[rescue] Re: Why .* sucks (was Re: FDDI card)

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2002 at 10:55:48PM -0500, Brian Hechinger wrote:
>it gets better.  i made the deal with the guy for the Onyx.  after we agreed
>on the price, he said, oh, btw, it has an MCO.  cool.  and i didn't pay for it
>since the price was derived from the config he gave me that didnt include said
>MCO.  then i get it home.  and it's not an MCO, but rather thie Sirius Video
>box.  haul and a half i'd say. ;)

Pretty sweet.
 
>>With that board, you can import CCIR 601 video, apply both OpenGL imaging 
>>operations (done in hardware) and 3D operations, and spit it back out in 
>>CCIR 601 format again, without breaking a sweat, all the while in 10bit color
>>(on the IO, internal operations can be done in 16bit).
> 
>sweet.  now if only i knew what that meant. :)

CCIR 601 is a digital video format.  Good for very high end stuff (well, what
was once very high end).  Much better than firewire.  For once thing, it isn't
compressed.
 
>i'm not a video expert, or even a video amatuer for that matter. i don't know
>squat about video.  so maybe you can help me out and pass me some info.

http://www.lurkertech.com/lg/ will give you a good overview with regard to 
SGI machines.  CCIR 601 it turns out is the outdated term.  Now it is 
ITU-R BT.601-4.  Ack.  Forgive me if I choose to continue with CCIR-601 in
leu of remebering that mess.
 
>also, i've got the box in my lap right now, and it doesn't have the serial
>digital connectors, just the parallel ones (two in and one out)

Mind posting pictures of the box in question, and saying what you mean by the
parallel video ones?  SDI-601 (CCIR 601 over serial digital, to my 
understanding) is a seperate option to be ordered in addition to the Sirius
board.  But, you should be able to get converters, I think.  Physical video
transfer methods of this caliper are a beyond my actual experience.  I haven't
worked with anything better the S/Video in the real world, anything better I
get from reading.

Unless you were actually trying to run a service bureau, my say would be to
just put the video on tape (meaning DAT or DLT) and have a service bureau take
care of putting it out to the desired format.  This goes double for film work.

>i also have a question about the analog side.  specifically the NTSC/PAL
>portion of it.  the composite output, is that the same as what is used by
>televisions?  could i hack up a piece of coax to go from the sirius box to
>a television?  also, what are the Y/C connectors?  s-video maybe?

I think the sirius has s-video out.  You might as well use it rather than the
other formats.  The composite should be the same as used for TV, but it isn't 
as good as the s-video.  The RE2 supports video out to, so you don't need to 
use the Sirius board.  But, why you wouldn't want to use it, I don't know, 
unless you are running out of VME slots.
 
>>You are now required to make sure you get an extremely highspeed(at least 150
>>megs/sec sustained) harddrive array if you are going to own a Sirius card.
> 
> now where to get one of those without breaking the already broken bank.

Load it up with internal scsi cards?  FCAL maybe, but that's expensive.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd