Vidi-Amiga Video Fram Gabber manual
Contents
1. ROMBO SUBJECT PAGE INTRODUC THON ccrann E E 1 Gelling Slane oan ce th a T 2 GUIDED TOUR eae ocse sees TE 3 Grabbing Frames sc ceion biiseteracnauryitin 8 St auleonecietes 3 HELD Frames and the Palette Editor oo ee 4 Saving and Loading cccccccccecesecestceesseccssecssee ceeseeesseeess 4 Cut Put and Clipboards oo cece ceescesssecveee sossersseseess 5 Window Grabbing ccccesthadaninesan alee atin 6 REFERENCE SECTION PROJECT MENU ecne a seskues 6 NEW ennaa nae ae aA a e aa 6 Eoad raaa a ce Yat test E ees a A 6 A On Fate ahaa et at er ne a E A 6 eTe Aee e A ETE TO E EOE E EIE OA EE 6 SAUS r a r a a a tuinteuadaten 7 DOIIE nerne Ta AET a AN 7 ONE a aasar a aa a a E Mette 7 OPTIONS MENU cei ee E N 7 aD ea a a A AE A T 7 Reread iea E EE i 7 Fastor aese AA uate eatecea hit 8 ANIMA oia e a E EE E aa hoe Sees 8 Carousel esa aa A N 8 VOW os E EE E SEN E E EAE A AAN cena CA 8 Frame SO bernua a E A 8 E T SARAT EE AN AE ET A OITA tn 8 PU it hee a a N a a a E N 9 Quanti Zo iii aeae E a A a ata 9 CGA E E E AI TEE E A ENE E E A 9 Clear FREE forerc cela tomineheie r ERT TA 9 mitalien a a els 9 SETTINGS MENU vacnr a e a ai 9 CNPC AEG sisson caress e A E wee a shat E 9 WSO CHO ec cosets ev nies cata N a Reweap A 10 TICLE AET a ene E A RRP E E ESE EEE Pe 10 A toadvant e sosro er AE ANTA 10 OnO FOME aan A T SrA 11 SOtWINGOW crass kos eere aneura TA steteersouss 11 Move Window sssesseessessessecsecererseos2. Frame status Carousel C Similar to Animate except HELD frames are shown and Interrupts do not have any effect is also available on the Panel See Animate Panel Carousel delay and Frame status View space This option lets you see the entire frame without menu or Panel bars Clicking on the picture area has the same effect Fr l F Up to sixteen frames are shown in miniature if more are available arrows in the corner of the screen may be clicked to move the display When choosing a frame a box is drawn around the frame and its palette is displayed you may select it by clicking once See Panel Frame number Cut X a Allows you to define an area of a frame for use with Put note that this area remains defined until another is selected even if the frame changes see Settings Set window for details on defining a window If a Clipboard is currently in use VidiGrab will automatically jump to the CLIP frame allowing you to position the clipping As with Put its location and size are then stored internally It is not normally useful to overlap clippings If the current frame is the clipboard then Cut allows you to select a clipping to be deleted Also see Put Clear Settings Clipboard and Use clipbd Used in conjunction with Cut areas may be copied between frames if a clipboard is in use you must first select a clipping to copy When not using the clipboard take care not to overwrite the Cut area since
3. ahead eg saving over an existing file or clearing all the frames Good luck Sok TAE RRON GR N es Wek SOs ao ged A RAER New Every frame is cleared given the default palette and made FREE If a clipboard is assigned it will be cleared but retains its CLIP status You may prefer to use Clear or Clear FREE from the Options menu Load L Upon selecting Load a File Requester appears in the Workbench screen after selecting a valid filename and VidiGrab will attempt to load an IFF picture with accompanying palette into the next FREE frame The frame is made HELD upon loading successfully and its palette is matched with an existing one where possible Also see Save Save as and Delete Operation of the File Requester is straightforward the scroll bar or arrows at the right move through the current directory Clicking on a filename will copy it into the File gadget double clicking selects a file and exits the Requester You may change directory by clicking on the Parent gadget or a directory name Clicking over the Drawer or File string gadget allows you to type a name directly from the keyboard RETURN redisplays the directory or exits the Requester with the given filename Clicking the right mouse button or the Drives gadget displays a list of logical device names which may be selected To cancel the operation click on CANCEL or the close window gadget OK will exit the Requester with the selected filename Save T
