Avid’s Real Impact

Windows NT Video Editing Solution

Non-linear digital video editing is tovideo production what desktop publishing is to the printed word. When AldusPageMaker 1.0 came out for the Macintosh, it revolutionized publishing. Nolonger did designers have to deal with typesetting, cut-and-paste, and otherprepress nightmares at an expensive print shop: They could instead work with asimple program on their economical desktops.

Video-editing applications have had a similar effect on video production.You no longer have work with a many-thousand-dollar commercial tape deck andcountless other pieces of equipment to produce professional-looking videofootage. Except for cameras and final output devices, all the tools are includedwithin the computer as a single package. Auxiliary applications for morphing, 3Danimation and rendering, and special-effects enhance what you can do and bring alevel of quality to the corporate enterprise or home user that was formerlyreserved for million-dollar studios.

Windows NT offers a stable and powerful environment for video editing, andAvid and other companies have specifically targeted the NT audience. Avid'sproduct, Real Impact, is an NT-native 32-bit application that can take fulladvantage of NT's inherent scalability and reliability. Real Impact offers avideo-editing solution that rivals $100,000 UNIX-based solutions, as well aslower-end desktop solutions based on Macintosh or Amiga systems. And you can'tbeat Real Impact's list price at $13,000 for a turnkey system. (The price isderived by combining $3000 for a basic Dell 120-MHz Pentium box with 32MB of RAMand 1GB of disk space, $3000 for the Real Impact software, $5000 for a Targa2000 video-capture card, and $1500 for a Seagate 4GB audio/video drive).Companies that produce information kiosks, CD-ROMs, video tapes, and othervideo-based products can save a significant amount of money by keeping theirproduction process in-house instead of out-sourcing their work.

Features
Real Impact's tool set covers most producers' needs, and any experiencedvideo editor can recognize the interface, which includes buttons and controlsthat mimic those you find on commercial tape decks. When you combine thatinterface with Windows NT's drag-and-drop capabilities, file standards, andmultiple-windows interface, Real Impact is a formidable competitor totraditional manual-editing systems (see screen 1).

The Real Impact/NT environment offers CD-qualitysound and 24-bit color video. It also supports instant playbacks, automaticaudio/video synchronization, 32 levels of undo/redo, and access to existingaudio and video clips at any point in a video sequence. Furthermore, you canimport and export file types in almost any format to use in many differentapplications: AVI, WAV, FLC, BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PCX, TGA, and Open Media FrameworkInterchange (OMF), which is a cross-platform industry-standard file format.

Digitizing audio and video is as simple as plugging your source into thecapture card and using the digitizing tool. Real Impact supports up to 30 framesper second--dual field--with automatic audio synchronization. Image and audioquality are adjustable, so you can tune them to your system or storage needs.The program also provides controls so that you can manipulate a commercial tapedeck via a serial interface to record from and print to tape.

Using the media library and database, you can create a storyboard bylocating and arranging your video and audio clips into a sequence. You can thenexperiment with the sequence in the Timeline window. Once you have your basicstory, you can add visual effects (such as picture-in-picture), transitions(wipe, dissolve), title sequences (rendered fonts with backgrounds, rolling orstatic), special graphics, or new audio to give your story your personal flare.Real Impact has four independent audio tracks and two video tracks for mixingaudio and video feeds, and the plug-in architecture allows you to use programssuch as TransJammer or Elastic Reality for additional effects (see "ElasticReality" on page 72).

Performance
I tested Real Impact on a turnkey system provided by Avid (a Dell DimensionXPS P120c, as described above). Although Avid does not directly sell thisconfiguration, you can order it from US dealers. Avid does sell the audio/videodrives.

I ran into a few problems with the video drivers for the Truevision Targa2000 board, which is currently Avid's only supported capture device under NT.The problems, which came from incompatibilities with existing Truevision NTdrivers, caused screen-redraw errors and occasional failures when I tried toreactivate windows. Avid personnel said these problems will be fixed by the nextrelease of Real Impact and existing users will be able to get upgrades.

Avid offers ample documentation, both in a comprehensive printed manual andvia extensive on-line Help. There is also a complete tutorial that steps youthrough the program's features and capabilities.

The only place this turnkey solution is lacking is in overall systemperformance. The P120 is probably the bare minimum you would need for this work,and you might consider a 150-MHz or 200-MHz Pentium Pro, with 64MB of RAM ormore for speedier results. I'd like to see some more advanced audio-editingfeatures, as well. Real Impact came up short when I compared its meageraudio-editing capabilities with the application's excellent video-editing suite.Avid representatives say that these enhancements will come in future releases.The next version of Real Impact will encompass support for third-party MovingPicture Experts Group (MPEG)-encoding tools to allow for network filedistribution.