TV Technology - 0454 - October 2020

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OCTOBER 2020

BROADCAST • PRODUCTION • BROADBAND • SATELLITE • MOBILE

➤ Beyond Broadcast

Exploring NextGen TV business opportunities —page 18

➤ Inside Audio Open mics are everywhere these days —page 26

➤ Equipment Guide

Connecting TV News During a Pandemic Six months in, how has IP performed?

BY DAN SLENTZ MIAMI BEACH, Fla.—The year 2020 has forced many changes on TV broadcasters—one of the most visible has been through electronic newsgathering. With more sources stuck at home, broadcasters have increased their use of Zoom, WebEx, Skype and other consumer-grade Wi-Fi video conferencing services to help deliver the news.

Although broadcasters have used these services in the past, their use was certainly not as ubiquitous as what is seen today. Six months ago, broadcasters had the luxury of considering these services “sub-par quality” for professional TV news CONNECTING, PAGE 10

Cloud Solutions —pages 28–32

Matt Groeteke, news operations manager at KTLA

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IN THIS ISSUE

3

www.tvtechnology.com TV TECHNOLOGY October 2020

TUNE IN TO TVTECHNOLOGY.COM For the latest information on our industry’s virtual events, visit our Resources section.

OCTOBER 2020 ➤ TVTECHNOLOGY.COM ➤ VOLUME 38, ISSUE 10

NEWS

INSIGHT

1

Connecting TV News During a Pandemic Six months in, how has IP performed?

26

It’s Open Mic Night Inside Audio, Dennis Baxter

12

Furniture Vendors Focus on Protection Whether broadcasting from the studio or at home, the ergonomics haven’t changed

27

Mixing Lighting Technology Lighting Technology, Julia Swain

16

Remote, OTT Driving T&M Trends Demand for remote was strong even before the pandemic

18

ATSC 3.0: It’s Not Just for Broadcasting Sinclair, ONE Media 3.0 lead discussion on how standard can attract new markets

20

Lensmakers Focus on Focus, Lighter Weight More high-resolution content, lighter weight equipment guide tech development

22

Data Becomes More Critical to Compliance Explosion of distribution channels can complicate the process

EQUIPMENT EQUIPMENT GUIDE 28

User Reports—Cloud Solutions PlayBox NEO, LiveU, Telestream, Signiant

24-25 Marketplace 32

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4 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

GUEST EDITORIAL

Reimagining SMPTE A

lmost exactly two years ago, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers announced completion of a strategic business plan to guide the Society in becoming an even more valuable resource for individuals and organizations within the media and entertainment indus4BARBARA try. We re-examined our guiding principles, LANGE vision, mission and value propositions and EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR refined them to emphasize the Society’s role OF SMPTE AND HPA as a global organization and stress its ongoing commitment to being inclusive and objective.

Using this strategic business plan as a foundation, we are transforming every element of SMPTE to meet the changing needs of technology professionals in the digital media industry. This is the essence of an initiative we launched to reimagine what today’s SMPTE can be for its members and for the industry. We’ve spent the past year working behind the scenes to begin this change, an evolutionary rather than revolutionary redefinition of the way we do business.

With its public launch on Oct. 1, SMPTE’s reimagined identity introduces the first and most obvious signs of changes: dramatic redesigns of our logo, website and the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, as well as this year’s virtual annual technical conference.

The new logo is just the third used over the Society’s 100+ years, and we feel that, with its updated typeface and iconic camera iris graphic using the renowned SMPTE Color Bar colors, it represents our history and our future.

The website features our new logo, a new look and a more inviting user experience. Equally or more important, the site offers our members more convenient access to relevant, timely and useful information and educational material. Over time, we will continue to expand this offering and the utility of smpte.org to our membership.

On a deeper level, we’re also transforming the Society to ensure our members benefit fully from the tools, expertise, educational offerings and rich network of colleagues that SMPTE provides.

In terms of standards, this means being more nimble and responsive as we keep pace with quickly changing media technologies, creative techniques and business models. We’re focusing on many more software-oriented standards, and we’re

Congratulations to Recipients of the 2020 TV Technology Best of Show AwardsFall Virtual Edition!

“We had a terrific turnout considering the virtual nature of the current trade show environment, which is fantastic because it’s important that product development and innovation continues to receive the visibility it deserves despite the lack of physical events,” said Future B2B group content director, James McKeown.

“Every year the level of entries goes up a gear and 2020 is no exception.”

A special digital supplement featuring all of the nominated products for this year’s awards is available at tvtechnology.com under the “Resources” menu tab.

using more software-based tools to manage and streamline standardization. While we maintain a rigorous standards development process, we’re also introducing other models by which members and the public at large can contribute to various standards-like documents.

With respect to membership—and our engagement with the industry as a whole—we’re developing plans to promote greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. We hope you already see evidence of these efforts, and we will continue to amplify the talents of a broader spectrum of media technology professionals of every nationality, race, gender, and career stage. We’ve taken a first step by being the first standards body to remove the use of offensive terminology within our standardization program.

Taking a broader look at our membership, we consider SMPTE to be a society of and for media professionals,

technologists and engineers. (Yes, “SMPTE.”) This means that we will continue to fulfill the needs of our core group of traditional engineers, who may require deep dives into specific technologies, as well as the needs of a burgeoning group of creative technologists whose work relies on a solid understanding of technology fundamentals.

Being responsible for standards development, SMPTE always has excelled in providing education and training around standards-related topics and technologies. Education is at our core, engaging thousands of industry professionals with our webcasts and online classes. Moving forward, we’re expanding that offering with foundational courses to address the needs of creative technologists and better serve newer members of our community.

Although the pandemic accelerated our plans for delivering programming virtually, we are proud that this year’s annual technical conference—SMPTE 2020: “Game On, Nov. 10-12—will be the most accessible SMPTE conference yet. Technical presentations, educational sessions, exhibits and networking opportunities will be available to members around the world, and we’ve created special pricing options to ensure that cost isn’t a barrier for any participant, whether student or professional.

We hope you’ll join us online or at SMPTE 2020 to see how the Society can support you in a successful career!

Here’s this year’s winners: Adobe - Roto Brush 2 in After Effects; Scene Edit Detection in Premiere Pro Amazon Web Services (AWS) - AWS Elemental Link Bridge Technologies - Bridge PoE (Power over Ethernet) Instrument View Kit Creamsource - Vortex8 Dejero - Dejero CuePoint 50 compact return feed server disguise - disguise Extended Reality (xR) Eluvio - Eluvio Content Fabric Interra Systems - BATON LipSync Automatic Audio-Video Sync Detection Net Insight - Nimbra Edge NewTek - TriCaster 2 Elite OWNZONES Entertainment Technologies - OWNZONES’ Deep Analysis Ross Video - Ross Graphite PPC (Portable Production Centre) Synamedia - Media Edge Gateway Telestream - Telestream Inspect 2110 - IP Video Monitoring TVU Networks - TVU Partyline Wheatstone - Remote Dimension Three Touch Mixer

TVTechnology TVTechnology Vol. 38 No. 10

October 2020

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6 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

IN THE NEWS ➤ FOR MORE INSIGHT AND INNOVATION VISIT TVTECHNOLOGY.COM

Miller Lite’s ‘Cantenna’ Matches Beer With OTA TV CHICAGO—Miller Lite, antenna maker? The beer company has announced what it calls the “Cantenna,” a reception device—and beer—that is meant to offer cordcutters and cord-nevers access to NFL game broadcasts from local over-the-air channels as an alternative to illegal streaming.

Miller isn’t planning on entering the antenna industry, however. Cantenna is a promotional offer, with those 21 and older able to enter (millerlite.com) into a sweepstakes

by Oct. 12 to win their own Cantenna.

Ann Marie Cumming, senior vice president of communications for NAB, offered her thoughts on this unique antenna hybrid to Marketing Daily: “I can’t speak to the functionality of the beer can TV antenna, but I do concur with the campaign that

Syncback’s VUit Boosts Local TV Stations’ OTT Presence NEW YORK—Synback’s VUit, which launched in September, is a free, ad-supported streaming service that aims to be “the Netflix of live, local and free” TV.

VUit features more than 200 TV stations owned by Gray Television, Meredith Corp., Cowles Media Co., Heritage Broadcasting Group and Morgan Murphy Media. In addition to live programming from these stations, VUit offers its own “VUit Originals” content, as well as themed channels.

“VUit is grassroots up, enabling viewers to see what is happening in every community,” said Jack Perry, CEO and founder of Syncback. “The way we see it, VUit is the perfect complement to binge culture. After you binge, you come to VUit to enjoy the best of local news, sports and culture from anywhere you want.”

VUit is available on major streaming platforms and devices, including iOS and Android devices, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and more.

Michael Balderston

Cable Guru Paul Kagan Dies WASHINGTON—Paul Kagan, founder of Paul Kagan Associates and cable business guru, died on Aug. 23 at the age of 82.

over-the-air television offers exceptional picture quality for free.

That’s a value that can’t be beaten!”

Michael Balderston

8K Association Debuts 8K Educational Website BERLIN—The 8K Association has launched a new website with the specific purpose of educating consumers about the benefits of 8K displays and content, Discover8K.com.

Discover8K.com offers tools and news aimed at helping consumers learn about the 8K ecosystem and the latest advances in displays, cameras and home entertainment. Things covered include the list of TVs that meet 8KA’s performance standards, information on current and upcoming sources of 8K content, details like ideal screen sizes and seating distances for viewing 8K content, technology behind 8K upscaling and general 8K news.

“Consumers who understand the benefits of 8K ultra-sharp bigscreen displays, finely detailed 8K gaming and the power of immersive 8K video are going to speed the transition to 8K,” said Aaron Dew, 8KA Marketing Work Group chair. “That’s why the 8K Association launched the new Discover8K.com website to help educate consumers on all the benefits of enjoying big-screen 8K entertainment at home.”

Michael Balderston

Kagan founded Paul Kagan Associates in 1969 and was the first analyst to value cable companies based on multiples of cash flow, which proved to be the most accurate way for tracking the then-fledgling industry. After a handful of sales, Paul Kagan Associates continues today as Kagan, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Kagan entered The Cable Center Hall of Fame in 2011 and was co-founder and director of The Cable Center.

He was also a co-founder and Director Emeritus of the John Bayliss Broadcast Foundation, and a member of the Media Analysts Group of New York.

He is survived by his wife of 62 years Florrie, daughters Melanie (Ross) Canter, Linda (Ron) Cosmero and grandchildren Mia Canter, Gabe Canter and Matthew Cosmero.

Mike Farrell

8 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

IN THE NEWS

NAB: Digital Giants Put Local IBC Gives Its Highest Award to Broadcasting at Disadvantage ‘News Organizations of the World’ for Advertising WASHINGTON—When it comes to the current advertising market, local TV and radio stations are at a competitive disadvantage compared to digital technology powerhouses like Google, Facebook and YouTube, according to comments from NAB President and CEO Gordon Smith.

Smith’s comments are to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law. In his comments he also said that these digital powerhouses can impede broadcasters’ ability to effectively monetize their own content online.

“The massive shift in advertising to other platforms has profoundly affected local broadcasters,” said Smith. “Stations in mid-sized and small markets with limited economic bases have been disproportionately impacted because any significant loss of revenue has an outsized effect on their ability to pay the largely fixed costs required to operate and to produce or acquire news and other programming.”

Smith also noted how broadcasters often have little power in negotiating with digital companies in monetizing their content online. Meanwhile, advertising policies can negatively impact broadcasters’ news programming.

In his comments, Smith offered his support for the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in front of Congress that would allow broadcasters to collectively negotiate with digital platforms on distribution of their content online.

Michael Balderston

LONDON—For the first time in its history, IBC presented its highest award, the International Honour for Excellence, not to a single individual or organization but to the news broadcasters of the world. The award recognizes the key role journalists have played in educating and informing audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, while operating under extremely challenging conditions.

Michael Crimp, chief executive of IBC commented: “The need for investigative journalism to separate fact from rumor has never been greater and the news organizations of the world have been unfailing in their drive to ask the difficult questions. They have delivered clear, accurate and timely information, keeping audiences—even in isolated communities—informed about new regulations and complex science, while facing the same restrictions on travel and social distancing as everyone else.

As the global forum for the broadcast and electronic media industry, it is important that we recognize the excellence that the world’s news organizations have consistently delivered during these challenging times and thank them for their dedication and service.”

IBC has scheduled its 2021 show as an in-person conference, Sept. 10–13.

TVT Staff

HPA Hands Out 2020 SBE’s Ennes Educational Engineering Excellence Awards Foundation Announces Five Scholarship Recipients BURBANK, Calif.—The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Awards Committee announced EIZO, Eluvio, Moxion and Carl Zeiss SBE as the winners of the 2020 HPA Awards for Engineering Excellence.

The HPA Engineering Excellence Award honors outstanding technical and creative ingenuity in media, content production, finishing, distribution and archive.

