The '90s PC add-on that everyone forgot - Snappy Video Snapshot

[@SterremanWillie]

A fried alerted me to this video where you referenced my website where you got all the software versions from. Great to see this was still handy since my website will soon be disappearing after my retirement in February where my site is hosted. As I mentioned on my website, I was sent a prototype S-video attachment that plugs into the side slot, sent to me by an ex-Play employee. I used some of the info we exchanged in emails on my Snappy website.

[@teh_supar_hackr]

I'm wondering if that S-video addon can be reverse engineered to make clones of. Sure it would probably only be for curiosity on how it could have worked, but could still be useful.

[@UltimatePerfection]

Could you maybe archive the site, so it's up on the Internet archive for people in the future to make use of? Would be shame to see it go.

[@UltimatePerfection]

@@teh_supar_hackr Actually, AliExpress is full of clones for this, even modernized to connect over USB instead LPT.

[@ropersonline]

Since you know in advance the site will disappear at its current, work URL (understandable), you might consider manually checking if the Wayback Machine has captured all of it, maybe even manually archive any pages or files missing from the archive. If you have another, non-work webspace and are happy to keep hosting the content there yourself post-retirement (or know someone else who is), consider editing the site now, so the page points to or even redirects to the new URL, and then making sure that change is captured by the Wayback Machine too (assuming your employer is okay with that).

[@aidanjarosgrilli]

@@ropersonline great idea!

[@ACBMemphis]

I used one of these in the late 90s to create a "virtual window" for my cubicle-bound co-workers. A headless 486 PC running Snappy with an old camcorder took a picture every minute and copied it to the file server, while a Visual Basic app running on individual desktops would copy it down and set the windows background to the image. People stuck in the middle of the building could "look out the window" to see what the weather was like... Great video! I definitely remember Snappy... I think one of the software "updates" came with a new battery cover. Sorry to hear of the sad ending to the company.

[@darkcoeficient]

This sound so damn smart. I wish I could get the same thing at work.

[@CaliMeatWagon]

I've thought about something kinda similar. Many people live, and work, in windowless environments. Screens are thin enough you could easily put one in a fake window frame and mount it to a wall. Put speakers in the frame and have the volume controlled by the opening and closing of the window. Using this you could then create a window to any location, real or otherwise.

[@greenaum]

@@CaliMeatWagon A couple of people on KZbin have done that. But like the... hot anime babe... says, I can imagine it just driving you nuts. If you did it with a big window, you'd notice that as you walked past it, looked at it from different angles, the view was still the same, flat. With a window, you can look in different directions and see different things. It'd work as a small "window", or a larger one at a distance. Maybe for your nuclear shelter or something. Put some sky above your artificial beach. It'd just need to be far away enough that the view would be limited, were it a real window. The further you are from a real window, the less your viewing it from different angles affects the view. But yeah, people get fatigue looking at screens. Great big ones the size of a wall would annoy the piss out of you. It's like they're slightly burning your eyes or your brain or something. There are health and safety regulations telling computer operators to take a break every 15 minutes and look out of a window, or something distant, just to re-focus your eyes and give them some exercise. Otherwise you end up short-sighted. It's possible to do great big walls using displays that specially have very thin borders. I bet you could get screens with almost no border to fit together, there's no reason an LCD or OLED needs a border at the edge. Often that's where the electronics connect to the panel, along the edges, but that only needs like a millimeter. And with chip-on-glass, you can have, well, a chip, in the LCD's glass, to generate the picture and communicate with it's control computer through connections somewhere else. But still, I think it would just look horrible. People now have TV screens in their living rooms that are far too big, too large for the distance you're viewing them from, IE how far your couch is from the wall with the TV on it. You can't comfortably see the whole screen any more. People are dazzled by them so they buy them, but they're not a great idea. Also windowless environments are terrible! Architects should be made to answer for their crimes! People need real windows with views and sunlight. Otherwise it's like being in a cross between a casino and a tin can, no idea where you are, no sense of space or time. Uprooted, disorientated. Nightmarish. Money-grubbing bastards! Can you imagine working on the 70th floor of a skyscraper, and the view out all the windows is other skyscrapers? Madness! No wonder those windows don't open, it'd be raining stockbrokers.

