Enthusiasm Mediocre, keep in mind the paper is dead.

[pyoor_excuse]

*sigh*

It's not like I don't care. It's not like I've not got energy. It's just... it's hot. And I really don't feel in the mood for university work at the moment. I don't need compassionate leave, I need I'm fucked off with this place leave.

Adult learning my arse.

I admit it though, I don't really feel like doing anything very much. Maybe chilling out listening to some music (e.g. the Kaiser Chiefs album, oh, hey, I'm doing that) and reading a book I know far too well...

Or wandering up a mountain?

But sitting here doing university work. I know I need to. I'm going to Alaska in... 10 weeks. In 10 weeks time I'll be in Alaska. Roughly. Or en-route. Hang on... Oh, I can't be bothered to work it out right now.

But the general point is true.

So I've got a vast amount of work to get done. And I suppose I should attempt to make some kind of progress on it. In other news, I've found the MatroxG200 card, or G100 or whatever it is (seems less than forthcoming) which goes with the PCI Matrox+Rainbow runner card.

Having looked, the Rainbow Runner definately doesn't fit onto the G200 card; which means... well... I think maybe the idea was that they both go in together - thus giving a decent AGP card for the normal use, and a second monitor displaying the output of the PCI card. Unfortunately, this desk is 'not big enough' for two monitors. So I'm left pondering.

Ponder, ponder, ponder.

Comments

[inspector-81.livejournal.com]

the later matrox cards (the dual-head ones) support tv-out. there is a cable you use, switches a regular monitor out to tv-out. s-video or coaxial. these older cards might be able to do it too, look it up if you are interested. i don't know if their drivers will support all the fancy niceness like dual resolution, and fullscreen movie on one monitor with normal desktop on the other, etc.
however, switch resolution, and running movies fullscreen on your primary monitor isn't a chore... so if you hook up the second video out to the tv, you can watch videos on your computer on a real full-size tv.

this is probably less appealing if your computer monitor is nicer/and or bigger than your tv.

[pyoor_excuse]

Ahh, see, I've not made it clear why I want it...

Dual head I'm not really hastled about, although it may have its uses; it's more the Rainbow Runner that I want to get in there. The Rainbow runner would enable me to encode stuff that I've got on video that I'm unlikely to get hold of by any other route (for example, somewhere around I've got a Channel 4 season called 'Alan Bleasedale Presents'; which really rocked (mentioned here) but which doesn't look likely to come out on video. Also, I can pick up a Hi8 camera for around 30 quid, such that when I make the movie I dearly want to make (my friend has a good concept, now we just need a script...) it can be done with reasonable (if not exactly stellar) quality.

Since my capture cards consist of a BT848 card (currently in the machine; has unfortunate colour issues and seems to be too slow in this Athlon 1700XP to capture the UK's normal framerate) and Lauren's Rainbow Runner, the Rainbow Runner is the top choice. Unfortunately it only fits on a PCI, and ancient, graphics card. I don't *often* play games, but I have my moments... and I have a thing for visualisations in WinAmp... so... I want a fair-to-middling graphics card (okay, a basic one now, it's a TNT2 at the moment) as my main card, so the dual head would only really be so that the Rainbow Runner could be in there and I could still have decent graphics performance for everything else.

Mind it would be nice when editing to have 2 screens....

Just the whole 'space' issue (or the lack of it) is a bit of a problem.

[inspector-81.livejournal.com]

there are switches for a situations like this. where you have two video inputs, but one monitor. hit the switch, to flick back and forth between the two. i believe some monitors have it as a built in feature, but to be fair, the switch is probably a lot cheaper than the monitor ;-)

[loopback0.livejournal.com]

It needs a Mystique G200 card. It should fit AGP or PCI, but it has to be a Matrox Mystique G200.