Pro video production on Amiga?

[Rebel-CD32]

The Draco video workstations used the MacroSystem VLab Motion card, a non-linear broadcast quality video editing card. They were a Zorro II card, and when combined with a Toccata sound card, a 030-060, RTG card and a fast SCSI (or something more modern perhaps) hard drive, they're a brilliant little video editing system. Editing video on the fly is instant, the only processing time is when it needs to render the wipes and other special effects. They handled MPEG and Motion-JPEG, but I guess the max resolution they can do is PAL and NTSC video res, so for editing DVDs they'd be fine, but for anything HD you'd be out of luck.

I used a VLab Motion Amiga system many times in the past as well as many earlier PC and Mac editing systems and the Amiga was a dream compared to those systems. Times have changed though, sure, but for its day it was the best. The VLab also connects directly to the Video Toaster, and ran this awesome software called Movie Shop.

For more information, check this link - http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=303

I'll tell you what, it sure impressed all the other kids in high school when they were presenting their assignments on big bits of cardboard, or a speach, or a slide projector if they knew how, and I was bringing in fully digitally edited videos with special effects, wipes, titles, animations, 3D landscape fly-throughs, and all those other cool things that were so simple to do on an Amiga.

My friend who owned the Amiga with the VLab edited several videos professionally, including some surfing videos (I can still buy some of these on DVD in the shops now), TV ads and educational videos for kids.

I'm hoping somehow we get some new video editing software for AmigaOS4, maybe a new version of Movie Shop or something ported from another system, as long as they support whatever modern cards are out there that can be plugged in.

[Rebel-CD32]

I just thought I might add, one of the cheapest, easiest and most fun things you can do with an Amiga and video is to get a Genlock and play around with it. Plug a video camera into the Genlock, the Genlock into the Amiga and overlay some graphics over the video signal, output it to a TV or monitor.

Kids love it, they can look straight at the screen and paint on their face with a paint program. You can play animations over video, like an animation of some fire burning at the bottom or around the edges of the screen, and anyone who looks at the screen sees their face in the middle of the flames (a trick I set up in the window on Halloween). One time I made a DOOM-style panel and gun, placed them at the bottom of the screen and genlocked a video I took walking through my house, my friends thought it was cool at the time. And of course, there are HEAPS of video titling programs out there for overlaying animated, scrolling, bouncing, 3D titles with all sorts of effects.

Genlocks go pretty cheap on eBay these days too.

[Rebel-CD32]

Jose wrote:
@Rebel-CD32

That's not correct. The Draco used the Draco Motion card, check on amiga-hardware for Draco and DracoVision. The Draco motion was an updated version of the VLabMotion for the Draco bus with added capabilities and faster throughput.

I was waiting for someone to be anal about this. It's practically the same card, just changed a slight bit. I just didn't feel like elaborating at the time.