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Source of Amiga Video Toaster Software Released
bender writes "About a decade after the release of of the NewTek Video Toaster for the Amiga, OpenVideoToaster is now hosting the source code of the software! The Video Toaster ushered in the age of affordable desktop video in 1991 and was used in products such as Babylon 5 and Jurassic Park."
Video Toaster was great for local-access cable channel type work, but it wasn't even full broadcast quality... at least it was cheap.
Some of the early rough-out effects for Jurassic Park were prototyped using an old version of Lightwave on an Amiga, but that's about it. All of the CGI effects in the movie were done on big iron Silicon Graphics machines at ILM, some of which included the use of the SGI IRIX version of Lightwave.
Again, Jurassic Park effects were done with big iron... not with a consumer-level computer with a single 680x0 processor and an NTSC/PAL video board.
No that's partially true. There ARE indeed new Amiga Hardware either in the AmigaONE or the Pegasos II. It's a new PowerPC architecture with industry standard formfactor and components. I have one here running MorphOS a native PowerPC Operating System with full AmigaOS 3.1 API compatibility + MC680x0 JIT for emulating old Amiga programms in full speed (even faster)
For some cool ScreenShots go to my Web page Here the Link or for more look at MorphZone (top right Image Gallery).
greetings,
oGALAXYo
I remember distinctly lusting after the Video Toaster for a while, but budget restraints (having NO money) and other factors kept me from it. Sure, the Toaster was a bit crude, but it probably jump-started a few video editing careers... It was used in a few music videos, such as the Todd Rundgren song "Change Myself", which shipped with the demo tape of the Toaster's promotional package.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
You can't even begin to compare Discreet's software to the original Toaster (or any toaster). The Toaster was basiclly a fancy video mixer controlled by an amiga. It was totally linear video (meaning you had to have a source deck and a record deck) it couldn't even capture video clips. NewTek later made "Toaster" software for Windows, which is pretty much in the same ballpark as editing/effects packages from Avid, Adobe, and Apple.
Seaquest used Lightwave, a 3D package from NewTek, for its CG effects. The Video Toaster was a combination of hardware and software, also from NewTek, for doing fancy computer-controlled video switching and mixing ("blue screen" chroma key, wipes/fades/disolves, graphics mixing, etc) in real-time via two or three tape decks... one or two for source, one for recording. Seaquest probably used the Toaster to mix the graphics with the video... but the 3D effects themselves were done in Lightwave. The Video Toaster is not a magical fairy wand that can do everything... it's just a computer-controlled video mixer / switch.
IIRC the Toaster did utilize the Amiga's chips to the extent that it could. The magic was in that ASIC, and IMO that would be the more interesting thing to examine, although I'm sure if you dig into the code enough you'd have a rough idea of what they were trying to do.
However, to do anything with it today is pretty redundant. Your average $500 PC from Dell with a $250 Canopus ADVC-100 has more capability to edit than the toaster ever did, plus the ability to do real-time previews and output to DVD or DV tape. If you were to emulate the hardware, you'd have something that with full effects would take fractions of a second to several minutes per frame or more to render its output. Then you'd need an analog deck with frame-by-frame control, because that's how the Toaster used to do its thing: frame-by-frame, painfully, slowly usually. Plus you'd need stand-alone Time Base Correctors at a few hundred a pop for frame stabilization. To do a 1-2 hour video and have a render and print-to-tape go overnight or even over the course of a couple of days wasn't a big deal considering the lack of alternatives at the time.
I think for historical purposes or the code geek will appreciate the relase of code, but anyone with a PC from the last two years with a decent capture/output solution and a DVD writer can do far more than the original Toaster ever could.
One last note: the Amiga technology back in 1984 was being bid upon by two companies. The company that won was Commodore, and we know what a debacle of excess and poor marketing they were. The other was International Business Machines, who decided it wasn't valuable. Had IBM purchased the Amiga technology, it's very likely the computing landscape and development of multimedia technologies would have been a lot different and IMO advanced much further for the average person than history as it stands today shows.
