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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025

All you need to know about

What is it? What does it mean for the industry?

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The state of play

ith both major trade shows now done and dusted for 2025, it’s the perfect time to sit and take stock of where we are as an industry. Back in April, the talk of NAB was all around the plans to introduce tariffs by the current incumbent of the White House. It felt like that died down over the summer, although the recent suggestion that films made outside of the United States could be subject to 100 per cent tariffs is causing consternation. Not least because no one has any idea how they’ll be implemented.

At IBC, the focus of the industry felt as though it had moved on. Subjects such as the cloud, IP migration, artificial intelligence and the dreaded ‘doing more for less’ remained key themes of meetings. However, I found myself talking about brand new subjects that hadn’t been on my radar pre-Amsterdam. Most notably, they included FinOps (shared responsibility for an organisation’s cloud computing infrastructure and costs) and the Media eXchange Layer, an open-source framework for enabling real-time, in-memory media exchange between containerised applications in software-based production workflows. We have more on both those subjects in the following pages.

In every one of my meetings at IBC I asked people to share what they thought was the biggest topic of conversation in the industry right now. As you can see below, artificial intelligence is still a dominant theme, but I heard other phrases such as transformation and collaboration.

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CONTENT Content Director: Jenny Priestley jenny.priestley@futurenet.com Senior Content Writer: Matthew Corrigan matthew.corrigan@futurenet.com Graphic Designers: Cliff Newman, Steve Mumby Production Manager: Nicole Schilling Contributors: David Davies, Kevin Emmott, Kevin Hilton, Graham Lovelace

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Someone said that technology is accelerating to meet the moment in the industry, and I think that is true. Decisions that broadcasters and streaming services make now are going to resonate for years to come. New technologies like MXL will help the industry meet the challenges it faces. We can’t bury our heads in the sand and hope everything is going to work itself out.

One of my favourite quotes from my favourite TV series (The West Wing) is “decisions are made by those who show up”. That’s why I’m so pleased to see vendors working hand in hand with their end users, making their products and solutions interoperable. There’s often talk of silos in this industry, and that’s not going to help it meet the challenges it faces. Working together will.

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JENNY PRIESTLEY, CONTENT DIRECTOR @JENNYPRIESTLEY

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 | 03

In this issue OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 08 Facing the real problems —and solving them together

By Larissa Görner-Meeus, managing director, LaraMedia

10 A new era of interoperability

Jenny Priestley talks to the BBC and CBC Canada about the Media eXchange Layer (MXL), which is set to change how content moves around facilities and make software more interoperable

14 Addressing the industry’s mental health crisis

David Davies sits down with Marcus Ryder, CEO of the Film and TV Charity, to examine the complex mental health challenges facing the industry, the high numbers of media workers now considering alternative career options, and the looming threat that AI poses to ‘self-worth and identity’

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16 Ready for an upgrade?

Dr Pierre-Anthony Lemieux, executive director of the Alliance for Open Media, tells TVBEurope about plans to launch the new AV2 codec by the end of the year

22 Repelling the content pirates

With anti-piracy legislation lagging behind technological change, Matthew Corrigan investigates how content can be protected to stem the tide against illegal streaming

28 Animated Serkis animals

Technology now offers many ways to create a talking animal film but, sometimes, older techniques can produce the most effective results. As Kevin Hilton reports, Andy Serkis’ new interpretation of Animal Farm takes the animation route and has a sound design that helps create a world where all is not well in the farmyard

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34 Power to the people

With synthetic content becoming increasingly indistinguishable from reality, the world is drowning in misinformation. BBC Principal R&D engineer Judy Parnall tells Kevin Emmott how the broadcaster is tackling the challenge head-on by pioneering open standards for digital provenance

39 Simply the best

Future’s Best of Show awards programme at IBC2025 highlighted the amazing stand-out products and solutions on show in Amsterdam. We showcase the winning entries from the TVBEurope category

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39 www.tvbeurope.com

OPINION

The changing face of VoD

By Markus Hafellner, director of product management, Bitmovin

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ideo-on-Demand (VoD) has come a long way since the mid-2000s when the first on-demand streaming services hit the scene. Delivery was clunky, playback was slow with buffering common, quality was lacking, and interfaces were difficult to navigate. Personalisation was limited, and watching content on the move wasn’t something most people even contemplated.

The viewing experience has completely transformed from those early days, and additionally, the industry has moved from a fixed subscription-based mindset to a much more flexible approach to monetisation, in which advertising plays a prominent role. Analyst Mordor Intelligence reported that although SVoD still held 84.63 per cent of the market share in 2024, AVoD is gaining momentum fast and is expected to grow substantially by 2030 at 11.2 per cent CAGR. Subscription fatigue and economic uncertainty in recent years have nudged providers away from the simplicity of flat monthly subscription fees toward a more nuanced offering, combining multiple strategies for generating revenue and reaching viewers.

Most streaming services have rolled out lower-cost, ad-supported plans alongside their premium ad-free tiers, with some services now offering everything from premium SVoD, TVoD with pay-per-view rentals, to FAST services. This approach gives providers more options to cater to different demographics, making it easier to meet the diverse needs of a wider audience. VoD services are realising it’s not about finding one perfect model but instead creating a mix of options to appeal to a broader audience.

An evolving viewing experience Things began to shift around 2007 when Netflix launched its streaming service and Apple introduced the first iPhone. The latter of which, with hindsight, we can see disrupted the communication industry and paved the way for the smartphone revolution that enabled viewers to stream content anywhere, anytime. Over the next few years, internet infrastructure improved, streaming services started to become available on mobile devices, and HD became the norm.

Content discovery also improved as VoD providers moved from static menus to algorithms that suggested content viewers would enjoy.

Fast forward to today, and viewers expect a high-quality experience with video in 4K and HDR, as well as instant playback on any device, anywhere. Encoding has significantly improved to enable better visual quality and optimal bitrate efficiency through features such as split-and-stitch encoding, smart chunking, per-title and 3-Pass encoding, while techniques such as adaptive bitrate streaming ensure

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smooth playback on any device, even in low-bandwidth conditions, by adjusting the video quality based on the quality of the viewer’s internet connection.

Personalised experiences have also become the norm with providers now tailoring much of the user experience and user interface to suit individual preferences, including everything from recommendations, thumbnails, and trailers, to the home page. And AI, having now moved from theory to mainstream deployment, is playing an increasingly important role in the personalisation process. For example, video providers can enhance VoD workflows by deploying multimodal AI analysis at scene level to enable more personalised viewer experiences and effective ad targeting.

Innovations in ad-tech As ad-based models and hybrid monetisation have grown in popularity, the whole experience around viewing ads has also come under the spotlight. Irrelevant ads, badly timed ad-insertion, and poorquality delivery all result in a poor viewing experience. This has led to a lot of ad-tech innovations coming to fruition, such as Server-Guided Ad Insertion (SGAI), which is set to play a key role in enabling VoD services to improve the experience. SGAI blends the best of clientside and server-side insertion to ensure that ads are delivered with both precision and performance, enhancing viewer satisfaction.

Advertising analytics have also evolved significantly, allowing providers to get real-time, in-depth data on ad performance to ensure flawless playback and improve revenue across live and on-demand streams. As expected, providers are also using AI to enhance ad delivery by analysing viewer preferences as well as content being viewed at that moment to extract real-time insights for more accurate targeting and improved engagement.

What comes next for VoD? While it has been a difficult few years for VoD providers as subscriber growth has stagnated, a bright future lies ahead, not least because of the industry’s ability to adapt. As demonstrated over the last few years, the streaming industry is a master of reinvention, with providers adapting their offerings to give viewers more choice across both pricing tiers and ways to watch, from SVoD and AVoD to FAST and TVoD. On the technology side, we’ll undoubtedly continue to see new capabilities coming to the fore, designed to help providers deliver more value to viewers, while squeezing as much value as possible from content.

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OPINION

Is AI capable of iconic?

By Graham Lovelace, AI strategist, writer and keynote speaker

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hat’s your all-time favourite TV ad, and why? I’m guessing it’s a creative gem that through imagery, scripting and music not only helped shape your perception of a brand but also made a personal connection. I’m further guessing that ad has stayed with you like a favourite song and can transport you back in time to when you first experienced it. As Don Draper, the lead creative in Mad Men eloquently says in the first season finale, effective advertising builds a deep bond by exploiting our passion for nostalgia.

“It’s delicate, but potent...it’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone,” says Draper in one of the advertising industry’s greatest (albeit fictional) monologues of all time.

My favourite ads swiftly propel me back to my childhood. I grew up in the days of broadcast channel scarcity when advertisers only had one commercial television channel to launch and build their brands, and that was ITV. Through the magic of TV advertising and snappy slogans that remain with me to this day I knew that “Beanz Meanz Heinz” (brilliant wordplay); that “Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet” (no qualms then about tobacco advertising); and that a mysterious figure in black clothing was prepared to take extreme risks to deliver a box of Cadbury’s chocolates, “All because the lady loves Milk Tray”.

My favourite ad of the 1970s is the one in which a boy pushes his bike up a steep cobbled hill to deliver Hovis bread, then freewheels back down to the bakery to the musical accompaniment of a northern colliery brass band. For years, I thought the scene was set in Yorkshire, but I eventually discovered it was shot in Dorset. I also thought the voiceover artist had a northern accent, when in fact he spoke as if he was from the West Country. Those details didn’t matter. Far more important was how the ad made you feel. Warm, cosy, and yes, nostalgic, all thanks to the storytelling skills and visual talents of Sir Ridley Scott, who, back in the ‘70s, was honing his pre-Hollywood craft, turning TV commercials into an art form we revere decades later.

What are my least favourite ads? They’re the commercials for household cleaning products, cosmetics and food items that have clearly been shot in another language—I’m assuming German— then badly dubbed into English. For the past 20 years, I’ve been

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shouting at the telly whenever they air. AI, of course, is set to solve the problem with perfect lip-synched dubbing in multiple languages. And now AI is making the entire ad: ITV debuted its first AI-generated commercial last year, and Channel 4 Sales is developing an AI solution, having collaborated earlier this year with Spirit Studios on its first AI ad campaign. The ability to make multiple versions for multiple markets, quickly and cheaply, is without doubt AI’s killer app. Coca-Cola’s agency generated 110 iterations of its AI-rebooted “Holidays Are Coming” creative in just a few days ahead of last Christmas.

Could AI go even further and come up with something as iconic as an ad from 50 years ago?

Dino Burbidge, creative innovator par excellence, recently shared his experiments with Google’s hyper-realistic video generator Veo 3. He prompted the model to generate ads from yesteryear, including Hamlet’s Photobooth’ and Yellow Pages’ ‘J.R. Hartley’. The results? As Burbidge said on LinkedIn: “Close enough”. That’s largely down to the deliciously detailed prompts that took Dino—who’s held senior creative roles at numerous agencies and a leadership position at Sky Innovation Labs—several hours to compose.

I asked Burbidge if he thought AI could go beyond mimicry.

“Right now? Hard no,” he said. “Broadly speaking, iconic ads aren’t derivative, but the AI models are. If you ask any of the frontier models for new ideas, it’s eye-rollingly obvious stuff. AI can help you sneak up on ‘iconic’, as it can only dream what it’s already seen. At best, it’s a serendipity or weirdness engine to nudge you towards originality and ultimately, maybe, iconic ideas.”

Burbidge went on to echo my views precisely. “On a more philosophical note, iconic is relative to the norm. It’s what stands out. If every ad is a belter, it just increases the norm. Iconic ads will therefore need something else that AI isn’t capable of. And I’d chance my arm that thing is called a human. As Syndrome, the villain from Disney Pixar’s The Incredibles said: ‘When everyone’s super, nobody is.’”

Graham charts the global impacts of generative AI on human-made media at grahamlovelace.substack.com

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 | 07

OPINION

Facing the real problems—and solving them together

By Larissa Görner-Meeus, managing director, LaraMedia

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lobal trade tensions, the rising cost of capital, and a growing lack of trust between nations are stalling investment decisions in equipment and cloud services.

Sports rights—once seen as the industry’s ‘promised saviour’—have become an uncertain and fragmenting force, with broadcasters bidding against global streaming giants, leaving fans with a confusing mix of platforms and experiences. Revenue models are shifting in ways more threatening than ever, and, most importantly, there is still no clear vision for how to reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha with relevant content and distribution strategies.

The innovators’ dilemmas we cannot ignore We are not facing just one ‘innovator’s dilemma’, but several. Firstly, streaming disruption is forcing traditional broadcasters to rethink their old business models and potentially cannibalise their linear ‘cash cows’. Secondly, audience shifts are threatening our longterm relevance, as younger generations build entirely new viewing habits on platforms broadcasters barely participate in.

What made me hopeful at IBC2025, however, is that we are finally discussing those challenges openly—and together. Some of the smartest minds in the industry are now focused on defining solutions and strategies to carry us through the years ahead.

Crucially, we are moving beyond discussing cloud, SaaS, ST 2110, FAST channels, and instead addressing holistic, realworld problems. We are talking about how to tackle them with interoperable, software-based solutions, combined with AI, underpinned by FinOps practices, and built on secure and financially viable models. There is still a long way to go, but at least it has begun.

Yes, the industry is accelerating, and transformation is central, but is it adapting quickly enough to overcome its deepest challenges?

IBC2025 showed two things clearly: the industry is moving toward software-based solutions, and technology is racing ahead of business adoption. Concepts like the Media eXchange Layer (MXL) and the Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) are paving the way to a progressive, agile world that can adapt rapidly to change, exactly what is needed in the years ahead.

Agentic AI is another accelerant. Instead of merely automating repetitive workflows, it is reshaping how we work. Use cases

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for content indexing and enrichment are central, and AI agents are automatically generating metadata, subtitles, and highlight packages—for real this time. Real-world solutions are here for assisted coding and workflow design, supporting engineers to build and iterate software-based tools faster than ever before.

The promise of sovereign cloud is gaining traction. The EBU’s work in this space highlights the need for European alternatives to US offerings, providing resilience, compliance, and more control over cost. Here again, FinOps is becoming a must-have discipline.

In an era of high costs of capital, finance is finally no longer a backoffice function; it is central to every decision.

The challenge now is for businesses to adapt at the same pace as technology and to redefine themselves for what lies ahead. Some are beginning to disrupt their own strategies—splitting streaming from traditional business—while others are experimenting with cocreation models alongside the creator community.

The direction of travel is clear: only those willing to disrupt their business and embrace new ways of working will make it.

Ultimately, the most important question is not about technology, cost, or infrastructure, it is about audiences. Reaching people where they are is the single biggest determinant of success. Encouragingly, there are already solutions that show promise: mature multiplatform solutions, better integration of digital-first formats, and increased adoption of personalised, fan-centric experiences.

Yet much remains open: how to balance reach with monetisation and advertisements, how to build trust, and how to serve fragmented generations without fragmenting content and brand identity.

Acting together, leading forward Will the industry pull together, embrace agility, strengthen financial and operational discipline, and, above all, reimagine audience connection? For broadcasters and vendors alike, the path forward lies not in waiting for certainty, but in navigating uncertainty with clarity. Those who invest now in audience-first strategies, software agility, sovereign infrastructure, and AI will be the ones still standing a decade from now.

Technology is ready, the innovations are real, and the challenges are surmountable. The question is not whether change will come—it is whether the business adapts fast enough to lead it.

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TVBEurope’s newsletter is your free resource for exclusive news, features and information about our industry. Here are some featured articles from the last few weeks…

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OPINION: WHY EUROPEAN BROADCASTERS NEED TO GAIN CONTROL OF THE MOBILE DEVICE ECOSYSTEM

IBC2025 TALKING POINTS: FINOPS, CLOUD PRAGMATISM AND THE PACE OF CHANGE During our special webinar reflecting on the talking points, trends and themes of IBC2025, the panel shared their thoughts on the show and some of the main topics of conversation

Mark A Aitken, president of ONE Media Technologies, explains why pursuing 5G Broadcast without securing device autonomy risks leaving broadcasters subservient to Mobile Network Operators.

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 | 09

MEDIA MANAGEMENT

A NEW ERA OF

interoperability Jenny Priestley talks to the BBC and CBC Canada about the Media eXchange Layer (MXL), which is set to change how content moves around facilities and make software more interoperable

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roadcasters have spent years trying to integrate different vendor technologies in their facilities. As the industry has moved closer to software, that struggle has become more pronounced. Currently, media exchange protocols need timing synchronisation accuracy that’s beyond most IT hardware, while the reliance on SMPTE ST 2110 and NDI can lead to significant computer resource consumption, latency, and vendor lock-in.

However, a groundbreaking initiative led by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), with key contributions from both broadcasters and vendors, could be about to revolutionise how media is exchanged.

The EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) project published its first whitepaper in 2023, proposing the adoption of an IT-focused approach with best practices such as developing solutions using a layered architecture and creating a unified infrastructure for media production.

The idea of the Media eXchange Layer (MXL) came when Canadian broadcaster CBC began to reflect on the move to software-first cloud architecture for its facilities. CBC’s proposed approach also included a layered model where each layer has distinct responsibilities. At the base lies the physical IT equipment, moving up to applications and user

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interfaces at the top. The crucial missing piece, they realised, was a software-centric approach to media exchange.

“We didn’t want to use a streaming technology like SMPTE ST 2110, for example, or NDI to exchange video, audio, and timed data,” explains Félix Poulin, co-chair of the Dynamic Media Facility Group at the EBU and director, global innovation collaborations, CBC/Radio-Canada.

“The idea is not to go outside of the software on one computer; we want applications to share video frames and audio chunks directly within a computer’s memory.”

The concept of exchanging memory between applications isn’t new, but most of the currently available solutions are driven by specific vendors, and some broadcasters are not keen on being tied into one vendor’s way of doing things. MXL, therefore, is a direct response to the need for interoperability, tackling each layer of the DMF reference architecture independently, with media exchange being the obvious first target.

“Using a streaming technology like ST 2110 or NDI requires a lot of computer resource,” adds Poulin. “You need to packetise the image and organise it in a certain way, and then you need to serialise it and send

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MEDIA MANAGEMENT

each packet one by one. To reconstruct the video and audio, buffering happens, which takes time, so there’s latency building up in a complex system. But using direct memory access, like memory sharing. saves all of this work. You save compute, therefore power, therefore efficiency.

You solve latency, because the application will put parts of the video image in its memory as it’s working on it, and then that image is available to be picked up there. There’s no additional process.”

Early experiments have shown latencies of less than a millisecond for each transfer of video, a significant improvement over the 20 milliseconds per device typically expected with ST 2110.

making it open source means it can be used by all vendors and thus become automatically interoperable. “The vendors we approached were enthusiastic, and I think most of them were ready to go in that direction.

The EBU called the first meeting in November to test how far we could go, and everybody in the room said, let’s do it!”

“In an open source project, everybody can see everything that’s happened,” adds Brightwell. “And like the best open source projects, you get to influence it by doing work and actually contributing something to the community.”

But what does this mean for standards such as SMPTE ST 2110 and NDI? Both Poulin and Brightwell believe ST 2110 will continue to play Why broadcasters are embracing MXL an important role in the industry. “2110 is not going to go away. It’s there at the inputs and the outputs and now the edges,” For broadcasters, MXL is crucial in future-proofing their states Brightwell. operations. Poulin explains that CBC is currently working Poulin adds, “2110 was an enabler to get there. It was on a major project for its Toronto headquarters, aiming the move to get out of industry-specific connectivity like for a dynamic and adaptable technology platform. “If SDI, to go to IP connectivity. It will still be the interface of we were going to be a static, purpose-built facility like choice between compute clusters. 2110 will still be used.” before, with studios that are a certain size and have a The first release of MXL code is expected towards the certain number of cameras, we would be limited if we end of this year, very likely in Q4. “In terms of the other decided two years later to do another kind of show with layers, we’ve identified a couple of immediate priorities,” that facility.” says Brightwell. “One is to work on the joined-up The industry’s shift to software, alongside the issue timing model. One of the great things about working in of getting different vendors’ technology to talk to each Peter Brightwell software is you can add this sort of thing very easily, the other, made it clear that accelerating interoperability was hooks are there to put timestamps into MXL payloads, paramount. MXL became the key to “unlock that vendor as they’re called, so that they can be used downstream. ‘lock-in’ problem,” says Poulin.

“One of the questions we’re often asked is, if you have MXL will also help broadcasters like the BBC, which two separate pieces of technology, how do they find has resources in multiple locations across the UK. each other? That’s a fundamental part of what we call “Networks are so fast these days, you get hundreds of the control layer and that is going to be our immediate gigabits per second down inexpensive fibre. We have next step.” the option of being able to move our resources around At IBC2025, the EBU announced a partnership with the country, to wherever there is most capacity,” explains the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) to Peter Brightwell, lead engineer at BBC R&D and co-chair Félix Poulin create the Joint Taskforce on Dynamic Media Facilities of the DMF Group.

(JT-DMF), which will bring together vendors, end-users and system “What we really want is to not just do things in different ways depending on where they are, whether they’re local, within the cloud integrators, and aims to ensure that the next wave of live production and so on. That’s the idea of a Dynamic Media Facility,” he adds. “About infrastructure can benefit users and vendors alike. “There’s a lot of a year ago, we had a workshop in Geneva, then CBC hosted another questions surrounding orchestration,” Poulin explains. “We need to one in Toronto at the beginning of this year, where we brought together solve a number of these problems in that category. The joint taskforce several of those key vendors to challenge the industry to work together. now begins working on these different aspects by priority.”

It’s gone very well.”

The momentum behind MXL is undeniable. “It’s been so fast from when we started with the idea, to a number of vendors being willing An open source approach to work in open source, to releasing an early version of code in June,” Instead of the traditional, lengthy standardisation process, the EBU Poulin says. and its partners have opted for an open source approach to MXL. Multi-vendor demonstrations at IBC showcased the progress, “We decided to go with an open source approach because usually and work is underway to finalise a production-ready version one. our industry would have gone through a standardisation process at Poulin hopes that by NAB Show in April, vendors will have solutions this stage,” says Poulin. “We’d bring in standards bodies, write the text incorporating MXL available for purchase. about the solution, eventually we get it ratified, and then start to see MXL represents a significant leap forward for the broadcasting first implementations.” industry, promising greater interoperability, efficiency, and adaptability in Instead, a software development kit (SDK) has been developed, and an increasingly software-driven world.

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 | 11

MEDIA MANAGEMENT

BEWARE THE hype Geeter Kyriazis, head of strategic sales at swXtch.io, offers a counterpoint to the excitement around MXL

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pproximately every three to five years, a new topic emerges that dominates the conversation on the NAB and IBC exhibit floors. Some (remember 3D?) fade as quickly as they rise, while others endure and evolve with the industry. The IP transition, cloud computing and AI represent the latter, each shifting into new phases as they sprout branches.

AI’s emergence in 2022 means the broadcast industry was due for a new dominant talking point, and that clearly took shape in 2025 with the appearance of the Media eXchange Layer (MXL). The difference from NAB in April to IBC in September was striking, with MXL an ubiquitous thread of conversation throughout the amusingly nonlinear halls of the RAI. MXL, which is an open-source initiative has the potential to revolutionise software-based media production. As part of the European Broadcasting Union’s Dynamic Media Facility vision, MXL promises a standardised protocol for real-time, in-memory exchange of video, audio, and metadata between applications.

We are genuinely excited about MXL’s potential to streamline workflows and foster creativity. While increasing interoperability is touted by this open standard, existing standards such as SMPTE ST 2110 already enable integration across devices and systems.

The true game-changer with MXL lies in its ability to eliminate traditional networking between applications. By facilitating direct in-memory exchanges, it sidesteps the latency and timing challenges that often plague IP-based workflows.

However, MXL requires centralising applications into a consolidated compute node to access shared memory spaces. While efficient, this approach can have drawbacks. In general, it runs counter to the established trend of creating decentralised composable workflows in virtual machines, containers and the like. It can lead to resource contention, where high-demand apps compete for CPU, GPU, or memory, potentially causing bottlenecks. This could create a single point of failure with limited fallback options.

This architecture could also introduce hurdles related to discovery.

For instance, there’s no fully standardised mechanism for applications to dynamically discover available memory buffers or know precisely

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which frames are being presented. Without clear signaling, such as notifications for new frame arrivals, broadcast applications could miss updates or inefficiently poll buffers, introducing overhead and potential synchronisation errors. These gaps, while surmountable, highlight areas for ongoing refinement.

Another consideration is how MXL’s local focus might exclude remote applications from workflows. In today’s hybrid environments, where teams collaborate across clouds or distant sites, in-memory exchanges don’t naturally extend beyond a single node. This could limit MXL’s applicability in distributed setups, sidelining valuable remote tools and hindering global productions.

Here’s where we see an opportunity to build on MXL’s strengths.

Just as we’ve implemented multicast as a software overlay in our current products, we are considering doing the same for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA). This would extend MXL’s in-memory efficiency to distributed networks, enabling low-latency exchanges across nodes without hardware dependencies. By adding this layer, we’d enhance MXL’s value, promoting even broader adoption while maintaining its open ethos.

It is early days and many of these gaps will be addressed over time.

We’re optimistic about MXL’s future and eager to collaborate with the wider community.

“MXL requires centralising applications into a consolidated compute node to access shared memory spaces. While efficient, this approach can have drawbacks”

EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

ADDRESSING THE INDUSTRY’S

mental health crisis David Davies meets Marcus Ryder, CEO of the Film and TV Charity, to discuss the complex mental health challenges facing the industry, the high numbers of media workers now considering alternative career options, and the looming threat that AI poses to ‘self-worth and identity’

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rom the #MeToo movement that gained momentum in the wake of the allegations against—and subsequent convictions of— Harvey Weinstein, to the many disturbing claims around UK TV presenters, it has been a decade of troubling revelations about the darkest behaviour that can occur behind the scenes of the broadcast and film industries. But whilst it has attracted less global attention, there has also

14 | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025

been a steady stream of research that confirms much more needs to be done to protect the mental health and well-being of media workers in general.

An organisation responsible for a significant part of this study is the Film and TV Charity (hereafter referred to as FTVC). Originally founded as the Cinematograph Trade Benevolent Fund in 1924, the charity was created to help those behind the scenes in the UK’s film, TV and cinema industry to “overcome both personal and professional challenges”. Rebranded as FTVC in 2018, it has since introduced a free, 24-hour confidential helpline and launched the now biennial Looking Glass survey to specifically highlight the industry’s mental health challenges—and consider what might be done about them.

CEO Marcus Ryder confirms the often shocking nature of that initial Looking Glass survey. “Mental health issues are fuelled by lots of different things— from the precarious nature of work to the challenges associated with the increase in freelancing, where previously you had people with more stable contracts being on-staff. Then there are the issues that we knew about already, such as bullying, sexism, discrimination and harassment. But what the Looking Glass survey

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EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

revealed very clearly was that there is a mental health crisis that needs to be addressed.”

Regrettably, the tenor of the reports has, if anything, grown rather bleaker over time. The most recent, in 2024, interviewed 4,300 film, TV and cinema workers, and found that self-ratings of mental health were at their lowest across the five-year history of the research. It also found that 64 per cent of those surveyed are considering leaving the industry due to concerns about mental health, with 32 per cent having already taken the first steps to do so.

Ever since the inception of Looking Glass, notes Ryder, “there has been a huge number of people who say they’re thinking of leaving the industry, but they don’t. The difference now is that lots of people are actively looking to leave the industry, which means they’re updating their CVs, applying for jobs and going for interviews. And they are disproportionately older people working at more senior levels, which sends out a really worrying signal about how we as an industry are retaining that skilled workforce. There’ll always be churn, but the amount of people who are actively looking to leave is worrying.”

Place this in the context of the pronounced skills shortages that already exist in senior engineering and other technical roles—not to mention the fact that they are occurring during a period of profound technological change—and it becomes even more troubling. Evidently, says Ryder, “you really don’t want to lose those people, but if they are leaving, let’s make sure we have a proper industrial strategy in place to address it because the investment that the creative sector, and the foreign direct investment brought into the UK by film and television is absolutely immense.”

AI and self-worth Part of the challenge facing industry stakeholders trying to move the dial on mental health is that new factors seem to be emerging all the time at present. In terms of heralding fresh uncertainty with regard to job description and security, AI is unquestionably the most important, but Ryder notes that it also raises broader questions about career path and identity.

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Marcus Ryder

“One point I don’t think has been addressed enough is that we get self-worth and value for the work that we do,” he says. “If we then find out that our selfworth and what we think is important to us and our contribution to society can be automated—maybe not quite as well, but nonetheless—it makes you question your value and entire identity. So there is a whole looming mental health issue there that needs to be talked about.”

It’s easy to suggest that the widespread perception of AI as a runaway train, with no meaningful legislation in prospect in many countries, and huge varieties of opinion about how AI should be implemented, also can’t be helpful. “It is a runaway train,” Ryder agrees, although he cites examples from musical history, including the growth of small-group jazz in the 1950s after the decline of the big bands, to highlight how unexpected creative booms can occur after calamitous periods.

“That said,” he cautions, “AI is qualitatively and quantitatively different from other technologies, and the reality is that it’s so hard to know what to do, and what the positive and negatives are going to be, at such a [relatively early point in its development].”