[@obeseperson]

@HotAnimeBabe99541 not me I’m built different

[@hornox4life]

😄

[@ShawnTewes]

Back when the Snappy came out, our school produced student IDs by using a Panasonic S-VHS camcorder's freeze function to take the "photos", which were then captured by the Snappy and touched up for printing. They did it this way as a cost saving measure, as you could fit many hundreds of student photos on a single S-VHS tape.

[@JJschannel255]

Ok 👍

[@johnarbuckle6775]

Genius move actually

[@mikes-wv3em]

price club did similar for their membership photos

[@Gr8thxAlot]

The 1990's were the golden age of PC peripherals. A lot of them over-promised and some were downright wacky. Now they've all been replaced by phone apps. One of the thrift stores I used to visit was a graveyard for all this stuff and ancient boxed software. Great video! I was hoping they're be one released over the holidays.

[@Gorilla_Jones]

No boxed software is a tragedy for the consumer.

[@zulumax1]

I remember going to the mall to a shareware store, buying a few 3.5" floppy disks on the cheap. If you liked it you could pay the creator for the full version. Don't like apps, it is evaporware. You don't have access to the software if it disappears off of the server, or the if your operating system is updated it no longer works. Yet, you paid for it......

[@Lit_Hot_takes]

1990s Tech was the Best! ( I LUV THE NAME SNAPPY!)

[@wolfetteplays8894]

@@Gorilla_Jones no it’s not. It’s the most libertarian software

[@Zodroo_Tint]

@@wolfetteplays8894 Pirates are not consumers.

[@angryshoebox]

Man, in the mid-to-late '90s it seemed like Kai's Power Goo was bundled with EVERY scanner, digital camera, ink jet printer, etc.

[@JaredConnell]

I wonder if anybody bought a standalone copy of it lol

[@DrBagPhD]

That software slapped

[@stonetic2515]

@@DrBagPhD It was pretty limited. Now Kai's Power Tools, that was where all the groundbreaking stuff was.

[@greggv8]

I hated Kai's user interface design. It was childish appearing and hogged a massive amount of screen space. IIRC the makers of Bryce hired him to do their UI.

[@mikes-wv3em]

definitely scanners, and likely my cheapo canon inkjets too

[@RMRubert]

Definitely this is the proof that limitations often improve creativity and imagination. It also has the option of letting you choose the frame that you look better from all of them.

[@rasz]

@TubeTimeUS on twitter did a Snappy deep dive, teardown and reverse engineering down to schematic and figuring out remarked "PLAY HD-1500" main chip is a XC2064 FPGA. 30msps ADC + special 2Mbit video ram capable of holding whole field = this thing grabs whole one field of video all at once after perfectly synchronizing to 14.318MHz video clock (like Amiga and VideoToaster). Design is as good as one could get capturing analog video. LPT is the limitation, if the company didnt fold they could easily release same hardware with USB 2.0 frontend in 2000 doing full resolution full framerate live video.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Good ol TubeTime.

[@Brushedmetal69]

What they could have HD live streaming?

[@orangejjay]

@@Brushedmetal69 huh?

[@Brushedmetal69]

@@orangejjay the op said if they had made one in 2000 it would be capable of "live video"

[@greggv8]

Someone needs to take one of these and hack it to connect using USB to see how fast the old capture chip can be pushed. If it can hit 30 FPS NTSC or 25 FPS PAL and ignore Macrovision, that would be pretty nice.

[@StariusPrime]

I was a big fan of Play, Inc. back in the late 90s, and got to visit the company in Rancho Cordova, CA in the year 2000. (Where I met Kiki and many other talented people.) Play Inc was actually founded by people who left NewTek, creators of the Video Toaster. Fun fact, you can find a cameo of Kiki in the pilot episode of Babylon 5, because the special effects of the show were made using Amiga 4000's with Video Toaster boards. Play went on to create the Trinity NLE tv studio in a box which was at the forefront of online video streaming, long before KZbin was ever a thing. (Before their demise that is.)

[@tweakpc]

This story would be worth its own video 👍

[@jennoscura2381]

B5 is an underrated scifi show. Walter Koenig is fantastic as Bester. I wish they had devoted a season to the war with the teeps. I wish Crusade got more than one season.

[@timacrow]

Back in the mid 90s, I got to meet Kiki Stockhammer and Wil Weaton at a Video Toaster demo. Good times. :)

[@alexanderchernyavskiy5011]

You really met Kiki?

