tvbe november 2015
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www.tvbeurope.com
November 2015Business, insight and intelligence for the media and entertainment industry
Adrian Scott: lifetime achievement winner Does RGBW qualify as UHD? | IBC acquisition feature
Is high dynamic range the best thing sincethe introduction of colour?
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TVBEurope 3November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
High dynamic range
(HDR): from afar,
it sounds like the
defi ning quality of a leading
soprano. Similarly, to us,
it may just represent the
closest thing we have to a
defi ning measure of image
quality running at the top
of its game. Not that we’re
leaving resolution at the
door, but HDR is being
trumpeted, loudly
in some parts, as a key
value proposition in the
evolution from HD.
Is it the most marked
staging post in technical development
since the introduction of colour some 80 years
ago? Some think so. Simon Fell, the EBU’s
director of technology, termed it
‘the new black’. (Many thanks to him for
our cover slogan.)
SMPTE has recently published its Study
Group report into the HDR ecosystem in
which it pinpoints the need for new standards,
an investigation into the effects of content
conversion on HDR material, and states its
uncertainty that future HDR content
delivery/transmission systems will be
capable of supporting “dynamic, content-
dependent metadata”.
We take up the discussion in this issue, as
Adrian Pennington gets to the bottom of
the challenges and
opportunities of this much
talked about area.
We also refl ect on the
career of Adrian Scott,
who was the recipient of
our lifetime achievement
honour at the TVBAwards
at the end of October.
Adrian’s qualities as an
evangelist for newsroom
computer systems and
non-linear editing, and
his dedication to roles
with IBC, IABM and
G-SAM, mark him out as
one the industry’s fi nest
ambassadors. Equally, his qualities as a human
being puts all of those technicalities into some
degree of insignifi cance: a much admired, and
widely respected character who is renowned
for his generosity, loyalty, and abilities as a
storyteller. Congratulations, Adrian: a well
deserved recognition.
Congratulations are also due to my
colleague, Holly Ashford, who, from the
December issue, will sit in the mighty deputy
editor’s chair following an internal reshuffl e. It is
a well-earned step up in her blossoming career,
and I’m delighted that she will be taking a more
prominent role with the TVBEurope brand.
I sincerely hope you enjoy this issue.
James McKeown Editor-in-chief
Welcome
There’s nothing black and white about HDR
EDITORIAL
Content Director and Editor-in-Chief: James McKeownjmckeown@nbmedia.comSenior Staff Writer: Holly Ashfordhashford@nbmedia.comContributors: Chris Forrester, David Fox, Adrian Pennington, Philip Stevens, Will Strauss, Catherine WrightHead of Digital: Tim FrostHuman Resources & Offi ce Manager: Lianne DaveyHead of Design, Hertford: Kelly Sambridge
Senior Production Executive: Alistair Taylor
Sales Manager: Ben Ewlesbewles@nbmedia.com+44 207 354 6000Account Manager: Richard Carrrcarr@nbmedia.com+44 207 354 6000
Sales Executive: Nicola Pettnpett@nbmedia.com+44 207 354 6000
Sales Director: Mark Rankinemrankine@nbmedia.com+44 207 354 6000
Managing Director: Mark Burton
US Sales: Michael Mitchellmjmitchell@broadcast-media.tv+1 (631) 673 0072
Japan and Korea Sales: Sho Hariharasho@yukarimedia.com+81 6 4790 2222
CirculationFree subscriptionstvbe.subscriptions@c-cms.comSubscriptions 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 +44 207 354 6002
NewBay Media is a member of the Periodical Publishers Association
© NewBay Media 2015. 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
High dynamic range has fully emerged from the (increased) shadow of the UHD debate
In this issue4 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
Will Strauss elaborates on the industry’s trending issues over the last 12 months, and off ers some ‘questionable’ predictions about the future
Workfl ow6 1234
Women in TVOn-screen, off -screen, and leadership: Jessica Hawkes reports from the latest conference to directly address the challenges facing women in media
Does RGBW qualify as UHD? The International Committee for Display Metrology is urgently considering revisions to its Measurement Specifi cations, in this TVBEurope exclusive
18
Feature
FeatureTranscoding forum
2036
HDR is the new black. The best thing since the introduction of colour? Will all HDR versions be equal? Adrian Pennington fi nds out
Philip Stevens chairs the debate as authorities from across the industry come together to discuss the increasingly innovative world of transcoding
How IMG tackled the Rugby World Cup. Philip Stevens went behind the scenes at the year’s biggest international sporting event
Opinion and Analysis
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Opinion and Analysis6 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
It was the year that UHD went live, IP took
over and everyone started to worry about
security. But how will history remember 2015
and, perhaps more importantly, what happens
next?
As fun as it was, it is unlikely that historians will
look back on 2015 as a signifi cant year in the
on-going development (and transformation)
of television. Yes, we’ve seen the fi rst ultra high
defi nition channels go live in Europe but even
that could be considered merely another notch
in the resolution bedpost.
Odd-numbered years, those without a major
sporting event (with apologies to the Rugby
World Cup), tend to be less evolutionary than
those that feature a football World Cup or
Olympic Games. It has always been thus.
What 2015 did show us, however, is that there has
been a major mind-shift amongst broadcasters.
There is now a genuine desire on their part
to move away from the reliance on closed,
proprietary and specialist broadcast equipment
and adopt a neutral platform for video data.
It won’t happen overnight but the powers-
that-be no longer want to have to invest in
hardware and upgrade their internal and
external networks every few years. They have
said so, at every conference, and in every
interview, you care to name.
Now, they want to use advanced IP-based
systems and IP networks for production and
broadcasting (even in a live environment),
potentially making them more effi cient and
more nimble. In the future, it will simply be the
software on top of the IP layer that determines
what that video data does, how it appears,
and where it goes.
Several broadcasters are already making
plans for cloud and IP-based broadcast facilities
that will look nothing like they do now. In fact,
they will look an awful lot like data centres.
As such, perhaps history will look upon 2015
as the beginning of a new era: the era of
software-defi ned broadcasting. Maybe it was
signifi cant after all?
Remote productionOn the same subject, one of the many
potential upsides of the television industry
Broadcast industry trends in 2015 (and some questionable predictions about the future), by Will Strauss
TODAY
sometime
tomorrow
NEVER
‘As personalisation takes hold in 2016, someone needs to come up with an idea
that creates on-demand experiences that combine the benefi ts of immediacy with the
magic of scheduling’
TVBEurope 7November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Opinion and Analysis
embracing IP is the opportunity that it presents
for live remote production.
By that I mean having cameras, operators and
very little else on location and then whisking the
live feeds instantly (or as near as dammit) via an
IP network to a gallery (conceivably) anywhere
in the world, where pictures and sound can be
switched, manipulated and distributed.
The immediate cost benefi ts of working this
way are obvious. With less movement of people
and kit required – and little need for OB trucks
– it could make certain types of live production
more cost effective. This, in turn, could potentially
allow for coverage of niche, lengthy, or less-
well-known events that might not be otherwise
affordable using a truck.
Various demos were shown at NAB and IBC this
year to prove that point, with the manufacturer
EVS particularly keen on making it work. It’s
not just vapourware either, as illustrated by
Gearhouse Broadcast’s successful demonstration
and ChyronHego’s VidiGo selling a working
remote production system to Euro Media Group.
Large multi-camera productions are still tricky,
especially when you start cranking up resolution
and frame rate, so trying to send live 4K at
60fps from 16 cameras over IP is probably
pushing your luck. But, on a general level, it is
technically feasible, and there are cost savings
from a production perspective. However, the
price of bandwidth still makes remote
production expensive.
My prediction is that next year, a forward-
thinking telco will come up with a package
that makes it cost effective for broadcasters.
Then we will really see if remote production
lives up to its billing.
SecurityUsing IP might be more effi cient but it does
have its downsides, not least that it makes
broadcasters potentially more vulnerable
than ever before.
With everything existing virtually, in the cloud
and across IP networks, hacking becomes a
far bigger consideration. Cutting an SDI cable
would cause disruption, of course. But hacking
into a broadcaster’s network could bring far
greater problems. As such, security has to be in
every conversation about the future. It was a
key theme in 2015.
In some cases, the solutions are simple.
Despite all the phishing attacks and probing
that happens in the media world, 75 per cent of
all security breaches occur via a valid network
username and password, and in many cases
authorised administrator access.
This is not unique to television, of course. But
having passwords will soon become a thing of
the past. It may take a serious security breach for
a broadcaster to take action, and this may well
happen in 2016, but either way, systems need to
be put in place, if they haven’t been already,
to avoid the adoption of IP becoming an open
invitation to would-be criminals.
PersonalisationThis is a ‘biggie’. As VoD services continue to
take hold of the broadcast world, profi t-seeking
service providers are looking to capitalise by
offering a more personalised experience to the
viewer, both in programming terms and with
targeted advertising.
This will, it is believed, help to keep a viewer
within a network, introduce them to the full
range of available content and, importantly,
make them happier and more likely to respond
to commercials (in turn, making media
companies more money).
Personalisation is relevant up and down the
programming chain. It can be as simple as
a marketing tweet telling a viewer that their
favourite show is now available to download.
Or as complex as being able to individually
customise the on-screen graphics that are
visible while watching a sporting event. Access
to data and the ability to manipulate and use
it is, of course, crucial here. Without information
about a viewer, experiences cannot be
personalised. Broadcasters continue to work
hard on gathering and disseminating viewer
data, and encouraging customers to make their
relationship a two-way thing.
Technology also plays a vital part. This year,
we have seen a signifi cant rise in the number
of platforms and services that are able to
automatically insert or splice relevant local
content and adverts into on-demand and live
streams. They use audio, watermarking, and
other cues to pinpoint when to personalise, and
both personal data and viewing records/trends
to decide what goes where. Previously very
expensive to deploy, these technologies are now
considered affordable and practical.
In the UK this year, Sky’s AdSmart personalised
linear TV ad service – in which adverts are stored
on set-top boxes and transmitted during live
viewing – was rolled out onto the broadcaster’s
on-demand services, where ads that were
previously stitched into VoD fi les can now be
refreshed or replaced.
As VoD grows in popularity, it doesn’t take
Nostradamus to predict that this will become a
major ‘thing’. We can expect other broadcasters
to follow suit in 2016, as Viacom, the owner of
Channel 5, did this year.
But while technology is key to allowing this
personalisation, the really successful exponents
will be those that bring a human element to
it too. The editorial skills that make (or made)
channels great need to be incorporated into
VoD products so that they avoid the hideous
problems that can be prevalent with computer
algorithms. Anyone that has ever bought
something from Amazon.com for a friend
or loved one, and is now bombarded with
inappropriate banner ads promoting similar
wares, will know what I mean.
As personalisation really takes hold in 2016,
someone needs to come up with an idea that
creates on-demand experiences that combine
the benefi ts of immediacy with the magic of
scheduling. We live in hope.
‘Next year, a forward-thinking telco will come up with a package that makes it
cost effective for broadcasters. Then we will really see if remote production lives
up to its billing’
Opinion and Analysis8 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
At the end of Q2 2015, there were
just under 63 million paying Netflix
subscribers globally. There are few rivals
of comparable scale: Netflix accounted for just
over half of global SVoD contracts at the end
of Q2 2015. Its closest peers include Amazon,
which operates Prime Instant Video in a handful
of markets including the USA, Germany, UK and
Japan; Hulu, which has begun to transition from
catch-up platform to fully-fledged subscription
video library; and local market players like the
UK’s Now TV, Germany’s Maxdome, France’s
CanalPlay, and others.
Yet Netflix and Amazon come from a different
background to that of most of their peers:
they’re not backed by traditional broadcast
or pay-TV groups. As a consequence, their
emergence onto the online video scene, while
a cause for consternation for many B2C TV and
film companies, was greeted happily by many
content distributors as another outlet and buyer
for their titles. Additional competition spurred on
inflated rights values, and a mini flush of cash for
those able to tap into the new revenue stream.
Netflix has spent roughly $8.5 billion since 2010
to obtain streaming content for its service. The
company coughed up $3.1 billion on content in
2014 alone and expects to expand its spend to
roughly $5 billion by 2016. Amazon has spent less
on content, but still paid out $1.3 billion in 2014,
according to CEO Jeff Bezos.
Some of the cash goes on competing for
high value premium content. Netflix typically
has at least one major ‘first window’ movie
licensing agreement in each market in order to
provide a steady flow of high-profile content. But
due to the opportunistic nature of such deals,
the company’s offering changes noticeably
between countries. In the USA, deals brokered
with Disney and the Weinstein Company
beginning in 2016 bode well for the streaming
service and build on early window arrangements
with Sony Animations, Relativity Media and
Dreamworks Animation, among many others.
