After playing around with music synthesis and building my own synths from scratch, i wondered if the same sort of methods could be applied to video synths. So after a few experiments i came up with a working circuit that produced nice wave forms and patterns that reacted to an audio input. This circuit would only work on an old TV though, mainly due to there being now sync signals at all, and the TV would just pump out the information it was receiving without caring. It kind of looked like a Wobblevision, but far more advanced. Also, having circuit bent an AVE3, some other strange video mixers i got off ebay, and numerous NES consoles, i wanted to perform with them, but the main issue i had was the clock pulse/sync signal being distorted due to the bends.

The only real way of restoring this is by using a time base corrector, which are expensive, or to use a video mixer with one built in, such as the panasonic MX range of video mixers or the Edirol V4. The machines work fine on analog TV sets, but when you plug them into a digital projector, they just display the usual blue screen of joy as the projector cant deal with the out of sync clock pulses/sync signals.

A timebase corrector stablises the sync signals by syncing or superimposing them with its own(i think…) which allows the projector to display the visuals. If i had a spare few hundred quid then i’d buy something, but i don’t, so i needed a solution.

After trawling the web, i came across Brian Mckenna and his VGA synth experiments, who suggested using a varity of IC’s to be able to create and/or strip these these sync signals, but his personal choice was to use a hacked VGA cable into which he fed his own data to the RGB lines instead of that which came from the original source. What a fucking ingenious idea! So simple, but just never really crossed my mind. Effectively, by using the VGA cable, he was stealing the sync info and tricking the output display into pumping out whatever you throw at it.

So, over a year later from when i discussed all this with Brian, i finally got round to doing something with it all….

VGA Experiments >>>>

VGA Experiments 2 >>>>