NewTek Inc has previewed version 2.0 of Video Toaster, a video controller board for the Commodore International Ltd Amiga that enables the Amiga to simulate professional quality video effects (CI No 1,624): NewTek has added several new effects to its switcher, including animated effects like turning gears and organic effects like smoke and clouds; the Lightwave 3-dimensional renderer has been enhanced and new features include the ability to provide transitions between two surface types, to perform shadow calculations in half the time, to create ray-traced reflections, permit animated texture maps and to add high-resolution output for film recorders; the Video Toaster Workstation is available in two configurations – for $4,000, the workstation includes a Commodore Amiga with 5Mb of memory and a 52Mb hard drive; the $9,000 model includes a 50MHz 68030 processor as well as with maths co-processor, 9Mb of memory and 105Mb hard drive.
