Four years ago, Softimage announced the start of development of Digital Studio. Many have wondered if the company could ever deliver on that bold promise. But Softimage has changed all that with its upcoming Softimage|DS, set to ship by the end of this year.The first version of this highly anticipated application will be in the form of a turnkey system ($100,000) featuring an Intergraph workstation with two Pentium II 300MHz chips, 512MB of RAM, and 36GB of storage, offering sufficient space for 30 minutes of uncompressed video. Is it an editing system? A compositing system? A paint system? A digital audio workstation? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. But calling it any of these is missing the essence of it.

DS is a nonlinear production system for creating, editing, and finishing videos. And, it's not like anything else out there it's the next step. The key is, with DS, you can take your project from start to finish ... if you want to. Here's an opportunity for you to do with one system the functions that would normally take multiple highend systems and software to accomplish. Truly the Swiss Army Knife of uncompressed digital production, DS offers, for the first time, a package that doesn't impose on users what they can do. It's now made possible by the skillful coders at Softimage, the deep pockets of its parent company Microsoft, and recent advances in Windows NT and its attendant hardware. Softimage looked far and wide for hardware that could handle the tremendous amount of data used in uncompressed video, and the winner of this throughput derby was Intergraph. That's why the software's initial release at the end of this year will be a turnkey system, optimized for its Intergraph hardware. Down the road, Softimage intends to release the software by itself.

The result of this Softimage Intergraph hardware/software team is as many "unlimiteds" as possible: unlimited layers, undo, audio channels, and more. This turns out to be just what the doctor ordered for highend production units doing shortform projects.

Audio editing functions in Softimage|DS include four channel I/O, eight channel monitoring, and realtime, fourband parametric EQ.

Softimage scoured numerous production houses, studios, and video boutiques, carefully assessing the needs of this market segment. The product has been tested in a variety of beta sites, including off and online editing companies, tapebased linear editing shops, compositing specialists, and even audio facilities. Softimage found that the principal fear of potential customers is obsolescence and the lack of flexibility. So, the company made a significant investment of time and money into making a software system that would be scalable with the steady upward march of computer speed and bandwidth.

With the development of this product, Softimage sought to redefine the digital video production market. It appears that the company is well on its way to achieving that goalbecause of its nature and $100,000 price point, customers who have already placed orders for the package say the decision to purchase DS was a "nobrainer". But $100K sounds like a lot of money, doesn't it? Not to the intended customers of DS, according to Softimage, targeting this first release at highend, shortform effects and compositing users. To achieve uncompressed video processing costs four to 10 times more with competing systems. By making this level of technology easier to acquire, Softimage starts to take the "ivory tower" aspect out of uncompressed digital video processing. And Softimage is uniquely suited to do this its experience with highend 3D, editing, and paint, coupled with Microsoft's NT expertise, makes Softimage well suited for development of a package like DS.

The emphasis here is on flexibility. Use one or two monitors. Set it up for editing or compositing. Be a jack of all trades or team up with other users on a network, each team member configuring the interface to suit their particular style of working. One of the objects of this project's development from the start was to make the system fit into current production environments. In beta since March of this year, the software is now in its third round of beta testing, with Softimage officials confident that the product will be ready to ship by the end of this year.

At this writing, the code is completenow all that's left is to quash a few bugs. There aren't many bugs, though. The app is a stable product, snappy and responsive. I didn't see it crash once in an entire day of working with the software. This is testament to the conscientious nature of Softimage when it comes to determining when a software package is ready for sale. In fact, Softimage insists that it could have shipped the editing and compositing parts of the system a year ago, but chose to wait until the entire system was ready.

One of the appealing aspects of DS is its ability to hedge against runaway technology inflation by using a scalable, resolutionindependent architecture (can you spell HDTV?). Softimage designed DS with an independent hardware abstraction layer, making the system easily portable to any or all other platforms. It has also made its API public, openly inviting other software developers to write extensions to the system.

I deliberately avoided using the term "plugin" here, because extra functions written by other developers don't look like plugins within DS. For example, the Primatte keying system, one of the first extensions written for DS, uses the same dialog box interface as all the rest of DS' builtin tools. We're talking fullblown integration into this product, and this is good news for those worried about climbing a steep learning curve. Learn it once, use it with all of DS' extensive features. This will be welcomed by ultra highend production facilities, too, where lots of the effects software used is proprietary. These companies will be able to write their own effects extensions and use them transparently within the DS interface.

This is a huge, featurerich applicationits full install consists of 1.9 million lines of code. And it doesn't stop there. Softimage has a firm grip on MMX technology, and it helps in rendering 70 different graphics calculations within DS. In fact, out of the 2200 lines of MMX code inside Intel's MMX chips, DS uses 1800 of those linesit's the most MMXfriendly application written to date. This helps with CPUintensive operations like color correction, but won't help you much with I/Ointensive operations like transitions. Looking ahead, Softimage is planning full interoperability between DS and the company's new version of its 3D application, code amed Sumatra. Look for seamless integration of all of Softimage products around the end of next year.

A Tour of Softimage?/font> DS

Let's take a tour of this application, and see what it can do. You start by bringing in your materialit can be captured in 4.2.2 digital from D2 or Betacam or any other format, or digitally transferred from D1, DV, or graphics formats. Pick your resolution and dial in compression if you want. For footage that needs simple editing, bring that in compressed, but for material that will be composited, import it uncompressed for the highest quality and no cumulative compression artifacts.

The system's timeline includes full interactive editing capabilities such as trim, roll, slip, replace, fittofill, and slip synch.

As you bring in the footage, as in many other NL apps, you log the shots and organize them in what Softimage calls "browsers". Import PostScript fonts, PICT or TIFF files, and nearly any audio file format. Then, it's time to get down to some serious editing, using either a timeline or source record motif. Rough in your production first, then add transitions. Do some color correction, choose from dozens of filter effects, layer video on top of video, add text. The central theme here is, bring the tools to the media, not the media to the tools.

The interface has a beautiful, organic look. Some parts of it look like a touchyfeely egg cartongiving the impression that if you fell on it from a considerable distance, the entire interface would cushion your fall with comfy featherfilled airbags. For my test drive, it's set up as a dualmonitor configuration where the left monitor is a browser containing thumbnails or a text view of clips. On the right monitor, there's the image viewer, where realtime D1 playback takes place. Playback is also visible in an external video monitor. In the right monitor, I could paint, title, move DVEs interactively, and see the results of any manipulations. By the way, this setup is but one of the many ways to configure windows in DS. Once you have a layout you like, save it for all time. This way, you're able to set up controls for the way you like to work. And, if a system has multiple users, each can have his/her own preferred layout.

The transport controls, although a conventional layout, look like little pillows, quite an inviting metaphor that begs you to dive in. The overall impression is one of friendly, all natural comfort. Under the image viewer is the timeline, where all your chosen clips reside. It's the road mapthe storyboard of your production. Select from bars with text only, head and tail thumbnails, or thumbnails with images all the way across. In DS, this is easily changed with a setting called "level of detail".

Another convenient feature is located just above the timeline. It's a pair of proxies that give you the ability to zoom into a part of your project, and also show you an overall view at the same time. When you move your cursor over the proxy on the left, it changes to a magnifying glass, allowing you to zoom in on any section of your project. The right proxy lets you quickly jump to another area of the timeline with a single click. On the timeline itself, there's a magnetism feature, letting you snap one clip against another or snap the beginning of an audio clip to a corresponding video clip. And, there's a conveniently located Ripple button that globally moves all clips to the right when you drop a new one onto the timeline. Also, each track has a similar Ripple button, so you can turn ripple on or off for each track.

When you want to trim clips, there are many ways to do this drag the clip's edges back and forth on the timeline, or go to the trimming window where you can see and move the Out of the first clip and the In of the second. Or, configure the trimming window in a fourscreen layout so you'll see the Out of the previous clip, the In and Out of the current clip, and the In of the next clip on the timeline.

At the bottom of the timeline are timecode indicator windows, where the in/out and duration of the selected clip are displayed. Here's where you'll see an innovative feature that's in many places where a number window is present in DS: gestural control. Select the timecode number and rotate the cursor clockwise, and the numbers ascend; they'll descend with a counterclockwise cursor movement. This is particularly useful when using a penbased interface.

Unique to DS is a new concept called the Activeness bar, allowing you to create different versions of your edit by stacking them on the timeline. This feature will be welcomed by those of us who are constantly offering up alternatives to fickle clients. Now it's easy to propose an unlimited number of options for a project, designating the active version with a click of the mouse. It works like this: if you drop a clip onto a position on the timeline where there aren't any other clips present, it will be designated as active. But, if you drop a clip on an empty track with other clips at the same time coordinates on other tracks, it's shown as inactive until you activate it. It's even possible to activate parts of a clip. If you want to view an unactivated clip, it's a matter of clicking the little Solo (S) button on the left of the timeline. Another great use for this feature is in multicamera shoots, where you first synchronize all your shots on the timeline, then activate cameras as you need to.

To apply transitions, you have choices of three families: dissolves, wipes, and 2.5D, DVEstyle effects. The impressive part of this is, all are infinitely adjustable over time using precise but userfriendly Bezier curve adjustments. You can even do Boolean functions with your effects, slicing out areas of the clip with another, then putting yet another piece of video into the hole you cut. The overall impression you're left with is one of industrialstrength editing, with a userfriendly facade making it all easy to do.

Although this is a singlestream system (for now, but multiplestream technology is in the works), processing happens extremely quickly. For example, a 1second dissolve takes only 3 seconds to process on the included dual300MHz machine. To further speed things up, set the preview options for quarterresolution, and you'll preview effects in real time.

Applying filters to a clip is a simple process as well, where you select the clip or region in the timeline, open the effects panel, and apply an effect. Then the control for it appears, looking remarkably similar to the controls for the transitions and virtually anything else you'd like to manipulate in DS. Softimage has designed this application to specifically address the learning curve issueall the operations are as consistent as possible. So, if you've learned how to use one dialog box, you've learned them all.

The key productivity enhancement here is that you don't have to take your media to the tools anymore. You bring the tools to the media. All the toys you need are there, and the interface makes it feel like you're holding your clip in front of you and then adding attributes. Each clip functions as an object, where attributes are added on an asneeded basis. This is a new approach to the nonlinear modelone that will save you lots of time scurrying back and forth from room to room, application to application, trying to accomplish a variety of refinements to a shot. Now, it's all here you bring the tools to the shot. For example, when you're compositing, you can still access editing features. If you're building a bluescreen effect and one of your shots is too long, just apply the editing tool to the clip, shorten the clip, and quickly go back to your effects tweaking. There's no switching back and forth.

Softimage users will recognize the "Rooms" concept of the interface, now carried forward with DS. On the left are buttons for NLE, Paint (including titling), Compositing, Audio, and Media I/O. Find a preset or setting of an effect or tool that you like, or need to reuse on a regular basis? Drag and drop its picon to the toolbar so it'll always be there when you need it. There it sits, as an icon or a text button. And, you can preset almost anything. For example, if you have a particular client who has preferences for certain typefaces or effects, make a preset for them.

Nonlinear editing features include perproject and perclip mixedresolution and compression editing, along with an unlimited number of video and overlay tracks.

The system is full of highend features, like a keyer with foreground suppression. Shrink the matte and blur the edge of the key and you'll be able to achieve nearperfect chroma keys. And, all effects are resolution independent. Before now, these kinds of features were available only on highend packages like Discreet Logic's Flame. Even with audio, you have access to all DS' tools. With its scrubbing feature, it's easy to mix your audio in real time, with all the adjustments you've made recorded. You can also hook up a MIDI controller. And, no matter how many channels you're mixing, it's all done faster than real time.

Another delight is DS' text titler, derived from the same Quill technology that is the basis of Microsoft Word (here's another benefit of being linked with that Redmond behemoth). Of course, you're able to add edges, shadows, and fills to your text. Taking it a step further, you can add any of the multitude of effects available in the system to just the face of your text. Then interactively scale, skew or rotate the text in the image viewer by dragging action handles. Like the rest of this app, it's clean, versatile, and easy to use.

This application represents a new way of manipulating digital media, and one that will probably be copied by lots of other software developers. Not only does it lead the way for software development in this market segment, it's a rare example of a software application waiting for available hardware to catch up to its level of sophistication.

But given today's pace of hardware improvements, DS won't have to wait long. That's not to say the available hardware doesn't do the job extremely well. It does. But speedy hardware isn't the only way to get your productions out the door faster. Perhaps the best way to speed things along is to use software that enhances productivity, works the way you work, and brings the tools to you, rather than the other way around. Softimage?/font> DS fits into that equation quite nicely. DM

Sidebar: The System

Dual Pentium II processors; 300MHz; 512KB secondary cache; 512MB EDO RAM

PCI, 133MB/second bandwidth; plugand play compatible; ISA; USB

24bit color supporting 1280x1024 dual screen graphics with video in a window

Two 21inch Intergraph multisync monitors

12x12inch graphics tablet and pen

Video

StudioZ Serial Digital Video board for capture/playback of compressed and uncompressed video. Offers Serial Digital in/out and analog composite and Svideo outputs; NTSC and PAL standards; Finite Impulse Response (FIR) hardwarescaled video subsampling. StudioZ/Softimage|DS supports the new extended (OpenDML) AVI file format. Video standards supported include capture and playback of either ITUR601 or square pixel sampled data, 4:2:2 component video as specified in the ANSI/SMPTE 259M and CCIR 656 standards. Input: serial digital component video (525 or 625line format); output: serial digital component video (525 or 625line format), analog composite (NTSC or PAL), and Svideo.

Audio

Digital audio adapter with four discrete tracks, 16bit sound, sampling rates up to 48KHz, digital mixing, and sync via MIDI, SMPTE, and StudioZ hardware sync. Audio I/O includes four independent, balanced analog I/Os (+4dBu or 10 dBV) and AES/EBU or S/PDIF digital I/O plus MIDI.

Network Interface

32bit Ethernet controller; 10/100BaseTX; PCIbased; motherboard integrated; RJ45 connection. SCSI interface: UltraWide internal SCSI; separate Ultra SCSI channel used for external SCSI devices; two UltraWidetoUltra cable adapters for installing internal UltraSCSI devices; two dedicated UltraWide SCSI channels for video storage.

System and Audio Disk Drive

9GB UltraWide SCSI.

Video Disk Drives

Four 9GB UltraWide SCSI; 24X EIDE CDROM; floppy disk drive; multimedia keyboard with builtin audio system and microphone; 3D IntelliMouse

Software Included

Windows NT 4.0; Softimage|DS; DiskAccess for Windows NT to Unix interoperability

Base Price

Approximately $100,000

Sidebar: 1

American Airlines. Milton Bradley. Hasbro. Exxon. These are only some of the wellknown clients for whom First Edition Editorial, a New York Citybased postproduction facility, has created commercials in the past. So far, the studio has relied on Avid systems for offline work and on Quantel's Editbox and Discreet Logic's Flame for online work. But according to the company, it will most likely be adding another powerful tool to its toolset in the nottoodistant future.

Originally created on a Flame, the effect for this Palmolive spot was achieved in DS by placing an image of a woman on a water background and applying polyline shape animation to another layer of water, which created moving plates to reveal the woman as she opens her arms.

First Edition Editorial has been betatesting Softimage|DS since June. Although the facility has only been "experimenting" with the system, and only doing so on past projects it has already delivered to clients, thus far the results of these tests have been rather favorable.

"Because the system is still in beta and is still premature, we have only taken old projects and recreated them in DS to see how the system would handle them," notes Bobby Smalheiser, First Edition's president.

"And so far," adds editor/designer Royce Graham, "it's proven to be a great tool.

"I'm primarily an Avid editor," Graham continues, "and the first thing I said when I started working with DS was, wait a minute, this isn't the way I've been doing things in the past.

"This is mostly a good thing," he adds. "The more I work with DS, the more I see its benefits."

According to Graham, the most important benefit that Softimage|DS affords him and his company is the fact that it offers an integrated toolset for image and audio editing, compositing, effects generation, image treatment, and project management. "With DS, you get all your tools builtin," enthuses Graham. "I don't have to create an effect on a Mac using After Effects or Photoshop, and then have the Flame artist recreate it on the Flame because the Mac software doesn't translate across to the Flame. I don't have to hop from system to system to do things. Instead, with DS, I have all those tools builtin. DS is an allinonebox system."

Other, more specific capabilities of the system which Graham found to be beneficial in his various tests and project recreations include the fact that it supports realtime, noncompressed, D1resolution video, and the system's ability to perform ramping speed changes. "We used that feature to slow down a liveaction scene progressively over time," Graham notes. "The Avid system doesn't do that."

In fact, Graham's testing of DS has been so positive that he even anticipates the day when Softimage|DS may actually replace his Avid system. "Now, both systems are in my editing room; I have DS on my right and Avid on my left," Graham says. "And for now, I'm probably going to be doing my editing on the Avid and my effects work on DS.

"But DS has so much potential; I can foresee a time when I'll only be on the right side of the room," he concludes. "And I really hope it works that way."Audrey Doyle, DM managing editor

Sidebar: 2

Founded in 1989 and in the postproduction business since 1991, Stable Films specializes in, well, everything. "Our real specialty, which we're known for in the business, is specialvenue and locationbased entertainment material that's going to be projected," comments Joe Beirne, VP Systems and a principal in the New York Citybased facility. "But we've also done some interactive films, we've done a lot of work for corporations, and we've done immersive environments," he adds. "So really, we like to say we do a little bit of everything."

El Ojo del SoHo, produced by Arturo Carvajal, edited by Nico Sarudiansky, and designed and composited at Stable Films by Manual Gaulot, Stable's senior effects editor.

