Any Amiga 4000 owners here?

[tonyvdb]

I have owned an Amiga 4000 (made by Commodore) for many years until recently, I would love to get one again as it made a very good video editing machine combined with the Video Toaster Flyer that I still have.
This may be the time to dust off the cobwebs in your attic and in the garage and see if you have one lying around.

Anybody have one available?

[Mike P.]

Hopefully someone will have a Amiga 4000. Which Toaster do you have, the 2000 or the 4000?

[tonyvdb]

I have the 4000 with the Flyer non linear editor add on card. I still have all the SCSI drives and the software but had to sell the Amiga due to some financial reasons but I am finding that there is no cost effective PC software that will do as good a job.

[MatrixDweller]

The 4000 is still in use by some TV stations believe it or not. They still command a fair price on Ebay. I think they tend to be in the $300-$500 range depending on what's included. You could get much better quality (higher res) and compatibility with a newer PC or MAC though.

Have you used Pinnacle Studio before? It's fairly cheap.

[wbassett]

I have an Amiga 1000 and 2000. Those computers were way ahead of their time but they did absolutely no marketing and as a result... that died a slow death.

The Toaster is amazing and was used for T2 and Jurrasic Park as well as Babalon Five. It is still a power house for non-linear video editing and as mentioned some TV stations still use them. Oh I forgot... Disney Studio's used to use Amiga's and the Video Toaster for their animation.

If you are into video editing and can find one, they are definitely worth it.

[MatrixDweller]

Video Toaster is also available for the PC and is called VT now and is up to version 5. Of course NewTek's more professional LightWave 3D is in use by many of the top rated studios. Lightwave 3D was the software that made the original Video Toaster famous and what was used in T2 and Babylon 5. The newest LightWave for PC is not that expensive either (sub $300).

[tonyvdb]

MatrixDweller wrote:

The newest LightWave for PC is not that expensive either (sub $300).

That is a stripped down version of Lightwave and lacks a allot of the features that the full version has.
The big plus that the Video Toaster 4000 had on the Amiga was that it ran on an Amiga. I never had issues with it crashing for no reason and the Amiga OS was far more stable than even XP is today plus it only needed 16mb of ram and 2mb of chip (graphics) memory to run.
The biggest flaw the Amiga had was the poorly built power supply and the clock battery leaked and caused damage to the MB if you didn't catch it soon enough. I upgraded both the power supply and the battery in mine and never had troubles.

[MatrixDweller]

Can the Amiga 4000 with Video Toaster do 1080p or 720p?

There's also 3D Studio Max. You pretty much have to be a good artist or know a lot of tricks to make stuff in either LightWave or 3D Studio Max though. They're overkill for simple text overs.

The only drawback I would see with using an old Amiga would be the speed. Newer hardware would render scenes 100's of times quicker.

[tonyvdb]

MatrixDweller wrote:

Can the Amiga 4000 with Video Toaster do 1080p or 720p?

Sadly ,No. Although the output is as good as it gets at NTSC 520 lines it just doesnt do any more than that However Lightwave dose have the ability to do widescreen rendering.

There's also 3D Studio Max. You pretty much have to be a good artist or know a lot of tricks to make stuff in either LightWave or 3D Studio Max though. They're overkill for simple text overs.

The Toaster used a built in Character generator to do most text overs. However you can key or insert Lightwave images over video.

The only drawback I would see with using an old Amiga would be the speed. Newer hardware would render scenes 100's of times quicker.

Yes, It took my system over 4 days to render a 30 second annimation but once it was done it looked fantastic.
Actually my avatar to the left is made on my Amiga using Lightwave.