David Wood, Contributor to 8K TV System Recommendation, to Receive SMPTE Progress Medal

The European Broadcasting Union’s technical deputy director David Wood—who chairs the International Telecommunication Union’s working group that drafted a recommendation for Ultra High Definition Television, which supports picture resolution up to 8K—will receive the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers’ highest recognition, the Progress Medal. It will be awarded at the society’s annual Technical Conference & Exhibition, which will be held October 22-25 in Hollywood.

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The Progress Medal—whose previous recipients have included Ed Catmull, president and co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Walt Disney Animation Studios—will recognize Wood’s career as a scientific leader and educator in the broadcasting industry.

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Also during the conference, SMPTE will present its Camera Origination/Imaging Medal to Bryce Bayer, who is retired from Kodak. He is the inventor of the Bayer Filter, a color filter array that is incorporated into many digital cameras and camera phones.

In the area of audio, the Samuel L. Warner Memorial Medal will be awarded to Douglas Greenfield of Dolby Laboratories. Greenfield has had a hand in cinema sound innovations including 5.1 channel Dolby Digital Optical mastering and printing.

The Society will present its Technicolor/Herbert T. Kalmus Gold Medal to Thomas O. Maier, a former research fellow at Kodak who also helped to develop the SMPTE standards for digital cinema. More recently, he contributed to the Academy Color Encoding Specification (ACES) that was developed under the auspices of the Science and Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to eliminate the ambiguities of today’s file formats from production through archiving.

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Honorees will include inventor Gary Demos, who will receive SMPTE’s Digital Processing Medal for his work in digital processing including computer‐generated digital special effects; James M. DeFilippis of Fox Television, who will be awarded the David Sarnoff Medal for his contributions to engineering and digital television; and Brad Gilmer, executive director of the Advanced Media Workflow Association, who will be presented the Workflow Systems Medal for his early work in file‐based workflows.

The Archival Technology Medal will be awarded to the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio‐Video Conservation in recognition of that group’s contributions to advancing long‐term content storage, archiving, and preservation.

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SMPTE will also present its Kodak Educational Award to William McDonald, chair of the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television; and Excellence in Standards Award to Bob Edge, who has led file-format development efforts.

“Whether it’s broadcast, cinema, or IT, the work of those being honored at SMPTE 2012 is foundational to the future success of motion‐imaging professionals,” said Barbara Lange, executive director of SMPTE.