{"id":7040,"title":"Design Device - A Unique Video Synthesizer","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/design-device-unique-video-synthesizer","version":"55d3d81777ae39bdaaf6d3885a64fcc0d180e7d66f3f3a697113fa61fbcc19be","modified":"2026-09-13T21:51:53.8867349+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Tom DeWitt"}],"authorKeys":["DeWitt, Tom"],"subjects":["Tool Texts"],"metadata":[{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC0294","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Design Device - A Unique Video Synthesizer.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/design-device-unique-video-synthesizer.","publication":"Tom DeWitt. Design Device - A Unique Video Synthesizer. 1976.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/7040.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC0294","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":32045},{"name":"abstract","source":"recorded publication abstract","generated":false,"characters":418},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":722},{"name":"archive_summary","source":"existing ETC archive summaries: ETC0294","generated":false,"characters":418}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Proposal from WMHT TV to The New York State Council on the Arts for A Unique Video Sythesizer Historical Background In 1975, Tom DeWitt and Phil Edelstein spent a weekend in Poughkeepsie visiting with Tom\u0027s family. Retreating to the attic rooms, they sketched out a proposal for a video synthesizer. The setting must have been influenced to some extent by Tom\u0027s father, David DeWitt, an IBM Fellow whose lifetime of contribution to electrical and electronic engineering including basic work in radio, television, radar, computers, transisors and semi-conductors. His 40 foot ham antenna mast was visible from the room in which Tom and Phil feverishly sketched their synthesizer, and Tom decided that calling their instrument the Design Device would bless the project with his father\u0027s initials. Returning to Albany, Tom put words to the sketches and dragged in documentation that had accumulated during his NEA Fellowship in Video over the course of a year. With graphic design help from his partner in art, Vibeke Sorensen, the sketches began to look legible to the eye of electronics engineers. Using the Electronic Music Studio at the University at Albany as a base, Tom and Phil phoned around the country to get price fixes for parts and interviewed potential allies in the proposed construction. The package was given a final draft and a pack of copies were sent to the New York State Council on the Arts under the aegis of the Capital District\u0027s PBS station, WMHT with the expectation of starting in Albany the kind of facility in which Tom and Phil had both participated in New York City, WNET\u0027s Television Labortory. There was a grant, but at half the proposed budget, the Design Device proved out of reach, and Pantomation was the born as a lower cost alternative. Tom Ditto August 2000 This proposal describes a new kind of video synthesizer which uses the graphic potential of the video medium for a programming language. The instrument, called the Design Device, will perform video synthesis and signal processing unde-control from a mini computer which reads a specially formatted picture language. This programming language will permit artists to prepare ideas away from the studio and provide a permanent record on paper of all useful programs. Review of Existing Video Synthesizers and Ideas for a New One To free the video artist from the confines of the real camera-recorded world, it is necessary to develop instruments which generate a television compatible signal from raw electronics. A synthesizer is the paint and palette of the video artist, a device which lets the artist construct spaces from the dictates of imagination. The first video synthesizers began- to appear almost a decade after the development of complete audio synthesis systems. There are compelling reasons for this delay. The development of a time variant artform is just now being born in the visual arts, centuries after the establishment of a related set of time variant structures in music. Technically, the video synthesizer is more complex than its audio cousin. Video signals cover a frequency spectrum 100 times greater than audio and must be constructed according to a precise timing synchronization which does not exist in the one dimensional audio signal. Consequently, design concepts and instrument components are now coming together for the first time. There have been two approaches to video synthesizer design, vector graphics and signal intensity. This split is a consequence of the television system itself which uses a one dimensional high frequency signal to describe a two dimensional field of much lower frequency. The systems developed by Steve Rutt and Bill Etra, Computer Image Corp., Vector General, and others operate on the x and y deflection amplifiers of a cathode ray display. The synthesized or processed images coming from these devices are rescanned by a conventional camera for recording on video tape. Digital signal synthesizers, on the other hand, such as those developed by Steven Beck, Dan Sandin, and EMS Ltd., operate on the intensity or-\u0022z\u0022 component of the video signal. Their output is made compatible with video standards by processing in a color encoder. The two approaches can be combined in a single device. In fact, Sandin has worked extensively with a computer controlled vector display, and RuttEtra synthesizers are invariably teamed with keyers, colorizers and other signal processors. However, no one has come out with an integrated package that incorporates both approaches. The Design Device will attempt this marriage of design principles. All the artist designed synthesizers are \u0022modular\u0022, that is, specialized devices are linked by patch cords which are manually inserted to complete a complex program. Modular design is essential in video, because it permits parallel and simultaneous processing of high frequency signals. The chief drawback of the general purpose computer in video synthesis is that it performs one operation at a time and cannot keep up with the video clock. As in the development of the audio synthesizer, artists have provided engineers with functional module building blocks which efficiently accomplish commonly needed functions. Modular design also permits a wide range of interconnections depending on the \u0022patch\u0022 made between them. For example, a system of only 8 modules, each with a single input and a single output can be patched in over 