Reports from the SMPTE Technology Committees:

Michael A. Dolan (31FS) is founder and president of Television Broadcast Technology, providing specialized professional encoders, test tools, and technical consulting in the field of digital television. He holds a BSEE degree from Virginia Tech and has worked for and founded various leading-edge computer graphics and realtime systems companies, including early foundational work in W3C technology and analog data broadcasting. Dolan has been involved in digital television engineering for the past eight years, including data broadcast system architecture and digital receiver design and compliance. He also currently chairs the ATSC Data Broadcasting Specialist Group (TSG/S13) and is active in the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE). A SMPTE Fellow, Dolan authors the SMPTE Journal Almanac column and holds several patents in computer web technology.

Bob Edge (33TS) is an independent consultant (Bob Edge TV Consulting). During his career, he has worked as an engineer, project leader, systems architect, and program manager on several products and research projects. Edge has served as an Engineering Director for SMPTE and he is a Life Fellow in the Society. He is active in Television standards work including his participation in SMPTE, some EBU projects, and other organizations. Edge has a BS in computer science from Oregon State University.

John Fletcher (33TS) is a lead technologist at BBC Research & Development, London, U.K. He studied natural and electrical sciences at Cambridge University before joining the BBC in 1986. He has worked in a variety of fields including acoustics, video coding and subtitling. His main interest in recent years has been the application of information technology to the TV production process, with projects such as the Ingex tapeless recording system. He is a Chartered Engineer and member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

John Footen (34CS) is an acknowledged industry expert in such areas as Business Process Management (BPM), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), and the Cloud, all of which have a major impact on today's broadcast television and professional media systems. As head of Cognizant's broadcast consulting practice, Footen is responsible for business and technology consulting throughout the broadcast industry. Footen is a sought-after speaker and expert writer on software architecture and workflow issues. He serves as co-chair of the Framework for Interoperable Media Services (FIMS) joint taskforce of the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Footen is a SMPTE member and chairs the 34CS Media Systems Control and Services technology committee. He has been responsible for managing many large and complex media solutions projects for many types of media enterprises. He has extensive international experience; having lived and worked in North America, Asia, and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Footen holds degrees in computer science and film and television from New York University. He is also the co-author of “The Service-Oriented Media Enterprise: SOA, BPM, and Web Services in Professional Media Systems,” published by Focal Press.

Paul Gardiner (10E) is standards manager at Sony Broadcast & Professional Research Labs, within Sony Europe Ltd., based in Basingstoke, U.K. He studied electronic engineering at the University of Southampton before joining the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) in 1974. His career has included a variety of roles related to the introduction of the UHF color television networks in the U.K. He has been involved in television technical regulation, and in R&D project management with responsibility for several international collaborative research projects. He became head of technical standards and Information at the Independent Television Commission (ITC), the regulatory and licensing body for commercial television in the U.K. and subsequently at successor body Ofcom. Gardiner has been an active SMPTE member since joining Sony in 2007, and is co-chair of TC-10E. He is also a regular participant in the work of ITU R and is chair of the AMWA-EBU FIMS Technical Board. He is a Chartered Engineer and a member of the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET).

John Hudson (10E) is director of broadcast technology at Semtech Corp. in Burlington Canada. He began his career in the broadcast industry in 1984 when he joined the Design and Development group of Sony Broadcast and Professional Europe as a technician engineer. During his career, he has worked as a design engineer, project leader, system architect, program manager, product-definition engineer, and technology strategist. Hudson is active in television standards work. He is co-chair of TC10E and chairs the 32NF20 Electrical Interfaces Working Group in SMPTE. He also chairs the Technical Committee of the HDcctv Alliance, which is responsible for the development of standards for the HDcctv Industry.

