hunter@oakhill.UUCP (Hunter Scales) (11/23/90)
I have seen a quick demo of the Toaster but the demonstrator
was not very knowledgable about the machine, so I have a
few questions. I am not an Amiga person so I have some
naive questions about the Amiga as well.
1. I understand that the Toaster will physically fit in only the
Amiga 2000/2500 box. Since the machine does its special effects
in hardware, is there any reason to get more horsepower than a
an A2000?
2. What is a reasonable configuration for use with the Toaster:
memory, monitors, etc.
3. What is a reasonable cost for a used A2000 with this configuration?
4. Will the Toaster perform the same functions as one of the
dedicated "color processors" such as the Azdens? I was told
that the ChromaFX functions operated on the luminance signal, is
there any chrominance processing?
5. Is possible to do "colorization" of monochrome video ala Ted
Turner? i.e. can you save frames of BW video, "paint" them and
the replay?
6. What software is shipped with the Toaster? Is the rendering
package included?
7. For someone who *has* a Toaster, has it been reliable?
8. Does the Toaster use a standard graphics file format, i.e.
can I use my favorite raytracer on a fast RISC machine and
user the file with the Toaster?
Whew. I know that was a lot of questions. I hope someone out there
with the knowledge has the patience to answer. Thanks a bunch.
--
Motorola Semiconductor Inc. Hunter Scales
Austin, Texas {harvard,utah-cs,gatech}!cs.utexas.edu!oakhill!hunter
#include <disclaimer.h>mikep@hpmwtd.HP.COM (Mike Powell) (11/27/90)
/ hpmwngf:comp.sys.amiga / hunter@oakhill.UUCP (Hunter Scales) / 2:42 pm Nov 22, 1990 / [stuff deleted] 1. I understand that the Toaster will physically fit in only the Amiga 2000/2500 box. Since the machine does its special effects in hardware, is there any reason to get more horsepower than a an A2000? ----------- Yes, there is a reason.... If you plan on using Lightwave much (the 3D rendering program), more horsepower is important.... Toaster includes floating-point versions of Lightwave and Modeler. ----------- 2. What is a reasonable configuration for use with the Toaster: memory, monitors, etc. ----------- A good configuration is a 5Meg machine with a 40mb hard drive and a good NTSC video monitor.... A great configuration is a 7-10Meg accelerated machine with 100+mb hard drive and two NTSC video monitors (this is in addition to the Amiga monitor...) ---------- 3. What is a reasonable cost for a used A2000 with this configuration? ---------- $2000-$6000 + Toaster ??? ---------- 4. Will the Toaster perform the same functions as one of the dedicated "color processors" such as the Azdens? I was told that the ChromaFX functions operated on the luminance signal, is there any chrominance processing? ---------- Sorry.... don't know much about ChromaFX yet... ---------- 5. Is possible to do "colorization" of monochrome video ala Ted Turner? i.e. can you save frames of BW video, "paint" them and the replay? ---------- It should be possible, but a difficult task to be sure... It would require a mastery of Toaster Paint, and a single frame viseo recording system to allow the colorized frames to be stored back to video format for playback. ---------- 6. What software is shipped with the Toaster? Is the rendering package included? ---------- Yes, The rendering package is included, and it is FANTASTIC! There is also Toaster Paint, ChromaFX, TOaster Character Generator, and the Switcher. ---------- 7. For someone who *has* a Toaster, has it been reliable? ---------- Yes. ---------- 8. Does the Toaster use a standard graphics file format, i.e. can I use my favorite raytracer on a fast RISC machine and user the file with the Toaster? ---------- The Toaster can save images in three formats... it's own Frame Store format, IFF 24, and RGB. If you have a Ray-Tracer that can output in IFF 24 then it should work fine... and I'm not too sure about the RGB format. ---------- Whew. I know that was a lot of questions. I hope someone out there with the knowledge has the patience to answer. Thanks a bunch. Motorola Semiconductor Inc. Hunter Scales ---------- -Mike Powell-
mark@calvin..westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson) (11/27/90)
In article <4230@cerberus.oakhill.UUCP> hunter@oakhill.UUCP (Hunter Scales) writes: > 1. I understand that the Toaster will physically fit in only the > Amiga 2000/2500 box. Since the machine does its special effects > in hardware, is there any reason to get more horsepower than a > an A2000? The additional horsepower doesn't aide the digital video effects but it will have major impact on the speed of Lightwave3D, the modeler, Toaster Paint, and most likely all disk access. If DVE's are all you want, you can probably get by without an accellerator. > 2. What is a reasonable configuration for use with the Toaster: > memory, monitors, etc. Depends on what you plan to do with it. 3D work demands an accellerator, saving images requires lots of disk space, and minimum recommended ram is 5M. I find that to use use the paint program for any sort of real work requires 7M of ram or better. Minimum disk requirements are 5M, but I recommend having at least 10M. As for monitors, you should have three but you can get by with two. If you are only using Lightwave, you could use a single 1084 but you will be doing a lot of switching on the input selector of the 1084. My configuration is a 2500/30 with 7M ram, 380M disk, and two monitors. This is very comfortable but I would like more ram. ALERT.....Something to note...........the Toaster does not like certain cables hooked up to the Amiga RGB port. It totally barfed at the active circuitry in my cable for the Mitsubishi DiamondScan. > 4. Will the Toaster perform the same functions as one of the > dedicated "color processors" such as the Azdens? I was told > that the ChromaFX functions operated on the luminance signal, is > there any chrominance processing? The current incarnation of the Toaster does chroma effects based on luma input. However, I am told that a hardware add-on is in the works for the Toaster that will add chroma processing (ie. chroma key). > 5. Is possible to do "colorization" of monochrome video ala Ted > Turner? i.e. can you save frames of BW video, "paint" them and > the replay? Yes but keep in mind that each colorized frame you create must be output one at a time, the toaster cannot playback real-time video. > 6. What software is shipped with the Toaster? Is the rendering > package included? All software is included: Toaster Paint, Switcher, digital effects, chroma effects, character generater, and Lightwave (3D modeler, renderer, and animator). > 7. For someone who *has* a Toaster, has it been reliable? Considering the complexity of the product and how new it is to the market, it is exceedingly reliable. I work on it a minimum of 6 hours a day and have come across only a few minor bugs (and this is not even the final release of the software, though it is very close). > 8. Does the Toaster use a standard graphics file format, i.e. > can I use my favorite raytracer on a fast RISC machine and > user the file with the Toaster? The Toaster supports a number of standard Amiga formats: 24 bit IFF input and output RAW rgb input (I believe this is Digi-View compatible) VideoScape objects and paths Sculpt scene files It may also accept other 3D formats such as Turbo Silver but I have not tried it. Hope this helps. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Mark Thompson | | mark@westford.ccur.com | | ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark Designing high performance graphics | | (508)392-2480 engines today for a better tomorrow. | +------------------------------------------------------------------------- +
whos@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Ben Feen) (12/03/90)
I'd like some info on exactly what the toaster does. I'm going to be using one with an Amiga 2000 with 4 Mb and an 80 Mb drive, with an NTSC monitor. Any help would be appreciated. -- whos@ddsw1.MCS.COM | I don't know, who's at DDSW1? | whos@ddsw1.MCS.COM! I asked YOU who's at DDSW1! Ok, there's a guy at DDSW1, right? | Right! Who? | Exactly! | What? | No, he's at lll-winken. | Where? | No, What! | I don't know! | He's at gargoyle. | Who? | No, he's at DDSW1.MCS.COM!