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Studio Magic Director - more info on this strange capture card?

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First post, by ElementalChaos

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A few months ago I got a large number of cards and motherboards in an eBay lot. This one in particular still eludes me.

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Googling the company name only returns an FCC filing and two mentions of their "Studio Magic Director" from PCMag and CBR. It seems to have been a Windows-based video editing board that could display VGA output through composite and capture screenshots (or video?) of composite and S-Video input. It has one composite and S-Video input, and one composite out. Curiously it has a Tseng ET4000AX chip.

This card seems to rely on Windows-based drivers that are totally extinct unless someone here proves otherwise. It's a long shot, but does anyone here own this card? Or, more importantly, the driver/software package for it?

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Reply 1 of 2, by Stiletto

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A couple of other references:
https://www.telecompaper.com/news/studio-magi … ing-card--29517
https://books.google.com/books?id=iPcnAQAAIAA … Rd3DGAQ6AEIIDAB
https://books.google.com/books?id=j2gkAQAAMAA … Rd3DGAQ6AEILDAE
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rec.video.d … SZyc/discussion
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rec.video.p … QDqE/discussion

One of the USENET threads says that "Studio Magic" was out of business by 1996...

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 2 of 2, by NJRoadfan

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This card likely doesn't do any actual full motion video capture going by the lack of chips and inherit limitations of the ISA bus, but still snapshots are supported. The references to Control-L and Control-M indicate it can remotely control two VCRs and do linear editing via something known as an "edit decision list". I wouldn't be surprised if the middle port on the card is a 8-pin Mini-DIN port. The on-board ET4000AX is used to generate titles and graphics onto tape. Nothing in the vague descriptions indicate its able to overlay/genlock video with custom graphics.

Pinnacle Systems released a similar device that plugged into the parallel port a few years later that did the same thing. the link describes how the whole mess actually works..... well when it worked right anyway: http://www.vitalsparks.com/vided.html

I was tasked with getting a Studio 400 working back in 1997-8ish or so. The stupid thing never worked right since the Panasonic VCRs I was using didn't properly support the Control-M standard.

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