IABM Journal - Issue 112 - April 2020

1 ST QUARTER 2020

JOURNAL 112

REPRESENTING

THE

BROADCAST

AND

MEDIA

TECHNOLOGY

MONETIZE Making it pay in broadcast and media

Also featured The Time for IP has Come Broadcast and media trends in 2020 Overcoming Obstacles to Cloud Deployment

INDUSTRY

WORLDWIDE

Index Seeing clearly into the future

4-6

Opinion – The Time for IP Has Come

8-9

IABM launches Virtual Platform

10-11

How the BaM Shop Window™ is putting Datavideo in front of buyers

12-13

Broadcast and media trends in 2020

14-15

Annual International Business Conference & Awards 2019

17-28

How the Verizon Media – Microsoft partnership is shaping the future of media

29-30

How Cerberus Tech is capitalizing on market opportunities

32-34

Overcoming Obstacles to Cloud Deployment with Imagen

35-37

Monetize – making it pay

38-46

APAC region update

48-49

EMEA and UK region update

51-53

North America region update

54

Trends for 2020 – the view from the Americas

55-58

Member Speak – Axinom

60-61

Member Speak – x.news

62-63

Member Speak – Mediaproxy

64-65

Member Speak – iSize

66-68

A tribute to Chris Cadzow

69

Member Speak – DejaSoft

70-72

Member Speak – LNS

74-76

IABM Business Intelligence Quarterly Digest

79 onwards

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

Telephone: +44 (0)1684 450030 Email: info@theiabm.org Web: www.theiabm.org Twitter: @TheIABM Chairman of the Board – Andreas Hilmer Vice Chairman of the Board – Graham Pitman Chief Executive – Peter White Journal Editor – Roger Thornton IABM Investments Ltd Chairman – Lucinda Meek

IABM Team – Kathy Bienz, Peter Bruce, Lisa Collins, Ben Dales, Dominic Louks, Riikka Koponen, Athena Krishanthi, Joe Mace, Lucinda Meek, Stan Moote, Yoshiro Sawa, Peter White, Darren Whitehead, Lorenzo Zanni. c Copyright 2020 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 the IABM.

IABM – Platinum Members

Business Continuity information from countries around the world to support the Broadcast and Media industry at www.theiabm.org/ business-continuity-resources

Change. Innovate. Adapt.

Peter White CEO, IABM

Welcome to the Q1 2020 edition of the IABM Journal. Do you remember seeing the ‘Change. Innovate. Adapt.’ headline before? It was the extraordinarily prescient theme for our Annual International Business Conference in December, and IABM is committed to supporting members to help them navigate the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic in just these three ways.

As the trade body that represents over 600 Broadcast and Media technology vendors worldwide and also maintains close links with the enduser community globally, specifically through our Global Engaged Partner program, we are ideally placed to be the fulcrum to keep the whole industry informed and up to date with useful knowledge and advice. We are taking that responsibility very seriously and have launched a wide range of initiatives to help keep the broadcast and media technology business ticking over.

Each national government is taking different steps to protect its citizens, workforce and businesses. IABM has set up a dynamic virtual resource to provide a one-stop, central repository for Business Continuity information from countries around the world to support the Broadcast and Media industry at www.theiabm.org/ business-continuity-resources. This is being constantly updated as new information comes in, and I am grateful to the many people who have stepped in to contribute, meaning that we are able to present local information on a global scale.

We have also launched the IABM Virtual Platform to give our members a raft of channels to keep the conversation going and promote themselves to the market through a single portal. We intend this to be a central hub for the broadcast and media industry, and a constantly

growing repository of the information that technology buyers need to continue to operate successfully during the coronavirus pandemic.

Read the article on page 10 for more details on the virtual platform.

At some unspecified time in the future, the world will get back to work. Some businesses may not survive the economic stresses caused by the coronavirus pandemic in their present form, but much of what they do will be no less required in that future. What seems certain is that our industry will not look the same on the other side of all this: the need will still be there but how it is satisfied will change; risk preferences may shift radically as a result of this external shock, encouraging broadcast and media companies to make the jump to cloud, IP and SaaS. The IABM coronavirus impact tracker we have been running clearly shows this trend.

There is a very illuminating article on page 14 where three of our Global Engaged Partners – influential figures in broadcast and media companies – lay out how they see the future unfolding and what members can do to support them. Like most of the other articles in this edition, they were interviewed before the enormous impact of the pandemic was fully understood, however their views will still be of great value to members looking forward.

Our special feature for this edition is the Monetize segment of the BaM Content Chain® – where the revenues that ultimately pay all our salaries are garnered. Six IABM member companies have contributed insights into where the action is in this vital content chain segment, and what’s coming next as the number of viewing options for consumers continues to explode. What is clear is that our members have the tools broadcast and media companies need to attract, track and retain those viewers – but there is no time to sit back and admire!

There is a wealth of other focused, useful content in this edition too – our biggest yet. I think you will enjoy reading it and hopefully find it useful in focusing your thoughts as we look beyond these difficult times to the future.

On a personal level, I wish you all safe passage through these difficult times.

Look after yourselves and those close to you – and please take advantage of all the resources IABM has to offer, and let us know if there is anything more we can or should be doing to support you.

Peter White CEO, IABM

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Seeing clearly into the future Stan Moote CTO, IABM

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Before I talk about 2020 and beyond, it is important to modify your thinking a little and recall that over the while there have been – well, basically – too many new technologies! What I mean is that over the last ten years or so we’ve been faced with so many technology and business shifts that it’s been difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff – which ones to back.

The bigger picture

Here we are in 2020 and clearly this is the year of stabilization of technology and trends. This follows a decade of disruption with too much focus on single technologies which caused many to struggle trying to create clear new business concepts.

Just think of 3D – it was going to change the world. At least that’s what some thought and it drove a massive investment by the TV set manufacturers that in-turn spurred on production and post work. Most of those sets are now junk as 3D sports never took off. Movies produced for 3D are typically only animated and super-action movies. DVB-H and ATSC-MH are another example of technology attempting to drive business plans. In a few parts of the world, there was moderate success, however perhaps simply too early,

plagued with limited screen size/battery life or was it that the content wasn’t correct?

My point is that with so many technologies, understanding how they can fit and how to use them in a practical and profitable manner, has been very disruptive within the media and entertainment industry during the past decade. Take 4K and HDR for example: some say it surpassed 3D with quality and glasses free viewing, yet where it universally took foothold was on the acquisition (camera) and production side.

In 2019 IABM, with its members, created the IABM Technology and Trends Roadmap©. We took dozens of technologies that affect our industry and put them into 14 larger groups. By grouping them together in this way, you can get a better overview and have the opportunity to think about them in distinctive ways – ways that affect you personally. Then within these groupings, we used various processes with the BaM Content Chain® to align with your business.

For example, you may focus on production while others focus on publishing – playout. Next, we plotted each technology and trend on the industry standard technology adoption curve. This allows us to establish for each technology and trend the current stage of its lifecycle.

Renard T. Jenkins, Vice President, PBS Operations, Engineering & Distribution was an early adopter of the Technology and Trends Roadmap. He said, “My job requires me to stay on top of the industry trends in an effort to be as efficient as possible in my solutions/systems architecture and design. I have found the IABM Technology and Trends Roadmap extremely helpful in those efforts.

We are using it as a bit of a heat map to direct some of our project planning and scheduling for our current supply chain build out and deployment…I am putting a printout up in each of my direct reports’ offices.” The Technology and Trends Roadmap© now forms the basis of many initial conversations between technology suppliers and buyers as the move to collaborative working continues apace.

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Technology advancements are increasingly used daily across almost all generations, so it is now more about lifestyles or way of life within age groups rather than their technical proficiency

Shaking out

AI on the march

Here we are in 2020 and clearly this is the year of stabilization of technology and trends. This follows a decade of disruption with too much focus on single technologies which caused many to struggle trying to create clear new business concepts. The industry is now stabilizing out with more mature ideas. Also the industry is no longer about the single-minded focus on millennials. Millennials became such a focus because they were seen as the next generation of viewer; naturally tech-savvy and ready to embrace – and indeed, drive – the future of our industry.

We see artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) playing a large role to make this a reality.

In the background AI and ML will learn how to provision 5G networks by anticipating the best way to handle the massive amounts of data required for media distribution.

With the demand for so much unique viewing, more content will constantly be required. AI will assist in the production of movies, TV series, documentaries, news and sports production.

But today, technology advancements are increasingly used daily across almost all generations, so it is now more about lifestyles or way of life within age groups rather than their technical proficiency.

5G – a game-changer Taking newer mobile technology as an example, the coming benefits of 5G are largely understood. The media and entertainment industry will drive deployments of 5G because of its speed and blanket coverage. Once deployed, hundreds of other uses – including the Internet of Things – will emerge due to its low power modes. UHD media will be able to be viewed anywhere you are – whether downloading, watching on-demand or live streaming. The concept of content everywhere will become a true, practical reality – all thanks to the 5G rollout on both large and small screens. On the production side, 5G will change the landscape for live remote productions. Additionally, with such high bandwidths, 4K, HDR and 8K will become the norm. And the landscape of interactive VR will transform beyond gaming.

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The industry of AI training will become a specialty in itself. Just like throughout the world, or for that matter within a single country, chefs learn how to replicate food cuisine tailored for each region – yet are still able to maintain mass appeal, when required. The same needs to happen with AI training.

AI is playing a strong role on the distribution side too, by better understanding how people actually see and watch images and listen to sound – newer compression engines are becoming strongly dependent on AI. AI is sure to play a role with the next generation audio systems (NGA) being developed too.

Onwards and upwards to the cloud

AI can understand and learn what the producers and directors want – help find the material after shooting hundreds of hours of footage I am not talking about the modest tasks of subtitles for AI. AI can understand and learn what the producers and directors want – help find the material after shooting hundreds of hours of footage. For that matter, it can even help the production staff and actors better understand exactly what ‘works’ – by this I mean will get the best viewership, or even boost the appropriate emotions within each viewer. It will be exciting also to see how AI plays in synthetic production too!

Cloud platforms are deeply entrenched into the media and entertainment business, however far from being simply thought of as complete. There will be continuous improvements on speed, performance, storage and also advancements on using less energy.

These will continue to match the apparently unyielding Moore’s Law. As I close here, you can see how the importance of IP plays into our industry. IP isn’t simply about replacing SDI – it is about assuring whatever the facility’s infrastructure is, being able to take advantage of the clear business benefits of IP to take media facilities into the 2020s and beyond.

Don’t forget…

On a final note, I won’t dwell on cyber security – however, take this as a reminder to keep it front and center with all the technologies and trends you work with.

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Customization and Regionalization

Alan Young CTO and Head of Strategy, LTN Global

Significant shifts in technology, regulation, and consumer behavior have driven change across the content delivery chain. To monetize content optimally across a variety of distribution channels – traditional cable, direct-tohome satellite, social media, directto-consumer websites, and over-the-top (OTT) platforms – content providers must be able to target consumers and advertisers across diverse geographies, devices, languages, and cultures. IPbased video transport and delivery makes it possible to reach all viewers on any platform with customized content.

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The days of broadcasting one version of content to all consumers based on a schedule are rapidly disappearing.

Rights, audience, geographic location, and device type are just a few of the factors that demand content be adapted on some level. Advertising and the content itself are two of the elements that need to be customized today but in future graphics, and audio tracks could also be customized for particular audiences or even individual viewers.

Content owners traditionally have provided their content to target geographies via satellite and their distribution partners then deliver it to their subscribers. More recently, the need for customization and regionalization make the use of satellite alone problematic. The constraints of satellite transport limit the number of possible variations of content that can be delivered.

Flexible, Economical Distribution A variety of business and regulatory factors are making the future of available C-Band satellite spectrum unclear and this will decrease the amount of capacity available for traditional broadcast delivery. There is therefore a strong impetus for content providers to explore non-satellite alternatives to supplement satellite initially and eventually replace it altogether.

IP-enabled terrestrial transmission is an attractive option because of the flexibility in routing traffic without the need to install dedicated physical end-to-end paths or ‘circuits’.

This is particularly the case if the Internet is used for last mile connections because of its ubiquity and low cost. The rapid extension of last-mile bandwidth over the past few decades – approximately 30% per year – and declining cost of bandwidth make it more appealing all the time.

The rapid extension of last-mile bandwidth over the past few decades – approximately 30% per year – and declining cost of bandwidth make it more appealing all the time.

Reliable Delivery of HighQuality Images However, for the internet to be able to support secure and reliable delivery of live video traffic at the same quality of service as satellite has delivered for decades, service providers must overcome several technical obstacles.

High-value live content distribution has exacting requirements for consistency, reliability, and latency.

Guaranteed reliability requires an intelligent overlay network that can track, route, and reroute flows over multiple carrier backbones in milliseconds (much less than one video frame), regardless of internet conditions or physical path conditions. LTN’s managed multicast IP network which is based on its Rapid Error Recovery (RER) protocols and Dynamic Multi-carrier Routing (DMR) algorithms is able to achieve reliability and latency that rivals or even exceeds satellite using a managed combination of the Internet for last mile and dedicated high speed fiber links between its data centers.

high reliability, exacting service-level agreements (SLAs), and low latency that matches or exceeds that of satellite- or fiber-based services. For content providers, these guarantees come with additional benefits including standards compliance, multiple levels of redundancy and resilience, immunity against a failure by any single carrier, universal network access from anywhere in the world, security through encryption and authentication, scalability with respect to number of channels and destinations per channel, and highvisibility monitoring and diagnosis tools that enable control over flow performance.

IP: The Way Forward Fully managed IP-based transmission of live video gives content companies both the capabilities and cost structure they need to reach consumers through a variety of distribution channels. As demand for customized content continues to grow, this model offers the flexibility and scalability media companies need to power their expansion and, ultimately, their profitability in meeting consumer demand for highquality content and high quality of service.

The addition of a robust layer over the public internet enables a fully managed video transport service with

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The IABM Virtual Platform helps companies stand out from the digital noise and ensure that buyers’ eyes are on members’ content, products and services

IABM launches Virtual Platform One-stop, up to the moment portal for the whole broadcast and media industry. www.theiabm.org/virtual-platform Ben Dales IABM Digital Media Manager

With 600+ members across the world covering every segment of the BaM Content Chain® and together representing the vast majority of broadcast and media technology revenues, IABM is uniquely positioned to provide a one-stop, up to the moment portal for the whole industry.

That’s why we have launched the IABM Virtual Platform, giving our members a raft of channels to keep the conversation going and promote themselves to the market through a single portal. We intend this to be a central hub for the broadcast and media industry, and a constantly growing repository of the information that technology buyers need to continue to operate successfully during the coronavirus pandemic. The IABM Virtual Platform helps companies stand out from the digital noise and ensure that buyers’ eyes are on members’ content, products and services.

There are also opportunities for non-members to participate – and the whole virtual platform is, of course, wide open to technology buyers.

IABM has designed virtual booths for all members – a one-stop ‘show’ where technology buyers can find out about all the new products and services IABM members are launching. IABM Virtual Booths can be searched either by company or BaM Content Chain® segment. Each booth includes a picture/graphic, headline description and links back to the vendor’s website for more detailed information and videos, and links for arranging personal, virtual demos.

The IABM Virtual Platform includes:

IABM Virtual events

BaM Shop Window™ Members can upload their new products and services to the IABM BaM Shop Window™ and be part of a global one-stop repository of products and services, all logically grouped in BaM Content Chain® segments and easily searchable.

Even before the arrival of the pandemic, the BaM Shop Window™

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was receiving 10,000 hits a month from end-users looking to buy products, and visitor numbers are now massively increasing. Whether you’re a technology vendor or buyer, this is the place to be!

IABM Virtual booths

IABM is busy organizing an extensive series of BaM Online Summits™ – virtual events around key industry themes – as well as a number of other virtual events, including the State of the Industry breakfast session.

Collaborate and Connect App While face-to-face networking is off-limits for most of us for the

foreseeable future, we still need to stay in touch to keep those essential conversations going. To help with this, we have launched a Collaborate & Connect App for attendees at BaM Online Summits™ and other IABM virtual events to enable delegates to talk directly with each other.

IABM TV IABM TV offers members extensive interview and panel discussion facilities at major shows, which are highly valued marketing and information sharing opportunities.

These will instead now be happening virtually and we are inviting IABM members to take part, introducing their companies and products, and joining panels discussing a wide range of topics from production and monetization to cloud and OTT, and all points in between.

IABM Virtual Events Calendar IABM has created a central, shared events calendar for the industry to find out what’s going on in the virtual world. All companies can submit their virtual, online or on-demand events for inclusion in the Virtual Events Calendar, with IABM members getting a premium listing.

VIRTUAL PLATFORM

IABM Webinars IABM has a schedule of webinars covering a range of topics. In addition, both members and nonmembers can take advantage of IABM resources to run their own webinars for a reasonable fee. IABM members also get exclusive access to our extensive webinar archive which includes over 40 on-demand webinars covering all the key topics in the Broadcast & Media industry.

Virtual Press Page We are working with PR agencies across the industry to provide an online repository of all the key news, virtual press conferences and releases. Marketing and PR staff within member companies are, of course, also welcome to contribute.

Visit www.theiabm.org/virtual-nabpress-page/ for details.

range of e-learning courses available on relevant topics to satisfy their need. These high quality, interactive online courses have been designed to provide companies of all types and sizes access to ensure employees are equipped with the appropriate industry knowledge.

On-demand content Brimming with thousands of pieces of unique content, the Knowledge Hub on the IABM website is already the industry’s most comprehensive online knowledge resource. We’re inviting members to put themselves forward to record presentations to further increase its scope, as well as submitting presentation ideas for the online Future Trends Theater.

Business Intelligence e-learning So often we are told that while people desperately want to update their knowledge, they just don’t have the time. Well maybe now they just might – and IABM has a wide

Our world-class Business Intelligence Unit is working flat out to keep abreast of all the latest developments and trends that are affecting the broadcast and media industry. All IABM members – and

technology end-users who have signed up to be IABM Global Engaged Partners – have access to all the knowledge they need to keep up to date and inform better business decisions.

Ben Dales, IABM Digital Media Manager, has been responsible for developing the IABM Virtual Platform. “IABM’s mission is to provide knowledge, support and leadership for the Broadcast and Media technology industry,” Dales said. “Having engaged with many IABM members and our Global Engaged Partners in broadcast and media companies over the last few weeks, we have a very clear understanding of what kind of information and support would help them keep their businesses ticking in these difficult times, and we have designed the IABM Virtual Platform to meet these needs. As always, we would welcome further input and ideas to make it work even harder for members – and the wider industry too.”

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How the BaM ™ Shop Window is putting Datavideo in front of buyers

Joe Mace Digital Marketing Executive, IABM

The IABM BaM Shop Window™ is an online resource designed to help end-users source and find out more about the best products and services available in the industry. The portal is free to technology suppliers who wish to list their products and services.

The BaM Shop Window™ is built on IABM’s industry model – The BaM Content Chain®. The BaM Content Chain® is designed to accurately reflect the new structure of the broadcast and media industry and provide a flexible, extensible model to accommodate the fast-changing technology and business environment.

The nine content chain segments are: Create, Produce, Manage, Publish, Monetize, Connect, Support, Store and Consume. These segments are then further refined into 315 different sub-categories, allowing broadcast and media technology buyers to drill down to a granular product/service level.

The BaM Shop Window™ was created to serve both buyers and suppliers of products in the broadcast and media Industry. Buyers are be able to see all the available products and services logically grouped to provide speedy searching that exposes a wide range of choices. Technology suppliers gain exposure on the largest one-stop product/service shop window in the industry. Since its creation, the BaM Shop Window™ has been searched by over 175,000 end-users, and has generated over 1,500 successful leads. Reflecting IABM’s

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international reach, these users span the globe, representing 57 different countries to date accessing the BaM Shop Window™. The top users by country are UK (32.05%), US (15.96%), India (5.36%), Canada (4.68%) and Germany (4.68%). The Asian region is also strongly represented at 28% of visitors.

