Wave Issue 9612 11/8/96 Article 4-01

***Digital Video on the PC and Pinnacle
by David Lohse

In the past, all professional digital video editing was done on either a
workstation or a Mac, but as with most applications, the PC is quickly
gaining ground as the platform of choice. Here at WAVE we spoke with Amir
Majidimehr, Vice President, Product Engineering at Pinnacle Systems Inc.,
a leader in Macintosh and PC DVE products, in order to asses his views on
the PC VE market.

Founded in 1986, Pinnacle has been a leader in the 3D digital effects
market. They entered the desktop market in 1994 with the introduction of
Alladin, a stand-alone product that provides video switching, real-time
digital video effects, character generation, electronic paint, 3D
modeling, animation, and still storage, starting at $10,000, and has been
used in conjunction with a variety of software suites, including
Pinnacle's close ties with Avid on the Macintosh. This last April at NAB
'96, Pinnacle introduced the Genie line of PCI-based VE products, making
an important push into the PC market.

While Pinnacle remains "100% committed to the Mac," they also strongly
believe in the PC. According to Mr. Majidimehr, although they still see
the Mac as a good VE platform, they see the market as inevitably going to
Windows, and are planning their product line in accordance: "... the
momentum of Wintel is so strong, we must go to Windows." They also have
no doubts as to the shift away from the workstation to the PC; while Mr.
Majidimehr feels that the workstation market (re: SGI) will hold on to
the high end of the compositing and editing market, at least for now, the
PC is destined to dominate all other segments of the market.

Although he sees the PC as the future of professional VE, Mr. Majidimehr
feels that the PC still has several areas in which it is lacking. Primary
among these is the current standard PCI bus, which he feels is the PC's
largest limiting factor for use as a VE platform: the PCI bandwidth is
not adequate for VE applications, and the 3 or 4 PCI slots available on
most PCs are not enough to support all of the auxiliary functionality
required. Another area in need of improvement is the current state of 3D
acceleration available. Most 3D companies are still focusing almost
entirely on the gaming market, with an emphasis on high-speed 3D over
high-quality: "VE needs higher quality - outside of pure polygon
rendering, [current 3D accelerators] just fall apart," especially with
respect to all-important texture mapping.

Pinnacle also strongly believes in the importance of standards. Although
they continue to back the OpenDML standard led by Matrox, they see the
future as being Microsoft's ActiveMovie technology. Although ActiveMovie
has in the past been used primarily for movie playback, a new push by
Microsoft's ActiveMovie team is attempting to bring the technology up to
the level required by professional VE, and Mr. Majidimehr feels that it
will be a fully viable solution by mid-1997, with professional-level
ActiveMovie-based products beginning to appear at next year's NAB.

Although Pinnacle won't be attending COMDEX this year (they plan to next
year), check out their Web site for information on their Genie, Alladin
and FlashFile product lines for digital video and 3D editing and
compositing.

www.pinnaclesys.com