40,000 different ways. While modular systems provide both variety and efficiency, they also can present the artist with a confusing welter of two ended wires which makes live performance difficult and leaves him with no permanent record of his patch. The first step in improving this situation came with the introduction of the matrix switching systems of the Arp and EMS synthesizers, adapted for video by Woody and Steina Vasulka. These systems have manually set crosspoints and permit patchfields to be recorded by graphic notation. Going a step further Don Buchla and Bell Labs have developed computer controlled patchfields which are notated with a verbal language. The Design Device will have an electronic switch system, but rather than a verbal language, it will be controlled by a graphic notational system. All existing video and audio synthesis systems use a building block called the oscillator. The most common technique for generating forms is called additive synthesis in which the output waveforms of oscillators are mixed to form a waveforn. which is the sum of their combined outputs. It is theoretically possible to duplicate any natural waveform by summing many sine waves of different frequency. This approach has led to the construction of synthesis systems with dozens of oscillators. When such systems became untenable because of the large number of signal paths, a device was introduced by Don Buchla which generated a waveform from discretely set increments. This device is now known as a sequencer. It can be used as an oscillator or a controller in voltage controlled systems. Information is loaded into a sequencer manually by setting dozens of potentiometers. Like the patch cord system, it must be set up from scratch every time it is used. There is no convenient way to notate for this device. The general pupose computer can be used as a kind of sequencer since its memory stores lists of numbers, but again the problem of cycle time limits its use to low frequencies. Recent innovations in semiconductor technology, however, have put digital memory within the reach of the video synthesizer. Using modular design techniques, it is possible to build an oscillator module with a programmable output. In the Design Device there will be two such oscillators. The stored waveform will be loaded from a sampled graph drawn by the artist and scanned by a conventional television camera. Given that this small memory can serve to store waveforms, a method must be found to clock out its stored information. oscillators such as those found on the RuttEtra or Steven Beck\u0027s synthesizer must be synchronized to the rest of the synthesizer in order to produce stable patterns. While it is relatively easy to make a voltage controlled oscillator, it is difficult to maintain synchronization for an analog module. The Design Device uses the video sync generator itself as the clock for its memories. The rate at which the memories are read out is determined by a simple binary counter which is preset to the number of subdivisions it makes of the sync signals. Hence all the patterns produced by the memories are stable both with respect to the video signal and to each other. The contribution of commercial manufacturers of television equipment must not be overlooked in describing the development of video synthesis. Every news broadcast these days uses chroma key backgrounds, and this technique can prove very handy for the artist. The trouble is that most synthesizers operated on black and white inputs which are synthetically colorized, and the standard chroma keyer must have separate red, green and blue inputs in order to work. The Design Device will have an encoded chroma keyer which will derive the RGB signals from a color tape input, so it will be possible to build generations of imagery by operating on sections of the image encoded in a particular color. This may sound like a major electronic undertaking, but the commercial manufacturers of television sets have put the chroma decoding circuits on three relatively simple integrated circuits. Building an encoded chroma keyer is simply a matter of opening up a color television and using its decoder circuitry. Paik and Abe perfored this operation on a Trinitron at the WNET TV Lab. Unfortunately they did not realize this application of their modification. Another area in which broadcast television people have made great strides is in time base correction. For the mere sum of $12,000 the broadcaster can replace his $100,000 quad vtr with a time base corrector and a Sony video cassette. This means that an inexpensive vtr can be used as a source in a switcher. For an artist making a multi generational tape, such time base correction is essential. For an artist working on a shoe string budget, $12,000 for a time base corrector is out of the question. The Design Device will have two kinds of \u0022pseudo\u0022 time base correction. It has a rescan system which will re enter a black and white image from an external tape source and even permit the luxury of relocating the input image into a new space in the frame. It will also use the cheap part of the big commercial time base correctors which is a digital memory system, only the Design Device will only have one bit of time base correction. This will eliminate the expensive D to A and A to D converters and the eight bit wide memory system. The input through this cheap time base corrector will be a simple black or white j3ulse train which happens to be perfect for triggering a keying circuit. The most common \u0022special effect\u0022 available on commercial switchers is the geometric pattern called the wipe. The technique for generating wipes is quite straight forward and is used by Beck and others in artist oriented synthesizers. The pattern of the wipe is formed by the waveshape of an oscillator, and such wipes as diamonds, ellipsoids, and boxes are easily formed with an analog oscillator. The memory oscillator of the Design Device will permit virtually any shape of wipe to be made, and there will be provision for making multiples of any shape. One of Steve Beck\u0027s contributions to video synthesis was a perceptive analysis of spatial composition. By dividing the image into components of point, line and volume he was able to design modules to achieve each objective. Among his inventions were devices that took complex imaqes and reduced them to these spatial elements. in many ways, this paring down of images is important because it allows the artist to simplify complex spaces and combine them inside a single frame. The ","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":32045,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}