by Lidia Paulinska | May 22, 2016
April 2016, NAB – At the start of NAB, SMPTE held the Digital Cinema Summit. The highlight speaker was Ang Lee who spoke following a discussion that HDR was not a tradeoff for future films, but was a technology that must be adopted due to its benefits in the story telling and immersive aspects of films. He spoke on pushing the limits of cinema.
One of the examples was with his film “Life of Pi”. In this film, the story is the enticing element. One aspect of the story was how to visually represent an irrational number and bring it to the screen as an experience. The film used 3D as an extra dimension in this story telling. HDR and HFR are also new technologies that can help with the story telling. HFR (High Frame Rate) has been under a recent resurgence as an alternative the traditional 24fps, and have been championed at NAB and other events by Doug Trumbull. Doug has been advocating 120fps content for both 2D and 3D films. Doug’s latest workflows include cameras, servers and editing flow for support of 3D, HDR, and 4K all at 120fps.
The workflow has over 40x the data of standard film, but produces an entirely different cinema experience. At NAB they had previews of an 11min clip of Ang Lee’s new film ‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,’ that was shot in 4K, HDR, 3D at 120fps. The preview was shown using dual Christie laser projectors and standard surround sound.
The clip provided an exposure to a new level of a “clarity of image” that has not been seen before by cinema audiences. This clarity of image defines a new challenge for the storyteller to be able to utilize this technology and enhance the story being told. The HFR feature also brings new cinematic capabilities to both 2D and 3D films. The HFR aspect also brings a new level of brightness and smoothness to the playback which can be used to enhance cinematic emotions and action without causing viewer fatigue. The overall common experience of the audience after viewing the clip – mostly related to technology and secondarily the cinematic use of the technology was “WOW!”.
by Lidia Paulinska | May 22, 2016
April, NAB – At the end of the day, the market is more and more competitive and we need our customers not only survive but also thrive – stated Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine Communications (IC), moderator of the power session “Transformation 2016: Media Technology Using IP, Cloud and Virtualization”. The session that took place at the Imagine Communications booth during NAB show, was featuring the panelists: Antonio Neri, EVP/GM, Enterprise Group, HPE and Steve Guggenheimer, CVP and Chief Evangelist of Microsoft Corporation.
Cloud-based technologies become more and more popular and there is a less speculation and more interest. But as the technology grows in popularity there is complexity involved. The options to choose from, the providers to select in order to put the pieces together. In the broadcast world everyone knows how complex the market is – stated the panelists – we want to make the complexity understandable. The cooperation between IC, Microsoft and HP Enterprise allow the companies to get full solution and reduce their own risk. So the customer does not need to talk to separate partners. It also to avoid confusion what works together etc. and what is not the best fit.
IC, Microsoft and HP Enterprise provide the leaders innovators solution. Microsoft is platform provider. HP is more cloud broker. Prior to NAB Imagine Communication launched 3 important applications, that required months and months of testing if the new solutions work. As Charlie Vogt mentioned IC and it’s partners goal is their customers to thrive versus not just survive. The reason is the move to the cloud, while necessary is scary, the broadcast community has been on premise for over 50 years, and the change is new.
The discussion included that cloud is a partnership – the tools, workflow, software and support all need to work together to provide the reliability and features of the current solution. As it moves to the cloud the partnership with HPE addresses the security aspects of the Azure cloud which are new to the broadcast community.
by Lidia Paulinska | May 21, 2016
April, Fathom events – On Saturday, April 30, 2016, I had the privilege and pleasure of viewing a screening of a live performance of Richard Strauss’s inexorable one-act opera Elektra,* the concluding operatic work in a year-long 10th anniversary celebration of “MET: LIVE in HD,” which had featured ten of the world’s greatest operas on giant cinema screens throughout the US.
The production premiered at the Aix-en-Provance Festival in France in 2013 and is considered to be a landmark contemporary staging of Strauss’s masterpiece. It was produced by the renowned Patrice Chereau who tragically died shortly after the opening at the age of 68. (A DVD is available of that production.)
The superb cast is headed by the smoldering intensity of soprano Nina Stemme in the title role whose Elektra is unremittingly consumed with a passion for vengeance upon her mother Klytamnestra, widow of Agamennon, performed masterfully by mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier, and her lover, the cowardly Aegisth, convincingly portrayed by Burchard Ulrich, who have brutally murdered Elektra’s father Agamemnon. Bass-baritone Eric Owens gives a strong rendering of her sympathetic brother Orest and Adrianne Pieczonka rounds out this incomparable cast as her weakling sister Chrysothemis who plays a perfect counterpoint with her banal domestic aspirations to her possessed sister Elektra who has dedicated her life to revenging her father’s murder, She realizes her goal in the end, but at the expense of her sanity.
Staged in an ominously sparse gray space with costumes to match, Chereau’s smoldering rendering of Strauss’s masterpiece is a production for the ages and opera at it’s best!
* * * Significantly, Sigmund Freud used Sophocles’ Elektra in his analysis of a daughter’s attachment to her father, and Oedipus Rex as the basis for his theory of a son’s attraction to his mother. The so-called “Oedipus” and “Elektra” complexes continue to be very much a part of Freudian psychoanalysis.
by Lidia Paulinska and Hugh McMahon
by Lidia Paulinska | May 21, 2016
April, NAB – Two years ago when we started to talk about IP and a question was – Can we do it? A year ago we were asking – Should we do it? This year a question is – How we do it? Steve Reynolds from Imagine Communications was describing the inception of AIMS, Alliance for IP Media Solutions, during our 1:1 interview. Reynolds added that in 2015 a lot of customers came to Imagine Communication with the concerns that they want to do IP but they were worried that is going to be a fragmentation in that segment of the industry. That was clearly need for AIMS.
NAB 2016 was a first year for AIMS, an industry consortium led by broadcast engineers, technologists, visionaries, vendors and business executives dedicated to an open-standards approach that moves broadcast and media companies to a virtualized, IP-based environment.
Reynolds explained that AIMS does not develop specs and standards. AIMS is trade of mind, it is marketing organization – he stated. The goal was to group the companies that primarily are working on broadcast technologies to get together and agree on the common set on the standards we want to use. The standards that are already developed. AIMS focus is on educating, evangelizing and spreading the adoption the technologies, but not to develop specs and standards. We here to help the adoption – he added. When the company joins AIMS it signs the adopter agreement, which says that they will promote this use of technologies, the AIMS roadmap, as you prefer to IP production.
More information about AIMS can be found here: http://aimsalliance.org/
by Lidia Paulinska | May 11, 2016
April 2016, NAB – Voice and language which is the most natural modalities we acquired since birth. No wonder that we are searching for communication with devices using our voice and language. Nuance Communications, has developed products that provide speech and imaging applications, is a leader in this area. If a customer uses voice commands to talk to automobile there is 99% chances that it is Nuance technology.
Kenneth Harper, VP, Devices & Ecosystem of Nuance talked to us about last advancements in transforming the TV experience with voice. Nuance has been working for some time on specific solution called Dragon TV that is going to have huge impact on the TV experience.
The TV room is usually a complex multi-person environment where the commands are mixed with conversations making voice control is a big challenge. While you are watching TV, your kids are playing or your other devices are talking to you. There are some advancements to solve that problem – said Harper. One of them is called signal enhancement. Nuance is looking at audio that is being recorded, usually from two different microphones that, depending on set up, use an integrated technology and solution that we use that can sit in the remote control or set top box. The technology trys to determine who is actually speaking in the living room. When we determine who that speaker is, we put what we called “a beamer” on that speaker. Then as a post processing task from all audio that was recorded, we enhanced that audio and suppress everything else. It called signal enhancement.
Accuracy matter in TV experience and Nuance making it work well.
TV is not one piece but multiple pieces. Nuance covers the entire spectrum for TV by providing the enabling technology to manufacturers and then integrate it this with specific hardware devices or specific solution. Now when the second screens are considered as TV as well, a companion app is in use in that case. Sometimes it is at the set up box, sometimes inside the remote control. The customers have their preferences and Nuance follows their needs for both solutions– said Harper.
There is a difference between using TV and training Dragon for PC use to helping write an document or general input to a computer– mentioned Harper referring to our journalism work. TV uses mostly short comments that are fairly predictable. For TV there are certain things people going to do.
There are usually short commands, 5-6 unique words, we know the vernacular. Those are things that can be optimized – stated Harper. If a customer search for ‘movies with Bill Murray”. That’s how it all comes together.
The future of the living room is set. TV becomes the central hub of the home and voice is becoming the primary interface.
