As always... you do a fantastic job ... There is something to learn for everyone here. Amiga was great regarding video, but you simply explains this things in such way that everyone can understand. Great work! amitopia.com/commodore-amiga-genlocks-compatibility-revealed/
It isn't though, is it. The device doing the heavy lifting here is the genlock, not the Amiga. All the Amiga is doing is running DPaint. The magic that's happening here is happening in the box doing the genlocking, chromakeying and video mixing.
Wow, that brought back some memories! I was the designer and creator of the GVP G-Lock and (of course) consider it one of the better genlocks for the Amiga (who I had also worked for prior to working at GVP). Prosumer grade for sure. I had plans on a full digital version which morphed into the scalable GVP TBC-Plus prior to leaving the Amiga market. GVP sold a ton of these (I had both NTSC and PAL versions) for a couple of years.
this is awesome fellas. I've always known about genlocks and the Amiga but ive never understood how they interface with the hardware, what software is needed and how they were used in dtp video production. 10/10 would watch again !
Thanks so much MVG! Glad you enjoyed it. My RocGen was probably the single most important piece of gear I had for my Amiga back then. I made so many videos with it. It was practically permanently connected to my A2000. It felt great to bust these out. This is our favorite type of video to make - trying to preserve the history.
Way to go fellas! Great video. I got the Amigen and G-Lock, but never knew the existence of the 3000GR. Vincent better find some time when things get back to normal to do a review!!
Where the strengths the Amiga had in Europe tend to be in the gaming field, the US saw it more for video production, broadcasting and other media uses, such as a channel called 'Prevue Guide" that ran on an Amiga for years.
Really cool seeing Anthony on the old CRT there, as well as Bill's animations. I recall being quite excited when I first noticed a guru on our local prevu channel. It wasn't until the late 90's when I happened across a guru, but I was so excited I went and got my dad to tell him. They were using Amiga's into this century, which blew my mind at the time. I'm not sure how much use I could have had with a genlock, though. Seems best used for either live video or to record off the Amiga itself. I know a lot of people would use it in combination with a VCR to add titles and dissolves to their home videos, but I don't think I could have handled the extreme loss in quality going from an original VHS camcorder tape to a VHS copy just for the sake of adding titles. I think the quality lost from copying the tape would have been far worse than the added professionalism from using titles or dissolves, etc. But being in a studio like that, awesome place for it!
Shot97 awesome Shot. Glad you enjoyed! Yeah I never really used it to put titles over pre-recorded video. Mostly to add titles on their own. It was fun busting out my old animations!
Yep, JVC manufactured the 1701 and the 1702 then the Commodore logo and color scheme were added for Commodore sales. The monitors as JVC were used in many TV studios and the outside casing was gray instead of the beige to match the C64 breadbin
Your videos always bring me back to my teens and create a wave of nostalgia . Your childlike exuberance and interesting stories make me so fond of this channel. It is so obvious you love the Amiga so dearly so I thank you for including us in your journey.
WOW Jaydee, you just summed up the heart and soul of our channel to perfection. We experience the same exact feelings making these videos as you do watching them. Thank you so much for the insightful comment. Comments like these really fuel us to keep doing this. We have so much to show so stay tuned! We don't make videos frequently, but we are here for the long-term.
That was fun. :-) I worked in an Amiga store back in the day, and a good portion of our customers were of the mom & pop video production variety A lot of them couldn't swing a Toaster, but made a lot of wedding videos with genlocks. I once genlocked an Amiga over an Amiga.... I needed to show some dpaint graphics over a Toaster render of a new product.
Thanks Jim! Glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, that is a great point. Amiga genlocks were really big in the wedding business. I didn't think to mention that. Genlocking an Amiga over an Amiga is some inception stuff! ha ha! Thanks for watching!
I still remember the Videocomp DVE-10p we had in an Amiga user group back in the 1990s. This machine had some hardware assisted picture mixing modes that could be controlled by the excellent video titling and presentation software “Scala MM200”. Did a lot of home video back then and used it a lot.
Happy New Year guys, I think only you could make this video possible, and its so great to see the hardware which pioneered what we have today on youtube. Back then, you could either pay $2,000 to $20,000 dollars for pro genlock, but here comes the Amiga!, and now anyone can do it. I played around with this for a while with modern editor tools, but I could never get a smooth edge with new camera, and the old analogue VHS/BETA cams gave the best effect.
Thanks LifeSchool! Happy New Year to you as well! Yeah, I should have stressed how revolutionary this tec was. Being able to do this level of production at that price point is stunning. I am not surprised that the older camera worked better since this equipment was designed to work with those cameras vs. the hi-tec cameras of the future! I guess it is kind of the same way that hooking up the Amiga to a good CRT is a better experience than many flat panels. Thanks for all the support LifeSchool! We appreciate it so much!
Man back in my AMIGA days I'd have killed for a GENLOCK, instead I had to settle for merely outputting composite to my VCR to record titles I made in Dpaint. Still, even THAT was impressive to my friends and family.
Truth! I should have stressed how revolutionary this was. It was unheard of to do video production of this quality with minimal equipment in your home. I feel you. I had an A590 to output color composite, but when I got the RocGen it changed my world!
Awesome video again, guys. Your channel is one of the best Amiga related channels out there. I'm fully expecting to see your subscriber count go through the roof in 2018 (and rightly so). Thank you very much !
Aw, thank you. You are too kind. I wish I had the same expectations as you. I would love it if our sub count skyrockets, but I don't think we make enough videos to make that happen, also since we are pretty much Amiga only, we limit ourselves. But it doesn't really matter. We just make what we like and hope that others will enjoy it as well. Thank you so much for the support!
