Reel-to-reel audio tape recording

Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, also called open-reel recording, is the form of magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording medium is held on a reel that is not permanently mounted in an enclosed cassette. In use, the "supply reel" ("feed reel") containing the tape is placed on a spindle or hub; the end of the tape is manually pulled out of the reel, threaded through mechanical guides and a tape head assembly, and attached by friction to the hub of the second, initially empty "takeup reel".
Reel-to-reel systems use tape that is wide, which normally moves at . All standard tape speeds are derived as a binary submultiple of 30 inches per second. The tape in a compact cassette is wide and normally moves at . By writing the same audio signal across more tape, reel-to-reel systems give much greater fidelity, at the cost of much larger tapes. In spite of the larger tapes, less convenience, and generally more expensive media, reel-to-reel systems, which first started in the early 1940s, remained popular in audiophile settings into the 1980s, and have reestablished a specialist niche in the 21st century.
Reel-to-reel tape was used in early tape drives for data storage on mainframe computers and in video tape recorders (VTRs). Magnetic tape was also used to record data signals for instrumentation purposes, beginning with the hydrogen bomb tests of the early 1950s. Studer, Stellavox, Tascam, and Denon still produced reel to reel tape recorders in the 1990s, but , only Mechlabor continues to manufacture analog reel-to-reel recorders. Currently (2020), there are two companies that manufacture magnetic recording tape: ATR Services of York, Pennsylvania, and Recording the Masters in Avranches, France.
History.
The reel-to-reel format was used in the earliest tape recorders, including the pioneering German-British Blattnerphone (1928) machines of the late 1920s which used steel tape, and the German Magnetophon machines of the 1930s. Originally, this format had no name, since all forms of magnetic tape recorders used it. The name arose only with the need to distinguish it from the several kinds of tape cartridges or cassettes such as the endless loop cartridge developed for radio station commercials and spot announcements in 1954, the full size cassette, developed by RCA in 1958 for home use, as well as the compact cassette developed by Philips in 1962, originally for dictation.
The earliest machines produced distortion during the recording process which German engineers significantly reduced during the Nazi Germany era by applying a "bias" signal to the tape. In 1939, one machine was found to make consistently better recordings than other ostensibly identical models, and when it was taken apart a minor flaw was noticed. Instead of DC, it was introducing an AC bias signal to the tape , and this was quickly adapted to new models using a high-frequency AC bias that has remained a part of audio tape recording to this day. The quality was so greatly improved that recordings surpassed the quality of most radio transmitters, and such recordings were used by Adolf Hitler to make broadcasts that appeared to be live while he was safely away in another city.
American audio engineer Jack Mullin was a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II. His unit was assigned to investigate German radio and electronics activities, and in the course of his duties, a British Army counterpart mentioned the Magnetophons being used by the allied radio station in Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt. He acquired two Magnetophon recorders and 50 reels of I.G. Farben recording tape and shipped them home. Over the next two years, he worked to develop the machines for commercial use, hoping to interest the Hollywood film studios in using magnetic tape for movie soundtrack recording.
Mullin gave a demonstration of his recorders at MGM Studios in Hollywood in 1947, which led to a meeting with Bing Crosby, who immediately saw the potential of Mullin's recorders to pre-record his radio shows. Crosby invested $50,000 in a local electronics company, Ampex, to enable Mullin to develop a commercial production model of the tape recorder. Using Mullin's tape recorders, and with Mullin as his chief engineer, Crosby became the first American performer to master commercial recordings on tape and the first to regularly pre-record his radio programs on the medium.
Ampex and Mullin subsequently developed commercial stereo and multitrack audio recorders, based on the system originally invented by Ross Snyder of Ampex Corporation for their high-speed scientific instrument data recorders. Les Paul had been given one of the first Ampex Model 200 tape decks by Crosby in 1948, and ten years later ordered one of the first Ampex eight track "Sel Sync" machines for multitracking, (although when it arrived, it was still set up as an instrument recorder running at 60 inches-per-second and had yet to be converted for audio use). Ampex engineers, who included Ray Dolby on their staff at the time, went on to develop the first practical videotape recorders in the early 1950s to pre-record Crosby's TV shows.
Inexpensive reel-to-reel tape recorders were widely used for voice recording in the home and in schools, along with dedicated models expressly made for business dictation, before the Philips compact cassette, introduced in 1963, gradually took over. Cassettes eventually displaced reel-to-reel recorders for consumer use. However, the narrow tracks and slow recording speeds used in cassettes compromised fidelity. Ampex produced pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes for consumers of popular and classical music from the mid-1950s to the mid-'70s, as did Columbia House from 1960 to 1984.
Following the example set by Bing Crosby, large reel-to-reel tape recorders rapidly became the main recording format used by audiophiles and professional recording studios until the late 1980s when digital audio recording techniques began to allow the use of other types of media (such as Digital Audio Tape (DAT) cassettes and hard disks).
Even today, some artists of all genres prefer analog tape, claiming it is more "musical" or "natural" sounding than digital processes, despite its fidelity inaccuracies. Due to harmonic distortion, bass can thicken up, creating a fuller-sounding mix. In addition, high end frequencies can be slightly compressed, which some claim is more natural to the human ear, though this claim is difficult to quantify due to the very personal aesthetics as to what is 'natural' sound. In this century, it is not uncommon for some artists to record directly onto digital equipment and then re-record the tracks to analog reel tape (or vice versa) for this effect, which can sound pleasing or "warmer" due to the increase of even harmonics that can often enhance musicality, much in the way vacuum tube amplifiers are preferred over solid-state devices for the same reasons. In addition to all of these attributes, tape "saturation" is a unique form of distortion that many rock, blues and funk artists find very satisfying, though with modern technology, these forms of distortion can be simulated digitally.
The great practical advantage of tape for studios was twofold – it allowed a performance to be recorded without the 30-minute time limitation of a phonograph disc, and it permitted a recorded performance to be edited or erased and re-recorded again and again on the same piece of media without any waste. For the first time, audio could be manipulated as a physical entity, and the recording process was greatly economized by eliminating the requirement for a highly trained disc-cutting engineer to be present at every recording session. Once a tape machine was installed and calibrated, there was no need for any attendant engineering, other than to spool or replace the tape being used on it. Daily maintenance only consisted of cleaning and occasionally demagnetizing the heads and guides. Tape editing is performed simply by cutting the tape at the required point, and rejoining it to another section of tape using adhesive tape, or sometimes glue. This is called a splice. The splicing tape has to be very thin to avoid impeding the tape's motion, and the adhesive is carefully formulated to avoid leaving a sticky residue on the tape or deck. "Butt" splices (cut at exactly 90 degrees to the tape travel) were used for fast edits from one sound to another, though preferably, the splice is made at a much lower angle across the tape so that any "click" or other noise introduced by the cut is spread across a few milliseconds of the recording. The low-angle splice would also help to glide the tape more smoothly through the machine and push any loose dirt or debris to the side of the tape path, instead of accumulating in the splice joint. The use of reels to supply and collect the tape made it very easy for editors to manually move the tape back and forth across the heads to find the exact point they wished to edit. Tape to be spliced was clamped in a special "splicing block" attached to the deck near the heads to hold the tape accurately while the edit was made. A skilled editor could make these edits very rapidly and accurately. A side-effect of cutting the tape at an angle is that on stereo tapes the edit occurs on one channel a split-second before the other. Long, angled splices can also be used to create a perceptible dissolve from one sound to the next; periodic segments can induce rhythmic or pulsing effects.
The performance of tape recording is greatly affected by the width of the tracks used to record a signal, and the speed of the tape. The wider and faster the better, but of course this uses more tape. These factors lead directly to improved frequency response, signal-to-noise ratio, and high-frequency distortion figures. Tape can accommodate multiple parallel tracks, allowing not just stereo recordings, but multi-track recordings too. This gives the producer of the final edit much greater flexibility, allowing a performance to be remixed long after the performance was originally recorded. This innovation was a great driving force behind the explosion of popular music in the late 1950s and 1960s. The first multi-tracking recorders had two, three, or four tracks, then eight, sixteen, and twenty-four, and so on. It was discovered early on that new special effects were possible, such as phasing and flanging, delays and echo by re-directing the signal through one or more additional tape machines, while recording the composite result to another. These innovations appeared on pop recordings shortly after multi-tracking recorders were introduced, although, Les Paul had been using tape echo and speed-manipulation effects on his single-track recordings from the 1940s and '50s.
For home use, simpler reel-to-reel recorders were available, and a number of track formats and tape speeds were standardised to permit interoperability and prerecorded music.
Reel-to-reel tape editing also gained cult-status when many used this technique on hit singles in the 1980s.
There has recently been a revival of reel-to-reel, with quite a few companies restoring vintage units and some manufacturing new tape. In 2018, the first new reel-to-reel tape player in over 20 years was released.
Pre-recorded reel tapes.
The first prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes were introduced in the United States in 1949; the catalog contained fewer than ten titles with no popular artists. In 1952, EMI started selling pre-recorded tapes in Great Britain. The tapes were twin-sided and mono (2 tracks) and were duplicated in real time on modified EMI BTR2 recorders. RCA Victor joined the reel-to-reel business in 1954. In 1955, EMI released 2-track "stereosonic" tapes, although the catalog took longer to be published. Since these EMI tapes were much more expensive than a vinyl LP record, sales were poor; still, EMI released over 300 "stereosonic" titles. Then they introduced their Twin Packs, which contained the equivalent of two LP albums but playing at 3.75ips.
The heyday of prerecorded reel tapes was the mid-1960s, but after the introduction of less complicated cassette tapes and 8-track tapes, the number of albums released on prerecorded reel tape dropped dramatically despite their superior sound quality. By the latter 1960s, their retail prices were considerably higher than competing formats, and musical genres were limited to those most likely to appeal to well-heeled audiophiles willing to contend with the cumbersome threading of open-reel tape. The introduction of the Dolby noise-reduction system narrowed the performance gap between cassettes and open-reel, and by 1976 prerecorded open-reel offerings had almost completely disappeared, even from record stores and audio equipment shops. Columbia House advertisements in 1978 showed that only one-third of new titles were available on reel-to-reel; they continued to offer a select number of new releases in the format until 1984.
Sales were very low and specialized during the 1980s. Audiophile reel tapes were made under license by Barclay-Crocker between 1977 and 1986. Licensors included Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Argo, Vanguard, Musical Heritage Society and L'Oiseau Lyre. Barclay-Crocker tapes were all Dolby encoded and some titles were also available in the dbx format. The majority of the catalog contained classical recordings, with a few jazz and movie soundtrack albums. Barclay-Crocker tapes were duplicated on modified Ampex 440 machines at four times the playing speed, unlike popular reel tapes which were duplicated at 16 times the playback speed. All of the known pre-recorded reel-to-reels on the market are all documented at the Reel To Reel Index website which focuses on the last reels made during the 1980s and includes photographs of all of them. David Winter also released the complete list of 1950s EMI and Barclay-Crocker tapes.
Pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes are also available once again, albeit somewhat expensively as a very high-quality audiophile product, through "The Tape Project", as well as several other independent studios and record labels. Since 2007, The Tape Project has released their own albums, as well as previously-released albums under license from other labels, on open-reel tape. The German label Analogue Audio Association ("AAA") has also re-released albums on open-reel tape to the high-end audiophile market.
Tape speeds.
In general, the faster the speed, the better the reproduction quality. Higher tape speeds spread the signal longitudinally over more tape area, reducing the effects of dropouts that can be audible from the medium, and noticeably improve high frequency response. Slower tape speeds conserve tape and are useful in applications where sound quality is not critical.
