Boards: What will be the main emphasis of Discreet at NAB?

Ragan: Discreet has many new initiatives and product shipments for NAB 2001. The main emphasis for Discreet will center around "The Discreet Digital Studio," a digital workflow environment integrating our nonlinear editing, effects and animation solutions with our backdraft media management system as well as complementary 3rd party applications. There is no other vendor that shows capture, management and distribution of media in editing, compositing and 3D environments across open IRIX, NT and Macintosh environments.

Boards: How does this reflect what's going on in the industry -- the changes that have happened over the last year?

Ragan: Hot topics and areas of great concern in the broadcast and post industries include convergence, productivity, infrastructure & workflow, retention of viewership through exciting branding and the uptake of HDTV and other digital broadcast formats. Interactive TV is slowly becoming an area of interest as well.

Discreet's response to these topics is very evident in our booth. The desire to multi-purpose content for on-air play out to online viewing has been Discreet's core "OnScreen OnAir Online" theme for the past 12 months. At NAB this year, Discreet will illustrate convergence and productivity by repurposing digital content using Discreet's Universal Mastering format for flexible, multi-purposing of content. In the frost theater, broadcast graphics generated for live, over-the-shoulder use are similarly available as online 3D animation with Discreet's 3ds max animation solutions.

Discreet will also demonstrate the use of infrastructure and workflow through demonstrations of the Discreet Digital Studio. All editing, effects and animation products integrate together using Discreet Infrastructure solutions (backdraft, stone, wire, mountstone and jobnet) to form cohesive, seamless workflows for facilities of varying sizes and production methodologies. From telecine suites to editing bays and animation departments, the Discreet Digital Studio offers facilities tremendous time and cost savings with unparalleled background I/O, media management, project management and archiving capabilities.

Boards: What will be the emphasis of the show in general? What do you think most of the attendees will be looking closely at?

Ragan: Many of the attendees will be scrutinizing the vendors against commitments articulated last NAB 2000. Discreet is pleased to have solid performance against its commitments from last year, with an excellent track record for on-time shipments and feature sets. Many attendees are in search of replacing existing linear editing bays or graphics systems; Discreet will be showing the latest in smoke and fire editing systems and industry-acclaimed inferno, flame, flint and combustion. Many attendees will seek workflow solutions to integrate animation, effects and/or editing: again, a key area for Discreet with the Discreet Digital Studio. Other attendees will look to vendors for future direction of their respective product lines: Discreet is pleased to debut upcoming product line functionality at our invitation-only Discreet User's Group and during selected demonstrations at the show. Lastly, after all the walking and talking, many attendees look long and hard for chairs and quiet! Again, come to Discreet. Our booth is modeled with internal quiet areas inside our booth structure, giving NAB attendees a nice peaceful break from the show floor.