CompuServe Messages

Chris wrote: How many drives can you hook up to VLAB-M? If possible, I'd like to have a 2gig drive hooked up to Input 2 and another on Input 3 of my Toaster, and finally have another 2 gig hooked to the Toaster Output. Is this setup possible? — VLM works completely different to the flyer. AFAIK the flyer is similar to a Video Machine equipped with the Double-DPR. With VLM instead You have (normally) ONE Video partition and ONE audio partition. Firstly You have to "record", means digitize your video material into VLM. Works like recording with a VCR. When recorded, You can trim Your scenes i.e. cut a little bit off on the beginning of a scene or at the end or split scenes. These scenes consists of a video stream and an audio stream (stereo if You have turned "Stereo" on). Now You can place these scenes into the timeline, combine them with effects like wipes, dissolves and all what You want including Lightwave animations with alphachannel informations. When ready, klick on the appropriate Button to "render" audio dissolves and then on another button to render video effects. VLM will render pic for pic until it is ready. Now You are able to play Your Video, completed with Audio and Video effects. While assembling the scenes in the timeline You can use upto 255 tracks for video and audio. Remember: There are NO "Input One" and "Input Two". First record, then assembling timeline, then Output the Video to tape. HardDisk capacity is at this moment limited to 2GB for each drive. This limitation is one of the Amiga OS, not VLM. Ofcause You can install tow or more 2GB drives, but these will be used as different projects, means different animations. One doesn't "know" of each other. Chris wrote: On the average, how long would it take to render effects with an 030 and/or 040? — Hmm, on my slow A3000 (030, 25MHz) a simple dissolve between two scenes with a duration of one second renders at about 10 minutes. Faster CPU's, naturally, faster. 040/40MHz ca. 4x faster, 060/50 may be 6x or 8x faster, dunno exactly. Chris wrote: Also, is the Tocatta a pretty decent, standalone 16bit sound editing system? For example: using Tocatta for audio broadcast editing (no video). — I wouldn't use Toccata for audio editing. The Audio Quality is quiet good (upto 48kHz sampling frequence), but the "Samplitude" Software is not really good. Espacially compared to Studio 16 for the Sunrize AD516 card. As long as You are working just for fun, it is much cheaper (DM600 for Toccata and ca. 200 for Samplitude SMPTE) than Sunrize (ca. DM2500 inkl. Studio 16) but Studio 16 is much better. If You are about to earn money with audio editing, go for a AD516. And now the good news: As long as You are working with VLM, toccata is completely controlled from Movieshop (Video editing software that comes with V-Lab Motion) and You can forget Samplitude unless You want to add any "echo" or "hall" effect to Your audio tracks. Unlike the Samplitude Software (which comes from a third party developer, not from Macrosystem) Movieshop is very well designed and working with it is a real fun. I love it and I can say, after comparing it with some other DNL systems on other platforms (especially Pro Motion) it is "geil" as we say in germany 🙂 — Chris wrote: Oh yes, before I forget: can the 1 gig removable JAZ drive by IOmega be used with VLAB-M? If so, that'll be one hell of a way to store video clips and use them with the Toaster. Thanks. — Generally You can use every drive that can be partitioned via HDToolbox. May be also SyQuest Cartridges or MOD's. But the Picture Quality depends of the speed of the drive and so I'm in doubt that the JAZ will be fast enough (You need at least 1,5MB/sec for a reliable Quality, >2MB/sec for good Pics). mfg Dirk Taggesell