Discreet Announces New Products
By lgodfrey
Created 09/18/2001 - 00:00
Discreet, a division of Autodesk Inc., announced a variety of new products at the 2001 International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) held in Amsterdam September 14-18, 2001. Among the new products unveiled to the European community were frost 3, the latest version of Discreet's real-time 3D-broadcast graphics creation and delivery system and combustion 2, the latest version of its paint, animation and 3D-compositing software for Windows and Macintosh platforms. Both products are expected to begin shipping by end-of-year 2001. Frost 3 will offer high quality broadcast 2D text tools, from newly adopted Inscriber Technology, and performance on SGI's Octane2 visual workstation - delivering a performance previously unavailable on the desktop. The new features in frost 3 build upon its ability to create 3D on-air graphics, providing a more interactive experience for viewers, and flexibility to make real-time changes on-air, as witnessed from frost customer TF1's recent coverage of the Tour de France. Combustion 2 software will offer professional visual effects and motion graphic artists a variety of new tools including multi-format project capabilities (including up to 16bit), new particle effects, and performance improvements in its base and rendering architecture, making complex visual effects creation faster and more sophisticated. Also shown, running on SGI's Octane2 and Onyx 3200 visual workstations, smoke 5 and fire 5, new versions of Discreet's online non-linear editing multi-master editing and finishing solutions. Discreet had previously announced its intention to purchase the Cleaner and CineStream family of products from Media 100. The US$16 million acquisition will advance Discreet's position in digital media design, content creation and delivery, allowing its customers to create, distribute, re-purpose and publish media content for consumption via the Internet and other platforms. The acquisition is expected to close before the end of Q4 in Autodesk's fiscal year (January, 2002).
