cathoderaydude
patreon
Help me toast some video!
🕑 Added 2023-01-23 00:43:25 +0000 UTCThis isn't a patron-exclusive thing, but I've made some progress on a long-delayed project and I thought you might want to hear about it - and maybe someone out there will be able to help me move forward on it, since there's hardware I absolutely need before I can proceed, and it's impossible to find without networking.
First, even if you don't wanna read this post (fair,) here's a link to a non-exclusive, but still hopefully fun article on my website cataloguing everything I think I've learned about NewTek's Video Toaster product line:
https://gekk.info/articles/toaster.html
So, about that: I have a NewTek Video Toaster, an incredibly well known piece of video processing gear. It's been sitting in the studio for a year, inside a perfectly functional Amiga, and I haven't done anything with it because I'm not sure how to approach the subject.
I really don't feel like the right person to make... an instructional VHS, basically. Because that's what it would be if I made a video "about" the Toaster: an hour and a half of me going "and if we click here, we get a wipe. If we click here, we can save a still in a framebuffer..." That's, ah, really not me.
I don't have a story for the Toaster. I have no personal connection to it, and frankly what it does is... pretty straightforward, if you understand the role it was made to serve. There's only five minutes of explanation to be had, unless I just use it to explain general video production concepts, and if I'm doing that, I'd much rather demo with more conventional equipment (a separate project I tried to get started on two years ago, and am still struggling with.)
I have no deep technical understanding of the Toaster either, so I don't think I'd be the right person to try to explain how it works. Almost all my opinions on it are also about what other people think of it, since it's been such a meme for decades, and honestly I shouldn't even explain my unjustifiable knee-jerk opinions there.
Still, I was shocked when I checked a few months ago and found that nobody else had really done a general-audience video about this thing. I was sure it had been covered to death, but not really! There's one video from thegurumeditation which doesn't really talk about the industry context - the stuff it "replaced" - and then a bunch of old VHS rips; not much else. So there's a gap here I could easily fill, but I'm still... not sure how.
Well, then I found out (a couple years ago, now) that NewTek didn't stop with the Amiga product. They went on to make Windows versions of the Toaster, and THAT IS SOMETHING I CAN TALK ABOUT. It's perfect for me, actually.
This story can be summarized as, "Company known for creating a single device that became a massive cultural touchstone goes on to make a series of similar devices, just as successful yet ignored for decades because they aren't That One Thing, and because they run on commodity hardware instead of a platform that's become a meme." That's right up my alley. I would LOVE to cover that, and I think I would have a much better idea how to do it.
Except... they're all gone. Like, Don't Bother Looking, You Won't Find One type of gone. NewTek made five Windows-based Toasters throughout the 2000s, called VTNT, VT[2], VT[3], VT[4] and VT[5], and there are none on eBay. Nobody talks about them. There are zero leads, and I can't make this video without one.
An original Video Toaster NT finally showed up on eBay a couple weeks ago, and I have it now - it works, but it turns out it was a halfass, unfinished product! A really interesting part of the story, but I still can't proceed on the video until I have one of the later models.
So: If you know where to get one of these, or can ask around (they got used in tons of churches!) or even just have the software (I have the first-gen card, and if I had the CD for a [2] or [3] I could probably move forward) please get in touch. Otherwise, at the rate things have gone so far, this video will probably never be made.
Thanks!
Comments
I just joined! I have some experience with VT and VT4000. I used them to play around (I owned both versions, I'll explain later), but I did use a lot of the later Windows version in proper studio environments. I also (think) I know enough about the platform VT runs on. I do have a personal connection. Any thing I can do to help. I actually want a VT4000, again, for myself!
Long shot here. Reach out to the This Week In Tech studios. They used VT5 for a while… they may have some equipment around.
David Hildreth
I started in the industry after this era, but still learned tape to tape cutting. This system sound amazing, I wish I had seen it back then.
Per 'Zapro' Jensen
Maybe reach out to Jeri Ellsworth?
Alex Smith
I live locally, and am an Amiga collector. I would love to take on this project if you'd like. I'm not a YouTuber, though, and I've never been able to physically touch the Video Toaster. I just remember in awe the things it could do, especially given that the special effects for the TV show Babylon 5 were all created on Amigas, using the Video Toaster. Let me know if you'd like further conversation!
