Re: Better Broadcast Graphics than VCR Companion?

[crownmi@zap.io.org (Myles Fudge)]

In article <50tsb8$or9@ordeal.cts.com>, Jim Stafford <jamess@cts.com> wrote:
>Since we're on the subject of video cards, this past week-end I was at 
>the local Computer Expo and saw a GS with a Edison or Allison card (the 
>one All Tech sells)

That's the Allison card: Vision Plus Enhanced.

>and a camera hooked up to it!! I didn't know that you 
>could even do that with a GS. The camera was taking pictures of 
everyone 
>that got in front of it. Just like when you go into a store and see 
>yourself on the little tv, I was on the GS monitor!!

Yeah it's neat for the GS to do that.  I've captured pictures from my 
camcorder, VCR, and cable TV with the card.  The accompanying software 
was written to capture 15 fps in real time, to avoid jitters in capture.
However the software can be modified to perform at the cards fullest 
potential: 30 frames per second, 60 fields per second, real-time full 
motion video.  For the GS, that's cool.  The quickest capture mode is 
300x200x16 greyscale.  In fullscreen mode, you can view the digitized 
image in real-time at 15fps... just like watching a 300x200 black and 
white TV without the audio.  In color mode (yes, the card does color, 
too) everything slows down by 3x: red, green, and blue color captures are 
done independently (and transparently) then merged to form the color 
image.  I always thought the color capture was pretty crummy until last
night I viewed one on my living room TV instead of the GS RGB screen.
The greyscale captures look much improved on the TV, too (thanks to the
softening effect the TV adds). 

With Paintworks, you can take several captured images and make a frame to 
frame animation out of them, too.  So you can watch a very brief home-made 
movie on your GS, too, minus the audio... unless we get into the 
Make-Your-Own-Video package (if I recall the name correctly).  The ShowMe 
NDA/Finder Extension does an excellent job of viewing many picture 
formats and can do a fast load and display type of animation, too, with 
unlimited frames.

>He said that ... you could even capture a picture and print it out!!

Oh, yeah.  I have had my best images print out using PMPFax (due to my 
current lack of a high or medium quality printer: the ImageWriter just 
doesn't cut it).  I just load the image into a specific paint program 
then option-print and send the output to my fax machine beside my GS.
It yields pretty decent output.  Of course, you can cut & paste into 
newsletters (or letters to mom), etc.

>Learn somethin' new everyday,

Ain't it great?

-- 
Myles Fudge  (crownmi@io.org)
http://www.io.org/~crownmi/pleasure.html