Discreet's next-gen creative environment - News - Brief Article

Post, May 1, 2002

MONTREAL -- At NAB, Discreet (www.discreet.com) introduced a new interactive nonlinear production environment based on its Discreet Media Architecture. The environment is designed to scale from a single workstation to larger collaborative workgroups and is compatible with the company's Inferno, Flame, Flint and Combustion systems and software.

The visual effects application for the new environment is code named "Strata" and is fueled by an asset server Discreet has dubbed "Mezzo." Strata is designed with realtime visual effects and compositing tools and can be used for conforming, editing and finishing. The immersive three-dimensional environment, says Discreet, enables objects to interact in a way that is more aligned with the true physical world.

Strata's SceneFlow provides a complete view of the entire creative process image flow, parameter set-up, 2D processes, 3D workflow and audio. Time-Flow provides a visual summary of any sequence of images. Image processing tools, such as tracking, keying, paint, 3D text and color correction, will all be incorporated into the software.

Mezzo is an open hardware asset server that is scalable to support a collaborative, centralized media sharing environment. Mezzo fuels Strata with real-time access to uncompressed media at any video resolution via a storage area network.

The company expects to deliver a Windows/ Intel-based solution before next year's NAB.