#Toaster Paint
42 messages in this thread
Chris,
I've got Alpha Paint. Have not yet learned how to use it. Maybe I will before
the end of the year.
Fred
Fred,
I've practically given up on TPaint and use Composite Studio and Alpha Paint
exlusively (well I do cheat by using LightWave to get some unusual compositing
effects). Go through the APaint tutorial in the manual its quick and easy —
and well worth the effort.
By the way, does a week ever go by when you aren't travelling off somewhere?
TaTa,
Russ
Russ,
During the Spring and Fall, I'm hardly in the office. Even though we keep
cutting back on conferences, more keep appearing. If it isn't a conference, it
is a meeting I'm attending or a family trip.
This last weekend, we (my wife, our two son's, their wifes and children)
traveled to Cleveland where my wife's mother also traveled to (from Florida) to
celebrate her 90th birthday. (How's that for a mouthful)
Why Cleveland? To make this real short, Ellen's family is originally from
Cleveland. Her sister's son and his wife live in Cleveland along with some
other relatives and friends. So, it was decided to have the party in Cleveland.
Turns out that the day we arrived, the nephew's wife came down with the flue.
She was better the next day, but the following night I came down with it and we
found out later that almost all of the people who were there came down with it.
Now to the important stuff. Did you mean to say that you use Composite Studio
and Alpha Paint? Together? I thought that C.S. was strickly for TPaint. BTW,
I've been faxing with David at C.S. He keeps promising to send me the update
that works with the new TPaint. Still have not received it.
Did notice today, that C.S. will now save a file to a TPaint directory. It use
to stop short of saving. However, the BACKGROUND feature does not work, and I
had problems making the bevel work. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it only
did the sides and left a line across the top and bottom of the image.
When I do these video scrapbooks, I am usually dealing with 100 to 200
pictures. About 25% are vertical and need something for a border. C.S. offers
me the fastest way of putting these pictures in a nice setting. All I have to
do is cut the picture as a brush and then select a background, a frame or bevel
and drop shadow. The program does the rest.
If I had to do each picture by hand, it would take me a lot longer. I use to be
able to cut 50 pictures to one piece of music in two hours. Now, with C.S.
crashing, trying to be too creative, and jumping back and forth between the
Flyer and the Toaster (the only place that C.S. will still work absolutly
perfect), I am finding myself spend twice that time.
Speaking of traveling. Next Wednesday we leave for New Orleans to record the
College of American Pathologists conference. It is a six day conference and
with driving time, we'll be gone about two weeks. Then in November it is off to
Arizona for a Methodone Conference. Great subjects. Then in December, I'm
trying to figure out how to attend the Lightwave conference in Hawaii. The
plane fare is hurrendous. $850 per person.
Yeah, I guess we do travel a little. My mothers birthday is in late December
and we always try and get to Florida for that. No wonder I'm behind on some
weddings. Want to come down here for a week and cut a few weddings?
Fred
Fred, FWIW,
Like Russ, I gave up on TPaint some time ago for working with an image. I've
never used Alpha Paint (which lots of people rave about) but I've been very
happy with ImageFX. The latest version works well with the Toaster/Flyer.
Regards
Mark
Mark,
I almost bought ImageFX. It was a about a month ago, when I couldn't get
Composite Studio to do anything without crashing and I was very frustrated. I
called ImageFX and asked them if the program would do the same thing that
Composite Studio would.
They told me their program was better than C.S. and Alpha Paint, but after a
long conversation, I came to the conclusion that it doesn't do things
automatically like C.S., but that you need to do things to the image.
Am I saying that right?
Since you use ImageFX, can you take an image or several images and place them
all on the screen at one time, use a pre-defined background, and have somekind
of border or frame around each image?
I need something to replace C.S. if I can't get an upgrade that will work with
the Flyer.
Please keep in mind, I am not an artist. Seriously, I can't draw. I'm a great
editor, but creating images is not one of my talents. I need something that
says "press here for background" "press to center" "bevel or frame". This I can
do!
Fred
>> I came to the conclusion that it [ImageFX] doesn't do things automatically
like C.S., but that you need to do things to the image.
Am I saying that right?<<
Yes, from my limited experience. I'm not an ImageFX expert and I tried C.S.
once for 15 minutes. And I'm not a free-hand artist either.
ImageFX is less automated for the framing/compositing functions you need.
However, you can create macros in ImageFX by simply turning on "record macro
mode" as you frame/composite.
For me, ImageFX excels at tweeking an existing image — from the basics of
cropping, resizing, blurring (to get rid of fine line jitter), sharpening,
contrast, colour balance, imposing NTSC legal colour (Canadian eh?) limits, to
more exotic fare — adding textures, 2D/3D rotations, and arty effects (oil
paint etc).
