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Transcript of TVBE October 2014 digital edition
www.tvbeurope.com
October 2014Business, insight and intelligence for the broadcast media industry
Satellite focusIBC Best of Show
Avid CEO, Louis Hernandez Jnr
NOW HEAR THISInside broadcast audio
Imagine where you could take your business...if technology didn’t stand in your way.
An all-new blueprint for managing, moving and monetizing video content is here.
an evolutionary path that aligns current investments with the network of the future.
Find out more. imaginecommunications.com© 2014 Imagine Communications
TVBEurope 3October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Welcome to the October issue of
TVBEurope: our diffi cult second album.
Edition two of a wholesale redesign
can often feel like that, but I’m happy to report
that all systems have very much been ‘go’ since
our return from Amsterdam, and we have another
cracking issue lined up for you.
I’ll start with Amsterdam, and
IBC. Being my fi rst experience of
the show, I arrived with a huge
amount of anticipation, and what I
discovered to be a hugely optimistic
meeting schedule — you can tell a
rookie by his limp, you know.
There were plenty of themes
and discussions emanating from
the halls of the RAI complex. While
some lamented the ‘silo mentality’
that exists in addressing global
industry challenges, others talked
of the need for leadership, and the current
lack of senior fi gures putting their heads above
the parapet. But if there was one thing that
struck me at IBC this year, it is the sense that the
component parts of this broadening industry
appear to be pulling in the same direction, and
working to a common goal: evolution. Without
joining the bandwagon-chorus of ‘evolution, not
revolution’ championed by some, it is impossible
to ignore the growing appetite of the industry
to embrace change as progress, rather than
interruption (‘disruption, not interruption’ — for
the buzz-phrase enthusiast).
Onto this issue, and our Audio for Broadcast
feature. It doesn’t take much twisting of the
arm to get me over to Abbey Road Studios,
being a songwriter from a family
of Merseysiders. My recent visit
took me behind the scenes of an
Audio Network recording session,
as the company continues to build
its impressive repository of music
for fi lm and TV. The engaging
Andrew Sunnucks, its co-founder,
offers an energetic account of
the company’s work, and the new
breed of composers it has taken
under its wing.
I also speak at length to Louis
Hernandez, Avid’s CEO, as we delve
inside the chief executive offi ce, while we showcase
this year’s IBC Best of Show winners, examine the
latest in IP technology in our forum, and assess how
the UK has fared in making October’s fi le-based
delivery deadline. It really has been an immensely
enjoyable issue to put together.
I look forward to seeing you at the TVBAwards
on the 23rd of this month.
James McKeownExecutive Editor
IBC buzz-phrases and Abbey Road, tenuously linked by (vandalised) Beatles lyrics
WelcomeEDITORIALExecutive Editor - James [email protected] - Melanie [email protected] Writer - Holly [email protected] Media, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN, England +44 207 354 6002Contributors Mike Clark, Chris Forrester, David Fox, Mark Hill, Dick Hobbs, John Ive, George Jarrett, Heather McLean, Adrian Pennington, Philip Stevens, Reinhard E WagnerHead of Digital - Tim FrostOffi ce Manager - Lianne DaveyHead of Design & Production - Adam ButlerEditorial Production Manager - Dawn Boultwood
Senior Production Executive - Alistair TaylorPublisher - Steve [email protected]+44 207 354 6000Sales Manager - Ben [email protected]+44 207 354 6000Sales Executive - Richard [email protected]+44 207 354 6000Managing Director - Mark BurtonUS Sales - Michael MitchellBroadcast Media International, PO Box 44, Greenlawn, New York, NY [email protected]+1 (631) 673 0072Japan and Korea Sales - Sho HariharaSales & Project, Yukari Media [email protected]+81 6 4790 2222 Fax: +81 6 4793 0800CirculationNewBay Media, Sovereign Park, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough, LE16 9EF, UK
Free [email protected] Tel +44 1580 883848
TVBEurope is published 12 times a year by NewBay Media, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London, N1 8LN, England
NewBay Media is a member of the Periodical Publishers Association
© NewBay Media 2014. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owners. TVBEurope is mailed to qualifi ed persons residing on the European continent. Subscription is free.
Allow 8 weeks for new subscriptions and change of address delivery. Send subscription inquiries to: Subscription Dept, NewBay Media, Sovereign Park, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough LE16 7BR, England. ISSN 1461-4197
Printing by Pensord Press, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood NP12 2YA
You say you want an evolution…
In this issue4 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Chris Forrester reports from IBC2014 where the satellite industry’s readiness to tap into 4K/UHD was evident from the many demonstrations witnessed in the prestigious Hall 1
Audio for Broadcast5222
6-10 Opinion & Analysis
TVBEurope’s parent company, NewBay Media, carried out its fi rst ever Best of Show awards programme for IBC in Amsterdam this year. Here, we celebrate the winning entries
37-41 IBC Best of Show Winners
58-63 IP Technology Forum
New research from GfK shows that while second screening is becoming commonplace, most people use the second screen for very separate activities
64-66 Data CentreFeature
44James McKeown speaks to Avid CEO, Louis Hernandez Jr, about the challenges of driving strategy in today’s market, and how his entrepreneurial spirit is helping to shape the company’s future
Our cover feature this month looks into the world of broadcast audio, where we learn more about the art of audio fi xing, talk to Harman’s Andy Stott about the company’s culture of innovation, and drop in on a recent Audio Network recording session at Abbey Road
14Coronation Street ’s production team delivers an even higher quality drama with a new workfl ow while still meeting the time demands of producing fi ve episodes a week. Adrian Pennington reports
12-20 Workfl ow
Satellite Focus
Simen Frostad, chairman of Bridge Technologies, analyses the technical issues surrounding the future of OTT
Philip Stevens moderates this month’s Forum which addresses the issues and challenges relating to internet protocol (IP) technology
Untitled-1 1 09/10/2014 17:03
Opinion & Analysis6 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Over 50 per cent of the global population
will have internet access within three
years’ time, with mobile broadband over
smartphones and tablets now the fastest growing
technology in human history, according to the
2014 edition of the State of Broadband report.
The report reveals that more than 40 per cent
of the global population are already online, with
the number of internet users rising from 2.3 billion
in 2013 to 2.9 billion by the end of this year.
More than 2.3 billion people will access mobile
broadband by the end of 2014, climbing steeply
to a predicted 7.6 billion within the next fi ve
years. There are now over three times as many
mobile broadband connections as there are
conventional fi xed broadband subscriptions. The
popularity of broadband-enabled social media
applications continues to soar, with 1.9 billion
people now active on social networks.
In total, there are now 77 countries where over
50 per cent of the population is online, up from
70 in 2013. The top ten countries for internet use
are all located in Europe, with Iceland ranked fi rst
in the world with 96.5 per cent of people online.
A TV Everywhere futureImagine Communications has unveiled its vision
for enabling communications service providers to
gain a strategic advantage in offering over-the-
top (OTT) video and IPTV services. It is claimed
to be the only company in the industry with an
end-to-end TV Everywhere solution — from media
ingest to advanced advertising, subscriber billing
and multiscreen CDN.
“TV Everywhere is a game changer for
communications service providers around the
world who are looking to offer their customers
new services that increase loyalty and drive
revenue,” said Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine
Communications. “Driven by our vision of leading
media companies to a future that is defi ned by
IP, software-defi ned workfl ows and the cloud,
we offer customers an unprecedented degree
of fl exibility and scalability that allows them to
introduce new TV Everywhere technology and
customised services with ease.”
Content Everywhere round up
Melanie Dayasena-Lowe rounds up the latest Content Everywhere news, including global internet access, TV Everywhere and 4K TV shipments
MVPDs, in particular communications service
p roviders, are under severe pressure to provide
video content to the multiscreen world, and
they often must acquire technologies from
many vendors to establish a complete TV
Everywhere offering.
More 4K UHD TV sets shipped in Q2 2014 than the whole of 2013This year, 2.1 million 4K UHD TV sets were shipped
in Q2, compared to 1.6 million in 2013, according
to the NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly Global
TV Shipment and Forecast Report. Brands
introduced their 2014 model ranges in Q2, with a
clear focus on 4K as the ‘must-have’ consumer
feature for high-end television viewing.
With the introduction of the 2014 models, the
shipment balance by region has shifted. In 2013
China accounted for approximately 80 per cent
of shipments in each quarter, as Chinese brands
introduced low-priced 4K TVs. However, in China
there were few sources of 4K UHD content, and
TV brands were largely marketing the higher pixel
count to consumers. New 4K TV models from
global brands have been introduced in every
region this year, and there has been a recent
increase in 4K UHD content available
from streaming providers.
A result of the regional shift is that China’s
share of 4K TV shipments dipped to 60 per
cent, though as supply chains are fi lled there
is likely to be some over-shipment relative to
demand outside the Chinese market. “New 4K
TV model introductions have broadened the
4K TV business, which has become a lot like
the high-end TV market, in general,” said Paul
Gray, director of European research for NPD
DisplaySearch. “Even so, there needs to be
greater implementation of broadcast
offerings that deepen the value of 4K sets
beyond pixel counts.”
Charlie Vogt
Opinion & Analysis8 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
It has been a summer laden with change and
development at TVBEurope, and the onset of
autumn brings with it one of the most exciting
and anticipated areas of our development to
date. As you are likely to be aware, 23 October
sees the launch of the first ever TVBAwards; a
brand new event dedicated to the recognition
of achievement, excellence, and endeavour in
the broadcast media industry.
The awards recognise talent from across
the industry, covering Capture, Delivery and
Workflow categories, as well as Special Awards
for achievement in Outstanding Broadcast,
Marketing, and Sustainability. The night’s most
prestigious accolade, the Lifetime
Achievement Award, will be presented to
Dr David Wood, former deputy technical
director of the EBU.
Wood spoke to TVBEurope ahead of the event
and discussed his long and illustrious career,
which began at the BBC as a graduate trainee,
from where he quickly progressed to roles at
the IBA and the EBU. He pinpoints “being part
of the ‘drivers’ cab’ in the three stages of
digital television standards” as one of his career
highlights, as well as “being in at the beginning of
the DVB project in 1993.” Attendees to the Awards
will no doubt discover the depth of Wood’s
experience, and his outlook on the future of
broadcast (you can read the full length interview
with Dr Wood on pages 50 to 51).
Nominated projects have all been completed
over the last year, and are divided into four
fields. Capture comprises three awards: Beyond
HD Achievement, Achievement in Sports
Broadcast, and Achievement in VFX. These
are designed to honour expertise in image
and content creation, and nominees include
projects as varied as The Match at Mission Hills
(U.COM Media), War Horse live in 4K (NT Live
and Sony), and Peaky Blinders (Bluebolt).
The Delivery awards celebrate Achievement in
Fast Turnaround Broadcast, Legacy Content and
Multiplatform Content. Elemental Technologies
boasts a double entry in the category, with its work
for the BBC World Cup live streaming nominated
for two awards. The category also looks back to
historical broadcast gems, with the Achievement
in Legacy Content nominees including projects
on World War I (Russia Television and Radio/FERC
Sovtelexport) and a fatal Everest ascent in the
1920s (BFI National Archive/Deluxe Digital).
Post Production, Sound and Systems Integration
make up the Workflow awards. The teams behind
TV hits Sherlock, The X Factor, Happy Valley, and
Later…with Jools Holland are all in with a chance
of scooping the Achievement in Sound award,
while major projects like ITV Studios’ Production
modernisation (Nativ) and “the world’s largest TV
catch up service for UK education” (Cambridge
Imaging Systems), make up the Systems
Integration nominees.
Tickets are still available and include a drinks
reception on arrival, dinner, awards presentation
and after party. The black tie event celebrates
the successes of known industry colleagues,
coupled with a chance to network with
emerging creative talent.
The inaugural TVBAwardsA celebration of industry excellence
Holly Ashford introduces TVBEurope’s inaugural awards ceremony, created to recognise excellence and achievement in the broadcast media sector
OTT was a big theme at this year’s IBC,
as was 4K/UHD. Consider OTT in the
light of 4K and you get some interesting
perspectives on the dynamics driving the current
development of the market and the possible
future shape of it.
While the drive towards 4K has an obvious
pay-off for certain vendors such as manufacturers
of TV sets, who will see a higher margin on
every 4K screen they can shift, a difference of
approach between pure OTT service providers
and broadcasters shows that the opportunity OTT
presents is not the same for everyone.
For broadcasters delivering their main,
revenue-earning service to subscribers’ 1080p
television screens, OTT services tend to be seen
as an extra that they offer to allow the same
content to be viewed on tablets and phones.
The screen resolution of these devices is always
rising, but much of their current HD content is
streamed at no more than 720p by broadcasters.
For out-and-out OTT providers, streaming
at higher quality than this is an important way
to differentiate their services. So while lower
resolutions are still necessary for viewing on
mobile devices, OTT providers such as Netflix
have a big incentive to stream the highest
quality to smart TVs, and embrace 4K early.
Younger appealOTT may be a forum for cutting-edge
technology development for some, and a way
of protecting existing revenue sources for others.
But demographical factors are determining
market developments too. Cord-cutting, and the
preference of younger audiences for OTT TV, which
fits an ‘anywhere, any time’ consumption pattern,
are factors that can’t be ignored. The introduction
of hybrids of OTT and live TV services allows
broadcasters to take a more agile approach in this
fluid marketplace, adding or expanding services
at a much lower cost than was previously possible,
and offering something to both the younger OTT-
oriented audience, and those who prefer linear TV.
Whatever the market imperatives are, there
remain plenty of technical issues for OTT service
providers. Security of content over the public
internet, and how to provide service quality at a
TV-equivalent level are two of these issues.
A question of formatsOne of the more concrete technical issues for
the future of OTT is the question of formats. The
range of viewing devices that an OTT operator
has to support is a source of complexity.
In addition to encoding content for SD and HD
TV, a broadcaster adding OTT services has to
prepare the content for a combination of HLS,
Smooth Streaming, and HDS. These adaptive
streaming technologies share common features
but are not identical, and as usual when there
are competing formats, there is uncertainty
about which horse to back. Having to cater
for multiple formats increases the costs and
complexity of establishing and operating services
in what is still a fluid and evolving arena.
The simplification offered by adopting MPEG-
DASH as a common format would remove
some of these obstacles, and accelerate the
development of the OTT market. In theory, a
common format supported by all devices would
lower the cost of establishing new services and
make entry into the OTT market easier. But MPEG-
DASH is still unproven, still evolving, and it’s not
clear yet whether it will become the standard.
But MPEG-DASH is codec agnostic, and while
the vast majority of video is currently encoded
as H.264 this does mean that DASH is ready
for UltraHD with H.265/HEVC and hyper-bitrate
codecs when they are needed.
Interest in 4K over DASH may not have been
a top priority for those broadcasters surveyed,
yet the inclusion of support for services beyond
HD in the DASH standard is important, especially
since 4K is more of a differentiator for some OTT
providers than for others.
Opinion & Analysis10 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
What does 4K mean for OTT providers?
Simen Frostad, chairman of Bridge Technologies, analyses the technical issues surrounding the future of OTT
Workflow12 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa (KNR) is the
national public broadcasting corporation
of Greenland, based in the country’s
capital city, Nuuk. This independent state-owned
corporation is responsible for broadcasting both
radio and TV programmes. On the television side,
about 700 hours of programmes are transmitted in
the Greenlandic language (Kalaallisut) each year.
KNR’s news departments in Nuuk, North
Greenland, South Greenland and Copenhagen
deliver news to the whole of Greenland in both
Greenlandic and Danish. “Broadcasting in
Greenland is a big challenge,” explains Jan
Berg, KNR’s head of TV and deputy director.
“KNR is a small public service station with around
90 employees and a yearly budget of DKK 67
million. That is not much to cover as great a country
as Greenland. The distances are huge and
it is very expensive to travel since there is no
road to connect the cities.”
Greenland, which has a population of about
56,000, is the least densely populated country in
the world. Despite the huge area, KNR radio and
TV broadcasts reach each home.
“The government of Greenland also utilises the
broadcast station services to further unify and
connect the dispersed population, as well as to
promulgate the Greenlandic language,” states Berg.
Apart from the studio facility in Nuuk, KNR operates
remote area offices which feed local stories and
news via the internet. In addition, some larger towns
have live feeds using Streambox encoders.
Health issuesThe KNR broadcast operation was set up
in 1958 in a building originally designed as
a heliport for Air Greenland.
Green issues in GreenlandEnvironmental considerations forced Greenland’s public broadcaster to relocate. Philip Stevens discovered what was involved in the move
The new KNR continuity playout centre in Greenland
TVBE Oct P12-13 GreenlandMDLHAJMcK.indd 12 14/10/2014 15:48
TVBEurope 13October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Workflow
However, the combination of a building with an
extensive steel construction and the extreme
temperatures experienced in Nuuk, led to
condensation and water drip problems. Over
the long-term these created a build-up of
unhealthy mildew and fungus, and meant that
relocation was essential.
In September 2013, Danmon Systems Group was
invited to visit KNR Greenland and consult on the
relocation project. The move involved the entire TV
and radio broadcast operation and 100 staff.
Defined goalsDanmon Systems Group project manager Jack
Pfeiffer takes up the story. “The project goals and
ambitions were well defined. First, to ensure KNR
remained on-air during the move. Secondly, to
move the radio and TV station in an efficient and
cost effective manner. Lastly, to accommodate a
future plan that may see KNR move again to
a new purpose-built facility in the coming
three to four years.”
Pfeiffer explains that the first requirement —
staying on-air — provided the biggest challenge.
“It was essential that the move, rewiring and post
installation tests be performed without interrupting
the normal daily schedule of live broadcasts.
In close partnership with KNR, we were able to
agree a work schedule which ensured that the
network was able to maintain full-time on-air
status. Despite the complexity of the operation, a
closely monitored build schedule was achieved
over nine weeks in two phases.”
Phase one embraced the relocation of the
radio studios, including three Studer On-Air 3000
desks, and installation of a new Ross digital audio
router for transmission.
“Phase Two centred on moving the existing
television facility, with its 20x20m, two set
studio, gallery, audio production control rooms,
continuity playout master control room, plus the
entire equipment room with 16 racks. All needed
to be moved to the newly refurbished building.”
The original studio control room included
four PCs, five Sony CCUs, and four Avitech
multiviewers that generated a considerable
amount of heat and noise. It was decided that
these should be moved into the CAR, with KVM
extenders for the PCs and DVI optical extenders
for the multiviewers.
The original time plan was optimistically
scheduled for completion by the end of 2013.
However, due to construction delays and
scheduling needs, work was finished in May 2014.
The five existing Sony DXC-55 studio cameras
with their Vinten pedestals and Sachtler tripods,
together with Panasonic ENG P2 cameras were
retained for the relocation.
Other equipment that made the move
includes a PESA Cougar SDI-AES Router, a
Soundcraft Series Five audio mixer, Chyron
Duet and Title One graphics systems and
the RTS Zeus Intercom with user panels
and Telex BTR700 wireless.
