Content+Technology ANZ February 2015

PP: 255003/06831

VOLUME 12 ISSUE 1 FEBRUARY 2015

MEDIA + PRODUCTION + MANAGEMENT + DELIVERY

ACQUISITION ISSN 1448-9554

NEWS OPERATIONS

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SPORTSCASTING

VOLUME 12 ISSUE 1 FEBRUARY 2015

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Cover Story – Riders on the Stream

17 REGULARS 02 EDITOR’S WELCOME 04 NEWS Hillsong Improves Workflow with Digistor, Manifold Joins Iloura, Vass Joins Telstra, Harmonic Names APAC VP of Sales

44 CLASSIFIEDS AND EVENTS 46 INDUSTRY FOCUS 48 TIME SHIFTER Sennheiser: 70 Years of Innovation

21 FEATURES 12 ACQUISITION VETUS Bites Into Sony, Fujinon, and Videocraft, HyperFocal Doubles Up on ARRI ALEXA XT, Shane Hurlbut - High Octane Optics

16 SPORTSCASTING Hostworks – Tour

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Down Under, RoscoVIEW Sets the Pace for Tabcorp Park Studios, Gearhouse Lands it in the Net for Asian Cup

21 NEWS OPERATIONS Network Ten Moves to Vizrt Control Room Automation, VSN Unveils Social Feeds and MOS Control of CG, New Dejero Compact LIVE+

24 POST-PRODUCTION Iloura Brings SpongeBob to CG-Life, DDP Upgrades SGO Mistika System for 4K, Fairfax Refreshes Xsan Environment with StorNext

30 MEDIA IN THE CLOUD HbbTV – Driving the Data, Quantum Unveils Q-Cloud, Archion Enhances Adobe CC Workflow

32 AUDIO Voices of Middle-Earth Brought to Life with isotope, PAT Supplies NEP’s HD11 Supertruck, Event Cinemas – Immersed in Dolby Atmos

37 RADIO Mobile Radio No Substitute for Broadcast, Telos and AVC – Audio Livewires, Broadcast Australia Chooses Nautel for FM Transmission

38 TRANSMISSION Crown Castle Explores Sale of Australian Subsidiary, Foxtel Launches

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CONTENT+TECHNOLOGY: ISSN 1448-9554 PP:255003/06831 Broadcastpapers Pty Ltd (ABN: 34 095 653 277) PO Box 259, Darlinghurst, NSW 1300 Australia www.broadcastpapers.com PUBLISHER: Phil Sandberg Tel: +61 (0)2 4368 4569 Mob: +61 (0)414 671 811 Email: papers@broadcastpapers.com

SUB-EDITOR: Keith Ford Mob: +61 (0)430 432 437 Email: papers@broadcastpapers.com PRODUCTION MANAGER: Lucy Salmon Tel: +61 (0)2 9211 8205 production@broadcastpapers.com DESIGN & LAYOUT: Wide Open Media Tel: +61-2-9282 9359 info@wideopenmedia.com.au PRINTING: Lindsay Yates COPYRIGHT NOTICE: All material in Broadcastpapers’ Content+Technology Magazine is protected under

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EDITOR’S WELCOME

Streams of Blood

By Phil Sandberg FREEDOM HAS COME TO THE PEOPLE OF CUBA with the February 9 launch of the Netflix streaming service. Throughout the Caribbean island bastion of communism, Netflix says it will “offer a broad range of great global entertainment to Cuban consumers as Internet access improves and credit and debit cards become more widely available.” Es hilarante, no?

Meanwhile Down Under, the cold war is starting to heat up with the anticipated launch of the service into Australia and New Zealand in March 2015.

Unconfirmed reports price Netflix in ANZ at around AUD$10.00/month placing it in line with Fairfax/Nine’s Stan and Foxtel/Seven West Media’s Presto TV or Presto Movies ($14.99/month for both).

Meanwhile, the “11 year old start-up” that is Quickflix is available for $29.99 a month (after 3-week free trial) while EzyFlix and BigPond Movies offer on demand pricing for a range of movie and TV titles, and there are other broadband bundled services such as Fetch TV and Telstra’s T-Box. Not to mention various free catch-up services via ABC iView and Freeview Plus.

For its part, Stan has rights to content from Sony Pictures Television (including Breaking Bad spin-off show Better Call Saul), Viacom International Media Networks (including shows from Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Comedy Central and MTV), BBC Worldwide, CBS Studios and ABC Commercial - politically, as we know, the ABC cannot favour one side or the other.

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The other challenge for Netflix is “converting” the unpublicised, but supposedly not insubstantial number of existing ANZ subscribers who are circumventing current geo-blocking arrangements and getting them to pay the same for access to less content, else expose itself to legal disputes with local right holders.

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Presto TV, meanwhile, has access to the likes of HBO, SHOWTIME, CBS Studios International, Viacom International Media Networks and Hasbro Studios as well as local content from Foxtel, Seven Network and ABC Commercial.

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Presto Movies is able to tap into content from MGM, NBCUniversal, Paramount Pictures, Roadshow Films, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Entertainment One Films Australia, ICON, Studiocanal and Transmission Films.

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+ Human bandwidth or available eyeball time; and + Rights to content.

Netflix ANZ will reportedly launch with the third season of its North American flagship, House of Cards, the previous two season having been exclusive to Foxtel. This resolves a situation which has impacted the service in other international territories such as France.

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In an already overcrowded market, there are two main problems:

Whether Netflix achieves dominance over its strong local rivals or not – there will be blood.

Thanks for Reading Phil Sandberg - Editor/Publisher papers@broadcastpapers.com - T: +61-(0)414 671 811

Netflix ANZ will include such original series as Marco Polo, BoJack Horseman and, among many kids titles, DreamWorks Animation’s All Hail King Julien.

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NEWS + PEOPLE For the latest news visit www.content-technology.com

Hillsong Improves Workflow with Digistor HEADQUARTERED IN SYDNEY’S HILLS district with its operations spread across Australia and ten other countries, Hillsong Church creates content for television programming, DVDs and CDs to help communicate with a global audience.

Luke Irvine, Hillsong’s television technical manager, called in Digistor when the ageing Apple Xsan storage system used to store all production material began to falter.

“We had major issues with the Xsan because we needed more storage and its drives were failing,” explained Irvine. “We needed to replace it quickly and upgrade to a bigger system because the Xsan was starting to impact our workflow and we were losing important media.”

Irvine had researched various storage options and had a wish-list to cover his requirements for the 14 suites using iMacs running a mix of Final Cut Pro and Adobe editing and compositing software.

“I wanted an all-in-one system capable of sharing content simultaneously with multiple suites and for the the five television production suites to be able to access multi-camera feeds,” said Irvine.

Digistor Senior Sales Consultant Matt Wood listened to Irvine’s initial enquiry, noted his needs and was able to match the brief with a Dynamic Drive Pool (DDP) ethernet SAN solution from Ardis Technologies.

According to Irvine, “I wanted to double the existing 40Tb storage, but Matt explained that

Videocraft Provides NSCC with Hybrid Broadcast Production Facility WITH A BROADCAST FACILITY entering its twelfth year it was clear to the team at the North Shore Christian Centre (NSCC) that an upgrade was well overdue. The NSCC produces coverage of weekly services and a half hour TV programme for TVS Channel 41. NSCC Operational Pastor Ross Stewart turned to Videocraft for help.

Stewart explained, “Our facility was over twelve years old and some of the equipment was almost thirty years old. We needed a major upgrade that would give us higher quality pictures for our live services and broadcast TV programme. We also wanted to go 16:9. As Videocraft specialises in these types of broadcast facilities and solutions we put together a tender.”

The Videocraft solution included four Sony

BVP-E30 SD triax camera chains and a Panasonic AV-HS450 vision switcher with Venitex Aux Bus control panels providing the NSCC with simple switching for two stage-side screens independent of the broadcast feed.

Stewart added, “The solution was a good one and the way Videocraft installed the switching console so we could overlay song lyrics over live video was particularly clever.”

The Videocraft installation also integrated AJA Key Pro hard disk recorders that enabled a fully file based workflow for post requirements, a Ross router, Sony monitoring, new Sony projectors, Fujinon ENG and box lenses and all back end glue, wiring and cabling.

Visit www.videocraft.com.au

one DDP product had a 48 bay chassis that could offer up to 120Tb of usable space so that was even better.”

The benefits of a DDP system suited Hillsong Church as it delivers high speed project and file sharing over standard ethernet without the expense of fibre channel options. With iSCSI connectors fitted to the workstations, standard Gigabit ethernet ports can be paired together to increases the bandwidth from 100 to 180 MB/s.

Optional 10 GbE ports can also be combined.

“Our workflow is a lot faster now so we can do multi-cam editing which we couldn’t do before because the Xsan issues limited our bandwidth to cuts only editing,” said Irvine.

Visit www.digistor.com.au

Riedel Names O’Neill APAC Director RIEDEL COMMUNICATIONS has announced the appointment of Cameron O’Neill as the company’s director for the Asia-Pacific region.

O’Neill will be based in Tokyo, working to build the Riedel presence there into a robust East Asian hub for Riedel design, sales, support, and service.

O’Neill served as general manager of Riedel Australia for three years prior to taking on this new role, and he was a professional user of the company’s equipment for the preceding five years. He already has a history working with Riedel’s Japanese distributor, Otaritec, and attending Japan’s largest trade show, Inter BEE. O’Neill also has traveled extensively in Japan and throughout Southeast Asia, and has cultivated a good working knowledge of the Japanese language.

Visit www.riedel.net

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Manifold Joins Iloura as Sydney GM AUSTRALIAN ANIMATION and visual effects company Iloura, has announced the appointment of Jeannette Manifold to the position of General Manager, Sydney.

Jeannette brings more than 25 years production experience to the role spanning feature film animation, visual effects and games and joins Iloura at a time of exponential growth for the company.

Most recently, Jeannette was Head of Production at Marza Animation Planet, Tokyo, where she oversaw feature film production activities for titles including the forthcoming Sonic the Hedgehog, and earlier as a Production Consultant for the anime hit Captain Harlock – Space Pirate.

Jeannette’s early career was forged in a pre-digital era in the camera and compositing units of animation companies in Ireland and the USA, including five years at Twentieth Century Fox Animation where she was a Compositing Supervisor on animated features including Anastasia and Titan A.E. In 2004, she moved to Australia to join Walt Disney Animation Studios as a Compositing and Scene Planning Supervisor for its large slate of projects before joining Animal Logic as a VFX Coordinator for the production of Happy Feet.

Visit www.iloura.com.au

Harmonic Names Choi APAC VP of Sales HARMONIC, the provider of video delivery infrastructure, has announced the appointment of Dario Choi as the company’s regional vice president of sales for the Asia-Pacific region. Choi takes on this new role with more than two decades of experience in senior management for major multinational businesses in the broadcast and media industries.

Choi joins Harmonic after having most recently served as vice president, Asia-Pacific region, at Avid Technology. He earlier held similar roles at Harris Broadcast, Ericsson, and Tandberg Television. Choi earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Alberta and a Master of Business Administration from the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa.

Visit www.harmonicinc.com

HDS Appoints Ablett as GM for APAC HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS (HDS) has announced the appointment of Mark Ablett as senior vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific.

He will be responsible for providing strategic direction and leading the company in its drive to capitalise on the fast growing opportunities in the Asia Pacific region, boosting revenue growth and expanding the business.

Ablett brings over 20 years of regional sales and leadership experience in the information technology industry to HDS. He is a proven business leader with a wealth of enterprise sales and leadership expertise. Before joining HDS, Ablett was vice president of Australasia at Juniper Networks responsible for revenue growth and profitability across the region.

Neville Vincent, former senior vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific, will be moving to a role focused on expanding the Global Systems Integrator business.

Visit www.HDS.com

Langham to Head PAT Tech Engineering PROFESSIONAL AUDIO & TELEVISION has announced the appointment of Adam Langham to head its technical engineering department in Sydney.

Adam’s career in broadcast spans from prestigious production facilities such as Silk Studios, to solutions providers like Videocraft, and also National Networks such as Channel 7.

“Having joined the PAT team, I am excited to be part of one of Australia’s leading broadcast solutions providers. The portfolio of brands PAT represents in Australia makes for interesting and challenging projects, that’s for sure.”

Mr Langham continues. “I like that, as a broadcast solution provider, PAT becomes part of the customer’s technical decision making process. That means system design, technical recommendations, and of course successful implementation, needs to be closely managed in order to deliver world class installations to our customers.”

Visit www.proaudiotv.com.au

Mojo Gets Its Graham Bennett On

NEWS + PEOPLE

GRAHAM BENNETT has joined Mojo Media Solutions as Sales Manager to further expand Broadcast and Post Production equipment sales and technical services business across Queensland and other territories. Bennett, a senior sales executive and former broadcast engineer with over 35 years’ experience in the industry, will work closely with company founder Stuart Monksfield to promote Mojo’s specialist services and product lines across Australia.

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Vass Joins Telstra Global Media Industry Solutions PHAEDON VASS HAS JOINED TELSTRA as the Media Industry Executive, within the Global Media Industry Solutions team led by Kathy-Anne McManus.

Phaedon is a media and entertainment practitioner who has been active across a diverse range of Media roles and environments for the last 22 years. He started his career in the industry as an investment manager for the Australian Film Finance Corporation and held subsequent senior positions at a range of organisations including Accenture, ABC, FOXTEL and Macquarie Bank.

“There is something refreshingly different about Mojo Media Solutions, and I am delighted to be a part of such a customer-focused organisation,” said Bennett.

As a consultant and advisor he has worked with a wide range of high profile entities including Australian Capital Equity, the Australian Film Commission, Beyond Limited, NSW Film & Television Office and Screen Australia.

Stuart Monksfield, MD and Founder of Mojo Media Solutions commented, “Graham and I have known each other for many years, and I can’t think of anyone else who has displayed a similar dedication and willingness to do whatever it takes to make a customer happy than he.”

More recently, Phaedon was engaged as the Executive Director to lead the start-up of the Tadreeb Training Academy for the Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority (twofour54), a state of the art facility that included the BBC and Thomson Reuters as its anchor partners.

Visit www.mojomediasolutions.com

Visit www.telstra.com

Dewey Joins ITV Studios Australia LEADING PRODUCTION EXECUTIVE Karen Dewey has joined ITV Studios Australia in the new position of Head of Reality and Factual.

She joins ITV as the company is underway on the first Australian series of I’m A Celebrity …

Get Me Out Of Here!, which recently premiered on Network Ten. Karen’s first assignment in her new role is on location in South Africa, working on the reality format – which has been broadcasting live from the South African jungle five nights per week Karen comes to ITV after seven years at the Nine Network where she also headed up reality and factual, leading the network’s creative team on top programs including Big Brother, Celebrity Apprentice and RPA. Prior to her time at Nine, Karen was an executive producer for seven years at Network Seven. Co-creator and executive producer of My Restaurant Rules, she also worked on a raft of hit shows including Harry’s Practice, Medical Emergency and Hot Property.

“Having an executive of Karen’s calibre join ITV is what I’d describe as a ‘great get’,” ITV Studios Australia Managing Director, Anita Jacoby, said.

“Our strong team just got stronger.”

Karen Dewey started in her new role on February 9.

Visit www.itvstudios.com/au

Nine Names Bowers CTO, Yelavich CIO THE NINE ENTERTAINMENT CO. has announced that Mat Yelavich has been appointed as the Group Chief Information Officer, effective 1 March. Mat has worked at the Nine Network for a number of years within the Broadcast Engineering team, his most recent position leading the team as Chief Technology Officer.

Simon Kelly, Nine Entertainment Co. Chief David Bowers Financial and Operating Officer, said “Mat brings a wealth of experience to the role from not just a technology perspective, he also has vast industry and company knowledge.”

Mat will continue the review of ITs delivery model and services, embed agreed structure changes to support design, build and run functions and maximise efficiencies across the Nine Entertainment Co. Replacing Mat’s current position of Chief Technology Officer at the Nine Network will be David Bowers. David’s most recent role was Head of Engineering and Technical Operations for Host Broadcaster at Glasgow Commonwealth Games.

Geoff Sparke, Director of Broadcast Operations for the Nine Network said, “David is an expert in systems contribution, distribution and transmission solutions and has extensive relationships with broadcast equipment and workflow solution suppliers, we welcome David back to Nine.”

NEWS + PEOPLE

Florey Heads APAC Sales for Digital Vision DIGITAL VISION HAS ANNOUNCED the appointment of Sam Florey as Head of Sales for the Asia Pacific region. Sam will be working closely with Peter Charles and Felipe Muraca and will be responsible for developing and managing channel partners in the region.

Sam has over 25 years’ experience in distribution and representation for the technology sector. Sam relocated from London to India just over a year ago where he ran his own consultancy firm. His location, added to his experience, make him well positioned to manage the region for Digital Vision.

Sam Florey said, “I am excited to join Digital Vision at this exciting time for the company, and am looking forward to contributing to its continued growth and success.”

Visit www.digitalvision.tv

Reynolds Appointed Director of ABC Regional Division THE AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION (ABC) has announced the appointment of Fiona Reynolds as the director of the new regional division.

Fiona, who is based in Launceston, has had extensive management experience in and outside the ABC and has reported, produced and led teams to deliver quality print, radio, television and digital content to audiences across Australia during a 26-year media career. She is currently Head of News Projects for the ABC – a national role held while living in regional Tasmania. She will oversee the creation of the new division.

As announced on November 24, ABC Managing Director Mark Scott said the aim was to have the new division in place by mid-2015, following consultations with staff and engagement with the community.

“I can’t wait to visit stations and offices across the country, meet community members and learn more about our diverse audiences and their needs,” Fiona said.

Grass Valley Names Andrew Thornton VP, Asia Pacific GRASS VALLEY HAS ANNOUNCED the appointment of Andrew Thornton to the position of VP, Asia Pacific, effective immediately. With nearly 35 years of experience in the broadcast industry, Thornton will assume responsibility for all aspects of Grass Valley’s sales activities and growth in the Asia Pacific region.

NEWS + PEOPLE

Thornton joins Grass Valley from Harmonic, where he served for four years as the company’s vice president for the Asia Pacific region and took part in in the acquisition of Omneon, where Thornton was previously employed.

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“It is a great pleasure to join the Grass Valley team and become part of a company that is strongly committed to developing innovative technologies that allow broadcasters of all sizes to succeed,” said Thornton. “As an established leader in the industry, Grass Valley understands its customers’ needs and has the ability to provide complete, end-to-end solutions not only for today, but into the future.”

Thornton is currently based in the company’s Hong Kong office and reports to Steve Ronneberg, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Grass Valley.

Visit www.grassvalley.com

Vale Geoff Rudder THE TEAM AT NEP AUSTRALIA are greatly saddened that beloved colleague and friend Geoff Rudder passed away on Tuesday 6 January 2015. He had battled a serious illness with courage, grace and remarkable humour over the last few months.

Geoff has been part of the Global/NEP family for almost 17 years, and for 23 years before that held roles with Network Ten. He was a rock of support within the business, a man who took great pride in developing his team, and a generous friend.

Geoff will be greatly missed by his wife, Jennie, his family and his many friends at NEP in Australia and overseas, and within the broader television industry.

Geoff had a 40 year career in the broadcast industry, having started with Network Ten in November 1975. Worked in the Audio Department for 18 years and was Audio Supervisor for 12 years. He worked on many Australian iconic programs, including: Number 96, The Restless years, Good Morning Australia, Blankety Blanks, and Perfect Match.

He also worked on many worldwide sporting events, including Olympic Games – Seoul, Korea; Commonwealth Games – Victoria, Canada; NRL Kangaroo Tour – Northern England; America’s Cup Challenge – Fremantle, Australia; Spring Racing Carnival – Melbourne, Australia; and Indycar – Surfers Paradise, Queensland.

Since joining Global/NEP he held various positions within the Operations division and over the years different departments reported to him including Resources, Project Management, Crewing, Logistics and Facilities. As the company expanded he concentrated more on Resources and Logistics, which was his latest role.

Rather than sending flowers, Geoff’s family have set up a fundraising page for a hospital bed at the RPA for tall patients in Geoff’s memory.

Visit www.gofundme. com/geoffrudder

TECHNICAL STANDARDS www.content-technology.com/standards

UHD Alliance Announced at CES LEADING HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS, consumer electronics brands, content distributors, post-production and technology companies have announced the launch of the UHD (Ultra High Definition) Alliance – a new coalition of companies united to establish new standards to support innovation in video technologies including 4K and higher resolutions, high dynamic range, wider colour gamut and immersive 3D audio.

