Actress Olivia Munn will host the 64th Primetime Emmy® Engineering Awards tonight at the Loews Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced today. Munn portrays financial news reporter Sloan Sabbith on the HBO series “The Newsroom,” created by Aaron Sorkin, and will be featured on Fox comedy New Girlthis season in a recurring role.
The Television Academy also announced this year’s Engineering Emmys honorees, who will receive their awards and be recognized at the ceremony:
The Philo T. Farnsworth Award
The Philo T. Farnsworth Award honors an agency, company or institution whose contributions over time have significantly impacted television technology and engineering.
Eastman Kodak Company is this year’s recipient of the Philo. T. Farnsworth Award for its long history of contributions to the television industry, among which are innovation and leadership in image capture, processing and manipulation. Known as “the filmmaker’s film maker,” Kodak has also made many significant contributions that ushered in television production’s digital age. The company’s pioneering work in creating and deploying Cineon systems for scanning and enhancing high-resolution images paved the way for what is now commonplace in High Definition postproduction. It also produced image-scanning technology still used in the postproduction and restoration of film-based images for television. Kodak’s research in electronic imaging contributed significantly to the invention of digital cameras that now dominate primetime production. Kodak’s is a television legacy that is rich and storied.
The Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award
The Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award honors a living individual whose ongoing contributions have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering.
This year’s award will be given to Dr. Richard Green, the founder and, until recently, the president and CEO of Cable Television Laboratories. Green guided the cable industry through the transition from its analog roots to the broadband architectures of today, stressing interoperability and standardization across a broad range of operators and suppliers.
In the 1970s he served as a technical manager at the ABC Television Network in Hollywood before moving to CBS as the director of the CBS Advanced Television Technology Laboratory in Stamford, Conn. He helped set up the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and joined PBS as senior vice president of broadcast operations and engineering, in which capacity he created and oversaw new national origination and transmission facilities. Serving multiple times as CCIR and later ITU committee chair, Green has spearheaded efforts to establish and maintain international standards for the creation and transmission of television content.
Green is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the CTAM board of directors, the IEC (International Engineering Consortium) board of directors, and the National Cable Television Center and Museum executive committee. He is chairman of Study Group 9 of the International Telecommunications Union, serves as a member of the FCC Technical Advisory Council, and holds memberships with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers.
Engineering Emmys
Eight Engineering Emmys also will be awarded. Presented to an individual, company or organization for engineering developments so significant an improvement on existing methods or so innovative in nature that they materially affect the transmission, recording or reception of television. This year’s Engineering Emmy recipients are:
Colorfront, Ltd. for Colorfront On-Set Dailies and FilmLight, Ltd. for look/color management.
Colorfront
Within the past two years the entire high-end HD episodic television industry has experienced a seismic shift and moved from shooting 35mm film negative to digital. A new generation of digital cameras raised the quality bar, allowing productions to jump from 35mm film — skipping tape — and adopt file-based digital workflows. This eliminated the need for negative stock, photochemical development, telecine and video transfer, offering great savings to productions while achieving exceptional production value and quality.
Colorfront On-Set Dailies allowed high-end episodic television shows that switched to digital file-based workflows to process and deliver multiple hours of footage each day so that dailies requirements could remain unchanged and deliver color-graded, sound-sync images with burn-ins in multiple file formats for editorial, production review, DVDs, viewing copies, etc.
Colorfront On-Set Dailies was introduced in the US at NAB 2011, and quickly became the de-facto standard for the leading labs and high-end postproduction facilities to process hours of digitally acquired material daily. This has changed the way high-end episodic television productions are created.
Filmlight’s Truelight On-Set and Baselight TRANSFER
Truelight On-Set applies ASC CDL standard color correction to the live feed of digital cameras, allowing cinematographers and directors to make color grading decisions while shooting. Truelight keeps on-set monitors properly calibrated so ASC CDL metadata can be applied to dailies and final color correction, preserving the creative intent established on-set while retaining the full dynamic range of the camera image. Truelight also applies color transforms to enable Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) workflow.
