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SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible
- cyberax 4mo agoWhat the heck is SMPTE?
- s1mon 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Motion_Picture_and_Television_Engineers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Motion_Picture_and_...
- SoftTalker 4mo agoDidn't realize they were so broad in scope. The only thing I had heard of was "SMPTE codes" used in audio recording to sync up multiple multi-track recording machines, so that e.g. you could record 30 tracks using two 16-track recorders (with one track on each machine used for the sync). I never bothered to look up what SMPTE meant.
- returnorthrow 4mo agoYou’re likely referring to SMPTE timecode, a method of conveying timing information about a video signal (eg. HH:MM:SS:FF), which is SMPTE 12M. There are various ways that timecode is conveyed in media such as LTC (linear timecode, usually carried as an audio signal), VITC (vertical interval timecode, in the vertical blanking interval of a video signal), and others.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- adrian_b 4mo agoSociety of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. The SMPTE standards have been very important for cinematography and television, especially for professional applications. Their importance has decreased since the transition to digital video, when many relevant standards have been issued by other organizations, but many SMPTE standards are still important, especially regarding the formats used for distributing digital movies for movie theaters.
- jonizzle 4mo agoBut they are getting back in the game with SMPTE 2110 which is a standard that describes how to send digital media over an IP network.
- qlm 4mo agoI learned this from the Frank Zappa song "Baby Snakes" which contains the lyrics: They live in a ho-ho-hole (Tiny hole) That is usually empty (Usually empty, tiny too) They live by a code (Dit dit dit dit) That is usually SMPTE Which stands for Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers
- dogman1050 4mo agoAlso the name of prog supergroup Transatlantic's first album, SMPT:E, a play on the band members names.
- jimmygrapes 4mo agoI thought it was the Transatlantic album (StoltMorsePortnoyTrewavas)
- PaulHoule 4mo agoExplained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk9xpH5aUtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk9xpH5aUtk
- cortesoft 4mo agoI saw it and thought it was an extension to the the SMTP standard.
- ElijahLynn 4mo agoI had the same question. I clicked on their menu About > Who is SMPTE page and it didn't define the acronym either. Then I scrolled to the bottom of the page and I did see it in the footer: SOCIETY OF MOTION PICTURE AND TELEVISION ENGINEERS Today I learned
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- geerlingguy 4mo agoI don't understand why any standards body would consider not doing this as a default.
- happytoexplain 4mo agoI don't think the benefits of charging for your work are mysterious. It's reasonable to believe that certain works should not be behind paywalls, but not understanding is kind of a confusing stance.
- geerlingguy 4mo agoIf your entire goal is to create a standard... it seems like giving anyone access to the materials needed to _adhere_ to said standard is prerequisite. Unless the goal is not to create standards, but instead to control access to said standard.
- btown 4mo agoBoth can be true. Promoting a standard isn’t free, and having licensing and certification fees, especially in an industry where such practices make a standardization org get taken more seriously, is a reasonable strategy. We’re lucky that our industry moved in a different direction!
- dare944 4mo agoIP licensing and certification are entirely separate from access to standards documentation. Of course certifying conformance to a standard is going to have a cost. But publishing documentation that has already been written is effectively free.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- stogot 4mo agoIt’s a proprietary standard moving to an open standard
- lambdaone 4mo agoAt last. It's time the whole would gets on board with open standards that are truly open, and there is explosive devopment going on in the world of new approaches to media production and distribution that this can only aid. It's net-head vs. Bell-heads all over again, and one of the biggest reasons for the success of the IETF standards was the no-cost availability of all their standards.
- tyre 4mo agoWe need a SciHub for standards docs. Since APIs have been ruled incopyrightable in the US, building a library that implements the standard shouldn’t itself be illegal. This will only increase innovation.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- bitwize 4mo agoAPIs have not been ruled uncopyrightable. The Supreme Court found that Google's use of the Java API's was fair use; fair use is specifically a defense against infringement of a copyrighted work. There may be court cases in the future that determine what the boundaries on API reimplementation are that distinguish fair use from infringement. A future Supreme Court may well overturn Oracle v. Google. APIs are specific forms of unique expression, and the same functionality can be made available through different APIs. (See for example, OpenGL vs. Direct3D.) Typically these are the criteria used to determine what is eligible for copyright, and ruling APIs uncopyrightable absent a statutory carve-out exemption may well put the copyrightability of currently protected forms of expression in jeopardy. But as things stand, the Oracle v. Google decision has only made the API-copyrightability decision more ambiguous, it has not settled the matter in favor of making APIs uncopyrightable.
