Florian Schleich has been elected to the role of SMPTE standards vice president, with responsibility for directing and supervising the standards projects of the Society.

He takes over immediately from outgoing standards VP Bruce Devlin, who described Schleich as “an enthusiastic and deep thinker whose talent with modern workflows is exactly what SMPTE needs”.

SMPTE-Florian_Schleich

SMPTE’s standards vice president Florian Schleich

Devlin added: “He has the skill and insight with both people and technology to bring great projects into the SMPTE community. The Society is lucky to have found the right standards leader at the right time, and I look forward to seeing Florian and the larger standards team achieve great things.”

In his current role managing technology partnerships and standards at Netflix, Schleich works with SMPTE and other bodies to ensure that standards and specifications address industry needs and to drive timely and successful implementation in the production technology space.

He has authored and implemented SMPTE standards, with his first contact with SMPTE standards back in 2005, when he studied the file format specification for the Material Exchange Format (MXF) while an undergraduate student at Fraunhofer IIS in Erlangen, Germany.

Using his training as a software engineer, Schleich implemented software to validate and process prototype Digital Cinema Packages (DCP). He went on to lead a drafting group for digital cinema standards and eventually the technology committee developing and maintaining all IMF standards.

Schleich said: “It is an honor to be taking the baton from Mr. MXF himself and taking on the role of standards vice president.

“Bruce has provided valuable leadership to the standards community, and I’m grateful also for the guidance and support he’s given me over the years.

“Continuing the trajectory Bruce has set, I will strive to streamline access to SMPTE engineering documents, strengthen collaboration with industry organizations that are keen to publish specifications, and ensure that agile processes are in place to make SMPTE attractive to software-centric projects.”

  • Schleich has a webcast scheduled for 13 January to talk about the future of SMPTE standards. Registration is available here 

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