[@StariusPrime]

@@alexanderchernyavskiy5011 Yep! I did! And I was frequent enough viewer on her Play TV “Kiki at Midnight” online show that she had a “Starius Says” graphic made up for when I would ICQ in to comment. 😅 I must confess, I miss those days.

[@virtualset]

I worked at Play and it was great to see this blast from the past. I didn't work in the Snappy department, I worked in the Trinity side of the business but I loved going back to Snappy tech support and hanging out with the techs. Humorously one of those techs ended up owning the whole company and I still sell their paintbox software today as a telestrator.

[@bf0189]

I vaguely remember my uncle using the Snappy since he was a camcorder geek to get family pictures and such. It was definitely impressive for the time. I love how it's just plug, install software and play. For mid 90s hardware as you've mentioned that's actually very amazing. It's sorta rare even now to have technology advertised on a consumer level then for it to completely meet the claims. So sad about the CEO. I suspect they could have gone and made some quality USB capture devices in the 00s and 2010s compared to mediocre stuff we have now. I hope Kiki Stockhammer is doing well! Pretty sure I saw her a few times on TechTV in the late 90s. Her social media doesn't seem active :(

[@vwestlife]

Yes, Kiki is still doing fine -- she gave a speech at the Amiwest Amiga show in October 2022: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJqseIuMo7WAhqc

[@LegendOfGames]

This is really interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what video game magazines from the 90s used to get a lot of the screenshots they featured.

[@sam-sn5pu]

Morph is best known as the software used to create the Animorphs book covers, and the company behind Fauve Matisse also created XRes which was the basis of Macromedia Fireworks after their acquisition.

[@GameDevMadeEasy]

I didn't know that, thank you for that. I was a huge fan of the Animorphs books and thought the morphing used on the book cover was amazing. I still have yet to figure out how to reproduce the effect in Photoshop.

[@rommix0]

It was actually Elastic Reality for Mac. That was the morph software used for the Animorphs covers. Don't be spreading misinformation like that.

[@ALurkingGrue]

I worked for this company in the early 2000's it was refereed to as "Play South" and we handled software like Amorphium. They were a spinoff of people from the Amiga based company NewTek. Many devs left newtek and join forces with people from DCTV and formed play. I have a lot of materal during that time including faxes and such. In many ways they were trying to recreate the success of Newtek with the Amiga digitizer DIGI-View. I still have a memorial box that was given out at Paul's death.

[@Fractalis65]

I owned DCTV and that thing was magic! Simply amazing how it made a reasonably detailed composite color image out of what? A 4-color screen? AND you could animate it.

[@davefarquhar8230]

I was working at Best Buy right when these came out. Store management was super excited about it. That fall, I enrolled in journalism school and they were excited about it too, but more for what they thought the followup might be. I wrote a paper for my New Media class on video capture with a Snappy, more as a proof of concept than anything. Video at 28.8 wasn't practical, but I speculated by the time PCs were fast enough to make video capture practical, Internet speeds might not be far behind so things could line up in a way for it to be a viable delivery mechanism for video. Snappy was a trailblazer, and it showed the way to the future we theorized was possible in 1995. I agree it's a shame it's so forgotten today.

[@dennisp.2147]

I used these at a former employer in the mid 1990's. We hooked them up to the 1970's vintage video cameras on some older microscopes and replaced the antique CCTV monitors with a Gateway Pentium 100 machine, very similar looking to yours. We were able to grab snapshots of failed components and test results and then mail them directly to the engineers upstairs. Some of them were still in use when I left the company in 2016, albeit with much later Dell machines.

[@souta95]

I'm a little surprised by how good of an image it can take, given the limitations of the parallel port and composite video. Very impressive for what it is.

[@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777]

it's all bits my friend.

[@fuzzywzhe]

It looks like I would expect it. I can definitely tell it's NTSC quality. I do not want to return to those bad old days. By 2001, digital cameras were starting to become affordable, not surprised this product wouldn't go anywhere after that point.

[@BestSpatula]

My family had a Snappy on our home computer, a first generation Pentium Gateway 2000 running Windows 3.1. That device got tons of use once we had internet access. My brother and I connected our NES to it and made tons of screen grabs from various games and posted them online. My dad used it for taking pictures of items to sell on eBay. The paint and morph software was also pretty powerful. The only bad thing about it was that it used a 9V battery.

