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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Pyromania on October 23, 2007, 03:04:04 AM
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Can it be done? Even if it was the original more limited Video Toaster 2000 card at first? Sounds like a hot new project for Dennis or someone else. We have a free Video Toaster 4000 card up for grabs for a hardware hacker that wants to take a stab at it.
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It can be done. Is it cost effective? Maybee.
The toaster used a bunch of custom chips so why not... would be nice to make a version with a builtin TBC but extended for HDTV resolution.
Imagine a Video Toaster on a chip? makes my mouth water...
A live VJ system that fits in a shirt pocket, like Snappy used to.
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Hey crom00,
Check your mail.
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Since almost all video cameras sold now are digital I don't think a TBC is even needed. MiniDV, HDV, etc video cameras feed right into the Amiga Video Toaster, no TBC required.
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Make it a Toaster/Flyer combination all in FPGA and you will really have something!
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Apple should license the toaster and make a VIDEO TOASTER IPOD... LOL! Of course it would only work with Final Cut Pro.
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It's almost a decade later so I'm asking again, can it be done?
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@ Pyromania
What would be the point? Who still uses NTSC with (ex-)standard aspect ratio when most people carry all-digital high-definition widescreen cameras in their pockets?
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@ Pyromania
What would be the point?
That's the real question. There isn't much point to it, back when the toaster was useful the main way people added effects like the animated transitions or overlaid text was to play a tape on one input with the toaster superimposing the effect on the live video and recording it out to another tape deck. We got away from that years ago when the work method was to just record everything right to the computer and apply the effect and save the resulting video back to the hard drive. Then you just shared the video with effects to whatever medium you wanted (burn a DVD, upload to web, etc.) The flyer helped shift to this paradigm but compared to today the flyer doesn't really compress video all that well compared to MPEG4. All this requires in the modern sense is a single video recording device and a lot of CPU power and HDD space. Very few video capture devices even perform hardware compression anymore since CPUs are so fast.
So if the question is can an FPGA be used as a video capture device and a hardware compression/decompression engine-sure it can, there are designs out there for FPGA MPEG4 compression. The the next problem is that you'd need someone to write drivers for all this and support it in one of the non linear editing packages, probably forget about the classic Toaster software being adapted to something so new.
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It's almost a decade later so I'm asking again, can it be done?
Is there enough documentstIn about what is in the original chips to figure out how to clone them?
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Is there enough documentstIn about what is in the original chips to figure out how to clone them?
Most of it's in Tim's head and they basically only work because of observed behavior, not technical specifications. The RAM for example runs WAY out of spec, but after experiments it proved to work in practice.
That's why there was never a PAL version. It would have been almost as much work to remake it in PAL timings as making the original NTSC version in the first place. It's not just an adjustment like most people assumed.
I'm sure the source for all the programmable chips is still around, but this was way before Verilog. I think the whole Flyer (including programmable chips and DSPs) is in the OpenVT distribution although I could be mistaken.
I think it would be easier with the fast FPGAs available today. You could focus on what needs to be done rather than finding a hack that makes the timing line up.
I'm sure it's possible, but it would be a major undertaking and would it be useful anymore?
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I think at this point it's less of a "usefulness" exercise and more of a "preservation" one.
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If it's for preservation I'd start with the software. The cards are as easily available as any Amiga device ever made and (inexplicably) rarely seem to fail.
At least the software could live on with new features and on newer platforms.
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Apple should license the toaster and make a VIDEO TOASTER IPOD... LOL! Of course it would only work with Final Cut Pro.
Screw Apple . Thanks.
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It's almost a decade later so I'm asking again, can it be done?
Ya know with 1080p as a minimum it could come in very handy.
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Is there enough documentstIn about what is in the original chips to figure out how to clone them?
You probably don't need to. You could probably reverse engineer the card by running the software under winuae, knocking up some code and testing it by feeding avi's in.