John Hurst (21DC) is co-founder and chief technology officer at CineCert, LLC, an internationally recognized developer of digital cinema technology, where he is currently engaged in the development of the D-Cinema Comprehensive Test Plan for Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI). Hurst has been an active participant in the SMPTE Digital Cinema technology committee and has served as editor of several of the standards published by that committee. He has more than 25 years of experience in sound recording and post-production, including the design and construction of well-known recording studios and post-production sound facilities in the Los Angeles area. He has technical responsibilities for many location recordings and live-to-air broadcasts. Hurst is a member of the Audio Engineering Society and is an active radio amateur and community volunteer.

Alan Lambshead (32NF) is vice president of engineering, at Evertz Microsystems Ltd., in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, where his responsibilities include the general oversight of R & D and product development, focusing on timecode and postproduction products. During his 33 years at Evertz, Lambshead has been an active member of SMPTE Technology committees and is the author of several SMPTE recommended practices. Currently, he is co-chair of the 32NF Network and Facilities Architecture committee and chair of the 3 Gbit/sec Multilink Ad Hoc Group. He is a member of the Toronto Section and has presented papers at local chapter and national conferences of SMPTE. Lambshead is a widely recognized expert in the field of HDTV timecode and sync issues, HDTV production, HDTV metadata, and film-to-video transfers. Lambshead graduated from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario with a B. Eng in electrical engineering in 1972 and became licensed as a Professional Engineer (P. Eng.) in Ontario in 1988. He became a SMPTE Fellow in 2009.

Pierre-Anthony Lemieux (31FS) is a partner at Sandflow Consulting, where he works with both Hollywood and Silicon Valley clients on proof-of-concept development, worldwide standards, and product architecture. His expertise covers the entertainment technology ecosystem, from content authoring to playback, including digital audio and video, file formats, Internet protocols and content protection. Lemieux's recent engagements include architecting and implementing an audio processing engine, representing clients at industry forums, and performing video IP due diligence. Lemieux has been participating in SMPTE since the early days of D-Cinema. In addition to chairing TC 31FS, he currently serves as document editor in TC 35PM and 21DC projects. Lemieux has a Ph.D. in physics from UCLA and a B.Sc. from McGill University.

Howard Lukk (35PM) is vice president of production technology at The Walt Disney Studios. There he is responsible for helping to incorporate new technologies into the workflow of the studio. Prior to that, he was director of technology for DCI where he was responsible for researching and documenting Digital Cinema Specifications. Before that he was chief engineer at IVC a post-production facility in Burbank. He has also worked as a freelance engineer in the past on HDTV productions such as Woodstock 25th Anniversary and Major League Baseball. Lukk is an active member of SMPTE since 1995 and is also an associate member of the ASC.

Thomas Bause Mason (35PM) is a digital video engineer in the Advanced Engineering department at NBCUniversal. As part of the NBCUniversal Technology Strategy team he helps to implement emerging technologies and standards for file-based workflows in production, post-production and distribution including traditional broadcast, cable and the web. His responsibilities also include 3D and Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology as well as engineering support for NBCUniversal R&D efforts. He works with many different NBCUniversal operational teams to implement standards and technology on a corporate level. In the past he worked at Ascent Media where he ran the encoding as well as the DAM system ingest operations and helped business development to implementing new media workflows. Before that he worked in Germany as a programmer for process visualization software and as a developer of database solutions. Additionally he managed a Quality Control department for several private broadcast networks at a large broadcast service provider. Thomas has a bachelor degree in Media Technology and is a SMPTE member since 2007. He is an associate member of AMWA and recently joined W3C.

Nelson Meacham (21DC) retired after more than 30 years of employment with the Walt Disney Company. The majority of his career was spent designing audio and video systems for theme park attractions in the U.S., Japan, France, and Hong Kong. For five years starting in 1981, Meacham was the assistant sound director for Walt Disney Pictures and in 1994/1995 supervised the installation of a new film and digital screening room for Walt Disney Feature Animation. Meacham graduated from California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. He is a Life-Fellow of SMPTE, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and member of the Audio Engineering Society.

