PubTV technologists turn to video, audio end-to-end quality issues
With help from a newly approved CPB grant, PBS has assembled a Quality Group to get high tech quality and efficiency out of public TV’s end-to-end chain of largely digital production and distribution systems.
“With much of the heavy lifting of the digital transition behind us,” writes PBS Chief Engineer Jim Kutzner, “PBS and individuals at a number of stations turned to ensuring that public television is able to take full advantage of the potential leap in technical quality.”
Kutzner and others have pointed out that various factors in the chain of digital processes from camera to home TV sets, including repeated compression and decompression, often significantly degrades quality.
The grant enables the Quality Group to acquire high-quality testing equipment, determine best practices in signal handling, advise PBS, and write articles and make presentations about their findings, Kutzner said.
Quality Group members from stations include David Felland, Milwaukee; Frank Graybill, New York; Terry Harvey, Carbondale, Ill.; Bruce Jacobs, Minneapolis-St. Paul; Chris Lane, Washington, D.C.; Dave MacCarn and Tim Mangini, Boston; Ernie Neumann and Steve Welch, San Francisco.
PBS members include Kutzner, Wendy Allen, Shawn Halford, Michael Hunt, Steve Scheel, Project Manager Cheryl Ann Welsh and Eric Wolf.
Other members include noted tech writer Mark Schubin, who works on Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and recently added members from two other program distributors, Gerry Field of American Public Television and Greg Tillou of National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA).
Posted Feb. 10, 2010, updated with three new committee members Feb. 12.
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