Program: SMPTE 2021 Annual Technical Conference

10:00 AM - 11:10 AM

Welcome and Introductions

Hans Hoffmann - European Broadcasting Union
Barbara Lange - SMPTE
Jaclyn Pytlarz - Dolby Laboratories
Ian Trow - Sky UK
Chaitanya Chinchlikar - Whistling Woods International
Greg Ciaccio - IMAX
Kari Grubin - Motion Picture Association of America
David Long - RIT
Bruce Devlin - SMPTE
Katie Cole - Perforce
Erik Weaver - Entertainment Technology Center at USC

What Does Virtual Production Mean?

Take a live tour of a virtual production workflow with leaders of the SMPTE RIS OnSet Virtual Production group. For the first time using the Movielabs visual language toolset, the group will walk through the workflow as represented in the recently published wallchart (October 2021 SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal). You will learn the lingo and get an understanding of the workflow at a high level, as well as understanding the natural diversions. Join experts Chris Vienneau (Movielabs), Erik Weaver (ETC), Katie Cole (Perforce), Chaitanya Chinchlikar (Whistling Woods International), Greg Ciaccio (Independent), and David Long (RIT) as they join Kari Grubin in this informational session, followed by a live Q/A period.

What’s SMPTE Thinking about for Video Production Help?

In support of virtual production, in this live session Standards Vice President Bruce Devlin will discuss the various issues around video production and delivery to the web. Bruce will also share his thoughts on SMPTE’ role as a registry authority, today as well as into the future.

11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

Technical Session - 1

Stephen Tallamy - EditShare
Willem Vermost - VRT - Flemish Radio-Television
Tom De Wispelaere - VRT
Dries Tastenhoye - VRT
Gregg Young - VRT

Proxy Workflows for a Secure Remote Production Future

Using lower resolution proxy files for video production has been an option for a number of years, however advancements in technology, remote working demands, and a drive towards remote production and usage of cloud technologies has opened up a range of new possibilities. Modern proxy workflows depend on a set of underlying technologies to provide a seamless, secure, and productive user experience. The paper will identify enablers for remote production and provide concrete examples to illustrate how media professionals: • Overcome challenges of collaborating with high resolution footage • Control access to valuable original footage • Create unique renditions to simplify workflows and increase traceability

Multicam live production in a virtual environment

Hardly any movie is made without the use of visual effects (VFX). The power of today's graphical processors allows a lot of the effects to be rendered in real-time, which opens the possibility of recording in-camera VFX. This technique has been used in the making of several recent movies. The TV show "The Mandalorian" uses a large active led wall to project its 3D scenery. This way, the actors, director, and camera operators see the sets in real-time, instead of a greenscreen. Bringing this innovation to the television studio offers several challenges to overcome. The use of a multi-cam setup and synchronous switching of what is displayed on the LED wall or a consistent depth of field to name just two. We have overcome these obstacles with the Ketnet live show "Gouden K's". Besides the big productions, we believe this technique might be even more beneficial in small productions using a limited technical crew. With a second project, VRT wanted to explore the possibilities and limitations of Virtual Studio Production using Game Engine Technology. The software-based solution we've deployed (running on common PC hardware) allows for lots of flexibility, creativity, and high-quality content in real-time. Using Unreal Engine and PTZ cameras, we've built a complete interactive 4-input Virtual Production switcher engine using one main workstation. Both projects will be described including lessons learned from an operational point of view.

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Technical Session - 2

Yiannis Andreopoulos - iSIZE
Fred Engel - PBS North Carolina
Red Grasso - North Carolina Dept of Information Technology

Toward Generalized Psychovisual Preprocessing For Video Encoding

Deep perceptual preprocessing has recently emerged as a new way to enable further bitrate savings across several generations of video encoders without breaking standards or requiring any changes in client devices. In this paper, we lay the foundations toward a generalized psychovisual preprocessing framework for video encoding and describe one of its promising instantiations that is practically deployable for video-on-demand, live, gaming and user-generated content. Results using state-of-the-art AVC, HEVC and VVC encoders show that average bitrate (BD-rate) gains of 11% to 17% are obtained over three state-of-the-art reference-based quality metrics (Netflix VMAF, SSIM and Apple AVQT), as well as the recently-proposed non-reference ITU-T p.1204 metric. The runtime complexity of the proposed framework on CPU is shown to be equivalent to a single x264 medium-preset encoding. On GPU hardware, our approach achieves 260fps for 1080p video (below 4ms/frame), thereby enabling its use in very-low latency live video or game streaming applications.

