Technical & Engineering Emmy® Awards

Grass Valley Emmy Awards and Citations

Grass Valley has been recognized with 18 Emmy® statues and two Citations conferred by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) for technology achievements that have advanced the state of the art in television in the areas of:

Automation
Cameras
Editing and Graphics
Image Manipulation
Infrastructure
Servers

©ATAS/NATAS
Emmy® and the Emmy Statuette are the trademark properties of ATAS/NATAS.

2012 Pioneering Development of Event Driven Control Room Automation Systems for Production of Live Television Shows, which Encompasses Full Control of Robotic Cameras, Audio, Graphics and Video Sources — ParkerVision (Grass Valley)
- The Ignite® system, based on technology originally developed by ParkerVision (then called the PVTV NEWS system), helped revolutionize television news production by allowing a single operator to run an entire newscast. The first live public broadcast using the PVTV NEWS production automation system was produced by News 12 The Bronx, in New York City on June 22, 1998. After acquisition by Grass Valley in 2004, the second-generation system, under the name Ignite, included an integrated Grass Valley switcher and robotic cameras that helped local stations create more news programs, improved consistency and quality of the on air presentation, all while reducing technical errors.

2009-10 HD super motion systems for acquisition, recording and playback for broadcast entertainment and sports productions – Grass Valley, EVS, NAC Image Technology, Sony and Vision Research
- Grass Valley continued to advance the state of the art moving SSM technology from standard to high definition and supporting both 720p and 1080i. Along with the introduction of HD, improvements to anti-flicker algorithms to operate at the pixel level permitted the use of SSM in mixed lighting conditions as well as under a wide variety of new artificial lighting systems operating at various frequencies. This enabled SSM systems to be used in an expanded range of applications including studio and live indoor events.
2002-03 Development and Application of Sub-Pixel Imaging Devices For Television Cameras – Thomson Broadcast and Media Solutions (Grass Valley business unit)
- Imagers were previously made to correspond to the line scanning format of the Television systems. As television coverage involved more and more international coverage, cameras had to work in different formats which meant that different cameras had to be procured for shoots in different regions. This was expensive for manufacturers and inflexible for users. Philips developed the HD-DPM CCD image sensor (Dynamic Pixel Management) that used smaller light-sensitive sites and bundled them up in different combinations to address different line scanning formats.
1993-94 Controlled Edge Enhancement Utilizing Skin Hue Keying – BTS and Ikegami
- Provides the ability to adjust detail enhancement but only within a selected skin tone hue. Hailed by aging news readers for its ability to remove their wrinkles.
1992-93 Prism Technology for Color Television Cameras – Philips
- An award recognizing improvements using advanced dichroic coatings on prisms used for color separation in television cameras.
1991-92 Triax Camera Cable Technology – Philips and CBS Labs
- Until the development of Triax, camera cables were ¾ to an inch thick, very heavy and extremely expensive. Also they could not be used at long distances. (limit of around 500 ft) Triax changes all that with a small diameter cable, 3/8" thick, that could be used at distances of thousands of feet. It simplified set up at sporting events and is in widespread use worldwide.
1966-67 Plumbicon Tube – N.V. Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken
- A substantial improvement then current pickup tubes the Plumbicon featured greatly improved resolution, had low lag and much better signal to noise. Plumbicons became the staple of high end color cameras until replaced by CCDs, though even today they remain a used in medical applications.

1998 Real Time Multicamera/Multistream Editing Systems – Tektronix (Lightworks), Avid Technology, Inc., (ATAS Citation)
- Heavyworks™ was one of the first multi-stream, non-linear editors that could synchronize replay of shots from a multi-camera shoot enabling the editor to quickly choose the right shot by live switching on the editor control panel. This significantly improved speed and flexibility during post-production of multi-camera shoots.
1987-88 3D Computer Graphics Technology and development of the FGS 4000 computer animation system – BTS Broadcast Television Systems Inc.
- New technology to animate computer graphics for television – commonplace today but groundbreaking in the eighties.
1986-87 In recognition of their engineering contributions in the development of the technology for the conversion of video tape of original Black and White images into color. – Dubner, (acquired by GVG in 1984), Color Systems and Colorization Inc.
- Original developments of colorization of movies. Dubner has a very good scene change algorithm that was used in the process.
1982 Development of the electronic character and background generator – Dubner Computer Systems (acquired by GVG in 1984) and ABC (ATAS)
- Another product that became the "Hoover" of the broadcast industry – a brand name that came to symbolize a product category. It provided the original captions that we see everywhere on television. Represented a shift away from caption scanning cameras to electronically generated graphics.

