Introducing freenbtv - new NBTV generation software
Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2017 10:42 am
Latest version
This isn't really "Off Topic" because it is NBTV related. But I couldn't quite find the forum to put it in.
So I have caught the NBTV bug again. I have been using Gary's excellent Video2NBTV software and it works great! But on more than one occasion, I have found myself wanting to play with other line standards, frame rates etc. I looked around and couldn't find any NBTV software that could generate or view arbitrary NBTV formats so I decided to start writing my own.
Since I am almost always jugging a dozen different things at once, I don't have a huge amount of time to dedicate to the project. Since there are still a lot of bugs and broken features, I am not releasing it quite yet. So this is kind of a pre-release announcement. But my design goals are:
It currently meets some but not all of these goals. There are still some things that need to be worked out to make the existing features fully functional. And other features still need to be implemented.
The configuration also doesn't come without a cost. Having almost every parameter tunable means there are a lot of run time conditionals and memory accesses as frames are generated. This means that it requires more CPU power than other NBTV software. I suggest at least a Core2 Duo for smooth real time performance.
I attached a picture of freenbtv generating a 32 line signal out the sound card with a loop back through stereo mix to display it on Gary's NBTV: The Big Picture.
At some point, I'd also like to write a matching viewer for arbitrary formats. Right now, testing is a bit challenging because of the limited options of viewers available.
This isn't really "Off Topic" because it is NBTV related. But I couldn't quite find the forum to put it in.
So I have caught the NBTV bug again. I have been using Gary's excellent Video2NBTV software and it works great! But on more than one occasion, I have found myself wanting to play with other line standards, frame rates etc. I looked around and couldn't find any NBTV software that could generate or view arbitrary NBTV formats so I decided to start writing my own.
Since I am almost always jugging a dozen different things at once, I don't have a huge amount of time to dedicate to the project. Since there are still a lot of bugs and broken features, I am not releasing it quite yet. So this is kind of a pre-release announcement. But my design goals are:
- To be as configurable as possible allowing the generation of arbitrary formats
- To be cross platform (Windows, Linux and Mac)
- To be released as open source software
- To have a functional GUI
- To support 4 simultaneous output channels
- To support monochrome as well as various different color formats
- To support high sample rates and high resolutions (96KHz+, 90 lines+)
It currently meets some but not all of these goals. There are still some things that need to be worked out to make the existing features fully functional. And other features still need to be implemented.
The configuration also doesn't come without a cost. Having almost every parameter tunable means there are a lot of run time conditionals and memory accesses as frames are generated. This means that it requires more CPU power than other NBTV software. I suggest at least a Core2 Duo for smooth real time performance.
I attached a picture of freenbtv generating a 32 line signal out the sound card with a loop back through stereo mix to display it on Gary's NBTV: The Big Picture.
At some point, I'd also like to write a matching viewer for arbitrary formats. Right now, testing is a bit challenging because of the limited options of viewers available.