• EIZO is presented with the award for its Prominence CG3146 31.1-inch HDR monitor with built-in calibration sensor.

• Eluvio is being honored for its pioneering work on a novel video distribution platform to service content providers around the globe.

• Moxion is being recognized for its Immediates, which enable post and production to share and review each other’s footage securely within minutes of creation.

• Carl Zeiss SBE earned its award for its eXtended Data lens metadata technology that amplifies and increases the accuracy of the image capture and processing workflow.

• Honorable mentions have been given to Frame.io and Sohonet for their Camera-to-Cloud and ClearView Flex technologies, respectively.

The 15th HPA Awards will be bestowed on Nov. 19 during a virtual gala.

Phil Kurz

INDIANAPOLIS—The Society of Broadcast Engineers’ Ennes Educational Foundation Trust has awarded five scholarships for 2020.

The Harold E. Ennes Scholarship, Robert D. Greenberg Scholarship, John H. Battison Founder’s Scholarship and newly created Gino Ricciardelli Scholarship are awarded to individuals interested in pursuing or continuing an education in broadcast engineering and technology. The $2,500 Youth Scholarship is specifically for a graduating high school senior interested in broadcast engineering as a career.

Recipients include: • Harold E. Ennes Scholarship—Chris Gamelin, Middletown, Conn.

• Robert D. Greenberg Scholarship—Jon Sanelli, Albertson, N.Y. • John H. Battison SBE Founder’s Scholarship—Ismail Otu, CRO, CTO, Charlotte, N.C. • Gino Ricciardelli Scholarship—Sadie Levy, New York • Youth Scholarship—Isaiah Dickson, Brookhaven, Pa. “We look forward to seeing the great progress of these five budding engineers as they further their education goals with the assistance of the Ennes Educational Foundation Trust,” said SBE President Wayne Pecena.

TVT Staff

10 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

IN THE NEWS CONNECTING CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

(and still are), but the social distancing prompted by the coronavirus pandemic has forced the industry to improvise.

For many others though, the events of this year are only increasing their use of broadcast-quality IP technology from companies like TVU Networks, LiveU, VidOvation/AVIWEST, Dejero, among others. The difference is usually easy to spot since broadcasters recognize the pitfalls of home Wi-Fi setups and streaming technology from screen freezing and tiling to audio degradation or complete audio loss.

‘GOOD ENOUGH’ To try to understand how ENG has been impacted, I reached out to some of the leaders in ENG technology for their feedback. As viewers, we certainly see a lot of non-broadcast video and audio hitting our

TV screens (whether it’s a local station or a national news network). Sometimes this is out of necessity of a last minute interview where the guest is using consumer/ enterprise streaming technology.

It’s also very interesting to see audio and video we’d never accept as “good enough” now being accepted. But technology is adapting to the times and finding new ways to use IP with bonded cellular technology (in addition to Wi-Fi) to create bandwidth that can even allow UHD video in HDR and 60ftp to go this route with as little as a half-second of latency.

Though some broadcasters adopt enterprise-level streaming technology—which can provide up to 1 Gbps connections— this can still only offer 15 fps and at bit rate that depends on how “slammed” the service is at that moment, causing pixilation, jerky video and lip sync for guest remotes.

There are better broadcast-quality IP solutions, and they offer a variety of supportive Rich DeMuro, tech reporter, prepares to go on-air from his home.

Despite Pandemc, KTLA Maintains ‘Broadcast Quality’ Newsgathering LOS ANGELES—When the coronavirus pandemic hit earlier this year, KTLA, the CW affiliate in Los Angeles, News Ops Manager Matt Groeteke had full support from GM Janene Drafs and Jason Ball, vice president of news, helping the staton adapt to the new challenges.

Their response was to keep staff informed with all-hands meetings in both mornings and afternoons.

Fortunately they had a supply of N95 masks (due to California’s frequent wild-fires). The cleaners were harder to come by, so they proportioned out cleaners and gloves in bags to make them last.

More than half of the station’s staff ended up working from home, including sales, writers, producers, special projects, creative services and their anchors and reporters working from home with home broadcast kits.

KTLA newsgathering tools include a combination of TVU, LiveU and Dejero, and they incorporate remote teleprompter use through Dejero’s CuePoint. This allowed anchors and reporters to work with broadcast-quality gear and included critical technology like IFB and prompters. By using a setup that included a six-modem gateway, they were able to ensure a full broadcast frame rate, perfect lip-sync, no tiling or “web meeting quality” drawbacks. Utilizing professional IP-ENG technology meant no noticeable loss of quality.

KTLA’s parent company Nexstar provided full guidance for safety procedures and protocols, and as staff has partially returned, provided increased facility cleaning and plexiglas safety panels to isolate work areas from each other.

A big change to field shoots is when the ENG vehicles are used, the driver/photog and reporter travel separately and when interviewing, boom mics are now used to provide a minimum 6-foot distance. In addition, the trucks are all deep cleaned and sanitized once a week and are well-supplied with masks, gloves, cleaners and face shields.

Dan Slentz

technology including intercom, IFB and even return video teleprompting or confidence monitoring from the field.,and all done with under a half-second of latency in most cases.

According to Jachetta, one large broadcast client has built full IP-based broadcast kits that can be sent out for use by high-profile guests or regular contributors to programs, making them truly “plug and play.”

“The system includes bonded cellular streaming systems that allow excellent bandwidth and high reliability, small PTZ HD robotic cameras that can be controlled remotely [from the control room side] of the broadcast, quality mics, IFB and everything the guest needs,” Jachetta said. “The idea was to

IT’S NOT ALL IP’S FAULT TVU Networks in Mountain View, Calif.—which has been pushing the envelope with IP-based broadcast technology—has seen 500% growth over the past year, according to CEO Paul Shen. Unlike consumer options, TVU for IP runs a broadcast quality signal and locks all signals together, so the signal can be 60p and lip sync is treated as critical (unlike the streaming consumer options).

Shen calls TVU’s connection to the cell system “IS+.”

“IS+ stands for inverse stat-muxing, where we are monitoring the quality of signal and bandwidth of the carriers and adjusting encoding bandwidth as the service may increase or decrease,” Shen said. “If Earlier this year, LiveU issued a “State of Live” report, updating the one carrier drops, we im- industry on how the pandemic has affected demand for IP broadcast technology. mediately adjust to compensate through the other carriers, or make a system that the guest could sit Wi-Fi or the wired connection if they are in front of them, plug it in, then let the also in use. TVU’s systems also easily al- control room make the adjustment and low users to use the cloud to produce put the guest on the air with minimal multiple cameras as a switched experi- involvement by the guest.” ence or to provide a broadcast quality multiviewer image by keeping sync be- ON CUE Matt Groeteke, news operations mantween all feeds.”

The fault of poor quality production ager at KTLA (see sidebar) has a large during the pandemic should not all be fleet of ENG, SNG and EFP vehicles, but laid at the feet of IP technology, though. the pandemic has increased their existWhere Shen sees a weakness is not with ing use of IP ENG technology. The Los technology, but on the “remote side” Angeles CW affiliate uses Dejero’s Gatewhere some may not fully understand Way network aggregation technology to provide reliable IP connectivity and the what defines a “quality shot.”

“Even people wearing the wrong shirt station’s own private network out to the with a pattern that 1080i can’t reproduce field trucks.

The station added Dejero’s CuePoint can be a problem,” Shen said. “Whether it’s a shirt or tie, which doesn’t reproduce well for remote teleprompting and live revia encoding, poor audio quality based on turns from the station to the field to althe lack of a mic to a $15 mic/earphone low studio talent working from home to combo, to simply terrible lighting for TV, have full prompter use for scripts to even all aspects must be considered. The techni- return video of the chroma keyed weathcal quality must be there through the right er map behind the talent. Groeteke says gear, but shot composition and production CuePoint is “simple, reliable and easy to explain to the end-user.” values should also be maintained.”

CuePoint allows the broadcaster to send a link for live teleprompter, pro‘PLUG AND PLAY’ Jim Jachetta, executive vice president gram, weather computer or anything and CTO of VidOvation in Lake Forest, they want from their house router to a Calif., also reports an increase in use of cellphone with as little as 250 ms of latheir systems. VidOvation is the U.S.- tency. This allows their weather people based distributor for the AVIWEST solu- to use the weather systems from home tion for IP-based broadcasting, plus nu- as well (where the station even created merous other equipment offerings.

CONNECTING, PAGE 12

12 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

IN THE NEWS

Furniture Vendors Focus on Protection Whether broadcasting from the studio or at home, the ergonomics haven’t changed

BY KEVIN HILTON LONDON—One of the many unexpected results from the coronavirus crisis is the important role furniture now plays in both enabling people to carry on working away from their offices and helping them to socially distance when they are at their facility. For broadcasters, specialist technical consoles and desks have long provided a comfortable, ergonomic environment for very specific jobs, such as sound mixing, video editing and color grading. Now these are allowing those tasks to be done either safely at work or remotely.

In some ways, however, this necessary but occasionally taken for granted market was already adapting to changing broadcaster requirements. New studios and facilities are smaller than their predecessors. This is due partly to mod-

ern equipment being both more compact and software-based, which enables a large number of functions to be carried out on either dedicated hardware or a laptop computer. There are also likely to be fewer personnel in a control room, although separate, designated areas for audio, lighting and production are still the norm.

BBC Studioworks has put Operator Safety Screens into all its control areas.

CONNECTING CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

a setup with a green screen in one of their meteorologist’s basements).

The KTLA home kits consist of Dejero Engo 260, Sony PXW 400 with tripod, iPad, Nila Varsa Deluxe Light kit and a laptop. Using CuePoint, they stream the teleprompter to the Safari browser on an iPad and route the stream to the Dejero 260 using a Dejero Control panel webpage. The Dejero 260 is connected to the Sony PXW 400 to broadcast the picture back to the station and the HDMI monitor output on the back of the Dejero 260 is connected to an external monitor at the home to broadcast the return video CuePoint feed, in this case, its house program.

PRIMARY DELIVERY IP-based newsgathering has been adopted by all the major news players, according to Sam Wasserman, CEO of LiveU in Hackensack, N.J. In the company’s “State of Live” report, Wasserman says that “for most, IP is the primary delivery of live content now and moving forward. Social distancing, lockdowns and quarantines have increased the need for remote reporting, fueling demand for live streaming, mobile apps and live IP video sharing solutions.”

Like the others, LiveU says it has seen a sharp increase in use of its cloud infrastructure as broadcasters increasingly adopt remote operations.

“It’s rewarding to see how all our equipment, especially our Solo wireless encoder, is being used in many different ways to bring both comfort and information to people who are isolated in their homes with live coverage of virtual events,” Wasserman said.

The company also recently announced a partnership

with Grabyo that combines Grabyo’s cloud-native SaaS platform, providing a range of digital video production and publishing tools such as editing, clipping and highlights, with LiveU’s broadcast-quality live video solutions, ranging from its professional-grade hardware HEVC field units and Solo wireless video encoder to its LU-Smart app for smartphones. This integration is optimized in LiveU’s new LU800 production-grade, multicamera field unit, with its inherent support for remote production workflows.

“The technical quality must be there through the right gear, but shot composition and production values should also be maintained.”

—Paul Shen, TVU Networks “With the growing demand for cloud-based solutions, we see huge benefits for our customers in partnering with Grabyo, an expert in cloud-based video production and editing—especially with the remote production capabilities of the LU800, said Ronen Artman, vice president of marketing for LiveU. “We’re committed to work together to enhance and simplify the content workflow, helping our customers, which include some of the largest broadcasters and media organizations, to create compelling live content from anywhere.”

WHAT ABOUT THE TRUCKS? With the increase in the use of IP making ENG easier and more widespread, what happens with traditional news vehicles?

HYBRID WORK ENVIRONMENTS “There’s certainly been shrinkage in terms of studio and suite size, with less equipment installed,” observes Ryan Haberman, chief executive of Forecast Consoles in Hauppauge, N.Y. “But now [since COVID-19] there is a lot of change and we don’t know exactly where things are going. With some broadcasters we have seen a lot of working from home, collaborating over Zoom calls, but those FURNITURE, PAGE 14

According to Steve Williamson, director of sales for Frontline Communications in Clearwater, Fla., ENG and DSNG trucks are still selling, but are equipped with more IP. “The deployment of Ku-IP has increased over the last few years,” he said, adding that the hybrid technology provides a financial break from the high cost of traditional satellite time and coordinating live shots.

Using IP encoding over satellite allows stations to get connectivity in areas where there is no cell service. With bonded cellular, the availability of a mast to raise those cell antennas can make a great deal of difference as well, since clearing “ground hurdles” and simply being the strongest and clearest signal might mean the difference between a live shot in a congested area or no live shot.

As the pandemic has thrust IP-based communications more into the spotlight, the technology has improved reliability, and systems are now packed with features that didn’t exist with traditional “one-way” ENG and SNG shots. It’s also demonstrated that as the industry migrates more fully to this technology and switches off to cellular carriage, there are some tradeoffs, in particular with cost savings in microwave tower sites and traditional satellite shots, at the expense of new costs in bandwidth usage.