The only thing I find TPaint better at for image tweeking is transparency
control for blending a brush into a background image. ImageFX can do it, but
not as simply and easily.
I think for your purposes, the C.S. upgrade may be the answer.
Regards
Mark
<<<Please keep in mind, I am not an artist. Seriously, I can't draw. I'm a
great editor, but creating images is not one of my talents. I need something
that says "press here for background" "press to center" "bevel or frame". This
I can do!>>>
My sentiments exactly, Fred. I try to do everything myself, without having to
rely on our graphics people, but drawing and painting are not my cup of tea.
Like you, I'm looking for something I can plug images into and make some nice
compositions.
What's the deal with Composite Studio?? Since upgrading to Flyer, I can't get
it to work at all. Is there really an upgrade that will work with the new
TPaint? I saw an ad for CStudio Pro, but no promise of working with new
TPaint.
Give me a yell when you get to New Orleans! 504.467.7400
BarryVedros
ISI
Barry,
I will call you when we get in or sometime on the weekend.
Right after I got your message, I got a fax from David at Composite Studio
tellling me that the upgrade is finished. It is suppose to ship today. I'll let
you know when it arrives.
You have two work arounds at the present time. Quit the Flyer and run the
Toaster program with Composite Studio. It works just fine that way.
Or, use it with the present TPaint in the Flyer. You then have to make the
following adjustments. In all version of the Flyer except for the 4.06, the
program would not save the finished file. However, it would leave you in
TPaint. All you had to do was go to DISK and press SAVE FRAMESTORE. The name
was there, it just would not take that extra step.
Also, the feature of BACK will not work. This means that some of the pre-formed
templetes will not work, if they have backgrounds. One way around this is to
find what is being used as a background and kill it. Then bring it in as either
a brush or framestore and use the size control to make it full screen, then
just save it. It will now become the background.
Another way, is to avoid anthing with a background. If you are creating your
own templete, just use the full screen save rather than pressing BACK.
You could also make up some backgrounds in the Toaster. Render them and save
them. Then use them as backgrounds when you run C.S. in the Flyer. When you do
this, get rid of the eliments when you first render. Then try and remember what
the background looked like and place the eliments in a proper place when you
run it under the Flyer.
Fred
Fred,
I will probably do some tutorials in VTU about Alpha….(if they let me) i
would be intersted in what you are having questions about. Please let me know.
I've been doing some writing for VTU this year…. check out my current article
about using the Flyer in a Live show
fen
Fen,
Ya old sandbagger…I knew you were on here! Let's talk soon ok?
All The Best,
Tom Patrick
without a doubt Composite Studio is the art program for the non artist…. it
kinda has a built in art director…..
I would be interested in peoples concerns and confusions concerning Alpha Paint
…. I am planning on writing some tutorials for Video Toaster User….if they
publish them. any and all input would be appreciated.
I learned the progrram on my own but I do use a few paint programs and had the
luxury of being a beta site for it and was given a hot line to call if I had
questions …. a real luxory
Let me know what you think people….
Chris,
Please do, Alpha Paint is a very powerful program, that I've been using
for a while, but I'd definitely like some more tutorials that could possibly
lead me into unexplored territory. Incidently, I really liked your article in
VTU, and admire your guts, using the Flyer live. It's going to be truly
awesome when it's finished, but I'd only use it live wearing brown pants. :^)
Regards,
Norman Austin 70743,1535
Hi Norman,
Thought you might like to know that we had the Flyer running live during the
Special Olympics World Games in July. It received a video signal from a
SuperCAM on the water in the New Haven, CT harbor. The signal was relayed to it
over HAM frequencies and the Flyer passed it to monitors in the VIP tent in
Olympic Town. The SuperCams were covering the sailboat races in the harbor,
some five miles away. While the signal was coming in we captured some of it to
the Flyer drives for later playback, and ocassionally interrupted the show with
"Live From Savin Rock" keys or LightWave running man animations with Special
Olympics credits. It ran from Sunday, 7/2, until Saturday 7/8, without any
problems and was mostly operated by complete Toaster as well as Amiga novices.