Looking to the Arctic GamesWhat are the future plans for KNR? “I’m afraid
the details are confidential,” declares Berg. “But
what I can say is that, of course, they do include
migration to a tapeless workflow and possible
support for HDTV broadcast. Our future projects
include expanding our services, as well as
supporting the 2016 Arctic Winter Games which
will be hosted in Greenland.”
The new continuity suite utilises a Dalet TV Playout System
ITV Studios’ move to a new northern
production base at Salford’s MediaCity
at the beginning of the year afforded the
opportunity to quietly revolutionise the post
workfl ow and on-screen production values of
fl agship soap opera Coronation Street.
The show had been post produced for some
time by 360 Media, the BBC and ITV joint venture
facility based, with ITV, out of Manchester’s central
Quay Street. But like the warren of production
offi ces there, Corrie’s production had outgrown its
resources and was in need of a revamp.
“Every Monday for 50 weeks we start a new
block of fi ve episodes, producing 260 episodes
a year,” explains Robbie Sandison, head of
production. “There is always media going
through. The more time we can spend producing
the programme as opposed
to making it work in post,
the more quality we can
show on screen.”
With the soap transmitted
fi ve times a week, the
production team is creating
the equivalent of a full-length
feature fi lm every week. The new location which is
built solely to cater for the Street (and is separate
to ITV Studios’ offi ces on the other side of the dock
adjacent to the BBC) includes external streets,
practical sets and studio space, together with all
the post production required to deliver completed
programmes on a fast turnaround.
“This building has given us a new lease
of life,” says Dave Williams, post production
manager. In designing the equipment spec and
workfl ow layout specifi cally suited to the needs
of the Street, the team’s goal was to increase
production values and to boost the effi ciency of
the technical workfl ow through to post.
One way of achieving both was to enhance
the colour correction process, which was
limited at Quay Street.
“We could only grade the location material,
not the studio material, because of the available
kit and the costs
associated with grading
the whole show,”
explains Williams.
“Previously, we were
exporting QuickTime
out of Avid, popping an
entire episode into the
Baselight One to grade,
and exporting it back
to Avid again. Each
round trip took an
hour or more.”
The new set-up features
the Baselight with Slate control surface but has
equipped fi ve of the production’s edit suites with
Baselight Editions, a software plugin that features
a familiar Baselight GUI and enables online
editors to manipulate the grading toolset
directly inside Avid.
Each clip is identifi ed with shot take, scene
and camera information which is fed through
to production. Script information is assembled
in Adobe Story.
HD camera outputs as AVC Intra 100 fi les are
immediately loaded onto an 80TB Avid ISIS 5000
shared storage system. From there, lead colourist
Stephen Edwards performs a master grade but
can do so without having to render a single
frame. Grading information is passed to the edit
suites as metadata in the AAF fi les, including
tracking information, windows and keyframes.
The colour correction is live, not burned in.
Instead, the grade is stored as metadata. By
working on the same media in its native format,
metadata exchanges between the grading
and editing suites are not only very fast but
there is no loss of quality through rendering or
fi le conversion. Editors can make changes to the
grade – such as extending scenes – if necessary,
and also the lead colourist can pull edited shots
(and their adjusted grades) back into Baselight
to make further changes in the master suite.
“They don’t have that much time to grade,”
explains Marty Tlaskal of FilmLight. “They may
use a couple of layers or a vignette to isolate
the action, put in an ellipse or blur someone out.
Workfl ow14 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
A new lease of life
Stephen Edwards: “We’re not trying to change the look of the show but we did need to balance it”
Coronation Street’s production team delivers even higher quality drama with a new workfl ow while still meeting the demands of producing fi ve episodes a week. Adrian Pennington reports
Corrie’s production had outgrown its resources and was in need of a revamp
The beauty of it is they can do it in an Avid and
everything is changeable. If a scene is too blurred
or not blurred enough – or the lighting director
wants to change it – then anything in colour
correction can be changed at any point. The
online editors don’t have to ring up grading as
they can do it themselves.”
AuthenticityThere was a perhaps unforeseen element to the
move which would ordinarily have impacted the
grade were it not for the more efficient workflow.
Although the sun rises in exactly the same place
in reference to the set’s geography as it does in
Quay Street, the lot is bigger, the street is wider
and therefore the shadows fall differently. Also,
the street simply wasn’t dirty enough.
“Although we’ve added dirt such as algae to
the buildings and added litter to the cobbles,
the set does reflect the light more than we
anticipated,” says Sandison. “It’s important to
be able to either fix this quickly in the grade
to match scenes that are usually shot out of
sequence (on different days), or to inform the
lighting director to maybe move the position of
the camera on set when they do pick-ups.”
“We’re not trying to change the look of the show
but we did need to balance it,” stresses Edwards.
“Between interior and exterior shots you could get
big jars caused by shadows or clouds.
“If we make it too desaturated, then people
will notice. We can make a block maybe darker
or moodier in keeping with a storyline and there
is scope for a director to want something more
silhouetted, for example. But the overall look to
the show is that it has a warmth (attributed in
part to the Ikegami studio cameras). It’s hard to
put a house style down because you don’t want
to lock-off a lot of artistic endeavour. But you do
want a look that invites people in.”
It was important that the file-based operation
maintain its use of AVC Intra as the codec from
capture through to DPP delivery, avoiding
transcodes as far as possible. Vidchecker is used for
automatic quality control and AmberFin to process
the DPP compliant delivery files. Until the final file
creation, production uses the same shared media.
This makes the process of approvals by
production executives much quicker too. Should
any changes be requested, the workflow is agile
enough now to be able to deal with it and save
everyone a lot of time.
Location rushes are currently captured onto
P2 media although this is shortly to be replaced
with studio cameras recording direct to a
gallery via AirSpeeds.
“The P2 adds a chalk and slate approach
to metadata, so moving to a gallery gives us
a chance to straighten out that part of the
workflow,” says Williams.
“What Corrie does well is try and push the
production values as high as possible bearing in
mind we’re delivering a show almost daily.”
TVBEurope 15October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Workflow
“With the drama transmitted five times a week, the production team are creating
the equivalent of a full-length feature film every week”
ITV Studios moved to a new northern production base at Salford’s
MediaCity at the start of 2014
TVBEurope 17October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Workfl ow
When Simon Robinson and Bruno Nicoletti
founded software company, The
Foundry, in 1996, the original intention
was to build a business employing no more
than six personnel. Today, the count is around
300, with staff split between the Soho, London,
headquarters, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley-
based offi ces and various other remote locations
around the world. “We are a software company
providing software tools for creative media people.
Media is pretty well a global activity, so we have
support teams wherever customers are using our
products,” explains Robinson.
As well as being a co-founder, Robinson
carries the title of chief scientist. “Starting a
company means you have the opportunity to
choose your title – and I felt chief scientist fi tted
my job description.”
He explains that the research team is mostly
made up of scientifi c people with PhDs, so his
own job title as the head of that group in the
early days was quite appropriate.
From the outset, the company produced plugins
for the Flame system, then made by Discreet
Logic. “At the time, the concept that you could
use software-based systems instead of bespoke
hardware was quite magical. And for us, the idea
of third-parties producing plugins and add-ons was
one of the motivations for starting the company.”
Although a great deal of the initial work
centred on commercials, it soon became obvious
that fi lm and broadcast television productions
could also benefi t from these solutions.
With the ever increasing need for the most up-to-date information to be available for viewers, Philip Stevens talks to a software developer that is meeting those demands
The Foundry fi nds a niche
Just in Time
Simon Robinson: “Developing Just in Time solutions actually helps
with this overall concern for shorter production cycles”
Award-winningIn 2007, The Foundry was presented with a
‘technical Oscar’ – a scientifi c and engineering
award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences – for a suite of plugins called Furnace.
“That led us into the world of motion pictures,
and as a result we took on a product called NUKE.
This comprised cutting-edge compositing tools that
delivered unparalleled speed and functionality in
the market. Soon it became obvious that this was
also a perfect solution for creating high quality
still and moving images not only in fi lm, but also
commercials, television, marketing and advertising
and design, especially where tight deadlines and
managing speed, quality and effi ciency in the
production workfl ow are required.”
The Foundry can now offer software for a whole
range of services from storyboarding through
3D content generation, rendering, visual effects
compositing, 3D painting techniques and fi nishing.
“The technology is moving ever faster and we
have customers come up to us and say ‘we are
doing this or that with our commercial or with our
fi lm, and these are the challenges we are facing
— what can you do to help us?’”
Just in TimeOne of those recent challenges revolves around
creating software that allows ‘Just in Time’
productions, especially commercials, to be
aired with the most up-to-date — even live —
information that will help consumers make a
purchasing decision.
He continues, “Our job is to meet those
demands with tools that are ‘Lego-like’ — which
means they have to be easily re-confi gurable
to make them into pretty well anything the
customers want. And that’s what one of the
customers needed in order to produce a series
of commercials, the content of which would
change according to certain conditions over the
course of an evening.”
The project involved Auckland-based design
and animation company Assembly carrying
out a unique piece of marketing for ASB Bank
in New Zealand. The company used HIERO, The
Foundry’s all-in-one shot management, conform,
edit and review solution, to move offl ine to
online, organise projects and stay on top of
review and versioning at every stage.
“HIERO is an interface that pops up rather
like an editor, on to which you can drag the
current state of the edit. It does all the conform
that allows you to build a fi le structure that
enables the operator to distribute the shots so
that anyone can pick them up and place them
in the appropriate folder. Every time a re-render
is carried out, the HIERO station plays back the
latest state of the edit.”
He continues, “The automated functionality
that cuts out complex manual processes means
that HIERO integrates seamlessly with NUKE and
other production tools to ensure smooth delivery
of collaborative end-to-end projects. It’s a
remarkably simple concept, but there’s a lot
of ‘tech’ underneath it.”
InterestingBlending marketing, animation, and social media,
ASB Bank’s inventive ‘Like Loan’ campaign —
created by Saatchi & Saatchi Auckland — proved
an ambitious project requiring spot-on timing
and precision. It centred on a competition via
Facebook that allowed users to collectively
lower a home loan interest rate and become
eligible to win that rate for a period of one year.
The dropping interest rate was tracked and
integrated into a pre-rendered animation and
then broadcast live in the designated spot.
Robinson explains more, “After creating and
fi nalising the commercials framing animation
with all its moving elements in 3ds Max and
compositing in NUKE, the crew at Assembly set
about building an OpenGL app that rendered
426 frames of additional 3D animation. This was
composited over the pre-rendered material and
then written out to a fi le sequence. This would
be set to happen every 70 seconds, versioning
up each time.”
The challenge for the creative team at
Assembly was to ensure that if the viewer was
watching television while logged into Facebook,
the number of ‘likes’ would be the same. Getting
those fi gures through to the correct spot on the
live screen was the next challenge.
Assembly also had to make sure the correct
motion-blur was on each number and then
animated in the exact ‘count-down’ fashion,
as it played live. HIERO and NUKE were tightly
integrated at the script level to ensure all the
tweaks were carried down the line.
The competition ran during primetime on
10 March, 2014 with the TV commercial appearing
nine times over a four-hour period, each airing
revealing the live results of the moving interest rate.
For each ad insertion into a break, the operators at
Assembly received a count-in from Master Control
at TVNZ, and at the appropriate moment the ‘play’
button on HIERO was pressed and the re-versioned
commercial sent down the transmission chain.
Assembly used a Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K with a
Thunderbolt cable, allowing the playing of an HD SDI
stream with embedded audio straight from HIERO
on the iMac via internal SSD. According to Robinson,
there were no dramas at any stage of the night.
In another example, The Foundry systems were
used to reconfi gure and re-render a commercial
during a sporting occasion in order for it to be
played in different versions during the event.
“There are other examples out there where our
systems are being used in similar circumstances.
In each case, the transmission is triggered by a
new set of parameters within the commercial.
But where our system differs from others is that it
can include changes in the motion content,
not just the overlay of new text.”
The futureRobinson says that developments in this area
are moving on — not just for use in ‘traditional’
broadcasting circles, but also in the ‘alternative’
outlets such as YouTube and Netfl ix.
“Just in Time is an active topic and we will
continue to talk to our customers about future
demands. There are technical hurdles and there
are creative hurdles — but those are what we can
overcome. It is a social thing to react to what is
going on around the viewers, yet maintaining the
complexity of the fi nished product. Developing
Just in Time solutions actually helps with this
overall concern for shorter production cycles and
gives the edge to those clients who wish to take
advantage of this technology.”
TVBEurope 19October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Workfl ow
“There are technical hurdles and there are creative hurdles – but those are
what we can overcome” Simon Robinson,
The Foundry
The more ‘likes’ the rate got throughout the day, the lower it went. Each of the draws generated such a huge social response that all winners gained record-breaking home loan rates and the bank earned many new leads
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Workflow20 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
When content makes money, everyone
involved wants a slice of the pie,
and the majority of an entertainment
lawyer’s time is spent negotiating contracts
specifying how that money will flow and to whom.
In 2007, the Writers Guild of America went on a
100-day strike largely over the issue of the future of
‘new media’ rights and compensation, including
IPTV, streaming and on-demand. While producers
saw no reason to change existing agreements with
the Writers Guild, writers recognised that new digital
media outlets were going to dominate the future
of the industry. The stand-off cost the LA economy
hundreds of millions (some say billions) of dollars.
Fast-forward seven years, and rights
management is more treacherous and byzantine
than anyone could have ever imagined. Rights
issues have always been legally tortuous, but
with global audiences now demanding to
access programming anytime, from anywhere,
broadcasters face an unprecedented challenge
in managing content — from commissioning and
purchasing, to producing and scheduling.
Demand for on-demandCounterpoint Systems has specialised in rights
and royalty management software for over 20
years. The London-based company — with offices
in Los Angeles — began by providing the music
industry with a way to manage royalties, and then
in 1997, it launched software packages for the
larger media and entertainment industries. The
company has built up a formidable expertise in
the shadowy world of content rights and royalties.
“The issue that people are facing,” says Ben
Clasper, Counterpoint’s senior vice president, “is
that consumers’ expectations have outstripped
the broadcaster’s or content owner’s ability
to keep up. The consumer couldn’t care less if
something is a difficult rights model with US shows.
All they want to know is if they miss their favourite
show, can they watch it the next day? Can they
watch it for the next seven days?”
On one side, rights holders are increasingly
particular about how, when and where their
content is shown, while on the other, audiences
are demanding more availability on more screens.
When a viewer’s expectations of accessing an
on-demand programme are thwarted, they
don’t see a complex international rights issue at
work, they only see a broadcaster providing an
unsatisfying service.
Clasper says that the research he has seen
shows that when consumers are denied content
in one outlet, they will find it through another,
whether by accessing it from other territories
through tunnelling or other technical solutions,
buying it through a premium content provider,
or resorting to illegal methods.
Counterpoint often has broadcasters
approaching it for help who have used content in
good faith but have discovered that they’ve used
it in a non-compliant way. More often the issues
are around what the industry terms ‘non-linear
versus linear’ distribution.
“The number one question that people come
to us with is: Can you manage non-linear with
linear? Can you make sure my content gets up
on every platform, not just my traditional linear
playout systems?
“Our clients want to be able to say: ‘This system
will tell our scheduling platform when it can
broadcast the content, and it will also inform our
on-demand platform when it will be available,
and we may even be giving this content to third
parties to put on their site, and that all has to be
done in realtime and has to be ready the minute
the first trigger event happens, on the first time that
content gets released to the consumer.’”
A premium futureClasper believes that premium content will be
the differentiator between content outlets in
the future. “Everyone is going to have the same
channels, everyone will have the same normal
content. It’s going to be what have you got
that’s exclusive.”
Providing this exclusive content will force
companies that previously might have had a very
simple rights problem to become content owners,
which complicates rights issues immeasurably.
“Now you’ve got a far more complex problem,”
Clasper explains, “You’ve got talent, you’ve got
producers. You’ve probably got partners that
you’ve produced that content with, and you
suddenly get a new set of responsibilities in terms
of reporting. So, we’re starting to see companies
get into areas of business that they weren’t in five
to ten years ago.”
Counterpoint also provides forecasting services
to calculate the potential cost for running a piece
of content: “A business needs to be informed
of what that cost of sale is going to be. ‘If I put
this on an on-demand platform in Australia and
make X, what do I have to pay to everyone who
contributed to that content?’”
Beyond the problem solving, it works with
companies to leverage their rights and user activity
data. “There’s no point in putting content out on
14 different platforms if three of them don’t get
any viewers or activity.
“There’s a sort of Holy Grail that we’ve been
working toward that we would love to give our
broadcast clients, and that’s telling them in what
order and how to distribute your content in the
new world and make the most money.”
Know your rightsWith multiple content sources paid for at multiple rates, and played out on multiple screens, the issue of who gets paid what and when has never been more confusing. Neal Romanek spoke with rights software provider, Counterpoint Systems, which helps companies negotiate the content rights swamp
“The issue that people are facing is that consumers’ expectations have outstripped
the broadcaster’s or content owner’s ability to keep up”
Ben Clasper, Counterpoint
Research shows that when consumers are denied content in one outlet, they will find it elsewhere
This isn’t the fi rst time I’ve stood awkwardly in
a corner of Studio One, blushed with goose
bumps, hairs on end. Once, this hallowed
hangar haunted with its emptiness, its silence;
as if I was present at some precious interval of
refl ection on sessions past, and the pregnant
anticipation of those to come.
Today, I am met with a very different, but no less
vertiginous sense of enthrallment. The cavernous
live room of Abbey Road’s main recording
studio is alive with the sweeping strains of the
English Session Orchestra (ESO), whose shivering
adaptation of a brand new work by an unknown
composer is reverberating off every camber,
panel, and parquet fl oor tile of this iconic space.
“You’re recording the room as much as you’re
recording the orchestra,” posits an enthralled
Andrew Sunnucks, as he invites my gaze to inspect
the upper reaches of this vast structure, “the
gods”, as he puts it. “Studio One has that amazing
‘bloom’. It has a 2.4 second reverb, and when
you’ve got mics up there (in the gods), it’s perfect
for recording ‘tutti’ (all together).”
Sunnucks is at home here, which is no surprise
given the frequency with which his company,
Audio Network, is on-premises to utilise the unique
facilities that Abbey Road famously harbours. “We
did 41 days here last year, which probably makes
us Abbey Road’s biggest client,” he offers. “The
advantage of that is that you get to have a direct
relationship with the players.”
The players, in today’s case the ESO, are
handpicked by project, giving the company’s stable
of composers the very best musicians with which to
record their tracks. “It took a long time to get to this
standard of playing and this standard of studio. There
are many great classical players but it’s a different
discipline to have a click track in the ears, their parts
in front of them and then bang! Off you go.”
