One of the most fun videos I've seen in some time regarding the Amiga. Not only are you going into application software here, which is already something that very few Amiga related places care to go into, despite how important that market was for the machine... You're also going into the hardware, which is of course even less common to see in action these days. Absolutely got a huge kick out of hearing your personal memories using the program, making your news letters for the Amiga group in two color black and white. Amazing to see the real hardware in action here. If I'm wanting to put newer pictures into my Amiga I'm always going down some convoluted conversation processes... Sometimes they can be fun, at least when you're doing them on the Amiga end, but it's always most fun when it's all on the Amiga like right here. So awesome seeing it demonstrated here. Great video, going into my favs.
Awesome Shot97! You communicate your feelings very well! Always love your comments. Thanks so much for the super kind words. I agree, there is nothing like using the real retro hardware. I am so happy that color wheel survived because it is quite fragile. I am also thankful that all that stuff still works! I do think it is fun to use new methods to get images into the Amiga, but nothing beats doing it the classic way. This stuff was specifically designed to do that. Glad you picked up on the WAUG newsletter! I used PageStream to make those. We will do an episode on PageStream here one day! Thanks again for all the support!
I agree, after coming across some really old boxes of my kit, I found a DigiView Gold. I've no idea what happened to my Amiga's over the years, but I keep finding parts and pieces.
Oh no way I had this thing! I remember digitizing stuff with a regular camcorder (not this fancy setup) and the color wheel thing. It was really handy for digitizing stuff for games.
What a fantastic video, my Digiview arrived today and you guys were the first hit in my youtube search, man its a small world with the Amiga community. shame that my Digiview wasn't complete, no motor support, or manual or gelatine filter. RetroManCave beat my Greyskull spy..by 10 months. very cool video. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us guys.
Thanks for the kind words Simon! Sorry your DigiView came incomplete. Worst case scenario you can get photography filters that will do the same thing as the DigiView color wheel. If you want help with that let me know.
This is incredible, I always wondered how these great devices worked when I saw them in magazines. And of course, always wanted to try one for myself. Great job as always lads. I can't imagine how much editing was involved afterwards.
Thanks Amiga Ireland! I can't even tell you how many hours I spent editing photos back then just to get them to look decent. As much as I love DigiView, getting a flatbed scanner was a real game changer back then. Also upgrading to an 020 A2000 helped a lot with the render times!
Kane Peterson That's awesome! Thanks so much. I hope they enjoy it. I am actually a cinematographer in NY and one of the camera houses I work with (Abel Cine) uses a TriCaster for all their classes. That is where I met some folks from NewTek when then came in to demo the TriCaster. It is a great product and you can tell that it evolved from the great Video Toaster. Say hi to the gang for me!
Now way! That is awesome!!!!! If you guys would ever like to do something with us we would be thrilled. We would fly out to you guys no problem. I just play around and have fun with these videos, but this is my "real" website billwinters.net The Amiga community would go CRAZY to see KiKi. She is one of the most iconic figures in the history of Amiga. Our Friend Zach Weddington worked with you guys on the film Viva Amiga
Great video! Used a DigiView in college in the early 90s for tons of reports. I loved how solid that little device was. I think they molded it in resin and there was definitely no inspecting the components. Had that Color Splitter too after a while... such a luxury!
Digitising with Digi-view is an art form all to itself really. There are a couple of things you need to do before you can get the best out of it AND not add any more fringing than the Amiga technically needs to add (hence the horrible quality you were getting). 1 Digitize a solid colour sheet of paper and make sure the lighting gives you as close as possible to a single even colour all the way across a screen (or even grey scale) in indexed colour mode. If you don't do this then not only does HAM have to cope with actual changes but also try and simulate subtle shadows and highlight in lightsource centre too which will triple the fringing you get in HAM mode and waste 65% of your colour palette on shades/colours needed. It is also VERY important to make sure you have a way to perfectly align the image so horizontal lines present in a test image produce a single horizontal line not a diagonal of even a 1 pixel step on the image captured, this is also to prevent excessive fringing in HAM. I will do a video on it soon when I have finished renovating my Victorian mansion. If you do all this you will get the jaw dropping quality on my Bladerunner PD slideshows doing the rounds in the late eighties :o)
MadCommodore Those are some great tips and you are totally right, digitizing with DigiView is an artform. Making the horizontal and vertices lines straight makes a lot of sense as well as flat, even lighting. Unfortunately the bulbs that we used back then and in the video are absolutely awful. Not only are they very hard and sourcey but they have a massive spike in the green spectrum. If I was trying to actually get a high quality scan I would have used larger and softer daylight balanced sources that have perfect 5600K color temperature like my KinoFlo's OR Arri Skypanels. And I would ditch the copy stand so I could place the lights exactly where I want to minimize reflections. Wait until you see what I have in mind for this DigiView though. There won't be straight lines or flat lighting anywhere to be found, lol. Would love to see your scandal if you have the files or an .adf
This demo was so fun to watch. I remember seeing some of these iconic photo HAM scans in 90s on Amiga, like that girls face covered with red cape, and it gave me huge inspiration do start doing graphics on computers. And interestingly, today I work as 3D artist in gaming industry. :) Thank you guys for doing this, you are great!
That is so awesome Toni! Thanks for the comment. When I saw these images back them my jaw was on the ground! They inspired me as well. Today I am a professional Director of Photography and the Amiga has a lot to do with that. Thanks so much for the kind words. Feel free to share any of your work with us if you would like.
The rendering of the images (those vertical stripes) is absolutely mesmerizing. This piece of technology would have blown my socks off if i had the chance to see it and use it but, sadly i could only read about it from magazines. I totally agree about how more patient computer users were back then. It was nice to see another great video from both of you. :)
alex76gr Thanks so much Alex! Yeah I was lucky to have this back in the day. It was a key piece of equipment for me. I agree, that scan is very mezmarizing, especially after a few beers ;-)
Thanks! You are so right. Digitizing was a very big deal and something I feel the Amiga did better than other computers of the time. As much as I love my DigiView, getting a flatbed scanner was a game changer!
I had the disks but not the hardware. Although I have a VIDIRT24 :-D I have a Philips video with 6 heads (4+2) which can pause perfectly still. Also has slow motion and that helped to capture even video on the slow VIDI. Then I adjusted the framerate on the amiga and voila!!! Great job guys, we need these types of videos for historical reasons.
Vincent GR Nice Vincent! Yeah I just had a regular consumer VCR so the pause was really poor. Agreed. We are going to make a lot more of these types of videos. It is a good way to keep it remembered. They are our favorite type of video to make actually.
I remember going to the local ma & pa computer shops in the chicago area where they'd sell the amiga and accessories, and the first time I saw them messing around with one of these. Then once it started hitting the market, demo disks would float around with good scans. The gold king tut is probably what I remember the most. Eventually got a used digiview but never had the color wheel, but still had fun importinng black and white images into deluxe paint and messing around animating things. Thanks for bringing me back #hammode
Thanks for the comment Joe. Really nice to hear your story. If you are thinking of the classic King Tut image from DPaint, that was actually hand drawn! Amazing, right? I always tried to get my scans to looks as good as the ones in the NewTek demo reel, but never quite got there. Oh well. I still love me some HAM mode!
@@TheGuruMeditation yes ,The woman was over 17,000 colors, Tut was over 12,000 colors. Other famous pics where over 22,000 colors.. lets see that would make the OCS chip set being able to do 32,768 colors or 12bit
I watched this one today and it reminded me of my DCTV unit! I need to pull that puppy back out and start using it to scan in things on my old Amiga! I also have a Digiview and pretty much the same setup you showed here, sans the Digidroid. I have inherited some pretty decent tiny little Honeywell security cameras with really nice little lenses (HCC474M cameras with HLD29V8DNL Lenses) - I need to set one up with my DCTV and see how it works for image digitizing. Keep up the great work, guys!
Awesome! We actually just shot an episode about DCTV. I will have it done in a month or so. Stay tuned and good luck with yours! Thanks for the kind words.
I just pulled mine out a box of Amiga goodies - and guess what? I found a second DCTV that I had in another box. I honestly has no idea I owned two! I have one hooked up and I am playing with it this week. Looking forward to your episode on the DCTV!
Boom! Is that Castle Greyskull behind the tower of retro???? Great breakdown of the process, love the droid add on! Have you ever tried to get a Dragons Lair arcade setup going with that laserdisc and your Amiga?
RetroManCave Bonus points for you! I was wondering if anyone would mention Castle Greyskull! Nailed it! I also have Snake Mountain there. I never though about hooking up A Dragon's Lair arcade game with the Amiga, but that would be a great project. I understand that an Amiga was inside the arcade cabinet interfacing with the LaserDisc? I head some say that it isn't true but I always heard it was. I believe Amiga was used for Mad Dog McCree as well.
You've brought back some memories with this video. I remember using one back in the day and how slow it was to digitise. I eventually upgraded to a VidiAmiga.