The UHD Alliance was created with the consumer in mind; it provides information on premium UHD content and devices to deliver best-in-class home entertainment. The Alliance is also focused on helping consumers benefit from an integrated and high-quality UHD ecosystem from end-to-end.

Global companies including DIRECTV, DOLBY, LG ELECTRONICS INC., Netflix, Panasonic Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sharp Corporation, Sony Visual Product Inc., Technicolor, The Walt Disney Studios, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros. Entertainment formed the Alliance.

“As the UHD ecosystem continues to evolve, we are strengthening our commitment to high-quality UHD content and devices,” said Hyunsuk Kim, President, Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “The Alliance will encourage the development of high-quality UHD content while distinguishing TVs that provide the most premium UHD viewing experience.”

The UHD Alliance aims to ensure that all the links in the chain – from content production, distribution and consumption to the playback capability of devices – meet the identified quality standards, whilst embracing standards that are open and allow flexibility in the market yet give consumers confidence that they can watch content they want on their devices.

GatesAir Recognises Digital Broadcast Patent Innovations GATESAIR’S LEGACY OF INNOVATION in over-the-air TV and radio broadcasting includes two Emmy awards and 238 US and Global patents.

Company executives recognised the innovators of GatesAir’s latest patents at a ceremony at the Oasis Conference Center in Cincinnati.

Following a keynote address from GatesAir CEO Phil Argyris, Chief Product Officer Rich Redmond led a presentation in recognition of the company’s recent patent awards. GatesAir engineers Wayne Duello, Dmitri Borodulin and George Cabrera were among those honoured at the event.

TECHNICAL STANDARDS

Obtaining a patent is a long and tenacious process that requires a longterm commitment, with countless hours of hard work and dedication from the innovators. Mr. Duello received a patent for innovations in digital signal processing of digital modulations that reduce interference and strengthen robustness for over-the-air digital TV signals. Mr. Borodulin and Mr. Cabrera received patents for advancements in broadband, high-efficiency amplification for digital radio and TV signals.

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“These patents represent the very high level of innovation happening throughout GatesAir today as we advance the possibilities of over-theair broadcasting,” said Redmond. “Our engineers and scientists continue to break new ground and innovate to enable our global customers to wirelessly deliver content at the lowest total cost of ownership, solidifying GatesAir’s leadership position in the broadcast industry.

We’re honoured to recognise these impressive achievements.”

Visit www.gatesair.com

HDMI Interface Wins Engineering Emmy HDMI LICENSING, LLC has announced that the HDMI interface has been honoured with a Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for engineering excellence in the television community by the Television Academy. The award was presented on January 8, 2015 at the 66th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, during the 2015 International CES conference.

“To be recognised as one of the technology breakthroughs that has had a significant effect on television engineering is an immense honour for the HDMI organisation,” said Steve Venuti, president of HDMI Licensing, LLC. Supporting the world of digital content, the HDMI interface has become the universally-implemented, standardised, digital connection for consumer electronics devices. By combining uncompressed high-definition video, multi-channel audio, and data in a single digital interface, HDMI technology delivers crystal-clear digital quality over a single cable.

“The success of the HDMI Specification is based on its ability to constantly evolve to meet the changing needs of the market place with added functionality and new features,” said Arnold Brown, chairman of the board of HDMI Forum, Inc. “Version 2.0 of the HDMI Specification nearly doubled the bandwidth to 18Gbps to support new features such as 4K@50/60 (2160p) and up to 32 audio channels, and our technical working group is working to deliver additional key technological advancements to further expand the ecosystem of interoperable, HDMIenabled products.”

Visit www.hdmi.org

ITU Standards Will Enhance Television Viewing Experience TELEVISION IS RECOGNISED as a major tool in informing, channelling and affecting public opinion. Its impact and influence on world public opinion and decision-making cannot be denied and today Television represents a symbol for communication and globalisation in the contemporary world.

“ITU is currently working on developing new standards that will dramatically enhance the television viewer’s experience, in terms of both visual and audio quality,” said ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré. “ITU is developing industry-leading standards for the next generation of television that will be available in very high definition as well as high performance dynamic video streaming.”

The first commercial services of Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) have already begun. In coming years, ITU systems will allow television with four times the detail of the first UHDTV services.

The second edition of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), Recommendation ITU-T H.265 | ISO/IEC International Standard 23008-2 approved in October 2014, includes enhanced format range extensions to improve video quality, general multi-layer support, scalability to cope with IP network congestion, and native 3D (multi-view) video encoding.

“ITU is striving for good and efficient future use of the radio-frequency spectrum to carry television broadcasting,” said Christoph Dosch, Chairman of ITU-R Study Group 6, which deals with broadcasting issues. “In order to continue to develop new and high-performance television standards, it is critical that we retain the currently used television spectrum which provides great value to the information society.”

Visit www.itu.int

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www.proaudiotv.com.au Professional Audio & Television Pty Ltd P: 02 9476 1272 E: sales@proaudiotv.com.au

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Vampire Production Puts Bite on Fujinon, Sony, Videocraft VETUS IS A NEW MULTI-PLATFORM Australian sci-fi/fantasy/horror live action web series, comic book and video game set in 15th century Romania.

Vetus sees its lead character, Rosa, arrive in Wallachia with her young pupil Leonardo Da Vinci. There she encounters her old lover Vlad Dracula, whose tiny kingdom is on the verge of collapse after years of war with the Turks, Hungarians and vampires.

The production used Videocraft as an equipment partner and a Sony F5 camera and Fujinon Cabrio lens combo to shoot its live action.

Producer and cinematographer on VETUS, Benjamin Shepherd, explained, “I have been working on-set with the Sony F5 for sometime now, so much so that I fell in love with it and had to add it to my kit. It’s such a versatile camera, you can spec up or down depending on the type of project and its requirement. I have found it serves as a great camera for about 70% of my work..”

Shepherd had a number of technical considerations as joint cinematographer and producer when selecting the right camera and lens package for the VETUS series teaser and four character clips.

He continued, “Without giving too much away, the teaser film is broken up into two distinct visual styles which I wanted to achieve in camera. My approach to achieve this was to shoot the ethereal world sequence with vintage anamorphics and the rest of the sequences with spherical lenses.

Anticipating that the films, especially the teaser, were to be treated with heavy VFX I needed a camera that would ideally be able to deliver at least 4K resolution and RAW. I intended to shoot the ethereal world sequence with anamorphics so the camera of choice needed to be able to handle the 2x anamorphic lenses along with a range of spherical glass. Another technical requirement was shooting the character clips off speed and doing so while at 4K RAW was an added requirement.”

HyperFocal Doubles Up on ARRI ALEXA XT Cameras HYPERFOCAL, one of Sydney’s top boutique camera rental houses, recently made the decision to increase and upgrade its fleet of ARRI ALEXA cameras due to demand from its customers and the changing world of television production.

HyperFocal owner and DOP, Kevin Scott, explained, “We’ve had an ALEXA classic for a while which I used for my own personal shoots and that we also rented to our customers. In truth the ALEXA was such a popular rental that it was rarely available for me to use so we decided to buy a second camera.”

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As a rental house with the very latest in lenses including Cooke anamorphics Kevin leant towards the ALEXA XT for this purchase due to the camera’s clever 4:3 sensor.

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He added, “As well as the great 4:3 sensor I was very impressed with the ALEXA XT’s reliability and stunning image quality which makes it such a joy to work with in post. The reliability factor makes a huge difference to us and our clients as it means you can take just one camera somewhere remote and never have to worry about a second or backup camera. Not many manufacturers can make this claim. I’ve never had any failures from any of my ALEXAs despite the fact that they are constantly working their socks off.”

Visit www.arri.com.au

Shepherd’s choice of equipment partners was a straightforward one, as he explained, “Videocraft and Panavision are my go to rental houses for the VETUS project. Videocraft being Sony specialists supplied me with specific Sony gear and also the Fujinon lenses. The Videocraft team is delightful to work with and with a relationship ongoing for close to 10 years now, they are one of my favourites.”

With camera and equipment partners chosen all that remained was his choice of lenses. The result was surprising according to Shepherd due to the quality he ended up achieving for the price. He added, “The Fujinon Cabrio series are such a neat set of lenses. My criteria for the spherical lenses were resolution, clarity, speed, look and feel and practicality of on-set use. When researching my options I knew I needed to produce an image that maintained the 4K resolution but at the same time wasn’t overly sharp. Pulling references and reading various articles I found that the Cabrio lenses performed at their sharpest at T5.6, but for my purposes it was too sharp, the image contrast and resolution was looking a little too harsh so I shot the with the Cabrios around T4, as wide open at T2.9. They are a touch softer compared to T4 but once closed down by half a stop the image settles nicely.”

Visit www.fujifilm.com.au, http://pro.sony.com.au and www.videocraft.com.au

Pseudo Echo Goes 4K with Blackmagic BLACKMAGIC DESIGN’S 4K Production Camera was recently used to shoot Australian 1980s new wave band Pseudo Echo’s music video for the title track of their new album “Ultraviolet”. Shot entirely on green screen, Melbourne-based production company Final Focus required a 4K camera that delivered Ultra HD cinematic images at an affordable cost.

“We needed a 4K camera due to the fact that the music video was shot entirely on green screen. This not only helped in regards to the quality of the key, but also gave us the ability to punch in for a closer shot without quality loss since the delivery was HD,” explained Adam Haywood, DP and co owner of Final Focus. “The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K’s images are amazing.”

The look and feel of the music video was inspired by lead singer Brian Canham’s love for retro and futuristic films and art, and this is a passion he shares with the video’s director Stuart Stanton, also co owner of Final Focus.

Brian wanted to explore the idea of people’s energy existing beyond death.

Stuart came up with the concept of a celestial character transitioning another version of herself from one dimension to another. Intercut with footage of the band, the music video is a throwback to the world of retro sci-fi.

Shot in 4K ProRes, Adam noted that the 4K format was especially advantageous when editing and delivering in HD. “Shooting in 4K is probably the best thing in regards to reframing or cropping shots for more options without having to compromise image quality. The other element is the strength of the ProRes codec, which saves time in the edit suite and which other cameras don’t record in camera,” he said.

Visit www.blackmagicdesign.com/au

The Beauty of Versatility Enjoy stunning performance with Sony’s range of multi-format XDCAM camcorders

M E S M / S O1412 0 5 / C T

For more information, please email us at sonypro.anz@ap.sony.com

pro.sony.com.au

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Evertz and I-MOVIX Collaborate on Ultra Motion

Convergent Design Announces the New Odyssey7Q+

EVERTZ AND I-MOVIX HAVE ANNOUNCED a collaboration on streamlined interoperability to provide integrated ultra-motion solutions combining I-MOVIX X10 camera systems and the Evertz DreamCatcher.

The announcement follows successful collaborations between the two companies in sporting events all over the world.

CONVERGENT DESIGN HAS ANNOUNCED the new flagship model of the Odyssey Family of Products, the Odyssey7Q+. The Odyssey7Q+ expands on the capabilities of its predecessor the Odyssey7Q, while maintaining all of the functionality, performance and ease of use. The addition of HDMI 1.4b input means that the Odyssey7Q+ can capture 4K and Ultra-HD video over HDMI.

DreamCatcher enables the production team to capture the event from all angles, while never missing a moment of the action. These captured events can instantly be replayed to reinforce the narrative or packaged after to re-tell and relive the moments of the event. The continuous ultra-motion recording capability of I-MOVIX X10 systems combined with the DreamCatcher platform is a powerful addition to the producer’s story-telling toolkit.

The Odyssey7Q+ can record HD/2K/UHD/4K via SDI and HDMI. It can record RAW (with Record Options), uncompressed DPX, and Apple ProRes 422 (HQ).

The Odyssey7Q+ features an OLED 1280×800 monitor with true blacks, accurate colours, 3400:1, extended colour gamut and a 176-degree viewing angle.

The Odyssey7Q+ also features an extensive array of image analysis tools, including an RGB waveform, RGB Histogram, False Color, Pixel Zoom with finger drag, three-mode Focus Assist and monitoring LUTs. The unique MultiStream Monitoring mode allows up to four HD video inputs to be viewed at once in a quad-split view or to be live-switched between in full screen.

“Our collaboration with Evertz makes all X10 systems fully compatible with the popular DreamCatcher, meaning that Evertz customers can easily specify I-MOVIX technology as part of their preferred production setup,” said Laurent Renard, CEO of I-MOVIX. Visit www.i-movix.com and www.evertz.com

Panasonic Launch New Remote Camera PANASONIC HAS RELEASED the new AW-HE130 remote camera, which uses a single LAN cable for power supply, control and Full HD video output. The camera is capable of full HD video output via IP transmission, in addition to HDSDI and HDMI. The highly sensitive camera is equipped with 1/2.86-type three MOS sensors, allowing for high-grade filming even in low light conditions.

Panasonic Product Marketing Manager, Markus Naegele, said, “This camera replaces the very popular HE120 and is suitable for similar applications, such as lecture streaming, video conferencing and, of course, reality TV and documentary production. It’s easy to operate and, using an IP control browser, users can control the camera from a PC, tablet or smartphone device.”

An image quality correction function allows for precision imaging; in addition to 12 conventional axes there are three skin tone axes for more accurate skin tones. Precise colour temperature settings can also be made with a dial to render colours, dependent on the application.

The Optical Image Stabilisation System (OIS) automatically corrects small vibrations, caused by doors opening and closing to enable stable video filming.

The Odyssey7Q+ offers uncompressed HD/2K recording in DPX stacks as well as HD/2K/UHD/4K video recording in Apple ProRes 422 (HQ), all included in the unit. In addition, Record Options for the Odyssey7Q+ are available for purchase or 24-hour rental via the Convergent Design website.

Options include ARRIRAW (ALEXA), Canon Cinema RAW (C500), FS RAW (Sony FS7 & FS700) and POV RAW (IO Industries and Indiecam cameras).

Visit www.convergent-design.com and www.newmagic.com.au

Tasmanian Inventor Launches Underwater Camera

Visit www.panasonic.com/au

FILMS ABOUT MARINE LIFE and the oceans remain popular subjects

Ikegami HC-HD300 3-CMOS HD Studio Camera System IKEGAMI’S HC-HD300 is a highly flexible docking-style camera for studio or field operation. A compact addition to Ikegami’s broadcast-ready Unicam HD product line, the HC-HD300 delivers the outstanding imagery and has the same rugged construction. It is equipped with a 1/3 inch bayonet lens mount and employs three 1/3-inch CMOS progressive-scan 1920 x 1080 native sensors in RGB prism formation.

Typical performance characteristics of the HC-HD300 in 1080/59.94i output mode are 1,000 television lines horizontal resolution, 58 dB signal-tonoise ratio and 2,000 lux sensitivity (89.9 per cent white reflection) at F10 aperture. Equivalent aperture in 1080/50i mode for this light level is F11.

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Supporting features of the HC-HD300 include the focus assist and lens aberration correction functions employed in Ikegami’s established UnicamHD range of cameras.

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The camera can be operated under local control or in conjunction with a newly developed control system. This consists of an FA-300 fibre adapter and BSF-300 base station. Light in weight and compact in size (1.5RU), the BSF-300 base station is easily integrated into any studio, mobile truck, or portable flypack. When using a hybrid fibre camera cable, the base station provides power to the fibre adapter and the camera itself.

Visit www.ikegami.co.jp

shown on the largest film screens around the globe, at venues such as Darling Harbour’s IMAX cinema and Melbourne Museum’s IMAX screen.

But filming underwater presents huge difficulties, especially in the 3D that most venues need these days. Traditional underwater housings reduce image quality and create distortion to such an extent that the images fall far short of what’s required for and possible on today’s giant screens and, in 3D, can actually cause uncomfortable eye strain. Typical cameras weigh more than 120kg and require cranes just to get them in the water, too.

DeepX 3D weighs in at less than 30kg and can be handled by a single cameraman, yet produces images that far surpass those of conventional camera systems. Using dedicated and optically matched underwater lenses, and a special formulation of reflective material that’s been specially developed for the the beam splitter mirror that evenly splits the highly polarised ambient light underwater. Achtel Pawel’s new camera system creates images that meet, and surpass, the 4K standard of today’s giant screen technology.

“We’ve been delighted by the international reception to our previous inventions, but the DeepX 3D is a major advance for us,” said Achtel.

“A single underwater cameraman can now do what hasn’t, until now, been possible even for a large crew with huge, cumbersome camera systems.”

Visit www.achtel.com

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MACS AND FASTEC HAS ANNOUNCED the release of an affordable high-speed 1080p HD production camera for TVC, Documentary, Sports and Drama. The New TS5-H 1080p is available for delivery from March.

Features include: + A new generation CMOS sensor for 1920 x 1080 recording at up to 634fps. 720p (1280 x 720) records at over 900fps. + 12-bit 5MP sensor with 5mm highly-sensitive, low-noise pixels + Long record times at high-speed frame rates in 1080p + Built-in video recording capability – no need for external recorders + Lens mounts available in PL; Cannon; Nikon and C-mount. + The TS5-H has a 7” touch-screen display, and all of the recording modes and features controllable from the screen. + Stand alone camera – no need for camera control computers + Compact – fit all you need in a backpack for hiking to remote locations + Supplied with FasMotion software for control of multiple cameras via a laptop or server + Rugged construction ideal for documentary makers working in difficult terrain + Internal and external battery powered + Compatible with Apple, Windows and Linux software systems Contact MACS on +61(0)2 9438 5836 or email enquiries@macsimage.com.au

ALEXA SUP 11.0 with ProRes 3.2K ARRI HAS ANNOUNCED that Software Update Packet (SUP) 11.0 for ALEXA cameras is now available for download from the company’s website, free of charge. ALEXA’s eleventh major update includes many new features, including an ALEXA ProRes 3.2K recording format for productions requiring 4K UHD deliverables, and ADA-5 – an enhanced debayering algorithm that further improves ALEXA’s image quality.

Available to ALEXA XT cameras and ALEXA Classic cameras with the XR Module upgrade, ALEXA ProRes 3.2K is a new recording resolution that uses 3.2K photo sites from the sensor to record a 16:9 3.2K ProRes file. The 3.2K sensor area was chosen because it is the largest area that can still be covered by almost all Super 35 PL mount lenses.

At data rates far below uncompressed ARRIRAW, ALEXA ProRes 3.2K provides the benefits of the well-established and efficient ProRes workflow. A straightforward up-sample from ALEXA ProRes 3.2K using standard post tools results in a 4K UHD deliverable of unsurpassed overall image quality.

The ARRI Debayer Algorithm ADA-5 represents an improvement in image quality for all ALEXA models, delivering clearer and sharper images. This is especially visible in small, high-contrast details (such as thin branches against a blue sky), which will exhibit smoother, cleaner edges.

Expanded media support is another feature of SUP 11.0, with all ALEXA cameras now able to support all generations of SxS PRO+ cards, and ALEXA XT/XR cameras able to support SanDisk CFast 2.0 128 GB cards.

ALEXA compatibility with the ARRI Electronic Control System (ECS) has also been expanded, with SUP 11.0 providing support for the new Lens Data Encoder LDE-1, as well as unlocking a number of new features when using the WCU-4 wireless hand unit.

Updates for ARRI AMIRA ARRI HAS ANNOUNCED the release of Software Update Packet (SUP) 2.0 for AMIRA cameras, and the subsequent release of SUP 3.0. The former unlocks 4K UHD recording for high-resolution pipelines, while the latter enables MPEG-2 MXF recording for streamlined, broadcast-friendly workflows. Together they stretch the already wide spectrum of AMIRA’s deliverable options at both ends of the scale, adding to the camera’s versatility.

AMIRA is designed for productions ranging from documentaries, reportage and corporate films to TV and low-budget movies, these two major software updates in the first half of 2015 will enhance the feature-set in ways that respond specifically to customer requests and industry trends.

AMIRA SUP 3.0 is scheduled for release mid-2015. The key new feature of AMIRA SUP 3.0 is the ability to record MPEG-2 422P@HL at 50 Mbit/s in an MXF wrapper. This XDCAM-compatible MPEG-2 recording format allows television productions to take advantage of AMIRA’s image quality and ergonomics, while utilizing a low-bandwidth codec that can easily be integrated into typical broadcast environments and workflows.

In order to further ease the integration of AMIRA into fast-paced television production environments, a new audio accessory will be released. Taking the form of an extension to the back of the camera body, it will equip AMIRA with a slot for a portable audio tuner/receiver.