Speed units of inches per second or in/s are also abbreviated IPS. in/s and in/s are the speeds that were used for (the vast majority of) consumer market releases of commercial recordings on reel-to-reel tape. in/s is also the speed used in 8-track cartridges. in/s is also the speed used in Compact cassettes.
In some early prototype linear video tape recording systems developed in the early 1950s from companies such as Bing Crosby Enterprises, RCA, and the BBC's VERA, the tape speed was extremely high, over , to adequately capture the large amount of image information. The need for a high linear tape speed was made unnecessary with the introduction of the now-obsolete professional Quadruplex system in 1956 by Ampex, which segmented the fields of a television image by recording (and reproducing) several tracks at a high-speed across the width of the tape per field of video by way of a vertically spinning headwheel with 4 separate video heads mounted on its edge (a technique called "transverse scanning"), allowing for the linear tape speed to be much slower. Eventually, transverse scanning was accompanied by the later (and less-expensive) technology of helical scanning, which could record one whole field of video per helically-recorded track, recorded at a much lower angle across the width of the tape by the head spinning in the near-horizontal plane, instead of vertically.
Quality aspects.
Even though a recording on tape may have been made at studio quality, tape speed was the limiting factor, much like bit rate is today. Decreasing the speed of analog audio tape causes a uniform decrease in the linearity of the frequency response, increased background noise (hiss), more noticeable dropouts where there are flaws in the magnetic tape, and shifting of the (Gaussian) background noise spectrum toward lower frequencies (where it sounds more "granular") "regardless" of the audio content. An MP3 of a noisy rock band at a low bit rate will have many more artifacts than a simple flute solo at the same bit rate, whereas either on low-speed tape will have the same uniform background noise profile and high frequency saturation (weakened high end response). A recording on magnetic audio tape is linear; unlike today's digital audio, not only was jumping from spot to spot to edit time-consuming, editing was destructive—unless the recording was duplicated before edit, normally taking the same amount of time to copy, in order to preserve 75-90 percent of the quality of the original. Editing was done either with a razor blade—by physically cutting and splicing the tape on a metal splicing block, in a manner similar to motion picture film editing—or electronically by dubbing segments onto an edit tape. The former method preserved the full quality of the recording but not the intact original; the latter incurred the same quality loss involved in dubbing a complete copy of the source tape, but preserved the original.
Tape speed is not the only factor affecting the quality of the recording. Other factors affecting quality include track width, oxide formulation, and backing material and thickness. The design and quality of the recorder are also important factors, in many ways that are not applicable to digital recording systems. The machine's speed stability (wow-and-flutter), head gap size, head quality, and general head design and technology, and the machine's alignment (mostly a maintenance issue, but also a matter of design—how well and precisely it can be aligned) electro-mechanically affect the quality of the recording. The regulation of tape tension affects contact between the tape and the heads and has a very significant impact on the recording and reproduction of high frequencies. The track width of the machine, which is a question of format rather than individual machine design, is one of two major machine factors controlling signal-to-noise ratio (assuming the electronics have high enough S/N ratio not to be a factor), the other being tape speed. S/N ratio varies directly with track width, due to the Gaussian nature of tape noise; doubling the track width doubles the S/N ratio (hence, with good electronics and comparable heads, 8-track cartridges should have half the signal-to-noise ratio of quarter-track " tape at the same speed, IPS.)
Tape formulation affects the retention of the magnetic signal, especially high frequencies, the frequency linearity of the tape, the S/N ratio, print-through, optimum AC bias level (which must be set by a technician aligning the machine to match the tape type used, or more crudely set with a switch to approximate the optimum setting.) Tape formulation varies between different tape types (ferric oxide [Fe2O3], chromium dioxide [CrO2], etc.) and also in the precise composition of a specific brand and batch of tape. (Studios therefore generally align their machines for one brand and model number of tape and use only that brand and model.) Backing material type and thickness affect the tensile strength and elasticity of the tape, which affect wow-and-flutter and tape stretch; stretched tape will have a pitch error, possibly fluctuating. Backing thickness also affects print-through, the phenomenon of adjacent layers of tape wound on a reel picking up weak copies of the magnetic signal from each other. Print-through on analog tape causes unintended pre- and post-echoes on playback, and is generally not fully reversible once it has occurred. In professional half-track use, post-echo is considered less problematic than pre-echo (as the echo is largely masked by the signal itself) and therefore tapes stored for long periods are kept "tails-out", where the tape must be first wound "backwards" onto the take-up spool before playback.
Another quality aspect, not related to audio quality, is the backing material. Typically acetate was used for cheaper tape, and Mylar for more expensive tape. Acetate would tend to break under conditions that Mylar would survive, though possibly stretch. The quality of the oxide's binder was also important, for it was common with old tape for the backing to wind on the reel, while the oxide falls off.
In the 1980s, several manufacturers produced certain tape formulations blending polyurethane and polyester as backing material which tended to absorb humidity over many years in storage and partially deteriorate. This problem would only be discovered after an archived tape was opened and required to be played again, after possibly a decade or less on the shelf. The deterioration resulted in a softening of the backing material, making it gooey and sticky which quickly clogged-up tape guides and heads of the reproducer. This phenomenon is known as "Sticky-Shed Syndrome" and can be temporarily reversed by baking the tape at a low temperature for several hours to dry it out and restore firmness. The restored tape may then be played normally for several days or weeks, but will eventually return to a deteriorated state again.
Noise reduction.
Electronic noise reduction techniques were also developed to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range of analog sound recordings. Dolby noise reduction includes a suite of standards (designated A, B, C, S and SR) for both professional and consumer recording. The Dolby systems use frequency dependent compression/expansion (companding) during the recording/playback, respectively. Initially, Dolby was offered via a stand-alone box that would go between a recorder and amplifier. Later audio devices often included Dolby. DBX is another noise reduction system that uses a more aggressive companding technique to improve both dynamic range and noise level. However, DBX recordings do not sound acceptable when played on non-DBX equipment.
In the late 1970s there was also the German Telefunken-made High Com NR system, a broadband compander, which was technically very advanced. That was a gain in dynamics of roughly 25 dB that outperformed the well-known Dolby B by far. High Com was included in more sophisticated cassette recorders, mostly alongside the various Dolby systems. Even though this applied to the consumer market, there was no tape hiss at all that an ear could realize. Another advantage was that recorded tapes could be exchanged amongst High Com recorders without any loss of quality in sound. The "pumping effect" mostly reported from critical sound material (e.g. drums or any percussive instrument) with advanced dbx NR did not show in properly calibrated High Com recordings. It did not penetrate the market, possibly due to the less aggressive marketing strategies typical for German companies at that time compared to the widely known Dolby systems.
Dolby B eventually became the most popular system for Compact Cassette noise reduction. Today Dolby SR is in widespread use for professional analog tape recording.
Multi-track recorders.
As studio audio production progressed and became more and more advanced, it became desirable to record the individual instruments and human voices separately and mix them down to one, two, or more speaker channels later, rather than in real time in the studio before recording. In addition to allowing recording engineers and producers to experiment with different mixing arrangements, effects, etc. on the same performance and to produce multiple versions of a recording (without having multiple duplicates of all the studio control room equipment used for mixing), multi-tracking enables the use of non-real-time effects or effects that cannot be produced in the same studio where the musicians perform. Another huge benefit of multi-track production is that recording of individual tracks or certain instruments could be done at different locations at any later date, if required. This allowed a producer to record basic tracks at a given studio, then take that tape to any other studio in the world that used the same format, and record additional tracks as needed for the same piece of music.
Reel-to-reel recorders with eight, sixteen, twenty-four, and even thirty-two tracks were eventually built, with as many heads recording synchronized parallel linear tracks. Some of these machines were larger than a laundry washing machine and used tape as wide as . A single new reel of 1" or wider tape, could easily cost $200 to $400. Still, in professional studios, most tapes were recorded only once, and all recording was on new tape, to ensure the maximum quality, as studio time and the time of skilled musicians was much higher than the cost of tape, making it not worth the risk of a recording being lost or degraded due to using media that had been previously recorded upon.
If more than 24 tracks of recording were required, it was possible in the mid-1970s and onwards with advanced servo-controlled machines to synchronize two (or more) 24-track recorders to behave as a single 48-track recorder (46 usable tracks due to the time code stripped on the first channel of each tape). Such precise synchronization was achieved by recording a time code on one of the tracks on each reel of tape: a computer system would keep the two time codes perfectly synchronized, and transparently as seen by the machine operator.
Digital reel-to-reel.
As professional audio evolved from analog magnetic tape to digital media, engineers adapted magnetic tape technology to digital recording, producing digital reel-to-reel magnetic tape machines. Before large hard disks became economical enough to make hard disk recorders viable, studio digital recording meant recording on digital tape. Mitsubishi's ProDigi and Sony's Digital Audio Stationary Head (DASH) were the primary digital reel-to-reel formats in use in recording studios from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s. Nagra introduced digital reel-to-reel tape recorders for use in film sound recording. Digital reel-to-reel tape eliminated all the traditional quality limitations of analog tape, including background noise (hiss), high frequency roll-off, wow and flutter, pitch error, nonlinearity, print-through, and degeneration with copying, but the tape media was even more expensive than professional analog open reel tape, and the linear nature of tape still placed restrictions on access, and winding time to find a particular spot was still a significant drawback. Also, while the quality of digital tape did not progressively degrade with use of the tape, the physical sliding of the tape over the heads and guides meant that the tape still did wear, and eventually that wear would lead to digital errors and permanent loss of quality if the tape was not copied before reaching that point. Still, digital reel-to-reel tape represented a significant advance in audio recording technology, and most who could afford to record using digital tape generally did. 3M's 32-track recorder was priced at $115,000 in 1978 ().
Best known for its lines of tape media and professional analog recorders, with its M series of multitrack and 2-track machines, the Mincom division of 3M spent several years developing a digital recording system, including two years of joint research with the BBC. The result was the 3M Digital Audio Mastering System, which consisted of a 32-track deck (16-bit, 50 kHz audio) running 1-inch tape and a 4-track, 1/2-inch mastering recorder.
The extremely short wavelengths recorded by a digital tape recorded meant that tape and tape transport cleanliness was an important issue. Specks of dust or dirt were large enough in relation to the signal wavelengths that contamination by such dirt could render a recording unplayable. Advanced digital error correction systems, without which the system would have been unworkable, still failed to cope with poorly maintained tape or recorders, and for this reason a number of tapes made in the early years of digital reel-to-reel recorders are now useless.
Because digital audio recording technology advanced over the years, with development of cassette-based tape recording formats (such as DAT) and tapeless recording, digital reel-to-reel audio recording is now obsolete, also because no new metal particle reel tapes for digital audio recording are manufactured today - only ferric oxide tapes for analog recording.
As a musical instrument.
Early reel-to-reel users realized that segments of tape could be spliced together and otherwise manipulated by adjusting playback speed or direction of a given recording. In the same way as modern keyboards allow sampling and playback at different speeds, a reel-to-reel could accomplish similar feats in the hands of a talented user.
In addition, multiple reel-to-reel machines used in tandem can also be used to create echo and delay effects. The Frippertronics configuration used by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp on numerous of their 1970s and '80s recordings illustrates these possibilities.


