Experiences with Video Framer/Video Creator ?

[Brad Gianulis]

In article <1991Apr23.032930.5814 at gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> topix at gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (R. Munroe) writes:
>
>I'm sure this has probably been discussed in this group before so excuse me
>if I'm being redundant if I'm being redundant.  I'd like to hear from
>anyone who has used or is currently using either the Video Framer or Video 
>Creator products from SGI.  The most important issue is the quality of 
>video output.  We are Wavefront users currently outputting our animation
>through 1) a minivas controlling a BVH 2000 (for encoded output) and 
>2) a minivas controlling a BVW 75 for component output.  For the BVH 2000,
>our signal is encoded through a Cox encoder.  Will the Framer or Creator give
>us worse, equal, or better quality than we currently have?
>
>Thanks for any and all responses
>
>Bob Munroe
>Internet: topix at utcs.utoronto.ca
>AppleLink: CDA0695
>CompuServe: 71160,3455
>Voice: 416.971.7711

We've got a VideoCreator and have been getting poor quality ever since we
turned it on. What is poor quality? That's the main problem. There doesn't
seem to be a language out there (at least not in the computer graphicist's
world) for describing video artifacts. I'm sure videographer's can describe
it all very well. We've been getting this "ghosting" or "echoing" or "looping"
or whatever you call it, where it looks like there is a duplication of the
video signal shifted to the right about 10 pixels and fainter. We've also had
about three weeks of hotline trouble-shooting with no luck. This resulted in
an FE replacing the whole unit as a test with no luck, yet. Is this the
expected quality? Does anyone out there have a VC that gives better quality
than this?

As far as the full screen capability goes, that's great (of course you have to
count on your 1-pixel-wide lines to fade because of the scan conversion - boost
it up to 2 pixels, and its fine). The one problem we did not anticipate is the
slowness of sending images thru the SCSI port. Because we are now able to
record the full screen in real-time, we HAVE to record the FULL screen in
real-time. You cannot set the screen to an uncompressed format (not-scan
converted, 640x486 NTSC size) the way we could before with our old Lyon Lamb
setup. This means you have to send NTSC size images through the SCSI, which
takes a few seconds longer for each frame. No big deal, right? It is when
you're sending thousands of frames for an animation.

We don't have the V-lan interface yet, its on order. We're still using our
Lyon Lamb to do the tape controlling.

Brad Gianulis, Interactive Computer Graphics Lab
Princeton University