ATSC 3.0 as a use Case for Public Safety Communications

Fire and EMS services across the United States still rely on paging technology to communicate emergency incident information. The infrastructure for these paging systems is typically owned, operated, and maintained by the local government or agency to ensure coverage includes as close to 100% of the jurisdiction as possible. This paper proposes the use of ATSC 3.0 datacasting technology to serve the paging needs of public safety and uses North Carolina as a test case. This concept could lead to cost-sharing, greater collaboration across jurisdictions, and reduced response times for mutual aid requests. The public deserve the best possible response from the public safety sector and therefore, public safety deserves the best technology available in order to achieve their mission.

1:35 PM - 2:10 PM

Social Session - 1 - Networking Team Challenge

Networking Team Challenge

Join us for a half hour break to meet and mix with your fellow conference attendees! Get to know one another through a little friendly team competition. SMPTE's Director of Education, Joel Welch, will host this fun session during which attendees will be randomly assigned to small groups to solve problems and complete challenges. Winning teams will win fabulous SMPTE swag prizes!

Sponsors

2:15 PM - 3:15 PM

Technical Session - 3

Brad Dickson - Lighting Video
Thierry Fautier - Harmonic

Calibrating LED fixtures and Video Walls to the camera's chroma signal

I will cover the shortfalls of the current lighting measurements used by end-users and manufacturers to evaluate, calibrate led lights and video walls to match on camera. I will show how an imbalance can occur in the cameras when the focus of calibration is on color meter readings instead of the actual response of the camera's image sensor. I will show the workflow that has been adopted by many virtual studios that use video walls and led lighting to get a harmonious balance between all of these based on the needs of the camera's image sensors response. I will cover the HS Scope and how it guides the end-user to obtain a calibrated setting that is based on the various camera's chroma responses. I will show the need to calibrate for the various cameras and the shortfalls of using global lighting measurements instead of camera-specific measurements. Video walls are being used for VR sets with LED lighting. There remains a diversity of output quality along with a variety of responses from cameras image sensors. You can see the wide range of mismatching that can occur. I have worked with LEDs and video walls for decades and using my methodology I have been able to get harmony between these elements no matter the camera as I used the chroma signal as my guideline. My methodology has now been adopted by some top VR studios globally. Many gaffers have stated my methodology is the missing link they have been looking for.

360 8K Viewport-Independent VR

360 VR has been deployed in the past few years using different techniques. Viewport-independent technology is used on 4K content for delivery to 4K-capable head-mounted displays (HMDs) and smartphone devices, resulting in a disappointing experience. The alternative is using viewport-dependent technology with 8K content on 4K-capable HMDs and smartphones devices, which enables a good experience, but with complexities and limitations in terms of the integration into existing OTT workflows. The 8K viewport-independent technology presented uses off-the-shelf encoding techniques to compress 8K 360 VR content as a single file and to distribute it in CMAF low-latency DASH mode to 8K-capable devices such as the Oculus Quest 2 or Galaxy S20. This paper will present an end-to-end 8K VR workflow, which is entirely cloud based and capable of delivering high-quality 8K VR DRM-protected content compared with 4K content on different devices.

3:20 PM - 4:15 PM

Social Session - 2- 100 Years of Standards Celebration

Thomas Bause Mason - SMPTE
Wendy Aylsworth - Walden Pond
Hans Hoffmann - European Broadcasting Union
Bruce Devlin - SMPTE
Florian Schleich - Netflix, Inc.
Peter Symes - Symes TV Consulting

100 Years of Standards Celebration

Celebrate 100 Years of the Formation of SMPTE Standards Committee! Join us for a social hour with discussion about our history, and a look to the future. In true anniversary celebration form, prizes are part of the celebration. And don't forget to bring a drink based on our featured cocktail recipes.

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Featured Session - 1

Cedric Lejeune - Workflowers
Paul Moore Olmstead - Atos
Alex Liu - NETINT Technologies Inc.
Brent Rabowsky - AWS
Bridget Meuse - Akamai
Pierre Couture - daregraphic
Chris Vienneau - FX-DMZ
Hemini Mehta - European Broadcasting Union

Sustainability session: Essentials of Media and Our Climate

This year’s SMPTE Annual Technical Conference features the first ever SMPTE sustainability session. During this session you will learn about the sustainability issues and concerns specific to media. In addition, the speaker will present sustainability statistics, challenges and opportunities, plus how workflows can evolve to overcome sustainability challenges.

Sustainability in Broadcast
Remote PP in the cloud

Lighting for People of Color: How to manage Camera in Glasses to Work Properly With all Skin Colors

How do you properly balance for all people but specifically for people of color when lighting for features, television, theatre and/or touring musicians? What techniques are needed to insure that every principal in a scene or on a stage is presented in their best light? Today’s camera sensors and lighting options offer so much flexibility. How do we truly optimize the environment to take full advantage of the technology and opportunities? In this session, lighting expert Christian Epps, will speak with us about his career and the art and science of proper lighting for all skin tones. During his illustrious career he has provided lighting services for the likes of director’s Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay; films like Selma and Sylvia Love; Artists like Michael Jackson, Barbara Streisand and Beyoncé; series such as American Horror Stories and Lovecraft Country and for theatre on broadway. You won’t want to miss this insightful conversation.

