Avid Technology, Inc., today announced that Weta Digital, the Academy Award? winning visual effects facility based in New Zealand, has chosen Avid? Unity? MediaNetwork 5.0 for its Wellington facility, currently in production on James Cameron’s Avatar (Twentieth Century Fox). In addition, the Avid DNxHD?36 codec is now Weta Digital’s standard HD format for editorial use both in-house and for supply to clients.
“Most of our VFX clients work on Avid systems; it is still the number one platform for long form motion picture film editing,” says Matt Holmes, Supervising Visual Effects (VFX) editor, Weta Digital. “We wanted to achieve more disk space and more flexibility with managing media. Projects using Avid HD codecs are on the rise, so it was a necessity to maximise space and bandwidth. The ability to use mixed platforms, Mac and Windows, is a bonus, too. I wanted to expand the number of clients accessing projects and media and this meant a mix of Mac and PC platforms.”