TVBE April 2014 digital edition

www.tvbeurope.com

Europe’s Television Technology Business Magazine

April 2014

War Horse in 4K live

— and other challenges beyond HD Forum: Virtual Sets

Conversation with IABM’s Peter White NAB Product Preview

April 2014 www.tvbeurope.com

TVBEurope 3

News & Contents

Blinkbox’s Michael Comish to Contents speak at Next TV Summit June’s top connected television event adds the head of Tesco’s video-on-demand to its line-up, writes Holly Ashford MICHAEL COMISH has been announced as the Honoured Keynote speaker for TVBEurope’s Next TV Summit, and the Next TV Digital Innovation Awards have been added to the programme.

Michael Comish, group digital officer, Tesco, and founder and CEO, Blinkbox will speak at the conference at London’s BAFTA on 11 June.

Comish will discuss the rising cost of premium content, the growing subscriber base for video-on demand and the issues surrounding the commissioning of original content.

The Next TV Digital Innovation Awards have been added to London’s event programme. Previous winners of the Next TV Innovation

Michael Comish founded VoD service Blinkbox in 2006

Harris Broadcast becomes Imagine Communications and GatesAir

By Holly Ashford HARRIS BROADCAST, a portfolio company of The Gores Group, has used its MediaDay in New York City to unveil its future as new companies, Imagine Communications and GatesAir. The company will cease trading as Harris Broadcast.

Imagine Communications will be headquartered in Dallas, with Centers of Excellence in Denver, Toronto, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv and Beijing. The

company’s history of media software and networking has secured more than 3000 customers spanning 185 countries, with more than 3 million products deployed.

“The central theme behind our technology vision unveiled today is to enable our customers to begin migrating towards software defined, IP-based, virtualised networks for both intraplant and interplant, without having to forklift their current networks and make significant

new investments,” said Steve Reynolds, CTO at Imagine Communications.

“Imagine Communications is uniquely positioned to deliver this transformation because of the breadth of our technology, solutions and intellectual property.”

GatesAir has been pioneering over-the-air TV and radio transmission innovation for nearly 100 years, and will be headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. From digital modulation to patent-pending

Award include James Packer, president, worldwide television and digital distribution, Lionsgate; Albert Cheng, EVP, chief product officer, Disney/ABC Television; and Ted Sarandos, chief content officer, Netflix.

The summit will offer panel discussions and keynote presentations with sessions covering multiscreen versus pure OTT, the popularity of reality programming for online and OTT providers, plus much more.

Delegates can listen to discussions on social media and how technology is advancing the quality of TV, IPTV and the OTT viewer experience.

There are networking opportunities throughout the day during coffee breaks, lunch and at the evening cocktail party.

Tickets are available at the Next TV website. www.nexttvsummitlondon.com

amplifier technology, GatesAir aims to deliver cost-, energyand space-efficient solutions and to hold a customer-first focus in re-architecting networks for the future.

“We are thrilled to bring back the positive market heritage associated with the name Gates,” said Rich Redmond, chief product officer, GatesAir. “We gain the best of both worlds by empowering our expert teams, technology and customer base, while also gaining exclusive focus and entrepreneurial autonomy to best serve the over-the-air radio and television market.” www.gatesair.com www.imaginecommunications. com

1-9 News & Analysis Peter White: Manufacturing the IABM future George Jarrett talked with IABM chief executive Peter White about where the industry stands in a constantly moving landscape 6

10-22 Beyond HD: 4K Challenges War Horse charges in 4K live Adrian Pennington goes behind the scenes of War Horse as the National Theatre production becomes the first event to be aired live to cinemas in 4K 10 Capturing the 4K storm 4K wasn’t the only topic absorbing visitors to BVE, but it was a key discussion point in many sessions.

David Fox reports 19 23-34 The Workflow Going tapeless at Telewizja Polsat In pay TV, the Polsat Group is the largest provider in Poland. Reinhard E Wagner tours the broadcaster 23 35-39 Virtual Sets Forum The reality of virtual sets Virtual set technology is growing ever more sophisticated. Philip Stevens poses questions to experts in the field 35 40-44 The Workflow The lifecycle of an asset Kevin Shaw, BBC S&PP explores the most valuable thing the industry possesses – its content 40

45-56 NAB Product Preview The second part of our pre-Show feature, with NAB announcements by the big players in the industry 45 58 News Review A round-up of this month’s most interesting stories from the broadcast technology industry 58

4 TVBEurope

www.tvbeurope.com April 2014

News & Analysis

EDITORIAL Acting Editor Neal Romanek neal.romanek@intentmedia.co.uk

TVBEurope expands in 2014 NAB is a time for announcements and launches. TVBEurope is making a few of its own, explains Neal Romanek

WHILE TVBEUROPE exhaustively covers the launches and announcements at this month’s NAB in Las Vegas (see our NAB Product Preview and next month’s NAB Wrap-up), we come to NAB this year with a few announcements and launches of our own.

First, we’re pleased to announce that this month TVBEurope is getting a new executive editor, James McKeown (see this issue’s People On The Move for more).

Additionally, we welcome back Melanie Dayasena-Lowe, who returns from maternity leave.

As part of her new duties, Melanie will be spearheading TVBEurope’s special projects — and there are a lot of special projects coming up in 2014.

After NAB, TVBEurope will be gearing up for our Beyond HD Masters conference on 3 June. The event, held at the BAFTA theatre in London, resumes our annual discussion of the innovations and challenges in next generation image capture and delivery. After a keynote address by Stephan Heimbecher, Sky Deutschland’s head of innovations and standards, eight discussion and keynote sessions will cover every angle on the latest capture issues. Session titles include ‘The case for 4K over IP’, ‘Ultra HD market analysis’, ‘The grammar and presentation of Ultra-HD’, ‘Next generation audio’, and a discussion of the cutting edge beyond the cutting edge with ‘Ultra HD 2’.

The week following Beyond HD Masters, we run our Next

Neal Romanek, Acting Editor

TV Summit London. Held on 11 June, also at BAFTA, and modelled on New Bay Media’s successful Next TV events in the US last year, Next TV London will be a day of discussion on all angles of the new TV ecosystem.

With Beyond HD looking at the new frontier of content capture, Next TV looks at the new frontier of content delivery.

Topics for discussion will include monetising new platforms, commissioning original OTT content, effective use of social media and the opportunities in multi-screen advertising. Confirmed speakers include Edward Lee, VP

Quantel acquires Snell QUANTEL HAS announced that it has acquired Snell, with the aim of creating “a major new force in the global broadcast and media technology markets,” commented Quantel’s executive chairman and CEO, Ray Cross.

The combined business hopes to offer customers a product range to create, version and deliver content across multiple platforms. Quantel and Snell

have 16 offices around the globe and combined revenues of more than $170 million.

Paul Martin, MD of Snell TV Everywhere and Robert Rowe, MD of Snell Live TV, will join the Quantel board.

Snell sales director Tim Banks, and finance director Peter Fredericks will also take leading roles.

Snell’s outgoing CEO Simon Derry, commented: “I’m really

content acquisition at Roku, Jens Richter, CEO of FremantleMedia, and Ashley Mackenzie, CEO of digital rights management agency Base 79.

Our third conference, IT Broadcast Workflow, has been hugely popular in past years, and, as production migrates increasingly to cloud and IP solutions, we expect this year to be the biggest conference yet.

ITBW takes place on 8 July.

Sponsorship packages for all three conferences are still available. Contact sales manager Ben Ewles (ben.ewles@ intentmedia.co.uk) or sales executive Richard Carr

delighted that the Snell and Quantel businesses have come together to increase the scale and scope for both. Under Ray’s leadership the combined business will be able to write a new and exciting chapter moving forwards. I look forward to supporting Ray during the important period of transition.”

“Our product ranges are entirely complementary so the excellent Snell and Quantel brands and product ranges will continue,” continued Cross. “We’ll be able to

(richard.carr@intentmedia.co.uk) for details.

With a new website and three major conferences on the horizon, you’d think TVBEurope would be resting on its laurels. But we saw that the broadcast community still lacked a TV technology awards event that appropriately represented the scope and breadth of the European industry, so we have stepped up, in partnership with New Bay’s TV Technology magazine, to deliver the TVBAwards, coming this autumn.

The TVBAwards will honour the best of the best in European TV broadcast capture, workflow, and delivery. Stay tuned for more TVBAwards announcements, including venue, award categories, and nomination procedures.

Finally, timed to coincide with NAB, we have launched our new website design. The new site is easier to navigate, the images are bigger and better, and the search functions far more friendly than in the site’s previous incarnation.

Most importantly, our content has been organised into new categories. The new categories also represent an expansion of TVBEurope’s content outlook generally. News, features, and opinion will appear across the areas of Capture, Workflow, Delivery, Content and Business.

And finally, we have a new general editorial email address, contact@tvbeurope.com. We hope you’ll use it often to let us know how we’re doing.

combine the best in class talent and technologies from Quantel and Snell to bring exciting new products and solutions to market to help our customers transform their businesses. More local offices across the world will enable us to build closer relationships with our customers and to offer even better support.”

A new facility will be created at the company headquarters in Newbury, UK. www.quantel.com www.snell.com

Editor, Special Projects Melanie Dayasena-Lowe melanie.dayasena-lowe@intentmedia.co.uk Staff Writer Holly Ashford holly.ashford@intentmedia.co.uk Managing Editor Joanne Ruddock jo.ruddock@intentmedia.co.uk Intent Media London, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN, England +44 207 354 6002 USA Correspondent Carolyn Giardina Contributors Mike Clark, David Davies, Chris Forrester, David Fox, Mark Hill, Dick Hobbs, John Ive, George Jarrett, Heather McLean, Bob Pank, Adrian Pennington, Philip Stevens, Reinhard E Wagner Digital Content Manager Tim Frost Office Manager Lianne Davey Head of Design & Production Adam Butler Editorial Production Manager Dawn Boultwood Senior Production Executive Alistair Taylor Publisher Steve Connolly steve.connolly@intentmedia.co.uk +44 207 354 6000 Sales Manager Ben Ewles ben.ewles@intentmedia.co.uk +44 207 354 6000 Sales Executive Richard Carr richard.carr@intentmedia.co.uk +44 207 354 6000 Managing Director Mark Burton US SALES Michael Mitchell Broadcast Media International, PO Box 44, Greenlawn, New York, NY 11740 mjmitchell@broadcast-media.tv +1 (631) 673 0072 JAPAN AND KOREA SALES Sho Harihara Sales & Project, Yukari Media Incorporated sho@yukarimedia.com +81 6 4790 2222 Fax: +81 6 4793 0800 CIRCULATION Intent Media, Sovereign Park, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough LE16 9EF, UK FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS tvbe.subscriptions@c-cms.com Subscriptions Tel +44 1580 883848

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6 TVBEurope

This software-driven era has seen prices dive (just consider the cost path of an Avid Media Composer, for example).

Has the IABM membership reflected the changes?

News

Peter White: Manufacturing the IABM future The IABM is the only international association that represents the broadcast and media technology supply industry. George Jarrett talked with IABM chief executive Peter White about where the industry stands in a constantly moving landscape FRONTED BY a famous industry face that comes from a trade association past, the IABM (International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers) has an annual membership churn of just under 10%. About 75% of IABM members come from Europe and the USA, and being an IBC partner has boosted its reputation hugely.

IABM chief executive Peter White started with the IBC link.

“Without it, our growth and development certainly would have been slower. It has enabled us to develop into areas which frankly we would have taken longer to develop, notably the training academy,” he said.

Looking back at a recent IABM industry trend survey he focused on the financial health of the manufacturing sector.

“There is a lot of confusion and uncertainty. Many companies struggled towards the back end of 2013, although orders were on the increase,” said White. “But there is quite a split between the companies that are doing well and those doing badly.”

Sadly things have polarised and we have a two-tier situation probably created by banks refusing to lend seed money.

“Absolutely. A lot of small to medium enterprises are still not doing very well (24% down on profits), but if you look at the top tier companies that have been in the black for two years, they

are actually showing a profit growth of 8%,” said White.

Does this suggest that R&D commitments have taken a hit?

“No. They have been maintained at very high levels — 15-16% of revenues for years now — and it seems that needs to be the case to bring products to market,” said White. “Profits overall have not been growing, but our industry just keeps on re-investing.

“There is a question whether we are over-engineering in some cases, and are delivering products that are over-specified for the marketplace,” he added.

“With IT convergence and the price of cameras coming down to almost prosumer levels, the question is can we afford to sustain this investment.”

whole supply line in broadcasting you have still got to have quality image capture and expertise in editing and delivery, and those things will never change.

“But if we ever let our guard down and we just start transferring files in the way we do in an office — it will be a disaster,” he added.

Is he a fan of 4K (UHD TV)?

“I think so. Unlike 3D it is not a false dawn. It really is the next stage up from HD, even if it takes a while to transmit it widely.

“As part of an infrastructure and certainly from our end-user survey it is definitely in the strategy now,” he added. “There are a lot of things ahead of it however in terms of what people are going to spend their money on — namely HD roll out, multi platform delivery, and MAM.”

Do not let our guard down This software-driven era has seen prices dive (just consider the cost path of an Avid Media Composer, for example). Has the IABM membership reflected the changes?

“Our last three years of influx has been very much software and IP driven, and frankly if we did not address the needs of those companies we would become irrelevant in the long term,” said White.

In all the talk about IT, IP, 4K, Cloud, big data, file-based delivery, etc he is clear on one aspect: “When you look at the

Down the pecking order The IABM training academy has done wonderful work, and four new courses reflect the interest in IP, data and file-based workflows.

But it would surely need to be much bigger to satisfy national engineering requirements.

“We have spoken to government bodies (like Skillset) and there is a lot of prioritisation around IT rather than broadcast, and there are a few universities that have technical media courses,” said White. “Our courses are designed for two things — to re-train broadcast

White: “If we ever let our guard down and we just start transferring files in the way we do in an office — it will be a disaster”

engineers and acquaint them with the latest new media technology, and prepare IT graduates who do not know much about broadcasting.

“In terms of what the government is doing — frankly precious little. We are on the board of the ICT KTN, which is the knowledge transfer network, and we are well down the pecking list. The top players are telcos and IT bodies, and that is where the big money goes,” he added.

“We do not get enough recognition. That is quite a contentious statement, but I believe it to be true.”

The IABM does get grants for bursaries for its courses, but White says this is not really sufficient given the demand for new engineering talent.

“We have put a lot of broadcasters through our academy, as well as our own members and suppliers. And it is definitely fulfilling a need,” he said. “Now we have got certification we want employers to recognise what a certified broadcaster means in terms of skills, attainment and knowledge.

This is not going to be done by government funding.”

The IABM has a number of links to the standards setting bodies, particularly SMPTE and the EBU. Are standardisation processes too slow to remove the huge proprietary element that bars interoperability around the industry?

“I don’t think it takes too long necessarily, but it’s probably too slow if you are a broadcaster,” said White. “I can fully understand it from the supply chain point of view though; you do need some distinctive advantage, meaning a proprietary equipment. But there is a new dawn, and we do understand as suppliers that we have to work together more. Let’s design things that work together and the standards for interoperability will come.”

He had one warning: “Suppliers need a certain amount of time for product life cycles.

These are shorter and R&D is at an all time high, but if we keep changing standards so quickly it will put more suppliers out of business.”

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8 TVBEurope

www.tvbeurope.com April 2014

People on the move

By Melanie Dayasena-Lowe

Stedman joins Quantum as SVP, StorNext

TVBEurope strengthens its editorial team TVBEUROPE HAS appointed James McKeown (pictured) as executive editor on the brand while Melanie Dayasena-Lowe has returned to the editorial team following her maternity leave. McKeown will lead the editorial team, which also includes acting editor Neal Romanek and staff writer Holly Ashford.

As editor, special projects, Dayasena-Lowe will continue working on the day-to-day running of the magazine, website, newsletters and events.

In addition, she will be focusing on spearheading the editorial content programme for the brand’s in-house events as well as working on the IBC Content Everywhere project.

“I’m delighted to return to TVBEurope at such an exciting time as we continue to develop new products, launch a brand new website and welcome

Arqiva has hired a managing director of satellite, David Crawford. He will be responsible for the day-to-day management and strategic direction of Arqiva’s fast-growing satellite business, which includes sales and operations for a range of international broadcasters and Occasional Use content distribution from major international sports, entertainment and news events.

Crawford takes the reins from Barrie Woolston who has been the interim managing director and will remain commercial director for satellite.

ARRI Lighting Rental has announced that John Colleyhas joined the team in the

our new executive editor James. Neal and Holly have done an amazing job during my absence and I’m looking forward to working with them again as we move from strength to strength,” said Dayasena-Lowe.

McKeown, an award-winning editor with over 15 years journalistic experience, joins from Lyceum Publishing, which specialises in the online gaming industry. Starting this month after NAB, his role will be to lead editorial strategy and direction for TVBEurope and its increasing portfolio of online and event platforms. Working closely with the existing team, this will allow TVBEurope to explore new areas of content in an ever-changing broadcast landscape.

role of general manager, following the retirement of managing director Tommy Moranat the end of 2013. Reporting to Martin Cayzer, CEO of ARRI’s global rental business, Colley will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the company, as well as expanding its proven ability to service all types of feature film, television and commercial productions in the UK and across Europe. Moran will continue working with ARRI Lighting Rental in the post of consultant, supporting Colley with the transition into his new role.

Audio-Technica has appointed Alex Jannas UK product and training specialist, with particular responsibility for DJ and

John Colley,

Alex Jann,

ARRI Lighting Rental

Audio-Technica

recording-related products from AudioTechnica and Allen & Heath (distributed in the UK by Audio-Technica).

Everth Flores has been hired by Harmonic as senior director, global accounts and business development,

GEOFF STEDMAN has joined Quantum Corp in a newly created position of senior vice president, StorNext solutions. “With StorNext 5, we have the opportunity to help a larger set of customers re-monetise or otherwise re-purpose their massive volumes of content, and I’m excited about Geoff coming onboard to drive this effort,” said Jon Gacek, president and CEO of Quantum. “He’ll be working closely with Alex Grossman to accelerate our scale-out storage growth, building on the StorNext leadership position we’ve established in media & entertainment and intelligence as well as the tight integration with our Lattus Object Storage systems

Richard HayterGare, root6

Everth Flores, Harmonic

for EMEA. In his new role, Everth will drive cable opportunities and channel sales within the region, with an emphasis on increasing deployments of Harmonic’s NSG Pro converged cable access platform.

Geoff Stedman, Quantum Corp to go both deeper and wider in the use cases we address.” Stedman has previously worked for Tintri and Harmonic, which he joined in conjunction with the company’s acquisition of Omneon.

Harris Broadcast has announced that Paula Bargeryhas joined the company as regional sales director for the UK, Ireland and South Africa where she will be responsible for all sales activity and enhancing customer relationships across these territories. Bargery brings over 20 years of experience in sales and business development including her most recent role as head of sales, EMEA at AmberFin, a post she held for four years.

Media Links Inc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Media Global Links, specialising in broadcast and network transport over IP solutions, has hired Tom Canavan as president. Canavan joins Media Links Inc. with over 25 years experience and business leadership in the media and technology industries.

Richard Hayter-Gare has joined the sales team of Soho-based reseller and integrator root6. A sales professional with over 25 years’ experience in the media and broadcast sector, Hayter-Gare joins from European RAID Arrays where he served as sales and account manager.

SGO has appointed Peter Amies as Training and Education mentor.

He will play a major role in managing the company’s training strategy of Mistika and Mamba FX software solutions for the global education sector. Before joining SGO, he worked at New Zealand’s Park Road Post Production for six years.

Provider of broadcast and production technology solutions and services Tyrell has recruited Alex Galanosas UK support engineer.

With over 13 years’ experience, Galanos started his career as an audio engineer and producer, and since then has developed his media production skills with engineering support roles at various rental houses and resellers including Gearbox Sound & Vision and CVP, before joining Tyrell.

10 TVBEurope

www.tvbeurope.com April 2014

Beyond HD:

National Theatre Live broadcast War Horse from the New London Theatre to over 1000 cinemas worldwide

4K Challenges

War Horse

War Horse was the first live-to-cinema 4K transmission

charges into 4K live Adrian Pennington goes behind the scenes of War Horse as the National Theatre production becomes the first event to be aired live to cinemas in 4K THE 4K stage production of the National Theatre’s War Horse claimed a number of firsts when it aired on 27 February. Not only was it the first live-to-cinema 4K transmission, it was the first commercial run for the format in which cinema-goers at Chelsea’s Curzon paid to see the 180-minute event. It also necessitated the world’s first high frame rate 4K Digital Cinema Package (DCP).

National Theatre Live (NT Live) broadcast War Horse from the New London Theatre to over 1000 cinemas worldwide — most of them live but with many also showing delayed ‘live’ screenings. All but one of those was an HD broadcast, but the significance of the sole 4K TX points the way to the future.

Technical producer for NT Live, Creative Broadcast Solutions (CBS), together with NEP Visions, NT Live’s longterm OB partner, partnered with satellite provider Links Broadcast and Sony to deliver the event, which is NT Live’s 36th stretching back to 2009.

“We regularly cover NT Live productions in HD but the National Theatre thought that War Horse was such an important show that it should ideally be captured with large format cameras,” explains David O’Carroll, technical projects manager, NEP Visions. “What was equally important was maintaining the HD workflow, since that feed was going to the majority of cinemas. We built a

4K layer into the flypack installed onsite, complemented by an audio truck and a second truck for graphics, subtitles and autocue.”

Six F55 CineAlta cameras equipped with Fujinon Cabrio

as four HD 3G signal (quad 4K) to create the live mix.

NEP Visions were tasked with creating three paths: a 4K mix with graphics, an HD version of the same and another HD

The F55s were positioned in the middle of the stalls (one on a jib, one remote controlled on a hot head) arrayed in an arc and shot mindful of a cinema audience watching on 15m screens.

As usual with NT Live performances, the stage director, broadcast director (in this case, Tim Van Someren) and production teams (including NT Live producer Emma Keith) got a chance to review footage shot during a rehearsal to see if any tweaks to coverage were required.

Digital Cinema lab Soho Digital Cinema (SDC) created a 4K DCP for them to view it projected on a cinema screen.

“There were no significant game-changing differences versus HD,” noted Chris Bretnall, technical producer for NT Live at Creative Broadcast Solutions.

Links Broadcast provided the satellite uplink and downlink facilities to enable the delivery of the 4K signal (and simultaneous HD signal) from the New London Theatre into the Curzon Cinema in Chelsea. Using four synchronous Adtec EN-100 encoders the incoming signal was combined into a single transport stream in MPEG-4 via an Adtec DTA3050 multiplexor for onward transmission via a 1.5m antenna on Links’s 4K uplink vehicle.

“We made an initial test using a truck on location to ensure we could transmit a 4K signal and then we did a glass-to-glass test at Visions taking the camera signal

“Many cinemas are capable of showing 4K and we know a small number capable of showing it live” Chris Bretnall, Creative Broadcast Solutions lenses fed 4K video into BPU4000 fibre adapters which generated 4K and HD signals simultaneously. The BPUs are an essential piece of kit, allowing the F55s to be used as a system camera with rack and control. The feeds were presented at a Sony MVS-8000X switcher

path with subtitles. The mix feed was recorded on a Sony MasterDeck, for archive and the creation of a 4K DCP master that will be distributed to cinemas. NEP Visions also recorded 4K ISOs onto two additional Sony MasterDecks for later use.

into a 4K projector,” explains Links business development manager Andy Tweedley.

The signal was then uplinked on to SES Astra’s 3B satellite using 36Mhz of capacity in order to achieve the maximum possible video data rate within the modulated 4K transport stream.

12 TVBEurope

www.tvbeurope.com April 2014

Beyond HD:

4K Challenges The technical set up was very similar to that of a live sports event

Soho Digital Cinema managing director David Margolis. “If 8.5 million pixels weren’t enough resolution, seeing them dance at 50fps results in the smoothest, most immersive digital cinema content we’ve ever seen.”

In the UK, approximately 500 screens showed War Horse

week before War Horse overseeing a 4K production for Turkish satellite broadcaster Digiturk of a Galatasaray and Besiktas match in which four F55s and two upconverted HDcams were fed through a MVS-8000X and linked back to a hotel for a VIP screening.

“There were no significant game-changing differences versus HD” Chris Bretnall, Creative Broadcast Solutions “4K live to a projector had never been done before so we had to do a lot of testing to get the suitable video bitrate,” says Bretnall. “Typical HD relays that go to cinemas use approx 1819Mbps within a 36Mhz carrier.

Now we are getting over 100Mbps within the same bandwidth.”

The incoming signal was downlinked at the Curzon via a 1.8M Links Broadcast receive antenna which was fed into Adtec RD70 receiver decoders and delivered to the projector.

Audiences will be able to view the performance recorded in Ultra HD with a live feed encoded standard Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) compliant DCP. In charge of this were SDC who were presented with a huge challenge.

Currently 4K HFR is only a proposal in the recommendations of the DCI, the governing body that sets digital cinema standards.

The Hobbit 3D films, for example, were shown at 24p for each ‘eye’, whereas War Horse was able to shoot and screened as

a single eye 50p. To get there SDC had to devise a new workflow in order to work with Sony’s latest SRMaster format. This included ingesting 4K 50p material from SR-R1000 decks and encoding using a new specially programmed beta version of DVS Clipster.

SDC, Sony and NT Live successfully tested a 4K DCP from Sony’s SRMaster, which is currently confirmed to work with Sony’s SRX-R320 4K projectors.

“4K HFR is an incredible spectacle to behold,” comments

live with many also showing a delayed version. In the US, around 300 screens took the live feed and another 100 showed delayed. Canada featured 100 showings; Europe approx 80, and in the rest of the world, including Australia, Russia, Mexico, and Japan, there were 80 delayed shows.

The technical set up was very similar to that of a live sports event. In fact, Andy Hotten, Sony’s technical project manager, was in Turkey the

“After War Horse we will have established a proven workflow for 24p 4K distribution with an option for cinemas to take it to 50p 4K,” says Bretnall. “We know that many cinemas are capable of showing 4K and we know a small number capable of showing it live with few additional high hurdles than for last the 35 NT Live productions.” www.creativebroadcastsolutions.com www.nepinc.com www.sony.co.uk

April 2014 www.tvbeurope.com

TVBEurope 13

When HDTVs were first introduced, many consumers felt they were impractical and unsuitable for the living room. There were also concerns about the lack of content available in a new format

Beyond HD:

4K Challenges

Fulfilling the 4K promise Ericsson has been instrumental in pushing 4K through its growing pains. Fabio Murra, the company’s head of TV compression, portfolio marketing, sees 4K as the next step for TV THE TELEVISION industry is currently undergoing a groundbreaking transition to an alldigital world, where HD quality is no longer a desirable feature but a consumer expectation.

Broadcasters are looking to take another seismic step forward in the evolution of television broadcasting with the onset of 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD) TV, which offers a new exciting dimension to the industry. There are a number of parallels that can be drawn between the transition from SD to HD, and now HD to 4K UHDTV. In essence, we’re asking the same questions today as we did in 1998 when the first HDTVs went on sale. When HDTVs were first introduced, many consumers felt they were impractical and unsuitable for the living room. There were also concerns about the lack of content available in a new format.

HDTV is now a relatively mature technology and larger screens are commonplace.

Viewers want high-quality content to enable the optimum television experience. According to an Informa Telecoms & Media report from last year, the proportion of global TV

households watching HD programming is expected to grow from under 14% at the end of 2012 to almost 42% by the end of 2017.

Although the process towards mass deployment may be gradual, 4K UHDTV is the next step in the evolution of TV services.

The 4K UHDTV journey Ericsson was responsible for a number of high profile 4K UHDTV landmarks last year, including multiple live trials of the technology alongside partners such as Sky Sports, KT Skylife and MEASAT. This culminated within the world’s first live full multi-camera 4K UHDTV sports production and delivery at IBC2013. Ericsson partnered alongside BT Media, Intelsat, Sony and Newtec to transmit the game via satellite and fibre in ‘true’ 4K UHDTV resolution from London to Amsterdam. The combination of the higher spatial resolution (4x HDTV), 4:2:2 and 10-bit color depth, and higher frame rates at 60fps delivered a truly stunning immersive experience for the viewers at the Ericsson stand.

These live demonstrations prove that TV service providers

can build the necessary 4K ecosystems and a library of UHDTV content now, using today’s delivery infrastructure.

This is a testament to the technological developments within the industry, proving that high-quality fast-moving images can be captured perfectly to offer a truly immersive television experience. Many of these successful trials were enabled thanks to our pioneering Ultra High Definition TV encoding system, which we first demonstrated live at an EBU technical seminar in Geneva early last year.

Our trials taught us how 4K UHDTV video compressed signals certainly require 4:2:2 chroma sampling and 10-bit depth. This is necessary to maintain the colour fidelity through the multiple encode/ decode/re-encode stages and through multiple editing stages, while delivering truly astonishing results to large consumers’ sets.

This year we expect to see these foundations consolidated upon as we move closer towards the launch of the first commercial 4K UHDTV services. Although mass deployment is unlikely to take

place until 2015, we will see ondemand services for movie content (streaming and downloads) appear this year and this will drive considerable demand for the format. Some services are already starting to appear on the market; Netflix is now offering a number of its key shows in 4K UHDTV via its video streaming service.

Getting it to the viewer In order to bring this content to the end viewer, the broadcaster must first bring the content from the live event into their production flow in a cost and bandwidth efficient manner. To this end the standardisation of High Efficiency Video Encoding (HEVC) will be key to enabling 4K UHDTV in the home. In the future we expect HEVC to deliver 4K UHDTV in the same bandwidth that is currently required to deliver HDTV. TV service providers need to find ways to make 4K UHDTV a truly compelling proposition compared to HDTV. To achieve this standard, we expect broadcasters to opt for a minimum of 60fps for live TV, as it offers the best balance between cost and quality. Doubling the frame rate

Murra: “In essence, we’re asking the same questions today as we did in 1998 when the first HDTVs went on sale” incurs an approximate 10-30% increase in bitrate usages, much lower in the compressed domain than the 100% for uncompressed video sources. With 4K screen sizes likely to be larger than HD displays, this refinement will take on a new level of importance as any interlace artefacts or image judder would be overtly noticeable with legacy interlace or low frame rate technology.

4K UHDTV is not about the spatial resolution of a single frame; it’s about enabling the consumer to take advantage of the most realistic experience from their video content. To deliver this next-generation TV experience, broadcasters will need to tune the whole media delivery chain, from the acquisition of high-value, high quality and truly immersive live content to its delivery to the home.

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Beyond HD:

4K Challenges

Is the 4K scramble hurting the industry?

While the prospect of a 4K future has invigorated a few sectors of the industry, behind the enthusiasm there is still caution, with many still recovering from 3D hangovers. Should we approach 4K adoption more carefully? Adrian Pennington reports THE STAGGERED introduction of Ultra HD 4K production, distribution and display equipment risks fragmenting the market, adding unnecessary cost and yet again ending any chance of fielding a single, worldwide television standard. The issue is causing concern among many manufacturers.

“It feels to us that there’s quite a scramble to create some kind of 4K service in terms of delivery,” says Nick Wright, CTO and co-founder of broadcast graphics systems vendor Pixel Power.

“Because CE manufacturers can make cheap 4K displays and consumer grade cameras and optics, the momentum is gathering. But the needs of the wider industry are not necessarily represented by that sentiment; there’s an element of the tail wagging the dog. If the industry

Wright: “There’s an element of the tail wagging the dog”

doesn’t make a big enough step between whatever comes next and the HD we have now, consumers won’t see a compelling difference and won’t buy.”

Wright also believes there’s a significant threat that if standardisation lags behind the

first 4K products then “the entire industry ends up paying for the fragmentation that results for a very long time — just like the 720p/1080i split all over again.”

He stresses: “We do think that 4K has the potential to be very disruptive if it’s not analysed properly. The danger is that people become fixated on the screen resolution at the expense of other important ideas.

Nobody knows what 4K is yet: the standards aren’t agreed; we don’t know what people are going to adopt; we don’t know about the codecs, frame rate or audio. Are we missing an opportunity here to have a

single, worldwide television standard again as this would be a major driver to reduce costs and perhaps more importantly reduce any confusion that could impact on consumer take up?”

Consumer risks The Digital TV Group (DTG) has also warned that the haphazard introduction of 4K Ultra HD TVs and services risks confusing consumers and harming market adoption.

“The question is whether you can drip feed Ultra HD to consumers or whether you need to make a step change in technology?” says DTG technology director, Simon Gauntlett. “Our view is that it’s best to make a step change, as from SD to HD where there was a clear leap up in resolution, colour, sound and performance.”

The problem is that there are different views as to what constitutes Ultra HD among content providers, broadcasters and TV set vendors.

For example, the first tranche of 4K content delivered to the home by services such as Netflix will be movies, which have a

“Nobody knows what 4K is yet: the standards aren’t agreed; we don’t know what people are going to adopt; we don’t know about the codecs, frame rate or audio” Nick Wright, Pixel Power standard frame rate of 24Hz. That is way below the threshold considered necessary by broadcasters before they launch Ultra HD services. The BBC for example wants to see 100-120Hz. Alongside higher frame rates there is an increasing feeling that Ultra HD also requires greater brightness and colour to deliver a truly compelling viewing experience. These elements are only just being introduced to the production pipeline and cannot be displayed on existing UHD TV sets.

Even the latest UHD sets with updated connection standard HDMI 2.0 sacrifice 10-bit for 8-bit colour to accommodate higher frame rates.

“Opinion is divided on whether the industry should wait for that step change,” says Gauntlett. “Manufacturers are keen to sell new TVs that support some, though not all UHD specifications, and content providers don’t want to miss the boat.

“Resolution is only noticeable on large displays whereas higher frame rates and higher dynamic range and wider colour range

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Beyond HD:

The issue os further complicated by the initial launch of 4K services delivered over the internet

4K Challenges

Gearhouse deploys 22 5K mini-cams for tennis

By Adrian Pennington

Gauntlett: “We need to find a way to make a UHD logo signify a different experience, not a low threshold one” gives a noticeably better picture on screens of any size. We see UHD as being a step change in picture quality no matter the screen size.”

UHD ready?

The issue is further complicated by the initial launch of 4K services delivered over the internet to select smart TV brands, such as Samsung.

Netflix will launch around May this year with services from Amazon and M-Go to follow.

They will rely on adaptive streaming, which will vary the quality of the video depending on bitrate into the home.

“Homes with high-speed broadband will be capable of showing 4K resolution but those with less bandwidth won’t see the full benefit of UHD,” says Gauntlett. “In which case is it

better to stream with higher colour and higher brightness at the expense of the highest resolution? The picture quality will remain high even though resolution is lost. “‘HD-ready’ was not a great success in terms of explaining to consumers how to get HD,” he admits. “We need to find a way to make a UHD logo signify a different experience, not a low threshold one.”

The DTG runs the UK UHD Forum to thrash out such issues for stakeholders. Gauntlett added that they are considering whether they can retrofit higher dynamic range and greater colour to the HD specifications and to HD TV sets.

“This won’t necessarily impact sales of UHD TVs since oversampling in the 4K displays will make HD content look better,” he says.

THE FREED sports analysis system featured as part of ATP Media’s coverage of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells in March used 22 mini-5K cameras.

Gearhouse Broadcast deployed the system, devised by Israel’s Replay Technologies, for the first time at a tennis event.

The centre court at Indian Wells was ringed with 22 lockedoff SP20000 cameras made by Danish firm JAI. The cameras, in JAI’s Spark series, are more commonly used in security, industrial and traffic monitoring environments. Built around a 41mm diagonal CMOS sensor with global shutter, each camera offers full frame 20megapixel resolution (5120x3840 pixels) at 30fps.

A built-in high dynamic range (HDR) mode (monochrome

only) lets users define two knee points to expand the dynamic range of the camera in high contrast situations.

Dual Mini Camera Link connectors in a two-cable ‘full’ configuration provide the bandwidth necessary for highspeed, high-resolution output.

At Indian Wells, four 3G signals per camera – some 88 signals in total – were fed by Thinklogical fibre extenders into 16 Access Tech servers at the media control room where FreeD software rendered a 360º matrix.

FreeD operators, in conjunction with the director, can decide on pre-set moves based on pivotal positions, such as the baseline server, from which to zoom in and pan around, start or stop or freeze the action or show slow motion.

Each JAI Sp20000 camera offers full frame 20 megapixel resolution at 30fps

The centre court at Indian Wells was ringed with 22 locked-off cameras Completed clips are ingested via HD-SDI into EVS machines ready for selection by the director (or editors compiling match highlights) at the end of a game or set. The latency of each clip is about 15 seconds.

Gearhouse, which provides all the facilities and crew to ATP Media for the production of the ATP Masters 1000 Series and the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, says it is talking with broadcasters about including the system as part of the picture package at future Grand Slam tennis events.

The system may make an appearance at the season-ending Barclays ATP World Tour Finals at The O2 in London in November. www.gearhousebroadcast.com www.replay-technologies.com

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Beyond HD:

4K Challenges

Pond5 splashes into the 4K stock market

By David Fox ANYONE CONSIDERING investing in a 4K camera may wonder how they will get a sufficient return on investment.