12:05 PM - 12:25 PM

Social Session - 3 - Take a Laugh Break!

Brian Sheil - ESLA

Take a Laugh Break with the One-Man Entourage of Entertainment

Join us for a 20 minute break to let your brain relax after absorbing all this knowledge!! Join Brian Scheil for an interactive comedy, music, and improv break! Brian takes the stage with UN-PARALLELED ENERGY!!! With his rapid-fire intensity, you’ll feel like you’ve seen four shows in one! A Comedy Show, a Music Show, an Improv Show...and you’ll be part of the SHOW!!!

Sponsors

12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Featured Session - 2

Michelle Munson - Eluvio
Jesse Korosi - Picture Shop

Michelle Munson

Not for Thee, Now All for Thee,” also known as “The Rise of Video NFTs for Video Engineers

Over the past few years while blockchain technology has risen in the financial spaces of the Internet ("DeFi"), it has largely remained "on the fringes" of the video technology space. SMPTE is exemplary: a blockchain category has been among the categories, but few talks have touched on it, let alone anticipated the shift 2020-2021 would bring to mainstream this technology, thanks to the rise of Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) for digital art and now for all types of media including video. Over the span of less than ~12 months starting with the meteoric sale of the 'Beeple' digital image, the field has expanded from static digital art NFTs to encompass virtually every digital media format conceivable -- whole albums, 3D/CG animations, and now even original video series released and sold as NFTs. My own experience as an innovator in blockchain media technology has given me a unique vantage point in this wild ride. In this talk I would like to share my experience, and take on this topic that has to date been "Not For Thee" in our community, and help make it "All for Thee", by examining the technical foundations of Non Fungible Tokens for video engineers, and explaining a new Content Blockchain Protocol that gets at some of the bigger problems facing NFTs for full length video. My comments will draw on our experience launching a game-ified video NFT marketplace for a mainstream consumer audience in conjunction with a popular television series on a major US broadcast network.

Jesse Korosi

ASC Framing Decision List (FDL)

Framing complexity has risen over the last many years, but yet the process for conveying framing from set to post-production for the most part remains the same. Without a standardized set of metadata for communicating framing, the process can be very labor intensive and error prone. The ASC’s Advanced Data Management (ADM) sub-committee intends to provide a mechanism to document framing decisions through all phases of a project’s lifecycle, from pre-visualization through post-production, allowing for a much more automated process of sharing and applying framing information between departments. Join the ADM sub-committees chair Jesse Korosi as he introduces the ASC FDL! Framing complexity has risen over the last many years, but yet the process for conveying framing from set to post-production for the most part remains the same. Without a standardized set of metadata for communicating framing, the process can be very labor intensive and error prone. The ASC’s Advanced Data Management (ADM) sub-committee intends to provide a mechanism to document framing decisions through all phases of a project’s lifecycle, from pre-visualization through post-production, allowing for a much more automated process of sharing and applying framing information between departments. Join the ADM sub-committees chair Jesse Korosi as he introduces the ASC FDL!

2:05 PM - 2:50 PM

Sponsored Interactive Session - 1- Blackmagic Design

Bob Caniglia - Blackmagic Design

Broadcasting from home - It’s not just a webcam anymore

Now that virtual meetings and presentations have become permanent fixtures in professional environments, let’s explore some easy and affordable ways to look and sound better on these calls. The higher the video and audio quality are, the more effective you and your communications become in the virtual world.

4:45 PM - 6:15 PM

Featured Session 3 - Fellows Ceremony

Patrick Griffis - dolby

The Fellows Induction Ceremony will take place on November 10 at 4:45pm EST / 21:45 UTC, and will honor the industry leaders newly elevated to Fellow status.

This honor is conferred on individuals who have, through their proficiency and contributions to the motion-picture, television, or related industries, attained an outstanding rank among engineers or executives in media and entertainment.

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Technical Session - 4

Sunday Nyamweno - CBC / Radio-canada
Carl Buchmann - Arista Networks
Patrick Morin - CBC/Radio-Canada
Christophe Burdinat - ATEME

Infrastructure as Code at CBC/Radio-Canada's Media-over-IP Data Center

Speakers: Sunday Nyamweno - Carl Buchmann - Patric Morin

Network infrastructure provisioning is a critical subset of the Automated Deployment of CBC/Radio-Canada's Media-Over-IP Data Center. As the On-Air date approached, it became clear that in order to respond to the fast changing production needs, traditional network provisioning methods were inadequate. As we began to explore various automation solutions, we realized that a new NetDevOps culture needed to be cultivated within our organization. This paper will present the architecture and implementation of CBC's network automated deployment workflow in collaboration with Arista. We believe these tools and methods will be applicable as a way forward to many media-over-IP projects at all scales.

