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ISSN 1448-9554
V0LUME 16 ISSUE 4 JULY-AUGUST 2019
50 YEARS OF INNOVATION. STRONG PARTNERSHIPS. SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS. LASTING RELATIONSHIPS. For the last 50 years we have been safely navigating our clients through an ever-changing landscape of broadcast media and telco technology. From analogue through digital to the cloud, we’ve stayed ahead of and embraced these changes, gathering the knowledge and expertise required to provide the very best solutions and positive outcomes for our clients. But most importantly, along the way we’ve formed many strong, lasting relationships with partners and customers alike and evolved a culture based on quality, experience and trust. And we just love to make people smile.
Visit Magna Systems and see the latest in IP, 5G, VR and 360 solutions at the Media + Entertainment Tech Expo on stand D42. To make an appointment, set a meeting or arrange a demo at the show contact your local Magna office today. Sydney +61 2 9417 1111 | Auckland +64 9520 1582 | Hong Kong +852 2563 4453 | Jakarta +62 8181 43923 | Singapore +65 6282 3613 | sales@magnasys.tv | www.magnasys.tv
VOLUME V0LUME 1516ISSUE ISSUE24 MARCH JULY-AUGUST / APRIL2019 2018
Cover Story – Making the Grade with Captain Marvel ... page 32. REGULARS 02 EDITOR’S WELCOME
46 INDUSTRY FOCUS Players in
Content+Technology caught off-air. Presented by Fujinon/Fujifilm.
04 NEWS Sky Racing Gets SMART with LAWO ST2110 Technology; Yospace and Seven Extend Partnership for Server-Side Ad Insertion; APAC Round-Up; People Moves.
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FEATURES
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10 METEXPO/SMPTE 2019 PREVIEW 17 ACQUISITION Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera on Captain Marvel; New Leitz Lenses; VA Hire Partners with Procam Europe; Atomos’ New Neon Recorder/ Monitors; Sony Introduces Simple Live Streaming & Shows Off 8K UHC-8300 Camera.
33 MEDIA IN THE CLOUD Tennis Australia
Chooses Spectra Logic and Digistor for Australian Open; Oracle’s DIVA Divestment; How Broadcasters Can Relieve the Headache of Storing Archive Footage Tim Jobling, CTO, Imagen.
36 AUDIO Mediacorp and DTS:X Create Sonic
Boom in Audio Production; Studios 301 Academy; Audient - Best of Both Worlds for Emmanuel College.
20 SPORTSCASTING NBA, Unbnd Launch
Immersive Basketball Content; Blackmagic Powers Baseball Tracking System; ICC World Cup Video Views Hit One Billion; Tieline Commentary Solution for FINA2019 Swim Championships; Lawo Goes Into Bat for Indian Premier League.
26 26
NEWS OPERATIONS TVNZ Upgrades
Newsgathering Fleet with LiveU; TVU Networks Partners with Stringr; Avid Boosts Production Speed with MediaCentral Update; Trust, Fatigue and Smartphones Reuters Institute Digital News Report.
40 RADIO MediaWorks NZ Aligns with
Orban; GatesAir to Strengthen NOVA’s FM Transmission Infrastructure; DAB Digital Radio Sales Reach 75 Million.
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CONTENT DELIVERY TEN Transmission Move to Broadcast Australia Prompts TXA Restructure; Sky NZ Accelerates on Streaming Services; Kordia Offers PopUp TV Channels; Video Ad Delivery Made Peachy; Looking Above the Clouds to Deliver Multi-Screen Content.
29 POST-PRODUCTION Marquis
Broadcast’s Project Parking Improves Archive and Backup Workflow for WTFN.
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EDITOR’S WELCOME
When the Platform Falls Far from the Tree Apple is closing down iTunes, but more people are upset over a $1000 monitor stand. By Phil Sandberg
Recurring revenue models are on the increase. In telecommunications, for example, 2018 saw a growth in revenue from subscriptions of 23% while media subscription revenues grew 11%, and while telecom churn rates have dipped to 26%, media churn remains under 35%.
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Subscription business sales have also grown substantially faster than two key U.S. benchmarks -S&P 500 Sales and U.S. retail sales. Overall, the SEI data reveals that subscription businesses grew revenues about five times faster than S&P 500 company revenues (18.1% versus 3.6%) and U.S. retail sales (18.1% versus 3.8%) from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2018.
Of course, when it comes to content, “physical stuff” is physical media – Bluerays, DVDs, CDs, retro vinyl, etc. A trend towards smaller dwellings, combined with increased bandwidth and easier, legal ways of accessing content will inevitably lead to a disappearance of the movie/music collection in favour of subscription-based consumption. 02:00
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According to the Subscription Economy Index (SEI) published by subscription business platform, Zuora, subscription companies have grown more than 300% in the past seven years, and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) Subscription Economy growth exceeds sales growth in regional stock market indices by a wide margin. 16:00
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Which brings us back to the subscription model, originally the preserve of cable and satellite pay TV and now hypercharged via the Internet by the likes of Netflix, iFlix, Viu and, the soon to launch, Disney Plus.
It also found that adults in Japan (75%) and Singapore (71%) are significantly more likely than adults in other countries to wish for less physical ‘stuff’ (compared to 57% in the U.S., 50% in U.K., 58% in Australia, 55% in China, 46% in France, 57% in Germany, 60% in Italy, 47% in the Netherlands, 56% in New Zealand and 53% in Spain).
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For a monthly fee, the new Music app for Mac will feature over 50 million songs, playlists and music videos, and users will have access to their music library, whether they downloaded the songs, purchased them or ripped them from a CD. For those who like to own their music, the iTunes Music Store will be a “click away”. The all-new Apple TV app, meanwhile, features Apple TV channels, personalized recommendations and over 100,000 iTunes movies and TV shows. More critically, for Apple, its Apple TV+, Apple’s original video subscription service, will be available 3Q 2019 in the Apple TV app. And, perhaps, reflecting the nascent nature of podcasting and the sheer volume available, podcasts on the Apple Podcasts app remain free.
(78%), China (77%), Spain (74%), the U.S. and Italy (both 73%) than to adults in the U.K. and Australia (both 67%), France (64%), Germany (58%), Japan (45%) and the Netherlands (53%).
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ASIDE FROM GENERATING A FLURRY of clickbait articles - padded out with screenshots from geek Twitter accounts - the move by Apple to fold iTunes into three new apps in its macOS Catalina operating system release is less apocalypse and more a recognition that subscription models have become the norm for media businesses, and a whole range of industries as well.
While most of us are in the middle of this transformation, Apple iTunes, like many legacy platforms, has reached the point of retirement. The subscription media economy would not be what it is but for Apple, but it recognises that it, too, needs to keep evolving. Thanks for reading Phil Sandberg – Editor/Publisher
In a complimentary report, The End of Ownership, Zuora found that access to valued content and services is much more intriguing to adults in Singapore
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NEWS + PEOPLE
NEWS + PEOPLE
For the latest news visit www.content-technology.com
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NEWS + PEOPLE Sky Racing Gets SMART with LAWO ST2110 Technology PROFESSIONAL AUDIO & TELEVISION has announced that Sky Racing have entrusted its ST2110 media network monitoring to LAWO’s SMART (System Monitoring and Realtime Telemetry) system. The system, which is supplied by LAWO’s exclusive distributor PAT, will be rolled out in the coming months to provide Sky Racing’s engineering team with this cutting-edge IP network monitoring tool specifically designed to bridge the gap between IT and Video engineering. In addition to SMART, Sky Racing have also contracted PAT to supply LAWO V_matrix equipment – LAWO’s video processing platform for encap, decap, streaming and distributed Multiviews, LAWO ruby audio consoles and processing engines, V__pro8s and a significant expansion to their nationwide VSM IP control system. LAWO’s System Monitoring and Realtime Telemetry Dashboard (aka smartDASH) is a vendor-agnostic enterprise software suite designed to provide full network and media visibility across an all IP, all SDI or hybrid WAN/LAN broadcast infrastructure. Strategically positioned to bridge the gap between IT and Video engineering, smartDASH straddles both sides of the operation to provide a comprehensive view of what the network is doing and how the media streams flowing across the network are behaving. Based on a UNIX OS, this software defined networking solution incorporates a powerful and robust database to document and rapidly search any aspect of the operation, from a simple cable ID number to seeking the journey of a multicast across a transnational multi-hop WAN. By leveraging a vast library of hardware communication protocols, the system automatically interrogates live and dormant path connections to create the most intuitive and data rich presentation layers of a COTS-hybrid infrastructure. With its award-winning deep packet inspection microservices, the SMART solution also supports monitoring and decoding a wide range of media formats, from low bitrate OTT/ABR streams, to uncompressed ST2110 studio production flows. It can also characterise the packet pacing off the delivery network. This approach brings a deeper dimension of operational visibility by unifying network telemetry and mixed media flow into a single glass view. smartDASH users have a zero-footprint installation and can be deployed on-premise, private or public cloud with HTTP accessibility from a browser or mobile device. This vendor-agnostic state-of-the-art software solution is an essential component to the conscious operation of any IP-based broadcast installation. Tabcorp’s Senior Manager Technology (Media Division) – Dennis Dovale commented, “SMART made perfect sense for our ST2110 Media network rollout to provide our engineering department with the monitoring and telemetry tool kit to easily identify and locate specific issues in the network. As this is the first install of SMART in Australia, Tabcorp are early adopters of this technology, but this is nothing new to us as we continuously look at improving our business of which the Media Network is a crucial part.” Sky Racing will be rolling LAWO’s System Monitoring and Realtime Telemetry software out for its newly built Brisbane Ann Street facility network before expanding it into Frenchs Forest, Belrose and Melbourne as the network expands over the next 12 to 18 months. LAWO’s Senior Director of Product Management Tony Zare was delighted with Sky Racing’s announcement.
LAWO’s SMART (System Monitoring and Realtime Telemetry) system.
“We know that SMART will play an integral part in ST2110 broadcast facilities in Australia and the rest of the world,” he said. “Still, I would like to personally thank Sky Racing for their trust in our technology and we are looking forward to a close cooperation with the Sky engineering team to make their new facility a shining reference site for ST2110 installations around the world.” In addition to LAWO’s SMART monitoring and telemetry system, Sky Racing is also relying on LAWO’s IP processing platform V__matrix for encap, decap, multiviews and of course streaming between facilities. LAWO’s already deployed VSM IP control system will significantly grow to take charge of Sky’s new IP media network. Part of the technology migration to a fully ST2110 compliant AES67 audio network are LAWO’s ruby consoles for the production studios with various 16 and 32 fader consoles replacing aging, end of life equipment. Mr Dovale continued, “Our audio network is migrating from DANTE to RAVENNA and the ruby consoles provide us with the perfect audio processing engine that can connect to our aging DANTE infrastructure, while also being the bridging device that connects to our hitless merge RAVENNA AES67 network. The fact that the ruby engine is fully compliant with SMPTE2110-30, while also offering a gateway to our DANTE network and controlled via VSM through EMBER+, made this the perfect audio engine to see us into the future.” Both Tony Zare and Dennis Dovale will be speakers at this year’s IP Seminar 2.0 held by LAWO, ARISTA and PAT on the 19th of July in Sydney and the 23rd of July in Auckland. Mr Dovale will be speaking about Sky Racing’s transition to ST2110, while Mr Zare will be highlighting the operational advantages SMART will bring to any IP broadcast or hybrid environment. To register, contact admin@proaudiotv. com.au or call +61-2-9476 1272.
ACMA Proposes Area-Wide Licence Type
NEWS + PEOPLE
THE AUSTRALIAN COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA AUTHORITY is proposing to develop a new transmitter and receiver licence type, referred to as the area-wide apparatus licence (AWL) type.
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The AWL type will authorise one or more radiocommunications devices in the geographic area and frequency or frequencies specified in the licence. Unlike existing apparatus licence types, the AWL will be capable of authorising a broad variety of services, uses, applications and technologies. It aims to benefit spectrum users by complementing existing licensing options and improving apparatus licensing flexibility. It should be noted that
the AWL type was previously referred to as the ‘spectrum space’ apparatus licence in the Draft five-year spectrum outlook 2019–23. To establish the licence type, the ACMA is proposing regulatory changes to the apparatus licensing framework, including a new licence condition determination for the AWL type. The ACMA has released a consultation paper seeking public comment on questions about the proposal. The deadline for submissions is COB, Friday 9 August 2019. Visit www.acma.gov.au/theacma/proposed-area-wide-apparatus-licence
Speaker Built in speaker for monitoring audio.
Control Buttons 7 buttons for transport controls, remote and 3D LUT.
LCD Display Shows video, transport controls, audio meters and menus.
Cache Optional media cache for fail safe recording.
Headphone 1/4" audio jack for monitoring audio with headphones.
Transport controls Touchscreen transport controls for easy playback and record.
In and Out Points Set in and out points for performing “tape to tape” style editing.
Audio meters Monitor up to 4 channels using VU or PPM metering.
Playback and Record Select Select which deck you want as a player or a recorder.
Transport controls Traditional broadcast deck transport controls.
Time Display Monitor deck timecode on clear LED display.
Shuttle/Jog Knob Large knob with electronic clutch for jog, shuttle and scrolling recordings.
Introducing HyperDeck Extreme 8K HDR! The first 8K deck with H.265 recording, touch screen, cache, scopes and more! The new HyperDeck Extreme 8K HDR features innovations such as space saving H.265 files, built in scopes, optional internal cache, 3D LUTs, native 8K and HDR support! The large touch screen ensures a perfect view of your recording as well as control over all deck settings. You can then add HyperDeck Extreme Control to transform it into a traditional broadcast deck!
Big Screen with Touch Control
Perfect for Live, Signage and Archive
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With its amazing versatility, HyperDeck Extreme 8K HDR is also great for live production as a master recorder, clip player and for recording ISO cameras� The analog inputs allow you to record from old video tapes, helping get legacy programming onto streaming services� Digital signage in 8K is easy with HyperDeck Extreme 8K HDR as it has 10G Ethernet for fast media uploads!
HyperDeck Extreme 8K HDR features full internal waveform monitoring� The waveform display shows traditional luminance levels of your video� The vectorscope display allows you to see the intensity of color� You also get RGB and YUV parade displays for color correction or illegal levels� Histogram shows highlights or shadows clipping� Plus all scopes are real time, even in 8K or HDR!
The innovative touch LCD user interface provides incredible control� You get dedicated buttons for play, stop and record, plus a mini timeline for scrolling through your recordings� The LCD includes display of timecode, video standard, media status as well as audio meters� You can even display real time scopes and focus and exposure assist tools� Plus you can load and save 3D LUTs!
Record and Playback 8K The latest Quad Link 12G-SDI allows record and playback in full resolution 8K for amazing quality! The SDI connections are multi-rate, so you can use Quad Link 12G-SDI for 8K, or switch to SD, HD or Ultra HD using the single link 12G-SDI connection� To allow regular CFast cards to be used in 8K, HyperDeck Extreme 8K HDR uses modern H�265 files for 8K recording and playback�
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NEWS + PEOPLE Yospace and Seven Extend Partnership for Server-Side Ad Insertion YOSPACE, A PROVIDER OF server-side ad insertion (SSAI) technology, has announced the extension of its partnership with Seven, Australia’s leading commercial TV network, enabling SSAI into live OTT channels. The announcement marks the third year of a partnership in which Yospace’s SSAI technology has been leveraged to create new, addressable ad spots during some of Seven’s largest live events, including the Winter Olympics, Rugby League World Cup, Commonwealth Games and Melbourne Cup, an event that pulls the highest concurrent streaming audiences in Australia.
the load on ad servers and programmatic platforms when they are hit by a sudden surge in simultaneous ad requests, as happens with major live events. Yospace’s ‘prefetch’ system enables it to call ad servers and the wider programmatic ecosystem in advance, affording them the time needed to handle the spike in ad requests and deliver the highest possible fill-rate for the broadcaster.
Yospace’s SSAI platform, used by leading broadcasters across the globe, solves the technical complexities of delivering addressable advertising for streamed television while maintaining a TV-quality viewer experience, This has enabled Seven to generate new revenue streams across the breadth of its enviable live sports portfolio and 24×7 Broadcast simulcast streams.
“We’ve worked with Seven to pioneer new approaches to monetising its premium live content,” said Tim Sewell, Yospace. “Broadcasters, advertisers, and audiences are demanding more from OTT in terms of viewer experience, addressability and scale – and the extension of our partnership is testimony to our ability to deliver that. We’ll continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with server-side ad insertion and we look forward to continuing our successful partnership with Seven for the long term.”
The platform addresses a critical challenge in monetising live streams at scale, that of managing
“Our viewers expect an engaging, high-quality viewing experience – whether they’re watching
Broadcast or Internet streaming content especially during high-profile live events,” said Darren Kerry, Director Digital Product and Technology, Seven. “Yospace has helped us elevate the OTT viewing experience while opening up whole new bodies of inventory at scale. Yospace will continue to be an important partner as we continue to maximise the value of that inventory through programmatic.” Visit www.yospace.com
Pacific Mags Partners with Playable to Offer In-Email Video SEVEN WEST MEDIA’S Pacific magazine division has announced a partnership with video marketing platform Playable, becoming the first publisher in the Australian market to adopt inemail video. Playable is a platform that optimises video content to drive audience engagement and response through video marketing campaigns. Headquartered in San Francisco, Playable was founded in 2016 and is currently being utilised in other markets by brands including Warner Bros
and Red Bull. The platform allows the insertion of video within the body of an email which can be edited with Playable’s built in artificial intelligence tools. The platform allows any type of video to be used to create clips of 6-10 seconds in duration. The clips automatically play when a recipient opens the email. Clips can be looped. Audio is not used as video email is not universally compatible with audio. Pacific has been trialling the product since the
QLD Launches Australia’s Largest Feature Film Fund Partnership A GROUP OF SCREEN INDUSTRY LEADERS along with institutional investment have joined forces to launch Australia’s largest feature film fund partnership with the aim of breaking diverse Queensland screen industry talent and stories. Screen Queensland CEO Tracey Vieira announced that four companies have entered into a three-year partnership with Screen Queensland to co-produce and co-finance a slate of feature films through the R.I.D.E (Respect, Inclusion, Diversity and Equality) Feature Film Fund. “The R.I.D.E Feature Film Fund brings together the screen industry expertise of Screen Queensland, SBS, Madman Entertainment and The Post Lounge along with investment from Media Super for a landmark three-year deal that will see up to two bold and distinctive films created each year in Queensland. “This fund will provide the opportunity for up to six Queensland creative teams to develop and produce AUD$1.5 million budget feature films that are visually stunning and emotionally resonating for theatrical release and national broadcast,” said Ms Vieira.
NEWS + PEOPLE
“Queensland is leveraging screen industry expertise and investment to even the playing field for underrepresented groups in the screen industry. We are empowering filmmakers from a wide range of backgrounds to tell stories that reflect the diversity of our community that will also resonate with global audiences”, said Ms Vieira.
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The R.I.D.E Feature Film Fund will select up to four projects in the first stage of the program with creative teams receiving intensive development support from market and industry experts, followed by the selection of one project that will be greenlit for production. Visit https://screenqueensland.com.au/initiatives/ride
start of 2019 and will roll it out across Pacific’s stable of brands. It will also be available to commercial partners. This year Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL) used Playable to add a short edit of its 2019 Season Launch TVC to its member email newsletter to drive members to view the full campaign on NRL.com. Visit https://playable. video/video-email-sports Visit www.pacificmags.com.au
Datacom and Viaccess-Orca Sign SI Agreement for APAC VIACCESS-ORCA (VO) HAS ANNOUNCED that Datacom is the first company to sign under VO’s new system integration partnership program. An international supplier of satellite communications equipment based in Hong Kong, with strong pay TV and SI skills, Datacom will play a crucial role in bringing VO’s content protection and TV platform solutions to Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries, including Hong Kong, Macau, Mongolia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Australia, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. “With VO’s solutions, operators can solve the inherent challenges involved with providing a smarter and safer digital TV and OTT experience, and we look forward to bringing these innovations to the APAC region,” said Bo Guan, Manager, Multimedia and Broadcasting Division at Datacom. “As one of the leading resellers in Asia, we have worked on a wide range of pay-TV deployments and specialise in providing complete turnkey solutions for simplicity, efficiency, and reliability purposes. VO completes our portfolio, enabling us to deliver an end-to-end solution.” Datacom has more than 20 years of experience in system integration services, with a staff of around 200 people and offices in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, and Congo, along with distributors throughout the Asian region. Visit https://www.viaccess-orca.com
Welcome to
Broadcast 3.0
Network 10 Picks Lotame as Data Partner AUDIO. VIDEO. CONTROL. NETWORK. The partnership gives 10 access to Lotame’s extensive third-party data sets, one of the biggest in the world, delivering unrivalled depth in audience targeting. Network 10’s director of 10 Interactive Christian Williams said: “We’re continuing to invest in our digital platforms, 10 Play and 10 Daily, to attract our key under 50s audience into our ecosystem. We’re seeing audiences across these platforms growing at an exceptional rate. “Our partnership with Lotame means we can leverage their more than
three billion additional audience profiles with our existing data set, giving advertisers the opportunity to create deeply targeted and relevant campaigns with us, at scale.” 2 Lotame’s clients mcinclude 56 IBM, Ticketek, Annalect, and Omnicom Media Group.
Network 10’sApartnership with Lotame follows recently announced Global Standard Re-Defined Fader Option – IP-native – 3D-native – LiveView™ Video Labels partnerships NEW: withDual real-time data customer solutions company Tealium and data technology agency Venntifact. Visit https://tenplay.com.au and www.lotame.com A__stage
Silver Trak Launches Cinema Distribution Platform SYDNEY-BASED MEDIA LOGISTICS COMPANY Silver Trak Digital has partnered with broadband and satellite support provider IPSTAR and KenCast to launch Cinecastar, a new method for providing rapid cinema content distribution in Australia and New Zealand. The service, currently operational throughout the US, takes the traditional DCP, uploads it to the KenCast secured cloud-based distribution platform and server and automates the forward transmission and download to participant cinemas wherever connected in Australia and New Zealand. As Silver Trak COO Christian Christiansen explained, “The cost and efficiency advantages of using Cinecastar are significant with the removal of physical HDD delivery and the instant recognition of content delivery.” Silver Trak Digital’s extensive experience in processing, creating and QC analysis of DCPs plays an integral part in the preparation of the content for satellite transmission and is completely integrated into the delivery service alongside the company’s traditional services including DCP creation, KDM management and HDD delivery. Christiansen continued, “There are major benefits to distributors and exhibitors including reduced total cost of ownership by providing a secure and efficient end-to-end IP delivery platform. We are also using proven KenCast technology that securely and efficiently delivers content to over 2700 cinemas in the US and reports on delivery of that content.”
A__line – WAN-Capable Audio-over-IP Nodes High-density – Multi-format – Lawo-grade preamps – Network Redundancy
IPSTAR also owns the satellite bandwidth and provides a dedicated one-stop-shop service from the satellite down to the earth station that connects it to the company’s data centre in Sydney where DCPs are ingested. Thus, the service is not reliant on the service performance or limits of exhibitors’ individual internet connections.
Silver Trak COO Christian
Christian Christiansen concluded, “With IPSTAR Christiansen. owning and controlling the satellite bandwidth, Cinecastar can immediately scale bandwidth as required to meet demand which means we can always ensure reliability of service. We can also offer excellent disaster recovery as, in the event of cinema site equipment failure, we have a backup system whereby we send HDDs directly to the affected site at no extra cost to any party. In parallel we arrange a service call for the site at no extra cost to exhibitors. In short our Cinecastar system is cheaper and more efficient than the current method of shipping content around the country via couriers which is good news for the vast majority of cinemas in Australia and New Zealand.” Visit https://silvertrak.com.au
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NEWS + PEOPLE
NETWORK 10 HAS SIGNED a partnership with data management platform Lotame as it continues to accelerate the roll out of its data solutions.
