![[Photo]](videosb.jpg)
Several years ago I volunteered to handle the updating of the church signboard in front of the Union Bible Church. It was the typical white sign with moveable black letters of one style and only a few sizes. I had to tailor the information on the sign to the limited space and limited number of letters (you never have enough S's). It was very boring to say the least and within a stone's throw were three other churches with bigger, better signs. We had a very unusual church but our blah blah blah signboard just didn't convey that.
A few years later I purchased a Commodore 64 and began to see the possibilities of a dynamic video signboard to replace the stagnate signboard using VideoTitler software. It would take installing a TV set into the front wall of the church and running a continuous loop of video on the C64. But I wasn't quite ready to dedicate my C64 complete with diskdrive to the purpose. I did create a 40 minute instructional video called "The Bible in Time and Space" which showed me that I enjoyed and had an aptitude for video production. It also showed me that, as great as the C64 was, I needed more colors, memory and speed.
It was then that I began looking at the Amiga computer as the ideal video platform. After 6 monthes of research, I purchased an Amiga 3000 (25Mhz/50Meg Hard Drive) with a V.I.P. encoder. After only a month with DeluxePaintIII (truly powerful software) and AmigaVision, I was convinced that anything could be done with it, including my Video Signboard idea. I still didn't want to subject a computer to continuous use, being hooked up to the TV, though. I gave some thought to putting the display on videotape and getting an electronics wiz to wire up a timer to turn on the TV and VCR and to begin a 6 hour tape playing at a certain prime time each day. But I saw a Samsung Video Player with Auto Repeat for $179 and I knew it was time to try my idea. I purchased the DigiView Gold digitizer with copy stand/camera setup to get images into the A3000. To sell the idea to the leaders of the church I produced a demo videotape showing what it would take to bring the idea to fruition. It wasn't as hard a sell as one might expect, since there is a high degree of computer literacy among the leadership and they had seen enough of my work at that point to realize I could pull it off. And everyone thought it was just the type of innovative sign that would aptly convey our church's uniqueness to our neighborhood.
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A used 25" Zenith TV set was purchased for only $100. (Interestingly, the TV was cheap because it took longer than usual to warm up; no problem for a TV to be used 24 hours a day.) The VCR was installed in a locked cabinet (we didn't want some joker slipping a copy of "Debbie Does Dallas" into the VCR for display on the street when we weren't looking, did we?) with an exhaust fan to keep all the little diodes happy. The TV was such a tight fit in the window we had built for it that it took a dozen hits with a sledgehammer to wedge it into place ... and it still worked! So, within a month of approval by the church leadership, the old sign was removed, the first videotape was produced, the TV was installed and we were up and running. The local paper came and did an article on it shortly thereafter and a classy sunshade canopy was made by others in the church to make viewing possible in the sunny afternoon through evening hours.
While it was thrilling to see people's reaction to our new sign, all of my free time from then until now was spoken for in producing a new video for each month. I digitize selected images with DigiView Gold, manipulate and animate them with DeluxePaintIV (truly amazingly powerful software) and tie them all together seamlessly with AmigaVision. The 3 to 10 minute presentations are put into a continuous loop and videotaped onto a 2 hour master tape with a 30 minute backup tape. The master is played for the entire month. That's approximately 360 consecutive plays and rewinds! I found Memorex videotapes (only $2 each in bulk) worked just fine for this application. I save the masters for future re-use when I need a break.
After 8 monthes (5,840 hours) of continuous play, the VCR needed a new video head. It turns out that video heads are rated for 5,500 - 6,000 hours Mean Time Between Failures. The bad news: because the model of VCR was so new, there were no spare parts sent to the USA from Korea yet (no one thought they would be needed for a couple years, anyway) so it took a month to get the video head from Samsung. The good news: the VCR was warranteed for 1 year, parts. A new VCR was purchased and the repaired one kept for a backup.
Since then, I have upgraded my Video (Chip) memory to 2 Meg and Ram (Fast) memory to 8 Meg so that each month's entire production can be loaded into Ram for videotaping. (Previously, I would display a screen of text for viewers to read while AmigaVision loaded the next image or animation into memory.)
I still use the Amiga 3000 (love it!) but I have upgraded my software so that I use DeluxePaint 4.5, DCTV digitizer/24 bit display instead of the DigiView Gold digitizer, and AmigaVision Pro for cool screen transitions. The TV eventually died and was replaced with another 25" set. The VCRs still only last about 8 months before head replacement is needed but they are getting cheaper ($70 each now). Even the canopy had to be replaced after 4 years. The video signboard takes up less of my time now so that I am doing Cable TV productions and WWW homepages.
This site is maintained with a smile by Terry Alan Blanchard and was last changed April 12th, 1996.