4. and Clear This option defines what happens if there is a CLIP frame and Cut or Put operations are taking place When Use clipbd is ON Cut will switch to the clipboard frame and Put will allow selection of a clipping When OFF the clipboard information is not lost but Cut and Put will behave as if there were no clipboard ie copy directly See also Clipboard Options Cut and Put Set grid Allows you to select an imaginary grid size which all windows corners are snapped to The lines may be on character 8x8 pixels quarter screen or sixteenth screen boundaries The grid is used by Set window Move window and Options Cut or Put operations rid on Switch the use of the grid temporarily OFF or ON you may use the key shortcut even while actually performing a window operation See above for more details Coordinates Y When ON window operations will display the window start coordinates or dimensions in the bottom left corner of the screen The key shortcut may be used during the positioning or sizing of a window Set interr The next HELD frame will be used to interrupt any Grab or Animate operations at regular intervals You may define the interval between each interrupt and the duration for which the frame should be displayed A value of zero for either of these settitgs is taken to mean the current Grab or Animate delay Also see Interr on Options Grab and Animate interr on I This switches the Interrupts featu
5. is ignored Select EXIT or press any key to return to the main Panel THE PANEL The panel displays various settings associated with menu items as well as duplicates of some commands In general the command is above and the setting underneath The commands Grab Win Cut Put Anim Caro Frame Stat and Pal are identical to their menu counterparts Win is equivalent to Set window There follows a description of the various settings and their names progressing from left to right Grab delay This represents the delay between each frame grabbed and may be between 2 and 99 50ths of a second but due to limitations of the Amiga parallel port frames cannot be read back much faster than 15 50ths seconds Selecting a lower setting than this will give no further speed increase See Options Grab and Fast grab Bri This is the software brightness control which varies from 0 thru 7 may also be changed while grabbing frames The brightness setting only takes effect when a frame is Grabbed it will not alter the picture after it is in memory Clicking over Bri restores the default of 4 See Options Grab and Fast grab Window type T This may be OFF grab whole screen INS grab inside window or OUT grab outside window and only takes effect when using one of the Grab options See Options Grab Re read Fast grab Settings Set window and Move window Animate delay The delay between each frame in Animate note that it takes at least
6. 1 Fax 0506 414634 Clipboard Clipping Device Directory Frame Grab IFF Interrupts Logical Device Menu Palette Panel Parallel Port Screen Window PPENDIX E GL ARY A VidiGrab frame that has been assigned CLIP status and is used to store portions of pictures An item held in the Clipboard A Logical Device Files on disk are grouped within directories Each picture in VidiGrab is called a Frame you may have many Frames in memory simultaneously but usually only one is visible on the Screen The action of taking a Video Frame and digitizing it in hardware into a form readable by the Amiga Frames are always grabbed 320 pixels wide in 16 shades Interchange File Format is a file type used by many Amiga packages it may store picture and palette data VidiGrab allows you to define an interrupt frame with which to periodically interrupt Grab or Animate operations May be a peripheral such as a disk drive like DFO printer PRN or a pathname such as DEVS You may write to each logical device in a similar manner The pull down menus at the top of the screen which are accessed by holding the right mouse button down and releasing over the desired item A collection of colours used to display a Screen in VidiGrab each Frame may have its own palette and all palettes may be edited The bar at the bottom of the VidiGrab Screen may be clicked on to select options or change settings The connect
7. 2 50ths of a second to display each frame Also see Grab delay and Options Animate 12 As Animate delay except sets the delay for the Carousel Whilst Animate is usually used for a rapid sequence of frames the Carousel is more often a utilised for slower picture gallery effect See Options Carousel Frame number 0 1 F1 10 Allows you to change the current frame number keys 1 9 0 for 10 and F1 10 for frames 11 20 may also be used Also see Options Frame sel Frame status H You may set each frame s status to be FREE HELD or CLIP FREE frames are used for Grab with Autoadvance and Animate whilst HELD frames are used in the Carousel and are not overwritten unless specifically requested See Options Grab Animate Carousel and Settings Clipboard Fiame palette The palette number of the current frame is shown here See Settings Palette for more details 13 APPENDIX A INSTALLING VIDI ON A HARD DISK You will need to copy the VidiGrab and VidiGrab info files into an appropriate drawer which may be done from Workbench by dragging the icon to its new home VidiGrab also needs certain libraries which may be found in the LIBS directory arp library vidi library mathieeedoubbas library and mathieeedoubtrans library To copy a file from the CLI type COPY Vidi Amiga libs name TO DHO libs RETURN name being the name of the file DHO is the name of the hard drive You may find that the last two library files are al
