Users had their say during the SMPTE engineering meetings held this week in Burbank, Los Angeles at the Walt Disney Studios. In a special session representatives from broadcasting (including several from Europe) and the motion picture communities contributed their visions on future requirements for media standards.
Many issues mentioned during the session are seen as being critical for interoperability in digital workflows as well as for future media formats: Higher Frame Rate, QuadHDTV (4K) and beyond. This valuable user feedback will help inform the focus and direction of standards development.
In addition to this special session the SMPTE standards Technology Committees made good progress in their work:
- Essence Technology: new image and audio formats, compression and 3D matters, professional reference displays
- Television and Broadband Media Technology: Timed Text/Subtitle and Lip-Sync
- Digital Cinema Technology: 3D subtitles and a new Study Group on Higher Frame rates for 3D/2D cinema
- Network/Infrastructures Technology: new studio, 3D contribution and IP based interfaces including the mapping of various essence formats; a new project on timing and sync aspects in 3D production chains was established
- Metadata and Registers Technology: metadata standards for the MXF file formats, SMPTE metadata work in digital workflows
- Media Systems Control and Services: BXF format, standard for control of media devices via IP networks
- Time and Sync Technology: new types of AV synchronisation and Time Code for network based infrastructures
- Media Packaging Technology: standardisation of the Interoperable Masters Format (IMF), 3D home master
- File Structures and Systems: standards on file based exchange of content, archiving file formats (AXF), multichannel audio in MXF
- The next SMPTE Standards meetings take place in March 2012. For further details on these developments and to learn how to participate in the work of the SMPTE Technology Committees, go to www.smpte.org