Thanks so much NOWM!!!! Glad you enjoyed it and actually learned something from us 2 clowns. Ahhh, never forgive your parents for that grave mistake ;-) Thanks for all the support guys! Keep up the amazing work over on your channel as well!
While in college, we used Amiga Genlock for sub titling projects. When asked, the video guru wanted a toaster instead. Never understood the pros and cons of genlock vs a toaster but my understanding is that toaster is slightly more versatile due to software it came with which is the lightwave 3d. Personally, I own a GVP genlock for PC and have done video editing for it with 3d studio max.
Awesome and very informative episode. The episode makes me appreciate how groundbreaking the Amiga must have been in the video and TV production world when you could suddenly do incredible things with relatively inexpensive hardware (certainly less expensive than professional and dedicated equipment). I only ever had the most basic composite converter for my Amiga to offload my animations to videotape but was happy to have even that. Great job as always guys!
Thanks for the kind words bud! For sure, it was incredible that you could do this level of video production with relatively inexpensive equipment. Like I said, I did most of my video production in my bedroom until I upgraded and moved my Amiga down into the basement, LOL! You may have been using an A520 RGB to Composite adapter. It did the job, but these genlocks were better quality and allowed you to monitor the RGB by having a pass through vs. the A520 which simply converted the Amiga RGB to composite. The A1200's composite out is basically an A520 built into it.
Thanks for the great video, guys! You should do an entire video just using Amiga equipment and traditional cameras sometime just to see what it is like.
Very good explanation! I always remembered the term genlock of the day and was intrigued by the overlaying capabilities but didnt investigate more beyond that (i was only 10yo so easily distracted). Really nice to finally see how things were done with this.
Oh sweet Hivan! Great to know, thanks! Yeah it is amazing how many professional hi-end studios here in the US actually had Amigas as well as the pro stuff. Of course the Video Toaster was the king of Amiga video here, but I imagine it wasn't popular in Europe due to the fact that it was NTSC
Very cool =D About time someone revisited the genlock stuff =D The ST had the MIDI, but the Amiga was used a tonne in TV and video production. You should talk about Lightwave and Bablyon 5 at some point, if you haven't already? I wonder how many video productions used images done in Deluxe Paint 3 lol. Funny point related to a font I just spotted you showing in Deluxe Paint there - "It Came from the Desert" on the Turbografx 16 - played that yesterday and noticed the exact same font used at the start of the game there where it says "Day One". So guessing the devs of that game used Deluxe Paint 3 for the TG16 version (as well as the Amiga version which was way better imo). I am betting that all the video on the TG16 version was run through an Amiga too.
Thanks Gadget! Good point about Amiga/Atari ST. Being surrounded by video production growing up could be why I was around Amiga all the time vs. the Atari ST. No we haven't done anything on Lightwave and Bablyon5 yet. That is a good idea. Very interesting about the Turbografx 16! That is funny. Diamond 20 FTW!!! I would love to explore some more Turbografx 16. That is a system I never had.
I still have my old 'miggy and genlocks, one of those rocgen plus and the other is an older rocgen, which only had one control knob and a mode switching button. I did some video titling with them, but if I'm honest the most use they got was having a video playing as my workbench background ^_^' But hey, I was doing that in the early 90s, full screen video desktop with zero system resource use on my C= 1701 monitor
Great video and super interesting topic, also done my share of genlocking on the amiga, making school videos and small presentations using Scala then recorded to VHS :) Great times and cool technology thats for sure.. cheers for the new yearz :)
Thanks Horrordelic! All the best to you in 2018 as well! Oh yeah, Scala! That is high on my list to make a video about as well. I still have my boxed Scala. Brilliant program!
Dude, I'm loving these explanations of the different genlocks and how to use them. Have you converted a digital source to analog for mixing on the Amiga?
Thanks so much Will! Yeah, we think it is important to keep the history alive. No, I haven't tried converting a digital source to analog and working with it on the Amiga, but that is a cool idea! I have only done it will still photos. Thanks!
Excellent review, always wanted a Supergen SX back in Amiga Days but I only could afford the original (the plain Supergen) one which still cost $595.00 new in 1987. I did some great genlocking with that. Recently picked up the SX but these days are not for NTSC. I bought the SX 20 years late at $50.00 on ebay and it's not a waste. I have it connected to my 1200 for show these days just in case. Thanks for the useful info. Always like your reviews.
Charles Voner Thank you so much for the kind words Charles. I know the feeling. I always dreamed of a SuperGen (original) but had to settle for a RocGen - which was actually a very nice piece of gear. It is really cool that you picked up an SX and still have it attached to your Amiga. Way to go! Thanks for sharing your story and you kind words mean the world to us. Can't wait to do more of these when Anthony gets back from the Olympics. AMIGA4EVER!
your "old" studio is still quite uptodate and modern, only in low to medium resolution image quality! still quite upgradable though, considering ancient Amigas can be equipped with highend video cards ... ;-)
dadautube yeah it isn't that bad. I think it was updated about 10 or 12 years ago. Truth is the resolution of the cameras really isn't important for the students. Teaching them a solid conceptual foundation is much more important than having the latest gear which is always changing, but the fundamentals are here to stay.
by the looks of it, these cameras images are 480 in resolution ... an upgrade to 1080 would be enough and adequate for years to come even by the time when 8K will be mainstream ... the Amigas would still be useful enough for the higher resolution ... probably the genlock 'mixers' too ...
i have an Hama Genlock. never got it working. and i have the same GVP g-lock you have got there. i hope my floppydisk is still oke. its needed to fire it up. and activate it. did you knew that? now i am thinking about it. more to get some controls activated. its totally software controlled. should give it a look again. this in combination with Scala was a perfect set-up.👍
Ah, Didn't know that you needed the software for your Genlock. I like the idea of software contol, but as an option, not as a necessity. Oh yeah, Scala was so great! Love that program
In Poland, we had a genlock producer HDP Electronics. They made great devices for the Polish market: www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=1989
The Guru Meditation, You can buy at the Polish Allegro auction site: allegro.pl/genlock-amiga-pro-i7034974926.html If the seller does not want to send to the US, please write to me 3m(at)t.pl, I will help you with the purchase and shipping.
