Path: kernighan.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: gi@gj-cent.demon.co.uk (G. O. Jones) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Vidi Amiga 12 RT video digitizer Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.graphics Date: 22 Sep 1996 18:02:00 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 172 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <523uuo$80v@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: gi@gj-cent.demon.co.uk (G. O. Jones) NNTP-Posting-Host: knots.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, graphics, video digitizer, commercial X-Review-Number: Volume 1996 Number 26 Originator: barrett@knots.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Vidi Amiga 12 RT BRIEF DESCRIPTION Full Colour Video Digitiser, Real Time capture (ie. no freeze frame required) AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Rombo Address: Kirkton Campus, Livington, Scotland EH54 7AZ Telephone: (44) 0506 414631 FAX: (44) 0506 414634 LIST PRICE I paid around 139 UK pounds for mine, although the prices are much cheaper now. DEMO VERSION None SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE 2MB RAM required. More is recommended. Video hardware, NTSC, PAL or Secam. SOFTWARE AmigaDOS 1.3 or greater. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 1200, 2 MB Chip RAM, 4 MB Fast RAM, 50Mhz 030 CPU. Workbench 3.0. INSTALLATION Uses a custom script: an icon is dragged to the target directory and is double clicked. REVIEW The Vidi 12RT hardware plugs into the Amiga parallel port. It is a fairly large unit which causes some irritating problems. First, due to its width, the serial port on the A1200 is obscured by the right hand side of the case, meaning you will have to remove your modem or MIDI interface each time you wish to use it. You can get around this problem by making an extention cable. There is an order form with the unit for this cable but I feel it should have been included free. The second problem involves powering the unit. Due to its power requirements, you need an external power supply. Yet again this is not included and so you will need to purchase one. The Digitiser has 3 inputs. The first 2 are standard composite video inputs and the other is a Super VHS input (or YC). You can select which input to use using the software so you don't need to fiddle with switches on the unit itself. Big Box Amiga owners may have a problem plugging in the digitiser as the parallel port is lower down than on the A1200. The extention cable will come in handy for this problem too. The software that comes with the digitiser consists of a Grabber, a simple Image Processor and a basic Animation arranger. The Grabber page has all the controls for grabbing images: you can alter the Hue, Saturation, Brightness and Contrast of the images, select the input to be used, and even set it to grab images in a loop with a time delay between each grab. There is also a trigger function that will grab an image each time a joystick button is pressed: handy for a simple security system. The Image Processor contains the usual features found in most Amiga graphics programs. You get Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Blur etc. These functions are fairly useful, but a dedicated program will do this much better. The Animation arranger allows you to arrange your stored frames into an Animation. It displays thumbnails of the images which can be selected and moved around, deleted etc. You can then save them as an IFF ANIM file. The Vidi software doesn't seem to like palette changes or loop frames so you may have to convert the Anim using another program before it will work with certain programs. DOCUMENTATION 64 Page manual, laser printed. The manual is reasonable. It has example images, a tutorial, setup instructions for the hardware, and most importantly a troubleshooting section. LIKES Quality of grabbed images are good. S-VHS input, PAL/NTSC and SECAM are autodetected, DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS The case obscures the serial port and won't connect to Big Box Amigas without an extention cable. Needs external power supply. Software doesn't use ASL filerequesters. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS ProGrab from Gordon Harwoods seems to be better supported. It has a PCMCIA option for A1200 owners for faster grabs. BUGS There seems to be a bug in the Grab page. After selecting the Mix function to convert to the image to a lower colour mode, returning back to the Grab options resulted in a guru. There is a V2.0 of the software but this isn't a free update. VENDOR SUPPORT Rombo have released PC versions of their Digitisers, however they still sell their Amiga version and even still sell their Atari version. There is a help hotline mentioned in the manual. WARRANTY None mentioned in the manual. CONCLUSIONS Although the ProGrab 24 from Gordon Harwoods is more popular than the Vidi, you can buy a Vidi 24RT for less than a ProGrab, which makes it a good value. The Vidi 12RT's picture quality is good and the software is useful. A1200 owners may want to consider the ProGrab and its PCMCIA option, or the recently re-released Videomaster. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1996 G. O. Jones. --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews Web site: ftp://math.uh.edu/pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews/index.html