So did you ever get your system up and running with a toaster/flyer combo?
New to the party but old toaster/flyer user here. Tools were great but I’ll admit I’ve forgotten more about my system than I remember.
I have most of the tools from their original makers that are included in the package “DiscreetFX's Millennium” and then some.
It seems AsimCDFS (edit - MasterISO is the actual program) or a similar offering allowed ‘ripping’ of CD’s from an CDRom drive to a CDDA format and then there was a tool to make that file into a flyerclip but I’m dimm on that. I’ve done some lower end musician sessions mixed to an edited final CD back in the day so I know it’s possible. Just don’t remember how.
The idea of using zuluSCSI cards just opened a world of ideas for me! Right now I have 4 9gig LARGE brick drives and several smaller 9gig drives (all for video) and 3 3.5 sized scsi drives for audio attached in 2 large external towers. The Zulu would make all that obsolete! I wonder if FlyerSCSI.device has (VERY) large drive support!?
OZTools were a set of AREXX scripts (among other apps and things he released) automating a lot of operations and allowing for some types of transcoding. I wonder if he’s still around? OZ! Are you out there? You crazy Aussie
A comment above referred to Flyer output being internal. Basically You would arrange ‘croutons’ on a timeline and put effects between the croutons if desired. Each croutons had controls for video and audio and you could split audio if desired or play back only video or audio from that clip. Playback was in realtime to an NTSC output into a VCR. I’m currently looking for a recorder which will take the Flyer output composite NTSC and capture it to digital so I can import into my Mac for YouTube or other distribution and/or processing. There seems to be options available out there and I may have several in the closet here right now.
Not sure if transcoding the dedicated flyer clips to a more modern digital format is available. But you can transcode flyer audio to CDDA format and write to a burnable CD. Again, don’t remember if tools are there to make MP3’s or other audio formats.
As someone mentioned flyer drives would appear on the desktop and clips could be moved back and forth between drives. I used DOPus for this all the time.
When played back the Flyer would sometimes studder if your clips were one to the next on the same Flyer drive. So something a-kin to A/B roll would be used to keep the output going, having sequential clips on different drives on the two video SCSI busses. Ie - clipFA0-clipFB0-clipFA1-clipFB0-clipFA3 and so on. So a lot of time was spent copying clips to alternate drives and replacing them in the sequence. It didn’t always have to be this way. The Flyer would tell you if ‘drive not fast enough’ was an issue but finding this out after playing to tape a 2 hour edit during the last 10 minutes was brutal so A/B rolling was a safeguard and well worth the time.
I could go on and on…!
I left my flyer setup to gather mothballs as digital video became the norm and better compression formats became available. Newtek went on to make the Tricaster (I think it was called) and left the Coaster/flyer behind as well)… pun intended…. so tools for it may have been developed but I was out by that time.
The lure of retro-Toasting is great and I’m looking forward to getting my system back on line to enjoy this again.
Photos are my first Toaster setup on an A2000 (from the 90’s!) and my current 4000 based Toaster/Flyer.
I've purchased a set of ZuluScsi cards with MicroSD as replacements, but since it's running so well I'm probably going to hold off on installing them for a while.
