Canopus structure & more on support for Premiere Pro
BC. What market share does Canopus enjoy in each of the three core geographical markets where it competes?HY. In Japan, we 'own' the video editing market, with a share of over 80 per cent. Pinnacle and Matrox have very little share.
Even so, our video-editing sales outside Japan are bigger. We actually treat the world as four markets - Japan, Asia [excluding Japan], Europe and the USA - and each accounts for about one quarter of Canopus's total video business.
In Japan, we also do TV tuner cards but we don't sell them elsewhere. These are very expensive but Japanese consumers are willing to pay for quality.
We have three product divisions - video editing (which also includes the ADVC converter products); system products (with lines such as the jaw-measurer and water-melon tester); and consumer in which we have graphics cards, TV tuners and cheap DVD authoring software.
Video accounts for 50 per cent of our profits; system is 30 per cent; and consumer is 20 per cent. And around 70-75 per cent of the profit for the video division comes from outside of Japan.
One product - our LAN-based video distribution system MediaEdge - is treated as part of the video editing group when exported but as a system product when sold in Japan.
BC. You now have a selection of relatively inexpensive video-editing-related software - the Let's range. How successful has it been in the various markets?
HY. There is a dedicated team developing Let's Edit and other family members. In Japan, Let's Edit has about 80 per cent of the sector in which it competes – Premiere Elements is not selling well at all.
Currently, outside of Japan, we are selling far fewer copies - probably about the same number as Edius - but we will be releasing a new version of Let's Edit based on Edius code, and that will do better. Also, we want to have just one engine to work on - for high-end and low.
BC. Will Canopus's NX or SP hardware ever support Adobe Premiere Pro? If so, when?
HY. When people talk about support they mean using Canopus's RT filters and transitions for Adobe Premiere Pro. Our ability to provide that on NX and SP hardware will depend on the new SDK that Adobe provides for Premiere Pro 2.0 - but, based on what Adobe has done already, and on the previous SDKs for Premiere Pro, I don't think such support is likely.