Muff's Modules & More

lizlarsen · Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 2:36 pm Post subject:

Okay, an update on the Pelco camera -- works great!!! It's a bit noisy with the AGC turned on, but you can easily switch it off on the backpanel. Very nice resolution. Genlock works just fine using an extra Color Video Encoder output. I'm going to have to order a couple more of these cameras, but yes, recommended!

snufkin · Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:33 pm Post subject:

nice Lars ! good to hear

MrDys · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:08 am Post subject:

Resurrecting a thread to let you know that I just picked one of these guys up. They're getting blown out at $20 with free shipping.

It's a multiformat card reader that will display stills and some encodings of video (MPEG-1, MJPEG). Outputs RCA. It has a slideshow mode with a few transitions.

I really just needed something that I could use to feed stills into my video modular for processing, and it looks like this will fit the bill, with some bonus features thrown in.

lizlarsen · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:15 am Post subject:

That's very cool, what a great price!

giorgio · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 12:45 pm Post subject:

grabbed one of these. I've been trying to source cheap and simple digital video players for the past few days, and gonna use an old iphone as one as well although it wasn't as cheap to begin with...

revmutt · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:00 pm Post subject:

Good catch. I bit too.

nickciontea · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:28 pm Post subject:

overkill, overcost but extremely over-versatile. i use my ipad for stills and stock footage

bitSmasher · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:29 pm Post subject:

Continuing the discussion of peripherals - what else do you guys augment your systems with? in addition to the usual synths/mixers/effects...

I've found a video matrix switcher to be invaluable when running a lot of stand-alone devices. Something like Extron MAV or a Kramer unit is worth buying - good quality and clever features.

Also, very cheap security cameras are fun for mixing/keying in live use - the ones I bought (cheap Chinese stuff from ebay) do wired and wireless from the same camera and the wireless receiver uses analogue tuning which is great to slightly untune for added fuzz/glitch. The automatic brightness circuitry is really slow so gives good effect when stage lighting flashes on/off.

As an additional input, I keep a bunch of videos on my phone and pack an A/V cable for it. Can also stream YouTube videos if you feel the need. Will buy an ipod touch for this purpose soon enough, less liability!

lizlarsen · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:32 pm Post subject:

As for peripherals, I love the camera-mount adapters for microphone stands! I have a couple of boom mic stands and a short tabletop stand I use all the time. Mic stands can be wobbly, but they're very convenient, don't take up much space, are cheap, and probably more rugged/giggable than cheapo tripods within the same price point.

revmutt · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:03 pm Post subject:

I use a couple of different types of camera to capture footage. Pxl 2000, color and black & white ccd cams, a hd helmet cam that has a slight wide angle to it.

I also use lighting and projection and process that.

giorgio · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:26 pm Post subject:

reminds me i have to figure out what is going on with my PXL2000! it has been a few years but it ate tapes last time I tried to use it IIRC

MrDys · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 10:38 am Post subject:

barto · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 2:12 pm Post subject:

for those of you using smaller cameras, i just found my little gorillapod works pretty well

daverj · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 2:52 pm Post subject:

I was looking at those things, but ended up recently getting a couple of table top tripods with "spider" legs (similar idea but more like rubber coated gooseneck legs), and a couple of C-clamp tripod mounts.

giorgio · Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 6:12 pm Post subject:

have you played any videos on this yet? it looks like it does 8 frames a second? I can't get any videos properly encoded to play on this thing yet :(

lizlarsen · Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 10:54 pm Post subject:

Which codecs are you using? MPEG-1 and MJPEG is pretty specific.

MrDys · Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 11:45 pm Post subject:

giorgio · Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 3:02 am Post subject:

yeah it does seem very specific. I tried using ffmpegx to convert to what I thought was mpeg-1 but it is a format I know almost nothing about. seems outdated maybe or something, similar to VCD format maybe?

MrDys · Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 4:55 pm Post subject:

It's very picky about its file formats. I had a JPEG with an embedded color profile and it couldn't read it. I had to take it into Photoshop and re-export it as a JPEG to get it to load.

On another note (probably more directed towards Lars), I can't seem to get this thing to sync correctly with my system. The image scrolls horizontally no matter what position the external sync switch is in. It locks fine when directly plugged into my capture device, but running through the VSG makes it all scrolly.

revmutt · Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 5:03 pm Post subject: