TV Tech Global July/August 2017

www.tvtechglobal.com July/August 2017

MENA focus

Crewing gets social

VFX in the cloud

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CONTENTS

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A WIDE WORLD OF SPORT Welcome to our annual sports special!

In this issue we look at how BT Sport pushed boundaries in its coverage of the Champions League Final. Combining 4K, HDR and virtual reality in one production, BT Sport once again showed itself to be a live TV pioneer.

Networking and IP are quickly becoming the norm and we delve into how this connected world creates new opportunites for remote production. Budgets are getting tighter and the days of sending a whole army to a major sports event are fading. Directors and teams can now work in a master control room one, or 5000, kilometres away, with only a minimal crew of operators and presenters are on the location.

New technologies make it easier for previously niche sports to reach huge audiences and provide stunning footage to boot. We take a look at how Telestream’s Wirecast software let viewers sit in the cockpit at the World Gliding Championships in Australia, coverage which turned into a social media bonanza.

And if you want more on broadcasting in sport, be sure to read our upcoming eSports Special coming up later this summer.

Neal Romanek Editor nromanek@nbmedia.com

8 CREWING IN THE CLOUD Web-enabled recruitment is making it easier for both crew and producers

28 THE JOURNEY TO MENA What to consider before localising your content for the Middle East?

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24 USER REVIEW: URSA MINI PRO

THE GHOSTS OF WAR

Christina Fox approves of Blackmagic’s upgrade to its Ursa Mini camera

Editor Neal Romanek +44 (0)207 354 6002 nromanek@nbmedia.com

Group Publisher Eric Trabb 212 378 0400 etrabb@nbmedia.com

Sales – US Atlantic & Southeast Michele Inderrieden 212 378 0400 minderrieden@nbmedia.com

Content Director James McKeown +44 (0)207 354 6015 jmckeown@nbmedia.com

Associate Publisher Vytas Urbonas 212 378 0400 vurbonas@nbmedia.com

Sales – US West Pete Sembler 650 238 0324 psembler@nbmedia.com

Sales Manager Pete McCarthy +44 (0)207 354 6025 pmccarthy@nbmedia.com

Sales – Japan Sho Harihara +81 6 4790 2222 ho@yukarimedia.com

Head of Design Jat Garcha +44 (0)207 354 6003 jgarcha@nbmedia.com

Senior Account Manager Richard Carr +44 (0)207 354 6000 rcarr@nbmedia.com

Sales – Spain / Italy Raffaella Calabrese +39 320 891 1938 rcalabrese@nbmedia.com

Designer Tom Carpenter +44 (0)207 354 6003 tcarpenter@nbmedia.com

London’s LipSync provides war-time VFX for Churchill

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GLOBETROTTING

July/August 2017

Adrian Scott, broadcast tech pioneer, passes The global broadcast technology industry is saddened by the death of Adrian Scott on 18 July, following a stroke.

Winner of the TVBEurope Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015, Scott was involved in almost every element of the broadcast tech sector. He was notable for introducing broadcasters to newsroom computer systems and the opportunities in non-linear editing and asset management. Scott was also responsible for promoting the earliest commercially available UNIX-based systems to broadcasters.

In later years, Scott became an essential part of

the IBC conference committee and represented Avid on both the IABM management committee and IBC exhibitors committee and continued consulting for a variety of firms.

Scott suffered a previous stroke in 2009, which he said in an interview, “knocked me off my feet for a while, and has left me with some lingering mobility issues. Thankfully, I have no mental or cognitive problems, and can still think and talk - to the great regret of those of my friends who think I talk too much.”

TV Tech Global extends condolences to all his familiy and friends.

China’s first fully networked broadcast facility Zhejiang Radio and TV Group (ZRTG), located in Hangzhou, China, has established a new production facility, the Zhejiang

International TV Centre. The centre comprises a 42-storey main building housing several TV studios, and additional studios for music and film production The facility’s audio relies on a RAVENNA digital network, controlled and monitored by Lawo’s Virtual Studio Manager (VSM), making this the first full networking of broadcast studios in China, with central routers distributing every signal required to be accessed by all of the studios within the centre.

The ZRTG International TV Centre has two studio networks that are already in use.

All studios are interconnected via centrally installed Lawo Nova73 routing system and video routing systems controlled and monitored by VSM. Each audio and video signal can be shared and distributed to the control room where it is required.

Beside the Lawo audio infrastructure, ZRTG has also invested in consoles from Lawo for its new 4k OB Van and Audio Truck. An mc²66 and two mc²56 mixing desks will be installed in the vehicles, whose coachwork is presently under construction in Netherlands.

The OB trucks are scheduled to enter service in summer 2018.

SMPTE and DPP will collaborate on new IMF specification SMPTE and the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) will collaborate on a joint pilot project to create an Interoperable Master Format (IMF) specification for broadcast and online.

SMPTE ST 2067, or IMF, is a global standard for the file-based interchange of multi-version, finished audio/visual works. The joint pilot project aims to deliver a technical specification for IMF in broadcast and online applications as a breakdown of different elements — video and audio packages, composition playlists (CPL’s) and output profile lists (OPL’s) — with

references to all relevant SMPTE standards.

The draft and final proposal stages will move forward in conjunction with a series of plugfests and product tests. Publication of the IMF specification is expected to take place before the 2018 NAB Show.

“One of the original DPP core objectives was to achieve a common, agreed set of technical requirements for the delivery of television programs to UK broadcasters, and our work on the IMF broadcast specification falls neatly in line with this goal,” said Mark Harrison, the

managing director at DPP. “Working with SMPTE, the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), manufacturers, and end users across the media industry, we plan to create a specification that brings the benefits of IMF more fully into the broadcast and online realm.

Details on progress and significant milestones will be posted on the DPP website at: www.digitalproductionpartnership.co.uk

IBC Best of show TV Tech Global is accepting applications for this year’s IBC Best Of Show awards. The awards honour the best new products on show at the IBC trade show in Amsterdam.

This year, IBC Best Of Show entries will be reduced to a shortlist of finalists prior to the IBC show. The shortlist will then be judged by

our panel of industry professionals at IBC. After IBC, NewBay will publish its Best Of Show e-book, which will include both winning and shortlisted products.

The Best of Show Awards at IBC are supported by six NewBay brands - TV Tech Global, our sister publication TVBEurope,

PSNEurope, Audio Media International, Radio World and Installation. Competitors can submit entries to as many of the publications as they wish.

Entries close on 4 September. For more information visit: www.nbmevents.uk/bestofshow/62527

COMMENT

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How to keep an editor, CTO, and CFO happy at the same time Nick Pearce-Tomenius of Object Matrix looks at competing storage options in the new media landscape

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he process of implementing a storage infrastructure has evolved out of being purely a tactical endeavour. It’s no longer deemed acceptable to take the price per terabyte as a valid indicator of how well a solution fits a content producer’s strategic vision.

And even the title “content producer” is ambiguous, given that almost every business is now producing content in-house to compete with its rivals or to satisfy internal corporate processes.

It’s no longer just traditional broadcasters that require a sophisticated, practical storage solution which works for numerous stakeholders and can be personalised to benefit participants within differing workflows. Storage platforms now need to keep multiple contributors happy, from editors, to CTO’s, to CFO’s.

THE EDITOR For editors, a prime concern is the ability to quickly access useable content. Effective storage systems enable editors to browse content easily, so they can spend more time putting their creativity to use instead of trawling through badly organised, sometimes almost irretrievable, content. At the heart of this must lie sophisticated metadata capabilities. A solution which is able to extract and process metadata where it resides will, understandably, quicken search operations.

But editors are very rarely the only users of archived content and often want to share it with colleagues and clients without restriction. Of course, deprived of a searchable audit of every action made on a piece of content, the editor will most likely find it difficult to keep track of any and all changes made.

A system like MatrixStore provides enables content producers to retrieve information about the actions made to an item of content, including deletions and edits.

Allowing editors to integrate their storage solution with partner tools is also key to a seamless workflow.

Editors inevitably want access to the solutions that work with the tools they’re most comfortable using.

THE CTO As we all know, creating a ‘forever’ archive system is more or less impossible. The fact is, as file formats change, so must the technology required to read them. Organisations are better off implementing a storage system which can automatically migrate

content to new formats, and the metadata contained within them. This way, content remains useful continuously, rather than requiring reformatting before use. An integrated solution able to be built upon will not require adapting shortly after investment, and so will more likely be futureproof; an appealing feature for CTOs. Clearly, content can only generate revenue if it’s available for use by the right users and more importantly protected from the wrong people.

On top of that, modern storage solutions must now be able to handle the retrieval of HD or 4K footage that could be the size of tens of hundreds of terabytes. A powerful object storage system should ideally handle the retrieval of these items with no problem. Given this, it’s also pretty essential that solutions are able to scale with the needs of an organisation and should, ideally, be able to store multiple petabytes of content.

Certainly, from my experience, CTOs are looking for a low maintenance system. Clearly if a system is easy to use this will also reduce user error and by extension, reduce the time and effort a CTOs’ team spends maintaining it.

Correspondingly, disaster recovery workflows are entirely essential for business continuity. Ask any CTO of the value of non-disruptive private cloud technology for business continuity and the answer will be the same.

THE CFO Pricelessly talented editors are not generating income while they trawl through endless

amounts of content. The same can be said for latent content moldering on offline media. For CFOs, storage solutions must increase efficiency and increase the time available for editors to create revenue-generating content.

In line with this, CFOs, as well as CTOs, want peace of mind in the event of an outage, in terms of robust disaster recovery and business continuity. An organisation with no access to data or files is likely at risk of a catastrophic loss of revenue without these features in place.

Relying on manual procedures or scripts within an organisation does not provide for the level of automation required to continue revenuegenerating activities.

Naturally, cost is one of the most pressing issues facing CFOs. As a result, customisable and integrated interfaces are another feature likely to appeal to them. Integrations with partner tools increases productivity and therefore revenue, while a customisable solution will remain suitable for longer, meaning less expenditure with no need to replace partial or whole systems shortly after upgrading.

The storing of data is a headache for most companies, who are now turning to highly customisable object storage systems for scalable, secure and easy to use solutions at highly competitive TCOs. For individuals within an organisation, spending less time managing their storage infrastructures means more time can be sent generating income from the invaluable assets housed within them.

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COMMENT

July/August 2017

Managing media assets in an immersive future VR and 360 content presents an especially thorny issue for asset management. David Schleifer, COO at Primestream, explains why

W

e are surrounded by cues that make us aware of how we fit into a 3D space. Many of these senses and reactions are based on survival instincts - the ability to hear someone walk up behind us, to see movement in our peripheral vision, a sense of how we are oriented when we move our bodies or swivel our head. All of this creates an overwhelming amount of data that we seamlessly interpret as we go about our day...

As movies and television evolved, we learned a new language, a new way to interpret the world based on a window into another world, the screen. What we’ve now become accustomed to via that ‘screen’ are jumps in location, perspective, time and space. Close ups, wide shots, panning, zooming, and many other devices are all an established part of the storyteller’s toolkit. ] Then along comes Virtual Reality (VR) and 360, and suddenly we fall over reaching out for things that aren’t there. We lose perspective, and even though this world, like ours, is not flat, we are lost!

Despite both VR and 360-degree images being more like reality, we find ourselves struggling to know how to use it.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL One major disconnect in VR is that we do not physically navigate our way through the VR world.

We can spin around and look up or down, but we don’t have all of the normal cues leading up to this. We didn’t walk into a town square or into the theatre, so we immediately look around to get our bearings as if just teleported in. Then we can’t really move around in 3D space, we are restricted to rotating to see what is next to us. In VR environments you can navigate through space, but generally not in the normal way like walking over to something you see. Basically, we’re a little lost and it takes time to orient ourselves into what is a static scene with action someplace that we have to find.

Throughput the whole VR/360-degree experience, the director can’t guide you through the story in the same way as in a 2D film. They no longer have the fast cuts, the zooming, the pacing to move you through the story. As a result, there is a focus on novelty as opposed to an improvement in how we can tell the story.

There is a lot of VR experimentation going on, and a lot of it is on the capture side - how to grab better immersive images and stitch them together.

As creative tools like Premier evolve to meet the needs of editors using them, companies like Primestream too are evolving how to manage the data and metadata that adds value to those captured images in the process.

