SMPTE® 2016 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition
Society’s Flagship Technical Conference Will Feature Diverse, Expert-Led Sessions, and First-of-a-Kind Celebrations Honoring SMPTE’s Centennial
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers® (SMPTE®) has details for the SMPTE 2016 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition (SMPTE 2016), Oct. 25-27 in Hollywood, California.
Papers will address ultra-high-definition (UHD) and 4K/8K resolution, higher frame rates (HFR), high-dynamic-range (HDR), and wider color gamut (WCG) in sessions that examine how these aspects impact and align with the director’s original creative intent. The “Future of Cinema” sessions will focus on delivering higher-contrast HDR images and increasing pixels per second by delving into the aesthetics of HFR capture, the psychovisual effects of HFR presentation, and the impact achieved by overfilling one’s field of view. Sessions dedicated to color management likewise focus on HDR while examining the art and science of preserving and enhancing creative intent. Presentations on display technologies will address the challenges of developing test patterns to evaluate and calibrate UHD HDR displays and also discuss the use of the 60 GHz radio spectrum to provide wireless high-bandwidth display connections.
Two sessions on new distribution modalities will discuss challenges in transmitting immersive-quality video for over-the-top (OTT) services and the influence of digital technology on distribution channels. In sessions on video compression, presenters will discuss both ends of the spectrum: low-bandwidth usage for OTT internet delivery to mobile devices and mezzanine encoding for high-end, intra-, and inter-studio/facility applications.
Sessions on broadcast infrastructure will explore the nature of continued broadcast signal distribution over coaxial cable and discuss the evolution of serial digital interface (SDI), including its potential to deliver 100 Gigabit services and enable a seamless transition to internet protocol (IP). Moving into the cloud, conference sessions will focus on how broadcast media-processing capabilities can be migrated to an IP architecture and virtualized across a data center and cloud infrastructure for encoding, master control, disaster recovery, and archiving.
Virtual reality (VR) will again be featured at SMPTE’s annual technical conference. Sessions will explore how standards, quality checks, and best practices can be counted on to protect, and even improve, the audience’s experience with VR. Speakers will present challenges, solutions, and metrics for VR workflows and content interchange, and they will review techniques to increase reliability and ensure the quality of VR productions.
Content security is an ongoing concern for the motion-imaging industry, and SMPTE 2016 conference sessions will investigate the security of Interoperable Master Format (IMF), particularly in the cloud, and the challenges of watermarking UHD/HDR content.
“Reinventing Entertainment Engineering: Merging the Experience of Today With Millennials’ Vision for Tomorrow,” features six millennials in entertainment engineering who will deliver presentations on their experiences, outlooks, and hopes for the future — on what it means to be a millennial in the motion-imaging field today.
Monday, Oct. 24 The annual Women in Technology Luncheon, co-produced with the Hollywood Professional Association’s (HPA®) Women in Post.
The SMPTE Honors & Awards Ceremony
Tuesday, Oct. 25, SMPTE 2016 opening keynote, The Annual General Membership Meeting and the Fellows Luncheon, which is open exclusively to SMPTE Fellows and Life Fellows. The day concludes with the Welcome Reception in the Ray Dolby Exhibit Hall.
Wednesday, Oct. 26, Oktoberfest Reception in the Centennial Exhibit Hall, as well as the HPA Student Film Festival at the Egyptian Theatre.
Thursday, Oct. 27, SMPTE will host a box lunch in both the Ray Dolby and Centennial exhibit halls.
Friday, Oct. 28, in the Ray Dolby Ballroom, the Centennial Gala will celebrate SMPTE’s past, present, and future. SMPTE will honor director James Cameron with Honorary Membership and Douglas Trumbull with the Progress Medal.
Further details about SMPTE 2016 are available at www.smpte2016.org. Centennial Gala tickets and tables may also be purchased independently of SMPTE 2016 registration at www.smptegala.org.