Manufacturers Debate the Future of Nonlinear Editing (page 2)
Eric Kloor: The MMX chip means nothing to us. We [DraCo Systems] built a little box that just edits digital video from a hard drive; it's not a computer, and it doesn't use any Intel hardware. We use an old Motorola Chip, the 040. In the future, we will have the DV Firewire interface board. We're working with Sony with their DVK1 board, so we will have that codec in and out of the Casablanca. Our target market is maybe a little bit different. We get some interesting faxes from people that say, "I don't want to throw away my computer; I'm confused by all of this." Our target market is just people who want to edit video, that want to crank out video, to make money doing productions. We target people that have work to do, and don't want to mess with hardware installations, endless upgrades, and all that.
Linda Frager: I think the question on a lot of Macintosh owners' minds is, "What does MMX mean for Macintosh, and what does it mean for Apple?" The Apple Macintosh has always been tailored and optimized for multimedia creation, whether it's audio, video, or creating your own CDs and titles. So where Intel and that platform is now moving into multimedia creation, Apple's been a multimedia creation platform for quite some time. Having said that, it's obviously necessary to address MMX from the Macintosh side, and there are a number of new architectures and products that we'll be announcing over the next several months that will help to address the MMX.
Christian Jorgensen: I'm very excited about MMX. We talked a little here about the idea of one nice, closed video appliance box, versus a tad bit more complexity. By using the modular approach of the computer technology, and software partners and hardware partners that make the process easier, you're going to benefit on a daily basis. We're at the point now where we're throwing away CPUs. It appalls me that we're trashing equipment, but at the same time, that's the efficiency of our society today. Realistically, a high-speed computer with all the latest speed and innovations is going to give you some dramatic benefits--MMX is one of them.
Steve Stautzenbach: MMX is all about speed. You'll want to get an overdrive chip into your current Pentium to get there. You've looked at Windows video editing. You've loved all the filters and transitions, all the creativity. One of your foremost questions is, "How come it takes so long to render my productions?" So MMX addresses the speed question. Plug it in, and you're going to see speed improvement right out of the chute. When we deliver our software that's optimized for MMX, when we go back in and write code that takes advantage of all the new capabilities on that chip, you'll see much greater speed improvement. You want Windows video editing that moves forward and delivers faster speed, higher quality, more creativity. MMX is about speed.
Joyce Chung: As far as Adobe products are concerned, we intend to support MMX for our digital video and our imaging products as well. As far as the actual increases in performance that you're going to see, I can't really say right now because we are still optimizing and looking at some of the benchmarks. Just keep an eye out. We'll put out some releases and let you know when that happens.
Christian Jorgensen: One of the things we've heard a great deal of is, "I bought this wonderful card from you last year, and now you're introducing the next card. I feel like you just outdated me." The point of it is, we're going to keep bringing you the latest and greatest technology. Whether its MMX, DV or whatever.
Stephen Muratore: Please join me in thanking Joyce, Christian, Eric, Steve, Jan, and Linda for appearing here this morning.
