• Wrote many video device interfaces for a variety of the CMX editors
• Modified the OMNI editor to include a "look-ahead" assembly mode.
• Managed up to 10 software developers.
• Pioneered several machine control techniques and algorithms:
• Algorithm for “on the fly” edit triggers for independent audio and video tracks.
• Generic synchronizing algorithm for all Video Tape Recorders
• Completely data-driven interfaces

CMX (CBS-MEMOREX) invented video editing and dominated the market for many years. Many industry standards including a keyboard coloring system and the EDL (Edit Decision List), originate from CMX.

I began my employment with CMX as a “programmer” and ended it with the title Director of Software Engineering. The majority of my work was involved with the C language, however, I was just beginning to develop a “next generation” machine control system with C++ targeted when CMX was dismantled by a parent company.

The final editing system, the “Omni” was based on a 68020 propriety SBC and employed an X11 GUI. The device interfaces were resident on disk and loaded as needed. While the language used was ‘C’, the code base was organized in a very object oriented manner with code sharing (re-use) as a major factor in reducing development, debugging and maintenance costs. A high degree of integration of the build system into the code base made this possible.

The so called “data-driven” interfaces allowed a single interface to be used to control any machine (that supported a specific control protocol), by loading data that described the characteristics of the machine into tables accessed at runtime to make decisions and calculate results. Some of these values were also updated at runtime to correct for inconsistencies between machines of the same make and model.