2022 BREAKOUT SESSIONS

Session times and room locations will be assigned shortly.

10:40 a.m. – 11:25 a.m.

Live Video Streaming:  What Every Engineer Needs to Know!
Room A112

Video streaming offers a great opportunity for local radio stations to add another dimension (and revenue) to their coverage of local high school sports and other community events.  This session will outline six steps to start video streaming and will share best practices for producing high-quality radio/video simulcast.

Presenters:
Joel Losego, AVC Communications
Mark Foerster, Woof Boom Radio

Casey Claxon, Claxon Communications

NextGen TV: A Progress Report – What is Driving the Transition?
Room A113

Deployment of ATSC 3.0 now reaches nearly 80 percent of U.S. viewers, including stations in Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Indianapolis, and Louisville.  Future markets can learn in detail what to expect when NEXTGEN TV comes to their market.

Pearl TV chief technical officer Dave Folsom will explain the status of market transitions, transmission equipment, consumer receivers, security, SFN testing, and the broadcast framework now being used in some two dozen markets.

Presenter:
Dave Folsom, Pearl TV

Practical VoIP for Broadcast Engineers
Room A114

Voice over IP (VoIP) is no longer something that a vendor “handles” for the station’s business phones.  Indeed, VoIP, and its ubiquitous Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is quickly moving into more broadcast operations. While there are countless tutorials about VoIP technology, almost none of them address VoIP and SIP as they apply to broadcasters.

This breakout session will give broadcast engineers an excellent working knowledge of VoIP and related protocols. We’ll teach and discuss the practical capabilities and application of VoIP and SIP in broadcast plants. And we’ll see how, specifically, SIP is playing a role in “contribution quality” audio connections.  We’ll also look at virtualized broadcast phone systems that can be instantiated on-premises or in a cloud platform such as AWS.

Presenters:
Kirk Harnack, Telos Alliance
Shaun Dolan, Inrush Broadcast Services

11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

The Dashboard of the Future is Now: RDS & HD Visual Data Transmission
Room A112

This panel discussion will explore the importance of Radio Data System (RDS) and HD Radio visual data transmission, and provide perspectives about how stations are employing RDS to remain relevant in the connected car.

Presenters:
Drew Kirkman, Hubbard Radio
Rick Funk, WILCO Custom Electronics/RF Specialties
Joe Marshall, Quu, Inc.

Dynamic Resolution Encoding (DRE) and ATSC 3.0
Room A113

The ATSC 3.0 standard allows broadcast stations to send higher quality signals than ever before with features like 4K UHD Resolution.  However, almost all existing commercial deployments were launched only in 1080P or 720P.  Launching in 4K UHD Resolution not only requires more bit rates, but also takes up more system resources, and thus presents both technical and financial challenges.

This is exactly the problem Dynamic Resolution Encoding (DRE) can help you solve. DRE Technology is based on machine learning (ML) mechanism that learns how to pick the best resolution to be encoded in a supervised learning environment. At run time, using the already existing pre-processing stage, the live encoder can decide on the best resolution to encode, without adding any processing complexity or delay. This results in higher quality of experience (QoE) or lower bitrate, as well as lower CPU footprint vs. a classical fixed ladder approach.

During this session, we will take a deep dive into Dynamic Resolution Encoding, and how to transfer this new technology into an incredibly powerful weapon that will work for you.

Presenter:
Jing Zhou, Harmonic

Drones in Droves: Policy to Production
Room 114

Drones are increasingly used by radio and television stations for sports, news gathering and as diagnostic tools.  Meanwhile, new drone gear and federal regulations may impact how stations utilize these aerial tools.

This panel will share experience and perspectives on drone usage and application.

Presenters:
Rob Meisse, Mid-State Multimedia Group

Zach Huffman, Hyvion
Stephen Hartzell, Brooks Pierce LLP

2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.

Cloud-Based Radio Broadcasting and the Last Mile Problem
Room A112

If the futurists are correct, the future of radio broadcast is “Cloud-based.”  We all know that operating cloud-based automation and playout systems, along with audio processing, is a relatively easy project.  But getting from the “Cloud” to an FM or AM transmitter site reliably, especially with last-mile issues of low bandwidth (or no bandwidth), is a significant issue.

Coupled with this issue are a few other technical challenges:  how to handle RDS (with FM), deal with local EAS insertion, manage Nielsen encoding, sync analog FM and HD-1 while handling HD-2 to HD-6 along with supporting legacy transmitters. These are all significant challenges facing any broadcaster looking to make a move to the Cloud.

We propose a presentation that examines these issues and their potential solutions including IP delivery redundancy, very low bandwidth solutions, and ways to handle the other issues mentioned above – all of which can be accomplished now.

Presenter:
Mike Pappas, Orban Labs

ATSC 3.0 Single Frequency Networks
Room A113

This session will provide general information about ATSC 3.0 Single Frequency Networks including timing & synchronization, coverage planning and self-Interference, as well as Gap Filler application and real-world considerations.

Presenter:
Steven Rossiter, GatesAir

Grounding and Lightning Protection
Room A114

Every year, lightning season descends with crashes, flashes and BOOM! Join us as we recap the things to look for to help you get through that part of the year – we’ll discuss grounding (of course), but we’ll also discuss how much grounding is too much and why how the grounds are connected to each other is almost as important as if there are grounds at all.

We will also be talk about the rest of the lightning protection triumvirate – properly installed surge protection and ferrites – and why they’re all-important parts of a reliably designed system.

Presenter:
Jeff Welton, Nautel

 

Thank you to our conference sponsors: