The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded three members of the Synchro Arts team Academy Awards for their Scientific and Engineering contributions to the film industry.

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Founder and Synchro Arts MD Jeff Bloom started development of the original audio alignment processing in 1981, and then in '84, the first 'Wordfit' system for automatic dialogue replacement was released. Jeff, along with Synchro Arts’ John Ellwood and later Jonathan Newland, converted the technology into the first VocAlign plug-in, which was released in 1995. The team's further research and development added automatic pitch alignment, first released in Revoice Pro (2012) for pro-audio editors and now in VocAlign Ultra.

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The Academy stated that "VocALign and Revoice Pro are software tools that together give sound editors unprecedented control over the final performance in replaced dialog. In use for many years, these technologies continue their predominance in the creation and seamless integration of replacement dialog tracks in motion pictures."

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Jeff Bloom adds "It is an incredible and uplifting honour for our team to receive a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award® for the audio alignment technology in our Revoice Pro and the VocAlign product range. While it has been a challenging and fascinating 40-year journey for me, it has taken the genius of John Ellwood, our Technical Director, and Jonathan Newland, our Head DSP Software Engineer, to continuously refine and extend this technology into increasingly more powerful and easier to use Synchro Arts products over the last 25 years."

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Doug Roble, chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, said “In a year of upheaval, some things remain constant: around the world, extremely clever people are striving to push the technology of film to new heights, and the Academy is privileged to be able to recognize and celebrate their accomplishments."

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You can watch the video of the virtual Scientific and Technical Awards Ceremony on the Oscars® website (our segment starts at 45:22).

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Following that were the Acceptance Speeches.