I had a strange dream the other night, more like a nightmare. I dreamed I was re-hired at a TV station where I learned non-linear editing on the IMix Video Cube. The returning to the station part was fine, except I returned to a time before the station got the Cube, back before computer editing, […]
I had a strange dream the other night, more like a nightmare.
I dreamed I was re-hired at a TV station where I learned non-linear editing on the IMix Video Cube.
The returning to the station part was fine, except I returned to a time before the station got the Cube, back before computer editing, to the time when producing local TV news promos was labor and time intensive, the era of B-rolls and multiple-source tape decks, routing Chyron and graphics, where a director struggled to make the dissolves in time, add super lower thirds, and end graphics, fade ins and outs.
In the dream, I tell the boss, I can’t work like this, there’s a better way.
The ability to edit video nonlinearly revolutionized television production for stations.
Example of the first WINK promos edited on the IMix Video Cube
And its importance to not only television production but film and movie production cannot be overstated.
This notion may not be fully appreciated by my young editor friends who came along after nonlinear was mainstream and routine.
I was the marketing director at WINK, the CBS affiliate in Ft. Myers, Fla., for five years starting in 1992. One day, the news director, Mel Martin, who also doubled as the station manager, came into my office. He had just gotten back from attending some television electronics conference, and had seen a computer edit system there, the IMix Video Cube.
“It has four channels of audio,” Mel said.
Example of the first WINK promos edited on the IMix Video Cube
Editing on Beta tape gave you only two channels, so if you wanted a rich audio bed, with music, sound bites, announcer track, sound effects and nat sound, you had to find a way to squeeze all that onto two tracks.
So the idea of four channels of audio got my attention.
Off to Miami to see a demonstration, and shortly thereafter, WINK became one of the first TV stations in the land to have nonlinear editing on the IMix Video Cube.
The earliest versions of the Cube compressed the video, reducing its quality. We didn’t care, we weren’t producing beautiful spots on film for National Geographic. We were producing local TV news promos using news footage mostly. We were already finding ways to treat the video to make it more compelling, more eye-catchy. We bent it, stretched it, colored it and un-colored it. We slowed it down and sped it up, put it in boxes that moved across the screen, making it bigger or making it smaller.
Example of the first WINK promos edited on the IMix Video Cube
So losing a little video quality in exchange to experiment with this nonlinear idea of editing was a price we were very willing to pay. It was freedom. Freedom to try different things and never being locked into anything unless and until we wanted to be.
The IMix Video Cube transformed our marketing department into the jet age. We could edit a highly-produced promo with a rich, thick audio track in hours, instead of days,
We could do it alone, in front of a computer screen in a nice quiet room, instead of through a production room with a director and some tape operators.
I think the year was 1995. Shortly after WINK got the Cube, we put together a promo and aired it. Someone said we were the first television station to use the IMix Video Cube to edit a spot and have it go on the air.
One day, I got a call from the IMix Video Cube company. Would I be willing to be part of their advertising campaign? The station consented and I was sent off for some photos and shortly thereafter, began to see the ad in industry magazines. My phone began to ring.
I fell in love with editing thanks to the IMix Video Cube, I knew I could sit down on a Friday afternoon with all of the elements I needed to create a news promo and have the confidence that by the end of the day, it would be ready for air.
Example of the first WINK promos edited on the IMix Video Cube
Sitting alone in a darkened room with nothing but a computer screen in front of you doesn’t sound glamorous, but the satisfaction of walking away having created a convincing promo that got viewers’ attention was quite the feeling of accomplishment.
Many of us at WINK got proficient at editing on the Cube, finding and pushing its limits and boundaries.
I wonder if there are any IMix Video Cubes out there still editing today.
You’d think the poster boy for nonlinear editing could get his hands on one.
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