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NEWS + PEOPLE New HQ and Manager for Techtel Singapore TECHTEL HAS ANNOUNCED the appointment of Susan Lim as Territory Manager in charge of its new Singapore office. Susan will be responsible for promoting Techtel’s growing base of partners throughout Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia in what is the company’s 26th year in operation. Lim will also oversee Techtel S. E. Asia Pte Ltd’s continuing businesses transition into a full-service systems integration resource mirroring more closely with the activities of Techtel Australia.
“I look forward to developing new and existing business relationships and working towards establishing Techtel as the go-to systems integrator for all broadcast requirements in South East Asia,” said Lim. As part of its transition, Techtel S. E. Asia recently opened the doors to brand new headquarters in Singapore. Located at the heart of Singapore CBD in Henderson Building, Henderson Road, this office is conveniently situated nearby three train stations
(Tiong Bahru MRT Station (EW17), Redhill MRT Station (EW18) and Telok Blangah MRT Station (CC28); multiple bus stops and can be accessed via Henderson Road, Jalan Bukit Merah and Ayer Rajah Expressway. Visit www.techtel.com.sg
New Techtel S.E. Asia Territory Manager Susan Lim.
IN BRIEF HONG KONG’S PCCW MEDIA IS USING Harmonic’s VOS Cluster SaaS for its Now TV, now Player and Now E services. Harmonic’s VOS Cluster SaaS is providing a wide range of functionalities, including VOD transcoding, catchup TV, live-to-VOD media processing, packaging and origin server capabilities. Visit www.harmonicinc.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(PRC) has signed an agreement with the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union which will see the two parties cooperate in areas such as: policy information, news production, programme production, technical exchanges, information sharing, organising of events, and human resources development. They also agreed to support radio and television organisations in China in order to conduct co-productions with other ABU members, specifically with regard to documentaries and TV dramas reflecting international cooperation, under such endeavours like the Belt and Road Initiative. Visit www.abu.org.my ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION has announced the appointment of Libbie Doherty as Head of Children’s Production, overseeing Australian children’s content across ABC KIDS, ABC ME, ABC KIDS listen and on digital and third-party platforms. As Head of Children’s Production, Libbie will commission more than 350 hours of content across the ABC’s two children’s TV channels. She will also oversee in-house development and production across ABC KIDS, ABC ME, ABC KIDS listen, and ABC children’s digital products and third-party platforms. She will also take the lead on commissioning external producers. Visit www.abc.net.au ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWS + PEOPLE
MARK WARDLE HAS JOINED ENCOMPASS in Singapore as Vice President, Engineering & Operations, APAC. He replaces Aaron Shaw who has moved to Atlanta to lead the Encompass North American Engineering team. Mark has previously held multiple positions at BT, including being responsible for Technology and Operations in their Media & Broadcast division and being the Programme Director responsible for the London 2012 video network build.
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Visit www.encompass.tv ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------THE NATIONAL RADIO AND TELEVISION Administration of the People’s Republic of China
MEDIAPROXY HAS BOOSTED ITS international presence with the appointment of Rajesh Patel as its new Vice President of Sales and Solutions for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Based out of London, Patel most recently managed the reseller, VAR, OEM and systems integration channel for the Mediaproxy range at Polar Graphics. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Westminster University and has worked for Grass Valley, Harris, VizRT, Avid and SGL. He was Operations Manager at the Sheik Zayed archive in Abu Dhabi. Visit www.mediaproxy.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NAGRA HAS ANNOUNCED THAT PT LINKNET, a provider of cable television and high-speed broadband internet services in Indonesia, has selected NAGRA Protect cardless content protection technology to secure its new hybrid broadcast and Android TV-based OTT service. “As a longstanding partner to LinkNet, NAGRA was the natural choice when the time came to evolve our platform to a cardless system,” said Desmond POON, Chief Product and Technology Officer, LinkNet. “This transition enables us to seamlessly deliver new services to our subscribers, by combining the best of our broadcast cable platform and the best of an Android TV OTT service.” Visit https://dtv.nagra.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------DTC BROADCAST HAS ANNOUNCED THE SALE of 16 complete AEON-TX 4K COFDM digital video transmitters, PRORXD-AEON receivers, antennas and ancillaries to Chinese broadcaster CCTV.
DTC Broadcast’s AEON group of products are specifically designed for the 4K market. The AEON 4K encoder makes more efficient use of the HEVC algorithm which, in this case, means it can take a 12G signal and compress it to a bitrate that can be managed over an RF link. The 16 AEON-TX’s will be utilised for high profile events. The CCTV deal follows the sale of four AEON 4K wireless camera systems that include IP-enabled camera control and RF over fibre solutions, to NEP Australia. Visit www.domobroadcast.tv ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------THAILAND’S MONO PLUS HAS UPGRADED to a Channel-in-a-Box playout system from PlayBox Neo. The upgraded system includes two HD Channel-in-a-Box systems, each with SafeBox Neo configured as main and backup. These have integral encoders allowing direct export in XDCAM-MXF file format. Mono Plus provides a wide range of content in its Movie Plus, Music Plus and Series Plus strands which are transmitted seven days per week via cable, terrestrial, satellite and IPTV networks. Visit www.playboxneo.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CNN PHILIPPINES (CNN PH), owned and operated by Nine Media Corporation in association with Radio Philippines Network (RPN), has boosted its terrestrial transmission network throughout the Philippines with the help of Dielectric, the manufacturer of broadcast antennas and RF systems, and local partner 90 Degrees North. The news broadcaster has ordered a new 30 kW TUM panel UHF DTV antenna for an early July installation. Launched in 2015, CNN PH broadcasts 24-hour programming primarily via terrestrial TV towers, supplemented by cable TV, satellite and streaming media services. According to John Achilles Denna, CEO/COO of 90 Degrees North, Inc., CNN PH is taking proactive steps to transition from its analogue VHF operation to the ISDB-T DTV broadcast standard. This move initially only affects their Mega Manila operation’s move to Channel 19, while the rest of its large station group will continue broadcasting in analogue from terrestrial towers around the nation’s 7000+ islands. Visit www.dielectric.com
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE SKY NEW ZEALAND HAS ANNOUNCED the appointment of Blair Woodbury as Chief Financial Officer.
editorial categories including lifestyle,
Blair joins Sky from McKinsey & Company, where he has helped New Zealand and overseas businesses rapidly improve their performance.
years as the Head of Yahoo Lifestyle. Prior
“I am delighted that Blair is joining the Sky team at this important stage of our transformation journey. His experience and his customer-centred approach makes him a great fit for Sky, and we look forward to welcoming him to the team.” Woodbury takes over from Deloitte Partner Andrew Dick who acted as interim CFO while the recruitment process took place. Visit www.sky.co.nz
news and news video. Chesterton joins Pacific following three to that, she held roles at MailOnline, Bauer Media and the Nine Network as well as a stint at Pacific in 2013. Meanwhile, in the newly created role of Head of Video, Keshnee Kemp will be responsible for video content strategy including the ideation, creation and production of original video content. Kemp joined Pacific in May 2018 as the Editor and Content Director of WHO. In February, she added to her duties taking on the role of acting Digital Content Director overseeing digital content across
-----------------------------------------------------------------------SEVEN WEST MEDIA’S PACIFIC MAGAZINE division has announced Lucy Chesterton as Digital Content Director and Keshnee Kemp as Head of Video. As Digital Content Director, Chesterton will be responsible for digital audience and content strategy, creation and delivery across all Pacific brands overseeing
Pacific’s stable of brands. In that time, Kemp helped to deliver a record high Unique Audience of 2.85m, up 42% yearon-year and launched multiple podcast series, as well as The WHO 100 List, a cross-platform travel product for the WHO brand. Visit www.pacificmags.com.au
Mifsud Joins Ross Video as Solutions Architect ROSS VIDEO HAS ANNOUNCED that Trevor Mifsud has joined the Oceania team in the role of Solutions Architect, part of the international pre-sales team. Trevor will be working in Melbourne and the company’s Sydney office, and brings almost two decades of experience to Ross, having worked in the IT and Broadcast Engineering sectors, specialising in live, pre and post-production environments. Trevor has spent his career designing, developing and implementing broadcast graphics systems, bespoke software solutions and advanced newsroom automation workflows at Nine Entertainment Co. and, prior to that, at Sydney production house Zspace. “I am excited to be a part of the Ross Video team, helping to deliver high impact, high efficiency production solutions to our customers,” Mifsud says. “I look forward to drawing upon my knowledge and experience to help increase the success and growth of Ross Video Oceania.” Amanda Leighton, Director of Sales for Oceania, is delighted to have Trevor onboard. “We have continued to expand our footprint in the region and I’m obviously very pleased that our pre-sales function now needs additional resource - it’s proof that an increasing number of content creators in the region are taking notice of Ross and like what we have to say.” Visit www.rossvideo.com
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METexpo2019 - Changing Technologies, Workflows and Viewer Habits
I C C SY D N E Y DA R L I N G H A R B O U R
w wInw.recognition m e t e x p oof. cchanging o m . a u technologies, workflows and consumer habits, the Australia Section of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), along with Expertise Events, are staging its next-generation, the Media + Entertainment Tech Expo (METexpo) from 17-19 July, 2019, at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Sydney’s Darling Harbour.
Receive on Full Price Conference tickets! SAVE $120! SMPTE METEXPO CONFERENCE PROGRAMME A FIXTUREaONdiscount THE INTERNATIONAL SMPTE CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY
Organised by 10:00 Moving to Microservices: Software Virtualization of Media Processing - Matthew Goldman (MediaKind)
Also, Non Members Fullwill Conference tickets includes 2 years free SMPTE membership. Use Code: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CALENDAR, the event be attended by CTMET19. Simply to www.metexpo.com.au/visitor-registration to register and use the code dignitaries from head the Society’s HQ, President Patrick Wednesday July 17 above at checkout to redeem. Offer only valid on ticket purchases made online by 30th June, 2019. Griffis and Executive Director Barbara Lange. 14:00 Capturing the ‘sound of portraiture’: A ROOM A Contact (02) 9452 7575 or email info@expertiseevents.com.au According to Barbara Lange, “The programme is exploration into the binaural and real spatial sound 9:00 Design and Implementation of a Decentralized pretty rich again. People like Michelle Munson capture for a 3D immersive experience - Maree Content Fabric - Michelle Munson (Eluvio) C&T Magazine_METexpo 264x190mm FA.in [founder of Aspera] who is inventing this what Sheehan Organised by In conjunction with Supported by 9:30 Lining-up Media Technology Trends with she calls ‘Internet fabric’, she will be speaking. CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY 14:30 Object-Audio Capture Systems for Sports Business Necessities - Stan Moote (IABM) There will be topics on microservices, HDR, 2110, Broadcasting - Renato Pellegrini 10:00 Pragmatic Infrastructure: Putting the best which is video over IP, so it’s a nice collection of 15:00 Enabling broadcast workflows and technologies at work for you - Amanda Leighton; solid content and speakers coming from around C&T Magazine_METexpo 264x190mm FA.indd 1 7/5/19 5:05 pm interchange for next generation audio - Jason Nestor Amaya (Ross Video) the world. I think people will be very impressed to Power; Mike Ward (Dolby) attend and get that knowledge. 11:00-13:00 Conference Opening and Keynote 16:00 Innovations in Sound - Tim Neal (Dolby) Presentation - Session Chair : Paul Broderick “And we have a key-noter actually from Dolby,”
adds Patrick Griffis. “Dolby’s CTO is, believe it or not, based in Sydney and he’ll be talking about the future of content in the cloud from a traditional content technology company like Dolby so that should be pretty interesting. Content in the cloud and it’s not just audio, it’s also imaging.”
(SMPTE Australia Board); “Future of Media and Entertainment in the Cloud” - Chris Bennett, Group Technical Officer, Dolby.
“So we’re excited to be there,” says Lange. “We will have a good collection of exhibitors, too, so they’re supporting the event and so we’ll look forward to another great SMPTE Australia, the new METexpo.”
14:30 best practices on ptp and media flow monitoring for ALL-IP infrastructures - Thomas Gunkel (Skyline Communications)
As well as being SMPTE President, Griffis is also Chair of the SMPTE drafting group set up to devise a fundamentally new Electro-Optic Transfer Function (EOTF) based on the human visual model. In his presentation, “HDR: From Dream to C&T Banner advertisement MainStream”, he will review some of the theory and resulting practice leading to the successful mainstream deployment of HDR in the market Right Page Alignment: today in television, mobile devices and computers.
MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
According to Griffis, “The new curve that we love and we call ‘PQ’ which models the human visual system, it offers a more efficient way of dealing with the world we see every day. [HDR] is reaching a tipping point now in production and TV products, and also computers and iPhones, so it’s really getting mainstream.”
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Left Page Alignment:
14:00 IP connectivity and its impact to camera workflows for live broadcast applications - Klaus Weber (Grass Valley)
15:00 Ethernet Video Fabric (EVF) to Accelerate and Simplify Workflows for IP based Media & Entertainment Industry - Stephen Hepworth (Industry & Bios IT); Michael Schipp (Mellanox) 16:00 Bringing IP all Together - The JT-NM TR1001 Tech Rec - Paul E Briscoe (Televisionary Consulting & SMPTE, IEEE) 16:30 Building Robust, Resilient and Redundant Hybrid PTP reference systems - Paul E Briscoe
Broadcast Solutions ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17:00 Security in ST 2110 Systems - Paul E Briscoe
Fibre Optics Wednesday July 17 ROOMNetwork B Adapters
9:00 Going micro: identifying ways to use Signal Protection microservices for nimble online video experiences Distribution Matt Lee (Bitmovin) 9:30 When Small Gets Big - Microservices for media and the cloud - Christopher J Lennon (MediAnswers)
Broadcast Solutions www.irtcommunications.com sales@irtcommunications.com
Fibre Optics Network Adapters Signal Protection Distribution
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Thursday July 18 ROOM A 9:00 Delivering Broadcast-Quality QoE for OTT Services - Thierry Fautier (Harmonic) 9:30 ‘Faster than broadcast’ low latency OTT streaming - Alex Leung (Akamai) Efficient mass-scale OTT media delivery - AnneLynn Nilius and Peter Howard (Brightcove) 11:00 Upping the quality of experience of OTT services through better encoding - Matt Lee (Bitmovin) 11:30 State of the Art in OTT Video Delivery via the World Wide Web and the Internet - Rhett Sampson (GT Systems) 12:00 Go Live: The Guide to Optimizing Live Streaming Experience - Zon Lim (Akamai) 14:00 Quick wins. Three times 7plus used machine learning to automate content workflows - Jeremy Brown (Seven West Media & Sydney Video Technology Organiser Sydvideo) 14:30 Securing Internet of Things (IoT) - Gemi James Kulangara (Akamai)
www.irtcommunications.com 15:00 An Honest Look at Blockchain for Video sales@irtcommunications.com Lincoln Ownes (Verimatrix,) 16:00 HDR: From Dream to MainStream - Patrick D. Griffis (Dolby Laboratories)
MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
16:30 UHD, HDR, WCG and their impact to live camera control solutions - Klaus Weber (Grass Valley) 17:00 Key Success Factors for Live UHD HDR Service Delivery - Thierry Fautier (Harmonic)
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Friday July 19 ROOM A
Friday July 19
9:00 Return on Investment from Automation in Today’s Media Supply Chain Environment - Phil Eade (Ooyala)
9:15 Honey to the Bee: How to Champion Women in Media, Entertainment & Technology - Megan L Riakos (Women in Film and Television Australia (WIFT Australia)); Katrina Irawati Graham (WIFT Australia Chair, Co-Founder & Queensland Board Member)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9:30 Microservices and DevOps for Telstra TV3 Thursday July 18 - Grant Simonds and Yogaesh Ramasundaram ROOM B CO N F E R E N C E & E X H I (Telstra) BITION
ROOM B
SO MUC MORE THA A SHOW
9:00 Immersive Tech - Simone Clow, Virtual Immersive
10:00 Secure Multi-Tier Content Distribution and Reporting - Lincoln Owens (Verimatrix,)
11:00 Measuring Colour Reproduction - Pawel Achtel (Achtel)
11:00 5G Broadcast I C C -STechnology, Y D N EOpportunities Y Nils Ahrens (Rohde & Schwarz)
11:00 Infrastructure as code for Media technology Michael Huynh and Martin Viski (Australian Taxation Office)
12:00 Shooting With Large Screen Sensors - Velinda Wardell and Tom Gleeson (Cinematographer)
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DA R L I N G H A R B O U R
14:30 Diversity & Inclusion (Creating Diversity on 11:30 Managed Media Contribution over 4G and Set) - Erika Addis (Cinematographer) beyond - Carlos Farias, ww w. Michael m e t eDay x pand o Paul . c oSlowey m . a u 11:30 Only Happy When It Rains: Migration to Orchestrated Video Processing in the Cloud 16:00 “Ladies In Black” - Peter James (Telstra) Mickaël Raulet, Will Munkara-Kerr (ATEME) (Cinematographer) 12:00 The driving forces behind ATSC 3.0 - Why they C R E AT I O N , DProgram I ST RisI subject B U TtoI Ochange. N, CONSUMPT 12:00 Building a frame-accurate, GUI-based clip Conference make sense for a modern broadcasting ecosystem trimmer in the cloud - Christer Whitehorn (AWS) For updates, visit www.metexpo.com.au Joseph Seccia (GatesAir) 12:30 Cloud Technology Drives Superior Video 14:00 Implementing DVB-T2 Networks - Colin Prior Encoding - Thierry Fautier (Harmonic) (ENENSYS) 14:30 Video production in the age of Agile - the 14:30 Digital Television Development in Australia ATO experiment - Lyle Crombie and Michael Huynh CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY - a leap to Next Generation Digital Television (Australian Taxation Office) TechnologiesAlso, - RogerNon G Bunch (Free TV Australia); Members Full Conference tickets includes 2 years free 15:00 Silver Trak Digital: a case study in migrating to SMPTE membership. Use Code: Stephen Farrugia (Broadcast Australia); Glenn Carrick CTMET19. Simply head to www.metexpo.com.au/visitor-registration to register and use the code the cloud - Christian Christiansen (Silver Trak Digital) (Network TEN); Michael Ryder (TX Australia); Trevor above at checkout to redeem. 16:00 OfferEsports onlyinvalid on -ticket purchases the Future New Business Models made online by 30th June, 2019. Nash (Nine Network) and Technology Innovation - Zon Lim (Akamai) Contact (02) 9452 7575 15:00 Implementation of immersive and or email info@expertiseevents.com.au 16:30 Audio Challenges in live eSport events personalised audio for DVB-T2 services - Jason Cameron ONeill (Riedel) Power, Jayant Shah, Pankaj Kedia (Dolby) 17:00 How virtualization will change live productions 16:00 Taking Organised Content tobythe Audience - Tim Parsons, In conjunction Supported by - David with Drew (Aperi) CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY The Studio
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MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY
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MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
IP Showcase Comes Down Under! By Stan Moote, CTO, IABM WHEN I RECEIVED A CALL ABOUT having IP Showcase at METexpo, I realised it was a great opportunity though with a relatively short timeline to plan and implement, we also had a few challenges. The IP Showcase had not been in this region weC getEspeakers? weIget CO before. N F ECould REN & E XCould HIB T Idemo O Nkit? Both are obligatory to provide an appropriate showcase such as the ones that have been successful at IBC and NAB over the past three years.
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In quick discussions with some of the participants various questions came up, such as “OneIof of SMPTE ST 2110 in the world has been Cthe C largest S Y Dinstalls NEY running successfully in Australia. Do we need to promote IP Showcase in the DA R L I N G H A R B O U R region at all?”. The counterpoint was quickly raised by many of the contributors. This is exactly why we need to be there, they said. “IP isn’t solely about large w w. ete x p o . cofosize. m .We a uneed the opportunity to solutions; it’sw about the m future, irrespective continue education about IP for all levels and sizes of installations and facilities.” This is absolutely correct. Just because the region is home to the one of the largest operating IP systems in the world doesn’t mean that everyone in the region must therefore be up to speed on IP. IABM and AIMS were bought in to support this activity with SMPTE Australia at METExpo 2019 in July.
We all want to see examples, and this is where the case studies come in, including real life operations and how they are monitored and maintained. SMPTE Fellow Paul Briscoe from Canada is orchestrating the IP Showcase demo and states, “we are demonstrating the unique nuances of IP. IP systems don’t have to be large nor single vendor focused to be practical.” The IP Showcase at METExpo shows how a diverse selection of vendors who comply with ST 2110 can achieve Video, Audio and Metadata interoperability between their equipment and using network-wide PTP for synchronisation. All running on the same network fabric and taking advantage of COTS IP interfaces and switches, the demo shows how video, audio and metadata all exist in harmony and are independently managed without the need for physically separate streams.
By understanding the ease-of-use as shown in the IP Showcase demo, you will The IP Showcase will take up roughly 170 square metres and be housed with a rapidly see how updating SDI workflows will open up your operations to the demo area, a theatre for speakers as well as a social area to discuss the touchbenefits of IP infrastructures now. One of these benefits is format independence, points of IP. One of the key points that people are often confused about is that with IP enabling any mix of formats and standards to share the same network CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY going IP is merely just an SDI replacement. This is far from the truth. There is using interfaces optimized for the application, such as 10 Gb+ fibre for video and little to no benefit doing a “lift and shift to IP” if you don’t take advantage of includes 2 years free SMPTE membership. Use Code: Also, Non Members Full Conference tickets 100 Mb / 1 Gb copper for audio. the multiple extra benefits ofSimply IP. Some of the presentations in the IP Showcase CTMET19. head to www.metexpo.com.au/visitor-registration to register and use the code Theatre will help you clearly recognise these benefits. Additionally, they will teach The IP Showcase, sponsored by SMPTE, IABM and AIMS will be open during above at IPcheckout redeem. Offer only valid on ticket purchases made online by 30th June, 2019. you about new directions takes you in,to such as the session called “Simplifying exhibition hours, with short presentations and demonstrations. Check the the use of AMWA IS-04 through dematerialised microservices”. This may sound METExpo website for the schedule, and then be sure to stop in and find out what Contact (02) 9452 7575 or email info@expertiseevents.com.au a little complex, however to be successful within our industry you need to know is happening with IP on a global basis. about dematerialization too. Microservices are the future and the best way to Stan Moote, a SMPTE Fellow, has worked worldwide in the industry for over four maintain our five 9’s reliability in these quickly changing times. decades and is the CTO for IABM, www.theIABM.org. IABM is the international To get everyone synced up, in the theatre I will be presenting a general overview Organised by In conjunction with Supported by trade association for suppliers of broadcast and media technology. Stan has a clear of the “IP parts” and lingo you need to know. For the more technically inclined the CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY understanding of technology combined with a solid business twist. theatre will present some deep dives into topics like synchronising and timing.
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Mediaproxy Latest for LogServer C&T Magazine_METexpoShows 264x190mm FA.indd 1 Compliance Monitor-Analyser
MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
MEDIAPROXY, THE PROVIDER OF SOFTWAREBASED IP BROADCAST SOLUTIONS, will show the latest updates to its LogServer compliance, monitoring and analysis package at SMPTE Australia’s Media+Entertainment Tech Expo on booth F27 in the International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney) from 17 to 20 July 2019. While recognized internationally as a company of cutting-edge technology for compliance applications in file-based broadcast workflows, Mediaproxy maintains a strong presence in its domestic market of Australia. Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, Australian broadcasters, service providers and platform operators are facing the realities of OTT services, which have made broadcast operations more complicated, particularly in terms of checking and analysing delivery streams.