Moreover, whilst AI represents a longer-term, existential challenge, there are also very specific issues that are concerning Ryder and his team right now, not least the rising levels of racism and hatred in the UK and around the world.

“Since October 7th 2023 and the Hamas attacks on Israel, the mental health of Jewish, Arab and Muslim people working in the industry has absolutely plummeted.

We did surveys, and irrespective of [people’s individual politics], it’s just objectively true that their mental health has suffered, so one of the things we have been doing is making sure we have services that support Jewish, Arab and Muslim people.

“No doubt there will be other things coming up in terms of global and local politics that will affect people in the industry, and of which we need to be mindful,” he concludes.

The latest Looking Glass report can be downloaded here; the next edition is due for publication in 2026. FTVC’s recent report on freelancing can be accessed here.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 | 15

MEDIA MANAGEMENT

capabilities. This opens doors that were previously closed. For example, support for split-screen programme delivery makes AV2 particularly valuable for sports.

How long has AV2 taken to develop?

Development started in early 2021, with the first research release of the AVM reference software tagged on January 17th, 2021.

The development has proceeded since then, with the specification, reference software and requirements being updated iteratively by the Video Codec Working Group technical committee.

READY FOR AN

Why do you think open standards are so important to the industry?

upgrade?

Dr Pierre-Anthony Lemieux, executive director of the Alliance for Open Media, tells TVBEurope about plans to launch the new AV2 codec by the end of the year What is AV2 and how does it differ from AV1?

AV2 is the logical evolution of AV1, building on its strengths while delivering significantly better compression performance and also introducing new capabilities like enhanced support for AR/VR applications.

designed to learn from these lessons while providing a natural upgrade path from AV1. Like software, video codecs benefit from regular updates that fix issues, improve usability, and respond to real-world feature requests.

Why the need for AV2?

Why are AV2’s features important to the media and entertainment industry?

The widespread adoption of AV1 revealed opportunities for improvement. AV2 is

Some of the features of AV2 are not merely improvements over AV1 but entirely new

16 | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025

Lowering friction to developing and deploying standards that meet user requirements is essential to meeting the changing needs of the industry.

Looking back over the Alliance of Open Media’s 10 years, what would you say has been the biggest challenge?

Wearing my executive director hat, I would say that focusing the energy of AOMedia members is the greatest challenge: AOMedia brings together a diverse group of innovators, large and small, from across the media ecosystem.

What do you think will be the biggest talking points over the next 10 years?

The future of media standards is exciting: • Traditional video codecs are reaching a performance plateau, opening the door to fresh approaches • Software performance is increasing across platforms, loosening the need for hardware support and thus making it easier and faster to deploy new technologies at scale, even on older devices • Standards development needs to be more agile and closely integrated with opensource software to keep pace with demand • While mass-market entertainment remains largely a 2D video affair, more immersive consumer experiences have made recent progress in terms of the availability of consumer devices and content.

ADVERTORIAL

The technology driving the $7 billion micro-drama Industry

By Fred Sun, general manager, Tencent Cloud Europe

S

torytelling for the mobile era is unlike anything that came before it. No longer tied to broadcast schedules or big screens, viewers expect content that is always available, interactive and tailored to their preferences. It’s an exciting time to be in the entertainment business. Around the world, content consumption is exploding in volume and evolving in form, driven by mobile-first formats. The future of entertainment isn’t defined solely by long-form streaming hits or blockbuster sports and music events; it’s increasingly shaped by bitesized videos that deliver impact in just minutes.

Micro-dramas are at the forefront of this shift. These snackable serials, typically 90 seconds to two minutes long, are growing in popularity—and fast. In China, where the format first took hold, the market is already worth around $7 billion and is forecast to exceed $14 billion (100 billion yuan) by 2027.

The rise of the micro-drama Tightly scripted miniaturised versions of traditional drama have surged in popularity in the last year. Their brevity matches attention spans shaped by social media and on-demand viewing.

But micro-dramas are no longer just a Chinese phenomenon; they’re going global. In the US, ReelShort, DramaBox and GoodShort were the top downloaded micro-drama apps, together accounting for about 50 per cent of downloads in 2025. Crazy Maple Studio’s The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband alone surpassed 419 million views on ReelShort in 2024. Europe is following suit: in France, Les aventures avec ma voisine (Next Door Adventure) became the first original French production on the international platform, Stardust TV, streaming in eight languages.

For today’s mobile-first audience, the appeal is obvious: short, bingeable stories that can be consumed anytime, anywhere. For broadcasters and media companies, the opportunity is equally compelling: a low-cost, high-volume format with significant potential for advertising, subscription and transactional models.

Technology as the enabler At Tencent Cloud, we provide a one-stop micro-drama management platform, giving creators cost-effective production tools, automated

content management and seamless distribution backed by analytics.

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This ensures high-quality streaming at scale, enabling platforms to maximise reach while diversifying revenue streams. It could be said this surge in mobile-native content is the result of creative innovation meeting user habits. In reality, the underlying driver is technology, making it possible to produce, distribute and monetise these videos at scale.

Short-form video requires robust infrastructure, from AI-powered transcoding, automated quality inspection and smart content tagging to real-time distribution networks delivering high-quality video at scale across devices. Personalisation engines and data analytics help platforms match stories with the right audiences.

How AI accelerates the process Of course, this scale would not be possible without AI, empowering human creativity to reach further and faster. AI services from Tencent Cloud supports media companies to: •A utomate media processing, including transcoding and quality control.

•A ccelerate localisation through subtitling, dubbing and translation.

• S upport discovery and engagement through personalised recommendations.

•O ptimise bandwidth allocation and reduce latency in live and ondemand delivery.

For engineers and executives, the real benefit of AI lies in efficiency. The technology reduces bottlenecks, lowers operational costs and makes it feasible to deliver huge volumes of content without compromising quality. For European broadcasters, studios and service providers, the lesson is clear: future growth will come from producing more content, and ensuring that content can move seamlessly across devices, networks and markets. Standards, interoperability and technical reliability will be just as important as storytelling itself.

Looking ahead Micro-dramas may be short in format, but they represent a seismic shift in the industry, illustrating how content, technology and infrastructure must realign to meet the demands of mobile-first audiences. This boom is not simply about entertainment—it signals the future of streaming.

Success will depend on the industry’s ability to move with the times, and every second counts.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 | 17

IP MIGRATION

AS IP BECOMES MORE ACCESSIBLE, what’s next?

By Andy Bellamy, technical director, EMEA, AJA Video Systems

I

nternet Protocol (IP) isn’t new to broadcasting, with talk of it dating back to the late 1990s. Since then, IP technology has advanced, and the workflows supporting it have moved beyond theory to practice. Full-fledged NDI studios are operating worldwide, and SMPTE ST 2110 is now often the standard for many greenfield facility builds. While these IP approaches have been around for a while, they’re now becoming more accessible.

Fibre is getting faster and cheaper, and SMPTE ST 2110 network switches are becoming more affordable. As IP infrastructure costs come down, technology providers are also solving another part of the equation—developing equipment for hybrid pipelines that connect the worlds of baseband and IP. This is key to unlocking the scalability and long-term cost benefits of IP for a broader group of professionals.

An era of hybrid experimentation With IP technologies rapidly evolving and video quality needs varying, there is no shortage of IP options available today. NDI is supported by a robust ecosystem of technologies and can be effective for environments where a nominal amount of latency is acceptable, but with efficient compression. The fast-growing Dante AV, also compressed, uses a highly efficient codec to ensure lower latency video delivery and integrates seamlessly into environments already leveraging Dante Audio.

SMPTE ST 2110 provides an uncompressed option. In these environments, signals are split into audio, video, and metadata, with redundancy. SMPTE 2110 is ultra-reliable and helps to avoid dropped video frames. If something goes awry, redundancy is in place to ensure the user experience is seamless.

There isn’t necessarily one right approach to IP, with each infrastructure unique. As many facilities and trucks find their stride with IP, the reality is that they’re likely working with a combination of these approaches, in addition to baseband equipment. SDI remains integral to workflows because not all IP tools are accessible yet. For instance, SMPTE 2110 monitors are significantly more expensive compared to HDMI and SDI monitors.

NDI, Dante, ST 2110, and SDI can be thought of in some workflows as different islands. Professionals need a bridge to move between them, which is where manufacturers are stepping up their game. At

18 | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025

IBC, we saw lots of innovation in this arena, but education remains a hurdle to making IP more accessible.

Expanding the knowledge base and talent pool The worlds of broadcast and IT are inherently different, but with IP, they’re becoming more interlinked, so understanding both is crucial.

We’ve seen a lot more material come out in recent years designed to help broadcast engineers better understand the intricacies of IP, and vice versa, with IT professionals learning more of the underpinnings of broadcast.

Running a SMPTE ST 2110 network requires knowledge of how to run both fibre networks and copper Ethernet networks, and how to solve networking issues that can be difficult to pinpoint. Thankfully, in the UK and Europe, we’re seeing Ravensbourne and other universities starting to provide that training to students early on, with many of these institutions now becoming a springboard for IP talent.

Predicting the impacts of the continued democratisation of IP As the industry advances in its IP journey, IP will not only provide the more obvious long-term cost-efficiency and reduced cabling footprint advantages but also enhanced production flexibility. More accessible IP workflows enable broadcasts and productions to produce content remotely from anywhere with less friction.

Barriers to IP will continue to come down, and as they do, distributed production pipelines will only improve, even in regions where they may have previously been difficult to facilitate. The volume of available content will continue to grow alongside the content quality, as these networks advance to support transport of the highest resolutions, bit depths, and sample rates. It will also become easier to add new tools to the pipeline and creative and production suites to networks.

While the M&E industry has made progress in its transition to IP in the last decade, there is still a long way to go. Predicting where everything will net out down the line is difficult, but I see IP becoming the new standard, especially as costs continue to drop. IP advancements could also pave the way for an expanded SMPTE ST 2110 feature set over the years and further ratification of standards that address challenges like 8K. The democratisation of IP is already underway, and with it come ample opportunities to reimagine how content is created, delivered, and experienced.

CASE STUDY

KEEPING THE FASTNET LIVE STREAM

rock-solid at sea 20 | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025

J

uly 2025 marked a special moment in the sailing calendar as the Rolex Fastnet Race, the world’s biggest offshore yacht race, and one of the most technically challenging, set off in its centenary year. The popular biennial event, which this year featured record participation, follows a 695 nautical mile route that begins at the Royal Yacht Squadron start line in Cowes, Isle of Wight.

Jostling for the best position without colliding or accruing a twohour penalty for setting sail too early, the boats across 13 different classes leave the Solent through the Needles Channel. They then follow the south coast west along the English Channel to Land’s End. Often negotiating unpredictable, fast-moving weather systems, they cross the Celtic Sea marking the halfway point as they round the Fastnet Rock off the southwest coast of Ireland; the turning point of the race. On the return, the course heads back past the Isles of Scilly and finishes in Cherbourg, France.

Building on its successful broadcast of the start of the race in 2023, production company Optical Media sought to further elevate the viewer experience. Central to this effort was LiveU IQ (LIQ), LiveU’s connectivity solution designed to dynamically and intelligently select the best-performing cellular networks in realtime. This capability proved critical for coverage from a high-speed

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CASE STUDY

RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat), which tracked the fleet at speeds up to and a hilltop overlooking Hurst Castle. The RIB-mounted LU800 unit, 20 knots, where maintaining a stable live signal in highly variable equipped with a specialised stabilised camera system, relied on LIQ network conditions is exceptionally demanding. to maintain an uninterrupted connection, automatically identifying James Light, director of Optical Media, emphasises the positive the strongest available networks and delivering a consistent signal impact of LIQ on the production. “We certainly never lost the despite the challenging environment. Coverage of the race was connection on the RIB. I think the LIQ service is very strong and broadcast live to the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s YouTube channel to put it in these challenging conditions proves to me that it really and to two European broadcasters. works. It was able to identify whatever key network was there Optical Media also deployed LiveU’s LU-Link for plug-and-play and present it the whole time. I think part of the success this year cloud connectivity. LU-Link eliminates the need for a custom firewall must go down to LIQ’s capability to react in real-time to changes in configuration, enabling the LiveU server to be hosted seamlessly on network conditions. It’s a weather-proof solution that gives you the an unmanaged network. best set of options.”

Highlighting its versatility Light says, “It’s like magic. Using LULIQ was launched last autumn and in spring this year, a worldLink we can plug into any network, we just pop the rack in the OB renowned broadcaster began live connectivity testing at several van, which is parked next to the Royal Squadron Building, and off we live sports (including international rugby and top tier football go. It just works.” matches) and news events in Europe from locations with congested Optical Media also used LiveU’s Audio Connect. Light adds, “The or limited cellular coverage. Using its fleet of LiveU LU800 videoteam could plug in their headphone ports connected via a jack over-bonded-IP encoder units, the broadcaster was able to rely on extender onboard the RIB, at Egypt Point and Hurst Castle and they LIQ to intelligently select the highest performing cellular network were able to hear crystal clear director comms in real-time. There operators in every location, keeping a consistent stream throughout was no messing around with phones or other more complicated each session. audio systems, which was critical for me. It was a big help and I The comprehensive tests found that LIQ provided high quality, certainly wouldn’t do this project without it in future.” low latency broadcast transmissions over bonded cellular networks These technologies simplified operations, eliminated complex in challenging scenarios that would previously have required the use network configurations and allowed the production team to focus of traditional connectivity options that are generally more expensive entirely on delivering premium live content. and complex in nature.

Light concludes “I believe our methodology as a production The tests demonstrated that LIQ not only lets broadcasters business is to find the best available tools for the job in hand, based break free of pre-allocated network on a range of factors including constraints, but also provides them budget, complexity and scenario. with predictable data analytics that Together with the LiveU team we find allow them to overcome previous solutions that work in challenging difficulties in known challenging environments so that we can bring environments. In moments that viewers closer to the action. LiveU typically see peak public network opens opportunities for us to talk to usage, such as when a goal is scored clients about how we can tell stories or at half time, LIQ was proven in different ways.” to overcome network challenges, The success of Optical Media’s significantly outperforming live stream of the start of the Rolex conventional bonded connections.

Fastnet Race demonstrates how Back in Cowes, to increase the LIQ allows productions to break free excitement and the tension of from the restrictions of preselected the Fastnet Race, Optical Media cellular operator connections, produced a 15-minute build-up show, dynamically and smartly switching then streamed the start of each to the best performing network class live, capturing the intense configurations, live and on air. preparation and strategic positioning This challenging deployment of the 3,000 sailors. Using several underscores LIQ’s innovation and other LiveU units, the team live its transformative impact on live streamed in 4K close-up, immersive broadcast production, empowering coverage from the water and key teams to seamlessly operate in The race was live streamed in 4K with key vantage points vantage points including Egypt Point including Egypt Point and a hilltop overlooking Hurst Castle difficult environments.

