Video Toaster

The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC video on personal computers. It comprises various tools for video switching, chroma keying, character generation, animation, and image manipulation.

The Video Toaster Flyer

For the second generation NewTek introduced the Video Toaster Flyer. The Flyer was a much more capable Non-linear editing system. In addition to just processing live video signals, the Flyer made use of hard drives to store video clips as well as audio and allow complex scripted playback.

Related Topics:
Non-linear editing system - Hard drive

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The hardware component was again a card designed for the Amiga's video expansion slot, but due to the increased complexity was a thick double card joined back-to-back. The Flyer hardware included three embedded SCSI controllers. Two of these SCSI buses were used to store video data, and the third to store audio. The hard drives were thus connected to the Flyer directly, rather than being connected to the Amiga's buses and were in general unavailable as general purpose data storage for the computer. The Flyer used a proprietary lossless data compression algorithm implemented in it's hardware to perform video compression, as well as a proprietary filesystem layout.

Related Topics:
SCSI - Lossless data compression

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The Flyer also came with a much larger software base. Perhaps most notable was the inclusion of LightWave, a powerful 3D modeling, rendering, and animation program. This program became so popular and useful in its own right that it eventually became it's own product separate from the Toaster systems.

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