Eleven-year-old Toronto duplication facility, VCR Duplicators, is expanding its field of endeavor with some new equipment, purchased over the last several months, and a broader mandate from clients.

In the fall, the company acquired a DEC Alpha workstation to bolster its capabilities and speed in the creation of 2D and 3D graphics and animation for its corporate and commercial broadcast clients.

The DEC Alpha workstation, which uses one of the speedier processors, running at 266MHz, features Lightwaves 3D for modeling and rendering and Elastic Reality for image warping and morphing.

‘We were looking for an animation workstation that would be quick in processing time and have the software we need to produce high-quality 3D animation and image compositing,’ says Alar Allas, vcr post-production manager.

Allas says it came down to a dollar/performance comparison with a Silicon Graphics workstation, the only other system with the necessary speed. Allas says the dec was the best value for the company’s needs, which include mostly corporate work as well as commercial broadcast and music video projects.

Allas compared an sgi Indigo2 at $60,000-$80,000 to the DEC Alpha at about $30,000 with peripherals and about $1,200 for Lightwaves software.

Allas acknowledges the limitations of the system in terms of software availability, but says Lightwaves for DEC Alpha is a good system for the company’s corporate and broadcast applications. ‘We’re always trying to look at what is the most stable technology and the cheapest,’ says Allas.

While duplication is still the company’s core activity, vcr is also expanding its multimedia capabilities with the development of its own multimedia program and the purchase of a Kodak PCD 600 cd replicator. TI