Quantel

Last updated

Quantel
Company typeLimited
Industry Broadcast television, video production and motion picture
Founded1973;51 years ago (1973)
Founders Peter Michael, Arthur Graves, Anthony Stalley, John Coffey
Defunct2015 (2015)
FateRebranded as Snell Advanced Media following consolidation
Successor Snell Ltd.
Headquarters,
Key people
Richard Taylor OBE (Former Chairman), Paul Kellar MBE (Former Research Director)
ProductsDigital production equipment
Number of employees
1,000 plus (1995) approx 250 (2014)
Website www.quantel.com
Footnotes /references
[1]

Quantel was a company based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1973 that designed and manufactured digital production equipment for the broadcast television, video production and motion picture industries. It was headquartered in Newbury, Berkshire. The name Quantel came from Quantised Television, in reference to the process of converting a television picture into a digital signal.

Contents

Quantel acquired Snell Limited in March 2014. [2] Following a period of consolidation the two companies started operating under the Snell name, trading as Snell Advanced Media or SAM, from September 2015, following the staged removal of the Quantel board of directors by incoming CEO Ray Cross. [2]

Quantel was purchased by Grass Valley, who were taken over by Cayman Island-registered Black Dragon Capital in 2020 who decided to close down Newbury factory in 2023, the 50th anniversary year of Quantel.

Around 50 legacy Quantel machines are known to still exist in museums and private collections around the world, several of which have been restored to working order by enthusiasts.

History

The Henry 'Think it Do it' campaign showcased work on Madonna, Ramones and Smashing Pumpkins music videos HenryIMG 0106(1).jpg
The Henry 'Think it Do it' campaign showcased work on Madonna, Ramones and Smashing Pumpkins music videos

Quantel founder, Peter Michael, had previously founded Micro Consultants Group (MCG). MCG had pioneered a range of fast data conversion products that could be used for converting video signals from analog to digital and back to analog. These devices found use in many early Quantel products.

In the 1980s, Michael merged Quantel along with his other interests such as Link Electronics Ltd into the UEI Group of companies. [3]

Michael became chairman with Quantel remaining a privately owned company of the publicly quoted UEI. [4] Under the leadership of Richard Taylor OBE, chairman from 1975 and Paul Kellar MBE, Quantel made several pioneering firsts in video:

This period until 1998 marked the high point of the company's profitability, size and market position, placing it in the top handful of broadcast vendors. The company had a global presence with major offices, staff and facilities on the east and west coast of the US, in Paris, Tokyo, London, Seoul, Hong Kong and Sydney, plus other overseas resources. There was a private air operation - Quantel Aviation - based in Farnborough which included a private Cessna Citation executive jet. However, as software based products began to gain ground in Quantel's then core businesses of compositing, graphics and news editing, the company was not able to maintain this position.

Recent history

In 1989 Quantel had been acquired from UEI by Carlton Communications which had also acquired high end sound console manufacturer Solid State Logic as part of the same deal. This relationship ended in 2000 when Quantel management bought the company back for $76.6m funded by Lloyds Banking Group venture capital arm LDC.

From 2000 to 2005, Quantel then specialised in:

December 2005 saw the forced departure from the board of long-standing chairman and chief executive Richard Taylor OBE by owners LDC in conjunction with Ray Cross - who had worked as an external consultant with Taylor and LDC to create the business plan to present to Lloyds for the 2000 management buyout from Carlton. Taylor was subsequently diagnosed with cancer in December 2008 and died in June 2009. [6]

Research and development director Paul Kellar MBE, who had been key to Quantel's previous technology leadership, immediately resigned on hearing of Taylor's ousting and Neil Hinson was promoted to replace Kellar by Cross. Hinson had joined Quantel in 1980 and played a pivotal part in the design of many of the most successful Quantel products including Harry, Henry, Mirage and Clipbox as well as the later generationQ family of products but was also quickly replaced by Cross with another Quantel employee, Simon Rogers in December 2008.

In the autumn of 2008 Cross made a sizeable round of redundancies, saying that the company was moving towards being more software based. Cross engaged in another round of redundancies in April 2009, giving the reason that the global recession has been deeper than had been planned for. Cross made further redundancies in October 2012, as its quarterly results were not as good as expected.

