be used to perform
>real-time video manipulation in the processing of double-star images 
>taken directly from a telescope detector.  The capabilities of the NeXT
>built-in DSP processor appear absolutely perfect for the task, without 
>having to resort to custom hardware.  
>
>Is video hardware available for NuBUS that would enable us to capture 
>30 frames/sec at a resolution of 256x256 or 512x512?  Capturing the video
>zoomed (i.e., 256x256 of a standard NTSC signal) would be a plus.  There
>is a product called PC-VISION available for both VMEbus and an AT-style bus,
>but last I checkd, they don't make a NUBUS product.  
>
>I would appreciate any prompt replies.  As our decision must be made in
>the next week or so in order to disburse funds, I'm anxious to find out what
>   
>  Don Barry
>  GSU Center for High Resolution Astronomy

Since you mention PC's and NTSC, I thought I would mention this for whatever
it may be worth, assuming it is not engraved in granite that you must have a
NeXT for this application.  There is a real-time frame-grabber for the
Commodore Amiga computer, called framegrabber by "Progressive Peripherals and
Software".  It will frame grab a true NTSC color or black and white image
in 1/60th of a second (1/30th for color).  When my company bought ours it
was 699.95 I think, (it had gone up a bit because of the increase in
prices of 256K DRAMS).  The framegrabber interfaces to the Amiga via the
parallel port though, not the bus, so while it can grab frames that fast
it cannot get 30 frames/second into the amiga.  It does have memory in the
framegrabber though and you can get a kind of strobe series of pictures
sent to the computer, or several smaller squares of video on your amiga
monitor.  It was mostly intended to be able to grab live "un-paused" NTSC
video and not to actually feed moving video into a computer.
Anyway, this may not be suitable for your application but I thought I 
would mention it, in case.

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