A decade ago when I started using IP-based technology, I threw together a system using 2.5 Gig wireless unlicensed Trango boxes for my 10 Mbps “pipe,” a Slingbox for encoding and a computer with scan converter. We’ve come a long way since then, but the premise remains the same. If you can make pictures or sounds into zeros and ones (digital), there really is no limitation to what you can do with IP. Dan Slentz is chief video engineer, New World Symphony, Miami Beach, Fla.

14 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

IN THE NEWS FURNITURE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12

with larger facilities have been putting people in separate rooms for sound, lighting, direction and so on.”

Jansen Hahn, chief operating officer of TBC Consoles in Edgewood, N.Y., does not think there has been a “seismic shift” in the size and shape of facility spaces and the furniture being requested post-pandemic, merely a faster continuation of what was already happening.

“Open offices were all the rage a couple of years ago but there has been a migration from those to smaller edit suites,” he says. “There has been a lot of talk about how to respond post-pandemic and we’re seeing different approaches.

Some broadcast staff are doing less intensive work at home and then coming into the facility for a day to finish off.

There are fewer people in control rooms and more physical separation between operators.”

Pre-pandemic, Hahn says, there was already a trend towards isolated working areas, particularly in news.

“We were seeing a lot of automation being used and the newsroom staff were

TBC Consoles’ Elevon

working in pods at U-shaped consoles,” he explains. “What has changed now is there is more emphasis on separation between the operators, sometimes with a physical barrier, although partitions are nothing new.” In May, TBC announced a range of partition options to meet social distancing requirements and enable workspaces to be modified.

These can be added to any console in the current TBC range, with transparent flexiglass available to facilitate collaborative working.

SAFETY SCREENS U.K.-based Custom Consoles has similarly been supplying its new Operator Safety Screens to clients for attaching to furniture already installed in facilities.

Among those who have added these partitions are Al Jazeera, Amazon Prime, IMG, QVC and Racing UK. BBC Studioworks has put Operator Safety Screens into all its control areas, including the production gallery for the TC1 studio at Television Centre in west London. The screens have been designed for Cus-

tomer Consoles’ Module-R range but can be fitted to not only other models in the manufacturer’s portfolio but third-party furniture as well.

The forward end of each Safety Screen is a large transparent panel that overlaps the desk. This lets through a lot of light and creates a line-of-sight to video monitor walls for the desk operators. Meryl McLaren, commercial director at BBC Studioworks, commented that the partitions “enhance our health and safety measures” and provide “a reassuring level of protection for our staff and clients.” Gary Fuller, sales manager with Custom Consoles, adds that the screens work in conjunction with mandatory temperature checks, UVC cleaning, one-way pedestrian routes and operating protocols to minimize any risk of infection as much as possible.

“The key change caused by the pandemic itself was that broadcasters realized they needed to create the safest possible working environment for their staff,” Fuller said. “BBC Studioworks was the first to approach us and we were able to respond very quickly with a design that we now offer as the Operator Safety Screen. Demand has proved very high

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16 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

IN THE NEWS

Remote, OTT Driving T&M Trends Demand for remote was strong even before the pandemic

BY JAMES CARELESS OTTAWA—Even before COVID-19 compelled our industry to work from home, the companies who make TV test and measurement equipment were seeing an increased demand for remote access testing. The products they have brought to market are responding to this trend, plus the need to support ATSC 3.0 broadcast/transmission chains and OTT video streaming.

SPEED OF TRANSITION COVID-19 not only accelerated the trend from hands-on to remote testing and measurement that was already underway, it increased the speed of this transition considerably.

“Engineers stuck at home have been calling us up asking, ‘can I get some remotely accessible test and measurement equipment that is either cloud-based or works in a virtualized environment,” said Ralph Bachofen, Triveni Digital’s vice president of sales and marketing for Triveni Digital in Princeton, NJ. “They didn’t have access to their at-work meters and spectrum analyzers anymore, but they had some kinds of issues that they had to monitor/analyze nevertheless.”

The demand is not just coming from at-home engineers. “NEP’s production trucks have returned to live sports coverage using more remote broadcasting and fewer staff,” said Dan Murray, Telestream’s director of product market-

Telestream’s PRISM SDI/IP Waveform Monitor and Inspect 2110 is designed to monitor ST 2110 IP video networks.

FURNITURE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

and we have sold in excess of 350 since we started producing them in March.”

COMFORT AND PRODUCTIVITY Because home working is, by its very nature, a more solitary pursuit, there is no need for partitions or screens; but replicating a proper working environment away from a facility has been crucial in ensuring comfort and productivity during the various stages of lockdown. As soon as isolation rules were introduced—and in some cases, before—broadcasters and facility owners instructed editors, sound designers, graders and other creativetechnical staff to work from their homes as much as possible.

Forecast Consoles has a history of designing desks for remote working, having

started out catering for the home music recording studio boom of the 1970s.

“We were already designing home working furniture anyway,” Haberman said, “but now people are going for shrunken-down versions of studio consoles, only for the home rather than an edit suite. It’s what companies would be putting into a studio any way, only 4-feet wide and 2-feet deep instead of 8-feet wide and 3-feet deep.”

Haberman says Forecast is offering a range of sizes and shapes to fit people’s homes and the space available. “Editors who live in non-metropolitan areas [in bigger houses] are getting fuller size desks,” he explains. “We’re also selling additional support arms, which allow people to mount monitors on the wall rather than take up space with a floor or desk stand.”

As much as, Haberman observes,

ing. (Telestream acquired Tektronix’s video division in 2019). “One way they are doing this safely is by increased use of remotely accessible testing and measurement equipment.”

Making this all possible is the broadcast industry’s across-theboard migration from SDI to IP; from content acquisition and transport to editing/production, storage, and service to multiple viewing platforms (broadcast and OTT).

Yet because this is a transition, broadcasters are looking for remotely accessible test and measurement equipment that can work with both SDI and IP infrastructures; to the extent that this is technically possible.

To address this need, Telestream is offering a range of software-based products such as the PRISM SDI/IP Waveform Monitor and Inspect 2110 for monitoring ST 2110 IP video networks. “Using these two products, engineers can make deep dives into their IP-based systems to perform a full range of end-to-end tests and stay on top of things,” said Murray.

ATSC 3.0 AND OTT While Triveni Digital is focused on remotely accessible testing and monitoring, it’s also targeting ATSC 3.0, aka NextGen TV. This includes launching “home working is becoming a thing,” there is still a need for some degree of communal working to allow staff to ask for advice or highlight problems without having to book a Zoom session.

TBC’s Hahn agrees, saying that “people still have to go to work to do highend things,” such as a full drama or theatrical sound mix.

“The broadcasters and facility owners still want to keep the density low, having designated areas and labelling for different operators,” he said. “We’ve also been asked about walls to create one-way corridors and partitions that light up. They’re all things people haven’t needed before but they are thinking about them now.”

Which is a move on from thinking about desks or partitioning walls as merely something to place your coffee mug or hang your coat.

Triveni Digital’s StreamScope XM analyzes ATSC 3.0 and ATSC 1.0 streams.

“Although we expect to still sell locally used scopes and analysers, there is no doubt that remote access is the way to go.”

—Ralph Bachofen Triveni Digital Triveni Digital’s new ATSC 3.0 Cloud platform to let broadcasters create and spin up NextGen TV content delivery from the web, and providing educational support to broadcasters transitioning to NextGen TV. “The big challenge for many U.S. broadcasters is their need to maintain ATSC 1.0 broadcasts while deploying ATSC 3.0, in order to sustain their advertising revenues,” Bachofen said. “To support testing and measurement on both systems, Triveni Digital is offering StreamScope XM, which is our ATSC 3.0 and ATSC 1.0 combo analyzer. This is the only stream analyzer that can work in both domains; making it an essential piece of equipment for broadcasters moving into ATSC 3.0.”

With NexGen TV already being deployed in the U.S. Triveni has announced several deals, including one with Meredith’s Portland, Ore. TV stations KPDX (MNT) and KPTV (Fox).

Both are using Triveni Digital’s ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Gateway scheduler, GuideBuilder XM ATSC 3.0 transport encoder, StreamScope XM ATSC 1.0 and T&M, PAGE 18

18 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

IN THE NEWS

ATSC 3.0: It’s Not Just for Broadcasting Sinclair, ONE Media 3.0 lead discussion on how standard can attract new markets

BY PHIL KURZ HUNT VALLEY, Md.—The television industry, which has walked the same technical path for the past 20 years with overthe-air delivery of DTV, is on the cusp of a new era of innovation in fields as far flung as the delivery of wireless data to cars and premium video to homes as ATSC 3.0 is rolled out and broadcasters embrace new business opportunities.

That’s the main takeaway from the recent “AT$C 3.0: The Innovator’s Platform” webinar organized by Sinclair Broadcast Group and ONE Media 3.0.

Moderated by Skip Flenniken, senior director, business development at Sinclair, the webinar featured presentations and discussions by Madeleine Noland, president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee; Anne Schelle, executive director of Pearl TV; Mark Aitken, senior vice president of advanced technology at Sinclair and president of ONE Media 3.0; George Ayres, executive vice president, partnerships, at car-to-cloud data computing platform vendor Vinli; and Nick Kelsey, CTO and founder of Silicondust, which is bringing to market a NextGen TV gateway.

BUILT FOR INNOVATION The ATSC president assured attendees that the ATSC 3.0 standard will allow broadcasters to innovate without giving up their bread-and-butter business.

“There’s a lot of headroom for innovation in the standard as it is today.

ATSC [3.0] allows broadcasters to grow and change without abandoning existing views and businesses, and there are

frame that it can understand and decode and simply skip the “crazy stuff” it can’t understand.

WIRELESS DOLLARS ATSC 3.0 broadcasting enables broadcasters to innovate as a wireless data network service that can aggressively compete on price with telecom wireless services and generate new revenue, said Aitken.

To illustrate his point, he presented a slide summarizing mobile data pricing around the world. In the United States, the average price of 1 GB of wireless data is $8 vs. an average price of nine cents in India. The cheapest price for 1 GB of wireless data was $2.20 in the U.S. and two cents in India, the chart revealed.

Representatives from ATSC, Sinclair, One Media 3.0, Vinli, SiliconDust and Pearl TV discussed opportunities for NextGen TV beyond traditional broadcast.

many technical design decisions within the standard that make this possible,” she said.

The standard was built to accommodate new technology that will drive future innovation without disrupting service to viewers or obsoleting their NextGen TV sets, she said. Having a bootstrap that tells receivers what to expect is key.

“If you tell the receiver every time it tunes in, ‘This is a 6 MHz band, and here’s where you find everything,’ then the receiver can be flexible,” she ex-

T&M CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16

ATSC 3.0 combo analyzer and StreamScope XM Verifier software application to ensure quality of service for viewers who are watching ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 streams.

The explosion of OTT has opened up new opportunities for broadcasters, and headaches as well.

Compared to operating single channel linear TV transmissions, OTT is forcing broadcasters to become multichannel video programming distributors, just like cable TV and satellite service providers.

Monitoring a portfolio of OTT services is precisely what Telestream’s IQ Solutions including cloud-based Live ABR Monitor is designed to do. Using 70 monitoring locations around the globe, Live ABR Monitor lets broadcasters/OTT providers check the quality and

plained. “[I]t can change as you want to change what’s happening under the hood in standard.”

The bootstrap also tells the receiver when the next physical air frame of video is coming, which Noland described as “one of the most fun parts about it.”

“What that allows you to do is… to have some kind of who-knows-what frame coming through with all kinds of crazy stuff that might be happening in the future,” she said. The receiver simply relies on data in the bootstrap to understand when to look for the next 3.0

performance of their video streams, plus see how their content is being prepped, packaged and delivered by distributors.

“Telestream’s IQ Solutions gives OTT providers the ability to see the state of their whole network from end to end,” said Murray. “We call this a ‘single pane of glass’ approach to OTT testing and monitoring.”

WHAT’S NEXT? The 2020 lockdowns caused by COVID-19 have proven the value of remote testing and monitoring to such an extent, that this trend has become an unstoppable global phenomenon, Bachofen said.

“Although we expect to still sell locally-used scopes and analysers, there is no doubt that remote access is the way to go,” said Bachofen. To aid this trend, Triveni Digital is offering StreamScope Enterprise, which networks together StreamScope RM

“Broadcasters can customize, they can create… things that they haven’t been able to do before in terms of enabling their content to be personalized.”

—Anne Schelle Pearl TV “You have to ask yourself, ‘Why is it in India, for example, using the same equipment, the same CapEx structure, same general infrastructure… that I pay one price for a gigabyte of data delivered… and I look at the United States

remote monitors to enable centralized management of video, audio, and captioning services across DTV networks.

Meanwhile, Telestream’s Murray is looking ahead to the future of remote testing and measurement. In this vein, “we’re continuing to see an increasing deployment of automation and machine learning to make this technology do more for broadcasters,” he said.

