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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


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Last updated 29/09/2017

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