360 MAM MAM providers and NLE manufacturers have been chasing ever-changing formats for some years, so our workflows have evolved to include format independence, but there is always a limit to the assumptions manufacturers have made about the files they are processing.

A first step to handling 360 material was understanding equirectangular files. A second step is understanding where there might be VR or 360 specific information that has been added to a standard format like MPEG. Finally, in order to facilitate an end-to-end workflow it is important to find developing partnerships and standards that are gaining support with both Capture toolsets and finishing toolsets.

One of the challenges we face is that the formats for capture and for delivery are in flux, and how those streams are delivered is also evolving. Gone are the days when a SMPTE standard for SDI controlled your infrastructure

rollout. We are seeing file-based workflows and IP-based delivery dominate across any new innovative introduction.

In one sense getting started is simple because manufacturers are leveraging existing formats like MPEG-4 or H.264, but cameras continue to push the limits. If you were happy with 4K, you now need that resolution all around you. Each lens, each eye on the camera, is capturing 4K that needs to be stitched into a seamless sphere into which the viewer can be inserted. Can 8K per lens be far behind? And 3D spatial sound to create an even more immersive experience requires spatial data and other markers.

We can’t force the market in a specific direction, but will need to be there for them when it evolves. We can participate in partnerships that seem to show directional leadership, like when a camera manufacturer and a codec supplier team up to create an endto-end workflow, but ultimately we need to be reactive to changes in the marketplace that can come from anywhere. Will there be a shift from equirectangular to cube maps, to pyramid maps, to something else? We will need to be there if and when it does.

We are no longer engaged in tracking content segments with time-based markers, but rather content that needs to be marked up in time and space with directional data. Not only when, but also where the interesting content is.

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PRODUCTION

July/August 2017

Crewing up in the cloud With web-enabled recruitment sites becoming more sophisticated, cast and crew become another asset to be managed. Michael Burns reports

C

asting and crewing for TV productions and advertising spots used to be all about who you knew, or which agent was the best placed to get you the gig. As with almost everything else these days, the internet, in particular the cloud, has changed all that.

Movidiam, ‘a professional creative network for filming’, is the brainchild of George Olver and Alex Vero, which they developed after running a production company of their own for 12 years.

“Movidiam is a profiling site - where talent, directors, producers, editors and others can build a profile, showcase their expertise, their geographic location and people that they’ve worked with,” Olver explains. “Then there’s the project management tool - you can find someone [for a video project] in a matter of minutes nearby, or we can brief the system and it will match you algorithmically with the right team. We have 25,000 independent creatives, producers, videographers, and so on, on the network. We sign up around 2000 production companies a month to the platform.”

Movidiam relies on a subscription model to its services, though anyone can set up a profile for

free on M-Network. A subscription gives access to a partnership with Google, called M-Promote, which lets users enhance their visibility on the network, and have the ability to showcase expertise.

Free elancerss really liike it, because we pay them m 50 0 perc cent up front and d 50 perce ent when n the pro oject co ompletes “We have the ability to pay through the system,” adds Olver. “Freelancers really like it, because we pay them 50 percent up front and 50 percent when the project completes.”

“TV and production companies are also finding it very useful for finding international resources,” he continues. “For example, you can find a drone pilot in 160 countries around the world on our platform.”

THE CASTING CLOUD Another UK start-up taking advantage of a cloudbased business model is Auditionist, described by its co-founder Will Crosthwait as a ‘video platform for people’.

“Auditionist is a more direct service [than traditional casting],” he says. “When you put a job out, it’s the actors themselves that apply for them, but they can only apply via their showreel, or the self-tape that the producer has requested.”

“The one thing we wanted to do when we started Auditionist, bearing in mind that I came from a production background, was to make it easier for producers to find great talent,” says Crosthwait. “We manage and collate all of the submission process. You just click on a headshot, it pops open with a video, starts playing and at that point you can just say, ‘shortlist, decline or invite’.

You can share all the people you’ve shortlisted with your team, so you can start working collaboratively on it.”

Shortlisted actors get a notification saying, ‘please record a self-tape’, which can be a reading from script, or a demonstration of a specific character or talent - and they can upload it from their phones. “We’ve actually had two people who have auditioned from trains,” says Crosthwait.

The self-tapes are all hosted on Auditionist itself.

“So we won’t clog up your inbox with videos,” says Crosthwait. “You don’t have 107GB of showreels or self-tape submissions that you’ve got to try to

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get over to your director by 9pm, wondering how you’re going to do it without getting a courier, or sitting by your laptop as it uploads and takes about 20 hours.”

Crosthwait say this results in a more refined selection of actors being actually called to the set - which is another automated service offered

by Auditionist.

Like Movidiam, Auditionist also handles the financial aspects of production.

“From the moment you send in the brief, to the moment you pay the invoice, you’re doing all of that through Auditonist” says Crosthwait. “The ultimate benefit for a production is that they get an itemised invoice for a hundred actors, rather than a hundred invoices, which would completely swamp their HR and finance departments. We even handle expenses.”

You u can find a drone e pilot in 160 co ountrie es arround d th he worlld on ourr platfo orm Crosthwait claims it also democratises the process. “Auditionist opens the role up to all the actors who match the criteria that you’re looking for,” he says. “By default we set the criteria to ‘any ethnicity’ - the production has to choose to limit it to a specific ethnicity.”

The search function also ranks the actors on their skills. “Rather than which agent they are with,” says Crosthwait. “So it’s not who you know, it’s what you can do.”

DEMISE OF THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK “Fundamentally crewing used to be a case of calling someone on the desk in Soho to see who was on her list, getting her to find someone who is up for it and then get them to travel a hundred miles,” says Olver.

Now, he claims, you could use Movidiam to crew a whole show. “We’ve got a 1000-man

PRODUCTION

Hollywood production studio being crewed up, or a two-man wedding video being crewed up.

Whether you’re making a multi-million dollar feature film or a three-man corporate video, it’s the same process - you want a director, producer, editor, all arranged in the right way and in the right time frame, that’s the way it works.”

Operational overheads are reduced too. “You can hire a producer for a project for a period of time,” says Olver. “You don’t need them full time in-house, they can be freelance, [the team] can be virtualised.”

Auditionist is aiming to become a supplier to broadcasters and bigger companies.

“We set quite high expectations of ourselves, to achieving rapid growth,” says Crosthwait.

“We’ve just started casting for ITV for example.

We’re now looking to do more sustained drama, larger productions where there are multiple roles, where it veers between actors and extras.

That moves us towards our ultimate goal of casting for feature films.”

APPLIED TECHNOLOGY The Auditionist system is fully automated, with a very responsive tech department in the shape of co-founder Ben Albahari, whose developer skills were honed as a programme manager at Microsoft. In fact, the human element of the company still only consists of the two founders.

“When we started out on this project we really wanted to put automation to the test,” explains Crosthwait. “Through automation and AI, the system manages more than a team of people could ever do.”

“The system will automatically chase up actors who haven’t replied to a message” he adds. “It will automatically send out invoices. It automatically does a lot of things which traditionally we would have had to employ an accountant to do, or a finance person. Even five years ago we would not have been able to leverage the amount of

9

automation which we have now, and therefore we wouldn’t have been able to provide a service which can scale up to provide hundreds of actors [to a production].”

Movidiam is also a disruptive force thanks to advanced tech. “We’re like AirBnB for productions,” says Olver. “A marketplace leveraged with a technology platform.”

That Movidiam platform is backed by one of the biggest names in the business:

Thrrough automa ation n and AI, the system mana ages morre than a team of peop ple cou uld evver do “We utilised nearly a full suite of Amazon tools to deliver Movidiam, the whole storage side of it is on the cloud,” says Olver. “I launched the business with Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, in October 2015 at AWS Reinvent. AWS has enabled us to very efficiently build a platform which is completely global from day one.”

Both Auditionist and Movidiam are growing exponentially, thanks to word of mouth and social media, in effect fuelled by the success of their users.

“The real advantage for us is the community plus the tool; it becomes a viral network of people using it,” says Olver.

“I think the industry will see more tools like this crop up,” he adds. “It’s going to get increasingly competitive as people enhance their knowledge of the cloud.”

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PRODUCTION

July/August 2017

Chasing Coral: Capturing the end of an underwater world

In this piece from our sister site Creative Planet, John Merli reports on the race to capture disappearing reefs in Netflix’s Chasing Coral.

C

oral reefs around the world are dying at an unprecedented rate. In the documentary Chasing Coral, a team of divers, camera designers and marine biologists set out to discover why. Although beset by technical challenges, after three years of stops and starts, the film is now streaming on Netflix.

The film started with the idea of showing changes taking place in the world’s oceans.

Richard Vevers, a former advertising executive, left his career to become an underwater photographer. During his work, Vevers noticed that a favorite creature, the weedy sea dragon, was beginning to disappear.

“I began hearing about a lot of things that were happening on a global basis, and realising there was a lot going on underwater that most people weren’t aware of. People just weren’t engaged with the ocean.”

Calling on his background as an advertising executive, he decided to tell this story. One way to inform the public about what goes on underwater

was to show it to them. In 2010 he founded the nonprofit Underwater Earth, which eventually became The Ocean Agency.

After exploring, and abandoning, documenting underwater environments with modified Google StreetView camera systems, Vevers developed his own underwater camera rig consisting of three Canon EOS 5D cameras with fisheye lenses in an underwater housing attached to an underwater scooter. Imagery from the three 5Ds would be stitched together for a 360° still image.

With funding from Catlin Insurance, Vevers and his team completed a comprehensive survey of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in 2012 and 2013, and received a contract to expand the oceanic survey globally over the next several years. It was during the Caribbean part of the survey in 2013 that Vevers detailed extensive coral bleaching.

WHAT IS CORAL? Coral reefs are sometimes referred to as the “rainforests of the sea.” While comprising less than

half of 1 percent of the ocean’s area, they are home to a quarter of all marine species. Coral reefs are endangered by many factors, including the effects of climate change: warming oceans and increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

If the water gets too warm, the coral becomes stressed, resulting in coral bleaching. If the adverse conditions persist, the coral starves and dies.

TELLING TIME LAPSES In August of 2013, Vevers saw the documentary film Chasing Ice, which detailed the world’s disappearing glaciers due to global warming via time lapse photography.

“It dawned on me that we were doing exactly the same thing, but with coral reefs,” Vevers said. “So I decided to contact the director [Jeff Orlowski]— perhaps this could be a follow-up film.”

Orlowski and his Exposure Labs team agreed to participate in an underwater documentary film with Vevers. Accompanying them was cinematographer Andrew Ackerman.

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Scientists at NOAA at that time predicted that a widespread coral bleaching event would take place in Bermuda, the Bahamas and Hawaii in 2015. Orlowski decided this would be an ideal time to shoot footage of white coral for the film. His approach would be to set up custom time-lapse camera systems in those locations and capture the bleaching as it happened, over a period of two months.

PROCESS AND PRODUCTION In addition to this time-lapse footage, the film consists of video shot primarily by Orlowski and Ackerman, with miscellaneous shots nabbed by other team members. The pair shot 4K video underwater with a pair of RED Dragon cameras and zoom lenses inside Nauticam underwater housings.

Lenses were typically a Canon EF 24-70mm 2.8 lens on one RED camera and a Canon EF 16-35mm 2.8 on the other. They also used Canon EF 100mm and Canon EF 8-15mm Fisheye USM (ultra-wide zoom) lenses, depending on what they were trying to capture. Filming topside was grabbed with a Sony PXW-FS7. In addition, Orlowski mounted a GoPro camera on top of the Nauticam housing to capture discussion the divers had while on the surface.

“We chose RED because Jeff [Orlowski] really wanted everything underwater to feel huge and colorful, and as ‘cinematic’ as possible. He really wants the audience to feel like they’re somewhere completely different when we’re underwater—like they were able to see and feel what we’re experiencing,” Ackerman says.

“RED’s raw footage also really helped us in postproduction because underwater footage is notoriously hard to color-correct.”

PRODUCTION

SYSTEMS, SOLUTIONS AND SETBACKS Orlowski began considering the technology required to operate the time-lapse cameras and turned to underwater camera engineer Trevor Mendelow and his company, View Into the Blue, for a solution. View Into the Blue created an autonomous time-lapse camera system based on Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-GH4 camera. The GH4s could shoot 4K still or video footage with a 12-24mm zoom lens.