Indeed, our live room discussion takes place just
after the second run through of a score the ESO
have had barely 20 minutes to acquaint themselves
with. “They’re all amazing – it’s extraordinary,” he
confi des. “Especially with brass players, because
they can get lip issues; you have to work out the
sessions so that they’re not blowing fortissimo semi-
quavers all day long. You can understand that how
you lay the session out is very important.”
The layout of the sessions has many infl uencing
factors, not solely the preservation of the players’
vital organs. Today’s recording has been broken
down into four distinct segments: strings, brass,
woodwind, and percussion. “For the user, this
means we can do different mixes and versions
of the same composition; for instance, we can
have a strings-only version which might have a
completely different usage (to the full version).”
Rather helpfully, the composition being put
through its paces by the ESO as we fi lter back into
the control room is a good example of this. The
score’s youthful composer and conductor, Jody
Jenkins, has brought touches of John Williams —
in his Indiana Jones pomp — and more than a
hint of Maurice Jarre’s Laurence of Arabia to an
orchestration with clear ambitions of accompanying
big screen adventure. But when heard as isolated
components, you can see (and hear) the markedly
different qualities each of the four segments brings,
and how each mix could be utilised for various
different synchronisation projects.
While this in itself is not breaking any new ground,
it does help in understanding the tangible benefi ts
of Audio Network’s mission on both sides of the
supply chain: removing barriers for those licensing
music for fi lm and TV, as well as for those making it.
Uncovering new talentThe latter is one of the most endearing things
about Audio Network, and Sunnucks; the
emphasis on rearing new and undiscovered
talent, and giving them a foothold in an industry
Audio for Broadcast22 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Audio Network’s ensemble cast
Audio Network was born to remove the complexity of licensing high quality music for fi lm and TV by producing an entirely new audio catalogue specifi cally for content makers. In doing so, it has also encouraged a raft of new composers and songwriters into its community, giving them a valuable break into the industry. James McKeown met co-founder Andrew Sunnucks at Abbey Road Studios
Audio Network composer, James Brett, in discussion at an Abbey Road session
TVBEurope 23October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Audio for Broadcast
which is notoriously diffi cult for songwriters and
composers to break into.
“There’s nothing quite like seeing a young
person starting their career, standing in front of an
orchestra hearing their music being played back
to them,” Sunnuck explains. He estimates that
around 30 per cent of the composers currently on
his company’s books do not read music, at least
not with the conventional fl uency of a composer.
“The composers put together detailed demos,
of which we receive around 40 per day, and
we have a process of going through them. For
the less experienced composers who haven’t
worked with an orchestra before, we might bring
in an orchestrator to work with them.
“It’s really important to me that we’re always
bringing new people in,” he continues. “We have
something called ‘Undiscovered’, which is where
people send in a demo, we don’t fi ddle around
with it too much, but we say, ‘it’s a great idea,
but we’re only ever going to take fi ve tracks from
you.’ The idea behind that is that these guys are
published, they get to join the PRS, they get a start,
but we make it very clear from the start that we
won’t be doing more with them.”
Not quite a development deal, but it serves the
dual purpose of giving people a start without
the company becoming oversubscribed, and
bottlenecked. “(Taking on new composers) is
easy to do when you’re growing, but the reality
is that if you’re not growing, then you’re culling
other things to keep people coming in. So, there
are always diffi cult decisions to make.”
Today’s decision has been slightly easier. There
are two of Jenkins’ works on the agenda for the
ESO to commit to tape (or fi le, as is the way these
days). “We started with a really hard one today, to
get them [the players] really wound up. Then we’ll
take it right down. Measuring what they can do is a
really important part of it.”
That measurement applies not just to the
ensemble cast of players singled out for each
project, but also the space in which it is recorded.
“Studio Two (at Abbey Road) is not that much
smaller (than Studio One), but it has a more
workable sound – you can add reverb to it. Then
you’ve got places like Air (Studios) which has a
ceiling that you can bring down and take up, so it
gives you a different acoustic depending on
what you’re doing.”
If a work requires plenty of tracking, spaces like
Angel Studios would be the port of call, he says.
What Audio Network is doing on a regular basis is
ensemble work specifi cally for fi lm and TV, which
Sunnuck believes puts the company in a class of one.
“Because what we do is music for a purpose, there is a danger of thinking that
the performance is of no relevance. Well, it is. The fragility and the imperfections are
the value in a live recording”
Audio for Broadcast24 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
“There is nobody else in the world doing regular,
large ensemble recordings like we are… there’s
just nobody else doing it. And we would know
because we’re using all the best players.”
Those players have moved on to track number
two in the short time we’ve been talking; Sunnuck
impressively interjecting his precise but warmly
delivered directions to Jenkins, and the orchestra.
“Some of the samples are really good now, but
they date,” he adds, as I question whether the
brass guide track underneath is a sample from
Jenkins’ demo. “If you do it right the first time,
you know the recording made today will still be a
great track in 20 years’ time, because it’s real.
“Because what we do is music for a
purpose, there is a danger of thinking that the
performance is of no relevance. Well, it abso-
bloody-lutely is,” he gesticulates passionately.
“The fragility and the imperfections are the value
in a live recording.” The impartial musician in me
couldn’t agree more.
Well stockedSo what’s next on the horizon for Audio Network?
The library is currently stocked with more than
81,000 pieces of audio, and the plans are to
double that. “The main thing is not to replicate
what we’ve already got,” he says.
“Firstly, we look at the metrics to see what is
being used, and why. We do a lot of analysis on
that. But, it has to be a creative business, so we
can’t rely on the metrics too much as you end up
reinventing what you’ve done to recreate that
success. We have to bring an element of surprise;
things that people wouldn’t expect to get from a
standard library.
“We’re doing a focus on international music,”
he continues, “and in that, we’re travelling the
world finding ensembles to record. We’re doing
lots in Nashville, we’ve got guys in India, Australia,
China, and Japan. So it’s a big A&R job to find
the right people, and interesting new material.”
The ensemble is put through its paces
TVBEurope 25October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Audio for Broadcast
On the orchestral side, there are various big
projects in the works, one of which is recording
all of the classical greats. “We’re reworking, for
media, everything from Wagner’s Ride of the
Valkyries onwards – we’re literally starting in 1700
and working our way through to build our own
classical catalogue. A lot of the classical music
you listen to on TV is actually taken from classical
catalogues, which is very dynamic, very difficult to
edit, whereas this will be designed to be used.”
And that’s just at one end of the spectrum. “The
other thing we’re looking at is ‘hybrid’ – the Hans
Zimmer sound where you have electronics with
orchestra. You need to have so many different skills to
bring it all together,” he explains. “The programming
needs to be bang on; it’s a big electronic production
and you’re adding orchestra to it, all of which means
that you need to know how to create space.”
It’s a bold blueprint to achieve the growth
necessary to keep the business moving forward,
but as with everything Sunnucks has described
today, there is an immense amount of thought
and perspective behind it. Audio Network now
has more than 500 composers on its books,
helping to release approximately 12,000 tracks a
year. It records with some of the finest orchestras
and musicians from around the world to create
what it believes is an entirely unique catalogue
of music for content producers.
“There was a time when ‘library music’ was an
egregious term, and something that people didn’t
want to be involved with,” he suggests. “Everything
has changed now, and media music is the way
that most of the top musicians and players have
a realistic opportunity to earn a regular source of
income. A lot of the libraries have been bought by
majors, which have a very P&L-driven approach
where the incentive to use samples, or to use small
ensembles, is very strong. I’ve seen a lot of great
catalogues being bought by majors where the
investment dries up, and then they’re run as cash
cows. I think that’s a very short-term approach.”
Sunnucks concludes that the ‘new approach’
is a strategy built for longevity; to produce a vast
new catalogue of accessible, and affordable
music with the utmost emphasis on quality. That
this strategy is being driven by the compositions
of a pool of largely unearthed, raw talent,
is refreshing to see, and is an encouraging
cornerstone of the Audio Network story.
“It’s about supporting creative talent: the
composers. It can be a lonely business, especially
as a composer trying to get into the industry, and
we want them to feel part of a community.”
If that community and this business can feed
off the passion and enthusiasm of Sunnucks
himself, then the future is an inviting prospect
for all involved.
“It’s about supporting creative talent: the composers. It can be a lonely
business, especially as a composer trying to get into the industry, and we want
them to feel part of a community” Andrew Sunnucks, Audio
Network
Much like the magical transformation at
the heart of the Cinderella story, audio
professionals quite are often tasked with
transforming flawed audio into pristine, usable
material. Yet in the broadcast world, there is no
escaping the fact that audio post production is
always at the end of the production pipeline. As
a result, schedules become compressed, with
quality suffering as a consequence. For a long
time, content creators have asked for workflows
to be even faster and more tightly integrated with
their DAW or NLE of choice.
One of the primary development themes in
audio repair is addressing workflow optimisation.
The optimum solution should not only solve typical
problems, but also solve them with minimum
disruption to users’ workflow, leaving them with
more time for creativity.
And, as important as repair may be, there’s much
more magic required to make the perfect-sounding
mix, whether it is matching dialogue recorded with
different microphones, creating a room ambience
across multiple edits by introducing the right kind
of noise, or removing reverberation and smoothing
levels for the right balance.
The perfect repair solution must reflect the
adage that a good sound mix is as much about
what people don’t hear as about what they do.
To understand the value-added role that audio
technology can play, it’s necessary to look at
some specific applications.
The reality TV audio editor/mixerReality television production requires a significant
amount of ‘run and gun’-style shooting without
much time or crew. With minimal set-up time,
quality and continuity are often sacrificed.
Additionally, due to constantly changing
locations and crew, it’s not uncommon for the
same actor’s audio to be captured with different
microphones. This, coupled with the naturally
varying sound characteristics of each location,
makes it difficult to keep each actor’s dialogue
sounding consistent and recognisably unique
to their character. Changes in the background
ambience of each location provide additional
challenges for editors striving to create a smooth,
consistent result in the shortest possible time.
The broadcast news audio editorNews is often breaking in frantic, uncontrolled, and
noisy environments. Being first-to-air is the primary
goal of any news crew, but the secondary goal is to
capture the most accurate portrayal of the situation.
Often, interviews are conducted at the
scene, and so dialogue can come back to base
distorted or with hums due to equipment failure
and no time to test the set-up before going live.
Add mobile phones, background noise, and wind,
and it may be almost impossible for viewers to
understand the interview.
The location recordist and audio post editor for filmLocation film sound tends to be highly controlled
and methodically planned out. The equipment
is thoroughly tested prior to shooting, and sound
recordists are masters of their craft.
Despite of careful preparation, no one can
predict what challenges will arise once actors
start moving and getting absorbed in their
performances. Because of the wide variety of
microphone placement and extraneous noises
captured on the set, the dialogue has typically
been ‘re-voiced’ in a process called ADR
(automated dialogue recording, or additional
dialogue recording). This process requires the
actors to re-speak their lines in a controlled audio
environment while viewing the take on a monitor.
While this technique offers the ultimate in
control for the mixer, the performance is typically
not the same, lips can be out of sync, and having
an actor perform multiple times in different
locations can be prohibitively expensive.
In modern post production, in order to reduce
the sound budget, the growing trend is to maximise
the use of location sound whenever possible. This
creates the challenge of matching any ADR-
recorded dialogue to that captured on location.
In light of these growing trends, editors and
engineers are finding innovative solutions for
delivering high-quality results without significant
increases in time. Intelligent software programmes
can vastly reduce manual efforts and streamline
workflows by ‘learning’ characteristics of audio
and matching those settings automatically to other
sound sources. Visual feedback in both waveform
and spectrogram modes offer additional layers of
detail, making it even easier to detect and isolate
common problems like electrical hum, mouth
noises, and unexpected mobile interference.
Companies such as ourselves are seeking to
address the needs of these broadcast and video
post markets through innovative new solutions
that will enable users to speed up their workflows.
These toolkits include the likes of ambience
matching, EQ matching, automatic levelling,
amongst other key developments.
Tools such as our own are built to be a
companion for all DAW or NLE systems, so
users can sculpt audio into professional-
sounding deliverables. Just don’t expect
them to transform your pumpkin into a
carriage at midnight.
Audio for Broadcast26 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Audio repair The Cinderella of broadcast post production
Rob D’Amico, senior product manager at iZotope, an audio technology company, looks at some of the most common challenges and pitfalls facing content producers
RX 4 is a new version of iZotope’s audio repair toolkit, which enables users to significantly speed up their workflows with time saving features
What would you say is the essence of the Infi nity core?One of the key drivers in the broadcast industry
is scalability and massing systems and channel
count. If you look at something like the Superbowl,
there are over 1,000 channels, so the ability
to process all of those audio channels is an
increasingly complex problem. At the end of
the day, you’ve got to have the digital signal
processing engine, and that’s the core.
There are three elements to a mixing system:
there’s the surface, the core and the input and
output sub system.
What we noticed about three-and-a-half
years ago was the fact that the DSP chips were
progressing on a linear trend. That means that
every fi ve years or so they bring out a new DSP
that has a level of processing benefi t which is
signifi cant, but not dramatic. If you do the same
comparison on x86 chips, which are in standard
pcs, it does follow Moore’s law. With Moore’s law,
every two years you get a doubling of power, so it’s
an exponential curve.
Three-and-a-half years ago we said ‘wouldn’t
it be great if we could get on the back of that
wave and do audio processing on an x86 chip?’
So we looked at that and put a project together
and that’s the essence of Infi nity core.
Intel had a strategy whereby it made every
chip backwards-compatible. That means you
maintain software compatibility from platform
to platform. It also means that as Intel brings
out the latest chip, which follows Moore’s law,
it means you can almost take out one chip and
plug in another and you’ve suddenly got (in
theory) double the amount of processing power.
As more and more channels are required to
be processed by the broadcaster and mixed
together and routed, we can adapt, and that
means we’re putting all of our expertise in
mixing platforms into the software that’s
actually mixing them.
The surface of Infi nity is all about redundancy.
More and more, the broadcast industry is
requiring increased redundancy. If they’re mixing
a live show, if anything goes wrong its big,
big trouble. We built in four CPUs into our
latest Vista X surface.
The third element [of Infi nity], which is
connectivity, was a relationship built with Riedel.
They handle data, and put it over a very high
capacity fi bre link which they can route between
their Mediornet boxes and take out the data
stream and re-convert it to whatever it needs to
be. We work with them to have this audio pipe,
we developed an interface called A-Link, which
we refer to as ‘MADI on steroids’. With MADI,
you’ve got 64 channels, with A-Link you’ve got
1,536 channels on a single fi bre.
What are the specifi c audio challenges for broadcasters carrying out live productions across multiple venues?[Broadcasters like the BBC] want to be able to
operate from one spot and control their system. It’s
the ability to handle a distributed network. It’s about
connecting everything together and networking all
their audio, so if they lift up a fader in London, they
can open a microphone in Manchester. The system
allows that to happen. We don’t want to limit the
way they want to work, we want to help them.
You were involved with the Olympics and now the Commonwealth Games. What other broadcast projects are keeping you busy at the moment? One of the wonderful things about being part of
Harman is we can do an end to end system, and
ever increasingly complex systems as well.
The sound of innovation
TVBEurope 29October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Audio for Broadcast
Andy Trott, vice president and general manager, MM&H SBU at Harman, spoke to James McKeown about Infi nity, innovation and his commitment to the broadcast market. By Holly Ashford and James McKeown
Andy Trott, Harman: “We are really hungry to innovate as a business”
Audio for Broadcast30 TVBEurope
When we go into a system, like one of the
stadiums in Brazil [for the World Cup], we can offer
a completely turnkey solution and that will be
tailored for whatever application we’re going into.
You can be sure that whenever there’s a
space with a live sound requirement, Harman will
be in there somewhere. We’re involved in a lot
of very big church installs. These places have a
huge broadcast and post production facility as
well, so they’ve almost got to have professional
TV-standard systems. It’s really big business.
We have OB truck projects on all over the
world. One of the biggest projects we undertook
is for the BBC. The BBC is our largest customer
worldwide: a lot of on-air consoles for radio
broadcast, including Vistas for shows like Strictly
Come Dancing.
What was the impetus behind the partnership with Martin Professional?Within the pro division, we want to expand beyond
audio. We see audio, lighting and video as a
ubiquitous system, it’s everywhere you go. We’ve
been going down this path for the last two years,
looking at acquisitions in these areas. Martin is the
biggest, they are one of the best brands in the
market for lighting. When we acquire a business,
we integrate it, and we have spent the last five
years getting ready for this.
The whole game plan was that when we were
ready we would start acquiring and bolting on
those companies. We got ready for that point
about two years ago and that is when we started
to get active in the acquisition world, the first one
being Martin. We’re also looking at technology
projects. What can we do with lighting and audio
that hasn’t already been done? We’ve got a
number of projects that we’re ‘blue skying’ – now
we own lighting, audio, what really cool stuff could
we do? It’s about doing cool stuff to give the
viewer, the paying customer, a better experience.
At the end of the day, it’s all about experience.
We are really hungry to innovate, as a business.
We’ve got engineers, marketeers, product
managers that are absolutely chomping at
the bit to get stuck in with Martin, AMX, with
whomever else we might buy.
We have this crowd sourcing capability
within Harman. We’ve got an Innovation
Studio with 15,000 engineers and R&D people,
innovators and inventors that can all contribute
and improve. A lot of this has come from our
corporate CTO, IP Park; he’s changing our
culture in terms of innovation. To pull people all
in one direction is quite a difficult thing and he’s
very successfully started to implement processes
to allow us to go in one direction. I went to a
corporate meeting in March and it was
hugely inspirational, and it was all about
innovation. We are all so hungry for it and are
here because we love it.
It must be quite a challenge to harness such an international pool of ideas...We spend half our time on conference calls, often
in the States in the evening. They’ll have the screen
split with the UK, China, Switzerland, talking about
different software – it’s amazing. It’s really exciting
and just breeds innovation.
No idea is a bad idea, that is genuinely true.
Even if someone comes up with something less
than inspiring, it still sparks an idea that can morph
into something completely different.
As our CEO, Dinesh [Paliwal], keeps
reinforcing to us, a successful business is ten
per cent innovation, 90 per cent execution.
Sometimes we do have to try and calm
things down a bit as people are so
enthusiastic, but ultimately, you can
have the best ideas in the world, but
unless you can put them into practice, it’s
worthless.
How prominent a focus do you now have on the broadcast sector? Not only are we totally committed to the
broadcast market, we love the broadcast market.
The broadcast market gives us a completely
different spin on pro audio. Pro audio is quite
diverse: for example, you’re talking to the kids
who want to be musicians, they want to play
guitar and they want to record themselves.
That’s the first time they have an experience with
one of your brands. On the other hand, you’ve
got the band on tour. They want to put on this
fantastic show, so they’re really looking forward
to anything new in terms of technology, but it has
got to be hyper-reliable. The broadcast industry
gives us massive scale, reliability, and quality. Being
involved in all these different areas is a really good
thing for us because instead of narrowing our focus,
we’re looking at the whole picture and each one
of these brings a unique element to our ability to
provide better solutions. The broadcast industry is a
very important industry for us, and working with the
people at the BBC is a joy.