:(
This is incorrect. Check out a comprehensive Amiga history and you'll see that the original corporate investor wanting to buy Amiga was in fact Atari, who produced the ST in competition to the Amiga after Commodore saved Amiga's IP butt by foiling a dirty funding deal by Atari.
IBM wasn't really involved at all. Would the computing landscape be different if Atari had bought Amiga? Maybe, maybe not. Atari had a great bit of mismangement as well, but it might've been a winning combination nonetheless. We'll never know.
Nope. That was SGI stuff, running the 'fsn' app. It was, indeed, a UNIX system.
Guys? This is the source for a Zorro based card. You arn't likely to get any use of it unless your PC has a Zorro bus.
For more details visit http:\\www.ann.lu
--AROS is an Open Source AmigaOS clone, and source compatible with AmigaOS! Try the x86 build at http://www.aros.org
When the toaster came out it was a wonderful replacement for aging, expensive monster mixers and effects boxes. In fact, when it came out it's closest competition was nearly $50,000. Toaster had the huge advantage of being a totally new system using new ideas and new techniques. It wasn't as powerful or as capable as a true non-linear editing system or field-accurate paintbox machine... but it didn't cost nearly as much as one either.
The worst thing about working in television is the editing - there's an editor sitting at a big dumb expensive machine and you don't experiment at 300 bucks an hour, you stick with grey. But there's a company that's changing that. There's a new machine that may give us real color TV. NewTek in Topeka, yes Topeka (the "yes Topeka" gag is right on their stationary) has done another one of those technological end runs around politics and conventions. They have invented the Video Toaster, desktop video. It costs around 1500 clams and works in an Amiga (I know you don't have an Amiga but if you want to play with video buy one, it's no big deal - it's just an Amiga for Pete's sake - you don't have to eat crow and buy a Mac). The Toaster does everything those pesky dinosaur machines do and you don't need any editor person in you face. You can do all those digital video effects you see on real TV yourself. It has a character generator, ChromaFX and Luminance Key (that's like blue screen so you can put things behind you that aren't really there - you can do your rap in front of a big nude picture of Uma Thurman). It has screen buffers so you can pull in pictures of, oh let's say, Uma Thurman and has a 3D animation thing and an incredible paintbox so you can doctor up those pictures or draw original ones and throw them right onto video tape. And, get this, it's broadcast quality. Rumor has it that some of CNN's Gulf War coverage was Toasted. This means one person can shoot footage of meat-puppets on HI-8 and, with a couple of tape machines and time base correctors, put out no-kidding television. The editing can be done in your home - alone. Once the set up is paid for, the editing is free. This machine is going to fill wedding videos with lots of 3D flying titles and "infinity slides" but, face it, we're going to have world peace before we have watchable wedding videos. I love playing with the Video Toaster but what really kills me dead is dreaming of a lot of people using Toasters. When it gets universal enough we'll have video that has the pure artistic white light/white heat of writing and painting - glimpses into another person's vision. Of course MTV will still show Robert Palmer - computers can't solve all our problems.
The Video Toaster itself wasn't really used in Babylon 5, but it came bundled with Lightwave...and THAT was used in the CGI...and continued to be used and is still used today...though not on an Amiga.
I remember when Alan Hastings was looking for another distributer when the one that distributed VideoScape 3D crapped out and NewTek gobbled him up. He was even looking for a name for the new "Videoscape" which later turned into Lightwave. This was back in the day when I was trying like mad to get Pixar to port Photorealistic Renderman to the Amiga, even getting them to go to a couple of Amiga-worlds...but I guess they saw the writing on the wall.
Oh well, that was a long time ago. But it's cool that they released the source for the Toaster. Now if they would release the source for Lightwave that would REALLY be cool. lol
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
That was all Irix. Irix screenshots showing the Jurassic Park interface.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Your facts are incorrect. The Toaster most definitely was video quality.
basiclly a 68030 Amiga with a fancy linear video i/o board and some software for basic effects.
