Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to Broadcast to post the podcast where the Key Code Media team dives into innovations shaping the future of broadcast, creative and AV industries. And today we're joined by two trailblazers in our industry. First, Renard T. Jenkins, the outgoing SMPTE president whose illustrious career includes leadership roles at Warner Bros. TV One, PBS and Turner Broadcasting. Renard is currently the President and CEO of ITwo A2 Technologies, where he continues to revolutionize creative technology solutions across media, healthcare and education.
And Rich Welsh, incoming SMPTE President and Senior Vice President of innovation at Deluxe, plus chairman at Volustore. Rich's groundbreaking work spans companies like Dolby, Technicolor and Sundog Media Toolkit where he's advanced everything from HDR to 3D and cloud pipelines.
Today we'll explore the current state of SMPTE standards like HDR and ST2110 plus emerging technologies like virtual production and USD. And we'll answer your burning questions in the live Q and A. This is Broadcast to Post. Let's get started. Why don't we start with some of the basics?
Let's talk about what exactly a SMPTE standard is for the uninitiated.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: Richer, the incoming president, that one's yours.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm happy to say that one.
Hopefully I should know.
Yeah. So SMPTE's best known as the standards development organization and it lives in an ecosystem of other standards organizations who we work with and also within the industry.
You know, we're the place that people come when they want to develop standards to help them with things like interoperability and compatibility.
And SMPTE's history actually has been standards from the very beginning. Our first standard was 35 millimeter film. Before that there was no standardized speed or film gauge.
And so C.F. jenkins, our founder, standardized film and then realized that actually there was more to be done in the motion picture space. So he founded SMPE and that then became SMPTE when television was invented around a decade later. And you know, from there we've been really at the center of media technology standards for over 100 years, which is incredible to think about.
If we skip forward to today, the process of making standards is much more streamlined. But also we recognize that we don't need, for instance, a full blown standard for certain kind of practices that we want to normalize in the industry and make sure everyone's doing the same thing, but not absolutely require people to do in the way a standard does with certain technology stacks. So outside of standards, we also have what are known as RDDs, registered disclosure documents and anyone can publish one of those. And they're effectively saying, look, we have a working practice and this is what that looks like. And we want to use SMPTE as the conduit to get that out to the community.
We also have engineering guidelines, recommended practices, and then full standards, the sts. And you know, each standard has a number.
Yeah. And we can go more into the process, but effectively where we are as an organization now is that we publish full blown standards. And this is something that a manufacturer or a software developer could go away. They will know that their product is able to interoperate with other products that also follow the same standard. And that's absolutely the cornerstone of this, the ability for the ecosystem to work together on an engineering level. And that's what ASSIMTI is all about. You know, we're trying to make life easier for everybody who makes wonderful TV shows, news, live sports, movies, adverts and everything else going on in the ecosystem of media. But also, you know, with, with high quality and, and you know, we've come to expect that really high quality output and, and that's what these engineering efforts in standards go towards.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: I find that immensely interesting because a lot of people who are on the forefront of technology will talk about there's a new sifting standard, but little do a lot of people know that there's been months or even years prior to that to ideate to come up with that concept before it becomes a standard. Can you briefly walk us through the process of how something goes from a concept to actually being approved? And as a SMPTE standard, sure.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Typically we'll have a group come to us. This might be, for instance, content owners like the film studios, or it might be a group of individuals who are all trying to solve the same problem. So once we get to the point of agreeing to do a standard, we'll then look at whether that standard should fit within an existing family or suite of standards in a particular area, say digital cinema or video over ip, or whether it needs its own new set of documents and a new family, effectively. So if we think like XR as a good example, augmented reality, virtual reality, that's definitely going to be its own suite. You know, it's not. It may share some commonality with other suites of standards, but there would really be, you know, a good case for something like that, that it's worth having its own group of standards. And at that point then we'll set up a new ST standards committee. It gets a number and then we go through the process of developing that standard, and that can be quite quick if the foundation's already there or it can take longer. If it's something where we're building a whole suite of standards, typically that can take a long time, although the individual standards themselves don't take as long. And so we're trying to get now into a much more rapid publishing cycle where we develop the standards quickly in an agile software development type of manner. So using things like GitHub and HTML documents, and we want to basically make that process a lot faster. I think people kind of associate SMPTE with being a little bit slow in developing the standards. Not without reason. You know, if you're going to make something that's absolutely watertight from an engineering point of view, you absolutely can't rush it. But if you have all the components that you need in, in place, you shouldn't have to spend a long time developing a standard that really has all the foundations and the component parts there. So we absolutely support the rapid development of standards. And whereas they used to take years, they now for certain take months. And then bearing in mind that those standards will live quite a long life, they'll go on beyond the initial publication phase. We have to then maintain that. So there'll be changes in technology. I mean, a really easy one to think about is security. You know, Internet security suites, encryption suites change, and we have to update standards to reflect that. If there is a weakness in the same as any other industry and companies and individuals have to update their security, you know, if that security is embedded in a standard, we would have to update that standard.
