Spark is our playback only solution. It's the only stand-alone version, putting it at a price that will let you replace DVDs, kludgy programs off the web, and of course, using awkward Windows based 'DDRs'. Spark is available for Mac and Linux, and a Windows version isn't out of the question, as we use standard cross-platform technologies, including Quicktime and OpenGL.

Spark will run on the second screen of a laptop or desktop, or on the single screen of a computer, such as a Mac Mini. If you move to the Pro version, it will use supported video output systems, such as AJA, Matrox or other firewire based interfaces. The pro version also imports and re-encodes video for you as needed.

The power of Spark will be defined by:

• Your CPU speed, type and number of cores - Synchromesh uses multiple processors as available
• The amount of RAM you have. The more, the better - we aggressively cache frames if we can
• Your GPU type and amount of RAM. All processing takes place on the GPU, plus the faster it is, the quicker frames can be pushed onto it
• Your disk configuration. With a single laptop disk, you'll have to use some reasonable compression. Synchromesh won't playback quite as high quality as your laptop might just playing a movie, say. We need extra power to play an extra file to transition to, and to get the best possible quality processing and frame rate conversions. With a fast enough RAID array though, you can use uncompressed 2k video if you want