1995-96 Pioneering Efforts for Rounding Techniques for Multiple Generation Image Manipulation for Minimal Visibility of Truncation Errors – Grass Valley Group, Quantel and BBC
- Dynamic Rounding is a technique that is used to maintain high quality when processing images such as we do for digital effects. In this process one cannot avoid truncating the word length of pixels – normally simple truncation creates a contouring effect with steps in the resulting image instead of the smooth transition one sees in reality. Instead, Dynamic Rounding uses the lower order bits to control, via a randomizer, the dither of the LSB of the truncated result. This effectively removes any artifacts that would otherwise be visible. Dynamic rounding is non-cumulative on any number of passes and produces statistically correct results.
1991 Digital Picture Processor Switcher (Kadenza) – Grass Valley Group, Inc. (ATAS Citation)
- Recognizes the introduction of the very successful Grass Valley Kadenza™ dedicated to high quality image compositing performed in real time. Products prior to this required waiting for the images to render.
1990-91 Multi-Layer Real Time Component Video Compositing Technology – Grass Valley Group and Abekas
- Another first making it possible to combine layers of pictures to make it appear as if everything in the picture was shot in one scene.
1989-90 For the Development of E-MEM / Effects Memory Systems for the Storage and Recall Technology in Large production Switchers – Grass Valley Group
- Made it easy to store and recall very complex effects in a production switcher making it possible to integrate complex effects within a production in real time.

1992-93 In Plant Digital Serial Interconnection Technology for Television - Tektronix (GVG), Sony, Thomson CSF and SMPTE
- The standard that defines how we get digital signals around a TV plant and ensure that equipment for different vendors will interoperate using a baseband connection.

2007-08 Development and Standardization of File Formats for Audio and Video – Grass Valley (for GXF), SMPTE (for MXF)
- When networking was added to disk recorders in 1997, there were no standards that allowed reliable exchange of AV content files between video servers. Grass Valley was the first to develop a standard suitable for the broadcast industry addressing this need. We registered the formats as a RDD allowing any vendors to adopts and implement the format to exchange content between devices from different manufacturers.
2002-03 Technology to Simultaneously Encode Multiple Video Qualities and the Corresponding Metadata to Enable Real-Time Conformance and / or Play Out of the Higher Quality Video (Nominally Broadcast) Based on the Decisions Made Using the Lower Quality Proxies – Philips and Thomson, Montage and Pinnacle
- Made it possible to browse content at a desktop PC and for decisions to be made based on that content and applied to the high resolution original files. We know this as browsing low res proxies. First implemented in News applications.
2000-01 Pioneering Developments in Shared video-data storage systems for use in television video servers – Thomson/ Philips, Leitch/ASC and Pinnacle
- The first shared video data storage system providing a reliable data to stream data to multiple clients attached to the storage array. (Profile was eliminated from this award on a technicality because we did not market our first product as a server even though it incorporated similar technology inside the box)
1996 Professional Disk Recorder (Profile) – Tektronix, Inc. (ATAS)
- The Profile™ video disk recorder is recognized as the first successful product making it possible to record and play at the same time and to allow multiple users to access the same content seconds after recording. A huge advance compared to videotape where tapes had to be copied to accomplish the same thing. The Profile defined a new category of product and was almost synonymous with the video server category.

Emmy® is a registered trademark of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and is also used by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The Emmy Awards recognize excellence within various areas of television and emerging media. Unless otherwise indicated award are from NATAS.