Taboulet Ltd. provides Broadcast editing, workflow and training worldwide. It’s capabilities are best summed up by the history of Taboulet founder and Chief Scientist Andy Foster.

 

Andy started shooting and editing on standard 8 cine film at the tender age of 10. He always wanted to make films or TV professionally but living in the heart of Britain's industrial midlands and not being the ideal school pupil he had to wait a while and then sneak in through the back door.

 

An apprenticeship and college day release was a far more effective learning environment and swiftly produced results. Having qualified in Electronics engineering, Andy began his career as an Electronics Technician at a small automation company. He progressed to Workshop Supervisor before taking responsibility for Research and Development.

 

After 6 years he resigned from his R&D job. A somewhat extreme step but the only way to qualify for a place on a new course in video production for the unemployed, at the Lighthouse Media Centre in Wolverhampton. Having completed the training he became their resident video editor and due to the electronics background also took joint responsibility for technical maintenance. It was there that he began as a trainer in pre-production, camera work and editing with the centre’s Y.T.S. trainees.

 

Once he got the 'in', he searched for a job in broadcast and was accepted as a news editor at Visnews (later known as Reuters Television). After only a year he was promoted to Senior Picture Editor, based in London and travelling globally to shoot and edit major news events. During the following years he also became involved in all aspects of program production and a variety of editing practices. Andy's skills as a trainer were put to good use and he took responsibility for training all Visnews/Reuters news production staff in both camera work and editing techniques.

 

Having worked on the specification, development and testing of Avid’s Mac NewsCutter while still at Reuters, Andy joined Avid Technology as a Broadcast Support Specialist providing telephone and field support for all Avid editing systems across Europe, Middle East and Africa. He also qualified as an accredited training specialist on all Avid products.

 

Recognising the fact that he made a significant contribution to the development of the Mac NewsCutter. Avid promoted Andy to Broadcast Product Specialist, responsible for testing and development of the NewsCutter, EditCam, MediaServer and AirPlay broadcast products. He also continued with training and workflow development for Avid Broadcast systems worldwide.

 

In the late 90's Andy joined a small team of ex-Avid employees at Marquis Broadcast where he took responsibility for Television production and Newsroom workflow analysis & development, workflow troubleshooting and editing consultancy. He also provided highly specialised training in equipment and systems operation, and in production, newsroom and post-production techniques.

 

He is now a freelance editor/cameraman and is the owner operator of a number of systems including FCP Studio, Avid Media Composer, Edius, Ikegami Editcam and Grass Valley Aurora. Although the majority of his paid work these days is in the training of other editors, workflow analysis and systems specification.

 

Andy also provides a valuable service to manufacturers and resellers, consulting on software feature development and testing, pre-sales system demonstrations and the development and presentation of demo techniques.