Digital content company Autodesk has signed an agreement to buy Media 100’s software product line, including the Cleaner family of products — Cleaner 5, Cleaner EZ, Cleaner Live, Charger and SuperCharger — and the editing and dynamic streaming media production software of CineStream, EventStream technology, EditDV, and IntroDV.
The products will become part of the software line of Autodesk’s Discreet division, perhaps best known to Mac users for Combustion, a unified paint, animation and 3D-compositing environment for visual effects creation that’s been Carbonized for Mac OS X.
Plans are for Autodesk to buy Media 100’s product line of US$16 million. The deal should close during Autodesk’s third quarter and is anticipated to be non-dilutive to Autodesk’s expected earnings for the current fiscal year. “The software acquisition forms the foundation of Autodesk’s entry into streaming media for the corporate and institutional markets,” said Paul Lypaczewski, general manager of Autodesk’s Discreet division, in a statement announcing the impending acquisition.
Media 100, led by CEO John Molinari, will continue developing digital media systems, such as iFinish and Media 100i, as well as continuing support for its ICE family of effects acceleration solutions, and its MediaPress family of real-time MPEG-2 encoding solutions. iFinish is a camera-to-DVD solution designed to simplify the complexity involved in producing high-quality DVDs. Media 100i is a combination of hardware and software that turns a Power Mac G4 into a streaming media production system. Key development and support personnel from the software division of Media 100, currently based in its Los Gatos, CA office, will transition over to the Autodesk Discreet division.