IABM 40 Year Publication

Celebrating supporting the industry for 40 years Index: IABM History for 40 years

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IABM Summary of Services

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IABM – Award Winning Training

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IABM Exhibitions

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IABM Awards

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2015 IABM Award Winners

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Award Winners through the years

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About our IABM Awards

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IABM Members

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Platinum Members

74–78

About our IABM Awards

79–94

IABM, 3 Bredon Court, Brockeridge Park, Twyning, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, GL20 6FF, United Kingdom.

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Chairman of the Board – James Gilbert Chief Executive – Peter White Technical Task Group Chair – Simon Auty IABM Team – Andrew Jones, Ben Dales, Caryn Cohen, Darren Whitehead, Elaine Bukiej, Hassan Ghoul, Joe Zaller, John Ive, Lisa Collins, Lucinda Meek, Lorenzo Zanni, Peter Bruce, Peter White, Sonali Nair, Stan Moote, Yoshiro Sawa.

IABM Investments Ltd Chairman – Derek Owen c

representing the industry at government level and a host of other services now offered by IABM add up to comprehensive business support package for IABM members.

Copyright 2016 IABM. A company limited by guarantee.

Disclaimer: The views presented in the Journal are those of the individual contributors and are not necessarily those of IABM.

Peter White CEO, IABM

40 years may be less than a nanosecond measured against the history clock of our planet, but our world has seen incredible change in that short time – and no more so than in the broadcast and media technology industry. 40 years ago broadcast production was almost entirely analogue, and the pinnacle of media technology was a 2” tape machine, early ENG cameras, and the first digital effects systems which could do incredible things with images – such as resize and reposition them on screen! At the consumer end of the business, the latest in media technology was colour CRT televisions – albeit with a very limited choice of viewing, the transistor radio, the newly introduced VHS video recorder and the direct-drive transcription turntable playing 33rpm records through valve amplifiers, what a change from today’s solid state digital world.

40 years ago, IABM was also formed. Initially its principal role was to provide a central voice for manufacturers to lobby exhibition organizers to provide more appropriate, effective and cost-efficient shows. With success in this, it soon became apparent that such an organisation could offer much more to its members. In response, IABM has grown over the intervening years into the multi-faceted organization that it is today. While exhibitions remain an important part of the Association’s remit, the training, market intelligence, technology liaison,

This book marks those 40 incredible years by looking at some of the fantastic technology our members have brought to the industry and the way it is evolving. There’s no better way of showing this than by showcasing IABM award winners, and they, and their brilliant technological breakthroughs, are at the heart of this book.

As the changing nature of the award winners clearly shows, we are moving from being very much a hardware-based business to a new virtual, softwaredefined world. In this new media technology ecosystem, IT and broadcast technologies are melding together to enable our customers to keep ahead of the rapidly changing multi-media landscape, where our customers’ business models are quickly changing from CAPEX to OPEX and collaboration is all.

IABM is of course nothing without its members, which range from the very smallest start-ups to our Platinum and Gold members, some of whom are also celebrated in this book.

The rate of change in technology is exponential and we can expect the same amount of change in the next few years as over the last 40! So while celebrating the past, at IABM we are also always looking to the future – how we can best help our members to continue to succeed in this rapidly changing world. That way, we can all look back on another successful 40 years in 2056; I’m already looking forward to reading the book!

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IABM History for 40 years From modest beginnings in 1976 and with much hard work from a lot of people, IABM has become an influential agent for change in the broadcast and media technology sector and has grown into the multi-faceted, member-driven organization it is today.

Our Association was born as the result of an RTS meeting in 1976 where a number of delegates discovered they shared a growing dissatisfaction with the biennial Montreux International Television Symposium, which took place in alternate years to the biennial IBC, then held in Brighton in the UK. Put simply, the industry was outgrowing what Montreux or Brighton could offer to both exhibitors and visitors, and it was becoming clear that change was needed.

Tom McGann and Peter Wayne founded the Association to provide a collective voice and front for competing manufacturers who shared a powerful common interest – high quality exhibitions for Europe which could match the burgeoning annual NAB exhibition in the USA. At first everything was done by the voluntary efforts of the honorary officers and committee. This committed band of IABM pioneers included the late Bob van der Leeden, Corney Webster, John Etheridge and John Wilson, as well as Brian Asbee, David Bryan, Claude Guillaume, Alan Pywell and David MacGregor, with Brenda White and Ken Walker initially providing the part-time secretariat, followed by Derek Owen, Martin Salter, Alan Brill, David Kirk, John Andrews, Debbie Benson and then Elaine Bukiej, who subsequently took on the role full-time when the permanent secretariat was established.

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In 1985, times were tough. Worse was in store; IABM set up an HDTV Standards Committee with the EBU. We're still waiting! A Committee minute acknowledged that they couldn't agree to a definition of broadcasting so they put it off to the next meeting. At the next Committee meeting they set up a sub-Committee.

We're still working on it – and that’s because ‘broadcasting’ is an ever-changing entity; the actual outcome has been that the IABM has expanded its horizons to encompass every aspect of the media technology supply industry that we have today.

1992 saw the first IBC in Amsterdam and the beginning of the end of the Montreux show that had so dominated IABM activities in the 1980s. In 1994, IBC became an annual event, and 1995 saw the final Montreux show; manufacturers and visitors had voted with their feet and chosen IBC – a vindication of the IABM’s tough campaigning over many years.

Talking of tough times, UK readers will remember the dreadful storm of October 1987, dismissed with “Don’t worry!” before it hit by BBC weather forecaster, Michael Fish – who shortly afterwards was guest speaker at the IABM’s first networking event!

In 1990, Peter Wayne, who had been Deputy Chairman for several years, passed away and the IABM Peter Wayne Award for Design and Innovation was established in his honor. At that time the Technical team were tackling EMC issues.

In 1995 Graham Roe pioneered IABM email communication with members; something you've all grown to know and love!

Since its first show in 1967, IBC had been managed by the UK’s IEE (now the IET). In 1998 we saw the creation of the IBC partnership, with IABM becoming one of six stakeholders in IBC – which has led us to where we are today, and giving IBC the freedom and industry support it needed to grow into the truly international event it is today. IABM has grown a bit since 1976 too; we now have 425 members and we're active around the world, representing and serving the broadcast and media technology suppliers across a broad spectrum of issues and activities.

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IABM History for 40 years industry, over an extended period of time. Honorary Memberships have been awarded to 14 individuals. More can be seen on page 67.

2006 also saw the first iteration of the Global Market Valuation and Strategy report which is now into its 7th year.

Tom McGann and Peter Wayne

GLOBAL LUATION MARKET VA Y & STRATEG REPORT

Tom McGann is one of a handful of names that is associated with a lifetime dedicated to the broadcasting industry. From the very beginning, he led the IABM. His vision, energy, charisma and determination set an example for everyone to follow. He built long-term relationships with individuals and organizations right around the globe. Following Tom’s retirement from the IABM in 1999, the association established its Student Awards as well as the Tom McGann Training Bursary and added to this in 2014 with the staging of the first Tom McGann Memorial Summit. This was to further support Tom’s long held desire to help provide the training that is so essential in the fast developing world of broadcast and media technology.

During 2009 Peter White IABM DC was appointed Chief Executive and we reached a significant milestone of 300 members. In response to demand from our members, the Assoiation launched the IABM Business Standard. As our industry changed and the individual demands of our customers increased, there was a growing need for assurances surrounding the ways in which vendors conduct their business relationships. The IABM Business Standard sets out eight criteria to which members must subscribe to demonstrate that they want to engage fully in the industry. This commitment indicates that member companies are reliable and responsible business partners.

The 30th Anniversary of IABM was celebrated in 2006 and to mark this anniversary the IABM Board decided to introduce a new class of membership. Honorary Membership recognizes those who have made an exceptional personal contribution to IABM, or to the supply-side of broadcasting and media technology

IABM undertook a research and investigation program in 2010 to gain an understanding of the problems and to identify skills issues relating to technologists and engineers in the sector. The conclusions raised fundamental issues about the poor performance of the industry generally in

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technical workforce. The investigation highlighted requirements for induction training for new recruits and continuing professional development for engineers and technical experts as they progress their careers and new technologies emerge.

To tackle these issues, IABM launched a major education and training initiative, now called the IABM Training Academy, which delivers a variety of courses worldwide both in the classroom, at members’ Training Academy premises and online.

In 2012 to support the Association’s increasing global influence IABM opened its first office in North America.

2013 saw the launch of the IABM Game Changer Awards which are now presented annually at NAB. All winners, along with the Design and Innovation Award Winners, are automatically selected as a finalist for the Peter Wayne Award which is now presented at the IABM Annual International Business Conference and Awards.

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Game Changer Award Winners 2015

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IABM History for 40 years

IABM Summary of 40 years

2013 also saw the establishment of IABM’s new Market Intelligence division which reflects the Association’s overall strategy to become the authoritative voice of the industry and further improve the quality and quantity of market and business intelligence for members. In this year the IABM Educational Foundation was established and a joint venture created with Devoncroft, IABM DC, to grow and enhance the Global Market Valuation and Strategy Report.

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Member Lounges have been established at most shows around the world, a new dealer database has been created, IABM TV Provider of broadcast and media technology content and the IABM APP were

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Perhaps one of the most visible developments was the move to a new membership structure, where we opened the door to all support businesses in the value chain through our new bronze category of membership.

40 years on, we’d like to think that our founding fathers would be proud of what we have built over the years, inspired by their original vision. The strength of IABM is the product of its membership and this will always be the case; we remain dedicated to representing and promoting our industry and informing and supporting our members.

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Like the parent body, the aim of the IABM Regional Councils is to promote, represent and support the broadcast and media technology supply industry but to do so at regional level, dealing with regional issues and representation.

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Following external research conducted by IABM on its own position within the industry and in order to remain both relevant to our existing members and an essential association for the industry, IABM significantly accelerated its development during 2014 and 2015. To facilitate global engagement, we appointed regional directors in APAC, North America and the MENA regions, we opened an office in Singapore and we launched our Regional Councils.

launched, and The IABM Educational Foundation launched its industry-wide international skills certification scheme.

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IABM Exhibitions IABM works closely with the key event organizers to ensure the shows remain relevant, as well as minimizing the costs associated with exhibiting to maximize the returns. IABM does this through a program of support for industry events, as well as regular surveys to gather members' views. IABM works with key event organizers on different levels to represent the interests of its members. There are two levels of support: Sponsored and Supported.

IABM Sponsored Events

IABM Supported Events

IABM has a strategic partnership with the event organizers and recognizes the event as an industry leading event in its region or on a global basis. These events are recommended to IABM members as a leading event and IABM has a public presence at the show to support members.

The current IABM Sponsored Events are: n IBC, Amsterdam n IBC Content Everywhere n NAB Show, Las Vegas

IABM undertakes regular audits of these shows and recommends them to members as credible events. The current IABM Supported Events are: n ABU, Malaysia

n CCBN, Beijing

n BIRTV, Beijing

n CSTB, Moscow

n BroadcastAsia, Singapore

n Inter BEE, Tokyo

n Broadcast India, Mumbai

n NAB Show, New York

n BVE, London

n NATexpo, Moscow

n CABSAT, Dubai

n SET Expo, Brazil

INNOVATING DIGITAL CONNECTIONS 29 FEBRUARY – 3 MARCH 2016

2016 IBC

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IABM Awards Game Changer Awards The IABM Game Changer Awards are presented at the NAB Show each year.

Nominations are invited from companies launching and showcasing their new product or service for the very first time at the show.

Entries are broken into nine industry segments and companies large and small, specialist and non-specialist all have a great opportunity to receive well deserved recognition for their outstanding products or services.

All three shortlisted nominations in each category will be publicised, listed on the IABM website and announced together with the category winners at the awards ceremony. All nine winners are automatically put forward for the prestigious Peter Wayne Award which is presented later in the year.

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Design & Innovation Awards

Peter Wayne Award for Design & Innovation

The IABM Awards for Design & Innovation are presented at the IBC exhibition in Amsterdam each year and recognize products that offer significant solutions or new opportunities to the broadcast supply industry.

The Peter Wayne Award for Design & Innovation was inaugurated by IABM in 1990 in memory of a former Deputy Chairman of the association. Judged by a panel of renowned specialists, the award is presented to one company and entries are made up of our Game Changer Award Winners from NAB and our Design & Innovation Award Winners from IBC. The award has become highly sought after as recognition of outstanding technical achievement.

Nominations are invited for nine industry segments – companies large and small, specialist and non-specialist all have a great opportunity to receive well deserved recognition for their outstanding products or services.

Three shortlisted nominations in each category will be publicised, listed on the IABM website and announced together with the category winners at the awards ceremony. All nine winners are automatically put forward for the prestigious Peter Wayne Award which is presented later in the year.

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Annual IABM Awards Presented at our Annual Conference in December, these awards include IABM Honorary Member Award, Broadcast and Media Technology Woman of the Year, Young Person of the Year and International Award for Exellence in Sustainability.

20 15 AWARD W I N N E R S A selection of our 2015 Design & Innovation and Game Changer award winners share the story of their success

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Game Changer Award 2015 – Acquisition and Production … and the winner is “SportTouch of BLT Italia...”: with these words at NAB 2015 the“IABM Game Changer Award” was given to BLT in the “Acquisition and Production” category, to honor the company for its efforts in bringing innovation at the NAB exhibition.

BLT SportTouch is an innovative integrated production suite aimed at live and sports production which consists of a BLT VideoServer, the main unit for acquisition and playout (including all features needed for live slowmotion), the control panel and the innovative tablet-based RUSTAB, that redefines the production workflow, introducing for the first time the use of everyday gestures in management and control of contribution material in TV program production.

As soon as the announcement was made, the news spread on social media and was published online by bloggers such as @broadcastbeat and @ProradioTv. The message also reached far beyond the broadcast industry landing on Twitter hashtags usually oriented to

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consumer and general purpose markets like #italiansdoitbetter.

This award gave BLT the opportunity to reach a wide audience through social media exposure, and thus receive comments and contacts from countries all over the world.

It also boosted product awareness and at IBC2015 BLT SportTouch was again recognized as the ‘Best of the Show 2015’ by TVBEurope.

One step behind BLT Italia is a “young” start-up established in 1959 by Leonardo Bartelletti, CEO and founder of the company. Since the early days, company activity has been the focussed on television industry always bearing in mind a “Game Changer” vision.

During the years the company switched to new technologies following the vision that the game was changing: in the 1960s it was an early adopter of transistor technology to replace vacuum tubes, in the 1970-1980 decade

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microelectronics was entering the television industry and BLT pioneered the use of digital technology making the brave decision to stop R&D in the analog area. In the 1990s the rise of DSP technology called for another change in technology and nowadays the broadcast industry is more and more driven by IT with video over IP networks.

The changing step BLT attitude has been to try to either set better rules for the existing game or change the game.

It was game changer idea that inspired BLT and led to the release of SportTouch which was given the prestigious IABM Game Changer Award in the “Acquisition and production” category at NAB 2015.

The introduction or better invasion of tablets and smartphones in our every day life made touchscreens and touch gestures commonplace and BLT innovative idea has been to add these technologies in the production chain of live TV programs.

GAME CHANGER 2015

A simple but not so easy to implement idea!

The basic idea is to integrate seamlessly all common tablet features in a professional video production workflow. BLT SportTouch is based on BLT Video Server and features live capture recording acquisition with playback at full quality with a simulcasting proxy quality channel for the tablet device. “Tablet touchscreen gestures are a natural way to get a lot of things done”: operation and control of Video Server content using the tablet device becomes thus extremely intuitive.

SportTouch represents the “tip of the iceberg” application in the hands of the on-air talent who during a live event can check, verify, prepare, edit and go on-air with its own material for the show. For show enrichment and better storytelling SportTouch comes with a set of graphics drawing tools like zoom and telestrator that can be used by the onair talent, the producer or the slomo operator.

The next step … it will be a surprise for 2016!

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Brainstorm Multimedia's Infinity Set virtual studio application was the winner of an IABM Game Changer Award in 2015. Key features that set it apart for the judges were its video Teletransporter & TrackFree capability.

During the latest edition of the NAB Show in Las Vegas, Brainstorm Multimedia’s Infinity Set was selected as one of the winners of the the IABM Game Changer Awards. Its ground-breaking and innovative technology was believed to change the way in which virtual set programs will be produced. This revolutionary technology refers to features such as the video Teletransporter, the TrackFree and the 3D Presenter.

The IABM Game Changer Award granted Brainstorm Multimedia further visibility and prestige, and has been a cornerstone of our marketing efforts ever since. “It is a great privilege for us to have this award,” says Amaya Gonzalez, Brainstorm’s Marketing Director.

“While this is not the first big award we’ve been granted, it has been certainly the most critical from a sales perspective. IABM’s Game Changer Award has opened new doors for us, allowing Brainstorm to further boost its overall brand recognition in the broadcast sector.”

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IABM’s Game Changer Award has been prominently featured in Brainstorm’s marketing efforts and is currently part of Infinity Set’s push marketing campaign. It has been a mainstay for trade shows as well, allowing Brainstorm to enhance its eye-catching theater presentations with the IABM Game Changer Award statue at IBC 2015 in Amsterdam, SMPTE in Sydney, Broadcast India in Mumbai and CCW in New York, among others.

Brainstorm’s unique video Teletransporter – also called ‘virtual traveler’ functionality – allows the incorporation of external postproduction tracking hardware and software data along with real-time tracking data, combining both with any object or set on the scene. Also, external tracking data coming from real cameras or third-party tracking software can be included as metadata in live feeds or prerecorded videos, and immediately be transferred and applied to the virtual camera’s parameters. This means that the user can seamlessly combine 3D virtual sets with real

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characters and pre-recorded video feeds, all moving accordingly with precise perspective match. It enables users to perform real-time insertions of live characters in a live event happening at a remote location; real-time insertions of the live character in an event that happened in the past, and real-time insertions of a pre-recorded character in an event set to happen in the future.

Equally impressive is Brainstorm’s patented TrackFree technology that, combining tracked and trackless productions for maximum flexibility, creativity and visual impact, has the capability to detect the exact location of the presenter and ensures the correct positioning of the talent within the 3D scene. It is a totally new, patented and revolutionary approach to virtual set production developed by Brainstorm. It is a camera-tracking independent technology, which combines in a single virtual camera the precision and higher quality of the most complex camera tracking system with the flexibility, freedom and ease of use of modern trackless systems. TrackFree also allows the usage of both internal chroma keying and external chroma key hardware in the same production.

Infinity Set is fully compatible with Brainstorm’s Virtual Camera

Controller, external hardware that controls the Production Mixer Mode.

This hardware, also used by other Brainstorm solutions, is designed to further enhance the live production capabilities of the Infinity Set, allowing full control of cameras, transitions, actions and objects.

All the features explained above are the main reasons why Infinity Set won the IABM Game Changer Award. Thanks to this Prize “we are sure that our strategy of investing in R&D is ensuring great achievements and that we ought to keep moving towards that direction,” said Brainstorm’s Product Manager, Thierry Gonzalo.

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About Brainstorm Multimedia: Established in 1993, Brainstorm Multimedia provides industryleading virtual sets and realtime 3D interactive graphics solutions for all broadcast graphics types and workflows as well as for feature film production and 3D real-time presentations. Brainstorm’s customer list includes many of the world’s leading broadcasters plus a large number of small and regional stations. For more information visit www.brainstorm.es

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GAME CHANGER 2015

Game Changer Award 2015 – Post Production

The third patented feature of Infinity Set refers to the 3D presenter that creates a 3D representation of the live character coming from a video feed, generating a real-time 3D volume which is continuously regenerated, repositioned and remapped based on the shooting camera parameters. This patented technology also allows the character to cast real shadows over synthetic 3D elements while interacting with any element on the scene. Infinity Set advanced compositing features allow designers and producers to create fully realistic real-time 3D scenes where the different elements behave like those of the real world, not like video layers or dumb stickers over a background.

