Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[ethan]

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

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[TeoZ]

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 



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Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Chris Hanson]

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

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[TeoZ]

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: et...@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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Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Ethan Dicks]

On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 4:36 PM,   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?
>
> From what I know the flyer boards had their own scsi bus or something for
> dedicated video disks?

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

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Dale H. Cook]

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 

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[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? 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

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Swift Griggs]

On Tue, 3 May 2016, Dale H. Cook 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.

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

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Dale H. Cook]

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 

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Dale H. Cook]

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 

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Swift Griggs]

On Tue, 3 May 2016, et...@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

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Al Kossow]

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.

Re: Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Dale H. Cook]

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 

Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Swift Griggs]

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