However, there is a growing market for 4K material, and stock footage library Pond5 is taking advantage of it.

“We have many customers asking for 4K stock footage, but saying: ‘We can’t find any’,” said Andy Goetze, Pond5’s director of business development.

Although the company’s 4K library was only officially launched days before Christmas, Pond5 had already sold many 4K files before it opened.

Business, lifestyle and nature are particularly popular. “To our knowledge, it is currently the largest 4K library,” with some 23,000 clips, he added.

It is also offering Redcode Raw (.r3d) files, with about 4800 clips currently.

Although there are lots of stock image companies, with huge libraries of photographs, Goetze insists that “the only market that is already saturated is the micro-stock market, but for video it is still the early days.”

you will be successful. I have talked to several hundred contributors and that is what they tell me.”

Contributors get 50% of any purchase price (more than other major libraries) and it gives artists the freedom to set their own prices, so they can aim for either the traditionally priced stock footage or micro-stock markets (or both).

“We already have 2.3 million video clips on site, mainly selling to post houses and broadcasters, but also to tiny companies and freelancers,” he said.

“Shoot what you love, then you will be successful.

I have talked to several hundred contributors and that is what they tell me”

Goetze: “To our knowledge, (Pond5) is currently the largest 4K library” New York-based Pond5 was formed seven years ago to specialise in video clips (and is claimed to be the largest selection of royalty-free video on the web, having doubled in size over the past year). It has since added

cameras such as GoPro or Contour. It will make exceptions for unique content, but only rarely.

It has also started selling audio files (music and sound effects), with about 600,000 files now available. It has also expanded into illustrations, 3D models and customisable After Effects templates (of which there are about 5500).

“If clients have special needs, and don’t have the resources to invest in content research, we can now offer research services, in central Europe at least,” he added.

Pond5 has also introduced a free plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro, so that editors have instant access to its online stock video collection, audio and effects, from within the non-linear editor (CC or CS6 versions).

The plugin allows editors to easily import watermarked comps

Andy Goetze, Pond5 other media, including photographs. It now has more than 150,000 customers, including many European broadcasters.

Goetze advises potential contributors not to look at what is selling. “Shoot what you love, then

It accepts content that originates from high-quality cameras, such as DSLRs, professional cameras, prosumer cameras, 3CCD consumer cameras, the iPhone4s and above (at full quality), and wearable

into a project, edit and add effects, and then - with a single button automate the entire process of purchasing, downloading, and replacing low-res previews with high resolution files. www.pond5.com

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Beyond HD:

Uncompressed 4K may give you the best possible colour and image resolution, but it also requires you to use some of the most expensive cameras, massive amounts of incredibly fast storage, and requires uncommonly big budgets

4K Challenges

Capturing the 4K storm 4K wasn’t the only topic absorbing visitors to London’s recent BVE expo, but it was a key discussion point in many conference sessions, and one of the most passionately debated ones. David Fox reports BROADCASTERS MAY not want to move to Ultra HD any time soon, but 4K was certainly the number one topic at this year’s BVE conference, with many standing-room only sessions (such as ‘Taking the fear out of 4K’), as creatives wonder if they should move to the higher resolution format now or wait for it to become more established.

“There is every reason for shooting 4K, for future sales. If you’re a producer and you’re not shooting at 4K, you’re an idiot — unless you are shooting really cheap, trashy stuff that is going to get thrown away,” cinematographer Geoff Boyle told a session, ‘The end-to-end 4K workflow — what does it mean for production, post and broadcast processes?’.

“If you have personal value in what you are shooting, then shoot it in 4K, post in 4K and share it in 4K, or at least store the EDLs and rushes so you can go back and re-generate it in 4K,” because you don’t want “to make something that is not saleable,” he added.

“If you’re shooting now for TV, you should be thinking whether in years to come you’ll want to re-master that and broadcast it in 4K,” said William Isaac, chief engineer, Glassworks, which has facilities in London, Barcelona and Amsterdam (where its infrastructure has been built for 4K). However, he sees “no immediate need to do a job in post at 4K.” DoP and cinematographer, Alister Chapman, who did a separate session, ‘Shooting 4K in extreme conditions with the Sony F5 and FS700’, shoots 4K “because it looks really, really good and it future proofs my content, because I shoot a lot of stock footage.”

He was an early adopter of HD, and video that he shot 10 years ago in HD is still making him a good income.

Also, there aren’t many people shooting hurricanes and tornadoes in 4K, so it helps differentiate his footage further. His clients include National Geographic, BBC Natural History and Discovery.

“4K doesn’t need to wait for broadcasters before it will catch on, because of downloads and higher quality displays,” and “by starting at 4K, you get very nice looking HD pictures,” he added.

Chapman specialises in shooting severe and extreme weather, such as hurricanes, tornadoes and the Northern Lights, as well as commercials and drama.

“If you’re doing high-end drama, or even reasonablebudget drama, and you think you’re going to have a future sale, if you don’t future-proof yourself you haven’t got a future sale,” said Boyle, who has shot movies, commercials and TV series using almost every 4K camera. “Only if you think your work is rubbish should you shoot it at anything other than 4K.” Consultant and editing trainer Larry Jordan pointed out that at NAB 2013 people were saying the same of 3D: “‘If we don’t shoot 3D our future as cinematographers is over’,” but now “we have got to shoot 4K or we have doomed ourselves to financial extinction.”

However, Boyle responded that last year, 10 of the top 20 grossing movies WERE 3D, as were each of the biggest grossing movies for each of the last five years.

But, there is very little outlet for 3D on TV, replied Jordan, although he sees “a lot of sense in acquiring in 4K, but it’s really important to understand that not all 4K is created equal. If you’re shooting the equivalent of AVCHD in 4K, you’re better off shooting high frame rate 2K, because you’re going to get a much better picture, because the compression of AVCHD is so severe.”

Boyle admitted that his approach is aspirational. “It is impossible for most people. I accept that, and I agree totally about ‘don’t shoot bad 4K, shoot better 2K’. Shoot the best you can, but always aspire to doing

Chapman: 4K Raw can be “very manageable, and it really isn’t that expensive to do”

“There is every reason for shooting 4K, for future sales.

If you’re a producer and you’re not shooting at 4K, you’re an idiot” Geoff Boyle, cinematographer

the audience could tell which was which.” In cinemas, people are too far from the screen. “Only the front row might be able to see 4K — any further back, they can’t.”

For him, 4K is a TV medium. “The big screen in the home you get close to,” where there should be enough resolution that you can’t see the pixels.

It’s just more… the ultimate.

Even if you have to make some compromises, don’t start off with a compromised viewpoint.”

The only Raw formats that are totally uncompressed are Canon and ARRI. ARRI isn’t 4K, but the rest of the camera works so well that Boyle doesn’t care - “4K is only part of what makes the image, and the colour response and the latitude of that camera is so good, I will happily forego any resolution.”

At BVE, Boyle had projected material shot with 2.8K Raw (ARRI) and 6K, “and nobody in

The amount of storage required for 4K is a big worry for many, but as Boyle said: “It’s just more data. If you are used to working with a HD workflow, then 4K is exactly the same. It’s just more.”

Storage prices have dropped considerably. Boyle bought 8TB recently for a 4K show, for just £200. “The amount of data, and the cost of storage, is not necessarily an issue,” he said.

He is obsessive about shooting “as uncompressed as possible, because...I want as much to manipulate in post as possible.”

However, shooting Raw means “you have to get the workflow right”, and “it will vary from shoot to shoot,” said Boyle. But, you needn’t handle vast amounts of data in post if you move to an intermediate format, such as DNxHD or ProRes, for editing at a lower bitrate. It will only be at conform and finishing that you’ll need to go back to the Raw video.

Jordan felt that Boyle glossed over the storage requirements of uncompressed 4K. “It is so much data that if you don’t have an infrastructure and bandwidth to move this gigantic file around your post facility, you’re going to have wonderful images you can’t edit because your bandwidth isn’t there.” Installing the right infrastructure and storage will be a significant cost, he warned.

“It’s not just about storage and bandwidth,” added Isaac, “it’s also about processing power and rendering.”

Glassworks does a lot of 3D CGI work, and rendering a 4K frame takes four times longer, and as that part of the process usually happens near the end of a production, they are under considerable pressure for time already, so it has to be taken in to account during planning.

“Simply shooting a 4K image because you can misses a lot of issues,” added Jordan.

Uncompressed may give you the best colour and image resolution, but “it also requires you to use some of the most expensive cameras, some incredibly fast storage, massive amounts of storage, and requires working on budgets to which Geoff has become accustomed.” Boyle agreed with everything, “except the last bit.”

Choosing cameras “What camera and codec you shoot on “has direct implications for post,” added Jordan.

“When you are working with 4K, it affects your entire system,” he said, so you need to pick the right camera, the right storage, and sufficient bandwidth to connect it, the right editing software and

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Beyond HD:

4K Challenges

NEWS IN BRIEF Double financial backing for TVbeat TVbeat, a London start-up that provides realtime television ratings, has secured $2million funding. UK-based Episode 1 and Czech-based Credo Ventures have backed the firm to develop its realtime TV analytics stream.

With the funds, the company hopes to expand its presence in new markets and further develop its platform. Its analytic capability covers pay TV platforms including cable, satellite, VoD and OTT, as well as IPTV. Having piloted its services to broadcasters, advertisers and pay TV platforms in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, TVbeat founder Robert Farazin plans further expansion in Europe this year.

Of the recently-secured funding, Farazin commented: “We are thrilled to see Episode 1 and Credo Ventures recognising the huge potential that our platform offers the media industry.” www.tvbeat.com Globecast delivers London Live Globecast has been selected as the content delivery service provider for London Live, a new TV channel dedicated to London scheduled to launch on 31 March 2014.

Globecast will provide turnkey connectivity for London Live, including satellite capacity and uplink, for UK subscribers of the Sky DTH satellite service.

London Live is London’s first dedicated 24/7 TV entertainment channel, offering Londoners the latest in arts, news, current affairs, sports, and events. London Live is owned by ESTV, which won the London television franchise auction in February 2013.

The channel will be available on Freeview 8, YouView 8, Sky 117 and Virgin 159 as well as being available in non-linear digital formats. www.globecast.com

format, and have to figure out what distribution format to use. It is possible to shoot 4K on a GoPro, but it will be at 15fps, and highly compressed (MPEG-4).

“A producer will say: ‘I own this 4K camera, therefore this must be the best camera to shoot this project, because I don’t have any money.’ So, post is confronted with dealing with a highly compressed format with a producer who doesn’t have any money to buy storage,” he added.

Chapman often shoots material that could be newsworthy, such as tornadoes, so he particularly likes the F5/F55’s ability to shoot both Raw 4K and HD XDCAM 4:2:2 compressed at the same time, giving an ideal format for news use without having to do any conversion.

“These are very challenging conditions to shoot in, with high winds, rain, dust and dirt.

I don’t have time to change lenses, so can’t use primes.”

He often uses a Tamron 18-270mm EF-mount zoom lens (the camera can also take a broadcast B4 mount, PL-mount or Nikon mount), which is optically stabilised. As the stills cameras that it is designed for use higher resolution sensors than 4K, such lenses are very suitable for 4K use.

“There is a little bit of a compromise, but sometimes you have to make a compromise to get a clip,” he explained.

A tornado may last for only a very short time, “so you have minutes, sometimes even seconds, to get a shot. To get the best shots, you need to be in front of the tornado, as behind it there is rain and you won’t see anything. So, you haven’t long before you have to move off to the next location,” unless you want to be caught up in it.

He uses the EI mode on the camera to shoot flat and that creates the look in post.

Jordan: “When you are working with 4K, it affects your entire system”

He had the budget to buy the F55, but as it only records compressed 4K on board, he would still have had to buy Sony’s external 4K Raw recorder (as Raw is so important to him), which would have been beyond his budget. Therefore, he bought the F5 and Raw recorder instead. “The F5 really does 99% of what the F55 does. It’s a very capable camera,” he said.

The cameras can shoot 4K at up to 60fps, or 2K at up to 240fps with the Raw recorder (180fps otherwise).

Data management With more data to deal with, managing that data can be more demanding, but isn’t something to be feared, even on a budget, said Boyle.

He did a five-day shoot on a Canon C500, recording 4K Raw to a Convergent Design Gemini recorder, resulting in 1TB of rushes per day, with everything double backed up. Each night he transcoded everything through his laptop into DNxHD 36 using lookup tables in Blackmagic’s

Resolve. The next morning a shuttle drive was ready to go to the editor. “A data management guy, who was an assistant editor who had never done the job before, was backing up on site all the time, copying all the files we used to multiple hard drives.” He also produced QuickTimes and H.264 files for the website. “It was mega low budget.” After getting the EDL from the Avid editor, “we used a 27-inch iMac running Resolve to autoassemble it, and I graded it on that. I then fed it into my Dell laptop to put titles and sync audio in Premiere, and rendered out DPX files, which I put into DCP Builder to make a Cinema DCP 4K release master,” he explained. “If I can do that, any post house can do it.”

A few days before BVE, Chapman was shooting in South Africa, using the Sony FS700 (recording to the Convergent Design Odyssey recorder), editing the 4K Raw files on his laptop in the hotel and airport using Premiere CC and Resolve on his way back to show them at

the Expo. The Sony 4K Raw files, which are compressed, take up 500GB per hour. “It is very manageable, and it really isn’t that expensive to do,” he said.

If he is delivering in HD, he can re-frame and stabilise the shots first, without losing any resolution.

Last year, Boyle shot UHD 3D tests for Sky, to see if it was possible to shoot to a normal production schedule. It was.

“The only issue was the amount of data [eight times HD]. It swamped them completely,” he admitted.

“We need to make sure that our system for editing 4K is fast enough, big enough and deep enough to support it,” said Jordan.

“For very heavy CG jobs, with lots of compositing, you want uncompressed formats,” said Isaac, but a lot of work Glassworks has done recently has been with ProRes, “and DoPs are very happy to work with that format,” which can also be part of its DPX workflow.

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4K Challenges

NEWS IN BRIEF New BBC iPlayer The BBC has released a new version of the iPlayer for the web and for TV. BBC iPlayer mobile and tablet apps will also be updated within months.

The new iPlayer has better multiscreen integration and also features a Collections function, which groups programmes by series, season, event or theme. The Playback page has been updated too with an improved recommendation engine and on-the-fly Favourites addition.

Prime Focus to acquire DAX Prime Focus Technologies, the technology subsidiary of Prime Focus has signed a definitive agreement to acquire DAX, a provider of cloud-based production workflow and media asset management applications, for a base consideration of $9.1 million.

PFT through its US subsidiary will acquire all the assets of DAX for an upfront payment with balance payable over three years.

The acquisition gives PFT ownership of DAX’s patented technology and products including the Digital Dailies solution.

Boyle shot a commercial on four Alexas, mostly using ProRes, except for specific shots that they knew would be heavily composited, which were recorded externally using 10-bit DPX, “making sure we did the right thing for each section of the job.”

“You need to make the most of the available media you have got, so you’re not wasting time, storage and processing,” added Isaac.

However, Boyle would prefer to work from the original files for grading and finishing, “because we don’t know how far we are going to want to push them. There is always more available on a Raw format, depending on the camera, than you are going to get out of a DPX,” which is an old format, created more than 15 years ago

by Kodak to deal with the needs of that time, when cameras didn’t have the dynamic range some do now.

Processing power “We can edit 4K on a Mac Mini.

The computer is not the relevant issue,” said Jordan, even if it will

take longer to render. “Which means that most of us are obsessing about the wrong part of the computer. You don’t need a 12-core Mac Pro.” Adobe and Apple have already “reached the upper limit of what they can get out of CPU power, and are offloading all the rendering, and their I/O functions, to the graphics card,” he said. “If you put your money into the dual GPU, you’ll discover that the system flies.”

Also buy as much RAM as possible - 16GB for small projects, 32GB for anything larger (a Mac Pro supports 64GB), and get fast storage. “A hard disk goes 120MBps; uncompressed 4K is about 500-520MBps for a single stream, so you need a RAID with at least six drives,” he said. And USB 3.0 isn’t fast enough, so you need eSATA, Thunderbolt 1 or Thunderbolt 2.

“The things that take the most time are debayering images, rendering, graphics processing and encoding at the end of the job, which do need considerable processing power,” added Isaac.

artificially high,” at $6,000 to $10,000 per system, making it “a stretch” for many smaller companies or individuals, and the industry needs an entry-level system around $3,000. He hopes to see one or two new entrants into the market at NAB with LTO systems in that price bracket.

LTO tapes can last 25-30 years, but as each new generation of LTO machines is introduced, there is a continual need to copy tapes onto the latest version, so Jordan advises users to budget for having to upgrade and copy every five years.

Boyle sees any of the current archive options as short term. “Maybe if you really care about what you’ve got, you transfer to film separations, and maybe it will still be here in 100 years.” www.gboyle.co.uk www.glassworks.co.uk www.larryjordan.biz www.xdcam-user.com

“4K doesn’t need to wait for broadcasters before it will catch on, because of downloads and higher quality displays” Alister Chapman, cinematographer Long-term planning For archive, Boyle feels that “LTO 6 is the sensible way to go.” Unfortunately, added Jordan, LTO 6 “prices are

April 2014 www.tvbeurope.com

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Polsat’s tapeless playout and production system design was brainstormed by a group which included the IT TV team, programmers and software engineers, editors, archive personnel, journalists, the QC department, traffic and even advertising staff

The Workflow

Going tapeless at Telewizja Polsat In 1992, Polish billionaire Zygmunt Solorz-Zak launched Poland’s first free-to-air commercial satellite TV channel, Polsat. Today, in pay TV the Polsat Group is the largest provider in Poland.

After a visit in 2008, Reinhard E Wagner toured the broadcaster again BACK IN 2008 TVBEurope reported on the installation of the new News Operation Centre at Telewizja Polsat.

The Polish broadcaster provides a comprehensive multimedia offering with services that include DTH, mobile television, broadband Internet in HSPA/HSPA+ and LTE and mobile telephony services. The total amount of pay digital television subscribers (as of 30 June, 2013) is well over 3.5 million and broadband Internet service users approach 200,000.

In total, the Polsat Group offers 130 Polish language television channels, including general entertainment, sports, music, lifestyle, news/information, children’s, education and movies. They offer all of Poland’s main terrestrial channels, including POLSAT, TVP1, TVP2, TVN and TV4.

In addition, subscribers have access to 37 HD channels as well as VoD/PPV, Catch-up TV, Multiroom, plus TV Mobilna service (based on DVB-T and launched in June 2012) with access to 20 encrypted channels (eight television and 12 radio channels) and to all DTT channels, through various devices (including smartphones, tablets and laptops). Two business segments produce revenue streams with distinct

Polsat is Poland’s second biggest TV channel

Team effort: (l. to r.) Bartosz Paprocki, assistant manager TV technology, Andrzej Szymanski, head of IT TV; Adam Brodziak, director of technology, and T. Artur Cichowicz, director of TV investment

characteristics: TV broadcasting advertising revenue and retail subscription and related revenue In the broadcasting and television production segment IT systems are managing advertising airtime, programme broadcasting and relationships with the advertising customers.