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 | 21

MEDIA CONSUMPTION

REPELLING THE CONTENT

pirates

Image courtesy of Just_Super / Getty Images

With anti-piracy legislation lagging behind technological change, Matthew Corrigan investigates how content can be protected to stem the tide against illegal streaming

C

ontent piracy is a huge problem. While the issue isn’t new—dishonest elements have tried to steal media for as long as it has been recordable—the advent of digitalisation has brought with it an exponential increase in the theft of intellectual property. The days of dubious DVD copies of the latest blockbuster, furtively filmed on a camcorder smuggled into the local multiplex, are very much in the past. Today’s content thieves are innovative, agile and highly motivated. Piracy is big business, and unfortunately, it’s a growth industry.

The crime takes many forms, with the figures involved hard to believe. A study commissioned by a group of rightsholders working in collaboration with the European Union to gather data on illicit streaming revealed a “huge surge” at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025. Upwards of 120 million illegal streams were detected across the period, and although take-down notices were served, the data suggested just 11 per cent were disrupted in a timely manner.

This statistic highlights another aspect of the challenge: industry groups are lobbying policymakers for change, but bureaucratic sclerosis ensures legislation continues to lag behind the pace of technological change. As an example, the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance, a group representing members from across the media and entertainment space, is anticipating clarification from European lawmakers as to the exact definition of the word “expeditious” where it appears in legislation designed to combat illicit streaming.

Furthermore, a Grant Thornton report in March 2025 found there had been “little to no reduction” in piracy levels in the preceding two years with no meaningful action from online intermediaries to stop the pirates.

Speaking at a panel discussion titled, Piracy—undermining sports, threatening businesses, funding crime, at IBC2025, Dave Gilmore, VP of intelligence at Friend MTS, revealed another deeply concerning number: over the past year the company had detected more than nine million incidences of piracy. Perhaps indicating the seriousness with which international lawmakers are taking the subject, a senior representative of Interpol’s IP crime and digital piracy unit was also

22 | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025

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MEDIA CONSUMPTION

present at the discussion. The piracy business has become analogous with the cocaine trade, albeit one with reduced risks for those who perpetrate it, be they organised criminal groups or other bad actors.

Some might see the situation as a “forever war”, a perpetual digital arms race in which both sides continually evolve to gain an advantage.

Others, while accepting some degree of loss will always be inevitable, suggest this is defeatist, and that building a robust defence is entirely Robin Boldon possible by adopting the right technological and legislative approach.

The latter view is shared by Robin Boldon. In his role as strategic product leader at Friend MTS, Boldon comes face-to-face with piracy on a frequent basis. “It is a big problem for our industry,” he says. “The more [content] that we make available, the more diverse means of access to that content, and inevitably, the attack surface for pirates becomes ever greater. And moving from more traditional forms of broadcast infrastructure to complete big, global ones just makes the process so much easier [for bad actors] to take what they want.”

Fortunately, rightsholders have largely recognised the need for effective security strategies, as Boldon confirms. “We’ve seen a

number of big customers who have really focused on this,” he says, “because they see it as a means to protect the revenue they generate.

Whether it be through subscriptions or, where exclusive rights are auctioned to the highest bidder in a territory, part of the commercial transaction is an obligation to ensure that exclusivity is underpinned by [having] good protocols in place.”

Outlining the extent to which content is vulnerable, he continues by highlighting the need for a holistic approach. “You can have a licensee that’s got really good security policy, good hygiene, and is doing a good localised programme, then you have another licensee who’s doing nothing. The pirate doesn’t really care where the content comes from. They’ll just import it into the market because it’s all online without borders, and you can use that content wherever. It’s really important that the rights holders think of it in total.”

In a world that is increasingly interconnected, media and entertainment cannot exist in its own bubble and a number of highprofile cyber attacks have already had significant impact. Boldon considers the implications and looks at where content privacy crosses over into the wider cybersecurity landscape, as well as

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Image courtesy of Just_Super / Getty Images

MEDIA CONSUMPTION

specific areas where M&E is uniquely vulnerable.

“There have been some big attacks in recent years on wellknown studios and other media organisations. But I think what’s really challenging for our industry is that we have quite a transient workforce as well, particularly the production cycle,” he states. “[Individuals] come into work on a production and then they go away again. They work on something else. They’re not employees of a static corporation. They are often self-employed, freelancing, technical people and so forth.”

The short-term nature of some productions, which can, says Boldon, resemble large businesses in size, necessitates the creation of many endpoints, each of which widens the attack surface presented to bad actors. “Often, it’s a mistake [that] causes content to leak out,” he says, explaining the need to both identify content and make it trackable, and once again referring to the need for an overarching approach. “We use a variety of techniques to do that. One of them is called forensic watermarking.

It’s quite a holistic approach, in that we’ll mark the content, but it also forms part of our monitoring capability. So when we’re looking in all of the myriad places online for where [it] is made available, because it’s baked into our solution, we can find those marks very quickly and effectively help the client shut down that source.”

Fast action is imperative. This is particularly the case in sports broadcasting, where the value of content has a finite life. ”If you think about a [football] match, for example, if you’re not effective in minutes, then you might as well not bother,” says Boldon.

“If it gets to halftime, it’s game over. If it’s a pay-per-view boxing match, it could all be over in seven minutes. You’ve got to be very effective as quickly as possible.”

For content owners, best practices should be considered from the start, Boldon believes. “First of all, we would always recommend that [owners] look at best practice when designing and building platforms,” he says. “A lot of the technologies that are chosen, if they’re implemented correctly, perform exactly as expected. But often, they’re not implemented correctly. Shortcuts are taken. They have to meet a budget or a deadline.”

A solution might be white labelled, he continues, but it has the same vulnerabilities as the “ten other cookie-cutter streaming solutions using the same design patterns—and the pirate knows exactly which soft bit to push, which vulnerability to exploit, which key to use again, and again, and again. [Content owners] have to make sure they have best practice in place when designing these things from the ground up.

24 | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025

“And then, there comes a point when consumers’ eyeballs watch your content. That’s another attack vector. [Pirates will] always choose the path of least resistance. So if you make it difficult to get into the encrypted domain, they won’t.

They’ll wait until it’s at the end, or they’ll buy a subscription, or they’ll do whatever they need, and then they can take that content and redistribute it.”

Best practice would be to take a layered approach, Boldon explains, with a programme that adds in extra lines of defence. “Put forensic marking in the content and you can shut down abuse, but equally, make sure you’ve got good fraud detection protocols in place when people are signing up for your services. So it’s kind of working in concert with all of those different areas to be as effective as you possibly can be.”

Acceptance and understanding seems to be the key to success.

While legislators have a role to play, it is increasingly clear that the responsibility is a shared one, in which everyone in the supply chain has a part to play.

“I think better understanding and knowledge of all the different participants in the ecosystem is really, really important,” says Boldon, before concluding on an upbeat note. “I’d like to think that there is an effective balance. I’d like to think there is absolutely a way in which you understand you’ll always have people that will take things from you and build it into your business model.”

The arms race may not yet be over, but with the right strategies in place content owners can keep closing the doors on the pirates, minimise their losses and help to safeguard the future of the industry.

“Put forensic marking in the content and you can shut down abuse, but equally, make sure you’ve got good fraud detection protocols in place when people are signing up for your services” ROBIN BOLDON

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ADVERTORIAL

WALKING THE FINE LINE BETWEEN

COST CONTROL AND GROWTH

N

ow in its ninth year, Bitmovin’s Video Developer Report has become something of a barometer for the challenges and trends shaping the video industry. The report provides a snapshot of the industry’s current state, tracking trends, highlighting key challenges, and shining a spotlight on the long-term shifts that define how video is built, delivered, and experienced. The report is based on input from hundreds of video professionals across 49 countries, and as such offers a grounded look at the challenges, strategies, and technologies shaping the future of video delivery.

What comes through clearly in the newly released 2025/2026 edition is that the industry is carefully balancing growth ambition with the realities of tighter budgets, and the need to optimise workflows.

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Key industry challenges revealed The latest edition of the Video Developer Report reveals that cost control is the number one concern for 38 per cent of respondents, making it the single largest challenge facing video teams. Bandwidth, storage, and infrastructure optimisation are all under scrutiny as providers look to maximise ROI while expanding services.

Ad insertion remains a key challenge, as cited by 37 per cent of respondents, while maintaining consistent monitoring and analytics (31 per cent) and ensuring reliable playback across all devices (31 per cent) also rank high as persistent difficulties in today’s fragmented ecosystem. The findings underscore the constant trade-offs faced by video teams: on one side, increasing reach and meeting the demand for higher-quality streams and richer user experiences, and on the other, managing the rising costs.

Playback on all devices remains a major operational challenge, largely because of ongoing platform and device fragmentation, and consistent monitoring and analytics is also a sticking point. Most teams can track down the root cause of streaming issues within a day, but very few can do so in minutes, and that lag has real implications when live events and premium sports are at stake. That said, Bitmovin’s Analytics, enables video providers to track, monitor and analyse streams in real time, so that issues can be detected and fixed before they impact viewers. It offers granular, everysession playback visibility, such as startup time, rebuffering, and device variance, as well as analytics around ad insertion and ad playback that generic tools cannot deliver.

Monetisation strategies in flux While it’s clear that cost control is the industry’s top priority, at the same time, video providers are also diversifying their monetisation models. The report finds near parity between advertising-based (37 per cent) and subscription-based (36 per cent) revenue models, a marked contrast to just a few years ago when subscription services dominated growth strategies. In addition, FAST channels, used largely to extend reach and complement SVoD offerings, have now carved out a stable role at 26 per cent, and transactional approaches such as pay-per-view remain in use but are more niche at 18 per cent.

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ADVERTORIAL

In terms of ad insertion architecture, server-side ad insertion (SSAI) is the clear leader at 37 per cent, prized for its seamless playback and resistance to ad blockers, particularly on CTVs. Clientside ad insertion (CSAI) follows at 28 per cent while server-guided ad insertion (SGAI), enabling richer user experiences through enhanced personalisation and better targeted ads, is gaining traction as a flexible hybrid at 10 per cent. The mix highlights trade-offs between control and user experience, with many teams running blended architectures across devices and formats. The Bitmovin Player supports server- and client-side methods as well as the increasingly popular SGAI, and has recently been expanded to provide support for SGAI on Apple devices, with support for Android and Web coming soon.

VIDEO PROVIDERS ARE DIVERSIFYING THEIR MONETISATION MODELS

AI crosses into the mainstream Perhaps unsurprisingly, AI has moved beyond experimentation into the mainstream, with broad deployment focused on ROI and operational impact.

The majority of respondents report deploying AI in at least one part of their workflow, with only 4 per cent saying they have no plans to use it. Accessibility is the most common application, with 46 per cent using AI for audio transcription and speech-to-text. Personalisation and tagging and categorisation follow closely behind, each at 35 per cent, while recommendations comes in at 33 per cent. Quality-focused applications, such as video quality optimisation and quality of experience are not far behind at 29 per cent and 20 per cent respectively.

From the findings, it seems that AI’s adoption is increasingly ROIdriven. Instead of being explored in isolation, AI is being built into pipelines where the benefits can be clearly measured, whether that is reducing churn, cutting bitrate costs through smarter encoding ladders, or driving engagement with more relevant recommendations and ad targeting through use of products such as Bitmovin’s AI Scene Analysis.

cent. AV1 follows at 16 per cent and with 21 of respondents planning adoption, it is the codec to watch as hardware support continues to spread. VVC and other emerging formats are present but less commonly used.

On the delivery side, multi-CDN has become the default strategy, with 31 per cent using multiple providers reflecting the need for resilience, performance, and cost optimisation. HLS and DASH lead distribution, used by 61 per cent and 46 per cent of respondents respectively, with CMAF use steadily rising at 23 per cent. Latency varies: 39 per cent achieve under five seconds, 35 per cent report 5 to 30 seconds, and 21 per cent don’t measure it at all. Commercial solutions are steadily replacing pure in-house builds for encoding, DRM, CDNs, and players, giving teams faster time-to-market and supported feature sets.

The report also points to the growing diversification of workflow and delivery strategies. Live encoding still leans heavily on hardware appliances (29 per cent), while VoD workflows are primarily handled through public or private cloud-based software (28 per cent and 32 per cent respectively). Codec adoption reflects a transitional moment.

H.264, valued for its unmatched device reach and simplicity, remains the dominant format at 65 per cent in production, largely for its reach, while HEVC, with its strong 4K and HDR use cases, follows at 41 per

Taken together, the findings of Bitmovin’s 9th Video Developer Report paint a picture of an industry in measured transition. There is no single breakthrough dominating strategy, but rather a pragmatic layering of technologies and models, with cost-conscious infrastructure choices, hybrid monetisation approaches and AI woven into workflows where it makes a difference.

Download your copy of the 9th Video Developer Report here, brought to you by Bitmovin—a leading provider of video streaming solutions for global digital media companies and service providers.

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Credit: Bitmovin

A market in measured transition Infrastructure and workflow choices

PRODUCTION AND POST

ANIMATED

SERKIS IMALS AN

The film's sound team used animal sounds, morphing them into the actors’ performances

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PRODUCTION AND POST

Technology now offers many ways to create a talking animal film but, sometimes, older techniques can produce the most effective results. As Kevin Hilton reports, Andy Serkis’ new interpretation of Animal Farm takes the animation route and has a sound design that helps create a world where all is not well in the farmyard

G

Eamonn Butler

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eorge Orwell’s Animal Farm is a searing political allegory which has now been adapted for the screen three times: the 1954 animated version received a universal rating and has a dark tone in its colour palette and some of the character design. The 1999 live action adaptation featured animatronics from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and was rated PG. The latest take, also PG, is aimed at the family market but still has a satirical edge, swapping the author’s original target of Soviet authoritarianism for corporate greed and mass consumerism.

Reimagining Orwell’s fable has been a long-term project for director Andy Serkis, who originally intended to use the performance (motion) capture technologies he made famous through his roles as Caesar in the Planet of the Apes films and Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The finished film has been realised through CGI (computer generated imagery) animation by facilities house Cinesite.

Eamonn Butler, associate director of animation on the film, says that when discussions first began with Serkis, motion capture was one of the techniques considered but this changed when tests were carried out. “We didn’t use motion capture at the time because a test is usually quite a compressed timeframe,” he explains. “We keyframed it instead, which turned out great.”

By the time funding was secured with content creation and IP production company Aniventure, with which Cinesite has a production output deal to deliver a slate of family-oriented films, keyframing was agreed upon as the way forward.