It's interesting comparing the quality of that old standard definition studio camera to the quality of the camera you recorded the main portion of this video in: No comparison! Technology has come so far, and the prices are actually cheaper in many cases too. Amazing.
Yeah that is cool, right? Those aren't the original cameras they had back in the 80's and early 90's but I would guess they are 10+ years old. They upgraded them a while back, but the image they produce certainly shows their age!
Yep! I wish I could show my younger Amiga self the quality that would be the norm in just a few years' time. I do often ponder where the Amiga would be, graphically, if Commodore had played their cards differently and remained in business. I'm pretty sure we'd all be using 4k monitors...in 3D! ;) [edit: On our Amiga 9000's!]
Ha ha! For sure! Yeah you are right. Technology has progressed so much in a short period of time. I remember talking about things like video on demand at one of our Westchester Amiga User Group meetings and wondering if it was ever possible or just sci-fi - little did we know!!! I have an Amiga 9000 on order BTW ;-)
Radiant Silver Labs Thank you so much for the kind words Radient! That makes us feel great! As soon as Anthony gets back from the Olympics we will shoot more but I have a few things in the que I will upload in the next few weeks
Don't you have a sidecar HD controller for your A500? I remember my first HD was installed into an ICD Trifecta 500 LX which was plugged into my A500. Floppies were fine but the HD was a godsend and saved a lot of disk swapping with multi-disk software.
I miss my old Amigas. I started late--just a few years before the end of Commodore unfortunately. But my first Amiga was the before-mentioned A500. I started with Workbench 1.3.3, floppy-only system by the end, I had a 512k Trapdoor RAM, the DKB Mini Mega Chip, 2MB Agnus, Super Denise, Supra Turbo 28 And Kickstart/Workbench 3.1. The HD's Controller's RAM expansion was fully populated with 8MB of RAM. It also had an external SCSI CD-ROM drive. I though that I was stylin' except for the fact that if my table was unstable, having the accelerator in the sidecar slot and then the HD controller made the connection a bit unstable and too much wiggling would cause my system to crash, I later got an A2000 and most of my A500 upgrades were able to migrate to my new big-box Amiga. Later I had a couple of A4000/040 systems--the last one was in a Power Tower case. Now all I have is Amiga Forever 7...sigh...
Oh man that was a very nice collection you had. Well, at least Amiga Forever works without carefully balancing and leveling it on your desk ;-) Ah, those were the days!
I had to keep a nice Amiga running since I was the Amiga Librarian and Amiga Editor for the local User's Group at the time. We even had the impression stamp from Commodore for the group. We were #0447
NICE! We had the stamp as well. I gave it to the person who took over when I went to college. Unfortunately he moved away soon after and took all the cool stuff with him never to be seen again :-( BUT our group is still going and we meet every month!
awesome video! Do you know what options there were for chromakey effects with the amiga? I know of the RocKey, but that's all I've found that would work with an Amiga 1200.. I know the video toaster could, but that would require a big box Amiga. I do have a GVP GLock and ugh.. seems so close to being the same as Chroma Key but my understanding is that it's still not enough to blend two video sources.. only computer graphics on other video.. but it seems like it would be one small step to go from replacing the computer graphics layered on the video background to just be another video source..
Thanks. There is such a thing as a piezo delay line, which was used to decode like PAL tv, except that was like a fixed duration. Maybe there was a trick to tapping or tuning them. I was looking at some genlocks taken apart. I don't see anything on the SuperGen card, but it may be in the box. This one does seem to have a delay line, the black box at the upper right. amiga.resource.cx/photos/photo2.pl?id=a2300yc&pg=1&res=med&lang=en Kimatek A2300 Y/C
I currently use 1084s crt for amiga ..its 14" .I want a bigger crt screen ...what would anyone recommend that's compatible without messing ..plug in and play ▶️
Is it possible to control SCALA over serial or parallel? for example, say i wanted to send an RSS feed or tweets to the amiga and have it rendered in scala like a news ticker or similar, is that possible? does my question even make sense? lol, ive just got some ideas for my a1200 and supergen SX so any tips in this direction would be wonderful
That's damn awesome that your school used Amigas to display town and school announcements! My town where I grew up went with Apple IIGSes for that purpose; still cool but not nearly as cool as Amigas! ;)
Oh nice! Yeah Amigas are WAY better than Apple IIGSes and you get the bonus surprise of GuruMeditations ;-) I uncovered some floppies from the school and am hoping some of there announcements can be preserved!
ADF archives of those old announcements would be pretty cool to see! I know for a fact that my town (Secaucus, NJ) stupidly dumped all of their old gear and floppies that had all the old town and school announcement graphics on them years ago. If I had known, I would've rescued the entire lot and archived everything. But I do remember that one of our local TV channels (Channel 34) had a IIGS hooked up loading all those images from a pair of floppies on a continuous cycle. Occasionally you'd tune in and see that the IIGS may have been rebooted and nobody put floppies into the machine, or it got stuck on the hardware monitor or on a ProDOS screen! Again, still not as cool as seeing the infamous Guru Mediation on your local access TV channel! :D
Oh man! Well my school dumped them too, but they dumped them in mu garage!!! I have an A590 that doesn't boot, but the floppies do work. I just have to get the right version of Pro Video Gold to display them. Should be easy.