In Europe, Netflix gained the lion’s share of the
MGM, Miramax and Lionsgate catalogues in
the UK, Disney in the Netherlands and Warner
in Scandinavia.
Amazon has taken a similar approach,
targeting a small selective set of higher-cost
rights, supplemented by a large catalogue
of library titles. In the USA, Amazon inked an
exclusive multi-year deal with HBO, the first time
that HBO content has ever been licensed for
an online-only SVoD service. However, the deal
excludes new shows from Amazon’s catalogue
for three years from first release and despite this
was widely reported to have cost $300 million.
Amazon’s other competitive US content deals
include an estimated $200 million deal with
Viacom as well as smaller agreements with
MGM and Lionsgate and access to the
Disney Movies Anywhere application as of
September 2015.
In Europe, Amazon has struck various deals
including a first window agreement with
Paramount in Germany and second window
deals with Sony, Universal and Warner in the UK.
A series of expensive events: The growing role of SVoD
By Richard Broughton, research director, Ampere Analysis
‘Netflix coughed up $3.1 billion on content in 2014 alone and expects to expand its spend to roughly $5 billion
by 2016’
TVBEurope 9November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Opinion and Analysis
Furthermore, the content acquisition strategies
represent separate pots. Subscription VoD
services exhibit relatively little overlap in terms
of title availability. Just 13 per cent of Netflix’s
US catalogue is shared with Amazon Prime
Instant Video, and just 6 per cent of Amazon’s
catalogue is also available on Netflix. Genres
are also differentially represented: Amazon has
a much higher proportion of documentaries in its
library than Netflix, which has a higher proportion
of comedy shows.
The catalogue differences have been picked
up on by consumers. Netflix’s US subscriber base
is more likely to choose comedy as a favourite
genre of show. And Amazon’s customers have
a higher propensity to prefer documentaries
and lifestyle shows. The content differences,
combined with a low pricepoint, mean that the
two services are not mutually exclusive. Roughly
a quarter of Netflix’s US subscriber base also
watches videos via Amazon Prime.
But the (brief) days of excess may soon be
coming to an end. Netflix is determined to build
itself into a brand associated with high-quality
exclusive content. And rather than spend its
cash furnishing the pockets of third parties,
it is increasingly placing its bets on original
productions. Amazon has followed suit, via both
its existing pilots scheme and also high-profile
moves such as securing the ex-BBC Top Gear
team’s services. Both companies are pushing
to increase the proportion of content spend
devoted to original titles.
Netflix has indicated it is aiming to reach a
position at which half of its business revolves
around the company’s ‘own’ content, albeit
over an undefined time period. If the subscription
VoD company reaches this target within the
next four to five years, peak spend on acquired
content could arrive as soon as 2016 or 2017,
meaning content distributors may soon face
dwindling budgets. Yet even as Netflix’s outlay
begins to switch source, Amazon’s content
spend is picking up, and Ampere expects that
even if a decline in Netflix acquisitions occurs in
2016-2017, Amazon Prime content acquisitions
should roughly offset the effect, despite its own
increasing focus on originals.
Ampere estimates that combined, Amazon
Prime and Netflix will be spending $1 billion on
original content in 2016. Furthermore, the race
for more ‘originals’ has begun to pull in runners
from adjacent markets, such as pay-TV operators
keen to ensure they don’t lose out to upstart
online rivals. UK pay-TV operator Sky hit nearly $1
bilion per year in original British programming in
2014 and has indicated it expects the figure to
grow still further.
So while the market for acquired content
remains robust, savvy content suppliers should be
preparing for a possible switch in spend from key
clients. Positioning themselves to take advantage
of the burgeoning ‘originals’ market will ensure
that they are shielded should the worst happen,
and the cash cow move onto pastures new.
The Window for Broadcast Evolution
SD
HDFHD UHD
www.tvlogic.tv
‘Netflix has indicated it is aiming to reach a position at which half of its business revolves around the company’s ‘own’
content’
Opinion and Analysis10 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
The growth of video delivered over IP
networks is showing no signs of slowing
down. The industry shift towards IP,
combined with consumer demand for the
highest quality video streamed to any device, at
any time, anywhere, is forcing service providers
and broadcasters to adapt to stay competitive
in this evolving video landscape.
HTTP-based adaptive streaming was
developed to enable high-quality video delivery
over the internet, and proved to be an efficient
method for delivering content to smartphones,
tablets and connected devices. Today, it is
increasingly replacing traditional IPTV solutions
for delivering even the prime video services
for the living room.
To ensure the best possible user experience,
video service providers must address bandwidth,
latency, and packet loss in order to avoid quality
issues such as buffering, slow responsiveness, low
resolution and glitches. HTTP adaptive streaming
is based on two main technologies that impact
the quality management: the use of TCP as
the transport protocol and the provisioning of
content at multiple quality levels.
TCP is a bi-directional protocol, allowing
clients to adapt to changing network conditions
by requesting a suitable quality level. The TCP
protocol also offers inherent retransmission
capabilities, which enables it to efficiently
deal with packet losses, preventing noticeable
glitches. However, to maintain a certain
bandwidth capacity in the presence of packet
loss requires over-provisioned networks. Another
issue impacting the available bandwidth is
latency. Despite not being a major issue with
user interactivity, increased latency will lower
the available bandwidth. This may prevent high
bitrate streaming (UHD and HD) over long-haul
networks. To ensure optimal video delivery,
service providers need to consider the following
techniques to address these challenges.
Resource managementProperly tracking and allocating bandwidth is
required in order to deliver high or continuous
quality content to a large number of viewers,
without over-provisioning the network. This is
challenging for adaptive streaming sessions,
which consist of hundreds or thousands of small
fragments instead of a single continuous stream.
A solution is to use ‘virtual sessions’. Deploying an
agile software defined network management
solution makes it possible to allocate resources,
provide load balancing and monitor functions
that are scaled on demand.
Proximity to clientOriginating streams as close as possible
to the viewers makes it possible for
operators to ensure high-quality video delivery.
A distributed hierarchical network stores the
most popular content closest to the end user
and the least valuable content deeper in
the network. In addition to improving quality,
caching can be a cost saver by reducing
upstream bandwidth requirements.
Multicast of HTTP live streamsPopular live content often causes peaks in
network traffic. To overcome this issue, distributed
caching servers can fan-out streams closer to the
end user. However, this may still be inefficient in
larger networks. There are several ways multicast
can be used to deliver live streams, at least to a
nearby cache. File fragments can be delivered
over multicast, or video can be delivered as
several synchronised transport streams. The
first option requires less intelligent caches, but
consumes more network bandwidth. The latter
option requires intelligent caches that can
segment, encrypt and re-package content,
but requires only one format to be delivered
through the network.
Pushing live streams over multicast to
edge caches is also an efficient way to
minimise the end-to-end latency for live
delivery, by avoiding intermediate cache
traversals. For some live events, like sports,
short latency is crucial.
Measure and analyseSince quality decisions are made by the clients,
the only way to verify the quality experienced
by end users and to evaluate the impact of
any optimisations introduced is to measure and
analyse the traffic that was actually delivered.
This can be challenging if the delivery of every
little chunk needs to be monitored. A video-
aware analytics tool that abstracts the data at a
meaningful level is key.
HTTP-based adaptive streaming enables
service providers to deliver premium content to
a growing number of devices and over different
network types. Yet, the issue of quality is still top
of mind. By considering the aforementioned
techniques, service providers can address these
issues and keep pace with industry demand.
Ensuring quality in IP video delivery systemsBy Göran Appelquist, chief technology officer, Edgeware
‘To ensure the best possible user experience, video service providers must address bandwidth, latency, and packet
loss in order to avoid quality issues’
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Every four years, the Rugby World Cup (RWC)
tournament involves 20 nations competing
in 48 matches for the coveted William
Webb Ellis cup. (Ellis was the Rugby School pupil
credited with inventing the game by picking up
the ball during a football game and running to
the goal. Not everyone is convinced of that origin,
however.)
But there is no doubt about the popularity of
the event, with organisers of the 2015 tournament
in England calling it the world’s third largest
sporting event, following the FIFA World Cup and
the Olympics. In fact, global television audiences
are measured in the billions. And with Rugby
Sevens’ entry into the Olympics in 2016, the sport
is likely to grow more rapidly.
Coverage in the UK for the 2015 tournament
which started on 18 September and ran through
to the end of October has been provided by
ITV, which also acted as host broadcaster. Working
with ITV and the broadcasters from around the
world who showed some or all of the matches
was IMG. Alongside supporting the Rugby
World Cup in many areas, including through
sponsorship, commercial ticketing, television rights
distribution and licensing, IMG is providing the
International Broadcasting Centre (IBC) at its
Stockley Park, west London, facility.
Making plans“As with most major events, we had the first
World Broadcaster Meeting (WBM) sometime
in advance - in fact, March 2014 in this case,”
explains David Shield, senior vice president,
IMG Studios. “At that meeting we outlined our
production plans, gave the rate card, plus
booking deadlines. The IBC became operational
on 14 September, with the second WBM held at
the Lord’s Cricket Ground a day later where all
the broadcasters came along for a final briefing.”
The signal from all the matches was available
at the IBC and The London Gateway (BT Tower)
and IMG arranged a satellite distribution path on
a cost share basis.
IMG received four feeds per match: Dirty Main,
Dirty Backup, Dirty Tertiary and Clean. In some
cases, there were up to four matches taking
place on a single day.
When it comes to ISO feeds, Shield says that
IMG relied on using the half and full time melts
provided by ITV. “The good old fashioned way,”
he quips. “Having said that, we did have access
to eight ISO angles as a by-product of the
TMO (Television Match Official) system used by
officials to check for infringement of rules and so
on. The citing commissioners used a remote
login to those systems to view the ISOs – but
they are low resolution and so not suitable for
broadcast quality. But they do provide useful
insights of incidents that we used for the highlights
programmes we produced.”
Not studio-boundShield reports that the main broadcasters to
utilise the IBC have been TF1, Canal+ and ESPN
Latin America. “We made a five camera studio
available at Stockley Park for all rights holding
broadcasters. However, these days broadcasters
don’t really want to be in studios at IBC. They all
want to be in amongst the atmosphere at pitch
side, presenting their output from the ground.
For the opening game featuring England and
Fiji, we saw 15 pitch side presentations. That
meant a great many elaborate set ups, but once
the broadcasters had handed to the match
commentators, there was some hasty de-rigging
as the teams emerged.”
In the case of broadcasters TF1 and Canal+
(who have been sharing feeds), IMG produced
French language graphics at the IBC. “Those
broadcasters took the graphics feed from us
and used Globecast to get the signals back to
their studios. Using a separate link, the studio
component – which came from each stadium –
was also sent to Paris, where the live pictures and
Workflow12 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
Philip Stevens talks to the provider of IBC services for this major sporting tournament
How IMG tackled the Rugby World Cup
TVBEurope 13November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Workflow
graphics were synchronised and combined.”
This meant that when, for example, the host
broadcaster inserted a lower third graphic in
English, a trigger sent to Paris allowed the French
language information to be inserted at the
same time. For those broadcasters who lacked
the resources to send commentators around
the UK for every match, IMG provided off-tube
facilities at the IBC.
Highlighting the actionAs mentioned earlier, IMG was responsible for
producing the official daily 26-minute highlights
programmes. In addition, there have been
52-minute programmes every Sunday night and
now a 60- and 120-minute overall tournament
round up. Avid and EVS were used for editing the
programmes, utilising IP Director and Ardome
Media Asset Management systems. Forscene has
also been used for producing clips.
“We also took the Opta data feed which
not only drives the live graphics feed, but also
produces the tournament data system,” reveals
Shield. “We used that information to populate our
logs for all the major incidents leaving our loggers
free to concentrate on visual aspects of the
games. That meant there was no need for them
to worry about numbers of tries, tackles and so on.
It is easier then to list shots such as cutaways to the
crowds that might be useful in the final edit.”
Using IPShield says that a dedicated tournament IP
(Internet Protocol) network was in place for all the
venues, including the IBC, used for the RWC. “We
made use of that network for the comms from
the host broadcaster. That VoIP technology was
utilised to create all the four wires needed for such
a complex operation. In all, there were five four-
wire circuits to every venue.” That IP network also
carried the Hawkeye system in place for each
match. “We also used it to carry the simultaneous
translations for the press conferences. Similar to
the systems used at the FIFA World Cups, we set
up booths within the IBC for the translators. They
could do their work here and so avoid the need
to travel around the country, something that
would have been impossible for just one translator
when there were four matches on some days.”
Alongside its television commitments, IMG also
serviced radio rights holders on site and produced
a radio World Feed.