If any of the IT systems fail, it could affect the operating of the whole business. Loss or failure to maintain the historical reputation of Cyfrowy Polsat and TV Polsat and the value of all brands would adversely affect the business. Naturally, a great deal of attention is paid to reliability.

New investments into the IT infrastructure and TV production workflows were initiated which resulted in the switch-off of analogue services, the migration from SD to HD standard technology and the introduction of tapeless production workflows.

At the end of July 2013, the switch-off of analogue broadcasting of all Polsat channels took place, ending the double cost of broadcasting Polsat’s main channels in both analogue and digital. Currently over 30% of all viewers are receiving Polsat via DVB-T, which makes this distribution method very valuable for the broadcaster although it is still SD only.

Going tapeless Adam Brodziak, director of Polsat’s technology division, spoke about Polsat’s move to tapeless production: “The quality of the products and services we offer depends on the services and the quality of third party infrastructure, services and related functions,” says Adam Brodziak. “If these third parties on whom we rely do not meet our performance standards or provide technically flawed products or services, the quality of our products and services as well as our reputation may be harmed.”

The company’s decision to depend again on well-know products and services makes sense: After the successful integration of a news production system based on Avid technology back in 2008, the design and planning group at TV Polsat chose to use an Avid solution again.

“Why should we use something else, when we know what we can get” explains Brodziak. “We knew Avid’s strong and weak points but after a long period of cooperation we knew how to solve the difficulties.”

The tapeless playout and production system design was brainstormed by a group which included the IT TV team, programmers and software engineers, operators, editors, archive personnel, journalists, QC department, traffic and even advertising staff. The idea behind it was that all needs should be taken into consideration before going into deep planning. The final design that went into the tender took another six months to be completed. In September 2011, the contract with Avid was signed and the final planning and programming phase of the system started with Avid and Warsawbased systems integrator Adtv.

Phase one was the high-level design with the preparation of all documents, which took another three months, followed by phase two, a six-month period of generating the detailed

April 2014 www.tvbeurope.com

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The Workflow the different production areas.

The second level is called the deep archive (SGL Flashnet), that provides the HSM functionality, which is required to control a tape library (IBM tape robot with LTO drives) and

specifications. “The core was the Interplay MAM system from Avid, but with the specific needs from Polsat, it became a dedicated almost proprietary solution, created by engineers from Avid, our own people and Adtv”, explains Brodziak.

Andrzej Szymanski, head of Polsat’s IT TV department, adds: “The existing Interplay PAM systems needed to be upgraded to the latest software version to make it interoperable with the new MAM solution being implemented with the current project. This was covered by the existing service level agreement with the manufacturer and therefore not a big problem.”

Broadcasting and television production TV Polsat has been doing HD production and playout since 2007. In its progress toward HD, the studios for sports and show production together with all infrastructures have been migrated and refurbished concurrently. This was finalised in December 2012. To support this, the construction of the production system was conducted in stages, so that in turns all of the introduced and generated functionalities have been made available to users. The aim of the project was to build a tapeless playout and production system based on a digital archive.

New MAM system Polsat’s production systems incorporate central disk storage, station-wide media asset management and a deep archive.

This required the integration of the central storage with the playout system, the Provys scheduling and the Aveco Astra automation systems to implement a new workflow for the playout.

The playout platform is based on GVG K2 video servers, managed by the Aveco Astra automation system that cooperates with Provys Traffic Management software. After importing playlists from Provys, Astra checks the playlist and playout servers in search of requested materials. If there are no materials found on the playout servers, the ingest server and MAM central storage are checked depending on the information about the origin of the files contained in the playlists. If there is material on an ingest server or on the MAM storage, then the transfer to the playout servers is initiated. If there is no material in the system, then the decision about its ingesting or tape playing is made.

The core of the new post production system is an Avid ISIS shared disk array and Interplay media management platform

Polsat’s new post production configuration Servers: 7 x Isis chassis, total capacity 224TB 4 x System Director 3 x Interplay Engine 4 x Interplay Media Indexer 4 x Interplay Transcoder 2 x Interplay Transfer Manager 19 x Airspeed 2 x iNews

Many functional groups (playout servers, automation and scheduling systems) within the production chain had to be integrated with the Interplay MAM platform. The Provys scheduling system creates various actions, which trigger other functional groups. The MAM system executes the rundowns according to this schedule, based on defined user interactions and workflows, and provides the interfacing or integration layer between all functional groups.

To support such a tapeless infrastructure together with a file-based workflow, material from the tape archive needs to be ingested. Such an integrated archive can collaborate with particular production computer systems which are connected to a computer and media backbone network (fibre, single and multi-mode GigE, HD-SDI) that is able to transfer

Workstations: 117 x VideoClient (MediaComposer Adrenaline/Mojo SDI, Assist) 2 x Protools (audio processing) 1 x DS (compositing workstation) Network infrastructure: 2 x CiscoNexus7000 7 x CiscoCatalyst4948 5 x CiscoCatalyst3750 traffic generated by the implemented workflows.

In 2009, a digital archive was implemented for news production system that is based on Avid Interplay and SGL FlashNet media management software. This archive, based on EMC2 CX-4 120C disk array, StorageTek SL500 tape library, SGL FlashNet and Avid Interplay management software, is a logical extension of the ISIS production disk space. The capacity of the tape library is about 230TB that equals 18,400 hours of DV25 4:2:0 material.

Organising the archive The station’s digital archive is organised on two levels. The first level provides the central storage for archived versions of proxy and high-resolution materials used in current production. The central disk array is also used as an integration platform between

interfaces with the MAM solution by an integration package of Interplay. For archived assets a high level of data safety is achieved under control of the HSM by duplicating file assets within the

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The Workflow One of Polsat’s playout studios

tape library on different tape groups.

Within the archiving solution different levels of cataloguing of archive objects are performed accordingly to the predefined subjects, such as: sports, culture, politics, music, communication disasters, etc. An automatic QC process confirms internal standards and acceptance procedures.

The nearline archive is directly attached to an Interplay MAM online storage solution providing fast access to assets that are in use or used frequently.

To offer powerful query functions, metadata fields within Interplay MAM help to identify assets and also help schedule their transfer to the deep archive. This can also be initiated as a ‘direct move to the deep archive’ or as a ‘copy for safety reasons’. The capacity of this storage is roughly 80TB. The browse storage attached to Interplay MAM contains the browse/proxy or low- res versions (MPEG-4/ H.264 at 800kbps) of all material (with optional watermarking), that has been registered and created during any ingest.

Authorised users can browse the asset across the Polsat network and can generate simple EDL’s. Because of the fact that the resolution as well as the bitrate has a direct impact on the amount of required browse storage, its capacity was designed to be about 60TB (130,000 hours of material at 1Mbps) for the beginning.

There are also specified production areas interconnected by a computer network. The data and material exchange are difficult, because in each of the areas different formats and compression schemes are used. The formats and compressions used within the production areas adapt to the requirements executed

by Vantage and Carbon Coder transcoding servers.

The core element of the post production system is an Avid ISIS shared disk array and the Interplay media management platform. All Media Composer editing workstations (NLE) are equipped with Adrenaline and Mojo SDI external accelerators.

Fulfillment Choosing an Avid solution again was not just a question of confidence but also depended on reliability and stability of an existing installation in the news production being used for over five years already. In developing a tapeless production infrastructure, the IT

department had to fulfill all necessary requirements, such as the bidirectional transport of HD signals over the network as well as supporting streams of up to 50Mbps bandwidth HD files.

“The project was so special because it has not been software off the shelf — it was created at the facilities and needed a lot of programming and adaptation to support all legacy interfaces and databases”, explains Brodziak. “It was hard work for both sides: the vendor together with the manufacturers as well as for the IT engineers in charge of the project.”

Although the tapeless system has been in operation since mid 2013, there are still some elements which are not being fully used. The concurrent 300 licenses show the amount of possible users and applications. It is not a question of training more operators, but of understanding and exploiting the new expanded capabilities of the system. The current goal is to optimise the system and to train the users to make best use of it.

The currently used workspace storage provides a total of 2.5PB for about 110,000 programme units which is filled by three parallel ingest paths in 24/7/365 mode (daily 155TB, monthly 465TB and yearly 558TB) as well as by growing files import.

Solving problems In adopting the system, there were some early difficulties with the interoperability between the MAM and PAM systems, caused by the interfaces and the MXF wrappers. In addition, there have been problems with formats, with information about the aspect ratio getting lost after importing material into the archive.

While retrieving the material from the archive, it was displayed in the wrong format. The information had been lost at the MPI software component.

The Polsat engineers sat together and proposed a solution, which then was implemented by the programmers from Avid into specific subfolders containing the correct information. Such troubleshooting can be compared with openheart surgery where any mistake can cause the death of the system.

Sometimes such ‘problems’ can lead to a delay of the final acceptance of the whole package. But in November 2013, with all problems addressed, Polsat’s tapeless infrastructure went into full operation.

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The Workflow

The enhanced studio, with the newsroom in the background, measures 300sqm

Doing the business in Poland Philip Stevens follows up his trip to Warsaw last year with a look at the new business channel set up by TVN JANUARY SAW the launch of the TVN Biznes i Swiat (Business and The World) channel from the broadcaster’s complex in Warsaw. Seen as complementing the flagship TVN24 news channel, the outlet’s programming includes the latest breaking news from the Polish and foreign markets, reporting of international affairs, as well as expert analyses and commentaries.

“When our first news channel, TVN24, was launched 13 years ago, numerous media experts claimed this an entirely pointless idea,” explains Adam Pieczynski, TVN’s management board

our own team was responsible for designing the new studio and implementing the upgrades.”

Switching the pictures

Colourful graphics and the use of video displays are integral parts of the new business channel studio at TVN24 member in charge of news and current affairs and editor-in-chief TVN24 and TVN24 Biznes i Swiat. “TVN 24 is now the most watched news channel in Poland. TVN24 Business and The World is a logical development direction, and I’m sure it will be popular with those who want to be best informed.”

The new channel meant that the original business studio had to be upgraded and completely redesigned — an operation overseen by Jarosław Kielmel,

TVN24’s technical director.

“The timing for the upgrade was challenging. We started the planning work in October and the studio had to be ready on Christmas Eve. That schedule allowed us a few days to make sure everything worked well before the launch. In effect, the design, ordering and installation phases blended into one.”

He continues, “Continuing our policy of keeping as many operations as possible in-house,

“When it came to choosing a vision mixer, we selected the newest Kahuna 360 switcher,” explains Kielmel. “Our new set-up does not involve having traditional programme directors controlling the output. We have a vision switcher operator who works in close co-operation with the journalist who is responsible for the on-air production.”

He goes on, “Snell enabled the Kahuna to work in 4K so that it could feed our new Barco videowall without the need of a separate controller. We are using HD sources plus output from the Vizrt system installed on a PC with dual head graphics card to provide some stunning images on the wall.”

Another backdrop is provided by a 103in TH-103PF12U Panasonic plasma screen giving full HD resolution with

1920x1080 pixels and providing a contrast ratio of 40,000:1.

Sharp seamless LED displays provide a third source of images on background screens.

Lighting for the new studio is provided by ARRI L-Series L7C lamps. These provide continuous colour temperature, tint and hue adjustments from 2800K to 10,000K, between full plus or minus green and RGBW colours.

Displaying the data “For any business channel, providing the most up to date information is vital. Our ticker system is now generating multiple elements, plus we have a live data stream from Reuters feeding directly into the Vizrt graphics structure. This provides all kinds of realtime — or slightly delayed — financial data to generate on demand template graphs, charts, and so,” states Kielmel. www.arri.com www.barco.com www.panasonic.com www.sharp-world.com www.snellgroup.com www.sony.com www.vintenradamec.com www.vizrt.com

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RAI has run a series of tests to identify the most suitable modus operandi and technology for proceeding with the digitisation of its archives

The Workflow

Italian history Italian state broadcaster RAI is ready to embark upon the digitisation of its archive, which totals over a million hours of transmission. Mike Clark reports ITALY’S RADIOTELEVISIONE Italiana (RAI) is about to launch the latest step in the digitisation of its massive archive of film and television material. Recorded on a variety of media since the 1950’s, and more or less equally divided between radio and television, the archive represents about a million hours of transmission.

The project aims to help prevent the material’s deterioration and to make the resulting digital content available as a resource for further transmission, for public use and for eventual publication and sale off-line.

The company has run a series of tests to identify the most suitable modus operandi and technology for proceeding with the digitisation process of its archives. Giorgio Balocco, of RAI’s Teche archive directorate in Turin, along with colleagues from the broadcaster’s leadingedge Research Centre (also in Turin), is a member of the project’s technical team.

“RAI has participated for years in initiatives and activity for the conservation of audiovisual material, acquiring valuable experience in this sector,” Balocco says. “As well as the work it has carried out in recent years inhouse, RAI has also played a key role in European projects such as the Presto “family” of projects by the three largest European broadcast archives: BBC, RAI and France’s INA (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel). In particular, Presto, PrestoSpace — in which we were responsible for the metadata aspects — and PrestoPrime — in which RAI’s Turin Research Centre with engineer Laurent Boch was responsible for technical coordination. RAI now has sufficient know-how, as far as hardware, software and processes are concerned, to carry out the digitisation of an ample range of media in-house and some of our systems have in fact already been operating for several years. One of those about to take off is that involving our large important film archives.”

The prototype system used to carry out preliminary study and research included DeBrie Technologies’ ‘Memory’

The archive digitisation test phase was carried out using a DeBrie Technologies Memory telecine telecine/film-scanner, but the final systems for the actual digitisation will be purchased after a call for tenders, based on RAI’s requirements, which the team has fine-tuned in this test phase. The scanners will be chosen from a higher category of machines (such as Debrie’s Film Transfer SD & HD 16/35 or the Sondor Altra Mk3), and purchased along with the rest of the configuration following the call for tenders.

Balocco continues, “There are approximately 340,000 films to be digitised — a total of approximately 28,000 hours, the

oldest of which date back to the fifties. The majority of the film content is newsreel footage and documentaries. About 90% is on 16mm film, the rest almost all 35mm. The Rome films will be digitised in the RAI’s Salario archive premises on the Eternal City’s Via Salaria, where they are currently stored. Almost all the rest of this important material is in RAI’s Milan facilities, where our sports archive is located.”

The majority of the archive footage covers a period running from the fifties through to 1985, so the content is an important part of

recent Italian history. It is therefore extremely important for it to be safely preserved and archived for future consultation. The enormous stock of films in storage has been carefully examined to enable RAI to decide in what order they should be digitised.

For the preparatory work, the technicians working upstream of the actual digitisation work at film rewinding and inspection tables to check the physical condition of the material. The content is not actually viewed, just wound from one reel to another. At this stage, as well as inspecting the condition of the actual film and cleaning it if necessary, splices are checked and re-splicing work carried out where required.

If RAI’s AV technicians (those involved in the digitisation work will be from RAI’s production division) decide at this point that the film is in a particularly critical state, it is put aside for a more careful in-depth restoration process by external specialist companies.

Balocco continues, “If the films’ content has to be viewed, flat-bed

editing units are used, which are similar to the rewinding and inspection tables, but have heads and lamps or LEDs that enable the film’s video and audio to be checked in detail, as well as making certain that the reels’ content is interesting and correctly edited.

For this stage in the work cycle, we are currently using Prevost and Intercine machines which were carefully overhauled before being brought back into service.”

The reel of film is then mounted on the film scanner and, after the unit has been appropriately set, the process begins. The film scanner feeds out a digital HD SDI signal, which is fed to a server with an acquisition card that records the signal and creates MXF (Material Exchange Format) files. Although not involved in the actual digitisation process, the test line also featured SONY IMX VTR units, used to compare the output format.

As well as for the actual film scanners used on the project, there will also be a call for tenders among specialist suppliers for all the hardware and software involved in the IT aspects of the digitisation work, such as servers, storage, LTO-6 libraries and work stations.

Balocco concludes, “Following the tender and the purchase of all the equipment to be used on the definitive digitisation line, work should be completed in five or six years.”

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The Workflow

Second nature Often, there is a lack of awareness of the potential of the web and behaviour of their audience, and ways you can make money on the internet.”

tablets will provide most of the second screen usage.”

Beyond that, will second screens promote ‘live’ — rather than on demand or time shifted — viewing? “Broadcasters are increasingly keen on ‘live events’ that keep viewers to their schedules, and create a ‘realtime’ social buzz by trending on Twitter and social chatter. The investment in ‘synchronised’ second screen apps helps this objective. It offers potential advertisers two chances of getting the attention, and maybe the engagement, of the viewer.”

Smart thinking

Building on success

But does the second screen impact on ‘traditional’ viewing habits? “It is clear that audiences’ attention is no longer fully on the main screen,” maintains Peter Cowley, CEO Spirit Digital Media. “In some cases, the second screen is now the TV as audiences focus most attention on digital activities.”

With that in mind, will smart TVs be used for both first and second screen viewing? “It depends on the mode of the viewer. If they are in a shared viewing environment, the smart TV will be augmented by other screens, so as not to disturb the main screen activity. If the viewer is on his or her own, I can see the possibility that the smart TV can provide extra content and so replace the second physical screen. My prediction is that mobile and

“A second screen campaign is always built on the success of the first screen content or brand,” maintains Kieran Bresnan, managing director EMEA of Massive Interactive, a leader in platform software and design for multiscreen TV everywhere entertainment. “Once you have that then you can start to build the campaign — be it voting on live TV, gaming odds, behind the scenes or bonus content. Your first screen will then form the basis of the campaign to promote the second screen — tied in with a bit of smart PR!” Bresnan says that where a broadcaster transmits a show with millions of viewers, it will be easier to convert them to second screen adopters. “For example, at the Winter Olympics the BBC used second screen technology for viewers to enjoy every element of

Second screens are a natural part of life for an increasing number of viewers and has produced successes as a marketing tool. Following our Second Screen Forum in February, Philip Stevens goes deeper into how second screen technologies are being employed

‘MEDIA-MESHING’ — actions that in some way relate to what viewers are watching on TV — is practiced by around a quarter of the UK population. The survey that produced that statistic suggests the figure rises to 44% for young people. The same study showed that 11% use social networks while watching television, while 3% interact directly with programmes via apps. Significantly, second screen has produced some pretty spectacular successes as a marketing tool. However, studies reveal there are still some in the broadcast industry who do not really understand this new level of viewing experience, and the technology is not something that can be ignored.

