Former Technicolor duo set up media services facility

Gary Edwards spent 18 years as director of engineering at Vidfilm, which was bought by Technicolor in 2006, while Peter Carrington was a digital media engineer at Technicolor for 13 years.

Now the duo have launched Liquid Media Hub as managing director and director of technology respectively.

Officially going live this week, Liquid will offer digitisation, transcoding, subtitling, QC and various other ‘post post-production’ deliverables services to domestic and international rights holders, content owners and broadcasters, as well as VoD operators and software- as-a-service providers.

The company will operate from a 3,500 sq ft facility in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, that has been built around the equipment and infrastructure previously used by Technicolor’s Media Services division and subsequently sold to Liquid, funded by sister company ES Broadcast.

A small central London office will be opened to handle media transfers.

Different pricing

Technicolor exited media services in December 2015, citing the “commoditisation” of the sector.

Edwards believes that being a small, agile firm will allow Liquid to succeed in this market.

“Because of our cost base, we can look at different pricing models,” he said.

The purchased kit bundle incorporates VTRs, reel-to-reel machines and hardware standards converters, as well as media processing software from Amberfin, Harmonic and Digital Rapids.

Also included is Isilon and Dell storage and Minnetonka and Vidcheck applications for file-based delivery.

The facility will feature three SD, HD and 4K-capable video, audio and QC suites complete with Avid Pro Tools, C24 mixers and 7.1 monitoring. Aspera will be used for file transfer.

Liquid will employ four full time staff, including former Loft London director Davide Maglio as sales and marketing director and Kit Harvey, formerly of Simplestream and Playboy TV, has taken on the role of sales manager.