The fpga doesn't have to emulate every chip in exactly the same way as the original toaster. The minimig doesn't even do that for the amiga custom chips.
The video input couple for an fpga video toaster could be HDMI.
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I think the reasons would be "fun" and "challenge."
What became of your Open Video Toaster effort?
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@ Pyromania
What would be the point? Who still uses NTSC with (ex-)standard aspect ratio when most people carry all-digital high-definition widescreen cameras in their pockets?
The point is that great software that's available from 3rd party developers that's Video Toaster only that could be enjoyed by Amiga users. It's no longer about NTSC. Not to mention the awesome software package that came with the Video Toaster/Flyer itself. From a preservation standpoint and an opportunity to get a bunch of additional software running in a Amiga Virtual Machine that's interesting to study and use. You are right NTSC timing does not matter anymore and that would not be the point.
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@Trev
Open Video Toaster is still available for Amiga fans to play with and enjoy. The code can be studied/updated by anyone with a "high tech brain", quote from the Revolution video.
http://www.discreetfx.com/openvideotoaster.html
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I've always thought it would be cool if just enough Toaster emulation could be added to UAE to bring up the switcher control panel... then run Lightwave. I suppose it makes more sense to just run the stand alone version...
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In my opinion, the Toaster/Flyer was one of the best creations made for the Amiga. I know that much of the processing was done on the Toaster card but the Amiga did give it a long life.
My system still runs flawlessly after all these years but truthfully I hardly ever use it any more other than to show people what the Amiga was capable of.
I still use a Newtek product called Speed Edit for my current HD video editing on a PC but it is not a live switcher so that part for me is lost.
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I still use a Newtek product called Speed Edit for my current HD video editing on a PC but it is not a live switcher so that part for me is lost.
For most people, live editing was only really beneficial when it was impractical to do offline editing.
I used to be a cameraman on a 4 camera setup and that was usually edited live, but all the cameras also ran tapes in case a mistake ruined the edit.
You do run the risk of perfectionism creeping in with offline editing.
If you are broadcasting live then obviously you need live switching. The Roland V-4EX looks quite nice, though it can't process 1080p.
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Most people I knew with a video toaster back in the day simply called it the Lightwave Dongle and only used it as long as they had to before NT decoupled the software from the hardware, and then switched to commodity PCs when NT branched out to other platforms...
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and only used it as long as they had to before NT decoupled the software from the hardware,
Or at least until Lightrave came out surely.
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In my opinion, the Toaster/Flyer was one of the best creations made for the Amiga. I know that much of the processing was done on the Toaster card but the Amiga did give it a long life.
My system still runs flawlessly after all these years but truthfully I hardly ever use it any more other than to show people what the Amiga was capable of.
I still use a Newtek product called Speed Edit for my current HD video editing on a PC but it is not a live switcher so that part for me is lost.
If you are looking for live switching, we still sell a huge number of TriCasters. It's a decedent of the Video Toaster.
It's similar to the complete Amiga/Toaster systems that we sold back in the day, a turnkey system as opposed to a card and software.
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Or at least until Lightrave came out surely.
Well by then this group of 4-5 people I knew with toasters already had them, so Lightrave, while cool, wasn't really of any use. Plus NT did their standalone version of LW which effectively killed Lightrave.
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If you are looking for live switching, we still sell a huge number of TriCasters. It's a decedent of the Video Toaster.
It's similar to the complete Amiga/Toaster systems that we sold back in the day, a turnkey system as opposed to a card and software.
sent you a PM
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If you are looking for live switching, we still sell a huge number of TriCasters. It's a decedent of the Video Toaster.
It's similar to the complete Amiga/Toaster systems that we sold back in the day, a turnkey system as opposed to a card and software.
I can vouch for NewTek's line of TriCasters. They are awesome and give the customer an excellent turn-key video workstation. One of the best live switchers money can buy.
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If anyone has a Amiga Video Toaster up an running the developer of the open source Amiga Virtual Machine needs some assistance. He's looking for "sys:tools/showconfig debug" output from a running Amiga Video Toaster.
