SMPTE To Have Huge Presence At NAB 2018

SMPTE is to have a huge presence at the 2018 NAB Show with the 'Future of Cinema Conference', IP showcase, alongside its booth and members.

2018 NAB Show's Future of Cinema Conference Produced in Partnership With SMPTE

NAB’s 'Future of Cinema Conference' is to take place at the 2018 NAB Show, in partnership with SMPTE.

The conference is to examine the future of movie-making, with some focus on shifting models and opportunities for monetization. It will feature topics like next-gem cinema, high-dynamic-range (HDR), and immersive media (AR/VR/MR).

SMPTE President Matthew Goldman, who is senior vice president of technology, TV and media at Ericsson, will join SMPTE Executive Vice President Pat Griffis, vice president of technology in the office of the CTO at Dolby Laboratories, and Chris Witham, director of digital cinema technology at The Walt Disney Studios, to open the event. SMPTE Executive Director Barbara Lange will join Mr Griffis and Mr Witham in opening the conference's second and final day.

Past SMPTE President Peter Ludé, CTO at Mission Rock Digital LLC., will be among the speakers addressing aspects of working with next-generation movie-making technologies. A study of viewing habits of "Gen Z: The YouTube Generation" will be presented by his daughter, 15-year-old Helen Ludé. SMPTE Member Michael Zink, vice president of technology at Warner Bros., is producing the session, "Getting Ready for Next Generation Cinema," featuring Ronan Boitard of Barco/MTT Innovation, Gary Feather of NanoLumens, and Jon Karafin of Light Field Lab, Inc. SMPTE Fellow Annie Chang, vice president of creative technology at Universal Pictures, is organizing a session that will take a look at the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning for content creation in a session titled "Do Androids Dream of Making Movies." Britta Wilson, who serves as vice president of inclusion strategies at Pixar, will host a session titled "Diversity & Inclusion in the Cinema Workspace." Further sessions will focus on the future of HDR, the emergence of location-based entertainment, and the techniques and technology used to capture immersive images.

The 2018 NAB Show's Future of Cinema Conference, produced in partnership with SMPTE, will be held in the Upper South Hall meeting rooms from 07-08 April.

IP Showcase at 2018 NAB Show

The Society will again join with the Audio Engineering Society (AES), Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), European Broadcasting Union (EBU), IABM, Media Networking Alliance (MNA), and Video Services Forum (VSF) to support the IP Showcase at the 2018 NAB Show. Dedicated to educating visitors and highlighting the business and creative benefits of IP, the IP Showcase will provide a unified, industry-wide view of the latest advances in IP technology and how it can add maximum value to the broadcast industry and the individuals and companies that drive it. Visitors to the IP Showcase will see engineering progress along with real-world examples of IP applications from leading networks and program producers. The exhibition also will assist broadcast/IT engineers, CEOs, producers, and others in determining how they can effectively leverage the recently published SMPTE ST 2110 standards documents.

SMPTE Publications and Resources at the 2018 NAB Show

Visitors to the SMPTE booth will have the chance to view "The Honor Roll and Honorary Members of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers," a limited-edition book that showcases the past century's industry leaders and innovators, and the newly released "Magic & Miracles: 100 Years of Moving Image Science & Technology", a richly illustrated and meticulously crafted history of the Society and its groundbreaking work over the past century. Attendees can purchase these books at the NAB Show store.

Throughout the 2018 NAB Show, SMPTE staff will be available to discuss current trends and answer questions about SMPTE activities, resources, and publications, including the latest "SMPTE Standards Quarterly Report," which details the outcome of the March 2018 SMPTE Technology Committee meetings. The report summarizes the current progress of SMPTE committees that are working to create, approve, revise, and remove standards for the industry

The Society recently announced the success of a first-of-a-kind pilot project to define a prototype SMPTE Specifications process. SMPTE and the Digitial Production Partnership (DPP) have delivered the first draft SMPTE Specification, which focuses on the use of the Interoperable Master Format (IMF), or SMPTE ST 2067, for broadcast and online applications. The documents represent input by the DPP, SMPTE, the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), as well as manufacturers and end users across the media industry. The draft specification for IMF for broadcast and online applications will address constraints including MXF Track Files, composition playlists (CPLs), output profile lists (OPLs), and IMF packages. The specification will reference other activities as well, such as the EBU.io/qc project for carrying quality-control metadata and EBU-TT, and it includes optional methods for carrying traditional EBU-STL subtitles in Europe and CTA-608/CTA-708 captions in North America. Built upon the IMF standard, this first SMPTE Specification will play a critical role in enabling broadcasters to use IMF workflows with their existing content archives, and it also will facilitate the realization of file-based interoperability on a large scale. By providing manufacturers with the guidance they need to move forward in designing and building readers, writers, and analyzers, the specification will bring the benefits of IMF more fully into the broadcast and online realm. The prototype SMPTE Specifications process will be exercised with these documents, and the process itself will be documented and reviewed by the SMPTE Board of Governors before being offered to the industry as a specifications service open to all.