On top of that, Infinity Set is a complete real-time 3D Graphics tool, as it can seamlessly integrate Aston 3D – Brainstorm’s graphics creation solution – projects within the virtual set environment, as a part of the set or as full-screen material. Infinity Set integrates 3D objects and StormLogic animation, even including external data sources for data-driven graphics such as bars, pies, charts, statistics and many more. Also, these graphics can be animated within Infinity Set to create complete productions and shows, and played out directly from Infinity Set or controlled by external OnDemand licences.

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4K Video over IP Workflows – an IABM Game Changer Award for the new TICO Light-weight compression.

TICO, Game Changer "intoPIX TICO Lightweight compression for Live 4K over IP is the Winner in the Content and Communication Infrastructure category for the IABM Game Changer Awards 2015.”

Receiving an award such as the IABM Game Changer Award is not only a great recognition from the industry for intoPIX and TICO technology. It is also the recognition for all the collective efforts produced by intoPIX people and partners during the past years to answer efficiently the constantly evolving Broadcast industry. The Award reflects the deep knowledge and understanding of today’s and tomorrow’s challenges faced by our industry and the creativity of a team to find an efficient and optimal answer to it. intoPIX has been 100% devoted to bring the best-in-class JPEG2000 implementation to address Digital Cinema and Broadcast needs and has learnt a lot from working in a very close relationship with the user needs, also applying the Agile Methodology of development over the last seven years. As many companies, we have seen how important the convergence with the IT world, and the move to software and IP-based workflow are for the future of the Broadcast industry. We have been constantly investing in our competences in cryptography and video compression to contribute to and serve this evolution.

The judging panel has identified intoPIX TICO compression technology as one of the leading products to be exhibited at NAB Show 2015. The IABM Game Changer Awards honor this effort and the forwardlooking solutions it yields.

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Considering the necessary bandwidth for the next generation of television with UHDTV resolution video and higher frame rates, live uncompressed transport across 10GB Ethernet network or existing SDI Chris Brown, NAB & Jean-Baptiste Lorent, infrastructure is not possible intoPIX anymore. Indeed, uncompressed 4K video at 60fps 4:2:2 requires 12Gbps or more for 4:4:4.

The light-weight compression TICO is visually lossless guaranteeing compression at very low compression ratio with only few pixel lines of latency, a small FPGA cost of implementation, with a high efficiency in CPU. Moreover it enables a perfect mapping 4K streams over 3G-SDI links and 10GbE networks. In December 2014, this compression has been submitted for a SMPTE Registered Disclosure Document (RDD).

UHD production over IP transition In the transition to 4K and to IP in broadcast, three important facts have to be considered:

SMPTE 2022 5/6 and related IP standards are evolving rapidly. Up to now, it was used for point to point IP transmission of uncompressed HD and 3G-SDI. But today, it aims to enable Live IP Production capability with independent essence mapping under specification, thanks to an effort conducted by the JT-NM VSF/SMPTE/EBU.

Reducing the bandwidth of 4K Moving to 4K/8K requires an expensive hardware upgrade, a heavy renewal of infrastructure and will increase power consumption. Lightly compressed storage and transmission remains affordable and manageable within systems and infrastructures. It involves a low cost hardware upgrade and reduces the renewal of infrastructures for the same power consumption.

n UHDTV needs more video bandwidth: that’s not for free n Broadcast industry lives in a SDI world: and massively invested in 3G-SDI n Broadcast facilities move to IP: 4K/8K does not fit into a single 10GE port.

Today 1GE & 10GE, are the obvious affordable ports.

Compared to SDI it enables a reduction of cost, size, and number of cables. The cost of a 10GE port from an Ethernet switch goes significantly down and is expected to be more affordable than a 3G-SDI in a near future.

However, 4K cannot fit in 10GE Ethernet (11 880 Mbps).

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production infrastructures. It is important not to lose the advantages of current point-to-point, SDI-based systems in terms of familiar workflow, operational practice and interoperability.

Moving to IP “Lightly compressed” 4K is needed to fit in a single 10GE cable. For the legacy deployed infrastructure, the compression has to be capable of leveraging already deployed SMPTE 2022 5/6 equipment and put 3 x 4K streams on the 3G-SDI mapped on 10GE. It is also positive if the compression can go up to mathematically lossless compression for a single 4K stream over a 10GE link. It is strongly required to get a compression with a low software and hardware complexity to cover all needs of the 4K over IP workflows.

TICO compression intoPIX TICO is a light-weight mezzanine compression codec that has been specifically studied to achieve near lossless quality at very

low compression ratios and for a very low complexity and cost.

Mapping SDI and IP infrastructures TICO guarantees low complexity of implementation with a low compression ratio, with no compromise to latency and visual quality to transport UHDTV 4K over IP. It is matching the requirements to be carried across both SDI and IP infrastructure. Here is a small overview in the case of a mapping in SDI and SMPTE 2022 5/6 standards.

Conclusion The AV industry faces heavy investments to enable the transport of UHD video in a regular way in Live production workflows.

Using TICO light-weight video compression, over IP Networks or through SDI mapping is a smart upgrade path to manage UHDTV, frame rates and number of streams assures visual quality and very low hardware complexity and cost.

Extending the Life of SDI Workflows Existing 3G-SDI infrastructures can be scaled with “Lightly compressed” 4K. It requires a small compression which can be easily implemented in existing infrastructure and FPGAs and eases upgrade in the field. It also requires ideally that the compressed 4K stream fit on a single 3G-SDI. The compression needs also to meet the key requirements to operate in live

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Game Changer Award 2015 – Content and Communication Infrastructure

Only 4:2:0 goes below 10GE and higher bandwidth (ie 25GE, 40GE, 100GE) ports are still too expensive for a large adoption. Broadcasters need real 4K 60fps at 4:2:2 or 4:4:4.

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Given the rapid growth in OTT, foreign distribution, the number of broadcast channels, and the number of consumer platforms, media assets are becoming ever more complex – especially on an international level, where the complexity is often compounded by 20 or more different language tracks. It's an operational challenge to ensure media is distributed in the correct languages along with the correct captions and video description all timed properly.

As an added pressure, caption regulations are becoming increasingly stringent around the world, where closed captioning, video description, and multilanguage support are more critical than ever. Traditional verification methods rely on humans, which is time-consuming and costly. In today’s environment, manual verification is no longer a viable option for media operators.

Nexidia developed its Illuminate product, an evolution of Nexidia QC products, to address those very challenges. As a result, it has automated the labor-intensive manual processes in closed captioning workflows.

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Like all Nexidia Media & Entertainment products, Nexidia Illuminate has its origin in the company’s patented and Emmy Award-winning phonetic-based search technology, which analyzes the individual sounds that make up human speech. Because phoneticbased search technology relies on those distinct units of sound rather than individual words, it can locate and verify speech with unprecedented speed and accuracy.

Nexidia was incorporated in 2000, formed the Nexidia Media & Entertainment business unit in 2005, and then began licensing the technology to third parties. As such, many users were first exposed to the technology that would evolve into Nexidia Illuminate when using Avid ScriptSync, a script-based editing software option for the Avid Media Composer® family of videoediting products.

Meanwhile, the phonetic-based technology went on a parallel journey and eventually developed into Nexidia Dialogue Search.

Turner Broadcasting was one of the first customers, and as such, Nexidia and Turner met regularly to discuss roadmap and technology

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capabilities. As part one of those discussions, Nexidia mentioned that the technology could apply to caption verification, caption alignment, and language verification. Around that time, Turner was actively collaborating with the FCC on rules around caption quality, so Turner issued Nexidia a challenge: create the first automated, broadcast – and IP – specific compliance system to monitor caption quality, determine the presence of video description, and enable language verification on the audio.

And Nexidia QC was born.

Nexidia QC software uses the aforementioned patented speech analytics technology to verify that video description content was actually aired, which automates verification and logging for legal compliance. It also verifies that the

After Nexidia QC’s successful deployment at both Turner Broadcasting and CNN, and after it won an IABM Design and Innovation Award in 2013 and an IABM Game Changer Award in 2015, the product evolved yet again.

perform their analysis. In addition, the solutions can process media over 40 times faster than real time using just a single processing core, and can run multiple files in parallel across all available cores. This capability means users can monitor more than 100 channels at a time from a single Nexidia Comply server, or QC tens of thousands of hours of media per day from a single Nexidia QC server.

In the spring of 2015, Nexidia introduced Nexidia Illuminate, a new product family that encompasses Nexidia QC and builds on the technology behind it.

With Nexidia Illuminate, Nexidia now offers three different softwarebased products targeted for different applications – Nexidia QC for caption quality control, Nexidia Comply for broadcast compliance, and Nexidia Align for automated caption retiming. Align is available as an option for both Nexidia QC and Nexidia Comply.

Nexidia Comply works in conjunction with Volicon Observer, Tektronix Sentry, and Triveni Digital Stream Scope.

Alternatively, customers can use Nexidia Comply’s REST API to implement their own solutions. Nexidia QC can work as a stand-alone solution and with existing integrations – including Telestream Vantage, Dalet AmberFin UQC, Aspera Orchestrator, and Evertz Mediator – and it can also be integrated into other third-party tools using Nexidia Comply’s REST API. Nexidia Align works as a stand-alone solution, as part of Nexidia QC via REST API, or via one of the Nexidia Comply and Nexidia QC integrations.

Unlike many of the existing products on the market that only perform metadata checks, the Nexidia Illuminate products actually inspect the essence of the media to

With Nexidia Illuminate, broadcasters can now automate something that could previously only be done manually, not only relieving QC and compliance

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operators from the tedious work of checking these aspects of their media, but also reducing costs, increasing throughput, and improving quality, particularly for the hearing impaired, mobile users, and alternative viewing environments, such as restaurants.

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Game Changer Award 2015 – Test, Quality Control & Monitoring

captions aired match the program broadcast and determines the level of caption coverage for the program. Eventually Nexidia added automated caption retiming to repair misaligned caption files for subsequent use and frame-rate conversion. Nexidia QC was designed for seamless integration into other workflow and QC applications.

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Stream-Circle Start Up is Game Changing DCIT, the renowned broadcast management company, member of IABM, and owner of Provys, is now ready to embark upon the next stage of its expansion which will be the establishment of a subsidiary whose principal objective will be the development and roll out of the award winning Stream-Circle.

Captains of the media industry will recall that Provys won the prestigious IABM Game Changer Award at NAB 2015 and the purpose of this article is to give you an update of the rapid developments since then. Massive interest was shown by visitors and exhibitors at both NAB 2015 and IBC 2015 and comment and feedback from all sectors of the industry has been analysed and utilised for improvements to the original

concept. Contributions, suggestions and feedback from the media sector are gratefully acknowledged.

Stream-Circle is an easy-to-use cloud service for media organisations or companies which broadcast video content online in a scheduled manner. In simple words, with Stream-Circle, you can instantly run your own linear TV channels on the web. This perfect and inexpensive solution allows TV operators to increase the number of their channels, corporations to run their own TV, or store chains to deliver advertisements from one point. It greatly helps film distributors, universities, sport clubs, associations, churches or unions to communicate more effectively with their target audience.

This pioneering concept consists of the following components: full HD capable video playout and CG automation engine (video stream composition), video, CG and socialcast planning (play-list editing), content management, internet media streaming, internet social media casting (Facebook, Twitter, Google+), and a web browser based control application. Solution users have secure access to their content uploaded in the cloud storage, and to their on line CG playout schedules and playout control.

Stream-Circle is a smart add-on to standard streaming and VOD services where viewers actively search and play the content. The Stream-Circle service builds on top of this concept and gives operators control of what will be presented and when it will be seen by the viewers. It combines traditional linear broadcast planning with Internet delivery at an extremely low cost.

In making the presentation for the award, Mr. Chris Brown, NAB Vice President of Conventions, and John Ive, IABM Director of Technology, said “There are several issues that limit innovation in services today.

Stream-Circle permits easy experimentation in new services without major capital requirements

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The new company will be established at the end of 2015 and will have the same name: StreamCircle. It will enjoy joint stock status and a proportion of the equity will be available for interested investors who recognise the great potential of this ground-breaking technology.

The first investment tranche will come from the parent company, DCIT, in the sum of Euro 750 thousand.

The development of the StreamCircle service has been very fast so far. A commercial prototype was showcased at NAB this year and later presented at local broadcast

conferences. At IBC 2015, the ready Stream-Circle solution was launched and scored a great success. The improvements presented at IBC included: full integration with Provys broadcast scheduling, finalisation of a comprehensive documentation for users, and live event supporting functions. Straight after IBC, one major broadcaster started a pilot project to replace the legacy systems used for their internet “movie” channel using their own storage infrastructure. Another midsized broadcasting network asked for a Stream-Circle proof of concept to extend a number of their existing thematic channels. These two initial projects with broadcasters were followed by a requirement from a large publishing house which found Stream-Circle as a perfect tool to move into the modern electronic media world of moving pictures.

The Stream-Circle developers are working hard to secure high availability for a large number of viewers. One of the first service providers on the compliance list was Amazon Cloud and the number of other compatible world CDN services continues to grow. Another priority for the developers is a wide range of usable video formats. Just recently, they have confirmed compatibility with 4K (UHD) together with many different coded HD and SD media.

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Since winning their award at NAB 2015, the Stream-Circle staff have been continuously growing. The technical team has been reinforced by three testers and IT consultants.

The extended business development team have prepared a clear business plan containing a detailed three year budget and a business model for partners. Following completion of this thorough preparation, the spin-off company will be soon established obtaining capital from DCIT as the first tranche. At the same time, the first commercial clients will be running the service.

GAME CHANGER 2015

Game Changer Award 2015 – Services

or the operation of expensive equipment. It will help change how TV stations or video providers work with new media distribution. It provides the completeness of what is needed without too much complexity. The OPEX model is the swing point. Stream-Circle is the Game Changer.”

Special thanks must go to the independent jury of the Game Changer Award whose professional judgement helped to launch this originally embryonic idea on the path to successful maturity.

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Building on its long-standing leadership in storage for complex workflows, Quantum has been expanding and refining its workflow optimized storage to help customers – including top studios, major broadcasters and cutting-edge content creators – address the industry’s most demanding media storage and management challenges.

The company’s solutions also are being embraced by a growing number of users across the sports video and corporate content markets.

Building on its long-standing leadership in storage for complex workflows, Quantum has been expanding and refining its workflow optimized storage to help customers — including top studios, major broadcasters and cutting-edge content creators — address the industry’s most demanding media storage and management challenges. The company’s solutions also are being embraced by a growing number of users across the sports video and corporate content markets.

Broad interest in Quantum shared storage solutions is being driven by the fact that any organization that produces, stores and delivers media content faces challenges in terms of production, especially with significant jumps in video resolution,

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and in terms of archive. Over the past few years, Quantum has introduced solutions with a unique ability to solve both of those problems within a single storage environment.

The company’s StorNext 5 workflow storage platform powers modern media workflows by enabling seamless, real-time collaboration and keeping content readily accessible for future use and remonetization. Specifically designed to enable the newest digital workflows and much greater levels of productivity and efficiency, StorNext 5 provides unmatched performance for online operations and automation for content movement and retention across all workflow stages including highresolution content ranging from HD to 4K and beyond.

With more than 100,000 StorNext client licenses deployed, customers have trusted Quantum to help them deploy flexible, high-performance

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end-to-end storage pipelines tailored to the requirements of their workflows, from ingest through finishing and into delivery and long-term preservation.

Quantum’s StorNext 5 platform and the company’s Lattus extended online storage systems have been deployed by customers such as AOL Huffington Post, Calgary Police Service, PBS, TV Cultura, the University of North Carolina, BBC Sport, MLB Network and UFC to enable more cost-effective storage infrastructure; faster, easier access to older media content; and seamless extension of the online work in process operations with private cloud.

“As more and more customers are realizing, no other vendor can provide the combination of high performance, low cost and intelligent, end-to-end data management across sites and the cloud that we offer with StorNext and Lattus,” says Alex Grossman, Vice President, Media and Entertainment at Quantum.

“Now, with the recent release of our new Xcellis shared workflow storage solution, we’ve taken the power of StorNext and Lattus to a new level, driving greater efficiency and easier deployment.”

Introduced in October 2015, Xcellis is a next-generation, highperformance, end-to-end shared workflow storage solution that empowers users to boost their efficiency, productivity and creativity in delivering the products and services that drive their business. Consolidating media and metadata management, extending connectivity options for both Fibre Channel and Ethernet clients, and supporting hosted applications, the new Quantum system greatly enhances productivity in collaborative media environments by integrating the most important components of workflow storage into a single easy-to-manage, fully scalable hardware solution.

This solution supports online work in process, ingest and delivery, and archive through Quantum’s portfolio of Lattus object storage, LTO tape and QCloud services, all running on StorNext 5.

Shortly after unveiling Xcellis, Quantum launched the newest of its Q-Cloud services, Q-Cloud Vault. Fully integrated as a tier within workflows powered by StorNext 5.3, Q-Cloud Vault provides low-cost, Quantum-

managed “cold storage” in the public cloud (Amazon Glacier).

The Q-Cloud Vault service facilitates automated, policybased movement of media to the cloud, without the need for additional hardware, separate applications or programming.

Media remains secure at all times, thanks to end-to-end encryption, and the user maintains full control over encryption keys and data access.

Q-Cloud Vault complements Quantum’s award-winning QCloud Archive service which leverages Amazon S3 as a storage tier.

Quantum customers also have leveraged new additions to the Quantum StorNext Pro Solutions product line, which offers solutions that enable media facilities to manage assets from ingest to delivery to archive at any scale, and adapt as their workflows evolve. The NFL’s Baltimore Ravens deployed a StorNext Pro Studio solution to support its transition to workflow-optimized tapeless storage, and a San Francisco motion design firm deployed the StorNext Pro Foundation to establish a high-performance storage infrastructure that would

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enable it to compete with much larger studios.

The rapidly growing range of customers – both large and small – choosing Quantum solutions also includes one of the largest video game companies and a top online video streaming provider, a major newspaper publisher that adopted StorNext Pro 4K and two state universities that needed to refresh their Apple Xsan environments for managing video.

“While we are all in a challenging market environment, demand for workflow-optimized storage solutions remains very strong,” adds Grossman. “Coupled with the explosive growth in content archives, this demand is driving customers to look for the kind of end-to-end solutions that Quantum delivers. Our unique combination of highest performance for the most demanding parts of the workflow and the lowest possible cost for long-term content archives enables Quantum to give customers the best of both worlds, all powered by StorNext.”

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Game Changer Award 2015 – Storage

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In 2013 a problem was highlighted to Sonifex by a sound engineer at a London TV station, which needed a realworld solution. When TV presenters are reading script/autocue, as well as the comms, count-downs and talkback messages coming from the production gallery, they also hear their own voice in delay at a high level in their ear-piece, which can be very disconcerting and confusing. The reason for the delay is that when a studio presenter’s microphone signal is played out through a monitor speaker in the control room/production gallery, it can be picked up by the control room microphone(s) and returned to the presenter’s earpiece as an undesirable echo.

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 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. 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. Also, different frequencies produce varying reflections across various types of surfaces and magnitudes within the room. For example, a 15m distance between speaker and microphone the delay is as much as 40ms .Whilst presenters tend to get used to this effect with practice, it’s not always so easy for

interviewees who are given a lapel microphone, an ear-piece and then have the same delay problem. This can cause problems where the interviewee then sounds hesitant and loses the thread of their topic because of the confusion caused by the delay.

There are already acoustic echo cancellation devices on the market (like noise cancelling headphones, for example), but these tend to be for telephony applications, so have a low audio bandwidth. Also, acoustic reflections in the control room cause multiple delays to be produced which are harder to remove.

The Redbox Acoustic Echo Canceller (RB-AEC) is a DSP solution which can dynamically compensate for varying delay configurations and is designed to produce superior quality cancellation. It takes an audio feed from the presenter’s microphone(s) and dynamically removes the presenter’s voice from the delayed audio, which is then sent to the presenter’s ear-piece as a clean signal. The high reduction of their own voice in their ear-piece is enough to make other sounds, such as a producer’s comments, much more comprehensible.

