Pro video production on Amiga?

[Sig999]

In the 90's Video Toaster made quite a splash in production as a very affordable editing system.

However... Modern in the 90's... not modern 'today'.

Nowadays putting one together would be quite expensive and underpowered compared to other alternatives.

If you want to play with such a system just to capture the nostalgia... to see what you can do with an older system (I'm guilty of that myself programming a classic in 68k when I could do things faster and better in flash) then more power to you! Enjoy!

If you're looking to actually do professional work in the industry - your dollars are better spent elsewhere.


(I expect a fair amount of flak for saying that - but it's the truth - based on using various systems in professional video and film production for the last 15 years).

[Sig999]

how do you want me to elaborate?

The video toaster at its base level is an A/B roll mixer pretty much... requiring now archaic hardware to use - and at the end of the day you're going to be slaved to decks with a bunch of outdated wipe and mix effects.
Todays systems are faster, cheaper, more reliable, easier to use, and afford many more options in the way of effects, color correction, and compositing capabilities.

You could spend even more money for the flyer and get rudimentary non-linear capabilities.. but again - slow, outdated, and will cost you even more when the near 20yr hardware fails.

Forget about HD or non standard formats.
Forget about any of the advantages to new technology used by things like XD cam (where I treat the deck itself like a harddrive and bypass digitizing all together)
Forget about using firewire too...
Forget about doing any kind of modern compositing effects - that have been made trivial to todays editors with programs like after effects.

Not to mention storage... being slaved to old small drives slung in a tower case when you could get many many many times the storage capacity for your projects much much cheaper today.

I mean if you want to tinker around with home vids - more power to you, but professional..... Forget it.

A handful of years ago I'd have suggested the toaster as a cheap alternative if you wanted to do live switching.. but I can't even do that anymore with switching boards going as low as 500 that work with modern systems..

as for whats available - fire up google and type 'video editing'

theres everything from low end software for small PC's from Avid, Adobe and others, all the way up to high end Avid and Final Cut systems.

There's too many available for such a wide range of prices-power-needs to list.

[Sig999]

weirdami wrote:
The commercial tapes for the VT say something about attaching a couple of VCR's as part of putting your television studio together. VT was invented to handle real-time whatnots, and nobody was doing non-linear until the Flyer came around. I'd say that the Video Toaster will be still useful as a broadcast quality switcher/real-time editing thingamabob until the current standard definition video becomes obsolete.

The VT and subsequent Flyer were very instrumental in bring the power of video editing to new levels of functionality and affordability, and nothing is ever going to change it's place in history

...however I do feel compelled to dispute some of the mis-information that appears at A.org with some regularity.

The first TRUE non linear editor was the CMX 600 in 1971..
although nowhere near as functional as what would follow it - it does have the distinction of being first.

LucasFilms Editdroid did come closer - in the early 80's

Quantel took it further around 1985 with a video effects editor

In 1989, however, the EMC2 and the Avid/1 (the first in the Media Composer line) were released.. it would be hard to dispute these as non-linear editing systems by todays standards.

This was before the Toaster came out (1990) - let alone the Flyer that would bring non linear editing to it.

Further - Adobe Premier was released in 1991 (although the initial version was far from useful...)


If someone already HAD one - I'd say sure, great cheap garage solution for switching.. maybe doing some editing... however, I couldn't (and wouldn't) recommend anyone wanting to buy or build a system going anywhere near the hardware.

It would be a very very poor choice and they'd end up wasting time and money.

[Sig999]

Well you're saying that noone was was editing non-linear until Flyer...

Which taken one way is of course absolutely false...
and giving the benefit of the doubt and taking the other way implies you thought flyer was the first.

[Sig999]

Varthall wrote:
Shouldn't an AmigaOne or a Sam be able to manage modern video editing?

Varthall

A more appropriate question would be 'Is anyone going to program a modern video editing system for the AmigaOne or Sam'


I've used Avid Media Composer on a Mac G3 doing News Promo's and a 1 hour weekly real estate show several years ago - so you could say it *COULD* be done.

Will it though?  That's another question entirely.

For the amount of work that would be required to go into it, it would have to be commerciallly viable - which means competing with products available today.

Not easy, but not impossible.. Final Cut has been able to do this.  Not too many years ago it wasn't taken very seriously at all - a lot of places I've worked with and for considered it a 'toy' for home use only.  This year we have replaced 3 out of 4 edit bays with Final Cut Pro.

Mind you that would involve looking at what is available, and improving on it.  Again this isn't impossible.  Avid had the foresight to design its interface around people who actually edit - which although not immediately intuitive, once you actually do the work is a joy to use - hotkeys are placed logically in groups based on frequency of use in actual editing.. they understood that your one hand will leave the keyboard to use the mouse and other such things.