Primarily an Avid Media Composer house, Stable Films has been betatesting Softimage|DS since August, and already has used the system to create a show open for a New York arts program pilot for Argentine television entitled El Ojo del SoHo (The Eye of SoHo). "We have a bluescreen stage here, so we've been doing a lot of compositing testing with it," Beirne notes.

Although Beirne states that thus far he's excited about the system and is looking forward to adding it to Stable Films' repertoire of tools, he's quick to note that Softimage|DS will not replace the company's nine Media Composers. "As far as tools in our studio," he says, "if DS lives up to its promise, for me it will be a specialeffects fixit tool for some kinds of projects. And it will be a conforming tool for shortform projects; in other words, we will do offline edits on the Media Composer and take that material and reedit it on DS.

"I don't see DS as being in competition with Media Composer. It's really a supplementary tool," Beirne continues, and adds, "we use several other Avid graphics and effects products as well Illusion, Matador, ElasticReality but we sometimes do uncompressed work, and Avid does not make an uncompressed editor. So for that kind of work, I can definitely see that Softimage|DS would be a handy tool for us."

possibility that intrigues Beirne is the integration of 3D animation tools with Softimage|DS. Although such capability is not available in beta versions of the product, Softimage does say that Sumatra, the code name for the company's next generation 3D animation system, will not only be available as a standalone system, but will also be built as an integral component of the final, shipping version of Softimage|DS. "Softimage 3D animation capability combined with special effects editing and compositingthat interests us very much," concludes Beirne.Audrey Doyle, DM managing editor

Sidebar: 3

Having originally been chosen as an alpha testing site for Softimage|DS, Montreal postproduction house Supersuite/CME has had the advantage of evaluating the system through at least two prerelease versions. And according to the facility's special effects director Denis Mondion, seeing how much Softimage|DS has advanced since those very early days makes him anticipate the final shipping version only that much more.

For its "Molson Promotion" project, Supersuite/CME combined two video layers, using DS to vary the speed of the plane, build reflections and create small waves in the water, and enhance the sky to resemble a sunset.

"The alpha version we got, back in May, was compressed 4:1 and too new for us to use on actual projects, so we really just looked at the system to see how it performed," says Mondion. "But the beta version which we got just before IBC in September is uncompressed D1 resolution. The system is so much closer to what Softimage is promising for the final release that we did do some commercial editing and compositing with it. And we were quite happy with the results."

According to Mondion, one of the projects on which Supersuite/CME has tested Softimage|DS is a commercial for Molson Beer. "For that commercial, we used DS both offline and online to create a couple of ramping speed changes that the client wanted to see, and to do all of the compositing in the spot," says Supersuite/CME's special effects editor Doneld Pilote. "In DS, all of the tools we needed were there, and the client was happy to be able to see and approve a look that was very close to final."

Some of the features both Mondion and Pilote have found to be quite helpful thus far are the system's audio editing capabilities, and, especially, its compositing functions. "The architecture of the compositing is very good," notes Pilote. "On one composite layer, you can have DVE, titling, keying, painting, and color correction functionality, all at the same time and all while you're in the compositing stage."

While Mondion and Pilote have tested Softimage|DS primarily on commercial work, they hope to also be able to use the final version of the system for their other area of specialtyseries television shows; that is, if Softimage follows their advice and incorporates longform editing capability into the final version.

"Being in Montreal, when we do postproduction editing work for a TV series, most of the time that involves creating an English and a French version of the show, and if we want to release it for the international market, we have to create the show with and without commercial breaks and with no text at the beginning or the end. So we know we have to create at least a couple of versions for each project," notes Mondion. "Being able to put these versions together in nonlinear form in DS would be much easier," he adds. "We'd have to edit it only once. And, we could use the integrated paint tools to remove dust specs."

According to Softimage, when Softimage|DS ships, the software will initially run on an Intergraph StudioZ dual Pentium II 300MHz system equipped with 30 minutes of noncompressed storage and dual monitors, and will cost around $110,000. Although Mondion and Pilote agree that at this point Softimage|DS may not be as fast as the other systems housed in Supersuite/CME's facility, it nevertheless holds lots of promise.

"For major projects, DS is still missing some power, compared to our Henry and Infernos," says Mondion. "But DS has grown so much since we first started testing it. And as it continues to grow and get faster, it will be interesting to see what we'll be able to do with it."

"Flames and Infernos cost a fortune," concludes Pilote. "So if we can have the same speed for what DS will cost, everybody will want it, I'm sure."Audrey Doyle, DM managing editor