You clearly love your job; that’s evidently a part of the culture of this company... We’re in rock ‘n’ roll, let’s not forget – it’s such
a great industry.
“Not only are we totally committed to the broadcast market, we love the
broadcast market”
Studer released its Vista V broadcast audio mixing
system at IBC2014
www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Find out more at studer.ch
When it comes to the serious processing power and bulletproof-reliabilty required by today’s broadcasters, the Studer Infinity Series sets a new standard with massive performance and aviation-class redundancy levels.
Now with a choice of three processing Cores and two class-leading control surfaces, Studer Infinity offers cost-effective broadcast mix solutions for any application, from OB Trucks through to TV and radio production facilities, with up to 800+ audio channels and over 5000 inputs and outputs via our D23m modular I/O system of analogue, digital and video interfaces.
Compact control surface - up to 52 faders and optional meter bridge
Expanded control surface - up to 72 faders (more on custom configs.)
Infinity Core - now available in 200, 400 and 800+ channels
Infinity just got bigger
The Vista V expands the new Infinity Series with a compact, cost-effective console ideal for broadcast environments where space is at a premium.
IBC Review32 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Much of the Ultra HD debate at IBC
centred on the merits and timing of
services delivering phase 1 UHDTV, by
general consensus less of a killer app than the more
full fat phase 2 version.
While phase 1 was approved by the DVB in July,
phase 2, which provides for greater latitude for
colour and light as well as higher frame rates, won’t
have trawled through the standards bodies until 2017.
As a matter of competitive necessity pay-
TV operators BSkyB, BT Sport, Sky Deutschland
and others will have launched services by then,
but they remain reluctant to invest for fear of
underwhelming consumer response.
“We like UHD, and technically we could
launch today, but we also don’t want to
jeopardise the market with a substandard service
given the consumer experience with 3D,” said
Stephan Heimbecher, head of innovation at
Sky Deutshcland who also co-chairs the EBU’s
Forum for Advanced Media in Europe leading
investigations into UHDTV. “The industry agrees on
HDR and wider colour and HFR for phase 2 but we
need to address the detail and understand, for
example, ten or 12-bit. This is a very complex issue
with a wide variety of opinions.”
With the business model on the transmission side still
to be found, there are no shortage of options for
shooting Ultra HD or 4K content (buyer beware: kit
marked with a UHD badge will probably be doing
3840x2160 resolution, while 4K specced kit will
attain the slightly higher cinema 4096x2160 images,
but at IBC the evidence was this messaging can
be blurred). In this period of transition, the mantra
from every exhibitor was ‘shoot HD now, record
4K for the archive’ — an increasing demand from
sports, drama and documentary producers and
their broadcaster clients.
“Interest in 4K acquisition is high because the
format provides greater flexibility in recorded
footage and in live, by being able to dive
into the image for zoom or replay,” was Andy
Bellamy of AJA’s take on it. When the first 4K UHD
channels do launch in Europe towards the end of
2015, there should be a stash of content ready to
fuel the pipe. Here are some of the technologies
getting us there.
Gold standardARRI proudly holds the gold standard for film and
drama imagery despite, or perhaps because of,
its insistence on marrying resolution with higher
4K acquisition review IBC2014
dynamic range and other picture attributes.
Nonetheless, the company was pestered by
visitors asking about a 4K successor to the Alexa.
“What is the point in making a camera just to
deliver more dots on the screen?” said Stephan
Schenk, GM, camera and DI systems business
unit. “There is no benefit if you can’t also deliver
representation of skin tones, high light sensitivity
and also on the cost of workflow. When we
are ready to release [a new system] it has to
surpass the Alexa as it is today. Our sensor is still
surpassing all the latest technologies. We are
much more gearing for phase 2 UHD.”
Alexa is used in 80 per cent of Hollywood
productions, the company said, the secret to
which lay not in the number of the pixels but
in their quality. Nonetheless, it has yielded to
demand from broadcast producers concerned
to future-proof productions, and upgraded the
Amira to provide in-camera recording of 3.8K, as
near as dammit to the notional 4K goal, at up to
60fps to CFast cards in ProRes.
Debate about the merits of phase 1 or phase 2 UHDTV aside, producers now have a wealth of options to accumulate 4K content today, writes Adrian Pennington
“We like UHD and technically we could launch today but we also don’t want to jeopardise the market with a
substandard service given the consumer experience with 3D”
Stephan Heimbecher, Sky Deutschland
Smart glassCommon to all these cameras is the glass, still
the most expensive part of the kit.
Blackmagic’s Tim Siddons says the growing
number of acquisition concepts give filmmakers
the ability to select exactly what they need,
shot for shot.
“In camera development, we are seeing lots
more electronics onboard, smaller sizes, higher-
resolutions, smarter cameras, but I don’t think
we’ll ever escape the fact that the camera is a
tool to manipulate light and a DP at the peak of
their game is not somebody who just presses a
button. You need physical control over that light.”
He added: “Glass will always be an integral
part of creating a look and feel, and so, unlike
any other piece of kit, users have an emotional
relationship with their camera. Software
simulation of that will never be as good.”
The Alexa too will now permit ProRes 3.2K
recording which, according to ARRI, can be up-
sampled to 4K and UHD.
For feature films, an up-sample to 4K can
already be carried out after VFX and other post
tasks have been completed at 2K resolution.
For certain fast-paced Amira productions,
however, there may not be the time or resources
for such processes in post, which is
why a UHD output direct from the camera will
prove beneficial.
That ARRI has a next-gen camera in the works
is no secret. Solectrix developed the processing
algorithms for the original Alexa and has
delivered similar IP for its neighbour’s next
generation camera.
Admitting that the company’s delay in
getting a 4K product to market was in part due
to “getting wrapped up in 3D commitments for
London 2012”, Nigel Wilkes, group manager BC
and IT systems, was pleased that Panasonic had
the €24,000 Varicam 35 close to shipping.
By taking the semiconductor designed for its
3D cams (which recorded dual stream, one per
eye) into the Varicam, Panasonic has enabled
simultaneous recording of RAW 4K, compressed
UHD 444 and high-speed HD as well as low res
proxies to a specially developed €15k Codex
recorder and P2 media. 240fps HD is achieved
with a special high speed head costing €16k
mainly for blue chip docs.
“If we had come out too early it would
have just been a shoulder cam. What we are
delivering today is the best specifications of any
camera around,” he said. “We understand that
ARRI is the camera of choice at the moment but
we are bringing our 35mm Varicam look with very
flexible gamma curves and a fresh palette of
paint that DPs have not used before.”
Documentary producers can future-proof
content using Sony’s PXW-FS7, designed
for run and gun operation and use in harsh
environments. The €8,000 XDCAM shoots 4K
Quad Full HD1 in 60fps and 240fps HD at up to
14 f-stops, and had 200 orders taken by dealers
including Visual Impact at the show.
Bolstering this new product is a shoulder
mounted accessory for the F55, tailored for
documentaries, and an upgrade to the F5 giving
users 4K recording capability. Sony will also debut
a 30-inch 30,000 4K OLED monitor come spring.
TVBEurope 33October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
IBC Review
Stephan Heimbecher: “The industry agrees on HDR
and wider colour and HFR for phase 2 but we need to
address the detail”
A two-piece mini 4K system (head and recorder) attached to a gimbal for aerial shooting by AltaSens
IBC Review34 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Although AJA “has built hundreds and is
ready to go” said marketing manager Andy
Bellamy of the CION, the company is not
accepting orders until the unit is 100 per cent
ready. Quite what the hitch is was unclear
but AJA has excited the industry with its
non-proprietary design and the accessories
are fl ooding in. These include an Alphatron
electronic viewfi nder, lens mounts/adapters
from MTF and Wooden Camera, and matte
boxes and focus controllers from Vocas. CION
supports 4K and 120fps, attributes tested for
replay by NASCAR and Major League Baseball.
4K systems camerasFinally, outside broadcasters like Megahertz, builder
of a 4K mobile unit for BT Sport, have a choice of
4K camera technology. Hitachi and Grass Valley
have favoured 2/3-inch sensors which permit the
use of their existing B4 mount HD lens inventory.
The former’s SK UHD40004, which houses four MOS
sensors, scored a mulit-million pound deal for the
fi rst 50 units from rental fi rm Gearhouse. It will use
the new cameras to populate a new 4K OB truck,
as well as a 4K truck planned for North America.
The rest will be spread among its European
operation. “It can output HD SDI for those not
yet ready to transmit 4K but who want to build
a library of 4K footage,” said Paddy Roache, UK
director and GM, in a familiar refrain. The camera
was also tested by Sky at the Ryder Cup. Grass
Valley’s LDX 4K/UHD camera is scheduled to ship
at the end of the year with a clever deployment
of three 2/3-inch sensors each offset by half a
pixel from each other. It then records 4:4:4 RAW
signal and upconverts it for maximum quality.
“The advantage is the same sensitivity, depth
of fi eld, and dynamic range as a regular 1080p
camera,” said Klaus Weber, senior product
marketing manager. “You need to compromise
for 4K whether or not you use a single large sensor
or three smaller sensors. A single-sensor camera is
a compromise in terms of shooting angles, the use
of zoom lenses, and depth of fi eld. It is ideal for
fi lm but not really for a live show.”
Weber’s words neatly sum up the reluctance
felt by some live sports broadcasters in using
the Sony F55 for 4K stadium work. Now they
have options.
“2/3 is nice to have in your arsenal and clients
will use it if the production suits, but shooting 2/3
with 2K lenses is not good enough,” said Mark
ARRI Alexa 65 for 6.45k cinematographyDespite being pestered by visitors keen to know
where its next generation Ultra HD camera was,
ARRI was on message at IBC: “We’ll only talk
about a new camera when there is something
to say.” Having concentrated TV producer
minds on 4K upgrades to the Alexa and Amira,
the German developer quietly debuted a
large format 65mm version of the camera
capable of 6.5K resolution at Munich show
Cinec just days after IBC closed.
Marketed as a speciality camera for large
format cinematography or VFX background
plates, it will be available exclusively through
ARRI Rental (price not disclosed).
ARRI executives have long maintained that
they would not release a native 4K model
until they felt that it didn’t compromise other
characteristics, particularly the Alexa’s wide
dynamic range.
So how does the Alexa 65 square up? At the
heart of the camera is the A3X sensor, three
times bigger than Super 35 (the size of Red’s
Dragon 6K chip).
This has a 54.12 mm x 25.59 mm active
imaging area, which is even larger than the
fi lm gate of ARRI’s 765 65mm fi lm camera. The
maximum recordable resolution from the A3X
is 6560x3102 photosites, with a dynamic range
greater than 14 stops.
The sensor design is based on the same
photosite technology as the ALEXA XT, therefore,
image attributes such as colorimetry and
dynamic range will match well with any member
of the ALEXA family. This allows productions the
option to mix a 35mm ALEXA XT with the larger
65mm format camera, without having to worry
about adopting different workfl ows or any
additional colour correction in post.
When recording full resolution Open Gate
6560x3102 ARRIRAW at 24fps, the ALEXA 65
generates around 2.6TB of data per hour. This
is almost three times more than an ALEXA XT
in similar mode. Alternatively, it will support
two cropped lower res recording modes;
1.78:1 (5120x2880) and 1.50:1 (4320x2880) and
generate less data.
The camera incorporates a Codex recording
engine, similar to the one built into the ALEXA
XT. Existing ALEXA XR capture drives support
recording from ALEXA 65 at up to 24fps, and
a 512GB media card will record around ten
minutes in full open gate mode. A new set of
capture drives developed by Codex for early
2015 will offer 2TB of recording capacity, and
be capable of 20Gbps data rates, enabling
recording times of over 45 minutes.
Two bespoke workfl ow systems, based on
Codex Vault, have been developed — the
Vault S and the Lab 65. Both can transfer, store,
and review ALEXA 65 material on set, near set
or in a post facility. ProRes 4444 HD dailies
masters can be generated in realtime for dailies.
On the glass side, ARRI has rehoused
Hasselblad lenses to work with the new sensor
— eight primes ranging from 24 to 300mm
and a 50-110mm zoom.
Additionally, a Vintage 765 lens range,
originally developed to partner the ARRIFLEX
765, has been adapted for use providing a
classic fi lmic look. Other lens and lens mount
options are being considered by ARRI.
Large format designs like this hark back to the
golden age of 65mm fi lmmaking in the mid-20th
Century where the epic frame was used to lens
fi lms like Lawrence of Arabia. ARRI’s 765 fi lm
camera was more recently used for sequences
in fi lms like Far and Away, Sunshine and Gravity.
It’s also no secret that fellow fi lm equipment
stalwart Panavision is developing a digital 70mm
camera. There is a view that if cinema exhibition
is to survive then immersive large format screens
are the future.
Given the specialist application of the Alexa
65, ARRI is likely to continue to be pestered by
producers, cinematographers and press for news
of a separate 4K Alexa with Super 35mm sensor.
Red Digital Cinema’s 6K Dragon sensor outputs 4K via a new broadcast module
Pict
ure c
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t: Re
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m, I
nc
Grinyer, Sony’s head of business development
for 3D, 4K and UHD. “You need a 4K lens.”
Nonetheless, he hinted that a product along the
2/3 lines might emerge from Sony.
Panasonic also showed a concept studio-
camera-in-box-style single sensor with a 2/3-inch
lens on the front. Expect more on this at NAB.
The surprise in this category was Red Digital
Cinema which has enabled its 6K Dragon sensor
to output 4K via a new broadcast module with
four 3G SDI outputs systemised by Nipros.
“The approach not only transmits 4K
video live, but records Red code raw for
archive and accommodates a simultaneous
TX of HD,” said Nipros CTO, Sal Sandoval.
“We can switch the signal live for broadcast
and we can put up to fi ve HD sources at any
frame rate and any system frequency for
POV applications.”
Functionality was put to the test with Vizrt and
tracking specialists Ncam in a live rendering of a
3D animation inside a live 4K feed.
“4K opens up whole new possibilities for what can
be displayed,” said Alan Piper, Red’s Europe MD.
“You put a lot more information inside a
4K image such as immersive graphics and
have it readable.”
4K compact and POVClaimed as the smallest 4K camera, the Flare
from IO Industries builds on the successful 2KSDI
and features a a Super 35 CMOS sensor with a
global electronic shutter, and quad-link 3G/HD-SDI
AJA’s CION supports 4K and 120fps
TVBEurope 35October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
IBC ReviewGermany’s Solectrix has collaborated with Codex to unite a custom-developed RAW recorder with two modifi ed sinaCAM remote heads for ActionCAM
36 TVBEurope
IBC Reviewwww.tvbeurope.com October 2014
outputs. It comes in interchangeable and fixed
lens versions, can shoot 60p and costs $8,000 but
recording must be made via a separate field
unit such as Ki Pro Quad or Odyssey 7Q. “It’s
perfect for locked-off POV shots in vehicles or on
gimballs,” said IO’s Stuart Cranston. “Since it only
weighs 600g you can easily put it on a jib.”
Germany’s Solectrix has collaborated with
Codex to unite a custom-developed RAW recorder
with two modified SinaCAM remote heads for
ActionCAM. The HD system has been adopted for
use as the satellite cameras in the Fraunhofer/ARRI/
Walt Disney hybrid 2D/3D and post S3D trifocal
system because SinaCam image sensitivity blends
well with the trifocal’s main Alexa camera.
While JVC focusses on the live streaming
capabilities of its camcorders, it also showed several
prototype 4K cameras built around a Super 35
CMOS chip capable of 12 or 10-bit depth made
by sister company, AltaSens. These ranged from a
compact handheld unit which uses Micro Four Thirds
lenses to a two-piece mini 4K system (head and
recorder) which was shown attached to a gimbal
for aerial shooting. Most notable is a 4K shoulder
mounted version with PL lens mount specced as
shooting 60fps 4K and HD at up to 240fps.
AltaSens has also been busy with Bradley
Engineering to locate its 4K sensor, this time
with up to 72fps, in a remote controlled module
based on Bradley’s dome-shaped Camball
camera head with a pan-tilt mechanism.
Go 4K today, 8K tomorrowOne of the drivers for 4K is consumer demand
in the Far East where half the 30 million panels
sold worldwide will be in Chinese homes by
2015. Asian demand is also encouraged by
government funding in Korea (via Kobeta) and
Japan (NexTV), the latter focussed on chasing
4K quickly to market with 8K in time for the
Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Indeed NHK plans to have
several 4K channels and an 8K test service up
and running in 2018 to coincide with the FIFA
World Cup in Russia.
Consequently, NHK is rounding out its
acquisition armoury by incorporating the Super
Hi-Vision chip into Hitachi (systems), Ikegami
(shoulder mounted) and Cube (steadicam)
cameras. The Sony F65, built for cinematography
but already having seen high-speed applications
recording 120fps World Cup Final action, is
earmarked for ENG use by NHK, upconverted
from the chip’s raw data. According to Sony’s
head of AV media, Olivier Bovis: “There will be
ramifications to our future product” as a result of
Sony’s taskforce R&Ding 8K capture.
Expect further NHK 8K tests at the Women’s
World Cup and Wimbledon next summer. 1 4K (4096 x 2160) shooting will be available by
early 2015
Two bespoke workflow systems, based on Codex Vault, have been developed: the Vault S and the Lab 65
TVBEurope 37October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
IBC Review
TVBEurope’s parent company, NewBay Media, carried out its first ever Best of Show awards programme for IBC in Amsterdam this year. The awards ran across the NewBay Media portfolio of brands, and here, we showcase the winning entries in the TVBEurope category
IBC Best of Show 2014
The new ConeXia intercom system from AEQ-KROMA is a new global audio solution. ConeXia has the capacity of up to 1024 x 1024 cross-points and is based on a modular system of audio I/O cards. It has the ability to integrate intercom and broadcast audio sources into the same matrix, with 48kHz 24 bits sampling. Further, the system can be built for 100 per
cent redundancy when catering for critical operations. ConeXia is also compatible with all AEQ-KROMA intercom panels, and expands the interface options with almost any telecommunications interface.
AEQ-KROMA
ConeXia
Capable of shooting at 4K/UltraHD and 2K/HD resolutions, CION is AJA’s new professional production camera that features an ergonomic design and offers in-camera recording directly to the Apple ProRes family of codecs, including 12-bit 444, for pristine image capture.
Enabling today’s growing demand for high frame rate
support, CION allows users to output 4K raw data at up to 120 fps via 4x 3G-SDI outputs and can record directly to AJA Pak SSD media at up to 60 frames per second.
AJA
CION
Accedo VIA is an application solution enabling operators, media companies, and broadcasters to launch full-featured multiscreen services quickly and efficiently across multiple connected platforms, including PCs, mobiles, tablets, smart TVs, and game consoles.
