TVBE August 2014 digital edition

www.tvbeurope.com

Europe’s Television Technology Business Magazine

August 2014

The Business of Sustainability How well is the industry protecting its most valuable asset: its future?

Aereo: the Fallout Countdown to IBC2014 Imagine Communications CEO, Charlie Vogt

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Editorial

Protecting our most valuable asset

James McKeown

Sustainability is often labelled a complex concept; one that requires businesses to manage the ‘triple bottom line’ of financial, social and environmental risks, responsibilities and prospects.

Ultimately, though, it is about adopting a long-term vision, and all successful companies are well versed in that practice

THERE ARE many themes that we could have run with as our lead this issue, but none quite as compelling as the industry’s relationship with the world in which it resides. In recent editions of this magazine, and indeed at our conferences, we’ve elaborated on the discussion over where the industry is headed in terms of strategic and technological direction in order to paint a vision of the future beyond our current horizon. But without employing sustainable practice and adopting standards that reduce our footprint as a sector, it is a vision of the future that we may never realise.

The good news is that the industry’s appetite for responsible practice is

clarity into the carbon footprint of their productions.

In addition, via Paul Evans at Greenshoot, and Georgina Stevens at One Pumpkin, two leading sustainability consultancies, we are given a fascinating insight into where the industry is, and needs to get to, in the employment of sustainable practice.

As I mentioned, there are companies who are pushing the envelope on this front, and if you would like to see any person or entity recognised for their contribution to sustainable operations, then you can nominate them for the special Sustainability Award at our inaugural TVBAwards. But be quick, as nominations close on August 8.

the industry by looking into the deal that saw Imagine Communications acquire Digital Rapids, whilst also speaking to BroadStream Solutions about its buyout of OASYS. In the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that online video startup, Aereo, infringes broadcasters’ copyrights in on-air programming, dooming the company’s current business model and securing broadcasters’ ability to protect their content.

It is a case that could still have potentially far-reaching ramifications as Aereo mounts a legal challenge to the decision, as this issue’s expert analysis and opinion will explain.

August also sees the return of the Channel-in-a-Box (CiaB)

“If you would like to see any person or entity recognised for their contribution to sustainable operations, then you can nominate them for the special Sustainability Award at our inaugural TVBAwards” increasing, with many companies already employing advanced sustainability operations.

The task now is to encourage widespread adoption of such measures. Neal Romanek’s article offers an intriguing glimpse of how seriously companies are now addressing their carbon footprints and sustainability profiles. He speaks to BAFTA’s industry sustainability manager, Aaron Matthews, about Albert+, a new certification standard designed to offer production teams better

This issue, we start the build up to IBC2014 in earnest, with a detailed product preview, a round up of the latest Content Everywhere features, and an exclusive interview with Michael Crimp, IBC’s chief executive.

We discuss the evolution of the IBC event, the expansion of its new Content Everywhere series of conferences, and the recent passing of IBC’s long serving president, John Wilson.

We continue our examination of the mergers and acquisitions activity that has swept through

forum, whilst we reflect on another successful IT Broadcast Workflow conference with chairman Jeremy Bancroft, hear from TIMA CEO, Alla Salehian and Quantum’s Jeff Stedman, and take a look at Ericsson’s latest IP Imperative report in our expanding Data Centre.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this issue of TVBEurope, and if you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact me.

James McKeown Executive Editor james.mckeown@intentmedia.co.uk

Contents 6-13 Opinion & Analysis Aereo: the fallout Experts from global law firm DLA Piper assess the fallout from the high profile Aereo case in the US 8 14-19 IT Broadcast Workflow Review Conference chair Jeremy Bancroft, as well as TVBEurope’s Neal Romanek and Melanie Dayasena-Lowe, sum up the day’s discussions 14 21-25 Workflow 3D in the wild French outfit breaks new ground on 3D wildlife film thanks to Cameron Pace technology, writes Catherine Wright 21 26-29 Feature The business of sustainability The most valuable asset the TV industry has is its future. Neal Romanek looks into how well we’re taking care of it 26 38-49 IBC Preview Inside the chief executive office James McKeown talks to IBC CEO Michael Crimp, about managing one of the key events on the industry calendar 38 IBC product preview A round up of new releases and product updates on show at IBC2014 40 51-53 Interview Taking a Quantum leap Melanie Dayasena-Lowe meets Geoff Stedman, who moved to Quantum to take up the new position of senior VP, StorNext Solutions 51 54-61 Forum Even more boxes Philip Stevens moderates our second forum on Channel-in-a-Box, a topic that continues to occupy a great many broadcasting minds 54 62-74 Data Centre In search of Contextual Intelligence Media entities are missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with their audiences through data, argues Blake Wooster, co-founder and CEO of 21st Club 69

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Content Everywhere

EDITORIAL Executive Editor James McKeown james.mckeown@intentmedia.co.uk

Content Everywhere news round up As viewing habits continue to change, Melanie Dayasena-Lowe rounds up the latest news from the connected world, pay-TV market and video streaming arena

Acting Editor Neal Romanek neal.romanek@intentmedia.co.uk Editor, Special Projects Melanie Dayasena-Lowe melanie.dayasena-lowe@intentmedia.co.uk Staff Writer Holly Ashford holly.ashford@intentmedia.co.uk Intent Media London, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN, England +44 207 354 6002 Contributors Mike Clark, David Davies, Chris Forrester, David Fox, Mark Hill, Dick Hobbs, John Ive, George Jarrett, Heather McLean, Adrian Pennington, Philip Stevens, Reinhard E Wagner Digital Content Manager Tim Frost

WE START our round up by taking a closer look at the payTV market. The growth of pay television continues as providers embrace multiscreen services to offer subscribers more viewing options. The Multiscreen Index, published by informitv, shows a 1.4 per cent increase in digital television subscriber numbers across 100 leading pay-TV services around the world in the first quarter of 2014. They collectively gained 4.17 million video customers over three months and 17.43 million year-on-year, an increase of 5.2 per cent.

The 100 multichannel pay-TV services in the Multiscreen Index cover over 30 countries and represent around 330 million subscribing homes worldwide.

Services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa gained the most subscribers, led by Tricolor in Russia, adding 340,000 in three months.

Satellite services made the greatest gains over the quarter, just ahead of telco networks, while operators in India accounted for most of the gains for cable.

Global connected TV device ownership exceeds one billion The global installed base of connected TV devices (including smart TVs, games consoles, Blu-ray players, digital media adapters and set-top boxes) will double over the next five years to exceed two billion units by 2018, according to the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices (CHD) service report, ‘Connected CE Devices Market Forecast: Global 2009-2018’.

Other key findings from the report found that IP connectivity is fast becoming ubiquitous as IP-enabled CE devices accounted for 87 per cent of all CE devices shipped in 2013. Global households own an average of 2.8 connected CE devices with the US seeing the highest levels of ownership at 7.7 devices. Global retail spend on consumer electronics products will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in 2017.

The report also found that average global retail spend per household on all consumer electronics products grew 2.9 per cent in 2013 reaching $485.

Office Manager Lianne Davey

Eric Smith, analyst, Connected Home Devices, added: “On a global scale, IP-enabled flatpanel TVs are the most common connected TV device in living rooms today, occupying close to 30 per cent of the installed base of such devices, a figure that is set to rise towards 50 per cent by 2018.

However, that is not to say that IP-enabled TVs will necessarily become the default device that consumers use to access OTT content as there will continue to be various device options available to consumers.”

Digital devices drive new viewing habits While TV viewing remains popular, consumption habits are changing rapidly, according to global research consultancy TNS. TV sets alone are no longer enough to satisfy viewers’ needs for content, driving the growth of online media and ‘screen-stacking’ as a result.

“The growth in ownership of connected TV devices is having a profound effect on the way in which people access and consume media content on the TV set” David Watkins, Connected Home Devices Sixty-five per cent of pay-TV services in the Index now deliver to multiple screens in addition to traditional TV, including phones, tablets and other network-connected devices.

“The informitv Multiscreen Index shows continued growth in pay-TV subscriptions worldwide,” said Dr William Cooper, the founder and chief executive of informitv. “Across the hundred services in the Index, net subscriber gains far exceed net losses.”

David Watkins, service director, Connected Home Devices, commented: “The growth in ownership of connected TV devices is having a profound effect on the way in which people access and consume media content on the TV set.

Furthermore, they are helping to provide opportunities for companies outside of the traditional TV industry such as Google, Apple and Amazon to compete for a share of the television audience.”

In Connected Life, a study of over 55,000 internet users worldwide, TNS found that almost half of people (48 per cent) who watch TV in the evening simultaneously engage in other digital activities, such as using social media, checking their emails or shopping online.

The survey found that viewers own about four digital devices each, rising to five among Australian, German and UK respondents. This, combined with demand for TV and video

content on-the-go, is fuelling the rise of multi-screening or ‘screen-stacking’ — the use of multiple digital devices at the same time.

The demand for live and on-the-go content has been strengthened during the recent FIFA World Cup. Viewers worldwide were accessing this international sporting event via multiple devices at home and on the move, while also engaging in conversations on social media platforms.

The desire to access favourite TV shows at all hours of the day is also driving online TV usage, which extends access to them.

One quarter (25 per cent) of those surveyed worldwide watch content on a PC, laptop, tablet or mobile on a daily basis.

Yet despite this surge in online consumption, traditional TV sets still play a huge part in our lives, with three quarters of respondents (75 per cent) sitting in front of the box every day.

Many of the big global media companies are already taking advantage of growing online viewing trends, offering on-demand services such as BBC iPlayer, Hulu or HBO GO, which allow people to access premium content wherever they are through their phones or tablets.

Commenting on the findings, Matthew Froggatt, chief development officer at TNS, said: “In a world where multitasking is the norm, the context in which we watch TV is rapidly changing — it isn’t just on the sofa at home with no other digital distractions around us.

Instead, the growth in screenstacking and online TV viewing is huge, particularly in the Asian markets, driven by a growing demand for content among viewers.”

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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Opinion & Analysis

The brave new world Alla Salehian, CEO, TIMA

Alla Salehian, CEO of The International Media Associates (TIMA), explores the impact that technology is having on the media industry, particularly newsgathering and distribution WE ALL know the media industry has seen monumental changes to operations, editorial workflow, newsgathering and distribution over the last decade.

The main driver of this change has been the emergence of new technologies impacting content production and the rise of social media impacting publishing and content distribution. The barriers to entry for producing news content, for example, are no longer there. Individuals can now become journalists, photographers and videographers without the need for expensive equipment or professional operators. Similarly, the barriers for content distribution have also been removed with the rise of online video distribution platforms, such as YouTube, and social media networks such as Facebook, removing the need for large network broadcasters to access viewers. So, in this brave new landscape, what impact does technology have on the media industry as a whole and on newsgathering and distribution in particular?

There are two main issues to address here. The first is how technology has changed

traditional methods of newsgathering, content creation and distribution. The second is the impact that these changes have had on the broadcast industry and the shift in the balance of power.

There is no longer any doubt that newsgathering technologies, in the form of smartphones, tablets, digital SLR cameras, and cellular bonded backpack systems — to name but a few — have increased the number of content producers and newsgatherers.

In some cases, broadcasters have also come to depend on these ‘citizen journalists’ to generate content from parts of the world where they do not want to, or cannot, send professional journalists, raising obvious ethical and professional questions.

The major impact on broadcasters has been on traditional linear workflows connecting editors, producers and journalists. New technology means that the time it now takes to commission a news story, film the event, and edit and transmit the finished product is very short and journalists and newsrooms have had to adapt their workflows to accommodate

track and access news content at short notice. For newspaper and online video sites, this has meant that computer algorithms have now replaced the role of journalists in sifting through content, organising and ranking stories and updating content and news stories on front pages and headlines. It is not too far fetched to imagine a scenario where computer algorithms will, one day, select the most important news content that will generate the largest audience, as it is being filmed and uploaded, potentially removing the need for news editors altogether.

the news agenda in the future, and not traditional news editors.

Given the technical challenges facing broadcasters today, and the rise of the citizen journalist and publisher, it would be easy to conclude that the future is bleak for the broadcast industry.

However, we must bear in mind that new technology is ultimately an enabler for content production, storage and consumption. The key is that relevant, well-produced content, which is adapted for distribution on broadcast, online, smartphone and tablet platforms and which can be stored and

“The challenge facing broadcasters in this new environment is how to navigate between the demands for reliable information, and the speed with which their audience can now access content” this change in speed. Competing with citizen journalists and online delivery platforms for viewers’ attention has also added to the time pressure on traditional newsgathering practices. Content verification is a major problem for broadcasters especially given the time pressure to publish a story.

Technology has provided some help with this process; location verification through GPS tracking, for example. Nevertheless, this function is still left to newsgathering professionals who look for clues in images and track the publisher of a story through social media trails.

The sheer volume of information and video content that is now being created and distributed has also generated the need for new storage technology to enable producers to sift through, organise, edit, tag,

The challenge facing broadcasters in this new environment is how to navigate between the demands for reliable information on the one hand, and the speed with which their audience can now access news stories and video content on the other. Technology has made it easier and cheaper to produce and access a mass of information, but it is debateable whether it has increased our knowledge and awareness of the world or helped us to make sense of events. That has traditionally been the role of professional journalists, and computer algorithms cannot replace this function. As more and more people access news content online and form into online groups with common interests and agendas, so they will come to be the ones to set

retrieved easily, will be vital for the survival of broadcasters.

Let’s take an example from the music industry. The iPod has revolutionised the purchase, storage and retrieval of songs and iTunes has become one of the main music distribution platforms. But while it now costs only £199 to buy an iPod Classic which can hold up to 40,000 songs, it will cost about £39,600 to fill it with music content.

The challenge — and opportunity — for broadcasters is not from the citizen journalist but from adapting to new and emerging technologies and using them to create compelling content that appeals to the mass and the niche audience. That means adapting workflows and changing established mindsets, which I would argue is a much bigger challenge.

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Opinion & Analysis

Aereo: the fallout The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court that online video start-up Aereo was operating in violation of copyright law appeared to have drawn a line under a case that has held the attention of the international TV broadcast community. Yet, Aereo has come out fighting with an “astonishing” new legal strategy. Here, Andrew L Deutsch, Marc E Miller and Melissa A Reinckens of DLA Piper in New York offer their analysis of the case Background to the case THE UNITED States Supreme Court held that Aereo infringes broadcasters’ copyrights in on-air programming when transmitting programmes to its Internet subscribers. The ruling on 25 June held that such transmissions are a public performance, and thus infringe the exclusive right to publicly perform a work protected by copyright. The Court rejected the argument that Aereo is only an equipment provider, and that subscribers, rather than Aereo, “perform” each transmission.

The Court held that Congress, in enacting the Copyright Act, had intended to prohibit cable TV companies from rebroadcasting copyrighted programmes without the copyright owner’s permission, and that to carry out this congressional purpose, Aereo’s system, which operates

without such permission, must be enjoined. The Court’s holding will doom Aereo’s business in its current form.

Broadcasters’ ability to protect their content, and to require cable TV operators to pay large retransmission fees for overthe-air programming, has been reinforced. The most important future question, however, is how the Aereo decision will affect Internet streaming and cloud-based services.

The way in which copyrighted works are stored and retrieved from such systems falls uncomfortably close to the definition of “public performance” as given in Aereo.

Although the Court was careful to say that it was not prejudging the legality of such services, future copyright litigation directed to cloud storage and retrieval is almost inevitable,

and the issue is likely to be back before the Court within several years.

Aereo’s business model Although users can receive over-the-air broadcasts for free, cable TV companies, in order to retransmit the same programmes on their systems, must pay billions of dollars each year to the copyright owners. Aereo was an attempt to find a legal route around this requirement.

Aereo’s system uses thousands of tiny antennas, each assigned to a single subscriber, to receive overthe-air broadcasts, and a remote server that creates individual copies of broadcast programmes that its subscribers wish to watch live or at a later time.

A group of broadcasters sued Aereo, claiming that the transmissions infringed the public performance right, and

sought a preliminary injunction.

Aereo maintained that because each transmission of this system was actuated by a subscriber, not

by Aereo, those transmissions were not public performances, and were no different than a user receiving the same signals through a home digital antenna.

A New York federal court denied the broadcasters’ initial demand for a preliminary injunction against Aereo, finding that the plaintiffs had not established a likely infringement of their public performance rights. The Second Circuit affirmed the denial of relief, then turned down the broadcasters’ request for en banc rehearing.

Meanwhile, Aereo expanded its services to a number of other US cities. It encountered lawsuits in other cities from the local broadcasters; Aereo defeated a preliminary injunction

in Massachusetts, but a Utah federal court enjoined Aereo from launching its service in the states of Utah, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming.

The losing broadcasters in the Second Circuit petitioned the Supreme Court to review the question, “Whether a company ‘publicly performs’ a copyrighted television programme when it retransmits a broadcast of that programme to thousands of paid subscribers over the internet,” and, unusually, Aereo also joined in the request for the Court to grant review. Given the interest and importance of the case, the Court decided to accept the appeal.

The Court decides On 25 June 2014, a six-justice majority reversed the Second Circuit and concluded that the Aereo service did infringe the public performance rights of the plaintiffs. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority opinion; Justice Antonin Scalia issued a dissent for himself and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The Court concluded that Aereo both “performs” in transmitting programming to its subscribers over the internet, and that the performance is public. Aereo argued that it did not perform, because it “does no more than supply equipment that emulates the operation of a home antenna and digital video recorder (DVR).” It contended that only Aereo’s subscribers ‘perform’, when they use such equipment to stream television programmes to themselves.

The Court rejected Aereo’s argument, reasoning that Aereo’s transmission is a performance because it is similar in nature to the old community antenna television (CATV) services which Congress intended to address with its 1976 amendment to the Act’s definition of ‘perform’. Prior decisions of the Court, Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc. and Teleprompter Corp. v. Columbia Broadcastings System, Inc, had held that CATV systems did not perform broadcasters’ copyrighted television programmes when they transmitted local television broadcasting to subscribers outside of the broadcast antennas’ range. The 1976 Act’s legislative history, the Court held, showed that Congress intended to overturn these cases, and “make clear that an entity that acts like a CATV system itself performs.”

The Court avoided interpreting the Act’s literal language,

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Opinion & Analysis finding it to be ambiguous, and instead relying on legislative history and inductive reasoning to discover Congress’s intent.

This is a substantially different approach than prior copyright decisions of the Court, which have adhered closely to literal textual analysis. See, for example, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 1351, 1358 (2013) (“The language of § 109(a) read literally favours Kirtsaeng’s non-geographical interpretation, namely, that ‘lawfully made under this title’ means made ‘in accordance with’ or ‘in compliance with’ the Copyright Act.”).

The Court used the same reasoning by analogy to conclude that Aereo’s performances were public. Aereo argued that its performances of the programmes were private because each performance is only capable of being received by one and only one subscriber. The Court rejected this argument on grounds that the performances did not differ from CATV systems’ transmissions to the public.

The Court found that Aereo’s technological architecture did not distinguish its services from CATV transmissions, at least from the subscribers’ perspective, and that Congress did not intend to exempt similar services on the basis of technological differences that make no difference to the consumer of television programming: “Why would a subscriber who wishes to watch a television show care much whether images and sounds are delivered to his screen via a large multisubscriber antenna or one small dedicated antenna, whether they arrive instantaneously or after a few seconds’ delay, or whether they are transmitted directly or after a personal copy is made?

And why, if Aereo is right, could not modern CATV systems simply continue the same commercial and consumer-oriented activities, free of copyright restrictions, provided they substitute such new technologies for old? Congress

would as much have intended to protect a copyright holder from the unlicensed activities of Aereo as from those of cable companies.”

In finding Aereo’s performances to be public, the Court gave no weight to the fact that each subscriber received a different transmission. It held that the Act suggests that an entity may transmit a performance through multiple discrete transmissions to more than one person, and that a performance need not be a single transmission.

Aereo’s model is no different than “one transmit[ting] a message to one’s friends, irrespective of whether one sends separate identical e-mails to each friend, or a single e-mail to all at once.”

Thus, the Court concluded that “when an entity communicates

legal issues such as fair use, that could differentiate cloud-based systems from the Aereo system.

But the Court’s definition of “public performance” may be broad enough to reach cloud computing and Internet streaming services, which use their own equipment to retransmit content to their customers, and often retransmit unique copies of the same programme to the individual users who uploaded them — like Aereo, and Cablevision’s RS-DVR system.

Because a cloud computing service arguably “communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to multiple people,” there is likely to be future litigation by content owners against such services, at least where the copies stored in

and cloud storage and retrieval is a public performance will soon make its way through the federal courts and up to the Supreme Court.

The fallout: Aereo’s new legal strategy However, shortly after its highly publicised loss, Aereo shifted to a new legal strategy which it hopes will save its business from extinction. The company has asserted in federal district court that it is entitled to a compulsory licence to carry over-the-air broadcasts under § 111 of the Copyright Act. Such a licence, which is available to cable systems, could be a complete defence to copyright infringement claims by broadcasters. Aereo bases its claim on the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Aereo

“Shortly after its highly publicised loss, Aereo shifted to a new legal strategy which it hopes will save its business from extinction” the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to multiple people, it transmits a performance to them regardless of the number of discrete communications it makes.”

While the Aereo case is now concluded, and the Aereo model has now been rejected as a copyright infringement, there is an important open question: how the Court’s definition of “to transmit … a performance,” will affect the legality of other Internet-streaming and cloudbased systems. Many of the amici, and the US government, devoted portions of their brief to the impact of a decision in the Aereo case on cloud storage. The Court essentially avoided the issue, saying that it was not prejudging the legality of such systems, and pointing out facts such as a user purchasing rights to play a recording or movie before storing it in the cloud, and

the cloud have not been licensed.

Lower courts may struggle to determine whether cloud computing services transmit performances to the public when users upload and retransmit copies of protected works. The majority of cloud computing users upload purchased, or licensed, copies of content that they wish to retransmit at some other time, or in some other place. But purchasing a copy of a protected work does not necessarily entitle the purchaser to publicly perform that work, and, under a reasonable interpretation of Aereo, a cloud computing service’s retransmission of that work is a public performance.

So, what then? Fair use, the Court said, is available to defendants to “help prevent inappropriate or inequitable applications of the [Transmit] Clause.” It’s fair to say that the question of whether streaming,

service is “highly similar” to that of a cable system. The Copyright Office has since rejected Aereo’s theory, reaffirming its view that § 111 does not apply to internet retransmission services.

Nonetheless, Aereo’s strategy presents interesting new issues, which may substantially prolong its litigation, and which may mean that the case ultimately returns to the Supreme Court.

Once the Supreme Court granted the broadcasters’ petition for certiorari, the New York federal district court presiding over ABC, Inc. et al v. Aereo, Inc., 12-cv-1540-AJN-HBP, stayed all proceedings until the Supreme Court decided the appeal. It also ordered that after the Supreme Court ruled, the parties must submit a joint letter stating their position on whether the stay should be lifted, and if so, how discovery should proceed.

The parties have now filed their

joint letter with the district court, stating how each of them believe the case should proceed. The broadcasters plan to submit a proposed order, consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision, that permanently enjoins Aereo from infringing their public performance rights. They say that any additional proceedings depends upon what Aereo plans to do with its service.

After claiming throughout the litigation that its service was not at all like a cable television system, Aereo has reversed course. It now claims that, like cable systems, Aereo is entitled to a compulsory licence to retransmit over-the-air broadcasts under Copyright Act § 111, because the Supreme Court held that the Aereo service is highly similar to cable systems. With such a licence, Aereo would no longer infringe broadcasters’ copyrights and the service could not be enjoined.

The broadcasters responded that Aereo’s new position is “astonishing… given its prior statements to this Court and the Supreme Court.” For example, the broadcasters note, Aereo distinguished itself from a cable system under § 111 in its briefing to the district court, and again at oral argument before the Supreme Court. Aereo, however, says that it has always “been careful to follow the law”— first under the Second Circuit precedent (i.e., Cartoon Network LP, LLLP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., 536 F.3d 121 (2d Cir. 2008) (Cablevision) and WPIX, Inc. v. ivi, Inc., 691 F.3d 275 (2d Cir. 2012) (ivi)).

