Shouldn't AVID be naming a new CEO soon? I believe the search has been underway awhile. Stock will move when this happens.
Also, AVID at Sundance FYI:
PARK CITY, Utah--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Jan. 28, 2000-- At the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, January 20-30, 2000, Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID - news) is showing the company's acclaimed 24-frame film and new digital-video (DV) native digital nonlinear editing, mastering and re-mastering systems for aspiring digital storytellers. At the inaugural festival of the new millennium, Avid is providing independent filmmakers a glimpse at the aspects that have made Avid systems standard to 24-frame feature film production today, and a look at the features and techniques that will let them optimize projects for the future's wider range of shooting, re-purposing and delivery choices. Several films taking part in Sundance's first-ever digital screenings, including Marc Levin's Twilight: L.A., which was onlined by Moving Pictures in New York, have benefited from these offline and online evolutionary tools.
On hand in Avid's demonstration suites will be the Oscar© award winning Film Composer© film editing system and
the Avid Xpress© system with FilmScribe(TM) Bundle for cost-effective, film-based editing. Making Sundance
debuts this year will be the Avid Symphony(TM) Universal system for re-purposing film-based projects for final
video and television distribution; Avid Xpress© DV software on IBM IntelliStation M Pro workstation for filmmakers
working in electronic cinema who use digital video to shoot and finish, and Digidesign© FilmFrame, which allows
feature film sound editors and mixers to work with true 24-fps integrated picture on a Pro Tools© digital audio
workstation.
Greater Flexibility in 24 Frames
As in past years, a high percentage of films seen at Sundance were edited electronically using Avid's 24
frames-per-second (fps) digital nonlinear systems. This year, several innovations from Avid offer filmmakers even
greater flexibility for projects originating in 24-frame formats - from editing and mixing audio synced to 24-frame
digital picture to generating multiple masters for varying film and television formats.
Digidesign FilmFrame is a software module for enhancing the benefits of working natively at 24 fps in a Pro Tools
audio system, with frame-accurate picture elements created on an Avid Film Composer nonlinear video editing
workstation. With its revolutionary 24P Universal Editing and Mastering technology for editing 24 frame progressive
content in its native format, Avid's Symphony Universal system ensures peace of mind for outputting projects with its ability to handle multiple aspect ratios and deliver NTSC, PAL, 4:3, 16:9, and letterbox formats from a single master.
Prepping for Digital Projection & HD with an Avid Symphony
With many directors already anticipating digital delivery of their films, Sundance has for the first time begun offering
to screen selections electronically in high definition using state-of-the-art digital projectors and Sony HDCAM decks.
One of several Sundance films screening digitally this year is Twilight: L.A. by Marc Levin, the director whose film
Slam won the Grand Jury Prize in 1998. Voyaging in and out of the violent events and emotions surrounding the 1992
Rodney King trial in Los Angeles, Anna Deavere Smith stars in this 85-minute narrative feature produced by
Deavere Smith with Ezra Swerdlow and edited by Robert Eisenhardt.
Because the film was shot on Super 16 at an aspect ratio of 1:66 and needed to go up to the high-definition ratio of
16:9 for HD, Moving Pictures in New York was brought on to online the project as uncompressed video, complete
the sound mix and prepare it to be upconverted to fit specs for the Sundance electronic screening. Alan Miller, vice
president of post-production and a principal at Moving Pictures, brought in Eisenhardt's offline cut from a
Macintosh-based Avid system, together with sound effects and music tracks from the Avid offline, into an Avid
Symphony system for finishing, and then over to Digidesign Pro Tools for the final audio mix.
``Using Symphony brought amazingly powerful, incredibly accurate new capabilities for digital color-correction,'
Miller says. ``Working closely with the film's cinematographer, Maryse Alberti, we could tweak a shot until it looked just right and then apply those same principles and properties across other shots automatically, thereby cutting color-correction time by two thirds. What's more, our results with scene-to-scene source correction went way
beyond the filmmakers' expectations -- they never thought material such as stock footage, old VHS copies and live
video shot by people on the streets, could be made to look so good.'
A 16:9 mask was used over the whole show to unify the 1:66 and 4:3 footage. The facility also did an effects pass to
reposition shots inside the 16:9 mask and used expert render to reduce the rendering process. Everything was then
output serial digitally directly from the Symphony system to Digital Betacam and then upconverted off-site to a
projection-ready, high-definition digital master.
An Avid Expressly for DV-Native Projects -- Enabling Easy Output to the Web, DVD & Other Media!
For independent filmmakers who want to make the best of limited production resources - and unlimited digital
distribution opportunities - Avid is offering Avid Xpress DV on IBM IntelliStation M Pro, an Avid editing system for
DV-native projects with the award-winning Avid interface and distribution capabilities for the Web and for DVD.
Avid Xpress DV ensures lossless images via a DV-native editing environment and provides filmmakers with
integrated compositing, effects and audio tools, such as real-time mixing and EQ among multiple audio tracks. Among
the system's digital distribution options are Web streaming formats such as RealMedia G2, Microsoft Windows
Media and QuickTime©/Sorrenson; MPEG 1, 2, AVI, and QuickTime© for use in CD, DVD, Internet, intranet
streaming applications and presentation tools like PowerPoint; and a native IEEE 1394 connection for creating digital videotapes. The system also comes bundled with Sonic Solutions DVDit!, an easy to use DVD authoring software.
For more information, please visit avid.com or
pc.ibm.com. |
