Q-Port is one of two seperate but interlinked systems for use with the Quantel V-Series Paintbox.
The basis of both systems is the Pictureport protocol developed by Quantel to allow third-party developers access to pictures stored on Paintbox discs. By enabling pictures to be accessed via a common SCSI bus the Paintbox may continue to work un-interrupted whilst pictures previously created by the Paintbox are transferred to another system.
In practice the common access point for the Paintbox and any external system is now assumed to be the external magneto-optical disc drive which Quantel are supplying with all new systems. Thus in operation the Paintbox designer uses the internal hard disc on the Paintbox for working storage and then saves finished frames onto the magneto-optical disc. The magneto-optical disc is then accessed using the Pictureport Bus and the required frames are transferred to the external computer which in this case is the Acorn Risc PC running either Q-Lib or Q-Port software.
The designer can carry on working on the Paintbox without any interruptions from the edit suites or other graphics areas that want the work to stop whilst they grab the new frames.
It is also desirable in a number of situations to be able to transfer Pictures from the Paintbox in order for them to be modified in ways not possible on the Paintbox and then re-imported back into the Paintbox. Particular applications might include Gamma curve manipulation, contour enhancement or 3D manipulation.
This is the point where Q-Port comes onto the scene.
Production versions of Q-Port will be fitted with a full T.V resolution 24 bit frame buffer which can either act as a gateway to other graphics systems or when fitted with appropriate interfaces may provide either Serial Digital 601, Ethernet or Analogue Y,Cr,Cb / R,G,B outputs independently from the Paintbox.
It may also be used to input frames created on other systems into the Paintbox. The SCSI and Ethernet interfaces are utilised on a large number of other graphics and animation systems.
Q-Port is based around the Acorn RISC based computers and consequently can make full use of the low cost fonts which are available at prices much cheaper than Postscript equivalents. For special effects text may also be distorted in ways not possible with the standard 3D package on the Paintbox and then fed to the Paintbox in the form of a Stencil or Cutout.
There is a wide range of foreign language fonts available and creating Indic, Arabic, Hebrew and Cyrillic captions on the Paintbox is is no longer a problem. Picture file storage on Q-Port is as TIFF files, so that images can be transferred to many other computer systems for direct incorporation into DTP documents, for example.
Software is also available to share control of older Quantel Digital Library systems with the standard Quantel replay panels. In this way Q-Port can be used to batch transfer pictures from the V-Series Paintbox to the Digital Library System. No operator intervention is required at either end other than ensuring that there is sufficient free space available on the respective discs to contain the pictures to be transferred. The actual transfer to the D.L.S can be made either via the R,G,B inputs or via a third-party 601 interface fitted to the D.L.S.
For digital Edit suites Q-Port may be used as a low cost Still Store when fitted with the serial 601 output card. If a high capacity hard disc is fitted Q-Port may also double as a library store.
The Video frame store installed in Q-Port may contain up to 16Mb RAM and so may also be used independently to create animation and colour cycling effects on Paintbox generated pictures.
In summary then, Q-Port is a system whereby pictures can be transferred to and from the V-Series Paintbox without interrupting normal Paintbox operation. Options are available to then output the pictures in a number of different formats both analogue and digital.
Standard system will include Acorn Risc PC with 17inch monitor, 4Mb DRAM, 2Mb VRAM and 800 Mb Hard disc. The 24 bit video card is fitted with 4Mb or 16Mb RAM. Higher capacity discs are available to order.
A Q-Port system may be upgraded to include Q-Lib features or may be networked with Q-Lib systems.