On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 09:16:22PM -0600, Jack Ungerleider wrote:
> At the risk of lighting some sort of fire I'll offer these comments. ;-)
> 
> Video editing might have been a killer app for Linux. Unfortunatly its not a 
> very successfull killer app, its had its chance. Anyone else remember the 
> Amiga and the VideoToaster? It was used for the in game effects for one of 
> the Super Bowls ('88 or '89 I think). PC Magazine even pitched the 
> VideoToaster as a PC peripheral. (Of course you had to buy an Amiga 2000 to 
> use it.) 

> Conclusion: If the HW/SW available is any good studios will use it
> if it cost less. 

Not a fair conclusion -- when you've got 6-digit gear to depreciate.
It won't happen until the next purchasing cycle.  I remember the Video
Toaster -- I was working in video then, and there were quite a few
video guys who had a great toy to play with, but they would often be a
little bummed that they couldn't bring it into work to use.  There
were a lot of things that were snazzier/easier than CMX editing,
though it didn't come close to a 2" Ampex machine for picture quality.

> TV production companies and news organizations were using
> VideoToasters as "prototype tools" before putting the stuff through
> the 6-digit Grass Valley machines and their equivilants. 

This is true, but it took me a minute to find out how misleading it is
to anyone who hasn't done video editing.  The digital machine was used
for what's called off-line editing, so you can get an edit list made
up and see what it will look like.  Then you use the big toys/tools
for broadcast quality.  Video Toaster was interesting in offline, but
nowhere near reaquired quality for online.

> The parallel rendering engines that have been developed for FX
> production may find a way into other related areas.

If you're talking about Pixar and PDI using Linux clusters, I think
we're getting back to the thread about Pixar moving from SGI to Linux
(in the tclug archives a couple of months ago.)

There -- I don't think there were any flames involved, were there? :)

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