OT: GO AMIGA

Jim H wrote on 8/12/2006, 8:35 PM
It seems like there are a lot of folks out there in the video business or hobbiests like me who started their carreers in video on the Amiga platform. I myself started on an A500 and a 20 meg external hard drive. Then I promoted myself to the A4000 with the Personal TBC and capture card and a GVP Genlock. Quite an investment at the time - around $10K worth of toys that I promised my wife I'd pay back with profits from wedding videos... problem with that plan is I spent all the money on more toys.

My claim to fame was a 3D first person shooter game I wrote and posted to GEnie. I went by the handle "Stubb." The game's still floating around the internet I discovered. Must be someone dumped the entire contents of the GE server onto the web before it was lost forever (it would probably fit on my hard drive today!) Here's a link to a site I created for some guys who were looking for the original game. It's a little twisted - but I was young(er):

New Stubb City


How about a head count of all you Amiga folks out there?

Comments

Matt_Iserman wrote on 8/12/2006, 8:55 PM
"How about a head count of all you Amiga folks out there?"

Here! A500 and later A600. Still have the A600. No video editing; however, just games, word processing, painting...
PeterWright wrote on 8/12/2006, 9:19 PM
Still have an A600 with internal HD somewhere.

Used to use it in the Tape to Tape editing days to add titles and captions, with a prog called Scala.
ArthurDent wrote on 8/12/2006, 9:58 PM
Got an Amiga 2000/Video Toaster system in 1991 for the school system where I taught TV Production . It was a great leap forward for us, and a lot of fun!

Old Toaster Demos are up on youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Newtek+Video+Toaster&search=Search
DGates wrote on 8/12/2006, 10:28 PM
>> Old Toaster Demos are up on youtube! <<

I blame NewTek for the first wave of tacky transitions. Remember the pitcher winding up and throwing? The globe spinning and exploding into the next scene? Man, that was bad stuff.
Logan5 wrote on 8/12/2006, 10:28 PM
Yes Amiga + Toaster here in the 90’s – college student then bought one for video production.

Ah the memories of a 1 field or two field still frame on the old’ toaster.

Very odd OS to me. Yes very very odd.

It reminded me of Atari’s 400/800 systems in some way.
ushere wrote on 8/13/2006, 12:33 AM
600>800>1000>2000

scala, and broadcast titler (now that was some titling program), along with plug in tbc (x2 for a/b) low band....

ah, when toys lasted more than 6 months....

checked out latest dir opus. ah, nostalgia

leslie
birdcat wrote on 8/13/2006, 5:41 AM
It was the Video Toaster that first piqued my interest in video editing - A friend (actually my son's Scoutmaster) had a setup in his home and showed me what he could do - I thought it was cool then and still do.

And what's wrong with those tacky transitions??? I loved the football one (where the profile of the QB throws a football and that is wipe).
mountainman wrote on 8/13/2006, 6:37 AM
And what about the falling sheep! And Kiki! Amiga 2000 with a DKG mega-chip. 1k of extra ram . Toaster Flyer for me baby. The Flyer almost gave me a heart attack because it had so many bugs when it was first released. Finally turned out pretty good. I made a lot of money with that machine.

JM
P.S. I had 2, nine gig hard drives. $3,500. each
auggybendoggy wrote on 8/13/2006, 7:35 AM
I didnt use an amiga but my cousin did and what a great comp it was :)

I being a musician and POOR ended up buying a Atari 1040ste
which was AWSOME for music.

man those were the days.

Auggy
AlanC wrote on 8/13/2006, 9:06 AM
It's bugging me know.

Can anybody remember the name of the titling programme for the Amiga. I think you could create animation by changing the x y co-ordinates of each frame and then rendering it all out. With lots of patience you could create some professional looking titles.

A l a n :~)
SimonW wrote on 8/13/2006, 11:24 AM
I still think the Atari ST and Falcon take some beating today as user friendly computers! I also miss the days of programmers using their ingenuity to get the computers to do things they were never supposed to be capable of.

These days even the demo scene seems to have become DX9'ised, even though there are still some impressive demos out there.
DGates wrote on 8/13/2006, 1:29 PM
The Toaster was certainly a step up from the Videonics effects of the day. A bit too pricey for me at the time.

I'm glad the tendency to over-produce videos has finally passed. Sure, there will be those who want endless transition effects and shiny, beveled flying text in their videos. But those people are living in the 90's.

As for Kiki Stockhammer, she was just an attention whore. Nothing more than lots of make up and tight mini-skirts.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 8/13/2006, 7:03 PM
i'm to young to remember amiga much (big C64 fan though). The ONLY amiga experience I had was playing a beta of Lemmins on a college comp with my mom. Two players. With two mice. Now THAT was cool. :)

I was upset when they went kaput. They made far superior machines to IBM, just not good enough marketing. :(
autopilot wrote on 8/13/2006, 7:36 PM
Well, I was going to buy an Amiga, but didn't have the money with a teenager's salary, so I stayed with my Commodore 64 until it's final day. I heard the Amiga had great graphics, though.
MHampton wrote on 8/13/2006, 9:04 PM
I miss my Amiga to this day. Had a 500, then added a hard drive, and then later to the 3000. Didn't do any video editing but played around with Scala and some slide show stuff.

And don't forget all the changes in the TV world with the Amiga. Anyone remember that little show Babalon 5? Wasn't most of the CGI done with a Amaga far? And what about Sea Quest DSV? Yes, the Amiga was way ahead of its time. Can you imagine where the Amiga would be today had Comodore not ran the company into the ground? That still makes me mad...

Thanks guys, now you've brought out all these latent bad feelings about missing my Amiga. Where's that e-bay page again.... :)

Michael
birdcat wrote on 8/20/2006, 8:20 AM
Ok - It seems our own Kelly Chien (Chienworks) has transitions for Vegas that remind me a bunch about the Toaster transitions I miss - Check out http://www.rchv.com/store/detail?tp01.

This also goes on my "to get" list...
rs170a wrote on 8/20/2006, 10:22 AM
Can anybody remember the name of the titling programme for the Amiga.

I had Broadcast Titler and Alpha Paint as well as Art Department Pro, all truly amazing tools for their time.

Mike
Jim H wrote on 8/20/2006, 5:18 PM
I used Bluff Titler which is now a great cheap little PC tool.
fwtep wrote on 8/20/2006, 10:00 PM
By the way, if anyone's interested, there's a fantastic DPaint clone available for the PC: ProMotion
jkrepner wrote on 8/21/2006, 7:30 AM
Amiga 500 here. Ah, memories emerging from the timefog.
AlanC wrote on 8/21/2006, 7:58 AM
Can anybody remember the name of the titling programme for the Amiga.

Of course. It was Deluxe Paint V.

How could I forget!
earthrisers wrote on 8/21/2006, 11:20 AM
Just a bit of related lore... one of the folks central to the development of the Amiga was Allan Havemose, who is now Chief Tech Officer at a company that has nothing to do with video, but is at the cutting edge of another technology.

He's a really good guy, too... I've had the pleasure of writing the technical documentation set for a couple of companies where he's been. The current one is...
http://www.availigent.com/company_management.shtml
And for some directly Amiga-specific lore...
http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1999/990509-cucug.html
(apparently there was to be a "second coming" of the Amiga, which as far as I know did not happen)
rs170a wrote on 8/21/2006, 12:02 PM
It was Deluxe Paint V.

For it's day, it was a fantastic program. I remember when they introduced onion skinning. Wow!!
And who could forget Kara fonts :-)

mIKE
Jim H wrote on 8/21/2006, 4:03 PM
"It was Deluxe Paint V"

Have not heard that name in a long time...but it wasn't really a titling program it was a paint program. But it was eclipsed by PhotonPaint? was that the name? Remember those HAM images with all their streaking? What we put up with.