The control room at the IMG production centre and inset, David Shield, senior vice president, IMG Studios
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One of the main themes at IBC this
year was the need for broadcasters
to better get to grips with viewers’
desire to watch their favourite programmes
wherever and whenever they want, and from
any device. Accessing programmes seamlessly
on mobile phones or tablets outside the home
remains difficut mainly because some of the
biggest broadcasters and producers out there
do not want to let go of the rights. But tailoring
programmes to better suit their audience’s tastes
in this increasingly on-demand world is one of the
areas where European broadcasters are making
big strides in their fight to rival US giants Netflix or
Amazon. They are playing catch-up, but some
are making interesting technology choices that
should help them compete.
Two of France’s main broadcasters, France
Télévisions and Canal Plus, have adopted
sophisticated software tools which enable them
to very finely tune programmes to match each
viewer’s specific requirements.
Somewhat surprisingly, pubcaster France
Télévisions, which used to be known as a worthy
but slow bureaucratic giant and certainly not
at the forefront of technological innovation, has
overtaken most of its gaul rivals with the launch
of franctv zoom just before the summer. To be
fair, the pubcaster has morphed over the last five
years from being a late technology adopter into
a serious player, paving the way with its its user-
friendly catch-up service Pluzz.
The mammoth organisation, home to
around 10,000 employees, spread across four
TV channels (France 2, France 3, France 4 and
France ô) changed management teams at
the end of the summer and is now led by
Delphine Ernotte who has put digital strategy
at the centre of her agenda.
The personalised channel which is available as
an app on Apple’s iPhone uses software designed
by French startup Cognik. Viewers who have
downloaded the app on their iPhone will be
able to choose whether and when they want to
watch a short YouTube-style teaser, a longer ten
or 20-minute extract or the full-length programme,
in a personalised selection of France Télévisions
content. The pubcaster has been working on
francetv zoom since January 2014, and has tested
it on various focus groups before launching what
it calls an initial prototype, which is due to evolve
according to viewer input. The broadcaster is also
planning to launch other versions of the channel
on all smartphones and tablets by the end of the
year. France Télévisions may be at the forefront
of technological innovation, but it has not
broken the bank: Cognik had to work within a
very tight €1.4 million to develop, test and launch
the prototype.
Stéphane Reynaud, the company’s CEO,
admits its software engineers went far beyond
the call of duty to meet the broadcaster’s
requirements but thinks that it is an effort that will
pay in the long run. “We are just at the beginning
of the process, new versions will be launched and
the publicity is great!” he enthuses.
The company already hit the headlines in
2012 when it won a Mipcom technology award
for software used by Canal Plus to launch Mon
Nickelodeon Junior for its Canalsat subscribers,
a personalised TV channel for kids, that parents
could programme according to their children’s
tastes. But, according to Stéphane Reynaud,
francetv zoom is another kettle of fish altogether.
“It is much easier to create software for a
Workflow14 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
To rival US companies such as Netflix, French broadcasters are increasingly betting on advanced search engine tools and personalised channels to better tailor programmes and advertising to their audience, writes Catherine Wright
Lucas Serralta, MD of Canal + digital
Stéphane Reynaud, CEO, Cognik
French broadcasters get personal
specialised TV channel, targeted at sport lovers or
kids, for instance. But France Télévisions’ audience
is much wider, and our profiling techniques are
much more finely tuned than they were a couple
of years ago: we now select psychological traits
according to a pre-defined list. We combine these
with the editorial input of France Télévisions, and
the end result is a tool that is very close to what
the viewer really is.”
Among Cognik‘s founding scientists, Kristine
Lund, who studied at the CNRS (Centre National
de Recherche Scientifique), France’s biggest
state-owned research body, has become one of
the leading gaul experts in the area of artificial
intelligence and how it can relate to human
beings. Her input in the development of Cognik
software has been essential. As Reynaud readily
admits, Cognik’s profiling tools could become
handy for advertisers as well. Francetv zoom
includes a wide number of pre-roll adverts, but no
profiling can be used unless the viewer specifically
agrees to it. The company is working with a
number of other European broadcasters on similar
tools and is expected to make some important
announcements towards the end of the year.
The huge elephant in the room remains Netflix.
The US-based OTT operator’s recommendation
engine is one of the key reasons for its huge
success: the service is user-friendly and gets better
each year. Around 800 research engineers work
on its recommendation tools, whereas France
Télévisions dispatched a team of 25, to which one
can add Cognik’s five software engineers, to work
on francetv zoom. The fight is unequal, but then
David did win against Goliath.
A company that has employed a bigger team
of software engineers is Canal Plus. The satcaster
has recently hired 200 new technical recruits,
which puts it at least on a par with the US giant.
Also just before the summer and before a change
in leadership, Canal Plus announced the launch
of Cube S, an OTT set-top box. The satcaster also
debuted a new software engine named Suggest,
which is initially available for the company’s
CanalPlay VoD service – essentially films – but
which will eventually be extended to other
services such as Canal + à la demande, which
also offers sport and entertainment.
Until now, the gaul satcaster used Eureka,
which simply compiled ‘historical’ information (ie
which programmes viewers have watched over
a period of time) and flagged up playlists based
on that basic input. But Suggest uses a much
wider base of information to create more precise
programme recommendations. “We try to assess
the viewer’s mood: is he emotional or in a zen-like
contemplative mood,” describes Lucas Serralta,
MD of Canal + digital experience. “We believe
that people still want to watch films and other
forms of content together in front of a TV screen,
even if they will look at stuff on other devices
as well. The idea is to be able to show content
that will bring people together, based on their
individual preference,” he concludes.
TVBEurope 15November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Workflow
Rai Expo was Italy’s national broadcaster’s
cross-media structure launched to ensure
Expo 2015 worldwide coverage. The
website (in nine languages) and multi-platform
production provided web documentaries,
interactive timelines, infographics, apps,
documentaries, events, streaming, blog and – of
course – TV programmes.
As the event’s host broadcaster, Rai produced
a series of events for the organisers, including
‘live’ events put at the disposal of interested
broadcasters in the form of an international HD
feed compressed in MPEG-4 AVC HD 1080i at
50fps 4:2:2 and scrambled in Clear. Multilateral
feeds were accessible over Europe via Eutelsat
7B. Thirty minutes of daily highlights were
also produced and fed out at 2.30pm and
5.30pm every day.
Rai also offered a 360-degree immersive
experience of the Expo, viewable on mobile
devices by downloading Kolor Eyes 360° by
France’s Kolor, a reference point in panoramic
imagery solutions, including panorama
software, virtual tour software, video-stitching
software and a full range of hardware products.
The broadcaster’s Il Mondo di Expo app, on
the other hand, offered users the ability
to discover the countries participating
in the event.
At the Expo site, Rai’s work included the
coverage of all the daily events held in various
locations: from the National Days to parades,
conferences, and countless visits by famous
personalities from all over the world.
Rai had an on-site multi-function studio
used for a variety of transmissions: Rai 1, the
broadcaster’s flagship channel, had live
coverage from the studio during its Uno Mattina
Workflow16 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
Rai’s food for thoughtMike Clarke reports on Italy’s state broadcaster’s in-depth coverage of Expo 2015
‘At the Expo site, Rai’s work included the coverage of all the daily events held in
various locations’
The Cooking Show – The World on
a Plate was produced for the Rai3
channel from Monday to Friday for
the first five months of the Expo
TVBEurope 17November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Workflow
morning news programme, its Mezzogiorno
Italiano lunchtime show and Vita in Diretta in
the afternoon. As well as live coverage for the
various channels’ TG newsreels, the studio also
hosted the conclusive evening of the Prix Italia
international awards.
Among the other programmes produced
by Rai Expo for its channel, TGR Expo News
on Rai3, Ricette a Colori for Rai Gulp, on the
topic of correct nutrition and Experia, a journey
round Italy in the Expo year, a series of 12
documentaries on the various Italian areas’
excellent products, aired on Rai2.
The most viewed on-site Expo production was,
however, The Cooking Show – The World on a
Plate, produced for Rai3 channel from Monday
to Friday for the first five months of the Expo and
weekly in October.
Hosted by Lisa Casali, expert in sustainable
cuisine and well-known food blogger, the show’s
format featured two different chefs every
day, one Italian and the other from another
country, preparing dishes that emphasised both
individual creativity and local or national origin.
In coherence with the themes of Expo Milano
2015, once the two chefs finished their dishes,
Lisa Casali and her celebrity guest of the day
took their leftovers and invented a new dish,
thus combining different gastronomic cultures
and sensitising the public to issues of cultural
dialogue, sustainability and food waste, a
fundamental message of the Expo itself.
The six HD cameras used in the studio were
four Grass Valley LDX 80p HD cameras and
two Panasonic AW HE 120 units.
Rai’s Milan Production Centre’s team had a
Sony MVS-8000 video switcher, two Sony XDCam
HD PDW-HD1500 disc recorders and BLT’s SMS
Teca 2U at its disposal. Audio was handled by
a Stagetec Aurus console, Stagetech Nexus
audio matrix and D.O.Tec converters and
the studio’s lighting was controlled by
Compulite Vector Red R8000 and Compulite
Spark 4D consoles.
L-Acoustics Kiva and JBL VRX loudspeakers
provided in-studio sound for the live audience
and shows’ hosts and guests used Sennheiser
series 5000 wireless microphones.
A key feature of the studio’s design was
the huge curved LED screen, for which
specialist firm STS Communication
(headquartered in Bresso, Milan) handled the
installation of 293 of Eurosell’s 5mm pitch Acronn
Air-LED tiles) with variable curvature, as well
as content management and live playout,
via two six-output Dataton Watchout systems.
The screen was controlled by six Linsn controllers
and featured active back-up with Barco DVI
and remote control with a (MIDI programmed)
digital pad. Rai3 director Andrea Vianello
enthused, “Our channel didn’t have a lot
of cookery on its schedules, but with this
programme it made up for lost time, and did
so from the perspective of eco-compatibility
and intercultural encounters.”
‘Rai produced a series of events for the organisers, including ‘live’ events put at
the disposal of interested broadcasters in the form of an international HD feed’
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The International Committee for Display
Metrology (ICDM), which is part of the
Society for Information Display’s Defi nitions
and Standards Committee, and which
defi nes performance measurements, quality
and fundamental parameters of all display
technologies, is urgently considering revising
its Measurement Specifi cations to prevent low
resolution TV panels being misleadingly sold as 4K
UHD TVs.
In many ways the current problem is similar
to the early days of HDTV when so-called ‘HD
Ready’ lower-cost displays fl ooded the market
with less-than-perfect technology. Today, the
current crop of (mostly) Chinese-manufactured
displays available are generally failing to deliver
true 4K resolution. Many TVs marketed as 4K or
UHD in reality only contain 2,880 lines of pixels,
and fall well short of the ‘active’ 3,840 pixels
required to be truly Ultra HDTV.
Industry stakeholders have highlighted to
ICDM that its current Measurement Specifi cations
were being deliberately misused by some
manufacturers to market ‘RGBW’ panels as
supporting the UHD requirement for 3,840 pixels
per line. In a modern display, the display raster
is comprised of individual pixels each made up
by a red/green/blue sub-pixel. However, ‘RGBW’
panels include a white pixel sub-pixel alongside
each red/green/blue sub-pixel triplet to make
each individual pixel. The technique comes with
a penalty of an effective 25 per cent reduction
in the number of pixels in each line of the display.
This in effect reduces the native resolution of
RGBW panels to 2,880 pixels instead of the UHD
requirement for 3,840 pixels and can also impact
the colour performance of the display. Critics
of the technology say that the fi nal image is
simply diluted and that colour fi delity information
is lost, and the ‘premium’ offering damaged.
One negative comment from the well-regarded
Vincent Teoh of HDTV Test, suggested: “[They
are] trying to shoehorn RGB video signals into an
RGBW matrix, [where] colour information is lost,
and users will never be able to enjoy movies in
Feature18 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
Chris Forrester offers this exclusive ICDM report for TVBEurope
Does RGBW TV qualify as UHD?
Data: NSR, SES
Data: GfK September 2015
1
20
19
67
56
74
158
242
426
509
481
14Sep 13 - Aug 14
Sep 14 - Aug 15
IE
0 100 200 300 400 500 600
ES
IT
FR
GB
DE
International year-on-year volume growthThousands of units, UHD
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
EUROPE
MENA
LATAM
US
APAC
Forecast of Ultra HD channels until 2025
RGBW matrix, [where] colour information is lost,
and users will never be able to enjoy movies in
the manner intended by the director.” Indeed,
informed sources say these low resolution displays
will not qualify as being approved to carry the
Digital Europe UHD Logo.
While there’s plenty of blame attached to
some TV makers which do not conform to the full
UHD resolution requirement. Even if the current
ICDM Specifications are correctly applied today,
then if these display are measured as having
25 per cent fewer individual pixels per line than
3,840 then these RGBW displays should not
qualify as UHD.
