On Wednesday 15 January 2014 13:06:41 Jon Elson did opine: > On 01/15/2014 02:20 AM, Gene Heskett wrote: > > In a sense it was. Its Achilles heel was that everything in and out > > of it had to go thru acca or accb, then moved to/from the register it > > was to/from. A full machine cycle was several microseconds. But > > despite that, it did manage to get my job done, which was run a tape > > machine with tight timing control, backwards and forwards, doing > > audio and video inserts to lay a new digitally generated academy > > leader on a commercial, and lay the cue tones on audio channel 2 to > > make it work with a Microtime Automatic Station Break machine. All > > dead on the money frame accurate. > > Oh, wow! Years ago, my company (Pico Systems) started out > making > a low-cost controller for animation, using editing VCRs. We > supported > several 3/4" U-Matic machines and industrial 1/2 VCRs, as > well as > the M-series machines that had separate heads for > chrominance and > luminance. Those SURE looked good! > > First, you had to format the tape, which laid down a timing > track > on the audio channel. We had a circuit to generate an 18-bit > time code with CRC. Then, when coming up to the insert point, > it would read the time track until very close, then count off > sync pulses to the exact insert frame, in case the frame of > the insert had an audio dropout. This was pretty hard on the > VCRs as they would sit with the heads spinning and tape > tensioned > for hours, while rocking back and forth through a couple seconds > of tape repeatedly. > > I did it with a Z-80, a UART and a little additional > circuitry for > the time code processing. Overall control was via serial > cable from the computer that was feeding the images to > a frame buffer. > > When I started, Lyon Lamb was the only game in town, > for $14000. Shortly after I got on the market, they lowered > their price to $7K. I sold about 25 of them at $2K, but the > magazine > advertising was eating all the profit. The, VideoMedia came > out with the VideoLan, little $600 boxes that communicated > over 75 Ohm coax. One box connected to your computer, one > to the VCR. So, for $1200, you could control one VCR. For > an additonal $600,, you could control TWO VCRs! Well, > that was so much more flexible, no way would anybody > buy my gizmo, so I quickly pulled the ads. > > Jon
Videolan was yours? I bow in respect, that was great! Some day I will tell a horror story which has nothing to do with videolan other than a $25000 a/b roll editor used it. Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> He who hesitates is sometimes saved. A pen in the hand of this president is far more dangerous than 200 million guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CenturyLink Cloud: The Leader in Enterprise Cloud Services. Learn Why More Businesses Are Choosing CenturyLink Cloud For Critical Workloads, Development Environments & Everything In Between. Get a Quote or Start a Free Trial Today. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=119420431&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