Ann Marie Rohaly (24TB) is director of accessibility policy and standards for Microsoft's Corporate Accessibility Group. Before joining Microsoft in 2003, she spent five years at Tektronix, Inc., in several senior positions, including strategic technology manager for the Video Product Line. Rohaly has been an active participant in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), leading the standardization of Tektronix's Emmy award-winning PQA300 picture quality measurement technology, and in many other international standards-setting organizations and industry consortia. She played a lead role in the standardization of VC-1 as SMPTE 421M and more recently, in the standardization of SMPTE Timed Text (ST 2052). In 2010, she was appointed to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee, which issued a report on closed captioning for internet-delivered video. Rohaly is a SMPTE Fellow and has served as Western Region Governor since 2009.

Dave Schnuelle (20F) represents Dolby Laboratories as senior director, image technology, and provides guidance in Dolby's efforts in the television, cinema, and consumer imaging areas. He began his career as an engineer on television outside broadcasts while attending Purdue University. Schnuelle later held positions as chief engineer at various post-production facilities such as Editel and Modern VideoFilm in Los Angeles. Schnuelle worked with Lucasfilm's THX Division, beginning in 1991, where he was responsible for founding the THX Digital Mastering Program for quality-assurance of home video masters and duplicated software. As director of technology for THX, he directed research efforts into new technology for cinemas. During that period, he directly supervised the international digital cinema exhibition of the new Star Wars movies— Episode 1 (1999) and Episode 2(2002). Schnuelle holds four patents on imaging and audio technology and has been deeply involved with film and television standards activities for 30 years. He is a SMPTE Fellow and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Chris Simons (34CS) spent the early part of his career working for U.K. terrestrial and satellite broadcasters then joined Drake Automation Ltd. in 1996. As head of customer support, he established a global support infrastructure delivering major automation projects including BSkyB, DirecTV, Network Ten, SkyPerfecTV, Dish Network etc. Following the acquisition of Encoda Systems by Harris in 2005 Simons managed the Automation Services organization covering both ADC and D-Series globally. After a working at Miranda Technologies in 2006, Simons returned to Harris and heads the Automation and Asset Management Product Group, responsible for the ADC, D-Series and Invenio product suite.

John F. Snow (32NF) represents Xilinx, Inc., where he is a senior staff design engineer in the Digital Video Processing group focused on developing FPGA cores that implement SMPTE interface standards. Prior to joining Xilinx in 2001, he was director of engineering at Evans & Sutherland where he was involved in realtime computer graphics for flight simulation for 20 years. Snow is active in SMPTE standards work. He is co-chair of TC32NF and chairs the 33TS.20 Working Group on Synchronization. He is also a senior member of the IEEE.

Paul Treleaven (30MR) obtained a First Class Honours degree in electrical engineering from Imperial College, London in 1972. He started his career in broadcast engineering with BBC Designs Department. His work included design of the interpolation system for the BBC's ‘ACE’ four-field standards converter. In 1979, Treleaven co-founded Avitel, a company that designs and manufactures video, audio and timecode distribution and processing equipment. He continued with Avitel as technical director until 2001. Treleaven is a member of the International Association of Broadcasting Manufacturers' (IABMs) Technical Task Group, representing the IABM at SMPTE and AES standards meetings and ABU technology committee meetings. He is also a member of the U.K.'s National Standards Body for IEC TC100. Treleaven has served as SMPTE International Region Governor and is a SMPTE Fellow. He is currently co-chair of the SMPTE 30MR Technology Committee and has chaired other SMPTE standards groups.

Phil Tudor (30MR) is a principal engineer at BBC Research & Development, London, U.K. He read electrical and information sciences at Cambridge University. Tudor's technical background includes software engineering, video compression algorithm development, MPEG standardization, metadata interoperability and the development of AAF and MXF standard file formats for use in tapeless production. Tudor is responsible for R&D projects in the areas of production tools, formats, workflow, media management and wide area production. He chairs the SMPTE 30MR Technology Committee and is a board member of the Advanced Media Workflow Association. Tudor is a SMPTE fellow, a Chartered Engineer and a member of the Institution of Engineering Technology.