By Ed Sutherland
UPDATED: Adobe today expanded its OpenHD Alliance to include 10 new companies
offering high-definition products for Windows.
The alliance, formed in
April with Microsoft, Intel, Dell and HP, certifies hardware and
software for creating high-definition video.
The 10 new companies — AJA, AMD, Blackmagic, Bluefish, CineForm, Focusrite,
Huge/Ciprico, Matrox, NVIDIA and Rorke — will be a part of turnkey video
applications created by Adobe Production Studio.
The turnkey products
supporting high-definition video to real-time compressed or uncompressed
HD will be available in February, according to Adobe.
The OpenHD Alliance Web site lists six turnkey systems, including HP and
Dell computers bundled with Microsoft Windows and various video capture
cards.
“With each milestone we reach and each new partner that comes aboard,
the Adobe OpenHD alliance is making HD technology more affordable and
accessible to a wider audience of creative professionals,” said Jim
Guerard, Adobe’s vice president of Web and video products.
According to Simon Hayhurst, director of video and audio product management for
Adobe said the goal of the alliance is to provide guaranteed HD performance. He added that the introduction of the XBox 360, along with the drastic decrease
in cost of high-definition cameras, has created an upsurge of interest in
high-definition content creation.
In April 2005, Adobe introduced the OpenHD Alliance at the National
Association of Broadcasters Convention in Las Vegas. The same month
Adobe purchased rival Macromedia for $3.4 billion.
“We’ve made a strategic investment in our joint resources with NVIDIA
and developed our applications to take full advantage of the NVIDIA GPU,
providing our customers the performance and features required to
accelerate HD production.” said Hayhurst.
Today’s announcement follows the one for Adobe Production Studio, a suite
of applications including Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe
Audition and Adobe Encore DVD.
The company updated Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to include Adobe Dynamic Link software for editing video, audio and DVDs.
