SMPTE 2016 Celebrates The Industry

Almost 2,500 registered attendees participated at this year's landmark SMPTE 2016 which featured 72 presentations and more than 108 exhibitors. The event, which was held on 25 – 27 October, culminated with the SMPTE Centennial Gala, celebrating the organisation's 100th birthday.

A day prior to the official start of SMPTE 2016 was the SMPTE 2016 Symposium, titled 'The Future of Storytelling and How to Save It'. The day-long symposium featured a keynote by Daniel Teruggi, director of the Research and Experimentation Department at the National Audiovisual Institute in Paris and recipient of this year's SMPTE Archival Technology Medal Award.

The Women in Technology Luncheon with Victoria Alonso, executive producer and executive vice president of physical production for Marvel Studios, was also held on 24 October. Joined by interviewer Kari Grubin, vice president of mastering for The Walt Disney Company, Alonso spoke of her experiences in the industry and offered advice to other women working to succeed in the business.

On the first day of SMPTE 2016, filmmaker, innovator, and entrepreneur Douglas Trumbull joined SMPTE President Robert Seidel, vice president of engineering and advanced technology at CBS, to present the SMPTE 2016 opening keynote. With Trumbull addressing cinema and Seidel speaking to broadcast, the pair opened the conference with a look at the past, present, and future of media and entertainment technology, as well as supporting standards work. Later that day, Barbara Lange, SMPTE Executive Director, discussed SMPTE's mission, vision and current work at the organisation's AGM meeting.

Like the centennial celebrations, the three-day conference programme focused on the theme of the past, present, and future. Sessions addressed the industry's continued embrace of ultra high definition and 4K/8K resolution, higher frame rates, high-dynamic-range, and wider color gamut from perspectives ranging from aesthetics and psycho-visual effects to workflow, monitoring, distribution, and display. Sessions on video compression described low-bandwidth usage for over-the-top internet delivery to mobile devices and mezzanine encoding for high-end, intra-, and inter-studio/facility applications.

Sessions on broadcast infrastructure discussed current and future use of coaxial cable and serial digital interface, including its potential to deliver 100 Gigabit services and enable a transition to IP. Moving into the cloud, further sessions focused on how broadcast media-processing capabilities can be migrated to an IP architecture and virtualised across a data center and cloud infrastructure. In discussing virtual reality workflows and content interchange, session presenters reviewed techniques for increasing the reliability and ensuring the quality of VR productions.

At the SMPTE Centennial Gala, James Cameron and Douglas Trumbull received SMPTE's top honors. SMPTE officially bestowed Honorary Membership, the Society's highest honor, upon director Cameron in recognition of his work advancing visual effects, motion capture, and stereoscopic 3D photography, as well as his experimentation in HFR. Oscar-winning VFX artist Joe Letteri presented the award to Cameron.

Oscar-winning special effects cinematographer Richard Edlund presented the Society's prestigious medal award, the Progress Medal, to Trumbull. The award recognises his contributions to VFX, stereoscopic 3D, and HFR cinema, including his current work to enable stereoscopic 3D with his 120-frames-per-second Magi system.

Barbara Lange, SMPTE Executive Director, said: "Attendance for SMPTE 2016 was higher than for last year's event, with guests from around the world joining us in Hollywood for an exceptional technical program and historic Centennial Gala. In fact, it was a fantastic week, offering everything from the latest creative and technical innovations to a beer garden, '20s-themed honors and awards reception, and black-tie gala featuring great entertainment and honoring top motion-imaging innovators."

Image: SMPTE Executive Committee of the Board of Governors pose on the red carpet at the Centennial Gala. (L-R: Paul M. Stechly, Alan Lambshead, William C. Miller, Wendy Aylsworth, Robert Seidel, Patrick Griffis, Matthew S. Goldman, Barbara H. Lange, and Peter Wharton).

www.smpte.org

(JP/LM)