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

Cindy Zuelsdorf of Ensemble Designs is interviewed at the International Broadcasters Convention in Amersterdam. Mondae Hott, the company sales director, can be seen on the television screen.

Ensemble Designs won the "Pick Hit" award for technology that converts YouTube video to high-definition video for television; the company plans to hold an open house on Wednesday, Oct. 21, after being in business here for 20 years.

 Ensemble Designs of Nevada City has customers that include ESPN, BBC, CBS News, Major League Baseball and television stations around the globe.

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

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

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

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

  Ensemble Designs and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers will give the public an inside look at its closed-caption technology from 1 to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 21, with an open house at the design and manufacturing facility at 870 Gold Flat Road.

  A caption-generation company, a Sacramento TV station and numerous equipment manufacturers will do demonstrations and presentations on closed-caption technology, according to a company press release.

  Those who will be at the open house include:

• Jack Davis, director of Engineering at KTXL-TV Fox 40 in Sacramento, will discuss closed-caption compliance for broadcasters and how Fox 40 has implemented that technology in its operations.
•  Emily Bell of Caption Max will demonstrate the process of creating closed captions like viewers see on programs like Law and Order and 30 Rock.
• Ensemble Design Engineers will demonstrate technology used by broadcasters for testing closed captions in broadcast equipment.
•   Televisions will be set up to show how each of the these units handles captions.
• Video-monitor manufacturers Plura, Marshall and TV Logic will show how their monitors decode and display open captions.

For more information, call 530-478-1830 or send an e-mail to cindy@ensembledesigns.com.