Guido Dukker, founder and partner at Webrangers, an Amsterdam-based cross media agency explains, “The second screen market is developing quickly, and provides broadcasters and producers with access to new revenue. I believe it is now possible to provide viewers with exciting cross media campaigns

Guido Dukker, founder and partner, Webrangers

Peter Cowley, CEO, Spirit Digital Media

that are funded through digital advertising solutions.”

Dukker explains how he creates a second screen campaign.

“We watch a test episode of the programme, but then look at it from the audience perspective.

That means researching just who is the audience, which personas can be defined, what makes or breaks the programme for these people? This is so important because people use different ways to interact while watching.”

Then engagement factors of the programme are considered.

Does the format include an invitation to engage? Is commenting, liking or voting an action which contributes to the viewing experience? Next, financing. Does it come from the production budget, or does the second screen finance itself?

“We decide on the goals — extra viewers, better ratings, money, enhanced experience.

Then, should we make a website, app, Facebook page, YouTube channel, mash-up, or something else? We present producers with a set of designs to bring it alive.

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The Workflow

11% of people use social networks while watching television, while 3% interact directly with programmes via apps

synchronisation. In its simplest definition, ACR technology gives a device such as a tablet, smartphone, or smart TV the ability to become ‘content-aware’ and ‘know’ what is being watched or heard. By being content-aware,

the connected device can make use of the broadband connection to retrieve related material.

Synching the campaigns We’ve seen that many viewers use second screens, but do broadcasters

need to do more to educate in the use of the technology?

“Maybe, but not hugely,” states Lindsey Clay, chief executive, Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial television in the UK. “It is a pretty intuitive activity

anyway and the broadcasters are doing well, alerting viewers to second screen opportunities and encouraging them to get involved.

There are also warm-up ads for things like Shazam, letting viewers know to get ready for an

Andy Nobbs, chief marketing officer, Civolution

Lindsey Clay, chief executive, Thinkbox the Games. However, they have used their first screen — both BBC1 and BBC2 — to market the app and drive awareness.”

But which comes first, the app or the content?

“We are the creator of the apps for the content owners,” explains Bresnan. “Whilst we are heavily involved in strategy, ultimately we are asked to develop the app around the content, but always with the user experience in mind.”

He reports there have been a number of content owners who possess a great platform and technology roadmap, but with low audience and engagement levels due to poor content. “Conversely we have met content owners with amazing material, but offering a poor or bug-filled user experience, which is only available on one or two devices that no one watches. The goal is to have both engaging content available on a great delivery platform with a fantastic user experience that everyone watches.”

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Synchronising is key Another company heavily involved with making the technology work is Netherlands-headquartered, Civolution. “We provide an extensive portfolio of digital solutions for media interaction — that is TV-synchronised experiences for cross-screen applications and smart devices, media intelligence and media protection,” explains Andy Nobbs, chief marketing officer.

Both audio watermarking and fingerprinting are key ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) technologies used for cross-screen

www.riedel.net

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The Workflow upcoming Shazamable ad.

Thinkbox has used this technique itself with its Harvey and Rabbit TV campaign.”

In 2012, ITV launched its Ad Sync format, which allows viewers to interact via a second screen with a brand and to explore more about the advertisers’ products or services. One highly successful second screen campaign involved supermarket retailer, ASDA. Here, users were invited to build their own snowman, with an array of buttons, hats, scarves and noses from which to choose. When their snowman was complete, users were asked to share their creation on social media and enter a competition for a chance to win a £500 shop. The creative achieved engagement rates of over 54%, with 20% clicking through to ASDA’s site. Over 36,000 snowmen were created and 14% of these creations were shared on social media.

Group and head of ShowPal. “TV was generating a significant amount of online action, but that activity was going to third parties, such as Twitter, Google and IMDb. We, as a broadcaster, wanted to repatriate this online activity within a controlled environment. This led us to partnering with app development company, Axonista, and jointly developing ShowPal which launched in October 2013.”

This app uses ACR to determine the point in the

The fashion factor “We started thinking about second screen in mid 2012,” explains Stephen Grant, director of online of Ireland’s TV3

Stephen Grant, director of online, TV3 Group and head of ShowPal

broadcast being viewed. It then sends pre-created links for complementary information to the second screen — synched to what’s being broadcast. It also has a Twitter plug-in prepopulated with the #hashtag for the show and a flexible HTML5 space for polls, quizzes, and so on.

Grant says that TV3 saw ShowPal as a way to develop deeper relationships with its viewers, and keep them engaged with content. “As a commercial broadcaster, we also saw it as an opportunity to link what was happening on-screen — both within and outside of ad breaks — to advertisers, making it easier for viewers to act on what they saw on screen.”

And there have been some notable successes. Online retailer Littlewoods is the sponsor of X Factor on TV3, and what the judges are wearing is a big influencer of fashion trends.

During the programme, Littlewoods’ staff identify what Nicole Scherzinger is wearing and locate a similar outfit on the retailer’s website. The details are

TV3 have begun building two-screen show formats using the ShowPal app communicated to the ShowPal team who drop a tag into the app that reads ‘Want to get Nicole’s look? — click here’.

“Our viewers love this as they want to get Nicole’s ‘look’ — and Littlewoods is deepening its sponsorship and driving immediate sales from what’s happening on screen,” states Grant.

That’s today, but what about the future? Grant states, “We are constantly working to improve the viewers’ second screen

experience with ShowPal. TV3 is looking to work with other broadcasters and offering ShowPal as a second screen solution. We are also building two-screen show formats using the ShowPal platform and we are exploring bespoke advertiserspecific variants.” www.civolution.com www.massiveInteractive.com www.spiritdigital.co.uk www.thinkbox.tv www.tv3.ie www.webrangers.nl

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Virtual Sets

Forum A man stands alone on a cramped stage, but onscreen he’s perched atop a disintegrating iceberg, explaining climate change. Virtual set technology is growing ever more sophisticated, Philip Stevens poses questions to experts from some of the top companies in the field

The reality of virtual sets VIRTUAL SET technology has been around for some time, but it is an arena that is ever-developing. And as the systems improve and the ability to render scenes with increased realism improve virtual reality in broadcast is becoming more commonplace.

This month we’ve brought together a number of participants from different sides of the virtual reality and augemented reality business to explore, among other topics, the challenges facing suppliers, the potential of 4K broadcasts and the use of ‘augmented reality studios’.

Our panel comprises (in alphabetical order) Ali Ahmadi, senior product manager, Litepanels; Ofir Benovici, VP marketing at Orad; Stjepan Cajic, CEO StypeGrip: Ellen Camloh, senior director worldwide product marketing at NewTek; Miguel Churruca, marketing director, Brainstorm; Phillip Dalgoutte, product manager, Vinten Radamec; James Eddershaw, sales director Shotoku UK; Luke Harrison, product manager, RT Software; Gerhard Lang, chief engineering officer, Vizrt; Robert Pancake, owner and lead designer, virtual-studioset.com.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the suppliers of virtual reality services?

Cajic: When you first face it, virtual reality is a pretty complicated thing. So our biggest challenge is to train the new people in this field to fully understand the technology and to feel comfortable using it in their studio setup.

Our biggest challenge in manufacturing and designing the equipment is to eliminate this learning process and make everything plug and play. I would say that we are half-way there.

Churruca: In the early days the biggest challenge was to achieve realtime performance. Now, with the latest advances in workstations and GPU technology, the challenge is more on the creative side — to be able to replicate reality in a realistic manner. This means technology must help the designers’ work, providing tools that facilitate their work, allowing them to concentrate on creation.

Stjepan Cajic, StypeGrip Dalgoutte: As VR and AR become more prevalent, it’s becoming more challenging to produce a system that is easy to

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Virtual Sets

Forum

James Eddershaw, Shotoku UK install and configure. Lenses, for example, need to be configured specifically to each manufacturer’s specification, which can be time and labour intensive. The same flexibility is needed when integrating with AR/VR providers, as there are subtle differences between systems. This means every installation is different so it’s imperative to work closely with providers and system integrators in each instance.

Eddershaw: Overcoming old pre-conceptions of VR as something from the mid-1990s with super-computers! Today’s VR solutions are very different — they’re considerably simpler to implement, and can be used more subtly without overwhelming the creative process or getting in the way of traditional production values.

Harrison: Finding designers that understand realtime remains a challenge. While there is a glut of skilled 3D designers in the industry, they do not always have enough experience of realtime delivery. But perhaps the biggest challenge is moving to photorealism, which is still beyond many VR systems — despite the massive increase in render capabilities over the last five years or so. Sets rendered in post for film, or even games can look fantastic, but maintaining this at frame rate is still a challenge.

Luke Harrison, RT Software

What has been the most significant development in virtual production technology in recent years?

Benovici: In many ways, virtual production has transformed in recent years from a tool which, in some cases, was perceived as a gimmick, to a day-to-day production device. Its ROI has always been unbeatable, you can simply produce so many more shows in the same physical space, but there was always the issue of how ‘real’ it looks on air. With the improvement of computing power, we are now able to generate sets that the average user at home can’t tell are virtual.

We invested a lot of effort in creating tools that enhance the level of photorealism. A good example is our depth of field shader that imitates the depth of field effect of a camera zooming in on talent in a real

environment. Another example is a rich library of material shaders that helps designers create sets with realistic materials like glass, metal, wood and so on. Yet another good example is casting realtime shadows of virtual objects — which again elevate the level of photo realism. The other focus area is to integrate the virtual studio into the standard workflow environment.

For example integrating it into NRCS systems and thus allowing the journalists to control the editorial content of the virtual studio background. Lastly, we are investing major effort in

rooms, or even worlds, all with photoreal materials, surfaces and textures, and import the model as a set. In either case, it puts the tools into the hands of creative and technical people who don’t have enormous budgets.

Churruca: Apart from the continuous increase in processing power and image quality, possibly one of the most significant developments was the introduction of EasySet 3D, that started the segment of real 3D trackless, cost-effective and easyto-use virtual set solutions. This product made VR technology accessible to a wider range of

the continuing development of high-precision, simple to use encoder tracking systems for heads, pedestals and cranes.

Harrison: The advent of GPU processing has greatly increased the ability to provide more sophisticated keying, rendering and tracking. In the application of sports VR, the more sophisticated keying allows our tOG Sports system to respond in realtime to the lighting environment, while image-based tracking recognises camera movement. Both are crucial to provide a realistic result for virtual advertising. The move to

“Finding designers that understand realtime remains a challenge. While there is a glut of skilled 3D designers in the industry, they do not always have enough experience of realtime delivery” Luke Harrison, RT Software integrating all the virtual studio elements together, allowing a full blown virtual studio production to be run by a single operator — without compromising the production quality.

Camloh: Immersion rather than superimposition is what has most significantly propelled realism, coupled with broader tool access for virtual studios that don’t have the budget for highly specialised VR systems.

The introduction of 360° photorealistic virtual sets, known as Holographic LiveSets, into the TriCaster multi-camera production system helps break down those barriers. People can use a device as simple as their smartphone to capture a panoramic vista of a location.

They import it into Virtual Set Editor, and the presenter then appears in that 360° environment, transported into a seamless, immersive virtual scene. Or artists can use a prevalent 3D platform like LightWave to model props,

medium and smaller broadcasters, who saw the opening of a new range of possibilities that previously had only been achievable by large stations.

Eddershaw: Probably the single most significant development would be the widespread availability of affordable, powerful, PC-based graphics processing computers.

This has greatly reduced the capital investment and technical complexity of VR production.

In terms of tracking, it would be

Ellen Camloh, NewTek

Stype Grips data-encoded crane gave movement to Fox Sports’ Australian Football virtual sets

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The combination of live and virtual material can seem complex, but it can end up achieving more realistic scenes, optimising designers’ time and even reduce costs floating point framebuffers allows set rendering to provide 10- or even 12-bit resolution.

This, combined with a full shader-based pipeline, paves the way to a fully photo realistic set.

Lang: The increase in a system’s capabilities; graphics card, processor, keying, etc, is making it possible to produce a complete show out of one box.

This opens the doors to smaller organisations being able to do virtual productions.

Pancake: I think the most significant development in the virtual studio and chroma key video production space has been the reduction in overall cost for camera technology. The quality of DSLR video cameras and more traditional HD video cameras has made green screen video production so much easier than in the past. This has in turn led to an overall increase in the amount of post production and virtual set/virtual studio video productions. The second significant development has to be the internet as a video content delivery system. Ten years ago, many viewers were still struggling

with a slow dial up connection.

Even five years ago, few viewers had the ability to watch video content streamed from the internet to their television. Today, many viewers have high-speed connections which allow them to stream HD content directly to their TVs, tablets and computers.

Will a move to 4K make any major change to the technology?

If so, how?

Benovici: It is yet to be seen. The Orad solution is already 4K enabled, so we are set for such a change. I do believe, however, that it will take some time until we start seeing 4K production coming up.

Churruca: When 4K is widespread at home, this will mean

the quality requirements of the programmes will be much higher than today. It also means the processing power of the hardware involved in production should increase as a consequence.

Therefore, hardware solutions must cope with these new requirements, at the same time that more attention to detail, realism of the scenes, composition, graphics and background scenes will be required than is often the case today.

Dalgoutte: 4K file sizes are huge, so storing and processing them is a challenge at the moment in the UK, as is broadcast distribution. From our perspective the challenge lies in reporting where exactly the camera is pointing. With 4K you need to report that position in more granular detail because at that fine resolution it’s distracting to see the VR image jumping by even just a few pixels at a time.

This means higher resolution tracking is essential.

Lang: Going 4K will bring back the same problems that were present with introducing HD. On one hand, you will have

Virtual Sets

Forum

Ofir Benovici, Orad

Robert Pancake, Virtual Studio Set

an increase of overall image quality, but on the other the systems will have a decrease in power. This will result in having to step back in the amount of details and functionality of the sets. There will also have to be a step back in the number of sources — live, clips, streams, etc — contributing to the final composition.

Pancake: The introduction of 4K camera and production capability will have some

impacts on our business in the near future. As UHD and 4K televisions become more available, viewers will seek more content created and delivered at higher resolutions. Once this happens, editors will need assets, motion graphics and animated virtual backgrounds created and developed for this higher resolution. The backgrounds and animations will need to hold up to the additional detail enabled by the increased

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Virtual Sets

Forum resolutions. Additionally, video editing software and work stations will need to be upgraded to handle the additional processing required by the increased video resolutions and productions.

Lighting is key to good VR. Have changes to more energy efficient systems made a difference to the way VR systems are used?

Ahmadi: One of the core requirements of a virtual environment is the completely even distribution of light, even the corners of the green screen are rounded to prevent shadows.

Energy efficient LED fixtures from Litepanels provide soft and even distribution of light.

Cool-running LEDs also emit a fraction of the heat produced

Is there an increasing use of ‘augmented reality studios’ — a mix of virtual and live? And how does that affect you?

Miguel Churruca, Brainstorm by tungsten fixtures and have built-in dimmers. Because less HVAC is required to cool the studio, LED lights can be used in smaller spaces, making VR more affordable for new market applications.

Lang: The new efficient lighting has opened more doors mainly because they produce very little heat. Rooms with lower ceilings and less air are still able to handle lengthy productions without any time constraints. Adding more lights to reduce uneven lit areas is not a problem anymore, either.

Benovici: Yes, we definitely see that trend, implemented in two ways — having augmented reality elements added to a real studio, as well as having a ‘hybrid studio’ — part of which is real and part of the background is green/ blue and used for virtual placement in the background.

Cajic: I would agree.

Augmented reality is where I see the biggest use of VR. It’s a lot more natural than a virtual studio in that it does not try to deceive the viewer, but just offers some meaningful addition to the real picture. It helps the viewer understand the complex data by adding stunning effects to it. In the end, this does not affect our particular technology in any way since it’s the same principle as a virtual studio.

Churruca: Broadcasters affect technology as they evolve the way they produce television.

Sometimes, when a new technology arrives, users want to make the most out of it, but as time goes by they tend to optimise its usage. In the case of VR, the combination of live and

virtual material can seem complex, but it can end up achieving more realistic scenes, optimising designers’ time and even reduce costs.

Eddershaw: This is probably the most significant difference in the use of VR today compared with earlier eras. From a tracking perspective it is generally no different, however, when virtual objects are placed very close to real objects it does make lens

calibration and tracking accuracy even more critical as differences in motion can be more easily seen. Simply by following some basic guidelines on the placement and design of AR objects within real sets these effects can be easily mitigated.

Harrison: Yes absolutely, particularly for sports production. From a render point of view, there is little difference.

A more significant issue is the accuracy of tracking and sophistication of keying. VR drift is less noticeable in a full virtual set because there are fewer real world references, but with AR inaccuracies become more obvious. So things such as lens modelling and synchronisation are crucial.

Keying for AR is important, too. Mixing background and foreground keying is desirable and combining this with ‘dynamic depth’ keying allows a much better sense of interaction.

What is the next major development on the VR front?

Gerhard Lang, Vizrt

Benovici: Virtual studio is a mature technology — it has been around for 20 years, so it will probably be more of an evolution and not a revolution.

There is a growing tendency to decorate sets with video walls and screens, and in many ways this could be seen as the evolution of the virtual studio.

Also, put the chroma key and blue boxes to one side and replace them with content fed to the video wall that serves as the background of the studio.

Cajic: The object tracking systems are slowly emerging. This should be the next thing that could open up more possibilities into the VR environment, especially in sports analysis.

Camloh: We think our vision of more-accessible creative tools on more common platforms is the trend for the future. What’s more, the economics won’t be out of reach for people to incorporate more VR-type segments into their programmes.

How powerful a brand can be or the amount of creativity its people have doesn’t always correlate with the size of its budget, so NewTek will continue with its mission of enabling even

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Virtual Sets

Forum those organisations with modest finances to express both.

Churruca: In terms of software technology, I believe the next step is to go beyond the trackless/tracking dichotomy, and provide 3D tools that allow an even more advanced integration between real images or characters with the synthetic environments.

Dalgoutte: Commercial broadcasters will increasingly use both VR and AR to drive revenues through product placement. It is already being used in sporting events — changing the boards during a game or according to region.

This will become more prevalent in regular programming with the insertion of virtual objects or changing branding of products and so on.

Eddershaw: Camera tracking systems are evolving all the time with the focus on precision and absolute positioning accuracy.

We have partnered with nCam, a company well established in the film world with their advanced tracking systems for CG previsualisation. Our deep

Phillip Dalgoutte, Vinten Radamec

Orad’s ProSet solution features a library of shaders, including depth of field

understanding of the technical and practical demands of live VR/AR broadcasts and nCam’s innovative technical solution will make a very exciting combination in this market place, and I believe will open up VR production opportunities to an even wider customer base.