Oh no way! That's awesome. I didn't realize they used Atari 800's as well. That's great to know. I love the 800. It was my first computer. Learned how to program BASIC, LOGO, connected to a BBS for the first time with it and played amazing games. I really love that machine and the Amiga obviously has strong roots in it with Jay Miner's Antic chip and all.
I recall the "Amigen" or a similar device was highlighted in the 1987 promo tape for the A500 that used to play in stores like Software Etc. That video along used to get me all psyched up over wanting to do videos like that with this computer. A similar ad that showed up later also showed off such a capability. th-cam.com/video/MpY0WFPHUro/w-d-xo.html
It wasn't that long ago that I learned about Amiga's use of genlock. It explained a LOT about how such a "modern standard" weak computer could handle overlays and video editing. Turns out it didn't deal with the video itself at all. It only had to worry about what the computer was meant to overlay or alter. Hence, only a few megabytes of video could handle what it did. I can imagine Lightwave pushed the system right to it's limits rendering and storing CG images to be superimposed amid live action. th-cam.com/video/9g12KdevYPQ/w-d-xo.html
Yeah, I probably should have spent more time matching them, but I didn't think anyone would notice - Kappa!!! Well at least they aren't as far off as the studio cam - which makes it awesome ;-)
The Guru Meditation I used to work at Granada TV Studios tour in England back in the 90s, and we had a stall where guests could be chromakeyed into a mini episode of the British soap Coronation street using an A3000 and genlock, and the results were terrible! I think it was more human error than the technology, though, and it wasn't helped by the final result being recorded onto cheap VHS tapes.
Hi, as a Amiga Old timer, Nice to see History preserved, I was working as a Assistant Manager (or Worker) @ COMPUTER SPOT, a larger Australian Chain selling Commodores, PC, SEGA, Woody Atari's Etc .. I sold a Rocgen Genlock to this guy, He came back next day, with his A500, to shop, Complaining on how Genlock would not fit his Amiga, upon Inspection I found, that he, didn't read the manual, he had, using needle nose pliers, attempted to make it fit Parallel port, bent d shell back out of way, to make it fit, but NOT !!!! He wanted a Refund, he didn't get it .... RTFM !!!
As always... you do a fantastic job ... There is something to learn for everyone here. Amiga was great regarding video, but you simply explains this things in such way that everyone can understand. Great work! amitopia.com/commodore-amiga-genlocks-compatibility-revealed/
Aw man, thanks for those super kind words! We do our best...well OK, almost our best, ha ha! And thanks for the great article!
Correction : Amiga IS great for video !
It isn't though, is it. The device doing the heavy lifting here is the genlock, not the Amiga. All the Amiga is doing is running DPaint. The magic that's happening here is happening in the box doing the genlocking, chromakeying and video mixing.
Wow, that brought back some memories! I was the designer and creator of the GVP G-Lock and (of course) consider it one of the better genlocks for the Amiga (who I had also worked for prior to working at GVP). Prosumer grade for sure. I had plans on a full digital version which morphed into the scalable GVP TBC-Plus prior to leaving the Amiga market. GVP sold a ton of these (I had both NTSC and PAL versions) for a couple of years.
Nice video, i love amiga genlocks, I still have here with me a digigen II, a sirius and a sirius II, really great hw for our amiga back in the days
Cool. Genlocks were the top peripheral for me back then. I did so much video work with them. I agree, really great hardware
this is awesome fellas. I've always known about genlocks and the Amiga but ive never understood how they interface with the hardware, what software is needed and how they were used in dtp video production. 10/10 would watch again !
Thanks so much MVG! Glad you enjoyed it. My RocGen was probably the single most important piece of gear I had for my Amiga back then. I made so many videos with it. It was practically permanently connected to my A2000. It felt great to bust these out. This is our favorite type of video to make - trying to preserve the history.
Way to go fellas! Great video. I got the Amigen and G-Lock, but never knew the existence of the 3000GR. Vincent better find some time when things get back to normal to do a review!!
ha ha thanks Bill!
Where the strengths the Amiga had in Europe tend to be in the gaming field, the US saw it more for video production, broadcasting and other media uses, such as a channel called 'Prevue Guide" that ran on an Amiga for years.
Really cool seeing Anthony on the old CRT there, as well as Bill's animations. I recall being quite excited when I first noticed a guru on our local prevu channel. It wasn't until the late 90's when I happened across a guru, but I was so excited I went and got my dad to tell him. They were using Amiga's into this century, which blew my mind at the time. I'm not sure how much use I could have had with a genlock, though. Seems best used for either live video or to record off the Amiga itself. I know a lot of people would use it in combination with a VCR to add titles and dissolves to their home videos, but I don't think I could have handled the extreme loss in quality going from an original VHS camcorder tape to a VHS copy just for the sake of adding titles. I think the quality lost from copying the tape would have been far worse than the added professionalism from using titles or dissolves, etc. But being in a studio like that, awesome place for it!
Shot97 awesome Shot. Glad you enjoyed! Yeah I never really used it to put titles over pre-recorded video. Mostly to add titles on their own. It was fun busting out my old animations!
Totally agree uwu
Kinda like that re-badged JVC monitor here! I could've swore that was Commodore's!
Yep, JVC manufactured the 1701 and the 1702 then the Commodore logo and color scheme were added for Commodore sales. The monitors as JVC were used in many TV studios and the outside casing was gray instead of the beige to match the C64 breadbin
Your videos always bring me back to my teens and create a wave of nostalgia . Your childlike exuberance and interesting stories make me so fond of this channel. It is so obvious you love the Amiga so dearly so I thank you for including us in your journey.