[@Mrshoujo]

The 9V battery lasted a long time in this thing!

[@hicknopunk]

I loved mine too

[@Chevroletcelebrity]

Nice try but ebay wasn't around when windows 3.1 was in use 🤨

[@BestSpatula]

@@Chevroletcelebrity we had win 3.1 for a while after win95 had been released.

[@alleykat1750]

❤ l 1:27 p .😅

[@emilcost8613]

I loved my Snappy. I had hours of fun and digitized hundreds of stills from VHS video tape. I have a directory in my archives called Snappy Pics. The product worked perfectly and to this day I have a soft spot in my heart for the Snappy. Thanks for doing this video... great job documenting the Snappy.

[@MaxStax1]

I bought the Snappy around 96 or 97, and really liked it. I also got a parallel port switch box with 4 ports to go with it and was able to plug in the Snappy the printer and my scanner and then i could easily switch between them. I would use my camcorder and TV/VCR to grab stills all the time. All that stuff was so new to me and was so much fun.

[@agranero6]

0:50 The model in the picture is Kiki Stockhammer. The model in the Video Toaster videos. When Paul Montgomery left NewTek (that made Video Toaster) to form Play Inc (that made Snappy) she went along with him. She became the spokesperson for the company. While at NewTek as Babylon 5 used Lighwave 3D that came with the Video Toaster she even appear on a cameo in Babylon 5.

[@robbyrobot3303]

I bet game journalists were extremely happy to have this device at the time to capture screenshots

[@hyperturbotechnomike]

I used a smiliar thing once to make a small printed guide for secrets and collectibes in PS1 and PS2 games, which i shared with friends at school or sold them for a little bit. The device i had was called Hauppauge and it could make still frames in high resolution and record MPEG1 video. But it was an add-in card, but they also had a version for USB in 2000, as far as i remember

[@bwc1976]

Yup, Hauppauge is still in business!

[@maxvideodrome4215]

I had one - got the developers kit and made my own captures in Visual Basic - was fun back in the day!

[@BigCar2]

Thanks for this, and Happy New Year! I didn't know you were also a Victor Borge fan.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

That Netscape navigator screenshot takes me back to my childhood/jr high years

[@CicadaMania]

I loved my Snappy. I used it to grab shots from movies and used them in band flyers and mid-90s era fansites. Thanks for the quarter-century-old computer memories!

[@GeomancerHT]

I can imagine the gamedevs using this to rotoscope and do lots of graphics for the games of the era, I would love to do retro gamedev on one of this for sure! Thanks for sharing!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Hell yeah, that’s how Mortal Kombat was made (an earlier bigger device, though)

[@GeomancerHT]

@@kaitlyn__L yeah, that's how the original Prince of Persia was done, Jordan Mechner taped his brother doing the movements, then he bought a huge vcr scanner and rotoscoped the pictures, and then he returned it at no cost XD

[@Vuusteri]

I feel this was very useful if you had Backstreet Boys fanpage or X-Files fanpage at Geocities and only a video camera. Since there was no Google to find images from, and ClipArt sucked, this was probably the best way to get multimedia content on your website.

[@jennoscura2381]

Ah Geoshitties. Where anyone could could make a web page plastered with clipart and a link to their guest book.

[@themaritimegirl]

It's too bad the company didn't live long enough to develop the hardware further with USB support and stuff. They could have turned it into a high-quality alternative to all of the mediocre USB video capture cards.

[@HughJaeness]

I mean, it would probably just end up being another mediocre capture card.

[@Kalvinjj]

I can see them being one of the video capture manufacturers that would now be doing HDMI capture cards indeed. That is if the creator had kept going at it instead of wanting to just turn a higher profit, in which case it would be another in the sea of mediocre. Considering the hardware kept the same for years and the snapshot max resolution is already riding on the upscaling bandwagon (heck it's more than analog video spec that it takes the content from) I can't really tell which direction they would go.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Dazzle hate? 😁

[@fuzzywzhe]

USB back in 2001 was terrifically slow - FAR slower than what we have today. The problem was solved actually by FireWire but it wasn't standard on PCs. USB 2.0 is quite usable, but USB 1.0 and 1.1 BARELY were. They were more designed for keyboards and mice than for actual data transfer. If you can find an old USB 1.1 flash drive, try it. That would be like a 32 MB drive, I doubt you can find one anywhere.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@fuzzywzhe it was still faster than parallel for image capture at least, but yeah 1.1 wouldn’t have done full video like the USB2 cards did

[@Viczarratt]

I was thinking about the snappy just five days ago, and then your video pops up in my homefeed today... wow!

