OPAL VISION
Frank,
I talked to Centaur last week and they said the HW parts (video processor
board and switcher box) will be introduced at the WOCA in Australia RSN
and will be available in the U.S. by the end of July. They sounded
confident, but never having dealt with them, I don't know what that
means.
I, to0, am interested in the Opal system. However doing a direct
comparison to the Toaster is not exactly correct as theopal system is
4 seperate peices. The main board, the video processor, the
external video suite box, and the free Imagine 2.0 software. Now if
you take the Toaster, add the Nova multi-standard encoder (get Y/C
and component out) and the J L Cooper AVSix audio mixer auto fader
you have the two board, one box equivalent. (Course you need Amilink
or some such to drive the system, but Opal requires external products
for editing control too, as I understand it.)
The bottom line for me will be the quality of the video output and the
ease of use with my existing editing suite and animation gear. Even
then, I can see a two machine suite with Opal and Toaster as a max
flexibility situation that also must be looked at. Then there is the
question: If Opal's system is as hot as Centaur claims, will NewTek take
it lying down?
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