🚀 go-pugleaf

bui@berlioz.nsc.com (Cuong Bui) writes:

>I have a video camera, if I purchase the Video Blaster (?) board,
>which can capture the video image, is it as good an image as a scanner?
>At least, it's a cheap and easy, not having to develop or blowup
>a picture for scanning, and huge source of data from video tape, TV ...
>Any pointer is appreciated.

Hi there

On my PC at home I have a Video Blaster (no camera) and a handy scanner,
and at our Computer Vision institute I frequently work with a video camera
that's connected to a frame grabber in a Sparc station. So I feel I can
comment a bit.

First, a home video camera outputs a composite signal whose colour resolution
is far below what a true colour scanner delivers (no RGB). The limitation here
is the television standard, but also home cameras are not as good as ones
used for broadcast. But that might not be important if colour is not of
interest.

The camera/frame grabber setup used at the uni is very high quality (RGB
camera, not composite) and we tried to "scan" maps and drawings with it.
It works, but the resolution of the output image is limited to the size
of a video image which isn't too great. Even my cheapo handy scanner produces
higher resolution.

The advantage of the camera setup is the possibility to make images of real
scenes, not just photos or paper drawings.

So if quality is important and all you want to do is scan from paper,
I think a flatbed scanner is the better option.

If you want to have a fun and cheap way to make images of whatever you like,
get the VB. The VB definitely IS fun :).


Greetings

Wolfgang

--
* Wolfgang Schwanke * Technische Universitaet Berlin * Germany * wolfi on irc *
* email: wolfi@cs.tu-berlin.de       *      wolfaefg@w250zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de *

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