In ivi, the Second Circuit held that a service that retransmits television programming live over the internet, like Aereo, is not eligible for § 111’s compulsory licence. It based this conclusion on the fact that neither Congress, nor the Copyright Office, has ever expressly permitted § 111’s definition of “cable system” to cover internet retransmission services. Aereo asserts that the

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Opinion & Analysis Supreme Court has announced a “new and different rule governing Aereo’s operations”, which effectively overrules ivi. Aereo has asked the district court to continue the stay of discovery and rule on its entitlement to a § 111 licence immediately.

One week after the parties submitted their joint letter to the district court, the Copyright Office provisionally accepted Aereo’s request to obtain a § 111 compulsory licence and filing of statements of account forms.

However, this is not necessarily good news for Aereo. The Copyright Office rejected Aereo’s legal theory that the Supreme Court’s decision overrules ivi, and reaffirmed its long-held position that § 111’s definition of “cable system” does not cover Internet retransmission services. However, it did state that it may wait to see the outcome of the court case before deciding whether to reject Aereo’s filings altogether.

So, now what?

The first problem is procedural.

The broadcasters argue that the district court cannot consider

the issue because Aereo did not plead § 111 as an affirmative defence in its Answer. Thus, the issue will be whether Aereo can amend its answer and that, in turn, may require the district court to determine whether the licence defence is viable, or ‘futile’, because the defence has no legal basis, particularly in view of the Copyright Office’s position.

Assuming that the district court reaches the viability of the defence, Aereo’s eligibility for a § 111 licence is far from clear. § 111 permits a “cable system” to retransmit a broadcast, pursuant to a statutory licence, where the cable system’s retransmission is permissible under the FCC’s rules and regulations. ivi interpreted this language as too narrow to encompass systems similar to Aereo’s. The district court will need to decide whether the Supreme Court’s statement that “Aereo’s activities are substantially similar to those of the [cable systems] that Congress amended the Act to reach” is enough to bring Aereo within the ambit of § 111. The court may be influenced by the Copyright Office’s rejection

of Aereo’s argument, but it is not necessarily bound by it. There remains another issue. Were the court to hold that Aereo meets § 111’s definition of “cable system”, it will have to deal with an even thornier issue: is transmission

by Aereo permissible under the FCC’s rules and regulations?

For years, the FCC has grappled with how to interpret the term “multichannel video programming distributor” (“MVPD”), as defined in the Communications Act of 1934, (47 U.S.C. § 522(13)), in light of internet retransmission services, like Aereo, and other internet video streaming services. An MVPD, as defined by the Communications Act, is subject to both benefits and legal obligations under the Act and FCC regulations. The regulatory benefits to an MVPD include the right to seek relief under the retransmission consent rules, which require broadcast stations to consent to an MVPD’s carriage of its signal, and the former programme access rules, which the FCC declined to extend beyond 2012, but which required vertically

integrated cable companies (i.e., entities that own both content and a delivery platform) to provide competitors access to their programming content.

On the other hand, MVPDs are obligated to negotiate in good faith with broadcasters for retransmission consent, among several other requirements. In 2010, Sky Angel, an internet protocol television (“IPTV”) service, filed a programme access complaint with the FCC against a broadcaster which had terminated Sky Angel’s affiliation agreement. At issue there is whether Sky Angel could show that an IPTV service meets the definition of MVPD such that it is entitled to seek relief under the FCC’s program access rules. In 2012, the FCC sought public comment on the issue. But the FCC has yet to rule and the issue remains open today. How will the FCC’s non-action in this area affect the district court’s resolution of Aereo’s argument? Will the FCC, as the Copyright Office did, express its view on the issue? Or will that court attempt to rule on the issue before the FCC

does? These questions do not have easy answers. In addition to these points, Aereo also argues that, if it is not eligible for a § 111 licence, any injunction on its services should prohibit only “simultaneous or nearsimultaneous streaming”, because such streaming was the only issue before the Supreme Court. This would leave Aereo free to transmit “non-simultaneous playback from copies created by customers.” It is difficult to predict what delay between broadcast and streaming would make the latter “nonsimultaneous”, and whether the district court will read the Supreme Court’s decision as narrowly as Aereo does.

In short, we have not heard the last from Aereo. As we have said before during this saga, stay tuned.

DLA Piper’s Sports, Media and Entertainment group offers legal services to the global sports and media sector. To follow DLA’s coverage, visit blogs.dlapiper.com/ mediaandsport, or email sport.mediaandentertainment@ dlapiper.com.

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Opinion & Analysis

Aereo ban: a legal win for the content industry The Supreme Court decision is pivotal on both sides of the pond, writes Alan Wolk, global lead analyst at Piksel ON 25 JUNE, 2014, the US Supreme Court ruled that Aereo was in violation of copyright law, backing the pay-TV industry in its fight against the free distribution of copyrighted content. Created in 2012, Aereo’s premise was to let users watch broadcast television on internet-connected devices via dime-sized digital antennas, creating a closed circuit relying solely on the consumer’s broadband access — cutting traditional broadcasters out. This meant that Aereo was directly and knowingly violating the Copyright Act of 1976 by charging for a “public performance” of the broadcasters content. The Court ruled that the system Aereo had set up was analogous to a cable network and thus Aereo was circumventing the retransmission fees that cable and satellite companies pay the TV networks to distribute their content. The landmark court decision secures TV network revenues for content that is rightly theirs, while also enabling the cable and satellite companies to benefit from the reach of the TV networks to attract more consumers.

In this new era of connectivity, pay-TV companies are facing the growing prospect of cord cutting along with rapidly increasing competition from OTT providers, as today’s digital natives turn to IP-only content to pay low subscription fees or, in some cases, to completely avoid paying at all. Although the trend is not as prominent in Europe as in the US, the pay-TV industry needs to prepare for a surge in low cost or free content as the advent of fibre optic networks makes even more content accessible online.

The easy access to content online also leads to legal disputes, as the distinction between authorised and unauthorised video is becoming increasingly blurred. This puts consumers at a bigger risk of infringing copyright law, without actually being aware of the offence. The European Union (EU) tackled the issue by putting in place a set of laws enabling consumers to store and stream content they own on their personal devices, such as the French ‘copie privée’ and the upcoming Copyrights and Rights in Performance

launch of Netflix in France and Germany before the end of 2014, the European broadcast landscape will continue to undergo another transformation, and it is crucial that broadcasters fight hard to keep online-only competition at bay. The Supreme Court decision is pivotal on both sides of the pond: most content is produced in the US, meaning that the biggest threat in North America relates to content rights issues, while in Europe, similar services to Aereo would immediately and directly impact the industry’s revenues.

The US Supreme Court’s decision to rule Aereo’s service illegal has had the resounding effect of securing the rights of content companies on any screen, whether on or off the air.

This ruling in the US courts is good news for content owners wherever they are, as it sets an example for similar cases in other territories.

Alan Wolk (Personal Copy for Private Use) regulations in the UK. Although Aereo hadn’t yet set foot in Europe, it would have faced similar opposition from the broadcast industry there as it did in the US. However, the lack of European-wide governmental bodies, similar to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) in the US, would have

made discussions harder as the industry is still very much fragmented. Telco providers and ISPs are increasingly involved in the European decisions as they leverage their broadband networks to offer online-based TV packages such as BT Sports, Orange Cinema Series or Sky Go. With the increased prominence of IPTV and the

As Global Lead Analyst at Piksel, Alan Wolk (@awolk) has become one of the most influential thought leaders and futurists in the television industry and was recently named one of the top 20 thinkers in social TV and second screen.Wolk writes and speaks extensively and his common sense approach has been hailed a ‘breath of fresh air’.

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IT Broadcast Workflow 2014

Welcome from the chair Jeremy Bancroft, director of Media Asset Capital, provides the foreword to our review of the 2014 IT Broadcast Workflow conference with his chairman’s assessment of the day’s sessions and talking points THIS JULY marked the sixth time that I have chaired the London IT Broadcast Workflow conference. During the five or so years that the conference has been running, we have heard case studies from organisations across the globe that have all faced similar challenges: how to move from a linear, tapebased workflow to one where television content arrives, is stored and processed, and is often delivered, as a file.

Reflecting on the changes over that period, it is clear that we have passed the tipping point whereby almost all new broadcast installations are file-based. Companies deploying file-based broadcast infrastructures can no longer be considered to be at the leading edge of technology transformation. However, there are still precious few standards that allow software platforms from different vendors to be integrated with ease. Software integration projects are often complex and time consuming.

The boundaries between the different systems used by broadcasters have blurred — MAM, channel management, automation, workflow, transcode, delivery platforms — it is becoming increasingly difficult to see where one stops and the next starts. This makes the selection of platforms and components all the more complex.

And where the customer wants specific functionality or workflows, the time taken to specify the requirements in sufficient detail for the systems vendors can be lengthy.

At this year’s conference, Andy Beale talked about the BT Sport project which had a very tight timescale, determined by late access to a new building, and the commencement of the Premier League season. As a result, there was no time to specify and implement a key element in many file-based workflow projects — an enterprise MAM solution.

Despite being told that the project could not be completed on time, BT Sport managed to convert a building and implement a file-based broadcast infrastructure to meet

Jeremy Bancroft sets the scene for the day’s agenda

“Companies Its findings were that bandwidth and access deploying costs meant that file-based broadcast for Discovery’s application, the infrastructures cloud wasn’t currently cost can no longer be effective. This considered to be at might have been influenced by the leading edge the fact that the Discovery board of technology is focused on making transformation” capital investments

its deadline. This was achieved by focusing on what was most important, what was currently available, and utilising integrations that had already been proven in other installations.

Sometimes, however, the solution required just does not exist. This was the situation in which Mark Keller, chief technology officer of Hogarth Worldwide, found himself.

Hogarth is the production arm of advertising agency WPP, and was looking for a way in which content related to TV commercials could be managed centrally, and workflows for content review and approval, and distribution of the finished ads could be streamlined.

Unable to find a solution to meet its needs, Hogarth partnered with Deluxe and

Microsoft to develop its own platform, ZONZA. ZONZA uses a private cloud infrastructure to store elements and versions of commercials. The economics of using the cloud for broadcast storage were discussed, and for short-form content such as commercials there is a good business case, particularly when costs to access the content can be recharged to the advertisers.

However, Jim McGrath of Discovery Communications had a different perspective on cloud-based storage. Discovery has investigated the use of the cloud for long-form content management and delivery.

in order to reduce operational costs. A common, but far from universal position for broadcasters.

The work of the Digital Production Partnership (DPP), highlighted by Channel 4’s Kevin Burrows at this year’s conference, has established an excellent framework for the filebased contribution and delivery of programmes to UK broadcasters.

By involving multiple users and vendors, and focusing on tools to assist in deployment, the DPP has not only managed to implement a standard, but a way of working across the industry in the UK. This is no mean feat.

John Ive quoted research undertaken by the IABM that suggests that almost 50 per cent

of the technology spend of a broadcaster is now on IT equipment rather than dedicated broadcast systems.

This led to the old chestnut of broadcast engineers versus IT engineers raising its head.

It was stated that it is easier to train broadcast engineers in IT skills that to instill IT engineers with an appreciation of broadcast workflows. This is a truism that Media Asset Capital has witnessed in a number of broadcast IT projects around the world. However, it was noted that there does not appear to be a sufficiently large new generation of broadcast engineers to replace the ageing (and greying) community, ably reflected within the conference audience.

Perhaps the IT engineers will take heart in the move from baseband video to IP streaming, best summed up by Cinegy’s Lewis Kirkaldie when he stated “SDI must die!” He went on to clarify, to the relief of several broadcast equipment vendors, that this is “a future-facing statement”. Judging by the plethora of IP-based video routing and distribution equipment at this year’s trade shows, perhaps that future is not so very far off.

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IT Broadcast Workflow 2014

IT Broadcast Workflow 2014 The dream becomes reality Delegates take their seats at BAFTA for the sixth IT Broadcast Workflow

This year’s IT Broadcast Workflow conference looked at some long-standing issues in file-based production and discovered that the industry is farther along in resolving them than expected.

Neal Romanek and Melanie Dayasena-Lowe sum up the day’s discussions

building a new facility or you’re upgrading an existing facility, the first thing you’re going to do is put in IT-based workflows,” Bancroft said. “There are lots of examples we can look at now, whereas five years ago there were only a few in Europe. Now, just about every project involves a degree of file-based workflows.”

sponsored by Cinegy, about BBC Northern Ireland’s (BBC NI) new, entirely softwarebased broadcast facility. BBC Northern Ireland replaced its tape-based system in 2008, using Cinegy systems.

Cinegy’s battle cry of “SDI must die” was the ethos driving the upgrade.

“The expertise is no longer within the walls of the BBC” Mervyn Middleby, BBC NI One observation that was returned to by multiple speakers was the idea that broadcast had been increasingly trying to understand the IT world, but that the IT world had not necessarily made any moves toward understanding broadcast.

JEREMY BANCROFT, director of Media Asset Capital, has hosted every IT Broadcast Workflow conference for the past five years. To see how far

the industry has come in that time, he reviewed the notes from his very first ITBW and discovered that the topics were startlingly similar to 2014’s.

The big difference was that the point of view had moved from aspiration to practicality.

“I’m glad to see that after those five years, the norm is, if you’re

Best of the BBC The opening session, ‘Lifecycles of a software-based TV station’ was a case study,

With the new facility, BBC NI had to increase its storage beyond what it had originally budgeted for. “It’s not that people got the maths fundamentally wrong,” said Cinegy’s Lewis Kirkaldie, “It’s that when people get given new technologies, they just use it differently. The assumptions and models they built on didn’t take into account the fact that Belfast suddenly had a post

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IT Broadcast Workflow 2014 said Kalanchekaev, “because it was really high-scale and a lot of people were working for us.

Coordination between those parties is a really big challenge.”

Your future in the cloud A presentation called ‘The art of enterprise asset platforms’ was presented by Mark Keller, CTO of Hogarth Worldwide. Keller showed how ZONZA, a cloudbased digital asset management system, was used for managing assets for TV advertising.

ZONZA operates in a Linux environment on Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology. Keller said that Hogarth found the Azure platform’s security and global reach more attractive than that of its competitors.

Cinegy and BBC Northern Ireland discuss the broadcaster’s new and entirely software-based broadcast facility production facility available quite superior to the rest of the BBC, and they suddenly won more commissions.

And winning more commissions subsequently meant they needed more storage.”

“The expertise is no longer within the walls of the BBC,” said Mervyn Middleby, BBC NI’s head of tech and operations. “We’re looking for experts in the industry now. I find good experts in Cinegy that help us, and hopefully we’ll be able to keep working forward to where we want to go.”

QC-ing the QC Next up, DPP, the Digital Production Partnership, gave an update on its activities in 2014, presented by DPP technical standards lead Kevin Burrows. DPP has established 1 October as the date by which UK broadcasters will move to file-based programme delivery.

Burrows gave an overview of the DPP’s history as well as its most recent activities.

In addition to shepherding the move to file-based delivery in the UK and supporting the AS-11 format delivery standard,

ITBW delegates visit the exhibitor area during the coffee breaks free to choose what language they want on their products, but at least we can get a standardised meaning.”

The three categories for the new rules will be ‘absolute

“We have a lot of people creating content now, hoping they can send the one file absolutely everywhere. And in reality, Craig Russill-Roy, Adstream they can’t” Having a software-based studio means that BBC NI can avoid having to commit to proprietary hardware with a fixed asset lifecycle and can upgrade whenever it needs to, using offthe-shelf hardware.

BBC Northern Ireland was the last BBC centre to move away from linear editing and newsroom production, but with the digital upgrade, Middleby believes, “We have the most advanced workflow in the BBC.”

DPP has, in partnership with the EBU, been developing a minimum set of automated QC tests and tolerances.

“In effect, it’s about defining templates, which contain the actual parameters with the allowable tolerances,” said Burrows. “It’s trying to formalise what people call different things. If you go to five different QC devices, the description of a measurement or tolerance might be something different in each case. People are

requirements’, ‘editorial warnings’, and ‘technical warnings’. Under these categories, DPP has defined roughly 40 different QC parameters.

HD at RT AmberFin sponsored a presentation by Russian systems integrator OKNO-TV on the new HD facility for news channel RT (Russia Today). The scale of the build was impressive, providing an infrastructure to support 2,000 users.

Vizrt provided enterprise-wide graphics solutions and Dalet was brought in for media management and archive.

Fibre channel network for the file system and high resolution storage was provided by Cisco.

The facility was all-encompassing enough to retain old favourites: the RT design department insisted on keeping Final Cut Pro 7, although RT’s main workhorse editor is Adobe Premiere.

RT was proud of the fact that its switch to HD was seamless and live, with an on-camera presenter literally walking off the SD set and onto the HD set during broadcast.

OKNO-TV’s Mike Kalanchekaev said that the migration of RT’s sizeable staff to an entirely revamped studio was not much of a problem in terms of operations. The staff already had a great deal of input into which systems would be incorporated. “The most complicated stuff was the managing of the subcontractors,”

Keller asked the delegates in the audience: “How many people think your stuff will be in the public cloud in the next five years?” In a room full of 200 people, only half a dozen hands went up. Surprised, Keller quipped, “Let’s do this again in five years’ time and see what happens.”

Keller was doubtful about the future of in-house storage: “I think anyone who thinks they can carry on buying disks to manage all the stuff they need going forwards into the future might have to have a really big cheque book.”

Keller’s assertion that cloud-based asset management systems would be the future of broadcast was met with lots of questions from the delegates, and some scepticism from those who thought cloud-based storage for big productions was not as financially viable as Keller made it out to be.

The future will tell.

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“We have the most advanced workflow in the BBC” — Mervyn Middleby, BBC NI

Sounding out Loudness The morning sessions concluded with a panel discussion on the challenges of Loudness compliance, moderated by MC Patel of Emotion Systems. Also on the panel were Craig RussillRoy of Adstream and Simon Leppington of Ericsson.

Adstream prepares commercials to be sent out to broadcasters worldwide.

The often elusive nature of file delivery, and the global challenge of it, was underlined

by Russill-Roy’s description of

fixing non-compliant files created a thorny conundrum: “It was easier to fix a file than to reject it and send it back. But if they’re aware you’re going to fix it for them, it encourages bad practice.”

Leppington agreed that education was key, but the company decided to bring in automated QC software, provided by Emotion Systems, which allowed for fasterthan-realtime correction in large volume, something that would have been impossible via human QC.

IT Broadcast Workflow 2014 file-based, not touching tape and not touching film anywhere in the process.”

Best known for its compositing software NUKE, The Foundry developed the system for assembling clips and to handle complexity involved in high-end film work. “NUKE is there to take assets of various forms — whether from 3D, live action or animation — and bring them all together to create a 2D file sequence. It’s there to aggregate assets to create a clip,” he explained.

Among its impressive portfolio in film and TV work, NUKE has been used on Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity and HBO’s Game of Thrones.

On Gravity, NUKE dealt with a vast amount of complexity and extremely large compute requirements.

For Game of Thrones, Robinson said: “As far as workflows and toolsets go and techniques employed to create the visuals, it’s very similar to high-end film. The quality threshold has gone way up.”

Strong links TMD chairman Tony Taylor introduced a case study by Discovery Communications.

The companies have worked together since 2006 and TMD put the first tape management system into Discovery’s Silver Spring, Maryland facility.

Jim McGrath, senior VP, global media engineering, Discovery Communications, set the scene by detailing the company’s global reach. It boasts 2.5 billion cumulative subscribers, operates in 224

“We would probably start with services in the cloud rather than storage” Andy Beale, BT Sport Adstream’s growth: “I managed to pay four people’s mortgages from people not being able to fix a file.”

Russill-Roy lamented the global audio community’s lost opportunity to create a worldwide standard for Loudness. Instead, audio file delivery differs from territory to territory. “We have a lot of people creating content now, hoping they can send the one file absolutely everywhere. And in reality, they can’t.”

Simon Leppington, looking back at his experience at Technicolor (now Ericsson Broadcast Services), found that

High-end workflows Simon Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of The Foundry, kicked off the afternoon sessions with a case study on the changing nature of broadcast.

As a software vendor, The Foundry primarily deals with content creation, particularly in VFX for the film market.

Robinson explained how VFX has a long history of file-based workflow. “In film, the rise of digital acquisition over the last few years means as a software vendor we primarily think about end-to-end production workflows which are entirely

Craig Russill-Roy of Adstream, Simon Leppington of Ericsson and MC Patel from Emotion Systems talk Loudness

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IT Broadcast Workflow 2014

Rounding up the day’s proceedings was a panel discussion on what’s next for broadcast workflows countries and territories, in 45 languages and across 197 international networks.

McGrath said: “We’re moving from being a non-fiction TV company to a truly global television company servicing all types of genres.”

Referring to the changing landscape, he went on to talk about the proliferation of non-linear platforms and devices.

Despite the universal enthusiasm for multi-screen video, McGrath noted, “The margins we are seeing on these platforms are very thin and often non-existent.”

Talking about early workflows, McGrath explained that these relied on incremental data, Excel sheets and a lack of linkage between the linear and non-linear environment.

“In conjunction with TMD Mediaflex, we’ve always been

“There are statistics to say we are, as an industry, an ageing society. That means there is a lot of reskilling needed and training is an important part of that” John Ive, IABM very strong about linkage of our upstream business systems, upstream planning systems, linking metadata and setting up business rules, etc.”

He has also found the evolution of digital very interesting. “As the early platforms started, like a start-up company they didn’t have a lot of structure. There was a lack of good asset management.

People would create content and label it how they wanted to. Within our companies, the corporate IT departments and

broadcast IT groups started to merge together.”

So what’s next? “We continue to consolidate, support and drive our systems to greater efficiencies and continue to merge our non-linear content management into regional centres in Miami, Silver Spring and London,” he remarked.

A star is born BT Sport’s chief engineer Andy Beale gave delegates an insight into its whirlwind first year of

service. Since its launch, BT has entered the premium sports TV market to enhance its triple play offering, built a brand new broadcast centre at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and constructed disaster recovery facilities at BT Tower.

Beale said BT Sport had experienced an incredibly successful year. “In 11 months we accrued 5.2 million subscribers, two million app downloads and broadcast 850 football and 127 rugby matches.

Our audience share is way above our forecast, and as a result, we’re starting to win some exciting new rights.”

Speaking about the workflow design, Beale said: “I wanted to make sure we were in line with current standards and building on existing standards.

We wanted to put ourselves in line, as a new broadcaster, and join the DPP group. We set the benchmark that we would be an AVC Intra house with AS-11 delivery to playout partners.”

Among the other requirements was the need to build a secure and efficient media network, automation and accelerated and secure file delivery.

For its archive needs, BT Sport did take a brief look at cloud solutions but with the timescales involved Beale wanted something trustworthy and reliable.

A key part of the company’s remit was to make sure BT Sport had business continuity.

Media archived at iCity is synced and archived at BT Tower using Aspera Sync, Orchestrator and Console.

BT Sport has also been investigating further innovation in the areas of cellular bonded contribution using LiveU, BT conferencing for live links, GPU and IT-based live production systems and cloud services. But for cloud services, Beale pointed out that BT Sport had ruled out using cloud as a storage environment for archive. “For us we would probably start with services in the cloud rather than storage.”

Training is key John Ive, director of business development and technology for the IABM, turned his attention to the discussion of interoperability, bandwidth and efficient workflows.

“Now we’re moving into digital files and IT/networkbased environments, not only

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IT Broadcast Workflow 2014 are we looking at fundamental changes in workflows but also we’re seeing the pace of change increase very rapidly,” he commented.

Ive explained that creativity and business need to work in harmony. “We want people to do what they do best, efficiently and without having to worry about the technology.”

According to Ive, IT workflows are not just about saving money but should include freeing up creativity by removing limitations, achieving more within the same budget and automating repetitive tasks.

He urged that IT workflows should be invisible to the programme makers and that programme makers should not be engineers or technicians.

For the future, Ive said IT workflows will become indispensable when considering the increasing diversity of delivery platforms, video/audio formats, interaction, feedback, data management and social media.

