by , 2:00 PM EST, April 3rd, 2003
Pinnacle Systems, Inc has announced Pie Town Productions' complete operating "Switch" to the Mac platform. Pie Town Productions specializes in the post-production of broadcast television content, including shows for The Food Network and MTV. Citing such reasons as improved information sharing, increased workflow, and hands-on tech support, Pie Town Productions has left older legacy NLE's for the joint team of Apple and Pinnacle. According to Pinnacle:
Pinnacle Systems, Inc. today announced that Pie Town Productions, a television production company specializing in reality and documentary programming, has replaced all of its editing facilities with Pinnacle CineWave RT Pro -- a powerful combination of Apple's industrial-strength Final Cut Pro editing software, advanced Pinnacle creativity tools, and Pinnacle's renowned TARGA Cine video processing and effects engine.
Pie Town is using the systems to produce popular programming for Paramount Domestic Television, MTV Networks, The Food Network and Home and Garden Television.
Scott Templeton, partner and executive producer at Pie Town said, "As an editorial experiment, we decided to use Final Cut Pro with CineWave side-by-side with our legacy systems for a 9-month period. The experiment went well enough that when decision time came in December, several of my editors confided in me that they would prefer to continue cutting with Final Cut Pro rather than go back to the old system. That was the moment that we knew the experiment was a success and it was time to fully convert the facility to Final Cut Pro. When enhanced by CineWave the solution not only meets our demands for speed and flexibility, but it gives us uncompressed image quality and professional real-time effects that competing systems don't have."
Support was another key factor for Pie Town, Templeton said, "People from Pinnacle and our other technology partners flew in and worked to find and fix problems with this sophisticated installation. In all the years of dealing with our previous vendor, I never got a tech support rep in our office. Instead I would call, tell them the problem, and get a response such as 'that's not supposed to happen.' With our Final Cut Pro/CineWave install, all of the parties came together to make it work."
You can find more information about the Switch story at the Yahoo Finance Web site.
An entire editing facility "Switching" all their equipment to the Apple/Pinnacle setup is a huge gesture of faith and confidence, especially for a company that must continue operation during the transformation.
This just highlights Apple's resolve to garner respect within the broadcasting world and to continue positioning Final Cut trench by trench, in a battlefield dominated by PC editing giant Avid.