WOW Jaydee, you just summed up the heart and soul of our channel to perfection. We experience the same exact feelings making these videos as you do watching them. Thank you so much for the insightful comment. Comments like these really fuel us to keep doing this. We have so much to show so stay tuned! We don't make videos frequently, but we are here for the long-term.
I wish I grew up with an Amiga. I was introduced to computing via Mac OS 7 and DOS. That Genlock feature is so cool I wish Windows 10 had it.
The Genlock and video capabilities of the Amiga were remarkable!
That was fun. :-) I worked in an Amiga store back in the day, and a good portion of our customers were of the mom & pop video production variety A lot of them couldn't swing a Toaster, but made a lot of wedding videos with genlocks. I once genlocked an Amiga over an Amiga.... I needed to show some dpaint graphics over a Toaster render of a new product.
Thanks Jim! Glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, that is a great point. Amiga genlocks were really big in the wedding business. I didn't think to mention that. Genlocking an Amiga over an Amiga is some inception stuff! ha ha! Thanks for watching!
Yeah, I was afraid that Amiga over Amiga thing was like "crossing the streams" and would short circuit the space-time continuum or something. :-D
Jim Steele ha ha! I am glad no Amigas were harmed !
I still remember the Videocomp DVE-10p we had in an Amiga user group back in the 1990s. This machine had some hardware assisted picture mixing modes that could be controlled by the excellent video titling and presentation software “Scala MM200”. Did a lot of home video back then and used it a lot.
20windfisch11 Oh yeah, I love Scala. Wonderful piece of software. Where was your Amiga user group located?
Happy New Year guys, I think only you could make this video possible, and its so great to see the hardware which pioneered what we have today on youtube. Back then, you could either pay $2,000 to $20,000 dollars for pro genlock, but here comes the Amiga!, and now anyone can do it. I played around with this for a while with modern editor tools, but I could never get a smooth edge with new camera, and the old analogue VHS/BETA cams gave the best effect.
Thanks LifeSchool! Happy New Year to you as well! Yeah, I should have stressed how revolutionary this tec was. Being able to do this level of production at that price point is stunning. I am not surprised that the older camera worked better since this equipment was designed to work with those cameras vs. the hi-tec cameras of the future! I guess it is kind of the same way that hooking up the Amiga to a good CRT is a better experience than many flat panels. Thanks for all the support LifeSchool! We appreciate it so much!
Awesome video guys really great explanations too
Thanks so much RetroManCave!!! Really appreciate it especially from a great TH-camr like yourself! Cheers!
Man back in my AMIGA days I'd have killed for a GENLOCK, instead I had to settle for merely outputting composite to my VCR to record titles I made in Dpaint. Still, even THAT was impressive to my friends and family.
Truth! I should have stressed how revolutionary this was. It was unheard of to do video production of this quality with minimal equipment in your home. I feel you. I had an A590 to output color composite, but when I got the RocGen it changed my world!
Awesome video again, guys. Your channel is one of the best Amiga related channels out there. I'm fully expecting to see your subscriber count go through the roof in 2018 (and rightly so). Thank you very much !
Aw, thank you. You are too kind. I wish I had the same expectations as you. I would love it if our sub count skyrockets, but I don't think we make enough videos to make that happen, also since we are pretty much Amiga only, we limit ourselves. But it doesn't really matter. We just make what we like and hope that others will enjoy it as well. Thank you so much for the support!
Great video guys! Learned a bunch of new stuff. Wish I had an Amiga growing up. parents got us a Texas Instrument TI-99/4A Home Computer instead.
Thanks so much NOWM!!!! Glad you enjoyed it and actually learned something from us 2 clowns. Ahhh, never forgive your parents for that grave mistake ;-) Thanks for all the support guys! Keep up the amazing work over on your channel as well!
While in college, we used Amiga Genlock for sub titling projects. When asked, the video guru wanted a toaster instead. Never understood the pros and cons of genlock vs a toaster but my understanding is that toaster is slightly more versatile due to software it came with which is the lightwave 3d. Personally, I own a GVP genlock for PC and have done video editing for it with 3d studio max.
Awesome and very informative episode. The episode makes me appreciate how groundbreaking the Amiga must have been in the video and TV production world when you could suddenly do incredible things with relatively inexpensive hardware (certainly less expensive than professional and dedicated equipment).
I only ever had the most basic composite converter for my Amiga to offload my animations to videotape but was happy to have even that. Great job as always guys!
Thanks for the kind words bud! For sure, it was incredible that you could do this level of video production with relatively inexpensive equipment. Like I said, I did most of my video production in my bedroom until I upgraded and moved my Amiga down into the basement, LOL! You may have been using an A520 RGB to Composite adapter. It did the job, but these genlocks were better quality and allowed you to monitor the RGB by having a pass through vs. the A520 which simply converted the Amiga RGB to composite. The A1200's composite out is basically an A520 built into it.
The earliest anime fansubs available in the US were made using an Amiga thanks to genlocks!
Yeah I learned that from the comments here after posting the video. Cool!
Thanks for the great video, guys! You should do an entire video just using Amiga equipment and traditional cameras sometime just to see what it is like.
Wow! You did a awesome job with this video, as always!
Thank you so much Jason! Appreciate that!
Very good explanation! I always remembered the term genlock of the day and was intrigued by the overlaying capabilities but didnt investigate more beyond that (i was only 10yo so easily distracted). Really nice to finally see how things were done with this.
Thanks Quantass! Glad you enjoyed it and got to see what they are all about!
Great job as always gents! Vintage TV studio was cool.
