********** Welcome to COnference mode on the Amiga Forum! ********** Tonight at 10:00 PM EDT: a formal conference on video applications using the Amiga. Our panel of guests is scheduled to include Joanne Bandlow, Mike Berro, and representative(s) from Aegis. Come join us in a discussion on the pros and cons of the Amiga in the professional video field. To participate, simply type /TUN 2. PLEASE NOTE: This is a FORMAL conference. If you do not know the protocols for a formal conference, /EXIT at the end of this bulletin, go to DL1 and read HOW2CO.HLP. Remember, we ask that you please do not type out of turn during a formal conference. Thank you for your support! Richard Rae/SYSOP [76703,4253] ******************************************************************* User User ID Nod Rm Name / Forum Area ---- ------------ --- --- ----------------- 42 73170,2663 GBN 2 Perry/ASDG 45 76046,2514 CVK 2 joanne bandlow 47 76067,2500 TOR 2 William Volk(Aegis) 55 76406,25 LIS 2 Marlene/SYSOP 60 72436,771 ANN 2 Mike Schulte 62 76703,4253 RIC 2 Rick/SYSOP 63 75766,504 BPC 2 Louis Markoya 66 76515,1572 HVT 2 Ariel 70 72240,10 PRI 2 Dave Michaels 71 74456,3054 MIA 2 Rick Rodriguez 89 71360,132 LOM 2 Robert K 97 73267,3361 VAN 2 Mike Berro/BCS 104 76625,1210 DEQ 2 John/TCR 118 73577,123 BOU 2 Ted Haskell (2,Rick/SYSOP) William, you repping Aegis tonight? (2,William Volk(Aegis)) Yes, I'm repping Aegis .... (2,Rick/SYSOP) SUper! (2,Rick/SYSOP) Okay, PANEL MEMBERS, listen up... I won't structure the Q/A too tightly... you don't have to answer any question you don't want to. When a question is posed... if you wish to answer it just type ! and I'll recognize you. Fair enough? Joanne> BTW, "..." denotes "more to come"; when finished with a comment... type GA so we can pass it to the next person... Okay, we're off... I won't bore you with a... repeat of the short bulletin: this conference is on the VIDEO AMIGA. We have video professionals here tonight, just itching to discuss the subject. Floor... is open! (2,Rick Rodriguez) The burning question on my mind is improving the Amiga's composite video... Has anyone here mastered the elusive encoder issue? (2,joanne bandlow) Are you referring to the sync problems, the color bandwidth problems, or something else? ga (2,Rick Rodriguez) What I'm referring to is the excess of chroma in reds. The vertical lines which somethimes show up in blacks. The low sync (2,William Volk(Aegis)) The red problem can be a oversaturation, I've heard that feeding the signal thru a VideoDeck monitor may work ..... VHS and REDs are allways a problem. (2,Rick Rodriguez) I'm using the Amiga with 3/4inch decks... I successfully took the signal from the machine through an encoder to one inch and it was beautiful. (2,joanne bandlow) The R-The R-Y, B-Y system of encoding used in Ami REDUCES DETAIL in the reds due to bandwidth restrictions in the "I" axis. When used with an external "I/Q" (wide bandwidth) encoder, the color looks just GORGEOUS! GA (2,Louis Markoya) Rick, you are probably seeing residual color carrier in blacks, not just red. Motorola has a fix for it, which is not implemented in the Ami. ga. (2,William Volk(Aegis)) We have fed the RGB into a RGB/Component converter, and then into a BetaCAM with decent red results, but this can be expensive. I've heard that you can use 2 VideoDecks, and feed the Amiga signal into the input of one, and use the monitor output of that deck to be the input of the second recording deck. The Beta decks must have some limiter circut that does some clean up on the Amiga signals, probabilly just a limiter. Red still bleeds with this setup .... an encoder will fix the problem, as well as using the BetaCAM. (2,William Volk(Aegis)) GA. (2,Rick/SYSOP) I would think just a limiter would damage the sync too badly... before it affected color or video information. More likely an AGC circuit... (2,joanne bandlow) We "borrowed" an encoder from a minicam, tied it to external power, etc, and sync'ed it from the studio system. With the Ami patched into the RGB inputs of the encoder, the red bleeding was gone. Of course the encoder has to be "white balanced" for residual carrier null, as Mike referred to. If you have a carrier null problem, it can be tweaked somewhat with resistors inside the genlock, but this only affects background color that's there all the time . GA (2,Rick Rodriguez) Has anyone seen the other genlocks that purport to have encoders to replace Ami's? Two things: I wanted to say that the 1377 (used in Ami) is also used very effectively in industrial quality video gear. The Ami circuit can be modifiedfor about $25 in parts to be pretty good.... In reply to Rick's query.Communications Specialties has an Amiga specific endcoder for about $400. ga (2,Rick/SYSOP) I'd like to widen Rick's question: can anyone comment on a genlock OR RGB->comp encoder that could be used by a budget constrained home user? (I.E. not thousands of dollars.) How about a DIY project, or the mods to the internal circuitry, how hard would that be? GA ! (2,Mike Berro, BCS) Mods are possible...an external DIY would be tough, considering the high frequencies involved, you'd need a circuit board and careful layout. ga. (2,joanne bandlow) I agree... the clock involved is about 26mhz, the color subcarrier is almost 4 megahertz... tricky if not familiar with that stuff.... GA (2,Louis Markoya) William, I read that Allen Hastings did Infinate Loop with 8mm gear . Was it single frame? (2,William Volk(Aegis)) O.K., the "original" Infinite Loop (shown at the Amiga Developers conference. was done with 8mm film, single framre the version we showed at CES was done directly from composite to 3/4" deck .... this is the version that you see on VHS tape. We have another film done on BetaCAM (direct RGB) called ANIMDemo and Alan Hastings uses a 8mm Video Deck for prototyping (at least he did before ANIM's arrived) GA (2,Rick/SYSOP) William, if John Smith Amiga owner wanted to see these videos, what would you suggest? Go to Amiga expositions? (2,William Volk(Aegis)) I guess that would work, if John Q could attend FAUG meetings, he would have seen the whole series .... including the new ANIMDemo film... He could also download the ANIM files, or purchase a VHS or Beta tape from Aegis .... I believe that's 10$???? (2,Rick/SYSOP) (... ship 'em off to C/A and tell them to make commercials out of them!) (2,William Volk(Aegis)) If you saw the Commodore film at Comdex . are the Anim sequences limited by memory? (2,William Volk(Aegis)) Yes, ANIM's are limited by 1. RAM for playback. 2. Disk for record. On a 1Meg amiga you could playback an ANIM of about 200 to 500 frames. You do NEED 1 Meg to record an ANIM (it requires 3 BITMAPS), but most ANIM's will play back on a 512K .... see demos... (2,Rick/SYSOP) William, you started to make a comment about the C/A film at Comdex? GA (2,William Volk(Aegis)) O.K., the Commodore AD agency made a promotional tape that they showed at Comdex that featured ALOT of VideoScape stuff. GA (2,Rick/SYSOP) Super! Mike, you had a question? GA (2, Mike Berro/BCS) Bill, does ANIM allow full "video" frame? I still get a lot of complaints... for pro video users about the "inevitable" border. ga. (2,William Volk(Aegis)) ANIM will support any overscan. VideoScape uses a overscan of 704 x 440. VideoTitler uses 768 x 480!!!, the file R_Baron.anim is the VideoTitler overscan (I believe), in Low RES that's 384 x 240 pixels. TheANIM R_Baron.anim was put together from a VideoScape ANIM and "enhanced" with a future product. I believe VideoScape uses the 704 x 440 overscan because that's what Deluxe Paint II (tm) uses. ANIM can support ANY size bitmap. (2, MIke Berro/BCS) Bill, great. That feature cannot be over-emphasized! ga. (2,Rick/SYSOP) William, does that take the video right out to the blanking pulses (704x440)? (2,William Volk(Aegis)) The 704 x 440 is not to the blanking pulse, the 768 x 480 is .... but it is a "problem child", some Amigas will not run the R_Baron.anim because it uses the Super-Overscan of VideoTitler.(2,Perry/ASDG) While the overscan efforts of Aegis are certainly a step in the right (2,Perry/ASDG) direction - we ought to be moving towards much higher resolution video. Software programmers should be sure to make their code not use hard wired limits. For example, who knows when a 1024 by 1024 video board may come along. (just wanted to add that plug for programmers not closing doors) (2,William Volk(Aegis)) O.K., first off .... for NTSC video you CANNOT go beyond (or much beyond) the number of lines the Amiga has, that's NTSC .... that's video. As to future hardware boards .... maybe for FILM it makes sense ... (2,Rick/SYSOP) (There are also bandwidth limitations in the horizontal direction) (2,William Volk(Aegis)) VideoScape and VideoTitler support 4 resolutions apece .... but because of the need to support pull downs AND overscan (particullary in Titler) you really have to play tricks with the Amiga software to get it to overscan at all. Titler is at the brink of CHIP RAM as it is ........ GA ((2,Perry/ASDG) Bill, by no means did I mean to impune your efforts. I simply want to state for the developers listening that 1680x2048 or whatever is really just around the corner. It is simple to provide loosely bound limits rather than to stick by hard coded ones. Let the hardware catch up to the software !!! (grin) (2,Rick/SYSOP) Perry, so even though it's not of any use tovideo production houses, you're saying keep an open hardware/software mind for CAD/CAE and whatnot, right? (Change that to "may not be", what do I know!) (2,Perry/ASDG) exactly - never code 640 when you want the full resolution of the machine - use the softcoded limits instead. ga (2,William Volk(Aegis)) Yes, I agree .... TOTALLY ... just wanted to point out the NTSC video limits .... and thedifficulty of getting overscan and Intuition to cooperate. Folks, Dave Barrett just walked in and asked me to relay the following .... (it does relate) If you want to see Composite NTSC output for the Amiga 500 Please contact David Archqurbault and/or Frank Leonardi at Commodore. (2,Rick/SYSOP) ... let's take an informal survey right now... (2,William Volk(Aegis)) The 500 doesn't have composite color out currently (built in) .... there is an addon for about $100. (2,Rick/SYSOP) Would everyone who has a 500, or is getting a 500, who would like to have composite video (color) out, signify by raising your hands (type *). Go. * (2,John/TCR) * (2,Rick Rodriguez) * (2,joanne bandlow) * (2,Rick/SYSOP) * (2,Marlene/SYSOP) * (2,Mike Schulte) * only if better than A1000's (2,Rick/SYSOP) 8) How's that, Dave? (2,joanne bandlow) Touche! (2,Perry/ASDG) !! (2,Jon Bryan) ! (2,Vic Wagner/Metadigm) ditto Mike Schulte * (2,joanne bandlow) ! (2,William Volk(Aegis)) O.K. call Frank and Dave, the number is 215 431 9100 (2,Marlene/SYSOP) (2,Rick/SYSOP) see if I can't clear some of them... (2,Rick/SYSOP) (You heard em, send in those cards and letters folks!)(2,joanne bandlow) As As long as we're talking of borders... (2,joanne bandlow) we discovered another "gotcha. If (when in Dpaint, for instance) the palette color 0 is too close to black (zero IRE units for you video freaks) some monitors, switchers, vtrs, etc will misinterpret the border area as Sync and will break up, jitter, etc. The easiest fix is to keep the border area just a shade above black or above 7.5 IRE on a waveform monitor.... (2, MIKE BERRO) It should also help to keep the chroma level at the border down. (2,Rick Rodriguez) I just wanted to chime in on the high resolution question. Without a doubt if you want professional video titles, they've got to be high res. Anything else looks terrible. Also TV Text 1.1 does a real nice job with intuition and overscan. (2,joanne bandlow) Speaking of resolution... the venerable Paintbox in the b'cast industry has resolution beyond 1000 lines in either direction but is compatible with NTSC. Resolution lines can be independent of the 512 scan line limit, as you said eariler, it's limited by bandwidth. If the resolution of the generating system is higher than the scanning system, then the generating system (computer) is no longer the chief contributor of 'ailiasing' (jaggies). The hard limit to ailiasing becomes the scanning limits of NTSC, and that's the best 'ya can do for video..... (2,Rick/SYSOP) Also, we don't need to go into the particulars, but I want to make sure everyone understands that there is a difference between video's "lines of resolution", the number of scan lines per screen, and the x/y digital resolution of a bit-mapped image; they aren't 1:1 correspondence. Joanne, would you care to ballpark the price of a new Paintbox, just so everyone will see that the Amiga ain't really doing such a bad job for the money? (2,joanne bandlow) Sure, a "cheap" paintbox (by the competitors) runs about 15 grand.... the better systems START around 30 grand.... so the AMi isn't a bad deal at all! (2,Mike Schulte) Actually there are 2 paintbox versions one for print/HDTV and the NTSC version