Hiroshi Yamada is retiring from Thomson effective June 30, shifting from his operational role to a management advisory role. Yamada is currently the senior vice president of Desktop and Enterprise Solutions for Thomson's Broadcast and Professional Solutions business unit and leads its Japanese operations. Yasuo Suyama will take over responsibility for operations in Japan.
Yamada has seen the company through its integration into Thomson following the January 2006 acquisition. Now, confident in the BPS team, it's time to move on to his "happy retirement," Yamada said.
Yamada founded Canopus--the Japan-based developer of NLE software--in 1983 with its first product, an add-in Z80 CPU card to run in NEC's PC 98-series computers. Under Yamada's direction, Canopus became recognized for the advanced HD, DV, and MPEG codec technologies developed by the Canopus engineering team and featured in the company's real-time nonlinear video editing systems, transcoding products, and delivery systems.
"As the father of Canopus and its powerful line of desktop video editing, media conversion, and software codec products, Hiro has been a driving force in the industry--and in the acceleration of delivery of new Grass Valley products for the professional video solutions market as well as the post-production industry," said Jeff Rosica, senior vice president of the BPS unit. "Hiro's enthusiasm for, and expertise in, video and audio technologies and compression are second to none..."