Joan Laporta

Joan Laporta i Estruch (; born 29 June 1962) is a Spanish politician and current president of FC Barcelona.
Laporta is a lawyer (he graduated from the University of Barcelona) with his own firm, Laporta & Arbós, which has important firms as clients. He served as MP in the Parliament of Catalonia between 2010 and 2012.
During his first tenure as President of FC Barcelona, they set a new record for trophies won in a 12-month period, winning 6 in 2009.
He was re-elected in 2021 as the President of the club for the second time.
Career at Barcelona.
Laporta started his involvement with FC Barcelona leading the "Elefant Blau" ("Blue Elephant"), a group which opposed former president Josep Lluís Núñez and which, in 1998, tried unsuccessfully a vote of no confidence against him.
2003–2010: First tenure as club president.
First season in charge.
In the 2003 elections, Laporta did not start as the favourite, but his charisma grew during the electoral campaign and he finally won against the expected victor, publicist Lluís Bassat, in part because of a widely published (and ultimately unfulfilled) promise to bring David Beckham to Barcelona. Laporta had the support of other young businessmen of Barcelona, such as Sandro Rosell. Laporta quickly became a media star, even more than some of the players.
Laporta's first season (2003–04) as president would prove to be a watershed for the club, but not without initial instability. The club situation was one of bitter unhappiness and disappointment amongst both fans and players after the club failed to meet their own standards to match Real Madrid's success in the early 2000s, having not won trophies since 1999.
Arrival of Frank Rijkaard.
With Laporta's arrival, and that of football superstar Ronaldinho (his star signing after David Beckham's decision to go to Real Madrid, and Thierry Henry who decided to remain at Arsenal) as well as new manager Frank Rijkaard, among others, the club was forced to embark on a new phase, having elected a new, young and largely untested managerial board along with him. Laporta also decided to fight against the threat of violence outside the Camp Nou stadium, specially from the "Boixos Nois" (Mad Boys) ultras gang, and faced insults and death threats from them. Police investigation revealed they had planned to kidnap him. To exacerbate the situation, the 2003–04 season began abysmally results-wise, with Laporta constantly having to call for the fans' understanding and patience with him and Rijkaard as the club slowly phased out underachieving players from the old guard in order to rebuild a new-look side around Ronaldinho.
Laporta also had to spur his board to foster creative business ideas to raise revenue, and in recent years, that new style of management eventually succeeded in turning around the fortunes of the club with the team spectacularly returning to form and finishing second after being at the bottom of the table in 2003–04, and then finally managing to win La Liga titles both in 2004–05 and in 2005–06. During this period, the inherited massive financial debt started to be cut down, and only two players remained from the original team that did not win a major title in six years, with players like Deco, Samuel Eto'o and Edmílson as the new starlets, around Ronaldinho and a core of home-grown players like Carles Puyol, Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Víctor Valdés and Oleguer. The club finally won the UEFA Champions League on 17 May 2006, only their second time in history, as well as that year's Liga championship.
Barcelona had a long history of avoiding shirt sponsors. In 2006, FC Barcelona announced a five-year agreement with UNICEF, where the club would donate €1.5 million and the UNICEF logo would feature on their shirts. After Laporta left as president, the club signed shirt sponsorships with Qatar Foundation and later Qatar Airways, which he criticised.
Re-election as club president.
There was some discussion about when exactly Laporta's mandate started, with the board of directors holding one opinion and the opposition another. One club member went to the court and, on 19 July 2006, a judge ruled that the first eight days of his presidency in June 2003 counted as the first year of his four-year term; his term had therefore expired and new elections were called. Temporarily, the club was ruled by a management committee led by the economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin.
The elections were to be held on 3 September 2006, but they turned out to be unnecessary as on 22 August, Barcelona confirmed Laporta's presidency for another four years after no other would-be candidate received the 1,804 signatures required to stand for the elections
Vote of No Confidence.
The poor results of the sports sections, especially in football, together with concerns about his leadership style, resulted in a censure motion which took place on 6 July 2008 and was led by Oriol Giralt. Exit polls showed that 60.60% of the 39,389 votes cast were against Laporta. Even though he lost the overall vote, however, the necessary 66% to hold new elections was not reached.
Following the results, it was speculated that Laporta would resign due to pressure from fellow directors. This would have resulted in then vice-president Albert Vicens taking over for Laporta, with Ferran Soriano replacing Vicens as the main vice-president. These rumours, however, were quickly dismissed by Laporta. On 10 July 2008, 8 of the 17 board members – vice-presidents Albert Vicens, Ferran Soriano and Marc Ingla, and directors Evarist Murtra, Toni Rovira, Xavier Cambra, Clàudia Vives-Fierro and Josep Lluís Vilaseca – resigned following Laporta's confirmation that he will stay on as president of the club despite the opinion of the members. In a press statement, they revealed that they resigned due to "discrepancies in the way to act after the result of the motion".
The return of Pep Guardiola.
After dismissing Barcelona head coach Frank Rijkaard, Laporta appointed the untested and inexperienced Pep Guardiola, Barça's team captain at the end of the "Dream Team" era. Guardiola's only experience as a coach was with the B team the previous season (which won promotion from the fourth tier to the third). Although the team started poorly, losing the first match to Numancia and drawing the second, Barcelona had the best season in its history, winning the treble of La Liga, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League. Supercopa de España and UEFA Super Cup titles followed in August, as well as a FIFA Club World Cup victory in December. He was succeeded by Sandro Rosell in 2010.
2021–present: Second tenure as club president.
In November 2020, Laporta announced president candidacy for the 2021 FC Barcelona presidential elections. In January 2021, he officially entered the presidential race after presenting 10,252 signatures out of which 9,625 were validated and was the favorite to win the presidential election. On 7 March, Laporta won the presidential election, in which he received 54.28% of the vote ahead of Víctor Font and Toni Freixa who received 29.99% and 8.58% of the vote respectively. He succeeded Josep Maria Bartomeu who resigned in October 2020 to avoid facing a vote of no confidence from the club members.
Political activities.
Laporta has long been involved in politics. In 1996, he joined the Independence Party, formed by Pilar Rahola and Àngel Colom, former members of the Republican Left of Catalonia.
Laporta has long held ambitions to enter Spanish politics after leaving office as president of FC Barcelona. He has in the past been outspoken about his political affiliations: he supports Catalan independence from Spain. FC Barcelona is seen by many as a symbol of Catalonia, a generally accepted fact which Laporta often emphasizes but has been criticized by those who think that Barça should remain neutral from a political standpoint.
Following the end of his second term as president, Laporta formed the independence-seeking political party "Democràcia Catalana" (Catalan Democracy). In the summer of 2010, Laporta's party merged with other extra-parliamentary pro-independence parties and grassroots movements into a political platform called Catalan Solidarity for Independence. Laporta was elected its president.
In the Catalan elections of 28 November 2010, the new party managed to win 4 seats in the 135-member Catalan Parliament, making it the sixth largest party out of seven. Laporta was elected in the circumscription of Barcelona.
In 2011, Laporta stepped down as president of the Catalan Solidarity for Independence and left the party.
Criticism.
Laporta's management of the sports sections of the club, especially the basketball section, has been controversial. On 2 June 2005, he faced the resignation of five members of the club's board of directors, including Sandro Rosell. They accused him of having changed for the worse as a person, having adopted authoritarian traits and harbouring ambitions of power.
In October 2005, he faced a scandal when his brother-in-law and member of the board of directors in charge of security, Alejandro Echevarría, was revealed to be a member of the Francisco Franco Foundation. After several denials by Echevarría and Laporta, contested by documents shown by a former member of the board of directors, Laporta was finally forced to accept Echevarría's resignation. Echevarría continued, however, to be close to the club and he organized the security during the celebrations of the 2005–06 La Liga championship.
Laporta's own political history added to the complications surrounding the Echevarría scandal, as his politics are diametrically opposed to those implied by Echevarría's membership of the Francisco Franco Foundation. Laporta is a self-described Catalan nationalist and has been identified on several occasions as supporting the independence of Catalonia from Spain. In the early 1990s, he and fellow Catalan politicians Pilar Rahola and Ángel Colom founded the now-defunct Partit per la independencia, which supported Catalan separatism. He was also an active participant at the controversial Frankfurt Book Fair of 2007, at which Catalan language and culture were the special featured invitees, but not including other Catalonia-based authors who wrote in other languages, such as Spanish. At the fair, Laporta stated that he "hopes that FC Barcelona continues to be a tool to promote the Catalan language and culture" and to the contrary, he would feel obligated "to create the Catalan Republic of Barcelona".
Personal life.
Laporta was married to Constanza Echevarría and has three sons, Pol, Guillem and Jan. Laporta's son Pol is a footballer who plays as a attacking midfielder.


