You missed a great presentation if you weren’t with us for this meeting. Niels Thorwirth of Verimatrix gave an overview of content identification, recognition and marking technologies used as a data carrier or forensic tool with a deep dive into one implementation of digital watermarking. Niels described watermarking in a simple but meaningful way. 

Many thanks to iHeartMedia for providing the space.

About Niels

Niels Thorwirth is the VP of Advanced Technology at Verimatrix, Inc. and is responsible for Innovation and Research in areas such as digital watermarking, IoT Security and Machine Learning. Since April 2005 Niels Thorwirth is spearheading content security innovation efforts to meet and exceed requirements of content owners and digital TV operators, resulting in among others the Verimatrix VideoMark® and StreamMark® forensic video watermarking technologies.

Prior experience includes research activity at the Fraunhofer Society and guiding the technology development at MediaSec, Inc. in Providence, RI, and Essen, Germany, from the company’s inception to its acquisition. Mr. Thorwirth has published several international papers and obtained various patents in the field of digital rights management and digital watermarking. He holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science and Business Management from the University of Mannheim, Germany and the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France.

See you in September!

To date, the best spectrum for studio and field wireless microphones and IFBs has been unused TV channels. With the recent FCC spectrum auction, much of that spectrum disappears next April in San Diego. But there remain a few places to use your wireless devices, and we’ll cover that.

Gary Stigall, contract broadcast engineer for Signal Wiz and NFL frequency coordinator since 2012, spoke about the disappearing spectrum and gave some solutions you can use for your TV or radio station.

Many thanks to iHeart Media for the meeting space and to Chapter 36 for the lunch.

The June 12, 2018 presentation covered Orban’s approach to automatic, CALM-Act-compliant loudness control as embodied in the Optimod-TV 8685 Surround Loudness Controller. Many thanks to Bob Orban for the teleconference and lunch, and to iHeartMedia for hosting.

With respect to the FCC spectrum auction, there are some subtleties in making changes to your RF plant that you should be aware of, whether a host or client station. And it wouldn’t hurt to be aware of the science even if you’re an FM broadcast engineer.

Eddy Vanderkerken of RFS Systems is coming to San Diego to give us some insight into the optimum solutions during the FCC repack and beyond.

• How antenna design influences radiation patterns
• The design and manufacturing of antennas
• How RF filters have evolved
• The software tools that can be used to select specific solutions

Join us Wednesday, May 9th at 12 noon at iHeart Media, 9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego. Eddy will buy a light lunch and give us a presentation.

About Eddy Vanderkerken

Eddy has been a longtime sales engineer of RF test  equipment for Rohde & Schwarz and now broadcast application equipment for RFS. He has an MSEE degree from Erasmus University in Brussels.