GAME CHANGER 2015

Game Changer Winner 2013 – Audio

The RB-AEC can also be used in another application which is where a caller is phoning in to a TV programme which is being broadcast live in a TV studio in front of an audience. Whilst the caller can be heard clearly for the TV broadcast, the caller audio is picked up by the microphones in the studio audience and fed back to the caller as a disconcerting echo of themselves in their earpiece. So to make the caller experience easier, this echo can also be removed using the RB-AEC. The RB-AEC is undergoing trials in a number of TV studios and is making a positive difference to the presenters’ live experience.

Additionally the echo cancellation algorithms used in the product are being migrated to other Sonifex talkback/intercom products.

For further information on the product, please go the Sonifex website at: http://www.sonifex.co.uk/re dbox/rbaec_ld.shtml or contact Sonifex sales on +44 (0)1933 650 700 or sales@sonifex.co.uk.

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Tedial Evolution takes centre stage At NAB 2015, Tedial, the leading independent MAM technology solutions specialist, unleashed Tedial Evolution™, an enhanced version of its Media IT platform. The launch was a great success and the show culminated in Tedial winning the IABM Game Changer Award in the System Automation and Control category. The awards were presented to companies whose solutions or products represent outstanding achievement across nine categories and winners were announced at a reception at the IABM Member Lounge, Las Vegas Convention Centre, during the show.

Since NAB, Tedial Evolution has gone from strength-to-strength, garnering significant industry interest and a further industry accolade at IBC 2015. TVB Europe presented Tedial with a Best of Show Award recognising Tedial Evolution’s ability to provide broadcasters and content owners with advanced Media IT tools for multi-site Enterprise MAM and Business Process Workflow. A significant number of entries were

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submitted prior to the show opening, and it was the task of an independent panel of judges to examine and evaluate each nominated product on the basis of design, features, cost-efficiency, and performance in serving industry professionals.

Since the launch at NAB Tedial is experiencing a record number of upgrade requests from its current customers who want to move from their existing version of its software to the Evolution platform. The company has also seen a 25 per cent increase in bookings year-on-year.

With all this success what is it that sets Tedial Evolution apart from other media IT platforms? The launch of Evolution has driven media management to a new level by presenting a suite of scalable and flexible Media IT software modules that automates the preparation, movement and distribution of media internally and externally. Built as a modern workflow engine with a world class MAM tightly coupled to

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Esther Mesas Chief Operations Officer, Tedial

it, Evolution makes media ’workflow aware’, enabling customers to costeffectively increase their media throughput to meet the needs of the market where the consumption of content is growing at an unprecedented speed thanks to mainstream take up of anytime, anywhere content.

Providing advanced, highperformance search and indexing tools as standard, Tedial Evolution users can easily surf and explore archives. They also benefit from improved integration between thirdparty business systems, driving workflow for linear, VoD and OTT services via a collaborative working environment.

The platform incorporates new GUI controls for any surface: MAC or PC browser, tablet or smartphone, and dramatically speeds up both manual and automated workflows. The new HTML5-based GUI keeps frequently used tools accessible to easily manage tasks, validate media or monitor workflow status remotely.

The interface is fully customisable for individual preferences or work assignments, including metadata views and screen configurations, with an integrated activity monitor and unified view of archives, workflows and business processes.

A true Object-based Datamodel manages group entities with a multi-level classification schema based on dynamic, changing relations. Entities are logged as assets and categorised as members of multiple entities, according to user needs.

Evolution’s Search/Indexing engine organises and searches media collections and other object related entities, and indexes sizable databases using shared indexes. Descriptive metadata is tagged automatically and keywords are autocompleted.

It offers new methods to surf the MAM through ‘departments’ using ‘Amazon.com’ style functionality.

Day-to-day, Tedial’s clients are able to continuously expand and easily re-configure their core media IT to improve their overall media business performance.

They are adding multi-site working and continuously tuning their media workflows using open industry standard BPM tools. Working with Tedial, customers are rapidly taking control to proactively manage workloads that are increasingly focused on content enrichment and the media throughput that is required to drive their multiplatform packaging for multiscreen distribution and success.

Efficient content management is also key for handling the different media formats, versions and variations required for new consumption models in all linear and non-linear platforms. Tedial Mediaset provides a logical view of all related components (audio languages, subtitles, attachments) that can easily be delivered using profiles in IMF, which define the elements (CPL, Composition PlayList) and transformations (Output Profile List) required for each platform.

Tedial continues to embrace global industry trends with support for media initiatives such as the UK Digital Production Partnership (DPP). Tedial Evolution ensures that customers can advance and develop their media businesses by evolving with the changes in

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media consumption and providing real operational efficiency and bottom line savings.

To maximise the capabilities of the modern broadcast facility, it’s essential for MAM technology providers to apply precise IT technologies to broadcast and media. By selecting the correct media IT solutions architecture, broadcasters can integrate their entire business from acquisition and production through to packaging and delivery, enabling far more efficient and costeffective operations.

Broadcasters and global media companies worldwide rely on Tedial's unique media IT solutions to manage their entire media workflow and to costeffectively reach new audiences on every screen.

2015 has been a successful year for Tedial and the company looks forward to continuing this success into 2016 and beyond.

GAME CHANGER 2015

Game Changer Award 2015 – System Automation and Control

Tedial’s customers’ problems are often complex, however, its approach is simple: Find IT, Enrich IT, Manage IT and Publish IT.

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Design & Innovation Award 2015 – Audio Aaton Digital – Transvideo Going forward from the IABM Award French company Aaton Digital was awarded the IABM Design and Innovation award in the audio category at IBC 2015 for its new CantarX3 digital 24 track location audio recorder.

Since then the CantarX3 has been very much in demand. Many sound recordists worldwide who preordered were overjoyed to receive them, as Billy Quinn and Philippe Mouisset were recently. The recorder has already been very involved in the making of top movies, television programmes and other recordings. It has been under the spotlight at international trade shows like Broadcast India, Camerimage and Inter BEE, where its outstanding appearance and impressive feature list have made it a centre of attention.

The CantarX3 is now the ultimate location recorder for the motion picture industry and for other recording applications such as drama and orchestral work. The Aaton and Cantar names already held a reputation for outstanding quality, practicality and reliability.

Following with the CantarX3, Aaton

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Digital applied new digital technology and new manufacturing techniques to create an outstanding, highly featured and flexible tool for professional audio recording for years to come. The recorder embodies the very latest audio and mechanical design advances coupled with a clever intuitive interface, a great display, and finished with stunning French style and design.

The recorder’s multi track capability has been created for the changing demands of top level movie and professional recording, where it is becoming normal to have many radio microphones where in the past a single boom mic may have been used. The increasing use of high level music and effects demands a very high quality ‘dry’ voice recording as a starting point so that in the final production the speech will be perfectly clear above the effects and music.

Aaton Digital’s sister company Transvideo has been designing and building electronics products over a 30 year period. Over the years, it has adopted new design and manufacturing techniques and

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has had great success in the manufacture of high end reference video monitors and monitorrecorders widely used by the broadcast and motion picture industries, products highly respected for their accuracy and reliability. Transvideo’s holding company Ithaki acquired Aaton Digital in 2013 and joint CEO Jacques Delacoux has been consolidating design and manufacture between the two companies, with more integration planned during 2016. Transvideo has brought its core technologies and manufacturing skills to Aaton Digital. Transvideo is also active in avionics with several products used in Airbus aircraft.

The StarliteRF is a 5” 3G-SDI OLED touch screen wireless monitorrecorder with a built-in wireless receiver. With supported resolutions of 720p, 1080p, 1080i and 1080psf, it operates on the 5.8Ghz ISM band, has a top mounted antenna, and a Sony prosumer battery at the back.

The wireless video connectivity is without latency, with low loss and without any transmission delay.

Robust wireless connection is made

The StargateFHD is the first of a new generation of 7" high-end recorder-monitors, 3G HD/SD SDI LCD, with full HD 1920x1080 high brightness 1000 Nits display compatible with 4K- 6G. Processing is fast path with no latency involving ‘Immediate display’ technology, ideal for shooting situations where no delay is acceptable. It includes the ability to record dailies (H264 – > MP4/MKV) to SD cards.

It has a host of invaluable tools such as Focus Helper, Peaking, Markers, Zoom, Job-Oriented Views, 3D LUTs, and Tally.

Also new, the CineMultiTrack, a reliable focus-puller’s assistant. It measures distance on set, with a main display unit and 3 Tags to be concealed on the actors. Tags are small concealable units which include the measurement system and a rechargeable LiPo battery via USB. Aaton Digital and Transvideo are proud to be members of the highly regarded IABM organisation and to participate and collaborate to share knowledge and ideas as opportunities arise. http://www.transvideo.eu http://www.aaton.com French Technologies for Motion Picture, Broadcast and Digital Cinematography

It is the perfect tool for directors, DOPs, focus pullers in every type of production – cinematography, broadcast, documentaries, sport, studio, location, video village.

Since the award both companies have presented, and are delivering new products incorporating latest technologies for the motion picture and broadcast industries.

Aaton Digital has introduced new accessories for the CantarX3. The CANTAREM 2 is a brilliant, innovative optional USB-connected mixer panel to quickly add 12 more assignable mixer faders when operating a high track count, with 4 assignable buttons for special functions.

Transvideo build into their products, it is the perfect choice for directors, assistant directors, focus pullers and DOPs in various configurations: aerials cinematography, motion picture and Broadcast.

possible by a TitanHD2 tx within a range of 200 meters LOS. It has a high brightness display of 380 Nits, and the ability to record dailies in H264 onto an SD card.

Small and lightweight, free of cables, and with all the reliability, accuracy and fine engineering that

A collaboration with top camera manufacturer ARRI to adapt the Transvideo StarliteHD recordermonitor to control the ARRI ALEXA Mini and the ARRI AMIRA cameras has resulted in the popular StarliteHD5 ARRI monitor, offering a superb practical display and many analytical features as well as inbuilt recording and playback capabilities.

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DESIGN & INNOVATION 2015

Transvideo have brought a strong, state of the art line-up of monitorrecorders.

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Design & Innovation Award 2015 – Storage Ericisson – By enabling the Networked Society, we make a real difference to people’s lives, and the world we live in.

The features and experiences that subscribers demand today – TV Anywhere, HD recordings, huge libraries – are costly, time consuming, and not very scalable or resilient when deployed with traditional architectures.

The Ericsson Video Storage and Processing Platform (VSPP) offers a unique, proven infrastructure that allows for seamless augmentation and replacement of legacy television services with new cloud based solutions. This scale-out, software based storage and computing platform, built using the converged cloud architecture resources principle, provides outstanding performance gains and greatly simplifies the architecture, allowing operators to avoid many of the complexities and costs associated with these new services.

The platform integrates and virtualizes the storage and processing capabilities of as many COTS servers as needed to create a unified, high performance infrastructure.

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Optimized for media, it can scale-out to support hundreds of petabytes of video storage and it’s ideal for time-shifted TV services like: n Massive video archive and playout n Scalable Origin and Edge servers n Cloud DVR (private and/or shared copy) n Start over TV n Pause Live TV

Flexibility In addition to supporting any mix of x86 generic server, the platform easily integrates into back office systems, even supporting ad insertion. Service providers get the freedom to configure the hardware to match their workload, with no vendor lock in.

It supports most Digital Rights Management (DRM), Content Management Systems (CMS), and Session Resource Management (SRM) applications.

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For all next generation TV applications, scalability and capacity efficiency is critical.

Ericsson leverages several elements to enable a cost effective deployment. First, the platform is hardware agnostic. Operators are free to choose their own generic x86 servers, even mixing brands.

This eliminates the need for expensive appliances or vendor lock-in.

Second, by combining compute and storage into the same stack, packaging, transcoding, streaming, and ad insertion are all integrated. In fact, the stack is optimized for media workflow.

There is no need for “silos” or a dedicated stack for streaming, one for encoding, etc. This dramatically reduces the server requirements and in turn OPEX.

Peak Performance – Always The characteristics and nuances of video have been carefully considered. For both read and write, the platform sustains very high recording and playout concurrency, which is critical for Cloud DVR. This helps compensate for the potential 30-40% recording concurrency at peak times, like prime time, or during popular programs.

Real World Experience

The high availability and 100% resiliency of the solution greatly benefits time-shifted TV. Content is striped across the entire cluster with “Cross-Server” RAID parity at the application level. This makes the system resilient against both disk AND server failure and allows for service continuity during maintenance.

Ericsson is the demonstrable market leader in implementing cloud-based TV solutions. It currently powers over 50 percent of the world’s cloud DVR deployments, including the first and largest private copy Cloud DVR deployment with over 100 PB of data. It is repeatedly chosen to power VOD expansion, time-shifting, and cloud DVR offerings for operators worldwide.

With this solution, the videos recorded will always be available, immediately. It also provides a high quality of service with very low latency ensuring the viewer will get instant reaction to all requests (stop, play, pause) with a good quality stream. The platform is built for continuous operations: n Redundancy without duplication requirements n Auto recovery, fast rebuild n No downtime for updates, h/w replacement n Comprehensive Diagnostics Suite. Enables tracking issues as they occur in production In a recent update, new features have also been added including support for subtitling of over-the-top (OTT) content, full support for Ultra HD (4K)/HEVC services enabling streaming of high quality video at lower bitrates and increased cost-savings, as well as CDN assisted delivery of RTSP (real-time streaming protocol) and CBR (constant bit-rate) content.

DESIGN & INNOVATION 2015

Cost Effective Scale-out

Solid Reliability

Ericsson recently announced that Swisscom has deployed the Video Storage and Processing Platform to power all of the time-shifted and cloud DVR features of its TV 2.0 offering.

Swisscom has leveraged the highly scalable functionality of the Ericsson solution to offer a TV service that includes 7-day replay on over 250 channels, an archive and the ability for consumers to record any numbers of programs in parallel, while ensuring continuous operations. The flexible platform allows Swisscom to deliver its TV 2.0 service across not only televisions but also as a multi-screen service to smart phones, laptops, tablets and PCs. As the leader in Cloud DVR and time shifted TV, we are continuing to offer operators the technology they can count on to get their unique service offerings to market quickly and reliably.

Real world experience enables great innovation.

Just in time transcoding will reduce server requirements even more, and virtualization will help some operators scale up and get started quickly, bringing VSPP to the edge will reduce latency and provide more flexible deployment options. We continue to provide the best solution for the seamless experience today’s subscribers expect in time-shifted TV.

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Mobile content in live sport delivered to the SEA Games by EVS’ C-Cast

The C-Cast Workspace operator reviewed content ingested, selected the best angles and tagged them with the appropriate metadata to describe the action. The cloudbased platform then quickly updated the SEA Games TV app with the latest clips and highlights for viewers to consume on their mobile devices.

SINGSOC, EVS and NETCO SPORTS designed the first ever multisport mobile app offering live and near-live replays and highlights At this year’s IABM Design and Innovation awards, EVS was recognised for its innovation in content and communication infrastructure for the implementation of its C-Cast technology at the 28th SEA Games.

The cloud-based platform was used to deliver content to fans through the official SEA Games TV app, designed for the games by NETCO SPORTS. EVS partnered with Singapore Southeast Asian Games Organising Committee (SINGSOC) for the games which were held in Singapore in June this year. The app was designed and implemented to make the games as engaging as possible and took advantage of a multimedia-rich mobile app which was the first of its kind for a multisport tournament. EVS’ C-Cast technology was the platform that

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delivered live and near-live multicamera angles, replays and highlights packages directly to consumers through the SEA Games TV app.

The app featured content from all 36 sports at the SEA Games including swimming, boxing, rugby, cycling and table tennis.

EVS was a key component supplier to the games and its solutions were

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used across the entire live production chain. Two C-Cast Agents were placed at the Games Headquarters and were then connected to the on-site production facilities. This was integrated with the industry-leading XT3 live production servers and IPDirector suites which ingested and managed all of the tournament’s content for the broadcast feed.

The overall C-Cast infrastructure was supported by five IPDirector suites operated in parallel by five operators.

This meant content from five different sports could be edited on-the-fly at any one time and made ready for delivery by C-Cast. The efficiency of the platform enabled SINGSOC to deliver a fast infrastructure which was able to easily publish content, allowing it to engage with audiences via the mobile app.

EVS operators were required to deliver a high volume of video content from five competitions

at any given time, on up to 20 productions a day for 15 straight days. Constant scheduling changes also meant that operators and infrastructures had to be flexible in order to work quickly, efficiently and without error.

The SEA Games’ EVS infrastructure allowed the design and implementation of a mobile delivery infrastructure that enabled a total of 317,618 users to access the app over the two-week period of the games across both Android and iOS devices.

Over the course of the tournament, users generated more than 37 million sessions of video and data consumption through the app. 90% of the applications’ users returned after their first use and 50% of activity was from Singapore while the rest of the world shared the other half. This proves that C-Cast is the key platform that provides the delivery of live content to sports

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fans who want it. The platform is now becoming hugely important to broadcast infrastructures so media rights licencees can deliver this level of live content to audiences in a compelling fashion.

EVS’ svp marketing, Nicolas Bourdon said “We were very excited to win the IABM’s Design and Innovation award for content and communications infrastructure.

The success of the SEA Games platform highlights the reliability that all of our solutions show under the pressure of delivering content for multiple sporting events at once. C-Cast has quickly become as key to these broadcast infrastructures as our live production servers and is driving the latest trend of allowing audiences to access live content in new, unique ways.”

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Design & Innovation Award 2015 – Content and Communication Infrastructure

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Net Insight is a public company based in Sweden and listed on the NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm. Founded in 1997 the company has been operating in the media industry for almost 20 years and now serves more than 500 of the leading media operators worldwide, spanning 60 countries. The company was formed under the premise that the Internet is the future of television and this has been guiding its vision, innovation and business decisions ever since.

The company’s Nimbra product line has evolved to become a leading platform for live, high-quality media transport, and has been deployed at some of the most prestigious global sporting events including numerous Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups, among others. The platform is at the heart of many of the world’s largest broadcasters’ and service providers’ video transport operations, enabling them to introduce everything from efficient 4K media transport and remote production techniques for live events, through to high quality video content acquisition and contribution

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over both managed and unmanaged IP networks. The success of the Nimbra technology is uniquely based around a Service Aware Media Network (SAMN) solution, which offers efficient video transport over IP without loss of quality. The SAMN also enhances the performance of IP networks for media traffic by creating a service aware media network that delivers the highest possible quality video transport and end-to-end service integrity.

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Leading up to IBC 2015, Net Insight undertook a complete rebranding exercise to define more clearly its position and reputation in the market, as well as its vision and philosophy of acting as a true partner to customers, its innovative approach to developing new industry-leading solutions, and emphasizing further the company’s knowledge and expertise in the industry. In addition, Net Insight has created a new “Activate Your Audience” concept, which underpins everything the company does to help bring engagement to the TV experience, efficient production workflows and

new opportunities for rewards. This includes rewards for broadcasters, content owners and service providers, right through to end users, enabling a quality of experience (QoE) consumers want to pay for, live and local content that makes broadcasters and service providers a part of their audience’s world, and compelling interactive experiences that television consumers want to be a part of.

Since Net Insight’s IABM Design & Innovation Award was presented at IBC 2015 for its unique customer provisioned network (CPN) solution, the company has solidified these new brand concepts and married them with the company’s vision to enable live and interactive media experiences for anyone on earth. This includes enhancing television audience engagement with media content and one another, as well as creating a global media marketplace where content can be exchanged and resources and transmission capacity scheduled in real time, on-demand anytime, anywhere. In line with this and its award-winning CPN offering, Net Insight announced the acquisition

of ScheduALL, the U.S Florida-based provider of Enterprise Resources Management (ERM) software for media, broadcast and transmission businesses, in a US$14m deal. This move bolstered the company’s CPN proposition, bringing it closer to enabling its vision of a global media marketplace, as highlighted above, where service orchestration is key to delivering the most efficient media transport, scheduling capabilities and capacity usage available to media players operating across the entire media ecosystem.

