Farewell !

[mftech(at)videotron.ca]

 

Yesterday,

was my last day in the role of Team Leader for the Avid DS Escalation Team.

After almost 10 years, I’ve been part of this wonderful human experience called Digital Studio.

It’s now time for me to move on with new adventures in the high-end video industry.

It’s been an immense pleasure to deal and exchange with all the DS users on this list.

Specials thanks to my present, past team and to the DS QA/DEV team.

In lack of better worlds and to paraphrase Luis Talavera back in 1998 .…YOU ROCKS!

 

As a legacy I decided to include some of the history of the good old days to comment the birth of Softimage|DS:

-PS: the geek factor of the following text may offend some users, be warned J-

 

Back in the 1990, lots of the post-production crowd in Montreal was laughing about the initial vision of Daniel Langlois.

The motto from Softimage was roughly -A fully integrated editing and finishing product running on a personal PC-

At that time some prototype running on SGI hardware was shown to key people in the industry.

But Digital Studio was more of a concept than a tactile product.

 

Personally at that time I was one of those online editors sweating over a GVG 200 switcher, Kaleidoscope 2 channels, Chyron Scribe and a GVG-151 connected to an armada of VCR.

I was then scratching my forehead and thinking: “They’re must be a more elegant way to do all this stuff…”

 

I often share my thought with my pears, thanks to Edith G-P, Christine D. and Eric L. for their tremendous patience for listening to my mental monologue.

After a salary argument with my director at that time I decided that I was ready for a radical change. (Many thanks to Bernard Bergeron for pushing my name to Softimage.)

So from the luxurious on-line room filled with clients eating St-Hubert BBQ chicken in my back (poutine not included), I then moved to a minuscule green cubicle at the Museum Just for Laugh on St-Laurent Street J

 

At that time the efforts to integrate the PLAY hardware in DS wasn’t very successful, we then switch to the Matrox Digisuite/Genie 3D/Netpower platform.

We were very close to ship and we even get in Beta process with this configuration, but even with a computer that was the size of a mini-bar and filled with every video PCI/ISA cards available on the universe

the performance and stability were simply not present at the rendezvous.

 

Hopefully a brilliant team of program and hardware engineer based in Alabama working for a company called Intergraph had the solution in their pocket.

A long vertical cabinet filled with Dual 233Mhz CPU (code-named Stingray) bundle with: a SDI capture card (Studio-Z) connected to 4 x 9G internal SCSI drives.

This hardware configuration provide up 30 minutes of SD un-compress video…

 

Oui Monsieur !

The long waited Digital Studio was finally available to the market.

At NAB 1998 the most major breakthrough for Softimage DS was about to be introduced…

 

A new powerful CPU equipped with dual PIII400 Mhz (GT1) attached to a Fiber Channel Storage of 8 x 9G drive was introduced to NAB 1998.

This was backed by a killer DS demo executed by Dean Lewis in the main theater.

 

I was totally amazed seeing two stream of un-compress video running real-time without dropping frame with real-time chromakeyer and transitions.

Nice work from everyone from Softimage and Intergraph, a true synergy between the hardware and the software.

 

In the mean time Symphony (the long awaited un-compress solution from Avid ) was introduced to NAB 1998.

At that time Avid was using the exact same platform than Softimage DS, the same purple box:

The trusty GT1…on the other hand the hardware and software from Avid Symphony was quite different and not as performing as well compare to Softimage|DS.

 

I’ll stop my story here; the rest of the story is not as romantic:

in short the purple guy from the south married the nice women from St-Laurent Street but they finally never get in bed and consume the wedding.:-(

 

 

Thanks for reading my ‘approximate” english writing…

Here’s my legato to the DS list…

 

Best wishes and kudos to my present DS Team:

 

Sylvain Labrosse:

Literally the incarnation of elegance and effiency united in one single person!

 

Philippe Antoniotti:

The guy behind the creation of all ours DS supports tools,

a very dedicated and inspiring person.

 

Christine Durand:

Queen of Interoperability!

And my feminine alter-ego,

Always present to provide me with the best managing advices.

 

The past DS Team:

 

Dominic Mercier, Eric Losier, Daniel Faille, Pascale Nadeau, Pierre Labonté, Pierre Ayotte aka Electrik BBQ and Iseult Seguin-Aube.

Hopefully most of those people are still working on DS today.

 

Special thoughts to:

(Warning!!!  Some comments are written in French -be warned-)

 

 

Howard Chasten:

-Be patient, someday I’ll visit Colorado.

 

Igor Boris:

-Please be patient, someday I’ll visit Toronto…

 

Tony Jover:

-It was a real pleasure to have lunch with you and Patsy on St-Denis Street.

 

Luc Bellerive:

-Wherever you go on the planet, you always know how to reach me J

 

Drew Keller:

-Thanks for introducing me to the RIO Karma, I don’t see how I could live without it…

 

Rupert Watson:

-It’s always fun chatting “geek stuff” with you at NAB

 

Serge Verreault :

-One word : Maudit Malade ! Merci pour ton humour à haute teneur de sarcasme.

 

Pierre Guérin :

Merci pour toutes les discussions sur les processus de la postproduction film.

 

Benoit Melançon :

Merci pour toutes les discussions endiablées lors de nos lunchs du midi.

 

Tony Cacciarelli :

I could witness that you’ve got balls…it takes lots of courage to demonstrate the early cuts of DS…

 

Gus C.

Thanks for showing me the real differences between DS and Symphony at NAB 1999.

 

Sherry White:

It was always a pleasure talking to you and imagine you working on

your DS on that isolated island in Hawaii.

 

Sam Small: Thanks for being my first encounter with an real authentic -Avid MC Editor-

 

That’s it folks…it’s been a real pleasure working with you.

 

Regards

Michel Forbes

Ex-Team Leader for Avid DS Escalation