One area that the IABM focuses on is training and there’s a lot of reskilling and

retraining required, said Ive. “There are new people coming into the industry that don’t have the culture of programme production and television so that’s a very important part of our work.

“We do need to enable IT engineers and new graduates to understand the cultures and practices of the media industry.

There are statistics to say we are, as an industry, an ageing society. That means there is a lot of reskilling needed, so training is an important part of that.”

A thank you to our sponsors The TVBEurope team would like to extend our sincere thanks to all our IT Broadcast Workflow sponsors.

Platinum sponsor Cinegy

Gold sponsors Emotion Systems TMD Signiant OKNO-TV Aspera

IT versus broadcast Rounding up the day’s proceedings was a panel discussion on what’s next for broadcast workflows. Channel 4’s Burrows thinks there is still a long way to go with integration. “Moving towards common standards and interoperability does take time.

We’re trying to move more to efficient workflows.”

Kalanchekaev from OKNO-TV said: “In the next two years we will start talking about the lifecycle of digital systems because it is changing

Silver sponsors Andy Beale: “I wanted to make sure we were in line with current standards and building on existing standards” much more rapidly than a traditional environment. More complication of workflows sometimes doesn’t provide a better user experience.”

Bancroft asked the panel if the industry is still at a point where it is IT versus broadcast?

“We’re seeing a separation between some of the back office systems such as email that are still in the IT domain. Broadcast engineers have learnt the IT skills as part of their toolkit.

Broadcast is encompassing IT. The separation is very much

Blue Lucy Media Pebble Beach Systems Telestream Dalet blurred now,” said Burrows.

Emotion System’s MC Patel added: “The real issue our industry has is, if you’ve been a veteran of a certain company, you have a whole legacy to support that restricts innovation.”

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Workflow WHAT DOES the world’s most successful film ever, Avatar, have in common with a low budget French-produced wildlife film on bears in the Kamchatka peninsula, in the far easternmost corner of Russia?

The answer is Manning Tillman, probably the world’s most experienced 3D stereographer whose blockbuster credits include Avatar, Life of Pi and Transformers 3 to name but a few.

Tillman supervised all of the 3D camera shots on Land of the Bears, which claims to be the first ever 3D shot wildlife picture to hit the big screen.

The film was produced by small French outfit Les Films en Vrac, but was mainly financed

by Gaul telecoms giant Orange and equally, and crucially, co-produced by the Cameron Pace Group, an outfit set up

by James Cameron and Vince Pace to promote the use of 3D technology in feature films. The decision to shoot Land of the Bears in 3D was initially made

by Orange but quickly embraced

by Les Films en Vrac director Guillaume Vincent (also a member of its production team — see picture) who relished the artistic and technological challenges of such a project.

From the beginning, Guillaume Vincent decided to shoot everything in 3D and to not include any CGI, because the producers wanted the film to

“The film took three years to complete, with a full year of preparation before shooting” be as realistic as possible. But that’s also where the trouble started. “In many ways, 3D technology is totally unsuited to wildlife films which require you to be spontaneous,” he says.

“Not only do you have to be ready to shoot when the animal does something interesting but, unlike actors, you can’t choose where to place the animal or at which distance you can shoot. Everything can change from one minute to the next, whereas 3D requires a lot of

3D in the Wild French outfit breaks new ground on 3D wildlife film thanks to Cameron Pace technology, writes Catherine Wright preparation and a huge amount of adjustment before each shot.”

The technological challenges were such that on hearing of the project, James Cameron

contacted the producers. The Cameron Pace Group offered to help, not only by leasing its technology for a small fee but also by involving Tillman.

“It was a first for the Cameron Pace Group as well, and an opportunity for the company to adapt the technology used on Avatar to a completely different

environment,” explains Vincent.

“We were all aware that we were breaking new ground. On a wildlife film, every piece of equipment has to be close to hand and adjustments have to be made very quickly, and we also needed the link between Tillman and our director

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Workflow of photography Lionel Jan Kerguistel to be as fluid as possible. CPG did its best to meet our demands.”

The film was shot with two RED Epic 5K cameras simultaneously, one camera for each eye, as required for a 3D-shot film. “The cameras had to be totally in sync and shoot exactly the same images,

workflow system and without that we would not have been able to shoot the film in the time we were given.”

The film took three years to complete, with a full year of preparation before shooting. “The logistical aspects sometimes seemed daunting,” admits Les Films en Vrac producer François Carsalade

All in all, the team made eight different trips to that remote part of Russia. The film was completed within the limited €5.6 million budget, despite 12 to 25 people required at any one time on set, much more than what is usually standard for a wildlife picture. “Shooting in 3D unavoidably means employing a bigger crew. There

“Shooting in 3D unavoidably means employing a bigger crew. There were two separate teams for each camera, for instance” Guillaume Vincent

Manning Tillman

at the same time, at a rate of 24 frames per second,” Vincent continues. “It was a huge constraint because the light had to be identical and the lenses required the same depth of field. But that’s where the Cameron Pace Group’s technology and Manning Tillman’s expertise came in and were so essential. We used CPG’s Fusion 3D rig and

Du Pont. “All of the equipment had to be flown in from LA, and each time we left the Kamchatka peninsula, it went back to CPG. When we returned it had to be flown in again.”

The only exception being a couple of Angénieux 45-120 Optimo lenses, which could not be found in America and which were rented in France.

were two separate teams for each camera, for instance,” describes Vincent. The cameras would either be set up next to each other for the longer distance shots, or perfectly aligned with one camera facing a mirror for the closer shots.

In order to capture some wide landscape views, the crew resorted to aerial shots. “We opted for a spherical helium

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Workflow balloon, remote controlled from the ground which can carry both cameras and the Fusion 3D technology,” Vincent adds.

For the aerial shots, the cameras were equipped with two Zeiss CP2 24mm lenses. “It took us a while to find the right solution, one of the other options being a hot air balloon, with members of the crew on board. But it would have been too noisy and Grenoble-based Soulcam had just the right equipment for us.”

The crew also had to contend with extreme weather conditions, ranging from torrential rain to sub-zero temperatures, as Vincent explains. “The equipment was quite bulky and heavy and we had to make sure it was well protected. We had specially made camera cases, for instance.” But apart from that, the impact of the weather conditions was the same on Land of the Bears as on any other 2D wildlife film. According to Vincent, the real difficulty for the cameras lay more in the brutal changes of temperature, than in the sometimes-extreme cold weather.

The Les Films en Vrac production team. From left to right: Benoit Tschieret, Guillaume Vincent, François de Carsalade du Pont, and Thierry Commissionat Working with Manning Tillman proved to be invaluable. “He took up every technical or artistic challenge we suggested.

There was a lot of talking on set, the DoP had to get Manning’s feedback before every shot to see whether it worked from a 3D point of view. The talking was a very good thing because it protected us from the bears by showing them that we were not rivals, out there to take their territory. They tolerate human

beings, as they are a protected species and no longer hunted in the Peninsula.”

Tillman also stayed on in Paris once the film was shot to oversee the post production process at French outfit Digimage, together with Guillaume Vincent and Lionel Jan Kerguistel, using Mistika software. “There was quite a lot of tweaking and smoothing out to be done, we had to make sure that the 3D images provided a

comfortable viewing experience.

For instance, we had to check that there wasn’t too much of a difference between shots and that the 3D was well balanced throughout,” Vincent explains.

The film has just been released on DVD (3D Blu-ray) in France and will soon be on the big screen in Germany and in China.

“We are still waiting for a date in the UK,” Vincent regrets.

However, the team is already working on its next 3D

“All of the equipment had to be flown in from LA, and each time we left the Kamchatka peninsula, it went back to CPG” François Carsalade Du Pont wildlife project, The Giants, a film on underwater sea life.

“This project will take five years to complete, because we are planning a TV series, alongside a 3D feature film as well as an IMAX version,” indicates François Carsalade du Pont. Clearly, as the Gaul saying goes, “Impossible n’est pas français”.

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Workflow

France’s MBT managing the broadcasters French broadcasters are managing their workflows with the help of a boutique MAM systems developer, MBT. Neal Romanek toured Parisian broadcast facilities to see how they did it IN COMMON with many broadcasters, French TV channel TF1 has migrated from merely having a digital, multiplatform strategy to making that strategy the core of its operations. The channel’s digital departments used to occupy a building adjacent to its main offices and studios — an extra wing next door. But as of May, TF1’s digital department — totalling 800 people — moved into the main TF1 building and only seems destined to grow further.

Patrick Guillou is TF1’s engineering broadcast manager and his responsibilities have expanded along with the need for a file-based broadcast infrastructure. “It’s important to have system information and broadcast working together,” says Guillou.

Until recently, TF1 has relied exclusively on its in-house team to create its file management solutions — including a media management system for news and traffic management.

Its migration to file-based workflows has been careful and methodical, overseen by the company’s CTO, Hervé Pavard.

“We would like to have zero per cent tape,” says Guillou, echoing sentiments of broadcasters around the world, “but we’re not there yet, especially with post production.”

TF1 has links with other French channels, including M6 and Canal Plus. The companies often need to exchange files amongst themselves, but the promise of an interconnected,

M6’s new control room has been built upon a completely file-based infrastructure

“A file produced at M6 will also work at W9, 6ter or any of the other M6 channels, which is cost-saving for us in terms of quality control and ingest control” file-based utopia is still a few years away. “We would like to start in a practical way to have a simple file exchange between the broadcasters,” says Guillou of the plans to streamline interorganisation workflows.

MBT makes news MBT (Media and Broadcast Technologies) has specialised in developing software for broadcasters since the company started in 2004. MBT’s CEO, Bedro Bengouffa, is no stranger to the workflow needs of big broadcasters, having spent five years as assistant technical director of France’s M6.

Mathias Bejanin, M6 Group

A member of the M6 broadcast team uses MBT’s MAM system on its first operational day

A company of no more than 30 employees, MBT has become a key partner in the digitisation of TF1’s workflow.

The need to make news and sports reporting more engaging, in a world where viewers are inundated with graphics and animations, means that broadcasters are having to push graphics production to the fore of all they do.

News is a key component of TF1’s offering. “In news, we need more and more graphics,” says Guillou.

“Graphics is very important for news, and news is very important for TF1.”

MBT’s NewsGraph was just the solution TF1 needed. The NewsGraph MAM system was developed specifically for TF1’s needs and manages the broadcaster’s entire graphics workflow.

NewsGraph is a new concept for TF1. It manages the workflow of pictures, graphics, animations and After Effects projects and integrates with Avid Newsroom. Its first function is as a MAM to manage these various assets.

Secondly, it operates as a ‘workflow processor’ that tracks all stages of the process in producing a graphic or onscreen

visual element, from job assignment, to artist versioning and approvals, to archiving.

Before working with MBT, TF1 had no enterprisewide solution for graphics management.

Currently, TF1 is working with SintecMedia to develop further software solutions for its rights management, which are scheduled to be up and running later this year.

A French revolution at M6 While TF1 has taken a phased approach to its adoption of file-based workflows, fellow French broadcaster M6

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Workflow made the transition in one revolutionary move. In December 2008, M6 was the first channel to go completely tapeless, followed in succession by the remaining channels in the M6 Group over the next 18 months. The entire digital workflow system is managed by MBT’s software, and runs on Harmonic servers with Orad graphics solutions.

In the beginning, M6 kept its MAM system, but everything else was rebuilt from scratch.

Previously, the channel had been on a Sony LMS tape system.

“One of the goals of the project was to put everybody under the same technical system,” says Mathias Bejanin, technical director of the M6 Group. “We wanted to mutualise the ingest and the storage in one universal system.

A file produced at M6 will also work at W9, 6ter or any of the other M6 channels, which is cost-saving for us in terms of quality control, ingest control and other things.”

“We would like to have zero per cent tape, but we’re not there yet” Patrick Guillou, TF1 M6’s legacy MAM system was finally set aside and replaced with an MBT MAM solution which went online in June of this year. Among the other solutions provided by MBT is its Video Broadcast Manager, which transcodes 10,000 files a month for all the versioning required for the M6 Group’s on-demand and multi-screen platforms.

MBT also developed a commercial synchronisation system for M6, which now regularly runs identical commercials across channels that have similar programming or audience demographic. The double screens are sold as a single package to advertisers.

The MBT software allows for precise synchronisation so that a commercial break happens simultaneously across selected M6 channels with a single ad playing out in both slots.

Despite the ruthlessly complete nature of the transition, Bejanin insists the upgrade wasn’t a problem.

For the broadcaster, it was change or die. Technical handicaps with their legacy systems were the fuel that propelled M6 to the next level.

“It was necessary and everyone understood that point. It was

also necessary technically because our Sony LMS systems were falling apart. We had technical problems daily.”

Often, it is when a broadcaster has no other choice that it makes the next

leap forward. When French broadcasters have had to make the leap, MBT has been there.

MBT’s ability to react quickly to the needs of big broadcasters, working individually with each of them to solve their particular

problems has turned it into the go-to company in France for large-scale MAM. With file-based workflows increasingly on everyone’s mind, tiny MBT will no doubt continue to grow.

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The Stern Review, presented to the British government in 2006, claimed that the financial cost of climate change would be equivalent to the loss of at least five per cent of global GDP each year

Feature

Facebook’s new data centre in Luleå, Sweden runs on 100 per cent renewable power

The business of sustainability The most valuable asset the TV industry has is its future.

Neal Romanek looks into how well we’re taking care of it THE BROADCAST industry is by its very nature compelled to emphasise the now over the future. A broadcaster’s job is to get a project delivered to air on time, to the highest standard, come hell or high water. It’s an attitude that doesn’t always result in the most eco-friendly solutions.

But broadcasters and production companies are starting to look seriously at their sustainability profiles — and are often finding that saving the future also means saving money.

Climate change has many devastating consequences, not the least of which is the devastation of economies. The Stern Review, presented to the British government in 2006, claimed that the financial cost of climate change would be equivalent to the loss of at least five per cent of global GDP each year. And the poorest countries, the new markets that tech and media industries are seeking to expand into, would experience

an economic and human cost far above that. The Stern Report famously dubbed climate change “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen”.

Worse, Lord Stern recently apologised for his 2006 report, saying he had got the economics wrong — that the real outlook was “far, far worse”.

New Alberts In 2011, BAFTA, in association with the BBC, released its free online carbon calculator, Albert. The award-winning online app helps productions calculate the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere during the production of a programme.

The Albert initiative was one of the first industry-wide attempts to address CO2 release by production companies. This June, BAFTA launched an updated version of Albert.

“The new version of Albert is going to give production teams better insight into the carbon

footprint of their production,” says Aaron Matthews, BAFTA’s industry sustainability manager. “They’ll be able to compare themselves more easily to the industry standards for their genre and their production methods. The new version also allows companies to look across all of their projects more easily.”

BAFTA has also just launched Albert+, a certification standard for productions.

Albert and Albert+ work together as a package to aid productions in reducing their carbon footprint.

“The standard analogy is, if Albert is the weighing scales, then Albert+ is the diet plan,” explains Matthews.

“With Albert+, productions have a number of questions they have to answer, and if they make the grade, they get our certification.”

The Albert+ certification has appeared on several projects already, including the BBC One drama From There To Here,

but the standards to which the Albert+ certification plan holds productions are a moving target.

“The standards have to constantly evolve, and we have to keep upping our game,” says Matthews. “Albert+ is banded into one, two, and three stars, and we’ve graded it so that a production that is pretty good at the moment could only reach one star; or two, if they were really going for it. It’s unlikely that someone would get three stars. And we’ll review that process annually with our external auditors to make sure that it’s sufficiently challenging and aspirational for productions.”

Shooting green In 2009, four industry professionals got together and formed Greenshoot,

a consultancy that helps productions toward more sustainable practice and now also has offices in LA and Australia. “We were disenchanted with the way our industry behaved toward the environment,” says Greenshoot’s Paul Evans.

“It wasn’t in a desperate, eco, tree-hugging way. We were just appalled at the waste.”

Universal was Greenshoot’s first industry partner. “Universal has a pretty big sustainability operation in LA. For Universal, it’s corporate policy, so it wasn’t a huge leap, but it was a big deal over here in the UK. We now do a lot of work with the BFI and with Sky, which is a very sustainabilityoriented company.”

Greenshoot also works in Europe with Cine-Regio, the network of European regional film funds, and has just completed a survey for them on the state of sustainability in film and TV production in Europe.

Evans notes that it can take effort for production teams to learn new tricks. “In film production, people work in a very specific way. It takes time

“The new version of Albert will give production teams better insight into the carbon footprint of their production” Aaron Matthews, BAFTA

Matthews: “If Albert is the weighing scales, then Albert+ is the diet plan”

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Feature for cultures to change. And if you’ve been working for 12 hours in the rain, the last thing you may want to think about is how to deposit your waste.

But in five years we’ve seen a dramatic shift in terms of people’s acceptance that when they make a production that they make it in a sustainable way. The key things that you need are that the top management, the producer and line producer, buy into it, that they support the process. Then, ideally, you want a person on-set

gigabyte from here to there, you can’t attach a carbon value to that because it can happen in a number of ways.”

The broadcast industry’s output globally consumes a huge amount of power. A production could be entirely carbon neutral, recycling 100 per cent of its materials, but the delivery of the content itself and its playout across millions of screens has a carbon footprint so large, that any savings in production are absurdly small in comparison.

“It’s no good saying to

people ‘This is all going to end in a disaster’, because people feel helpless and when they feel helpless, they do nothing” Georgina Stevens who looks after the sustainability issues – that could be a runner, but you need someone who is going to be responsible for it, or it’s not going to get done. In the last year, we’ve trained about 28 people on our Greenshoot runner training course.”

Dirty clouds The core of sustainability, especially as it impacts climate change, is energy use, and energy use in physical production is only a tiny fraction of the entire amount used throughout the industry, from development to delivery. Increasingly, content is produced in the world of IT— with a large proportion of a broadcaster’s energy use taken up in the running of servers for storage and processing.

Increasingly, assets are being moved to the cloud, which might be shared anonymously with any number of other enterprises.

“It is very difficult to quantify,” says BAFTA’s Aaron Matthews. “In terms of getting a

There are huge financial and environmental benefits to ending the distribution of physical media, but reducing power consumption is not one of them.

According to a white paper published this year by Cisco, global IP traffic will increase three-fold over the next five years, resulting in 80 to 90 per cent of global consumer traffic taken up by VoD, equivalent to six billion DVDs per month.

“All we can do in this regard,” says Matthews, “is encourage people to procure 100 per cent green energy.

That is another large area of our industry’s footprint that needs to be dealt with as a matter of urgency.

“We do have options with regard to energy. We can procure green energy; we can create a change in the market that way. We also try to push people away from tape and away from physical media toward file-based.

There is a carbon cost there,

Greenshoot provides crews with reusable water bottles – with handy belt-clips

Stevens: “I think a lot of companies are waking up to the fact that there are cost savings to be made all over” but there is an option to procure green energy and go with people who have their servers based in naturally cooler environments.”

Tech giants worldwide are already building server farms in the Nordic countries to take advantage of the ambient temperature for server cooling and a glut of cheap hydro, wind

and nuclear-generated electricity in the region. Sweden’s ‘Node Pole’ region boasts 100 per cent renewable power and is home to Facebook’s massive Luleå Data Centre.

Where to start Georgina Stevens’ One Pumpkin consultancy helps companies with sustainability

policy and has developed strategies for Virgin Atlantic, Marks and Spencer, Warner Bros, and several indie productions.

Stevens finds a wide variety in perspective and sophistication in her clients’ sustainability outlook. “In the main, I’m approached by companies who don’t know where to start, but realise it’s important. I’ve helped companies who want to work with government bodies and know they have to jump through hoops, and companies who are about to go IPO and know that they still have work to do.

“For a lot of companies involved in film and television production, sustainable practice isn’t mandatory, but they still think ‘Hang on, this makes sense. I’m sure we can save money here.’ I think a lot of companies are waking up to the fact that there are cost savings to be made all over. It’s a great benefit when a company can think long-term. For me, it’s how to future-proof your business. But when we have a chief executive in place who only has short-term vision, that’s when it’s a challenge.”

Anyone with a grasp of primary school science realises the global threat posed by climate change and environmental degradation, but Stevens notes that attitudes and behaviours are rarely improved by predictions of doom. “It’s no good saying to people, ‘This is all going to end in a disaster’, because people then feel helpless, and when they feel helpless, they do nothing. So, it’s really about empowering people.

You try to show them what they can do individually and as part of a business.” www.bafta.org/about/ sustainability/ www.greenshoot.com www.onepumpkin.co.uk www.cine-regio.org/green-vision

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Feature

A bold vision of the Charlie Vogt sits on the FCC Advisory Council, and is an important member of both the IABM and TIA on the supplier side. He has been the CEO of Imagine Communications for a year, and recently won Finance Monthly’s annual CEO award for his transitional achievements at the company. For this issue of TVBEurope, he talked to George Jarrett DURING THE great rush of consolidations around NAB, Harris Broadcast affected an identity switch and at the same time completed the cultural re-direction that so many other corporations are pursuing in the service of TV Everywhere. The acquisitions of Digital Rapids and Imagine happened under the watchful eye of Imagine Communications’ CEO Charlie Vogt, who spent much of his career helping Telcos and MSO companies build out their subscriber base access networks.

What did he learn back then?

“That there was a huge convergence coming, and you could see it from just spending quality time with the likes of AT&T and Verizon,” he said.

“Over the next three to five years we are going to see a pretty significant landscape shift. There were some big moves that go back to 2012 when Disney bought Lucasfilm and CBS bought TV Guide. There has been a lot of activity that has driven new shapes within our space.

“An AT&T or BT has focused for decades on the access plant and being able to provide that last mile of connectivity, whether it is fixed or wireless. The move that you saw AT&T make recently was really a dual one because it quietly acquired two companies — DirecTV ($48.5 billion) and Leap Wireless ($1.2 billion).

Leap gives AT&T spectrum it desperately needs, and DirecTV gives it a bigger fixed wire footprint in the home, and it gives it access to subscribers that it does not have today,” he added.

Vogt’s wider market knowledge tells him that the content distributors are trying to control a bigger footprint of the subscriber base. “Eventually, they are going to go upstream and will either create their own

content or acquire it. Ultimately, they want to own everything from the lens to the consumer.

First and foremost, you have to have the fixed wireless access to be able to do that, and certainly what broadband and the internet have done is to create a huge opportunity for both entrepreneurs and the really large giants,” he said. “Suppliers like us tend to follow our customers.”

Over 15 to 20 years we saw massive consolidation shifts in the Telco world, followed by a lot of consolidation amongst the supplier community because it was selling into fewer and fewer companies. Taking this as a foreboding, Vogt said, “We went from hundreds of high quality telecom companies that were spending lots of money to 25 or 30, and if you were not selling into these it put pressure on your business. That kind of convergence is going to occur in the media and entertainment space over the next five years,” he added. “We know what Ericsson is doing with its acquisitions from Tandberg to Red Bee, and Cisco has started dabbling in this space with its acquisitions (Collaborate, Assemblage, Threat GRID). There is certainly going to be supplier consolidation as the broadcast and multi-channel video programme distributor market continues to consolidate.”

Some really smart people So, Imagine had to be savvy in the way it aligned its strategies. How did Vogt apply what he knew from building IP networks to pushing Imagine in a new direction?

“Harris spent close to a billion dollars in the last ten to 15 years on acquiring technology, although there wasn’t a very clear technology vision or strategy that aligned with all the great acquisitions,”

Charlie Vogt, Imagine Communications

he said. “What we have successfully done is to dissect everything we had in the portfolio and do a good job of aligning it with where we know the industry is going.

“If you are convinced it is going to move into a software-defined, IP-oriented, cloud-based, TV Everywhere landscape, then you have to start playing the technology innovation and M&A microscoping game in that direction,” he added.

Vogt and his senior staff changed Harris into Imagine by dumping what felt more like a catalogue of products and switching to a solution-oriented business represented by three fundamental pillars (portfolios): applications, playout and networking.

“The only reason why you carry out M&A is if the market makes a left or right turn and you are going straight, or if

you took in some technology companies that have found their way two to three years ahead of your roadmap,” he said. “Everybody is on different timelines, and often it is the time-to-market that drives the behaviour within companies to acquire today.

