1 Beyond was founded in 1996 by Terry Cullen. In his previous company (semiconductor test systems for high speed manufacturing), Terry was frustrated not to be able to produce training and marketing videos at a reasonable cost to explain the highly technical products. After selling his company, he set off to accomplish one of his life’s goals, to spend the winter sailing the Caribbean. Investigating the latest video gear to document his trip, he discovered a new technology that Sony had just introduced, Digital Video. On returning from his dream vacation, he was again frustrated not to be able to find a reasonably priced editing system to edit his 20 hours of footage.
A computer specialist and successful entrepreneur, Terry was convinced that he could design and manufacture a editing system that would offer most of the features of high-end systems for a fraction of the cost - and edit the DV in its native format WITHOUT converting to M-JPEG, an older, less efficient compression technology. Terry felt the time was ripe to attempt a cost effective solution since hard disk and memory prices were dropping rapidly, processor speeds were increasing with Moore’s Law, feature-rich software was being developed and clear standards were emerging.
[Note, if you’re in the Boston area, please visit the 1 Beyond Technology Museum (‘1 Before‘) and see among other historic items, the first 1 Beyond NLE system. At the time the Pentium (1) had just been introduced (CPU speeds were measured in MHz and disk sizes were measured in MB’s) and the 4.7 MB/sec necessary for Native DV was a hard push of current technology.]
Another interesting note, 1 Beyond has grown at such a fast and furious pace since the introduction of that first all-digital lossless NLE system, that Terry has still not edited his 20 hours of Caribbean footage!
With 1 Beyond, you are assured of getting the latest technology: the fastest performance, best video capture technology and fastest, most efficient video storage. And best of all, the system is delivered to you Turnkey, complete and ready to use. No need to install or assemble anything!
The company Credo and guiding philosophy is to be "1 Beyond" in Service, Technology, and Value. See the Web Site section “The 1 Beyond Difference” for an explanation of our founding concepts i.e. our for greater detail and our Customer Testimonials for 1 Beyond customer experiences.
1 Beyond’s History is filled with Industry Firsts and Technology Awards. Here is a short set of Highlights. A trip down memory lane!
1997 - The 1 Beyond History of High Performance Systems is the result literally of the original garage effort to economically edit 20 hours of vacation DV footage! Terry has been in high performance computer, storage and applications design his entire career. After researching the latest hardware and software available, he designed a lossless NLE system at one-tenth the cost of the dominant analog NLE systems of the time. The rest as they say is history. With over 1,000 NLE systems worldwide, 1 Beyond continues to keep abreast of technological advancements, move into new video production areas while always pushing to keep the company’s products "1 Beyond" the competition.
2003 – The above scenario repeated itself with the introduction of High Definition. With the introduction of cost effective editing systems for High Definition, off-line editing using SD can be a thing of the past. At NAB 2003, 1 Beyond introduced an on-line High Definition editing and compositing system at a fraction of the cost of traditional HD editing systems. On-line editing of uncompressed, 10 bit high definition video. 1080i 29.97 requires over 35 times the data throughput of Native DV systems, but producing cost effective high performance systems and storage is what 1 Beyond is all about. With this introduction for example, 1 Beyond won HD systems contracts for ESPN and HD News HQ, the first 24-hour all HD news network.
2004 – At NAB, 1 Beyond introduced the industry’s first uncompressed HD Storage Area Network (SAN), purpose-built for the video industry. An HD editing system in the Adobe booth was editing original HD footage from Aerosmith with no disk array attached! If you followed the orange Fibre cable along the ceiling it dropped into the 1 Beyond booth where it was connected to the SAN along with several other HD NLE systems. 1 Beyond took home several Technical Awards for this (at the time seemingly impossible) accomplishment. The big prize was the Aerosmith music video produced by 1 Beyond “Making Honkin' on Bobo” was on the Sony Music site for years.
2006 – 1 Beyond moves into production as Panasonic requests 1 Beyond to design a professional, rugged, fast portable system to off-load P2 cards. This was the origin of the award winning 1 Beyond Wrangler software for on-set Off-Load and Verify as nothing at the time was fully automated, fast and reliable enough for professional use. The original Wrangler was born. The introduction of the 1 Beyond Wrangler lead to initial Hollywood involvement in several episodic productions and was the beginning of 1 Beyond in major movies.
2008 – 1 Beyond history moves to another chapter with the introduction of 3D. Again, 1 Beyond moves further into production as Lions Gate Films asks 1 Beyond to design a complete seamless 3D workflow including in-sync 3D Recording, Off-Load and Verify and Instant 3D Review. The entire workflow for SAW 3D was completed on six interchangeable 1 Beyond Wrangler systems, and with Zero Downtime! This eventually lead to many of the major movies (credited on our home page) including Pirates of the Caribbean, the highest budget movie in 2009.
2009 – At the recommendation of major networks, IBM selected 1 Beyond to represent the M&E market in the development of the new Linear Tape Format System (LTFS) for LTO-5 tape. This gave 1 Beyond an early exposure to the LTFS format and has lead to the industry’s most complete product line that stretches from Production through Post to final project archiving.
2010 – At the request of longtime partner Discovery Communications, 1 Beyond’s history moves again with the development of early 4K Editing and storage systems. 1 Beyond’s experience with high performance NLE and storage design combined with the latest SSD technology yields the beginning of 4K playback and editing.
2011 – 1 Beyond took its DDR Recording expertise to the Event Recording market by winning the NASA contract for the World’s largest Event Recorder. This was a massive project with 44 synchronized HD cameras utilizing 61 1 Beyond systems in total for control and recording (see web site for details). This development took synchronized multi-camera recording coupled with system reliability to a whole new level. It also included a 144TB 1 Beyond EzHDSAN and two 24 Tape Robotic LTO-5 / LTFS Libraries. This technology is now available in all of our DDR recorders including multiple 1 Beyond QuadDDR™ Event Recorders.
2012 – By this time the LTFS format has really taken hold and Major Networks are standardizing on LTFS for incoming production submission. 1 Beyond was selected by Discovery Communications to develop the hardware and software to implement a new level of efficiency to handle the incoming production Quality Assurance for the 4-500 companies worldwide submitting their work. What was a manual process inspecting productions visually on many random formats is now standardized on LTO-5 tape with LTFS and totally automated complete with format and video essence quality checking. 1 Beyond is not only working with other networks but also the Production companies going through the submission changes. The goal is to make this transition as painless and cost effective as possible. And 1 Beyond has the unique advantage of checking those production tapes with the same software that will be used for incoming QC. To benefit all, this is included at no cost with its 1 Beyond LTO NetDrive™ systems.
2013 – 1 Beyond is selected by Matrox and Telestream to combine its field proven production systems with Matrox IO hardware and Telestream Wirecast software to create another industry first; a new concept of truly rugged, portable and cost effective turnkey recording and streaming systems. This combination has opened a whole new level of this very rapidly growing market with a tried and true, cost effective solution. In a few short months, 1 Beyond is already facilitating streaming broadcasts worldwide.
1 Beyond, Inc.
529 Main Street, Suite 109 | Boston, MA 02129| Phone: 617-591-2200 | Toll Free: 1-877-ONE-BEYOND
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