“The BaM Shop Window™ satisfies real-world buyer needs, which is exactly what Datavideo are looking for now.”

Angela Lin, Marketing Manager, Datavideo

BaM Shop Window™ Users by region Oeania 1.69%

DataVideo Production Switchers on IABM BaM Shop Window™

Africa 0.24%

Americas 12.36%

Asia 28.00%

Europe 57.71%

IABM Gold Member, Datavideo Technologies, has been an active user of the BaM Shop Window™, uploading a total of 39 products under the Create, Produce, Publish, Support and Store categories. Datavideo is known for its affordable end-to-end workflow solutions for broadcast and A/V applications which include products such as cameras, switchers, encoders, recorders, intercoms, converters, and other key products needed for live video production.

“The BaM Shop Window™ provides a brandnew idea to offer the buyer a complete archive of products and services available across the broadcast industry,” says Datavideo’s Marketing Manager, Angela Lin. “As Datavideo are providing turn-key solutions in live video production, The BaM Shop Window™ is definitely putting us in a very good position to show to buyers our complete solution.”

Since Datavideo uploaded its products to the IABM BaM Shop Window™ back in August 2019, they have received 5,599 individual searches. They also gained 54 end-users visiting their website with the intention to purchase products. “We’ve received around 1,000 searches each month which is a great amount of exposure,” Lin added.

Part of the success of the BaM Shop Window™ has been down to the implementation of IABM’s Global Engaged Partner Program.

This is new initiative for users of broadcast & media technology is designed to foster collaboration and engagement across all sides of the industry. End-Users can apply to join this complimentary scheme to receive benefits such as access to business intelligence reports and IABM events. The GEP program has proved to be a great way of getting the message out about the BaM Shop Window™, which has helped many end-users to narrow their searches for suitable products.

IABM will continue to develop the BaM Shop Window™ in 2020, with the aim of further establishing it as the ‘go-to’ destination for endusers in the industry. It will also be enhanced from a supplier’s perspective, with plans for downloadable data-analytics already in motion. Members of IABM will be able to get valuable

insights on how their products are performing on the BaM Shop Window™, which will include the number of searches and clicks on every product.

Links: Search the BaM Shop Window™ at: theiabm.org/bam-industry-shopwindow Upload your products and services at: theiabm.org/bamindustryshopwindow For any questions regarding the BaM Shop Window™, please email joe.mace@theiabm.org

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The way we plan content isn’t just about what time it’s going to be on air – it’s also about a windowing strategy

Broadcast and media trends in 2020 – and how can IABM members help?

We spoke to three IABM Global Engaged Partners about their plans for 2020, and also asked their advice on how IABM members can best help and support them. Tom Griffiths, Director of Technology – Content Supply & Distribution at ITV in the UK, Carlos Octavio Queiroz, Head of Architecture and Analytics at Globo in Brazil, and Carlos Miranda Matzumoto, Chief Technology Officer at DISH Mexico all had many great insights and much good advice; as a result, this article is a mere dip into what they had to say, but we have published each interview in full in the Knowledge Hub on the IABM website, and it’s well worth seeking them out for a much fuller picture.

How is the move to direct-to-consumer models influencing your investment in media technology?

“Fairly fundamentally, actually – across the board with the possible exception of the production area of our business,” says ITV’s Tom Griffiths. “Direct to consumer has been influencing our investments in media technology pretty much since I started at ITV in late 2013. We now look at linear and VOD much more holistically. Clearly there are specific requirements for broadcast via satellite or terrestrial TV versus delivery of ITV Hub or BritBox over people’s broadband and there are clearly still discrete elements to that in terms of investment, but we’re looking wherever possible to unify things and avoid having separate, dual paths. This covers everything from how we ingest and then deliver content, through to our operational teams, but also when we’re replacing or transforming some of the planning applications, thinking about both domains.

“The way that we plan content isn’t just about what time it’s going to be on air – it’s also about a windowing strategy,” Griffiths continues. “When is it on a linear channel? When’s it going to be on ITV Hub? When’s it going to go on BritBox – which order am I going to release it on those platforms? And therefore when I'm looking at media technology, whether it be investment in products I’m buying or in terms of building something ourselves, I’m 14 IABM JOURNAL

Carlos Octavio Queiroz Head of Architecture and Analytics at Globo in Brazil

Carlos Miranda Matzumoto Chief Technology Officer at DISH Mexico

Tom Griffiths Director of Technology – Content Supply & Distribution, ITV in the UK

thinking about all of those parameters – trying to build things which are reusable in all of those different domains.

We’re looking at processes and how our channels are available on different platforms to make sure that every individual location at ITV is worth having. Investment is definitely pivoting towards future facing platforms and away from more traditional platforms. This change creates the most pinch for any vendors who are locked into traditional platforms and traditional solutions – although I think most of them have smelled the roses and are doing something about it.”

“This is our biggest investment in 2020,” says Globo’s Carlos Queiroz. “And to materialise it we are implementing what we call a Digital Hub. It’s a mix of technology and business, organised in agile ways of working. Most of our technology investments for 2020 – and for the next couple of years – will be prioritized on this Digital Hub. The Digital Hub, on the technology side, is responsible for developing DTC products. Globo Play OTT is one of these products. We also have games, apps and portals and we have a pipeline of DTC products to deliver over the next year.

“The Digital Hub is built around the concept of ‘business dollars ‘or value streams. We are not building something in the old way – we’re discussing, deciding, prioritizing and planning digital products with the business teams as part of it. The key metrics are shared between technology and business; the key objective results are not focused on

Investment is definitely pivoting towards future facing platforms and away from more traditional platforms

technology, they are things such as increasing subscriptions, increasing revenue, reducing churn. We want both the technology and business teams to embrace these objectives; we want the engagement of technology in the business objectives and at the same time, we want the business to be engaging in the decisions that require technology to support it, but to have options.

“We are reducing the gap between decision and action,” Carlos Queiroz continues, “and at the same time developing a new future for what we call a media tech company that produces content while recognizing that technology is fundamental to delivering business results.”

DISH Mexico’s Carlos Miranda Matzumoto has a different perspective - with good reason. “Around 40% of the world population has no access to the internet; in our region (LatAm), the number is better: around 70% has access to the internet. However, having access to the internet does not mean you can access services such as video streaming (due to cost and QoS in different regions). This means that we must primarily ensure our technology and operation for the ‘traditional’ business which is (still) our main revenue source and the changes related with new services are mostly adding CAPEX and OPEX to support OTT platforms, even though the ROI for these new services is still moderate at best, so we should be very careful when we decide to invest in these technologies.”

With the move to as-a-service models accelerating, how are your relationships with suppliers changing?

“New business, new rules,” says Carlos Miranda Matzumoto. “The new ecosystem is very complex; the technical, operational, financial and business dynamics are very different

from the standard model, so after a few years of experience, I believe the best option is inviting the providers to become partners. Sharing the business (the opportunities and the risks) is the best option to launch new services, especially in this transition stage of the business, unless you are a behemoth in the industry, in which case you can take the risk alone.”

“Completely,” says Tom Griffiths.

“There are some places where it’s still a ‘fire and forget’ buy then just run approach, but not very many, and where that is the case, it tends to be more where we're still buying what you might call infrastructure orientated solutions. Increasingly, that's not the consumption model that we're operating with. With as-aservice offerings, there are two considerations for me. Firstly, how do I engage commercially with a vendor?

And secondly, how does that vendor’s product manifest itself to me?

“Exercising our strategy of moving out of our data centres essentially means moving into the cloud – not automatically Amazon or Google though frequently that is the case, but at the very least, into somebody else’s data centres. This means there’s a more involved relationship with vendors because typically with software-as-a-service, we are talking about multi-tenanted solutions where making an upgrade for one customer means an upgrade that affects everybody. That potentially limits some customization depending on how they built it. And sometimes that means that if we really need something to be customised, we have to build that customised bit ourselves.

It also means that building a joint understanding of priorities and roadmap are key, to make sure you stay aligned. I think it also changes the relationship because actually there is a kind of a risk on our side – because we’re now more beholden to

that company continuing to support that particular service.

“On the commercial side, I think it is possible to consume something as a service and still pay for it in a relatively traditional way – for example I could still pay for it on a fixed 12 month basis or minimum term contract,” Griffiths explains.

“With smaller companies, where they’ve got the basis of a product that we want, we’ve asked them to partner with us to develop that product into something more substantial. That means quite a big commitment from their perspective in terms of the amount of effort they’ve got to put in, so they need to know that there’s going to be something in return. In some cases like this we’ve entered into minimum term two-year contracts or similar.”

Carlos Queiroz reminds us that not everything’s going SaaS: “While our priority is the Digital Hub, we already have in place some more traditional Investments like the next cycle of refreshment of cameras – traditional broadcast technology. While the relevance of this is decreasing because much of the focus is on DTC, that’s not to say ‘Oh – we’ll get rid of all this traditional stuff’ because we still shoot images, still have studios, we still have a lot of these things; we still have a content hub inside technology. So we have the Digital Hub, Content Operations Hub, Corporate Systems Hub, and we have a Distribution Hub. This four hub structure is new – it came about as a result of creating a new operating model for technology and consolidating four different companies into one – free to air Globo TV, Pay-TV via Globo Sat, the digital assets in Globo.com and a music licensing company – all under one banner now – a transformational program called One Globo.”

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What it is for sure is that there is no way a single company (even the industry giants) could develop a complete solution without integrating specialized providers

As the industry increasingly moves towards cloud-based infrastructures, how can small media technology suppliers remain relevant to your business?

“It is very important to note that, even though I recognize the new technological models – in this case, cloud-based infrastructures and services – I had found that being able to mix and manage the new and the ‘classic’ – saying old seems to be inadequate – is the best option,” says Carlos Miranda Matzumoto of DISH Mexico, “or at least that is the conclusion after the evaluation of cloud platforms from major providers in the industry, so the transition will take a few years before the cloud is able to support most of the required operations for Pay-TV operators, content producers, and broadcasters.

“However, as we move forward on the maturity scale for the new entertainment environment, the ‘small media technology suppliers’ should recognize the new rules that digital convergence dictate, and, from my personal point of view, being compatible, flexible and able to anticipate changes or at least being able to adapt quickly to them, are the most important characteristics to ensure their relevance (and permanence) in the market. In such a complex world, the ‘traditional’ business rules are challenged so even the differentiation between big, medium and small companies is relative. However, what it is for sure is that there is no way a single company (even the industry giants) could develop a complete solution without integrating specialized providers. That is why my answer to this question is focused on the characteristics that I consider essential for the future of any company.” (see the full interview with

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Carlos on the IABM website for a full explanation of these characteristics).

“For some suppliers it’s very difficult to adapt because their approach to business is not aligning with the new way of working,” says Globo’s Carlos Queiroz, “so they have some challenges to address. Others are so technology focused that they don’t have a layer to communicate with this kind of work. So it’s a barrier not necessarily because of the business that they are in, but because their pitch is only technology – and you don’t sell technology any more just for the sake of technology – you have to discuss how you will benefit the business in applying this technology.

Some of the suppliers and vendors are so far from this business perspective, that they don’t address this.

“This is not true for all of the market – for example in the case of the suppliers whose technology directly affects business, say the ad tech space, they naturally have a businessfirst mindset. But when, for example, you are dealing with a camera supplier, maybe they’re much more focused on producing content and not aware of our key metrics; what are the metrics that having a better camera will impact? They do not address this in their way of selling technology. So I think that it will be a transition over the years for those kinds of suppliers to adapt to this new way of buying technology,” Carlos Queiroz adds.

“You could argue that cloud-based infrastructures actually make life easier for smaller vendors rather than harder for them,” says Tom Griffiths of ITV. “Unlike the hardware-based past, they don’t have to make massive investments – they can just buy some cloud compute and write their software without having to buy all the servers and everything else – they can

just turn it off when they’re not using it. At shows, rather than having to invest in a whole booth, they can just take a pod on a major vendor’s booth – and benefit from all the traffic it naturally attracts. I would say we’ve actually seen an increase in the number of small, niche players in the last four or five years.

“I also think we at ITV are interacting more directly with smaller players than we perhaps traditionally would have done in the past. If I think back five or ten years, if we were working with a small company, we would tend to want to get a larger player to prime them in front of us – a company that knew how to bring a product to market and to provide all the support services. Otherwise you'd be worried they just wouldn’t be able to do it on their own, whereas now we’re much more open to working directly with smaller suppliers,” Griffiths concludes.

Carlos Queiroz also sees the cloud opening more opportunities for smaller tech suppliers: “For most suppliers besides partnering with the cloud guys, I think there is an opportunity in developing AI solutions using data that most of the big guys are not looking for. It can be scary at first because you are partnering with cloud giants like Microsoft or AWS. But I think there is a lot of space on the other side for innovation, using tools provided by these big guys and providing solutions at a scale that is larger than the small guys could have done in the traditional days of the industry. So for me, it’s a moment of opportunity for those guys to be leveraging the competition because they do not have to own the assets to seek scale. They can use the cloud to their advantage – so this is in fact an opportunity, not a trap,” Queiroz concludes.

REPORTS from ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS CONFERENCE & AWARDS 2019

Tech Leaders Panel – adapting to new business models and mark Moderated by IABM’s Head of Membership Engagement, Lisa Collins, the Tech Leaders Panel at the 2019 IABM Annual International Business Conference produced many valuable insights into what’s important to vendors today and what they’re looking towards for the future. The panel featured: Matt Hughes, SVP Global Sales, V-Nova; Thomas Gunkel, Global Market Director Broadcast, Skyline Communications; Scott Puopolo, CEO, Telestream; and Mark Christie, CTO, Piksel.

What follows is just a snapshot – it’s well worth checking out the full video of the session in the Knowledge Hub on the IABM website.

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What’s your take on the current market and its conditions and how’s this affecting your businesses?

Telestream’s Scott Puopolo opened up: “I’ve got my traditional broadcast customers who have to adapt and change their operations. And then I’ve got this growth in those digital only providers who are building operations from the ground up. Our challenge as a company, is how do we adapt? Strategically for us the transition to IP from a network and operational perspective is important. Then there’s the transition to the cloud – how we actually work with our customers to execute that migration to the cloud, and how do we leverage our technology to facilitate that? And how do we provide the native services that the digital companies actually need? And then above and beyond all of this, it’s all about how you integrate quality and quality management. Because when you’ve only got five more minutes of consumer viewing time over the next five years, you’ve got to make quality delivery: quality of file, quality of stream fundamentally are critical.”

et realities

For V-Nova’s Matt Hughes, LCEVC is top of mind: “We’re now focusing in on what MPEG want us to do for them for MPEG-5 for the LCEVC standard, and also for SMPTE for VC6 for the new standards that are coming out in 2020. So we focused in on going back to our customers and saying, ’OK, how do these work within your environments?’ How do we work with other companies – encoder manufacturers, with elemental AWS, and how do we work within their environments and then also on the device side? We’ve brought on a big development team to work with device manufacturers to ensure that when LCEVC is released as MPEG-5 Part 2, that we have the correct products on the market.”

Skyline’s Thomas Gunkel sees collaboration and adaptability as key: “Nobody can predict what's coming next week – we’re talking about disruptions.

And based on that, we see that people are asking for flexibility, not only on the

technical side but also the commercial side, and collaboration may be the biggest buzzword. We collaborate with our customers, with webinars, with our own events – we provide knowledge on that level, but also we have to come up with products that allow people to collaborate… so that on the technical side, we have the right product for people so that they can work together, but also work together with the vendors, not only the end customers.

The most important thing for us is the ability to be able to adapt, to have a platform that can evolve over time where you don’t end up in any dead end or lock-in to a vendor or technology, but have a flexible platform for the next few years as we cannot predict the future.”

Mark Christie sees Piksel’s role as helping broadcasters move to the cloud by benefiting from the company’s OTT experience: “We’ve got a lot of cloud experience, and we’re trying to use that back into the broadcast side to help our broadcast customers who've got an OTT side. We’re looking at their content supply chains and how they can use cloud-based services to transform their workflows and reduce their costs. That’s more of an ROI kind of story about how they're doing things today and how they may do things differently in the future. It’s a very wide breadth of stuff and the commercial models of how you sell and how people embrace the cloud is quite different; it’s a very complex landscape.”

Through all of this change, what do you see as the biggest opportunities out there for vendors?

For Telestream’s Scott Puopolo, “The challenge for our customers is finding a cost-effective way to transition to a more agile operating environment, lower capital intensity for those businesses, and the onus is on us to aggressively adapt our solutions. How do we actually work with our customers to migrate what makes sense to put into the cloud and how do you make that seamless? We have to work

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Everybody wants to lower their bandwidth, lower their bit rates – compression is still important for us and for our customers

with our customers on the whole concept of customer success – something that we’re looking very hard at building up our capabilities to do. We can work with our customers to help them understand how and where to get economic benefit. Then how we work with our customers through that transition, and stay with them, and help them through, and we’ve reallocated resourcing to really build up that capability.”

Matt Hughes sees compression as key, and sustainability rising fast up the agenda too. “Everybody wants to lower their bandwidth, lower their bit rates – compression is still important for us and for our customers. And also, to push things towards sustainability as well – how customers can reuse existing infrastructure they already have in place to do things like UHD, higher quality video at lower bandwidth, lower bit rates. Everybody gets RFPs asking for your green credentials. How do our products offer sustainability, and also how does our company itself?

How do we cut down on travel? How do we do demonstrations remotely? How do we get companies to start embracing remote production – not sending massive amounts of people to various locations around the world, how do our technologies work together to provide that to everyone?”

For Thomas Gunkel, it all comes back to good data practices. “For us when we go to customers, the first thing that they say is ‘We need to reduce Capex, we need to be more efficient, we want to automate, we want to use machine learning, artificial intelligence, we want to be faster to the market, probably with new products, new ideas, to compete with everybody else out there, and also the new competitors out in the market’. Our first response is usually going one step back. Customers have different silos for good historical reasons, but these cause them a problem with their data – not consistent across silos, poor access, poorly managed.

So we work together with our customers from the very beginning to say they need to have a clean foundation of data before they even think of adding machine learning or artificial intelligence; you can’t miss this step – you have to invest in it. We spend a lot of time with customers on this – they are not only buying products, they are buying expertise too.”

Mark Christie sees the huge diversity in the market as both challenge and opportunity. “It’s an interesting time – with the largest, most diverse set of customers in terms of buying patterns and their strategies that I’ve

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We have companies like IABM helping in this, to get closer with the vendors but then go together to the customer to prove that we can help them on their way forward

ever seen. We still have customers on the telco side who are Capex – they don’t want any operating expense.

That’s the way that they present to the markets, that’s the way they want to buy their SAAS platforms and everything else. And then you have customers on the other side who are leading the transition to the cloud, and they want to spend the minimum amount of money on a service to process some content. It’s very diverse and you’ve got to have several different models to deliver on this. I see a big shift to where these large RFP initiatives are starting to disappear. Once customers have got a camera and framework in place, like a workflow engine or an SLA architecture, then they’re down to buying just individual services to do certain things within workflows. And I think that’s a whole new ballgame about how you actually then plan and work out your R&D about what kind of market you’re going to go after. It’s all going to start to shake up and it’s going to be interesting to see how that turns out. I don’t necessarily think everyone’s got to own all the technology; control is really important, but ownership, that’s just a real big cost base for some companies.”

Looking ahead into 2020 What are your top priorities as a business?

Mark Christie was very clear on Piksel’s top priority: “Make money, make money and make money! How do you do that? You’ve really got to understand customer buying patterns. It’s not just about the technology, it’s about demonstrating to customers that you can take them on an important journey. And that’s technology, consultancy, frameworks and it’s everything else.

Customer success is super important in terms of how you engage and take your customer by the hand and lead them through, because particularly with transitions to the cloud, not many customers have been on that journey. You’ve got to give them confidence because they’re changing their entire five nines broadcast chain and moving it into the cloud. It’s a difficult journey, and we’re still in the educational phase in some ways.”