In March 2014 Quantel acquired Snell Ltd. also owned by Lloyds, and began the consolidation of the two companies. Cross made further redundancies, primarily in the former Snell organisation. [2] Like Quantel, Snell (as Snell and Wilcox) had formerly been a major player in the broadcast space but also like Quantel had seen a long-term decline in its market position and profitability. Although both companies produced media technology, each had quite separate but complementary products. [7]

In its heyday under Taylor, Quantel was ranked in the top four broadcast vendors and had one of the strongest brand names. Finally after almost 10 years of Cross downsizing Quantel and after apparently several failed attempts to sell the business, Cross himself was forcibly removed in March 2015 - allegedly partly following senior staff complaints about Cross to backers Lloyds Development Capital - and replaced by former Grass Valley CEO Tim Thorsteinson, chosen on a "proven track record of value creation". Thorsteinson subsequently sacked the entire Quantel board of directors. Finally in September 2015, the Quantel name was dropped and the residual business placed inside the Snell operation, branded as Snell Advanced Media (SAM). Thorsteinson has previously been involved in downsizing and restructuring other broadcast companies, such as Grass Valley and Harris, in order to prepare them for sale, which was the role LDC had originally brought Cross in to Quantel to achieve.

Timeline

Headquarters and manufacturing

Hardware-based systems like Henry declined after 1995 due to software-based rivals OnhenryIMG 0116(1).jpg
Hardware-based systems like Henry declined after 1995 due to software-based rivals

Quantel was based at 31 Turnpike Road, Newbury, Berkshire, England since 1982. The 126,000 sq ft (11,700 m2) building was built on the 6.7-acre (27,000 m2) site in 1940 for Vickers Armstrong and manufactured Spitfire fighter aircraft during World War II. Air raid shelters are still present in the grounds of the site. Other users of the building included the Post Office and the Ministry of Transport.

A large part of the site was dedicated to manufacturing. It is now very rare that companies manufacture their own products due to the complex nature of multiple layer circuit boards containing high density surface mounted components. It is more common now to design complex circuits on a computer and await delivery of a ready built board or simply use off the shelf IT.

As part of restructuring during the 1990s, Quantel decided to outsource support of legacy products to a separate company Effect Systems. Also based in Newbury and staffed by many ex Quantel staff, Effect Systems took over support for products. These include Editbox, Henry, Hal, Paintbox, Picturebox, Domino as well as older products dating back to the 1980s including Mirage, Harry and Encore. On 1 October 2008 Quantel ended the outsourcing contract with Effect Systems. Effect continued to offer independent support for Quantel legacy equipment (Paintbox V, Picturebox, Henry, Editbox and Domino) but has now ceased that support and in 2016 disposed of the inventory of spare parts.

Products

Traditionally, Quantel systems were based around proprietary hardware and software. With the introduction of the generationQ range a number of Quantel products were based on Microsoft Windows and standard PC hardware with occasional use of custom hardware.

Despite Quantel holding hundreds of Patents for inventions that many other companies utilized, such as the pressure sensitive stylus first used on the 1981 Paintbox, the company only ever sued three other companies for Patent infringement. Due to the high profile of the cases against Spaceward for their Matisse, which was marketed as a cheaper version of Paintbox and Adobe Systems for Patented elements within its Photoshop software, Quantel were unfairly accused of trying to suppress and control competitors. Quantel won their case against Spaceward in London and blocked further sales, though let the company service the systems already sold. [8] Adobe already having been punished for various anti-competitive practices such as buying and closing down CorelDraw in 1994 as it competed with Illustrator but Quantel was portrayed as a British company trying to destroy Adobe. The case partly hinged on first use of a digital airbrush. Adobe's lawyers, who were provided and funded by Apple, found a prior use of the airbrush by academics at NYIT which predated Quantel's Patent, therefore invalidating it and greatly influencing the judge's decision to dismiss the case.