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A major challenge is that playout is no longer the final point for quality control (QC). Modern distribution ecosystems call for a greater degree of management because of more logging and compliance checks needed to cope with CDN edge points, targeted ad-insertion, multi-language support and event-based channels at different places along the chain. During this year’s MET, Mediaproxy will demonstrate the concept of exception-based monitoring, which uses IP penalty boxes that allow broadcasters and MSOs (multiple system operators) working at scale to deal with QC and compliance more efficiently.
As well as OTT, broadcasters now have to address social media as an increasingly important platform for video distribution. More broadcasters are now exploiting Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to extend their reach. These outlets have different, specific requirements for how material is prepared and Mediaproxy has incorporated dedicated tools for this into LogServer. These include features for cropping the image and altering the aspect ratio to make it better suited for mobile devices, in addition to the capability for inserting ad bumpers.
7/5/19 5:05 pm
LogServer also supports SMPTE ST 2110 media over IP formats and Newtek’s NDI (Network Device Interface) technology. By working with both of these sources, the software’s compliance recording and monitoring options are enhanced, ensuring complete adherence to standards at all points along the IP chain.
and the latest version of LogServer, chief executive Erik Otto says, “We always look forward to our visit to Sydney for MET. It gives us a perfect showcase to demonstrate how LogServer can help with the major operational challenges faced by broadcasters today. Controlling a large number of OTT streams can be daunting, which is why having a unified system for monitoring compliance and identifying issues across all traditional and OTT playouts is critical. To ensure that the right content is at the right place at the right time, Mediaproxy LogServer enables operators to log and monitor outgoing ABR streams as well as Transport Stream and OTT stream metadata, including SCTE triggers, closed captions and audio information, all from one place. It is the key to surviving the multiformat game of the future and we are delighted to demonstrate this at MET 2019.”
Commenting on Mediaproxy’s presence at MET
Visit www.mediaproxy.com
Among other new features for LogServer that address the needs of network operators running multiple stations and playout streams is a live source comparison tool. This identifies mismatched content in real-time and is able to compare one or more live sources using video material. An alert is sent to operators immediately if irregularities are detected.
MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
Media+Entertainment Tech Expo 2019 Highlights
CO N F E R E N C E
ACHTEL PTY LIMITED Booth E58
Our products include underwater housings for RED DSMC2 and Sony Venice cameras as well as two ground-breaking 3D systems: 3Deep and DeepX 3D offering, for the first time, wide & Eundistorted, XHIBIT I Oangle-images N that are sharp from corner to corner.
1 7 – 1 9 J U LY 2Pawel 0 1 9Achtel, ACS is a member of
Screen Cinema Association S Y D N E Y Giant Technical Committee where he DA RisLa Iglobal NG HARBO U R champions advancements actively Achtel Pty Limited
ICC www.achtel.com
in IMAX and Giant Screen Cinema leader in providing underwater w w w. m e t e x p o . cindustry. om.au cinematography equipment, footage and production services. -----------------------------------------------------------------Our focus is on high-end immersive cinematography, including 3D and Giant Screen.
Our products deliver the high-quality, high speed imagery demanded by professionals and our equipment includes cost-effective options. We are showcasing cameras ranging from the compact and cost-effective, Veo PL 4K, ideal for drones and shoulder-mounting capture, and the Phantom 640S broadcast camera, through to the renowned and Academy Award-winning, highperformance Flex 4K, famous for providing exceptional flexibility and multiple work flows.
Each session will focus on some of the attributes of both the shouldermounted VEO PL 4K and the Flex 4K, where, for example, the multiple workflow capabilities of that camera will be demonstrated. Providing awesome customer service is our promise to you and we hope to see you at the show. We are solutions-focused and committed to providing the best and most cost-effective outcomes for your production needs.
Behind us is more than 90 human Whether you need a camera for drone years of specialisation and experience applications, for car-chase capture, which we proudly offer our clients; for sports broadcasting or a camera our goal being to ensure the highest especially designed for professional quality in all that we do for you. cinema applications, visit us and We constantly source the latest offmeet our experts. CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY the-shelf, world-class components to Join us2atyears our live daily includes freetraining SMPTE membership. Use Code: offer you smart choices, value-added sessions where we will demonstrate
Our customers range from small independent producers to large well-established companies and ADEPT TURNKEY PTY LTD include names like the BBC,Members National Also, Non Full Conference tickets Booth A17 Geographic (Natural History); Sony, CTMET19. Simply head to www.metexpo.com.au/visitor-registration to register and use the code with our expertise and solid technical Volkswagen (advertising); Avatar/ our camera pedigrees. You will have above at checkout towww.adept.net.au redeem. Offer only valid on ticket purchases made online by 30th June, 2019. James Cameron (features). support. the opportunity to see them put Adept Turnkey invites you to Contact (02) 9452 7575 or email info@expertiseevents.com.au through their paces and to learn how Our innovative and scientific -----------------------------------------------------------------visit our stand and experience a best to maximise each camera’s approach is what sets us apart from close encounter with some of the capabilities. others. Our products feature many industry’s unique and advanced “world firsts”Organised and set benchmarks in We are offeringSupported two training products for film production and by In conjunction with by sessions CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 –at 192.00 JULY 2019 Continues p14 >> each day at 11.00 am and pm.ICC SYDNEY ultra-slow-motion capture. image quality, reliability and usability.
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MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
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MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
BITMOVIN Booth D07 https://bitmovin.com
stand & meet with the local team at the Media + Entertainment Expo 2019 to learn how Brightcove’s powerful video solutions are helping broadcasters and media companies succeed with solutions for OTT video, live streaming, monetisation and encoding. Brightcove will be showcasing thatNhelp media & E X Hsolutions IBITIO companies:
Bitmovin video experts Carl Hurd Ndemonstrating FERENCE and Matt LeeCO will be Encoding, Player and Analytics products on all days of the show. • Deliver a premium UX experience Stop by to learn how to improve your with optimised video delivery and ICC SYDNEY online video infrastructure! Product playback DAinclude: RLING HARBOUR demonstrations • Easily monetise VOD or live
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between physical and digital set elements.
EUREKA PACIFIC/GB LABS Booth A62 www.gblabs.com
Before GVCG, defining a look and adapting it to current conditions involved modifying hundreds of parameter combinations. GVCG presents these controls as bundles of related parameters so shaders can easily toggle between streams from the same panel to experiment, compare and define a look. Once created, a look can be instantly shared across multiple cameras.
Come and experience GB Labs High Performance Online Storage - built for Film, Post Production. Unlike existing control panels, GVCG We will be introducing the awardeliminates the need to memorize winning Mosaic (an automatic individual steps when tweaking • Containerised Encoding w wVideo w. m e t e x p o . c ostreaming m . a u and 24/7 channels asset organiser), CORE4 OS with image parameters. Thanks to GVCG, – Deploy Bitmovin massively • Reduce significant video storage Analytics, AI and Cloud Integration. shaders can quickly take multiple distributed video encoding and bandwidth costs with Context GB Labs understands the difference snapshots of how setting changes anywhere! Based Kubernetes, you Aware Encoding, Brightcove’s and has addressed the individual impact an image, compare them can run our encoding software award winning video compression and select the preferred result. requirements with intelligent, on your Google Cloud and in a technology Grass Valley Creative Grading’s non-restrictive NAS technology datacenter. simple interface requires minimal that allows all platforms and -----------------------------------------------------------------training and can be learned on • Next Generation Streaming operating systems to work together the job, opening up more creative Optimizations – Bitmovin seamlessly. CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY camera functions across a range of continues its encoding technology Also, Non Members Full Conference tickets includes 2GB years free SMPTE All new Labs storage systems membership. applications. Use Code: innovations in Per-Title Encoding, now include GB Labs’ ‘Mosaic’ CTMET19. Simply head to www.metexpo.com.au/visitor-registration to register and use the code -----------------------------------------------------------------Multi-Codec Streaming, Per-Scene automatic asset organiser - a online by 30th June, 2019. above at checkout to redeem. Offer only valid on ticket purchases made Adaptation and our latest, A.I. HARMONIC dynamic, intelligent, and vastly Encoding. Contact (02) 9452 7575 or email info@expertiseevents.com.au Booth A31 enriched way to track and find media, CIVIL AVIATION SAFETY AUTHORITY • Web Player and Mobile SDKs – that saves users enormous amounts www.harmonicinc.com Booth A52 Build and manage multi-platform of time. Mosaic is streets ahead of At METexpo 2019, Harmonic will www.casa.gov.au video-enabled apps. Bitmovin old and inefficient searchby methods. demonstrate its unique approach Organised by In conjunction with Supported Heath Macdonald, one of CASA’s Native Player SDKs offer the It automatically scours all17 in-built CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY to delivering high-quality video, RPAS Inspectors will be on the flexibility to deliver a compelling up to UHD, while bringing agility metadata and integrates it with a CASA stand for the duration of end-user experience across web, to the broadcast and multiscreen highly professional AI tagging system. the METexpo to answer all of your iOS & Android platforms and keep video chain. Featuring the latest Find out how to organise your assets advancements in AI, Harmonic’s questions relating to commercial yourC&T developer teams happy with FA.indd automatically! Magazine_METexpo 264x190mm 1 7/5/19 5:05 pm unified video delivery solutions RPAS operations within Australia. unified UI, API and config! -----------------------------------------------------------------support all deployment scenarios, There will also be a range of • AV1 End-to-End Workflow – See including SaaS, cloud, software and GRASS VALLEY – A BELDEN BRAND educational and safety promotion the next generation video codec appliance environments. product available. Booth C01 AV1 in action – from source Highlights at the booth include: -----------------------------------------------------------------ingestion and cloud encoding to www.grassvalley.com Launch OTT Channels Faster Using browser-based playout. DRAGON IMAGE Newly launched at NAB Show 2019, Video SaaS Also, be sure to check out Bitmovin Grass Valley Creative Grading (GVCG) Booth A18 Hosted in the public cloud, presentations at the event: brings unparalleled creative control Harmonic’s VOS®360 SaaS unifies www.dragonimage.com.au to camera shaders. The new solution • July 17, 9:00 AM: Going Micro: the entire media processing chain, If you need help with equipment for delivers a fast, intuitive interface that allowing operators to launch video Identifying ways to Use shooting your own video content, removes complexity when adjusting streaming services faster, be more Microservices for Nimble Online Dragon Image can help. We help images, freeing up shaders to agile and simplify their operations. By Video Experiences people from all industries produce supporting a wide range of business express their creativity and focus on • July 18 11:00 AM Upping the their own videos and can provide models, VOS360 SaaS enables delivering captivating images. Quality of Experience of OTT equipment and training for all levels. operators to create and deliver Comprised of a new control panel and Services Through Better Encoding If you want to build your own studio, revenue-generating broadcasta companion touchscreen application, quality OTT streaming services. we can help with that, too. Dragon -----------------------------------------------------------------GVCG bundles multiple technical image is also the only Australian RED Deliver Pristine UHD Services with an BRIGHTCOVE operations into intuitive packages. authorised dealer. That is the same End-to-End Solution Booth A16 Camera shaders can now easily and camera used in movies like Guardians Delivering UHD video has never quickly manage adjustments, such www.brightcove.com of the Galaxy or Netflix shows like been simpler thanks to Harmonic’s as transitions from indoor to outdoor Stranger Things. end-to-end UHD workflow solution, https://brightcove-metexpo2019. lighting. Shaders can seamlessly which supports a wide range of splashthat.com -----------------------------------------------------------------manipulate images thanks to the applications, including channel Whether you need to improve your ultra-fast connection between origination, live streaming and onOTT user experience, increase demand. Harmonic’s UHD solution panel and control and the dynamic revenue or reduce costs, Brightcove delivers pristine video quality at adaptation to any format (HDR, WCG, is committed to helping media low bitrates and can be deployed 4K UHD, etc.) in real-time. Using on-premises or in the cloud as part of organisations break through to GVCG, camera shaders can even use Harmonic’s VOS360 SaaS. audiences using video. a WiFi-enabled tablet in the front of Continues p16 >> Stop by the Brightcove exhibition house to establish visual matching
MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
Receive a discount on Full Price Conference tickets! SAVE $120!
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STREAMLINE YOUR 1 7 – 1 9 J U LY 2 0 1 9 WORKFLOWS WITH ONE CONTENT-CENTRIC SYSTEM CO N F E R E N C E & E X H I B I T I O N
ICC SYDNEY DA R L I N G H A R B O U R
w w w. m e t e x p o . c o m . a u
OTT, VoD, Linear … whatever your mix of channels and business models is, drive efficiencies across your content workflows with a single system, from acquisition and scheduling to distribution across all your services.
Receive a discount on Full Price Conference tickets! SAVE $120! CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY
Also, Non Members Full Conference tickets includes 2 years free SMPTE membership. Use Code: CTMET19. Simply head to www.metexpo.com.au/visitor-registration to register and use the code above at checkout to redeem. Offer only valid on ticket purchases made online by 30th June, 2019. Contact (02) 9452 7575 or email info@expertiseevents.com.au
Organised by
In conjunction with
Supported by CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY
C&T Magazine_METexpo 264x190mm FA.indd 1
7/5/19 5:05 pm
• Cross-platform scheduling
• Rights management (including underlying rights and rights out) • Media management
• Revenue share calculations • Sports and eSports
welcome@mediagenix.tv - www.mediagenix.tv
Visit us at IBC - stand 3.C59 (hall 3)
MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
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MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
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MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
>> Continued from p14 Boost Video Quality, Optimize Bandwidth with AI-Based Video Compression At METexpo 2019, Harmonic will demonstrate AI-based video compression innovations that optimise bandwidth CO Nconsumption, FERENCE QoE and encoding density for OTT and broadcast delivery.
PANASONIC AUSTRALIA Booth A24 https://business.panasonic.com.au
Panasonic is a leading electronics company with a long history of delivering innovations and industry & EtoXtheHbroadcast, IBITIO N firsts professional video, photography and cinema industries. With product offerings Harmonic Brings Thought Leadership for all media and entertainment C CHDR SY DCloud N E Y communities, when you visit us on on OTT QoE, IUHD and stand A24, you will discover how RLING HARBO UR TechnologiesDA to METexpo Panasonic technology can bring Thierry Fautier, vice president of video vision w w w.and m president e t e x p o . cyour om . a uto life. Whether you’re a strategy at Harmonic broadcaster needing a better way to of the Ultra HD Forum, will present deliver live breaking news, are going three sessions at the METexpo to shoot a cinematic masterpiece Conference: or television commercial, or are producing a live event, big or small, • “Delivering Broadcast-Quality QoE we’re here to help you make it all for OTT Services,” July 18 at 9:00 possible. a.m.
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features ranges of Pro-PTZ cameras in the market, NDI/HX and software solutions, a Tecnopoint Tuning Dolly System, the pioneering AG-CX350EN Pro 4K handheld with the range of 4K cameras, a Cine-Live VariCamLT and EVA1-Live AU-EVA1 for live production with cinematic depth of field, the AK-UC3000 4K studio camera and AK-UC4000 4.4K studio camera and Lumix GH5 and S1 Full Frame cameras as well as a full range of lenses and much more. ------------------------------------------------------------------
TELSTRA
operations and engineering support. As a fibre provider with media service capabilities, Telstra Broadcast Services representatives will demo the interactive Telstra Global Media Network map and LTE-Broadcast at the Media + Entertainment Tech Expo 2019. Telstra’s Global Media Network is a media contribution and distribution network that enables the delivery of live, linear and file-based media content in/out of Australia and worldwide. Leveraging partner networks in Asia, the Americas, and Europe to reach audiences in new markets.
Booth A37
As recent major sporting events around the world have shown, meeting the massive peaks in Telstra is a leading technology company offering a wide range of demand for live sporting content What’s New will be the first showing services globally that enable our • “Key Success Factors for Live UHD takes extensive end-to-end network in Australia of the new AW-UE4K/W customers to thrive in a connected CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY HDR Service Delivery,” July 18 at design combined with careful 4K Compact POV Camera, AWworld.2 Telstra Broadcast 5:00 p.m. Also, Non Members HE42K/W Full Conference tickets years free Services SMPTE membership. Use Code: Full-HD Professional PTZincludes network management and strategic specialise in broadcast services • “Cloud Technology Drives Superior Camera with 3G-SDI and a prototype CTMET19. Simply head to www.metexpo.com.au/visitor-registration to register and useTelstra’s the code investments. LTE-Broadcast for global sports, news and special the exciting S1H Full Frame Lumix Video Encoding, ” Julyat 19checkout at 12:30 events. We bring to our customers above toofredeem. Offer only valid on ticket purchases made online technology by 30thdelivers June,a2019. single stream of Camera. If the newest gear is your p.m. a dedicated team of media industry video content to many mobile devices thing, stopinfo@expertiseevents.com.au by our booth for a demo. Contact (02) 9452 7575 or email professionals, high performance -----------------------------------------------------------------simultaneously. By improving network Discover the innovative Live Solutions media networks, online video efficiency, the customer experiences featuring the full range of Professional and cloud platforms, world class www.telstra.com/broadcastservices
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PTZ cameras, one of the largest well In conjunction with
satellite services, and 24/7 bookings, Supported by
an enhanced streaming experience.
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 17 – 19 JULY 2019 ICC SYDNEY
Magna Systems Demonstrates Wide Range of IP, 5G, VR and 360 solutions Furthering its long-term commitment to the broadcast industry Magna Systems & Engineering will demonstrate its widest-ever range C&T5G, Magazine_METexpo 1 7/5/19 5:05 pm of IP, VR and 360 264x190mm productsFA.indd and solutions on its largest-ever stand at this year’s Media + Entertainment Tech Expo. ON THE STAND, APPEAR TV will be demonstrating its updated ultra-low latency encoding solution including TICO, JPEG2000 and HEVC all within a single chassis. Broadcast infrastructure specialist Axon Digital Design will be demonstrating Neuron, the world’s first Network Attached Processor (NAP), which addresses the needs of IP and hybrid broadcast environments. It supports 200 Gb/s and 64 HD channels or 16 UHD channels in a single rack unit. Axon will also demo its Cerebrum control and monitoring platform.
MET EXPO 2019 PREVIEW
Bluebell Opticom will be demonstrating SMPTE hybrid to IP conversion via its Edgeware and BB450-IP suite of products that enable users to transition from base-band media to IP using SMPTE ST 2022-6/7 or SMPTE ST 2110 standards.
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Coral Bay will demo its cost-effective softwarebased playout solutions that can be hosted on bare metal, virtual machines or in public clouds such as AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. Coral Bay software provides an automation control interface as well as a video pipeline, delivering video and audio in a variety of output formats. Enensys will highlight its range of transport stream monitoring solutions that enable automatic
switch redundancy of ASI and IP feeds to secure the delivery of any streams and ensuring seamless switching, product and system redundancy, multi-link redundancy and video and radio over IP delivery. FileCatalyst will be demonstrating FileCatalyst Direct, its suite of server and client applications that use FileCatalyst’s patented UDP-based protocol to transfer files at speeds of up to 10 Gbps. MagnaTech360 and Kandao will be demonstrating the 360 camera solutions including QooCam, the first-ever stereo and 360° camera. Alongside QooCam will be the Obsidian Go 3D 360-degree camera for VR, and Obsidian R, the 360 camera that can generate 8K horizontal and vertical resolution 3D 360 images. Masstech will showcase how media organisations can seamlessly integrate the cloud into their operations, maximise their content’s value, and move media files more easily
between production, distribution and archive processes. Mellanox will demonstrate its SMPTE ST 2110 over Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) infrastructure solution. By combining key technologies from the adapter and switch, Mellanox can accelerate networks and reduce CPU utilisation for increased scalability and the highest efficiency. Nevion will share how it can help with solutions for IP in the facilities, contribution, remote production and DTT, built on its flagship products, VideoIPath (orchestration and SDN control) and Virtuoso (software defined media node). RTS will demonstrate its ODIN OMNEO digital intercom matrix, the latest in an ongoing program of IP-focused products, including the ROAMEO DECT-based wireless system and KP-Series keypanels.
TAG Vs will demonstrate its MCM-9000 softwarebased, ‘all IP’ monitoring and multiviewing platform. The MCM-9000 features SMPTE ST2022-6/7 and ST-2110-10/20/21/30/31/40 support, has 2110-20 UHD inputs and 2110-21 UHD with a two-frame latency output. It also Magna boasts MPEG TS compressed delivery formats, and Systems & JPEG2000 TR-01 support. There’s also OTT- HLS Engineering and MPEG-DASH multiple profiles monitoring and group transport layer and baseband monitoring. CEO Matthew Clemesha. Visit www.magnasys.tv
ACQUISITION & LIGHTING www.content-technology.com/acquisition
Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera – a Pint-Sized Marvel BLACKMAGIC DESIGN’S MICRO CINEMA CAMERA was used in the filming of key action sequences on Marvel Studios’ “Captain Marvel.” The 21st instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was lensed by cinematographer Ben Davis, BSC (“Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Doctor Strange” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”).
He adds: “For ‘Captain Marvel’, we also built cages for the cameras but in the end made little use of them. The structure of the body is so solid you don’t need to cage it in my opinion.”
Opting for a large format digital camera paired with a mix of Spherical and vintage Panavision glass, as the principal package, Davis required a smaller, more versatile camera to provide him with alternative options during filming. “We tested various options searching for that magic combination of size and quality, and the Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera was the clear winner,” he begins. According to Davis the Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera setups were kept as small as possible, breaking out the wireless transmitter into a backpack worn by a camera operator. “The camera’s expansion port gave us lots of options for creating rigs for remote operation and monitoring. Coupled with the fact you can record RAW onboard using SD cards also helped to keep everything small and compact.” “In the past I’ve made the mistake of rigging small action cameras with big lenses, not to mention a protective cage, a motor to drive focus, a monitor to frame and then a transmitter to transfer the information,” continues Davis. “But then you’ve defeated the very reason you’re using it in the first place.”
Davis would use clamps or arms to mount he cameras onboard vehicles for example, and fixed focus. He’d then check footage after the sequence had run, make any adjustments, and reset ready for another take. “That’s where this camera comes into its own. They’re very quick to rig. We’d often run two or three at the same time on sequences like the go kart track. We’d just line everything up, power them up and hit record. There was a lot of vibration and heavy hits on those karts but there was no corruption of files at all.” The Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera was used throughout the principal photography, which largely took place on location in Los Angeles and Louisiana, by Davis and the film’s second unit. “The bar for action sequences has been raised so high that for these to work you have to be very creative with the cameras you use,” concluded Davis. “I want to put the audience in amongst the action so having a small camera you can rig very quickly is great for that. That’s what I like about action cams like those from Blackmagic Design. They can get you into places you can’t always go with ordinary cameras.” Visit https://www.blackmagicdesign.com For more Captain Marvel, see our interview with Head Colourist Doug Delaney on page 32.
Leitz Wetzlar Delivers 90mm Thalia-T Lens
VA Hire in Strategic Partnership with Procam Europe
LEITZ WETZLAR HAS COMMENCED deliveries of its THALIA-T lens which, the company says, is not an extension of its existing THALIA set, but a new line of cine lenses.
PROCAM, ONE OF EUROPE’S LARGEST digital cinematography and hire firms, is broadening its global footprint through strategic partnerships with film and TV hire facilities VA Hire in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, and Inspired Image in Vancouver, Toronto and Sudbury, Canada.
