Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: thorrin on November 14, 2003, 03:11:08 AM
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I've been seeing a lot of these on Ebay lately. A 4000 with a toaster went for ~$400 yesterday, and I see that you can buy the toaster itself for ~ $275. Are these good deals? Would it be better to get one of these or a fancy video card for the PC (blah).
What are some of the features that the toaster has? I think it has Lightwave, a genlock, and framegrabbing capabilites. I seem to remember screen wipes and character generators...
I remember these used to be THE thing to have a few years back. How well do they stack up now?
-Thorrin
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A Toaster card alone is still cool
and will allow you to add titles, overlays,
transitions, fade between sources etc. but
you have to have additional analog "VCR"
style recording equipment and work in a more
traditional "linear" editing fashion.
On the other hand if you add a Flyer board
to a Toaster system suddenly you have a full
blown digital non-linear-editor that still
holds its own today and features all the
capabilities of the Toaster card in conjunction.
I have an A4000T/060 with Toaster/Flyer and the
quality and speed is pretty amazing. You could
still use a system like this for professional work
and many people do. Get an external DVD recorder
or 2nd computer to assist with 3D Rendering etc.
and it's quite a good system.
Plays back video in broadcast quality directly
from the hard drive at 60 fields / 30 frames per
second with 16 bit sound and full video overscan
while overlaying titles and doing transitions in
realtime using the Toaster card. There are certainly
a few limitation to work around but add-ons like
"Millenium" from Nova Design or "LayerPlayer" etc.
can fill the gaps. Overall Toaster/Flyer is still
really good and one of the only ways to use an
Amiga for high quality video editing. There still
exists a fairly active T/F mailing list too. :)
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Nice. I figure that the flyer is an accelerator of some sort? I have a 060/PPC (I think its the 204 Mhz). How does that stack up against the flyer?
I may have to invest in one of these...
-Thorrin
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The Flyer is a card specifically made to work in
conjunction with the Toaster. It adds the ability
to playback and record video directly to a scsi
hard drive and gives you non-linear editing
capability. It is not an accelerator but a
video/audio input/output card attached to the
Video Toaster's inputs.
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It's a great piece of machinery :-). I'd like to have it... but that price tag... uhh :-(
How many Zorro slots does it occupy? I mean Video Toaster + Flyer?