5G Media Streaming And 5G Broadcast for Delivery of DASH/HLS Services

Speaker: Christophe Burdinat

Beyond the spectral efficiency and throughput improvement for Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), 5G brings many new features targeting vertical applications. To leverage new 5G features and capabilities for media distribution, 5G offers the 5G Media Streaming Architecture (5GMSA). It supports a full set of collaboration scenarios between third party content providers and mobile network operators with various degrees of integration adapted to the OTT ecosystem. While the first version of 5GMSA focuses on media delivery over unicast, Multicast/Broadcast in 5G is one of the key new features currently specified by 3GPP and expected for Release 17. Integration of 5G Multicast/Broadcast capabilities within 5GMSA is essential to scale up the network capacity for linear contents. With the publication of DVB-I in 2020, DVB allows for the delivery of linear television services to internet connected devices over broadband and broadcast networks. As an access independent service layer, DVB-I becomes a strong candidate for providing a converging service layer for 5G. This paper will explore the growing capabilities offered by the 5G Media Streaming Architecture; how it the multicast/broadcast capabilities will be integrated; and how it will enable the delivery of DVB-I services.

7:15 PM - 8:15 PM

Technical Session - 5

Kodai Kikuchi - Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)
Robert Loughlin - Frame.io
Derek Schweickart - frame.io

8K Camera System with Multi-plane Phase-detection Autofocus

Speaker: Kodai Kikuchi

We propose a phase detection autofocus (PDAF) method for three-chip 8K UHDTV2 240-fps cameras that detects the in-focus position of a lens by using disparity information between pixels with different apertures across multiple sensors. This multi-plane PDAF method executes pupil division in the same incident position while using simple metal-shielded pixel technology, which can achieve accurate AF and enable low-cost implementation. The proposed method implemented in an 8K three-chip camera incorporating 8K sensors with half-shielded phase-detection pixels into the blue and red channels demonstrated robust disparity calculation compared with the conventional single-chip metal-shielded-based PDAF method.

The Problem with Timecode

Speaker: Robert Loughlin and Derek Schweickart

Why do we have timecode at all? We take it for granted, but what's the big deal with timecode anyway? Before timecode, film editors used Edgecode (Kodak - 1919) to identify individual pictures on a film reel. With the increased use of videotape in the 1950s, this editing became more of a challenge because there was no way to visually see what frame you were on when trying to make an edit, so tools were developed to assist with this.

8:20 PM - 8:40 PM

Social Session - 4 - Casual Networking

Casual Networking

Join your colleagues during the APAC Session for some light conversation and discuss what you've learned at the event so far.

8:45 PM - 10:15 PM

Technical Session - 6

Andy Rayner - Nevion
Yoshitaka Ikeda - NHK
Adam Mitchell - Warner Brothers

Live Production System to Handle Video Signals with Various Aspect Ratios

Speaker: Yoshitaka Ikeda

With the aim of providing a service that allows viewers to watch more attractive TV programs using various aspect ratios freely selected according to the creator's intent, we studied the system requirements and specific transmission methods for live production in broadcast stations. We proposed the use of a 16:9 active video area in conventional video signals such as HD/4K as containers, and determined the range that the user-specified aspect ratio video occupies in the container using identifier ancillary data. The advantage of this method is that it is highly compatible with existing systems and conventional workflows. We also considered the scalability using multiple containers.

Automatic essence timing alignment in IP production

Speakers: Geoff Bowen and Andy Rayner

This session will look at the existing timing mechanisms baked into IP media connectivity standards and specifications and how these are typically used in system deployments. We will look at these alongside the ideal timing requirements of a full system. As more of the production chain becomes virtualized, these timing requirements need to be able to be realized in both broadcast appliance infrastructure and virtual server infrastructure (local or cloud based). We will explore some of the technical work still outstanding to realise end-to-end time-aware systems that can deliver the true potential of fully 'time savvy' solution architecture. Fundamental to this work is the concept of timing planes in a production workflow and how these domains are managed in an end to end system.

Super Resolution Application - Content Modernization

Speaker: Adam Mitchell

At Warner Bros, we have decades of digital-native content in old standards - lower resolution, higher framerate, interlacing, etc. Bringing that content to modern expectations is currently a manual, labor-intensive process. We are using machine learning techniques as an alternative to that process, which will increase the breadth of content we can bring to streaming audiences by decreasing cost and turnaround time. Our in-development process executes multiple algorithms for each step (upres/frame-interpolation/interlacing) and measures the quality compared to a ground truth via objective algorithms.

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Technical Session - 7

Siegfried Foessel - Fraunhofer IIS
Yuriy Reznik - Brightcove, Inc.

