Talk:Video Toaster

General Updates

I am adding a picture of a Screamer (front panel only), one of allegedly 7 made, in the possession of designer Brad Carvey. I will try to source a photo of the various Toaster models and maybe screengrabs. I don't believe the bit about George Lee and "The Toaster Microwave" has any validity in this article, and I can find no citation of it anywhere. I propose its removal. I could provide a lot of additional info about the Toaster but it would all be "original research" unless someone interviews Brad in a credible publication. XenonofArcticus (talk) 17:44, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

a relabeled

"a relabeled Amiga 2000 or Amiga 4000 containing a plug-in board, along with software to make it communicate with a PC or Apple Macintosh."? As far as I remember the only thing the Mac or PC was used for was to prop up the monitor. Any source to this? // Liftarn

"As I recall, the PC\Apple connection was used to provide a secure backup system, were the Amigas not bad for crashing\over heating?

I'm sure it was as a back up drone, they were used. Axel "

wouldn't some simple case mods and adding some fans (uncommon as that would have been at the time) been a heck of a lot cheaper and more failsafe? :) I can't see why they would be any more or less reliable than a reasonably solid 680x0-based Mac or Atari system otherwise, probably similar or better than a contemporary PC... Mind you i wasn't there :D 82.46.180.56 (talk) 00:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

"I don't recall Toasters being especially crashy. I don't think the PC/Mac connector was used for backups, because the link between them was serial, and would have been exceedingly slow. The PC/Mac bit was mostly a farce, it was just a remote UI that ran on the host PC/Mac and allowed you to do the switcher operations without using the Amiga keyboard and Mouse. All other Toaster facilities (Paint, CG, Lightwave) were still Amiga-native only." XenonofArcticus (talk) 17:44, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

The best source would be old Video Toaster-specific magazines from the early 90s, none of which I have. I specifically remember Macintosh users bragging that they could "now get a Video Toaster too." Exactly what role the "host" computer played when "connected" to a Video Toaster, I can't say. Being an Amiga zealot myself, I didn't want to come out and say something quite that strong. If you want to reword it, go ahead. --Dave Farquhar

The Mac version of the Toaster was a fully functional Amiga with a serial cable and a version of the switcher software (at least, I don't remember that any of the other programs could be used with the Mac natively). I remember seeing a few of these Mac-labeled systems being resold as stand-alone units. As far as reliability, VT systems used in a production environment with a minimum of third-party software installed were quite stable. Most of the system crashes I dealt with as an Amiga tech had to do with aging hardware that was no longer stable after 3-5 years of daily production use, especially hard drives. The most notorious Amiga OS crashes were the result of software that was not written to the standards of best practices and that was certainly not the case with the Toaster. It came along well after all the issues with 32-bit impure software were well-known.--SEWalk (talk) 07:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The device was called ToasterLink and was a modified SCSI controller you added to the Amiga and connected to the external SCSI port on a Mac. The Mac software duplicated the Toaster user interface so you could use the Video Toaster without connecting the Amiga to a monitor. There was no PC version of this.

Delay

Are you sure about the delay in the first version of the toaster? A delay of 100-200 ms would have required you to store somewhere around 10 fields or 5 frames. That would have been _extremely_ expensive back then. --132.199.230.178 17:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

To whit, about 5mb of high speed random access memory... even high end PC video cards capable of TV-standard output didn't commonly break 4mb for a few more years. Mind you, it might still have been cost effective compared to the professional studio equipment equivalents i'd imagine as even more exhorbitant! (and not entirely worth it if you're only after making a title screen and putting a few name subtitles on anchors, reporters and guests for your local news reports, regardless of it's more famous use on e.g. Babylon 5) 82.46.180.56 (talk) 00:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The insertion delay of the Video Toaster was 400 nano seconds input to output. If you were running video through the digital channel there was a one frame delay (~34 mS).

