Recommended setup for amateur video art project?

[orb85750]

OK, well for the short term I have narrowed what I would like to do with the Amiga for a video project.  I am new to Amiga video (and to video in general), so please assume that I am ignorant.  I can use either an A2000 or an A1200.  At this point, both are essentially stock machines, so clearly I'll need to make some changes, but I'd like to keep things fairly economical.

***CORRECTION BELOW: IT'S A HI8 home camera, NOT A SUPER8!***
I have a super8 video camera from which I'd like to digitize video on my Amiga.  I then plan to modify the video in a pretty extreme, artistic way.  This does not need to be done for broadcast/realtime --- and I certainly *do* need nonlinear editing capability.  I know that I'll need some sort of digitizer card and good software, but not sure which ones.  I presume I may also need to do an OS upgrade (I have 1.3 on the A2000 and 3.1 on the A1200), new hard drive (new controller too?), and whatever else.

Do I have some options?  Does anyone have any recommendations for a setup that is not going to take a year for me to find or afford?  The more detailed you could be, the better.   Thanks so much!  -Dave

[wawrzon]

lol. lets say that is an ambicious project. well, since to my knowledge none ever built super8 (or any other celuloid film) digitizer for amiga and last time i cared it was still a proffesional task to transfer film to video, this would be most difficult part. amigas were widely used for linetesting animations but this is a task that needs just a table you put your cell drawings on with a video camera mounted atop feeding a simple digitizer. but then you would have to make a photoprint of every frame you want to use, what istn exactly practical nor easy.
what concerns non linear editing of video material on amiga im just putting together a vlabmotion-system meant to digitaze my analogue videos. im still unsure if it pays at all, but do not have appropriate pc for my old av-master card anymore. i have par dsp card running in another machine but this is not a flexible solution for editing videos, and still there is digital broadcaster (very rare) and video toaster system (only ntsc) as alternative, but dont ask me anything about it

[beller]

I think wawrzon nailed the first problem, getting Super8 into a digital format.  This is probably best left for a professional.  I'm not sure where you are but there is probably someone who can turn your Super8 into a DVD.  You could then digitize stills, or use the Amiga to process the video and record the results to another video device.  

It's hard enough to do direct video editing on a modern Mac with tons of memory.  You can use the Amiga to process your video but trying to edit on an Amiga without a Toaster setup could be painful.  Thinking about it, doesn't the Toaster rely on a second video device to save the effects (you don't save on the Amiga)?  I've not actually used or owned a Toaster.

I've some very short animations I did with AmigaLive and my A2000 in '87.  The results are very short but interesting.  I quickly moved to a video editing system for an editing solution.  Nothing was available at that point.  

Good luck...I think you could do some interesting video effects for your project even if you have to go to another means to do final edit.

[orb85750]

EXCUSE ME, I MEANT HI8, not super8.  This is an inexpensive Sony home video camera.  One cannot easily (with the correct digitizer card) convert the analog to digital of similar quality?  Is the editing still going to be hopeless?  No software available to do it?  THANKS.

[beller]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news...but computers in the late '80s and early '90s weren't designed to do digital video with motion.  You can grab still images or very short bursts of video, or color video/add titles  and then dump the results to another video deck, but you can't digitize and store directly to the Amiga.

This is a job better left to a Mac with iMovie I'm sorry to say....

[orb85750]

What is the point of video digitizer boards such as the Vlab motion 1.3?  I thought those boards were specifically designed to do what I want to do, including hard disk storage?  (I'm confused, I guess!)  

[weirdami]

toaster flyer

[beller]

I just looked up the VLab Motion at the big book of hardware.  It requires an '030 but it does digitize full motion at 30 fps.  

Not sure when this was released, I'd not seen one before.  I stand corrected!

The Amiga Big Book of hardware contains the following list of Amiga framegrabbers and digitizers.  The only one I saw that wasn't a framegrabber was the VLab Motion.

If you like Framegrabbers, I'm partial to the DCTV myself, but then I worked on that project!

Bob

[wawrzon]

i did some sort od video editing using my olde trusty a1200 i still own along the others in the beginning to mid 90ies. this was possible with 030, later 060 card and a simple digitizer the name of i do not recall anymore. this was drawn sequences, raytracing and also some hand edited video footage, mostly taken out of existing movies. the resolution in question was mostly half of pal, 256 colors or ham8 either 368x283 or 368x576 in interlace (using ssa animation technique like in clarissa). all that was fed back to the studio hi8 deck via amiga chipset at circa 12fps if i recall right.
well that is not much, but pretty much none i knew was able to do any such videoediting at the time, except that the videomixer and the hi8 deck in the academy of arts i was using the studio could do some fancy wipes and subtiteling, but that was it.
with all that mjpg boards like vlabmotion video capture in high quality is not a problem. ive already tried the dce par and it has better capabilities than avmaster that i got 98 for the pc. the problem is to edit the video, since amiga lacks nonlinear software and well working 24bit painting package except for tvpaint3.6 or maybe photogenics.

edit: well, when i put my vlab machine together i will be able to tell more.

[orb85750]

beller wrote:
I just looked up the VLab Motion at the big book of hardware.  It requires an '030 but it does digitize full motion at 30 fps.  

Not sure when this was released, I'd not seen one before.  I stand corrected!

The Amiga Big Book of hardware contains the following list of Amiga framegrabbers and digitizers.  The only one I saw that wasn't a framegrabber was the VLab Motion.

If you like Framegrabbers, I'm partial to the DCTV myself, but then I worked on that project!

Bob

As WEIRDAMI just pointed out, the Toaster Flyer board can also capture and store.  

So it sounds as if the software is the main problem??  At a minimum level, does anyone know of such software?  Its seems awfully strange to me that there would be a couple of digital video capture & store options for Amiga, but no software to make them useful??!!