explodingdog
Month
Everybody okay?
it was about the Thin Lizzy song “Jailbreak”. Does anyone know where it is?
Someone asked and I thought it would be easy to find but I can’t find it.
Yeah, it wasn’t just amazing. It was truly revolutionary.
At that time, if you wanted to edit video, you had to go to a professional editing bay and it was expensive. If you wanted to do digital video effects, it was even more expensive. The idea that you could do it in your home or your own studio for about $10,000 was unheard of.
To put it into perspective, the video switcher alone replaced about $100,000 worth of equipment. And the 3D modeling and animation package (Lightwave 3D) turned an entire industry upside down. shows like Babylon 5, SeaQuest, and I think even one of the Star Treks used it for visual effects.
It’s not a stretch at all to say that the Video Toaster, and especially the Video Toaster 4000, created the world in which we all take iMovie for granted.
I loved what we did at NewTek in those days, and I’m super proud of what I helped make and market. I only wish that I wasn’t a 20 year-old idiot with no perspective at all, and that the distribution wasn’t so far behind the technology. Back then, you could make amazing films and live TV shows with the Toaster, but the only way to get them to an audience was through the mail, or public access. We all thought that satellite and digital cable would change that, but it didn’t, really. The thing that closed that gap, ultimately, was YouTube.