AMSTERDAM—The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers will make its presence known at the 2018 IBC Show with a slew of sessions and additional resources including the return of the popular IP Showcase.
SMPTE BIG SCREEN SESSIONS
The four-day Big Screen sessions at the RAI Auditorium feature the very latest in cinema projection and sound installation. A world-class forum where creativity meets technology, the Big Screen program allows visitors to hear from the talent behind the camera.
During "HDR Focus: 'Blue Planet 2' and 'The Grand Tour,'" the first of two sessions on high dynamic range (HDR) that will be chaired by Randi Altman of postPerspective, Andrew Dune of the BBC and Chloe Blackwell of Chump will take a look at two innovative productions and explain how they used new HDR technology to build scale and bring the screen to life. During "HDR: From Post to Screen," speakers at the cutting edge of HDR postproduction, VFX, grading, and delivery will share their insights and discuss the change of gear needed to get the workflow right, exploit the potential of HDR, and achieve the holy grail of lifelike images. The panelists — Jeremy Booth of Jellyfish Pictures, Peter Collins of The Farm, Christos Glaridis of Visual Data, and Cara Cheppard of Warner Bros. De Lane Lea Studios — have worked on productions ranging from "The Innocents" to a restored version of "The Deer Hunter."
Jack Watts of Deluxe and Tomasz Witkowski of Sundog Media Toolkit will present "Ensuring the Ultimate Cinematic Experience Every Time," sharing essential information and usage concepts that aid distributors and exhibitors in guaranteeing an authentic cinematic experience. The two speakers will focus on how features supported by the SMPTE Digital Cinema Package (DCP) ensure interoperable implementation of critical new content formats such as immersive audio, HDR, multiscreen presentations, high frame rate (HFR), and more.
Presented by Jonathan Karafin of Light Field Labs and Ben Keen, an analyst and advisor to companies in the media and telecommunications space, "Keeping It Real: Technologies Behind Immersive Entertainment" addresses the technologies that bring people to the cinema and allow them to lose themselves in the story and characters and to forget about the real world. New and emerging technology promises cinema displays capable of producing holographic images, virtual-reality images, immersive sound, and location-based experiences. This session will explore how these advances will make it possible to create an experience that puts the audience inside the story.
During "The Latest Formats, the Best Cinematography," three of the world's top cinematographers will share their latest 4K and HDR project workflows. Geoff Boyle, BSC, will reveal results from his recent and highly anticipated camera tests and showcase recent projects. Bill Bennett, ASC, will bring his work with RealD Flamengo and the ARRI Alexa LF Motocross to the Big Screen stage.
SMPTE GENERAL SESSIONS
"SMPTE ST 2110 Standards Suite: Catalyst for Industry Transformation" will be a special IBC2018 session dedicated to explaining the growing SMPTE ST 2110 Standards suite and why it is essential to the future of the industry. Speakers will examine how, with the publication of each additional SMPTE ST 2110 Standard, professional media creation facilities are transforming the business of content creation.
The session titled "SMPTE ST 2110 Implementation Case Studies: What Have We Learned?" will explore how professional content-creation facilities around the world are leading the industry evolution by implementing the SMPTE ST 2110 standards. Citing their experiences within real-life implementations ranging from greenfield builds to updates of existing facilities, leaders in the realm of IP-based operations will discuss the challenges facilities have encountered and the lessons learned about how best to maximize the benefits of SMPTE ST 2110.
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) IMF User Group will host "The Interoperable Master Format: Gateway to Component-Based Workflows," a session dedicated to the explosion in the number of content versions resulting from the proliferation of localized versions due to worldwide distribution and acquisition; multiplication of viewer experiences; and the expanding repertoire of audio-visual essence.
The IBC Content Everywhere Hub Sessions provide an engaging way for show visitors to get up to speed with different aspects of "Content Everywhere" and the explosive growth in the consumption of video, TV, and media on IP-connected devices. The panels aim to expand visitors' understanding of the business and technical issues at the intersection of broadcast and broadband. SMPTE Executive Director Barbara Lange will be moderating this session.
IP SHOWCASE
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), and Video Services Forum (VSF) to support the IP Showcase at IBC2018. 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. More information about the IP Showcase is available at ipshowcase.org. Details about SMPTE ST 2110 are available at smpte.org/st_2110.
SMPTE PUBLICATIONS & RESOURCES
Visitors to the SMPTE stand will have the chance to view the newly released "Magic & Miracles: 100 Years of Moving Image Science & Technology" by executive editor Phil Cianci, a richly illustrated and meticulously crafted history of the Society and its groundbreaking work over the past century, as well as "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. Attendees can purchase these books and take advantage of low-cost international shipping options online at magic-and-miracles.org.
Throughout IBC2018, SMPTE staff — including Thomas Bause Mason, attending for the first time as SMPTE director of standards development — 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 June 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 and is available at smpte.org/outcomereport.
In the year since IBC2017, the Society completed a first-of-its-kind pilot project to define a prototype SMPTE Technical Specifications (TSP) process. Digital Production Partnership (DPP) has proposed the first SMPTE TSP, 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.
More recently, the Society announced published standards for binding Ad-IDs to commercials and Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR) codes to programming content. The standards specify the use of Kantar Media's audio watermarking technology, an open solution available for licensing. The SMPTE 24TB Open Binding of IDs Drafting Group created and published two new sets of standards and recommended practices: ST 2112-10 and RP 2112-11 for the Open Binding of Content Identifiers (OBID) and ST 2112-20 and RP 2112-21 for the Open Binding of Distribution Channel IDs and Timestamps. The availability of these standards for persistent binding of identifiers into advertising and programming content establishes a fundamental building block for the advancement of full cross-platform measurement and content integration.
At its IBC2018 stand, SMPTE also will offer details on the results of the SMPTE 2018 Innovation and Technology in Media Entertainment Survey, part of the Society's ongoing work to provide insight into the critical issues that are transforming the media and entertainment (M&E) technology industry. The survey examined artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), immersive media, professional media over managed IP networks, and the Better Pixels Project.
As always, the Society will feature at its stand the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, which last year earned a Merit Award in the STC International Summit Awards (STC ISA) competition. Copies of the September 2018 "Progress Report" issue will be available in the stand.
SMPTE has published videos of the presentations from the SMPTE 2017 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition (SMPTE 2017) on its YouTube channel youtube.com/smpteconnect. The new content includes more than 50 videos of the expert paper presentations delivered over the one-day Symposium and three days of technical sessions, held last October in Los Angeles and dedicated to exploring media and entertainment technology. The technical papers themselves are available within the SMPTE Digital Library hosted on the IEEE Xplore platform, along with more than 800 SMPTE standards documents currently in force and the peer-reviewed SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal dating back to 1916 — more than 20,000 documents in total. A complete listing of SMPTE publications is available at smpte.org/digital-library.
SMPTE Director of Membership Roberta Gorman and other SMPTE leadership will also be available on the SMPTE stand 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. Further information on student programs is available at smpte.org/students.
