NAB Event News
Snell & Wilcox "putting pictures to work" at NAB
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Apr 13, 2008 - 8:08:00 PM

By Carl Lindemann
 
Yes, the growing audience for HD programming is a bonanza for Snell & Wilcox, a company perhaps best known for image processing products.  But at NAB 2008, the company’s focus is wider - on growth and diversification of offerings to meet the demand for the new HD infrastructure, content conversion, live production and content repurposing for multiplatform delivery.
 
“With HD, image quality becomes paramount. You can’t ignore the importance,” said Simon Derry, Chief Executive, Snell & Wilcox. “We are file-based pioneers, and so combine the best of image processing and IT.”
 
The company’s overall theme this year is “Putting Pictures to Work.”  Highlights include iCR V3.0, the company’s end-to-end content repurposing solution that ingests SD and HD content and prepares it for mobile, telco, cable, and broadband distribution.  Also featured is the second-generation Hyperion quality-control engine, providing multichannel content monitoring. According to Joe Zoller, Snell & Wilcox VP, Corporate Development, improved algorithms mimic human intelligence to provide dedicated audio, video, and metadata monitoring for all content throughout the broadcast infrastructure, from ingest to transmission.
 
For live production, enhancements to Kahuna, Snell & Wilcox’ SD/HD multiformat production switcher, represents an expansion of the traditional concept. New DVE capabilities include what are called “Fluid Effects” in IMPAKT DVE v.4 that wrap live video around animated models. This expanded capability blurs the lines between today’s production switchers and graphics devices.  Typically, you have to render video and the 3-D model on a separate system. Now, Kahuna operators can select any real-time source and apply it to any 3-D model that has been preloaded onto the switcher.
 
Does this point to a future where production switchers will incorporate all the functions of today’s graphics devices? Perhaps. But there is a difference between having the processing power to create such hybrids and what today’s operators expect in a production switcher interface.  The next generation, raised on computer gaming consoles, may wonder why you would divide DVE from graphics. 

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