Accedo VIA has been launched to solve complexity for Accedo customers, who are experiencing challenges in technical multiplatform delivery, as well as editorial challenges, where different
platforms may require different promotions, messages and consumer bundling.
Accedo
Accedo VIA
Aspera’s new Auto-scaling Transfer Platform automatically scales and expands transfer capacity of Aspera server software in cloud infrastructure, providing media companies with the ability to expand high-speed transfer capacity direct to cloud storage as needed, and leverage the most cost-effective infrastructure. Companies can control and predict ingest, delivery, and distribution times, regardless of
media volumes, infrastructure distance, or network quality.
Built directly into the core Aspera transfer software stack, the platform automatically matches the actual transfer capacity with the transfer demand in realtime, based on user-defined criteria.
Aspera
Auto-scaling Transfer Platform
DaVinci Resolve 11 is a major upgrade to the Emmy award-winning DaVinci Resolve colour correction platform, and comes with more than 70 new editing features including dual monitor support and familiar professional tools such as dynamic JKL trimming, audio crossfades and fully customisable keyboard shortcuts for faster editing.
There is also a new collaborative workflow toolset that allows an editor and multiple colourists to work on different workstations, sharing the same timeline and working in tandem as they complete shots.
Blackmagic
DaVinci Resolve 11
IBC Preview38 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
The VB288 Objective QoE Content Extractor is a server-based system that provides objective video and audio monitoring of MPEG-2, h.264/MPEG-4 and h.265/HEVC streams, integrating monitoring of realtime streams and OTT services within a unique web browser-based remote video wall capability providing full view-anywhere visual status information.
In its latest version, the VB288 features on-board AES decryption, which means that the VB288 can provide full content extraction and
packet inspection at any point, anywhere in the delivery chain, even when the signal is encrypted at the encoder stage.
Bridge Technologies
The new Studer Infinity Core is the x86-based signal processing audio core with direct built-in AES67 interface. The Infinity Core delivers more than 800 audio channels with superb sonic quality, and more than 5,000 inputs and outputs.
The use of CPU-based processors suggests exciting possibilities for scaling up to even larger channel counts, and for running third-party algorithms.
Studer by Harman
Infinity Core
VB288 Objective QoE Content Extractor
EditShare’s XStream EFS is the newest member of the company’s shared storage product line, and is a powerful distributed, scale-out file system designed from the ground up for in-place, online editing in media intensive environments.
A single XStream EFS system can start as small as 128TB and scale up to many petabytes. All XStream EFS systems offer multiple layers of redundancy that can tolerate the failure of many hard disks, including the failure of an entire node.
EditShare
XStream EFS
Ericsson’s MediaFirst TV Platform is a software-defined, media-optimised platform for the creation, management and delivery of next generation pay-TV. The new end-to-end cloud-based platform embraces all content sources and delivery networks, equipping operators to deliver the most cutting-edge, large-scale video services to the billions of devices forecast to be connected by 2020.
Ericsson
Harmonic
Harmonic’s VOS provides a common media processing platform, simplifying workflows and maximising flexibility for the deployment of broadcast and multiscreen services.
The software-based Electra XVM transforms content playout, distribution, and multiplatform service delivery by integrating realtime encoding, high-quality branding and graphics, and transport stream playout for broadcast and multiscreen services, providing video content and service providers with unparalleled function integration, increased operational flexibility, and unlimited scalability.
VOS-Based Electra XVM
The LDX XtremeSpeed (LDX XS) from Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, comes packed with features that make this the most cost-efficient advanced imaging camera for live sports production.
This handheld ultra-motion camera provides sports directors and producers alike with seamless system integration into live
production workflows, the flexibility to move their ultra-motion cameramen close to the action to capture stunning live shots, and
the same high performance and features as the LDX Series of advanced imaging cameras.
Grass Valley
MediaFirst TV Platform
LDX XtremeSpeed 6X ultra slow-mo camera system
TVBEurope 39October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
IBC Preview
mocha Pro by Imagineer Systems is the Academy Award-winning visual effects software package built on Planar Motion Tracking technology, a unique image analysis engine designed to reduce artist-driven manual post production tasks such as match moving, rotoscoping, object removal, clean plate generation and image stabilisation.
The new mocha Pro version 4 offers native Stereo 3D (S3D) workflow capabilities, advanced support for Python scripting and complimentary workflows with popular editing and VFX systems.
Imagineer Systems
Hitachi Kokusai Electric
mocha Pro
Lawo’s mc²36 audio console is a universal all-in-one mixing desk with a comprehensive feature set for use in broadcast, theatre, houses of worship, live and install applications, which offers value for money.
Its compact size, DSP micro-core (with internal 512x512 port audio matrix) and
integrated I/O make the new console suitable for permanent
installations with limited space and for rental companies with an eye on transportation considerations.
Lawo
Hitachi Kokusai Electric has developed the SK-UHD4000, a broadcast 4K Ultra HDTV camera system which can use the 2/3-inch B4 mount lenses used in conventional HD broadcast cameras.
The use of standard HD lenses with the SK-UHD4000 eliminates the need for special conversion adapters, and allows broadcasters to use existing lenses and shoot video in 4K
resolution. The 4K Ultra-HDTV camera system is designed to provide solutions to the challenges of live outside sports broadcasts, such as sensitivity and depth of field.
SK-UHD4000 4K Camera
mc²36 all-in-one production console
Piksel Mosaic unites all forms of content in one simple browsing experience, using a tile-based interface which retains a consistent look-and-feel playing to the individual strengths of the device used – TV, smartphone, laptop, desktop or tablet. Piksel Mosaic is built on context-based recommendations, intuitively pushing content to the user based on an understanding of what the user likes to access, when, and on what device.
xxxxx40 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
IBC Preview
The EVO.Live console can switch between live and post production modes at the touch of a button, and is available in chassis, table-top or in-surface consoles, 12 to 60 faders, and scalable processing and I/O. It also can be used in a dual-operator configuration.
EVO.Live features Fairlight’s FPGA-based Crystal Core engine that delivers high channel and bus counts, low latency and exceptional audio quality. It offers enhanced production tools such as sound FX playout, multi-track recording and playing, external device control and full timecode capabilities.
Media Logic GmbH
Piksel
EVO.Live
Mosaic
The NVIDIA Visual Computing Appliance (VCA) is a turnkey appliance equipped with eight high-end NVIDIA GPUs to dramatically accelerate ray tracing, enabling users to interact with computer models of such high visual fidelity that it can eliminate the needs for physical 3D prototypes.
The scalable, network-attached GPU appliance is engineered and built by NVIDIA and designed solely to provide designers and artists with the fastest and easiest way to create photorealistic images of their creations.
NVIDIA
Pixel Power’s Buzz is the smart entry point for adding social media to your broadcast. It allows users to engage with and take the measure of an audience, reliably moderate contributions from Twitter or other social media streams and then integrate the content within the Pixel Power graphics workflow.
Buzz software is a natural extension of the graphics workflow that was designed with non-technical staff in mind, with training requirements at a minimum.
BuzzPixel Power
Visual Computing Appliance (VCA)
StorNext’s Pro Storage Solutions are specifically designed to enable the newest high-performance digital workflows and drive higher levels of efficiency for broadcasters and post production facilities.
StorNext Connect enables users to install StorNext software through an easy, self-guided interface; download software and
upgrade StorNext clients and servers from a single screen; restart clients and servers and check the status on automated tasks from a single screen; and troubleshoot performance bottlenecks with realtime activity, performance and usage graphs.
The RTW TM3-Primus is a multifunctional audio measurement unit featuring unbalanced RCA type 2-ch analogue and digital (SPDIF) interfaces. The unit is powered by a USB mains supply or the USB connection direct from a PC.
The unit supports all widely used PPM and TruePPM measurements and scales.
Provided Loudness standards are: ITU BS.1770-3/1771-1, ATSC A/85, EBU R128,
ARIB, OP-59, AGICOM, CalmAct. Level and loudness display with bargraph type or numerical readout plus MagicLRA type.
October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Screen Systems
A challenging, yet much sought after solution to subtitling live web video has been developed by Screen Systems. The solution adds low bandwidth timing information to the video stream and is used to synchronise subtitles to the frames of video the viewer is watching.
An advantage of the Screen solution is that the same general mechanism of image-based subtitles held on a separate server can be used for consistent broadcast quality subtitling of both Video on Demand and live web video.
StorNext ConnectQuantum
TVBEurope 41
IBC Preview
RTW
TM3-Primus
Web/OTT LIVE Subtitling
xxxxx42 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
IBC Preview
Timecode Buddy :pulse is an advanced piece of long range RF and Wi-Fi enabled timecode and metadata technology; a single box camera and production solution to streamlining production workflows.
In addition to the core technical functionality, Timecode Systems has also
included a range of user-friendly features to give users the best possible experience, including its size (94mm x 67mm x 23mm), its high resolution OLED display, flexible mounting methods, USB2.0 host ,and device and multiple powering options.
Timecode Systems
Vislink and TVU Networks have joined forces to develop the TVUPack TM8200 that combines cellular, IP and microwave transmission technology in one compact backpack that delivers reliable, live, HD video picture quality on the go.
The TVUPack allows news broadcasters to transmit a live video stream from a remote location back to the newsroom using any (and all) 3G/4G, microwave, satellite, Ethernet, wireless and even Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) connections simultaneously, dynamically aggregating all connections for maximum transmission throughput.
Timecode Buddy :pulse
Viaccess-Orca’s Connected Sentinel Player is a new multiplatform media player available for Android and iOS tablets and devices that include digital rights management (DRM) for premium VoD and live content. Using the Connected Sentinel Player, service providers can distribute content securely to set-top boxes (STBs), tablets, smartphones, and PCs with a very short time to market.
Viaccess-Orca
Connected Sentinel Player
Vislink and TVU Networks
TVUPack TM8200 powered by Vislink Hybrid Technology
While our inaugural Best of Show awards
highlighted some of the leading new
products being showcased at this
year’s IBC, there were plenty of other companies
demonstrating the latest in their range of gear,
equipment, and solutions.
One such company was Canon, which brought
a number of new additions to Amsterdam
including the latest in its Cinema EOS line-up. The
CN 7X17 Cine Servo zoom lens is the first large
sensor lens that Canon has designed from the
ground up specifically for broadcast use,
as Peter Yabsley, professional products marketing
team leader at Canon Europe, explained.
“It’s all about the operation,” he says. “It’s
very practical for hand-held use; it’s lightweight,
compact but it’s got that servo drive unit meaning
that it can be used in a studio configuration, for
sports, outside broadcast, and is perfectly suited
for 4K production. It’s an exciting new step for us.”
Technological breakthroughYabsley moves on to what Canon sees as a
technological breakthrough in its dual pixel
seamless autofocus. “This is a new sensor
technology that has been developed over a
number of years by Canon,” he said.
“It enables autofocus with any Canon EF lens
on large sensor cameras, which are traditionally
difficult tools to focus with because of the shallow
depth of field. So this is a great addition for
C100 and C300 owners to make it easier to
shoot with these cameras in a wider variety
of shooting situations.”
You can see more from Canon’s Peter Yabsley
on the video section of the TVBEurope website.
Canon’s focus on technical breakthrough
Dual pixel seamless autofocus was among a number of products released at IBC by Canon Europe, as Peter Yabsley, the company’s professional products marketing team leader, told TVBEurope
Peter Yabsley
TVBEurope 43October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
IBC Review
In terms of your own perspective on where we are and where the industry is headed, what do you make of the current environment?I think it’s undergoing some fundamental
changes. Sometimes when you’re in the
heart of the change you don’t appreciate
how fundamental it is. The digitisation of the
connection between the idea that you have
to create content and the consumption of that
content allows a much more intimate, more
powerful, more economic connection. Every
other part of our lives is becoming digitised.
The way you buy a car and the way you meet
people is being digitised, so why wouldn’t
media be digitised?
For our clients it offers some fundamental
questions. Why do we need to be so siloed?
Why do we need to have so much proprietary
technology? Why do we have to have so
much fragmentation and non-cooperation
between vendors, which is costing us 25 to 30
per cent extra? We think it is the most ineffi cient
deployment of capital of any industry. Why do
we have to live with this?
These changes are causing media companies
to ask questions about ‘how should we
organise what technology we deploy and
who should we hire?’ The siloed approach
isn’t sustainable with the economics of today’s
media industry.
The good news is that media consumption of rich
media is rising rapidly so it’s a good place to be
if you know how to create content. The problem
is you need to create great content more
effi ciently and you need to get more value out
of every asset. That’s what Avid Everywhere was
designed to address.
There’s an understanding now of the change that’s taking place and that component parts of the industry are less afraid of that change. Is this something you are seeing?I don’t see enough leadership from the people on
the fl oor here. I actually see more ideas from the
clients than I do from my peers. That’s not normally
the case and I’m not sure why that is. I think this
industry needs more leadership. I think the vendor
community could do more to step forward and
create a path that makes sense for them and for us.
Interestingly, everyone’s talking about 4K within
their silo or device but it has to be solved in a
more creative way. That just means we’re on to
8K and you throw everything out and do it all
again. Other industries do it a lot smarter. We can
do it a lot smarter. We can expect more and the
clients should expect more.
What challenges are you facing now in terms of driving the strategy for Avid amid this evolving landscape?I had the luxury of being on the board fi ve years
before, so I was familiar with the company’s
strategy and got asked to be the CEO. There
are the same questions you would normally ask:
who are we? How are we unique and different?
How do we address the biggest pain points of
the industry? What I found is that we have a lot
to be proud of and to build on, but we also have
tremendous opportunity right now.
We have a 25-year heritage in a category we
helped to create on the editorial side. But just
as we reimagined how to create content, we’re
now reimagining how to connect the entire
workfl ow between the creative process and
the distribution process. Now that it’s digitised, it
should, and can, be fully digitised.
Our clients have a unique challenge in that
they don’t have the luxury to just worry about
the digital channels and devices. They also
Feature44 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Entrepreneurial blueprintLouis Hernandez Jr, CEO of Avid, talks to James McKeown about leadership, where the industry is headed, and how his entrepreneurial background has put him in good stead to drive the company forward. By Melanie Dayasena-Lowe and James McKeown
“I don’t see enough leadership from the people on the fl oor here. I actually see
more ideas from the clients than I do from my peers. That’s not normally the case and
I’m not sure why that is”
have to worry about the terrestrial and heritage
business so they have a more complicated
set of questions. Coming in has been a lot
of fun because Avid is a very trusted and
respected brand. It’s proven technology that
has been part of the family for 25 years. Avid
Everywhere is being adopted at such a fast
rate but it’s not because we’ve convinced
everyone it’s the only way to do things. From
conversations happening with clients for two
to three years, they just didn’t have anyone
to attempt to put together a cohesive
enterprise strategy. Since it comes from
someone in the family, someone they know
and trust, it is being adopted at record rates
right now. The industry was looking for it and
I feel they were looking for someone in the
industry to step forward and say ‘here’s our
take’ on how to move forward as an industry,
more than just in one of the silos.
We asked clients what’s important to their
business of media, not just what’s the next
function or feature they need, or when and
how they want to move to 4K. It’s much
bigger than that.
There’s a lot to be proud of but there’s a
lot changing within the family and we need
to do something more about it. 4K is a good
example because the issue isn’t high resolution,
in fact it’s going to keep changing. We’re in
a world where you need to create great
content and consumers are demanding
better viewing experiences, but the ease with
which you can create content today has
increased the competition for viewership/
listenership/advertising revenue. Content
creation has gone up dramatically in the
last 15 years but budgets haven’t. You have
to do more with less. 4K is an example of a new
standard being adopted for viewing, essentially
for resolution, that’s changing codecs on the
front end with manufacturers and changing
devices on the back end. We can go through
this endless merry-go-round of waiting for the
next resolution decision to be made and throw
everything we have at it but with the business
dynamics it’s not sustainable. We have to think of
something different.
What was your background prior to joining Avid?I grew up as a technologist. My father is
a technologist and an educator and my
mother is also an educator. My formal training
is in economics and finance. I’ve worked
in sports and media, e-commerce and
banking technology.
I was in the media area before in a start-up
that grew very rapidly and went public in the
late 90s with digital distribution of content. I then
went into the banking industry, which was
interesting because it is by far the largest
segment that deploys technology. It is roughly
three times larger than media but they had
1,500 fewer vendors and if you take the top ten
vendors they equal about 50 per cent of the
market. In broadcast media, it’s a lot smaller,
it’s only 15-20 per cent. By comparison, we
[media] spend a lot more time and energy just
connecting all the parts. We estimate 25 to 30
per cent of budgets are wasted just putting
all the pieces together.
Part of it is the vendors, part of it is the way
media clients run and part of it is the adoption
of technology. No matter how you look at it, it’s
terribly inefficient. When you look at a return on
invested R&D dollar, it’s poorest in our sector
and we can be more competitive as an industry
in how we deploy capital in R&D. It has to be
better than it is today.
I’ve mostly been an entrepreneur. I taught and
also consulted for a couple of years at PwC.
My interest in banking was that I wanted to have
an impact on social stability.
My last company, Open Solutions, tried to find
a way that we could share common standards
globally so it was easier. We’re serious about
these types of technologies because we know
they work. ‘Open’ means inclusive and that a
community can work better with each other in
a productive way. Even if that means it’s not
always your product.
Coming here, where it’s not as regulated
as banking (it’s smaller and without those
pressures) was really shocking to me. There
was so much pride in proprietary technologies
that were disconnected. We’re trying to
make it harder for each other, and that’s not
good for anybody.
What parts of your entrepreneurial background do you bring to the role at Avid?I’ve started a few companies and I still have
a few companies operating. When you’re a
disruptive innovator and taking on established
players, you learn what it takes to excite the
senses on what’s possible in an industry. When
you’re a larger, proven, established player, I’ve
also learnt what can happen if you become
complacent. Avid has a unique opportunity
TVBEurope 45
Feature
“We can go through this endless merry-go-round of waiting for the
next resolution decision to be made and throw everything we have at it but
with the business dynamics it’s not sustainable. We have to think of
something different”
October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Feature46 TVBEurope
because it has a rich heritage that was born
out of reimagining how to create content and it
really created a category.
We, at our birth, were a disruptive
entrepreneurial company that created a whole
new way to think. Like a lot of companies,
over time you tend to stay where you began.
The digitisation of the workfl ow: Avid can
legitimately take credit for being the initial
people that took fi lm and converted it to a
digital fi le record when many hadn’t heard of
such a thing, and really led that to create this
category. Since then, the rest of the workfl ow
has become digitised but Avid stayed with what
it knew best. Now it’s trying to take that anchor
role and say that we can do more to the entire
workfl ow. Now, our problem isn’t just creating
content, it’s doing it in a more cost-effi cient
way that fuses the creative process with the
monetisation process. We’re re-embracing our
heritage of being an innovator. The board saw
that linkage between my background and
what we needed now.
