| Kev,
A Word of Warning and a little description of the ROMBO (mod please
modify the title!) VIDI-ST gadgets :-
Vidi ST
Vidi ST allows you to grab 8 (for a �Mb machine) through to 16
frames in Black and White from a video source using phono cables.
You can then play with the pictures, cut and paste, inverse, and
change the colour palette. Changing the colour palette is perhaps
the most versatile of these commands. There is a nice face which
has been captured in B/W and edited with a RED pallete. This gives
the skin tone and 'colour' back into the image. You can play the
frames from 1 to nn (depending how many you have grabbed) in an
animation sequence. This worked quite nicely with a video of my
nephew... from frame 1 he started laughing through to 8, and then
jumped back to frame 1 to start laughing again. Looks good, but
is no real use! To grab, you plug the cable into the VIDI-ST box
and press play on the video. You will now be seeing a B/W version
of the video on your monitor. Press RETURN to start grabbing.
Another press of the key and it will stop. You now have you frames
to play with. These can be saved in NEO or DEGAS type files. In
the package you get the software, a small manual and the device
with video cables.
Vidi Chrome
Vidi Chrome is basically just a new version of the software to grab
colour images from a Video *CAMERA*. Supplied is the software, a
manual and 3 filters, 1 red, 1 blue, and 1 green. I don't quite
know what they expect you to do with the filters - i haven't got a
video camera. Again it has the same features as VIDI-ST but you
have to grab RED or BLUE or GREEN each time. IE to make a colour
picture you first need to grab one frame on Red, Green, and Blue
and then merge them together. As you may understand this means
that you can only work on one frame at a time. You can save
complete colour pictures as NEO, DEGAS, IFF or ART pictures.
Vidi RGB
This little device requires it's own power supply and is inserted
in between the video source and VIDI-ST. It allows you to grab a
split colour frame (red, green or blue) from a video source without
the use of the filters. It's an automatic splitter. It has 2 extra
cables that come out of it. One is on the 9-pin joystick type,
which needs to be plugged into the second joystick port, and it has
a RS232 cable (DB25 pin). This doesn't appear to be used for the ST
version. I understand that it is used for the PC version. It has
1 led on top which turns Red, Green or Orange depending which
colour you are grabbing. Apparantly blue led's are too expensive
to use. You use the Vidi Chrome software to control this device. I
am not sure whether or not the animation features of VIDI-ST work
with colour or not (i don't think they do!). Bear in mind that to
grab Red, Green and Blue and then to merge them, you need a PERFECT
freeze frame video, and can only do 1 frame at a time. This is the
part that i am most disappointed with. I don't have a perfect
freeze frame video so Vidi-Chrome and Vidi-RGB are not very useful
to me at the moment.
Dowling are offering this package at a very low price, but they have
none in stock! ROMBO claim to have stocks start coming in again in a
couple of weeks. I got mine from SILICA who still have it in stock and
it was delivered the next morning while Dowling kept me waiting for a
week before they'd tell me that they would not have any in stock for a
while - now that's Courier service for you! ;-)
I spoke to ROMBO about software upgrades because i want to view a
colour representation on the monitor, but they said there was nothing
being worked on.
I haven't really played with it too much, haven't had the time, but i
will be playing with it again next week. One good point about it is
that they claim it is very easily controlled by other programs. I guess
i'll have to start writing a program to do what i want! Should take
just a few years ;-)
If you have any more questions, i'll be more than glad to reply to them
after all it's about time i started putting notes of use into this
conference! ;-)
Regards,
Lewis.
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