Apple Computer Inc. tonight confirmed the purchase of technologies from Prismo Graphics. The company’s products include India Titler Pro, a video-effects program for creating animated titles and Motion Graphics.
“Apple has acquired technologies from Prismo Graphics, a developer of motion graphics for broadcast and digital video projects, including their DVFonts and India special effects software,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement to MacCentral. “Apple intends to use the acquired technologies in future products.”
With India Titler Pro you can create tracks — each of which can contain a line of text, an imported graphic or a background texture — and then animate tracks by assigning to them one or more of the hundreds of effects that accompany India Titler Pro. Finally, you export the finished title as a QuickTime movie.
India Titler Pro included 27 CD-ROMs containing effects, background textures and animated fonts.
According to a Macworld review done earlier this year, “the program can animate text in every imaginable way — letters can bounce, slide, spray or wiggle into place. There are also animated textures that make great backgrounds, fades and zooms that you can apply to text or graphics, and numerous glitter effects that wash across text. Some of the effects belong in late-night used-car commercials, but others are downright beautiful and wouldn’t be out of place on a network news show. You can customize each effect, and India Titler Pro even has a simple scripting language, called EffectScript, for creating new effects.”
The acquisition of Prismo Graphics is the third such purchase by Apple in recent months. In February 2002, Apple acquired Nothing Real and its flagship product Shake — a high-speed compositing software optimized for high resolution visual effects.
Last week Apple acquired Silicon Grail and the RAYZ and Chalice product lines. Developed to run on Irix, Linux, Windows and OS X, RAYZ is a compositor based on Chalice, which provides effects and color correction tools for cinema. The software has been used in feature films including Deep Blue Sea, Titanic, Star Trek: Insurrection, Men In Black and others.
As we posted this article the Prismo Graphics appears to be down.