[@ntsecrets]

I remember helping a friend of my dad set up that exact same computer including a 10base2 lantastic card. The lady that was to use it was such a “pro” at word perfect macros she looked at the mouse and said what’s this! And threw it behind the pc!

[@therealbluedragon]

These devices were popular with a lot of smaller magazine publications who needed to capture screenshots from tv shows/movies/video games for their articles. As they were reliable, easy to use and a lot cheaper than any of the “professional grade” alternatives of the era.

[@bwc1976]

Very cool! I remember that "PC Soul Snatcher" ad from the DAK catalog. In 1995 I got a PowerMac clone that had Apple's AV capture card built in, which was amazing. Many other capture solutions even later on were not as good, as they only captured one field instead of both. It's nice to know that Snappy let you choose between one or both.

[@stereophonicstuff]

V3 of that software looks like Windows XP’s pinball game. The quality isn’t bad at all. The full motion video capture, while terribly clunky, is amazing given the limitations. It’s like the EZ-Cap’s distant ancestor.

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

This finally explains how at least some of the screen captures I saw on BBSes for download were created.

[@LakeNipissing]

I still have this from new in the 1990s... and the box and manual !! The lack of parallel ports on laptop computers I have used since the desktop 486 has made it a shelf item. I should check that I didn't leave a 9V battery in it, which would have destroyed it if the battery leaked out. Sad about Mr. Montgomery gone at only 39.

[@steve.Lowles]

USB to parallel adapter may work

[@LakeNipissing]

I just looked at mine. Nice they include a small hole under the blue _Snappy_ battery cover to allow for a 9V battery eliminator cable to exit with the cover still on. The 107 page manual is high quality and comprehensive. I was very pleased with the results from this; especially with the limitations of the video cards of computers t the time. The results looked amazing for the era.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@LakeNipissing I love “battery eliminator”, it’s so much more evocative than “mains adaptor” like people say in the UK.

[@tonyfromcali81]

Great Video !!!!!! Wow Flash Back of The Snappy Video Snapshot !! I was The Audio Visual Department Manager at Computer Warehouse in 1995, and this was my Favorite Capture Card for capturing Video still Images Sacramento Ca..

[@boowiebear]

This actually performs better than I thought it would. Thanks for the video!

[@WeatherSTARIII]

My dad used to have this back in 1998 on our former Windows 95-era IBM Aptiva. I remembered that capturing the video was always a challenge with the Snappy due to the low frame rate. Even my old ATI All-In-One TV Wonder that I later got in 2005 (which also used USB instead of parallel), had a much better frame rate than the Snappy, considering how much the video capturing technology has evolved since the 1990s.

[@Markimark151]

Although I never used Snappy, I used a similar capture card that uploaded photos from VHS-C tapes, I mostly went to the camera store to print photos from tapes, it was still cheaper due to one hour photo printing dozens of photos for few dollars! This was cool for live video capturing or editing!

[@duprie37]

This is great! Took me right back to 90s computing. What a funky decade it was!

[@Madness832]

Back in the day, I had one. And if remember correctly, you could access the battery by slidin' off the blue cover. Also, notice about 6:36, there's a little hole on the front, left. It allowed you to use one of those 9-volt battery eliminators from Radio Shack.

[@MrRedRooster]

Thanks for the travel to memory lane 🙂. I never owned a snappy but I was at the CEBIT in Germany (biggest hardware and software exhibition in Europe) in '96 with my father in my early teens. I even got a pin button that I wore on my jacked for a long time. Haven't thought about this in years...

[@Exitof99]

I immediately recognized Kiki Stockhammer of NewTek/Video Toaster fame! Oh, watching further into the video, I owned/possibly still own the DCTV.

[@geribaldi2]

I never used this technology back in the day. But looks pretty cool and works as advertised given the tech limits mid 90's. Good video and very detailed walk through.

[@GarthBeagle]

Well done overview! I remember seeing these back in the day, but never owned one. By then I already had a Macintosh Quadra 630 with built-in video capture I was using.