I saw Digi-View pictures back in the day, and also pictures of the color wheel. Never really thought about how the thing worked, so this was very interesting to see! The method is ingenious! Much later when I had my A1200, I got a Rombo Vidi 24RT. My dad's camcorder, which took the big VHS tapes directly, had a very clean pause image. I spent a lot of time digitizing pictures from video. Also interesting to see the LaserDisc player. I had two players myself, which was both Pioneer. First the 2950, and later the D925, which automatically switched sides. I loved the CAV disc sides, and went crazy with the motion wheel! Aww, cool memories. Gonna stop the blah now. Great video!!
Oh nice! I am glad you got to see it in action here. You were lucky to have a way to get a stable image from VHS. I just had consumer stuff and it was impossible to get a good scan. Yeah I love my LaserDiscs. I never had a play that could play both sides, so I would have to get up every 30 minutes to flip the disc, but there was something kind of cool about that - I guess, LOL!
It ensured some cardio, which is good, hehe.. In a way that was cool, especially in the beginning when you just got the player. In general LaserDiscs had a big wow factor here in little Denmark, as it was very much a niche product, compared to the US. It was cool to invite a friend over for a movie, and then bust out the big disc.. "What the hell is that..?!" lool.. 30 mins.? Is that CLV or CAV? I forgot how much they hold, but remember that CAV holds the least.
ha ha! if I still used the LaserDisc regularly, I would be getting a beer every time I have to flip or change the disc! They were not all that common here in the USA either. Only cinephiles, and people who invested in expensive home theater setups really had them. VHS was way more mainstream. CAV had about 30 minutes per side, and CLV was about 60 minutes per side.
Oh man, now I really, *really* wish my parents got an Amiga instead of a PC back in the day!! I would've had so much fun with this hardware! Seriously awesome video, guys! I learned a hell of a lot of really good, juicy information about not only Amiga hardware and the creative streaks it inspired, but also about photography as well!! Bravo!!
LambdaCalculus379 Yeah Amiga was way more fun than PC. Still is actually :-) So glad you like the video bud. At least you can still enjoy Amiga today :-)
Awesome stuff, I would have loved one of these back in the day. The first device I ever had to be able to put photos into a computer was a parallel port scanner(can't remember the brand name for the life of me) back around 97 someone had dumped off at a Goodwill store, and paid $5 for it, and it worked with Windows 95 and 98, and it used a florescent tube to light the scanner bed, and a "high quality" single pass scan of 800x600 took around 5 - 10 mins. Man how things have changed.
Oh nice. I upgraded from DigiView to a Sharp JX-100 scanner. It was a cool little device, but it also took forever to do a color scan. Enough time to go grab a beer!
I bought one of them way back but never found a camera haha. Interested if you switched to color camera when you did the starwars scan ? or would it have helped ??
Just goes to show what incredible technology the Amiga was right from the start. One thing I would be interested to know would be how much the cost of that set up was as new. Because I can't imagine you'd be able to get a comparable system for the PC or Macintosh at the time for the same sort of money.
The DigiView itself with the software was $200. Then the Panasonic camera was $280 and the copy stand was $75. I don't remember what the DigiDroid cost, but it didn't come stock with the DigiView. A pretty good price for what you got back then!
I’m surprised colour digital photos of that quality were on home computers as early as the 80s, always assumed that was a 90s thing, so cool that was available in the 16 bit generation!
The Video Toaster fascinates me in terms of wanting to use one as a (very) retro gaming graphics hardware. Trouble is, as soon as I mention that idea, generally people tend to instantly think of warp3D style graphics hardware (like plonking in a voodoo2 to an a1200) and that a video toaster would not compare (because it isn't the same). This is such a shame because not only was the warp3D stuff introduced anachronistically (which was lovely of course), long after the fall of the amiga (and thereby a silly comparison) but also, really, the usage of the video toaster as a gaming graphics hardware could be more akin instead to the overlaying techniques used on sega-cd games with megadrive (aka genesis) and/or 32x. I don't mean the 3D power of the 32x. I just mean the way graphics were overlayed. Imagine Dragons Lair if a CD32 (which its FMV cartridge for VCD) was plugged into an amiga (e.g. a3000 or a2000/2500) with a video toaster. If you really think about it, the potential would be massive, a bit like that TV show "nightmare". So another words, you'd be able to use VCD movie disks in the CD32 and also use a VCR in addition. While that may seem like a lot of equipment, the only thing that held the Toaster back was the price and the fact you needed an a2000 even though the a2000 shared many smilarities to the a500. The difference with the toaster usage in an a2000 was that the a2000 (as it had zorro slots an a500 lacked) would be pimped out with a 68030 and a bunch of other RAM, Cards, and SCSI drives to get it going, but then people pimped out their a500 all the time (such as with a 40Mhz GVP CPU 8meg RAM HDD caddy). So if an FPGA version of the toaster could be made now (on a PCI-e card via adaptation maybe into PCI), the price obstacle would be eliminated. That then means that everything else in the "kit" I've thus far mentioned would be very likely for a person (at least in the UK) to have had. So for example, every single person who had a CD32 had an amiga (e.g. a500 or a2000 etc) also. They just did, I mean come on we all know it. I may not have graphs and charts to "prove" it but we all know its true. I doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out that no "new console peasants" bought a CD32 ever (save but about 3 in the entire world). All CD32 consoles were bought by existing amiga owners. Next in terms of "equipment" is the VCR. Every person who had an amiga at some point hooked an amiga up to a TV set. If you had a TV set, you had a VCR. Therefore, any person who had a CD32 had a TV, another Amiga, and a VCR. With the aformentioned toaster (which as stipulated would be the only hurdle to overcome and FPGA PCI-e seems like the route for that) that is all the equipment such a gamer would need and so I think games akin to Dragons Lair and the TV show "nightmare" would have been possible. Also, since lightwave3D used the toaster, I think custom outro animations could be rendered as you played the game so your game's ending would be tailored to how your character played. I do think however, things like Chroma effects and swapping of background images could be done live in gameplay like the TV show nightmare. Lastly, I will add that of course the toaster forced prerequisite hardware as with the SCSI HDD inputs and outputs and RAM and CPU etc. So this would improve game quality massively. I suspect (but would gladly stand corrected) that their may be some other registers that could be utilised for redundancy not all that differently from how amiga demo coders use redundant registers to hold dat a temporarily since it is faster to use, say cache friendly routines than painfully slow RAM (which hte amiga had). With that register trick in mind (if possible) I think the Toaster in that regard would have a subtle "extra usage" a bit more on the "humbleness" level of the blitter chip. While these days it might be scoffed at when compared to a Warp3D graphics card, the bonus it added to gaming on the amiga back in the day is something many games would have not been able to do without. In fact they benfitted from the blitter chip immensely. so Ithink in that "humble" level, the video Toaster may have potential as a "gaming graphics" boosting hardware for the amiga. It is also (and this is important) a "legit" (i.e. not anachronistic) piece of amiga kit officially of the er and thereby "legit", and a "dream machine". Considering the CDTV existed, it is a pity the Toaster could not have been more popular and used in gaming. On a side, unrelated to all this, the fact that it is not in amiga emulators is a pity as mimicking its input and output would be cool and so would reverse engineering its drivers.
Epic comment! I love your idea. Unfortunately CD32 was not popular here in the USA. I would love to have one. But the concept of the Video Toaster game and FPGA are great. Even if people are missing some pieces they are not difficult to source - except maybe the CD32, that baby is increasing in value!
Yeah I heard about the absurd legal reasons for the cd32 being delayed in USA (so I think americans get it from Canada). I guess they could not rename it because all the printing and plastic moulding would have it on the console. The way the amiga tried to be mainly about business machines (CBM) seemed so silly when blatantly it was for games in hte eyes of the owners. I think commodore would have been better to market it (and thereby design models of it) to europe for gaming sine that is where it was strongest. Then what would have happened is USA would have demanded it (and of course CBM would have gladly extended provisions to USA). So in other words, never making the a500plus (even though I respect the machines) would have been wiser and never making the a600 would have been wiser. My above comment does not apply to that though (lol) because CBM *did* make the plus and 600. I think by 1994 they should have simply stuck a removable upgrade 68030 circa 30MHz or 33MHz (with on/off switch maybe near the zorro) inside the a500 and called it something like the a500superduper (or whatever, they can call it "tom-dick-and-harry" for all I care) and released that when the PC computers had those speeds. That would be a better way to spend money rather than worrying and RandD on the a600 or plus or money on making and marketing those. Whatever they did with their box machines a3000 or a2000 etc., I wouldn't change or don't care if they do change or not. Then they could just keep churning out that "superduper" (assuming the a590 from 1989 worked with it - although of course, like I say their should also have been a SCSI boot option for CDROM) until the a1200, and then the A1200 (which btw should have come with a CDROM as mandatory which would thereby massively improve games and software and sort out games-copying problems) should have been released in 1991with a PCI port, not pcmcia. So, all those a500 machines with a 68030 in them (or whatever chip ran at 30MHz) would have sold for sure. In the UK I remember time and time again people buying an a500 at £400 even though a PC would dwarf it. It was for the games and they all wanted what their mates had. It definitely would have sold. The library of games would have been great then for the a1200 (but that too would have needed such a CPU if not better, like maybe two CPUs in parallel, and maybe 4meg and that mandatory CDROM). Really, I think alot of amigans would have been choosing then to opt for extra RAM. So you'd basically have a stock a500 but with a 30Mhz (or so) CPU and 3meg of RAM. Games with that standard of RAM and MHz would be pretty darn impressive, I reckon. I anticipate games like Rocket Ranger would have looked even better. " _Shoulda Coulda Woulda_ "
I had one with my A500 back in the day. Everyone else had a "green" monochrome monitor I had 4096 colors and a multitasking OS on a 40 mb scsi hd with 2 mb fast ram. Those were the days. Scanning in photos from my kodachrome and sharing them on BBS. Those were the days my friends I wish they never had ended. :) Thanks for this. What would you want in a modern day Amiga HW, Software? I was wondering if the Amiga could be put in a SOC and be incorporated into modern mb hw?