Worse, perhaps, is that the buying public has
no way of identifying these less-than-perfect
units. There is simply no notification or labelling to
indicate the display’s core structure.
The ‘RGBW’ issue has been highlighted at
the recent Eurodisplay 2015 – the International
Display Research Conference – held from 21
to 23 September in Ghent, Belgium. ICDM is
now contemplating revising its Measurement
Specifications to prevent RGBW based panels
being misrepresented as supporting 3,840 pixels
per line and thereby qualifying as ‘true’ UHD TVs.
It is widely agreed that in these early stages
of the UHD market the entire value chain has to
deliver the best experience to consumers. These
lower resolution RGBW displays are not delivering
the premium experience that UHD demands.
This latest development comes on top of the
latest GfK research into 4K/UHD sales, and which
shows that Ultra HD popularity is booming in
terms of retail sales.
By the end of 2015, GfK estimates that already
more than 9.3 per cent of all screens sold in
Europe in 2015 alone will be UHD capable and a
potential installed base of 6.2 million Ultra HD TV
sets will be acquired.
Nick Simon, GfK’s senior analyst for consumer
electronics, said the UK alone will see one million
‘UHD’ units sold this year “and it could be more”.
The UK will see 1.8 million units sold in 2016, and
three million during 2017. Across Europe the
sales picture is much the same, with the UK
leading the way in UHD sales (509,000 in the 12
calendar months to the end of August 2015).
Germany is just behind, with 481,000 units sold,
and France 426,000.
The consensus is that next year’s Rio Olympics
will again boost sales with a growing consumer
awareness of UHD. GfK forecasts that Ultra HD
screens in 2020 will represent more than 70 per
cent of total sales across Europe and almost 60
per cent in the Middle East and North Africa.
The annual volume of screens sold in these
markets is expected by then to have reached
37 million. Satellite operator SES is already
transmitting a handful of UHD channels (NASA TV,
Insight, Pearl.tv, Fashion 1, plus demo channels)
and COO Ferdinand Kayser says SES expects
around 220 UHD channels to be available over
Europe within the next ten years. n
TVBEurope 19November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
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18 19 TVBE Nov Workflow_ RGBW-UHD_finalamended.indd 19 12/11/2015 10:15
The potential to offer high dynamic range
(HDR) is considered by many broadcasters
and OTT players as a key value proposition
in the move to upgrade viewers from HD. Both
Netflix and Amazon Prime are offering UHD
HDR remastered videos and shooting original
content in the format. For little to no additional
bandwidth, viewers can see a difference over
normal HD at any viewing distance. There can
be few if any manufacturers with a stake in Ultra
HD not also offering a means of getting HDR
through the chain. As Simon Fell, EBU director of
technology and innovation neatly put it: “HDR is
the new black”.
While the average TV today has a brightness
range of around 100 candela per square
metre (known as nits), HDR displays could offer
1,000 nits, 1,500 nits or more. That’s still far less
bright than some things you might see in real
life, but the increased luminosity will still mean
a far more realistic picture. The difference is
immediately apparent when looking at images
of water, or of clouds, for example.
The introduction of HDR also ramps up the colour.
HDTV is based on an 8-bit system, meaning there
are up to 256 shades of each colour available
(in theory – in practice around 220, for historical
technical reasons). But with HDR, a 10-bit system
allows an increase in the colour gamut to 1,024
shades of each colour. Combine increased
luminosity and richer colour with the greater
resolution 4K can provide and HDR could be as
important an experience as the introduction of
colour was 80 years ago.
“It’s hard to believe unless you experience it,”
claimed Dominic Glynn, Pixar’s senior scientist
who guided the HDR finish for Inside Out. “We
can show the audience colours they’ve never
seen before.”
But any mainstream TV industry shift towards
HDR will be delayed as technical standards are
agreed. “How you create that HDR data chain is
a question that needs a lot more attention,” said
Sean McCarthy, engineering fellow at Arris. “It’s
not as interesting as the pretty colours and stuff,
but it is important.”
“HDR is the area with the least agreement
across the board for a single standard,” notes
Rowan de Pomerai, senior technical manager,
Digital Production Partnership, which wants
to design a single UHD HDR specification for
Feature20 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
HDR is the new black
High dynamic range is touted by some as the best thing since the introduction of colour, but will all HDR versions of it be equal? Adrian Pennington finds out
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‘HDR could be as important an experience as the introduction of
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TVBEurope 21November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
programme delivery. SMPTE will publish a
Study Group report on the current state of the
HDR ecosystem for content mastering and
broadcast shortly. It has already published two
HDR standards related to content mastering: ST-
2084, for the Electrical Optical Transfer Function
(EOTF); and ST-2086, to define static metadata.
SMPTE is now working on a standard for dynamic
metadata needed to support SDR and HDR
content at the same time.
Dolby helped deliver SMPTE 2984 implemented
in its own Dolby Vision system – this SMPTE
standard has been adopted in the Blu Ray Disc
Association. Content owners including most of
the studios are starting to remaster older content
for HDR-compatible UHD Blu-Ray.
However broadcasters BBC and NHK have
expressed concerns that this standard is not
ideal for the workflow of live TV where a single
broadcast version needs to deliver acceptable
quality on both HDR and standard dynamic
range (SDR) displays, minimising additional
bandwidth. This is a different challenge to on-
demand content or packaged media, where
different versions can be created to optimise the
quality for both SDR and HDR, and selected for
playback appropriately. So, NHK and BBC have
created the Hybrid Log-Gamma HDR solution to
try and solve this issue. It intends to ensure that
an UHD HDR signal can be displayed not only
by HDR-enabled devices but in the vast majority
of household sets with the SDR range of HD. It is
one of a number of options being considered by
the ITU for standardisation, but even then it then
needs to be implemented into TV sets.
“We can show the audience colours they’ve never seen before”Dominic Glynn, Pixar
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7680/8192 4320 120 60 [8] 80 [8] 120 [16] 72 [8] 95.5 [16] 144 [16]
7680/8192 4320 60 30 [4] 40 [4] 60 [8] 36 [4] 48 [8] 72 [8]
7680/8192 4320 50 25 [4] 33 [4] 50 [8] 30 [4] 40 [8] 60 [8]
7680/8192 4320 30 15 [2] 20 [2] 30 [4] 18 [2] 24 [4] 36 [4]
7680/8192 4320 25 12.4 [2] 16.6 [2] 25 [4] 15 [2] 20 [4] 30 [4]
7680/8192 4320 24 12 [2] 16 [2] 24 [4] 14.4 [2] 19 [4] 29 [4]
3840/4096 2160 120 15 [2] 20 [2] 30 [4] 18 [2] 23 [4] 36 [4]
3840/4096 2160 60 7.5 [1] 10 [1] 15[2] 9 [1] 12 [2] 18 [2]
3840/4096 2160 50 6 [1] 8 [1] 12 [2] 7.5 [1] 10 [2] 15 [2]
3840/4096 2160 30 3.7 [1] 5 [1] 7.5 [1] 4.5 [1] 6 [1] 9 [1]
3840/4096 2160 25 3.1 [1] 4.2 [1] 6.2 [1] 3.7 [1] 5 [1] 7.5 [1]
3840/4096 2160 24 3 [1] 4 [1] 6 [1] 3.6 [1] 4.8 [1] 7.2 [1]
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Disney Pixar’s Inside Out which exploited Dolby
Vision’s wider colour gamut
22 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
www.asperasoft.commoving the world’s data at maximum speed
Which brings us around to the consumer
messaging: TVs are already being marketed as
supporting HDR, but which standards are they
supporting? How ‘high’ is the dynamic range,
with brightness levels of displays varying from 400
nits to over 1,000 nits and giving dramatically
different experiences for the viewer?
“Currently, the clearest
proposition is the BDA, with Ultra HD
Blu-Rays reportedly launching before
the end of the year,” says DTG chief
technology officer Simon Gauntlett.
“The HDMI specification was updated
to 2.0a, to deliver the metadata to the
displays to enable SMPTE 2084 presentation.
This suggests that if the display supports
HDMI 2.0a it should decode HDR content
correctly. However the message to
consumers is far from clear.”
Peter White, CEO and co-founder,
Rethink Technology Research, agrees: “HDR
is being seen by many TV manufacturers
as something that they will introduce after
4K. That’s the wrong approach, but the TV
manufacturers hold a lot of sway. In the US,
manufacturers are selling ‘4K’ devices that are
not UHD. The fight to differentiate among those
players is pushing ‘4K’ rather than UHD, in the
same way that they tried to push 3D when no-
one was ready for it.”
The UHD Alliance which includes members
of the consumer electronics community and
Netflix is also trying to specify UHD, which will
include HDR requirements. All eyes will be on
the CES show in las Vegas in January where
the next crucial stage of the UHD HDR
debate will be played out.
LDX Series camera
‘BT TV said at IBC that the company is looking to add HDR capabilities to its Ultra
HD 4K channel within two years’
Feature
TVBEurope 23November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
Live HDR For live broadcasting the issue is more complex.
The main outside broadcasters including Visions,
Telegenic and Arena, are testing live HDR
(UHD and HD chains) for clients including BT
Sport. Delia Bushell, managing director at
BT TV said at IBC that the company is looking
to add HDR capabilities to its Ultra HD 4K
channel within two years.
How might live HDR broadcasting be handled?
Technicolor has a new server-based version of
its Intelligent Tone Management software that
scales standard dynamic range source material
(such as 4K 60p) for HDR use. The aim is to allow
sports or live event productions to continue to
use current cameras and infrastructure at a
venue with the upscaling occurring on the
final output mix.
Importantly, the upscaled signal is routed
through an Elemental encoder which spits
out a single stream which can be received
in HDR and SDR which for a broadcaster
reaching the mass of households with plain
old SDR screens is a must.
“You can’t justify the cost of running two
infrastructures so the distribution system needs
to be combined,” says Mark Turner VP, business
development and relationships. “The cheapest
way of implementing HDR live is for the mix to
happen as normal with the final mix upscaled.
OB engineers can adjust the settings in real time
or apply different HDR settings to different sports.”
Dolby offers an alternate route to HDR. It has
worked with Grass Valley to introduce a process
for individual camera feeds. Grass Valley has
an XDR software-upgrade option for all LDX 86
Series cameras working in single-speed formats
(HD/3G/4K). This is claimed to deliver 15 F-stops of
sensitivity to the home with a suitably equipped
HDR set. At IBC the feed was encoded along
with the HDR information by a Muse Live encoder
from Envivio (now an Ericsson company). A
licence upgrade from Grass Valley is required
to unlock it on all LDX series, plus you need a
monitor to view it on – and Dolby has those.
Sony pledged its commitment to incorporate
HDR capabilities into more of its production
equipment. It has trialled 4K HDR capture with
Dorna Sports using HDC-4300s at the 2015 British
Grand Prix MotoGP.
Michael Harrit, marketing director, Sony
Europe, said, “We have built HDR into leading
production tools to create an HDR end to end
production workflow from acquisition to delivery
to the living room.”
RED Digital Cinema also has a live HDR output
solution allowing users to simultaneously monitor
both the standard dynamic range and HDR
images of the same shot on-set, in real-time. That
will allow users to see more of what the sensors
on their cameras are capturing – from the deep
shadows to bright highlights. Like Dolby, the RED
solution meets the SMPTE 2084 standard.
Creatively, what can HDR do?There are also some obvious ways in which
HDR could enhance specific types of
programming like sports: it means you can
actually see a flying golf ball against the sky;
or watch a football match in a stadium half
in and half out of bright sunlight without
experiencing that clunky moment when the
camera has to jump through five or six stops as
the play moves in or out of light or shade.
Pixar’s Rick Sayre says that on Tomorrowland,
on which he was digital imaging consultant,
the HDR “revealed a gleam in the eyes of
the actors which it has not been possible to
show before.”
“The eye tends to be drawn to the highlights
which can pull a viewer out of the story,” says
cinematographer Steven Poster. “We may see
some gimmicky HDR that has nothing to do
with storytelling. Just because we can now see
through a brightly lit window exterior doesn’t
mean that we should.”
“As time goes on, filmmakers will take
advantage of the expanded colour space
offered by the use of laser light source
technology to bring colours and contrast
never seen before on a cinema screen,” says
Stuart Bowling, director, content and creative
relations at Dolby.
“Animation is an amazing way to apply
wider colour gamut to audiences,” he adds,
highlighting a scene in Inside Out which
exploited Dolby Vision’s wider colour gamut
capabilities. This is when Joy and Sadness enter
the Subconscious and the production design
called for the look of a black-light room: glowing,
colourful, and highly saturated.
