Читать книгу Timeline Analog 5 - John Buck - Страница 15

Alias Research was far from video editing systems and moving further away from profitability. Despite being a leader in 3-D graphics software (next page) used in films like Terminator 2, the Toronto firm was near bankruptcy.

The company’s board hired Rob Burgess away from Silicon Graphics to become COO. He cut the Alias workforce and closed a division in Europe. In time Burgess made the same tough decisions at a company that held editing's future.

Adobe made a significant business move acquiring the video package ReelTime from SuperMac. Adobe told the press that it expected to ship a revised version of Randy Ubillos' program for $499, at around the same time as Apple released QuickTime.

Unknown to almost everyone, it was doing so without the application's creator. Although it had acquired the ReelTime intellectual property and source code, Adobe was prohibited from offering a job to Ubillos, who recalls:

I was speaking with Tim Myers, who had become the product manager for Premiere. At around this time, I was in the position of interviewing the people who were going to potentially work on the project as part of SuperMac’s commitment to the sale.

I was having a hard time not only reconciling the fact that someone else would be working on this thing but in finding someone who I thought was good enough.

I asked Tim, “Is there maybe a position for me at Adobe?”

He looked at me and asked, “Are you aware of the details of the contract with SuperMac?”

I said, “Yes, of course”.

He said, “OK”. Next minute I was having lunch with Tim and Eric Zocher and we chit chatted a while.

Eric Zocher was Adobe's VP of product engineering and prohibited from offering Ubillos a job to lead the Premiere team but he could accept a request from Ubillos.

Ubillos continues:

And then I asked them, “Is there any opportunity for me at Adobe?”

Ubillos' lunch guests smiled and offered him a job. He was soon readying ReelTime for its metamorphosis into Premiere and to take advantage of the upcoming QuickTime.