Digital Postproduction And Pablo Respond To The HD Challenge

At the beginning of the year, Paris post house Digital Postproduction, a subsidiary of Groupe Transatlantic invested in a Pablo colour correction and finishing system to complete their HD offer for producers and broadcasters. The Pablo is equipped with the brilliant new Neo control panel.
Thierry Daghero, Managing Director of Digital Postproduction, said: "The post business has radically changed over the last few years. Producers and broadcasters now expect a global offer from the post facility to enable them to complete global projects. They don't come to us today, as they did in the past, looking for any specific piece of kit. They want us to propose a full range of services and solutions to get their post work done as efficiently as possible, with very demanding criteria, in both artistic and financial terms. English speakers call their post houses facilities, which means they expect post houses to facilitate their task. We consider ourselves 'facilitateurs'. With the development of HD, which is very demanding technically, the essential role of the facility is really to accompany the client through this change."
With this approach in mind, Digital Postproduction chose to integrate a Quantel Pablo into its HD production workflow. Thierry continued: "Quantel's Pablo truly responds to the needs of our producer and broadcaster clients. It's a complete solution, with a very realistic value-for-money proposition. Before, we had the choice between two extremes: on the one hand, very expensive DI grading stations that were designed for feature films and which required endless peripheral stations and, on the other hand, PC-based systems that were a lot cheaper, but which were too slow in terms of processing time and rendering."
This combination of performance and precision were the key critieria in Digital Postproduction's decision. Thierry Seux, Operations Engineer, explained: "The Pablo Neo is a complete machine, which allows us to colour correct with great finesse, and which also gives us a complete toolset which covers all of our finishing needs: compositing, SFX, mastering, versioning... We also have various ergonomic choices, covering the full range of practices from traditional colour grading to Quantel-based techniques. But, that's not all. The Pablo allows us to see the real final image right away, since there are no proxies and since we work with full HD, non-compressed images. On top of that, Pablo gives us real-time processing, which enables the director of photography or the director to work alongside our operators."
Pablo processes HD at the speed of SD, but beyond, in this period of transition with several standards being used, it offers the possibility of dealing with different resolutions on the same timeline. Thierry Seux said: "This is really something that works well in Quantel systems. The capacity to handle different resolutions at the same time, what Quantel calls Resolution Coexistence, is a real plus. We have to integrate archive elements, as well as material shot in different formats, especially for documentaries and docu-dramas. With Pablo, we can mix all of these sources and even do compositing, which really makes life a lot simpler."
Thierry Daghero added: "Indeed, Pablo allows us to work just as easily on fiction and documentaries. Today, these are the two main genres in our market, as well as live shows. For example, we are now finishing HD post-production on Kaamelott Livre VI (the French equivalent of Black Adder) directed by Alexandre Astier and we've just completed Marco Polo, a ballet with Marie-Claude Pietragalla to be broadcast in HD. But beyond stock programmes (ie: telefilms, series and documentaries with a potential of being aired several times), producers are now going to HD for current programming. Tomorrow, reality shows such as Koh Lanta and game shows such as Fort Boyard will also be made in HD. And, of course, sport is an essential component in the overall HD offering. We are no longer looking at HD as a future format, it's now a daily reality."
(KMcA/JM)