So there's a whole maintenance life cycle that goes on. And also other standards, like organizations pick up SMPTE standards and effectively adopt them. So ISO is a good example of that. A lot of the media technology standards that ISO publish originated as SMPTE standards.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: So the wonderful thing about standards is that everyone has them. And that means the folks have standards that fall outside of kind of the SMPTE construct.
[00:08:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: We look at things that are very ubiquitous to our industry, like ProRes by Apple or NDI by, well now vis RT. So how does SMPTE reconcile those standards that are developed outside of the SMPTE scope versus what's being done within smpte.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: Yeah, I think, you know, Rich hit on a number of things. And the main way that we do that is by partnering with across the industry, with other organizations. We spend a lot of time building those partnerships, working with other organizations and making sure that we understand what the needs are of the industry. By doing that, we can find ways in which a lot of these other open source, some of them are open source and some of them are not, but some of these other standards that are being created can be integrated into the larger interoperable workflow. So when you think about the fact that our industry has just, you know, inputs coming from all over the place, having a place like SMPTE where we can actually bring all of that together to have a conversation about how do we actually make all of this work properly and how can we make it work in a sustainable manner, those are the things where we really do dive in. And so we have those conversations. We work with other organizations, we, we look at their standards, they look at ours. We. We see where we can actually place some of them together. I mean, you know, VSF in 2110 and, you know, an INMAS from AMWA, you know, all of these types of things work together as a suite. So all of the hard work of those other organizations and the hard work of the individuals within SMPTE play together in order to make that work.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: So five or six years ago, a 2030 vision paper was released by the folks over at Movie Labs, which is a nonprofit organization with members of technology from the five big studios. And Movie Labs was an. The vision paper was an ambitious look to the future. Here's where the puck is going to be in 2030 and how the filmmaking will be done in 2030. And as I said, it was very ambitious. So what is the relationship with some of SMPTE's standards and the various other ways CPTE contributes his standards with Movie Labs, which. With. With which had a much more robust goal?
[00:10:42] Speaker C: Yeah, I would simply say that first, full disclosure, I was a member of the. The Movie Labs board. And the way that we work with Movie Labs today is that one, we have their cto. Jim Hellman is a member of our board of Governors, and we work very closely with movielabs in order to see how standards can be integrated into the processes and the workflows that they're describing as the future of movie and media production. We work closely with them across the board within the standards process, as well as in various conferences and things throughout the year. We also have working groups within SMPTE right now that have members of Movie Labs as a part of those working groups, and they also have a voice at the table as we are developing these things. My job as past president is really about partnerships and about supporting Rich as he comes into his position and supporting his vision going forward. Movie Labs is part of that vision. And so that's how we support that. And a lot of the things that they're talking about in 2030 tie into things like video over IP, virtual production, you know, enhanced, and, you know, next generation audio. All of these types of things, along with HDR and all these other types of things are part of giving customers the most impactful presentation of the work that the artists have put together. And that's where SMPTE and Movie Labs really focus in on the art and science of what it is that we do in the background.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: I like that you mentioned that, because there's a lot of similarities between art and creativity and technology. There's an idea, it's formulated, it's crafted, but then it's put out to the world and then you see what sticks, see if people appreciate it, see if people use it. And so I'd be curious to hear what standards has SMPTE approved and put out there over the past several years that just has taken off and people can't get enough of.
[00:12:54] Speaker C: Oh, the big one, you know. The big one, Rich.
Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: I mean, this, you know, there's a revolution going on in, in live in television. And video over ip obviously, is a huge change for not only the manufacturers, but the broadcasters themselves. What surprises me about 2110 is where it's being adopted in places maybe we didn't originally think of when we first started work on that standard. The one that stands out to me, that I love and I can't recommend enough as an experience for people to go and try is the Las Vegas sphere. You know, that incredible venue with its unbelievable immersive screen on the inside, and of course the huge screen on the outside as well. The two largest screens in the world, one's on the inside and ones on the outside.
They both work because of 2110. You know, that's an amazing venue, an amazing experience, but at the end of the day, it's an artist's vision. Be that the live music, you know, artists that perform there, or the filmmakers who are producing content for that for that venue. And that absolutely relies on perfect, perfect video sync across that huge display surface. And likewise for the outside, you know, that's a huge marketing vehicle. And again, that has to work like perfectly. It can't be glitchy or panels out of sync with each other or any of that kind of thing. And 2110 is the only standard that they could find that would actually do the job for what they needed to deliver in that venue. And I think That's a great kind of testament first to the work that went into that standard, but also to the kind of outside of the box thinking of how to use it. And I know Renard, that's just the tip of the iceberg in places that 2110 is being used.
[00:14:49] Speaker C: Yeah, Rich, you know, one of the things that I really like about 2110 is that it was an industry effort. You know, VSF and AMWA and SMPTE all played a big part in bringing 2110 to where it is today. And they continue to work together on, you know, advancing it forward. We what I love is when you're riding the tram and you're in Las Vegas and you pass by the sphere in the morning, there's a giant smiley face that actually says good morning to you. That's 2110 in its most simple example of how it can work. There's also a lot of work that's going on right now and a lot of development that's happening for virtual production. And they are finding ways to use 2110 that were once again, like Rich said, they were not things that we were thinking of at the time when all of this was being put together. And, and then you start looking at live sports. Live sports is just using it like, I mean, just everywhere. And one of the greatest examples that I've seen right now, one of the best has been the folks at TV Global in Brazil. They are killing it with 2110 and they are killing it using 8K. And their live sports innovation and development is just moving at a just a really rapid pace. There's a ton of innovation going on down there. I'm very impressed by how they're using it. I want to see where 2110 goes in 2025, because 2024 was sort of like not really a coming out party, but it was sort of like all of a sudden people realized its power.
So now that they've realized its power and it's its ability to be malleable, you know, and work it in some of these legacy, these legacy facilities without having to sort of just cut off what you're doing. You're building while you're moving. And 2110 allows you to be able to do that. One of the things that I laugh about is that those of us who started, you know, and worked in the live, the live event area, you know, we got tired of carrying all that copper around with us. You know, when you went to a stadium or you went to a facility that was not pre wired, you know, I mean, I can literally tell people I used to dig ditches on golf courses in order to run cable. You know, that was the way that it worked. Now you don't have to do that. You know, you have the ability to do a lot of this stuff over ip and that just makes life a whole lot easier.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: So there's also some other standards which are even more recent than 2110. Talk to me a little bit about microservices and XR and ARM and how those standards are resonating out in the wild.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: Yeah, with microservices. We were actually involved with microservices probably about seven years ago. We started doing some work with a few organizations that were looking at how those modular blocks could be a part of a different way of looking at the media supply chain.
Broadcasters were more so looking at it. And then the film industry said, hey, wait, these microservice sort of modular way of looking at production pipeline as well as looking at media supply chain can come together. And so, you know, and both of these, you know, both industries feed off of each other and they always have. And that's, that's what's really great about it. Microservices in them, in themselves. For those who are, who are not aware, it is a, you know, you think about it as a, a simple but closed small process that can actually be replicated and moved into other workflows. So this is when you start thinking about our workflows as more of a sort of a Lego in a building block type of way, instead of thinking it in a linear fashion, which was, you know, an older way of thinking about workflows, like, you know, probably pre1999 things were very linear. Now with the sort of integration of microservices, we are able to do things at a much more dynamic way and a much more dynamic scale. So if you have, say, you know, you're using your ESB to kind of pipe down into your workflow, you can have a microservice that is simply saying, I am going to create an output for specifically for a specific streamer. And then you can have another one that would go for another streamer because they all have different requirements that helps you to be able to have one input and multiple outputs.
That kind of change in the distribution platforms now makes it much more palatable for people who are working in hybrid situations or working in legacy areas to be able to integrate these types of things. And that's one of those things that SMPTE continues to work very hard on.
When it comes to XR and VR, we're just starting those conversations with the individuals who are actually working on standards in those spaces. We do have some working groups that we are talking about starting in 2025 and I do look forward to seeing where that goes because I see that technology as the next step in storytelling.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: If we flip the script on 2110, it's had enormous popularity. But have there been any standards that have been worked on and have been put out there and just haven't resonated? Or are there standards that there are just some fundamental roadblocks that we haven't overcome yet to make it viable for folks?
[00:20:40] Speaker A: I mean, you know, certainly don't want to throw anyone under, under any buses. But you know, you can look at some of the lessons we've learned from standards developed that maybe had unintended consequences. And I think a really good example of that is mxf. You know, as that came in, you know, we were working on that alongside lots of other groups actually. I know MXF was by far probably the biggest industry effort at the time.
