Avid buys E.R./Parallax
14 messages in this thread
Eat or be eaten !
Avid is buying Elastic Reality and Parallax Software with a stock deal which
equates to about $45 million.
Bruce N. Goren
Who is Parallax Software?
John,
Parallax sells Matador, a high resolution digital film compositing application
which runs on Onyx class SGI's. ILM has been using this software in-house for
several years.
Seems pretty clear to me that Avid wants to expand it's marketing and compete
with Quantel Domino and Kodak Cineon at the high end now that non-linear video
editing competition is heating up from below.
Bruce
Where did you hear about this? Which day's Wall Street Journal announced this?
I called Elastic Reality to confirm it, and the person I talked to said it was
true, but they didn't know much about it – in fact, they couldn't tell me what
Parallax did, either. 🙂
Wow, I can't believe that so many people don't know what Parallax does.
Matador is the SoftImage/Alias/Wavefront of the 2d paint and compositing
world. Virtually every map you've seen in the last 5 years from ILM, Boss,
etc. is done in Matador. All of the dino skin for JP was Matador. Matador
does this:
_ sub-pixel editing for photo-retouch and film-retouch
_ simultaneous painting and drawing to image and masks with any transparency
_ total mask control, luma,chroma, r,g,b, etc.
– fringe free chromakeying
– automatic cutout tracing
– perspective placement
– unlimited number of cutouts in memory
– smart brushes
– thousands of exotic filters, refraction, etc.
– full direct control of virtually every video device on the planet
– heirarchial i/o channel linking for infinate layering/compositing
– total automation through grab and drop macros
– unlimited layering with single pass rendering
– full animation of cutouts, vectors, live action, "rostrum camera" moves
– film res panning backgrounds
– unlimited multiple mask operations
– total hierarchial layer control
– real time linetest or flipbooks
– dynamic picture store size; video,film, print, etc.
– simultaneous multi-store, with multiple visible layers
– real time pan and scroll
– totally resolution independent
– frame or field output to Alias, Pixar, Scitex, SI, Targa, TDI, etc. etc.
– direct controland output to virtually all film recorders
– 100 level undo function
– etc. etc. etc.
and virtualy everything else that any other 2D package does, it also morphs,
etc.
It was "THE" paint/compositing/roto package for JP, Death becomes her, etc.
Now you know. 🙂
Paul
Oh yeah … did I mention perfect soft edge masks and autocushioning of time
based controls and a price tag of $22,000 a seat? Plus the $1980 a year
support contract. <BG>
Paul
John,
The announcement was on Wednesday, I caught it in Thursday morning's Hollywood
Reporter.
Bruce N. Goren
John,
Isn't Parallax the co. that makes the Matador paint system?
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
Yep,
IMHO the absolute best 2D paint compositing program on earth. I run it and love
it. Parallax has been ripe for picking for a while. Original spec was that
Alias would purchase them, then SGI was looking at them, but AVID? I have no
idea where that came from.
Paul
Paul,
Yes, it is a GREAT package. We tried to pick them up, but there's an
exclusive in our territory. BTW, are you aware of any TRAPPING packages for
SGI (pre-press)?
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
I don't know of any SGI based trapping software but I'll definately check for
you. I don't really know of anyone off hand who uses their SGI boxes for
pre-press. It does seem to me that my group handled a similar question for a
client a year or so ago. Let me ask around the shop and see what we come up
with.
Paul
Thanks, Paul. We have found in-house that the SGI makes a good file & print
server for people with Macs. We can load files faster across the network than
from a local hard disk (on a slow Mac), and OPI server software releases the
Mac from an 80M print in about 10-15 seconds, while using very few resources on
the SGI. Helps speed up all these Tek printer demos.
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates