A History Of The Amiga, Part 9: The Video Toaster - From a Dream to a Reality

Together, the hardware and software provided, for a few thousand U.S. dollars, a video editing suite that rivaled the output of contemporary (i.e. early 1990s) professional systems costing ten times as much. It allowed small studios to produce high-quality material and resulted in a cottage industry for video production not unlike the success of the Macintosh in the desktop publishing (DTP) market only a few years earlier. The Video Toaster won the Emmy Award for Technical Achievement in 1993.[1] Other parts of the original software package were spun off as stand-alone products, notably LightWave 3D, and achieved success on their own.

A History Of The Amiga, Part 9: The Video Toaster | Ars Technica

Download File

Aside from simple fades, dissolves, and cuts, the Video Toaster has a large variety of character generation, overlays and complex animated switching effects. These effects are in large part performed with the help of the native Amiga graphics chipset, which is synchronized to the NTSC video signals. As a result, while the Toaster was rendering a switching animation, the computer desktop display is not visible. While these effects are unique and inventive, they cannot be modified. Soon Toaster effects were seen everywhere, advertising the device as the brand of switcher those particular production companies were using.

The Toaster hardware requires very stable input signals, and therefore is often used along with a separate video sync time-base corrector to stabilize the video sources. Third-party low-cost time-base correctors (TBCs) specifically designed to work with the Toaster quickly came to market, most of which were designed as standard ISA bus cards, taking advantage of the typically unused Bridgeboard slots. The cards do not use the Bridgeboard to communicate, but simply as a convenient power supply and physical location.

As Commodore approached its final Christmas season, it was having trouble negotiating with its parts suppliers. Years of being behind on payments were starting to take their toll, and Commodore could only procure enough parts to make 100,000 CD32s. As Dave Haynie noted in his Deathbed Vigil video, they might have survived with 400,000.

The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC standard-definition video. The plug-in expansion card initially worked with the Amiga 2000 computer and provides a number of BNC connectors on the exposed rear edge that provide connectivity to common analog video sources like VHS VCRs. The related software tools support video switching, chroma keying, character generation, animation, and image manipulation. Together, the hardware and software provided, for a few thousand U.S. dollars, a video editing suite that rivaled the output of contemporary (i.e. early 1990s) professional systems costing ten times as much. It allowed small studios to produce high-quality material and resulted in a cottage industry for video production not unlike the success of the Macintosh in the desktop publishing (DTP) market only a few years earlier. The Video Toaster won the Emmy Award for Technical Achievement in 1993. Other parts of the original software package were spun off as stand-alone products, notably LightWave 3D, and achieved success on their own. As the Amiga platform lost market share and Commodore International went bankrupt in 1994 as a result of declining sales, the Video Toaster was moved to the Microsoft Windows platform where it is still available. The company also produces what is essentially a portable pre-packaged version of the Video Toaster along with all the computer hardware needed, as the TriCaster. These became all-digital units in 2014, ending production of the analog Video Toaster line.

When the Amiga came out with all video capabilities, Tim in partnership with Paul Montgomery, saw the big market opportunity that would be to create a video-capable solutions for the machine and immediatelly went out to buy an Amiga 1000. His first product was a video capture software called Digiview. Later on, Video Toaster was born and took the video editing market by storm. 2ff7e9595c