Thanks so much Doug! You the man. Hope to catch you at VCF East in May!
i know in Sweden they used the Amiga for a long time to edit and all kinds of stuff for TV even in the late 90's due to the speed and stability
Oh sweet Hivan! Great to know, thanks! Yeah it is amazing how many professional hi-end studios here in the US actually had Amigas as well as the pro stuff. Of course the Video Toaster was the king of Amiga video here, but I imagine it wasn't popular in Europe due to the fact that it was NTSC
I'm sure it sucked for many wishing NewTek had put out a version for them.
Agreed, that must have been very fustrating
Very cool =D About time someone revisited the genlock stuff =D The ST had the MIDI, but the Amiga was used a tonne in TV and video production. You should talk about Lightwave and Bablyon 5 at some point, if you haven't already? I wonder how many video productions used images done in Deluxe Paint 3 lol. Funny point related to a font I just spotted you showing in Deluxe Paint there - "It Came from the Desert" on the Turbografx 16 - played that yesterday and noticed the exact same font used at the start of the game there where it says "Day One". So guessing the devs of that game used Deluxe Paint 3 for the TG16 version (as well as the Amiga version which was way better imo). I am betting that all the video on the TG16 version was run through an Amiga too.
Thanks Gadget! Good point about Amiga/Atari ST. Being surrounded by video production growing up could be why I was around Amiga all the time vs. the Atari ST. No we haven't done anything on Lightwave and Bablyon5 yet. That is a good idea. Very interesting about the Turbografx 16! That is funny. Diamond 20 FTW!!! I would love to explore some more Turbografx 16. That is a system I never had.
still got a Rendale Genlock use mostly for telly prompt, I still miss delux paint, the colour cycle copper bars. cheers for that
I still have my old 'miggy and genlocks, one of those rocgen plus and the other is an older rocgen, which only had one control knob and a mode switching button.
I did some video titling with them, but if I'm honest the most use they got was having a video playing as my workbench background ^_^'
But hey, I was doing that in the early 90s, full screen video desktop with zero system resource use on my C= 1701 monitor
Great video and super interesting topic, also done my share of genlocking on the amiga, making school videos and small presentations using Scala then recorded to VHS :) Great times and cool technology thats for sure.. cheers for the new yearz :)
Thanks Horrordelic! All the best to you in 2018 as well! Oh yeah, Scala! That is high on my list to make a video about as well. I still have my boxed Scala. Brilliant program!
Dude, I'm loving these explanations of the different genlocks and how to use them. Have you converted a digital source to analog for mixing on the Amiga?
Thanks so much Will! Yeah, we think it is important to keep the history alive. No, I haven't tried converting a digital source to analog and working with it on the Amiga, but that is a cool idea! I have only done it will still photos. Thanks!
Excellent review, always wanted a Supergen SX back in Amiga Days but I only could afford the original (the plain Supergen) one which still cost $595.00 new in 1987. I did some great genlocking with that. Recently picked up the SX but these days are not for NTSC. I bought the SX 20 years late at $50.00 on ebay and it's not a waste. I have it connected to my 1200 for show these days just in case. Thanks for the useful info. Always like your reviews.
Charles Voner Thank you so much for the kind words Charles. I know the feeling. I always dreamed of a SuperGen (original) but had to settle for a RocGen - which was actually a very nice piece of gear. It is really cool that you picked up an SX and still have it attached to your Amiga. Way to go! Thanks for sharing your story and you kind words mean the world to us. Can't wait to do more of these when Anthony gets back from the Olympics. AMIGA4EVER!
your "old" studio is still quite uptodate and modern, only in low to medium resolution image quality!
still quite upgradable though, considering ancient Amigas can be equipped with highend video cards ... ;-)
dadautube yeah it isn't that bad. I think it was updated about 10 or 12 years ago. Truth is the resolution of the cameras really isn't important for the students. Teaching them a solid conceptual foundation is much more important than having the latest gear which is always changing, but the fundamentals are here to stay.
by the looks of it, these cameras images are 480 in resolution ... an upgrade to 1080 would be enough and adequate for years to come even by the time when 8K will be mainstream ... the Amigas would still be useful enough for the higher resolution ... probably the genlock 'mixers' too ...
great job guys...always fantastic
Thank you so much Ricardo!
i have an Hama Genlock. never got it working.
and i have the same GVP g-lock you have got there. i hope my floppydisk is still oke. its needed to fire it up. and activate it. did you knew that? now i am thinking about it. more to get some controls activated. its totally software controlled. should give it a look again.
this in combination with Scala was a perfect set-up.👍
Ah, Didn't know that you needed the software for your Genlock. I like the idea of software contol, but as an option, not as a necessity. Oh yeah, Scala was so great! Love that program
In Poland, we had a genlock producer HDP Electronics. They made great devices for the Polish market:
www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=1989
3M / InD That Genlock looks very nice! Anthony needs one for his collection! Thanks for sharing 3M
The Guru Meditation, You can buy at the Polish Allegro auction site:
allegro.pl/genlock-amiga-pro-i7034974926.html
If the seller does not want to send to the US, please write to me 3m(at)t.pl, I will help you with the purchase and shipping.
Cool! I will let Anthony know. Dziękuję Ci !
The Guru Meditation, no problem. You welcome! Bardzo proszę. :)
It's interesting comparing the quality of that old standard definition studio camera to the quality of the camera you recorded the main portion of this video in: No comparison! Technology has come so far, and the prices are actually cheaper in many cases too. Amazing.
JustWasted3HoursHere i quite like the Sd. Ring
Yeah that is cool, right? Those aren't the original cameras they had back in the 80's and early 90's but I would guess they are 10+ years old. They upgraded them a while back, but the image they produce certainly shows their age!
