Brief Company History
Back in 1982, a company named Abekas Video Systems was formed by three former employees of Ampex, which itself was the company responsible for inventing the world’s first practical video recording machine. At Abekas, Junaid Sheikh took on the roles of software engineering, sales and marketing; Phil Bennett led the engineering & development effort; and Yeshwant Kamath tackled the tasks of analog design, manufacturing and accounting. As a matter of fact, the name “Abekas” was derived by arranging the first two letters from each of the founder’s last names, and adding an “A” at the beginning (although they thankfully dropped the "h" from Junaid’s last name).
Abekas was formed right around the time in which the professional video marketplace was beginning to transition from the old world of analog video, to the new world of digital video.
The first product introduced by Abekas back in 1982 was the revolutionary “A42” Digital Video Still Store. This product recorded and played still video images with an associated “key” signal for use in live broadcast operations. Standing as testimony toward the engineered reliability of Abekas products, today there are several A42 Still Stores in use in live television broadcast operations, more than 25 years later!
Within two years following 1982, additional products were introduced from this small company named Abekas, which were quickly accepted by the broadcast marketplace. These products included the A52 Digital Effects system (predecessor of today’s Dveous/MX Digital Effects system), the A62 Digital Disk Recorder (the world’s first digital video recording machine with a built-in real-time digital video keyer), and later on, the A72 Digital Character Generator.
By 1985, Abekas was a quickly growing privately held company, which garnered the attention of potential buyers. In early 1985, Carlton Communications Plc Group from the United Kingdom acquired Abekas.
After this acquisition, additional digital video products were developed by Abekas, including digital video switchers (or “vision mixers” as they are known elsewhere in the world), digital video signal processing equipment, digital video production systems, and sophisticated “3D” digital effects machines — with the world’s first “warp” effects engine.
Come 1987, Junaid Sheikh was growing restless with the ever-expanding Abekas, and longed again for the “company start-up” experience. Junaid departed Abekas and in 1988 helped launch a new company — named Accom.
Accom’s first product to be introduced was the “DIE-422” — a Digital Image Enhancer. This machine was used in the film-to-tape transfer process, electronically removing film dirt and scratches, as well as providing overall image enhancement capabilities. Shortly afterward, the “DIS-422” Digital Image Store was introduced, which was targeted at the film-to-tape color correction market. Then in 1989, the RTD-4224 was unveiled by Accom; the world’s first 10-bit uncompressed digital video disk recorder.
From that point forward, a succession of new products were brought to the marketplace by Accom, including the new WorkStation Disk (WSD) concept; a table-top uncompressed digital disk recorder for the computer graphics and video production marketplaces. The WSD product line experienced several generations throughout the 1990’s as new advances in disk recording technology were developed by Accom.
In 1992, Axial Incorporated was acquired by Accom, which broadened the product line to include two visual online editing systems — the Axial 2010 and 2020. Axial was earlier co-founded by Ian Craven, Lance Kelson and Junaid Sheikh.
Then in December of 1998, Accom acquired all of the assets of Scitex Digital Video (SDV); which was formed by Scitex Corporation Ltd. in late 1995, through the acquisition and subsequent merger of ImMIX, Inc. and Abekas Video Systems, Inc. This acquisition by Accom in 1998 further expanded the product offerings from Accom, and the company continued to expand world-wide market share.
However, over time, the world economy as a whole took a downturn in the early part of the new century, with the double-negative impacts of the “dot-com bust" and the episode of September 11, 2001. These events cascaded into a rather large negative shock on the overall business of Accom. Eventually, Accom ceased operations in June 2005 and closed down completely in September of 2005.
Fortunately for the loyal customers of Abekas and Accom products, Junaid Sheikh and Phil Bennett were able to acquire critical assets from the liquidation of Accom; including inventory, technology rights and intellectual property. Immediately afterward, a new corporation was formed — and once again, it was named Abekas, Incorporated.
Abekas has since introduced three new products and is actively developing more. The staff at the new Abekas has also taken on the impressive role of providing technical support for all legacy products from the former companies of Abekas, Accom and ImMIX; going all the way back to the product that started it all — the A42 Digital Still Store.
So for Junaid Sheikh and Phil Bennett, history has come full circle. And once again, Junaid and Phil are enjoying the role of piloting a “start-up” company once again.