Harrison: Almost certainly image tracking, both for cameras and objects. Imagebased camera tracking, with either the aid of targets in the camera’s field of view or existing set features — the

AR case — negates the need for sensors on the camera.

Whilst such systems currently exist, none are yet completely 100% reliable.

Lang: 4K, of course, is on the forefront of everyone’s mind right now, but beyond that I think the introduction of new keying technologies will be a major factor. We have seen some very promising development in keying technology which does not require an evenly lit uniform colour background. This will

open the doors even further for anyone to begin creating their virtual productions.

Pancake: I think the next major development in the virtual news studio will be the development of more affordable realtime 3D virtual spaces and camera hardware that works in conjunction with software to place a user in an interactive virtual environment. Currently, the hardware necessary for pulling off a realtime virtual studio is cost prohibitive for most small to medium sized

video productions. But, I see this price falling in the near term allowing a wider variety of video producers to take advantage of this technology in their productions. www.brainstorm.es www.litepanels.com www.newtek.com www.orad.tv www.rtsw.co.uk www.shotoku.co.uk www.stypegrip.com www.vintenradamec.com www.virtual-studio-set.com www.vizrt.com

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The Workflow

The lifecycle of an asset Kevin Shaw, lead technologist at BBC Studios and Post Production Digital Media Services, explores the most valuable thing the industry possesses — its content THE WORD ‘asset’ — or ‘asset management’ — is now used so often that we could be forgiven for forgetting what it means.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that an asset is ‘a thing of use or value’, and for most media businesses their content is their lifeblood. So it makes sense to treat content as a critical asset, and ensure that it’s safeguarded and available as necessary.

When discussing asset management, people often talk about monetising content in the future, and this is certainly important.

But the value can also be realised in a different way. At BBC Studios and Post Production Digital Media Services we recently conserved the archive content of renowned dance company Rambert by

digitising it. Their collection — on VHS tapes — is the company’s cultural history.

If they wanted to revive one of their ballets, the choreography was only available as a video recording, so they needed continuing access to their archive.

With VHS players rapidly dying out, it was becoming harder for the company to watch the recordings. Rambert’s motivation to digitise its archive was, then, not to monetise it, but to conserve it for future generations of dancers and choreographers. They’ve also made it accessible, free of charge, to the public, so it serves to improve public awareness and extend their marketing reach.

The critical point to remember is that, if an archive is on tape, you have to address this issue now. Every time a tape is played it

Renowned London dance company Rambert restored its deteriorating VHS archive and has now made it available to the public

Kevin Shaw, BBC S&PP is being worn, reducing its quality the next time it is played: tape has a very finite life.

And, of course, it’s increasingly difficult to find players for the many tape formats we’ve seen over the 60-year life of video recording.

The solution is digitisation, but on its own that is not enough. It may seem simple to go to the local computer store, buy a couple of USB disk drives, write the content to them and put them on the shelf.

But that’s not a good long-term idea for media. That sort of disk drive is designed to last no more than a few years in reasonably constant use. Leaving them on the shelf means they’ll almost certainly fail the first time you go back to them, so your media assets still have no protection.

Protection So the first consideration must be to protect the assets into the future. That means making copies and then continually checking the integrity of the data. Whether

the archive is stored on spinning disks or data tape, and whatever form the archive storage takes, you need to be continually aware that the data is securely stored and can be retrieved when required.

Because of this need for continual checking, unless your archive is so vast you can sustain your own dedicated team it makes sense to hand the task to an organisation that has the resources to continually monitor the integrity of your data. They’ll operate securely redundant storage, usually in multiple locations, and will have archive management software which is continually running checksum calculations on the data across the sites to spot errors and rewrite files before they become a problem.

Visibility The archive may exist to raise revenues or protect a cultural heritage; it may be open to all or just a small group of researchers.

Whatever the requirement, the content will need to be accessed by some people, so it is vital that the archive is visible.

First, there must be good metadata to help the researcher find the right content quickly and accurately. A search which brings up hundreds of possibilities is as useless as one which delivers nothing. Each archive will be different and therefore have a different metadata schema.

BBC S&PP won a FOCAL Award for remastering Sir David Attenborough’s Life on Earth and Trials of Life

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16mm film, well restored, is a perfect match for high definition television. If you perform a full restoration today, you can regard the archive as the definitive version for the future Normally the database will be linked to a browse server, so you can view the selected material, and maybe even perform simple functions like clipping or assembly editing, without recovering the full resolution files from the archive.

For some archives only a very small closed user group should be allowed to access the content; for others it could be opened up to a larger group or even potentially everybody. It depends on the nature of the content and the way you hope to realise its value. But the big difference to the tape and indeed the simple files on disk approach is that the full resolution master file is always copied when needed, which avoids loss or damage during use. An asset is most vulnerable precisely at the time it is most valuable!

Restoration Another central question is how much restoration should be carried out before committing content to a managed archive.

Restoration tools — automatic and manual — are already extremely capable. We recently won a FOCAL Award for remastering two landmark Sir David Attenborough nature documentary series, Life on Earth (1979) and Trials of Life (1990), and although the 16mm film was more than 20 years old, it now looks like it was shot yesterday.

16mm film, well restored, is a perfect match for high definition television. That means that if you perform a full restoration today, you can then regard the archive as the definitive version for the future.

Making the content immediately available to its target market of users is a good way to determine priorities for restoration. Market demand for content will demonstrate what is popular, and user comments on quality will underline what work is required. Together they will help you set up a targeted programme of work. For some organisations, unlocking the value of the archive content is sufficient to pay for the cost of the archive.

Preservation In conclusion, there are a lot of organisations who have audiovisual material which should be preserved because it will have value, in some way, in the future.

Along with the obvious broadcasters and production companies, these organisations range from sports federations to charities (we have recently undertaken the management of Oxfam’s archive, for instance).

The chances are that the content will exist across a broad range of formats. This will include film, and at BBC Studios and Post Production Digital Media Services we maintain one of the last functional Rank

Cintel Mk III telecines with gates for obscure gauges like 9.5mm, as well as the regular 8, 16 and 35mm.

But much more pressing is video and audio tape, which is degrading faster than film and is

The Workflow significantly damaged by the wear of each play. Again, we have a remarkable collection of machines to get the best out of those tapes, and a team of engineers who can service our VTRs and customise the

hardware to create bespoke preservation workflows.

The critical message, though, is that you cannot put off this task: preservation has to be considered now or the content will degenerate and may be lost forever.

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The Workflow

Preparing for the kick-off

Philip Stevens continues his preview of the World Cup by talking to key players in the coverage

BRAZIL 2014 will be the fourth FIFA World Cup for Host Broadcast Services (HBS) and the fifth for Francis Tellier, CEO of HBS Group of companies. In 1998, he was head of operations at TVRS’98 in France, but that was the last World Cup where the host broadcasting operation was handled by a local host broadcaster. As such, Tellier was director general of the last Host Broadcaster of an era — and with his appointment to HBS in 1999, he was the first of a new one.

Why was the change so important? Tellier explains: “The principle of reciprocity had reached its limits and people in the know realised that Host Broadcasting — with its many facets, such as dealing

Live 4K was trialled at the Confederations Cup in 2013 in readiness for the World Cup in Brazil beginning in June with Rights Holders, contracting with Federations and so on — had to be managed differently.

That was 15 years ago and what a mind-boggling revolution we have witnessed in the

world of high definition broadcast and new media over that period!”

“Today HBS is FIFA’s dedicated broadcaster. And ‘dedicated’ means the teams live every working day and sleep every night invariably dreaming of FIFA deliverables somewhere around the world,” states Tellier.

He says that FIFA is a very demanding employer and receives only the best. “Our milestones include, the MultiFeed concept implemented in 2002, full HD with the extraordinary Media Server — FIFA MAX — in 2006, 25 matches in 3D in 2010 and new state-of-the-art multimedia services in 2014.”

Planning takes time Two-to-four years before the implementation of a broadcast operation, HBS does an indepth audit of all the conditions and resources of the host country. “No two host countries are alike,” states Tellier. “For example, there are 11,000km between venues in Brazil, while only 3000km were involved to tour all sites in South Africa in 2010.”

Having said that, the 2014 FIFA World Cup Production Plan is largely based on the highly successful South Africa tournament coverage.

However, several upgrades will be implemented, including increasing the number of match cameras from 29 to 34,

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All 12 venues will be equipped with 16 XT3 multi-format servers for replays, highlight editing, graphic insertion, clipping and content management” — Luc Doneux, EVS

providing one additional Clips Compilation Channel to the Multi-Feeds, and a new fully edited 26 minute programme — the FIFA Preview Show.

Tellier continues, “An event such as the FIFA World Cup is the ideal platform to deliver an increased package of multimedia content. For the first time users and viewers will be able to choose their own perspective of the event. With an interactive camera plan, fans watching the games on their screens will be able to select and review multiple angles at a given moment.”

“One of HBS’ attributes is the ability to make key industry suppliers work together to offer innovative products, under total reliability. This has led to longlasting partnerships, a good example being the arrangement with EVS. Such agreements work well with Sony, a longstanding official FIFA Partner.”

Showcasing the drama Mark Grinyer, head of sports business development, 4K & 3D live sports, Sony Professional, explains what the relationship

involves. “As HBS’s delivery partner for the 2014 tournament, Sony is responsible for the provision of all venue services, including systems integrations, equipment and staff. Together with our own strategic partners, we will be responsible for delivering every single minute of live match footage from the tournament, as the theatre of football unfolds.

It’s a huge coup to have been once again selected by HBS to provide venue services for the 2014 tournament.”

He states that the plans call for capturing the final in 4K. “Having delivered some of the world’s most high-profile events, including the Confederations Cup, where live 4K was trialled, we believe its use for the World Cup represents a major milestone in the future of sports production. We’re confident sports fans will be wowed by the most immersive viewing experience of the World Cup to date, and we look forward to working with FIFA, HBS and our partners to bring the thrill of the game to them.”

The Workflow Grinyer believes that the strong working relationship that has been built with HBS over the years, and Sony’s experience of sports production technology, will be showcased in full in Brazil. “Collectively we will push new boundaries for live sports production.”

Recording the FIFA tournament

Tellier: “The teams live every working day and sleep every night invariably dreaming of FIFA deliverables somewhere around the world”

Grinyer: “Collectively we will push new boundaries for live sports production”

In May 2013, EVS Broadcast Equipment was appointed to provide technology solutions for live production, centralised broadcast media server and filebased media sharing systems, and new multimedia distribution infrastructure in Brazil.

“All twelve venues will be equipped with sixteen XT3 multi-format servers for replays, highlight editing, graphic insertion, clipping and content management,” reveals Luc Doneux, executive vice president of the company’s sports division.

“We’ve also added some new features for this global tournament, including implementing the advanced multi-angles production tool, as

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The Workflow hours of added-value content for their global audiences,” declares Doneux.

For the first time, HBS will be providing new media distribution capabilities to broadcasters. This process relies on EVS’ C-Cast multimedia distribution platform. C-Cast technology will connect the live production infrastructures to a central cloud-based platform, aggregating live streams, multiangle clips, stats, and social network feeds. These will be distributed to affiliate broadcasters to offer extended multimedia consumption to their viewers, as a second screen application. Two of those broadcasters are HRT from Croatia and ZDF in Germany.

Gruschwitz: “Something of which we have to be very aware in these days, of course, is the overall cost of mounting such an operation” well as extensive multi-media content distribution infrastructure.”

EVS’ new LSMConnect, MultiReview, and C-Cast agent tools lie at the heart of the live production workflow along with XT3 live production servers.

A combination of EVS XT3 servers and the IPDirector production asset management suite drive all the ‘emotion’ highlights packages, while the compilation of all the best clips will be managed using the new MultiReview solutions.

Within the IBC, more than 100 EVS IPDirector suites will be used to manage live incoming feeds and access to the FIFA Media Asset Exchange (FIFA MAX) server containing match feeds, clips, highlights, city profiles and other relevant data.

In all 12 XT3 will handle 4500 hours of storage that will be accommodated, based on EVS XStore SAN. The IPDirector suites will also be utilised for the live logging of events. Access is provided for the multilateral production team for further editing and programming as well as to Media Rights Licensees (MRLs) to browse, access and download the content.

Electronic News Gathering (ENG) operations at the various venues will be facilitated based

spokesperson for HRT, picks up the story: “During the live broadcasts we will utilise two ENGs for the matches in which the Croatian team plays. We plan to have one camera on top of the stadium, while the other will be near the changing room area so that interviews can be arranged.” HRT will deploy an on-site OB truck to combine the international feed with HRT’s own ENG output. “We

including a studio in Rio at the Copacabana.”

Gruschwitz says the broadcasters will employ their own technical equipment installed at the IBC and at the matches involving the German team. “We plan to use between three and five cameras in unilateral flash positions or in the mix zone,” he adds.

When it comes to personalising further the

“We’re confident sports fans will be wowed by the most immersive viewing experience of the World Cup to date” Mark Grinyer, Sony Professional

Croatian coverage

Cosic: “HRT will not have its own studio in Brazil, but our presenters will be working from our main broadcasting centre in Zagreb” on 32 EVS Xedio Dispatcher for rough cut editing, logging and transfer from local ingest points to the IBC. The EBIF (Extended Basic International Feed) room within the IBC will be based on XT3 servers, LSM Remote and new Connect platform, IPEdit for realtime timeline editing and EPSIO FX for on air graphic insertions.

Thirty six Adobe Premiere stations, along with the EVS IPLink plugin panel will be used to create final edits of World Cup updates, promos, behind the scenes footage and multimedia packages. All the stations have direct access to IPDirector database containing all ingested clips. “The complete set-up will enable FIFA and Rights Holders to produce many

“We started planning for our coverage in Brazil in early February, this year,” states Drago Cosic from HRT (Hrvatska radiotelevizija, the Croatian public service broadcaster). Cosic is HRT’s head of project for the event and a reporter with 30 years’ experience in live sports broadcasts.

He continues, “HRT will not have its own studio in Brazil, but our presenters will be working from our main broadcasting centre in Zagreb. However, we will have a permanent link from the Croatian national football team camp to ensure the very latest news is available for the many football fans in Croatia.”

Although the presenters will be working from the Zagreb studio, HRT will take a team of 24 to Brazil.

Igor Medic, deputy

will be using all the feeds that the host broadcaster is offering, and then using Avid Composer for editing,” says Medic.

“Although there are no plans for web streaming back to Croatia, stories and video clips will be uploaded with the shortest possible delay so that fans at home can catch up on the action.”

The German angle German public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF will broadcast the World Cup in full for the first time since 1998.

“We started with our planning in May 2012,” states Dieter Gruschwitz, head of ZDF sports department. “Between the two broadcasters, we will have around 450 staff working in Brazil. We will also be sharing facilities,

Doneux: “We’ve added some new features for this global tournament, including implementing the advanced multi-angles production tool”

coverage, ZDF will utilise both pool fed ISOs and Clips Compilation Channel content — both provided by HBS. The Compilation Channel gives MRLs access to angles which are not part of the main match feed — and are available in near realtime. All editing will be carried out at the broadcaster’s unit at the IBC using Avid and EVS systems.

So, what does Gruschwitz see as the main challenges in meeting the broadcasting requirements for the upcoming event? “Certainly, the logistics is a major consideration. The distances involved are great, and there are the customs procedures involving the temporary import of a great deal of technical equipment to be taken into account. And something of which we have to be very aware in these days, of course, is the overall cost of mounting such an operation.

Nevertheless, we look forward to a great tournament!” www.evs.tv www.hbs.tv www.hrt.hr www.pro.sony.eu www.zdf.de

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NAB: The measure of change A LOT has happened since last year’s NAB. We’ve seen 4K break free of the question of “how” and move resolutely into the realms of “when” and “why”. Linear TV and on-demand have gone to war like gargantuas from Pacific Rim. And increasing migration to IT workflows means the slow-to-change broadcast industry is entering the same frantic rate of change as the consumer electronics market.

What’s on the horizon for next year is anyone’s guess. The only thing we seem to know for sure about the TV industry is

that the final product is content on a screen. But the journey it takes to get to that screen and how the consumer interacts

Double zoom for Q3 Camera Corps CAMERA CORPS has chosen NAB 2014 as the launch venue for an advance in robotic camera technology. Developed from the Q-Ball, the new Q3 incorporates double the zoom power, a higher specification camera and an expanded feature set. It is compatible with multiple serial data formats including IP plus Camera Corps’ audio-based data system.

Cinegy in NAB giveaway Cinegy CINEGY IS offering the first 1000 visitors to its booth at NAB a free Cinegy Player License.

Cinegy Player is a new tool for broadcast professionals working with high-end video formats. Cinegy Player includes native support for most broadcast industry standard video codecs within MOV and MXF containers.

Now included is support for decoding and displaying VANC and Parental Rating values from SMPTE 436M tracks, as well as decoding and display of line 608 and 708 closed captions.

Cinegy is exhibiting 4K IP-based broadcast solutions.

Automation, playout and CG solutions include Cinegy Air PRO, Cinegy Studio PRO and Cinegy Type. The company’s media asset management and archive solutions Cinegy Archive and Cinegy Desktop are also on show. www.cinegy.com SL11116

with it is wide, wide open.

The next year promises to be unpredictable, but very exciting, and I’m counting on the discussions we have together at NAB to give us some insight and direction.

TVBEurope will be on the ground with a crack team of journos, including Holly Ashford, Russell Grute, David Kirk, Ian McMurray, and Adrian Pennington.

They’ll be roaming the show floors, covering all

the releases, conferences, and announcements, and you can read their reports in our May issue NAB Wrap-up.

Here we bring you Part Two of our NAB Product Preview, a survey of NAB announcements by the big players in the industry. Along with Part One in last month’s issue, we hope it will be more than enough to get you started on your NAB journey.

Neal Romanek The new Q3 from Camera Corps

Using an integral 3GBps slip-ring, Q3 can perform an unlimited number of 360° lateral rotations. Pan and tilt speed are adjustable from 360° in 90 minutes to 90° per second.

“The original Q-Ball revolutionised the use of robotic cameras in applications such as sports and reality shows,” stated Camera Corps’ founder and managing director Laurie Frost.

“Q3 feeds can be intercut seamlessly

with the output from broadcast cameras. Each Q3 head incorporates a high-precision pan/tilt/zoom/ focus mechanism in a compact unit which can be mounted at any height, indoors or outdoors, and operated under full remote control from an adjacent desk or half-way round the world. Over a hundred Q3 heads can be operated from a single joystick panel.” www.vitecvideocom.com C6025

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Panasonic’s HD handheld camera recorder, AJ-PX270

AB One goes live Thales AngÊnieux THALES ANGÉNIEUX and Binocle 3D have been working together to develop stereoscopic 3D projects new rigs, lenses and correction tools. Their AB One system aims to make stereoscopic 3D production more accessible and to reduce operational costs, particularly in the area of live events.

