HPA named four technology offerings winners of its 2019 Engineering Excellence Award, recognizing products from Adobe, Epic Games and Pixelworks along with a collaboration between Portrait Displays and LG on integrated hardware-level calibration for consumer OLED TVs.
The Winners
Adobe was honored for its implementation of Photoshop’s popular Content-Aware Fill in video via After Effects. Content-Aware Fill uses a set of algorithms to analyze a moving image over time and automatically delete unwanted objects marked by users, like boom mics, cables and camera tracks, or even (potentially) stray crew members, filling in the background behind them.
Epic Games was cited for its Unreal Engine 4, a platform originally designed as a game environment but increasingly in use as a real-time visualization platform in filmmaking and broadcasting. More than just previs and virtual location scouting, Unreal Engine now allows users to edit CG characters and environments in real-time, deliver mixed-reality broadcasts, and even fast-forward to final VFX on set.
Pixelworks got kudos for TrueCut Motion, a new video-processing platform supporting SDR and HDR images, including SDR-to-HDR conversions, strobing and juder control, virtual shutter control, and dialing in the feel of 24- film or high-frame-rate video.
And Portrait Displays and LG Electronics were lauded for bringing 1D and 3D LUT-based calibration via CalMAN AutoCal to 2018 and newer LG OLED TV sets. Color calibration is a virtual must-have when OLED displays are in use as HDR client monitors.
The Honorable Mentions
HPA’s Honorable Mentions went to Belden’s Grass Valley for Creative Grading, its new camera-shading control panel and tablet app for Grass Valley cameras; to Netflix for Photon, a repository of IMF validation tools available as a java archive under the Apache License v2.0; and to Ambidio for Ambidio Looking Glass.
The 2018 Hollywood Professional Association Awards Ceremony, held on Thursday, November 15, 2018, in Los Angeles.
Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging
The 2019 Engineering Excellence Awards will be given out as part of the HPA Awards gala scheduled for November 21 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Awards recognizing excellence in a dozen different craft categories, including color-grading, editing, sound, and visual effects, will also be given out at the event.
“Every year, it is an absolute pleasure and a privilege to witness the innovative work that is brewing in our industry,” said HPA Awards Engineering Committee Chair Joachim Zell in a prepared statement. “Judging by the number of entries, which was our largest ever, there is genuine excitement within our community to push our capabilities to the next level.”