“Going down the more traditional way, I think, worked out fantastic for everybody,” Butler says. “It’s often been said of Andy that he’s an actor’s director and loves giving guidance and performance insights. Where we collectively decided to go was that Andy would work with his animators as the actors in his film—because they’re also closet actors.”

Butler observes that a degree of anthropomorphisation was used to “lean into the characters”, while conveying both the

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PRODUCTION AND POST

real sounds of puppies, chicks and cows.

As we went on we tried to add more animal sounds into each character, morphing them into the actors’ performances.”

An example of this is when Boxer is falling asleep. Bennett says Woody Harrelson gave “a really funny kind of snore”, which was mixed with recordings of a horse snorting and whinnying. “There’s also a moment when Napoleon is first trying to talk to humans and put on a human voice. Seth Rogen had done this very exaggerated speech moment and we modulated in real pig grunts using a sound design and morphing system called Kyma.

The result is quite unpleasant and weird— but in a nice way.”

Audio is also used to create the atmosphere of the farm and reinforces how it changes through the film. “Andy wanted to go for the full potential of what the sound design could do,” Bennett comments.

“There are funny, silly bits that appeal to the kids but also quite dark moments, both sonically and tonally. At the beginning the farm is lush, with natural, organic sounds, including a watermill made out of bits of wood and junk. By contrast, the human world is futuristic and industrial, almost edging on science fiction, with droney, electronic sounds.

They’re two distinct worlds but slowly, as the animals become more corrupted and human-like, the worlds collide.”

The soundtrack was laid up on Avid Pro Tools, with the final Dolby Atmos mix created at Goldcrest Post Production in London on Avid S6 consoles, with an AMS Neve DFC used to route the various stems and give a warmth to the sound. “Even during the opening credits, you have the music [by Heitor Pereira] coming in with little sounds of animals and a stream, which is building the world before you see it. And we were able to put those around the audience, immediately putting them in that place," explains Bennett.

text and subtext. “We were very aware we were making a movie for the whole family but also we really wanted to try to aim it at young kids,” he says. “We went towards a caricatured look and then pulled it back so it didn’t feel too young a design. Subtext plays a big part in this movie and there are big issues to deal with.

"We didn’t want it to be purely cartoon characters delivering some of these weighty messages, which meant we needed to make the characters feel not necessarily realistic but believable.”

Animal Farm is an entirely CGI animation, which Butler describes as “an artistic process using computer tools". Production took just over two years at Cinesite’s facilities in London, Vancouver and its main animation and visual effects studio in Montreal. Its “foundation” animation system, Butler says, is Autodesk Maya, augmented by “a variety” of modelling tools, including SideFX Houdini and ZBrush.

The starry voice cast includes Seth Rogen as Napoleon, who becomes dictator of the farm, Woody Harrelson as the stalwart Boxer the horse, Laverne Cox (Snowball), Glenn Close (new character Freida Pilkington) and Andy Serkis himself as Mr Jones the farmer and Old Major, who inspires the animals’ uprising. All the actors were videoed performing their lines using lipstick cameras, with the recordings taking Animal Farm screened at the BFI London Film Festival earlier this month. place at different studios depending on their location. Butler comments At the time of going to press it does not have a release date. that the video footage was passed on to the animators so they got a sense of mouth shapes and the looks in the actors’ eyes.

The sound of the character voices was also important in creating a sense of believability. Supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer Dillon Bennett reveals actuality of animals specially recorded for the production was often mixed in with the performances.

“I was keen to try and get in as many real animal sounds as I could, which makes the performances as rich as possible but also grounds the idea of their natural state,” The animators wanted to made the characters he explains. “When there are crowd reactions from all the feel not necessarily realistic but believable animals, it was mixed between humans voicing them and

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OPINION

Make adverts great again A milestone anniversary in television advertising makes Matthew Corrigan question whether technology can help bring creativity back

L

ast month, ITV marked 70 years since its launch as the UK’s first commercial television broadcaster with a series of programmes reflecting on the sights and sounds of its seven decades on air. At the same time, another anniversary was passed.

Though there was considerably less fanfare, it was at least equally significant—70 years since the appearance of the first TV advert.

Around half of the readers of TVBEurope’s newsletter correctly identified the product being showcased as toothpaste (it was actually Gibbs SR) in a quiz about the event. Proof, if it were needed, that adverts can have an effect that far exceeds their lifespan, the message sometimes even outlasting the product itself.

Late in life, I have realised I missed a calling somewhere. I love adverts. Or rather, I used to. As a very small boy, enthralled by the company’s campaign (and completely oblivious to the supreme irony so obvious in hindsight) I had a poster of the Esso tiger on my bedroom wall. I can still recall the advert’s soaring Jeff Wayne soundtrack, its melodies echoing those of his all-conquering War of the Worlds.

One of the very first things I ever searched for on YouTube was a wonderful animated short I remembered from my school days, featuring a Shell platform standing firm against a raging North Sea as it worked to supply the country’s energy. I recently showed the film to a (much younger) animator. She immediately identified it as the work of Richard Williams, the Oscar-winning animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and was amazed at the level of artistry behind a simple half-minute commercial.

I explained it wasn’t particularly unusual. Adverts used to be entertaining in their own right. I can remember being amazed by British Airways flying a brightly-lit Manhattan island over the west London suburbs in an incredible homage to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. On the subject of airlines, KLM produced a wonderful campaign in which footage of a swan preparing to take off was overlaid with the sound of pilots running their checks in the cockpit.

Simple, effective and memorable.

Everyone was doing it. During 1998’s FIFA World Cup in France, Nike’s campaign featured an impromptu airport kickabout by the Brazilian football team, godlike genius Eric Cantona watching imperiously from his aircraft seat. Beer commercials had everything from Rutger Hauer’s enigmatic Guinness productions to the amusing Carling Black Label ads that would probably cause eyebrows to raise

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at the ASA today. Car makers ran extended films, sometimes taking over the entirety of the News at Ten’s mid-programme break or, in the case of Honda’s exquisite Cog, making viewers rub their eyes in disbelief at what the filmmakers had achieved.

And then everything changed. Other than the major stores attempting to out-John Lewis each other at Christmas, the era of the advert as an event is over. For me at least, adverts have lost their power and in fact have a counterproductive effect. Speaking as a consumer, I find continually repeating, poorly-made adverts horribly intrusive. Without naming names, I have actively avoided using services that are promoted in this way.

Commercial realities have obviously played a big part in this. We are living through straitened times; advertising budgets have shrunk.

As my animator friend mentioned, Shell must have had a lot of cash to splurge on their campaigns of old. Quite.

Additionally, the shifting technological landscape has had a significant impact. Thanks to the march of the streamers and the consequent expansion of consumer choice, the idea of a large audience sitting captive at the same time every night belongs firmly in the last century. For advertisers, squaring this circle presents a daily challenge.

The advent of AI has certainly helped. Automated insertion and personalisation are allowing advertisers to tailor their message as never before. As a fairly obvious example, live sports broadcasting presents considerable opportunity, with new adtech solutions regularly launched to try and grab a corner of the market.

However, the creativity that made us actually want to watch adverts has yet to return. Elsewhere in this issue, Graham Lovelace explores whether generative AI models may provide an answer. I’m very much hoping it can, and I’ll bet I’m not the only one.

“Other than the major stores attempting to out-do each other at Christmas, the era of the advert as an event is over” www.tvbeurope.com

MEDIA MANAGEMENT

A GATEWAY TO THE

future of broadcasting

V

By Richard Bernard, director of product management, VITEC

ideo now accounts for the lion’s share of global internet traffic (with recent reports putting it at around 82 per cent), and the pressure on broadcasters to deliver more feeds, from more locations, to more destinations has never been greater. The challenge is twofold: handling this increase in bandwidth, as well as managing the complexity that comes with more channels, more sources, and more ‘plate-spinning’. Every additional protocol, every new remote venue, every affiliate handoff adds operational risk.

Simplifying the scaling challenge Centralised IP gateways are a key tool to help bring feeds under control.

They give broadcasters a single control plane for contribution and distribution, abstracting the messy reality of mixed standards and network conditions. Ease of use is key, and our own inspiration at VITEC has been to make technology that is as easy to use as the traditional video mixer, with the added flexibility of IP. Features like automatic IP channel failover are now increasingly critical to operations, whilst live previews also afford real-time confidence monitoring.

Interoperability as a product principle Workflows today are heterogeneous, which can be a problem for broadcasters handling different feeds in different protocols. It’s important for technology to be protocol-agnostic and standards-first so customers can pick the right tool for the job, supporting formats such as SRT, RIST, Zixi, RTMP, HLS, UDP and RTSP. That interoperability philosophy extends to codecs as well. By prioritising ISO-standardised formats, aspects such as performance, latency and royalty models are predictable for everyone in the chain.

Rising demand The greatest demand we’ve seen for gateways has been in live sport. Rights owners and broadcasters want to work with dozens of concurrent venue feeds and run commentary remotely when it makes sense. There are now too many channels to have dedicated commentary teams in studios for every live sport feed. It’s also too expensive when paired with the high prices broadcasters must pay for rights to specific events, such as the Olympics, so remote commentary helps to keep these productions economically viable.

We are also witnessing an increased usage in point-to-point contribution over the public internet and content sharing across facilities, where an operator needs to drag and drop a source to a

destination and be certain it will work every time at a fraction of the cost of using satellite transmission.

The codec challenge Looking ahead, the codec development race continues apace to address bandwidth issues; whether that be HEVC/H.265 today, VVC/H.266 tomorrow, or the possibility of AI-assisted compression on the horizon for next-generation codecs. VITEC’s algorithm teams contribute to international standardisation forums alongside many partners to balance efficiency and latency. Recently, we worked on helping to reduce the latency of the VVC codec. The industry will continue to see advances in this area, and there are many smart people working on this development. Advancing codecs allows broadcasters to handle the increased number of feeds as well as the increase in resolution, and it’s very important to meet industry challenges as well as enhance quality.

Solidifying sustainability Sustainability is no longer optional in 2025, and is appearing increasingly in RFPs as a mandatory requirement. Manufacturers are looking to develop carbon-neutral video solutions to reduce the impact of video resources. First, the addition of real-time power telemetry in product UIs allows teams to see the watts associated with their settings and make informed decisions. Second, design practices that disable unused interfaces and power down components when idle. Engineers must now assess each stage of the product design process to make sure that products are smart in the way they operate.

In a world where IP video is scaling relentlessly, the ability to route more streams and burn fewer watts is becoming a selection criterion in its own right. It’s also true that clean energy investments are often more economically efficient, so it’s a win-win for everyone concerned.

What comes next The future of contribution is about smarter control, and coming to terms with the ever-increasing amount of video and channels, which looks set to continue. Centralised gateways and efficient codecs are crucial solutions in broadcasters’ toolkits, helping them stay on top of this ever-increasing challenge. The huge amount of video traffic in use also gives the industry a terrific opportunity to lead the way with sustainability initiatives, and make tangible steps towards reducing carbon emissions.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 | 33

LIVE PRODUCTION

Power people

TO THE

With synthetic content becoming increasingly indistinguishable from reality, the world is drowning in misinformation. BBC principal R&D engineer Judy Parnall tells Kevin Emmott how the broadcaster is tackling the challenge head-on by pioneering open standards for digital provenance

I

t’s not easy to tell what’s real and what’s not anymore. We’re bombarded with content, and we’ve all seen things that have made us wonder if it really happened or not. But while we might accept that synthetic content is ubiquitous, the manipulation of images and videos by artificial intelligence poses huge risks to the credibility of news and information. Increasingly, it’s impossible to know what to trust, even if you’ve seen it with your own eyes.

So, it’s reassuring to know that there are people already addressing these risks, and in this year’s IBC Accelerator projects, a collaboration between BBC R&D, Sony and 19 other partners sought to address some of the growing concerns around the impact of synthetic content on public trust.

The project was seeking to test the output of a broader initiative called the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a committee whose goal is to develop open technical standards for

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publishers, creators and consumers to clearly establish the origin and edits of digital content. And in doing so, win back some of that trust.

Misinformation and misattribution

Judy Parnall is a principal engineer at BBC R&D and has spent over three decades at the cutting edge of broadcast technology.

“Prior to 2020, many organisations were putting out content attributed to the BBC that didn't come from us,” she says. “There was a real problem of misinformation and misattribution of content, and in conjunction with The New York Times, Canada’s CBC Radio, and Microsoft, we formed a research group called Project Origin to see if there was any way to positively assert digital provenance.

“We proved that there was, and Project Origin’s research led to a paper at IBC where we discovered that Adobe were undertaking similar research with a couple of its own partners. Since then, we have joined forces to create one solution as an open project through the Linux Foundation, with an agreement that we wouldn't charge for Intellectual Property Rights. That’s how we created the C2PA.”

Creating a standard The goal of the C2PA is a simple one: to enable users to verify the authenticity of content so that they can make better-informed

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LIVE PRODUCTION

decisions about what they consume. While Parnall asserts that the BBC approached it with news authenticity as the primary driver, there are now thousands of members from a broad range of sectors, including finance, insurance and social media.

“The aim is for C2PA standards to be integrated into devices and platforms to allow users to track details of content creation and manipulation,” she says. “In every piece of content, whether it is a video, an image, or an audio clip, we include some information in the metadata. We describe it as the who and the how; it might be where or when it was made, or even how it was made and who by, but all this metadata and content comes together to create an asset with a digital signature, and it is registered in a manifest, which makes all this information available.

“By checking the content credentials, users can see whether a video was captured by a real camera, who published it, and if it has been manipulated.”

Crucially, assets can be tracked throughout the workflow: for instance, if a journalist sells their content to Getty, and it is edited and published by the BBC and then repurposed on YouTube by a third party, all that tracking information should be available. It is these breadcrumbs that enable consumers to decide how trustworthy a piece of content is, a distinction that Parnall says is an important one.

“It’s fundamental that we make no editorial judgment on the content other than giving the user the information to make their own decision.

Knowing how and where that content comes from should be all the information they need to ascertain if they trust it or not.”

in between. The demonstration also highlighted the potential of AIgenerated content to deceive viewers. Using Runway's Aleph model, BBC R&D combined real footage with AI-generated backgrounds, showing how easily synthetic content can be created.

“Sony’s development is significant because the PXW-Z300 is possibly the first news-targeted camcorder that is capable of embedding the digital signatures into video files and addressing the growing need for verifiable content,” says Parnall. “We’re all taking small steps at this point, but people have been watching this develop for some time and there was a lot of interest at the show. Our hope is to encourage more people to trial these credentials for themselves and see where it adds value.”