Fast forward

To fast-forward is to move forwards through a recording at a speed faster than that at which it would usually be played, for example two times or two point five times. The recordings are usually audio, video or computer data. It is colloquially known as 'f-forwarding'. On media control symbols, such as player buttons and interfaces, the function is commonly represented by two solid arrows pointing right and these typical icons were correctly recognised by 75% of a sample of European consumers. This symbol is represented in unicode as .
Usage in audio.
To reach a certain portion of a song, a person may fast-forward through a cassette tape by pressing a button (often labeled "Fast Forward" itself) on the tape deck containing the tape. The tape deck's motor activates at a speed higher than usual—for example, double the standard 1-7/8 ips playing speed of the 1/8" cassette tape—and can be stopped by the end of the tape, the pressing of a "Stop" button on the deck (or another button mechanism disengaging the button), or simply lifting a finger from the "Fast Forward" button.
Fast-forwarding is the exact opposite of rewinding, in which tape, music, etc., are moved backward at a user's discretion. In either operation, because of sound distortion, volume is usually muted or severely reduced.
With the advent of inexpensive digital music media, fast-forwarding has most likely lost its past meaning related to the speed of a tape deck motor (or record turntable, or another device allowing fast-forwarding) and now may, especially as cassette tapes and other analogue media are used less and less by younger generations, only apply to the operation of moving ahead in a recording's time frame—accomplished today by simple clicking, dragging a slide image, or even via speech-recognition software. (Still, some CD and DVD players offer tape-style fast-forwarding, so that the user can detect when the destination is reached and stop.)
Usage in video.
Analogue VCRs provided fast-forward by simply playing the tape faster. The resulting loss of synchronization of the video was accepted because it was still possible to make out approximately what was happening in the video to find the desired playback point. Modern digital video systems such as DVR and Video on Demand systems use 'trick mode' to present an apparently faster stream by only displaying selected frames.
Unlike analogue video streams in which only serial access is possible, digital video allows for random access to the media, which raises the possibility of alternative fast forwarding algorithms and visualizations. In video streaming formats, such as H.264, fast forward algorithms use the I-frames to sample the video at faster than normal speed. In streaming videos, fast-forward represents a useful search or browsing mechanism, but introduces extra network overhead when non-I-frames are transmitted in addition to the viewed I-frames and extra computational complexity in the video transcoder. Finding more network bandwidth-conserving and computationally efficient algorithms for accommodating both fast-forward and normal speed viewing is an active area of research.
When fast-forwarding is used as a search mechanism (sometimes called a fast-forward "video surrogate") in video libraries, the question arises as to what is perceptually the best fast-forward strategy for effective browsing. The main trade-off is between the fast-forward speed and the ability to understand the video. One study concluded that a 1:64 ratio surrogate (that is, show one frame out of every 64) allowed most participants to perform adequately on a range of tasks related to video understanding.
Metaphorical uses.
Fast-forwarding videotapes and similar is familiar enough for metaphorical uses to develop, e.g. "The court doesn't want to know about your aunt's bad hip. Fast-forward to when the fight started."


XMLNuke

XMLNuke is an open source framework intended to create Websites using only XML/XSLT transformations. XMLNuke has several classes to aid the developer create entire applications producing only XML. XMLNuke is integrated with a basic Content management system.
Design.
XMLNuke assumes it the most important part of any site is the information. However all information is merged with complex HTML, JavaScript structures, so any changes in the application or design may cause a very deep modification in the current structure. Using XMLNuke you can separate naturally your information from your layout. Any class in XMLNuke produces XML.
You can easily move your site from a FLAT layout to a very complex layout using, for example, Ajax, without any change in your application.
XMLNuke focus the development to maintenance.


It takes a licking and keeps on ticking


Shalshelet

The Shalshelet (Hebrew: ) is a cantillation mark found in the Torah. It is one of the rarest used, occurring just four times in the entire Torah, in Genesis 19:16, 24:12, and 39:8, and in Leviticus 8:23. The four words accented with the shalshelet mark all occur at the beginning of the verse.
The Hebrew word שַׁלְשֶׁ֓לֶת translates into English as "chain". This shows the connection of the worlds by the links of a chain. The symbolism of the Shalshelet is that the subject of the story is wrestling with his inner demons and is undergoing some hesitation in his actions.
It is rendered musically by a long and elaborate string of notes, giving a strong emphasis to the word on which it occurs.
Purpose.
The Shalshelet mark is said to be used for various purposes:
Grammatically it is equivalent to "segolta", but is never preceded by a conjunctive accent or a disjunctive of a lower class. It is thus related to "segolta" in the same way as "Zakef gadol" is related to "zakef katan", or "Yetiv" to "Pashta".
Total occurrences.
The shalshelet note occurs a total of 7 times in Tanakh outside of the Sifrei Emet. They are:
Additionally, the note occurs 39 times in Psalms, Proverbs, and Job.
Melody.
The Shalshelet has a melody similar to that of 3 Pazers.
According to Chabad tradition, it is equivalent to 2 Pazers and one Tlisha Gedolah. Rabbi Stolik of Chabad Caltech disputes this "Chabad" tradition.
It is approximately 30 notes, though this number varies depending on the word on which it is used.


National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences

The National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (Initials: NUCES) (), also commonly known as "Foundation for Advancement of Science and Technology" (FAST), () is a private research university with multiple campuses system in Pakistan.
The university has five campuses based in different cities and was the first multi-campus university in Pakistan. These campuses located in Chiniot-Faisalabad, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar. It was inaugurated by President Pervez Musharraf in 2000. It is consistently ranked among the leading institutions of higher education in the country and top in computer sciences and information technology by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan in 2010. Its engineering programs have been accredited with Pakistan Engineering Council. It also give financial aid to their students based on Qarz-e-Hasna (Interest free loan) by Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF).
Programs offered.
Bachelors
Bachelor of Business Administration,
BS (Accounting & Finance),
BS (Artificial Intelligence),
BS (Civil Engineering),
BS (Computer Science),
BS (Cyber Security and Digital Forensics),
BS (Data Science),
BS (Electrical Engineering),
and BS (Software Engineering)
Masters
Master of Business Administration,
MS (Accounting & Finance),
MS (Applied Linguistics),
MS (Civil Engineering),
MS (Computer Network and Security),
MS (Computer Science),
MS (Data Science),
MS (Electrical Engineering),
MS (English Language Teaching),
MS (Management Sciences),
MS (Mathematics),
MS (Software Engineering),
and MS (Software Project Management)
PhD
PhD (Civil Engineering) ,
PhD (Computer Science) ,
PhD (Electrical Engineering),
PhD (Management Sciences),
PhD (Mathematics) ,
and PhD (Software Engineering)
History.
The Foundation of Advancement of Science and Technology was founded and established by Bank of Credit and Commerce International financier Hasan Abidi which provided a large financial capital for the university to promote research in computer sciences and emerging technologies in 1980. Later this foundation established National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences inaugurated by Former President and Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf in 2000.