Thanks for sharing your story Jerry, I feel you too. Tough question to answer, but I would like a full functioning OS that is very user friendly, has a beautiful design, and powerful enough to be used for every day tasks as an alternate to Windows or Mac. If it could run on a RaspberryPi or inexpensive hardware it would be awesome,. Of course the pipe dream would be the Amiga as the most powerful and #1 computer in the world with some sort of super awesome tech that I can't even imagine.
It perhaps should be pointed out that process the Digiview uses to get colour information from a black and white image is essentially exactly the same as was used in the early 3-strip Technicolor process for movies. They'd have specially built cameras that used three strips of black and white film loaded into the same camera, and a special lens with a prism, which would split the light into three, to hit each strip of film, passing through a coloured filter along the way. The film would then be developed and recombined (again, with filters and prisms) to produce colour footage. Of course, this was a hugely expensive undertaking, as you had to deal with three times the footage, with three times the developing, processing, editing and duplication. And naturally, this vastly increases the chances of something going wrong - like the film breaking or melting in the camera, or the mechanisms jamming, etc. So, while it produced truly lifelike colour that was better than any other process available, it was hugely expensive and time consuming, leading to better systems being developed. I'm also told (by my brother, who is more knowledgeable about these things than I am) that this has also been the underlying principle behind astronomic photography for years. I suppose because it's easier to have a very good black and white camera on a probe, instead of a crappy colour camera (or even a large, better quality colour camera for that matter).
That is a really great point about Technicolor! You know I should have thought of that. I had my head in video land and was thinking along the lines of a 3CCD video camera, but 3-strip Technicolor is way cooler!
The Guru Meditation Well, the essential thing is that with an Amiga and the DigiView, you could essentially achieve the same effect for about $1000 or so what it cost Hollywood millions upon millions to develop. That shows you how much power the Amiga had and how well it worked in the fields of television/video production and graphic manipulation. Maybe if Commodore had got their act together and teamed up with Adobe, Quark Express and Avid, using PowerPC processors when they first became available, things would have worked out differently. As it was (and as I think your interview with David Plesance aptly shows) Commodore was more often than not led by people with no real understanding of their own product, or the market they were in.
Not only Technicolor, the legendary Kodachrome used this technique for still and movie film. 3 separate layers recorded 3 black and white images, and when developed turned into color. This had the effect of not only extraordinarily great looking pictures, but the longest lasting proven archival color method yet obtained. Shot's from the 1920's have shown no color fade almost 100 years later, looking just the same as the day they were taken. My favorite film ever, very disheartened when Kodak discontinued it in 2009, but I'm quite lucky to have many 35mm slides and Super 8mm movies with it.
Great video. I guess it wouldn't be too hard to make the little robot setup? I want to use Digi view in a primary school setup to get the kids to learn about computing history, but also to learn about red green blue stuff. No fancy vidi Amiga for that!
Octamed Oh wow, that is awesome Octamed! I love that you want to teach this history in school! Way to go! The DigiDroid wouldn't be extremely difficult to make, but it would take some effort for sure. The thing is - the Droid is just a luxury. You can do the same thing by turning the wheel manually, or if you don't have a color wheel you can just use glass or gelatin photography filters and hold them in front of the lens while you scan that channel. The Droid just makes the process cooler ;-)
Guys you both knocked it out the park again! Whenever I watch one of your videos it makes me feel like a kid. This is probably because you guys act like kids in a candy store, lol. Keep up the great work!! Amiga4ever
Awesome video. I'm confused. It's been over 25 years since I used digiview. I swear the version I had , I could plug any composite video source. And I could capture video frames with one click. And they came out looking way better then what you guys got. Also I could be just old and not remembering it right. LOL!
Ha ha, thanks! You might be thinking of another device that is similar called DCTV. You didn't need to split the signal into Red Green and Blue and the quality was much better. We just shot a video about it so stay tuned! You could plug a composite video signal directly into DigiView, but that would limit you to black and white only and it was not a one click instantaneous capture. Of course there were many other digitizers back then as well, but I have a hunch you may be thinking of DCTV. Thanks so much for watching!
It's too bad that the 256 color and HAM8 modes (AGA) didn't come along until late in the Amiga's development. Dynamic HiRes with HAM8 (AGA) was incredible (There are some demos on Aminet I think). I'd love to see you guys do a hands-on review of DCTV, which was another hardware/software combo that made the Amiga even more powerful. DCTV Paint is, to this day, one of my favorite paint programs of all time. But what made DCTV's method of getting 21 bit color so amazing is that it only needed 4 bitplanes, which meant that you could actually do real time IFF animations with it; Basically any animation that could be done with regular HiRes on even an original chipset Amiga!
Nice JW3HH! I love DCTV. I basically replaced DigiView with it. I also have the RGB converter for it. It is on the top of my to-do list. I did bust it out for Vintage Computer Festival East. You can get a taste of it here: th-cam.com/video/HEIesAtmKfM/w-d-xo.html
Hi Guys. back in that day I became graphics with the likes of Digiview, DCTV and a board called Opalvision I ran on an Amiga 1200 with an external video slot I made. It was quite an era. Not enough credit is given to Amiga treasures that were imagined on such a basic machine. Today I use Cinema 4D version 19 that was used by me on an Amiga in version 2. Amazing transformation of this software over the years. You guys hit the nail on the head every time. I did not know about the use of the Sunrise box. I knew it existed but never saw it work. I had the Digiview and Digiview Gold of course and fed in many scans through my 1000 and 2000. I was into Desktop Video which was coined by the Amiga and your demos on this are very enlightening to my past. Keep truckin guys. Hey, do you need a Sunrise Perfect Sound digitizer to demo? I still have that box in my drawer with the software to digitize sounds. I'd send it to you.
1992 - Could have been a DCTV. We will demo that one too. There were quite a few digitizers, though so it could be a different one as well. DigiView was one of the first ones on Amiga, if not the first one though.
Well - I live in the UK, and I know it worked with colour (note the correct spelling ;) ) video camcorders. I vaguely recall it was the Rombo one like this: www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=314
Great video guys. I didn't realise it but I have the DigiView Gold without the droid. I thought I just had software in the box but when I opened the box there's the hardware including the disks, documentation and colour wheel! I'm going to have a play once I find a suitable camera.
Gary Hucker NICE!!! That is so great to hear! DigiDroid was an add on and didn't come with DigiView which is probably why it isn't in your box. Good luck finding a camera. And old black and white one shouldn't be too difficult to find just make sure you get an NTSC camera if you have an NTSC DigiView or a PAL camera if you have a PAL DigiView. If you live in North America chances are good you have an NTSC
Oh I have plans for this DigiView! I hooked my my DSLR to my DCTV at Vintage Computer Festival East. You can see it here: th-cam.com/video/HEIesAtmKfM/w-d-xo.html It would be cool to try it with DigiView as well
Oh yeah! I have seen that video when it first was published! I will watch the one with the DSLR if and when you'll publish it of course. Actually looking forward to that! :D
I am too, but I have some more plans for this puppy before that. The issue I had with my DSLR is that it doesn't use the full 4:3 frame so you are getting less information than a native 4:3 camera. I want to use my Canon XL-1 camera as well!
Had one on my A1000 back in the 80's. I still have a live scan of me where i sat perfectly still why I gently reached to turn the color wheel without moving for 3 passes. Crazy. Digidroid would have helped :)
The Guru Meditation the more I learn about the Amiga, the more mind blowing it is. I was given an amiga 1000 when I was five. I had to teach myself everything. I even remember the day I learned about sliding the plastic tab to save files on a disk. I have fond memories playing space quest 3, along with dozens of other games. Everyday I’d come home from school and spend hours using dpaint. Another memory that stands out is playing Shanghai with my father, winning revealing the dragons eye.
