[rescue] Monitors and Sync

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 08:19:18PM +0000, Paul Sladen wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Jan 2002, Big Endian wrote:
> >
> >
> > Nope... These are VGX/VGXT SGI Crimsons.  They are SOG, but there is 
> > an option to do a seperate Alpha as well.  My RE crimson has a 13W3 
> > Connector on it so I can't look at one right now but if I recall 
> > correctly the fourth bnc is alpha.  I think it has something to do 
> > with output to tape perhaps.
> 
> Cool;  You want this type of thing for titleing (thing 3D quiz show
> graphics where it's all overlaid), though I thought they normally sucked the
> video in;  processed it;  and spat it out again?  (a` la massive amount of
> support for over/underlays in GL).

I'm not sure what all over and underlays are used for on SGIs in the real 
world.  

As far as titling goes, it is probably easier to have the actual compositing 
done by a seperate device than it is to do it on the SGI.  Back when Crimsons 
where hot stuff, it certainly would be cheaper to do it this way than to 
purchase a real time video capture board for the machine.  Now those boards are
probably made of unobtainium.

The idea of sucking video in, processing it, then spitting probably wasn't too
common for realtime applications until the indigo2 came out with it's real time
video IO boards.  However, video processing is exactly why my first choice SGI
affordable SGI (as opposed to an Onyx with unobtainium boards) is an O2.  Not
sure how well it handles IEEE-1394 video though.  That could be a problem.

Frankly, I would love to have the gear to play with the more advanced high end
SGI features, but money continues to be a problem.  It is my dream to someday
have a good number of rack and/or deskside SGIs for various applications.

In the mean time, I'm still fighting with my framegrabber under linux.  There 
seems to be something seriously wrong with my install of linux, or one of the 
recent kernel revisions rendered the docs dreadfully out of date.  This is 
pissing me off.  In a few more weeks I may just give up on it and get a better
supported card.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd