Around 1991, in Ohio, I was at a computer expo where Disney demonstrated much of what you see in this video. It may have been at the University of Akron. It was to a large audience, and it was either on a really big TV or a projector (can't remember which - but I do remember being able to see it clearly). One of the amazing things was the Disney artist demonstrating the software did some drawings of classic Disney characters... with a mouse. And not only that, he apologized because he was right-handed and was using the mouse with his left hand so he could better face the audience and talk to them as he was demonstrating. Of course the drawings looked perfect, and to this day I've never seen anyone draw free-hand with a mouse with that amount of skill.

The Amiga really was a kickass machine.

I remember watching this episode and being floored by the Video Toaster. Simply amazing stuff.

Why is it that 1987 to 1991 or so has the most concentrated 80s feeling, despite being at the very end of the decade and a year or two into the 90s? Having been born in '88 I never realized just how 80s the period from 1989 to '90 or '91 really was.

It's really amazing. Just 6 years before, they were dealing with pixalated green on black terminal machines with only floppy A and floppy B data entries. Then in 1990, they are dealing with 3d objects and video on a color gui.

It actually amazes me how advanced the Amiga and Atari ST were upon their release dates in 1985. Sure, the Amiga 1000 was pricey, but compared to a Macintosh, it was still less expensive, but way more capable. I used to have a Macintosh emulator on my ATari 520ST FM, but it was 10 percent more powerful, plus had a higher resolution display. Decent PC windows, Window 3.0 was years later...

I used the Amiga 2000 with the Video Toaster ($10,000) in a Community TV studio when it first came out, and I could do WAY more from the keyboard than a $300,000 editing and control room of regular analog TV equipement, plus 3D rendering and TONS of stuff that nothing else could do!!! So far ahead of its time professional video people did not know what it was. I could replace ALL the equipment and I could run the whole studio durring a broadcast, live, replacing everyone but the Director, 4 or 5 other people!!! I quicly replaced the VCR opperator as well as doing titles, what they bought it for. I was a computer geek with a modded Atari 800, 256K, with 128K for a ram drive and task switching with cut and paste between as many windows as I wanted and and it blew the doors off the PC XT with paper white monochome monitor and no sound I got later. I very fondly remembet the Computer Chonicles, I doubt I missed many episodes! Thank you for posting these!

This was how small productions got made in the 90s... with the Amiga 3000 and Video Toaster. they did come out with some updates. You could later add more ram, better storage and faster CPUs. The Amiga 4000 was the end of the line in 1997.

Wow, I came across this video and it brought back so many great memories. I grew up using the Amiga in the late 80's early 90's and again a few years later when I attended college as the entire 2D animation lab was based on the Amiga. Truly ahead of its time able to perform functions that Windows and Mac machines either couldn't do or struggled to reproduce the same results in the Amiga heyday. I still remember how the Amiga was panned in the US as a gaming computer, again being ahead of its time. Today, gaming in general is big business to the tune of billions of dollars. Not only could the Amiga run good games back in those days, it was robust in actually creating games, animations, multimedia, video production, sound and music...good times man, good times.

I was so happy to finally get an Amiga 3000. I remember drooling at this machine in high school. But man was it expensive at the time. This machine blew everything else out of the water. If only Commodore management marketed it properly.

I love how they had a segment on computer calendars. That was really a thing back in the day. Part of the appeal of buying an expensive computer was to keep track of your day.

PowerAnimator was used to create the water creature in the 1989 film The Abyss, as well as the T-1000 character in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, at a cost of $460,000 per minute. It was also used heavily for the many visual effects of the 1996 film Independence Day. PowerAnimator also served as the solution used to produce South Park episodes digitally before production was moved to Maya. The title sequence of Disney's One Saturday Morning was created using Alias Wavefront Power Animator.PowerAnimator was also used in game development, in particular as a part of Nintendo 64's SGI-based developers kit. It saw some use for modeling, texturing, animation and realtime effects for other titles and platforms as well. Notable titles: Crash Bandicoot[3] Casper[4] Wing Commander 3 Wing Commander 4[5] Quake I on the movie The abyss they use the cube map for the reflections

Glad these shows are starting to hit KZfaq. Been watching lots of 80s tv here lately

oh the irony of the interview talking about the amazing Toaster and the text on the screen is generated by a Chyron or an Aston which cost 100 times what the Amiga 3000 cost

It was an honour to be a teenager while all this happened. Just bought a Blizzard 1260 PPC 256Mb, mainly to look at SysInfo benchmark.

so so interesting.... because in 1990 I was only 6 y/o and I remember my first time in front on computer in 1994 and internet in 1996.

When i was 18 in 1991 I had an A500 and so desperately wanted a video toaster 😕

My friend had the Amiga 1000, I would go to his house and play Sword of Sodan, my parents bought me the Amiga 500. I went into broadcasting and the first TV station I worked at had the Video Toaster on the Amiga 4000.

