Michael Borthwick offers clients in the arts, education, location-based entertainment and cultural sectors the benefit of his 20 years of experience in information technology, multimedia production, corporate event technical direction and analog and digital video system engineering. Michael is a specialist in integrating information technology with video systems as is often required when cultural institutions wish to display video to the public or archive the medium for posterity, when web designers and event producers wish to deliver video over the Internet or multimedia producers seek to compress video at high quality for delivery via kiosk, CD or DVD.

Clients include cultural institutions such as libraries, museums and galleries seeking to fully understand and then successfully capitalise upon the opportunities associated with Internet, multimedia and video technologies. Services provided include high-level conceptual design, design development; technology, vendor and tender evaluation services, stakeholder workshops and the development of detailed system specifications and workflows for media production, distribution, display and streaming systems. Commercial projects include the compression of over 300 video clips for the recently launched realtimehealth.com streaming video health portal.

We offer presentations, papers and training workshops on video technology within the cultural sector, for example:

Digital Media World Conference June 2 & 3, 2005- Video Compression and Storage

Presentation synopsis
Understanding the complexities of digital video compression is mandatory for the modern video professional. One of Australia's leading consultants to government and industry today, Michael Borthwick, will provide an essential overview of digital video concepts that influence our understanding of everything from video recording formats to DVD authoring and Web-based video. He will focus on the different compression formats including MPEG-4 while explaining their impact on production,post-production and storage requirements.

Museum and Galleries Foundation of NSW The Virtual Museum

Presentation synopsis
This paper explored the relationship between the physical and virtual museum object and examined the potential application of RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth technologies to assist in creating a connection between the visitor and collection items. The paper introducted the notion of a "smart object" that has an awareness of its location with the gallery and incorporates various technologies for visitor interaction. The paper also explored the use of low-cost and/or open source technologies by regional museums who by encumbered by budget constraints for technology infrastructure.

Additional sectors who benefit from Michael's research include the education and e-learning sector; video, web and multimedia producers; location-based entertainment developers; producers of technically complex cultural festivals and events and artists seeking to effectively use technology within cutting-edge performances, environments and installations.

Michael specialises in assessing the application of international standards such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and MPEG-7 for archive, preservation, display and exhibition of content in museums, libraries, archives, galleries and in e-learning.