The Video Blender is an external genlock for the Amiga which supports video switching, luma keying, 24bit local colour generation, video fading, wiping and audio mixing. The Video Blender has four video channels which are Composite (with pass-through), NTSC RGB (externally synced), Amiga RGB and internal colour generation. A time base corrector is not required for most video operations.
The Video Blender provides black burst out for studio and professional video applications, and provides 'key in' for external chroma-key and special video devices. Hardware control of hue, saturation, and contrast is provided through the Video Blender's front control panel.
Audio control is handled by two stereo input channels which may be blended through synchronisation to video, in fades and wipes between video sources, or through user-timed audio gain or decay.
Video Blender is controlled entirely through a software interface and is connected via the Amiga's serial port. The software allows 256 levels of red, green, and blue to be selected manually for up to 16 million colours. Select colour fading from one colour to any other colour at an adjustable rate to produce special local colour effects. For precise audio control, the software provides 256 audio volume levels per channel. The software allows 'Video Mixing' between
up to three of the four available channels, at 256 levels per channel.
Luma-keying is provided to achieve special advanced video effects. The Video Blender may key on any user-selected channel, which need not be an output channel. This allows for a variety of advanced keying applications, such as 'weather-map', 'ghost', 'invisible man', 'vanishing', 'transporter', and other video techniques. A user-definable window of any shape or size may be created for 'picture in picture' video effects.
Any IFF picture or animation may be used as a video wipe, either appearing in the wipe, or 'invisible' to the eye and used only as a control pattern for the wipe. The Video Blender wipe system allows anything from standard wipes, such as vertical, horizontal, diagonal, venetian blinds, diamonds, radar, spiral and random wipes, to complex wipes consisting of moving objects, shrinking and expanding objects, or video masking for three-dimensional effects. The MixMaster software provides a paint program and wipe script generator to create simple or advanced wipes quickly and easily, with full control of speed, direction, and other wipe parameters.