Timeline Analog 4. John Buck

       It was different from anything you had ever seen but as a brand new company trying to persuade people to ‘bet their whole farm on us‘ we needed to get back to the lab after SMPTE and get it right. Many of our first customers were critical in helping us grow the product incrementally and turning it into a real workhorse.

      While most of the attendees flew home from the SMPTE show, the Digital F/X team had chosen to have their only prototype driven home by an employee in a rented truck.

       We couldn’t risk having it packed in a commercial container and the time delay that would happen. Our deadline, that we thought at the time, was very tight and we figured it was quicker to do it ourselves and recommence work in the morning at Mountain View.

      The DF/X 200 prototype and spare boards were stolen from the rental truck overnight. Clarke recalls the blow.

       The police were involved. We posted rewards but it was never recovered and we always wondered why someone would have stolen it but the theft set us back at least two or three months. We had to acquire parts and rebuild the whole unit from scratch at the same time as we were preparing for the launch of the next software release. Heck of a hurdle and we still need to make NAB 1988.

       THE WHIZ

      Pete Fasciano and Tom Sprague’s VizWiz had started with a TR-5 VTR, a timebase corrector and an IVC camera crammed into a small van. With a run of success the company had evolved into a dedicated 20,000 feet facility in downtown Boston.

       We were a very active company of 50 people using five editing suites, audio mixing suites, a large dedicated studio, 2 Postbox systems and a design area. So we knew a thing or two about post and editing but we were also seen as being innovators. In November, Bill Warner made a time to come in and talk with me and to get my feedback on what he was doing.

       He had just hired Jeff Bedell, in fact I recall it was Jeff's first day and he showed me a VHS copy of the hypercard UI demonstration that he and Jeff had created.

       I watched it a few times and listened to what Bill had to say and then I offered up my opinion. I said, "I understand the technology, I know what you want to do but this is not the way editors think. Give me a few weeks, I will write a paper for you and perhaps we can talk again".

      Fasciano diligently plotted out what a digital nonlinear editing system needed to do, to be successful.

       Bill knew that I had come to be known as the video wizard of Boston, hence the name of the company VizWiz. Bill and I talked on the phone a few times and then we had a second meeting of five hours where I went through the document I had written. I explained to him some of the larger concepts of videotape based postproduction versus film editing, as well as what I saw as the key areas he needed to focus on. Bill code named the editing system I had outlined as the Oz.

      The "Oz System" was probably more appealing to video editors than film editors. It had a Record and Play interface (his notes above) made popular by linear systems in edit suites using video machines and it was based upon the need to use timecode for trimming, editing and finessing.

      A paragraph from his notes included:

       Online and offline editing systems up until now have been largely the same. Offline systems are simply less expensive versions of online systems and, therefore, subject to similar creative constraints with respect to speed and linearization of the video editing process. Normal offline systems are not faster or more flexible than online systems. They are simply cheaper and that's the only advantage they enjoy.

      Jeff Bedell recalls.

       We left that demo with Pete and agreed that we needed another UI. It was originally going to be a two-monitor approach like basic tape-to-tape editing but with a touch screen UI that was more modal. With touch-screen back then the area of sensitivity for a screen was at odds with what we needed so we dropped that and focused on the simpler iteration that Fasciano had outlined in his Oz brief

      Warner spent weeks collating his research from various industry sources as Fasciano adds:

       He rang me with few questions and then invited me to come out to Avid at the start of the year.

      Eric Peters wished he could contribute more to Avid than just his spare time and weekends, but he had good reasons not to leave his full-time position with Apollo Computer. It wasn't that he doubted Bill Warner, or the start-up's chances of success. Peters and his wife had just completed the home study process of adopting their second child.

      Having waited months for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to process their paperwork, Peters knew that a move away from a safe job at Apollo could jeopardise their adoption.

       We had to prove that we were, as they say 'stable' people. So we waited.

      Using accrued leave, Peters joined Warner at SMPTE in Los Angeles in November 1987.

       We went to the show to try and figure what was going on with the industry and talked to as many editors as we could find. We would ‘button hole’ editors in lobbies, anywhere we could find them and after the initial shock they were fascinated by the possibilities that we were proposing. What do you think about not having to push a sequence of buttons to do one edit?

       People were very generous with us and told us lots of things it would need to do and I had a notebook and scribbled down lots and lots of feedback.

      Peters' written notes defined the make-up of the first Avid/1 editing system.

       RAWLEY AND FERSTER

      Another key person in Avid's future was contemplating change. Curt Rawley had worked for several Massachusetts based computer companies like DEC and Pixel Computers but thought it was time to start his own venture. Unsure as to where he might start Rawley canvassed industry people for their opinions.

       I was working as a consultant to keep bread on the table and was working through product ideas to put on a computer. I wanted to know if I should use a workstation or one of the emerging PCs

      He spoke with Roy Moffa who had worked at senior levels in DuPont, Apollo Computer and alongside him at Digital Equipment Corporation. Moffa told him of a former colleague from Apollo who had quit his job to get funding for a PC based business venture.

      He suggested that they meet each other. It was now just a matter of time before Curt Rawley met Bill Warner.

      Without sufficient funding to progress the Avid system Warner decided to heed the advice from the MIT Start Up Forum and he made the most important phone call of his life.

       I called Bill Kaiser at Greylock and said “You said to call you, so I'm calling you. I think I need some money, I need half a million dollars!”

      At almost the same time Bill Ferster spoke with Pansophic's president David Eskra about potential investors for his start-up, The Editing Machines Corporation. Venture capital firm Greylock Partners in Boston had taken Pansophic to an IPO and Pansophic had subsequently acquired Ferster’s West End Film.

      Unknown to both men Greylock was talking to Bill Warner about nonlinear editing. Bill Kaiser recalls:

       When smart people with the same backgrounds and similar knowledge start looking at a problem, they will come up with independent solutions within weeks of each other. As I was contemplating Avid, my assistant told me that there was a guy called Bill Ferster on the phone from Washington. Then when we started talking he told me that he had invented a nonlinear video editing system that worked on a standard PC! Pretty remarkable.