"Textures are the Fonts of the 90's", a pithy slugline for templates

The VideoValet was a Director shell created as interface for advertising and other media executives to review material. It was constructed of high-touch textures and interface elements so even senior partners would be comfortable pitching to major clients. The IMTX-8000 was a non-digitized alternative for auto-assembling tapes and elaborate media controller box that automated logging time codes as segments are defined.

Form and Function helped refine internal development to permit one to sequence tape segments and special effects with frame accuracy, with the system then directed to auto-assemble or output an EDL, without ever digitizing the source tapes. Computer control and the random digital access we like, but controlling the analog source and equipment.

Underneath the simplicity of our interface was a single serial port that we squeezed Lingo commands through via an X-object {Director specific} that grew out of an X-command {HyperCard specific} that Bill Hensler wrote to make the IMTX-8000 play nice. This amazing box used an array of sorts to soft-patch a grid, like a spreadsheet, so that any number and manner of video sources could be routed to any assorted outputs. This configurable splitter device allowed for some twelve video and 20 audio signals to be soft-patched into a variety of devices controlled through industry standard communication protocols. It was like an octopus able to simultaneously route & split video and audio signals to dozens of inputs and outputs while controlling industrial strength video gear.

Our first main task was the creation of an easy to use video archive database interface that would require minimal training for senior salesmen and advertising executives pitching examples - and have the high-touch their audience expects. That is, turn this five-screen drag-n-drop functional panel for direct control over certain devices and sources into a general retrieval method the non-technical would use. This window shows the SuperCard 'edit-suite' front-end we used to develop the principles.
Software then permits the director to sequence the tape segments and special effects with frame accuracy, by editing a list referencing the time codes. The system can either auto-assemble or output an EDL, without ever digitizing the source tapes. While not as flexible and powerful as true nonlinear editing, this approach eliminated the need for extensive data storage when drives were vastly more expensive than raw videotape. Now hard drives are plentiful and cheap while professional cameras and tape decks expensive to obtain and maintain.

VideoValet became a working proof of concept that a pictorial system of focused and blurred images could denote the pathways and available clips and reels:
like moving forward and backwards through a swimming pool, things relevant and close at hand are bright and sharp whereas inappropriate or irrelevant items fade back, but at the ready. It couldn't generate picture icons of new material, nor sort them in interesting "Google" sorts of ways, but it was a comfy beginning and a far cry from setting down clients in noisy video edit suite.

IMT's elaborate IMTX 8000 media controller box used a Mac front end and allowed semi-automated logging of clips and time codes as segments - all non-digital, but exacting in their adherence to established professional edit lists and meant to bring a new level of order to the editing work-flow.