GLENDALE CA, August 13, 2008—NTC, the world leader in strategic technology consulting and engineering design services for the media and entertainment industry, is proud to announce that five of its technology experts have been selected by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers to present technical papers at the SMPTE 2008 Technical Conference and Exhibition, scheduled for October 27-30, at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel, in Los Angeles.
“NTC is well known for the forward-looking thought leadership with which it has served the media and entertainment industry for more than 25 years,” states Managing Partner Chuck Phelan. “NTC’s highly collaborative thought-leadership approach encompasses an unparalleled range of expertise in media and entertainment technologies. NTC is providing television networks, major studios, and other content creators and distributors with the best, most cost-effective systems for service-enabling their businesses and orchestrating their workflows to address new opportunities presented by next-generation HD and digital-media delivery alternatives.”
NTC experts sharing their special areas of leading-edge knowledge at the SMPTE 2008 Technical Conference will include: Ugo Corda, Ph.D., Principal Software Architect; John Footen, VP in charge of NTC’s Software Solutions Group; David Potter, Director of Software Systems Engineering; Michael Sterling, Principal Consultant on Digital Cinema, High Value Media Security, and Display Technology; and Joey Faust, Consultant.
The first of NTC’s SMPTE 2008 technical papers, titled "New Consumer Displays and the Challenge of Providing Content to Take Advantage of Advanced Capabilities," will be presented by Michael Sterling as part of the Wednesday, October 29th “New Displays – New Challenges” morning session chaired by David Bancroft of Thomson Broadcast Media Solutions.
“During the past few years a major shift has occurred in the type of display that is considered the ‘typical’ home television receiver,” Sterling explains. “LCD and other new consumer display technologies offer noticeable improvement in motion-blur reduction, contrast, and color fidelity. This introduces a range of possibilities in digital post-production for providing consumers with better images and improved fidelity that’s closer to the original version of the content than ever before possible. The issues are of interest to DI facilities and content providers alike.”
Both NTC’s Ugo Corda and David Potter will present technical papers during the Wednesday afternoon session titled “The Role of Metadata and Process in the Evolution of Media Asset Management,” chaired by Jim Casabella, of ABC. Corda’s paper, titled “Multimedia Semantics: From MPEG-7 Metadata to Semantic Web Ontologies,” surveys various industry efforts intended to formalize the semantics of multimedia metadata and to develop tools for the automatic extraction of semantic metadata from media assets.
“These efforts are particularly relevant to today’s media industry,” Corda states. “This is because of the commonly recognized importance of semantic metadata in effectively supporting various media-related activities – such as intelligent search and retrieval of media assets, Web access, and personalization – and because of the high cost usually associated with the manual creation of such metadata.”
Later in that session, Potter’s paper, “The Impact of Technology upon Metadata Collection Costs: Courvoisier or Cold Duck?” will examine the cost of metadata collection in both traditional and file-based workflows, and will consider the influence of technology on those costs. The analysis includes workflows that utilize dynamic metadata in complex ontologies (such as usage histories, relationships to other media, and hierarchical rights management).
“This paper focuses on the impact of technology on the cost of metadata,” Potter says. “We compare these costs within representative media and entertainment workflows when using either traditional or modern, file-based technologies. Projections regarding the ongoing impact of technology upon metadata costs will also be examined.”
NTC experts John Footen and Joey Faust will present their respective papers during the Thursday October 30th afternoon session titled “Topics in File-Based Workflows and Technologies,” chaired by Al Kovalick of Avid Technology.
Faust’s paper, titled “Media-Aware Storage,” will survey new and existing technology approaches in this growing area, which includes online, near-line, and offline storage solutions that leverage the fact that the files being stored are time-based in nature. This provides advanced functionality unavailable from other IT storage media.
“Until best practices emerge, this area will be subject to significant upheaval and innovation,” Faust observes. “Is there room for standardization here? Will these technologies be applicable to other areas? This paper’s purpose is to provide clarity to this important and evolving issue.”
“Service Oriented Architecture in Media Systems,” the title of John Footen’s paper for the “Topics in File-Based Workflows and Technologies” session, looks at how an IT-derived design methodology used to connect media systems as services is being successfully adopted by television and media/entertainment facilities to provide major workflow advantages and the agility to exploit new business opportunities.
“Service Oriented Architecture solutions have been used by IT departments in banking and other fields for more than a decade,” Footen explains. “They are stable and mature and are now being leveraged to facilitate the television and media/entertainment industry’s transition from ‘physical’ to ‘file-based’ technologies and workflows. SOA is an ‘architectural’ approach that improves file-based workflow efficiencies, allows for easier integration of multiple software and hardware applications within a facility, and provides the agility to integrate future technology advances as they become available.”
To learn more about the SMPTE 2008 Technical Conference and Exhibition visit www.smpte.org/events/smpte_annual_tech/.
About National TeleConsultants: National TeleConsultants (NTC) is the United States’ largest independent media systems consulting, design, and implementation firm with offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington DC. NTC specializes in strategic technology consulting, media-related facility design and engineering, and systems integration. For more information, visit www.ntc.com.
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