The Wholly Family

The Wholly Family is a 2011 Italian short fantasy film written and directed by Terry Gilliam. The film was funded by the Garofalo Pasta Company and shot in the Naples area.
Plot.
Jake, a ten-year-old boy, is on holiday with his bickering parents in Naples. Jake asks them to buy him a Pulcinella figure from a street stall, but they refuse. Jake's father tells him a piece of local Naples lore: buying a figure for oneself will bring bad luck – good luck can be found only by stealing one. While his parents continue to argue over trivial affairs, Jake sneaks away and attempts to steal the figure. The stall holder catches Jake in the act, and directs him instead towards a series of glass bell jars containing models of the idealised Holy Family. Before Jake can make a purchase, his mother arrives, furious at her son's disappearance. After another argument with Jake's father, the family leave to return to their hotel. The stall holder, noticing that Jake has stolen one of the figures, smiles.
Jake's parents send him to bed without dinner as punishment for sneaking away. While they argue next door, Jake produces the Pulcinella figure and places it on his bedside table. Later, a hungry Jake lies in bed, and remarks that the figure has failed to bring him good luck. Suddenly the miniature Pulcinella comes to life and hides behind Jake's lamp. A full-sized Pulcinella appears on Jake's bed and offers him a plate of spaghetti. Jake backs away and bumps into a fat Pulcinella, who shoves Jake head-first into his own stomach and sits down on the bed to enjoy some spaghetti.
Jake finds himself wandering through a dark cavern with high walls. When he discovers a dinner table, an entire troupe of Pulcinella arrive. They offer him several meals, but remove them as soon as he attempts to take a bite, telling him to save his appetite for the main course. The Pulcinella then serve Jake his parents' heads on platters. Jake is disgusted and refuses to eat. The Pulcinella ask Jake if this is not what he wanted, and wonder aloud if they have misunderstood him. Deciding to give Jake a "history lesson", the Pulcinella seize him and carry him through a misty doorway and across a bridge over a body of water. The Pulcinella force Jake to look through the glass door of a building, where he sees his parents dancing happily in their wedding attire. Jake calls out but they do not hear him. The Pulcinella begin to dance in a tight circle, squashing Jake, who suddenly finds himself lying in a bed. Jake discovers that he is in a surreal maternity ward, staffed by Pulcinella, where women lay gigantic eggs which hatch into babies. At the end of the ward, Jake finds his own parents playing with a newborn dressed in Pulcinella garb. Again Jake attempts to call out to them, but a Pulcinella stops him. Jake's parents begin to bicker over how to handle the baby. Jake's mother removes the baby's mask, revealing Jake's face. As the argument escalates, she throws the baby to the floor and begins to cry, turning to her husband for comfort. The dismayed Pulcinella stoops to retrieve the baby Jake, now revealed as a broken robotic doll. The Pulcinella takes the Jake doll to a dollmaker who, despite their pleas, refuses to fix him. The Pulcinella regretfully dumps the broken doll in a burn barrel.
As Jake desperately promises to be good from now on, he awakens in his bed at the hotel and concludes that his adventures were just a dream. Finding his parents sleeping peacefully in the next room, Jake orders breakfast and serves it to them in bed. Having dressing himself as a Pulcinella, Jake tries (and fails) to balance an egg on his nose for their amusement. As the family laugh together, it is revealed that they are models inside a bell jar on the street stall seen earlier. The stall holder, describing the bell jar and its contents as a "masterpiece", asks another young boy and his parents how much they would be willing to pay for it.
Production.
The film was funded entirely by the Garofalo Pasta Company. Gilliam defended this arrangement, stating "It wasn't selling out. The only stipulations were the film had to be made in Naples and nobody gets killed in it. I did exactly what I wanted to do." He also commented on the ease with which the film was financed: "Making a short is a lot easier than doing feature-length movies, where most of your time is spent raising the money. This took no time to raise the money. All the time was spent making the movie." "The Wholly Family" was one of five short films financed by Garofalo.
Release.
The film's premiere took place in March 2011, at the Bradford International Film Festival, where it was shown as part of a retrospective of Gilliam's life, along with "Storytime" and "Miracle of Flight". Another film festival rejected "The Wholly Family", deeming it to be an advertisement – a decision Gilliam considered "crazy". The film was later distributed online directly via Distrify.
The pasta company that funded the film also posted it to YouTube.


Charles Tegart

Charles Augustus Tegart (5 October 1881 – 6 April 1946) was a British colonial police officer in India and Mandatory Palestine. He has received praise for his industry and efficiency and notoriety for his brutality and use of torture. He was ruthless and "uncompromising with detainees".
Early life.
Born in Derry on 5 October 1881, Tegart was the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman, Rev. Joseph Poulter Tegart of Dunboyne, County Meath. He was educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen and briefly at Trinity College, Dublin.
Career in India.
He joined the Calcutta Police in 1901, becoming head of its Detective Department. He served almost continuously in Calcutta for a period of thirty years until he was appointed a member of the Secretary of State's Indian Council in December 1931.
He was the first officer of the Indian Police (IP) in the organisation and on his report the Special Branch was created.
He was awarded the King's Police Medal in 1911. He became Superintendent of Police in 1908, Deputy Commissioner in 1913, Deputy-Inspector General (Intelligence) in 1918, and Commissioner of Calcutta Police from 1923 to 1931.
He earned notoriety amongst the Bengal opponents of British rule, especially from independence activists. In their eyes, he was an obdurate opponent of Indian nationalism to the point of illegality.
Charles Tegart was involved in a skirmish with Indian revolutionaries led by Jatindranath Mukherjee at Balasore in Orissa on 9 September 1915.
Tegart was reported to have survived six assassination attempts in India and in spite of the danger he continued to drive around in an open-top car with his Staffordshire Bull Terrier riding on the bonnet. The assassination attempts included:
Tegart's efficiency in curbing the revolutionary activities of the Indians came in for praise from Lord Lytton, then Governor of Bengal. He was awarded the KCIE in the 1937 Coronation Honours.
Prior to his roles in India, he served as chief assistant to Ormonde Winter, the head of British intelligence operations in Ireland during the Black and Tan period. As a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin he retained contacts there and was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1933.
Career in Palestine.
In view of his expertise, the British authorities sent him to the British Mandate of Palestine, then in the throes of the Arab Revolt, to advise the Inspector General on matters of security. He arrived there in December 1937.
In due course he advised the construction of 77 reinforced concrete police stations and posts which could be defended against attack, and of a frontier fence along the northern border of Palestine to control the movement of insurgents, goods and weapons. His recommendations were accepted and 62 new "Tegart forts", as they came to be known, were built throughout Palestine, however all but a few located along the Lebanese border were built after the Arab Revolt, in 1940–41. Many of them are still in use, some by Israeli forces and others by Palestinian ones, while others were destroyed in various rounds of fighting.
It is recorded that suspects underwent brutal questioning by the Mandatory police, involving humiliation and the Turkish practice of falaka (beating prisoners on the soles of their feet), but a Tegart researcher concluded that there is no proof to be found in Tegart's personal papers in support of the accusations that he built interrogation centres or that he developed new torture techniques.
World War II.
In 1942, Tegart headed up operations at the Ministry of Food in wartime Britain to combat the black market.
Personal life.
For some time, Tegart kept a defused bomb as a paperweight to remind him of the attempts on his life. He once threw the bomb in a moment of anger, only to have it explode against the wall of his office, an incident he reportedly considered amusing.
Tegart died at his home of age-related disease.
In Popular culture.
In an Indian Bengali TV Serial Titled 'Netaji' launched in 2019, that portrayed the life of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, here Bengali Actor Sohan Bandopadhyay was seen in playing the role of Charles Tegart.


Digital Forensics XML

Digital Forensics XML (DFXML) is an XML language used to automate digital forensics processing. DFXML contains information about both the results of forensic processing and the tools used to perform the processing (provenance). Currently there is no Digital Forensics XML standard and there is no fixed schema. There is a draft schema available from NIST.


Howard Koch (screenwriter)

Howard E. Koch (December 12, 1901 – August 17, 1995) was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studio bosses in the 1950s.
Early years.
Born to a Jewish family in New York City, Koch grew up in Kingston, New York, and was a graduate of St. Stephen's College (later renamed Bard College) and Columbia Law School.
Career as writer.
Writing for stage and radio.
While practicing law in Hartsdale, New York, he began to write plays. "Great Scott" (1929), "Give Us This Day" (1933), and "In Time to Come" (1941) were produced on Broadway.
His radio work in the 1930s as a writer for the CBS Mercury Theater of the Air included the Orson Welles radio drama "The War of the Worlds" (1938), which allegedly caused nationwide panic among some listeners for its documentary-like portrayal of an invasion of spaceships from Mars. Koch later wrote a play about the panic, "Invasion from Mars", which was later adapted into the 1975 TV movie, "The Night That Panicked America", in which actor Joshua Bryant plays Koch.
Screenwriting and blacklisting.
Koch began writing for Hollywood studios. His first accepted screenplay was made into a 1940 film. Koch contributed to the popular film "Casablanca" with Humphrey Bogart, which he co-scripted with writers Julius and Philip Epstein in 1942, and for which he received an Academy Award in 1944. He also wrote "Shining Victory" (1941) and "Letter from an Unknown Woman" (1948), his favorite screenplay.
In 1943, at the request of Jack L. Warner of Warner Bros., Koch wrote the screenplay for "Mission to Moscow" (1943). The movie subsequently spawned controversy because of its positive portrayal of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. After the war, Koch was fired by Jack Warner after Koch was denounced as a Communist. He was then criticized by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for his outspoken leftist political views. Koch was blacklisted by Hollywood in 1951.
After being blacklisted, Koch moved with his wife Anne (an accomplished writer in her own right) and their family to Europe and eventually took up residence in the United Kingdom with other blacklisted writers, where they wrote for five years for film and television (The Adventures of Robin Hood among them) under the pseudonyms "Peter Howard" and "Anne Rodney". In 1956, they returned to the United States and settled in Woodstock, New York, where he continued to write plays and books and remained actively committed to progressive political and social justice causes.
Howard Koch died in 1995 in Kingston, New York.
Bibliography.
Play:
Book:
Short story:
Anthologies:


Capital Radio Network

Capital Radio Network is an Australian radio company, which owns stations in Canberra, Goulburn, Cooma, the Snowy Mountains, Gippsland and Perth. The company is a subsidiary of Blyton Group, with Kevin James Blyton as managing director for both. The company first acquired 2XL (now XLFM) in the Snowy Mountains, as well as 2CC and 2CA in Canberra - the latter two offloaded from parent companies Australian Radio Network and Austereo respectively in order for them to launch joint-venture stations 104.7 and Mix 106.3.
In February 2015, Capital Radio Network acquired Gippsland-based 3GG.
With the exception of XLFM, Snow FM and 3GG, all stations are operated as a 50/50 joint-venture with Grant Broadcasters.
Networks.
Some Capital Radio Network stations broadcast identical formats and programming in the networks below:
Former Stations.
In the 1990s, Kevin Blyton held a 40% stake in Newcastle's NXFM.
Outside of buying and selling stations in the same stations/territories as current stations, he has also held stations in Tasmania and Queenstown, New Zealand.


