Truevision, Inc. was a maker of digital video

Digital video

Digital video is a type of digital recording system that works by using a digital rather than an analog video signal.The terms camera, video camera, and camcorder are used interchangeably in this article.- History :...

 processing add-on boards for PC computers. It was founded by Cathleen Asch, Carl Calabria, Joseph Haaf, Bryan Hunt, Brad Pillow, Joe Shepard and Jeff Walters and others when AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

 split off their Electronic Photography and Imaging Center (EPICenter) in 1987. EPICenter was originally founded by Alan Wlasuk, Carl Calabria, Bryan Hunt, Brad Pillow, Joe Shepard and Jeff Walters. Located in Indianapolis

Indianapolis

Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...

, Indiana

Indiana

Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

, Truevision was later acquired by monitor and graphics card maker RasterOps in Santa Clara, California

Santa Clara, California

Santa Clara , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. The city is the site of the eighth of 21 California missions, Mission Santa Clara de Asís, and was named after the mission. The Mission and Mission Gardens are located on the...

. RasterOps took on the Truevision name and retained the Indianapolis engineering team which continued producing ever more advanced products until 1999 when the company was finally acquired by its biggest competitor, Pinnacle Systems

Pinnacle Systems

Pinnacle Systems, Inc. is a California-based American manufacturer of digital video hardware and software for the consumer and broadcast markets. The company was founded in 1986 by Ajay Chopra, Mirek Jiricka and Randall Moore....

. Pinnacle Systems

Pinnacle Systems

Pinnacle Systems, Inc. is a California-based American manufacturer of digital video hardware and software for the consumer and broadcast markets. The company was founded in 1986 by Ajay Chopra, Mirek Jiricka and Randall Moore....

 was later acquired by Avid Technology

Avid Technology

Avid Technology, Inc. is an American company specializing in video and audio production technology; specifically, digital non-linear editing systems, management and distribution services. It was created in 1987 and became a publicly traded company in 1993...

, who initially used the AT-Vista when they were a two person startup company.

The administrative hierarchy of the company developed into a triumvirate shortly after its inception. Joseph Haaf became VP of Sales and Marketing, Carl Calabria was VP of engineering, Cathleen Asch was VP of Administration and Accounting. Each had equal voting power in corporate decisions-making. The company was privately held by employees until purchased by RasterOps in 1992.

Beginning as AT&T EPICenter with still-image frame grabber cards like the ICB (image capture board), Truevision Inc. went on to pioneer the desktop digital video editing industry with the introduction of the TARGA videographics card in 1987. Its engineers developed brand new ASICs that were eventually powerful enough to perform realtime operations on live video microscopy, which culminated in the TARGA 2000 digital video processing board in 1998. These HUB chips operated with a memory-centric architecture that simplified the task of third-party developers to integrate TARGA boards into their products. Most notable were Japanese companies Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 and Matsushita (Panasonic

Panasonic

Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...

), who used TARGA in the heart of several of their video editing workstations.

Multiple observation methods were supported, and the range of applications has been further increased.

Historical Tidbits

Still Frame Video Teleconferencing

Developed by Bryan Hunt, this was a product using the ICB for still frame video teleconferencing.

RA-RAM

Row addressable DRAM. The development at AT&T that allowed the development of the VDA, ICB and Targa cards in the days before DRAM was fast enough for high pixel depth video frame buffer applications.

VIDI/O Workbench

A card an associated hardware that allowed for complex video waveform and vectorscope analysis and test pattern generation.

Fresco

One dynamic Truevision development was software, which peaked with the hiring of several software engineers to create programs that would show off the ATVista hardware to its largest advantage. These "utilities" were often handed to 3rd party software development companies to append or enhance existing applications. However, in 1988, a fully fleshed paint program was developed internally under the working name of Fresco by authors David Cook, Walter Wright, William Romanowski and Shawn Steiner. The complex software had capabilities which far exceeded many of the current paint packages of the day and in some cases had features which are still unrivaled. Fresco was never released.