8. ab in detail can be found towards the back of the manual this is the place to check up if you are having a problem or are not too sure how a particular feature operates There is also a Glossary and a Quick Reference chart showing each option available from the menu panel and keyboard If you are unfamiliar with the operation of the Amiga then a look at your User See RRR SOUR ROE F Be 3 A yee l zee DEA WELS TR r EERTECO EAE PR Manual will do no harm terms such as double click drag requester and gadget are used throughout this manual so it may help to know what they actually mean Calling up a menu is done in the normal Amiga way by holding down the right mouse button moving up to the required menu item and releasing the button We hope that Vidi Amiga will open up experimentation in the field of computer graphics and art to a much wider audience It is also ideally suited to the production of professional video and presentation applications If you have developed programs or videos with Vidi or have any comments suggestions or special requirements from the package we would be most interested to hear from you user teedback is always of value Amiga development is continuing and from time to time software upgrades will be available and we hope to incorporate your ideas l ED Your Vidi Amiga system consists of Vidi Amiga interface the black box Phono phono video cable Vidi Amiga software on a 3 5 disk Registrati
9. aste into the frame Although you may only have one Clipboard at a time it can contain up to 40 non overlapping clippings If Cut or Put is selected from the Clipboard frame itself ie the frame has the status of CLIP they allow you to delete or copy a clipping respectively If want to retain all clip information but do normal Cut and Puts for a while switch the Use clipbd setting OFF Cut and Put will behave as if there were no clipboard until this is switched back ON To get rid of the clipboard entirely use the Clipboard option again doing this will lose all clip information but the screen remains intact Clipboards may also be Loaded and Saved with the clip information being saved in a separate clip file Window grabbing To achteve more complex animations you may Grab into a window The Grab window is defined in a similar way to Cutting from a frame but selecting Set window or Win There are two types of windows INSide and OUTside as well as the default OFF these are displayed under Win on the panel When a window is selected Grab only updates parts of a frame leaving the remainder as it is Try grabbing different window animations with Autoadvance ON some interesting effects can be created Well that about wraps it up it will probably take you a while to understand each option fully but don t be afraid to experiment If you accidentally ask the program to do something radical it will check to see if you are sure before going
10. ed up with the Vidi disk To avoid any problems with disk corruption the first time you load the Vidi software please do the following select Quit from the VidiGrab Project menu and answer Yes to the prompt Now type DISKCOPY DFO TO DFO RETURN from the CLI you may use TO DF1 if you have more than one drive Follow the prompts until the disk is backed up Now reboot the software from your backup and keep the original safe NEVER use the original disk unless you are backing it up and DON T save any files on it If you have any problems with the disk supplied eg it does not load the VidiGrab program please contact Rombo direct on 0506 414631 The latest information on Vidi Amiga can be found in a ReadMe file in the Vidi drawer type MORE README RETURN from the CLI or double click over the ReadMe icon from Workbench GUIDED TOUR By this time you should have connected up your system made a backup re booted VidiGrab and are probably wondering what it can actually do The aim of this section is to guide you through most bits of VidiGrab without going into too much detail you can always check the Reference section for more information Grabbing frames We ll start by grabbing a sequence of frames move the mouse pointer over the word Grab at the left hand side of the Panel bar Clicking the left mouse button once should start the grab if not check that your video source is running and properly connected to the interface Use le
