If you're still wrapping your head around 4K workflow, brace yourself—8K is definitely on the way. Quantel announced today that it is providing a Pablo Rio 8K editing, color-correction and finishing system to anchor the post pipeline at Sony PCL in Tokyo. It will be the first Pablo Rio 8K installation for real-world commercial applications.

Sony PCL specializes in event production, post, digital cinema, and video authoring for DVD and Blu-ray, and added 4K services in 2009. The company will launch its 8K services in August, with a Pablo Rio 4K HFR system [pictured, above] living in a suite next door to the 8K system. Quantel says the Rio will support interactive finishing at 8K, with real-time review of changes at full resolution.

"Sony PCL is dedicated to delivering state-of-the-art productions for our customers; we are therefore always looking for highest quality, highest resolution video and audio solutions for large scale productions," said Sony PCL President Kunihiro Takeda in a prepared statement. "Pablo Rio 8K will take us to a whole new level, and its ability to handle multiple resolutions on the same timeline will further increase our creative options."

The Pablo Rio 8K was developed in collaboration with NHK, the national public broadcaster in Japan, where serious research on 8K broadcasting, or "Super Hi-Vision," has been going on for years—coming to initial fruitition with limited transmissions of World Cup games last summer. 

It uses AJA Corvid 88 multichannel I/O to reach a continuous data rate of 5 GB/sec. "The Corvid 88 packs eight 3G-SDI interfaces onto a single PCIe card, enabling us to build the world's first practical 8K color and finishing system," said Quantel Marketing Director Steve Owen in a prepared statement. 

Processing power is beefed up by three Nvidia Tesla K80 GPU accelerators. Three RAID 60 disk arrays offer fast storage for up to 160 minutes of 8K 60p footage.

No word yet on how Sony PCL plans to actually monitor the footage. At NAB, Quantel had a loaner of Sharp's new 85-inch 8K (7,680×4,320) monitor. Another option would be to monitor on 4K screens set up in a quad configuration. We'll update this story if we get more details.