Radius planned to produce 24-bit Touchstone style multimedia boards capable of capturing and outputting 30 fps video with support for 16.7 million colors.
REELTIME
SuperMac had generated consumer interest at the 1991 Boston MacWorld Expo in DiskFit and ReelTime but it was not positioned to sell software-only products. It decided to sell off the two applications. DiskFit was traded back to the original developer Dantz and ReelTime was ‘shopped around’ to prospective buyers. Steve Blank told the press:
There's a feeding frenzy of companies trying to buy it, but no matter what, we will bundle ReelTime with Video Spigot for the first 90 days.
A short-lived bidding war between Microsoft, Aldus and Adobe Systems ended when the company that had defined, and dominated print publishing on the desktop agreed to buy ReelTime.
Blank told the press that selling ReelTime was like:
...trading away a first-round draft choice.
Having co-ordinated video development between Adobe and Digital F/X during the development of TitleMan and Hitchcock, Tim Myers was well suited to be Product Manager for ReelTime.
I knew enough about editing from my University days and then with our work alongside Digital F/X, not a lot but probably more than most others at Adobe!
He told the press at the time:
Adobe plans to bring the product ‘in line’ with its professional products.
Denise Caruso wrote in her ‘Digital Media’ newsletter:
Adobe plans to add minor enhancements to ReelTime before the initial release. It will be working closely with SuperMac to create versions 1.0 and 1.1. Sources say that the specifications for 2.0 will also be worked out between the two companies. But Adobe will be calling the shots.
First, the product's name will be changed, although the new name is still being cleared through copyright lawyers. Then programmers will write software connections, or "hooks," to Photoshop, Adobe's image manipulation software.
The acquisition was significant for Adobe because it had never released a video product.
For SuperMac, the deal officially signaled its exit from the software market.
Robert Gruttner adds perspective:
I don’t think SuperMac imagined they were losing what would become Premiere, KeyGrip, and Final Cut Pro. It was all about making monitors and video cards back then. Hardware, not software, was the money machine for SuperMac.
Tim Myers concludes:
Obviously, SuperMac had decided to focus on hardware and couldn’t justify further development and support of Randy’s application. Adobe started to get serious about the acquisition. They had experimented a little with video, mainly with PICT image applications and so forth but nothing at this level.
I think it was a combination of feeling that there was a chance that desktop video may take off but they were probably just being opportunistic. ReelTime was a low-risk, low-cost chance to get into video and if it turned into something, great. If it didn’t, not too much would be lost because Adobe was very much a print-focused company.
HITCHCOCK
The acquisition of ReelTime was long planned by Adobe but it came at a time of considerable uncertainty. Avid was doing well but its future was unknown. EMC was still a small player and Digital F/X continued to struggle. Video F/X programmer Michael Olivier recalls:
There was a point when Steve Horowitz and Richard Snee and I had a kitchen table discussion where we all asked, “Where should this product line go?" and we pretty quickly came to the realization that we should be build a low cost ‘Avid killer’.
At this time Avid was selling systems for $50,000-100,000 and we knew it was possible to make a much cheaper system, so we got approval from the Digital F/X leadership to make our Avid killer product.
We 'fired the gun in the air', and took the code base from our existing Soft F/X product and modified it. Our battle cry was to make NAB 1993.
The new product was called Hitchcock.
Steven Horowitz recalls:
We realized then that the Hitchcock product was probably what they (Digital F/X) should have been working on for the previous three years. But by then the money was running out. I remember an article, which was headlined, “Why Venture capital is so patient with Digital F/X”.
The VC's saw that PC based nonlinear editing or a digital post workstation was a good product to persist with, but for how long?
Steve Horowitz worked on the UI design for Hitchcock and the team spent hours pouring over user feedback.
Chuck Clarke recalls the next steps at Digital F/X.
The other factor at play here was the investment. To keep research and development going in things like Hitchcock we needed to dilute the shareholdings of our employees, so as we got closer to an IPO, and releasing Hitchcock and the PAL version of Composium, our own personal stake in the company was getting less valuable.
That Silicon Valley dream of getting rich from a lot of work was slipping away.
Steve Mayer lent on a former colleague to guide Hitchcock to market. Pioneering computer scientist Allan Alcorn knew Mayer from Atari. Among other achievements Alcorn had built the successful video game ‘Pong’ and worked with start-ups like Catalyst before settling at Apple as an Apple Fellow.
The San Jose Mercury News announced "Elite Executive leaves Apple for small firm".
One of Apple Computer Inc.'s elite corps of Apple Fellows said Friday he will leave the company to take a top post at a small Mountain View high-tech firm. Allan Alcorn, who has worked at Apple for six years, will start Monday as vice president of engineering for Digital F/X, a maker of computerized video editing gear.
Alcorn was instrumental at Apple in developing technologies to integrate video with the company's Macintosh computer line.
Alcorn recalls the plan
The Composium was a technical tour de force but was very expensive and had a limited market. The Video F/X had the most potential was and was a most interesting product at the time to me but we needed to get rid of the hardware and use our software to control one of the third party cards that digitized video on the fly and stored it on the disk.
That product was Hitchcock.
IMMIX AND EDIFLEX DIGITAL
Designer Jonathan Burke was working with the ImMIX hardware team to create complete system architecture for the new editing device.
They had settled on three core components being The Media Processor Unit (MPU), the Control panel and the Storage Module.
The biggest challenge wasn't creating a unique editing system from the ground up, though that was tremendously difficult. It was the time we had to do that work! We started in September and needed to be completed three