August 2012

Transcription

August 2012

www.tvbeurope.com
Europe’s Television Technology Business Magazine
August 2012
Beyond HD
Standards & broadcasters align
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Check out Selenio™ at IBC2012 – Stand 7.G20.
TVBEurope 3
August 2012 www.tvbeurope.com
News & Contents
TSL separates its
Products, Systems
By Fergal Ringrose
TVBEUROPE EXCLUSIVELY
reveals that TSL Systems and
TSL Professional Products have
officially parted company — on
the back of record-breaking
turnover for both entities in the
year to June 2012.
David MacGregor, who
co-founded TSL 26 years ago,
steps back from day-to-day
operations and Bruce
MacGregor and David Gunn
are appointed directors of
Television Systems, reporting
directly to Managing Director
David Phillips. Meanwhile
Martin Dyster and Terry Boon
have been appointed as directors
of TSL Professional Products,
reporting directly to Managing
Director Chris Exelby.
TSL PPL is now an
independent legal entity, with
separate P&L, offices, staff,
ISO9001 certification and
operational procedures. Both
David Phillips: “Things
are moving rapidly”
Chris Exelby: “Standing
on our own two feet”
entities believe the move will
reinforce the fact that TSL
Systems is independent of any
particular manufacturer.
“This brings clarity to our
customers” said Chris Exelby.
David McGregor will no longer
be hands-on and instead can
“step back and enjoy the fruits
of his labours” commented
David Phillips.
Now, sales of Professional
Products relating directly to
orders from Systems accounts for
“less than 5% of our business,”
said Exelby, so “we’re standing
on our own two feet”. He cites its
TallyMan as being “number one
worldwide”; the fact that Dega
Broadcast and the BBC were
instrumental in the development
of the Touch Mix; and that
Boost for fast turnaround television
By Michael Burns
EVS IS using IBC to unveil its new
Breaking News toolset, which
relies on EVS’ ingest and playout
servers for increased speed and
reliability of newsroom operations.
The company is also showing
enhancements to its XT3/XS
production servers and the latest
features for its OpenCube MXF
File Mastering tools.
The Breaking News solution is
an advanced production and
content management system,
which the company said could
easily integrate with any existing
production infrastructure. Based
Breaking News has been developed to help the broadcast
industry deliver dynamic content within even tighter deadlines
on years of live production
workflow expertise at EVS, it
maximises the use of ingest and
playout infrastructures.
Enhancements to EVS
OpenCube ingest products are also
being highlighted. Features include
improved MXF JPEG2000
CCTV in China are the world’s
largest users of PAM-2 as being
key reasons behind the
company’s success in the last five
years — during which time
business has increased fourfold.
TSL Systems is busy with
“more projects in parallel” than
ever before, said Phillips. The
complexity of technology means
“things are moving rapidly,” so
much so that nowadays “customers
aren’t necessarily able to keep up to
date themselves” and rely heavily
on their systems partners.
Lead times and sales cycles
are longer, with more
stakeholders involved in the
purchasing process — and the
design stage of each project has
increased hugely as broadcasters
insist on “an awful lot of detail”
to finalise business objectives for
systems installations. TSL has
recently opened two overseas
offices, in Dubai and Singapore,
as business has expanded.
Exelby is confident on business
prospects, seeing potential in
North America and emerging
territories. He acknowledges firm
caution on European sales
projections but said, “there’s
plenty of growth to go before we
can use the excuse that the
market is depressed.”
support for AS02, IMF formats
for production mastering, and
archive preservation, including
comprehensive H.264 proxy
generation at ingest.
On its stand in Hall 8, EVS is
also showcasing the evolution of
its XT3 and XS production
servers, featuring the first triple
encoding capabilities. Servers
will be able to simultaneously
support the I-Frame codec for
high precision live replays, Long
GOP Sony XDCam 422
50Mbps HD codec for high
quality lower bitrate media
handling, and Proxy for
augmented connectivity and
control of the production
operations. The new feature will
be available in early 2013.
IBC Stand: 8.B90
Contents
1-18 News & Analysis
Global Broadcast Summit
for C-level execs takes shape
Spectrum issues are at the heart
of a planned new conference,
bringing together CEOs from the
world’s leading broadcasters.
Adrian Pennington reports
15
Super Hi-Vision at London Games
As NHK subjects Super Hi-Vision to
its latest test, practical production
issues and audience research are
being evaluated by the BBC,
writes Adrian Pennington
16
20-46 The Workflow
At the editing cutting edge
In the latest industry roundtable
discussion, Philip Stevens talks to
key providers of editing systems
about trends in the market
20
Making the top grade
There are technical and aesthetic
issues that contribute to the
stubborn reluctance of the industry
to replace the CRT. Do current
displays meet core requirements?
Dick Hobbs investigates
30
Ultra HD: Standards
and broadcasters align
The essential building blocks for 4K
and higher resolution video delivery
to the home are being put in place,
writes Adrian Pennington
44
IBC Sneak Preview
As we count down to IBC,
find out the latest news
ahead of the Amsterdam show from
The IBC Daily reporting team 49-61
62-63 The Business Case
Single-handed control
Melanie Dayasena-Lowe talks to
Rascular Technical Director Roddy
Pratt about its flagship product
Helm — already being used by over
150 broadcasters globally
62
64-65 News & Analysis
Spec-ulation over glasses-free future
Has the market conceded that 3D
will never take off until people do
not have to put on special glasses
to watch at home? Adrian
Pennington investigates
64
66 TVBEurope’s News Review
A look back at the month’s most
interesting stories from the
broadcast technology arena
66
4 TVBEurope
www.tvbeurope.com August 2012
Opinion
UltraHD: Yes we can!
By Fergal Ringrose
Intent Media London, 1st Floor,
Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road,
London N1 8LN, England
+44 207 354 6002
Editorial Consultant Adrian Pennington
Associate Editor David Fox
USA Correspondent Carolyn Giardina
Contributors Mike Clark, Richard Dean,
Chris Forrester, Jonathan Higgins,
Mark Hill, Dick Hobbs, John Ive,
George Jarrett, Heather McLean, Bob
Pank, Nick Radlo, Neal Romanek, Philip
Stevens, Reinhard E Wagner
Digital Content Manager Tim Frost
Office Manager Lianne Davey
Head of Design & Production
Adam Butler
Editorial Production Manager
Dawn Boultwood
Senior Production Executive
Alistair Taylor
London 2012: Super Hi-Vision trials at the Games
will be watched closely by broadcasters around the world
Olympic Games and the
Paralympic Games.’
So, HD really is the new SD.
Well if that’s the case, then what’s
beyond HD for broadcasters,
equipment vendors and consumer
electronics manufacturers?
What is going to drive the
European television technology
industry into the future? What is
the new quality horizon for
broadcasters — and what’s the
new must-have home viewing
experience to drive TV set sales
for consumer electronics
manufacturers? What is next?
At NAB and IBC2012, 4K
beyond HD higher resolution was
the new model for the future … as
3D appeared to fade from view.
After all, how much sense does a
move toward 3D make with
ongoing HD costs, the complexity
of 3D production, and limited
consumer enthusiasm — allied to
confusion over 3D home viewing,
with or without glasses?
Attention turns instead to
improving the 2D experience;
higher resolutions and increasing
frame rates, colour space and
dynamic range. Developments in
image sensors are leading the
charge with higher resolutions,
lower noise and greater accuracy.
Ongoing video compression
improvements by MPEG show
promise. UltraHD transmissions
are being advanced by SMPTE,
and tests continue with NHK and
European broadcasters.
Beyond HD for broadcast is
fast approaching — but what
shape will it take? How many
pixels are enough?
On page 44 this issue, Adrian
Pennington attempts to answer
that question, from the knowledge
available to us at this time. He
quotes ITU Broadcasting Study
Group Chairman Christoph
Dosch as saying, “UHDTV
promises to bring about one of the
greatest changes to audiovisual
communications and broadcasting
in recent decades. Technology is
truly on the cusp of transforming
how people experience audiovisual communications.”
Let us hope the NHK, BBC
and OBS trials in London this
month are a huge success — with
those massively higher resolutions
and frame rates — and do
provide impetus towards the next
horizon in broadcast quality.
Who remembers the early EBU
HD trials at University College
Dublin in 1992? It has taken the
EBU 20 years to go from that point
to ‘switching off’ SD TV at London
2012. Can it take another 20 years
before we see the full introduction
of UltraHD and the subsequent
switch-off of HD? Yes, it can …
Sleeping giant dreams of increased Euro market share
By David Fox
HITACHI IS showing several
new cameras at IBC as part of a
renewed focus on the European
market. These include the super
slow-motion SK-HD1500 and the
16-bit SK-HD1200 1080P/3G
production camera. It is also
showing models developed for
specific broadcast applications from
wireless operation to fibre system,
PoV and goalmouth cameras.
“Since the days of antidumping levies, Hitachi has
been a sleeping giant within the
broadcast system camera
market, but at IBC2012 visitors
Deputy Editor
Melanie Dayasena-Lowe
[email protected]
Staff Writer
Jake Young
[email protected]
Going Beyond HD
WITH LONDON 2012 Olympic
and Paralympic Games upon us,
a real milestone is reached as the
EBU bids farewell to standard
definition for all major sporting
events. Before 2012, the EBU had
always provided parallel SD and
HD signals — but this is its first
HD-only event.
Shortly before the Games we
received an EBU release which
read, ‘The EBU has made a
considerable long-term investment
in its Eurovision satellite and fibre
network, ensuring that more than
70 EBU Members holding rights
can flawlessly access all 12 HD
multilateral signals.
‘As part of the network
upgrade, the EBU gave these
Members up to eight MPEG-4
decoders each, to give European
public service media and the
audiences they serve optimal
transmission quality.
‘Eurovision Network Director
Graham Warren said the London
2012 Olympic and Paralympic
Games marked a milestone in the
live sports transmission industry.
He added: “This is a turning point
for Eurovision, and the beginning
of the end of standard definition.
Until now we have always
provided parallel SD and HD
signals, but this is the first big
event where we have focused all
our energy on HD alone.”
‘Occupying a square kilometre
of the International Broadcasting
Centre, in London, the EBU will
run 12 simultaneous multilateral
transmissions and three unilateral
feeds for up to 13 hours a day
for the duration of both the
EDITORIAL
Editorial Director
Fergal Ringrose
[email protected]
Media House, South County Business
Park, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland
+3531 294 7783 Fax: +3531 294 7799
Hitachi’s new SK-HD2200 – the full studio body version of the SK-HD 1200
will witness the start of a
new era in our company’s
development,” stated Paddy
Roache, director and general
manager of Hitachi Kokusai
Electric Europe.
“A major broadcast camera
research and development
initiative is starting to pay rich
dividends,” many of which are on
show for the first time at IBC,
alongside “a development
roadmap that will position us in
the vanguard of this dynamic
technology sector.”
The SK-HD1500 is being shown
working in combination with
LGZ’s just.Replay cost-effective
replay server system. LGZ is also
showing its new LGZ.usb — an
HD-SDI to 8x USB Recording
device, designed for recording
sequences to USB sticks or disks.
IBC Stand: 11.E30
Publisher
Steve Connolly
[email protected]
+44 207 354 6000
Sales Manager
Ben Ewles
[email protected]
+44 207 354 6000
Managing Director Stuart Dinsey
US SALES
Michael Mitchell
Broadcast Media International,
PO Box 44, Greenlawn, New York,
NY 11740
[email protected]
+1 (631) 673 0072
JAPAN AND KOREA SALES
Sho Harihara
Sales & Project,
Yukari Media Incorporated
[email protected]
+81 6 4790 2222
Fax: +81 6 4793 0800
CIRCULATION
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6 TVBEurope
News
NEWS IN BRIEF
DekTec Express
Netherlands-based digital TV
specialist DekTec has released the
DTA-2162, a low-profile PCI
Express network card with two
gigabit Ethernet ports that it will be
demonstrating at IBC2012 in
Amsterdam. The card contains
special hardware for jitter-free
streaming and for receiving
numerous time-stamped transport
streams over IP. Error correction
and fail-over functions are
supported to achieve high
availability. The driver integrates
with the standard network drivers
available on Windows and Linux.
IBC Stand: 2.B40
Realtime, multiscreen
transcoding for OTT
The 3480STX, an adaptive bit-rate
transcoder for multiscreen delivery, is
being introduced by Evertz at IBC.
The 3480STX is targeted at the
growing OTT market space for
delivering content to mobile and
web-based devices, and is part of the
3480 portfolio, which Evertz said
guaranteed operational cost savings
versus the conventional solutions
available on the market today. The
realtime transcoder provides a
streaming output for various
platforms including: Apple HLS,
Microsoft Live Smooth Streaming,
and Adobe Flash. The 3480STX is
one of the first streaming platforms
to support the MPEG-DASH
streaming protocol.
IBC Stand: 8.B40
Check out eStudio
Brainstorm Multimedia is featuring a
new range of product improvements
that it says will provide further
enhancements to its flexible, fast and
comprehensive broadcast graphics
packages. At the core of the
improvements is Brainstorm
Multimedia’s eStudio on-air graphics
and virtual studio engine, a platform
on which all the other Brainstorm
products run, including EasySet 3D, a
trackless virtual set solution.
www.brainstorm.es
IT Broadcast Workflow
speaker videos online
By Melanie Dayasena-Lowe
SPEAKER VIDEO interviews
from TVBEurope’s fourth
IT Broadcast Workflow conference
held at BAFTA recently are now
available online. Hear from ITFC’s
Lesley Marr, Aspera’s Bhavik Vyas
and Sony’s Fred Wood.
The conference opened with a
keynote presentation and panel
discussion led by Lesley Marr,
senior operations director,
ITFC. Marr spoke about ‘nextgeneration workflows’ and she
sees the changes brought about
by file-based environments as
revolutionary not evolutionary.
Bhavik Vyas, director of
Cloud Services at Aspera,
discussed enabling the cloud for
large-scale broadcast workflows
with high-speed transport.
Aspera can assist with storage
and its expertise is in moving,
managing, processing and
distributing files. “We’re all
about getting files from A-to-B.”
As London counted down
to the Olympics, Fred Wood,
Business Development,
Sony Professional America,
spoke about the NBC Highlights
Factory: Nonlinear content
delivery through effective
workflow control for
Champagne prize winner
SHAREPOINT CITY held a
Champagne Prize Draw at
this year's IT Broadcast
Workflow asking delegates for
their ideas for a 'killer app'
that, if existed, would make
work life easier. We're pleased
to announce that the winner is
Steve Biucchi from Signiant.
Almost all responses
mentioned the need for better
communication between
people and teams; something
to cut through email
proliferation but more
focused on the job and more
accessible everywhere than
tweeting or yammering.
IT Broadcast Workflow had a busy programme with 10 speakers at BAFTA
London 2012. He discussed
the role of Sony’s Media
Backbone Conductor.
“NBC are going to deliver
3,000-5,000 pieces of new
Dolby supports Rx instruments
ORIGINALLY RELEASED for
its Phabrix Sx handheld test and
measurement instruments,
support for Dolby E has now
been made available on the newest
of its product releases — the Rx
modular rack mount instruments.
Key to the success of the
new functionality is the
amalgamation of the Dolby
analysis within the video toolset.
Dolby generator as part of a closed loop
An engineer can now have a very
portable handheld tool with both
audio and video test and
measurement tools for generation,
analysis and monitoring.
Dolby-E metadata present in a
selected audio stream is displayed
and determines whether the
Dolby-E packet is timed correctly
on the SDI video stream. The
Dolby-E may also be monitored
from any of the SDI input
embedded audio channel pairs or
media over the 17 days. Up to
200 finished pieces will be
processed simultaneously
each day.”
www.tvbeurope.com/video
the AES input. V Bit information
and PCM values along with a
snapshot of the Dolby E
metadata if a Dolby E signal is
present forms part of the main
display. The Dolby-E metadata
screen carries primary
information including signal
source, Dolby-E ‘guard band’
timing, CRC errors, programme
channel and metadata detail.
In combination with the world’s
first Dolby generator as part of
a closed loop solution, Phabrix
continues to develop comprehensive
support for all Dolby standards.
IBC Stand: 8.E29
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8 TVBEurope
People on the move
By Jake Young
Curran leads Chellomedia
NIALL CURRAN has been appointed as president of Liberty
Global’s international content company Chellomedia. Curran
has been Chellomedia’s COO since 2003. Charlie Bracken,
chairman of Chellomedia, executive vice president and coCFO of Liberty Global, said: “We are delighted to have Niall
at the helm of Chellomedia and very excited at the potential of
his leadership of an important group asset which continues to
demonstrate growth and the possibility of expanding further,
through both acquisition and organic growth.’’
Curran joined the group in 2000 focusing on operational
restructuring during the turnaround of UPC. He took
on leadership of the media operations in 2002 and
was responsible for the group’s European
broadband internet product management
and was appointed COO of Chellomedia
in 2003.
From 1995 to 2000 he was with the
Walt Disney Company leaving from the
position of executive vice president
Operations for Walt Disney Europe.
Niall Curran,
Chellomedia
Keith Massey, GTC
KEITH MASSEY has
succeeded Graeme McAlpine as
chair of the Guild of Television
Cameramen. He accepted the
post for a two-year tenure at a
meeting of the GTC Council at
Pinewood Studios in July, at
which two Co-Vice Chairs,
Dudley Darby and James
Fulcher, were also appointed.
"I started with a hand-wound clockwork
16 mm silent-film camera. My first television
piece was of Kelabit natives in Borneo,
used on What The Papers Say by Granada TV
in Manchester”
Keith Massey, GTC
Paul Willey
Caroline Shawley
Erwin Engel
Andy Black
Greg Dolan
Soho Square Studios
MKM
Riedel
Whiteoaks
Xytech
Autoscript has hired Simon Clark
in the newly created role of head of
Sales & Support for the EMEA
region. He joins Autoscript following
a long career at Cintel.
Michael Senge has stepped up to
assume the role of European sales
manager for the entire DFT Digital
Film Technology product line.
UK visual effects facility LipSync has
appointed a new Head of 3D and Visual
Effects Supervisor, Ben Shepherd.
“When the opportunity arose for Ben
to join us, there was not a moment’s
hesitation as he would improve any
facility he worked at,” stated Stefan
Drury, head of VFX, LipSync.
London’s MKM Marketing
Communications has named Caroline
Shawleyas its new senior account
manager. Shawley has strengths in
developing and driving effective PR
campaigns, including using digital and
social media as well as the traditional
print domain.
Zachary Weiner has joined
never.no as director of marketing. In
his new role, Weiner will work to
evangelise social TV and interactive
platforms to broadcasters worldwide.
Soho Square Studios has recruited
former Prime Focus Commercials
Executive Paul Willey to the role
of business development and
co-production manager. Willey has
more than 12 years experience of both
long-form and short-form broadcast
post production.
Vaddio has appointed Mark Steen
as COO and Darrin Thurston as VP of
Product Development. Steen joined
Vaddio in April 2007 as both a product
manager and member of the
management team for the company.
Thurston joins Vaddio from ClearOne
Communications where he was VP of
Product Management.
Facility management software
specialist Xytech has named Greg
Dolan as its COO. He has served as
executive vice president of the
company since 2009. “In the past
three years, Xytech has enjoyed
record-breaking success during the
worst economic times in decades, and
I look forward to continuing to work
closely with Greg as we expand upon
the great work that we’ve begun,”
said Xytech President and CEO
Richard Gallagher.
Riedel Communications has
expanded its Swiss office with Erwin
Engel, who will take care of the sales
and rental markets in western
Switzerland. He has more than 20
years of experience in the professional
broadcasting market.
Sohonet has welcomed Damien
Carroll as chief operating officer to its
executive board. Carroll has overseen
the launch of a new portal application,
The Sohonet Hub, which makes it
easier for global members of the
Sohonet Media Network community to
share information and digital content.
Communication multimédia - Tél. +33 (0)5 57 262 264 Non contractual images. TriCaster, TriCaster 455, TriCaster 855, TriCaster 8000 are trademarks of NewTek, Inc. Copyright ©2012 NewTek, Inc. and 3D Storm. All rights reserved. All specifications are subject to change without notice.
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10 TVBEurope
News & Analysis
Follow us:
On Twitter
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Wimbledon 3D stays in court
By Adrian Pennington
AS THE All England Lawn
Tennis Club (AELTC) and Sony
look to extend their contract to
produce the Wimbledon tennis
championships in 3D beyond
2013, the particular nature of
the venue continues to restrict
their ambitions.
This year 12 matches from the
quarter finals were captured in 3D
with the production itself by CAN
Communicate and Sony, broadly
mirroring that established in 2011.
Centre Court was populated with
six 3D camera positions, five of
which were 3Ality Technica
Pulsars carrying Sony P1s while
a sixth position in the cramped
commentary box area is a
PMW-TD300 camcorder.
An additional TD300 was
used to capture colour shots and
ad hoc interviews docked to an
SR Master R1 in order to boost
the rate of data throughput.
The TD300 would normally
record at 35Mbps to SxS cards.
NEP Visions Gemini trucks
housed the technical operation
including stereographer
convergence ops, while another
housed the editorial teams of
the BBC and ESPN.
Live feeds were ingested into
EVS XT2s with recording also
being made to solid-state SR
Master decks, effectively
rendering the production tapeless
as well as bringing substantial
space saving in the truck.
Broadcasters taking the host 3D
feed included BBC, ESPN,
Canal+ (Spain), Nova (Greece),
Sky Italia and Japan’s WowWow.
Mervyn Hall, broadcast
manager at the AELTC, professed
to be “very pleased” with the 3D
experiment to date and has opened
talks with Sony about extending its
three year deal which ends in 2013.
“We have begun exploring what
the possibilities might be,” he said.
The AELTC’s ambition for
doing more 3D will depend on
broadcaster demand, which this year was led by ESPN
“There issome debate about the effectiveness
of tennis in 3D…. there are some who think
it doesn’t deliver as well in 3D as other
sports like boxing or football” Paul Davies, BBC
“We believe in starting these
conversations early and we are
very determined that this
relationship should go further.”
The AELTC’s ambition for
doing more 3D will depend on
broadcaster demand, which this
year was led by ESPN, but it is
reluctant to begin covering more
than the Centre Court in 3D
because of fears it would negatively
impact on its primary 2D coverage.
“The more 3D broadcasters
that come on board the more
incentive there is for us to be able
to generate more 3D coverage,”
said Hall. “We might do more
days. We might include additional
camcorders for 3D studio
excerpts and more 3D ISOs.”
The BBC is to introduce a 2D
wirecam for 2013, which will
probably be rigged for 3D.