So many music videos, tv shows and even movies utilized Amgia computers back in the 80s and 90s.

Allen Hastings the creator of the award winning Lightwave 3D (and later Modo) software makes a cameo in the opening footage of the Amiga user group footage! Back when he had hair! ;)

My first ever home computer was an Amiga 500. I used it for programming and music mostly..I still have a tape with all the songs I wrote..using the wonderful 4 track MED sequencer and later on 'Octamed' the eight track version.

i have a great appreciation of computers growing up in the 90's. Wish i had a Amiga.

This is such a strong set of program and hardware demos. Like, a straight flush. Just incredible for 1990, even those that got less attention: AmigaVision is basically MS Power Apps in 1990.

The Amiga was way ahead of its time, especially when equipped with the Video Toaster. I remember when Pixar was threatening to sue individuals that were making animations similar to theirs using the Amigas back in the days.

The prices in the video are insane relative to today. I remember buying and soldering a 512k(Half of a megabyte) chip onto the board in my Amiga 500(Was 1988) and it cost $150 just for the memory. You had to drill a hole in the case of the Amiga to attach a dip switch which you could flip on or off depending on what you were doing. Some games and applications wouldn't load if the extra memory was running so you had to turn it off. For an example one of those games was Silkworm.

I love how at the end they advertise how if you want a transcript of this episode, just send $4 to this P.O. box.

The guy at 0:10 is the Lord of Vaporwave and doesn't even know it

Wow the Disney animation software looks incredible. I would have had my mind blown as a kid with this.

I still wonder how they managed to do these awesome retro jingles. I was working on TV jingles for couple of years, but some of them never stopped amaze me

Oh, the Amiga 3000...my small town used one for their public access station for well over a decade. I think Babylon 5 used an array of Amigas for their CGI as well.

21:31 - still waiting on the 6-8 decade delivery but I know it will come one day. You dont fool me!

I have a working Amiga 4000 , two Amiga 500s an Atari 1040ST and a Spectrum48+. Fab Machines! Worked with them since 1984.

Ahhh. 80's/90's tv news format. A strange void where all is darkness until the lights come up and two formerly empty husks, eyes cast downward, are roused from their lifeless slumber.

"Please allow 6-8 decades for delivery."

I had an Amiga 500. I always wanted a video toaster. In the Uk we used to have a music show called The Chart Show in 1987 That started my obsession with computers and my thus far 27y career in software.

23:10 Fun Fact, Tim Jenison went on to create a breakthrough documentary in 2013 called 'Tim's Vermeer', He proved renaissance artists mostly likely used mirrors to create their works of art, especially Vermeer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim%27s_Vermeer

21:55 As a concept, LightWave 3D may be the great-great aunt of Blender.

Love those faces on the video toaster. "So you did this in 30 minutes?????“ (and his jaw dropped)

I wonder if, 35 years later, Jeff Burger finally realizes how many office drones' lives he's ruined with that music.

The Toaster really sparked a big wave of budget analog video production. However, by about five years after this, video was moving to digital, and the Amiga couldn’t really keep up. The Video Toaster Flyer was never quite as successful as the original Toaster.

Damn man the video toaster segment is mind blowing.

the popcorn idea sounds neat....you are helping protect the environment as well as getting a free snack with your purchase! :D

Has the best thumbnail on you tube. Eighties guy jamming in the background with many synths before the suit comes in.

I love Jeff rocking his mullet in the background to his mall music.

i used disney animation studio on pc in 92. i did not have the book that was used as an authentication mechanism since the password asked for a set of pictures found on a random page of the manual that my uncle had. i was amazed with the software and had a lot of fun with it.

21:05 "Computer Chronicles has not been hit by a tornado!"

This was amazing stuff back then! I still remember the Toaster

I love the 90s vibe from Jeff Berger, dancing around while creating music. I have a friend who works creatively with audio and video, but he is quite static in comparison. He doesn't even get up from his chair. 😂 How I miss this era!

I want an amiga now :-(

I owned an Amiga 500, then an A1000, then an ultimate A4000 040 with dual 300mb Seagates. It really cranked. Someone from the ABC bought the A4000 to do editing for the TV station.

My first computer wan a C128 but it was followed up by an Amiga 500 as soon as I could lay hands on one... overseas in Japan in the military, wasn't super easy to get one.

PowerAnimator and Animator, also referred to simply as "Alias", the precursor to what is now Maya and StudioTools, was a highly integrated industrial 3D modeling, animation, and visual effects suite.

27:38 Wait what?? Imagine getting a package from Amazon or something these days and finding it filled with *popcorn* instead of bubble wrap or packing peanuts? Would have been insane if that was somehow still a thing. I imagine issues with rodents, among other issues, would have been why this never caught on

2:21 Tim Bajarin foresaw Steve Ballmer's "Developers, developers, developers, developers..."

i dont much about this computer honestly as it was before my time...well i was born then(i was born in 1989) but i was a baby when the Amiga was around. I know 90s computers are now clunky slow dinosaurs but man does the Amiga seem ahead of its time...seems like it was miles of head of all the other clunkers....So why is it defunct? Just imagine if Amiga was around today...