Well, the Toaster was far from inexpensive on first release. $1999, if memory serves me correctly. And that was in addition to the cost of an Amiga 2000HD/2500 to host it. A check of the high-res pictures on the Big Book of Amiga Hardware site shows that the RAM daughterboard had 16 AAA1M200P-10H ICs for the frambuffer and the original specs for the Toaster show it to be capable of capturing 8 fields in real-time at 24-bit color resolution. There was a delay in in the framebuffer and I remember having to calibrate it on particularly troublesome units in the mid to late 90's after Newtek got tired of requiring owners to send them in for service and started allowing us to do it. And yes, using the CG was slow and tiresome but it was still an order of magnitude cheaper than any available real-time solutions available then.--SEWalk (talk) 07:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The list price of the original Video Toaster was $1495, when Video Toaster 2.0 was released this raised to $2495.

More clarity needed

This entry needs more info about a typical Toaster setup. There's no mention that a user still required two or more video tape units to perform edits. The entry does not make it clear that the Toast was *not* an NLE. --24.249.108.133 23:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

wording?

Though it was admittedly one of the better graphically specified computers of the 80s (and particularly in terms of bang-for-buck), I can't see much justification in the Amiga being "unique amongst personal computers in it's ability to run at NTSC TV frequency (15.75khz)"... unique but for almost everything else except the IBM PC (and then, excepting those using a CGA or compatible video card) and certain low-end machines that typically had a built-in or bespoke monochrome monitor, then? Practically all non-IBM home computers I can name would be quite happy plugging directly into a standard television (NTSC or PAL), albeit some needing a seperate RF modulator if the television lacked a composite or RGB (component/SCART) input.

Most particularly, the Atari ST (& extended family covering STe, Mega ST/e, TT and Falcon), arguably the Amiga (family)'s main direct rival - even the early model I personally own having both composite and RGB SCART output capabilities to regular televisions (and tunerless TV-circuitry based monitors) at PAL 15625/50 and NTSC 15750/60 frequencies.

Now I think about it some more, did you maybe mean that the Amiga had a built-in GenLock, and otherwise specialist and typically expensive item that could match the machine's output frequency and H/V sync/blanking to that of an input, allowing for much easier production of graphics overlays? With the ST/etc obviously requiring a seperate, and necessarily even more complicated external box to carry out the same feature (of which I only saw one or two ever featured in an ST magazine, alongside much more basic video editing or titling software, for excessive prices). 82.46.180.56 (talk) 23:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

As far as CGA having a horizontal frequency of 15.75kHz, the fact that it was a digital output format pretty much excludes it from being capable of generating braodcast-quality video. The thing that made the Amiga uniquely suited for this task was that the timing for the entire chipset and the CPU was structured around a NTSC/PAL clock signal making genlocking a trivial matter. Other systems, like the Atari you mentioned, required some kind of separate framebuffer device to manage the same thing.--SEWalk (talk) 06:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

TriCaster

Should this article not be renamed TriCaster, the Video Toaster has been renamed by NewTeck right??? 22:46, 12 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.151.35.143 (talk)

"PAL" version of the original Video Toaster?

My understanding is that there was never a PAL version of the original video toaster (*), because Sony (IIRC) never made a PAL version of the chip it was based around...? However, the opening statement says

The NewTek Video Toaster was a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of standard-definition video in NTSC, PAL, and resolution independent formats on Commodore Amiga computers and subsequently on computers running the Windows operating system

...which implies that there was an Amiga-based PAL version. Can someone please clarify this?

(*) IIRC someone released a "PAL" Video Toaster in the UK, but it was just an NTSC model with an NTSC -> PAL converter slapped on (which sounds like it would do horrible things to both sharpness of the video and smoothness of motion, particularly if they did it two ways).

Ubcule (talk) 21:24, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Additional; yep, this article broadly confirms what I remembered. Amiga Format's big cover "story" about it "finally coming to the UK" was a disingenuous contrivance:-

"The Video Toaster was a US-only gadget then, because it could only work with the NTSC video signal [but] with a couple of video converters, we [Amiga Format] were able to review this incredible gadget"

Ubcule (talk) 21:35, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Might be worth adding a comment to the article to point out that no (native) PAL version was made. This was the first question that sprung to my mind on reading the article. It’s so common for Wikipedia articles to assume the rest of the world doesn’t exist, that it’s not clear whether the author has just ignored any PAL variants or not. 86.179.25.169 (talk) 16:17, 19 May 2023 (UTC)