BBC Executive Sport
Producer Paul Davies said, “There
certainly seems an appetite from
broadcasters that if content is
there they will take it. If it is made
available by the club as a 3D host
feed they will take it.”
The biggest problem however
remains the constraints of space
on Centre Court. “We have six 3D
cameras around court and it’s
been very hard to find a seventh
and an eight [position],” said Hall.
“There is no point just putting
them anywhere. We’d like more
space but while that is not possible
the production team is learning to
get good coverage from six.
“We are trying our best to
accommodate 3D cameras but it is
challenging simply because of the
compact structure and availability
of places to put them on court,
especially when ESPN have
additional cameras there and other
broadcasters would like to have
more,” he added. “So while 3D is
not way down the pecking order it
is not the most important. We have
to complement what we’re doing in
2D with our 3D ambitions.”
Production style
One solution to cutting costs would
be to produce a joint outside
broadcast combining 2D with 3D
camera positions and taking a 3D
or a 2D cut from either left or right
eye. The number of pooled cameras
increased this year (the panoramic
camera on Murray Mound and
the robotic track camera on
Centre Court were converted into
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STAND 2.B21
3D) but despite a will to make it
work, no model for ‘5D’ has been
agreed. Hall said, “The problem
is we haven’t yet found a way to
use 5D cameras which don’t, in
our view, interfere a bit with the
essential core service which is a
2D world feed. We are very
cautious about impacting on
that but no doubt it can work
out and sooner or later it will.
“There is also an editorial
consideration. If we did it in 5D
the direction would have to be the
responsibility of the BBC since it
is the host broadcaster, directed in
a 2D way because that is what is
effectively paying the rent. That’s
what broadcasters really want.”
The editorial production style
of 3D broadcasts at Wimbledon,
as honed by Sony and CAN
Communicate, features fewer
cameras, fewer cuts and longer dwell
times on shots than 2D. In addition,
the 3D director will navigate to
either end of the court by way of a
central 3D camera position to
maintain a viewer’s understanding
of their position relative to the
action. In 2D a straight end-to-end
cut is more common.
According to Davies, “5D
is a real possibility but there
are issues of resilience and
making sure the output is not
compromised in any way by
issues in 3D coverage. There is a
nervousness about building 3D
into one [5D OB] and there needs
to be a bit more reassurance on
that before it comes off.
He added: “There is some
debate about the effectiveness of
tennis in 3D. While it is very
fresh and impactful there are
some that think it doesn’t deliver
as well in 3D as other sports like
boxing or football.
“You can also argue that in
those sports the jury is still out
on 3D and ask whether the long
term coverage of sport may be
more like Super Hi-Vision.”
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12 TVBEurope
90% of the world’s data has been
created in only the last two years
News & Analysis
NEWS IN BRIEF
EditShare with Octopus
EditShare has struck up a technology
and distribution partnership with
Octopus Newsroom. The new
relationship expands EditShare’s
support for MOS-compliant
newsroom computer systems to
include Octopus6, with integration
benefits such as the ability to preview
from within the newsroom client
video asset proxies that are stored on
the EditShare Media Asset
Management system. In addition to
deeper integration with EditShare’s
broadcast servers, journalists can
browse source material stored on the
EditShare shared storage systems.
www.editshare.com
www.octopus-news.com
SWR airs with
Astra Studio 2
The Südwestrundfunk (SWR), a
member of the German ARD
consortium and the second largest
broadcasting organisation within
the ARD, is now on air with Aveco’s
new studio automation solution,
Astra Studio 2. SWR’s three
production control rooms, which are
all configured differently, can now
control any of its four studios.
“ASTRA Studio 2 is uniquely able to
support the complex processes that
we have in our virtual studio where
we produce our news shows,” said
Udo Fettig, SWR project manager.
www.aveco.com
Divine distribution
Clear-Com has expanded its
partnership with Optocore/ BroaMan
and is now distributing the new
BroaMan Divine V3R-FX-ICOM-SDI.
Unveiled to the broadcast market for
the first time at IBC, the new
BroaMan Divine V3R-FX-ICOMSDI
is described as ideal for any set-up
that requires multiple feeds of
high-quality audio, video, data and
intercom. It provides scalable,
protocol-independent routing,
repeating, transport and distribution
of multiple signals over optical fibre.
www.clear.com
IBC i-mediaflex Mobile
IBC2012 will see the European
launch of TMD’s i-mediaflex Mobile,
a new app for the iPad, Android
tablet and smartphone enabling
users access to content from a
handheld device, and add or update
metadata. It is a web-enabled
solution for asset and business
process management, for both
digital and analogue content. Also
on show will be TMD’s Unified
Media Services (UMS). The
architecture and API enables
external media services and devices,
to be integrated on a single
workflow bus.
IBC Stand: 2.C58
From gigabytes to terabytes:
dealing with big data waves
David Wood, EBU, looks at industry
challenges discussed at the SMPTE Forum
ALONG THE West Coast of
the US there is a phenomenon
known as the sneaker wave: an
unexpectedly large upsurge of
water that can appear without
warning and catch beach
combers unaware. Some are
merely knocked down; others are
swept out to sea and need
Baywatch to rescue them.
The media and entertainment
industries sit in the same
metaphorical spot. Heading our
way is a huge wave of digital data
for programme production and
delivery, growing in size every day
like a latter-day scene from a
Hollywood B movie. Because we
will have the ability to capture every
single shot and take, at increasingly
and exponentially higher levels of
quality, hold it in perpetuity, and
distribute unique versions of the
resulting content across an evergrowing array of platforms, we will
need to handle storehouse upon
storehouse of digital video and
metadata created by broadcast and
cinema production. The future
clearly belongs to big data.
To give us a clue about what’s
coming, a report from IBM
published last October stated that
90% of the world’s data has been
created in only the last two years.
So how is a media executive to
plan for the future without being
caught off guard by data growing
at such a rapid pace?
This question was one of many
forward-looking challenges
considered by executive attendees
from more than 80 global media,
entertainment, and IT companies
at the Forum on Emerging Media
Technologies held recently in
Geneva. Sponsored by the Society
of Motion Picture and Television
Engineers (SMPTE) and produced
in collaboration with the European
Broadcasting Union, this
symposium focused on the most
important and innovative research
taking place over the next 10-15
years, with a particular focus on
the technologies likely to come to
market within the next five years.
Over the two-day symposium, it
became clear that a significant part
of coping successfully with waves
of big data will require multiple,
scalable storage systems at
different points along the
production chain, each tuned
technologically to provide the
access speeds necessary to reliably
complete a particular task.
Professional storytelling
For content providers and
distributors worried about their
business models, the steadfast belief
among the broadcast, broadband,
and cinema executives is that
entertainment programming will
not be reduced to a near-endless
stream of home movies; the future
will not be one of cats playing
pianos ad nauseum on YouTube.
Professional storytelling and
high-quality moving images will
continue to carry the day, whether
viewed on a screen in the theatre
or in the home or on a TV, phone,
and tablet simultaneously. There
will always, always be a need by
people for ‘laughter, tears, stories,
and emotions.’
Yet each instance of imagequality improvement, from HD to
3D to 4K and beyond, carries an
additional data load for content
providers. The Super Hi-Vision
(SHV) system originally developed
by the Japanese public broadcaster
NHK and now ITU-R UHDTV
Level 2, for example, has much
more than 16 times the resolution
of today’s HD and 22.2 channels
of audio to match the high-quality
visual experience.
The ITU UHDTV specification
allows 120 images per second and
12 bits/sample. There is even talk of
shooting at 300 or 600 pictures/
second. The data being amassed
will be way off the end of today’s
scales. In cinema too, there is growing
interest in camera rates of 48fps.
Further expanding these data
loads is the reality that in an
IT-based production world,
professionals will want to record,
and keep, as many scenes as
possible to ensure that the final
cut of a programme or movie
matches the original vision of the
creative time.
These creative visionaries may
even find an unlikely ally in the
management suite to keep all this
data, as production executives will
be reluctant to relinquish any
scene that could one day be
parlayed into a new commercial
package or distribution agreement.
By the way, don’t forget that we
will also need as much metadata
David Wood: “Superior storytelling and image quality — things that the media
and entertainment industries already know how to deliver — will light the
path forward to business success provided we come to grips with storage”
as it takes to find each frame. As
the saying goes, ”If you can’t find
it — you ain’t got it!”
So everything must be defined,
labeled, and stored in ways that
make the greatest technical and
business sense.
To keep pace with these waves
of data, media executives need to
start planning, now, to deploy
scalable systems at multiple
points along the production
chain; scalable systems are those
that you don’t have to throw away
when you need more storage.
What’s more, each of these
systems should use the technology
best suited for the task at hand.
Solid-state storage, for example,
would be a very good way to house
production materials for near-term
use given its fast access times and
low transfer latencies. On the other
hand, a tape-based storage system
may be OK for media archives —
as long as it could scale to meet an
organisation’s projected needs.
Then there is the cloud
Despite its design as a resource
of theoretically infinite size and
speed, the use of cloud-based
infrastructures in production
environments raises difficult, and as
yet unsettled, issues. Chief among
them is the security of a media
company’s intellectual property:
how can it be sure that all its
content is absolutely safe, and won’t
get misplaced or make its way onto
a public server somewhere and have
its value gutted overnight?
Setting aside security concerns,
cloud-based systems also raise
technology questions, such as those
about retrieval times: while you
might save money hosting materials
in Greenland, how quickly can you
transfer those monster clips to an
edit suite in London?
There are also communicationsrelated costs to consider. Most
companies will pay private network
operators for the privilege of
moving data; if the current market
is any guide, those payments will go
up with increases in bandwidth and
transfer speeds. What’s more,
governments may look to new
tariffs on network traffic as a source
of additional revenue, adding to a
company’s operating costs.
The greatest point of
agreement was that superior
storytelling and image quality —
things that the media and
entertainment industries already
know how to deliver — will light
the path forward to business
success provided we come to
grips with storage.
There is similarly good news on
multiple technical fronts, not the
least of which is the continued
and rapid decline in scalable
storage costs that will make
capturing, producing, archiving,
and distributing these stories
that much easier. Deploying
scalable systems at multiple points
along the production chain
affordably will enable media
companies to bring their stories to
more viewers cost-effectively —
and, as important, prevent them
from being caught unawares by
waves of data already forming
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TVBEurope 15
News & Analysis
“Historically, broadcasters delivered certain
national and local services for civil society”
Global Broadcast
Summit takes shape
Spectrum issues are at the heart of a planned new conference, bringing together CEOs
from the world’s leading broadcasters. Adrian Pennington looks at the key issues
THE GLOBAL Broadcast
Summit (GBS) aims to create a
trans-border lobby group of
commercial and public
broadcasters to persuade
governments and regulatory
bodies of the need for a level
playing field in issues of
spectrum dividend and multiplatform competition.
The GBS, which is being
held for the first time from
28-29 November in London, is
being billed as an exclusive
roundtable debate for broadcast
CEOs to consider the global
broadcast industry from policy
and business strategy perspectives.
It is being organised by
Broadcast Planet, a partnership
of Media Asset Capital and
BPL Broadcast and chaired by
Michael McEwen, a 27-year
veteran of CBS including as
executive VP of Media, and
a former director of Media
Asset Capital.
“In conversations I have had
with over 30 broadcaster CEOs
about the Summit I can state
that there is a hunger to share
concerns and talk to peers about
certain challenges that transcend
national borders and the
competitive environment,”
McEwen explains. “There are
some principals in regulation
and in multi-platform
distribution for example that
can be shared, recognised and
applied in domestic markets and
it is those principles that we
hope to crystallise.”
The event has enticed CEOs
from broadcasters including
Regulation obligations
“One focus is to ask what
government and regulators
expect broadcasters to deliver
in an environment that has
changed so much over the last
10 years,” says McEwen, who
is also director general of the
North American Broadcasters
Association (NABA).
“Historically, broadcasters
delivered certain national and
local services for civil society in
return for a relatively protected
Michael McEwen: “On-demand
services, internet streaming
and mobile content only exacerbate
market fragmentation”
ZDF, France Television, RTL,
ABC Australia, NHK Japan,
CBC Canada, PBS USA and
Televisa Central America.
At least one representative of
a national government and
another from a regulatory body
will be invited. The BBC’s
outgoing Director General
Mark Thompson is providing
an opening keynote.
The forum will be underpinned
by research and analysis
orchestrated by CMRI (Canadian
Media Research Inc), which
will tax the CEO, COO, CTO
and the CFO of 100 broadcast
organisations with 200 questions
about production, financial,
operational and audience issues.
“The question is whether
governments understand that in
many cases broadcasters are
struggling to maintain their core
services let alone have the
capability to innovate for the
future. The more that spectrum
is squeezed the less chance
broadcasters have to deliver on
the promise of future formats
like UltraHDTV.”
He adds: “The principal of
broadcast spectrum has to be
recognised by governments
and the consequent need for
licensing regimes, retransmission
and distribution agreements to
allow public broadcasters the
benefits of increasing their
audiences and revenues. It will
further ask how business models
can be adapted to plough digital
revenue streams back into the
core service and how broadcasters
can adapt their workforces,
trained in linear programme
production, to produce for crossplatform applications.
The spotlight will also be
turned on journalistic
accountability in a social media
age (although McEwen hopes
the event will not be sidetracked
by the Levenson enquiry which
is due to report in the autumn).
The Summit is primarily for
organisations that have a
broadcast service component
at their heart, whether over the
air or retransmitted on satellite
or cable. There will be no
Microsoft, Google or Facebook.
“The principal of broadcast spectrum has to
be recognised by governments around the
world and ratified by the ITU. If broadcasters
don’t have sufficient spectrum then their
contract with society is broken”
regulatory and legislative
framework and spectrum for
over the air broadcast.
“That market has changed
irreversibly with the introduction
of pay and specialty channels on
cable and satellite which don’t
face nearly the same regulation
obligations. They don’t have
the same kind of barriers to
deliver revenues that helps
them create content and has
led to an imbalance affecting a
conventional broadcasters’
ability to fund and fulfil
their own license agreement.
On-demand services, internet
streaming and mobile content
only exacerbate market
fragmentation.
around the world and ratified by
the ITU because that is where
a broadcaster’s core services lie.
If they don’t have sufficient
spectrum then their contract with
society is broken.
“Delegates to the Summit will
be able to return to their national
governments, having met as an
industry on a global basis, and say
‘we need you to pay attention and
to practice some fairness in usage
and distribution of spectrum.’”
Cross-platform
A second focus of the Summit
will look at the multi-platform
evolution, in particular the
demand for content to be
made available on every platform
“There is no forum that
brings together broadcast leaders
at the C-level as peers to look at
issues they all face after a
decade of unprecedented
change,” says McEwen.
“Many are moving from
traditional broadcast
organisations into content
distribution companies where
broadcasting is only one platform.
“We thought that if we could
bring them together, put some
research behind some of
those issues and give them the
space to explore and come to
some conclusions in terms of
principles of action, then that
would be a useful contribution
to the discussion.”
16 TVBEurope
News & Analysis
Super Hi-Vision put through
its paces at London Games
As NHK subjects Super Hi-Vision to its latest
test, practical production issues and
audience research are being evaluated by
the BBC. Adrian Pennington reports
A LIVE mixing and editing
platform is among the
innovations planned for the
Super Hi-Vision (SHV)
production of the London
Olympics by Japanese
broadcaster NHK. A new
lightweight camcorder is also
being previewed (see below) but
not used in the trials.
The transmission of select live
and recorded events is being
made by NHK in concert with
the BBC and Olympics
Broadcasting Services and is
multiple areas and screening
techniques for public venues.
“The trial should provide
us with plenty of know-how
about producing content
and screening formats,” said
Dr Keiichi Kubota, directorgeneral of science and
technology research labs at
NHK. “The public viewings
will hopefully give people a
good taste of what SHV can
offer, and have us moving in the
same direction for broadcasts
of the future.”
Panasonic has allied with NHK to develop a
145-inch 8K (7860x4320) plasma, one of which shows SHV
London 2012 content in a VIP screening room at the Olympic IBC
“We are steadily reducing the size of
camera and have also developed larger
capacity terrestrial transmission which
has enabled us to carry out the first-ever
field experience”
Dr Keiichi Kubota
being shown via JVC/NHKbuilt 8K (7,680 x 4,320
resolution) projectors at public
theatres on over 50ft tall screens
in Bradford (National Media
Museum), London (New
Broadcasting House), Glasgow
(Pacific Quay), Japan and
Washington DC.
For NHK the objective is to
prove a number of technologies
such as programme production
with live relays, transmission
over global IP networks, feeds to
NHK is pursuing R&D
covering all aspects of SHV
broadcasts, from programme
production to broadcasting
facilities, as well as SHV TV sets
for the home and is keen to
produce a major arts event for
its next live test.
“We are steadily reducing the
size of camera and have also
developed larger capacity
terrestrial transmission which
has enabled us to carry out
the first-ever field experience
of the terrestrial SHV
transmission,” said Kubota.
“We have devised image
sensors for SHV cameras to
capture fast-moving objects
more clearly at 120fps with the
ultimate objective of perfecting
a 120Hz frame rate. And we
have developed a high framerate SHV projector.”
The current Super Hi-Vision
system relies on a 60Hz dualgreen format, but NHK wants
to maximise the potential to
a 7,680x4,320 x RGB/YC,
120Hz format. “Our ultimate
goal for SHV is to achieve its
full potential standard-wise
with a 120Hz frame rate and
a wide-gamut system,”
explained Kubota. “The
standard was tentatively
adopted at the ITU-R in April,
and we are in the process of
getting it approved.”
The UltraHD TV standard in
process of ratification at the
ITU is SMPTE2036-1 (MPEG
H.265 HEVC) which provides
for a 120Hz frame rate.
Household screens
NHK is also founder member
of the Future of Broadcast TV
(FoBTV) project which
recognised UltraHDTV as an
effective application for future
terrestrial broadcasts. “We hope
SHV will be adopted across
For audio, 22.2-channel point
recording microphones capture sound
for mixing in a separate audio relay
vehicle and on an audio mixing board
that can output 22.2 channels
the world via FoBTV,” said
Kubota. “Hopefully, we will be
able to come up with the firstever uniform standard for
terrestrial telecasts.”
There are a number of
technical challenges lying ahead
of the proposed 2015 domestic
test transmission and a 2020
commercial launch (which may
happily coincide with the 2020
Summer Olympics if Tokyo
wins the bid). Among the
difficulties are overcoming rain
TVBEurope 17
London trial includes three 20kg cameras with
four, 8-million pixel 1.25-inch CMOS sensors
London 2012 SHV workflow
SHV pictures are streamed
across the UK’s JANET
research network, a 20GB
high bandwidth IP network,
taken to Washington via other
academic networks, and
streamed to Tokyo and
Fukushima via the GEMNet2
network of telco NTT. These
networks have enough
capacity at a fraction of the
cost of commercial CDNs.
“It is impossible to distribute
SHV over satellite at the
moment so we are forced to use
IP over fibre and to think
about a step-change in the way
we produce content with this
amount of data,” said Tim
Plyming, project executive,
digital & editor live sites, BBC
London 2012. “Having to
produce over dark fibre is a
good learning curve for our
move into a more IP
production base.”
Acquisition for the trial in
London is by way of three 20kg
cameras with four, 8 million pixel
1.25-inch CMOS sensors (two
for green and one for red and
blue) at four venues (opening
ceremony, aquatic centre,
velodrome, basketball arena).
“We will take uncompressed
camera feeds at 80Gbps from
the Olympic venues back to
Television Centre where we are
building a production suite to
produce a live feed and a 45
minute updatable highlights
feed,” he explained. “This
includes an ability to render the
world’s first SHV graphics.”
The signals go via an NHK
OB van to TVC and the VIP
showcase by dual-diversity dark
fibre. From TVC it is compressed
into IP packets — 16 x 1080i
signals converted into 8 x 1080p
signals — and sent to the public
screens as two MPEG transport
streams. Recording is also made
to 32 Panasonic P2-based
64GB cards, providing two
hours of recording. The OB
van includes an 8-channel
vision mixer, an 8×8 router, slomotion playback capabilities
and HD up converter.
For audio, 22.2-channel
point recording microphones
capture sound for mixing in a
separate audio relay vehicle
and on an audio mixing board
that can output 22.2 channels.
The main SHV devices built
by NHK for the Olympics
production include an SHV
Recorder/Player based on
H.264/AVC-Intra100 with a
compression ratio of 15:1;
a slow-motion playback system
which records up to 120 minutes
uncompressed SHV onto 64 x
SSD units of 512GB each. There
News & Analysis
is the newly developed SHV
Superimpose Edit system with
key/fill output, cuts, feeds, wipes
and remote control selection
made in 4K and realtime
upconverted to SHV. An SHV
Switcher for wipe/mix and
Picture in Picture is available in
HD only and an editor with
capacity for four hours of
content stored on an array of
2TB drives.
18 TVBEurope
News & Analysis
attenuation with 21GHz band
satellites over Japan.
“We are studying ways of
solving the problem by
controlling the satellite
transmitting power in each
region,” said Kubota. “We also
have to overcome the issues of
securing transmission channels,
compression coding technology
allowing for adequate
resolution, and supplying SHV
displays for the home.”
The latter is being cracked.
Following Sharp’s lead of an
85-inch 8K prototype LCD at
CES2012, Panasonic has allied
with NHK to develop a
145-inch 8K (7860x4320)
plasma, one of which is
showing SHV London 2012
content in a VIP screening
room at the Olympic IBC.
4K screens will begin rolling
into the market from 2013. LG,
for example, has a 84-inch 4K
screen also sporting 3D and
smart TV features.
NHK has even developed a
touch panel interface to a screen
that down-converts the content
resolution from SHV to HD
(though the display itself only
for viewing in the home,”
said Kubota.
While remote-controlled SHV
cameras are still several years
away, NHK is pondering whether
to start development of compact
recorders in the near the future.
The shift to card-based editing
systems is already being made
since current SHV cameras use
multiple Panasonic P2 cards to
record and edit SHV images.
According to Dr. Yoshiaki
Shishikui, head of NHK’s
Advanced Television Systems
Research Division, “After 15
years we expect to develop the
same level of usability as current
HD devices but will still need
large-capacity archive systems
and higher-sensitivity cameras.”
SHV camcorder
Dr Keiichi Kubota: “Our ultimate goal for SHV is to achieve its full potential
standard-wise with a 120Hz frame rate and a wide-gamut system”
has a resolution of 4K). The
smallest SHV display is an
85-inch LCD, which Kubota
says may be a feasible size for
household use in the future.