Other features of SUP 3.0 will include a versatile camera remote control interface for multi-camera live or scripted productions; Super 16 mm lens support; an intervalometer function for time-lapse applications; and a host of general usability enhancements.

Meanwhile, AMIRA SUP 2.0 is scheduled for release in March 2015. 4K UHD recording is the major new feature of AMIRA SUP 2.0. Enabled by the software update, it is activated through the purchase of a 4K UHD license at the ARRI License Shop (and a camera sensor calibration at an ARRI service centre for cameras purchased in 2014).

The new 4K UHD recording format has been developed for productions that need to generate high-resolution deliverables. It allows ProRes codecs up to ProRes 4444 to be recorded in Ultra High Definition 3840 x 2160 resolution directly onto the in-camera CFast 2.0 cards, at up to 60 fps. Optional in-camera de-noising, sharpening and detailing tools permit the image to be optimized for specific applications or matched to different cameras and lenses.

Further enhancements provided by AMIRA SUP 2.0 include ProRes 3.2K recording (allowing cross-compatibility with ALEXA cameras running ALEXA SUP 11.0); WiFi remote support; the ability to monitor audio channels individually; additional lock functions to prevent the accidental pressing of buttons or switches; frame rate adjustments while in pre-record mode; frame grabs from the live camera image; and more.

Visit www.arri.com.au

New Canon HDTV Portable Zoom Lens CANON HAS ANNOUNCED a new HDTV portable zoom lens – the HJ24ex7.5B – offering a 24x zoom ratio. The new lightweight HDTV portable zoom lens is designed for broadcast shooting, including sports telecasts and news coverage, as well as indoor and outdoor locations.

The new HJ24ex7.5B achieves a focal-length range from 7.5 mm to 180 mm and employs an all-new zoom system. The advanced zoom system allows for high-resolution imaging performance, expanding the zoom range from close up to far away.

The new lens weighs approximately 30 grams less than its predecessor, making it the lightest body weight in its class. Featuring a centre of gravity that has been shifted towards the lens’s mount, the HJ24ex7.5B offers an optimal weight distribution for reduced physical stress, facilitating enhanced operability when shooting video while moving as well as during panning and tilting.

Other features of SUP 11.0 for all ALEXA models include improved web remote functionality, refined user buttons and the ability to save frame line and time zone information within the camera metadata.

The new Canon HJ24ex7.5B’s drive unit, ensures accurate detection of zoom, focusing and iris information. This information can then be output to a virtual system enabling users to combine CG (computer generated) images with video being shot live.

Visit www.arri.com

Visit www.canon.com.au

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Affordable High-Speed 1080p Camera

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Shane Hurlbut – High Octane Optics

By Keith Ford

AT FIRST GLANCE it wouldn’t seem like Act of Valor, a movie which followed active duty Navy SEALs into action, and Need for Speed, the movie adaptation of a racing car video game, would have much in common. But, thanks to Director of Photography Shane Hurlbut, they were both shot on Canon DSLRs. Act of Valor was Hurlbut’s first time shooting with a still camera, but he wanted to get in close so he had to use this untested camera system.

“I didn’t know how to expose it, I didn’t even know what the hell picture style it was. I was shooting 30P, and I was tricking the camera in a way to shoot manual exposure,” said Hurlbut. “But what I did know, it was the absolutely right tool to tell the story in a way that you never experienced a film before. It was going to immerse you.”

Act of Valor also got Hurlbut used to destroying cameras, a practice which can get extremely pricey unless you use a less expensive option.

“It took 17 5Ds to kind of keep up with the Navy SEALs, and we put those in harm’s way in every way, shape and form,” he explained. “What we did is we took a half inch piece of steel and we put it in front of the CF card area, so they could literally gun the camera down and blow the thing up and destroy the cheesy little $600 still lens, and we still captured the shot of all this tracer fire coming right into the lens.”

Before the Canon cameras were picked for Need for Speed, a rigorous test period was undertaken.

“We used nine cameras. One was the F65, the RED EPIC, the Arri Alexa, the Sony F55, the Canon C500, the Blackmagic, the Go Pro Hero 3, the Canon 1DC and good old 35-millimetre Kodak film. The test was labelled one to nine. Not knowing what the camera was, that the ISO was going to give it away, we would annihilate the ISO, we wouldn’t give all the information,” said Hurlbut.

“We put this through a battery of tests: overexposure, underexposure, film ratio, dynamic range, IR pollution, and different environments. Through this we also did night exterior, no noise, in the day, in the afternoon, in the evening. And Steven Spielberg sat in that theatre on the 40-foot screen and said ‘I want camera six’. The director said ‘I like camera six as well’. And I looked at my sheet. They selected the C500. And that became our night interior, night exterior, day interior, high speed crash camera, and hard rig camera. What was kicked to the B camera was the ARRI Alexa. I only used it for day exterior, and some day interior with the extremes. The 1DC became the helmet-cam, the crash camera, and the camera rigs. And the Go Pro Hero 3 was the blow up camera, the ‘light-the-bastard-on-fire camera’, and ‘toss-off-the-bridge-to-its-death’ cam. We just tossed it off the bridge, it was burning, on fire, melting the whole housing, it landed, and it was still rolling.”

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After choosing the cameras, the shooting schedule was cut to keep the budget in check. Generally, if a schedule is reduced by 13 days, there will be script re-writes to remove some of the more time intensive and difficult shots. Not so for Need for Speed. Instead, they brought in more cameras - a 50 camera package of 15 C500s, four ARRI Alexas, 11 Canon 1DCs and 20 Go Pros.

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“I had to systematically break down every action sequence in the whole film. Everything was storyboarded to the ‘T’. And then I would go in, and this thing was like a Bible in thickness, and every day I would pass it off to the grip, the electrics, and the camera,” explained Hurlbut. “They would know that this frame here is the space-cam or the Alexa Plus, the Canon, and on a Codex. They would know that this is a pod car, hostess tray, C500PL, or the 30-105 Canon slider. They knew where the rigs were, the hard rigs, all the different mounts.”

In Need for Speed, the car-racing action inevitably involved spectacular stunts and crashes which more often than not destroyed at least one camera.

To capture as much of the action as possible, Hurlbut and the stunt team mounted Go Pro’s all around the car. None of the stunts were CGI, other than to paint out other cameras in the shot.

“So we launch this car over four lanes of traffic. It jumps 97 feet. It’s got 10 Go Pros mounted to it as it flies. This was the shot of the century,” said Hurlbut. “When we did this stunt, the stunt man came up and there was a fluorescent X. He said ‘This is where you place your camera’. And I’m like ‘Really?’. He goes ‘Yeah, we go right over the top of that thing’. So we put our C500, its crash housing, 120 frames per second, 14-millimetre Cook, right there. And this guy hit it at 90 miles an hour.”

The direct hit at high speed sent debris from the C500, the crash housing, and the Go Pros in all directions. Among these was the 14mm Cook lens, which was found two city blocks away.

The cars used, which included a 1000 horsepower 2014 Ford Mustang built specifically for the production, a P1 McLaren, and Lamborghini Elemento’s, among others, often wouldn’t have a lot of space to cram a camera in. This was yet another reason that the C500 was the right choice for Need for Speed.

“Size does matter,” adds Hurlbut. “You should try sitting in it [the Elemento]. I got into the thing, and they had to get me out with a crane. We had to have a very small intimate camera, and that was the C500.”

Hurlbut also found that the way he lit scenes could be much more natural with the C500, including a scene at a drive-in theatre that was actually lit with a projector.

“What we found with this camera, the C500, is this baby owns the night,” explained Hurlbut. “Unlike anything we’d ever seen before. You have an ARRI Alexa that its native ISO is 800 ISO. At 4000 ISO on the C500 it has the same noise level as 800 on the ARRI Alexa. Put that into your head for a second.

That kind of reinvents the way you light. All of a sudden you’re lighting with matchsticks, or Georgia lighting and power, or a movie screen. With this, I set out on this mission to be able to light a drive-in like you would experience it with your own eyes, which is you drive into a drive -in, you park your car, the projector is firing into a white screen, and you can see the hoods and the reflection and everything illuminated. And if you step outside the car, you’re illuminated by this beautiful kind of whitish cool light.

“I literally took a 2K high luminance projector, blasted it from 150 feet away, and illuminated this screen, and this is what you see, the light reflecting on the blue of car, all on the grills, everything, this fill level is all from the screen.”

SPORTSCASTING Sport coverage worldwide

www.content-technology.com/sportscasting

Hostworks – Tour Down Under

By Keith Ford

Spurred on by CEO and cycling tragic Will Berryman, Adelaide-based company Hostworks are the primary digital distribution partner for the Tour Down Under – the biggest cycling race in the southern hemisphere.

“WHAT WE’RE DOING is using our infrastructure to take the international traditional broadcast feed, draw it in through our satellite infrastructure in Sydney, downlink it, encode it, and distribute it across our content delivery network (CDN) and then be responsible for the quality of service monitoring and reliability checks,” explained Berryman. “So that feed is being distributed as part of the official media supply for the Tour Down Under organisers, but it’s also feeding the Tour Tracker application as well, so people can enjoy the Tour Down Under on their mobile app, which is the first time that the organisers here in South Australia have done that.”

In order to maintain that quality of service, Hostworks implemented an adaptive bit rate (ABR) solution for iOS devices and a mid-tier profile for Android devices.

“The three profiles we’re using are pretty close. There’s a 400, a 700, and a 900 kilobits per second profile. We’re thinking about putting a higher bit rate in there as well, because we’ve got capacity on our CDN and coding can manage that,” added Berryman. “We have enough capacity; we’re one of the few digital media providers in the country that runs its own content delivery network. So we have our own CDN nodes in all the capital cities and in New Zealand.”

Much of the operations that Hostworks provides are run through their Media Foundry suite of services, which essentially manages and distributes content, both on-demand and live.

“Media foundry’s an initiative that we have here, that consists of lots of things. Everything from app development and user experience all the way

Hostworks’ duties extend beyond simply encoding for the live stream, nor is their work limited to the actual race. The event is fast moving and unpredictable, as is the case with many sports broadcasts, but few other sports both cover such great differences and have the potential for such wildly different run times.

Hostworks’ streaming master control for the Tour Down Under

Anytime an event like the Tour Down Under is being streamed, particularly to mobile devices, the myriad formats that need to be accommodated are huge and ever growing.

“A lot of the work that we do happens well before the event. Unlike television, where there are standards and all televisions work off the same standards and it’s pretty easy, with many different types of desktop device, mobile device; our guys have to do a lot of pre-planning to make sure that the video that we’re sending comes in enough formats – enough bit rates in order to accommodate people’s different bandwidth, people’s different device,” explained Berryman. “Earlier in the year we did a global Coldplay high definition audio livestream for Southern Cross Austereo, where we streamed a Coldplay concert to the world and I remember being involved in that and making sure that our audio stream was compliant to about 80 different devices. So it’s a lot of work that goes on beforehand to make sure that we’ve got enough capacity, got enough bit rates and that the video that we’re doing is absolutely compliant to the types of devices that people want to watch it on.

“When it’s actually time to actually do the Tour Down Under, it’s more of a quality of service and bandwidth management exercise that we’re doing, because all the hard work’s been done ahead of time, making sure we’re compliant.”

into some pretty heavy lifting technology,” said Berryman.

The beauty of Media Foundry and the way Hostworks sets up its workflow is that most operations can be automated to save time. There is, however, a constant human presence to monitor critical events.

“We can cache our content to the edge and manage it. You know, it’s not just a CDN, it’s kind of set and forget. There are guys that are sitting here watching its performance through the whole day and are able to manage variations,” said Berryman.

“When our customers are just working through our platform and our Media Foundry instances, they can actually just check the box and do a livestream and that will automatically capture or trigger a workload and push it out straight after. So when it’s finished, it’s just a matter of kicking off that transfer process,” adds Daniel Goldsworthy, General Manager, Product Factory – Development.

“Because we’re working with a production company on Tour Down Under, we’re just waiting for them to do their editing and all that stuff and at the end of the day, they just say, ‘Here, the packages are ready,’ and so then, we just mainly do the content ingestion, but our platform does support automated live to VOD workflow.”

Visit www.hostworks.com.au

SPORTSCASTING

“It’s quite a dynamic event – Stage 1 was fast, the cyclists were quick, so our guys had to be prepared to reorder the run down and make sure that it was as seamless experience as possible,” said Berryman. “At the same time, getting out of the hair of the production company – you know, the last thing they want to be worrying about are the types of things that we do.”

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SPORTSCASTING

Gearhouse Broadcast Lands it in the Net for Asian Football Cup COMPRISING 32 MATCHES across five cities in a one month timeframe, the AFC Asian Cup 2015, in Australia, was the largest televised footballsoccer tournament outside of the FIFA World Cup. Following selection by the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) Asian Cup Broadcast Services (ACBS), the entity that is the combined efforts of Gearhouse Broadcast as technical facilitator, McGuire Media as production service provider and HBS as production consultant, provided all the host broadcast services and facilities for the 2015 Cup. From its humble beginnings in 1956, the AFC Asian Cup has grown into the continent’s biggest football event bringing together Asia’s top national teams every four years. Television viewership figures for the group stages of the AFC Asian Cup in China, Japan and Korea Republic hit record numbers while the number of people attending the games in Australia reached over 400,000.

The official Twitter feed @afcasiancup, which ran in five different languages, reached more than 1.82 billion, making it one of the most talked about Asian football events in history and videos on YouTube clocked in excess 3.3 million views, with more than five million minutes watched. The tournament’s qualifying nations included regional football powerhouses Australia, Japan and Korea Republic alongside Iran, Korea DPR, Kuwait, Oman, Uzbekistan, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, China PR, Iraq, Palestine and Qatar.

Rights holding broadcasters included: beIN Sports (Arab League); Fox International Channels (Asia-Pacific); Fox Sports, ABC (Australia); SporTV (Brazil); CCTV (China); Eurosport (Europe); Now TV (Hong Kong); RCTI and SINDOtv (Indonesia); IRIB (Iran); TV Asahi (Japan); TV3 and TV9 (Malaysia ); Sky Sport (New Zealand ); ONE World Sports (North America); SABC (South Africa); KBS & SBS & MBC (South Korea); Channel 7 (Thailand); ABSCBN Sports+Action (Philippines); and SPORT-UZ (Uzbekistan).

Gearhouse Broadcast Sales Director and AFC Asian Cup 2015 Project Director Manny Papas explained the company’s involvement saying, “Gearhouse Broadcast has provided technical and broadcast facilities for many FIFA football world cups and it’s this experience that we brought to the AFC Asian Cup 2015.”

Gearhouse’s involvement in the AFC Asian Cup 2015 included providing all the technical and broadcast facilities for the host broadcaster and international unilateral rights holders such as TV Asahi and NHK from Japan. The company dedicated a crew of over 460 on the Asian Cup right around Australia.

SPORTSCASTING

For all 32 matches, signals were routed to Stadium Australia in Sydney which housed master control, simple apparatus rooms and served as a main hub.

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This was done, according to Manny Pappas, because of the venue’s high bandwidth infrastructure.

Telstra was contracted to provide DVN2 circuitry from all the venues to bring a main and a redundant circuit back from the venues to Stadium Australia in Sydney where all the signals were passed through a quality control (QC) area. From there they were passed back to an international gateway for uplinking into Asia, Middle East, and all other rights holding countries.

One of the challenges facing Gearhouse was the changes to radiofrequency spectrum which came into effect from January 1, and ensuring all stakeholders had the correct equipment to operate in the new bands.

Another factor in the “Spectrum spectrum” was the crowded sporting calendar - especially in Melbourne - during the January period. With the Australian Open Tennis on at the same time “just across the road”, there was “a very busy precinct of frequencies, radio cameras, uplinks, and so forth.”

Other events competing for time, personnel and resources in the same timeframe around Australia included tennis internationals in Sydney and Brisbane, cycling in Victoria and South Australia, AFL, A-League and NRL fixtures and the Cricket World Cup. Papas continued, “We have brought a world class production to Australia and this includes bringing in some world class people, such as famous FIFA football world cup director John Watts to direct the top tier games.”

Gearhouse provided 18-cameras (consisting of Hitachi SK1200, SK1500 and NAC ultra slow motion cameras) at each of the five stadiums (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Newcastle and Canberra) linked into its fleet of HD supertrucks that also use the latest in EVS replays, Lawo audio, VizRT graphics and Riedel comms systems. Most of the trucks were permanently installed at venues with the exception of one truck moving between Sydney and Newcastle.

Together with McGuire Media, Gearhouse also increased the number of camera angles, replays and pre-planned sequences for the AFC Asian Cup to give it a true FIFA world cup and world class feel. There were also more mics, audio and crowd effects than ever before at an Australian sporting event – something which significantly adds to the viewer experience.

Manny Papas concluded, “From a technical standpoint we significantly raised the bar. Also, as all Gearhouse OB trucks are identical we have the added benefit of being able to mix and match crew without issues. This helps producers, directors and operators do their jobs to the best of their abilities which, in a high pressure broadcast environment, is absolutely critical.”

Visit www.gearhousebroadcast.com

Magna Supplies ChyronHego Graphics for MCG

Techtel Wins NEP Super Truck Deal for TVLogic

Magna Systems and Engineering recently supplied a ChyronHego Mosaic graphics system to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) via the Australian systems integration division of Grass Valley, a Belden brand, who were the awarded the contract to upgrade the MCG’s control room by Cockram Constructions as part of the “Smart Stadium” project.

NEP AUSTRALIA (formerly Global Television) has selected TVLogic’s

Mosaic is a tightly integrated turnkey platform that scales to fit graphics production. Designed as a solution for demanding traditional or automated production workflows, Mosaic operates in combination with ChyronHego’s iSQ multi-playlist controller or a third-party automation playout interface.

When combined with ChyronHego’s Lyric PRO real-time and scriptless graphics creation application, Mosaic forms the cornerstone of BlueNetTM, ChyronHego’s end-to-end graphics creation and playout workflow solution.

Multi-Format LCD monitors for the fit-out in particular areas of its highlyanticipated OB fleet additions – HD11 and HD12. The monitors will be supplied by Techtel in early 2015 when the first “super truck”, HD11, is expected to be delivered and ready for technical fit-out, commissioning and testing by NEP’s systems integration team.

A factor for NEP Australia was the recent release of TVLogic’s free wall monitor management software, “Observer”. The Windows application is ideal in an OB environment as it provides comprehensive control of multiple monitors via network connection, allowing operators to control the monitors’ power, inputs, UMD and other features from their PCs.

The MCG’s Mosaic system is now live and in use displaying scores and other graphical data on the stadium’s two large Daktronics screens and in-house IPTV video system.

The monitors purchased include several from TVLogic’s new RKM range of rack mount monitors as well as a number of their 7” LVM-074W HD MultiFormat LCD Monitors.

Visit www.magnasys.tv

Visit www.techtel.tv

SPORTSCASTING

First-Class Service from Lawo at Australian Open RENTAL PROVIDER GEARHOUSE BROADCAST rolled in nine Lawo mc²56 audio mixing consoles, 21 x Lawo V__pro8 video processor units and a Nova73 HD router for the broadcast of the 2015 Australian Open tennis tournament.

Traditionally, the tournament attracts the tennis elite to the 30 tennis courts in Melbourne Park where, from 11 o’clock in the morning till late at night, they battle each other for the prestige of victory and the AUD$3.06 million prize money that awaits the winners of the singles games. The finals took place at 1 February in the Rod Laver Arena.

distribution and duplication of these networked signals,” explained Bowey.

Gearhouse has also supplied an additional four mc²56 mixing consoles to rights holders ESPN, Tennis Channel, Channel 7 and WOWOW. One of the large installations was that of the Seven Network. The console used there was a 48-channel MKII fitted with an additional 16 channel fader module, all of which were fully used on every layer with the channels from five DSP cards. The console was operated in Split Mode, with two separate monitoring outputs.

Visit www.lawo.com

Lawo staff went down under in order to support Gearhouse Broadcast in setting up and commissioning the Lawo systems.

Of the nine mc²56 consoles, five were networked via a Nova73 HD to provide sound feeds for host broadcaster, Tennis Australia. Four of the mixers were deployed to deliver sound from the Rod Laver Arena, Hisense Arena, Margaret Court Arena, and Courts 2, 3, 6 and 8. A further mc²56 provided the world feed for the rights holder. All stageboxes were interlinked by the central Nova73 router, and assigned via access rights management to the respective audio control rooms. A mixed 5.1 surround signal was sent to the V__pro8 units for embedding.

