Autodesk Media & Entertainment (formerly Discreet) left some customers perplexed last week when it arrived at the debut National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Post + Production Show in New York with the newly announced Discreet Flame on a dual-core workstation running the Linux operating system. The bewilderment stemmed from Autodesk simultaneously unveiling the Discreet Inferno visual effects system (the higher end iteration of the Flame) for the Japanese market during the International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition (Inter BEE) in Makuhari Messe, Japan, which is Asia’s equivalent to the U.S.’s spring NAB conference.
This is the first time in the company’s history that it made a geographically constrained product release. So the move begged the question “Why?”
Autodesk said that its decision was based on a very specific target market–Japan’s commercial post market. The company reported that roughly one-third of all Infernos worldwide are in Japan, and these are primarily used for commercial postproduction, often for mixed resolution spots.
The new Japanese configuration is being offered in addition to the currently shipping version of Discreet Inferno on an SGI Onyx 350 Visualization system. The new, Japan-only Discreet Inferno runs on a dual-core IBM, AMD workstation with high-performance parallel server processing capabilities and several Japanese components. Pricing was not disclosed.
“This platform alternative is suited to the Japanese market’s needs. It delivers compelling performance and throughput, particularly for project-based commercials work,” said Bill Roberts, director of product marketing for Autodesk Media & Entertainment. More specifically, he said markets such as London and Los Angeles use the system for film-based applications and therefore require the current Onyx platform’s texture memory that enables users to work with many layers interactively. “From a performance standpoint, [the Japanese market] needs speed, not these features,” he said.
When questioned as to why the choice of systems would not be available to all users, Roberts said, “We may choose to roll it out globally–but it doesn’t solve all the needs globally.” He added that the company would likely announce a more detailed direction next spring at NAB, but for now, “We continue to explore other platform options for this product, such as the newly announced Altix blade-based architecture from SGI. Our goal is to ensure that the creative power of Inferno software is available on the right platform for as many customers as possible.”
For now it looks like most of the world will be looking to Flame if their interest is in Linux. Pricing was not announced although the company said it plans to keep it consistent with the current IRIX version, for which support continues. It is scheduled to ship this winter.
NAB FEEDBACK
SHOOT conducted an informal survey of exhibitors during the show; most acknowledged that exhibition floor traffic was light and they would like to see more participants, yet they also said they were pleased that the major New York post houses did attend the show and product demos.
“A healthy percentage of attendees were editors; for Lightworks that’s great,” said Seth Hallen, VP of operations for exhibitor Lightworks.
“It used to be the technology world would wait from one NAB to the next; now every three months something better comes along,” added David Friedman, editor at New York-based DJM. “Another show gives us a chance to keep up with technology.”
NAB spokesperson Jon Milner said NAB was pleased with the debut event; a second is scheduled for Oct. 24-26, 2006, in New York.