Demo Available   
We welcome customers to come and talk about their video production requirements, and we will advise and demonstrate equipment accordingly.

vMix HD video switching streaming software

Our main demo suite for Video Production (Live Streaming & Editing) is currently running

Magewell Pro Capture Quad HDMI PCIe cardvMix HD v18 and various versions of VidBlaster, with a number of capture cards & USB devices including those from Magewell and Blackmagic. There's both an MSI gaming laptop and a custom-built desktop PC, both with 6700-series i7 CPUs,  Windows 10 and Nvidia GTX 9xx-series graphics cards.

Plus we have an ATEM Television Studio hardware HD vision mixer together with the Blackmagic Video Assist and Hyperdeck Shuttle SSD recorders and a variety of signal converter units.

For video editing we have Adobe CS5 Production Premium including Premiere Pro CS5, After Effects CS5, Encore CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Adobe Production Premium CS5on an i7 Windows 7 PC with 24GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 660 graphics card, along with a Blackmagic USB3 Shuttle I/O device.

We have samples of SD & HD footage, including DV, HDV, P2 DVCPro-HD, Sony EX HQ, Canon XF 50Mb 422, AVCHD 1080i & 720p, DSLR & Red One 2K, and can show how all these can be used within the same project, even on the same timeline.

Our external monitoring includes a 32" Samsung Full-HD TV plus a Sony PVM 20L4 professional CRT monitor, Tannoy audio speakers and BBC-style PPM meters.

This system has been used at the IOV Videoskills training events for editing the "Perfect Interview" sessions, and the Music Video workshops. It also runs the VidBlaster software vision control system with hardware that includes Blackmagic, Viewcast, Magewell & Startech capture devices.

We also have both the Blackmagic Micro and Pocket Cinema Cameras on demo, and are experimenting with various lenses, including building a rig to use 2/3" B4 zoom lenses with the BMPCC. See B4 lens tests here.

BMPCC - A demo unit of the Pocket Cinema Camera


All demonstrations are at our Manchester office, and are by appointment only. Contact Details

Some of the video editing equipment in our Manchester demo area   Adobe Premiere - After Effects - Photoshop CS5

What we're about . . .      ZEN is not a traditional Audio-Visual dealer who started selling computers, nor is it a computer shop that also sells video products. You won't get any salesmen giving you the "hard-sell" when you call, just straightforward advice and information - which for some callers is the knowledge that they don't need to buy whatever it is they thought they needed! Above all you'll be dealing with someone with a wide range of experience and knowledge of both PCs and video production. We're not the biggest, nor necessarily the cheapest, but we are one of the longest established computer/video specialists in the UK.

Company history . . .      ZEN was started in the 1980s by Martin Kay, then working for ITV at Granada's Manchester studios, who built his first 6502-based computer in 1979 from an Ohio Scientific kit, bought in the USA whilst working as a Sound Recordist on a film shoot for World In Action. With the advent of the Amiga, which could be gen-locked to a video source, Martin started writing a variety of video-related software. This included subtitling & tele-prompting, ident clocks, scoring software for sports & gameshows, and specialist software to mimic other computer displays for use in TV film dramas like Cracker, Prime Suspect and A Touch of Frost. Martin left Granada in 1993 to concentrate on his computer-video activities with ZEN, following a natural path into non-linear editing systems, for many years the main business activity, although he still maintains an active interest in video production.

ZEN - Home Page Phone 0161 736 5300 Copyright © 2017 Zen Computer Services.
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Revised: 24 January, 2017