“The cheapest way of implementing HDR live is for the mix to happen as normal with
the final mix upscaled” Mark Turner, Technicolor
Mark Turner, Technicolor
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TVBEurope 25November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
With Ultra HD channels going live, buying UHD and 4K capable equipment is no longer a matter of mere future-proofing. Fortunately, there is now a wide choice of cameras available, and it can even make financial sense to buy one if you only use it for HD, writes David Fox
T he camera that attracted most attention
at IBC was Sony’s compact new Super
35 handheld UHD camcorder, the
PWX-FS5, a smaller, and less feature-full, brother
to its best selling FS7.
Its body weighs just 0.8kg, light enough to
consider for drone use, and it is well designed,
with a very comfortable rotating hand grip,
six custom buttons (three on the grip), and a
really nice electronic variable ND filter (which
retracts out of the way completely when not in
use, to make the most of the sensor’s low light
performance, ISO 3200 to 32,000). Its 3.5-inch LCD
screen can be positioned on
nine different mounting points on the body.
Its main drawback is that
it only goes up to 30p in
UHD, however it can do
eight second bursts at up
to 240fps in HD. It records
internally (to SD cards) using
XAVC Long-GoP 4:2:0, but can
output 10-bit 4:2:2 to an external
recorder. It can record S-Log2 and
S-Log3, with up to 14 stops dynamic range. It
should cost €5,800 (body only) or €6,300 (with 18-
105mm E-mount lens) inc VAT in November.
Blackmagic Design’s Ursa Mini also attracted
crowds, as the €3,395-€6,225 (£2,025-£3,699)
camcorder has only recently started shipping. For
broadcast users, the more expensive PL-mount
Minis are the ones to get, as they can be fitted
with a $295 B4 mount (shipping November) to
take ENG lenses, complete with power and
control from the camera. The mount includes
optics, to give full sensor coverage, but “we
don’t lose any light or have vignetting,” claims
Capturing the imagination in UHD
‘With Japan’s NHK committed to test transmissions of 8K next year, and full
coverage by the 2020 Olympics, anyone that wants to sell it cameras must be able
to offer 8K’
ENG ready: Caniglia shows
off Blackmagic’s Ursa Mini
with B4 Mount
Bob Caniglia, a senior regional manager. Thanks
to upgrades since it was shown at NAB, the
camera can also now do both SDI in AND out
as well as timecode and intercom, and can be
controlled from Blackmagic’s Atem switcher
like a studio camera. The 4.6K Mini offers 15
stops of dynamic range (compared to the 4K
version’s 12), and also affords room for cropping/
stabilisation for 4K or UHD production. There is also
EF mount versions of both.
Little or no aliasingCanon’s recently released XC10 is one of the
least expensive UHD camcorders (under £1,600
inc VAT), but may not be the ideal form factor
for many as it tries to be a camcorder in a DSLR
body. However, it does show how the extra
resolution of UHD can make for an excellent HD
camera, as an independent test against the
EBU’s standards for HD content acquisition found
that the 1-inch CMOS sensor and DIGIC DV5
image processor provides “little or no aliasing”
and meets Tier 1 for HD production, making it
suitable for use on even high-end productions.
Feature26 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
UHD on tap: Grass Valley’s LDX 86 Universe offers UHD and 6x HD slo-mo Red’s new forged carbon fibre 8K Weapon with Zeiss lens
TVBEurope 27November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
JVC’s GY-LS300 handheld Super 35 4K camcorder
has received a version 2.0 update, and now
includes: a film-look JVC Log mode; Cinema
4K/2K recording (4096x2160 and 2048x1080);
Prime Zoom allowing zooming using prime
lenses without losing resolution, offering 2.3x
maximum zoom for HD or 1.25x zoom for 4K;
and a histogram. It can also now
trigger recordings via HDMI/SDI, has JVC LUT
support for the Atomos Shogun recorder, and
HD output via HDMI/SDI when doing 4K
recording, for HD monitoring.
V2.0 also adds colour matrix adjustment, spot
meter for exposure, and a black paint setting to
precisely adjust the colour temperature of master
black. A new 70Mbps recording mode allows 4K
recording on economical Class 10 SDHC/SDXC
cards. The GY-LS300 includes HD streaming with
WiFi and 3G/4G for live HD transmission.
The 2/3-inch conundrumSport is where Ultra HD is taking off, and outside
broadcasts require greater depth of field to keep
everything in focus, which is why all the
major manufacturers have been intent on
releasing models with 2/3-inch sensors that
take B4-mount lenses.
Hitachi was first last year with its SK-UHD4000
four-chip camera (two green sensors), and
has now been followed by more traditional
three-sensor cameras from Grass Valley (LDX 86
range), Sony (HDC-4300) and Ikegami (Unicam
UHD). Panasonic has taken a single-sensor
approach (B4 mount with convertor and slight
light loss) for its AK-UB300 and AK-UC3000 box
and studio cameras.
The HDC-4300 will also address one of the
biggest sports requirements, live slo-mo replay,
via a software update, to offer 2x (100 or 120fps
shooting: it will also do up to 8x super-slow-mo
in HD). The camera can also be used for high
dynamic range shooting (it will get S-Log3 output
in the update), something that the LDX 86 will
also be able to offer via its new XF fibre
transmission base station.
This will not only provide 15-stops of dynamic
range but also one-wire UHD transmission (instead
of 4x 3G-SDI), using Tico compression, “which
is getting a lot of momentum because it is low
latency and can be virtually lossless at 4:1,” said
‘The FS5 is well designed, with a very comfortable rotating hand grip, six custom buttons and a really nice electronic variable
ND filter’
Sony’s new FS5 is light enough for use on a drone
www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
Feature28 TVBEurope
Mike Cronk, Grass Valley’s senior vice president of
strategic marketing.
Small and mightyAnother problem that broadcasters need solving
for UHD is miniature cameras capable of 50/60p.
Here Bradley Engineering has been
working with AltaSens (JVC Kenwood’s sensor
manufacturer), and is using its Super 35 4K sensor
in the new fibre-based Bradley 4K PTZ (3840x2160
50p) remote camera, which was demonstrated
in a small spider-cam type rig at IBC but can also
be housed in Bradley’s usual remote heads.
The tiny IO Industries 4K SDI camera offers
50/60p in both UHD and 4K in a tiny package,
and received several updates at IBC. It now
supports Camera Corps and TV Skyline remote
control panels, with full control of focus and iris
for Canon EF lenses, as well as all the standard
camera functions. The camera has a Super 35,
global shutter CMOS sensor, outputting 4:2:2, 4:4:4
or Raw. Panasonic’s new AW-UE70 is claimed
to be the industry’s first integrated UHD pan/
tilt/zoom camera, but it only delivers 3840x2160
25p (via HDMI), although this might be OK for a
commentary camera. It can stream UHD IP and
record to microSD. It also delivers various HD
formats including 1080 at 50p, 50i and 25p.
To a greater XtendFor high-end production, the new Alexa SXT
(Super Xtended Technology) adds electronics
from Arri’s Alexa 65 camera to the existing Alexa
XT sensor for in-camera recording of ProRes 4K
UHD (3840x2160) and ProRes 4K Cine (4096x2637).
It can do live colour grading, so no need for a
separate LUT box, and can output to an on-set
monitor as well as doing the final grading and
dailies creation, “so the people in post will know
what the intended look was,” said Stephan
Schenk, Arri’s managing director. It also has
SXR (Super Xtended Recording) with new 1TB
or 2TB capture drives. “That gives you massive
capabilities to shoot without stop,” up to seven
hours in ProRes. SXT ships later this year, and “we
have already a lot of orders”, anyone taking
delivery of an XT now gets a free upgrade to SXT.
Its Amira documentary camera will get a free
new software update (3.0) enabling ProRes 4444
XQ recording, plus MPEG-2 HD 4:2:2 to match the
XDCAM workflow. It will also connect
via Ethernet to a Sony box to be controlled
by a standard Sony RCP-1500 for multicam
capability. A new Amira Slot developed with
Ambient for wireless audio has a two-minute
battery to allow hot swapping the camera
battery without interrupting the signal. There will
be a paid update for the Alexa Mini
made available later this year, adding Arriraw
and 4:3 capability.
Rolling in the deepCanon’s new EOS C300 Mark II shoots 4K and
UHD, and offers wider dynamic range (up to
15 stops). It uses a new Canon-designed Super
35mm CMOS sensor that has twice the readout
speed (reducing rolling shutter effects), and a
JVC’s upgraded GY-LS300 4KCAM
The Videosys 2cm HD cam
more advanced imaging engine
with dual DIGIC DV5 processors. The
extra dynamic range is courtesy
of a new Canon Log2 codec
that retains more
highlight and shadow
information. It also has
the Wide DR setting
from the C100 MkII,
which requires less
work in post.
Other new features include:
improved auto focus; extended ND
filters; an increased ISO range of
up to 102,400 for low light use; and
dual CFast 2.0 card slots. It has new
XF-AVC recording codecs based
on H.264 compression and MXF
wrapping, with 10-bit 4:2:2 XF-AVC
intra for 4K/UHD at 410, 225, 220,
or 110Mbps, while HD and 2K can
be recorded in 10-bit 4:4:4 at
210Mbps, or 12-bit at 225Mbps. It
won’t shoot at more than 30p in
4K/UHD, although it can go up to
100/120p in 2K/HD.
Beyond UHDWith Japan’s NHK committed to test
transmissions of 8K next year, and
full coverage by the 2020 Olympics,
anyone that wants to sell it cameras
must be able to offer 8K, so camera
manufacturers are ramping up
their development efforts. Canon
announced at IBC that it will commit
to 8K, it just wouldn’t commit to any
timescale for this.
Ikegami is already on its fourth
generation 8K/Super Hi-Vision
camera. The new SHL-810 is one
tenth the size and weight (less than
9kg) of its first model from 2002.
It uses a
single 33-megapixel Super 35 CMOS
sensor, achieving 4,000TVL horizontal
and vertical resolution, and provides
8K, 4K and 2K output, all in native
quality. It can be used in a fully 8K
production environment or alongside
UHD and/or HD cameras.
It can use regular PL-mount lenses,
while a System Expander enables
the use of large viewfinders and
full studio lenses, converting the
portable camera into a full facility
studio/OB camera. Output from
camera head to the control unit is
40Gbps via standard SMPTE hybrid
fibre, allowing long-distance links
for live broadcasting. The SHK-810
employs a dual-green colour filter to
deliver SHV’s wider dynamic range.
Red alertRed was showing its first 8K Weapon,
with its new lighter, stronger forged
carbon fibre body, fitted with a 70-
200mm Zeiss Compact Zoom, as
this gives the most complete
coverage of the Weapon’s 8K
sensor. It uses the small new Weapon
body (also available in magnesium
and woven carbon fibre), but with a
larger new sensor, and should ship
by the end of the year.
Unlike the Dragon, which had its
fan inlet at the front (which
could cause noise on set),
the Weapon has its fan
inlet at the back, using the
front to house two on-board
microphones, so users always have
a reference audio track. Red was
also showing live monitoring of
high dynamic range. Its HDR-
2084 option uses the quad
outputs of the Redcast module
(developed for live broadcast use)
to offer four different LUTs at
once, and supports HDR monitors,
such as Dolby.
TVBEurope 29
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Neat touches on Sony’s FS5 include rotating hand grip and numerous mounting points
The Sony FS5
C anon’s global showcase takes place
once every five years, with 15,000 square
metres devoted to new and improved
products demonstrating the breadth of consumer
and business industries the company covers, and
the vision of its R&D teams.
At Expo 2015, Canon stressed how rapidly the
world of imaging is expanding in our age of the
Internet of Things (IoT), in which we are seeing an
increasing number of objects being connected
through smart devices. These rely on built-in
cameras or sensors and the data they generate,
and although the company “cannot predict how
this will play out”, according to chairman and
CEO Fujio Mitarai, “The possibilities are big, they
are real, and they are ours for the taking.”
Canon does predict that IoT will largely
depend on developing the “imaging of things”
and to deliver its new developments in the
world of imaging, Canon is building a network
of companies with regional headquarters
managing local R&D and manufacturing. It
is hoped this will deliver its ambitious goal, of
a future in which “every image should have
a connection with Canon,” according to
Rokus van Iperen, president and CEO,
Canon EMEA.
“Whether it is taking the image, recording,
storing, editing or printing it, we want to play a
part and are building businesses to do this.”
The Grande Halle de la Villette which hosted
the Expo was divided into ‘zones’ covering
life, professional, work and society, though
perhaps most impressive was its World Imaging
Gallery. Before seeing the technology capable
of producing 8K content, Expo visitors were
treated to the end result: a huge screen
showing footage captured with 8K cameras,
offering a roller-coaster point-of-view ‘ride’
through different scenery. The incredible detail
created a rather impressive and unexpectedly
immersive experience.