THALIA-T lenses were created by making use of synergy effects, by taking over the very unique characteristics from the legendary Leica M-Thambar from 1935 and translating these very distinctive attributes of still images to moving images. The THALIA-T 90mm has one filter-like look, a distinctive bokeh created by deliberately under-corrected spherical aberrations, along with a circle round aperture for circular rendition of out-offocus highlights. The aberration increases towards the periphery of the optical system, that is why both, the extension of the depth of field and the degree of diffusion, can be precisely controlled via the stepless aperture ring. Widening the aperture increases the soft focus, whereas stopping down reduces the effect. Visit www.leitz-cine.com
For over 30 years, Procam has supplied production equipment to industry professionals throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. With offices in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and New York, the company’s services include equipment and crew rental, project management, workflow consultancy and 24/7 technical support. Also part of the Procam Group are Procam NY, Procam Projects, True Lens Services and Take 2. The Procam Group supports productions across a multitude of genres, including music, live events and streaming to commercials, feature films, drama, reality, fixed rig and factual television. Its wealth of knowledge and vast inventory of kit are of key interest to both VA Hire and Inspired Image. “This global partnership provides exceptional value for our clients through the expansion of our breadth of equipment and an increased wealth of technical expertise,” said Warren Day, VA Hire Director. “Everything we do is focused on delivering exceptional 24/7 service and we are proud to partner with two companies who are renowned for their client-centric approach. We are looking forward to the exciting array of new opportunities this strategic partnership will bring.” To an increasing extent, more of the productions the Procam Group supports and facilitates have a global footprint. The development of strategic relationships in the well-established drama, film and television regions of Toronto, Vancouver, and Sudbury, as well as Melbourne and Sydney will enable the Procam Group to offer added value to its clients. According to John Brennan, Procam Group CEO, “VA Hire and Inspired Image are two of the most respected hire facilities globally and it makes good business sense to formalise the Procam Group’s relationship in an agreement.” Visit www.procam.tv and www.vahire.com
ACQUISITION
THALIA-T lenses come with the robust, approved premium Leitz lens housing and mechanics, with all diameters and gear positions matched to the existing THALIA set, and features one enlarged image circle diameter of 60mm and will be available with PL- as well as LPL-Mount.
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ACQUISITION & LIGHTING
Atomos Basks in the Neon ATOMOS HAS INTRODUCED the Neon range of precision 4K HDR field monitor/recorders for on-set or in-studio production. Speaking to C+T at the recent BroadcastAsia2019 show in Singapore, Trevor Rooney, Business Development Manager with Atomos, said, “Atomos has been around for nine years, originally disrupting the industry with small monitor recorders, items like the Shinobi monitor, the Ninja, which has now evolved into the Ninja 5 for the prosumer market, from the very basic through to products like the Sumo and the Shogun Studio. “The Neon product has come along to embrace the professional cinema market. Our goal, really, is to democratise the whole evolution of workflow. If you can imagine, we look back 20 or 30 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago even, what people are doing day-to-day and then how they’re actually managing the content that they’re filming during the day and then looking at dailies and whatever else. Our goal with something like the Neon is to create an ecosystem.” The Neon range comes in four sizes: • 17” for focus pullers and as an onset buddy reference monitor for laptops; • 24” and 31” models for the video village, DIT, cinematographer, editor, director, and as a reference monitor for an iMac or Mac Pro; and • 55” for clients, showrooms and colour graders. The monitor/recorders are controlled over Bluetooth via the Atomos iOS app, and feature Dolby Vision HDR, Dynamic AtomHDR backlight technology, ProRes RAW recording, and a replaceable Master Control Unit that allows out-of-the-box 4K capture capability which can be upgraded later. The Master Control Unit is also compatible with AtomX expansion modules that provide SDI and NDI connectivity on top of Neon’s standard HDMI connectivity.
ACQUISITION
“The goal is to have all of these on set, the director potentially using the 55”, focus puller maybe using the 31”, you’ve got your sound guy, you’ve got everyone else and everything is talking to each other via Bluetooth,” says Rooney. “You can have up to 1000 products all in sync, which is quite
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exciting.
Atomos BDM, Trevor Rooney, with the new Neon 4K recorder/monitors.
“They’re not a touchscreen. We’ve decided to move away from that figuring that people don’t want to have grubby hands on a large 55”, so everything is controlled by an app. And, quite simply, the director would be looking at Neon with four camera feeds. As he’s watching and controlling with the app, he’s making his edits as he goes, picking the right shots. That’s all being recorded and so when we export at a later date, all of the changes that have been made live are actually then in that export feed so it slips into Final Cut Pro, or whatever it might be, and all of those points are already in-situ. I guess what it does is, from glass to glass, it brings everything back to a much shorter period of time. “In layman’s terms, I’ve been telling people from creation to consumption, at the end of the day, it used to be a long time but now, if it’s not a very heavy visual effects movie, you could literally be filming in a few days and then broadcasting. So, we’ve very, very excited.” Neon17 and Neon 24 will be available from August 2019; Neon31 and Neon55 will be available from September 2019. All four are for sale from authorized Atomos Entertainment Resellers. Visit www.atomos.com
ACQUISITION & LIGHTING
Sony Introduces “Simple Live Streaming” AT THE RECENT BROADCASTASIA SHOW in Singapore, Sony announced that its palm-sized 4K HDR professional camcorders, HXR-NX80 and PXW-Z90, will receive additional workflow flexibility via a free firmware upgrade. The company introduced “Simple Live Streaming”. Requiring only Wi-Fi connection without additional gear, Simple Live Streaming allows users to conduct live streaming and upload onto major video sharing sites and social media platforms in a straightforward manner. Sony has been actively promoting “Simple Live solution”, achieved by combining the company’s MCX-500 Multi Camera Live Producer and the RM-30MP remote commander to provide multi-camera basis simple live production. When a user needs to expand the live streaming to multiple camcorder operation, HXR-NX80 and PXW-Z90 camcorders can be connected to MCX500 via SDI or HDMI providing live stream onto social media platforms with rich live features such as tally, title and transition. The Simple Live Streaming supported by HXR-NX80 and PXW-Z90 offers even simpler operation achieved by single camera, further enhancing the remote delivery of content quickly without compromising on imaging quality. “In today’s live environment, video content is evolving quickly as an essential tool to connect with audiences,” said Takuma Wada, Head of Content Creation Solutions Marketing, Professional Solutions Company (PSAP), Sony Corporation of Hong Kong Limited. “The introduction of Simple Live Streaming for HXRNX80 and PXW-Z90 streamlines the overall workflow, from shooting to live distribution. Equipped with Simple Live Streaming, the camcorders will have online sharing features, further empowering our content creators to concentrate on what they do best - storytelling on the go.” Well-suited for a range of live applications including events, concerts, seminars, weddings and news reporting, the ultra-lightweight camcorders shoot in any situation with stunning image quality at all times, offering users complete creative control, all thanks to Sony’s ground-breaking Fast Hybrid AF system featuring 1.0-type stacked Exmor RS CMOS image sensor. In addition, fixed 29mm wide-angle ZEISS Vario-Sonnar T lens are equipped with12x optical zoom that can be increased maximum to 18x with Clear Image Zoom maintaining 4K resolution using Super Resolution Technology or 24x in HD. On the audio front, an XLR audio input terminal and microphone holder also add to its operability on top of sound quality and reliability in connection. The free firmware upgrade is planned to be available by the end of 2019. Visit http://pro.sony.com.au
Sony Takes on 8K Ahead of Tokyo 2020 ALSO AT BROADCASTASIA2019, Sony showcased its 8K UHC-8300 camera system.
The camera captures 8K images (7680×4320) at 120P. Delivering well balanced high-resolution footage with an impressive deep depth of field, the camera can support BT.2020 wide colour space, allowing content creators to realise 8K images with unprecedented clarity, colour and realism. Visit http://pro.sony
ACQUISITION
Generating 8K, 4K and HD signals simultaneously and applying different colour spaces and OETF to each signal, Sony’s UHC-8300 camera system is suitable for premium productions, including live broadcasts, entertainment and factual high-end documentaries
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SPORTSCASTING Sport coverage worldwide
www.content-technology.com/sportscasting
NBA, Unbnd Launch Immersive Content for Oz and Singapore Basketball Fans
SPORTSCASTING
THE U.S. NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION (NBA) and Unbnd, an Australian creative technology company, have announced a content partnership to broadcast NBA TV – the league’s 24/7 dedicated linear channel – and game highlights in a Mixed Reality Theatre Experience to fans in Australia and Singapore. Unbnd is a technology company that specialises in virtual reality, augmented reality, spatial AR, animation and more. Unbnd’s immersive campaigns have been executed across different fields, including advertising, marketing teaching, training, selling and on-boarding practices. The NBA is a global sports and media business built around four professional sports leagues: the National Basketball Association, the Women’s National Basketball Association, the NBA G League and the NBA 2K League. NBA Digital’s assets include NBA TV, NBA.com, the NBA App and NBA League Pass. Beginning with the 2019-20 NBA preseason, Unbnd
Twitter and SBS Partner for FIFA Women’s World Cup THE FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP 2019 has seen Twitter and SBS partner to provide fans around Australia with a Twitter exclusive live show produced by SBS, and video highlights of the tournament’s biggest moments on location in France. SBS has been live streaming #WorldGameLIVE exclusively on Twitter each match day (24 shows, in total) during the tournament. The show, hosted by David Basheer and Sarah Walsh in France, and Craig Foster and Tracey Holmes in Sydney, features a range of match actions, previews, recaps and the best Twitter highlights. The series kicked off over the June long weekend with 30,000 football fans connecting with the live show post Matildas’ loss to Italy.
SPORTSCASTING
In addition to the live show, fans have enjoyed near-live video clips from the tournament’s first whistle right through to the final, including key match highlights, interviews with players and coaches, and official press conference clips, via @TheWorldGame on Twitter.
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The partnership follows a collaboration with SBS last year to broadcast the #WorldGameLIVE show and video highlights around the FIFA World Cup 2018. Over the month-long tournament, SBS broadcast 23 shows with the live streams reaching 1.5 million views. Visit www.sbs.com.au and https://about. twitter.com
will launch its new Missing in Action (MIA) content platform, which will allow users to experience live NBA games, highlights and original programming. The MIA platform will use mixed reality to enhance the NBA broadcast experience for fans, simulating a 360-degree virtual theatre environment that displays real-time game statistics and interactive branded content experiences. “With the AR and VR industry set to reach a value of $20 billion in 2019, we know MIA will really appeal to fans and open doors for brands looking to attract and retain consumer attention,” said Antony Arena, CEO and Founder of Unbnd. “As a big fan of the game, this partnership with the NBA is a huge deal for me on a personal and professional level, and we’re excited to take fans from being spectators to actively engaging with the content in a meaningful,
relevant and exciting way.” “As content consumption continues to evolve, the NBA has been at the forefront of technological innovations that enrich the viewing experience, and this partnership with Unbnd will allow us to provide another next generation viewing option to our fans,” said Ramez Sheikh, NBA Asia Head of Global Content and Media Distribution. “By combining NBA content with Unbnd’s enhancements, we will deliver an immersive and unique experience to further engage fans of the NBA.” The MIA app will be available before the start of the 2019-20 NBA season across iOS, Android and all compatible virtual reality headsets. Visit www.unbnd.com.au and www.nba.com and www.missinginaction.com.au
Blackmagic Powers Baseball Tracking System in Japan BLACKMAGIC DESIGN has announced that its DeckLink SDI Micro is being used for capture and playback with the baseball pitching tracking system “Baseboy,” a newly announced system by Japanese company Qoncept Inc. which is capable of visualising a ball’s path and interlocking with a camera feed. Baseboy was first used, in conjunction with a Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K, in the recent Japan/ US international baseball match, Samurai Japan Series 2019, broadcast by TV Asahi as Japan’s first real time baseboy analysis system. Qoncept (concept) is a research and development venture company from Osaka University established with the aim of enhancing image processing technology from research level to practical level. Focusing on AR (Augmented Reality), Qoncept offers image processing technology such as markerless tracking for AR, machine learning-based tracking and selflocalisation. The company also provides real time composite, data analysis, and player and ball tracking in sports competitions. Baseboy can analyse the movement of balls from baseball pitching and batting and make real time composites using analysis result which is 3D image data. It will be installed in many broadcasters, baseball stadiums and sports federations in Japan. For the Samurai Japan Series 2019 match, a Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K was used to shoot baseball in play with its feed sent to Baseboy via a Blackmagic DeckLink SDI Micro.
Baseboy then analyzed the camera feed and produced real time composited graphics, overlaying CG which shows the path of the ball thrown by the pitcher. These images were then sent to TV Asashi for broadcast. “I was able to miniaturise Baseboy thanks to this small card which allowed me to build it so that everything can be processed without an operator. The single DeckLink SDI Micro handles capturing and playback simultaneously. Input feed is processed for marking a ball’s path using Intel’s NUC, then output via the DeckLink SDI Micro. There is no other choice than DeckLink SDK Micro which is capable of capture and playback simultaneously up to 1080p60 with such a small size. If you have this small a box in your equipment booth in the relay site, you can add something more creative to your program. Without the DeckLink SDI Micro, Baseboy 2D couldn’t be born,” said Kenichi Hayashi, CEO of Qoncept. Hayashi continued: “Blackmagic Design allows me more flexible product development because they offer an open SDK. As the SDK supports Mac, Windows, Linux, I can develop a system on various platforms, it is easier to develop softwares. Also, with DeckLink’s software update, I can do more new things which greatly expands our product development possibility.” “We’ve been used many Blackmagic products. I can say, without Blackmagic Design, we could not succeed as a company,” Hayashi concluded. Visit www.blackmagicdesign.com and https://qoncept.co.jp
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ICC World Cup Video Views Hit One Billion THE ICC MEN’S CRICKET WORLD CUP 2019 has shattered previous digital and TV records and become one of the world’s biggest ever sports events – having delivered over 1 billion video views across digital content on ICC’s platforms and social media channels.
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In addition, TV figures have seen India alone amass a viewership of 342m during the first fortnight of the tournament even before the much-anticipated fixture between India and Pakistan. Hotstar, ICC’s official digital licensee in India, delivered a record 15.6 million peak concurrent live viewers for the India v Pakistan match - a record for an international cricket fixture across formats. The nail-biting India v Afghanistan fixture on Saturday at Southampton also delivered similar peak number of concurrent live viewers for the platform. Audiences on the UK’s Sky Television have been the highest for One Day International cricket for more than 13 years in United Kingdom with the tournament reaching six million viewers so far. The India v Pakistan match becoming the most watched ODI and the fourth most watched match across any format since 2006 with an average audience of 821,000. Across other fixtures on Sky Television*, the India
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v Australia match delivered the highest unique audience at 3.14 million whilst the England v Bangladesh delivered a unique audience of 2.74 million. The opening match between England and South Africa (2.41 million) and the England v Pakistan (2.15 million) also delivered unique audiences of more than 2 million. ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said, “Providing a mix of platforms including TV, digital and social, means we’re widening our reach and providing greater opportunities for fans to engage with our sport and content more than ever before and clearly demonstrating the power of live cricket to aggregate huge audiences.” On digital platforms the billion views have been captured across match recaps, best moments from the matches, behind the scenes content,
ICC Digital Insider pieces, the Review and Preview shows, “At The Nets” features, viral content and other colour stories on the game’s heroes, current and past. Fans have engaged on a range of platforms including the official ICC CWC 2019 website and mobile app and ICC’s channels on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. The biggest draw was the India v Pakistan match on June 16 which has had 120 million video views across all the official digital and social media channels. Other high performing videos are Liton Das’s back-to-back sixes for Bangladesh and India captain Virat Kohli’s request to fans to show respect for his Australia former counterpart, Steve Smith. In addition, the ICC’s official digital clips licensees have recorded 364 million video views across all their platforms** taking the total video views on official digital platforms to close to 1.5 billion and there have been more than 37 million unique visitors to the event website since the start of the tournament. * Sky Sports audience numbers as of 20 June 2019 **Statistics are relevant as of June 18 2019 Visit www.icc-cricket.com
Broadcast Solutions Covers the Field with Robycam Cable Camera
New Chairman for ABU Sports Group
AT THE RECENT BROADCASTASIA SHOW in Singapore, Broadcast Solutions, together with its subsidiary Robycam Germany, presented the Robycam cable camera system. The Robycam aerial camera system is used in national and international sporting events, live shows and TV productions, indoors and outdoors. The system is available on a rental basis with full production support included or for sale.
THE RECENT 64TH ASIA-PACIFIC Broadcasting Union Sports Group Conference and Associated meetings saw renewed calls from broadcasters to enhance further cooperation. The conference acknowledged that sports broadcasting continues to evolve, often posing serious challenges to broadcasters in terms of increasing rights fee especially, the premium sports and events.
The Robycam system uses four real-time controlled automatic winches and a sophisticated motion control system that allows for millimetre accurate and fast camera movements - up to 8m/s in all axes are possible. The largest system has an operating radius of more than 250 m x 250 m and operates with full redundancy (UPS units on each computer). Robycam Compact is a smaller version. Same as its bigger brother, the camera can move freely through space in vertical and horizontal dimensions allowing to shoot spectacular images from all viewing angles Robycam Compact is designed for use in TV studios and small and medium-sized sports venues, for example, basketball or ice-hockey halls and covers an area of up to 80×80 m with a top spead of 4 m/s. All systems comply with the German safety standard DGUV 17/18 (formerly BGV-C1) and meet all other important national safety requirements. Defining areas in which the system can fly and those that are blocked is a particular feature of the system that enables use in environments with “blocked” spaces. The Robycam systems come with native augmented reality integration and can be integrated with all major AR systems to provide accurate tracking data of camera position, orientation and lens parameters. Visit www.robycam.de
The meeting called for the need to work closely with the union, share information and enhance communications. The conference also highlighted the relevance of not just a national pool, but even regional one to help address the challenges and concerns. The Conference elected the Head of Sports of KBS Korea, Mr Kimoon Lee as the new Chairman of the ABU Sports Group. Mr Lee, who replaces Mr Jiang Heping, the Controller of the China Global Television Network at CGTN, will serve for a two-year term. One of the major highlights of the 64th ABU Sports Group and Associated conference in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan was the signing of the ABU/FISU distribution contract for the next three years. The agreement was signed by the ABU Secretary General, Dr Javad Mottaghi and the Secretary General of the University Sports Federation (FISU) Mr Eric Saintrond. The three-day conference was hosted by the QAZSPORTS. The 65th Sports Group Conference and Associated meetings will take place in Tokyo Japan in November on the sidelines of the ABU General Assembly. Visit www.abu.org.my
Sports Analysis Solution from RT Software REAL TIME 3D BROADCAST GRAPHICS developer RT Software has announced the fully featured launch of their ‘Tactic Advanced’ sports telestration and analysis system. Previewed at NAB 2019, Tactic Advanced is RT Software’s next generation sports graphics solution, allowing sports producers to tell compelling stories around team tactics by inserting informative graphics into clips of sporting action. Tactic Advanced has already been available to the Sports Professional market for a year, with orders from some of the best-known sports clubs and federations around the world. Now, with SDI i/o and the ability to control external replay servers, Tactic Advanced supports full broadcast workflows for highlight packages, post- or pre-match segments, and even live events. Features include automatic keying and camera tracking, editable motion paths, composite graphic creation and the ability to change styles of graphics to match their in-house brand. The full release of Tactic Advanced adds further functionality, such as line calibration to provide metric graphics (speed, distance run etc.) and custom touchscreen interfaces for oncamera presenter control. Visit www.rtsw.co.uk
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Tieline, CNW Provide Commentary Solution for FINA2019 Swim Championships TIELINE, THE DEVELOPER OF solutions for remote audio distribution, has announced that its codecs will be used for live radio and television commentary by the host broadcaster at the 18th FINA World Aquatics Championships held in Gwangju, South Korea during July. Tieline’s longstanding South Korean representative Coil and Wire (CNW), has been contracted by host broadcaster Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), to provide all commentary units and manage all commentary positions, including the Commentary Switching Center at the International Broadcast Center (IBC). “31 Tieline i-Mix G3 and 19 Commander G3 codecs will be used to cover numerous aquatic sports including swimming, diving, artistic swimming, water polo, open water swimming and high diving at the FINA 2019 Swimming Championships,” said Mr. Hyung-uk Sheen from CNW. “MBC has entrusted CNW to provide commentary systems for this significant FINA 2019 event, because CNW and Tieline have successfully provided rock-solid commentary solutions and comprehensive support for global sporting events such as the 2017 FIFA World Cup, 2014 Asian Games and the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in 2013.” All commentary positions will stream live audio over IP, with backup audio over ISDN also being provided at each of the six main venues. The codecs can all be fully configured and remotely controlled from the IBC and fail over seamlessly between IP and ISDN feeds if required. “The level of remote control, coupled with the support provided by Tieline, is one of the key reasons why CNW and Tieline were selected for this event,”
said Charlie Gawley, Tieline VP Sales APAC/EMEA. “Tieline has been involved in live sports broadcasts since our inception. The importance of having complete remote control of each
Mr.Jung, MBC TV Department Team Leader.
commentary unit from the IBC means there is no requirement for a Commentary Control Room at each stadium. This simplifies network configuration and reduces costs substantially for the host broadcaster.” Visit www.tieline.com
True Bangkok United FC Chooses ChyronHego’s Coach Paint CHYRONHEGO HAS ANNOUNCED that True Bangkok United Football Club (F.C.), one of Thailand’s most successful and popular football teams, has adopted ChyronHego’s Coach Paint for its 2019 season. True Bangkok United’s coaching staff is leveraging Coach Paint’s advanced video telestration capabilities to boost the club’s preparation for upcoming matches and enhance player performance. “Coach Paint is an extremely important tool in our club’s preparation processes and pregame workflows, greatly increasing our analytical perspective and the understanding of players and staff. The tool’s high-quality output and ease of use really set it apart,” said Luís Viegas, First Team football match analyst and scout, True Bangkok United F.C. “Coach Paint’s animations and high-impact graphics bring clarity to our presentations and make it easier to explain the strategy for each upcoming game. And the support of the ChyronHego team, which is always available and reachable, makes a huge difference.” “Working with True Bangkok United has been a great experience, and their analysis staff has done an outstanding job integrating Coach Paint into their game-prep workflow. They’ve uncovered the benefits of using advanced
telestration - using the same tools as live sports broadcasters such as Sky, ESPN, Fox, and more – to engage and inform players and illustrate key coaching points,” said Craig Inness, sports performance and technology specialist, ChyronHego. “At the same time, the team has provided insightful feedback for future product improvements. We look forward to working with True Bangkok United as they continue using Coach Paint in subsequent seasons.” Visit www.chyronhego.com
Lawo Goes in to Bat for Indian Premier League NOW UNDERWAY FOR ITS 2019 SEASON, Indian Premier League (IPL) is the star in cricket’s commercial crown, putting the sport’s best players in front of the largest audiences and paying the highest fees. The IPL broadcast rights for the season are currently held by Star TV as part of a five-year contract, and marks a significant change in the operation but sees a continuation of the longstanding and pioneering use of equipment from German broadcast innovator, Lawo.
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The IPL was founded in 2008 of eight teams representing cities in India – with players drawn from the world’s best. Live, it is the most-attended cricket league in the world and, in 2010, became the first sporting event in the world to be broadcast live on YouTube. It has an estimated brand value of US$6.3 billion in 2018.
