Twenty-five
years ago this year, Doremi founder and CEO Camille Rizko, invented a better way
to perform digital audio for postproduction. Joined by his brother Emil, and
fellow engineer Safar Ghazal, the Doremi partners have never looked
back.
In 1985, the entertainment industry was beginning
the transition from analog, the standard at the time, to digital. It was in the
crossroads of these changing times that Doremi’s first product was created.
DAWN, short for Digital Audio Workstation Nucleus, was one of the industry’s
first fully digital audio systems and on the forefront of the digital tech
revolution in Hollywood.
“We came up with a solution for post houses that
performed digital multi-track audio recording and editing on a computer hard
drive, said Camille Rizko. “The timing was perfect, and our system quickly
gained popularity as an affordable, high quality alternative to tape based
recorders and editors.”
Flush with this initial success, the Doremi
engineers moved into the digital video arena, engineering new products with
video recording capabilities. The V1 Video Disk Recorder, which premiered at the
National Association of Broadcasting convention (NAB) in 1996, was once again a
triumph for Doremi, and again embraced by the industry.
“The success we had with the V1 Video Disk
Recorder enabled us to expand worldwide,” explained partner and managing
director Emil Rizko. We opened facilities in France and Japan to gain a foothold
in the lucrative Asian and European markets.”
The company’s engineering and
manufacturing prowess lead to a number of home grown products including the
V1-HD JPEG2000 Recorder/Player and the Nugget HD Video Player. These innovative
products further burnished the company’s reputation as an industry thought
leader and important entertainment technology player.
Around 1999 began the stirrings of “Digital
Cinema” within the industry, and Doremi was listening. As the DCI specification
was nearing completion, it was Doremi who first integrated the JPEG2000 codec
into a server, operating at full 2K resolution at IBC, Amsterdam, in September
2004.
Next, Doremi was
the first server manufacturer to demonstrate its DCI JPEG2000 cinema server
(DCP-2000) playing the encrypted DCI Mini-STEM at CineExpo, 2005. It was this
year that Doremi introduced Doremi Cinema LLC to market its line of Digital
Cinema servers and mastering systems to the theatrical exhibition market. “Time
to market is how we got here today” comments Safar Ghazal, principal partner.
“With Camille's vision and direction, we were able to identify and adapt the
right technologies into products that serve specific markets.”
Doremi was on the cutting-edge of innovation in
the analog to digital age in 1985. Now Doremi is a key player in 3D, the
entertainment technology trend that is the state of the art today. Not your
father’s 1950’s 3D, the digital 3D technology that Doremi solutions enable
represents a revenue-rich advancement for studios and exhibitors, as clearly
indicated by the success of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland.
Doremi is well positioned, with its long history
of engineering innovation, to support the needs of its customers as the industry
continues to transition to all digital platforms and work flows. “Content is
still king, ” says Michael Archer, VP or Digital Cinema. “Our broadcast and
digital cinema product lines were developed with technological forethought, and
an understanding of where the industry is going today, and in the future.”