“This should significantly reduce the workload on engineers.”

These developments illustrate how test and measurement is moving away from its locally based, manually controlled and “one function at a time” roots to become a remote multi-site technology capable of testing many functions on many points simultaneously.

We’re not at the point of being able to voice-command a network to perform a complete self-diagnostic, but we’re getting there.

19

www.tvtechnology.com TV TECHNOLOGY October 2020

IN THE NEWS and mysteriously in terms of the lowest cost bit, we’re looking at a 100:1 difference,” said Aitken.

Innovation here for broadcasters promises “a huge income potential,” he said. “So, do [I] reach for the sky and say, ‘Well, I’m going to get one cent per gigabyte delivered’… [if so] you’re looking at $200 million in one market,” he said, adding that his figures are a target and “certainly something to aspire to.”

One possible client looking to deliver massive amounts of wireless data is the automotive industry. “I hadn’t really heard too much about ATSC 3.0 until recently,” said Ayres, who has been in the industry for 30 years and connected cars for the past 10. “But the more I learn about ATSC 3.0, the more excited I am about the potential with connected vehicles.”

Most cars shipped today in the United States are connected, and guided navigation, infotainment and diagnostics are major data-driven applications available in many, he said.

“You know, the cost of sending that data to those vehicles, I think [that is] what’s exciting to me around ATSC 3….

[It’s a] very low-cost way to continuously update those vehicles,” he said.

Ayers pointed to the delivery of map data to vehicles for ATSC 3.0. “There’s lots of information [to send] over a wireless connection that can cost a lot of money,” he said. “What carmakers are

ONGOING INNOVATION ATSC 3.0 as an IP-based platform gives broadcasters the ability to combine their core linear live content with the internet. “That brings with it a lot of

Mark Aitken from Sinclair discussed the advantages of using ATSC 3.0 for wireless datacasting, highlighting the differences between data costs among countries outside the U.S.

trying to do is have dynamic map data so that it’s constantly updated. You can constantly push the latest version to the vehicles [via ATSC 3.0],” he said.

opportunities for innovation around the delivery of both internet-based and linear content,” said Schelle.

Unique characteristics of ATSC 3.0

that support personalized audio and interactivity give broadcasters a way to innovate by offering personalized content, interactive advertising and even support for sports betting, she said. “[B]roadcasters can customize, they can create… things that they haven’t been able to do before in terms of enabling their content to be personalized,” Schelle added. “You know, as I think about the application environment, it’s really giving us control. It is enabling… taking what we’re already doing with OTT and other services and creating environments that allow us to direct the consumers’ journey.”

Silicondust raised $600,000 with a Kickstarter campaign earlier this year to develop and market a home gateway with up to four ATSC 1 and ATSC 3.0 receivers, according to CTO Nick Kelsey.

“Dropping a gateway is more screens and more screens that have ATSC 3,” he said. “That means faster adoption; that means more eyeballs. ... So, for entrepreneurs that also means that enables integration between the broadcast TV world and the app-driven world.”

The webinar is available on demand at atsc3advocate.com.

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20 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

IN THE NEWS

Lensmakers Focus on Focus, Lighter Weight More high-resolution content, lighter weight equipment guide tech development

BY CRAIG JOHNSTON

is rent it as they need it, which is why we’re concentrating on the rental companies,” Tubbs added.

SEATTLE—Two of the largest providers of professional camera lenses to the broadcast industry recently introduced new glass designed to improve the production of an increasing supply of 4K (and higher) resolution content.

FUJINON One of the new lenses grew out of a Fujifilm box lens developed for NHK’s postponed 8K coverage of the Olympics for the Japan television market, according to Gordon Tubbs, vice president for broadcast and cinema products for Fujinon. These 8K cameras designed for the project use Super 35 single sensors and PL mount lenses.

“Our people thought about developing as long a box lens as was possible,” Tubbs said. “Most PL-mount motion picture lenses, including the ones we developed for NHK, were like a 5x1, 7x1 zoom. I mean, your iPhone can zoom twice as far as these extremely expensive lenses we were developing for NHK. In response, the company developed a 20x 35mm box lens, Tubb said.

“Twenty doesn’t seem like much, because we make ENG lenses in 4K that are 24x, that are normal size hand-holdable lenses,” Tubbs said. “This lens will go from 35mm to 700mm, and then with an extender go out to 1,000. That’s unheard of in PL mounts.”

The result is a difference in size and weight than with most professional lenses, according to Tubbs.

“In order to do that, the lens is heavi-

Canon has just debuted the CJ20ex5B 4K UHDxs UHD portable zoom lens, designed for 4K UHD broadcast 2/3inch cameras.

“We have the latest in optical coatings to ensure we get a deep, rich black, which is essential to good HDR.” —Larry Thorpe Canon er and bigger than our 125 box lens for 2/3-inch chip cameras,” Tubbs. “It’s a 70 pound lens. You couldn’t fit it on your coffee table, it’s too big. All of that to get a 20:1 lens. So NHK bought a few of them.”

(Note: Several camera makers have introduced 8K, 2/3-inch, three-chip cameras that allow use of smaller 8K lenses.)

Tubbs added that the new lens had potential beyond NHK’s immediate needs.

“We looked at the lens and said ‘You know something? That’s got a PL mount on it; it’s got a cine mount on it. What’s to stop us from marketing that to people who are doing concerts?’ HBO wants that cine look for its concerts. If they’re going to use cine cameras, this could be their lens. It’s the only PL mount 20x 8K zoom lens in the world.”

He thinks there’s also a market for the 20x zoom in sports production, where many super slow-motion cameras are single sensor, PL mount. “The lens is so expensive the only thing they’ll do

REVISITING AUTOFOCUS More than a dozen years ago, broadcast lens makers introduced an autofocus feature on their HD lenses. But it never sold all that well.

Fast-forward to today, Tubbs said Fujifilm is revisiting autofocus.

“Focus is much more important in 4K because depth of field in 4K is actually shorter than HD, so there’s less in focus,” he said. “That will be true again when you shoot in 8K. And we know that the viewfinders on the cameras really aren’t that advanced to be able to really, precisely show if you’re in and out of focus.”

The technology for Fujifilm’s new autofocus system is called “phased detection” and is entirely new, according to Tubbs.

“It is much more accurate than the prior system, faster and it doesn’t overshoot,” he said. “The [old system] could sometimes go past focus and then come back real quick. It won’t do that. The other thing it can do is reach focus from a much further out of focus position. With [the old system], if you were considerably out of focus, if it was just a blur, you were looking at a fog bank, it wouldn’t find focus. Now this system can find focus even from that far out of focus.”

The autofocus feature is available on Fujifilm’s 4K 107x box zoom for about an additional $20,000.

Fujifilm also introduced a UA125X8 zoom ratio box lens last spring, the longest in the industry, according to Tubbs.

21

www.tvtechnology.com TV TECHNOLOGY October 2020

IN THE NEWS “This lens is not only the longest telephoto zoom lens, it’s got the longest zoom ratio at 125x, of any broadcast lens ever made,” he said. “It’s got the widest angle of any field lens, sports lens that was ever produced. It starts at 8mm and goes to 1,000mm, so with a 2x extender it goes out to 2,000mm.”

CANON Canon has two tiers of 4K lenses, the difference being a function of the spec, according to Larry Thorpe, Canon USA’s national marketing executive.

“We tightened the specs on the upper level, and that costs more, of course,” Thorpe said. “The specs we talk about are sharpness across the image plane, tightening up on the lateral and longitu-

width that you get, the angle of zoom horizontally that you get at 5mm is 87.7 degrees.”

Thorpe emphasized the importance of HDR to the development of Canon’s lenses.

“We pay high attention to dynamic range,” he said. “We have the latest in optical coatings to ensure we get a deep, rich black, which is essential to good HDR. And then the choice of glass materials allows us to properly handle speculars.

With its small size and weight, the new lens has applications with a portable camera. “But where it really shines for that focal range is in a lot of coverage of small venue sporting arenas, probably basketball being the best illustra-

enhanced functionality and operational control of the lens.

The new portable zoom lens utilizes Canon’s proprietary optical design technology, incorporating materials such as fluorite and Ultra-Low Dispersion (UD) glass. In addition, the lens supports the wide color gamut approved by the ITU-

R BT.2020 UHD broadcasting standard, essential to HDR imaging. The ergonomics and digital servo operational controls of the lens are similar to Canon’s current lineup of portable zoom lenses, providing users with maximum mobility in a variety of shooting situations.

Wireless Systems

Last spring, Fujinon introduced the UA125x8, targeting 4K UHD long distance shooting.

dinal chromatic aberration. And then last but not least, doing justice to the new world of HDR, getting deep, rich blacks and good treatment of speculars in the lens.”

Thorpe said Canon discovered a gap between the two wide angle zooms in Canon’s upper level of 4K lenses. To develop the new lens to fit that gap, “we mobilized some of the latest of our technologies in lens design that we’ve been able to improve, along with more powerful simulation capabilities and manufacturing capabilities. We saw that we could slot in there a lens where we push both the wide angle and the telephoto end.”

The result is the CJ20ex5B 4K UHDxs, a 20x zoom that goes from 5mm to 100mm, (200mm with a 2X extender.)

“This baby comes in at just under five pounds, [4.9], is 9.9 inches long with a filter diameter of 127mm,” Thorpe said.

“And it has the latest in our digital drive unit that gives you the capability of broadcast controllers controlling zoom and focus. It also has an output for virtual, giving you the 16 bit information on the virtual application. It has a range extender of 2 times. The horizontal

tion,” Thorpe said. “And because of size, weight and focal range it has application for SkyCams.”

COMPACT AND LIGHTWEIGHT Last spring Canon introduced the CJ18ex7.6B KASE S, a new addition to its UHDgc series of 4K UHD broadcast portable zoom lenses. The new lens is designed to be used with 4K UHD broadcast cameras with 2/3-inch sensors. It has the same optical specifications as the existing CJ18ex7.6B IRSE/ IASE except it has no optical extender.

The lens features a zoom range of 7.6137mm and weighs just 3.7 pounds.

The 4K UHD imaging quality is delivered at a price point that matches well with the many lower-cost 4K cameras in the market. By eliminating the optical range extender, the lens maintains a compact and lightweight design to meet the versatile and ever-changing needs of a broad range of video productions, including documentaries, sports, events and news coverage. Additionally, the lens is compatible with the new Canon ZDJ-G01 Zoom Demand and FDJ-G01 Focus Demand accessories that provide operators with

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22 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

IN THE NEWS

Data Becomes More Critical to Compliance Explosion of distribution channels can complicate the process

BY KEVIN HILTON LONDON—Compliance monitoring and logging has always been a key part of the broadcast production and distribution process, albeit a niche, somewhat “background” one. Today its importance is growing in relation to the proliferation of TV channels and streaming services, with not only more programs to monitor but many more points along the chain to check as well.

The demands of both editorial/regulatory and technical compliance have put the onus on technology developers to produce systems that log and analyze more efficiently and comprehensively than before. Which explains why a relatively small, specialized but competitive market sector looks set to not only grow but also expand its reach along broadcast workflows and transmission paths.

THE VOLICON ‘MIGRATION’ With broadcast streams increasingly

carried over uncompressed IP networks, broadcasters and OTT service providers alike are looking at the technologies available to ensure all regulatory requirements are met and technical quality is at its best.

Business has also continued to adjust following Verizon Digital Media’s decision last year to discontinue the widely used Volicon Observer monitoring product.

Verizon bought Volicon in 2016 but decided to focus on “future solutions that better align with industry trends and market needs during the ongoing migration to IP and streaming video workflows,” when it made its announcement. To provide support for existing Observer customers, Verizon named SnapStream, a Houston-based provider of compliance monitoring software its official “Volicon transition partner.” After the announcement was made in April 2019, SnapStream reported that more than 100 Volicon users made the move to its support scheme.

The second phase of the program came at the 2019 NAB Show New York with

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the launch of SnapStream Monitoring and Compliance, and there is now a full transition route, including settings, to SnapStream’s new “Moco” platform.

Brick Eksten, formerly with Digital Rapids and Imagine Communications, recently joined Qligent as chief executive.

ALL IN THE FAMILY As would be expected, the other compliance companies have been looking at the situation and developing their own migration paths for Observer users. Among these is Digital Nirvana, which is offering the option to switch to its MonitorIQ broadcast monitoring and compliance logging platform. An added incentive could be that Russell Wise, a cofounder of Volicon in 2004 who moved to Verizon following the acquisition, is now senior vice president of sales and marketing at Digital Nirvana.

Wise comments that the Volicon team—four of whom, including the user interface (UI) designer, moved with him to Digital Nirvana—”did a great job on the feature set” of Observer and that it was “a well-loved product.”

Wise acknowledges that users are now either replacing systems or considering their requirements. “Some networks are taking their time to make the decisions about replacing Volicon and a lot of the bigger broadcasters had the clout to have Verizon support it,” he said.

