BURBANK, Calif.—The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Awards Committee announced EIZO, Eluvio, Moxion and Carl Zeiss SBE are the winners of the 2020 HPA Awards for Engineering Excellence.
The HPA Engineering Excellence Award honors outstanding technical and creative ingenuity in media, content production, finishing, distribution and archive.
EIZO is being recognized for its Prominence CG3146 31.1-inch HDR monitor with built-in calibration sensor. New technologies were invented to include advanced brightness and color uniformity correction that allows calibration to occur at the top of the monitor and a stable XYZ glass type sensor that resists temperature.
New algorithms were needed for one sensor in both low brightness areas with higher noise and high bright areas with more light saturation. Machine learning display stabilization and custom ASIC technologies were implemented to improve image stability and increase the available colors of the LCD panel by more than 22%.
Eluvio is being honored for its pioneering work on a novel video distribution platform to service content providers around the globe. The Eluvio Content Fabric provides an efficient, secure and cost-effective means to deliver ultra-low latency video globally just-in-time without CDNs, cloud transcoding or databases.
As a single backend for distribution, the platform links media, metadata and programmable code and serves high quality streaming video to the viewer without intermediaries, separate file copies or static versions. Content is personalized dynamically and rights-controlled via software blockchain contracts.
Moxion is being recognized for its Immediates, the result of multiple innovations enabling post and production to share and review each other’s footage securely within minutes of creation.
Immediates footage, complete with camera, action and VFX wranglers’ metadata, flows from the QTAKE video assist into the Moxion cloud, where it can be reviewed and logged before flowing into editorial or VFX workflows. Conversely, footage created in post can be sent via the Moxion Cloud back to the set, security, the video assist for playback on on-set monitors or to any on-set iOS device.
Carl Zeiss SBE is being honored for its eXtended Data lens metadata technology that amplifies and increases the accuracy of the image capture and processing workflow. Zeiss eXtended Data unifies two data sets: key lens data based on the Cooke and i-Technology and the ZEISS distortion and shading lens data.
After recording on set together with the video files, the data can be applied in post-production for more accurate compositing and editing by using the suite of Zeiss-developed lens plugins.
Frame.io and Sohonet received honorable mention for their Camera-to-Cloud and ClearView Flex technologies, respectively.
This year’s judging was adapted to adhere to restrictions imposed on the industry by the COVID-19 pandemic, HPA said.
Now in their 15th year, the HPA Awards, including the HPA Award for Engineering Excellence, will be bestowed Nov. 19 during a virtual gala.
More information is available on the HPA website.
