TVB Europe 79 February 2021

Intelligence for the media & entertainment industry

FEBRUARY 2021

THE VERY REAL ENGINE POWERING REMOTE PRODUCTION

FEBRUARY 2021

MICROSOFT’S STUART ALMOND DISCUSSES DATA ANALYSIS

TIM DAVIE

THE BBC’S DG TOPS TVBEUROPE’S

2021 WATCH LIST

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CONTENT Editor: Jenny Priestley jenny.priestley@futurenet.com Graphic Designer: Marc Miller

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON

H

ere we are then, a brand new year that feels remarkably like the last one, at least in terms of the global elephant in the room. But, let’s leave that to one side for the moment and focus on what’s in store for 2021.

We could be set for a busy year if all the major sporting events that were postponed in 2020 take place. They may not happen in the way originally intended, but that could be a boon for our industry as viewers and sports fans turn to their screens to watch the action. And if they do happen, will we see remote production become even more important as broadcasters and rights holders decide to send smaller production teams?

Managing Design Director: Nicole Cobban nicole.cobban@futurenet.com Contributor: Philip Stevens Group Content Director, B2B: James McKeown james.mckeown@futurenet.com

exciting speakers, especially if you’re a Star Wars

MANAGEMENT

fan! You can find out more about the event in the coming pages.

In this issue, we reveal the full line-up of our 2021 Watch List, with some names you’ll know, and some who may be new to you. With everything that’s happening in our industry, and some big new disruptive broadcasters set to enter the market during the year, it’s a great insider’s guide as to who we’re all going to be talking about in 2021.

We’re also taking a closer look at remote production. Thinking back just 12 months ago, it was an area that we were starting to discuss, but it was still a way off from being adopted throughout the industry. How time, and the

Senior Vice President: Rick Stamberger

“Almost everyone I’ve spoken to over the course of putting this issue together has told me remote production is now a key part of the workflow”

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2021 will be as busy as ever for the team at TVBEurope with lots planned for the year.

Hopefully, you’ve been keeping up with our MediaTech Outlook reports over the past few weeks. All of the different sections have offered fantastic insight into the state of technology adoption and deployment across the major industry disciplines, and the trends and technologies that are driving innovation.

March will be a busy month, as we host the MediaTech 360 Summit. It’s two days of discussion looking at some of the industry’s biggest technological and operational challenges and opportunities. We’re busy finalising the line-up as I write, but we do have some very

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impact of a global pandemic, can change that thinking. I feel like almost everyone I’ve spoken to over the course of putting this issue together has told me remote production is now a key part of the workflow not just for live programming but for post production as well. That can only be a positive thing for the industry, not least because we’ll be cutting down our carbon footprints. Another key talking point for 2021! n

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TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 03

MEDIA, ENTERTAINMENT AND TECHNOLOGY: WE’VE GOT IT COVERED

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IN THIS ISSUE

FEBRUARY 2021

06 The future of production

By Grass Valley’s Marc Lopez

11 The Watch List 2021

TVBEurope’s people to watch in 2021, and beyond

18 Data analysis

Microsoft’s Stuart Almond explains why he believes artificial intelligence and data will be the industry’s next big talking point

30 New working practices drive collaboration

11

Densitron IDS’ Reuben Such on how the pandemic has created more fluid communication and camaraderie between vendor and customer

36 Are you remotely interested?

Philip Stevens gathers a variety of opinions about remote working

48 Remote production at the gallop

Timeline Television’s Daniel McDonnell tells Jenny Priestley about the company’s hybrid remote production solution, currently being used on horse racing in Dubai

50 Tracking the Bundesliga’s biggest stars

How the German football league is using

new technology to distribute tailored and l

ocalised content packages to media partners

54 The very real engine powering remote production

36

Jenny Priestley talks to Ben Lumsden,

business development manager at Epic

Games, about Unreal Engine’s growing popularity

54 www.tvbeurope.com

61 The Final Word

From coding on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum to why video may be the highest form of communication, Dr Andrew Cross has plenty to say in this month’s Final Word

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 5

OPINION AND ANALYSIS

The future of production

By Marco Lopez, general manager of live production, Grass Valley

C

onsumer behaviour is becoming increasingly dynamic, and the way audiences now engage with content is constantly shifting; and at a faster pace than ever before. The result is that we are seeing a television industry running to play catch-up with the demand for new personalised, interactive services and access via a host of non-linear platforms. Broadcasters, production companies, and content producers around the globe are seeing the complexities in production and distribution soaring, increasing costs with lower revenue per asset.

In parallel, the TV production world has struggled to keep pace with the twin drivers of technological advancement and evolving consumer viewing behaviour.

Now, the industry needs bolder innovations to keep up with the growing number of platforms, devices, markets, audiences, and versions of content. We live in the age of media choice, and it is making the complexity of producing programmes of all types – especially live TV – more challenging than ever.

Today, audiences are typically smaller than they once were for a given channel but there are more of them spread across a diverse range of platforms, with eMarketer research reporting overall video content consumption across both TV and digital combined rising by 6.6 per cent between 2014 and 2019.

While the TV production world tries to balance the growing demand for content on the one hand with smaller, more fragmented audiences on the other, the yield per asset (YPA) has become an area of intense focus for forwardlooking media organisations. Despite a significant change in consumption patterns, production costs have remained high; or in some cases, have continued to rise. Today, reaching new levels of efficiency – and flexibility – is very much the name of the game.

MOVING THE NEEDLE WITH SCALE AND FLEXIBILITY Staying ahead of the curve goes beyond merely increasing the volume of content being produced – it is no longer enough to just up the output. In today’s environment, our

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customers need to engage with global audiences that can no longer be reached through one or two platforms.

To remain future-ready, production must now scale vertically and horizontally across formats, versions, device types, and platforms to meet an increasingly diverse audience footprint.

The shift towards the widespread adoption of standards-based IP as a more flexible and scalable replacement for SDI, alongside the greater use of s oftware rather than dedicated hardware to reduce cost and enable more automation, is the first step in addressing this challenge. Additionally, the need for flexibility and scalability – which has been strongly underlined by the global pandemic – has also accelerated the trend towards cloud-based infrastructures that support the creation of dynamic content across multiple platforms. For many of our customers, the primary aim is to address the fundamental YPA issue by creating more content, more cost effectively, and better monetising that programme through increased advertising revenue or extended audience reach across a growing number of distribution platforms.

Content production at its most basic equates to we capture it; we create it; and we deliver it. Finding ways to carry out these tasks with greater efficiency and, potentially, for less capex and/or opex requires shifting the technology stack towards a more software-centric position.

UNDERSTANDING THAT ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL Transitioning to a software-centric future doesn’t automatically bring greater efficiency; what’s also needed is a simultaneous change in approach. As our customers – regardless of whether they are traditional broadcasters or esports companies – strive to meet rising consumer demands for greater immediacy, choice, and quality, there is a drive to do more with less. IP and cloud-based models undeniably form a large part of the solution, but the shape that solution takes varies from customer to customer, and even from application to application.

OPINION AND ANALYSIS

Those outside the world of TV may assume a uniform picture between media companies, but when you look deeper, it becomes abundantly clear that almost every organisation is moving along a unique trajectory. When we talk to our customers and partners, they convey that they are at different points in their journey. Additionally, this journey is governed by several factors, including: 1. When the last refresh was done and how much useful life remains in the current equipment; 2. Are we strategically promoting more work from home or remote access working environments; 3. Is the organisation large enough to include creative teams that are geographically spread out, requiring greater collaboration and sharing of assets; and 4. Is the organisation financially structured to shift from capex to opex even if the cash going out is lower?

With the growing adoption of IP and software-centric solutions, what’s evident is that a ‘one size fits all’ approach simply does not exist. Any ‘solution’ aiming to improve production efficiency must have the flexibility to adapt to each organisation’s own tempo.

these assets for a significant amount of time. Besides, certain processes are still more efficient, faster, and cheaper via local, highly specialised hardware. Think of your switcher panel as analogous to your iPhone; purpose-built hardware that enables the user to be more effective.

Wherever they are in their journey towards a softwarebased future, our customers tell us they need solutions that can evolve and grow with their business and operational needs. Organisations that have already moved to an IPcentric workflow are looking ahead and want assurances that they can leverage many of the capabilities offered by their existing systems in the cloud.

Master control (MC) is a great example of this. At the heart of the master control room (MCR) – the technical hub of a broadcast operation – are hardware elements such as our Masterpiece 12G-SDI or IP master control switcher. In today’s production environments, this equipment must work across multiple formats, include flexible audio capabilities, channel branding, and multichannel video programme distribution, as well as dynamic visual effects. Organisations that have already moved to an IP-centric workflow can already leverage many of the capabilities offered by a Masterpiece powered MCR cloud-based platform.

HARDWARE HAS A ROLE TO PLAY While it is clear that the move to IP, cloud, and softwarecentric models offers many of the answers, there is no quick fix for rising production costs, and revenues are certainly not increasing to counteract the additional expense.

Cloud is something that offers many answers, and there are some who argue that throwing everything into the cloud is the solution. Remote production via the cloud, for instance, has many advantages, including more flexibility and the ability to scale up (and down) quickly within an opex model. However, it is still technically unfeasible for specific use cases.

Right from the start, TV technology has been centred around integrating discrete and purpose built hardware elements – and, more recently, software parts – to accommodate a specific workflow. The need to deliver more channels or support increases in quality requirements, such as the transition to HD and UHD, has helped prompt each refresh cycle. Bespoke hardware has been designed – and improved over decades – to offer a guaranteed level of performance and is perfectly suited for the capex-heavy buy-cycle that broadcasters are traditionally geared around.

While it is central to the future evolution of the industry, an immediate move to the cloud is also not always financially sensible. The existing investment made in hardware-based broadcast TV technology runs into the hundreds of billions, and many broadcasters can sweat

EVOLVE AND THRIVE While the shape of tomorrow’s TV landscape is still emerging, one thing remains clear: consumers have a huge appetite for content, and ultimately greater choice, and this shows no signs of abating. To address this spiraling demand in key live content areas, such as news and live sport, concerts, awards, and elections, traditional broadcasters and newer players alike will look for partners and ecosystems to help them navigate the complexities of production.

Our customers want to form strategic technology partnerships with vendors that can draw on deep experience in broadcast technology across both traditional hardware and newer software and cloud platforms to help them stay ahead in today’s dynamically shifting market.

Across the board, broadcasters and content producers are exploring new ways to get more value out of their production workflows, looking to greater use of cloudenabled remote production. While this is undoubtedly about extracting improved yield per asset, the focus is also on freeing up production teams to concentrate on developing the more creative and engaging programming that audiences have come to expect.

In a world where terms such as ‘remote production’ and ‘cloud-based production’ simply become ‘production’, and where audience demand for content continues to rise to new heights, only organisations that are ready to embrace innovation will continue to thrive. n

“We live in the age of media choice, and it is making the complexity of producing programmes of all types — especially live TV — more challenging than ever” www.tvbeurope.com

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 07

OPINION AND ANALYSIS

Tying remote production together

By Lewis Kirkaldie, head of product management, Cinegy

T

he key elements for remote production and delivery have been in place for a while. The ability to handle high quality content in real time, on standard IT hardware on premises or in the cloud is well established.

But the individual elements of storage and processing do not make a workable system. The challenges brought about by the pandemic has called for the rapid rollout of solutions which work reliably and securely.

Technology has stepped up to that challenge. In particular, the maturity of two open standards – SRT and WebRTC – has made broadcast-quality contribution and distribution links practical.

SRT is the secure, reliable transport protocol, which pretty much says what it does. It is a means of transporting content over the public internet with low latency, minimising the effects of jitter and bandwidth changes. It is built on UDP, so is familiar to developers, and the SRT Alliance publishes an open source technology stack.

SRT uses dynamic stream management to get high quality at low latency, which needs two-way communication alongside the content. That means at least one party is directly internet connected, so it is good for contribution circuits to a broadcast centre or, indeed, to the cloud.

Cinegy has considerable experience in helping major players migrate to the cloud. Indeed, over the last few months we have helped a very large, very well-known US cable network migrate its primary playout to the cloud. As is so often the case with companies that have found the secret sauce they do not want their competitors to find out too much I cannot tell you which broadcaster, but you will have heard of them.

As I said, SRT is a great way to build contribution circuits over relatively low bandwidth. That is particularly important in cloud implementations, where getting the content in and out can be a big cost. At Cinegy we have found that demonstrating we can control bandwidth and therefore ingress and egress charges goes a long way to reassuring finance directors.

SRT is a powerful tool but it is not the solution for everyone, which is where WebRTC comes in. Again, the name tells the story: WebRTC provides real-time communications – including high

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quality video – from a web browser. It is part of HTML5 so it is available in all modern browsers, and can be built into bespoke applications. Perhaps the best-known tool which uses WebRTC is VMix, which is a complete and surprisingly sophisticated cloud-based production system. By using WebRTC it works peer-to-peer, so you can remote produce from anywhere.

The downside is that WebRTC will vary frame rate to ensure a constant video stream over the given bandwidth. Producers have no real control over what frame rate each contribution will appear as, but that apart it, too, has found a real place in live and as-live remote production. That the open standard – developed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and others – was ready to go in 2020 is a huge bonus.

Collaborative tools, of course, have been connected directly into production systems for some time. What we now have is the ability to develop new workflows which suit the new mood of social distancing. At Cinegy we have been working for some years with a major UK entertainment show (again I cannot name it, but it is very, very popular) which needs a large number of short video packages each week, for incorporation into the main live broadcast and for the spin-off shows. Editors access shared storage on Cinegy server racks and file the finished packages into the playout section.

The 2020 series had the same need for content, but social distancing meant that editors and producers worked from home as much as possible, rather than in the production offices. So we were called in to adapt the infrastructure for remote ingest and downloads. Most importantly, we had to develop the security protocols and management of firewalls which would allow the very sensitive content to be available for remote editing and review, at no risk of piracy.

I could quote many other applications, where proven web-connected broadcast tools are now being used in the heat of premium production. At least partly in response to the pandemic, you can now build practical remote production and delivery pipelines, based on the latest open source tools, with a technology partner that understands the real issues of secure and cost-effective content flow. n

OPINION AND ANALYSIS

Get real: Technology for greater interactivity

By Ariff Sidi, GM and chief product officer, media platform, Verizon Media

T

he year 2020 was a turning point for video streaming.

Content consumption reached new levels as ongoing lockdown restrictions resulted in people spending more time at home than ever before.

Technology enhancements have enabled the integration of real-time interactivity into live video platforms. There is now the ability to enable higher quality and lower latency, ensuring the best experience for every viewer.

The opportunity for broadcasters and content owners to innovate is ripe. Now is the time to experiment with these technologies to create new and exciting ways to evolve the live experience for viewers at home when they need it the most.

MAKING LIVE VIEWING MORE INTERACTIVE The trend towards real-time streaming has been gaining momentum in recent months as it opens up new possibilities for how viewers interact with the content provider and with each other.

Real-time streaming technology provides sub-second latency for live streaming. It helps enable the creation of interactive global online experiences that were previously not possible, such as betting and gamification. This capability opens up new business opportunities by making live viewing a more interactive experience.

OTT has unique advantages over traditional broadcast platforms because the underlying technologies naturally allow for more interactive viewing experiences. There is a real opportunity to experiment with technologies that maximise viewer engagement.

CREATING NEW EXPERIENCES Real-time streaming sets the stage for a new reality of how content can be consumed. The emerging technology provides viewers with brand new ‘watch together’ social experiences, such as co-viewing synchronised live streams and in-game trivia, allowing fans to host virtual watch parties with family

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and friends. Yahoo Sports is an early example of using these real-time streaming features to increase viewer engagement and create new experiences.

There has been an increase in demand for interactive features, especially from live sports broadcasters who want to recreate the match-day experience at home.

Even though fans are expected to return to stadiums later in 2021, interactivity will continue to play a significant role in sports and events streaming as OTT providers utilise technology to go beyond just replicating the traditional TVwatching experience.

These new types of immersive experiences are making their way into the OTT streaming world and will play a massive part in the viewer experience now and in the future. There will be more demand for interactive features as 5G rollout continues and last-mile connections in homes or in venues become capable of providing richer experiences.

CREATING ADDITIONAL REVENUE STREAMS Investment in technology, such as real-time streaming, will create unique ways to engage viewers and create additional revenue streams. Advertisers can offer more integrated ad experiences, while the virtually unlimited distribution opportunity of streaming means they can reach an extremely targeted and engaged audience.

DEMONSTRATING CREATIVITY FOR SUCCESS There is an opportunity for broadcasters and streaming providers to demonstrate their creativity at a time when the competition is intense. Using real-time streaming capabilities will keep viewers at home engaged and excited while enabling them to stand out in an increasingly crowded landscape Those who fail to innovate and evolve their OTT product are likely to see viewers leave their offering dissatisfied and turn to a competitor that can offer them an experience that’s much more interactive. n

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 09

FEATURE As always, TVBEurope.com is a hive of news, features and information about our industry. We’ll be focusing on remote production throughout February and March with exclusive online-only content, so do make sure you’re subsribed to our Daily and Weekly newsletters. In the meantime, here are some stories you might have missed...

