8 TVBEurope The Business Case
On a wave of Emotion
THERE ARE few personalities in the world of broadcast vendors more familiar than MC Patel. From a beginning as an electronics engineer he became associated with some of the most groundbreaking developments in digital technology, and went on to be regarded as a serial entrepreneur. Today he is putting his weight behind Emotion-Systems, a new company that is tackling some of the smaller — but no less vital — challenges of the file-based environment. How did he get from there to here, and what lessons did he learn on the way? “I started in 1975 as a graduate, with an Indian passport and no job,” MC said. “I needed a work permit. Phil Bennett had joined Quantel, and he recommended me.” Filling out the details, his degree
was in electronic engineering from the University of Essex in the UK, which then as now has a particularly strong course in television systems engineering. It was a great time to be doing pioneering work in television technology: in 1975 Quantel launched the world’s first all-digital framestore, which the following year amazed the world by offering picture-in-picture effects from the Montreal Olympics. It seems amazing now, but this
was before digital graphics were a practical proposition. The first
deliver. I was brought up with the ethos of being given a task and told to get on with it. So I moved quickly from design engineer to running a team, which recognised I was good at finishing things – but I didn’t get much actual design work.” So he looked to move on.
He went next to a company called Gunnerfield, where his mentors were Tony Stalley and particularly John Coffey. From there he went to IVC, then a major force in distributing products like VTRs. “I said if we put two TBCs and a little mixer and some machine control, we could have a three machine editor. And we could add some simple effects with a framestore or two.”
Alpha Image to Dynatech It was at this time he was joined by Tim Gale, and together they made a forceful partnership. “We wrote down a set of rules about how we would go about designing a product,” he said. “The first step was to write down a spec – it seems obvious now – then we would go away and think about a design, which would be peer reviewed. “The intention was to get to a PCB without green wires. We implemented this successfully, and we developed that first product from paper to shipping in 11 months.”
Alpha Image quickly built a development team: “I went from being a design guy to nurturing a team of youngsters,” MC recalled. He also had another
responsibility: someone had to front the company when it appeared at the Montreux exhibition just a couple of months later. “Tim said I talked more than he did so I was in charge of sales,” he claimed. “I had never sold before, and I had no idea how to do it — so I went into the library and got some books.” The D1 was a parallel digital
device, so the first products were parallel DAs and routers, which were complex beasts and saw Alpha Image lead the industry. Then digital technology moved on to serial digital interconnections, and again MC and the team were ahead of the pack on technology. “At that time everyone in post used a Grass Valley Kaleidoscope or Kadenza for effects, but it needed two racks of equipment for switching,” according to MC. The Alpha Image was more powerful — capable of switching every crosspoint in one vertical interval — and considerably smaller, so it too became the standard product in the post production business. “Alpha Image went quickly from zero to three million — it was always
“If the IT companies get their way — and they will because they have the muscle — then there will be the need for specific products which they have no interest in developing”
paint systems came later: the BBC’s Eric became the Logica Flair in 1980, the Quantel Paintbox was launched in 1981. Not unreasonably, MC wanted to be in the design department at Quantel and, although initially employed as a test engineer, he badgered the head of R&D every day for a transfer. “Quantel at that time was a
very innovative company that moved really quickly,” he recalled. “They believed that work expands to fill the time available, so we were constantly under the cosh to
Several changes of ownership meant that the company became known as Abekas UK, and Patel, Gale and team were developing a 3D DVE at the same time as the parent company in the USA was working on the A53. A collision was inevitable, and the two sold out their stock options and started perhaps their most iconic company, Alpha Image, in March 1987. Again, the timing was great.
Sony had just got the D1 digital video recorder to a deliverable state, and there was a clamour for the infrastructure to go around it.
profitable, even though we were not really businessmen. And a lot of people wanted to buy the business.” It was eventually sold to
Dynatech, which had big benefits including a large sales organisation, with the result that the products grew in success around the world, not least with the Star TV project in Hong Kong. But being part of a large business was frustrating MC: “Under own control we just looked at an opportunity, built it and moved on,” he said. “Now we had to present to the board.”
MC Patel in 1987 (Alpha Image’s first public appearance at Montreux) with Nigel Hadley of Soho 601 – the first post house to install a D1 edit suite
Post Impressions to Emotion Systems After a brief period with Discreet (now Autodesk) he started another business, Post Impressions, essentially to provide hardware to work in association with the rapid rise of software-based finishing tools. It flourished for a while, most notably teaming up with Pandora to develop a disk-to-disk HD colour corrector. But in 2000 he resigned and set up a consultancy. “I wanted to work with small companies that either had a technology that they wanted to take to market, or they had growing problems,” MC said. “I had a lot of
The ebullient MC Patel returns with Emotion Systems following previous guises with Discreet, Alpha Image and Quantel — this time making audio analysis software for post production workflows. Dick Hobbs looks behind the algorithms
MC Patel: “We have 35 years of video
experience behind us when we use IT skills to solve media problems”
www.tvbeurope.com June 2012
empathy for the issues they went through. My job was to help them see the wood for the trees. “[Test and measurement specialist] Omnitek was one of the first clients. I helped them define and present the product, and bring on the sales and marketing. This was very nice, because I could use my experience, and we could see some successes. “The problem was I had got used to having a team to develop ideas. So I started Emotion Systems about two years ago, with the idea of making file-based products which are very high quality and very cost effective.” Again, this is a venture at a critical time for the industry. More and more of what was traditionally broadcast-specific hardware is now being done by off the shelf computers, but that is a risk in those areas where video and audio have very specific requirements. “If the IT companies get their
way – and they will because they have the muscle – then there will be the need for specific products which they have no interest in developing,” he explained. The plan is to develop small applications based on repetitive tasks that are susceptible to automatic analysis, correction Continued on page 10
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