Zack Rago, a camera technician and coral expert at View Into the Blue, says of the time lapse system, “It would essentially wake itself up on a preprogrammed schedule and take 30-burst shots, and then go back, to sleep. And then wake back up a couple hours later and do the same thing.”

The team built several autonomous underwater time-lapse rigs and installed five of them in locations in the Bahamas, Bermuda and Hawaii in July 2015.

“We needed to install these underwater timelapse cameras, but we also needed to film the installation of them at the same time,” says Ackerman. “So, for me, jumping in between filming on the boat, then filming underwater, and then actually installing these time-lapse cameras was the most difficult challenge.”

Complicating matters was the fact that the installation of the time-lapse cameras amounted to a sort of underwater construction project itself, involving dealing with an estimated 700 pounds of equipment for each camera. “So sometimes trying to juggle shooting goals with the logistics of moving that much weight underwater and then also trying to film from the boat was difficult.”

The time-lapse cameras were left into September to do their job of recording daily imagery of the

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reefs bleaching. As seen in the film, when the cameras were retrieved after two months, the team discovered there had been a lens malfunction and all of the recorded imagery was out of focus.

Eventually the team solved the focus drift issue by switching to fixed focal length lenses, as well as using the camera’s autofocus mode instead of focusing manually.

MOVING TO MANUAL The groups headed north to Lizard Island (Orlowski and Rago) and New Caledonia (Ackerman), leaving five time lapse cameras in place and running.

Without time-lapse cameras, they also decided to shoot coral bleaching manually, going out each day and shooting the same coral locations on the reefs over a 40-day period and creating time lapse imagery from gathered footage. The teams took along the same Lumix GH4 cameras, in standard diver film housings (with Orlowski following along behind Rago with a RED Dragon, to shoot his subject at work).

The process is, as one would expect, an arduous one, and emotional. Rago experiences grief and frustration as he, a longtime coral lover, watches, over the course of the shoot, one of the world’s natural wonders die before his eyes.

The resultant footage of their voyages was shown to scientists attending last year’s annual International Coral Reef Symposium, where even hardened of marine biologists found themselves tearful as they see the wdeath of these massive ecosystems. But change, they realise, is possible, and it begins with not only educating adults about the crisis, but by sharing the majesty and wonder of these ocean environments with others.

12

SPORTS – PRODUCTION

July/August 2017

Return to Master Control Tim Felstead, head of product marketing, and Karl Mehring, director of playout and delivery, at SAM analyse the benefits of moving to a Master Control Room in broadcasting live sport

L

ive production events include significant on-site resources. Budgets soon escalate and can grow to a significant operational cost. Because of that, “At Home” (or REMI – remote integration) production, where a crew of only two ensures on-site set up and connectivity, can be very appealing.

However, moving production resources from on-site to a centralised location may not be the ultimate end-goal for remote production where the most important thing is total cost of delivery to customers and network operational efficiency. In ‘Olympic’ style events, it may be more efficient to pull those home-located production resources into a network master control environment.

KEEPING COSTS DOWN Scheduled playout typically requires a customer to invest in a playout automation system like SAM’s Morpheus.

Often, automation systems are presented with the relatively straightforward task of following schedules made some days or weeks in advance. These of course, do not require the human and real time complexity of live broadcasting. When live sports programmes are included in a schedule, variations can be introduced that require master control systems to be ready for anything. Over-runs or other late schedule changes can make a mess of the very best planning processes.

To avoid this, automation systems need to be able to manage the transitions from scheduled to live and back again in flexible ways.

SAM builds master control environments around Morpheus and ICE that are highly capable in live broadcasting environments.

This offers the opportunity to move a number of key functions into the master control environment during a live broadcast.

Important to this integration is the capability to manage realtime SDI and AES audio signals, and processes such as video or audio mixing/switching, and graphics creation.

Automation systems need to be able to manage the transitions from scheduled to live and back again in ways that suit the network’s requirements. Furthermore, it is the enabling of efficient human interaction with the system that illustrates its suitability for live events. Returning to automation control in an

elegant and intelligent way is a challenge for most playout automation systems.

SAM builds master control environments around Morpheus and ICE that are highly capable in live broadcasting environments.

This offers the opportunity to move a number of key functions into the master control environment during a live broadcast..

STAYING SOUND Moving production into master control for sports still requires interactions between file-based workflows and the live broadcast.

This can be in circumstances when a new highlights reel is available during a break or after full time, or perhaps a new commercial has been sold and is yet to be processed ready for broadcast. In this case the need is for a sophisticated workflow system that is aware of playlist order and the time that content needs to be ready. By enabling on-air time based prioritisation in file processing functions, the pressure experienced in live broadcasting can be reduced. This is no longer first in, first out, but a far more sophisticated focus on real time events.

Audio presents its own issues too.

Commentary could be introduced in the master control suite based on the view of the sources delivered from a remote location,

or by carriage of multiple commentary feeds from location by virtue of AES-67 functionality.

In terms of REMI production however, a potential problem raises its ugly head - lip sync errors. Should lowest cost for a sports network mean that master control is the live production hub, but commentators are in another city, state or country, network latencies will introduce timing errors between video and audio.

A NEW MODEL n sports networks where a number of programme types are required, overall solution efficiency needs to be sought. This means finding a model to broadcast different events that avoids cost In low complexity events. Where sophisticated presentation is required on the output, but low cost of production is fine at the event, the remaining functions can be pulled into the master control suite. A variation of this system has been deployed in the Rogers UHD Master Control environment meaning live sports incoming in UHD can be fast turn edited before being played directly to air from the sQ servers used.

Multi-channel outputs and an ability to manage late changes means that commercial sales can be maximised over multiple delivery systems.

www.tvtechglobal.com

SPORTS – PRODUCTION

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Remote production: live content, low cost How can sports broadcasters cut costs and increase coverage? Marc Logez, Globecast’s head of marketing, global contribution, offers perspectives on leveraging remote broadcast

T

hese are challenging times in the broadcast world as the industry faces increasing market pressures.

For one, there’s an ever-growing volume of content available to consumers today, and viewers are watching content on many devices. This puts a considerable burden on the contribution market because content requirements have changed while the sector also faces downwards price pressure. Sending a single – or even several – produced OB feeds to broadcasters no longer matches modern viewing demands.

Nowhere is this more evident than in live sports productions where the demand for more compelling content is monumental. But we know it’s expensive to send a production team to a stadium – and logistically complex especially when that venue is a distance from a broadcaster’s main facility. Couple this with transmission costs, you’re looking at a hefty price tag.

This notion of ‘broadcast inflation’ is a familiar scenario to broadcasters. Having to expand their scope without increasing their budgets is becoming common practice.

It makes sense to have a single, central remote production and switching operation because that way, camera and audio feeds can be brought back to this one particular site instead of having to send an OB truck (and a sizeable staff) to the venue several times a week or month. Think about the time and cost savings here!

REMOTE BENEFITS But what is remote production, and how does it work? The basic concept is quite simple. When feeds are received by broadcasters from a large event, they’re generally ready to broadcast and have already been produced. But by transitioning to a remote production workflow, resources are used more efficiently and the setbacks that are often associated with traditional OB productions are eliminated. Globecast has worked to create a solution that provides a package of multiple raw camera and audio feeds — anywhere from three

feeds upwards. This allows content owners and broadcasters to produce their own unique output from this content, whether at a home studio or a central location.

With this model, content owners can be supplied with dedicated camera feeds to create additional content for second screen viewing.

At its core, remote production provides both economic benefits for rights holders and feeds that are far more suitable for today’s multiscreen environment.

As an example, late last year Globecast partnered with Imagina France to demonstrate our remote production system for the first time.

During this trial run, the broadcast was of the French League 1 football match between Bastia and Bordeaux. Images from five dedicated cameras and their associated signals (CCU, tally, intercom, etc.) were sent from the Bastia stadium in Corsica to the Imagina France production truck in Boulogne, near Paris. This was acting as the central production unit where the director and his team were located. Globecast provided the signal transport via a 1Gbps link, with a total latency of 100ms in JPEG2000 and 350ms in H.264.

This trial went off without a hitch, though keep in mind that we’re talking about an IP terrestrial transmission here, not satellite. And the signals

were all going over a dedicated fibre network, not the public Internet.

The technology was available to enable the director to ask the crew at the stadium to zoom or make any adjustments, just as they would in a traditional live production environment. We can then push this further as the technology evolves.

DIVERSIFYING CONTENT Remote production opens up new possibilities for broadcasters and rights holders because providing multiple raw feeds helps diversify content. Plus, with multiple sources at a centralised site, you can produce a variety of programming formats of the same event for less money, which optimises monetisation.

Globecasts remote production trial with Imagina France proves that it’s possible to provide the market with packaged or customised solutions that meet content providers’ needs.

We’ve made this service commercially available in France and Italy, and have plans to expand the offering to other regions (as fibre networks permit). We continue to conduct more internal trials using both JPEG2000 (which is expensive but provides almost no latency) as well as with major technology partners for testing other compression standards and encoding systems.

14

SPORTS

July/August 2017

BT’s quest for the heart of sport

BT Sport broadcast this year’s Champions League Final. Neal Romanek talks to COO Jamie Hindhaugh about the editorial vision that drives technological innovation

F

ive years ago, BT Sport didn’t exist. Now it’s leading the broadcast industry in its dogged mission to bring an ever more immersive experience to sports viewers across the UK. BT Sport COO Jamie Hindhaugh has been a key part of that growth, proving that the motto “who dares, wins” holds true in the world of modern broadcasting.

“All of our innovation is delivered around our editorial aspirations,” says Hindhaugh. “Everything we do is a focus on how we bring our audience closer to the action.”

Being at “the heart of sport” is the driver for every technology and editorial choice the company makes. This customer-centred focus has been BT Sport’s guiding light in picking up with new tools and techniques that might burn the fingers of other broadcasters.

For a start, BT Sport already has more live 4K experience under its belt than almost any other broadcaster in the world. The network decided to offer live 4K sport to its customers over two years ago, when most other broadcasters were still evaluating whether 4K was feasible at all

(a discussion which, in most cases, remains unresolved). In those two years it has produced more than 350 live 4K events.

In January of this year, BT Sport also rolled out Dolby Atmos broadcasts, allowing those home viewers with the appropriate installations, an immersive audio experience.

CHAMPION COVERAGE When BT Sport became host broadcaster for this year’s UEFA Champions League final, the company decided to use it as the ultimate showcase.

SPORTS

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“It was one of those wonderful moments, where it’s a massive event and you can really use the halo effect of that event to showcase the different things you’re up to,” says Hindhaugh.

BT ran with the opportunity, producing, in addition to the HD broadcast of the final, a 4K multi-HDR broadcast with Dolby Atmos audio, plus a VR offering available through multiple online outlets.

The HD broadcast alone was impressive.

Available in 200,000,000 households worldwide, it was the biggest ever audience for multi-camera coverage of a Champions League final.

“I’m told it outperformed the Super Bowl, from a world-wide reach perspective,” says Hindhaugh.

But in addition to the HD broadcast, BT Sport flexed its 4K muscles with a 25-camera, 4K production. Traditionally, BT Sport creates an HD stream out of its 4K coverage, but for the Champions League final, the team deployed a complete, standalone 4K workflow, separate from the HD workflow.

Twenty-five 4K cameras were employed, thirteen of which were shared with the HD production. The kit also included a 4K spider cam, 4K polecams and a 4K helicopter cam. Additionally, eleven 4K cameras were used for presentation.

A RANGE OF DYNAMICS The 25 camera 4K coverage was an HDR feed as well. High dynamic range imaging can add particular value in sport coverage, offering greater fidelity to a real life experience and eliminating variables in exposure which can make shooting sport, especially outdoors, especially tricky.

The Sony 4K cameras output a Sony S-Log signal - Sony’s proprietary HDR gamma curve which enables use of the extensive dynamic range of the Sony camera sensors and the matching colour

profiles of all the cameras in the Sony ecosystem.

The feed was delivered in multiple HDR formats.

