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NEWBURY, U.K.—The retention of its R&D team after the MBO from Carlton, and the perfection of a versatile Monty architecture over the past four years, have enabled Quantel to relaunch itself on the back of an extremely powerful all-new product hierarchy called generationQ. Three years in development, this continues the company’s traditional focus on the post, graphics, news and live production sectors, but gives users, paying $12,000 for new VFX and paint software packages, the same tool sets and user interface as hardware-assisted systems costing upwards of $300,000, as well as common metadata. Diluting the marketing speak, generationQ is designed to serve a multiresolution world with “price point” processing muscle. [an error occurred while processing this directive] Richard Taylor, Quantel executive chairman, introduced generationQ as, “the embodiment of Quantel thinking,” and said the new cross-industry strategy will finally kill talk of the company being arrogant and closed. In one power play, Quantel has fused IT and video technologies, and provided a bridge that includes the crucial ability to handle frames or files (in a new server called sQ). MD Nigel Turner confirmed that customer feedback had helped identify a set of key trends — increased efficiency, team working, re-purposing, and the increased use of IT systems — to be served with a combo of new hardware and software. “We never let on what Monty was really about,” he said when explaining that although Windows 2000 lurks in generationQ, Quantel has written its own object manager to provide total assurance. Quantel has implemented AAF across the product range and is emphasizing the ‘uniformity’ of the software, and the publishing of its main API. Turner also pointed out that the common UI will save on training time. Post people will recognize iQ as the big daddy of generationQ. It has been boosted with a storage ceiling of 7TB, a new disc swap capability, new SAN connectivity, and new HDSL and fiber 2k interfaces connecting to da Vinci and Pandora grading systems, and enabling “fast load off telecine.” It also has the new QEffects software plus workflow and project management improvements, including indestructable background tasks. Resolution co-existence (native formats on the disks), editing format to format without rendering, and real-time versioning are powerful features. IQ costs anything from $300,000 to $800,000, but people frightened by such sums or wishing to build cost-effective workflow pipelines now have the eQ at $175,000 to $200,000, and QEffects costing $12,000 to consider. EQ will do HD work, but it is faster at SD stuff. It has full resolution coexistence, and 16-bit processing. In terms of storage it gives users 200 minutes at SD and 40 minutes at HD. It has complete VFX abilities, the real-time versioning, and users can employ HD (difference) tools on SD projects. Introducing the PC software QEffects, product manager Steve Owen said, “We’re not protecting a market here, we’re opening up a market. It has the same toolset, and common metadata as the hardware assisted eQ and iQ, and the idea is offline working and sending elements to iQ for rendering. This gives users desktop to real-time 2k, and beyond.” For the “close to air” graphics market, Quantel has introduced the gQ platform costing $120-150,000, and QPaintbox graphics software for $12,000. Conjuring up “Paintbox magic for the new age of broadcasting,” the demonstration emphasized that a lot of design is the thinking behind it, so working at PC level is okay. It was also exciting to see everything live and editable at every point on gQ. QPaintbox is founded on brand new code that gives it the resolution coexistence of the new family. New tools include a wonderful digital rostrum camera, templating tools that will attract college students and perhaps journalists doing graphics in the news room, keyframeable color correction, multi-layer compositing (with all layers live), and DVE and Blur with ‘undo’ at every stroke. Backwards compatibility is assured, but gQ is 60 times quicker at processing moving images than Hal. One of the key elements of generationQ is the progressive software QEdit, a timeline editing interface shared by iQ, eQ and the new “bi-lingual” server sQ. QEdit takes users from simple viewing functions to full craft editing. GenerationQ is also strong on plug-in scope. Look for more information about sQ and how it marries IT and broadcast technology in Film & Video’s NAB review and the PC card (running QEdit) that Quantel wants to ship as a turnkey option. 1 2 3 Next Source: Film & Video Magazine [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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