3418-Quantel-Canal Case S

Canal+ goes HD… with Quantel
Thinking together

Canal+ goes HD… with Quantel
Etienne Robial has been the Artistic Director of Canal+ since its
beginnings 22 years ago. He is heading up the project to design
the new station branding for one of Europe’s leading pay-TV
broadcasters. Robial’s team is working with the latest Quantel gQ
graphic workstations, continuing a tradition that began in 1984
when Canal+ revolutionised television graphics using the very first
Quantel Paintboxes. Etienne Robial is the inventor of habillage;
literally the ‘dressing up’ of television channels. In this article we
look at how High Definition has become Haute Couture in Paris.
On 4 th November 1984, a revolution occurred in the
French media, with the birth of the country’s first
pay-TV channel. Viewers were greeted with a black
screen (reminiscent of a cinema just before the
feature film is projected), gradually lighting up with a
white diagonal line preparing the way for a rainbowcoloured
ellipse and the letters of CANAL+. The eerie
electro-acoustic music for these opening fireworks,
in sharp contrast to the cutesy jingles and pastel
graphics of the period, set the tone for what was to
become – and remains – arguably the most
sophisticated and provocative channel in Continental
Europe (British viewers got a taste of the Canal+
style when one of their star presenters, Antoine de
Caunes, crossed the channel with Eurotrash).
Etienne Robial, designer of the station branding sting
and its avatars, explains his approach: “The Canal+
design was intended from the start to give the
channel a unique look and feel. We christened this
signage system habillage.”
To produce this original system, Robial discovered a
machine which he felt could get the job done: the
Quantel Paintbox. At the time, there was only one of
these new systems in France, far from Paris in
Angoulême, and the machine was pretty well booked
solid. Robial decided to head for London, the city of
one of his mentors, Martin Lambie-Nairn, founder of
one of the UK’s most prestigious design studios and
famous for his work on the BBC and Channel 4 logos.
For six weeks, he settled in at pioneering facility The
Moving Picture Company (MPC), working day and
night (and mainly at night to obtain lower rates) to
create his logo and hundreds of spin-offs for the
start-up channel.
From the start, Canal+ aired about 250 graphic
sequences every day, constantly designing and
adapting its branding and titling to attract viewers.
Paris post facility UMT had just bought a Paintbox as
Canal+ was reaching cruising speed. UMT would
shortly thereafter buy France’s first Quantel HAL and
Right: Etienne Robial, Artistic
Director, Canal+.
Far right: The first Canal+ logo,
created on Paintbox.

Right: Florence Déchanet,
freelance graphics artist and SFX
editor, and Fasia Lamari, Canal+
graphics artist.
both machines were made available to Robial and his
team, as was the Quantel Editbox a few years later
when it first came out.
Over the years, Canal+ adapted to changes in
broadcast video with Quantel kit, moving from
analogue to digital and from linear to non-linear
systems. Robial unwaveringly remained loyal to
Quantel, fighting off the software miracle merchants.
“The problem with software-based systems,” says
Robial, “is that they’re just too slow, they have
trouble dealing with aliasing problems, they don’t
give you a good freeze frame and they manage A to
B transitions poorly. Quantel systems, technically
and creatively, are clearly designed with the needs of
editors and graphic designers in mind. They’re not
piecemeal solutions that you string together hoping
they’ll work. To make matters worse, software
systems can be virus-ridden, which is a nightmare
we can do without.”
To make the leap into HD, Robial and his team
looked at almost everything on the market and, after
having considered different technical options and
commercial offers, they decided to renew their
confidence in Quantel with the new generation
Paintbox gQ. Two machines have been installed and
are churning out stunning graphics on a daily basis.
Florence Déchanet, freelance graphic artist and
special effects editor, was involved in the project to
design and deploy specific HD work processes on
the Quantel systems and to set up the templates. “To
begin with, we had to manage the weight of HD and
the different formats needed during the transition
phase. Also, we wanted to maintain a well-oiled
workflow process and translate the visual style guide
into useable graphics, in both 16/9 HD and 4/3 SD.
Colour management had to be controlled, to ensure
that the results on viewers’ screens were in keeping
with the initial design.”
Right: Once upon a time, Zinedine
Zidane had hair and played for
Juventus.
Far right: Canal+ billboards in
Dutch.