The Animation software is pretty damn impressive for the time. Digital painting where barely possible at the time, let alone animation. Still kinda wants it.

Back when Amiga ruled. Just 2 years later it would get annihilated by the PC. Remember going to my friends house who owned an Amiga 500 just so I could play First Samuari and Moonstone. I never persuaded my Dad to buy me one, but I built a PC in 1993 for Wolfenstein and Doom and figured ... ah well. Got there in the end!

Holy shoot! Disney contributing to/ without being in charge of marketing. way back when.

Good lord I recall buying an A3000 in Sydney for about $5000 AUS$ and also SCALA great program and computer at the time.

imagine if we only had large storage space and high speed internet back then, it would have been an amazing time.

Sweet. I see a YAMAHA DX7, MEMORYMOOG, MINIMOOG/MODEL D, and AKAI S1000 and ROLAND D-550 racks

I remember that bird, on my friend's Amiga 500 and the Disney software!

Towards the end I was half-expected that the news would report that Riggs and Murtaugh had again destroyed a few cars in a high speed chase, to be honest.

That dude was enjoying life. Good for him.

I am seriously thinking in upgrading to the Amiga 3000! It has the video toaster and stuff, imagine the possibilities...

The A3000 was the sexiest of all Amigas. What a great machine.

Lack of distributor support is a understatement. I didn't even know Amigas existed in the 90s. How did people even buy Amigas back then?

I wanted to get either an Atari 520ST or an Amiga back in the late 1980s / early 1990s, but there wasn't any local computer stores that would carry either system. 😢

Was exciting times. I loved my Atarti ST rgb

I think NewTek followed this up with the TriCaster, which around 2010 was a go-to for high-end podcasts.

Amiga is the Acura NSX of computers.

Poor Memorymoog and Minimoog left to abandon.

12:53 now *THAT* is pretty neat!

The good side of the bad old days. Preserve your videos!

Wouldn't be cool if we have Amigaphones instead of iPhones today?! If only things went a different way

Almost nobody in Germany cared about Apple or PC until maybe 90 or 91 on home use. We all used the different Atari and Commodore 8bit and 16bit models. Personally we had a Schneider CPC (Amstrad), C64, Atari Mega ST1, Amiga 500. Friends also had either Atari St or A500. After that we all went on our first PCs (Basically when 486 and later P60/75 came out).

It is faster than any of my today PC app ... I loved so much my A1200

Got a 3000 1990. that was expensive but awesome. Still have it.

What is that calculator-like object to the right of the hand of the guy at 11:19? Anyone know?

Awesome computer! The way I see it, the Amiga 3000 could be an affordable substitute to Silicon Graphics computers which cost way, way more at that time. It's capabilities were way beyond the IBM PCs and clones of the same era. It's sad to know that the company does not exist anymore. Who knows what they could have come up with if they still exist today, considering the level of technology we presently have.

used the video toaster on amigas until 1999 in highschool and I know they used it for some years after until after their jason project funding ended and they used all the hardware for their setup, since it was WAYWAY more modern.

I have an Amiga 500. You can see it in two videos I recorded on my channel from 1988 and 1989 if anyone is interested. Before that I have a Commodore 64 and Vic 20. I even ran an online BBS in the mid eighties.

its amazing how far we have come - AR, DeepFake, Snapchat filters etc.

90s adult people watching this show on their TVs in the 90s thinking if they could have one of these machines!

"notebook sized laptops with built in hard disk drives" that just sounds so wierd

16:26 Full 3 D skeleton model. That thing was awesome!

Awe man I wanted them to play that hi numera newtek demo !

What exactly is a "Video Toaster Board"?

I'll bet that these guys hardly dreamed that by the first decade of the 21st century , people would be editing Independent film complete with CG special effects , and music, on home computer studios. how far we have come in such a short time. . I'm sure our grandchildren will be astounded by the fact that WE did not have sentient AI in our home systems.I can certainly see how all this would have been so exciting to the young people especially of that era . I was a teen from the 70's but did not get my first computer till 1998. It was a windows 98 system. so I missed out on all this early fluff...I watched it , but was not active in it .

Like the "Are you certain?" dialog box.

Loved the news.

Amiga Vision something that even today does not exist on any platform

8:09 The term is “onionskin”.

It was a really fast machine. No wonder why it was famous.

My dream computer of the time, totally beyond my reach due to fobidding price.

Only 3 more decades and I'll get the cassette!

What was the original air date on this episode? Was it April the first?

The PS2 with full motion in the intro. What kind of voodoo magic is that!?

The Amiga had graphics and sound that made us drool back then. Then IBM came out with VGA graphics and you could buy a sound card which got you close, though still not as good

Isn't that "the Wave", 20 meters tall?! Amazing machines