I have the parallel device by itself. what would happen if i had a color video source go into it directly? alternately, could i use any b/w camera video source and basically just insert color transparencies of those three colors in front to fool the digiview? or was there something more specific about the hardware for it to work?
Still have the DigiView for my A1000... Sidenote, the picture for Edison Carter ("Max Headroom" TV show character) on Wikipedia, for a very long time, was a screencapture I did from my VHS of the show, using DigiView on my Amiga... (bottom of this page: umlautllama.com/Image/2000/10/amiga/ )
Oh that's awesome! Great image and web page! I never had good luck capturing from VHS. I never tried the LaserDisc until we did this episode because I had the Amiga setup in that basement and the LaserDisc player was in a stereo rack up in my room. I guess I was too lazy to disconnect it and bring it down, LOL! Good eye on the Bogen tripod mount! bonus points for you! I needed a 1/4" 20 screw in a pinch so I just grabbed that mount, ha ha! I don't know if there are schematic for DigiDroid. I have never seen them. Thanks for watching and sending me that image!
Great trip down memory lane, We created a demo with almost exactly the same setup, same type of video camera, with the DigiView Gold and colour wheel, even down to the lights at the side, although we constructed a wooden frame to hold the camera as we did not have anything as posh as a proper frame as you had. Our demo only used Hi-res 16 colours, but the quality that you could get from this setup was amazing in it's time. Here's a video grab of the demo (Although it ran much smoother on a real Amiga) th-cam.com/video/X3dxVcUl45Y/w-d-xo.html
@@TheGuruMeditation From your comment below: "Digitizing was a very big deal and something I feel the Amiga did better than other computers of the time." Well done, you've typified Amiga euphoria: Feelings. Your own personal sense of excitement is no kind of objective measure. The main driver of those feelings isn't that what you're looking at is entirely remarkable. Look at your own demonstration, it takes until 16:25 before you get there, but there it is. Now, compare this to the sort of image used in publishing and you can immediately see why this would not have been used. It may well be cheap but - if we're allowed to measure this with personally reflexive language - by reprographics standards, not only of its day but of years preceding it, that's crap. The Sunday Times has been publishing a colour supplement since 1962 and the images were better than this one from the very first issue. I'd ask "by what standard are you becoming exciting by this?", but I know the answer: It's the standard of things you can personally afford and easily use. I can't deny it's a totally appreciable personal response, but what Amiga enthusiasts also can't deny is that not everybody who wanted colour reproductions had either the budgetary or technical limitations you did, nor the same Amiga evangelist devotion to doing everything on the an Amiga, even when it hurts you to do it. If you're impressed by this, how do you think professional colour publishing existed? www.beatchapter.com/sunday-times-magazine-109-c.asp Meanwhile, thanks to their widespread use to digitise printed documents in offices scanners have been commodity devices on PCs and Macs since about 1984. So you sort of look at this as a professional PC user and think "This is it? This is the legendary Commodore Amiga? The home computer for which all sorts of exuberant claims of its graphics superiority are made by its advocates?". Whenever I see a demonstration of it made by enthusiasts my jaw hits the floor for exactly the opposite reason you'd expect. It may be cheap, but boy oh boy, it really shows. It looks like exactly what it is: It's the sort of thing you buy from a supermarket and give to your children, which for many people is exactly how they were exposed to it.
Matthew Suffidy yeah they are standard gelatin filters housed on that cardboard. I am surprised that wheel is still functional. It has taken a few lumps!
Great vid, always. ;) I always wanted a Video Toaster after seeing things like Babylon V, and SeaQuest DSV on TV. (and then realising that most of that was just Lightwave, and about 30 Amigas. lol) Still need another Laserdisc player too. I have Independence Day, Die Hard 3, and Empire Strikes Back on LD (sadly the Special Edition), but no player atm. lol
Thanks as always Ash! Nice! I remember it being a big deal the first time they released Lightwave 3D by itself without the need for a video toaster. I have a pile of LaserDisc players in that garage if you want one ;-)
excuse me! wasnt dynamic hires and dynamic ham 2 different things! dymamic was new color pallete per scan line! copper chip loads new colors per scan line. hires ham on ecs/ocs is interlaced mode not 640 pixels there is no dma time on ocs/ecs to have ham in hires.. not possible. it is new color pallet per scan line. which uses more dma time due to load color register in horizontal blank time can do in any mode but it take more data aswell so file sizes will be a bit large
26 minute video for about 1 minute of interesting content. For those who want to cut to the chase the result you wait almost 25 minutes for is here: 24:53
This would be more enjoyable if you didn't take so long to get to anything. I've noticed this on every video of the handful I've watched. A little more concise editing and writing would be a huge improvement.
One of the most fun videos I've seen in some time regarding the Amiga. Not only are you going into application software here, which is already something that very few Amiga related places care to go into, despite how important that market was for the machine... You're also going into the hardware, which is of course even less common to see in action these days. Absolutely got a huge kick out of hearing your personal memories using the program, making your news letters for the Amiga group in two color black and white. Amazing to see the real hardware in action here. If I'm wanting to put newer pictures into my Amiga I'm always going down some convoluted conversation processes... Sometimes they can be fun, at least when you're doing them on the Amiga end, but it's always most fun when it's all on the Amiga like right here. So awesome seeing it demonstrated here. Great video, going into my favs.
Awesome Shot97! You communicate your feelings very well! Always love your comments. Thanks so much for the super kind words. I agree, there is nothing like using the real retro hardware. I am so happy that color wheel survived because it is quite fragile. I am also thankful that all that stuff still works! I do think it is fun to use new methods to get images into the Amiga, but nothing beats doing it the classic way. This stuff was specifically designed to do that. Glad you picked up on the WAUG newsletter! I used PageStream to make those. We will do an episode on PageStream here one day! Thanks again for all the support!
I agree, after coming across some really old boxes of my kit, I found a DigiView Gold. I've no idea what happened to my Amiga's over the years, but I keep finding parts and pieces.
I also remember that original NewTek demo.... amazing.
I love that demo
Oh no way I had this thing! I remember digitizing stuff with a regular camcorder (not this fancy setup) and the color wheel thing. It was really handy for digitizing stuff for games.
What a fantastic video, my Digiview arrived today and you guys were the first hit in my youtube search, man its a small world with the Amiga community. shame that my Digiview wasn't complete, no motor support, or manual or gelatine filter. RetroManCave beat my Greyskull spy..by 10 months.
very cool video. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us guys.
Thanks for the kind words Simon! Sorry your DigiView came incomplete. Worst case scenario you can get photography filters that will do the same thing as the DigiView color wheel. If you want help with that let me know.
I had the Digi View Gold. Cheers from Germany!
Awesome! I love the DV Gold. Cheers from New York City!
Always a pleasure watching your videos. Very thorough,informative and entertaining!
Thank you so much Aminet! Glad you are enjoying them. Really appreciate the kind words.
This is incredible, I always wondered how these great devices worked when I saw them in magazines. And of course, always wanted to try one for myself. Great job as always lads. I can't imagine how much editing was involved afterwards.
Thanks Amiga Ireland! I can't even tell you how many hours I spent editing photos back then just to get them to look decent. As much as I love DigiView, getting a flatbed scanner was a real game changer back then. Also upgrading to an 020 A2000 helped a lot with the render times!
Great video. I work at NewTek and sent your video company wide for all to see. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Kane Peterson That's awesome! Thanks so much. I hope they enjoy it. I am actually a cinematographer in NY and one of the camera houses I work with (Abel Cine) uses a TriCaster for all their classes. That is where I met some folks from NewTek when then came in to demo the TriCaster. It is a great product and you can tell that it evolved from the great Video Toaster. Say hi to the gang for me!
Thanks, I've gotten a few responses back from coworkers, including Kiki who loved it.
Now way! That is awesome!!!!! If you guys would ever like to do something with us we would be thrilled. We would fly out to you guys no problem. I just play around and have fun with these videos, but this is my "real" website billwinters.net The Amiga community would go CRAZY to see KiKi. She is one of the most iconic figures in the history of Amiga. Our Friend Zach Weddington worked with you guys on the film Viva Amiga
What a fantastic team you are. You make me proud for using my Amigas everyday! All the best! Learned something today for sure!
Aw, thanks bud. That is so kind of you. It means the world to us. Thank you so much!
So happy I found this channel! Ah the memories of digiview! Worked at a computer store in highschool and sold a lot of Amiga hardware.
Awesome Jaydee! Welcome. Glad you are here! We have a lot more coming. Enjoy!
Great video! Used a DigiView in college in the early 90s for tons of reports. I loved how solid that little device was. I think they molded it in resin and there was definitely no inspecting the components. Had that Color Splitter too after a while... such a luxury!
