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Media 100 844/X Debuts in New York
New Compositing Engine Capable of Four Layers of Video with Keys and Color Correction in Real Time
by Charlie White
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 Monday night at the Museum of Television and Radio Broadcasting in New York, Media 100 CEO John Molinari introduced Media 100 844/X, a video compositing system he called not just a product, but a new category of integrated software and hardware products that are capable of manipulating video "faster than anything out there." He said 844/X, formerly code-named Pegasus, would bring to the digital video marketplace "blazingly fast visual effects, the greatest in the world."
 | | (Click graphic for streaming QuickTime movie) Media 100's John Molinari speaks to DMN earlier this month about his new compositing hardware and software. |
Billed as an uncompressed precision product, the $66K 844/X is intended to satisfy Molinari's desire to place his company at the top of the compositing field. "I want it to be the king of interstitials," Molinari said. "That's our beachhead: Bumps, high-end commercials, stingers, teasers. Networks are trying to catch the eye of viewers, keep them watching. They want to keep hands off the clicker. That’s our beachhead," said Molinari.
 | | Click graphic for Media 100's Web presentation. |
"Media 100 in many ways is going back to its roots: nonlinear editors", Molinari continued. "In effect, we're re-launching the company." Armed with a war chest of $16 million Media 100 received from Autodesk on its sale of its Cleaner application and other software, added to the company's existing $4 million cash hoard, Molinari decided to put all his company's R & D effort behind this mission. Molinari also made it clear, though, that Media 100 would still continue to support the current line of Media 100 i and iFinish products.
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 | | (Click for streaming QuickTime movie) Take a look at the three cards that make up the GenesisEngine. |
In development since 1998, 844/X runs on a PC under Windows 2000. Using Media 100's new technology it calls the GenesisEngine, it's able to play back eight uncompressed streams of 10-bit video in real time. Molinari and Media 100's engineers characterize this as being organized as four video streams with four motion/alpha streams playing back at once without rendering. In order to accomplish this, the data rate of this hardware equals sustained throughput of a whopping 240MB per second, the highest bandwidth we've seen for PC workstations, and in fact, right up against the limit of the PC's PCI bus. So, with each video stream, you're able to add a 2D DVE, color correction and an Alpha key, and you can do this with four uncompressed video streams at the same time without rendering. Beyond that, to create eight video layers with color correction, DVE and Alpha channel, it only takes 2X real time to render.
All this pixel crunching takes place in Genesis hardware and doesn't tax the computer's main processor. It's comprised of three circuit boards designed by Media 100. The Studio card for audio, VLAN, genlock (you can time a whole TV station to this thing), a processing amp, and time code; the CFX card that takes care of the compositing tricks, and the IFX card that processes effects. Click on the graphic at left for a QuickTime demo of the three cards.
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