TVBEUROPE LAUNCHES 2021 MEDIATECH OUTLOOK REPORT

#

TVBEurope is delighted to launch this year’s MediaTech Outlook report, which curates expert commentary from across the broadcast media community on the state of technology adoption and deployment across the major industry disciplines, and the trends and technologies that are driving innovation.

Following a year like few others before it, the 2021 iteration of the report features extensive commentary throughout all sections on the impact of the ongoing pandemic conditions.

The TVBEurope 2021 MediaTech Outlook is brought to market in association with premium partner Signiant, section partner Xytech, and report partner LiveU. Available sections include:

CASE STUDY: RETUNING BRITAIN Over the past three years the promise of 5G has gained momentum. This connectivity will not only supercharge the ability for industry to automate but also enable the delivery of the next level of digital transformation such as augmented and virtual reality, robotics, real-time translation, training and E-health applications. But to realise it, there has to be enough spectrum available on the most suitable bands to support it.

In the largest broadcast engineering project since the digital switchover, Arqiva has now freed up spectrum for mobile operators to meet these rising mobile data demands. Initiated by Ofcom in 2014, the 700MHz clearance project involved moving around 54 per cent of digital terrestrial television (DTT) multiplexes from the 700MHz band to different frequencies. n https://bit.ly/3pGNB4G bit.ly/XXXXXX

Production and Post https://bit.ly/3ts9K9m Media Management https://bit.ly/39NbbXQ Media Distribution https://bit.ly/2LjlvNX Broadcast Audio https://bit.ly/3cJMoG6

EBU PUBLISHES NEW CHART FOR CHECKING HDR MONITORING SET-UPS The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has published a new electronic chart to help rapidly identify issues encountered when setting up high dynamic range monitoring system.

The chart has been published as EBU Tech 3374, and is based on a similar chart used at Canadian EBU Member CBC/Radio-Canada.

The EBU said the chart is not intended to accurately measure a display’s dynamic range, but as a visual test to see if code values are output as intended. n https://bit.ly/3cBpqRo

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THE WATCH LIST 2021

TVBEurope’s people to watch for 2021, and beyond

D

isruption is an all too familiar topic of discussion in the media technology industry, but never quite on the scale we’ve seen over the last year. For the component parts of the marketplace, this has been a year without parallel as productions across the world shuddered to a halt as societies locked down to slow the spread of the pandemic.

One of the overarching themes of this period is accelerated change, and how businesses throughout the broadcast supply chain are having to fast-track technology adoption and deployment to meet the demands of a changed landscape.

It is against this fast-moving backdrop that Future’s media and entertainment editors have compiled their respective Watch Lists of key individuals who we believe will be instrumental in how the industry pivots into its new reality over the next 12-18 months. At TVBEurope, we have worked with a special advisory panel to assemble a list of 25 ‘movers and shakers’ for 2021 and beyond, who we believe will have an influence in shaping the next part of the industry’s journey.

www.tvbeurope.com

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 11

THE WATCH LIST 2021

Tim Davie

1

Director general, BBC

The new BBC director general took the reins on 1st September 2020. In releasing the corporation’s annual report that month, Davie suggested that despite a strong year of performance, “the BBC can take nothing for granted, and must keep reforming at an urgent pace.”

Davie’s tenure opens with the BBC under ever increasing scrutiny from the UK’s Conservative government which has already implemented a ‘root and branch’ review into its size and scale, and whose former chancellor George Osborn suggested that it was becoming “imperialistic in its ambitions”.

With the government set to appoint former Daily

Mail editor Paul Dacre as chief executive of Ofcom, and with Conservative Party donor Richard Sharp assuming chairmanship of the BBC from February, that scrutiny only looks set to increase.

In terms of his short term priorities, Davie tells TVBEurope, “There are four areas we are focusing on

to deliver a BBC for everyone: our commitment to impartiality – we have new training rolling out now; bringing more to our online offer, following a record-breaking year for BBC iPlayer and Sounds; delivering more high-impact content of the highest quality; and increasing our commercial revenue.”

How challenging does Davie believe the next 12 months will be for the media industry? “The way the industry has adapted to the challenges of the pandemic has been astonishing – delivering live news and information alongside quality dramas and entertainment,” he says. “These are demanding times, but the value of a trusted broadcaster in delivering impartial news and content alongside initiatives such as our education programming is proven and growing.”

Alex Green

2

Managing director, Amazon Prime Video - Sport, Europe

It is uncanny just how quickly the major streaming services have rooted themselves as part of the ‘TV establishment’. What sets Amazon Prime aside from its competition is its entry into the sports market, with a flurry of new licensing deals which has seen the streamer become broadcaster for the English Premier League, rugby union’s Autumn Nations Cup, and the tennis majors.

With Champions League rights for Germany and Italy already secured, Amazon’s surge into linear programming through sports rights, under Green’s stewardship, will be fascinating to observe. Green tells TVBEurope: “Sport, along with other areas of entertainment, has seen a huge challenge from Covid-19. The economic impact caused by the lack of crowd attendance and the disruption to broadcasting schedules will

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continue to be felt for many months. At the same time the sports industry, and we as broadcasters, have adapted quickly and with agility,” he says. “Clearly there will continue to be challenges in 2021 but with resourcefulness, flexibility and trust between broadcasters and sports organisations, I’m confident that the viewing public will have access, including low-cost access, to a huge variety of live sport in what promises to be a busy year. We have acquired exclusive rights to show the new Night Matches at Roland Garros domestically in France, which will mean our first ever live sports production in France with a French crew, talent and production. We aim to keep our Prime members across Europe entertained with premium live sport, alongside our unique Amazon Originals, movies and TV shows.”

THE WATCH LIST 2021

Delphine Ernotte Cucni CEO France Televisions, and new EBU president

3

France Télévisions CEO Delphine Ernotte Cunci is in the process of making history as the first female president of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

Cunci was elected in October 2020, and formally took over from the outgoing Lord Hall on 1 January 2021.

She was appointed CEO of France Télévisions in 2015 and was re-elected for a second-term in the summer of 2020. Prior to joining France Télévisions, she spent 26 years at Orange S.A. (previously known as France Télécom), latterly working as CEO of Orange France from 2011-2015.

On being appointed EBU president, Cunci said: “I am very honoured by the

trust and confidence that members have bestowed upon me. The health crisis has underlined the major democratic role played by public service media in accessing free and trusted information. The diversity of our countries and our cultures is a major strength in confronting global media platforms and I will, of course, rely on it.

“I follow in the footsteps of my predecessor Tony Hall, to whom I pay tribute, so that our alliance can continue to uphold Europe’s cultural and technological sovereignty.

“Lastly, I am both proud and happy for all France Télévisions staff, with whom I share the honour of becoming the EBU’s first female president.”

Simon Farnsworth

Global head of broadcast technology, Discovery

4

It’s an interesting time for Discovery. Back in September we learned that the company was streamlining its EMEA operations to enable further investment in its direct-to-consumer business.

Proof of that strategy had already been born out with the announcement of the Discovery Plus streaming service, which launched in 12 European markets in January, in partnership with Vodafone.

The company is also behind the launch of the new GB News channel, mentioned elsewhere in this list, which is seen as a disruptor to the UK’s established information-based news services.

And with the company positioning Discovery Plus as the new streaming home of the Olympic Games in Europe and Eurosport’s premium sport offering, it has an opportunity to

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establish a rich SVoD business in 2021. Farnsworth’s influence in establishing and maintaining that technology capability will be instrumental. Speaking to TVBEurope, Farnsworth explains just how challenging the next 12 months will be for the media industry.

“Very challenging while we’re still battling Covid and economic uncertainty. For my team at Discovery the priority is and has been keeping our critical broadcast workers safe, both mentally and physically,” he says.

“Launching Discovery Plus globally in the midst of a pandemic will continue to bring challenges and I couldn’t be prouder of the team for their efforts.

As for Discovery’s main focus for the 18 months ahead, he explains, “The global rollout of Discovery Plus is the absolute top priority. It’s already launched successfully in the US and the UK plus some EMEA markets, and we’re excited to bring it to more platforms and consumers this year. The Olympic Games in Tokyo will also be a huge undertaking for us, operationally and logistically, and we’re determined to do it justice.”

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 13

THE WATCH LIST 2021

Barbara Lange

5

Executive director, SMPTE and the HPA

The enduring importance of institutions such as SMPTE has been highlighted like never before during the pandemic. With many companies having to fast-forward to new ways of working, particularly with regard to IP migration, SMPTE has a critical role to play in both educating users about existing standards, and enabling them to pursue new strategies.

As executive director of SMPTE, Barbara Lange is entrusted with delivering a body of standards that can equip the industry for the requirements of today, but also the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.

That is no easy agenda, and possibly more than a ‘one to watch’, all eyes will be on SMPTE to guide businesses through the next phases of industry progress.

Lange tells TVBEurope about the

challenges of the next 12 months. “The media industry will be grappling with the fall-out from the pandemic, which accelerated the transition to a cloud-based environment. With that will come many challenges for workflow, interoperability, and skill sets.”

As for SMPTE’s focus for the foreseeable future, Lange explains, “We, too, want to examine media in the cloud more deeply to understand what role we can play in helping to solve the engineering problems, whether they be interoperability solutions, educational needs, or connecting experts. As the media industry evolves in the cloud, we plan to be there providing the support that drives it forward.”

Thierry Fautier

Vice president of video strategy, Harmonic; and president-chair of the Ultra HD Forum

6

Thierry Fautier has been a prominent figure in the drive to increase adoption of ultra HD technologies for many years, and in 2015 set up the Ultra HD Forum.

Fautier recently talked to TVBEurope about Harmonic’s pilot with France Televisions to provide enhanced immersive coverage of the French Open tennis championships at Roland Garros. The test set out to demonstrate that with 4K technology, a seamless experience can be produced on 4K capable devices, all over 5G. The fact that this was achieved remotely only adds to the progressive nature of the work being pioneered by Fautier, Harmonic and its partners.

On the challenges for the next year, Fautier says, “Live sports experiences are evolving

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due to the pandemic. We’re seeing a shift from traditional broadcast to unicast (ABR) delivery, and more interactivity, with end users choosing the point of view. Over the next year, expect to see live sports in UHD HDR with targeted advertisements, facilitated by cloud technology,” he says.

With regard to his focus for the next 12-18 months, he explains, “Scalability remains an important focus for OTT. The industry needs to scale up to support ten times more users. The question is how to build dynamic workflows that improve QoE, making it comparable to broadcast, and reduce the TCO, while taking into account the nature of content, usage and operator preferences.”

THE WATCH LIST 2021

Andy Beale

7

Chief engineer, BT Sport

It’s fair to say that BT Sport has been a disruptive force in the UK sports broadcasting space since it burst onto the scene in the summer of 2013.

Having gradually prised open the monopolistic grip on Premier League coverage previously held by Sky, and the broadcaster has also prised away completely the rights to the Champions League and Premiership Rugby.

Through the early days of the first lockdown period, BT Sport was busy innovating its way back on-air from fully remote productions of programmes such as

Early Kick Off to the remote production of the 2020 FA Cup Final later in the summer.

We’ve also seen innovations such as the Watch Together function, Match Day Experiences with EE, and Dolby Atmos

Jamie Hindhaugh Chief operating officer, BT Sport

being made available to the broadcaster’s Ultimate customers.

There’s never a dull moment at BT Sport, and Andy and Jamie are pivotal to much of that great work being brought to life.

Hindhaugh explains to TVBEurope, “I think we are at the peak of the challenges and as the external environment and uncertainty starts to stabilise in the next few months, the learnings we have had will enable us to settle and build on what we have done,” he says.

In terms of a focus for the future, Hindhaugh says: “Building on our journey in transitioning from being a ‘broadcaster’ to delivering rich, engaging and personal experiences. Addressing inclusivity challenges from the move to remote production; taking into account the

challenges of centralising operations both from a location and workflow perspective.”

Jamie Hindhaugh

Guido Meardi CEO, V-Nova

8

Ever since TVBEurope first met with executives from V-Nova back in 2015, we have followed the company’s progress with much interest. V-Nova’s pursuit of improving data compression for enhanced video streams using AI and parallel processing technologies has seen it grow into one of the most watched technology companies serving the media broadcast space.

The UK-based company has been invested in by the likes of Sky and Eutelsat, and has been the recipient of a number of industry awards for its products, including three TVBEurope Best of Show Awards.

More recently, V-Nova played an enabling role in the development of the MPEG-5 Part 2 LCEVC (Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding) standard, which achieved official ISO FDIS standard status (ISO 23094-2) in

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November. It is the first internationally accredited enhancement standard for any existing and future video compression scheme. In Ocotber, SMPTE also published V-Nova’s VC-6 video codec as the SMPTE ST-2117 standard.

CEO Guido Meardi is most definitely one to watch in the months ahead. “We are working hard on the roll-out of our LCEVC software, in order to enable large-scale adoption of the standard as quickly as possible,” he tells TVBEurope.

“Our priority is to support the many service providers that are keen to enhance their service quality and profitability with LCEVC as soon as possible. We developed clear, simple and inexpensive licensing terms for LCEVC, so as to make sure that service providers can confidently embrace its deployment, without the uncertainty that has marred other video standard deployments in recent years.”

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 15

THE WATCH LIST 2021

Carrie Wootten Co-founder, Rise

9

The work being carried out by women’s advocacy group Rise is nothing short of inspirational. Far more than merely creating a platform for discussion on the causes for the uneven playing field for women in the industry, Rise is creating meaningful initiatives to do something about it. And it is succeeding.

The annual mentoring programme has been a huge success, opening doors for dozens of women to valuable counsel and advice from some of the most experienced and respected individuals that broadcast has to offer. Added to that, the Rise Up initiative is providing a critical outreach programme to inspire the next generation of talent. It is fundamentally important work, and Wootten and her Rise co-founder Sadie Groom deserve recognition for the amazing difference that Rise is making

to people’s lives. We will observe and support their endeavours fully. On the challenges over the next 12 months in the market, Wootten tells TVBEurope, “Disruption has threaded through every aspect of the value chain, technology has never moved more rapidly and the demand for content has never been higher.

Innovation, consolidation, and resilience will continue to be themes that challenge us throughout 2021,” she says. Wootten’s future focus for Rise is to, “Expand our Rise Up programme – working with young women (16-18 years old) and to get back into primary schools #inspire #educate #inform,” she explains. “To grow our work internationally; to continue to campaign for more women in C level positions with parity of pay across all levels of seniority; and to support women who are feeling isolated across the sector.”

Simon Gauntlett,

10

Director of imaging standards, Dolby Technologies

Simon Gauntlett has been a leading figure in the UK media and entertainment technology marketplace for a number of years, and is a frequent speaker at European conferences and events (including our own).

Formerly the CTO of the DTG, he was instrumental in helping the UK TV market to shape its technological future by bringing companies across the supply chain together to collaborate on standards. This included technical standards work such as the Freeview HD D-Book and the Hybrid Connected TV standard, and extending HbbTV.

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In his role as director of imaging standards at Dolby Technologies, he oversees technical input to imaging standards, such as HDR and DVB, DTG, and ETSI. His current focus is on improving the emerging augmented and virtual reality (VR and AR) experiences and exploring the future of spatial computing.

Adding in his role as the current chair of the SMPTE UK section, it’s quite clear just how quietly influential a role Gauntlett has in the development of key standards and profiles for the UK broadcast market, and therein to the furtherment of the industry as it evolves ever forward.

THE WATCH LIST 2021 seemed a natural fit in that narrative. An impressive female leader in UK media, Mahon has set her priorities on streaming, saying recently she won’t let C4 “go the way of Kodak”.

16 Mark Schneider/ Andrew Cole GB News

11 Reemah Sakaan

Chief creative & brand officer, BritBox Global

Reemah Sakaan wins a place on our Watch List predominantly for her role presiding over BritBox. It’s an early gauntlet thrown down by the UK’s traditional broadcasters as they seek to compete in a streaming space currently dominated by Amazon, Netflix, and Disney.

12 Andy Rayner

Chief technologist, Nevion

Rayner spent more than two decades leading the broadcast technology division at BT, during which he helped to create the world’s first MPLS-TE Global Media Network. He has been at Nevion since 2010, and it will be interesting to see the effect of Sony’s acquisition of the company play out in the coming months.

13 Mike Cronk

Chairman of the board, AIMS

Similar to SMPTE, the work of AIMS has arguably never been more critical as the industry ups its pace of change towards IP systems and operations.

Standards form the backbone of this industry-wide migration, and more pointedly, interoperability, of which AIMS, and Cronk, is the driving force.

14 Mark Harrison CEO, DPP

Even pre-pandemic, the DPP has been providing an instrumental collaborative peer-to-peer engagement platform for the industry to learn from one another. Its hand-holding initiatives to guide businesses through these uncharted Covid waters only amplifies the organisation’s growing influence.

15 Alex Mahon CEO, Channel 4

Channel 4 has often been viewed as a disruptive force as a UK PSB, and Mahon’s appointment as CEO

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Welcome or not, we are about to enter into a new age of news broadcasting in the UK. The Andrew Neil-fronted, Discovery-financed GB News promises to provide a “boldly different 24-hour television and digital news service.”