“You do this assessment of ‘make versus buy’, and how long it will take you to get to the trial phase, the adoption phase, and to market. You look at technology, customers and people. That’s why you buy companies,” he added.

“We’ve got a very robust R&D roadmap, and will spend $90 million to $100 million, but in the case of Digital Rapids it was doing very different things in software-based/file-based transcoding and encoding, and it had a very unique workflow management platform that we felt was really going to change the landscape.”

For Imagine to develop its own equivalent, assuming it had the intellectual property from a people standpoint, would have taken several years.

“Digital Rapids was an easy decision because we are big believers in multi-screen TV Everywhere. Content is going to be distributed to thousands of different devices and the way content is going to be packaged, formatted and delivered is going to be very unique. Digital Rapids brought us some key technology,” said Vogt.

“Regarding ‘Little Imagine’ (an in-company name): while it was developing specific encoders and transcoders, it actually had a next generation ABR technology that really hadn’t hit the market.

“We found it to be a huge advantage for us, and both transactions line up in the category of ‘we can get to market a couple of years faster’,” he added.

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Feature

Vogt warms to any mention of the internet or broadband, and the fact that 70 per cent of internet bandwidth is consumed by video is one of his key reference stats.

future “And we get some really smart people that have been working on this technology for years.”

Going to hit a wall Vogt believes that companies are still lining up on two sides of a pendulum.

“On one side, people are beginning to recognise that technology needs to be software oriented, and then you have a set of companies that are still in the age of proprietary technology. At some point, they are going to hit a wall,” he said.

Aligning with big customer roadmaps means taking a view on many areas. For example, looking at the Channel-in-a-Box (CiaB) market, Vogt expounds a clear ambition. “We have a strategy to leapfrog the CiaB market. Playout from the cloud and automation from the cloud is really the future of how content is going to be played out and moved throughout the consumer marketplace,” he said.

Imagine has got a secondgeneration CiaB platform and there certainly will be a market for this for a few years, surely.

“Yes. But I believe the future of playout and automation is going to be done in a new way — that is taking advantage of the virtualised network data centre world that we are moving into, and leveraging the cloud,” said Vogt. “I am convinced that’s the future for playout, and I think we are in a unique place because we have really shifted our roadmap to be one that is software focused versus one that is hardware dependent. It gives our customers a lot more flexibility: think how many people would love to turn up certain channels across many different languages for 30 days

and then tear it back down and do something else.”

Vogt warms to any mention of the internet or broadband, and the fact that 70 per cent of internet bandwidth is consumed by video is one of his key reference stats.

“Video is going to dominate our market, and because so much time and energy is being spent on ‘how do I move this content more efficiently and more cost effectively’ you are seeing the scarcity around spectrum,” he said. “There is a correlation between the TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association) and the IABM. Those two organisations need to be collaborating because they are supplier organisations.”

Spectrum has been a prickly subject for many years, so what is Vogt’s take on the American situation? “The FCC is struggling a bit with how it balances what seems to be obvious needs versus an even playing field. This is why there have been no decisions made for such a long time,” he said.

“Even if the spectrum re-pack happens, it remains a super-heated topic and there are so many lobbyists promoting their own agenda. If it happens it will be great for the wireless players, and it could be very good for many of the broadcasters because most of that spectrum that broadcasters own today is not used in the same way that an AT&T, Verizon or Sprint might use it, especially in the major metropolitan areas. If you just did the forecast — video consumption tapping into the wireless world is massive. It is a real problem.”

More pressure on bandwidth Vogt acknowledges that 4K for the movies is successful, and he fingers the electronics industry

for creating a consumer drive for 4K sets. What people do not see is what’s happening in the middle of the market, he says.

“A lot of the large broadcasters and networks have only just got through a major phase from SD to HD, which was expensive and it really didn’t net them a whole lot of incremental revenue,” he said. “They are still struggling with how they make money with 4K, and anything more than HD over the mobile network is going to put more pressure on bandwidth.”

Imagine is not back at base one, wondering if 4K is going to happen or not. It is looking at technology requirements, the technology capability gap between consumer consumption, and the desire to build the network amongst TV networks and broadcasters. “4K to a mobile device means you are going to need some pretty sophisticated encoding and transcoding technology, which is why we continue to invest in that part of the market,” said Vogt. “We think that is a key area that companies like us are going to be big winners in, as the industry moves more and more of the high quality video content to end devices over the mobile network.”

If traditional content providers can build a strong subscriber base and develop a stronger relationship with the mobile operators, this allows them to create their own destiny to a certain degree. “They are not just dependent on their own broadcasting capabilities in their own traditional manner, and I certainly believe that this is spurring on a whole new thinking about how you monetise content,” he added.

“With the subscriber-based model, everybody understands how they get compensated, but in a true advertising supported business model as you shift from the linear model to online, one that is OTT, it creates a highly

entrepreneurial opportunity.

You have to figure out how to better monetise advertising content away from the traditional linear model.”

Imagine is not the only company spending a lot of development time in the various areas of content exploitation, and Vogt has no illusions when it comes to the challenges. “If we can continue to stay in that food chain, to where we are providing the management tools and the campaign tools that allow users to better manage and monetise content, we are going to be in a pretty good place regardless of how the bits and streams get divided for the various delivery mechanisms,” he said.

With Netflix and Amazon creating their own high quality dramatic content, does it mean the entry level for new players is becoming too costly in terms of content production?

“You are going to see very expensive content used to get into the market, but you can create TV series and movies much more cost effectively.

And they can certainly be distributed much more cost effectively than we

ever did before,” said Vogt.

“There are lots of different business models by which you can monetise content. The ‘re-trans’ opportunity in this new world is huge. It is what created Netflix and HULU up until House of Cards and some of the other new content they are developing themselves.

Google is creating its own content, and so is Yahoo.

Broadband internet has created an opportunity, and anybody that can leverage this means to a consumer end anywhere in the world, just has limitless opportunity. This is what gets us excited.”

Vogt is talking about managing the whole advertising sales model and incremental monetisation, sophisticated CRM tools, playout and the way playlists are automated, and the archiving and storage of content. He concludes, “It is going to become a bigger part of the overall workflow, and we are going to revolutionise how that whole element gets managed in the future by leveraging virtualisation in the cloud, and IP, in a softwareoriented workflow.”

“We have a very bold vision around software-defined networks, IP, the cloud and virtualisation — the networking technologies that are going to be required to participate in the multi-screen TV Everywhere market” Charlie Vogt, Imagine Communications

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Feature

Familiarity breeds success Mark Errington, CEO at BroadStream Solutions, talks to TVBEurope about the company’s recent acquisition of automated playout specialist OASYS, and how the deal will enhance the strategies of both entities You mention in the official dispatches from the deal that “the broadcast industry is undergoing a transformation, spurred by consolidation in the market sector”. What kind of impact is the recent and continuing M&A activity having on the industry, and do you think we are likely to see more deals in and around IBC? The consolidation of two businesses into one inevitably reduces the number of suppliers in the market, but being a specialist in a single country or region no longer makes any sense in today’s landscape.

The interest of IT companies and the infrastructure providers is adding a new dimension to the transformation of the broadcast technology marketplace. As such, I would not be surprised to not only see more deals in and around IBC, but to see an increase in deals that bring together mediacentric organisations.

Mark Errington, CEO, BroadStream Solutions

How long has this deal been in the making – from establishing the intent to acquire, to completion of the deal?

The first conversations about setting up BroadStream were at NAB 2013. The contracts put in place at that time allowed for the option of exercising an acquisition at any time from July 2014, however, it was clear by early this year that it made sense to move ahead earlier and, after revised terms were agreed, it took only around eight weeks to conclude all the contracts.

What specific qualities marked OASYS out as the right acquisition target for BroadStream in terms of the strategic fit between the two entities?

BroadStream Solutions and OASYS were already under common ownership and having set up the company infrastructure the time was right to bring the organisations, and most importantly the

Intellectual Property of the companies, together. The deal is about combining these companies with a fully funded business plan to better approach the global market, taking BroadStream Solutions into more countries outside of North America, and to better position the multi-award winning OASYS products in the US. How will this deal assist both companies in their strategy going forward?

Now BroadStream and OASYS have joined forces, we are well placed to ensure that our customers gain maximum ROI, with better long-term flexibility of products, that can be reconfigured as channel requirements and workflows change.

How important is the cultural fit? Having been under common ownership, are there synergies in the way the companies think, operate and perform?

As you say, it’s an industry in the grip of transformation in a number of areas encompassing technology, consumption habits and demand, and the composition of the business landscape through consolidation and new entrants to market. What are your views on how the industry will progress in the short to mid-term future as it grapples with the new digital landscape?

A lot of technology and activity in the broadcast industry is still based in-country, with a lot of vested interests and investment still needing to be recouped. As business models evolve, the discussions around who pays for what content, delivered to what devices, will inevitably settle down so that programme makers and media companies get their fair share.

Having said that, I still expect to see a number of attempted land-grabs in the short to mid-term as the battle for ‘eyeballs’ is an on-going part of our daily lives.

“The interest of IT The businesses have similar operational companies and structures and the infrastructure cultures, which meant they were providers is adding a perfect fit to combine under a new dimension to a global holding the transformation company, with regional sales and of the broadcast support offices servicing customers technology locally. Together, they will offer the complete range marketplace” of playout solutions for news, live production, turnaround operations and master control, while BroadStream will continue to develop and improve the functionality of all the existing product lines, based on a standardised hardware platform that has the flexibility to be configured for all channel types.

At this stage, what can you tell us about the integration of OASYS into the BroadStream business – is it the case that OASYS and its staff will be

consumed into the new entity with no reduction in manpower on either side?

The company is in the process of recruiting for a range of positions, including the recent appointments of Ben Wolk as President Sales and Marketing and Michael Edwards as VP Sales EMEA and Asia. Contrary to redundancies, all the current OASYS team are retained in the new organisation.

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34 TVBEurope

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Summer of Sport

Sky tees up its Ryder Cup plans This issue, we continue our summer of sport focus by looking at two key events on the sporting calendar: The Ryder Cup, and Wimbledon. Before running the rule over this year’s output from SW19, Philip Stevens examines the requirements of providing comprehensive coverage of the biggest event in golf Interior of the 3D scanner used at the last Ryder Cup in the UK at Celtic Manor

EVERY TWO years, The Ryder Cup is contested between the best golf professionals from Europe and the United States. The tournament traces its history back to the 1920s when a seed merchant, Samuel Ryder, became so enthralled by a match at Wentworth that he donated a trophy for future contests between Great Britain (later expanded to Europe) and the USA. The crowd at subsequent Ryder Cup matches has always been substantial, but today the audience can be measured in millions through the use of television. This year’s battle – the 40th – will take place at the PGA Centenary Course at Gleneagles, Scotland in September.

“We’ll do everything we can to draw people in to watch because it’s one of those unmissable events” Keith Lane, Sky Sports

or in pubs and golf clubs. We’ll do everything we can to draw people in to watch because it’s one of those unmissable events.”

Covering the course The area of the golf course and the distances involved, along with the environment, set the biggest challenges when it comes to covering a prestigious golfing event. There is, of course, a considerable amount of fibre that needs to be deployed right across the venue. In the case of Gleneagles, for example, the distance from the TV compound to the first tee is around a kilometre. “Once you multiply this by all the broadcasters’ needs and the scale of the course, you soon have a very large temporary installation to manage.”

For Sky Sports’ HD broadcast, 14 cameras, including four RF cameras will be deployed. In addition, Sky will be providing 3D coverage. “We will be using 35 cameras for the 3D course coverage, comprising 25 rigs: mirror and side-by-side, one Hi-motion, a Polecam, four RF hand-held, three mini cameras and one for the commentary booth. The positions are different to the normal HD coverage, as the call for lower and closer to the course views means alternative positions need to be identified in the planning stage.

The fixed cameras are fibred backed to truck. Most of the cameras are SMPTE-based, but we generally use single mode fibre with convertors as this is easier to deploy, with the distances involved.”

There is also a full 3D graphics set up which comprises three Vizrt systems. Two are used for the presentation, while the third is used for shot graphics and is linked into the on-course data feed provided by MST Systems. Lane emphasises that integrating data is key to making the graphic content accurate. “Sky Sports has a long relationship with MST Systems and, through a close working relationship with our own internal design team, we have a really good quality stable system.”

Comprehensive facilities Since 1995, Sky Sports has covered the tournament – and that arrangement continues this year. Although exact timings are not yet confirmed, Sky Sports typically shows 12 hours a day of live coverage. “We’ll be live from Gleneagles all week on Sky Sports and Sky Sports News,” states Keith Lane, head of Sky Sports.

“We will be showing the opening ceremony on Wednesday, and

then all the matches until Sunday.

But the weather sometimes changes our plans. At Celtic Manor in 2010, for example, we showed an extra day because of the bad weather.”

Lane says that it’s impossible to give an accurate figure when it comes to viewership, although it is one of the most eagerly anticipated events to be shown on Sky Sports.

Keith Lane, head of Sky Sports “It’s one of those occasions like The Ashes, Premier League title deciders and big boxing events that transcend sport; it attracts viewers that wouldn’t normally watch golf. Also, with events like these, people watch in groups at someone else’s home,

Telegenic will be providing all of the facilities for both HD and 3D broadcasts. In all, three scanners will be used – one for the HD presentation and two for the 3D programming.

“We will use edit facilities supplied by Telegenic in a purpose built edit container,” reveals Lane.

“Within the edit container there is a comprehensive media management, feed logging, and

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Summer of Sport The Sky Sports presentation studio at Celtic Manor in 2010 keywords system via the Grass Valley Stratus platform. Any workstation in the container can be used as a media management station providing a flexible use of space. The heart of the system is a Grass Valley 12TB SAN server system, capable of more than 30 HD simultaneous streams at 100Mbps. The system is fully redundant. Edit stations use the EDIUS software, while special effects come from the Adobe CS. The feed acquisition and playout are via a four-channel Grass Valley Summit which are recorded back on the EVSs in the main truck.”

The HD production will use half a dozen six-channel EVS servers for recording and replay of all ISO feeds with the content produced either in advance or on site in the edits. The servers are

“The area of the golf course and the distances involved, along with the environment, set the biggest challenges when it comes to covering a prestigious golfing event” configured as three-in, three-out or four-in, two-out with more than one controller on each server. The 3D production also has to cater for a full replay and analysis set-up which utilises eight eight-channel EVS XT3 servers in different configurations and, again, with more than one controller per server.

Attention-grabbing graphics Lane reveals that there will be an enhancement to the visualisation of the player profiles and groups for this year’s coverage. Sky Sports has been developing its touchscreen/analysis operations and has significantly changed the graphical presentation of those elements. There have been further improvements to the ‘virtual fly-throughs’ of the course, with more detail and texture to the animations. This will provide an opportunity for even better analysis of the course and the conditions and challenges players face as they play their rounds. “These ‘virtual fly throughs’ are created in 3D, but the models are also used in the HD broadcast in 2D.” To meet the audio demands, the HD production will take a feed from the host production for on-course effects, but will use an additional six RF handheld microphones for the roving reporters. The commentary

set-up comprises two Glensound commentary boxes with four lips microphones for the commentators.

Lane concludes, “We’re very proud of the Ryder Cups we’ve done in the past, and we can’t wait to show this one, too. It’s

one of the jewels in the crown of our schedule on Sky Sports. And it’s thanks to the co-operation of The European Tour and The Ryder Cup that we’re able to put into place the logistics we need to enable to broadcast the event the way we do.”

Sky reporter James Haddock presenting at Celtic Manor in 2010

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Summer of Sport

Serving the tennis fans and Japanese sports broadcaster WOWWOW. “For Channel 7 we turned around material to be sent to Australia,” says Atkinson.

“We brought feeds into the EVS editing facility, topped and tailed the footage and delivered them to the client’s facilities in Australia.”

The operation for WOWWOW was similar to that demanded by the World Feed, with the addition of a studio and stand-up positions for the broadcaster. “We employed a Lawo audio mixer and Riedel talkback system for this particular set-up.”

The Wimbledon tennis championship continues to be one of the major outside broadcast events of the year, as Philip Stevens reports AS ONE of its ‘crown jewel’ events, the BBC once again provided comprehensive coverage — about 150 hours in all — of the Wimbledon tennis championship. Alongside the traditional broadcast output, the BBC took an additional transponder on the Astra satellite position at 28.2° East for the duration of the event — capacity that was also used for coverage of the Glastonbury Festival and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

The additional facility was used to broadcast multiple high definition and standard definition video streams to satellite and cable viewers in the UK. This extra capacity enabled viewers to select tennis matches of their choice, alternative sound stages at the Glastonbury Festival and various events at the different locations hosting the Commonwealth Games.

The Corporation reports that feedback from viewers after the 2012 Olympic Games showed overwhelmingly that the provision of more choice of live events made the event even more popular and enjoyable.

Feeding the world A long-standing production partner for the Wimbledon fortnight is IMG Productions.

“We provide a fully produced International World Feed with English and Russian commentary covering the best tennis from an editorial point of view,” states David Shield, senior vice president, global director of engineering and technology at IMG Productions. “That operation includes distributing international highlights worldwide via satellite and on Sport 24, our own live in-flight sports service for airlines, plus multilateral and unilateral satellite distribution of TV-enabled courts to broadcasters across the globe. In all, we had about 60 personnel onsite.”

Remote cameras ACS Henman Hill: Aerial Camera Systems provided an additional tracking camera on Henman Hill

“We provide a fully produced International World Feed, with English and Russian commentary covering the best tennis from an editorial point of view” David Shield, IMG Productions Shield says that other services provided by IMG Productions include Live@Wimbledon, the new video and audio channel and Twitter channel broadcasting from the All England Lawn Tennis Club. “There are three radio channels for listeners to choose from. Around the Grounds brought the whole event to life, Centre Court featured ballby-ball commentary from that court, while No.1 Court offered the same service from that venue.

The service also provides interviews, vox pops and local traffic news. Alongside visitors to the Championships, the service is available online for a worldwide audience.”

In addition, the company provided recording of the Wimbledon Archive and provision of the Central Content Store (CCS) that allows rights holding broadcasters to access any footage, including ISO feeds, from the current Championships, and compilations of matches from the ‘digital’ era — post 2007. Editing is carried out using Avid and Final Cut Pro. “All TV courts, ISO cameras and colour

footage are logged using a team provided by the BBC. The logs are shared between the BBC and IMG. They are available to other broadcasters through the CCS I mentioned earlier.”

Shield continues, “Besides working with the BBC, we provide technical facilities onsite for Fox Australia and full production for Fox Sports Singapore.”

To service that complex operation, IMG Productions ran two production galleries, one for the World Feed and one for Live@Wimbledon. On the World Feed, the producer cuts the pictures, while Live@ Wimbledon requires a vision mixer and director. In addition, both galleries have sound supervisors, EVS operators and graphics operators.

This year saw Visions take over responsibility for OB provision from previous incumbent SIS live. “The changeover was pretty seamless and the new Technical Operations Centre is an improvement over the On Site Central Apparatus Room (OSCAR)” declares Shield.

David Shield, senior vice president, Global Director of Engineering and Technology at IMG Productions

Gearing up for technical ops Technical equipment and engineering support for the IMG Productions World Feed operation was supplied

by Gearhouse Broadcast.

“Gearhouse supplied equipment including EVS XT3 servers, Sony MVS-7000X and MVS6530 vision mixers, MC7 audio desks, Harris glue, an RTS Telex talkback system as well as cabling and fibre connectivity,” explains Simon Atkinson, technical project manager at Gearhouse Broadcast.

Also used was a Snell Cygnus 576 x 576 26U 1080p 3Gbitps Router, plus several smaller Snell routers throughout the Wimbledon operation.

Gearhouse Broadcast also serviced Australia’s Channel 7

Aerial Camera Systems (ACS) once again provided a number of specialised units. New this year was an additional tracking camera on Henman Hill (or Murray Mound, as it is increasingly being called). This delivered slow tracking shots of the crowd enjoying the day’s coverage from outside the actual playing areas.

Beyond that, ACS continued to rig an HD Cineflex V14 stabilised camera mount on the underside of a hoist that towers 22m (72 feet) above the broadcast compound to provide directors with spectacular aerial views of the courts and surrounding countryside.

Another robotic unit (similar to the one on Henman Hill) offered tracking shots from just behind the base line of the Centre Court. Finally, the company’s SMARThead compact remote heads were again mounted on the umpire’s chair in Centre and No. 1 Courts to give close up pictures of the players between games, as well as any net shots.

And talking of remote, Shield feels that with space becoming more cramped around the Wimbledon courts, there may be opportunities for some of the production work to be carried out away from the location.

“IMG Productions has been responsible for ESPN’s interactive, red button coverage for six years, and much of that work is handled remotely. For the future, we are thinking that some parts of our production could come from our main facility at Stockley Park.

Although it is preferable to be at the location, it is worth looking into what elements could be handled just as efficiently from a remote site.”

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IBC Preview

Inside the chief executive office Managing growth for one of the key events on the industry’s calendar is the unenviable task that befalls IBC CEO, Michael Crimp, on an annual basis. Not only that, but this year also marks the launch of IBC’s new Content Everywhere series of conferences that will be hosted in Europe, MENA and Latin America. To open our preview of this year’s event, James McKeown sat down with IBC’s chief executive to discuss IBC2014 and all that lies beyond WE ARE fast approaching IBC2014, and I imagine all systems are very much ‘go’ for everyone at the company. So close to the event, what aspects are you now focusing on ahead of day one in Amsterdam?

At this stage of the process, our core campaign is in full swing to ensure that everyone who wants to come to the show is registered and organised in time. IBC is a big event and Amsterdam gets very busy when we are in town. The sooner attendees know when they will be here and where they will be staying, the smoother things go for everyone.

We are also finalising the last details of the conference programme and the special feature areas we have dotted throughout the show, not to mention confirming speakers for the IBC2014 Conference, Rising Stars Programme and the IBC Leaders’ Summit. There is a lot to do, but our experienced team is working hard on all the different and diverse areas of the show and will be ready to hit the ground running in September.

In terms of your role as CEO, what areas typically provide you with the most challenges once the event is underway?

Dealing with the unexpected is always a challenge. When you have over 1,500 exhibitors and over 52,000 visitors there will always be some onsite issues.

But we have processes in place to deal with pretty much every eventuality, supported by a great team of creative and hard-working people who are more than capable of responding to any unusual situations that might arise.

Oddly enough, it is also when the show is on — and we have a good proportion of the people that run the industry under the same roof — that we do much of our future planning. That is

Michael Crimp, CEO, IBC

always exciting but you can’t let it distract you too much from what is occurring out on the show floor and in the conference.

IBC is an undoubted success, with total registrations and attendance growing steadily each year. What are your expectations for this year’s event in terms of numbers and the demographic of attendees?

We are looking to increase and diversify again on last year when we had 52,974 attendees. We are lucky in that for many of our attendees, IBC is a firm fixture on their calendar, but we never take that for granted which is part of the reason why we are constantly looking to evolve and add new features, such as this year’s debut of IBC Content Everywhere. Given the high profile and disruptive nature of

one that is constantly striving to improve. We reflect the industry, and as it changes, so do we. We have an innovative and highly experienced content team that has a deep knowledge of current industry trends and direction and this feeds back into the conference and the special areas we develop.

IBC is in constant motion and different every year. Sometimes the changes are obvious, such as with the launch of IBC Content Everywhere and in previous years the establishment of IBC Rising Stars and the IBC Leaders’ Summit. However, sometimes it is incremental, such as the subtle reorganisation of this year’s conference into themed days, each one telling a different part of the innovation story of our industry.

What did you learn most from last year’s experience that you have taken on board for 2014?

Last year we trialled Touch & Connect, which uses near field communication technology to provide contactless information exchange, as well as granting access to a 24/7 online portal.

It was a great success, and we are now rolling that out to all of our expected 10,000 visitors to IBC Content Everywhere Europe.

You mentioned that Professor Brian Cox OBE will be giving the keynote address in Sunday’s Television’s Expanding Universe session. How significant is his involvement for IBC, and what can delegates look forward to from his address?