A major part of the IBC Accelerator programme was to give more organisations the tools to prove that value for themselves, and this value is key to its wider adoption. The timing is perfect, and trust is a major issue on everybody’s lips. Parnall says journalists are already asking about content credentials to identify whether content they have been sent was made using generative AI, and more governments are putting protections in place to safeguard their consumers. The C2PA is not the only game in town, but it could be an effective part of the toolkit, and the existential threat of generative AI is global.

While more focused on the transparency of generative AI content, the California AI Transparency Act comes into force in January next year and calls for a visible label on AI-generated or altered content.

Similar to the work that Parnall is doing with the C2PA, it states that content must carry embedded metadata, including the provider’s name, the AI system name and version, and a creation timestamp.

The IBC Accelerator project This year’s IBC Accelerator project approached this challenge from opposite ends of the production chain to demonstrate key parts of an authenticity workflow. As one of the world’s first use cases of testing the C2PA workflow with video content, BBC R&D collaborated with Sony and around 20 other industry leaders to enable Sony’s PXW-Z300 camera to embed digital signatures into video files to support the C2PA standard for content authentication at capture. Meanwhile, content credentials were also added at the point of publishing, preserving integrity irrespective of whatever happens in the newsroom

A global issue

“This issue affects everybody,” says Parnall. “The IBC Accelerator project proves it, with partners from Europe, Japan, the US and India; it is absolutely a global endeavour. There is a real need for it, and having some very easy tools and easy plugins for content providers is vital. The ideal scenario is for all equipment in our production chains to incorporate these content credentials, and then the certification almost comes for free.

“My hope is that people will start expecting to see these credentials because they've seen them on the bigger platforms, and so will gradually expect to see them elsewhere. I hope it will become a IBC Accelerator project team (l-r) Rob Porter (Sony), Mark Smith (IBC), Hitomi Hamaba (Sony), Judy Parnall (BBC), Marc Cieslak (BBC), Charlie Halford (BBC), Peter Sykes (Sony) virtuous circle."

On 14th October, Jatin Aythora, BBC R&D’s director, will collect the Television Academy’s Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Award on behalf of the department. The Emmy honours an agency, company or institution whose contributions over time have significantly impacted television technology and engineering. The Academy’s plaudits for BBC R&D included its work on C2PA.

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PRODUCTION AND POST

A day in the life…

In the latest of our series focusing on the day-to-day realities of working in media and entertainment, TVBEurope meets Drew Banerjee, MD of Dublin-based EGG VFX

Client relation: making sure our clients are happy with the way their projects are going at EGG VFX. Sales: spreading the word of EGG VFX’s world class team and the extremely competitive 32 per cent Irish Film and TV Tax Credit, and 40 per cent for feature films with budgets under €20 million.

Tell us about your most recent project.

Our most recent big project was The Rainmaker, a 10part episodic series for Lionsgate/USA Network. The series is a reboot of the John Grisham novel that was made into a feature in the ‘90s starring Matt Damon.

Helmed by showrunner Michael Seitzman, it features wonderful scripts and performances from established performers like John Slattery and PJ Byrne, but also some great newer faces like Milo Callaghan and Madison Iseman. We first started talking to Lionsgate about this project in May 2024 and the first episode aired on August 15, 2025. It was a joy to work on— working with such an experienced US team, alongside great production and post crews in Ireland, meant that the project went really smoothly.

Other recent highlights include Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, which premiered in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, and at the other end of the scale, an independent short, Girls & Boys, which won Best Independent Irish Film at this year’s Galway Film Fleadh. In the past year we have also delivered shots for Bad Sisters (Merman/Apple TV), Doctor Who (Bad Wolf/ Disney- BBC), The Forsytes (Mammoth Screen/ PBS), How To Get To Heaven From Belfast (Hat Trick/ Netflix), which has pushed the studio creatively and technically on an international stage.

Describe your daily working routine.

What is your job title and what does it entail?

Drew Banerjee

I am the managing director at EGG VFX and I am ultimately responsible for anything and everything that happens at the studio. My role encompasses the strategic, creative, and operational leadership of the studio. I work closely with internal teams and external partners to ensure we deliver high-quality visual effects (VFX). A key part of my remit is also to invest in the next generation of Irish talent—building out a studio culture that blends world-class delivery with continuous mentorship and development.

Some of the specific areas that I focus on in my role as MD include: The EGG VFX team: making sure our artist and production teams have the resources, space and time to bring their best creative work to every project.

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The start of my day is always the same, reviewing emails that have come in overnight, particularly from the US and Canada and then jumping on our production call at 9:30am. The call has all our supervisors, head of production, studio manager and leads, and is where the teams give an update on the previous day’s progress and the plans for the day ahead. This daily check-in is vital to ensure that we deal with any challenges head on and as a team. That is where the routine ends. Every day is different. Whether we are having technological issues (not very often!), a client has an urgent request or the coffee machine is broken, I never know what is going to happen when I walk through the door in the morning. Sales, client relations and keeping my crew happy and ensuring they are growing professionally and personally are the main responsibilities of my

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PRODUCTION AND POST

job—so making sure that I make the time to fulfil these important tasks alongside whatever other emergencies are happening is a key part of my role.

70-strong team to complete our shots in short order, and it was a delight to see them grow and develop together to contribute to a big budget Sony movie told from a very different perspective. We won an IFTA for our work on the film—and a number of the young artists who joined our team for the project are still with us three years later.

What sort of technology do you work with on a daily/frequent basis (please give as much detail as possible)?

EGG's artist and technical teams are creative technologists, so every second they are in the studio they are relying on and improving our world class software such as Nuke, Houdini, Maya, Resolve, Redshift; constantly developing our first rate custom technical pipeline; ensuring robust and secure network and storage; and using high end machines and cards to carry out their creative work.

My needs on the other hand are high speed internet and a phone for meetings with potential clients, the people who have entrusted their creative jewels to us and other VFX studios in Ireland and worldwide, who we work alongside on a majority of the projects.

And least favourite (names may be withheld to protect the innocent/guilty)?

I can honestly say that I don’t have least favourite projects. We are very lucky in our industry, the world gets to see the praxis (without getting too Marxist here) of our work. So while there are projects that are more difficult—be it in achieving the client’s vision or a lack of timely payments (!), those challenges are always forgotten once we get to see our work on the big or small screen.

The least favourite part of my role is dealing with the mundanity of running an office and all the repairs, headaches and payments that entails.

How has technology changed your life since you started your career?

I am old. My first job, while I was at school, involved using a fax, and that was the height of cutting edge technology at the time. The revolution in the processing power of computers, email, the internet and now AI have transformed the way we communicate. The ability to transmit complex ideas and images instantaneously across the globe means that what I can produce and do in a day has exponentially increased since my first job.

And what do you wish someone would invent to make your job easier?

A magic money tree for producers, production companies and directors. The contraction of budgets post the writers and actors strikes in 2024 has meant that creatives and storytellers have had to curb their ambitions for their projects.

VFX and styles that were possible on larger budgets are not always still in reach. We do our best to come up with creative solutions to help our partners achieve their ambitions, but it is a struggle for everyone and our partners are having to unlearn/not use techniques and approaches that are now no longer achievable on the budgets they have.

EGG VFX's recent credits include Good Omens (top left) and Doctor Who

What do you see as the next big thing in your area?

AI is obviously the next big thing for VFX. While training AI for the written word can be contentious with regards to the ownership and rights held within the training data, images are easier.

We are already incorporating AI tools to our workflows, always mindful of what material the AI was trained on. We will need to keep embracing the latest developments­—which are coming every week at the moment—to ensure that our artists have the space and time to apply their creative instincts and knowledge, while using these tools, to achieve the maximum impact of the images that appear on screen.

What has been your favourite/most memorable assignment?

The project I am proudest of EGG VFX’s contribution [to] was The Woman King. We pulled together a

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2025 | 37

SIMPLY THE

best

Future’s Best of Show awards programme at IBC2025 highlighted the stand-out products and solutions on show in Amsterdam. Here, we showcase the winning entries from the TVBEurope category ACCEDO: ACCEDO COMPOSE Accedo Compose includes a modular orchestration layer powered

by AI agents that can aggregate data, accelerate experimentation, and enable individual-level personalisation. The solution is designed to help streaming providers transform their customer journeys from static paths into continuously adaptive experiences. It’s a significant leap forward in how OTT services understand, engage, and serve their audiences.

AGILETV: AGILETV PLATFORM In the TV business, timing is everything. Audiences expect instant access, operators need fast results, and telcos cannot afford to miss the moment.

For Lowi, Vodafone Spain’s high-growth subsidiary, the challenge was launching its first TV service without compromising the simplicity and value-driven DNA its customers expect. That’s why Vodafone chose AgileTV to deliver the new Lowi TV. Launching a TV offering from scratch is never easy. Content rights, technology stacks, operational workflows, and user experience all had to come together seamlessly.

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ADDER TECHNOLOGY: ADDER API FOR ADDERVIEW MATRIX With API enhancements for the ADDERView Matrix, broadcasters and media organisations can take full advantage of dynamic API control, unlocking greater flexibility and seamless integration across fast-paced, content-driven environments. Whether users are running a live broadcast studio, managing playout operations, or producing content across multiple locations, Adder API enables intelligent, scalable, and secure control right across the production chain.

AMAZON WEB SERVICES: MEDIA QUALITY-AWARE RESILIENCY Media Quality-Aware Resiliency (MQAR) is an advanced AWS capability that redefines how premium live video is protected and delivered. Designed for sports, concerts, news, and other must-see events, MQAR ensures that audiences always receive the highestquality feed automatically without interruption, regardless of where they’re watching. MQAR continuously monitors live video quality at its origin and makes split-second, automated decisions to switch to the highest-quality feed across multiple AWS Regions.

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BADGER MEDIA: TRUSTABEL

APPEAR: HARDWARE ACCELERATED SRT Appear’s Hardware Accelerated SRT is a breakthrough solution enabling broadcasters to deliver high-quality video over the public internet. It redefines internet video transport by optimising the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol with purpose-built hardware acceleration. Unlike conventional software-based solutions, Appear’s platform achieves significantly higher capacity and lower latency while maintaining broadcast-grade reliability. A single 2RU chassis can handle up to 22 simultaneous UHD feeds—a density far beyond typical offerings.

For decades, critical broadcast, telecom, and data centre infrastructure has been labelled with paper. Printed tags, stickers, and handwriting on tape—outdated the moment they’re applied. trustabel ends that by replacing static labels with dynamic digital displays, built directly into the patch panel.

Each port shows the right information at the right time. Updates flow instantly to every display. Testing becomes faster, clearer, and more reliable. trustabel doesn’t just improve the back room, it elevates the entire delivery experience.

BIRDDOG TECHNOLOGY: XL BirdDog XL is a cinematic PTZ camera designed for high-end broadcast, live production, XR/virtual sets, and premium AV environments. It breaks new ground with a unique combination of cutting-edge imaging, professional-grade connectivity, and automationready AI, all in a sleek, studio-friendly form factor. At the heart of XL is a large-format 4/3” CMOS sensor paired with a 20x optical zoom (up to 40x in HD), XL produces filmic depth of field, exceptional low-light performance, and stunning clarity. Alongside the main 4K PTZ camera is an integrated 100-degree panoramic 4K camera powered by a 1/1.8” sensor. Both video streams output independently at 4K60.

BITMOVIN: SERVER-SIDE AD INSERTION (SSAI) ANALYTICS

AVID: AVID PRO TOOLS 2025.6 Post production teams face intense pressure to deliver high-quality audio on ever-shorter timelines. Pro Tools 2025.6 directly responds to the challenge with future-forward innovation designed for today’s creators. The headline addition is native integration with Splice, the world’s most widely used platform for samples, loops, and sounds.

Pro Tools 2025.6 also debuts AI-powered Speech-to-Text, automatically generating transcripts of dialogue and vocal recordings.

Editors and mixers can search transcripts and jump directly to specific lines or takes, accelerating ADR preparation, dialogue editing, and vocal workflows.

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Ad insertion continues to be a major challenge for streaming services. To understand ad engagement, video services need access to the right data, such as ad plays, quartile plays and abandonment rates. However, this data isn’t available in real time and may only be accessible after a delay, such as on a weekly basis. Bitmovin’s SSAI Analytics has been developed to address these challenges. The solution extracts data from the video player, the app and the stream regarding ad timing and performance as well as relevant data to be able to identify and debug errors like rebuffering, failed ad beacon requests and glitches when switching between encrypted and clear content.

BOLAND MONITORS: QD4K315HDR10-OLED The Boland QD4k315HDR10-OLED is a precisionengineered 31.5″ OLED monitor delivering true 4K resolution (3840×2160) with spectacular HDR performance, anchored by a contrast ratio of at least 1,000,000:1, a lightning-fast 0.1 ms gray-to-gray response, and peak full-screen brightness of 1000cd/ m². The monitor features dual 12G and 3G SDI inputs with loop-through and support for single or quad UHD (via 2Si and Quadrant Division ) in addition to a single HDMI 2.0 port (with HDCP) for versatile signal integration.

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CALREC AUDIO: 48-FADER ARGO M CONSOLE Calrec’s new, powerful and scalable 48-fader Argo M delivers the same feature set, operational familiarity and rock-solid reliability as Calrec’s established Argo platform. It comes in a compact 24, 36 or now 48-fader footprint. Argo M is a high-performance plug-and-play control surface straight out of the box with a full range of ST 2110 and cloud connectivity, allowing broadcasters to focus on what matters most— creating great content at scale. With up to 356 channels of internal DSP, Argo M features built-in analogue and digital audio I/O and GPIO, 3 x modular I/O expansion slots, and a MADI I/O port via SFP.

COMCAST TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS: COMCAST MEDIA360 Comcast Media360 is a fully managed service integrating three existing services: CTS’ Cloud Video Platform, Comcast MediaExpress, and Comcast MediaOrigination. Comcast Media360 introduces a new operational model built on a single ingest point, integrated workflow, and end-to-end global video distribution and monetisation capabilities.

It eliminates duplicative workflows, reduces technical complexity, and provides broadcasters and content owners with a centralised approach to managing premium content.

DENSITRON: PRODECK 24 The ProDeck 24 from Densitron is a professional-grade control surface, designed for desktop control in the broadcast and AV industry. Supplementing the existing ProDeck series, including the ProDeck and ProDeck Touch, it addresses a fully comprehensive range of industry specific requirements.

The ProDeck 24 boasts a robust embedded computer, ensuring smooth performance for tasks like content streaming and multimedia editing. The device also features a high-resolution 8” IPS display with a tactile touch and 1280 x 800 resolution.

COBALT DIGITAL: ARIA AUDIO MONITOR Cobalt introduces the ARIA AUD-MON-V, a 1RU audio monitoring panel that delivers best-in-class sound in a compact rack-mounted design.