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=1100595&postcount=66
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The point is that great software that's available from 3rd party developers that's Video Toaster only that could be enjoyed by Amiga users. It's no longer about NTSC. Not to mention the awesome software package that came with the Video Toaster/Flyer itself. From a preservation standpoint and an opportunity to get a bunch of additional software running in a Amiga Virtual Machine that's interesting to study and use. You are right NTSC timing does not matter anymore and that would not be the point.
Still, what is the point of using an FPGA for this?
If preservation is your goal, adding the required functionality to highly portable emulation software is surely the better move.
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Still, what is the point of using an FPGA for this?
If preservation is your goal, adding the required functionality to highly portable emulation software is surely the better move.
I 100% agree, it does not have to be FPGA based. Running it in an Amiga Virtual Machine would be fine.
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What's with the newspeak? It is still UAE. "Amiga Virtual Machine" would be a nice description for running MacOS under Shapeshifter or Fusion, where those two act as hypervisors and there is no/little CPU emulation. At least call it "Virtual Amiga Machine".
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What's with the newspeak? It is still UAE. "Amiga Virtual Machine" would be a nice description for running MacOS under Shapeshifter or Fusion, where those two act as hypervisors and there is no/little CPU emulation. At least call it "Virtual Amiga Machine".
Amiga Forever, UAE, FS-UAE, and all the various versions of UAE are all Virtual Machines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine
That's the industry standard terminology for what they are. They are marvels of software technical achievement and everyone that participates in their development/sales should be supported and commended. It allows many people to still run an Amiga that may not otherwise do it.
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Virtualization is a bit more - and less - than emulation. It isn't just semantic hair-splitting, either (unless you don't care about the details, then I guess it is). I don't think I'm "virtualizing" when I run WinUAE on my PC. However, when running MacOS through Fusion or Shapeshifter or Sheepshaver or whatever on the Amiga, I do. It has to do with the specificity of the processor in question.
But, again, if you don't care, that's fine.
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Virtualization is a bit more - and less - than emulation.
Originally virtual machines covered emulating enough to run multiple operating systems on one computer. One of the requirements was that it was efficient, which pretty much precludes emulating the cpu. The 68000 didn't support virtualisation, but the 68010 did (i.e. MOVE from SR became privileged).
So for running windows on an intel mac you can use virtualisation software like VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop. If you want to run windows on a power pc mac you need to run an emulator like Virtual PC 7
The term virtual machine has been used incorrectly over the years though, which muddies that water a little. The Java Virtual Machine for instance. It's not a real virtual machine in a lot of ways, but the name stuck. Technically all "operating systems" should be running under a hypervisor and not have any access to the hardware, this is largely impractical now though down to how operating systems and device drivers are developed. Windows Hyper-V Server is realistically the closest you can get.
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Originally virtual machines covered emulating enough to run multiple operating systems on one computer. One of the requirements was that it was efficient, which pretty much precludes emulating the cpu. The 68000 didn't support virtualisation, but the 68010 did (i.e. MOVE from SR became privileged).
So for running windows on an intel mac you can use virtualisation software like VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop. If you want to run windows on a power pc mac you need to run an emulator like Virtual PC 7
The term virtual machine has been used incorrectly over the years though, which muddies that water a little. The Java Virtual Machine for instance. It's not a real virtual machine in a lot of ways, but the name stuck. Technically all "operating systems" should be running under a hypervisor and not have any access to the hardware, this is largely impractical now though down to how operating systems and device drivers are developed. Windows Hyper-V Server is realistically the closest you can get.
Agreed.
I was reading up on it a bit, almost 20 years ago, when I was working the night shift in a data center (and well before the notion of desktop virtualization was a common idea); when IBM created the S360, they wondered what to do with all that computing power (for the time) so one of the first things the created was virtualization: running a copy of the system on the system itself.