We Had THIS Technology In The 90s for Computers!

[@marcusdamberger]

On the Amiga monitor to get composite input, there is a slide switch on the right side of the flip down cover. It's pretty small and almost hidden, it slides left and right. On the back of the monitor there should be a composite labeled RCA input, or it's likely the yellow RCA. Might be a Y and C input on the back that I think was meant for C64's and 128's that had separate luminance and chrominance output cable. I remember drooling over those PAR cards in Amiga magazine ads. I had worked with a U-Matic 3/4" deck to lay one frame at a time using a serial to parallel controller that could control the VTR down to the field using SMPTE timecode that was on one of the audio tracks. I think the controller cost almost as much as the 3/4" deck. It worked perfectly, but man did it take forever. You would start an animation on Friday afternoon in Lightwave 3D, render each frame; each frame taking however long, usually depended on complexity of animation. Maybe by Monday morning it would be finished for a few seconds of animation. Hoping you didn't get some kind of glitch on tape or stupid animation mistake you made. Usually used virgin tape to get the cleanest playback.

[@DarrenJCrawford]

The PAR was a game changer when I got that into my A2000 with the Video Toaster & Lightwave, I was broke buying all these cards, but happy. 🙂

[@johnsmith1953x]

Well, until the Amiga 4000 with the Newtek Video Flyer. It did LOSSLESS (unlike lossy MPEG) 768x480x4 million colors at 30 frames/sec.

[@SeeJayPlayGames]

@@johnsmith1953x 22-bit color?

[@manueljesus3147]

Poor but happy sums up my Amiga experience from 1989 to 2005. I used that stuff for as long as I could. In 2005/6 I had to switch to HD and streaming and left it behind.

[@aaldrich1982]

luke warm take: old DOS computers , Amigas, Ataris and the rest were good fun in their day but nowadays we're able to enjoy them even more because of all of the fan-made projects which make them better.

[@HoldandModify]

I really missed the simpler software and hardware. Lured me back. I like working with limits and still making neat stuff.

[@TemalCageman]

@@HoldandModify Limits feed creativity... There is no way around it. Depending on what needs to be done, the creative guy using LW will run circles around a Houdini artist in terms of output quality vs time spent. Work smart, not hard. :)

[@SensibleChuckle]

Paused at the open.... Is that the PAR board!! If it is I used one a couple of years and it was astounding for the day! .... Back to the opening... Boy, does that bring me back to a great period in my life when I worked at Alpha Video in Minneapolis as my first job in 3D. I had the PAR board going and never had to do single frame recording after getting it. I was outputting to an M2 deck and it could be done so fast that I could do it while the edit bay was not using the deck for a bit. Only 6 months earlier I was single frame recording on a JVC s-video deck manually with cause and insert edits. Took me 4 months to make the 2 minute demo that got me that job. I didn't do it alone, my best friend did most of that single frame recording when he got home, while I was make the 3D for the next batch of frames to render over night. Last month he brought his Amiga 030 system to me. I need to do a serious clean and retro bright treatment. I'm excited to finally have a 2000 again. I miss the 4000 too.... Someday.

[@HoldandModify]

Awesome!

[@SledgeFox]

If only we had this back in the day, life could have been much easier... Great addition to your collection! Thank you very much. Have a great day!

[@bryndal36]

That was incredible. Amazing what the humble Amiga could do. It truly was an underrated machine and it's a shame it go marketed so badly.

[@HoldandModify]

Couldn't agree more!

[@Thiesi]

I like to say the Amiga was amazing not _because of_ but _despite_ Commodore. Back in the day I knew little to nothing about Macs - their market share here in Germany was hardly even measurable -, but with all the retro tech channels on KZbin these days it becomes very obvious how far behind Commodore was. Seeing how Apple with its abysmal OS on the Mac had already switched to '030 and was about to launch '040 systems when Commodore was still dishing out '020 and even plain old 68k machines (Yes, A600 - I'm looking is you!) is _painful._ It's so very sad considering how many very talented people worked _on_ and _with_ the Amiga. But then I see Atari who failed just as hard, and I think either plenty of computer companies back in the 90s were severely mismanaged, or Apple just got lucky. Well, or both. Then again, where would we be today had the system wars continued for another decade - or two, or to this day? I guess we'll never find out.