“We are pressing forward
with our R&D on lighter
displays with less energy
consumption and studying
the appropriate display sizes
NHK has unveiled a new
compact Super Hi-Vision
camera which will be used to
produce regular SHV content
by 2014. The camera is not
being used as part of the
London Olympics test
transmissions. NHK says it
plans to start using the camera
in SHV production by 2014 after
further checks on performance
and necessary improvements.
“We have come up with a small
SHV camera-head the same size
as existing HD cameras,”
explained Kubota. “It weighs
only 4 kilos, or less than 2% of
the existing SHV cameras. Since
the camera adopts the single-chip
colour image sensor, the camera
can be fitted with a range of the
commercially available 35mm
full-frame lens for single-lens
reflex cameras.”
The camcorder’s single
33 million pixel (7,680 across x
4,320 high) CMOS sensor can
capture at 60fps. The SHV
signals from the camera are
uncompressed and output at a
data rate of about 24Gbps for
recording variously onto a
HDD, SSD or P2 recorder.
Recording capacity is 20 to 50
minutes in HDD and SSD
(uncompressed), or about two
hours on P2 (compressed).
The full performance specs of
the unit, including senors
sensitivity to light, will be
released at an academic
conference this month. Its
power consumption is 45W.
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20 TVBEurope
The Workflow
At the editing
cutting edge
LIKE ALL production areas,
editing has been affected greatly by
technological developments in both
electronics and IT. And that looks
as though it is set to continue.
So how do those who are
actively involved in producing
editing packages view the current
and future state of that area of the
production cycle? Will the cloud
make a significant difference to
techniques? What are the
challenges of 3D? And how do
these vendors see the way ahead?
We put these and other
questions (in alphabetical order)
to David Colantuoni, senior
director of product management,
Professional Video at Avid;
Atsushi Kataoka, director,
Product Planning & Marketing,
Grass Valley; Steve Owen,
Marketing director, Quantel;
Maurice Patel, Entertainment
Industry manager, Autodesk;
Niels Stevens, Adobe UK
Business Development manager,
CS Video; and Richard
Threadgill, senior director,
Channels & Sports Market
Development, Grass Valley.
(Ed note: We did ask a
representative from Apple to
take part, but our invitation was
declined. See separate article by
David Fox, page 25.)
TVBEurope: What do you rate
as the biggest innovation in NLE
in the past two years?
Colantuoni: The integration of
file-based media into existing
editing workflows, and end-toend file-based workflow
adoption. Manufacturers have
had to develop their products to
take into account changing
customer demands to mix and
match media and accept the
proliferation of file-based formats.
For example, Avid has made
significant architectural
enhancements to Media Composer,
and developed AMA (Avid
Media Access) plug-in technology
to assist in this evolution.
Kataoka: The continuing
popularity of file-based
camcorders and the expansion of
network bandwidth is allowing
easy access to high-quality video
data in large scaled shared
Maurice Patel: “Ironically, 3D is actually a misnomer. What is typically referred to as 3D is really a stereo image pair – two 2D”
In the latest of our
broadcast industry
roundtable discussions,
Philip Stevens
talks to key providers
of editing systems
about trends in
the market
toes! What they want is anything
and everything to help them
do their jobs better, and it’s
great that they keep the ideas
coming through.
Patel: We ran a detailed
market study among professional
editors to help better guide the
development of Autodesk
Smoke. We asked them
specifically about their number
one concern… and the answer
was TIME. Professional editors
are expected to do more and the
pressure is on for them to deliver
high quality results faster.
This caused us to rethink our
strategy and launch Autodesk
Smoke 2013, providing editors
with a powerful integrated
workflow that allows them to
be more creative within NLE
without having to step out of
“We ran a detailed market
study among professional
editors [asking for] their
number one concern… and
the answer was TIME”
Maurice Patel, Autodesk
Steve Owen: “More speed, better
integration, handling more file
formats, more tools – our
customers really keep us on our toes!”
David Colantuoni: “The experience
should feel as though you are actually
in your newsroom — except you
could be anywhere in the world”
digital storage cameras. To
accommodate these new formats,
the NLE community has embraced
the level of native realtime
performance now available with
64-bit platforms — for me this has
been the biggest innovation.
networks. More and more editors
are not just editing on computers,
but also sharing content and
projects via the web during their
content creation process.
Owen: Remote editing — and
it’s only just got started.
Customers want to take it in all
sorts of different directions, and
we’ll be able to assess its impact
better in a couple of years. Then
the new workflow possibilities it
can offer will have been much
further developed.
Patel: In the past two years the
market has undergone significant
transformation, though arguably
the biggest innovations driving
those changes have been outside
of the NLE solutions themselves.
Probably the most significant
change has been the rapid
emergence of low cost, digital
cameras that have completely
democratised acquisition of high
quality, high definition (HDTV,
2K, 4K+) content. This combined
with the compute performance
of multi-core processors, low
cost storage and bandwidth, and
high performance GPUs have
made the acquisition, storage,
and manipulation of large
amounts of digital data extremely
cost effective.
Stevens: The world of
acquisition has seen a shift from
tape and film-based cameras to
TVBEurope: What is the most
common demand from users
in terms of improvements/
features/upgrades?
Colantuoni: Customers are
asking for more workflow
enhancements, such as integrated
and improved advanced colour
correction or FX functionality,
coupled with speed improvements
through GPU acceleration.
Additionally, customers want
seamless interoperability with
other specialised products
through AAF or XML.
Owen: More speed, better
integration, handling more file
formats, more tools — our
customers really keep us on our
the application into other
software packages.
Stevens: This varies between
different communities of
editors, depending on the type of
programming they create.
Intelligent asset management tends
to be a common demand from
users across all areas, though.
Threadgill: Doing more with
less is a constant demand from the
market. While this doesn’t
necessarily translate to a single
feature set per se, it does require
the whole of a solution to be tuned
to meet this need. Today, a user
can edit 4K footage with a suite of
full 10-bit colour correction
tools…on a laptop. More power,
less cost…amazing stuff really.
TVBEurope: What difference does
cloud computing make to NLE?
Colantuoni: For Avid, it’s all
about a seamless user
experience. We will build
systems so that users do not
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22 TVBEurope
The Workflow
know they are using a cloudbased product. We recently
announced Interplay Sphere,
which is Media Composer and
NewsCutter editing connected
to Interplay using the cloud.
The magic here is that you no
longer need to be connected to a
LAN. You can basically be
anywhere there’s an internet or
cellular connection to your
workgroup. The experience
should feel as though you are
actually in your newsroom —
except you could be anywhere
in the world.
Owen: Not very much at the
moment. It’s still hard to move
hi-res pictures quickly, so users
mostly need to work with lo-res
proxies and apply the edit decisions
remotely on the hi-res content —
and making that 100% correct,
100% of the time is the challenge.
Patel: Today, cloud computing
is best used where scalable
compute resources are required or
for applications that need effective
remote/mobile collaboration
and/or where processing power
may be limited on the host side.
One of the biggest challenges is
that NLE workflows typically
involve large amounts of media,
but are less demanding when it
comes to image processing. Most
cloud services offer the opposite:
large amounts of processing
power with low storage and
bandwidth capacities.
Stevens: The biggest
consideration, and potentially
obstacle, at the moment is
‘upstream’ broadband speeds,
which can be a bottleneck to
being able to upload your
footage to the cloud.
Threadgill: Video editing
likely represents the greatest
challenge to cloud offerings. The
cloud presents a fantastic new
vehicle for systemisation of
editing environments that are
yet to be tapped. Metadata and
asset management become key
factors in this race along with
tools integrated within the
traditional editing UI to
empower seamless operability.
Niels Stevens: “The world of acquisition has seen a shift from
tape and film-based cameras to digital storage cameras”
that they can work as seamlessly as
they do today.
Owen: A long way!
Patel: We are very far away
from being able to do a 4K or
even a 2K uncompressed edit on
an iPad. However, the important
problem for high-tech software
companies like Autodesk to solve
is not how we ‘port’ existing
software models to new
technologies, but how we exploit
the inherent strengths of new
technologies to develop better, and
more effective creative workflows.
Atsushi Kataoka: “Almost anyone
can be a good ‘technical’ editor. But
to be a great ‘artistic’ editor is rare”
TVBEurope: What are the particular
challenges of NLE for 3D?
Colantuoni: Customer challenges
include viewing stereoscopic in
the editing room, managing up to
use as 2D editing. We’ve exceeded
expectations with our 3D editing
functionality and Media
Composer is being used today to
edit the latest Hollywood features
and this summer’s major sporting
event in London.
Owen: Handling lots of data
accurately, no hiccups on playout,
developing new tools to help
users face the unique challenges
of 3D, and giving them the tools
to easily produce different
versions. 3D has extra challenges
beyond 2D in terms of different
viewing environments that need
to be accommodated.
Patel: One of the biggest
challenges is making changes in
post, after the real 3-dimensional
information has been lost.
Ironically, 3D is actually a
misnomer. What is typically
referred to as 3D is really a stereo
image pair – two 2D images. It
is the differences between these
two images that trick the brain
into seeing an illusion of 3D.
However, unfortunately for the
editor, once the stereo pair has
been acquired the real-world
3D information is lost and
cannot be easily recreated.
This makes it very hard to make
adjustments after shooting.
Unless done well 3D can
essentially end up looking like a
series of planar cut-outs.
“The divide between asset management
and editing is an artificial one. Editing is all
about asset management — and today’s
technology doesn’t make it as easy as it
could be”
Steve Owen, Quantel
TVBEurope: How far away are we
from full scale editing on iPads (or
similar), rather than desktops?
Colantuoni: The technology
certainly exists to edit on tablets and
handhelds. The change will come
when users are more accepting to
workflow changes. However, these
changes cannot get in the way of
their creativity. Editors will demand
four times the media of a single
eye production, and being able to
both complete projects with one
integrated solution and prepare
for S3D digital film mastering.
We’ve made significant changes
to Media Composer to adapt to
stereoscopic editing workflows.
Our goal was to make the 3D
editing experience as simple to
Stevens: This depends on the
extent of functionality required. It’s
easy to ‘bake in’ left and right eye
information into 2D footage using
an external decoder. However, for a
full-featured solution, the support
of multiple input types, delivery
formats, as well as a full suite of
alignment and convergence
controls is required.
Threadgill: Where to begin!
The greatest challenge is
probably with the editor (the
person, not the software). The
principles of editing in 3D, the
do’s and don’ts, the fine nuances
around scene changes, titling,
graphics, etc. are quite foreign
to most. 3D is not anything that
is particularly new. What is
different this time with 3D is the
accessibility of the technology.
This will welcome many new
editors into the space that may
struggle with editing traditional
video today.
TVBEurope: Is there a danger
that the craft of editing can get
lost in the overall technology of
asset management, workflow
controls, storage and so on?
Kataoka: Asset management
and workflow controls are only
tools to help the craft editor to
edit more quickly and
effectively, which should help
improve the quality of output.
However, many aspects still rely
on the creative skills of the craft
editor. Almost anyone can be a
good ‘technical’ editor. But to be
a great ‘artistic’ editor is rare.
Owen: The divide between
asset management and editing is
an artificial one. Editing is all
about asset management — and
today’s technology (particularly
in post) doesn’t make it as easy as
it could be. Editors need tighter,
more seamless integration
between the assets and the edit.
Patel: No. The craft of editing
is the ability to tell a story
whatever tools are put in your
hands. Those tools will change
and there is no doubt that things
are likely to get more complex. A
good workflow without a good
end product is pretty meaningless
and individuals or companies
that lose sight of this are not
likely to remain in business for
long. At Autodesk, we do a lot of
development work building better
workflows. However, we try to
never lose sight of the fact that
without great creative tools those
workflows are meaningless.
TVBEurope 23
The Workflow
“The NLE community has embraced the level of native
realtime performance now available with 64-bit platforms”
Stevens: It’s definitely the
case that creative craft editors
now, more than ever, have to
understand the implications and
technical constraints of various
workflows, but equally I would
argue that there has never been
a time where NLEs offered such
a wealth of possibilities and
flexibility in delivering the
creative vision.
TVBEurope: What specific
features do you incorporate to
help improve workflow?
Colantuoni: Quite simply, Avid
provides the entire workflow
with our range of products from
ingest to creative to manage to
master to archive.
Owen: All of them! A
lousy workflow equals a
frustrated editor and
usually leads to less
than perfect results,
delivered late.
Patel: We
tackle
workflow on
multiple
fronts,
including
improving inapplication
workflows,
optimising our
creative tools,
supporting open data
formats to enable
efficient metadata
exchange, supporting popular
media formats and the integration
of key creative processes into a
single application.
Stevens: Adobe leads the field
in interoperability of camera
formats and codecs, coupled with
realtime performance. We also
provide powerful hooks between
all of our own applications, as
well as the ability to import and
export in all of the key industry
standard interchange formats
(AAF, OMF, XML etc). Now,
with the introduction of Adobe
Story and Prelude, we are making
it even easier for creative teams
to craft their visions, enter and
access metadata, and create rough
cuts early in the process. This
enables the media and all
associated metadata to flow
throughout post production and
beyond (for archival needs).
Threadgill: From an Edius
perspective there are a number of
things. First, for those customers in
a Grass Valley ecosystem with GV
Stratus, the integration is tight and
well engineered for a seamless
operation between all aspects of
the workflow. Additionally, Grass
Valley has made the Edius SDK
available to developers at no cost
that enables integration with other
systems and solutions. Finally, the
native codecs of Edius, HQ (8-bit)
and HQX (10-bit) are now available
as free downloads for both encode
and decode for PCs and Macs
making content truly transportable
on virtually any platform.
TVBEurope: What do you see as the
next major development with NLE?
Colantuoni: Future NLEs will
leverage cloud computing for the
ultimate in collaboration, storage
and user experience. Also, users
can expect converged applications
that provide advanced functionality
with a greatly simplified user
experience. This simplification will
“Video editing likely
represents the greatest
challenge to cloud
offerings. The cloud
presents a fantastic
new vehicle for
systemisation of
editing environments
yet to be tapped”
Richard Threadgill, Grass Valley
Richard Threadgill:
“Today, a user can
edit 4K footage with
a suite of full 10-bit
colour correction
tools…on a laptop”
come with
performance that
uses all processing/
multi-core and
graphics power
that CPUs can
provide.
Additional
development will
allow for
distributed and
background
processing of the
most computationally
intensive tasks.
Owen: We want to support
amateur editors with tools that help
them make content that looks like it
has been professionally finished.
Editing is about more than making
cuts. Things like checking the
continuity in the image across a cut
is a natural process for the
professional editor — suspension of
disbelief is critical in storytelling
and simple blunders can ruin the
viewing experience. So we need to
come up with tools to help nontrained editors to get the basics
right — a sort of video equivalent
of grammar and spell checkers in
word processing packages. You
don’t have to use them, but if your
command of the language is not
perfect, they can be very useful in
helping produce a good quality
result. As computers get more
powerful, I can see artificial
intelligence being developed to help
get edits right in a similar fashion.
Patel: The Harvard Business
Review recently ran an article on
‘The New Science of Viral Ads’,
detailing research on just how
critical effective storytelling is to
the ability of an ad to go viral.
We believe that the next major
developments will centre on
enabling editors to do just that. Our
belief is that modern storytelling is
a highly, though not exclusively,
visual process and the visual
content/quality is critical to success.
Stevens: We are only just
scratching the surface with features
that are intelligent, or ‘contentaware’. Further developments in
this area are set to revolutionise
the automation of repetitive tasks
in editing in the future.
Threadgill: A continued shift
away from proprietary workflows.
Customers, whether professional or
consumer, expect to work anytime,
anywhere. Using off-the-shelf
equipment for acquisition, storage,
I/O, and even the editor itself will
continue to drive the market.
Portability is key with more and
more editors looking to edit in the
field and produce that same-day.
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TVBEurope 25
The Workflow
Is Final Cut Pro X
ready for broadcast?
After a year of updates, is Apple’s best-selling nonlinear editor
finally ready for primetime? And how has it addressed users’
major concerns? David Fox investigates the evolution of FCP X
WHEN APPLE introduced
others have simply remained on
Final Cut Pro X last year, it
FCP 7 and waited to see what
wasn’t so much an update to
Apple would do next.
FCP 7 as a completely new
“I think the main issue was
nonlinear video editing
that FCP X wasn’t what people
programme. It was a radical
were expecting. It was a whole
re-think of how we do editing — new application that shared
but because it was essentially a
little with its predecessor other
version 1.0 release, it became
than its name and it edits video.
more talked about for what it
It also challenges the way we
didn’t do than its new features.
think about editing with its
Among broadcast editors,
storyline approach to editing
especially, the initial reaction
rather than tracks,” says Chris
was one of dismay. Many
Roberts, video editor, Apple
aspects of the traditional
Certified Trainer and Adobe
broadcast workflow weren’t
Certified Instructor.
supported. Indeed, so great was
“It also lacked some of the
the backlash that Apple soon
key features we had come to
put the discontinued FCP 7 and
expect with FCP: the ability to
the Final Cut Studio package
update older projects; the
back on its shelves, so that
familiar roundtripping workflow
facilities and production
with Motion, Soundtrack Pro
companies that relied on the
and Color; exporting and
earlier version didn’t need
to upgrade to X if they
wanted to add further
edit seats.
Since then, Apple
has certainly lost
mindshare in
broadcast, where some
editors faced with
having to learn a new
way to edit have
decided to look at
discounted crossgrade
offers from
Avid and
Cutting edge: Final Cut Pro X is designed for how we’ll
Adobe —
edit in future — not always helpful for use today
while many
importing ‘industry-friendly’
files such as EDLs and XMLs;
working from shared media
assets; audio mixing; broadcast
video monitoring; and, of
course, multi camera editing. All
this, coupled with an unfamiliar
interface, alienated existing users
who unfairly likened it to
iMovie [Apple’s consumer
editing package].”
However, FCP X does have
some excellent and innovative
features, such as the Magnetic
Timeline, Inline Precision Editor,
skimmer (now also seen on Adobe
Premiere), Auditions, Keyword
collections, and Smart Collections.
Apple has also been diligent in
pushing out updates, and is
seemingly listening to complaints,
although there are still more than
80 requested features on the To
Do list at the Final Cut user
site fcpx.tv.
“The updates have
helped address some of
the major concerns
(XML import/export;
exporting Media Stems;
multicamera editing)
and the software we
have now is quite
different from the
software initially
released,” says Roberts.
“In many
circumstances
third parties have
started filling
Chris Roberts: “The software we
have now is quite different from
the software initially released”
the gaps … but not always and
sometimes the updates from
Apple break what already works,”
he adds, citing problems with
Automatic Duck’s Pro Export
FCP, Genarts’s Sapphire Edge
plugins and Red Giant’s Magic
Bullet Looks. Although fixes
became available, some users had
to wait months.
Among the large number of
third-party applications that
solve some of the problems of
X, one of the most useful is
Intelligent Assistance’s 7toX. It
only costs $10 and makes it
relatively easy to migrate FCP 7
projects or sequences into X,
and handles the vast majority of
standard effects and transitions.
Some things (such as text
effects) might not translate
exactly, but it will make it a
great deal simpler for anyone
upgrading from 7 to X.
Intelligent Assistance also has
an Xto7 application ($50) that
converts FCP X Project XML to
Sequence XML for import into
FCP 7 or other applications,
such as Premiere Pro. It also has
a nifty $5 app, Event Manager X,
which makes it very easy to keep
track of Events and Projects,
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TVBEurope 27
The Workflow
Among broadcast editors, especially,
the initial reaction was one of dismay
whether they are mounted or not,
particularly if you want to avoid
a project being seen by an
unauthorised client.
There are also a huge number
of plug-in filters and effects
packages available for X, from
the likes of CoreMelt, Digital
Heaven, GenArts, Noise
Industries and Red Giant.
The large number of thirdparty applications and plug-ins is
a good sign that FCP is still the
most widely supported of editing
systems. Like the programme
itself, they tend to be good value
— there is even a lot of freeware
available, such as from the editor
Alex Gollner, whose site
(http://alex4d.wordpress.com/)
has lots of useful effects, fixes
and transitions.
Multicam Editing
One of the major complaints
when FCP X launched was that it
couldn’t do multicam editing —
although you actually could
using a fairly easy workaround.
However, Apple has since added
a multicam editor that is better
than FCP 7. It offers 64 camera
angles, using mixed video formats
and frame rates, and a selection
of synchronisation methods.
Besides timecode and markers,
it will also sync automatically
by matching audio waveforms.
Then, to cut between the
cameras, there is an Angle
Viewer, with a bank of up to 16
angles (you can switch between
banks for more cameras), and
you cut using a number key.
Broadcast monitoring has also
been added back into X, so long
as you use third-party PCIe cards
or Thunderbolt devices from the
likes of AJA, Blackmagic Design
and Matrox (although this can
mean it isn’t as well integrated as
it was previously).
Roberts is happy that “Apple
seems to be keeping to its promise
of regular updates….” He is doing
less FCP 7 training now, quite a
lot of FCP X and taking enquiries
all the time. “For my editing I’m
still largely on FCP 7 because my
clients haven’t moved yet, but
we’re now looking at how FCP X
can be used for their workflows.
“I’ve done a few little
corporate projects in FCP X
now and I have to say I’m really
impressed with how quickly I
can put an edit together and,
more to the point, how quickly I
can make changes.”
www.apple.com/finalcutpro
www.chrisroberts.info
www.digital-heaven.co.uk
www.genarts.com
www.intelligentassistance.com
www.noiseindustries.com
www.redgiantsoftware.com
‘It’s rare to find a TV show that averages 40 DFX per episode’
FCP X finds Leverage
By David Fox
SOME MAJOR broadcast
productions have moved to
FCP X, with excellent results.
Electric Entertainment has been
making the crime drama series
Leverage using Final Cut Pro
since 2008, and has moved
completely to FCP X for the
current Season 5, which it is
shooting in 4K on two to nine
Red Epic cameras per take.
“We think that Final Cut
Pro X shows how simply and
inexpensively a powerful
file-based workflow can be
implemented,” says Executive
Producer/Director, Dean
Devlin. “We’ve been able to
do things on Leverage that no
other cable show does simply
because we can afford to do
it using our all-digital
workflow. It’s very rare to see
a television show that averages
40 digital effects per episode.
Or has four- or five-day sound
mixing sessions.
“We’re able to do it and still
produce a show for basically
$1.8 million an episode. Not
only does it change the price,
but it actually changes creatively
the way we work. We don’t have
to wait to lock pictures to start
our digital effects shop.”
Daily rushes are sent on hard
drives from Portland to Los
Angeles, where the Red .r3d
files (about 200 per day
of the seven-day shoots per
episode) are converted to
ProRes Proxy using Red
efficiently with the waveforms,
mostly putting dialogue in and
cutting a lot of sound.”