Last year, the International Telecommunication Union cut short a potential HDR format war by settling on two HDR standards, PQ (Perceptual Quantizer) and HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma). PQ is the format preferred by online providers like Netflix and Amazon; HLG appeals to broadcasters because of its backward compatability. BT Sport broadcast the final in both PQ and HLG HDR formats, as well as in Dolby’s proprietary HDR format, Dolby Vision.

The 4K BT TV broadcast also featured Dolby Atmos audio. BT Sport isn’t new to Dolby Atmos.

So far the company has broadcast around 37 live Premiere League and Champions League matches in the format since launching the offering in January.

“Dolby Atmos been very well received. People really do get that sound is very important,” says Hindhaugh. “And I know a lot of other broadcasters are now getting interested in that and how you drive awareness to get more people to take it up. It’s one of my favourite pieces of innovation actually. It makes such a difference.”

The live 4K broadcast was presented to the Dolby theatre at Dolby’s Soho headquarters, in Dolby Vision HDR, with Dolby Atmos sound.

Hindhaugh says the Champions League final coverage was the first 4K HDR production with Dolby Atmos on that scale, which seems hard to refute. But BT Sport was just getting started.

TURNING A 360 BT Sport has been working with VR for about nine months now. They have been using it primarily for their boxing coverage.

“VR is about being immersive, about being part of the action,” says Hindhaugh. “But to be blunt, I think VR is in danger of becoming the Emperor’s New

15

Clothes. There are a lot of broadcasters who have forgotten that they are broadcasters and instead are just making a single VR camera feed available.

That’s not engaged enough for me. There’s a way you watch a live football match - you want to have a story curated to you. “ Working with UEFA and Nokia, BT Sport placed 12 of Nokia’s Ozo VR cameras around the stadium. The company developed its own 360/ VR OB truck and the capability to do a director’s cut from the 12 VR cameras to create a curated VR feed, allowing viewers to follow the action entirely in 360. The coverage included live VR replays and a virtual jumbotron which displayed the feed of the HD coverage. BT Sport also worked with UK-based VR company Moov to develop live, augmented reality graphics.

The VR coverage was made available on YouTube for free. BT also developed its own VR app in partnership with LiveLike, who specialise in VR sports experiences. The app allowed viewers to watch the VR coverage live, as well as select up to eight different camera angles.

“I have to say, I was blown away by the reaction on social media and by articles by some opinion formers,” say Hindhaugh. “I think people could see the effort that had been put into it. It was by far the biggest VR coverage of a live game. We had over 290,000 people who engaged with that VR feed live.

“The Champions League final was setting out our stall for what we’ll be doing next season in terms of 4K, Dolby Atmos and VR. HDR will come later, because we don’t think the consumer appetite is quite there yet. But it’s all about pushing toward that editorial strategy of bringing people closer to the action.”

Whether BT Sport’s tech innovations yield big financial returns in the long run is still an open question. More than one company has been unable to turn editorial integrity and innovative execution into cash.

But in the unlikely event that BT Sport’s “closer to the heart of sport” vision does go the way of, say, Sky’s valiant but doomed 3DTV offering, the company’s efforts are producing value not just for fans, but for the entire broadcast industry.

In the past, the BBC held led the field in innovations in technology, content and audience engagement. Reined in by cuts, the Corporation has had to tread a more cautious path in recent years and in the vacuum there are few alternative organisations that will see a mountain and climb it “because it’s there”.

Jamie Hindhaugh has always been at pains to point out that all this technical innovation is in service to an editorial vision. As BT Sport get audiences closer to the heart of sport, maybe it can inspire others in the industry to get closer to the heart of the audience.

16

SPORTS

July/August 2017

Soaring and streaming New cameras and new streaming tech gave web viewers an eye in the sky at this year’s World Gliding Championships. Elsie Crampton reports.

I

n January of this year, Benalla, Australia – halfway between Melbourne and Canberra - was host to the 34th FAI World Gliding Championships.

The World Gliding Championships are held every two years by the FAI World Gliding Commissions.

This year 29 nations competed and winners were Russell Cheetham of the UK, Killian Walbrou of France and Sebastian Kawa of Poland.

In previous years, streaming of the event had been very basic using only a single static camera.

Consequently, gliding spectators had had a very difficult time engaging with the sport.

But with the advent of a new generation of small, high resolution cameras, this year’s World Gliding Champtionships were able to provide stunning footage from inside the gliders and from all around the event. This footage was captured and streamed globally using Telestream’s Wirecast live streaming software. The streaming coverage climaxed in the final three days of the event when

over 12 hours of live action – much of it captured by the pilots - was streamed over YouTube and the World Gliding Championships website.

Wirecast is cross-platform, live streaming production software that enables capture, live production and encoding of live streams for broadcast to multiple servers and platforms simultaneously. The software is optimised for live streaming to most social networks includin Facebook Live, Twitter Periscope and YouTube Live.

With Wirecast, users can stream multiple live cameras while dynamically mixing in other media such as movies, images and sounds, and adding production features such as transitions, built-in titles, chroma key, virtual sets and live scoreboards.

Using Wirecast, more content than ever was streamed to the World Gliding Championship’s YouTube channel. Content was edited and uploaded quickly and efficiently to both the YouTube channel and its website, ensuring that

viewers did not miss out on the best of the action.

By the end of the event nearly 200,000 video views, over two million web page views and two million social media views had been recorded.

Sean Young, media relations, web master and content director for the World Gliding Championships explained: ‘’Our aim was to make a live TV channel for followers of our website and social media. The ability to stream content from the championships transformed our media footprint and gave our international viewers a chance to be involved.’ ‘’Wirecast was a core part of the production mix, speeding up ingest, handling graphical overlays and managing the streaming and posting content. Wirecast greatly increased the speed of production and delivery, making the volume of video that we produced possible. It was very easy to use, and I am sure that someone coming from either no experience or a live broadcast environment would have no problems.”

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SPORTS

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SHARPSHOOTER

19

The human drone Where does the camera go when you’re no longer on Earth? Barrie Smith talks to skydiving cinematographer Gustavo Cabana

Profile Name: Gustavo Cabana Age: 50 Where did you grow up?: In Buenos Aires, Argentina Where do you live now?: Empuriabrava, Spain Languages?: Spanish, English, Portuguese Occupation?: Skydiving cameraman

and a ring sight for framing the shoot.

I use Nikon DSLRs for stills and high quality video, as well as Sony video Handycams which have an excellent balance SteadyShot, like a gyro, perfect for shooting in high speed free fall jumps.

We use cable remote shutter releases for the stills with custom made tongue switches, since we need to have our hands free to fly, and wired remote control for the Sony videocams and turned-on indicators for when we use GoPros.

What training have you had?

I studied photography with a great professor when I was 16. He gave me technical knowledge, but I didn’t find my inspiration until I started jumping with cameras in 1991.

Do you ever do live broadcasts from the sky?

The first time I used air-to-ground transmissions was when I shot the US Nationals championships in 1999, with a small pack on the chest, connecting a TCA cable to the Hi8 cameras we used back then. Now there are more and better options out there.

You’re a skydiving and underwater cameraman.

What specialised gear do you use for aerial work?

The most important gear we use is a custom helmet to attach the cameras on, with platforms, brackets and quick releases, cable connections, audible altimeters which signal different altitudes

Describe the preparations and processes in an aerial shoot.

Depending on the kind of jump I need to shoot, we plan the timing of the exit, where we are all going to be in the sky and the moves we need to do. If it is a big record jump, we define sectors

around the formation with the rest of the camera team, so as to not interfere with each other – also the timing of the separation when the jump is over for a safe opening of the parachutes. Sometimes I like to jump with a group without knowing the flight plan and just follow them, trying to be creative with every new move they do.

The betterr you fly yo our body throug gh the air, or move e your body underw water, th he be etter imagess you ca an get Normally, we don’t use radio. The communication is more personal with signals and body movements. I adjust the camera to subject distance flying my body closer or further away.

What is your most memorable jump?

I have many, but big world record jumps are the most memorable because of all the teamwork involved and the emotions we go through, shared with skydivers from all over the world, until we get the record. It’s a very magic moment, a communion of human energy.

20

SHARPSHOOTER

I had the privilege of shooting all the skydiving disciplines’ world record formations: 400 jumpers flying belly down, 164 in head down, 72 in head up and 100 with their open parachutes linked together in a huge diamond kite-like formation.

We use cable remo ote shutter release es for the stillls witth custom m mad de to ongue e sw wittchess, since we nee ed to have our hands free to fly What are the major safety concerns?

Lately, it is the use of really fast flying machines, which complicates the traffic with other open canopies.

Many accidents happened with jumpers colliding with each other, getting entangled, parachutes collapsing and falls into the ground. Or when they fail to do a proper and soft landing or for weather issues.

Also in free fall, because of the high speeds which can reach 300km per hour, a collision with jumpers flying in different trajectories can have fatal consequences. But at the end of the day, with the millions of jumps done around the world, this sport became pretty safe, besides the

fact that some skydivers are not so skilled.

You also do underwater shooting. What similarities or differences are there between underwater and aerial camerawork?

I started diving in 1987, the year before my first jump.

Both sports are unique - they’re in 3 dimensional and dangerous environments, where you (and your cameras) can move around without any external help, like tripods, fluid heads, jib rigs and tracks. The better you fly your body through the air, or move your body underwater, the better images you can get.

A few years back I did a lot of technical diving, using rebreathers, in wrecks and caves. I shot most of them with a helmet-mount videocam and also did photography with full DSLR rigs. I think the underwater environment is much more harsh for ourselves and our equipment. And having daylight up there helps big time!

There’s a time difference between the two types of shooting too - one second in free fall is like one minute underwater.

Is there any specialised equipment you wish was out there?

Just better and smaller cameras - like a 4K, 60fps,

July/August 2017

with balanced stabilisation optics. And a small Nikon full frame mirrorless cam.

How seriously are you affected by weather conditions?

We can’t jump when the wind speed on the ground is higher than our canopies’ forward speed. With 23 knots we go into a standby, or “weather hold” as it’s called.

Clouds are amazing to fly through, but too many, when we can’t see each other, makes an unsafe playground. And rain is painful on the skin - besides that, cameras and water don’t mix well.

Normally, we don’tt use radio o. The communiicatiion iss more person nal with sign nals and body moveme ents Where have you shot?

I have done around 20,000 jumps all around the world. I’ve done aerial shoots in Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, United States, Cuba, Brazil, Colombia, Thailand, Uruguay, Spain, France, Croatia, Germany, Ecuador, Venezuela, Czech

SHARPSHOOTER

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Republic, Poland, India, China, Qatar, Italy, Belgium and Chile - jumping from small Cessnas to Hercules cargo planes, helicopters, Boeing 727s and Russian AN-72s, biplanes, trikes and balloons.

Who are your clients?

A lot in the skydiving industry itself and also doing ads for agencies, banks, insurance, cigarettes and watch companies.

What was your first ever shooting job?

A commercial for a toy, in which we did a very interesting stunt in free fall.

Do you find your clients sometimes lack an understanding of your role and special needs?

Understandably. It is difficult for an outsider to understand our needs and the environment in which we work. Our task is to communicate and share our knowledge with them.

Gearwise, do you travel heavy or light? Do you work with an assistant or alone?

Normally, heavy and alone! We need to carry our cameras and accessories, plus our heavy skydiving rigs (around 20 pounds each), plus

helmets, suits and the rest of stuff.

Is the DSLR style of camera workable in your shooting style?

I think it’s the best in terms of size, weight and versatility, before going up the ladder to a Red cinema camera.

What specialist camera gear do you use?

A ring sight is the most specialist tool for us. It’s like a virtual viewfinder to frame our images.

At the end d of the da ay, with the millio ons of jumpss do one around d the world, th his sp port became prettty safe On location, is battery life an important issue?

Not really — jumps are short.

Have you ever shot 3D? No. Best thing about your job?

The possibilities of flying a camera all around

21

your subjects, without being limited by the two dimensions we have on the ground.

Worst thing about your job?

To find out that the great human beings you meet and fly with in the past are gone too early.

Hairiest/scariest shoot and why?

Demonstration jumps at night in the middle of cities, because there’s always the possibility of having a malfunction of your main canopy, or a bad spot — and the need to land elsewhere where you can’t see the ground.

