JamieG Analysis

Currently James is spending all his time running a company by the name of digitAll involved in many different aspects of digital media, production and technologies. Please go to the www.digitall.net.au website for a link to related companies.

The following is a history of projects and related technologies James Gardiner has worked on during his career;

James obtained his first computer at the age of 10 (1979) : the VC20 which was later known as The Commodore Vic 20. From here, he moved on to the C64 then to the Amiga.  He was a very big Gamer in his youth.

He also ran a BBS called “Phoenix” on his Amiga then later on a Sun360 UNIX system with access to the first real internet email system “name@host.com”.  To his knowledge, it was the first UNIX based BBS in Australia.

At university he started a degree called RDT (Robotics and Digital Technology).  The year he started was the year the universities set up the first internet links from Australia to the US.

James also set up the first IRC server in Australia; however it was closed down by the computer centre. A student at ANU a week later got a server running with unofficial acceptance from ANU computer centre.  It was an interesting time to watch how this technology was affecting the students and how they socialised.

APANA (Australian Public Access Network Association) was the first organisation to offer internet access to NON-education entities.  James was a founding board member.  APANA offered UUCP and limited PPP (over modems) to the internet.

After a year of RDT, James switched to Info Systems.  Micro controller programming did not stimulate him. He switched to a higher level course covering topics like Databases, SQL and systems analysis.

James’ first job was for Australian Technology Partnerships, “ATP” a software development company.  He was a system administrator working on HP/UX systems. Projects included, TMCS - train collision detection and control system used by the Victorian government and a voice switching system used by the Perth government to communicate with trains.

After leaving this company, James went to work for Thomson CSF, a division of Thomson France military development.  The project was called IRDS (Interim Radar Display System) which was an interim system used while a larger system was developed over the next 4 years.  James was in charge of implementation, development and documentation of a grade A fault tolerant system for monitoring Australian Air Space for the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority). This project won an award for excellence from the Australian Government.

James’ next adventure was working for “Kodak Cineon”. An attempt by Kodak to develop software for producing digital special effects for FILM at 4K.  It was a very ambitious project for its day.  He was in charge of nightly compiles and revision and source control, working closely with Silicon Graphics. Much of the system was based on software being written in tandem by Silicon Graphics.  It is here James learned a lot about film technologies and how digital technologies were being used to make film.

At this stage James became a silent partner for “Act III”, a digital 2D and 3D animation and visual effects company. James supplied all the technical knowledge and knowhow to setup the company systems.  This company was formed with his brother Martin Gardiner and Mike Hollands from Video Pant-brush, the leading Visual effects company of the day.

Eventually James and his brother decided to form their own 2D, 3D visual FX company called “Planet X Studios” named after the Loony Tunes cartoon, “DuckDogers in the 24th and a half century” in which the characters search for Planet X. There first job was for a popular sitcom show called “Full Frontal” based on the opening sequence of an episode of The Simpsons.  Over the next few years, from nowhere “Planet X Studios” became a top 5 player among the Post Production companies in Melbourne Australia.

Planet X Studios had a steady supply of Visual FX work, however also started to move into the facility business after implementing online video editing systems.  Planet X was an early beta tester for Adobe Premiere and AfterFX, and the first Australasian beta Tester for Softimage HD-DS.  James was heavily involved in all these processes as the technical chief of the company.  Planet X Studios was the first HD online facility in Melbourne, and Australia.

While at Planet X Studios James spent a lot of development time working on moving to HD as he believed it was going to revolutionise the Film industry.

With his brother, he also developed an in house film recording system.  This was used by MEG “Media Entertainment Group”.  Planet X was birth place of the “Designer Ad” - a Motion Slide production line technology, and was doing hundreds of ads per month for cinema advertising. Planet X had invested much time into MEG focusing on taking it digital.  MEG became a powerful media player very quickly and was taken over by Rupert Murdoch.  This unfortunately derailed the development plans.

Village Cinemas International was also a major client.  MPEG based playback systems where developed for foyer display systems and point of sale.  Planet X was the Australian dealer for Scala, however this was abandoned due to lack of flexibility.  This is where James and Martin started to develop their own tools for digital display systems. Village had hired James to travel though Europe implementing digital video playback systems in seven cinema complexes throughout Europe. During this time he spent a lot of time in BIO boxes and back end cinema translation systems.

