The ABCs of Character Generators (page 2)

Computer-based CG's

If your videomaking needs include broadcast quality titles and graphics and expanded creativity, and your budget can stand the extra abuse, you should consider a computer-based character generator. These systems provide much more flexibility, a greater number of features and higher performance than most stand-alone models.

Another advantage of the computer-based CG is its ability to grow with you. Software and hardware upgrades cost less than buying a new system. They also provide more features and improvements while maintaining the familiar feel of the old system.

These systems have many advantages over the stand-alone models. The desk top computers have a great deal of power and memory as well as a wealth of software available to build graphics and typefaces. Most systems have millions of colors and thousands of fonts. You can use the computer to balance your budget, keep a database of important addresses or write memos and letters to friends and business associates. None of these are possible on the stand-alone systems.

While it has distinct advantages, the primary problem with a computer-based CG is its cost. The culprit is the cost of the computer itself. One way of justifying the cost is to take advantage of the computer's abilities. If you're a serious videomaker, you probably need or already have a system that will do spreadsheets and word-processing to produce budget forms and production scripts.

To enable your computer system to input a video signal from your camera or video player; convert it into computer readable digital formats; combine it with your graphics and titles and output it to a video tape recorder and monitor, you will need a video capture board. These boards have various capabilities and can cost from $500 to $5000 plus. Most of the four figure boards also have editing capabilities. With some research, you should be able to find a board that will fit your computer's needs.

There are primarily three computer platforms that support video character generators: The Amiga, the IBM compatible PC and the Macintosh.

The Amiga platform has had a rough time lately. Last year its parent company, Commodore International shut down their offices and manufacturing plants and filed bankruptcy. The future looked pretty uncertain. In April of this year, Escom of Germany won the bid for Commodore's assets in the United States Bankruptcy Court. On May 30 of this year, Escom held a worldwide press conference to announce their plans for the coming months. The main point of interest for this article is that Escom will continue to build the Amiga 4000/040 and 4000/060. However, it will take awhile for the Amiga to become available as readily as it once was.

One major advantage of the Amiga computer platform is the standard NTSC video jack. You don't need a video capture card for this platform. However, you'll still need some form of genlock to enable the system to superimpose titles over moving video.

If you own NewTek's Video Toaster, you already have a fairly good CG system. If you want to expand your Toaster's capabilities, you may want to look at Innovision's Montage ($500). If you have an Amiga AGA 1200/4000 or Amiga 2000/3000 with OpalVision or Impact Vision 24, you'll want to look at Montage 24($400). Both systems require 8MB Fast RAM & 1 MB Chip RAM, a hard drive with 10 MB's free, AmigaDOS 2.0 plus a 68020 accelerator or higher.

This CG system has eight scalable master typefaces with "click and drag" font scaling on any individual character. You can also resize the text horizontally or vertically. Additional Montage fonts are available for expanding your typeface library. If you'd like to use PostScript fonts, you can purchase the additional Montage PostScript Module (see dealer for prices). The Montage for the Video Toaster, will load fonts in Toaster and Chroma formats.

Other features of the Montage include 16 million colors, anti-aliasing characters to background with a 1ns effective resolution, and the ability to select any combination of fonts, sizes and colors per line. Character styles include fully adjustable outline, shadow and cast attributes, as well as variable transparency, gradient color fills, embossing and soft shadowing.

The Montage also features a 24-bit, 16.8 million color graphics display in IFF-24 or Framestore formats. Its imaging capabilities include translucency blending, gradient color spreads, beveled boxes and wallpaper embossing. As with most CG's, the Montage has a number of transitions. Its effects include wipes, crawls, scrolls, checkerboards and slides. All of its transitional effects playback automatically or manually with user controlled speeds and pause times.

Another product that works on the Amiga platform is Innovisions Broadcast Titler 2 Super High Res version($300). This system requires an Amiga computer with 1 MB of Chip RAM and 1 MB of Fast RAM and the ECS and AA Chip sets.

While a capable system, the Broadcast Titler 2 has fewer features and less power than the Montage system. However, it still has more features than most stand-alone models and has a sharp resolution at 35ns. This system offers 16 anti-aliased fonts with adjustable borders, cast and shadow. You can also load hundreds of Amiga and color fonts. Graphically, the system boasts over four thousand colors with 320 colors per page, IFF brushes and patterns for text fill and built in backgrounds. It also supports IFF image file import and export. The transitions include credit roll, crawl, page shuffle, corner, push, pull, ease, tumble and more. For those who currently own Broadcast Titler 2, you can upgrade to the Super High Res Model for $99.