Software defined ultra-low latency Video-Over-IP system with compression

Speaker: Siegfried Foessel

Traditional Video-over-IP implementations in software either result in higher latency due to the processing time for compression or in high bandwidth required when transmitted as an uncompressed stream. With 4k and 8k video, this is even more of a challenge, as the uncompressed stream requires high-performance Ethernet networks or the compression needs special hardware support. In some cases however, a software implementation and standard COTS equipment are beneficial to allow higher flexibility. With JPEG XS, a mezzanine compression codec was developed that can also be implemented as an ultra-low latency system in software. However, special care must be taken when designing a multi-threading architecture and an optimized data pipeline. Using a case study for 4k Video-over-IP, this paper explains how such a system can be implemented with COTS components, which software architecture is necessary and how low the latency can be reduced.

Performance of Low-Latency DASH/CMAF and Low-Latency HLS Streaming Systems

Speaker: Yuriy Reznik

Reducing end-to-end streaming latency is critical to HTTP-based live video streaming. There are currently two technologies in this domain: Low-Latency HLS (LL-HLS) and Low-Latency DASH (LL-DASH). The latter is sometimes also referred to as Low-Latency CMAF (LL-CMAF), but effectively it is the same architecture. Many players support LL-HLS and/or LL-DASH protocols, including Apple's AVPlayer, Shaka player, HLS.js, DASH.js, and others. There are also several encoding and packaging tools available for the generation of LL-HLS and LL-DASH streams. This paper is dedicated to the analysis of the performance of low-latency players and streaming systems. The evaluation is based on a series of live streaming experiments, repeated using identical video content, encoders, encoding profiles, and network conditions, emulated by using traces of real-world networks. Several performance metrics, such as average stream bitrate, the amounts of downloaded media data, streaming latency, as well as buffering and stream switching statistics are captured and reported in our experiments. These results are subsequently used to describe the observed differences in the performance of LL-HLS and LL-DASH-based systems.

11:15 AM - 12:45 PM

Technical Session - 8

Ha Nguyen - Warner Bros. Discovery
Aansh Malik - Warner Media LLC
Brian Wellner - Warner Bros Discovery
Clayton Mosher - Warner Media
Manal Siddiqui - Transitional Forms

Exploring Realtime Conversational Virtual Characters

Speakers: Ha T Nguyen and Aansh Malik

Advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as Speech-To-Text, Language Understanding Models, Language Generation Models, and Text-To-Speech enable various types of applications, one of which is real-time conversational Virtual Characters. Building an end-to-end framework with the right AI technology components enables relatable and multi-dimensional Virtual Characters, who can naturally converse in creatively controlled domains, while consistently maintaining their state and personality in pre-determined narratives. In this work, we designed such a conversational framework with interchangeable, and loosely coupled components to support granular creative details in character performance, efficiency in mass creation of Virtual Characters, and flexibility to embrace future improvements of each component in the fields. We then evaluated the robustness and modularity of the framework by creating Melodie, a Virtual Character who is fond of music, and is a fan and promoter of the Eurovision Song Contest. With Melodie, we went through the full cycle from processing a speaker's audio signals, to generating a proper response using a Natural Language Generation model, to synthesizing the response in a character's Voice Font, to finally synchronizing the synthesized response with corresponding body and facial movements to produce a coherent and believable character performance. Testing and analyzing the implementation of Melodie brought forth areas of improvement and ethical considerations that are, and continue to be, essential to the design of our future applications involving Virtual Characters

Using Biometric Signals to Improve Storytelling

Speakers: Brian Wellner and Clayton P Mosher

Consumer wearable Bluetooth enabled biometric devices are becoming more reliable for collecting physiological data. They are also becoming more accessible to the average consumer. Building a technology platform with the right devices, components, and algorithms can enable content creators to gather consumer insights on how viewers are engaging with their content. Additionally, content can be created with the intention of allowing viewers to interact and control storylines by utilizing their physiological responses. This paper outlines the framework by which this type of data can be collected, what types of stimuli can be applied to insight gathering and content creation, and how this data can be processed

Pitfalls, Progress & Opportunity – Part 1

Speakers: Manal Siddiqui, Nikki Pope and Miriam Vogel

What are some of the defining characteristics in the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence space today? How do those characteristics influence or exaggerate bias or exclusion? How do we define bias in this context? What can we do to mitigate it in the design process and remove it from existing models and algorithms? What are best practices and why is this important to the future of the products and services that you produce, supply and support? Join this incredible panel of ML and AI experts as they discuss the state of the state as well as provide thought provoking possibilities for the future.

12:50 PM - 1:10 PM

Social Session - 5 - Networking Team Challenge REMATCH!

Networking Team Challenge

Sponsors

1:15 PM - 2:15 PM

Technical Session - 9

Klaus Weber - Grass Valley
Cullen Kelly - Cullen Kelly Color

New generation 2/3" CMOS imager with 9.5Mpix, combining charge-domain global shutter operation with exceptional high-speed capability

Speaker: Klaus Weber

Until now, when developing 2/3" imagers with native 4K resolution, it was necessary to decide whether they should support global shutter operation or high-speed operation, as both requirements together could not be realized in one imager with the technologies available so far. Furthermore, the sensitivity and dynamic range of even the best native 4K imagers did not yet reach the level that typical 2/3" HD imagers with their larger pixels have been offering for several years. A new 2/3" CMOS imager based on a 65nm process now offers, for the first time, 9.5 million pixels as required for native 4K/UHD resolution, with charge-domain global shutter operation and an output data rate of up to 114 Gbit/s, enabling super slow-motion operation at full resolution. This paper details the solutions and technologies used in this new generation of imagers and the resulting improved image parameters.

Digital Print Stock Design: A Framework for the Post-Film Era

Speaker: Cullen Kelly

For most of cinema history, the defining factor in the post-production "look" of captured imagery was the print stock. In addition to serving the technical function of transforming scene-referred imagery for display, print stocks were engineered by color scientists to impart preferential color characteristics, and selected by filmmakers based on these qualities. As the physical medium of the print stock has been retired from contemporary image mastering workflows, so too has the guiding principle of a global creative transform. This is neither necessary nor beneficial; in fact, modern colorists are more in need of this concept than ever. With the expanding color gamut and dynamic range capabilities of cameras and displays, unifying the imagery of a given piece of content has become increasingly challenging. This has led to the development of systems which address the technical aspects of the challenge, most notably ACES. Such initiatives and their broad adoption demonstrate an industry-wide recognition that world-class color grading demands world-class engineering. Yet in spite of this recognition, there exists no initiative aimed at supporting the creative aspects of unifying motion imagery at the macro level. As a result, colorists are left to either re-purpose traditional color correction tools, or to step into the role of image scientist to develop their own. This paper outlines a proposed framework for the design of digital print stocks, composed of a set of manipulations whose parameters can be intuitively modified by artists, resulting in a global look which can be deployed within any imaging pipeline.

2:20 PM - 3:05 PM

Sponsored Interactive Session - 2 - Telestream

Karl Kuhn - Sherwood Insights LLC
Steve Bilow - Telestream
Michael Waidson - Telestream, Inc.

IP Diagnostic Best Practices

A tutorial on what you need to know to understand the challenges we face in making the transition from SDI to an IP based transport for video, audio and data. Karl will share what he has learned by being involved in several ST 2110 and ST 2059 deployments with a focus on what questions early adopters wish they had asked. New troubleshooting methodologies are required to visualize variable delay across the network and how critical multilayer trend measurements can be made on the stream to improve QoS and QoE.

3:10 PM - 3:55 PM

Special Programming - 1

Julian Chaves - WorldStage
John Gallagher - Borough of Manhattan Community College
Barry Grossman - Consultant
Anita Seeratan - Keen Independent Research

Launching your Media Career in the Age of COVID

It has always been a challenge to launch a media career as a freshly minted graduate, but it has become even more difficult in the age of Covid-19. Join us for a panel discussion and live Q&A, programmed by the SMPTE New York Section, and learn some valuable tips and insights on how to get your toe in the door in this always evolving industry.

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Featured Session 3 - Virtual Production

Jim Skinner - Meta
Pete Lude - Consultant
Gary Feather - NANOLUMENS
Michael Smith - Wavelet Consulting LLC

Nightmare on HDR Street

Speaker: Jim Skinner

This Halloween themed talk looks at the many problems facing HDR as a consumer video format. The patent problems, the lack of consumer awareness, the playback issues and the transcode issues (from one EOTF to another) are all covered. Host Jim Skinner asks “Will LUTs save us?” and talks about how his thinking regarding technical LUTs has evolved ever since the iPhone 12 launch (the first consumer phone to exclusively record video in HDR). The iPhone 12’s HDR variant is covered in detail, as is Dolby Vision’s place in the ecosystem. Also at 13 minutes into the talk Jim hits a car on the freeway and we left that in the edit for your amusement.

Deep Dive into Virtual Production Technical Challenges and the Research Needed to Solve Them

Speakers: Peter Lude , Gary Feather, Mike Smith and Adam Callaway

Knowing what technical challenges to expect is one thing but understanding how to, or even if there are solutions is another. During this session you will take a deep-dive into virtual production related technical challenges. You will hear about the sources of those challenges, why they are issues, and what research is still required to make it all work.

12:05 PM - 12:25 PM

Social Session - 6 - Take a Laugh Break!