Wise adds that compliance is now moving from the main purpose of recording output to being able to scrutinize the logs to now using artificial intelligence and machine learning—which Digital Nirvana has been working with for seven years—and offering even more features, including producing transcripts.

A SINGLE SOLUTION Actus Digital has also produced a migration path for Volicon, making it possible to play existing recordings through the Actus UI. Gary Learner, executive vice president of business development for the company observes that compliance and monitoring “is not a stale market” but is “constantly adapting” to changes in broadcasting.

“New regulations and amendments to existing ones are coming in, the industry is not dormant,” he said. “The customers are looking at the vendors to see who is quickest to respond so you have to be on your toes. There are big changes because of OTT and streaming but also with the move from parallel IT and broadcast infrastructures to just one IT infrastructure.

This means broadcasters are now looking for a single solution.”

“There are big changes because of OTT and streaming but also with the move from parallel IT and broadcast infrastructures to just one IT infrastructure.”

—Gary Learner Actus Digital

Erik Otto, chief executive of Mediaproxy, also sees the growing trend for one system that covers all functions, increasingly in file form.

“The overall trend today is for software-based compliance monitoring and logging systems,” he said. “There still may be some applications that call for dedicated hardware but generally the entire broadcast market is moving towards software and virtualization of operations.”

This, Otto adds, is a major advantage as broadcast facilities move from SDI to IP, a shift that usually comes with an increase in channels due to traditional broadcasters adding VOD. “There is always the possibility of problems when switching from one distribution system to another,” he said. “Compliance monitoring and QoE [Quality of Experience] technologies will be crucial for both the smooth running of services and maintaining the quality of the viewing experience.”

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www.tvtechnology.com TV TECHNOLOGY October 2020

IN THE NEWS

SnapStream Monitoring and Compliance’s Multiviewer

QC CONCERNS The new breed of broadcast infrastructures is bringing production/post-production facilities closer to the playout and distribution chains, which in turn are now more connected to consumer platforms. This means the quality control stage, at one time carried out by a third-party facility or a specialist department within the TV station, is being more influenced by monitoring and logging.

“Compliance is becoming an extremely critical part of the QC process,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems.

“Broadcasters and video service providers have quite a bit of responsibility to take care of both editorial

compliance and technical quality and that means the monitoring companies have to come up with solutions that work in the cloud and are able to be scaled.”

Anantharaman predicts that in the next two to five years there will be more companies in this market sector, possibly offering “interesting solutions” that will “blur the lines between collecting compliance data and audience experience data.” Such a move could already be in progress, with the recent announcement of LWKS, a new company set up to take over the QScan analytical quality control (AQC) software and Lightworks nonlinear editing system from EditShare.

QScan has previously been used primarily for QC

during the post-production process but there are now plans to take it further towards the compliance stage. “The transmission chain is something we can approach,” says Daniel Roqués, worldwide product manager for QScan. “The OTT providers are working with files and they need to make sure their streamed output is QCed.” Brick Eksten, formerly with Digital Rapids and Imagine Communications, recently joined Qligent as chief executive. He views compliance as something “that has to be done,” Quality of Service (QoS) as “what you want to do” and QoE as “what you need to do.”

To ensure all of these processes work properly, measurements have to be taken at the granular level: “TV is a big data environment, with a large volume of content,” he said. “But there are not many people looking at the big data, other than on the analytics side. If ATSC 3.0 is going to succeed, it will have to behave as an internet service, because we are all consumers.”

Like the other compliance developers, Qligent is working on ML, which, Eksten says, “will take an everincreasing role in how we think about media delivery.”

This, he concludes, ties in with big data: “It will give a greater degree of automation and allow the control room operators to concentrate more on what matters.

As well as giving more operational freedom, it will also raise the accuracy of the automated systems.”

With ever greater technological potential and an increasingly vibrant marketplace, compliance monitoring certainly looks like the sector to watch.

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24 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

PRODUCTS & SERVICES

MARKETPLACE MICROCOM XR

CONNECT CAM SERIES

The MicroCom XR intercom system from Pliant Technologies provides full-duplex, multi-user intercom technology. It can be used in 2.4 GHz worldwide, as well as 900 MHz where legal.

The system features a two-channel intercom platform for up to 10 fullduplex users, a 12-hour battery and extended range.

Secure Reliable Transport technology has been added to JVC’s Connect Cam 500 and 900 series cameras via a new firmware update. With SRT technology, the cameras now have Forward Error Correction, Stream Identifier, vertical interval time code and longitudinal time code functions.

The Connected Cam series, covering the Connect Cam 500 and 900, also includes SRTenabled BR-DE900 decoder, BR-EN900 encoder and the KM-IP6000 switcher. These brands are cross-compatible, allowing for different streaming video capabilities to be incorporated into existing streaming studio equipment.

For additional information, contact JVC at 973-317-5000 or visit pro.jvc.com.

ELEMENTS SATELLITE

MicroCom XR was designed with advanced RF technology. Additional features include compatibility with the Pliant’s SmartBoom series of headsets, as well as having an OLED display, drop-in charger and rugged, lightweight beltpacks.

Elements Satellite is a remote-access editing software that merges technology from remote gaming company Parsec with low-latency demanding workflows. The platform is designed to eliminate unstable playback and low framerate. It also enables editing of 4K 60 fps video from anywhere with high video quality and in-sync audio.

For additional information, contact Pliant Technologies at 334-321-1160 or visit www.plianttechnologies.com.

The system can also work with Elements Client app, which manages and initiates encrypted connections on both Windows and macOS operating systems. All access permissions are available centrally, including twofactor authentication and full end-to-end encryption.

MINI TX UHD Broadcast Sports International, a Broadcast Services Co. of NEP Group, describes its Mini Tx UHD as the smallest UHD wireless video transmitter on the market, measuring in at 85x56x28 millimeters. The Mini Tx UHD is designed to transmit two different frequency bands via its softwaredefined radio with traditional wireless video transmitter features.

For additional information, contact Elements at 415-336-9362 or visit www.elements.tv.

Mini Tx UHD offers camera control features, changeable connector panels, as well as the ability to handle video formats up to 2160p59, HEVC and AVC encoding, up to 32 Mbps video bitrate, four channels of embedded SDI audio, two channels of analog audio and support for HDR. For additional information, contact BSI at 410-564-2600 or visit www.bsintl.com.

STREAMMASTER PRIME

9992-ENC ENCODER Cobalt’s 9992-ENC software-defined broadcast encoder card series now offers an ultra-low latency mode that combines parallel processing with Gradual Decoder Refresh and a suitable Coded Picture Buffer to achieve encoder latencies as low as 10 milliseconds, per Cobalt.

Additional features for this new 9992-ENC mode is LPCM audio support to bypass typical audio encoders. The 9992-ENC can also be combined with the newly updated 9992-DEC with tunable latency, which can achieve end-to-end latencies of about 100ms in HEVC mode and 300ms in AVC mode.

For additional information, contact Cobalt at 217-344-1243 or visit www.cobaltdigital.com.

StreamMaster Prime is a turnkey appliance designed to replace individual devices in a traditional broadcast architecture, such as a master control switcher, video server and graphics inserter. StreamMaster Prime provides a plug-and-play replacement for end-of-life hardware with connections via SDI. Any software licenses for the new product can be transferred so that when a broadcaster migrates to a new architecture the license can be transferred at no added cost. The system can also operate autonomously, with hardware or via software UI control panels.

For additional information, contact Pixel Power at 818-276-4515 or visit www.pixelpower.com.

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www.tvtechnology.com TV TECHNOLOGY October 2020

PRO CONVERT ENCODERS/ DECODERS

AW-UE100 PTZ CAMERA The AW-UE100 PTZ camera from Panasonic is now available, featuring support for 4K/60p for highbandwidth NDI and SRT for capturing high-quality video over public internet.

Three new Magewell Pro Convert encoder/decoder models have been unveiled—the Pro Convert 12G SDI Plus, the Pro Convert for NDI to SDI and the Pro Convert H.26x to SDI.

Key to the AW-UE100 is a Direct Drive motor that allows for quieter and smoother movements and heightened response time. There is also increased flexibility with support for a range of IP transmission protocols. In addition, Panasonic is developing a plug-in for use with the AW-UE100 that integrates with Unreal 3D Engine via the camera’s FreeD positioning output.

The Pro Convert 12G SDI Plus is a plug-and-play unit that ingests video up to 4K at 60 fps over a single-link, 12 Gbps SDI interface and converts it to full NDI streams with low latency. Both the Pro Convert for NDI to SDI and the Pro Convert H.26x to SDI are decoders that convert input streams up to 2048x1080 at 60 fps for output via a 3 Gbps SDI interface.

For additional information, visit Panasonic at na.panasonic.com.

For additional information, visit Magewell at www.magewell.com.

AMBERFIN CLOUD TRANSCODER The Amberfin Cloud Transcoder is a SaaSbased, high-quality media processing service that offers robust transcoding, media packaging and distribution capabilities with unlimited scalability.

WIRECAST 14 The latest version of Telestream’s Wirecast production and streaming platform, Wirecast 14, provides new options for more accurate Chroma keying, like spill suppression, edge coloring, clipping ranges, Luma key and Color key. Options for sizing and scaling sources have also been added.

With Amberfin, users can simplify working with 4K/UHD images, as well as Dolby Vision, ACES or HDR10 color. There is also a fully capable BPM workflow design and execution environment, enabling media packaging and delivery to be created for multiple endpoints. Additional features include a REST API and a built-in script execution to call third-party applications.

For additional information, contact Dalet at 212-269-6707 or visit www.dalet.com.

Wirecast 14 has moved the status bar to the bottom of the screen to provide more space to show System CPU, App CPU and other streaming stats. All of the new features are designed to assist with remote production capabilities.

For additional information, contact Telestream at 530-470-1300 or visit www.telestream.net.

BRC PTZ CAMERAS A firmware upgrade has been made to Sony’s BRC remote PTZ cameras that are designed to help with remote production. The V2.1 firmware covers BRC-X1000/1, BRC-X1000/WPW and BRC-H800/1, BRC-H800/WPW, providing them with simplified VR and AR workflows.

These BRC cameras can now output tracking data over IP using the Free-D protocol, allowing the cameras to pan, tilt, zoom, focus, iris and access positioning data in real time.

General improvements to the pan/tilt/zoom operation of the BRC-X1000 and BRC-H800 are also part of the firmware update.

For additional information, visit Sony at pro.sony.

NINJA V The Ninja V HDR monitor-recorder has received an update that enables it to allow for Apple ProRes RAW recording over HDMI when used with the Sigma fp mirrorless camera.

This combination makes it possible for RAW recording at 4K DCI p24 or 4K UHD up to p30, as well as recording RAW over HDMI video in HD at 120 fps.

The Sigma fp and Ninja V pairing can be built into a fully rigged cinema-style camera with an option to use L-mount lenses natively or PL mount, EF mount and other lenses with adapters.

To allow for RAW recording, users must upgrade to both Sigma v2.01 firmware and AtomOS 10.53.

For additional information, contact Atomos at 503-388-3236 or visit www.atomos.com.

26 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

INSIGHT INSIDE AUDIO ➤ FOR MORE INSIGHT AND INNOVATION VISIT TVTECHNOLOGY.COM

It’s Open Mic Night I

MOUTHY COMMENTATORS In August a story about a Cincinnati sports commentary made headlines because the announcer made an insensitive remark, which was accidentally streamed out live to listeners. The announcer awkwardly apologized, but ultimately left the announce booth. As in the “The Wizard of Oz,” the microphone had become the insular shield that precluded direct contact between the adoring peasants and the wizard—but ultimately, the bubble burst.

Mouthy commentators getting caught is nothing new. Early in my career, the live sports networks began using C band satellite frequencies for transmission between the remote sites and network master control, (transmission was continuous from the location even when the network went to commercial break).

Broadcast folklore has stories of drunk and misbehaving fans caught on camera accompanied by imaginative commentary being transmitted through cy-

berspace over satellite dishes. Not only was this unscripted broadcast picked up by master control, it was also heard by many shocked sports fans and snoops from the FCC. This content would not have met FCC censorship rules.

After phone calls to politicians, the FCC and numerous complaints to network

and a cry and usually was recorded with nothing more than a Sony mini cassette recorder capturing an open microphone.

But after the producer called a college intern an unacceptable word, I went to upper management to complain on behalf of the crew. Of course the producer did not remember things exactly as I

Getty Images/Ary6

have never been comfortable talking into a microphone.

I first noticed how awkward and funny I sounded when I was in the fourth grade in Madison, Ala., and was learning 4 DENNIS about girls, chit-chat and BAXTER telephone etiquette over a rural telephone party line. Not only was the telephone in the kitchen, where I believed everyone on earth including my father was listening; but also the neighbors could listen in because there were three or four houses on the same telephone line as ours. Net result? A paranoid introduction to sound at 10 years old.