Baselight TRANSFER is deployed near-set to handle the end-to-end requirements of dailies workflow, from ingest and review through to the generation of material for editorial, VFX and other deliverables. Baselight transcodes raw files from all common digital cameras, syncs sound, applies color and burn-ins and manages metadata. Baselight includes full support for ACES and Truelight monitor calibration.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) and the American Society of Cinematographers Color Decision List (ASC CDL)
ACES
The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) is a SMPTE standards-based color-management architecture designed for the production, mastering and long-term archiving of motion picture and television (non-live broadcast) production content. Developed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in collaboration with motion-imaging and color-science experts, ACES provides a set of digital image encoding specifications, transforms and recommended practices that enable the creation and processing of high-fidelity images. It offers a larger dynamic range of scene tones, a wider color gamut and greater mathematical precision than is possible with 10-bit Cineon encoding or High Definition Television standards such as ITU-R Rec. BT.709.
ACES also resolves ambiguities frequently linked to transforms between so-called “log” and “linear” image encoding, as well as those associated with using a variety of display devices during production, postproduction and mastering. ACES supports comprehensive cross-platform image and color management, along with flexible workflow implementation for different imaging processes, including film and digital camera acquisition, on-set color management, digital intermediate, visual-effects production and re-mastering, as well as final color grading. ACES expands the scope of the creative palette by removing color-management limitations of legacy motion-imaging workflows.
ASC CDL
Developed by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Technology Committee, the ASC Color Decision List (ASC CDL) enables primary color-correction data to be passed from the shooting set to dailies and editorial post, as well as interchanged between different color-correction systems and applications. Critically important to cinematographers, directors and the creative teams responsible for designing the artistic look for a motion picture or TV production, the ASC CDL helps communicate scene-specific “looks” throughout the production and postproduction pipeline in an iteratively modifiable fashion that can also form the basis or starting point for final color grading.
This cross-platform data exchange combined with look-management and color-grading applications that incorporate Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) can consistently create matching results across multiple imaging platforms, thereby improving the quality while maintaining the fidelity of scene specific “looks” that represent the filmmakers’ creative intent.
Dolby Laboratories Inc. for the Dolby PRM-4200 Professional Reference Monitor and Sony Electronics Inc. for the BVM E250 OLED Reference Monitor.
Dolby
The Dolby PRM-4200 Professional Reference Monitor is a Grade 1 monitor that offers a new standard for critical viewing applications. The monitor renders true black levels, highly accurate dark detail, and the most precise color possible at all luminance levels and in all formats. Dolby uses its patented process called Dual Modulation: a modulated LCD in concert with a dynamically modulated LED backlight unit that forms the process that gives exceptional image quality. The backlight is a full array of fully modulated LEDs and with filtering provides full accuracy of blacks, color and grayscale. Perhaps the most innovative feature of the monitor is its ability to accurately display the full latitude of today’s high-end digital cameras. The Dolby monitor perfects the creative process for colorists and cinematographers by ensuring that the final image will match what is seen on the display.
Sony
The Sony OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) reference-grade monitor incorporates groundbreaking processing and imaging capabilities designed to truly replace CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) in critical viewing. The OLED has transcended the other panels, including CRTs in resolution, colorimetry, black level, magnetism and weight.
Sony’s OLED is a self-emitting device and can deliver deep blacks, high contrast, accurate color reproduction and quick response with virtually no motion blur. Its organic materials react to the control of the electrical current immediately, and do not emit light in the absence of an electrical current. In this way, the OLED display panel features superb black performance and quick response to fast-motion pictures.
In addition, Sony’s OLED display panel delivers a wider color gamut meeting ITU-R, BT-709, EBU, SMPTE C broadcast standards, and conforming to the wider DCI-P3 color gamut. This is breakthrough technology for applications where visual performance and accuracy are paramount, offering an unbeatable combination of image reproduction, color accuracy, reliability and stability.
