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Video Toaster 2 is a true realtime system that takes full advantage of your processor(s). How many realtime layers are available is only limited by how fast your system is. If you have a fast computer and a fast disk array, you can have multiple real time layers. A slower system will be able to process fewer layers and the faster upcoming computers will be able to handle a lot more. How about that? Upgrade your computer and you get more realtime layers! Most important is that fact that everything in the editor is realtime, not just a few selected effects. Chroma keying, DVEs, transitions, color correction, CGs – you name it. It works just as if you had all those dedicated hardware boxes, with a simpler interface and without the associated expense. [an error occurred while processing this directive] To make the system even more editor-friendly, if you run out of computing power it will render the sequence for you in the background while you do other things. During our demo, for instance, we had over five layers of uncompressed D1 video with filters, effects and transitions. We added another layer with chroma keying and the basic disk array wasn’t fast enough to handle it all. Toaster 2 played back the sequence anyway, just dropping frames. It was, however, already rendering in the background. So, as soon as we hit play again, the sequence was already rendered without any effort on our part and it played back perfectly.
The Timeline Editor deserves lots of praise in other ways, too. Like with Apple’s Final Cut Pro, you can have projects inside other projects – which is extremely useful when you edit a weekly show or need to change the monthly specials on TV commercials. All you have to do is work on the specific segments, drop them inside your template and you are done. But Toaster 2 seems to be faster because the interface is extremely well designed and, of course, everything is realtime. I would expect that editing with this system would save tons of time compared to any other system in its price range, regardless of platform.
VideoToaster 2 is not just an editor, either. It is a full-blown multi-input live switcher with a virtually unlimited number of playback devices (called DDRs). What I found extremely cool about the setup is that you can have the DDRs automatically cue the clips for you, just as if you had a videotape operator. If you are doing a news show, for instance, you can have all your clips on a DDR, ready for the broadcast. When you switch from the anchor’s camera to the DDR, it automatically starts playing back the segment. When you switch back to the camera, it automatically cues up the next clip for you, even if you didn’t reach the very end of the previous one (so you that can have a few extra seconds of video at the end for safety). Switch back to the DDR and the next story plays back. It’s truly a work of genius, enabling a single person to run the whole live presentation without a glitch.
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