The companies have collaborated to produce the brand AB Live.

The partners’ main aim is to offer a versatile solution with tailor-made support, adaptable to a range of projects. The system has been designed to work for live operation with a fibre adapter link to operations with standard metadata connections. It also

features an OCP Operating Control Panel, enabling control of several rigs, as well as a tool analyser with automatic corrections.

The team aims to make this a competitor to 2D, by supporting its customers and users in running 3D shooting at a limited cost. www.angenieux.com C7419

LEGAL-8 launch Eyeheight AT NAB, Eyeheight is introducing LEGAL-8, a new addition to its range of video and audio legalisers. Developed from the LEGAL-6, the LEGAL-8 incorporates extended audio capabilities including eight loudness level control channels configured as four AES stereo pairs.

The LEGAL-8 provides automatic realtime control of perceptual loudness and true peak level using multi-channel loudness and true-peak computations.

This is coupled with industry standard and proprietary correction algorithms.

The LEGAL-8 incorporates six user memories plus common presets. Video legalisation features include automatic luma overshoot and undershoot

Eyeheight’s new LEGAL-8 video and audio legaliser suppression together with luma and chroma gain, black level adjustment, hue rotation, adjustable clipping levels and soft-clipping-knee levels. An ‘out-ofgamut’ indication feed displays overshoot

or undershoot severity and shows the user where on the picture any signal correction is being performed. www.eyeheight.com C9511

4K outlook at NAB Panasonic PANASONIC IS debuting its new Varicam 35 camera that shoots 4K raw, as well as its thirdgeneration VariCam, the VariCam HS. The company is also presenting the next generation of P2 solid-state recording media, the expressP2 card.

Designed to accommodate 4K image capture, the expressP2 card offers transfer speeds of up to 2.4Gbps, meaning an hour of 4K footage can be transferred within around 10 minutes.

The Varicam 35 incorporates a newlydeveloped super 35mm MOS image sensor and complements the company’s current AVC-ULTRA family of video codecs.

The VariCam HS 2/3 type camera head docks with the AVC-ULTRA recording module, to provide the functionality and ergonomics of a conventional production camera/recorder.

Also making an appearance at NAB is the recently launched AV-HS6000, a 2M/E switcher and the AJ-PX270, the company’s first P2 HD handheld camera recorder with AVC-ULTRA recording. www.panasonic.net C3607

We

y

Buy your EARLY BIRD tickets NOW from www.installawards.com Each ticket includes pre-dinner drinks reception, entry to the awards, a three-course meal, entry to after-party and more.

A variety of sponsorship opportunities are available now.

For more details, please contact Ian Graham For tickets & table reservation: contact Sara Mather –sara.mather@intentmedia.co.uk +44 (0)20 7354 6001

For sponsorship opportunities: contact Ian Graham – ian.graham@intentmedia.co.uk +44 (0)20 7354 6000

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www.tvbeurope.com April 2014

48 TVBEurope

Remote controlled filming Bradley BRADLEY ENGINEERINGis showing a set of newly-developed camera heads and accessories for unobtrusive and remote controlled filming at NAB this year. The highlights on show include Bradley’s enhanced Camball 3, a miniature rotating camera head which now offers 30x optical zoom; three miniature high resolution camera heads with 4 MegaPixel imaging and improved low light performance.

The company is also introducing a new precision controlled camera head for remote camera control. The XM or Extended Motion, is fully motion controllable, controlled by a joystick, computer, and by pre-programming.

The XM offers 14 – 16-bit joystick control, when it is operated with Bradley’s Multi Function Controller, which gives improved control at very low speeds. The XM camera head is similar in design to the U4, U5 and U6 models, and comes in two variants, a double-sided camera head or a single-sided L-shaped camera head. www.bradeng.com C11130

FORK for NAB Primestream AT THE 2014 NAB Show, Primestream is debuting FORK v4.6, its media asset management and production automation software platform featuring modules and third-party integrations. The Workflow Manager modules allows users to design, control, and automate production processes that span multiple departments within their organisation.

Primestream also introduces FORK Xchange Suite 3.0, an upgrade to the web and iOS application that provides access to content on FORK Production

servers. Single and multi-site production operations can access their media from anywhere to manage, create, and trigger various FORK automations.

Xchange 3.0 also features a redesigned iPad interface for Apple iOS 7.

Archive Bridge, a new module for the FORK Production Suite, is also being unveiled. Archive

Bridge provides integrations between archival solutions and the FORK media asset

at $4/min. The user uploads proxy video to the cloud, and once the operator’s TV channel(s) air the specific content, the CaptionCast servers listen for the ‘audio fingerprints’ from the SDI signal, pulls the matching captions and delivers them to the screen automatically.

“The cloud service and all of our captioning products have been very popular across Asia and we’re now bringing it to North American broadcasters,” said David Lee, CEO of i-Yuno Media Group Americas.

Also being introduced by i-Yuno for the first time to

Primestream’s FORK Production Suite v4.6 allows edit-while-capture management platform. www.primestream.com SL10216

Captions on the cloud i-Yuno I-YUNO IS demonstrating its subscription-based caption technology CaptionCast, at NAB. Users are able to install the CaptionCast server in their transmission facility and i-Yuno creates frame accurate captions on the cloud for automatic service

broadcasters at NAB is the company’s CaptionCrowd caption service platform; Subtitle/Caption Recut subtitling and captioning technology and iMediaTrans Cloud subtitling and captioning cloud service. www.iyunomg.com N6421

April 2014 www.tvbeurope.com

TVBEurope 49

Live 4K Ultra HD demo hits NAB Harmonic HARMONIC IS demonstrating a series of solutions that aims to optimise the production and delivery of video services.

The company is unveiling new solutions and feature sets including ATSC 3.0-ready Electra and Spectrum product line.

Harmonic is also hosting a live 4K Ultra HD 2160p60 demonstration.

The ATSC 3.0-ready Electra universal multifunction, multiformat encoding platform featuring high density audio encoding capabilities, is on display, as is a primary distribution solution built on the Harmonic DMS video distribution management system and a new ProView IRD. Harmonic presents its multiscreen ad insertion solution, which leverages the ProMedia family and ProStream with ACE broadcast and multiscreen transcoder and integrates with advertising partners.

“During the 2014 NAB Show, the products and solutions demonstrated at our booth will

Beyond Definition for 4K and IP Sony SONY IS building on its Beyond Definition vision by showcasing a series of 4K solutions as well as recent developments around IP Live production.

Developed to provide video production environments for live productions, realtime IP production technology integrates IP network technology and HD-SDI. It enables video, audio, reference signals and control data to be transmitted between devices using a single network cable.

Sony is also showing a range of 4K products, systems and solutions for content creators.

These include the possibilities of HD to 4K migration and HD production as well as 4K live production workflows using Sony’s 4K camera systems.

Other 4K solutions on show include 4K Multiview and 4K screen blending. The former is a 4K viewing system that displays four times as much information as HD, allowing information from multiple sources to appear together in high quality.

Ci, Sony’s Media Cloud Services is on display with a number of enhancements including Team Workspace. www.pro.sony.eu C11001

highlight the operational efficiencies, cost savings, and amazing video quality that operators can achieve by leveraging an integrated solution

from Harmonic,” said Peter Alexander, chief marketing officer at Harmonic. www.harmonicinc.com SU1210

HarmonicSpectrum

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‘Beautifully Creative Technology’ SGO SGO’S NEW strap line ‘Beautifully Creative Technology’ is intended to sum up the ethos behind the company’s development drive to provide creative artists with empowering facilities. At NAB the company is showing additions to its range of Mistika post production systems and Mamba FX compositing software.

SGO’s new Mistika range is based on Mistika Post, Mistika Optima and Mistika Ultima in version 8.0.

Features include a spatial keyer with the ability to allow grading selections or keying mattes to be derived from CGI object metadata. Other features in version 8.0 include a node-based compositing interface, support for Canon’s MRF, Sony’s XAVC, enhanced AAF support and ProRes 4:4:4 file formats.

“We are not hesitant to embrace change in new ways in the best interests of the industry that we passionately serve,” said Miguel Angel Doncel, CEO of SGO. www.sgo.es SL9021

MultiMonitor makes NAB debut Nugen Audio NUGEN AUDIO is showcasing its complete line of solutions for loudness compliance, at NAB. The new MultiMonitor software for loudness and true-peak monitoring is also being unveiled at the Show.

The company’s Loudness Toolkit features VisLM: Visual Loudness Metering Plug-In; ISL:

handling option for LMB that allows direct analysis of audio within the MXF container. The option introduces native MXF audio-handling that enables LMB to perform automated analysis and correction of audio in an MXF container while preserving all other data within the file. www.nugenaudio.com C561

Pushing boundaries Dejero “AT DEJERO, we continue to push the boundaries of bonded wireless technology to offer our customers the industry’s most innovative solutions for transmitting high-quality live video,” commented Brian Cram, CEO, Dejero.

At this year’s Show, Dejero is demonstrating its bonded cellular technology, using available wired and wireless networks to transmit highquality video for a wide range of applications including electronic newsgathering (ENG). The Dejero LIVE+ Platform offers

SDI loop enhancement for Meridian Boxx TV BOXX TV has added an SDI loop to its Meridian zero delay transmitter which allows it to support two monitors. The Meridian will now provide a live image to the camera operator’s monitor, as well as a live feed to the director of production’s monitor on set. Boxx TV is demonstrating the new Meridian with its SDI loop at NAB. Boxx TV’s portable receiver now has dual SDI and composite connections and the company’s broadcast receiver offers the same dual SDI out and composite connections plus a component connection and an LCD monitor.

Camera operator and founding director of Boxx TV Scott Walker explained: “It’s essential for

NUGEN Audio’s ISL 5.1 True-Peak Limiter

Inter-Sample True-Peak Limiter; and LM-Correct: Stand-Alone Loudness Tool.

Making its first NAB Show appearance, MultiMonitor offers up to 16 individual loudness and true-peak meters in mono, stereo, and 5.1 formats for up to 96 individual audio channels.

NUGEN Audio has also launched a new MXF file-

capabilities for improving the ability of broadcasters to deliver primary and supplemental live video feeds from the field.

Featured products on display at the Show include the Dejero LIVE+ 20/20 Transmitter; the LIVE+ Mobile App, enabling users to send bonded live or recorded video from their iOS or Android mobile devices; the LIVE+ VSET; and the Dejero + Nucomm Connect Live transmitter, a next-generation camera-mounted bonded cellular and microwave system.

In addition, the company will highlight its LIVE+

Dejero will demo video transmission over wireless networks Broadcast Server, a 2-channel, 3-U rack-mounted server that receives realtime genlocked video from multiple LIVE+ systems, and the LIVE+

Portal, an online interface for managing and routing LIVE+ products. www.dejero.com N1110

LED displays light up NAB Boxx TV’s Meridian transmitter

Steadicam operators to have an instant view, to give them a feel for the video they are getting, and we’ve added this to the system after requests from our customers. This is what they ideally need for all live TV shows and sports events.” www.boxx.tv C10108

SiliconCore SILICONCORE IS launching its Common Cathode driven LED display at the NAB Show. The company is also showcasing the Magnolia P1.5mm, a high resolution LED display for broadcast applications.

“SiliconCore has revolutionised the LED display industry by developing a new way to drive the LEDs using the Common Cathode mode, which is a much more efficient design than in previous products,” said Eric Li, CEO of SiliconCore. “Our displays offer brilliant resolutions, super fast refresh rate of over 2000Hz and viewing angles that enable them to perform even with extreme off axis camera shots. This makes them perfect for broadcast applications. It also ensures that power is not lost to heat, thereby

SiliconCore’s LED display reducing power consumption and increasing the lifespan of the display, resulting in a market leading lower

total cost of ownership.” www.silicon-core.com SL14805

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4Designer streamlines graphics Orad ORAD HI-TEC Systems is unveiling 4Designer and RenderEngine7, the next generation of its realtime graphics

4Designer and RenderEngine7 are native 64-bit applications with new workspace layouts that support high resolution/multimonitor desktop displays.

4Designer is geared towards

authoring software. 4Designer offers new capabilities that aim to streamline the graphics creation workflow, and a new user interface and features.

realtime on-air graphics creation from SD, through HD, UltraHD and large scale video walls.

New preview features include a multi-camera local preview which gives artists working cameras for

designing complex graphics, and allows virtual studio designers to realise all the camera angles used in a production without requiring a connection to the virtual studio.

SL6319

8th

Front Porch Digital demos its LYNXdr cloud service

4

Cloud evolution Front Porch Digital “AT THE 2014 NAB Show, we’ll demonstrate how our LYNX cloud content storage management system has evolved to keep up with the ever-changing industry,” commented Michael Knaish, president and CEO, Front Porch Digital.

LYNXdr, Front Porch Digital’s private-cloud hosted disaster recovery and business continuity service, ensures file safety and zero downtime. As part of an overall media asset management solution, LYNXdr aims to control costs as users pay only for what they use when they use it. Also, by consolidating operations, media organisations can cut capital and operating expenses to reduce overhead.

LYNXdr offers a secure off-site backup capability by ingesting and managing content electronically or from datatape to key strategic regional cloud locations. Additionally, there is no cost increase as the technology evolves, which, the company claims, means users can realise even more value from their assets.

Kniash added: “The buzz around ‘the cloud’ has prompted us to make sure our cloud offering continues to advance further and further.

We will also demonstrate the latest updates across our full product line. Visitors will clearly see how Front Porch Digital can make the cloud work for their operations.” www.fpdigital.com SU4302; SU4405

A unique conference for European broadcasters IT Broadcast Workflow (ITBW) is Europe’s premier event charting the development and adaptation of file-based operations in European broadcasting organisations. ITBW is now in its sixth year and promises to deliver a wide range of innovative case study practices.

Enhance workflow efficiency Reduce operational costs.

Networking Opportunities ITBW 2014 will once again take place at the prestigious BAFTA in central London on Tuesday July 8th.

Following the success of the revised format last year, networking drinks in the evening will follow the day’s extensive case study programme.

Silver Sponsor

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For more information on delegate bookings contact: Sara Mather +44 (0) 20 7354 6001 sara.mather@intentmedia.co.uk

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PREVIOUS ATTENDEES INCLUDED: UTV, BBC, HBO, Channel 4, ESPN, TV2 Norway, DELL, GSTQ Consulting, Yleis Radio, ITV, Encompass, ARTE, Associated Press, Broadcast Center Europe, Broadcast Innovation, BVE, Canal Sur, Canal+, Council of the European Union, Channel 4, Deluxe Laboratories, Discovery Communications Europe, Disney Channels, eMotion Systems, Formula One Management, Global Broadcast Summit, IABM, IBC, IMD Media, IMS Ltd, ITN Source, IveTech, Kleinhofen, Lime Pictures, MTV Networks North, NBC Universal, NRK Norway, Production Village Ltd, ProTV, Reuters Television, Radio Suisse International, root6, Sanoma Entertainment Finland, SBS Broadcasting Networks, Screen Digest, Siemens, Sound Network, TATA Consultancy, Technology and Production Center Zurich, The Audio Suite, TV4 Group Sweden, TVI, TVM Ireland, RTE, Cologne Broadcasting centre, DPP, News International, TFO, UEFA

If you are interested in sponsorship and speaking opportunities contact: Ben Ewles +44 (0) 20 7354 6000 Richard Carr +44 (0) 20 7354 6000 ben.ewles@intentmedia.co.uk richard.carr@intentmedia.co.uk Steve Connolly +44 (0) 20 7354 6000 steve.connolly@intentmedia.co.uk

VOD, OTT, IPTV are expanding broadcast content beyond the TV

EARLY BIRD RATE ÂŁ149+vat For further details contact: sara.mather@intentmedia.co.uk

Next TV’s formidable line-up of speakers will include:

Ashwin Navin CEO of Samba TV, and founder of BitTorrent, the largest ďŹ le-sharing network in the world

Edward Lee VP content acquisition at streaming video powerhouse Roku

Mary Ann Halford Managing Director, media and entertainment, at FTI Consulting

Jens Richter Former managing director of Red Arrow International and CEO of Fremantle Media

Patrice Slupowski VP digital innovation and communities at Orange

Ashley MacKenzie Michael Comish Founder and CEO of leading Group Digital Officer, Tesco, digital rights management Founder, CEO, Blinkbox agency Base79

For the full agenda and to book tickets, visit www.nexttvsummitlondon.com Broadcasters’ Solutions to Growth of TV Anywhere, VOD, OTT, & IPTV Content Reaching Broader Audiences in an Evolving Multiplatform Ecosystem Second Screen & Connected TV: Changing Viewer Habits New Products to Deliver TV Content to Gaming & New Video Device Platforms WHO SHOULD ATTEND Commissioning Editors, Technology Suppliers, Analysts, Digital and New Media Companies, Ad Agencies, Brands, Venture Capitalists, Media and Entertainment Executives, Film & TV Producers, Cable Operators, Broadcasters, Content Buyers, Content App Developers, Talent Agencies, International Content Distributors, Consumer Electronics Companies, Social Media Business Development Executives In Partnership With

Supported By

For sponsorship information contact:

For speaking opportunities, contact

Steve Connolly: +44 (0) 207 354 6000 , steve.connolly@intentmedia.co.uk Ben Ewles: +44 (0) 207 354 6000, ben.ewles@intentmedia.co.uk Richard Carr: +44 (0) 207 354 6000 , richard.carr@intentmedia.co.uk Louis Hillelson: + 1 917 281 4730, lhillelson@nbmedia.com

Arthur Schweitzer: +1 212 203 6273 , arthur.schweitzer@gmail.com

For ticket enquiries contact: Sara Mather: +44 (0) 20 7354 6001, sara.mather@intentmedia.co.uk

TVBEurope 53

April 2014 www.tvbeurope.com

Switch to Vantage

NAB marks Miller’s 60th Miller MILLER CAMERA Support celebrates its 60th anniversary at NAB. The company is releasing new, limited edition LP 54 tripods, built by hand as they were when first introduced, from remaining components left after the last production run of the Light Professional (LP).

A family-founded company, by 1958 Miller was exporting the Miller Fluid Head worldwide, including the first fluid head tripod to Hollywood. The company also began manufacturing polished ‘Classic’ limited edition LP 54 tripods wooden tripods. With the release of the first portable and, more recently, its Skyline system. video camera in the mid 1970s, Miller Miller’s systems are currently used by transitioned from a company focused more than 265 television networks, on the manufacturing of film fluid including the BBC, CBC Canada, CCTV heads and tripods into one specialising in products for ENG. Miller has since China, NBC USA, and ABC Australia. supplied many broadcast networks www.millertripods.com around the world with its Arrow system C9520

Pixel Power’s Pixel OnDemand

Next-gen graphics workflows Pixel Power AT ITS 26th consecutive NAB, Pixel Power is demonstrating highlights from across its range.

