Finally the beginning of my video suite gets built!

[amigadave]

I posted a picture of my computer racking and setup for my video suite with multiple Toaster/Flyer and VLAB Motion Amigas.  Here is the pic (if I can figure out how to link to it).



I guess I can't figure out how to make the link above show up as an image, sorry.  Moderators please come to my rescue and edit this so it can show the jpeg of the office desk/video suite furniture I have built now.

[Bazzaq]

a photo would be nicer.

[adolescent]

@dave

Don't link the page, link the picture..

[amigadave]

Thanks adolescent,  I knew it would be an easy fix for someone here.

I will post a picture soon.  The layout has changed just a little from the drawing that I did in TurboCAD and saved as a jpeg.  I have added even more Amigas to it with the addition of a CDTV and my Sony EVO-9700 dual editing Hi-8mm tape deck and 4 towers to house just hard drives and a tape drive for backing up projects.

I have not completed all the wiring hook-ups yet, but I am working on it as I find some free time.

[Trev]

Yikes! How about posting a copy of your first post-build-out electricity bill? ;-) Pretty cool, though.

[amigadave]

Trev wrote:
Yikes! How about posting a copy of your first post-build-out electricity bill? ;-) Pretty cool, though.

 :lol:  Yeah, the electric usage is going to be a {bleep} when everything is up and running.  The price of having fun I guess!  Also, I hope to make some spare change doing some video editing work, like wedding videos or training tapes.

Who knows, maybe I will get some work from the local cable company.  I have seen some of the stuff they air and it is a joke.  I know I can do better than a lot of what they are doing, or getting locally.

[B00tDisk]

ZOMG toshiba TIMMs!  I had forgotten about those.  Last job I had they used them in the testing lab for s/w development; they generally got hooked to the commercial satellite feed for midday soap operas for some of the office mavens!

[amigadave]

The TIMMs are great for Toaster/Flyer work, but they are monsters to move around and setup.  I have three of them and I would not part with them.

Getting all these Amigas setup and tested is taking 5 times as long as I thought it would.  I also want to network all of them together with the big Dell tower for file transfers, networked Lightwave rendering, and using the Dell DVD writer from the Amiga Workbench (if possible).

Time to turn everything off, including myself.

[HellCoder]

With so many computers in a room I think you'll spend alot of time in there too. What you are missing is a coffee machine and a fridge!  :lol:

[hardlink]

amigadave wrote:
The layout has changed just a little from the drawing that I did in TurboCAD ...

What, you didn't use an Amiga CAD/Vector drawing program for your setup?

[amigadave]

The drawing is for one wall of the game room, so the pool table is behind me as I sit at any of these computers, and the mini-kitchen is around the corner and only 8 feet away, so if I did drink coffee, which I don't (I'm a Monster Energy Drink addict), it would only be a little more than an arms length away.  The mini-kitchen is getting remodeled next week with the addition of a dishwasher, bigger sink, garbage disposal and longer countertop.

I may start using Lightwave as my preferred CAD tool, but I need to learn how to use it better to be as fast with it as I am with TurboCAD.  That will get me one step closer to getting rid of any version of Windows completely.

Pics of the completed project will be coming as soon as I finish routing all the wiring and testing each computer.

I have a Cable Modem supplying 3mb/sec Internet connection speed connected to a wireless router that has 4 ethernet ports, one of which is connected to the Dell.  What do I need to network all the Amigas together and also connect them to the Internet and the Dell, a ethernet switch with 10 ports that is hooked up to the wireless router and has individual ethernet wires to each Amiga?

[leirbag28]

@amigadave

 Just out of curiosity.......why use th Hi8 tape deck?  You could use Digital8 instead which also works with Hi8 tapes but is twice the resolutiojn and its Digital, not analog. Its not worth doing ll that good video, to in the end, end up with a degraded MASTER tape.  once you put it on Digital8 ..it stay Digital and doesnt not degrade if ever so slightly.

If its cost your worried about.........Go on Craigs List.  Seek SONY Digital8 or MiniDV. Or go to Circuit City where they have used Digital8 and MiniDV for very very very cheap.  I got a 3CCD Panasonic MiniDV cam with 2.1 Megapixel Picture camera in it for $120.  perhaps if you make money from your videos, you can replace those decks...........as far as editing with the decks.........Sony cameras usually have LANC control which you can control with Amigas if you have a SCALA ECHO or other serial controllers.  I may have one here called the Singl Frame Controller which I think does just that.

I use Digital 8 and MiniDV and the capture is exactly as the Amiga outputs it.

[amigadave]

I knew this question would be coming when I wrote that last message.  Well, the answer is I have been collecting used video and Amiga equipment for the last 20 years and I now own 4 Hi-8mm and 1 Digital 8mm (that will also playback Hi-8mm tapes) video cameras/camcorders plus the dual editing Sony EVO-9700 Hi-8mm video deck, so I am just using what I have until I start making money with all of my antique equipment and can upgrade to all digital.  The other reason is that the maximum quality I can produce with the Toaster/Flyer system is limited and can't compete with the high definition equipment that is available today, so the definition of the Hi-8mm video cameras should be plenty good for now.

If the video business takes off, then I will re-evaluate my choices, but either way it will be hard to give up the Amigas and the Toaster/Flyer systems for nostalgic reasons.  A good friend of mine is just now in the middle of making the transition and still uses both the old Toaster/Flyer and a newer digital system (forgot which one he chose).

[Crom00]

Is this for a hobbyist setup? Becuase when you do the math on running all that equipment it may be more cost effective to get PC's/ Macs off the shelf.

If you're doing it for the Amiga Factor of seeing what's possible, then GO FOR it. I had a setup similar to that from 96-2005. Complete with 2 toshiba timms, A4000T, A4000HighFlyer, MacG4/G5 and a PC with the VT3 (pc video toaster version)

Those were good times!

[Crom00]

Amiga VT flyer output recorderd onto DV hold up ok. Text tends to get hazy around the edges. These days I use NewTek's VT4 system uncompressed as a $1000 PC with SATA drive Raid can do uncompressed quite well.

Even a cheap Wall-MART PC does great with an external SATA array. For playback or simple 2 stream edits.

The uncompressed graphics are stunning. I never though there was that much of a difference until I compared a flyer clip to uncompressed.

I will say that the flyer does a nice job of making the video look "analog" instead of BLOCKY aliased artifacts associated with MPEG2 and MotionJPEG, based compression.