Hank
Videology, Inc Where you always get P.O.M.P. and
Service under all circumstances
Hank,
I read about that and was pleased to hear it, because it meant that I
would soon be able to complete/start my projects. I don't mean to be hard on
NewTek, I believe they're trying and in most cases I read about lately,
succeeding at producing a product that will be earth shaking. I have yet to
play one single project without stuttering. There may be a number of reasons
for this that have nothing to do with NewTek. I have two 9gig Micropolis
drives, one A/V and one non A/V, I'm using OS3.1 on a 4000, all of which, I
know NewTek does not recommend, but by the same token other people are using
these without the stuttering. I only have one problem with the Flyer and that
is the stuttering I get. I have one problem with NewTek, the time frame that
they work from. The possibility that after a reformat of my Flyer drives the
stuttering will go away. I also use the SuperCam, and reasoned that if I went
straight from the camera to the Flyer that I'd get much higher resolution on my
first generation S-VHS tape, and as a result, I have no tape to redigitize from
(totally my fault, I know). All of my individual clips played fine, only not
within a project. When 4.06 came out, there were some problems that looked as
though alternating succeeding clips on alternating drives would solve. I
proceeded to copy the clips to alternating drives and destroyed some of my
clips in the process, necessitating a reshoot of the entire project, which
can't be done until January because of time constraints. I have by no means
given up on the Flyer or NewTek, the capabilities of the new software opens up
possibilities I never considered before, but a live production would still
require brown pants. :^)
Regards,
Norman Austin 70743,1535
OK I have another one for you Norm….I too did a production where we shoot on
location DIRECT TO DISK and it was very hair raising untill I got the final
show off the drives and onto the now 1st generation BetaSP master…. wow what
a week that was….
Might be another article in VTU
fen
Chris,
Why not record to tape at the same time as D to D recording? It might not be as
"hair raising" if you lose the data…
to be totally honest with you….the reason I recorded ONLY TO Disk was so that
I could say I did it…. face it….someday we will laugh at tape….
<—beginning to chuckle
Chris,
You could have backed up to tape and not told anyone!
Right Sam.
On a job I did, taping a slide show, we ran three tapes. One to the L1 camera
in Hi8, one to the Flyer and one to an S-VHS deck. Really covered that grounds
there. The audio went to the L1's mic, and was directly plugged into the Flyer
stereo. All copies survived fine.
Hank
Videology, Inc Where you always get P.O.M.P. and
Service under all circumstances
Chris,
Sounds like an article to me. How did you cover yourself, or did you
leave yourself exposed like I did?
Regards,
Norman Austin 70743,1535
Norman Austin wrote
" Sounds like an article to me. How did you cover yourself, or did you leave
yourself exposed like I did?"
well I must admit….the ice was feeling pretty thin for awhile there.
fen
Glad you were lucky.
Regards,
Norman Austin 70743,1535
Norman,
I have recorded directly to the Flyer as well, but did a -backup tape
recording- at the same time! All this requires is pushing a record button, and
I highly recommend that you try it in the future! 🙂
Sam,
Believe me I will do a backup tape from now on. The SuperCam has 700
lines of resolution coming off the camera section and only 400 lines off tape I
didn't want to lose any resolution and wound up losing everything. Had I not
been cheap, I'd have gone BetaSP and not lost all this time.
Regards,
Norman Austin 70743,1535
Norman,
How do you like the Supercam?
It's the Hi-8 tape loss that's prevented me from getting a higher-end Hi-8
model (I use an L2). Think I'll wait for the next technology (digital tape?).
<<<I have recorded directly to the Flyer as well, but did a -backup tape
recording- at the same time! All this requires is pushing a record button, and
I highly recommend that you try it in the future! :-)>>>
Amen to that!! Hard drives (and software) are just too volatile. I could
never sleep knowing that my only camera original was on a disk. As tempting as
it is, I'll stick to tape for origination or, at least, safety copy.
BarryVedros
ISI
Norm,
Are your Micropolis drives making any noise during access? I have a customer
with a non A/V 9GB one and several weeks after installation, it started to
"crunch" every time it was accessed. He had so many clips on it, that when he
accessed it in the files section it took over five minutes before the software
displayed the clip croutons in the files area. Eventually, whenever the program
accessed the drive while playing a project, it stuttered. Micropolis replaced
the drive on a cross-shipped and, although the replacement seems to be lasting
longer, it has started making noises upon clip access again.
Hank
Videology, Inc Where you always get P.O.M.P. and
Service under all circumstances
Chris,
Will Alpha Paint let you pull or capture a frame of video? Or maybe I should
ask, how do you get single frames of video into Alpha Paint?
Since when I use Toaster Paint to cut out a brush, I seem to degrade the
signal, how would I go about pulling in a single frame from video into Alpha
Paint. I would then cut out a brush, which Composite Studio would be able to
use.
I looked through the Alpha Paint manual today but could not find any reference
to bringing in an image. Just how to load images already stored on the drive.