Adding to Net Insight’s success and momentum in 2015 the company ceremoniously entered a new market with the launch of a game changing, new true live Over-the-Top (OTT) solution, which it spent several years innovating and developing. The solution, launched in November 2015, represents a major investment in the future of the company and will, for the first time ever, enable the delivery of live OTT TV in total harmony across all devices, in sync with live linear television, with low and predictable delay. This opens up a raft of new business opportunities for media

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operators that have previously been left out of the OTT value chain to enter this space in new and exciting ways, and also fixes the broken promise around the second screen and real-time social interactivity that OTT TV promised, but failed deliver.

Closely following this launch Net Insight also announced the global telecommunications service provider TATA Communications as its first customer using the solution.

Overall 2015 has been an amazing year for Net Insight. The company has seen steady growth under CEO Fredrik Tumegård and reinforced its credentials as a leading company that is constantly evolving and innovating to meet the growing demands of today’s television audiences and helping to shape the future of the media and broadcast industry.

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DESIGN & INNOVATION 2015

Design & Innovation Award 2015 – System Automation Control

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What is LiveIP? Awarded special recognition at the IABM awards at IBC 2015, LiveIP shows that IP for live TV production is finally becoming a reality. But what is it really? The LiveIP project is handled in a pragmatic way. Its mission is to build and operate a live TV production studio using standard IP-based and IT-centric hardware and software.

It is a collaboration of the Flemish Public Service Broadcaster, VRT, the EBU and a group of broadcast technology partners: Axon, Dwesam, EVS, Genelec, Grass Valley, Lawo, LSB, Nevion, Tektronix and Trilogy. Together we’ve built this studio, based on open standards (SMPTE 2022-6 for video, AES67 for audio, PTP for timing and OpenFlow 1.3 SDN for network control), to show the interoperability that is available today on IP. Once built, The LiveIP studio is operated by VRT’s operation and production crews in order to validate the useability of these IP technologies for Live TV production and to provide the much needed end-user feedback that is valuable to participants.

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LiveIP is one of the many projects hosted in the VRT ‘Sandbox’ environment, a VRT initiative supported by the EBU and the Belgium technology accelerator iMinds, to accelerate innovation and foster co-creation. VRT ‘Sandbox’ brings technology companies into the eco-system of the broadcaster, by means of short-term innovative collaborations (typically 3 to 4 months).

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Why LiveIP? Many broadcast technology vendors have started to offer IP technology today. But how well the user can integrate components from the different vendors still needs to be sorted out. The best way to move forward and achieve this level of interoperability is to bring the vendors together to build a real system.

As a broadcaster and content provider, the VRT is confronted with the digital shift. Almost everyone has their own mobile device on

The digital shift calls for a shift in content production as well.

Content must now be produced in a quick and flexible way.

Public service broadcasters can no longer do everything themselves. Instead, they will have to do it together with people and partner companies.

The LiveIP project is a practical implementation where we can start learning to use the new technology, evaluate its benefits and feedback to vendors so they can improve their products and ensure interoperability.

How is LiveIP built?

The high level architecture consists of the studio floor, the control room and the data center, all connected by only a few glass fibers. This architecture is the foundation for remote and distributed production: spanning from distributed resources within a

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single building to different geographical locations.

This set up enables the sharing and repurposing of resources.

There is no longer the need to scale up studio gear to handle the most demanding production that is happening only every so often. The distribution of resources can also support redundant infrastructure and disaster recovery scenarios.

And with some automation, all of the provisioning and management of the infrastructure can be easy to use and reconfigure as required.

First walk, and then run!

Project phases To achieve the LiveIP project’s ambitious objectives in a short timeframe, we’ve chosen a practical multi-phase approach.

In Phase 1, we built a simple, single camera studio to reach the necessary interoperability to produce content in an IP environment. The three locations are interconnected with only 3 fiber cables and the studio was accepted by our operational team. We are no longer using one big SDI router, but are using distributed routing over the network.

At the time of writing this article, we are proceeding with

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Phase 2. We have expanded the system to four cameras and introduced new partners to the project. Since we are producing a 4 camera talk show in a real TV-set with a lot of screens, the required bandwidth is higher and the network will become more complex.

In early 2016, we hope to start Phase 3 which aims to see an uninterrupted programme production of 45 minutes with live streaming on the internet.

The future There is still work to be done to make live IP production widespread. We need more complete implementations of standards like PTP/SMPTE 2059. We also need improvements to other standards i.e. the separation and synchronization between video and audio. It is also a huge challenge for the user to learn how to use IP networks for critical applications.

But together we are getting there and this project is an important showcase of what can be done when public service broadcasters collaborate. Stop by the VRT to see the set up or visit our project webpage for more information: sandbox.vrt.be/liveip

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Design & Innovation Award 2015 – Special Recognition

which content is consumed, and people are moving away from linear TV. For many broadcasters, important decisions on future infrastructure have to be taken in the next few years. To do so, they need answers on the maturity of the technology i.e. the feasibility of using IP for business, critical applications, and new workflows.

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We are proud to have received the 2015 IABM Design & Innovation Award in the category of Acquisition and Production for our iphrame Vision Remote solution.

Iphrame Vision Remote is just one part of the iphrame suite of products, a range of solutions enabling combined SDI and IPbased operations. Suitcase TV takes the approach that the move to IP needs to offer broadcast operations more than simply replacing SDI in traditional architectures.

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One module of the iphrame suite is iphrame Vision Solo, a distributed software defined production system that offers a radical alternative to the way outside broadcasts are planned and implemented. Because it is 100% software, only utilising dedicated hardware when SDI connectivity is required, iphrame Vision Solo can drastically reduce the cost of broadcasting large international events, hence why it has been used at the likes of Glastonbury Festival, The Queen’s Baton Relay, and T in the Park.

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Developers at Suitcase TV dramatically enhanced the capability of iphrame Vision with the introduction of iphrame Vision Remote, which exploits the solution’s ability to be monitored and controlled from anywhere in the world without needing highbandwidth links to bring back highres feeds to a central location. As a result, fewer staff are needed onsite and events can be remotely produced using lower bandwidth links which is great news for your budget.

Iphrame Vision Remote works by consolidating all SDI and IP sources at an event within a server deployed at the event site. The server buffers these streams, generates synchronised proxies of them and pushes them up into the cloud.

From there an operator can use an iphrame Vision client to view the proxy streams frame-accurately and make switching decisions which are passed back to the remote site.

The iphrame Vision Engine then generates a high-bit-rate, highquality output, ready for lightningfast transmission to multiple platforms across the globe.

The shortlisted entries for the IABM Awards were judged by a panel of

The judging panel said of iphrame Vision Remote, “This product is highly innovative and enables vastly new workflows offering flexibility and OPEX savings over conventional methods. Saving time and travel allows people to collaborate with greater ease.”

During talks with ITN, the news giant advised us that they were setting up a trial of a range of solutions from different suppliers. This was going to be a perfect opportunity to put iphrame Vision Remote through its paces.

ITN was televising the Labour and Conservative Party Conferences in Brighton and Manchester. At this high profile event, iphrame Vision Remote was used alongside conventional broadcast equipment to provide a live stream that could be viewed online across multiple platforms. Iphrame Vision servers were deployed at each of the event sites, and operators at ITN’s premises were equipped with PCs loaded with iphrame Vision clients.

As part of the setup, we also supplied an iphrame IP bridge server to provide secure connectivity between two networks. This was a useful demonstration of how such a server

might be used to act as a gateway in certain architectures, or to bridge secure networks.

We worked closely with Avid to provide direct connectivity between iphrame Vision and Avid Isis/ Interplay, with the result that Avid operators could edit directly on the iphrame stream. Suitcase has always made a point of understanding how customers use the products of other suppliers, so this particular area of interoperability is seen as crucial.

Since receiving the IABM award, we have continued to add new modules to the iphrame suite. Iphrame Publish, for example, is set to radically transform linear channel playout so that it can be treated in much the same way as publishing for

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VOD. A solution for the complete pre-rendering of playout channels, Iphrame Publish was born out of the realisation that the majority of today’s channels are non-reactive and schedules are known well in advance of transmission. Iphrame Publish significantly reduces the risk associated with the reliance on realtime processing currently found in playout whilst maintaining the ability to handle last minute changes to programming and commercial content.

Additional iphrame modules will be developed over the coming months, and we are confident that these are set to make an impact on the broadcast industry.

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Design & Innovation Award 2015 – Acquisition and Production

thirty independent specialists chaired

by John Ive, Director of Technology & Strategic Insight, IABM, and winners were announced at the IABM reception and awards ceremony at IBC 2015 in Amsterdam.

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GAME CHANGER 2012

Game Changer Award 2012 – HDC-2500 system camera With solutions that support every stage of the production chain, Sony has long been a leader in broadcast technology. Dedication to image quality has always been combined with a strong focus on workflow efficiency, ultimately delivering tools which underpin and enhance the work of broadcasters and broadcast producers.

AWARD WINNERS T HR O UGH T HE YEA R S Look back at a selection of our previous award winners, who have all contributed

2012 saw the launch of IABM’s ‘Game Changer’ Awards, and it was fitting that the inaugural award went to Sony for its HDC-2500 system camera.

The end result is stunning picture quality with very little noise and High Dynamic Range.

The HDC-2500 quickly became a mainstay for the world’s biggest media firms and production houses, who were attracted to its flexibility, ease-of-use and multi-format capability. Sony built on the success of the HDC-2500 to build its new game-changer for the 4K/UHD generation – the HDC-4300, capable of both HD and 4K production, which was announced in April 2015.

Launched at IBC in 2011, the HDC-2500 was Sony’s flagship live production camera, capable of recording in multiple formats from 1080/100i to 1080/24p. Still a leading camera in live production today, the camera incorporates Sony’s advanced studio technologies, including a 2/3-inch CCD sensor and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) technology.

positively to the industry

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The BVM-E250 combined Sony’s highly sophisticated TRIMASTER EL technology with the intrinsic benefits of OLED to deliver the next generation of colour production and picture performance. By incorporating Super Top Emission technology, the monitor further enhanced OLED’s benefits, resulting in outstanding black reproduction, virtually no motion blur, and a wide colour gamut. It also featured a new 12-bit output digital signal processing engine that delivered excellent picture quality consistency, smoother-thanever gamma performance, and picture uniformity.

Sony’s flagship 4K reference monitor – the BVM-X300 – draws on the TRIMASTER EL OLED technology first shown in the BVM-E250 to deliver an industry-leading display for today’s 4K and High Dynamic Range content.

Before the broadcast industry as a whole had truly begun to appreciate the inevitable convergence of broadcast and IT technologies, Sony unveiled its IP Live Production Unit – the NXL-IP55.

Enabling multiple video data streams to be transmitted over an IP Local Area Network (LAN), the NXL-IP55 made multi-camera shoots with up to four different video streams possible over IP. This made the technology perfect for large, multi-camera events that required broadcast quality video transmissions, such as major sports events. As a result, veteran broadcaster NBC deployed the NXL-IP55 to support with managing and streamlining the creation and distribution of a record amount of content at the 2012 Winter Olympics.

The capabilities of Sony’s NXL-IP55 were recognised at the 2012 IABM Awards, where the technology picked up yet another Design & Innovation Award for the company. The unit also led the way for Sony’s latest IP solution, the IP Live Production System – announced at IBC 2015 and supported by 36 industry-leading companies – which enables 4K and HD live production over IP technology.

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Peter Wayne Award 2007 – BVM-L230 LCD display

Peter Wayne Award 2003 – Sony Professional Optical Disc In 2003, Sony’s Professional Optical Disc won the Peter Wayne Award for Design and Innovation. Combining outstanding recording capacity with true high-definition picture quality, Professional Disc™ unlocked all the advantages of non-linear production for ultra-efficient filmmaking and news reporting.

At a time when digital media and broadcast was still in its infancy, Sony’s Professional Optical Disc was recognised as being one of the technologies that blazed a trail for the convergence of IT and broadcast technology.

The subsequent product range is still going strong today, with Professional Disc technology underpinning some of Sony’s most popular products, such as the PDW-850 camera. Supported by reliable recording and easy-to-share media, this professional ENG line up continues to provide high quality pictures which can easily be fed into digital workflows and archives alike.

In 2007, Sony launched its BVM-L230 flat screen monitor, which quickly gained a reputation as a “CRT killer”. At a time when systems engineers were concerned by the lack of replacement for rapidly disappearing CRT monitors, the BVM-L230 was the perfect demonstration of a cutting-edge product which answered a pressing and specific market need.

Relying on Sony’s ground-breaking TRIMASTER technology, this 23-inch, true HD monitor delivered accurate colour reproduction, precision imaging, and absolute picture consistency, thanks to a combination of three factors: a customised LCD panel, precision high-purity LED backlight, and sophisticated display engine.

With the BVM-L230, Sony set the standard for professional media display in the post-CRT world, combining operational flexibility with lower ownership and operating costs. The technology introduced in this model is now a mainstay of Sony’s industry-leading range of monitors, including its innovative picture and picture-blend modes, and pixel zoom function.

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Sony scooped the IABM Award for Design and Innovation once again with its BVM-E250 monitor, which put Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) technology and signals processing centre stage.

PETER WAYNE 2011 DESIGN & INNOVATION 2011 2012

Design & Innovation Award 2012 – NXL-IP55 IP Live Production unit

Design & Innovation Award / Peter Wayne Award 2011 – BVM-E250 OLED display

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Game Changer Award 2013 NextRadio started as a preload for Sprint customers on August 15, 2013. Since the launch, NextRadio has been preloaded on 48 smartphones and four tablets for Sprint, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile customers. HTC and Motorola’s G and E phones are available for NextRadio download on all major wireless carriers.

Currently, there are over 4.5 million activated users and growing quickly by 400,000 users each month.

NextRadio is the smartphone app that allows listeners to see, hear and interact with live local FM radio.

NextRadio began as a radio industry initiative supported by the National Association of Broadcasters, Radio Advertising Bureau and most of the radio industry’s major owners and

operators. It was designed to create a new unified radio listening experience on mobile phones providing consumers with a new way to listen to traditional radio using the FM Chip.

TagStation is the cloud-based service that is the programming and sales content engine behind NextRadio, powering the interactive experience. It allows radio stations to synchronize their radio broadcasts with album artwork, images, text and interactive touch points for visual display in NextRadio. Over 12,000 FM stations have been tuned to through NextRadio and on average 5,040 stations are tuned to each day.

The average time spent listening to

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Live Guide and Now Play screens on the app

NextRadio is 20 minutes which is double the ATSL of 10 minutes spent on traditional radio. On average, unique listeners are listening to NextRadio eight hours each month. NextRadio now ranks in the top 10 free music apps on the Google Play Store.

On September 11, 2014, TagStation announced a joint venture with iBiquity Digital (now DTS) to develop an integrated automotive platform that combines their technologies and services. The combination blends the best of broadcast technology and IP delivered services to enhance the in-car user experience and unlock the full potential of connected service.

In October, 2014, NextRadio launched version two of the app

Paul Brenner, President speaking at CTIA in September

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NextRadio latest booth design

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featuring Live Guide®, a first-of-itskind visual tuning interface that displays local stations with realtime album art or custom schedule content. Other exciting enhancements included a streamlined navigation drawer that puts all user options in one easy-tofind place as well as in-app tutorials showing listeners how to interact with their local stations, a behavior change that can grow radio’s position in the exploding mobile ad business. Dynamically-driven related content “cards” that accompany station songs and programming events to provide the listener with more information about the live broadcast while providing the station with extended advertiser and promotion options.

These may include upcoming concerts, record release dates, recently played, next up on-air,

In February 2015, NextRadio launched a national awareness campaign to promote the activation of FM chips within all smartphones and NextRadio. This has been an industry-wide marketing effort, supported by the NAB. Since the launch of the campaign (as of November 5, 2015), 1.3 million users had visited www.freeradioonmyphone.org to learn about FM radio in their smartphones and 500,000 people have taken action and reached out to their wireless carrier, Apple, the FCC and Congress urging for the activation of the FM chip in their smartphone. This effort led to conversations with all major wireless carriers and an agreement with AT&T for the activation of the FM chip within smartphones. It also increased downloads by 30%+ each month.

In March, 2015, Allstate, the nation’s largest publicly held personal lines insurer became the first-to-market advertiser on NextRadio in a multicity advertising campaign. A multicity campaign test spanned over six months and proved to be very successful. The enhanced advertisement within the NextRadio app had an overall response rate of 2.28% compared to the norm CTR for digital of 0.060% and the norm

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CTR for mobile of 0.020%.

On June 29, 2015, NextRadio became available for download through the Amazon App store, allowing consumers another avenue to download and utilize the app.

On September 22, 2015, NextRadio announced results from artwork overlay beta tests ran on select radio stations gauging the interactivity response rate within the app. The results showed an average of 6.65% interactivity rate, compared to industry norm of .060% (DoubleClick 2015 industry norm data). NextRadio tested how interactive a listener was with what was playing and what they were seeing on the NextRadio app screen.

The interactivity being measured consisted of tracking what NextRadio buttons the listener tapped on: buy link on artwork screen, buy song, dislike, like, share and save. The data was broken down further, uncovering a norm purchase intent response rate of 4% across the artists.

In 2016, NextRadio will be available on 60 million smartphones. AT&T and T-Mobile will soon have NextRadio available for all Android device customers. NextRadio will also soon provide broadcasters with real time reporting, prior day’s reporting not available today in radio. Plus much more to come. “isovideo” journey. Please visit http://isovideo.com for more information.

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GAME CHANGER 2013

and more. Improved frequency locating accuracy was also included in version two.

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isovideo is an innovative start-up media and technology and servicing company located in Beaverton, Oregon, USA. isovideo's Viarte was honored to receive the prestigious IABM “Game Changer” award in 2013. From the “iso” (equal) prefix in our name, our goal is to provide “equal high quality video” processing for all types of content: new or legacy, SD, HD or UHD, HDR or SDR, HFR (180p) or 24p, as well as any scan type: interlaced, progressive, telecine, or mixed cadence. As the media industry transitions to IP production and workflow with emerging HDR/WCG/UHD/HFR standards, we want to be part of this exciting, and ever changing media landscape. isovideo provides cinema quality, flexible, fast, cost effective and easily accessible media conversion, digital re-mastering, and encoding services, with a clear path to Cloud deployment. We are progressing steadily and would like to invite anyone to join or share our journey.

We would also like to share some “milestones”.

After receiving the award, we were excited and honored to work on Ron Howard's documentary “Made In

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America”, competing with other well known solutions (hardware and software). The goal was to convert all 59.94i interlaced concert material (over 650 clips), and framerate convert them to 24p. This process had never previously been part of film post-production, as deinterlacing to film quality and down-conversion without visual artifacts or motion judder is very difficult to do well.

Luckily, we were able to apply our newly developed state-of-the-art, 100% vertical resolution pass through MC deinterlacing, combined with our MC frame rate conversion technology with the ability to add accurate simulated motion blur for judder reduction. Processing of all the clips was initiated with a single command, and even with extreme concert lighting, results were returned within 48 hours without any redos. The Film was World Premiered at TIFF that year, and then released later on Blu-Ray. Another milestone project was the feature-length documentary “Finding the Gold Within”, by award – winning filmmaker Karina Epperlein. While searching for better conversion quality at low

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frame-rates (1080p29.97 to 1080p23.976), she found, tested and trusted isovideo's solution to convert her whole film. This project was also challenging, with fast motion, including drumming, and sports. The converted film was world premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival in 2014, and has since been shown at several film festivals.

It also received the “John Michaels Award” from the Big Muddy Film Festival in 2015.

In developing Viarte for digital remastering, one of the challenges has been up-converting noisy and mixed-type legacy content for bigger and brighter displays. In particular, we have been perfecting our high quality inverse telecine and MC noise reduction. Noise not only degrades the viewing experience, but also contributes significantly to compressed file sizes – an important cost factor in HDR/SDR OTT delivery.

