Toaster Lets You Produce Videos
An obscure company of self-described video and computer fanatics in Topeka, Kan., has created a remarkable device that converts an Amiga computer into a broadcast-quality desktop video production system.
For $1,595 the Video Toaster from NewTek Inc. offers real-time video digitizing and manipulation capable of just about every special effect you’ve seen on television--and some you haven’t. What’s more, it is easier to use than most software.
In fact, the only thing you need to know about the computer is how to turn it on.
For instance, if you want to replace one video image with another using a special wipe with a Venetian blind effect, here’s what you do: Use the mouse to point at a graphic symbol depicting the effect on the Amiga monitor’s screen. Click the mouse button and then control the speed of the wipe by moving the mouse. There are 132 special effects available, with more to come.
The networks, local TV stations and commercial video makers are the obvious early buyers of the toaster. But NewTek’s marketing director says the firm is really after the millions of home camcorder and VCR owners who would like to produce their own high-quality videos.
The toaster is a complex expansion card for Amiga 2000 or 2500 computers that contains four custom VLSI (very large-scale integrated) chips.
Designed by NewTek owner Tim Jenison, it works in conjunction with the Amiga’s special “blitter” chips that give that computer unique graphics processing abilities. But the toaster does not use Amiga graphics, which are not nearly video resolution quality.
With the toaster are eight disks of software. They include the special effects and the toaster control panels. There are two frame buffers where you can freeze and store video images. You can keep as many as you want on the hard disk and have any two available simultaneously for use with the special effects. Freeze frames occupy 700 kilobytes of disk storage each.
There is a character generator for overlaying titles and credits in a variety of fonts and sizes of type, in 16.8 million colors and with any shadowing you want.
Additionally, a paint program lets you modify video images to any extent you wish, also in 16.8 million colors and any degree of transparency. If you’ve got artistic talent, you can turn a face into a one-eyed Cyclops or span Yosemite Valley with the Golden Gate Bridge.
Finally, there is LightWave 3D, a three-dimensional modeling and rendering program with which you could design your own version of the Stealth fighter and mount a successful raid against Saddam Hussein in an action video.
Even if you don’t own an Amiga or a camcorder or even a VCR, the Video Toaster will enable you, for $10,000 to $15,000 starting from scratch, to have virtually the same functions as a television production studio.
It is tempting to say the toaster could create desktop video the way Apple Computer and Aldus Corp. created desktop publishing with the Macintosh, Laser Writer and PageMaker.
But that analogy isn’t precise. Desktop publishing on 300-dot-per-inch resolution laser printers is not as good as in print shops with 2,000-dot-per-inch typesetters that cost $40,000 and up.
On the other hand, the quality of video produced by the toaster is equivalent to network television standards, according to Mark Randall, NewTek’s director of marketing. It meets Electronics Industry Assn. and Federal Communications Commission video specifications.
That high quality is the reason you shouldn’t expect to see the Macintosh or PC version of the toaster soon.
Unlike the more popular Apple, IBM and IBM-compatible computers, the Amiga was designed from the beginning to be compatible with video signals. Thus, its microprocessors run at exact multiples of the industry-standard video signal frequency of 3.58 megahertz. That makes it possible for the toaster to match the timing of video signals exactly with no conversions needed, as would be the case with other computers.
Timing is critical and so far remains as an expensive barrier to “toasting” your already-recorded videotapes with the toaster. A video signal is nominally composed of 30 image “frames” a second. Each frame is made by a pair of electron scans that move from side to side from top to bottom on the screen, at 60 scans per second.
But it isn’t quite 60 per second. Actually it is 59.94 scans per second, and that is exactly the signal that the toaster needs to get from whatever video sources are feeding it. Cameras and video laser disc players work just fine, but VCRs do not. Thus, an expensive device called a “time base corrector” must fit between a VCR and the toaster.
If you will do much rendering, which creates a full-color, three-dimensional picture, you’ll want the faster Amiga 2500 computer, where a single frame can be processed in as little as five minutes.
Amiga dealers also sell the Video Toaster.
In addition to the Amiga monitor, which serves as the toaster’s control panel, you need at least one video monitor and preferably two. One will display the video image before modification, and the other shows the result. That output can be recorded directly on any VCR with just a simple connection.
The toaster accepts four simultaneous video inputs, which could be cameras, VCRs or a combination, and allows you to perform cuts, fades and wipes between any of those sources and two still-frame buffers for stored images plus a color background generator.
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