[rescue] Rescued O2

[Joshua Boyd]

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 10:15:42PM -0700, Curious George wrote:

> > I don't know that there was every
> > anything that made great use of the hardware.  As I
> > understand it, there were basically three choices for 
> > editing software: the included Movie
> > Editor; Premiere 4.2; and Jaleo O2.  The last program was
> > extremely expensive and I believe it only did uncompressed video. 
> 
> I'd be happy if I could just *reliably* digitize video, etc.

OK.  There are two potential issues.  First, it sounds like you have a
R10k or R12k.  Some of the R10ks were incapable of doing this reliably.  

The second issue is that the O2 is a bit finicky about sync, so people
using non-professional VCRs tended to benefit from using a time base
corrector, which describes most pro quality capture systems of the day.
Actually, that still describes a lot of pro quality captures systems if
the newish gear at work is anything to go by.
 
> > Premiere 4.2 was absolutely terrible.  The included software is
> > what it is, which is to say very basic.
> 
> Yes, that seems to also be a "given".  :<  I note how crappy
> the SunVideo software is, the video software that came with
> my VWS320, etc.  It;s as if they wanted to say "See?!!  You
> *could* do these kind of things!!!" but really didn't want
> to spend much effort ($$$) proving that point!  (cripes, then
> why even bother if you aren't going to exploit the unique
> abilities of your hardware over that of "beige computers")

I think the Irix included software is a cut above those two examples.
 
> > Fow awhile I had dreams of writing my own software to
> > maximize the O2,
> > but of course writing good GUIs is always hard, which is
> > what kept me
> > from getting anywhere.  Now I can see some better starting
> > points (on
> > the surface, OpenME looks like it could be reasonably
> > stripped down to
> > just a GUI then built back up again), but I lack the time
> > and energy.
> 
> Easier and quicker to just move to a platform that does what
> you need *now*.

There is no free software that does what I want now.  The commercial
software that appears to come the closest is in the neighborhood of
$100k, as a turnkey package including hardware.  

Besides, I make my money writing code, not editing, so it makes sense
for me to think about writing my own software, even if it doesn't make
sense to actually do it.

> > You could always clear the password by sticking the disk in another
> > machine.  Linux can do the job, although I think you might have to
> > custom compile a kernel to do so.
> 
> I don;t run Linux.  Solaris or NetBSD are the only choices I have
> readily available...

I see.  It might be possible to do it on NetBSD, but I don't know.  I'm
pretty certain Solaris is right out.