Once the network approves the
cut, the finished XML files are
sent to DaVinci Resolve (where it
reconnects to the original Red
.r3d files, which are colour
graded and rendered out as
ProRes 4444 files), and through
for the latest season, edited on
FCP X. According to Editor
Knut Hake, using X allowed him
to work faster than with any
previous editing tool. “We have a
very tight editing schedule, as the
season’s first episodes were
already airing as we were cutting.
The editing speed with Final Cut
Pro X was fantastic. Trimming
“We’re able to do it and still produce a
show for basically $1.8 million an
episode… It actually changes creatively
the way we work”
Dean Devlin
Rocket cards at faster than
realtime, and picture and sound
are synched as a batch using
Intelligent Assistance’s
Sync-N-Link X.
One of Leverage’s three
editors, Brian Gonosey
particularly likes the Magnetic
Timeline on FCP X. “I do a
lot of cutting in the timeline,
and I never even think about
losing sync. And the new trim
tool makes quick work of
whatever I need to use it for.
It lets me edit a lot more
Marquis X2Pro Audio Convert
to Pro Tools for sound mixing.
“Final Cut Pro X started out
by completely redefining our
approach to editing,” says
Devlin. “But the giant
improvement since it was
originally released is that now it
interfaces with a professional
workflow in a way that Final
Cut Pro never could before.”
Award winning German
comedy Danni Lowinski, which is
made for SAT.1 by Phoenix
Film, is shot on a Red One and,
especially was very fast, and a lot
of it can be done without ever
leaving the arrow tool.”
Editing at home on his iMac
in Berlin, Hake particularly
likes the Magnetic Timeline
“because it lets me focus on the
storytelling. I know other
methods of trimming in Final
Cut Pro 7 and in Avid, but I’m
glad I don’t have to deal with
them in Final Cut Pro X.
Because all I care about is how
I trim — the rest is done for
me. I really like that.”
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28 TVBEurope
The Workflow
Preparing for Olympic
home advantage
With the Olympics in London, the BBC as rights-holding broadcaster for the UK has a special responsibility. It has seized the
opportunity presented by digital broadcasting to make a unique claim: every event will be broadcast live. Dick Hobbs
visited the Olympic Park as the BBC’s installation in the IBC was being completed to see how this will be achieved
INEVITABLY IN a project like
this it is the numbers that are
staggering. The BBC production
area has around 200 incoming
circuits from all the venues, and
from two dedicated studios. Each
venue has the multi-lateral feed,
created by Olympic Broadcast
Services, and these are directly
routed into the BBC centre.
At many events the BBC will
have its own unilateral feeds to
tailor the content for British
viewers. Some will be from BBC
operated outside broadcast trucks;
some from one or two camera
units for local presentation.
The fact that all these feeds will
be arriving over different fabrics,
and given the fact that the
satellite bandwidth is likely to be
crowded, was one of the causes
for concern at the design stage.
Each incoming feed needs to be
checked for quality control, and
passed through timebase
correctors and other processing
to ensure everything is
synchronised by the time it
reaches the production staff.
At the other end of the
operation there are up to 24
parallel outputs, to meet the goal
of covering every event. Through
careful negotiations with Sky for
satellite, Virgin for cable and
Freeview for terrestrial, as far as
possible these are all independent
channels on the EPG rather than
red button services. According to
Under construction: Early July
view of studios being built on
top of a temporary structure in
the Olympic Park
Under construction:
Interior view of a
production control room
being put into place
the BBC this will make it easier
for viewers to find their preferred
sport, and to record it if they
cannot watch it live.
As well as dedicating channels
to Greco-Roman wrestling and
synchronised swimming, the
BBC is also presenting packaged
programming on two of its
channels. BBC One will carry
the main Olympic coverage, with
a second live programme
running on BBC Three.
These will be presented from
two studios built on top of a
temporary structure at a
crossroads in the Olympic Park,
around 500m from the BBC’s
part of the IBC. For BBC One
there is a large glass box.
BBC Three has an outdoor
presentation space to feel more a
part of the atmosphere.
Back in the IBC there are
separate production control
rooms for BBC One and BBC
Three, each with a Sony
production switcher and a
separate audio room with a
Studer mixer. There is a third
gallery with similar hardware to
allow for other productions from
around the site, and for news use.
The fourth main output area is
responsible for all the other
streams, which inevitably is much
more about routing the right
feeds to the right outputs,
maintaining seamless presentation
and overseeing quality. Most of
the feeds from venues for these
channels will arrive complete
with BBC commentary, but where
the need arises there are a couple
of “off the tube” rooms for
local voiceovers.
TVBEurope 29
The Workflow
In total the BBC has around 300 staff
on site, including about 70 journalists
In the middle is an
infrastructure based on that
installed at BBC Sport’s
headquarters in Salford. Eight
EVS XS servers are used for
ingest; content storage and
playout is on Omneon
MediaGrid; and 21 Avid editors
sit on an Isis server. 13 editors
are used by journalists and
producers in the open plan office
to create highlights packages,
and there are eight craft suites
adjacent to it all. Graphics come
from eight Vizrt suites.
shuffling, as well as video tasks
like colour correction.
Conspicuous by their absence
in the installation are VTRs: this
is a file-based production,
managed by the BBC’s BNCS
control system. Of the 200km or
so of cable, a substantial
proportion is Cat-5 ethernet.
As well as its unique sports
streams and the two national
channels the centre also
supports the BBC’s national and
regional news services who will
want to create their own stories:
additional Avid editors are
available for them attached to
the content network.
In total the BBC has around
300 staff on site, including about
70 journalists. They, and the
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Harris in harmony
The underlying architecture
relies heavily on Harris
equipment, including the Selenio
platform as well as standard
modular frames. With all the
signals flying around there is a
huge call for multi-viewers, and
there are 16 frames each holding
six cards of Harris 6800+ quad
splits, some of which are cascade
for 16 to view. The architecture
also uses the newer Harris H
View Pro multiviewers that put
up to 64 signals on a screen.
Some of the H View Pro cards
are in standalone frames, others
are in the 512 x 1028 Harris
Platinum router.
The system has been built by
Dega Broadcast Systems.
Director John Cleaver has been
living the project for the last two
years. “The BBC wanted to start
back then to ensure the
hardware and the installation
resource would be available,”
he said. “This is their biggest
Olympics yet, and they had a
clear idea of what they wanted
to achieve.”
The system design was very
much a joint effort between
BBC and Dega. Resilience was a
key feature, with as much
redundancy as practical, and
detailed design to minimise the
effects of a failure. The I/O
ports on the router, for example,
are carefully chosen to ensure
that a main feed and an
alternate never pass through
the same card.
One of the effects of developing
the technology over two years is
that new techniques come along
which were not available at the
start of the project. It makes
extensive use of the Harris Selenio,
the media convergence platform
which is capable of handling both
IT and realtime video and audio
files simultaneously.
“It is a slick way of providing
layers of signal processing,”
according to Cleaver. The 26
frames at the Olympic IBC are
used for a lot of audio processing,
including Dolby encoding, AES
embedding, synchronising and
systems engineers who have
designed and built this
remarkable facility, have to
accept the fact that if all goes
well they will be forgotten as we
celebrate the successes of our
favourite athletes.
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30 TVBEurope
The Workflow
Making the top grade
There are technical and aesthetic issues
that contribute to the stubborn reluctance
of the industry to replace the CRT. Do
current displays meet core requirements?
Dick Hobbs talks to the players involved
“WITH THE RoHS and
environmental issues faced by
CRTs, not to mention the lack
of spare parts, the reality
was that it had to happen.”
That’s how Kris Hill of JVC
summarises one of the biggest
challenges faced by broadcast
engineers: how do we look at
what we are putting out?
The CRT is dead: but what
replaces it?
The mass migration to flat
panel displays changed the
business as well as the
engineering of monitoring. As
JVC’s Hill points out, flat panel
displays are smaller, lighter and
cheaper, and by being on top of
this advance JVC now takes the
largest overall market share in
monitors in Europe. It also
brought about the multiviewer
revolution: take advantage of
the larger screen sizes available
by putting multiple feeds onto
one display.
There is one screen, though,
that remains to this day a
problem: the grade one monitor,
the reference display. As the
BBC’s Richard Salmon puts it,
we need a monitor that shows us
not how good the signal is but
what is wrong with it, so we can
put it right.
Richard Salmon: “It is very difficult
to replace a CRT with a flat panel
display, because you have to keep
the colours the same”
It was in 2007 that Sony
stopped manufacturing its grade
one CRT, which was pretty
much the only game in town.
Since then, there has not been
any practical replacement, and
much engineering time has been
devoted to nursing the installed
base of grade one CRTs along.
As Michael Byrne of WTS
Broadcast said, “there are both
technical and aesthetic issues
that contribute to the reluctance
in the industry to replace the
CRT. Technical issues relate to
the limitations of current
alternatives; aesthetic issues
relate to visual differences,
which result in the viewer losing
confidence in the accuracy of
the image.”
TVBEurope 31
The Workflow
The EBU set up a task force
to look into the issue: Richard
Salmon was one of its leaders. It
published documentation earlier
in 2012. “It has taken us five
years to produce the final
documentation,” he said, adding
“it has taken the manufacturers
that time to come up with
displays that start to really meet
the core requirements.”
The EBU, as a broadcast body,
looked to maintain core
broadcast standards, and so the
new specification, EBU Tech
3325, essentially aims to define
what should replace the venerable
Sony CRT. But, as Salmon
admits from his experience in
that they could not agree what the
colours were. As you moved
around the colours changed. The
CRT was a stable reference.”
But manufacturers have been
working alongside the
development of the standards
for the last five years, so you
would expect that there is a
broad choice in modern grade
one monitors. Sadly, you would
be wrong.
On target
Friedrich Gierlinger of IRT is
another member of the EBU task
force, and at the launch event he
said: “At the moment there are
two displays which nearly meet
requirements apart from concerns
about the viewing angle. The
Sony OLED is described as much
better in terms of black level and
viewing angle, but it may be too
small — 24.5-inch diagonal, as
opposed to the Dolby’s 42-inch —
to spot HD artefacts.
According to Daniel
Dubreuil of Sony, the company
has sold more than 10,000 of
its OLED monitors since the
launch in February 2011. “It
set a new standard for colour
graders and editors in terms of
deeper blacks, high contrast
ratio, colours in low lights and
image stability,” he said. OLED
is an emissive technology, and
Sony’s Dubreuil points to “enhanced
motion reproduction” as one of the
major benefits of the OLED display
“If consumers are not watching their
content on CRTs, then what logic is there for
basing the ‘standards’ on it?” Paddy Taylor, Autocue
BBC studios, “it is very difficult
to replace a CRT with a flat panel
display, because you have to keep
the colours the same.
“We put some LCD panels in a
production environment, and the
guys controlling the lighting found
the requirements for grade one
displays.” These are the Dolby
4200-PRM, which is an LED
backlit LCD display, and the
Sony BVM250 OLED display.
According to Gierlinger, the
Dolby display nearly fulfils the
black really does mean no light
coming out of the display,
thereby addressing one of the
biggest problems for quality
flat panel displays: very poor
linearity at the low end of
the scale.
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32 TVBEurope
The Workflow
The Dolby monitor, on the
other hand, combines a high
quality LCD panel with an
active LED backlight:
approximately 1500 RGB LED
triads, each of which are both
individually dimmable and
colour controllable. Together
with the modulation of the LCD
panel, it results in extremely
high linearity across the full
range from black to white.
Prices are broadly
comparable, too. Sony did not
comment on price, but Dolby
acknowledged that the $1,000 an
inch rule of thumb that used to
be applied to grade one CRTs is
still a good guide. So is the
advice to go for a Sony OLED
unless you need something
larger, in which case the Dolby
is also excellent? The answer is
not quite so simple.
As Paddy Taylor of Autocue
— also in the reference monitor
business — points out, “If
consumers are not watching
their content on CRTs, then
what logic is there for basing the
‘standards’ on it? Certain
aspects of a video signal will
perform differently between
technologies so there is a strong
argument to use the most
common denominator when
grading an image.”
Steve Hathaway is managing
director of Oxygen DCT, which
distributes the Penta line of
reference monitors. “The Penta
series are a ‘leveller’ for the
industry,” he says, “enabling
broadcasters, post houses and
production companies to all
operate the same, industry
compliant colour standards, and
provide the picture accuracy
necessary through the proliferation
of high definition formats.”
Moving fast
Sony’s Dubreuil points to
“enhanced motion
reproduction” as one of the
major benefits of the OLED
display, and many will have seen
demonstrations at NAB or IBC
featuring ridiculously fast text
crawls which are perfectly
reproduced. That is a huge
benefit when engineers are
trying to capture transient
problems with a signal,
certainly, but at the same time
it could be a temptation for a
creative artist to make
something that looks good on
the reference monitor but could
never be reproduced at home.
So Ian Lowe of Dolby has a
point when he says “The thing
that makes the PRM-4200
genuinely different is its built-in
ability to emulate other display
devices as standard.” From the
front panel it is possible to
change the response of a single
monitor from grade one
equivalent to emulation of
consumer LCDs and plasmas.
This adaptability goes the
other way, too, and that is
important because broadcast
HD grade one is not the only
premium standard to which
facilities aspire today. As well as
SMPTE Rec 709 HD, many
suites will want a graded monitor
for digital cinema work, which
means DCI P3 and emerging
12-bit signals, in 2K and even 4K
resolution. The Dolby monitor
supports 2K DCI, switching
reference luminance and gamma
as required. Not only is it ready
for 12-bit colour space, it also
supports 48fps DCI for high
frame rate projects.
These higher resolution
signals are no longer a
theoretical concern: when the
Blackmagic camera, launched at
NAB, comes to market we will
TVBEurope 33
Sony has sold more than 10,000 OLED
monitors since launch in February 2011
The Dolby monitor combines a high
quality LCD panel with an active
LED backlight: approximately
1500 RGB LED triads
have a source of
greater than 2K
signals at consumer
prices. It is a safe bet
that engineers will
need to take a careful
look at these signals.
For dealer WTS
Broadcast, Michael
Byrne makes the
excellent point that
“the advantage of
modern monitoring
technology is that it is
far more flexible and
extensible, using easily
upgradeable software to
support new standards.”
Looking to the future,
Dubreuil commented:
“Sony sees OLED monitoring
technology as the best
available at this point in
time, and we will continue
to develop Trimaster EL
OLED products.”
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JVC claims it now takes the largest overall monitor market share in Europe
compatible with
quality LCD panels and also
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16-bit video processing and
comprehensive support for
calibration, lengthening the
life of the screen. It has an
even longer heritage than
other offerings: Penta started
guarantee every monitor to
Rec 709 colorimetry.
Ian Lowe of Dolby wraps
things up by bringing us back
to the EBU’s current findings.
“It has taken five years to
better the CRT with only two
monitors,” he says. “While
there may be new technologies
work on reference flat panel
monitors in 2006 in its native
Germany, working in
collaboration with
broadcasters and national
standards body IRT.
Hathaway adds that the
16-bit oversampled input and
processing “ensure the
highest possible signal quality,
often exceeding EBU Tech
3320 Grade 1 performance
for many signal metrics.”
He also claims Penta is the
only manufacturer to
and display devices discussed,
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standard specified by the
EBU? If a device does not
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®
Manufacturers have been working with
the development of standards for the
last five years, so you would expect a
broad choice in modern grade one
monitors. Sadly, you would be wrong
Competition is coming up
from other vendors looking at
active backlit LCD, too, such as
Autocue — its T Series won a
TVBEurope Editors’ Award at
IBC2011. “Probably the biggest
advantage of all of LCD in the
professional market is the price
point,” claims Taylor. “Grading
monitors are now available for
less than £10,000 but with many
features you would normally only
find on more expensive monitors.”
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34 TVBEurope
The Workflow
“Facing such difficulties, TF1 issued a request
for proposals with four main specifications”
How to choose a television
graphics package
French network TF1 found its old graphics package was approaching obsolescence, and
a total revamp of graphics creation and management was required. Philip Stevens
looks at the choice and process of change resulting in the selection of Orad’s 3DPlay
workstations, plus one further in
the master control room.
Primary animation is carried
out on a Harris ADC100, using
the Video Disk Control Protocol
(VDCP) protocol. This standard
protocol allows for a powerful
integration with the other
resources, such as the MAM
platform. Automation is
bidirectional, and allows for
both manual and automatic
control. In addition, an Orad
3Dplay software suite is used for
secondary animation.
Organised workflow
WHEN FRENCH national
channel TF1 decided to
implement a new graphics
workflow, it was looking for ‘a
quantum leap forward’ with
immediate improvements in
reliability, flexibility and
user friendliness.
“For many months, we had
been experiencing a number of
difficulties regarding our
graphics,” admits Franck
Mériau, TF1’s director in charge
of broadcasting. “Our old
system had its limitations,
which prevented us from
implementing requests from the
art department. There were
certain graphical transitions that
we were unable to create. The
previous system had been
installed in 2005, and some of
the hardware was becoming
obsolete. As a result, the
upgrading of the graphics
system became an increasingly
vital step.”
The general consensus was
that the system, as it was, could
not evolve towards HD and the
multi-feed broadcasting that
future plans involved. In fact,
expansion and increased
demands meant that the system
could not adequately support the
station’s existing workflow.
Furthermore, operators had to
add graphical elements using
only time codes, and were unable
to see previews of their work.
Mériau continues, “Facing
such difficulties, TF1 issued a
TF1 uses Orad 3DPlay to generate all of its channel branding
by creating systems that allowed
more in-house involvement.
The system selected for TF1’s
demands comprises three
specific elements. First, there
are four Orad HDVG platforms
(two SD models and two HD
models) for two output feeds.
Next, there is a platform
dedicated to previews. Finally,
an SD-only platform is used
as a synchronous and
autonomous backup.
The HDVG platform runs on
Linux, provides redundancy
and has SDI inputs and outputs.
There are eight operator
“On the master control room side, the
operator can also see and preview the
contents that are lined up for broadcast.
It’s all good news”
Olivier Dusatoir, TF1
request for proposals with four
main specifications. These
were to improve the system’s
reliability; simplify its
scalability; be more responsive;
and have full control over the
system. After an in-depth tender
process, TF1 selected Orad
3DPlay to fulfil these criteria.”
According to Victorien Giret,
TF1’s project manager, the
station’s proposals set high
standards for the new solution.
“We preferred Orad because,
in its submission to us, the
company demonstrated its
willingness to meet most
accurately our needs. One of
the selling points was the
reliability and the power of the
High Definition Video
Graphics (HDVG) platforms’
rendering engine.”
Once appointed, Orad liaised
with personnel within TF1’s art
department in order to integrate
their requirements into the
graphics package being
developed. One major objective
was to remove the need for
outsourcing some of the more
complex graphic requirements,
“The new system is more
flexible, and allows the creation
of dynamic graphics for both
regular programming and
special events,” explains Avi
Sharir, CEO and president
of Orad. “3DPlay is an end-toend channel branding system
that includes all operations
from scheduling to on air. The
suite incorporates a browser
module for traffic and
scheduling, allowing an
operator to access 3DPlay’s
actions, ingest data, preview the
graphics locally and confirm
the graphics and content.
“This process saves time, as
the graphics can be previewed
and approved in one operation.
When the playlist is distributed
it will include all graphic
elements as secondary events.”
He continues, “3DPlay is
used to create realtime,
The Media Asset Management on the Orad system provides operators with
clear choices when it comes to using the various items on the database
TVBEurope 35
The Workflow
branding graphics for
sequences such as coming up
next, promo over credits,
squeeze backs, multiple tickers,
and so on. Beyond that, when
the production’s flow is
unpredictable, such as in
election programmes, game
shows, sports broadcasts,
and other special events,
3DPlay provides a really
workable solution.”
Sharir describes 3DPlay as an
action based, flexible, graphics
controller that can perform
graphics in a nonlinear way
through the triggering of the
selected action. “All the user has
to do is arrange the created
actions, put them into the
relevant groups, and then place
them in the relevant workspace
to match the needs of the
production. In some instances,
these created actions can be
dragged and dropped into a
playlist and displayed as events.”
These sequences can be
triggered manually by a
standard keyboard or via a
GPI/O, or through automation
systems and interfaces, including
Snell (Probel) Morpheus, Harris
ADC 100 and D Series, Pharos
and Pebble Beach.
After a playlist is loaded,
the automation programme
integrates with 3DPlay to
check the status of each event
and to verify that all the
relevant graphic elements —
such as text, clips and textures
— are available on the system.
If any element is missing, the
operator will be alerted,
allowing sufficient time to
remedy the situation.
Where changes in content in
the playlist affect the graphics
element, 3DPlay has the
capability to check that the
loaded information remains
relevant. “This facility is
especially useful where a
graphic has a time or date
dependency,” states Sharir. “For
instance, before a ‘coming up
next’ graphic is triggered by the
system, the programme’s data is
pulled automatically from the
station’s traffic information and
combined with graphics. In this
way, only the most recent
details and updated sequences
are shown on-air.”
Olivier Dusautoir, assistant
director in charge of
broadcasting and networks at
TF1, says the investment has
proved very satisfactory. “This
solution will last us for quite
some time, with its many
advantages in broadcasting as
well as in production. There are
no more operating errors, as was
the case in the past.
The reliability of the HDVG system was cited by TF1
as a reason for the investment in Orad equipment
“Technicians can now play clips
with the graphical overlay using
the preview mode, before they
are aired. On the master control
room side, the operator can also
see and preview the contents
that are lined up for broadcast.
It’s all good news.”
www.tf1.fr
www.orad.tv
www.harris.com
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www.evertz.com
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TVBEurope 37
The Workflow
Guest Opinion
TheCloud on the ground
Julian Wright, CEO of Blue Lucy Media, examines why cloudbased service provision has not caught on in broadcast and
television production sectors the way it has in other industries
EXPLOITATION OF cloudbased computing services in the
broadcast and video production
industries has failed to take off
in the same way that it has other
sectors such as image libraries.
With many of the ‘heavy
lifting’ video processing functions
such as format conversion being
ad-hoc and infrequent through
the production process, the
‘use it when you need it’ nature of
in-the-cloud processing would
naturally lend itself to the
business of programme making.
This, coupled with the significant
costs associated with video
processing components and
software, would suggest that the
pay-per-use economics of the
cloud should have driven growth.
However, there are actually
very few cloud-provisioned
processing platforms and some
vendor-specific offerings are
something of a ‘cloudwash’, i.e.
cloud in name and architecture
but without the economic
benefits. The principal reason
for this is largely attributable to
the internet bandwidth cost of
transporting large video files.
