Varactor Based Video Synth Prototype
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
My first winter in Brooklyn I made this biz. It’s a video synth that I put together on a little Narrat1ve-specific protoboard (or as I call it, the Narrat1ve Big Wizard). It’s different than the last one in lots of important ways. It’s NTSC, and generates all its own sync and blanking pulses in software (that mess is coded in C for the AVR). I spend a lot of time looking at Bruce Land’s stuff, as well as the always-on-point Owen Osborn.
More importantly I figured out how to get a continuously variable phase shift of the color carrier (analog color!) using varactor diodes! This was a big step in making stuff that looked cool. Varactors are not ideal in a lot of ways, but they are sure simple.
I slapped this guy together for a talk I gave at La Superette that I got asked to do by the inimitable Kyle and Tali from Lovid. They were really cool about this talk and I had a great time!
This really beautiful and simple proto has since been deprecated by the monsters II’ve made since and is hanging around in some drawer or other. Sad, really. Ask Too $hort about it.
xo
TB