We were excited to digitally remaster Metallica’s “Some Kind of Monster” feature documentary from SD 59.94i to HD 59.94i. The challenge here was mixed content, containing interlaced, progressive (PsF) and telecined segments. They all needed to be properly handled (deinterlaced/inverse telecined/noised-reduced/up-

scaled, and reinterlaced), while also preserving timing! The Blu-ray was released in November, 2014.

Besides several more film projects, including “Love & mercy”, the acclaimed American biographical film about Brian Wilson, and directed by Academy Award® nominated producer Bill Pohlad, we have been focusing on further Viarte advancements in order to move onto the Cloud. n Viarte noise reduction technology can now handle challenging HDR material. We have demonstrated that, while preserving subtle image detail, Viarte noise reduction can 1) reduce HEVC/AVC file size by up to 80%, 2) yield PSNR improvements of upto 10dB, 3) speed up encoding

by upto 100%, and 4) enhance the HDR viewing experience. Results show that gains from Viarte denoising can easily exceed what may be achieved with the next generation of encoders. The image above is processed from the Fox HDR “FirePit” clip. n Viarte splitting technology has advanced to achieve very efficient scalability, allowing massive server parallelism (and huge throughput increases) on top of speed gains from GPU. This enables cinema quality conversion/encoding with lowest bit-rate and highest throughput possible in the Cloud. n Viarte technology has been recently extended to perform higher precision pipelined HDR

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processing, combining excellent picture quality, bandwidth savings, and display-independent processing in a single encoded HDR stream. Viarte features 16-bit HDR video I/O, 32-bit processing, and up to 10 bit HEVC/AVC encoding, with 12-bit HEVC coming soon. Viarte can perform HDR conversions between BBC HLG, PQ, and our own very versatile mlog system.

We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the IABM, NAB, and associates for their recognition in the “Game Changer” Award, and for their continued support while we continue the “isovideo” journey. Please visit http://isovideo.com for more information.

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Game Changer Award 2013

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It’s commonly said by theatrical professionals and writers that winning awards means nothing…. unless you never win any. And for a technology company, the effect of an award is intangible in terms of any direct linkage to sales. A customer is unlikely to state as the reason for purchasing Company A’s latest 1-RU gizmo that what swung the decision was the ‘Best of Show’ rosette on the packaging. But as anyone knows who has dashed into a wine merchant in a hurry for something to take to a dinner party, a gold or silver medal on the label is never a disincentive to buy the bottle.

Customers in our industry don’t dash anywhere when buying kit, and they are usually pretty well informed with a list of must-have features, but the subtle effect of the awards a product has picked up must surely be influential. Especially when products or technologies are in some way breaking the mould or defining a new category, they can be difficult for potential buyers to assess against known yardsticks. An innovative product sometimes needs the rosy glow of peer approval before buyers deem it worth understanding.

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In every area of human behaviour there are many who prefer the security of habit, and a few who try to shake things up and find a better way. The innovators always encounter resistance at first, and until enough people see the light and the bandwagon starts to roll, every bit of confidence-building endorsement from high-profile early adopters and industry awards helps the wider market understand that the game is changing.

So we’ve been fortunate to be recognised by IABM for two of our mould-breaking products in successive years – PocketProbe in 2013, and the VB288 Objective QoE Content Extractor in 2014. Both of these products embodied our tendency to problem-solve by going back to first principles, and questioning the underpinnings of existing solutions. We look for a better way to crack the nut.

The PocketProbe is part of our solution for ensuring high quality standards in OTT services. Since OTT is now such a vital addition for broadcasters in the competition for audience share, the need for effective OTT monitoring tools is urgent. By launching it as an app

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Simen Frostad – Bridge Technologies

that runs on smartphones and tablets, we made it simple to analyse OTT data on the devices typically used to consume OTT services. We also wanted to allow engineers to be able to use the phones in their pockets as a sophisticated addition to their toolkit. And if it helped some reluctant broadcast engineers get a little closer to the technology their audiences now seem to prefer to the TV set, that wasn’t a bad thing either.

Our 2014 game-changer was perhaps a little more controversial in that the VB288 was a direct challenge to the status quo, because Quality of Experience monitoring –

This seemed a case of the emperor’s new clothes. Nobody needs to invest in a system that algorithmically simulates the collected opinions of users; with digital video, it’s quite clear what errors cause lower service quality, and the technology exists to track and report every one of those errors.

Hard, empirical data can replace, woolly, imprecise, simulated ‘opinion’. Objective results replace subjective ‘opinions’ from ‘users’ that were in fact nothing more than an algorithm.

As well as providing the initial platform for Objective QoE, the

VB288 has been developed since its launch to become a virtual ‘flight deck' of monitoring instruments.

The key advantage of the end-to-end approach to monitoring is that it can integrate and correlate information from every single technology involved in getting the sound and pictures to the subscriber, so it makes sense to see all that information together in a form that suits the operator’s unique requirements. The great innovation with the VB288 is that technical staff can arrange their own collection of data-display instruments on the VB288’s virtual remote data wall to

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provide instant visual correlation between any chosen set of points in the operator’s network – anything between the satellite ingest at the head-end and the HLS stream on the viewer’s smartphone.

Awards, of course, encourage the manufacturer too. For Bridge Technologies, 2015 was the year we launched perhaps our most fundamental game-changing developments to date. In this industry, it’s essential to think outside the box every step of the way.

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Game Changer Award 2013 and 2014

as it was before the VB288 – seemed all wrong to us. QoE testing as a concept arose in the telecoms industry, as a way of evaluating what kind of audio quality phone users would consider acceptable from a telco. Panels of phone users were assembled to provide the data by listening to standardised messages over phone lines and offering their subjective opinion of the sound quality; and market research methods were used to massage the results into a form telcos could work with. When QoE began to be mooted as a tool for assessing digital video services, these methods – and the panel of ‘users’ – were simulated algorithmically, and presented as data giving a useful indication of subscriber satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

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In 2014 Axon Digital Design, leading supplier of broadcast infrastructure solutions, was presented the IABM Peter Wayne Award for Design and Innovation for its Neuron networked live production system. With this new technology, Axon was one of the first companies to implement IEEE Audio Video Bridging (AVB), demonstrating multiple Ethernet switches and interfaces to third party products.

A year on from winning this prestigious award and as the broadcast industry continues its steady transition to video over Ethernet, Jan Eveleens, Axon’s CEO discusses the company’s continued work in this area, the development of open standards and the path ahead.

Neuron technology has evolved In 2013, Axon launched Neuron, our networked live media production system based on open standard Ethernet AVB. Using the massive backbone speed of modern IT based Ethernet equipment, Neuron revolutionizes the way video and/or audio live production infrastructures are built, enabling the design and realization of very powerful

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networked infrastructures for broadcast applications – making them highly flexible and easy to reconfigure.

It employs IEEE standards, many of which Axon has been actively involved in creating (most notably the definition of the video transport format in the IEEE1722 standard).

Over the last 18 months and with no less than seven industry awards including the IABM Game Changer and Peter Wayne Awards, we have successfully evolved Neuron technology from a single SD stream to multi-stream, multi-hop, multivendor transport of UHD video and associated audio.

As the broadcast industry explores the possibilities offered by the next generation of standards, Neuron remains at the centre of our approach as we help organisations prepare for the transition from SDI infrastructures to IT Networking.

We are now proactively developing solutions using both AVB, S2022-6 and beyond to be able to convert to and from SDI, cross-convert and demonstrate how these standards can shape production workflows in the future.

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AVB delivers self-managing stability Last year, we unveiled our progress on the Audio/Video Bridging (AVB) standards project – also known as Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) – with an Ethernet AVB-based proof of concept at IBC 2015. Using this system, we demonstrated an inherently stable and selfmanaging infrastructure geared towards the demands of dynamic live production, successfully managing 216 HD streams distributed over IT switchers.

New devices were automatically detected in the network and streams were transferred from one switch to another – without call for a Software Defined Network (SDN). Audio was sent separately over the same network without the need to embed it.

With Clock reference streams embedded in AVB, our solution highlighted the need for separate reference distribution. Our team was able to clearly demonstrate how AVB delivers the latency and reliability, providing critical elements such as synchronisation and bandwidth management. It made easy work of heavy traffic: we loaded the network more than 90% and it still worked reliably.

Whilst AVB has made significant in-roads into industrial and automotive markets, and in a more limited way into pro-audio, its need for new switching equipment is felt by some to have held back mass-adoption. But at Axon we believe that AVB still has great potential – not least in sports broadcast, where its robust and reliable capabilities lend themselves to the requirements of live video over Ethernet. AVB makes it possible to set-up and change a network very quickly; it really is plug-andplay. It removes the need to manage and reconfigure an SDN; if there is insufficient bandwidth you will be warned and will not be allowed to make that connection. In situations where things change and you need flexibility, AVB can deliver.

Support for S2022-6 & beyond Whilst we have a strong belief in the capabilities and technical merits of AVB, we retain an agnostic approach and continue to innovate in order to support other relevant emerging technologies – not least SMPTE S20226, which defines a unidirectional IPbased protocol for the transport of real-time video, audio and ancillary signals.

To this end, this year we were delighted to collaborate with The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and a group of innovative industry partners to implement the world’s first live IP production studio for Belgian public broadcasting company VRT. The acclaimed Sandbox+ LiveIP project uses state-of-the-art IT-centric hardware and software, including Axon’s Synapse based networked multiviewer technology, to enable broadcasters to produce programmes quickly, efficiently and cost effectively.

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The path ahead is hybrid It is early days for video and audio over Ethernet and the majority of broadcast equipment is still SDI. We expect hybrid systems (a mix of SDI and Ethernet/IP) to emerge and remain for years to come whilst demand grows for a more future-proof format. With this in mind, we will continue to help organisations prepare for the transition from SDI by developing conversion solutions using both AVB, S2022-6 and other formats, to be able convert to and from SDI and cross-convert. Our range of Synapse signal-processing cards are already fitted with both coax and Ethernet connectors, so that they can eventually be upgraded to accept Ethernet/IP, protecting the initial investment. In 2016, we will also begin to ship a new range of SDI-Ethernet cards to help those customers who are ready to make the transition.

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Game Changer Award 2014 and Peter Wayne Award 2014

Whether the endgame for video over Ethernet will be based on AVB or S2022-6 (given the format’s substantial limitations) remains to be seen. There is already growing momentum behind new standards, including VSF TR03 for video and AES-67 for stable audio over IP. As a conversion company, Axon will continue to play a proactive role in the development of standards, focusing on solutions that will enable our customers to upgrade to IP, without the need to replace their complete infrastructure.

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Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, keeps broadcasters, content owners and service providers Future-Ready as they navigate the changing landscape of television.

Selected as an IABM Game Changer Award winner in 2014, GV STRATUS Playout from Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, is a scalable cloud-based Software as a Service (Saas) solution for unprecedented control and monitoring of channel playout from any location that’s equipped with an Internet connection. It uses the power of the cloud to house the controls of the playout system while providing the enormous advantage of allowing content owners to maintain full control over their content.

A major advantage of the solution is that it employs a hybrid cloud approach, giving the customer full control of the location and movement of their broadcast media.

Elements such as media preparation and asset management can remain on-site rather than in the cloud, which eliminates not only the potential security concerns of relinquishing control of valuable assets, but also the huge potential costs of moving content to/from cloud-based storage.

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GV STRATUS Playout is part of a system that includes Grass Valley’s Densité SSP-3801 solid state playout (SSP) card installed at the edge to handle HD/SD content playout. Switching and probing are managed by the GV STRATUS production platform. The SSP cards have no moving parts and integrate with the system using openstandard web service protocols.

Ideal for broadcasters whose efforts to regionalize programming have been compromised by the high costs of providing content variation via conventional satellite or cable distribution, GV STRATUS Playout provides a high degree of flexibility to insert local content at the edge, creating localized programming without requiring an expensive additional satellite feed. It also provides the ability to add local graphics and branding, and replace both short- and long-form programming.

Within the overall architecture of a typical GV STRATUS Playout installation, schedule management and control are provided by the service, and media called for by local schedule variations is moved to the network edge. There, the SSP playout cards are used to insert the

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content into the main channel feed before it is passed to the downstream system as a baseband feed for encoding and broadcast.

Each SSP card runs a playlist and the cards can be configured as main and backup channel pairs, or as a single-threaded playout chain.

Local material playback can be controlled by the times in the schedules, manual intervention from the central facility or by break triggers inserted in the channel feed. In cases where the local channel is played out entirely from the edge, the channel feed is not required.

The monitoring included within GV STRATUS Playout provides comprehensive status information for all connected playout devices and playlist status including reports of missing primary and secondary media. Depending on the IP network configuration, it is also possible to display confidence streams from the remote devices at the GV STRATUS Playout operator’s position. In cases that require “monitoring by exception” to allow a high density of channels to be handled by a single operator, GV STRATUS Playout acts as a gateway to remote devices for a control system to be integrated into the overall solution.

At Grass Valley, we are continuing to develop the technology and are migrating more products into cloudbased systems.

Since winning the IABM Game Changer Award, GV STRATUS Playout has been implemented with many customers using it in a variety of ways.

Some examples include: A major playout center in Asia is using it as a way of rapidly launching new lower cost services for its clients. The ability to rapidly spin up channels on demand is ideal for this situation where customers often don't want to commit to long term contracts for new services. They are also using the fact that this is a cloud-based system to separate the operators who are in one location from the playout equipment which is in another.

One of the major station groups in America, Sinclair, is using GV STRATUS Playout for regionalization. The group has SSP cards in a number of its local stations which can be controlled from a central point, enabling it to provide alternate commercials or local live content at specific times of the day.

A major broadcaster in Canada is using GV STRATUS Playout for disaster recovery. The company recently commissioned an offsite DR facility, and because it is based on completely different technology than its primary playout system and

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We also are developing new solutions that bridge the gap between public and private data centers, giving customers maximum flexibility and choice over how much of their infrastructure they want to move into the cloud.

GAME CHANGER 2014

Game Changer Award 2014

is cloud-based, it gives them total separation and a high degree of resiliency. The broadcaster completed a successful trial of the system by ordering its staff to evacuate the building without notice and continue operations from the offsite location.

The exercise was very successful with no impact to on-air operations.

For information about Grass Valley solutions and services, please visit grassvalley.com.

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Glensound is very glad that they decided to put forward a product for the Design & Innovation Award in 2012, as they ended up a very grateful winner!

The Rise of HD Voice and the GS-MPI004HD Broadcasters’ Mobile Phone The GS-MPI004HD is a very important product for Glensound.

As the core market for Glensound is commentator operated outside

broadcast equipment for news and sport reporting, a new technology was required for voice reporting, to fill the gap as the ISDN market slowed down.

In 2011, the GS-MPI004HD was launched, exploiting the rise of the HD Voice system being adopted by mobile phone operators around the world. HD Voice offered 7kHz audio links using only the voice circuit on 3G mobile phones, but it did not require a data service. This offered

broadcasters a high quality link option in highly congested areas, such as sports stadiums, where access to high speed data services has always been challenging.

The ease of use and high quality audio, that is reliably available in compatible countries around the world, found the GS-MPI004HD a legion of broadcast fans. The system was used in many key projects, including major BBC events. In 2012 multiple GS-MPI004HD systems provided daily, non vision TV audio, and radio coverage of the Olympic Torch Relay for the BBC. Also in 2012, the audio coverage from the many boats on the Thames during the Queens Jubilee, was provided back to the BBC by the GSMPI004HD. The boats on the Thames had been a particular technical challenge that was easily solved with the GS-MPI004HD’s HD Voice system.

Award Successes It was in September 2012 at the IBC show in Amsterdam, that Glensound won the IABM Award for Design & Innovation, and this really validated Glensound’s commitment to the use of HD Voice systems for mobile reporting. This brought the GSMPI004HD and the Glensound HD Voice units to a much wider audience. Enquiries and demand

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Expanding HD Voice The GS-MPI004HD was the core product of the HD Voice range, as the portable OB unit. Since the IABM award, demand in products featuring HD Voice have increased, and the Glensound HD Voice range has more than tripled in size. Also during this time, sales of the GS-MPI004HD units have increased by over 400%.

in overseas territories increased as the product had been given industry wide validation.

It is a strange fact that however unique, successful, or widely used a product is, there will always be broadcasters that just haven’t heard of it. Making broadcasters aware of what your company does is a constant exercise and this is where an IABM award can really help to introduce new audiences.

In October 2011 there were 32 operators in the world offering HD Voice. Today there are 145, with all European territories now covered. The market potential has continued to increase and the ability for the GS-MPI004HD to offer broadcasters’ cost effective remote broadcasts, exploiting the technology growth of HD Voice, has become ever more popular.

The next generation Glensound unit offering 4G LTE connections, the Expedition, launches in December 2015 and it has very big boots to fill after the award winning GS-MPI004HD.

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Project Successes About a year after the IABM award, towards the end of 2012, Rai Radio in Italy published a requirement for portable OB equipment for journalist reporting. Glensound won the project with the GSMPI004HD system and Rai Radio instantly created a very powerful HD Voice network which allows 7kHz audio links throughout Italy.

There are 40 Glensound HD Voice systems now delivering HD Voice including 20 of the GS-MPI004HD. In 2012 the state broadcaster in Indonesia RRI, launched a tender to supply portable reporting units throughout the country. The GSMPI004HD system won the tender and in December 2013, 77 units were delivered that now supply the people of Indonesia with its audio reports.

IABM As an award winner Glensound uses the IABM logo on its website and on its emails to show customers they are communicating with a manufacturer that places high importance on the functions of design and innovation.

The IABM award is a very welcome addition in the Glensound boardroom. Glensound’s award was over three years ago, but the kudos will continue for many years ahead.

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DESIGN & INNOVATION 2012

Design & Innovation Award 2012

At IBC 2012, Glensound also won TVB Europe’s award for the ‘Best Of Show’ with the GS-MPI004HD. Success breeds success, and at the NAB Show 2015 Glensound Radio World awarded Glensound with a Best Of Show for their GSHA014 headphone amp.

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TRIMARAN is a French computer graphics studio specialized in motion design, visual effects and on-air graphics real-time. The company has its own R&D team who develop innovative graphics software for television and sports. For instance, TRIMARAN has for more than 12 years produced the 3D precomputed animations of the route and stages of the cycling Tour de France for ASO. For several years, TRIMARAN has developed its own sport product named GEORACING, an innovative GPS tracking and virtual visualization system for outdoor sports, able to manage live GPS data and produce virtual timing, ghost visualization, virtual reality, ranking, distances, speeds and several more information necessary for a better understanding of the competition.

Each participant is equipped with a GPS tracker which sends in real time location data to GEORACING’s cloud where they are analyzed and converted into 2D and/or 3D graphic representations.

In 2014, the company won an IABM Design & Innovation Award at IBC, within the acquisition and production category, for its outstanding GEORACING system deployed, in real

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time, during the WRC Rallye de France-Alsace 2014 on Canal+, a premium French cable television channel.

During each stage, the system's ghost visualisation system provided 3D representation of the rivals' positions in real time, creating the feeling that the cars all left the starting line simultaneously. In addition, leveraging the virtual timing capability, Canal+ was able to demonstrate the virtual differences between cars at a precision of 1/10th of a second. Using this innovative solution, the broadcaster has dramatically improved the live audio commentaries and the TV viewing experience, and was highly satisfied by the system.

François-Charles Bideaux, head of sports programs at Canal+ said that “TRIMARAN’s GEORACING system dramatically improves our ability to deliver live audio commentary about the race, giving viewers a live comparison of the drivers in addition to a variety of other important stats.

By allowing us to deliver in-depth sports information and statistics, above and beyond what is traditionally offered by broadcasters, GEORACING boosts our viewer satisfaction.”

