A video synthesizer is a device that electronically creates a

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

signal. A video synthesizer is able to generate a variety of visual material without camera input through the use of internal video pattern generators. It can also accept and "clean up and enhance" or "distort" live television camera imagery. The synthesizer creates a wide range of imagery through purely electronic manipulations. This imagery is visible within the output video signal when this signal is displayed. The output video signal can be viewed on a wide range of conventional video equipment, such as TV monitors, theater video projectors, computer displays, etc. Video pattern generators may produce static or moving or evolving imagery. Examples include geometric patterns (in 2D or 3D), subtitle text characters in a particular font, or weather maps. Imagery from TV cameras can be altered in color or geometrically scaled, tilted, wrapped around objects, and otherwise manipulated. A particular video synthesizer will offer a subset of possible effects.

Real-time performance instruments

The history of video synthesis is tied to a "real time performance" ethic. The equipment is usually expected to function on input camera signals the machine has never seen before, delivering a processed signal continuously and with a minimum of delay in response to the ever-changing live video inputs. Following in the tradition of performance instruments of the audio synthesis world such as the

Theremin The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone, etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named aft ...

, video synthesizers were designed with the expectation they would be played in live concert theatrical situations or set up in a studio ready to process a videotape from a playback VCR in real time while recording the results on a second VCR. Venues of these performances included "Electronic Visualization Events" in Chicago
The Kitchen
in NYC, and museum installations. Video artist/performer Don Slepian designed, built and performed a foot-controlled Visual Instrument at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1983) and the NY Open Center that combined genlocked early micro-computers

Apple II Plus The Apple II Plus (stylized as Apple ] or apple plus) is the second model of the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Inc., Apple Computer. It was sold from June 1979 to December 1982. Approximately 380,000 II Pluses we ...

with the Chromaton 14 Video Synthesizer. and channels of colorized video feedback. Analog and early real time digital synthesizers existed before modern computer 3D modeling. Typical 3D renderers are not real time, as they concentrate on computing each frame from, for example, a recursive ray tracing algorithm, however long it takes. This distinguishes them from video synthesizers, which must deliver a new output frame by the time the last one has been shown, and repeat this performance continuously (typically delivering a new frame regularly every 1/60 or 1/50 of a second). The real time constraint results in a difference in design philosophy between these two classes of systems. Video synthesizers overlap with video

special effect Special effects (often abbreviated as F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the fictional events in a story or virtual world. ...

s equipment used in real time network television broadcast and post-production situations. Many innovations in television broadcast equipment as well as computer graphics displays evolved from synthesizers developed in the video artists' community and these industries often support "electronic art projects" in this area to show appreciation of this history.

Confluence of ideas of electronics and arts

Many principles used in the construction of early video synthesizers reflected a healthy and dynamic interplay between electronic requirements and traditional interpretations of artistic forms. For example, Steve Rutt, Bill Etra and Daniel Sandin carried forward as an essential principle ideas of

Robert Moog Robert Arthur Moog ( ; May 23, 1934 – August 21, 2005) was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthe ...

that standardized signal ranges so that any module's output could be connected to "voltage control" any other module's input. The consequence of this in a machine like the Rutt-Etra was that position, brightness, and color were completely interchangeable and could be used to modulate each other during the processing that led to the final image. Videotapes by Louise and Bill Etra and

Steina and Woody Vasulka Steina Vasulka (born Steinunn Briem Bjarnadottir in 1940)
Soros Center for Contemporary Arts Budapest and Woody Vasulka ...

dramatized this new class of effects. This led to various interpretations of the multi-modal

synesthesia Synesthesia (American English) or synaesthesia (British English) is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People with sy ...

of these aspects of the image in dialogues that extended the McLuhanesque language of film criticism of the time.

EMS Spectron

In the UK, Richard Monkhouse, working for Electronic Music Studios (London) Limited (EMS), developed a hybrid video synthesiser – Spectre – later renamed 'Spectron' which used the EMS patchboard system to allow completely flexible connections between module inputs and outputs. The video signals were digital, but they were controlled by analog voltages. There was a digital patchboard for image composition and an analog patchboard for motion control.