17 Cristina Gomilla Torres MD of content and technology, Sky

Back in 2019, Cristina Gomilla Torres became the first ever female recipient of the SMPTE Progress Medal; the highest honour the organisation presents. It recognised Torres’s leadership and ongoing contributions to the motion-picture and media industry, and we look forward to the continuation of her sterling service in the market.

18 Anna Mallett

VP of physical production, Netflix

Another statement of intent from the streaming powerhouse Netflix of its commitment to original programming was the capture of former ITN CEO, Anna Mallett in November, to become its new VP of physical production. Another reason why we won’t be able to take our eyes off the streamers this year…

19 Antonio Arcidiacono

CTO and CIO, EBU

As CTO and CIO at the EBU, Arcidiacono holds an influential office in technical development across all members of the union. He is chair of the 5G-MAG, and chair of the ETSI JTC on broadcasting, as well as being a founding member of the DVB project.

20 Peter Bruggink,

CTO, NEP Netherlands and co-chair, office of the CTO, NEP Global

Bruggink brings a wealth of technical knowledge to his role with NEP. The company is very much at the forefront of live production services and technical

development in this area will be key as live and remote productions over IP ramp up.

21 Neil Maycock

SVP strategic marketing and playout, Grass Valley

Grass Valley tends to be front and centre when it comes to industry-wide technological progress, and we expect no different in the coming months. Maycock’s communications to the EMEA market will continue to be crucial, as will his influence on market thinking and debate.

22 Axel Blackaert CTO, EVS

EVS has steadily carved out a pivotal role for itself in the market, as a leader in live production switching and more generally a trustworthy authority on technology development. The company has a growing footprint in esports and as ever its technical team, headed by Blackaert, will be keenly followed in the coming months.

23 Matt McConnell, CEO, MediaKind

It’s easy to forget that MediaKind was born out of a rebranding of Ericsson Media Services, and subsequent divestment, such is the pace at which the company has developed its own brand identity. McConnell is now charged with continuing that success story.

24 Sinead Greenaway, Chief technology and operations officer, UKTV

It has been a time of change for UKTV since its split acquisition by BBC Studios and Discovery in 2019.

Greenaway sits at the heart of the technology proposition, not just internally but in the wider industry too. Her vast experience is currently being shared in her role as a Rise mentor, ensuring her market influence remains as strong as ever.

25 Michael Geissler, Founder and owner, Mo-Sys

Mo-Sys is a vastly impressive company, whose StarTracker in-studio optical camera tracking systems for AR and VR we’ve been covering for some time.

As studio technology continues to evolve, it’s hard to see how Geissler’s technical nous won’t sit front and centre of that drive forward. n

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 17

FEATURE

DATA ANALYSIS Jenny Priestley catches up with Stuart Almond, industry lead, media and telco at Microsoft to discuss why he believes artificial intelligence and data will be the industry’s next big talking point

A

t the end of 2020, TVBEurope attempted to predict what we thought would be the key discussion points in the media technology industry for 2021. It’s never a good idea to try and see the future – just look at 2020 – but, there are some talking points that seem to be mutually agreeable: artificial intelligence and data.

Both have been rumbling around in the background for a while, but it seems in 2021 they will come to the fore, particularly for technology giant Microsoft.

“Data and AI are kind of the USP that the organisation is really focused on in terms of supporting, not just actionable insights and what you can do in the production space, but around personalisation and understanding audiences” explains Stuart Almond, Microsoft’s industry lead, media and telco. “We have fingers in a lot of pies, so to speak, but we’re absolutely driven around how we deliver customer outcomes from production all the way through to engaging audiences in a completely different way.”

Almond joined Microsoft in the summer of 2020 with a focus on the wider view of digital transformation, not just purely for content production, but media organisations as a whole. “I’m in a privileged position at Microsoft, where I get to look across both the media and telco industries at insights, see what our partners are doing, look at the trends taking place in the market, and really support our customers to go through that transformation, and to obviously achieve as much as they can.

“If you start to look at how organisations are transforming, whether that is in content production, or actually trying to monetise experiences or content across the whole production flow, what underpins most if not everything is data and AI,” he continues. “I don’t just mean how audiences are interacting or using the content, which obviously is a big focus around how you can personalise that content, but it’s about taking that and applying it to the type of content you want to create, the type of personalisation, the kind of automation you can bring into that, the kind of synthetic content you can even create in AI. I think Microsoft is one of the leading organisations that places not only so much focus around both the privacy and the ethics of data and AI, but is actually helping organisations to transform with those two major parts.”

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What other technologies does Almond think are likely to have an impact on both the media and telco industries, and how soon does he see them being fully adopted by the media industry? “One of the key things that I’ve observed in recent years is that a lot of industry predictions haven’t necessarily changed; it’s the speed of that change that’s accelerated. We’re already seeing proof of concepts taking place around production, and we’re already seeing delivery of VR, AR, XR services, so it’s already happening in some of those niche pockets. Within the next year, and certainly in the next three years, there will be a lot more adoption of those services.”

Obviously, cloud is a major topic of conversation for Almond and his media clients. We know there has been some reticence from both broadcasters and production companies to fully embrace the cloud, although that seems to have shifted a great deal over the past 12 months. “The desire is now there more than ever,” states Almond. “During 2020, the catalyst really was the strategic focus on business continuity, and strategic plans, and how they move to cloud. But actually, the strategic plans are just being brought forward, and therefore the demand from the customer side is fourfold with regards to strategic engagement. Scale is absolutely key to moving to the cloud. It means content companies can work without having the limits of on-premise or proprietary technology in order to scale or adapt or be agile for new business opportunities, or maybe taking on a direct-to-consumer channel.

“It’s about a cohesive connection between post production and effects companies, as well as the delivery companies,” he continues.

“Having things in a single platform doesn’t just bring efficiencies such that people can actually play with content in a single environment, but the big thing that goes on top of that is data.

The data driven benefits of having visibility of everything you do on one platform is one thing, but there’s also the security aspect. No longer are you taking content out of your post facility to transfer it to a special effects facility, to take that content back somewhere else for review. Security is a massive benefit to what’s being seen in that space. The appetite to see all these kinds of business rationales is definitely stacked up and has come front and centre due to the need to move to the cloud and keep business and content production going during 2020.”

We’ve talked about what Almond thinks will happen in 2021, but gazing even further ahead, he expects audience engagement to become increasingly important. “I think a great example might be with the BBC and Beeb, its voice activated assistant.

The whole idea of these custom built AI-based technologies, which bring cognitive services from Azure, lead to much more personalised experiences,” he says. “Beeb is a really good example of where an organisation like the BBC sees an opportunity to go deeper with their audience and connect in completely new ways. It’s also a great example of how you take the core cognitive and AR technology along with bot services technology to create something that becomes a deeper audience engagement for you as an organisation, not just through personalisation. It shows how that kind of AI and the services that we offer, combined with a customer like the BBC, start to build out a completely different way of engagement for the market in terms of how content is accessed, but also served up as well.”

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Finally, what does Almond think will be the next big piece of technology that will have a major impact on our industry?

“At Microsoft we are very focused on both the intelligent cloud and that intelligent edge. We’re seeing IoT (internet of things) becoming more of a key focus across multiple industries, not just media and entertainment, it’s a key focus with telecommunications providing services and new connectivity opportunities, and innovation in itself around what we’re going to start to see achieved in that space. What underpins that though is the data plane,” he concludes. “All businesses think about building that long-term agility and resilience no matter what the future brings, but to realise its full potential, you have to have that strategic or unified framework for using data and analytics to gain insights, make decisions, and improve business outcomes. So that combination of data and understanding how people are interacting and allowing them different ways to interact a lot faster and closer at the edge with IoT, I think that’s the one to watch.” n

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 19

FEATURE

MARCH 25-26, 2021

Technologies Shaping the Future Media Landscape Returning in 2021 to explore the technologies and trends driving evolutionary change in today’s media industry. Learn how the market’s leading authorities are evolving their businesses for tomorrow’s world.

The effects of 2020 for media companies will be long lasting, and permanent, and the period adds a significant footnote in the story of an industry already undergoing fundamental change. Against this remarkable backdrop, the MediaTech 360 Summit will explore some of the industry’s biggest technological and operational challenges, and the opportunities that lie within.

What’s on the Agenda?

• • •

The revolutionary role of 5G in the media supply chain Artificial intelligence and machine learning: applications and opportunities The rise of virtual production featuring a fireside chat with with cinematographer Greig Fraser (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Dune (2021), The Mandalorian)

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This virtual experience provides a unique opportunity to gain maximum exposure for your brand to a highly qualified audience. Contact Nathalie Adams for more info at nathalie.adams@futurenet.com.

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Featuring

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TVBEUROPE XXXXXXXXXXX 2021 | 21

FEATURE

EMPLOYING THE ‘SWISSPOCKET KNIFE’ OF DATA-MANAGEMENT

By Alexandros Galanos, product support specialist, Polar Graphics

T

he Covid-19 crisis has caused profound changes in our societies, from how we go about our daily lives to how we work. With corporate shutdowns, furloughed staff, and remote working, the post production industry has been hit harder than many. This is because of the particular needs of post production work, such as access to post production systems and physical proximity in traditional collaboration between members of a creative team. As with every crisis, new solutions emerge to address these problems. In post production these solutions utilise existing technologies and capabilities, which were being used to a limited degree before but much more now and have been rapidly developed further to address the needs of the ‘new normal’ in video post production. These solutions can be divided roughly into three categories, remote access software, virtualisation of working environments and applications, and the cloud.

StorageDNA has a long experience in data management technologies infused with media ‘intelligence’. Their product DNAevolution focused on LTO archiving systems and provided the ability for creatives to archive and restore only the relevant files of a project (Avid or Adobe), or the files associated with an AAF or ALE file, rather than whole workspaces, in addition to archiving at folder or volume level and being able to restore individual files if needed.

Their data movement product DNAsync enabled remote data synchronisation of remote servers. Their applications understand media files and can extract metadata, which speeds up searches and restores, and takes advantage of the ‘intelligence’ which powers the Avid, Adobe, and DaVinci DNAfabric remote workflows.

All this experience and knowledge has been employed in their latest product, DNAfabric, which is the Swiss pocketknife of data-management in today’s world. Many companies provide subsets of DNAfabric’s functionality but they are limited to a small range of workflows or tasks.

DNAfabric, on the other hand, supports all types of data storage and data transfers between any destination (local and remote), remote post production workflows, multi-site

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syncs, recovering valuable storage space via stublink tiering, and disaster recovery replication across disk storage, cloud and WAN. DNAfabric provides two main sets of services: ‘Mobility’ and ‘Visibility’.

VISIBILITY Through the DNAfabric interface an organisation can index, monitor, and manage all their storage locations, local and remote (disk, tape, camera cards, remote servers, cloud).

Visibility services have two components, indexing and analytics. With indexing services a user can simply index their storage to view all their files via a single GUI and also have the ability to run powerful searches. DNAfabric analytics functions are powered by a robust analytics engine (Tableau) and offer the capability to monitor how much space specific projects, departments, or particular users are using for example. Users can also monitor the existence of duplicates for deletion, SLAs and disaster recovery purposes, as well as configure customisable graphs, metrics and much more to monitor their data more effectively. The analytics component is more suitable for larger and corporate organisations with large data sets spread across different geographical locations.

The benefits of analytics other than comprehensive central data management are cost savings. As companies manage their data better, they will spend less on additional storage servers and manage their existing ones more efficiently.

MOBILITY DNAfabric transfers data across disk, cloud, and WAN, and enables some very interesting and powerful hybrid cloud workflows for Avid, Adobe and DaVinci, one of which is ‘Remote Shared Workspaces for Creative Workflows’. The core mobility services in DNAfabric allow users to set up transfers between local online or nearline storage, remote servers, and the cloud, and all combinations of these. Advanced options such as scheduling of jobs, filtering of files to be transferred, performance options, pre- and post-scripting options and others are available so that DNAfabric users can manage and tailor their projects to work exactly how they want

FEATURE and transfer only what is needed. A unique feature of DNAfabric mobility services is one which existed in their DNAevolution product, namely the ability to parse Avid/ Adobe Projects, or Avid ALE and AAF files, and transfer only the files associated with these projects.

DNAfabric can easily move data from local online storage to cloud and from cloud to remote locations and from the outset include the features and technology to facilitate remote edit collaboration. In addition to this the StorageDNA development team have worked hard to galvanise their knowledge of coding and media post workflows further into the ‘fabric’ of DNAfabric to create all new hybrid cloud workflows including remote shared workspaces for Avid, Adobe and DaVinci.

REMOTE SHARED WORKSPACES The Remote Shared Workspaces workflow simulates a local network environment to a large degree, with project sharing and bin locking features independent of the application. Due to the remote nature of the workflow, there are of course some differences. The model is based on uploads/downloads between a small cloud cache, the main storage at a post production facility and remote users.

HOW IT WORKS: • A user or administrator at the main facility can configure a project and the relevant media to be shared via DNAfabric remote shared workspaces.

The project and media folders are synced to the cloud cache first and then to the local storage of remote editors • Remote editors can then do their edits and changes, and these are automatically uploaded to the cloud cache and downloaded to the main server and other remote users • Shared workspaces support locked-for-write bins and project files. As remote users’ files are synced across all other remote locations, they are read-locked, enabling other creatives to review without overwriting • In terms of collaboration a remote editor can only open, but not modify, the locked bin of another remote user. They could though, for example duplicate a sequence, copy it to their own bin and then add their changes and edits, which in turn are synced back to all other locations for the rest of the team to preview and follow the steps mentioned above to add their own changes • Editors can enable snapshots of their work, so in the case of accidental deletion of files, they can recover their project and work

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(Remote Shared Workspaces)

The range of hybrid cloud workflows that StorageDNA offer doesn’t end there though.

DNAfabric is an extremely versatile tool which also can be used in conjunction with Adobe Premier and Avid Media Composer Cloud Editorial Projects. In these scenarios DNAfabric powers the following processes: • Delivery of low-res media from central on-prem storage to a low-cost object store in an edit ready cloud • When media is needed, DNAfabric syncs the necessary media from the low-cost object store to the cloud file system assigned as storage for the remote cloud edit VMs, reducing costs in the meantime • Adobe Team Projects or Avid Media Composer can be used at the central location to access finished sequences and bins, re-link and export hi-res media

(Avid Media Composer Cloud Editorial)

A last note about DNAfabric is that it automatically employs WAN acceleration in the form of multi-part uploads and multi-threaded streaming to maximise upload and download speeds, which enable a seamless working experience for creatives using remote shared workspaces, or other users using DNAfabric for data transfers. In this sense DNAfabric can be used the same way as IBM Aspera and Signiant applications to simply transfer data or schedule transfers to another location fast. n

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 23

FEATURE

DELIVERING CONTENT RELIABLY

By Roland Axelsson, CEO, Intinor

F

or obvious reasons, we have all been thinking much more about remote production over the past 12 months. Some may think that this is a technology born out of a new need but carrying video over the internet – without which remote production cannot possibly exist – has been around for quite a while.

I have been involved in sending professional video over the internet for 15 years. In 2004 we at Intinor started developing the technology (and founded Intinor); at that time there was nothing available. I remember that year we covered a hockey game in Umeå, Sweden against arch-rivals Skellefteå. We agreed to send the signal the 150km or so, where a thousand Skellefteå fans were in a tent enjoying beer, food and hockey.

Failure would have caused a riot!

That was a single feed, but it proved the concept, and it made clear to us the challenges we needed to solve if remote production was to become a reality. And it was: almost immediately a start-up business got the rights to cover tier 2 hockey for live streaming. They wanted to do the whole thing with just two people: a skilled camera operator on site, who also set up a second camera locked on to the scoreboard; and a producer/replay operator/graphics operator/commentator back at base. That very low-cost model is still in use, by the same company, today. It follows more sports, with more than a

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thousand events a year. And it still relies on Intinor technology.

What this history lesson demonstrates is that we have had a lot of time to think about transporting high quality video over the internet. We understand the very real challenges, and we have developed robust solutions to overcome them.

We talk so freely about IP today that it is easy to forget that the internet protocol was set up to do something very different. The fundamental strength of IP is that the data will get through, at the expense of latency. You know that, when you send an email or a PDF attachment, all of it will reach the destination, uncorrupted and complete.

That is the goal the designers of IP set themselves, and they achieve it through a capacity to resend packets of data which have got lost on the way, until the entire file has been delivered. Quality is perfect, but latency is random; it depends upon how many packets have to be resent.

Video is deterministic: every 50th of a second we need a new picture. Buffering for a very long time to be sure to capture all packet resends is not practical for many remote production applications. Our recommended solution for reliable delivery over the public internet takes two parts. The first is redundancy in the path; more than one route for the signals from source to destination. There may be fibre installed in the venue, and you may be tempted to rely on it. But the internet depends upon a

FEATURE

“The fundamental strength of IP is that the data will get through, at the expense of latency.”

signal being handed on from telco to telco through peering points. These switches can be the source of timing variants: you might be happily sending signals with an end-to-end latency of maybe 10ms, when suddenly you get a spike of 500ms.

These latency spikes are generally caused by heavy traffic on the non-deterministic networks which make up the internet.