Matrix number

A matrix number is an alphanumeric code (and on occasion, other symbols) stamped or handwritten (or a combination of the two) into the run-out groove area of a phonograph record. This is the non-grooved area between the end of the final band on a record's side and the label, also known as the run-off groove area, end-groove area, matrix area, or "dead wax".
Industry usage.
A matrix number is intended for the internal use of the record manufacturing plant, but they are also studied and documented by record collectors, as they can sometimes provide useful information about the edition of the record.
There are two parts of the matrix number to be considered: the "main number", which is usually printed on the label as well, and "extra information" which can include a cut or take number. "Matrix numbers" can refer to any of these elements, or all of them combined. The inscription area may also contain record plant codes or logos, the initials or signature of the disc cutting engineer, and cutting or copyright dates, among other things.
The matrix number printed on the label should not be confused with the catalogue number, which is usually in larger type, and will typically be the same number on both sides of the record. Matrix numbers will be different on each side, and are sometimes printed upside down on the label to prevent them from being mistaken for the catalogue number.
The purpose of the "main number" is to assign a filing number to the stamper, and to ensure each side receives the proper label, by visually comparing the number on the label to the inscribed number.
The most important part of the "extra information" is usually the cut number, which is a suffix to the main number. For example, matrix number 12345 is seen on a label, but examination of the run-out groove area reveals number 12345–3, which indicates this is the third cut of this side. It is not unusual to find records with a different cut number on each side.
Sides are recut for various reasons. Record stampers could only be used to make a limited number of copies before they became worn, and a new cut was required. As of the early 1980s, this was no longer true. Changes to master disc manufacturing methods, including the DMM or Direct Metal Mastering system, made it possible to make many copies of a master cut non-destructively, so a recut was no longer necessary when the plate used for pressing became worn. Stampers can also become damaged from handling. Recuts can also be made when there is a problem with the previous cut, for example, a technical fault or improper banding (the visual separation between songs). When a new cut is made, several copies called "test pressings" are made for technicians (and, for a new record, the producer and the recording artist) to review the cut, and determine if it should be accepted or rejected. If it is rejected, another cut must be made.
More reasons for multiple cuts: If a record is pressed at more than one factory, as can be the case when a popular release is issued by a major record company with factories in more than one city, each factory may make its own master cut. If a record is issued internationally, each country typically cuts its own masters. If a record is re-issued by a different company, or by the same company under a different catalogue number, the record is usually recut, although there are occasions where the previous cut is reused and the new number is added to the inscriptions in the run-out area, sometimes with the previous number scratched out.
Singles.
Records with one song per side, particularly 7-inch 45 rpm and 10-inch or 12-inch 78 rpm records, are often found with non-consecutive matrix numbers on each side, and the "hit" side or "side one" may not necessarily be the lower number. This indicates that the numbers were probably assigned at the time the songs were recorded. If there is a significant gap between the two numbers, the songs were probably not recorded at the same session. If the numbers appear to be from completely different sequences, or have a different format or number of digits, this can indicate that the numbers were assigned by the recording studio, and the two sides were recorded at different studios. When record historian Brian Rust researched his discography books on early recordings, he was able to determine the studio and approximate recording date of certain songs from matrix numbers by comparing them to other numbers in the sequence.
78 rpm records.
In the days of 78 rpm records, before recording tape was commonly used (up to approx. 1950), audio recordings were cut directly to disc. The recording studio would assign a number to the song to be recorded, which would become the main part of the matrix number, and several takes would be made, with the take number inscribed in the matrix area. Only one take would be selected for issue in most cases, but there are occasions where alternate takes were issued as well, possibly by accident. Frequently, the record label on an alternate take is identical to the label for the more common take, as it only shows the "main" matrix number for the song without the take number.
Alternate takes are of interest to collectors, particularly if the music is jazz. Since jazz is often partially improvised, two takes can contain significant differences, and a comparison of two takes can reveal which portions of the music were pre-determined, and which were improvised or variable. Also, when two takes are released, one is usually much more common than the other, and the less common take can become a valuable record to collectors.
Take numbers on Victor Records can usually be found to the left at the label, i.e. the "9 o'clock" position.
When looking for matrix information on 78 rpm records, care should be taken to examine the label area as well, as some numbers may be coded underneath the label, and are viewable as indentations.
Albums.
Album matrix numbers are often similar to the catalogue number. For example, a record numbered X-1234 may have a matrix number like A–1234 or X–1234–A on side one, and B–1234 or X–1234–B on side two, as shown on the label. In the run-out area, the latter number could be expressed as X–1234–B7, where 7 is the cut number. In other instances, the matrix numbers may be a separate series of two consecutive numbers such as 55667 and 55668.
Compact discs.
Compact discs (CDs) also contain factory codes inscribed near the hub, and these are also called matrix numbers.
Importance to collectors.
Matrix numbers are often quoted as evidence that a record is a "first pressing", although this term is not used in a consistent manner by collectors. Records can be pressed in multiple batches that are identical, and therefore a group of batches must be regarded as one "pressing". Collectors sometimes refer to a "second pressing" when a major change takes place, such as a change to the selection or order of songs on an album side, or a not-so-major change such as a different record label design, or correction of a typo on the label text, or minor variation of the cover, such as a change of address for the record company. Or they may refer to a record as a "second pressing" if the cut number changes, but the label, cover, and musical content are otherwise identical. A first cut could be a rejected cut, and a cut #2 or later could actually be the one used for the first pressing as issued to the public. Even so, collectible records are often questionably identified as "first pressing" based solely on the matrix number marked as cut #1.
If a record is recut for re-issue with a new catalogue number, the cut number will probably start at #1 again. Therefore, a matrix number in itself is not proof of an original pressing, and additional research should be done before declaring a record to be a first pressing.
A greater importance to collectors is where a recut contains an audible difference from previous cuts. Some recuts contain a different take, mix, or edit (length of song) from previous editions. Some recuts are made to re-issue a song with different lyrics as an act of censorship. Even if a censored record is only distributed to radio stations as a promo edition, there could be two versions of the promo: censored and uncensored. Some recuts with altered content have a suffix of "-RE" at the end of the inscribed matrix number, but this does not necessarily mean that the non-"RE" edition was issued to the public.
In cases where a popular release is issued by a major label that uses more than one factory, so that copies are manufactured in several cities, a factory code in the form of a number, acronym, symbol, or logo found in the run-out area may have importance. These are sometimes quoted when collectible records are offered for sale. Factory codes used by major American labels such as Capitol, Warner Bros., RCA and Mercury have been documented by researchers.
Hidden messages.
Record collectors have often been amused to find hidden messages inscribed in the run-out area. The vast majority of these are the work of George Peckham, a disc cutting engineer in the UK who possibly cut hundreds of thousands of records for many record companies over several decades from the 1960s onward, and often signed his cuts "Porky" or marked them as "A Porky Prime Cut". While some of his cuts state only his nickname or motto, others contain a clever or cryptic reference to something mentioned in the lyrics, or something about the recording artist. Some of his inscriptions include a small drawing or cartoon. Most of his cuts can be found on records manufactured in the UK, but his use of messages has been imitated by others, and similar messages can be found in records from various countries. They can even be found on compact discs on occasion.
On the original UK edition of "This Year's Model" (1978), the second album by Elvis Costello, Peckham inscribed a message stating that this is the winning copy of a contest, and anyone finding this message should call the phone number which follows to claim their prize.The prize was a pre-printed signature photo of Elvis Costello which was sent out in limited numbers.
U2's "Rattle and Hum" (1988) features a secret message to the band's production manager, Anne Louise Kelly, reading "We Love You A.L.K.", but this was the first of several hidden messages referring to her in U2 albums, followed by her name being scrambled to make the name Kiley Sue LaLonne in the booklet of "Original Soundtracks 1" (1995) and then on most CD copies of "Pop" (1997), a message on the playing side of the CD near the matrix numbers reads "4UALKXXXX".
Although hidden messages are usually the invention of the disc cutting engineer, there is an instance where a message is believed to have been inserted at the request of the recording artist, on Led Zeppelin's single, "Immigrant Song", which contains this message on copies made in more than one country: "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law". Not all copies contain this inscription, and copies that do have a higher collector's value.
On Emitt Rhodes' self-titled album, an ornate design surround a "Recorded at Home" inscription, as Rhodes recorded the entire album by himself and at his home.