[@igorszamaszow171]

14:51 I love this Techmoan reference!

[@breadsticat6264]

I simply must tell you how underrated your KZbin channel is. You deserve way more subscribers! Keep growing!

[@povilasstaniulis9484]

Haven't heard of this thing before. This is a really innovative product that's way ahead of it's time. Mostly limited by LPT bus, this would have worked much better with USB. But then again, USB wasn't even invented when this was released.

[@TheDeathmail]

Once USB got big, this device kinda became obsolete... it was a niche device for a kinda niche market. It was during a time when not everyone had a PC nor everyone thought of sending photos or using them on the PC. PCs were used mostly for documents or surfing the web or playing web games... and once adding photos to the PC became mainstream, this was already an obsolete device because USB allowed you to just transfer over photos...

[@rty1955]

How does the LPT port limit? The LPT port is a bi-directional 8 bit port. Even an 8 bit port will not limit any data transfer

[@JohnJones-oy3md]

We owned a color inkjet printer (I want to say Lexmark, but not certain - edit: it was a Lexmark 7200V) that had the Snappy built into it. I imagine the idea was to be able to print stills from video. IIRC I used it once to try it out, then never used that feature again. Was certainly strange to have an inkjet printer with RCA jacks on it.

[@vwestlife]

Themaritimegirl did a video about a Brother multifunction laser printer that also had a composite video input for printing out video snapshots: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mGeqgmdunbKlers

[@StitchJones]

I sold a ton of these at CompUSA back in the day. It was super cool! Great memories.

[@iamnobody2]

honestly i don't remember this either, but i'm impressed that it works as well as it does, it doesn't work miracles but it is impressive

[@ntsecrets]

That was a fun video. What gets me is I was into computers at the time and video and I have no recollection of it! I even had a roommate with that Sony floppy camera we used all the time!

[@CARLiCON]

had one, quality wasn't perfect, but worked well for what it was & the time. Lots o' early internet memes & GIFs were created with this & a VCR

[@Mrshoujo]

If you weren't getting good quality, then you were doing something wrong!!

[@KanalFrump]

those 90s GUIs were so distinct. Shiny 3D plastic pills, blob-shaped app windows, purple and green, why not. A tiny preview window from the video capture gadget? Place it inside a picture of a television, go hog wild. My recollection of the period was that few companies were able to distinguish function and appearance, and the "UI" was often designed and made up by graphics artists going by what looked fun, the end result often resembling onscreen representations of childrens toys with weirdly shaped knobs and buttons.

[@JoshuaPaulKing]

That Netscape screenshot (0:05) brought back so many memories! #nostalgia

[@AppliedCryogenics]

I recognize the spokesmodel as Kiki Stockhammer, tech evangelist for the Newtek Video Toaster. I was a huge fan in 1992-93 when I was in high school. Rawr!

[@Darkk6969]

Wow. What memory lane this has for me. I used to own first generation Epson PhotoPC camera, DCTV and Snappy capture card. You're correct the hardware really didn't change much other than software between versions. The blue logo is actually the battery cover. Cool video!

[@video99couk]

12:07 The video recorder in the background there is of the failed Panasonic MII format. It looks like the AG-750 which I am sitting right next to now. The MII format (derived from VHS) was Panasonic's answer to Sony BetacamSP (derived from domestic Betamax) but it failed to really get much traction because all TV studios were using BetacamSP. So in this regard, Beta won and VHS lost, and considering how expensive these machines are, it's likely that Sony made more money from Beta than anyone ever did from VHS. Some smaller videography businesses, of the type that this card seems to show, bought into MII because it was cheaper than BetacamSP, but it proved to be unreliable so they probably regretted their decision.

[@Petertronic]

Haha - I spotted the MII machine too!

[@Steven-vo4ee]

I had a Snappy, used it for creating eBay photos with the aid of an (even then) ancient VHS JVC camcorder... The alternative for me was scanning Polaroid photos or 35mm prints, both of which were costly. That method was used until I purchased a Fujifilm DX-10 digital still camera in 1998. I think I may still have the Snappy buried somewhere in the garage!

[@vwestlife]

If you've ever seen the listing from Canadian eBay seller "wiredforservice", I think he uses one of these even today!

