• Bill Reckwerdt, , CTO, Video Clarity and San Francisco Section manager

• 7:00 PM Social time/refreshments in "Green Room"
• 8:00 PM Program Recording in Main Studio

Program:

Bottom line: Test, measure, and alarm along the entire transmission chain —or risk losing your audience.

Compelling content will hold people's interest for a while, but eventually, consciously or unconsciously perceived, bad video and audio can drive away viewers. After a few minutes of dialogue not matched to the picture or distorted audio perceived as “too loud” or several kinds of video distortion, many viewers will change channels. Bottom line: Test, measure, and alarm along the entire chain before and during delivery and broadcast—or risk losing audience share. Bill Reckwerdt will portray three deadly factors that make the user jump for the remote:
 

• Bad Lip Sync: Sound arriving after the action is quite normal in human experience, e.g., a mouth in the distance opens to shout or a gun is fired and the sound is heard a fraction of a second later than the image. Sound arriving before the image of the action causes measurable psychological stress and viewer rejection. Bill will show clips of lip sync errors during transmission.
• Audio Distortion: Unpleasant-sounding audio, whether consciously or unconsciously perceived, also drives away viewers –distortion amplified along the production, storage, and transmission chain. Audio distortion horrors that broadcasters and cablecasters inflict on their audiences include harmonic, intermodulation, phase, amplitude, frequency response, and clipping.
• Picture Distortion: Motion artifacts can rival audio distortion in the viewer's subconscious rejection of an image and drive him to change channels. Bill will discuss the most common motion artifacts and other video distortion, including noise, geometric inaccuracy, and blocking.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY:
Bill Reckwerdt, Chief Technology Officer of Video Clarity in Campbell, CA, brings an interesting mix of real world experience to his technical presentation. Bill’s career spans more than 20 years in the digital video and medical imaging industries, during which he developed extensive technical expertise in compression, digital transmission, and video servers. Prior to joining Video Clarity, Bill held senior positions at Hewlett-Packard, C-Cube, Vweb, and Optibase. Bill is an active member of the SMPTE, VQEG, and VPQM.

Video Clarity is a member of the SMPTE & VQEG and works with other standards-based committees, including ISMA and MPEG-IF. The company collaborates with other vendors in promoting common standards and interoperability.

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