Avid Technology Inc. on Monday announced plans to synchronize development of its Mac product line for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. The company said the strategy is part of a general effort to synchronize its Mac and Windows offerings.
The company plans a mid-2006 release of High Definition (HD) versions of its Xpress Pro and Media Composer Adrenaline systems running PowerPC systems; following the arrival of Intel-based Macs, Avid plans to release the same capabilities for those systems.
Dana Ruzicka, vice president of Post Solutions for Avid, explained in a statement that Avid’s developers are using Apple’s Xcode development environment to help manage the change. Ruzicka said Apple’s Intel effort “shows great promise” for improving Macintosh performance, “but it also requires third-party developers to rework their roadmaps in order to support two Apple platforms” — an effort bound to cause frustration for developers and users alike, Ruzicka added.
“Although our timeframe for delivering HD on the Mac is now mid-2006, our support of both the new Intel architecture and the existing PowerPC platform offers a path for all of our loyal Mac customers – and helps us to better serve their needs in the long run,” said Ruzicka.
Avid editing systems running on either PowerPC and Intel-based Mac systems are expected to include HD editing support for major HD formats, including HDCAM, HDV and DVCPRO HD, support and encoding for Avid’s DNxHD sytem and realtime HD multicam support.
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