Final Cut is more designed by programmers - my hands 'cross over' - things that can slow you down..

On the flipside Final Cut is a dream to work with when going back and forth between things such as photoshop and after effects. it's clip manipulation on the timeline I think is better and easier to use as well.

If a new program were to be made, its designers would do well to find these things that seem to work well on one system or another system and bring these features together.

This being said, there seems to be a near bullish resistance to change when it comes to the Amiga nowadays, and if the solution were simply a rebadged and tooled toaster - it would be doomed to failure - NOBODY wants to  go back to the 'bad old days' of scopes and mixers. The paradigm has changed....for the better.

In fact my boss came to me several months ago, knowing I was a Amiga enthusiast from the old days and put it to me 'Could you imagine still using Video Toaster for this?'

My reply was 'If you ever made me - I'd slit my wrists and bleed out on the edit bay floor'.

[Sig999]

weirdami wrote:

Sig999 wrote:
Well you're saying that noone was was editing non-linear until Flyer...

Which taken one way is of course absolutely false...
and giving the benefit of the doubt and taking the other way implies you thought flyer was the first.

I guess context means nothing these days.  :roll:

Ok, so the former then I take it?

In context.... your statement is false. From right after you mentioned hooking decks up to the end.

That makes it much simpler.

[Sig999]

stefcep2 wrote:

leirbag28 wrote:
@orb85750

Don't listen to some of these People.

The Amiga can do 480i  1440 x 480 (its called Super HiRes mode)
Just put it in Overscan

But this mode is best suited for Slide SHows and Overlaying Graphics, lower Thirds and animated logos over Video with a Genlock.

Listen Carefully: Get SCALA MM300, 400, or InfoChannel 500 and a SuperGen SX genlock and a CHROMAKEY PLUS if you can get it.

All Cheap.  You will be amazed!  and YES you can do DIGITAL Video (Not internally) but externally with Amiga Hardware and a 3CCD Digital8 or MiniDV Camera that has S-Video input.

this allows you to professionally record Amiga's output as well as the Video that is being Genlocked onto professionally in Digital Format. You can then Edit it further if you like with iMovie. (I try to d everything on the fly in Amiga)

@bloodline
quote:
Digital Video work requires Hispeed Harddrives, Powerful CPUs and 32bit GFX all of which never made it to the Amiga.
------------------------------------------------------------

Wrong.... Digital Video only requires a Digital Recording Device... both for genlocking and Recording a Master of all Amiga's output.......it doesnt have to be an INTERNAL Harddrive in the Amiga...it cna instead be external like a DV Camera or Deck with S-Video inputs.


@orb85750

Look at this Video I did with an Amiga 1200 with Genlock, ChromaKey, SCALA MM300, and Converted www.digitaljuice.com bakgrounds. The Dancers I hired.  No Special Video Card....just an A1200 with a Blizzard 1240 and 128mb RAM (will work the same with 16mb)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hEbs6FX0cM

Very Nice. Goes to show that often its lack of talent and creativity thats the limiting factor, not necessarily the hardware or software you use.  So what exactly was done on the A1200?  I'm assuming the background moving images were, but what software did you use to animate the bacgrounds?

Alternatively - because all the stuff from digital juice has alpha channels imbedded in their graphics (I use them too) - you can just do the whole thing in your editing software (even avid dv can do this) - its like including the amiga in the loop serves only to slow down the workflow and add a level of unneeded complexity.

But hey - if thats what floats your boat, all well and good... I'd hardly call it 'professional'.

[Sig999]

persia wrote:
Here is a link about the state of Linux video processing.

Nice article - pretty objective.

I remember trying out a demo version of Main Actor on linux years ago - and it was quite polished.. shame they stopped working on it.

I remember reading somewhere that originally it was being developed on the Amiga before Linux - but I've never seen even a demo so I cant substantiate it.

[Sig999]

Pyromania wrote:
@Sig999

Don't forget the Flyer card for the Amiga Video Toaster. Then decks are no longer needed and the dream of real time tapeless editing is at hand on Amiga OS.

That 'dream' has been my reality for over a decade.. and standard practice on any modern system.  I think the money and time spent tracking one down isn't worth it, for something that is considered standard in this day and age.

Especially considering the topic of this thread.. PRO video production.  Now with things going over to HD, doubly so - money and time better invested in a FCP system with a KONA card if you ask me.

[Sig999]

hardlink wrote:

Sig999 wrote:
 ... It would be a very very poor choice and they'd end up wasting time and money.

Well, I suppose I made those poor choices and am wasting time and money, but I sure am having a blast doing it!

And more power to you - however I'm sticking to the topic of the thread 'PRO VIDEO PRODUCTION'.

I mess around programming in asm on my Ami 2000 constantly - but I'd never put it down as 'Professional Programming' anymore.. 20 years ago sure!, now, no.