[@jjdigitalvideosolutionsllc5343]

YOU bought that!!! I was watching it. I had a PAR back in the day. It was decent quality but there wasn't really a solid way to do nonlinear editing, similar to VLab-Motion or Broadcaster Elite or Flyer. The PAR got around the Z2 bottleneck by putting the harddrive and an IDE controller on the card itself. There may be a size limit on the IDE drive. The TBC4 is necessary IF you want to record video on your PAR. You can dump rendered frames to it and playback without the TBC4. DCTV was closer to 18bit quality. And it produced some fuzzy results and banding in some of the darker colours. It was pretty good for what it was though.

[@HoldandModify]

Yes DCTV was not ideal. I love the PAR for the exact task I always used it for. Putting my animations to tape or being able to see them in all their glory from the Amiga!

[@jimmay8627]

IIRC the thing that you had to watch out for with PAR hard drives was how aggressive their thermal recalibration was. The demo reel that got me hired at Westwood was recorded via an original ISA PAR I got for cheap after the next gen SCSI-based cards came out. This was on a PC, and amazingly was quite usable for editing with Adobe Premiere.

[@HoldandModify]

My “hired” Demo was assembled on a PC using a borrowed Bravada Targa Truevision card and Premiere R/T. :)

[@mikedefoy]

Good addition Q. Its starting to look like one of my old machines. 😅 Had to call DPS and have them step me through getting both TBC-IVs working, there was some short cable that connected them together. Did actually use the PAR card to output completed TV commercials for clients here, pre-Flyer. Panasonic had the AG1980 SVHS deck out at the time that could record single frame too. Stacked both the PAR and OS hard drive in the 5.25" bay. Now you know why I had to put Bigfoot 500W power supplies in each A2000, all slots filled really sucked up the juice. Before long you'll have ScreamerNet running 😅

[@HoldandModify]

Ah sweet! I have that short cable. The kit seems very complete.

[@manueljesus3147]

@@HoldandModify i think the cable was the same as a SCSCI Ribbon cable. I have my DPS PAR in my Flyer Vampire 2 A2000 system. I use it as a video DDR source I can switch too. This was a great tool. When I was in China for toy work I visited some Hong Kong film studios and was happy to see them using DPS products in PC's.

[@keyvanmehrbakhsh4069]

I was nine when I'd been informed about such a thing's existence by my father who was a camera man video producer etc.( I was playing about videos as a kid with vhs's etc) .it had been remained in my mind as a mythical phenomenon I kinda thought my dad is making this up about the name PAR till I finally saw it here.thanks for closing this very important case for me :D.

[@HoldandModify]

THE … P A R

[@jimsteele9261]

That 3.5" hd on the PAR was a lot smaller than the one I saw. He needed a huge 5.25" full height drive. We had to mount it in a PC minitower case. The cases designed for just drives were too expensive. I don't remember his playback time though. The toaster really drove the cheap TBC industry for a while there. They just plugged into the 2000's ISA slots for power and were controlled from the Amiga's serial port. They let you use consumer/prosumer grade VCRs with the Toaster. You needed one for every VCR input you planned to use. It synced horizontal, vertical and color clock so you could do Switcher effects.

[@CantankerousDave]

Only for tape-based inputs. Didn’t need them for laserdiscs or camera signals.

[@jimsteele9261]

@@CantankerousDave I'm not sure about the laser disc, but I'm fairly sure that the cameras had to be genlockable if you were using more than one without TBCs.

[@TemalCageman]

OMG! This is so awesome!!!!

[@HoldandModify]

Hah! Glad you got a kick out of it.

