REALITY CHECK çddf,faa,afa,aaf,faf,ffa,aff ³-------------------------------------- ¾Reality Check ¢By²:¹ Plugster/Defiance ³-------------------------------------- ²what is happening while all amigans are picking their noses ??? just the other day i read an article about the new VideoCube from a company called ImMax, it is a non-linear on-line editing system based on ( you guessed it.... ) a powermac.... non-linear video-editing has been available on a professional level for about 4 years now, non-linear on-line video-editing ( which requires a much, much higher picture quality ) is pretty new and several companies are now introducing their new systems... what have we got for the amiga to show ??? nothing really... at least not something that can compete as an editing-system with any ( new or old ) of the other non-linear editing system ..... sure these systems cost an arm and a leg ( and you'd probably have to sell your grandma too ... ), but you get what you pay for ..... i do a lot of broadcast video-editing work and about a year ago the company i work for needed a new video-titler, so i suggested to buy an amiga 4000 and use scala for the titling .... they did shop around and get some offers so they new what the prices were, but then the 'ones that had to decide' refrased the question to "are we going to continue on the amiga-level or are we going to ¶²continue on a professional level?" .... so they ended up buying a 'professional' titling system that costed them $50000 ( btw it runs on a MC68020 with a 68881 and a lot of custom circuitry... ) sure there has been a lot of ignorance influencing these people, but i think that the amiga community at large is very much responsible for this image of a gamesmachine-and-good-for-nothing-else that the amiga has to put up with...... after all.... commodore has never done any marketing what so ever.... so the image the amiga has is based on what amiga owners had to show... if you think you need an amiga 4000/060 with cd-rom, 32Mb ram and 1 gig hd, then why is it that you do not want to pay for it ???? how many of you have bought the par-system for home-use ???? none probably.... ok there may be some wealthy exception to the rule .... but lets face it .... most of the expensive and resource-hungry hard- and software are of no use to the vast majority of home-users ..... i don't see any dads editing their summer-holiday videos on a non-linear video-editing system..... knowing the trouble involved in the process.... sure... the par is targeted at the low-cost video-production marked, but hey, it's a big world out there and any company is only going to invest once every 3 to 5 years in equipment ¶²so they tend to go for the 'bit more expensive but very compatible with larger systems and easily expandable'-systems..... hate to say it but the amiga-based systems up until now lack in this field..... if the amiga is ever going to conquer the world as the best multi-media-machine-ever then you have to seriously address these kind of things ... people who really need the hardware are willing and able to pay for it... only those who think that it would be cool to play rise of the robots on an amiga 4000/060 with cd-rom, 32Mb ram and 1 gig hd do not want to pay the full price... if you really do need the hardware options then this means that you are in some way or another involved in a professional video or multi-media business, which means that you can and have to adjust your hourly rates to be able to offer your clients exactly what they want, to properly serve them and thus you will have no problem spending the above mentioned arm and leg..... if you are not involved in a professional video or multi-media business and still think you need the hardware, you either now why it is priced as it is or you should just sell your computer as obviously you are incapable of valuing it correctly anyway..... there also is another way of looking at the whole situation; what do you ¶²want the amiga to support or be able to do ??? anything ? or just anything that doesn't cost anything ??? the last one ofcourse being the least exciting one.... face it, cutting edge technologies cost an arm and a leg and if you want the amiga to be able to handle these technologies then some conditions have to be met..... and those will involve expensive hard- and software setups... so what does the world look like right now? until very recently almost all of the sound-studios outside the u.s. were using atari as their main 'do it all' computersystem.... right now they are almost all switching to macs..... amongst the non-linear video editing systems the macintosh has always had a very firm base.... several leading systems were based on macs and that seems to continue or even increase..... the developments in this field are still moving incredibly fast and it seems that the end of this will not be reached for some time to come .... so basically it might not be too late to join the game .... but we will all have to get used to soft- and hardware demanding certain minimum setups ( eg .... A6000/xICS, 32Mb ram, several gigs hd, etc ... ) it should not be any issue at all to drop support for ks<3.0 .... the difference between ks3.0 and 3.1 are minimal so one *might* consider supporting both...... but frankly, i can't blame the new company if they were to abandon ks<3.1 altogether.... what i think is the only way to make ¶²the amiga survive is to have it outperform any powermac setup conceivable, no matter what the costs are... as said before, those who need it are willing and able to pay the price.... this makes it possible to mass-produce the new technologies, and thus dropping the prices and slowly bring these technologies into reach of the ordinary user..... the amiga will never be a widely supported, meaningful system if it keeps conforming to those stuck in the past and unwilling to spend some extra money to at least keep up.... nor will it ever get anywhere by demanding that everything should always be able to run on a cheapest setup available, again, sorry but if you are unwilling to pay for a proper system ( by this i mean a system capable of handling your tasks in the best possible way ) then where do you get the nerve to demand everybody else to conform to your standards..... sorry, you lose ....