Pixel Factory is intended to support file-based operations.

It can be used as a solution for adding extra graphics capability to support quality control, web delivery and post production, or to enhance programme material and add graphics overlays for playout and streaming applications.

Pixel OnDemand aims to give companies the flexibility to pay for the rendering time they actually need rather than spend on unused capacity, and runs on standard IT servers.

Gallium provides the intelligence to build a variety of playout solutions using Pixel Power output devices for file, IP or SDI domains.

The ChannelMaster integrated playout system reduces the traditional playout signal path to a single system.

Newsroom allows users to insert graphics throughout the entire workflow, from production through distribution and, finally, Pixel Promo is a fully automated branding and promotion software tool that aims to lower the cost of delivering branding and dynamic, accurate promos to air. www.pixelpower.com N2034

Telestream TELESTREAM IS demonstrating four new products at NAB; three products based on the Vantage file-based video transcoding and workflow automation platform and a new desktop application, Switch.

The complete family of Vantage transcoding and workflow products, including new HEVC/x265 encoding, 4K support and Lightspeed K20 GPU-acceleration are on display at the show.

TrafficManager aims to streamline ingest and manage commercial and syndicated content. It automates the ingest of local, regional and national spots, processes and delivers the media to ad-insertion or on-air servers, automates loudness correction, format conversion,

Telestream’s Post Producer, shown at NAB and decision-making based upon media attributes.

Also available on the Vantage platform, Post Producer is a new content production and assembly product that addresses the issue of repetitive rendering of different versions of media.

Switch is a new multiformat player that allows users to play, inspect and correct their media.

It supports high-quality playback for MOV, MP4, MKV, MXF, GXF, MPS, MTS and more. www.telestream.net SL390

Media transformation Digital Rapids DIGITAL RAPIDS is bringing its complete range of media transformation and workflow solutions to the 2014 NAB Show.

Highlights include the StreamZ Live 4000EX, for live and linear multiscreen applications from IPTV and OTT headends to live event streaming. The new StreamZ Live 4000EX multiscreen encoder builds on the StreamZ Live family with increased performance, faulttolerant redundancy and expanded control capabilities.

Also on show is the StreamZ Live 8000EX integrated multiscreen and broadcast live encoder.

Digital Rapids is showcasing recently-released extensions to its Transcode Manager 2 powered

by Kayak.

Digital Rapids Transcode Manager 2, powered by Kayak Kayak Media Processors bring the media transformation and workflow capabilities of Digital Rapids’ Kayak platform to the cloud, enabling Microsoft Windows Azure Media Services users to build cloud-based media processing applications and

services that scale with their business.

Finally, the latest version of the software for the company’s StreamZHD multi-format, ingest and encoding system is being showcased. www.digitalrapids.com SL5625

MINIVATOR II emerges MSE MATTHEW STUDIOS Equipment is unveiling its MINIVATOR II in Las Vegas at NAB. The MINIVATOR II is the stronger and taller version of the MINIVATOR stand.

MINIVATOR II features a double cable mechanism that will keep both risers travelling at equal proportions with each of the handle, allowing for steady movement of any lighting fixture attached. The addition of ‘combo’ dual-purpose top castings allows for use of both Junior pin and Baby receiver fixtures.

MINNIVATOR II reaches a maximum height of 361cm, a

MINIVATOR II stand

load height of 140cm, with a maximum load of 36.4kg, weights 21.8kg and covers a footprint of 150cm.

“MINIVATOR II is the perfect complement for these and other shots,” said Robert Kulesh, VP sales and marketing, MSE. “We’ve beefed up the payload of the MINIVATOR II from 60 to 80 pounds and added to the maximum height without sacrificing strength, safety or stability.”

MSE’s MINIVATOR II accessory package includes a Rocky Mountain leg and optional 4-inch casters. www.msegrip.com C5437

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54 TVBEurope

A host of solutions at Vitec Videocom

Launches, demos and enhancements

Vitec Videocom VISITORS TO Vitec Videocom’s stand at NAB can see a number of products from different companies, as well as hear from guest speakers.

Anton Bauer is introducing a new generation of digital batteries at NAB, and unveiling a new line of chargers.

Autoscript’s E.P.I.C all-in-one prompter display and on-air talent monitor is being shown, and Litepanels is showcasing the Sola 9 LED Fresnel, for daylight balanced illumination and the Inca 9 LED Fresnel for tungsten balanced illumination.

Sachtler’s newly launched ENG 75/2D HD tripod is on display and Vinten is using this year’s Show to highlight the Vector range of heads for broadcast applications.

Vinten Radamec claims its Absolute Positioning System (APS) navigation system is going to take centre stage at this year’s NAB, and the company is introducing the latest addition to its range of next generation fluid heads, the FH-200. www.vitecvideocom.com C6025

Barnfind BARNFIND IS launching several new products at NAB. These include BarnMini for point-to-point digital extension and its new ASI to IP converter card and optical housing. It will also show upgrades to existing products and hold demonstrations of established products including the BarnOne signal transport system.

The BarnMini-01 provides 2xBNC RX7TX and 1xSFP (MSA standard or 3rd party SFP), while the BarnMini-02 comes with 2xSFP and is optimal for converting multimode to single mode fibre, and single mode to multimode fibre.

Barnfind’s new ASI to IP converter card converts 4xASI signals into 1xIP stream and will be available in the BarnOne BTF1-09 special frame. A new range of optical housing for CWDM, DWDM, optical splitters and optical change overs are also on display.

With business partner Village Island, Barnfind will feature transmission tests for 4K 60p 10bits 4:2:2 base band signal over a single fibre using a single-frame Barnfind multi-format media converter on either side of the optical link. www.barnfind.no N1307

Thomson Video Networks demos HEVC encoding

Enhancing the viewing experience Thomson Video AT NAB Thomson Video Networks is focusing on delivering world-class video quality on any screen, the company claims.

Thomson is demonstrating several solutions that aims to enhance the viewer experience and maximise available bandwidth and video quality. These include the company’s Ultra HD playout solution powered by HEVC compression; premium broadcast video compression systems with the enhanced version of Thomson Video Networks’ XMS Network Management System; new fixed and mobile contribution solutions; and an HEVC solution for live and file-based delivery.

Visitors can see the North American debut of Thomson Video Networks’ own HEVC technology, powered by the ViBE VS7000 HEVC encoder and Sapphire MPEG stream server.

Also at the Show is the company’s TimePlanner application, new DVB-S/S2/DSNG satellite modulator board, and demonstrations of both realtime and offline HEVC encoding on the ViBE VS7000 platform, using MPEG-DASH packaging, to tablets, smartphones, and connected TVs. www.thomson-networks.com SU2610

Date: Tuesday, June 3rd 2014 Venue: BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London Formidable line-up of speakers will include:

PROGRAMME & FIRST SPEAKERS ANNOUNCED For details visit www.beyondhdmasters.com

John Ive Director of business development and technology for the IABM

David Wood Chairman of the World Broadcasting Unions Technical Committee, Consultant, Technology and Innovation at European Broadcasting Union

Simon Gauntlett Technology Director of the DTG

Stephan Heimbecher Head of innovations and standards at Sky Deutschland

WHO SHOULD ATTEND Directors of Technology, Heads of Production at independent production companies, Directors of equipment rental or hire, Heads of Outside Broadcasts, Production Managers, Senior Directors, Heads of Cameras, Chief Engineers, Programme Operations Managers, Stereographers, Producers, Directors of Broadcasting, Studio Directors, Technical Consultants, Research Engineers

SAVE £1g 0th0e !

by bookin y bird rate incredible earl

£149

WHY ATTEND? plus VAT Discover the media eco-chain for ultra-HD Hear from the world standardisation leaders Case studies from high-profile production trials Find out the future for 3D TV in Europe Tech insights into frame rates, codecs, formats Meet the key market influencers and vendors Network with technology & production colleagues Know what the Beyond HD roadmap looks like PREVIOUS ATTENDEES INCLUDE Orange, ITV, Sony Pictures, Arqiva, 20th Century Fox, Telenor, Panavision Europe, BBC, S4C, Discovery Networks Europe, Sky, Pro TV, Siemens, MTV International, Dolby, EDU, Digital TV Group, Deluxe, Cambridge Research Systems Ltd, BKSTS, Bath University, Atlantic Productions, Finnish Broadcasting Co.,Fountain Studios, France Telecom/Orange Labs A TVBEurope event

Follow us on Twitter

@BeyondHDMasters Gold Sponsors Richard Mills Chief Technical Officer at ONSIGHT

Andy Quested Head of Technology for HD and UHD, BBC

To book your tickets visit: www.beyondhdmasters.com or call Sara Mather +44 (0) 20 7354 6001 For details on sponsorship opportunities, please contact: Ben Ewles on +44 (0)207 354 6000 or ben.ewles@intentmedia.co.uk

Steve Connolly on +44 (0)207 354 6000 or steve.connolly@intentmedia.co.uk

Richard Carr on +44 (0)207 354 6000 or richard.carr@intentmedia.co.uk

www.tvbeurope.com April 2014

56 TVBEurope

Live-Link Mini gets NAB debut Studio Technologies STUDIO TECHNOLOGIES is introducing its Live-Link Mini remote camera interface system at NAB 2014. The new camera extender system offers a choice of two 1RU truck units and a compact camera unit that weights 1.6 kg.

The Live-Link Mini offers one SDI path in each direction, supporting a range of SD-, HD-, and 3G video signals. The system features integrated party-line and 4-wire intercom support, line-level

‘dry’ and powered ‘wet’ talent cueing and is fully compatible with SMPTE standards. The camera-end unit features an integrated battery mount, which allows for the use of a broadcaststandard rechargeable battery.

The Live-Link Mini joins the family of Live-Link systems, which includes the original LiveLink, Live-Link Jr. and the ready for 4k Live-Link 07X systems. www.studio-tech.com C11149

VirtualSet

Immersive graphics Vizrt AT NAB Vizrt is showing its new Viz Virtual Studio, as well as enhancements to its broadcast graphics newsroom workflow and Viz One media asset management system.

Viz Virtual Studio aims toenhance broadcasts through immersive graphics and interactive capabilities. The Studio provides 2D and 3D virtual sets, easy set-up and design and a new Defocus Shader that emulates the focus effects of optical lenses.

Studio Technologies’ Live-Link Mini adds to Live-Link systems family

Ghost expands BHV Broadcast BHV BROADCAST is showing its Video Ghost series at NAB. Video Ghost allows the user to run power and serial digital video over a single coaxial cable.

It now offers cable length performance up to 200m from the camera or monitor and a maximum power output of 65W. Multi-layer protection circuitry prevents inadvertent damage caused by misconnection.

On show for the first time is rack-mounted Ghost Rack, offering four channels of Video Ghost power over coax in a

2RUx19-inch rack case with integral power supply and front panel monitoring.

Julian Hiorns, BHV Broadcast’s managing director, said of Video Ghost: “Operational benefits include portability and rapid deployment — important features for mobile productions and difficult locations where monitoring is required, and the flexibility to send or receive video signals and DC power wherever and whenever the need arises.” www.bhvbroadcast.com C3841

Ensemble works the magic Ensemble Designs AT NAB Ensemble Designs will be introducing its Multiviewer Magic 2.0, delivering an offline mode for creating screen layouts, alarms for ensuring signal integrity, fast authoring tools with eye dropper and paste functions, closed caption support, and countdown clocks. Also new are independent Edit and Control modes, which aim to give the user precise control for specific jobs.

“The staff setting up and configuring a Multiviewer have very different needs from the dayto-day operators,” said Mondae Hott, director of sales for

Ensemble Designs. “Engineers and installers are configuring the hardware, setting up alarms and creating screen layouts. Segment producers, floor directors and QC staff need to see a lot of different sources and look at signal quality.

We’ve addressed those two types of workflows in Multiviewer Magic 2.0.”

The Avenue MV82 is an eight input/two output multiviewer, and eight sources can be displayed on one screen, or split into two quad splits. The MV164 is a 16 input/four output multiviewer. www.ensembledesigns.com N2524

Vizrt’s workflow for newsroom broadcast graphics gives journalists control of graphic content and the ability to play those graphics in realtime live to air. The system includes interactive graphics for the studio and data-driven graphics for elections and social TV. The workflowencompasses Viz Trio character generator, Viz Content Pilot templatedriven graphics and video management, and Viz One for media management and multiplatform publishing.

Viz One is a toolset for the management and delivery of media assets to any platform. The enhanced version allows broadcasters to make edits to video and graphics from within their native newsroom system until the moment content is sent live to air. Built around extensive APIs, the system can be adapted to individual workflows. www.vizrt.com SL2419

ncam is on track Shotoku AT NAB Shotoku is showing enhancements to its manual camera support range with the new carbon fibre tripod system and pan and tilt solutions. It is also unveiling its new ncam camera tracking system.

Shotoku’s new two-stage TTH1502C carbon fibre tripod weighs 5.9kg, features a 150mm bowl base and stands over 1615mm tall at its maximum height.

The SX300 features a 40kg payload and wide-balance capability, and supports an array of cameras, lenses and accessories.

The SG900 manual pan and tilt head is suited to OB and studio production with teleprompters or box type lenses, supports 90kg, and features single knob balance adjustment.

The unit incorporates the VISCAM ultimate fluid drag

system to control smooth pan and tilt movement and REULAUX perfect balance system.

The ncam camera tracking system features a multi-sensing bar mounted on the studio camera that provides realtime data to its associated tracking server.

The company is also showcasing its advanced TK53VR crane and its entire range of control systems will be available for demonstration. www.shotoku.tv C8731

The SX300 fluid head, new from Shotoku

Connector turns heads ScheduALL PROVIDER OF Enterprise Resource Management (ERM) software for media and transmission, ScheduALL is showcasing its booking platform, ScheduALL Connector at the 2014 NAB Show. ScheduALL Connector gives customers of transmission providers the tools to book their own bandwidth.

ScheduALL Connector is a direct link for the Occasional Use (OU) business to its customers. The tool provides a centralised view of a global resource network for both the provider and the customer.

“Connector is going to turn a lot of heads at NAB,” said Rick Legow, president at ScheduALL. “We are giving our clients the capability to connect directly with their customers for instant

access to resource booking.

It vastly improves the way our clients do business with their customers.”

ScheduALL Connector unites ScheduALL systems across all types of media and broadcast enterprises, giving realtime availability and access to selfprovisioning consumers of their providers’ resource inventories. www.scheduall.com SU3021

58 TVBEurope

www.tvbeurope.com April 2014

News Review

By Holly Ashford

Lipsync gets Starred Up: LipSync has provided equity investment and full post services on the award-winning film Starred Up. The Sigma Films production opened in the UK last month and tells the story of a troubled teen who meets his father in prison.

Starred Up was graded on Baselight by colourist Adam Inglis at LipSync, and was the third film he had graded for director David Mackenzie. “The range of colour and light within the original material gave us a lot of storytelling and mood possibilities,” commented Inglis. “This prison is a place of sensory overload and I like to think that rather than just looking real, it feels real too.”

The sound mix was created on an AMS-Neve DFC console by Robert Farr, LipSync’s re-recording mixer. He explains: “The film was shot in a real prison, and David [Mackenzie] wanted to use the original recording as far as possible to capture the real sounds of the building.

It was a very challenging and rewarding project to work on.” www.lipsyncpost.com

Sequence Post completes Channel 5 drama

Space Season in lift-off with Prime Focus Prime Focus was selected by Arrow Media to complete post work on two documentaries for Channel 4’s Live From Space Season (pictured above). Prime Focus’s finishing team also post produced multiple VTs for live transmissions from National Geographic and Channel 4. The interactive TV event featured astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata conducting a tour of the International Space Station, showcasing experiments from the floating laboratory.

Tim Waller graded the VTs and documentaries in Baselight. Waller commented: “I came to work at Prime Focus for the level of quality work that comes through the doors so it is utterly thrilling to work on such an outstanding programme. When I graded Moon I was challenged with stylising an out of this world environment and now I am actually grading real life space footage.” www.primefocusgroup.com

The Voice live finals at Elstree with BBC S&PP BBC Studios and Post Production (BBC S&PP) is providing full production gallery facilities for the live finals of The Voice.

Broadcasting live at Elstree, The Voice (pictured above right)

will take over the Studios’ George Lucas Stage 1, and make use of a purpose-built gallery.

With direct access onto Stage 1, the production, sound and lighting galleries are equipped with high definition technology. www.bbcstudiosandpostproduction .com

Sequence Post has completed the end-to-end post of the 10-part crime drama, Suspects, created and produced by Newman Street, part of FremantleMedia UK for Channel 5.

Suspects is the first original drama for Channel 5 in several years, and aims to take a different approach by having the actors improvise dialogue and using filming techniques and a directorial approach usually associated with factual programming.

Sequence Post was contracted to provide the entire post solution, with post production supervisor Ben Foakes using DaVinci Resolve as the ingest and transcode platform.

Foakes oversaw the finishing process at Sequence Post’s central London boutique by colourist William HW Read. www.sequence-post.co.uk

BroaMan extends routing matrix for French parliament: BroaMan has completed the second phase of its communication infrastructure project for French TV network La Chaîne Parlementaire.

This has seen the extension of the system to further locations and creation of a centralised routing system by redeploying old devices with further interfaces from BroaMan. BroaMan has delivered a Route66 as the centralised router and two MUX22 units, with a third supplied later.

“Route66 is configured to combine five satellites — integrating the older V3R-FX- INTERCOM-SDI units with the new MUX22 devices. Every channel that appears on the satellite is available in Route66 and can be routed to any of the outputs,” said BroaMan application engineer, Maciek Janiszewski.

Both the V3R-FX-INTERCOM-SDI and MUX22 devices are equipped with the Clear-Com board, offering four 4-wire intercom ports each, while a X6R-FX-INTERCOM provides local audio and intercom I/O in the central location. www.broaman.com

Baselight gets Under the Skin of Scarlett Johansson film: Dirty Looks, the London colour grading studio specialising in Baselight grading for independent movies, carried out the finish of Under the Skin — the latest movie from director Jonathan Glazer, starring Scarlett Johansson. Visual effects were completed by Dirty Looks’ creative partner, One of Us. As effects developed, they were regularly conformed and worked on in a 2K grading environment. Dirty Looks’ Tom Balkwill explained: “Combining technical resources allowed a quick turnaround between creative departments and helped us deliver what this film needed, not only quickly but to the highest standards — the efficient workflow from VFX, aided by the Baselight integration, meant quality never had to be compromised.”

The film was shot in Glasgow and rural Scotland on the ARRI ALEXA and the small cinema-quality digital camera, one-cam. www.filmlight.ltd.uk