First Toaster/Flyer video

[rcgrabbag]

It's been a long time coming, but I finally completed my vintage A4000T Toaster/Flyer system and captured and edited my first video. The subject of the video is my friend Bill's old Cox Dune Buggy, which is an old toy buggy powered by an .049 (i.e. small) glow fuel engine. The car dates back to the 1970's, and so does the background music I found

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS9dfT9xLjQ

Edit: This is the link to the new version of the video. The previous version's colors were off, so it's been deleted from YouTube.

[Vlabguy1]

Nice....So what camera were you using?
I remember those cars and line control planes.

Rich
ny

[save2600]

Hahahaha!  Little cars racing around, how cute.  :lol:

Nice vid!

[Matt_H]

Nicely done! Very good camerawork. Color seemed a bit off, though,

[rcgrabbag]

Nice....So what camera were you using?

I used a sony HDR-HC3.

[rcgrabbag]

Nicely done! Very good camerawork. Color seemed a bit off, though,

Thanks, yes the color is off, not sure why, probably something with the Autohue or other calibration stuff. Looks OK while I'm editing. Lot of peculiar things while using the Toaster/Flyer that I'm seeing. Oddly enough I think it adds to the vintage effect, sort of resembling the color shift on old videos. Still, I wasn't trying to get those colors so somethings not right.

[Crom00]

Looks like your toaster flyer needs an autohue adjustment. Do you know about this. Connect a TBC or Camera source to the inputs and run autohue on that.

[Matt_H]

Ah, yes, autohue. I had forgotten about how frustrating it is. I think there's some good guidance on it in a big Toaster/Lightwave 5 FAQ that should still be floating around the interwebs...

[Crom00]

I suggest registering with http://www.newtek.com and it's forums. They have an active Video Toaster Flyer board and NewTek employees like legend Chuck Baker will answer questions Aussie Holten (I believe that was his name) also works there. Some of the Amiga toaster personalities from back in the day now work for NewTek. As later as 2007 they still had Video Toaster FLyers and 1084's setup in the San Antono office.

[rcgrabbag]

I found the "problem", and although I've found a fix, it's more of a bypass than a fix. Initially I was using two DPS TBC II cards in an A2000 sitting next to the A4000 to do my TBC work. But, since I use only one video input source, there really wasn't any need to use the TBC's at all. Putting the video source through no TBC's results in no color shift. Put it through one, and there is a slight color shift. Put it through two, and you see a major shift, as you see in what I posted on YouTube. The TBC's seem to be introducing the shift. I tried Autohue several times using a video camera, dvd player, with and without the video going through the TBC, but doesn't seem to work. I found this by googling:

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?p=43378

It's a thread on using Autohue. I followed the steps, but still get shifted colors through the TBC. I'll continue to play around with it, but I really only need one video source as input for the Flyer anyway, so for now, I'm simply not using the TBC's. I'll see if I can get a hold of Chuck and get some assistance. Thanks for the info!

[Crom00]

With modern digital cams (since 3 chip firewire cams like the VX1000) you don't need a TBC, the singal is stable enough to feed the FLyer just deave it plugged in and in camera mode when you turn on the flyer and run autohue. I used to do this without issue.

The only tim I ran into trouble was when I used a Micronik A4000 Tower desktop conversion with the two video slots. Turns out the bussboard was not compatible with the flyer.

USe the quickpack a4000 and commodore A4000 D with the original busboards.

[Matt_H]

@ rcgrabbag

I thought about connecting a TBC when I was putting together my own Toaster rig, but it just seemed far too complicated for the miniscule chance that I'd connect a VCR. I'm thoroughly impressed that you got it working with 2 TBCs at all!

Have you looked at the TBC manuals? They might have some more information.

EDIT: This is the guide I was referring to earlier. Very handy!

[rcgrabbag]

Yeah, a video camera is stable but I don't have any analog outputs from my camcorder, only HDMI and USB. So I burned the raw footage to DVD, hooked the DVD player analog output to the input of the Toaster. DVD player seems to provide a stable input signal too.

So, corrected video uploaded onto YouTube. Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS9dfT9xLjQ

Thanks for the tips folks. Have a Happy Thanksgiving (if you're one to celebrate it).