Timeline Analog 5. John Buck

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      Splane had designed controllers for Nintendo and Sega.

       We wanted an editor to able to take our end product, lay back in a chair, almost put their feet up on a desk and edit in comfort. Our goal was that you should be able to reach any control surface with one hand.

      Splane set about making the manual interface. Kravits and Kurth continued on the new code. Kurth recalls:

       I guess my ideas of video technology came from the form that video was really just one giant database, and why couldn’t the same concept be used to organize video segments in the same fashion. Don, came from a different direction. His world was large cutting rooms, my world was portable.

       My programming was not done so much in the way of bit and bytes, but descriptive "higher languages".

       Adrian was harder to convince. Assembly code had been his life when DOS/MS DOS ruled the world. The concept of "readable code" coming from this young girl was a bit hard to believe.

       Don, on the other hand, having used a Mac/Apple, thought nothing of it. Our debates and corresponding "show and tell" revolved around data organization, how a Windows operating system worked and exactly what was perceived to be "intuitive" in terms of a user interface.

       Coming from a background, where most of my users were less than technical, film editors looked like scientists by comparison. Don had a vision for editors, a literal timeline or strip of film displayed on the screen, but was not so hooked into the lower half of the team, the assistant editors.

       He wanted to display a "set of boxes" like in the film/video storage rooms but I wanted to bring the assistant out of the storage room, with all of its multiple mouse clicks to open and shut data files. I wanted the video, ready to use on the screen, with only the process of mapping video segments onto a physical script.

       If you want the next line, flip the page. And it flowed for the editor as well so, not only could the editor read what was being spoken, but see exactly how many takes were done for a line, in just a glance.

       The Ediflex patent was there; the only thing different was the visual script, instead of a lined representation, the physical presentation won.

       BURGESS AND UBILLOS

      Alias Research was far from video editing systems and moving further away from profitability. Despite being a leader in 3-D graphics software (next page) used in films like Terminator 2, the Toronto firm was near bankruptcy.

      The company’s board hired Rob Burgess away from Silicon Graphics to become COO. He cut the Alias workforce and closed a division in Europe. In time Burgess made the same tough decisions at a company that held editing's future.