9 minute read
How technology can boost happiness in post production teams
By Jane Sung, COO, Cinedeck, and Zeb Chadfield, founder/CVO, The Finish Line
Media businesses are becoming increasingly aware that there is a direct correlation between employee happiness and client satisfaction. According to a recent study by the University of Warwick, happiness in work made people around 12 per cent more productive. This is important because higher productivity means a better service and more value for money for the client.
There are lots of factors at play that impact how happy a person feels in their role within a team and the wider company they work for, such as work environment, work/life balance, having a sense of purpose, and feeling valued. Along with these factors, technology also has a key role to play in keeping individuals and teams happy, and this is definitely evident in the field of post production.
BREAKING THE MOULD: THE POST PRODUCTION PERSPECTIVE Post production can be a stressful environment to work in because of the often heavy work schedules, long hours and tight, immovable deadlines. Working with this kind of pressure can really impact an individual’s work/ life balance, job satisfaction, health, and happiness.
Each stage in the broadcast process from content creation, ingest, production/post production, through to playout, has its own challenges to overcome. In particular, post production editing is a time-consuming process because of the need to export and create a new file then carry out a full QC check after each and every edit. It is this process that makes the role of editing repetitive and sometimes frustrating. On average, it is generally accepted that it can take anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour of editing time for each minute of finished video. So, for a one hour episode, editing could run into 60 hours!
Post production companies should be looking to create more space for individuals and teams to work in a healthy way, so they can have a better work/life balance and more time with family and friends. This might mean making it possible for people to work from wherever they want to work from, cutting out their commutes where possible, and making working schedules more realistic and manageable. A person shouldn’t be missing out on quality time with family and friends just because they happen to work in post production.
TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE LIFE BETTER Technology has revolutionised how we all live our lives. It has the power to improve lives by making life easier and better. One way it does this is by saving us time. So how can this be applied to talent working in post production? Can it make a difference to the quality of their lives?
In the context of editing, if the right tools are used that allow for edits to be made for one part of the video and that section re-inserted without the need to re-review and validate the rest of the file, there is potential for huge time savings.
At The Finish Line, using the right tools for editing in this way has saved the team, literally, 100 hours per week. The editing team’s time-effortreward ratio is much better. Individuals are more likely to enjoy and have pride in their work and have a greater sense of job satisfaction.
With a ‘humanist technologist’ approach, we don’t just strive for more technology for the sake of progress, we strive for more technology for the purpose of helping people. Technology because we care, not just because we can.
While technology has the potential to change lives for the better, to do this effectively, its adoption needs to be carefully considered, planned and executed. If technology is not well thought out, while the concept may appear to make life easier, in reality, the opposite can be true and it can make things more difficult. Training is also key. When people are knowledgeable about the technology they use, they can utilise its full potential, work more effectively, and finish projects faster and better.
KEY TAKEAWAYS When carefully thought out and managed, technology has the potential to make a positive difference on a big scale at individual and team level as well as at company level. The use of new technology to make improvements to ways of working is something that must be done with consideration and planning. Failure to do this can result in lack of employee engagement/onboarding which can have a knock-on effect on job satisfaction, productivity, and client satisfaction.
If employees are satisfied, they are more productive, and this leads to better customer service and greater value for clients. The added value that the client gains leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, which in turn leads to increased profitability and continued success.
Talent, Training and Tools help to deliver better end results and all of those Ts need to be looked after. If all of the three Ts are looked after, clients will be happy too. n
Seizing the full potential of NDI
By Karl So, vice president, product management, Caton Technology
NDI – the network device interface – was originally conceived as a simple way to connect devices for live events. Cameras, a switcher and a video wall processor could be networked to create a practical, effective solution.
Today, many broadcasters and production companies rely on NDI architectures to manage their facilities. Because it was designed for live events, it operates with remarkably low latency, a real bonus as it is extended to broadcast applications.
The protocol was originally developed by NewTek, now part of Vizrt, but was envisioned from the start to be an open system, with as many vendors as possible encouraged to develop products and tools to join the network. This has proved extremely successful, and now it has huge support across the industry, with NDI incorporated even in products which are not obviously IT, such as cameras.
But it is important to understand that NDI was designed as a direct replacement for SDI; even the initials are similar.
SDI is a point-to-point system, so all sources have to be brought to a central router to be passed on to the appropriate destinations. NDI replaces that with a networked solution, which makes cabling and installation much simpler.
Just as SDI is designed as a signal format for local area use, so too is NDI. It combines mild compression (typically 100 Mbps for HD) with packetising and routing software, making it easy to network.
Note here the fundamental difference between NDI and SMPTE ST 2110: ST 2110 carries uncompressed video. That demands extensive bandwidth, and in turn requires enterpriseclass non-blocking routers to ensure the required performance. NDI with its lower bandwidth requirements is switched using much more common, everyday routers.
The challenge for both SDI and NDI comes when you need to move out of the building, away from the LAN. In a world where remote production is increasingly the norm, finding a way to provide wide-area connectivity affordably and reliably is vital.
When considering transporting NDI over long distances, two considerations are vital.
First, the signal must be carried without alteration, including the management packets which identify the device type and other metadata. Receiving NDI devices must know what type of signal it is and how it should be handled.
Second, it must retain the inherent good quality of the original. The encoding in NDI is generally regarded as hitting the sweet spot between uncompressed or very large files and quality impairment.
NDI is described as ‘visually lossless’, which is taken to mean that ‘most people would not be able to see the difference on most material’. It actually uses the same compression algorithms that are used in the leading post production signal handling schemes like ProRes and DNxHD. We can safely say that it is good enough for production requirements.
That means that the solution offered by a lot of vendors – adding heavy compression at the interface to the long-haul connection, down to maybe 10 Mbps – is not acceptable. It would introduce quality shifts between remote and local signals, and the additional encoding and decoding stages would add further latency.
On the other hand, trying to carry 100 Mbps or more means moving away from readily available broadband connectivity to leased circuits, which defeats the point of NDI: if you are paying for your own fibre circuit you may as well send ST 2110.
The workable, demonstrable compromise is a mild compression – down to 50 Mbps – allied to additional processing to protect against perturbations in the circuit and maintain low latency.
At Caton we have an established suite of algorithms called Caton Transport Protocols (CTP), which uses AI-enhanced forward error correction to protect against packet loss. CTP also secures the circuit with AES encryption.
The open nature of NDI makes the implementation of the interface a simple matter. Caton has implemented it in macOS software, aptly named Caton NDI Gateway. Like most things it works better with an Apple silicon-powered machine, but at Caton we have a permanent demonstration circuit which has been running non-stop for months on a five-year-old MacBook Pro.
Transmitter and receiver software instances appear on the network like any other NDI device and need no special management or handling. SDI inputs or outputs can be included simply with the addition of a widely-available video interface card.
NDI is not the solution to every requirement, but for many – maybe the majority – of production and delivery environments it is an excellent basis. With a good NDI gateway, it is now perfectly possible to include multiple remote sources, simply and accurately, without compromise on quality. n
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