As always, the Society will feature the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, which last year earned a Merit Award in the STC International Summit Awards (STC ISA) competition. Copies of the April 2018 "UHD/HDR/WCG" issue will be available in the booth.

SMPTE Director of Membership Roberta Gorman and Society leadership will be on hand at the show to discuss membership benefits and the Society's role in global standards and interoperability. Prospective members will be able to join, and existing members may renew their memberships on-site. Through the Student Membership Challenge (SMC), a SMPTE fund that pays for a student's first year of membership, students can join for free.

SMPTE Members at the 2018 NAB Show
 
Approximately 260 SMPTE Sustaining Members will exhibit at the 2018 NAB Show, and more than 50 SMPTE Members will participate in 2018 NAB Show conference sessions.

Sessions Featuring SMPTE Members
2018 NAB Show conference sessions featuring SMPTE Members will touch on an array of timely topics and technologies. Andy Beale, chief engineer at BT Sport, will speak on "Converging New TV Technologies Into a Unified Live Sports TV Experience." Madeleine Noland, a consultant with LG Electronics, will participate in the session titled "Field Deployments of the ATSC 3.0 Standard." Wayne Pecena, director of engineering at Texas A&M University — KAMU, will speak during the session titled "My Broadcast Plant Network Is Secure — Is Yours?" Ramki Sankaranarayanan, founder and CEO at Prime Focus Technologies, will take part in the session "Mastering Edits on Cloud." Augusto Villasenor, vice president of broadcast technology at Globecomm, will be a speaker for the session titled "Stuck in the On-ramp to the New Data Highway? Take the Media Enterprise Service BUS." Willem Vermost, IP media technology architect for the EBU, will present "The Art of Conforming to SMPTE ST 2110-21 Traffic Model."

These are just a sampling of the many sessions featuring the expertise and experience of SMPTE Members.

SMPTE Member News and Honors
During the 2018 NAB Show, TVNewsCheck.com will present a Technology Women to Watch Award to SMPTE Member Jaclyn Pytlarz, senior engineer for applied vision science at Dolby Laboratories. She will be recognized for her work in developing color mapping and display-management algorithms on a wide variety of displays, including high-dynamic-range (HDR) and wide color gamut (WCG) displays.

Webcasts and Virtual Classroom Courses
SMPTE offers Monthly Technology Webcasts to its members free of charge, as a member benefit as well as Standards Webcasts that are free and open to all. Information about upcoming webcasts will be available at the show.

SMPTE also recently announced a new series exclusively for its Executive Members. The Executive Webcast series will provide the latest insights, tools, and strategies to assist executives in confronting pressing issues such as examining corporate culture and core values, managing change, managing performance, and developing technology transition strategies.

This series will be conducted by experts from Eagle Hill Consulting, including CEO and co-founder Melissa Jezior, co-founder Jack Kelley, and SMPTE Fellow John McCoskey, who leads the firm's technology, media, and entertainment practice. Each webcast will include a Q&A section and discussion opportunities for attendees.

SMPTE Virtual Classroom programs include both independent study and live, instructor-led coaching sessions that cover more complex topics and activities. Each program begins and ends on specific dates and includes established learning goals for that period. Successful completion of these courses is determined by course activity completion and graded assessments.

The latest addition to the SMPTE Virtual Classroom is "Understanding SMPTE ST 2110: Live Production of Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks," an educational program focused on SMPTE ST 2110. Led by SMPTE Fellow Thomas Bause Mason, this course provides attendees with the knowledge they need to help their companies make the most of SMPTE ST 2110, a critical enabler of fully internet protocol (IP)-based operations. The ST 2110 course assumes a basic understanding of IP and associated terminology. The SMPTE Virtual Courses "Introduction to Networks," "Routing and Switching Essentials," and the "Essentials of IP Media Transport for Broadcasters: Moving Real-Time Video and Audio over Packet Networks" courses enable a deeper understanding of IP, internetworking, and many essential concepts that are referenced in the ST 2110 suite of standards and are recommended prior to enrolling in "Understanding ST 2110."

SMPTE Student Support: Events and Sponsored Memberships
Students are invited to room N222, in the LVCC North Hall, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on April 10, for a social mixer with SMPTE Members, including SMPTE Board of Governors Members, directors, Section leadership, and staff, who will discuss their work in the industry.

During the show, students can learn more about the student membership opportunity — their first year of membership free. They also can find out how to submit a paper for the SMPTE Student Paper Award and how to apply for the Louis F. Wolf Jr. Memorial Scholarship.

www.smpte.org