ScuzzBlog: Diaries September 2017 Entry 29th September 2017: Post: 1 Grab some toast Sifting through various boxes to locate hidden and lost disks I came across this RocTec RocGen Plus RG310C GenLock. I have a few of these Genlocks and realise I have never ever used any of them. Back in the very early days of the nineties when I was doing my hand drawn animations and recording to video using a still frame on a SONY HandyCam I often popped into Jessops to look at the video set-ups. There were quite a few Amigas hooked up to video kit and the general use was for wedding videos and titling. Whilst interested I kinda ignored the computer at that time. Dixons were also featuring the Amiga 600 quite heavily but I was more likely to get a better camera in truth and some animation black box for projecting images and taking single shots. I had already sourced some kit and was thinking of buying. November of 1993 all was about to change as I ventured into Lansdown Computers in Bournemouth. This place was like an Aladdin's cave filled with every known Amiga gadget and contraption known. I was drawn to a VidiAmiga box and an image on the box of Christy Turlington a well known American model of the time. I was stunned by the quality and asked Ivan the store keeper how the images were captured. he explained the process. Thing was to do all this I needed an Amiga. I counted my pennies that week and paced back and forth outside the shop. In the end I bought a 1200 Desktop Dynamite set with a whopping 80MB hard drive and the rest is history. Trouble was though it was never enough. Some weeks later I was back in the shop and this time to buy the Vidi-Amiga kit, a RAM card and later a bigger hard drive. The Vidi-Amiga was £100 and the RAM card £200. The hard drive was to set me back another £350 and the monitor was £300. The Amiga cost £550 and I was soon also buying an accelerator for another £350. So in just a few months I had spent well over £1800 and that was without the disks, books and other software. I had spent a year or so back from this £1000 on a SONY Handy- Cam. I also had purchased two videos, a Panasonic with a slow motion pause wheel and a stead fast Akai. You really need frame stability to do any video work. I transferred my activities to the Amiga and set up a small animation bench with backboard and lights plus the HandyCam on the tripod and used VidiAmiga to capture images and put them into DPaint. In truth the quality wasn't that brilliant. What was good though was the animation captures from the video. With the Panasonic and the still frame progression I was able to capture very good animation with precise frame intervals. I could then use DPaint to edit and have fun. I also was able to use AMOS. I was soon also grabbing sound and mixing the whole stuff up. I was in heaven. It was very easy to grab my hand drawn animations and the animation was a dream. My only problem then became storage as I was burning through disks like there was no tomorrow. I am glad I did not come across the A4000 and Toaster at that time cus I think I would have bankrupted myself. It was hard enough getting any sleep as it was. I don't think I have ever enjoyed myself as much as the time I spent with my HandyCAm and the VidiAmiga. I still have all my animations and image disks. Magical time. http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=437 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYcm8KOIDas An early TechnoSound An early TechnoSound With the sample grabber And my original Turbo II version I have the Pro-Grabber among other grabbing kit but never used them. Vidi Amiga that predates my original My original box My original cost me £99 That cost me a fortune in the day My actual Vidi-Amiga now glass cased I still have Vidi-Amigas hooked up and so still use them regularly Toast anyone Never used it

If you can only see this CONTENT window
then click the image above for the full site

Last updated 29/09/2017

Chandraise Kingdom

Keep the Faith