Evolution into frame buffers

Video synthesizers moved from analog to the precision control of digital. The first digital effects as exemplified by Stephen Beck's Video Weavings used digital oscillators optionally linked to horizontal, vertical, or frame resets to generate timing ramps. These ramps could be gated to create the video image itself and were responsible for its underlying geometric texture. Schier and Vasulka advanced the state of the art from address counters to programmable (microcodable) AMD Am2901 bit slice based address generators. On the data path, they used 74S181 arithmetic and logic units, previously thought of as a component for doing arithmetic instructions in minicomputers, to process real time video signals, creating new signals representing the sum, difference, AND, XOR, and so on, of two input signals. These two elements, the address generator, and the video data pipeline, recur as core features of digital video architecture. The address generator supplied read and write addresses to a real time video memory, which can be thought of as evolution into the most flexible form of gating the address bits together to produce the video. While the video frame buffer is now present in every computer's graphics card, it has not carried forward a number of features of the early video synths. The address generator counts in a fixed rectangular pattern from the upper left hand corner of the screen, across each line, to the bottom. This discarded a whole technology of modifying the image by variations in the read and write addressing sequence provided by the hardware address generators as the image passed through the memory. Today, address based distortions are more often accomplished by

blitter A blitter is a circuit, sometimes as a coprocessor or a logic block on a microprocessor, dedicated to the rapid movement and modification of data within a computer's memory. A blitter can copy large quantities of data from one memory area to a ...

operations moving data in the memory, rather than changes in video hardware addressing patterns.

History

1960s

* 1962,

Lee Harrison III Lee Harrison III (1929–1998) was a pioneer in analog electronic animation. Harrison received two bachelor's degrees from Washington University in St. Louis (Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1952 and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1959) ...

's ANIMAC: (Hybrid graphic animation computer) – predecessor to the

Scanimate Scanimate is an analog computer animation ( video synthesizer) system created by Lee Harrison III of Denver, Colorado. Harrison had developed its predecessor, ANIMAC, which generated used a motion capture system, based on a body suit with poten ...

* 1966, Dan Slater's custom vsynths: Dan Slater has built a number of custom homebrew vsynths over the years and worked with

Douglas Trumbull Douglas Hunt Trumbull (; April 8, 1942 – February 7, 2022) was an American film director and visual effects supervisor, who pioneered innovative methods in special effects. He created scenes for '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', '' Close Encounter ...

on various films. * 1968, Eric Siegel's PCS (Processing Chrominance Synthesizer) * 1968, Computer Image Corporation

: ** Video of
News Report on Scanimate
including interview with inventor Lee Harrison III * 1969, Paik/Abe synthesizer ** Built at WGBH Boston Experimental TV Center envisioned by

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a South Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" ...

, designed by artist/engineer Shuya Abe. ** Several built at

CalArts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both the ...

, and Experimental TV Center

Binghamton University The State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University or SUNY Binghamton) is a public university, public research university in Binghamton metropolitan area, Greater Binghamton, New York, United States. It is one of the four uni ...

, WNET NYC; Jim Wiseman has one still operational * 1969, Bill Hearn's VIDIUM: (Analog XYZ driver/sequencer) * 1969, Glen Southworth's CVI Quantizer and CVI Data Camera

1970–1974

* 1970, Eric Siegel's EVS Electronic Video Synthesizer and Dual Colorizer (Analog) * 1970, groove & VAmpire ** (generated real-time output operations on voltage-controlled equipment) ** (video and music program for interactive realtime exploration/experimentation). * 1970, Lear Siegler's vsynth: unique high-resolution video processor used in the film ''

The Andromeda Strain ''The Andromeda Strain'' is a 1969 novel by American writer Michael Crichton, his first novel under his own name and his sixth novel overall. It documents the outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism in Arizona and the team of scie ...