Yep! I wish I could show my younger Amiga self the quality that would be the norm in just a few years' time. I do often ponder where the Amiga would be, graphically, if Commodore had played their cards differently and remained in business. I'm pretty sure we'd all be using 4k monitors...in 3D! ;) [edit: On our Amiga 9000's!]
Ha ha! For sure! Yeah you are right. Technology has progressed so much in a short period of time. I remember talking about things like video on demand at one of our Westchester Amiga User Group meetings and wondering if it was ever possible or just sci-fi - little did we know!!! I have an Amiga 9000 on order BTW ;-)
Nice work, boys!
thedevilbunny Thanks DevilBunny!
The video quality looks.really good.👍
Thank you so much!
I have an Amiga 1000 and it came with a Super Gen. Mine is beige. I didn't know what it was until i saw this video.
i love this channel this is amazing, thank you
Radiant Silver Labs Thank you so much for the kind words Radient! That makes us feel great! As soon as Anthony gets back from the Olympics we will shoot more but I have a few things in the que I will upload in the next few weeks
Beam me down snotty 27:14
ha ha!
I've always wanted to try this... I wonder if I could use this older Sony handy cam video recorder with this.
If it has composite or s-video out, then you can
Well I guess I need a genlock 1st... :).. I keep eye out for one
@@michaelwallen738 LOL, yep
Don't you have a sidecar HD controller for your A500? I remember my first HD was installed into an ICD Trifecta 500 LX which was plugged into my A500. Floppies were fine but the HD was a godsend and saved a lot of disk swapping with multi-disk software.
Mark Reed I used to have an A590 but it has since failed. Now I have an ACA500+ which is amazing
I miss my old Amigas. I started late--just a few years before the end of Commodore unfortunately.
But my first Amiga was the before-mentioned A500. I started with Workbench 1.3.3, floppy-only system by the end, I had a 512k Trapdoor RAM, the DKB Mini Mega Chip, 2MB Agnus, Super Denise, Supra Turbo 28 And Kickstart/Workbench 3.1. The HD's Controller's RAM expansion was fully populated with 8MB of RAM. It also had an external SCSI CD-ROM drive.
I though that I was stylin' except for the fact that if my table was unstable, having the accelerator in the sidecar slot and then the HD controller made the connection a bit unstable and too much wiggling would cause my system to crash,
I later got an A2000 and most of my A500 upgrades were able to migrate to my new big-box Amiga. Later I had a couple of A4000/040 systems--the last one was in a Power Tower case. Now all I have is Amiga Forever 7...sigh...
Oh man that was a very nice collection you had. Well, at least Amiga Forever works without carefully balancing and leveling it on your desk ;-) Ah, those were the days!
I had to keep a nice Amiga running since I was the Amiga Librarian and Amiga Editor for the local User's Group at the time. We even had the impression stamp from Commodore for the group. We were #0447
NICE! We had the stamp as well. I gave it to the person who took over when I went to college. Unfortunately he moved away soon after and took all the cool stuff with him never to be seen again :-( BUT our group is still going and we meet every month!
Thanks, Bill, now I immediately heard "Snootchies-bootchies, lil' noonchies!" from the instantly-cancelled "Clerks: the Animated Series". XD
The Amiga needs to be considered for potential V A P O R W A V E fodder.
In one of my storage boxes I found a never used “Mini-Gen” in its box. Still wish I had my old A500.
awesome video! Do you know what options there were for chromakey effects with the amiga? I know of the RocKey, but that's all I've found that would work with an Amiga 1200.. I know the video toaster could, but that would require a big box Amiga. I do have a GVP GLock and ugh.. seems so close to being the same as Chroma Key but my understanding is that it's still not enough to blend two video sources.. only computer graphics on other video.. but it seems like it would be one small step to go from replacing the computer graphics layered on the video background to just be another video source..
Never heard of supergen sx in France. Did it exist in PAL? Or was it NTSC only?
I am 99% sure it is NTSC only.
How you generated the gold fonts? 30 years ago I remember I created 5 floppy disks, don't tell me you used one of mine Grassoft fonts disks? 😁
Those are KaraFonts. I have a KaraFonts collection with a few different styles.
Wonder how an Amiga genlock compared in terms of price with a SVHS Panasonic MX10 vision mixer, which had a chroma key function
Good question, I am not sure
woo hooo I have the Stronics and an A2000 internal too :-D
Love these vids mate!!!
And we love the "VincentGR 3000" ;-) I nearly lost my lunch when I saw that, ha ha! Thanks for all the support bud!
You know I work very far from home, when I have time back I will make a review about it :-D
Vincent GR Awesome Vincent! Looking forward to that!
It was a golden era
Love it guys! Looking forward to more :-)
MadPete Thank you so much for the kind comment Mad Pete. We really appreciate it and have a lot more on the way!
Good video guys. Thanks
Thanks Aldo! Hope you are well!
Mega production great work guys thanks.
you have to do an episode in Genlock quality, it looked like you were on the Computer Chronicles haha
You are welcome! Thanks for watching!
ha ha, yeah I love that it looks like Computer Chronicles! We have to do an entire episode in SD! This high definition stuff is over-rated!
cool video..
Thank you! Appreciate that EcBaPr!
Doesn't a genlock sort of suggest one of the mix signals has to be somehow delayed? Don't know exactly how you'd so that without sample memory.
I am not exactly sure, but that does make sense. I suppose time has to be shifted a bit to get the 2 signals matched. Interesting thought.
Thanks. There is such a thing as a piezo delay line, which was used to decode like PAL tv, except that was like a fixed duration. Maybe there was a trick to tapping or tuning them.