The majority of Quantel products used code names for some parts of their systems before launch. One source of code names was the television series The Magic Roundabout. The Dylan disk system and the Zebedee processor take their names from characters in this series. Quantel's product names often seemed random but Henry, Harry, Harriet and HAL were chosen as they stood out in the broadcast arena where technology was named in a more mathematical acronym way.

As well as news, sports and weather graphics, Quantel video technology was used extensively in production of a wide spectrum of TV shows, from Top of the Pops in the UK, to the American television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. [9]

Many of the major movies released since 1999 were created or manipulated using Quantel technology, including Star Wars episode 2 and 3, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring , The Day After Tomorrow , and Sin City . Users of sQ server based systems include ESPN in the US, Rogers Media in Canada, and BBC, BSkyB and QVC in the United Kingdom.

Quantel effects appear in many TV Commercials and music videos, including the winner of the first MTV Award and most famously, Dire Straits' Money For Nothing

Quantel-designed technologies include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Non-linear editing</span> Non-destructive audio, video, or image editing

Non-linear editing is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear editing, edits are specified and modified by specialized software. A pointer-based playlist, effectively an edit decision list (EDL), for video and audio, or a directed acyclic graph for still images, is used to keep track of edits. Each time the edited audio, video, or image is rendered, played back, or accessed, it is reconstructed from the original source and the specified editing steps. Although this process is more computationally intensive than directly modifying the original content, changing the edits themselves can be almost instantaneous, and it prevents further generation loss as the audio, video, or image is edited.

The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC standard-definition video. The plug-in expansion card initially worked with the Amiga 2000 computer and provides a number of BNC connectors on the exposed rear edge that provide connectivity to common analog video sources like VHS VCRs. The related software tools support video switching, luma keying, character generation, animation, and image manipulation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quantel Paintbox</span> Computer graphics workstation

The Quantel Paintbox was a dedicated computer graphics workstation for composition of broadcast television video and graphics. Produced by the British production equipment manufacturer Quantel, its design emphasized the studio workflow efficiency required for live news production.

Grass Valley is a manufacturer of television production and broadcasting equipment. Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, it was formed by the March 2014 merger of the original Grass Valley with Miranda Technologies, which were both acquired by American networking company Belden in 2014 and 2012, respectively. In February 2018, owners Belden merged Grass Valley with newly-acquired Snell Advanced Media. On July 2, 2020, Grass Valley announced the completion of its acquisition by private equity firm Black Dragon Capital from Belden Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vision mixer</span> Electronic device for selecting and compositing of live video sources

A vision mixer is a device used to select between several different live video sources and, in some cases, compositing live video sources together to create visual effects.

Penguin Software was a computer software and video game publisher from Geneva, Illinois that produced graphics and application software and games for the Apple II, Macintosh, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari 8-bit, and Atari ST computers. They produced the graphics programs Graphics Magician and Complete Graphics System, graphic adventure games such as the Transylvania series, arcade-style games like Spy's Demise, and role-playing video games such as Xyphus.

QFX is an image editing computer program developed by Ron Scott, a Texan photographer and software engineer. The first version was released in 1990. At the time of its release, QFX was one of the most feature-rich image editing applications available on the PC platform. It was the software of choice for digital artists and image postproduction studios in the times when 1024x768 truecolor graphics were a luxury, far before Photoshop could have been considered a serious professional tool. Its clean interface and clever workflow helped build a devoted user base, some of whom continue using it, despite QFXs being long ago eclipsed in features and users by Photoshop.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motion graphics</span> Digital footage or animation which create the illusion of motion or rotation

Motion graphics are pieces of animation or digital footage that create the illusion of motion or rotation, and are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects. Motion graphics are usually displayed via electronic media technology, but may also be displayed via manual powered technology. The term distinguishes static graphics from those with a transforming appearance over time, without over-specifying the form. While any form of experimental or abstract animation can be called motion graphics, the term typically more explicitly refers to the commercial application of animation and effects to video, film, TV, and interactive applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer Originated World</span> BBC symbol

The Computer Originated World (COW) was the method of creating the BBC1 symbol that was used between 18 February 1985 and 16 February 1991. It was later used by the international, commercial television service BBC World Service Television from its launch until 26 January 1995.

