Viddler

Figuring out how to do a demo of what would become the Avid Media Composer was a challenge.
There was no way to digitize a stream of video. There were no real-time compression systems. There was no way to show synchronization of sound and...

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Figuring out how to do a demo of what would become the Avid Media Composer was a challenge.
There was no way to digitize a stream of video. There were no real-time compression systems. There was no way to show synchronization of sound and picture. There was no way to get a stream of video on and off of disk.
So I decided to boil it all down to the most very basic elements. A bunch of 128x96 images with a line at a changing angle. We'd make edits and the line would move and jump based on the edits. The eventual goal was to have a still frame with the line overlaid.
All the frames would be stored in RAM. We'd "blit" them to the screen fast enough to get motion.
Here, Bill talks with Rick Olha, who worked at Apollo and did some consulting on the side to create our very first demo.
Granted, it's very, very basic, but you begin to see the outlines of a video editing system emerging.
--- Bill Warner November 22, 2008

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