For Thomas Gunkel, relationships are key: “We have Dataminer, this platform where we work together with hundreds of different manufacturers, and it’s really a big focus to get closer to them. We have had good relationships for many, many years, but we have to get even closer. And that’s also on a personal level. We have companies like IABM helping in this, to get closer with

the vendors but then go together to the customer to prove that we can help them on their way forward.

“And maybe the other big topic for next year for us is to get also closer to the IT people in our customers’ organizations. To be honest, when we talk to big organisations, some of their IT people don’t know any brand in the broadcast industry, but they make the decisions and we have to get them on board and also provide them the right tools, the right skills. It’s all about education – we have put up hundreds of hours of video content on Dataminer TV over the last 18 months; every week we do a webinar. We have to get together with partners on this – we cannot do it on our own.”

“For us it’s the official launch of LCEVC in 2020,” says Matt Hughes.

“We’ve gone quite far with it already – we’ve had soft launches with LCEVC, and bringing that to market, working with device manufacturers, the large internet providers and internet companies that are out there to develop this further for their projects.”

“We spent the last two years heavily investing in upgrading our portfolio, cloud-enabling it,” said Scott Puopolo. “It’s all about scaling and it’s working with our customers on their most strategic projects. And then it’s about making the go-to-market effective at working with our customers at the right time on the right projects and helping them through those transitional processes. We want to do it in a way that helps our customers accomplish their objectives.”

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IABM JOURNAL 21

“It’s the obsession with the user that distinguishes start-ups – making a connection with them”

Thinking like a start-up Start-ups are frequently offered up as models of how all businesses should behave. But what is it that gives start-ups their edge? Who better to tell us than two start-up founders? Gareth Hickey of Noa (incidentally the winner of the IABM broadcaster of the year award) and Mark Little of Kinzen talked the audience at the Annual International Business Conference through their journeys, dispensing much wisdom along the way.

What follows is a summary of the headline points made.

Watching the video of the full session on the IABM website will reward you with a much fuller picture.

How do you build those first customer partnerships to break through? “People like to see and feel what it is you’re going to do. Launch as early as you can with a handful of partners to build a reputation and trust,” said Gareth.

Is Silicon Valley the right model for start-ups? Only in some areas according to Gareth: “Be agile, but you don’t need to move fast and break everything.”

“Be stubborn on the vision, but be really, really agile and flexible on the detail and iterate rapidly in experiments that are small enough not to keel you over, but big enough to move the needle,” Mark added. “Always have an idea of what success looks like and be agile in the process of getting there.

“It’s the obsession with the user that distinguishes start-ups – making a connection with them.”

What are the characteristics of a good relationship between a start-up and big company? “Small teams with ownership of projects. Avoid companies that want to bring in the whole management team for early stage meetings. It will end up in repitch, repitch, repitch…” said Gareth.

How do you create a start-up culture in a large organization? “Build small teams and empower them around a vision, a trajectory. This works a lot better than trying to loop in everybody and having endless discussions. Also set out your success metrics and keep measuring against them every day, testing your assumptions to keep a sense of direction and whether it’s worth pursuing.” said Gareth.

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Advice for leaders of larger organizations? Mark: “It requires a new type of leadership – a radical decentralization of power to small, agile teams who are given permission to fail quickly and not chase shiny things. A focus and an understanding that the only security they have is total insecurity and the only constant is change. There is no end-point – it has to be a process of constantly feeling that everyone in your organization knows the vision and knows they can take some risks – and you’re going to have their back. Every week, keep asking three questions: Do you know what the company stands for?

Do you have faith in the product?

Does somebody have your back in the organization?

Final advice for leaders? “Looking for the unheard voice in the room is your superpower for innovation. As an innovation leader you have to have the courage to listen,” Mark concluded.

Media Distillery has a staff of 35 people and its technology is processing 20,000 hours of video daily, reaching over 20 million households through the partners we work with

Media Distillery tames the Dragons One of the many highlights of the IABM Annual International Business Conference in December 2019 was the Dragons’ Den session. Two young companies – Media Distillery (www.mediadistillery.com), which pitched its use of AI to understand what’s inside video content, and Jump (www.jumptvs.com) which offers to maximize ROI and optimize business decisions using big data and AI – took up the challenge. Each had nine minutes to pitch their idea to a panel of three Dragons and a very engaged audience.

After each presentation, the Dragons – Anna Lockwood of Telstra Broadcast Services, Pam Fisher of The Media Institute and Nicki Fisher from Clear-Com – questioned the presenters to test the viability and applications of the innovations, and the audience was then invited to vote for the winner. The audience chose Media Distillery.

What follows is a summary of the pitch by Media Distillery’s CEO, Roland Sars, his responses to the judges’ questions and some follow up questions to complete the picture.

Tapping AI to understand video content Media Distillery offers a solution that guarantees deep content understanding in real time at large scale using AI. It is designed to help consumers discover relevant content faster, and this has many benefits for media companies and brands too. The number of organizations using our technology is growing fast, as is Media Distillery as a result of this.

Media Distillery was established five years ago. Today it has a staff of 35 people and its technology is processing 20,000 hours of video daily, reaching over 20 million households through the partners we work with.

We can ingest live TV and perform analysis via our cloud platform to extract all kinds of metadata in real time, including speech, logos, faces, text, subtitles, close captioning and topics as well as all kinds of objects, events and images to represent a program. Currently we are doing this for over 200 TV channels in several countries 24/7 in real time, including Telenet and Eutelsat.

This information can then be used to drive viewership. Critically, enriched advanced metadata enhances discoverability, user experience and engagement by enabling quicker and more relevant content discovery with an ultimate viewing experience by providing more information about the content of the video in terms of topic, characters, time, etc. For example, if a viewer searches for their favorite football team, they will immediately be offered a range of videos around the subject – a much more powerful recommendation engine based around the consumer’s interests. Other benefits include identifying the exact start and finish times for programs, support for binge viewing – the facility to skip straight to the next episode, and much wider but more accurate search results – all of which help retain viewers.

Our technology can also be used for advanced advertising, with the advertising ecosystem now moving from broadcasters to TV operators. It is a new revenuegenerating business for TV operators, so we are investing a lot of effort into this development. It’s a way in which we can help them make these business cases more useful.

Our media monitoring is also highly valued by brands who want to track their exposure on TV. For example, for sports sponsors, what exactly has their exposure been?

We can answer this question so they can measure the real value they get out of their sponsorship.

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Anna Lockwood: What are your next steps – what are you looking for?

Roland: Three years ago we took our first steps in TV and we’re on the rapid scaling curve – we’ve grown from 15 to 35 people over the last year, and for 2020 we’re looking to double or even triple again. What keeps me awake at night is steering the company forward and staying focused amidst all this dynamic growth.

Pam Fisher: How are you dealing with competitors?

– major cloud vendors also offer AI-based services.

Roland: Our technology is home built. The biggest difference from standard cloud tools is that we deliver turnkey products, not just an API – our customers get a complete solution to solve all of their immediate problem. You can’t get our multimodel technologies together otherwise – the cloud providers’ models are not aimed at particular use cases.

Nicki Fisher: How are you going about recruiting the right people?

Roland: It’s tough, but Amsterdam where we’re based is one of the biggest tech hubs in Europe. We are bringing AI into real-world production – others are just talking about it and testing it. If you work for Media Distillery, you build something and the next day it’s in production impacting over 20 million customers.

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Additional questions: What is the background of the founders of Media Distillery?

Roland Sars is a genuine entrepreneur; born with a truly commercial instinct and vision on business growth. He previously founded BackupAgent and grew the company to a global successful software venture with 350 telecom operators and service providers in 4 continents.

After BackupAgent was acquired in 2014, Roland joined Media Distillery and concentrates on sales, marketing, strategy and growth of the company. Geert Vos is cofounder and CTO of Media Distillery. Geert’s exceptional track record of technical improvement is based on his belief in quality and expandability. With a strong background in Software Architecture and Distributed systems development, he is entrepreneurial-spirited with 5+ years of executive-level experience identifying and implementing technologies and enterprise systems that facilitate business processes and strategic objectives.

He co-founded Media Distillery in 2014.

The traditional TV operators need to innovate and change the way that they see content and what they do with it

How did the idea for your use of AI to understand video content come about?

When I joined [as CEO and ‘late founder’], we were three people and we did not have any employees yet. In the initial years the company was focused solely on media monitoring. About three years ago, we also started to look at other areas, and the broadcast and TV area seemed quite relevant for our technology. Firstly, there is a lot of video content created and distributed on a daily basis in this industry, and we can add the most value when we process a lot of data. Secondly, these companies, mostly TV operators, have limited understanding of the content they distribute such as: when the programme starts, when commercial breaks start, what topics are being talked about, and which people are actually visible in TV programmes. With personalisation, recommendation and search being more and more important, these metadata are quite relevant. Lastly, the media industry is changing drastically with new OTT players entering the market, [including] Netflix, YouTube and Hulu. The traditional TV operators need to innovate and change the way that they see content and what they do with it.

How was it for you standing up in front of an audience of your peers to pitch to the Dragons?

It was a great opportunity to introduce our company in front of such an assembly of experts and leading industry players. It made me focus on what’s most important within our company and product and compress this into a presentation. The dragons were well prepared and the competition (Jump) was very good. It was a great recognition from the crowd that they selected Media Distillery as the winner, which I reckon is a confirmation that we are on the right track.

What’s next for Media Distillery?

We are planning to expand partnership with international TV players. As well as this, we will be focusing on in-video search and consumer profiling capabilities.

In-video search solution enables TV operators to enhance the consumer experience in their replay environments and provide the perfect VOD user experience. By offering an optimal consumer experience in their inline replay environment, our aim is to provide an entire suite of products for the Next Generation Replay Experience which will enable TV operators to compete with the software companies that are conquering the media industry.

Besides this, we are investing a lot of effort into the development of advanced advertising solutions. It is a new revenue-generating business for TV operators and it’s a way in which we can help them make these business cases more useful. The TV operator is dynamically inserting ads based on their demographic knowledge about the user, but they don’t know what exact content is watched by their audience. So when you match these two data types – demographics and rich metadata – you have all the information to create a great personal profile of a user or household. With this advertising profile, advertisers have the opportunity to better target their audience, which makes advertising more relevant and means brands are willing to pay more.

Through scalable AI-driven insights generated through millions of pieces of metadata, TV service providers who build the user profiles of tomorrow will lead the way in reshaping what valuable consumer behaviour actually means.

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IABM Annual Awards - 2019

Creative Collaboration Award Winners

Sveriges Television and partners for remote/at-home production of the 2019 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships Collaborating Companies: Sveriges Television (SVT) Grass Valley – cameras, base stations, servers Net Insight – media transport platform Arista – IP switches Clear-Com – IP intercom SVT and its four partners won the prestigious Creative Collaboration Award at the 2019 IABM Annual International Business Conference for their remote/at-home production of the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in February 2019. The project broke new ground with remote/at-home production, demonstrating reliability and robustness across long distances.

It was a collaboration between multiple vendors and a broadcaster, drawing on their collective

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expertise to create a proven use case for productions of any size and complexity. The result is a cost and timesaving model that delivers minimal latency – with zero compromise on the flawless images audiences demand. The project creates a new approach for news, sports and live events.

The result is a cost and timesaving model that delivers minimal latency – with zero compromise on the flawless images audiences demand

Pushing the boundaries As the host broadcaster for the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, held in Åre, Sweden in February 2019, Sweden's national public broadcaster Sveriges Television (SVT) had the opportunity to push the boundaries of live production. SVT wanted to be more ambitious than ever, deploying more cameras and delivering more angles and live replays for a rich, captivating viewing experience.

SVT chose a remote production approach but decided to go one step further and completely eliminate the need to rent multiple OB trucks to support the live production operation.

As the host broadcaster, SVT had to guarantee the stunning pictures that rights holders demand; there had to be no discernible difference from the viewers’ perspective, and media transport had to be completely reliable – audio and video feeds needed to be synchronized and latency kept to a minimum.

“We knew from the beginning that we would need more bandwidth, an adaptable workflow and very tight collaboration with our technology partners,” said Adde Granberg, SVT’s director of technology and CTO. SVT’s goal of retaining most of the production team and functions such as camera matching, coloring and shading at its home studio, made ultra-low latency even more critical. The decision was made to employ an end-to-end, open standards-based IP remote production infrastructure – but the challenge was delivering on the sheer scale needed.

As a long-time Grass Valley customer, SVT already used its solutions at its main facility and relied on Grass Valley cameras during live event productions. There was also a long-standing working relationship in place between SVT and Net Insight.

Robust and reliable remote workflows over 600 kilometers “When SVT first approached us about this project, the capacity to support so many

cameras and reliably transport uncompressed HD signals over IP across such a large distance was unprecedented,” explained Tor Blomdell, Head of Products at Net Insight.

Grass Valley had already delivered uncompressed, ultra-low latency HD, 3G, UHD and SlowMotion feeds over a distance of 20,000 kilometers earlier in the year with its DirectlP solution. It was this assurance of reliability over long distances that provided the bedrock of the remote production workflow set-up between Åre and SVT’s main Stockholm facility.

SVT’s remote production workflow for the 2019 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships was built around Grass Valley’s unique DirectlP capability.

This innovative solution enabled the UXF XCU base stations to be situated in the central equipment room in Stockholm, while the cameras were on location in Åre. The DirectlP configuration on the Grass Valley cameras ensured uncompressed HD signals were handled with greater bandwidth efficiency and lower latency to ensure audio and video arrived in sync to the production studio.

During the championship, uncompressed HD signals were delivered from 80 Grass Valley LDX 86 Series cameras via Arista 7280SR series switches and 100 feeds, including return feeds, were compressed using Net Insight's Nimbra 600 JPEG2000 platform. All these signals were delivered to SVT’s Stockholm HQ over two 100 Gbps fiber circuits from Telia, each outfitted with Net Insight's latest Terabit Nimbra 1060 media gateways to handle this traffic, as well as feeds from two SlowMotion cameras, hyper cameras and all IT and intercom data.

Also part of the workflow was a Grass Valley Kayenne video production center switcher panel located in Åre, which gave the director access to a Grass Valley K-Frame X video production engine back at the studio, sitting alongside a multi-format Sirius 850 router purchased specifically for this project. Arista 7280SR series switches were used at SVT’s facility to aggregate all the camera feeds and a Clear-Com IP intercom

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In the past, this would have required weeks of testing and set up between projects, but now we can be ready to cover another major event within 24 hours of a production like Åre

system supported communications between the production team and camera operators.

SVT required a unique communications system incorporating a combination of features to allow for broadcast intercom to be projected out from their studio in Stockholm in a way that was familiar to and trusted by broadcast staff. The solution also needed to be easily transferable and scalable between small weekly events and large, biennial events like the ski championship. “For over 10 years, Clear-Com has been collaborating with leading broadcasters like SVT to build the most optimal intercom solutions to support remote production.

From an intercom perspective, we were able to achieve several milestones in creating the solution for the FIS Alpine World Ski Championship,” said Clear-Com Senior Product Manager Peter Stallard.

The solution included robust, intelligent linking of Eclipse-HX matrixes over IP networks, native multichannel IP-connected V-Series intercom panels, and the connection of transceivers over IP networks to support FreeSpeak II beltpacks at remote venues.

Clear-Com’s Agent-IC smartphone intercom app was introduced to support secure access to EclipseHX IFB’s, point-to-point and broadcast conferences.

The multi-purpose LQ IP Interface unit was used to provide multi-format intercom bridging to remote venues using an E-IPA interface card that can provide local and remote IP interfacing and the latest AES67 and SMPTE 2110 interfacing. “The combination of IP and commodity technology offers efficiency and scalability for the production team, without compromising the high-quality experience for viewers, no matter where the event is produced,” concludes Stallard.

Reaping the benefits Using this approach, SVT was able to limit its onlocation staff and equipment, requiring a support team of around 150 camera operators and technicians in Åre. The rest of the production workflow and staff were based in Stockholm, some 600 plus kilometers away. “Grass Valley’s DirectlP capability was instrumental in enabling us to create a robust and reliable workflow that could cope with the unique conditions of a live ski event.

Additionally, set-up time was drastically reduced – even for a project the size of Åre – and we were also

28 IABM JOURNAL

able to cut costs on the project by ten percent without compromising on image quality,” said Granberg.

The same workflow was deployed the following month at the IBU World Championships Biathlon event in Östersund when SVT once again acted as host broadcaster. As Granberg explained: “In the past, this would have required weeks of testing and set up between projects, but now we can be ready to cover another major event within 24 hours of a production like Åre. That is a real gamechanger for live production.”

The combination of experience and technology excellence that SVT, Grass Valley and Net Insight had between them delivered a record-breaking project that proves the reliability and viability of IP remote production in any environment. The FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 2019 saw the highest volume of remote signals – video, audio and data – transmitted to date from a live location to a home studio.

A step change in live production “The Åre project demonstrates the next step change in live production, opening up new ways of working by allowing a production team back at base to have all the resources they need to deliver the captivating content that consumers demand. We are very proud to have been part of it,” said Grass Valley’s vice president, live production Mark Hilton.

“What we have demonstrated with the 2019 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships is that remote production can deliver a better fan experience while maximizing resources,” said Granberg. “This was a unique project on a scale that has never been seen before and it proves that this workflow can stand up to even the most rigorous conditions. We can now do much more with less equipment and staff on location, and this experience has given us the ability to create programming in new ways,” Granberg concluded.

Creative collaboration: How the Verizon Media – Microsoft partnership is shaping the future of media

Jason Friedlander Senior Director Product Marketing, Verizon Media

Get ready, the streaming services landscape is about to become even more crowded. AT&T TV, HBO Max, and NBC Universal’s Peacock, to name a few, are debuting soon and looking to capture viewers’ screen time. And with U.S. SVOD subscriptions expected to climb from 199 million last year to 307 million by 2025, it’s clear the battle for viewers, and their dollars, is going to be even more fierce.*

While great content is a given to attract streaming audiences, an outstanding viewing experience is critical for retaining viewers. During a recent Verizon Media Customer Advisory Board meeting, our largest broadcast customers told us the most important criteria for choosing a streaming technology partner boils down to three criteria. First, reliable, TV-like quality OTT streams to every device. Second, the ability to monetize through personalized ads that avoid ad blockers.

And finally, lower latency, especially for sporting events.

The Verizon Media Platform’s advanced suite of features and capabilities simplify every phase of OTT streaming, from encoding to delivery to data, enabling consistent, high-quality streams to global viewers. Integrating our video platform with our CDN means we can exert granular control of the

video workflow and player experience.

This is especially necessary when tackling the complex nature of time behind live, which is an important goal for live video streaming service providers. We achieve low latency by harnessing industry standard adaptive bitrate (ABR) technologies, like Apple’s HLS and MPEG-DASH, but implement shorter segment sizes for faster video playback start times. This has an impact on the player, which our responsive video workflow is built to manage. Our workflow, combined with the Verizon Media CDN server optimizations, means our network delivers low latency and easily handles millions of concurrent viewers and crowd surges that often occur during live sporting events.

To take advantage of Microsoft’s scale, we are porting our streaming product to Azure – one of the largest cloud

platforms in the world. It enables unprecedented levels of reach and reliability that optimizes the end-user experience by delivering content from the nearest edge using fast, efficient global networks proven to outperform the open internet for TV-like viewing experiences.

Verizon Media and Microsoft Azure Our partnership with Microsoft began in 2013 with our CDN. The Azure CDN from Verizon Media quickly established itself as a leader for delivering highquality OTT streams to all connected devices, everywhere. Extending the partnership with Verizon Media Streaming on Azure will bring Azure customers a cloud-native video platform that has powered live and VOD OTT streaming for tier 1 broadcast networks and digital publishers since 2010.

IABM JOURNAL 29

The most important criteria: First, reliable, TV-like quality OTT streams to every device. Second, the ability to monetize through personalized ads that avoid ad blockers. And finally, lower latency, especially for sporting events

This Verizon Media and Microsoft Azure partnership provides: Streamlined workflow: We simplify every part of OTT, from encoding to content protection to delivery, enabling brands to provide consistent, high-quality streams to users, anywhere in the world.