The bandwidth cost,
particularly for HD content, is
expensive and even a single, short
production enjoys little or no
savings when compared to buying
expensive processing systems and
storage and deploying them at a
production facility. Many
productions are sporadic/project
based and in such cases expensive
software systems can sit idle for
long periods. The chief benefits
of cloud computing in this
context — namely cost savings
and pay-per-use/pay-as-you-go
models provided by on-demand
processing — are not realised.
The economic model for
video processing in the cloud
doesn’t yet make sense. Even
extrapolating Moore’s Law from
transistor density to technology
costs — or applying Nielsen’s
La, which forecasts a doubling
in ‘to the door’ internet capacity
every two years — makes it clear
that we are some way from the
financial benefits driving a shift
to video processing in the cloud.
Notwithstanding the costs
associated with moving content
And not a cloud in sight! Some content owners struggled
with the transition from tapes to black box disk arrays …
to the cloud, the benefits
afforded by pay-per-use storage
don’t stack up either — again
due to the file size. Long-term
archive storage with the cloud
model therefore makes little
sense for large amounts of
content when compared to an
in-house storage solution.
The medium-term outlook of
the cloud for video content
owners isn’t economically clear
either because there is a further,
more emotive, barrier to the
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38 TVBEurope
The Workflow
Guest Opinion
cloud that is particularly acute
for production companies and
content owners. That barrier is
intangibility. Before its
appropriation by the IT industry,
a cloud as traditionally defined
was, after all, just vapour.
Some content owners
struggled with the transition
from tapes to black box disk
arrays that sat in a closed
technical area in the basement.
For many, the thought of
valuable archive content or
rushes being stored in a virtual
black box at a remote data
centre is an uncomfortable step
too far. And there may be
genuine, well-founded concerns
in respect of security, reliability
and the economic stability of
the service providers.
Back on earth
Does the service provider own
outright the hardware on which
the content is stored? Does the
service provider own the
building in which the hardware
is stored? What happens if the
provider goes bust?
These very real questions
should be a caution to
broadcasters and content
material available for
purchase through web portals.
Equally, collaborative
production and post
production workflows can be
transformed with, for
example, core asset
management systems
provisioned from the cloud
enabling geographically
disparate users to share, log
and edit material via a low bit
Julian Wright:
Video processing
capabilities have
to be decoupled
from proprietary
hardware
rate browse proxy. This is a
genuinely transformative
innovation with relatively low
set up and operational costs.
At a broadcast facility back
on earth, the denser, high bit
rate master material resides on
HSM-based storage and is
processed locally with job
management control between a
cloud-based management
system and ground-based video
processing services using secure,
open protocols and standards.
In order to properly see the
benefit of the cloud-based
model, which can be
described as scalable
capacity in a
burstable manner
(rapidly scaled up
and down as
throughput needs
dictate) and a
pay-per-use charge
model, the ground
deployment needs
to be designed
accordingly.
Video processing
capabilities have to be
decoupled from proprietary
hardware and moved onto
commodity IT infrastructure
Conversely to the
introduction of IT into
owners. The cloud
broadcast 15 years ago,
isn’t going to be
the operational
the business and
economic nirvana
that supply side
commercial needs of
proponents
broadcasters should
suggest.
However, the
drive technology
cloud does offer
operational and
implementation — and
commercial
not the other way
opportunities. Many
content owners are
around
beginning to generate revenue
by making syndicated archive
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to become truly service-based
software components.
Processing functionality should
also conform to serviceorientated architecture to
allow rapid increases in
capacity while leaving system
resources free for use by
other processes.
The last component is the
pay-per-use access model.
Over the summer of 2012
BLM is making a series of
announcements about metered,
pay-per-use services.
Broadcasters and content
owners will soon be able to
deploy high quality video
processing software that
conforms to the serviced-based
ethos at their facility and
only pay for the time it is in
active use.
Similar to the introduction
of IT based systems some
15-years ago, sensible
technology decisions need be
made in the context of the
operational and business
benefits to determine which
functional components are
best placed in the cloud and
what should remain firmly
anchored on the ground.
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40 TVBEurope
The Workflow
IPV tees up content
at the Golf Channel
There is a massive, unique metadata requirement for golf coverage: ever-changing
leaderboards, detailed historical information, stats on everything from driving distance
to sand saves. Dick Hobbs journeyed to the home of TV golf to understand its MAM
is still a leader in the field.
Today, though, it has added
advanced capabilities in asset
management concepts.
“Someone from IPV came in
to look at the proxy problem,
then explained that they
could help with the rest of the
project,” Browning continued.
“They spent a month and a half
going through the workflow,
then came back with a proposal
which was more or less precisely
what we wanted, and what we
went with.”
Golf Channel had an existing
database that had no capability
to deal with the media itself.
It had also grown organically
Welcome to golf’s home: Main studio at the Golf Channel in Orlando, Florida
“THIS IS a unique sport:
historical information is always
a part of it. Our need for data
is probably more paramount
than any other sport.” Don
Browning is director of Media
Asset Management at Golf
Channel, and showed me
around the system he has
developed at the broadcaster’s
Florida headquarters.
For its fans, golf is
fascinating because of the huge
number of variables. Each
competition takes place on a
completely unique canvas:
unlike the more or less
standardised pitches of
football, cricket or athletics,
every golf course is different.
They each have 18 holes, but
geography, the quality of the
grass, the weather and the
skills of the course designer
introduce critical variables. The
result is that golf produces not
just a handful of superstars but
tens, perhaps hundreds of
players all of whom are capable
of winning a big tournament.
To provide entertaining and
informative coverage for the
well-informed fans of the sport,
Golf Channel — part of NBC
but operating independently —
has to manage a huge amount of
data and media assets. If Tiger
Woods misses a fairway into the
wind on a links course, is that a
one-off or does he have a
problem? If Rory McIlroy has
an 8ft putt for a tournament,
what happened the last time he
was on this course?
With vast amounts of content
building up, Browning at Golf
Channel was faced with the task
of developing a coherent asset
management system readily
accessible by production teams.
And at first, the project did not
go well. “We had an appointed
supplier but the project was not
delivering,” he recalled. “One of
the biggest problems was with
proxies, so a colleague suggested
I talk to IPV as they are the
browse experts.”
When UK-based IPV
launched the SpectreView
Ingesting a tournament is a huge undertaking: eight to
12 hours of non-stop material each day for four days
log all the content currently on
tapes and Sony XDCAM discs,
then marry that up with the
database. IPV proposed its
Curator and process engine
technology to provide the bridge.
“As media is ingested, or created
by editing on Avid or Final Cut
Pro, IPV spies the new files,”
Browning said. “It creates new
proxies and enters information
including metadata into Curator,
which is now the search tool.
“IPV came up with the
mechanism which spied the file
then checked the existing
database and, if it was there,
married them. This sounds
slightly complicated: it is
actually vastly complicated.”
Player reaction
The genius, according to
Browning, is the scale of the
project. There are more than
153,000 tapes and discs in an
offsite store, corresponding to
around 2.5 million assets. There
are XDCam cart robots and a
Front Porch Digital Samma
tape ingest system continually
ingesting archive content: the
team is ramping up to 150 hours
a day through the Samma alone.
Alongside that is the constant
stream of new material, with
several tournaments being
covered each week. Ingesting
a tournament is a huge
undertaking: eight to 12 hours
of non-stop material, in multiple
streams for the majors, each day
for four days.
But this is golf, so it is much
more than simply giving a clip a
title and transferring it to the
asset management system. For
every clip you need to add a huge
amount of metadata if anyone is
going to find it again. So the asset
“IPV came up with a mechanism which
spied the file then checked the existing
database and, if it was there, married
them. This sounds slightly complicated: it
Don Browning
is actually vastly complicated”
browse server 15 years ago, it
was a revolution in broadcast
automation and asset
management, and the company
rather than initially planned,
so for example, there were no
naming conventions. What they
wanted to do was digitise and
is logged with the tournament,
the course, the weather, the
round, the hole, the shot, the
distance to the pin and the player
TVBEurope 41
The Workflow
The team is ramping up to 150 hours
a day through the FPD Samma alone
(plus the playing partners).
The video quality is rated, so a
researcher can quickly discount
those that do not track the flight
of the ball perfectly, for example.
Then the content of the clip
has to be added. Is the putt
made? What is the reaction of
the player and the crowd? Is
there a close-up of the player?
Is there any signage visible?
You might need to research a
shot later that is clean of
sponsors’ branding, or possibly
a sponsor might want to buy a
shot of a particular player in
front of its logo.
“The future is the logger,”
according to Browning. IPV
built a logger on a web services
interface. It uses on-screen
buttons to ensure that all the
right information is added,
using a standardised lexicon so
that later researchers will find all
the relevant material. A tool is
included to estimate the distance
to the pin from the video. The
logger is designed to be fast and
easy for operators, so the same
tool is used for logging live play
as is used for ingested content.
Logging play information
for sport using a buttonbased interface is not new.
The challenge in this
implementation is setting up the
buttons in the first place,
because of the huge number of
variables in golf. Again, IPV
offered a smart solution, using a
tool called Metadata Central,
part of its Teragator semantic
data processor.
The essence of Metadata
Central is that it harvests
information from external
sources. Applications have
included trawling through social
media to build up a realtime
picture of audience reaction to a
programme and the segments
and personalities within it.
At Golf Channel, Metadata
Central automatically
researches the data needed for a
tournament, looking at websites
for the course, the tournament,
the player rankings and money
list, the weather and other
sources. The buttons on the
logger have to be defined anew
for each day of each
tournament: this automates it.
“IPV developed for us a really
cool tool which collects just the
information we need,” said
Browning. “It populates the
logger automatically. We just
check it before it goes live.”
Rich metadata
The roadmap for Golf Channel
includes extending the IPV
Teragator capabilities to
collate further information.
It will connect not just to
the broadcaster’s own iNews
system but to other web
news services to build up a
picture of the players and the
play. This data can support
the live commentators as
well as add to the rich
metadata attached to the
archive content.
“Teragator knows what
the important parts of the
information are,” according to
Browning. “Anyone will be
able to use it as a powerful
research tool.”
The relationship between Golf
Channel and IPV has clearly
moved on from a browse vendor
rescuing an asset management
project. “IPV are not tied to
any other manufacturer and
work with everyone, which
is nice. More important,
they are all very clever people
who seem to delight in
coming up with responses to
difficult challenges.”
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42 TVBEurope
The Workflow
Euro 2012 win for Riedel
Signal distribution and TETRA radio at the
Championship. Fergal Ringrose reports
AT EURO 2012 in Poland and
Ukraine last month, the organisers
as well as several rental and
broadcasting networks used media
systems and digital trunked radio
from Riedel Communications.
To distribute signals between
the TV compound, the
commentary booth and the sound
FOH in the arenas, the organisers
used three MediorNet Compact
Pro frames in each stadium. The
fibre-based networks distributed
the program feed, the audio and
MADI signals as well as the
intercom signals via AES, saving
significant costs and effort
without cuts in regard to
flexibility or stability.
More than 3,000 digital trunked
(TETRA) radios were used in
Poland and the Ukraine. TETRA
systems were used in all eight
arenas and in the IBC in Warsaw.
View of stadium broadcast
centre, with Suddeutscher
Rundfunk trucks in foreground
All TETRA base stations were
interconnected and could be
monitored, remotely serviced and
controlled from one single point.
Filmmaster Group, an Italian
production company responsible
for the opening and closing
ceremonies, used a combination
of Performer digital partyline
For signal distribution, organisers used three
MediorNet Compact Pro frames in each stadium
and Riedel RiFaces for its wired
and wireless communications.
To realise the live sound signal
distribution in each arena,
Neumann & Müller, the Germanbased provider for event technology
used an extensive RockNet system.
More than 20 Riedel RockNet
audio input and output modules as
well as interface cards for digital
Yamaha mixing consoles were
deployed in the stadiums. Artist
CCP-1116 commentary control
panels complete the Neumann and
Müller installation. To transport
the signals Neumann & Müller
used the existing MediorNet
infrastructure.
Apart from the systems that were
installed for the Championship, a
number of broadcasting networks
in the IBC such as ARD/ZDF,
ORF and HBS used intercom and
media networks and technology
from Riedel Communications.
www.riedel.net
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44 TVBEurope
The Workflow
Ultra HD: Standards
and broadcasters align
The essential building blocks for 4K and higher resolution
video delivery to the home are being put in place,
reports Adrian Pennington
NDS demonstrated HD-to-4K video on
a giant living room screen at IBC2011
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ALTHOUGH
BROADCASTERS have barely
settled their investments in HD
production and transmission
equipment and only a few are
contemplating broadcasts at
Full HD 1080p, the next leap in
broadcasting specs is coming.
Earlier this year the Joint
Collaborative Team
on Video Coding (a body
comprised of MPEG and ITU
teams) finalised a draft for the
H.265 codec, aka High
Efficiency Video Coding or
HEVC, as the successor to
H.264 MPEG4 AVC.
The aim is to improve coding
efficiency by at least twice that
of AVC. On the one hand
this will benefit streaming
technologies, notably to boost
the quality and efficiency of
online video services. It will
also pave the way for two
UltraHDTV systems: at 4K
(3840 pixels wide by 2160 high)
and 8K (7680×4320).
“UHDTV promises to bring
about one of the greatest
changes to audiovisual
communications and
broadcasting in recent decades,”
wrote Christoph Dosch,
chairman of the Broadcasting
Study Group in ITU News.
“Technology is truly on the cusp
of transforming how people
experience audio-visual
communications.”
According to David Wood,
chair of the ITU working party
in the Broadcasting Service
Study Group and deputy
director of the EBU’s
Technology and Development
team, “greater compression
efficiency means that broadband
networks and mobiles that use
them can deliver higher quality
video before congestion
problems set in, or before
measures (like MPEG-DASH)
must be taken to stream at lower
quality because of congestion.
Essentially ‘bits are bucks’ and
the bit rate gain is what will
make HEVC attractive.”
Tests have apparently
revealed gains in excess of 50%
but Wood is keen to rein in
these expectations. “When
interpreting the performance of
a compression system, you need
to understand that some scene
compositions are harder to
compress than others,” he says.
“Programme content has a
range of ‘criticalities’. The 50%
estimate might be content of
average ‘criticality’. But, if you
just look at content which has
high criticality, the specific
saving will probably be less.”
Another way of looking
at this, he says, is to relate
TVBEurope 45
“Technology is on the cusp of transforming
how people experience AV communications”
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Jérôme Vieron (L) & Benoit Fouchard: “As we progress further, the industry
will realise the full magnitude of the production challenge” says Vieron
already thinking along such lines. PayTV
systems innovator NDS, for example,
demonstrated how HD to 4K video on a
giant living room screen could be
expanded and contracted in accord with
content and usage over its proof of
concept Surfaces platform at IBC2011.
First applications
If a plug-in can be developed for
download then the first applications of
HEVC can be used almost immediately
for carrying HD video over the internet.
Encoding specialist Ateme believes there
could be early trials and commercial
deployment in 4K using MPEG-4
compression using its EAVC4 encoder
(see TVBEurope’s July 2012 issue) that it
claims delivers 20% efficiencies over
existing MPEG-4 technologies.
There is already some 4K content
available on-demand and supported by
YouTube at a resolution of 4096 x 3072
pixels (12.6 Mpixel). The introduction
of 4K-ready TV sets from 2013 will see
4K begin to seep into the home.
“It will be interesting to see if tablets
have the processing capacity to decode
HD HEVC at conventional picture rates,”
says Wood. “Maybe not the versions in
the shops today, but soon. HEVC is
several times as sophisticated as AVC so it
will need more processing capacity, but
not by an impossible amount.”
With only a few countries to date
using DVB-T2 it is likely that those
countries yet to deploy a DVB-T2
system might use a HEVC DVB-T2
scheme. France is one such country
already with HEVC on its radar for a
DTT 2.0 launch in 2015/16.
“Provided there is enough volume
there to make the set top box affordable
then HEVC would surely allow more
HDTV broadcasting,” notes Wood.
“HDTV bit rates will probably be down
to 4-5Mbps with HEVC (incidentally
similar bit rates at which SDTV began).”
Using HEVC for satellite broadcasting
outside of NHK’s system, which has a
2020 target for domestic TX, will be
limited to cases where it is practical to
ask viewers to change their set top boxes
or receivers.
3G - Full HD
2 km SMPTE 311M cable /ARIB BTA S-1005B
actual bit rates to the proportion of
content that you want delivered
without impairment.
“We won’t know the ‘real’ savings of
HEVC until subjective evaluations are
made with a full hardware decoder and
test material with a representative range
of criticalities,” he says. “More than
that, over time manufactured
equipment performance improves
within the same system spec so figures
become just a snapshot in time.”
The percentage gains compared to
AVC for compressing video to mobiles
will be greater in practice than those for
UHDTV, “because we are not so nitpicky about impairments with video for
mobiles,” observes Wood. “In that case
we are working with average quality and
in the UHDTV case we are less tolerant
to any impairment at all because perfect
quality is the name of the game.”
The draft parameters for a UHDTV
signal format accommodates 8 Mpixel
images at 4K and roughly 32 Mpixel
images for an 8K system. The quality
steps (HD-4K, 4K-8K) are of about
the same order as the quality step
from SD to HD.
“However the colour gamut for both
UHDTV systems is larger than for
HDTV, and there are two options for
creating YUV signals from RGB
signals,” explains Wood. “One is the
way we use today for HDTV, called
‘non constant luminance coding’,
and the other, which will have benefits
in some circumstances such as
compression, is ‘constant luminance
coding’. We’ve done every which way
we can to move the quality forward.”
The initial version of the HEVC
standard, scheduled to be completed in
January 2013, includes a 16x9 aspect
ratio, progressive only and for frame rates
up to 120Hz. It will be 8 bits/sample,
4:2:0, single layer only with an extension
planned for January 2014 which will
include 10 bits/sample, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4.
The support for a higher frame rate
option may be necessary for accurate
portrayal of motion at extreme
resolutions on large wall sized displays.
Pay-TV operators and vendors are
1080P
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LEMO SA
Switzerland
Tel: +41 21 695 16 00
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46 TVBEurope
The Workflow
“I am not sure it will be easy
with satellite broadcasting to
change the STB to HEVC, unless
the change also brings some
significant picture quality such as
UHDTV, which persuades the
viewer that it is necessary,”
suggests Wood.
The second iteration of HEVC
(January 2014) will also include 3D
tools equivalent to MVC (which is
written into the DVB Service
Compatible 3DTV Phase 2a
system). In the fullness of time, an
‘object wave recording’ system will
be developed that will provide, what
Wood describes as, “a superb three
dimensional image, free of the need
for glasses, and which will avoid the
‘vergence/ accommodation’ conflict
of today’s 3D systems.”
There are several collaborative
projects taking steps toward this
though the ITU guesses estimates
20-30 years to make this kind
of technology practical. “You
have to develop a sensor that
records the amplitude, phase, and
wavelength of an area of light, and
then work out some way to deliver
the massive amount of data that
comes out of that,” says Wood.
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“It is obvious that compared to current HDTV 1080-i you
are much more likely to create a ‘wow!’ effect by increasing
the frame rate than by an increase in resolution”
France explores UltraHDTV
A THREE-YEAR multi-million
Euro research programme
under the aegis of French
consortium 4EVER aims to
demonstrate a first complete
Ultra HD production and
transmission chain by mid2013, based on HEVC.
Members include Ateme,
Orange Labs, GlobeCast,
TeamCast, Technicolor and
Doremi, as well as the Télécom
ParisTech and INSA-IETR
University labs. On the
production side, the lead
partner will be France
Télévisions which is already
experimenting with 4K
captured content.
“4EVER is looking at
applying HEVC to a broad
range of use cases including
broadcast contribution
where bandwidth is really
constrained,” explains Benoit
Fouchard, chief strategy officer,
Ateme. The French presidential
election featured a lot of
coverage on the streets of Paris
which was of dreadful quality.
One obvious candidate for
tests, according to Fouchard, is
the 2013 French Open at Roland
Garros, coverage which Orange
and France Télévisions have
jointly produced in recent years.
They previously collaborated on
experiments including the first
trials of HD over DSL in 2006
from the venue.
Before then there will be a
series of other tests including ‘at
a key sporting event in France’.
Fouchard is not at liberty to say
which, so I will leave you to
guess. At any high profile event
where France Télévisions is
present you can expect to find a
team of 4EVER researchers
wielding 4K cameras. Orange is
even targeting the end of 2012
for end to end 4K test over its
IP network.
Challenges ahead include
overcoming a lack of standards
for transport of 4K uncompressed
video around a production
environment and the lack of a
standard means of getting 4K
onto a TV set itself.
“The 4K consumer sets
demoed at CES2012 all used
different ways of getting 4K
to the TV, by for example,
aggregating several HDMI
ports,” explains Jérôme Vieron,
in charge of advanced research
at ATEME and the 4EVER
project’s instigator. “There are
3-4 different workarounds while
a standard is pending. So in the
short term one needs to cool
down expectations. Without a
standard uncompressed 4K
format that is accepted in a
production environment and a
common way of getting 4K
video from STB to TV set,
development will be impeded.
But it will be overcome.”
He adds: “As we progress
further, the industry will realise
the full magnitude of the
production challenge. Just now
the level of noise we get from 4K
content and the amount of light
that needs to be cast on a scene
makes capture very restrictive.”
Vieron says 4EVER has
tested several 4K cameras on
the market but considers none
capable of delivering a true
4K signal that preserves the
full bit depth, latitude and
colour from the lens. “We
need an 8-fold increase in the
performance of the sensor
cells to be able to produce 4K
content,” he says.
“4EVER is focussed on
assessing the perceived benefit
of the video experience,” says
Fouchard. “We are not
making a final statement
about whether this will be
achieved by high frame rate or
by freeing up bandwidth but if
you take the average screen
size in homes as 50-inch (and
current high end TVs can
interpolate that at 120Hz) it is
obvious that compared to
current HDTV 1080-i you are
much more likely to create a
‘wow!’ effect by increasing the
frame rate than by an increase
in resolution. The industry
needs to make sure that the
end user experience is there.”
— Adrian Pennington
WHATS’On allows us to launch
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Conference 6-11 September : Exhibition 7-11 September
IBC2012
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IBC is at the cutting-edge of new technology in the
rapidly evolving electronic media industry. It couples a
comprehensive exhibition covering all facets of today’s
industry with a highly respected peer reviewed conference
that helps shape the way the industry will develop in the
future.
