Should I buy this A4000? - Page 2

Syko · 27 February 2003, 15:59

Don't know how many, but there's just one word you need to remember if you're into video - TOASTER - there's still nothing to match it at anything less than $5K!

Unknown_K · 27 February 2003, 16:32

Quote:

Originally posted by Syko
Don't know how many, but there's just one word you need to remember if you're into video - TOASTER - there's still nothing to match it at anything less than $5K!

Whats so great about toaster that you need a $1k machine just to install it on? Also you can get the video toaster on a much cheaper A2000.

I play with some analog video capture on my PC and Mac. On the mac I have a Radius Videovision PCI with Telecast box, the stuff was purchased new on ebay for maybe $200 all together and used to cost over $10K when new (and was used as pro equipment at the time mid to later 90's). Oh the mac that it runs off of costs maybe $100 or less. The thing captures and outputs RCA, SVHS, Component video (beta cam) , and grabs audio in 16 bit DAT quality and even has digital sound capture (the rca type not optical).

IanS · 27 February 2003, 17:09

Does anybody still use a Toaster for actual video/TV production? The Draco also died a death, simply because you can get as good or better, cheaper and faster. Please don't try and kid yourselves that technology that old hasn't been surpassed in the mainstream world. Very sad, but true.

Syko · 27 February 2003, 17:39

Yes I know, I've got a Pinnacle DC10 w/ Studio7 and the the same facilities on the ASUS V8200, and while I can do things with them that cant be done as fast/as well with an A4K and toaster, the important thing to remember is that the toaster is full(NTSC) broadcast quallity and that is still expensive. If Argentina doesn't use NTSC, a high-quality PAL conversion on the final mix would give full broadcast quality PAL as well.

All the kit mentiond is fine for semi-pro/amature work, but having trained professionally with a £250,000 (1986 price) video suite, I know the difference between semi-pro and full bradcast and it's worth the extra if your work is good enough. Espesialy if you're going to make money with it!

IanS · 27 February 2003, 18:15

NTSC is fine if you're in a country that uses it. Otherwise converting between standards is expensive (so I'm told), and you still lose some quality. Pay money out for more modern kit and you can do anything you can with a toaster. Plus the fact you can use any common or garden PC or Mac to do it, rather than relying on old, expensive and hard to come by Amigas.

The Toaster has had it's day, along with the Amiga as a serious, professional workstation. No offence to those who still use it for small scale stuff, but it's not top of the heap any more.

Amiga1992 · 27 February 2003, 18:19

Pyro will be very interested in replying to this, methinks

Unknown_K · 27 February 2003, 18:32

Good for him, I was serious as to whats so great about the video toaster since I have never seen or used one.

I just hope it doesnt turn into one of those solid state vs tube amp bullshit sessions the elite audio people get into. Audio and video is subjective, crunching numbers is not.

IanS · 27 February 2003, 18:59

Reality check please.

Realistically, the only questions that you need to ask are along these lines:

Are Toasters still produced and can you buy one, commercially, brand new and under warranty?

Can you buy an Amiga 2000/4000 new and under warranty to which you can attach the above?

Is there any official technical support for both these products?

Is it possible to produce identical or better results using other products?

Do these other products satisfy the availability, warranty and support criteria?

Is it cheaper, easier and/or faster to use these other products?

If you were going to set up a video production company, or a project where cost, time and productivity were priorities... you would ask these or similar questions.

Of course, simply because something is technically (and technologically) obsolete, does not render it useless. It can still be used. It will probably function for many years to come. But that still does not mean it is the best solution. Otherwise every TV/film production company worldwide would still use Amiga/Toaster combinations.

Unknown_K · 27 February 2003, 19:29

Nobody in their right mind would use equipment that is not supported for anything critical to their paychecks.

Are there places that still service, sell, repar amiga/toaster devices? Is the company that made the toaster still around?

When I worked for a company that made semiconductor process equipment we serviced some very old OMRON controllers (full din) the company had purchased from the Omron factory cheaply as they were phased out. Quite a few chip production companies used those controllers in their old equipment (they were used on custom chips not the latest pentiums) and came to us for repair/recalibration. As long as we repaired/replaced thier defective units they were kept in use, after we ran out of parts there was a wholesale dumping and replacement of the equipment because nobody wanted to use equipment that was unsupported for production work.