Given the vast increase in Zoom business calls by day and Netflix streaming by night which the pandemic has brought us, these latency spikes are likely to become more prevalent.

And our experience has shown that peering point latency spikes are most likely to happen between 6pm and 8pm on Saturday: you set up and rehearse in the afternoon and all is well; you go live and the problems arise.

Using more than one ISP for redundancy will help. Send and receive units should be able to support multiple bonded connections, including two internet routings.

Similarly, we talk about bonded cellular connections, over 3G or 4G (and soon, 5G). Whether you use fixed fibre internet or cellular connections may be a commercial decision – and cost management should be part of your connection technology – you should always be looking for diversity. If your link uses multiple SIM cards, then ensure that they are on at least two different networks. Beware: some apparently independent and competitive mobile providers actually have alliances to share infrastructure. If your SIMs are on different networks but they share the same towers, you have not gained any resilience.

The second part of our solution is to address the problem of resending data by incorporating forward error correction into the transmission. As the name suggests, FEC means sending some extra data as part of the transmission, which can be used to reconstitute lost or damaged packets. The obvious advantage of FEC is that, while it adds latency, that latency is relatively small and entirely constant.

When it became clear that sending contribution circuits over the public internet would be something broadcasters and other content companies would want, we developed our own transport protocol, which would incorporate FEC in a controllable way, allowing users to determine their own balance of reliability and latency. We call this BRT, for Bifrost reliable transport, or Bifrost for short.

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As a Swedish company we chose the name from Norse mythology: Bifrost is the burning rainbow bridge between the earth and Asgard, the realm of the gods. Bifrost also incorporates adaptive bitrate encoding, so the circuits can tune themselves automatically to provide the best result.

That depends on the sending and receiving equipment communicating to dynamically change data rates on each path.

So far I have only mentioned fixed internet (which is usually fibre more or less rack to rack) and cellular connections, bonded together to meet the specific needs of each transmission. Some vendors also talk about satellite links, specifically using the data-centric Ka-band and Ku-band.

While we do support these, in practice they are less popular.

The latency over satellite is significant, and reception is far from reliable. We work with news broadcasters who now operate their SNG trucks without ever using the S part: the satellite link.

I mentioned 5G earlier, and that represents a strong promise for the near future. We have done real-world 5G events very successfully, getting a lot of bandwidth for our transmissions. But that, of course, was with very few other 5G devices around. 5G will deliver much greater bandwidth and stability.

One perhaps unexpected benefit of 5G is that the very high frequencies it uses means that cellular towers have to be closer together, which increases the scope for signal path diversity. Cameras on opposite sides of a stadium could well link to different towers, for example.

The 5G specifications allow for individual circuits to be given guaranteed bandwidth, which would of course be a great benefit to remote live production. But it is a commercial decision by the mobile provider whether to offer such high priority SIM cards.

To sum up, we have been in the business of delivering content over the public internet for as long as anyone, and our experience has taught us this: multi-camera, multi-stream remote production is readily practical and proven today. To take just one example, we support the International Triathlon Union with coverage of its races, with cameras on motorbikes following the running and cycling. Whether the race itself is in Bermuda or Japan, the production is in Sweden. n

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 25

FEATURE

KEEPING CONNECTED AT A DISTANCE Robert Szabo-Rowe, SVP of engineering and product management at The Switch takes a look at the ongoing shift to more remote and cloud-based production in 2021

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he media and entertainment sector has experienced disruption on a level no one could have previously imagined since the Covid-19 pandemic began. It has forced many in the industry – especially those producing live event coverage – to rethink their approach, spurring an incredible drive towards innovation. Many broadcasters and other content producers have, as a result, opened themselves to adopting live production solutions that veered from their accustomed methods; yet were already proven and, critically, are safer than traditional approaches in light of health concerns.

From scheduled sports and awards shows to ad hoc entertainment and enterprise events, live programming has been safely produced and delivered over the past year largely due to the advantages of remote and cloud-based production. What’s more, the industry migration towards these models has raised the bar for the future of live broadcasting and heralded a more permanent shift.

The pandemic has accelerated the trend toward remote methods and the use of cloud technologies and will continue to do so. While the rollout of vaccines globally points toward the return of a more ‘normal’ situation for the industry at some point, ongoing uncertainty and the emergence of a new, more transmissible Covid-19 variants will continue to drive the uptake of remote approaches and cloud tools. Rightsholders and event producers worldwide are looking to remote production as a means of delivering high-quality coverage while ensuring the health and safety of every person involved, including production crews at every location, the talent and all personnel onsite at an event.

PIONEERING NEW WORKFLOWS FOR LIVE PRODUCTION The power of remote production was demonstrated by one of the largest and most complex projects in 2020: the move by CBS Sports – supported

by The Switch – to use remote production workflow for Golf Channel broadcasts of a series of PGA Golf Tour events, including the [Tour] Championship. The production delivered feeds from 24 cameras and a multitude of audio sources from the site of each tournament, and connected teams from The Switch’s broadcast studios in Burbank, the CBS facility in Stamford, Connecticut and other locations around the US. Cloud-based production has also emerged as an invaluable tool for broadcasters, acting as a natural extension of existing remote production capabilities and providing significant benefits. The broadcast of a number

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of entertainment awards events, such as the livestreamed unveiling of the Grammy nominations last November, have leveraged cloud tools to safely provide and extend coverage. Live production in the cloud is now a tried and tested option that enables every element of the production pipeline – from clipping and editing to graphics creation to comms and talk-back – to be handled in the cloud.

Production crews can use these innovative solutions to operate from anywhere globally – or spread out across an array of locations – working on one platform. This approach also opens up exciting new opportunities for broadcasters and rightsholders, such as the ability to instantly produce clips for social media and the rapid production of live shoulder programming, such as pre-game, post-game and highlight shows.

EXPANDING NETWORK CAPACITIES FOR A SAFER FUTURE While remote and cloud-based production solutions have formed the bedrock of live event broadcasting during the pandemic, it is clear that this model has now demonstrated its efficiency, flexibility and reliability for the long term. The more widespread use of remote and cloud-based production is here to stay.

Looking beyond the pandemic, when conference centres, arenas, theatres and other venues are once again safe for crowds to return to, the use of remote and cloud-based production during the crisis has demonstrated its advantages. The potential for substantial cost savings, efficient use of resources and the ability to quickly adapt to any circumstance – regardless of an event’s location, crew members’ whereabouts and the distribution method – will continue to appeal to live content producers.

The nature of remote production, however, involves a considerably higher number of feeds being sent between venues, various production facilities, crew locations and other sites. This means network capacities need to eventually be extended to provide higher-bandwidth capacity.

FEATURE Deploying state-of-the-art connectivity at event locations specifically for the tournament – and installed new hardware is critical to allowing the transport of high-quality HD on-site at Stade Roland Garros. The deployment allowed feeds via fibre paths, linking stadiums, arenas and other the transport of high-quality HD feeds via dedicated fibre event venues with production and operations facilities paths across the Atlantic with SMPTE 2110 hand-off to across the globe.

Tennis Channel’s new production and operations facility in The adoption of new industry standards and the shift Los Angeles. The project enabled an all IP-based production to all-IP media workflows is also playing a crucial role in environment for the first time. The new media workflow the industry-wide transition to remote and cloud-based permitted the separate transport of high-quality feeds from production. Entirely IP-based production environments 17 courts at Roland Garros to Los Angeles.

Robert Szabo-Rowe allow the flexible transport of video, audio and data across This type of set-up offers the agility and efficiency more fibre and internet connectivity, meaning broadcasters can broadcasters and other live content providers are looking deliver more camera feeds from venues to multiple destinations while also for to more efficiently deliver feeds in the highest quality – with no making simultaneous live streams available. compromise on latency – while meeting viewers’ growing expectations.

DELIVERING MARQUEE SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EVENTS GLOBALLY The need for significantly higher connectivity has become clear to the organisers of major sports events being broadcast and live-streamed around the world. Rights holders are already putting in place the infrastructure they need to support remote and cloud-based production for coverage of major events such as tennis tournaments and awards shows.

Tennis Channel for example, tasked The Switch with delivering connectivity for the 2020 French Open. The Switch utilised three dedicated transmit paths between Europe and North America – one created

EQUIPPING THE INDUSTRY The pandemic has certainly tested the capabilities of broadcasters and rights holders. But at the same time, their ability to adapt and embrace new business models and technologies to overcome fresh challenges has been proven.

With a strong roster of live events set to resume in 2021, the industry needs more remote and cloud-based production to continue to deliver the seamless, quality broadcast of live events amid ongoing uncertainty, and it looks set to build on the use of these methods and technologies long after the pandemic is no longer a major factor. n

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TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 27

FEATURE

THE POST-POST PRODUCTION HOUSE Symon Roue, MD of Visual Data Media Services, talks to Jenny Priestley about the Entertainment Globalisation Association, and what’s in store for the global streaming market in 2021

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s the media and entertainment industry sees more and more streaming and OTT services launch around the world, the need to ensure content is ready for local audiences is becoming ever greater. When Netflix launches a new series, it can take up to two months to ensure it’s ready for viewers in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc. The problem is that content needs to be sent to post-house facilities that are both safe and secure.

We all know of prevoius examples where major TV series have leaked online before broadcast.

Towards the end of 2020, the Entertainment Globalisation Association (EGA) launched, with 60 companies already signed up. Its aim is to create a closer connection to the creative community in order to better facilitiate the ‘retelling’ of their stories for global audiences, and it’s primarily focused on creating educational resources and localisation standards. Among those founder members is Visual Data Media Services, a company that specialises in managing and localising content for some of the biggest streaming platforms and content creators, and describes itself as a “post-post production house”. With offices based in London, Los Angeles and Bangalore, Visual Data is a preferred partner for Netflix and also works with Apple.

The company joined the EGA in order to help raise awareness within the creative community about the importance of high quality localisation and dubbing. “We want creators to understand about getting dubbing and subtitling right,” explains managing director Symon Roue. “I’m sure we’ve all watched a film which has been either badly dubbed or there are typos in the subtitles. When you’re

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FEATURE spending millions or possibly tens of millions of pounds on an amazing drama, and to then have it translated or localised badly, you effectively ruin the experience for viewers in those markets.

“We’ve come together to really raise awareness about the importance of good quality localisation. It’s also about upskilling and training people within the community.

There are no rules that everybody adheres to in terms of how the process of localisation, subtitling and dubbing is done, so the EGA is about bringing us all together.”

Roue says that the emergence of the global streaming platforms has led to a shift in thinking by traditional broadcasters when it comes to selling their content globally. “When you’re dealing with a domestic broadcaster your main commission is to get the programme to them so that it can be transmitted on a certain date, and then the afterthought is ‘oh, where can we sell this?’ Previously the distributor might not have thought about who they’re going to sell their programme to. They’d think of domestic first and then sales afterwards, and that’s actually a piracy window. The programme ends up being discovered in ways in which it shouldn’t. To remove that piracy window you have to build in enough time to do the right translation.

“As soon as there’s a locked cut of the programme in post, that’s when localisation should start, so it’s much earlier in the production process. It takes quite a considerable amount of time and there’s often different vendors in different territories. Also, with some projects it’s important to get the casting right, there might already be an actor in France who always dubs a certain actor and so you need to make sure that he’s available.”

Working with big budget, high-end productions must mean a lot of security is needed around the content.

How does Visual Data deal with those issues? “We’re a member of the TPN, the Trusted Partner Network, which is an extension of the Motion Picture Association of America,” explains Roue. “We’re audited annually by one body; it used to be several bodies in different studios. A team of people come on-site, and they interrogate our IT departments and then they also perform tests – we call them Pen or Penetration Tests – where they try to hack our company and see if they can get information from us by brute force.

“There’s also a lot of security training such as not opening emails with weird attachments if they’ve managed to get through somehow,” he adds. “The actual content itself is redacted, the image is partly blurred so that should a file escape you wouldn’t want to watch it.

Also, the files tend to be streamed from a secure server so you don’t actually have the file to grab or copy and share. We use technology where every frame of every video file has an invisible watermark, so when we send a

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file, that watermark is embedded invisibly in the frame.

It says the file has come from Visual Data and has gone to a certain dubbing facility, so if it does get picked up, you can run that file through a watermark detector and it will say it went from here to there. It doesn’t solve the problem, but it allows you to address where you’ve got leakage in the system.”

While some companies within the production sector have been hit by the ongoing impact of the pandemic, Roue says Visual Data has been fortunate, with business continuing as usual much of the time. “There was a moment where everybody went ‘ah, what’s it going to mean?’, and then we realised everyone’s going to stay in and watch more television.

“Last summer we started to see the pipeline of new content slow down because obviously production had halted. And then in the UK, once the first lockdown finished, production was able to get insurance and there was a big rush to complete anything outstanding from before the lockdown.

“Covid has changed people’s behaviours,” he continues, “the biggest example of that is theatrical and cinema.

We’re starting to see a lot of day and date theatrical releases with VoD. A lot of the studios are launching their own VoD platforms and in order to drive eyeballs to those platforms, they’re releasing content that would have gone into cinemas.

“That’s an interesting dynamic and 2021 is going to be very telling in terms of people’s behaviour and going to the cinema. Once the vaccines kick in, will people go to the cinema in the same sort of numbers as they did in the past? If they’ve got the convenience of watching the same movie at home but without spending £50 on tickets and popcorn will they still want to go to the cinema? It’s going to be difficult. A lot of people go to the cinema for the big screen experience but now you can watch content at home in 4K, in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. It’s going to be really fascinating to watch.”

So what does Roue think will happen with the streaming market in 2021? Has it reached its peak? “I think in the UK, we haven’t reached the saturation point yet. There’s another couple of years, and it all really depends upon what content lands on what VoD platform,” he says. “2021 looks like it’s going to continue to be a sort of stay at home year. I think the change in behaviours, and as I mentioned going out to the cinema, mean people are going to become home birds much more.

“On a global basis, some of the big VoD platform rollouts haven’t even started yet. We’re working on localising catalogues for launches in new territories. I think we’re at the beginning of a five to ten-year run here.

I wouldn’t like to be a broadcaster, it would be very, very scary, particularly for pay-TV.” n

Symon Roue

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 29

FEATURE

NEW WORKING PRACTICES DRIVE COLLABORATION

By Reuben Such, global business director of Densitron IDS

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he technology and commercial landscape evolved dramatically in 2020. Most business sectors were affected by enforced changes in working practices and broadcast was no exception. Not only did studio, production, and OB staff see changes in how they perform daily tasks, but the technology and processes they use to complete those tasks have been decentralised.

It is no longer essential to deliver resource-hungry operations or control workflow from a fixed location or studio facility. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of new ways of working for many people. Of course, forward-thinking broadcasters would already have been road mapping more efficient methods of delivering content, increasingly via remotely controlled technical operations, but none could have predicted how steep their learning curve would be, and how fast that curve would have to be navigated.

Having to unexpectedly scale operations to accommodate increasingly diverse – and urgent – working patterns for multidisciplined resources has been a challenge. Many have had to think

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on their feet, often building workable solutions on the fly to keep operations flowing. But not all of those efforts, as noble as they are, have resulted in sustainable long-term solutions. So, what’s next? Do we now have the opportunity to build a more successful and unified working pattern? Can we look to deliver a technology future that not only includes, but embraces multiple working practices?

I ask because I believe scalable solutions specifically designed to not only accommodate, but improve multiple applications are key for the future success of broadcasters and media technology companies. As a vendor, it is our responsibility to identify and be sympathetic to the requirements of the companies who so urgently need these solutions while recognising that in many cases a single-application solution will not tick every box for every user.

That’s why solutions need to be accessible, agile, robust, and, of course, scalable. They have to be adaptable to a broad range of requirements from home working – whether talent or technical – and remote production to more conventional on-premise infrastructure workflows. As a supplier, it would be wrong to

FEATURE

“This situation...has created more fluid communication and camaraderie between vendor and customer.” assume we know what’s best for clients without actually asking them, and this is where so many go wrong, especially as we enter entirely new realms of technology delivery.

For nearly a year now, the way we usually demonstrate what we’ve learned and productised from our customers has been turned on its head. For the most part we have not been able to make site visits, attend conferences, or exhibit at trade shows, all of which are crucial opportunities to maintain and expand personal contacts; both to learn and discern. The way we have done business for many years has changed significantly, which has meant that although we have been frustrated by being stuck at home, our existing and potential customers are also stuck at home. The welcome benefit of that is a common desire to get through this situation together and has created more fluid communication and camaraderie between vendor and customer. Historical sales barriers are being broken down and people with problems are looking for people to provide solutions. I hear a lot more, “I know, right! Me too!” than I ever used to, in person or from afar.

In the initial stages of the pandemic people were understandably scared and concerned for the safety of their families, colleagues and themselves. The fear of the unknown was felt globally and created panic and caution. We, as did many suppliers, also struggled with the question of whether approaching people who probably had much larger concerns than looking at our new applications or technology was at best insensitive or, at worst, immoral. It was a very real conundrum at the time, but our hesitation enabled us to regroup as a company and rethink our approach to the sales process in unprecedented circumstances with a clear-eyed view.