What country would you most like to shoot in?

The US is the biggest skydiving destination in the world. And there are many events and opportunities to make images of great jumps.

Contact Name: Email: Website: Vimeo:

Gustavo Cabana guscabana@usa.net www.guscabana.com www.vimeo.com/gustavocabana

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24

USER REVIEW

July/August 2017

Pro spec, low cost: Blackmagic’s Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K Easily accessible controls, built-in ND filters and two additional card slots for SD media - and its cheaper than the competition. Christina Fox reviews the Pro update to Blackmagic Design’s Ursa Mini 4.6K

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lackmagic Design prides itself on selling a good piece of kit at a decent price (or in the case of DaVinci Resolve – for free).

So, if you’re looking for a camera with high specifications then it would make sense to add the Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K to your research list.

Lets do the price first, because you’ve probably only got so much money to spend. It

costs around £4,900 ex VAT for the body only.

Compare this to the recently announced Canon C200 at £6,400 ex VAT or Panasonic’s upcoming AU-EVA1, which should be under €8,000 this autumn, and the Ursa certainly seems price competitive.

Even if you are not shooting Ultra HD or 4K it will help to future proof your purchase if

the camera delivers that too. In fact, the Ursa Mini Pro offers 4.6K (4608x2592), 4K, UHD, 3K Anamorphic, 2K (DCI and 16:9) and HD resolution. There is Lossless Raw, Raw 3:1 and 4:1 along with ProRes444XQ down to ProRes Proxy recording.

However, while Raw 4:1 and Raw 3:1 compression is compatible with DaVinci Resolve,

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USER REVIEW

25

they may be incompatible with other applications.

So, do check what software your grader is using.

For high dynamic range 15 stops of latitude seems to be the standard all new cameras must reach. While I don’t have a test bench to check the claim, the camera certainly seems to cope well with HDR. So, with all this on offer, it looks like pretty good value for money.

Im mportanttly, start up p time is now ju ust five e second ds co ompare ed to ab bout ten n second ds wiith th he earlie er modell FEED ME There are four card slots for recording media: two for SD cards and two for CFast 2.0 - and if you shoot at the highest rates you will need a fair bit of storage. You only get six minutes of video on a 256GB card when shooting at 4.6K, 50p in CinemaDNG Raw. If your more modest production is happy with HD in ProRes 444 at 50p then it will record 61 minutes.

If you need to record at the highest quality, it is worth checking which cards have been verified and recommended for use by Blackmagic.

You can find this in the support pages of the Blackmagic Design website.

But if your client doesn’t need Raw footage then you should be fine using SD cards. If you record UHD on the camera, Blackmagic recommends using the fastest UHS-II type SD cards, but UHS-1 cards are suitable for HD. RAISE A GLASS The Ursa Mini Pro features an interchangeable lens mount with EF as standard, and options for PL and B4 lenses (with a Nikon mount to come), so if you have already invested in lenses you should be covered.

The PL mount has four pins to communicate with Cooke lenses using Cooke’s /i Technology interface. This lets you record lens information in your clips’ metadata such as the lens model, focal length, aperture setting, focus distance and other lens specific information, all of which can be read in Resolve.

My only niggle about the screen iss that there is only a histo ogra am avvailable. I’d prefe er a wave eform monitorr, wh hille a vectorscope would be the ic cin ng on the cake Buying production kit is an expensive business, and having to buy accessories to bring things up to spec can quickly drain anyone’s budget, so it

was good to see that the Ursa Mini Pro has the all-important Neutral Density (ND) filters (clear, 2, 4 and 6 stops). ND was missing on the original Ursa Mini so this is a very welcome upgrade.

The review kit came with a Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 constant aperture lens. My only gripe with the lens was that the iris is stepped rather than smooth and continuous. So, if you change exposure by several stops while recording it would be quite noticeable.

USER ACCESS There is usually more than one way to access any of camera feature. If you can’t get at the on/off switch because of the design of the rig you’re using, no problem, just press and hold the record and forward step buttons on the control panel behind the LCD to power your camera on or off.

Need to change audio levels? There are three ways to do it. And iris, shutter speed and ISO? There are couple of ways to adjust each one.

The LCD screen is touch sensitive. Most of the operations can be accessed by tapping on the screen and swiping a controller. However, be careful if you have large fingers. On some of the menu screens it was easy to accidentally change menu options that were on the edge of the screen when what you meant to do was select the Next Page navigation arrow.

There is also a free iPad app that lets you remotely control the camera via Bluetooth, including powering on or off, changing settings, adding metadata using a digital slate and triggering recording. This could be really useful if you are using the camera on a crane or other remote head.

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USER REVIEW

July/August 2017

I have to study a lot of camera operating manuals. Usually they are a poor afterthought and terrible bedtime reading. I know I’m speaking to a small audience (of manual readers) here - but the Ursa Mini Pro manual is a joy, well laid out and easy to follow.

TOGGLE SWITCHES AND BUTTONS I really liked the feel of the ISO, shutter and white balance toggle controls.

The ISO range is limited to a 200 (minimum) to 1600 (maximum) range. In comparison, my Canon C300 goes from 320 to 20,000.

Colour temperature goes from 2,500K up to 10,000K, or if you prefer there are preset white balance options for daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, shade and cloudy conditions (DSLR owners will feel right at home). All of these are accessed via the touch screen, as is manual white balancing.

The Ursa a Mini Pro manual is a joy, welll laid d ou ut an nd ea asy to folllow The camera has a good range of outputs with 12G-SDI (for HD and UHD output), 3G-SDI, Reference and Timecode in, and 3.5mm headphone socket.

There is also a Hirose 12-pin connector for broadcast lenses, plus a LANC remote control, 12G-SDI input for attaching to a switcher, 12 volt power and two XLR audio inputs with phantom power. Importantly, start up time is now just five seconds compared to about ten seconds with the earlier model.

TELL ME MORE The Ursa Mini Pro’s flip out screen has shrunk from five inches to four, but it still feels right for the camera. The resolution is good and made focusing easy. There is also peaking and image magnification.

It is pretty intuitive finding your way around the menu, which has six tabbed sections – Record,

Monitor, Audio, Setup, Presets and LUTS. There is also a menu wheel to navigate the menu – which at first I thought didn’t work until I realised it was for the navigation in the eyepiece only, which makes sense.

If the LCD screen is closed there is a monochrome status display screen that faces outwards showing all the important camera settings. All this info is available in the viewfinder too - or not, if you prefer a clean screen.

My only niggle about the screen is that there is only a histogram available. I’d prefer a waveform monitor, while a vectorscope would be the icing on the cake. But there are zebra stripes and a false colour screen to ensure exposure is correct. However, I loved the audio metres with their quick response and gentle decay. Tapping on them allows you to adjust the headphones and audio (CH1 and CH2) level inputs.

There are rotary dials too, which I would be worried about adjusting by accident when on the shoulder. Those controls need to be protected.

The Mini Pro can be e a stu udio camerra one day, an OB camera the next and d then sh hootting a drama on day y three Access to HFR (High Frame Rate) at the touch of a button is probably a good thing until you knock it by accident. Perhaps it also needs positioning in a more protected part of the camera.

As a trainer, the downside of my job is that

URSA STUDIO MONITOR The review kit also came with the Ursa Studio Viewfinder.

The seven-inch LCD monitor has a standard four-pin XLR 12v power input. It mounts simply with a V-lock quick release plate. It has a deep sun hood to encourage you to use it on location as well as in the studio.

The monitor’s menu is comprehensive and simple to navigate. You’ll be able to customise it exactly as you want it - so much so, that the only improvement I can suggest is they make the user settings saveable to an internal memory or to an SD card so that when you take over a camera you can set up the monitor quickly to your own way of working.

Once aga ain, Blac ckma agic has produced a high h spe ec ca amera at a lower cost than itts riva als CONCLUSION Once again, Blackmagic has produced a high spec camera at a lower cost than its rivals. If you want to make the move into 4K the Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K delivers a good camera for the price, and many worthwhile improvements on its predecessor.

While I personally wouldn’t want to have the camera on my own shoulder all day due to the weight (2.3kg), those with broader shoulders will find the layout logical as it follows a similar form factor to what many experienced operators are used to.

For production companies that need to sweat their assets the Mini Pro can be a studio camera one day, an OB camera the next and then shooting a drama on day three.

Where the Ursa Mini was reliant on the touch screen, the Ursa Mini Pro makes good use of physical buttons and toggle switches.

However, the touch screen has been well thought out and only enhances the experience of using the camera.

With the Mini I felt like something was missing.

Here with the Pro pretty much everything has been taken care of.

The Ursa does have a couple of interesting competitors hovering on the horizon, such as the Canon C200 and Panasonic’s EVA1, but, if you need a camera now I’d highly recommend you take it for test drive.

Rx 2000 REAL-TIME EYE

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Workflows are optimised with ultra-flexible layouts, and easy recall of pre-sets. Each display can present up to 4 channels, and up to 16 instruments per channel.

With multiple advanced diagnostics tools, including Real-time Eye™ physical layer analysis plus closed caption, loudness and Dolby® monitoring, Rx 2000 is ideal for OB trucks and broadcast facilities.

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MENA FOCUS

July/August 2017

Is your content suitable for MENA?

We tend to think that opportunities for content localisation are driven by technology. But Ian Brotherston, CEO at TVT, explains how preparing global content is more art than science

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he age of global television brands is fundamentally transforming the viewing marketplace around the world, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is no exception. Driving much of this sweeping change is the staggering 292% growth projected for the region over the next five years in OTT TV and video revenue, according to Digital TV Research.It is undeniable that MENA presents a wealth of opportunity for broadcasters and content owners looking to expand into promising new markets.

Versioning content for the region’s linear broadcast, OTT, catch-up TV and video on demand market requires a blend of cutting-edge technical processes and highly skilled people with expertise – spanning regulatory compliance, format versioning, craft editing and a host of other content management skills.

The art of effective versioning is key to meeting local market expectations of quality, tone, translation, presentation and the reflection of native values.

Entering this market, however, is not straightforward. There are a significant number of cultural and compliance issues that need to be addressed to successfully prepare content for smooth journeys to MENA.

LANGUAGE Translation is a key question in versioning – whether it is voiceovers, lip-sync dubbing or subtitling programming based on local cultural norms or regulations. Strong language in later evening timeslots is generally tolerated in MENA countries. If the content is being subtitled, then the Arabic translation will tone down the strongest language if necessary.

Detailed compliance logs help to speed up the rest of the workflow, and accurate notes on vernacular or unfamiliar local slang will aid localisation teams when they are working on these translations.

Operator brand identity is another key side of the language issue that may necessitate re-scripting for voiceovers. Some channels re-script and re-voice the narration to match the channel personality and house style – even in the same language. For a reality show made in the United States and prepped for distribution in the United Arab Emirates, for instance, sometimes the remit is to remove the narrator’s on-camera appearances and voiceover to create ‘presenterless’ versions – enabling easier re-voicing of the narration either into Arabic, or maintaining it in English but with a local accent and vernacular.

RED FLAGS MENA schedulers will avoid broadcasting or streaming programmes that feature excessive and persistent violence, LGBT themes, substance abuse, overt sexual themes and, crucially, content that might cause religious offense.

For example, Ancient Aliens is a popular, longrunning series, produced in a documentary style that presents hypotheses of ancient astronauts and suggests that historical texts, archaeology and legends contain evidence of past contact between humans and aliens.

Certain episodes make clear connections between aliens and religious figures – such as the Prophet Elijah – or suggest that the angels referred to in the Bible or the Koran were aliens. These references are likely to offend or dismay Muslim viewers at any time – but especially during Ramadan. Some of the references are brief and can easily be removed by the compliance team and editors; however, in some instances, the entire episode should be omitted from the MENA schedule. The compliance team, therefore, has the added responsibility of providing detailed, clear advice to the schedulers.

Another often-overlooked cultural nuance is the use of religious names for an animal or toy

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within a programme. Even if this is dramatically appropriate, it needs to be carefully considered before the programme goes to air. For example, a character in the series Footballers’ Wives who professes to be Hindu names her dog ‘Krishna’.

This revealed a lot about the character’s lack of religious understanding but, despite the dramatic justification, it would cause concern if played in territories with a sizable Hindu audience, such as the United Arab Emirates.