Ultra-personalization: Our Smartplay technology generates unique manifests for every viewer that presses ‘play’, making millions of concurrent decisions to deliver the most personalized experiences.

Smartplay provides a host of innovative capabilities, including Stream Routing (multi-CDN switching), content targeting (regional blackout and content replacement), DRM, as well as server-side ad insertion, enabling you to increase engagement with more viewers.

Better ad experiences: Our content, programming, and advertising experiences drive stronger engagement and higher CPMs. Personalized ads are processed in advance and inserted server-side to ensure a seamless TV-like experience from content to ads. Continuous improvement of technology provides more data so customers can fine-tune its business and maximize monetization.

Innovation leading to a new world of possibilities The premium suite of features available to customers as part of this partnership includes utilizing Azure technologies to bring richer solutions to content owners.

Azure Blob Storage will bring cost-efficient, fast storage for video files, which can, in turn, be pushed to Azure’s advanced AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning products. Azure Video Indexer unlocks video intelligence by automatically extracting metadata – such as spoken words, written text, faces, speakers, celebrities, emotions, topics, brands, and scenes – from video and audio files.

Augmented metadata captured by Video Indexer can enable completely new, personalized viewing experiences.

By integrating our partner Iris TV’s recommendation engine with Video Indexer metadata, content owners can build theme-based content channels that appear as linear channels, all comprised of stitched-together VOD assets that play out as a single stream with ads. This integration leverages Verizon Media’s Smartplay server-side ad insertion (SSAI), which dynamically serves up advertising best suited to the content, location, or business rules put in place by the content owner. And because ads are placed server-side, ad blockers are avoided. Our server-side technology stitches content and ads into a unified stream, guaranteeing TV-like quality.

30 IABM JOURNAL

This is just the beginning of true 1 to 1 viewing experiences. Azure’s AI and machine learning technologies – such as speech-to-text, keyword extraction, object and action identification – could provide levels of information and personalization that would have been impossible without advanced technologies in the cloud. This combination of innovation is bringing in a new era of hyper-personalized content recommendation and relevant advertising that increases engagement, loyalty, and maximizes monetization.

Improving the content chain Verizon Media partnered with Microsoft Azure to address three areas where digital transformation is happening within the media industry: Production, digital supply chain, and monetization. Verizon Media Streaming on Azure solves OTT distribution and monetization complexities when it comes to high-quality streaming at scale. It is also being looked at to help production houses unlock video assets from content repositories and open them up for streaming and syndication. These three high-level themes also match the creative, technical, and business processes tackled by the IABM BaM Content Chain® – a flexible, extensible model designed to accommodate the fast-changing business environment.

Microsoft Azure, with its partners, like Avid and Verizon Media, addresses all nine categories of the BaM Content Chain®.

Moving forward As new streaming services come online, and the battle for streaming viewership grows more intense, broadcasters must choose how they are going to build viewership. They can continue to work with multiple technology vendors or take a streamlined approach that enables them to focus on content and managing their business. The integration of the Verizon Media Platform on Microsoft Azure ensures that all media enterprises can take advantage of advanced technologies like cloud computing, AI, and more. Our partnership brings greater simplicity to existing workflows, improves the quality of video services, lowers latency, and enables our customers to maximize the monetization of advertising and video content so they can quickly and efficiently build and maintain audiences – regardless of what content their viewers are watching. *Forecast: US to hit 307m SVoD subs in 2025, AdvancedTelevision.com, 2 March 2020, advanced-television.com/2020/03/02/forecast-us-to-hit-307m-svodsubs-in-2025/. Accessed 3 March 2020.

Funding success: How Cerberus Tech is capitalizing on market opportunities

Chris Perkiss Head of Operations, Cerberus Tech

We spoke to Chris Perkiss, Head of Operations at Cerberus Tech, about the company’s decision to seek external funding to accelerate the company’s path to market for its Livelink live contribution solution. While Cerberus Tech’s funding came in the form of a UK government grant, many of the considerations and processes the company needed to go through are very similar for companies that seek loan or equity-based funding.

What caused you to seek funding – why did you need it rather than growing organically?

The funding is designed to help us bring the latest version of our Livelink solution to market. Livelink 1.0 is an IP cloud teleport solution for transporting content from source to destination without the need for expensive, traditional infrastructure. This funding will enable us to further enhance the platform to give content owners better UX-driven choice and control, enable cloud-based video edit and manipulation, increase personalisation and monetisation opportunities, and roll-out many more innovative features.

The way in which video and audio is delivered is changing fast. This project fully maximizes the potential of cloud and IP workflows but we are aware that as the media landscape is fast-paced we also need to bring this update to market fast.

While we are growing well and have had some great success, the cash injection means we are able to do that, and we should have a fully developed product ready to launch later this year.

How do you find the right funding partner – what are your criteria for selection?

We already have the expertise in-house to develop our solution, so the funding partner didn’t need to bring that to the table.

What do you need to have ready to show to the funding authority – what information do they require up front?

We had to demonstrate how we planned to use the fund. We outlined the challenges being faced by media companies, the development roadmap for our solution, and how those updates would solve the challenges outlined.

What external authoritative sources of reference did you use to support your view of the potential success of the investment?

To support our application process, we used figures from the IABM’s ‘Broadcast & media – Technology Transformation: Facts & Figures’ as presented in July 2019. Of most value to our application was to set out the market need for Livelink 2.0 and the ‘Top Media Tech Priorities’ in particular helped us to demonstrate that our product would address these needs.

IABM JOURNAL 33

Livelink 2.0 aims to solve these challenges, fundamentally changing the way that content owners approach management, manipulation and distribution

How much management time do you need to put aside for the mechanics of the funding process – due diligence etc.?

How will your clients benefit from the funding?

Applying for InnovateUK funding requires a significant investment of time. The application form is comprehensive in terms of the information required but is also restricted in terms of word-counts for each question.

Therefore, it is important to allow time for drafting and re-drafting answers to ensure it’s possible to get across an adequate amount of information to fully answer each criterion within each question, without being too vague and without exceeding the wordcount.

The media landscape is increasingly competitive, and our customers are challenged with finding new ways to improve engagement and monetise content while keeping costs low. At the same time, they need to be able to scale fast to handle extra capacity during busy periods, such as live sporting events. This is a challenge which is currently not being full addressed by solutions available today. Livelink 2.0 aims to solve these challenges, fundamentally changing the way that content owners approach management, manipulation and distribution.

How long did the process take from deciding to seek funding to securing it?

What do you expect in the way of company growth as a result of the funding?

We decided to progress our application for InnovateUK funding in May 2019 and the application was due for submission by the end of July 2019. We were informed of our application’s success by the end of September 2019 and the project then took a further 2 months to ‘set up’. Funding for the project commenced on 1st December 2019.

There is a real need for this type of solution.

However, with a fast-paced industry, it was naturally critical that we can get this to market quickly. Thanks to this funding, we should be able to bring Livelink 2.0 to market in the next few months. We already have a lot of interest around the solution both from existing and prospective customers, so we expect this will help us grow our business substantially.

How will the funding be used?

The funding is being used to bring Livelink 2.0 to the market. Livelink 2.0 will be a cloudbased SaaS live video delivery platform that is globally accessible, offers an attractive payas-you-go pricing model and makes it easy for users to monetise their video content. We aim to enhance the existing Livelink cloud platform to give content owners and affiliates UX-driven choice and control when it comes to video delivery and ingress and egress formats, as well as enabling seamless scaling capabilities. Livelink 2.0 will also facilitate cloud-based video edit and manipulation, so that customers can edit content on-the-fly to increase personalisation and monetisation of their content based on widespread, local or even niche consumer demands. With this latest version, we will deliver a whole host of new services on a SaaS basis to the market.

34 IABM JOURNAL

How is the relationship with InnovateUK going?

At the beginning of the project, we had a kickoff meeting with a monitoring officer. We will remain in contact with him throughout the project, so that he can monitor our progress against the project plan. This will enable us to claim the money back against actual expenditure.

Have things worked out as you expected following the investment – are you delivering the results you predicted?

Development is going well and we already have the demo version ready to show interested parties. We expect to have the first iteration ready for BETA testing in the next month or so. By IBC, we should be ready for full launch and go-to-market.

The charity is now much more able to find and share examples of its content to show potential future donors the work they do

Overcoming Obstacles to Cloud Deployment with Imagen In January, media management specialists Imagen hosted a webinar with IABM on ‘overcoming obstacles to cloud deployment’.

Imagen was one of the first companies to transition to a cloud-based SaaS model for media asset management and wanted to share the knowledge it has built up to support IABM members bringing cloud solutions to market.

The webinar also highlighted cloud’s suitability for collaboration and partnerships, and how Imagen are embracing this.

The Imagen team on the webinar were:

Tim Jobling

Tom Wild

Brie Pegum

CTO

Senior Account Manager

VP Product

Owen Shackleman Partnerships Director

They used two real-life projects to illustrate the typical obstacles that need to be overcome for a successful deployment.

BBC Media Action BBC Media Action is the BBC’s international development charity which reaches more than 100 million people a year.

It taps into the power of media and communication to help reduce poverty and support people in understanding their rights, with the aim of informing, connecting and empowering communities around the world.

Consisting of disparate production teams often filming in remote, rural areas, BBC Media Action needed a system able to cope with the uniquely challenging conditions its teams face, whilst also providing more capability and value compared to its existing storage set-up of hard drives and tapes.

To support the business case Imagen took a ‘big picture’ approach to demonstrating the cost of cloud transition.

This highlighted the lower initial CAPEX and controllable OPEX and uniquely for this client, removed the risk of hardware damage or seizure. This was a frequent issue for the production teams and helped coin the phrase ‘you can’t confiscate the cloud’.

The remote places in which the charity often works also present a major connectivity challenge. With teams required to upload footage from locations including rural Pakistan, Tibet and Somalia a stable, fast internet connection is a rarity.

For the system to work effectively it was vital that it could function even in these challenging environments. Imagen achieved this by utilizing low-res proxies for fast loading, creating automated workflows that capitalize when a solid connection is established, and incorporating its proprietary file delivery system (AFD), which speeds up transfers, and automatically resumes deliveries after connection dropouts.

Imagen also use a browser-based system and authenticate via established single sign-on portal; this provides quick access, and ensures that even in territories with restrictive firewalls or site blocking, teams can still get online.

Being able to manage and distribute its video content easily via a centralized media library has helped BBC Media Action achieve a number of crucial organizational benefits. Significant cost savings have been made as it’s much easier for teams to locate and repurpose old footage, rather than filming again. Content is much less likely to be lost through events like fires or border confiscations, both of which had happened in the past.

And the charity is now much more able to find and share examples of its content to show potential future donors the work they do.

IABM JOURNAL 35

Imagen worked with Chelsea to design a system to share this content across internal departments and media production teams, and to provide secure external access for broadcasters and press

Chelsea FC Chelsea Football Club in London has a media archive which stretches back over 50 years. For this project the challenges were less about overcoming technical hurdles and more focused on using cloud to drive positive transformation in Chelsea’s media workflows.

The archive was previously accessed solely via a large number of LTO-5 and Digibeta tapes. They were reliant on different tools to locate, load and ingest content from the tapes, and extracting the data was often challenging. The whole process was owned by a media manager who was constantly swamped with requests.

Imagen worked with Chelsea to design a system to share this content across internal departments and media production teams, and to provide secure external access for broadcasters and press.

The migration was used as a driver to standardize formatting and metadata to ensure easy access and discoverability. Workflows were also redrawn to take advantage of automation and global access.

The Imagen team was aware that it would not be possible to move all of Chelsea’s operations to the cloud, so the system was designed to complement on-prem workflows, taking the strain off physical infrastructure and working in tandem.

As part of the project, a large volume of content needed to be digitized for upload to cloud, and here Imagen relied on its collaborative approach. Rather than trying to undertake work which fell outside its core competencies, Imagen employed a trusted partner to work in tandem. This produced the best possible result for Chelsea and ensured quick rollout of the solution – a key requirement.

With its Imagen media portal in place, Chelsea FC can be sure of a safe, long term storage solution for its valuable content, which can quickly and easily serve media requests. The new system has radically improved the way Chelsea aggregates, catalogues and distributes its historic archive, enabling the club to exploit the full value of its legacy media assets.

The club can now concentrate on giving fans the best possible experience, building on its legacy and connecting with supporters in new, innovate ways.

View the full webinar at https://theiabm.org/cloudcollaboration-and-integration-with-imagen/

36 IABM JOURNAL

We followed up on the webinar with a few questions to the Imagen team to further illustrate some of the key points they made. Here’s what they had to say.

What yet needs to happen to make cloud the automatic, 100% solution to all media management requirements?

“Bandwidth remains the main limiting factor, but as networks improve and more applications become cloud native, then this is likely to fall away. The direction of movement to cloud has only been going one way, and the speed of adoption is undoubtedly accelerating.”

– Tim Jobling

You’ve experience of seeing a number of companies through the cloud transformation process. What are the key areas companies need to concentrate on to ensure a smooth, successful transition?

“On a technical level, it’s fully understanding the whole organisational structure, role and workflows. The majority of time customers are very helpful and are responsive, however challenges can arise where certain stakeholders have not been part of the initial discovery process, and then their requirements need to be addressed later. Also, determining the size, quality and make-up of an organisation’s media assets is rarely straightforward. No archive is 100% in shape when we first encounter it – there can be broken tapes, corrupt files, mislabelled assets etc.”

– Tom Wild “You need to put a value on the physical archive – an ROI calculation has to be made; where is there value in digitising assets – and how do we prioritise?” – Brie Pegum

It’s often said that people are the biggest barrier to change. From your experience, how can companies get the buy-in they need in the move to cloud workflows?

“Barriers can be really varied; it very much depends on specific workflows and existing infrastructure – no two deployments are the same. In general though, it’s about communicating how we provide value to everyone in the organisation. This sometimes involves explaining how staff can be re-purposed to carry out more high value activities, or even how existing kit can re-used so it doesn’t go to waste.” – Tim Jobling “Then of course there is always the issue of cost; calculating the value of cloud investments still remains a challenge, and as we discussed in the BBC Media Action

case-study, it is really important for organisations to be able to take a big-picture approach, as like for like comparisons are rarely precise.” – Brie Pegum

What’s coming next in cloud for the broadcast and media industry and what part will Imagen be playing in this future?

“There still remains quite a lot of fragmentation with lots of people operating with different specialities.

Cloud is helping break that down into a more seamless world where live, near-live, and archive content can be managed and processed within the same platform.

“This means that speed is rapidly increased; we can see this for example in ‘in-match highlights’, a recent phenomenon in sports where clips are cut and distributed to social platforms and news sites in minutes, when the process used to take hours or even days.” – Tim Jobling “Organisations are no longer tied to a physical location to manage, process or distribute their content; however in many cases they are still tied to legacy workflows which limit their ability to take advantage of this flexibility. The aim for our product is to develop

feature sets which allow them to break out of this, effectively upskilling non-technical roles so that they are no longer reliant on having to push content back and forth to version, package and deliver it.

“We’re also focused on developing features which expand the monetization capabilities from which our clients can benefit directly from the platform. So for example, we have recently integrated a catalogue pricing and shopping cart feature to enable content owners to break down some of the complexity in licensing and centralise the entire process.

“As cloud removes many of the scale and distribution challenges to delivering content to a wide audience, we are also likely to see many of the ‘new media‘ brands and MCNs move away from a reliance on YouTube, where they remain at the mercy of restrictive rules and an unpredictable algorithm.

Platforms such as ours provide them with the underlying structure, and media management capability so they scale out, setting up their own platforms, and OTT offerings to directly reach their fanbase.” – Brie Pegum

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IABM JOURNAL 37

“We are seeing a distinct move towards Advertising Video on Demand services with consumers prepared to sit through ads for free content.”

Craig Buckland, Broadcast Traffic Systems

“Content personalization means that data and analytics is crucial to enable monetization as once again consumer activity drives changes in technology and revenue.”

David Candler, Veritone

38 IABM JOURNAL

SP ECIA L R E P OR T

“Developing ways of monetizing new tech is also important and potentially lucrative. AR and VR offer unique mediums to deliver content to viewers’ homes.”

Alex Wilkinson, Accedo

Monetize – making it pay

Roger Thornton IABM

The Monetize segment of the BaM Content Chain® is about managing business processes for content rights and royalties, scheduling linear and nonlinear services, subscriptions, and selling and managing advertising. In short, how broadcast and media companies make money; Arvato Systems’ Portfolio Manager, Ben Davenport, sums this up perfectly: “Put very simply, media is monetized through advertising, subscription service or, decreasingly, public funding or subsidy.”

We asked six IABM members to explain the drivers of change in this vital segment of the BaM Content Chain® and talk through the opportunities and challenges they are facing today, and what the future holds.

“With increased choice in the market and more ad-free services, consumers that can buy their way out of viewing ads will likely do so.”

Sam Jenning, Conviva

Drivers of change “There has been a significant trend towards subscription services in the last years, with Netflix and Amazon dominating, now being hotly challenged by Disney and others, while some ad-driven services, such as YouTube are also now generating a significant, and growing, proportion of revenue from subscriptions,” Ben Davenport continues. “The increasing competition here means that media companies need to offer the best and broadest catalogue of content, in turn requiring them to maximize usage of content they own or have rights too.

“For media companies relying on advertising revenue, competition in the past decade from ‘digital’ or ‘online’ has driven a lot of innovation in the ad sales space for TV. And despite ‘stable’ viewing numbers, ad revenues for TV continue to grow and there is still fierce competition between platforms and media companies which continues to drive change and innovation,” Davenport adds.

Keep adapting David Candler, Senior Director, Customer Solutions at Veritone, also sees the squeeze on the traditional broadcast model driving innovation. “Consumption platforms are growing and content experiences on mobile devices means that the M&E industry (e.g. studios, production houses, broadcasters, distributors, etc.) can now take advantage of new revenue options as they directly access the consumer’s device.

“For those in M&E relying on more traditional commercial models, there will need to be a realization of the new content and consumption models. They will need to rapidly assess and adopt new monetization methods; and keep adapting. Digital revenue streams are more and more in focus as these traditional sources become less effective.

Digital, social media and OTT platforms are the new focus, with many rights owners are now building their own OTT outlets as the technology becomes more usable, cost effective and accessible. Adopting new advertising, subscription and other transactional revenue lines across these types of platforms is happening at a rate of knots.

Content personalization also means that data and analytics is crucial to enable monetization (i.e. targeted content and 40 IABM JOURNAL

ad-campaigns, etc.) as once again consumer activity drives changes in technology and revenue. In summary, there will be a lot more competition in the overall marketplace in terms of who the consumer decides to spend their time and money with,” Candler asserts.

“Ad-based monetization must be balanced by maintaining a high quality of viewer experience,” says Sam Jenning, Solutions Architect, Conviva. “As viewers are increasingly sensitive to heavy ad loads, repeat ads, and irrelevant or useless ads, especially on VOD content, publishers are shifting to server-side ad insertion – dynamically inserted ads personalized to individual viewers.

“With increased choice in the market and more ad-free services, consumers that can buy their way out of viewing ads will likely do so,” Jenning continues. “To enable this, the market is transitioning as providers experiment with varied business models that give consumers options ranging from truly ad supported to fully subscription based.

In the middle is the hybrid model, which has evolved to become very successful in terms of monetization. It is expected that many SVOD and AVOD services will move towards the hybrid model as they look to monetize effectively. Privacy regulation will split ad sales into TV-like direct sold ads and campaigns intermediated by large tech or media conglomerates. Advertisers do not prefer panel or proxy metrics and will move to impression-based buys in walled gardens and large publishers as the measurement and service provided by those companies matures.”