International Video Corporation, or IVC, was a California company with large European operations that manufactured a number of models of middle to high-end video tape recorders, or VTRs, for industrial and professional use in the US, alongside a range of digital video Time Base Correctors and Special Effects units designed and manufactured in the UK. Their products were very popular in the industrial, scientific, research, medical, education, and institutional markets from the late 1960s through the 1980s.

Snell Limited, branded as Snell Advanced Media or SAM, was a British company that designed and developed solutions for the media production market including applications for central operations, live production, post production, playout and media management. They were headquartered in Newbury, UK.

AVC-Intra is a type of video coding developed by Panasonic, and then supported in products made by other companies. AVC-Intra is available in Panasonic's high definition broadcast products, such as, for example, their P2 card equipped broadcast cameras.

Digital video effects (DVEs) are visual effects that provide comprehensive live video image manipulation, in the same form as optical printer effects in film. DVEs differ from standard video switcher effects such as wipes or dissolves, in that they deal primarily with resizing, distortion or movement of the image. Modern video switchers often contain internal DVE functionality. Modern DVE devices are incorporated in high-end broadcast video switchers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ross Video</span> Manufacturer of television production and broadcasting equipment

Ross Video Ltd is a privately held Canadian company that designs and manufactures equipment for live event and video production. Ross Video's headquarters and manufacturing operations are located in Iroquois, Ontario, Canada, while their R&D labs are in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Boris FX is a visual effects and video editing software plug-in developer based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The developer is known for its flagship products, Continuum, Sapphire, Mocha, and Silhouette.

The history of computer animation began as early as the 1940s and 1950s, when people began to experiment with computer graphics – most notably by John Whitney. It was only by the early 1960s when digital computers had become widely established, that new avenues for innovative computer graphics blossomed. Initially, uses were mainly for scientific, engineering and other research purposes, but artistic experimentation began to make its appearance by the mid-1960s – most notably by Dr. Thomas Calvert. By the mid-1970s, many such efforts were beginning to enter into public media. Much computer graphics at this time involved 2-D imagery, though increasingly as computer power improved, efforts to achieve 3-D realism became the emphasis. By the late 1980s, photo-realistic 3-D was beginning to appear in film movies, and by mid-1990s had developed to the point where 3-D animation could be used for entire feature film production.

GenArts, Inc. was a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based developer of visual effects software for the film, broadcast, and advertising industries. GenArts's special effects software was used in the production of many movies, commercials, television shows, newscasts, and music videos. GenArts software and plugins integrated visual effects such as glows, lightning, fire, and fluids into post-production video editing software from companies like Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, and The Foundry.

Pandora International is a maker of hardware and software systems for video editing, Telecine Control and Colour Correction. Pandora was founded in 1985 By Steve Brett and Martin Greenwood, later Aine Marsland joined the team and took over the administration of the company. Pandora International devices are able to colour-correct video and 16 mm and 35 mm motion picture film in real time. Pandora International is based in Greenhithe, Kent, England.

References

  1. "Radiohead", biography of Sir Peter Michael, by Darius Sanai, The Independent, 27 September 2000 (retrieved 24 August 2012).
  2. 1 2 3 "Former SAM-branded Products". grassvalley.com. Retrieved 5 January 2019.
  3. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. (20 September 1986). Billboard. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. pp. 55–. ISSN   0006-2510.{{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  4. "Sir Peter Michael - Biography". Archived from the original on 5 June 2008. Retrieved 24 May 2008.
  5. "A Change in the Weather", BBC Television, broadcast Mon 18 Feb 1985. YouTube copy.
    The weather goes electric, Blue Peter , 18 February 1985; via YouTube
  6. "Richard Taylor obituary written by Paul Kellar MBE" (PDF).
  7. "LDC decides to merge rather than sell Snell - Megabuyte". megabuyte.com. Retrieved 5 January 2019.
  8. #author.fullName}. "Patents: Spun out tale". New Scientist. Retrieved 5 August 2023.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  9. "Revisiting Cinefex (37): Star Trek: TNG, The Fly II, Oxford Scientific Films". Graham Edwards. 31 May 2013. Retrieved 17 July 2022.