Toast, anyone?

[Radman]

Is anyone familiar with NewTec's Toaster? Particularly VT4. I just joined a company that uses Toasters for their switching and media playback, and I'd like to hear everyones opinions of them. I already have my own, but I'll wait to share till I hear from some people.

[Charc]

Originally Posted by Radman

Is anyone familiar with NewTec's Toaster? Particularly VT4. I just joined a company that uses Toasters for their switching and media playback, and I'd like to hear everyones opinions of them. I already have my own, but I'll wait to share till I hear from some people.

Should I assume this isn't the same toaster as the kind I have downstairs?

[mbenonis]

Originally Posted by charcoaldabs

Should I assume this isn't the same toaster as the kind I have downstairs?

I'm pretty sure they're related, though the consumer ones are much, much simpler. Up for source A, down for source B. Still trying to find the in/out connectors, though.

[avkid]

Originally Posted by mbenonis

I'm pretty sure they're related, though the consumer ones are much, much simpler. Up for source A, down for source B. Still trying to find the in/out connectors, though.

Umm...Mike, that was cleverly disguised humor.
I think Charc meant a device like the ones found here:
http://www.toaster.org/index.html

[Charc]

Originally Posted by avkid

Umm...Mike, that was cleverly disguised humor.
I think Charc meant a device like the ones found here:
http://www.toaster.org/index.html

Yes I am not quite clear on what, I guess I'll refer to, a "Theatrical Toaster" is.

(When he said, "I'm pretty sure they're related", I then read the A/B source, and for a moment thought he meant different types of bread... )

[inspector_gizmo]

Since a lot of people here seem confused, perhaps I should shed some light on the situation. The toaster in question is manufactured by NewTek and the current version is VT4. Within the next few months VT5 will be released promising a fairly decent feature set.

My Highschool had a VT4 system with the SX8 breakout box which gave us many inputs to chose from. We ran composite from the cameras along a coax cable and into the SX8. VCRs were handled by S-Video and our DVD player connected via Component. The downsides I see to the SX8 are the fact that if you don't have all professional equipment, you need a large number of RCA to BNC adaptors to accommodate "prosumer" gear.

I never had any issues with picture quality, I thought the toaster images always looked beautiful and watching the DVD via component just floored me. The audio from the toaster was also quite good, however I feel the routing and mixing of audio on the toaster leaves some to be desired. You also have to remember that video running through the toaster has something like a 30 ms delay, so you must at least run your master audio through the toaster to time it to the video so you don't get what i suppose you could call "the godzilla effect".

All in all VT4 is very powerful and extremely affordable. The features one gets from using the system far outweigh the price you pay for it, however you have to remember that its still a piece of software running on a computer. Being a piece of software, VT4 can crash and freeze especially if it is not running on a solid PC. I've had VT4 lockup on me on a few not so opportune occasions, so I suggest that you be careful with how many effects and whatnot you have loaded all at the same time. Granted I never ran VT4 on a custom built system for it, so perhaps my issues came from some incompatibility we had with our high power HP machine. If you have a turnkey solution at your work I don't think you will have too much trouble.

I don't claim to be a video toaster expert, and I never did finish reading the 500 page manual that comes with VT4, but I'm happy to offer a hand to anybody interested in learning more or trying to understand some of the features the video toaster program offers.

[Charc]

Originally Posted by inspector_gizmo

Since a lot of people here seem confused, perhaps I should shed some light on the situation. The toaster in question is manufactured by NewTek and the current version is VT4. Within the next few months VT5 will be released promising a fairly decent feature set.
My Highschool had a VT4 system with the SX8 breakout box which gave us many inputs to chose from. We ran composite from the cameras along a coax cable and into the SX8. VCRs were handled by S-Video and our DVD player connected via Component. The downsides I see to the SX8 are the fact that if you don't have all professional equipment, you need a large number of RCA to BNC adaptors to accommodate "prosumer" gear.
I never had any issues with picture quality, I thought the toaster images always looked beautiful and watching the DVD via component just floored me. The audio from the toaster was also quite good, however I feel the routing and mixing of audio on the toaster leaves some to be desired. You also have to remember that video running through the toaster has something like a 30 ms delay, so you must at least run your master audio through the toaster to time it to the video so you don't get what i suppose you could call "the godzilla effect".
All in all VT4 is very powerful and extremely affordable. The features one gets from using the system far outweigh the price you pay for it, however you have to remember that its still a piece of software running on a computer. Being a piece of software, VT4 can crash and freeze especially if it is not running on a solid PC. I've had VT4 lockup on me on a few not so opportune occasions, so I suggest that you be careful with how many effects and whatnot you have loaded all at the same time. Granted I never ran VT4 on a custom built system for it, so perhaps my issues came from some incompatibility we had with our high power HP machine. If you have a turnkey solution at your work I don't think you will have too much trouble.
I don't claim to be a video toaster expert, and I never did finish reading the 500 page manual that comes with VT4, but I'm happy to offer a hand to anybody interested in learning more or trying to understand some of the features the video toaster program offers.

If it can actually make toast, I'm sold!

On a serious note, let me see if I've got this. The system you have is video/audio playback run on a PC? That seems good. We "plan" to have a projector in our theater, but we haven't "planed" any playback systems, or line to the booth. I was looking at possibly a high-power mac for playback (it's a mac campus, not a computer quality argument.), though I'm not sure exactly how I'd go about that, especially because this would also have to handle sound playback. (Something like QLab.)

[Peter]

Could you give us a link to the *real* toaster? It sounds like an interesting product!

[Eboy87]

Here's a "real" one with 4 i/o
toaster
Or perhaps this is more to your liking (i like mine lightly toasted with butter and strawberry preserves)
click again

[bfoschizzle]

My college had both vt3 and vt4. The vt3 is used in recording random things such as commencement and other various things. The vt4 was used in the tv studio for live productions (bad idea--explained later).

I love how the vt4 has exerything you could want to run a live tv program, from supers to ddr to aaudio board to the keyer. Thats a lot of power packed into one small box.

The only problem with all of this was the fact that in my current profession at a eral tv studio is that almost all of those jobs are given to seperate people to handle. THe fact is, there are just too many things to run on one computer with one person. This is why is should not be bought as a quick-fix to go from liner to non-linear. It definitely had a problem with crashing. The sad thing is that this computer was only used for this purpose (there were no other programs on it)

The vt3 is used in our cathedral and elsewhere on campus. We plug our cameras in via baluns, svideo, and cat 5 cable. At time we have had as many as 5 cameras plugged in like this and it has had acceptable picture quality. We have a seperate guy for mixing and then just run in one line for ease. We record to dvd and it does a decent job.

We have also had a lot of fun and challenges by taking an out and hooking it up to a projector for an oscar-like show completel with red carpet and other fancy things.

I am fairly impressed with its ease of use and the fact that it has mutiple random wipes. (my boss, however was not always happy with that feature)

I hope that vt5 keeps building on the good things that it has started and fixes the problems.


Its definitely a great thing to start on. But it is nothing like a real tv control room.