3 May
2016
3 May
'16
11:56 a.m.
Back in the early 90's I remember that many times I'd see a print
advertisement for a Video Toaster or a new genlock card, they'd say things
like "features you'd have to pay thousands for in a professional paintbox
or titler!" I always wondered what they were talking about, since I'd
never seen how broadcast was done back then (and still don't know). So,
I'm really talking about the tech of the 80's (since that's what the
marketing folks were referring to, I assume).
Here's what I could find that I'm speculating were the "competition" of
the time:
The Quantel Paintbox:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantel_Paintbox
Superpaint running on a DG Nova 800
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpaint
The Bosch FGS 4000
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oyGaEu7D7s
These are about the only ones I could find. Does anyone know of any
others?
Also, here are my favorite paint and 2D animation programs of yore. If you
guys have others that you loved and remember, what were they?
DOS
1. Deluxe Paint II Enhanced
2. PC Paintbrush
3. Autodesk Animator
4. Paul Mace's GRASP
5. Deluxe Paint Animation
Amiga
1. Photogenics
2. Photon Paint
3. TVPaint
4. Brilliance
5. Disney Animation Studio
Sorry, I didn't use the Mac enough to form any favorites, though I did
love Fractal Design Painter (now Corel Painter).
-Swift
3 May
3 May
12:59 p.m.
At 11:56 AM 5/3/2016, Swift Griggs wrote:
The Quantel Paintbox:
Superpaint running on a DG Nova 800
The Bosch FGS 4000
Add to those the Avid/1 non-linear editor from Avid Technology, introduced in 1989, which
ran on a Mac II using some specialized hardware. It rapidly became the leading video
editing system for television and film (which, of course, had to be digitized). It
eventually displaced almost all celluloid cutting.
After NT4 was introduced Avid introduced Avid Studio for that OS, the first Windows OS
that Avid considered stable enough for one of its edit suites. AFAIK everything before
that was for Mac. They also built video playout systems for TV master control rooms that
were Mac based. Perhaps Avid's best known product is Pro Tools, which they acquired
when they bought Digidesign in 1994.
The small TV station that I worked for used Video Toaster before we bought Avid Studio.
The latter made a huge difference in editing ability, FX range and quality, and rendering
time.
Dale H. Cook, Radio Contract Engineer (and former TV Engineer), Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA
http://plymouthcolony.net/starcityeng/index.html
1:52 p.m.
Add to those the Avid/1 non-linear editor from Avid
Technology,
introduced in 1989, which ran on a Mac II using some specialized
hardware. It rapidly became the leading video editing system for
television and film (which, of course, had to be digitized). It
eventually displaced almost all celluloid cutting.
The early Avid systems just commanded the VTR's over RS-422 to go to time
points then punch in, correct? It was non-linear but the video wasn't
digitized or stored on disk?
--
Ethan O'Toole
2:05 p.m.
On Tue, 3 May 2016, ethan at 757.org wrote:
The early Avid systems just commanded the VTR's
over RS-422 to go to
time points then punch in, correct? It was non-linear but the video
wasn't digitized or stored on disk?
That's what I remember, too, but I could be wrong. I also seem to remember
that the Toaster had something that came along later called the "Toaster
Flyer" card that would allow you to digitize video and work with it
digitally, but I never used one.
I was too poor. All I could afford in those days were tiny frame grabbers
for the Amiga.
-Swift
2:14 p.m.
At 02:05 PM 5/3/2016, Swift Griggs wrote:
I also seem to remember that the Toaster had something
that came along later called the "Toaster Flyer" card that would allow you to
digitize video and work with it digitally, but I never used one
Our Toaster had a Flyer.
Dale H. Cook, Radio Contract Engineer, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA
http://plymouthcolony.net/starcityeng/index.html
2:51 p.m.
On Tue, 3 May 2016, Dale H. Cook wrote:
Was I right? Did that thing actually digitize video? Once you had it could
you use it as a source for A/B rolls and the like that the regular
Toaster functions covered?
I didn't realize the Avid stuff was as popular and well-used as you guys
are saying. Back in the day, I was under the impression that Avid
equipment was just for hobbyists, but it seems not. Sounds like it was
well used in professional broadcast apps, also.
What about titlers? I'm under the impression that, until the mid-90's or
so, titlers were totally dedicated bits of hardware. Then came a lot of
packages for the PC and Amiga to do it in software and overlay it with a
genlock. I also remember that switchers and time base correctors were
needed for video back in the day. I understand the concept of a switcher
(easy) but a TBC? Was that because you had to have video timings exactly
matching before you could successfully show bits from both at the same
time (ie.. in an A/B roll) or was it for a completely different purpose ?