Later in my professional life, one of the first things I learned about a television set, announce booth or sports field of play was that there are microphones everywhere and some of those microphones may be open—and often they were. There are boom microphones, field microphones, headset microphones, even a “snoop” microphone, so the accountant could listen in and hear if we were working. Needless to say, there were no private conversations on a television set or in an OB van with so many headsets with open microphones lying around everywhere.

management, live television engineers devised an audio-to-air bypass called a “bird-beater,” which took the announcers out of the audio transmission path and put their voices in the headsets of the director and producer who could strategize about the live production off-air.

At the time, the broadcast industry was flying high with little oversight by too many people with too many Emmys and big egos. But in the mid-1980s, the fiefdom came crashing down when freelance operators and technicians replaced loyal and spoiled network employees. Before Disney owned ESPN and ABC, colorful commentators, foul-mouthed directors and producers were common.

As freelancers, we even had a phrase for these types of people, “The Untouchables.” It always seemed (as it does sometimes today) that these folks were immune to the fallout from an open microphone.

The untouchables were rampant in the late ’70s and ’80s until someone pushed the button—the record button.

In the early ’80s, I began working with a belligerent producer who, over the PLs (the communications systems), was extremely mouthy to freelancers. After a few years of listening to the B.S., I began to record the intercoms. First it was for a laugh

it is obvious that there is a good chance that a wide range of people with different sensitivities could be listening in.

Forget sensitivities, what about conspiracies? Consider this, if I make a recording of actual conversations or comments and alter the content and context of the recordings for fun or possibly for other nefarious reasons, it opens Pandora’s box. Even with my primitive sampling technology in the ’80s, I was able to edit words and phrases enough to construct a conversation, completely out of context, between a producer who was not on site yet and a gullible sports commentator who was on headsets.

A lot of the behavior I witnessed seemed to occur simply because people could get away with it, including my sampler escapade with the sports announcer, although I got an earful from the late, great Fred Rheinstein when he found out about my little prank. I still have Fred’s voice loaded up on my vintage Akai S900 Sampler and chuckle every time I play one of his witty comments.

It is not necessarily illegal to record someone without their permission and I imagine most seasoned broadcast technicians can remember an incident where two or three people did not remember

I would think that if you are going to put on a headset and talk over a microphone, it is obvious that there is a good chance that a wide range of people with different sensitivities could be listening in. did, but the tape was damning evidence.

However, the tape (recording) not only did significant damage to the producer’s career, but to my career as well. Essentially, the network had to do something and dismissed the producer from live television production for a year or so, but I was flat-out blacklisted.

NOT SACRED ANYMORE The television intercom communication system is a closed private network and was often considered sacred and immune from any implications of harassment, but an open microphone and a recording has been the demise of not only a few commentators, but also television directors and producers and politicians long before Watergate and Nixon. I would think that if you are going to put on a headset and talk over a microphone,

things the same way. But what about the morality of the recording? When there is little to no accountability the results are predictable. Remember the recording of a presidential candidate boasting about grabbing a person’s private parts? Beware, there may be an open microphone somewhere and someone may be listening and recording you!

Dennis Baxter has spent over 35 years in live broadcasting contributing to hundreds of live events including sound design for nine Olympic Games. He has earned multiple Emmy Awards and is the author of “A Practical Guide to Television Sound Engineering.” He is currently working on another book about immersive sound practices and production. He can be reached at dbaxter@dennisbaxtersound.com.

27

www.tvtechnology.com TV TECHNOLOGY October 2020

INSIGHT LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY

Mixing Lighting Technology T here are a lot of options available when it comes to lighting technology, and these days many tools are becoming ever more versatile. There are still lights for different uses 4 JULIA though, offering dif SWAIN ferent qualities, colors, shapes, etc. More often than not, a lighting package includes a variety of these tools in order to meet the challenges of lighting different spaces.

Something that can give you a powerful, directional push through a window isn’t necessarily what can give you the perfect omnidirectional soft light. Often, there are a few different types of lights actually lighting a scene. So how do we paint a frame with various tools and make it look natural and intentional?

BLENDING LIGHT At the root of “mixing lighting” is the idea of blending light. Typically we don’t want a viewer to pay too much attention to the light sources on screen.

When mixing different lighting technology, we usually strive to do so that is transparent for our audience. One specific example is when an effect of a light that exists in a location is extended with a film light.

For instance, an incandescent lamp that is on in a room may be used as a motivated source to “key light” a subject.

The lamp by itself may not throw enough light on someone’s face without looking much too bright on screen, so a film light must be added just out of frame to extend the effect of the lamp.

A few factors are considered when choosing what this unit should be to mim-

A leko helps mimic the qualities of a lamp with its warm bulb and a narrow beam that can be focused from a distance.

ic the qualities of the lamp—whether the light is soft or hard, its color temperature, shape and intensity. All of these things should match to ensure that the viewer cannot read the additional unit. A leko is a great solution for this as it naturally has a warm bulb and is a narrow beam that can be focused from a distance.

FROM SUBTLE TO INTENSE In a recent music video, we had a few natural looks inside of different rooms where the lighting started out as subtle and then began to pulse with the beat.

This shoot started the same way with practical sources placed by the production designer in different rooms. In this situation, we knew that light was going to change as the song progressed and would begin to mix differently.

Instead of using more tungsten, incandescent units that would match, Astera Titans were rigged overhead and programmed with a warmth that would ini-

For a recent music video, the author had a few natural looks inside different rooms where the lighting started out as more subtle and then began to pulse with the beat.

tially match. In this case, this warm light was not meant to be an extension of lamps but rather a feeling of another practical fixture overhead in the room. Because we matched it, it blended in better. As the music changed, it was then easy to move away from the warm and have them strobe with new colors and intensities.

programmed and matched in color easily. A few M40s pushed through with selected gel frames in front of them. Matching colors and choosing other colors that contrasted well with each other was really important so that as we moved from room to room, the visuals remained seamless.

When mixing different lighting technology, we usually strive to do so in an invisible way for our audience.

Beyond just extending what already existed in the location, the artists moved from space to space at night. So we needed to feel the depth of outside by illuminating surfaces outside windows and pushing light through others. Because we had Asteras above on the ceilings, Skypanels served as the main units outside since they, like the Asteras, could be

GETTING STARTED Starting out, it can be intimidating to blend and mix units that have different traits. Because of the ability to change color, quality and intensity, we can find a middle ground where different sources don’t overpower others and instead, work together to create a pleasing frame. Setting a white balance on camera that is between tungsten and daylight can help avoid any warm or cool units being too oversaturated.

There are so many choices in lighting tools and the more knowledge we possess of what each is capable of, the better we can put together a versatile lighting package—one that can allow us to be really intentional with any shooting location.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer whose work includes films such as “Lucky” and “Speed of Life” alongside dozens of commercials and music videos. She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be reached through TV Technology.

28 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

EQUIPMENT GUIDE

CLOUD SOLUTIONS

➤ FOR MORE INSIGHT AND INNOVATION VISIT TVTECHNOLOGY.COM

WLVT Manages Playout With PlayBox Neo

BY ANDREA CUMMIS Chief Technical Officer, WLVT Lehigh Valley, Pa. LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa—At PBS39, Lehigh Valley Public Media, we broadcast five channels of programming: WLVT PBS, WLVT Create, France24, PBS39 Ex-

USER REPORT tra and WORLD Channel. PBS39’s primary service area includes much of eastern Pennsylvania and parts of western and southern New Jersey. Cable television carriers include Comcast, Service Electric, RCN, Blue Ridge Cable and others.

WLVT-TV is also available over-the-air and throughout the region via DirecTV, Dish Network and Verizon FiOS. With five separate broadcast channels—three that pass through our internal master control and two others managed by joint master control ( JMCO)—a playout system we can count on 24/7 is clearly a must-have. Given the amount of live and pre-recorded content we create and deliver, we need rock-solid playout that is flexible, easy to use and affordable—all in one system.

This was made clear when our legacy automation system failed right after I started as a consultant at WLVT a few years ago. Based on my previous experience with PlayBox Neo equipment, I

branding. With both, we can do file-based video playback, live pass-through streaming and graphic overlays. We’ve got the flexibility to play out local programming precisely when and how we want to do it.

In 2018 when our old clip player died, we replaced it with the ProductionAirBox Neo and also had that installed and working in a live show the same day. It’s used for playing clips back into our original productions that are shot in our studios.

THIRD PHASE The support we’ve received As our programming output for such a mission-critical part has expanded, so has our playof our operations has been stelout system. We’re now in our lar. Van Duke, director of U.S. third phase of PlayBox Neo operations for PlayBox Neo, installations. The most recent has gone above and beyond for install was due to a new chanus. No matter the issue, he and nel launch for PBS39 Extra in his team have come through March, which reruns some of for us. our most popular shows from Currently, our full setup of PBS39. We’ve assigned PBS39 PlayBox Neo equipment inExtra to our JMCO and brought cludes: our home and crafts channel, WLVT Master Control Operator Carlin Canfield works on the station’s new • Two dual-channel AirBox Neo Create TV, to our in-house masPlayBox Neo platform. servers for master control ter control.

• One TitleBox Neo CG to our setup for content ingest, master Create TV features original and • Four channels of CaptureBox Neo playout and storage. We also added a pledge programming, which requires to control multiple ingest channels TitleBox Neo character generator for fullower thirds and logos. We added our • One ProductionAirBox Neo for ly interactive 4K UHD/HD/SD channel second dual-channel AirBox Neo server multichannel live production clip playout knew we could install one of their automation servers quickly and get it up and running in a day, which we did. We’ve been with PlayBox Neo ever since.

For WLVT, we need to add in live pledge drives with lowerthirds and insert live and prerecorded local programming— all within our budget. We get that all in a simple-to-use system with a lot of options for the price from PlayBox Neo.

BUYERS BRIEFS LTN Global LTN Live Video Cloud The LTN Live Video Cloud is a software service designed for ingesting, managing and distributing live video feeds. It was also built with the intent to be compatible and expandable with other industrystandard workflows and hardware.

LTN Live Video Cloud is able to ingest formats

While we use their server-based solutions, given the present state of remote production, we may look someday to the company’s Cloud2TV virtual channel playout system at some point. Cloud2TV’s SaaS lets you operate their playout channels from any location via a simple web interface.

in SRT, RTMP push, WebRTC, H.264 and AAC, with the ability to automatically record all ingested signals. It enables monitoring of up to 48 feeds at once in live, low-latency and thumbnail view mode.

Users can also access on-going recordings and edit content for transfer and download.

For more information, visit www.ltnglobal. com or contact LTN Global at 855-586-4562.

Triveni Digital ATSC 3.0 Cloud Service Triveni Digital’s ATSC 3.0 Cloud service enables broadcasters to launch NextGen TV services faster and more efficiently. The service integrates the company’s software-based ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Gateway scheduler, GuideBuilder XM ATSC 3.0

Transport Encoder and state-of-the-art third-party systems. It is available with a SaaS business model.

ATSC 3.0 Cloud provides instant scalability and upgradeability to enable flexibility for future growth. Support for the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol minimizes the effects of jitter and bandwidth changes and ensures a secure communications path in the cloud.

For more information, visit www.trivenidigital. com or contact Triveni at 609-716-3500.

After serving as a technical consultant to WLVT, Andrea Cummis started as the station’s chief technical officer in March of 2018. She is also the vice president of the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE), a role she’s held for the past year. She can be reached andreac@wlvt. org.

For more information, contact PlayBox Neo at 844-611-4444 x1, or visit www.playboxneo.com.

29

www.tvtechnology.com TV TECHNOLOGY October 2020

EQUIPMENT GUIDE

LiveU Helps Grand Canyon University Media Connect With Students and Their Families

BY STEVEN NIEDZIELSKI Sr. Multimedia Manager Grand Canyon University PHOENIX—The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the way students across the country are learning and connecting with schools, faculty and each other. At

USER REPORT Grand Canyon University, our plan to use live streaming technology to connect current and potential students and their families with the school and campus life started months before quarantine. We wanted to make the school as accessible as possible for prospective students that couldn’t physically visit before making their final college decision. We previously created campus tour videos using a cell phone and a gimbal, but the Admissions department wanted to make the experience more dynamic and interactive.

Our media group produces all types of content including commercials, live events and web videos. Live interactive video was paramount to generating student excitement and engagement, while increasing enrollment. We talked to students and staff about how we could amp up our programming and quickly moved from cell phones to a cellular-bonded backpack from LiveU. The LiveU enabled our digital media crew and broadcast students to up the production value by implementing higher-end cameras, cutting to different scenes across campus, and adding a studio element so viewers could ask questions in the YouTube chat and have them answered on stream. We have a roving team with the LiveU backpack that can toss back to the studio so they can get to the next live shot in a different area on campus.

The live streaming created a fully broad campus experience that had a lot of interactivity and variety. Over the summer, we talked about ways to use live streaming to cover more outdoor events. The LiveU helps us distribute mobile crews to capture content that we can distribute to viewers.

