Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

• • • • • ,
5
1
Gary Whiteley offers
some helpful
advice for
would-be Amiga
DIVers
lion over the last few months, ond hinted
S at some of the ways you con use fonts for
iSIM
video titling. I thought it might be a good
n.deo
to go over the basics of video titling hard-
cware,
what you need, how it's connected together
e Ond what you might achieve with a basic setup.
I
I'll keep it as simple as possible for those of you
with the yearning, but not yet the knowledge, to
'
add graphics and titles to your own videos, such
vat
holiday films, weddings and family events.
e 1 you have an Amiga with its own colour video
goutput
(such as the Amiga 1200) then you olready
ihove
a machine with which you con do simple
vIdling
and graphics to video. You probably realise
ethat
you can use either the RF or video outputs to
n display your Amigo programs on a suitable TV,
ybut
did you know that you can also use them to
orecord
the output from your Amiga to video? The
u
simplest way is to connect the Al200's RE output
to the aerial input on your VCR, and then monitor
a
it via your TV in the usual way whilst you record
l or prepare graphics, though the picture quality
l won't be morvellous.
t
hCROSSOVERS
aAdd
another VCR in place of the Amigo and you
t con copy sections of your production across and
f make an edit from your original video footage,
ocutting
out all the worst ports. If you want to odd a
ntitle
or graphic simply reconnect the Amigo to the
record VCR (the one you're editing onto), use your
t
favourite point or titling software to make your
i
graphics, and then record them. The quality of the
nedits
you'll gel with such a system will be rather
f hit and miss, since there's no way to control the
ooccuracy
of the cuts, so 'glitches are likely to
r occur, but for almost no outlay (provided you can
mgel
your hands on two VCRs, one of which could
a
-
SINGLE CONNECTION
In addition to its overlay functions, the advantage of using a
genlork is that you don't have to keep reconnecting equipment,
since it can output either Amiga graphics, incoming
video, or a combination of both, so if you just want to edit
picture only simply switch the genlock's output to Video
Only.
However, a genii:KJ( still won't cure glitchy edits, since it
affect the way that two (unsynchronised) VCRs relate
,
a,
qect ce
either split second accuracy or perfectly clean edits.
•:Iember h m that you're working on the cheap, so bear this in
leind ow
before you get depressed wondering why your CI000
fcollobled-logether
th
video edit suite can't compare to a E10000
Pro•SVHS or E30000+ litetaCam system.
hi
ec
r h
ws
Titling for
beginners
A A
be a camcorder) and a TV or two (a second TV is
useful for cueing up the playback VCR, though not
totally essential) you can at leost experiment with
video titling from your Amiga.
Incidentally, if your VCR has a composite video
input in addition to the standard RF you'd be better
advised to use it if possible, since the quality
will be better than RE. IF your video has a SCART
connector you can always buy a suitable set of
leads to connect from the Al200's phono video
output to your VCR's SCART socket.
Owners of most other Amigos won't have it so
easy. Inexplicably, for such.° DTV-friendly
machine, most of the other Amigos in circulation
don't have an RF or colour video output, so you'll
have to add one in the form of either a modulator,
genlock or encoder card, depending on your
needs, your budget and the type of Amiga you
have,
Each of these devices connects to the Amiga's
ROB port and convert the Amigo's native RGB
signal to one ot more forms of video signal,
For instance RE, composite video, or SVHS.
Genlocks allow computer graphics to be
'keyed' over background video, enabling text or
graphics to be superimposed directly on top of
video pictures. In simple terms, this means that
wherever the background colour (palette Colour
AMIGA COMPUTING
FEBRUARY 1996
RGB
TV
VCR
GENLOCK
AMIGA
NB - AMIGA MAY REQUIRE MODULATOR OR GENLOCK
TO OBTAIN VIDEO OUTPUT
Two baale oyatoms for amigo Weave Hang and graphics
AMEEMMEIkammailidEMEMEMMII
- a M M
01 occurs, the video image will show through
behind the graphics, though some genlocks permit
other colours to be used os their background key
colour,
Modulators and encoders simply convert RG8 to
video and cannot usually provide any superimposition
or other genlock functions. They are usually
used to take the Amiga's display to a TV or moni•
tor, or to provide a video signol for recording
and/or further manipulation. Note that on encoder
will generally provide a higher quality output than
a modulator, since they are built with video in
mind, rather than TV display.
If you hadn't olready realised it, you'll also
need two VCRs if you want to use a genlack. One
VCR provides playback for the source video, which
in turn is needed to 'genlock' (in other words, synchronise)
the Amigo's display timing to that of the
incoming video signal, while the second VCR is
necessary to record the composited graphics and
source video from the genlock's output.
CONTACT
POINT
You can e-mail Gary Whiteley as
drgaz@cix.compulink.co.uk