-Swift
I also seem to
remember that the Toaster had something that came along
later called the "Toaster Flyer" card that would allow you to digitize
video and work with it digitally, but I never used one
Our Toaster had a Flyer.
4:28 p.m.
At 02:51 PM 5/3/2016, Swift Griggs wrote:
Did that thing actually digitize video? Once you had it
could you use it as a source for A/B rolls and the like that the regular Toaster functions
covered?
IIRC it could be used that way, but IIRC it wouldn't store an awful lot of video.
I didn't realize the Avid stuff was as popular and
well-used as you guys are saying. ... Sounds like it was well used in professional
broadcast apps, also.
Avid was initially only professional and very expensive. The fully-loaded Avid/1 Media
Composer in 1989 had about 4 gigabytes of SCSI hard drive and 5 megabytes of RAM (in the
Mac) and cost nearly $80,000.00. IIRC that configuration could store something like 6
hours of 30 fps video with stereo CD-quality audio.
... but a TBC? Was that because you had to have video
timings exactly matching before you could successfully show bits from both at the same
time (ie.. in an A/B roll) or was it for a completely different purpose ?
A/B roll was one purpose. Another use was that some video sources (such as some sat
receivers) were not genlocked to the house standard, so we used TBCs to permit smooth
dissolves and switching between sat receivers and in-house sources which were genlocked.
We also got some out-of-house video (some church services shot by small churches come to
mind) that came in on VHS, and the VHS decks were not genlocked.
Dale H. Cook, Radio Contract Engineer, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA
http://plymouthcolony.net/starcityeng/index.html
4:36 p.m.
Was I right? Did that thing actually digitize video?
Once you had it could
you use it as a source for A/B rolls and the like that the regular
Toaster functions covered?
From what I know the flyer boards had their own scsi
bus or something for
dedicated video disks? I could be wrong, I worked for an ISP
and one of
our customers had an Amiga with one and I talked to him briefly about it.
I didn't realize the Avid stuff was as popular and
well-used as you guys
are saying. Back in the day, I was under the impression that Avid
equipment was just for hobbyists, but it seems not. Sounds like it was
well used in professional broadcast apps, also.
Media 100 was another company that came on the scene later on the Mac
side.
What about titlers? I'm under the impression that,
until the mid-90's or
so, titlers were totally dedicated bits of hardware. Then came a lot of
packages for the PC and Amiga to do it in software and overlay it with a
genlock. I also remember that switchers and time base correctors were
needed for video back in the day. I understand the concept of a switcher
(easy) but a TBC? Was that because you had to have video timings exactly
matching before you could successfully show bits from both at the same
time (ie.. in an A/B roll) or was it for a completely different purpose ?
You got it!
Modern stuff sure fixes a lot!
--
Ethan O'Toole
4:58 p.m.
On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 4:36 PM, <ethan at 757.org> wrote:
ISTR the Toaster Flyer had 3 SCSI channels, one for A, one for B, and
one for the output stream once you were done with doing the
layout/compositing, but I wasn't a Toaster user, so I could be wrong
too.
-ethan
Was I right?
Did that thing actually digitize video? Once you had it could
you use it as a source for A/B rolls and the like that the regular
Toaster functions covered?
From what I know the flyer boards had their own scsi bus or something for
dedicated video disks?
5:19 p.m.
On Tue, 3 May 2016, Ethan Dicks wrote:
ISTR the Toaster Flyer had 3 SCSI channels, one for A,
one for B, and
one for the output stream once you were done with doing the
layout/compositing, but I wasn't a Toaster user, so I could be wrong
too.
Interesting. That makes sense since you'd have a discrete channel for
everything you needed for a two-source compositing operation like a roll.
I've used my SGI's a lot for simple video editing, but I never got into
anything cool like a Toaster or an Avid rig. I know there are a lot of
hardware options for doing video on SGI's (internal video, Sirius video,
Galileo video, and the dmedia bundle for newer systems). There are
applications like Alias Composer, Autodesk Flame, Flint/Effect, Avid
Illusion, Jaleo, Matador, Piranha Cinema HD, Adobe Premier, and Shake.
However, I haven't been able to get my hands on more than half that stuff
because of how expensive it is. Plus, just about all of it was LMF
nodelocked. So, you can't even buy a used copy.