Brian is rapidly establishing himself as one of the best science broadcasters of his generation.

As you would expect, he is also an extremely entertaining and engaging speaker, but beyond that he also has some genuinely interesting perspectives about the industry. That is partly because he trained in a very different discipline and can step back and examine it as an observer, and partly because he is such an ardent enthusiast for broadening the public — and industry — engagement with science.

In terms of the conference programme itself, what can delegates look forward to from what is a busy five-day schedule?

Aside from our keynote address from Professor Cox, you can expect some truly incisive addresses from the other pre-eminent thought leaders including Channel 4’s CEO, David Abraham; president of Google Europe, Matt Brittin and Tim Davie who is CEO and director, Global BBC Worldwide.

The new conference format we are unveiling for 2014 means that each day will be anchored by a keynote session as we examine a different aspect of the industry. We still have our streams that form the pillars of the programme, themed through technology, business, content and strategic overview, as well as the free-to-attend industry insights sessions. In general, though, this subtle change in format will make

“We are lucky in that for many of our attendees, IBC is a IP connectivity and the second firm fixture on their screen, I would calendar, but we never expect that should prove take that for granted, highly popular and help us which is part of the bring in a new audience to reason why we are the show. constantly looking Plus, of course, with Professor Brian to evolve” Cox OBE delivering what should be an absolutely riveting keynote this year, we are further elevating the international profile of the conference.

How difficult is it to keep building on the successes of previous years to retain that growth arc?

As I mentioned, we are a fixture on the calendar but we are also

One thing that does not change, though, is the great service the exhibition team provides which means that, even with the economic climate still being a challenge, we are in the enviable position of having a waiting list for space.

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IBC Preview it much easier for delegates to plan their time and avoid clashes within areas of interest.

You’ve also announced the new IBC Content Everywhere series of events, the European section of which will launch in Amsterdam, with further events in MENA and LATAM. Why was this the right time to launch such a series, and what is the primary goal for these events?

IBC Content Everywhere lets us expand in many different ways: to different audiences; to different regions; from being a one-week event to being a 365-day-a-year presence.

With the Touch & Connect technology, it truly takes us into the digital space as well. It was simply the right time, both for us in terms of growth and for the industry that is pioneering new development in the field.

To lean on your experience in the content everywhere space, how well do you feel the traditional broadcast sector is applying itself to the changing landscape brought on by developments in technology, systems, platforms, connectivity, and much else besides?

I think it is doing very well.

You only have to look at some of the astonishing figures that have come out of the World Cup in terms of terabytes per second streamed, downloads for the official apps, tweets per second, and more, to understand how quickly the traditional sector has adapted.

There is shakeout underway, as the spate of high-profile mergers from earlier this year indicates, but consolidation in some respects is simply a sign of a maturing industry and increasingly commoditised technology.

Looking to a vision of the future, there has been a lot of focus on TV/media 2020 — in the absence of a crystal ball, how do you think the industry will change by the time we reach 2020?

Viewers will expect content everywhere and be able to watch what they want, when they want, on what they want.

They will want the experience to be seamless, painless, and genuinely transmedia. As an industry, we have to supply that. I think you will also start seeing more pronounced influences from different regions, both in terms of the way that technology is used and deployed and in the content as well.

A global audience consuming content sourced from a free and global marketplace will fundamentally change the established patterns of commissioning and consumption in the industry.

Finally, you announced the very sad passing of IBC president, John Wilson. What are your reflections on Wilson as a person, and his achievements in helping to shape the modern-day IBC?

John is one of the main reasons I’m talking to you today. He made IBC what it is and has been hugely influential, both for us and in terms of the wider industry. He understood that change was an inevitability

and that we had to embrace and reflect that if we are ever going to progress. It is his legacy of constant progress and development that underpins all that we do, and which makes IBC so successful.

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IBC

SHOW 2014 COUNTDOWN TO AMSTERDAM

By James McKeown THE COUNTDOWN to IBC2014 starts in earnest in this issue. Our preview showcases just a selection of new products and updates that you can expect to see in Amsterdam come September. As for the exhibition halls, it’s business as usual with themed exhibition areas spread throughout the 14 halls of the RAI exhibition centre.

Halls 1 to 5 and Hall 14 are home to Content Delivery

(broadcast solutions, cable and satellite, home systems and broadband, iTV, IPTV, mobile systems, service and broadcasters, transmitters and set top boxes), while Halls 6 to 10 will host Content Management (MAM, playout and server apps, post and new media, Sis and consultancy, transmitters, VFX and workflow solutions).

Content Creation (acquisition and accessories, audio and radio displays, content production, studio

systems and telecine and film) is based in Halls 11 and 12, and will share Hall 9 with IBC’s Content Everywhere workflow solutions.

New for this year is the launch of IBC’s Content Everywhere conference series, which will comprise of events in Europe, MENA and Latin America. The European leg begins at IBC2014 before expanding to Dubai on 20 to 22 January, and Sao Paolo later in 2015.

IBC has also announced that Professor Brian Cox OBE will

be providing a keynote address.

The acclaimed physicist and broadcaster will take part in the Television’s Expanding Universe keynote session on Sunday 14 September, in what promises to be a fascinating insight from a man credited with bringing accessibility to factual documentaries and programmes.

This year’s conference runs from 11 to 15 September, with the exhibition running between 12 and 16 September.

Gearhouse Broadcast

Upgraded production trailer showcase

By Heather McLean AN UPDATED model of its fully equipped, live production OBLite HD trailer will be shown by Gearhouse Broadcast at IBC2014. Building on the success of its launch at last year’s show, the trailer has been refined in terms of both build and production workflow.

OBLite features eight of the latest Hitachi Z-HD6000 camera

Cool runnings: the Maxiva range includes compact and energyefficient UHF and VHF transmitters

channels. The main operational upgrade sees the trailer’s production workflow redesigned using Ross Video’s openTruck blueprint, ensuring increased efficiency, video quality, and the ability to quickly reconfigure the trailer for different events.

Ross Video’s Carbonite vision mixer, NK Series routing system and glue have been implemented from its openGear platform, as well as the powerful and

compact LAWO V_pro8 1U video processor.

Structural updates to OBLite include a lighter chassis, built-in retractable door steps, a loadbearing roof with operator safety harness and anti-slip surface, waterproof mouse holes for cable runs, stabilisation jacks and flush door locking mechanisms. All external units have been encased and a new internal cooling system has been installed.

Refined OB: the OBLite HD trailer is updated one year on from launch OBLite now includes a new LED lighting array as well as ECE 104 compliant reflective tape and ‘On Air’ lights.

Changes to the interior layout also allow for two six-channel HD EVS XT server positions.

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GatesAir

Transmitters aim for all-round efficiency

By Michael Burns BASED ON transformational PowerSmart 3D architecture, the new Maxiva TV and DAB radio transmitters are being introduced for over-the-air broadcasters across UHF and VHF spectrums.

GatesAir’s Maxiva UHF series is comprised of the ULXT liquidcooled model, for medium-tohigh power broadcasts, and the UAXT air-cooled model for low-

to-medium power requirements.

The broadband amplifier design increases power density in both models, reducing transmitter footprints and rack space requirements by up to 75 per cent, said the company. GatesAir said this design also simplifies maintenance, as it offers modularity, lighter weights and fewer parts.

The company added that the designs of the Maxiva ULXT

and UAXT enhance energy efficiencies to reduce carbon footprint and lower operating costs, claiming possible annual power savings of over 50 per cent for over-the-air broadcasters.

GatesAir will also showcase its Maxiva VAX air-cooled VHF transmitter, built on the same PowerSmart 3D architecture and delivering similar operational efficiencies. The VAX covers mostly low-to-medium power

VHF requirements, and is aimed at broadcasters operating large networks from space-challenged facilities, or local broadcasters filling in coverage gaps across expansive regions. For radio broadcasters, the Maxiva VAX can be used for DAB radio networks, with advanced inputs including Encapsulation of DAB Interfaces (EDI) to support signal distribution over IP networks.

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IBC2014 Sneak Preview

Blackmagic releases camera update Blackmagic Design

By Carolyn Giardina BLACKMAGIC DESIGN recently released its 1.8 update for its Blackmagic Cinema Camera, Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and Blackmagic Production Camera 4K. A new code base offers improved performance and a new user interface similar in design to Blackmagic’s recently announced URSA camera.

It also brings compressed RAW DNG support to the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K model.

With this update, users gain enhanced lens control support

Emotion Systems

Focus on file-based workflows

By Carolyn Giardina THE LATEST versions of Emotion Systems’ eFF and Engine will be on show in Amsterdam.

These tools let users open a range of video and audio files as well as make measurements and adjustments and handle transcoding without conversion to baseband.

Supported file formats include MXF, P2, LXF, QuickTime, WAV, AIFF and DPP, as well as files with Dolby E. eFF provides audio loudness compliance to a range of standards and can be used in multiple workflows including standalone, automatic watch folder and fully automatic through API integration.

Engine allows automated file-based audio workflows for loudness, Dolby E encoding and decoding, track replication and track swapping. It is controlled by use of a ReSTful API and can be integrated with various MAM systems.

Emotion CEO, MC Patel, said: “We have worked very closely with our customers to understand the audio issues they have with file-based workflows and this closeness has allowed us to engineer systems that are functional, cost effective and scalable.”

6.C28c

for EF lens mount cameras such as the original Blackmagic Cinema Camera EF and the Blackmagic Production Camera

4K models. This means customers now get auto focus when pushing the focus button on active EF-based lenses.

The release also improves the focus peaking display.

The original Blackmagic Cinema Camera gains enhancements to the camera’s dynamic range when shooting at 1600 ISO.

For the Pocket Cinema Camera, the 1.8 update includes the new interface, focus peaking and improved de-bayer quality, plus extra active MFT lens support for lenses including Sigma and Lumix.

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IBC2014 Sneak Preview

ARRI

Alexa supports ProRes 4444 XQ

By David Fox ARRI has become the first camera maker to support Apple’s new ProRes 4444 XQ codec, the highest-quality version of ProRes to date, which is designed to preserve all the detail in higher-dynamic range imagery through post production.

“Working with ProRes has been great for our customers,” said Marc ShipmanMueller, ARRI’s product manager for camera systems. “Up until now, the ProRes 4444 330Mbps version has been the workhorse of professional filmmakers using the Alexa. ProRes 4444 XQ has a higher target data rate of 500Mbps that makes it the ideal choice for post production that requires visual effects processing or extreme colour grading.”

“ProRes 4444 XQ is a fantastic choice

for high-end mastering and archiving,” added Henning Rädlein, ARRI’s head of digital workflow solutions. “ProRes 4444 XQ offers 12-bit RGB encoding with a low compression ratio of 1:4.5 that maintains the superior tonal range of Log C, while providing the speed, ease of use and familiarity of ProRes.” Final Cut Pro X 10.1.2 fully supports ProRes 4444 XQ for editing, compositing, rendering, and exporting.

ARRI Alexa XT cameras and Alexa Classic cameras with the XR Module gain ProRes 4444 XQ capability in both HD and 2K via ARRI’s Software Update Packet SUP 10, to become the first cameras capable of encoding ProRes 4444 XQ. SUP 10 is due to be released in August.

11.F21

Ensemble Design

BrightEye on a new compact router

By Michael Burns A new version of the BrightEye NXT line of compact routers will be making its IBC debut, adding up/down/cross conversion to its feature set.

David Wood, Ensemble Designs CEO and chief design engineer, said the BrightEye NXT 430-X offers glitch-free conversion to a common production format, routed seamlessly to HDMI and SDI destinations.

“SD sources can now be up-converted to HD as part of the routing process, as well as crossconverting from one HD format to another,” he explained. “Just select an output format and route whatever SMPTE broadcast resolution source you have to that destination.”

Like other BrightEye NXT routers, the NXT 430-X features direct cuts,

Glitch-free: the NXT 430-X converts from SD to HD as part of the routing process dissolves, router salvos, and clean and quiet switching of HDMI and SDI sources. The unit, around the size of a paperback book, offers audio level and channel assignment on an input-byinput basis, a full motion LCD display for switching and a built-in web server for control and set-up with any browser-enabled device.

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IBC2014 Sneak Preview Sony

Global 4K production showcase

By Adrian Pennington HIGHLIGHTS OF the FIFA World Cup shot in 4K, including the final won by Germany, will be central to Sony’s exhibit. It will be showing how its 4K products from cameras to switchers are helping pioneer live and recorded Ultra HD production.

Among this summer’s other landmarks supported by Sony technology were the UK’s National Theatre production of War Horse live in 4K to cinemas; the BBVA League finale between FC Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid, and broadcasting the canonisation of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. As part of the FIFA TV broadcast production of the World Cup, Sony partnered with Presteigne Charter, Studio Berlin, CTV, AMP Visual TV

At a gallop: the NT’s production of War Horse was a 4K first

and Broadcast RF to deliver three matches in 4K, including a quarter final match and the final itself, which were also streamed live to digital cinema screens for the first time ever in Ultra HD. Sony is also taking time to showcase how its IP-based

solutions are helping broadcasters to deliver accurate multi-camera live productions with unshakable continuity.

This trails the announcement earlier this year of a licensing programme for Sony’s new AV over IP Interface for

manufacturers, promoting the adoption of this technology across the industry.

There will be further detail on how the vendor is helping national and global news broadcasters to modernise their workflows, delivering increased

data transfer speeds that reduce the time between acquisition and transmission. It recently announced that broadcasters RTP, ITV, TVE, Scottish TV and RAI have all switched to Sony XDCAM. “IBC provides a great opportunity to meet with our customers and partners to trigger ideas which could distinguish the future of professional A/V,” said Olivier Bovis, head of AV media, Sony Europe. “Even in the 12 months since IBC2013, we’ve delivered a host of industry firsts which show how our vision for a world ‘Beyond Definition’ is coming to reality. IBC2014 starts the next chapter of that story. We’re looking forward to meeting our customers, hearing their feedback, and plotting out together what’s next around the corner for the broadcast industry”.

Hall 12

DPA

Pendant powers safe sound

By Michael Burns A ROBUST wearable mini-mic aims to give control of microphone placement to nontechnical actors or reality show contestants without compromising sound quality.

The d:screet Omnidirectional Miniature Necklace Microphone is making its IBC debut, but is already being used in the Danish adaptation of Big Brother. The necklace mic houses the company’s 4061 miniature capsule in a soft rubber necklace, and is available in black, white and

brown and in lengths of 47 or 53cm.

“These microphones are perfect for situations where fast costume changes are necessary, or for reality TV shows where the contestants have to place microphones without help from a trained audio engineer,” said DPA CEO Christian Poulsen. “The necklace design ensures that the microphone sits in exactly the same place on the body every time, so there is no need for EQ-ing between different recordings.”

DPA will be demonstrating the necklace mic on the stand

of its Dutch distributor Amptec, alongside more robust variants of its d:screet 4060 Omnidirectional Miniature Microphones.

The classic d:screet 4060 gains reinforced cable relief, while the heavy-duty d:screet 4060 microphone features a stainless steel housing, sturdy cable relief and a thicker 2.2mm cable.

“Our new robust strain relief version brings much needed reassurance to people who are not used to handling miniatures,” said Poulsen.

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By a neck: DPA’s new necklace mic offers discreet and robust sound recording

August 2014 www.tvbeurope.com

TVBEurope 45

New audio mixer joins crystal set Lawo

By Michael Burns IBC WILL play host to the launch of a brand-new audio mixing console on Friday, 12 September. The new member of the Lawo product family, which the company claims boasts high performance and a new face, with an advanced featureset, is set to extend Lawo’s application range and round up the company’s product portfolio.

Also on show will be the new crystal radio console. This entrylevel mixer offers a redesigned user surface in a slim chassis and a new ergonomic hand rest. The redesigned crystal base unit features power supply redundancy and optimised expansion slots for easy addition of I/O cards.

Lawo said the console was prepared for integration with radio automation systems like ENCO, RCS, Dalet and Radiomax. It works with touchscreen-optimised VisTool PC software, providing additional functionality for DSP parameters, signal levels, and the snapshot database. Also on display will be the fully touchscreen-based crystalCLEAR virtual radio

Mariner Navigating IP video monitoring

By Monica Heck SOFTWARE-DEFINED monitoring for IP video is at the core of Mariner’s demonstrations at IBC as the company showcases enhancements to its xVu solution for ‘video anywhere’.

Mariner xVu increases visibility into the home, providing operators with analytics and realtime monitoring tools to ensure a superior QoE on any screen.

Mariner xVu enables providers to pinpoint the root cause for degradation of service, allowing network operations teams and help desk technicians to manage endto-end IP video quality. It aims to offer a clear understanding of the viewing experience by delivering insight, in realtime, to those who influence and assure the customer.

The company explained that its ability to rapidly isolate network, content or service problems helps reduce mean time to repair service, truck rolls and STB swaps, which in turn ensures a more cost-effective broadband and IP video service.

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mixing console, complementing the crystal product line for applications where no physical faders are needed.

And finally, the mc²56 and the mc²66 audio mixing consoles in different frame sizes will be on show too. These include features

such as the advanced AutoMix function, which enabled the production of 32 feeds with two operators during the World Cup in Brazil.

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Crystal clear: Lawo’s crystal radio console offers a slim chassis with new ergonomic handrest

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IBC2014 Sneak Preview Canon

Canon’s 4K cinema servo lens

By David Fox CANON’S NEW CN7x17 KA S is its first cinema lens to feature a servo drive unit, making it more suitable for handheld broadcast use for 4K and large sensor cameras.

It is claimed to offer a best-inclass focal length of 17-120mm, and is available in EF-mount and PL-mount versions, while the addition of the servo drive unit, with high speed zoom, iris and

focusing, lends itself to a more fluid shooting style, for drama, documentaries or current affairs.

Its low speed drive functionality offers greater control over slow zooming, while immediate startup means shots won’t be missed in dynamic situations.

It supports 4K resolution shooting, with a 7x zoom range and a maximum T-number of T2.95.

The lens is also suited to tripod-mounted use. Zoom,

focus and iris can all be controlled using Canon’s existing zoom and focus demands. Virtual studio use is also supported via 16-bit encoder output.

For more traditional moviestyle shooting, the servo drive unit can be removed completely, with follow focus units and matte boxes fitted, while re-installation is quick and simple, with no adjustment of gear positions required.

The CN7x17 KAS S supports communication between lens and camera. The EF-mount version uses Canon’s own system, while the PL-mount variant is the first in the Cinema EOS series to support Cooke’s /i Technology. There is also support for 12-pin serial communication.

Canon will also be showing more than 100 lenses in a vast array of focal lengths and types,

IDX

THE NEW Endura Cue battery range from IDX is claimed to combine enhanced reliability with lower cost. The Lithium Ion batteries have been designed to meet the most stringent PSE regulations for electrical and mechanical safety — essential for air travel. There are three V-Mount models:

from ENG to cinema to EF lenses, at IBC, as well as numerous 4K demonstrations, including 4K output from studio camera configurations and live colour grading enabled by its 4K reference monitors.

11.E50

LiveU

Cue battery cost savings

By David Fox

Servo equipped: the CN7x17 KA S brings ENG-style shooting to Canon’s cinema lens range

Endura Cue-D75, Endura Cue-D95 and Endura Cue-D150. All have D-Tap DC output, allowing peripherals to be powered direct, while a discharge cut off prevents them being damaged by products without a voltage-sensing shut down mechanism. Four LEDs provide a quick check of remaining power capacity. The range comes with a one-year

capacity better than 70 per cent Right on Cue: the new Endura Cue range from IDX and a two-year component count and improve defects warranty. reliability. The Cue range The cells have been supplied includes battery circuit

by Sanyo, which has combined protection to counter improvements in design overcharging or exposure to and manufacturing with high temperatures. developments in microchip 11.C21 technology to reduce the

From Rio to the RAI

By Will Strauss BONDED 3G/4G uplink technology used during coverage of both the FIFA World Cup in Brazil and the Sochi Winter Olympics will be on show at the LiveU stand.

The range of portable live video acquisition, contribution and management innovations includes the LU500 and the DataBridge. The former, which weighs 1kg (2.2lbs) and is available in both backpack and camera-mount versions, is based on patented bonding algorithms and is powered by a new multi-processor video encoding engine.

The LiveU DataBridge is a mobile hotspot that offers broadband connectivity in any location by bonding together multiple cellular and other data connections.

Also being demonstrated during IBC will be a browserbased management system for controlling and tracking LiveU systems, feeds and apps. LiveU Central enables a live preview of all incoming feeds to be dragged and dropped onto a physical server output anywhere around the world or be encoded for web streaming.

LiveU’s mobile application for smartphones and tablets, the LU-Smart will also be on show, along with the Xtender external antenna for extra-resilient signal in extreme scenarios.

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IBC2014 Sneak Preview Matrox

Crestron controls streaming and recording tools

By Carolyn Giardina THE MONARCH HD streaming and recording appliances and VS4Recorder multi-camera recording systems integrated with Crestron controllers will be showcased by Matrox Video during IBC. Crestron programmers can use the Matrox Monarch HD Control API or the VS4Recorder API to interface Matrox products with Crestron 2-Series and 3-Series room media controllers. Operators can then start and stop streaming and recording from within the Crestron interfaces.

“Crestron integration is one of the top user-requested features for our streaming and recording products,” said Daniel Maloney,

Regal display: the Monarch HD Creston panel interface technical marketing manager, Matrox Video. “Our APIs let AV integrators eliminate the need for additional control surfaces in venues such as lecture halls, office buildings, museums, hotels and convention centres.”

Matrox Monarch HD is an H.264 encoder designed to allow producers to simultaneously

stream a live event and record a mastering-quality version for post event editing. From an HDMI input source, Matrox Monarch HD generates an H.264-encoded stream compliant with RTSP or RTMP protocol. While encoding the video at bitrates suitable for live streaming, Monarch HD simultaneously records a high-quality MP4 or MOV file to an SD card, a USB drive, or a network-mapped drive.

The VS4Recorder comes with Matrox VS4 quad HD capture cards. It gives live event producers synchronised control over capture of the four inputs connected to the VS4 to create MOV, MP4, or AVI files for use with select editing apps for immediate upload to the internet or for archiving.

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On the air: IBC TV is depending on FORscene to provide its self-service syndication workflow

Forbidden Technologies Updates in place for IBC TV

By Michael Burns POSITIVE USER feedback has helped enhance the FORscene post production system behind IBC TV, and delivered a raft of improvements to users of the cloud-based platform.

The official broadcaster for IBC2014, IBC TVwill again use FORscene to provide its self service syndicated workflow. A FORscene server based at the RAI conference centre will compress and upload material shot by IBC TV teams during the exhibition.

Participating broadcasters and IBC exhibitors can access library content, including rushes and daily programme footage. New this year is

24-hour coverage available yearround to subscribers.

IBC will also use FORscene to prepare content for the IBC2014 Awards for the first time.

Forbidden Technologies is also introducing a high-res codec for the system, to enable dynamic display of high or low res proxies. Users can also now move original source material from one FORscene box to another and take advantage of a new MAM system.

Forbidden is also releasing iOS and Android FORscene apps and providing new documentation for supported camera and ingest formats.

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IBC2014 Sneak Preview Rohde & Schwarz

Imagine

Clipster certified Atmos

By Carolyn Giardina THE CLIPSTER mastering system is now certified to enable users to create DCPs with a Dolby Atmos mix.

Dolby Atmos is an “objectbased” immersive sound format, and recent films, including Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Guardians of the Galaxy, were given Atmos mixes for supported cinemas. A beta version of Clipster with Atmos was used last year for The Hobbit: The Desolation

At a good clip: Clipster generates Digital Cinema Packages

of Smaug. Clipster can generate compliant DCPs in realtime — whether the material is in 2D, 3D, 4K or high frame rate. By using Rohde & Schwarz DVS’s JPEG2000 encoding hardware, 96 frames can be converted per second.

Now, Dolby Atmos mixes can additionally be integrated in the mastering process for the DCP. “Dolby Laboratories always delivers exceptional technology that has and will transform the entertainment and cinema industry,” said Bernhard Reitz, head of product management at Rohde & Schwarz DVS. “Combining our technological know-how in past projects has shown us what we can achieve for cinemagoers.”