A NEW WAY OF APPROACHING PRODUCTIONS When you think about the vast number of live events that typically happen on a college campus, of course they are generally built around the idea of a mass

Steven Niedzielski, Sr. Multimedia Manager

gathering of people. That is going to be different this year. It already has been.

As we head into the fall, we are talking about a lot of ways to use live streaming to take experiences that used to be a lot of people in one place and distribute them out.

One of the examples is a weekly chapel service, where there would normally be 5,000–7,000 people in the arena.

They are going to have to distribute that and do a lot of that at remote sites and individual streaming viewers. It’s been one of the big challenges that I am sure everybody who’s in my boat is thinking about.

Normally, when you build a live production, you have a large crew. It’s a lot of people wedged in a little room all breathing the same air, which we can’t do anymore. So one of the things we’ve been thinking about is how to use more distributed crews and more mobile crews. The LiveU and the ability to move around—the flexibility and the portability side of it is going to be a huge factor. So many of these events are no longer in a building with great wired connections—they are going to be outside. We have amazing weather in Arizona throughout the fall. We will have all these events outside so then suddenly you wonder, “How do we get a connection out there?” The LiveU really answers that.

RETURN OF SPORTS We are approaching live sports coverage—whether it returns for fall or winter

sports—similar to our game plan for this past spring semester. When streaming live sports you are trying to take that experience and extend it out to this broader viewership. One of the things that is unique about GCU is that we have a campus with 24,000 students and an additional 70,000 that take classes online.

We have a huge body of students that identify with the university and its athletic programs and so we try to give them an equal experience as our traditional ground campus students and let them be a fan and be connected. It’s really all about capturing what’s going on and sharing this with a broader group of people.

Steven Niedzielski is a senior multimedia manager at Grand Canyon University, where he brings 20 years of experience in pro video workflows, managing technical and creative professionals.

Niedzielski produces compelling marketing content and implements cuttingedge technology. He can be contacted at Steven.Niedzielski@gce.com.

For more information, visit https:// get.liveu.tv/ or call 201-742-5228.

BUYERS BRIEFS Imagine Communications Versio in AWS Imagine Communications’ Versio channel origination ecosystem delivers a playout solution for the cloud, optimizing AWS building blocks to create a ready-for-air workflow with security, data resiliency and reliability. Accessing the AWS library of services through Versio, operators can avoid complex challenges and time demands of large physical infrastructure.

Versio in AWS enables users to scale on demand and experiment with new revenue models, while taking advantage of service improvements that come from a cloud-enabled business. Customers can tailor a secure, disruption-free transition to cloud technology for the reach, reliability and results that meet their business needs.

For more information, visit myimagine.tech/2QKQhP6 or call 866-446-2446.

The Switch MIMiC The cloud-based, production-as-a-service MIMiC platform from The Switch includes remote IP-video contribution, production and clipping tools, and distribution so users can ensure broadcast-quality production to and from anywhere, with different plan options that enable broadcasters to utilize their crews or operators from The Switch.

MIMiC handles different aspects of production, from editing and graphics creation to comms and talk-back. The MIMiC platform can operate with video streams of 1080p60 encoded up to 20 Mbps with either H.264 or H.265/HEVC encoding.

For more information, visit www.theswitch.tv or contact The Switch at 646-933-0950.

Harmonic VOS360 Harmonic’s VOS360 live streaming platform utilizes cloud-native infrastructure to help meet the needs of media processing and delivery. The platform can run on a range of public cloud platforms and powers simultaneous streams, live channels, video-on-demand requests and has hundreds of petabytes of storage and delivery.

The VOS360 includes flexible and real-time scaling, a rich API for integration of media applications, a compression engine that reduces the average bandwidth by 50%, as well as live or file transcoding, packaging and origin, real-time CDN selection, targeted advertising, VOD, SVOD, time-shift and network DVR. For more information, visit www. harmonicinc.com or contact Harmonic at 800-828-5521.

30 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

EQUIPMENT GUIDE

FooEngine Taps Telestream For Remote Production in the Cloud

BY BEN SMITH CEO/Co-Founder FooEngine GILLINGHAM, U.K.—FooEngine is a U.K.-based SaaS company focusing on media processing of program content for streaming providers worldwide. Hav-

USER REPORT ing done this for many years in the short form commercial delivery market, we knew how to handle video delivery over the internet.

In order to create the world’s first video orchestration platform focused on the long-form industry, we settled on an “API-first mentality,” which would enable us to build an open and extensible virtual platform for connecting to any third-party processing tools and services we required to get the job done. At FooEngine we want to process content faster than ever before leveraging the near limitless computing power available in the cloud.

FROM MONTHS TO DAYS Previously, streaming preparation could take months for long-form programs. With audiences stuck at home

craving new content, this timeline was unacceptable, so we built a solution to bring long-form content to market faster. While the short-form world works in seconds and MBs/GBs, the long-form world is TBs/PBs. By leveraging providers like Google TCP, AWS, together with cloud-agnostic Telestream processing services from Vantage Cloud Port, we were able to shorten months to days for longform processing tasks. FooEngine uses Telestream Cloud Services to enable the central architecture of our intelligent media workflows.

These services include QC as a Service for technical inspection and validation of master and final deliverable content.

We also deploy Telestream’s Cloud Flip Service for transcoding to common distribution formats. Having everything in the cloud gives us unlimited processing capabilities; the core idea behind bringing media into the cloud is that the data doesn’t move. You need to be able to QC the file,

Ben Smith CEO/Co-Founder FooEngine

do the processing, wrap up your metadata, then push out again without moving the media around.

With the ability to detect media offline, black and silence, FooEngine analyzes

BUYERS BRIEFS Grass Valley GV AMPP The Agile Media Processing Platform from Grass Valley is a cloud-based SaaS platform that is designed to utilize the power of elastic compute.

AMPP serves as the core enabling technology of the GV Media Universe.

AMPP features a series of applications that a user can customize to meet their specific production needs. The applications include master control, stream, multiviewer, ingest, input, graphics, playback, archive, output and more. The platform can run in any data center or cloud environment, with the ability to transition to cloud- and data center-based operations.

For more information, visit www.grassvalley. com or contact Grass Valley at 514-333-1772.

streaming or VOD clip publishing. Screenweave LIVE can also simulcast the incoming RTMP stream to Facebook Live and YouTube Live.

For more information, visit www.cablecast.tv or contact Cablecast at 866-866-4118.

Sony Ci Catalog Cablecast Community Media Screenweave LIVE Screenweave LIVE enables community media organizations to bring live feeds of virtual meetings from Zoom and other web-based conferencing solutions into the Cablecast Community Media platform for cable television, online, OTT and social media distribution.

Deployed entirely in the cloud, Screenweave LIVE receives a live RTMP stream from Zoom or a streaming solution and delivers it to a Cablecast VIO, Cablecast Flex or RTMP-capable third-party server platform for live broadcast, recording,

Ci, Sony Electronics’ cloud-native professional media management and collaboration platform, has expanded into enterprise asset management with Ci Catalog. This new offering enables enterprises to build and securely manage centralized libraries of rich media and make them easily accessible to stakeholders across teams, departments, divisions or companies.

With the addition of Catalog, Ci now provides secure content management from production through monetization—all in a single platform.

Catalog seamlessly integrates with Ci’s Workspace enabling companies to replace up to five separate systems including accelerated file transfer, transcoding, collaborative review, content management and archive with the Ci platform.

For more information, visit www.sonymcs.com.

each file at 600x real time and produces reports for operators to access the file remotely in FooEngine’s private platform.

We make use of machine learning to analyze media files quickly for problems that technology can detect, but humans approve to ensure everything looks as good as it possibly can. FooEngine uses Vantage Cloud Port for transcoding and media processing to advanced broadcast deliverable formats. Advanced frame rate conversion is performed using Cinnafilm Tachyon technology for the highest quality. The system uses Telestream’s Timed Text Flip for subtitle and closed-caption processing.

DATA-CENTRIC WORKFLOWS Our new platform can accept any format from 640x480 to 8K at any framerate and in any video codec. It offers the world’s first SaaS solution for audio, offering Dolby E encode and decode, channel swapping, upmixing and downmixing with world standard loudness correction or analyzing.

FooEngine harnesses media information that is used to drive data-centric workflows allowing 100,000s of hours of content to seamlessly pass through the platform. Whether it’s video QC, format conversion or more powerful broadcast format workflows including subtitle and caption conversions, we are covered with the Telestream Cloud Services Toolkit. Like FooEngine, Telestream Cloud is cloud-agnostic, so this fits perfectly with our tech stack.

We have recently acquired a major North American broadcast customer who is using FooEngine to repurpose its content for distribution throughout Latin America. Within three weeks of opening, FooEngine had already processed around 40 TB of data, including 4629 separate episodes and incidents.

The service we’re providing is not really feasible utilizing on-premises CAPEX equipment. The beauty of a SaaS offering is that you pay as you go. Being able to service multiple locations out of an office that is not central was previously unheard of, but the pandemic has driven industry workflows to this business model as a necessity. The model works so well and is so economical, we believe it will stay this way for customers going forward.

Ben Smith is CEO and co-founder of FooEngine. He has been in the industry for decades, having launched BEAM.TV, workflow tool for creatives in 1995. Most recently he launched Waive, a Talents Rights tool for the creative industry. He can be reached at ben@fooengine.com.

For more information, contact Telestream at 877-681-2088 or visit www.telestream.net.

31

www.tvtechnology.com TV TECHNOLOGY October 2020

EQUIPMENT GUIDE

DFT Keeps Content Moving And Secure With Signiant

BY ERIN WHITE Director of Content & Data Security DigitalFilm Tree LOS ANGELES—While DigitalFilm Tree (DFT) has served the media and entertainment community since 1999, 2020 has been a critical year in terms of show-

DFT is wildly unique in that we make choices and investments based on a balance of future thinking, like developing our own software, and partnerships with formidable authorities like Signiant

the globe and delivered, in some cases, more than 35 hours of 4K content or 15plus TB of media. The turnaround time on this show was accelerated due to the short window between filming and

USER REPORT casing our remote and collaborative innovations. I joined the team eight years ago, but DFT has evolved several times over since then. I’m the director of content & data security, a role that didn’t yet exist on the team, but as our technology and services expanded, so have many of our abilities as a group of interdisciplinary creatives.

DFT has a history of pioneering solutions and workflows across both production and post, and the pandemic has magnified just how much time and effort we’ve put into defining “what’s next.”

Our intentional focus on television and independent features—solving for their specific, time-sensitive and budget critical challenges—has given us our greatest ideas and market changing solutions. It’s our clients’ obstacles that have driven us.

Media Shuttle, and our partnership with Signiant, has been fundamental to our evolution and innovations.

AGILE AND WORKFLOW-AGNOSTIC Well before COVID-19 sent many of us off the lot and into our homes, Media Shuttle was integral to our workflows.

Erin White says that Media Shuttle has proved a valuable tool for productions during the pandemic.

for immediate needs. This hybrid has allowed us to remain agile, workflowagnostic, and ready to solve client challenges while avoiding trendy or untested platforms that often encumber others.

For example, Amazon Prime recently released its second season of “The Boys” and DigitalFilm Tree was brought on to work on its companion content, “The Boys After Show,” which was filmed across nine different locations around

episode release dates, so the speed and the efficiency of our infrastructure was imperative during both dailies and finishing.

Our Media Shuttle usage skyrocketed at this time. DFT staged transfers of the completed footage at night so the producers would receive it via their home internet, waking up to all the necessary files for review. By 10 a.m., they were ready to go into a live remote review

session with us. This smooth flow of content and collaboration was largely a result of Signiant’s reliability. Every file we work with is mission-critical, so speed, visibility and security are imperative. These values are tantamount in our industry, and Media Shuttle has them covered in spades.

Using multiple ISPs, working across several storage solutions, and focusing on our own software development to drive meaningful innovation has ensured our ability to get content where it needs to go on time. Where other facilities couldn’t pivot during the initial rush into individual homes, Signiant’s platform gave us the freedom and immediate ability to push massive amounts of data quickly without interruption or the fear of giant hidden penalties. Other file transfer software can limit bandwidth, restrict storage, charge “fine print” fees or fumble important content, but Media Shuttle has none of those obstacles.

With the current climate, our number one goal is helping others get back to work; be it from home or shortening their physical time needed on set by better leveraging the cloud, we’re committed to getting our community up and running again. Having a partner like Signiant has allowed us to show people in real time just how meaningful, reliable and immediately available these workflows are to everyone.

Erin White has been pioneering secure, data focused M&E workflows for 20 years, eight of them on team DigitalFilm Tree. She can be reached at erin@digitalfilmtree.com.

For more information, contact Signiant at 781-221-4000 or visit www.signiant.com.

BUYERS BRIEFS Qligent Dymos The Dynamic Monitoring Service (Dymos) is a SaaS, pay-as-you-go event stream monitoring solution in the cloud. No additional onpremises hardware is required to monitor QoE, QoS and compliance for live streams on-demand. Customers can choose to use Dymos as a managed or unmanaged cloud service.

