We finally released v2.5 of Delirium, Damage and Buena Depth Cue!  This represents the single largest investment and quantum leap in Digieffects recent history – since the company came under new management in May of 2007.  For those paying attention, we actually announced v2.5 about 8 weeks ago thinking a release was imminent.  Well…it turned out a lot of behind-the-scenes work was still needed.  It was a stressful 8 weeks knowing we’d already announced and feeling the pressure of being delayed.  However, we did the right thing and fixed a lot of hidden issues that will benefit our customers.  At the end of the day, as painful as those additional 8 weeks were, it was really a minor delay in the history of software delays!

So what’s new?  For starters, Damage and Delirium’s Phenomena effects are now FCP (X, 7 & 6) native.  This is a big move for us as we try and extend VFX functionality to the editing market.  We’ve also fixed a bunch of issues with OS X Lion, Windows 7 and Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 (Premiere Pro and After Effects).  Our plug-ins are a lot more stable and snappier than in the past.  Lastly, we’ve improved HD support for Buena Depth Cue, especially the venerable Camera Mapper plug-in.

Delirium, Damage and Buena Depth Cue v2.5 are priced as follows:

Digieffects is based in Wilmington, North Carolina, affectionately dubbed “Hollywood East” or “Wilmywood” by the locals.  We’re considered the third largest film production hub in the U.S. after LA and New York.  Over 300 movies have been filmed here and the local university (UNCW) has one of the best film schools in the country.  Screen Gems also has 10 massive sound stages which helps keep our 2,500 or so film crew employed and busy year round.

Wilmington is also home to the Cucalorus Film Festival, one of the top ten film festivals in the U.S. (up there with Sundance, Tribeca, etc.).  This festival is a non-competitive showcase of nearly 150 films over a four day period each November.  It attracts filmmakers from all over the world and many productions shown at Cucalorus go on to receive Oscar nominations.

The more Digieffects gets involved with Cucalorus the more we believe it is a great model for success.  The festival receives very little government funding (less than 2.5% of its budget) but has an economic impact of $5.5 million dollars during the four days of the event.  The organization is comprised of a group of very resilient, creative and entrepreneurial people (and a lot of volunteers) who make things happen and don’t sit around complaining about difficult economic environments.

Here at Digieffects we consider ourselves brilliant marketing mavens.  It wasn’t always this way; this new status was self-conferred recently after a product marketing brainstorming session.  The subject of this meeting was RenderMon, a new web-based application that enables digital media artists to remotely monitor and manage the video rendering process, as well as securely upload, view and share the rendered video from Vimeo.

Near the end of the meeting, we asked ourselves what segment of the video industry does RenderMon fit into?  Historically Digieffects has made visual effects plug-ins; RenderMon is a completely different animal.  It’s a productivity tool.  It’s a workflow enhancement tool.  Great, so what market segment do tools that enhance workflows and offer productivity fit into?  We scoured the internet but alas, nothing emerged.  It was at this time that brilliance struck!  With RenderMon we will be entering the Remote Management Market!  And guess what?  We’re the “leading provider of products for the Remote Management Market”!  It feels good to be on top!

In all seriousness, we are excited about the forthcoming release of RenderMon.  If you want to hear me talking about it on Larry Jordan’s Digital Production Buzz podcast please go here.  We’re also looking for more beta testers.

After an insane amount of speculation, Apple finally shipped Final Cut Pro X last month. The build-up was extraordinary.  Even Conan O’Brien took time to rip on it – you can watch the segment from his show here.

From our preliminary tests here at Digieffects I can empathize with both the advocates and dissenters. FCPX lacks many of the professional features of its predecessor FCP7.  It also doesn’t support plug-ins right off the bat – something we naturally care dearly about!  However, all this is bound to come sooner or later so we’re not overly concerned.  One nice feature – Final Cut Pro can simultaneously run different versions of the software (eg. FCP7 and FCPX) on the same system.  This means you can dabble with the upgrade but still rely on FCP7 for the heavy lifting.  In the past, once you upgraded to a newer version of Final Cut Pro the older version was uninstalled and deleted.