Right: The new Canal+ habillage,
produced on Quantel’s gQ.
To deal with this complexity, Canal+ installed an HD
oscilloscope and simultaneous HD/SD monitoring to
check results in all formats. Once these technical
problems were resolved, flexible work methods were
implemented.
“With this base,” says Florence Déchanet, “we had
the ability to play around with the templates, while
continuing to respect the colour principles and the
style guide. We then went on to the editing phase,
based on an audio template. A musician came in to
pace each sequence on a timeline. Alternating black
and white segments on parallel tracks made it easier
to introduce prefabricated material into each clip.
This is where having the metadata with the history of
each element made it easier to edit and make
changes as needed.”
Once the editing was complete, the editor produced
an international version, used in France and then
adapted to the other Canal+ countries and
languages. It was therefore essential to have a
workable archiving and retrieval system and to have
a consistent style guide for adaptations.
“It’s true that these various upstream development
stages took time and that the best solutions didn’t
necessarily jump off the screen on Day 1,” concludes
Florence Déchanet, “but this exploration phase was
one of the most interesting and creative parts of the
process. Having the right tools was a key to produce
the quality and quantity required for this project,
while respecting very tight deadlines. We produced
over 300 useable sequences on the Quantel kit,
which definitely lived up to expectations and allowed
us to get this very complex and creative job done
properly.”
Fasia Lamari, a graphic artist who has been working
with Robial (and Quantel equipment) for over 20
years, appreciates “the ergonomics and precision of
the new generation Quantel systems. The Canal+
Right: Canal+ in Russia.
Far right: This reads SPORT.

Right: The PSG logo, created by
Etienne Robial.
habillage system is an intelligent and economical
Lego kit, which takes the technical hassles out of the
creative process. Our main challenge as we went to
HD was to maintain our work methods, based on the
fabrication of very precise templates, useable in all
SD and HD formats and aspect ratios (4/3, 16/9
and letterbox). We opted for Version 3.5 of the
Quantel system from the start (in the spring of
2006), which really made it easy to manage our HD
graphics. Our workflow stood up to the test of these
new challenges and constraints. Etienne Robial
created the basic graphic design and templates, and
we applied these to all formats. For everything to
come together just right, you have to have all the
editing, FX, grading and audio tools available and
Quantel puts all of these into a single machine. The
ergonomics are really efficient and we can really get
down to the pixel level.”
“As we enter full speed into the HD era,” concludes
Robial, “we need precision and harmony more than
ever and we’re seriously looking at how our work on
screen can be applied elsewhere. With Quantel
systems, we’re really looking at a multi-format and
multi-media world.”
“As we enter full speed into the HD era, we need precision and harmony
more than ever and we’re seriously looking at how our work on screen can
be applied elsewhere. With Quantel systems, we’re really looking at a multiformat
and multi-media world.”
-Etienne Robial

2030-00-00 04.04
Right: Canal+ graphics air in
several languages.
Tailor-made television graphics
In May 2006, at a ceremony in Vienna, Etienne
Robial, Artistic Director of Canal+, became the first
recipient of the Promax/BDA EMEA Award for
Outstanding Achievement.
Presenting the Award, Carmen Alzer, Senior Vice
President and Managing Director, Promax/BDA
EMEA declared: “Unquestionably, throughout his
remarkable career and most certainly during his 22
years as Artistic Director of Canal+, Etienne Robial
has made an indelible mark on the European design
and marketing communities, if not the entire industry
worldwide.”
Etienne Robial’s well-deserved award is the crowning
achievement of his career, based on hard work,
creativity and precision. Every single detail of the
Canal+ identity, on and off screen, has been
meticulously thought out and produced with almost
fanatical devotion, without ever forgetting the
aesthetics and fun that go into branding a maverick
channel like Canal+. He dresses television like a
fashion designer and mixes ingredients like a great
chef.
“You know, when I claim I invented the notion of
habillage, I’m not trying to be pretentious. In fact, the
whole thing was very down to earth. In 1984, Pierre
Lescure, Managing Director of Canal+, asked me to
create a logo for the new pay-TV channel. We were
on a very tight budget at the time and we had to find
a clever system to distinguish ourselves from
established broadcasters on a 24/7 basis. To meet
all these constraints, I came up with the idea of a
graphics wardrobe and I remember explaining to
Pierre Lescure that he could go into this virtual
closet and chose different graphic elements the way
he would choose a suit, a shirt and a tie. The idea
was to have enough clothes and accessories for
different occasions. The term habillage, which the
Americans have adopted, had very humble
beginnings.”
Etienne Robial has designed the logos and visual
style systems for several other French TV channels,
including La Sept, M6, Show TV, i>télé, RTL-TV and
RTL 9. He is also the creator of the Paris PSG football
club logo and several other logos, including G7 Taxis,
the Parc des Princes and the CNC (the French Film
Board).
www.quantel.com
2127-56-502 09-06