Craig Buckland, CTO at Broadcast Traffic Systems, also identifies AVOD as the direction of travel. “We are seeing a distinct move towards Advertising Video on Demand services with consumers prepared to sit through ads for free content. At the same time, advertisers are increasingly looking to book an integrated ad campaign covering all media types. This represents a great opportunity for broadcasters to maximize monetization options.”

“Media companies have to find new ways to monetize because consumers have access to a wide choice of premium content at no cost,” says Alex Wilkinson, Head of Sales and Marketing, EMEA & LATAM, Accedo. “For some services, subscription models still work, but as many consumers have started to reduce the number of paid subscriptions, some providers are undoubtedly missing out.

This means that they either need to offer something compelling enough to make consumers willing to pay or look to monetize through advertising.”

“The technological challenges are far easier to overcome than some of the change management in terms of process and organizations.” Ben Davenport, Arvato Systems

Serving multiple platforms We asked our correspondents about the challenges of delivering ads to multiple platforms and how they are helping broadcast/media companies surmount these. As Craig Buckland of Broadcast Traffic Systems says, “The very complex nature of digital ad campaigns, coupled with the growing need to enable targeted ads and the lack of integration to existing workflows, is causing a massive challenge for broadcasters.”

“One of the primary challenges is to ensure a consistent user experience across all ads and content,” says Alex Wilkinson at Accedo. “This is especially difficult when it comes to new innovative platforms, such as Augmented Reality, or low performing devices such as legacy set-top boxes. At the same time, media companies are looking to provide targeted advertising to deliver a more personalized and relevant experience. If done correctly, this can significantly increase the value of advertising and improve consumer engagement. The Accedo One platform ensures a consistent user experience for ads as well as for content.

We have integrated our solutions, including our Augmented Reality experience, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elemental MediaTailor to enable targeted advertising.”

Metrics matter “The main challenges of delivering ads to multiple platforms are fragmentation and lack of trust, user tracking, ad reach, and frequency,” says Conviva’s Sam Jenning. “Ad reach and frequency are metrics which have traditionally driven brand lift for linear television, and they have become very hard to measure for digital and OTT ads due to viewer fragmentation and measurement challenges across platforms. Ad buyers have to make sense of multiple reporting streams from individual publishers, and the publishers themselves might use a mix of direct and proxy reporting. Efforts to address this reporting have forced

unreasonable overhead into publishers in the form of endless measurement SDK and reporting requirements.

Lack of trust also limits the scale of ad campaigns that run.

“Conviva’s SDK, which is already deployed to the largest publishers in the world, combats this issue by powering the playback data used by technical operations teams,” Jenning continues. “This means Conviva provides validated, standardized metrics based on census measurement.

Conviva enables media companies to run ad campaigns without the overhead of multiple measurement vendors, without dictating which currencies or platforms can be used, and with the potential to measure and report on metrics cross-device and at the household level.

“Another one of the key challenges for our customers continues to be tracking users across social media and owned and operated platforms to understand unduplicated reach as well as ability to track migration from one platform to another. With cohesive measurement across both channels, like Conviva offers, publishers are able to understand consumption and channel/platform performance in a unified manner to help determine optimal channel/platform mix,” Jenning adds.

Getting together “As is often the case, the technological challenges are far easier to overcome than some of the change management in terms of process and organizations,” says Arvato Systems’ Ben Davenport. “While cross-platform advertising is a hugely attractive concept for many media organizations, getting past legacy structures is often the first hurdle in that transition. One of the ways we’re helping broadcast and media companies take on these challenges is to bring them together in a non-competitive environment to discuss and learn from each other’s experience. Facilitated by Arvato Systems, but with topics and presentations driven by ad sales professionals from broadcasters and media organizations across multiple regions, the Broadcast Sellers Circle does exactly that.

“Of course, we also help our customers delivering to multiple platforms by providing a cross-platform solution that enable them to easily create and adjust cross-platform campaigns. Along with the concept of ‘budget shifting’, we ensure that advertisers achieve their reach and frequency goals by dynamically moving placements between platforms depending on audience forecasts and postings,” explains Davenport.

IABM JOURNAL 41

“Essentially, the industry needs to get better at collecting and actioning data.”

Alex Wilkinson, Accedo

Monetizing content in OTT “We work closely with our customers to determine the best monetization strategy for their services, depending on a wide range of factors including content, demographic, platform scope, and more,” says Accedo’s Alex Wilkinson. “We then offer solutions and services to support whichever strategy suits each client, including Subscription, Video on Demand, Pay-for-Play, and Advertising Video on Demand. We help our customers define a feature set that best suits their offerings, such as paywalls, trials, and mixed-revenue models.

“Developing ways of monetizing new tech is also important and potentially lucrative. AR and VR offer unique mediums to deliver content to viewers’ homes.

This also translates to fresh advertising opportunities, as brands are able to virtually place their products in the homes of potential customers,” Wilkinson adds.

Craig Buckland of Broadcast Traffic Systems sees an integrated, cross-platform approach as the answer. “We recently launched an advertising module that enables integrated linear and digital ad scheduling from one platform. The Digital Ad-Sales module allows advertising executives to fully integrate digital advertising on the major platforms into their linear campaigns. Broadcasters are able to manage advertising campaigns covering all media types. The module integrates both with broadcast automation solutions as well as with any ad platform server to ensure broadcasters can deliver and monitor the entire linear and digital campaign.”

Empowering media companies “Conviva is already supported on OTT, CTV, and STB devices, while legacy measurement companies are still largely limited to web and mobile,” says Sam Jenning, and adds that “Conviva empowers media companies in five ways:

42 IABM JOURNAL

1. Technical analysis of playback and content engagement: Conviva provides clients with real-time data for every stream on every screen for every second of playback, including ad failure events typically missed by ad servers and analytics systems.

Publishers use Conviva data to maximize inventory utilization and understand the relationship between ad load, content, and audience.

2. Building trust and reducing barriers to ad spend on historically measurable endpoints: For better or worse, ad buyers depend on legacy measurement which is tied to web cookies and mobile device IDs. By making OTT, CTV, and STB genuinely measurable, Conviva presents media companies with a path forward on these platforms that are otherwise disconnected from Internet 1.0 web-and-mobile verification vendors.

3. Providing AVOD household consumption graphs and segmentation: Conviva enables publishers to better understand viewers across services in order to maximize engagement based on viewer behavior. For multi-brand publishers, the consumption graph helps insights into maximizing share of viewing across a portfolio.

4. Enabling unified visibility into content consumption across all mediums including social media: This allows advertisers to optimize their advertising mix and understand what drives viewers to their owned and operated platforms.

5. Gain insights into social branded content, and track campaign performance: Utilizing social media enables publishers to unlock monetization opportunities with branded content and leverage their social channels to optimize monetization.”

“One of the biggest barriers to AVOD is establishing legitimacy in the eyes of brands.”

Sam Jenning, Conviva

Intelligent asset management David Candler at Veritone sees intelligent asset management as key to monetization. “Our Digital Media Hub (our white label, content management and monetization hub) – fully integrated with aiWARE (our AI operating system) – is the future federation point for content owners to monetize their media assets. Industry data points to the growing importance of this type of intelligent asset management for the future of media owners’ businesses. More stakeholders (e.g. marketing, rights, production, post-production, partners, etc.) will increasingly turn to intelligent asset management to help them centralize and streamline their media processes, monetize their content, and drive growth in their businesses.

tools and technologies and select different parts of the workflow from different vendors. Accedo One democratizes access to a flexible and scalable platform which includes open APIs to allow integration with a wide range of partners. This enables the use of best-of-breed vendor combinations instead of being forced into a boxed solution.”

What challenges does AVOD need to overcome to really take off?

It is becoming clear that many consumers are either unwilling or unable to pay for multiple subscriptions as the number of OTT platforms continues to grow rapidly. This is leading to a rise in the number of AVOD platforms around the world, where, as noted by Broadcast Traffic Systems’ Craig Buckland earlier, consumers are increasingly prepared to accept advertising rather than pay a subscription – particularly if it is relevant to them. “The main hurdle remains managing the complexity of OTT ads and enabling targeted ads,” says Buckland. “Broadcasters need effective ways to integrate delivery of ads across all platforms into their existing workflows, making it simple to enable ads, no matter the platform, as well as ensuring these can be effectively targeted to improve engagement. “ “Essentially, the industry needs to get better at collecting and actioning data,” says Accedo’s Alex Wilkinson. “AI and data-driven design can identify how consumers engage with certain types of ads or content to enable video service providers to better target them with appropriate ads.”

“Companies like Veritone are investing in this future by building and integrating relevant features into their products. Due to our robust and flexible APIs, we have the ability to expose the content residing in Digital Media Hub to multiple downstream distribution end-points such as OTT platforms, social media and applications through third-party technical partners, making it easy for additional direct-to-customer revenue streams to be activated quickly and efficiently,” Candler adds.

Open APIs are also key for Accedo, says Alex Wilkinson.

“The total cost of ownership is currently high for video service providers, as they need to keep up with new

“One of the biggest barriers to AVOD is establishing legitimacy in the eyes of brands,” adds Conviva’s Sam Jenning. “If someone launches a digital-only business, they don’t have a history of demographic measurement, brand lift studies, or upfront presentations that can be used to land large advertising budgets. Independent AVODs have to generate the research and integrate measurement, like Conviva, in order to tell these stories. Another path for AVODs is to partner with established media companies, gaining legitimacy via the parent company’s ad sales while they build up this history.”

IABM JOURNAL 43

“Media companies need to make media matter again. Programmatic treats content as incidental, and that has to change.”

Sam Jenning, Conviva

Is programmatic advertising the answer – or at least part of it?

Is ad blocking still a challenge to monetizing?

Not yet – according to Sam Jenning. “Programmatic is still incompatible with long-form video due to inability to manage frequency and separate competing brands. On top of this, buyers remain wary of Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI), where requests may be spoofed and legacy measurement doesn’t work. Sellers need to stop accepting low CPMs and unpredictable fill rates, both of which are a spiral that drag down revenue and user experience.

Of course it’s no good basing your business model on advertising revenues if those ads are just going to get blocked at the consumer’s end. Craig Buckland adds: “Ad blocking remains a challenge, however there is evidence that consumers are turning towards adfunded services in order to get premium content without the cost. According to Digital TV Research, for example, North American revenue from ad-support streaming platforms will nearly triple in five years. At the same time, targeted advertising makes consumers much more engaged with those ads and less likely to skip or block them.”

“Looking to the future, for programmatic to work properly there will need to be mechanics which create trust, like third party granular ad verification, as well as greater adoption of solutions for long-from like PG, multi-bid, and pod-based ad request/response. Media companies need to make media matter again. Programmatic treats content as incidental, and that has to change,” Jenning warns.

Arvato’s Ben Davenport also sees limitations – but sees programmatic as useful in some cases. “Even where programmatic has been embraced and is in production, it is often only used for secondary or niche channels or off-peak programming.

Advertisers and agencies know their targets, and in many markets will still insist on picking specific spots. It’s unlikely this will change for peak programming on primary channels, but we’ve been able to help our customers encourage agencies to utilize programmatic advertising by including an agency portal with our solution. This solution gives the agency direct access to define audience segments and target reach and frequency, as well as the campaign results, thereby enabling them to quickly see the benefits for them and their customers and doing so in way in which they’re familiar from digital advertising.”

Craig Buckland at Broadcast Traffic Systems notes that “The main challenge comes down to the complexity of programmatic advertising. In many cases, broadcasters are not setup to handle a mix of digital and linear ads which means that it becomes a very manual and laborious process. With our recently launched ad module, we are aiming to make it simple for broadcasters to deliver and monitor an integrated ad campaign for their customers.”

44 IABM JOURNAL

Conviva’s Sam Jenning also acknowledges that “Ad blocking is still a challenge, especially on mobile devices, desktop web, and by extension, SFV and news publishers. On VOD content, where viewers actively initiate a video, there is a higher tolerance for ads, but even so, Conviva measures 40 -70% of ad attempts are blocked on these devices. Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) technologies can potentially get around ad blocking, and more publishers are moving towards it even though ad blockers still impact ad measurement for SSAIs. The big picture answer is to move away from a mindset of maximizing video and ad metrics at the expense of user experience.”

And what about piracy?

Even the most perfect monetization efforts are wasted if consumers can simply access pirated content instead. Alan Ogilvie at Friend MTS lays out the stark facts: “When copyrighted content is redistributed without authorization on a large-scale, content piracy impacts customers, erodes brand and strips the bottom line of media and entertainment businesses around the world. The scale and financial implications of piracy today are well illustrated by individual cases. For example, one case of a piracy operation, Omniverse One World Television, was shut down in 2019 and agreed to pay a $50 Million settlement. In 2018 SetTV paid damages of more than $90 Million.

“These pirate subscription services not only steal content from legitimate providers, they steal their subscribers. For example, a survey conducted by YouGov

“Ad blocking remains a challenge, however there is evidence that consumers are turning towards ad-funded services in order to get premium content without the cost.” Craig Buckland, Broadcast Traffic Systems

highlighted the detrimental effect: ‘of the 28% of consumers who purchased a TV box used to stream pirated television and video content, half stated that they had cancelled all or some of their subscription to legal Pay-TV services’,” Ogilvie says.

So what can the industry do about it? “In terms of exact piracy related numbers and patterns, Friend MTS’ clients have access to comprehensive and detailed piracy consumption reports reflecting geography and volume of the problem these companies face,” Ogilvie says. “This comprehensive data is based on millions of videos captured and analyzed every day by Friend MTS’ highly scalable automated Global Monitoring Platform for detection of illicit content distributed via websites, social media, apps, etc. including paywalled sources.

With the best interest of our clients in mind, we don’t disclose the proprietary figures but our steady and growing customer base of content owners and distributors across the globe proves that we are doing something right here and our clients’ investment pays off.

Commercial piracy the biggest threat “When most people think of piracy they tend to think about torrents and file lockers. However, these are dwarfed by large-scale, commercial piracy when it comes to inflicting financial damages on legitimate content owners and distributors,” Ogilvie continues.

“Being the biggest threat in this respect, commercial piracy is constantly evolving, becoming ever more sophisticated and better organized. Pirate services today are legitimate looking, subscription-based offerings with thought-through business models and professional sales and marketing. They offer a wide selection of channels and content pieces not restricted by any content rights agreements and sold at a much lower price. Indeed, this piracy is big business and there is

every incentive there for those who profit from content theft to invest in developing and securing it.

“Thus, a significantly increased level of technical complexity and targeted anti-piracy measures is required to defeat commercial piracy. For legitimate content owners and distributors Friend MTS' comprehensive, scalable, technology-driven anti-piracy services directly address this menace. There will always be some tech savvy individuals that will find a way to consume content without paying for it but we are talking about getting back your average paying consumers once a pirate subscription service is shut down,” Ogilvie concludes.

What role is AI/ML in improving monetization today?

“In the shorter term, at least, AI/ML stands to make a far bigger difference at the Monetization end of the content chain than in creation or production,” says Ben Davenport at Arvato Systems. “For subscription services, recommendation engines use AI to track view behavior and make better recommendations, ensuring better subscriber retention. TV remains the most effective medium for advertising, however, currently, the typical efficiency of most advertising campaigns still offers much scope to reduce waste. AI offers several opportunities to optimize reach, frequency and increase both the efficiency and effectiveness. One of the areas we’re already seeing the successful application of AI/ML is in ratings prediction (for which we won a BaM Award® in 2019). Accurately predicting ratings is crucial as a broadcaster to maximizing the value of your inventory, so to be able to more frequently and accurately generate predictions has had a direct and positive impact on revenues.”

Best yet to come Alex Wilkinson at Accedo sees plenty of scope to further tap AI. “Technologies such as AI and machine learning are already being used by providers to identify trends, but many are still not utilizing them to the best effect. By analyzing how OTT customers interact with services, you can better identify trends in use and, perhaps more importantly, identify risk of churn. This insight has to be turned into action as soon as possible by, for example, adapting the user experience or conducting marketing outreach to encourage those at risk of churn to remain subscribed. In the future, video providers will rely on AI

IABM JOURNAL 45

“When most people think of piracy they tend to think about torrents and file lockers. However, these are dwarfed by large-scale, commercial piracy.”

Alan Ogilvie, Friend MTS

and machine learning even more to keep consumers engaged and happy. These technologies will help with providing content and ads that feel relevant to each individual customer, as well as adapting the user experience depending on trends and usage.”

Craig Buckland at Broadcast Traffic Systems also sees plenty of room for development, particularly in making advertising more relevant. “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are already being used to build profiles of the consumer in order to be able to target the right types of ads to the right types of people. In the future, I expect this to

get even more sophisticated and make even better choices about what a particular consumer would find interesting.”

Conviva’s Sam Jenning agrees, but acknowledges there are hurdles to be overcome to fully leverage AI’s power.

“Today, AI/ML has been improving monetization by playing a key role in ad decisioning systems for both digital ads and social content by allowing publishers to understand what content resonates with their audiences. Understanding what content resonates with an audience and when it resonates most is important for publishers because it helps them to create more engaging content and improve social monetization. While the algorithms are available, viewer data privacy and general lack of data still holds back a wider adoption of ad decisioning for digital ads.”

46 IABM JOURNAL

Efficiencies + insights = better monetization Veritone is betting heavily on the power of AI/ML in its solutions. Says David Candler: “Using AI/ML to create efficiencies in media workflows and unlock actionable insights into content ultimately enables improvements in monetization. With capabilities such as language detection, translation, transcription, object detection, face detection, identification and much more – aiWARE imitates human behavior while recognizing and analyzing patterns. It processes information faster and at higher volumes than the human brain – all to help boost revenue and efficiency.

In the M&E industry, we can help to improve monetization by automating and simplifying content accessibility, searchability, distribution and analysis.

This allows organizations to discover content in new ways, to drive operational efficiencies, and generate new revenue streams.

“We believe that aiWARE’s extensive integrated AI and ML capabilities will set us apart going forward,” Candler asserts. “Intelligence to analyze, manage, and monetize media assets will be increasingly important for the market. Veritone’s applications and services help the world’s leading media companies – including broadcasters, studios, networks, and sports federations – unlock hidden revenue streams trapped in their content as well as gain operational efficiencies in their daily operations.

As we continue to focus on this technology, we will be a highly compelling technical partner for anyone wanting to utilize and monetize their valuable content.”

APAC region update – ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ I have thought about writing on any issues except the COVID-19 coronavirus disease situation.

However, being based in the APAC region, which is at the Peter Bruce sharp end of what has been Director, going on in the last two months, APAC, IABM I am fully aware that every conversation that I have with IABM members or industry end users always reverts to discussing the coronavirus.

My response to anyone on the matter is that we must not speculate and all updates on the industry situation are tracked on our website https://theiabm.org/coronavirus/.

It is a rapidly changing and evolving situation. On one of the main news channels an expert had two brief pieces of advice: Firstly, ‘Plan less and react faster’. This is not bad advice given the rate at which things are changing and the lack of the ability of the experts to understand when this situation will all settle down. It does not mean that we need to be completely reactionary; make plans where you can, but adjust when you need to.

Secondly, ‘Trust only the experts and the official sites’.

Recent over-reactions on social media in Singapore led to widespread and unnecessary panic buying in stores.

Again, only trust official sites from appropriate institutions.

Remember to stay alert and that all is not lost – the present situation can lead to opportunities within the broadcast and media sector. Video distribution does not aid the spread of viruses, and the population uses media to be informed and entertained while having more time not going out. I recently visited the biggest global eSports company. Their Singapore office explained that they had a gaming event in Poland (Intel Extreme

48 IABM JOURNAL

Masters XIV) restricted to the players only, within the stadium. The audience banning notice was given to them only 24 hours before the event was scheduled to go ahead. Yes, it caused issues. However, the event still went ahead and as a consequence had the highest online audience, breaking all records.

Additionally in the last week of February, One Championship decided to go ahead with its Singapore martial arts event without an audience. As a result the online streaming audience did not suffer and Jeff Chan (martial arts super hero from Canada) explained that his “Win Broke His Instagram Account”. He adjusted by flying in two weeks early and was relieved that the show went on. But going ahead was a great success, although it was for sure a bit strange covering such dramatic sporting events without a reactionary audience to give an atmosphere.