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Described by Star CEO Uday Shankar as “very powerful property”, Star broadcasts IPL matches live online in India via its over-the-top video streaming platform, Hotstar (which also holds the worldwide internet rights) – Star India saw 700 million viewers tune in across its platforms to watch the 2018 tournament, with 200 million of those streaming the action via Hotstar. The tournament final drew a peak of 10.3 million viewers – a record for live streaming of any event worldwide. With the most expensive broadcast rights deal in the history of cricket, the contract with Star TV signifies a change in the IPL OB arrangements. In a move to make operation more efficient, Star TV has now built its own OB kits, enabling
it to be less dependent on kits from third-party suppliers and to use the same setup for events other than the IPL. Lawo’s earlier IPL involvement includes the first broadcast of the IPL in 5.1 surround in 2015, using Lawo mc²56 digital broadcast consoles with HD Cores. This involvement was expanded to include 11 more mc²56 console and a number of Lawo V__pro8 video processors to provide an 8×8 video matrix, and 384×384 audio matrix, Dolby E encode/decoding, and cost-effective SDI embedding/deembedding. Star TV’s provision for broadcasting the IPL includes a new studio. The studio’s audio is centred on a 48-fader Lawo mc²56 audio console ordered towards end 2018 and installed in January 2019. The initial installation for Star TV included a Lawo Compact Core routing populated with three DSP cards, a RAVENNA card for IP link to remote Lawo DALLIS interfacing, a Dante card for interfacing with external Dante devices, and a MADI card with AES In/Out for internal and external interconnects such as MADI to V__pro 8. The studio’s DALLIS I/O frame supports 48 mic/line inputs, 48-line outputs, and 16 AES in/outputs. The setup also uses Lawo’s V__pro 8 video processing toolkit for audio de-embedding/embedding, and also a Dolby-E option for surround production work. Visit www.lawo.com
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NEWS OPERATIONS www.content-technology.com/newsoperations
TVNZ Upgrades Newsgathering Fleet with LiveU’s HEVC Bonded Solutions NEW ZEALAND FREE TO AIR BROADCASTER,
TVNZ, is upgrading its fleet of LiveU portable transmission units to LiveU’s LU300 HEVC and LU600 HEVC, ensuring the highest-quality live video performance. The deal has been overseen by LiveU’s long-term partner in the region, Pacific Live Media, which provides ongoing service and support. The NZ broadcaster has been using LiveU since 2015 with multiple units deployed around the country as well as in New York, London and Sydney. The units have been used for all major news and sports events, including royal and state visits, covering political campaigns and elections, as well as the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Sydney, Rio Summer Games in 2016, and the recent yellow vest protests in France. The upgrades come in time for this September’s Rugby World Cup in Japan where LiveU will be used to cover all the action around the games and even serve as disaster recovery backups for the fibre transmission of the games themselves. TVNZ started looking at cellular bonded options at the 2012 Summer Games in London. Andrew Fernie, General Manager of Operations, News and Current Affairs for TVNZ, explained, “We had been interested in the technology for some time, but it really came to a head before the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England. After testing the equipment, we were impressed by LiveU’s LU200 small-form factor, ease of use and video quality and started spreading the units across the country. The catalyst for the major growth in pushing these units out were the changes we
Yaal Eshel, LiveU’s VP Sales, said, “This is an excellent example how TVNZ has transformed live newsgathering and sports coverage using small portable LiveU units for live streaming and advanced store and forward capabilities. We’re delighted that TVNZ is rolling out our latest HEVC technology and look forward to continuing our long relationship.” Visit www.pacificlivemedia.com
NZ On Air and RNZ Launch Local Democracy Reporting
TVU NETWORKS, THE DEVELOPER of live IP video solutions, has announced a partnership with the Stringr video marketplace which will see Stringr’s network of professional and amateur videographers available through the TVU Global Grid, the cloud distribution platform for content owners to contribute and pull video, enabling assets to be shared and sold globally.
AN NZ $1M PILOT SCHEME aimed at boosting the reporting of local democracy issues across New Zealand has been launched by an alliance of publishers, Radio NZ and NZ On Air. The pilot will see eight journalists recruited to provide local democracy news to a wide array of media. Funding will come from the RNZ/NZ On Air Innovation Fund, a one-off $6M fund announced last year. The purpose of the pilot is to fill gaps in the reporting of local bodies and other publicly-funded organisations, mostly in regional New Zealand, brought about by significant decreases in reporting numbers in traditional media. The concept is similar to a partnership forged in the UK between the BBC and British publishers under which 150 reporters have been hired across Britain to strengthen the reporting of local issues. The British scheme has been funded from the BBC’s broadcasting licence fee. In New Zealand, the partnership has been negotiated between the Newspaper Publishers’ Association (NPA), RNZ and NZ On Air. RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson said RNZ had already brokered a number of content-sharing partnerships with different media and the Local Democracy Reporter (LDR) service was an extension of that. “We’ve changed the thinking in an industry that has been highly competitive in the past to enter new content-sharing partnerships that have proved to be mutually beneficial and of significant public value,” he said. “The objective is to give the New Zealand public an independent, impartial news service, delivered on as wide a range of media platforms as possible. To extend this in partnership with the newspaper industry is an important step forward.” While local democracy reporters will be employed by newspaper companies, all the stories generated by these reporters will be made available to RNZ and other qualifying media, including competitors. Visit https://www.rnz.co.nz
Stringr allows users to access its content library and request custom footage from over 90,000 videographers around the world. In addition, broadcasters, publishers and brands in the U.S. and U.K. can access Stringr’s livestreaming function, which launched earlier this year. Users will now be able to put out requests through TVU Grid, and as a videographer in Stringr’s network begins sharing live footage, it will be transmitted directly to TVU Grid.
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Fernie continued, “LiveU has completely changed our business. enabling us to cover every story quickly and cost-efficiently with no need for SNG trucks. We can truly go anywhere with this system, even broadcasting live from the remotest Pacific islands using LiveU as the encoder combined with a Satellite IP system. In terms of future big events, TVNZ has secured the exclusive rights to broadcast the next America’s Cup in 2021 and we’re already planning our LiveU deployment.”
TVU Networks Partners with Videographer Network Stringr
TVU Grid is an IP-based switching, routing and distribution system. With TVU Grid, stations can route live video streams over IP networks to one or more Grid-enabled news stations anywhere in the world with sub-second latency. Using its TVU Global Grid platform, users can exchange, share, and sell video content. Users can view public video sources that are available around the world, and request to take the stream and make it available for their own viewing audience.
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made to the newsgathering and news operations teams across the entire country. In 2017, we introduced a centralized editing model, taking all the contribution servers and combining them into a main content and production server in our main newsroom in Auckland. This meant that all the content could be streamed or sent via store and forward into the main server; we could then get all the content out to our linear and digital channels almost immediately. We were able to create a team of video journalists who could operate from the remotest regions using a small camera and a LiveU unit.”
The Stringr/TVU Grid workflow is seamless. A joint customer requests video from Stringr. When one of Stringr’s 90,000+ videographers goes live with video matching the request, the feed is sent through Stringr, straight into TVU Grid. From there, the joint customer can take the feed just as they would for any other TVU content. TVU Networks and Stringr are currently working with a major cable network and plan to expand to other partners shortly. Visit www.tvunetworks.com.
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Pond5 Partners with Reuters on Royalty-Free Editorial VIDEO MARKETPLACE POND5 has announced the launch of a royalty-free Editorial collection, featuring timely footage from the worlds of current events, sports, and entertainment, plus video from citizen journalists. The new royalty-free model for this content gives filmmakers and creators worldwide access to footage in the collection which starts at US$79 a clip. To build the new collection, Pond5 has partnered with global news agency Reuters. Pauliina Hepola, Global Head of Channel Partners, Reuters News Agency, said: “Reuters is committed to delivering trusted, independent, and impartial news from around the world. We’re excited to share this content with newsmakers and content creators in a new way by partnering with Pond5.” Other partners include Cover Video, which offers celebrity and entertainment video content, and Newsflare, known for user-generated breaking news videos, with more partners to be announced in the coming weeks. Through these partnerships, Pond5 is both expanding its collection of valuable archival footage and presenting buyers with royalty-free options for video relating to timely topics and current events, with thousands of new clips added to the collection every day. Visit http://pond5.com/editorial
Avid Boosts Production Speed with MediaCentral Update AVID HAS RELEASED MEDIACENTRAL 2019, the next generation of its comprehensive media workflow platform for TV news, sports and postproduction operations. MediaCentral 2019 scales to meet the needs of journalists who collaborate in increasingly dispersed teams as they strive to create engaging shows and stories faster and be first to break news on air and on social media. MediaCentral’s unified platform has a customisable suite of creative tools and media management, which enable teams to work simply from within the modern user interface, create and collaborate from anywhere using any device, and deploy the platform with seamless cloud integration for a full cloud solution or an on-prem/cloud hybrid approach. With MediaCentral 2019, teams - across multiple geographic locations can quickly ingest, log, search, edit, distribute, and publish video content to any number of outlets, giving them the agility to create better content faster and maximise its value. All-new MediaCentral functionality includes: • Collaboration across multiple sites: Up to six production sites can connect, enabling sharing and powerful searching of content in different locations for greater accessibility and collaboration. Content creators can search, browse, and play back media remotely with the same performance as if stored locally. • Faster and more intuitive search: Find media faster by using the new query builder, and expanded filtering (metadata, dates, and favorites). Users get the right results faster and are better able to leverage and monetise their media assets. The Phonetic Index option allows users to find all clips that contain the words that they’re looking for in a matter of seconds.
• Automated file ingest: Ingest high volumes of media through a web browser or volume ingest with full Avid Media Access (AMA) support in the Ingest desktop app. • Flexible deployment: Users can set up the platform however they want and transition it as business needs evolve. MediaCentral can be deployed on premises in a facility, in a private data center, or with a hybrid model. Visit www.avid.com/products/mediacentral
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• New logging capabilities: Users can log assets with meaningful details quickly. Ideal for sports, news, reality TV, and post production, the new Log app allows loggers to tag information as it happens, and mark in/ out points quickly, enabling other team members to easily search large amounts of media and find the right clips faster.
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Trust, Fatigue and Smartphones Feature in Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report THE REUTERS INSTITUTE HAS RELEASED
its Digital News Report for 2019. Authored by Director of the Reuters Institute, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Senior Research Associate Nic Newman, along with Institute Research Fellows Richard Fletcher and Antonis Kalogeropoulos, the report is based on a survey of more than 75,000 people in 38 markets. The Institute also worked with Flamingo, an international market research company, to look in detail at the habits and behaviours of younger groups in the United States and United Kingdom. The methodology included tracking actual online behaviour of 20 participants for several weeks, in-depth interviews, and small group discussions with their friends. Insights and quotes from this research are used to support this year’s Digital News Report but will also form the basis of a separate report to be published in September. The findings of the Digital News Report 2019 include: • A small increase in the numbers paying for any online news – whether by subscription, membership, or donation. Growth is limited to a handful of countries mainly in the Nordic region (Norway 34%, Sweden 27%) while the number paying in the US (16%) remains stable after a big jump in 2017. • Even in countries with higher levels of payment, the vast majority only have ONE online subscription - suggesting that ‘winner takes all’ dynamics are likely to be important. One encouraging development though is that most payments are now ‘ongoing’, rather than oneoffs. • In some countries, subscription fatigue may also be setting in, with the majority preferring to spend their limited budget on entertainment (Netflix/Spotify) rather than news. • In many countries, people are spending less time with Facebook and more time with WhatsApp and Instagram than last year. Few users are abandoning Facebook entirely, though, and it remains by far the most important social network for news.
• Social communication around news is becoming more private as messaging apps continue to grow everywhere. WhatsApp has become a primary network for discussing and sharing news in non-Western countries like Brazil (53%) Malaysia (50%), and South Africa (49%). • People in these countries are also far more likely than in the West to be part of large WhatsApp groups with people they don’t know - a trend that reflects how messaging applications can be used to easily share information at scale, potentially encouraging the spread of misinformation. Public and private Facebook Groups discussing news and politics have become popular in Turkey (29%) and Brazil (22%) but are much less used in Western countries such as Canada (7%) or Australia (7%). • Concern about misinformation and disinformation remains high despite efforts by platforms and publishers to build public confidence. In Brazil 85% agree with a statement that they are worried about what is real and fake on the internet. Concern is also high in the UK (70%) and US (67%), but much lower in Germany (38%) and the Netherlands (31%). • Across all countries, the average level of trust in the news in general is down 2 percentage points to 42% and less than half (49%) agree that they trust the news media they themselves use. Trust levels in France have fallen to just 24% (-11) in the last year as the media have come under attack over their coverage of the Yellow Vests movement. Trust in the news found via search (33%) and social media remains stable but extremely low (23%). • Worries about the quality of information may be good for trusted news brands. Across countries over a quarter (26%) say they have started relying on more ‘reputable’ sources of news – rising to 40% in the US. A further quarter (24%) said they had stopped using sources that had a dubious reputation in the last year. • The news media are seen as doing a better job at breaking news than explaining it. Across
countries, almost two-thirds feel the media are good at keeping people up to date (62%), but are less good at helping them understand the news (51%). Less than half (42%) think the media do a good job in holding rich and powerful people to account - and this figure is much lower in South Korea (21%), Hungary (20%), and Japan (17%). • There are also significant differences within countries, as people with higher levels of formal education are more likely to evaluate the news media positively along every dimension than the rest of the population, suggesting that the news agenda is more geared towards the interests and needs of the more educated. • The smartphone continues to grow in importance for news, with two-thirds (66%) now using the device to access news weekly (+4pp). Mobile news aggregators like Apple News and Upday are becoming a more significant force. Apple News in the United States now reaches more iPhone users (27%) than the Washington Post (23%). • The growth of the smartphone has also been driving the popularity of podcasts, especially with the young. More than a third of the study’s combined sample (36%) say they have consumed at least one podcast over the last month but this rises to half (50%) for those under 35. The mobile phone is the most used device (55%) for podcast listening. • Voice-activated smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home continue to grow rapidly. Usage for any purpose has risen from 9% to 12% in the United States, from 7% to 14% in the UK, from 5% to 11% in Canada, and from 4% to 8% in Australia. Despite this, the report found usage for news remains low in all markets. For a free download of the full report, visit https://www.reuterscommunity.com/topics/ audience-development/reuters-institute-digitalnews-report-2019
SBS Signs News Content Deal with US ABC Network AS THE UNITED STATES APPROACHES yet another critical Presidential election, SBS today announced a new partnership with one of the USA’s most respected news providers, the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
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From July 1, SBS will broadcast ABC World News Tonight with David Muir and ABC America’s flagship political affairs program, This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
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Daily episodes of ABC World News Tonight with David Muir will drop exclusively on SBS On Demand from 6.30am, and will air on SBS VICELAND later that day. From July 30, the program will air daily on SBS at 12.30pm, followed by an encore screening on SBS VICELAND that afternoon. This Week with George Stephanopoulos will air weekly on SBS from Monday, 1 July at 6.30am, followed by an encore screening on SBS
VICELAND later that day. The deal also includes catch up episodes available on SBS On Demand for seven days from broadcast. SBS Director of News and Current Affairs, Jim Carroll said, “During a particularly fascinating period in US and global politics, we are very excited to be partnering with a news service of the calibre of ABC News. Australians have a voracious appetite for comprehensive and intelligent coverage of what’s happening in America and its relationship with the rest of the world.” In addition, SBS will broadcast and/or stream ABC America’s coverage of major political events, including the Presidential Debates and the Republican and Democratic Party Conventions. Visit sbs.com.au
POST PRODUCTION www.content-technology.com/postproduction
Meet the Colourist - Sam Chynoweth Sam Chynoweth joined Technicolor’s London colour team in 2018. He previously worked as a colourist in Australia on a number of different projects, including The Lego Movie, The Infiltrator, Peter Rabbit and The Lego Batman Movie.
“I’d had a strong interest in image manipulation throughout college and was pretty sure I was destined to be a compositor (or a shake jockey as my lecturer liked to call them). After a few false starts, including a stint as a trainee cheese maker, I entered post-production as a VFX review assistant at Animal Logic, in Sydney Australia. I was pretty much a glorified VCR machine looping through shots all day (yelling “play it again Sam” brought a chuckle to most supervisors). But, it wasn’t too long before I realised I had an amazing and unique opportunity to listen to some of the top visual effects supervisors and production designers, and to hear them breaking images down and discussing them in great detail. “We were running these sessions out of our grading theatre, leaving me seated behind this impressively illuminated colour panel. After a particularly long and arduous review session, two supervisors were stuck arguing over a shot of a burning moose. I quietly reached over and spun the gamma wheel - both of them turned around and exclaimed ‘yes, that!’” “That really was the beginning for me as a DI operator. From there I was very fortunate to assist some amazing artists who were always more than willing to answer my barrage of questions and help me learn the craft.” You’ve joined the team at Technicolor in London. Why did you decide to join the company? “It was a tough decision to leave the sunny beaches of Australia behind, but there was no way I could pass up the opportunity to work with one of the most prestigious post-production companies in the world. Technicolor London sits right at the heart of the UK film industry and offers me the chance to work with new collaborators and diversify my skillset.” Would you say that your client’s requests in London are different than the ones you had back in Australia? “My role in Australia differed in that I was primarily working for a production company; they tended to offer longer schedules, with my role beginning in the early look development stages. Having such a long involvement with a project allowed me to focus on the imaging in a very detailed way. We were really able to push the boundaries of what was achievable in the DI process. “Now, in a more traditional post services role
with Technicolor, I am looking at the ways we can incorporate the benefits of a detail-orientated finish into a traditional post schedule.” What was the first project you ever graded? “My first solo outing was a short film for a friend of mine. He had managed to borrow a Red One camera for the shoot, which turned out to be quite the crash course in raw management. My first professional credit was fittingly on the TV featurette Lego Star Wars: The Padawan Menace. It was a fantastic little project and started a lot of the discussion that went on to form The Lego Movie.” How long have you been using Baselight? “I’ve been using Baselight for about five years now, having switched over from Digital Vision’s Film Master. Baselight feels intuitive and it is quick to pick up and learn. That said, there is a sophistication and depth behind Baselight that enables real flexibility; the list of what can be finished in the system grows with each release.” What are the main benefits of Baselight when working on animated and stereoscopic productions? “Baselight’s support for multi-channel EXR has had a massive impact on the workflow of animated features, offering huge benefits to image control and greatly reducing the amount of transfer work when preparing a stereo timeline. “The flexibility of Baselight’s EXR implementation allows us to carry dozens of supplemental channels such as World-Space-Position (WSP) and Normal Map information. This, in turn, allows us to use the newly implemented Matte XYZ tool [which isolates static objects so they can be graded individually], and adding reflection and volumetric passes gives us an amazing level of control over the finishing of an image. “Another benefit of working with Baselight is the flexibility that it delivers to stereo. Baselight is able to recognise multiple ‘views’ within EXR channels, allowing us to embed all of our mono and stereo imagery into a single sequence. Baselight will also seamlessly update all of the mattes referenced in a grade stack based on the view option, which greatly speeds up the process of transitioning the grade over to stereo.”
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www. l abs pac e. c om. au
What are the biggest challenges when working on projects like The Lego Movie, The Infiltrator, Peter Rabbit, etc? “Every job will always have unique challenges. There are three categories of film I’ve worked across. Animated features offer unparalleled levels of control (especially when harnessing multichannel EXRs) and it can be easy to lose your way amongst the detail, neglecting the bigger picture and its consideration beyond a sequence of shots. VFX-heavy films often require a lighter touch, with extra consideration needed to avoid upsetting the integration of the visual elements. And of course, traditional single camera drama, which is often a delicate balance of speed and detail.” You recently worked on one of the biggest VFX movies in the history of Indian cinema – 2.0. What was your overall experience? “2.0 was my first experience working on a big Indian feature and it was an absolute blast! The film-makers wanted to give Indian audiences a home-grown experience akin to the western spectacles being produced by Marvel and DC. The movie ticked off a lot of firsts for an Indian production, with the largest budget, native stereoscopic acquisition and the most extensive use of visual effects. “I was brought on right at the end of the three-year production to offer a western perspective. The DOP, Nirav Shah, was keen to give the film a look that would be unique to the Indian market and in line with the ‘Hollywood blockbuster’ theme. The project was definitely one of the tightest schedules I have worked on, with new shots arriving right Continues p30 >>
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POST PRODUCTION
You are known for your expertise in colour grading animation and VFX. What brought you to those specialties?
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POST PRODUCTION >> Continued from p29 up until the day of the DCP wrap, just five short days before the film premiered (in three different languages!). “The most rewarding part was seeing the film’s reception - the energy and excitement the fans have is like no other audience I have ever seen.” How did you decide on the look of the movie? “We took a fairly unusual approach to find the look of the film. I completed my first grading pass with minimal external direction. Nirav sat and watched quietly as I found my way through the footage. He was very keen to look at the film with a purely ‘Hollywood’ aesthetic, free from domestic influences and styles. Once we had a fairly solid pass we stopped and took some time to discuss how we might layer in some of the more traditional Indian cinema attributes to give the film a truly unique feel. From there we went through it together, refining the balance of scenes and the shots within. “We spent a significant amount of our grade time working closely with VFX Supervisor Srinivas Mohan polishing the visual effects. Shots were coming in thick and fast from a number of vendors across India and internationally, and for many of them it was their first project using an ACES pipeline, which was a learning curve for them.” Which Baselight tools were particularly beneficial on this project? “We would have been in real trouble without Baselight’s sophisticated colour management tools. I arrived to three years of delivered VFX work as many of the smaller vendors had problems with their implementation of the ACES pipeline. The tight schedule meant we couldn’t always request redelivery so we used Baselight’s colour space conversion tools to unpick and convert every delivery
into a usable format.” How long were you working on the movie? “It was a four-week grade across the feature, marketing and music video. It was challenging dealing with large sequences of VFX that weren’t delivered until the final days. In an ideal world another week clear of visual effects deliveries would have given us a good opportunity to review the piece as a whole. “This was my first visit to India and I was very keen to experience some of the amazing cuisine on offer. So, after a long day grading Nirav stopped off at a kerb-side market stall where he ordered us a freshly squeezed sugarcane and ginger juice. I gulped it down greedily, finishing just in time for Nirav to sheepishly inform me that the juice was a fantastic intestinal cleanser. It was very effective!” One scene in the film has a man lying in bed and the walls of the room are made of cellphones. How do you build the grade of such a shot? “This shot is a good example of how we’re always walking the balance between creating beautiful imagery and communicating the story. It is a visually busy shot with thousands of phones buzzing and vibrating along the walls of the room, breaking away to encircle a terrified businessman in a virtual tornado of cell phones. The screens of the phones all light up presenting us with the calling card of the antagonist, a small sparrow bouncing around a forest backdrop. That’s an awful lot of information to present to a viewer in the space of a few seconds. “I work backwards with a priority list of story points, and if the viewer only takes one thing away, it needs to be the actor’s performance. I use a lot of incredibly soft, dynamic vignettes to guide the eye to the subject using variations in the luminance and
contrast. To improve the recognition that this event was being caused by our antagonist, I shifted the colour temperature of the phone screens closer to a tone used earlier in the film to help link the events in the viewer’s mind. Finally, I applied some frequency management to the phones surrounding the outside of the room to minimise attention stealing and tiring detail without eroding the overall separation and impression of the individual phones.” What are your thoughts on HDR? “It’s a bit of an arms race at the moment. The high rate of variance between manufacturers does make it technically tricky to deliver viewers with a consistent creative vision. “On the creative side, I am very excited. I believe the extended dynamic range really adds depth and dimension to an image. I don’t believe it’s a simple step up from SDR and it doesn’t work as a derivative deliverable - it requires a different approach to the management of a scene’s contrast ratio. The sooner the creative team is able to start viewing their footage in HDR the better positioned they are when it comes time to grade.” What’s next for you? “For me now it will be a real focus on developing relationships here in the UK. I’m excited by the prospect of meeting with a new and diverse group of collaborators and to keep making beautiful images. “We will also be looking to further develop our pipeline and how we can integrate more on large VFX heavy shows and stay at the forefront of development.” Visit www.filmlight.co.uk
Marquis Broadcast’s Project Parking Improves Archive and Backup Workflow for WTFN
POST PRODUCTION
WTFN IS ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S leading independent producers of quality factual, lifestyle and reality entertainment programming, providing compelling stories for a global audience. The company has recently installed Project Parking from Marquis Broadcast in order to streamline its archive and backup workflow within an Avid Interplay and shared storage environment.