What I find interesting is that Apple clearly thinks the market beyond (or, more accurately, below) the high-end professional is where the action is.  Apparently they aren’t alone.  Look at these announcements from GenArts and The Foundry.  Both companies are coming out with versions of their software designed for a much larger middle and low-end market.

Actually, here at Digieffects we’re guilty of this too.  We’ve been offering individual plug-ins for sale on an a la carte basis for over a year.  Sure you can buy Delirium (and it’s 45 effects) for $299.  However, if all you need is a Rainfall or Fireworks effect, we also offer those (and many other) a la carte for only $49.  Why did we do this?  The answer is “Puppets”.

Look no further than a great story about Puppets told by a great guy, our good friend Josh Mellicker of DVCreators.net.  Josh writes:

Once, I was teaching a “DV Revolution” 3-day workshop on Apple campus in Cupertino with about 25 attendees, and we were about to break for lunch, and a high-ranking, high-pay-grade Apple exec came in (no, not Mr. Jobs, and I don’t want to mention a name because this story is not altogether flattering).

He asked if he could have a word with the class, and asked, “How many people edit projects for TV?” No one raised their hand. “How many edit films?” No one. The exec was visibly puzzled. “Documentaries? Shorts? Animated films?” Nobody.

So he asked “Well then, what kind of movies do you make?” One guy said “I do training videos for our company. We make giant batteries.” Another said “We make videos that teach people how to make puppets.” And a third, “I shoot video every year at the annual conference for remote-controlled aircraft builders.”

He left with a kind of defeated expression on his face that said that he really had no idea who Final Cut Pro users were. I think the puppets answer was the one that really did him in.

How I love that story!

It’s funny how great things can sometimes be hidden in plain sight.

Our latest press release is titled “Digieffects Integrates Sophisticated, Workflow-Enhancing Innovations into Delirium and Damage Family”.  This refers to our AutoAnimate capability which eliminates the tedium of manually animating parameters of an effect to test its viability in a shot (an extremely time consuming process when using Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro).

On the surface, this looks very innovative and something that can significantly enhance our customer’s workflow.  And if you use this feature inside of our plug-ins it really is!

So what’s the big deal?  Why am I writing about this now?  Well, the not-so-dirty-little-secret is this technology/feature has existed all along, since the beginning of Digieffects (all the way back to the late 90′s).  For some absurd reason we’re only promoting it now!  Yes, we’ve optimized and updated it for Adobe CS5+/64-bit hosts (After Effects and Premiere Pro).  And yes, this feature will be supported for our upcoming Apple FxPlug releases, as well as yet-to-be-announced (stay tuned!) version 2.5 updates of Delirium and Damage.

The irony is that we’re now getting some great PR and customer kudos for this “new” AutoAnimate feature.  Shame on us I guess for not recognizing something of such value to our customer, something that’s been hidden in plain sight all these years!

Regards,

Robert

Last month at NAB, Apple commandeered the popular SuperMeet user event to announce the next version of Final Cut Pro (FCP X).   Some 1,700 people got a look at what had, until then, been merely hype and rumors.

FCP X will be launched in June, the price will be chopped to $299 (as opposed to only being available as part of Final Cut Studio for $999) and will only be available for purchase via the Mac App store.  Final Cut Express will also be discontinued.

FCP X will be a 64-bit application and include the ability the handle larger, more complex projects.  It’ll also use a resolution independent playback system and be able scale up to 4K with native support for most cameras.  Background rendering will also be supported, a new feature many users will cheer.

Despite the ballyhoo around the announcement, many users are grumbling that FCP X really seemed dumbed down and less professional, or something akin to iMovie Pro.  They feel that the new features are really targeted towards the amateur video maker with a camcorder or DSLR.

