Toaster 2000 board

[artman]

Just managed to come accross a Video Toaster 2000 board, I keep reading threads about how great they are, but, please forgive my ignorance, I don't know much about them.  What the heck can I do with it?  Gotta admit, it's pretty impressive looking.  Any tips or hints on putting it to good use?  Thanks in advance.  Best regards...Art  

[Ronmor]

Art,
  After installing the 2000 board and software( which is the hard part)playing with toaster is where the fun begins.
  You can title a video, do 3D animations or added wipes and effects to video.
   Ron

[JimS]

Be your own TV studio....
Here's what ya got:

4-input 'switcher' you can do various wipes from one source to another. But keep in mind that the sources need to be 'genlockable'. They must be able to sync up to horizontal, and vertical sync plus the color clock. Most pro cameras do this. If you want to use tape, the tape must be run thru a TBC (time base corrector) to fix up the sloppy signals coming from a VCR. Some pro units have this built in. TBCs are available as plug in cards that fit into the pc slots - they only get power from that slot. A TBC will also let you sync up consumer cameras.

Character Generator. Do Text crawls and scrolls like the big shots. It's pretty good actually. You can use your own postscript fonts too. But if you want to title a tape.. see the TBC comments above.

Croma/FX mess with color in realtime. never saw much use for this, but it's there. :-)

Toaster Paint. 24 bit painting. It's kinda awkward, since you paint on the amiga's HAM mode then render to the toaster.

Lightwave 3d: My favorite part... the 3d animation software.  Without some sort of frame accurate recorder or that 24-bit mpeg playback board (PAR) it's hard to playback animations. But I had good results making 24-bit frames and using a program like rend24 to make HAM mode animations. These can look pretty good, especially on a AGA machine. Or find a used DCTV somewhere.

There are 2 24-bit frame buffers in there. I seem to remember some software that let you blast jpegs right into them.. so it makes a cool slideshow

I "inherited" a toaster system when the store where I worked folded. It's a great toy. :-)

[justthatgood]

Yeah you have your nice little Toaster, get you a TBC, and if you have a nice little DPS Personal Animation Recorder, you will have a nice little animation setup.  Yeah S-Video output, Composite out, Y, R-Y, B-Y, and the Genlock In, it would be great.  

[tonyvdb]

One note on the TBC issue, You must have one for each input if you plan to switch between more then one camera/VCR or other input. Lightwave is alot of fun to play with but to do any animating you need to have either a frame capable recorder or as said above a personal annimation recorder.

The Toaster is very powerful and if set up properly will give you years of use.

[justthatgood]

I think I'm going to get my one A4000 a Toaster 4000 and join that up with my Amiga 2000 with a toaster networked or something.  Yeah my fast 4000 and my big useful 2000.

[tonyvdb]

If you can get a Toaster 4000 for a good price (less then $150) and then try to find a flyer add on card, you will really have a nice system :-D You will only need one TBC for input #1

[JimS]

I was just thinking... if you had a peecee, you could use it to make & play 24bit animations from Lightwave frames... granted, it would be faster if you did the rendering on the pc, but not everone can afford lighwave on the pc.

[justthatgood]

Well if you happened sign up for a lot of loans get in a nice art or CAD class, some places will let you get a really nice discount on it.  Sometimes you can alway get that on a loan too I guess.  Who knows you might even make a career out of it.

[Amiduffer]

I was wondering about Toaster too.

I've seen some of the online sites that mention the issue of Toaster 2000 or 4000's in Amiga3000D, dealing with the space problems. If a cheap one comes up, I'd like to grab it. But has anyone put a Toaster Card in an A3000D?

[tonyvdb]

The Toaster card will fit in a 3000D but it  means that you can't add any other exspntion cards to the 3000. You must also  add an external fan to remove the excess heat from inside the case. I have a Toaster 4000 with Flyer card in my A4000D and now that I have a cyberstorm ppc also in there I have 3 fans moving air through the case. Heat is a big killer of the Toaster cards.

[artman]

WOW!!  Thanks to all for your input, really appreciate it.  Sounds like this Toaster is going to be a lot of fun, and that's what I think the Amiga stands for.  I'm going to be asking more questions, but learning new stuff about Amiga kinda brings back the old days in a way.  Best regards to all...Art

[Amiduffer]

tonyvdb wrote:
The Toaster card will fit in a 3000D but it  means that you can't add any other expantion cards to the 3000. You must also  add an external fan to remove the excess heat from inside the case.

Nothing else!! Shucks! It wouldn't be very fun to have a toaster without SOME acceleration. :-P

[tonyvdb]

You can fit in a Cyberstorm but its a snug fit and somtimes you need to modify the inside of it to fit. The A3000D was not built for space more for looks I guess.

[justthatgood]

I guess that's all the toaster units I see are Amiga 2000's, Amiga 4000's, and Amiga 4000T's.  I think the 3000 was more as a workstation then an actual video production unit.

Ah yes, I'm going to have a Video Toaster 4000 and Flyer in Cecilia, and  move my VLAB card in Amanda and put a Video Toaster 2000 with some TBC's.