Horst has been helping me translate his article about the optical
transcriber system he built.  He is interested in the "Flying Spot
Scanner" technique for transcribing music rolls of differing
formats.  (This technique was used, briefly, in the early 1930s
for live television. The studio was very dark, and a single
photodetector tube picked up the light reflected from the scene.)

His concern about "unneeded data" refers to the output signal of a
line-scanner-detector, such as the CCD array which Jody used in Mike
Ames' roll reader.  In that system approximately 2000 pixels are
received in each line, which must be "winnowed" to only 100 note
channels of the piano roll data.

-- Robbie Rhodes

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Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 20:04:40 MEZ¶
From: "Horst Mohr" <mohr@nemeter.dinoco.DE>¶
To: "Robbie Rhodes" <rrhodes@foxtail.com>

I followed the discussion about light sources and photocopy technics
with interest. Is there already a possibility to direct a slim light
beam, laser or not, very fast(!), to every fixed point in a line by
computer control?

I would like the computer to determine what is to be read, not to
have a bucket full of unneeded data that must be sorted.  That would
be part of my next multi-format note roll reader.

Remember I am a realtime computing fan. Not really an expert,
but since 1978 I learned some tricks.

h.m.