Video Toaster
 

As you may of seen from some of my previous posts I work for a city goverment tv station and were updating are live production room. were looking to pickup a 8 channel mixer my boss was looking at a panasonic board but I noticed that for just a bit more we could get a toaster setup which would also take care of our graphics, plus would alow us to run video of a harddrive instead of a deck which would come in handy. has anyone else used one of these before and what were your experences?

other plusses to this route it would give us also another editing station when were not doing productions. which would also help us out a bunch

also what should I look for in a turnkey setup for one of these how much am I looking at and who would be a good place to buy from.

Hello,

I own a VT3.. one question I would ask in your post, you mention needing an 8 channel mixer, i am guessing you meant a switcher and not a mixer?
If that is the case the advantages of the Toaster are many, you get a uncompressed video, paintobox, character generator,editor , vectorscope, Lightwave 3D animation package..and more..I have owned the Toaster for about 5 years.. and it is a solid product..
The only downsides i can think off, are one it is a computer and
no matter what they can crash..( I have not experienced that yet..) that can be a negative for live productions... and the toaster largely depends on the host computer for its horsepower.. so a fairly powerful computer is required to run it..lots of ram and cpu power is good.. and fast drives for the video.
some good resources are here

www.videotoasternt.com
www.newtek.com

I cannot suggest a dealer, but there is a section with dealer listings on the newtek site..

mike m.

yes I ment switcher.

have you used your toaster for live productions and if so how intuitive is the interface. if we go this route the operator will have to be running both the toaster and the camera control software on another computer.

Hello,

It is pretty straigtforward to use..It is just like a traditional switcher, but on a computer screen.. you can use the mouse to control it, it even has the T-Bar.. or there are keyboard shortcuts that control everything..there are also video decks on screen which can be cued from.. they even look like traditional decks.. All easily learned in a couple of hours on the computer..

i do not know where you are located, but i would suggest you find a dealer or attend a show to do a hands on with a system..If you look on the Newtek site here,
http://vbulletin.newtek.com/

there is a sections called shows and events that will tell you places and dates where there are demos of this system..

Mike m

Just my .02, I use a VT3 system at work for our local goverment Commissioners Court meetings. It rocks. Just so you know, while you can control everything with a mouse and keyboard, you can also get the RS-8 which is a USB device that allows you to punch your program and preview shots with large buttons, it has a real T-bar, other buttons for DSKs and etc...It works really well.

I've been using the Toaster since VT2 and seldom ever have a problem. I didn't go through a dealer, I got the biggest baddest Dell I could at the time (dual Xeons, 1GB RAM, SCSI drives, etc..) and bought the Toaster system and installed it myself. It works great. While a turnkey system may be the best route to go, at the very least for support, it is possible to build it yourself.

Newtek has created a fine system for live production. I won't lie and say I've never had a problem. Anything relying on a computer is going to mess up one time or another...but the problems I've had are usually small and don't occur often at all anyway.

Edit: Also meant to say, the interface is very intuitive. I'm able to control 3 cameras in the courtroom, switch between them, and also place lower thirds on the screen...just me. It's a piece of cake.