No, the Original video toaster didn't come with an Amiga.. the toaster was the "fancy linear i/o board and some software for basic effects."
It was basiclly a fancy video switch / mixer.
Yes, that's the point.
the Toaster didn't even do ful 640x480, it was a bit less than that
First of all, "640x480" isn't "full" video, it's "VGA", which is significantly different than a TV signal. (VGA is underscanned, with a 1:1 aspect ratio, NTSC video is overscanned, with a 4:3 aspect ratio.)
And second, the Toaster did do full 752x480 - full overscanned NTSC.
There is no way this was used for film work.
It was used for film work - just not the way you think. Although it wasn't used in the final cut, it was used to do rough-ups for staging.
its all in M68K assmebly language...
We might as well start from scratch...
unless of course u own a AMIGA, then it is very useful.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
This isn't entirely true. the Video Toaster could handle live video, something you really can't do with any good consumer systems right now. The closest thing that came to a replacement for the video toaster was the Play Trinity, but you can't buy that anymore, not to mention that it was for a much higher end market. It was a professional system.
If I'm a low budget cable access, or UHF station, I can't use Final Cut Pro for my live broadcast. In fact, my local cable access station still uses, guess what, the Video Toaster for this purpose.
-twb
I was in Kansas City working for an Amiga dealer, and I remember when Tim Jennison came to demo the DigiView. At the time, it was astonishing. Mac users were buying Amigas just as a way to get frame captures and higher color scans.
The name Video Toaster was the end result of humorous false rumors spread by NewTek. They leaked that they were working on a "laser toaster" to toast graphics onto white bread for hotels and resturaunts. Then they said that they had expanded their project to include a "JellyJet printer" that could spray mint, rasberry and blueberry jelly onto the bread for color output. The next month they announced that they had expanded it to the Amiga's 4096 color "Hold and Modify" mode for "HAM on Toast". This went on until the actual product was announced. At which point it became vaporware for a very long period of time.
The Toaster was broadcast quality by the only standard that mattered - would a broadcaster broadcast it? They did. The video output was comparable to the quality of a 1" C-format machine, and the CG letters were comparable to Dubner or Chyron systems of the time. What people fed into the Toaster was another matter. VHS in is going to look like VHS coming out. But I put the Toaster directly on air several times, and the engineers looked closely at it's bars on their waveform monitors and vectorscopes and were happy.
I have doubts how worthwhile this code is going to be for anyone. The Video Toaster development team had a reputation for bizzare hacks, making the Amiga chipset do things that they were never meant to do. Woz would have been proud of their kind of hackery. But I doubt if any of it is going to be transferrable to any other platform - maybe the CG code.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
BAsically, what would need to be done is all the parts that deal with hardware would need to be reimplemented in software. Not a huge deal, given the power of today's CPUs. Not sure if it would be worth the effort or not, but it's still something that people can tinker with.
Most people here seem to have it all mixed up.
The Amiga, with Toaster or whatever else has never been an NLE (non-linear video editor). Professional NLEs are Avid (Mac and Windows) and Apple's Final Cut Pro (Mac only, of course). There are a few others for hobbyists.
What the Amiga had, was hardware producing high quality analog video output (PAL or NTSC), and video software to go with it like Toaster, for effects, mixing, switching, etc. and all that at an incredibly low price.
Another thing that adds to the confusion is that the Amiga also had a great 3D package called Lightwave, which enabled it to do 3D rendering for film output. The rendering was slow, but the quality was great. For faster rendering, people could just add more cheap Amigas.
So Lightwave on Amigas certainly has been used for 3D stuff in some big movies. (I have no idea if it was really used in Jurrassic Park. Probably not, because they would have had the budget to afford many SGIs with SoftImage, but it could have been used).