I am informed from our training partner in Singapore (AV8), that many of their classes are still going ahead and they have got more enquiries from the bigger institutions who may have an international travel ban.

They are looking at getting their training obligations out

be a game changer. Institutions that do not believe that business happens if their staff are working from home – particularly countries such as Japan and China who have been forced to prevent their staff and children from attending work or school – have been forced to experience remote learning and make the use of the home office.

This experience may allow them to review and change their whole way of operating, boosting remote conference systems and school remote learning.

Once this all settles down, things will get on track very rapidly, with a boost to the broadcast and media sector and how live events are covered and attended. Great opportunities are going to evolve with the change on how learning, HoW, gaming, sporting events and video conferences happen.

of the way, while they can. What I remember when the SARS outbreak happened in 2002/2003, was that I was amazed how quickly things had got back to normal once new cases of the virus had stopped. Of course, it is now a great time to support those existing customers in an even stronger way. But most TV stations, media outlets etc. still have their annual budgets and objectives to fulfill: there are channels and streaming of programs that still need to go ahead, and there is an audience out there that wants to view media. So the broadcast and media industry has not closed down – quite the contrary: there may well be increased demand for all those news and entertainment channels and video streams.

Of course, as schools in many countries may be temporarily closed, remote learning systems

will end up getting a big boost and injection of cash moving forwards.

Schools and education institutions still need to get pupils through their classes and to accomplish their degrees, albeit remotely.

Additionally, as attendance at houses of worship may be reduced or the locations even closed, there will be a boost for media solutions for such events to go ahead virtually.

As the poster that the British government issued at the start of World War II said, now is the time to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.

The IABM APAC Members’ Council has made the decision that as several physical conferences will be postponed, there will be an increase of webinars for the region, so keep an eye on the Webinar section of the IABM website: https://theiabm.org/iabmwebinars/ Once all settles down, I believe that this current situation will prove to

IABM JOURNAL 49

INDUSTRY INDUS TRRY NEW NEWS WSS

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Knowledge, Knowledge, Support & Leadership Leadership Visit: www.theiabm.org Visit: w ww.theiabm.org

Q IABM members’ members’ news, news, articles, press articles, pr ess rreleases eleases and white white papers papers Q Latest Latest insight and analysis analysis Q Executive Executive interviews interviews Q Thought leadership leadership and opinion articles articles

The Hamburg Open event was a great success with c.1,500

EMEA and UK region update Darren Whitehead Director of Business Development, IABM

The end of Q1 this year has been unprecedented with the pandemic of the Coronavirus and the forced postponement of many of the trade shows that serve the global broadcast & media community.

Nevertheless, in UK and Europe, we managed to organise three events before the virus and governments’ health policies took over!

The first was the Hamburg Open, running in January as a two day show for the first time in Hamburg Messe, formerly organised and hosted

by MCI Studios.

The event was a great success with c.1,500 attendees over the two days. The DACH Members’ Council, led by Chair Alain Polgar, produced a really interesting session, entitled ‘The viewer strikes back: how streaming affects content production’.

Following Hamburg Open, the KITPLUS event took place in London, E1 late February and was a one-day event that delivered c.600 attendees.

See the report from this by Dick Hobbs on the following page, which also includes some reflections on where the industry stands today – provoked by the event.

Finally, in early March, the DACH Members’ Council, in collaboration with IRT in Munich, organised a half-day event on the topic of IP and Remote Production. This was a great event with c.100 attendees.

The programme focused on the business drivers as well as the technology around IP and Remote Production, with a series of case studies demonstrating what can be done around the world with this methodology.

For sure, in the short term, our industry will miss the ability to get together to learn and network around topics of interest. However, the broadcast & media industry is resilient and in the interim IABM will be here to bridge the gap as much as possible with: IABM JOURNAL 51

Winning that dollar KitPlus, the practical and down-to-earth magazine that serves the broadcast, media and pro-video industries, also runs targeted, one-day events in regional media hubs such as Glasgow, Bristol, London and Salford.

These combine table-top exhibits with some relevant seminars, writes Dick Hobbs, consultant and writer on television and film technology.

The most recent was in London in February, and one of the seminar speakers was IABM’s Darren Whitehead.

His presentation included a couple of telling quotes.

The first was from Christin McCarthy, CFO for Disney, who is reported to have said “We expect total operating expenses for Disney+, which include marketing, technology, customer service, billing, and G&A expenses, to be a little less than $1 billion for fiscal 2020 and we’d expect these expenses to ramp as the subscriber base grows.” Read that one again: one billion dollars in operating expenses.

Then Darren quoted John Stankey, CEO of Warner Media. “At a time when we must shift our investment focus to develop more content for specific and demanding audiences on emerging platforms,” he said, “we can’t sustain a model where we invest one dollar more than necessary in the administrative aspects of running our business.”

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Taken together, those two statements dramatically set out where we are as an industry. There is plenty of money out there, even though much of it is in the hands of new players not traditional broadcasters and production companies. But the spend is going in three directions only.

First is content. If you are in the production business then you are happy for now. According to Wall Street researchers BMO Capital Markets, Netflix is going to spend around $17.3 billion on production this year. It seems happy to spend $13 million an episode for The Crown; a frankly astounding $60 million for just three stand-up comedy specials from Dave Chapelle.

And just because Netflix spends enormous sums, that trickles down to every broadcaster and media company, which is now expected to raise its production values to match. It’s hard to imagine, but when Russell T Davies relaunched Doctor Who for the BBC in 2005, it was shot on DigiBeta because the budget would not run to HD. Today it uses Arri cameras with Cooke prime lenses.

The second is advertising technology. You have to monetise every last penny out of that vast content spend. Matching content to eyeballs, across platforms, is a complex business, and broadcasters need all the

...expenses for Disney+, which include marketing, technology, customer service, billing, and G&A expenses, to be a little less than $1 billion for fiscal 2020

technological support they can get for campaign planning and dynamic ad insertion, tailoring the messages even down to the original.

And the third, as Warner’s John Stankey suggested, is in automating workflows. This is where machine learning is likely to have a major impact: every business and operational process that a computer can take over from a human will represent a tangible benefit. To achieve the goal of not investing one more dollar than necessary on running the business, they will need to invest in smart, video-savvy, industry-relevant systems.

To get back to the KitPlus London show, its big focus was on the first. Virtually every camera manufacturer’s latest products could be seen.

That is probably understandable.

At the moment – and this could change between me writing this and it getting published – the working assumption is that the big decisions are made by the guys with the big expense accounts who are currently planning on heading to NAB. They are going to be looking at cloud artificial intelligence.

But the latest in cameras, lenses, grips and tricks?

They are increasingly taken by individuals. That is not to say they are not important: they are absolutely vital. But these buying decisions are taken by hands-on people, often by freelancers who need to be out there shooting or producing, and not sitting on a plane to the next continent.

So the KitPlus day was busy, bustling and engaging. There

were a lot of stands, and a lot of cameras, crammed into a relatively small room, so people were jostling for information. It forced vendors and visitors into the generous attitude of sharing detailed questions with others, simply because there was not a quiet corner to which to retreat.

According to Wall Street researchers BMO Capital Markets, Netflix is going to spend around $17.3 billion on production this year.

Seeing so many cameras in one place makes you realise that buying decisions are complex. Just a few metres separated the latest from Arri (which was showing some great behind the scenes footage from the movie 1917) and Blackmagic, which offers a raw 4k output from a camera costing £1k.

JVC was showing models that looked like traditional video camcorders (but were also capable of live streaming); across an aisle the latest modular Sony FX9 was demonstrated. In an entertaining but occasionally mind-bending seminar, Neil Thompson (late of Sony) discussed the application of full frame sensors like the FX9, and the bewildering number of output formats and their uses.

care about two minutes’ latency; a super-fan could not bear the thought of live not meaning absolutely live to the millisecond.

It was not all cameras and accessories. There were other exhibitors, like EVO and its workflow-defined storage – “if you can mount it, you can index it” I was told. Again, the applications are likely to appeal to the smaller, more agile businesses who may have a lot of content but no corporate archive strategy.

All in all, this was an excellent day, and congratulations to the organisers. Despite a bitterly cold day they brought together many of the vendors who can differentiate a production, and introduced them to a worthwhile number of potential buyers and certainly influencers.

And, in the uncertain future, this sort of localised, targeted event may be the way we do more of our business.

Next show is 10th November 2020 in the heart of MediaCityUK, Salford – registration open soon at www.kitplusshow.co.uk and exhibit enquires to show@kitplusshow.co.uk.

You can watch Darren Whitehead’s full presentation at KitPlus via this link: http://bit.ly/IABM-KitPlus

TVU was showing its remote production capabilities, sending multiple streams over the internet.

One of its recent projects was the Hawaii Triathlon, which was produced in Paris. There was a lot of talk about sports on VoD, which led to the question are you a fan or a super-fan? A sports fan might not

IABM JOURNAL 53

North America region update Kathy Bienz Director, North America, IABM

Unprecedented Times What a start to 2020 due to the devastating global impact of coronavirus!

While the broadcast and media (BaM) industry is well versed in covering major news developments, in our lifetimes there are none that have such a difficult, direct and widespread impact to news and media organizations as has COVID-19 – not even September 11, 2001. n n n n

Nine (9) have rescheduled to later dates Six (6) have postponed with new dates yet to be announced Six (6) have cancelled Two (2) have converted to online only

With the postponement and cancellation of these global industry exhibitions, conferences and events, where our industry connects around the latest technologies, new solution offerings and operational/business workflows to advance their deliverables to virtually all eyeballs around the globe, organizations are working hard to determine next steps.

For North America specifically, with the NAB making the difficult decision to not host April’s NAB Show – the industry’s largest event in the world – shockwaves have reverberated throughout both exhibitors and attendees.

Numerous coronavirus travel restrictions took place prior to the NAB announcement, nonetheless, the waves have rippled outward and are impacting many organizations outside of North America.

On the following pages, you can read the article contributions from members of IABM’s Americas Council – made before the NAB announcement – who expressed their organizations’ great anticipation and excitement in advance of the NAB Show! They were fully prepared to host end users and show how their offerings address user’s current and future-planning needs, such as:

n 4K/UHD/8K

n Cloud-based workflows

n Machine Learning

n 5G

n Cloud computing

n NextGen TV

n Artificial Intelligence

n Content creation done cost effectively, cost efficiently & quickly

n OTA / OTT developments

n ATSC 3.0

n Emerging standards (such as ‘ASCMHL’ Media Hash List)

n Personalized/targeted advertising

n Blockchain

n Immersive experiences

n Software-based solutions

n Bridges to address gaps in cloud-based solutions across the content creation & delivery chain

n Importance of trusted relationships between supplier, integration partner and end user

n Subscription-based solutions

n CAPEX to OPEX migration

n IP-based infrastructures

n Virtual Reality

The IABM has been working hard on approaches to help our members mitigate the loss of industry exposure from the NAB Show postponement – see details on new initiatives within this issue. This is important for both their organizations and the end-user community in moving forward in today’s competitive content-consumption environment.

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We humans are highly resilient beings and will navigate the fluid situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in the coming weeks and months. IABM is pulling out all stops to support the industry. We look forward to your engagement in our new initiatives and welcome your feedback as we all navigate these times together.

The main priorities for technology buyers will be cost savings, efficiency and the ability to create more content quickly

Trends for 2020 – the view from the Americas We asked Americas Regional Members’ Council members to talk about their expectations for NAB Show Las Vegas before the news of the show’s cancellation came through. The technologies and trends they identified, however, remain highly relevant on where the industry is heading this year and beyond.

Evolution not revolution Paul Stechly President, Applied Electronics Limited and chair of the Americas Members’ Council We expect this NAB to be more evolutionary versus any dramatically new technologies. The main trends to IP, software and virtualized workflows continue.

Manufacturers continue to develop their IP strategies with IP standards still lagging in areas such as control.

Software, and particularly software subscriptions, continue to grow. Media companies will be at the show to determine if now is the time to dive into the IP world.

Many will also be looking at automated software-based production systems. This year we will also see a number of vendors with deliverable AI systems to automate production.

The main priorities for technology buyers will be cost savings, efficiency and the ability to create more content quickly. They will also be looking for more options to purchase as a capital asset, subscription based or hosted subscription.

Consolidation and adjustment Carlos Capellão Managing Partner, Phase Engineering Our perception at PHASE is that in Brazil and most of South America 2020 will be a consolidation year for the traditional media industry as a whole: a year of adjustments to face the new challenges imposed by the rapid and dramatic changes in the business and the consumers’ behavior.

In terms of new technologies, there are high expectations related to the impact of 5G in the way content will reach the viewers. Cloud based production and playout should start a noticeable expansion and that will impact drastically the way the systems supply business operates. Ways to make traditional OTA Broadcast a more modern and interactive experience for the viewers, while providing new ways of revenue generation, will be of extreme interest and demand.

The IP based video & audio infrastructure systems already deployed in some of the most advanced production and playout facilities will certainly undergo updates to take advantage of the new standards, making them more friendly and attractive. Certainly, IP infrastructure expansions will also be required. These upgrades will represent business opportunities for the system supplier chain. The degree of intensity will very much depend on the decrease of prices for IP based video infrastructure products.

The implementation of OTA Digital TV Services in the myriad of very small cities in our very large territory will also demand innovative transmission products to allow very economic and easy to deploy solutions.

Some of the best business opportunities will be in software-based products of all kinds; those that can make operations easier, faster, more automated and more economic, as well as those which will make a difference in the content looks and provide for new sources of revenue.

Last but not least, the huge consumer migration to the numerous OTT based services will drive lots of investments in production gear, infrastructure and, again, software-based products for ease of access, AI, targeted advertising and new ways of monetization.

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The new standard, dubbed ‘ASC-MHL’ (Media Hash List) is poised to be implemented in 2020

Data integrity is key Dan Montgomery President, Imagine Products, Inc. With the heating up of competition in VOD offerings it’s great news for our industry and content creators in general as demand has never been higher. However, at the same time the drive for higher quality images will also continue to push data growth and the need to handle it efficiently.

The pressure to deliver faster with consistent data integrity is driving the application of technology and standards to reduce pinch points in digital workflows.

For example, we’ve been working closely with the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and other manufacturers in the industry to establish a new standard with regard to large data set integrity and assurance throughout acquisition and production workflows. The new standard, dubbed ‘ASC-MHL’ (Media Hash List) is poised to be implemented in 2020.

While this news may sound like it lacks ‘sizzle’ the implications are far reaching and will impact our industry for some years to come. I suspect MHL with Merkle Tree (blockchain) technology will become core to both ‘air gap’ data handling as well as cloud storage strategies as it offers the ability to audit data from origin throughout its use cycle.

Personalization key to consumer engagement Ian Sharpe CEO, Promethean.tv In today’s market where consumer attention is divided across multiple platforms and formats, only the most engaging and relevant advertising will resonate with audiences. Businesses are beginning to recognize the number of missed opportunities from broad brush approaches, after seeing more and more traditional ads falling at the wayside.

What’s more, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022 – 15 times higher than it was in 2017. With the continued rise in online consumption, more businesses are building video into their marketing strategy to build sales, brand

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awareness, trust, and establish an engaged customer base. The need to retain consumers’ attention and break through the noise with personalized advertising is still at an all-time high.

Personalization is a powerful tool in developing video ads that create consumer engagement. It effectively allows businesses to target individuals by considering the context of their consumers, such as their location, age, buying habits or favorite brands. This type of targeted advertising also generates higher conversions, with consumers two times more likely to click-through to a video ad featuring an unknown brand if it was tailored to their preferences.

Promethean.tv is an online platform for dynamically programming interactive video overlays. We deliver engaging customer interactions that drive measurable ROI.

Partnerships are crucial Joe Commare Marketing Manager, Riedel In today’s fast-paced times, with disruptive technologies rapidly changing the face of our industry, customers are looking for solid and reliable supply partners. Partners that they can cooperate with, that they can trust, and who are able to provide proper support over the long term. IP technologies raise a lot of questions and it’s really important, in these days of fake news, to have solid answers.

For the 2020 NAB Show, Riedel will be introducing new products for both the intercom and media distribution product families. And, with the recent acquisition of Embrionix, clients will see that the integration of the two companies is in full swing.

Any shopping list for HD camera systems should include High Dynamic Range, Progressive Scan (1080p60), 4K up-conversion, Global Shutter and the capability to connect via ST 2110

A year of consolidation Council member Sean Moran COO at Hitachi Kokusai Electric America Ltd., submitted the following thoughts from John J. Humphrey Vice President, Business Development at Hitachi Kokusai While Hitachi Kokusai will showcase some forwardlooking technologies such as 8K at the NAB Show, we will be primarily consolidating new developments and products from the past year. We previewed our ST 2110 Media-over-IP support last year, and it’s now fully functional with bi-directional audio, intercom, tally and video on our CU-HD1300 CCU. Our two CMOS Global Shutter cameras – the Z-HD5500 and SK-HD1800 – both won TV Technology ‘Best of Show’ awards in their introductory years, and we will be demonstrating how they reduce or eliminate artifacts when using LED lights or shooting large LED screens.

Any shopping list for HD camera systems should include High Dynamic Range, Progressive Scan (1080p60), 4K up-conversion, Global Shutter and the capability to connect via ST 2110. We recently introduced new lower-priced Full HD (1080p60) camera products, including the CA-HF550 SMPTE fiber camera head adapter and CU-HD550 CCU, available with simultaneous SDR/HDR and 4K output.

Broadcasters have many things competing for their engineering budgets. Today, ATSC 3.0 enables a variety of new capabilities, and many of those improvements start with the latest camera developments. Because Hitachi cameras have always delivered great price/performance value, purchasing decisions should include upgrading older studio cameras to the latest technology.

Continuing the move to the cloud John Miller SVP of Sales and Marketing, BeBop Technology At NAB 2020 we’ll continue to see the impact of M&E’s dramatic shift toward cloud-based workflows, with products traditionally only used on premises compatible with the cloud, and buying decisions shifting from CAPEX to OPEX. Platforms like BeBop, which enable

artists and editors to seamlessly use the same tools in the cloud they use locally every day, and spin compute power up or down as needed, are quickly becoming standard. Cloud computing allows you to use high powered machines that are often faster than what you have on prem, and access to more of them, enabling the horsepower to complete projects without significant cost or loss of time.

Concurrent computing – rendering or exporting on one machine while you work on another – makes creative work more efficient. The immediate benefit of creating in the cloud rather than locally is the removal of geography as a limiting factor in creativity; you have the freedom to create from wherever you do your best work.

Whether it’s your home office, kitchen table, or visiting friends and family hundreds or thousands of miles away, you get to work in an environment that is most conducive to being creative and productive, anywhere, anytime!

Scalability, Visibility, and Flexibility: Three Essentials for Over-the-Air Keith Adams Global Marketing Communications Manager, GatesAir The U.S. spectrum repack was the most high-profile current-day validation of OTA as a major content distribution vehicle. A huge portion of U.S. TV stations are ‘repack refreshed’ and ready for what’s next. With the recent introduction of NextGen TV into the consumer vernacular, we are helping TV broadcasters efficiently and effectively migrate to ATSC 3.0 – a technology that seems to be gaining global interest.

With that said, a significant amount of stations worldwide have yet to update and upgrade. Whether they need to retire IOT systems, be competitive as lowpower broadcasters, or combat complex topographical challenges, we see many opportunities for our customers to step into new solutions that are both flexible and cost-efficient. Our newly acquired European division facilitates some of these solutions, including compact, high-density solutions that can house multiple transmitters/transposers/gap fillers.

To further help broadcasters grow, adjust, self-regulate, and ultimately succeed, GatesAir also continues to integrate more IP-based functionality across its product portfolio. We see transport, control, and monitoring IABM JOURNAL 57

I predict that many vendors will be featuring various different bridge designs to help create a proper evolutional transition plan to take the road less travelled.

systems continuing to evolve to meet the needs of broadcast networks of any size and configuration. Fully virtualized solutions exemplify what the future holds for broadcast, including the integration of multichannel AoIP/VoIP transport within centralized IT networks.

