In this article, we are diving into the history of postproduction and exploring how in just over 70 years, the technology available to post professionals has completely transformed film and television.
History:
Over 70 years ago editing a television series or a film was a completely different process. Editors would physically cut recording tape and use a specific type of adhesive tape to put the recording back together. The company behind the splicing blocks process was called Editall. In 1963, electronic editing was introduced, the companies Ampex and Editec used cue tones recorded on tape to electronically control the timing of splicing and required great reflexes, as well as a considerable degree of luck.
In 1971 the first widely used electronic computer editing system launched, the CMX-300. For around two decades, the CMX-300 dominated the postproduction industry using NLE technology. NLE technology stands for non-linear editing, it is an editing process that allows the editor to make changes to a project without regard to the linear timeline.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s that Avid, really moved postproduction forward. Avid designed specific hardware and installed Avid software which when combined with the Apple Macintosh II computer created the biggest shake up that the video editing sector had ever seen. This led to films being entirely cut using Avid’s products. In 1994 Open Media Framework was introduced, Avid continued to introduce new products which truly moved postproduction on. In 1993 Avid were awarded a Technical Emmy for their development of the Avid Media Composer video editing system.
Today technology is better than ever before, and the quality keeps surpassing the expectations of viewers. Post professionals today have access to dozens of different software applications, each built to excel in a different part of the postproduction process. That being said, any software will only run as well as the hardware it rides on – that is why here at Proline we purpose build systems to run postproduction software seamlessly. With the help of our partners, we design and build systems built with the highest quality components best suited to post workloads.
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