I’d like to thank the folks on AMD’s @Play blog, for giving me an opportunity to exercise my blogging skills. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Charlie Boswell and I’m the director of Digital Media & Entertainment at AMD. Yesterday, as you may have seen, our good friends at Sony Creative Software, announced a new piece of editing software called Sony Vegas Pro 9 that I’m really excited about and think you should be too.

Maybe you’re a filmmaker and you just shot the next blockbuster (or maybe the latest installment of your YouTube video series) and of course, you had the grand idea, the perfect storyline, dramatic acting and the killer ending. But right now, all you have is a ton of raw footage and you’re wondering “how the heck do I turn my amazing shots into something that people watching on their laptops, desktops, home theaters and movie theaters will say, ‘Wow, this is incredible! It is truly the best film/TV show/video I’ve ever watched!’ without spending tons of hours and money in the editing studio?”

Well, with Sony Vegas Pro 9 spending hours editing your artistic vision just got a whole lot easier.

At AMD, it’s no secret that our hardware(both graphics and compute) benefits from amazing software taking advantages of the features we’ve built in the processors to enhance the overall user experience. While we love tweaking and fine tuning our processors, at the end of the day – if it doesn’t do a great job running the software, then what’s the point?  That’s why we’ve been so proud to work closely with the team at Sony Creative Software to help them deliver dynamic video editing capabilities. But, this is about more than just creating great technology. It’s about the experience and the end product.

Think about the video editing process 10, 5 or even just 2 years ago. Previously, if you didn’t have the resources of a major studio, you were out of luck. Today, the barrier for entry is much lower, and with an AMD-based workstation or PC and Sony Creative Software you-the novice or professional filmmaker-has the power to create amazing video content with ease. This includes creating killer content with features like customizable real-time audio effects, HD authoring, ripple editing, tilting technology and multi-camera editing. Meaning you can create more compelling content from a variety of sources, encouraging people without a studio  backed project to create truly Oscar or buzz worthy content-fulfilling their artistic and professional visions.

But, what’s so special about the way Sony Creative Software runs on AMD-based systems? It may sound a bit geeky, but it comes down to things like multi-threading capabilities and advanced memory technology. This is something that a filmmaker may not necessarily think about, but we do specifically so that they don’t have to. When you’re editing complex video content, mixing in audio and adding special features – it’s a lot for a CPU and GPU to handle. Sony Creative Software’s Vegas Pro is one of the first non-linear editing technologies that is specifically designed for 64-bit computing environments. The power and efficiency of AMD’s multicore and ATI graphics processors really shine here – delivering the user an experience that is smooth and seamless. And, that’s exactly what they’ll need if they want to compete with the big boys like Robert Rodriguez.

Speaking of Robert, my team and I recently interviewed Robert’s art department.  You can see the video that we produced using Sony Vegas here.  In addition, I directed a movie for Dweezil Zappa, one of AMD’s artists, called “Son of Roxy & Elsewhere.”  A sneak peek montage trailer can be seen here.

Charlie is Director of Digital Media and Entertainment at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.