11. esrsasessesssossserore seseasceees 11 Pallotto e E A doeeies 11 THE PANE E roa a E Seance 12 Grab dalare odian ier cccann eee eee 12 ESF KARAPE EPEE EA EEA E AO N E 12 WIDGOW VPO errea NRE 12 ANIMAE COI AY iieiea a a E N E 12 Carousel delay sesesesessseresssessessssoossssoossusoreresseesseesssreese 13 Frame numba rorya a N EA 13 Frame stals cunan a ceetenegiels 13 Frame paltoto cic icc ccte ss sess eet a eae tesa ache 13 APPENDICES A Installing VIDI on a Hard DISK ee eeseeeeee cesesseeees 14 B Technical SpecifiCation cccccsssseeceessreeee cosseeseeens 14 C User Hardware ACjuStMents ccssscsseseceee sorses 15 D Technical SUppott esesessssessesossessereseseresesssssso dries 15 E GIOSS AV aare nea EE EEE 16 F VidiGrab Quick Reference uessesesseersessresescoseressse eessseeress 17 VIDI AMIGA Video Grabber for AMIGA computers Version 1 c 1989 ROMBO Productions 6 Fairbairn Rd Livingston EH54 6TS Tel 0506 414631 Credits Hardware Colin Faulkner Software Keith Wilson BASAAR eh eaS SRNA AA etre VIDI AMIGA USER MANUAL August 1989 by Keith Wilson ROMBO INTRODUCTION VIDI AMIGA is a video frame grabber capable of digitising video frames into your Amiga computer This means that a variety of video sources can be used such as a camera video recorder another computer or even live TV a still picture is not needed The Amiga screen is updated in approximately a quarter of a sec
12. ft right cursor keys to adjust the brightness and up down to shift the frame To halt the grab press any other key or click the mouse A succession of frames will have been grabbed into memory clicking on Fram shows a selection of frames in miniature click on one to select it The number beneath Fram on the panel is the current frame being displayed which may be changed by clicking over the arrows at either side To replay these frames you should select Anim to cycle through the frames until stopped by pressing a key or clicking the mouse You ll notice that frames are replayed much faster than they are grabbed so you can slow them down by changing the value under Anim on the panel with the nudge arrows The VidiGrab software has several ways of selecting various options clicking on the Panel or changing a value with the nudge arrows are two ways VidiGrab also has menus which are obtained by holding down the right mouse button moving to the top of the screen then down to the desired option When the mouse button is released the option under the pointer is chosen or switched ON or OFF for some items on the Settings menu Most options have a key shortcut which is displayed in the menu You may use any method of selection as many features are available from the panel menu and keyboard If you re only interested in grabbing one frame try changing the Autoadvance and One frame settings from the menu bar Autoadvance OFF grabs into the curre
13. he current frame along with its palette is saved to disk under its existing name if the frame has no name then an error is reported use Save as instead After saving a frame VidiGrab will move to the next frame with the same status this is to make saving sequences slightly easier Files saved are standard IFF See also Save as Load and Delete Save as S This option is similar to Save except that you are prompted with the File Requester before saving see Load for more details Note that even if you decide not to save the frame its title will be updated you may want to use this as a way of naming frames See also Save Load and Delete A copyright message is displayed along with the amount of free memory number of frames and how many have FREE status Clicking Stat on the Panel also gives this display See Panel Frame status Del Del Allows you to delete files on disk with the File Requester see Load for details will keep prompting for filenames until CANCEL is selected NOTE files which are deleted cannot be recovered Quit Q After prompting to ensure that you really mean it Quit will exit VidiGrab returning all allocated memory to the system NOTE unless first saved to disk all frames are lost forever Grab G Starts grabbing video frames also available from the Panel If Autoadvance is ON grabbing commences from the next FREE frame and if One frame has been selected only a single frame is grabbed You
14. may set the delay between each grab and Interrupts may occur Brightness is adjusted with the left and right cursor keys Vertical frame offset with up and down Interrupts may be switched ON or OFF with pressing any other key or clicking the mouse will halt the Grab If a grab window is selected only a portion of the frame will be updated When grabbing a window with Autoadvance you will see the original frames animating at the same time which may be used to create some excellent multi window animations Also see Re read Fast grab Animate Settings Set interr Interr on Autoadvance One frame and Set window Panel Grab delay Bri Window type Frame status in fact most of the rest of this manual Re read R The frame currently stored in the interface is copied into a FREE frame the following FREE frame if Autoadvance is ON Also see Grab Fast grab Settings Autoadvance and One frame fea aR Fast grab Z This option is only available when Autoadvance and Grab window are OFF Is similar to Grab but frames are displayed in only 4 shades until the grab is halted the interface will then be Re read in the full 16 shades Also see Grab Re read and Settings Autoadvance Animate A FREE frames are shown in a continuous loop and Interrupts will occur if turned ON by pressing You may set the delay between each frame from the panel See also Grab Carousel Settings Set interr Interr on and Panel Animate delay
