Workflow and Adobe’s $3.4 billion purchase of Macromedia were the hot topics at this year’s NAB. © National Association of Broadcasters. All rights reserved.

The good news at NAB2005 was that attendance was up at the Las Vegas Convention Center from 97,500 to 104,000, and that the buzzword was “workflow” rather than “interoperability.” The message was basically the same, though: that the digital revolution currently underway is now all about refining and simplifying the workflow to enhance efficiency and performance in these leaner and meaner times. No wonder there has been an explosion of DI and DAM products lately. So, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that the biggest news to emerge from NAB2005 was Adobe’s $3.4 billion purchase of Macromedia. As the announcement suggested, “The combination of Adobe and Macromedia strengthens Adobe’s goal of helping people and organizations communicate better, combining Adobe’s PDF format and Macromedia’s Flash.”

And the fact that Alias, Autodesk Media and Ent. (formerly Discreet) and Softimage are much more cooperative with mutual partners underscores how the sharing of assets and technology are vital to the success of any production. Or, as one Autodesk marketing exec suggested, the goal is to leverage technology for problem solving. Yet collaboration isn’t enough: automation is the key to making the process more efficient to increase pipeline performance. Thus, as part of its new rebranding strategy, Autodesk will bring together entertainment and non-entertainment modes of operation to solve complementary production problems.

No wonder Autodesk, under the leadership of senior director Tom Ohanian, has extended its consulting services to the media and entertainment industry. These 3D workflow problems are ubiquitous, with pipeline data management as “a fuel for creativity.” It’s a modular approach to production that is more intuitive and interactive. Yet how do you manage databases in overseas sites (such as ILM with its new animation deal in Singapore)? Or how do you custom develop a data translator? Or how do you calibrate your DI pipeline? Or how do you implement, say, Autodesk’s new Toxik compositing software into your workflow? These are all organizational concerns that need to be addressed by companies large and small all over the world.

Alias made some big changes this year: It divested itself of SGI, purchased Kaydara to leverage MotionBuilder (above), strengthened branding and expanded its partnership with Sony Pictures Imageworks. © 2004 Alias Systems Corp.

Not surprisingly, Alias echoed Autodesk’s message of workflow problem solving and was beefing up its consulting business, hiring Mark Lasoff as entertainment consulting manager of the Custom Development Center. Last year, Alias divested itself of SGI and purchased Kaydara to leverage their products, particularly MotionBuilder. This year, Alias continued to strengthen the complementary branding of its software (while expanding its longstanding partnership with Sony Pictures Imageworks), and discussed its own consolidation of emerging technologies, education, film and TV, broadcast, games and automotive/design in search of cost effective ways to provide a new 3D workflow.

Meanwhile, NVIDIA discussed the combining of its professional solutions group with the digital film group, under the new leadership of general manager Jeff Brown, merging infrastructure and workflow. Their message was that movie productions could benefit from automotive and architectural workflows, which provide fast, iterative solutions. Conversely, hardware systems with different requirements can read back improvements with the help of NVIDIA’s gelato hardware-accelerated renderer. They obviously believe this will expand the 3D pie.

Not to be outdone, Softimage continues to integrate XSI and all the other Avid tools into a seamless workflow, and to work with other partners in trying to solve various production problems. In this regard, Avid co-hosted a Metadata summit with American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). Part of their efforts has been to research parameters for a metadata standard designed to make digital media hardware and software systems interchangeable and interoperable. There’s that word again. Thus, with the rapid evolution of digital intermediate technology, there is an urgent need for a standard metadata system.