on for the previous three years. But by then the money was running out. I remember an article, which was headlined, “Why Venture capital is so patient with Digital F/X”.
The VC's saw that PC based nonlinear editing or a digital post workstation was a good product to persist with, but for how long?
Steve Horowitz worked on the UI design for Hitchcock and the team spent hours pouring over user feedback.
Chuck Clarke recalls the next steps at Digital F/X.
The other factor at play here was the investment. To keep research and development going in things like Hitchcock we needed to dilute the shareholdings of our employees, so as we got closer to an IPO, and releasing Hitchcock and the PAL version of Composium, our own personal stake in the company was getting less valuable.
That Silicon Valley dream of getting rich from a lot of work was slipping away.
Steve Mayer lent on a former colleague to guide Hitchcock to market. Pioneering computer scientist Allan Alcorn knew Mayer from Atari. Among other achievements Alcorn had built the successful video game ‘Pong’ and worked with start-ups like Catalyst before settling at Apple as an Apple Fellow.
The San Jose Mercury News announced "Elite Executive leaves Apple for small firm".
One of Apple Computer Inc.'s elite corps of Apple Fellows said Friday he will leave the company to take a top post at a small Mountain View high-tech firm. Allan Alcorn, who has worked at Apple for six years, will start Monday as vice president of engineering for Digital F/X, a maker of computerized video editing gear.
Alcorn was instrumental at Apple in developing technologies to integrate video with the company's Macintosh computer line.
Alcorn recalls the plan
The Composium was a technical tour de force but was very expensive and had a limited market. The Video F/X had the most potential was and was a most interesting product at the time to me but we needed to get rid of the hardware and use our software to control one of the third party cards that digitized video on the fly and stored it on the disk.
That product was Hitchcock.
IMMIX AND EDIFLEX DIGITAL
Designer Jonathan Burke was working with the ImMIX hardware team to create complete system architecture for the new editing device.
They had settled on three core components being The Media Processor Unit (MPU), the Control panel and the Storage Module.
The biggest challenge wasn't creating a unique editing system from the ground up, though that was tremendously difficult. It was the time we had to do that work! We started in September and needed to be completed three months later! The MPU design was tough because it wasn't a typical product.
We were working with the ImMIX engineers like Quint and Paolo on the layout and design of the printed circuit boards that were going to be used in the MPU to do all the heavy lifting for the Mac.
You needed a unique bus system to connect all the boards and accessories that were leading edge designs in their own right and ran eight or ten levels deep. To achieve the quality and capability that Dick Jackson had set, meant that the MPU was a unique device outside of high-end computing. Naturally, everyone wants it in the smallest package possible.
Burke turned his attention to the ImMIX’s front end.
The Controller was divided into two, half for the video editing functions and the other half for audio. We persisted and fleshed out a design, without I should add, the tools that we have today.
We rendered the Editing Console and Media Processor Unit drawings with Magic Markers, not a 3D paint program! Once the overall design was approved, the final mechanical engineering work began in earnest.
The ImMIX team returned to ICV in Pleasanton as Michael Williams recalls:
I had seen a demo of the Avid at MacWorld and it blew my mind. It was easy to see that the days of A/B Roll editing on systems like Paltex, CMX and Mach One were numbered. When the ImMix guys eventually had something to show us we were very eager to adopt it into our workflow.
Meanwhile, the team at Ediflex released an updated system that used write once Panasonic optical discs to play back source material. Don Kravits recalls:
It worked on a few shows but quickly it became clear that it wasn’t the future however it allowed me to develop a new interface, a graphical interface and so I was given the job of steering Ediflex in a new direction with the new front end.
Debbie Kurth recalls:
Much of the existing technology was bound to customized boards and serial protocols. I saw that it was hard and expensive exercise to keep up with the latest and greatest features except for the big studios. There simply HAD to be another way, and the PC had to be it.
One might say it was the first non-linear hardware system.
It was flexible and had potential, with its portable plug-in parts. As a computer engineer, I will admit, I was not as fascinated with the Macintosh as Don Kravits was.
In fact, I hated it. Not because of the user interface was not exceptional, but because Apple likes to control what and how you could do something on it. I was young. I had ideas and I wanted to push the envelope. Do what they said could not be done.
The PC, on the other hand, at least in the beginning, was a true Open O/S. There were no limitations or guidelines
Kravits and Kurth teamed to create a new Ediflex system (above) that used the best elements of the existing LINK timeline, Adrian Ettlinger’s Script Mimic concept and Montage’s application of DVI technology. Kravits recalls:
I guess I could have used the Mac for our new system, and looking back maybe I should have but the new version of Windows was out and that seemed like a sensible move. So we had a great challenge before us and it was a chance to realize my dream, finally something a film editor could relate to.
A vertical film interface with active script thumbnails superimposed upon the interface. It was truly revolutionary then, and now I would have to say. Of course, we were aware of what EditDroid had done with the jog/shuttle interface and so we hired Robson Splane an industrial engineer to create our own manual interface.
Robson Splane grew up near Hollywood and was inspired by film studios and technology.
Splane Design had already been involved in a wide range of products from electronics housing
