Rob Legato & Steve Wozniak Talk Technology at NAB 2012

Fusion-io and Adobe teamed up at NAB 2012 to keynote the Post Production World Conference. Steve Forde of Adobe and Vincent Brisebois of Fusion-io kicked off the talk by revealing that Adobe Creative Suite 6 is the first software application to be optimized [1] for the Fusion ioFX.

Steve Forde, Adobe Product Manager, told the audience that After Effects 6 was Adobe’s biggest release in about a decade. Adobe wanted to hone in on performance and get under the hood to accelerate the root of the applications. Steve said that once they found that I/O was the bottleneck, Adobe turned to Fusion-io “to take performance to the extreme.”

“For our major revolution with Creative Suite 6, we wanted to work with the biggest revolution in storage, so of course we started talking to Fusion-io,” Forde explained. “We wanted to get the machines out of the way to get what’s in your head on the screen as soon as possible so you can see what works before you lose the train of creative thought.”

Two-time Academy Award winner Rob Legato [2] took to the stage to talk about his history pushing technology to the limits in his visual effects work. From Titanic to Hugo, computers got incredibly more powerful, but Legato enjoys still pushing everything to its limits in the pursuit of the creative vision.

“I use and abuse technology to take audiences to a place they haven’t seen before,” Legato explained. “I like to do shots from a different angle so people can see something completely new. That gets me out of my house to see a major motion picture. People are so sophisticated that it takes a lot to create something they haven’t seen before, and you need the latest technology to make that happen. I use the genius of others to do what I do. “

Speaking about deadlines, Legato noted that they are a challenge all visual effects artists have to manage. “Time and deadlines are things you can’t change. You scale up, get another computer. People say it can’t be done. It can be done. You get what it takes to get it done. Get more stuff.  It’s all about scale and finding what’s new that’s cheaper, better and faster. Never rule out the crazy idea.”

“The more technology we have, the more I can ‘go fishing’ with shots to see what I can play with,” Legato said. “Too often, human nature jumps to say that things just won’t work. It takes away the ability to try and learn how to break through."

Fusion-io Chief Scientist Steve Wozniak [3] gave an inspiring talk on creativity and innovation. There’ll be more video to come, but for now here’s a sample of what all the speakers had to say: