[rescue] Sun 711

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 11:06:34PM -0500, Shawn Wallbridge wrote:
> I don't see anything from Sun that does 2000x???? resolution, but I haven't
> looked too hard. I think I will have a hard time selling it unless I can
> prove it will work before we spend $6k.

The XVR-100 does 1920, which is 128 pixels off width wise.  But, assuming 
you are using the 16:9 aspect ration, it has 48 pixels more height.  But
also note that this is at a 75hz refresh rate.  If this were an SGI, I'd
bet that the resolution could be cranked to what you need, in exchange for
lowering the refresh rate.  For starters, you really want to use either 48hz
or 72hz.  I'd recommend calling Sun and finding out if their cards can be
tweaked in software to do what you need.  

Also, the Expert3D looks pretty much the same (ignoring 3D performance, of
course), except it appears to want a PCI slot instead of using UPA. That 
might be a problem.  The Expert3D-Lite also looks like a possibility, but
with it you would probably be forced down to 48hz.

Moving down the list, the Elite3D comes no where near close.

The creator3d could do the job, but it also would certainly have to be 48hz,
and it would also have to be single buffered, which could be a pain.

But again, why not just call Sun and see what they have to say?
 
> I was thinking we could write our own playback interface, how hard could it
> be?

It depends.  You don't want to open each file and close it while playing
I would think, but that would be a good place to start.  Assuming it
doesn't work, a possible next step would be to open all the files at
once, and keep them open the whole time.  That would save on all those
extra open and close calls, and might be good enough.

My video playback experience is a) all vaguely in the broadcast range, and
b) consists of either using an API for QT, AVI, or MPG (for a bit I was
fiddling with an idea for using colored polys for accelerated video scaling
and playback on non texturing SGIs), or loading all the frames to memory
first.  This is to say that I'm venturing out into areas that I can only
draw from what I've read rather than what I've done.
 
> No Fusion will do all the LUT stuff (from what I understand of it).

In other words, Fusion is going to do a rendering pass to see what it would
look like on film.  While it is doing that, could you have it spit a 
quicktime file to the playback machine, or is that out of the question?

I ask because while writing your own player is possible, being able to use
an existing video library would make life easier for you.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd