The traditional yearly gathering of broadcast production engineers and managers is only a few weeks away. From 27 to 29 January the EBU headquarters in Geneva (CH) will host again the Production Technology Seminar, the brainchild of the EBU PMC, which manages the EBU TECHNICAL work on professional production technology. There are still some seats left, first-come first-served.
HD events
| 2008 has featured a number of large HD productions, including sports event such as the Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland. How these events are produced and distributed will be the opening theme of the seminar. The session will not only look back at 2008, but it will also detail the preparations for the Ice Hockey World Cup 2009. A crucial part of HD broadcasts is the choice of technology, especially compression formats and bitrates. Broadcasters will report on HD formats tests for several types of production, including mainstream and drama. |  |
Loudness, DAB+ and surround
Day 1 will also put a spotlight on audio. ORF's Florian Camerer will explain how the EBU P/LOUD Group is aiming to help stop the loudness problems causing many consumer complaints, while EBU's Mathias Coinchon will share details on the EBU DAB+ audio codec tests. There also is a session on the use of surround sound in 50p infrastructures.
IT and archives
Day 2 will focus on IT-based production and archives. Special attention will be given to Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), file-based production and on how to synchronise a TV facility using Ethernet-based infrastructures. The latter is related to the work of the joint EBU-SMPTE Task Force on Time and Synchronisation, which will meet directly after the seminar to finalise its report to the industry. As concerns the archives, BBC's Richard Wright will enlighten the audience on long-term preservation and relevant technologies. Also several other iniatives in Europe on opening up audio and video archives will be presented.
The morning of day 3 (29 Jan) is reserved for future-oriented developments, including 3DTV, higher framerates and gaming. The last session is reserved for applications and will feature VRT's Scoop system. Register here.