Ensemble Designs

Ensemble Designs Wins Big for Video Converter

2009-11-09T18:00:43Z

Nevada City tech firm a big 'hit' at International Broadcasters Convention

2009-10-23T00:23:13Z

By Pat Butler, Oct 15, 2009 – Ensemble Designs of Nevada City has customers that include ESPN, BBC, CBS News, Major League Baseball and television stations around the globe.

Now, the Nevada City company can add an industry honor to the list. It was recently received the Pick Hit award at the IBC International Broadcasters Convention in Amsterdam.

“It was the best IBC exhibition we’ve ever participated in,” said Cindy Zuelsdorf, marketing czar at Ensemble Designs. “We had a huge response from engineers who need a high-quality way to take YouTube material to air, to use it in a high-definition TV facility. TV stations are relying on web footage more and more for source material.”

The company, which has 45 employees, won the award for its new BrightEye Mitto HD Scan Converter, which along with six other new products was introduced at the exhibition in Amsterdam.

“Bringing progressive images from the desktop into the interlaced world of video used to be a compromise between sharp details versus interfield flicker…

More at: Nevada City Advocate Newspaper

Closed Caption Open House and SMPTE Meeting 21 Oct

2009-10-09T14:50:03Z

Grass Valley, CA, 5 Oct 09 – Closed captions help to make media accessible to everyone. Do you ever wonder why the captions aren’t displaying properly on your TV? What is process of creating closed caption data for a live show and how is it carried throughout the entire signal chain – from creation to station to home viewer? Can broadcast signal paths be tested for compliance in handling 708 caption data? What are the differences between closed captions, subtitles and audio description? These are just some of the questions that will be addressed at an upcoming Closed Caption Open House and SMPTE meeting in Nevada City, California.

On Wednesday 21 October 09, Ensemble Designs is hosting an afternoon open
house and evening SMPTE meeting all about Closed Captions. A caption generation company, a Sacramento TV station and many equipment manufacturers will provide demonstrations and presentations about closed caption technology.

The public is welcome and invitations have gone out to video and audio equipment manufacturers, television broadcasters, the deaf and hard of hearing community, and local businesses. All are invited to come see technology demonstrations, ask questions and hear from fellow experts.

Jack Davis, Director of Engineering at KTXL Fox 40 in Sacramento will be on hand to talk about closed caption compliance for broadcasters and exactly how Fox 40 has implemented closed captioning technology in their facility.

Emily Bell of CaptionMax will be demonstrating the process of creating closed captions exactly as it’s done for shows like 30 Rock and Law and Order. Emily is an expert on caption creation and has spent time as a closed caption editor for both offline and real-time pro-gramming. CaptionMax specializes in making media accessible to all types of people through captioning. They provide caption services for hundreds of program providers including ESPN, ABC, and Discovery.

Tektronix, AJA and other manufacturers will be demonstrating how their video equipment generates, tests and passes closed caption data. Engineers from Ensemble Designs will be demonstrating technology used by broadcasters and manufacturers for testing closed captions in broadcast equipment. Specific test sequences will be discussed and demonstrated.

Video monitor manufacturers Plura, Marshall, and TV Logic will be at the event showing how their monitors decode and display open captions. An array of consumer televisions will set up to show how each of those units handles captions. Programming from Sacramento TV stations will be used as source material for the testing.

Schedule of Events
Wed 21 Oct 2009 at Ensemble Designs

1:00pm-5:00 Open House – All are Welcome
Equipment and technology demonstrations by Ensemble Designs, AJA, Tektronix,
Plura Broadcast, Marshall Monitors, TV Logic and CaptionMax. Open to the public.

5:00pm-7:00 SMPTE Social Time and Technology Demonstrations
Featuring food and drink beginning with the letter C.
Special technology demo on caption creation and editing by
Emily Bell of CaptionMax.

7:00pm-9:00 SMPTE Presentations and Meeting
Speakers:

David G. S. Wood, President and Chief Design Engineer at Ensemble Designs, will present technology for testing closed captions in broadcast equipment. Specific test sequences will be discussed and demonstrated.

Jack Davis, Director of Engineering at Fox 40 in Sacramento, will talk about closed caption compliance for broadcasters and exactly how Fox 40 has implemented closed captioning technology in their facility.