Obviously that was in order for broadcasters, primarily for broadcasters to transition from tape based workflows to file based workflows and facilitate that. And I think one of the key points of it and the X in MXF is extensible. And yeah, it's extensible to the point that you. There's like a thousand versions of mxf. So in efforts to make it open and flexible to the user's needs, we also moved away from what you would traditionally think of as standards constraints. And the reason that standards are constrained typically is to allow product manufacturers and integrators and broadcasters and studios to be able to actually adopt the technology and know that when they plug cable into box and box into other box via cable, they talk to each other, be that over IP or further back, obviously things like SDI and so on. But the point is that without the standards that just wouldn't happen. It would be the Wild West. MXF was interesting because like I said, in an effort to be kind of more software oriented and make it very extensible, we ended up with a lack of interoperability, you know, spinning to another standard where maybe adoption isn't as wide as it could be. IMF is a good example. You know, we've done loads of work. IMF is used widely by studios for archiving and certainly is used a lot for interchange in the post production space and particularly in the theatrical cinema or theatrical releasing in cinema space. IMF is very popular but, you know, that hasn't maybe seen as much adoption as we would like, but it's a slow burn with that. And again, I think this comes down to a lot of things are not always adopted as quickly as you think they might be. And cloud is a good example. You know, we're still, you know, certainly on the broadcast side, we're still a long way to go with the kind of full adoption of cloud as the. As the kind of primary infrastructure for live. And there are lots of good technical reasons why that hasn't happened yet, but it's in progress and things like that. Absolutely. Other standards effectively hinge off adoption of technologies. So, you know, if we were more cloud based, and cloud production workflows are pretty common now in the filmmaking space. And, you know, a lot of the movies that I work on directly, you know, we're almost 100% cloud. And we, we try not to get out of the cloud if we can because, you know, it's much better if you stay there. But, you know, as the technology matures and the industry matures and the workflows mature, we'll see those standards get picked up. But certainly we've learned our lesson from standards that maybe haven't been adopted as much as we would like.
And, you know, I guess you have to. If you don't break things, you don't really learn anything.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And, you know, what I like about what you said, Rich, is that we can look at these standards that even though they may not have gotten the adoption that we were expecting at the time that they were conceived, they're still playing a major part in how we are actually getting things done and the workflows that are being built around it. You talk about how we're doing so much of this work in the cloud in the film community.
When I was at Warner, one of the things that we were focused on was dailies in the cloud because, you know, that process in itself was a very manual process. And not only a manual process, but it was, you know, very physical process. And being able to get that into the cloud took, you know, the use of IMF and then being able to understand how we could actually do that. So there, there, there's you know, there's sort of the desire at the beginning of the conversations about where something can be developed and where it could go. And then there's the reality of what you actually run into once you put it into the wild. And I think both IMF and MXF have both just benefited our industry tremendously thus far. And they still have room to be further developed and further to go.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: Now we touched a little bit on this earlier, which is how SMPTE worked with different groups and how SMPTE is embracing working with open source and GitHub, et cetera. But there's been a big push outside of SMPTE for things like otio, right, the Open Timeline initiative and also Open Review and Approve. And that all then plays again to the modularity within the vision paper for 2030. So what is, has there been a lot of work with these groups that are developing this kind of open, these open source standards in conjunction with smpte?
[00:26:19] Speaker C: Not as much as I would like. Over the past two years we have spun up a working group that is focused on open source, but we need to get more involved and we need to get more people at the table in order for us to make sure that we're doing things that are going to be interoperable across the industry. The one thing that you, you always have to be careful of with, with any of the standards that are being put out there is that you're thinking globally. You know, when, when you're doing this work, you can sort of get, you know, sort of the engineering dilemma where you can paint yourself into a corner because it's a good idea and you're working on a specific task to fix a specific problem and that's great. And yes, you fix that problem, but in the, you know, sort of, in the development process, you may have created, you know, three other opportunities. And we have to think about when you're looking across at open source, when you're looking at all of these things, how do we make sure that not only are they, you know, truly open source and they are benefiting the entire industry, but are they also, you know, scalable? Is it something that we can actually put out into the wild and it can actually work for a larger community?
Those are things that SMPTE looks at because we think globally, we are a global organization and we don't just think, you know, about what's going on in North America. You know, Rich is our first president from the UK and I think that is a step forward. You know, I am the first president of African descent for this organization and my, my view was to look, why don't we have more, you know, more activity in, you know, Africa, in South America, you know, to be honest, in, you know, in places, you know, like Brazil, where you have a SENTU chapter and you have these wonderful, innovative people.
But why aren't we doing more? Why Aren't we hearing more that same thought process plays into open source?