Visitors were also able to try out Canon’s first 8K
camera, its Cinema EOS System, which captures
8192x4320 resolution video at up to 60fps. The low
aberration 8K lens gave clarity and sharpness to
the image, while a high dynamic range and wide
colour gamut created an intense vibrancy which
even a non-filmmaker like myself was impressed
by. Still images taken from RAW videos are 35
megapixel, and the camera system can be
battery powered, with the 4K 10.1-inch
LCD monitor connected by a single cable.
Incorporating Canon image-processing
technology, the UHD 8K reference display
supports the production of 8K video content,
with a pixel density exceeding 300 pixels
per inch – a level approaching the limit of
human visibility, according to the company –
achieving high brightness, high contrast, and
a wide colour gamut.
From vibrant brights to a dark room at the
Expo, where Canon was demoing another new
development, an ultra-high sensitivity 35mm
full-frame CMOS sensor. The Canon ME20F-SH
camera boasts a maximum ISO in excess of
four million, and despite the near darkness in
the demo space, the video captured showed
objects indiscernible to the naked eye. The
technology can shoot videos in condition of
only 0.03 lux – which Canon said was comparable
to the amount of light provided by a crescent
moon – and, in the broadcast space, the
company sees it being used primarily for
wildlife documentary filmmaking.
Also on show was Canon’s ultra-high resolution
250 megapixel CMOS sensor, which allows for
the detailed capture of images from a great
distance. According to Canon, it boasts the
world’s largest number of pixels in its lens size,
and five times more than the amount currently
available in the company’s EOS 5DS. Its use for
security and surveillance was highlighted at
the Expo, which was a somewhat unnerving
prospect, as the sensor technology allows the
user to clearly see letters on a building 15km
away. According to the IHS Security Systems
Feature30 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
A resin-based 3D printer, a camera that can “see in the dark”, an immersive 8K theatre, and Super Machine Vision were just some of the innovations on show at the Canon EXPO in Paris in October. Holly Ashford reports
“We have mastered imaging technology. Our lenses and sensor
together with our processor are the best in the world” Fujio Mitarai
Canon’s ecosystem of innovation
Canon’s ME20F-SH boasts a maximum ISO in excess of four million
TVBEurope 31November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
Integrations Report 2015, the video surveillance
market is estimated to be close to €18 billion
by 2018, so its no wonder Canon is ploughing
money and resources into its network video
solutions (NVS) business.
“We have mastered imaging technology. Our
lenses and sensor together with our processor
are the best in the world,” stated Mitarai, boldly,
in his keynote speech. And the technology at
the Expo was a clear attempt to demonstrate
this, using advances we’ve seen in broadcast
markets and using these to branch into
new target markets, including NVS. “It is this
technology that keeps Canon ahead of the
competition,” Mitarai concluded.
In addition to technological networks and
development at the Expo, there was also an
emphasis on developing human networks.
Canon is working to build a network of Canon
companies, an “ecosystem of innovation” which
Mitarai described as “a dream that is very special
to me”. Much of the futuristic 8K kit at the Expo
is yet to hit the market, but it did demonstrate
what the next generation of video technology
may look like. And as for the future of the Canon
business? Mitarai said the company “will seek
further M&A” in Europe, and by 2020 “you will see
the Canon you know and trust, plus a brand new
Canon built around partnerships with some of the
world’s best known companies, and some you
may not even know yet.”
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Members Of:
Canon’s global showcase devotes 15,000 square metres to new and improved products
Canon’s POV ‘ride experience’ immersed viewers in 8K footage
Canon’s 8K Cinema EOS System captures 8192x4320 resolution video at up to 60fps
AAdrian Scott had a fairly unusual
education, so he relays, having
started out at a small preparatory
school in Scotland, followed by
Rugby School for which he says “a prior reading
of Tom Brown’s Schooldays was a perfectly
adequate preparation”. His summers were spent
in France, and then came the University of North
Carolina thanks to a “very generous American
scholarship programme. I did a degree in
journalism, which involved working in both radio
and television…my start in the industry.”
Scott’s return to the UK coincided with the
start of independent local radio. “I managed to
get myself a job in the newsroom at Radio Clyde
in Glasgow, not easy when your hometown is
Edinburgh. After a couple of years, I moved to
London to work as a presenter and producer at
Independent Radio News and LBC, from where I
went to TV-am as one of the launch team.”
It was there he first came into contact with
broadcast technology. TV-am was pioneering
in several respects, he says, being one of the
first all-ENG news operations (three quarter-
inch BVU) and also one of the first to dispense
completely with script and prompter typists in the
newsroom in favour of the very first generation
BASYS Newsroom Computer System. “For reasons
I still cannot explain, in addition to being news
editor and head of forward planning, I became
the in-house newsroom system super-user, and
was largely responsible for figuring out how to do
three hours of live television starting at six in the
morning every day on a system which nobody
knew how to use, and which had no how-to
manual. Fun!”
For a time, TV-am was one of the four or five
newsrooms worldwide using a newsroom system,
“of which by far the largest was CNN,” he states.
“Another was the Channel 4 newsroom at ITN;
and when the BASYS company went to the wall,
ITN stepped in and bought it, largely to protect its
own investment in the product. I was then invited
to lunch at ITN and offered the job of European
operations manager with the aim of trying to
persuade other broadcasters to invest. This
was in 1985.”
So began the first of many evangelism roles
Scott would take up in the industry. “At the time,
no one in Europe had heard about what we
now know as NRCS, or even about PCs, which
didn’t really exist in those days anyway. I started
travelling the continent with about a quarter
of a ton of rather unwieldy demo equipment,
trying to persuade a generation of journalists
that learning how to type and then using an
unwieldy green screen terminal would make
their lives a lot easier.”
Amongst all the other firsts, the system
Scott was selling was one of the very earliest
commercially available UNIX-based systems.
“Perhaps one of my most far-reaching career
achievements was to go to Helsinki with my
demo kit, to show it to YLE and MTV, whose
editor-in-chief, Jan Torvalds, asked if I minded
if his teenaged son came to have a look at
the demo. This was, of course, the young Linus
Torvalds, so I suppose you can call me the
Godfather of LINUX!”
Over the next few years, the customer base
increased from a handful to over a hundred,
and included the BBC, NBC, ARD, NOS, NRK, SVT,
and many more. In addition to travelling around
Europe, Scott toured the national broadcasters
in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and
South Africa. All of this, he states, was a major
reason why BASYS was awarded the Queen’s
Award for Export Achievement in 1989.
The next phase came when ITN got into a
financial crisis when the cost of building Gray’s
Inn Road formed “a perfect storm with the cost
of covering the first Gulf War,” he explains. “They
decided to sell BASYS. The buyer was DEC, the
Digital Equipment Corporation, who having seen
us as a means of entry into the broadcast sector,
then realised they hadn’t the faintest idea how
to achieve it. The rumour went round that they
were planning to close us down altogether.
“Having already encountered Avid Technology
at various trade shows, I started a rear-guard
action along with some Avid colleagues to
persuade Avid’s board and shareholders that
they should buy BASYS from DEC. With less than a
week to go before our planned closure, Avid and
DEC both agreed, and the deal was done for an
extraordinarily modest sum of money (none of
which came to me, alas).”
At the time, Scott explains, Avid was almost
entirely a post production-oriented company,
“with practically no exposure in the broadcast
industry. We soon changed that, and my
second major evangelism role was to persuade
newsrooms and news organisations to embrace
non-linear editing and playout, which soon came
to include the first working video server.”
The onset of non-linear video editing and
playout brought with it a new generation of
issues that the industry had yet to locate on its
radar. “A small group of us at Avid began to think
Feature32 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
GREAT SCOTTCelebrating a lifetime of achievement
The second annual TVBAwards saw another much loved industry figure inducted into TVBEurope’s lifetime achievement hall of fame. This year, the spotlight shone brightly on the career of Adrian Scott, the hugely admired and widely respected industry veteran, who played no small part in opening the eyes of the broadcasting world to newsroom systems, and non-linear editing. Scott discussed his professional life with James McKeown
about these [issues], and I ended up drafting
our thoughts into a paper for internal discussion.
This ended up being the basis for a successful
Avid US patent application describing a ‘Digital
Multimedia Editing and Data Management
System’ which allowed users to create,
browse, and catalogue multimedia assets.
This was awarded in 1998, and was, I’m almost
certain, one of the first mentions of the words
‘digital’, ‘assets’ and ‘management’ in the
same sentence.”
Scott departed Avid in 2002 to start his own
one-man consultancy business, Bakewell House,
which he runs to this day. Two other roles of
prominence that add some sizeable context to
Scott’s legacy were those with IBC’s conference
committee, and the Global Society for Asset
Management (G-SAM). Indeed, following his
exit from Avid, Scott’s influence in the industry
began to flower. “I had represented Avid on
both the IABM management committee and
the IBC exhibitors committee, and I continued
in those roles but also started to sit on IBC’s
conference committee and to take on a business
development role with the IABM.”
This latter role included helping to move the IABM
towards appointing a full-time CEO, a job for
which Scott was shortlisted “but lost out (quite
rightly) to the wonderful Roger Crumpton.”
For almost ten years, Scott produced and chaired
conference sessions at IBC, and was responsible
for establishing, producing, and chairing the early
years of the IABM Annual Conference. “Both of
these conferences were among the first to start
seriously discussing such topics as how industry
manufacturers can best survive
the downturn; the skills shortage, especially
of trained engineers; standards-driven systems
integration; multiscreen/360° delivery; and
(inevitably) the importance of metadata and
media asset management.”
It was in connection with the latter that, in
the mid-noughties, Scott became a founder
and European Chair of G-SAM. “The society
was conceived by a small group of us as a
discussion forum and fledgling trade association
within which all sides of the industry, standards
bodies, broadcasters, and manufacturers,
could exchange views and experiences in aid
of developing common ideas and particularly
standards applying to MAM and DAM.”
In 2009, Scott suffered a serious stroke,
“which has left me with some lingering mobility
issues. Thankfully, I have no mental or cognitive
problems, and can still think and talk (to the
great regret of those of my friends who think I talk
too much).” He claims to be “idly considering”
retirement, having reached the milestone age
famously committed to folklore by The Beatles on
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. However,
his work is not done yet.
Technologist, journalist, evangelist: however
Adrian Scott’s legacy is defined, he will always
be considered a giant of the industry, and most
importantly to his colleagues, peers, and friends,
one of its truest gentlemen.
TVBEurope 33November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
‘Technologist, journalist, evangelist: however Adrian Scott’s legacy is defined, he
will always be considered a giant of the industry’
Following the Women in
Broadcast Roundtable
hosted by TVBEurope in May,
the discussion continued
last month with the Women in
Television – Onscreen, Off Screen
and Leadership conference at
The Royal Society of Chemistry in
Burlington House. The roundtable
in May examined the current
landscape for women in the
industry, and the opportunities
for better representation across
the board. Taking a look at how
the discussion has developed six
months on, the Women in Television
conference aimed to highlight the
challenges facing women across
various disciplines of today’s
media and entertainment industry,
and how the industry as a whole
can work towards resolving the
gender imbalance.
Adding personal insight from her
experience as a female working in
parliament and in the media, Oona
King, the Baroness King of Bow and
diversity executive at Channel 4
chaired the discussion that included
the panel sessions ‘Talent and
ensuring diversity of representation’,
‘Women in leadership and
management’, ‘International
perspective’ and ‘Women off-
screen, behind the camera and
calling the shots’.
With the BBC’s decision to
make the inclusion of mandatory
female guests in panel shows, a
main theme of the opening panel,
‘Talent and ensuring diversity of
representation’, highlighted the
difficulties of quotas and whether
they work as a positive step for
women in the media industry.
Claire Dresser, chief administrator
at BBC television, Minnie Crowe,
COO of TriForce Creative Network,
and Jean Rogers, equity councillor
and member of Equity Women’s
Committee began the discussion
by asking what steps can be taken
to ensure the diversity of women
on screen. Six years on from the
victory of Miriam O’Reilly against
the BBC for age discrimination,
have lessons been learned and
actions taken to ensure diversity
of women across the industry?
Speaking of TriForce Creative
Network, a company that aims to
identify issues in the entertainment
industry regarding diversity, access
and ‘knowing the right people’,
Crowe kicked off the discussion
by stating that she believes the
industry is not deliberately sexist,
Feature34 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
Women in Television On-screen, off-screen and leadership
By Jessica Hawkes, account manager, Bubble and Squeak
The panel at the Women in Television conference at Burlington House
TVBEurope 35
Feature
but that women are just not noticed
if they’re not present. However,
highlighting that diversity quotas
can be divisive, Crowe believes
tackling the issue should focus on
‘inclusivity not exclusivity’ as these
quotas can start to set up minorities
against each other. “Quotas are
a good start, but they are not the
answer.” Crowe stated that positive
discrimination should not be the
only reason women succeed, rather
it should be through merit alone.