The event will be held at Ensemble Designs, 870 Gold Flat Road, Nevada City, CA 95959 (530) 478-1830, http://www.ensembledesigns.com/exhibits/cc_SMPTE

For information about SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), contact Mona Smothers, (530) 745-5602, http://www.smpte.org/sections/section_sacramento/home

For more event details – technical, press or otherwise, contact:
Cindy Zuelsdorf
cindy@ensembledesigns.com
http://ensembledesigns.com
(530)478-8328

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Ensemble Designs Wins Pick of Show Award at International Broadcasters Convention

2009-10-09T14:48:17Z

Grass Valley, California, 1 October 2009 – Ensemble Designs was honored to be awarded Pick Hit of the IBC show by Broadcast Engineering for their new BrightEye Mitto HD Scan Converter. BrightEye Mitto is for use at television stations and provides a tool for taking video from the web to air. The BrightEye™ Mitto and seven other new products were introduced at the exhibition in Amsterdam.

http://broadcastengineering.com/news/broadcast-engineering-ibc2009-pick-hits-winners20090916/index.html

“It was the best IBC exhibition we’ve ever participated in. We had a huge response from engineers who need a high-quality way to take YouTube™ material to air, to use it in a high-definition TV facility, said Cindy Zuelsdorf, Marketing Czar at Ensemble Designs. “TV stations are relying on web footage more and more for source material. I was demoing the unit constantly for the full five-day show.”

Mitto’s intuitive user interface allows the broadcaster to select a portion of the computer video display using just a mouse, and send it to air. The region selected for output determines if Mitto acts as an upconverter or downconverter. The filters automatically adjust in accordance with the conversion being performed.

“A broadcaster came to us and said they needed a superior quality scan converter, a way to take YouTube™ to air with the best possible quality. So we built a product for them,” said Mondae Hott, Director of Sales at Ensemble Designs. “When we brought the unit to the customer for testing they were completely amazed at how good the HD output looked.”

“Bringing progressive images from the desktop into the interlaced world of video used to be a compromise between sharp details versus interfield flicker,” said David Wood, President of Ensemble Designs. “The proprietary filtering we came up with satisfies both of these seemingly contradictory requirements. The result is that the output looks as good or better than the original material, which makes it useable in the most demanding broadcast facilities.”

A small stand-alone unit, the BrightEye Mitto, offers 1.5 and 3 Gb/s HD outputs. The genlock reference input allows the output to be timed to house. Analog or digital audio inputs provide for embedded audio on the output.

Mitto comes from the Latin root for transmit or send. Mitto is also the root word of uncompromising.

Based in Nevada City, California, Ensemble Designs is in their 20th year of business and is a leading provider of signal processing and infrastructure products to the professional broadcast industry. Customers include RAI, CBS News, NASA, Major League Baseball, Olympic Broadcast Organisation, Sky, ESPN and TVNZ.

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Ensemble Designs
PO Box 993, Grass Valley CA 95945 USA
http://ensembledesigns.com Tel: 530.478.1830

Press Contact: Cindy Zuelsdorf
cindy@ensembledesigns.com Tel: 530.478.8328

Ensemble Designs Takes YouTube™ to Air the Right Way With New HD Scan Converter

2009-09-11T15:00:00Z

Grass Valley, California, 11 September 2009 – For those broadcasters who find themselves relying on video content from the web as source material, Ensemble Designs has introduced the new BrightEye Mitto for taking video from the web to air. The BrightEye™ Mitto and seven other new products will be shown on stand 8.B91 at the International Broadcasters Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam 11-15 September 2009.

Mitto comes from the Latin root for transmit or send. Mitto is also the root word of uncompromising.

Based in Grass Valley, California, Ensemble Designs is in their 20th year of business and is a leading provider of signal processing and infrastructure products to the professional broadcast industry. Customers include RAI, CBS News, NASA, Major League Baseball, Olympic Broadcast Organisation, Sky, ESPN and TVNZ.

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Ensemble Designs
PO Box 993, Grass Valley CA 95945 USA
http://ensembledesigns.com Tel: +1 530.478.1830
IBC Stand: 8.B91

Press Contact: Cindy Zuelsdorf
cindy@ensembledesigns.com
Tel: +1 530.478.8328

Ensemble Designs Shows New 3 Gb/s Broadcast Products at IBC09

2009-09-10T15:00:00Z

Grass Valley, California, 10 September 2009 – Ensemble Designs today announced the introduction of eight new products for use in broadcast and satellite applications, including a new high-end scan converter. The new products will be showcased on stand 8.B91 at the International Broadcasters Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam 11-15 September 2009.

The new scan converter, a href=”/products/brighteye/bemitto”>BrightEye Mitto, is aimed at broadcasters who are relying on video content from the web for broadcast applications. Exclusive filtering and scaling technology are used to output video that looks as good or better than the original material.

The broadcaster can simply use a mouse to click and drag over the specific portion of computer video that is desired for output. “The beauty of the user interface is that you can see which parts of the screen you don’t want, as well as the portion you want to broadcast,” said Cindy Zuelsdorf, Marketing Czar at Ensemble Designs. “There aren’t any push-buttons to fiddle with. Users can just drag over the section they want to see on-air.”