[@KarlWitsman]

We used the Snappy from Version 1.x to the last version. We loved it. It was better than most digital cameras and the software was great. Later, some of the staff created a product called Visual Communicator which was a video studio in a box, long before OBS and Streamyard came along. Plus all their manuals and printed materials were hilarious with jokes.

[@thevacdude]

Thanks for the video, Kevin.

[@markanderson350]

I had a similar product, it had a printer pass thru and no battery needed. This launched me as an ebay seller in 1997 with my sony camcorder, a tripod and some desk lights. I sold hundreds of products. I had to fto ro my isp member storage use html tags in my listings to show pictures and i did midi files for background music. You had to be a geek. Yes my hardware ran windows 95 and 98. The pictures amazed people.

[@stupedcraig]

wow! What a time to be alive.. You can afford a camcorder AND a trip to Disney?! Now we just have to pick between food and shelter.

[@RalphBarbagallo]

I had one of these! At the time it was quite impressive--digital framestores were really expensive at the time.

[@josephmay4937]

Your videos are all amazing love them all hope your Christmas was great

[@AndersEngerJensen]

Haha.. 1500x1125 pixels with razor sharpness … from composite video 576i (or 480i in your case). We sure liked to be fooled back then. 🙈🤷🏼‍♂️😂 But great feature presentation as usual.

[@bgelais]

Snappy, I ever used this mainly to take picture from my VHS cam. TO Solve the issue of space on printer port, i plugged my Snappy to an paralal port extesion pin to pin. cable.

[@steviebboy69]

I don't remember ever hearing of this device, but maybe living in a PAL country of Australia they never released it here. I did have another Amiga product called Digi-View that plugged into the parallel port and you used a B&W camera and took 3 shots through a Colour wheel to get full colour from it.

[@hicknopunk]

I got a black Friday one for 39.99. Was great to populate my web page with laserdisc images. Was great for short Javascript animation and animated gifs.

[@r66fplaysgames]

My uncle had one of these, back around 1997, that I would play with. His also had the Morph & Fauve Matisse software bundled with it.

[@benakanecrophile2878]

dude I saw one of these at my local goodwill a few weeks ago and was tempted to pick it up because it was complete in box

[@miked4377]

what a great device ..mine should be coming soon....thanks for telling me about this kevin...

[@MojaveAdventure]

I worked at Play with Kiki! Such a fun place!

[@TheMasterSpecter]

Holy crap! I remember seeing this at a Goodwill and not knowing what it was. Nice to finally find out.

[@dardenvideos]

I was a tech master in middle school and used this in '97 to create intro graphics for the school "news" show every morning. Even used the free morph software to transition between the hosts. I was the popular geek !

[@MatroxMillennium]

Bravo on the title, I absolutely did forget about this!

[@iVTECInside]

Lol. I have mine all boxed back up. Looked at it just yesterday thinking "I should make a video on that thing, haven't seen one". 1 day later in my KZbin recommended... Time to watch the video.

[@lemagreengreen]

You're right, I did forget. The thumbnail brought back memories though, never owned one but this was a really prominent device in magazines of the time.

[@VectraQS]

I think I picked one of these up from a thrift store or a friend gave it to me. It actually makes higher quality stills than my later 1999-ish Dazzle USB recorder. Of course, my DVD recorders and Hauppauge cards blow these things out of the water for full video recording. Incidentally, I just lick my 9Vs to test them. Maybe I shouldn't do that.

[@brentfisher902]

I was sampling the NTSC CVBS signal with a Mirics SDR board and using a homebrew SDL program to decode the recording. It takes about 18 minutes to calculate one minute of video...

[@LegionOfWeirdos]

If you hooked the camera up, lit your scene, and snapped video from the live preview instead of the tape, it worked GREAT! I used it to take pics for eBay all the time.

[@MATTY110981]

Merry Christmas. Your videos always bring me joy.

[@anameofsomesort959]

Seeing that this works with commercial VHS tapes with copy protection really would've made this a game changer. My uncle ran a movie review site back in the very early 2000s and this would have made getting stills for reviews really easy. Sad he never had one and seems the company failed around the time he started it. Edit: seems the small little blurb I made at the bottom has caused a hubbub. So I'll just leave the comment about my uncle's old website. Also, he liked the video.

[@vwestlife]

It is a 1990s-era diorama of the NYC-area skyline.