Atmos launched in Spring 2012 with roughly 650 Atmos screens installed or committed to so far.

7.E25

A transformed Imagine debuts at IBC

By Carolyn Giardina MARKING ITS first IBC since Imagine Communications transformed from Harris Broadcast, the company is coming to Amsterdam to demonstrate how it plans to support the media and entertainment industry through the transition to a future defined

by IP, software-defined networks and workflows, virtualisation and TV Everywhere.

Among the initiatives, it plans to show are expanded ‘playout in the cloud’ plans with demos combining content originating from public and private clouds with on-ramps and off-ramps to bridge baseband video and IP; hybrid integration with on-premises playout systems; and

Your flexible friend: the SelenioFlex software-based media processing technology

transformation for multi-platform delivery.

It will also highlight its MultiService SDN (software-defined networking) framework for media companies operating in hybrid baseband and IP environments, as well as new advertising tools for the Landmark business application management platform, including campaign management for streamed and nonlinear content.

Using technology gained in the acquisition of Digital Rapids earlier this year, Imagine will also be presenting the Xenio workflow management platform.

Addressing consumer adoption of TV Everywhere it will additionally demonstrate

the SelenioNext adaptive bitrate transcoder, SelenioFlex software-based media processing technology for live and file-based encoding and transcoding, and the SelenioEdge content delivery network software for streaming to end-user devices.

Imagine’s IBC stand will also feature its processing and compression portfolio. New processing tools making their IBC debut include the Selenio X100 1RU processor, with a path for IP and ultra HD, and new modules for the Selenio MCP (media convergence platform) that support JPEG2000 contribution encoding for live events and satellite distribution via a dualchannel DVB-S/S2 demodulator.

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IBC2014 Sneak Preview PHABRIX promises “innovation, innovation, innovation”

Screen

Script Extractor speeds subtitling

By Ian McMurray SCRIPTS COME in a variety of different layouts and anyone wishing to make use of such content in a machine-readable form can waste a lot of time trying to isolate just the material they need to use, according to exhibitor Screen.

For subtitling or dubbing customers who rely on using scripts to increase their productivity, Screen says that it recognised the need to speed up the process of extracting useful payload as quickly as possible Script prescription: Script Extractor reduces a 20 minute from any script layout. task to two minutes Faced with the challenge of to be preserved, and ignores the other identifying and isolating the required information from a range of script items. A process which used to take 20 minutes or more can now be completed layouts and discarding unwanted material, within a minute or two, claims Screen.

Screen developed the Script Extractor.

If a series of scripts is received from the Script Extractor is an assistive tool same production company, all in the same designed to enable a user to quickly layout, then a ‘template’ can easily be identify examples of the material of saved so that the ‘training’ provided in one interest, and to automate the task of session can be retrieved and used again. retrieving all similar instances from the The output may then be imported into script. The user highlights one or two Screen’s WinCAPS Qu4ntum subtitling items of each of the content types they software where speaker labels can be are interested in on the uploaded script used for automatic subtitle colouring and — for instance, speaker label and the dialogue and timecodes are used to dialogue — and using a sophisticated create subtitles. pattern matching algorithm, the Script 1.C49 Extractor then picks out similar content

By Holly Ashford PHABRIX will be showcasing its portable PHABRIX SxE with eye and jitter analysis and a new A/V delay toolset across the Sx series.

Following the release of TAG earlier in the year, new for IBC2014 is TAG’s New for IBC2014 is TAG’s support for PAL M and N formats support for PAL M and N formats alongside SD, HD and 3G-SDI D and Dolby Digital Plus with the Rx range standards. The TAG provides a range of offering full decode of two Dolby streams interfaces including analogue, SDI and optical simultaneously. and can be upgraded to include a fully functional Paul Nicholls, PHABRIX’s sales and generator across all standards. marketing director commented, “The SxE, TAG Also new at IBC for the Rx modular rack and Rx all have enhancements so we welcome system is increased support for WSS/VI/AFD the chance to see all our customers, old and new. and closed captions. PHABRIX’s four simultaneous inputs of closed captioning provide We suspect a lot of people will be coming to IBC this year with questions about 4K.” At the Show, separated views for 608 and 708, and further PHABRIX will have a new area where visitors will features will be on show at IBC. be able to discuss the technical view of 4K PHABRIX will be highlighting its advanced support for audio on the Rx platform, particularly support across multiple formats and frame rates.

8 E40 Dolby. All products now support Dolby E, Dolby

TVU

IP developments for ENG

By Will Strauss OPTIONS FOR OB vehicles and mobile phones will be among the live mobile IP newsgathering innovations on show at the TVU Networks stand.

The TVU MLink is being touted for IP-based OBs. This IP ENG transmitter allows users to aggregate available bandwidth from mobile, Ka-band satellite, Ku-band satellite and microwave links in order to deliver what TVU describes as a stable, resilient transmission from any location.

The TVU Anywhere app, when used with a TVUPack receiver, turns a compatible mobile device into a live video transmitter.

Features of the free app include store and forward, IFB and the ability to control transmission settings from the studio and to aggregate Wi-Fi and 3G/4G/LTE connections.

Improvements to the TVUPack on-camera transmitter wbe on show, including the ability to aggregate mobile, Wi-Fi, ethernet, satellite or microwave connections with sub-second latency.

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EVS

Making the most of live

By Michael Burns A MULTI-SOURCE, file-based ingest server and tools for live production, automated archive and production workflow operations are some of the live media asset systems to be showcased at IBC by EVS. EVS said its OpenCube SD/HD server offers an extended range of MXF file generation, advanced MXF file interoperability, including AS-02, AS-03 and AS-11, IMF support, and management of ancillary data (closed caption, subtitling) throughout the entire production and archive chain.

EVS will also be presenting the latest IPDirector tools for automated archive and production workflow operations.

The new Melt feature offers automated playlist creation of all key actions (clips) created during live operations and transfers to archive, post or offsite production. It also attaches the log sheet and original metadata, which the

company says provides significant clip retrieval advantages.

IPDirector also features new AutoClipping capabilities for automatic clip creation based on associated keywords. These are added using the IPDirector logging tool or by importing external statistics information linked to the live-event timecode.

A new range of live production tools based on the XT3 platform are also on show. A series of live control panels, MultiReview, LSMConnect and Epsio Zoom, offer on-the fly media control capabilities during live operations. Both the company’s XT3 and XS servers now offer extended format support and capabilities including 4K, 1080p and proxy, plus 10Gb ethernet connectivity.

The C-Cast Xplore web browsing interface provides access to live multicamera recording feeds and clips on XT3 servers, allowing production teams to enhance content from any location.

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Interview

Taking a Quantum leap Geoff Stedman made the switch to Quantum earlier this year to take up the newly created position of senior VP, StorNext Solutions. Melanie Dayasena-Lowe met with Stedman to find out how his experience in start-ups and the storage business has helped him to steer the company’s goals THIS MARCH, Geoff Stedman joined Quantum as senior VP, StorNext Solutions to focus on expanding the company’s leadership in scale-out storage solutions across current and new vertical markets.

With a solid background in storage, having worked for the likes of Tintri, Harmonic and Omneon, Stedman is well placed to push ahead with the development and growth of Quantum’s StorNext portfolio. “With Quantum being in the storage market, I’m able to draw a lot from my experience at Omneon, which is also storage but a different part of the storage market. Omneon focuses more on playout servers and nearline NAS storage. At Quantum it’s focused much more on production with our SAN technology and archive. I’m deďŹ nitely leveraging some of that past experience,â€? he explains.

So how did this move come about?

Stedman had been in discussions with several companies for his next role, many of which were start-ups. He was introduced to Jon Gacek, CEO of Quantum, and they began talking about his past connection with the media and entertainment business.

Stedman explains: “I like marketing into vertical markets because you’re able to have much more business level workow discussions rather than pure technology discussions. Jon was describing where the company wanted to get to with its scale-out storage products and wanting to extend into multiple verticals beginning with media and entertainment, government and other adjacent markets. He was looking for someone who could help identify those markets and lead the go-to-market efforts.â€?

Stedman’s experience in the start-up arena was of particular interest. “[Jon’s] also trying to create a little bit of a startup mentality within Quantum around the scale-out storage products. It’s the key growth driver for the company. I thought I’d be able to bring a little of my start-up background and it all came together. I felt like the overall company vision was compelling and exciting. It deďŹ nitely drew me in and gave me the platform I

Geoff Stedman: “We’re not a general purpose storage company when it comes to media and entertainment. We’re workow storageâ€?

“Over time, you will see was looking to be a part of.� us work with Brought in to head up customers and the StorNext partners to enable portfolio, he explains that cloud-based part of what attracted him workflows built to the role at Quantum was around that “we were StorNext� starting from a position of strength.

We had a well adopted, very reliable, robust technology that adds value for customers.�

Building for the future His appointment followed the recent introduction of StorNext 5, a re-architected, high-performance scale-out storage and archive platform optimised for customers’ changing workow needs. “In order to keep up with where the industry was going and to handle the tremendous growth we’re seeing in data storage, particularly media storage and volumes of libraries, we’d have to go back and rebuild parts of StorNext as we need

it to be even more tremendous for the next ten years,� he explains. “We took the opportunity over the last couple of years to rebuild StorNext using newer technologies. That resulted in StorNext 5. We have this technology platform to build on for the future, and we also have a strategy to increasingly incorporate that technology into the systems we provide.�

According to Stedman, a big part of StorNext’s success has been the breadth of the application partner ecosystem that works very well with StorNext. “We’ll continue to grow that ecosystem. Part of our strategy is to build those relationships and help our independent software vendors integrate better with StorNext.�

He believes the beauty of StorNext is its ability to allow users to establish policies for where data will reside and presenting a single view into that infrastructure regardless of where the ďŹ le actually exists. “An application doesn’t need to know how to talk to a tape library, it just talks to StorNext and it will give them the data they are looking for. It’s smart enough to make sure the data is in the right place at the right time and that the application can always get to it without having to do a lot of custom integration.â€?

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Interview Into the cloud So what’s next? At NAB this year, Quantum delivered a live demonstration of StorNext in the cloud. Stedman explains: “You can imagine a world

where StorNext knows how to manage data that sits in a cloud or in a cloud environment. Many cloud environments are built with storage that looks a

lot like our object storage product. Over time, you will see us work with customers and partners to enable cloud-based workflows built around StorNext.”

Stedman dubbed the NAB demo as “forward looking” and “a proof of concept that you can do a full StorNext workflow in the cloud”. Content was ingested into Quantum’s

StorNext 5 platform and moved to its Lattus Object Storage cloud using the Levels Beyond Reach Engine platform and Quantum’s StorNext Storage Manager. “Once it was in the cloud, we were using Adobe Anywhere to edit that material, Reach Engine to do media management and workflow management and Telestream for transcoding,” he says.

“Once you put data in the cloud, all these applications could work on the data without moving it to a local device. You can work on it in the cloud. If you can put data up in the cloud and let people work on it as they need to, StorNext can manage that. The applications already know how to talk to StorNext and it’s almost an easy migration to cloud-based workflows.”

He is excited about the prospect of the cloud going forward and the company thinks of the cloud as an active part of the workflow.

“It’s a great direction for us of embracing the cloud as part of a workflow or as an enabler to the workflow. We can help customers migrate some or all of their workflow to the cloud with our technologies. I think it could be pretty transformative for customers trying to deal with needing to produce more content with more distributed workforce and do it faster.”

But are customers still concerned about security in the cloud? “We explain the object storage technology and how that stores data in a very secure fashion. The gateway and firewall security, which we don’t make, is part of any hosted environment so you can pretty quickly get over that objection,” he says.

There are two types of cloud – public and private. “In a public cloud multiple people are sharing the same infrastructure whereas in a private cloud the infrastructure is in a hosted facility dedicated to you as a customer. Everything we’re talking about is on the private cloud side. That also alleviates a lot of the security concerns. It’s dedicated infrastructure but because it’s cloud-based it’s very scalable and you can dial it up or down depending on your usage.”

4K strain Aside from the cloud, other developments in the industry such as Ultra HD have had an impact on the storage market.

“It’s going to pose challenges for customers, and it already is,”

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Interview

“4K is going to put a strain on storage in terms of more data and higher bandwidth”

he explains. “A lot of the market is moving to 4K production. It’s because they see what is coming on the consumption and TV side. You always want to produce at the highest quality resolution you can. So that is putting significant strain on existing storage infrastructure. One of the Pro solutions we introduced at NAB was the StorNext Pro 4K, a specific StorNext configuration that supports direct 4K production.

We’ve sized it and tested it. We know it works today. One of the offerings Quantum has to bring into the market right now is 4K production. That’s not the future — it’s doable today.

“We have a lot of customers using it and talking to us about how to move to 4K. A lot of customers have a StorNext environment. They may want to start a separate 4K environment, and because it is all StorNext they can bring it together sometime in the future, and that sounds appealing to customers. 4K is going to put a strain on storage in terms of more data and higher bandwidth. It needs the performance that a StorNext SAN can provide and it needs cost effective storage when you come to archive it. Those are two things that Quantum excels at.”

Workflow storage So what makes StorNext and Quantum stand out? “We’re not a general purpose storage company when it comes to media and entertainment. We’re workflow storage. It’s storage optimised for the workflows that are used in video and media and entertainment markets. I think of Quantum as being very specialised.

“We’re using industry standard hardware, but it’s the combination of that with our software that makes StorNext so special. It is very intelligent, and allows you to accelerate workflows in ways that other general purpose storage vendors simply can’t.” Stedman likes the fact that StorNext is a product that “understands media and knows how to optimise workflows in ways you can’t get to with other products”.

Customer choice A recent customer of StorNext is Belgium-based SONUMA (SOciété de NUMérisation et de commercialisation des Archives audiovisuelles), which chose StorNext 5 content workflow solutions to help with a large-scale digitisation and digital restoration project. As the owner of RTBF’s TV and radio archives, SONUMA’s mission is to preserve, digitise and monetise these archives, which are currently stored in a wide range of media formats including 16mm film, Beta SP and digital cassette, CD and DAT. SONUMA will be digitising 8,000 hours of 16mm film, resulting in more than 8PB of content, and needed a high-performance, scale-out storage solution that it could easily deploy in its existing environment. Working with VP Media Solutions, a Quantum reseller, SONUMA purchased a StorNext M441 metadata appliance and StorNext

StorNext 5 is a re-architected, high-performance scale-out storage and archive platform optimised for customers’ changing workflow needs

QX-1200 disk storage to address this need. The DPX 2K files resulting from the digitisation process will be ingested directly into StorNext, where digital restoration and transcoding operations will be conducted and the content will be preserved.

“Our archive is a real goldmine, stretching back more than 80 years of radio and nearly 60 years of television,” said Eric Denis, IT manager, SONUMA. “To accomplish the digitisation, the ingest in 2K format and the realtime transcoding of these 8,000 hours of archive, we chose Quantum’s StorNext 5 solution because of its high performance and seamless integration into our content workflow.”

Why do customers select Quantum for their storage needs? Stedman explains: “StorNext has enabled productivity or capability that they struggled with before.

Customers recognise the workflow they are trying to do is difficult. StorNext has a level of intelligence about content and the applications and there’s a certain amount of automation in terms of setting policies which translates into automated movement of data or tiering, which can save a lot of time or take out complexity.”

He also believes that customers value the company’s expertise in the media and entertainment sector. “It’s the combination of many years in this market and the talent we have in the company. It has given customers a level of confidence. We understand their requirements, and we know how to build the technology to handle the uniqueness of media data and the way media needs to be handled. Customers in this market look for expertise and commitment to the media space.”

When asked where Quantum is heading, Stedman says the scale-out storage side of the business is seen as a key growth driver. “It’s an area where we have made significant investments in engineering, particularly with the rewrite of StorNext 5, and we bolstered the team to give us the resources we need to get that done. Enabling cloud workflows and enabling our object storage product

are continuing development efforts that are focused on growing that scale-out storage.”

Quantum’s strategy for growth is to focus on the core vertical markets, says Stedman. “We’re not trying to be a general purpose vendor for storage.

Our number one market is media and entertainment and we’re going to continue to make that the number one focus.”

Stedman finds the media and entertainment market exciting because it never stands still. “The industry as a whole is constantly changing and some of that is driven by the consumer technology which changes and demands different forms of content, either higher resolutions for UHD/4K or lower resolutions for watching movies on mobile phones or tablets.

“I’ve been fascinated about how the content business continues to change in terms of what needs to be consumed,

and how it is consumed, which also drives changes in how it is distributed/ packaged. In turn, that drives changes in how it is created. All of that creates amazing opportunities to partner with customers to help them deal with that change and help them ensure they have an infrastructure that gets them there. Partnerships and ecosystems of application vendors are so important because no-one operates as an island in this market.”

Aside from the company’s growth objectives, Stedman hints towards his personal goals and ambitions.

“I want to help the company grow. I’m driven by growth. I’m driven by helping companies to solve customer problems.

I want to continue to help the company expand on its reputation of being customer friendly and customer focused and to do so in a way that finds new ways of growing the business.”

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Channel in a Box

Forum

Even more boxes With Channel-in-a-Box continuing to occupy a great many broadcasting minds, we felt a second Forum was needed this year. Philip Stevens moderates CHANNEL-IN-A-BOX (CiaB) acceptance has now reached the stage where the benefits — especially in terms of capital and operating expenditure, and space demands — far outweigh the perceived downsides.

Nevertheless, questions still remain in some minds, around 4K and second screens, for example.

The panellists discussing these and other issues in this month’s Forum are (in alphabetical order) Don Ash, managing director, PlayBox Technology; Mark Errington, CEO, BroadStream Solutions; James Gilbert, CEO, Pixel Power; Karl Mehring,

senior product manager, TV Everywhere at Snell; Scott Rose, director of product management, Grass Valley; Mat Shell, proposals and solutions manager, Pebble Beach Systems; Stephen Smith, product line manager, Imagine Communications; Bruce Straight, vice president sales and marketing, ToolsOnAir; Andy Warman, director of product management, media servers and storage, Harmonic; Jan Weigner, managing director and CTO, Cinegy; and Goce Zdravkoski, managing director, Stryme.

We last looked at CiaB earlier this year. What are the latest developments since that time?

Ash: The first half of 2014 has proved extremely dynamic and successful. CiaB is now recognised right across the industry as being fully complementary to traditional high-end systems, as well as being ideal for emerging markets and low-budget installations.

We have recently been working with Toronto-based Masstech Group which offers some of the world’s most advanced asset management and archiving systems. The combined skills of the two companies have proved so powerful that we plan for Masstech to acquire the products and technology of PlayBox. Our software designers and their Masstech colleagues have been cooperating very closely to achieve the tightest possibly convergence between

our CiaB technology, centred on AirBox, and Masstech’s MassStore technology and the Masstech for Enterprise solution. The goal is to create a seamless, end-to-end filebased broadcast environment where playout and graphics are fully integrated with the asset management system.

Errington: Having determined that a standard IT server can handle a fully-featured channel, and that these servers can handle increased channel count and complexity of secondary events, there is an interesting divergence of direction going on with regard to vendor offerings in CiaB. Some are creating hardware-specific edge devices, which is not significantly different from a standard server running as an

Don Ash, PlayBox Technology

James Gilbert, Pixel PowerSolutions

edge device (which has been around for many years), some are looking more to end-to-end IP solutions, and in some cases those are combined with ‘cloud’ architecture – whether private or public. These models are still evolving and I believe a hybrid of hardware-specific and IT

solutions will exist for some time to come as broadcasters sweat some of their legacy equipment before fully embracing an all-IP solution.

Gilbert: What I see as the important development in this market is that it is diverging. The mechanics of

Channel-in-a-Box are pretty well established, and each vendor now has to put a distinctive spin on it. At Pixel Power, we see broadcasters and content owners wanting to migrate more of their channels to simple, low impact technology. The key issue, though, is that they do not want to lose any functionality or, more important, quality.

So our solution is focused on the real requirements of broadcasters today. In particular, we start with the branding and work back from there. Our central graphics platform, Clarity, already has all the video processing needed for a channel playout, like video servers, realtime effects and, of course, multiple layers of 3D graphics — all the things you need in a premium playout suite. So, we built ChannelMaster from the Clarity graphics platform, rather than take an off-theshelf PC and try to make it do things it is not very good at achieving. In conjunction with either our own Gallium software or any other playout and asset management tool, ChannelMaster really does do all you need for a true Channel-in-a-Box — including advanced functionality like automated menu and promo production, complex 3D graphics and squeezebacks.

Mehring: At Snell, our focus has been on giving broadcasters more functionality, flexibility, and creativity with advanced CiaB technology. This includes taking the ‘box’ out of CiaB and focusing on software. We do this by taking rule-based approaches to common problems — such as ‘now and next’ menus, and auto population that removes

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Channel in a Box

Forum the complexity of upstream systems which, ultimately, reduces the overall cost of a playout facility even further.

We’ve also seen new developments from various manufacturers on technologies that, ultimately, may or may not be appropriate for linear playout applications. The jury is still out.

Smith: The biggest step forward is the move of integrated playout solutions (long our preferred terminology over Channel-in-a-Box, given the rich capabilities now available) truly ‘out’ of ‘the box’. Our previously discussed vision of moving channel playout to fully software-and IP-based, virtualised environments — whether on a blade server or in public or private clouds — has become a reality. At NAB, we provided a live demonstration of playout in the cloud in conjunction with on-ramps and off-ramps to bridge baseband video and IP, and the ability to integrate with on-premises playout systems in hybrid architectures to leverage customers’ existing investments.

Of course, we have continued to expand the feature set available for our on-premises integrated playout systems, but the move of cloud-based playout solutions from discussions to a real demo is the most significant advance.

Straight: The latest development was our just:play version 1.8 automated playout solution and just:in version 1.7 multi-channel ingest product. Version 1.7 of just:in multi adds support for XDCAM EX, HD and HD 422, as well as AVC-Intra 50/100 and H.264 codecs. Also new is the implementation of multiple recording destinations, improved support for proxy creation — also in an MP4 container, and full compatibility with new devices and drivers from AJA and Blackmagic Design. Version 1.8 of just:play and

Mark Errington, BroadStream Solutions entirely virtualised broadcast encoding.

Second, we are adding support for playout of content as part of the software encoder that frame-accurately switches between live encoding and clip playout. Third, we are folding in the graphics, DVE, and other facilities from the Harmonic Spectrum ChannelPort CiaB solution. Finally, we are demonstrating that we can also deliver mobile and web-based encoding on top of broadcast encoding.

Zdravkoski: Clearly, the most innovative advance has been the change from a Channel-in-a-Box to Multichannel-in-a-Box, including ingest, graphics, playout as well as H.264

“CiaB is now recognised right across the industry as being fully complementary to traditional high-end systems” Don Ash, PlayBox Technology just:live also offers a wealth of new features, including a new image-based software installer, realtime log analyser tool, and full integration with just:control ToolsOnAir’s new control and monitoring application, enabling failover control using redundant playout.

Warman: The industry is becoming progressively more interested in IP-based playout. While SDI is still by far the more popular output of a CiaB system, compressed output over IP is gaining traction for some customers.

Harmonic has taken a somewhat different approach in four key ways.

First, we are delivering our encoder technology as a pure software platform called Electra XVM that enables

streaming capabilities to mobile devices.

At the same time, the TV business itself has changed, with more and more stations moving away from their own in-house playout system towards outsourcing the entire operation. This is becoming an increasingly attractive option and our fourth generation Genesix VideoServer perfectly responds to this trend. Stryme is one of the few broadcast solutions providers that offers multi-channel streaming in the H.264 format. Since we are constantly working on the development of Genesix, in order to meet the demands of the market, we created a bunch of new modules, such as the AB ROLL playlist, which enables the Genesix VideoServer to handle multi-channel playlists.

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Forum Are you expecting anything radical to emerge at IBC with regards Channel-ina-Box? Ash: The most obvious thing will be the more completely developed Masstech PlayBox solution, of course. IP-based playout looks set to be very big business. Our EdgeBox is capable of a full IP playout workflow. When integrated with Masstech, we can streamline and automate the movement of assets from production and storage into playout. EdgeBox makes delivering a TV station, complete with local branding and content, to anywhere in the world an economic reality.