How do we make sure that the community that we're building understands that not only do they have a seat at this table, but they have a voice in how we are actually developing all of these things.
That's the key to us making sure that as we go forward there's not this sort of standards versus open source. Because to be honest, that's ridiculous.
They're all meant to help the industry.
So how do we come together and make sure that we're all talking and sharing ideas and making sure that what we're working on is interoperable, scalable, and it's for the long haul?
[00:29:16] Speaker B: That sounds like something that dovetails directly into Rich, as the incoming president, what your vision is to continue to carry that torch and how do you see, or can you tell us what your vision is and how that's going to impact media creation for the next decade or even longer?
[00:29:35] Speaker A: Wow. Well, I mean, I, I really hope that what I do it seem to, over the next couple of years as president, impact the media industry for a decade in a good way. Obviously.
Yeah, that would be a great legacy. But, you know, I think from my point of view, you know, to expand really on what Renard said, and this is something Renard and I have been working on together for before Renard was president, actually, and something we absolutely see eye to eye on.
We need to become a more diverse organization and that in every respect, you know, not only, you know, the kind of, the demographics of our, of our members, but also the, the industry areas that we cut across, you know, we, we, we very much sort of stayed in that engineering lane, typically broadcast some cinema. But if you look at the amount of media consumption now and the areas that that happens, you know, everywhere from mobile to XR and you know, headset, you know, experiences to these, you know, new kind of developments in, in our home experiences and these huge venues like the Sphere. And that's, you know, it's not the only immersive experience that's sort of coming forward now. We're seeing these kind of immersive sports fan experiences that are, you know, not at the live venue, but give you a kind of a feel of being there.
So there's so many areas, so many industries that we actually touch already and SMPTE standards are in use and people probably don't realize.
I'd love to do this kind of experiment where we just whipped out all the SMPTE standards because I tell you now, media would just Stop dead. Like, everybody's video, everybody's audio. You know, all media would just not really work without the SMPTE standards that underpin that. Not only the playback, but the production of all of that content. And so, you know, what I want to see is that we can get out to a much wider audience explaining what we do, explaining why it's important, but also to bring them in and have them help us develop these things. I think that my, my biggest, I guess, hope for simply is that in doing that, in bringing in, you know, much younger constituents from much more diverse backgrounds in terms of, you know, not only, yeah, the areas of industry they're in, but globally, you know, different geographies and getting all those people together, working together to really push things forward, we're going to have a better result. We're going to have more innovation in workflows and system design and content tools that help the creatives deliver their vision. At the end of the day, you know, we're in the service of the content that people consume and so be that news, which is so important now that we, you know, we, we have a kind of consistency and veracity of this content that we know that what we're seeing is real. You know, we live in an AI age, like it or not, and it's very easy now to be misled. And so what is truth, you know, what is. How do we make sure that we, we have integrity in our media? So all of these things, I think, can only really happen if we come together as a community and work together towards these common goals. So my vision for SMPTE over the next couple of years is for us to expand our reach, get a broader membership and a broader community into SMPTE so that we can carry these things forward and make the technology better, actually, for everyone across the world and for the good of, I hate to say, like, sound overly grandiose, but for the good of mankind. Because actually, you know, we're so now tied to media. Everything is on demand. You know, we see news events as they happen in real time, you know, and, and content now, you know, when movies come out, they come out in so many different formats all at the same time. You know, it's not so long ago that you actually had to wait for film prints to stop playing in America before they could move to international so people could see the latest blockbuster release in that country. And, and now everything's instant and, and in that kind of world and with the influence of things like AI, and as we move to more deep experiences from things like immersive. I think it's essential that we have groups that look at all of that and make sure we do it responsibly and with integrity and maintain quality.
[00:34:32] Speaker C: And thank you, Rich. You know what? Thank you so much for pointing out the immense power that media and communications have and how important it is for us to think about that ethically and responsibly that goes beyond standards. And thank you, Rich, for really honing in and making that a part of your mission as we go into 2025.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Let's stop now before I have to get a tissue.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Well, gentlemen, this has been a pleasure having both Renard, the outgoing president, and and Rich, the incoming Simte president, to hear both sides and to hear both the technical and some of the political portions has been phenomenal. It's been very educational. Everyone watch the podcast. Check these two gentlemen out on LinkedIn. They're there. And again, thank you so much for your time today.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Thank you.
We really appreciate it.
[00:35:33] Speaker C: Thanks for watching broadcast to post Please.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Make sure to subscribe to the podcast to receive future episodes, follow key code media on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
[00:35:41] Speaker C: To receive news on additional AV broadcast.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: And post production technology content.
[00:35:46] Speaker C: See you next time, folks.
