Innovation Awards 2005
Technical Innovation Awards 2005 were presented by Stephen Cole on Thursday 8 December 2005 at Bafta, 195 Piccadilly, London W1.
Technology in Content Creation, Capture or Restoration
Use of Mobile Phones for Newsgathering - BBC Technology Direction
“The jury said that the winning entry’s technology was progressing by leaps and bounds, and, as the European pioneer in its field, was breaking new ground with the leading software developers.”
Nominee
RPPTV - Remote Programme Production – RPPTV
Technology in the Post-Production Process
Forbidden’s FORscene – Forbidden Technologies
“This production tool delivers, for the first time, high quality, frame accurate, flexible editing solutions via the web from rushes uploaded onto a secure web site using the company’s advanced compression technology. It means that producers, directors, editors, reviewers, loggers or even clients can access the rushes, anywhere in the world with web access, on a laptop (PC or MAC, it doesn’t matter) or even on a suitable mobile phone and log, review or off-line edit the material using an intuitive and responsive easy to use drag and drop interface.
This technology is spawning new ways of working in the field which are minimising production costs and reducing the time to air through eliminating many of the logistical complications of location shoots, especially where it involves multiple locations.
The product does not stop at operational benefits but also addresses the billing issues in a new way – editors only pay for the time they actually spend working on the footage on the web, thus providing a very cost effective ‘pay as you go’ model for post production costs.”
Technology in Content Management
Front Porch Digital DIVAworks - Front Porch Digital
“The Jury said that the winning Technology’s web-based interface seems to include all the necessary functionality to support its turn-key approach, and they were impressed both with the quality of the entry and with its ability to simplify the complexities of asset management along with its potential cost effectiveness.”
Nominees
Digital Picture of Britain Viewers Gallery - BBC Learning and Interactive
Pro-Bel Morpheus - Pro-Bel
Technology in Content Delivery
Coast Mobile Interactive - BBC Learning and Interactive/Gavitec AG/Hewlett-Packard
“The judges were impressed at the manner in which the winning entry integrated known technology with a complex production to produce a new and attractive experience, together with an innovative use of mobile phones. The architecture of the technical system was fully utilised and the result is a new, innovative programme experience.”
Nominees
Digital Picture of Britain Viewers Gallery - BBC Learning and Interactive
Powering IP Video Contribution and Distribution –
T-VIPS
Technology in Consumer Electronics
Coast Mobile: Data Codes - BBC Learning and Interactive/Gavitec AG/Hewlett-Packard
“The judges recognised the application as an innovative exploitation of mobile phone technology, used to enhance the appeal and effectiveness of a television programme.”
Research & Development Team
BBC Research & Development’s Interactive Team Services - BBC
“The development of interactive services has moved us into an era of highly complex projects. While many companies have contributed to this success, the judges were particularly impressed by one laboratory’s leading contribution in the interactive field, in developing the technology to enable interactive services to work equally effectively on the terrestrial, satellite and cable platforms.
The team also played a leading role in the development of the UK profile of MHEG, which has been key to the success of interactive services on the terrestrial platform, and has paved the way for the volume and breadth of interactive programming now available to the public. This team is to be congratulated on a sustained, highly professional approach in the development of these services”.
Judges’ Award
BBC General Election Results Programme 2005
“Earlier in the year one UK broadcaster’s team excelled in their creation of a very demanding, end-to-end technical solution - which was delivered on time, helped to create an excellent on-air programme, and advanced the way that the broadcaster could present information to viewers. This was achieved both by the development of new systems and by the integration of facilities across the UK, allowing the programme to be produced with substantial cost savings over a similar programme in 2001. The project and integration team worked closely with the R&D group. Advanced technical concepts were developed which are now being used on-air daily – for example, ground-breaking projection technology which allowed the presenter, without blue screen technology, to see and fully interact with all graphics, and a 3D real time graphics system which enabled the presenter to seem to pass virtual objects between himself and his guests. The creation and integration both of the specialized OB captioning system supporting the directors, and of the “on the fly running order system” supporting the studios, hubs and OBs located around the country, enabled the broadcaster to take a vast amount of information and present it to the viewer in a smooth and seamless manner. The use of a 3G phone allowed live and pre-recorded contributions from the general public, whilst a fully interactive service allowed the viewer to choose throughout the programme from the content on offer. This highlights just part of the fully integrated technical solution developed in close co-operation with the programme makers. The solution that was delivered exceeded all of the goals and met cost objectives that were the initial targets for the project. For clarity, this award is being made to the team that developed and integrated the systems that supported the presentation of the programme, rather than to the programme itself.”
Lifetime Achievement Award
Chris Clarke
“…a person who has devoted his working life at the BBC to technical innovation in broadcasting. His work has been characterised by a remarkable combination of deep theoretical insight and practical electronic design, both practised at the highest level of professional excellence. In particular, we owe two landmark developments to him. We now take the digital standard known as CCIR Recommendation 601 as the bedrock of digital television. He realised that in future most digital processing would be in programme production. His great achievement was to show theoretically and practically that, with acceptable complexity, it was possible to decode PAL (and NTSC) signals digitally at any convenient sampling frequency. This convinced broadcasters that they could abandon sampling schemes based on the colour subcarriers. The second major development was his early development work on digital terrestrial TV. He led the team that designed and built the first DTT prototype transmitter and receiver at the same time that the standards to be used were being discussed and agreed. His tracking of the standards development was so good that the transmission system was on the air just three months after the standards had been agreed. The experience gained during the trial transmissions led to the development of receiver chips by LSI Logic that took 80% of the domestic market during the first year of transmission. The lessons learned during this period were later crucial to the success of the BBC’s Freeview bid. We could go on to describe his other work on a wide range of research projects including modern radio cameras and of the 27 patents that he filed, but what is common to all his work is a rare combination of vision, sound judgement, rigorous theoretical understanding and practical design, all of which are characterised by the pursuit of excellence, all of which has produced a profound effect on our industry”
Lifetime Achievement Award
David Sparks
“…[he] started his career at EMI, and then, in the 70s and 80s, he worked at Thames Television. It was in late 1988 when he took the bold step of leaving what was then the established UK broadcasting fraternity to join Sky television – and before its broadcasting launch too! He was instrumental in the establishment of the systems for Sky News - and the quality of that work was such that many of those systems were still in use until 2003. Appointed as Sky’s Chief Engineer in 1992, a key element of his immediate work was the expansion of the play-out capacity from 6 to 16 channels. Very soon after, however, that change became but minor in scale as, with digital television on the horizon, Sky’s senior management directed that it would need the capacity to play-out 200 television channels. Our recipient was tasked by the Director of Engineering to find an automation system to help achieve that goal. The challenge was simple: If playing-out 16 channels required both the dubbing of every promo and commercial at least 16 times, and 80 operators to cover 24 hour operations, 365 days of the year, what would 200 channels need? You might think the logical answer would be - 200 dubs and 1,000 operators. But this would be obviously unsustainable. A chance meeting in a car park with Robin Adams, an ex-BBC engineer who was working for Drake Automation, started a stream of work which ultimately revolutionized the way that television programmes are compiled and played to air in multi-channel broadcast systems. The system achieved a reduction in hardware costs to one tenth of their historic value, eliminated the need for the multiple dubbings, and reduced the operator needs to the point where 8 to 10 people, rather than 80, could reliably manage 16 channels. Many of the services in our multi-channel world would not exist but for the reductions in transmission costs achieved by digital compression technology, and from the substantial operational and hardware cost savings achieved because of our recipient’s work in collaboration with Drake.”