MIDDLEWARE

Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc., today opened its "Connect"-themed stand at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) being held in Amsterdam from Sept. 10-14, 2004. Discreet is showcasing a powerful product line-up designed to deliver on the needs of broadcasters, post-production facilities, and film and broadcast production companies creating content from digital film to high-definition television (HDTV) and standard-definition video At IBC, Discreet's entire stand is a real-world example of the next-generation in data-centric media production facilities, featuring one of the most powerful and comprehensive post-production workflows ever designed. At the core of this workflow is Discreet's landmark new stone® shared high-bandwidth, fully scalable, real-time storage area network (SAN) for high-quality, non-compressed, high-definition film and television post-production. stone shared scales to provide multi-user collaboration with simultaneous access to multiple uncompressed 4K, 2K, HD and SD projects from a single storage location within the facility. (stone shared announced separately) "This IBC, Discreet is redefining the data-centric workflows of the future," said Martin Vann, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Discreet. "We are clearly demonstrating that Discreet's solutions are the ultimate professional solutions. They continue to deliver not only the best creative toolset in the industry, but also higher quality, superior performance, increased productivity and greater collaboration when compared to solutions based on proprietary hardware boards. Today, it is clear that proprietary, vendor-specific, shared filesystems and hardware processing for editing, visual effects and colour-grading applications can no longer keep pace with the rapid progress being made in general-purpose workstation, graphics and IT technologies." At its IBC stand, Discreet is offering a technology preview of a lustre® workstation featuring advanced technology based on the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000 SDI Graphics Accelerator. Using software technology developed by Colorfront, Discreet's strategic development partner, the system is able to take advantage of NVIDIA's unique GPU functionality to show extremely high-quality, real-time resizing between different image raster sizes, including real-time 2K film data to SD and HDTV conversions that can be output directly to video using the card's graphics to serial digital video interface. This new technology clearly demonstrates the added value the lustre system will provide as producers use the lustre system on everything from screening through to the mastering of DVDs and television deliverables from a single source of film data. Discreet has also announced new versions of its non-linear editing and finishing systems, fire® 6.5 and smoke® 6.5. Discreet's editing systems play a pivotal leadership role in digital intermediate (DI) workflows for 2K film, high-definition television (HDTV) and standard definition (SD) projects. The smoke 6.5 system, on both the SGI® TezroTM visual workstation and the IBM® IntelliStation® Z Pro workstation running Linux®, is being showcased at Discreet's IBC stand on multiple demo pods and in Discreet's broadcast and film theatres. (fire/smoke 6.5 systems announced separately) Also featured by Discreet at IBC are demonstrations of the following products: -- Discreet's flame(R) 9 and flint(R) 9 visual effects systems; -- Discreet's lustre 2.5 digital grading and colour correction system -- Discreet's 3ds max(R) 7 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software; and -- Discreet's combustion(R) 3 visual effects software. During IBC, Discreet is hosting client demos by Toybox, Red Rover, The Matchbox, Def 2 Shoot, Pirates n' Paradise, The Happy Day, Iclair, Condor and Moving Picture Company at the Discreet stand. Discreet is also hosting two free workshops as part of the larger IBC Digital Cinema Symposium. On Saturday, Sept. 11 from 14:00-15:30 (2-3:30 p.m.), colorist Luke Rainey and his team will present the technical challenges associated with grading and interoperability for the BBC's Pride, a live-action, high-definition film about a pride of lions in the African Savannah. On Sunday, Sept. 12 from 3:30-4:30 p.m., renowned digital film expert Jon Thompson will give a technical presentation on the development of digital cinema technology, with a particular focus on mastering and projection.