The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Awards Committee has unveiled the winners of the 2022 HPA Award for Engineering Excellence. The awards will be bestowed at this year’s HPA Awards gala on November 17 at the Hollywood Legion in Hollywood, Calif.

The HPA Awards recognize creative artistry and innovation in the professional media content industry. The Engineering Excellence Award rewards outstanding technical and creative ingenuity in media, content production, finishing, distribution, and archive.

HPA Awards Engineering Committee chair Joachim Zell said, “The pace of innovation in our industry continues unchecked! This year, we received more submissions for Engineering Excellence consideration than ever before. It’s gratifying to see this record number of submissions, driven by a deep understanding of the true needs and desires of our industry, laying the groundwork for future progress even as they launch us ahead in the moment. Congratulations to the winners, and our deep respect for all of the entrants, who have contributed to the continued evolution of our industry.”

The winners of the 2022 HPA Award for Engineering Excellence are:

• Amazon Web Services: Color in the Cloud.    Leveraging JPEG-XS, signals are compressed to be suitably transmitted over AWS Direct Connect, AWS VPN or the open internet while maintaining lossless or uncompromised image quality, resulting in a viable and scalable solution for high fidelity, visually lossless color from a cloud provider. 
• ARRI: REVEAL Color Science    The ALEXA 35 REVEAL Color Science reveals improved dynamic range, color gamut, and superior rendering of skin tones and subtle colors. It separates looks from display transforms, to support dual monitoring of HDR and SDR on set, enabling more efficient grading for multiple deliverables in post production.
• LG Electronics: LG UltraFine Pro OLED Monitor    The UltraFine OLED Pro EP950 reference grade HDR monitor meets color critical needs for content creation in cost-effective small-formats (32in & 27in). The RGB additive OLED UHD panel delivers close to 100% AdobeRGB and P3 coverage with peak luminance of up to 700 nits at 25% APL (HDR mode) and 250 nits full-field white. In-monitor 1D LUTs, 3D LUTs and 3x3 matrices allow accurate user calibration with Calman or LG software.
• Mo-Sys Engineering: LED Key    LED Key makes VP filming affordable by allowing wide shot capture on small LED walls. Virtual Production LED wall based filming is great for mid and close up shots, but wide shots required set builders to build floor and wall extensions or huge LED walls, which increases cost and time. LED Key allows filming with much smaller walls or even projectors, enabling greater location flexibility for filmmakers.

Four technologies followed closely, earning honorable mention: Carl Zeiss SBE, LLC (ZEISS CinCraft Mapper), Frame.io (Camera to Cloud), Glassbox Technologies (DragonFly virtual camera) and LucidLink (Filespaces).