It takes time and money for a company to quit one platform and move to another. You need to know each systems quirks and relearn how to do "your thing"' with the new equipment. But in the long run its always better to dump what you know if you cant get it serviced unless your techs know it inside out and you have a huge stock of spares sitting on the shelf. All that buys you is time to qualify another vendor/system for your eventual abandoning of the current system.

Pyromania · 27 February 2003, 20:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Unknown_K
Good for him, I was serious as to whats so great about the video toaster since I have never seen or used one.

I just hope it doesnt turn into one of those solid state vs tube amp bullshit sessions the elite audio people get into. Audio and video is subjective, crunching numbers is not.

The Amiga Video Toaster has something that most editing solutions on the PC & Mac don't have today, a real-time switcher, this allows you to switch in realtime between 4 video sources. Also it has hundreds upon hundreds of realtime digital video effects (DVE's) and add-on packs are available at a very low cost. Most editing systems on Mac and PC have a few if any realtime effects. Also included is a realtime 10NS CG. Also the design of the user interface will have you editing video fast while people with other solutions will still be struggling trying to fiqure out what the pull down menus do in thier PC/Mac editing solution. An Amiga based Video Toaster Flyer system is very nice if you can't affrod to get the new Video Toaster [2] system for the PC. I have both and they work together as one powerful video editing solution. If you find a Amiga Video Toaster Flyer system available used at a good price buy it fast you will love it. Even though I have the new super powerful Video Toaster [2] for Windows 2000/Xp I will not get ride of my Amiga 4000T Video Toaster Flyer system.

Pyromania · 27 February 2003, 20:14

Quote:

Originally posted by Unknown_K
Nobody in their right mind would use equipment that is not supported for anything critical to their paychecks.

Are there places that still service, sell, repar amiga/toaster devices? Is the company that made the toaster still around?

When I worked for a company that made semiconductor process equipment we serviced some very old OMRON controllers (full din) the company had purchased from the Omron factory cheaply as they were phased out. Quite a few chip production companies used those controllers in their old equipment (they were used on custom chips not the latest pentiums) and came to us for repair/recalibration. As long as we repaired/replaced thier defective units they were kept in use, after we ran out of parts there was a wholesale dumping and replacement of the equipment because nobody wanted to use equipment that was unsupported for production work.

It takes time and money for a company to quit one platform and move to another. You need to know each systems quirks and relearn how to do "your thing"' with the new equipment. But in the long run its always better to dump what you know if you cant get it serviced unless your techs know it inside out and you have a huge stock of spares sitting on the shelf. All that buys you is time to qualify another vendor/system for your eventual abandoning of the current system.

Yes! Newtek will fix your Amiga Video Toaster/Flyer card for free and still provides tech support for Digiview! Thier 1986 Amiga digitizer.

Amiga1992 · 27 February 2003, 20:32

There you go

The realtime video effects that come with certain cards, like the miro DC line, do not work, or are simply pathetic. I haven';t found a decent analog capture solution for Mac/PC, but I DO like Final Cut Pro on the Mac. If you have DV, it's the bomb.

IanS · 27 February 2003, 21:46

Well, one "yes" out of six possibles is slightly better than none at all I guess.

To those people who say that the Toaster does this, that and the other, whereas the this modern XYZ brand doesn't, ask yourself one thing.

Are you comparing like for like?

In it's day the Toaster combo was never an affordable 'home' or small business solution. It cost a lot of money, on top of everything else you had to have. If you can work out what a Toaster would have cost in todays money, find a solution that costs the same and then make comparisons.

How many "realtime" effects can a Toaster do simultaneously? In reality, realtime effects are just number crunching. They can be generated by the host cpu, and if you happen to have two or more fast P4s or Athlon MP's (or G4s or UltraSparcs etc) in one box, or even two or more machines working in unison... does the old toaster compete?

If anybody seriously thinks that technology hasn't moved on in the last ten years, perhaps they need to get out more.

Amiga1992 · 28 February 2003, 14:06

The realtime effects are handled by the card. This works like that if you have a miro, for example. The CPU does jack all...

IanS · 28 February 2003, 15:57

Akira, perhaps you should answer the questions I asked. There are plenty of real time effects packages available that don't rely on proprietry hardware. How many Athlon 2000+ machines and effects packages can you buy with the same money as one A4000 and a Toaster? Maybe a Toaster can outpace one machine, but how about 2, 3, 4 or more running concurrently?

