The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC standard-definition video. The plug-in expansion card initially worked with the Amiga 2000 computer and provides a number of BNC connectors on the exposed rear edge that provide connectivity to common analog video sources like VHS VCRs. The related software tools support video switching, luma keying, character generation, animation, and image manipulation.
Together, the hardware and software provided, for a few thousand U.S. dollars, a video editing suite that rivaled the output of contemporary (i.e. early 1990s) professional systems costing ten times as much. It allowed small studios to produce high-quality material and resulted in a cottage industry for video production not unlike the success of the Macintosh in the desktop publishing (DTP) market only a few years earlier. The Video Toaster won the Emmy Award for Technical Achievement in 1993. Other parts of the original software package were spun off as stand-alone products, notably LightWave 3D, and achieved success on their own.
As the Amiga platform lost market share and Commodore International went bankrupt in 1994 as a result of declining sales, the Video Toaster was moved to the Microsoft Windows platform where it is still available. The company also produces what is essentially a portable pre-packaged version of the Video Toaster along with all the computer hardware needed, as the TriCaster. These became all-digital units in 2014, ending production of the analog Video Toaster line.
First generation systems
The Video Toaster was designed by NewTek founder Tim Jenison in Topeka, Kansas. Engineer Brad Carvey built the first wire wrap prototype, and Steve Kell wrote the software for the prototype. Many other people worked on the Toaster as it developed.
The Toaster was announced at the World of Commodore expo in 1987 and released as a commercial product in December 1990 for the Commodore Amiga 2000 computer system, taking advantage of the video-friendly aspects of that system's hardware to deliver the product at an unusually low cost of $2,399. The Amiga was well adapted to this application in that its system clock at was precisely double that of the NTSC color carrier frequency, , allowing for simple synchronization of the video signal. The hardware component is a full-sized card that is installed into the Amiga 2000's unique single video expansion slot rather than the standard bus slots, and therefore cannot be used with the A500 or A1000 models. The card has several BNC connectors in the rear, which accepts four video input sources and provided two outputs (preview and program). This initial generation system is essentially a real-time four-channel video switcher.
One feature of the Video Toaster is the inclusion of LightWave 3D, a 3D modeling, rendering, and animation program. This program became so popular in its own right that in 1994 it was made available as standalone product separate from the Toaster systems.
Aside from simple fades, dissolves, and cuts, the Video Toaster has a large variety of character generation, overlays and complex animated switching effects. These effects are in large part performed with the help of the native Amiga graphics chipset, which is synchronized to the NTSC video signals. As a result, while the Toaster was rendering a switching animation, the computer desktop display is not visible. While these effects are unique and inventive, they cannot be modified. Soon Toaster effects were seen everywhere, advertising the device as the brand of switcher those particular production companies were using.
The Toaster hardware requires very stable input signals, and therefore is often used along with a separate video sync time-base corrector to stabilize the video sources. Third-party low-cost time-base correctors (TBCs) specifically designed to work with the Toaster quickly came to market, most of which were designed as standard ISA bus cards, taking advantage of the typically unused Bridgeboard slots. The cards do not use the Bridgeboard to communicate, but simply as a convenient power supply and physical location.
As with all video switchers that use a frame buffer to create DVEs (digital video effects), the video path through the Toaster hardware introduced delays in the signals when the signal was in "digital" mode. Depending on the video setup of the user, this delay could be quite noticeable when viewed along with the corresponding audio, so some users installed audio delay circuits to match the Toaster's video-delay lag, as is common practice in video-switching studios.