Take advantage of a variety of extra special features including:
• Future Zone
showcasing the latest developments
in broadcast technology in the Park
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• IBC Connected World
including demonstration area
in Hall 14
• IBC Big Screen
providing the perfect platform
for manufacturer demonstrations
and the
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• IBC Production Village
presenting the latest camera
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• houses a presentation theatre for
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also the home to IBC TV News
• IBC Awards Ceremony
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TVBEurope 49
IBC
SHOW 2012
GETTING READY FOR AMSTERDAM
IBC (INTERNATIONAL
Broadcasting Convention)
running 6-11 September 2012 is
the premier annual conference
and exhibition for professionals
engaged in the creation,
management and delivery of
electronic media and
entertainment worldwide.
Attracting 50,000+ attendees
from more than 160 countries,
the IBC conference and
exhibition allows visitors to
learn about the developments
which are shaping the industry,
interact with the latest
technology, experience world
first demonstrations and do
business in a professional and
supportive environment.
Starting the day before
the exhibition is the six-day
four stream IBC conference
(6-11 September) guided by
Bridge Technologies
industry experts. This year hear
from keynote speakers such as
Mike Darcey, COO, BSkyB; Roger
Mosey, head of Olympics, BBC
London 2012; Per Borgklint, vice
president & head of Business Unit,
Ericsson; Mark Hollinger, CEO &
president, Discovery Networks
and David Eun, executive vice
president Global Media & CEO
Advisor, Samsung Electronics.
Over 1,300 exhibitors
covering 250 product categories
fill the 14 exhibition halls of the
RAI Amsterdam. The newest
hall this year (hall 14) is home to
The IBC Connected World.
Again TVBEurope will have
its ear to the ground at IBC
reporting on the new product
releases and latest contract deals
being signed on the showfloor.
The IBC Daily team of writers
has been busy collecting the
news ahead of the show in our
IBC product preview.
Telestream
Probe features new Episode 6.3 software
Bulk OTT Engine
gains x264 support
By Ian McMurray
By Carolyn Giardina
“2012 IS the year that OTT is
becoming a reality for the wider
industry,” according to Simen
K Frostad, chairman, Bridge
Technologies, “ and our new
product launches reflect the
urgent need operators have for
comprehensive, highly-evolved
OTT monitoring tools ready
for deployment across the
entire delivery chain. We’re also
showing our ground-breaking
solution for DVB-T2, the most
complete of its kind for this
rapidly expanding sector.”
Among Bridge’s new products
is the new VB330, which the
company describes as the
industry’s most powerful media
monitoring probe. Now
featuring a new Bulk OTT
Engine, the VB330 includes
advanced OTT monitoring
capabilities for high-traffic
applications. The VB330’s 10GB
architecture can deliver a massive
60GB monitoring capability in a
1RU chassis, and the new Bulk
OTT Engine can be enabled on
any existing VB330 to provide
sophisticated monitoring of large
volumes of OTT streams.
The OTT engine tests
manifest files, profiles, chunk
“OTT is becoming a reality for
the wider industry,”says Frostad
download speed and many
more parameters, to deliver,
according to Bridge,
comprehensive data on OTT
service quality. The engine
supports Smoothstream, HLS
and HDS, and is M-DASHready. Designed for extremely
high-density applications at
points of maximum data
throughput in today’s 10GB
core networks, the VB330 with
OTT option is said to offer
telcos, network operators and
digital media organisations a
monitoring solution with the
potential for scaling to match
almost any level of throughput.
1.A30
THE LATEST version 6.3 of
Telestream’s Episode video
encoding software has gained
native x264 codec support.
Version 6.3, which became
available in late June, is also
aimed at making it easier for
filmmakers to access Episode by
providing direct integration with
Autodesk editing and finishing
software, Smoke and Flame.
“With this release, Episode
continues to add value in post
production environments with its
In the swim:
Telestream’s Episode UI
high-quality format support and
ability to easily create file-based
deliverables, as well as digital
masters,” said Barbara DeHart,
VP of marketing at Telestream.
Episode’s integration with
Smoke and Flame enables
browsing, monitoring and
transcoding directly from the
Autodesk software. It also
allows editors and digital
artists to offload encoding
tasks to other systems or to
centralise functions on an
encoding cluster.
Episode’s design allows users
to join Mac and PC computers
together to share encoding work.
7.D16
Rhode & Schwarz DVS
Strawberry Fields for SpycerBox
By Carolyn Giardina
PROJECT SHARING and
management software Strawberry
from FlavourSys is now available
as an option for DVS’ SpycerBox
and DVS-SAN.
Its main functions include
searching for and exchanging
projects and data as well as
enabling collaborative editing
using systems such as Avid
Media Composer, Apple Final
Cut and Adobe Premiere.
“With the newly integrated
software in our DVS-SAN and
SpycerBox systems, our customers
benefit from increased efficiency in
their workflows,” said Henner
Steinwede, DVS product manager.
FlavourSys Product Manager
Marco Stahl added: “We
developed Strawberry from the
user’s perspective as we wanted to
Strawberry container: DVS’ SpycerBox
organise complex post production
workflows in a simpler and more
efficient way.”
7.E25
50 TVBEurope
IBC2012 Sneak Preview
Ross Video
Deltacast
Free cross-platform
monitoring application
Position perfect: The Furio family of Robotic Camera Systems
Robotics and augmented reality
By Monica Heck
ROSS VIDEO’S recent
venture into robotics, which
includes the April acquisition
of robotic camera systems
company Cambotics, has led
to a new product line which is
on display at IBC2012. The
Ross Robotics division
features two lines of robotic
camera systems: the Furio
track based Robotic Camera
Systems and the CamBot
Roaming Pedestal Series.
The Furio Robotic Camera
Systems uses a unique absolute
positioning system and rail
based tracking along with lift
and PTZ head. The product
line is aimed at automated
studios as well as virtual set
and augmented reality
applications. The Furio system
is said to enable producers and
directors to deliver original and
more captivating content in a
reliable, cost-effective and riskfree manner.
The CamBot Series is
described as robust, durable and
precise studio camera
automation technology that
can accept industry-leading
payloads of up to 200 pounds
on the 700 Series pedestals.
Ross is showcasing a fully
integrated virtual set and
augmented reality solution
using its entire portfolio of
technology. The demonstration
involves the production of a
live newscast every half hour,
which aims to show how a
sophisticated virtual production
can be delivered with a single
operator and talent. It
combines Ross’ Furio Robotic
Camera System with dynamic,
tracked on-air moves;
XPression 3D Graphics
Platform generating virtual set,
production graphics and a live
ticker with social media
integration via Ross Inception;
and Vision production switcher
keying and mixing video, all
automated with the OverDrive
Automated Production System.
9.C10
dMOSAIC: free monitoring of video
and audio on Deltacast I/O cards
By Monica Heck
A NEW free cross-platform
monitoring application is now
available from Deltacast for data
captured through its i/o cards. The
tool, called dMOSAIC, allows
users to simultaneously preview
multiple video and audio feeds in
an on-screen mosaic format.
The application features a series
of standard mosaic layout presets
and can also be customised by
users to suit individual presentation
needs. It automatically detects
incoming video resolution and
adapts to it.
It also features audio preview
through on-screen audio meters,
as well as OSD text to identify the
source channels and to display
incoming timecode.
“This is an extremely useful tool,
especially for the newly introduced
8-channel HD SDI input video
card,” said Christian Dutilleux,
CEO of Deltacast.
10.D10
Trilogy
Enhancing Gemini
and Watchdog
By Monica Heck
TRILOGY COMMUNICATIONS has launched a new
development to the portable IP
Twinset: Trilogy’s
flagship IP intercom system, Gemini
capability of both Gemini and its
matrix based intercom systems at
this year’s IBC.
The company explained that
these developments are a
response to user feedback and
that this IBC debut would
provide advances in user
flexibility and product utilisation.
Expanding on its IP solutions,
Trilogy is also showcasing a
range of other enhancements to
its flagship IP intercom system
Gemini. Gemini is aimed at both
the broadcast and professional
media markets and combines the
benefits of a scalable distributed
matrix with integrated IP
connectivity for high quality
audio performance and global
IP access.
At the show, the company is
also showcasing the new features
and functionality of Watchdog,
its configurable signal detection
and changeover unit. Watchdog
extends the capability of
Trilogy’s Mentor XL SPG/TSG
master reference generator.
10.A29
TVBEurope 51
Sony
Believing beyond HD
DOMINATING HALL 12 once
again and delivering its ‘Believe
Beyond HD’ vision, Sony
hopes to demonstrate how
its products are enabling
European customers to take the
lead in the content creation and
distribution markets. From
developing a complete 4K
workflow including the F65 and
SR Master recording options to
its continued innovation in
technologies such as the
Optical Disc Archive system or
stereo 3D, Sony says it will
show how it is using its
“immense technological power
to serve the individual needs of
its customers.”
“IBC2012 is an important
opportunity to meet many of our
customers and show them how
our innovative solutions can help
meet their business needs,” said
Olivier Bovis, head of AV Media,
Sony Europe. “By working in
close collaboration with partners
and customers and listening to
their feedback, we are uniquely
placed to develop entirely new
technology platforms where
necessary for the industry.”
Sony will also be promoting its
commitment to becoming a
leading technology provider to the
sports industry. In the last month
Olivier Bovis: “Enhancing the
entertainment experience for sports fans”
alone, Sony has led successful 3D
productions for iconic sporting
events including the Wimbledon
Tennis Championships (with the
BBC) and the Goodwood Festival
of Speed (for Sky).
In addition, Hawk-Eye, which
Sony acquired last year, was
recently one of the systems
qualified by FIFA to license its
goal-line technology to football
associations across the world.
“At IBC, Sony will outline its
commitment to enhancing the
entertainment experience for
sports fans by implementing
technology that will move the
industry as a whole,” said Bovis.
12.A10
Fujinon
New OB work
zoom lenses
By David Fox
FUJIFILM EUROPE’S
Optical Devices
Division will have
several new lenses at
IBC, including a 77x
zoom for outside
broadcast work, two
new PL-mount zooms for
digital cinema work, and
two 19x lenses.
The XA77x9.5BESM is a
HD telephoto lens designed for
sports coverage. Its features
include: OS Tech image
stabilisation; an advanced
diagnostic Focused Intelligent
Network Diagnosis system for
preventative maintenance and
troubleshooting; dustproof
and anti-fogging technology;
16-bit optical encoding output
for accuracy in virtual
environments; an advanced back
focus system that allows very
close macro shots; and ‘an
attractive price point’.
The lightweight
ZK4.7x19SAM is latest in
Fujinon’s PL Premier PL-mount
zoom range. The 19-90mm lens
includes: a detachable servo
drive unit, so it can work as a
standard PL-mount lens as well
as an ENG-Style lens; flange
Integrated Microwave Technologies
Cine or ENG style: The versatile
ZK4.7x19SAM lightweight 19-90mm
PL-mount zoom
focal distance adjustment;
macro; Lens Data System and /i
metadata compatibility. Fujinon
will also show a prototype of a
new ZK3.5x85SAM lightweight
telephoto PL-mount zoom.
It is also showing two models
of its new 19x zoom: The
XA19x7.4BESM small box style
lens and HA19x7.4BE barrel
style lens, which are claimed to
be the first lenses in such a
compact size to feature three
floating zoom groups and
Aspherics, which combine to
produce unsurpassed optical
performance. They also feature
the latest EBC coating
technology to give richer colours
and improved blue response
and transmittance.
11.C20
2-GHz microLite HD
transmitter revealed
By Ian McMurray
THE RF Central 2-GHz
microLite HD transmitter
from Integrated Microwave
Technologies receives its
official introduction to the
European market at IBC.
The camera-mountable
transmitter features SD/HD
encoding capabilities in a
miniature transmit solution
package and has, says the
company, been specially
designed to address both
domestic and international
broadcasting band
requirements within a single
unit. It now includes coverage
from 1.9 to 2.5GHz and
delivers up to 200mW from a
package of less than 12 cubic
inches. Developed for a new
generation of HD (SDI)
capable compact cameras, the
transmitter supports video and
embedded audio transmission.
The unit’s size makes it,
claims the company, ideal for
broadcast ENG operations.
The 2-GHz microLite HD
may be camera mounted via
a hot shoe or paired with
Litepanels’ camera-mounted
lighting solutions. It features
H.264 SD and HD encoding
capabilities and operates in the
standard 2k DVB-T COFDM
mode. The H.264 video
encoder supports the main
profile of the H.264 standard,
providing a 30% bit-rate
reduction or video quality
improvement — compared to
encoders that only support the
H.264 baseline profile, notes
the company.
1.D40
NEWS IN BRIEF
Autocue standalone live
production system
The new Autocue Production Suite is
a standalone live production system
that combines several components in
a single cost-effective system. It
includes a vision and audio mixer, a
playback device, still store, caption
generator, picture-in-picture
processor, chromakey, logo/bug/ticker
inserter, output recorder and a
multiviewer. Based on Autocue’s
video server range, the Production
Suite provides designated video
inputs for live sources, designated
audio inputs, internal players,
processing to provide various graphic,
effect, transition, mixing and
switching operations and designated
outputs to provide synchronised
audio and video for preview and
programme feeds. Autocue is also
releasing solid-state versions of its
video server range. Designed for OB
trucks and mobile applications where
space is at a premium, the two- and
four-port SSD servers run on single
power supply units and include
800GB and 2TB of unprotected
storage, respectively. In addition, the
company has launched a range of
accessories to complement its
Master Series teleprompter range,
including: a 22-inch talent feedback
monitor with native HD-SDI and a
new mounting system.
11.F34
Zacuto PlaZma puts soft
light ahead of the curve
Unlike an LED light, the new Zacuto
PlaZma light is a super soft light
source much like a Chimera soft box,
but surprisingly bright when needed.
Zacuto has more than 30 patents on
Micro Plasma technology and the
lightweight, ultra-thin PlaZma light
puts out 2000 lumens compared to
mainstream 1x1 LED panels at 12001500 lumens or side lit reflected
LEDs that put out under 800
lumens.The $1,350 light has a
characteristic incandescent curve,
unlike LEDs that usually have a nasty
green spike and don’t mix well with
practical or tungsten lights. Like
traditional soft lights, the PlaZma offers
a wide light pattern, compared to the
spotty nature of an LED. However,
unlike traditional soft lights, PlaZma
has a huge throw. The daylightbalanced curve is 5800K and should
mix well with HMIs, while the soft
nature of the light enables actors to
look directly into it (from 12.5cm)
without squinting. It will also be
available in Tungsten, and Zacuto is
working on adding other sizes and
accessories such as barn doors and
expandable snoot. The lights are
powered by 110-240v 50/60Hz AC or
11-18v DC with an Anton/Bauer-type
battery or a Sony V-Lock.
11.E84
52 TVBEurope
Tedial
Tools trio to manage workflow
By Michael Burns
Customer feedback on simplifying working has led to a redesign of the Tarsys GUI
THREE TEDIAL software
products aimed at aiding
workflow management on filebased platforms are making
their European debut at IBC.
Following in-depth feedback
from customers Tedial has
redesigned the interface to its
Tarsys MAM solution. The
company said this would further
enhance operator experience
and provide additional features
for cataloguing, editing and
exporting media to third-party
systems. The new GUI has
been specifically designed to
simplify collaborative working
between professionals in
any media enterprise, the
company claimed.
Also on show is the Ficus
Web Client, which enables the
implementation, monitoring
and execution of production
workflows in a full web-based
environment. The Web Client
features proxy editing followed
by the automatic creation of a
high-resolution version. It thus
makes possible tasks such as
segmentation of media as well
as compliance editing. The
company also claimed that the
new Ficus Web Client would
further simplify business
procedures and workflows.
Finally, Tedial is also
demonstrating its new enhanced
Capture (ingest) application
on the stand. The ingest
management tool provides full
control of a wide range of
VTRs and other devices.
Capture supports industry
standard protocols for routers
and includes scheduling features
and multiple device control for
the likes of MOG mxfSpeedrail,
Omneon and K2 servers. It also
features a source scheduler
application, which enables
operators to schedule, access
and plan work around any
current or future ingest feed.
8.B41
Studer
Console-maker’s Compact ‘surprise’
By David Davies
THE VISTA 1 Compact is
described as a ‘true Studer
Vista console’ in a compact and
low-cost configuration that will
‘surprise’ many engineers. The
new desk comes complete as a
single chassis, with control
surface, I/O connections and
DSP all integral, thereby
reducing weight and footprint.
According to Studer, the
new desk is suited to both fixed
and portable systems, such as
newsrooms and game shows,
while its compact size lends
itself to OB and ENG vans. It
is also compatible with Studer’s
new Compact Remote Bay,
which offers remote operation
of the console and can be used
Form and function: the fully featured,
single chassis Studer Vista 1 Compact
to extend the main control
surface for a second operator
on large shows.
The Vista 1 is based largely
on the Vista 5, so existing Vista
users will be familiar with all
the functionality of the
Vistonics user interface and
Studer Vista control surface, as
well as features such as true
broadcast monitoring,
talkback, red light control,
GPIO, N-x (Mix Minus)
busses, snapshot automation
and DAW control.
With an integral DSP engine
of 96 channels, the Vista 1 can
handle mono, stereo and 5.1
inputs, and is provided with 32
mic/line inputs, 16 line outputs
and eight stereo AES inputs
and outputs on rear panel
connections. Both 32-fader and
22-fader models are available.
I/O can be expanded using
the standard Studer D21m card
slot on the rear, to allow
MADI, AES, AoIP, ADAT,
TDIF, CobraNet, Dolby
E/Digital, SDI connections,
etc. A MADI link can connect
to any of the Studer Stagebox
range for XLR connectivity as
well as other formats.
New to the Vista family on the
Vista 1 is an integral jingle player,
played from audio files on a USB
jingle stick (such as station ID or
background FX), and triggered
by a series of eight dedicated
keys in the master section.
The Studer Vista 1 also
features a redundant PSU,
while RELINK integration
with other Studer Vista and
OnAir consoles means the
Vista 1 can share signals across
an entire console network.
8.D60
Signiant
Cloud storage for media files
By Anne Morris
SIGNIANT IS showcasing a
new product that it says will
provide media operations and
creative professionals, as well as
engineering and IT, with a
powerful and simple way to
move large media files anywhere.
Signiant Media Shuttle is a
public cloud-based file-sharing
service that comes without file
size limits or security risks
associated with storing highvalue assets in the cloud.
Available in two subscriptionbased packages, Media Shuttle
standard edition is instantly
downloadable to any server,
while Media Shuttle enterprise
edition provides a scalable file
transfer solution for enterprise
teams, including delegated
administration, bandwidth and
storage management and
tracking capabilities.
Signiant is also unveiling new
capabilities that make use of
media file format and media
service interface standards to
promote interoperability when
working with file-based media.
Signiant is demonstrating new
asset compliance capabilities for
validation of files-based media
using standards published by
Lit up with anticipation: Launching the Shuttle
SMPTE, AMWA, the EBU and
the UK’s Digital Production
Partnership (DPP) to catch file
format errors as early as possible
when working with file-based media.
14.621
TVBEurope 53
Content delivery ‘revolutionised’
The company is also
unveiling a ‘revolutionary’ new
technology that leverages
home networks to dramatically
reduce the number of pieces
of equipment deployed in the
operators’ network. As a
result, says Broadpeak, content
operators can more efficiently
deliver video services to
end users.
4.B72
The BkM100 features an
advanced caching mechanism
Broadpeak
By Ian McMurray
NEW TECHNOLOGIES, which
the company says are designed to
revolutionise content delivery
networks (CDN) as well as the
way content providers interact
with CDN service providers, are
being unveiled by Broadpeak.
The company is introducing
what it describes as sophisticated
new features for its BkM100
CDN management and BkA100
video delivery analytics
technologies, which it says
strengthen Broadpeak’s
operatorCDN and +screensCDN
solutions in delivering a superior
quality of service.
The first new solution to be
launched is designed to help
content providers allocate the
ideal CDN for their content
according to various criteria
such as content format, end-user
location, content provider, or
time of day.
The enhanced BkM100
includes what Broadpeak
describes as an advanced
caching mechanism that
optimises storage at edge levels,
combining the best of both the
IPTV and OTT worlds. In
addition, the BkM100 features a
new system for managing
content based on its importance.
Using the new content priority
management tool, users can
prioritise pay and free content in
order to distribute CDN video
services more efficiently.
Broadpeak is also demonstrating
its BkA100 video delivery
analytics solution, which the
company claims improves an
operator’s system management
and quality of service
dramatically by providing
meaningful data to the entire
organisation in a variety of
formats. New features include a
logged response time from
various modules in the network
(eg front office, cable resource
manager and so on), an increased
number of dashboards including
map views, and personalised user
profiles. Harnessing the new user
profile functionality, a content
provider can access customised
statistics, maximising video
delivery analytics for operator
CDN applications.
Global Leaders in
Broadcast Audio
Technology
More than 2000
essential broadcast
audio products
accessible in print
and on-line
With 36 years of experience in broadcast sound, HHB Communications is firmly established as the
audio technology supplier of choice for broadcasters and systems integrators worldwide. Our London
headquarters is home to a knowledgable sales team with real-world broadcast experience, and
Europe’s largest independent pro audio technical facility, equipping HHB to offer valuable advice and
levels of service and product support that other suppliers simply cannot match.
HHB: T: +44 (0)20 8962 5000 E: [email protected] www.hhb.co.uk
54 TVBEurope
Softel
Swiftly does it
with Softel range
By Ian McMurray
FEATURING ITS widely
deployed Swift range of subtitling
and closed captioning solutions as
well as its versatile interactive TV
platform, MediaSphere, is Softel.
The Swift range of products is,
says Softel, optimised for nextgeneration file-based workflows
and supports subtitling and closed
captioning for multi-platform
delivery, across multi-language
feeds and in a complete variety of
file formats. Swift Create is claimed
to be the market leading subtitle
and closed caption tool which, as
well as efficiently creating files, can
also be used to convert from one
format to another, making
repurposing straightforward.
Softel MediaSphere is a suite of
solutions that supports an array
Operators can
drive second
screen experiences
of interactive TV technologies
including for connected TV, the
second screen and for set-top box
based interactivity. MediaSphere
Bridge is a recently announced
second screen platform that lets
broadcasters and operators drive
second screen experiences and
retain viewers’ attention while
providing them dynamic two-way
interactions between their TV and
tablet or smartphone.
Automatic Subtitle and Closed
Caption Timing is provided by
Swift ReSync, which is said to
combine the most powerful
subtitling and closed captioning
workstation with the most state-ofthe-art audio analysis logic from
partner Nexidia. Swift ReSync
TiGo automatically assigns time
codes to reduce subtitle and closed
caption costs, allowing the operator
to focus on text manipulation.