Developed from customer feedback, it features a high-efficiency Class-D amplifier with DSP and specially selected speakers. Each of the eight individual volume controls includes a push-to-mute/solo function. The colour LCD display monitors 16 SDI audio channels, 64 MADI channels, or up to 64 DANTE channels, displaying PPM with peak hold and loudness. The browser-based UI allows users to configure input channels and arrange screen layouts.

DALET: DALET FLEX 2025.6 LTS Dalet Flex is a media workflow solution designed to simplify the production, management, orchestration, and distribution of content across platforms. By providing a unified environment, Dalet Flex connects teams, tools, and resources, enabling organisations to streamline operations at scale. The latest release, Dalet Flex 2025.6 LTS, enhances ingest-to-distribution workflows with new features aimed at improving collaboration, scalability, and efficiency while reducing cost and complexity.

ENCO: QIMERA VIRTUAL PRODUCTION STUDIO WITH UNREAL ENGINE 5.6 ENCO updates its Qimera Virtual Production Studio with new features that improve workflow capabilities for the rendering, visualisation and automation of AR/VR/XR graphics and live data in live broadcast, news and event production.

Qimera is a real-time 3D compositing tool that allows content creators to utilise advanced virtual sets anywhere. Qimera has been integrated with Unreal Engine 5.6, delivering higher quality graphics through more effective utilisation of hardware resources.

EVERTZ: FRCX-2000 Bridging global content with broadcast excellence in today’s interconnected media landscape, broadcasters face a persistent challenge: flawlessly integrating content from around the globe, particularly from 59.94 Hz regions, into their native 50 Hz production environments (and vice-versa). The Evertz FRCX-2000 Frame Rate Conversion Platform is engineered to solve this fundamental challenge, with its advanced algorithms ensuring artefact-free, broadcast-quality processing between the 59.94 Hz and 50 Hz families for both interlaced and progressive formats.

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EVERVIZ: EVERVIZ MAPS everviz Maps is a new mapping solution built for journalists, digital editors, and live production teams. It enables fast and easy creation of branded maps for live broadcasts, digital articles, and social media, without the need for design or development support. Used in breaking news, elections, sports and weather coverage, everviz helps newsrooms tell geographic stories clearly and accurately on deadline. Maps can be animated or static, tailored to story context, and published directly into NRCS workflows, graphics platforms or CMS environments.

FILMLIGHT: NARA BY FILMLIGHT Nara was created out of FilmLight’s extensive imaging expertise to transform how media is accessed, reviewed and processed. It delivers a streamlined, secure, and fully colouraccurate viewing experience for anyone, anywhere, while providing creatives with instant search tools, as well as accurate, bandwidthfriendly streaming of any media file, irrespective of its encoding or format. In fact, Nara is the first solution to support so many file types (160+ formats, including all camera RAW files) in a web browser, fully remotely and in real time.

EVS: TACTIQ AND FLEXIBLE CONTROL ROOM EVS introduces Tactiq, the next-generation modular control room interface at the heart of its Flexible Control Room (FCR) solution. This software-defined approach reimagines how broadcasters design, operate, and scale live production environments, freeing them from the limitations of fixed-function, hardwaredependent control rooms. Already adopted by RTBF, Belgium’s Frenchspeaking public broadcaster, Tactiq and FCR will power the country’s first fully software-defined, all-IP, reconfigurable control rooms at RTBF’s new Media Square facility in 2026.

FOR-A: HVS-Q12 The HANABI HVS-Q12 represents a transformative advancement in production switcher technology, delivering broadcast-grade capabilities that redefine what’s possible in modern video production. What sets the HVS-Q12 apart is its 'quantum leap' approach to switcher architecture. The ‘Q’ designation reflects not merely incremental improvement, but fundamental reimagining of how production switchers should operate in today’s dynamic broadcast environment. This compact 4RU powerhouse delivers exceptional versatility that traditionally required significantly larger, more complex systems.

GATESAIR: AIRWATCH365 MONITORING SERVICE

GLOBALM: GLOBALM DEVICE CONTROL

AirWatch365 provides TV and radio broadcasters with a dedicated team of GatesAir RF experts to monitor transmitter performance, analyse RF conditions, and proactively respond to issues that affect quality of experience and uptime. AirWatch365 monitoring infrastructure takes advantage of each transmitter’s control system via its secure application gateway to provide 24/7 alarming, accelerate root-cause diagnoses, and immediately execute remediation tasks (parameter adjustments, parts deployment, software upgrades, etc.). Continuous monitoring also empowers the infrastructure’s AI to provide predictive analysis and detect potential future RF problems thanks to the storage of data in GatesAir’s Knowledge Base.

GlobalM Device Control (GMDC) is a powerful API that orchestrates edge encoding and decoding hardware directly from the company’s software-defined IP video transport platform.

For the first time, users can schedule, configure, trigger and monitor sessions end-to-end, from cloud workflows through to physical devices. This integration gives production teams a unified orchestration layer across network, codec and stream management, reducing set up times, simplifying operation for distributed teams and improving reliability under live broadcast conditions.

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GRASS VALLEY: K-FRAME VXP

GRASS VALLEY: LDX 180 SERIES

Designed for today’s dynamic production environments—from live sports and entertainment to news and mobile flypacks—the VXP brings broadcast-calibre power to smaller and cost-sensitive setups.

The VXP uses the exact same native UHD processing engine found in the flagship XP-series, ensuring flawless performance in 1080p or 2160p. It handles complex, multi-layered productions with precision— delivering exceptional visual quality under the tightest constraints. The K-Frame VXP is preloaded with a comprehensive suite of advanced software features, giving users the flexibility to tailor their workflows from day one.

The LDX 180 Series is a camera platform designed to bring the cinematic depth of film into the fast-paced world of live production. Leveraging a proprietary in-house-developed Super 35mm (S35) CMOS global shutter imager, the LDX 180 Series meets the unique technical and creative demands of modern media workflows. While the LDX 180 is ideal for traditional setups, including tripod and shoulder-mounted shooting, the LDX C180 offers flexibility for speciality applications such as Steadicam, Spidercam, Flycam, or unmanned and remotecontrolled positions. Both models support NativeIP workflows and can also connect via an XCU base station.

HAIVISION: FALKON X2

HARMONIC: HYBRID STREAMING SOLUTION WITH CENTRAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Falkon X2 pushes the boundaries of 5G video transmission for live broadcasting. As a next generation mobile video transmitter, Falkon X2 provides ultra-low latency streaming and 4K 10-bit HDR video over bonded cellular networks including public and private 5G. Powered by dual modem, quad antenna 5G technology with advanced 2×2 MIMO support, it ensures seamless connectivity, extended range, and maximum performance under the most demanding field conditions.

HUMANS NOT ROBOTS: HNR TO ZERO Scenario Modelling is a powerful new set of capabilities within the HNR to ZERO platform, strengthening its position as a leading solution for sustainability, operational agility, and regulatory compliance in the media and entertainment sector. Leveraging advancements in measurement technology, this feature improves data accuracy and granularity, enabling sustainable media practices.

Designed for CTOs, operations managers, and sustainability leaders, it evaluates the impact of technical and business decisions before implementation. Within one platform, users can simulate and compare scenarios, whether optimising workflows, deploying new technologies, or adjusting infrastructure.

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The solution empowers service providers to utilise each environment where it delivers the most value, providing greater flexibility and lowering streaming costs. An advanced new central management system simplifies workflow operations across cloud and on-premise environments, while state-of-the-art encoding enhances video quality and drives additional cost savings. With broad application support, Harmonic’s solution enables service providers to meet today’s challenges and prepare for future streaming demands.

IMAGINARIO AI: IMAGINARIO AI Imaginario AI is transforming video curation and workflow automation, empowering creative professionals, broadcasters, and production teams. Designed for media-heavy industries, it addresses challenges like rigid labelled search, slow manual curation, and complex workflows. Powered by advanced AI agents, Imaginario AI offers context-aware, flexible curation, enabling teams to work smarter and faster. What sets Imaginario AI apart is its multimodal understanding, which analyses vision, speech, and sound simultaneously. Unlike traditional tools relying on static labelling or third-party APIs, it delivers real-time insights without requiring complex metadata or multiple indexing models.

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INTERRA SYSTEMS: BATON CAPTIONS IMAGINE COMMUNICATIONS: XVR PLAYOUT ENGINES Imagine Communications is expanding its industry-proven playout portfolio with the launch of XVR, an all-new offering of scalable, deployment-optimised playout engines designed from the ground up to streamline the launch and management of broadcast-quality linear and live streaming channels across on-prem, hybrid, and cloud environments. XVR engines are ideal for ingest, playout, and unified origination environments of any scale—especially in SMPTE ST 2110 or cloud-hosted scenarios.

LIVEU: LU900Q LiveU’s LU900Q is the company’s brand new, nextgeneration field unit that delivers a quantum leap in live transmission and production intelligence.

The first unit to natively integrate the company’s connectivity solution LiveU IQ (LIQ) within an advanced 5G architecture, the LU900Q transforms how broadcasters approach remote live news and sports productions by combining connectivity intelligence with operational flexibility. Responding to next-generation live production requirements, the LU900Q represents a fundamental advancement in broadcast technology, built from the ground up for the beyond-5G era.

MATROX VIDEO: MATROX ORIGIN FABRIC Matrox ORIGIN Fabric’s asynchronous processing model achieves full compute utilisation while enabling reliability through multi-producer redundancy. Multiple producers generate identical content streams simultaneously, with consumers connecting via logical resource descriptors rather than physical addresses. When Producer A fails, consumers automatically retrieve content from the most optimal source—local or remote—without interruption. This eliminates single points of failure that plague traditional ST 2110 or NDI solutions.

In today’s fast-evolving media landscape, where accessibility, accuracy, and efficiency are paramount, Interra Systems’ BATON Captions is a transformative solution for closed captioning and subtitling. Purpose-built for traditional broadcast, OTT, and streaming platforms, it leverages cutting-edge AI, machine learning, automatic speech recognition, and natural language processing to automate and elevate the entire captioning workflow.

MARK ROBERTS MOTION CONTROL: RPS-LT The RPS-LT, with its nextgeneration free-roaming camera robotic system, brings MRMC’s renowned core technology of robotic arm platforms to a roaming pedestal. What sets the RPSLT apart is the system’s innovative design, featuring three steering wheel trucks with two driven wheels each, to provide perfectly balanced power and enable smooth, on-air-worthy motion. This allows broadcasters to capture dynamic and previously challenging camera angles with ease.

MAXON: MAXON STUDIO Maxon Studio is a powerful After Effects template engine that streamlines motion graphics and video editing for creators, editors, and broadcasters. Designed to enhance storytelling without slowing down workflows, it offers an intuitive interface with a vast library of customisable Capsules, which are ready-made templates for titles, transitions, motion graphics, and effects. Maxon Studio harnesses the capabilities of over 130 Red Giant tools, replacing rigid prefab templates with ultra-customisable Capsules that can be browsed, selected, and fine-tuned with the userfriendly editing interface.

MEDIAGENIX: SCHEDULING AUTOMATION Mediagenix Scheduling Automation speedily schedules linear channels (from FAST to traditional) with an 80 per cent reduction in effort compared with manually-scheduled channels. The company’s goal is to let a single user run dozens of channels offering an engaging, high-quality experience indistinguishable from ‘hand-crafted’ schedules. The automation process has several phases, each using dedicated AI techniques. Content for scheduling can be selected manually and/or by a recommendation engine, which starts from an audience profile and refines it with performance data.

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MWARETV: SERVER-GUIDED AD INSERTION (SGAI)

MOMENTS LAB: DISCOVERY AGENT Discovery Agent is an AI-powered research assistant specifically designed for media, entertainment, sports, and brands that manage large audiovisual libraries.

Moments Lab’s Discovery Agent removes the common bottleneck of not knowing what content is in an archive and how to find it, and empowers anyone—even new team members—to find great footage on their own through a conversational experience. Through this fast and intuitive workflow, teams can find clips they didn’t even know they had.

SGAI, offered by MwareTV. is a revolutionary new advertising solution, fully integrated within the TV Management System of MwareTV and with the Apps for 16 supported devices. The ad-insertion technology combines elements of both Client-Side Ad Insertion (CSAI) and Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI), benefiting both advertisers and viewers.

In SGAI, the server signals the ad break while the client-side video player handles insertion. The overall experience is more interactive and engaging—ads play seamlessly between, within, or around content, while remaining clickable, or offering QR codes, so viewers can engage with additional content.

NET INSIGHT: NIMBRA EDGE Nimbra Edge is a cloud-native, deploymentagnostic software platform that enables secure, reliable transport of live video over any IP network.

Supporting the full live content lifecycle, from contribution and signal processing to playout, regionalisation and primary distribution—it delivers the flexibility of the cloud with the robustness of classic broadcast infrastructure .Through a breakthrough partnership with NETINT Technologies, Nimbra Edge incorporates AI-powered, hardware-accelerated video processing directly into the platform, achieving 80 per cent lower power consumption and 67 per cent lower transcoding costs versus hyperscale cloud alternatives.

OPERATIVE: ONTARGET

NETGEAR AV: M4350 NETWORK SWITCHES Let’s face it, configuring a network switch AV over IP, especially SMPTE ST 2110, is not easy. The unique NETGEAR AV OS allows certified, reliable, and consistent profiles for any type of broadcast and AV over IP. The M4350 switches represent hours of conversations with actual customers and engineering and testing to ensure they are ready for the rock-solid performance required in broadcasting environments.

NETGEAR has added a new OS option for broadcast and AV configuration, making it easier to set up a switch.

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In a fragmented media landscape dominated by AVOD, CTV, FAST, and linear-streaming convergence, accurate forecasting is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. Operative’s OnTarget redefines how media companies forecast, price, and monetise advertising. As the industry’s first fully integrated, AIpowered monetisation engine, OnTarget transforms forecasting from a manual guessing game into a proactive, precision-driven revenue accelerator—and revolutionises how media companies optimise inventory across every channel.

OTHER WORLD COMPUTING (OWC): JELLYFISH S24 When a team’s output is only getting faster, bigger, and more complex, they can’t afford to have shared storage slow them down. That’s where the OWC Jellyfish S24 comes in. A full SSD, rack-mounted production server built to keep even the most demanding video teams running at full throttle, the server is designed to take on RAW multicam footage, 8K timelines, finishing passes, visual effects, and anything else the team throw its way. Out of the box, the OWC Jellyfish S24 offers up to 384TB of SSD storage in a single head unit, which is more than enough for active projects and archive space.