'' and by Douglas Trumbull and Dan Slater * Stephen Beck's Direct Video Synth and Beck Video Weaver ** Stephen Beck created some early 1970s synths that had no video inputs. They made video purely from oscillations. ** He also modified a few Paik/Abe units. * Walter Wright: one of the first video animators, in the early 1970s, he worked at Dolphin Productions a Division of Computer Image Corporation, where he operated a Scanimate. While at Dolphin, he worked with Ed Emshwiller on ''Thermogenisis'' and ''Scapemates''. He also made several tapes on his own. In 1973–1976, as artist-in-residence at the

Experimental Television Center Experimental Television Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit electronic and media art center. History The Experimental Television Center (ETC) was founded in 1971 by Ralph Hocking. The center was the result of the expansion of a media access progr ...

, New York, he pioneered video performance touring public access centers, colleges and galleries with the Paik/Abe video synthesizer. He also worked with the David Jones colorizer and Rich Brewster's sequencing modules. These various modules were based on David's design for voltage-controlled video amps and became the basis for the ETC studio. He was there when Don McArthur built the SAID. Woody Vasulka and Jeff Schier were close at hand building computer-based modules in Buffalo including a frame buffer with ALUs built in, mixers, keyers and colorizers. Wright also worked with

Gary Hill Gary Hill (born April 4, 1951) is an American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Often viewed as one of the foundational artists of new media art, based on the single-channel work and video- and sound-based installations of the 1 ...

at Woodstock Community Video, where they had a weekly cable show of live video/audio synthesis. Wright has developed his own performance video system, the Video Shredder, and uses it in performances with a mission to create a new music of sound and image. He has performed throughout the east coast of the US and Canada at art galleries and museums, schools and colleges, media centers, conferences and festivals. Sandin_Image_Processor

* 1971, Sandin Image Processor: very early video synth, DIY modular, built by Dan Sandin of Chicago. * 1972, Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer: co-invented by Steve Rutt and Bill Etra; this is an analog computer for video raster manipulation. * 1973, Phil Morton publishes "Notes on the Aesthetics of Copying an Image Processor". He "proudly referred to himself as the ‘first copier’ of Sandin's Image Processor. The Sandin Image Processor offered artists unprecedented abilities to create, process and affect realtime video and audio, enabling performances that literally set the stage for current real-time audio-video New Media Art." * 1974, Videosynths' by David Jones: many creations, the most famous being the Jones Colorizer, a four channel voltage controllable colorizer with gray level keyers. * 1974,

EMS Ems or EMS may refer to: Places and rivers * Domat/Ems, a Swiss municipality in the canton of Grisons * Ems (river) (Eems), a river in northwestern Germany and northeastern Netherlands that discharges in the Dollart Bay * Ems (Eder), a river o ...

Spectre: Innovative video synthesiser using analogue and digital techniques, developed by Richard Monkhouse at EMS. Later renamed to 'Spectron'.

1975–1979

* 1975, Dave Jones Video Digitizer: an early digital video processor used for video art. It did real-time digitizing (no sample clock) and used a 4-bit ALU to create color effects * 1975, Don McArthur's SAID: Don McArthur developed the SAID (Spatial and Intensity Digitizer), an outgrowth of research on a black and white time base corrector with Dave Jones * 1976, Denise Gallant's vsynth: created a very advanced analogue video synthesizer in the late 1970s. * 1976, Chromaton 14 ** A fairly small analog video synthesizer with color quantizers and which can generate complex color images without any external inputs. ** Built by BJA Systems * Atari Video Music * 1977, Jones Frame Buffer: low-resolution digital frame storage of video signals (higher resolution versions, and multi-frame versions were made in 1979 and the early 1980s) * 1979, Chromachron: one of the first DIGITAL VSynths – designed by Ed Tannenbaum. * 1979, Chromascope Video Synthesizer, PAL and NTSC versions. Created by Robin Palmer. Manufactured by Chromatronics, Essex, UK. Distribution by CEL Electronics. Model P135 (2,000 units built) and Model C.101 (100 units built).