Dymos users manually or programmatically send event-driven information to create an instance in the cloud, access the stream content and begin monitoring. The Dymos dashboard provides realtime access to video, audio and alarms in a browser. Following the event, all recorded data is transferred to Qligent’s Cloud Aggregation Server for subsequent access.

For more information, visit www.qligent.com or contact Qligent at 321-273-2280.

TVU Networks TVU Producer The cloud-based TVU Producer has been widely used for a range of applications, such as: live sports, live news, corporate communication production, concerts and house of worship services.

The multicamera, cloud-production solution enables production and streaming to social media channels, websites and web streaming platforms, as well as delivery to traditional SDI infrastructure without

any hardware, software or training.

This service enables media organizations to produce content during the pandemic, while keeping production crews safe.

TVU has added an Audio Mixer Panel feature that adds familiar audio mixing capabilities to TVU Producer. With a simple, browser-based UI, operators have full control of all audio signals from their home.

For more information visit www.tvunetworks.com or call 1.

650.440.4812.

32  October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

BUYERS BRIEFS Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage The B2 Cloud Storage from Backblaze offers up to 10 GB of free storage, unlimited free uploads and 1 GB free downloads per day for users who have a Backblaze account. With an account, users have access to information that will let you contact APIs. Backblaze supports two different suites of APIs: B2 Native and S3 Compatible, which offers support to the S3 ecosystem. With the Backblaze APIs, users can upload, download and delete files; create and manage the buckets that hold files; and, only with B2 Native APIs, manage the configuration of their account.

For more information, visit www.backblaze.com or contact Backblaze at 650-3523738.

Dalet Galaxy xCloud A remote production system for newsroom and media organization content production and distribution operations, the Galaxy xCloud is a scalable SaaS platform that is designed to extend on-premises production and enable remote editing and collaboration from home to hub.

With a cloud infrastructure, Galaxy xCloud users can operate from home while still using familiar production tools, including Dalet OneCut, Dalet WebSpace and Dalet On-the-Go from their homebased devices. Adobe Premiere Pro-based editing workflows are also supported through the Dalet Xtend plug-in. Galaxy xCloud is hosted in AWS. For more information, visit www.dalet.com or contact Dalet at 212-269-6707.

PRODUCTS & SERVICES SHOWCASE

33

www.tvtechnology.com TV TECHNOLOGY October 2020

EQUIPMENT EXCHANGE A u d i o • C a m e r a s • C a m e r a A c c e s s o r i e s • E d i t i n g / G r a p h i c s • E m p l o y m e n t • M e d i a • R e c e i v e r s • Tr a n s m i t t e r s • V i d e o P r o d u c t i o n TV Technology’s Equipment Exchange provides a FREE listing service for all broadcast and pro-video end users. Brokers, dealers, manufacturers and other organizations who sell used equipment on an occasional basis can participate in the Equipment Exchange on a PAID basis. All free listings run at the discretion of the publisher. Call 1-703-852-4610 for details. Submit your free listings on your letterhead and state the make, model number, a brief description, sale price and complete contact information and mail it to: TV Technology, 5285 Shawnee Rd, Suite 100, Alexandria VA 22312

AUDIO WANT TO SELL Gentner Digital Hybrid I, call; JK Audio Digital Hybrids, call; ADC patch bays, ¼” & Bantam, start at $39; Hotronic AU51 audio delays, call; Sound Ideas CD Efx library, call; Rane AVA22 delay, call, Tom, 856-222-0636 or info@bibbteck.com or www.bibbteck.com.

Yamaha PM5000 52-chnl audio mixer, $4900. 908-879-9590 or www.mccom.tv.

WANT TO BUY Wanted: real plate reverb. abgrun@gmail.com.

CAMERA ACCESSORIES WANT TO SELL 1950 Frank Back Zoomar Telephoto lens for RCA TK-11, w Fiber case; SOM Berthiot Zoom lens, w case, needs work, Call 856-222-0636 or info@bibbteck.com.

Vinten Fulmar & Hawk pedestals, repair, service, buy, sell and rent. Call Laurie or Jennifer for assistance. 800-9955427, Camera Support, Inc. Tripods: Miller 30 sticks—$249; Oconnor 50D w 50M/C, flight case, VVG $1900; Anton Bauer Ultralights, $35; Intellix CATx baluns, cheap, Varizoom Pro L LANC cntrlr, $169; Fuji focus controls, and focus blocks, call; Portabrace casesC-BVV5 $29, CO-PC Cam case 69.,

MO8044 Monitor case $29, RS-33 rain shield $35. Tom, 856-222-0636 or info@ bibbteck.com or www.bibbteck.com.

Sony BVM/PVM monitors, Philly So. Jersey area. Tom, 856-222-0636 or info@ bibbteck.com or www.bibbteck.com.

INTERCOMS

RF CONNECTORS

WANT TO SELL

WANT TO SELL

Clearcom MS-808A, $389; RTS 2-chnl stations, some parts, call. Tom, 856-222-0636 or info@bibbteck.com or www.bibbteck.com.

RF CONNECTORS & GADGETS – Parts, Products & More! www.W5SWL.com

SWITCHERS

MISCELLANEOUS WANT TO SELL

WANT TO SELL

Selling TV audio soundtracks from the 50’s through the 70’s. Variety shows, talk shows, etc. Call 925-284-5428 for details.

Panasonic AV-HS6000 2ME, 32-input HD switcher; Panasonic AW-HS50 switcher demo; Panasonic AJ-PCD2500 P2 demo, call; Panasonic AG-HPD24 P2 rcdrs, call.

908-879-9590 or www.mccom.tv.

AJA IoLA, $89/ea; AJA C10, D5D, $75; Degaussers: Aerovox, Garner, please call; Blonder Tongue processors, modulators, combiners 30+ pcs, BO; Ross DAC-9213PVM SDI to RGB, $199. Tom, 856-222-0636 or info@bibbteck.com or www.bibbteck.com.

WANT TO SELL

WANT TO BUY I’m looking for complete American Bandstand shows from 1969-1974. If possible, I would like for these shows to have been originally recorded off of video tape as opposed to film. I will pay for DVD copies. Contact Ron at 925-284-5428.

2” plastic “spot” reels 6.5 or 8” diameter, as used for quad video. Wayne, Audio Village, 760-320-0728 or audiovlg@gte.net.

TRANSMITTERS WANT TO SELL

Transcom Corporation Solid State Digital & Analog TV Transmitters

Rohde & Schwarz & Larcan Magnum up to 6KW DTV UHF Complete Package for Less than $40,000.00 System includes Spare Amplifiers, tuning and testing to any UHF channel.

VIDEO Sony Alignment kit; scales, torque and tension sets, call. Tom, 856-222-0636 or info@bibbteck.com or www.bibbteck. com.

VIDEO PRODUCTION

Also Available Harris Platinum Analog VHF Transmitters

New TV Transmitters Technalogix

WANT TO SELL Sony HDW-2000 HDCAM call; Panasonic AJ-PD500 P2 rcdr, Panasonic AJ-PG50 P2 rcdr; Sony DVW-M2000, call; Sony MSW-M2000 VTRs, call; Sony DVR-28, call; Fast Forward Video 2-chnl Omega HD rcdr, BO; Panasonic AJ-HD3700B, call. 908-8799590 or www.mccom.tv.

OMB www.fmamtv.com transcom@fmamtv.com215-938-7304

ADVERTISERSINDEX PAGE

ADVERTISER

WEBSITE PAGE

ADVERTISER WEBSITE

WEBSITE

11...............AJA.................................................................. www.aja.com

9.................Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark ........................ www.comarktv.com

32...............Avateq..........................................................www.avateq.com

5,7..............LAWO............................................................. www.lawo.com

23...............Arri ............................................................ www.arri.com/en/

13...............Lynx.................................................. www.green-machine.com

32...............Computer Modules - DVEO Division......................... www.dveo.com

19,32...........Mobile Studios ............ www.mobilestudios.com/portacast-cases.php

17...............Comrex Corporation......................................... www.comrex.com

1.................Ross Video ................................................ www.rossvideo.com

21...............Eartec........................................................... www.eartec.com

25...............Switchcraft................................................www.switchcraft.com

36...............Evertz............................................................www.evertz.com

32...............Tactical Fiber............................................www.tacticalfiber.com

3.................Enco Systems, Inc.........................................www.enco.com/nab

14...............Telos.................................................... www.telosalliance.com

15...............Guntermann & Drunck GmbH.................................. www.gdsys.de

17...............Voice Interaction ................................ www.voice-interaction.com

While every care is taken to ensure that these listings are accurate and complete TV Technology does not accept responsibility for omissions or errors.

ADVERTISING SALES REPRESENTATIVES U.S. & CANADA: DIRECTOR OF SALES, MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT & TECH LAURA LUBRANO 917-301-3815 laura.lubrano@futurenet.com

AD DIRECTOR PAUL MAURIELLO paul.mauriello@futurenet.com

ACCOUNT MANAGER KATRINA FRAZER katrina.frazer@futurenet.com

EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA RAFFAELLA CALABRESE +39-320-891-1938 Fax: +39-02-700-436-999 raffaella.calabrese@futurenet.com

JAPAN EIJI YOSHIKAWA +81-3-3327-2688 Fax: +81-3-3327-3010 callems@world.odn.ne.jp

U.K. NATHALIE ADAMS +44 (0) 203 998 2850 nathalie.adams@futurenet.com

ASIA/PACIFIC WENGONG WANG +86-755-8386-2930/40/50 Fax: +86-755-8386-2920 wwg@imaschina.com

34 October 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE JOSHUA WEISS

JENN PAONESSA

LOU DIMAURO

Chief Executive Officer

Director, Venues Solutions Division

Vice President of Sales for East Coast

ChyronHego

Globecast

Ark Multicasting Ark Multicasting has promoted Joshua Weiss, a co-founder of the company, to CEO. He will continue the company’s efforts to build out a footprint of NextGen TV stations, reportedly covering 100 million people with nearly 300 broadcast assets. Weiss replaces outgoing CEO Vern Fotheringham who is staying on with Ark as the vice chairman and as an advisor to Weiss.

ALVIN R. LUSTGARTEN Senior VP, Technology and Information Services Hearst Television Hearst Television’s Alvin R. Lustgarten has been promoted to senior vice president, technology and information services after serving as vice president since 2001. He also provides strategic leadership for the company’s new-technology initiatives, including artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics efforts, and has played a critical role in overseeing Hearst Television’s cloud transformation.

ChyronHego has promoted Jennifer Paonessa to director of the company’s new Venues Solutions Division. The new division focuses on custom, workflow-driven graphics solutions to deliver an end-to-end sports production ecosystem that combines traditional LED content control, advanced graphics creation, virtual and data visuals to boost fan engagement and team branding.

JEFF HUGHES

SCOTT BROWN

Chief Operating Officer

General Manager, Audience Measurement

NEP Group’s Global Businesses Jeff Hughes has joined NEP Group as chief operating officer, covering all of NEP’s operating segments: Broadcast Services, Media Solutions and Live Events. He will be based in Los Angeles, and report directly to NEP Group CEO Brian Sullivan as a member of the executive team. Hughes comes to the NEP Group from Fox Networks’ Digital Consumer Group where he was president and COO.

MIKE FLATHERS

GRADY TRIPP

Customer Solutions Officer

Chief Diversity Officer

Signiant

TEGNA

Signiant has appointed Mike Flathers to the company’s newly created role of chief solutions officer. Flathers will be a member of Signiant’s senior leadership team, reporting directly to CEO Margaret Craig, and will assist with customer engagement on how to employ the Signiant SDCX platform.

Industry veteran Lou DiMauro joins Globecast as vice president of sales for the East Coast. He will be responsible for selling media management, contribution, distribution and IP services to customers based in the United States and Canada. This includes Globecast’s advanced media services including cloud-based playout and media management services and OTT platforms.

TEGNA Inc. has appointed Grady Tripp to the new position of vice president and chief diversity officer. He will report directly to TEGNA President and CEO Dave Lougee and partner with organizational leaders to develop and execute the company’s diversity strategy. He joined TEGNA in 2017 and has been an integral part of the company’s people and culture strategy.

Nielsen Nielsen is working to transform its cross-media strategy by unifying measurement across linear TV, advanced TV and digital video solutions. The company announced the appointment of Scott Brown to the role of general manager, Audience Measurement, to help with that effort. Most recently Brown served as the CTO for Nielsen’s measurement products.

GERRY MCAREE Director, Strategic Accounts, Eastern Region TVU Networks

LUC COMEAU Director of Product Marketing TVU Networks TVU Networks welcomes Gerry McAree as director, strategic accounts, Eastern Region, North America. Gerry will be responsible for working with major television networks and station groups headquartered on the East Coast. Luc Comeau joins as director of product marketing, North America, and will lead product marketing efforts for the company’s cloud solutions.

9000