“The build of a system that had distribution flexibility was key for us during the design process and is why we chose to network the system. There were several surprises on the courts during the early days of the tournament and the technical infrastructure really held its own – as expected,” said Nick Bowey, Gearhouse’s Senior Audio Engineer.

SPORTSCASTING

“The inherent resilience of the networked system provided us with ultimate control of signals on the fly by use of extended matrix capability across six systems. We have also been able to provide a set of complete backup control rooms through the

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SPORTSCASTING

RoscoVIEW Sets the Pace for Tabcorp Park Studios

By Keith Ford

Playing host to over 130 harness racing meetings per year, Tabcorp Park in the southern Sydney suburb of Menangle includes a studio designed for the production of various racing broadcasts. After taking over management of the studio, production company Harbor Television found the facility had issues caused by exterior light. In order to combat these issues, company owner John Harbor looked to Rosco and its RoscoVIEW technology.

“WE’RE DOING A FEW SHOWS that span a fair few different directions. We use the studio for shows that are based around information for the punters, like a preview show where we’re got an expert that comes in and talks about the day’s racing every single day, and we Netcast that out, so that anyone that’s interested in having tips and so forth, they watch that show,” said John Harbor. “We’ve got another show that is called One on One, which is more of an intimate show between one of our experts and industry participants, and they talk about things that are more in depth, personal life stories, how they got to harness racing and so forth, as well as a few others. We’re just rolling them out fairly slowly at the moment.”

The lighting issue for these shows, as well as for live broadcast of the racedays, was that the studio windows look out onto the parade area. Not only does the large amount of natural lighting cause a lot of brightness, due to the nature of racedays, which last for hours, Harbor needed a solution that could be altered depending on the time of day and conditions.

SPORTSCASTING

“All the lighting in here is daylight balanced, so we’re basically just adding to what comes through. We don’t use Rosco beyond a closed set like that. And more so when there’s activity in the background, because we do daily stuff and there’s not racing here daily, unfortunately.

But when there’s no racing here, we used a closed set, so we can have something in the background that we can control,” explains Harbor. “On the days where there is racing,

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we’re more likely to use the windows with the RoscoVIEW, because then we’ve got the activity we’re looking for in the background, just to show the colour and everything else.

The RoscoVIEW just gives us the ability to have both areas outside and inside light balanced beautifully, correctly.

“In actual fact, the plan was always there to have the windows in position to use as a background, and sort of take advantage of the colour and the activity out there. But RoscoVIEW came in later, when we started looking at ways to control the light.”

Harbor looked at scrims and other solutions initially, but found that they would be more trouble than they are worth.

“Whenever we have shows in here that span midday through to midnight, and there’s a lot of lighting changes in that period, with the scrims it would be a matter of rolling the scrims up and down, and wheeling them in and out or whatever you want to do,” he added. “Whereas the RoscoVIEW is the twist of a knob on the control panel, or as simple as a twist of a filter on the camera, and we can control the light.”

The ease of use is central to the RoscoVIEW premise, a premise that is itself remarkably simple. RoscoVIEW is essentially just a polarising filter being applied to an external window with a corresponding polarising filter being added to a camera lens. The application on the window creates a very minimal tint for the room, but aside from that has no effect on

the light coming in to the naked eye. However, when looking through another polarising filter the light can be shut out completely, or by varying degrees depending on the angle of rotation.

“There was some questions on whether or not the window was a good idea before the RoscoVIEW went in. We knew we wanted it, but we jumped in all of a sudden, because the building was being built, but we hadn’t really solved the back lighting problem,” said Harbor.

“At that point, scrims were the only option we looked at, and then we thought, ‘how difficult is that going to make our job?’ This solves it. We can adjust it on the go, as the light changes.

“It’s just a lot more controllable, because you don’t have to position lights to deal with the light coming – because everything in the studio looks normal when you’re walking around the studio, but what the camera sees is the effect of the RoscoVIEW. So I suppose, setting lighting up becomes less of a chore, because you don’t have to worry so much about dealing with the incoming light,” adds Harbor. “You can get rid of a lot of that as far as the camera sees it, and you just have to deal with lighting the subjects more evenly. That’s a definite benefit, because a lot of times we’ve had situations in similar studios where the incoming light has been such a battle to deal with, we’ve had to disregard proper lighting techniques on the subjects, because you just have to do what you’ve got to do to get the shot. Whereas in this case, you can make the choices you need to make.”

The only issue that Harbor and his team have had so far is with monitors. Due to the way a lot of monitors are constructed, they also have polarising filters. This means that they interact with the cameras polarising filter in the same way that the window does, making them completely unusable in a studio using RoscoVIEW. “I went into Harvey Norman with that sheet of RoscoVIEW, wandering around – I think they all thought I was a nutter, but I had to show the guy what I was looking at. It was quite funny.

There are certain monitors in there that were quite okay; they weren’t affected at all. But there was others that were completely blacked out,” concluded Harbor.

Contact Harbor Television on +61(0)427 070 550.

Visit www.rosco.com

RoscoVIEW filter at various levels of polarisation [L-R] from completely open, part open, and completly closed.

NEWS OPERATIONS www.content-technology.com/newsoperations

Network Ten Moves to Vizrt Control Room Automation

IN 2014, WHEN AUSTRALIA’S NETWORK TEN began mulling the pros and cons of moving to automated control rooms and streamlining the in-house workflows to become more productive, it brought together a group of its top directors, technical directors, producers and engineers to collaborate on the project. Over a period of a few months, the network developed a migration plan that takes into account all of the facility’s departments and how they like to work.

This groundwork for installing two Viz Mosart broadcast automation systems from Vizrt proved to be very valuable throughout the installation and training process. For example, a lot of names created in templates used by the network’s ENPS newsroom computer system also appear in the ActiveX lists within Viz Mosart used by editorial staff. The multi-department discussions and careful planning led to a series of common terms that were understandable and logical to all parties involved, saving a lot of time and effort later.

Viz Mosart broadcast automation systems are now fully operational in the network’s total of four control rooms spread across its news studios in Brisbane, Sydney (the channel’s headquarters), and Melbourne, where two studios controlled by a Viz Mosart system produce news bulletins for Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth viewers. The network has also integrated the Viz Mosart systems with its online publishing system to support its website and other digital publishing channels.

The publishing system takes the as-run information from the Viz Mosart system as soon as the story has gone to air and uses it to automate the preparation of the news content for the “Tenplay” online catch-up service. This workflow dramatically reduces the manual process of clipping content for online and allows the digital producers at Network Ten to select the clips they want from the run-down, adjust any descriptive information and quickly publish to Tenplay.

“There are a couple of reasons why I think Network Ten had a good approach to this project,” said Michael Namatinia, President Vizrt APAC. “The editorial staff (producers) had an ownership of the project from day one. So, when they later were building ENPS templates and rundown skeletons, they understood not only how to do it but also why. This made it easier for them to train the newsroom staff in this new workflow.”

He added that with the participation of editorial staff, directors and engineers the network created the best workflow to suit Network Ten’s individual needs.

“The input from editorial staff helped put the automation template creation process on the right track from the start, and the producers from the group were also consulted whenever we saw that we had to deviate from the path that was agreed upon in the group,” he said. “Since Viz Mosart is a technical installation controlling technical devices in the control room it is left

to engineers and directors to decide how to design the system. But the choices made in the implementation process have a great impact on the workflow in the newsroom, and I think the participation of the editorial staff was very valuable. The challenge is to merge technical and editorial needs into one smooth operation.

Network Ten are now users of all major Vizrt product lines; graphics, MAM and studio automation.”

PRODUCTIVITY BOOST Leveraging the MOS protocol, the Viz Mosart system takes input from the network’s ENPS newsroom computer system, controls systems and devices, and allows a single operator to maintain control of both regular broadcasts and unpredictable live breaking news events.

Producers, reporters or technical staff input various commands for the equipment to be used in the NRCS rundown, in the traditional fashion.

Most of the traditional (and familiar) newscasts and studio production processes are maintained (such as story rundowns). However, they are handled in a different, much more efficient way.

For example, a “camera template” will contain a crosspoint command for the production switcher to cut to a given camera at an exact time during the newscast – either relative to another action taking place or responding to a keyboard command. The same template also defines which audio channels should be open while the camera is on air, and can even contain other items such as adjustments to lights, router switching, firing DVEs etc. To begin the process, a producer or journalist will fill in the commands, then a director or TD uses the Viz Mosart “Rundown Window” to check and make sure all of the commands correspond correctly.

In addition, any changes made to the show rundown in the newsroom computer system are automatically updated within the Viz Mosart rundown list immediately. All story rundowns are considered “live” until the last story has aired.

Jason Tuendemann, Chief Technology Officer at Network Ten, said the biggest challenge to implementation was getting everyone to understand how the system was going to work for their particular show and what the changes in workflow were going to be.

“We need to understand how our various roles would change and who would be responsible for which part of the workflow,” he said. “Change is always the hardest part and you need to provide confidence to staff that the future state will work successfully and the entire project team is supportive and committed to making it a success.”

Continued Page 23 

NEWS OPERATIONS

After much planning and months of integration work, Viz Mosart broadcast automation systems are now fully operational in the Network Ten’s total of four control rooms spread across the country.

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NEWS OPERATIONS

VSN Unveils Social Feeds and MOS Control of CG

Wearable Presenter Device ‘Projects’ Graphics on to Any Surface ORAD, the developer of interactive broadcasting solutions, and MUV, a provider of wearable interactive solutions, have combined their expertise to provide an interactive device, which is worn on a presenter’s finger and turns any surface into an interactive screen. Ideal in a studio environment, the presenter can stand anywhere and rotate, scale, move, drag, tap, hold, draw, highlight graphics on any surface.

MUV’s tracking technology can identify where the presenter is pointing to, standing, which surfaces are relevant, how much pressure is applied, etc.

The data from the MUV device, called Bird, is then transmitted to Orad’s Interact system, which presents the corresponding graphics on the surface.

For example, the presenter can drag any image on any wall in the studio or emphasise a particular object in the video wall.

WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT DEVELOPER, VSN and broadcast graphics company, ClassX, have collaborated to deliver MOS implementation for VSN’s graphics tool VSNCG+.

The joint efforts of the two companies enables VSNCG+ to control production graphics from any Newsroom Control System (NCS) using the MOS (Media Object Servers) standard industry protocol. In addition, new implementations made on VSN’s graphic module allow the user to broadcast social media messages in real-time with 3D effects and hundreds of eye-catching layouts.

The MOS implementation carried out by ClassX offers the ability to use a variety of template forms and enter new data, images or videos into pre-defined graphic animations directly from the editorial staff.

The graphics templates can be accessed directly from the NCS interface using an advanced ActiveX plugin. This allows users to navigate, previsualise and edit templates in real time, at final resolution.

The latest developments for VSNCG+ have also taken into account the increasing importance of social media and the new ways of communication that have developed during the past few years. Now, it is possible to present tweets from Twitter, Facebook posts and polls, all of them in real time, thanks to the integration with the Spredfast streams and the interaction with second screens through the app Parterre.

SocialPlayer integrates flawlessly with the graphics playout, and gives multiple connections, push notifications and instant updates.

Visit www.vsn-tv.com/en/

New Dejero Compact LIVE+ Broadcast Server DEJERO HAS LAUNCHED an all-new version of its rack-mounted Dejero LIVE+ Broadcast Server in a compact, 1U form factor. The new LIVE+ Broadcast Server includes dual-redundant power supplies and RAID hard drives.

NEWS OPERATIONS

The updated 1U LIVE+ Broadcast Server supports two live feeds simultaneously from different LIVE+ transmitters and outputs real-time genlocked HD or SD video that feeds into the playout workflow. In addition to live video, the server can also receive store-and-forward video clips, edited video packages or other files that may be used at the broadcast facility to complete a story.

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Dual 400W redundant power supplies ensure broadcast continuity if one power supply fails, and they can be hot-swapped while the server is in use.

For data redundancy and protection of stored data, the LIVE+ Broadcast Server now includes 2 x 1TB RAID hard drives. In addition, the new server features a quad-core Intel Xeon high-performance processor.

Visit www.dejero.com

“This ground-breaking solution opens the door for broadcasters who want to turn any surface into an interactive surface. Moreover, by having the sensors on the presenter’s finger, he or she can stand anywhere in the studio as opposed to standing in front of the interactive screen itself,” said Avi Sharir, CEO and president of Orad.

“We are confident that this unique solution will establish a new standard for broadcasters to present their content in a futuristic fashion, with minimum adaptations to their current studios. Once we enable the presenter to easily interact with holographic content floating around him, a new ecosystem of interactive content is expected to emerge,” added Rami Parham, CEO and founder of MUV. Visit www.orad.tv

Ultra-Small Newsgathering Bonding Device LIVEU, THE DEVELOPER OF PORTABLE live video acquisition, contribution and management solutions, has unveiled a new ultra-small cellular bonding solution for global newsgathering compatible with any camera.

Weighing just over 500 grams, (1 lb), the LU200 is available in a pouch or camera-mount configuration, bringing two built-in modems with integrated powerful antennas in a bonded solution for any video professional.

The flexible LU200 can also serve as a stand-alone video encoder with satellite integration functionality, or be used as a LiveU DataBridge mobile hotspot for all IP applications in the field.

The LU200 supports two 4G LTE/3G modems together with Wi-FI and LAN connections and includes LiveU’s proprietary antenna modules for extra resiliency.

The LU200 is the latest offering within LiveU’s multi-layered live video ecosystem and can be locally or remotely managed via LiveU Central, the unified management system for LiveU’s field-units. As the hub for video ingestion, LiveU Central allows broadcasters to acquire both live and recorded content from the field, preview it centrally or remotely, broadcast it live or in scheduled programming and distribute it to any location.

Visit www.liveu.tv

NEWS OPERATIONS  Continued from Page 21

OPERATIONAL BENEFITS

However, the main reason for the move to production automation was a desire to increase the efficiency of its operation while not reducing the flexibility or impacting the consistency of the news programs and special “bulletins” it produces on a daily basis.

For the Network Ten staff, the Viz Mosart system has brought immediate benefits, according to Polley, such as a reduction in operational requirements for each news bulletin; the ability to share common stories across studios; a sharpness and consistency that you would expect of automated events; unlimited visibility into the control room by being able to extend the automation views and timing information to the newsrooms – including across geographical locations such as Melbourne to Perth, Australia.

John Polley, Broadcast Operations Manager at Network Ten, said they immediately saw the efficiencies and other benefits of having a common interface and operation across multiple sites whereby the team could move and share stories without having to worry about the differing underlying technologies of each studio facility.

Tuendemann added that they chose the Viz Mosart system because it is hardware agnostic, meaning it could control the different third-party video and audio equipment—such as the ENPS newsroom computer systems, Grass Valley, Snell, and Sony HD video production switchers, Harmonic Spectrum servers, Calrec and Yamaha audio mixing consoles, across the network’s four studio control rooms (located in different cities).

“While we replaced some components we didn’t want to have to replace everything for this project,” Tuendemann said. “Viz Mosart allowed us to integrate and control existing and new hardware which reduced our up front capital requirements and fitted into our infrastructure investment cycles.

The other reason we chose the Viz Mosart system is that it abstracted the newsroom system from the control room hardware and looked after all the associated mapping of crosspoints. This means the news and operational staff do not have to worry about where the story is going to be played from or having to change crosspoints or inputs depending on the studio.”

Tuendemann said he and his team found Vizrt as a company to be very responsive and open. “We asked for a demo and within 24 hours of providing some server hardware they had integrated and setup a demo in one of our studios with our equipment. That was pretty impressive and the demo was opened up to other potential customers of Viz Mosart to view.”

However, the main reason for Network Ten’s successful implementation of the Viz Mosart system into its existing facilities – without negatively affecting on-air operations – was its willingness to get everyone involved with the production process to weigh in early with how they wanted it to work.

“Ten has done a number of these types of projects over the years and recognises that the more collaboration you have among your staff, the greater success, so it is essential,” Tuendemann said. “Our Operation teams are very focused on the changes to workflows, staff training, rehearsals and procedures. This level of detail and engagement provides the News department with comfort that everyone is committed and focused to support it going to air and making it a success. In the background there is regular dialogue between the head of departments to check in on progress and the level of confidence of the teams.”

This collaboration throughout the implementation process also included the product engineers and other staff at Vizrt, he said.

“To have a successful technology project you not only need a great project team, as we did, you also need a good technology partner that is responsive to the customer’s needs and understands the value of a long term relationship,” Tuendemann said. “We look forward to continuing our relationship with Viz Mosart and seeing a tighter integration to the broader Vizrt products.”

Visit www.vizrt.com

POST PRODUCTION www.content-technology.com/postproduction

Iloura Brings Spongebob Squarepants to CG-Life Animation, Nickelodeon, Director Paul Tibbett and SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg to ensure that the transition of the SpongeBob team of characters from 2D to 3D was as smooth and authentic as possible.

“We knew we had a huge responsibility with this film, as the audience is seeing the SpongeBob cast for the very first time as 3D characters and that transition was extremely important to Paul and Stephen,” said Melenhorst.

“We spent a lot of time in the design phase and R&D drawing on the essence of the 2D characters, but also focused a lot of attention on the rigging and modelling before going in to animation.”

Iloura’s work extended to the ‘super-hero’ versions of the characters, which provided a fun and unique way to play with the cast and the story.

AUSTRALIAN ANIMATION & VISUAL EFFECTS STUDIO Iloura has brought SpongeBob Squarepants and his merry band of friends to CGlife for his second feature film, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. Completing 550 shots for the 3D-2D-Live action hybrid, Iloura was appointed the important task of building and animating the SpongeBob entourage for its big screen debut as CG characters.

Iloura’s VFX Supervisor Glenn Melenhorst and Executive Producer Ineke Majoor employed more than 100 artists and worked closely with Paramount

DDP Studios Upgrades SGO MISTIKA System for 4K DELUXE AUSTRALIA’S post-production studio, DDP Studios, recently completed upgrades to its two SGO MISTIKA systems in preparation for high resolution and high-frame rate work, including 4K UltraHD. Nic Smith, Head of Technology at Deluxe Australia, commented, “We are seeing a healthy number of enquiries from our local and international clients to finish their projects at 4K. MISTIKA is un-matched for speed and efficiency when it comes to handling mixed resolution camera source files in their native RAW format, so the obvious strategy for us was to extend its capabilities by upgrading to MISTIKA OPTIMA specification.”

The upgrades, supplied by Mojo Media Solutions, SGO’s official Australian Reseller Partner, allow DDP Studios to work in real time at project resolutions of up to 4096 x 4096 and 60 frames per second.

With native file format support for all commonly used high-resolution digital cinema cameras, including ARRI, Sony and RED, a MISTIKA OPTIMA timeline can be a mixed bag of file formats, resolutions, aspect

POST PRODUCTION

ratios, frame rates and bit-depths without needing to transcode first.

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Working natively with such formats avoids the unnecessary ballooning of data on disk, as well as time consuming transcode render passes and copying, which at 4K and High Frame Rates becomes at least 8x more of an issue than when working at HD or 2K. Visit www.ddpstudios.com.au and www.mojomediasolutions.com

Further work included Burger Beard’s (Antonio Banderas) ship, CG seagulls, pelicans, cannon balls and a fighting skeleton pirate. Careful attention was also paid to the environments which included streetscapes, beaches, and a CG ‘Pelican Island’.

“A lot of the authenticity of the SpongeBob characters was reliant on how they appeared in their environments,” continued Melenhorst. “We knew that if they didn’t interact naturally in the outside world we would lose the trust of the audience, so we invested a lot into the environments and concentrated on detail such as lighting and the interaction with sand particles on the beach for instance.”

Visit www.iloura.com.au

Deluxe Australia Launches DailiesVu EXTENSIVELY USED on Hollywood productions, Deluxe DailiesVu is a proprietary technical platform which streamlines the entire production process and is completely scalable for large and small projects. It is now available to New South Wales & Australian productions.

Production Company Mythology Entertainment (White House Down) and filmmaker Brad Fischer (Black Swan, Zodiac, Shutter Island) recently used the platform in Australia for use on the feature Truth, shot entirely in New South Wales, starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford.

According to Fischer, “Deluxe DailiesVu created efficiencies right across our production. It was essential for us to have a flexible, cost-effective and secure platform that our entire production and post-production teams can benefit from.