But this 3D stuff has not much to do with Toaster or the Amiga's video output abilities (except for previews). 3D stuff is output in single files of a single frame each (usually TIFF files), and transfered to film negative in a specialized lab, frame by frame (even today, these later printers do not work in real time; I think they print a few frames per second).
And all these movies were definitely not edited on an Amiga. They were edited on film or on an Avid.
Hope that clears up a little bit the confusion between NLE, 3D, video hardware and video effects and mixing software.
Not to troll, but could someone tell me why I should use the Amiga as opposed to another platform, such as the Macintosh?
Well, if you'd ask the same question around 1990, the answer would be pretty straightforward. Amiga OS was a superb blend of CLI and GUI. In early 1990's, there were already many better solutions of both the GUI and the CLI, but the quality of the blend itself was unmatched until MacOS X. And even in MacOS X this blend is not always as good as in Amiga (for example, it was much easier to tweak the startup sequence of your system using purely GUI tools). Also, until the mid 1990's Amiga was a much better gaming platform than a Mac.
One Warp11's web site there are even some videos!
-- Multics
p.s. no she's not 'let herself go' -- mostly the contrary!
Lightwave ScreamerNet nodes don't need licences. for example you can have unlimited amount of Linux machines to do your rendering. Linux ScreamerNet rpm comes with 7.5c update.
$ cd /usr/src/kernel/linux-2.4.24 . /* fuck me plenty */ /* XXX Fucking Cypress... */ /* Binary compatibility is good American knowhow fuckin' up. */ /* XXX No fucking way dude... */ /* Why the fuck did they have to change this? */ /* fuck me plenty */ /* Fuck me plenty... */ /* Fucking losing PROM has more mappings in the TLB, but /* ARGH! Fucking brain damage. You don't want to know. */ /* This card is _fucking_ hot... */ /* ??? What the fuck is the purpose of the interrupt mask /* Be careful, we could really get fucked during synchronous /* Be careful, we could really get fucked during synchronous /* task can fuck it up GTL */ /* Fuck me plenty... */ /* Ugly, ugly fucker. */ /* Ugly, ugly fucker. */ /* If you fuck with this, update ret_from_syscall code too. */ \ :-) /* James M doesn't say fuck enough. */
$ grep -ir fuck
./Documentation/DocBook/kernel-locking.tmpl:&nb sp; If you don't see why, please stay the fuck away from my code.
./Documentation/DocBook/kernel-locking.tmpl : <title>The Fucked Up Sparc</title>
./arch/x86_64/kernel/mtrr.c:/*  ; Some BIOS's are fucked and don't set all MTRRs the same! */
./arch/i386/kernel/mtrr.c:/* Some BIOS's are fucked and don't set all MTRRs the same! */
./arch/sparc/kernel/process.c:
./arch/sparc/kernel/head.S:
./arch/sparc/kernel/ptrace.c:/* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */
./arch/sparc/kernel/sunos_ioctl.c:
./arch/mips/sgi-ip22/ip22-setup.c: * fucking with the memory controller because it needs to know the
./arch/mips/kernel/irixelf.c:#if 0
./arch/mips/kernel/irixioctl.c: * irixioctl.c: A fucking mess...
./arch/ppc/kernel/ppc405_pci.c: * the kernel try to remap our BAR #1 and fuck up bus
./arch/sparc64/kernel/traps.c:
./arch/sparc64/kernel/process.c:
./arch/sparc64/kernel/binfmt_aout32.c:
./arch/sparc64/mm/init.c:
./arch/parisc/kernel/signal.c:
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:/* Only Sun can take such nice parts and fuck up the programming interface
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:
./drivers/net/b44.c:
./drivers/net/macsonic.c: fuck did SONIC_BUS_SCALE come from, and what was it supposed
./drivers/char/drm/drmP.h:extern int DRM(release_fuck)(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp);
./drivers/scsi/qlogicpti.h:/* Am I fucking pedantic or what? */
./drivers/scsi/esp.c: * how bad the target and/or ESP fucks things up.