Bridging decision paralysis Shawn Maynard Senior Vice President and General Manager, Florical Systems NAB 2020 is going to be a very interesting show. The industry seems to be at a technological crossroad and struggling with which path to take. One road leads to our supposed future of cloud based SaaS models and virtual workflows using machine learning to handle asset repurposing. The other road is business as usual upgrading operational efficiencies with the latest and greatest on premise technology. The decision would be much easier if there wasn’t a chasm in front of the broadcaster on the road to the cloud. The gap of requirements that are not available within the cloud environment is creating decision paralysis. I predict that many vendors will be featuring various different bridge designs to help create a proper evolutional transition plan to take the road less travelled.

OTT continuing to gain momentum Thomas Tang President, Apantac Fundamental changes in formats and audience viewing habits alongside the IP transition are continuing to drive big changes in technology. The adoption of 4K and UHD imaging, and the vast number of signals that require processing and monitoring is driving some broadcast / media companies’ purchasing decisions.

Our Multiviewer product line is continuously evolving, due to new demands being placed on the need for lower latency and minimal delay, and requests for enhanced control – such as keyboard mouse switching & control. Conversion between broadcast and multimedia formats as well as the distribution are also important elements for an overall system to function efficiently.

We also see OTT – over the top broadcasting – as a key trend that continues to gain momentum; on demand video, TV via live streaming, multi-platform video, multi-screen viewing, new cost-effective content package bundles; these are all attracting customers. Immersive viewing such as 4K and virtual reality are all ‘new age’ technologies which provide the rich and enhanced visual experiences that viewers are expecting.

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IABM GLOSSARY OF TERMS A one-stop, online knowledge base for everyone involved in broadcast and media Invaluable for understanding and keeping up to date with the technologies that make our industry tick.

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Axinom customers include Red Bull Media House (A), Mofa (Qatar), Sky (D), ORF, HRT, TVN, RTL, Bloomberg and many more

Member Speak – Axinom – transforming the media supply chain Johannes Jauch CTO, Axinom

We spoke to Johannes Jauch, co-founder and CTO of Axinom, about the company’s success in helping media companies transform their content supply chains to meet the fastchanging demands of today’s consumer-driven media industry.

Please give us a bit of background on Axinom Axinom was founded at the brink of a technological revolution where portable devices started taking the reign from computers; it was the year 2001.

Companies with digital communication, outreach, or product strategy soon realized the upcoming challenges of a fragmented device ecosystem. They needed a management solution that would allow them to manage, deliver content to their users. Axinom capitalized on this opportunity and introduced a CMS system that soon became immensely popular with major companies across Europe.

Over the years with advancing technology, Axinom has been working in the same direction. We still solve the evolving challenges of digital content, services, and data in the media, entertainment, and aerospace industry. And, with our efforts, Axinom has grown immensely in the last 19 years, from one office in Germany with three people to five offices around the world with a 160 strong workforce.

Give us an overview of Axinom’s offerings for the media industry today. What is your ideal customer profile?

Axinom products are designed and targeted at various stages of the digital media supply chain. From ingestion and transcoding to security and integrations, our products aim for more efficient workflows for all stakeholders involved. The media products on offer are: 1. Axinom VIP (Video Ingestion and Processing) is a cloud-native system that takes care of encoding, transcoding, and encryption of video assets into multiple formats for streaming.

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2. Axinom CMS (Content Management System) is a modular content management system that allows you to manage and edit content, catalogs, collections, business models, regions, subscribers, integrations with advertisement providers, payment gateways, and more. The modularity of the system allows our customers to choose the services they need and customize them further to fit bespoke workflows.

3. Axinom DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a highly scalable multi-DRM service running in the cloud or on-premise. The service supports the latest industry standards and technologies, including FairPlay, Widevine, and PlayReady.

The inherent flexibility and scalability of our products have allowed us to work with companies of all sizes and differing ambitions. That’s why our products can be found in a global streaming service with several million users or a niche service targeting a few hundred thousand viewers with specific content.

Tell us about a few customer installations to illustrate how your products help your customers do better business.

Axinom CMS is powering a massive streaming platform in the Indian sub-continent that provides regional content to the Indian viewer domestically or abroad. The platform reaches over 190 countries and 76 million users in over 15 languages. With our CMS, the stakeholders can ingest and manage hundreds of thousands of hours of content, localize it for any region or language, integrate with ad engines, payment gateways, and create different business models.

Our products are also enabling an aspiring Dutch media company to build niche streaming platforms for genrespecific viewers. Axinom VIP, CMS, and DRM products are integrated with their MAM for automatic ingestion and transcoding of assets, creation of catalogs, translations, and much more. The customer has achieved a lead time of as low as two months to deploy an entirely new platform and one month to launch into a new region.

What are the challenges of transitioning from legacy content handling to a unified, global system – and how does Axinom help its customers through this process?

As with any significant organizational transition, the biggest challenge is posed by the established infrastructure. People in organizations get used to the existing workflows; they are sometimes so deep-rooted that no other possibilities are taken into consideration.

Consequently, while starting our roll-out, we dedicate time to listen to all stakeholder apprehensions and provide them with documentation, training, and workshops so that they can reach their goals.

What is Axinom’s ‘secret sauce’ – why do your customers choose you over competitors?

Axinom’s secret sauce is a unique blend of technology, innovation, and experience. When you are in this business for many years, you gain expert insight into issues and challenges faced by professionals, and also know how to best approach such matters. We have also learned that finishing a project is not the end of it; our customers should be able to scale, customize, and expand the infrastructure as they grow. They should have all the tools and documentation needed to do that.

Hence, we strive to provide bespoke yet expandable solutions to our customers. It means that while we are attached to the particular challenge, our solutions can still be expanded further to meet future needs.

There is a growing demand for live on OTT channels to be delivered alongside VOD content to multiple screens – what are the challenges and how is Axinom addressing these?

The delivery of live content has its benefits and challenges when compared to VOD. On a high level – with live, there aren’t different content types to deal with, but on the other hand, risks and expectations increase exponentially. Also, while serving live streams, you know that your viewers want the same chunks of

video. Hence, the caching complexities are less as the fragments are of known size. However, at the same time, you know that you compete here for speed, latency and that you work with small-size chunks and small buffers.

In Axinom, we engage and follow edge trends in low latency streaming to provide the best of breed approaches to live streaming in OTT. Moreover, we have invested in R&D and provide live streaming solutions using proven technologies such as multicast streaming.

As content rights become ever more costly – especially with premium 4K-HDR content – how is Axinom protecting its customers’ investments?

4K-HDR is right now the most premium quality format used by streaming platforms, and thus, content owners and distributors are using the highest level of DRM protection to secure it. This level of security involves hardware, meaning that all content processing, cryptography, and control is performed within the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) on the playback device’s processor. This level of protection also depends on the DRM service used. Axinom DRM supports hardware DRM and the technologies (Widevine, PlayReady, FairPlay) that are required to facilitate it.

What are the most valuable IABM member benefits to Axinom?

Access to industry analysis and insights that IABM produces is the most beneficial aspect of being a member. Besides the knowledge, the participation in industry events, ability to network and form partnerships are other much-needed addons.

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We provide the world’s best software platform for online video by delivering the best quality, reliability, innovation and customer experience

Member Speak – x.news – the crossing point for news

Andreas Pongratz Founder and CEO, x.news

We spoke with Andreas Pongratz, founder and CEO of x.news information technology, about the company’s x.news™ AI based live story research tool, which the company says is transforming the way journalists work by monitoring a wide range of different sources (news agencies, social media sites, web and internal sources) all on one screen. It’s all about giving journalists the tools to find, follow, collect and share all the latest information to deliver better and faster journalism.

Tell us a bit about x.news’ background x.news information technology was incorporated in late 2015, with a basic version of the product x.news™ developed by the founders ahead of that. Having a long track record in digital media production and management tools (the founders and their team members), we quickly discovered the need for a tool to break up legacy systems, create more transparency in digital audio & visual files and cope with the steadily growing number of sources at the same time. Certainly, HTML5 was the path to go, enabling it to be used on any internet connected device anywhere on the planet.

Tell us about x.news information technology today Today x.news serves customers in the media, corporate and public sectors on three continents from our HQ just outside of Vienna in Pinkafeld, Austria. Our customers include Red Bull Media House (A), Mofa (Qatar), Sky (D), ORF, HRT, TVN, RTL, Bloomberg and many more.

How has x.news (the product) developed over time – what does it offer today? x.news™ is now in its 3rd generation, enhanced primarily by ideas and needs defined together with and by our customers. Today it offers a wide range of sources whether they come from contracted, internal, social, web or communication tools. That number is steadily growing of course as integration with other applications also continues to grow.

The UI can be fully adapted by customers to meet a user’s requirements for efficient working. Sources can be grouped into profiles for teams, regions, etc. to avoid user-distracting ‘noise’. Users can create their own stories (saved searches) and get alerts if there are any updates. Drafting a script or collecting material for 62 IABM JOURNAL

online publishing or reports has never been easier.

They can collaborate and share knowledge, stories and sources. Publishing into 3rd party systems can be executed with a simple button push.

Integration with other manufacturers’ studio-based news systems must be important – which companies do you work with and what are the special demands in this area?

Based to our open standards and the optional Media Transfer Service (MTS), we currently support all major NRC Systems like iNews, ENPS, Octopus, Dalet, Ross, Grass Valley and Open Media. We also integrate with MAM systems like Media Central Cloud UX, axle.ai, Sony, DigaSystem, Masstech, Latakoo and VizOne. x.news™ even supports live graphics systems such as Maestro.

The level of integration mainly depends on the partner’s capabilities of how to hand over metadata and the type of media. Another demand sometimes is bi-directional interfacing, allowing the partner’s app to utilize our APIs for enhanced integration.

What business advantages do your products bring to your customers? x.news™ customers have the freedom to choose onpremise or their cloud of choice to run our system as well as full control and all administration rights. They also have the unique ability to freely connect contracted sources with internal repositories, social media and web in one app. This can deliver 90% savings on research, alerting of individuals on new updates, collaboration across teams and locations, D&D or publish to external systems to ensure fast news delivery – and huge $$$$$ savings.

Give us a few examples of how your customers are using x.news During the Austrian parliamentary election campaign 2019, the ORF was monitoring parties and candidates’ activities on their communication and reactions of competitors and publishers. The international news desk was watching the news on Brexit and the impeachment process in the US. KTBS3abc is monitoring all regional sources in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma for faster news and alerts while Mofa is monitoring international news sources reporting on Qatar.

You’ve begun integrating some AI into your products. Tell us what and why – what advantages does it bring? conceptr™ is our new product utilizing AI to allow the verification and fact checking of news, and also to provide personal trending topics and the ability to learn from individual user’s behavior to then show results prioritized by personal relevance.

flexible integration, our API, XML and NewsML G2 while maintaining full control of the application which we have not seen with other vendors.

What’s next for x.news?

Continuing the development of conceptr™, LGrid and sources catalogue subscription. LGrid – which stands for Language Grid – is an option which enables integration with any of the many great language solutions available, allowing the customer to choose their preferred one while ensuring that conceptr™ will connect and integrate with it. SCS (sources catalogue subscription) will be an option that, based on the user’s research (search/stories), could propose other (currently not in the system) relevant sources to enhance story creation quality.

Finally, what are the most valuable IABM member services to x.news?

Communication, networking, global events and lounges.

What’s your ‘special sauce’ – why do your customers choose x.news over your competitors?

I think it is the combination of breaking up legacy, our open data structure, easy and

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Mediaproxy has an installed base of over 15,000 channels in over 60 countries, offices in the US and UK and a network of global partners across all continents

Member Speak – Mediaproxy – monitoring, compliance & analysis Erik Otto CEO, Mediaproxy

We spoke to Erik Otto, CEO at Mediaproxy, about the company’s growth into a leading international player in monitoring, compliance and analysis, the new challenges opened up by the explosion of OTT and what’s coming next.

Tell us a bit about Mediaproxy’s background – what problems were you looking to solve, and what opportunities did you see ahead?

The company was created in 2001 by broadcast engineers when we saw an opportunity to innovate in the space of regulatory compliance logging. Traditionally this was done using VHS tape recording in log-play mode and was cumbersome to work with for all the obvious reasons. It took broadcasters hours if not days to turn around a request from regulators. We designed one of the industry’s first computer-based recording systems that took an analogue baseband feed and encoded it as Windows Media, storing it on disk for months. This was complemented by a Windows-only based client user interface that enabled clips to be reviewed and extracted virtually instantly. Over the years the product quickly evolved to support SDI as well as provide a richer user experience through integration of embedded metadata and as playout logs

Tell us about Mediaproxy today Almost 20 years on and the technology has evolved into a comprehensive suite of tools that supports virtually all input types including TSoIP, OTT, SMPTE 2022-6 and 2110 and provides features across compliance, analysis and monitoring for on-premise, virtualized and cloudbased installations. Being HTML5 browser-based these days, our reach spans across various departments within broadcasters including engineering, sales, marketing, compliance and executives. We have an installed base of over 15,000 channels in over 60 countries, offices in the US and UK and a network of global partners across all continents.

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Give us a summary of the Mediaproxy product range today Our core technology is a software-based product called LogServer, which includes different license options to suit customer requirements for various logging, monitoring and analysis requirements. This includes tools for compliance, transcoding, multi-viewers, transport stream analysis, publishing to social media, etc.

What business advantages do your products bring to your customers?

Powerful HTML5-based interfaces that are easily available across the entire organization and offer easy access to all content for review and even direct publishing to social media (news, sports, etc). Business intelligence is available instantly through recording competitors and integration of viewer ratings data. And a comprehensive suite of tools that cover extensive feature sets for engineers to monitor transmission paths as well as SCTE-104/35 detection and reconciliation.

What’s your ‘special sauce’ – why do your customers choose Mediaproxy over your competitors?

Mediaproxy is an engineering driven company with a roadmap, not an exit strategy. In the niche discipline of broadcast that is compliance, we have constantly led the way to innovate new solutions, tools and enhance our products to have the most reliable and flexible technology in the market. We were first to market with many innovations over the years, which now extend to support for SMPTE 2110. As part of the AIMS alliance, Mediaproxy was there from day one, based on a software-only solution, not hardware (PCIe/FPGA) based.

Mediaproxy is an engineering driven company with a roadmap, not an exit strategy. In the niche discipline of broadcast that is compliance, we have constantly led the way to innovate new solutions, tools and enhance our products to have the most reliable and flexible technology in the market

We are the only compliance vendor that not only has active deployments in the field, but also supports VM installations around 2022-6 and 2110.

boxes that allow broadcasters and MSOs (multiple system operators) working at scale to deal with QC and compliance more efficiently.

What new challenges does the rise and rise of OTT and multiple devices bring to compliance, monitoring and analysis – and how is Mediaproxy addressing these?

What’s next for Mediaproxy?

The biggest challenge in the new OTT and multiple device distribution world – and the most significant change from conventional linear broadcast – is that a lot can happen to a programme or video item once it leaves the playout system. There are now options open to both operators and viewers for targeted ad insertion, language selection, closed captions and event-based transmission, which means the content undergoes multiple changes as it passes along the distribution chain. Because of this the master control room (MCR) at the playout centre is no longer the final point for quality control. Ideally monitoring should take place at all points but in the OTT world, once material is in the hands of the big service providers all control has been forfeited. Mediaproxy has gone beyond established detection methods such as time and date searches and predefined metadata and developed techniques such as exception-based monitoring, which uses IP penalty

Having a solid roadmap, we are in the process of extending our core engine to provide more exceptionbased monitoring tools in addition to the ones we already offer. Broadcasters need to be able to scale up and deal with the rising number of representations of their content whilst reducing the operational cost. Also with SDI slowly being replaced by IP-based workflows, customers need to rely on companies who have in-depth understanding of both traditional broadcast and IT. This is our forte at Mediaproxy and something our customers have come to appreciate over the years.

Finally, what are the most valuable IABM member services to Mediaproxy?

The support given by the IABM is a great help to a company like Mediaproxy. Discounts at exhibitions and being able to promote our products through IABM events, with the potential of meeting new contacts through networking opportunities, all help get our brand and what we do further out into a competitive and growing marketplace.

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Founded in 2016, iSize starting as a company that was using AI in super resolution to upscale still images and videos to create 4K resolutions from 1080p content

Member Speak – iSize – raising quality, lowering bitrates Sergio Grce CEO, iSize Technologies

We spoke to Sergio Grce, CEO of iSize Technologies (www.isize.co), about the challenges the industry is facing with ever higher resolution content delivery, and his company’s innovative use of AI for pre-processing to deliver higher quality images at lower bitrates – whatever the codec.

Tell us about iSize – when and where was it founded, by whom and with what business objectives?

We are a deep-tech technology company, powered by artificial intelligence, that is solving the problem of the increasing demand for high-quality video streaming by reducing bitrates while simultaneously improving the visual quality of streaming video.

I founded iSize in 2016, starting as a company that was using AI in super resolution to upscale still images and videos to create 4K resolutions from 1080p content.

Since then, we expanded into solving much bigger problems, primarily how to reduce the data footprint – file size in practical terms – and bitrate of video content delivered over the Internet or wireless links.

Please explain how you mathematically represent key elements of human visual perception – and what led you to this seemingly breakthrough approach to handling video through pre-processing prior to encoding and optionally postdecoding in the iSize BitSave?

In the last few years, the video content quality assessment community has moved from looking at the signal waveform, e.g., using signal-to-noise ratio and similar lowlevel metrics for video distortion, to 66 IABM JOURNAL

quantifying visual quality using higher-level visual quality metrics that have been shown to correspond much better to what people actually see in terms of video distortion during Video-on-Demand or live content playback on their devices. For example, these metrics focus a lot more on structural aspects of content, appearance of textures and motion artifacts in the displayed video, etc. Examples of such metrics are the multi-scale structural similarity or something more sophisticated like the Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) that was proposed by Netflix and is now widely deployed for video content quality assessment in VoD or live streaming versus the source material.

So we have seen a turning point in the quality assessment community: moving from low-level metrics quality assessment to mid- and high-level metrics. At iSize, we work on ways to mathematically represent such metrics as functions that can be minimised at the pixel level by an AI engine that pre-processes the content prior to the actual encoding. A conceptual example of what our AI engine does would be to think of it as a mechanism that enhances textures, geometric structures, foreground and background detail, human faces, and so on, while also attenuating details that the human eye will not focus on.

What this means is that we can keep the bitrate of subsequent encoding the same – or even lower – and when assessed with existing quality metrics the processed and encoded images will actually score better than the same encoding of the source material.

Two factors guide our thinking.

One is that it is widely recognised that encoding complexity and associated bitrate savings are hitting a complexity-scaling barrier. Every new standard claims to be saving 20-40 percent in terms of average bitrate for the same video quality, but in reality, the saving is much closer to 20 percent because it is extremely computationally-intensive to implement all encoding optimizations.

This is true even for large companies with large amounts of live streaming content: even if they want to adopt the latest optimizations allowable by the new encoding standards, they also face this computational explosion for diminishing savings in bitrate.

Secondly, the move to higher-level perceptual metrics is, in our view, inevitable. People have already attempted to pre-process video content using focus-of-attention methods or custom-made enhancement filters and so on, but they were never satisfactory, largely because they are essentially handcrafted methods using a variety of

rules and assumptions that do not work well for diverse types of content. In short, they were not based on learnable solutions based on data.

Machine learning has now matured enough that it’s possible to scale this type of learning based on multiple loss functions and multiple mathematical representations of metrics that can be used to train automated neural networks to perform those operations for a wide variety of content.

That’s what we believe is happening in that technical space, and why it’s important.

What kind of bandwidth savings are you achieving – and does this vary by different types of content? (please explain). Also, what are the speed advantages?

