Californian companies SuperMac Technology Inc of Sunnyvale and Digital F/X Inc of Mountain View have announced a cross-vendor upgrade strategy that lets users of Supermac’s DigitalFilm video production system migrate to the Digital F/X Hitchcock professional digital-video editing and authoring system for $3,000. DigitalFilm is a single-slot, QuickTime-compatible system that provides real-time capture of full-screen, full-motion video and audio, using hardware-accelerated JPEG compression to record to disk at high compression ratios while preserving image quality. It also plays back full-screen, full-motion video with synchronised audio on any display with up to 17 timing. Its integrated video encoder enables users to record finished work to videotape. DigitalFilm is bundled with Adobe’s Premiere 2.0; the CoSA After Effects special effects package; Alsoft’s DiskExpress II for optimising the user’s hard disk for smooth recordings; and Diaquest’s DQ-TimeCoder for fast, accurate SMPTE or EBU time-coding on DigitalFilm video frames. The Hitchcock system combines DigitalFilm’s hardware technologies and the Digital F/X Advanced Productivity Software. It provides digital-video editing and authoring with full-motion and full-screen playback. It also integrates PostScript graphics and fonts, supports PICs animations and QuickTime, and has digital audio. Hitchcock enables users to generate QuickTime movies, print directly to videotape from hard disk, export a professional edit decision list for compatibility with high-end post-production suites, or integrate with Video F/X for tape and disk-based editing.