If you own or are planning to purchase a PC, there are a number of options for you in the world of CG's. Crystal Graphics weighs in with the Flying Fonts Pro($245). This system requires a 386 or higher PC (math co-processor or Pentium recommended), eight MB of RAM (thirty-two MB recommended) and forty MB of available disk space (again, more is recommended). Flying Fonts Pro also requires Windows 3.1 or NT and can use any Windows-compatible video graphics card.

This system has most of the features of other professional CG's with many additional treats including 2D and 3D animation and texture and mapping support.

Besides its standard twelve outline fonts, it has a built in text tool that gives you the ability to load PostScript Type 1 and True Type fonts; a virtual library of thousands of fonts. The simple modeling tools allow ease of use and rendering capabilities include predefined materials such as glass, stone plastic, chrome and gold. You can also use any 2D Tiff, TGA, BMP, PCX and GIF file as textures or backgrounds.

Living up to its name, this program offers an array of text animations. Besides the usual CG fare, you can fly titles in and out, create compound motions such as flying words and spinning letters, and use any of over a thousand predefined animation paths for your titles. As a final treat, Crystal graphics includes a CD-ROM with hundreds of images for textures and backgrounds.

If you're in need of a truly high quality system and can do without some of the bells and whistles of Flying Fonts Pro, take a look at Innovision Technology's brand new (ships this fall) Alpha CG($700) video titler and Alpha FX($300) effects module. This system has an effective text resolution of approximately 1ns. Its system requirements include a 386, 486, or Pentium PC, SuperVGA card or TARGA 16/TARGA+ video adapter, eight MB of RAM, Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, 20 MB of available disk space and an optional VGA to NTSC Converter or Video Genlock Overlay card.

Besides extremely good resolution, this program provides easy creation of titles with up to sixteen million colors and the use of any fully anti-aliased scalable True Type fonts. It also supports full color texture mapping, outlines, extruded shadows, soft-edge feathering and video transparency. You can also process the images with built in processing filters.

With the optional Alpha FX effects module you gain the ability to add multiple page sequencing and special effects playback. These effects include most of the usual CG effects found in other systems.

For the Macintosh user, the field has a few bright stars. Avid Technology's Bola 32($795) offers high-quality anti-aliased text, and support of an 8-bit key-alpha channel that ensures that text remains smooth even over live video. In addition to its own fonts, Bola 32 supports Adobe PostScript Type 1, Macintosh bitmap and True Type fonts.

The system requires any Macintosh II series, Quadra, SE/30, LC or IIsi (requires floating point unit or software emulation of FPU). You'll also need System 6.05 or System 7, five MB of RAM (eight or more recommended), 32-bit color Quickdraw (included as part of System 7), a 16 or 32-bit color display card (highly recommended), Truevision NuVista series video framegrabber/display card and a NTSC broadcast monitor to preview your titles. If you want to import PostScript fonts, you'll need Adobe Type Manager (ATM) version 2.0.2 or greater.

The Bola 32 performs over 20 smooth transitions between video, text, graphics, or sequenced screens. It also produces smooth broadcast quality rolling text with text styles such as drop and depth shadows, textures and transparency.

If you enjoy using the Macintosh interface, you'll find the Bola 32 easy to use and a flexible intuitive CG program.

If you're in the market for a high quality (10ns effective resolution), sophisticated system for your Macintosh, take a look at Comet/CG 3.0 by Microberts Software Incorporated. The system requirements include the Macintosh Quadra and RISC PowerMac, eight MB system memory (sixteen recommended), System 7.1 or later, True Type and PostScript fonts, video graphics card, and a minimum 14 inch color monitor. The Comet/CG 3.0 supports all PostScript, True Type fonts as well as most WorldScripts. You have total control of the over forty different text attributes including character kerning, sizing, textures and others.

Graphically, the Comet/CG 3.0 is able to import any PICT image you may create and has a large number of graphic tools to create high quality backgrounds and text objects. It provides rules, safe title and action areas, as well as logical menu windows to provide ease and accuracy in your title development. With flexible document and page manipulation as well as thousands of video pages per document, the Comet/CG can handle the most demanding video project.

Cue Credit Roll

Two key items you need to really think over before you decide what kind of CG system you're going to invest in are: "What are my video production and titling needs now and what will I be doing in a few years?" Technology changes very quickly. It's always a good idea to find out how upgradable your system will be and decide whether it can keep up with the times. If you feel that you'll be able to grow into a system, and you need high quality titles now, do the research, shop around and buy a system that won't give your banker a heart attack but will meet your present and future needs. If your productions do not require professional quality titles, pick up a piece of chalk and take a walk to the nearest blackboard. By the way, we never did find those headphones!