As we ease ourselves into the new year, let's take a look back at the predictions I made last January for 2000. Next time, I'll have predictions for 2001.

As we venture forth into the next millennium, let's take a look back at 2000, and see if the predictions I made at the beginning of the year actually came to pass. Was I an uncanny soothsayer like Nostradamus or was I as lame as Geraldo's "forseeing" hoards of cash in Capone's vault? Am I a seer or a charlatan?

Prediction 1: "DigitalVideoEditing.com will experience no further Y2K problems."
Correct. We have experienced no further Y2K problems, nor has anyone else. What a hoax! That was an easy one to predict. After we wrestled that automatic date-stamp thingy to the ground (the date on the front page that's automatically generated by our load-balanced servers), all has been right with the world. Seems to me like there are always those who are eager to warn everybody about the end of the world, but for some reason, this big blue marble keeps on turning.

Prediction 2: "Bandwidth? That goes for inside computers and out as well. By the end of the year, it will seem as if everybody has broadband connections to the Web, so we editors will be thinking about compression and content issues for Web distribution much more than before."
Correct. Many more users have broadband connections than a year ago, although technical problems plague installations, particularly for DSL connections. As for Web distribution of digital video, almost every digital video product released in the past year has Web-friendly features added.

Prediction 3: "Intel's chips will continue their fight against AMD's mighty Athlon chips, with Athlon seeing a big speed lead by year's end. I also expect to see both Intel and AMD hitting well beyond the gigahertz level before 2000 is done."
Correct. Even though Intel released its Pentium 4 processor at 1.5 GHz, AMD's 1.2 GHz Athlon with DDR memory still blows the doors off Intel's new chips. And, the gigahertz barrier was smashed on February 7 by the AMD Athlon 1.1GHz chip, a mere month after I made that prediction.

Prediction 4: "I don't believe [Apple's] PR flacks when they blather about the twelve month process of rolling out OS X."
Correct. Apple said OS X would be released last summer. Didn't happen, unless you count a half-baked beta version. Even if you gave Apple the benefit of the doubt and bought into that "twelve month process" propaganda, I was still 100% right.

Prediction 5: "I predict huge profits for Apple."
Correct. How's $789 million for you? Sufficiently huge? Until the end of Apple's fiscal year, huge profits were the norm. With a gross margin of 28% for the fiscal year, Apple's profitability was nothing to sneeze at. In my prediction, I was focusing on the iMac, which especially kicked ass, accounting for 48% of Apple total sales for the year. Huge profits. But then came the stock market debacle of October, with Apple losing over 50% of its market value in a matter of hours. This happened because earnings estimates fell short of expectations. But still, for the fiscal year overall, profits of $789 million would be classified as "huge." (Apple's profit breakdown, if you're interested: Q1= $183M Q2=$233M Q3=$203M Q4=$170M)

Prediction 6: "Final Cut? You'll see more phenomenal growth for it as it starts nipping at the heels of the king of that market segment, Adobe Premiere."
Correct. While Adobe sat on its laurels with Premiere 5.1 for the entire year, Mac enthusiasts snapped up millions of copies of Final Cut Pro, making it a phenomenal success. At the same time, hardware manufacturers like Pinnacle and Matrox demonstrated real time products for FCP that promise to finally bring real time digital video editing to the Mac. But Adobe won't just sit there and watch its market share slip away -- Premiere 6 will be released soon with lots of new features that will make it more competitive.

Prediction 7: "Look for Media 100 to continue its Web initiative with more innovative ways to get your video out of the camera and on to the Web."
Correct. With the introduction of Media 100 i, the company made it easier to add clickable elements into streaming video, and further streamlined the process of preparing video for the Web.

Prediction 8: "Quantel will make more strides toward becoming less proprietary."
Correct. Quantel introduced its "iQ" initiative with much fanfare, allowing developers to write software for the Quantel platform on ordinary Windows 2000 PCs. But Quantel, bought from the Carlton Company by Quantel's top managers, still clings to its proprietary platform, hoping that its glory days of charging customers a million dollars to edit video are not over yet. Got news for you, Quantel -- it doesn't take much iQ to figure it out -- the gilded age is gone for good.

Prediction 9: "Discreet moves its edit* line of vid-cutters into the waiting arms of high-end smoke* and flame*."
Correct. With edit* version 6, Discreet introduced new integration and workflow features where edit* project metadata could be freely exchanged with high end Discreet applications like smoke*, fire* and flame*. Version 6 of edit* can now also import rendered animations from 3D Studio Max, and can seamlessly pass color correction, audio levels, and EDL data between Discreet's high-end compositors.

Prediction 10: "I predict a major breakthrough in compression technology."
Correct: There were at least two breakthroughs. A company called GeoVideo Networks, a division of Lucent, introduced a PC-based product for desktop access to HDTV video, called the GeoVideo Browser, which, according to company officials, uses breakthrough compression technology that's been sitting in Lucent's vault of patents for years. It's still holding back on some of the hottest technology, though, first rolling out the service for business-to-business users. This is one to watch. GeoVideo better not wait too long, though, because a German company called DynaPel takes a different approach from traditional compression methods, using the processing power of personal computers along with the image analysis characteristics of MPEG-4 to fill in the blanks created by highly compressed video. Neat idea, especially since the bottleneck in today's streaming video is due to bandwidth limitations. DynaPel's result? High quality, 30-fps video extracted from low-frame-rate, highly compressed video files. Wow.

Watch this space for my predictions for 2001, coming up in my next editorial.

Charlie White has been writing about new media and digital video since it was the laughingstock of the television industry. A technology journalist and columnist for the past seven years, White is also an Emmy-winning producer, video editor and shot-calling PBS TV director. Talk back -- Send Chazz a note at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com.