./drivers/scsi/esp.c: * phase things. We don't want to fuck directly with
./drivers/scsi/esp.c:
./drivers/scsi/NCR53C9x.c: * how bad the target and/or ESP fucks things up.
./drivers/scsi/NCR53C9x.c:
./drivers/sound/aci.c:/* The four ACI command types are fucked up. [-:
./drivers/cdrom/sbpcd.c: blkdev_dequeue_request(req);
./drivers/ide/pci/cmd640.c: * These chips are basically fucked by design, and getting this driver
./fs/binfmt_aout.c:
./fs/jffs/intrep.c: don't fuck up. This is why we have
./include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_limit.h:
./include/linux/netfilter_ipv6/ip6t_limit.h:&n bsp;
./include/asm-m68k/sun3ints.h:/* master list of VME vectors -- don't fuck with this */
./include/asm-sparc64/system.h:
./include/asm-parisc/spinlock.h: * writers) in interrupt handlers someone fucked up and we'd dead-lock
./lib/vsprintf.c: * Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up
./net/core/netfilter.c:
./net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_nat_snmp_basic.c: * (And this is the fucking 'basic' method).
./net/ipv4/netfilter/ipt_limit.c: * Alexey is a fucking genius?
./net/ipv6/netfilter/ip6t_limit.c: * Alexey is a fucking genius?
That's mainly the reason for running big render jobs on big iron - there is literally twice as much data to shift, four times the precision needed in calculations (at least), and don't forget you need extremely specialised processes to get the digital output onto film.
Rendering moved off Amigas when Netter Digital took over from Foundation Imaging. Series 3 IIRC.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Back in the early days of B5, a couple of the Foundation Imaging guys were active on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 (along with JMS), and this question came up a lot.
My (admittedly sketchy) memory of the answer is that the FX shots for the original 2-hour pilot episode of B5 were composed and rendered with ScreamerNet/Amiga, but that by the time the actual series got picked up and put into production (over a year later), they'd pretty much migrated entirely to LightWave NT, and were doing their rendering on Intel hardware.
I can't speak for Sliders and DSV (and, frankly, don't care), but Voyager was certainly not rendered on Amigas: Foundation was entirely an NT (and SGI?) shop by that point.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
http://www.warp11.com
Anyway Agnus, the biggest chip in the Amiga and the one most frequently upgraded because it increased your chip memory, is responsible for clock generation in OCS amigas (2500 and below.) here is a pinout for the video slot. Agnus does not generate a clock, it divides an external clock which is apparently 28MHz.
Unfortunately I don't have any amiga manuals lying around any more, so I can't look in the schematic for clock pins and trace them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Source of the comment from here, probably cribbed from this comment.
I don't know why you'd do that, especially when you break all formatting and make it impossible to read. Paragraph breaks are your friend.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I worked for NewTek during the Toaster heyday. Tim & Paul tried to negotiate with Irving Gould (of Commodore fame) in his Bahamaian Commodore headquarters (can you say 'evade taxes'?) in an attempt to get him to license the Amiga chip-sets.
With 'em we could've made a Mac & PC Video Toaster!
But alas, old Irving knew that his shell game of moving Amiga's around the world would cease (currency trading is very profitable if done right) and the Toaster was the only thing that was keeping the Amiga going.
Being at the Christmas parties with "Lurch", Wil Wheaton, James Doohan (Scotty), Kiki and the other "Cool Friends of NewTek" made me even more aware of my un-coolness. But the buzz was really there and it really, really felt like the early Apple days (I rep'ed them too in 1980).
Imagine had Commodore done it....what might've been.
After reading many of the comments it seems that people are under the impression that VT and lightwave are dead products and of "historical" value, they aren't dead at all, still sold check out NewTeks' web site
They still kick ass and i still want one (damned lottery not picking the right numbers)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.