The region selected for output determines if Mitto acts as an upconverter or downconverter. The filters automatically adjust in accordance with the conversion being performed. Output formats include 3 Gb/s and 1.5 Gb/s high definition, standard definition and analog composite.

Other new 3G products on display include new BrightEye 83 HDMI to HD converter for broadcast and post facilities. Dual link to 3G conversion is provided by the new BrightEye 81. Both BrightEye units are palm-sized, yet rugged.

The new Avenue 9600 embedder and disembedder has sixteen channel audio support which is useful for multi-language broadcast applications. Additionally, the 9600 handles data multiplexing for HD and SD SDI signals and can be used with RS-232 and
Dolby E™.

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Ensemble Designs
PO Box 993, Grass Valley CA 95945 USA
http://ensembledesigns.com Tel: +1 530.478.1830
IBC Stand: 8.B91

Press Contact: Cindy Zuelsdorf
cindy@ensembledesigns.com
Tel: +1 530.478.8328

Ensemble Designs Debuts New Data Inserter and Audio Embedder for Broadcasters at IBC

2009-09-09T15:00:00Z

Grass Valley, California, 9 September 2009 – Ensemble Designs today announced the introduction of the Avenue 9600 audio embedder, disembedder and data inserter, along with seven other new products for use in broadcast and satellite applications. The 9600 and seven more new products will be shown on stand 8.B91 at the International Broadcasters Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam 11-15 September 2009.

Sixteen channel audio embedding is required for many broadcasters. The 9600 module is a sixteen-channel audio embedder or disembedder for 1.5 and 3 Gb/s high definition video signals. It also supports 270 Mb/s standard definition signals. Eight AES ports are automatically configured as inputs or outputs.

A built-in sixteen-channel audio mixer provides channel swap and shuffle capability for rearranging and remixing audio channels. “If Spanish is in group 2 and needs to move to group 1, it’s easy to do with the intuitive controls built into this unit,” said Cindy Zuelsdorf, Marketing Czar at Ensemble Designs. “The need for sixteen channel support is evident by the number of languages carried in so many broadcast facilities.”

Since the 9600 has simultaneous disembedding and embedding, it is also an in-line processor for embedded audio. It can take embedded content, adjust levels and remap channels, and deliver it to the output as an embedded signal.

The 9600 can be fitted with Dolby E™ encoding and decoding options which are useful for broadcaster and post houses. Additionally RS-232 and RS-422 data can be multiplexed or demultiplexed as per SMPTE 337M.

Other 3G products on display include the new Avenue 9550 frame synchronizer and BrightEye 81 HD SDI to HDMI converter.

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Ensemble Designs
PO Box 993, Grass Valley CA 95945 USA
http://ensembledesigns.com Tel: +1 530.478.1830
IBC Stand: 8.B91

Press Contact: Cindy Zuelsdorf
cindy@ensembledesigns.com
Tel: +1 530.478.8328

Sooners Serious About Signal Conversion

2009-06-26T21:40:45Z

NORMAN, OKLA.

by Chris Turner
Film, Video and Broadcast
Production Services
University of Oklahoma

Our recent move from a very small facility into a brand new 10,000- square-foot operation has provided us with the capacity to handle more live shows and to do more productions in high definition.

A great deal of this programming involves interaction with some of the bigger networks. Our university president, Dave Borne, regularly does talk-backs with MSNBC from our facility. We frequently do NFL interviews as well. On any given day you might find us doing three different live Q&As with three networks simultaneously, along with several hours of taped production as well.

A lot of our broadcast activities are done remotely from the Barry Switzer Center— location of our football locker room and the place where our football coaches can often be found. Fiber is used for video feeds to and from Switzer Center, located about four blocks from our studio and control room operations.

AVENUE STANDS OUT

Quality video signals are key to providing feeds for the networks and other users. I specify all gear for the TV facility here, and after quality, the next two really important selection factors are flexibility and price. In evaluating a lot of equipment for our new television facility, I found Ensemble Designs’ Avenue line of cards especially well suited to our needs.

We’ve got some HD sources and an SD server and Avenue ties those signals together. The 5330 A to D cards take our video feeds, along with associated audio, and convert them to SD SDI. The Ensemble frame sync card is very useful in helping us with white balance and chroma correction. Avenue PC software provides an easy way to adjust levels and timing. For D to A conversion we use the 5230 cards. Their audio output function is convenient for monitoring.

We’ve never had an Avenue card go bad on us, and we run everything 24 hours a day. In one situation, we were in the middle of a live show on a hot summer day when the air-conditioning quit. The Avenue equipment was in the cabinet with everything else and even though some other gear got fried, the Avenue cards just kept on running.

