Timeline Analog 4. John Buck
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Название: Timeline Analog 4
Автор: John Buck
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческая литература
Серия: Timeline Analog
isbn: 9781925330182
isbn:
The concept video also reminded everyone of a technology conundrum. What could be imagined was often not able to be built. Apple's Group Product manager Tyler Peppel cautioned in an interview for InfoWorld:
Knowledge Navigator is not a product plan but a vision of where we could go.
Jean-Louis Gassee was Apple’s President of Products:
Multimedia is not poised for success like desktop publishing was in 1985. Those who think otherwise will be in for a major disappointment. I have every confidence that the required hardware building blocks will eventually become available and affordable, but the transition from desire to reality will be much slower than in the case of DTP.
Pundit Jonathan Seybold cautioned in the LA Times.
People habitually overestimate the speed with which something happens in the short run and underestimate the impact in the long run.
In future, the Knowledge Navigator became an Apple product suited to many professionals including editors. A handheld device able to edit graphics, multitrack audio, broadcast quality video and real time special effects capabilities. But an iPad with Final Cut X and Siri was more than twenty years away.
STOLEN GOODS
Fifteen months of work culminated in October 1987 with the launch of Digital F/X’s first shipping product. Jason Danielson recalls the technical preview of the DF/X 200 Production System at SMPTE in Los Angeles:
We were scrambling to get all the code written and complete before we opened the booth which had a banner that said we were “A Paintbox and ADO but in a single box". The trouble was then that the system kept bugging out so we decided to take the banner down.
With its modern GUI and digital throughput the DF/X 200 signalled where the online postproduction industry was going. Here was a single unit capable of compositing and special effects without any image degradation. Danielson recalls:
It was different from anything you had ever seen but as a brand new company trying to persuade people to ‘bet their whole farm on us‘ we needed to get back to the lab after SMPTE and get it right. Many of our first customers were critical in helping us grow the product incrementally and turning it into a real workhorse.
While most of the attendees flew home from the SMPTE show, the Digital F/X team had chosen to have their only prototype driven home by an employee in a rented truck.
We couldn’t risk having it packed in a commercial container and the time delay that would happen. Our deadline, that we thought at the time, was very tight and we figured it was quicker to do it ourselves and recommence work in the morning at Mountain View.
The DF/X 200 prototype and spare boards were stolen from the rental truck overnight. Clarke recalls the blow.
The police were involved. We posted rewards but it was never recovered and we always wondered why someone would have stolen it but the theft set us back at least two or three months. We had to acquire parts and rebuild the whole unit from scratch at the same time as we were preparing for the launch of the next software release. Heck of a hurdle and we still need to make NAB 1988.
THE WHIZ
Pete Fasciano and Tom Sprague’s VizWiz had started with a TR-5 VTR, a timebase corrector and an IVC camera crammed into a small van. With a run of success the company had evolved into a dedicated 20,000 feet facility in downtown Boston.
We were a very active company of 50 people using five editing suites, audio mixing suites, a large dedicated studio, 2 Postbox systems and a design area. So we knew a thing or two about post and editing but we were also seen as being innovators. In November, Bill Warner made a time to come in and talk with me and to get my feedback on what he was doing.
He had just hired Jeff Bedell, in fact I recall it was Jeff's first day and he showed me a VHS copy of the hypercard UI demonstration that he and Jeff had created.
I watched it a few times and listened to what Bill had to say and then I offered up my opinion. I said, "I understand the technology, I know what you want to do but this is not the way editors think. Give me a few weeks, I will write a paper for you and perhaps we can talk again".
Fasciano diligently plotted out what a digital nonlinear editing system needed to do, to be successful.
Bill knew that I had come to be known as the video wizard of Boston, hence the name of the company VizWiz. Bill and I talked on the phone a few times and then we had a second meeting of five hours where I went through the document I had written. I explained to him some of the larger concepts of videotape based postproduction versus film editing, as well as what I saw as the key areas he needed to focus on. Bill code named the editing system I had outlined as the Oz.
The "Oz System" was probably more appealing to video editors than film editors. It had a Record and Play interface (his notes above) made popular by linear systems in edit suites using video machines and it was based upon the need to use timecode for trimming, editing and finessing.
A paragraph from his notes included:
Online and offline editing systems up until now have been largely the same. Offline systems are simply less expensive versions of online systems and, therefore, subject to similar creative constraints with respect to speed and linearization of the video editing process. Normal offline systems are not faster or more flexible than online systems. They are simply cheaper and that's the only advantage they enjoy.
Jeff Bedell recalls.
We left that demo with Pete and agreed that we needed another UI. It was originally going to be a two-monitor approach like basic tape-to-tape editing but with a touch screen UI that was more modal. With touch-screen back then the area of sensitivity for a screen was at odds with what we needed so we dropped that and focused on the simpler iteration that Fasciano had outlined in his Oz brief
Warner spent weeks collating his research from various industry sources as Fasciano adds:
He rang me with few questions and then invited me to come out to Avid at the start of the year.
Eric Peters wished he could contribute more to Avid than just his spare time and weekends, but he had good reasons not to leave his full-time position with Apollo Computer. It wasn't that he doubted Bill Warner, or the start-up's chances of success. Peters and his wife had just completed the home study process of adopting their second child.
Having waited months for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to process their paperwork, Peters knew that a move away from a safe job at Apollo could jeopardise their adoption.
We had to prove that we were, as they say 'stable' people. So we waited.
Using accrued leave, Peters joined Warner at SMPTE in Los Angeles in November 1987.