Amiga1992 · 28 February 2003, 18:11

I dont think I could buy more than one PC and a package.

Unknown_K · 28 February 2003, 18:33

Doesnt newtek have a windows version of the video toaster 2?

IanS · 28 February 2003, 18:47

Well I bought a new Athlon XP2000+ with 80Gb HD, 256 DDR Ram, integrated Dolby sound, Geforce 2 gfx, LAN and 16spd DVD for the grand total of 400 UKP. One second hand A4000 with tiny HD, little Ram and 25Mhz processor costs more than that alone. Add a Toaster for twice as much again. Add more Ram (72 pin Simms at quadruple the price of a Dimm), one or two HDD's (bearing in mind the 4GB limits of AmigaOS and assuming you have somewhere to physically fit them), drop in a CG3D or Picasso and you have something to work with. Oh and don't forget you need to convert that crappy NTSC format in to a slightly more decent PAL format... add a converter or two.

Oh how these things mount up. Now I think my old Amiga is great, but which route would I want to go down if I wanted digital video?

Nuff said

IanS · 28 February 2003, 18:49

Unknown, I reckon Newtek do indeed have a Windows version.

28 February 2003, 18:58

www.newtek.com

It's called Video Toaster 2

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27 February 2003, 15:59	#21
Syko Now got GSX750F :)) Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Halifax UK Age: 60 Posts: 584	Don't know how many, but there's just one word you need to remember if you're into video - TOASTER - there's still nothing to match it at anything less than $5K!

27 February 2003, 17:09	#23
IanS Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Nottingham England Posts: 277	Does anybody still use a Toaster for actual video/TV production? The Draco also died a death, simply because you can get as good or better, cheaper and faster. Please don't try and kid yourselves that technology that old hasn't been surpassed in the mainstream world. Very sad, but true.

27 February 2003, 17:39	#24
Syko Now got GSX750F :)) Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Halifax UK Age: 60 Posts: 584	Yes I know, I've got a Pinnacle DC10 w/ Studio7 and the the same facilities on the ASUS V8200, and while I can do things with them that cant be done as fast/as well with an A4K and toaster, the important thing to remember is that the toaster is full(NTSC) broadcast quallity and that is still expensive. If Argentina doesn't use NTSC, a high-quality PAL conversion on the final mix would give full broadcast quality PAL as well. All the kit mentiond is fine for semi-pro/amature work, but having trained professionally with a £250,000 (1986 price) video suite, I know the difference between semi-pro and full bradcast and it's worth the extra if your work is good enough. Espesialy if you're going to make money with it!

27 February 2003, 18:15	#25
IanS Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Nottingham England Posts: 277	NTSC is fine if you're in a country that uses it. Otherwise converting between standards is expensive (so I'm told), and you still lose some quality. Pay money out for more modern kit and you can do anything you can with a toaster. Plus the fact you can use any common or garden PC or Mac to do it, rather than relying on old, expensive and hard to come by Amigas. The Toaster has had it's day, along with the Amiga as a serious, professional workstation. No offence to those who still use it for small scale stuff, but it's not top of the heap any more.

27 February 2003, 18:19	#26
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	Pyro will be very interested in replying to this, methinks

27 February 2003, 18:32	#27
Unknown_K Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio/USA Age: 55 Posts: 1,380	Good for him, I was serious as to whats so great about the video toaster since I have never seen or used one. I just hope it doesnt turn into one of those solid state vs tube amp bullshit sessions the elite audio people get into. Audio and video is subjective, crunching numbers is not.

27 February 2003, 18:59	#28
IanS Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Nottingham England Posts: 277	Reality check please. Realistically, the only questions that you need to ask are along these lines: Are Toasters still produced and can you buy one, commercially, brand new and under warranty? Can you buy an Amiga 2000/4000 new and under warranty to which you can attach the above? Is there any official technical support for both these products? Is it possible to produce identical or better results using other products? Do these other products satisfy the availability, warranty and support criteria? Is it cheaper, easier and/or faster to use these other products? If you were going to set up a video production company, or a project where cost, time and productivity were priorities... you would ask these or similar questions. Of course, simply because something is technically (and technologically) obsolete, does not render it useless. It can still be used. It will probably function for many years to come. But that still does not mean it is the best solution. Otherwise every TV/film production company worldwide would still use Amiga/Toaster combinations.

