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L•TV Portable Pro
L•TV Portable Pro
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Adjust the Brightness
Changing brightness may minimize flicker and other distortions.
Avoid “Dither” Patterns
Use solid colors for Windows and Macintosh backgrounds rather than “col -
ors” formed by combining two colors in a pattern. TV monitors often flicker
wildly when attempting to display dither patterns.
Connection to the Video Device
Monitors
The connections labeled “Composite” and “S-Video” may be connected to
many different video devices. Commonly, you want to connect a TV/monitor
to L•TVPortable Pro. Please keep in mind the following tips when connecting
to a TV/monitor:
• If you need to buy a composite video monitor, many manufacturers of
televisions now include monitor connections in their TV’s. TV’s from
Sharp, Panasonic, Sony, NEC, Mitsubishi, and others are available with
monitor connections at almost any store that sells TV’s. The TVfunctions
as a video monitor when you flip the proper switch on the TVor remote
control. Also, choosing a monitor with S-Video input capability will sig-
nificantly improve your results.
• To improve clarity and prevent signal loss, keep your video connections
as short as you can. If you must have long cables, use thick, well-shield-
ed cables.
• L•TV Portable Pro output quality will begin to quickly degrade if TV
monitors are daisy chained to a single output connector. Although you
can connect one TV monitor to the Comp. output and another TVmoni-
tor to the S-video output, connecting two TV’s to the Comp. output,
through a splitter, will cause signal degradation. For distributing the sig-
nal to more than one monitor simultaneously, a Video Distribution
Amplifier is necessary, such as those available from your local electron-
ics store, or Comprehensive Video Supply in Northvale, NJ (800) 526-
0242.
• If you need to view your video on a regular TVthat does not have a video
input, you can either loop the signal through a VCR that’s already con-
nected to the TV, or you can purchase an RF modulator to convert the
composite video to a modulated signal. You can then set your TVset to
channel three or four to view. Keep in mind that using an RF modulator
does deteriorate the signal significantly and is not recommended for high
quality output. RF modulators are available at your local electronics
store.
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Unfortunately, when the video standard was developed in the first half of this
century for television video, no one anticipated the coming of multimedia and the
personal computer market. If they had, TV would have had more resolution and
better color. But since the coming of multimedia was not anticipated, and TV
video does not have the best resolution, we suggest that you follow these guide-
lines when creating computer generated graphics for L•TVPortable Pro:
Use 640 by 480 Modes
L•TVPortable Pro does a great job converting VGAscreens up to 1024 by 768.
But since the TVstandard itself only allows about 480 viewable lines, it gains you
nothing to use a 800 by 600 mode in situations where your ultimate output is
video (as when using L•TV Portable Pro). In fact, text and lines get smaller in
these modes and can become difficult to read when converted to TVvideo. So the
best rule is to use a 640 by 480 mode whenever possible while using L•TV
Portable Pro - it’s the best possible match for TV.
Large Text
The general rule of thumb is, if you think the text is big enough, make it even
bigger. Not only do you need to account for the lower resolution of TVvideo, but
you must account for scale, as well. After your computer generated text is trans-
formed into video tape, the television used to view it might be a 3 inch Sony
Watchman or a full-size projection TV.
At it's smallest, your text should be readable from 20 feet away on a 12-13 inch
television. Perhaps the worst example of breaking these rules is in auto commer-
cials where an unreadable list of conditions and terms are shown whenever a price
is mentioned. Your videos need not be so sneaky. After all, you really want peo-
ple to be able to read your text.
Avoid Fine Detail
One pixel wide horizontal lines have a tendency to flicker. Thin vertical lines
may not give the best results either. To avoid flicker, simply make your lines two
or more pixels wide.
Use the Center 85% of the Screen
This rule applies for two reasons. First, viewers expect the action to be in the
center of the set. Second, it’s possible that the edges of the screen will be cut off
on an older or poorly adjusted TV. For these reasons, never place crucial graphics
on the edges of your screen.
Choose Colors Carefully
When two completely different colors are next to each other, it’s possible that
the border between the colors will pulsate, jitter, or crawl. Simply put a bright red
next to a deep green and you’ll see the crawl. Your best bet is to experiment, keep-
ing in mind that some colors may clash.