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Since winning the award, the enterprise continues to undertake new projects and to extend the range of sport covered by its GEORACING system. Widely deployed around the world for live sport coverage, the system has been used successfully for a variety of international events such as the WRC Tour de Corse 2015, the FAI Sailplane Grand Prix Final, and for sailing, the Bullitt GC32 Racing Tour, the Tour de France à la Voile, the Red Bull Foiling Generation...

Available for car racing, sailing, cycling, gliding, rowing, powerboat, jet ski, kitesurfing... GEORACING is compatible with all devices (TV, Large screens, Pc, Mac, tablets and smartphones). It’s the only solution on the market that relies on a variety of tracking systems, such as satellite, GPRS, and RF to enhance media coverage of any type of sport, whether at sea, on land, or in the air, making it truly versatile.

GEORACING includes a 2D offering, available on the GeoRacing portal and on apps for tablets and smartphones, and a 3D solution that is capable of producing a video stream produced from Trimaran’s control room located in Paris, or on the spot for an event with live broadcasting video facilities. With GEORACING, each participant during

a sports event is equipped with a GPS tracker, which delivers realtime location data to the cloud. Data is analyzed and converted into 2D and/or 3D graphic representations, which are instantly transmitted to multiple end user devices and available via GEORACING apps.

Intuitive and easy to use, GEORACING dramatically simplifies broadcast media coverage of sports events. No dedicated software or plug-ins are needed. The multiscreen system works seamlessly via simple Internet connection on any device.

This year, TRIMARAN announced that the company become Official GPS Partner of the Bullitt GC32

Racing Tour for 2 years and has broadcasted all the 5 European stages of the Tour 2015 thanks to its GEORACING tracking and visualization system. Furthermore, the company has signed long term contracts with the Tour de France à la Voile, the Genève-Rolle-Genève sailing race and other events.

Most recently, the company won recently a tender for the coverage of the Vendée Globe 2016, a famous offshore sailing race around the world. GEORACING will provide its 3D technologies for the TV programs and its interactive 2D/3D players for the digital market (web and apps for mobiles phones and tablets).

In the short term, the enterprise

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plans to release an upgraded version of its interactive web players and to launch new professional offers for clubs and leagues and an amateur offer for individuals, running on a mobile phone app.

Otherwise, after a first successful experimentation of its 3D visualization for ASO during the Tour de France cycling this summer, the company aims also to supply its GEORACING technologies to other cycling events and obviously, to produce its 3D visualization for the Tour de France cycling 2016, live on TV this time…

DESIGN & INNOVATION 2014

Design & Innovation Award 2014

Further information about: TRIMARAN on www.trimaran.com GEORACING on www.georacing.com

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When Peter IJkhout founded VidiGo in 2000, he was far ahead of his time. Leveraging his twin passions, radio technology and computer programming, IJkhout Peter IJkhout had a vision to bring VidiGo Founder software-based automation solutions to television production. Over his previous career in radio engineering, he had witnessed a 180-degree turnaround in radio operations – from the era of bulky hardware that required highly specialized technicians and a significant capital outlay, to the easy-to-use, IT-based automation systems that run most radio stations today. IJkhout saw powerful potential for this approach in television, but it wasn’t until 2006 that VidiGo systems began to get a serious look by the industry.

As far-fetched as IJkhout’s vision might have seemed to TV broadcasters in 2000, his hunch turned out to be right. Commodity computer platforms and operating systems have grown exponentially in both power and stability, paving the way for broadcasters to migrate away

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from proprietary hardware. Now that IT-based systems can provide not only the horsepower to power highresolution video but also the reliability to drive a high-stakes live television environment, broadcasters are accelerating the move to allsoftware operations. Another driver is the explosion in multiplatform and OTT video delivery services over IP networks, which presents compelling new opportunities for broadcasters worldwide.

While technology advances and the rise of IP video are the big drivers in the adoption of software automation in TV broadcasting, IJkhout believes that cultural shifts are also playing a role. “There’s a saying that it’s not difficult to introduce new ideas, but it is difficult to overcome old ones. Only a few years ago, we’d still hear people say things like ‘Wow, your technology’s great but we can never make a TV program with a PC,’” he said. “But a new, more technically creative generation of younger engineers is entering the industry.

They believe software-based automation tools can help them show off their creative abilities in a way that the old hardware paradigms never could.”

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These trends have propelled VidiGo’s growth, and the company is riding a wave of broadcast transformation that is completely re-defining the Hans Krouwels television operations of today VidiGo’s CEO and tomorrow. VidiGo has built a global customer base of broadcast and video production organizations by providing tools that are easy to learn and simple to use. By focusing on usability and automation, the VidiGo product family minimizes the need for specialized technical staff and helps lower production costs.

Very recently, VidiGo has passed two important milestones. The first was in September 2014, when the VidiGo Studio Automation solution topped finalists AVID and Imagen to receive an IABM Design & Innovation Award in the system automation and control category. Studio Automation is an all-in-one software solution for multi-camera live production and automation, including integration options with newsroom systems.

The VidiGo Studio Automation workflow allows broadcasters to fully automate their live (newscast) productions.

“The IABM award was powerful acknowledgement from the industry and proof that broadcasters are shifting to software-based workflows and solutions,” said Hans Krouwels, VidiGo’s CEO. “Borne out by the successes of our global customers, the industry is now seriously open to software solutions and is saying goodbye to complicated and expensive hardware setups.”

“In ChyronHego, we’ve found an ideal partner who shares our vision and passion for empowering today’s broadcast operations through advanced, IT-based automation solutions,” Krouwels noted. “The acquisition will give our customers access to a vast array of the industry’s most sophisticated graphics creation and playout solutions.”

solutions for live production.

VidiGo products are equally useful for automating a newscast, creating a high-quality visual radio experience, or boost stadium experiences. The company’s clients include industry-leading broadcasters, commercial and public radio stations, sports arenas, and video production companies all around the world.

The second milestone occurred earlier this year when VidiGo was acquired by broadcast graphics powerhouse ChyronHego. With the VidiGo product family, ChyronHego is well-positioned to take advantage of new and emerging opportunities in broadcast news, sports, and nontraditional markets such as corporate and public-sector video production. The VidiGo technology offers an ideal complement and extension to ChyronHego’s BlueNet graphics creation and playout workflow system, delivering to joint customers a true end-to-end, ITbased production solution.

Added IJkhout, “Not only does ChyronHego bring some of the industry’s most powerful broadcast graphics solutions to the table, but the company has a software-centric technology strategy that is extremely compatible with our own. With ChyronHego’s resources and marketing strength on our side, VidiGo is poised to grow even faster than ever.”

“In the end, television is all about creating content, but today’s industry demands that broadcasters produce a lot more content without expanding their workforce,” IJkhout said. “At VidiGo, we’ve taken our cue from consumer devices that make it tremendously easy to create and share content with friends and family members. With a 100percent software environment, it’s possible to make broadcast workflows every bit as easy and intuitive. We’re convinced this is the future of broadcasting.”

With the belief that broadcasting should be fun, easy, and costeffective, VidiGo is continuing to expand its portfolio of broadcasting workflows and

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DESIGN & INNOVATION 2014

Design & Innovation Award 2014

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Peter Wayne Award 2008 There is no doubt that in 2008, winning the IABM’s Peter Wayne Award for Innovation marked a milestone in the story of PHABRIX. In many ways it provided the kudos that the company needed to have both its name and product recognised by the industry.

Wind back to 2005 when the company was founded. Phillip Adams, former Technical Director of Oxtel, became bored with a life many might envy following the successful sale of that company to Miranda Technologies. He was bored with breeding pigs, mowing the lawn, fixing the cloches on the organic smallholding – all those activities many would associate with success. However if you’re an electronics designer, then you’re never far away from a good idea. So was formed PHABRIX, a company challenged with the remit to develop technologies relevant to the broadcast market based upon many years of industry experience.

With no direct route to market or experience in selling and marketing products, the decision was made mid-2007 to pool the technologies thus developed into a demonstrable

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handheld product targeted at the emerging requirement to test 3GSDI infrastructures. An early prototype was demonstrated at IBC 2007 and to our surprise the demand was strong. Armed with feedback we quickly firmed up on the specifications and the PHABRIX Sx, a handheld generator, analyser and monitor was born. The industry had an appetite for a highly specified engineer’s toolset, in a portable platform, at a third the price of equivalent desktop bound test and measurement instruments from the incumbents in the market supporting SD-SDI, HD-SDI and 3G-SDI. It was at this time that PHABRIX entered the Peter Wayne Award.

There was stiff competition with many of the industry’s premier brands also up for this prestigious award. The judging was rigorous and thorough and there was never any indication that we were in with a chance. We arrived at the presentation evening at IBC that year happy to be surrounded by our fellow manufacturers and a free drink. As the nominations were read out, it seemed inevitable that the award would go to the one of the big

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players. The shock of hearing the PHABRIX named stunned us initially, but then our small crew erupted in a tremendous shout uncouth of such an occasion.

The sense of elation didn’t stop for the next month. IABM was quick to support us with press releases and publications and a very warm spirit of support from the organisation helped spread the word about the PHABRIX SxA. The award itself although without any monetary prize, did have such recognition in the industry that many began to take the PHABRIX SxA seriously as an alternative to their usual T&M

supplier. With support for SMPTE standards for both generation of audio and video and analysis, the instrument found a ready audience – globally. With our own promotion machine in action, we used the award on all our marketing material. Following the presentation of the award we began to contact distributors world-wide, the award

Within a year we had signed up 16 distributors and most importantly, a tier one distributor for America.

As we reach 2016, the company has grown to 35 with global distribution in every continent in the world. The PHABRIX Sx hand held has become a range of highly successful products which can be found in just about every broadcaster and broadcast manufacturer around the globe. We recently did a survey to see where each of our products was being used and quite literally the world lit up with little flags.

However time does not stand still and the technologies of 2008 are not the same as 2015. This year we have released a new generation of product designed to support the testing and monitoring of UHDTV and IP infrastructures. The PHABRIX Qx is that new platform developed to address the needs of the industry as it moves towards new infrastructures and methods of broadcasting. The new SMPTE standards associated with UHDTV require a powerful new technology and with it more innovation and this is where PHABRIX has been able to make a significant difference. The PHABRIX Qx incorporates a unique 12 Gbps eye and jitter toolset featuring real-time multi-rate physical layer analysis with

automatic measurements required to confirm SMPTE compliance. In addition there is support for IP networks also providing a true hybrid IP/SDI solution. We consider the new Qx platform to be a real ‘game changer’ for the industry.

PHABRIX continues to promote using the IABM Peter Wayne Award

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in every advert and although it is one of now 14 awards the company has achieved during the ensuing years, it is still the one we associate with the aspirational company of five in those early days. For anyone with a great product that needs unbiased support, we would highly recommend submitting your product for the IABM awards.

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PETER WAYNE AWARD 2008

adding prestige to the product in discussions with our new partners.

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website. It could be rapidly deployed and was easy to customise and brand – customers could set up an online VOD service, or a clip licensing platform in minutes. The system can be configured to suit all kinds of business models.

Receiving the IABM Design and Innovation award represented an important landmark in the evolution of our company. We started our journey as a small software company delivering bespoke video management solutions for corporate and public sector clients – including the MOD and BBC. In 2012 we embarked on a bold move to productise our software – in particular to adopt and take advantage of the benefits of cloud based technology – to bring media asset management to a wider range of organisations and users. In 2014 we entered the Design and Innovations award and arrived at IBC with what we believed was a world class product.

Harnessing the affordability, power and elasticity of cloud computing IABM had clearly recognised the potential for the solution when commenting on the award. John Ive said “our judges said this solution neatly packages a collection of features to allow broadcasters to easily redistribute linear output onto non linear platforms with minimal manual intervention and without any onsite infrastructure leveraging a cloud based concept”.

Turning our back on project work and embarking on a lengthy period of development to productise our software had been a challenge technically and commercially, but the hard work and patience had clearly paid off. The IABM judges had clearly understood the value of our solution – we had developed a powerful media management platform that was enormously scalable – it could be used by small businesses or production companies right through to national broadcasters – for preserving, navigating and searching their media assets through an online

Over a year has passed since we won the award - and so many good things have happened to us since. To emphasise our belief in our award winning enterprise video platform, we've even renamed the company after our product – we’re now Imagen Ltd (formerly Cambridge Imaging Systems). We’ve also gone on to win more awards – including the Streaming Media European Readers’ Choice Awards 2015 for Media Asset Management and the Frost and Sullivan Global Digital Asset Management Entrepreneurial Company of the Year 2015.

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The IABM award however, was our first major tech award and for that reason the event will be remembered as an important moment in the company's history.

It gave us credibility and the confidence to take our platform to a wider customer base. We now firmly believe that the media and broadcast sector have a great deal of expertise to offer other industries who are now faced with the challenge of managing large amounts of video data.

We are about to enter ‘the golden age of video’ according to Mark Zuckerberg. As the world continues to generate and consume a tidal wave of new media – all kinds of organisations will come to experience the same challenges that broadcasters and media companies have been facing for the last decade. Innovative tech vendors in the media and broadcast industry have devised new strategies for managing, indexing and delivering vast amounts of valuable digital media. Other industries can learn a great deal from this – not just in the way we have utilised cloud based technologies to reduce costs and improve efficiencies – but also in the recognition that content needs to be stored securely with a range of access controls for different audiences.

DESIGN & INNOVATION 2014

About our IABM Awards IABM Honorary Members

Honorary membership has been awarded to:

Honorary Membership was introduced in 2005 to recognize the outstanding personal contribution made to the supplier side of the industry, or IABM itself, normally over an extended period.

n Graham Roe n John Wilson n Lyle Keys

The knowledge, experience and contacts of the Honorary Members is invaluable and as a thank you IABM provides them with an annual dinner and complementary full delegate passes to its Annual International Business Conference and Awards.

Some of our Honorary Members help run The IABM Educational Foundation is run on a voluntary basis.

2015 Award – Clyde Smith “I am very pleased and honoured to accept this award. I am also very humbled to join the ranks of the distinguished past recipients, whom I have long admired and respected for their accomplishments.”

Clyde Smith

n Alan Brill

n Clyde Smith

n David MacGregor

n Derek Owen

n John Ross

n Lawrence Kaplan

n Martin Salter

n Mike Martin

n Peter Owen

n Roger Crumpton

n Roderick Snell

Clyde Smith & Peter White

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About our IABM Awards

About our IABM Awards

International Award for Excellence in Sustainability The judges look for specific initiatives that demonstrate a commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainability.

2015 – Coronation Street/ITV Studios When long-running British serial drama Coronation Street relocated its production site to MediaCityUK in 2014, it pledged to deliver ‘television drama of the highest quality with the lowest possible environmental impact’.

“Coronation Street/ITV Studios has provided a blueprint for sustainable television production,” said John Ive, IABM Director of Technology and Strategic Insight.

IABM INTERNATIONAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN SUSTAINABILITY 2015 W

“They have assessed and minimised the environmental impact of every element of the production from renewable energy to power the site, to electronic scripts and ‘paperwork’, recycling and minimising waste across the entire production chain.”

"Coronation Street is very pleased to receive this Award from IABM. We have worked extremely hard in championing

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Broadcast & Media Technology Woman of the Year

Young Person of the Year

“The high calibre of all the shortlisted candidates for this year’s Woman of the Year Award clearly demonstrates that our industry is moving on from its male-dominated past” said Peter White.

Encouraging the flow of young talent into the industry is vital for its continuing development and success. IABM recognizes this through its extensive training activities under the auspices of The IABM Education Foundation.

sustainable TV production and have no doubt this award will help us further our goals.”

– Robbie Sandison, Head of Production, Coronation Street In addition, GENELEC was highly commended in this category for its 30-year commitment to sustainability, which it regards as a core part of its business values.

IABM International Award for Excellence in Sustainability – 2015 – Coronation Street/ITV Studios

Mark Horchler, Jigna Chandaria & Nigel Burt

International Award for Excellence in Sustainability – 2014 – Elemental Technologies

Peter White, Michelle Munson & Wenbing Yao

Peter White & Ludovic Michaud

This year’s winner, CEO and Co-Founder of Aspera, Michelle Munson, has not only led the business in a stellar, profitable growth path culminating in its recent acquisition by IBM, she has also played a key role as coinventor of the company’s FASP® high-speed data transport technology, transforming the way big data is ingested, processed, managed, distributed and delivered today.

for which I am very grateful. I’d like to thank IABM and our peers in this industry for this award and the tremendous support of the digital media and broadcast industry in encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship.” Michelle Munson

“Just to be recognized amongst such an esteemed group of talented women in our industry is a great honour

Naomi Climer & Lucinda Meek

Broadcast & Media Technology Woman of the Year – 2014 – Naomi Climer

2015 – Ludovic Michaud A graduate of Valenciennes University in France, this year’s winner of the IABM Young Person of the Year Award is Ludovic Michaud.

“Ludovic Michaud has demonstrated a strong understanding of transmission, compression and workflows and how they can be better applied to meet the challenges of delivering content everywhere,” said IABM CEO, Peter White. “Our challenge is to ensure that the broadcast and media technology business continues to attract the Adam Plowden & brightest talent; Steve Warner Ludovic Michaud demonstrates that Young Person of the Year we can.”