Brian Sheil - ESLA

Take a Laugh Break with the One-Man Entourage of Entertainment

Sponsors

1:35 PM - 2:20 PM

Sponsored Interactive Session - 3 - Epic Games

David Morin - Academy Software Foundation

This session will cover advancements in “in-camera visual effects” and how this technique is changing the film and TV industry. With software developments in real-time game engines, combined with hardware developments in GPUs and on-set video equipment, filmmakers can now capture final pixel visual effects while still on set – enabling new levels of creative collaboration and efficiency during principal photography. These new developments allow changes to digital scenes, even those at final pixel quality, to be seen instantly on high-resolution LED walls – an exponential degree of time savings over a traditional CG rendering workflow. This is crucial as there is a huge demand for more original film and TV content, and studios must find a way to efficiently scale production and post-production while maintaining high quality and creative intent. In this presentation you will learn about the fast evolution of virtual production in Film, Television and other markets, about the growing role of Unreal Engine in many departments within live action production and animation, and why using Unreal Engine today will help you participate in the creation of the open metaverse tomorrow.

2:25 PM - 3:25 PM

Featured Session 5 - Annual Membership Meeting

Hans Hoffmann - European Broadcasting Union
Barbara Lange - SMPTE
Patrick Griffis - dolby
Patricia Keighley - Imax Corporation
John Ferder - Qvest US
Paul Stechly - Applied Electronics Ltd.
Michael Zink - Warner Bros.
Renard Jenkins - Warner Media
Bruce Devlin - SMPTE

Join us as Executive Director Barbara Lange provide a state of your Society. In our next century, there is much to report on the Society’s current activities as well as what is in store.
This event is free and open to all - non-members are welcome! Come learn what SMPTE is up to and feel free to ask questions!

3:45 PM - 4:45 PM

Featured Session 6 - Introduction to On-set Virtual production: Studio perspectives and Business Cases

David Long - RIT
Edward Plowman - disguise Technology Ltd
David Stump - Cinematographer
Sam Nicholson - Stargate Studios

Introduction to On-set Virtual production: Studio perspectives and Business Cases

Speakers: David Long, Ed Plowman, Konstantin Wilms, Dave Stump and Sam Nickolson

Several recent, high profile productions have successfully utilized on-set virtual production technology and workflows in place of traditional methods. Is virtual production the future of content creation? Are studios and producers going all in on this new technology? The opening session of the Future of Cinema Conference offers a primer to help you get your arms around everything virtual production from the current state of the art, the business proposition, the new skills required, and the challenges that must be overcome.

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Technical Session - 10

Thomas Kernen - NVIDIA
Thomas True - NVIDIA
suman kalyan - Accion Labs Inc
Angshuman Patra - Accion Labs

Tighter NIC/GPU Integration Yields Next Level Media Processing Performance

Speakers: Thomas Kernen, Thomas True,

As the media industry further consolidates building services based on Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware, the requirement for increasing performance continues to accelerate. The processing of video resolutions up to Ultra HD (UHD) and 8K, higher frame rates, increased bit depth, and High Dynamic Range (HDR) imagery, requires tighter integration and optimization between the Network Interface Controller (NIC) and the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). Combined with simultaneous input and output of multiple streams, this creates the potential for performance bottlenecks that must be unlocked. This paper describes how COTS hardware platforms running GPUs alongside ST 2059-2 PTP locked NICs which are accurately pacing packets according to ST 2110-21 requirements may further increase their performance throughput by reducing CPU driven data copy overhead. And in doing so, reduce processing latency and jitter, and more effectively use GPU resources while freeing up CPU resources.

Model-based predictive control for continuous success planning in movie production

Speakers: Suman Kalyan and Angshuman Patra

The movie industry across the globe is a multi-billion-dollar business for stakeholders. Perhaps the single most financially dominating recipe among all flavors of media entertainments available to the audience. A plethora of carefully coordinated onerous efforts encompassing acting, direction, scriptwriting, casting, editing, and production goes into making and releasing a movie.

11:15 AM - 12:45 PM

Technical Session - 11

Thomas Edwards - Amazon AWS
Abdelmajid Moussaoui - ATEME
Kristen Grauman - University of Texas at Austin and Facebook AI Research

RTP Payload Format for JPEG XS

Speaker: Thomas Edwards

JPEG XS is a low-latency, low-complexity wavelet codec that is promising for IP transport of professional media both on-premises and on the cloud. A combination of standards and specifications, including SMPTE ST 2110-22, ISO/IEC 21122-3, IETF RFC 9134, and VSF TR-08 define the transport of JPEG XS in RTP over IP.

