Although 4K is mainly seen as an experimental format in Europe, it is rapidly gaining hold as the medium of choice in Japan for movies, high quality TV programmes and large screen public displays.
“Japan is moving ahead rapidly with 4K, with the world’s first regular 4K broadcasts already under way and an increasing demand for 4K post for both movies and TV production,” said Martin Mulligan, Quantel sales director.
The move to 4K is being boosted by the Japanese government, which is targeting widespread delivery of 4K to homes throughout Japan by 2016 in time for the Olympic Games in Brazil, which means that Japanese post houses need to be able to offer fast and creative 4K to their customers.
As a result of the 4K boom Quantel is seeing rising sales of its Pablo Rio 4K colour and finishing software and in some cases Genetic Engineering 2 shared workspace systems.
“We have adopted Pablo Rio for handling every aspect of the 4K projects we do – it is essential to have uncompressed 4K 60p playback for our jobs,” said Rintaro Doke, general manager, technical services, post production centre, at Tokyo-based Omnibus Japan. “Currently we are using Pablo Rio to finish the 4K movie Patlabor, The Next Generation, which is produced by the Omnibus Group.”
“We upgraded our Quantel eQ system to Pablo Rio 4K HFR because it is the only system available on the market that supports 4K 60p realtime monitoring during editing,” added Yasuteru Oda, senior general manager, engineering division at Onkio Haus, in Tokyo.
“Our main business is TV commercials production in North Japan and we have upgraded our four Quantel eQ systems to Pablo Rios with Genetic Engineering 2 shared workspace to give us major efficiency improvements, particularly with hi-res jobs,” said Takayuki Ishige, general manager, Studio Rec, Fukushima.
“We produce many TV programmes every day and Pablo Rio’s integrated editing, finishing and colour correction toolset saves us a tremendous amount of time. We think Quantel has produced a unique and very advanced post production technology which we can trust and use to the full,” added Toshihiro Shiota, manager, post production, Toei Lab Tech (Toei Digital Lab), Tokyo.
“Tokyo Laboratory has a long and distinguished history in film scanning and DI and we were the first company in Japan to adopt Pablo Rio. We have chosen Pablo Rio 4K HFR to cope with ever-increasing demand for 4K; its file handling is fast and easy and it has all the creative tools we need,” explained Katsuji Nishino, general manager, in its image media department.
“We have a strong demand for 4K finishing from one of our leading clients – a key commercial TV station in Tokyo. Pablo Rio gives us the ability we need to handle 4K 60p uncompressed RGB,” said Sei Takahashi, sales director, Tokyo Sound Production.