– 2014 – Adam Plowden

Peter Owen, Robbie Sandison, Llio Fflur & Peter White

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IABM Members

IABM Members

A AA Media Group Aaton Digital Abekas Actus Digital Adder Technology Advanced Broadcast Services Advanced Broadcast Solutions Aframe Agama Technologies Agility Logistics Akamai Alphatron Broadcast Electronics Amagi Media Labs Amos – Spacecom ANNOVA Systems Anvato AP ENPS Apantac Appear TV aQ Broadcast Archimedia ARG ElectroDesign Argosy Arion Technology ARRI artec technologies arvato Systems S4M Asia Pacific Broadcasting Aspen Media Aspera, an IBM company Astec Solutions ATEME ATG Danmon

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Atomos Atos Audio-Technica AVECO Avid AVT Audio Video Technologies Axinom Axon Digital Design B Babcock International BCE Beijing United Victory Belden Wire & Cable Benchmark Broadcast Systems BFE Studio und Medien Systeme Black Box Network Services Blackmagic Design BLT Blue Lucy Media Bluebell Opticom Bluefish444 BMS Boris FX / Imagineer Bowens International Boxer Systems BPL Broadcast Bradley Engineering Brainstorm Multimedia BRIDGE Technologies Brightcove Broadcast Connexions Broadcast Magazine

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Broadcast Networks Broadcast Pix Broadcast Traffic Systems BroadcastAsia BroadStream Solutions BroaMan Brocade Bryant Unlimited BT Media & Broadcast Bubble & Squeak Communications Burli Software BVE Show C Calrec Audio Canara Lighting Canare Canford Audio Canon Cartoni CASTWIN Cavena Image Products Sub-Council CEDAR Audio Christie Christy Media Solutions ChyronHego Cinegy Cisco CJP Broadcast Service Solutions Clear-Com Clyde Broadcast Products Cobalt Digital Cogent Technologies

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Conax CP Cases CreateLED CryptoGuard Crystal Vision CUBA Broadcast CueScript Limited D Dalet Digital Media Systems Dan Technologies Danmon Asia Ltd Danmon Danmark Danmon Norge Danmon Svenska Danmon Systems Group Datavideo Technologies Datos Media Technologies DAVID Systems dB Broadcast DDP (DynamicDrivePool) Dega Broadcast Systems Dejero Labs DekTec Digital Video Deltacast DEV Systemtechnik DIGISPOT System Digital Garage Group Dimetis Disk Archive Corporation DLP-Digital Tech Dolby Dot Hill Systems Doteck Digital Technologies Dynamic Broadcast

E Ecalpemos Technologies Editshare EKT Elemental Technologies ELEMENTS | syslink EMC Emotion Systems EMS Ensemble Designs Envivio Ericsson Television ETL Systems euNetworks Eurofins Digital Testing Evertz Microsystems EVS Broadcast Equipment Exhibition Freighting Eyeheight F Facilis Technology Farmers Wife FileCatalyst FOR-A Forscene G GatesAir GB Labs GEA & Associates Gearhouse Broadcast Genelec General Dynamics Mediaware Giga Communications

Gigawave Gill Craig Consulting Glensound Electronics Global Distribution Globecast Globecomm Systems Glookast Grass Valley Grus Gsoft Guntermann & Drunck

IMC Technologies I-MOVIX InBroadcast Intel Corporation Interfacio Interra Systems Interxion intoPIX ioGates IPE IPV IRDETO

H Haivision Harmonic Hewlett Packard HHB Communications Hi Tech Systems HILTRON Hitachi Kokusai Electric HTS HUAWEI Technologies HybridTV I IBIS IBM Ideal Systems Asia Pacific IdeasUnlimited.tv IEWC IHSE Ikegami Electronics Imagen Imagine Communications Imagine Products

J Jump K K2E Tekpoint K5600 Lighting Kane Consulting L L2TEK Lawo Leader Instruments Corporation LEMO Lightstar Limelight Network Linear Acoustic LSI Projects Lund Halsey LYNX Technik

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M MACOM Malooba Manor Marketing Marquis Broadcast Masstech Innovations Master Media Matrox MBC Media Asset Capital Media Excel Media Links MediaBridge Capital Advisors MediaGeniX MediaGuru Mediatrade Megahertz Memnon Archiving Services Metaglue MeteoGroup Deutschland Microsoft Miller Tripods MISTV MKM Marketing Communications Mode-AL MOG Technologies MRC MRMC MultiCast Consultancy MultiDyne Video & Fiber Optic Systems

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IABM Members

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NAGRA Nativ Nautel NEP Group NEP - Avi-drome NEP - Bow Tie TV NEP - DutchView NEP - Faber Audiovisuals NEP - Infostrada NEP - Mediatec Broadcast NEP - Mediatec Solutions NEP - Observe NEP - Outside Broadcast NEP - TEAM ENG Net Insight NetApp NETIA never.no Nevion NewsBoss Newtec NewTek Nexidia Nikon NTP Technology NTT Electronics NUGEN

Peak Communications Pebble Beach Systems PESA PHABRIX phoenix7 Pixel Power PlayBox Technology Plura Polecam Portaprompt Prime Focus Technologies PROVYS PTS

S.T.P S3 Satcom SAM SandRun Consultants SatService ScheduALL SCISYS Deutschland Screen Systems SDNsquare SeaChange International Sematron SEMTECH SENCORE Sennheiser SES SGL SGT Shotoku Shure Incorporated Signiant SIS LIVE Skyline Communications SmartCart SVX SoftNI Corporation Softron Media Services Softvallee Solid State Logic Sonifex Sony Spectra Logic Squared Paper Starfish Technologies StorageDNA STREAM Labs Studer Professional Audio Suitcase TV

O Object Matrix Octopus Newsroom OmniTek Oracle Corporation ORAD Hi-Tec Systems ORBAN Osprey Video

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Q Qbit Q'ligent Quantum Corporation R Radio Frequency Systems Radome Media Consultancy Rascular Technology Red Lorry Yellow Lorry Riedel Communications Ripple Networks Rohde & Schwarz Root6 Limited Ross Video Rotolight RT Software RTS Intercom Systems RTSS RTW

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SWIT Electronics Syrp T TAG TC Electronic Tedial Tektronix Telemetrics Telestream Thales Angenieux The Broadcast Bridge Thinklogical Thomson Video Networks Tiffen International Tiger Technology Timecode Systems TMD Tradefair Transvideo Trilogy Communications TSL Professional Products TSL Systems tv-bay / KitPlus TVLogic tvONE TVT TVU Networks TXA U United Broadcast & Media Solutions Utah Scientific

V Veale Associates VectorBox Verimatrix Veset Viaccess-Orca ViaLite by PPM Vidcheck Video Clarity Videostar VidiGo ViewQwest VILLAGE Island Visio Light Vislink VITEC Vitec Group Vitec Imaging - Avenger Vitec Imaging - Gitzo S.A. Vitec Imaging - KATA Bags Vitec Imaging - Manfrotto Vitec Services - Bexel Vitec Videocom Anton/Bauer Vitec Videocom - Autocue Group Vitec Videocom Autoscript Vitec Videocom - Camera Corps Vitec Videocom Litepanels Vitec Videocom Manfrotto Distribution Vitec Videocom - OConnor Vitec Videocom - Petrol Bags

Vitec Videocom - Sachtler Vitec Videocom - The Camera Store Vitec Videocom - Vinten Vitec Videocom - Vinten Radamec Vizrt V-Nova Vocas Sales & Services Volicon VSC Design VSN W Wall Street Communications Walton De-Ice WASP3D / Beehive Systems Waterside Media Wheatstone Corporation Whiteoaks Wire: Broadcast Wohler Technologies Wowza Media Systems X Xilinx XPresso Communications Xylostream Technology Xytech Systems Z Zylight As at end December 2015.

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Platinum Members Our IABM Platinum members are making a statement, clearly identifying themselves as a 'thought leader' and trailblazer in the industry.

Huawei is at the forefront of technological development supporting growth of HD and 4K/UHD as broadcast and media industries move to file-based production, cloud services, and virtualised solutions. Our Omnimedia solutions give access to any content, anytime, anywhere. Consumers now expect movies, TV, gaming, and social media at the speed of light.

They want interactive, mobile, and on-demand access from any device.

Huawei helps make that happen.

Our cutting-edge technologies streamline the creative process for media and entertainment industry customers in: n Broadcasting n Production and post-production n Digital feature film and animation n Advertising n Media agencies

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Huawei’s solutions for video production platforms, diversified distribution channels, and innovative media asset management and storage are powerful and help customers generate more revenue today, as well as in the future.

We opened our first office in the UK in 2001 and won the first major UK contract, with British Telecom (BT), in 2005. In a little over a decade since, we’ve grown from a telecommunications provider to a fully integrated ICT supplier, helping to roll out parts of the UK’s broadband, telecom, and broadcast networks.

Our partnership with companies like BT remains an on-going one, presently focused on the provision of Superfast Broadband, and, in addition, the company is involved in partnerships with other household names, including EE’s 4G roll-out and Vodafone’s ‘Project Spring.’ One of our 15 workplaces situated in the UK is our headquarters, in Reading, which employs over 1,000 people.

As one of China’s largest outward investors, Huawei plays an important role in investing in the next generation of computer scientists and engineers, their skills and research and development. This is demonstrated through the company’s support of

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undergraduates around the world, and through partnership projects like the Huawei Innovation Research Programme (HIRP), through which we have established partnerships with 120 universities as well as research and consulting institutes throughout Europe.

Huawei is working with universities to identify exceptional young talent to participate in our “Seeds for the Future” programme, to put them on a more certain path to success.

So far Huawei has invited more than 1,500 outstanding students from over 150 universities worldwide to our facilities in Shenzhen, where they become familiar with our cuttingedge technologies and the latest trends in the industry. Training from our experts and hands-on experience in our most advanced labs broadens their horizons and readies them for leadership in developing the next stage of our information society.

During the last five years, over 500 students from 23 European countries have been included in this programme.

The company describes our vision as being, “to build a better connected world and enrich life through communication.” http://www.huawei.com/uk

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MEMBER

Huawei is headquartered in Shenzhen, China and employs 170,000 employees around the world, 76,000 of whom are engaged in R&Dfocused work. Huawei’s products can be found in over 170 countries, serving more than a third of the world’s population and we have three core operating divisions: Carrier Network, Enterprise, and Consumer business groups.

PLATINUM

Huawei is a leading multi-national Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions provider and a Fortune Global 500 company.

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With a legacy in the broadcast industry of more than five decades, the company supplies products, solutions and services to all segments of the media and entertainment ecosystem. Nearly half of the world’s video channels traverse more than three million Imagine Communications products deployed in 180 countries.

Imagine Communication is an influential force in the graceful evolution of broadcast technology and provides the most complete end-to-end video solutions and advanced IP, cloud-enabled, software-defined networking (SDN) and workflow management solutions in the world. Its technologies and services enable the world’s leading media companies to

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channel playout and multiscreen delivery.

Imagine Communications delivers uniquely integrated, future-proof solutions that enable fixed and mobile production companies to efficiently prepare and transport live content for multiple viewing platforms and ready their operations for emerging technologies such as Ultra HD and IP.

The company holds dozens of active patents and has received more than 50 awards for technical innovation, including 10 Emmy® Awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Imagine Communications’ advertising management solutions oversee nearly $50 billion in annual ad sales as of the end of 2015.

Its advertising management portfolio provides software solutions that enable some of the largest media companies in the world to efficiently monetize content across multiple consumer viewing platforms and optimize the value of media inventory.

The company provides technology that stretches the entire length of the video content creation and delivery lifecycle, from ingest to end user devices. Its solution portfolio encompasses live production, advertising management,

Its channel playout solutions, among the most advanced available, enable media companies to prepare, process and playout content for multiple channels and distribution platforms, while providing an evolutionary path to IP and

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Imagine Communications is a global leader in multiscreen processing and delivery solutions.

By leveraging the latest innovations in both media and IT disciplines, the company is accelerating the transition from traditional baseband broadcasting to flexible IP-based workflows – enabling efficient delivery of revenue-generating content wherever and whenever audiences are consuming media.

By moving operations out of dedicated hardware and into virtualized environments, media companies are able to accomplish objectives critical to future success, including delivering services faster and more efficiently than ever before. A software-based infrastructure provides broadcasters with the agility, for example, to launch socalled pop-up channels – shortterm services around special events that can be launched and ripped down in a matter of minutes.

A pioneer and leading advocate of a graceful and customer-paced

Similarly, the company is a staunch proponent of open standards and multivendor interoperability. It is working with influential industry associations, such as SMPTE and the Video Services Forum (VSF), to accelerate the definition of common procedures and practices for moving, managing and manipulating video signals in an IP-based realm. Imagine Communications is tackling many of the performance and responsiveness shortcomings of IP environments, which are

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nondeterministic by nature, through standards that now span both the media and IT domains, such as SDN. Imagine Communications is also collaborating closely with leading computing and networking leaders of the IT industry, including Arista, Brocade, IBM, HP, Microsoft and others, to better condition IT environments for the execution of mediaoriented operations. Imagine Communications is working with IT leaders to incorporate controland data-plane modifications into IP-based switches and servers to better meet the exacting requirements of video production and playout environments.

Imagine Communications is combining its rich legacy in the broadcast industry with its visionary focus on the future requirements of media companies around the world to provide a measured and graceful transition to next-gen environments. By supporting hybrid environments that enable media companies to leverage existing investments in baseband technology, Imagine Communications is enabling media companies to advance their businesses at a pace and along a path that is precisely aligned with their economic and competitive requirements.

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MEMBER

Charle Vogt CEO, Imagine Communications

rapidly introduce new business models and fulfill the evolving and expanding video consumption expectations of their customers. The descendent of a corporate entity founded in 1922, Imagine Communications carries forward a heritage tightly entwined with the establishment, expansion and overall history of radio and television media.

transition of media operations to more agile and flexible production, playout and delivery environments, Imagine Communications has invested millions toward researching and developing innovations that enable precisely timed features and functions, which traditionally required dedicated hardware, to be performed entirely in software running on generic computing resources – without compromising performance or quality. Precise and sophisticated technical functions, including frame sync, color correction and master control, are now being executed in virtualized environments by media companies working closely with Imagine Communications.

PLATINUM

Imagine Communications is a global leader in video and advertising solutions, empowering the media and entertainment industry through transformational technology innovation.

cloud-based operations. The company’s cloud-based, allsoftware integrated playout solution is being used by broadcasters in live production environments on multiple continents.

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n Post-production facilities in Dublin, Oslo, Helsinki, Zurich, Munich, Leuven and Hilversum

n Specialty and wireless cameras

n Studio facilities in Los Angeles, New York, Connecticut, London, Sydney, Melbourne, Oslo, Helsinki, Brussels and Hilversum n Innovative solutions for media management, workflow, content delivery and monitoring

Like our equipment, our productions are backed by the experience and knowledge of an extensive network of experts from across the globe that maintains the highest standards. Working with NEP means tapping into the highest quality and most comprehensive service available, with access to more than 2,000 of the most talented and innovative problem solvers the industry has to offer. Our engineers, technicians and support staff anticipate problems and are quick to find solutions.

Whenever and wherever you need us, you can rely on NEP to be your partner in success.

SS-CBS is the newest addition to NEP’s fleet. It features an IP-based routing system that makes it flexible, scalable, and 4K ready.

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About Grass Valley With the most comprehensive collection of workflow solutions in the industry, Grass Valley delivers end-to-end television production and content distribution workflows, combined with expert consultation and insight that lead to sustainable success. Grass Valley, headquartered in Montreal, is part of St. Louis-based Belden Inc. Belden delivers a comprehensive product portfolio designed to meet

the mission-critical network infrastructure needs of industrial, enterprise and broadcast markets.

With innovative solutions targeted at reliable and secure transmission of rapidly growing amounts of data, audio and video needed for today's applications, Belden is at the center of the global transformation to a connected world. For more information visit www.belden.com.

are trademarks or registered trademarks of Belden Inc. or its affiliated companies in the United States and other jurisdictions.

Grass Valley, GV STRATUS Playout, and Densité are trademarks or registered trademarks of Grass Valley. Belden Inc., Grass Valley, and other parties may also have trademark rights in other terms used herein.

MEMBER

NEP’s team of more than 2,000 employees is driven by passion and a focus on technical innovation, and together we have supported productions in over 65 countries on all seven continents. Headquartered in the United States, NEP has offices in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Belgium, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.

n Over 120 HD OBs, HD flypacks, satellite uplink trucks, smaller camera systems and other audio visual packages

Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, keeps broadcasters, content owners and service providers Future-Ready as they navigate the changing landscape of television.

Belden, Belden Sending All The Right Signals and the Belden logo

PLATINUM

With the largest pool of resources available, our worldwide network includes:

MEMBER

We are the leading worldwide provider of outsourced production solutions offering technical services for remote production, studio production, video display, host broadcasting, post production, smart asset / media management, multi-screen delivery and end-to-end OTT solutions.

n Thousands of plasma, LED, and projection video display solutions n A fleet of mobile LED trucks across North America and Europe n An industry-leading team of engineers and technical experts

PLATINUM

NEP provides the technology and know-how to enable clients to produce the world’s biggest live and broadcast events around the globe.

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GOLD MEMBER

With solutions that support every stage of the production chain, Sony has long been a leader in broadcast technology.

Dedication to image quality has always been combined with a strong focus on workflow efficiency, ultimately delivering tools which underpin and enhance the work of broadcasters and broadcast producers.

As a result, Sony has been recognised by IABM on several occasions for the formative role its technology has played in the evolving world of modern broadcasting.

Gold Members Our Gold members have a deep level of engagement with the industry

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Today ARRI is a leading provider of professional motion picture equipment and services, with over 1,200 highly-trained employees spread between subsidiaries in Europe, the U.S., Asia and Australia.

Throughout its 98-year history, ARRI has been associated with constant innovation in all of its core businesses. The company is involved in every technical aspect of professional film production, from the engineering, design and manufacture of camera systems, lighting fixtures, film scanners and film recorders, to studio lighting solutions. Services offered by ARRI include worldwide equipment rental, as well as picture and sound postproduction in Germany.

Manufactured products include the ubiquitous ARRI ALEXA – easily the most successful professional digital motion picture camera system ever made. Members of the evolving ALEXA family include the new ALEXA SXT models, the compact and lightweight ALEXA Mini, and the flagship ALEXA 65 – supplied exclusively through ARRI Rental to

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prestigious productions such as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, War for the Planet of the Apes and The Great Wall. Common to all ALEXA cameras is a unique combination of the best overall image quality and easy, efficient workflows, delivering unsurpassed production value.

Since ALEXA's entry into the film industry in 2010, every movie to have won the Oscar® for Cinematography has been shot with the camera system.

Anamorphic, Master Prime and Ultra Prime series, which are the result of ARRI’s long-standing technical partnership with Zeiss.

Other ARRI lenses include the remarkable Ultra Wide Zoom and the Alura zooms.

ARRI Pro Camera Accessories come in two strands: firstly there are the mechanical accessories, a range of film-style matte boxes, follow focus units and support systems that bring legendary ARRI quality and reliability to almost all types of digital cameras. Secondly there is the Electronic Control System (ECS), a complete, modular toolset for wireless remote control of any camera and any lens; it also provides valuable lens data for tasks both on set and in postproduction.

Launched as a documentary-style camera due to its single-user ergonomics, the versatile ARRI AMIRA has fast become the preferred option for an increasingly diverse range of production types that want cinematic image quality in situations where crews are small, time is short and budgets are constrained. Application areas include TV and internet shows, sports, music videos, branded content, independent films, commercials, nature films and documentaries.

Preservation of the world’s cinematic heritage is another area where ARRI is leading the field, with its Archive Technologies. Offering the most versatile, upgradable and high-quality digital scanning options on the market for restoration facilities and film archives, the ARRISCAN and its various accessories are increasingly relied upon for delicate restorations of classic movies.

Among ARRI’s exceptionally wide range of cine lenses are the Master

ARRI lights include groundbreaking LED fixtures such as the

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recognized ARRI's engineers and their technical contributions with 18 Scientific and Engineering Awards. Most recently, the developers of the ARRILASER film recorder were honored with the Academy Award of Merit® (Oscar Statuette®).

ARRI Rental, with its worldwide network of subsidiaries, can provide an unrivalled range of cutting-edge equipment wherever a production might be shooting. Facilities in the U.S., U.K. and mainland Europe, as well as over 40 global partners, mean that productions are never too far from world-class ARRI service and support.

On the postproduction side, ARRI Media has a number of facilities in Germany that provide state-of-theart image and sound services, including VFX. From the uniquely well-equipped one-stop-shop in Munich to Europe's biggest DI grading suite in Berlin, ARRI's post houses carry the vision of filmmakers through the final steps of the creative journey. ARRI Media

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is also involved in film production and world sales.

In 2013 ARRI Medical was founded to utilize ARRI's core imaging technology and know-how for medical applications. Drawing expertise from all over the ARRI group, ARRI Medical has developed the ARRISCOPE, a unique, fully digital 3D surgical microscope. In addition, the Surgical Imaging service allows medical procedures to be filmed in unprecedented quality, using camera technology that has been used in multiple Oscar®-winning movies.

A third-generation privately held company, ARRI is owned by the Stahl family, who are descendants of co-founder Robert Richter. The Managing Directors are Franz Kraus and Dr. Joerg Pohlman.

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Headquartered in Munich, Germany, ARRI was founded in 1917 by August Arnold and Robert Richter, who combined the first two letters of their surnames to create the famous acronym.

L-Series Fresnels and the new SkyPanel soft lights with their unique color tuneability feature, which have rapidly been embraced by the industry. Daylight fixtures are also at the forefront of technology; ARRI’s M-Series encompasses the company’s most innovative, Academy Award-winning daylight products, featuring the unique, patented MAX reflector. MAX Technology enables lensless, focusable lampheads that unify the advantages of a PAR and a Fresnel, providing maximum light output.

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In today’s media environment, enterprises are under intense pressure to improve content monetization and maximize operational efficiency. They’re expected to do more – to create more content for more platforms and deliver it to more people – so they have to find new ways to secure revenues and differentiate services to earn audience loyalty, and deliver all these services at a lower cost.

One of the key routes to achieving this goal is through media asset management (MAM). Originally, asset management was seen as a low-level function, a means of keeping track of content.

Today, the MAM system is seen as a key strategic investment. It provides wide-scale access to content, and it can take an active role in identifying and promoting content that has a revenue opportunity attached to it.

And as the repository of metadata, it’s seen as the heart of workflow processes and automation. MAM should today be seen as the workflow engine, driving automated processes as much as possible, and thereby reducing costs as well as serving more markets and outlets.

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To determine today’s attitudes towards MAM, Avid commissioned international research company Ovum Consulting to survey business leaders on their views.