15. n EXIT or press any key to return to the main panel Saving and Loading You will at some stage want to save frames to disk and this is achieved with the Save as menu option Insert a disk with at least 40K free space select Save as and press the right mouse button then click on the correct drive name only save to RAM disk if you are sure there s plenty of room Directories are entered by clicking on their name and the File gadget should be used to type in a filename Click OK or CANCEL to exit The Load and Delete options work in a similar way Try various combinations of these on a blank disk with some unimportant pictures to familiarise yourself with these options Note that frame titles are remembered and can be seen in the Frame select display you can use Save to save a frame under its existing name Cut Put and Clipboards Frame editing is performed with Cut and Put use Cut to click and drag out an appropriately sized window and Put to copy this window to another part of the frame or another frame Note that if you overwrite the Cut area any subsequent Put will use the new window even if the entire frame has changed For more advanced editing a Clipboard may be allocated for storing several clippings this is done via the Clipboard option in the Settings menu lf a Clipboard is allocated and in use a Cut from another frame will flip to the Clipboard and allow you to place the clipping and Put allows selection of a clipping to p
16. nt frame rather than successive frames One frame only grabs a single frame When Autoadvance is OFF you may also select Fast grab to catch the right moment reduce the Grab delay beneath Grab on the panel to ensure maximum speed Re read will merely show the last frame grabbed HELD frames and the Palette Editor Once you are happy with a frame it is a good idea to make it HELD by clicking underneath Stat or pressing H this ensures that it cannot be overwritten unless specifically requested HELD frames may be shown using the Carousel which has its own delay and operates in a similar manner to Animate Frames are always grabbed in 16 shades and by default these are shown as grey but by changing the frame palette number underneath Pal on the panel you can display the frame in various colours Clicking on Pal itself gives you access to the Palette editor Choose a palette that you don t like much and select ink 8 by clicking on its coloured box Change the ink s Red Green and Blue content to give the desired colour To fill in the other colours in the palette click on ink 8 and while holding down the mouse button drag the pointer over to ink O and release All the colours in between will have been smoothed automatically do the same from 8 to 15 and you have a new palette Simple It is worth experimenting with colour smoothing to get a feel for it eg you may create palettes which go from black through red and yellow to white Click o
17. on Move window Options Grab and Panel Window type Move window M This allows repositioning of the Grab window without changing its size Again you may abandon using ESC toggle the Grid with or Coordinates with Y The window outline will be shown on screen and you can position it with the mouse clicking once will store the new position As with Set window the Window type is altered Palette Allows editing of the shades used to display frames A new Panel appears along with boxes showing the sixteen colours in the current palette Note palettes 1 thru 9 are global ie identical for each frame changing these will alter all frames with that palette with palette 1 being the default palette Palette 0 however is specific to each frame and editing will not affect other frames The current ink may be changed by selecting a coloured box or a point on the picture the colour of the pixel under the pointer will be used To actually change an ink s colour you must adjust the Red Green or Blue content of that ink in a similar way to adjusting values on the main Panel A smooth transition between 11 colours can be achieved by setting the colour of the first and last inks clicking upon the first and dragging to the last All inks inbetween will be smoothed Palettes can be Loaded or Saved by clicking on the relevant box Note that if you Load a picture file from the palette editor only its palette will be used the picture itself