Great point William! That thing is solid as a rock! But wait, your name is 'William Winter" ? My name is "William Winters" WOW!
There are dozens of us! (Also, my middle name is Walker, so it's WWW!)
ha ha! WWW - Amazing!
Digitising with Digi-view is an art form all to itself really. There are a couple of things you need to do before you can get the best out of it AND not add any more fringing than the Amiga technically needs to add (hence the horrible quality you were getting). 1 Digitize a solid colour sheet of paper and make sure the lighting gives you as close as possible to a single even colour all the way across a screen (or even grey scale) in indexed colour mode. If you don't do this then not only does HAM have to cope with actual changes but also try and simulate subtle shadows and highlight in lightsource centre too which will triple the fringing you get in HAM mode and waste 65% of your colour palette on shades/colours needed. It is also VERY important to make sure you have a way to perfectly align the image so horizontal lines present in a test image produce a single horizontal line not a diagonal of even a 1 pixel step on the image captured, this is also to prevent excessive fringing in HAM. I will do a video on it soon when I have finished renovating my Victorian mansion. If you do all this you will get the jaw dropping quality on my Bladerunner PD slideshows doing the rounds in the late eighties :o)
MadCommodore Those are some great tips and you are totally right, digitizing with DigiView is an artform. Making the horizontal and vertices lines straight makes a lot of sense as well as flat, even lighting. Unfortunately the bulbs that we used back then and in the video are absolutely awful. Not only are they very hard and sourcey but they have a massive spike in the green spectrum. If I was trying to actually get a high quality scan I would have used larger and softer daylight balanced sources that have perfect 5600K color temperature like my KinoFlo's OR Arri Skypanels. And I would ditch the copy stand so I could place the lights exactly where I want to minimize reflections. Wait until you see what I have in mind for this DigiView though. There won't be straight lines or flat lighting anywhere to be found, lol. Would love to see your scandal if you have the files or an .adf
This demo was so fun to watch. I remember seeing some of these iconic photo HAM scans in 90s on Amiga, like that girls face covered with red cape, and it gave me huge inspiration do start doing graphics on computers. And interestingly, today I work as 3D artist in gaming industry. :) Thank you guys for doing this, you are great!
That is so awesome Toni! Thanks for the comment. When I saw these images back them my jaw was on the ground! They inspired me as well. Today I am a professional Director of Photography and the Amiga has a lot to do with that. Thanks so much for the kind words. Feel free to share any of your work with us if you would like.
The rendering of the images (those vertical stripes) is absolutely mesmerizing.
This piece of technology would have blown my socks off if i had the chance to see it and use it but, sadly i could only read about it from magazines.
I totally agree about how more patient computer users were back then.
It was nice to see another great video from both of you. :)
alex76gr Thanks so much Alex! Yeah I was lucky to have this back in the day. It was a key piece of equipment for me. I agree, that scan is very mezmarizing, especially after a few beers ;-)
Amazing stuff. Digitizing images was a very big deal back then.
Thanks! You are so right. Digitizing was a very big deal and something I feel the Amiga did better than other computers of the time. As much as I love my DigiView, getting a flatbed scanner was a game changer!
I had the disks but not the hardware.
Although I have a VIDIRT24 :-D
I have a Philips video with 6 heads (4+2) which can pause perfectly still.
Also has slow motion and that helped to capture even video on the slow VIDI.
Then I adjusted the framerate on the amiga and voila!!!
Great job guys, we need these types of videos for historical reasons.
Vincent GR Nice Vincent! Yeah I just had a regular consumer VCR so the pause was really poor. Agreed. We are going to make a lot more of these types of videos. It is a good way to keep it remembered. They are our favorite type of video to make actually.
Excellent work, great guide, I can see people using this to help them get their stuffs going.
Sorry I missed Poland guys.
No worries dude. AmiParty happens twice per year!
I remember going to the local ma & pa computer shops in the chicago area where they'd sell the amiga and accessories, and the first time I saw them messing around with one of these. Then once it started hitting the market, demo disks would float around with good scans. The gold king tut is probably what I remember the most. Eventually got a used digiview but never had the color wheel, but still had fun importinng black and white images into deluxe paint and messing around animating things. Thanks for bringing me back #hammode
Thanks for the comment Joe. Really nice to hear your story. If you are thinking of the classic King Tut image from DPaint, that was actually hand drawn! Amazing, right? I always tried to get my scans to looks as good as the ones in the NewTek demo reel, but never quite got there. Oh well. I still love me some HAM mode!
@@TheGuruMeditation yes ,The woman was over 17,000 colors, Tut was over 12,000 colors. Other famous pics where over 22,000 colors.. lets see that would make the OCS chip set being able to do 32,768 colors or 12bit
I watched this one today and it reminded me of my DCTV unit! I need to pull that puppy back out and start using it to scan in things on my old Amiga! I also have a Digiview and pretty much the same setup you showed here, sans the Digidroid. I have inherited some pretty decent tiny little Honeywell security cameras with really nice little lenses (HCC474M cameras with HLD29V8DNL Lenses) - I need to set one up with my DCTV and see how it works for image digitizing. Keep up the great work, guys!
Awesome! We actually just shot an episode about DCTV. I will have it done in a month or so. Stay tuned and good luck with yours! Thanks for the kind words.
I just pulled mine out a box of Amiga goodies - and guess what? I found a second DCTV that I had in another box. I honestly has no idea I owned two! I have one hooked up and I am playing with it this week. Looking forward to your episode on the DCTV!
Boom! Is that Castle Greyskull behind the tower of retro???? Great breakdown of the process, love the droid add on! Have you ever tried to get a Dragons Lair arcade setup going with that laserdisc and your Amiga?
RetroManCave Bonus points for you! I was wondering if anyone would mention Castle Greyskull! Nailed it! I also have Snake Mountain there. I never though about hooking up A Dragon's Lair arcade game with the Amiga, but that would be a great project. I understand that an Amiga was inside the arcade cabinet interfacing with the LaserDisc? I head some say that it isn't true but I always heard it was. I believe Amiga was used for Mad Dog McCree as well.
You've brought back some memories with this video. I remember using one back in the day and how slow it was to digitise. I eventually upgraded to a VidiAmiga.
Nice! Many folks mentioned the VidiAmiga. That is something I never had.
I saw Digi-View pictures back in the day, and also pictures of the color wheel. Never really thought about how the thing worked, so this was very interesting to see! The method is ingenious!
Much later when I had my A1200, I got a Rombo Vidi 24RT. My dad's camcorder, which took the big VHS tapes directly, had a very clean pause image. I spent a lot of time digitizing pictures from video.
Also interesting to see the LaserDisc player. I had two players myself, which was both Pioneer. First the 2950, and later the D925, which automatically switched sides. I loved the CAV disc sides, and went crazy with the motion wheel! Aww, cool memories. Gonna stop the blah now. Great video!!
Oh nice! I am glad you got to see it in action here. You were lucky to have a way to get a stable image from VHS. I just had consumer stuff and it was impossible to get a good scan. Yeah I love my LaserDiscs. I never had a play that could play both sides, so I would have to get up every 30 minutes to flip the disc, but there was something kind of cool about that - I guess, LOL!
It ensured some cardio, which is good, hehe.. In a way that was cool, especially in the beginning when you just got the player. In general LaserDiscs had a big wow factor here in little Denmark, as it was very much a niche product, compared to the US. It was cool to invite a friend over for a movie, and then bust out the big disc.. "What the hell is that..?!" lool.. 30 mins.? Is that CLV or CAV? I forgot how much they hold, but remember that CAV holds the least.
ha ha! if I still used the LaserDisc regularly, I would be getting a beer every time I have to flip or change the disc! They were not all that common here in the USA either. Only cinephiles, and people who invested in expensive home theater setups really had them. VHS was way more mainstream. CAV had about 30 minutes per side, and CLV was about 60 minutes per side.
Oh man, now I really, *really* wish my parents got an Amiga instead of a PC back in the day!! I would've had so much fun with this hardware!
Seriously awesome video, guys! I learned a hell of a lot of really good, juicy information about not only Amiga hardware and the creative streaks it inspired, but also about photography as well!! Bravo!!
LambdaCalculus379 Yeah Amiga was way more fun than PC. Still is actually :-) So glad you like the video bud. At least you can still enjoy Amiga today :-)
Awesome stuff, I would have loved one of these back in the day. The first device I ever had to be able to put photos into a computer was a parallel port scanner(can't remember the brand name for the life of me) back around 97 someone had dumped off at a Goodwill store, and paid $5 for it, and it worked with Windows 95 and 98, and it used a florescent tube to light the scanner bed, and a "high quality" single pass scan of 800x600 took around 5 - 10 mins. Man how things have changed.
Oh nice. I upgraded from DigiView to a Sharp JX-100 scanner. It was a cool little device, but it also took forever to do a color scan. Enough time to go grab a beer!
I bought one of them way back but never found a camera haha. Interested if you switched to color camera when you did the starwars scan ? or would it have helped ??
