[rescue] Monitors and Sync

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2002 at 07:07:39PM +1100, Robert Rose wrote:
> >However, video processing is exactly why my first choice SGI
> >affordable SGI (as opposed to an Onyx with unobtainium boards)
> >is an O2.

> So I bet you're probably really pissed that my $250 O2 has only
> had it's video-in used once for 5 minutes and never had it's
> video-out ever used at all.

No, but if I end up settling for an audio only O2, I'm coming after you for a
swap.
 
> >Not sure how well it handles IEEE-1394 video though.
> If I ever find a cheap PCI card for it, I'll let you know.  I
> don't think I could afford SGI's list price and I haven't been
> able to find out if any third-party ones will work in it.

There seems to be 2 standard chipsets in use for firewire.  Find out which 
chipset SGI's card uses, and there is a good chance another card with the same
chipset will work, unless SGI has more than just firewire IO on the card (which
would mean other cards probably won't be compatible, but would still be a good
thing here).

My concern about firewire performance  stems from the fact that svideo, 
composite video, and, if you buy the right module, SDI video all get piped
the video subsystem coming and going, and is compressed/decompressed (assuming
you are using compression) by a chip that is closely tied to the rest of the 
graphics subsystem.  So, real time effects using these types of video IO are
fairely trivial.  I wonder if it is as easy to do real time stuff with 
firewire.  It really doesn't matter that much to me though since I don't really
see any other options.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd