Quantel Mirage

The Quantel Mirage, or DVM8000/1 "Digital Video Manipulator", was a digital real-time video effects processor introduced by Quantel in 1982. It was capable of warping a live video stream by texture mapping it onto an arbitrary three-dimensional shape, around which the viewer could freely rotate or zoom in real-time. It could also interpolate, or morph, between two different shapes. It was considered the first real-time 3D video effects processor.

The Mirage was programmable - new shapes could be created by writing programs in the Pascal programming language on an attached Hewlett Packard computer. This made the device extremely flexible, but such programming was difficult and it became a highly specialized skill known by few.

Physically, the Mirage was a large device whose processing equipment filled a full height 19-inch rack, weighed 400 kilograms and consumed over 4 kilowatts of electrical power.

One famous Mirage user was Mike Oldfield, who purchased one for his extensive home music studio and video production facility. Signature Mirage effects can be seen in the "Wind Chimes" video album, in the form of rotating spiky spheres and granulated morphing effects.

External links

* [http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5103217.html U.S. Patent 5,103,217]
* [http://www.hammerhead.com/thad/morph.html Feature-Based Image Metamorphosis]
* [http://www.positivelyatlantaga.com/said/stratigraphy.html Video Statigraphy]