Swift ReSync Enterprise is a clientserver based solution that
automates the timing of subtitles
and closed captions, allowing for
batch operations. Both radically
decrease the time taken to
repurpose and re-sync subtitled
and closed captioned content.
1.A27
Portability key for live TV
LiveU: Live broadcasting gets resiliency boost
LIVEU WILL be presenting its
expanded range of live video uplink
solutions for global broadcasters,
news agencies and online media,
writes Anne Morris.
Highlights at the show include
a demo by LiveU and Panasonic
of their next-generation,
integrated live camera solution,
using the LU40i video uplink
device and the new Panasonic
AJ-HPX600 P2 camcorder.
LiveU adds that the complete
camcorder transmission system
provides a high-quality video feed
with simple remote operation.
The company is also presenting its
new LU70 mobile uplink unit with its
second-generation internal and new
external antenna arrays. Boosted by
its remotely located antennas, the
LU70 backpack supports up to 14
cellular links simultaneously, offering
extra-strong resiliency in built-up,
crowded areas and on-the-move.
Finally, LiveU is unveiling the latest
developments of its compact,
lightweight HD/SD video uplink
solution. Since its launch at IBC2011, the
LU40i has transmitted live video from
some of the highest-profile events.
14.365
TVBEurope 55
Agama
Red Bee Media
Norwegian operator will
improve service quality
By Ian McMurray
CANAL DIGITAL Kabel TV,
Norway’s largest distributor of
TV and broadband within the
cable segment, is to deploy
a full-scale Agama DTV
Monitoring Solution for end-toend quality assurance of its
nationwide cable TV service.
With this deployment, covering
the distribution network all the
way down to each set-top box,
Canal Digital expects to
systematically improve service
quality, raise operational
efficiency, and further increase
customer satisfaction.
Canal Digital Kabel TV,
backed by Telenor, delivers
future-oriented TV and
broadband services to around
500,000 Norwegian homes,
Agama will provide ‘full insight’
for Canal Digital Kabel
utilising high-capacity and
future proof Hybrid-Fiber-Coax
(HFC) and Fiber-To-the-Home
(FTTH) networks.
The selected realtime quality
monitoring solution will provide
Canal Digital with full insight into
the distributed DVB-C service
quality across its deployment, with
Agama Analyzers throughout the
hybrid IP/cable network and
with the Agama Embedded
Monitoring Solution integrated
with the ADB hybrid STBs. By
processing, correlating and
presenting all relevant QoE and
QoS information, together with
service usage and system health,
aggregated from all monitoring
locations, the central Agama
Enterprise Server EX is claimed to
give instantaneous end-to-end
overviews of the delivered video
service quality and show the extent
of any problem and its position.
Canal Digital was voted as
having the best customer service
in Norwegian TV distribution
for 2011.
4.D55
BSkyB subtitling
deal announced
By Ian McMurray
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
company Red Bee Media has
announced a five-year deal
with BSkyB to provide
subtitling services in the UK.
Red Bee Media says that it is
exclusively providing all live
subtitling for six Sky channels
— Sky News, Sky Sports News
and Sky Sports 1-4 — and prerecorded subtitling for a suite of
Sky services including Sky 1,
Sky Atlantic and Sky Living.
“This deal with BSkyB is a
significant win for Red Bee
Media,” said David Padmore,
director, access and editorial,
Red Bee Media (pictured).
“We believe it’s essential to
make TV accessible to
everyone, and we’re looking
forward to working with
BSkyB to deliver our industryleading subtitling services to
“Significant win,” says Padmore
the 10 million plus Sky
subscribers across the UK.”
Red Bee Media says that its
Access Services group is the
largest in Europe and has been
providing subtitling services for
over 25 years. According to the
company, it delivers more than
100,000 hours of subtitling per
annum for broadcasters in the
UK, France, Germany, Spain
and Australia, as well as audio
description and signing services.
1.B26
56 TVBEurope
Fischer Connectors
NEWS IN BRIEF
Gearhouse chooses Hitachi cameras
Gearhouse Broadcast has awarded a
multi-million pound contract to Hitachi
Kokusai Electric Europe for 22 SK-HD 1200
high-end multiformat 1080p/3G production
cameras and three SK-HD 1500 HD
Supermotion system cameras.
Gearhouse Broadcast explained that the
new Hitachi cameras provide a higher
performance and more affordable alternative
to their existing Sony camera fleet.
Launched last year, Hitachi’s SK-HD1200
represents a high-performance portable
16-bit A/D HDTV studio and EFP camera
with three 2.3 million pixel 1080p IT-CCDs
(which are 1080i switchable).
The SK-HD1200 camera is described as
delivering sharper and cleaner HD images
thanks to its 14bit A/D converters and
Hitachi’s implementation of the latest digital
processing technology.
John Newton, chief executive officer at
Gearhouse Broadcast, commented that they
wanted to offer their rental clients a wider
choice: “We put the Hitachi cameras through all
their paces and what we have discovered is a
rugged and reliable product that offers real
choice to our studio, OB and rental customers.”
10.D46
MiniMax ultra high-density
push-pull interconnect
By David Fox
THE NEW Fischer MiniMax from
Fischer Connectors is a first-of-its kind
rugged push-pull interconnect for today’s
smaller devices. It is an all-in-one system
with a patents-pending 24 mixed
contacts — 20 for signals (0.5A) and four
for power (5A) — and is designed for the
harshest environments. It has passed
extreme temperature tests and survived
1000 hours of salt-water spray.
According to Fischer Connectors’ VP
Sales & Marketing, Pierre Marechal, the
new connector will help customers fit
more connections into a smaller space.
“The connector itself is about the width
of a push-pin, so it is a great engineering
achievement to design it so that the
power and signal don’t interfere with one
Next Generation News
and Studio Automation
is
Fischer MiniMax combines signal and
power for demanding environments
another. We’re expecting to see a lot of
use in hazardous environments, on
portable equipment like communications
devices, and even in medical and harsh
industrial applications.”
Product Manager David Magni added
that Fischer Connectors set out to cut
cost and weight. “Our customers have
been demanding applications in harsh
environments, but they are just like
everyone else when it comes to finding
the right balance of performance vs.
cost. The MiniMax is more cost-effective
not only because you have a physically
smaller connector, but the 24-contact
configuration can mean fewer connectors
are used. On top of that, there are fewer
cables needed, so the entire device
becomes more cost-effective and stays
reliable. The solution is also 100%
pre-cabled which is a great time saving.”
The MiniMax is available in three
latching systems: push-pull, breakaway
and screw lock. Other features include:
sealed to 120m, both mated and
unmated; unbreakable keying system that
withstands more than 4Nm of torque;
small profile (less than 7mm inside the
box); and assemblies able to withstand
40kg of pull (break-away force).
11.E31
Beijing OSEE Digital Technology
Low end monitor debuts
By Monica Heck
I
I
I
I
Single Operator Control
Compatible with all Studio
Equipment
Affordable and scalable
from small to large facilities
Automates your Social Media
See us at
IBC 2012 –
Hall 3.B67
www.aveco.com
OSEE WILL be showcasing a full range
of LCD monitors at IBC with a
particular highlight being the low-end
monitor from the LMW series that is
making its debut at the show. The
company explained that though
LMW-200 and LMW-230 monitors are
targeted to fit low end markets, there is
no compromise made in terms of
features and functionality.
OSEE also said that both models are
priced competitively and include
features found in OSEE’s other LCD
monitor series, including waveform and
vector scope display, dynamic UMD
and Tally support.
The LMW-200 and the LMW-230 ship
with two SDI inputs and loop out. In
addition, they also support one
Cinebags
Bet on a High Roller
By David Fox
THE NEW CB40 High Roller is CineBags’
flagship camera bag, and its first to include
a retractable telescope arm plus wheels to
improve the grind of daily production.
The bag will accommodate medium
sized cameras such as the Canon
How low can you go: The new
LMW-230 low-end monitor by OSEE
composite input, one Y/C and YPbPr
input as well as DVI-I/HDMI input.
In a similar format, OSEE also offers
the MVM200 and MVM230 from the
MVM series as a total tabletop solution,
ideal in situations where a quad split
monitor is needed.
10.D59
C300 and Red Epic, plus accessories
such as base plates, monitors, rods,
mattebox, batteries and chargers. It also
has a separate compartment for a
15-inch laptop.
“Modular camera systems require a
bag that protects and organises the
elaborate camera systems of today and
allows for maximum customisation, the
new CB40 High Roller is that bag,” said
Product Designer, Markus Davids.
11.E84
TVBEurope 57
Where baseband meets broadband
Harris
By Dick Hobbs
At IBC Harris will be
showing integrated content
workflows, including capabilities
in stereoscopic 3DTV, 3Gbps
infrastructures and the
convergence of baseband and
broadband for multi-platform
delivery. To ensure revenues
are maximised alongside new
technologies, Harris will also
be demonstrating its asset
management and business
solutions and the capability
to closely interface with
external systems.
7.G20
OVER THE top TV will be a
key feature at IBC this year,
according to Harris, and the
company plans to demonstrate
how its core technologies are
important in this new sector.
It sees new opportunities and
Richard Scott: “Broadcasters
need insight from partners”
business models emerging,
so is positioning itself as a
trusted partner to help
media organisations through
the transition.
“In today’s rapidly changing
world, broadcasters need
insight from partners capable of
showing where this
evolutionary process could lead
us,” said Richard Scott, senior
vice president for global sales
and services at Harris
Broadcast Communications.
He pointed to the company’s
breadth of technologies in both
traditional baseband audio and
video and in broadband, filebased infrastructures. As well
as its own products and
systems, Scott noted Harris’
ability to integrate simply with
third-party solutions.
“With our market position
comes a responsibility not
just to supply the technology
but also thought leadership
about where our industry is
heading and the lowest risk
route to where our customers
need to be,” he said. “At IBC
we will demonstrate that we
have both the proven
technology and the integrated
vision that our customers need
to thrive and survive in this
dynamic market.”
NEW
More Info
Scan with your smartphone
for full details of Studer
broadcast consoles
58 TVBEurope
SGL
FlashNet gets a new
web-based interface
By Carolyn Giardina
Monitoring the IPTV experience
Mariner
IPTV Trouble-shooting
By Anne Morris
GIVEN THE increase in IPTV
service deployments and
multiscreen video services, IPTV
monitoring is expected to be an
important topic for service
providers attending the Conference.
As a provider of IPTV
monitoring solutions for
multiscreen networks, Mariner
is one of the companies
demonstrating its range of video
service monitoring solutions
designed to increase efficiencies for
service providers while improving
subscribers’ overall quality of
experience on every device.
Mariner is announcing
significant enhancements to its endto-end service assurance solution
Mariner xVu, including exclusive
pre-integration with the industry’s
leading probe manufacturers
and feature enhancements that
improve installation quality and
efficiency as well as increase
customer satisfaction.
Mariner is also showcasing
its frostt IPTV application
management platform, a highly
scalable, open architecture
solution that allows operators
to reliably deliver and monitor
feature-rich, revenue-generating
IPTV applications.
Using a standards-based
interface, frostt can be integrated
into the Microsoft Mediaroom
IPTV ecosystem to improve the
quality of experience.
14.521
A NEW web-based interface
for SGL’s FlashNet archive
system is being shown publicly,
for the first time in Europe, at
IBC. SGL is also introducing
its new client-based web tool,
FlashBrowse 3, to the
European market.
According to SGL,
broadcasters and content
owners could now use FlashNet
to archive and restore material
for projects that fall outside
the sphere of the controlling
MAM or automation systems.
Using the new FlashNet
GUI tools, the user can bundle
material as required, before
archiving to any configured
FlashNet disk or tape group.
Users can also archive and
restore Avid content for
non-Interplay shared
environments.
With SGL’s FlashBrowse,
content can be sent to the
AETA Audio
Forward-looking tools
for the field and studio
By David Davies
THE SCOOP Fone HD
professional mobile phone and
Scoop5 IP rack-mount codec are
among a host of new innovations
to be shown by AETA at IBC2012.
Now here’s a Scoop: AETA’s latest range
of audio codecs will show at IBC
According to General Manager
Christophe Mahoux, the
company’s presence at this year’s
show revolves around “building
on the tremendous success of our
archive directly from an Avid
editor and restored via this
web interface. Once in the
archive metadata can be
extracted or added manually.
An extension of the new
FlashNet UI, FlashBrowse 3
provides at-archive browse
creation, automatically
generating browse resolution
copies of clips as the highresolution versions are
archived. It also allows
operators to instigate restores
or partial file restores directly
from their browser window.
FlashNet and LTFS
interoperability in a production
environment will be part of the
IBC demonstration.
7.J15A
existing products and introducing
new offerings to provide
broadcasters with cutting edge
tools for recording, mixing and
transmitting events, from the field
or the studio. At IBC2012,
broadcasters will see how we have
innovated for: live IP transmission;
web-based configuration and
management; faster, more intuitive
web browsing; HD voice; LTE
support, and the first audio codec
supporting Ravenna [IP-based
networking technology].”
Specific products on display
will include Scoop Fone HD, a
pro mobile phone that integrates
3.1 kHz 2G telephone calls into
the broadcast chain and offers an
increase in audio quality to
7kHz/HD Voice in 3G/UMTS
mobile networks. HD Voice is
said to deliver higher quality voice
transmissions by extending the
frequency of traditional or
narrowband voice calls (300Hz to
3400Hz) out to wideband audio
ranges (50Hz to 7000Hz).
Among other developments,
AETA will also introduce the
Scoop5 family of audio codecs.
The Scoop5 IP is a rack-mount
codec for IP studio-to-transmitter
and other pure IP links, designed
specifically for broadcasters or
others who wish to conduct
transmissions over IP. The
Scoop5, meanwhile, builds on the
feature set of Scoop4+ and is
available with all multiple
network interfaces, including IP,
ISDN, Leased Line, POTS and
cellular 2G/3G/AMR Wideband.
Finally, Scoop5 Ravenna adds a
dual Ravenna IP audio interface
for redundant audio transfer to
the standard version of the codec.
Also on display will be the Scoop
Fone HD Center Rack, which
combines three Scope Fone HD
units for use in a studio or OB van.
8.B30C
TVBEurope 59
Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Cinema
Camera launches
By Carolyn Giardina
AT PRESS time, Blackmagic
Design was preparing to ship its
anticipated Blackmagic Cinema
Camera, as well as DaVinci
Resolve 9.
Announced earlier this year,
the camera — which lists for
$2,995 — including a 2.5K
sensor, 13 stops of dynamic
range, and a built in SSD
recorder that has the bandwidth
to capture open standard
CinemaDNG RAW, ProRes and
DNxHD files.
It includes an LCD
touchscreen, Thunderbolt
connection, and comes with a
copy of DaVinci Resolve for
colour correction and
Blackmagic UltraScope
software for waveform
monitoring. The camera is
compatible with Canon EF and
Zeiss ZF mount lenses.
“We are very excited to
see the first units of the
Blackmagic Cinema Camera
begin to ship,” said Dan May,
president of Blackmagic.
“There has been an incredibly
positive response around the
Cinema Camera’s ability to
provide film quality images, an
open workflow designed for
easy post
production,
all in a compact,
elegant design that is
affordable. This is the result of
a huge amount of hard work by
everyone here at Blackmagic
Design, and the enthusiastic
reaction we have already
received from people across all
parts of the creative world has
been amazing.”
Envivio
Zylight: Next generation LED Fresnel
WealthTV
finds its Muse
THE NEW F8 LED Fresnel from
Zylight is claimed to be the next
generation of Fresnel light, with
a thin, lightweight design,
water-resistant IP54 rating, and
rugged construction quality,
writes David Fox.
Like a traditional Fresnel light,
it also offers: single shadow
beam shaping through barn
doors; continuous focusing; and
a smooth light field. Available in
3,200K or 5,600K colour
temperature versions, it offers
completely silent operation, and
By Ian McMurray
WEALTHTV, AN independent
cable TV network based in the
United States, has selected
Envivio encoding solutions to
extend its broadcast service to
Asia. WealthTV is using Envivio
Muse iTV encoding software on
the Envivio 4Caster appliance for
HD content distribution of its live
broadcast services to TVs, PCs
and other mobile devices.
“WealthTV continues to increase
its viewership around the world,
and we are excited to offer viewers
in Asia access to our full range of
programming,” said Charles
Herring, president of WealthTV.
“In looking for a solution provider
to help us with our latest
expansion, we were impressed with
Envivio and the outstanding
picture quality, flexibility and
feature set of the Muse encoders.
“We have invested in our product
development to provide WealthTV
and other content providers with a
high quality solution that meets
their needs for delivery to the
television or any other screen,” said
Julien Signès, Envivio president and
CEO. “Optimal video quality, low
delay and high reliability are critical
for live distribution of HD content,
and we are focused on delivering
the technology that can help
facilitate our customers’ success.”
Envivio Muse software-based
encoders support live and ondemand services and are available on
the Envivio 4Caster 1RU appliance
or HP BladeSystems in an IT-centric
datacentre environment.
1.D73
Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve 9,
a new version of its colour
correction software that includes
a new user interface, was also
slated to ship at press time.
These technologies will be
exhibited at IBC in September.
7.H20
On the face of it: The new
Zylight F8 LED Fresnel light
can be powered by either a
worldwide AC power adapter or
standard 14.4v camera battery.
In the studio, it can be
controlled via DMX or remotely
via the built-in ZyLink wireless
link. Local control such as
dimming, focus and wireless
operation are provided on the
rear of the F8. It has an
adjustable beam spread
between 16-70˚ and has an
equivalent output of a
traditional 650W fixture.
11.D78
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60 TVBEurope
Viaccess-Orca
MultiDyne unveils new
SilverBack-II with Juice
MultiDyne
Deep diving Juicy camera
fibre signal
with new VO transmission
By Ian McMurray
SHOWCASING WHAT the
company describes as innovation for
second screen content engagement
and addressing the new levels of
web piracy that operators now have
to deal with is Viaccess-Orca — who
are now happy to be known as VO.
The company is introducing
Deep, which it describes as a
brand new family of services. A
data enrichment and enhancement
platform, Deep is said to provide
smart aggregation of secondgeneration metadata.
Rich content related to what
viewers are watching is out there
in abundance and available from
various sources like news and
gossip, images, trailers, games and
the list goes on. Deep introduces
rich content to the second screen
as part of the content service
provider offering, engaging the
user on the second screen, before,
after and while watching TV as a
way to monetise this content and
reduce churn.
P2P Live Audience Measurement
is a new service for operators to
monitor and measure illegitimate
peer-to-peer redistribution of live
programmes, which is, according
to VO, the fastest growing
phenomenon of web piracy. VO
enables content service providers
to assess the threat, including
geolocalisation data of peers,
samples of the measured streams
and a list of available channels.
With the introduction of Deep
and P2P Live Audience
Measurement, VO believes that
operators will widen their reach
to offer second screen
engagement capacities, and stand
stronger against illegitimate
content redistribution threats.
1.A51
By Monica Heck
MULTIDYNE IS unveiling the
SilverBack-II with Juice, a costeffective, camera-mounted fibre
transport solution capable of
transmitting any camera signal,
including HD-SDI video, audio,
control data, GPIOs, tally and
power over a single hybrid fibre
and copper cable without relying
on local power or batteries.
Featuring a compact case
measuring just over one inch
thick, the SilverBack-II with
Juice is designed to eliminate
operator fatigue in the field
by providing users with a
lightweight, remote powering
system that can seamlessly be
integrated onto any camera.
MultiDyne said the
SilverBack-II is ideally suited
for news, sports, ENG, D-SNG,
OB and multicamera studio
applications. It can transport
SDI video up to 3G HD-SDI
uncompressed with embedded
or separate program audio.
A return video option also
supports up to 3G HD-SDI
video for viewfinder or monitor
viewing, providing a high-quality
viewing experience for users in
the field. In addition, the unit
enables operators to achieve
camera control/RCP paint
functions through one of the
three available data channels.
An additional back channel is
available for camera sync or
genlock. Several options are
available for optical connectivity
including STs, Neutrik
opticalCon, Fibreco Mini
expanded beam and Lemo 304M.
Visitors to the MultiDyne stand
can also see the SMPTE-HUT
universal camera transceiver,
which is now shipping worldwide.
It’s designed to increase the
transmission distances of HD
cameras that can be distance
limited by hybrid copper/fibre
cabling. The company describes
it as a high-performance
transport system which is ideal
for remote broadcasting,
sports, shared control rooms,
campus facilities, and arena and
stadium applications.
The SMPTE-HUT is said to
cost-effectively enable full
camera operation, in even the
most rugged broadcasting
environments, extending
transmission ranges up to 10km
on just two singlemode fibres.
9.A06
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measurement and management solution.
SpotCheck™ provides an easy to use, intuitive, and automatic
way to measure, record and access audio loudness records.
Because SpotCheck™ monitors an IP, ASI, or a transmitted
over-the-air MPEG stream at the transmit (emission) encode
point, SpotCheck™ measures and logs loudness for all
programming emanating from the facility. HTML5 web-based
GUI makes SpotCheck™ easy to use and can be accessed
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SpotCheck™ offers options that correlate loudness records
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TVBEurope 61
Symphony deploys exchange system
Ericsson
By Ian McMurray
SYMPHONY, A network service
provider of high speed data
communication circuits in
Thailand, has deployed a content
exchange system from Ericsson.
As Thailand’s National
Broadcasting and
Telecommunications
Commission aims to digitalise all
television broadcasting by 2015,
service providers and network
operators are placing increased
focus on achieving maximum
network efficiency.
Symphony’s fibre-optic
networks provide efficient data
transmission for circuit links
between the base stations of
telecommunication companies
and also government and private
corporate sectors. This enables
the provision of services such as
digital broadcasting and Metro
Ethernet across Thailand.
“Broadcasters and content
owners demand the highest
quality digital content distribution
solutions from us. We have been
testing Ericsson’s content
exchange system working with our
fibre network for some time and
they offer the perfect
combination,” said Supornchai
Chotputtikul, EVP of
engineering, Symphony.
Symphony has deployed an
Ericsson solution that includes the
E5710 MPEG-2 SD encoder,
Ericsson RX8200 receivers and the
CE-Encoder by Ericsson to enable
the reliable exchange of video
between central and regional sites.
1.D61
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By Ian McMurray
ALL TRIAX cables for
broadcast use are coloured
red, notes exhibitor LEMO
Connectors —but the
company has recently
launched a new HD triax
cable coloured black, a direct
response to feedback from the
market.
The 75Ω cable has been
specially manufactured to
LEMO’s specifications to
match the transmission
properties of its range of
precision triax connectors for
HD applications. LEMO says
that it is competitively priced
against other HD triax cable,
and is ideal for both indoor
and outside broadcast use,
giving HD transmission
distances up to 30% greater
than standard triax cable.
