From Proximity Corp.’s website:
We are pleased to announce that all Proximity technology and intellectual property, including artbox workgroup and artbox enterprise, was recently acquired by Apple.
Existing Proximity customers with current support contracts will be contacted by Apple with details regarding their specific agreements and support requirements.
We remain a dedicated leading provider of creative media asset management and production workflow software. Our cutting edge production workflow solutions are widely considered the defacto standard for the ingestion, retrieval, browsing, editing, management, cataloging and storage of broadcast rich-media assets. Proximity solutions empower the customer to protect, leverage and extend media with the best-of-breed equipment available in broadcasting today.
Proximity’s, er… Apple’s product portfolio includes:
artbox
Our flag ship product and next generation, all-in-one asset management and workflow solution from Proximity. artbox manages clips, animations, stills and audio and is targeted at TV , news production and post-production workflows. artbox integrates format conversion, storage, workflow management, and search and retrieval of media into a single device. artbox’s content management module stores media in its native format. Users can search, locate, transfer and transcode, edit clips, generate EDL’s media across multiple platforms and formats. artbox’s workflow management module introduces the concept of a “Project”, which gives producers and journalists the ability to associate multiple pieces of artwork that exist in different formats and across multiple devices with a single story.
videoripper
A video ingestion solution specially designed for the demanding throughput and quality requirements in a post-production and dub-and-ship houses. Customers can rip frame accurate MPEGs and GXFs with or without program slate, generate metadata, and automatically publish clips to their artbox or ftp server.
xenotrack
Improves productivity of media content workflow by utilizing several modules to track the flow of graphics, from the request creation through fulfillment all the way to placement on the play-out device. Not only does xenotrack integrate with artbox, it also integrates seamlessly with Newsroom systems ENPS and iNEWS, allowing Journalists or Producers to order and receive media content through the Newsroom system.
xenostore
The premier graphics content management solution that includes a single searchable media catalog and an independent storage area for full resolution images that can be stored in their native format. Our Content Management API provides an Interface for third party Asset Management systems to access our media catalogue, information or content.
More here: http://www.proximitygroup.com/
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]
Final Cut Studio 2.
NAB 2007
I am ignorant – literally. Can someone please interpret this for me so I can be excited about this?
“And so it begins . . . “
j – Yes, my child. You are ignorant.
(But I blame myself.)
Apple is so cutting edge one wonders why Microsoft even tries anymore.
Just as long as it increases Apple’s profit in the next five years I won’t mind.
I have a feeling Apple have so many things cooking that they will be kicking ass in multiple arenas in the not-so-distant future.
God,
Just don’t bend over around me…
Well, from the looks of Artbox, it could be something Apple integrates into both Final Cut Pro and into Aperture.. I don’t know what they’ll end up doing with it, but I am encouraged to see some of these developers getting rewarded by Apple (so to speak) instead of Apple just negating their products by integrating features that kill them.
First CoverFlow, now Artbox.. could this be a trend?
J—
Unless you are in production environments where you amass large quantities of media assets such as video, sound, animation, still image, etc, that need cataloging and archiving for future reference and use, than there is not much to get excited about.
My professional knowledge of these products wouldn’t lead me to expect to see them directly in Final Cut Pro Studio. Seems like some pieces of it may help in media management on the local side.
These products are aimed at a larger organization. A TV News room, or larger production house. My thought is that this will lead to a product along the lines of AVID’s Unity system. Final Cut utilizes X-Serve for online group storage and asset management, but it’s not as “finished” as Unity is. Both systems have pluses and minuses, and of course, people that swear by them. With this technology, Apple could produce a much more persuasive media management and asset tracking system for film and video post. This would allow them to make a push into some of the higher end film production and TV broadcast areas that AVID still heavily dominates.
Just my opinion.
– David
blucaso—
CoverFlow and Artbox are so far apart, it’s not even funny.
j…
The short answer to your question is that this is Apple going after Avid’s lunch money.
But here’s the longer answer…
The first three products all appear to cover the same territory as Avid’s Interplay family – asset management, ingest and workflow.
The last product (xenostore) seems to be the odd-man out, however I wouldn’t be surprised if this resurfaces as the server in a multi-user Aperture product.
“A video ingestion solution”
Just luurve that phraseology!!
Still, if they can do anything to improve my own somewhat random storage ‘methods’ then I’ll be a happy consumer.
I get excited anytime someone uses the words “creative media asset management and production”.
Yeah,
I wasn’t thinking about Interplay. Good call. While a lot of the things that Unity does in the way of media management for multiple users, interplay does more. That is a much more clear match.
In the end, the point still is that this will probably be a direct stab at AVID’s business.
– David
These are more likely to be bundled with xSAN than FCP.
Imagine a tv station or – say – an Olympics news team with dozens or hundreds of hours of video coming in continuously. It needs to be logged, tagged and placed online immediately. Then editors need to be able to quickly search and scrub through the video to find clips to use in the program.
This software makes that fun and easy. Well more fun because more easy.
Or maybe Proximity has some Patent Gold that Apple needs.
It’s exciting because it will give another reason for Macs to dominate in media-related businesses. Yes, this software already exists, but I’m sure once it has an Apple logo on it, it will have more exposure and legitimacy than it currently does.
Does this give Apple any leverage over the studios – Proximity’s former clients??
for all apple fans who are reading this tody is the day when apple begins to dethrone avid in the broadcast market
after having this technology..apple could
handle turn key projects for a large tv station
only thing lacking is the aja video card company..and u could launche a tv station all from apple ..after the purchase of adobe ofcourse for graphics software
I doubt very much that any of this will land up being bundled either with xSan or FCP.
A conventional business would be confused by Proximity’s rebadged products appearing as part of xSan and small-scale corporate video production and independent video editors may not want to pay for redundant functionality.
The rebadged Proximity family are far more likely to be made available as another piece of Apple’s creative jigsaw like Shake, although hooks to use artbox et al will undoubtedly appear in Final Cut, Motion, Logic, DVD SP, Shake and Aperture as a fully-integrated professional media browser that probably will appear at an abstract level as the bigger, smarter, more capable version of iLife/iWork’s media browser.
The one thing you can be sure of is that the products will come down in price over time: once the deal has been done and absorbed by the market (say 12-18 months), Apple can price the components in way that will make buying Avid’s products under Windows an act of gross commercial stupidity.
…after the purchase of adobe, of course…
Wouldn’t that make life sweet? They’d own the [MW] industry!
“…after the purchase of adobe, of course…
Wouldn’t that make life sweet? They’d own the [MW] industry!”
Not just yet, if Apple acquired Maxon, makers of Cinema4D and combine that into Shake, then I think they can dominate.
I’d think these technologies would also be relevant to the iTV box, which is going to be about serving/streaming all the digital assets managed on networked computers.
here in the arabic world”the middle east” we have a stellite with around 200 free channels ” nilesat” all these channels are a good hunt for the apple profesinal systems team.. they could establish apple as the standard for broadcast quality editing management and asset managemnt..and then use this as an example for the american market..after the hostile take over of adobe ofcourse and then we could all watch avid sink into the atlantic next to the titanic