"Our team over in the US could view dailies footage from Sydney on their iPads, all while Deluxe’s DDP Studios’ on-set and in-house teams were housing and managing our data feeds into our Editorial, DI and VFX pipelines.”

Deluxe DailiesVu is a customisable and secure tool to view dailies footage; content owners can grant expanded access to content on a case-by-case basis regardless of location, set notifications about who has viewed content, download content for off-line viewing and manage expiry and archiving. All footage is securely stored on Deluxe’s servers; after an extensive QC process content is then released to viewers through the Deluxe DailiesVu system and Deluxe’s own private Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Visit www.bydeluxe.com

POST PRODUCTION

Fairfax Media Refreshes Xsan Environment with StorNext When traditional newspaper giant Fairfax Media realised that an Apple Xserve/Xsanonly environment could no longer meet its mission-critical server and storage needs, it selected Quantum’s high-performance StorNext storage and collaboration platform.

The transition was seamless, and the redesigned workflow has enabled a 40 percent increase in productivity.

wanted to have roadmap decisions of a single supplier put our own plans in jeopardy. In addition, we absolutely had to have a smooth transition— we are in the news business and needed to be able to get to a working system fast, in a way that did not disrupt the tools and processes that our editors were already using.”

FAIRFAX MEDIA is one of the leading media companies in Australia, and—like other organisations originally founded on traditional print — has been rapidly expanding its publishing to include web and online delivery systems. So when the team in charge of creating and posting video for the company’s many online services realised that its legacy partner, Apple, was changing its approach to media workflow solutions, the team knew a change was needed to support Fairfax’s continued rapid growth.

After looking at all the options, Fairfax chose an appliance-based Quantum StorNext solution, including StorNext Q-Series high-performance disk storage and a StorNext metadata appliance for file sharing and serving as the underlying file system.

“In the old days, the team started out with a few individual Mac edit suites,” explains David McMillan, Head of Production at Fairfax Media. “But we quickly upgraded to shared storage built around Apple’s Xsan to give better workflow, faster performance, and a more collaborative approach.

We had to do that to keep up with the growth in demand for video content and to meet the short production cycles that always characterise a newsdriven organisation.”

The system that Fairfax built was Apple to the core — Xserve RAID storage, Xsan on Xserves for high-speed collaboration, and Mac edit stations running Final Cut Pro as the primary production tool. “The expanded system served us well and got us to a production system that could sustain production of 300 video clips a week,” says McMillan.

“But we knew we were going to need more. So when Apple announced the end-of-life plans for Xserve RAID and changes to the roadmap for Final Cut Pro, we realised we needed to rethink our approach and look for additional partners with a firm, longterm commitment to supporting video production.”

Several factors were critical as Fairfax looked for alternatives. It needed high-performance shared storage for collaborative media workflows, with multiple editors sharing high-resolution content — the company already had some workstations re-sharing over Ethernet and knew that faster performance was a requirement. Fairfax also wanted a partner that was not only experienced in storage and media and entertainment workflows but also had a roadmap that provided a vision for improving workflow efficiency and productivity as well as a commitment to the market. In addition, scalability was important to support a rapidly growing demand for the department’s production, and so was the option of expanding storage choices in the future to take advantage of lower-cost, highercapacity archive technology.

POST PRODUCTION

“We really wanted to put ourselves in a position to take advantage of more hardware and software options today as our business evolves,” says McMillan. “And even though we liked Apple products, we no longer

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With those requirements in mind, the Fairfax team looked at all the alternatives, both doing its own research and using an experienced integrator, Computers Now. The company rejected some because of technical limits, including requirements to use a specific file format or proprietary media management tools. Those would have demanded too steep a learning curve for the production team and would have again involved too much reliance on a single supplier. In other cases, the team rejected suppliers that did not demonstrate a long-term commitment to the video production market.

We chose Quantum partly for technical reasons—the products were just what we needed—but also because the Quantum team understands the video production environment like no one else we talked to,” explains McMillan. “We also checked with a lot of Quantum customers in our field and heard only positive comments. That experience in helping others gave us very high confidence that we’d be able to pull off the transition quickly and easily.”

The installation went smoothly — the entire implementation stage was completed on a four-week timeline, and the final roll-out took place over one weekend. In the last week, staff copied content from Xsan to removable media. After users went home on Friday, the Quantum and Computers Now team worked with Fairfax over the weekend to import all the data into the new system.

“The Quantum team was terrific to work with,” explains Laura Dowd, Account Manager at Computers Now. “They really knew what they were doing and finished the job quickly.” “When the editors came in on Monday morning, all the data was there on StorNext, all the tools worked just like before, and everything was ready to go,” says McMillan. “No interruptions, no delays, no retraining — it was great.”

According to McMillan, the new system is already paying dividends in productivity. “We’ve increased the number of clips we can publish per week by about 40% with a very small staff increase,” says McMillan.

Fairfax has already begun to plan the next phase of its system, taking advantage of StorNext’s flexible, open approach to platform support (the team installed its first Adobe editing suites, with plans to expand in the future). “We really like the idea of adding the StorNext archiving capability, including Quantum’s LTObased StorNext AEL Archives,” continues McMillan. “That will let us make copies of our content on tape automatically, both to protect it and archive it, but still let us access it quickly for re-use, something that we need to do all the time. It will speed up our process and give us a much more economical platform than one built only on disk storage.”

Visit www.quantum.com

POST PRODUCTION

Blackmagic Design Unveils DaVinci Resolve 11.2 BLACKMAGIC DESIGN has announced DaVinci Resolve 11.2, which adds improved CinemaDNG RAW image processing with new soft clipping features, improved round trip workflows with Avid Media Composer 8.3, DNxHR support and more.

DaVinci Resolve 11.2 is available for download now free for all existing DaVinci Resolve customers. DaVinci Resolve 11.2 includes improvements to CinemaDNG RAW image processing. Customers can take advantage of new colourspace transform enhancements when decoding RAW files for more realistic Rec. 709 and P3 colourspace images. New soft clip options are now available when converting high dynamic range CinemaDNG RAW images into Rec. 709 colourspace.

DaVinci Resolve 11.2 also makes it easier to work with Avid editors because users can now move both high resolution media and sequences back and forth between the two systems. New DNxHR encoding and decoding lets customers work natively and share the same high resolution media files, and improved AAF import and export lets editors and colourists round trip projects with Media Composer 8.3 more accurately and reliably than ever before.

Additional features in DaVinci Resolve 11.2 include the ability to select RGB pixel order when working with DPX 2.0 files, new flag and marker support in ColorTrace, and support for the Red SDK 5.3.

Visit www.blackmagicdesign.com

BroadcastSafeMC8 for Avid Media Composer EYEHEIGHT HAS ANNOUNCED a further expansion to its range of broadcast compliance plug-ins with the addition of BroadcastSafeMC8.

Designed for use with the latest versions of Avid’s widely used Media Composer editing software, Eyeheight’s BroadcastSafeMC8 incorporates a Broadcast Evaluate display indicating which parts of a video image require adjustment in order to be fully broadcast compliant.

Eyeheight’s BroadcastSafeMC8 displays non-compliant areas of content in a user-definable colour with the option of manual or automatic correction, giving editors greater choice in the way they work.

Previously, this was an auto-only function. BroadcastEvaluate supports all common compliance standards. Users can alternatively define their own compliance standard as an XML file.

BroadcastSafeMC8 comes complete with BroadcastSafeArea which can be used to generate a wide range of safe-area markers for superimposition over the video monitor display. BroadcastSafeArea supports a multitude of standards including SMPTE, EBU and DPP, in 525/625 standard definition, 720/1080 high definition and 2K line formats.

Visit www.eyeheight.com

Interactive HFR Frame-Blending AT THE RECENT HPA 2015 Tech Retreat in the U.S., Colorfront debuted Interactive HFR Frame-Blending – a creative capability giving real-time control over the motion blur of objects in an HFR sequence.

Colorfront demonstrated Interactive HFR Frame-Blending using ALEXA ARRIRAW footage, shot at 120FPS with an open shutter, being debayered in 4K on-the-fly.

Using a simple slider interface, this new capability allows users – both on-set and in post production – to incrementally adjust shutter angles on HFR footage between 72º and 360º, and to perform realtime frame blending. Along with providing control over motion blur, this new capability also delivers the ability to retime shots and create speed ramps. Colorfront has published a clip of Interactive HFR FrameBlending at http://vimeo.com/119155061.

Colorfront Interactive HFR Frame-Blending supports a wide range of digital cameras that can shoot 120FPS HFR RAW/ProRes footage, including ARRI Alexa, RED Epic, Canon C500, Sony F55/F65, Panasonic VariCam 35 and AJA Cion. It is available in Colorfront On-Set Dailies and OSD Transkoder 2015.

Visit www.colorfront.com

Avid Media Composer, Media Access Certified for UK DPP Delivery Standards AVID HAS ANNOUNCED that Avid Media Composer | Software and a new release of the Avid Media Access (AMA) AS-11 plugin form the first professional non-linear editing solution to receive certification as part of the UK-based Digital Production Partnership’s and Advanced Media Workflow Association’s new compliance programs.

The new file-based delivery specification, AS-11 DPP, is a subset of the AMWA Application Specification AS-11 and has been written to satisfy the needs of UK broadcasters for the delivery of finished programs. AS-11 DPP delivery came into effect in the UK from October 2014.

Powered by the Avid MediaCentral Platform and part of the Avid Artist Suite, Avid Media Composer | Software (version 7.0.4.1 onwards) along with the latest AMA AS-11 plugin (version 1.0.3) have been specifically developed to make exported files from Media Composer conform to the new specification.

This enables editors to include relevant program metadata in a digital file, ensuring the descriptive program metadata travels with the file all the way through the post production workflow to final broadcast transmission. It also enables a season’s worth of episodes to be tagged quickly and easily.

Media Composer | Software customers using previous versions of the AMA AS-11 plugin will need to update their plugin to version 1.0.3 to create AS11 DPP-compliant files.

Visit www.avid.com

Blackmagic Announces Intensity Pro 4K Capture Card for SD, HD and Ultra HD that allows capture and playback of extremely high quality SD, HD and Ultra HD video on Windows, Mac and Linux PCI Express computers.

The new Intensity Pro 4K includes all the features of the Intensity Pro model it replaces and now adds deep color support in HDMI, higher frame rate 1080p60 capture and playback and high resolution Ultra HD capture and playback up to 2160p30 via HDMI. This new model now allows customers to connect to an even wider range of video products and in higher quality.

The new Intensity Pro 4K features both HDMI and analogue YUV, composite and S-video connections so it is compatible with the latest Ultra HD televisions and game consoles, as well as older equipment.

Customers can capture NTSC, PAL, 720HD, 1080HD and Ultra HD, the newest broadcast video standard. Regular 1080HD can be captured at up to 60 frames per second.

Intensity Pro 4K also includes DaVinci Resolve Lite for Mac and Windows, giving customers a complete video capture and post production solution.

Video can be captured at full 10-bit quality and files can be saved in standard formats such as ProRes (Mac) and more, or as fully uncompressed video. Files captured with Intensity Pro 4K can also be used with other popular Mac and Windows applications like Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro, Vegas Pro, Media Composer, Fusion, After Effects, Flash and many more.

Visit www.blackmagicdesign.com

POST PRODUCTION

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN has announced Intensity Pro 4K, a new PCIe card

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POST PRODUCTION

Avid Releases New Version of Media Composer AVID HAS ANNOUNCED the availability of the latest version of Avid Media Composer | Software, which allows video professionals to acquire, manage, edit, and deliver native 4K and other high-res media faster and more efficiently than ever.

Leveraging the new Avid Resolution Independence architecture and Avid DNxHR encoding, Media Composer offers a complete and flexible end-to-end workflow for file-based editing of any resolution. This new release helps content creators deliver higher quality content in more collaborative, powerful, and efficient ways – a key part of Avid Everywhere. Leveraging the Avid MediaCentral Platform, Media Composer is part of the Avid Artist Suite of industry-standard creative tools.

Avid Resolution Independence provides a holistic, platform-centric approach that puts no limits to the resolutions customers can capture, edit, and output. Media professionals can work with the broadest variety of media in every resolution – SD, HD, 4K and beyond – using their existing infrastructure. Media Composer is the first Avid product to support Resolution Independence, with support for more products and solutions across the MediaCentral Platform coming soon.

At the centre of the Avid Resolution Independence architecture is Avid DNxHR, a new extensible media codec that makes it possible to edit and deliver high-res content within HD-capable infrastructures. Offering greater beauty without the bandwidth, DNxHR scales from lightweight proxies to mastering-quality high-resolution media.

Visit www.avid.com

Tessive Introduces Time Shaper TESSIVE HAS INTRODUCED TIME SHAPER, a new way to create smooth, accurate motion at standard output frame rates. The concept is simple: employ the capabilities of new digital cinema cameras to acquire footage at a high frame rate, then use Time Shaper to render footage at standard frame rates with precise and fluid motion.

With Time Shaper, you can dramatically render panning and action shots with a feel never before possible. Time Shaper’s “Synthetic Shutters” offer the ability to reduce judder and make scenes more lively and present than ever before.

Time Shaper runs on OS X, and supports ProRes, ARRIRAW, and ACES file formats.

Visit www.tessive.com

Quantel Pablo Rio Delivers World First 8K 60p Post Workflow QUANTEL HAS UNVEILED a new Pablo Rio working in realtime at 8K 60p. The new Pablo Rio system makes 8K 60p post-production practical as 8K moves out from the laboratory into real-world production.

POST PRODUCTION

Pablo Rio is a high quality colour correction and finishing system that runs on high performance PC hardware. The new Pablo Rio 8K has three significant power-ups compared to previous systems:

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Realtime 8K 60p input and output via 16 3G SDI interfaces using the latest AJA Corvid 88 multichannel I/O boards to achieve the necessary number of connections in a practical unit Realtime 8K 60p processing using the NVIDIA Tesla K80 GPU accelerators.

Super-optimised software to sustain the 5GBytes/s throughput required for real-time recording, processing and playback of 8K 60p Visit www.quantel.com

Volicon Announces Collaboration with Adobe VOLICON HAS ANNOUNCED that it has collaborated with Adobe to enable a rapid workflow for capturing aired content and making it instantly available in Adobe Premiere Pro CC video editing software.

Using Volicon’s Observer Media Intelligence Platform along with Adobe Premiere Pro CC, broadcasters and other content producers can radically accelerate the repurposing of aired audio and video for rebroadcast, bringing breaking news promos, sports highlights, weather updates, and other timely pieces to air very quickly and simply.

The Observer Media Intelligence Platform, equipped with Volicon’s Capture application, provides an easy-to-use live or linear acquisition solution that works across the diversity of sources: baseband, MPEG-TS, or post-STB. Recording around the clock, the platform can encode live, network contribution, and cable/satellite/ IPTV feeds and make them available within seconds to users — without the costs and constraints of user-based licensing — via an intuitive browser-based interface.

Working with the Observer interface, multiple editors can review content as it is captured, immediately clip high-value footage, and push long GOP H.264-encoded media clips directly to Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Supporting a range of incoming containers and codecs, Adobe Premiere Pro CC accepts this content from the Observer platform without requiring any time-consuming transcoding or repackaging.

Visit www.volicon.com

Ready-Motion.com Offering Keyframed Animation Re-Targeting READY-MOTION.COM offers instant access to professional, handanimated movement cycles “ready-made” for your own characters.

Professionally key-framed, Ready-Motion.com’s stylised walk and run cycles offer greater expression and flexibility, going beyond the technical-realism that motion-capture delivers.

Rigs use predefined Autodesk Maya HIK for easy re-targeting to your own characters, but with the use of Autodesk’s FBX data exchange format they are compatible with most other software.

Ready-Motion will launch with a range of walk and run cycles, but will continuously build its database to include a wider range of motions.

Visit http://ready-motion.com

Metus Previews QuickCut METUS QUICKCUT is a new lightweight clip editor. The professional tool plays, trims and assembles clips, and exports files without rendering. It enables editors and non-editors alike to make cuts on the fly, significantly reducing programme turn-around times.

The Windows-based software is able to operate on even modestly specified laptops and desktop PCs, yet has the power to support professional formats including MXF, XDCAM, MPEG-2, MP4.

Edits exported from QuickCut can be used instantly live on air or incorporated into larger projects using users’ existing NLE. At launch, Quickcut is bundled with Ingest Professional, Metus’ multi-channel Ingest, streaming and transcoding solution. A standalone license will launch at a future date.

Visit www.metus.com

MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT HbbTV – Driving the Data

By Keith Ford

Following the acquisition of Unicorn Media in January 2014, Brightcove formed a new Media Group led by Anil Jain as Senior Vice President and General Manager, Media. Anil spoke to Content +Technology about the Australian market and the recent addition of Hybrid Broadcast Broadband Television (HbbTV) to the landscape.

“THE MEDIA INDUSTRY in particular, is one of maybe five or six global industries that is truly going through a massive disruption brought about by digital technology,” said Jain. “The vast majority of data traffic in the next few years will be video hits and that’s not on all premium content but it is video content. The consumer’s expectations drive the entire trillions of dollars of industry and that’s what we sit in the middle of today.”

There are many similarities between the US and Australian market, but also key differences. Online streaming is only beginning to take off in Australia while it has been a game changer in the US for many years. The new technology Australia is embracing, as opposed to the US, is HbbTV.

MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT

“At a macro-level everyone is buffeted by the same winds of change, the same major industry drivers, that’s everywhere, no different here than in the North America or UK or anywhere else. The differences are subtler today but manifest themselves in interesting ways. One is the perspective on advertising and the majority of media businesses tend to be adsupported media, but a number of customers we’ve talked to in the US, they’re looking to replicate the ad load if you will on long form content online like they do on linear, and here there’s a number of customers that say, ‘Well our consumers won’t accept that’,” explains Jain. “The other thing is of course HbbTV, which is not a North American thing at all.”

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“The thing that’s unique about HbbTV here is the collaboration between the broadcasters. That is unique to my knowledge, it looks like they’re planning to do a similar strategy in New Zealand, but I don’t know anywhere in Europe where the technology’s been adopted but they’ve had across the broadcaster body that coordinated approach,” added Mark Blair, Vice President, Asia Pacific at Brighcove. “We’ve got them all onboard, it’s quite unique for the broadcasters in a lot of markets but arguably in Australia it’s very unique for them to work together. I mean I can’t actually think of a time that the broadcasters in Australia have ever worked together, even when they’re lobbying the government.”

Broadcasters, both Free-to-Air (FTA) and Subscription, are trying to get the seamless move to On Demand where you don’t even notice that you’re going to IP. HbbTV is the FTA way of doing this and will only get more seamless as services expand and consumers get used to the system.

“The thing that’s unique to me is like the comparing it with a connected TV, like a traditional connected TV, smart TV experience, is an end user you have to log out of broadcast and log into IP to be able, and then when you’re in IP you need to log into a particular service and log out of that and either log into broadcast or log into another IP service provider,” said Jain. “That transition between both different providers of content and different and IP and not IP, is much more seamless with HbbTV. There’s still some transition stuff goes on there from a technology perspective, but it’s as seamless as it can be, given the constraints of networking and the device, which I think is

Anil Jain, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Media, with Brightcove.

going to drive more adoption on connected TVs to look at the IP. “The other thing that’s interesting to me between where pay operators, as opposed to the free-to-airs, is the pay TV operators, will have had access to data for some time just by the very nature of the way that technology works; there’s a conditional access card in the box, they’ve known who you are for quite some time. That’s entirely new to the free-to-airs on the big screen, the fact that, and one of the capabilities that’s not often promoted around HbbTV, is every time someone switches a channel on a HbbTV compliant device, you can send a ping back.”

This is breaking new ground for FTA broadcasters, who have long been searching for ways to get more accurate data on their viewers to inform their decisions.

“The reality is that everyone wants to be able to make data-driven decisions, and they’ve been unable to do so. I mean they do on a regular basis, the problem is it’s imperfect data. Broadcasters will tell you that we rely on panel-based ratings for the ratings for content but those forecasts are estimates, they’re estimates based on a small sample population, we know they’re wrong, it’s just that we all agree they all use the same raw data. Maybe that’s fundamentally what’s happening across the value chain between the broadcasters and the media buyers and the advertisers and it’s kind of ridiculous but there’s billions of dollars being spent doing that,” explained Jain.