What do you enjoy most about your job?The most fun thing has been how willing our
clients are to share with us. Avid is in the middle
of a transformation itself, trying to recapture the
imagination of the industry. We’re part of the
family. We want to help an industry that we’re
excited about and care about.
The three things that excite me are, number
one, that it’s a big challenge because
we want to preserve our heritage and
build on it in a way that solves the
biggest business issues.
Number two, our clients and
employees are fully engaged; one
thing that surprised me was how the
largest media companies in the world
roll up their sleeves and share with us
what their business problems are.
The biggest thing, and probably
why this effort is so important, and
what’s always been the case with
media, is how it is part of our social
fabric to educate, to connect, to
delight and to inspire. In good times
and bad, this is the case. As we
become more globally connected,
more organisations want to fi nd their
voice. That’s one of the reasons why
media consumption is going up so much.
We’re working on something that is socially
very important and has always been a big
piece of the fabric of our existence.
There are two things that I hope
our clients are appreciating
that’s happening. Number
one, the world is changing,
they’re in some form of
adaptation and we just
want to help because it
is happening to us too.
Number two, we should both care about this.
We have a chance to impact something that
impacts everybody. The social connectedness
and digitisation has made the world’s social
fabric stronger through media. You’re seeing it
play out all over the world.
What are the specifi c challenges you face as a company over the next 12 months to two years?Avid Everywhere was designed to meet the most
signifi cant business needs of the industry. We
conceptualised it in 2013 with a white paper
and launched it at NAB 2014.
One challenge was Avid Everywhere: the
platform and modules. The other was the
Avid customer association.
The platform was designed to meet the
challenges of the industry. How do we allow you
to collaborate, create at a lower cost and get
more value out of each asset by connecting the
creative to the distribution process? The reaction
and sales on this has gone crazy and it’s caused
us to have more strategic dialogue with more
large media companies than we had expected.
It has caused us to engage in ways we
haven’t had to before.
There are some new challenges and we’ve
had to adjust to this strategic dialogue. For
instance, our cloud-based offering has exposed
us to a whole new area of the market. The
marketplace allows you to be social with others
and collaborate via the cloud. This is a new
concept for our industry.
Part of the challenge is Avid Everywhere
being adopted at a faster rate than we thought.
We wrapped our SDKs and APIs with an
extendable toolkit and announced at NAB that
it’s available to anybody for free immediately:
customers, competitors.
We thought we’d have to go and recruit
people but in fact we had hundreds sign up
immediately. Once you’re certifi ed and you post
it on the marketplace, when you sell something
to my client, if it’s a certifi ed connection we’re
guaranteeing it works.
Now that we’ve put forth this ambitious
strategy and there are working modules that
people are buying at a fast rate, I really thought
it would take longer to get it going.
The Avid customer association was formed by
us for our community. It has an executive board
of some of the largest media companies in the
world, which governs six advisory groups (125
representatives). Their job is to represent the
interest of three million end users who use our
products. We’ve spent a ton on R&D.
Louis Hernandez Jnr
“The most fun thing has been how willing our clients are to share with us. Avid is in the middle of a transformation itself, trying to recapture the imagination of the industry. We’re
part of the family. We want to help an industry that we’re excited about and care about”
I just want to get a better return on what
we’ve spent by addressing the bigger
business issues. I thought the biggest
challenge was going to be getting people
to understand what we’re trying to do.
Our proven trust and heritage has kicked in
and they’re just happy that someone has
attempted to step forward with a bolder
strategy and it’s being adopted at a very
fast rate.
Someone called us the most open,
extensible platform on the planet. Clearly,
now we’re leading the way on openness
and flexibility, not only on the products/apps
but in the way you deploy it. You should be
limited by your own imagination/strategy,
not by your own vendor telling you you
can only deploy it one way because it’s
more profitable.
How much of your operation do you devote to R&D?We’ve always been 20 per cent above market
on spend. All I want is to get a better return.
We just announced our results recently. I think
people were shocked by how the company
has transformed economically because of all
the excitement of Avid Everywhere. We have
always spent a ton on R&D. We’ve had a fully
engaged client community.
What is the message that the industry needs to be buying into?The industry is in the middle of a transformation.
Clients should be expecting more. We only
need a couple of vendors to join the movement
to be more creative.
What industry has changed their delivery so
you can now only be cloud? Or the fact we’re
so fragmented. There are 1,500 main vendors
here that have no interest in making these
connect, everything is point to point. We have
a responsibility to stand up and say ‘there’s a
better way’, and that if we work together and
collaborate we can help ourselves and our
industry solve the biggest issues. The issue isn’t
how do we do the next button or feature, it’s
how do we keep doing what we love to do
in a sustainable way.
We have to work together more. We’re trying
to take out this fragmentation that is costing
us 25 per cent of the budget. Lets use that
money instead to focus on what the joy is.
The joy is in creating content.
TVBEurope 47October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
“We have a responsibility to stand up and say ‘there’s a better way’, and that if
we work together and collaborate we can help ourselves and our industry solve
the biggest issues. We have to work together more”
Burrows, the DPP’s technical standards lead, and
Channel 4’s CTO of broadcast and distribution.
Bigger post houses have been prepared for
the new file delivery protocol, but many smaller
producers and contractors, accustomed to
delivering in ProRes or other formats, have been
scrambling to manage the transition.
Assessing progressSo, one year after the DPP announcement, how
have the British broadcasters managed?
Last month’s IBC2014 featured a special session
by the DPP, which looked back at the past year’s
progress. The DPP was able to announce that
as of 1 October, both ITV and Channel 4 will
have fully transitioned, with file-based delivery
becoming the default standard for all their
suppliers. In fact, the two broadcasters had
already been taking file delivery for several weeks.
Channel 5 and BT Sport have also been expecting
Feature48 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Where were you on FDDay?
On 1 October, while the rest of the world
was quietly going about its business,
the UK broadcast industry observed
a momentous turning point. The first day of
October marked the end of tape forever and
the beginning of a bright new era of file-based
programme delivery. Sort of.
A year ago, at IBC2013, the DPP (Digital
Production Partnership) announced that on
1 October 2014, UK broadcasters BBC, ITV
and Channel 4 would move to fully file-based
programme delivery, with other major broadcasters
set to make the transition at best possible speed.
The DPP had set the stage for the transition back
in January 2012, when it announced a UK file-
based delivery standard that was to be the new
common file delivery spec for the future, AS-11.
Since then, the DPP has been tireless in its
educational efforts to prepare the industry for a
tapeless world. Its day and night campaigning
has included a continuous stream of social
media messages, links to technical papers,
publications – including the Producers Guide to
File Delivery – videos, and multiple seminar and
conference appearances (including TVBEurope’s
IT Broadcast Workflow). The conversation around
the file delivery switchover date even has its own
Twitter hashtag, #Fdday.
“It’s not just about producing a standard, it’s a
huge business change programme,” says Kevin
UK broadcasters created the DPP to speed the transition to fully digital production. This month marked their deadline for moving to entirely file-based workflows, using the new DPP AS-11 standard. How did they do? Neal Romanek reports
delivery of DPP AS-11 files for several
months now. The BBC has begun to phase in
file-based delivery from producers. BSkyB began
accepting AS-11 deliveries from 1 October,
aiming to complete the migration to full-file
delivery by October 2015.
The DPP’s Burrows says of the file-delivery
finish line, “It’s gone as well as we could expect.
Obviously, for shows in mid-commission, there’s a
view to take concerning whether you disrupt the
show half-way through the run or start it with files
the next time up. We’re basically taking a very
pragmatic approach to it.”The tape-to-file switch
is not the only transition the DPP is shepherding
the UK industry through. Earlier in the year,
working with the Advanced Media Workflow
Association (AMWA), the organisation created a
Compliance Programme, which aims to ensure
that suppliers are producing kit that can
correctly read and process files which meet
the AS-11 DPP standard.
“We realised at the beginning of this year
that, whilst we were making good progress
with the manufacturers, this is still a complex
area and our concern was making sure that
the files created would play back in other
manufacturers’ devices.”
In March, the DPP began to put together a
test centre, so it could analyse files from various
manufacturers and test products. “We came up
with a minimum criteria for compliance with our file
format,” says Burrows, “This isn’t to say we check
absolutely everything with that file, but there are
these 500 things you check when a file is delivered
or a file is created from a piece of kit. What we
do then is create a test report, which differs
depending on the type of product.”
The DPP already has about 30 suppliers signed
up for the programme, including Aframe, AmberFin
(a Dalet company), Emotion Systems, Front Porch
Digital, Nativ, Nugen, root6, Snell, Sony, Telestream
and Wohler Technologies. And at IBC2014, DPP
announced the first four companies that have
passed certification — Cinegy, Dalet (AmberFin),
root6 and Telestream.
Delivering the worldSo, tape will be around for a bit longer in UK
broadcast delivery – for a few weeks in some
cases, months in others – but considering many
UK companies have already been tapeless
for some time, and that the UK is continuing to
expand as a hub for file-intensive international
productions, it’s possible that next October
will find the UK a streamlined, fully
file-based ecosystem. The new AS-11 DPP
standard has attracted attention from other
parts of the world. Burrows said, “We met at IBC
with a few international broadcasters, from the
US and Europe, and there’s quite a lot of interest
from other people in adopting our standard or a
version of it, because we’ve been through all the
pain of getting there. They realise they need to
do something themselves.”
TVBEurope 49October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
FeatureKevin Burrows presented at a special DPP session at IBC2014 last month in Amsterdam
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Describe your early career, the composition of the landscape at the time, and the problems you saw that needed fixing. I joined the BBC as a ‘graduate trainee’ in 1968
from the Electronics Department at Southampton
University in the UK. At the BBC’s Ellis Island —
‘Wood Norton’ — one of the BBC top brass told
us that he felt sorry for us because (sic), “with
the start of PAL and SECAM colour TV, all the
challenging technical work has already been
done”. Of course, it wasn’t true. I started work at
BBC Research Department (Kingswood Warren),
the home of deep thoughts and gentile sports.
After five years at the BBC in 1973, I joined the
IBA (Independent Broadcasting Authority). One
reason was because it was moving to its superb
new premises just outside Winchester, Crawley
Court. Also, the boss at Crawley was the great
Howard Steele. His name sounded like a rock
star. He was an inspiring leader, young and full of
energy and ideas. He died relatively young. They
broke the mould after Howard.
Soon after I joined, I was asked to work with
the IBA team developing Teletext. I didn’t invent
their Teletext — this was Peter Hutt and his
guys. But I was asked to create and edit the first
live Teletext magazine. The service was called
‘ORACLE’, which is an acronym, and there will
be a prize for someone who remembers what
it meant. Howard Steele was competitive and
he knew the BBC was developing in parallel a
Teletext system called CEEFAX – he wanted to be
first. Our first live ORACLE service was at IBC
in September 1974.
One day my (rather Noel Coward-like) boss,
Dr Boris Townsend, who worked a lot in the EBU,
asked me to write a report on the new EBU ‘hot’
topic, Electronic News Gathering. I told him I
knew absolutely nothing about ‘ENG’. His words
ring down the decades: “Dear boy, anyone can
write a report on something they do know about
— it takes a good engineer to write a report on
something they don’t”. This was my introduction
to the world of committees and standards, which
was to absorb the rest of my career.
In 1980, I joined the European Broadcasting
Union Technical Centre in Brussels. The fine EBU
chief engineer, Prof Henri Mertens, wanted the
EBU ship steered towards a common world
standard for digital television – what a super
challenge to have. He gave me a lot of freedom
and much good advice. He told me that:
“achieving a common standard, even if not
perfect, is 100 per cent better than no common
standard at all”.
We set up a ‘Task Force’ that harnessed the
resources of the EBU and the SMPTE. To create
new standards, you do need some rules of
procedure, but you also need imagination
and creativity.
In 1989, the EBU moved its Technical Centre
(and me) to Geneva, Switzerland. Over the next
25 years, MPEG made its mark, the DVB Project
started, the EU collaborative projects began,
World Broadcasting Unions became more active,
and well, there’s lots more that could be said.
You mention some of the changes you have witnessed in your career — what in your view are the major milestones of this industry’s progression from the days of analogue and ‘traditional’ broadcast, to today’s digital realm? The world media industry has played ‘musical
chairs’ geographically over the decades.
Feature50 TVBEurope October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
A time for reflection and celebration
“The impact of IP and the web is certainly of equal magnitude to the
Gutenberg bible”
Dr David Wood, former deputy technical director of the EBU, takes a trip down memory lane with TVBEurope ahead of his Lifetime Achievement honour at the inaugural TVBAwards, in recognition of his outstanding career in the broadcast industry
One of the shifts has been the move of the
development of new hardware video and audio
systems from Europe and the US to Japan, Korea,
and China. There are no manufacturers of
displays and few of production equipment
left in the ‘West’.
We are still witnessing major transitions in
programme production technology – file-based
workflows, IT programme production, and the
use of commodity equipment for professional
purposes. It has been a bumpy ride, and
broadcasters still need to fasten their seatbelts.
Not exactly the birth of printing, as a
generality, new eras in broadcasting do begin
when the ITU, MPEG, and DVB agree common
standards, but the impact of IP and the
web is certainly of equal magnitude to the
Gutenberg bible.
How have you changed as a person and professional during the course of your career? I was privileged to lead standardisation groups in
the ITU, DVB and elsewhere. I learned by attrition
that to reach common agreements you must
understand how the world looks from the point
of view of the different interests involved.
You need to also understand the differences
in behaviour of people from different countries
— there are different ‘conventions’ in different
countries. Japanese people, for example,
believe that certain things are ‘impolite’ and
they don’t say them. There are differences
between Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, many
European nations, Russians, and Americans. The
point is that the discussion leader’s job is to be a
bridge between the participants, and to sense
where the participants are coming from.
I have the honour of knowing many individuals
who possess natural authority, who exude an
aura of decisiveness that leads people to agree
with them and support them. Among them are
Ulrich Reimers in DVB, Leonardo Chiariglioni in
MPEG, and Mark Krivocheev in the ITU.
What have you enjoyed the most about your career — what personal achievements have given you the most satisfaction? Being part of the ‘drivers cab’ in the three stages
of digital television standards must come near
the top — SD, HD, and UHD — via Rec. 601, Rec.
709, and Rec. 2020. Incidentally, I always hoped
that by including 1080p/50,60 in Rec. 709 in 1989
we would see the decline of interlace scanning,
un-necessary in an age of content adaptive
compression, but it’s taking a long time.
For the HDTV Rec., we added a 1080p/24
format in 1998, believing it could have a role in
TVBEurope 51October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
the cinema industry. Hollywood then went into
action and developed the higher quality DCI
standards for normal movie making. I hope the
Rec. 709 wake-up call helped them.
Being in at the beginning of the DVB project
in 1993 was another high point. When we
started, we thought it would be a three-year
project, but it was so successful, and still
continues actively over 20 years later, with over
a billion DVB-based sets out there now.
I am a passionate stereoscopic
photographer. I did work to move 3DTV forward
in the DVB Project. We agreed the 3DTV
standards the world needed, but expectations
were not managed, and we shot over the peak
of the inflated expectations curve into the trough
of depression. Eventually this will stabilise — so
don’t give up yet.
As chair of the EU Collaborative Projects
Concertation Group, I could see that Europe
overflows with great engineers and great ideas
for advancing technology — we just have to
harvest and manage them.
One of my favourite professional periods
was when George Waters was my boss at the
EBU, following his term as DG of RTE. He was
a kind and generous guy, with a great new
idea every day — just what you need to be
productive. It’s also been a treat working
with Christoph Dosch from Germany in
ITU-R Study Group 6.
How important a role do associations like the EBU have to play in the progression of this industry into the future? It has always made sense for broadcasters to
act together in matters of common interest.
The EBU’s national broadcaster members have
so much in common, while at the same time
they are not competing with each other. For an
association, it’s a gift to have this arrangement.
Broadcasting itself is riding stormy waters,
and no one knows whether over-air
broadcasting will be subsumed by internet
delivery in the years ahead.
What is your perspective of the industry of today, and where do you feel we are headed in terms of technological progression? The rise of technical quality is inexorable, and
eventually all displays from large screen sets
to tablets will be 2160p. 2320p will take more
time but we can be certain that it will happen.
Maybe it will be followed by an object wave
3DTV system. How will standards be developed
in the future? Systems will be increasingly realised
in software, a land where an ‘open source’
approach, rather than formal standardisation,
may be king.
Finally, the TVBAwards Lifetime Achievement honour has been bestowed upon you by your peers for your services to, and impact upon, the broadcast media industry. What message would you have for those in this industry (particularly the new entrants) who are tasked with preserving its longevity for generations to come? Every organisation, particularly broadcasters,
needs to have a plan of where they want to be
in five and ten years’ time — but a plan that is
constantly under review. We all need to have
our hand on the shoulder of something and
someone in front.
Secondly, each organisation should have to
have some kind of ‘unit for the future’, where
your best people look ahead from the ‘engine
drivers cab’, so to speak. Most of time, we are in
the ‘guard’s van’ looking backwards at what has
happened — you need people looking forward
for trends and tendencies.
If you do those things, you’re on your way. I
know it’s easy to spend other people’s money
like this. Forgive a guy who is just thrilled to be
asked for an opinion.
David Wood: “Broadcasting itself is riding stormy waters, and no one knows whether over-air broadcasting will be subsumed by internet delivery in the years ahead”
Typical comments of the likely impact to
come from 4K is this by Luxembourg-based
SES and its COO Ferdinand Kayser, who
said that SES is convinced that Ultra-HDTV will
make a major impact, and that satellite will
play a signifi cant part in winning audiences for
4K viewing. “Satellite will be very relevant for
delivery in the future,” he said. Kayser bases his
argument on the challenges faced by IPTV and
(to a certain extent) cable delivery of 4K signals.
Kayser expects some key European
broadcasters to have 4K channels on air during
2016. “The catalyst will undoubtedly be the
UEFA European Football Championships and
that year’s Olympics from Brazil.” He said he
expected some important pay-TV broadcasters,
such as Canal+, to start closing their Standard
Defi nition services soon.
He said that satellite was in place to ensure
there was no “digital divide” and that viewers
could watch 4K transmissions without buffering.
Kayser admitted that even the arrival of 4G and
perhaps even 5G, as well as digital compression,
would still not make terrestrial networks perfect as
a delivery mechanism. “No single technological
answer ticks all the boxes,” he said. “But satellite
is very strong and also represents value for
money and maximum choice.”
He added that by 2025 half of all screens and
STBs would be for Ultra HD. “Ultra HD screens are
already showing a similar price entry point and
price decreases, just as full HD screens did when
fi rst introduced. Introduction of the new [HEVC]
compression format will require a new simulcast
period to migrate from MPEG-4 to HEVC.
Congestion-free viewing of Ultra-HD services is
a ‘sweet spot’ for satellite.”
SES already has a number of demo 4K
channels on air, as has arch-rival Eutelsat. Indeed,
Paris-based Eutelsat has had test transmissions
on air for more than a year. At IBC2013, the
company showcased a live 4K demo of that
year’s San Marino Moto GP Championship.