Densitron has always held a strong relationship with our customers. We actually listen making sure what we supply adds real value. But frankly, it was always quite one dimensional. Sure, we have an amazing range of products used by global clients such as Google, YouTube, Bloomberg, Discovery, CNN, BBC, and ITN, but we had historically always looked at supplying our product as part to fit a particular need. With our Intelligent Display System (IDS) we have a very scalable and flexible control and display solution that is completely agnostic. It works with any third-party system to deliver operational and practical benefits for multiple applications, and that’s fantastic, but this changed for us during 2020. Our conversations with clients became far more collaborative than simply informative. We knew customers were struggling.

We understood that the legacy systems they had used for many years were now far less agile than they needed to be, and they needed to be in a hurry.

We therefore started including multiple stakeholders from Densitron as key components within the sales process.

Representatives from our development, product and engineering

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teams became crucial parts of the sales cycle. They were included in remotely conducted meetings and we were able to provide what turned out to be invaluable consultative advice to clients. This often became the catalyst for a thinktank of ideas, conceived by the client and progressed by our technical teams to evolve our current technology roadmap to meet clients’ requirements. The result was invariably a demonstrable solution to real-world problems they were facing, which in turn quickly relieved the pressures they were under, enabling them to concentrate on what they did best at work, and needed to do at home.

We have a wealth of engineering talent across the globe at Densitron and it’s no exaggeration to say we have collectively designed and delivered some really exciting and innovative technologies that solve a lot of problems. But we soon realised that we also needed to take this a step further. IDS was born within a system integration house and was initially designed to help system integrators solve problems faced during design and delivery.

Integrators often have to knit multiple separate systems together in order to meet client requirements, so we thought “Why not do that on a product level as well?”

That’s what I was referring to about taking a different approach to sales within the pandemic year, starting to more intensely work with other vendors to create a unified solution incorporating multiple different applications under one umbrella. By joining forces with the expertise of key manufacturers such as Evertz, Panasonic, Techex, Skaarhoj, Bridge and Polecam, all seamlessly integrated through the power of Densitron IDS, we have created a solution that not only works across multiple platforms and scenarios, but can be scaled to quickly respond to changes in working habits, I dare say almost indefinitely.

Such solutions enable facilities to be genuinely open to new methods of working, whether that is remote, on premise, or distributed. We no longer want to sell a single solution to every client. We want them to share detailed descriptions of their pain points so we can deliver a solution to fix their specific issue(s) rather than throw a blanket solution over them and hope part of it covers the right problems.

To that end, we are building a network of technology partners, all experts in their own field so we can truly offer a total solution to an integrator or end user. We want to eliminate the headaches people are facing, to remove the fears and concerns they have with technology, and be a defined and trusted partner.

This obviously isn’t a new philosophy. We aren’t reinventing the wheel. Be we are making a better wheel. Our flexible and transparent approach to relationships, technical expertise, global presence, network of trusted partners, and industry proven products combine to create a very strong proposition, with the evolution of customer needs firmly at the centre of these offerings. n

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 31

ADVERTORIAL

AMPING UP CLOUD-BASED PRODUCTION WITH GV AMPP

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he way consumers engage with content is shifting faster than ever before, leaving the television industry playing catch up. Broadcasters, production companies and content producers are also seeing the complexities in production and distribution soaring.

The industry now needs bolder innovations to keep up with the growing number of platforms, devices, markets, audiences and versions of content. We live in the age of media choice and that makes producing programmes of all types – especially live TV – more challenging than ever. The need for flexibility and scalability has been further highlighted by the coronavirus pandemic, accelerating the trend towards cloud-based infrastructures that support the creation of dynamic content across multiple platforms.

Grass Valley had already been anticipating this shift to distributed cloud production before the pandemic hit, while customers across the board were increasingly looking for greater efficiency and flexibility through remote broadcast setups and customisable workflows. Grass Valley released GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform) in 2020, a cloud-native, cloudagnostic solution which can be operated on-premise, private cloud, or in the public cloud, ensuring a smooth transition from hardware to software. The platform’s foundation is based on five core technologies – fabric, timing, connectivity, identity, and streaming – the key to elastic media services.

GV AMPP is a game-changing platform, giving customers the flexibility to spin up or spin down applications as needed – only paying for the services they use – even in live production environments. This solution unlocks the power of elastic compute for live sports, news, and playout workflows, helping customers easily transition to public, data centre or hybrid infrastructures that are future-ready with nothing more than a web-based interface. Built on an unique microservices architecture, GV AMPP also solves many of the issues that can complicate IP and cloud deployments; such as network connectivity, timing, and ultra-low latency.

Discovery’s leading multi-sports brand, Eurosport, recently chose GV AMPP Playout, Grass Valley’s newly launched

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application suite for its Agile Media Processing Platform, as part of a major technology transformation to provide ‘true cloud’ architecture supporting playout across the network’s sports broadcasts. The project is part of a wider technology transformation Eurosport has been undertaking, including utilising cloud and remote technology within a unified production ecosystem to allow it to create and distribute world-class content onto any platform, from anywhere in the world. The cloud allows services providers to keep pace with their core audience demands and spin services down as fast as they are spun-up.

Los Angeles-based live entertainment and media company De Tune also deployed GV AMPP Master Control to support completely virtual live event broadcasts. The De Tune team used GV AMPP Master Control to create a master control room (MCR) in the cloud with full redundancy, accessible anywhere globally to support a series of online events for the creative agency Public School. Production staff, located in their homes, with no on-site tech support, handled three-hour-long events, featuring 40 presenters worldwide and delivered to six countries across EMEA, the Americas, and Asia.

Other broadcasters are using the flexibility of AMPP’s microservices to solve a variety of use cases around remote production. For example, using AMPP’s low latency monitoring technology to bring all of the multiviewer heads from outside broadcast trucks back to production staff working from home.

GV AMPP is central to the GV Media Universe, Grass Valley’s vision for an entirely software and cloud-based media future. GV Media Universe is a comprehensive ecosystem of cloud-based tools and services interconnected with a range of existing Grass Valley solutions from all areas of the portfolio, including playout, editing, and replay.

The cloud brings significant benefits to the media industry, such as cost savings, agility, and scalability. It enables businesses to experiment creatively while providing efficient and scalable workflows for now and the future. We’re excited that GV AMPP is leading the way in unlocking these flexible production workflows and allows customers to be prepared for change as the media industry continues to evolve. n

CASE STUDY

MAKING THE SHIFT TO REMOTE WORKFLOWS AMIDST COVID 19

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uring ‘normal’ times, award-winning media production company Taylor Made Media works from its creative hub in east London, collaborating closely with clients globally throughout the entire process. With strong and transparent client relationships, producers share content with colleagues and clients at each stage, requiring fast, efficient workflows and media delivery solutions.

However, when the UK first went into lockdown in 2020, the company was instantly forced to work remotely. Its main priority was to ensure the smooth running of content pipelines as staff collaborated from home and worked on content for some of the world’s leading brands. Data security and round-the-clock technical support were critical, particularly as this shift happened virtually overnight. To guarantee it could continue to share rushes and creative assets, Taylor Made Media turned to managed cloud services company BASE Media Cloud – an IBM Aspera partner – for a solution that would support its new remote working strategy.

At the centre of Taylor Made Media’s transition was the need to quickly move away from its on-premise storage and manual media workflow. To maintain the efficiency of media exchange with clients and colleagues, the company had to immediately migrate all media assets to an integrated cloud storage solution.

With several projects in progress and staff unable to access its on-premise storage in London, the company required a quick turnaround solution with minimum disruption to existing workflows and processes. Assets like rushes, editing, music and animation files had to be migrated efficiently and made accessible to all stakeholders through cloud storage, all while ensuring data security, resiliency and redundancy. Instant access back-up, archive and file sharing capabilities were key requirements.

Finally, the technical solution had to come with minimal training

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How IBM Aspera and BASE Media Cloud enabled Taylor Made Media to quickly embrace a remote working strategy

requirements and continuous technical support for creatives working around the clock to ensure the fast and seamless transition of its storage and data workflows.

Understanding the project’s urgent requirement – migrating 10 terabytes of data over a single weekend – BASE Media Cloud deployed IBM Aspera on Cloud and IBM Object Storage alongside its migration and support services for data migration. The decision was made on a Friday and Taylor Made Media’s employees were working seamlessly by the following Monday, accessing rushes and project materials quickly and remotely via their standard home IP connections.

Due to IP connectivity restrictions at the company’s London production facility, the hard drive was transferred directly to the UK-based data centre, using IBM Aspera on Cloud to migrate the assets to IBM Cloud Object Storage. This all ensured business continuity for Taylor Made Media, enabling it to continue producing films for the likes of Barclays, Accenture and American Express.

With creatives able to access valuable media assets from a single storage hub and collaborate seamlessly from home, the new remote working strategy has enhanced the company’s workflows and created a more dynamic way of working, whether from the studio in London or home offices.

The solution’s capabilities, combined with BASE Media Cloud’s technical support, has enabled Taylor Made Media to maintain its efficiency in delivering creative support to clients during a period of significant disruption. Staff can work from the safety and comfort of their homes with peace of mind that valuable client content remains secure.

As well as delivering a fast and smooth transition, its new cloud-based infrastructure has provided the added benefit of future-proofing its workflows beyond the pandemic. The modular nature of the solution means Taylor Made Media can evolve its production workflows as required. For example, it can add more storage space or facilitate adjacent services such as media asset management and transcoding for the potential creation of a virtual studio in the future.

“Although we had been interested in transitioning to cloud storage for some time, the pandemic proved to be the deciding factor, presenting an urgent need for remote access to content virtually overnight,” said Taylor Made Media’s production manager Ian McGinty.

“BASE Media Cloud responded in lightning quick time. Our new workflows have enabled us to adapt to new ways of working without any drop in performance or customer service, and given us the tools to respond to any disruption thrown our way.” n

PRODUCTION AND POST

360 NEWS

STORYTELLING IS HERE

By Stephane Guez, CTO and co-founder, Dalet

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here’s no turning back. More than ever, we see a proliferation of digital-only news channels and fierce competition across the board. To compete, news operators must embrace digital-first workflows. However, many news operations still prepare digital content at the end of the workflow. Content is prepped for TV before other platforms. There is lag time in pushing breaking stories to all platforms.

Audience habits have changed too. Today’s audiences expect curated news stories to be available on all screens in real time. They want frequent updates on stories with rich graphics and relevant context that help paint the full picture. Not only does the future newsroom need to be able to deal with more news sources, they need to have a far greater control over editorial and media sources to prevent the spreading of fake news and deliver fast breaking news in realtime on all platforms.

Adding to the pressures, the old way of shooting news, with a full camera and reporter crew in the field, is gone.

Media is expected to be delivered in near real time with editing and storytelling done on any device from any location.

The same goes for developing storylines. There are multiple contributors and thus multiple storylines. Journalists and reporters need ways to collaborate and share content beyond the confines of the newsroom. To accelerate delivery, they need more advanced tools that assist in searching archives, offering contextual recommendations on relevant content to supplement their story arc.

Newsrooms cannot accomplish this with rundown-centric workflows. A shift needs to happen or they will be left behind.

THE VIRTUALISED NEWS PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT Current news production systems heavily rely on on-premise physical equipment and are rundown centric, limiting the ability to create and distribute news anywhere and anytime during a pandemic.

We have created a way for journalists and news professionals to work and collaborate in a virtualised

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environment, bringing their digital news workflows to the level beyond. It’s called Dalet Pyramid and it’s the next-generation of our Unified News Operations solution that features the NRCS, news production system, media asset management core, all wrapped around a collaborative, digital-first workflow. The brand new digital editorial and editing tools enable resources to collaborate in a virtualised environment with access to the assets and modern capabilities that enable storytelling across all platforms from a single source. The cross-collaboration enriches storytelling, with many perspectives, angles and formats to deliver it in. All of the activity is well managed through a centralised dashboard that simplifies monitoring of resources, assets and stories in progress. This is 360-degree storytelling: a new story-centric approach that enables teams to collaborate together at the story level.

Enabling a true borderless newsroom, the virtualised environment leverages cloud infrastructure, enabling new levels of mobility and service including the extensive use of AI to better manage and utilise millions of assets. Agile SaaS models mean shorter release cycles and transparent upgrades that ensure operators have the very latest capabilities. Combined with the increased usability, operators will be able to lower their TCO. During these last few months, we have helped many of our news customers adapt to the new conditions and adopt different work practices to cope with the challenges of lockdowns and social distancing inflicted by Covid-19.

Dalet Pyramid enables them to approach this in a more systematic way and positively transform their business and explore new work models that enable them to deal with the challenges of an industry that sees rapidly changing news media consumption habits.

A virtualised newsroom with its ecosystem of digital-first tools will change the way journalists work to produce compelling stories. This is what newsmakers and vendors can achieve together: changing the way they tell news, for good. n

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 35

PRODUCTION AND POST

ARE YOU REMOTELY INTERESTED?

Philip Stevens gathers a variety of opinions about remote working 36 | TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021

PRODUCTION AND POST

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ntil recently, the live production industry’s annual calendar was filled with large conventions, meetings and conferences. We had a lot of fun, but a lot of business got done, too. One hotly discussed topic, even years ago, was remote production, and it wasn’t always met with a positive reception.” Those are the thoughts of Andreas Eriksson, head of Telstra Broadcast Services.

He says that people didn’t want to lose that feeling of being at a venue, feeding off the excitement of a live event when the energy carries from the field and into the production truck. “But 2020 and Covid-19 changed all that. The pandemic has moved remote production from merely a topic of discussion to a day-to-day reality. Truthfully, it’s been creeping up on us gradually for some time now, spurred by the demand for a wide range of traditional sports like lacrosse or volleyball that, while popular, don’t necessarily warrant the expense and time to bring an OB unit out on location. Outside of traditional sports, esports has been booming alongside the increased popularity of gaming worldwide, especially during the pandemic, as many leagues’ seasons were put on hold. Esports has been a pioneer in the use of remote production and the industry will continue to accelerate its adoption in media and broadcast operations.”

Telstra covered the IAAF World Relay Championships in Japan delivering

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TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 37

PRODUCTION AND POST

Telstra believes remote production works and will be a key part of media and broadcast operations in 2021 and beyond

Chris Pearman

remote broadcasts to Australia and the UK using 10 Gbps diverse, hitless IP networks using VC2 ultralow latency to transport 30 HD feeds across almost 10,000 miles. It has also built out a network, known as the Distributed Production Network, solely relying on remote production for 27 tier one, two and three venues.

“Gaining that experience with remote production means we were already set up for the current global environment, putting us in a very strong position in the media and broadcast industry. Moreover, we’re continuing to expand our capabilities by working with international broadcasters, forging new partnerships and increasing our connectivity to the points where our customers need to get to and from – all with the goal of being the enabling driver behind the future of seamless and dynamic remote production.”

Erikkson adds, “From these workings, we have clear

38 | TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021

proof that remote production works and will be a key part of media and broadcast operations in 2021 and beyond. It also gave us the opportunity to enhance our Global Media Network, building on our global subsea cable infrastructure, IP transit, media cloud connectivity, and world-class satellite services.”

A DISRUPTIVE INVENTOR! “Necessity is the mother of all invention, and the pandemic has been the driving force that has brought remote production and post very much to the forefront.” So says Lewis Brown, product manager at Atomos. “Lockdown and social distancing restrictions have made it impossible for many of the traditional ways of working therefore stimulating the need for change. And that has meant on-premise workflows have had to be virtualised and in person

PRODUCTION AND POST communications move to instant messaging or video communications. Atomos has been a long-time disruptive innovator within the world of production acquisition with high bit-rate edit ready codecs gathering the high-quality images from a broad range of cameras focused on maximising creativity in post.”

Brown says that owner operators have had to change their workflows with many video professionals incorporating live streaming and limited crew operation in multi-camera set-ups. “Where users may have been focused on using our products for recording in RAW, we also incorporate multi-camera ISO recording and switching on the Shogun 7 and Sumo 19. We’ve seen great feedback and uptake from users who have used the product in this way.”

To extend these functions beyond baseband video, Atomos released an HDMI to UVC adaptor that allows professional users to incorporate their camera equipment into livestreaming or video wide conferencing systems to improve the quality beyond simple in-built webcams.

“Remote workflows with post production have also seen a huge upsurge with traditional post houses working from home. Facilities have rapidly arisen, such as cloud-based systems for software, storage, project management and client engagement. For image critical projects, remote edit/grade review and approve systems have become vital.”

Brown believes that while many elements of the post pipeline can be virtualised, accurate and consistent monitoring for critical review still requires dedicated hardware. “We’ve had a lot of interest in Neon 17” and 24” for this very reason as post teams have become spread out across their homes, not able to be in the same suite to look at the same monitor.

The traditional cost of these monitors also makes it expensive to have monitoring, especially for HDR, however, the image quality and price point of Neon can make this a reality.”

The changes the pandemic has accelerated means that the evolution of remote production and post has changed the landscape for the long term. So how do we see the changes this time next year? Brown says it is hard to be specific, but what can be said is that remote working has been embraced by all working environments, demonstrating that it is an achievable reality and as with all aspects of the world things will likely never go back to the same way of working. “We’ve seen increases in efficiency, broadened the accessible talent pool and at Atomos we will continue to innovate and bring high quality affordable tools to enhance creative work flows.”