Ovum spoke to 125 individuals – mainly at C or board level – in 21 countries.

Operational efficiency The ability to increase operational efficiency is highly valued. 66% of respondents felt that their MAM system had lowered their multiplatform distribution costs, 50% said it had improved real-time collaboration between creative media professionals and a staggering 82% of executives believe that MAM delivers a return on investment of 10% or better.

Integration It was clear from the survey though, that MAM cannot deliver benefits on its own. It has to be part of a widely integrated system that provides seamless and, where practical, automated workflows across multiple vendors’ solutions. MAM may be the heart of the system, but if it doesn’t interwork with peripherals, a lot of its value is lost.

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67% of respondents identified poor integration with existing broadcasting systems as the most likely reason for MAM implementations to fail to deliver the predicted benefits.

The real benefits of a modern MAM system come in the ability to store, update and maintain comprehensive metadata, and to use this to drive automated workflows. This can only happen in an organization that has reviewed all its processes and considered how best they can be accomplished in the future.

Key findings There was widespread agreement that MAM streamlines workgroup collaboration and multiplatform distribution – two-thirds of respondents stated that as an important factor. Half of the senior executives surveyed stated that MAM facilitates real-time workgroup collaboration across multiple locations.

That can be linked to a second key finding: vital KPIs are not just multiplatform distribution costs, but perhaps even more important, reduced lead time for new digital service launches. If you have a new idea, you want it on air or online as quickly as possible to stay ahead of the competition.

That links into the fourth issue, which is that media enterprises are keen to move towards vertical integration of their management systems, and ultimately a move towards business process outsourcing (BPO). They recognize that the MAM system is a critical link between core activities – creating, managing and delivering engaging content – and BPO. The final key finding from the report concerns future content. Half of those surveyed felt that by 2020 – just four years away – their content inventory will have increased in value by a factor of five.

There’s also the consideration that some of that new content will be in new, and perhaps as yet unidentified, formats.

Executives surveyed expect around 5% of their total content to be 4K or 8K, but Ultra HD is still being defined.

Conclusions

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Media asset management: the key to business success

On the other hand, there’s a widespread feeling that poor third-party integration, metadata issues and a lack of process improvement impedes the success of MAM systems.

67% stated poor integration with broadcasting systems as an important pain point.

Today, MAM is widely seen as a fundamental component of any media enterprise, and users are confident about its ability to deliver a return on investment.

MAM is proven to solve key business and operational challenges which many media organizations face today. However, to achieve a successful outcome, MAM should be designed and implemented in close collaboration with the customer. Understanding their needs at every stage, from design through to implementation, and beyond, is imperative.

In conjunction, the MAM system needs to be future proof to meet whatever new challenges in media formats and creativity media organizations will face in the future. Therefore, flexibility, extendibility and the scalability to address specific business or operational needs are paramount requirements of a MAM system, especially if total media enterprise transformation is the ultimate goal.

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The Danmon Group (www.danmon.com) is a longestablished broadcast and media solutions provider combining indepth experience with the ability to implement new technology quickly and efficiently. Danmon distributes a wide choice of products from the world’s leading hardware and software producers. It also offers bespoke systems encompassing complete turnkey television and radio studios, newsrooms, postproduction suites, master control rooms, media archives, playout centres, outside-broadcast vehicles and business solutions as well as high-end audio interfaces, IP infrastructure, telecoms and satellite communications.

Over four decades, Danmon has developed a reputation for unerring quality and attention to detail, implementing missioncritical projects for broadcasters, media companies and service providers worldwide.

Understanding tomorrow's technology needs, we support customers’ investment through close co-operation. We believe in developing long-term relationships, built on making the

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right technological choices and delivering value.

Danmon began in 1981 as collaboration Ole Clausen between two CEO – Danmon Danish Group entrepreneurs, Ole Clausen and Henning Brønnum. Ole Clausen took the position of CEO, a position he still holds today. They developed and marketed professional video monitors under the Danmon brand name. The company gradually progressed into the supply of broadcast systems on a wider scale and, in 1987, was awarded a contract for the delivery of equipment to the Odense headquarters and Copenhagen studios of TV2/DANMARK. This project was achieved in partnership with the US-based Ampex Corporation.

Expanding from its Danish head office at Gentofte near Copenhagen, Danmon established Danmon Svenska AB in 1987 and, the following year, Danmon Norge.

Soundware Denmark, Soundware Norway and Soundware Sweden

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were also established in this period to focus on professional audio products and systems for applications such as broadcasting, studio recording, theatre sound support and education.

The Danmon Group's business in the broadcast sector grew strongly throughout the Scandinavian region. Partnership agreements were signed with an increasing number of major suppliers who recognised the advantage of having an experienced distributor able to supply strong support throughout the sales process and beyond.

A landmark event in Danmon's transition into a global business was the securement, in 2000, of a contract to design and integrate a complete television station at Thanh Hoa in Vietnam.

In 2003, Danmon Group reactivated its role as a manufacturer with the acquisition of NTP Technology which develops and produces advanced digital audio routing solutions for the major international radio and television broadcasters.

Three years on, Danmon Group acquired ATG Broadcast, a leading UK-based broadcast systems integrator. That same year, 2006,

Danmon marked its 25th anniversary with a well-attended celebration held in Amsterdam during the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC).

In 2008, Danmon Group acquired Digital Audio Denmark, worldfamed for its flagship AX24 eightchannel digital/analogue/digital audio converter which is used by many of the world’s leading recording studios, broadcasters, orchestras and opera houses. The combined skills of the NTP and DAD design and sales teams have made the two companies among the strongest in the entire audio business sector, resulting in outstandingly successful products such as the 24-channel AX32 and its sister DX32 digital networking router.

Also in 2008, Danmon Group extended into the area of satellite communications technology by acquiring Hiltron GmbH. Located at Backnang, 30 km northeast of Stuttgart, Hiltron is one of Europe's leading transmission-

system integrators and best known for its HCS3 universal satcom controller. As part of the Danmon Group, Hiltron has greatly expanded its product development and manufacturing capability while remaining strong in the SI sector. In Q3 2015, Hiltron introduced SORBAS. This is a complete family of products designed to form the heart of customised satellite communication systems.

In January 2013 Danmon announced the opening of a new company in Vietnam.

Headquartered in Hanoi, Danmon Asia Ltd extended the group's presence into Indo-China. At IBC during the same year, Danmon announced the formation of Datos Media Technologies which proved an almost instant success with many broadcast system sales in Spain and Portugal.

Just two years later, 2015, Datos Media negotiated the acquisition of Vantec, a leading Portugese systems integrator with over 20

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years of experience in designing and integrating virtual studios, robotic cameras, and real-time 3D graphics.

The most recent addition to the Danmon Group portfolio is Marquis Broadcast with proven expertise in broadcast content workflow and media integration software. Marquis' Edit Bridge won IABM's Design & Innovation Award in the Post Production category at IBC2015.

The ongoing success of the Danmon Group is a tribute to the experience and dedication of its staff, building and retaining the trust and confidence of customers not just for the duration of a project but on a sustained longterm basis. Broadcasting and the wider multimedia market have always been rapidly-evolving markets so everyone in these sectors is accustomed to fast technical progress. Never has that progress moved faster than today.

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The Danmon Group: We Think Globally and Act Locally

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Today, the company enables the delivery of amazing video experiences through its commitment to superior innovation, world-class service and compelling total cost of ownership (TCO).

Harmonic video infrastructure solutions power everything from HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) compression of Ultra HD video, to blazing-fast transcoding of over-thetop (OTT) video content, to high-speed data, video and voice delivery via innovative cable edge systems. From terrestrial broadcast, cable and satellite delivery to adaptive bitrate streaming, Harmonic solutions simplify workflows and give content creators, broadcasters and service providers the power to deliver superior-quality digital video in real time and on demand, to every type of screen.

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Innovation has been Harmonic’s hallmark from the start. The first products shipped by Harmonic brought fiber optics to the cable industry, and the company’s subsequent innovations supported various transmission technologies. By 1999 Harmonic had expanded into video encoding technology, which it refined and leveraged over time to facilitate the industry’s migration from analog to digital and from SD to all variety of formats. The following year Harmonic began its history of IP innovation with the launch of the industry’s first IP edgeQAM solution, and just two years later it introduced the first all-IP TV headend and all-AVC headend.

Continuing its launch of industry-first solutions, Harmonic released the Ion in 2004, the first broadcast encoder equipped only with an IP output. The next year Harmonic put itself at the forefront of adoption of IP-based interfacing in compressed headends, which enabled broadcast interfaces such as MPEG transport stream over ASI to be replaced by more commonplace IP interfacing, in turn paving the way for all-IP infrastructure and virtualization of the media delivery chain. The same year Harmonic launched the industry’s first multichannel, multiservice HD H.264 encoder. The acquisition of Entone’s F O R

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VOD unit brought video-on-demand and asset solutions into the technology mix.

An Emmy® Award win in 2007 recognized the use of Harmonic’s Ion encoding technology by Time Warner Cable to generate IP-based ingest streams. The same year, the acquisition of Rhozet added high-speed universal transcoding technology into the Harmonic portfolio. The company’s introduction of FLEX® technology, incorporated into its Electra and Ion products, enabled the universal video/audio decoding necessary to support the all-IP headend. The subsequent acquisition of Scopus brought Harmonic valuable contribution and distribution technology. Harmonic’s further refinement of stream processing solutions yielded the first IP headend in a box, with integrated multiplexing, scrambling and transcoding. By 2010, Harmonic ProStream® stream processing technology had been deployed to power Comcast Media Center’s nationwide all-IP platform for content distribution.

The acquisition of Omneon in 2010 fueled further innovation in high-speed workflows, as well as the gamechanging strategy of broadcast function integration. The Spectrum family of

Harmonic’s early and consistent focus on forward-looking media technology helped the company to earn further awards, including a 2012 Emmy Award that recognized the company’s development and commercialization of (IP-based) digital infrastructure for local cable ad insertion. A third Technology and Engineering Emmy Award win in 2015 honored the company’s achievements in IP-based closed-loop statistical multiplexing of geographically distributed encoders, made possible with its DiviTrackIP™ statmux technology.

In the intervening years, Harmonic demonstrated its industry leadership by powering the first public DASH trial at the 2012 London Olympics and by performing the first HEVC demonstration. Harmonic became the outright industry leader in IPTV headends and went on to introduce its

IPTV 2.0 solution for unified all-HTTP adaptive bit rate (ABR) delivery architecture.

It was at this time that Harmonic was the first to introduce a fully virtualized video production and delivery architecture with its groundbreaking virtualized IP-based media processing platform, VOS™. VOS facilitates origination of channels for delivery via broadcast and direct over the Internet to consumers with all the reliability and functionality of today’s broadcast infrastructure —but fully virtualized and deployable in a private or public cloud.

Today, the Electra XVM virtualized media processor and Electra X advanced media processor sit at the heart of Harmonic's IP-based headend architecture. The Electra XVM is part of Harmonic's VOS family, consisting of both pure software and appliance-based products, Electra X2 for SD, HD and multiscreen media processing applications and X3 for UHD processing. Addressing growing demand for software-based, virtualized system deployments on IP-based server infrastructure — including support for the SMPTE 2022-6 standard for baseband over IP – Electra X and other Harmonic solutions enable customers to go end-to-end in IP, from camera to consumer display.

The Harmonic Video Network (HVN) (www.hvn.tv), an OTT video streaming service launched in 2015, uses

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Harmonic solutions to demonstrate the efficiency gains, dramatic reduction in TCO and superior video quality that can be realized with unified playout, encoding and delivery in a fully virtualized environment.

Electra X3, the industry's first converged media processor for UHD content, powers NASA TV UHD, the first consumer UHD channel in North America. Leveraging an end-to-end UHD delivery system built on Harmonic solutions, NASA's ambient video channel provides gorgeous 2160p60 video content from the space program.

Winner of a 2015 IABM Design & Innovation Award, the Harmonic Spectrum X media server also supports emerging UHD applications and services. In addition to enabling direct ingest and output of IP feeds, supporting lightly compressed and uncompressed workflows, this solution gives users the freedom to move from HD channel-in-a-box (CIAB) playout with graphics and branding to UHD playout.

GOLD MEMBER

Since its founding in 1988, Harmonic has grown to become the worldwide leader in video delivery infrastructure, and the first to provide broadcasters, service providers and other media companies with emerging video capabilities that are ready to deploy on a global scale.

media server systems set the industry standard by providing a unique combination of efficient compression and outstanding video quality, as well as rock-solid reliability, and the MediaGrid system – winner of the IABM’s prestigious Peter Wayne Award – firmly established Harmonic in the realm of efficient, scalable high-performance shared storage via Ethernet. In 2012 the company’s Spectrum ChannelPort integrated channel playout system combined channel branding and master control switching with clip playout to simplify the task of bringing new services to air quickly and affordably.

Through ongoing innovation, from production to distribution, Harmonic gives its customers the agility to navigate a rapidly evolving video economy. The company’s products help production, media, broadcast, cable, satellite, telecom, terrestrial and new media service companies respond to the challenges of the digital video revolution while reaping its benefits.

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The media and entertainment industry is experiencing rapid changes in the way content is consumed, evidenced by more than 800 million iTunes users, 60 million Netflix subscribers, 6 billion hours of video being watched per month on YouTube, and 19 percent U.S. Millennials using Amazon Prime.

As a result, there is a need for new technologies to advance the capabilities of content enterprises and adapt to meet current demands, increasing margins and driving creative enablement.

production, marketing and other functions of a broadcast enterprise are left to invest in their own respective storage and processing systems, leading to inefficiencies and high cost of ownership.

Enterprises need to think digitally and move from islands of automation to build a connected enterprise and a digital ecosystem.

Since then, CLEAR has expanded to five modules – Cloud MAM, Operations Cloud, Broadcast Cloud, Production Cloud and Distribution Cloud, catering to different verticals including Broadcasters, Studios, Brands, Sports and Digital companies across the content value chain. Expanding its footprint in the U.S., PFT acquired both DAX, the creators of the Primetime Emmy® Award-winning Digital Dailies® and Academy® Awardwinning Lowry Digital.

Standalone on-premise media asset management serves the needs of broadcast operations and engineering departments but

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CLEAR Media ERP Suite virtualizes the content supply chain, facilitating

2011 became a year of transformation for PFT – where Media ERP, a SaaS offering was born. CLEAR blossomed into a full-fledged Media ERP suite with solutions across the content value chain – from content creation, transformation, distribution, exhibition and archiving.

Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), the technology arm of Prime Focus, the global leader in media and entertainment services, foresaw this change. PFT’s revolutionary product CLEARTM, offers hybrid cloud enabled ERP solution unlike any other single point solution provider, ready to meet the needs of this margin-pressed industry that lacks the digital infrastructure and agility needed to meet content demands.

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Learning from IT across sectors such as manufacturing and banking, media & entertainment companies also need a single enterprise-wide software, an ERP system, tailored specifically for their industry to include media asset management, workflow orchestration and applications to work across the enterprise and supply chain for both linear and digital businesses.

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PFT’s clientele now includes Disney, 21st Century Fox-owned STAR TV, Warner Bros. Television Studios, CBS Television Studios, 20th Century Fox Television Studios, Legendary Pictures, Starz Media, Lionsgate, A&E TV Network, Crown Media Family Networks, FX Networks, Hearst International, IFC and many more.

PFT’s 2015 “DIGITAL NEXT” offerings including Media ERP addresses the changing media & entertainment landscape and underpins what content enterprises must do to survive and succeed.

These offerings are tailored to address what we call ‘Digital Next’ realities – volume, discovery, platforms, devices, speed, monetization and everything digital which is the new normal. DIGITAL NEXT offerings help meet the demands of the digital consumer, with a focus on building a connected enterprise and digital ecosystem, over-the-top solutions, distribution and 4K. One of the DIGITAL NEXT realities is that consumers are not only cutting cord by choosing from variety of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Plus, they are also not signing up for traditional TV service when they move out on their own.

With growing numbers of digital outlets globally, content enterprises must embrace the cloud to meet the increased demands for volume

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and speed. They need to do that with lowest total cost of delivery and make it discoverable for the consumers quickly. PFT’s CLEAR Operations Cloud helps do just that – not just store and transcode, but perform end-to-end content operations on the cloud.

Our award-winning, pioneering technology, talent pool, scale & innovative business models makes us the partner of choice for the Media industry. The successes that came our way in the recent past – be it strategic acquisitions, key client wins, award winning projects, and product innovations, give us confidence to be bold and daring to think BIG.

GOLD MEMBER

Prime Focus Technologies: Pioneering ERP for the Media and Entertainment industry

agility and driving operational efficiencies. CLEAR breaks free from isolated islands of automation and brings content to the center of business helping drive creative enablement, enhancing efficiencies and aiding the realization of new monetization opportunities.

Since its formation in 2008, PFT has experienced rapid growth as a cloud solutions provider with a unique combination of media and IT, addressing the challenges faced by content enterprises in fulfilling the needs of today’s hyper digital consumers. CLEAR, PFT’s flagship offering, was first beta tested in 2008 and deployed in 2009.

The media & entertainment sector has got to think transformation, to change the way they traditionally work, question the status quo and reinvent. In this time of transformation, PFT remains committed to advancing the technological capabilities of the media & entertainment industry to meet the demands of consumers.

For more information, visit www.primefocustechnologies.com.

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Vitec is continually adapting to the exciting changes in our marketplace by creating powerful products and solutions that attract strategic partners into our diverse and premium portfolio. The best minds in the industry also choose Vitec for its continued promise of innovation. By attracting and retaining exceptional talent known for driving execution for breakthrough results, Vitec has maintained its position as the industry leader in research & development, analytics, creativity and technology, embracing a future full of optimism and promise.

educate, inform and entertain viewers on every continent, every day. Our products encompass a variety of technologies and are carefully designed to ensure that, whatever the conditions, the image taker has the best equipment to

Capture the Moment According to Vitec Group Chief Executive Stephen Bird, “capturing the moment is the essence of Vitec.

It is our passion, our philosophy, our way of life. It is what drives us”.

Vitec’s purpose is to support the capturing and sharing of exceptional images that inspire,

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“capture the moment”. These technologies range from traditional mechanical engineered products to electronics and software. At our collective best, our users understand the power of our products in helping them use their images to create, inform and impact the world.

Our commitment to our customers and the industry at large is founded on a set of core values that form the

GOLD MEMBER

For over 100 years, The Vitec Group (an international company headquartered in London) has embraced an entrepreneurial spirit throughout its businesses, creating an organisation where passion and excellence serve as the foundation for continued success. Around the world, Vitec is known for building meaningful relationships by serving customers in the Broadcast and Photographic markets.

Vitec mindset. These values comprise product excellence, innovation, integrity, customer focus and collaboration. We set the highest standards of technical performance and aftercare, designing solutions that do precisely what image-makers need them to do. All our activities reflect our commitment to quality.

We are constantly looking to break new ground. We believe in learning fast and looking for new ways to support our customers and their needs.

To stay ahead of the game, we apply our creativity to every aspect of our business, not just our products. Our passion, flair and willingness to ask “why not?” are at the heart of everything we do. Our focus, however, is always on the customer. Within each specialty, each of our brands is known for developing industry-leading technology that allows our customers to capture the moment in critical situations where the difference between success and failure can be a fraction of a second. We believe that if we embrace our customers' creative expertise, they will embrace our commitment to excellence.

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As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company's advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize

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consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are helping businesses move faster forward, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

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As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers.

IABM – Head Office 3 Bredon Court, Brockeridge Park Twyning, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire GL20 6FF United Kingdom T: +44 (0)1684 450030 F: +44 (0)1684 450024 IABM – North American Office PO Box 230187 Portland, OR 97281-0187 USA T: +1 732 595 4077 IABM – APAC Office #09-02 Tampines Junction 300 Tampines Avenue 5, Singapore, 529653 T: +65-6679 5839

Visit our website to find out more: www.theiabm.org

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