Markus Fritz, Eutelsat’s commercial and marketing
development director, is anticipating an early
start. “In reality, many of our customers will fi nd
space on one of their existing transponders with
us for the early transmissions. How will it start? It
will be similar to the early days of HDTV; but fi rst,
the set-top boxes have to be available. In my
view, there’s plenty of content about, and if you
wanted us to fi nd content for two channels, let
alone a few hours in the evening, we could do it.
Certainly, fi lling four or so hours a day is
not diffi cult.”
Intelsat was also busy a year ago (showcasing
the live rugby union match between Saracens
and Gloucester), and is already carrying 4K
signals around the planet. A recent study from the
company found that 23 per cent of its clients expect
to launch 4K services within the next four years.
On airBut hop to Japan and Intelsat has had a real
– as distinct to a demonstration – service on air
since June, using communications satellite TV
channels of Sky Perfect JSAT Holdings. Moreover,
the Japanese are promising far more. Japan’s
government has confi rmed its roadmap for
the introduction of Ultra-HDTV in its 4K and 8K
versions. Japan will use its ‘BS’ satellite channels
for these debut services and as part of its build
up to a widespread introduction ahead of the
2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
Satellite Focus52 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Satellite ready to tap into 4KIBC2014 was dominated by 4K/Ultra-HD, and nowhere was this more apparent than in IBC’s prestigious Hall 1, where the world’s satellite operators have their massive stands. Almost every one of them contained compelling demonstrations of their latest, sparkling 4K assets, writes Chris Forrester
Ferdinand Kayser admitted that even the arrival of 4G and perhaps even 5G, as well as digital compression, would still not make terrestrial networks perfect as a delivery mechanism
The country’s Internal Affairs and
Communications Ministry said the government
would begin test broadcasting in 2016, when
Rio de Janeiro hosts the Summer Olympics, and
upgrade it to full-scale broadcasting as soon as
possible, according to local reports. By 2018, the
roadmap calls for Japan’s public broadcaster
to have its own dedicated 4K channel as well
as five commercial broadcasters to be
transmitting 4K channels.
None of Europe’s ‘big four’ pay-TV operators
(BSkyB, Canal Plus, Sky Deutschland or Sky Italia)
have yet made an announcement regarding
4K transmissions, although Sky Germany has run
tests on football coverage, a key driver for pay-
TV. On 26 April, it carried a Bundesliga football
match in Ultra HD. The match, between Bayern
Munich and Werder Bremen, was carried on an
SES satellite at 50fps using the new High Efficiency
Video Codec (HEVC) compression algorithm.
Six 4K cameras were used and another four
HDTV cameras had their signals up-converted
to Ultra HDTV.
Brian Sullivan, Sky Deutschland’s CEO, said:
“By successfully broadcasting a complete
Bundesliga match live in what was a true
end-to-end test of the full Ultra HD production
chain, it is clear that the day is getting closer
when it will be possible to bring a top quality
Ultra HD live sports production into consumers’
living rooms. There are still a few things to take
care of but I am very confident that we, as
the innovation leader, along with our partners,
are on a very good path to revolutionising the
viewing experience.”
TVBEurope 53October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Satellite Focus
“I expect we will see a few showcase events on a channel, which will grow to a
channel that has a lot of looping of content”
Euan Smith
Bringing the benefits of an “all connected” future to all citizens requires networks capable of enabling and supporting all required broadband and video-related features
looping of content. Over time,
I can see this migrating to
three, four or five channels and
perhaps more.”
Both BSkyB and Sky Italia are
investing in 4K content, being
captured for their archive
and future transmission. BSkyB
has worked for some years
with Atlantic Productions (for
both 3D and 4K shows) on
such award-winning hits as
David Attenborough’s Natural
History Museum Alive, shown
last Christmas, and its latest
4K production, Wild Flight. This year, Sky Italia is
releasing a co-production (with Rome-based
DBW) of Puccini’s La Boheme, shot in 4K at
the spectacular Torre del Lago, near Pisa.
There’s much more, in the form of sports of
course, and music, and natural history from
the likes of the BBC’s Natural History Unit and
Japan’s NHK, extreme sports from Red Bull,
and dozens more production houses now
gearing up for UltraHD.
www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Satellite Focus54 TVBEurope
Sullivan’s EVP of product and operations, Euan
Smith, went further, saying that Sky Deutschland
would have a test channel on air later this year.
Asked what this work would lead to, Smith said
there was much more to Ultra HD than just a
football game or two, however important they
were to subscribers. “I think it will go in much
the same way as HDTV did initially. I expect we
will see a few showcase events on a channel,
which will grow to a channel that has a lot of
SES is convinced that Ultra HDTV will make a major impact, and that satellite will play a significant part in winning audiences for 4K viewing
4K comments from IBC “4K is a tidal wave” NBC-Universal
“4K is a natural evolution” BT Sport
“We are working to the 2015-16 season”
BT Sport
“The juggernaut is in motion” Arqiva
“There is an appetite for quality” BT Sport
“The market will buy” Sony
“We are headed for 4K” BBC R&D
“4K is a no-brainer” DisplaySearch
“We’ve brought everything forward by
two years” NHK
“Blu-ray 4K by the end of 2015” CEA
“4K has a momentum today” Sky Deutschland
“HEVC is early in its life-cycle” Netflix
“200 4K channels by 2020. 1,000 by 2025” SES
“4K is a bit like an airline. HDTV is obviously
economy class. Everyone has it and they
can fly anywhere in the world. But it’s nicer
in Premium Economy where you can get
UHD-1/phase 1. Then in first class, it’s UHD1-
phase 2. Of course, 8K then means you are
in your own executive jet.” BSkyB
What will be the key challenges to overcome for satellite teleports when it comes to the future of redundancy designs?To keep up with demand for bandwidth and
new types of modulation, over 25 commercial
satellites are being launched each year.
As a result, I believe the key challenge for
many satellite teleports is to move away
from passive splitters and patch panels and
trust in improving software and hardware
redundancy technologies. Although this will
require investment, the added benefit is the
improvement in RF performance, such as
noise, return loss, isolation, signal compression
and flatness for their signal chains. At the end of
the day, the satellite industry has to persuade its
broadcasting customers that satellite is the most
reliable, affordable and flexible way to deliver its
programmes to a worldwide audience.
What Satcomms areas have been affected by increased SLAs?With the development of the mobile phone and
PDA market, streaming content to handheld
devices is driving new requirements for phone
operators and the satellite market. On a recent
trip to upgrade a satellite teleport in Hong Kong,
I was surprised to see so many people watching
live feeds, especially as there are often stringent
service level agreements to ensure these
networks are always online. The result is that to
keep the official departments issuing the licenses
for mobile networks happy, these SLAs mean that
the satellite industry that delivers live content to
the telecoms operators may have to comply.
What types of redundancy designs have you come across in global teleports?Installing increased levels of redundancy
within a satellite teleport or earth station can
be a costly process, unless a combination of
intelligent software, RF detection and switches
are installed. At the headend, we often see one
or two-standby motorised satellite dishes linked to
redundancy switches, which are brought online
as a main feed fails. In addition, we often find
that ETL’s RF matrix switches are used to ensure
that satellite feeds can be routed to any number
of IRDs or modems, which again can be used
in a 1:1 or n+1 redundancy design to back up
downlink equipment.
What are the more affordable ways satellite operators and broadcasters can improve their redundancy?Managing single
points of failure within
a budget is a tough
job for satellite RF
engineers. It is easy to
imagine the impact of
failure during a major
football match – where
millions of people may
be linked to a single
feed – and as a result,
the RF engineering
mindset should be
to design reliability
into the equipment. A balance of hot-swap
dual redundant power supplies, control cards
and RF hardware is becoming the standard
in professional teleports and means that the
important measures of mean time before failure
(MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR) are the
best we can achieve.
Which direction do you think RF redundancy will take?The pattern that I am seeing in the Satcomm
market is the increased investment in monitoring
and control software. The result is that a typical
media company, with a number of different
downlink and uplink teleports around the world,
can monitor and control downlink content and
uplink transmission equipment from one central
location. We have had to respond to this by
ensuring that all our RF distribution equipment,
including fibre links, can be integrated
into these all-seeing networks via Ethernet
to provide peace of mind.
TVBEurope 55October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Satellite Focus
Redundancy in your RF chainHow far do you go?
Andrew Bond: “To keep up with demand, over 25 commercial satellites are being launched each year”
“The key challenge for many satellite teleports is to move away from passive
splitters and patch panels and trust in improving software and hardware
redundancy technologies”
Service level agreements (SLAs) have become increasingly demanding for many satellite operators, as telecom-style performance measures influence uplink and downlink teleports. Andrew Bond, commercial director at the RF Engineering company, ETL Systems, talks to TVBEurope about the challenges facing the satellite industry in meeting these sometimes onerous requirements
Founded in 2009 by Alexander Mazzara
and TV industry veteran Kurt Schaad, the
concept for joiz was to create the most
innovative social TV broadcaster and platform.
Mazzara has a background in journalism and
has worked within the TV industry for Switzerland’s
largest broadcaster (SRF) and Germany’s RTL and
Pro7, so was well placed to enter the TV market.
The idea for joiz was to fuse TV with the web,
social media and mobile platforms. In 2011,
investors were secured to launch joiz for the first
time in Switzerland, followed by Germany in 2013.
“When we started, second screen and social TV
didn’t exist,” explains Mazzara. “Those days, it was
more about interactive TV. There’s a chance that
people are using other devices while watching
TV and the reason is that Wi-Fi is available for the
first time and there’s a huge chance of having
interactivity with software, not with hardware. Many
companies tried to do interactivity with another
remote control or set top boxes and typically it
didn’t work because in those days, interactivity was
not fast enough. Right now with apps or websites
you can do much more interactivity. You can
create a community around a programme.”
So what is joiz? It’s a combination of a TV channel,
website, social network and mobile service, all
offered as one entertainment proposition that
places young people at the heart of it.
joiz can be viewed as a free digital TV channel.
Users can also watch a live stream of the
channel (if based in Switzerland and Germany)
via joiz.ch and joiz.de as well as via its mobile
apps. There is also access to original content
(short videos as well as long-form programming)
via the websites and apps. The channels in both
countries are completely different operations.
They share some programming but are produced
for Swiss and German audiences locally.
Getting to know youThe company produces the majority of its
content and has incorporated advanced
technological developments to serve its users
across all platforms. “There are vendors that
make graphical interfaces, social media on TV,
etc. That’s nothing. Our view is about the viewer,”
says Mazzara. “We consider them first as viewers
and secondly as loyal customers. The TV world is
sort of a B2B model. You produce content and
go to a satellite/cable operator and those guys
provide content to households. The company
uses a customer relationship management
tool to better understand its viewers at home.
“E-commerce companies like Amazon are
already doing that. They don’t have content but
really understand their customers.”
At joiz, the company calls their viewers or users
‘viewsers’. Viewsers can create a profile on
the joiz website, which enables them to take
advantage of second screen opportunities such
as to check-in and comment on live shows, chat
with friends, review videos, submit questions to
studio guests and vote or take part in polls.
Another way for viewsers to be involved is through
the Red Button second screen feature, which
Mazzara describes as “a software Red Button that
sits in the app”. He adds: “We use it for commercial
reasons. For instance, during a McDonald’s ad,
people can click and immediately get a voucher
for McDonald’s. We also use it for cooking shows.
Viewsers can click the Red Button and receive the
recipe immediately on their mobile phone.”
Following its success in Switzerland, last year
joiz launched in Germany. “In Germany, we
create about 85 to 90 per cent of the content
ourselves,” explains Mazzara.
OriginalityThe original programming is produced locally at the
company’s hi-tech studios in Zurich and Berlin. “The
studios are pretty similar. We learnt a lot from Zurich
and we tried to make it better in Germany. We
typically have two main studios. One is a newsroom
studio and the other is a virtual set. In both studios,
we produce daily shows, talk shows and live shows
as well as people working outside on reports.”
In addition to the entertainment experience,
joiz is working with advertisers and sponsors. “The
Satellite Focus56 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Social TV grips Europe
Fresh from speaking at IBC2014, joiz co-founder and CEO Alexander Mazzara talks to Melanie Dayasena-Lowe about his plans for ‘Europe’s first social TV channel’
“What we’ve tried to do in the last four years is to understand the ‘viewsers’
much better and to try to make a business model out of this”
Alexander Mazzara speaks at IBC2014’s ‘Interactive entertainment — You ain’t seen nothing yet’ conference session in Amsterdam on how to monetise big data
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shift from linear TV to multiscreen experience
is already there. With customers like Coca-
Cola, they understand that and try to do new
things with us. Typically, what we do for them is
branded entertainment. Not only do we develop
a format idea for a campaign for them but we
also leverage their needs with a multichannel
approach. We try to create a format that works on
TV, online, social media, etc.”
Growth plansWith successful launches under its belt, joiz is
eyeing up expansion plans in the UK, US and
other territories. “We are looking for partnerships
and are in negotiations with some of the players
in the market. Both markets [UK and US] will be
very interesting for us, but we’ll do it carefully.”
In addition to launching the joiz brand in other
countries, the company is pursuing a new area
for expansion with its proprietary and innovative
technology framework. The interactive features
of joiz, including its fully integrated second screen
app, can work across numerous TV genres
including news, sports and programming for kids.
joiz Group is currently in discussions with
several broadcasters and production companies
interested in taking advantage of this opportunity.
“We’ve already signed some deals. We’re
already in the phase where we are integrating
the systems. The feedback is overwhelming.
It looks like we’ll be starting in Germany.
We understand the market here [in Europe]
much better so it’s faster to implement with
broadcasters,” he comments.
The company also offers several service
packages to complement the licensing of its
technology framework, including consulting,
hosting and user verification, community
management, media sourcing and support
services. Going forward, Mazzara sees TV as the
next big market. “I strongly believe the TV market is
in a big transition right now,” he concludes.
“It might come in the next five years. We get
a lot of feedback from advertisers and agencies
since we have such a broad distribution of
our free-to-air channels in Germany and
Switzerland. We’re seeing shifts in the
consumption of media along with new
platforms rapidly evolving.”
TVBEurope 57October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Satellite Focus
The idea for joiz was to fuse TV with the web, social media and mobile platforms
Dyster: I can remember producing broadcast
system designs where VT-based editing was
cutting edge, serial control was a revelation and
the parallel control cable infrastructure linking GPI
ports and Boolean logic-based custom switching
systems held together day-to-day operations
across the entire broadcast facility. In the past two
decades these ‘clunky’, over-complicated and
ineffi cient systems have gradually disappeared
to be replaced almost entirely with IP-based
facsimiles. Where hundreds of kilometres of cable,
thousands of connections and months of design
and installation once existed, now a few racks of
PCs, hundreds of metres of CAT5e cable and an
appropriate quota of Ethernet switches does the
same job for a fraction of the cost and complexity.
Mailhot: The economic scale of the IT industry,
as compared to unique equipment for television,
produces a very different leverage on its
technology supply chain. For the IT industry, this
has produced a benefi cial price/capability
improvement of roughly twice every 18 months –
this is seen across storage, computing, and also
networking. By contrast, HD-SDI was introduced
in 1995 and we are still using it today. For
uncompressed content, HD-SDI is still the standard
interchange. Signals are connected back to
a house ‘router’ and high-quality pixel-perfect
synchronous-timed signals are available. Except
for cost and scalability, HD-SDI would live forever,
but as IP technology continues to improve, even
these uncompressed production infrastructures will
fi nd scalability and TCO benefi ts.
Vermaele: IP technology will help us move
into one end-to-end virtualised platform that
will be software-based for all media processes
and IP-based as one converged network for
all media workfl ows between these processes.
If well designed, this will result in a format-
independent, vendor-agnostic, highly fl exible and
scalable infrastructure. The creativity, speed and
fl exibility to set up, develop and offer new media
experiences on these platforms will increase, while
the cost and complexity decreases.
58 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
IP is the only way to go
Philip Stevens moderates this month’s Forum in which issues relating to internet protocol (IP) technology are discussed
With its ability to carry signals from any point to any point within standard internet infrastructures, audio and video-over-IP will transform broadcasting. So, what are the challenges when it comes to IP technology? What are the latest innovations? And where next for this technology?
Those taking part are (in alphabetical order) Martin Dyster, director and head of audio, TSL Products; John Mailhot, product architect director, Imagine Communications; Kirstan Pepler, head of propositions, media sector, Easynet; Steve Plunkett, CTO, Red Bee Media, part of Ericsson; Robert Rowe, MD, live TV, Snell, a Quantel company; Arnhild Schia, CCO, Nevion; Garrick Simeon, MD, General Dynamics Mediaware; Lieven Vermaele, CEO, SDNsquare; Jan Weigner, CTO, Cinegy; Hiroshi Yamauchi, technology and business development manager, 4K IP production and optical disk archive, Sony Europe.
IP Forum
How does IP technology help the broadcasting industry?
Martin DysterTSL Products
John MailhotImagine Communications
Mailhot: IP technology’s strength is also the
basis of its challenges. Take security: the core
strengths of IP networks are the ability to freely
interchange assets, to allow any computer to
reach, and control, any device, and to allow
the interworking of equipment, assets, graphics,
and fi les across facilities. This also presents
opportunities for operational errors and mistakes
— or malfeasance — at a greater scale. A
mis-routed RS-422 cable could create only a
limited amount of damage, while by comparison
an over-tired operator at a computer console
could take down an air chain. Then there’s
scalability even under duress. IP networks are
designed to ‘fi nd a way’ to get packets around
obstacles. As we transition more and more time-
critical work into packet-based networks and
routed infrastructures, allocating and managing
bandwidth requirements in these second-tier
connections will remain an important challenge.
Rowe: Ultimately, the biggest challenges are
small bumps in the road to a new, more effi cient
and effective workfl ow, rather than roadblocks
on the path to IP. As with all technology shifts,
the biggest challenges are in overall cultural and
organisational change management. Often, the
unfamiliarity of the equipment and the technology
and the changes with workfl ows require careful
planning, training, and consideration.
Schia: There are, of course, technical challenges to
IP, especially when it’s used for the realtime transport
of content for live production. These challenges
include variations in latency, the level of reliability
and the management of the IP networks. The reality
is that these technical challenges have largely been
overcome. There are two obstacles to the large-
scale adoption of IP, particularly in facilities. The fi rst
is the timing. The best time to make the move is
clearly when there is a need for new or upgraded
facilities — moving to IP for the sake of moving may
not make sense for many broadcasters. The second
and most important obstacle to IP’s adoption within
broadcast facilities is the lingering mindset of doubt.
Simeon: When it comes to technical change,
broadcasters tend to be cautious. Incumbent
technology, budgets and operational
considerations all play a role in driving change.