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Andreas Erikkson

CONNECTIVITY IS CRITICAL According to Chris Pearman, head of efficient production strategy and enterprise architecture at Red Bee Media, connection between sites will be the primary challenge for the foreseeable future when it comes to remote production. “Connectivity needs to be of reasonable bandwidth to allow media flows to pass, but needs to be of a high enough quality of service to guarantee a ‘hit-free’ transmission, especially where items such as interviews are taking place. The connection needs to be extremely low latency allowing streams to pass between remote and production sites with minimum delays.”

He says that consideration also needs to be made not only about the flow of media from remote sites to the production hub, but also the requirement of the return stream. This includes traffic such as return videos, audios and dataflows and for remote control of venue devices such as cameras and prompters and so on.

“The connection is generally our primary concern, as short-term fibre installations in most market areas are prohibitively expensive for all. For the highest tier events, we must rely on working with venues that host multiple events and can all benefit by sharing initial connection costs. Otherwise we must trust connection methods such as bonded 4G platforms which inherently add extra processing delays, often in the region of several seconds, which can have knock on effects as to the usability of remote production over such platforms.”

When it comes to the technology that will advance remote production generally, Pearman believes the hot topic – and hoped by many to be the ‘silver bullet’ – must be 5G connections. “These 5G connections should, in the future, bring to fruition a reasonably blanket coverage of high speed, low latency connections, where we can start to experiment with real-time remote production workflows. I think once there is a general rollout of reliable commodity 5G service from the telecoms companies, we will see

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 39

PRODUCTION AND POST a whole new bouquet of services and workflows, some of which we cannot even envisage today.”

Raoul Cospen

Robert Drewett

RELIABLE ROAMING One aspect of remote production is, of course, the need to keep crews safe and working at social distances.

One way to help achieve these goals is by using a freeroaming dolly system for camera operations.

At the Le Mans 2020 motor race Motion Impossible introduced its latest innovation system, Agito Sports, to provide footage remotely.

“The 88th edition of the iconic 24-Heures de Mans motor race has been different to any other,” states Robert Drewett, CEO and co-founder of Motion Impossible. “As with many sporting events in 2020, the Le Mans 24-hour endurance race was delayed from its usual June date and took place over 19-20th September, with no fans present, at the Circuit de la Sarthe.

However, close to 63 million spectators in 57 countries were still able to watch fabulous coverage of the race as a result of Nova Grip choosing to operate Motion Impossible’s Agito Sports to support the broadcast and help capture the action with never-before-seen live footage shots.”

Motion Impossible is a Bristol-based modular dolly systems and camera stabilisers manufacturer. The company was set up in 2014 by BAFTA award-winning cameraman Rob Drewett and product design engineer Andy Nancollis.

Drewett says that Agito is the world’s first modular dolly system. “It offers multiple configurations, allowing smooth motion from a slow crawl up to high speed, without any gear change. Agito provides the perfect solution for any scenario where there is a need to become ‘immersed’ within the action and to create footage from a different and more intriguing perspective.”

He adds, “Increasingly, camera operators and production teams are having to turn to remote filming solutions to be able to apply the correct safety measures needed as a result of Covid-19 and we are proud to be able to offer an award-winning and leading solution.”

GOOD NEWS! As part of a move to improve remote working for its news production, France Télévisions has subscribed to Dalet Galaxy xCloud, enabling editorial staff to effectively manage critical news workflows from home.

“This is a full-featured SaaS version of the latest Dalet Galaxy five platform that leverages the cloud to facilitate end-to-end, remote news production workflows,” states Raoul Cospen, director of product strategy, news at Dalet. “It gives France Télévisions the flexibility to support the remote work requirements of its 300-plus journalists. The flexible solution will facilitate news production workflows across national channels and the franceinfo rolling news channel, as well as support key newsroom editing applications Adobe Premiere Pro and Dalet OneCut.” This remote editing framework features integration with the on-premise Dalet Galaxy five system. It supports advanced proxy editing workflows, mixing of central and local content, with proxy content cached locally to eliminate disruptions due to limited bandwidth. Rendering is offloaded to the Dalet Galaxy xCloud system, optimising performance to break news faster.

France Télévisions will first use Dalet Galaxy xCloud running entirely on AWS Cloud. In a second phase, the broadcaster will move to a hybrid configuration that utilises the Dalet Galaxy xCloud on-premises gateway component to manage heavy media processing such as creating proxy files and rendering of projects on-prem. Only proxy content is sent to the cloud, optimising media transfer between the on-premises system and cloud. The Dalet Galaxy xCloud hybrid implementation will also support low latency workflows such as editing growing files.

Cospen continues, “Journalists can use familiar tools like the Dalet OneCut news editor as if they were in the newsroom. They can search the production system, collaborate with producers, edit growing files and more. It’s a seamless integration whether you are at home, in the newsroom or in the field.”

Emmanuel Gonce, head of engineering for the newsrooms, France Télévisions, adds, “Dalet Galaxy xCloud offers us a path to news production with remote editing that is connected to our central Dalet Galaxy systems.

“Once integrated within production workflows, it will extend the content and the workflow tools that we use day in and day out to deliver the news beyond the physical newsroom. The integrated editing will allow us to be very efficient as well as connected to each other no matter where we’re reporting from.” n

“Once there is a general rollout of reliable commodity 5G service...we will see a whole new bouquet of services and workflows, some of which we cannot even envisage today” CHRIS PEARMAN 40 | TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021

CASE STUDY

DIGITISING THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF ESTONIA

T

he need to digitise the archives of many institutions is a pressing one. Film stock only lasts so long before it destabilises and it is perfectly possible for tape stock to degrade or be caught in cultural obsolescence as technology inexorably progresses. As a result, organisations not only need their material to be transferred to a format suitable for long-term storage, they need that material to be accessible as well.

Digitisation is the key and, of course, has a double benefit in allowing an archive to be monetised in a global online market, something that adds additional commercial impetus to the implementation of any digitisation project. But when it came to the job of digitising precious newsreel footage for the National Archives of Estonia (NAE) there was an added factor which lay in the sheer historical significance of the archive.

NAE’s newsreel collection consists of 275 hours of audiovisual material and documents that cover a broad range of culturally significant Estonian history spanning over 70 years, including its post WWII period of Russian-annexation. Only around ten per cent of the archive has so far been digitised in HD or higher.

The NAE is currently carrying out two film related digitisation projects, one of which includes newsreels made between 1914 and 1991. As a result of this project, 120 hours of newsreels will be digitised and catalogued during the upcoming months. The material spans a period of 27 years – from the first Soviet Estonian newsreel, Nõukogude Eesti no. 1 released in 1940, until the late 1960s – and provides a unique window into life under what was effectively Russian occupation.

The project is being undertaken by Prasad Corp in a uniquely designed workflow which leverages the power of the Prasad-owned DFT’s Scanity HDR film recorder and sees the work split across two continents and between Estonia and India.

“Being able to place a Scanity within the NAE to perform this key digitization program is a real honor for Prasad and is one of our unique capabilities,” comments Simon Clark, Prasad’s vice president (Europe). “This is truly an international project with the teams in Tallinn and Chennai working very closely together to save these incredibly historic and important newsreels.”

The project workflow starts with preparation work, including the inspection, repair, cleaning of reels, and cataloguing, which is being carried out by the Estonian Film Database (EFIS). The digitisation and post processing of the 35mm black-and-white newsreels in 4K resolution is being undertaken by a team consisting of Prasad and Estonian digitisation specialists Ratus OÜ.

The project is the latest high-profile job for Ratus OÜ. The company has plenty of diverse know-how in carrying out

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digitisation projects, from the post processing of films to the digitisation of paper-based documents, and has carried out largescale digitisation projects in European countries and the Middle East for both private and public sector companies and institutions.

The digitisation process itself begins with the Scanity HDR film scanner on-site in Tallinn, while the post processing and creation of deliverables will be completed in India, following which preservation, access and online copies (i.e., TIFF, WAV and MOV files) will be delivered to the NAE. For the NAE it is quite a step up in the amount of archive material it digitises. The organisation’s internal workflow normally sees around 50,000 metres of analogue film digitised per year, but this is another level entirely.

“We are going to handle nearly 200,000 metres of original film elements, including fragile negatives and duplicates as well as nitrate film,” explains project manager, Kadi Sikka, from the NAE. “The full service and equipment offered by Ratus OÜ/Prasad met our specifications perfectly. Scanity offers a great combination of film scanning applications specifically for archival films and mass digitisation purposes. Its features offer gentle film transport and help to reach the objectives of the project in the limited time frame.”

The project will conclude in 2022 and is expected to meet the target of delivering more than 800 newsreels to researchers, historians and more via the online platform of NAE’s Film Archive, as well as the technical and descriptive metadata. As a result of the project, 50 per cent of the newsreel collection of the NAE will not only be accessible online but protected and preserved for future generations to examine and gain invaluable insights into what the world was like at a key period of the country’s modern history. n

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 41

A COMPLETE ECOSYSTEM A LiveU’s Ronan Artman tells Jenny Priestley about the company’s new partnership with Grass Valley and its plans for 2021 s remote production becomes a permanent part of the workflow process, we’re starting to see some of the major media tech companies forming partnerships in order to offer customers new solutions to simplify their workflows.

One good example of this is LiveU and Grass Valley who have partnered on cloud-based remote production, enabling LiveU customers to send live feeds from any of its field units for remote switching and live production using LiveU’s cloud solution with Grass Valley’s GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform).

The partnership with Grass Valley is the start of a new strategy adopted by LiveU, as Ronen Artman, VP of marketing, explains: “We believe that we cannot develop everything and own the entire production chain. We feel that partnering with the leaders in remote production, in graphics, in cloud switching, in cloud production is the right way for us to go. It means that our customers can not only rely on LiveU out in the field, but know that LiveU can be integrated with all those leaders along the chain.”

While the change in strategy hasn’t been driven by the pandemic per se, Artman admits the changes the

42 | TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021

industry has seen over the last 12 months has had an impact on the company’s thinking. “When we started to see the pandemic and its impact on remote production, and a lot of IP and a lot of cloud, we realised that this is where the industry is going and we immediately decided that we needed to be a part of that. Covid brought us to a level where we felt that we needed to accelerate our partnerships because broadcasters were shifting to remote productions and home studios.”

The partnership with Grass Valley means that LiveU customers can utilise metadata to send content back to the control or ingest rooms much more easily. “The ecosystem starts to be complete for those customers,” explains Artman. “We want to make it easier for our customers to work, no matter where they are. We’ll soon be announcing other partnerships and I think with the companies that we are partnering with, we’ll cover probably 80 to 90 per cent of the system that you see in every control room.”

Taking a broader view of remote production, does Artman believe the industry has been fundemntally changed by the speed of adoption over the last 12

PRODUCTION AND POST months? “Remote production is here to stay and not only because of the pandemic,” he states. “It’s mainly because of the cost reduction impact; you can save between 60 to 80 per cent of your current production costs. No matter how you look at it, when it comes to money that’s the biggest trigger of all. If you can produce any sporting event, or even a news production, and save a huge amount of your opex, you’re definitely going to turn to remote production.

“With remote production capabilities right now you see that there is no impact from delay, you can deliver signals from the US to Italy in less of the delay that you have via satellite. So when the reliability, cost saving, and delay are all solved by remote production I don’t think you’ll see the industry returning to the way it always was.

“Last year we were involved in the Cartier Queen’s Cup 2020 Polo tournament in London, where they used our LU800 units which allow you to do multi camera production,” Artman continues. “The production team sent four camera crews to the event and the remote production was done in South Africa, including the graphics, titles, switching between the cameras etc.

It was done on 4G and they were able to produce an

LiveU’s LU800 was used during the Cartier Queen’s Cup 2020 polo tournament

HD-quality polo game, something that they had never done before. The cost saving and the reliability aspect of that suddenly gave them the ability to produce this polo match and it was a huge success.

“We also did all the remote production for the Democratic Convention in August. People weren’t allowed to travel and actually be in Ohio so we provided all the feeds coming into the convention. All the senators and representatives were able to to be in their hometown, deliver their speech and everything was produced remotely.”

Artman promises more partnership announcements are on their way, so watch this space. n

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PRODUCTION AND POST

LIGHTING UP THE SPANISH SKY Philip Stevens finds how reliable connectivity was crucial to a live televised firework display during lockdown

P Yvonne Monterroso

iromusical de la Mercè fireworks is one of the most important events in the Catalunyan calendar and is covered by Spain’s national broadcaster, TV3 every year. Piromusical combines fireworks, a laser display and music in one spectacular event that rounds off Barcelona’s biggest annual festival, La Mercè. However, in 2020 the Piromusical was forced to reinvent itself in line with requirements linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the revised event was covered for TV3 by production company, Quality Media.

“Normally, the fireworks display would be hosted in one location, Montjuïc, where the people of Barcelona would all gather outside the venue to watch.” states Pablo Reyes, chief production officer at Quality Media. “But, due to social distancing, the organisers arranged for the fireworks to be launched from four different locations so that people could enjoy them from their balconies or rooftops. These different locations presented a number of challenges for us, particularly ensuring the live display and the broadcast were synchronised.”

Yvonne Monterroso, director of product management at connectivity provider, Dejero adds, “Quality Media knew that people would be watching the fireworks, but they would also be tuning into TV3’s main channel to listen to the accompanying music and watch live on television. This meant that Quality Media needed to manage and deliver perfectly synchronised live video feeds from these four different locations that were more than 20 kilometres apart.”

In order to position cameras with the best views of the displays, Quality Media couldn’t be restricted by location or the reliance on fibre lines or satellite connections to go live. It required more flexibility with the camera positioning and needed to ensure they had enough bandwidth to send live high-quality video.

“One major challenge was being able to capture and

44 | TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021

encode such a dynamic and difficult scene as fireworks.

Our EnGo solution features content adaptive encoding which adjusts the process based on the amount of motion in the live shot to greatly improve picture sharpness in challenging network conditions,” says Monterroso.

The production company provided the TV3 team with eight cameras and Dejero EnGo transmitters. The cameras were positioned to cover each location of the fireworks, in Sants Montjuïc, Las Cortes, Nou Barris and Sant Martí.

LOW LATENCY “The EnGo is the ideal tool for field crews creating high-quality, low latency video in remote locations,” says Monterroso. “It features our Emmy Award-winning Smart Blending and Hybrid Encoding technologies that work together to respond in real time to changes in network quality and video content, which was key to the success of capturing the speed and constantly changing lighting of the Piromusical fireworks display.

The EnGo transmitter carries six SIMs, so it wasn’t relying on just one or two networks. Having only one connection path leaves organisations vulnerable to having insufficient bandwidth, or in the worst case, downtime. This solution meant that Quality Media didn’t need to find a location with fibre or satellite connectivity in order to create high-quality live video of the fireworks. What’s more, the solution delivered latency as low as 0.8 seconds.”

She adds, “Dynamically and intelligently managing the fluctuating bandwidth, packet loss, and latency differences of individual connections in real time, EnGo chooses the optimal path to route IP packets to their destination.”

This network aggregation, that blends available connections together, increases reliability and allows the video content to leverage the full combined

PRODUCTION AND POST

potential of individual links, even when those links have different and variable characteristics. Its onebutton, sub 30-second start-up, easy to navigate user interface, and automated settings that adapt to the available bandwidth make EnGo 260 a reliable solution in terms of usability and picture quality in the field.

The EnGo supports 20 Mbps encoding and 1080p 50/60 and uses a unique hybrid encoding technique; a combination of hardware and software encoding, which dynamically adapts in real time based on the complexity of the video scene being captured and the network throughput. “This means that camera operators don’t need to make any adjustments when capturing scenes such as fireworks, plus they can seamlessly and automatically transition from a limited motion talkinghead shot to a high-motion shot without any softening of the picture or introduction of compression artifacts,” explains Monterroso.

MAINTAINING BALANCE “Camera control was absolutely critical to the success of TV3’s television broadcast of Piromusical, particularly with the fireworks and light display changing the balance of lighting,” emphasises Reyes.

“This meant it was fundamental that we worked with a technology that could adapt to the environmental changes. We also used the EnGo’s built-in intercom which provided a two-way, full-duplex voice communication between the director and camera

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operators. This was key as TV3 stressed the importance of having a complete communication process, which was especially important with the crew working in different locations around the city.”

The intercom set-up gives EnGo users a second communication channel on top of the unit’s one-way interruptible foldback (IFB) channel. Not only does this support real-time communication from the field to the control room, it also allows for one channel to the talent and a separate channel to the camera operators, ensuring everyone is synchronised.

Reyes goes on to explain that the whole programme was produced remotely. “With EnGo we did not need to be concerned about connectivity and that allowed the TV3 team to focus on communication during the event.

All the feeds are received in the MCR and sent through the internal circuit to the director who carried out his own vision mixing. That mixer has a multiview with the different video sources.”

Reyes concludes, “Dejero EnGo has transformed our remote production workflow. It allows us to be fully mobile; meaning we can be free of satellite trucks and do not need to depend on a venue’s internet.

“The technology enables us to reach more locations as we’re not restricted by cables or signal strength. That solution means we are filming in a lot more locations with teams able to work remotely. It also gave us a big advantage during the pandemic when teams couldn’t physically be together.” n

Pablo Reyes

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 45

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Although there’s been a lot of bumpiness, people who say that media companies are dying are just embarrassing themselves.”

