BATC Forum

Hi, folks

I last did ATV in the mid-1980s, so things have probably moved on a bit now

I've built the MiniTiouner v2, and am well on the way to having all the PCBs for the Portsdown built.
As the point at which I'll be operational approaches, I'm turning my attention to what I'm going to shove into the portsdown. In the olden days you bodged an old cctv vidicon camera into the input of your Fortop tx, and that was it (unless you had deep pockets and could afford colour, more than 1 camera and a switcher/mixer. I did build a Test Card Generator, but that was about it.

So, I'll have the easy cap dongle - so I'm assuming that I could still put a 'cctv' type signal in there? But what else can I stick in there? HD (1080) signals? What else? What sort of cameras are available?

Also, if I find myself wanting something a bit fancier for 'base station' use, what does everyone use for source switching and mixing/fading?

Thanks for your thoughts...
John

Hi John

I'll answer the Portsdown part of your question.

Yes, you can use a classic CCTV camera into the EasyCap. I sometimes use an old CamCorder that outputs a perfectly reasonable colour video signal even thought the tape mechanism is long gone. Portsdown won't do HD (yet). The Pi Camera produces a very good picture which is transmitted at 720x576. The other option is to use the IPTS option and take an input from vMix. Details here: https://wiki.batc.tv/Feeding_Video_to_P ... _from_vMix

As for video mixers/switching beyond vMix, I'll let a video enthusiast answer that!

Dave

Hi, Dave

Thanks for that - I do have a camcorder somewhere which I can probably press into service initially, so conformation that this will work is good to hear

Thanks for the link to using vMix - i had skimmed that page a few days ago, but I don't think I had a clear enough idea of what I was trying to achieve at that point. I have re-read it this evening, and I see it a little bit more claerly now. I thnk that the vMix route might be something for lter on, as I can't see myself being able to justify the capture devices required at the moment.

So, still looking for ideas about source switching/mixing that don't involve vMix or expensive capture cards/boxes - all suggestions welcome

73
John