Television has made the shift into the ICT realm,
replacing many point-to-point intra-facility
connections with Ethernet and capitalising on
Rob RoweSnell
Arnhild SchiaNevion
TVBEurope 59October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
IP Forum
What is the biggest challenge when it comes to broadcasting using IP technology?
“Any multiplatform strategy today is IP-based. So no IP equals no multiplatform”
Jan Weigner, Cinegy
TVBEurope 61October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
IP Forum
commoditised IP networks and hardware for
fi le-based workfl ows and moving audio around.
However, the technical impracticality of shifting
uncompressed video around using IP technology
during ingest and playout remains stark. Studios
persist in working with uncompressed video
because that is what they are used to. As well as
being a cautious bunch, broadcasters also have
long memories. It takes time for broadcasters to
gain experience in working in all-IP and fi nally
forgetting about how IP packet-based networks
have lost data, suffered from jitter and caused
pain in the past.
Vermaele: The biggest challenge will be to
change and adapt the common best-practices
of IT and IP networking to the quality level
broadcasters and media applications require.
Weigner: To educate the engineering staff and
users. Change management. ‘Angst’ management.
Not an issue with the iPhone generation.
Yamauchi: One of the primary challenges when
broadcasting using IP technology is ensuring
a stable infrastructure and connection that is
able to transmit large data fi les reliably. When
broadcasting live over IP, this is even more vital
and presents a challenge to ensure that there
are no interruptions in the feed.
Mailhot: The current work is around the
challenges of signal formats, timing, and control
methodologies for moving uncompressed
production-level video into an IP-streaming
signal fl ow inside the facility. Software defi ned
networking (SDN), and software defi ned workfl ows
(SDW), are two areas where we, as a company,
are focused right now. They provide the critical
control methods and the workfl ow optimisations
to achieve the promised savings.
Workfl ow orchestration is paramount to any
baseband and hybrid IP-baseband network,
and is a key area in which we have
accelerated our leadership.
Pepler: New camera developments are gaining
momentum, with the ability to deliver the output
directly as an H.264 encoded stream, as well as
traditional HD-SDI. This means the location need
only have an Ethernet connection and it removes
the encoding from HD-SDI currently needed to
convert the camera to an IP transport medium.
New encoding formats are required to produce
manageable video paths or streams across
networks. With UHD containing more than four-
times the picture detail, it also means traditional
encoding can produce stream bitrates that
become diffi cult to deliver at a competitive cost.
Plunkett: One of the most signifi cant is the activity
underway to provide an IP alternative to SDI.
Standards such as SMPTE ST 2022:6, IEEE 1588 and
advances in Ethernet switching infrastructure are
being introduced into vendor products with the
potential to radically change how professional
media facilities are built and managed.
Rowe: The most signifi cant innovations at the
moment are around SDN that allows the control
infrastructure of IP networks to be abstracted away
from the underlying hardware. This allows a highly
fl exible lever in the operation and management of
traffi c within the IP infrastructure.
This has also led to the concept of virtual
networking, which complements the rise of virtual
machines and cloud-based computing. Signifi cant
advances have been made in high bandwidth
links and their processing in IP routing infrastructure.
Links operating at 40Gbps and 100Gbps are now
commonplace, with work being targeted at higher
and higher rate links. These high capacity IP links
with routing infrastructure, coupled with software-
defi ned networking, allow the high bandwidth
media signals used in television production to be
handled by off-the-shelf carrier grade IP routers.
Schia: Some of the most signifi cant innovations
are around the compression of video, where
technologies are being applied to reduce the
volume of data transported, with very low latency.
We are also seeing a great deal of innovation in
the management of IP networks, which essentially
allow non-experts from the broadcasters to be in
control of setting up and taking down connections
between virtually any location.
Simeon: For us it has been ensuring all our ad
insertion splicing and editing software is HEVC-
available for when broadcasters are ready to
convert, plus redefi ning our solutions using IP, such
as our transport stream delay with logo insertion
and programme switching.
Vermaele: Networking today is limited to the
functionalities given by hardware providers and
the talent of implementations by the engineers,
“The technical impracticality of shifting uncompressed video around using IP technology during ingest and playout
remains stark” Garrick Simeon, General
Dynamics Mediaware
What are the latest innovations in this fi eld?
Kirstan PeplarEasynet
Steve PlunkettRed Bee Media
62 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
IP Forum
mostly providing connectivity and best-effort QoS.
The most important evolution in networking is
‘software defi ned networking’. The innovations lay
in pulling the network control and management
away from the individual network devices towards
(and into) the intelligence of software applications
that will manage in specifi c ways for defi nite
business requirements. That is where we focus as
a company with our GRID solution, to have one
converged network with guaranteed performance
for each workfl ow — fi le transfer, live SDI video and
centralised editing, and any kind of other IP traffi c.
Weigner: The buzzwords would be SDN, AVB
and SMPTE2022-6, but ultimately they are not
necessary for the migration, but a sign of the
legacy SDI folks trying to save their bacon.
The real innovation is moving from dedicated
hardware products to software-based products
that can also run in virtual machines which,
of course, inevitably lead to cloud-based
applications. Here, cloud does not necessarily
mean ‘public’, but could be a private cloud in a
broadcasters’ own data centre.
Yamauchi: Sony has developed a new AV-
over-IP interface. This converts video, audio,
and metadata into packets, enabling realtime
transmission between equipment via standard
network infrastructures. Using this technology,
Sony confi gures IP Live Production systems in
order to increase operational effi ciency and to
reduce system cost for broadcasting studio and
sports live production.
Dyster: Aside from simply monetising content
delivery, there are parallel opportunities to tailor
advertising through consumer/viewer analytics and
personalised targeting. As somebody inclined to
watch TV on demand or from the TiVo, I’ve become
quite adept at bypassing the commercials. I can
imagine those days are numbered and my content
provider is out there plotting new and devious ways
to pitch products at me.
Mailhot: When content is virtualised and no
longer encumbered by, or restricted to, physical
plant, amazing things begin to happen. You can
manage your advertising and air time much more
effi ciently. IP technology and IT infrastructure
also enable television operators to reach more
consumers with more content at lower cost-points
going forward. This ability to match specialised
content to smaller audience fragments
at appropriate cost-points, as well as with
addressable advertising, is a key to monetisation.
Pepler: There are three signifi cant opportunities.
First, IP allows for lowering the costs of creation
as well as contribution and distribution of live
and fi le-based content. Secondly, broadcasters
are able to offer more fl exible ways to both
create and access the content they own. Lastly,
consumers can have better access to content, in
both the B2B and the B2C markets.
Rowe: The benefi t of IP technology for monetisation
is mostly in the distribution end of the broadcast
chain. The ubiquity of IP transport across both fi xed
and mobile systems means that more and more
customers have more and more access to media
when and where they want. The bi-directional
nature of IP connectivity means that more
interactive viewing experiences can be delivered,
literally and fi guratively connecting with one’s
audience. This connection can be monetised by
offering innovations such as click-through purchases
of advertised or featured products or premium
interaction with a show’s hosts.
Schia: IP will be everywhere in the broadcast
value chain and so will new opportunities for
monetising content. Most importantly, IP brings
fl exibility to the creation and distribution of
content, which means it can be more carefully
tailored to the user. For example, Denmark-based
television broadcaster TV2 Denmark has adopted
an IP-based network that not only enables each
region to contribute to each other, but can
also select international content with a regional
interest, such as a local sportsperson competing in
a major sporting event like the Olympics.
Weigner: Monetisation equals multiplatform. Any
multiplatform strategy today is IP-based. So no IP
equals no multiplatform. Now, more live formats
will be added to the mix as well, for example
sports and concerts.
Yamauchi: IP technology is allowing broadcasters
to transmit content from more locations, with
more information than ever before, which
presents some enticing opportunities to monetise
content. With remote IP production, for example,
broadcasters can connect to more sports venues
for live feeds. This is particularly important, as
many broadcasters experience problems with the
increased demand for, and number of, football
channels they provide, due to a limited number of
OB vans. So, this is a clear example of how
sales can be supported.
Dyster: Absolutely. We are at the tipping point
between baseband and IP. At NAB, I heard the
technology head of one of the world’s major
broadcasters declaring that he had purchased
his last SDI router. With that announcement
still echoing around the halls of the Las Vegas
Convention Centre, manufacturers of all
sizes must start investing their considerable
development resources in creating and
delivering next generation infrastructure solutions.
Pepler: Yes, without a doubt. Moving to IP v6 with
built-in QoS and multicast-type distribution will
accelerate the adoption of this as a platform,
not only on distribution to the end viewer, but
also as methods of contribution.
Plunkett: Yes, but getting to an all-IP
broadcasting environment is complex and will
take time to be fully realised.
Simeon: Absolutely guaranteed. Adoption of
IP technology is causing a paradigm shift. It is a
change-enabler for allowing everyone to think
differently about how we work with video. It will
free the industry from known technical hamstrings
and cost implications of always working in
baseband with uncompressed video.
Yamauchi: The core benefi ts of IP production
are compelling: fl exibility, mobility, and reduced
operating expenses. Flexibility is enabled by the
format tolerance of IP technology, which means
that it’s already compatible with SD, HD, and 4K,
and with any other formats the future may bring.
Added to this, the design and confi guration for
IP-based systems brings another level of fl exibility.
The ability to execute IP production anywhere with
a solid connection ensures that IP solutions are truly
mobile, and control and transmission over IP also
helps to reduce operational expenditure.
What opportunities does the technology off er for the monetisation of content?
Is IP technology the future of broadcasting?
Hiro YamauchiSony
Jan WeignerCinegy
Garrick SimeonGeneral Dynamics Mediawave
Lieven VermaeleSDNSquare
Dyster: I’d like to think that the various
standards bodies are working to bring together
manufacturers of IP technology to tackle
interoperability of video-over-IP protocols in the
same way that the Audio Engineering Society
has championed AES-67.
Pepler: Easynet is working to provide an option to
a cloud-based DAM/CMS, with online burstable
storage and archive, through the advent of IP. This
allows Easynet to take packages and live playout
directly into the DAM, available anywhere. Using
IP networks opens up new ways to leverage cloud
assets, with storage becoming the major area
where broadcasters struggle to keep up with the
amount of content growth. When networks fi nally
move to IP v6, the way consumers can receive
services will change. Networks using IP v6 will
suddenly become a more ‘friendly’ environment
for video and other media-related services. At the
consumer end, the need to ‘record to disk’ your
favourite show will become a thing of the past.
PVRs won’t hold content locally, but in the cloud.
This benefi ts the broadcaster as they have more
control of the content recorded.
Plunkett: The use of IP transport and
communication opens the door to the
wider trends in the technology industry.
It will accelerate the use of software-
based infrastructure in many parts of the
broadcast chain and increase the use of
virtualisation and ‘the cloud’. Collectively,
these developments will change the broadcast
environments that we have known dramatically.
Rowe: The next major development is going
to be the general deployment of IP streaming
and IP routing for use in broadcast production
facilities. Some early systems exist today,
however, the technologies have changed
now to the point whereby much more effi cient
systems can be trialled that will lead the way into
the next generation of IP production facilities.
Schia: The area where IP is yet to make
major inroads is within facilities like studios
and campuses. There is still quite a bit of
resistance in those areas, driven by the
obvious cost of replacing existing, proven
baseband technology for new IP-based
technology. Rather surprisingly, there is some
discussion about adopting proprietary solutions
– for example, based on Ethernet, but history
has shown that industry standards ultimately
succeed, and in the domain of networks, the
industry standard is IP.
Simeon: I expect it will be a large shift towards
cloud-based operations including playout. We are
seeing components that will one day constitute not
just OTT playout facility in the cloud, but also entire
linear playout facilities that scale as channels and
demand ebb and fl ow.
Vermaele: The fundamental development will
be to adapt the current methodologies applied
in IP networking; such as unreasonable over-
provisioning or supposed QoS to cope with the
requirements of the media industry. We believe in
software defi ned networking, applied for media.
Weigner: Broadcast hardware is dead. IP means
commodity IT. The real benefi ts will be better
workfl ows with automatic metadata acquisition,
remote control and monitoring, and the ability to
run anything anywhere through the ‘cloud’.
TVBEurope 63October 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
IP Forum
What is the next developmentwhen it comes to IPtechnology for broadcasting?
64 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
Operators are not just distributors
anymore; they want to increase
customer satisfaction. It is clear that
analytics and viewing data are becoming very
important for operators who want to stand out
in a marketplace where competition is getting
fiercer and consumers have more choice than
ever before. Operators are beginning to develop
an appetite for granular data that provides
critical insights into how to satisfy their customers,
as well as being able to anticipate the needs
of their audiences, maximise opportunities for
upselling, assess which content is valuable and
optimise TV viewing data monetisation.
What our data has shown usThrough our partnership with Hvatski Telekom in
Croatia, we are currently measuring data from
300,000 households. By processing this data,
we’ve been able to identify a number of trends
that show how big data is changing the way
that audience measurement can help pay-TV
operators, broadcasters and media buyers.
Live TV is still importantOne trend we have spotted is that for big TV events,
such as sport, people still like to gather around the
TV set and watch live. We premiered our first live TV
ratings during the opening of the World Cup at NEM
in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Our audience measurement
of the Brazil versus Croatia game provided realtime
insight into audience engagement, revealing that
71 per cent of all Croatian households tuned into
HRT2 to watch the match at some point in the
evening. It was particularly interesting to see the
increasing numbers of people that tuned in when
Croatia scored a goal. Across the evening, the
game itself had an average household rating of
56 per cent and an average viewing share of 77
per cent, making it the most watched broadcast
that TVbeat has analysed in Croatia in the last two
years. Although TV viewing habits are changing due
to time-shift, multi-device and on demand, these
insights demonstrated that it is still important for
pay-TV operators to analyse linear TV, especially
for live events.
Many channels are still under-represented Another insight we gained is that many channels
in Eastern Europe are still under-represented
by current audience measurement systems.
For example, we learnt that over a two-week
period, one of the largest international channels
produced a ‘zero’ rating for 2,500 advertising
spots, according to existing measurement
currency. By contrast, our own data
demonstrated that the zero rating for the same
channel occurred less than a hundred times over
the same period. Zero ratings currently measured
on channels are not representative of the wider
picture of who is really watching. The samples
that current audience measurement systems
use are small, meaning that discrepancies can
be big and there’s a large margin for error,
especially for niche channels where viewers are
not truly represented. This is a problem for many
channels globally, not just in Eastern Europe.
It was interesting to read in UK media
publication The Drum recently that niche TV
channels are reconsidering current audience
measurement, and the challenges they bring.
Tim Kirkman, chief operating officer of London
Live, the local news and entertainment channel
for England’s capital city, explained the struggle
that the channel has been facing with its
dependency on BARB ratings. “BARB is
a mechanism which is designed and works for
the five public service broadcasters,” he said.
“If you’re below the one per cent audience
share mark, you’re always struggling. All minority
or small TV stations have the same issues.
For a good night of TV, I need to get ten BARB
homes watching – I cannot. It’s not a
sustainable model.”
Realtime audience measurement
platforms ensure that niche channels know
their real audience viewing figures and
understand how they can optimise monetisation
with ad revenues.
Pay-TV operators are ready for big data
Data Centre
56%
77%
12%
71%Percentage of households tuning into HRT2 for the Brazil vs Croatia World Cup game
Average household rating for Brazil vs Croatia
Average viewing share for Brazil vs Croatia
Average viewing driven by mobile, PC and tablet in Croatia
How big data is changing the way that audience measurement can help pay-TV operators, broadcasters and media buyers
Number of Croatian households measured by TVbeat = 300,000
Pay-TV operators are ready for big data that can help them understand how their consumers are really behaving, writes Laurence Miall–d’Août, CEO of TVbeat
“BARB is a mechanism which is designed and works for the five public service broadcasters.
If you’re below the one per cent audience share mark, you’re always struggling”
Tim Kirkman, London Live
66 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
A s people own and use more devices,
supplementary activities are growing at a
rapid rate (see chart 1). Research shows
that the biggest growth in second screening
between 2013 and 2014 has been on laptops
and netbooks, which has seen an increase of 18
percentage points, compared to smartphone
and tablet — growing at 16 and 15 percentage
points respectively.
But integrating watching TV with the activities
happening on other devices isn’t popular: only one
fifth (20 per cent) of respondents said they would
like the content viewed on another device to be
displayed on the TV screen. The same proportion
would like the websites for products, personalities
or adverts just shown on TV to appear on another
device automatically.
Staying connectedThat’s not to say people aren’t adapting quickly to
the smart TV environment. Six in ten (59 per cent) are
now using their main TV to access the internet via
a variety of means, with 16-34 year olds more likely
to do so at 78 per cent, and families also at 69 per
cent. Smart TV ownership continues to increase (see
chart 2 for penetration) with one in five (20 per cent)
now claiming to have a smart TV. However, it is the
need for a new TV rather than the smart features
that are driving choice, with 64 per cent citing this as
their main reason for purchase. There are still people
(15 per cent) who own a smart TV but do not take
advantage of the connected environment.
In today’s world, where consumers have more
control over when and how they choose to watch
TV, media consumption patterns evolve rapidly.
In particular, how people view catch up TV is
changing. In 2013, 64 per cent of people had a
PVR (Personal Video Recorder) or other catch up
service: in 2014 that figure had risen to three quarters
(76 per cent). The majority (86 per cent) agreed
that “it matters little or does not matter at all” if I miss
a programme that I wanted to watch.
Typically, the often ignored viewers aged 55
and older are heavy users of the new ways to
consume content. Since acquiring a DVR
(Digital Video Recorder)/PVR:
38 per cent of all respondents agree: “I am
more satisfied as I can choose what to watch at
a convenient time” (45 per cent of 55+)
37 per cent of all respondents agree “I am
watching fewer adverts” (45 per cent of 55+)
32 per cent of all respondents agree: “I am
watching more programmes that I enjoy”
(36 per cent of 55+)
The TV screen remains the main device for time
shifted viewing. Most (58 per cent) use it to watch
a pre-recorded programme and 46 per cent to
view a broadcaster’s free catch up service, but
more people are watching content via other
devices such as computers and tablets.
GfK predicts that smartphones will be the
most owned smart device, more so than TVs,
notebooks and tablets. While viewing TV content
on smartphones at present is not mainstream, this
increase in ownership, and our desire to catch up
on programmes wherever and whenever will mean
that more and more TV content will be viewed
on the small screen first, and broadcasters and
content makers need to be ready for that.
Second screening grows, viewing activity remains disconnected
Data Centre
GfK predicts that smartphones will be the most owned smart device – more so than
TVs, notebooks and tablets
New research from GfK, presented at the IBC conference, shows that while second screening is becoming commonplace with almost two thirds of viewers (64 per cent) using another device when watching TV, most people use the second screen for very separate activities. The way we are viewing content, however, continues to change as technology evolves, writes Christine Connor, research director at GfK
Chart 1: Second screening Chart 2: SmartTV ownership continues to grow
Chart 4: Smartphone and tablet value shareChart 3: Core internet devices
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