|
|
Posted by nobody special on 04/19/07 03:31
Have not seen one yet, and not likely to. Back in prehistoric times,
we had reel to reel backpack field recorders and cameras that were
steam powered, and Sony had what we called a "bang-bang" pocket
switcher.
What that was, was a box the size of your hand, that hung on your
belt, and you connected a composite video line from two cameras into
it, from there one line went into the so-called portable deck.
every time you hit the one switch on the box "bang", it cut from the
first source tot he second one, or back again.
A more sophisticated model had a fader that went to black in apreset
amount of time.
That was almost thirty years ago, and there is nothing I know of quite
like that today.
First of all, back then the switcher did not take during the vertical
interval, so you got a burst of static and disruption every time you
made a camera switch.
To make such a box now, that cuts cleanly, requires someone build sync
generators and frame syhchronizers (two of em) into a small enough
circuit board to jam into that small box.
This would cut cleanly between two composite SD analog signals, and
would be great for those guys that have to tape lectures with one guy
standing and talking and say a powerpoint screen next to him. If you
could live-switch that with a simple bang-bang box, you'd save a LOT
of time on those projects (not that those are good projects to be
doing anyway, but that's for another discussion).
Anyway, to sum up that kind of box, you can't find a big enough market
to justify the expense of protoryping and making the boards. If you
were hot stuff with a soldering iron and breadboards, you could make a
one-off version for yourself , but it would definitely not be an easy
do it yourselfer type project. More like a tough final exam for a ham
with a stack full of licenses and a lot of EE degrees.
And worse, nobody wants to do that switching in analog composite
anymore, anyhow. Now they want to switch live firewire signals
cleanly, and if anything, that job is even MORE difficult than the old
analog bang-box.
I just don't hold out much hope for a shipping, buyable product like
that to ever come out before I hit retirement age.
But you never know, give some savant solderer enough jolt cola and
maybe he'll make a breakthru.
As of now, the smallest practical switchers I see are like the
Datavieo and Edirol models, under a thousand bucks, but still pretty
much briefcase-sized and not really made to be easily portable, though
you COULD rack mount it. But nothing pocket fisherman sized, sorry.
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|