- tyre 4mo agoYou're right, fair use was the ruling. Thank you for the correction. In that case, would the implementation of a standard qualify? Feels like it would?
- cloud8421 4mo agoOff-topic, but also the title of the first album of the progressive supergroup Transatlantic.
- ksec 4mo agoFrom [1], >This move is part of a broader effort to modernize the organization's Standards development and publication processes. Recent initiatives include: >Adopting GitHub-based workflows for version control >Issue tracking and automation >Transitioning to structured HTML-based authoring >Implementing an integrated publishing pipeline that streamlines document creation, review, validation and release. I am not entirely sure the Hosting on Github, Issue tracking and automation, and HTML-based authoring are all good thing. Although I would guess it is still better than what they had. And on another note, can anyone pin point the significance of making this entirely Free? SMPTE doesn't hold any patents. And I don't believe their original standards were hard to access. Are there any significant impact of this announcement? [1] https://www.smpte.org/setting-the-standards-free?hsCtaTracking=11d26906-9103-4b81-90c7-40675ae72b46%7Cf10dc6be-b5af-4225-95ae-def44e2b9b7e https://www.smpte.org/setting-the-standards-free?hsCtaTracki...
- asdcplib 4mo ago>can anyone pin point the significance of making this entirely Free? It's critical for data encodings (codecs, metadata,) because without free standards developers will attempt to reverse engineer from sample files, resulting in poor interoperability and causing chaos for those implementers that actually do bother to acquire and read the spec.
- eek2121 4mo agoGitHub == git, which is free. You can clone the repo and push it to wherever. No comment on the rest. I am just pointing out that using GitHub for source code doesn't mean mean that code can't be easily forked or used elsewhere. I suspect GitHub is for convenience since the majority of folks using git use it.
- rswail 4mo agoThe git part of github is a very small part of it, they are using Github issues etc which are not exportable/cross-platform. So yes, you can git clone the repo and get the HTML, but if you want all the other stuff (the "github based workflows") then you have to use github.
- andersthuesen 4mo agoRemember buying the 430.10 standard pdf back in the days in order to build subreader.io's cinema integration. Nice that it is openly available now!
- RossBencina 4mo agoGreat, now do AES and IEEE.
- javawizard 4mo agoAt least AES membership gets you free access to all of their standards, which is more than can be said for IEEE. Source: I'm a card-carrying AES member.
- tonyarkles 4mo agoAnd pretty cheap. I was a member for a year, just to get access to the entire AES67 standard. I think it was $65 for the membership at the time.
- RossBencina 4mo agoIndeed, I only learned this recently. There was a time when AES digital library access required an extra fee.
- guerby 4mo agoIn France if a standard is mandated by law (like electrical home wiring) then it must be freely available. I assume most democracies have similar laws, it's a basic right to know what laws you should follow ...
- hobofan 4mo agoDoes that actually mean "freely" (as in beer) available, or it must be able for anyone to be procurred? I would assume that France, like many countries heavily rely on ISO standards, which in many cases cost some money. Or is it the case that those standards are not explicitly mandated, but are essentially only fulfillable by knowing the ISO standard?
- erincandescent 4mo agoWhen the EU legislates compliance with a standard into law, they pay the standards body for a license covering all EU residents and citizens
- RetroTechie 4mo agoGiving a nice incentive for a standards body to lobby EU politicians to write their standard(s) into law proposals. Success? Ca€€hing! (sound of cash register)
- guerby 4mo agoIn French https://www.francenormalisation.fr/les-acteurs-de-la-normalisation/normes-obligatoires/ https://www.francenormalisation.fr/les-acteurs-de-la-normali... If there is only knowing the norm that makes you able to follow the law that refers it then it's a "obligatory norm" and must be readable without cost. https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/article_lc/LEGIARTI000044322043 https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/article_lc/LEGIARTI00004... List of such norms in spreadhseet linked here: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/contenu/menu/autour-de-la-loi/entreprises/normes-afnor-d-application-obligatoire https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/contenu/menu/autour-de-la-loi...
- 4mo ago
- fitsumbelay 4mo agoSPMTE timecode is the first tech standard I was able to understand as a young adult (which was decades ago). Standards.
- fithisux 4mo agoTime for HW vendors to include a datasheet for everything they sell. And this should be mandatory.
- edoceo 4mo agoOpened up my older clothes dryer to replace the belt. Has a two-pager schematic inside. Reminded me we used to have a TV that came with similar details.
- NathanielK 4mo agoFull pile of standards available here: https://pub.smpte.org/doc/ https://pub.smpte.org/doc/ There's some really neat ones all the way from film standards to digital cinema