1980s

* 1984, Fairlight CVI Computer Video Instrument: The Fairlight CVI was produced in the early 1980s, and is a hybrid analog-digital video processor.

2000s–2020s

* 2008, Lars Larsen and Ed Leckie founde
LZX Industries
and began developing new analog video synthesizer modules (Visionary, Cadet, and Expedition Series). * 2010, Milkymist One * 2011, Critter & Guitari Video Scope: preset video synthesizer. * 2013, Critter & Guitari Rhythm Scope: preset video synthesizer. * 2014, Critter & Guitari Black & White Video Scope: preset video synthesizer. * 2014, Ming Mecca: modular pixel-art-oriented analog video synth *2015, CFOGE Video Equations: procedurally generated digital video synth. * 2016, Paracos
Lumen
semi-modular software video synth for

MacOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. * 2016
Vsynth
a modular video synthesizer package fo
Max/Jitter
by Kevin Kripper. * 2016, Ming Micro: pixel-art-oriented digital video synth * 2017, Critter & Guitari ETC: video synthesizer that supports 720p output. * 2021, Critter & Guitari EYESY: video synthesizer that supports 1080p output, MIDI input and programming. * 2022, Blittertech Waveblitter: audio-reactive video synthesizer, b/w composite video output in PAL or NTSC. * 2023, Blittertech Waveblitter Color: audio-reactive video synthesizer with inbuilt video player, composite video output in PAL or NTSC.

References

Bibliography

;Books *Computer Lib by

Ted Nelson Theodor Holm Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms ''hypertext'' and ''hypermedia'' in 1963 and published them in 1965. According to his 1997 ''Forbes'' p ...

;Web
Tools Thomas Dreher: History of Computer Art
Chap. IV.1.2 Video Synthesizers. *Nam June Paik (http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/paik/index.html) *Nam June Paik (http://www.paikstudios.com/) *Rutt-Etra ( http://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/vidsynth/ruttetra/ruttetra.htm ) *Walter Wright (https://nohtv.wordpress.com/ ) *Sandin Image Processor ( http://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/vidsynth/sandin/sandin.htm ) *Sandin Image Processor, references to videotapes from, with stillframes

) * Phillip Morton Archive ( http://copyitright.wordpress.com/ ) * Stephen Beck (Analog and Digital video synths) ( https://web.archive.org/web/20060211003115/http://people.wcsu.edu/mccarneyh/fva/B/BeckDirectVideo.html ) *Keeling Video Machine design blog ( https://web.archive.org/web/20060515063107/http://www.lundberg.info/vidsynth/ ) *Fluidigeo synth, designed late 1970s built in early 1980s, patent has good diagrams and text describing archetypical video synthesizer of that era ( https://web.archive.org/web/20060211005327/http://www.fluidigeo.com/patents/US4791489.pdf ) *Tannenbaum's "Recollections" at

Exploratorium The Exploratorium is a museum of science museum, science, technology museum, technology, and art museum, arts in San Francisco, California. Founded by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer in 1969, the museum was originally located in the ...

( https://web.archive.org/web/20051023192358/http://www.kidsart.com/IS/418.html ) *Video Synthesizer List ( http://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/vsynths.htm ) * Videokalos Colour Synthesiser ( https://web.archive.org/web/20041119134620/http://www.donebauer.net/manifestations/videokalos/features/features.htm ) *The Bob System (http://iknewthem.tripod.com/gear/bob.htm) *Don Slepian music videos: (http://DonSlepian.com) *# "Beginnings", 1983 – Chromascope Analog Video Synthesizer (http://www.veoh.com/videos/e68305kXXwNmEs) *# "Next Time", 1983 – Chromascope with Luma-Keying and Image Processing (http://www.veoh.com/videos/e68279sepxtkB3) *# "Rising Crimson Tide", 1982 – Chromaton 14 Analog Video Synthesizer with colorized video feedback techniques, animations from the Apple II+ micocomputer with genlock board. (http://www.veoh.com/videos/e6820952kjjPX4)

External links

{{Commons category-inline, Video synthesizers Video art Film and video technology