Key features of the cable
include a silver coated pure
solid copper central conductor
for high conductivity and a
black PUR outer jacket for
excellent resistance to handling.
11.E40
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62 TVBEurope
The Business Case
“Our first key products were targeted
towards the Miranda Imagestore range”
Single-handed control
Melanie Dayasena-Lowe met Rascular Technical Director Roddy Pratt to talk
about its flagship product Helm — already being used by over 150 broadcasters globally
BRITISH COMPANY Rascular
might be a well-kept secret to some
but not to the 150 broadcasters,
such as BSkyB, Discovery
Communications Europe, M-Net,
Sky Italia and Red Bee Media,
who already use its products.
So where did it all start? Roddy
Pratt and Ephraim Barrett
founded Rascular in 2001. The
pair originally met at Oxtel,
which was acquired by Miranda
Technologies. “Our first key
products were targeted towards
what we knew — the Miranda
Imagestore range,” Pratt explains.
Ten years on and Rascular still
has regular conversations with
Miranda and still supports their
products. “Because of the history
it’s one of the products we have the
best level of support in but there’s
no commercial partnerships. The
nature of what we do means we
have mutual customers — a
customer has [Miranda’s]
hardware and our software.”
Pratt is quick to point out that
Rascular is not a company trying
to sell IT software into broadcast
but is indeed a broadcast company
with a broadcast background.
It develops software products that
allow broadcasters easy access to
the complex functionality of thirdparty devices installed within a
broadcast facility. The software
allows the broadcaster to control a
number of technologies such as
routers, servers, branding
technology, multiviewers and
modular gear from any Windows
computer.
Its flagship product is Helm,
a user-configurable, PC-based
application that provides either
mouse-driven or touchscreen
control and monitoring via
TCP/IP of a wide range of
essential broadcast equipment:
branding devices, routers, video
servers, VTRs, multi-image display
processors and modular gear.
Operators can use a single,
purpose-designed control panel
rather than having to access this
equipment via the different
proprietary systems supplied.
Past evolution
The product originally shipped to
its first customer, ZDF in
Germany, in 2005. “The first
versions of Helm were very much
Helm panels are created using a simple drag-and-drop system
like router/multiviewer and server
control that we moved into being a
serious central point of control for
playout environments,” he explains.
Since its introduction, Helm has
continued to develop and evolve.
The latest release, Helm version 4,
now supports Snell’s RollCall
system for device control, with
Helm able to work with any of the
company’s products that are
RollCall-compatible. “Helm
dynamically detects all cards and
Roddy Pratt: “We’re starting to see
people use Helm on Windows 7 tablets” their capabilities in any Rollcallenabled frame. This means that
Imagestore only, used in channel
any new or updated RollCall cards
branding control environments. It
can be used without updating the
was only when we added capabilities Helm software.”
Rascular has also announced
that is working with Ross Video as
an openGear partner. By
integrating with the openGear
platform standard — which is
designed from the ground up as an
open protocol — Helm now has
the potential to control any and all
technology that adheres to the
openGear standard.
In addition, Helm controls/
monitors third-party equipment
from Miranda, Evertz, Harris,
Pixel Power, Snell, Ross, Nevion,
Lynx, Axon, Pro-Bel (router
protocol), Quartz, NVision, GVG,
Sandar, Omneon as well as VDCP.
Pratt believes the ‘unique’
approach of Helm is “the primary
breadth of manufacturer support
we have. We treat everything equally.
That’s the key differentiator”.
Helm now also benefits from
the inclusion of Lua scripting, the
fully-featured, fast programming
language used in video games and
Adobe Lightroom.
It sits alongside — rather than
in between — equipment within a
facility. For example, the automation
system still interfaces with the
branding devices exactly as it did
prior to the installation of Helm.
Future control
What’s next for Helm? Pratt expects
to see a move towards the use of
tablet devices for control due to the
slick and tactile user interface.
“We’re starting to see people use
Windows 7 tablets with Helm —
a tablet with a hard wire Ethernet
connection. Helm runs on
Windows systems only so we
don’t have an answer for iPad
and Android devices yet but
we’re looking at it.
“We’ve seen manufacturers
launch iPad applications. We
expect to see devices like tablets
fundamentally built into a control
surface in front of an operator
bolted on to the desk. We’ve seen
some customers do something
similar such as an installation at
RSI in Switzerland, which built
desks with 24-inch LCD
touchscreens laid flat running
Helm on that as their primary
control surface for those
channels,” he explains.
Over the next 12 months
Rascular is focusing on maturity
and growth. Things have started
to take off for the company over
the last two years and it will
continue to look at ways of growing
organically, getting more people
onboard and enhancing support
and development.
www.rascular.com
2!)!MSTERDAM
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64 TVBEurope
News & Analysis
“To get mass market prices we are
probably looking at 2015 at the earliest”
Spec-ulation over
glasses-free future
WITH 3D glasses seen as the
greatest barrier to 3D viewing
outside the cinema, manufacturers
are pumping R&D to achieve the
ultimate goal of cheap and quality
autostereo devices. While it will be
several years before we see such
screens in the home, take-off is
happening in digital signage and
will be driven into consumer’s
hands via personal devices.
That’s because the problems
inherent in delivering a glasses-free
3D experience to more than one
viewer are less of an issue when it
comes to mobiles, tablets and PC
hardware. Indeed Matt Liszt, VP
marketing at MasterImage 3D,
believes autostereo mobile devices
will go mainstream by autumn
2013. “Devices will be shipped
glasses-free as standard; they won’t
necessarily be marketed as a 3D
product,” he predicts.
German 3D display developer
SeeFront 3D has seen its technology
adopted in Sony’s Vaio SE-series.
“We believe that the market for
glasses-free 3D will take-off in the
personal mobile devices segment as
well as in displays in cars and planes
and also gaming and gambling
machines,” says SeeFront Founder
and CEO Christoph Grossmann.
Meanwhile, large screen multi-view
auto-stereo displays are improving
in quality and reducing in price,
from £12,500 a couple of years ago
to around £5,500 per unit today,
to be applied to an increasing range
of signage applications.
Signage applications multiply
In the US, Travel Plaza TV has
rolled out 350 glasses-free screens
across its network of service
stations; 3D display developer
Tridelity partnered with Ram
Active Media to trial live
broadcast of the Heineken Cup
and Champions League Finals on
a 65-inch screen in London;
Exceptional 3D has had its 3D
displays installed on the gaming
floor at Atlantic City casino,
Revel; Nike introduced its new
Lunar Eclipse footwear into India
in March with the help of a 110
xyZ 3D Video Wall supplied by
Dutch firm Zero Creative; and
cinema advertising agency Pearl
& Dean wants to install a glassesfree 3D foyer screen network once
it has found a sponsor.
“The market is starting to
progress a little faster,” says Eric
Angello, CMO and creative
director, Exceptional 3D. “It is a
disruptive technology because of
all the 2D screens out there, but it
is also one to which the market
will make a logical transition.
“A lot of our rivals price each
46-inch display between £4-6,000,”
he claims. “We are near half of
that and we are literally just on the
bubble of making it very
competitive for the 2D DS
market [like other lenticular
panels, Exceptional’s is
compatible with 2D content].”
The most compelling case for
out of home glasses-free 3D is
that the experience attracts
eyeballs, increasing dwell time on
content comparative to
conventional displays.
Technologies to achieve
autostereo displays divide into two
camps. Parallax barrier
technologies typically consists of
an electro-optic layer sited over the
DVB 3DTV Phase 2
THE INDUSTRY’S move
toward autostereo viewing will
be crystallised in the second
phase of the DVB’s 3DTV
broadcast standard, writes
Adrian Pennington. It primarily
caters for the needs of content
deliverers who need a 2D and 3D
version of a programme to be
broadcast within the same video
signal but includes provision for
Multiview Video Coding (MVC)
which could potentially handle
15 or more simultaneous views.
The generation after that may
involve multiview in both
horizontal and vertical directions
and beyond even that perhaps
the recording of a continuous
object wave passing through a
given area. With that we’re into
the realm of volumetric or
holographic displays which may
seem light years away but
Japanese broadcaster NHK is
already researching the territory.
It recently began examining
the principles of electronic
Has the market conceded that 3D will never
really take off until people do not have to
put on special glasses to watch at home?
Adrian Pennington investigates the
progress towards the autostereo Holy Grail
Christoph Grossmann:
“We believe the market for
glasses-free 3D will takeoff in the personal mobile
devices segment”
nine views the screen actually
offers. Bars at the bottom of the
screen line up when the viewer is
in the optimum position. It also
uses a diagonal offset on the
lenticular lens which helps to
reduce the loss of the 3D effect
when a viewer’s head is tilted.
“For multi-view screens
freedom of movement is currently
limited to a specific zone for
each viewer,” says Grossmann.
“The main challenge is picture
resolution which is dependent on
the native screen resolution.”
A ‘Full HD’ panel with nine
views results in a picture with
SD resolution, for example.
A 4K panel (3840 x 2160 pixels)
with nine views is able to achieve
“It is a disruptive technology because of
all the 2D screens out there, but it’s also
one to which the market will make a logical
transition”
Eric Angello, Exceptional 3D
screen with a series of precision
slits separating the light pathway
into images for left and right eyes.
It provides a single ‘sweet spot’
which can be augmented with eyetracking devices and is most suited
to single-viewer applications.
The most common multi-view
method for large screens is to
use lenticular lenses which
manufacturers bond to the host
screen using different techniques.
Lenticular lens displays can
deliver two viewing modes:
multi-view and dual view. Most
are capable of generating nine
holography which relies on
spatial light modulators to
provide ‘unprecedented
ultra-high resolutions’
according to the broadcaster.
There is a growing body
of opinion which believes
that UltraHD television
formats such as NHK’s 8K
Super Hi-Vision provides more
of an immersive, ultra-realistic
viewing experience than 3D
and that in the medium-term
3D will be sidelined in favour
of higher resolutions regardless
of whether it is watched with
or without eyewear.
views (technology from Dutch
firm Dimenco can generate 28)
but the gap between each view
is not yet seamless and barely
HD quality.
Using a nine-view auto-stereo
screen as an example, multi-view
mode provides a different
perspective at each of the nine sweet
spots (just as moving past an object
would do in real life), whereas in
dual view mode all nine positions
deliver the same stereoscopic 3D
image that would be seen on a
conventional 3D display using
active or passive glasses.
Outside the sweet spots the 3D
effect is either lost or significantly
impaired and CE manufacturers
are therefore devising ingenious
ways to ensure viewers are in the
right position.
For instance Toshiba, whose
56-inch home TV can be bought
for £7,000, uses a camera to
track up to five viewers’
positions and ‘steers’ the
image/viewer to deliver the
optimal effect. Other solutions
include using green circles
displayed at the top of the screen
to show viewers when they are in
one of the sweet spots.
Philips employs a technique,
described as ‘fractional
separation’, to achieve the visual
effect of many more than the
a picture roughly equivalent to
HD (1280 x 720).
“4K displays will push the
price up,” observes Jim Bottoms,
director & Co-founder
of Futuresource Consulting.
“To get mass market prices [for
multiview screens] we are probably
looking to 2015 at the earliest.
Not only must manufacturing
costs be reduced to a level where
the displays can be sold at a massmarket price, the sets must also be
able to deliver a 3D experience
equivalent to, or ideally exceeding,
the quality of today’s active
shutter 3D displays.”
He says: “There’s no doubt that
all the major CE manufactures
perceive the benefit of launching
auto-stereo displays that can
deliver a picture of acceptable
quality for the general consumer
at an affordable price point.”
Another problem with fixed
lenticular lens systems is the loss of
screen brightness and the
detrimental effect the lenses can
have when viewing regular 2D
images. Several manufacturing
techniques have been employed to
address the brightness issue, with
varying degrees of success.
Avoiding degradation of a 2D
image, however, requires far more
complex technology. Philips, for
example, is experimenting with a
TVBEurope 65
Inition’s DepthCatcher works by shooting objects in stereo
rotating on a turntable and multiplexing
together eight different angles
solution which combines the 3D
views to produce a single high
brightness, high resolution image.
Multiview video
Even when we do get affordable
high resolution autostereo screens
the only content of acceptable
quality they may be able to show
would be animated or computer
generated. Acquiring live action
stereo content requires a rigged
pair of cameras but to create
pictures for, for example, nine
views then nine camera angles
would be necessary.
“There is an uplift in price and
you need a brand that is willing to
make a complete [multiview] advert
to make the budget work but the
results are worth it,” says Shannon
Dowsing, Visualisation &
Technology consultant for Inition
which has produced multi-view 3D
content for in-store campaign
promoting LG handsets.
There are other methods. One is
to capture picture and depth
information from a source camera,
and then information from an
array of ‘witness’ cameras, which
can be recombined in post.
Fraunhofer HHI has developed a
Trifocal Depth Capture system
and is working with German
neighbour Imcube to pass raw
depth-map data through software
that automatically adjusts and
smooths the result.
Another solution is to capture
light fields from a scene from a
camera fitted with a lens array,
like the Lytro. Inition has a novel
approach. Its DepthCatcher
works by shooting objects in
stereo rotating on a turntable and
multiplexing together eight
different angles. The software is
currently only compatible with
eight-view Alioscopy displays but
will shortly support Dimenco and
Phillips displays.
“We film with a much larger
interocular between the two
lenses than we would for
conventional stereo capture so we
have more occlusion information
and making it easier to generate
multi-views,” explained Dowsing.
Another cost-effective route is to
convert stereo into autostereo
content. Dimenco is converting the
3D library of stock footage
company Stereobank using its
proprietary software process to
extract depth-maps which is then
used to render multiple viewpoints
over lenticular displays.
Meanwhile, French display
developer Alioscopy has allied
with Fraunhofer HHI to convert
stereoscopic footage for creative
and production companies
specialising in movie trailers.
There are over 30 different
multiview display companies
already in the market including
Stream TV, Wowfly, Aliscopy,
iPont, Miracube, Dimenco,
SeeFront, Exceptional, Zero
Creative, Tridelity and
Magnetic. That’s not to mention
the heavyweight interest of
Sony, Samsung and Apple,
which may include autostereo functionality for its
anticipated entry into the smart
TV market.
viewpoints and an HD
resolution. It is very rudimentary,
suitable at this stage only for
static images and a narrow
viewing angle, but NICT is
developing a 200 camera system
to achieve multi-view video.
At NAB, Japan’s National
Institute of Information and
Communications Technology
(NICT), previewed a 200-inch
rear projection providing 200
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need to work on the fly.
The kit includes:
> 3 Sola ENG fixtures & accessories
sories
- 2-Way barndoors
- AC adaptors
- Gel filter kits
- D-Tap cables
- Ball head shoe mounts
> 3 Stands
> Softbox & diffusion
> Custom Pelican case
See us at IBC Stand 11.E55
Litepanels
A Vitec Group brand
®
www.litepanels.com
66 TVBEurope
TVBEurope's News Review
BBC live with Quicklink
The BBC World Service has
purchased Quicklink broadcasting
solutions for both live reporting
and file-based video transmissions
on behalf of all sectors within the
Arabic and Persian divisions
worldwide. Comitting to an
additional five year ongoing
contract, the broadcaster has been
a Quicklink customer for nine
years using the company’s Store &
Forward solutions for its filebased reporting. Quicklink Live
LNG, MAC solution, has also
been used for the BBC series
Planet Earth Live.
www.quicklink.tv
Bexel snaps up lenses
Bexel has purchased Canon and
Fujinon lenses as part of its
continuing upgrade and
expansion of its long lens
inventory in advance of major
broadcast events this year.
Canon’s DIGISUPER 86II xs,
DIGISUPER 22 and XJ60 lenses
have been added to Bexel’s rental
equipment inventory. The
DIGISUPER 86II xs is a field
lens that uses Canon’s Power
Optical System and X-Element
technology and optical design
concept. The DIGI SUPER 22 is
a new innovation in HDTV
studio lens design. In another
order, Bexel made a million-dollar
purchase of over 60 new Fujinon
lenses as well as a significant
amount of lens accessories,
including zoom and focus
controls and optical stabilisation
gear. The acquisition of the
Fujinon ENG lenses supports
Bexel’s growing inventory of
Panasonic P2, Sony PDW-F800
XDCam camcorders and HDC2500 camera systems. It includes
22 Fujinon ZA12x4.5BERD
super wide-angle HD ENG full
servo production lenses, and over
40 ZA22x7.6BERD and BERM
HD production lenses.
www.bexel.com
Up-Down Crystal clear
Crystal Vision now allows
broadcast engineers to
synchronise sources timed to a
different reference or correct any
processing delays while up or
down converting. With flexible
conversions between SD, 720p,
1080i and 1080p, the Up-DownAS 3G synchronising
up/down/cross converter provides
an output picture quality that
broadcasters standardise on and
can perform two different
Bayonet gets Codex look: Bayonet, a short political
thriller from Bergen Films and Director Gregory Horoupian
(pictured right), recently completed principal photography
using digital recording technology from Codex. The short
was shot by cinematographer Lyle Vincent (left) using
an ARRI Alexa Studio camera paired with anamorphic
lenses and a Codex Onboard M recorder. It provided
Horoupian with practical means to maximise image quality
by facilitating the capture of the uncompressed RAW
output from the Alexa Studio’s 4:3 sensor.
www.codexdigital.com
ADVERTISER INDEX
AJA .................................................14
Apantac ..........................................38
ASL Intercom..................................28
Autoscript.......................................37
Aveco..............................................56
Blackmagic........................................5
BMS................................................35
Bridge Technologies..........................3
Cobalt.............................................60
Datavideo ........................................41
Digital Rapids.................................IFC
DVS................................................62
Emcore ...........................................30
Ensemble.........................................31
Envivio............................................55
Evertz Microsystems......................IBC
EVS ................................................23
Front Porch Digital ..........................27
conversions simultaneously,
giving a continuous clean output
in two formats with two
downstream synchronisers. It is
available in four versions as the
Up-Down-AS 3G, Up-DownAFDS 3G, Up-Down-ATS 3G
and Up-Down-ATXS 3G - with
each version providing different
features. Shipping now,
Up-Down-AS 3G fits all its
functionality into a space-saving
100mm x 266mm module which is
housed in the standard frames.
www.crystalvision.tv
Ericsson closes its
Technicolor purchase
Ericsson has completed its
acquisition of the Broadcast
Services Division of Technicolor.
Magnus Mandersson, executive
vice president and head of
Business Unit Global Services,
Ericsson, said: “With this
acquisition Ericsson has
strengthened its position in the
broadcast managed services
market and reinforced our
growth ambitions. Managed
services is one of the main focus
areas for Ericsson and we will
continue to invest and expand
this area.” The company
welcomes over 900 employees
who will be integrated into the
Ericsson group in business unit
Global Services over the coming
months and will work under the
Ericsson brand as of today.
www.ericsson.com
www.technicolor.com
Boris Weeds out effects: On the TV series Weeds, starring Mary-Louise
Parker (pictured), Film Editor David Helfand edited using Avid Media
Composer and used Boris Continuum Complete (BCC) plug-ins. “For the
eighth and final season premiere I used BCC Lens Flare, BCC Rays Puffy,
and BCC Temporal Blur to design lens flare, sunlight, and motion effects
in SD that were duplicated perfectly and automatically in HD on Avid DS.
We had a very tight turnaround and I was pleasantly surprised that I could
lock a precise look in SD without the need for hours of high cost HD
adjustments on another VFX platform.”
www.borisfx.com
a signal, our new app will allow
iOS users to download
information, contact any of our
global offices, and to send us a
comprehensive enquiry.”
www.presteignecharter.com
at least 45˚ East to 45˚ West, and
via careful placement and
separation, the dishes are able to
see most satellites in use in the UK.
www.sislive.tv
Presteigne Charter app
Presteigne Charter has launched
the ‘PC Rate Card’ app. The app
is described as the first of its
kind and allows iOS users to
easily browse through, select
and enquire about the
company’s range of video and
audio broadcast equipment for
rental, whether they are in-office
or out in the field. Listing a
full inventory of its extensive
stock of broadcast equipment,
products can be selected by
category or via a quick search
function and each has a detailed
description of its features, along
with key facts and figures. Mike
Ransome, CEO of Presteigne
Charter, observed: “Our
customers, often from a fieldbased location, want to know
what we can supply, when and
for how much. Providing there’s
SIS Live teleport
at MediaCityUK
SIS LIVE has announced the
launch of its brand new teleport
facility at MediaCityUK in Salford
(pictured), claimed to be the largest
broadcast teleport ever built in the
north of the UK. This state of the
art facility includes nine satellite
dishes; two 3.8m, two 4.8m, two
6.3m, two 8.1m and one 9m, plus a
handful of smaller dishes. The new
teleport is located on Trafford
Wharfside, close to the new
Coronation Street facility. Making
use of optimised viewing angles of
Digi-Box is Wohler
EMEA distributor
Digi-Box.co.uk will serve as an
EMEA distributor for the
complete Wohler product line.
From its offices near London,
Digi-Box will supply Wohler
products and solutions to the
terrestrial, satellite and cable,
telecommunications, and
broadcast industries, as well as
to systems integrators, the
convergence market, and
broadcast post production
facilities. “Wohler’s reputation for
innovation and quality extends
from its early engineering of
in-rack audio, video, and data
monitoring solutions to the
company’s new leading-edge
transcoding and file-based
automation platforms,” said
Jon Phillips, managing director at
Digi-Box. “We are pleased to be
working with Wohler, and we look
forward to offering the company’s
products and their many benefits
in today’s multiplatform
workflows to customers across
EMEA markets.”
www.wohler.com
www.Digi-Box.co.uk
Fujifilm..............................................7
Gefen ..............................................42
Guntermann & Drunk .......................21
Harris..............................................FC
HBB Communications .....................53
Integrated Microwave Technologies.....24
Lemo ..............................................45
Lite Panels......................................65
LTO Program..................................54
Matrox.............................................13
MediagENIX ...................................46
Miranda............................................11
MultiDyne.........................................8
Murray Pro .....................................22
Nevion ............................................44
Newtek .............................................9
ORAD..............................................18
OSEE ...............................................17
Phabrix...........................................29
Pixel Power.....................................58
Playbox ............................25, 34, OBC
Red Lion ..........................................61
Ross................................................32
SGL .................................................16
Snell ................................................19
SSS...................................................6
Studer.............................................57
SVP .................................................15
Telestream .....................................48
Thales Angenieux ...........................26
TV Logic .........................................50
TV One............................................33
Videssence......................................59
EVERTZ MEDIA SERVER

August 2012

Transcription

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