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OWC: THUNDERBOLT 5 DUAL 10GBE NETWORK DOCK

PROJECTIVE: STRAWBERRY MULTISITE

The OWC Thunderbolt 5 Dual 10GbE Network Dock enables users to connect to multiple high-speed networks, access network-attached storage (NAS), and expand device setups via a single Thunderbolt cable.

It is built for pros who need serious speed and flexibility. With one powerful Thunderbolt connection, users get two 10GbE ports, a 2.5GbE port, three Thunderbolt 5 ports, and four USB ports—all designed to simplify setup and supercharge workflows. It’s built to handle the demands of media and production work.

Strawberry Multisite offers a unique project management approach designed for today’s hybrid work environment. By unifying cloud and on-premises creative project workflows into a single, user-friendly interface, it enhances efficiency, supports scalability, and facilitates collaboration.

The robust REST API enables upstream integration with resource management tools like Wrike, Asana, and freispace, streamlining media flow, simplifying budget controls, and ensuring storage quotas and reporting work at scale.

PTZOPTICS: HIVE STUDIOS

QUICKLINK: STUDIOEDGE

Hive Studio by PTZOptics gives users the power of an on-site production booth with the convenience and flexibility of remote management from anywhere. Hive Studio offers an integrated and user-friendly platform for camera control, management, and recording. It connects automatically with Hive Linked PTZOptics cameras, enabling instant control from the cloud with no additional hardware, plugins, or software needed. Hive also allows for seamless setup via auto-discovery, customisation options for controllers like Xbox and StreamDeck, and broad compatibility across more than 400 camera brands.

QuickLink StudioEdge is a multi-platform remote guest contribution system, enabling seamless, broadcast-quality integration of remote participants from Zoom, Microsoft Teams and QuickLink StudioCall, all optimised with AI technology.

The StudioEdge line features the flagship StudioEdge-4, which supports four channels of SDI I/O, the StudioEdge-2110, supporting four channels of ST2110, and the new StudioEdge-1 and StudioEdge-2 models round out the line, offering greater flexibility and scalability to meet a wide range of production needs.

RIEDEL COMMUNICATIONS: BOLERO MINI

ROSS VIDEO: CARBONITE HYPERMAX

Riedel Communications’ Bolero Mini is engineered for the fast-paced demands of live production, broadcast, and sports, Bolero Mini delivers the full power of Riedel’s Bolero platform in the company’s lightest and flattest beltpack yet—just 165 grams and 28 millimetres thin. Bolero Mini leverages Riedel’s exclusive Advanced DECT Receiver (ADR) technology to mitigate multipath reflections, ensuring flawless performance in RF-challenging environments where other systems falter. The beltpack also incorporates advanced 5G filter technology, enhancing resilience against interference from highoutput cell towers.

Carbonite HyperMax is a nextgeneration production switcher platform that brings together all the tools required for modern live production in one compact system. It’s a hyperconverged solution that combines switching, routing, video and audio processing, multiviewer monitoring, and ultra-high-resolution compositing into a single platform. At the heart of HyperMax is the Software Defined Production Engine (SDPE), a versatile processing blade that changes functionality through software. A single chassis can support up to eight SDPE blades, scaling to as many as 56 MiniMEs or 288×288 I/O in an FR12 frame.

SARAMONIC: K9 DIGITAL UHF WIRELESS MICROPHONE SYSTEM The K9 is a dual-channel digital UHF wireless system that combines three essentials—global frequency coverage, 32-bit float onboard recording, and precise timecode sync—into one platform. Operating across the ultra-wide 550–960 MHz UHF spectrum, the K9 ensures interference-free transmission even in congested RF conditions. With an input dynamic range of 130 dB and an analogue output range of 120 dB, the K9 captures everything from whispers to explosions with cinema-grade clarity. Dialogue and effects are preserved naturally, making it a first choice where reliability is critical.

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SENNHEISER: MKH 8018

SPX GRAPHICS: HTML GRAPHICS

The MKH 8018 stereo shotgun RF condenser microphone is Sennheiser’s latest and top-ofthe-range broadcast microphone.

With its dual capsules, the MKH 8018 provides a coincidence stereo signal that creates an immersive sense of directionality and spatial realism. The 8018 is durable in harsh outdoor broadcast environments and delivers an undistorted, homogeneous sound image with minimal off-axis colouration. A switch allows users to choose from flat response or low-frequency roll-off via an integral 70 Hz high-pass filter to help control undesired ambient noise. The microphone also features a built-in -10 dB pad, making it ready for demanding location work straight out of the box.

HTML graphics are increasingly vital in media production, especially in the fast-paced newsroom where reliable tools are essential. SPX Graphics’ new suite of HTML graphics tools is designed specifically for newsroom environments. This new suite is built around MOS protocol integrations, ensuring seamless operation with existing newsroom systems. ‘SPX Broadcast’ is a graphics server that offers a complete solution for live productions, including a graphics controller UI for operators. Supporting both HTML and OGraf templates, it provides a ServerAPI for automated workflows that can be deployed on-premise without an internet connection, guaranteeing reliable performance.

STORAGEDNA: AI LINK

TAG VIDEO SYSTEMS: QC STATION

AI Link empowers users to connect to legacy data stores and multiple AI vendors in just a few clicks. Rather than locking customers into one pathway, it creates a unified, multi-vendor pipeline for enrichment, testing, and semantic search—helping organisations maximise investments and accelerate outcomes.

DNAfabric’s connector engine connects to the customer’s storage ecosystem: NAS, hard drives, cloud objects, MAM, DAM, and archive systems. It extracts and consolidates metadata, making hidden data searchable and discoverable. With this visibility, users can prioritise which assets to enrich, enabling a phased approach instead of a single big-bang migration.

QC Station is TAG’s advanced video quality control solution that combines monitoring, multiviewing, and real-time QC analysis into a single software platform. QC Station integrates all essential QC functions directly into the live multiviewer mosaic, allowing operators to detect, diagnose, and resolve issues instantly within the same environment used for content monitoring. New advanced colour analysis tools enable operators to visualise luminance and chrominance in real-time using integrated waveform scopes, histograms, and vectorscopes, all displayed directly within the mosaic. The release also includes a preview of the TAG test pattern, a mathematically generated reference signal designed to validate workflows end-to-end.

TECHEX: TX DARWIN

TELESTREAM: VANTAGE AI

Techex’s tx darwin is a modular, software-defined media processing platform that securely transports and transforms highvalue live video. With over 60 modules now in production, tx darwin helps organisations integrate more of the live media chain into a single, software-centric workflow that reduces complexity while preserving broadcast-grade control and resilience. The platform’s microservice architecture delivers an expanding toolset of transport and processing functions tailored to the realities of cloud and hybrid operations. Key features include switching between non-identical streams, advanced SCTE-35 functionality for flexible monetisation, and high-performance SRT and NDI integration.

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Vantage AI introduces advanced artificial intelligence capabilities that drive smarter automation, richer metadata, and more precise quality control across live and file-based workflows. Designed for broadcasters, content owners, live event producers, and post production teams, the system embeds AI directly into existing workflows, making insights immediately actionable. Vantage AI delivers context-aware, intelligent metadata that can trigger automated processes, accelerate search and discovery, and enable operational decisions without manual interpretation. No customer media is ever used to train AI models, guaranteeing data privacy and regulatory adherence.

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TELOS ALLIANCE: MINNETONKA AUDIO AUDIOTOOLS SERVER V7

TRUENAS: TRUENAS F-SERIES

Minnetonka Audio AudioTools Server from Telos Alliance is a proven enterprise platform for file-based audio automation in broadcast, post-production, and OTT delivery. The Version 7 software release adds advanced capabilities that directly address two significant challenges in today’s media workflows: intelligible dialogue and the complexity of multilingual Next Generation Audio (NGA) personalisation. ATS V7 introduces a proprietary algorithm that evaluates how easy or difficult it is for viewers to understand spoken dialogue within a full mix, emulating human hearing to assess real-world intelligibility. When intelligibility falls short, ATS can automatically extract the dialogue, apply level correction and enhancement, and then re-embed the speech without human intervention.

TrueNAS F-Series is an open enterprise flash platform that guarantees every frame is delivered flawlessly. With up to 30 GB/s throughput and millions of IOPS in just 2U, the F-Series eliminates performance bottlenecks. Editors, artists, and VFX teams can work in real time without dropped frames or playback delays.

High-density design scales to 720 TB in 2U and to multiple petabytes across systems, consolidating projects and archives without expanding footprint or complexity. The F-Series, powered by OpenZFS, delivers end-to-end data integrity with checksums, triple-parity RAID, unlimited snapshots, and dual-controller High Availability. Even in the face of hardware failures or ransomware, production continues without downtime. Recovery is instant, lossless, and ensures that critical creative assets remain protected.

TSL: HUMMINGBIRD

TVU NETWORKS: TVU MEDIAMESH

TSL Hummingbird is a unified, interoperable ecosystem of control and monitoring applications and interfaces that reduces complexity in broadcast and AV environments. It gives broadcasters, system integrators, and in-house AV teams the freedom to design the workflows they want, with the tools and technologies they want, with the ability to adapt and scale operations without complexity. TSL Hummingbird brings together the combined strength of TallyMan and DNF Controls’ proven solutions.

Its modular applications can be deployed independently or combined into a full ST 2110 orchestration system or other broadcast workflow solution.

TVU MediaMesh is a breakthrough cloud-native infrastructure that redefines how live media is created, moved and shared. At its core, TVU MediaMesh is a global shared memory fabric for live video.

It makes any authorised live feed instantly available to any tool, application, or team, anywhere in the world, without traditional setup work. MediaMesh’s asynchronous microservices architecture combines high-performance memory operations with timestampbased alignment, delivering frame-accurate synchronisation across distributed sites. Supported formats include HLS, ST 2110, SDI, NDI, Dante, SRT, Zixi, JPEG XS, and more. Native support for open standards such as the EBU’s Media eXchange Layer (MXL) also enables true multi-vendor workflows without custom engineering.

VIDENDUM PRODUCTION IMAGING: AUTOCUE PTZ PROMPTER The Autocue PTZ Prompter is a purpose-built prompting solution designed specifically for pan–tilt–zoom (PTZ) camera workflows. It provides an integrated hood enclosure that houses the PTZ camera, streamlining installation, improving cable management, and ensuring reliable on-camera prompting in broadcast environments. The system supports full calibration without removing the prompter glass, a significant improvement for PTZ cameras like the Sony FR7, which auto-calibrates each time it powers on. This eliminates repeated dismantling, saving time and reducing wear.

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VIZRT: VIZ ENGINE 5.4 As audiences demand the same high-quality experience whether they’re watching on TV, streaming on mobile, or engaging on social media, the pace of multi-platform delivery is accelerating. With adaptive graphics that flex to any aspect ratio—and transitions that stay flawless—one design can now hit broadcast, OTT, and social simultaneously. Viz Engine 5.4 includes support for Unreal Engine 5.4 and 5.5, enabling hyper-realistic virtual sets and richer visual detail. Automated lens calibration slashes setup time without requiring specialist skills, freeing teams to focus on the shot, not the settings.

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THE FINAL WORD

Why the future belongs to the fans

By Nick Walters, president and chief strategy officer, SuperAwesome

K-Pop Demon Hunters image courtesy of Netflix

I

f you haven’t seen K-Pop Demon Hunters (KPDH), it’s an animated, action-comedy musical about a band of idols who secretly fight demons. Interest has sustained way beyond the initial Netflix release. Unlike other viral moments that last a weekend, KPDH has created a glut of ongoing content and community discussion.

In the 90+ days since its launch, it has become one of the biggest hits in Netflix’s history, surpassing 300 million views and becoming the new number one kids film overall.

A constellation of fans has spawned their own interpretations, remixes, and fan works. It’s a collaborative canon: everyone builds on the same base but adds their own creativity. This is the Gen Alpha (Gen A) equivalent of merch sales and theme park rides—except in real time and driven entirely by fans.

Scroll TikTok and you’ll find edits of the band’s fight scenes, choreography tutorials, and plenty of ‘shipping’ discourse.

YouTubers are already dissecting the lore. On Roblox, creators are experimenting with fan games set inside the KPDH universe. On Animal Crossing, they’re putting on recreations of concerts. None of this was storyboarded in a studio strategy deck. It’s happening because audiences picked up the IP, remixed it, and started to make it their own.

That’s the difference between a film and a fandom. It’s nice to have viewers. It’s much nicer to have a community that generates content, memes, and entirely new interpretations of the world you’ve created. It’s nice to have people who watch your shows, but, as Disney shareholders will happily attest, it’s much nicer to have fandoms.

Historically, franchises originated top-down. The studio made a show, marketed it, and if enough people liked the show, the studio made some merch. Fans could vote with their wallets (and eyeballs), but they didn’t get much say.

That’s where the big change lies with KPDH. Gen A has more ways to engage with their favourite stuff than ever, and they have a lot of control. In a world of near infinite content, they are entirely unshackled from the linear schedule, and have absolute choice about what they choose to watch, and more importantly, share. They, and the creators they follow, can clip, remix, and react to content

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ad infinitum. Meanwhile, over on platforms like Roblox, a legion of creators stands ready to jump on any trend that looks like it’s going viral and experiment with interactive content before a commercial director can say the words ‘minimum guaranteed licensing deal’.

All this revolves around communities of superfans on platforms like Reddit and Discord, who scrutinise and celebrate their fandoms in exhaustive detail. That ecosystem has equipped Gen A communities to spawn and sustain their own fandoms. But that doesn’t mean the conventional model is dead, far from it. Instead, smart studios need to lean into the dynamics of modern fandom.

KPDH is an awesome movie, but it made life easy for itself by harnessing the surging popularity of the K-pop fandom. And the movie does so with genuine love. It’s replete with ‘if you know, you know’ K-pop visual nods and references. The movie’s whole premise is that the absolute worst thing a demon can do is steal the souls of the group’s fans.

Smart studios also need to recognise the power of creators.

Fandoms are about talkability, and SuperAwesome’s research repeatedly shows that YouTubers and TikTokkers excel at sparking conversations among Gen A. One great way to tap the power of content creators is to give them something to make content about.

One of the benefits of KPDH’s deep lore is that it gives creators and their communities a near-Tolkienian level of background material to feast on in their posts.

And of course, in a world of community-powered fandoms, professional IP owners are well advised to engage respectfully with those communities. When Paramount, owners of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IP, noticed the explosion of fan-made games and content around the franchise, they didn’t send takedown notices. Instead, they leaned into collaboration—licensing, partnering, and in some cases integrating fan sensibilities into official projects. The result? A revitalised IP that has thrived across film, animation, games, and a vibrant online community, proving that fans and studios can co-create the future of a franchise.

Gen A is perfectly capable of constructing their own fandoms.

When they do, we should learn from them.

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