In Sync SMPTE Output (S249, SunRize Indus- tries) generates LTC (SMPTE) time code and sends it out through the Amiga's audio jack, letting you stripe time code onto audio and video tape. You can use it by itself or as an expansion module for SunRize's Studio 16 audio-editing systems. SMPTE Output locks to the sync pulse of each frame of video when used with a genlock or NewTek's Toaster. The software can also sync audio and video decks together, slave VTRs to the Amiga, and synchronize audio decks using a sync box. SMPTE Output is NTSC and PAL compatible, works with any Amiga, and requires 1MB of RAM. (RS 133). Oscar-Winning Team: Amiga, Toaster, and D2 If you've been dreaming about the day when the Amiga and economical video tools could create an Academy Award winning film your fantasy just came true, T his year, The Empowerment Project won an Oscar for Best Documentary Film with Panama Deception. The group edited the film on 3 4" SP videotape, and color-corrected it through NewTek’s Video Toaster on D2 composite digital tape using a unique capability called “pre-read.” Then believe it or not 35mm film prints for theatrical distribution were made from the video master! Production Coordinator Gary Meyer (now with Sweet Pea Productions) secured US Department of Defense battle footage taped by the Pentagon during the Panama invasion. Production folks combined this footage with video from Panamanian sources showing newly discovered grave sites of civilian casualties. Shot by anxious camera operators under difficult conditions, much of the footage was wildly out of color-halance; some footage came from multigeneration copies of 8mm and VMS sources. The Empowerment Project edited all this, together with interview segments taped in Panama and the US, onto 3 4" tape using tube cameras of varying quality. Co-producer David Kasper sent the edited program to Video-It Post, an innovative post-production facility in Culver City, California, which copied the full 3 4" SP tape over to 1)2 composite digital tape. The digital format stabilizes chroma crawl found in nondigital NTSC video and eliminates generation loss problems. The facility then perfected the shot-by-shot color correction with pre-read, which uses the dynamic tracking heads to pull audio and video signals from the D2 master tape into a special-effects console. This they corrected, mixed with other video signals, fed back into the 1)2 editor, and re-recorded onto the same master tape as if it were a signal from a B-sourcc deck. Video-It (310 280-0505) discovered the potential power of pre-read for low-bud- get producers in 1989 and has since refined it into what they call D2-. The facility networks five Amigas on-line for multiple effects, and uses InnoVision’s Broadcast Tider for text. The D2 pre-read signal is routed through a Video Toaster switcher, which maintains first-general ion master-quality, good enough to make the final 35mm film print for theatrical distribution. At $ 225 per hour this method is much less expensive than 1)1 processing and it’s much faster: The full 90-minute program was corrected in two hours. The decision to do the color correcting on D2 brought the quality level of the entire production up to feature film standards, and on Oscar night die producers of Panama Deception walked away with a golden statue the realization of every home-video producer’s dreams. Paine Hedlund As the keeper of I UN sole A4000, I'm continually asked by co-workers to capture AGA-gen- erated screens. For ibis task, 1 use a PD program residing in the Amiga area of every network QuickGrah i. 1 by Steve Ilines. Operating as a commodity under OS 2.0 through 3.0, ON-LINE SCAN By Tim Walsh M QuickC irab handles AG A screen modes quite nicely. And while we're on the subject of 2.0+ commodities: Most nets harbor version 1.80 of Hans- Peier Guenther's W'COMM. Complete with a clock and palette window, W'COMM lets you cycle screens via user-defined hotkeys. Another commodity, HuntVVin- dows 2.6 by Jorg Bublath, has won rave reviews thanks to its ability to create scrollable screens larger than the visible area of vour monitor. To determine your Amiga's performance in a variety of areas, Amiga Intuition Bused Benchmarks (AIBB) has seen recent revisions and now lingers at version 6.0. Another interesting program, Dashboard 1.4 is an OS 2.0+ utility by Marat 4 4 Favzuilin that uses dashboard- j like gauges to display CPU activity, as well as chip and last RAM usage. For those so inclined, BIX recently freshened its entire lineup of Amiga software tools.