Re: What is this card?

[warnken@nospam@mother.com]

Thanks for the information Mitchell.
 
I have a couple of questions.  I have the AST digitzer and also a card labeled Frame Grabber by Progressive Computer products. They don't look anything alike. Do you know anyting about the FG.  anybody have software for it.  I also have the video overlay card.  All of these are sitting around waiting for me to check out, but no time.  What you've said encourages me to find the time.  It seems to take so much time to read the manuals if lucky enough to have such and then futz with the machines to get thin
gs running.  
 
Sandy
 
>What is an AST Vision card and what does it do?
 
    It was a real-time video frame grabber. You plugged in any NTSC
(composite) video source and you could digitally capture an image
and save it either as raw data or Super-Hi-Res. In the case of the
latter it was 4-bit greyscale or color for the 320 mode, though raw
data images held more color data if you wanted to export it. The
card also went by the name "Visionary GS" and "Vision Plus Enhanced" as it changed company hands.
 
    What was neat (for it's time) was as a real-time capture card, you
could watch the live frames update and appear on your RGB monitor.
Rather like a poor-man's Video Overlay Card for TV-input (poor in the
sense it was greyscales, in a tiny window and skipped a bit I heard).
The ComputerEyes GS by contrast took 6 to 12 seconds just to
process a single scanned frame! It did have the potential ability to
work as a video capture card (capture streaming video and play it
back) but the software was never written. Ron Mercer's Mini-Movies
and DreamWorld's DreamVision Demo are (I think) prototypes of that
software that never was.