Despite this, Norway’s gender quota
was considered, whereby it is the
law since 2008 that all company
corporate board memberships
require a minimum 40 per cent
female membership. Noting that
‘portrayal is power’, Jean Rogers
argued that these forms of diversity
measures can play a vital part in
the positive exposure women need.
Rogers claimed that it’s difficult to
break through to being judged on
merit if never given the opportunity,
and the positive discrimination
allows a level of exposure for women
to be noticed and appreciated.
Focusing on the heart of the issue,
Rogers continued that images of
women in the media are directly
correlative with the glass ceiling for
female industry success, pointing
to young presenters seen as ‘eye
candy’ as they’re paired almost
invariably with older men on screen.
In fact, 80 per cent of newsreaders
over 50 are male. Underlining the
vital role that men have to play in
positive exposure, Rogers claimed
that “seeing is believing and women
need to be seen”.
Talking on how to overcome
the gender imbalance alongside
introduction of quotas, Claire
Dresser was keen to highlight the
positives of how far the industry has
come, utilising examples of support
provided from the BBC. Within the
organisation, 48.8 per cent of staff
employed are women and a third
of these are senior management.
Additionally, 164 women from BBC
have received training through the
Experts Women Programme. Despite
this, she called out for continued
support for the issues women
face, suggesting part-time during
parenting and job shares.
This discussion led well into
the following panel, ‘Women in
leadership and management’ that
looked, amongst other discussion,
at whether the unsociable hours
required within the industry mean
that women have to make a
decision between motherhood
and a career. How can the industry
increase female representation at
the upper levels of management
and how can they avoid tokenism
and discrimination? The panel
featured Heather Jones, senior vice
president, content and creative
at A+E Networks, Emma Tennant,
controller at UKTV, Kate Kinninmont,
chief executive of Women in Film
and TV and Jane Roscoe, the
director of the London Film School.
Heather Jones heavily supported
career and motherhood, claiming
she owes much of her own success
to being a mother. “I am living
proof you can be a successful
woman and a mother.” The
dynamics of motherhood contribute
additional skills vital to leadership
and management positions, noted
Jones, listing prioritisation, confidence
and self-esteem.
“We need to promote an
environment where women can
take themselves seriously as leaders,”
said Jane Roscoe, furthering Jones’
idea that a great deal of the gender
imbalance lies in a lack confidence.
“We need to encourage women to
imagine themselves in leadership to
create a psychological shift”.
The full version of this report can be
found on the TVBEurope website.
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“Quotas are a good start, but they are not the answer” Minnie Crowe, TriForce Creative Network
Encoding solutions abound.
And with the diversity of
delivery mechanisms open
to broadcasters, the demands are
becoming greater. So what are the
issues facing makers of transcoding
systems? We asked a number of
players to provide their views on
various aspects of the transcoding
business.
Those offering thoughts
are (in alphabetical order)
Thomas Burnichon, file ingest
and transcoding product
marketing manager at ATEME;
Matthieu Fasani, a product
manager for Dalet Brio and Dalet
AmberFin; John Nemeth, VP
sales, EMEA, Elemental; Marc
Risby, director of technology at
Boxer Systems; Mark Senecal,
manager, product management,
compression products, Imagine
Communications; Steve
Sklepowich, VP marketing, Vantrix;
and Paul Turner, Telestream’s VP,
enterprise product management.
The challenges facing today’s makers of transcoding equipment and services“Being a broadcast executive
of a certain vintage, I can think
back fondly on past times when
tape format choices were
simple, although we might not
have realised it – composite or
component analogue and Digital
Betacam as a high-end option,”
reflects Paul Turner, Telestream’s
vice president, enterprise product
management. “Today, the
format landscape has changed
drastically and is characterised by
a dynamism that is increasing
month on month. Our customers
are faced with myriad different
formats: 4K/UHD/J2k/X-AVC/AVC-
ultra/HDR are all options that need
to be covered.”
Turner says that as a transcoding
system vendor, the company
needs to make commercial
decisions. Which formats have
‘legs’ and which represent a
bad investment decision for both
parties. “Take 3D, for example, at
Telestream, we’re mighty relieved
that we didn’t bet the mortgage
on that one.”
The days of simple transcoding
are gone. It’s not just a question
of transcoding files, but also how
the process dovetails within a
production workflow. Intelligent
workflow management is a key
issue for any transcoding platform
since it is here that significant
savings in time, manpower and
cost are made.
He continues, “The platform
must add value over and above
the simple file conversion model:
metadata management, workflow
management, graphics overlay,
audio channel mapping are all
important pieces of the puzzle.
In developing our Vantage
media processing platform,
these considerations are equally
important to the variety and
CodewordsPhilip Stevens moderates this month’s forum, dealing with the increasingly innovative world of transcoding
36 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
Forum
TVBEurope 37November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Forum
efficiency of file transcoding
functionality. Capabilities such as
caption/subtitle insertion, loudness
correction, QC integration, reverse
telecine, de-interlacing and frame
rate conversion are features that
customers need and expect within
their transcoding system.”
Turner goes on, “Also, we need
to make sure that our transcoding
platform is available anytime,
anywhere: an intuitive platform
that is on-premise and in the cloud.
Vantage Cloud Subscriptions is a
service that provides a broad
range of enterprise-class
transcoding and file-based
workflow automation for Amazon
Web Services (AWS), available
through the AWS Marketplace. It is
a natural extension of on-premise
Vantage transcoding and
provides discretionary capacity
for managing demand peaks,
prototyping new concepts,
and deploying cloud-based
media services.”
The impact of ‘the cloud’ on transcoding practicesWith nearly infinite combinations
of consumer preferences, devices,
formats and protocols and a
flurry of new OTT and live-to-linear
VoD services, operators require
limitless flexibility and scalability
to keep pace. And, increasingly,
enterprises are turning to software-
defined video (SDV) solutions where
hardware-based approaches
cannot keep pace.
“SDV platforms, such as those
offered by Elemental, enable
video providers enormous
flexibility and scalability, as well
as capabilities critical to new
revenue-generating services,” states
John Nemeth, VP sales, EMEA, for
Elemental.
“Chief among these is the ability
to deploy software across an
optimal combination of dedicated
and virtualised resources in both
private and public datacentres.
So, where should transcoding be
located, on-premise, the cloud or as
a hybrid approach?
Nemeth answers, “Each operator
situation is different. Low-volume
broadcast companies may
want to move all transcoding
functionality to the cloud so
they can scale resources up and
down as requirements fluctuate.
For companies that consistently
process vast amounts of video,
the economics of a cloud-only
solution are still challenging. For
those companies, a hybrid workflow
makes the most economic sense.”
A hybrid workflow is achieved by
maintaining just enough on-premise
infrastructure to fulfill day-to-day
requirements, while leveraging
cloud services for the elasticity
to handle variable demand. This
ground-to-cloud approach has
the potential to save organisations
significant capital expenditures
by instantly scaling up video
processing capacity to
accommodate high-traffic
events, and scaling back down
again as throughput wanes.
Having the flexibility to leverage
both on-premise and cloud
systems allows companies to
economically balance video
processing resources.
“The ability of Elemental Cloud to
seamlessly support hybrid ground-
to-cloud video processing and
both live and VoD workflows is vital.
In addition to lowering barriers to
entry and reducing up-front capital
investments, with the Elemental
Cloud Platform as a Service - PaaS,
broadcasters can ebb and flow
their video processing.”
As one of the leading integrated
consumer media groups in
Malaysia and Southeast Asia, Astro
focuses on providing a variety of
pay-TV, radio and digital media
content. Astro, with a customer
base of 4.2 million, offers more
than 180 broadcast TV channels,
including 48 HD channels, delivered
via direct-to-home satellite TV, IPTV
and OTT platforms.
“In 2012, the company
introduced its OTT service, Astro on
the Go, which currently provides
VoD content and live linear
programming,” says Nemeth. “In
an effort to continuously expand
its service to include relevant and
popular content, Astro partnered
with Elemental to build a reliable
workflow for multiscreen services.”
“In order to keep up with industry
trends and consumer demands,
without depleting funds, Astro
decided to take a software-
based approach and incorporate
the cloud into its video delivery
workflow. The Astro on the Go
workflow now consists of more than
6,000 hours of VoD content and
34 live linear channels. Elemental
Cloud securely manages Astro’s
high-volume video content with
scale and elasticity, allowing
customers to watch both live and
VoD content instantly.”
How just-in-time transcoding can reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)According to a report from Frost
and Sullivan, operators should
build live-to-VoD media processing
capabilities at the network edge
to cope with the explosive growth
in time-shifted and place-shifted
consumption of live, linear content.
“To date, the most popular
approach for multiscreen content
transcoding has been just-in-time-
packaging (JITP), driven by relatively
low-cost storage, manageable
content volumes, and expensive
live transcoders,” states Steve
Sklepowich, VP marketing, Vantrix.
“However, soaring content volumes
and growing profile complexities
on the one hand and increasing
transcoder densities and falling
transcoding costs on the other, are
shifting economics in favour of just-
in-time-transcoding (JITT).”
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“To support the growing assortment of protocols, formats and resolutions, media companies must make frequent upgrades to
transcoding equipment” Mark Senecal, Imagine Communications
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JITT is actually ‘JITT-P’, where
packaging immediately follows
transcoding. This is particularly true
of network DVR deployments where
operators are required to maintain
one copy of recorded content
per user. The report ‘The business
case for shifting live-to-VoD video
transcoding to the edge with just
in time transcoding’, details the
CAPEX and OPEX economics of JITT,
as compared to JITP, deployment.
Financial models show that when
considering a steady audience
with consistent consumption of
time-shifted linear content, the five-
year total cost of ownership of JITP
infrastructure is nearly twice that of
JITT. That’s because the CAPEX for
JITT transcoders and the reduced
storage that they enable is 30 per
cent lower than JITP. Similarly, the
models estimate a 40 per cent
annual OPEX savings because
volume consumption in this use
is predictable, and therefore
capacity can be planned to
optimise utilisation.
Sklepowich continues, “In the
report, analysts point to the Vantrix
Media Platform (VMP) as an
example of an ultra high-density
transcoder enabling JITT scenarios
for operators. VMP is a software-
defined solution that enables
providers to cost-effectively deliver
high quality, multiscreen video. VMP
can be deployed on ultra high-
density turnkey video processing
appliances, or on standard servers
in private or public Cloud scenarios.
Operators are able to combine
efficient IP conversion, ultra high-
density transcoding, adaptive
bitrate packaging, encryption and
streaming into a modular, virtualised
solution. The result is a highly flexible
and cost-efficient way to give
consumers high quality video today
with a future-proof feature set.”
Sklepowich believes that up to 80
per cent cost reduction per stream
can be achieved by deploying
Vantrix Video Processing modules
on industry leading 4.3U, 2U and 1U
appliances. These turnkey solutions
also reduce footprint by 95 per cent,
resulting in dramatic CAPEX and
OPEX savings.
“Frost and Sullivan found that
when the cost of a JITT transcoder
is weighed against the OPEX
savings generated over a five-year
period, the return on investment is
over 200 per cent. Another way of
interpreting these findings is that for
the same investment levels,
JITT allows operators to build
significantly higher capacity and
deliver much better quality of
experience to subscribers.”
The impact of the increased use of second screensThe continued shift of video
consumption patterns toward
devices other than the television
is having a profound impact
on transcoding equipment.
Compression equipment in a
multichannel workflow must take
on new levels of adaptability and
flexibility for media companies
to keep pace with a rapidly
evolving industry.
“The days of ‘one format’ and
‘one codec’ per transcoder are
long gone,” explains Mark Senecal,
manager, product management,
compression products, Imagine
Communications. “That formula no
longer supports a business model
that requires media companies
to distribute content to a growing
diversity of devices, nearly all
requiring unique resolution,
packaging, and compression.”
TVBEurope 39November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
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“My first message is that ‘transcoding’ is no longer just ‘transcoding’. What we are now talking about is a suite of tools
and integrations that are at the very core of everything we do in the file-based world.”
Marc Risby, Boxer Systems
From left to right: John Nemeth, Elemental, Marc Risby, Boxer Systems, Mark Senecal, Imagine Communications and Steve Sklepowich, Vantrix
Instrumental to the evolution of
transcoding equipment is the
gradual abstraction of transcoding
functionality from purpose-built
hardware. The ability to perform
complex computational tasks on
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)
equipment means that users are
now able to scale and diversify
transcoding capabilities simply by
adding new servers.
Senecal continues, “To support
the growing assortment of
protocols, formats and resolutions,
media companies must make
frequent upgrades to transcoding
equipment. In an environment
where functionality is dependent on
specialised hardware, companies
need to replace existing plant
with each upgrade: a costly and
inefficient process. Software-
based compression approaches
enable new formats and support
additional devices to be added
often through simple additions. A
software-based approach delivers
levels of agility and productivity
that empower companies
to explore new monetisation
opportunities while improving the
efficiencies of operations.”
