At Avid‘s press conference today CEO David Krall marked the company‘s 20th anniversary with a few dramatic facts, some to do with nearly a billion dollars in revenue, similar sums of R&D, and a furious output of patent applications–I think he said one every 15 days for 20 years. He also looked ahead–or rather looked around–at digital content and its proliferation across multiple devices and channels. It‘s a reality Avid has expected (or has been trying to hasten) for as long as I can remember.

VP of Worldwide Marketing for Avid Video Jeff Stewart picked up the thread in a straightforward presentation that reinforced the idea of Open Avid. Much of Avid‘s historic innovation was made possible–at least initially–by being the opposite of open. But that was then. Now Avid has to work harder than some to make a convincing case for openness, even though that has been the company‘s direction for some time.

This week you can see one of the more self explanatory displays of openness at the Open Storage Initiative booth, next to the Avid booth, where Digital Vision, Adobe and Final Cut Pro software are running on an Avid Unity network.

In addition to announcing Unity 5.0, Stewart also announced DNxHD 36, a new bitrate for Avid‘s HD mastering codec that can be used on laptops; a new Liquid Chrome Xe ($995 upgradeable to HD with a $1695 AJA hardware addition), and a new Media Stream 9000 broadcast playout server for XDCAM HD and LongGOP SD and HD.

More on a major shipped release impacting Xpress Pro, Composer, and Symphony platforms in a moment.

Read the press release in The Briefing Room: 2007 NAB Newslink