Screen Machine II is a real-time true-color or grey scale
video digitizer and a multimedia board capable of displaying live
video in any size at any monitor position. It combines
high-quality image recording, digital video signal processing,
and real-time video display on a single board for your Intel
486-based PC running NEXTSTEP 3.1. It is the first video overlay
board to support non-interlaced resolution of 1024 x 768 at
screen frequencies of up to 76Hz in graphics mode. Screen Machine
II incorporates the Professional Video Scaler and the Video
Memory Controller (VMC) which increases the display quantity of
the live video and provides video effects/overlays, such as luma,
chroma keying, mosaic, etc., respectively.
Q: What kind of video sources can I use? A: Screen Machine ll has video inputs for composite and
S-VHS signals (3 x composite, or 1 x S-VHS plus 1 x composite).
Therefore, all camcorders, video recorders, laserdisc players,
S-Video, Video 8, U-Matic, and still video equipment in any
standard (PAL, NTSC, SECAM) can be hooked-up to the board. Q: What is the Screen Machine ll Developer Kit? A: It is the developer library which makes full use of
the capabilities of the Screen Machine board. It includes: Q: What are the system requirements for the Screen
Machine ll? A: Hardware requirements: Software Requirements: Q: What does Screen Machine do? A: Screen Machine ll is a real-time video digitizer
that digitizes images in true color or gray scales. Screen
Machine ll is also a multimedia board that is capable of
displaying live video in any size, at any position on your VGA
monitor. Q: What software is available for the Screen Machine
ll? A: With every board bought, you receive the driver and
some applications for capturing and displaying video images as
well as controlling the live video. There is a developer kit for
programming your own applications with the Screen Machine ll that
is optional. Q: Do I still need a graphic adapter? A: Yes. Screen Machine ll is added to your graphic
subsystem. It receives the VGA output and adds the live video
image to the monitor signal by an analog process. Thus, you still
have the resolution and refresh rates of your VGA, independent of
which mode you use. Q: How is Screen Machine ll connected to my system? A: You connect the external output of the VGA adapter
and the monitor to Screen Machine ll. You don t need the feature
connector. Q: Is Screen Machine hardware? A: Yes. It is a 16-bit ISA add-on-board with all the
cables and documentation you need. Q: Which video standards are supported? A: PAL, NTSC, SECAM auto detection. Q: Which scan rate does the Screen Machine run at? A: Max 14.75 MHz (reached only by PAL) with 2x
oversampling. Q: What are the real geometric resolutions? A: 768x576 (PAL,SECAM), 640x480 (NTSC) per frame with
square pixels. Q: What screen resolutions are supported? A: 640 x 480, 800 x 600,1024 x 768 (all
non-interlaced), higher resolutions only in interlced mode. Q: Does the Screen Machine do true color? A: Yes, it digitizes 24-bit (16.7 million colors). Q: What is the digitizing time for one frame? A: Realtime 1/50 sec. field PAL (1/60 NTSC) 1/25 sec.
frame PAL (1/30 NTSC) Q: Which storage formats are used? A: Mainly we use a professional YUV (4:2:2) format to
receive the best quality. But, of course, we also support RGB
formats like TIFF. Q: Can I scale the video? A: Yes, Screen Machine supports real-time scaling on
the screen with interpolation. It can scale down and up, not like
the NeXTDimension which only showed part of the video, and could
not exceed the video resolution. The SM can display video from
4x4 to 1 024x768. Q: What fields are digitized? A: Both fields, even and odd, but you can decide by
software which fields should be used. You can switch to
even-field or odd-field interpolated or to both fields, for slow
motion and high quality. Q: Does Screen Machine 11 support NEXTTIME? A: NEXTTIME is an environment that supports the replay
of sound and recorded video. Its modular design allows the use of
different plug-in-modules (e.g. Quick Time Apple, Wavelet
Compression NeXT, Aviator FAST). We will support our own
compression which can be hooked-up to NEXTTIME. Q: What about compression? A: With the release of NEXTTIME there will be an
additional hardware option available. This hardware, which can be
plugged into every SCREEN MACHINE 11, supports real-time hardware
compression for video recording. Requires NEXTSTEP Release 3.1 or higher. Now shipping in Multi-Architecture Binary (MAB) format. 
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Real-time True-color Video Digitizer and Multimedia Board
Screen Machine II Question and Answer