"...financial pressures forced (Radius) to merge its Macintosh clone business with Umax Data Systems, Inc., a Taipei, Taiwan based computer scanner maker that holds a license to sell the Mac OS in Asia."
Umax started selling Apple clones with the SuperMac brand. Despite the changes Radius continued development of its highly acclaimed editing package, Edit.
The company released Version 2 of Radius Edit with support for unlimited video layers and multiple bins for storing media. The editing interface had evolved to a three-point system, and the compositing tool also had unlimited layers, alpha channel support, and multiple key-frameable effects.
There were a number of new features including re-digitizing, PZR (Pan-Zoom-Rotate) within the 3D filter and up to six real time audio tracks. Rhonda Stratton, Radius' digital video product marketing manager told the press:
With the combination of Radius Edit 2.0 and VideoVision, Radius creates the ultimate digital video editing environment. Now, digital editors can explore new areas of creativity and get professional results on their desktop.
The Edit upgrade also included enhanced PICT Import, immediate FX Preview that let customers tweak special effects in real-time, Power PC Native code which improved overall performance and enhanced EDL importing to handle lists in CMX 3400/3600, GVG and Sony formats.
With Apple preparing a major update to QuickTime, Berger was bullish about editing on the Mac.
As QuickTime becomes the ubiquitous standard for motion based media, the workflow of the creative professional moves beyond the confines of a single platform. With the explosion of outlets for digital creations, the graphic professional requires tools that foster the creative process rather than hinder it.
Since its introduction, QuickTime's features have helped both Radius and Apple maintain their preeminent relationships with creative professionals.
MACROMEDIA
The relationship with KeyGrip’s technology partners soured.
Microsoft had promised to deliver ActiveMovie as the enabling Windows API and Truevision was to be the preferred hardware supplier for Wintel machines. After its launch in March there wasn’t another press release all year.
The Macromedia team received a phone call about the development of a Truevision driver. Phil Schiller told the subsequent U.S. Justice Department’s case against Microsoft:
The team from Truevision called my team at Macromedia and said, “We can’t deliver you your QuickTime driver for our card on Windows because we have entered into an agreement with Microsoft. And part of that agreement requires us not to make a QuickTime driver for our card for Windows.
Apple’s Dr Avie Tevanian added in his deposition:
Macromedia was working with Truevision to develop a ‘driver’ to ensure that its video capture card was compatible with (KeyGrip) Final Cut software. When Macromedia realized that Microsoft was not going to deliver ActiveMovie as promised, Macromedia decided to alter the development of Final Cut so that it would be based on QuickTime for both the Mac and Windows operating systems.
Although this work continued, Truevision eventually informed Macromedia that it could no longer continue with the development of a Windows QuickTime driver to support Final Cut. Mr Schiller was informed that Microsoft had agreed to invest in Truevision, but only on the understanding that Truevision could not deliver or support QuickTime drivers for the Windows operating system with Truevision products.
According to Mr Schiller, Truevision and Microsoft reached an arrangement that allowed Truevision to create a QuickTime driver for its video capture card. However, the driver could work only with KeyGrip and Truevision could not market, brand or refer to the driver as a QuickTime driver.
Despite negotiations with Truevision to resolve the issues, Macromedia management was now forced to adopt QuickTime as its API for both PC and Mac. It also needed to settle on a new hardware partner.
In August 1996 Macromedia had $100 million cash in the bank but with many businesses moving their focus to the Internet, its core business of making software tools for developing CD-ROMs was slowing.
The woes at Apple had also sent many Macromedia clients to the seemingly more stable Windows/DOS platform.
Chairman Bud Colligan believed Macromedia needed a fresh, outside perspective to survive and he replaced himself with Robert Burgess, former VP Software at Silicon Graphics.
Burgess had stated publicly that a ‘hard’ platform like CD-ROM was going to give way to a ‘soft’ platform like the Internet. The depth of the Internet as a platform was still unknown but Burgess was convinced that it could save his company. He told Fortune:
Basically, we bet on the idea that the Web could be a better place and that we could build some stuff to help it along. We really understood interactive media, and the products we created hit the sweet spots of the markets we targeted.
Burgess wanted customers to come to Macromedia for a complete website building package and it was unclear what role KeyGrip played in that mix.
The AliBaba team still needed to solve VCR control for its incomplete consumer-editing package. VP New Development, Bill Loesch recalls:
I had sold Mark Sanders on the idea of this project called AliBaba, which was an offline then online editing system. I had looked around at what others were doing and I had used Gold Disk's Video Director product myself. Video Director was essentially an off-line conforming tool (with no front-end non-linear editor).
It controlled the source camcorder (using LANC, Cntrl-M or IR) and the record VCR (using IR). It was cuts-only. As I got deeper into the detail of what Pinnacle needed to create it was obvious that one of the key pieces of technology that we needed was low-end IR machine control. I figured we could clone this technology and create a new front end.
Out of nowhere Loesch took a lucky break.
The computer publisher Gold Disk had sold more than 100,000 copies of its $99 video editing product called Video Director. Company cofounder Kailash Ambwani told the press:
Gold Disk has worked hard over the past two years to provide customers with affordable, easy-to-use software tools for enhancing their home video collection, with great success.
Despite the success Ambwani changed direction and focused Gold Disk on the emerging web conferencing market. Loesch continues:
Gold Disk approached us to see if we wanted to buy Video Director. It was Pinnacle's first acquisition after the IPO and we really agonized over that purchase!
Pinnacle's Mark Sanders knew the acquisition solved AliBaba's immediate problems.
They (Gold Disk) had this great deck control technology that we could use straight away. VHS tape machines are pretty basic, they are shaky and the ballistics change from one end of the tape to another. A 120-minute tape acts differently to a 3-hour tape and the existing Pinnacle consumer editing system was essentially predictive.
It would predict if you pushed the button on your VHS deck how long the deck would take to roll up and get to speed and lock. So you could easily be off five frames without batting an eye. It was very difficult and very frustrating for the home user.
Bill Loesch had the pieces to let home enthusiasts make professional-looking video.
We now had all the bits