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Crosspoint at a Crossroads November 25, 2003 Post-Production Post Haste Crosspoint's staff of 45 engineers, editors, and producers has been handling a variety of video-production tasks since the company was founded in 1986. From TV commercials to staff training videos, Crosspoint provides clients with scripting, production graphics, design, and editing services. It also has 3D animation and audio mixing capabilities and handles a variety of output options, from tape, to CD, to DVD. Like many companies in the multimedia-content industry, Crosspoint is dealing with a variety of challenges, including a decline in advertising and ever-changing technology. Crosspoint is determined to meet these challenges, and has found that a combination of PC-based technologies and custom-made editing tools is the most cost-effective way to deliver professional-quality services. "You can't expect to get 10 years out of a piece of hardware anymore," says Robin Schmactenberger, general manager at Crosspoint. Still, with the economy in a slow recovery, it's especially important that IT investments pay for themselves quickly. With the help of Avid and HP, Schmactenberger was able to find a solution that will increase productivity without breaking the bank. To weather the poor advertising climate, Schmactenberger says the company "made a decision to focus more on long form content and put a bigger focus on marketing" --a decision that has pushed Crosspoint to do more work in High Definition (HD) video. Marketing materials are often viewed in conference rooms on PCs, which can support the HD format. "Marketing products also have more outlets in the HD range," says Schmactenberger, "because most commercial spots are still shown on TV." Even when projects require film or SD video, HD usually finds its way into the process somewhere, mainly because it's much cheaper to edit digitally. In fact, many projects move through any number of interim formats before they are finished. "We have shot commercials digitally, converted them to 24p, added titles and type in HD, and then converted the final product back to film," says Schmactenberger. Whatever the beginning or interim format of a piece of video, HD is increasingly the final format because of its high quality and adaptability. "A lot of the clients we are working with are asking for HD products," says Schmactenberger. "We are finding that HD is the preferred finishing format." Editing in HD, however, not only requires skill, but a serious amount of processing power. Go to page: 1  2  3  4