All posts by Gary Stigall

March 2013 Meeting: All About the High Efficiency Video Codec

Just when you thought your H.264 codecs were about as efficient as possible for transmitting your media files, along comes H.265. This new HEVC is likely to change everything. But how much more efficient is it? What exactly is different about it? How are vendors gearing up for the new codec? When will it be ready for prime time?

Chapter 36 is fortunate enough to bring highly regarded speaker Joel Wilhite from Harmonic to our March meeting.

Be sure to mark your calendar for 6:30 PM, March 28th at the KGTV studios, 4600 Air Way, near where the I-805 and CA-94 freeways meet. Note this special evening time and day. Harmonic will provide dinner at 6:30, followed by a brief business meeting and the presentation.

Joel Wilhite has been a Broadcast Solutions Manager for Harmonic for 18 years, designing media compression and storage systems for news and programming originators. He’s frequently called on to update groups like SBE with technology presentations.

March 2013 Member News

James Culligan of El Cajon recently became an SBE Certified Radio Operator.

Ken Tondreau joined Avid Technology as Enterprise Account Manager for the Los Angeles region in January this year. Ken had been a Sales Representative with Grass Valley since 1986. Ken recently renewed as Certified Broadcast Technologist.

Matt Lunati joined a technical team installing and servicing mobile cellular sites for CellularOne in Show Low, Arizona. Matt says they serve a large network in northeast Arizona.

Richard Large Retires From KUSI After 31 Years

Talk about a clean break. Friday, February 1st, McKinnon Broadcasting’s VP of Engineering Richard Large appeared on KUSI briefly as the station celebrated his retirement. The next week he was settling into his new home in Idaho Falls with his wife of 44 years, Edith.

He learned electronics in the Air Force and wisely took courses that would lead to an FCC First Class Radiotelephone license–a ticket to a good job in 1968. He first worked at WBTW (TV) in Florence, SC weekends while still in the Air Force.

After his discharge in 1970, Richard went to work in Decatur, Illinois at ABC affiliate WAND. What he remembered most about his years there was an ice storm in 1978 that took down the tower and destroyed the transmitter building.  He and the other engineers managed to salvage the RCA transmitter and build a new shelter for it, having it back on the air in four days.

In 1980, Tom Wimberly, who had worked with Richard in Decatur, hired him to work at KCST in San Diego. He stayed about a year before moving on to WPHL in Philadelphia.

Richard answered an ad and put KUSI on the air in 1982 with a leased package of gear from RCA that included a TTU-55 channel 51 UHF transmitter, three TK-760 studio cameras, a TK-86 portable camera, and a TK-27 telecine system.

Richard helped the McKinnon family plan and oversee construction of a TV station in Austin to add to the group’s properties in Corpus Christi and Beaumont, Texas. And he was given the title of Corporate Chief Engineer.

In 1990, the McKinnon’s bought out the remaining financial interest of the United States International University, freeing them to invest in a news department. Richard was challenged to create a news facility on Viewridge Avenue in Murphy Canyon and have the news on the air within six weeks. With only his crew, they installed everything including the electrical wiring and had their first newscast on September 13, meeting the challenge.

He was given the title of Vice President of Engineering for the McKinnon group and oversaw the Corpus Christi station move to another site.

Richard saw two fires overcome Mt. San Miguel where the KUSI transmitter is located. During the first one (he doesn’t remember the year), Tom Wimberly of KNSD and he were taken to the top to survey the damage. Neither had lost their building, but neighboring buildings were destroyed. In 2007, he drove up the mountain with Fred Swift through the Harris Fire and found smoke billowing off of the roof. He lifted buckets of water that Fred filled and put out the fire, saving the building and its contents.

KUSI’s trademark has been its low cost but highly watched newscasts, and Richard has always come through with ways to stretch the dollar, most recently with JVC high definition cameras, Bitcentral file management system, and HD production system.

Besides his wife Edith, Richard has two daughters–Laura and Rachael, their husbands and grandkids living in the Idaho Falls, Idaho area. He looks forward to a restful retirement.

Here Comes H.265

The International Telecommunications Union, ITU announced January 25th the new High Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC) to be known also as H.265. The new codec is expected to use about 50% of the data bandwidth of its predecessor H.264, which itself uses about 50% of the bandwidth of its predecessor MPEG-2.

The savings in bandwidth comes at the cost of processing power. It’s said to take 4 to 5 times the CPU power to compress and decompress, so it could take years for wide adoption, during which time another technology could leapfrog the standard.

But potential economic benefits are profound. If H.265 is adopted by transmission media like cable, satellite, and broadcasters, as many as twice the number of channels could fit into available bandwidth.