Netflix, Inc. for Netflix Streaming of Movies and Television programs.
Today, more than 27 million subscribers regularly access the Netflix streaming service from 800 types of consumer electronic devices. Netflix Streaming Service delivers over 1 billion hours of TV shows and movies each month and accounts for up to 30% of “last-mile” internet traffic in the U.S. on any given night. The Netflix cloud infrastructure — cloud-based video encoding and encryption, cloud-based bookmarking, multiple-profile stream encryption, “Open Connect” content delivery network, adaptive streaming technology, dynamic app updates and personalization technologies — delivers the service at scale with 99.99% availability. The major patent portfolio that Netflix has developed, combined with the scale of service delivery, widespread market use of the services and the validation of an alternative business model for television distribution, has changed the television industry in fundamental ways. Netflix streaming of movies and television shows has been an engine driving digital distribution of television; it is a fundamental spur driving TV Everywhere efforts by MVPDs in response to its game-changing engineering achievement.
Toon Boom Animation Inc. for the Toon Boom Storyboard Pro.
Designed for storyboard artists, Storyboard Pro is the only true storyboarding application that offers all the key tasks that storyboard artists require for any type of project, be it animation or live-action. The software boasts all the necessary tools available: key functionalities include powerful drawing tools, import of existing artwork and photos, camera-movement capabilities, sound synchronization and animatic creation. Storyboard Pro also supports scripting format from Final Draft with automatic parsing and pre-cut, as well as all major bitmap, vector-graphic format and audio format, allowing storyboard artists to build boards, shot lists, complex shot sequences and any other idea imaginable, all in one single package.
Engineering Plaque
The Engineering Plaque honors achievements that exhibit a high level of engineering and are important to the progress of the industry. The Engineering Plaque is not a consolation prize, but a positive recognition of engineering achievements on a different level of technology and industry importance than the Emmy statuette. This year the plaque goes to:
Adobe Systems for the Adobe Pass Viewer Authentication process.
Adobe Pass has been embraced widely by major U.S. Pay TV operators and has enabled the rapid development and deployment of TV Everywhere applications and services to their customers and furthering the evolution of the television experience and digital content across multiple screens and device types. Adobe Pass for CNN went live on CNN.com and via the CNN iOS App in June, 2011. Since that date, over 150 Pay TV operators in the U.S. have integrated with Adobe Pass so their customers can access TV Everywhere content. Major live events that have been enabled by Adobe Pass in 2012 include: The Olympics (NBC), where the company counted more than 88 million authenticated streams during the Games, March Madness (Turner), Euro Soccer Cup (ESPN), NBA Playoffs (ESPN) and live news coverage (CNN). These 150 Pay TV operators represent over 97% of all Pay TV households in the U.S. On the programmer side, there are over 40 live sites and apps from leading media companies — including but not limited to Viacom, NBCU, Fox, Disney, ESPN, Cartoon Network and Scripps Networks — that depend on Adobe Pass for viewer authentication and enabling their TV Everywhere experiences for consumers. For more information please visit here.
About the 64th Primetime Emmy Engineering Awards
The 64th Primetime Emmy Engineering Awards are overseen by co-chairs Chris Cookson, president, Sony Pictures Technologies; Geoff Katz, vice president, business development and marketing, Watchwith; and Wendy Aylsworth, senior vice president of technology, Warner Bros. Committee members are Curtis Clark, ASC; David Feldstein, executive producer, mobile and advanced platforms, Fox Sports; Kevin Hamburger, supervising producer, The Talk; Eileen Horta, Sound Editors Governor, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences; David Jensen, partner, Monitor; Will Kreth, senior director—advanced video strategy, Time Warner Cable; the late Bob Lambert, CEO, the Digital Firm; Frank Morrone, C.A.S., Sound Governor, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences; John D. O’Brien, Electronic Production Governor, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences; Barry Zegel, CBS.