[@Wiscotac]

We are moving into the kewler season as I noticed the handwaving is several levels of better than before, a lot. Nice job getting the legacy hardware up and running again. I hope the old monitor was plugged in or turned on and it was that simple. But no doubt not that simple. Please excuse the sarcasm I had to turn on the heat for the first time this season or else the local boss would never let me hear the end of it.

[@HoldandModify]

Hahaha love this! (yes the monitor was on ;) )

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

i see everything

[@JamesHalfHorse]

Can't stop the Amiga signal.

[@alexanderwingeskog758]

My memory is short, but when I had the A500 (bought a 80 Mb SCSI harddrive :-) I don't remember streaming IFF/ANIM that much it was memory bound. But I do remember a program for my A1200 called "biganim"? or something like that could stream IFF/ANIM files really big ones... Then again 24 FPS (720*576 PAL overscan) was not probably possible ofc But large 320*256 5 bit color IFF/ANIM was streamable from the harddrive as far as I remember. I also do remember setting up (I worked as IT tech in the 90's) a video editing studio (really low budget) in a school that had it as a course... and bought (if I remember correctly again) a Pentium Pro dual motherboard and Adobe Premier (v4?) and couple that with a MJPEG handling graphics card. It worked but you had to save your stuff every time on regular basis because a crash was always imminent. And although it was pretty good digitally, everyone wanted it on the TV ofc... and that conversion was not easy or nice... as the PC, graphics, or programs never really was connected to a PAL TV... so getting your digital video (usually PC resolutions) and then editing them on a PC (with PC resolutions, i.e 640*400 or 640*480 back then) to 720*576 interlaced (or something similar) was hard... and the School did not have an unlimited budget... At home back then I had A1200 with 68030 and the best OS known to man :-) I loved it... But for sure... the Dual Pentium 200 Mhz pro was way faster... I do also remember loving Lightwave, and got a couple of "outdated" PC's and bought one also (AMD K5, 133 Mhz? or 166?) and had neighbors with (Amigas and PC's) and built a BNC network so that I could install Screamernet on all their PC's and all of mine... did the modeling on my Amiga sent the animation on the Screamernet and it was just awesome... but after awhile they did not like the noise of their computers running 24/7 ofc... :-) But I loved watching the (I had the "server" install and ever render got back to my machine... the renders arriving on my machine... Think we had about 8-9 machines in total... and the Screamernet was just awesome it juggled everything so all computers just rendered my anim at 100% duty cycle :-)

[@HoldandModify]

Yeah, but saying PAR is just fun. :)

[@mtrivelin]

DPA PAR. A old friend of my. I'd one, but for PC. Still lurking somewhere at home..

[@HoldandModify]

I never had the PAR on PC. I did get to use the next model, the PVR.

[@mtrivelin]

@@HoldandModify Ah, yes.. I forgot it. I traded my PAR for a PVR. That one is somewhere in a random box that is still sealed after i changed to a new small apartment, years ago.

[@boydpukalo8980]

Pretty cool video. I have considered both the PAR and Video Toaster, but considering the analog NTSC, or rather SDTV, resolution always decided to save a precious Zorro slot for things I can actually use and passed on these devices. Thank god it was not yet another emulation video!😂

[@HoldandModify]

I know I know. I do like my REAL Amigas more too, but I also have some love for my emulation!

[@JamesHalfHorse]

I still want a high end Amiga Toaster with all the extra cards. One of these now that I know it exists.. I dream of using it to do a low rez youtube channel but probably... well I just want it. I lost my 500 and 1200 always dreamed of replacing them and kick myself for not buying nice one when they were fairly cheap. I can probably figure out DPaint but don't know if I can remember Imagine. It's been 35 years. Hopefully when I have that spare money I keep trying to get I will contact the Amiga gods and see if I can get all the parts to build my dream machines.