Bernard Vorhaus

Bernard Vorhaus (December 25, 1904 – November 23, 2000) was an American film director born in New York City, of German descent, who spent many decades living in the UK. H eworked early in his career as a screenwriter and co-produced the film "The Singing City". He was blacklisted in Hollywood for his communist sympathies, and returned to England, where he resumed his career; he was known alongside Michael Powell for his quota quickies, he had also worked in Europe.
Career.
The Harvard University graduate, in addition to directing thirty-two films, was also the mentor to future film director David Lean, some of whose work as a film editor early in his career was on Vorhaus pictures.
He worked steadily as a screenwriter in Hollywood while in his 20s for such studios as Columbia Pictures and Fox Studios but wanted to direct movies. He eventually decided to move to England and began directing quota quickies, such as "The Last Journey" (1935).
After attaining success in England, Vorhaus moved back to the U.S. and began working at Republic Pictures directing B-movies. He was blacklisted in 1951 at HUAC hearings.
Vorhaus had already moved to Europe at that time and directed a few minor films while there. He finally returned to England and retired from the film business, unlike contemporaries Joseph Losey and Cy Endfield, who were also communist blacklisters, he founded a company "Domar Industries" a business specialising in house renovations. He's film's gained a resurgence in the 1980s.
Family.
Vorhaus had two children, Gwyn and David, an bass player and electronic music pioneer who worked under the name White Noise.


Tiffany Holmes

 Tiffany Holmes (born 1964) is an American new media artist and educator. She is based in Chicago, Illinois.
Early life and education.
Tiffany Holmes was born in 1964 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her formal education includes: a PhD (2004–2010) "Eco-visualization: Combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption," from the Arts Department at University of Plymouth. Additionally she has an MFA degree (1996–1999) in Imaging and Digital Arts, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; an MFA degree (1992–1996) in Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); and a BA degree (1986–1990, cum laude) Art History with a minor in Environmental Studies, Williams College.
Work.
In her research and practice, Holmes explores the potential of technology to promote positive environmental stewardship. She coined the term "eco-visualization" in 2005. Her creative projects include a commission for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications where sequences of experimental animations visualize real time energy loads.
Her paper detailing this work, “Eco-visualization: Combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption,” won a Best Paper award at Creativity and Cognition 2007 and a 2010 doctoral degree. She lectures and exhibits worldwide in these venues: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, 01SJ Biennial, SIGGRAPH 2000, Worldart in Denmark, Interaction ’01 in Japan, ISEA Nagoya. A recipient of the Michigan Society of Fellows research fellowship in 1998, Holmes has earned the Illinois Arts Council individual grant, an Artists-in-Labs residency award in Switzerland, and a 2010 Rhizome Commission.
Holmes is a professor in the Department of Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.


This Land

This Land was a Canadian television series, which aired from 1970 to 1982 on CBC Television. Evolving from the earlier series This Land of Ours, a documentary series about Canada’s nature and resources, "This Land" expanded its focus to include environmental and conservation issues.
Hosts of the show included John Hopkins, Phyllis Gorman, Laurie Jennings, Mary Chapman, John Foster, Mike Halleran and Don Francks.


Viewer Access Satellite Television

The Viewer Access Satellite Television service, or VAST, is a satellite television platform in Australia, providing digital television and radio services to remote and rural areas, as well as viewers in terrestrial black spots. The service using the Optus C1 and Optus D3 satellites. It is partly funded by the Australian Government and managed through a joint-venture between Southern Cross Media and Imparja Television. It is an even more restricted free-to-view replacement for Optus Aurora providing channels which have been absent (such as a Network Ten affiliate and digital only secondary and HD network channels) on the remote service until now. The platform uses only H.264 video encoding and 8PSK, which allows for more lower bit rate channels on the limited transponder space that's available. The EPG uses an MHEG-5 guide instead of the usual more compatible DVB EIT.
History.
On 10 January 2010, the Australian Government announced a new satellite service to deliver digital television and radio channels to Australian viewers who reside in remote and rural areas, or who can't obtain adequate television signal in an existing metropolitan or regional terrestrial broadcast area, commonly referred to as being in a "black spot". Initially, the service was only available to viewers in and around Mildura, Victoria, to coincide with Australia's first analog television switch-off. On 15 December 2010, the service was made available to viewers in the existing Remote Central and Eastern Australia and Mt Isa licence areas. In April 2011, the Western VAST service began for Regional and Remote Western Australia viewers.
From December 2013, CRN, NIRS, RPH, and the BBC World Service were transitioned to the new satellite platform over a two-month period from the existing Aurora platform and were the final channels to make the transition. February 2014 was when the last Aurora uplink ended.
Availability.
Anyone is entitled to access ABC and SBS channels on the VAST service, after completing a successful application, regardless of location within Australia.
Several different groups of people are currently entitled to use the VAST service to receive "commercial stations":
1- It was previously possible to apply for the Optus Aurora service instead, and then move to VAST before the 6-month period preceding digital switchover in the applicable licence area.
Equipment.
Viewers accessing the service must use a VAST certified satellite television set-top box and smartcard, and go through an application process. The original set-top box is a model provided by the South African owned vendor "Altech UEC", which also offers models with recording functions along with the newer offerings from Korean owned vendor "Humax" and a basic model "SatKing" from Australian owned vendor "Phoenix Technology Group". The units with a recording function inhibit forward cuing and skipping to prevent commercials being bypassed. Unlike the Aurora service, VAST only uses Irdeto version two and three (not version one) for DVB encryption key management with each smart card locked to the serial number of the provided set-top box.
Channels.
VAST is designed to provide the same number of digital television and radio channels available in metropolitan terrestrial areas. A minimum of 17 digital television channels are currently available to eligible viewers. The service also provides a minimum of 39 digital radio channels and a number of niche channels. The channels are sorted into bouquets based on a number of states and territories in Australia. Each VAST certified set-top box is assigned a bouquet suitable for the geographical location the set-top box is registered to.
Television.
ABC Television provides digital television channels ABC TV, ABC HD, ABC TV Plus/Kids, ABC Me and ABC News from 7 states and territories. SBS Television also provides SBS, SBS HD and SBS VICELAND from 7 states and territories, as well as SBS Food, SBS World Movies and NITV. The channels are assigned the same virtual channel numbers as terrestrial areas, but are also assigned 3-digit virtual channel numbers for out-of-area or interstate viewers.
Southern Cross Austereo, Imparja Television and Central Digital Television provide commercial digital television channels to VAST viewers in the Remote Central and Eastern Australia license area, which covers all states and territories except Western Australia. Standard-definition digital television channels 7 Central, 7TWO, Imparja Television, 9Go!, 10 Central and 10 Peach are each split into two separate feeds based on Australian Eastern Standard Time and Australian Eastern Summer Time respectively. High-definition digital television channels 7mate, 9Gem and 10 Bold are also available.
Commercial digital television channels for VAST viewers in the Regional and Remote Western Australia license area are provided by Golden West Network, WIN Television and West Digital Television. Unlike the Remote Central and Eastern channels, they are all available in Western Standard Time and are assigned typical regional virtual channel numbers. Standard-definition channels GWN7, 7TWO, WIN, 10 Bold, 10 Peach, Sky News on WIN, Nine West and 9Go! are provided as well as high-definition channels 7mate, WIN HD and 9Gem. Home shopping and sport channels ishop tv, Racing.com and TVSN are also provided by the WA commercial broadcasters.
As well as government and commercial channels, VAST provides Indigenous Community Television (ICTV) and 3ABN International to all viewers nationally.
Regional news.
The Remote Central and Eastern commercial television channels carry minimal local news content due to the size of the licence area. Southern Cross Austereo came to an agreement with the Federal Government to provide the VAST Regional News service, a group of 20 channels broadcasting news bulletins and updates from over 40 regional television stations. The stations send their news programs to a playout centre in Canberra, ACT, operated by Southern Cross Austereo. A menu placeholder on virtual channel 4 directs viewers to the 401-420 virtual channel range.
Radio.
Most terrestrial analog and DAB radio channels from ABC and SBS are provided as audio-only DVB channels. A number of niche radio channels such as Faith FM, Niche Radio Network, Radio TAB, Aussie Flashbacks, 2RPH, Vintage FM and Vision Radio Network are also provided, as well as community radio channels from regional Western Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland and South Australia are also provided, such as Yolngu Radio, CAAMA Radio, Gumala Radio, Radio Larrakia, 2CUZ FM, RadioNGM, PAKAM Radio, PAW Radio, Radio 5NPY, QRAM Central Radio, TEABBA Radio, TSIMA Radio and Waringarri Radio 6WR.
A number of community radio channels from Community Broadcasting Association of Australia such as CRN, NIRS, RPH, the BBC World Service and Hope Christian radio are also provided.


Konsojaya Trading Company

The Konsojaya Trading Company was a shell company cofounded by Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as "Hambali", and his Malaysian Chinese wife, Noralwizah Lee Abdullah on June 1994. The company was based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
An Afghan named Wali Khan Amin Shah was one of the board of directors of the company. He also owned half (3,000) of the company's 6,000 shares. Another member of the board of directors was Afghan Mehdat Abdul Salam Shabana, who owned the other half of the company's shares. Another member was 30-year-old Hemeid H. Algamdi, a citizen of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Yemeni Amein Mohamed was the managing director of Konsojaya. A company profile that was circulated to suppliers and customers stated that he was the former marketing director of a Pakistan-based supplying agent for a company in Jeddah.
Konsojaya stated in its incorporation papers that it was an "import/export" company that shipped palm oil to Afghanistan from Malaysia. The organisation also dealt with the export of Sudanese honey. Its "principal objective" was to import and export products found in the Asia/Pacific region (East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania) to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Sudan.
A man named Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was staying in Manila, Philippines, often travelled to several places, including Brazil, to promote Konsojaya.
Konsojaya actually funneled money and material assistance to several regional militant Islamic plots. The organisation also funneled money to an account owned by Omar Abu Omar, an employee of the International Relations and Information Centre, an organisation run by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, who is married to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters. The money would then be siphoned into an account under the name of "Adam Salih", an alias of Ramzi Yousef, who was at the time planning Manila-based Operation Bojinka, an attack that would have destroyed eleven airliners.
Manila police discovered Operation Bojinka after an apartment fire led police to a suspect on January 6 and the morning of January 7, 1995.
According to corporate records in Kuala Lumpur, Konsojaya no longer exists.


