Engineering Emmys for remote production

The winners of the Engineering Emmys at the 72nd Engineering Emmy Awards include four that have been recognised for their efforts to address issues related to Covid-19.

The awards honour an individual, company or organisation for developments in broadcast technology.

It said: “These organisations have developed and deployed engineering technology that has allowed remote production to continue during this unconventional year.”

They include Evercast, a real-time collaboration platform that combines video conferencing, HD livestreaming and full-spectrum audio in a web-based platform. It is particularly popular among the editing community. Sohonet won for ClearView Flex, another real-time remote collaboration tool which is popular for review and approvals including for colour work.

Also awarded was Teradici which has specialised in providing remote access to workstations for over 15 years but in 2020 came into its own. Users access remote workstations through the Teradici PCoIP protocol from a wide choice of client devices and use their display, keyboard, mouse and peripherals like Wacom devices as if they were on a local machine.

HP’s ZCentral Remote Boost is the fourth remote production tool. This provides users access to high-performance computing for a range of applications including VFX, simulation and 3D.

Other winners include CODEX for its RAW workflow high speed data transfer of camera RAW; compositing and VFX software Nuke, Epic Games’ Unreal Engine (which is driving realtime renders of most virtual production systems); RE:Vision Effects optical flow-based post tools such Twixtor; Sound Radix Auto-Align tool for phase/time corrections of moving multi-microphone recording; and audio technique Gain Sharing based on a design by Dan Dugan.