Sony 6000 video disc and Silicon Graphics

[Anjana Kar]

In article <1991Jun21.91172.145330SONDRICK at HASARA11.BITNET> (Rick
Jansen) writes:
> In our visualization lab we plan to use a Sony LVR6000 video disc
> for recording computer animations and still pictures. This appears
> to be not quite so trivial as we thought it would be at first.
> ....... SARA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands


At the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, we are using locally
developed software to record animations on a SONY LVR5000
video disc. Most of our images are in the Computer Graphics
Metafile (CGM) format. To render the CGM files, we use GPLOT,
the CGM interpreter. GPLOT's IRIS device driver (igl) renders
the image, and recording is done on the Sony Laser Videodisk
Recorder (LVR-5000) using Gplot's lvr controller.

GPLOT's LVR controller selects the first available blank space on
the laser video disc to start laying down a series of CGM images.
In addition to the video area on disk, there is also a user data
area.  For each GPLOT session, a user data frame is written. The
frame contains a datastamp, the CGM file name, user name, number
of copies per CGM image, and video start and end frame numbers.

A disc need's to be initialized before any frames can be layed down
on it. The software "lvr_do" will initialize a disk. It can also be
used to perform playback, search and other operations on the video
disc.

GPLOT and LVR_DO software are available from calpe.psc.edu (128.182.62.148).
ftp in as user anonymous (any password).
cd to pub/gplot, and get the gplot.tar file. Un-tar it on the IRIS,
and edit the Makefile before building Gplot.
cd to pub/lvr, and get lvrdo.tar and rs170.c. Before starting laying
down frames, you will need to type "rs170 on" on the IRIS. Un-tar the
tar file on the IRIS, and make lvr_do.

Please send me mail if you pick up a copy of this software.

-Anjana Kar
 Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
 kar at a.psc.edu