Wave Issue 9610 10/11/96 Article 3-01

***Video Editing on the PC
by David Lohse

As with many aspects of the professional multimedia industry, video
editing seems to be gaining momentum in a move from the workstation (and
Mac to some extent) to the PC; the evangilists pushing this move citing
the lower price point of the PC as the prime motivater. However, PCs have
traditionally not had the processing power and enabling technologies
available for performing professional-quality video editing. Video on the
PC has been mostly confined to playback, in most cases based on
Microsoft's Video for Windows.

Seeing these shortcomings, Matrox decided to lead the way for
professional video editing on the PC, and as such created OpenDML as a
possible open standard for enabling VE on the PC. However, earlier this
year Microsoft unveiled ActiveMovie as part of its ActiveX platform, as
the successor to both Video for Windows, AVI and any other video
technologies floating around, and with the hopes of eventually using it
to enable professional VE on the PC. In its first release of ActiveMovie,
Microsoft claimed that over 80% of the needs of OpenDML were
incorporated, but WAVE's interviews with both ISVs and IHVs in the
professional video space revealed that the actual industry opinions were
that ActiveMovie was still only good for playback and did not meet the
needs of the professional VE community.

In response, Microsoft has been collaborating with Matrox on improving
ActiveMovie's capabilities to meet the needs of the professional video
editor. Indications are that ActiveMovie will move to replace OpenDML
eventually (most likely within the next 6-12 months), and according to
Janet Matey of Matrox's Video Products Group, they "hope at one point
that OpenDML will just go away." On behalf of OpenDML, Alain Legault and
Janet Matey visited the Microsoft ActiveMovie team in Redmond, WA on
August 22, from which they reported that Microsoft had in response
increased their ActiveMovie development team from 5 to 20 people, and has
made the improvement of ActiveMovie a top priority. They also reported on
the status of ActiveMovie's development and current schedule:

ActiveMovie 1.0 runtime version: Released to the Web (RTW) in August
ActiveMovie 1.0 SDK: Sept. 96
ActiveMovie 2.0 Beta: Nov. 96
ActiveMovie 2.0 RTM: Mar. 97 or before -- in time for NAB
ActiveMovie 2.0 w/ MAC support: 3 months following 2.0 release
ActiveMovie 3.0: Oct. 97

With ActiveMovie 2.0 currently under development, Microsoft is addressing
many of the shortcomings in the current version as felt by the video
editing community. The features felt by most in the community to be
missing from ActiveMovie that will most likely be integrated into
ActiveMovie 2.0 include:

Capture filter
File writing (sink filter)
Cut list support
VFW codec support
Codec performance testing at 5 MB/sec. minimum throughput on legacy
hardware
A/V sync and slewing audio clocks
DV file format support
Support for the MAC

At this point, the future for the PC (re: Windows NT) as the video
platform of choice seems inevitable. While in the past the Macintosh has
been the platform of choice for some video editors, it also looks like
the move will be away from the Mac to Windows NT. Avid, a leading
provider for digital video editing software for the Mac, recently (Sept.
12) announced the availability of MCXpress for Windows NT, signaling an
important shift in the industry. Much of the professional content
development seems to be shifting away from the beleaguered Macintosh, as
does industry support: asked about the future of the Mac for DVE, Janet
Matey replied, "I wouldn't buy one at this point," (although it should be
noted that Matrox does focus exclusively on PC products and
technologies).