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I recently came across this Promotional Video that Newtek sent me to lure me into purchasing their product. It worked, I was mesmerized by it. Back in the early 1990's I bought an Amiga 2000 Computer with the Video Toaster 2000 thinking I was going to make money. Unfortunately all I used it for was for Wedding Videos and some local company videos. More information on the Toaster: The Video Toaster was designed by NewTek founder Tim Jenison in Topeka, Kansas. Engineer Brad Carvey built the first wire wrap prototype, and Steve Kell wrote the software for the prototype. Many other people worked on the Toaster as it developed.[2] The Toaster was announced at the World of Commodore expo in 1987[3] and released as a commercial product in December 1990[4] for the Commodore Amiga 2000 computer system, taking advantage of the video-friendly aspects of that system's hardware to deliver the product at an unusually low cost of $2,399.[4] The Amiga was well adapted to this application in that its system clock at MHz was precisely double that of the NTSC color carrier frequency, MHz, allowing for simple synchronization of the video signal.[citation needed] The hardware component is a full-sized card that is installed into the Amiga 2000's unique single video expansion slot rather than the standard bus slots, and therefore cannot be used with the A500 or A1000 models. The card has several BNC connectors in the rear, which accepts four video input sources and provided two outputs (preview and program). This initial generation system is essentially a real-time four-channel video switcher. One feature of the Video Toaster is the inclusion of LightWave 3D, a 3D modeling, rendering, and animation program. This program became so popular in its own right that in 1994 it was made available as standalone product separate from the Toaster systems.[5] Aside from simple fades, dissolves, and cuts, the Video Toaster has a large variety of character generation, overlays and complex animated switching effects. These effects are in large part performed with the help of the native Amiga graphics chipset, which is synchronized to the NTSC video signals. As a result, while the Toaster was rendering a switching animation, the computer desktop display is not visible. While these effects are unique and inventive, they cannot be modified. Soon Toaster effects were seen everywhere, advertising the device as the brand of switcher those particular production companies were using.