Fred:
In the lower right hand corner the is a big LOAD button. this allows you to
load IFF, JPEG, and Framestores. You can not capture video in AP because,
well… just because. You have to do it ahead of time in the toaster.
Brad Hayes
Hayes Visual Communication
Fred,
Because AP is using both of Toaster's framebuffers to their fullest extent,
there is currently no way of "suspending" AP's control of them to grab video. I
know at one poinmt there were some discussions at Innovision regarding the
possibility of adding such a feature, but alas it appears that future
development of AP is going to be a very slow process. Innovision has cut back
staff and from all signs, could be waiting for the new Amigas to begin shipping
in quantity before launcing any more programing efforts on that platform.
As Chris mentioned to you in his post, you can load many image file formats
(including framestores) directly into AP for manipulation.
It's kind of interesting though. After seeing the new Tpaint (A4000 version) I
realize more than ever that AP is truly in a class by itself and deserves much
more attention by those who think that waiting for Newtek's 4.0 standalone is
the best chpoice. Quite frankly, AP offers so much more than the new TPaint,
that it should be a no brainer. Buy it, use it, tell your Toaster pals that we
need to support Innovision and encourage their efforts to continue AP''s
continued development and support.
Frank
To bad AP is so expensive….Thats how mac lost out too…they kept things so
high that they priced themsevles right out of the market…
The new TPAINT is crap.
Ed
"To bad AP is so expensive….Thats how mac lost out too…"
excuse me….MAC LOST OUT…..I DON'T THINK SO
I am a mac user and lover…..But mac lost a great part of any serious market
share by not licensing and by keeping there price so high..
now they are plying catch ulp.\
ED
Ed,
you may not be aware of this but AP has been available directly from Innovision
for $399 for some time now. That's quite a reduction from it's original price
of $699.
Regarding your comments on the new Tpaint. I don't agree that it's "crap".
WHile it's not nearly as improved as the rest of the Toaster software, it's got
some very interesting hooks for those with Flyers and it still remains a staple
for those who need basic touch ups on video grabs as well as a number of other
functions that get a lot of use by many of us. Even those of us who own and use
AP. I will say however that my visits to Tpaint have become much less frequent
since aquiring AP.
Frank
Frank,
FYI, I'm pretty sure AlphaPaint has been available mailorder for between
$400-500. $699 is list price…
Thanks for the infor about the price reduction!!!
And maybe you have been using AP so much that you have not really give the new
Tpaint the test since 4.05 or 4.06.
After working with it for 10 minutes you may lose all control to paint anything
let alone the texmap functions I have been tring to use, Sometimes the solid
fill works sometimes it does not.
It could be something in my system but I use no acceleraters, or other
cards…just a 4000 040.
Ed
ed….
in Alpha Paint you can pick up a brush…. and instead of Txmaping it you can
size it to any shape you want….then…if you wish.. you can ROTATE IT on a 3D
AXIS…..
TPain is on version 4.0 and they still don't have ROTATION…
don't even get me started about the BEAUTIFUL SOFT drop shadows in Alpha
Paint….
If you call InnoVision and order….YOU WON'T BE DISSAPOINTED
I'm sorry ….I meant to say size it to any size…not shape….although there
is a warp control that allows youto pour the contents of a brush into an odd
shaped area…
AND MAGIC WAND SELECTION
You have me drooling…Thanks Chris.
Hi Ed. At $399 it's a bargain. An Videology offers a CIS discount.
Hank
Videology, Inc Where you always get P.O.M.P. and
Service under all circumstances
amen brother frank…amen….
Fred,
you seem to be asking three quetions….
1. how to capture a frame in Alpha Paint
2. how to make composite Studio capable brushes
3. how load images already on your hard drive into Alpha Paint (AP)
1. Alpha Paint can't capture a frame…yes I know, it is a drag, I tried to get
them to add that feature but they had to get a product on the shelf. USE the
toasters frame grab capability to grad a frame and then save it as a framestore
..Alpha Paint can load Toaster FrameStore, IFF (or TPain, I left the "t" off on
purpose) or jpeg file formats…
2. Composite Studio bruses… I don't know Composite Studio at all… the only
compositing that happens in my studio is in Alpha Paint. The file formats are
what I would call "damn near compatile".. meaning that I know I can load a
TPain brush in Alpha and it works fine and I believe I have used AP brushes in
TPain…but to tell you the truth…i really avoid TPain for the most part.
3. To Load an image into Alpha use the Load button in the lower right of the
screen…remember the file must be FrameStore, IFF, or Jpeg…(warning…some
programs like ADPRO I believe do wierd jpeg things and some jpeg file won't
load in AP…HOWEVER …all the jpeg files I try and load from my MAC work
fine).
later all
fen