According to Apple, the current version of Final Cut (Pro and Express) has a 94% customer satisfaction rate and some 2 million users.  So the question is, why would Apple make such dramatic and potentially unpopular changes to an application with so many existing users and a ridiculously high approval rating?

The answer is, it comes down to simple math.  For those of us who’ve spent a career in the professional video market, 2 million users sounds gargantuan.  But for most major consumer technology manufacturers, it’s anemic.  So check out this erudite mathematical logic:

Multiply 2 million users (current user base) times $599 (average selling price when the price of FCP and FCE are averaged).  The answer is about $1.2 billion.  Admittedly, my numbers are completely bogus but it at least gives us a formula to work with.

Now let’s do the same math with FCP X and assume the price drop will grow the user base by 10x to 20 million users (a number that still pales in comparison to the number of camcorders, DSLRs and mobile devices capable of capturing HD video on the market).  Multiply 20 million users by $299 and the result is nearly $6 billion.  Even if you ignore all the strategic reasons for FCP X, this is a pretty major bump in high-margin software revenue, even for Apple (who will probably break $100 billion in sales this year).

So, you have to admit the brilliance of my argument.  Right?

Robert

Here at Digieffects, we strongly believe that doing well and doing good should go hand-in-hand and about 10% of our time is spent pursuing pro-bono projects. We wanted to share some of the projects we have recently worked on with some great organizations.

We worked with LINC (www.lincnc.org/), an organization that helps those recently released from incarceration find employment, housing, and establish positive habits. The group is trying to educate the public against misconceptions concerning the beneficial effects of this program for individuals and communities alike. We worked with LINC to create the videos you can watch at http://www.youtube.com/user/lincNC.

We work with Cucalorus as well. We let them use our space for free, donate time and money, and Digieffects president, Robert Sharp is even on the Cucalorus Board of Trustees. Our employees’ films are also included in the festival.

Wilmington Downtown Inc. is an organization we work with that helps promote economic and social progress in Downtown Wilmington. We helped them to create a short video supporting the promotion of Wilmington Downtown area as a great place to live and/or start a business. You can see it at http://www.vimeo.com/21025208.

A project that is still in the early stages is with Community Boys & Girls Club of Wilmington. We will be looking to Adobe to donate 50 copies of Premier Elements and Photoshop Elements that we will install on the kids’ PCs. Then we will teach the kids how to create video projects.

We strongly believe in the social entrepreneurship trend and because of this, we will continue aiming to further social and environmental goals in the future.

Peace,

Dustin

The NAB show was a success for Digieffects!  Before reviewing our accomplishments, I’d like to mention and thank the Digieffects team.  Without their dedication and hard work we could not have had such a great show.  The Digieffects contingent at the show consisted entirely of recent UNCW graduates, most of them from the film studies and computer science departments.  This band of intelligent, motivated young Wilmingtonians made me extremely proud.  In spite of early mornings, long days of standing at attention in the booth and of course late nights (it was Las Vegas after all!), this group showed up on time, engaged our customers and really immersed themselves in the most important four days in the media technology business.  Plus they had to spend an inhumane amount of time with me, something nobody should be forced to suffer.

Now on to reviewing how well we accomplished our goals.  In review:

Goal #1:  Drink lots of water and make it to the show every day on time

Result:  Nailed it.  Mission accomplished there.  OK, that was an easy one…

Goal #2:  Talk to as many customers as possible in order to understand their real needs.

Result:  This is sort of hard not to accomplish when you stand in a booth for nine hours a day for four days.

Goal #3:  Strengthen our business with Apple and Grass Valley (and their users).

Result:  Representatives from Apple were surprisingly absent from the show floor.  Apparently they were holed up in a press room.  This was disappointing but we still engaged their customers.  We made a major technology announcement regarding support for Apple products and this was well-received.