[@HoldandModify]

Never give up! I’ve thought about making more Imagine videos. I made that one and it showed that…yeah…I dob’t remember at all how to use it. :)

[@JamesHalfHorse]

@@HoldandModify When I put my 1200 in storage where I thought my mother wouldn't give it away I could make simple shapes with it... but no not really good. DPaint was awesome though. It was just stupid simple for making a 2d animation. It's been a long long time.

[@BerndFelsche]

Kewl.😮

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

My par ran the crapiest hard drive ever made. The Micropolis 1GB. Epic size for the day but 80% of the drives were doa From the factory

[@CantankerousDave]

IBM had its DeathStar, Micropolis had its 9gb drives that were doomed to heat death.

[@HoldandModify]

The legendary MiCRAPulous drives!!

[@manueljesus3147]

Mi-CRAPO-lis drives was more like it. They may as well have been tombstones.

[@Checkmate1500]

Actually I may be wrong but I saw NTSC video using DCTV before them ? However nothing as good as this or the German version that I have. Maybe we can replace the Chinesium monitor

[@HoldandModify]

DCTV could almost do it on non AGA Amigas but you had to use the lower bitplane mode AND often not use interlace mode. And DCTV could bot display the full color profile a PAR could. On an AGA ‘040 Amiga you could get really close to FULL NTSC interlace and in full bitplane mode but it was not perfect. Plus you’re limited to system ram for your anim playback for a lot of those early years. So, yes sort of, but nowhere near ideal.

[@Checkmate1500]

As I mention on Facebook my A1000 could do it but not as good as PAR. Commodore CDTV had a plug in dctv full motion plugin card which I saw in the lab but not sure it was released.

[@cp256]

I have a DCTV I bought to use with my original A3000 back in the day with my 8mm camcorder. It was fun to play with, but more of a toy than anything. I wonder if it still works. I still have the 3000 too. The camcorder died over 30 years ago...

[@HoldandModify]

@@cp256 Try it out again. You might find some fun!

[@a4000t]

Par is IDE,why not just use a IDE/CF(or sd) adapter for the PAR hd? would be interesting to see how it works.

[@BerndFelsche]

IDE-SATA bridge with M.2 SATA would tuck in nicely. Also use less power and be inaudible.

[@HoldandModify]

Others have tried. The PAR is very picky. CF doesn’t seem to work. DOM modules fail.

[@a4000t]

@@HoldandModify thanks for the info,i have a par card i haven't messed with yet,and its good to know what works and what doesn't.

[@ivanmedved2539]

Hi I'm looking for software for DPS PAR for MSDOS and Windows. Maybe someone still has it?

[@eijentwun5509]

SCALA with a LANC controller and a DV cam was MUCH MUCH better. S-Video/DVD quality recording. and MUCH MUCH CHEAPER. and all Digital. I was Destryong PC users in the 90's. Also used a DCTV with RGB adaptor and converted Video Footage into single frames and put them back into the Amiga as 16 color DCTV images (which it translates to 16 million colors) and played back smoothly. The Amiga thinks they are 16 color frames/animations and treats them as such so its light. I also used Elan Performer to play them back on an ECS Amiga to VJ. Instant response.

[@HoldandModify]

DCTVs output wasn’t that great. I mentioned DCTV in the video. I’ve done some vids on it. It’s a good cheap solution. Just not to the quality as the PAR’s output. The Amiga was very versatile and lots of animation options. The PAR was one of the best for true broadcast quality 30fps animation playback. Especially from your own desktop without a huge investment in other gear and fancy decks. A simple VCR was all you needed to record your amazing looking animations from the PAR.

[@kelseystickney8663]

"This monitor sucks" . . . the only one that actually works . . . Jesus, stop talking and we might get more enjoyment out of your videos. You do demonstrate some interesting stuff, but damn, the nonstop, ad-lib commentary is stopping me from watching anymore . . . I'll try again a year from now.

[@HoldandModify]

You heard it here. From now on. Total….silence. ;)