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“We create TV and film content, from the development stage all the way through to international sales,” comments Mark Irwin, CTO for WTFN Entertainment. “We’re an Avid shop, running Media Composer on all suites and finishing in Symphony, all hung together on Avid Interplay. Currently in production are Paramedics, Emergency, Teen Mom Australia, The Living Room, Bondi Vet, The Great Weekend and a number of other shows. We chose Project Parking to help us archive and move media in and out of the Interplay/ISIS/NEXIS systems, reducing the manual labour required. It’s been essential with Paramedics, where we’re shooting more than 18,000 hours of footage for Season 2 alone!” WTFN uses a mixture of Avid ISIS and Avid NEXIS systems for its Tier 1 storage, while Tier 2 storage comes from Synology. Material is off-loaded to
recently been updated with a new dashboard feature, enabling usage tracking for Marquis Workspace Tools and Project Parking systems, which is especially useful for multi-site companies, helping to monitor their data usage.
Tier 2, transcoded to DNX36 and ingested into WTFN’s Avid systems. “Project Parking allows us to pack-up shows, archive and maintain the Interplay environment much more effectively,” Mark explains. “It also allows us to easily reconstitute a project if we ever have to re-cut or provide different versions to our clients.” Marquis Broadcast’s Avid platform-certified Project Parking tool is the industry goldstandard for Avid storage management and project portability, providing project analytics, visualisation, management and archiving. It has
“Media for each of our productions stays on the ISIS/NEXIS until the series is complete; it’s the packing up at the end where Project Parking really comes into its own,” concludes Mark. “We have also used Project Parking’s ability to package projects so freelancers can work offsite. The system has saved us a heap of time and storage and ensures we’re running as effectively as possible. We have a fantastic relationship with both CompNow and Intraware, our integrators, who gave us a huge amount of support thorough this project – being able to pick up the phone is a luxury in the modern world! Every one of our shows now uses Project Parking with Avid; it has greatly reduced the manpower required to manage Avid projects and media.” Visit www.marquisbroadcast.com
POST PRODUCTION
POST PRODUCTION
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POST PRODUCTION
Making the Grade with Captain Marvel A superhero among colourists, Technicolor’s Doug Delaney spoke to C+T about using Baselight on Captain Marvel By Phil Sandberg. WITH CREDITS TO HIS NAME INCLUDING feature films Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Bad Neighbours and the Equalizer, and TV series such as Love, Death & Robots, and The Hot Zone, Technicolor colourist Doug Delaney brought all his 20-plus years’ experience to bear on his first Marvel Studios project, Captain Marvel. “Technicolor’s done 14 Marvel films so they have a pretty good relationship with Technicolor,” says Delaney. “These films are pretty big films with lots of visual effects so managing the media and the versioning and all of that editorial stuff is a very complex matter so there’s a lot of tools, automation and scripts and things like that that Technicolor’s developed over the years. That makes my job much easier. “In this particular show, the entire thing was conformed in Baselight and graded in Baselight. We kept it all native shot-based, sort of an ACES workflow, at the beginning and then we kind of went off on a slightly different workflow. “I think one of the challenges with a movie like this is the various deliverables and when you have a show this size, while I’m this sort of supervising finisher or colourist, I have a second colourist who’s also helping me and then additional colourists who are doing the stereo versions, the IMAX version and then we do the home video version. Grading the film is one thing, but managing all the versions and the pressure of doing the delivery on a very, very tight deadline and keeping the whole team in sync is, I think, the biggest lift of the process.”
POST PRODUCTION
You’re dealing with multiple effects houses as well.
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“Yes. There were effects vendors all over the world from Animal Logic to ILM in San Francisco and different time zones. The colour management was important and the show LUT was something that was decided and sorted so that everybody is looking at the same thing and CDLs with a company in the VFX so that when they’re reviewing with the directors, Anna [Boden] and Ryan [Fleck], and everyone else, we’re all looking at the same thing. So, by the time it comes into the theatre it’s all pretty sorted and consistent in terms of the VFX are concerned.
Is there any data that comes to you from previous Marvel productions to keep it consistent? “Within the Marvel cinematic universe as it’s called, there’s an established language in that world and what’s really important is not only making the movie look good but ensuring that the costumes and the various story points that are colour-specfic are accurate, the crew uniforms, the Tesseract, for example, Captain Marvel’s uniform, needs to be a very particular colour so managing that and assuring that that’s consistent throughout the film is a key part of it because that’s definitely part of their identity. It was a quasi-ACES workflows, so the VFX vendors delivered EXR AP0 and then we went into a different working colour space, so it was kind of an ACES workflow and then we deviated from that.” Of all the platform options, why was Baselight most suitable? “Again, it was a native Baselight conform. It was really important to keep it that way. At the beginning of the grading process, you’re doing the 2D version and maybe you have two or three reels that are live - meaning you’re actively working on them. Then, maybe after a couple of weeks, the 3D version starts and then we’re already starting to do the pan and scan for the home video and then we do the EDR version and then we’re - and so all these versions are live and happening at the same time and being actively worked on. “It’s not a straight, linear process and we’re moving through the film non-linearly based on which reels are the most complete at that given time and then each version is being moved around non-linearly. There’s a lot of moving parts so it was important to keep everything native within the platform and Baselight offers a lot of collaborative workflow tools which became really critical to be able to manage it.” You mentioned different versions, was HDR a consideration there? “For sure. We went straight to the EDR, the laser projection version, and, again, therein Baselight’s tool set was really great. The EDR trim was pretty extensive as a matter of fact and a lot of it, I think, not necessarily only in the highlights but also in the low-end, in EDR, really beautiful opening of the shadows and this
really rich black and detail at the low-end that you don’t get in standard projection and so we were seeing things we didn’t really see with the amount of clarity before. Using some of the tools within Baselight and Basegrade, for example, to help address that stuff was really a beautiful thing. But, also visual effects are very specific and have been look-developed for sometimes a year or more and maintaining the look of those in the grade was important but also ensuring that that feeling translates throughout all the deliverables, because in HDR you have the ability to open things up and now you’re seeing all kind of highlight detail you didn’t see before. But, sometimes you don’t want to see additional detail or you want to see an appropriate amount of additional detail and Captain Marvel, her energy and her power-up and some of those glow effects were very specific. And, so, if you’re opening things up in EDR and not managing that properly, it’ll look different and then that breaks some of the visual effects illusion that we’re trying to create.” What would you say was the most challenging aspect of the production? “There were a couple of sequences, one was an end-of-day, dusk scene where - not particularly a big visual effects scene necessarily, but just one of those nature tie-in scenes that happens and every colourist deals with at some point or another in the film and maintaining visual consistency of this very emotional scene shot over the course of a number of days with vastly different skies and colour temperatures and just leveraging a lot of the tools within Baselight and grading techniques to even that out. “Another sequence towards the end where, again, visual effects were very well executed but we found that on the reverses, in the grade we had a little bit of interactive lighting just to stitch the shots together, shot to shot, for visual consistency and that took a bit of work but it was one of those things again on a film like this. The effects are super well executed and you don’t want to be too heavy-handed in your grade because of the established aesthetic. Yet at the same time, when you have an opportunity or a need to plus the sequence, you need to be able to do that and deliver.” Visit www.filmlight.ltd.uk
MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MAM Tennis Australia Chooses Spectra Logic and Digistor for Australian Open
As John O’Neil, Technical Manager - TA Productions at Tennis Australia, explained, “We have an enormous amount of content and needed a permanent, cost effective and scalable solution. We knew what we had today and what we would need in the future and wanted to develop a partnership that would grow with our needs. Digistor played a major role in the deployment of the Spectra Logic solution, and worked with us to refine the requirements and options, as well as providing the necessary quotes and timelines to enable the purchase to be approved and acquired.” Tennis Australia’s requirements for the new storage solution were extensive. They needed a solution that guaranteed them reliability, scalability, robustness, connectivity and came with comprehensive support at the right cost. O’Neil continued, “We needed a reliable solution that could cope with a number of challenges, as well as grow with our needs, including the ability to archive content to other storage media and thus removing the need to be adding more spinning disks. We also needed a product that could take 188TB of content in 14 days, the duration of the Australian Open. We have a massive data spike when the Australian Open is in progress and then for the remainder of the year, the storage is used to access content. We needed a product that would work with our existing EVS infrastructure to fully realise that investment. Finally, we wanted to have support and critically, we could get this locally via Digistor and globally via the Spectra Logic team.”
addition. The Spectra Logic storage integrated into our EVS infrastructure without any significant work required. The storage is fast and responsive to any media requests. Each Australian Open generates more than 180TB of data made up of approximately 2,100 files. It’s clear to see that we have significantly large files as they are the full record of a tennis match, which can sometimes be many hours in duration. We needed a solution that could handle such large files without issue, which the Spectra Logic has more than done.” During the Australian Open, everyday content was pushed to the Spectra Logic via an integration into Tennis Australia’s Host Broadcast EVS network. As a guide, in the first four days, there are 64 tennis matches per day and some matches have three versions - Clean, Scored and Virtual. In addition, there are press conferences, match highlights, ultra-slow-mo compilations, full day records of the World Feed coverage and the World Feed highlights programme.
The Spectra Logic solution delivered and installed by Digistor met all of Tennis Australia’s requirements presenting them with a robust storage solution that enabled them to migrate all of their data from their temporary storage solution without any data loss or issues.
The amount of work and storage required to make all of the above run seamlessly and reliably is not lost on John O’Neil who added, “In the past, the push of the content to our storage solution was never completed before the bump-out of the Host Broadcast operations. This often meant that we did not have a complete copy of all the content generated and needed to wait until the storage used by the Host Broadcast Technical Partner was active again, copies were made to external devices and sent to Tennis Australia. This could take several months. For 2019 Australian Open, we had all the content on the Spectra Logic storage and the end of the tournament. At the beginning of the final day, the Men’s Final, the only content that we didn’t have was the upcoming Men’s Final. This is first time that this has occurred, and as a result we consider the Spectra Logic solution supplied by Digistor to be an outstanding success.”
O’Neil said, “We added extra storage prior to the Australian Open and it just worked. It was seamless
The Spectra Logic solution supplied by Digistor to Tennis Australia not only improved the organisation’s
efficiencies, critically it also saved them money as O’Neil explained, “We have dramatically reduced our costs post-Australian Open with the implementation of Spectra Logic. We had all our content on the Spectra logic and we didn’t need to employ people to copy data post event or wait for external drives to arrive months after event. We had the full tournament immediately after the final match which has enabled us to generate new content straight away. This is a very welcome and major cost-saving bonus for Tennis Australia. “Digistor’s sales and service has been outstanding. They listened to what Tennis Australia was trying to achieve, the need to integrate into existing infrastructure and brought to us a vendor in Spectra Logic who could deliver on our needs and requirements.” Visit www.digistor.com.au
Oracle Divests Itself of Digital Media Solutions and DIVA Content Management ORACLE HAS ANNOUNCED it has completed the sale of its Digital Media Solutions business and DIVA Content Storage Management product line to EcoDigital, a privately-held company based in Atlanta, Georgia, with previous experience in digital archiving technologies. Oracle acquired the DIVA Content Storage Management product line as part of its September 2014 acquisition of the platform’s developer, Front Porch Digital.
is our top priority. To ensure business continuity, Oracle will continue to operate the business on behalf of EcoDigital during an interim transition period. For day-to-day operations, please continue to contact your current account teams across sales, support, and other business functions. Oracle and EcoDigital will provide notification well in advance of any changes in contact information and processes.
According to a statement issued by Ajay Srivastava, Senior Vice President, Oracle Operating Systems and Virtualisation, “We see this new development as a positive improvement for the two organisations, our mutual clients, and the industry.
“In the meantime, please contact Rino Petricola and Geoff Tognetti with any questions you may have about this exciting combination. Please note that all contracts and renewal orders executed by Oracle following this notice are being entered into on behalf of EcoDigital.”
“A seamless experience for all of our customers, partners, and vendors
Visit www.goecodigital.com
MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MAM
TENNIS AUSTRALIA IS THE ONGOING HOST BROADCASTER for the Australian Open and, as part of this year’s event, was seeking a solution to store over 180TB of host content generated during the tournament. After a comprehensive evaluation process, Tennis Australia chose the Spectra Logic Black Pearl solution supplied and installed by Digistor.
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MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MAM
How Broadcasters Can Relieve the Headache of Storing Archive Footage Tim Jobling, CTO, Imagen WITHIN THE WORLD OF VIDEO AND FILM PRODUCTION, archive footage has a hugely important function – allowing media production companies and broadcasters to build previous events and interviews into new programming in order to create a more compelling story. For instance, in the build-up to a Grand Prix, broadcasters will often use historic content from previous Formula One races to add to the excitement, create a narrative and, sometimes, to ensure the programme is long enough to fill the time allocated to it. However, many broadcasters experience significant challenges when trying to access archive footage, saved in different places across disparate systems or, most frustratingly, just being unable to find it. What obstacles does it present? Frequently, broadcasters have facilities in several locations, causing storing and sharing content amongst themselves and with other organisations, along with multiple users, to become a sizeable headache. Often, a number of databases or file sharing platforms are in use and content can’t be found easily. This content may then be impossible to recreate, or if it can be, it’s at a large cost to the business. Similarly, with employees for an organisation often spread out across the globe, there are ineffective systems in place to store and share content and once a person leaves the business, they also take their knowledge of where content is located with them. Additionally, with so much new content being created on a daily basis, the amount of archive material held by broadcasters is only increasing. While they may be able to overcome the issue of storing that footage, finding it again can present a whole new series of problems. For instance, how is it organised, what format is it in and how can they find specific video clips at any given time? With such a vast library, pinpointing a certain piece that contains a particular goal from the 1998 World Cup can become a mammoth task. So, how can broadcasters overcome these challenges and calm the headache the storage of archive footage presents? Implementing a solution As the creation of new content builds, this has meant the amount of older material created by broadcasters and media companies has also increased. As a result, the size and scale of the problem they are dealing with in terms of the management and storage of content will grow only in tandem. To alleviate this, these organisations must look to implement a more robust cloud-based solution which will ensure their digital assets are not only protected but also reusable for the future. While this will require a small initial investment of time and money to implement, it is a low-risk, highreward option which will allow broadcasters to safely store, search and share content internally and has the potential to provide a number of significant benefits.
An additional advantage provided by a video management platform is the opportunity to monetise content. As we have seen with nearly every major broadcaster, a wealth of programmes or footage stored online creates the potential for VOD services. Or, in the case of the BBC, it allows broadcasters to add another element to their existing services. As while BBC iPlayer has been around for more than a decade, it wasn’t until 2017 that the BBC added a ‘From the Archive’ section to the platform. This move saw the broadcasters add existing content, some of which dated back to 1946 and hadn’t been aired since it was first broadcast, to its existing platform. This allowed the BBC to add an extra element to its service and play into the growing trend of consumers going back to re-watch old boxsets or programmes, even if they’ve seen it before. This is something we have seen with the addition of the ever-popular Friends series’ to Netflix in the UK and the subsequent revelation that it had become the most popular show for streaming. While the majority of broadcasters won’t have a back catalogue on the same scale as the BBC, moving to a single, digitised catalogue of content can allow them to create platforms showcasing their content on a smaller scale and therefore create new revenue streams. Furthermore, opting for a single digital solution may give broadcasters the push they need to digitise archive footage which may currently only exist on film or video and which is therefore easily lost, damaged or destroyed. This is something most of us can relate to in our personal lives, with many of us likely to have old photo albums from our childhood or video tapes containing camcorder footage stored in shoeboxes or at the back of a cupboard. However, with so much sentimentality often attached to this content, most of us are willing to pay for a cloud solution that will allow us to digitise and store all this content in one place, giving us assurance of its long-term security. This idea also applies to broadcasters but on a much bigger scale and for them, the risk of footage getting lost or damaged could create major problems. While it won’t have the same sentimental value, it will have a large monetary value and may be impossible to recreate. In no uncertain terms, broadcasters that fail to address the challenge of storing existing content will only see the problem worsen with its effects likely to hit the quality of their output which, given the competitiveness of the broadcast industry, could prove dangerous. Media organisations must, therefore, arm themselves with a single solution to manage their growing content library more effectively, ensure it is preserved for future use and reap the additional rewards that a more efficient system can offer. Visit https://imagenevp.com
MOG Integrates NewTek NDI into mxfSPEEDRAIL
MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MAM
MOG TECHNOLOGIES HAS ANNOUNCED full support on NewTek’s NDI standard for transporting video, audio and metadata over 1Gb Ethernet networks.
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The integration means that MOG’s central ingest solution can now support NDI input/output for recording and live production with mxfSPEEDRAIL’s new mediaNDI, a software application specifically designed to support NDI video gateway to record four streams of NDI in Avid, OP1a, QT, MP4, XDCAM, XDCAM EX, XAVC, FLV, HLS, MPEG-DASH, WebM, MPEG-DASH WebM, MPEG-TS, Matroska, and IMF formats. The solution guarantees the most efficient streaming video production possible, with no need for satellite trucks or RF infrastructures. Additionally, mxfSPEEDRAIL’s mediaREC, mediaLIVE, and mediaPLAY will also fully integrate NDI’s standard protocol, guaranteeing the maximum flexibility for the customer’s production environment: • mediaREC is an NDI / IP / SDI Video Recorder for content production, post-production, finishing, and distribution, up to 8K resolution. mediaREC is
a powerful and flexible multi-format SDI recording system that can capture baseband and IP Live signals. • mediaLIVE can encode NDI, RTMP, HLS, MPEG-TS and other live video streams in real-time and compresses it for distribution to viewers, delivering the highest video quality at minimum bitrates with low latency. With multiple social media streaming outputs like Facebook, YouTube Live, Twitch or Periscope. • mediaPLAY is a channel playout solution fully tailored for NDI / IP / SDI channel origination, management, delivery and play-on-air with master control switching with clip playback and enables multi-format and multiresolution, up to 8K. MOG Technologies mxfSPEEDRAIL offers a centralised solution that allows customers to improve their workflows for recording and streaming video without being limited to high-end workstations with complex infrastructures, making the ingest process easier and simple. Visit www.mog-technologies.com
MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MAM
Quantum Launches Distributed Cloud Services & Cloud-Based Analytics Software Quantum Distributed Cloud Services are designed to enable customers to redirect valuable IT and engineering resources to focus on meeting business goals, improving the overall user experience and maximizing the return on investment for storage, while maintaining the control and security of an on-premise infrastructure. These services are powered by Quantum’s new Cloud-Based Analytics (CBA) software, which serves as a central hub where Quantum products are designed to connect to send log files and other telemetry data about their environment, making them part of the Quantum Distributed Cloud. Quantum’s global services team is then positioned to proactively manage the customer’s environment, either as an operational service or as a pay-per-use Storage-as-a-Service offering. Leveraging and capturing value from digital data has become central to the success of many businesses today, which are increasingly challenged to create more, study more, and develop more with fewer IT and engineering resources. These businesses are looking to others to manage their data storage infrastructure so they can focus on their core mission. Quantum Operational Services, a new line of proactive managed services, are designed to provide cloud-like simplicity with the benefits of on-premise control. Using Quantum Operational Services, Quantum works with its customers to manage day-to-day storage operations, with the goal of providing better uptime via proactive monitoring and analysis. These services can create a better user experience for internal and external customers. Key benefits include: • Eliminate the burden storage management places on IT and engineering resources
delivered with a pay-per-use subscription service, Quantum is also introducing a new line of Storage-as-a-Service offerings. Leading Quantum products can now be purchased via a predictable, pay-per-use pricing model with no data access fees. Key Benefits: • Reduce upfront acquisition costs • Reduce operational and administrative resources and costs by only paying for storage used • Eliminate unplanned capital spend and forklift upgrades • Improve control and security with an on-premise infrastructure • Avoid data access fees or unpredictable charges • Reduce downtime and achieve better performance QUANTUM CLOUD-BASED ANALYTICS SOFTWARE At the core of Quantum’s new services is CBA software. Quantum designed CBA software to enable customers, partners and Quantum’s support team to proactively manage and monitor their environments across the globe from a central hub. Many of Quantum’s largest media customers, enterprises, and some of the world’s largest service provides are using this software to actively manage their Quantum products and technology today. Customers who opt to send data to Quantum’s CBA software can choose to monitor their environments themselves, or Quantum can proactively monitor and manage their environments for them via the Distributed Cloud Services.
• Maximize storage ROI
Quantum Operational Services and Storage-as-a-Service Offerings are generally available today. Cloud-Based Analytics software is available today across most of Quantum’s product lines, and customers can start sending data to CBA software today and access their content via a web-based portal at no charge.
For customers who want all the benefits of Quantum Mediaproxy_Ad_C+T_Asia_2019-02-04.pdf 1 4 Feb 19 6:03:53 pm Operational Services,
Visit www.quantum.com
• Reduce downtime and improve the user experience • Maintain the control and security of an on-premise infrastructure
Does any of the above apply to your current broadcast compliance system? If yes, join the hundreds of broadcasters around the globe who rely daily on Mediaproxy’s unified software solutions for monitoring, analysis, multiviewing
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MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MAM
QUANTUM CORP. HAS ANNOUNCED DISTRIBUTED CLOUD SERVICES, a new line of operational services and storage-as-a-service offerings.
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AUDIO Digital soundwaves
www.content-technology.com/audio
Mediacorp and DTS:X Create Sonic Boom in Audio Production AMERICAN AUDIOTECH DEVELOPER DTS and Singapore’s media network, Mediacorp, are sounding a collaborative high note, with Mediacorp becoming the only certified DTS:X content production powerhouse in the region.
earning Mediacorp Audio Post the distinction of being the first DTS:X certified mixing studio in Southeast Asia. The state-of-the-art surround sound format replicates the resonance of real-world audio, and was deployed in the delivery of the Mediacorp Lunar New Year Album 2019, as well as for films like “Killer Not Stupid” (2019), plus the upcoming “Long Long Time Ago 3: Not Too Long Ago” and ‘Scared To Death’ in November 2019 and ‘Ah Boys to Men 5’ in February 2020.
The two parties affirmed their alliance at a special trade screening at Shaw Theatres’ first DTS:X-capable cinema at Jewel Changi Airport on Wednesday, 29 May 2019. The event exemplifies Mediacorp’s efforts in engaging external creative players in the extended ecosystem, and shines a spotlight on the oft-overlooked technical talent so essential to any entertainment experience. Bill Neighbors, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Content at DTS parent company Xperi Corporation said, “We’re delighted to engage Mediacorp as the primary DTS:X content production partner in Singapore, and look forward to working with the country’s top transmedia provider to expand the DTS:X experience to audiences in Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia.” Added Mr Neighbors, “With the recent handson training session extended to the Mediacorp Audio Post team at our Calabasas, California headquarters in late April, we are confident that Mediacorp is prepared to move quickly with the execution and delivery of even richer DTS:X content. I look forward to growing this mutually beneficial partnership.”
Founded in 1979, Mediacorp Audio Post is a mixing and mastering department dedicated to pioneering professional music and sound effects, as well as song composition and recording for in-house and commissioned projects – a medley of melodies amounting to an annual average output of more than 12 feature films and 1000 hours of television content. Its broad body of work has acquired award-winning acclaim, including recent wins for Best Theme Song and Best Music Composition for period drama ‘The Journey: A Voyage’ at the Asian Television Awards and Apollo Awards respectively. This sweet sound of success was augmented by the adoption of DTS:X technology in June 2018,
Visit https://mediacorp-sg and https://dts.com/dtsx
Studios 301 Academy Calls for Applications
AN ASP4816 CONSOLE has been installed in a new performing arts centre at Emmanuel College in Victoria, Australia.
THE NEWLY LAUNCHED SYDNEY-BASED 301 Academy is calling for applications for its 5-week Post-Graduate Finishing Course which is designed to bridge the gap between the completion of a tertiary audio degree or diploma, and working as a full-time audio engineer.