I was looking at some genlocks taken apart. I don't see anything on the SuperGen card, but it may be in the box. This one does seem to have a delay line, the black box at the upper right.
amiga.resource.cx/photos/photo2.pl?id=a2300yc&pg=1&res=med&lang=en
Kimatek A2300 Y/C
Actually a lot of them have that possible delay box:
amiga.resource.cx/photos/photo2.pl?id=cd1300&pg=1&res=med&lang=en
Cool. Thanks for the research. I will ask some of my video engineer friends as well.
I currently use 1084s crt for amiga ..its 14" .I want a bigger crt screen ...what would anyone recommend that's compatible without messing ..plug in and play ▶️
Is it possible to control SCALA over serial or parallel? for example, say i wanted to send an RSS feed or tweets to the amiga and have it rendered in scala like a news ticker or similar, is that possible? does my question even make sense? lol, ive just got some ideas for my a1200 and supergen SX so any tips in this direction would be wonderful
Great work! Cheers!
Dziękuję Ci Pixel Nation. Keep up the great work yourself!
thank You! :)
That's damn awesome that your school used Amigas to display town and school announcements! My town where I grew up went with Apple IIGSes for that purpose; still cool but not nearly as cool as Amigas! ;)
Oh nice! Yeah Amigas are WAY better than Apple IIGSes and you get the bonus surprise of GuruMeditations ;-) I uncovered some floppies from the school and am hoping some of there announcements can be preserved!
ADF archives of those old announcements would be pretty cool to see!
I know for a fact that my town (Secaucus, NJ) stupidly dumped all of their old gear and floppies that had all the old town and school announcement graphics on them years ago. If I had known, I would've rescued the entire lot and archived everything. But I do remember that one of our local TV channels (Channel 34) had a IIGS hooked up loading all those images from a pair of floppies on a continuous cycle. Occasionally you'd tune in and see that the IIGS may have been rebooted and nobody put floppies into the machine, or it got stuck on the hardware monitor or on a ProDOS screen! Again, still not as cool as seeing the infamous Guru Mediation on your local access TV channel! :D
Oh man! Well my school dumped them too, but they dumped them in mu garage!!! I have an A590 that doesn't boot, but the floppies do work. I just have to get the right version of Pro Video Gold to display them. Should be easy.
I'm old enough to remember seeing Amiga's ancestor, the Atari 800, crashed on the cable guide channel.
Oh no way! That's awesome. I didn't realize they used Atari 800's as well. That's great to know. I love the 800. It was my first computer. Learned how to program BASIC, LOGO, connected to a BBS for the first time with it and played amazing games. I really love that machine and the Amiga obviously has strong roots in it with Jay Miner's Antic chip and all.
I recall the "Amigen" or a similar device was highlighted in the 1987 promo tape for the A500 that used to play in stores like Software Etc. That video along used to get me all psyched up over wanting to do videos like that with this computer. A similar ad that showed up later also showed off such a capability.
th-cam.com/video/MpY0WFPHUro/w-d-xo.html
It wasn't that long ago that I learned about Amiga's use of genlock. It explained a LOT about how such a "modern standard" weak computer could handle overlays and video editing. Turns out it didn't deal with the video itself at all. It only had to worry about what the computer was meant to overlay or alter. Hence, only a few megabytes of video could handle what it did. I can imagine Lightwave pushed the system right to it's limits rendering and storing CG images to be superimposed amid live action. th-cam.com/video/9g12KdevYPQ/w-d-xo.html
Keep going, it's genius! :)
Kamil Małagocki thank you so much!
Hi guys where can buy super gen sx i looking for ages without luck. If you have one please let me know.
Try AmiBay or...eBay ugh
@@TheGuruMeditation I found alternative device for same job named tricaster. Basicly working everything like Amiga with genlock but it is windows pc.
@@serbianknights4988 The Tricater is awesome and made by Newtek, the same folks who did DigiView and The Video Toaster
@@TheGuruMeditation I know for that. My concern was for Amiga and genlock can work on HD tv. That's why I decided for tricaster
Wish i was there helpin as a colortec. Hue is off on camera 1
Yeah, I probably should have spent more time matching them, but I didn't think anyone would notice - Kappa!!! Well at least they aren't as far off as the studio cam - which makes it awesome ;-)
Too bad you couldn't experience how different were PAL genlocks in Europe.
Borys Jelcyn Agreed! I would love to see one of these in PAL. I bet it would look much better.
I believe one of AmiParty attendees owns Elsat Arizona: Amiga dedicated genlock/mixer (can be used without amiga, but not to full potential)
The Guru Meditation I used to work at Granada TV Studios tour in England back in the 90s, and we had a stall where guests could be chromakeyed into a mini episode of the British soap Coronation street using an A3000 and genlock, and the results were terrible! I think it was more human error than the technology, though, and it wasn't helped by the final result being recorded onto cheap VHS tapes.
Oh cool! Do you know which attendee that is?
Oh wow, that is awesome and hilarious Evil Twin! I have an Amiga Chroma Key we are going to demo here when Anthony gets back from his business trip!
I want one uwu
They are cool!
Hi, as a Amiga Old timer, Nice to see History preserved, I was working as a Assistant Manager (or Worker) @ COMPUTER SPOT, a larger Australian Chain selling Commodores, PC, SEGA, Woody Atari's Etc ..
I sold a Rocgen Genlock to this guy, He came back next day, with his A500, to shop, Complaining on how Genlock would not fit his Amiga, upon Inspection I found, that he, didn't read the manual, he had, using needle nose pliers, attempted to make it fit Parallel port, bent d shell back out of way, to make it fit, but NOT !!!!
He wanted a Refund, he didn't get it ....
RTFM !!!
DAMN. This is why it is important that you read your instructions.
retro bullshit.