-Swift
6:42 p.m.
Radius Videovision was another major player early on for the mac (both Nubus
and later PCI versions). There was also semi pro stuff like Supermac
DigitalFilm. Targa also made a bunch of cards for overlays on PC and Mac.
Avid also had some dead ends like Avid Media Suite Pro for the Mac.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzy94vWUitE <== AVID/1 DEMO
-----Original Message-----
From: ethan at 757.org
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2016 4:36 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast
Equipment
Media 100 was another company that came on the scene later on the Mac
side.
---
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2:13 p.m.
At 01:52 PM 5/3/2016, Ethan O'Toole wrote:
The early Avid systems just commanded the VTR's
over RS-422 to go to time points then punch in, correct? It was non-linear but the video
wasn't digitized or stored on disk?
I don't know - the earliest Avid products I worked with were from the late 1980s and
early 1990s and used digitized video with the largest hard drive and biggest RAM that I
had worked with up to that point. The MCR video playout system that I worked with stored
all the short-form video in a bank of SCSI drives, and we ran all of the long-form
manually from a bank of U-matic decks or directly from sat - all of the switching done
with a Grass Valley switcher run by the Avid. We did all of the long-form preroll with a
built-in preroll cueing function in the U-matics, and rolled them by hand, IIRC correctly
(that was about 20 years ago).
Dale H. Cook, Radio Contract Engineer, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA
http://plymouthcolony.net/starcityeng/index.html
1:11 p.m.
On 5/3/16 8:56 AM, Swift Griggs wrote:
Superpaint running on a DG Nova 800
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpaint
Superpaint was an experimental system at Xerox PARC
Quantel paintboxes were some of the earliest commercial systems.
Dig around in the SIGGRAPH proceedings in the 70s for others.
The technology advanced rapidly once semiconductor memory systems
were dense enough to have color frame stores that weren't astronomically
expensive.
9:13 p.m.
Several of my friends worked on Intelligent Resources? Video Explorer NuBus card, which
could do realtime video capture and manipulation because it had some sort of video
processing and switching chip on the card. It also had an open bus that could be used to
connect multiple video-related cards together so they could bypass NuBus for sharing data.
(NuBus is only 10-40 MB/sec.)
I think AnimEigo was using a subtitling system built atop Video Explorer cards right up
until the switch to DVDs.
-- Chris
9:43 p.m.
Those are pretty hard to find, have yet to add one to my collection.
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Hanson
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2016 9:13 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast
Equipment
Several of my friends worked on Intelligent Resources? Video Explorer NuBus
card, which could do realtime video capture and manipulation because it had
some sort of video processing and switching chip on the card. It also had an
open bus that could be used to connect multiple video-related cards together
so they could bypass NuBus for sharing data. (NuBus is only 10-40 MB/sec.)
I think AnimEigo was using a subtitling system built atop Video Explorer
cards right up until the switch to DVDs.
-- Chris
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
4 May
4 May
10:48 a.m.
Back in the early 90's I remember that many times
I'd see a print
advertisement for a Video Toaster or a new genlock card, they'd say things
like "features you'd have to pay thousands for in a professional paintbox
or titler!" I always wondered what they were talking about, since I'd
never seen how broadcast was done back then (and still don't know). So,
I'm really talking about the tech of the 80's (since that's what the
marketing folks were referring to, I assume).
Here's what I could find that I'm speculating were the "competition"
of
the time:
I think this is one of the center companies of that world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chyron_Corporation
I'm not a broadcast guy just a hobbyist but pay attention to lots of
different tech stuff! A diver friend is a manager on a video
production truck (top of the line type.) I've gotten to tour his current
one and it was insane. I've never seen so much hardware in
such a tight space (Full length trailer that slides it's entire length out
to add 75% or more.)
Early days was the Computer Eyes board for DOS PC. Then various windows
capture systems. I've owned some PC video editing stuff like Matrox
RT-2000 (sucked), and the Matrox Digisuite cards (found for sale online,
soemone thought it was networking hardware but I recognized the ports.)
Currently have Blackmagic ATEM Television Studio, which is very neat
hardware and software.
Haven't had a video toaster system... yet!
--
Ethan O'Toole
3001
days inactive
3002
days old
15 comments
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participants (7)
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aek＠bitsavers.org -
cmhanson＠eschatologist.net -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
ethan＠757.org -
radiotest＠juno.com -
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teoz＠neo.rr.com