If I were to build another production facility or another truck, I’d buy Avenue HD conversion cards, as it saves you lots of money in the long haul, and this gear won’t let you down.

HANDLES THEM ALL

Our customers range from video producers with training video projects, to network and government customers. We see all sorts of formats and media—Beta SP to full HD— and have to be able to accommodate them all. The Avenue lineup of conversion and other cards make this possible— A to D and D to A, SD or HD. The nice thing is that I can intermix everything in the same card tray. The decision to add Avenue gear to our operation was a sound one and the equipment that we purchased keeps on paying us back in more and more ways.

Chris Turner is the director of operations and broadcast producer for the Film, Video and Broadcast Production Services at the University of Oklahoma. He has 18 years of experience in broadcasting including studio and remote broadcasting. He may be contacted at cturner@ou.edu.

Ensemble Designs Announces Complete 3 Gb/s Signal Processing Line for Broadcast

2009-04-22T05:18:49Z

April 20, 2009 – Grass Valley, CA – Ensemble Designs today announced that it will introduce the Avenue 7400 and Avenue 9400 Sync Pulse Generators and Test Signal Generators for use in broadcast and satellite applications. The 7400, 9400 and 27 other announcements will be highlighted at booth #N4023 at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention held April 20-24 in Las Vegas.

For broadcasters and mobile trucks looking to future-proof their installations, the 9400 3 Gb/s Signal Generator and Test Pattern Generator offers every signal needed for a complete house reference system. 3 Gb/s and 1.5 Gb/s HD SDI, SD SDI, analog composite, HD Tri-Level Sync, timecode, AES audio and analog audio reference outputs are generated. It provides the most types of simultaneous outputs of any TSG available. New closed caption test signals help broadcaster trouble shoot closed caption data carriage through a signal chain. The built-in memory card allows creation of custom test patterns and audio clips.

Both manufacturers and broadcasters are expressing a real need for our new 3G TSG, said Mondae Hott, Director of Sales at Ensemble Designs. “Equipment manufacturers need a solid 3 Gb/s test pattern and sync pulse generator for developing equipment in the lab.”

All Avenue frames are 3G capable. Customers can use the new 3G modules in their existing Avenue frames.

For the ultimate in precision reference, the 7400-GPS option can be used with the 9400 3G/HD/SD SPG and TSG module. It’s a reliable timing source that is well suited for local reference generation in broadcast, remote trucks and post.

For facilities using 3G the issue of monitoring the signal becomes a challenge. The
BrightEye 72 is a 3G/HD/SD SDI digital to analog video converter with an HDMI confidence monitor out that provides a convenient way to monitor any type of digital video signal. A 3G video signal can be easily viewed via the HDMI output.

Other 3G products on display include new Avenue 3G electrical and optical converters and 3G distribution amplifiers.

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Ensemble Designs
PO Box 993
Grass Valley CA 95945 USA
www.ensembledesigns.com
Tel: +1 530.478.1830
Fax: +1 530.478.1832

Press Contact: Cindy Zuelsdorf
cindy@ensembledesigns.com
Tel: 530.478.8328

Make Audio Levels Consistent Between Program Sources

2009-04-22T05:14:59Z

April 20, 2009, Grass Valley, CA – Ensemble Designs announced today that it will introduce its new LevelTrack™ Audio AGC (Automatic Gain Control) system designed to correct mismatched audio levels between different program sources or segments within a program. The new LevelTrack™ Audio AGC system and 27 other announcements will be highlighted at booth #N4023 at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention held April 20-24 in Las Vegas.

Mismatched audio level errors between different program sources is regrettably common due to inconsistencies between different providers and program elements. Gradual changes are applied to prevent the audio level from dropping below or exceeding user programmable thresholds based upon the history in each channel. By adjusting the overall level of the signal, rather than masking the errors with compression, LevelTrack will not upset the internal dynamics of the program material. LevelTrack is for use in satellite and broadcast applications.

LevelTrack operates downstream of the manual audio level adjustments that are already provided in Avenue modules. This allows the automatic feature to assist the operator when needed, without needing to be enabled or disabled. The LevelTrack product is available through a software license and for use with Avenue HD up and downconverters, frames syncs and audio embedders.

Other products on display include new 3Gb/s test signal, test pattern and sync pulse generators and an HD video protection switch used for critical feeds in satellite and broadcast.

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Ensemble Designs
PO Box 993
Grass Valley CA 95945 USA
www.ensembledesigns.com
Tel: +1 530.478.1830
Fax: +1 530.478.1832

Press Contact: Cindy Zuelsdorf
cindy@ensembledesigns.com
Tel: 530.478.8328