Issue: Week of April 25, 2003

QUANTEL DEMOS COLLABORATIVE WORKFLOW WITH APPLE'S FCP

NEWBURY, UK - At the NAB show earlier this month, Quantel (www.quantel.com) demonstrated a new offline/online workflow model designed to work with Apple's Final Cut Pro 4 editing software. The showing continues Quantel's strategy to support open standards and collaborative workflow for its line of film and HD editing solutions.

Quantel will be using Automatic Duck Inc.'s AAF plug-in to work with Apple's XML interchange format to provide a single-step transfer operation for users who will be able to exchange data of SD, HD and 2k projects offlined with Final Cut Pro 4 with Quantel's generationQ range of high-end finishing systems.

At NAB, Quantel showed Final Cut Pro projects being transferred from Mac PowerBooks to Quantel eQ and iQ systems. The technology on which this workflow is based uses the AAF (Advanced Authoring Format), an open standards architecture on which the Quantel file format is based. AAF allows for rich metadata exchange far beyond what is currently provided by edit decision lists. Data that can be exchanged can include DVE positional data, flex-file and color correction information, clip names and more.

Quantel says the technology will be available via a Final Cut Pro plug-in from Automatic Duck early this summer.