EdgeBox provides a tapeless,

Karl Mehring, Snell

file-based operation in two parts: one integrated with the broadcast centre and the other at the remote site. At the broadcast centre, it is fully integrated into the current or preferred systems including traffic, storage, MAM, ingest, transcoding and file transfer systems, or PlayBox Technology

can provide these. This connects to the remote EdgeBox site’s playout equipment via the public internet — making a huge cost saving over the traditional dedicated fibre or satellite links.

Mehring: With all the new approaches to linear playout, the industry runs the risk of

losing focus on what this type of solution is trying to provide.

The goal should be to give broadcasters the ability to playout channels with excellence — so the rich presentation styles they have enjoyed for many years, but with the added benefit of reduced costs. One example of a highly focused technology is Snell’s ICE product, which offers more functionality, but with a smaller footprint — or even a virtual or cloud-based footprint — without having to compromise the presentation style, playlist dynamism, or reliability.

Rose: IBC will be the first European show for customers to see GV STRATUS Playout and the new Densité SSP card — playout on a card.

This offers a radical solution to the challenges of modern playout, how to simplify operation, lowering cost but meeting quality and service level agreements even when playout is moved to the edge.

Shell: We expect cloud-based solutions to be at the forefront as never before. The challenge will be to establish what sacrifices and

compromises can reasonably be made as far as channel branding and graphics are concerned in order to run a Channel-in-a-Box as a virtual machine on pure CPU — whether in a private or a public cloud — as opposed to one running with the assistance of GPU hardware.

Smith: Knowing what we plan to show at the Imagine Communications stand, I’ll say ‘yes’. We’re going to be building on our NAB demonstration of playout in the cloud and unveiling additional aspects of our virtualised playout plan, as we rapidly progress towards our goal of enabling geo-dispersed operations across a unified media platform. That platform encompasses not only typical Channel-in-a-Box functionality like playout, automation, graphics and effects, but also business systems, multi-platform delivery transformation and more — all free from the confines of physical appliance deployment.

Weigner: Channel-in-a-Box is such a bad term. It has now become ‘TV-station-in-a-Box’ with additional functions such as Dolby encoders, IP encoders,

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“While SDI is still by far the more popular output of a CiaB system, compressed output over IP is gaining traction for some customers” —Andy Warman, Harmonic

IP-based vision mixers all becoming software functions as well. With virtualisation, this can be running in your private cloud or be hosted at, for example, Amazon Web Services public cloud.

Scott Rose, Grass Valley

How do you convince sceptics that the concept of fitting everything needed for TX into a single component isn’t scary from an engineering perspective?

Gilbert: Frankly, some Channel-in-a-Box solutions are scary. We all know that off-the-shelf computers and operating systems are getting better, but 99 per cent availability is still the practical norm, while one per cent downtime means your channel is off-air for more than three and a half days in the year — is that really acceptable?

That is why we created our ChannelMaster system on a platform that was designed and is built for broadcast expectations of reliability.

Rose: Fitting all of the required features and functions into one solution has never really been a question of ‘can it be done?’ but more ‘why

would I do it?’ The perceived risk outweighed the benefits for some — that is, the sceptics, but the constant pressure of business margins and rapid change has brought even the most ardent sceptic to consider and adopt

more efficient solutions, such as our own iTX. Warman: In the context of the Harmonic Spectrum ChannelPort solution, we have a number of ways we can make the transition to CiaB easy.

To begin with, the Spectrum system’s conventional video server reliability, scalability, flexibility, density, and energy efficiency are well-known, and the system is a trusted server platform for customers all over

Channel in a Box

Forum the world. The ChannelPort solution uses the same I/O hardware as our Spectrum MediaPort server, and we have added CPU processing to it to support more simultaneous codecs, graphic branding,

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Channel in a Box

Forum audio management, switching, DVE, and many other CiaBoriented capabilities. This approach allows existing Spectrum customers to expand their current systems with ChannelPort both securely and reliably. Channel density is the same as it is for standard MediaPort systems, which offer four channels and four simulcast channels per rack unit, and we give users the choice of using Harmonic’s own embedded automation for playout control or a third-party solution. In other words, customers can choose to use their existing automation solution, transition to a new automation system, or use the embedded system from Harmonic.

Weigner: Using a highly integrated ‘TV-station-in-aBox’ solution is only scaring engineers or system integrators who are used to earning their living stringing and gluing together many proprietary boxes with SDI and RS-422.

The divide is between hardware and software people. Hardware is now a commodity and the software is the differentiator.

The broadcaster’s CFO will see the financial benefits right away along with the fact that a new channel can be launched in minutes.

Social media and second screens are becoming increasingly important to broadcasters.

How can CiaB systems handle these demands?

Ash: Our SocialMediaBox is designed as an integral element of our CiaB system, and allows programme production and presentation creators to incorporate comments from multiple social networking feeds quickly and efficiently into a single, ready-for-broadcast stream.

Comments can be selected and moderated from a variety of different social media outlets,

easier to do this in an integrated system than having to feed the data and control messages to disparate boxes.

Straight: We have been integrating social media into CiaB playout for some time. Each installation is a custom-build that we market under the tag line ‘just:social’. We work together with the multi-disciplinary broadcast agency Molden Media for these solutions.

Would the widespread adoption of 4K mean any new innovations for CiaB?

Mat Shell, Pebble Beach Systems

Stephen Smith, Imagine Communications integrating sources such as Facebook and Twitter on a single feed for broadcasting.

This is extremely useful for live television shows that produce auxiliary-screen pages for viewer feedback.

SocialMediaBox is controlled using a standard web browser. Operators can view preconfigured feeds from various social media sources or websites, and add the desired posts to a customised feed list using simple drag-and-drop actions.

Comments in the customised feed can then be edited, checked against a profanity word-list, and published immediately (instant-publish mode) or floated until approved for publishing.

Mehring: CiaB systems should be able to harvest data from social media feeds and provide insertion into live graphics.

At Snell, we have a rules-based approach to this, which gives the ability to add business rules to the rendered output.

For example, the system can automatically filter highly influential or particularly interesting social content to better capture audience attention and engagement.

Another useful development that Snell has undertaken is to provide the live recording of material while it is being broadcast for on-demand applications. This can include the insertion of audience tracking information days after the original airing to allow commercial revenues to be recognised on nonlinear platforms.

Rose: The best playout solutions allow social media data to be utilised within a playlist and with high quality on-screen graphics. In fact, it’s

Gilbert: Innovations: no.

Challenge: yes, but only in terms of processing and bandwidth.

The biggest challenge remains the need for a clear standards direction, and the prospect of a real, large-scale move to 4K to justify extensive development.

Shell: 4K will require the adoption of new generation codecs that can work efficiently in a software only environment.

The challenge is how to achieve this with purely CPU-based processing, for multiple channels and with no dedicated hardware.

Smith: We believe that even when 4K gains more widespread adoption, it will still be initially across a relatively small percentage of channels for quite a long time — limited particularly by content availability. Even as sports, movies and other select premium content become available in UHD, keep in mind that those account for just a fraction of the channels for most operators. So while it’s clear that handling UHD channels will require integrated playout solutions to have considerably more processing horsepower than they do today, the continual increases in processing power of the standard IT platforms that form the basis of these systems should be able to accommodate the needs by the time there is corresponding demand. From an input/output perspective, the existing movement towards IP-based connectivity also provides a natural foundation for eventual 4K support.

Weigner: 4K is here already today. Just buy a faster server and start 4K broadcasting. I do not see traditional playout ever being used for 4K playout.

No broadcaster with any sense of financial responsibility would even consider this.

Also, broadcast equipment vendors will not be so stupid to develop another generation of ‘traditional’ products for addressing 4K. Zdravkoski: Yes, of course, in many ways. On the one hand, 4K requires different hardware, more bandwidth and an additional codec support. On the other hand, it takes a higher performance in general to handle 4K files, but especially concerning Channel-in-a-Box solutions.

To keep Genesix up-to-date in state-of-the-art technology we are constantly working on our 4K support.

In a previous Forum, there seemed little appetite for the idea of a ‘Channelon-a-Chip’.

Have there been any developments that suggest this is now more achievable?

Ash: Broadcasters appreciate the scalability and upgradability of server-based CiaB. That would be much more challenging to implement if the system were scaled down to a single chip or even a bag of them.

Smaller processing and storage components will allow greater power in a given size of server but one RU is likely to be as small a form factor as any serious broadcaster will require this side of 2020, and probably beyond.

Errington: If you define Channel-on-a-Chip as Channel-on-CPU/GPU, then ultimately I believe this is where

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Forum all the solutions are heading.

However, it will not be based on a single ‘box’, but rather on clustering and virtualisation technologies. As with many things CiaB, the definitions of ‘channel’ and ‘box’ are likely to differ amongst solutions, so we will probably be discussing whether it is channel or channels on chip or chips.

Gilbert: We continue to innovate with our hardware, and we have no doubt that the capabilities of integration will always move forward. For now, though, we are confident that our architecture is the right choice for our customers who want reliability, flexibility, capability and quality.

Mehring: We don’t believe that this technology is the best way forward because it limits interaction for live programming, which is the main driver for linear television.

Customers prefer softwarebased platforms such as ICE On Demand because these platforms let media companies deploy new services without the need to buy silicone chips: they can simply clone channels

and deploy new services on commodity IT equipment.

Rose: At NAB, we moved much closer with Channelon-a-Card. We launched GV STRATUS Playout, an industry-first cloud-enabled playout solution that utilises the new Densité SSP (solid state playout) card, enabling customers to simplify playout or move it to the edge reducing distribution costs.

Shell: Some vendors are promising this, but it is our belief that the market does not want proprietary hardware going forward.

Smith: In our view, the lack of interest for Channel-on-aChip is not because it wasn’t ‘achievable’, but because it goes against the direction that customers are taking as the industry transitions away from proprietary hardware towards a virtualised, software-based approach and the flexibility, elastic scalability and economic benefits that offers. A workflow built on a Channel-on-a-Chip would be limited in its ability to adapt to evolving standards and expand with new functionality.

Straight: It isn’t around the corner but it is something we are thinking about for certain applications. We have been playing around with things like Raspberry Pi, for example, in the lab.

Weigner: If ‘chip’ means dedicated hardware or custom FPGAs, then the answer is no.

Hardware is commodity and should be commodity.

Zdravkoski: As I assumed in the last CiaB Forum, I cannot imagine Channel-on-a-Chip yet. Maybe the technology itself allows Channel-on-a-Chip sometime, but I am not sure if the customers’ requirements will, since we do not yet have any enquiries. However, I am convinced that we will see multi-channel in a blade server as a new standard in three to five years from now.

We are already working on such a solution. It is our aim to equip the multi-channel in a blade server with capabilities for 32 or 64 completely independent channels, including ingest, graphics, playout and streaming, using just a single 4HE machine.

Do you have a brief case study that shows how CiaB technology has made a significant difference to a broadcaster’s operation?

Ash: We worked with the UK-based Travel Channel International (TCI) to expand and streamline parts of its worldwide operations. This involved the companies working together to achieve the required integration of EdgeBox remote playout servers from PlayBox Technology into TCI’s existing file-based workflow and Zeus traffic system. TCI has complex playout needs. The process needs to be dynamic, flexible and economic, and yet deliver a high quality, extremely reliable feed. The EdgeBox remote playout solution could fit into its operation and was robust and reliable enough to handle the channel. Four EdgeBox servers have been supplied for TCI to

Andy Warman, Harmonic

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Forum support its services in Germany, Asia and New Zealand. Each server is located at the local transmission platform’s network operations centre where it provides a complete channel as a high quality digital feed.

The only connection between the EdgeBox and TCI’s headquarters in London is via the internet. This transports all video material, subtitles, captions and graphics as well as playlists and monitoring data between the remote site and TCI’s operations headquarters in London, making the whole system schedule-driven. Each EdgeBox is configured with full redundancy and includes AirBox playout servers, supplied complete with multi-channel audio and SafeBox content management. Each receives files, sent via the internet and based on FTP, that include media and playlists from TCI in London. It then checks it has the required media to fulfil the playlists, sending a list of any missing media items back to HQ. Errington: The Customer required a unique solution to a re-broadcast requirement, taking three live input feeds, opt-out ad insertion, and opt-out programming, all time delayed. Traditional solutions would have required several pieces of equipment to achieve this, but the Oasys solution was capable of using a standard server and, with software

signal routing, implement it in a single playout device. Two live input feeds are switched based on time of day, as well as a manual operator override.

The live throughput of the inputs is passed through to a trigger de-embedder that provides GPI switching for advert opt-out. A copy of the live throughput is internally switched into the advertising insertion software (Local) where it can be reviewed in realtime.

From there, it is internally switched to a further opt-out allowing for switching to a third input if the re-broadcast rights don’t exist for the main live inputs. The opt-out is controlled by a separate GPI signal de-embedded from the main feed. The final signal from the multi-combined pass-through and playlist is then internally

Jan Weigner, Cinegy

switched into a final process which delays the channel by 15 minutes for re-broadcast.

Gilbert: The New Zealand Racing Board is the most recent company to move to ChannelMaster. Its channels have a mixture of live horseracing from home courses and around the world — which requires some manual intervention — and scheduled programmes, which might be a live discussion or a packaged content. They wanted to broadcast 24-hours-a-day, which they could not achieve without automation. However, they also wanted the operational flexibility for manual as well as fully automated control, and they required strong branding and lots of graphics. ChannelMaster was perfect for them.

Mehring: A major US broadcaster had a hybrid automation system that included an end-of-life in-house system and Crispin for live events. They required a change to the in-house system, as it was no longer economical on a number of levels including system, component and personnel issues. The system had a number of bugs and wasn’t future-proof, and therefore was unable to grow with the pace of the business.

The broadcaster moved to the Snell ICE system to build on a standard ‘IT’ platform and to ultimately reduce costs.

Rose: Located just outside Dallas, Westar Master Control Services currently provides video playback services to 15 commercial and public broadcasting customers and is a fully owned subsidiary of New York-based All Mobile Video (AMV), one of the USA’s premier providers of end-toend video and audio solutions for entertainment, sports, news programming and events. When the company decided to launch an outsourced centralised master control service, they knew that a core component would have to be the most dependable playout solution they could find to streamline operations for all the stations served. iTX, the most widely deployed integrated playout solution in the industry, is the only playout system to have proven scalability, coupled with unprecedented speed of channel deployment and format flexibility. In Westar’s case, each iTX output server is also equipped with graphics capabilities that can be used to enhance channel branding and differentiate individual services.

Shell: Africa 24 recently installed the Pebble Beach Systems Stingray Channel-ina-box solution at its 24-hoursa-day, seven-days-a-week Paris transmission centre. It integrates into the broadcaster’s existing technical infrastructure, offering automatic media movement

from the current media SAN. Stingray’s native 2D Flash graphics playout capability is deployed to deliver graphics which are dynamically updated when breaking stories arrive, and Stingray’s audio and DVE functionalities are used to generate transitions between news segments.

Smith: One such example is a European media enterprise that sought to launch multiple new channels on an aggressive schedule. Leveraging Imagine Communications’ Versio integrated playout system enabled the customer to successfully meet their short timelines while minimising space requirements, lowering operational costs and complexity versus discrete components, and allowing for easy future channel expansion.

Straight: This year, Copenhagen played host to the 59th Eurovision Song Contest.

At the red carpet opening ceremony, broadcast live from the Copenhagen City Hall Square, ToolsOnAir played an integral part. Working from OB vans, Best Broadcast Hire used ToolsOnAir just:live production software to streamline the playout of artist interviews and video clips. In live interviews direct from the red carpet with each contestant, lower third graphics with artist information were integrated in realtime with the video feed, then simultaneously broadcast live and streamed over the web. just:live delivered the high quality video and audio playout, while the integrated playout engine provided back-to-back playout of mixed codecs, aspect ratios, pixel sizes and field orders.

Interactive realtime graphics can be integrated to display live source-data, including news or stocks tickers and weather feeds. The tight integration with composition:builder, our graphics template creation tool, enables pre-produced templates to be layered on top of the video layer, which enables content changes to be made during playout and delivered in realtime.

Warman: The CiaB deployment at Fox Sports 1 is a good example, as this application required technical sophistication, as well as media workflow and control.

The broadcaster met these requirements by combining the Harmonic ChannelPort system with third-party automation; in this case, Snell Morpheus. Fox

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Forum we have managed to put all the single components into one video server, including functionalities for every single workflow. Whereas traditional architecture would require separate systems to carry out

Goce Zdravkoski, Stryme had a very clear visual look and performance criteria in mind, and these were best achieved by using the Harmonic and Snell systems together. The channel requirements went well beyond simply putting ChannelPort under automation control as the play-to-air system. The actual deployment also includes Spectrum servers for ingest and the MediaGrid shared storage system for centralised storage.

These and other media workflow and control systems interoperate to deliver a sophisticated and striking on-air product — and one in which the on-screen action continues even as ads and supporting graphic branding run to support the commercial operation of the channel.

Weigner: One of our largest customers, Dogan Media Group, went from six traditional playout channels to more than one hundred units with our software-based commodity IT-server playout, without having to increase the physical rack space. To achieve this scale in the short amount of time required, in the small physical space available, and at an affordable budget, would not have been possible with the traditional solution used before. Today, this customer is moving forward with us, migrating its playout centre into a private cloud.

Zdravkoski: After winning a tendering within the ORF, the national Austrian broadcaster, we worked closely with our client to make sure to fulfil the specific requirements. As we tried to simplify the workflow in broadcast management, we developed a multi-channel all-in-one solution that now works as a parallel backup to the existing ORF systems and serves TV channels ORF 1, 2 and 3. The backup ensures the smoothness of the daily television business and can be integrated easily in the customer’s infrastructures and workflows. Since we started to develop this all-in-one solution,

the equivalent functionality, our all-in-one broadcast solution Genesix fully met the project demands and took the ORF one step closer into a tapeless scenario. This has proven Genesix’s capabilities and

showed the power of a fully integrated and highly automated Channel-in-a-Box system. www.broadstream.com www.cinegy.com www.grassvalley.com www.harmonicinc.com

www.imaginecommunications.com www.pebble.tv www.pixelpower.com www.playbox.tv www.snellgroup.com www.stryme.com www.toolsonair.com

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Data Centre

The television social Social media provides a powerful platform for content creators and advertising agencies to get closer to their audiences, writes Keith Bedford, managing director at EBS

Twitter conversations and statistics around ITV’s Broadchurch series SOCIAL MEDIA has provided programme creators and advertisers with an efficient and productive tool that nurtures and grows conversations about their programmes. The constant chatter on Twitter and other social media networks about what’s on TV allows broadcasters to engage with their audiences, provides them with an additional data set to track viewers, and in some instances, has had a huge impact on social and economic issues.

Take Hugh’s Fish Fight as an example. In 2010, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall launched a campaign to highlight the large quantities (50 per cent) of edible fish that were caught in the North Sea

and were then thrown back dead because of EU laws. The three-part TV series, Hugh’s Fish Fight, was aired on consecutive nights in 2011 as part of Channel 4’s “Big Fish Fight” season and carried the hashtag #fishfight. Following the show, 220,000 tweets and 225,000 emails were sent to MEPs; celebrities in Germany, France, Spain and Poland launched their own fish fights; and three years later, Europe’s politicians have voted to ban discards. This campaign stirred our social conscience into action and highlighted the combined might of social media networks and television.

This is backed up by a recent study by Twitter and

been seen on TV. It identified two ways in which people use Twitter hashtags around TV content: ‘Punch lines’ where hashtags are used as a creative and funny way to sign off a tweet about a TV show; and ‘Sorting’ where hashtags are used to categorise conversations and as a way to find new content associated with the TV show. The report highlights that users search for a hashtag to learn more, so brands need to make sure they have additional content ready and waiting.

With all these conversations taking place 24/7, how do broadcasters and advertising agencies track what’s being said? In the UK, traditional viewing figures are compiled by the Broadcasting Audience Research Board (BARB), which commissions specialist research companies Ipsos MORI, Kantar Media and RSMB to collect data that represents the television viewing behaviour of the UK’s 26 million TV households. This is important information that provides viewing figures for each programme aired in the UK but it doesn’t tell the broadcaster or advertising agency how engaged the viewer is or how they interpret the show.

A platform developed by London and Bristol-based company Second Sync, recently acquired by Twitter, provides a solution. The platform analyses millions of social media conversations that take place every day around TV broadcasts

“The constant chatter on social media networks about what’s on TV allows broadcasters to engage with their audiences, provides them with an additional data set to track viewers, and in some instances, has had a huge impact on social and economic issues” Thinkbox that looks at the use of Twitter by audiences watching television in the UK. ‘#TVTwitter: how advertisers get closer to conversation’ gives insight to advertisers who want to be part of the TV conversation on Twitter and

will help brands understand the emotional drivers of this behaviour as well as the potential business benefits.

The research shows that 75 per cent of people believe hashtags are searched for on Twitter because they have

to provide audience insights that can be used alongside traditional TV audience figures. This data brings clarity to what engagement means for programme makers, broadcasters and advertisers.

Andy Littledale, managing

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media uprising director, Second Sync says, “The broadcast industry in the UK spends £2.5 billion on commissioning new TV shows every year and there’s £5 billion worth of ad slots sold. The price of those spots is historically determined by the number of people watching that TV show, so these stats are used to make big business decisions.”

With the millions of tweets out there, how does Second Sync analyse the data? When using Twitter, the company has a three-step process. First, it extracts key terms from TV listings, which are supplied

by EBS. These are checked by Second Sync’s large editorial team who then run selected terms against the Twitter fire hose. The company monitors programmes from half an hour before they start until half an hour after they finish.

Littledale says, “Some shows

Second Sync Dashboard breakdown of recent TV Twitter activity are very easy to track. Take Broadchurch for example; if someone mentions Broadchurch during the transmission you

can be pretty sure that it’s relevant to the show. On the other end of the scale, however, there’s a film, which I always

use as an example, that’s simply called Paul. For titles like this, we use additional indicators such as character names,

actors, watching terms, and channel synonyms, and we have algorithms to weight the tweet in terms of relevance.

Using this methodology, we pull in tweets live from the fire hose and then we check the data before it gets sent out each day to our clients. We check about 1,000 shows a day and pull in approximately one million tweets per day on average.”

Second Sync currently analyses social media data for all programmes on 35 channels in the UK. Back in February, The Brits broke all records on Twitter with almost one million individuals taking to the network to discuss the live broadcast, and recently, the BBC’s Sport Relief 2014 generated 319,000 Tweets from over 190,000 individuals on the evening of the live show.

Social media provides a powerful platform for content creators and advertising agencies to get closer to their audiences who will continue conversations and, in some instances, change European law.

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Sport slow to exploit smart television An opportunity for sports and media companies to engage fans and drive revenues by using internet-connected TV sets is currently being missed, writes Frank Dunne, editor of TV Sports Markets ACCORDING TO ‘Know the Fan — The Global Sports Media Consumption Report 2014’, sports fans using internetconnected television sets believe they have more control over the sport they watch, that a greater range of sport is available to them, and that the sports content available is more personalised to their tastes.

Despite the benefits, the number of people accessing sport in this way is still low, given current penetration levels

of ‘smart’ TV sets. A platform which enables big-screen HD coverage to be complemented by on-screen information — offering both a high-quality ‘lean-back’ experience and content for the data-hungry fan — ought to be a game-changer.

So far, at least, it has not.

As Jörg Daubitzer, managing director of DFL Sports Enterprises, the commercial arm of the German Bundesliga, put it, “I don’t consider smart TV a game-changer, but it is

an opportunity to widen the offerings to the fan.” He said activation was happening slowly because: it takes time to change consumer behaviour; suitable offerings have yet to be developed; and the infrastructure required to run high-quality broadband services was not universally available. “To make progress in these three areas takes time,” he explained.

Connected TV sets accounted for 39 per cent of the global

market in 2013, according to research firm Futuresource, which estimates that the share will rise to 87 per cent by 2018. Over half of owners of smart TV sets in the US and Western Europe use them to access the internet.