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PRODUCTION AND POST

EXTREME E RACES AHEAD WITH RED BEE

Steve Russell, head of media management and OTT services at Red Bee, discusses the company’s role in supporting the broadcast of new electric off-road racing series, Extreme E

Steve Russell

RED BEE WILL BE PROVIDING SATELLITE DISTRIBUTION OF THE EXTREME E FEED TO BROADCASTERS, CAN YOU TALK US THROUGH HOW THAT WILL WORK? Extreme E’s production partner will hand over the feeds to Red Bee in London, which will be the initial distribution hub. From there, the feeds will either be directly up-linked or delivered to teleports for uplink into other geographic regions. To ensure the coverage required by Extreme E, multiple satellites will be utilised to reach the necessary downlink sites. Through our hub in Hilversum, Netherlands, we will also provide Extreme E with managed distribution services.

HOW MANY SATELLITE FEEDS DO YOU EXPECT TO DISTRIBUTE FOR EACH RACE? We will be delivering a single world feed which local production facilities can choose to opt in to.

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access to all the components needed to reach worldwide audiences on any device in a scalable, reliable and secure way.

WHAT ABOUT THE TRANSCODING OF THE DIGITAL FEED? CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW THAT WILL WORK, AND WHICH STANDARD THAT WILL BE: RIST, SRT, ETC? Our satellite distribution provider will manage the handover of the digital feeds to us through AWS. We will then be providing a managed digital distribution service, sending event feeds to Extreme E’s regional distribution partners, the Red Bee OTT platform and onwards to social media platforms. Across these diverse distribution paths there’s a range of standards for broadcast and OTT sources and destinations. We will ensure compliance with all supported standards across the entire ecosystem of platforms where Extreme E’s feeds will be available.

EXTREME E IS AIMING TO BE ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS. HOW CAN RED BEE REDUCE ITS CARBON FOOTPRINT? We share Extreme E’s ambitions and as a company we are constantly looking at how we can become a more sustainable business. We want to take an active part in making the media industry greener and deliver our own services with as little environmental impact as possible. We are, for example, a main sponsor of the DPP Committed to Sustainability programme and we run a company-wide sustainability initiative called Green Bee. The aim of Green Bee is to build internal awareness around our impact on the environment and find ways to become more sustainable as a business. We will continue to increase our efforts in 2021 and work together with the industry to increase sustainability wherever we can.

HOW DO YOU EXPECT EXTREME E TO UTILISE RED BEE’S OTT PLATFORM? Red Bee’s Managed OTT platform will be providing Extreme E with the ability to make their events available to worldwide audiences. We’ll be providing dedicated live event operations to support setup and monitoring, with the option of embedding video players in websites owned by Extreme E and third parties as well as streaming to native applications on other device platforms. In addition to this, we’ll provide analytics for realtime monitoring during races and post-event reporting. In summary, with Red Bee’s OTT platform, Extreme E will get

WILL YOU BE CONTINUING TO DEVELOP THE TECH BEING USED FOR EXTREME E AS THE SEASON CONTINUES? Yes, we are continually investing in our platforms and service delivery in order to innovate and improve and our multi-tenanted OTT and distribution service lines are no exception. We fully expect Extreme E to make the most of our evolving service capabilities as well as influencing many product focus areas. We love to work with forward-looking customers who inspire our development teams to create worldleading service delivery. n

TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021 | 47

PRODUCTION AND POST

REMOTE PRODUCTION AT THE GALLOP Timeline Television’s Daniel McDonnell tells Jenny Priestley about the company’s hybrid remote production solution, currently being used on horse racing in Dubai

Timeline’s gallery in Ealing

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PRODUCTION AND POST

H

ow do you produce the broadcast of the world’s richest horse race during a global pandemic? That has been the question facing Timeline Television in the lead up to March’s Dubai World Cup. Timeline has again partnered with Racing TV to produce coverage of the Meydan Horse Racing season, which culminates with next month’s World Cup. In a typical year, the team from Timeline would fly out to Dubai and build a full operation with caw meras, talkback, gallery, etc. They’d also be sending a production team and operators back and forth throughout the six-month long season. But with Covid leading to flight restrictions in and out of the UK, plans for 2021 had to be changed.

“In September 2020, Dubai announced it would be bringing back horse racing, starting in November and at that time we had the quarantine provisions in place, so you had to have a Covid test before you flew to Dubai and also one before you could fly back,” explains Timeline’s managing director, Daniel McDonnell. “Once you landed in England, you needed to self isolate for 14 days. So it was very impractical to be able to send out a large number of people because of the restrictions.

“We looked at how we could do remote production and we came up with a solution where we only needed to send three people to look after the kits, with all of the production done from our broadcast centre in London.”

Not only does that save on travel time, but by the time the contract ends, McDonnell estimates the company will have saved about 77 per cent of its annual flights to and from Dubai, and something like two and a half tonnes of CO2 emission. “Just from an environmental point of view, it’s a very good saving, and people who are already based in London can come into the gallery and we can produce a full broadcast with the team working in Ealing but controlling the equipment remotely,” says McDonnell.

“For the Dubai racing, all the equipment can be remotely controlled by IP from the UK. The EVS, graphics, vision mixing and sound is all done remotely from London. We have Axon Cerebrum servers in our UK office in London and we’ve installed an Axon Cerebrum system at the OB, and that allows everything to join together such as tallies, control networks and switching, so that in the UK we can switch our monitoring feeeds remotely. The Cerebrum is at the heart of it and makes everything work together.” As well as Cerebrum, Timeline is also using Sony 4300 cameras, Calrec audio mixers, and Grass Valley’s GV Matrix.

Getting live racing feeds from Dubai to London can’t be an easy feat. How does the production team deal with latency? “There is a delay, and it’s all to do with the speed of light,” explains McDonnell. “In the UK even if your OB is only 400 miles away there’s a negligible delay of a few

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milliseconds. Going to Dubai is about a three frame delay, about 120 milliseconds. So, there is a delay but it’s pretty small. We’ve found that if it’s just a few frames delay, then then you can work with that.”

Timeline has been using remote production for quite some time, particularly for football, where they’ve been using the technology for the past two years. “When the first lockdown happened, the remote production technology allowed us to keep BT Sport on air. We were doing programmes from people’s homes, we had to when full lockdown came in. And we carried on broadcasting all the way through it in that manner. Now we’ve used all of the techniques to switch major OBs like the racing in Dubai and football over to remote production. From that point of view it’s really driven the ambitions of what can be done a lot further,” says McDonnell.

Once we finally get out of this pandemic, whenever that will be, does McDonnell intend for Timeline to continue using its hybrid solution? “That is a really good question!” he laughs. “When there was an air corridor with Dubai it was easier to go back to the traditional model. But as we’re trying to limit everyone’s travel, and I don’t really want to put my staff onto planes where we don’t have to, we are continuing to work with this model.

“It’s a journey we were going on anyway, albeit a lot slower before Covid, but actually I can’t see us now returning to our traditional model for OBs like this because we’re saving so much money just in the flights and accommodation and people’s time. I can’t see it going back to the full, old fashioned way of doing it.” n

Above and bottom: On location at the racetrack in Dubai

“It’s really driven the ambitions of what can be done a lot further” DANIEL MCDONNELL

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PRODUCTION AND POST

TRACKING THE BUNDESLIGA’S BIGGEST STARS How the German football league is using new technology to distribute tailored and localised content packages to media partners

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D

uring the 2020/21 football season, the Deutsche Fussball Liga (DFL) is trialling new technology to track individual players while they’re on the field.

The automated robotic camera system can be placed anywhere in the ground, but the current trial is set around the halfway line and compromises a Grass Valley LDX C86n 4K with a Fujinon HA18x5.5, and a robot-controlled camera mount on a tripod. The system is controlled by the Nikon/MRMC (Mark Roberts Motion Control)

Polymotion Player software using tracking data supplied by ChyronHego.

In development since 2016, the project has been led by MRMC and Sportscast who agreed to set up a trial at Borussia Dortmund. “MRMC technologies are focused on motion and camera control, which lends itself to remote production by the nature of the technology,” explains Marius Merten, VR/robotic imaging manager for Nikon MRMC. “There is no doubt that the pandemic has seen a natural increase in the use of remote production

PRODUCTION AND POST technology in the broadcast industry, but Polymotion Player is not just a remote production technology. It provides the client with shots a human would not be able to capture manually, and increases the creative possibilities.”

“The robotic camera positions crucially provide angles where a human is physically not able to go safely such as from the roof of the stadium, and therefore provides additional value.”

Robotic Camera can be used as either a tactical standardised product or as a close up/individual player tracking system. Typically, between two and four cameras are deployed simultaneously.

“The system has the capability to install up to 12 camera positions that can be controlled by the software. The system physically moves the camera when tracking its subject and that allows an operator to position the cameras anywhere around the field of play,” explains Merten.

Currently, the feeds are delivered back to the PCR via broadcast IP and satellite, but Merten says 5G will be possible in the future.

Currently, the system is being trialled in the Bundesliga, but could it be employed by other sports? “It’s designed for field-based sports, football, American football, ice hockey, basketball, handball, volleyball, etc. Each sport has its own challenge such as increased speed or smaller pitch geometries.

“If you compare ice hockey with football, it is more challenging due to much higher speeds and accelerations. On the other hand, with ice hockey there are tracking systems which are sensor based and thus more reliable and faster than in football, but Polymotion Player can be configured to work with these different systems.”

Finally, are there plans to continue to develop the trial throughout the football season? “The system is continuously being developed and enhanced, as is the case with all of our broadcast solutions,” states Merten. “We are working closely with Sportcast and DFL to meet any further requirements they will have.” n

Marius Merten

#VB4 40

Remote Production ANALYTICS M O N I TO R ST 2110 ST 2 0 2 2  6 / 7 & N M O S

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CASE STUDY

THE COLLECTV AND WHISPER: A PERFECT TECHNICAL PARTNERSHIP

I

n a time when companies throughout the broadcast sector are under increasing pressure for a growing number of reasons, forging and maintaining relationships is one of the key skills that helps successful ones thrive. A good example is one that has grown between The Collectv, a client-led broadcast services company with a wealth of experience in largescale fast turnaround environments, and broadcast production agency Whisper.

The Collectv and Whisper’s relationship began informally in 2015. Working alongside Sunil Patel, Whisper’s CEO and co-founder, the team at The Collectv would have informal chats about workflows, offering advice and suggestions about how to tackle some of the issues and creative challenges they were facing. This slowly evolved into providing periodic technical support for edit suites and storage systems at Whisper’s premises in Chiswick, London.

The real jump in the relationship came when Whisper won the prestigious Formula One production contract with Channel 4 in 2016. The Collectv already had a number of years of F1 experience under its belt, delivering edit support and media management around the world for some of the numerous broadcasters, so it was a perfect partnership.

“Very few people that we have come across work at the pace that Sunil works,” says Chris Sarson, MD of The Collectv. “The time between being made aware of the Formula One project to getting the equipment built and up and running for the production to start was only a handful of weeks. Sunil put complete faith in us to deliver what Whisper’s production team needed and once the spec was agreed, left us to it whilst still across the detail. He empowers us to do what we’re good at, which means he can focus on the rest of the business.”

The Collectv worked with Presteigne Broadcast Hire on Formula One to deliver the edit systems, storage, and EVS integration for Whisper, and also provided remote technical support, which was a first for the team. Meanwhile Whisper’s F1 team had moved into a new office, almost overnight, and The Collectv supplied over 300TB of nearline storage and 200TB of edit

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storage, generally based around QNAP and GB Labs Space products.

“This storage initially had to go in the middle of the office, and I recall the noise it made, which perhaps wasn’t the most conducive to a production team hurriedly getting ready for the start of an F1 season!” says Sarson.

“However, as usual, Whisper had a plan, and a move to their current premises in Kew was already afoot.”

“One of The Collectv’s real benefits is that we’re completely independent but have excellent relationships with a number of manufacturers and resellers, largely due to the number of high profile clients and productions we have worked on and previous purchases this has involved,” explains Soraya Robertson, commercial director for The Collectv. “This means clients, like Whisper, can get a completely unbiased opinion and solution when they’re looking to expand their technical facilities. For example, it made sense for that first F1 season to come to an arrangement with Whisper that meant they owned all of the UK-based edit hardware, but all of the EVS systems were purchased by us and rented to them for the duration of the F1 season.”

Whisper brought The Collectv into the office move to Kew at the earliest possible point, which gave the best

Above right and below: The Whisper team on location

CASE STUDY

chance of a stress-free process. The Collectv designed and built all of the broadcast infrastructure within the new facility, which initially started as seven main edit suites, dual racks, and multiple desktop edit and nearline storage systems.

“At this point Whisper took out an annual support agreement with us, while soon after also hiring Ed Veglio as its in-house post production manager. This gives Whisper the best of both worlds. It has Ed and his edit assistants on the ground, managing all of the day to day and operational duties. But, as and when technical issues arise, we are on hand via our support system to help diagnose, fix and replace any issue. We regularly offer advice and consultation as part of that, whether it’s pitching on new productions or assisting Ed on specific hardware to help build a desired workflow.”

As part of the two companies’ ongoing partnership, on numerous occasions The Collectv has also been able to offer Whisper support by substituting The Collectv’s experienced team, including staff engineers and media managers, from universities, hire companies, and even post and effects houses. Collaborative projects in the past have included the Paralympics, the Race of Champions, the Women’s Super League and FA Cup, as well as various press and advertising shoots. And those have continued even in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. “2020 was a challenging year for many of our productions, but our work with Whisper feels like

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business as usual. We’ve undertaken multiple projects for them, some of which give strong hints for their intentions for future years, which we hope to still be a part of,” says Sarson.

Through the last half of 2020, Whisper pushed further into entertainment and had its first few productions running on Avid. The Collectv has a large stock of Adobe and Avid systems for hire so was only too happy to help with providing storage, switches, and licensing to get these high-calibre productions through the door.

“Sitting alongside this and with the obvious amount of remote work we’re now all doing, we have just managed to slip in a new Signiant server build and installation to help their workflows move even more fluidly,” Sarson continues.

The Collectv was also responsible for procuring and installing 480TB of 7fivefive NAS edit storage for Whisper’s most recent expansion, both in programming and physical edit suites, as well as redesigning and rewiring the technical racks. This was followed by the purchase of a nearline system for Whisper’s regional offices, which was configured off-site and then delivered directly by Collectv staff.

“Whisper’s continued rate of expansion means nothing stays still for long and the changes and updates over the last four years meant we needed to overhaul the power to ensure safe and reliable running of any further additional equipment,” concludes Robertson. n

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TECHNOLOGY

THE VERY REAL ENGINE POWERING REMOTE PRODUCTION Since the debut of Disney Plus’ The Mandalorian it seems everyone is jumping aboard the virtual production speeder bikes. Many productions are employing Unreal Engine from Epic Games as the backbone of their technology. Jenny Priestley talks to Ben Lumsden, business development manager at Epic Games, about the software’s growing popularity

HOW LONG HAS UNREAL ENGINE BEEN WORKING WITH VIRTUAL PRODUCTION? It’s important to make a distinction between incamera visual effects, and other forms of virtual production. Unreal Engine has been set up to do all sorts of forms of virtual production for about eight years, but it just keeps getting better and better at accommodating film, TV, and animation workflows.

The culmination of these improvements can be seen in the rise of interest in in-camera visual effects.

In-camera VFX for this kind of production uses massive LED screens and a tracked camera to create a stage volume, while rendering the perspective of that camera through Unreal Engine scenes playing out across multiple LED panels. Epic Games was part of an active R&D effort in developing the workflow for season one of Disney Plus’s The Mandalorian along with ILM and Magnopus to help realise Jon Favreau’s ambitious vision for the show. Many new features evolved from that R&D effort that are now available to all users in the main branch of Unreal Engine.

WAS IT ALWAYS THE PLAN FOR UNREAL ENGINE TO BE USED IN FILM AND TV PRODUCTIONS, OR HAS THAT SURPRISED YOU? It hasn’t surprised me because that’s why I joined Epic Games from the visual effects industry. Kim Libreri also joined Epic Games eight years ago and continues to drive the use of Unreal Engine in film and television. Kim was the visual effects supervisor on The Matrix trilogy, and worked on many other films before becoming the CTO of Lucasfilm prior to joining Epic. There are many incredibly talented people from the film, animation and visual effects industry who have also joined Epic Games since, and the use of Unreal Engine in all forms of production is a priority at the company.

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There have been many uses of Unreal Engine in film production over the years. One of the earliest and most prophetic uses was on Steven Spielberg’s A.I. in 2001, where an early version of Unreal Engine was used to plan out Rouge City scenes that were recreated as a game, allowing Spielberg to work out camera angles and movements in advance. One of the first times Unreal Engine shots were seen on screen in a major motion picture was in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in 2016. My personal favourite was a full length feature film produced out of Pakistan called Allahyar and the Legend of Markhor that was created entirely in Engine.

