<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:tahoma,new york,times,serif;font-size:14pt">Hi Scott,<br><br>No, I did not know Alvy Ray Smith, in fact I did not know about AVA until I saw it running in the same form as at NYIT, upstairs in building #3.<br><br>Junaid is a good friend, in fact we sat in a bar, in Sidney and discussed many of the things he did when he started Abekas.<br><br>AVA-3 was ahead of the curve, and we fought the installed base of Paintboxes, and it's very hard to explain technology to Artists.<br><br>Bye for now, Bill<br><div> </div>Bye for now, love to all, Bill & Gewyn & Ginger (whoof...whoof)<div><br></div><div style="font-family: tahoma,new york,times,serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b>
Scott Thomas <scottgfx@mac.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Quad List <quadlist@quadvideotapegroup.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Wed, December 8, 2010 10:23:16 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [QuadList] Ampex ESS and AVA<br></font><br>
<div><div style="margin: 0px;">Bill,</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br></div><div style="word-wrap: break-word;"><div>Did you ever meet Alvy Ray Smith? He wrote the software that became the AVA while at NYIT. He was later one of the founders of Pixar.</div><div><br></div><div>The person who took delivery of the paint software was Junaid Sheikh, who would later go on to start Abekas and Accom.</div><div>I went to the Abekas booth at NAB in 2006 or 7 and asked to meet Junaid. The first question he asked me was "You're not a lawyer are you?".</div><div><br></div><div>I really thought the demo video on the AVA 3 was amazing. I very nearly bought an AVA 3 system from a dealer a few years ago. I've never used one, but always wanted to.</div><div><br></div><div>Scott Thomas</div><div><br></div><br><div><div>On Dec 8, 2010, at 6:17 PM, Bill Carpenter wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium;"><div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: tahoma,times,serif; font-size: 14pt;">Hi David and everybody.<br><br>Yes, the first Still Store was built for CBS, and was called the ESS or the ESS-1. This was a sorta spin off from the AVA, which we had in the late &0's and built 7, + 1 (but that's another story)<br><br>Then we built the ESS-2 which would handle real time video. I don't know how many of these were built, but they were Great.<br><br>Then in 1983, the ESS-3 came along, was shown @ NAB, and immediately redesigned, to make it more flexible and scalable.<br><br>I moved from VTR's to Graphic's at the request of Engineering and Marketing Management.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br><br>I had introduced the VPR-3,and had a solid $ 40 million dollar order backlog before the first unit shipped, so in July of 1983, I moved over as the Product Manager of Graphics, and re-introduced the redesigned ESS-3 and the new AVA-3 in 1984.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br><br>I had learn about digital video and object based programming and databases, in a big hurry. OBTW along with this came learning how to deal with Graphic Artist's and some interesting union problems.<br><div style="margin: 0px;"> <br>Bye for now, Bill Carpenter<br></div></div></div></span></blockquote></div></div></div><br></div></div>
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