Opportunity in the world of multimedia, in its myriad colours, beckoned this year, and nearly doubled the number of companies exhibiting multimedia products and technologies at Milia ’96, to almost 1,100, from 47 different countries. France, the UK, Germany, the US and Belgium counted the most exhibitors, but the big story this year was the impressive technologies and content from Israel. In three years, Milia has grown from a self- transformed, obscure book-publishing fair to an internationally recognized hotspot for new media publishing. At one of its first sessions on international licensing and distribution, new media experts from Europe and the US revealed that the market for multimedia products, particularly CD-ROM titles, has more room for growth in Europe and the rest of the world than in the US. Apple Computer Inc manager of business development Vicki Vance said, The US has too much [CD ROM] product and the distribution channels are tight, so a lot of US and Asian publishers are coming to Europe. She noted further that Europe has only 7m CD- ROM drives, against 25.6m in the US. Four Israeli companies in particular stood out for the rave reviews and the crowded stands they commanded throughout the four-day show. GEO Interactive Media Group Ltd, a two-year-old creator of multimedia products for training, education and entertainment, unveiled its Emblaze software decoder technology, which enables animation to be displayed at 12 to 24 frames per second at between 1Kbps to 1.5Kbps. The speed is the average you get today with a 14.4 modem, said Tzur Daboosh, chief interactive designer. The on- line demo of real-time, full-motion animated cartoons that he showed Computergram was running at 1.7Kbps. Without having to pre-load animation files onto a user’s hard disk, Emblaze begins displaying real time, animated images in 256 colours immediately upon clicking on a hypertext object on a Web page. No more than 3Mb or 4Mb of disk space on a Web site server are needed for approximately 30 minutes of play time. Eli Reifman, senior vice- president, technology development, says GEO is a complement, rather than competitor, to Sun Microsystems Inc’s Java. Java is limited by the media it can do. It cannot play a half-hour of media; it can make icons turn and jump around, things in short bursts. Our product completes Java to provide a full-blown multimedia tool. The sky’s no longer the limit. GEO has put the Emblaze decoder onto its Web site (http://www.geo.co.il) for users to download, whereupon it functions as a plug-in to any browser – Navigator, Mosaic, Explorer. We want to put it out there to make people hungry for the technology. Then we’ll make them pay for it, the same way Netscape did, Reifman said. In March, GEO will release its encoder and authoring tool, Emblaze Creator, to enable non-programmer Internet users and Web-site owners to create their own animation for the Net. Reifman said most of GEO’s business is in multimedia training systems, for US and European companies and for the military. Seagull, an extensive courseware program that teaches the most complicated aspects of international trade and documentary credits, has been purchased by the Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corp. The company expects to close soon with several more European banks, he said. It has also developed an Aircraft Recognition Training system that incorporates the latest technologies, including three-dimensional modelling, differential recognition algorithms and computer simulation, to improve pilots’ ability to distinguish aircraft. GEO says an early version of the system installed by the Israeli Defense Forces has reduced training time by 50% and increased their recognition ability by 500%. Cinnamon Multimedia Systems Ltd, a privately-held developer of multimedia content and production, editing and authoring tools, was also high on the list of ‘must see’ companies for technology scouts from industry leaders such as Apple.
By Marsha Johnston
They came to see the pre-release version of its VideoActiv aut
horing tool. Using Cinnamon’s HyperVideo technology, VideoActiv can identify objects [hot spots] in digital video files and to link them with other types of media, such as text or still video, to create an interactive journey through the video. Taking up only 100Kb of ROM, the technology features an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for defining objects that requires no writing of code. Its first release will be available in the next three or four months, and it is talking with Macromedia Inc about becoming a plug-in option on its authoring tool. No royalties are required for the run-time version that sells for under $1,000. President Yoel Einy told Computergram that Cinnamon is developing video technologies for Intel Corp’s next generation MMX chips and that they have given us all of the technology necessary to make our CD-ROMs MMX-ready. Having just had a private investment of $1.5m for one third of the company, Einy expects to conclude a second placing soon. As for going public, he says, the technology part of the house will probably do it before the CD ROM publishing side because the latter is a crowded market and the profits are just so-so. But, we have a technology that’s truly innovative, that Apple and Microsoft keep saying they will have, but have yet to develop. The development is 80% done, but we will need money for marketing, distribution and support, he said. We have a software-only MPEG encoding product, and we’re one of only two or three companies in the world. For most software-only MPEG encoding, one minute of video requires 40 minutes of compression, he said. We deliver 1-to-10 and, with the new Intel chips, our target is real-time encoding, Einy said. One of Einy’s former students, Eyal Gever, is the brains behind yet another Israeli concern – Zapa Digital Arts Ltd – whose booth was packed with executives from the biggest entertainment and media groups throughout the show. In three years, the company has grown from a team of three people to a staff of 35 that develops advanced visual and audio software for media-related industries, such as News Corp. Among the visually stunning products it showed was a preview of Enigma: The Secrets of Blechley Park, which is being developed on contract for News Corp. A role-playing fantasy based on actual events, the title takes users into the heart of Allied military intelligence during World War II, it provoked oohs and ahhs from attendees. It is due in the autumn. Zapa also wowed attendees with a Net-based, three-dimensional multi-player role-playing game called Witches. The company has also developed a line of development tools, called Zap Technologies, ZT. With the appropriate computational power, disk space, data transmission speed and graphics resolution, ZT is designed to enable the creation and distribution of virtual worlds occupied by natural-looking and behaving objects that may be controlled by multiple novice users; enable the transmission and synchronization of multiple, interactive 3D Smart Objects – a trade-marked name (autonomous or user controlled) and virtual spaces over a network. It can also address an object’s physical properties like weight, surface and relationship between objects, such as the sound one object makes upon contact with another. 3D Smart Objects was also developed by the company and is considered the most significant of its technologies. Gever said he plans to keep his technologies under wraps for the next few months, making them available bit by bit, as we develop even more advanced technologies. Finally, Arome Interactive, a publisher of the acclaimed Art de la Table cuisine-related CD ROMs unveiled its plans to develop Kitchen 2000. The kitchen would be equipped with a voice-activated computer containing the same kind of cuisine information today found in Arome’s CD-ROMs. It would also provide on-line connections to retailers to send shopping lists. Arome is already building a prototype, along with new studios, in Caesarea. Product manager Myhal Saperia said the company, which has a notable presence in the US, is
in discussions about going public.
