Scanimate Gets a New Lease on Life!

The Scanimate always did have a few weak points. Well, OK, a LOT of weak points! Especially compared with modern technology. Artwork was scanned in on so-called "high-resolution" cameras (800 lines, woo-hoo!) from Kodalith artwork. While in production for DVD-2, I wanted to have Scanimate do some titles, and since I happen to have several old SGI Indy systems, it occurred to me that I could modify an Indy and (it turns out, EXTENSIVELY) modify the Scanimate to accept the high-resolution display from the SGI framebuffer. That way I can use all my new digital tools and fonts to create nice clean artwork input.

I though you might want to see some of the setup here as I am working on editing the 20 + hours of material I have for DVD-2. The interviews are fantastic, and the story that is shaping up of how Lee Harrison's "Dream Machines" came to be is truly fascinating. I wish it were finished so I could watch it! With any luck, and a lot more hours, it will be soon!

I actually have three Indys with early PRISMS 3D software on them, but I have mostly been using PhotoShop to compose the graphics for artwork titles. The Indy has a video input, and it turns out you can run its display in high-resolution mode at 60 Hz but tell it to genlock, and it will vertically lock to NTSC, which is what you need to avoid a rolling scanbar when the CRT is rescanned. I have also been experimenting with using the newer CCD cameras to rescan the CRT, and they seem to do a lot better job than the old plumbicon cameras!
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Last updated Feb 2, 2005

All Images, Text, Motion Pictures Copyright, © 2005 David W. Sieg