Digital Vision announced today that it has agreed to acquire Nucoda Ltd. who is a leading supplier of advanced digital media solutions for film and video, including systems that support the digital intermediate process in the 2K and 4K domains. In exclusive discussions with fxguide, Digital Vision’s President and COO Robert Ekstrom states “the final talks on the acquisition has been intense and quick”, we asked him about what this means to the future of D
Digital Vision produces a range of high end media mastering and networking products. These include impressive image processing systems incorporate sophisticated Motion Estimation engines that allow the system to apply a variety of temporal and spatial filters to an image, including sections that contain frame-to-frame motion. Nucoda has been one of several companies exploring the growing digital intermediate market, with systems providing edl conform from NAS, SAN, HD and SD – as well as complex colour grading with realtime 2K playback.
The two companies are quite different, Nucoda is a privately held company, Digital Vision is a publiclly listed company having listed on the Swedish stock exchange almost 6 years ago in the April of 1999. Nucoda is based in Soho London, with a staff of 15 people, Digital Vision has 32 staff in Stockholm and another 4 based in LA. But their technology seems complementary. President and COO Robert Ekstrom, “The intent is definitely to utilise the best of both worlds and come out with new innovative products that can support our customer base. But we’re also very pleased with the existing product portfolio of the two companies and hence will continue investing heavily in those.”
No staff loss are planned – on the contrary says Ekstom “this is an aggressive move and an investment for the future.”
All engineering and technical support functions for Nucoda will remain headquartered in London. Digital Vision will continue to invest in the technology already developed by Nucoda, in addition to further development of its own image processing systems for post-production and broadcast applications.
Digital Vision has working with Nucoda “for quite sometime in specific customer activities” explains Ekstrom, commenting on the deal he explains that “through that process both parties have seen the opportunities and it turned out quite natural after a while”.
The move signals a new agressive push into the American market for Nucoda points out Ekstorm. “With DV being an established player in the US market it will help to even more aggressively position the Nucoda product line there.”
“In just five years, Nucoda has established itself as a leading technology supplier in digital media solutions for film and video�, said Ekstrom. Our customers have been asking us to expand our industry-standard product portfolio with data centric solutions. The addition of the Nucoda product line, in combination with our own award-winning image processing algorithms, offers a full range of value points to our customers.We are extremely impressed with the Nucoda team. The combination of their skills and experience with that of the DV engineering team will help us accelerate the development of the important new tools that will help our customers operate more productively and provide the best looking pictures possible.�
Digital Visions and Nucoda will be annoucing new project resulting from the deal at NAB in Las Vegas in April. Ekstrom would not be drawn on any plans to combine global distributors, – but he did comment that “we will of course review this and where we can find synergies and opportunities we will pursue them.”
“We’re very excited by the huge potential that the combined entity offers,” said Simon Cuff, CEO and co-founder of Nucoda. �Digital Vision and Nucoda possess powerful and complementary brands, products and technology. We look forward to joining Digital Vision as we continue to offer the groundbreaking and high performance products for which we are known.”