the NTSC version is 768x483 but it has 24 bit color resolution. (2,Rick/SYSOP) Aha, another reason to keep the resolution limit open: HDTV. (Sorry, GA) (2,Mike Schulte) With higher resolution that 768 in video, however there are some neat effects that you can get by changing the color faster than NTSC can encode it. Effectively adding to the number of colors available. (2,Marlene/SYSOP) How extensive is the use of Amigas in Proffessional Video at the moment and do you forsee a big future in this field for the Amiga? GA (2,William Volk(Aegis)) O.K., Many desktop Video products have been created with "personal" use in mind. Surprisingly, we have found that over 50% of the buying public are using both Aegis and E.A. products professionally. As a result, Aegis is putting greateffort into reaching the professionals with products designed for THEM. Further, many companies including 3rd Party hardware developers are creating products for the video market using the Amiga. Currently the Amiga is used professionally on many TV shows, several motion pictures, and on MTV. The BIG use for the Amiga in video will be for the Industrial market - education, financial, and business. (2,Marlene/SYSOP) Do they find the Amiga easy to use compared to/with more expensive systems? (2,William Volk(Aegis)) Yes, the Amiga is ALOT easier to use than most PRO systems. (2,Rick/SYSOP) WIlliam, can you list any of those TV shows Et. Al., or would you rather not? GA (2,William Volk(Aegis)) Miami Vice, Amazing Stories, Max Headroom (backstage), Magmum PI, MTV videos, ... (2,David McCutchen) pROFESSIONAL USE FOR TITLEING OR ANIMATION OR BOTH? GA (2,William Volk(Aegis)) BOTH. (2, Mike Berro) First...Bill, you said 50% of EA/Aegis buyers use it for pro video?!? ga (2,William Volk(Aegis)) Yes... It IS at LEAST 50% (2, Mike Berro) Wow, I've found a lot of resistance to the Amiga from networks & production houses, mostly due to misinformation about it. ga (2,William Volk(Aegis)) There is resistance .... that's Commodore's problem ... but they're working on it (2, Mike Berro) Not just Commodore, but local sales people, who don't know video. (2,William Volk(Aegis)) That's right.... That's the nature of retail. How many people would like to see a book on Desktop Video??? (2,Rick/SYSOP) Show of hands... (*), who wants a book on DTV? (2,Rick/SYSOP) * (2,Vic Wagner/Metadigm) * (2,joanne bandlow) * (2,S M Anderson) * (2,Louis Pochron) [_[_[_[_* (2,John/TCR) * And onsite sales training by Aegis and BCS for salesmen 8) (2,Rick/SYSOP) Okay William, get to work writing! (2,William Volk(Aegis)) David Barrett is already writing a book on the ENTIRE field (2,Ted Haskell) As they say on Wall Street Week, "Examples please" Joanne, what pro vid uses do you put the Amiga to? ga (2,joanne bandlow) Well..... we use Pro-Video CG as a post-production tool for graphics overlays (titles) on local programs. We use paint programs (both flavors) for graphics beyond 'words-on-the-screen...... and we plan to use Videoscape for some knock-your-socks-off local sports opens. The sound programs (Sonix) are fun too... we're not musicians here, though but we're gettin' better at it! The staff is all learning the Amiga, and even those computer-phobics are attracted by how easy it is to get a graphic on the screen with little experience. Still fighting with genlock, though. (2,Ted Haskell) If I may, will all panel members please jump in with one-line entries for software products and hardware products currently available for pro vid. (2, Mike Berro)I have SMPTE time code programs, demos of which you will find in DL16. (2,GreG Tsadilas) Dpaint II, Animator, CGI, TittleCraft, VideoScape, DVCS.... (2,joanne bandlow) Pro-video CG by Jeff Karline, Aegis A (2,GreG Tsadilas) Genlock (2,GreG Tsadilas) Ooops! I forgot Images! (2,Ted Haskell) Hardware too please. ga (2,William Volk(Aegis)) Aegis VideoTitler, Aegis VideoSEG, Aegis Anamator's Workshop(Oct.) (2,MIke Berro) CSI's encoder. (2,joanne bandlow) The font quality of Pro-Video rivals Chyron (TM).. (2,Ted Haskell) Programmers? ga (2,Ted Haskell) Company names? ga (2,William Volk(Aegis)) Aegis VideoTitler is our largest program to date. (2,Ted Haskell) Sorry, need background. ga (2,Rick/SYSOP) Ted, are you looking for addresses or what? (2,Ted Haskell) Just examples for feel of state of art. ga (2,Rick/SYSOP) Ted, I'd