27 February 2003, 19:29	#29
Unknown_K Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio/USA Age: 55 Posts: 1,380	Nobody in their right mind would use equipment that is not supported for anything critical to their paychecks. Are there places that still service, sell, repar amiga/toaster devices? Is the company that made the toaster still around? When I worked for a company that made semiconductor process equipment we serviced some very old OMRON controllers (full din) the company had purchased from the Omron factory cheaply as they were phased out. Quite a few chip production companies used those controllers in their old equipment (they were used on custom chips not the latest pentiums) and came to us for repair/recalibration. As long as we repaired/replaced thier defective units they were kept in use, after we ran out of parts there was a wholesale dumping and replacement of the equipment because nobody wanted to use equipment that was unsupported for production work. It takes time and money for a company to quit one platform and move to another. You need to know each systems quirks and relearn how to do "your thing"' with the new equipment. But in the long run its always better to dump what you know if you cant get it serviced unless your techs know it inside out and you have a huge stock of spares sitting on the shelf. All that buys you is time to qualify another vendor/system for your eventual abandoning of the current system.

27 February 2003, 20:32	#32
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	There you go The realtime video effects that come with certain cards, like the miro DC line, do not work, or are simply pathetic. I haven';t found a decent analog capture solution for Mac/PC, but I DO like Final Cut Pro on the Mac. If you have DV, it's the bomb.

27 February 2003, 21:46	#33
IanS Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Nottingham England Posts: 277	Well, one "yes" out of six possibles is slightly better than none at all I guess. To those people who say that the Toaster does this, that and the other, whereas the this modern XYZ brand doesn't, ask yourself one thing. Are you comparing like for like? In it's day the Toaster combo was never an affordable 'home' or small business solution. It cost a lot of money, on top of everything else you had to have. If you can work out what a Toaster would have cost in todays money, find a solution that costs the same and then make comparisons. How many "realtime" effects can a Toaster do simultaneously? In reality, realtime effects are just number crunching. They can be generated by the host cpu, and if you happen to have two or more fast P4s or Athlon MP's (or G4s or UltraSparcs etc) in one box, or even two or more machines working in unison... does the old toaster compete? If anybody seriously thinks that technology hasn't moved on in the last ten years, perhaps they need to get out more.

28 February 2003, 14:06	#34
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	The realtime effects are handled by the card. This works like that if you have a miro, for example. The CPU does jack all...

28 February 2003, 15:57	#35
IanS Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Nottingham England Posts: 277	Akira, perhaps you should answer the questions I asked. There are plenty of real time effects packages available that don't rely on proprietry hardware. How many Athlon 2000+ machines and effects packages can you buy with the same money as one A4000 and a Toaster? Maybe a Toaster can outpace one machine, but how about 2, 3, 4 or more running concurrently?

28 February 2003, 18:11	#36
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	I dont think I could buy more than one PC and a package.

28 February 2003, 18:33	#37
Unknown_K Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio/USA Age: 55 Posts: 1,380	Doesnt newtek have a windows version of the video toaster 2?

28 February 2003, 18:47	#38
IanS Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Nottingham England Posts: 277	Well I bought a new Athlon XP2000+ with 80Gb HD, 256 DDR Ram, integrated Dolby sound, Geforce 2 gfx, LAN and 16spd DVD for the grand total of 400 UKP. One second hand A4000 with tiny HD, little Ram and 25Mhz processor costs more than that alone. Add a Toaster for twice as much again. Add more Ram (72 pin Simms at quadruple the price of a Dimm), one or two HDD's (bearing in mind the 4GB limits of AmigaOS and assuming you have somewhere to physically fit them), drop in a CG3D or Picasso and you have something to work with. Oh and don't forget you need to convert that crappy NTSC format in to a slightly more decent PAL format... add a converter or two. Oh how these things mount up. Now I think my old Amiga is great, but which route would I want to go down if I wanted digital video? Nuff said

28 February 2003, 18:49	#39
IanS Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Nottingham England Posts: 277	Unknown, I reckon Newtek do indeed have a Windows version.

28 February 2003, 18:58	#40
oldpx Posts: n/a	www.newtek.com It's called Video Toaster 2

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