Motion Picture Engineering - Micro-credential

Overview

Who is this Micro-credential for?  

• This micro-credential has been developed to benefit engineers interested in learning more about the design of engineering systems that enable video streaming and cinema production platforms. 

• Engineers with a background in Information Science and Engineering including Electronics, Computer Science, Mathematics would be well prepared for this micro-credential. Learners will advance their professional competencies through coursework targeted at industry standard video processing platforms including NUKE and ffmpeg and taught by an Academy Award winner in motion picture effects. 

• Learners will consider design and deployment of both video compression technologies and video processing enhancement tasks for the cinema and media streaming industry.

Why should I take this Micro-credential?  

• Companies like Netflix, Apple, Amazon are both content creators, and streaming media platforms, and this fuels the demand for engineers in both domains. The pandemic has amplified the importance of both movie making technology and streaming media platforms. 

• As the areas of filmmaking and media streaming converge, engineers in post-production houses need to understand more about the latest compression standards and engineers in streaming media teams need to understand more about what high quality image manipulation entails. 

• This micro-credential suits engineers in a start up in the video streaming space or designing image enhancement technology as well as those embarking on a graduate degree in Video Engineering. If you have just joined a post-production house or start up as an early stage graduate this course is an excellent onboarding strategy.

When can I start this Micro-credential?  

• There is one intake per year in January:   

• Next available start date: 12th January 2023.  

What do I need to be accepted onto this Micro-credential? – Entry requirements & Prerequisite documents  

• Graduate engineering knowledge in DSP/Signals and Systems or equivalent experience.

• Level 8 award. 2.1 grade Engineering or Cognate Discipline.

• CV & transcript.

What will I learn?

• You will learn about engineering design in both high-end postproduction and best in class streaming media workflows. 

• The first part of this micro-credential gives you both the mathematical underpinnings of algorithms for rotoscoping, matting and motion estimation and the practice of developing your own tool in a high-end platform.

• In the second part, you will learn about the fundamentals of video compression technology and how that is applied to content aware transcoding. Through all of this you will learn the mathematical fundamentals of the new Deep Learning algorithms which are disrupting both these domains. 

• Finally, the course is interspersed with domain insights from practitioners in industry e.g., Google, YouTube, BBC, Facebook, Foundry, Weta, and others.  

What will I do? 

• You will use the cinema industry standard NUKE compositing platform to develop your own application for a cinema effect, then draft a short scientific paper about your effect including reporting on visual fidelity and computational complexity. 

• Learners will also attend guest lectures from internationally acclaimed industry experts. In 2020/21 these guest lectures were delivered by 3 Academy Award winners: 

• Simon Robinson (Foundry)

• Peter Hillman (Weta) 

• Anil Kokaram (Trinity)

• R&D experts from Google  

• Peyman Milanfar, a lead scientist behind the camera tool in the Pixel phone

• Marta Mrak the lead scientist for the BBC’s compression division

• Ioannis Kompatsiardis, the Video infrastructure team of Facebook

• In the last 5 weeks of this micro-credential, you will apply what you have learned about video compression and fidelity to creating media streams using workflows established by Netflix and YouTube video engineering teams

How will this Micro-credential be delivered? 

• The micro-credential is built around 5 contact hours per week. There is a fixed 3-hour block for practical work and 1-hour blocks for lecture material every week. 

• In the first two weeks the 3-hour blocks will be used for an introduction to the NUKE cinema compositor and its programming environment. 

• Thereafter you will be led through several short exercises in plugin development and compression usage. These blocks will be mostly self-directed with advice from the module coordinator in the first hour of each block.

How is this Micro-credential assessed? 

• This is a 10 ECTS course and there are 4 exercises and 1 mini-project. 

• The mini-project is built around the design of a colour-keyer in NUKE which you also write up in a 4-page paper. 

• There are 2 quizzes about the underlying mathematics of effects and compression and 2 practical laboratory exercises.

• 10 ECTS, NFQ Level 9, learning hours: 250