Naomi Jaffe

Naomi Esther Jaffe (born June 1943) is a former undergraduate student of Herbert Marcuse and member of the Weather Underground Organization. Jaffe was recently the Executive Director of Holding Our Own, a multiracial foundation for women.
Early life.
Jaffe was born in upstate New York on a small family farm run by her Jewish parents. Her father, Abe Jaffe (February 3, 1909–October 11, 2003), was a poultry farmer and her mother, Sadie Bakst Jaffe (May 13, 1908–January 15, 2005), was an elementary school teacher. Her brother, Bernard (1945–January 2, 2004), was a musician.
As a child, she was influenced by her Communist relatives, their influence was reflected in her later revolutionary involvement. After high school, she went on to attend Brandeis University and studied Marxism in a few classes with the professor and political theorist Herbert Marcuse.
Students for a Democratic Society.
After receiving her undergraduate degree Jaffe founded a chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society at The New School for Social Research where she was pursuing her graduate degree in sociology. During graduate school, she formed a friendship with future Weatherman, David Gilbert. While in the SDS, Jaffe worked for the independent publication "New Left Notes" and published an article about equal rights for women called "The Look Is You" coauthored with Bernardine Dohrn.
Jaffe, a known member of the group Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.), participated in the 1969 demonstrations at the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. The demonstrations were held to speak out against the consumer driven oppression of women, and to say that the Miss America Pageant perpetuated false stereotypes about the capabilities of women. In 1969, as a member and leading feminist of the SDS, Jaffe traveled with a group of people to Hanoi to talk to Vietnamese students and others about the US antiwar movement.
Weathermen.
In 1969, the SDS was heading in a more radical direction and Jaffe became one of the founding members of the Weatherman Organization, yet never became a leader. Jaffe joined the Weather Underground because the group believed in the self-determination of African American people; that they should have a revolution of their own without the total involvement of white middle class people. She also joined because the group was radically anti-racist and anti-imperialist. As quoted by historian Dan Berger, Jaffe says the Weather Underground was "the most vital show in town." The organization was also aligned with her Marxist ideals. To join she had to set aside her feminist convictions, yet she always believed that the WUO should have focused more on women's liberation.
In September 1969, she participated in "jailbreaks", actions in which high school students were encouraged to leave class and run through the halls as though they were being freed from the prison that was their school. This action was to gain support for the "Days of Rage" also called the National Action. She and 25 other Weatherwomen, including Cathy Wilkerson, were arrested in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for that act. From October 8–11, 1969 Jaffe participated in the "Days of Rage" in Chicago where members of the WUO, after having taken control of the SDS, ran through the streets smashing windows and causing chaos, she was arrested on October 11 for battery and resisting arrest. In 1970, Jaffe was indicted in Detroit, Michigan, for her participation in the 1969 War Council held in Flint, Michigan, the final public meeting of the Weatherman-controlled SDS before the dissolution of the SDS in January 1970. 13 people were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bombings and murders, however, these charges were dropped in 1973.
Underground.
After the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in March, 1970, Jaffe went underground. She found it necessary to cut her beloved long hair which she had been growing since childhood; she also cut ties with her tight-knit family because it was what she needed to do to become a revolutionary (or, simply, to elude capture by the FBI). Although her whereabouts from 1970 to 1978 are mostly unknown, in 1971 the FBI lifted her fingerprints from an abandoned apartment in San Francisco, California. Summaries of surveillance files indicate that the apartment had been rented by Weathermen from 1970 to 1971 and contained bomb making material; the FBI called the apartment a bomb factory. While underground Jaffe helped to design and publish Weather's short-lived publication, "Osawatomie". Around 1975, while living on the East Coast, Jaffe expressed concerns about the direction the group was taking: because of her feminist background she most likely wanted them to refocus on women's issues, and this led to her becoming estranged from the group. She was living on her own and not in a collective, so when she showed up to a planned meeting and no one else showed, she realized she was out. Jaffe resurfaced in 1978. In an unpublished critique of "Prairie Fire", written soon after Weather split up, Jaffe wrote harshly about the problems with the Weather Underground's lack of focus on feminist issues.
Recent history.
After she resurfaced, Jaffe spent a great deal of time reassessing her priorities as an activist. In the last 20 years, she has focused much of her attention on feminism, lesbian issues, and anti-racism in New York State. Today Jaffe is a mother of one son and lives in Albany, New York, with her life partner. Having continued a life of activism, Jaffe has worked on a local Free Mumia Committee and she is also the former Executive Director of the organization Holding Our Own, an anti-racist women's funding foundation. Jaffe was also prominently featured in the 2002 documentary film "The Weather Underground".


Video Coding Experts Group

The Video Coding Experts Group or Visual Coding Experts Group (VCEG, also known as Question 6) is a working group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with video coding standards. It is responsible for standardization of the "H.26x" line of video coding standards, the "T.8xx" line of image coding standards, and related technologies.
Administratively, VCEG is the informal name of Question 6 ("Visual coding") of Working Party 3 (Media coding) of ITU-T Study Group 16 (Multimedia coding, systems and applications). Its abbreviated title is ITU-T Q.6/SG 16.
The goal of VCEG is to produce recommendations (international standards) for video coding and image coding methods appropriate for conversational (e.g. videoconferencing and video telephony) and non-conversational (e.g., streaming, broadcast, file download, media storage/playback, or digital cinema) audio/visual services. This mandate concerns the maintenance and extension of existing video coding recommendations, and laying the ground for new recommendations using advanced techniques to significantly improve the trade-offs between bit rate, quality, delay, and algorithm complexity. Video coding standards are desired with sufficient flexibility to accommodate a diverse number of transport types (Internet, LAN, Mobile, ISDN, GSTN, H.222.0, NGN, etc.).
Question 6 is part of Study Group 16, which is responsible for studies relating to multimedia service capabilities, and application capabilities (including those supported for NGN). This encompasses multimedia terminals, systems (e.g., network signal processing equipment, multipoint conference units, gateways, gatekeepers, modems, and facsimile), protocols and signal processing (media coding).
History.
VCEG was preceded in the ITU-T (which was called the CCITT at the time) by the "Specialists Group on Coding for Visual Telephony" chaired by Sakae Okubo (NTT) which developed H.261. The first meeting of this group was held Dec. 11–14, 1984 in Tokyo, Japan. Okubo was also the ITU-T coordinator for developing the H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2 video coding standard and the requirements chairman in MPEG for the MPEG-2 set of standards.
The first digital video coding standard was H.120, created by the CCITT (now ITU-T) in 1984. H.120 was not usable in practice, as its performance was too poor. H.120 was based on differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM), which had inefficient compression. During the late 1980s, a number of companies began experimenting with the much more efficient discrete cosine transform (DCT) compression for video coding, with the CCITT receiving 14 proposals for DCT-based video compression formats, in contrast to a single proposal based on vector quantization (VQ) compression. The H.261 standard was subsequently developed based on DCT compression.
In 1994, Richard Shaphorst (Delta Information Systems) took over new video coding development in ITU-T with the launch of the project for developing H.324. Schaphorst appointed Karel Rijkse (KPN Research) to chair the development of the H.263 video coding standard as part of that project. In 1996, Schaphorst then appointed Gary Sullivan (PictureTel, since 1999 Microsoft) to launch the subsequent "H.263+" enhancement project, which was completed in 1998. In 1998, Sullivan was made rapporteur (chairman) of the question (group) for video coding in the ITU-T that is now called VCEG. After the H.263+ project, the group then completed an "H.263++" effort, produced H.263 Appendix III and H.263 Annex X, and launched the "H.26L" project with a call for proposals issued in January 1998 and a first draft design adopted in August 1999. In 2000, Thomas Wiegand (Fraunhofer HHI) was appointed as an associated rapporteur (vice-chairman) of VCEG. Sullivan and Wiegand led the H.26L project as it progressed to eventually become the H.264 standard after formation of a Joint Video Team (JVT) with MPEG for the completion of the work in 2003. (In MPEG, the H.264 standard is known as MPEG-4 part 10.) Since 2003, VCEG and the JVT have developed several substantial extensions of H.264, produced H.271, and conducted exploration work toward the potential creation of a future new "HEVC". In January 2010, the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) was created as a group of video coding experts from ITU-T Study Group 16 (VCEG) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 (MPEG) to develop a new generation video coding standard.
In July 2006, the video coding work of the ITU-T led by VCEG was voted as the most influential area of the standardization work of the CCITT and ITU-T in their 50-year history. The image coding work that is now in the domain of VCEG was also highly ranked in the voting, placing third overall.
In July 2014, Jill Boyce (then of Vidyo, later Intel) was appointed as an additional associated rapporteur for VCEG.
In May 2015 the ITU celebrated its 150-year anniversary, and the work of VCEG was one of the five areas of standardization to be recognized by an "ITU 150 Award" as one of the most influential topics of ITU work.
Video coding standards.
The organization now known as VCEG has standardized (and is responsible for the maintenance of) the following video compression formats and ancillary standards:
Image coding standards.
Starting in late 2006, VCEG has also been responsible for the ITU-T work on still image coding standards including the following:
VCEG works on most of these standards jointly with ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1 (Joint Photographic Experts Group/Joint Bi-level Image experts Group).