From an HD standpoint, there was a sense of history when the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) held its joint winter conference with the Video Services Forum (VSF) last week in Hollywood. Twenty five years ago this month, at the ’81 SMPTE Television Conference at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, NHK staged an elaborate demonstration of the state of HDTV research in Japan, and those present recalled that the demonstration was a catalyst for questions and discussion about HDTV in the U.S.
A quarter century later, SMPTE is continuing its work in this area, and one of the initiatives could have notable impact on the creation and distribution of commercial deliverables. More specifically, SMPTE is focusing on aspect ratio, or the ratio between the width and height of an image. While aspect ratio is not tied to image resolution, newer widescreen sets have a 16:9 aspect ratio, while it is quite common to also see a 4:3 aspect ratio on many sets. With both types in the marketplace, commercials that were delivered in 16:9 may be viewed on a 4:3 set, and vice versa. This creates a quandary when creating commercial deliverables.
“Post houses traditionally need to supply both [a 4:3 and 16:9 version of a commercial],” explained Graham Jones, director of communications engineering for the National Association of Broadcasters. “Since the introduction of HD, there has never been a way to provide that information [on a single deliverable].”
That may be, until now. Jones chairs the SMPTE image formatting ad hoc committee (for those interested, this is under SMPTE’s S-22 TV Systems Technology group), which has developed a proposed standard that would enable an advertiser to send just one deliverable to a station, in widescreen, which would include pan and scan metadata communicating what part of the widescreen image should be broadcast for 4:3.
The development–a format for pan and scan information–involves embedding the metadata into any standard or high definition digital video format, meaning that it could be applied to any deliverable including a 1080I or 720P version, Jones explained. This step would occur at the postproduction house when it creates the deliverables.
“Usually stations broadcast the center cut [of a 16:9 image for 4:3], but it doesn’t have to be [that portion of the image],” Jones explained. “This gives advertisers flexibility.”
The proposed standard is currently in final committee draft, and the balloting is scheduled to close at the end of the month. A few more steps will follow before completion of the process.
“It will probably become a standard, hopefully by summer,” Jones said. He related that the development will also be previewed at the Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) Technology Retreat later this month.