video input?

[Ken Ray]

On 9/28/04 3:27 PM, "malte.brill at t-online.de" <malte.brill at t-online.de>
wrote:

> Hi Ken,
> 
> I cant speak for the Win world, but on a Mac it works like a charm.
> Although I havent tested it in 2.5 yet.

Cool.
> 
>> 3) Do you use onboard video input or a dedicated video input card?
> 
> Users of my shareware app. uGrabIt use it with different setups.
> Videocards, Firewire and iSight, Firewire and Camcorders, USB Webcams.
> It works very stable if the computer is fast enough (600 MHz +)

Well this is for a dedicated turnkey solution, so we'll have whatever
hardware we need (dual processor G5 with the best video card, etc.).
 
>> 4) If I said the video needed to display at 1067 x 600 resolution, what
>> comments would you have about how the video would play out?
> 
> If you can avoid grabbing at this resolution dont do it. :-)
>  The external will grab at the specified resolution, but the video will
> be distorted if the hardware is meant for another aspect ratio.

Interesting... I didn't know that.
> Also If
> your videocard allows only 800*600 (for example) maximum resolution, the
> external needs to interpolate the "missing" pixels and your video
> footage will become blurred and or  overlapped with artefacts. You might
> also lose some frames while grabbing. If you need live footage (preview
> mode) it might work, but if you can grab videos on the HD before showing
> it, I guess scaleing a player object is a better approach.

As I mentioned to Troy, this isn't really for capture but just for display
purposes - we want to have an MC app that displays what a camera is
currently pointed to... it doesn't have to capture it to disk, so that might
eliminate some of the overhead.

> Just my 2 cents,

Thanks, Malte!

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com