June 2010 Meeting - Saturday Morning, June 5, 2010

Mark Schubin
discussing the technology behind
the Metropolitan Opera world-wide live HD theatercasts.

Mark Schubin, the Metropolitan Opera HD Theatercasts’ Engineer-in-Charge, will describe:
• The history of opera and on-stage operatic effects and illusions.
• The history of operatic broadcasting, including many audio and video firsts that occurred with opera broadcasts and recordings.
• The technology behind the HD theatercasts (including cameras and microphone placements, the
production trucks, the international satellite links, and the multiple audio and video formats), plus the very tight schedule and constraints under which they prepare and produce the broadcasts.
Schubin will play a short excerpt from a Met Opera HD broadcast.

Date/Time:  9AM, Saturday, 5 June 2010
Location:  AMC Framingham 16 (Theatre #7)
22 Flutie Pass, Framingham, Massachusetts 01701
www.AMCEntertainment.com/Framingham
(Located between Route 9 and Route 30 and between the Natick Mall and Shoppers World)

An after-event picnic-style lunch is planned to be held in the parking lot behind the theater, weather
permitting, which will offer additional time for your questions.

Contact David J. Weinberg ( WeinbergDJ@BostonAudioSociety.org ) for more information.

The Metropolitan Opera live HD theatercasts (“Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD;” www.MetOperaFamily.org/metopera/broadcast/hd_events_current.aspx) began in 2006 and have been astonishingly successful worldwide, with a monotonically increasing number of theaters showing the Saturday afternoon broadcasts to overflowing audiences. The technological and managerial complexity of these broadcasts involves a staff of more than 70 people at the opera house who overcome severely restrictive access and constraints, always with the stress that comes from knowing that it must work perfectly the first — the only — time.

Mark Schubin (www.SchubinCafe.com) is a multiple-Emmy-award-winning SMPTE Fellow with a degree in chemical engineering who has been working in television for more than 40 years and written about it for almost as long. He has worked “in just about every aspect of television technology from design and manufacturing to program distribution.”

Schubin has taught forensic analysis of video and testified as an expert witness on cinema and television technologies and their histories.

He has even dabbled in lighting, sound, camera, editing, and appeared on screen.

He was involved in Japan’s first regularly scheduled HDTV broadcast and has worked on standards including the VU meter, digitally compressed video transmission, and the Barbados national TV system. His clients include the Metropolitan Opera, Court TV, and the AFL-CIO. His writing has been translated into French, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.

This event is being produced by John F. Allen (High Performance Stereo; www.HPS4000.com) and David J. Weinberg. It is being underwritten by the New England sections of the Acoustical Society or America (ASA; www.GBCASA.org), the Audio Engineering Society (AES; www.BostonAES.org), and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE; www.SMPTE-NE.org), plus the Boston Audio Society (www.BostonAudioSociety.org), AMC Theatres (www.AMCEntertainment.com), Sony Corporation of America (www.Sony.com/SCA), and Christie Digital (www.ChristieDigital.com).

This notice is available as a PDF HERE.

Directions: On Rte 9, midway between Rte 495 and 128 (I95), just east of Framingham Shopper's World, turn north on Ring Road. Turn right on Flutie Road.