The Storm is over – Foundry kill product

BREAKING NEWS: In light of the advances that RED has engineered with their free professional REDCINE-X PRO, The Foundry has decided to bow out and leave them to it. We can report that The Foundry has decided to discontinue development of their Storm product with STORM 1.0v4 (the current release – being the last version).

Speaking exclusively to fxguide.com, CEO Bill Collis explained that The Foundry knew nothing about REDCINE-X PRO until everyone else heard about it. He commented that “it’s an understandable move on their side, though”.

This does not mean that The Foundry will stop supporting r3d and drop all RED support. “Supporting RED and the r3d format is as important to us now as it always has been,” Collis explained.

In the course of our discussions Collis hinted at new secret product(s) coming from The Foundry at IBC in a couple of days (watch fxguide for more on this) but indicated that they had no direct replacement for Storm. “It’s unlikely [any new products] will appeal to most of the same customers. There will be a few, though, who do find it an attractive proposition, and we’ll always do our best to be fair to them.”

While The Foundry like most companies do not publish exact license numbers, it is understood Storm was not killed due to lack of interest, Collis stating that the Foundry had been “pleased with the progress of Storm,” but clearly the company was faced with selling a product very similar to a free product.

The Foundry were promoted by RED as a partner that might be working on the HDRx temporial alignment issue in the EPIC, but RED themselves developed Magic Motion which works remarkably well, so we asked Collis if The Foundry ever did actually develop any code with or for RED and if so would any of this code ever see the light of day. Collis responded that “We’ve never had any formal agreement with RED. We’ve collaborated in a couple of ways, though. For example, we’ve been fascinated by RED’s HDRx technology and continue to have fun helping our clients make the most out of it.”

The Foundry did issue this formal statement:

FOUNDRY: Like the rest of you, we were very intrigued to see REDCINE-X PRO. We love the look of it and see it as proof of RED’s commitment to its professional users. STORM is a professional tool for RED users and now that REDCINE-X PRO has emerged, justifying investment in developing STORM becomes harder and harder against free software of this breadth. We say this with a heavy heart, because we’re fond of what we’ve done.

The current release – STORM 1.0v4 – is the end of the STORM roadmap for us.

STORM will remain available to purchase until the end of September after which we will maintain the software until the end of October 2012.

We have also been busy on a secret project based on STORM technology which we’ll be revealing at IBC in Amsterdam this weekend, so come and see us if you’re attending.