The Star Wars scan was from Laser Disc using a color splitter. But the technique would be the same as with a color video camera
Absolutely amazing stuff. Can't wait to see more of that old tech guys.
Thanks Aaron! More to come for sure!
Great video guys, looking forward to the next one, hope to see some stuff on original classic hardware like graphic and sound cards.
Wez Zer Thanks WezZer ! Yes we have a lot if cool old hardware to go through. We have no shortage of material for this channel, lol! Stay Tuned
Just goes to show what incredible technology the Amiga was right from the start. One thing I would be interested to know would be how much the cost of that set up was as new. Because I can't imagine you'd be able to get a comparable system for the PC or Macintosh at the time for the same sort of money.
The DigiView itself with the software was $200. Then the Panasonic camera was $280 and the copy stand was $75. I don't remember what the DigiDroid cost, but it didn't come stock with the DigiView. A pretty good price for what you got back then!
I’m surprised colour digital photos of that quality were on home computers as early as the 80s, always assumed that was a 90s thing, so cool that was available in the 16 bit generation!
The Video Toaster fascinates me in terms of wanting to use one as a (very) retro gaming graphics hardware. Trouble is, as soon as I mention that idea, generally people tend to instantly think of warp3D style graphics hardware (like plonking in a voodoo2 to an a1200) and that a video toaster would not compare (because it isn't the same). This is such a shame because not only was the warp3D stuff introduced anachronistically (which was lovely of course), long after the fall of the amiga (and thereby a silly comparison) but also, really, the usage of the video toaster as a gaming graphics hardware could be more akin instead to the overlaying techniques used on sega-cd games with megadrive (aka genesis) and/or 32x. I don't mean the 3D power of the 32x. I just mean the way graphics were overlayed. Imagine Dragons Lair if a CD32 (which its FMV cartridge for VCD) was plugged into an amiga (e.g. a3000 or a2000/2500) with a video toaster. If you really think about it, the potential would be massive, a bit like that TV show "nightmare".
So another words, you'd be able to use VCD movie disks in the CD32 and also use a VCR in addition. While that may seem like a lot of equipment, the only thing that held the Toaster back was the price and the fact you needed an a2000 even though the a2000 shared many smilarities to the a500. The difference with the toaster usage in an a2000 was that the a2000 (as it had zorro slots an a500 lacked) would be pimped out with a 68030 and a bunch of other RAM, Cards, and SCSI drives to get it going, but then people pimped out their a500 all the time (such as with a 40Mhz GVP CPU 8meg RAM HDD caddy). So if an FPGA version of the toaster could be made now (on a PCI-e card via adaptation maybe into PCI), the price obstacle would be eliminated. That then means that everything else in the "kit" I've thus far mentioned would be very likely for a person (at least in the UK) to have had.
So for example, every single person who had a CD32 had an amiga (e.g. a500 or a2000 etc) also. They just did, I mean come on we all know it. I may not have graphs and charts to "prove" it but we all know its true. I doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out that no "new console peasants" bought a CD32 ever (save but about 3 in the entire world). All CD32 consoles were bought by existing amiga owners.
Next in terms of "equipment" is the VCR. Every person who had an amiga at some point hooked an amiga up to a TV set. If you had a TV set, you had a VCR. Therefore, any person who had a CD32 had a TV, another Amiga, and a VCR. With the aformentioned toaster (which as stipulated would be the only hurdle to overcome and FPGA PCI-e seems like the route for that) that is all the equipment such a gamer would need and so I think games akin to Dragons Lair and the TV show "nightmare" would have been possible. Also, since lightwave3D used the toaster, I think custom outro animations could be rendered as you played the game so your game's ending would be tailored to how your character played. I do think however, things like Chroma effects and swapping of background images could be done live in gameplay like the TV show nightmare.
Lastly, I will add that of course the toaster forced prerequisite hardware as with the SCSI HDD inputs and outputs and RAM and CPU etc. So this would improve game quality massively. I suspect (but would gladly stand corrected) that their may be some other registers that could be utilised for redundancy not all that differently from how amiga demo coders use redundant registers to hold dat a temporarily since it is faster to use, say cache friendly routines than painfully slow RAM (which hte amiga had). With that register trick in mind (if possible) I think the Toaster in that regard would have a subtle "extra usage" a bit more on the "humbleness" level of the blitter chip. While these days it might be scoffed at when compared to a Warp3D graphics card, the bonus it added to gaming on the amiga back in the day is something many games would have not been able to do without. In fact they benfitted from the blitter chip immensely. so Ithink in that "humble" level, the video Toaster may have potential as a "gaming graphics" boosting hardware for the amiga. It is also (and this is important) a "legit" (i.e. not anachronistic) piece of amiga kit officially of the er and thereby "legit", and a "dream machine". Considering the CDTV existed, it is a pity the Toaster could not have been more popular and used in gaming.
On a side, unrelated to all this, the fact that it is not in amiga emulators is a pity as mimicking its input and output would be cool and so would reverse engineering its drivers.
Epic comment! I love your idea. Unfortunately CD32 was not popular here in the USA. I would love to have one. But the concept of the Video Toaster game and FPGA are great. Even if people are missing some pieces they are not difficult to source - except maybe the CD32, that baby is increasing in value!
Yeah I heard about the absurd legal reasons for the cd32 being delayed in USA (so I think americans get it from Canada). I guess they could not rename it because all the printing and plastic moulding would have it on the console.
The way the amiga tried to be mainly about business machines (CBM) seemed so silly when blatantly it was for games in hte eyes of the owners. I think commodore would have been better to market it (and thereby design models of it) to europe for gaming sine that is where it was strongest. Then what would have happened is USA would have demanded it (and of course CBM would have gladly extended provisions to USA). So in other words, never making the a500plus (even though I respect the machines) would have been wiser and never making the a600 would have been wiser.
My above comment does not apply to that though (lol) because CBM *did* make the plus and 600. I think by 1994 they should have simply stuck a removable upgrade 68030 circa 30MHz or 33MHz (with on/off switch maybe near the zorro) inside the a500 and called it something like the a500superduper (or whatever, they can call it "tom-dick-and-harry" for all I care) and released that when the PC computers had those speeds. That would be a better way to spend money rather than worrying and RandD on the a600 or plus or money on making and marketing those.
Whatever they did with their box machines a3000 or a2000 etc., I wouldn't change or don't care if they do change or not. Then they could just keep churning out that "superduper" (assuming the a590 from 1989 worked with it - although of course, like I say their should also have been a SCSI boot option for CDROM) until the a1200, and then the A1200 (which btw should have come with a CDROM as mandatory which would thereby massively improve games and software and sort out games-copying problems) should have been released in 1991with a PCI port, not pcmcia. So, all those a500 machines with a 68030 in them (or whatever chip ran at 30MHz) would have sold for sure. In the UK I remember time and time again people buying an a500 at £400 even though a PC would dwarf it. It was for the games and they all wanted what their mates had. It definitely would have sold. The library of games would have been great then for the a1200 (but that too would have needed such a CPU if not better, like maybe two CPUs in parallel, and maybe 4meg and that mandatory CDROM).
Really, I think alot of amigans would have been choosing then to opt for extra RAM. So you'd basically have a stock a500 but with a 30Mhz (or so) CPU and 3meg of RAM. Games with that standard of RAM and MHz would be pretty darn impressive, I reckon. I anticipate games like Rocket Ranger would have looked even better.
" _Shoulda Coulda Woulda_ "
Wow, I actually learned something today. Thanks guys!
Whoo-hoo! Thanks guys! Amazing that we are actually able to produce anything useful, lol
fantastic video. looking forward seeing what other treasures you guys uncover and document. cheers!
Thanks MVG! I can't wait to do more digging!
I had one with my A500 back in the day. Everyone else had a "green" monochrome monitor I had 4096 colors and a multitasking OS on a 40 mb scsi hd with 2 mb fast ram. Those were the days. Scanning in photos from my kodachrome and sharing them on BBS. Those were the days my friends I wish they never had ended. :)
Thanks for this. What would you want in a modern day Amiga HW, Software? I was wondering if the Amiga could be put in a SOC and be incorporated into modern mb hw?
Thanks for sharing your story Jerry, I feel you too. Tough question to answer, but I would like a full functioning OS that is very user friendly, has a beautiful design, and powerful enough to be used for every day tasks as an alternate to Windows or Mac. If it could run on a RaspberryPi or inexpensive hardware it would be awesome,. Of course the pipe dream would be the Amiga as the most powerful and #1 computer in the world with some sort of super awesome tech that I can't even imagine.
Love the Art of Noise Paranoimia background music!
Yeah I took it right from the NewTek Demo Reel 1. I was really afraid that it would get a copyright flag , but thankfully not!
Awesome work guys, love Digiview
Thanks so much Stephen! Love your work as well!
