Free lance contracting, 1996 - present.

Since completing my first book, I have been engaged in short-term and long-term consulting contracts. I have assisted manufacturers of integrated circuits to apply video technology - particularly digital video interfaces, high-definition television, emerging display technology, and accurate color - to their products. I have assisted manufacturers of studio video and broadcast equipment to adopt digital video, high definition television, and Internet technology. I have worked with digital imaging and display companies to implement color management and color calibration.

Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation, Mountain View, California, 1988 - 1994. Staff Engineer.

Color Management - Conceived and executed the strategy that brought color management technology to Sun. Investigated color technology, provided technical leadership to Sun's technical, business and contract teams. Worked closely with Kodak to define APIs, profile format, and color data interchange standards. Provided industry leadership to achieve agreement on an industry standard for color device profiles. Key contributor to the inclusion of accurate color capability in the TIFF 6.0, JPEG, and JFIF image interchange standards.

Digital Video Standards - Major contributor to SMPTE standards for digital video, digital film, and high-definition television (HDTV). Document editor for the Working Group on Advanced Television Production Technology, responsible for drafting the SMPTE 274M, 1920 x 1080 standard for high definition television. Active member of the Working Group on Colorimetry, working to establish standards for wide-gamut color image exchange in HDTV, video, and print. Founding chairman of SMPTE's Working Group on Digital Pictures; responsible for the development of the SMPTE 268M (DPX) standard for the exchange of digital film. Major contributor to the Working Group on Television Signal Technology.

High-Definition Television (HDTV) - Responded to DARPA's 1989 Request for Proposals for a High Resolution (High-Definition Television) Workstation. With Glenn Reitmeier of David Sarnoff Research Center, conceived the system architecture and wrote the system specification. Provided technological leadership to the design and implementation team. Wrote interface standards for HDTV video standards. Specified the 1920 x 1080, 72 Hz non-interlaced display now offered commercially by Sony.

Low-cost Video Interface - Developed product architecture and provided technological leadership for the product team designing, building and marketing a low-cost video capture device for SBus.

Poynton Vector Corporation, Ottawa, Canada, 1982 - 1988. Founder and principal.

Performed contracts for the specification, design, development, implementation, testing, and installation of special-purpose studio-quality digital video equipment.

NASA, Johnston Space Center, Houston, Texas, 1982 - 1986.
Specified, designed and built the digital video processing equipment used at JSC to convert field-sequential video from the Space Shuttle into NTSC for processing, recording, and distribution. This equipment processes Space Shuttle video about 50 milliseconds before it is displayed at Mission Control.

National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, 1986. Designed and built interface equipment to capture video from CanadArm into a general-purpose minicomputer, for algorithm development.

Vertigo Computer Imagery, Vancouver, Canada, 1986 - 1987.
Designed and built codec equipment to convert component analog video to component digital video (SMPTE RP 125), to interface Vertigo's hardware to broadcast video plant equipment.

Hewlett-Packard Labs, Palo Alto, California, 1985 - 1987.
Performed consulting on the integration of video and computer graphics. Designed an experimental multi-port framestore system.

Ross Video, Ottawa, Canada, 1988.
Consulting to investigate the use of DSP and RISC computing technology in pattern generators for digital video production switchers.

Digital Video Systems, Toronto, Canada, 1979 - 1981. Hardware/Software Engineer.

Designed and wrote microcode to control the highly successful DPS-1 framestore synchronizer. Applied DSP theory to characterize the adaptive comb filter and chroma decoder used in that product.

Ontario College of Art, Toronto, Canada, 1976 - 1978. Faculty member.

Taught full-course Electronics for Art, for 2 years.

Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), 1992.

Honorary Member of BKSTS, 1999.

David Sarnoff Gold Medal, awarded by SMPTE in 1993 for significant contributions to the integration of digital video and computing technologies.