“The Audient ASP4816 is a beautiful console with a small footprint and a massive sound,” he says. “It was by far the stand-out console even amongst more expensive models, nothing seemed close to providing the heart and soul this desk has. The preamps were raved about - these I can vouch for 100 percent. They contain a warmth and are yet transparent. “The complexity of routing, the in-line architecture and the EQs are laid out so well and in such a user-friendly manner, I knew the students would immediately adapt to its intuitive and creative nature. It’s still all very new for them, but I do feel they are grasping the concepts of routing, gain staging and EQ much quicker on the inline console rather than ‘in the box’. “It has always been my goal to get an analogue console in front of the students and somehow bridge the gap between the practicality of analogue and the sheer capabilities of the digital realm,” he says. As well as being integral to the music production course – all the students will be using the desk for assessments over the course of the year – the studio has already been used to record voiceovers for film and video publications for the college.
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Doreen Neo, Chief Content Officer, Mediacorp, said, “The strategic synergy between Mediacorp and DTS:X has boosted our behind-the-reel audio capabilities, the mastery of which is mandatory for suffusing ‘soul’ to any production. By supplying superior sound equipment and expertise to local and regional movie makers, we hope to strengthen our reputation for technical expertise in the international creative industry – and possibly earn Singapore its first Oscar for sound design in the future.”
Audient Best of Both Worlds for Emmanuel College “I wanted to bring the best of both analogue and digital to our wonderful new space,” explains tutor and studio technician, Peter Sassmanshausen, who specified the desk after six months’ in-depth research.
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Mediacorp Audio Post’s physical space itself is in sound shape, comprising a Movie-Mixing Studio, two composition suites and six advanced audio suites souped up with industry-standard Fairlight EVO, Pro Tools, Auro-3D and the aforementioned DTS:X digital software.
Visit https://audient.com
Working alongside a selected team of Studios 301 engineers, the course will follow an end-to-end lifecycle of a real project which includes preproduction, recording, mixing, mastering and music business workshops. One of the most unique layers of the course is that it is bolstered by a number of Studios 301 industry events which will give participants direct access to industry personnel and the chance to start curating their own networks. Created by Studios 301 owner and SAE founder Dr. Tom Misner, 301 Academy features Australian music industry heavyweights such as Grammy Nominated 301 Engineer Simon Cohen (Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Starley, Thelma Plum, Thundamentals) , legendary A&R Manager Peter Karpin (Former Director A&R Sony, Universal Music), Chief Mastering Engineer Steve Smart (Midnight Oil, Tash Sultana, Ocean Alley, Vance Joy), APRA, Listen Up Music and the Studios 301 engineering team featuring Stefan Du Randt, Jack Garzonio and Harvey O’Sullivan. The inaugural course kicks off on Monday 19th August 2019. Visit https://studios301.com/301academy
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AUDIO
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AUDIO
Mic, Line, AES/EBU I/O to Dante Interface NEUTRIK HAS ANNOUNCED the new 2-in, 2-out NA2-IO-DPRO Dante Interface. The NA2-IO-DPRO features two inputs switchable between Mic, Line, and AES/EBU signals plus two outputs switchable between analog Line and AES/EBU. Two Dante ports provide for either redundancy or device daisy chaining. With its small size, metal construction, and removable rubber protector, the NA2-IO-DPRO offers a rugged, reliable solution that is well suited to a wide range of applications. The NA2-IO-DPRO front panel provides two latching XLR inputs plus two XLR outputs. AES/EBU operation is seamlessly and independently auto detected for inputs and outputs. Using Neutrik’s free DPRO controller software for Mac or PC, +48 V phantom power can be applied; microphone preamplifier gain, pad, and high-pass filtering can be set per channel; and input channels can be linked for matched operation. Output channels can be muted or unmuted within the software.
The NA2-IO-DPRO rear panel provides primary and secondary Dante ports over Neutrik etherCON connectors. The secondary input can be configured for either Redundant mode or Switched mode (for daisy chaining). When operating in Switched mode in conjunction with a 60 W PoE injector, up to eight devices can be daisy chained. Up to four devices can be daisy chained with a 30 W PoE injector. Neutrik’s NA2-IO-DPRO is AES67 compliant. Power must be externally supplied via either a PoE switch or a PoE injector per IEEE 802.3af/at, class 2 or no classification at 6W. With optional mounting
Xplorer Wireless Intercom Beltpack from AEQ MORE THAN A BELTPACK, the Xplorer from AEQ is also wireless intercom user panel. Based on Wi-Fi technology, it is equipped with a 4-shortcut key user interface - arranged in pages, another two programmable keys, and a multifunction screen. It can operate associated with an intercom matrix or as a Party-Line terminal. The Xplorer wireless intercom terminal is based on WiFi technology. WiFi connectivity simplifies installation, start-up and maintenance of the system. It also allows the use of existing wireless networks to be used to service the terminals. Using managed access points, the panel uses a “roaming” function, allowing the user to move freely throughout the coverage area. The Xplorer can be part of a system based upon an intercom matrix or as a terminal for a Party-Line system without the need for a matrix. When Xplorer works as a client for the AEQ Crossnet, Conexia and TH5000 / TW5000 / IL5000 Intercom matrices, each key can activate any of the following commands: Talk, Listen, Talk & Listen, Remote One Way, Remote Both Ways, Remote Volume and Dial Call. When connected to any of the Intercom Matrices mentioned, the Xplorer will coexist with 8000 series wired user panels, and also with terminals using the Xvirtual application on iOS and Windows operating systems, such as iPad, iPhone and PC. Xplorer can also work in Party-Line mode, as a terminal for the Kroma E@synet system, with 4 channels and up to 28 devices, without the need for a central matrix. All round the multifunction screen, Xplorer has 4 quick access keys and another two for mute and page or menu. The Keys are labelled through the display that also shows, among other things, information regarding the audio level for each destination/origin, battery level and WiFi signal. Xplorer has a recording playback function for the last 30 seconds corresponding to the last call or communication to the terminal. The Belt-pack has dual volume control to give direct access to the level adjustment of the main interlocutor, differentiating it from the rest.
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Its dimensions and weight are reduced, and it is protected against shocks and spills. The unit can be fastened to a belt or hung from a ribbon in order to carry it over the shoulder. Offering sufficient battery autonomy for 20 hours of work, it can be charged by means of a multiple base.
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Visit www.aeq.eu
brackets or a rack panel, the NA2-IO-DPRO can be mounted below tables, in floor boxes, in racks, or on the stage truss. The Neutrik NA2-IO-DPRO Mic, Line, AES/EBU I/O to Dante Interface is slated to be available October 2019. Visit www.ambertech.com.au
Wireless In-Ear Monitor System PROCO SOUND, an ACT/RHC brand, has introduce a new wireless in-ear monitor system (W.I.E.M.S.), which made its debut at InfoComm 2019. It features a sleek and simple design, with no external antennas and a seamless plug-and-pair set-up. With up to 30 meters of range (line-ofsight) between the transmitter and belt-pack receiver, the W.I.E.M.S can be used in a variety of applications, including live sound, broadcast and film, as well as in educational and other installbased instances. ProCo’s new W.I.E.M.S. has four userselectable channels and features a 3.5-mm headphone jack— enabling users to plug in their preferred earpiece. The receivers are powered by a lithium-ion battery, which is easily rechargeable with a micro USB, ensuring that users don’t lose power when it’s needed most. The receiver automatically pairs to the transmitter, which uses the 5.8GHz frequency band, keeping it isolated from the highly crowded 2.4GHz band. Additionally, with a simple XLR cable, the transmitter works through any Dante-enabled wall-plate or drop-snake, such as ProCo’s latest AoIP solutions. This low-latency (less than 5.6 milliseconds) solution has 24-bit audio quality with a 48KHz sampling rate and transmits from a balanced, line-level output. Visit: www.procosound.com
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Audinate Unveils Dante-As-Software Products for Manufacturers, Developers
Dante Embedded Platform enables manufacturers to add full Dante functionality in software running on Linux for x86 and ARM processors, while the Dante Application Library allows software developers to integrate Dante functionality directly into their PC & Mac applications. According to Audinate, the new software-based solutions give manufacturers and developers the ability to deploy Dante into products where it wasn’t previously feasible, in ways that weren’t previously possible. Dante can now be deployed in products where either the price point or form factor made integrating dedicated Dante hardware challenging. Dante as software also provides exponentially more flexibility, with the potential to enable new capabilities like Dante being deployed retroactively to products already in the field, the ability to add new features and functions to products on the fly, and the possibility for manufacturers, integrators or customers to configure the number of Dante channels they want for a particular application. Audio technology manufacturer QSC has announced it will deploy the Dante Embedded Platform within the Q-SYS Ecosystem to enable native software-based Dante audio channels. The effort is part of a strategic partnership between the two companies announced earlier this year.
Audinate has also announced a reference design with Analog Devices (ADI) for Dante Embedded Platform on the ADSP-SC589 DSP + ARM processor. Meanwhile, Zoom Video Communications Inc., a provider of video-first unified communications, has teamed up with Audinate to integrate the Dante Application Library into its Zoom Rooms application for video meetings. According to Lee Ellison, CEO of Audinate, “This is an inflection point in the AV industry. The decreasing costs, increasing computational power and improved flexibility of the software approach will enable manufacturers and developers to deploy Dante into a plethora of next generation AV products. The option to go with a softwarebased implementation will enable OEMs to add Dante functionality to existing products without a major redesign and will drive further growth for networked Dante endpoints.” Dante Embedded Platform for X86 and ARM Applications Leading manufacturers are already delivering AV products built on commodity x86 and ARM computing hardware running Linux, giving their users the flexibility of software-based DSPs and mixers in robust, compact packages. Dante Embedded Platform is designed for these OEMs, providing cost-effective Dante networking with minimal additional hardware, immediately giving users connectivity to the largest ecosystem of AV-over-IP devices in the world. Dante Embedded Platform will offer two options
for manufacturers: an SDK with validation tools will eliminate costly guesswork by allowing OEMs to easily qualify existing x86 and ARM based products for Dante performance requirements. For new products under development, Audinate will also provide complete reference designs for popular ARM SoC chipsets such as the Analog Devices ADSP-SC589 and NXP i.MX 8M Mini QuadLite. Dante Application Library for Mac and PC Applications Dante Application Library for Windows and MacOS gives developers the ability to build Dante functionality directly into their products. Each instance is wholly contained within each application and not shared with other resources, allowing multiple Dante-enabled applications to run simultaneously on a single computer with complete independence. With Dante Application Library, developers can integrate Dante device discovery and subscriptions directly into their conferencing, recording, lecture capture and media playback products for a seamless “one-stop-shop” setup experience. Use Dante Application Library to improve customer satisfaction with instant access to thousands of popular Dante-enabled products that include microphones, DSPs, amplifiers and powered speakers. Dante Embedded Platform and Dante Application Library each enable complete interoperability with more than 2,000 Dante-enabled audio products already on the market. Visit https://www.audinate.com
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SUPPORTING THE AV INDUSTRY’S shift from purpose-built hardware to software-based solutions running on standardised hardware, Audinate - developer of Dante AV networking technology – has announced two new softwarebased Dante products.
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RADIO The original broadcast media
www.content-technology.com/radio
MediaWorks Aligns with Orban By Blake Beale, Radio Engineering Manager, MediaWorks New Zealand NEW ZEALAND BROADCASTER MEDIAWORKS RADIO broadcasts over 180 unique content streams via a network of just under 300 transmission points. MediaWorks broadcast nine national brands: MoreFM, The Breeze, The Edge, The Rock, The Sound, MagicTalk, MaiFM, George FM and Magic Music. Since its inception as a single station, Taranaki’s Energy FM in 1987, MediaWorks Radio, as it is now known, has pushed the boundaries of broadcast technology, being the first in NZ to use satellite delivery for music radio stations with closures enabling local insertion of commercials in 1996, a delivery method still used today. With this technology approach, MediaWorks Radio was able to take full advantage of NZ radio deregulation of the late 90’s and through acquisitions and mergers is now a national broadcaster, continuing to grow. Due to the unique way MediaWorks radio came to be through many years of acquisitions and mergers, there have been inconsistent technologies used from broadcast consoles, automation and transmitters, resulting in a difficult support model to maintain and stations that were once local, but now network brands sounding different in each market, e.g., MoreFM could have an Orban 8500 in one market and a 25 year old Unity2000 in another, creating a network which sounded different in each of the 28 markets the network broadcasts was delivered. A nationwide audit was undertaken with the primary brands and models that made up the network all being worthy options for comparisons. Our requirements were one processor supplier with the flexibility to sound great on an Oldies format to a CHR, Rock as well as a Dance format to mention a few. These comparisons resulted in our choice to partner with Orban, who were more than happy to assist with a long-term procurement schedule. Having the reputation of rock-solid reliability that we required for remote sites with difficult to access due to New Zealand’s challenging and volatile geography also played a part in our decision. Three models were chosen to rollout, depending on the size of the market. Metro cities like Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch would receive the 8600 (now 8700i), Regional cities the 5700i and small provincial markets the 5500i. Having the added extra of integrated RDS generators has enabled MediaWorks Radio to not only up the game sound wise, but also introduce RDS with an AF table that hands over seamlessly when transitioning frequencies from the next broadcast point.
A major milestone was reached just before Christmas 2018, when major stations in the MediaWorks Radio group were aligned with Orban technology, delivering a consistent sound and RDS frequency handover along 95% of New Zealand’s primary highway, from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island, that is covered by MediaWorks Radio brands. This means along the primary route down New Zealand, all major brands mentioned now sound exactly the same at each broadcast point, resulting in the processed sound now being a part of the brand itself. More FM, a Hot AC, has some compression, whereas The Sound, a Classic Rock format is very open with wide stereo separation, making the most of the production techniques used at the time of recording. With studio automation, raw audio being linear and satellite delivery with limited compression, we have eliminated the listener fatigue that had plagued our brands for many years. Listeners can hear the difference, clients love the wide friendly quality of our broadcasts and listener TSL has risen for each brand in the markets where we have deployed the Orban processors, resulting in higher ratings. The partnership MediaWorks NZ has with Orban for this project has been second to none. The professionalism, the speed of support and the willingness to introduce enhancements based on our requirements has resulted in the decision to align with Orban becoming one of the most successful vendor relationships I have had the pleasure of working in and continue to work with as we continue the plan and work towards aligning the remaining markets in NZ by Q2, 2020 resulting in a 100% Orban processing solution across our growing FM Network. Visit www.orban.com and www.mediaworks.co.nz
GatesAir to Strengthen NOVA’s FM Transmission Infrastructure GATESAIR HAS WON A LARGE CONTRACT with NOVA Entertainment in Australia to upgrade six FM radio transmission sites within the continent. GatesAir will supply a total of 16 Flexiva FAX air-cooled FM transmitters, with in-country partner RaeAir conducting all site evaluations, installation, commissioning, and post-sales services. NOVA Entertainment’s national FM footprint first took shape in 2001 with the launch of Nova 96.9 in Sydney, followed by stations in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. The broadcaster will first upgrade these five metropolitan sites, beginning with the Melbourne and Perth locations. NOVA Entertainment will subsequently upgrade the remaining metropolitan sites, followed by a regional location on the NSW Central Coast.
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GatesAir won the contract in large part due to its growing presence in Australia, bolstered by the recent expansion of its in-country sales and support team. NOVA Entertainment also anticipates an attractive return on investment through GatesAir’s high-efficiency transmitter designs, which will reduce annual rental and utility costs at transmission sites.
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“The remarkable compact footprint of GatesAir transmitters will take up substantially less space than our existing transmitters, lowering our monthly expenditures and our long-term total cost of ownership,” said Matt Steadman, Head of Technology, NOVA Entertainment. “We are also
confident that GatesAir’s Australian presence, both through direct personnel and their partners at RaeAir, will efficiently guide us through the installation process and ensure excellent post-sales service and support.” NOVA Entertainment’s FM radio transmission project represents part of a broader strategic initiative that follows a recent upgrade of its studio systems. GatesAir will deliver twelve Matt Steadman, Head of Technology, 10kW and four 20kW models, with NOVA Entertainment. redundant transmitter configurations for all five metropolitan sites; and integrated IP-based control and monitoring across the network. NOVA Entertainment will also benefit from streamlined maintenance and the ability to share common spare parts across the network. Visit www.gatesair.com
RADIO
DAB Digital Radio Sales Reach 75 Million Worldwide WORLDDAB’S LATEST MARKET REPORT reveals that by the end of Q4
Key findings from the WorldDAB report include:
2018, over 75 million consumer and automotive DAB/DAB+ receivers had been sold in Europe and Asia Pacific - up from 65 million in Q4 2017.
• In the UK, 67% of households have at least one DAB radio, and digital listening has been in excess of 50% for three successive quarters
The new data published by WorldDAB draws on multiple sources to give a
• Over 11 million receivers have been sold in Germany
comprehensive overview of the latest statistics on DAB receiver sales, road and population coverage, household penetration and the number of national stations on DAB/DAB+ compared to FM. The report covers Australia,
• In Switzerland, 64% of all radio listening is via digital platforms • In Italy, 46% of new cars are now sold with DAB+, up from 32% in 2017
Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway,
• 6 million receivers have been sold in Norway
Switzerland and the UK.
• In Australia, 69% of new cars are now sold with DAB+, up from 47% in 2017
DAB is now firmly established as the core future platform for radio in Europe – a position underlined by a number of recent regulatory interventions. On a pan-European level, the EECC directive adopted by the EU in December 2018 requires all new car radios in the EU to be capable of receiving digital terrestrial radio by the end of 2020. Italy has already put legislation in place
DAB is also seeing significant activity across Asia, Middle East, and Africa. The infographic details the rollout status in 21 emerging markets including information on trials and population coverage.
work to ensure a healthy and vibrant digital future for UK radio. The review
Following the launch of the findings, WorldDAB president, Patrick Hannon, commented: “The last 12 months have been an exceptional period for DAB radio. The EU has adopted a directive requiring all new car radios to be capable of receiving digital terrestrial broadcasts; new markets such as France, Belgium and Austria are launching national DAB+ services and established markets including Germany, the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia are reporting record levels of digital listening. In 2018, 10 million DAB receivers were sold worldwide. We expect this figure to be easily surpassed in the years ahead.”
is expected to be concluded in 2020.
Visit www.worlddab.org
to ensure that it complies with the directive by the start of 2020, while France – whose aggressive rollout of DAB continues to sweep across the country – has also triggered a receiver law requiring all new car radios released from June 2020 to include DAB+ digital radio capabilities. In the UK, digital listening has reached a new record share of 56.4%, with over two thirds (71.6%) of all digital listening attributed to DAB. The government has just announced the launch of a review and programme of
UK Revises Digital Radio Technical Codes UK REGULATOR OFCOM has outlined revisions to the technical rules that digital radio (DAB) broadcasters in that country need to follow. The rules are designed to not only ensure that digital radio signals are transmitted in a uniform way, and do not conflict or interfere with each other, but also take in account the needs of future ‘small scale DAB’ services, a technology the UK has been pursuing which could make it easier for smaller radio stations to transmit on digital radio. The main changes that we have decided to make are in the following areas: ACI/blocking procedures – Ofcom is proceeding with proposed changes in relation to the management of ‘Adjacent Channel Interference’ (ACI) and ‘blocking’. The regulator has decided to extend slightly the maximum turnaround times for existing multiplex operators to respond to ACI/blocking liaison requests. It will also introduce a target turnaround time for determinations by Ofcom in cases where broadcasters cannot reach agreement on specific liaison requests. Spectrum masks for DAB – Ofcom says it has decided not to proceed with including a ‘non-critical mask’ (a spectrum ‘envelope’ which is slightly more relaxed than the ‘critical mask’ which is currently used by all existing DAB multiplexes) in its Technical Code at this time. This is due to the possibility of interference occurring to other services and the likely small benefit of introducing the non-critical mask at this time. DAB+ audio encoding – Ofcom has decided to proceed with removing the current requirement for licensees to obtain specific authorisation before adopting DAB+ audio encoding. This change is intended to remove potential barriers to the adoption of the more efficient DAB+ standard by broadcasters.
PANEDA AND AGILE BROADCAST have entered into a partnership agreement for the Australian and New Zealand markets. Agile now represents Paneda for DAB headend and monitoring products. With this partnership in place, Paneda and Agile will together be able to offer complete DAB solutions that includes support, installation, system integration and other related services. Lars-Peder Lundgren, Managing Director of Paneda said, “Paneda are very pleased to have this agreement in place, we are aware of the skills and expertise that Agile possesses and we are confident that this co-operation will bring success for both parties and our customers. The Australian market is one the most DAB mature markets, and we see a growing interest for our products and solutions. We are now looking forward to providing a ‘total care’ solutions to this market together with Agile.” Adrian Harper, Director of Agile Broadcast said, “Paneda’s innovative DAB multiplexing products are something we’ve admired for some time. We are now very excited to be representing Paneda in ANZ. The range of products complement our existing offerings in the Digital Radio Broadcasting sector and are a natural extension to the support services we already offer the Australian Digital Broadcasters. We look forward to growing Paneda’s business here as well as being a part of this continually evolving broadcast platform.” Visit www.paneda.no and www.agilebroadcast.com.au
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FOR OUR ADVERTISING RATES AND OPTIONS Contact Adam Buick adam@broadcastpapers.com or +61(0)413 007 144
RADIO
Visit www.ofcom.org.uk
Paneda and Agile Broadcast Partner in ANZ
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CONTENT DELIVERY Terrestrial, Mobile, Broadband
www.content-technology.com/transmission
TEN Transmission Move to Broadcast Australia Prompts TXA Restructure NETWORK 10 AND BROADCAST AUSTRALIA HAVE ANNOUNCED a new agreement for the transmission of Network 10’s free-to-air broadcast channels: 10, 10 Bold, and 10 Peach. Transition of 10’s transmission services to Broadcast Australia from TX Australia (the joint venture transmission services company established by Australia’s commercial TV broadcasters) is underway. The comprehensive transition plan will ensure a seamless transition of 10’s services to Broadcast Australia. The two companies have stated there will be no disruption of 10’s services for viewers through this process. Network 10’s chief operating officer Annabelle Herd said, “We’re very happy to be moving into the future with Broadcast Australia. This new agreement secures our transmission with an experienced and trusted partner dedicated to excellence and innovation. Like 10, Broadcast Australia is passionate about connecting people with great content and we look forward to developing our free-to-air terrestrial platform in partnership with them over the coming years.”
Broadcast Australia’s chief executive Peter Lambourne said, “At Broadcast Australia, we are honoured to be the transmission services provider of choice for Network 10. This partnership presents exciting opportunities for both organisations and ensures certainty of service, continuity and reliability for Australian audiences. This collaboration celebrates our shared commitment to connect all Australians and enrich our communities with information, entertainment and services. We are excited to embark on this journey with Network 10, one of Australia’s leading broadcasters.” Meanwhile, the move has seen a restructure at TX Australia. The company was established in 1999 by the three commercial metropolitan television networks - Seven, Nine and Ten - to take over responsibility for the analogue television transmission services of the Seven, Nine and Ten networks and to upgrade the transmission infrastructure to cater for the introduction of digital television from 1 January 2001 in compliance with the Commonwealth Government Legislation. The company owns, operates, manages, engineers, maintains and markets transmission and
Sky NZ Accelerates Focus on Streaming Services SKY NZ CEO MARTIN STEWART has reaffirmed the company’s accelerated focus on streaming services. “From my first day at Sky I have talked about how streaming services are our future,” said Mr Stewart. “Over the last few months we have taken a close look at Sky’s technology roadmap and as a result we have sharpened our future focus. “Our core goal is to deliver our superb content in ways that meet the needs of all New Zealanders. We want everyone to be able to access our content in the way that suits them best. That means delivering extremely well to the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who have Sky boxes in their homes with our world– leading service reliability and convenience, and providing highly appealing and competitive services to those customers who want to access our content online. Having best-in-class streaming experiences is a critical part of our growth plan for Sky. “With that in mind, we have taken a thorough look at the development and deployment of the next generation ‘Puck’ device that we have been working on, and which has not yet been launched. Drawing on our understanding of the ways New Zealanders are watching content in 2019 and what they want from us, we have decided that we can best serve our customers by enhancing our streaming services, and we will not proceed with the Puck device. Customers who prefer to consume our sports and entertainment on a set-top box are already well served with My Sky, which offers reliability and great functionality, and they all get complimentary access to our SkyGO app.
