The Pentium III processor, the newest CPU from Intel is blazing fast and turbo charged for non linear editing! This past February, the new Intel Pentium III processor was launched with CPU speeds of 450 & 500 MHz. By year end 650 MHz systems should be readily available and Intel has already announced that they were able to break through the gigahertz speed barrier. That's right, 1,000 MHz!!! With all this computing power and speed comes the obvious benefits, but there is much more to this new processor then just speed.

What makes this new processor so important for non linear editing is the inclusion of 70 new instructions called Streaming SIMD Extensions that enable advanced imaging, 3D, streaming audio and video, and even speech recognition applications. They are specifically designed for such CPU intensive tasks such as image filtering and processing 3D geometric shapes. I know what you are thinking, "Wasn't that what MMX was supposed to do? Why should I buy into this new hype when MMX was a big dud". Well MMX didn't live up to all it's expectations, but it was by no means a washout for digital videographers. The latest versions of Adobe Premiere and Ulead Media Studio as well as the drivers for most video capture cards now utilize MMX for better performance. Unfortunately, by the time we had software that could utilize MMX technology, we had all but forgotten about it.

It looks like Intel learned a lot from that experience. When they rolled out their new processor at the Pentium III Processor Preview Day they had a wide range of hardware and software vendors announcing support for the new SIMD extensions. While most of the focus was on the internet, gaming and voice recognition, I was very happy to learn they had several desk top video editing vendors participating as well. All announcing how they were ready to start taking advantage of the new PIII technology. By optimizing their drivers and software for the SIMD extensions these companies hope to get a leg up on the competition. By getting vendors involved at such an early level, Intel hopes to see "Optimized for Pentium III" as a key selling feature for desk top video editing products. If all goes according to plan, everyone wins. Intel sells more computers, the vendors who optimize for PIII earliest and best gain market share and end users who buy a new PIII with one of these video capture cards and software bundles get a better Non Linear Editing System.

Digital Origin, Canopus, Data Translation, and Ulead all made official announcements about how wonderful the Pentium III processor is and how beneficial it will be for their customers. I've gathered together sound bites from all the various announcements and press releases from the Preview day and put them together for you to take a look at.

Digital Origin (formerly Radius)

Tom Galvin, Intel's Director of Entertainment/Education Market Development had this to say about AVA III "High quality desktop video capture, editing and playback demands speed and top performance from the computer. The Pentium III processor with Digital Origin's software delivers the power to make desktop video editing a streamlined and convenient task."

Canopus Corp

"Video editing, being CPU intensive, takes a leap forward with the new high-speed command set available in the Pentium III processor," said Hiro Yamada, Canopus president and CEO. "Increased speed means videographers can spend more time shooting footage and less time editing." Intel's Tom Galvin added "Canopus' video editing technology benefits greatly from enhancements within the Pentium III processor."

Data Translation Inc

"Broadway Pro 4.0 packs professional-level features and years of digital video technology experience into a product optimized for PC users," said Fred Molinari, president and CEO of Data Translation. "And now that it's specifically tuned to take advantage of Intel's Pentium III processor technology, Broadway is one of the most advanced video editing systems available for the PC." Intel's Tom Glavin confirmed this stating "Broadway Pro 4.0 takes advantage of the new performance enhancements of Intel's Pentium III processor to capture and manipulate video and images on the PC."

Ulead Systems, Inc

Liming Chen, president of Ulead Systems, Inc., said, "We're very pleased to see that Intel is bringing such power directly to the consumer. Since these three products from Ulead are all about images, video and animation, the processor speed of the computer used has a direct impact on the quality of the experiences with our tools."

"We're pleased Ulead Systems optimized several of its products for the Pentium III processor," said Tom Galvin,. "The Pentium III processor's Streaming SIMD Extensions, coupled with applications from vendors like Ulead, help deliver easy-to-use graphics and animation capabilities."

So what are we to make of all this? Well, faster rendering and better playback performance are definitely high up on every digital videographer's wish list. Together they will give us a much more productive working environment. All this sounds great, but I wanted to learn more, so I called up some of my contacts throughout the industry. From my follow up conversations with product managers at Digital Origin, Canopus and Pinnacle, I have come to believe that we are going to see some very real benefits from all of this new technology. While current products will get a speed boost, I got the impression that it's the next wave of products, set for introduction at this year NAB show in April, that are really going to benefit the most. While I couldn't get any specifics, the two words that were on the tip of everyone's tongue were MPEG2 and DVD. I promise to let you in on all these new products in my NAB recap article.

SIDEBAR ARTICLE: Digital Origin releases EditDV software for new Blue & White G3s with built in FireWire. The new software only package lets G3 owners take full advantage of the built in FireWire ports on their new G3. No boards to install. EditDV allows users to capture, edit and playback perfect DV footage. EditDV for G3 is the full 1.5 version of the EditDV software plus Terran Interactive Media CleanerEZ, Bias Peak LE audio editor, and a 6 foot FireWire cable. G3 users get to take advantage of the coolest feature around for editing DV footage, Draft DV. This lets you work with low resolution proxy files, instead of the actual DV files. As a result you get practically real time previews, including titles, filters and effects. In addition EditDV's software-based Accelerated Video Architecture (AVA) enables extremely rapid rendering and compression and decompression of digital data streams. Brady O. Bruce, marketing vice president for Digital Origin had this to say about their new software "The combination of EditDV and the Apple G3 fulfills the promise of IEEE 1394 -- making broadcast quality video editing possible on an off-the-shelf machine, no add-in hardware required. You can be ready to edit in three minutes. That's about how long it takes to install the EditDV software. We look forward to the day when every computer comes equipped with IEEE 1394."