GOVERNMENT

Discreet, the media and entertainment division of Autodesk, Inc. today announced that New York-based post-production house Nice Shoes has advanced its advertising workflow with new and upgraded Discreet processing, visual effects and editing solutions. Nice Shoes adopted these solutions in response to growing demand for advertising content that can be repurposed beyond television to cinematic spots, the web, promotional videos and retail outlets. Nice Shoes is currently working on spots for Kodak, Sony, Splenda and Microsoft Xbox. Said Joe Bottazzi, principal & chief engineer at Nice Shoes, "With Discreet systems we're able to create projects in HD and higher resolutions, giving ourselves and our clients the freedom to repurpose content when needed. We can avoid creating a spot in standard definition and later getting stuck 'up-rezzing' for a different outlet. Also, Discreet systems' hallmark speed gives us the ability to effortlessly do visual effects, compositing and editing in real-time with the client." Nice Shoes is benefiting from the interoperability between its Discreet systems and the systems' ability to input and output media in multiple formats. Nice Shoes purchased 14 Discreet burn background processor licenses, as well as upgrading its Discreet flame visual effects and smoke editing systems. The company's advertising workflow includes six smoke editing systems, a Discreet inferno visual effects system and nine Discreet flame(R) systems. The result is a complete Discreet workflow that can handle media in standard-definition (SD), high-definition (HD) and 2K (film) resolutions in real-time. Nice Shoes' Discreet smoke editing systems were upgraded to the latest version -- smoke 6.5, with a hardware upgrade from Silicon Graphics(R) Octane2(TM) to the Silicon Graphics Tezro visual workstation. The flame systems' hardware was upgraded to Silicon Graphics Tezro, enabling faster completion of projects.