It perhaps should be pointed out that process the Digiview uses to get colour information from a black and white image is essentially exactly the same as was used in the early 3-strip Technicolor process for movies. They'd have specially built cameras that used three strips of black and white film loaded into the same camera, and a special lens with a prism, which would split the light into three, to hit each strip of film, passing through a coloured filter along the way. The film would then be developed and recombined (again, with filters and prisms) to produce colour footage. Of course, this was a hugely expensive undertaking, as you had to deal with three times the footage, with three times the developing, processing, editing and duplication. And naturally, this vastly increases the chances of something going wrong - like the film breaking or melting in the camera, or the mechanisms jamming, etc. So, while it produced truly lifelike colour that was better than any other process available, it was hugely expensive and time consuming, leading to better systems being developed.
I'm also told (by my brother, who is more knowledgeable about these things than I am) that this has also been the underlying principle behind astronomic photography for years. I suppose because it's easier to have a very good black and white camera on a probe, instead of a crappy colour camera (or even a large, better quality colour camera for that matter).
That is a really great point about Technicolor! You know I should have thought of that. I had my head in video land and was thinking along the lines of a 3CCD video camera, but 3-strip Technicolor is way cooler!
The Guru Meditation Well, the essential thing is that with an Amiga and the DigiView, you could essentially achieve the same effect for about $1000 or so what it cost Hollywood millions upon millions to develop. That shows you how much power the Amiga had and how well it worked in the fields of television/video production and graphic manipulation. Maybe if Commodore had got their act together and teamed up with Adobe, Quark Express and Avid, using PowerPC processors when they first became available, things would have worked out differently. As it was (and as I think your interview with David Plesance aptly shows) Commodore was more often than not led by people with no real understanding of their own product, or the market they were in.
Not only Technicolor, the legendary Kodachrome used this technique for still and movie film. 3 separate layers recorded 3 black and white images, and when developed turned into color. This had the effect of not only extraordinarily great looking pictures, but the longest lasting proven archival color method yet obtained. Shot's from the 1920's have shown no color fade almost 100 years later, looking just the same as the day they were taken. My favorite film ever, very disheartened when Kodak discontinued it in 2009, but I'm quite lucky to have many 35mm slides and Super 8mm movies with it.
had lotsa fun with digiview, the memories....
It was so great!
Great video. I guess it wouldn't be too hard to make the little robot setup? I want to use Digi view in a primary school setup to get the kids to learn about computing history, but also to learn about red green blue stuff. No fancy vidi Amiga for that!
Octamed Oh wow, that is awesome Octamed! I love that you want to teach this history in school! Way to go! The DigiDroid wouldn't be extremely difficult to make, but it would take some effort for sure. The thing is - the Droid is just a luxury. You can do the same thing by turning the wheel manually, or if you don't have a color wheel you can just use glass or gelatin photography filters and hold them in front of the lens while you scan that channel. The Droid just makes the process cooler ;-)
Guys you both knocked it out the park again! Whenever I watch one of your videos it makes me feel like a kid. This is probably because you guys act like kids in a candy store, lol. Keep up the great work!! Amiga4ever
Fretter18 Thanks bud! Ha ha, yeah our bodies are old but our brains are still in high school and that will never change nor do we want it too! Ha ha!
Awesome video. I'm confused. It's been over 25 years since I used digiview. I swear the version I had , I could plug any composite video source. And I could capture video frames with one click. And they came out looking way better then what you guys got. Also I could be just old and not remembering it right. LOL!
Ha ha, thanks! You might be thinking of another device that is similar called DCTV. You didn't need to split the signal into Red Green and Blue and the quality was much better. We just shot a video about it so stay tuned! You could plug a composite video signal directly into DigiView, but that would limit you to black and white only and it was not a one click instantaneous capture. Of course there were many other digitizers back then as well, but I have a hunch you may be thinking of DCTV. Thanks so much for watching!
I still have one, in the original box and all! And with the RGB-splitter and all..
Awesome!
Awesome stuff and very sweet memories, I did have Color Splitter and had lots of fun with it, later I switched to DCTV
It's too bad that the 256 color and HAM8 modes (AGA) didn't come along until late in the Amiga's development. Dynamic HiRes with HAM8 (AGA) was incredible (There are some demos on Aminet I think).
I'd love to see you guys do a hands-on review of DCTV, which was another hardware/software combo that made the Amiga even more powerful. DCTV Paint is, to this day, one of my favorite paint programs of all time. But what made DCTV's method of getting 21 bit color so amazing is that it only needed 4 bitplanes, which meant that you could actually do real time IFF animations with it; Basically any animation that could be done with regular HiRes on even an original chipset Amiga!
Nice JW3HH! I love DCTV. I basically replaced DigiView with it. I also have the RGB converter for it. It is on the top of my to-do list. I did bust it out for Vintage Computer Festival East. You can get a taste of it here: th-cam.com/video/HEIesAtmKfM/w-d-xo.html
Hi Guys. back in that day I became graphics with the likes of Digiview, DCTV and a board called Opalvision I ran on an Amiga 1200 with an external video slot I made. It was quite an era. Not enough credit is given to Amiga treasures that were imagined on such a basic machine. Today I use Cinema 4D version 19 that was used by me on an Amiga in version 2. Amazing transformation of this software over the years. You guys hit the nail on the head every time. I did not know about the use of the Sunrise box. I knew it existed but never saw it work. I had the Digiview and Digiview Gold of course and fed in many scans through my 1000 and 2000. I was into Desktop Video which was coined by the Amiga and your demos on this are very enlightening to my past. Keep truckin guys. Hey, do you need a Sunrise Perfect Sound digitizer to demo? I still have that box in my drawer with the software to digitize sounds. I'd send it to you.
Thanks guys. My mate had a digitizer, I don't think it was that one though. Sometime around 1992 IIRC.
1992 - Could have been a DCTV. We will demo that one too. There were quite a few digitizers, though so it could be a different one as well. DigiView was one of the first ones on Amiga, if not the first one though.
Well - I live in the UK, and I know it worked with colour (note the correct spelling ;) ) video camcorders. I vaguely recall it was the Rombo one like this: www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=314
Ah yeah, Vidi Amiga. That one was popular too
Great video guys. I didn't realise it but I have the DigiView Gold without the droid. I thought I just had software in the box but when I opened the box there's the hardware including the disks, documentation and colour wheel! I'm going to have a play once I find a suitable camera.
Gary Hucker NICE!!! That is so great to hear! DigiDroid was an add on and didn't come with DigiView which is probably why it isn't in your box. Good luck finding a camera. And old black and white one shouldn't be too difficult to find just make sure you get an NTSC camera if you have an NTSC DigiView or a PAL camera if you have a PAL DigiView. If you live in North America chances are good you have an NTSC
I'm in New Zealand and it's a PAL version. I was given a mono security camera years ago so I'm hoping I still have it.
Gary Hucker right on! Fingers crossed
Used my old DV video camera in B&W mode. You can see my take on it on the Amigos Retro Gaming youtube channel.
Oh cool. I will check it out. The Amigos guys are great!
Lovely videos, guys!! :p
Thanks so much for the kind words PutinWithAnimals!
I had a 4 Head VHS video recorder in 1991 and it had perfect image pause. Slow capture device, I had hours with it.
Oh nice! I had a 4 head machine with a flying erase head at school, but not at home :-(
I guess in theory you could scan vhs with this thing, or record a scan somwhere else with a vhs and sample it into an amiga later.
Matthew Suffidy you could scan VHS but you would need a pro level deck. One with something like 4 heads and flying erase head
Lovely video guys, thx for sharing !
Thanks so much for the kind words!
Same 2 disk demo, made me an Amiga convert. Prior to that I was all Atari. The platform was waaayyy ahead of it's time.
Agreed! I had the same path. Atari 8bit to Amiga!
Very good video!
I wonder what happens if you use a DSLR camera instead of an analogue CCTV?
Wouldn't that be interesting?
Oh I have plans for this DigiView! I hooked my my DSLR to my DCTV at Vintage Computer Festival East. You can see it here: th-cam.com/video/HEIesAtmKfM/w-d-xo.html It would be cool to try it with DigiView as well
Oh yeah! I have seen that video when it first was published!
I will watch the one with the DSLR if and when you'll publish it of course. Actually looking forward to that! :D
I am too, but I have some more plans for this puppy before that. The issue I had with my DSLR is that it doesn't use the full 4:3 frame so you are getting less information than a native 4:3 camera. I want to use my Canon XL-1 camera as well!
Awesome, and true about the dslr 4:3 frame, mine is the same! :D
The Canon XL-1 experiment will be a blast for sure!
I would love to see a "Where are they now?" episode about the models in the still shots. 😀
ahhhh ha ha ha! You and me both! Teenage Bill spent some time looking at those ladies :-)
Had one on my A1000 back in the 80's. I still have a live scan of me where i sat perfectly still why I gently reached to turn the color wheel without moving for 3 passes. Crazy. Digidroid would have helped :)
ha ha! That's awesome. I have a similar idea in mind for some follow up videos to this one
awesome, this brought back some great memories. Amiga rules
Right on Dan! Thanks for watching. Busting this baby out brought back some great memories for us as well!