We made great progress with Grass Valley as hoped for.  The big news however is we had meetings with Sony and plan to move forward with a partnership.  It’s extremely exciting to consider being involved with one of the world’s most respected consumer brands.

Again on the partnership front, we also furthered our relationship with Adobe, really the most important company to our customer’s ecosystem.  Several times a day, Adobe’s showed some of our effects in action in their jam-packed theater.  Apparently our Camera Mapper effect was used in HBO’s new series Boardwalk Empire.  We did not know this going into NAB – the big media & entertainment companies are not that forthcoming about the specific technologies used in their productions so discovering this is thrilling.

Goal #4:  Establish stronger relationships with customers from big media & entertainment brands.

Result:  A lot of big brand name customers were at our booth.  That’s not the same as receiving a nice-sized purchase order from them, but it’s a great start.  Time Warner, the U.S. Army, Disney, Intel and the Library of Congress, to name a few, came by the booth.  Obviously we’ll be following up vigorously!

Goal #5:  Engage industry press (dozens of press meetings are scheduled) and win an award.

Result:  Tons of press meetings.  Not only did they understand our corporate strategy, their approval provided a nice confirmation that Digieffects is on the right track.  We did not win an award but there is always next year!

Well, I’m wiped out!  I took the red-eye home with the rest of the Digieffects team and am ready to get some rest!

It’s wonderful to be home in Wilmington!

Robert

As I walked around the numerous NAB convention halls today, gazing in wonder at all the various video equipment, I started thinking about Wilmington.  Four years ago I moved to Wilmington.  I’d been visiting the area since the early 90′s so our vibrant film community was of no surprise to me.  On the contrary, it was one of the main assets that convinced me to make the move to Wilmington (that, and Jackson’s Barbecue on Kerr Avenue!).

I started thinking how fortunate we were to have a film community in Wilmington.  Cities of our size around the United States must be jealous!  Not only do we have Screen Gems and all the production business it attracts, we also have Cucalorus and UNCW’s film studies program.  The Cucalorus Film Festival is one of the top festivals in the United States according to Time Magazine, MovieMaker Magazine and The Brooks Institute and is well known among the crowd at NAB.  The UNCW Film Studies department is nationally recognized as a leading film program and this only adds to the equation.

I’ve been attending NAB for 16 years but in the past four years I have felt a new sense of pride.  That pride stems from being a Wilmingtonian, especially when I tell the other folks on the show floor that I’m from this great film town.  We’re close to the end of the show and as I start to reflect, I realize I’ve been wearing three hats.  The first is of course my Digieffects hat.  The second is, as a board member of Cucalorus, is as an advocate of the film festival (and, of course, raising sponsorship funds from national media technology companies).  The third is as an ambassador of Wilmington.  Maybe the chamber of commerce will start paying me!

Regards,

Robert

Every year at NAB I have dinner with Kevin Klingler, founder & CEO of SmartSound Software and Andrew Little, founder & President of Red Giant Software.  Last night we were joking that no one ever invited us into the inner loop of power brokers in our industry so we’d been forced to create our own inner loop.

As the conversation became more serious and reflective, we discussed all the changes in the media technology industry.  Historically, our industry was rather limited in scope.  Film and/or video was created and edited with expensive equipment by big budget, brand name media and entertainment companies.  That content was then delivered to the consumer via a limited number of mediums, namely TV, movie theaters and video rental stores.

How the world has changed!  Ten years ago there was not a single device in my house capable of recording video.  This past year, at Christmas, I did a quick inventory and found no less than 11 gadgets with this capability.  And, that video can be delivered easily over the internet, by email, text messages, etc, really anywhere imaginable at virtually no cost.

What does all this mean for Digieffects?  For starters, the market for our products has grown by a measure of order.  No longer is video creation and distribution controlled by organizations with big budgets.  What the ultimate impact of this seachange is unknown but one thing is for certain, it’s getting very exciting and Digieffects is growing because of it!

Signing off…

Robert