Quote Originally Posted by veldeman
I'll try to explain a bit, but it's difficult to write down.

In fact both systems are more then a 'video server', since they do a lot of real-time effects with the used media.

The Eureka3D system had basically 2 layers, a background and a 3D object layer. The background and/or object could have a texture. BMP or Video file with basic color effects or sound effects. The camera view could be moved real-time in 3D and zoomed in etc...

The Maxedia goes much further. I looks like these guys in Belgium learned a lot from the previous system. Maybe that's why they changed the name of the product?
You have now 2 x 20 layers real-time in a A & B mixer.
On each layer you can modify the 3D camera, color, texture, effect, 3D object etc... and add real-time effects on them.
When you make something in the A or B mixer, you can then X-fade between them. Like you have 2 machines in one.
It's difficult to explain, you have to work with it before you realize how powerfull and smooth the images are.

The main difference in one sentence between Eureka3D and Maxedia:
Eureka3D was good for Clubs for effects, the Maxedia blows away even video pre-production companies.
I heard yesterday a story were a pre-production company in Germany lost it's deal for a TV-show this week.
Because the Maxedia did more artistic images then they did for a lot of money...
Firstly, it's not the media server that does the artistic images - it's the person who uses it and what they do with and the person who creates the content for it.

20 Layers - what does that mean? 20 Images? 20 movies? What?
The A/B Mix paradigm is difficult to map to a lighting console.

Essentially Maxedia works off a standard, although powerful PC, with a Radeon 9800 graphics card and a 7200 rpm hard disk. As we already know from Catalyst - there's a limit to how many SD movies you can actually run off a hard drive - particularly something as lowly as a 7200 rpm drive, and it's well below 20!

Hugh