Wow just wow. My first video digitizer was or my mac 8500. To think I could do stuff like this when I had my Amiga. Mind blown.
Awesome stuff, right?
The Guru Meditation the more I learn about the Amiga, the more mind blowing it is. I was given an amiga 1000 when I was five. I had to teach myself everything. I even remember the day I learned about sliding the plastic tab to save files on a disk. I have fond memories playing space quest 3, along with dozens of other games. Everyday I’d come home from school and spend hours using dpaint.
Another memory that stands out is playing Shanghai with my father, winning revealing the dragons eye.
Wow awesome Aaron. Thanks for sharing your memories with me. This is really great to hear. AMIGA4EVER!!!
I have the parallel device by itself. what would happen if i had a color video source go into it directly? alternately, could i use any b/w camera video source and basically just insert color transparencies of those three colors in front to fool the digiview? or was there something more specific about the hardware for it to work?
Thank you for this excellent video. I had no idea of this retro 3-pass way of "scanning" :) More! More! Dobra robota!
You are welcome! Thanks for watching and for the comment. Yes, we have a lot more hardware demos like this coming so stay tuned!
Does anybody know the wiring for the digidroid? I believe you could use a regular rc plane servo for this project.
I don't but I will look into it. I bet you are correct
Still have the DigiView for my A1000... Sidenote, the picture for Edison Carter ("Max Headroom" TV show character) on Wikipedia, for a very long time, was a screencapture I did from my VHS of the show, using DigiView on my Amiga... (bottom of this page: umlautllama.com/Image/2000/10/amiga/ )
Also, Nice Bogen tripod mount on the bottom of that camera. ;)
I kinda want to get a digi-droid now... are schematics available for it anywhere?
Oh that's awesome! Great image and web page! I never had good luck capturing from VHS. I never tried the LaserDisc until we did this episode because I had the Amiga setup in that basement and the LaserDisc player was in a stereo rack up in my room. I guess I was too lazy to disconnect it and bring it down, LOL! Good eye on the Bogen tripod mount! bonus points for you! I needed a 1/4" 20 screw in a pinch so I just grabbed that mount, ha ha! I don't know if there are schematic for DigiDroid. I have never seen them. Thanks for watching and sending me that image!
@Scott Lawrence, That's technically piracy. You rebel!
I Like My first newtek lightwave, digi paint, imageFX, photogenics and more more more for Amiga and AmigaOS4! ✌️
Yep! NewTek produced some amazing stuff! I just got a physical manual for ImageFX and can't wait to experiment with it as well!
I still have one, I just need to get another Amiga.
Do it! They are just getting a bit expensive these days
Great trip down memory lane, We created a demo with almost exactly the same setup, same type of video camera, with the DigiView Gold and colour wheel, even down to the lights at the side, although we constructed a wooden frame to hold the camera as we did not have anything as posh as a proper frame as you had.
Our demo only used Hi-res 16 colours, but the quality that you could get from this setup was amazing in it's time.
Here's a video grab of the demo (Although it ran much smoother on a real Amiga)
th-cam.com/video/X3dxVcUl45Y/w-d-xo.html
Thanks AmigaOne! Great job with your demo! Quality scans. It is tricky to get scans of that quality with DigiView. Way to go!
@@TheGuruMeditation
From your comment below: "Digitizing was a very big deal and something I feel the Amiga did better than other computers of the time."
Well done, you've typified Amiga euphoria: Feelings.
Your own personal sense of excitement is no kind of objective measure.
The main driver of those feelings isn't that what you're looking at is entirely remarkable. Look at your own demonstration, it takes until 16:25 before you get there, but there it is.
Now, compare this to the sort of image used in publishing and you can immediately see why this would not have been used. It may well be cheap but - if we're allowed to measure this with personally reflexive language - by reprographics standards, not only of its day but of years preceding it, that's crap. The Sunday Times has been publishing a colour supplement since 1962 and the images were better than this one from the very first issue. I'd ask "by what standard are you becoming exciting by this?", but I know the answer: It's the standard of things you can personally afford and easily use. I can't deny it's a totally appreciable personal response, but what Amiga enthusiasts also can't deny is that not everybody who wanted colour reproductions had either the budgetary or technical limitations you did, nor the same Amiga evangelist devotion to doing everything on the an Amiga, even when it hurts you to do it.
If you're impressed by this, how do you think professional colour publishing existed?
www.beatchapter.com/sunday-times-magazine-109-c.asp
Meanwhile, thanks to their widespread use to digitise printed documents in offices scanners have been commodity devices on PCs and Macs since about 1984.
So you sort of look at this as a professional PC user and think "This is it? This is the legendary Commodore Amiga? The home computer for which all sorts of exuberant claims of its graphics superiority are made by its advocates?". Whenever I see a demonstration of it made by enthusiasts my jaw hits the floor for exactly the opposite reason you'd expect. It may be cheap, but boy oh boy, it really shows. It looks like exactly what it is: It's the sort of thing you buy from a supermarket and give to your children, which for many people is exactly how they were exposed to it.
14 year old me had such a crush on Kiki Stockhammer
Ha ha you are not alone. I think some of us still have that crush ;-)
Great equipment! Good video :)
Thank you!
love your channel
Aw, thank you so much. That really means a lot to us. Cheers!
EXCELLENT video!!!!!!!
But, I have to know.... You just may have an undoctored version of Star Wars there....
Does Han Solo shoot first?
Thanks! Yes, that is the doctored version! Han always shoots first ;-)
Retro basement heaven
Thanks! I love it down here!
are you guys shooting a canon c300?
Yes, both a Canon C300 and a Canon C300 MKii
@@TheGuruMeditation yeah nice. I'm C100 mark ii user :)
@@tanuki2k Excellent!
The color filters should have a way better build quality and at least be cleanable.
Matthew Suffidy yeah they are standard gelatin filters housed on that cardboard. I am surprised that wheel is still functional. It has taken a few lumps!
ALL THE DVD PLAYERS!!!
Great vid, always. ;)
I always wanted a Video Toaster after seeing things like Babylon V, and SeaQuest DSV on TV.
(and then realising that most of that was just Lightwave, and about 30 Amigas. lol)
Still need another Laserdisc player too.
I have Independence Day, Die Hard 3, and Empire Strikes Back on LD (sadly the Special Edition), but no player atm. lol
Thanks as always Ash! Nice! I remember it being a big deal the first time they released Lightwave 3D by itself without the need for a video toaster. I have a pile of LaserDisc players in that garage if you want one ;-)
The Guru Meditation
I'd love a player, but it would be wayyy too expensive to ship. hehe
Thanks anyway, dude. ;)
ElectronAsh You will just have to come to one of our Westchester Amiga User Group parties and pick one up!
Great, awesome, fantastic.
excuse me! wasnt dynamic hires and dynamic ham 2 different things!
dymamic was new color pallete per scan line!
copper chip loads new colors per scan line.
hires ham on ecs/ocs is interlaced mode not 640 pixels there is no dma time on ocs/ecs to have ham in hires.. not possible.
it is new color pallet per scan line.
which uses more dma time due to load color register in horizontal blank time
can do in any mode
but it take more data aswell so file sizes will be a bit large
This is really really cool.
Fredrik Rambris Thanks so much Fredrik!
For those interested, here are some of the source images from various Amiga slideshows eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=72389
ibuksal Awesome! Thanks so much for that link!
Sweet memories ❤️
26 minute video for about 1 minute of interesting content. For those who want to cut to the chase the result you wait almost 25 minutes for is here: 24:53
Build Aros amiga os computer from old computer parts and see how fast it can be you would suprise or laptop with Aros os.
Yeah, building an AROS machine is on my to-do list for sure! We had a demo of it at last month's Westchester Amiga User Group meeting.
The Guru Meditation Excellent.And keep up goodwork that you are doing.Great videos and interviews.Thx for the answer.
Thanks for the encouragement! It means the world to us!
In Poland everybody used cheaper and better alternative FG24
It is only better if you scan while drinking Polish vodka ;-)
nah, it was really strong. and you could use extra bandwidth of A600/A1200 PCMCIA amiga.resource.cx/exp/fg24plus
I never saw one, and I don't think I will miss the computer
Az életemet rá merem tenni, hogy a pápaszem meztelen nőt csak képen látott. Az autómat meg arra, hogy homi.
This would be more enjoyable if you didn't take so long to get to anything. I've noticed this on every video of the handful I've watched. A little more concise editing and writing would be a huge improvement.
FIRST!
POW! Enjoy!
you could do 1.8million colors with newtek.;,by itself 32,768 colors in ham mode at once. Just need more ram then 256 k irony 6 more bits or 18bits