Even with all of the key
advantages of a software
environment, the transition will not
happen overnight. Any shift from
hardware-based to software-based
encoding will depend upon a
number of factors, including costs,
existing infrastructure, distribution
requirements and technical factors,
such as video quality and latency.
“The logical next step,”
says Senecal, “in the software
transformation is moving
functionality into a virtualised
environment, whether that’s a
private datacentre or a public
cloud service. This approach
changes the entire economic
model. Investment in physical plant
is diverted to operational expenses,
providing even greater levels of
flexibility and resource elasticity. This
allows the scaling of resources – up
or down – on-the-fly, creating a
perfect balance between resource
demand and resource utilisation.”
He explains that transcoding on-the-
fly, or just-in-time, especially when
paired with just-in-time packaging
(JiTP) capabilities, enables content
owners and aggregators to
reduce storage requirements by
several magnitudes. “The ability to
transcode a programme for any
bitrate or to package it for any
device, including the application
of encryption, at the time of the
subscriber’s request, frees service
providers from storing multiple
versions of each piece of content.
Single copy, or mezzanine file,
storage models potentially reduced
datacentre resource requirements
by as much as 80 per cent, in
comparison to solutions lacking just-
in-time capabilities.”
One step closer to the real thingRedefining the television experience
goes beyond increasing the
amount of pixels to reach a higher
spatial resolution. It also involves
extending the dynamic range
between brightest whites and
darkest blacks, preserving more
colours intact, and increasing the
frame rate to improve movements.
“Real life luminance level can
be significantly higher or lower than
those that TVs can reproduce,”
states Thomas Burnichon, file ingest
and transcoding product marketing
manager, ATEME. “High Dynamic
Range (HDR) consists of extending
fidelity in both directions. Modern
TVs can also display more colours
than included in the traditional
BT.709 colour space – hence the
definition of BT.2020 including more
of the visible colours.”
Perceived brightness depends
on the image luminance measured
in candela per square metres,
colloquially known as ‘nit’. In
theatres, since the surrounding light
level is very low, a maximum of 48
nits can be sufficient. For television,
though, 100 nits is the target; and
recent receivers exceed this to
reach 300 to 400 nits. New HDR
TVs can go even higher, typically
above 1000 nits – and can hence
accommodate input formats
graded for a maximum luminance
well above 100 nits.
By defining typical Standard
Dynamic Range (SDR) as a
luminance range from 0.1 to 100
nits, and HDR as 0.01 to 1000 nits, the
contrast is increased by a factor of
100. “The broadcast chain is getting
ready for this change, which implies
modification in the way content is
shot and graded, and ATEME can
help deliver such content to the end
users,” says Burnichon.
He adds that specific care is
required for proper HDR and WCG
(Wide Colour Gamut) grading
for TV. With given source material
characteristics and target display
capabilities, it’s up to the colourist to
adjust how much he wants to use of
the new colours and contrast levels to
which he now has access.
Technically, the delivery
transcoding is usually done in HEVC
Main 10, and specific HDR signalling
is used. Instead of the traditional
gamma, luminance levels are
sampled according to the human
eye average luminance sensitivity:
much more precisely on low
luminance levels than on high ones,
such as with the PQ (Perceptual
Quantiser) curve, defined in ST 2084.
Ten-bits sampling is also required,
using 9 bits to go up to 100 nits and
the tenth bit to reach 10,000 nits.
Third-party proprietary metadata
can be added to improve HDR and/
or guide tone mapping from HDR
to SDR or inverse tone mapping
from SDR to HDR – but this requires a
compatible decoder.
“Our Titan video transcoder
manages a wide range of HDR
workflows, from various sources to all
kinds of target devices. It handles the
various HDR EOTF (Electro-Optical
Transfer Function), maintains high
bitdepths, performs required colour
conversion steps, manages metadata
and can be easily controlled.”
He concludes, “HDR content
poses new encoding challenges
and our R&D continues to develop
specific ways to handle them.”
How the nature of transcoding has changed in the past 15 yearsIn 2000, when Boxer Systems
started selling transcoding with
Telestream’s FlipFactory, the
broadcast world was a totally
different place from what we see
today. “Broadcast servers had only
baseband I/O, video on the web
was in its infancy and certainly not
a revenue earning activity and a
‘cloud’ was something that spoiled
picnics,” states Marc Risby, director
of technology at Boxer Systems.
“But, at this time, Telestream saw
where things were heading and
the future was file. After successfully
helping to change how media
was delivered with their ClipMail
product, Telestream moved focus to
making transcoding an enterprise,
server based, activity that could
be automated and designed for
volume and FlipFactory was born.”
So, asks Risby, what is transcoding
now? “We are now at the stage
that transcoding moves from being
viewed as an individual component,
for final output or ingest perhaps,
to being a more general, core
infrastructure product. Transcoding
– and its related functions – have
effectively replaced elements such
as the video router, video and audio
glue and standards convertors.”
He believes that if you broaden
this view to include some of the
elements that fit into the transcoding
ecosystem, such as subtitle insertion,
‘The days of simple transcoding are gone. It’s not just a question of transcoding files, but also how the process dovetails within a
production workflow’
40 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
ForumForum
graphics tools and auto QC, that
list grows. Furthermore when some
of the automated, variable driven
editing functions are added, the
true scale of where ‘transcoding’ fits
becomes apparent.
He continues, “My first message
is that ‘transcoding’ is no longer
just ‘transcoding’. What we are
now talking about is a suite of tools
and integrations that are at the
very core of everything we do in
the file-based world. An additional
upshot of this is that some systems
have embraced enterprise IT
methodologies for resilience,
monitoring and security to ensure
consistent delivery and uptime.
Allowing access to third party
systems ensures interoperability
with control layers and
complimentary systems.”
“Next, our larger customers report
that the biggest change they see
regarding transcoding in their
environments can be simplified to
one word - volume. For example,
ITV recently announced their
platform has processed 25,000
programmes and there are users
who process several thousand short
form clips a day.”
Primarily, this is due to the pace
at which services and platforms
are being added. The proliferation
of devices is huge and the move
from low-res early mobile content
to multiple renditions of HD has
continued to push Moore’s-Law
constrained processors. “CPU limits
have caused manufacturers to
look at the benefits of optimising
processing in a bid to ride the
development curve of this
related technology. Although
not immediately applicable to
every codec, some tremendous
performance gains have been
made in h.264 encoding and
processes that include image
scaling. Moving forward indicators
are that customers will transition
some services from h.264 to HEVC,
not just to make 4K delivery cost
effective, but also to bring down
current HD bit rates to lower
distribution costs.
Finally, the cloud is here or at
least coming. In many customer
engagements we are looking at the
relative costs of on-premise or in the
Cloud and the game is changing
quickly. We’ve been talking about
Cloud for a while, but in real terms
it’s early days, but we’re definitely
seeing viable solutions.”
The next innovation in transcoding“As English is not my mother-tongue,
before answering ‘what is the next
innovation in transcoding’, I referred
to a dictionary and the definition
of the keyword: ‘innovation’,”
explains Matthieu Fasani, a product
manager for Dalet Brio and Dalet
AmberFin. “I was actually presented
with two uses: ‘origination: the
act or process of inventing or
introducing something new’; and
‘new idea or method: a new way
of doing something’. This second
definition is probably a good place
to start, having just released and
demonstrated the latest Dalet
AmberFin, version 11, at IBC.”
Available with version 11 is the
combination of the robust, high
quality AmberFin transcode engine
and the advanced Workflow
Engine. This greatly improves the
orchestration of media workflows by
leveraging a highly intuitive Business
Process Model and Notation (BPMN)
2.0-compliant workflow designer.
Users can quickly and easily create
complex workflow chains with little
or no prior experience.
Deployed workflows can be
monitored at any level of detail with
graphical and textual reporting.
Fasani continues, “By turning
to BPMN 2.0, which is a widely
understood IT standard, we can
bring a multitude of benefits to
media processes, making them
more understandable, shareable,
future-proof and deployable. In
the same way as this innovation
has been led by the ‘generic’ IT
standards, the next few years will
see similarly led development.”
The largely XML-based IMF
(Interoperable Master Format)
standard promises to revolutionise
the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of transcode
and media-processing workflows.
IMF provides the specification
to separate content into various
ingredients or components
(namely, MXF media files), a
number of ‘recipes’ (Composition
Play Lists), and a selection of
instructions (Output Programme
Lists: OPLs) appropriate for
each audience. By authoring
the recipes and instructions in
widely understood XML, users can
concentrate on the process of
monetising media, rather than
the complexities of media formats
and processing.
The inclusion of the instructions
(OPLs) in the source package
also fundamentally changes the
nature of a transcode operation.
However, with ‘smart’ media
packages that know what they
need to be, there will also be a
need for ‘smart’ transcoders.
He concludes, “Looking just
a little further, it is inevitable
that advancements in
virtualisation and cloud
technology will go beyond the
infrastructure-led influence that
it has had on media workflows to
date, and start to re-imagine the
way we approach the business
of media production.”
TVBEurope 41November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
ForumForum
From left to right: Paul Turner, Telestream, Thomas Burnichon, ATEME
www.mediagenix.tvwww.mediagenix.tv
VODStreamline your
from content acquisition over
scheduling to publishing and
package your content using
miniplaylists or render channels.
www.mediagenix.tv
42 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015
Apps delivering streaming to mobile
devices are experiencing tremendous
growth, and the reasons behind this
growth are country-specific, driven by different
content preferences and the structure of the
traditional TV industry in each market. App
Annie’s latest report, Mobile Video Streaming
Takes off Globally, focuses on the US, UK and
China, looking at the trends shaping the growth
in streaming video apps.
In the US, the revenue from the top ten
streaming apps more than tripled during the
12-month period ending 31 July 2015, the report
states, with the majority of growth driven by
HBO Now and Hulu. Strong uptake of iPhone 6 in
China may have been one factor, according to
App Annie, driving the revenue growth of the top
ten video streaming apps on iOS in the country.
In the UK revenue remained relatively flat, which
the company believes to be largely due to the
fact that free-to-air networks remain popular.
China’s top ten video streaming apps for iOS
saw downloads increase 1.6 times year on year,
whilst downloads in the UK and US remained
relatively flat. The top ten video streaming
apps in each country lean towards different
content types. In the UK, the revenue share of
video streaming apps focused on TV/movies
is significantly lower that in the US, as similar
content is available on free public networks. In
China, the dominant share of video streaming
apps which provide multiple types on content
is an outcome, App Annie believes, of limited
government intervention as compared to
regulations faced by the traditional TV industry
in the country. The US has the most diverse
set of top video streaming apps whereas in
the UK, traditional broadcasters dominate,
claiming eight of the top ten spots. YouTube
ranked number one in both the UK and US for
downloads. In the UK, sports apps accounted
for seven of the top ten; the majority of sporting
events are only available on pay TV channels
in the UK, driving viewers to streaming options,
the report states.
There is a huge amount of diversity across
countries among the apps that rank in the
top ten by monthly active users (MAU), and
YouTube and Netflix are the only ones to appear
to appear in the top ten for multiple countries.
The top ten by MAU tend to be TV/movies and
sports in the US, and are most balanced in the
UK. Similar to its download and revenue rankings,
China’s most-used apps lean heavily towards
those that deliver multiple types of content.
The lines that differentiate content providers
will continue to blur as they evolve in order to
maximise share of viewing time, App Annie’s
report concludes. Aggregators such as Netflix
and Amazon, for example, have started creating
original content. China may see even more
growth ahead if Alibaba’s subscription video
streaming service Tmall Box Office (TBO) is
rolled out to mobile.
Finally, the report predicts eSports to be a
major growth driver; YouTube and Twitch were
the fastest growing apps in the US, which bodes
well for the recent launch of YouTube Gaming.
Mobile video streaming takes off
Data Centre
This issue, we take a look at the latest intelligence from mobile analytics firm App Annie that covers global trends in video streaming apps
‘The US has the most diverse set of top video streaming apps whereas in the
UK, traditional broadcasters dominate, claiming eight of the top ten spots’
China* United Services United Kingdom *China data only includes iOS App Store
Top ten video streaming apps by countrydownloads, iOS App Store and Google Play* combined
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
Ind
exe
d D
ow
nlo
ad
s
12 months ended July 31, 2014 12 months ended July 31, 2015
Top ten video streaming apps by countryrevenue, iOS App Store and Google Play* combined
1500
1250
1000
750
500
250
0
Ind
exe
d D
ow
nlo
ad
s
12 months ended July 31, 2014 12 months ended July 31, 2015
3.2x
9.6x
1.0x
top related