DUTY OF CARE TO CHILDREN The duty of care relating to children is also paramount when it comes to contentious and adult-themed content.

Regulations may vary but it can generally be taken as read that no operator can show anything that would impair the emotional development of a child or otherwise harm viewers. This means that broadcasters, other operators and compliance teams need to be aware of when children might be watching – even outside daytime hours.

TV audiences ten nd to increasse durin ng Ramad dan as more people e are at hom me due to restrric cted wo orking hourss – and childre en are often allow wed to sttay up late into the e night TV audiences, for instance, tend to increase during Ramadan as more people are at home due to restricted working hours – and children are often allowed to stay up late into the night.

The objective for those broadcasters with a dedicated MENA channel is to, therefore, offer viewers more family-focused programming during this time – and often opting to schedule daytime versions of content, when potentially damaging or contentious content has been cut or minimised, is the best recourse for operators.

MENA FOCUS TRACKING AND RELYING ON SHOW DATA Building a detailed log at the time of viewing provides programming planners with the tools they need to schedule appropriately – especially when a series designated to play in a territory such as MENA for the first time might contain some of the potentially offensive, graphic or non-compliant content discussed above.

What’s more, the versioning and compliance team needs to consider not just the next transmission, but also all possible future transmissions, and provide rich data for every show – participants, actions, and potential flashpoints in each scene. Having a platform for capturing all this information is necessary to ensure an efficient and accurate workflow and media asset management that is comprehensive, flexible, quick and transparent. For example, terms such as ‘plane crash’ must be logged, so that in the event of a major air disaster, a broadcaster knows to pull a scene, or entire programme, that could upset audiences.

KNOWING THE LEGAL LIMIT Understanding legal requirements and the potential ramifications of failing to meet them is essential in creating versions of content for any new market. For instance, traffic cop programmes, real-life crime shows and court case documentaries often show people not convicted of a crime, or who have finished serving a jail sentence, and whose identity might need to be protected. Versioning for markets within MENA and other regions involves knowing what can and cannot be shown in each.

Another legal issue that can be thorny and requires knowledge of local rules and regulations is the need to mirror the respect shown in the MENA region to the Royal Families in these countries.

The Royal Families are highly respected by their people and extreme care should be

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taken with any references to them, especially if such references are made in satirical or comedy shows.

Any content that might be considered as a possible representation of a Middle Eastern Royal, whether critical or not, needs to be carefully assessed – for example someone wearing a Dishdasha as a fancy dress costume, drinking shots and smoking, would not be acceptable to a local audience.

MENA schedulers willl avoid broadcasting or strea aming programmes that featurre excesssivve and d persisttent violen nce, LGBT theme es, substa ance abuse, overt sexual th hemes and d, crucia ally y, content tha at might cau use religious off ffe ense MAINTAINING QUALITY, TAKING OPPORTUNITIES Editing TV content for any market – whether for compliance, correct formatting and show length, or even to protect viewers with photosensitive epilepsy from strobe effects – needs to be achieved without losing the flow and production values of the original programme makers.

For broadcasters and video service operators offering successfully versioned video content, the opportunities in the rapidly growing MENA TV and video marketplace are unquestionable – but there are inherent risks and big potential costs for those that take a wrong step.

Successfully navigating the waters of cultural taboos, accepted norms and broadcast regulations requires the expertise, skills and background necessary to get the critical elements of successful content versioning right. That is the true art of versioning.

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MENA FOCUS

July/August 2017

Story-centric workflow at Al Jazeera Despite being one of the world’s premiere news organisations, Al Jazeera had to up its game. Avid’s SVP of global sales Tom Cordiner tells how the company evolved its newsroom

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reating synergies or even unifying the content creation process for distribution over multiple platforms has been a growing concern for news broadcasters, leading many to re-examine the behind-the-scenes process required to efficiently generate content.

Avid’s next-generation newsroom system is based around a story-centric workflow, putting the story at the centre of news operations. This

holistic approach provides tools to news teams for planning, creating, collaborating and delivering news to a wider range of viewers across multiple platforms, allowing for more dynamic and organic storytelling and greater workflow agility both inside and outside the newsroom.

Al Jazeera is among the world’s leading television news broadcasters and has been using Avid iNEWS since 2003, rolling it out for various channels and international offices as the network

grew. Over the last five years, Al Jazeera has implemented a program of iNEWS upgrades and new installations, working towards the ultimate goal of facilitating greater networking and sharing of material between its headquarters in Doha, Qatar and its other newsrooms worldwide.

Leveraging the Avid platform consistently across its global news operations has helped Al Jazeera achieve several business and operational objectives, increasing its production of compelling

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MENA FOCUS

content at lower costs, while extending its audience reach. Al Jazeera upgraded its newsroom technology at its London and Balkans bureaus in 2014 and 2011, respectively. The last phase of the project was Al Jazeera’s Doha headquarters, which is the most complex of its news centres. Not only is it live, the bureau employs multiple languages, including English and Arabic.

The legacy iNEWS system at Al Jazeera Arabic’s (AJA) newsroom in Doha was reaching end of life and limiting growth and access to modern newsgathering technologies. There was no real potential for expansion to include new services and functionality, and many tasks had to be carried out manually, taking up the time of creative operational staff. AJA had reached the point where they had to make a change so as not to compromise quality.

“Our industry is increasingly competitive, complex and is changing rapidly,” said Mohamed Abuagla, executive director of technology and operations, Al Jazeera Media Network. “Despite our success, we knew we had to overhaul our global newsgathering and delivery platforms to remain an industry leader. We needed a partner that understood the industry, could deliver innovative technology solutions to solve our strategic needs and could work collaboratively over the long term.”

the industry’s most open, tightly integrated and efficient platform designed for media. The workflow comprises Avid’s comprehensive tools and solutions for creating, distributing and optimising media: Avid iNEWS with Interplay | Production for production asset management, Avid shared storage, AirSpeed 5500 servers, Media Composer editing workstations, the Avid MediaCentral | UX web-based cloud interface, Interplay Capture scheduling and control, and Interplay media services.

While Al Jazeera’s journalists are highly experienced in using iNEWS, they needed training in the end-to-end video workflow, allowing them to edit video on the fly and search for clips. Avid’s Professional Services team delivered over 160 days of workflow and training services, supporting AJA throughout the transition from workflow design to project management and end user training support from both English and Arabic speakers.

The transitional installation was about 20% larger than the system AJA had been using for 12 years, offering more inputs for playout. The final system that went into service at the end of 2016 was approximately 30% bigger again, with greater bandwidth and storage. Now that the new installation has been completed, the legacy system continues to serve an important purpose as part of Al Jazeera’s newsgathering training facilities.

PRODUCTION CHAIN AJA knew that it needed an entirely new file-based HD workflow, which would be an enormous and disruptive task. To stay on air in the interim, it decided to create a transitional system that would be an upgrade to its old version of iNEWS, and would also help it build an infrastructure able to cope with the heavy flow of media and information now involved in modern TV journalism.

Al Jazeera created a complete production chain based on the Avid MediaCentral Platform,

THE FUTURE OF CLOUD-BASED NEWSROOMS In January 2017, Al Jazeera decided to embark on the next phase of its technology strategy, which will see it introduce cloudbased capabilities into its workflows and new hybrid cloud deployment models for its global news production infrastructure, helping to drive even greater global collaboration and operational efficiency across the enterprise.

Al Jazeera is currently working with Avid to pioneer cloud-based newsroom workflows, developing and testing cloud-based

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technology deployments of the end-to-end Avid newsroom solution.

The end result will be the first ever hybrid cloud deployment of MediaCentral across a large, global newsroom operation. As well as helping Al Jazeera realise its own cloud strategy, the project will help shape the future of cloud-based newsrooms across the industry.

To support this infrastructure around the world, Al Jazeera has signed a multi-year, multimilliondollar enterprise-wide Global Services Agreement with Avid. Avid will supply services including system support, software maintenance and an array of professional services tailored to the needs of Al Jazeera’s global operations to help optimise its significant investment.

MediaCentral | UX is now the hub and catalyst in the story-centric workflow at Al Jazeera, allowing the teams to manage every facet of a news story from a single user interface.

Several new panes within MediaCentral | UX facilitate this workflow and integrate with other platform-connected solutions such as iNEWS and Interplay | Production. These new panes include the Assignment Pane, Elements Pane, Calendar Pane, and Trending Pane. MediaCentral | UX now has integrated panes for Maestro and Social Media Hub, providing seamlessly integrated graphics management and social media interaction.

“With Avid Everywhere and the MediaCentral Platform, Avid has delivered comprehensive innovations across the media workflow using an open and extensible centralised platform to help drive efficiency,” said Abuagla. “As we have embraced the Avid Everywhere solution to drive business results, over the past several years Avid has consistently shown that we made the right choice in a partner. As we move towards a cloud-based future across our global newsroom operations, we are pleased to have Avid at our side to help us navigate this important journey.”

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CASE STUDY

July/August 2017

Managing content in an all-UHD environment When UHD adventure channel Insight TV decided they had enough of spreadsheets, they sought out a new MAM system from PFT to help.

CLIENT PROFILE: TERN International’s Insight TV brings compelling programmes to viewers globally, through linear and non-linear platforms. With over 500 hours of original Ultra HD content a year.. The range of programming demonstrates the best of Ultra HD..

BUSINESS CONTEXT: Insight TV collaborates with various renowned, international production houses to create original Ultra HD content. Coordinating each of these projects through the production process required a great deal of manual effort on the part of Insight TV’s staff.

Each show was managed using a separate spreadsheet, and there was a distinct lack of visibility as to the status of deliverables. The team had to spend a lot of time and effort tracking late deliveries, retrieving assets and downloading content from a variety of disparate sources.

This manual approach was having a negative impact on Insight TV’s operational costs and speed of delivery. The organisation needed an end-to-end solution for supply chain management that would enhance efficiencies, reduce costs and achieve faster time-to-market.

PFT SOLUTION: Insight TV deployed PFT’s Clear Broadcast Cloud to automate the content supply chain and centralise workflow orchestration from ingest to delivery of the final UHD TX Master. Clear is a hybrid cloud-enabled Media ERP Suite, and its Broadcast Cloud module is designed to support end-to-end broadcast operation, from creation to transformation, distribution and exhibition. The deployment included the following: • Work order administration for each project, with automated reminders and notifications • Dashboards to track the status of all deliveries against due dates • Customised review module to automate sharing feedback with production houses • Media Player to handle UHD content in its native frame rate of 50fps • Secure ingest of content directly on the Cloud • Auto QC of TX masters using Baton, a

leading QC solution • Centralisation of data from third party solutions • Deep archival of content with the ability to view and restore library assets remotely • Integration with Insight TV’s Broadcast Management System (BMS) - What’sOn • Workflows to handle raw footage, designed to increase monetisation of UHD content OUTCOME Clear Broadcast Cloud helped Insight TV centralise its content operations by bringing the ecosystem of production houses and vendors onto a single system. The solution’s Hybrid Cloud architecture played a vital role in managing distributed workflows, and enabled Insight TV to seamlessly collaborate with vendors across the world for 15 concurrent productions. This meant that the team was able to focus on creative excellence rather than managing logistics.

Clear’s dashboards provided increased transparency for end-to-end content operations

across Insight TV’s content supply chain, enabling them to be more aggressive with delivery schedules. Data from the dashboards could be studied to understand supply chain trends and improve operational processes.

Additionally, the frame-accurate feedback provided to production houses helped Insight TV streamline review and approval processes, as comments could be exported along with EDLs and imported directly onto the edit table. Deep archiving content in a centralised repository also helped Insight TV reduce costs, as they no longer had to maintain content backups in various locations.

Building on the success of this implementation, Insight TV is on the threshold of entering the second phase of engagement with PFT. The focus will now be on deploying Clear’s revolutionary Promo Operations Module, which offers business process orchestration for promo creation including versioning automation.

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34

VFX FOCUS

July/August 2017

Haunting Churchill VFX artists at LipSync Post evoked the tragedy of the disastrous invasion of Gallipoli in this summer’s war biopic, Churchill. Monica Heck reports.

O

ne of this year’s top British historical dramas, Churchill, follows the charismatic and controversial Prime Minister, played by Brian Cox, in the tense hours before the D-Day landings in 1944.

