Posted by Mike S. on 06/21/07 17:03

In article <JJzuGE.4tt@wjv.com>, Bill Vermillion <bv@wjv.com> wrote:
>In article <mmAci.178980$C_.64813@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi>,
>Jukka Aho <jukka.aho@iki.fi> wrote:
>
>
>>The external video standards converter might use frame-blending,
>>instead - i.e., it it captures, stores and mixes several adjacent
>>frames together, in a moving window, with varying degrees of
>>opacity. (Think of the "onion skinning" techniques that cartoon
>>animators use: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_skinning>.)
>>This will give a smoother impression of motion as nothing is ever
>>duplicated straight away, but at the same time, everything that
>>moves will get faint shadow images around it from the previous
>>(and following?) frames.
>
>Back in the last 1960 or early 1970 frame, a person I used to work
>with got into video quite heavily.
>
>He had 3 network connections coming in and would record the
>nightly news from CBS/NBC/ABC and then ship them via air to
>Puerto Rico so they could watch the world news stories with
>only 1 day delay. It seems so strange in this day of satellites.
>
>Then he bought the first Marconi standards convertor shipped to the
>US. It cost him $250,000 [in 1970 dollars].
>
>He got a contract to convert all the ABC Wide World of Sports
>from NTSC to PAL for European distribution.
>
>I last saw that device in a warehouse where our old ISP was
>located. It was about 6 feet tall. Had plug-in cards that were
>about 12" high and 18" deep. And it was no longer operational
>as some of the chips used in that device were no longer being made.
>
>The logo from the rack was saved, and all the cards were recycled
>to get the gold from the contacts.
>
>And now we can get semi-reasonable translations in $30 DVD players.
>That's about an 8000 times price difference. And of course the old
>tapes he was converting from were the 2" quad machines which
>were good for their time - but had their problems.

I'm told that, for major events intended for international broadcasts,
the biggies still use separate NTSC and PAL video cameras because the
standards conversion is not perfect even now.

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