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- From: bob@atlantis.CS.ORST.EDU (robert s. richardson)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics
- Subject: Re: DMI Editmaster
- Message-ID: <1k1e0oINNqi6@leela.CS.ORST.EDU>
- Date: 25 Jan 93 19:11:20 GMT
- Article-I.D.: leela.1k1e0oINNqi6
- References: <C1A4B4.F1o@fiu.edu> <1993Jan24.185855.77@condor>
- Organization: Computer Science Outreach Services - Oregon State University
- Lines: 41
- NNTP-Posting-Host: atlantis.cs.orst.edu
-
- In article <1993Jan24.185855.77@condor> oxleyd@logica.co.uk writes:
- >I've been trying to figure out how the Editmaster works. Presumably, a cable
- >runs between the video source and the Editmaster itself. So it takes a
- >video signal as input and does some real-time digitising, which then gets
- >compressed on the fly into JPEG frames. The resulting picture files must be
- >small enough that the board can write them directly to the hard drive at a rate
- >of 25 (or 30) per second.
- >
- >All well and good. BUT, what about the return trip? The frames get read off the
- >hard drive after you've processed them, or for ray tracing, after you've laid
- >them down in JPEG format (presumably using the board to do the conversion for
- >you). Then they get decompressed on the fly by the hardware JPEG chips...and
- >then what? Are they converted back into analogue video and squirted down the
- >cable coming out of the Editmaster? Actually, that sounds quite reasonable,
- >producing an output of equivalent quality to DCTV, but at the proper frame rate
- >...and then you buy the Vivid24 if you want to record at 24 bit in real time.
- >And the Vivid has the capability to run at 160MFLOPS so it's finished your ray
- >tracings before you've even told it to start rendering ;)
- >
-
- When I saw this demoed in Pasadena, they had a laserdisc player running a
- video (indiana jones as I recall) into an Amiga (a 3000 i think) and then
- coming back out and being displayed on a big-screen monitor. I saw a
- poster or something saying that there was a JPEG card inside. I thought
- to myself almost immediately "I wonder if they are just looping the
- video signal through and the board isn't really doing anything--its
- really vaporware..." Well, I asked a person in the booth what was
- really going on and he showed me. They had the input signal going
- through one JPEG board, being compressed, and then sent over to a second
- JPEG board for decompression and back out. ( I assume you only need
- one board if you don't need to compress and decompress at the same time.)
- He typed some CLI commands and changed the compression ratios and you
- could immediately see their effect on the video--so this board was
- certainly a reality at the time. But the "editing" software was "coming
- soon." They had absolutely nothing, not even beta stuff, to show
- along those lines.
-
- ===========================================================================
- Bob Richardson (bob@atlantis.cs.orst.edu) \ __ | "What in the name of Bob
- PO Box 1404, Corvallis, OR 97339-1404 /\ \/ | is that?" "Who?"
- (503) 758-5018 Opinions Offered Daily at Noon. | "Forget it." -- D. Adams
-