18. on card This manual To use Vidi Amiga you will also need the following An Amiga computer with at least 512K of memory A video source may be a VCR video camera etc Suitable cable to Vidi hardware if not phono phono If using Amiga 1000 a standard F F RS 232 gender changer Connect Vidi Amiga to the parallel port at the back of your Amiga the 23pin D plug is used to power the interface and must be plugged into the second drive port If care is taken Vidi may be connected or disconnected while the computer is on but this must be done at your own risk the worst that can happen is a machine reset Now connect a suitable video source to the phono connector on the interface All video recorders have some form of Video Out via a Phono BNC or SCART connector and an appropriate cable or adaptor may be bought from an electrical supplier Rombo is able to supply a variety of adaptors To load the VidiGrab software reset your Amiga and insert the supplied disk in drive zero the software will load automatically NOTE This process does not load Workbench and upon quitting VidiGrab you will be presented with a CLI type R yi sue ng Mi EF ue fhe Lae ue vided Sis N CRE LOADWB RETURN ENDCLI RETURN to enter the normal Workbench environment or you may type VIDIGRAB RETURN to re load the program VidiGrab can be loaded from Workbench by double clicking on its icon which can be found in the Vidi drawer but this only works if you boot
19. ond allowing the video source to be viewed without the need for a separate monitor This also allows you to grab moving sequences and create stunning multi window animations by digitising incoming pictures over existing animations with great ease All available memory in the Amiga is reserved for multiple framestores which are used to store sequences of pictures or single frames which may be HELD to avoid being overwritten On a 1Mb Amiga 15 framestores are possible and a further 25 frames per megabyte after this that s over 90 pictures on a 4Mb machine Editing between frames is achieved by use of the Cut and Put commands with the option of having an intermediate Clipboard frame which is used to store multiple clippings for later use Full palette control is given over each frame and a palette editor allows palettes to be defined loaded and saved The VidiGrab software handles standard IFF files to ensure compatibility with all Amiga art and graphics packages FINDING YOUR WAY AROUND THE MANUAL First read the Getting Started section on how to connect up your Vidi Amiga and load the software The software has been designed to be as intuitive as possible so feel free to play about with it and explore the various options To take full advantage of Vidi Amiga however it is probably a good idea to follow the Guided Tour at some stage in order to familiarise yourself with the entire package A Reference section describing every feature of VidiGr
20. ons Initialize Settings Interr on Settings Set interr Project Load Settings Palette Options Put Options Re read Options Quantize Project Quit Settings Palette Project Save as Settings Palette Project Status Options Grab Options View lt gt O n a 9 F 1 10 zn 2 H4HEZSNO0 L P R Q S H is space signifies value displayed underneath specified option choose this option after selecting menu item Anim Anim Caro Caro Cut Fram Pal Fram Stat Bri Grab Grab Win Win Load Put Pal Save Stat his was brought to you from the archives of http retro commodore eu
21. or at the back of the Amiga into which the Vidi interface or a Centronics printer is plugged VidiGrab opens its own screen which is used for all operations except the File Requester which is displayed on the Workbench screen In VidiGrab this is a rectangular area of the screen which may be Grabbed into or copied to another Frame 16 Function Animate delay Animate FREE frames Autoadvance ON OFF Carousel delay Carousel HELD frames Clear all frames Clear current frame Clear FREE frames Clipboard ON OFF Clipboard usage Coordinates ON OFF Cut window Delete disk files Fram number Frame palette Frame select Frame status Grab brightness Grab delay Grab frames Grab one frame Grab quickly Grab window size Grab window position Grab window type Grid ON OFF Grid size Initialize Vidi Interrupts ON OFF Interrupt settings Load frame Load palette Put window clipping Re read interface Quantize frame Quit VidiGrab Palette editor Save frame Save palette Status amp credits Vertical frame offset View entire frame 17 Menu Item Options Animate Settings Autoadvance Options Carousel Project New Options Clear Options Clear FREE Settings Clipboard Settings Use clipbd Settings Coordinates Options Cut Project Delete Options Frame sel Options Grab Settings One frame Options Fast grab Settings Set window Settings Move window Settings Grid on Settings Set gnd Opti
22. re ON or OFF see Set interr Autoadvance V Takes effect when Grabbing a series of frames If Autoadvance is ON the frame number will become that of the following FREE frame before each Grab this allows you to later Animate a series of frames When Autoadvance is OFF the current frame is used for any Grab operation Note that Fast grab is only available 10 with Autoadvance OFF See also One frame Options Grab Re read and Fast grab One frame Q When ON Grab operations will grab only a single frame and return to the Panel display the default is continuously grab frames until halted If used in conjunction with Autoadvance this feature allows stop frame animation by allowing preparation of the picture between frames Also see Autoadvance Options Grab Re read and Fast grab Set window W Allows an area of the screen to be used for grabbing into You may then Grab either inside or outside this window area To set a window click on the top left corner and drag the pointer down to the right until the desired size is set then release the mouse button You may abandon a window by pressing the ESC key in which case the window will remain unchanged Coordinates and the Grid may be switched ON or OFF while defining the window by pressing Y or respectively Attet defining the Grab window the Window type on the Panel is automatically set to INSide unless you have already selected OUTside Also see Coordinates Set grid Grid
