About Us

Post Production Consultants Ltd was founded in 1992 by James Timothy and Mark Lawrence. The intention at that time was to provide advice on navigating the minefield that in the broadcasting industry is generally termed 'post production'. The founding directors were working on-line editors who experienced on a daily basis the many pitfalls experienced by producers and directors when trying to understand and choose between the many routes possible for post production. This was particularly true then because of the rapid emergence of computer based off-line editing and associated new technologies.

In the event, the commitments of busy on-line schedules meant that there wasn't much time left for consultancy work. However, as off-line systems such as Lightworks and Avid flourished, the Edit Decision Lists (EDLs) they produced for recreating programs in the on-line were giving rise to many headaches. James Timothy started to spend many hours of spare time developing a basic software package for rescuing and manipulating EDLs. This package, Phoenix List Manager, soon became the de facto standard in London and UK based facility houses for rescuing and optimising EDLs prior to auto-conforming sessions. Over the next two years, List Manager became probably the most robust and fully featured EDL management package available and in terms of rescued on-line conforming time, has probably saved the industry millions of pounds.

In 1993, James had the opportunity of seeing a shot logging package developed by Lightworks in Canada. He thought it could do with a lot of improvement and started work on his own shot logging software. In May of that year, Phoenix Log was born. Lightworks UK asked if they could sell it under licence and thus 'Lightworks Assistant', through the Lightworks dealership, became available to a larger world market.

In June 1995, James left full time employment as an editor to devote his energies fully to Post Production Consultants and software development. Since then, the main 'off the shelf' products have been extended and developed and form the basis of revenues for the company. Over the last three years, bespoke development of databases such as tape libraries and shot log archives has taken an increasingly greater part of development effort, with major systems having been developed for public service and commercial UK broadcasters.

Past and present projects.