Dynamic Seamless Resource Allocation For Live Video Compression On A Kubernetes Cluster

Speakers: Abdelmajid Moussa and Thomas Guionnet

A solution is proposed on top of Kubernetes to dynamically allocate services resources without service interruption. It serves as the basis for optimizing a live video compression service. It is demonstrated that dynamic resource allocation can benefit to a video compression application, either by reducing the resource consumption, hence costs, or by enhancing delivered video quality. By combining the proposed solution with an elastic encoder and machine learning for content complexity estimation, a content and application aware dynamic resource orchestrator for real-time video compression is designed. Preliminary experimental results using ATEME Titan Live Micro-services encoders demonstrate up to 9.4% average bitrate reduction and up to 12.8% bitrate reduction on the most demanding channel.

Teaching AI to perceive the world through your eyes - Facebook

Speaker: Kristen Grauman

AI that understands the world from a first-person point of view could unlock a new era of immersive experiences, as devices like augmented reality (AR) glasses and virtual reality (VR) headsets become as useful in everyday life as smartphones. Imagine your AR device displaying exactly how to hold the sticks during a drum lesson, guiding you through a recipe, helping you find your lost keys, or recalling memories as holograms that come to life in front of you.

12:50 PM - 1:35 PM

Sponsored Interactive Session - 4 - Key Code Media

Chris Ostertag - Austin PBS
John Connolly - Key Code Media
Mason Pierce - Key Code Media

Building a Television Studio in 2021: Design, Automate, Broadcast

Key Code Media will be joined by Austin PBS Chief Technology Officer, Chris Osterag to discuss the build-out of a massive new broadcast facility in Austin- including three production studios, MCR, 3x PCR, 3x ACR, machine & rack room, and post-production equipment.

In this roundtable, our team of broadcast experts will discuss camera systems, lighting, and video switcher equipment that will allow you to build or upgrade a Television Studio, Control Room, and Network in 2021. We'll cover hot topics like 12G, SMPTE 2110 standards, future-proof cabling, remote contribution, UHD video, multi-cam live streaming, graphics systems, and more.

This will be essential learning for any broadcast television, corporate video departments, city governments, houses of worship, or video education facilities.

The session is co-sponsored by Key Code Media, NewTek, and LiveU.

THIS PRESENTATION WILL INCLUDE:
•   Modernizing TV Studio Components
•   Multi-Camera Systems
•   Comm Systems
•   Video Switchers and Composition
•   Motion Graphics
•   Live Streaming and Social Media Publishing
•   Teleprompter

1:45 PM - 2:45 PM

Technical Sessions - 12

Hojatollah Yeaganeh - SSIMWAVE
Michael Smith - Wavelet Consulting LLC

Understanding Banding - Perceptual Modelling and Machine Learning Approaches For Banding Detection

Speaker: Hajatollah Yeganeh

Banding is an annoying visual artifact that frequently appears at various stages along the chain of video acquisition, production, distribution and display. With the thriving popularity of ultra-high definition, high dynamic range, wide color gamut content, and the increasing user expectations that follow, the banding effect has been attracting a growing deal of attention for its strong negative impact on viewer experience in visual content that could otherwise have nearly perfect quality. Here we present two different types of technologies of great promises on banding detection. The first is knowledge-driven and is built upon computational models that account for the characteristics of the human visual system, the content acquisition, production, distribution and display processes, and the interplay between them. The second is data-driven, and is based on machine learning methods, by training deep neural networks with large-scale datasets.

Hue-Preserving Color Transforms for LED Wall Virtual Production Workflows

Speaker: Michael D. Smith

Virtual Production using LED wall display technology is gaining popularity in the entertainment industry to produce motion pictures, episodic television, live broadcast and esports content. This new paradigm typically uses one or more large LED displays that contains millions of individual Light Emitting Diodes (LED) that are used to display a virtual background and/or foreground objects from a virtual scene that is simultaneously captured by the digital photographic camera on set, resulting in so-called "in-camera visual effects". Realtime video game rendering engines update the image shown on the LED wall image to compensate for changes in camera location, camera pose and focal length. Modern digital camera workflows typically include color transforms that were not designed to accurately render the large areas of saturated colors that are possible when capturing the image shown on an LED wall. Some examples of a hue shift that can occur in typical workflows are blue to cyan, red to pink, red to orange and green to yellow. We found these hue shifts can occur dynamically while racking focus to and from the LED wall, and also statically when the LED wall is kept out of focus, which is a common technique that is used to minimized moiré artifacts. This paper explores a simple modification of these common color transforms to preserve the hue of the scene while also creating a similar Look of the existing color transforms.

2:50 PM - 3:50 PM

Social Session - 7- Oktoberfest

Hans Hoffmann - European Broadcasting Union
Barbara Lange - SMPTE

Oktoberfest

Join our host, Hans Hoffmann, for a virtual Oktoberfest in honor of Barbara Lange! This will be her last SMPTE Oktoberfest as Executive Director. Help us remember all the good times (and good beers) and wish her well for the future! Bring your favorite Bavarian Beer to celebrate!

Sponsors

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