“The promise of internet delivery, video is that you get one-to-one data, we have very precise data, we can measure almost anything. You know how much of a piece of content was actually watched, when did they drop off, if the ad in a roll is put in at ten minutes versus 15 minutes and it was two hours versus three hours, what’s the effect? What ads with which content performed the best, all types, you can ask almost any question and if you’ve instrumented it properly, you collect the data. The problem is there’s so much complexity right now that the data is not being collected mathematically and with HbbTV this ping back capability actually introduces new data that is not been able with linear broadcasting.”

Visit www.brightcove.com

MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT

Quantum Unveils Q-Cloud Solutions QUANTUM CORP. HAS ANNOUNCED three new solutions that integrate the cloud into multi-tier, hybrid storage architectures for demanding data workloads. Rejecting the generic one-size-fits-all approach, the new Q-Cloud solutions enable customers to leverage Quantum’s intelligent data management software to store data in the cloud when it makes the most sense for a given workflow or application.

Q-Cloud Archive and Q-Cloud Vault incorporate the power of the public cloud as an off-site tier within a Quantum StorNext 5 workflow environment, while Q-Cloud Protect for AWS enables customers using Quantum’s DXi deduplication appliances to replicate data to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

Taking into account both the benefits and challenges of the cloud, Quantum’s approach is to enable customers to combine public cloud storage with on-premise storage in a multi-tier, intelligently managed, application-centric architecture. Quantum integrates the cloud as an active tier in a hybrid storage infrastructure driven by application requirements. This comprehensive approach provides customers with an optimal mix of performance, access, scale and efficiency and is the basis for not only today’s Q-Cloud announcements but also new cloud offerings Quantum is currently developing.

Q-Cloud Archive and Q-Cloud Vault are public cloud storage services delivered by Quantum, with Q-Cloud Archive providing fast, on-demand access to data in the cloud and Q-Cloud Vault offering “cold storage” for long-term data retention and disaster recovery. Key features and benefits beyond general cloud advantages include: Full integration as a tier in StorNext 5-managed workflows, with automated, policy-based data movement; No additional hardware, separate applications or programming needed; Agility in addressing changing workload demands; Reliability of global public cloud infrastructure; Straight-forward pricing and billing directly from Quantum; Secure, encrypted data in transit and at rest; and Quantum service and support StorNext customers can also use Q-Cloud Archive and Q-Cloud Vault in conjunction with Quantum’s Lattus extended online storage, including moving data from a Lattus object storage technology-based private cloud on premise to Q-Cloud.

Offered as a subscription service through the Amazon Marketplace, Q-Cloud Protect for AWS enables customers to replicate from either a physical or virtual DXi appliance on premise to a virtual DXi instance in the AWS cloud.

Visit www.quantum.com

ETERE Enables Media Cloud Access via Light Client ETERE, THE DEVELOPER OF software solutions for broadcast and media companies, has announced a new product designed for users who need to access its cloud storage from anywhere on a network.

Etere Light Client is the standalone application that enable users to instantly get cloud media into any target (e.g. file browser, editing application, etc.).

Etere Light Client gives a simple and fast way to access an Etere media cloud while providing the following features: Standalone tool that runs without any Etere installation; Secure database access to download assets and news; Simple an intuitive interface powered with drag and drop; Full-text search to look up for media matching properties; Custom filtering by storage device and creation date; Thumbnail-enriched results and “newest first” ordering; and Platform-specific versions for Windows and Mac OS. Like standard assets, Etere Light Client also allows downloading video files related to news stories created from Etere Nunzio. Under a dedicated section, news stories can be searched and filtered according to the rundown scheduled time.

NLE users can rely on the Etere Light Client to gain quick access to the Etere cloud storage, and retrieve archived media into a non-linear editing system with a drag and drop. With Etere Ligh Client you will get your archived files ready for post-production using no API or third-party controls.

TELESTREAM INTEGRATION ETERE has also announced the integration of Telestream Vantage video transcoding with its MERP Cloud file-based workflow framework, thus making available a powerful, cost-effective and time-saving way to accelerate the production of content for multiplatform and multilanguage distribution.

The integration of Vantage brings to ETERE MERP a comprehensive and automated way to create and distribute multiple versions of content while maintaining all kinds of essential information, such as metadata, rights, formats, languages, branding, subtitles and business rules.

The API-based integration of Vantage transcoding with ETERE MERP allows bi-directional communication between systems, making the integration even more powerful as ETERE is able to drive via workflow all the different content paths managed by Vantage as well as link newly created content to the original assets.

Visit www.etere.eu

BUILT ON TOP OF the Ross Video web technology platform, Streamline is a web-based software product that integrates seamlessly with the Ross XPression graphics system, and allows users to attach assets to graphic templates via a simple drag and drop workflow. The software also offers a rich variety of asset metadata allowing users to easily organize and search their graphics, greatly reducing the effort required to find and reuse content between productions.

Robust reporting tools in Streamline provide up-to-the-second data visualization of any metrics in the workflow process. Insights can be used to better allocate resources to the areas of greatest overall benefit to the organization. Streamline reporting allows monitoring of details like order types, deadlines, ordering trends, most ordered asset types, cycle times and more.

Streamline also provides the ability to manage and prioritize graphics production through its order management system. The system offers placeholder workflows for graphics that, when fulfilled by the art department, are automatically delivered by Streamline into the XPression template and ready to air.

Visit www.rossvideo.com

Archion Enhances Adobe CC Workflow ARCHION, A DEVELOPER OF networked storage solutions for media workflows, has announced Collaborate, a new appliance to manage Adobe Creative Cloud sync points and provide continuous high-speed access to the world of Adobe CC assets, Archive, Libraries, files and tools.

Archion’s Collaborate fits into an EditStor EO network to provide 24/7 Adobe CC cloud connectivity between local client workstations and all remote applications and systems. Easy to install and set up, it comes completely configured with two 10gigE ports. One is connected to the EditStor EO 10gigE port for fast transfer of media, Libraries and Collaboration files to the client’s shared sync point. The second 10gigE port is connected to the Internet and Adobe CC Sync.

Sync is the key in the new Adobe CC tools. Archion’s Collaborate provides the sync point for all the Adobe CC clients on the EditStor network, making CC Collaboration tools always available for mobile applications and remote networking clients. All of the assets, archives, files, Libraries and Collaboration shares are available on all Adobe CC Sync systems 24/7 with EditStor and the Archion Collaboration appliance. Working with Collaborate is transparent to an Adobe user.

Visit www.archion.com

MEDIA IN THE CLOUD, STORAGE & MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT

Ross Streamlines MAM for Graphics

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AUDIO Digital soundwaves

www.content-technology.com/audio

Voices of Middle Earth Brought to Life with iZotope AUDIO TECHNOLOGY COMPANY IZOTOPE, has revealed that Ray Beentjes, dialogue editor for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, has made extensive use of iZotope’s RX 4 audio repair and enhancement toolkit to capture more of the actors’ on-set dialogue.

When Beentjes began working on The Lord of the Rings fifteen years ago, many of the actors’ best performances were unusable, often contaminated with noise from production equipment and the surrounding environment. In the end, only 5–10% of the original location audio was usable for the final cut.

“An actor could have delivered a stellar performance on location, but the audio would often be unusable,” Beentjes explains. “They would then have to spend hours in a dubbing room re-recording their lines, and due to the complexity of the production, they might be covering what was six months’ worth of filming in a two-day ADR session. That often makes it very difficult to create the same mood again.”

The audio team began searching for a solution that would enable them to rescue troubled audio from the best on-location performances and chose iZotope’s RX audio repair software, which Beentjes describes as a “game changer.”

Today, the team is able to save more than 80% of the original production dialogue, and blend in ADR seamlessly when required.

“RX has been fantastic, and we’ve developed a completely different workflow,” Beentjes says. “Now we can focus on finding the best

performances from the original material delivered by the actors. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh love utilising production audio over ADR where possible if it sells the performance better, and then it’s up to us to clean up that audio and get it working.”

After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Beentjes and the team took on an equally epic project with the Hobbit trilogy. The films utilised cuttingedge camera technology, which presented Beentjes and the Dialogue Team with a new set of technical challenges.

Instead of the normal 24 fps frame-rate, the films were shot in 3D at 48 fps, which required many of the lights to be reengineered for flicker-free operation to avoid visual strobing.

Unfortunately, the new lights and control methods often introduced extra high-frequency noise from 3 to 8 kHz — significantly interfering with dialogue clarity. However, using the Denoiser feature in RX 4, Beentjes was able to remove many of the artifacts created by the new lighting, while preserving the crisp definition of the original dialogue.

Ray Beentjes, Dialogue Editor for The Hobbit trilogy.

able to take away the sounds that would take the audience out of the scene,” says Beentjes.

“It could be a very important line, and there’s a Cessna prop plane taking off from a nearby airport that’s buzzing through the track. With Spectral Repair, we can go in and remove sounds that are completely out of context for the scene.

Another key feature Beentjes utilized in RX 4 was Spectral Repair, which enabled him to isolate and remove unwanted sounds, even during long passages of audio. For The Desolation of Smaug — the second film in the Hobbit series — a large part of the film takes place on a desolate mountain, devoid of animal and human life. Unfortunately, there were birds and other distracting noises all over the audio track.

“RX has really come into its own with RX 4 and the ability to run the standalone program connected to Pro Tools (via the RX Connect feature). What used to take us a couple of hours is now taking 20 minutes, which ends up saving the editors thousands of hours over the course of a project,” remarks Beentjes. “We are able to create material that is effectively the same as what would come out of a dubbing suite.”

“The magic of Spectral Repair is actually being

Visit http://www.izotope.com/rx

PAT Supplies LAWO, VSM and Bel for NEP’s HD11 Supertruck PROFESSIONAL AUDIO & TELEVISION

of trucks.

(PAT) has been awarded a contract to supply NEP Australia (formerly Global Television) with a large LAWO mc2 56 MKII console system, a VSM system and eight Bel (Digital Audio) audio confidence monitors.

NEP Australia has entrusted control of the truck to L-S-B Broadcast Technologies VSM system (Virtual Studio Manager). The unlimited size matrix VSM system will be responsible for controlling most of the hardware in the broadcast trailer, including a Riedel Artist talkback system, LAWO VPRO8’s, LAWO mc2 56 MKII console system, LVM TV Logic Monitors, Imagine Technology’s Video Router, Sony MVS 8000, OpenGear equipment, and Ross Video Frames. The system, which is currently custom configured by NEP Australia staff to their specific needs, also provides multiviews for over 350 pictures and allows NEP create, load and save presets including labels, crosspoints, GPO states, parameters and panels layouts.

Virtual Signals allow creation of “re-entries” without using physical router resources. VSM

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NEP Australia purchased the 64 fader LAWO mc2 56 MKII with a fully redundant NOVA73 HD console Core router, redundant DSP functionality and 6 DALLIS input and output frames. The system, which provides full control, DSP, and I/O redundancy, is based on the configuration used by NEP in its HD9 truck, but with the expanded scope of a 64-fader surface.

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LAWO’s console and router technology features, among other things, auto-mix, up mix and loudness metering. The system, which is due to arrive in Australia in March, will comprise the largest LAWO console system in the NEP fleet

Pseudo devices enable NEP to link Video, Audio, TC, and RS-422 signals into a switchable overall bundle.

NEP Australia’s Technology Services Manager, Milan Milenkovic, commented, “Our long standing relationship with Professional Audio & Television allowed us to develop the system in close cooperation with LAWO & LSB Technologies and build this industry leading HD super truck.”

NEP, had entered discussions during NAB 2014 with Bel and its Australian distributor PAT to reduce the dimensions of the BM-A1-16SHD to a shallower depth of only 200mm while still keeping the essential features. The result is that the new and very first Bel (Digital Audio) BM-A116OB units will arrive in Australia in March this year to be used in HD11.

Visit www.proaudiotv.com.au

OpenS new perSpeCtiveS More info? NAB stand C4937

www.riedel.net

AUDIO

Event Cinemas - Immersed in Dolby Atmos

By Keith Ford

Dolby Atmos configuration at Event Cinemas’ George street, Sydney Complex showing speakers in the middle of the roof and the increased side wall speakers and additional subs.

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Over the last two decades there have been numerous advancements on the visual side of cinema technology, but the audio side hasn’t had the same progression. There have been improvements, but not to the same level as the move to digital projection, the addition of 3D, or the more recent move to 4K. Immersive audio is where that all changes.

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“WITH DOLBY ATMOS, it is the first large scale audio technology that I have seen in the last 15 years, its simply brilliant,” said Anthos Simon, General Manager of AHL Entertainment Technology. “Immersive audio, is the next big thing and for Event Cinemas we have chosen the Dolby Atmos product. Having said that there are other immersive audio products in the market such as Barco’s Auro.”

Anthos and his team at Edge Digital Technology recently completed the installation of a Dolby Atmos audio system at Sydney’s George St complex. Both VMAX 1 and 2 have been fitted with the Atmos systems, and has drastically increased the audio fidelity, quality and audience experience of the cinemas.

Atmos immerses the audience into the film in a way that hasn’t previously been possible, and at

its most simplistic it does this with more audio channels and speakers. The complexity of the set up is impressive which involves architectural drawings for each speaker and amplifier and the correct positioning to maximise the immersion.

“For us to accomplish a Dolby Amtos upgrade takes a lot of planning and research. New cinema processor, speakers-lots of them and specification criteria all need to be met via Dolby prior to any approval. Dolby provide a ‘DARDT ‘spreadsheet which stands for ‘Dolby Atmos Room Design Tool’. Essentially you need to nominate every speaker and every amplifier that you have, the model number, architectural drawings and positioning and then if it doesn’t meet their specification you need to review and get it to spec. This takes a lot of time but worth the effort,” explained Anthos.

“Every speaker has to be aligned perfectly so it is depending on where you sit, all the angles work.

So, we went from having 1-2 amplifiers per the

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right surrounds, 1-2 amplifier for the left surrounds, to having an amplifier for each speaker and they had to be rated at 105dB, which is impressive.”

The installation of a system like this is both a long process and one that requires a lot of manpower. Due to the length of the installation as well as the need to tailor the system to the space it is much easier to manage with a brand new cinema. George St is a fully functioning cinema so they had to design a work around. This meant that there was the added obstacle of not being able to shut the cinema down for a few weeks because the loss of revenue during that time would be massive, meaning that work had to be done off peak.

“We would be starting at 5am and we try to get out of there by 5pm for the evening sessions. We stayed away from weekends as well. So come Friday 5pm we were out of there. A lot of pack up and pack down so some patience was required. Can’t thank my team enough, Ben, Scott, Ricky and Peter did a great job,” said Anthos.

“AHL (Amalgamated Holdings Limited, parent company of both Event Cinemas and Edge Digital Technologies) have plans to expand Atmos and they want to concentrate it on essentially their Premium cinemas, so VMAX and Gold Class obviously,” explained Anthos. “So we have just done two here at George Street. Prior to that Edge has already installed quite a few immersive audio systems so they have already had a lot of experience doing this and they have also installed an Auro system as well, so we have done both. We have done all of the Village’s Atmos work, done all of Reading’s Atmos work as well. I think it will keep growing but obviously to get what I call mass penetration into the market will take time.”

Introduced in April 2012, Dolby Atmos has been embraced relatively quickly by all the major Hollywood studios. Filmmakers utilising the system include 11 Academy Award winning directors, and 23 Academy Award winning sound mixers, among others. More than 900 Dolby Atmos screens have been installed or committed to in more than 40 countries with more than 250 exhibitor partners. More than 200 films from 17 different countries have been, or scheduled to be, released with Dolby Atmos sound since the first film debuted in June 2012.

“Because of the nature of the concept of immersive audio as it is realised in Atmos, filmmakers are encouraged to visualise sounds in a threedimensional space around them as creatively as they see fit,” said Bruce Emery, Dolby Sound Consultant. “Part of the Atmos system is that each Atmos mix engine in the environment, both where they are creating the soundtrack and then all the subsequent replay areas, all have to position sound according to where the filmmakers want them. The idea is to keep the mix the same when it is replayed as when it was created.”

“I had the easy part. I was just coming in to do the final commissioning, but my colleagues at Dolby in Singapore who undertake the plan reviews and work with the design team to make sure that the room not only meets Dolby’s specifications, but in all cases we’ve got to adapt to individual site requirements,” added Bruce.

“Once you have drawn it all up and you have given it to Dolby they will come back to you and will always have questions. The refinements take around 2 weeks and they don’t approve it until you resubmit. So you have to have your diagrams every time there is a change. They have to essentially certify what you are doing is correct. It is a certification process really,” said Anthos.

When it comes to showing the film the process is somewhat simplified by the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) including all possible versions of the mix.

“The technology is different but in terms of the content the Atmos mix is part of the DCP package. If you want to play an Atmos mix then you need to ensure you order one from the respective studio.” explains Anthos. “Our programming department now know what sites have immersive audio so when they do the ordering they actually ring the studio and say ‘we want an Atmos version for our George Street Complex thank you very much. It’s a great progress and the end result was brilliant. Having sound system in cinema that is that good is imperative for future cinema experience.”

Visit www.edgedigitaltechnology.com and www.dolby.com

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Removing the Echo in a Presenter’s Earpiece THE RB-AEC FROM SONIFEX is a DSP-based acoustic echo canceller primarily designed for the benefit of studio television and radio presenters. When a studio presenter’s microphone signal is played out through a monitor speaker in the control room, it can be picked up by the control room microphone(s) and returned to the presenter’s earpiece as an undesirable echo. In circumstances where green screen video processing is taking place, the delay can be greater than 200ms. Additionally, the dimensions, occupancy and distance between mouth and microphone can further influence the echo.

The RB-AEC is used to remove the entire control room monitor speaker output from the presenter’s feed by adapting to the environment in which the control room microphones are placed.

Although acoustic echo cancellation is more commonly implemented in telephony systems, the Sonifex RB-AEC is designed to produce broadcast quality cancellation.

Much like during a conference call configuration between two rooms, each room has a microphone and speaker to conduct a conversation.

When an occupant of one room speaks, it takes a certain length of time before it is received in the second room. Without a suitable solution this ‘delayed’ signal can then be captured by the microphone in the second room and returned back to the first room as an echo.

In the particular example of TV production, as well as the processing/ transmission delay, sound reflections from the control room monitor speaker into the control room microphone(s) cause the studio earpiece to suffer further delay. The sound reflections in the control room vary with the contents of the room, including any personnel present, and different frequencies produce varying reflections across various types of surfaces and magnitudes within the room.

The DSP solution offered by the RB-AEC can dynamically compensate for varying configurations.

Visit www.sonifex.co.uk

Calrec Launches Optimised Summa Processor Rack and Modular MADI Solution CALREC AUDIO HAS ANNOUNCED two new developments in the company’s product range. The first is a 4U console core with a new look.

Benefiting from significant hardware improvements, the core is used for the Summa and Artemis Light consoles. Calrec has also announced a new single-slot modular MADI card with SRC. The new core offers many benefits over its predecessor, including improved green credentials. Not only does it have faster and more efficient processors, it now operates with 5 percent lower power consumption and fewer fans, which are more easily accessible for maintenance. The new fans also have automatic speed control and ambient temperature-sensing, which enable them to run 8 decibels quieter at 25 degrees Celsius. There is even less noise at lower temperatures, and the fans operate at lower, less noticeable frequencies.

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The new rack’s cleaner design has clearer status LEDs and labelling, with the added functionality of the Control Processor LAN sockets being independently configurable via the user interface. This provides simpler configuration of third-party controllers such as Calrec’s Assist.

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Also announced is a single-slot modular MADI card that fits into the 3U modular Hydra2 box. Not only does the new card offer 64 bidirectional channels, but it also includes a sample-rate converter.

Visit www.calrec.com

RTW and IRT Announce New Partnership RTW, THE DEVELOPER OF visual audio meters and monitoring devices, and the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) have announced that RTW will implement the IRT’s newly patented Continuous Loudness Controller into its future broadcast-focused audio equipment.

The IRT’s Continuous Loudness Controller allows users to continuously readjust the level of audio material they are working on, against a given program-loudness value, as well as a definable loudness range in real-time with minimal artefacts. This technology is in accordance with EBU-R128 and other worldwide loudness standard specifications.

Visit www.irt.de and www.rtw.com

STAGETEC Unveils New AURUS Mixer, NEXUS Monitor Control STAGETEC has unveiled the new AURUS Platinum, the successor to its AURUS mixing console which combines proven AURUS functions with modern features, a brand-new control concept and a plethora of formats.