Matt Falcon
I can try to help a bit with the story thing. You do it all so well: what is it, where did it come from, what made it explode into popularity at its time? Ads, articles, trade shows... what's the company about and all? That's what I kinda want to know. The technical angle is juicy to me - I'm not even familiar enough to know if the Toaster stored digital video on hard drive or... how it rendered things, what it rendered, anything. All the blind spots I have about a technology I only loosely knew about. Maybe it didn't pioneer anything, but to me at least, it evidently had a pivotal role in changing the way "cheap video" was produced. To me, the Windows version is just a footnote. I want to know the story behind the Toaster itself! And that's so much more than just "press butan, receev wipe". The story, the applications, the places it showed up in that _YOU_ know is Toaster-produced, but maybe we all didn't (without being video nerds). Sure, having the Windows version would be a hilarious also-ran footnote, but... what about the culturally significant elephant on the timeline? :)
Adrian's Digital Basement
In high school, I worked at a computer store which was a Newtek authorized dealer for the Video Toaster. (When it first came out on the Amiga.) I built many systems that got used all around Hollywood and played with our test system in the store extensively... And even with that, I had no freaking idea that they made a Windows version! I had a MIPS based Windows NT system that I got from a local guy here in Portland which he used to run Lightwave 3D on MIPS. There is an old video on my channel about this MIPS machine. The guy I got it from paired that with a Video Toaster 4000 and Video Flyer (which I also got from him) to do all his video production for many years. He then moved onto PC based stuff, but I don't recall him staying he stuck with a Video Toaster--- just that he used that 4000 up until he started to need to do HD work, so got something current. The Amiga 4000 was quite tricked out and packed with drives and stuff. I never got the Toaster and Flyer up and running. (The boot drive had failed.) I mainly wanted the system for the Amiga 4000 anyway. Also, back in University, around 1993-1994 I had LightWave 3D on my Amiga 2000 which was hacked. It did not require the toaster to run and I actually dabbled in my own 3D animation and rendering -- I got decently good at that program....... and just left my computer on all night to render out animations. (I have a 50mhz 68030 + FPU on that machine.) I would watch Babylon-5 on the campus TV network knowing that the 3D graphics were done with the same software, which was pretty neat.
LGR
I wish I had any leads! I’m in the same boat here, been looking for a Windows version for years but no luck.
Derek Quenneville
I saw these on ebay all from the same person.. VT5 software (upgrade ver?) https://www.ebay.com/itm/115327894829 VT4 software https://www.ebay.com/itm/115327896250 VT3 software https://www.ebay.com/itm/115327897004 If you wanna buy one, i'll pay for it - send me a DM and I can PayPal
Cathode Ray Dude
Kiki Stockhammer - she promo'd all of Newtek's stuff up until some of the staff went off to form Play, Inc. She went with them, then when Play folded she went back to NewTek.
Bill Florio
I seem to remember NewTek had a pitch lady named Kiki or something who'd demo systems in miniskirts and fishnets and later on one of the competitors hired her away to do the same for a different line if editing systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiki_Stockhammer
Bill Florio
Ah! FAST supported a bunch of control protocols. I remember using it with $600 prosumer decks alongside $10k pro decks and even the Sony dvcam stuff. Also the system came with an instructional video worthy of commentary itself on its overdramatic style and overuse of transitions and chroma key. I may have saved that I'll check.
More just technical details, though not anything particularly important. (For example, it's a Video Slot card, rather than Zorro, though the Flyer is a Zorro card. The Toaster 4000 was released years later with headers to support the upcoming Flyer, could use the 4000's AGA chipset for better color transitions, and to physically fit inside the A3000/A4000 case - Commodore changed the backplane compared to an Amiga 2000, requiring chopping up the case to make a Toaster fit, and that's why the vast majority of the non-4000 Toasters you see are in A2000s despite being sold concurrently with the A3000, a much better system.) I think you did well on the cultural context; NewTek is widely assumed to have kept Commodore afloat for years longer than it would have otherwise. I do think NewTek wanted less reliance on the Amiga, but it had to be tightly coupled to the hardware to pull off what they did back then. The Toaster was also a natural evolution from hardware and software they'd already been making for the Amiga: Toasterpaint was just an updated Digipaint, Lightwave was an updated Videoscape, DigiView was their early video digitizer.
Harley Davidson
https://www.newtek.com/blog/todd-rundgren-4k/ ugh. i love this. todd rundgren is also the guy who released a philips cd-i and windows disc that would let you remix his whole album into different genres. i’d love to see that video! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_World_Order
Cathode Ray Dude
Which things? As far as like, incentive behind it's design, or in terms of what it's capable of?
I could nitpick a few things in your article about the original Amiga-based Toaster, but sadly know little of the PC version. My dad pestered NewTek over the phone so much about their continually slipping release date that they sent us an early production Toaster with beta software. Eventually, our studio had a full A4000/Toaster/Flyer setup, but he ended up landing a full-time editing job at TV Guide and sold it all off as terribly obsolete after a few years. To top it off, I had a friend who had a Toaster NT in the early 2000s, but have lost contact with him since. :(
Cathode Ray Dude
I've been curious about this era for a long time! Hybrid editing is such a fascinating concept. Only trouble is - like with most editing techniques that involve tape - you have to get multiple functioning VTRs of the exact same type to get it all working together, and that requires a ton of domain knowledge that I don't have, having never actually worked in the field. But if I ever have a chance, yeah, I definitely want to get into it.
Bill Florio
I think the inclusion of the Toaster/Flyer would be interesting paired with The Fast Video machine. Fast made a modular hybrid editing system that I was a huge fan of that worked with PCs. Wish I still had mine I'd donate it to ya. https://theditspot.com/2012/06/11/editors-wake-fast-video-machine/
Allison F.
This might sound a bit silly, but have you considered asking another retro tech youtuber by chance where they would source such a thing? (or if they have one to lend?) A simple message isn't going to hurt I imagine. Maybe LGR for starters, but I'm thinking more British tbh