Exhausted, having endured political ridicule

and military failure, Churchill is haunted by his involvement in the disastrous Gallipoli landings in 1915, a fiasco for which he shouldered much of the blame.

“With this kind of film, it’s not about big, in-your-face VFX,” explained Andy Quinn, digital

compositor at LipSync Post, the outfit that completed the full post-production work for the Salon Pictures film. “There is one key scene, a dream sequence showing Churchill walking down the beach of Gallipoli, that we completed working closely with director Jonathan

VFX FOCUS

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35

Teplitzky, with whom we spent a lot of time discussing the shot. He had a very clear vision for this shot and it was probably the biggest technical challenge for us.”

During this sequence, Teplitzky, best known for The Railway Man (2013) and Burning Man (2011), wanted the audience to understand that Churchill remained haunted by the human loss at Gallipoli. The scene received by the team at LipSync showed Churchill walking down a beach, away from the camera. The brief made it a very important shot in terms of establishing Churchill’s character in that particular film.

“Teplitzky wanted the viewer to understand that Churchill was living with the guilt of sending so many soldiers to their deaths on the beaches of Gallipoli,” said Quinn. “So we were given a totally empty shot of this beach and had to add various details to invoke Gallipoli.”

RETURN TO GALLIPOLI The LipSync VFX team for this film, which included up to 12 people, worked very closely with Teplitzky to bring to life the anguish felt by Churchill during the dream sequence, making sure that the shots were neither gruesome or exploitative and that the audience would not be distracted by extraneous details.

“First, we worked with the director in terms of coming up with concepts that set the right mood and told the story in the way he wanted to tell it, by invoking certain emotions in the audience,” added Quinn. “We used Photoshop to set up lots of concepts, paintings, collages and so on. Once the director was happy, we had to make sure the objects we were about to insert were of the highest historical accuracy. It’s difficult to source First World War images, for example, that hold up to a 2K film delivery, which is why we used an actor in a soldier’s costume.”

LipSync created the beach environment with a combination of matte painting and 3D created detail to give Winston Churchill an appropriate backdrop. For this scene, the team used 3DEqualizer, a 3D tracking solution for merging live action footage with digital visual effects, to track the camera.

PHOTOGRAMMETRY SUCCESS Photogrammetry was key to the successful insertion of objects into the scene. The soldier was shot from multiple different angles and in various positions, using DSLR still cameras in a multi-camera set-up. All of the still photographs were then fed into the AGIsoft programme, which generated a mesh.

The mesh was then tidied up in Maya 3D modelling and animation software, which delivered the bulk of the 3D animation, while Nuke handled the compositing. The team uses

ACES, the Academy Color Encoding System, to unify the colour space.

“The mesh generated by AGIsoft is sometimes too dense, making it too slow to use in the composite, so optimising it in Maya helped us work more efficiently,” explained Quinn. “The 3D object mesh meant our team could move the 3D soldier around and position him wherever we wanted to. We did this with other props, including boots, helmets, rifles and even barbed wire, so that we weren’t confined to whatever angle the photograph was taken at. Photogrammetry even allows you to light objects in 3D, to achieve the correct lighting for the environment.”

With thiss kind of film m, it’s not about big g, in n-your-fa ace VFX It was very important to the team that the objects, some of them very close to camera, should be of the highest visual quality and historical accuracy. “Working from old photographs just doesn’t give you this feeling of depth, of moving when the camera moves,” added Quinn. “Having those 3D objects was key to the shot. It was a huge job, even just on the logistics side: finding the correct uniforms, researching Gallipoli and even finding the correct type of barbed wire. The small details ensure the film has historical legitimacy and accuracy.”

Once the objects were lined up and positioned, based on the concepts that had been presented to the director, the old photographs were replaced with the high quality photogrammetry. There were no surprises for the director as the positioning of objects had already been pre-approved.

Quinn says that the use of photogrammetry in this context was exciting for the team, as it gave them the flexibility to work with objects within the compositing software rather than in a traditional 3D package. This meant the compositor putting the shot together could manipulate the objects directly, as opposed to the traditional workflow where a 3D artist renders the objects first. “This was crucial as it allowed us to produce multiple iterations of the shot quickly and efficiently,” said Quinn.

LONDON LOOK LipSync’s VFX work on the film also involved creating authentic period detail to ensure London looked as it did in 1944. The team had to remove a lot of anachronistic details from buildings, such as satellites and street furniture.

“There are also a number of driving sequences, where Churchill was in the back of a car talking,” added Quinn. “We used green screen to put the background into those shots, using Nuke for the compositing and manipulation of these scenes.

Everyone takes green screen shots in cars for granted, but they can be quite tricky. You need to get the right angle on the background, the lines of convergence in the background need to be correct. It’s tough.”

Quinn gives one example of the car driving along a country road, with trees on both sides, where light and shade dapple the interior of the car to help tie the background and the foreground together. “We were able to build that successfully, which we were quite pleased with.

It really helps when the production team can get the right angle, though.”

36

VFX FOCUS

July/August 2017

Is there a server in the house?

London’s Jellyfish Pictures is pioneering an entirely cloud-based visual effects and animation pipeline. Neal Romanek reports.

A

s urban real estate values balloon, some companies are rethinking whether that prestigious Soho address is worth it. And as workflows becoming increasingly decentralised, with files flying across continents and oceans, the argument for maintaining a central brick and mortar headquarters is progressively weakening.

Companies like VFX house Jellyfish Pictures are devising new ways of working that better suit clients, artists and accountants.

Jellyfish is over 200 people and comfortably collaborating across multiple locations. The company has provided animation and effects for films, TV and commercials. Their most recent work has been for American-produced series destined for the big OTT players like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

A year ago, Jellyfish opened a new Vauxhall location. The new studio is operating at full tilt everyday with animators, editors and compositors working on several projects at once.

It looks like a normal VFX house.

Except one important aspect of the new location is truly revolutionary: None of the artists in the building are accessing local files.

All the work, whether animation or editing or compositing. is being done entirely the cloud. In fact, each artist’s workstation is little more then a monitor and a few peripherals.

“We’re proving here that the technology is mature and is ready for the mainstream,” says Jellyfish CTO, Jeremy Smith,. “To my knowledge we’re the first company to be doing this kind of remote access from entirely different premises – certainly when it comes to doing editing suites live or doing full Wacom support.”

Jellyfish uses Microsoft’s Azure cloud service - plus a secret sauce - to make this cloud networked facility as seamless and latency-free as possible. They’re offering their expertise to the industry as a service, called RenderWise.

RENDERWISE Through RenderWise, Jellyfish will offer both consultancy services and setup. The new hybrid cloud service aims to save studios money by preventing them from over provisioning and enabling them to ramp up and down as production requires, from any location.

Studios migrating to the new cloud solution can adopt an Opex pricing structure rather than

Capex, and buy compute power as and when they need it, with all system administration costs being outsourced to Microsoft Azure.

Doing such graphics intensive work in the cloud, without the help of additional hardware, has been viewed as impractical, but Jellyfish has cracked the problem.

“There were issues initially. But we spent the last two years ironing all those bugs out. We are using software defined networking and software defined storage. It has opened up so many other doors that would not have been opened otherwise. There has been a very long list of technical stuff that we’ve had to do.”

Necessity forced the invention of a better way of cloud collaboration, says Smith: “We were at a crossroads. We were running out of physical space in Soho, and we didn’t want to take on additional office space there. We had all the servers and resources that we needed already and we didn’t want to have to buy that again in a new location. So were basically forced to find a solution where we could continue to utilise all that existing gear, even though it was geographically based somewhere else.”

OUT OF THE CITY INTO THE CLOUD If Jellyfish could have afforded to keep expanding into Soho, would they have?

Smith says, no.

“The other thing is a lot of the artists live in this part of the city, so it’s more convenient for them. And it means we’re not really tied to London. This sort of technology opens up being able to work from absolutely anywhere.

Now there’s less of a driver for artists to have to come all the way to London to work when instead we can take the work to them.

“We can pool all the hardware resources together in one location and with people being able to work in different geographical locations, we’re shrinking our CAPEX considerably. If we had to open a new office, say in Scotland, we’d have to buy servers, switches, backup solutions and render blades.”

“We do have investments in some hardware, and we don’t want to throw all that away just because we want to use the cloud. But cloud is getting cheaper every day, and I think, as that existing hardware depreciates, we may just not replace it.“

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38

MAKING THE GRADE

July/August 2017

The colours of Istanbul Originally from Germany, Andy Minuth worked as a DI colourist. He is now lead colourist at 1000 Volt post production in Istanbul You started as an editor. What brought you into grading?

I always had a passion for working with images.

Photoshop, motion graphics, and so on. I enjoy all of that. Sometime around 2003. while I was working as an Avid editor, I heard about colour grading. I instantly became eager to learn more and gathered as much information as possible about it. It seemed like the perfect mixture of creativity and cutting edge technology for me.

I mapped out a plan to become a colourist, went to university, and after graduation, applied for a junior/dailies colourist job. From there it was a lot of hard work and many night shifts. I actually love it when a plan comes together!

In 2015 you moved from Munich to Istanbul.

Has your work changed across those countries?

In Germany I was mostly colouring features and some television and archival projects. At 1000Volt in Istanbul my main focus lies in commercials, though I do also regularly colour feature films.

Comparing both countries, the final results are not that different. But you can feel the Mediterranean Global sun here, so generally my images tend to be a bit more colourful and brighter.

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You graded The Mountain II, the highest grossing drama film in Turkey last year. How did you create the looks for the story?

My fundamental approach to look development is to avoid fighting against the material and to follow my instincts. Most of the time, you are on the right track when you enhance what is already there and work more intensively on the few problematic shots that are not matching.

Alper Caglar - the director of the film - is a true auteur filmmaker. Before I started with the project, he gave me a list of movies to watch at home in the evenings. This really helped me get into the right mood for his film, which is a realistic war drama about a special ops team behind ISIS lines. Usually the box-office blockbusters here in Turkey are comedies. I was surprised and very happy about the incredible success of The Mountain II, because it is an independent genre film.

Alper was busy finishing the edit and sound while I was working on the colour. In total we only met a few times for a couple of minutes, but I regularly sent him reference stills and collected his feedback. He trusted me from the beginning and we were able to develop a good relationship.

The first day I developed specific LUTs for the project based on a Kodak print emulation. I aimed for more definition in the shadows than print film but with a similar color palette. Additionally I extended the range in the cold tones a bit.

Alper had a very precise idea about the look of some scenes and provided me with his grades for some shots. I translated them to P3 with Truelight Colour Spaces and matched the other shots in the sequence. For the rest of the film he was open for my suggestions, which I built utilising the custom show LUTs. One of my challenges was to make the images flow along with the story, which contains a lot of flashback sequences.

Is there a specific scene or sequence in the film that was especially challenging?

We received the last hour of the film just three days before the delivery deadline. That part contained the final climatic battle sequence with thousands of cuts and many effects. It was quite a challenge to finish that sequence on time. We made it − and the Baselight system never let me down during that intensive phase.

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How much of the process relates to the colour science and how much to the grade?

There is one part of my job that I find particularly enjoyable: I call it colour engineering. It consists of selecting, applying and tweaking the right colour science for a specific job. In my working style that is a fundamental part of the look and an important part of the grade.

I divide my job into two basic parts: first finding and tweaking a “process” for the project; and then adjusting the individual shots to fit into that process. Ideally the fitting is just an exposure correction. But in real life it could also take 20 layers.

Can you tell us about your grading on Turkish horror-thriller Baskin?

Baskin was my first feature film project in Turkey.

And to that date one of my favourite ones. The film is a nightmarish trip of a group of cops into hell, and it contains a lot of surreal imagery.

Director Can Evrenol and DP Alp Korfali experimented a lot and selected a very wild colour palette for the film. That gave me lots of possibilities to play around. I took inspiration from famous Italian horror masters of the 1970s and 1980s, like Lucio Fulci or Dario Argento, and tried to find a contemporary version of that colourful and gritty look.

At our first meeting Can realised that I am a true horror fan. From that day he gave me an incredible amount of freedom. I put special attention to the texture of the movie, working with the Diffusion and Grain operators in Baselight.