Some industry experts say that one of the main reasons for the relatively slow growth of sport-specific applications for smart TV is that rightsholders have not yet adapted their licensing strategies to take into account the opportunities offered by the medium. In part, this is due to the technology being young and rights often being tied into long cycles that are not responsive enough

to technological change. In some cases, it is also due to confusion about exactly what kinds of rights are at stake: internet or TV? Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp last year rolled out its BallBall service, a free app and website available in local languages in Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam. The service combines short video clips of top football from around the world with editorial content from News Corp-owned newspaper titles, such as The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times.

Fans can access the content on smartphones, tablets and computers but not on connected

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Data Centre TVs, something which News Corp’s global head of rights, Simon Greenberg, puts down to it being such a new medium.

“At the moment, a service like BallBall, which is on devices enabled by the internet, isn’t allowed on a connected TV. That anomaly is in all the

The market leader in the manufacturing and distribution of smart TVs is South Korean electronics company Samsung.

Billy Wright, the company’s director of European strategy, planning and business operations, argues that the time now being spent by

have been locked away by existing deals,” he said. “Where they have been locked away, which is generally the case, is the licensee in a position either technically or commercially to exploit their rights and the underlying content through the smart TV platform?”

“The development of technology is quicker than the development of rights agreements. Connected TV is one of the things that has got caught up in that” Simon Greenberg, News Corp

TV Sports Markets editor, Frank Dunne

rights agreements. It sticks out like a sore thumb and nobody can really give you a proper explanation as to why it is there.”

He said that the anomaly would probably be resolved in the next rounds of rights agreements. “The development of technology is quicker than the development of rights agreements. Connected TV is one of the things that has got caught up in that.”

viewers on smart TV services like BBC iPlayer, Netflix, and Skype and many others “has exploded”, and is clear evidence that there are already high levels of consumer engagement. There are several reasons, he said, why sport was still not fully maximising the possibilities offered by the platform.

“A lot depends on whether appropriate digital rights are available, or whether they

He added that it was difficult for non-broadcast companies to break into the market for building services around sport on smart TVs. “The key question is whether there are rights available, and, if so, whether you can afford them.

As of today, the answer to both questions will more often than not be no.”

Wright also questioned whether traditional broadcasters who have acquired sports rights

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were exploiting them in a way that gets the best out of a smart TV’s IP connectivity. “If you are an incumbent broadcaster, are you thinking through the best way to use the rights you have in that context, to use smart TV as a complement to the live linear broadcast? It’s fair to say that a lot of the incumbents have not particularly embraced smart TV yet. Part of that is just about mindset and where they have come from. Part of it is around protecting existing revenue models,” he said.

Data growth US sports fans have always had a big appetite for statistics and data around live events, something which is increasingly spreading to Europe, Asia and other parts of the world. A lot of second-screen activity around sports events is driven by the need for a greater level of statistical analysis than that provided by the main broadcast feed. Connected TV allows fans to bring the live coverage and data together on a single screen, a development that Samsung, among others, view as an opportunity.

The company this week launched Kick, an app that

views with fellow fans over social networks on a tablet device.

Social explosion Another area of rapid growth has been in the consumption of sports content via social media platforms. In the Know the Fan 2014 report, the consumption of sport via social networking platforms increased in all markets that were previously surveyed (except Turkey, where it

Rights-holders and media companies are increasingly looking at ways to work social media into the overall commercial offering. As News Corp’s Greenberg points out, the advantages of doing so are great because of “the connectivity you get with the user, the speed you can get to the user, and the way you can target the football fan.”

He points out that a marketing campaign could target, for example, everyone who has expressed a ‘like’ on Facebook for Cristiano Ronaldo in Indonesia. “It might cost you quite a lot of money, because there are a lot of them. But in terms of growing your audience and getting them to stick with you

“We attach real importance to data, analytics and insights to enrich the experience, from pre-match predictions to live insights to post-match analysis” Billy Wright, Samsung provides overlays delivering rich data and analytics to live sports broadcasts on connected TVs. The service covers top European and international football.

The app has been developed together with Perform. Statistics are provided in realtime by the Perform group’s data services Opta and RunningBall, with supplementary editorial content from the Perform-owned Goal. com football website.

As Wright points out, “We attach real importance to data, analytics and insights to enrich the experience, from pre-match predictions to live insights to post-match analysis.” The service taps into what he sees as a clear emerging trend: multiscreen viewing and interaction – watching the live match on the ‘big screen’ while drilling into analytics or exchanging

has decreased slightly.

The number of hours spent by people accessing sport on social networking sites has reached remarkable levels when compared with the time spent watching sport on TV, considering that the comparison is between a way of consuming sport which is 70 years old, and one which didn’t exist a few years ago.

In seven of the 16 markets surveyed, fans are spending at least two hours per week consuming sport this way. These include India (2.6 hours), Brazil (2.5), Turkey (2.3), the UAE (2.2), Italy and China (2.1), and Spain (2.0).

in future, it is a very good and targeted marketing tool. It is far more effective than traditional advertising,” he said.

Wright concurs, but adds a note of caution. “Social media is far more targeted but the audience is also far more critical of overt commercialisation,

relative to traditional ad-supported media channels.

Brands need to approach this space carefully if they are not to alienate fans.”

Harnessing social media in the right way presents certain challenges for businesses.

Social media is largely, though not exclusively, a passion of the young, and most of the companies in the sports media value chain are run by executives aged 40 or over.

“There is a generational issue around social media,” Greenberg admits. “One of the things we found, and which hopefully we are beginning to do successfully, is that you have to recruit people that understand it.

That means recruiting much younger people and giving them management roles in your organisation that, perhaps in years gone by, you would not have considered.

And I think that this is a hugely positive thing.”

To buy the full Know the Fan 2014 report or to access more information, you can visit http://www.sportbusiness.com/ know-fan-global-sports-mediaconsumption-report-2014.

The annual report into sports media consumption trends is published by digital specialists Perform, research company Kantar Media Sport, and TV Sports Markets.

Source: Know the Fan 2014

Source: Know the Fan 2014

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Viewing decline a wake up call for broadcasters IHS analysis of television viewing data has found that traditional broadcast TV viewing saw a significant fall in the UK and US in 2013. The research firm finds that consumers are increasingly looking to on-demand services, both via pay-TV and online platforms, to time-shift and place-shift their TV viewing. Fateha Begum, senior analyst at IHS, discusses the need for transformation in broadcaster and pay-TV operator strategies, as cross-platform competition intensifies and broadcast TV and online spaces increasingly merge across the value chain THE FINDINGS from the Cross Platform Television Viewing Time Report 2013 published by IHS Technology show that linear broadcast viewing fell well below historic levels in both US and UK markets for the first time, facing the biggest decline to date.

IHS data reveals that although DVR time-shifted viewing accounted for the largest proportion of non-traditional viewing in both markets, on a per DVR home basis it has stagnated. Time-shifted minutes on a per DVR household declined for the first time in

more than half of all pay-TV VoD minutes. However, IHS has found that pay-TV VoD and DVR time-shifted viewing failed to compensate for linear declines, resulting in total time spent viewing television content to decline in the UK, and to only increase by an additional

more time watching on-demand content on connected devices than on pay-TV VoD services in the US. Subscription-based platforms (sVoD) such as Netflix have been driving online growth in both markets, eating into broadcast TV.

“OTT subscription-based VoD services such as Netflix have proved that the power to reach a large audience without the help of the traditional TV set-top box is within their grasp, and as such, it is critical for operators and broadcasters to maintain control of key content and offer comparable routes to access” Average daily viewing time fell by 11 minutes per person in the UK and seven minutes in the US year-on-year.

While linear broadcast TV viewing has declined sharply, non-traditional viewing (DVR recorded and on-demand) on TV sets and other devices has increased substantially, now accounting for nearly one in five minutes of television viewing time.

the UK, alongside 1.4 million new DVR households being added in the year. DVR ownership has had a larger impact on VoD than recordings in the UK, with time spent viewing pay-TV VoD content increasing by 50 per cent year-on-year.

Access to catch-up TV content has contributed to the fall in linear viewing, accounting for

minute in the US. Increases in TV viewership came largely from devices other than the TV set.

The report also finds that long-form video viewing online increased by six minutes each day between 2011 and 2013 in the US, while viewing on the TV set, both linear and non-linear, fell by seven minutes each day.

By year-end 2014, IHS forecasts that individuals will be spending

Total time spent viewing sVoD content online doubled yearon-year in the UK, while the US saw a threefold increase in consumption over two years.

IHS suggests that these ongoing declines in broadcast viewing serve as a wake up call to incumbent pay-TV operators and broadcasters, prompting them to bolster their content portfolios and ensure

their online services do their catalogues full justice. The entrance of OTT sVoD services has intensified competition for viewership in the TV world.

With sVoD’s ability to offer large catalogues of content with a higher degree of flexibility and a low monthly cost, it is perhaps no surprise that viewers are beginning to shift their habits.

IHS says that it is now more crucial than ever to ensure that customers are able to watch content on their various devices and in more locations. A strong TV Everywhere proposition will help distinguish pay-TV operator platforms from OTT sVoD services, ensuring the operators’ video platforms, both on the TV set and online, remain the subscriber’s go-to video viewing source.

OTT sVoD services such as Netflix have proved that the power to reach a large audience without the help of the traditional TV set-top box is within their grasp, and as such it is critical for operators and broadcasters to maintain control of key content and offer comparable routes to access.

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In search of Contextual Intelligence How media is missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with their audiences through data, by Blake Wooster, co-founder and CEO of 21st Club BRAZIL 2014 became the most accessible and shared World Cup ever, breaking a massive number of social media records for a sports event. On Twitter alone, 35.6 million tweets were sent during the Brazil vs Germany semi-final, with a record 618,725 tweets per minute posted after the Germans were crowned winners on Sunday 13 July. In comparison, the last Super Bowl hit a peak of 24.9 million with a maximum frequency of 381,605 tweets per minute.

Another clear trend was the widespread integration of stats across broadcast, online, print and social media.

Rights holders, brands and bookmakers are clearly recognising and reacting to the growing appetite amongst fans for data-driven content.

Overall, however, many will have been left frustrated and disillusioned by what was invariably a safe, unimaginative and transactional use of stats by most outlets during the tournament. Broadcasters persisted with the status quo narrative such as possession, passes completed and distances covered — none of which are particularly important when it comes to winning in football.

Brands and other sports news channels opted for speed over substance in the race for first mover advantage on Twitter.

The 21st Club #BPLBrazil campaign, ranking the best performing Premier League players on show at the World Cup

Blake Wooster Such frustration was the original trigger for 21st Club’s foray into media. We felt compelled to try and change the conversation in football and so diversified our data-driven offering normally reserved for football clubs.

Our core business is helping

Helping media understand their audience professional teams achieve competitive edge — typically in the areas of talent identification, player acquisition, game plan and commercial strategy.

Our work is underpinned by the application of what we dubbed ‘Contextual

Intelligence’ (CQ). This essentially recognises that every stat is meaningless without context. This comes from understanding data, and from knowing which stats are important at any given time, and the subsequent ability to

articulate the correct narrative through the use of words, visualisations and interactive design.

CQ has become the yardstick by which we measure how our content enables media to connect with their audiences.

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Data Centre There was a realisation of the huge opportunity to apply this expertise to the media and create new value for their audiences. Moreover, we found that media liked the credibility and expertise we brought to the table, having spent our lives helping top players and managers understand how to use data.

21st Club worked with TV broadcasters, brands and bookmakers during the World Cup, creating stories and campaigns through data. For DR Byen (a leading Scandinavian public service broadcaster) we delivered a series of stories geared towards the expert fan — in the client’s words “content that we can’t get anywhere else”.

It challenged some of football’s assumptive fallacies and clichés: Is 2-0 really a dangerous lead? Is it really a ‘great time to score’ just before half-time? Does travelling long distances really affect your chances of winning?

One of the biggest mistakes the media (and football clubs for that matter) make when using

data is that they start with the answers rather than the questions.

We turn this on its head and focus on the real questions fans want answering.

Case studies By way of example, we provided content for Carlsberg’s #BPLBrazil campaign — a joint initiative to celebrate the Premier League players representing their national teams in Brazil (the Premier League had the highest number of players on show at the World Cup). We delivered rankings for the company’s official Tumblr page and social insights for its supporting Twitter activation.

We also created a dedicated World Cup page for Danish bookmarker Danske Spil, which included a ‘Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats’ (SWOT) analysis and outright predictions for each team. While our data artists transformed the raw ingredients into an engaging interactive design, Danske Spil’s punters were empowered to interact with the content (pull, not push). The

Live Score Predictor — using a data model to predict the likely outcome of the game, and the various chances of each scoreline Live Attacking Momentum during Germany’s (blue) 7-1 demolition of Brazil (red). Note the steady build up of attacking momentum for Germany just before the goal rout on 23, 24, 26 and 29 minutes result was a bespoke, socially share-worthy, fully hosted and seamlessly embedded solution.

We also sought to join the conversation ourselves, creating GoalDifference.com with the vision of going ‘against the run of play’ as a portal to showcase our digital content capabilities to media partners. We had great fun during the tournament

experimenting with the fans’ user-journey and various touch points around the match.

In particular, our live score predictions tool (based on our unique in-running algorithms) and our attacking momentum widget (which visualises the ebb-and-flow of the match), were hugely successful. During Germany’s demolition of Brazil, over 2,500 people were talking about momentum shifts in the game, but seemingly we were one of the few who tuned into the conversation amongst fans and amplified the debate through contextually relevant content.

If the media industry is to truly leverage the power of data, it’s vital that they tune into what fans are actually talking about. Of course, there are different audience profiles to consider — the flirts, followers and expert fans. But even the average football fan wants to know: who are the big game players in Europe? Which strikers score the most important goals for their clubs? Which teams are currently under-performing?

Who are the luckiest teams in the league? Has the momentum shifted in this game since the goal?

What are the chances of my team getting back into this game?

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Data Centre Undoubtedly, the integration of statistical content needs careful consideration. In addition to understanding each demographic’s appetite for data, the media sector must ensure that the content is introduced in a way that doesn’t cannibalise the actual match feed. Red button

pull, rather than no-option push, is an obvious solution.

The information must also be placed in the hands of the right people. Pundits need training on this information. In the future, it should no longer be good enough to proclaim that “the only stat that matters is the final score”. With

the likes of Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher’s tactical analysis now a mainstay, and Michael Cox’s (‘Zonal Marking’) graduation from blogs to broadsheets, a generational shift is happening, with the old guard moving aside for a more data-savvy crop of pundits. A common excuse

minute-by-minute or social media) which is all about being ‘in the moment’, while the minute hand is perhaps your pre-game and half-time opportunities to deliver something more interesting and in-depth. The hour hand affords the opportunities to get your head above the parapet and deliver

looked at what players did with the ball. Effectively, his one good game against a weak team in Honduras swayed the stats, whereas a player like Javier Mascherano (whose match contributions are usually more subtle positioning, reading the game, breaking up play) didn’t

“Media owners who think that shots, goals and possession stats will cut the mustard with audiences of the future are hugely mistaken”

An interactive prediction tool 21st Club created for another one of our partners, Danske Spil, the national lottery and gambling operator in Denmark

used by media who don’t quite know how to integrate stats in a meaningful way is that there isn’t enough time during the broadcast to provide the deeper layer.

This is where a carefully considered cross-platform experience is required (DR Byen sparked the debate on TV, and continued the conversation online and through social). We use the metaphor of a clock to help us get the proposition right: the second hand is your live activation (typically live commentary,

more thoughtful insights.

Media owners who think that shots, goals and possession stats will cut the mustard with audiences of the future are hugely mistaken. More care needs to be taken about how stats are represented or media run the risk of pundits and fans dismissing their use in TV broadcasts and online.

For example, fans will be struggling to understand how Xherdan Shaqiri made the BBC’s World Cup XI, which essentially

feature. These contributions are harder to measure, but it is possible to recognise these factors through data. It’s all about game intelligence.

At present, we are typically seeing stats presented to summarise matches and end conversations, but good statistical insights should also start them, sparking debate. Those who continue to publish data without context and fail to tap into the real conversations that fans are having, will ultimately be left behind.

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The IP imperative As part of its ongoing Media Vision 2020 project to create a “coherent vision of what the television and media industry will look like in the future”, Ericsson has released The IP Imperative as the second of its ‘Game Changers’, which outline key consumer, technology and business trends expected to have a major impact on the television and media world. Ove Anebygd, VP and head of media at Ericsson, provides the lowdown on the latest report Here and now The second Game Changer report centres on the invention and global deployment of the network transport protocol IP, which has defined a new era that has reshaped our planet, our lives, and global industries including TV and media.

The past decade has been a spectacular journey for internet video, starting with the arrival of YouTube in 2005 and then a year later, with the launch of Netflix’s flagship on-demand service. Alongside the rise of

become well-established in most countries. The penetration of broadband will reach one billion home subscriptions, representing around 75 per cent of digital TV homes. Ericsson’s June 2014 Mobility Report highlights that global mobile broadband subscriptions will grow towards the eight billion mark during this time and these consumers will all have access to connection speeds that support high quality video.

Managing this explosive data growth while ensuring

Welcome to 2020 The shift to IP will provide far greater consumer reach and depth of engagement and enable new consumer experiences, while maximising the value of all consumer devices. For the most innovative service provider, IP can drive opportunistic churn from rivals by resolving the quickly increasing fragmentation of discovery and consumption across IP devices and apps.

Additionally, those players that have the asset of an IP

“The IP Imperative is a massive game changer for the industry of 2020 as it both unlocks opportunity and places ever more challenging demands on the consumer and established business models” IP-based VoD services, we have seen significant growth in video-enabled IP devices, with computers now joined by smartphones, smart TVs, IP set-top boxes, tablets and gaming consoles.

Between 2000 and 2013, the number of IP connected devices that can view video grew from 200 million (personal computers), to over 1.6 billion, according to research conducted

by Business Insider. Ericsson predicts this number will increase to 15 billion by 2020.

The journey From now until 2020, the consumer expectation for high-speed internet access will

quality of experience is going to be critical, especially in emerging markets where video over IP will be dominated by wireless and early adoption of broadcast within LTE networks (LTE Broadcast) will accelerate. Based on the eMBMS standard within 3GPP, LTE Broadcast brings the dynamic ability to broadcast content to enormous numbers of devices, often in dense urban situations where unicast of content would never scale sufficiently. LTE Broadcast will also open up all new experiences in stadiums and around live events, where use of mobile devices can augment the live experience.

delivery network specifically optimised for video will be generating additional revenues for carriage, optimisation and personalisation. Satellite and terrestrial players especially, but also cable players with nonIP based broadcast delivery platforms, will need to find ways to very quickly embrace the addition of broadband IP video delivery to the consumer, and potentially long-term migration to pure IP video models.

What is clear is that the OTT disruption model of today, where new players, existing broadcasters and content owners leverage the internet for delivery, will evolve relatively quickly into an established

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Data Centre model of collaborative, optimised video delivery through another player’s broadband IP network for carriage fee. This ‘OTT delivery for all’ model is especially interesting for satellite and terrestrial players as it provides another strategic option to become IP-enabled and embrace a hybrid IP broadcast platform.

IP empowering the consumer With a limitless amount of linear, live and on-demand content available ‘online’, connected to a predicted 15 billion video-capable devices by 2020, the consumer is in danger of becoming overwhelmed. In 2020, IP will be fundamental in enabling multiple devices to be simultaneously used for solving issues of content discovery through search and recommendation. On-demand consumption, irrespective of location, will offer a true immediacy and more personalised interaction with the content and socially between the viewers.

In turn, this will place demands for greater personalisation of content and open up opportunities for multiscreen targeted advertising.

The widespread availability of broadband IP for video, especially mobile, will also accelerate the shift in terms of consumption patterns. By 2020 in advanced markets, they will alter to such an extent that the time spent watching on-demand and time-shifted content will reach 50:50 parity with linear and live TV. The IP Imperative is a massive game changer for the industry of 2020 as it both unlocks opportunity and places ever more challenging demands on the consumer and established business models.

The complete paper is available for download from Ericsson’s website (www.ericsson.com/ televisionary/media-vision-2020/ the-ip-imperative/download/) and delves into more detail, complete with research data and insights from leading industry experts.

Between 2000 and 2013, the number of IP connected devices that can view video grew from 200 million to over 1.6 billion

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Connected device report: Germany The increasing number of OTT options is driving growth in the German connected device market, according to research by SNL Kagan SNL KAGAN has provided TVBEurope with the latest insight from its connected device coverage in Germany — as part of its Global Multichannel Markets service — which shows how the burgeoning OTT offering is pushing the pace of growth in the connected device market.

The company’s report follows Blu-ray players, digital televisions, PCs (connected to TVs), smartphones, streaming media players, tablets and video game consoles, and estimates that from 2013 to 2018, the number of connected devices per household in Germany should increase from 4.16 to 5.49.

“From web-based video services such as Google’s YouTube and others, to the increasing number of second screen options offered

to more than double from 2013 to 2018 from almost 44 million to more than 100 million.”

SNL Kagan’s research suggests that smartphones should remain the standout OTT video consumption device in the German market, as well as the whole of Western Europe.

“The number of connected smartphones in Germany should increase by more than 12 million between 2013 and 2014, and continue with rapid growth throughout the forecast period. Usage of smartphones to watch OTT video should increase along with the growth in the overall installed base. In 2013, roughly 56 per cent of the smartphone-installed base was used to watch OTT video.” SNL Kagan esimates that by 2018 that

Germany connected and in-use devices to watch OTT video

Connected and in-use devices (installed-base)

“From web-based video services to the second screen options offered by incumbent pay-TV operators, the availability of more video entertainment options outside of the traditional delivery channels is boosting both shipments and usage of connected devices in Germany” by incumbent pay-TV operators, the availability of more video entertainment options outside of the traditional delivery channels is boosting both shipments and usage of connected devices in Germany,” the research states.

These factors are expected to play catalysts for considerable growth in the market (the 121.2 million installed base in 2013 is projected to grow to 141.3 million this year).

“The growing number of video options for consumers is also leading to increasing usage of those options,” the report continues. “The number of connected devices being used to watch OTT video modelled

number should grow to 70 per cent, or 40.2 million smartphones.

Tablets With the number of in-use tablets growing at a compound annual growth rate of 32.6 per cent from 4.7 million in 2013 to 19.3 million in 2018,” says the report. SNL’s research has shown that video consumption is a significant application for most tablet users, “with over half of all tablet owners watching OTT video in 2013. Even though it is a relatively new device category, the installed base of connected tablets is expected to grow significantly, from almost 8.4 million in 2013 to 21.9 million in 2018.”

Connected TVs Another area of growth can be seen in Germany’s installed base of connected televisions, with the number moving from 6.4 million in 2013 to 27.8 million in 2018.

“While TV Everywhere apps for Smart TVs are scant in this market, there are sufficient SVoD and TVoD apps available to satisfy most viewers,” explains the report.

“In 2013, more than half of all digital TVs shipped to Germany were Smart TVs, up from roughly one-third in 2012. In 2018, connected TVs should be the second-largest in-use device behind smartphones, with 19.5 million connected TVs used to watch OTT video, up from 5.2 million in 2013.”

Connected devices per broadband household

Game consoles While the total installed base of connected video game consoles in the market is expected to decline over the forecast period from 25.7 million in 2013 to 21.7 million in 2018, the percentage of total consoles in use to watch OTT video should increase. “Video game consoles have traditionally been a dominant platform for viewing OTT video services on televisions not only because of their parallel use for gaming, but also because of offering a faster interface to watch OTT video compared to other devices like smart TVs or streaming media

players,” says the report. “Not only should this continue with the new generation of video game consoles, but also important to note is Microsoft’s recent decision to roll back the requirement to subscribe to Xbox Live to view OTT video. Although video game consoles as a share of the total in-use market are modelled to shrink significantly over the forecast period, declining from 23 per cent in 2013 to 18 per cent in 2018, the aforementioned factors should expand the number of consoles in use to watch OTT video from 10.2 million in 2013 to almost 17.6 million in 2018.”

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