[@agenericaccount3935]

I don't see why it would be in poor taste

[@Grim-oc9fw]

Your out of your mind it was made in the 90s

[@SianaGearz]

By the early 2000s TV tuners became commonplace and they capture stills easily. The typical BT848 PCI one needs some advanced hackery to deal with Macrovision, but some USB ones ignore it perfectly. But yeah this is exactly the product for the purpose pretty much.

[@Grim-oc9fw]

@@SianaGearz huh? I was capturing images in the 1980s bro man using the NATO rsv4500 which was at least a decade ahead of consumer tech but kept on the downlow to spy on the USSR and CHICKETY CHINa

[@NavJack27gaming]

Sonique looking interface with that software. Wow!

[@asianbatman555]

This channel is so awesome, I love learning about random historical tech :D

[@MilMike]

I used to have one in 1998. (pal version) I used it with windows 95. I loved it. The morphing software was also pretty cool.

[@Fractalis65]

I purchased one of these in the mid 90's. I was impressed by how fun and funny the manual was. I don't remember any specifics, but it gave the impression of people who loved what they did and had good senses of humor.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I wonder why that promotional video had a voiceover reiterate what Kiki was saying - she’s a very talented saleswoman all by herself. I hope it was just to condense the time it took rather than some respectability reason. Ah, so the video and still option is actually a field/frame option! (Edit: oh, you’re saying it at the end!) I’m guessing given the claim for version 3 about interpolating, that the first versions didn’t interpolate at all. Makes me wonder what the point of their high resolution capture even is! Especially given the S-video circuitry just recombines the signal just like that Radio Shack adapter. I was lowkey hoping the original might try to use a long capture-time to try and squeeze out more spatial resolution. But I guess not. Maybe the image chip was just future-proofing turned into an (originally) useless sales point. At least they did it eventually, it’s just as impressive as when I did it with low resolution digital cameras.

[@vwestlife]

That was part of a TV news piece covering the Snappy, not a promotional video for it. Versions 1 and 2 do interpolate, they just didn't advertise it as being able to turn any camcorder into "HDTV resolution".

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@vwestlife ahh, that makes sense, the voiceover is very “bland local news”. It stood out to me precisely because he didn’t sound excited about it at all! Oh, okay! Is that to the medium degree you showed where it’s combining two frames/four fields? Or does it go all the way even in v1 and it was purely a marketing exercise for v3?

[@veganguy74]

Great video. Kiki Stockhammer…now that’s a name I've not heard in a long time.

[@mileshigh1321]

Super handy and really seemed to be easy to use! I remember trying to use hardware and having IRQ issues or assigned port issues haha. I bet that Stonewall 25 video is interesting to watch!

[@bill392]

I had a Snappy. It's probably still in a box in my basement somewhere with other old computer stuff. I remember it worked very well for the time. I could point my handycam (from Radio shack) 8mm camcorder at anything and take pics or connect my VCR to grab images.

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

I had a VIDI12 and a VIDI24. I used to capture video on the Amiga with this, just played VHS at slow motion and that did the trick. SONY TRV67E and a 4+2 head Philips VCR.

[@Sb129]

That version 3 software is so delightfully late 90s/early 2000s, I love that era of design. This thing seems quite functional, I can see why it was so successful. With a Laserdisc setup this would have been pretty excellent for grabbing HQ frames from movies and such.

[@paulmaglio9254]

I had a Snappy and a Video Capture card. I loved to play around with both of them. Nice walk down memory lane.

[@BlakeEM]

I had one of these that I eventually replaced with an ATI All-In-Wonder 128 Pro back in the late 90's. I remember the software being buggy, however it did work and I used it daily to watch TV on my computer.

[@dedr4m]

Nice shout out to Fran Blanche (Franlab)! Also, wow, these photos for what hardware's being used, is of quite good quality for the times. Yeah, scanners and all could do a bit better with photographic paper, yet, this has that, well, retro feel.

[@fixitalex]

Still quality of interlaced composite video signal was awful

[@dvuemedia]

I remember Snappy, but never had one, I did not have PC back then. I had VidiAmiga 12RT (RT is for Real Time) for Commodore Amiga in 1990s which I got in mail order. Fun memories capturing stills from video.

[@BollingHolt]

I had one of those when they first came out! As 14-15 year old kid, I loved this thing.