What I love about Can is that he is so openminded. One anecdote: probably the most memorable cut in Baskin is when the minibus full of cops is driving along a road and passing the camera. In the next cut the frame is upside down, as if they are passing over to another dimension. Originally it was not intended like this, but a Flip/Flop got automatically applied twice within Baselight by accident. When I saw that cut, I instantly fell in love with it and showed it to Can. He also liked it and it ended up in the movie as well as in the trailer.

39

MAKING THE GRADE

For those who enjoyed Baskin: I just finished my work on Can’s second feature film Housewife.

It has very iconic imagery and is shot in the English language.

How do your clients like the work you can do with Baselight?

With Baselight, I feel kind of limitless and incredibly confident. Although they usually have no deep knowledge about the technical details, the clients can sense how the colourist feels about his tools. And that makes them more confident as well.

Some clients come into the grading session with headaches about particular shots or scenes.

Often the shooting conditions were not optimal, for example. With Baselight I can offer them solutions very fast and reassure them that their project will look great.

How do you keep current with emerging technologies?

I think you never should stop learning. Otherwise life gets boring. Additionally I teach regularly, which intensifies knowledge.

Besides that, I try to visit tradeshows like IBC in Amsterdam, and keep a close relationship with FilmLight, who are great educators, and have a regular exchange with people smarter than me.

Would you say you are a ‘technical’ colourist or would you rather prioritise instincts?

For the creative part I tend to trust my gut feeling and listen very carefully to the customer. Technical knowledge helps you to find solutions when your instincts are telling you that something is not right. Additionally it makes you push boundaries and helps navigate around or find efficient solutions to problems.

I have a strong technical background, and I think that it is getting more and more important for colourists nowadays. But when I am in the tunnel working on a series of shots, I am driven mostly by instincts and very rarely check the scopes, for example.

Just recently you wrote a review on Baselight 5.0’s Base Grade. Is it a tool you’d recommend?

It’s big news. It feels like they just released a new season of the show about colour grading and colourists should not miss it!

Base Grade is a more natural approach to grading and a high precision tool to sculpt the gradation of images. I’d recommend everyone to read the full article - Click here How do you approach grading projects when we now see such a diverse range of delivery requirements?

First, I work in a scene-referred colour space.

That broadens the possibilities for the output.

Second, I try to be aware of the different outputs while grading. So I might put a slight gamut compression into my grade, for example.

Lastly, I trust Truelight Colour Spaces, which is built on scientific research. I don’t think that I can do the conversions to different output colour spaces better than the smartest colour scientists. When I check the different outputs I am doing just minor trims, colour-wise. But the image-texture still needs manual adjustments.

Where do you find inspiration?

Just by living. Istanbul is the most inspiring city that I have ever experienced. Here you can find 2000-year-old buildings from the Roman Empire as well as modern skyscrapers.

Western and oriental cultures mixed together.

Such a diversity of textures, sounds, odours and colours. And everything is changing so rapidly. The city has an enormous energy.

Apart from that I try to immerse myself in all kinds of visuals. Paintings, photography, movies and so forth.

What do you do to de-stress from it all?

Having a walk or a run along the Bosphorus from time to time. And as weird as it sounds, after a long day at work I can relax reallyGlobal well while watching movies at home.

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40 WHITE PAPER

July/August 2017

Worldwide service made easy

Mobile Viewpoint collaborated with the BBC News to create a mobile app for broadcast contribution. Here’s how they did it.

B

roadcast contribution is the technical term to describe the process of sending broadcast feeds from a remote location to a television studio or master control room. Over the years this has given companies an unprecedented level of creative freedom in the way they choose to deliver live content to audiences.

While broadcast contribution itself is not a new technology, the emergence of faster and more accessible internet bandwidth has created IP-based live broadcast contribution, which has allowed broadcasters to use contribution more frequently and creatively. As a result, IP-based live broadcast contribution has become important in attracting larger audiences and keeping them engaged over longer periods of time.

CONTRIBUTION IN THE NEWS Of all its possible use cases, it is within journalism and news reporting where broadcast contribution technology reveals its full potential. With news organisations facing increased competition,

many have found broadcast contribution to be an effective way of creating distinctive content.

Having a journalist on location adds an extra dimension to reporting.

One organisation that is constantly looking to maximise the potential of broadcast contribution is BBC News. he BBC has been committed to the use of broadcast contribution technology wherever possible, using a range of equipment to broadcast from locations all over the world.

BBC News has benefited from getting to stories quicker and with a simplified workflow — especially when compared to previous solutions.

Before efficient contribution technology, BBC journalists looking to live broadcast a breaking story would first have to call the news desk, which would then call the satellite bookings department to make sure there was an available satellite. Once this was booked, the news desk would call the MCR to ensure there was an available decoder ready to receive the transmitted contribution feed. The process was laborious and time-consuming.

Since then, BBC News has worked with numerous vendors to further build upon its contribution success — particularly within IP — and has a large existing fleet of equipment that allows it to do quality reporting via numerous connections, including baseband, satellite and IP. It also recently announced that its Cardiff HQ will be the first BBC site in the UK to adopt IP across both its production and broadcast operations. In order to cement its position as a contribution leader, however, it required a cost-effective, software and IP-based solution designed specifically to offer flexibility and agility in breaking news situations, with no need to rely on expensive outside broadcast and satellite news gathering trucks to transmit feeds back to Broadcasting House in London.

To champion what it described as ‘first, fleetest and finest’ reporting, BBC News sought to create a custom-built version of Mobile Viewpoint’s Streamur App, which enables instant live broadcast contribution from Apple devices over IP. Having used several Mobile Viewpoint

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solutions since 2012 the two companies already had a long-standing working relationship, and so they set to work on creating a solution that could revolutionise BBC News’ contribution reporting.

THE BBC WMT LIVE APP After months of development between Mobile Viewpoint and the BBC newsgathering operations team, headed up by Morwen Williams, the BBC WMT Live app was born — a bespoke version of Mobile Viewpoint’s existing Streamur app that is designed and developed specifically for use by the BBC and available on iOS and OS X devices, including smartphones, tablets and laptops.

The BBC WMT Live app can be used anywhere in the world where there is an internet connection, and uses similar algorithms to the original WMT Live app to ensure the highest possible video and audio quality. The app was officially rolled out by the BBC in September 2016, and is a natural progression for BBC News; as they move away from a traditional hardwarebased approach to a software-based one.

HOW IT WORKS Despite the unique format of this contribution solution, the technical process in which it records, decodes and transmits signals is surprisingly similar to many hardware-based products. To best understand the process, it is beneficial to visualise the workflow in the context of a real-life use case.

Let’s say a BBC journalist is currently in a city where a major news story has broken. Once the journalist arrives on the scene, they can open the app on their smartphone, go into the settings to ensure the feed will be sent to the correct decoder output and hit the ‘record’ button to go live.

At this point, the feed from the BBC WMT Live app is sent via an IP connection to the MCR at Broadcasting House, which houses a pool of WMT servers. The incoming and outgoing servers are all monitored and controlled by Mobile Viewpoint’s LinkMatrix management software, which gives operators the power to determine where each feed is delivered. If the feed is to be broadcast live on television, it is sent to any number of decoder outputs at key BBC sites around the world. Alternatively, if the feed is not destined for television, it can be live-streamed exclusively on the BBC Online website or across various social media channels via the LinkMatrix software. The app transforms what used to be a complex process into something simple, providing a more agile way of reporting on breaking stories while also enabling simultaneous cross-platform broadcasts.

Another advantage of the BBC WMT Live solution is that it can be ‘pushed’ to a journalist’s

WHITE PAPER device no matter where they are via the BBC’s mobile device management (MDM). If a reporter finds themselves near a breaking story but without the app, an operator inside Broadcasting House can use the MDM to transfer the app overthe-air to their device and help them prepare for broadcast within a matter of minutes.

INTO ACTION Despite having only been officially rolled out in September 2016, the BBC WMT Live app has already been used to report live from all over the world on some of BBC News’ most popular programmes. It was a vital tool for several journalists covering the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election and Theresa May’s visit to India in November 2016, and it has also been used extensively to report live on the ongoing conflict in Syria.

Itt iss almostt guarantteed that we’lll see e major glob bal broadcasterrs and ne ews outle etss adoptiing app--based so olution ns In one case last year, the app was also used to broadcast live to the 10 O’Clock News — the BBC’s most popular daily news programme.

The journalist, who flew from Rome to Kos to report on the story of Ben Needham, needed to go live as soon as possible but did not have the app installed on their phone, so it was enabled on their phone and instructions on how to use it were provided on a call. Within minutes, the journalist was broadcasting live from a remote island to millions of television viewers back in the UK, using just a smartphone and a public internet connection.

PROMISE FOR THE FUTURE The most obvious advantage that can be achieved through the BBC WMT Live app is, as previously mentioned, the additional levels of speed and agility it affords its journalists. There is suddenly far less to consider from a logistical point of view: OB and SNG trucks are not required due to the IP-based solution, and the BBC news desk doesn’t need to worry about which journalists have the app and which ones don’t. As long as there is a journalist near the heart of the story with their Apple device readily available, BBC News can be confident in its ability to have a live broadcast up-and-running with minimal preparation time. The usefulness of a solution like this in breaking news situations should never be underestimated.

This new app-based solution has allowed BBC News to move from a ‘planned live workflow’ to an ‘offered live workflow’. By using an intuitive management platform to control the inputs

41

and outputs of every contribution feed, it can be far more flexible and is better positioned to accommodate any unexpected or unplanned broadcasts that might present themselves during breaking news situations.

Secondly, thanks to the algorithms integrated into the app, the video and audio quality is of a professional broadcasting standard. Even when using the app to broadcast from the other side of the world directly to the 10 O’Clock News, viewers at home are often unable to tell that they’re watching footage transmitted via smartphone.

Through close collaboration, the two companies have created a bespoke app-based solution tailored to BBC News’ specific working requirements, as opposed to having to work around a standard, pre-existing solution. This means it has instantaneous access to all the features it requires, and the ongoing working relationship means that further customisation is possible going forward.

Finally, and perhaps more significantly, the app is a cost-effective solution for the BBC. Previous contribution solutions involved booking satellites, renting and maintaining trucks, paying for the transport of numerous staff members and all their equipment, and all the other associated costs.

With the BBC WMT Live app, the only expenses are the costs for transport of two people and the IP network data usage, which is often minimal for short news broadcasts.

THE RO TO 5G With several benefits wrapped up into a tidy, portable package, apps such as the BBC WMT Live solution are going to shape the future of IP-based broadcast contribution technology.

Other UK broadcasters have already created similar apps in a bid to bolster their own contribution efforts.

Of course, solutions such as this simply wouldn’t be possible without the availability of fast and reliable 4G and 5G connections, and so the future of app-based IP contribution technology largely depends upon the continued investment and improvement in these publicly available networks. Providing that more money continues to go into improving the coverage and speed of 3G, 4G and 5G connections, it is almost guaranteed that we’ll see major global broadcasters and news outlets adopting app-based solutions on a wider scale.

BBC and Mobile Viewpoint will continue to work closely together to tweak the BBC WMT Live app and ensure it remains a future-proofed solution. This will involve taking on-board the feedback of the BBC itself as well as the BBC journalists that are actually out on location using the app on a day-to-day basis.

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TVBEurope will act in the capacity of an independent facilitator and moderator Topics of discussion to be set by the client or in collaboration with TVBEurope Can take the form of either a Powerpoint presentation or a webcast Unlike a 1-2-1 conference it is not restricted by geographical or temporal factors Live Q&A session to encourage dialogue Ideal for lead generation Ongoing promotion following the webinar’s transmission

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5 x e-blasts Advertisement on each of the three sites: TVBEurope, TV Technology Europe, and NewBay Connect Advertisement included on multiple newsletters sent across the three databases All generated leads to be shared with the client Follow up correspondence/reminders to all non-attended registrations Permanent hosting on each of the three sites

COntact details Sales Manager Peter McCarthy +44 (0) 207 354 6025 pmccarthy@nbmedia.com

Account Manager Richard Carr +44(0) 20 7354 6000 rcarr@nbmedia.com

US Account Manager Michael Mitchell +1 631 673 0072 mjmitchell@broadcast-media.tv