SMPTE’s Extensive Presence at 2015 NAB Show Signals Society’s Leadership in Advancing the Industry

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers® (SMPTE®), a leader in motion-imaging standards and education for the communications, media, entertainment, and technology industries, made an impact at the 2015 NAB Show with broad representation across exhibition floors and conference sessions. During the show, 135 SMPTE member companies exhibited and more than 90 individual members served as speakers, contributing their expertise on topics ranging from the latest industry standards to the future of audio and moving images.

“The ‘fingerprints’ of SMPTE and its members are evident in technical and creative advances made throughout the industry, and the enormous impact of this work was reflected in the exhibitions, presentations, announcements, and awards given during the 2015 NAB Show,” said SMPTE Executive Director Barbara Lange.

Following on the success of the NAB Show’s Technology Summit on Cinema (TSC), produced in partnership with SMPTE, the Society’s presence at the 2015 NAB Show reflected the significant engagement and importance of SMPTE members in advancing the industry. Lange took part in the session titled “OTT Video Going Global — A New Game for Traditional Broadcasting,” and SMPTE Eastern Region Governor John McCoskey delivered the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) keynote and participated in the session titled “Protecting Our Assets: Cybersecurity and the Media.”

SMPTE Toronto Section Chair Paul Briscoe presented “Making Signals with SMPTE 2059 Networked Genlock” at the Broadcast Engineering Conference (BEC), which coincided with the Society’s formal announcement that the SMPTE-2059 standard had been completed and published. Immediately preceding the 2015 NAB Show, SMPTE also published the ST 2081 and ST 2082 document suites, covering serial digital interfaces (SDI) at 6 Gb/s and 12 Gb/s. Looking ahead to future standards development, SMPTE also used the NAB Show as an opportunity to announce a request for proposals (RFP) for a technology for an open standard for binding Ad-IDs to commercials and entertainment ID registry (EIDR) metadata into programming content.

SMPTE Executive Vice President Matthew Goldman and SMPTE Member Lukasz Litwic presented “Implications of High Dynamic Range on the Broadcast Chain for HD and Ultra-HD Content” at the BEC, where they and their Ericsson colleagues Olie Baumann and Philip White won the NAB Show Best Paper Award. At the NAB Technology Luncheon, several SMPTE members were honored, including SMPTE Fellow Richard Friedel, who was recognized with the NAB Engineering Achievement Award.

During other NAB Show events, SMPTE Western Region Governor Sara Kudrle was named a 2015 Technology Woman to Watch honoree by TVNewsCheck and SMPTE Institutional Sustaining Members Elemental, Quantum, BLT Italia srl, and Nexidia earned 2015 Game Changer Awards from the IABM. SMPTE Past President Wendy Aylsworth, senior vice president of technology at Warner Brothers, and SMPTE Fellow Dave Siegler, vice president of technical operations at Cox Media Group, were presented with 2015 Technology Leadership Awards from Broadcasting & Cable.

At the SMPTE NAB Show booth, the Society launched its multimedia #LIFEWITHOUTSMPTE public awareness campaign with the premiere of the first #LIFEWITHOUTSMPTE video, which is dedicated to SMPTE time code. The annual student social, this year sponsored by Rohde & Schwarz, Netflix, and GoPro, brought students to the SMPTE booth to interact and learn from SMPTE members and officers. A draw for students sent one lucky winner home with a GoPro camera, which happens to be powered by the GoPro CineForm codec that last year was standardized as SMPTE ST 2073 video compression (VC)-5.

During the show, the Society announced plans for a Student Film Festival, produced in collaboration with the Hollywood Professional Alliance® (HPA®) that will take place during the SMPTE 2015 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition (SMPTE 2015), October 26-29 in Hollywood, California. The event also will feature a Netflix-sponsored Oktoberfest party, the full-day SMPTE Symposium on virtual reality, and a new silent auction accompanying the Honors & Awards ceremony. Proceeds from the auction will support the education initiatives and goals as outlined in the SMPTE Centennial Campaign’s Next Century Fund, which recently topped the $1.5 million mark with a commitment from Technicolor.

The HPA Awards are also reaching a milestone, celebrating 10 years in 2015, and SMPTE announced the call for entries for two of the industry’s most prestigious awards: the HPA’s Engineering Excellence Award and its Judges’ Award for Creativity and Innovation.