23. ready on your hard disk in which case you needn t copy them check by using DIR DHO libs Once all these files are copied successfully you should be able to run VidiGrab by clicking on its icon held in the hard disk APPENDIX B TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION Hardware Vidi Amiga requires a 1v composite video signal and samples to 4 bit resolution at approx 6MHz using a flash A D converter A complete frame is grabbed to a high speed internal frame store in 20 milliseconds ie a single video frame Hardware brightness and contrast controls set the floor and width of the digitised data The standard unit is fitted with 32K of RAM giving over 200 lines of 320 pixels per line in 16 shades or grey level This is factory upgradable to 40K giving 256 lines Software Grabs moving pictures into multiple framestores Animation at up to 25 frames per second Provision for stop frame animation Grab to windows with multi window animation Saves and loads IFF picture and palette files Software brightness control Cut and paste editing between frames Optional clipboard facility Interrupt feature for displays and demonstrations Palette editor with colour smoothing Works with interlaced or free running sync 14 ie Ht Mi hi ae ie i hl lh aa E gee APPENDIX C USER HARDWARE ADJUSTMENTS A good quality video signal contains a vast amount of information it comprises signals of over 5Mhz with h
24. there is no intermediate buffer Placing the clipping is similar to the operation of Settings Move window Selecting Put on the CLIP frame will duplicate the selected clipping Also see Cut Settings Clipboard and Use clipbd Quantize Copies a frame into the following FREE frame and if requested reduces it to the number of shades requested 2 4 or 8 Clear Clears the current frame gives it the default palette and FREEs it NOTE Cleared frames cannot be recovered so be careful Also see Clear FREE and Project New Char FREE Clears all FREE frames NOTE these frames will be lost completely there are no key shortcuts to any of the clear operations to prevent them being selected by accident Also see Clear and Project New Initialize Resets the Vidi hardware and informs you of the video signal type connected You MUST select this option when you swap video signals or the interface is removed and re connected to allow use of the parallel port for example otherwise frames may not be Grabbed correctly or the display may jitter An Initialize is performed automatically when you load VidiGrab See also Grab Re read and Fast grab SETTINGS MENU Clipboard If there is no clipboard the current frame is Cleared and given CLIP status otherwise the existing clipboard will be switched off In this case although the frame data is retained all clip information is lost and unrecoverable Also see Use clipbd Options Cut Put
25. undreds of different intensity levels Vidi Amiga has to reduce this to a screen of 64000 pixels each having only one of 16 intensity levels don t expect perfect results VIDFAMIGA 23h Oi isi a tin All video signals are equal but some are more equal than others to help overcome these variations Vidi Amiga has the following adjustments available SCAN WIDTH This alters the digitising frequency com pressing or expanding the video signal horizontally This is factory set to give the correct aspect ratio when viewed on a standard television screen User adjustable Controls BRIGHTNESS This sets the aoe mean level for the keyboard brightness controls and hence the upper or white level for the digitiser With a BRI value of 4 adjust this to give a good light dark balance on an average picture Scan Width Videol P Brightness Contrast CONTRAST This sets the lower black reference level With this set fully clockwise this is clamped to the incoming black level and all the video signal is digitised To achieve best results on difficult pictures careful adjustment of the BRIGHTNESS and CONTRAST controls may be required APPENDIX D TECHNICAL SUPPORT Contact us If you have any problems suggestions or special requirements Amiga technical support is free from Rombo Rombo Productions Amiga Technical Enquiries 6 Fairbairn Road Kirkton North Livingston EH54 6TS Tel 0506 41463
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