Analogue Video Camera Into Laptop

[ThomJ]

We have just become the proud owners of a DMT P10 LED Screen, and are running it with Arkaos Media Master on a Laptop at the moment. I have purchased a couple of (cheaper) USB Dongals for camera input, they are ok when using them in a stationary position but cannot handle fast movement.

 

Obviously the refresh rate is to low but I cannot seem to find anything 'pro' to alleviate this problem.

 

Any product suggestion would be most welcome.

 

Many Thanks

 

Thom

[Pete McCrea]

What exactly are you trying to achieve from the cameras?

 

If your looking to use the screen for IMAG (Image Magnification - letting people see the stage participants larger on screen than seen on stage ), then it might be worth feeding the cameras into a vision mixer, and bringing the Arkaos into that to try and preserve some of the quality of the cameras. Something from Edirol/Roland might be worth a look.

 

If it's the playback of video effects, then looking at a higher spec computer with upgraded capture card may well be the way forward, as I would suspect that asking a laptop to render video as well as capturing the video inputs might be pushing it, causing it to drop frames and give the low refresh rate.

 

When feeding LED we tend to use our ScreenPROII's to mix and scale sources appropriately for the screen area.

[cho_drummer]

I'd agree with Pete. Get yourself a vision mixer send the analogue feeds from the camera (s-video or composite usually) to the mixer and put the feed from arkaos into it too.

 

I opperate a similar system for school dance shows. I've done it on the cheap though, so I use two or three cameras into a vision mixer then I have scan converters out of 2 laptops (one primarily for video playback and one for VJ). That converts the VGA output of the computer to composite, then I send the signal to the composite in on my projector. it adds another dimension to the show plus if you then want to use your usb dongle to capture the output from the vision mixer, you'll have a finished product for DVD or the web.

 

Obviously I'm running a slightly different system and high resolution isn't an issue with the position of our screen and the fact it has to be visable through the stage lights but it might give you some ideas.