Encoding technologies became a major part of Planet X’s development.  Planet X was early in implementing high quality SDI based encoding systems, real time and software.  Much work was done with Ravisent systems (Ravisent decoder was that initially released by XBOX DVD player software). Ravisent hardware decoder cards were used in the initial version of Planet X digital media players.

During this time the Internet bubble was at its peak, and Planet X was spotted by venture capitalists and encouraged to IPO.  There was a lot of interest in Planet X and the IPO had been underwritten, however, as it came to market, the internet bubble burst. A decision was therefore made to delay the IPO for six months to see what the market was doing.

In September 2001, a subtenant of the building where Planet X group was located had a fire.  Planet X was completely destroyed.  James and his brother Martin lost 10 years of work in one night.

Planet X was under insured and James and his brother were devastated.

James and his brother fought on, recovering what they could, and setting up in temporary premises.  The IPO was history.

With the money left over from the insurance pay out, James and his brother back door listed into a company called “Swish Group”.  James became a major owner in a Telco grade data centre, including an ISP and new media development, web and application services company.

James was then involved in several projects;

1.      Re-establishing and equipping Planet X.

2.      Taking over a satellite ISP.

3.      Developing the first high definition e-cinema installation in the whole of Australia: This project involved a cinema which runs a 20min tourist presentation every 30 mins for 12 hours per day.  The installation is still running today and has had less than a day’s down time per year including globe replacements. This same technology is used in the current design “Cine X Range” systems.

4.      Implementing a VOD system for hotels; Swish Group given major ownership in a VOD company to come and fix their failing system.  James redesigned and replaced failing parts of the system, implementing a maintainable solution. The legacy implementation could not scale and was not deemed a workable business model unless completely rebuilt and redeveloped. Integrating more automated solutions and cost cutting methods were needed. During this time James evaluated and redesigned the solution, starting from the ground up. However, close to the end of the initial release, James had to leave Swish Group.  The system was sold to a number of hotels in Dubai.

During this time at Swish, James was very happy developing technology and took his eyes of the control of the company.  Soon after he discovered a con man (his lawyer) had tricked him out of his ownership.  This took a number of years dealing with layers.

For the second time James had to start again.

James became involved with a company called WAN TV, a point of sale digital signage company.  WAN TV reached board level on many implementations.  Thomson/Technicolour entered into an agreement to purchase WAN TV and employ James and his brothers technology. However, due to Thomson over stretching itself with the purchase of WALL MART TV, the purchase was not able to be completed in time to meet the needs of major contracts. Thomson reserved the right to revisit the deal at a later date.

Knowing little else, and with all the money they could scrape together, James and Martin set up a new company called digitAll, incorporating four subsidiaries - VID, d-cinema, ddsign and Planet X Studios Although digitAll still did film and TV production, James and Martin decided to focus on technology implementations, which was the area they knew best and in which there were fewer competitors.

From here digitAll entered into a contract to implement a Cinema Advertising network for “Moonlight Projects”.  Moonlight completely outsourced the production and distribution of cinema ads on the Moonlight Projects network to James’ company digitAll.  This involving about 50 cinemas and over 200 screens.

This included the development of web Sales Portals using AJAX and RIA technologies. CRM systems for Cinema and clients, Automated content scheduling and distribution for digital, CD, Minidisk, Audio Tape.  The infrastructure was designed to bring the industry into digital distribution technologies.

Recently, e-Cinema has also been taking off.  The Cine X Range (See www.d-cinmea.com.au and www.ddsign.com.au ) based on Planet X’s 8 year old media player software for POS (Point of Sale) systems, has been upgraded to suit Cinema BIO box implementations.  James is also developing content management and distribution applications to work with the media players, allowing full control of a cinema or Cinema Chain from any internet accessible terminal.

Today, James is mainly involved in the www.d-cinema.com.au business dealing with Cinema Technology from DCI and eCinema implementations to Compression for theatre exhibition.

He is extremely happy to be involved with the evolution an industry he is very passionate about.