We have shown on large data sets in the public domain, for example in the YouTube UGC dataset for video compression research, that when assessing quality using high-level metrics like VMAF as well as lowlevel metrics like structural similarity index (SSIM), the average bitrate saving for the same quality using BitSave over 1,500+ clips is 30%.

This has been validated with two

generations of encoding standards, the older AVC/H264 and the more recent HEVC/H.265 standard.

(Links for validation available via iSize web site)

Have you got any real-world examples of use in the commercial world yet? If so, please share.

We are currently engaged in a number of commercial and technical discussions and have also released comparison clips to illustrate bitrate savings of 30-40 percent, as well as full bitstreams, that are downloadable for independent inspection. www.isize.co/validating-our-deep-perceptualprecoder-with-independent-viewerpreference-testing-on-amazon-mturk/ In terms of commercial examples, iSize is gaining considerable interest from industries outside broadcast and production. The fact that we are totally codec agnostic means that we can talk to pretty much anyone who wants to reduce the video bitrates without compromising quality – and therefore cut the costs without sacrificing viewers’ experience.

Alternatively, we can offer improved

visual quality for the usual streaming bitrates of existing standards.

Demand is increasing and a lot of new – and fairly large – streaming and VoD companies are entering the market, many of which are evaluating what we offer, including those involved in live events, gaming, and sport streaming as well as video within social media applications.

In addition, we’re currently involved in client testing for the use cases like video conferencing as well as the defence and security sectors.

How does machine/deep learning play a part in the iSize process?

What is it learning from?

Basically, it’s what in mathematical terms is called ‘semi-supervised learning’. You can think of semisupervised learning as content passing through a BitSave pipeline that is first pre-processed with iSize’s machine learning IP. Any distortion or losses that come in from any type of encoder at ingest are compared on egress and the machine learning updates the relevant models.

We learn by emulating the process of machine learning enhancement and encoding; comparing that output with

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Once we’ve firmly established our commercial footprint with BitSave, we’ll move into discussions on how to improve the client side with post-decoder enhancement

the output of just the encoder and use the result to update our models during training. Once trained, our models can be deployed for live performance with no disruption in the usual video encoding and delivery pipeline.

In your contribution to the Future Trends Theater at IBC, you indicated that you had been inspired by work in the audio side of the industry. Please expand.

The evolution of audio encoding reached a similar bottleneck, i.e., not being able to compress high fidelity audio to bitrates below 1Mbps. What subsequent technologies did, e.g., starting from the MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3) and beyond, was to come up with psychoacoustic thresholds of audio subbands, which remove inaudible frequencies prior to the actual encoding of the audio stream.

That effectively removes tonal frequencies that the human ear can’t pick up in each audio clip and thereby reduces the subsequent encoding bitrate all the way down to 64kbps with very high fidelity audio.

As we know, this enabled the web to carry voice, music, and, eventually, associated business transactions.

The video community has been talking about doing something similar for a long time, but video is much more difficult. The human visual cortex is far more complex as a biological neural network, and visual perception is still poorly understood in comparison to auditory perception in the human brain.

Every few months it seems there’s another new video coding ‘standard’ announced The interesting thing about what we do is that as we test with newer codecs, our bitrate savings increase

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in comparison to older standards. So, the better the encoder, the higher the attained bitrate savings using our technology.

For example, with the current state of the on-going MPEG/ITU-T VVC standardization, we have shown that bitrate savings can be even higher than 30 percent, and we’re still improving further.

So, even though new standards come out, they take a long time to reach the market. So promises made can take a long time to emerge. But what we do delivers savings right now, and is backward compatible without breaking anything. In a sense, we’re codec agnostic.

Tell us about other products in the iSize offering. What are you planning next?

Our aim is to improve things on the server side with machine learning, pre-processing and so on, but further down the road there is no reason why we can’t also enhance the client/decoder side. We’re effectively working our way in from the two edges, the pre- and post-processing sides.

Once we’ve firmly established our commercial footprint with BitSave, we’ll move into discussions on how to improve the client side with postdecoder enhancement.

iSize has recently joined IABM. What are the most useful member benefits to your company?

Being connected to the experts in the industry; understanding their current issues with streaming; what they are focussing on for the future gives us great insights in how we can further improve our technology so it can be used to benefit everyone.

Being part of the IABM community is helping us a lot in understanding these things because we’re a deeptech company rather than a broadcast manufacturer.

I like to think our membership also helps fellow IABM members understand what we’re doing, which means we all benefit from the crosspollination of information and ideas.

And finally, membership gives us visibility that we would not otherwise have in a market that is very important to us, which is essential when you are introducing a new technology.

A tribute to Chris Cadzow We are very sad to share the news of the death of Chris Cadzow this January. Chris started his career in the broadcast industry in 1962 at the BBC as a technician in the Studio Apparatus Section of Designs Department, working on the development of encoding systems for colour television.

Chris eventually moved on to SCPD (Studio Capital Projects Department), and then in the late 1970s, left the BBC and set up Avitel Electronics with Paul Treleaven, who is IABM’s technology specialist consultant today. Avitel carved itself a niche as a specialist supplier of modular products and timecode equipment, holding a prominent position in the European market.

Chris was also an active supporter of IABM, serving on the committee and as a director of IABM Limited for a number of years.

“When we started Avitel, Chris’s circle of industry friends and contacts were essential to our early success,” Paul Treleaven remembers. “He introduced me to the wonderful world of IBC, Montreux, NAB and the friendships on which our unique industry is based.”

“I have been friends with Chris since we were 11 years old,” says Derek Owen, a fellow industry veteran and co-founder of Pro-Bel, who also worked closely with IABM for many years. “Chris was always a true gentleman in every sense of the word. He was an excellent engineer and salesman however it was for his generosity and his encyclopaedic knowledge of fine wines, liqueurs and French cuisine plus his uncanny knack of finding the most amazing and unusual restaurants and hotels anywhere in the world that he will be best remembered.”

“I first met Chris in the early days of Pro-Bel,” recalls Graham Pitman, current Vice Chair of the IABM Board and another Pro-Bel co-founder.

“Derek had arranged for Chris to borrow our test equipment to put a Video Distribution Amplifier, the founding product of Avitel, through its paces.

Derek has already mentioned Chris’s appreciation of the finer things of life – it became clear to me that Chris’s desire to seek out quality and elegance touched everything he did and was one of the reasons why Avitel became such a success.”

Our main business includes all-round services of broadcasting solution design, project management and signal production

Member Speak – DejaSoft – from editors to editing game-changers

Nikolai Waldman

We spoke to Nikolai Waldman, CTO new IABM Start-Up member DejaSoft (www.DejaSoft.com), about what inspired him and fellow founder, Clas Hakeröd, to venture beyond running an established, successful post production business into setting up their own technology company, and talked about the challenges and opportunities this has opened up for these two entrepreneurs.

Give us an overview of what inspired you to set up your own company – where do you see the opportunity in the market, and why?

I think I was destined to be proficient at languages including programming lingo, from the very beginning. I was born in Amsterdam with a Dutch father and German mother and moved to Sweden in 1985 where I have lived ever since. I enjoyed an incredible year at the prestigious Full Sail film school in Florida where I developed a passion for entertainment and media technology in real-world industry environments and came away with creative problem-solving skills that have come in useful throughout my career.

DejaSoft is a collaboration between my business partner Clas Hakeröd and me. We also own a successful boutique post facility called CAN Film based in Gothenburg. We are both established editors and postproduction professionals in our own right, with over 30 years of industry experience behind us. As editors ourselves, we fully understand what post-production professionals require in order to work more efficiently.

I have always written small programs from time to time that help me in my job as an editor and colourist. For example, I developed Resolve Collect, which is a Media Manager for DaVinci Resolve. Developing does come naturally to me, but I was not aware that we would end up creating DejaEdit.

DejaEdit is described as a unique collaborative editing solution for Avid Media Composer, Avid Nexis and EditShare workflows and acts as a powerful media file synchroniser for multiple remote Avid systems. The applications and advantages of DejaEdit are vast and include allowing multi-site post facilities to work as one, 70 IABM JOURNAL

Clas Hakeröd

empowering multiple remote editors to work together, exchanges of media with VFX houses, as well as enabling editors to easily migrate between office and home or mobile-based editing installations throughout the lifecycle of an entire project.

DejaEdit’s conception began back in 2014, when we were working on a TV-series called ‘The fat and the angry’ by director Johan Renck. It was shot in Gothenburg and edited in Stockholm. This project kick-started discussions that prompted Clas and I to further explore whether there was a better way to transfer footage to the editor, other than just sending physical hard drives across. It was at that stage that I started working on designing an application that would, in essence, create a workflow, where we could send offline files directly into the editor’s Avid Media Composer. We then founded DejaSoft, and DejaEdit was born as our main product, which we started developing further while working on projects at CAN Film.

During the development process over the years that followed, we used DejaEdit on many projects where CAN Film was handling the post workflow. This way, we could also find bugs while we managed the post-pipeline and could get feedback from editors using the software.

Once we were fully satisfied that the product was successful and worked well in all scenarios, we decided to formally establish DejaSoft and introduce it to the market. We worked extremely hard to achieve the status DejaEdit enjoys in our region today as a robust and reliable solution. We now feel the time is right to share DejaEdit with the rest of the world and we want editors everywhere to fully enjoy its benefits across the globe.

Award-winning post-production professionals are already using DejaEdit on notable film projects and benefiting by being able to work from practically anywhere in the world

What are the most rewarding aspects of launching a new company?

It is very satisfying to see that an idea that we had many years ago, now being promoted on an international level and embraced throughout the world.

What challenges did you face in getting started?

One of the biggest challenges we have been facing is that there are no other products out there that are like DejaEdit.

Many producers are afraid of using new technology, so a lot of time has gone into convincing them that DejaEdit works and has been tried and tested on real-world projects. We found that once a new client has tried DejaEdit out, and has been able to experience the advantages first-hand, they very quickly come back for more and have evolved into some of our most loyal customers. We just need people to be aware that it exists, give it a go, and they will be hooked.

With over 1500 vendors jostling for attention at major shows and in the press, how have you set about getting noticed by potential customers?

Award-winning post-production professionals are already using DejaEdit on notable film projects and benefitting by being able to work from practically anywhere in the world, including the most remote areas.

A few examples include the likes of Oscar Awardnominated editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis, ACE of ‘The Favourite’, ‘The Lobster’ and recently ‘Suicide Tourist’.

Well-known Scandinavian producer and production manager Daniel Lägersten at B.Academy noted that DejaEdit is a game-changer and he has produced popular TV series such as ‘Riverside’, ‘The Befallen‘ and ‘The Spiral’. Editor Rickard Krantz, s.f.k. used DejaEdit in the ‘The Perfect Patient’ (aka ‘Quick’) which was nominated for Sweden’s Guldbagge award for Editing (similar to a BAFTA).

We are using Carole Cox’s agency Radiance Communications. Radiance helps us with communication strategies, press relations, and provides advice and guidance in many areas. We also sponsor and attend key industry events and will be attending NAB as well as having a booth at IBC this year to demonstrate the wonders of DejaEdit. We are also involved in many festivals and regional events and keep abreast of trends. We are relying on our association with IABM to also hold us in good stead, make introductions and put us in the spotlight, which will be a great help when jostling for attention at major industry gatherings such as NAB.

What’s next for DejaSoft?

We are confident that DejaEdit will drive substantial future growth, lead into new regions and open up further innovative product development opportunities.

Post-production producer Anna Knochenhauer used DejaEdit on many projects, and she is known for her work on ‘Euphoria’ featuring Alicia Vikander; ‘The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared’, ‘Lilya 4-Ever’ and ‘Together’.

We are open to financing opportunities to speed-up our marketing and development process. We are hoping to find commercially astute technology and reseller partners who can help us navigate the market and help us strategically sell DejaEdit software worldwide.

Other high-profile film projects that have recently involved the use of DejaEdit, include ‘The Inner Circle’ with editors Pierre Laurent & Andreas Hay Johnsson; ‘White Wall’ with editors Sami Heikkilä and Kristofer Nordin; and ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ with editor Darek Hodor, and many more.

It has already been an exciting start to the year, and we expect DejaEdit to appeal to many international editors, studios, producers and post supervisors who are looking for an affordable film tool that is both cost-effective and time-saving.

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We are already working on the next version of DejaEdit (Version 3.0), which will include new features that clients have requested, due for a late spring release. DejaEdit will be presented for the first time at NAB 2020, including a sneak preview into Version 3.0 with highlights that include ‘Private’ and ‘Global’ bin sharing and many other helpful features that facilitate media file transfer across large media projects.

We have a booth secured already for IBC 2020, where we plan to showcase the DejaEdit workflow in all its glory. These shows play an important role as it provides us with valuable feedback to help us further develop and improve on every aspect of the product to benefit users.

You have used DejaEdit in many of your own client projects at CAN Film – can you give an example of how it delivered efficiency?

One of the projects we worked on at CAN Film that stands out was the TV-series ‘Conspiracy of Silence’, which was shot in Lithuania and edited in Sweden. When we looked at the time between when the scene was shot and when the editor Darek Hodor could start editing, we were quite surprised. One and a half hours after shooting, he had the synced footage and could already start editing. He was able to send the edited timeline back to the director, by just simply dropping it in the DejaEdit ‘ToSet’ folder. The director was then able to watch the edited scene on the DIT station literally minutes later. Using DejaEdit, they always knew that all the shots for the scene were secured.

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Based on your experience, what key pieces of advice would you give to someone considering starting their own company in the media technology business?

I would say that you have to make sure that you have an idea that is not only beneficial and helpful, but also unique.

These factors will help your product or service stand out. It is vital that you have a stable product before launching though, as you will not get a second chance.

You have taken advantage of IABM’s Start-Up membership package.

Which will be the most useful services to you, and why?

There were many reasons that motivated us to apply for IABM membership.

IABM’s rates are very reasonable for our DejaSoft Start-Up, and we are very impressed with the resources and support at events such as NAB and IBC tradeshows that the organisation offers its members.

We also appreciate the fact that our news releases will be circulated across all IABM channels which we hope help give us additional visibility. I also feel that being a member of IABM gives us a kind of ‘quality assurance’ for our customers.

As it is a critical time in our growth and development as we ‘go global’, we are now fully ‘investor-ready’ and ideas-rich and therefore there are immense opportunities on the horizon. We fully welcome offers and are seeking new partnerships and ideas.

We are confident that IABM, with its extensive influence and business acumen, can help us provide the industry with a better understanding of our product. We are proud to be associated with a well-respected industry body and look forward to a fruitful partnership.

To arrange a meeting with DejaSoft at NAB, email nab@dejasoft.com Visit www.DejaSoft.com

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Member Speak –

LNS – Live News & Sports Systems John O’Loan CEO, Live News & Sports Systems

The heart of creative, cost efficient, coordinated workflows, LNS is story centric, where just One Button changes everything.

There is an expanding world market for more efficient and more accurate workflows and systems, to meet the challenge of new technology. Cost of entry has been lowered, increasing competition, and stimulating demand from live news and sports audiences. But at the same time, producers and platform operators are increasingly finding they are required to do more – with less.

LNS has been built from the ground up to help operators face this challenge. We’ve pioneered new technology and have patents pending for topic centric content generation, high quality production value and automated output, to multi platforms.

We’re also working with world leading technology companies to exploit AI and VR graphics, automation and overall cost benefits. This includes being able to present live, a complete linear rundown, without the need for a traditional control room – while also publishing to other platforms, at the same time. And, no control room needed! Think how much that will save small to medium size operations.

With more than 30 years’ experience behind us, LNS has responded to the vast culture change requirements sweeping the industry. Our prototypes are up and running and proven in their success.

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Like you, we are also working to keep our costs down, as well.

That’s why we have systems for larger, continuous multiplatform output operators as well as smaller operators, who may only require a Software-as-a-Service solution – and no control room!

We’re ‘in the cloud’ and also have systems which are locally based. We are experienced enough to be able to adapt LNS workflows to all environments.

The Live News & Sports System runs on Windows, which makes training and maintenance easy. It sits on MOS compliant, newsroom computer systems (NRCS) which allows efficient, real time communication within the standard protocol, linking and automating video servers, audio servers, still stores, teleprompter, scripts, running orders and character generators, for live or delayed playout of news, sports or any other production requiring fast reaction to rundown changes and updates.

This results in lower running costs, quicker reaction time in live broadcast environments, and therefore the ability to improve the production values involved in communicating with a wider audience.

Part of this improvement is the automated system for quickly moving content from one main programme rundown, say for example for broadcast operations, to its social media, web and app output and ancillary smart phone and tablet requirements. Whereas previously, these processes to move content from a broadcast environment to those of the internet and web outputs were separate app operations, the LNS systems integrate the priority process into one, streamlined and automatic, process. This used to require separate teams of people engaged on each part of the multi-media outputting process.

But this is no longer necessary.

Visit the LNS website at www.livesystems.io

Within LNS the one team, which is responsible for the Master Rundown, can also operate the output of the other platforms, without additional manpower. Or it can do the bulk of the work, which then requires only a limited amount of additional layout wrangling.

This process holds true for both news and sports in broadcast, webcast and appcast situations, all within the one unitary system, whereas before, this has not been possible.

How LNS works in detail:

Acquisition & News Planning Journalists can quickly and easily browse for video and text, with a variety of information sources at their disposal: wire agencies, rss feeds, websites, the station’s existing media archive, or any external video file. The time and number of programmes per day, week and month, and the format or outline structure with placeholders, are imbedded into LNS system. News stories on individual rundowns are assigned to journalists who can see the tasks assigned to them from their own login.

Script and Video Editing Journalists write their story, app and web page template cues, prompter script, camera cues and character generator text using a simple to use, multilingual Windows program. As the story is changed and updated, all users are updated on developments. The journalist can record voice overs and undertake a simple edit in their workspace, using the inbuilt timeline editor. If extensive video editing, packaging and compositing is required, the timeline can be exported to an NLE, rendered and the file imported back into the LNS workspace. If only cut editing and voiceovers are required, then rendering of the timeline is processed

by LNS. After checking, the assigned journalist marks the resulting video as the on-air copy, which notifies it’s completed. It is then marked as being ready for more senior editorial approval and placed in a pool of stories and content, ready to go into the programme running order with a simple drag and drop.

Pre-Production Rundown Management Using pre-prepared templates for each deadline or programme category, the

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Journalists write their story, app and web page template cues, prompter script, camera cues and character generator text using a simple to use, multilingual Windows program

completed stories and packaged content is now in a specific rundown, which shows detailed information on the readiness of each of the stories or packaged content, signaling potential issues such as video missing, prompter script not approved, cg not approved, etc. Users who have sufficient rights can then publish the rundown, for air, app and web.

Live Broadcast. Live Webcast. Live Appcast At that one button instruction, several things happen; the video and CG are listed as a playlist and sent to playout servers or the automation system; prompter texts are sent as a playlist to the teleprompter; the graphic, video and copy data populates templates in apps and web pages, as determined by their position in the rundown, and are published to digital devices. Rundowns which are published before they are complete can be updated at a later stage.

One Button Changes Everything As the programme is on air, updates to the individual scrips, video, CG, data and the running order are instantly adopted and seamlessly updated to all devices, apps. And web pages.

LNS continually notifies users of the status of the playout server, that the correct playlist is loaded and whether the playout server is active. Users with the necessary rights, can modify the rundown by adding, removing, re-ordering stories and packages, as well as edit and update incomplete stories, and republish. When a rundown is published while on-air, all five lists (playout, CG, prompter, apps and web) are updated instantly and remain in sync.

For the record John O’Loan was responsible for the launch of Sky News, and 40+ news, sport and entertainment channels since then, including SKY TG24, STAR News India and China, National Geographic Channels, Fox Entertainment Channels, NDTV 24x7 and NDTV.com, Asia's biggest news web site. John studied Culture Change in Media at Oxford and HEC Paris. He can be contacted at john@livesystems.io. Visit the LNS website at www.livesystems.io.

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NEW IABM MEMBERS 24i Media

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