suggest reading up in AmigaWorld, Amazing Computing, AmiProject there have been some pretty good reviews that will give you that sort of depth. We need to move along now, I have a very patient man with questions... (2,William Volk(Aegis)) If you need ANY information do call us ..... (2,Rick/SYSOP) okay with you? GA (2,Rick/SYSOP) (Yes, or call your friendly software/hardware houses) (2,Ted Haskell) Have done that. Just wanted to hear from people in field. ga (2,John/TCR) Is there any chance of the Amiga (Some time in the Future) being used to control a network of home electronic equipment. ie. VCR, LaserDisks, Tuners, Amplifiers, (The whole works!) not just by turning things on and off but actually understanding what it is 'seeing' on the TV or 'hearing' (Maybe some kind of closed caption that the Amiga can understand) what is going on. The TV is a huge source of information to us now in the '80s, is it possible that someday we can manipulate it with computers?? GA (2, Mike Berro) John, are you talking about image recognition? (2,John/TCR) Mike, it could start more simple than that... (2,Rick/SYSOP) (John, you and Mike have the floor, chat away) (2,John/TCR) If we could get some kind of info transmitted about what's going... on that the Amiga could understand/retrieve. Is that possible? (2,Rick/SYSOP) John, like the data in the vertical blanking interval now? (2, Mike Berro) Like on the SAP channel? It'd take a big push to get a standard going! ga (2,John/TCR) Yes, like how do they do 'closed captioning' GA (2,Rick/SYSOP) Mike> In other words, there's a CHANCE, but someone would have to see a market, right? (MIke Berro) Rick, yes, a BIG market 8).... (2,John/TCR) Rick, how many TV's are out there? I see that market, just lack the know-how. (2,William Volk(Aegis)) Over 1 Million Cam/Corders sold last year. (2,Rick/SYSOP) John, it's more than that: how many people have a TV and an Amiga and a whatever... (Mike Berroe) See what HDTV is up against. ga (2,Rick/SYSOP) AND want to tie it all together? Also, there is a project underway SmartHouse... that will be targeting some of that. (2,joanne bandlow) get hold of the Harold Ennes Television Broadcasting series, Howard W. Sams (Mike Berro) John, contact SMPTE, they have great books as well. (2,John/TCR) Mike/BCS, how much info can be transmitted during V-Blank? ... (2,Rick/SYSOP) Mike, Guess: Society of Movie Producers and Television Engineers? 8) (2,John/TCR) Mike, do you have an address or phone number? (818) 362-6031 (2,John/TCR) Mike, does it take the form of bytes? or waveforms? (pardon my knowldege... (2,David McCutchen) Question... will ray tracing ever be practical with amimation on the Amiga ?? (2,Rick/SYSOP) David> REAL TIME RAY TRACING??? (2,David McCutchen) no, with video, without the several hour drawing time.. or just a function of complkex math? (2,Mike Schulte) John, VBI Data takes the form of a serial bit stream with start & stop bits. Usually white is a one and black is a zero... (2,Rick/SYSOP) David> Oh, single-frame recording is okay, then? (2,David McCutchen) rick-> with the advent of affordable home controillers, yes. (2,Rick/SYSOP) David> Okay, that's more possible. The folks that did MandFXP could prolly do one that's pretty fast (relatively speaking) (2,David McCutchen) Rick-> I am a REAL novice at this.. what/whos mandFP (2,Mike Schulte) Closed captioning is two bytes per frame on line 21. John, with Live! and a genlock and some homebrew software a cc decoder should be possible. A teletext decoder might also be possible, but the data rate is higher.... (2,John/TCR) Teletext? (2,Mike Schulte) CC is very noise immune because of the low data rate . (2,Mike Schulte) John, Teletext as in the full pages sent by WTBS and some others. (2,John/TCR) Mike, they send a full page of text? describing the next frame? (2,Mike Schulte) John, no, news, sports, weather etc. (2,David McCutchen) Are there any single frame controllers designed to work with home or lower cost professional VCR's ?? For the interested novice?? Seems the software and hardware is there but aimed at the professional market primarily, it that a semi-accurate assumption?? (2,John/TCR) David, of course there are always things like Genlock, Deluxe Video, etc. (18,David McCutchen) Mike-> Any good Amiga video user groups/sigs in LA area (San Diego here)