Included among its new features are a neat matrix mixer, DAW control and the ability to use meter bridge screens for external video signals in parallel. It is also possible to access Dspecialists’ ISOSTEM automatic upmix algorithm via the NEXUS that comes with the mixing console.

AURUS Platinum has a control concept which is predicated on fast operation: 22 rotaries per channel strip and up to 96 channel strips with real-time switching and display give direct access to all channels and parameters. A touch pad integrated into the control surface replaces external input devices such as a keyboard and mouse, and facilitates fast and easy access to the control software.

The mixing console also scores with additional improvements to familiar features such as scene automation and the spill function. Deep integration into the NEXUS audio network provides an AURUS Platinum user with unlimited connectivity and an unsurpassed variety of audio formats. Patented noiseless microphone inputs and very high-precision calculations for all DSP and mixing functions ensure that sound is clear and transparent.

The company has also released NEXUS Monitor Control which provides an easy way to monitor signals in NEXUS networks, completely independent of the mixing console. It is aimed as a monitor controller in a sound editing suite or for supervisor monitoring control in large NEXUS networks.

The controller enables signal source selection, monitoring volume adjustment, choice of alternative loudspeakers and much more. It replaces an independent fully-fledged monitor controller unit. With a touchscreen the system also provides extensive access to the Logic Control functions integrated into NEXUS. In the most basic application they can start a player but they can also provide full duplex communication and more complex functions.

The interface consists of a precision multi-touch screen with a customdesigned GUI that enables rapid and intuitive operation. Another advantage of a GUI-only interface is that the NEXUS Monitor Control is extremely adaptable.

The NEXUS Monitor Control does not require an operating system, making it very fast. It responds to the user’s operations in virtually real time and is without parallel in the world of digital technology.

NEXUS Monitor Control gives access to all the signals of the entire NEXUS network. A CAT cable to the corresponding control board in any NEXUS Base Device within the audio network is the only connection required. Even if the connection is interrupted, audio settings are retained and monitoring of the selected signals continues since the audio processing necessary takes place within the NEXUS as usual.

Visit www.stagetec.com

RADIO The original broadcast media

www.content-technology.com/radio

Report Shows Mobile Broadband No Substitute for Broadcast Radio A REPORT RELEASED late last year by Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) and written

by Professor Reg Coutts, has found that mobile broadband communications networks, particularly in regional areas, are not a replacement for broadcast free to air radio.

The report considers the potential for mobile networks to be expanded to a point where they are viable to accommodate all live free to air radio broadcasting at the same high quality to hundreds of thousands of listeners at the same time as a replacement for broadcast radio, and/ or instead of rolling out DAB+ digital radio, which is currently available in the five major metropolitan cities.

The Coutts Report highlights that mobile networks in regional Australia are less cost effective compared to a potential DAB+ digital radio rollout in regional areas. Even with upgraded 4G networks using the most advanced LTE broadcast mode, there are technical and economic reasons for radio to be delivered using free to air broadcast technology in both regional and metropolitan areas.

Following the submission to the Federal Government’s Digital Radio Discussion Paper in 2014, the commercial radio industry commissioned highly respected telecommunications expert, Professor Reg Coutts of Coutts

Ofcom Research on Indoor DAB Coverage

Communications, to analyse the use of mobile telecommunications to deliver free to air broadcast radio in Australia.

CRA CEO, Joan Warner, said, “There are a lot of misperceptions around the future of broadcast radio, mobile networks and the delivery of radio online and this report shows it may not yet, or even in the longer term, be technically or financially viable.

“Listening to radio online is complementary and not a replacement of broadcast radio, whether it’s analogue or digital. Listeners use streaming as a convenient alternative.

The commercial radio industry is continually assessing technological innovation and economic viability. We recognise our listeners want to listen to radio wherever they are – in the car, at home, on their phone while in transit and as an industry we are constantly exploring the best way to achieve this.”

“Internet radio on smart phones by itself cannot substitute for broadcast radio. Broadcast digital radio is globally where innovation is happening.

The Government is currently depriving regional listeners of digital radio unlike their city cousins who have both digital radio and internet radio.

Innovative local radio broadcasters need broadcast digital radio which so necessary for regional communities to thrive in the future,”

said Professor Coutts.

There are 220 commercial regional radio stations throughout Australia and, aside from questions over urban delivery, the report also suggests there is considerable uncertainty as to a plausible business model to support the upgrade of regional mobile networks from 3G to the most advanced form of 4G LTE Broadcast and it would also mean listeners would have to pay via their data plan for what they now can receive at no cost.

Importantly there would be significant impact on mobile cell capacity for other user’s applications (i.e. social media, internet browsing, video on demand etc) even if LTE Broadcast is able to be used to replicate broadcast radio’s live reach, robustness and quality.

The radio industry has rolled out digital radio in the five state metropolitan capitals and is looking to secure its digital broadcast future by continuing a phased rollout of broadcast digital radio to regional Australia.

The findings of this Australian study are consistent with recent European reports which show mobile networks complement broadcast radio, but are unlikely to replace it in the foreseeable future.

The full Coutts Report is available at www.digitalradioplus.com.au

ATC Labs Integrates Digigram Cards Into Audio Processors

UK REGULATOR OFCOM has published

The research was intended to validate, and if necessary help refine, the computer model used for measuring DAB. It involved taking measurements of DAB reception in households across different coverage areas in 2013. Testing took place in different locations in a large number of homes and the results were compared to the model.

Overall, the findings of study confirm that, on average, the prediction model gives a good indication of the level of DAB coverage and DAB reception in coverage areas deemed ‘good’ is equivalent to good FM reception.

Results of the research can be found at http:// stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/other/radio-research/dab-reception/

DIGIGRAM HAS ENTERED into a partnership through which audio technology company ATC Labs will integrate Digigram sound cards into the company’s Perceptual SoundMax line of audio processors and ALCO Blue IP codec, engineered for the radio broadcast and streaming market. The Digigram cards provide high-quality analog and digital interfaces.

ATC Labs will use Digigram sound interfaces across a broad line of audio processing and IP codec products and will also recommend Digigram products to its customers. The Digigram VX222e, UAX220v2, and VX222HR cards will be incorporated into the company’s Perceptual SoundMax audio processors, which provide unmatched signal processing functionality for broadcast or audio streaming,

thus allowing users to move ahead of the competition in sound quality and implementation efficiency. The Digigram cards will also be built into ATC Labs’ ALCO Blue rackmount IP codecs and used in conjunction with its ALCO Professional line of integrated IP audio SoftCodec solutions designed specifically to meet the demands of the professional audio and broadcast industry. Among the benefits of working with integrated solutions from ATC Labs is the ability to perform concurrent on-air and Internet streaming.

Visit www.digigram.com and www.atc-labs.com

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research, undertaken with the BBC, into the accuracy of predictions of indoor Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) radio coverage.

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RADIO

Telos and AVC – Audio Livewires

By Keith Ford The companies under the Telos Alliance umbrella have long been innovators and leaders in audio technology. One such innovation is the Livewire Audio over IP (AoIP) protocol developed by Axia Audio, which forms the backbone of AVC Group’s 360° Radio.

“AVC IS ONE OF OUR TOP DEALERS – internationally – they’re ranking in the top 5,” said Peter Passian, Director of Sales, Eastern Hemisphere for Telos Alliance. “We really believe in their 360° Radio campaign they’re running, which is actually a mix of a lot of hard and software products that work nicely together. It’s not just us – it’s a couple of other hard and software companies with incredible incorporation between the products. This offers a perfect work flow for the customers and it’s all based on Audio over IP, so it’s straight – the new technology – what we do and what AVC’s doing.”

“AVC have traditionally been a hardware supplier and now we’re kind of moving into software as well: automation, music scheduling, those kinds of things,” explained Greg Altena, Broadcast Media Consultant at AVC Australia. “The idea is that these products can boost each other, so I think the age of Audio over IP and with Axia and Livewire brings new opportunities about what you can do with these things and how you can mix them together to produce something exciting.”

“Within the Telos Alliance, we already have a kind of ecosystem, because we have five focussed brands,” added Passian. “So it’s Axia, AoIP technology, then we have Telos, which is codecs and telephone hybrids. Then we have Omnia; Omnia is audio processing for FM, but also provides solutions for processing for web streaming or digital radio. Between Omnia and Telos there is a combination of products, which are our streaming product line, so all the streaming products have a processing core from Omnia for streaming and encoding from Telos.

Then finally we have 25-Seven Systems, which is kind of a niche product, it’s only three products which is profanity delay, the precision delay, and the ATM which is the Audio Time Manager; where the name 25/7 came from is trying to squeeze 25 hours of content into 24 hours a day.”

It is from Axia Audio that the AoIP backbone of AVC Group’s 360° Radio comes.

Axia lays claim to the invention of AoIP for broadcasting and patented Livewire, a protocol that enables high-reliability, low-delay uncompressed digital audio over Ethernet. Livewire, and all Axia equipment, is compliant with the Audio Engineering Society standard for AoIP interoperability – AES-67.

“Working together is possible because from the beginning, Axia committed to standards. Livewire has always been open source, so whoever wants can adapt it, there is no license to pay for,” explained Passian. “The main difference between Livewire protocol and others, especially the AES-67 standard is that Livewire is not only providing the audio, but also embeds in the audio logic functionality, like GPIO or other control information, which makes it very flexible because you can send your logic information around your facility

the same easy way you do with the audio. Also Livewire provides a specific discovery system, so once a source is brought to the network it’s visible in the whole network.”

“Livewire is the real backbone of 360° Radio. That’s where all the audio goes, that’s where all the control protocol is carried. It’s all basically one blue cable that carries everything and that – the fact that Livewire is multicast and that carries these control protocols, gives you a lot of flexibility in what you can do,” said Altena. “With Stirlitz and logging we can look and see and capture events. So every time a mic is turned on or every time the studio goes on air or whatever it might be, and we can capture those and save those, with metadata and all the rest of it. In the case of automation, you know, you can use not only the Livewire audio, but you can use the control protocols to drive your automation to do whatever you want to do. Fire off on a commercial break or whatever it might be; change routing, whenever you need essentially a pulse to do something in a route, it’s there, it’s on the network. It’s very clean, so there’s no relays or any of that rubbish, it’s all just on the blue cable, it’s all on the network, it’s available everywhere.”

“Livewire is not only providing the audio, but also embeds in the audio logic functionality, like GPIO or other control information, which makes it very flexible because you can send your logic around your facility the same easy way you do with the audio.”

While Livewire goes beyond AES-67 in a number of areas, any equipment that is AES-67 compatible will work with the protocol. This makes installing an AoIP system a much easier proposition for AVC, particularly for new installs, but even upgrades are relatively simple.

“Even in a single studio, where we are still talking about sources that are AES or analogue inputs: we can handle those inputs. It’s really putting that to a structure that you can build on and start getting flexibility in. So, for example, some of the smaller stations might upgrade one studio only, which is fine, and we can do that with some of the smaller consoles, they can take advantage of some of the new features that those consoles bring, like remote control,” concluded Altena.

Visit www.telosalliance.com and www.avc-group.net

ELENOS/ITELCO Broadcast Buys Electrosys ELENOS SRL, the supplier of equipment for FM radio and TV digital broadcasting, has announced that the company ITELCO Broadcast SRL (majority-owned by Elenos), has completed its operational framework for the acquisition of Electrosys operations and the brand name.

RADIO

With the acquisition of Electrosys, all activities covered by the previous company immediately begin operation under ITELCO Broadcast Srl management.

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The company ITELCO Broadcast Srl will engage in activities to the worldwide broadcasting technology market with the products and the brand name of Electrosys, with an independent commercial structure.

While Elenos is and will be mainly focused on the FM and TV Digital market, with products and solutions branded “Elenos”, ITELCO Broadcast will be mainly focused on the digital TV, Scientific, Medical and FM radio market, with products and solutions branded “ITELCO Broadcast-Electrosys”.

Each organization has and will have its own independent sales organization; moreover, ITELCO Broadcast will continue to manage customers and third party partners through previous Electrosys arrangements.

Visit www.elenos.com

RADIO

ARQIVA, main broadcasting operator in United Kingdom, which amongst others owns and operates transmission networks on behalf of the BBC, has awarded Mier Comunicaciones with a Contract for the supply of Digital Radio transmitters being deployed as a national rollout throughout the UK. The scope of supply includes transmitter systems with output power levels from 50Wrms to 2.400Wrms, including several redundancy levels.

The Mier Comunicaciones MC2 Series multi-standard range of transmitters include solutions for Digital Radio and Digital TV, and is available for output power levels up to 3.200Wrms, with different redundant configurations, both in UHF and VHF band.

With this new award, Mier consolidates its position as a reference supplier of Digital broadcast solutions in Northern Europe, having signed contracts in countries such as Denmark, Finland, and Norway.

Visit www.mier.es and www.luminabsa.com.au

Broadcast Australia Chooses Nautel for FM Transmission NAUTEL HAS ANNOUNCED the first deployment of high powered FM transmitters to Broadcast Australia under a new five year supply agreement.

The NVLT series was chosen following a successful bid by Nautel and its Australian representative, Innes Corporation for Broadcast Australia’s high powered FM transmission requirements. Nautel is the developer of “intelligent broadcast transmitters” and the NVLT series is ranked highly in terms of overall power efficiency.

[L-R] Kevin Rodgers, CEO Nautel and Stephen Farrugia, General Manager of Engineering Broadcast Australia.

Broadcast Australia’s General Manager of Engineering, Stephen Farrugia said “We are pleased to formalise our continuing engagement with Nautel and Innes Corporation. Broadcast Australia has been using Nautel solid state transmitters for over 25 years and look forward to excellent performance from these air cooled FM transmitters.”

Innes Corporation’s General Manager, Karen Olliver commented “We have a long standing relationship with Broadcast Australia and have worked closely with their RF Engineers and Field Services Technicians on past project and

maintenance requirements. I am very pleased this relationship now extends to the supply of Nautel FM transmitters and this initial deployment will see the first 20kW NVLT’s in Australia.”

Nautel’s Asia/Pacific Regional Manager, John Abdnour added “Broadcast Australia and Nautel continue a two- decade long relationship with this agreement. We look forward to the future of our relationship with the supply of the Nautel family of transmitters”.

Visit www.nautel.com and www.innescorp.com.au

RADIO

Arqiva Takes Mier for UK DAB

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CONTENT DELIVERY Terrestrial, Mobile, Broadband

www.content-technology.com/delivery

Crown Castle Explores Sale of Australian Subsidiary CROWN CASTLE INTERNATIONAL CORP. has announced that it plans to explore the potential sale of its Australian subsidiary (CCAL).

“In light of recent unsolicited offers we have received for our interest in CCAL, we have determined that fully exploring the options available to us will ensure the best long-term results for our shareholders,” stated Ben Moreland, Crown Castle’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Similar to our US business, CCAL has developed into a leading wireless infrastructure provider in the attractive Australian market with a unique portfolio of assets and platform for future growth and expansion.”

CCAL is the largest independent tower operator in Australia. Crown Castle owns 77.6% of CCAL and has an intercompany loan of approximately AUD$306 million due from CCAL as of December 31, 2014. CCAL is expected to contribute approximately 4% to 5% to the midpoint of Crown Castle’s previously provided full year 2015 Outlook for Adjusted EBITDA of US$2.15 billion and AFFO of US$1.46 billion. Crown Castle’s full year

Since its establishment in 2000, CCAL has a nationwide portfolio of approximately 1800 sites. Crown Castle Australia’s customers include major mobile telecommunications carriers such as Optus, Telstra and Vodafone Hutchison Australia; wireless broadband service providers such as NBN Co.; and key emergency service network providers.

Visit www.crowncastle.com

Brand Developers NZ Boosts Automation with Pebble Beach, Magna

FOXTEL HAS ANNOUNCED its new subscription TV, Broadband and Home

BRAND DEVELOPERS is one of Australasia’s leading direct response televi-

Phone bundles have gone live and are now available. The move brings together Foxtel’s subscription cable and satellite TV service with new Broadband and Home Phone services delivered over Telstra’s ADSL network one of Australia’s largest telecommunications networks.

sion companies, specialising in product development, infomercial shopping and multi-channel retail distribution. Operating from offices in Auckland and Melbourne, Brand Developers pushes the boundaries of traditional homebased TV shopping.

Customers can take out a single Foxtel subscription for their TV, Broadband and Home Phone. The company has also announced its new Broadband home network gateway, the Foxtel Hub, designed to deliver fast household WiFi speeds to Foxtel Broadband subscribers.

In 2013 Brand Developers purchased The Shopping Channel, New Zealand’s first home shopping channel broadcasting on both free-to-view and SKY TV New Zealand. Brand Developers decided to upgrade the Shopping Channel from a PC-based playout system to a full channel in a box solution to give them a wider feature set and enhanced graphical branding. The solution they chose was a Pebble Beach Systems Dolphin and Marina combined channel in a box supplied and installed by Magna Systems and Engineering.

Key features of Foxtel’s TV, Broadband and Home Phone bundles include: + A range of great value data options to choose from with 50GB, 100GB, 200GB, & 500GB plans, and no peak or off peak data limits + The new Foxtel Hub – Foxtel’s WiFi modem designed to deliver fast WiFi speeds, great in-home coverage and easy streaming to multiple devices + Unlimited standard local and national calls

Playout of video content needed to be fully automated and scheduled up to a week in advance of transmission. The company also required the generation of suitably branded video content for distribution into Australia.

After discussions with Magna it became evident that the most suitable solution would be Pebble Beach Systems’ robust transmission platform Dolphin combined with the proven automation capabilities of Marina as this combined solution has a wide expansion capability of up to four channels in one 2RU Dolphin server.

Foxtel intends launching Broadband and Home Phone bundles over the National Broadband Network later this year.

As a result Brand Developers initially purchased a combined Dolphin Marina package with two separate transmission channels plus a compile channel for the generation of material for distribution to Australia. Playlist generation was provided by an additional and dedicated preparation list. Soon after the initial installation Brand Developers expanded the system with an additional transmission channel to enable them to playout directly into the Australian free-to air market via Spree TV.

Visit www.foxtel.com.au

Visit www.magnasys.tv

+ Foxtel TV customers have no data download limits for Foxtel TV on Foxtel Go and Anytime when connected to Foxtel Broadband. Presto and Foxtel Play customers also enjoy this benefit when connected to Foxtel Broadband.

CONTENT DELIVERY

According to a company statement, “There can be no assurance that the exploration of a potential sale will result in the consummation of any specific action. Crown Castle does not intend to discuss developments with respect to the exploration of a sale unless or until its Board of Directors reviews and approves a specific action or otherwise deems further disclosure is appropriate or required.”

Foxtel Launches Broadband and Home Phone Bundles

Richard Freudenstein, Foxtel CEO, said, “Foxtel is passionate about bringing Australians the best entertainment experience possible and we’ve worked tirelessly to make that experience more accessible through our investments in pricing and packaging for cable and satellite customers and through our new movies and TV streaming service, Presto.”

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2015 Outlook was previously provided on January 21, 2015 and assumed an exchange rate of 0.81 US dollars to 1.0 Australian dollar.

Intelligent Design Meets Superior Reliablity and Perfomance

X 10 • Compact Size…only 22RU • 70% AC to RF Efficiency • Hot-Pluggable, Swappable Power Amplifier and Power Supply Modules • IP Connectivity with Superior GUI for anytime, anywhere access • STXe 500 exciter with best of class audio quality

Continuing the BE Tradition The intelligent simplicity of the STX 10 is unmatched.

The new STX 10, 10kW FM transmitter has been designed to offer the perfect combination of audio quality, reliability, redundancy, serviceability and efficiency in an amazingly compact design.

No other 10kW transmitter can match the design, feature set, and BE tradition of providing the best value.

All PA modules and power supplies are hot-pluggable from the front of the transmitter. In addition the controller power supply is also accessible from here.

Making maintenance a breeze.

Even the most experienced radio engineers will appreciate this mechanical design that allows easy access to all important parts and assemblies from the front and the rear access points.

Lumina Broadcast Systems Australia Pty Ltd PO Box 1693 Lane Cove NSW 1595 Phone +61 2 9817 2179 Fax +61 2 8572 5285 sales@luminabsa.com www.luminabsa.com

CONTENT DELIVERY

MediaHub to Play Out Imparja

Telstra Invests in Elemental Technologies, Plans Major Roll-out

MEDIAHUB, Australia’s largest independent digital media playout and distribution facility, has announced it has signed an agreement with Imparja Television to provide the broadcaster with full playout facilities.

ELEMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES, the developer of software-defined video

A free-to-air television broadcaster, Imparja’s signal is sent out across a vast viewing area of over 3.6 million square kilometres, spanning six states and territories – Northern Territory, South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria with over one million resident viewers.

Imparja Television is also watched by approximately one million tourists who visit outback Australia each year including 200,000 viewers in terrestrial black spots.

CEO of Imparja Television, Alistair Feehan said, “Given the rate of technology change in the broadcast industry and the cost of keeping abreast of these changes meant that we had to decide whether to marginalise the business or take the appropriate steps in order to remain a healthy and competitive member of the industry. Making the move to have MediaHub, Australia’s market leader in this space, provide our playout is indeed one of those appropriate steps.”

MediaHub CEO, Alan Sweeney, added, “MediaHub will provide Imparja Television with comprehensive technical and operational resources.

As a result of our many years experience and technical knowhow and the fact that we continue to use the very latest, state of the art equipment and processes this service will assist Imparja in its day to day broadcasting and increase the company’s efficiencies.”

Imparja Television is the latest in a long line of channels (currently 168 TV channels across Australia) whose content is now managed and played out by MediaHub. MediaHub also offers all of its clients a centralised workflow delivery system.

Imparja Television now also benefits from MediaHub’s continuing philosophy of providing broadcasters with everything they require in terms of technology and operations, allowing them to concentrate on programme production and acquisition.

Visit www.mediahubaustralia.com.au

The AVW Group Launches StreamLive THE AVW GROUP (Australia, New Zealand) has launched a streaming service offering – StreamLive. StreamLive is a wholesale streaming platform for Broadcasters, Event Organisers and Organizations who want to stream and store their live events in real-time.

Business Manager within AVW, Stefan Hunt comments, “Traditionally live event streaming has either been too expensive (especially for adhoc short events) or technically difficult and time-consuming to establish, with StreamLive we have created a solution to fix both these problems, offering a low cost service which takes very little time to setup and get operational per event.”

CONTENT DELIVERY

StreamLive’s standard service operates in an ad-free/distraction free environment, which can be customised to each client’s requirements including branding, logo’s and marketing material along with E-commerce integration allowing event organisers to collect additional revenue streams by incorporating click-to-view and transactional revenue.

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Hunt adds, “Possibly the biggest draw-card of StreamLive is the technical support and service The AVW group provides. We are based locally and have dedicated technical support working on StreamLive – this support is invaluable when working in a live environment.”

Mobile device delivery and viewing is included within the StreamLive service, StreamLives back-engine provides active transcoding of content (along with 30 days secure storage) designed to provide an optimal viewing experience to all viewers regardless of their device and internet connection speed.

Visit www.avwbroadcast.com.au

solutions for multiscreen content delivery, has secured USD$14.5 million in series D financing led by Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications and information services company. Telstra is joined in the round by Sky, Europe’s largest entertainment company, and existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Voyager Capital.

Elemental will use the funds to accelerate worldwide growth and expand its suite of software-defined video (SDV) solutions to support the whole of the IP video delivery chain.

Telstra has begun the deployment of 4G services on new 700MHz spectrum, in addition to the wide scale introduction of LTE Advanced technology to deliver ultra-fast mobile data speeds. The telco plans to leverage the entire Elemental product line, with a specific focus on Elemental Delta for its nextgeneration content delivery services.

Elemental Delta combines just-in-time (JIT) packaging, origin services, intelligent caching, dynamic ad insertion and replacement, and end-toend encrypted content protection functions in a single solution. The video delivery platform helps media companies and content distributors reduce content delivery network (CDN) cost and complexity.

Telstra’s equity investment is to be combined with a commercial agreement which will allow the company to integrate solutions from Elemental into the company’s network for media and broadcast customers.

“We also plan to use Elemental’s solutions internally, across our large portfolio of media properties such as IPTV, Foxtel on T-Box, AFL, NRL and BigPond movies to deliver high quality video performance across a multitude of devices for customers,” said Mr Sherman.

“With our international connectivity, Telstra intends to make Elemental cloud capability available to its media customers globally in virtual hosting facilities”.

Visit www.telstra.com and www.elementaltechnologies.com

ABC iView Launched for PlayStation4 AUSTRALIAN PLAYSTATION4 (PS4) owners can now access internet TV service, ABC iview, with the release of iview for PS4.

The new ABC iview app for PS4 is joined by the latest version of ABC iview for PlayStation3 (PS3). iview was first to market on gaming consoles in Australia when it launched on PS3 in 2009.

Rebecca Heap, ABC Head of TV Strategy and Digital Products, said, “In 2014 ABC iview was the number one internet TV service in Australia with more than 20 million plays per month and a 29% year on year increase in weekly program plays. We are delighted to be launching ABC iview on PS4 and will continue to be the home of Australian stories for our audience on all their screens with the best user experience.”

Michael Ephraim, Managing Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Australia, said, “PlayStation and ABC iview have enjoyed a long relationship since the service debuted on home consoles with PlayStation 3 as the inaugural platform in 2009. We are thrilled to expand our suite of platforms that offer the extensive stellar range of ABC viewing to our PS4 audience.”

On February 16, GOOD GAME the ABC show for gamers by gamers, will launch a daily POCKET EDITION on ABC iview.

Featuring up-to-the-minute gaming news in a five minute program, the GOOD GAME POCKET EDITION will encourage and respond to viewer suggestions through social media platforms.

In addition to PS4, the new-look iview app for big screens is already available on FreeviewPlus certified devices, and is planned for release on Xbox One and other connected TV devices early 2015.

Visit http://iview.abc.net.au

CONTENT DELIVERY

BROADCAST INFRASTRUCTURE SPECIALIST Axon Digital Design has unveiled SMART DVB, its new platform for live MPEG-2 and DVB transport stream reporting.

SMART DVB is a complete suite of tools to monitor, report and analyze live MPEG-2 and DVB transport streams. The SMART DVB suite enables owners and operators to ensure health, conformity and quality across the digital distribution chain and to drive performance at the highest level.

The suite includes four tools.

The SMART DVB 10-series Compact stream probe and analyzer comes in a compact (1RU, 25cm) and low power (typ. 35W) case.

Input options are DSAT, ASI and IP networks. Full scope monitoring and analysis is performed against standards defined criteria such as TR 101 290, and more importantly assessing the stream’s signalling parameters, including comparison against an operator introduced capture of a known good stream. Furthermore, essential encryption parameters and EPG content are included in this analysis. If problems occur or custom alarm thresholds are triggered the Probe generates local alarms, forwards alarms to an aggregation server, and may even be triggered to record the stream.

SMART 10-series DVB offers multiple facilities to provide remote insight and local visual and audible insight in content. Catering for bandwidth limitations from remote sites, the Probe can de-multiplex, and forward individual services (with user defined option to transcode them) as well as provide JPEG mosaic for forwarding to the gateway (next to providing a running mosaic display on the unit itself. In this configuration the Probe can display 4 SD or 2 HD services in a single multi-tile display.

Meanwhile, the SMART DVB 50-series High performance eyes off stream and content probe solves the monitoring demands for operators that deal with a large number of streams that need to be inspected and monitored not only for the signalling and stream integrity as the SMART DVB 10-series does, but also need to be verified with regard to the actual content payload (i.e. checking the encoded video and audio for video black / freeze and audio level). The SMART DVB 50-series will do this as a background process for those situations where efficiency is chosen above multiviewing in a staffed NOC environment.

The SMART DVB IP Viewer High performance multiviewer provides an essential display of video, audio, subtitles, audio levels and EPG data (now/next). The IP Viewer has a capacity for 16 HD AVC or 32 SD MPEG2 video tiles each with detailed ancillary stream data. The inputs can be derived from up to 8 MPTS or 32 SPTS on IP input. Supporting as standard two full resolution HD outputs with custom screen templates ensures nothing is missed. When content is too sensitive to be shown in full IP Viewer’s picture mask obscures the picture as required. In the background IP Viewer is monitoring the signal for essential TR 101 290 stream errors. Like the SMART DVB 10-series these alarms can be passed to the SMART Gateway.

Lastly, the SMART DVB 90-series fully integrated probe and multiviewer blends together the capabilities of the SMART DVB 10-series/50-series and SMART DVB IP Viewer. Supporting up to 8 MPTS or 40 SPTS, The SMART 90-series delivers monitoring, analysis and display. Designed for Operators or Content providers that must not only know the detailed current status of their services, but also quickly identify problems, their cause and remedy. Ideally located in central or main regional sites the SMART DVB 90-series offers a complete and uncompromising service integrity tool for those with premium content and or high performance SLA targets.

UXP Systems, Ericsson Collaborate to Boost IPTV UXP SYSTEMS is collaborating with Ericsson to enable operators to deploy UXP’s MINT Unified Services Platform on Ericsson Mediaroom IPTV platforms.

With MINT, operators can simplify next generation user access and onboarding, and create universal profiles for personalised experiences, allowing them to deliver engaging viewing experiences for customers. This combined solution enhances the operator’s ability to monetise next generation services, provides a consistent, personalised user experience across all screens, and maximises their competitive posture in the markets they serve.

MINT works across both Ericsson Mediaroom and Ericsson Mediaroom Reach platforms, providing a converged user experience across all devices. These new capabilities will: + Add flexible User Access Management capabilities for frictionless customer journeys + Embrace new user options supporting Freemium models and Guest Accounts without changes to existing BSS/OSS infrastructure + Provide Universal User Profiles, delegated access and hierarchy management for all members of the household across all services and devices + Provide all of these benefits to new and existing Mediaroom solutions today + Be available through Ericsson globally “The collaboration between Ericsson Mediaroom and UXP Systems’ MINT Unified Services Platform empowers Ericsson to provide operators with the most compelling TV services. Personalization will be at the forefront of the viewing experience, allowing users to create their personal profiles, receive video on demand recommendations, and blend cloud services into their TV profiles,” said Ben Huang, Vice President of Marketing of Product Area Mediaroom at Ericsson.

“Ericsson Mediaroom is leading the way in terms of personalization and integrating traditional content with over-the-top content. However, many operators still don’t have the flexibility in their back-office subscriber platforms to accommodate OTT user onboarding, create user profiles and integrate personal cloud services into IPTV,” said Jim MacDonald, VP Sales & Marketing at UXP Systems.

Visit www.uxpsystems.com/ericsson

Multi-Mode Mobile Transmission System VISLINK HAS LAUNCHED NEWSTREAM, a multi-mode mobile vehicle transmission system which now features a new antenna array providing greater than 72% efficiency across all cellular bands. The upgraded NewStream is also equipped with a universal modem design for use on a variety of frequency bands outside the United States.

“The NewStream is a multi-mode system intended to give today’s broadcasters the flexibility to transmit multiple video streams at once,” said Michael Payne, VISLINK’s President of the Americas and Group CTO. “With its cellular, microwave and satellite transmission capabilities, and the ability to operate on multiple frequency bands, the NewStream offers the ultimate newsgathering platform through a single, compact rack mounted unit.”

As part of the VISLINK portfolio, the NewStream can easily integrate with a variety of other VISLINK uplink products for additional data and video applications. Designed to meet both current and future demands, and based on a future-proof platform, the NewStream also offers broadcasters a clear upgrade path to multi-channel newsgathering.

With a vendor-agnostic design, the NewStream can easily provide multichannel support to any existing newsgathering system.

In addition to the extensive features of the SMART DVB 10-series and SMART DVB IP Viewer combined, the SMART DVB 90-series also provides black and freeze frame detection running continually on all services as a background process.

The NewStream also complements VISLINK’s broad range of portable pointto-point microwave broadcast equipment as well as the portable MSAT satellite data terminal, suitable for first-on-scene satellite newsgathering.

Visit http://www.axon.tv

Visit www.luminabsa.com.au

CONTENT DELIVERY

Smart DVB from Axon

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CLASSIFIEDS + EVENTS Position Vacant – Viz Mosart Specialist/ Project Manager VIZRT PROVIDES real-time 3D graphics, studio automation, sports analysis and asset management tools for the broadcast industry. This includes interactive and virtual solutions, animations, maps, weather, video editing and compositing tools. Vizrt has customers in more than 100 countries worldwide including companies such as CNN, CBS, Fox, BBC, BSkyB, Al Jazeera, ITN, ZDF, Star TV, Network 18, TV Today, CCTV, NHK, and locally Network TEN, Seven Network, TVNZ, FOXTEL, and Nine Network among many others.

+ Customer pre study and workflow reports

With increasing demand for Viz Mosart in Oceania, Vizrt is now looking for a Viz Mosart Specialist / Project Manager.

+ Service minded with great customer communication skills

Viz Mosart is a powerful tool for production control rooms. It allows for the automated control of broadcast devices used in television production. Using Viz Mosart leads to improved quality, person independence, and lower cost, but also enables an old profession to be executed in new and creative ways.

The ideal candidate will be qualified, have appropriate television experience, and possess knowledge of broadcast devices used in a production control room.

Required qualifications: + Relevant degree qualifications in electronics, telecommunications, computer science, or production + Experience with television production workflows and broadcast equipment + Working IT knowledge, both Windows and TCP/IP networks + Operational experience or exposure to the following: Vision mixer; Audio mixer; Video servers; and Broadcast graphic systems.

Your responsibilities: + Design, supply, and integrate a Viz Mosart install for the customer. This includes project management, installation, training, support, and of course the integration to an existing control room in an on-air facility + Testing and fault finding within the broadcast environment

CLASSIFIEDS + EVENTS

Advertiser Index

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AJA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 ARRI Australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBC Blackmagic Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Elemental Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Grass Valley Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Jands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OBC Lumina Broadcast Systems Australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Madison Connective Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Magna Systems & Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC On-Air Solutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 39 Professional Audio & Television. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11, 19 Quinto Communications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Riedel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Sennheiser Australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Sony Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 SMPTE Australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Studiotech Australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Techtel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

+ Sales and customer support + Show design, the process of transforming a manual operation into a Viz Mosart program. + Being a customer facing role, it is important that you have excellent interpersonal skills.

The following attributes are desired: + Team player + Efficient, focused, and fast when it comes to meeting on-air deadlines + Eagerness to learn, curious, proactive, and responsible for maintaining your own competence level + Capable of fault finding and resolving issues in smart, and perhaps nontraditional ways + Fluent in English, oral and written.

The successful candidate will have a solid knowledge of broadcast workflows and equipment, the ability to work in an on-air environment, be service minded, and possess excellent communication skills.

This position is based in Sydney, with your operational area mainly within Australia and New Zealand, and occasional overseas travel beyond that as required. Australian citizenship, or an Australian working visa will be a distinct advantage.

What we offer: We offer an exciting job in an expanding international company, with good salary and employment conditions. We feature a friendly and youthful working environment with highly skilled colleagues.

You will also benefit from using the most modern software development technologies and methodologies.

If you have any questions about the position you are welcome to contact Nigel Streatfield, General Manager Vizrt Australia, at nstreatfield@vizrt.com.

If you find this interesting and want to be a part of our team, submit your CV and application via http://vizrt.theresumator.com/apply/E9UohA/VizMosart-Specialist-Project-Manager.html

Position Vacant – Telecommunication Manager - Operations & Maintenance WE ARE A medium size telecommunication business in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

We require a highly motivated person to oversee our technical division.

The main responsibilities/activities: - Managing the technical supervisor team of five with 20x field technicians - Satellite HUB/VSAT - Internet Service Provider - Bandwidth Management - Wireless Networks - VPN - MMDS Cable Television System - Satellite Television installations nationwide - Technical Sales Required skills: - RF Experience - IP and Networking Experience Strong experience in troubleshooting, problem solving and root cause analysis This is a senior expatriate position based in Port Moresby with accommodation and vehicle provided.

If you are keen to be part of a dynamic, friendly team and have excellent communication skills and relevant industry experience, please forward your CV to jobs@hitron.com.pg * Please note: only applicants short-listed for this role will be contacted. Your application will be treated with strict confidentiality.

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TIME shifter Sennheiser: 70 Years of Innovation FOR DECADES, THE NAME SENNHEISER For decades, the name Sennheiser has been synonymous with high-quality products, excellent sound and numerous innovations that have set new standards in audio technology. This year, the audio specialist is celebrating its 70th anniversary.

It remains a family-owned and -operated enterprise, now headed by a third generation of the Sennheiser family: today’s CEOs, Daniel Sennheiser and Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, are the grandchildren of the company’s founder, Prof. Dr. Fritz Sennheiser.

The list of product innovation from Sennheiser is as extensive as it is impressive. Sennheiser has made a significant impact on the evolution of audio technology over the past seven decades, from the world’s very first open headphones, the HD 414, to present-day innovations such as the Digital 9000 wireless microphone system and MobileConnect, an inclusive audio-streaming solution for people with sight and hearing impairments.

Numerous patents and awards – including an Emmy, a Grammy, a Scientific and Engineering Award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Engineering Emmy‘s Philo T. Farnsworth Award – bear witness to the company’s unique innovative drive.

“In the past, our products have surprised and amazed the audio world over and over again. Why? Because they have gone beyond the common standard. As a result, nobody anticipated them,” says Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, who is co-CEO of the company alongside his brother Daniel Sennheiser.

THE BEGINNINGS The company was founded on 1 June 1945 as Laboratorium Wennebostel – or “Labor W” for short – by electrical engineer Prof. Dr. Fritz Sennheiser in Wennebostel, near Hanover, Germany. Initially, the young enterprise produced tube volt meters. They sold well, but Fritz Sennheiser had higher ambitions. Driven by the ethos of making good existing products even better while advancing new technologies, the lab developed a constant stream of new solutions. The product range gradually expanded over the years.

In 1947, Sennheiser launched its first microphone developed in-house. The first “shotgun” microphone followed in 1956, and a year later the company was already producing 100 different types of products. In early 1958, Labor W was renamed Sennheiser electronic – the inception of a brand that ten years later would spark a worldwide boom by developing and producing the first open headphones.

GENERATIONAL CHANGE

TIME SHIFTER

In May 1982, Sennheiser saw its first change of generations. Prof. Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, son of Prof. Dr. Fritz Sennheiser, was appointed Managing Director, while his father became a limited partner. Over the years, Prof.

Dr. Jörg Sennheiser gradually modernised and inter–nationalised the company’s structure, turning Sennheiser into a GmbH & Co. KG. Cutting-edge developments across various areas of acoustics, and new sales locations

48

[L-R] Prof. Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, Prof. Dr. Fritz Sennheiser.

worldwide, followed with unprecedented momentum.

Sennheiser opened an additional production plant in Tullamore, Ireland, and a branch office for research and development in the USA. An additional plant followed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and a joint venture with Denmark’s William Demant Holding was initiated, forging a path for the founding of Sennheiser Communications A/S in 2003.

[L-R] Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, Daniel Sennheiser.

In July 2013, Daniel Sennheiser and Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, the sons of Prof.

Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, took over as the CEOs of Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG. Both share their grandfather and father’s entrepreneurial ambition of aiming to shape the entire audio sector through a dynamic culture of innovation and an uncompromised passion for excellence.

Thanks to this spirit, Labor W, a start-up based in a half-timbered house in Wennebostel, has grown to become a global player, sustaining a continual increase in turnover over the decades. Today, Sennheiser has more than 2,700 employees, with around half of them based in Germany. In 2013, the family company, whose Management Board still regards independence as a core value, generated turnover of €590.4 million.

THE FUTURE As an innovation-driven company, Sennheiser will continue playing a key role in shaping the future of audio. The foundations for this have already been laid with its new Innovation Campus, built on the company site in Germany.

“Here, as at our worldwide innovation centres, we will work in crossfunctional teams that bring together our breadth of expertise to shape unique solutions, such as ones to individualise audio content even more,” Daniel Sennheiser explains. “In the future, we will align our product development even more closely to customers’ true needs, wherever they arise – on live stages, at professional studio productions, in offices, or simply while listening to music and relaxing – while always striving to achieve acoustic perfection.”

With adaptable and increasingly smart products, Sennheiser will keep on developing and delivering future solutions that redefine audio technology. Throughout 2015, Sennheiser’s anniversary year, the online magazine “Bluestage” will present exciting background stories about the audio specialist’s products and the corporate history every month. More information is available at: http://ende.sennheiser.com/bluestage-magazin.

Visit www.sennheiser.com.au

The original Laboratorium Wennebostel in Wennebostel/Wedemark, near Hanover, Germany.

[L-R] Prof. Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, Alannah Sennheiser, Daniel Sennheiser, Prof. Dr. Fritz Sennheiser, Dr. Andreas Sennheiser and Karin Sennheiser.

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