🚀 go-pugleaf

Organization : Loughborough University, UK.
Keywords: 

I have a request for information from you netters:

In our research project a multi-media interface to process-control systems
is being developed. To evaluate this interface in two real process control
environments we need to record amongst other things the state of the
display the operators see at any time. The simplest way, we reckon, is to
record the video output from the sparc before it reaches the monitor. 

1. Is it feasible to use some sort of 'splitter' to intercept the rgb &
sync sigals coming out of the sparc and feed the signals into both the
monitor and a video recorder ?

2. Do video recorders exist which can take input directly from a sparc
station, record it and then pass the signals on to a monitor (sony) ?

3. If both of the above is possible, what is best (cheapest) ? 

Since the interface is multi-media we also need to record output from a
speech synthesiser and a sound sampler in sync with the display recording.

4. Is it possible to record the sound directly onto the video with a microphone
placed beside the operator ? This would take care of problems of
syncronising the audio and video recording.

As the video and sound recordings will be used in conjunction with a log of
process-, control system- and interface events (which are recorded
separately) by the experimentors to deduce errors and problem solution
times etc., it is absolutely necessary to accurately timestamp the video 
(and sound) recordings.

5. Do video recorders exist which can overlay a timestamp in, say the top
left corner, of the video frames ?

You will have noticed that this request does not contain a single technical
term. This is due to my complete ignorance of video technology. I have
browsed through some spec sheets for video recorders and must admit to
being baffled by the technicalities. Any hints as to what the problems with
the setup described above might be (incompatibilities between video signals
from sparcs and video recorders etc) would be appreciated. If anyone has
done this before I'd be extremely grateful for some help.

Please reply by email directly to me. If anyone else has similar problems
contact me and I'll summarise directly to them or on the net.

Thanks in advance,
- marius.

-- 
Marius Bergan
Loughborough University of Technology (Computer Studies)
Loughborough
Leicestershire LE11 3TU