Blu
make use of Bluefish444’s products in development
on BluBox
31st July 2004.
In 2003 we decided to move our graphics engine to a DirectX
based development platform. Among several advantages was
the possiblilty to achieve greater flexibility in developing
2D and 3D broadcast graphics solutions by using a vast body
of easily accessibly documentation and code examples.
In our search for a DirectX graphics adapter with SDI output
we were introduced to the BlueFish444 series of cards. These
cards allow for fast copying of frames or fields from a separate
graphics adapter for output via a genlockable broadcast quality
SDI output. This was perfect for our development as we were
not tied to a single manufacturer and their development cycle
for our graphics engine. Instead, in conjunction with the
Bluefish444 card, we are able to use either the latest and
most powerful graphics card or the most inexpensive one from
a varity of manufacturers depending on our needs.
Based on the BlueFish444 documentation and examples, we
developed a code module in C++ that copies fields from a
NVIDIA based graphics adapter 50 times each second to produce
an excellent smoothly animated output.
For the first production using this new setup we have a
scene consisting of numbers that are drawn and animated in
3D space that fall to different places on a board, all of
which is floating above an animated background. These animations
are all performed in a Visual Basic 6.0 application using
Direct3D, fields are then copied from the Direct3D framebuffer
in realtime to the Bluefish444 card using the C++ DLL. Whilst
doing all this animation our application also generates all
the sound for the show (Wav), and controls a Philips Videomixer
via serial-port.
It has been a great to be able to use the Bluefish444 boards
to build a solution for outputting 3D graphics in a professional
and high quality format. It have given us the creative freedom
needed for producing many different types TV shows.
About Blu
Blu is a Danish TV Production company located in Copenhagen
producing several TV shows for the leading danish broadcasters.
Blu has developed a system for fully automating TV productions
called BluBox.
The BluBox software
controls the unmanned moveable cameras and lights, graphics,
and music. BluBox also controls the
game itself, automatically awarding points and keeping track
of scores and time. This flexible concept has been applied
to several different types of TV shows – eg The Weakest
Link.
Jakob Kristiansen
Lead Programmer - Blu Productions
Copenhagen, Denmark
www.blu.dk