YOU RELEASED A NEW UPDATE IN DECEMBER, HOW DOES THAT IMPACT WHAT UNREAL IS ABLE TO DO WITH VIRTUAL PRODUCTIONS? We’ve made significant improvements to so many essential production features. One of the most important updates for incamera VFX is nDisplay which allows for rendering across multiple displays, concurrently and in synchronicity. There’s also a whole new hair and fur system, along with the release of an incredible sample project called Meerkat produced by Weta to battle test the feature.

There are also a host of other enhancements in Unreal Engine 4.26 like Movie Render Queue, Animation in Sequencer, Remote Control API, and improvements to the Chaos physics system that our customers in VFX and animation are putting to use.

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT ANY OTHER PRODUCTIONS THAT THE UNREAL ENGINE TEAM HAVE BEEN INVOLVED WITH? Unreal Engine is an advanced real-time 3D tool, and our engineers focus on developing that technology, so as a company we typically don’t get involved in productions. On the publishing side of the

TECHNOLOGY

Germany’s LAVALabs uses Unreal Engine in its Virtual Production Studio

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TECHNOLOGY

Oxfordshire’s Rebellion Film Studios

business, Epic Games has created Fortnite, and many of our Unreal Engine features are tested and put to use both in-game and in the creation of cinematic productions. In the case of The Mandalorian, Favreau’s vision for in-camera VFX aligned with where our virtual production R&D efforts were headed so the alignment made sense, and the features developed for that project are now integrated into Unreal Engine for all users to access. Many of our Unreal Engine licensees have used the technology on countless productions in many different ways. From Westworld, to HBO’s Run, and Welcome to Marwen to extensive use in previs and production design for projects such as John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, His Dark Materials for virtual scouting, Game of Thrones and more.

There is also a ton of Unreal Engine being used in live broadcast and XR production, in particular for performance-driven shows such as America’s Got Talent, the MTV Music Awards, Karate Combat, news programming for The Weather Channel, and countless others.

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR 2021? WILL THERE BE NEW FEATURES, OR EVEN UNREAL ENGINE 5.0?

Epic will continue to roll out improvements to the Unreal throughout the year. The big news down the line in 2021 will be Unreal Engine 5. There

are very exciting developments on that front. The biggest shift will be with the release of Nanite, virtualised micropolygon geometry which will free artists to use feature film assets across all applications, from mobile, to games, to VR experiences, and more. In typical productions assets have to be recreated in multiple versions depending on the use, but Nanite will truly allow for the success of the whole transmedia phenomenon, where high-fidelity assets could be used across all delivery mediums. Stay tuned for much more to come from the Unreal Engine team at Epic this year!

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE FUTURE FOR VIRTUAL PRODUCTION? COULD IT REPLACE ON-LOCATION FILMING COMPLETELY? Virtual production won’t replace on location filming anytime soon.

Use of virtual production workflows such as in-camera VFX, remote multi-user collaboration and virtual location scouting have certainly been accelerated due to the pandemic on projects that otherwise might have taken more traditional production paths. Plus, there are so many different kinds of virtual production. I have an affinity for performance capture, and I believe that making films and television series that way will grow because of the democratisation of tools.

“The gamification of production will have a profound impact on people’s creativity and the way they tell stories” 56 | TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021

TECHNOLOGY

“Virtual production won’t replace on location filming anytime soon” There is also previs, techvis, postvis, all of which are becoming much more prevalent. People are using these more and more in production, whether it’s art departments, location scouting, or building scenes virtually ahead of time to maximise efficiency for when crews go on set. There are also extended reality or xR stages, and live events and live broadcast uses where you have similar technologies being used in a live transmission scenario and, when the pandemic is over, for live event productions as well.

HAVE YOU SEEN AN UPTICK IN INTEREST DUE TO THE PANDEMIC? Absolutely, there’s one show that I know of that was supposed to film in five European countries but instead went to one and shot on an LED stage. The crew didn’t have to isolate each time they changed locations, and were able to use photo real assets from Quixel (a company within the Epic Games family) to simulate environments of each location they wanted to shoot. As a result of the pandemic there has not only been an increase in interest but there’s been an overall pause in the production industry. So we’re also seeing a massive rise in interest from filmmakers, creators and visual effects and animation professionals to understand real time workflows, and learn how to use Unreal Engine. In response we kicked off the Unreal Fellowship where we offered a full-time course with fantastic teachers and an

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incredible calibre of students to gain the training that is in such high demand by every studio at the moment.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ARE THE TECHNOLOGIES OR TRENDS THAT ARE GOING TO HAVE THE MOST PROFOUND IMPACT IN YOUR FIELD IN THE COMING YEARS, AND WHY? The gamification of production will have a profound impact on people’s creativity and the way they tell stories. If you want to shoot a car chase, you can actually build a drivable car and the director or cinematographer can play it with a game controller to create an action sequence. Then they can shoot with a virtual camera on top of the scene they’ve created.

The other big change driver is the democratisation of all of these virtual production tools. From cheaper hardware to more accessible mocap systems and using mobile phones for facial capture with tools like our Unreal Engine Live Link Face app to digitally puppeteer a character. The virtual camera has traditionally only been in the purview of the highest resourced directors – Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, etc – and now this technology is readily accessible and creators in their homes the world over are starting to dabble in virtual production. This will lead to a greater diversity of voices telling more interesting stories, and it’s a very exciting time! n

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TECHNOLOGY

ACCELERATING REMOTE PRODUCTION WITH NEXT-GEN TOOLS

By Russell Wise, SVP sales and marketing, Digital Nirvana

E

ven before the unprecedented events of 2020, viewers’ insatiable appetite for content was at an all-time high. With no shortage of viewing outlets, media companies have struggled to meet this demand and deliver large volumes of compelling, high-quality content for many different markets and distribution channels.

Enter Covid-19, which has turned the media industry on its head.

Viewer demand has accelerated, and the challenge to produce content has been compounded by new requirements to restrict in-person contact and to collaborate remotely. Tools for remote production and cloud-based collaboration have been evolving and maturing in recent years, but – almost overnight – they have assumed critical importance.

Well before the pandemic, advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools were beginning to transform virtually every aspect of content creation and distribution, bringing new levels of accuracy, efficiency, compliance, and cost savings to media operations. And now, AI-based tools delivered in the cloud facilitate a broad range of small tasks throughout the content lifecycle, from acquisition and contribution to post production and then final distribution on various platforms.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some use cases for AI tools in the

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cloud that can drive content production from any location, enabling remote collaboration by geographically dispersed teams.

CONTENT ENRICHMENT By identifying important details about a piece of content (the metadata) and learning systematically about the content the metadata represents, AI-based solutions can automate the process of capturing metadata for large volumes of existing assets. In this manner, these technologies replace burdensome manual processes and save high-value staff members from countless hours of tedious work.

Likewise, media companies can use AI to index any incoming feed so that metadata already exists before the content even enters the primary system. In either case, having more – and more accurate – metadata speeds up the search process and accelerates content creation for faster delivery of programmes to air.

REPURPOSING AND LOCALISATION Even in the best of times, media companies place a high value on their ability to repurpose and monetise their vast libraries of existing content; for instance, the ability to localise it for a new audience in another country. Once assets in the repository are enriched with metadata, it’s

TECHNOLOGY

easy for media companies to repurpose them. For instance, they can use AI to localise content for different markets. An AI-driven speech-to-text engine can translate content into secondary languages, generate captions within seconds, and import existing caption files from legacy content for translation and multilingual distribution.

review, saving valuable time. Likewise, AI can automatically quantify logo insertions, product placements, brand mentions, or even the number of times a given person appeared within a broadcast; verifying that ads and other sponsor elements aired as contracted and per the advertiser’s specifications.

QUALITY ASSURANCE AND COMPLIANCE On the far end of the production chain lies content distribution.

With AI-based tools, broadcasters can run instant checks on content to confirm that it complies with each delivery platform’s specific requirements, including multi-language transcriptions and compliant closed captions. Also, broadcasters can assure compliance with their internal standards and local government regulations for caption quality and accuracy.

IN CONCLUSION AI and ML technologies continue to grow in sophistication, accuracy, and ease of use, enabling media companies to create compelling and compliant content faster and easier than ever; even in these times, remote production workflows are imperative. Excellent news for broadcasters is the growth of turnkey platforms that enable them to harness AI’s power. For instance, some products allow users to upload any media through a portal to a cloud-based system. Once the content is there, the system essentially does all the work: transcription, translation, captioning, and monitoring. Users can set up presets to publish captions in the format required by the distribution platform.

With AI tools automating and accelerating remote content creation workflows, team members are the real winners. With mundane tasks reduced or eliminated, high-value creatives can focus on what they do best: creating memorable content. n

MONITORING AI-powered compliance monitoring and logging tools can also play a critical role in preventing the broadcast of language or images that do not meet local standards for decency, nudity, and other culturally sensitive elements. AI engines such as image and speech recognition can continuously monitor and automatically flag questionable content for

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TECHNOLOGY

2021 – GET REMOTE, UNDER CONTROL

By Greg Hoskin, managing director, EMEA and APAC, Signiant, in an extract from his contribution to TVBEurope’s 2021 MediaTech Outlook report, available now

O

ne of the challenges in the media and entertainment industry is that it’s just not that easy to ‘take your work home with you’. And so, in 2020, when the world went remote, media businesses that were unable to quickly and easily empower their employees to work remotely found themselves at a disadvantage as they scrambled and struggled to keep content flowing. In 2021, media executives from across the industry continue to report that a key focus for their teams is to ‘shore up’ their remote workflows to better prepare for whatever lies ahead.

This includes a significant review of their tech stacks and a hard look to ensure that they have the right tools for the jobs at hand.

Our industry requires solutions that are designed for our unique requirements. Here, we share what our customers tell us about their needs for remote work and remote collaboration in media.

THE NEED FOR SPEED Our high-pressure industry requires teams to move masses of content as quickly as possible to meet tight deadlines. The more diffuse your workforce is, the more important speed becomes. Whether you are sending files back and forth to each other or accessing shared files on remote storage, ensuring that content gets where it needs to go as quickly as possible is mission critical.

BIG FILES CREATE BIG CHALLENGES As files continue to get bigger, tools with file size limits are nonstarters. As such, services like Dropbox and SharePoint that work well in other industries simply will not support the workflows that our industry must complete. The power of remote work ultimately lies in its flexibility, and the idea that teams would be limited simply because of file size almost entirely defeats the purpose.

CREATING EFFICIENCIES WITHIN TEAMS, INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY Because administrators, operations personnel, and IT professionals manage dispersed workforces, intuitive, easy-to-manage and easyto-delegate, centralised administrative features are fundamental to ensuring that remote teams can achieve success. Day-to-day operations such as adding and removing users, customising the experience, setting up alerts and running reports need to be done remotely and without IT intervention.

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MAINTAINING CONTROL OF YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSETS Being able to confidently control where your content is stored is a major part of making remote access strategies work. Whilst some file sharing tools such as Dropbox force businesses to use storage that they own and operate, solutions that offer storage independence allow organisations to decide whether their files will live in the cloud, on-prem, or across a hybrid storage architecture. But most importantly, those valuable assets will always be in your storage and under your full control.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE CLOUD As the world went remote in 2020, Signiant saw a more than 230 per cent increase in data moving into and out of cloud storage on Media Shuttle. For many looking to build a supportive remote infrastructure, cloud storage has become an invaluable resource. Whilst storage independence is paramount, cloud storage offers IT teams the ability to spin up the storage they need, immediately and without ever setting foot in the office.

PROTECTING ASSETS AND REPUTATIONS Perhaps robust security is the most obvious and important thing that remote collaboration and file sharing solutions should provide. The need for defense-in-depth, enterprise-grade security in any solution you select allows you to indulge all of the incredible benefits of remote access whilst also ensuring that no unauthorised access occurs.

KEEPING MEDIA ON THE MOVE The industry isn’t showing signs of going back to where we were before but rather focusing on shoring up those remote workflows, making them more permanent and more scalable by turning to enterprise-grade SaaS solutions like Media Shuttle that can adapt quickly as business demands evolve. As we all look forward to getting back to some level of normalcy in 2021, it does not appear that remote work is a trend that is going away. n

THE FINAL WORD

THE FINAL WORD

From coding on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum to why video may be the highest form of communication, Dr Andrew Cross, president of Research & Development at the Vizrt Group has plenty to say in this month’s Final Word

How did you get started in the media tech industry?

I started coding on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum when I was ten. My interest was in 3D graphics and you could only ever draw lines back then, but drawing lines was about all you could do and there certainly were no graphics in the way we would define it today. But even then, it was always what fascinated me. While I was working on my PhD, I worked on plugins in the evenings for 3D software applications and I started selling those. Through that work, I ended up meeting Tim Jenison which is how I got to NewTek and, eventually, to the Vizrt Group.

How has the industry changed since you started your career?

Our industry has changed beyond all recognition. When I went to my very first NAB for NewTek (just months after I started and I had no idea what was going on), people looked at what we were doing – trying to make real-time video switchers on computers – and thought there must have been something wrong with us. Back then computers were

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used for playing basic computer games and the idea that one might be using them to create TV seemed crazy. Although everyone was probably polite, it was clear that most people thought we just didn’t understand the needs of the market.

Today, everyone is talking about production with software, computers, and networks as an accepted way to work. That has been the primary, fundamental shift since I started out. It has gone from being something that couldn’t be considered to something that everybody now just assumes is the right way going forward. I hope that what we played a little bit in helping shape this direction.

What makes you passionate about working in the industry?

I love graphics and making images with computers. Indeed, even if we did not have a single customer then I would still find it just as fascinating. I am lucky that what we do in our industry has got to be one of the most fun things there is. It is amazing to think that we are taking technologies like CPUs and GPUs that are designed for

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THE FINAL WORD playing computer games and we are using them to make tools that serve the broadcast industry.

Humans evolved with our eyes as our primary form of communication before language and speech really developed. It points to seeing things that convey information. Something we often lose sight of as an industry is that video may likely be the highest form of human communication. We are all building tools to serve that need and allowing the world to make and tell their story with video, from kids in schools right the way up to the largest broadcasters. What could be more amazing than that?

Where do you think the industry will go next?

The industry is clearly going up against its greatest competitor: social media. This is because content that is more personal to people is always going to win out and we need to learn from this. We need to make content that is not just for TV, but is accessible everywhere in different formats, on more devices, different show lengths and all in a way that is more personally relevant to people. If we don’t do that, people will go and find media that is more relevant to them, and if they do then we will face the same challenge that traditional printed media did when the internet came along and created thousands of blogs for every interest.

If you could change one thing about the media tech industry, what would it be?

Our industry spends far too much time focusing on things that have got nothing to do with what audiences really care about. Our audiences want to be told great stories, watch great shows and sports games that matter to them. As an industry we spend far too much time talking about whether uncompressed video is right, what colour space we’re going to use, etc., instead of how to make the shows better, and whether somebody watching a show thinks that it looks and feels great.

We’re seeing new generations of producers who never thought about the technology itself. Instead, they made a show on YouTube and suddenly found that they have a million viewers. We should be scared by the fact that a talented teenager can make a show that can engage as many as a multi-million dollar TV studio.

What’s the biggest topic of discussion in your area of the industry?

The cloud is a big area of discussion and while it is very important in many ways, we also need to think hard about the bigger picture of why we are talking about it. The biggest topics of discussion at the highest level ought to be around software production and IP, and in particular moving video around over IP. Once you move to those technologies then where it runs is almost secondary with cloud, remote trucks, or on-prem studios all being possible.

The things holding TV stations back from moving their video into the cloud is making sure the video can end up easily and reliably in the cloud, and then back down on-premise without problems. Those are challenges that are not completely solved yet but are being worked on by people like us. I think those are problems that will be solved within five years.

At that point, the transformation of the industry will largely be complete. It will be one that’s software- and computer-based, whether that is in the cloud or on-prem.

How inclusive do you think the industry is? And how can we make it more inclusive?

Vizrt Group’s R&D department has roughly 50 different nationalities represented in its workforce. We also work to ensure we are recruiting and hiring in a way that encourages diversity in different roles across our entire group. We believe that this makes us stronger and we want to play our part in helping improve this.

The answer to doing it is to create a workplace that is welcoming to everyone and recruit people who have different backgrounds and experiences into all our positions, including leadership.

How do we encourage young people that media technology is the career for them?

I don’t think we need to encourage young people. I think the kids of today are doing it better than we are! It is us who should be learning from a whole new generation because they are focused on making content and shows that their peers want to watch, and they are doing the experimentation in the market that we should be learning from.

What should the industry be talking about that it isn’t at the moment?

We should be talking more about the content, about the stories, about people making great shows and making them visible to other people.

How do we produce better looking shows that require fewer people to make them and make it so that anyone can do it? This is important, because our competition is a kid who worked out how to do it on his own in his bedroom and got a million viewers while we are sitting in a multi-million dollar studio with 20 or 30 people needed to produce a show. This is not sustainable, unless we work out how to make the process of making more content for more places easier, quicker, and cheaper. Software, computers, and networks will enable this, but we need to recognise that we can be beaten by the kid making their own shows and commit to changing the way we think and work. n

“We should be scared by the fact that a talented teenager can make a show that can engage as many as a multi-million dollar TV studio” 62 | TVBEUROPE FEBRUARY 2021

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