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“In August we are launching our new sports App, with a superb content line-up, new pricing and great features. We also have a number of enhancements planned on Neon and Sky Go that will increase choice, quality and ways of enjoying those services.
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“We will continue to encourage Sky customers to connect their Sky box to their home internet in order to access our vast array of on demand ready-to-watch content. We’re also improving the viewing experience with an increased number of HD channels, and there are superb enhancements coming on the Sky Sport front.” Visit www.sky.co.nz
retransmission facilities in the five major mainland metropolitan cities of Australia. While the company declined to make a statement to C+T, its website now reads, “TX Australia Pty Limited (TXA) is a joint venture company owned equally by two of the commercial metropolitan television networks, Seven and Nine.” Visit www.broadcastaustralia.com.au
Kordia Offers Pop-Up TV Channels NZ TELECOMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST, KORDIA, is now offering a service which allows anyone seeking a wider audience for their event to broadcast on nationwide television across New Zealand. Kordia Pop Up TV is a complete solution which includes a dedicated Freeview channel and can include filming, audio, post-production, branding and the inclusion of advertising. Kordia’s head of media, Dean Brain says Kordia Pop Up TV is designed to make television broadcasting more accessible. “With this unique new service, we’re making an ad-hoc broadcast simple and cost-effective. Customers can choose a complete package, including all aspects of production and broadcast, or they can choose to provide Kordia with a recording that we’ll put on the air. This means customers can reach a bigger audience and build credibility while sharing their messages across New Zealand,” Dean said. “We’ve taken the popular pop up store concept, which a lot of Kiwis are familiar with, and applied it to broadcasting. Now anyone can set up a temporary Freeview TV channel for any duration - an hour, a day, a week or more - and beam news or events to viewers around the country.” The pop-up TV concept has been proven with Auckland’s popular Lantern Festival, which took place earlier this year, hitting NZ airwaves for the first time. Event Producer, Eric Ngan, said, “Kordia provided the 2019 Lantern Festival with a Pop Up TV channel and online video stream of festival highlights, increasing the exposure of New Zealand’s largest cultural event. We plan to extend our partnership with Kordia to further expand our video presence in 2020.” Offered as a complete managed service or on an ‘a la carte’ basis, Kordia Pop Up TV can include the company’s in-house crew, available to film any event throughout New Zealand, or customers can use their own video production team. Similarly, Kordia offers audio and post-production services as required, and advertisements can even be slotted into supplied footage. Dean points out that the service is underpinned by Kordia’s extensive broadcasting network, which carries all New Zealand’s major TV and radio services. The Kordia media team is similarly proven, responsible for getting live footage of almost every major local sporting event to TV screens across the country and the world. “We’re excited to bring this service to market and meet the definite demand for this service. Not only does Kordia Pop Up TV give our customers the ability to reach bigger audiences, it also means their event is professionally recorded for posterity,” Dean concludes. Visit www.kordia.co.nz
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Video Ad Delivery – Just Peachy! Forged out of the merger of IMD and Honeycomb, Peach delivers video advertising to any screen, anywhere, anytime. C+T spoke to the company’s National Director ANZ, Andy Gilroy, about how cross-platform ad delivery is bearing fruit. C+T: For those unfamiliar with IMD or Honeycomb, what is the history of Peach? “There’s the two companies that came together in the U.K. and Europe, IMD and Honeycomb, and they merged last year. Both companies operated in pretty much the same space and they came together, consolidated. “The technology we use originally emanated from a company called eBUS. [It] developed the product in a mission to not only streamline quality in the transferring of TVCs, but also to improve the workflows between all the stakeholders involved in producing TVCs, creating TVCs and sending TVCs and receiving TVCs, so the whole eco-system. “eBUS then launched in Australia very briefly and were taken over by Group IMD, whose headquarters is in London. That platform has evolved and developed to become an integral part of the platform that we use globally in multiple markets. What we’re finding is our platform is allowing creative agencies, media agencies and post to collaborate very simply on a very easyto-use platform, get their work tech-checked in seconds, which is not available anywhere else and be able to deliver immediately to stations. Can you run me through the workflow? “A typical work bill with a creative agency would start an order, they would create the order, they would then delegate in our platform to the postproduction agency or whoever is uploading the finished file to upload those finished TVCs or radio commercials into the order, our system would then grab those files, run it through a tech check, which is proprietary software that we’ve had since eBUS launch, so provide a tech check in under 23 seconds normally on average and then sends that report back to whoever is uploading the file if it fails. If it passes it goes straight through. “And, independently of that, the media agency or whoever is selecting the destinations select which speed they want their files to arrive at the broadcaster and then the order is done. In theory, you can create an order and have the material broadcasted in minutes and that process used to take days, hours, depending on how your workflow was set up. So, we try to enable possibilities for people to get material to destinations, whether they be digital online destinations or TV destinations, as fast as possible.” At the QA stage what is the system checking for? “It checks all the parameters, OP59 requirements. It will check for things like audio levels, match peak levels, check that the frame rates are accurate, it checks that we’ve got the required silence at the start and the back, checks for luminance. So, in total, there’s about 65 different tech checkpoints that it analyses as the file is being uploaded.” You also mentioned commercials for online. That’s just a natural extension of your workflow? “Absolutely. And, what we’re seeing is online video workflows are even more disjointed and difficult than actual TV. We’ve solved the TV workflows and we’re experts in that, so what we’re doing is applying those disciplines from the TV landscape. We think that’s even more important going forward because broadcasters are telling us that, with IP connected TVs, the quality of content arriving needs to be as high as possible. Sourcing content is an issue for media agencies and people who are actually trafficking the video asset and,
as addressable TV and more targeted opportunities become available for a client, they’re going to need more and more versions of assets. “So, we’ve seen a real content explosion that is required to meet the creative side of things because advertisers are wanting – TV is becoming much more one to one, whereas 20 years ago it was one to many. It would be one big ad and it goes to many people, now we’re seeing TV behaviour is much more targeted and actually requiring a lot more versions and content.
Andy Gilroy, National Director ANZ of Peach.
“So, the industry is really struggling to keep up and the processes and automation in what we do haven’t really been applied to the online digital video sector. So that’s a piece we’re really plugging into in 2019.” With these ads going to different platforms, do brand owners prefer creating separate assets in advance or can that be done on the fly?” “It depends on what the creative objectives are. Some things we are seeing that there’s technology that is allowing creative to be changed on the fly, things like colours, fonts, texts, whatever, it depends on what the creative intention is. So, we are seeing changes in that area. As for the genesis and creation of the ads we’re seeing a real challenge with creative agencies knowing which aspects to shoot or an original piece of content. So we’re seeing a lot more agencies starting to shoot in different aspect ratios, you know, with Instagram you might shoot a one to one and then also a 16:9 for TV. So, they’ll be doing the creative job at the start, but that costs a lot of money. “So, one of the challenges is getting an originally shot asset to multiple different platforms. We’re not going to interfere with people’s creative processes because that’s never been our philosophy, but what we want to be able to do is give people the option to be able to change their specs and aspect ratios alternating through our process.” So, where now for Peach? “One of the reasons that we’ve rebranded to Peach is it’s where we’re headed into the digital space, and the online video space is a really big frontier for our business and what we do going forward into 2019 and beyond that space. There is a massive amount of content that needs to be moved and moved quicker than it is now. We’ve seen a massive disconnect between the agencies and the workflow between creative agencies and media agencies and as content needs to get to broadcasters and online channels faster, the automation features are crucial, which is what we’re playing in more and more for 2019. So, I think that’s kind of one of the biggest things that we’re working on.”
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5G - the Game Changer for the Content Market By Patricio Cummins, Vice President, Asia-Pacific and Japan THE RACE IS ON FOR 5G, the next iteration of wireless networking. South Korea is currently in the leading position by offering the world’s first commercial 5G services – users of Samsung’s Galaxy S10 5G smartphones can now access 5G networks through three of the country’s leading telcos. In addition, KT, a telco offering 5G commercial services, has also rolled out 5G-based UHD live broadcasting service, providing an enterprise 5G network and 5G mobile news gathering equipment to news broadcaster Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS).
AR & VR Finally Become Mainstream
For the content market, 5G is leading the charge for a next-generation viewing experience. With the bandwidth that it offers, video viewing will truly be seamless as there will no longer be a need to switch between networks. It is seen as a potential replacement for home broadband in general as well as digital terrestrial television (DTT), by offering the same speed and reliability. When the technology reaches mass adoption, it is likely to launch a new round of cord-cutting as consumers cut their home broadband and give a helping hand to AR & VR technologies, finally allowing lightweight, eyeglass-style wireless headsets. It has tremendous potential to be the next revolution in broadcasting we’ve all been waiting for.
5G will also be a potential rocket that VR and AR can ride on. The next-generation wireless networks will allow manufacturers to scale back on the size of headsets and eliminate the need to be tethered to a computer. The reason? 5G networks are designed to handle significantly more data than 4G networks and that of most residential Internet services. In addition, live delivery of sporting events has the potential to be better than traditional broadcast or pay-tv delivery, by incorporating more AR elements during games, using high-speed 5G network.
A New Cord-Cutting Craze
Major Driver for Sports Delivery
Some estimates say video could make up as much as 90% of all 5G traffic. For OTT services, that means faster and smoother delivery of video, no buffering, higher resolution and a better, more engaging user experience. This is expected to continue driving growth and opportunities for OTT plays as more consumers migrate away from traditional pay TV.
Mobile is already grabbing a significant share of major sporting events like the World Cup. Mobile views are also growing tremendously – especially to younger, more at-risk audiences that have moved away from traditional delivery. 5G will open a market for content creators looking to focus on mobile, delivering shorter content designed for smaller screens. Live sports events also often place a lot of stress on networks, especially sporting occasions as seen in the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. Data consumption during a match was found to be double the data consumed during the “busy hour” for the remainder of the year. 5G answers to the needs of sports viewers by being able to better support such network-heavy events.
If 5G technology delivers on its promises - the ability to deliver wireless gigabit Internet service, massive bandwidth, incomparable low-latency video and fivenines reliability – it will truly be a game changer.
Both subscription and ad-supported services should flourish. In the case of AVOD, 5G mobile delivery will be capable of providing more data and actionable insights for personalised advertising. For SVOD services, 5G promises a better viewing experience and increased accessibility for consumers. A Boon for Content Processing and Delivery 5G brings opportunities for storytellers and aggregators to speed up and simplify their uploading needs. A documentary being shot in the field, a content provider who needs to send content to their licensees, the ability to stream news content from the very spot where it’s happening, sports contribution from the venue… The potential for 5G to make it easier than ever to send large volumes of content from removed locations to HQ, be it for production, preparation or distribution, is certainly enticing.
With the numerous opportunities that 5G promises, it is likely to bring a new set of challenges for content owners and distributors. To truly cash-in on this next-generation technology, it is important for them to ensure seamless workflow automation and orchestration from the get-go so that they can bring content to consumers at speed, efficiently and effectively. Visit www.ooyala.com
Evertz Showcases Virtual IP Media Services EVERTZ MICROSYSTEMS SHOWCASED ITS LATEST Virtualized IP Media Services at NAB 2019. Evertz’s evEDGE Virtual IP Media Services platform enables agile operational workflows with its flexible library of media services and support for agile hardware platforms. New for NAB 2019, evEDGE’s agile hardware platform support has been expanded to Evertz’ SCORPION, Smart Media Processing platform.
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Broadcast facilities have been highly dependent on fixed function processing hardware such as video and audio processors, frame synchronisers and up/down/cross converters for day-to-day operational tasks. However, with this approach, operational workflows are limited by the functionality of the equipment that is available. This type of operational architecture, while functional, is not flexible or particularly cost effective in dynamic environments.
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evEDGE virtual IP media services support a selection of processing functions which can be provisioned based on evolving workflow requirements. The flexibility enabled by evEDGE allows highly efficient and adaptable workflows for every application. Unlike fixed function processing hardware, evEDGE services can be run on agile hardware platforms. Processing functions are no longer permanently coupled to the underlying hardware platform. evEDGE supports virtual IP media services over agile hardware platforms including FPGA compute
blades, x86 COTS servers and the Cloud. For increased operational flexibility, evEDGE’s agile hardware support now includes the SCORPION smart media processing platform. SCORPION is a high-density signal conversion, routing, aggregation and transport platform which utilises miniature interface modules enabling a customised SCORPION solution for every application. SCORPION now supports evEDGE IP Media Services with the introduction of a new microservice mini I/O module. This advanced module enables the SCORPION platform to be provisioned with evEDGE services, further expanding its already advanced capabilities and flexibility. “Having a platform that can be provisioned with IP media services has given broadcasters a new tool to address environments with rapidly changing workflows,” said Nick Knez, Director of Processing and Timing Products at Evertz. “evEDGE, with its comprehensive library of media services and support for agile hardware platforms is the leading virtual IP media platform available today, and its expanded hardware platform support that now includes SCORPION, gives broadcasters even more flexibility with how they adapt to evolving workflow requirements.” Visit https://evertz.com
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Looking Above the Clouds to Deliver Multi-Screen, High Quality Content By Thomas Wrede* HIGH QUALITY VIDEO CONTENT DELIVERED ACROSS any multimedia device in the home is a regular expectation for modern-day TV consumers. The OTT revolution has drastically changed the way in which audiences consume video, but increasing demands for high quality content across several multi-screen devices are placing a huge strain on broadband bandwidth and impacting internet speeds. This often results in poor-quality viewing experiences. The solution to delivering high quality live content to any screen lies, quite literally, above the clouds with the new industry standard, SAT>IP. SAT>IP enables a totally seamless multi-screen TV experience, including 4K content, without the need for a high-speed home broadband connection. The technology takes a conventional satellite TV signal and converts it to an IP based data stream. This can be transmitted across a standard wired or wireless IP network in the home, and viewed on a multimedia and IP compatible devices, such as smart TVs, PCs, tablets, gaming devices and smartphones. The applications for SAT>IP technology extend globally, its benefits to operators in the APAC region are immense, for pay-TV providers and also the hospitality and travel industries.
SAT>IP is able to deliver advanced, multi-screen services even to locations where broadband is not reliable enough to handle live, high-definition video. Using SAT>IP in areas of low broadband speed will democratise access to high quality, multi-screen TV experiences, guaranteeing high quality video services to customers globally.
such as laptops and tablets. SAT>IP can also simplify room refurbishment projects by integrating live premium TV alongside VoD services delivered over a single IP network to anywhere, within the resort. Remote holiday island resorts in the Pacific, where high bandwidth internet infrastructure is too expensive to deploy can also offer guests access to high quality movies and TV shows with SAT>IP – all without the need to install cabling. Any hotel needs an IP network anyway, so why not deliver a reliable, high-quality, branded TV service? Within the travel industry service, providers are increasingly offering on-board video entertainment but access to premium, live content is still challenging over terrestrial TV networks. Satellite TV has proven the best option for many of these modes of transport, but delivering flexibility such as
Multiple OTT subscriptions in single households across Australia and New Zealand are very common. Using SAT>IP will enable operators to move subscriber authentication into the device so they can offer the same kind of flexible, personalised subscriptions. This could include offering individual subscriptions in a housing development or office, or to temporary rental properties such as the family bach. Another alternative would be offering personalised access to content for different family members - for example, a kids TV bundle on a iPad and premium sports for the big TV in the lounge. By moving to a IP / DRM based approach, satellite providers can unlock this potential for multiscreen based subscriber options.
personal viewing on portable smart devices is still a major technical hurdle.
SAT>IP also helps to enable satellite service providers to make the best from premium sports content rights. The English Premier League is carried by 80 broadcasters in 212 territories worldwide, and an average game is watched by over 12 million people. The vast majority of these viewers are watching live via satellite, which offers the best experience for content at true 4K quality. However, these same consumers also crave the modernity of modern services that allow flexible viewing options across a range of devices. SAT>IP enables operators to offer these experiences.
Combining satellite with an in-home IP network offers service providers,
Thousands of hotel operators across APAC are increasingly looking at ways to differentiate themselves to potential guests, especially in the face of the rival 10 million properties now listed on sharing economy services such as Airbnb. One of the ways that both groups can increase guest comfort is through improved TV services that offer a ‘better than at home’ experience. Access to high quality premium content such as sports has been a major benefit of satellite TV services, and with SAT>IP, hoteliers now have a simpler way of increasing the reach of these service to guests own personal devices
The rush to 4K could be a tipping point for satellite providers to truly
The arrival and wider adoption of SAT>IP offers the potential to offer exciting new mobile TV services within mass public transport systems, as well as reducing the cost and complexity of building reliable viewing systems. The SAT>IP Alliance membership (Arcadyan, Eutelsat, HISPASAT, Irdeto, MaxLinear, NAGRA, Panasonic, SES, Verimatrix and Zinwell) has created a whole ecosystem of easy to deploy, flexible, solutions from over 40 manufacturers. SAT>IP can be delivered using satellites covering 95% of the globe, potentially reaching over a billion viewers. operators and broadcasters the best way to deliver low latency content across multi-screen, multi-device experience with ease. This enables satellite providers to guarantee true 4K quality across multiple screens in the home, and allows them to clearly differentiate their 4K offerings - especially when compared to OTT services which cannot guarantee 4K quality over broadband networks. differentiate their services. The combination of satellite and IP can be the ideal route to showing what a premium 4K experience can be, regardless of broadband network capabilities. * Thomas Wrede is President of the SAT>IP Alliance and VP New Technology & Standards at SES Video. Visit http://alliance.satip.info/
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As the adoption of UHD TVs becomes more mainstream, the demand for 4K sports matches, movies and top series is creating a huge opportunity for satellite providers to demonstrate a compelling advantage. The ability of OTT services to deliver premium, linear 4K content is still limited by the lack of FTTH and other high-speed broadband technologies. Even in Australia, the average broadband speed is 25.88 Mb/s (according the The Ookla Speed Test Global Index). This makes satellite, with its downstream bandwidth of up to 500Mbps, an attractive option for the delivery of 4K premium content to every subscriber, irrespective of local broadband availability. Having multiscreen functionality is also extremely valuable as consumers are reaching a tipping point where more video content is viewed on a secondary screen or device that is not the main TV within the household.
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The Dawn of a New Era
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CLASSIFIEDS + EVENTS ConnecTechAsia Primes Asia for an Increasingly Transformative Future CONNECTECHASIA, comprising BroadcastAsia, CommunicAsia and NXTAsia, wrapped up in June drawing 38,000 attendees and 1700 exhibitors over two venues, according to organiser, Informa Market.
The event unfolded over three exciting days of networking, announcements, thought leadership keynotes and discussions, showcases on the latest innovations and trends including 5G, AI, IoT, Smart Cities, next-generation broadcasting and more. 5G emerged as the show stealer with the Singapore Infocomm Media Development Authority’s Chief Executive Tan Kiat How outlining Singapore’s vision for 5G – as an enabler that supports the development of innovative applications and services that will power the country’s Digital Economy. Showcases and discussions around 5G throughout the event also shone the spotlight on how the technology will create value and deliver benefits to businesses and societies, and how 5G will accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies as Asia’s digital future beckons. Connectivity’s New Era – VR, UHD and more
CLASSIFIEDS + EVENTS
Technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) also saw buzz on the show floor, with Korea’s Salin Co. inking a deal with Singapore’s Green Lab to bring its EpicLive VR education platforms to international schools in Singapore and regional Asian countries. EpicLive allows students to interact in a VR class and can be used in scenarios such as debates or lessons programmed by schools, boosting knowledge retention and adding a fun, engaging teaching aid for the classroom.
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“We’re excited to bring VR to the classrooms to redefine education experiences for students here in Singapore,” says Kenny Tay, Director of Green Lab. “Besides adding a dimension of fun to learning, VR allows teachers to use a more visual approach to help students understand concepts and engage with each other, leading to more memorable and better learning outcomes.”
With growing demand for highquality video content made possible by the increasing connectivity across the region, Malaysia’s MEASAT Satellite Systems announced an agreement at ConnecTechAsia to carry India’s first 4K/UHD channel and the world’s first 4K/UHD HDR travel channel, Travelxp. Travelxp offers viewers a closer and immersive view at the world’s most beautiful travel destinations, cultures and heritage in stunning resolution like never before. Heralding the golden age of live entertainment in Asia Asia’s rising growing smartphone adoption and youthful population has also seen a surge in gaming and the e-sports industry. Esports, beyond being a multi-billion dollar industry, could possibly be an Olympic sport as soon as 2024 in Paris and spark the next wave of global gaming. “Esports is driving significant growth for the live entertainment sector, and is also a converging point with other industries such as media, broadcast productions, advertising, and games,” says Nicholas Khoo, CoFounder & Chairman of Singapore’s Cybersports and Online Gaming Association. “ASEAN itself has become a significant focal point for the region with a massive uptake of smartphones and rising income levels. With emerging technologies such as 5G, VR and IoT there is a lot of potential for esport’s further growth and expansion, which is also bringing about massive opportunities for the world’s largest brands.” ConnecTechAsia will return in 2020 from 9-11 June at Marina Bay Sands Singapore. Visit www.connectechasia.com
Peter Greste for 2019 CBAA Conference Keynote THIS YEAR’S Community Broadcasting Association of Australia Conference has announced Professor Peter Greste, Director at Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, as its keynote speaker.
Peter Greste spent two decades reporting from the front lines in some of the world’s most dangerous countries before making headlines himself following his own incarceration in an Egyptian prison. Charged with terrorism, threatening national security, and enduring a sham trial, solitary confinement and
detention, Greste himself became a victim of what he describes as the new global war on journalism. He was released after 400 days behind bars, and since then has become a devoted advocate for press freedom - a campaign that has earned him a series of awards including the Royal Television Society’s Judges Award, a Walkley Award, the International Association of Press Club’s Freedom of Speech Award and the Australian Human Rights Medal. The CBAA conference provides an opportunity to: • Hear from experts and leaders from within and outside the community radio sector. • Attend informative and handson sessions covering everything from leadership and management, to station tech and content programming, finances and community engagement. • Connect with other broadcasters from all over Australia, as well as sector organisations like the Community Broadcasting Foundation (CBF), Community Media Training Organisation (CMTO), and the CBAA’s board and staff. • Celebrate some of the year’s best work at the CBAA Community Radio Awards. The 2019 Conference will take place from 24 - 27 October at the Pullman on the Park, Melbourne. Visit https://www.cbaa.org.au/ conference
SIGGRAPH Asia Gears Up for Brisbane THE 12TH ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Asia will take place in Brisbane, Australia at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre (BCEC) from November 17-20, 2019. The annual event, which rotates around the Asian region, attracts the most respected technical and creative people from all over the world who are excited by research, science, art, animation, gaming, interactivity, education and emerging technologies.
Keynote speakers for the event include: Jeffrey Shaw - Endowed Chair Professor of Media Art, Director, Center for Applied Computing and
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Interactive Media (Hong Kong, Chengdu), School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Shaw will be speaking on the “Present, Past and Present Future – The Embodied Practice of Digital Media Art”. Donna J. Cox - First Michael Aiken Chair, Professor in the School of Art and Design at the College of Fine and Applied Arts, Director of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL), Associate Director for Research and Education at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Director of the Emerging Digital Research and Education in Arts Media (eDream) Institute at NCSA, United States of America. Cox will be speaking on the “The Revolution in Geospatial Mapping”. The SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 Exhibition is gearing up in full swing with companies such as Carpe Diem Solutions, FORUM8 Co., Ltd, Fox Renderfarm, Mind & Idea Fly Co., Ltd, PIXAR, SideFX Houdini Software, Tsinghua University – Tencent Joint Laboratory, Unity Technologies, Visual Computing Center at KAUST, and more. Visit https://sa2019.siggraph.org
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