StreamingMedia
Advertisers often have more information about online video metrics than the content owners. Videoplaza aims to change that.
Tuesday 26 March 2013
Sunday 24 March 2013
Post-production: the green lights of recovery
Broadcast
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/production-feature/post-production-the-green-lights-of-recovery/5025275.article
MEDIACITYUK
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/production-feature/post-production-the-green-lights-of-recovery/5025275.article
Like their London peers, regional post facilities were hit hard by the economic downturn, but a rise in commissions has given them renewed confidence for 2011, says Adrian Pennington.
Facilities outside the M25 face many of the problems that afflict their London counterparts: the struggle to keep afloat during recession, budgetary pressures forcing rates down, and the impact of production companies keeping more work in-house. Almost without exception, the sector has suffered in the recent downturn, so it’s good to report signs that business is picking up.
The benefits of working outside the capital are universal: with rents cheaper than London, office space can be larger; the wage bill is lower; and the reduced costs can be passed on to clients in competitive rates.
There’s also the delight of working somewhere without the travel and parking hassles and associated stresses of London life.
“We have quite a few clients who return here because they find it an appealing change from Soho,” observes Sarah Miller, facility manager at Bristol’s Big Bang Post.
Commercials and corporate work sustain two significant players in the north-east, although the bankruptcy last November of the region’s biggest ad agency, Robson Brown, caused some disruption.
“We can cut big holes in London charges,” claims David Jeffries, managing director of Newcastle’s Mere Mortals Moving Image. “We are looking further afield for our business and would consider partnering with a significant London company.”
The CG and editing facility owns two Final Cut Pro suites, Smoke, 11 seats of Maya and a Pyramix stereo suite. It recently completed a graphics segment on BBC2’s How TV Ruined Your Life.
Jeffries would like to attract more work from north of the border but says: “It’s like the wall still exists. We’ve got to be a bit more tenacious to win Scottish work.”
Although a high proportion of postproduction work at fellow Newcastle firm Dene Films is in-house, it does cater for a number of external clients. “For the C4 series The Lakes On A Plate, we provided dry hire editing, the grade, online and dub,” says managing director Steve Salam. “From time to time, our audio suite is involved with a number of automated dialogue replacement jobs for dramas like Wire In The Blood.”
A new £12.5m post-production facility dedicated to stereo 3D has been earmarked by an unnamed group of venture capitalists for launch in the North. Sites in Wales and Manchester are being considered but Sunderland is the most likely candidate, with the decision depending on an award of regional development money. “We aim to outsource work from London to the North, where the salaries and offi ce space are cheaper,” says Saif Chaudhry, founder of Sunderland 3D specialist Stereographix and a consultant on the project. “The missing piece is public funding, which would help make it feasible.”
Although Birmingham stood in for London in scenes in recent series of Kudos’s Hustle, and BBC drama Doctors is shot there, there are fewer network productions in Birmingham than perhaps a city of its size deserves.
Aquila, the Midlands’ largest independent, landed the post on Hustle in 2009 for the 2010 serise and offers six Avid editing suites linked to Unity, and a Symphony for grading.
Collaborative approach
Relocating from Warwick two years ago, corporate production outfit Fullrange was disappointed to find fellow houses weren’t willing to collaborate to win larger post projects. “Everyone is fairly insular,” observes post supervisor Dave Stephenson. “People shout about trying to get productions up here but there isn’t the sort of bonding that can really help make it happen.”
Nonetheless, Fullrange is now receiving its largest-ever number of enquiries and feels it is on safe ground, with skills in production and post. It recently cut locally produced feature Tortoise In Love.
Tony Quinsee-Jover, managing director of HD Heaven, agrees there isn’t a local post community as such in Birmingham, but points to a worksharing relationship with The Audio Suite on the floor above his company.
“We are networked, so we can offer a complete post solution,” he says. C5’s The Gadget Show and Fifth Gear from locally headquartered North One are examples - they are edited downstairs and soundtracks laid upstairs.
BBC S&PP closed its commercial post operation in Birmingham in 2009 but the corporation retains facilities at The Mailbox and at the Selly Oak campus (the latter supporting Doctors). “Despite the closure, the BBC still endeavours to do as much in-house as it can,” says Quinsee-Jover. “Everybody wants more for less and things are getting even harder as producers begin to install their own online equipment. But we continue to forge ahead and remain hopeful.”
Bristol’s facility scene, which contains one of the UK’s largest indies, Films at 59, remains healthy on the back of BBC Natural History Unit commissions and its relative proximity to London. Also in Bristol, Big Bang Post performed grade, online and audio on Madagascar, and is finishing BBC series Ocean Giants. “We’ve been privileged to have worked on a lot of landmark natural history commissions over the past seven years,” says Miller.
The self-proclaimed ‘largest facility on the south coast’ is Brighton’s BTV, owned by factual producer Electric Sky, which generates 30% of BTV’s business. Other clients include the Royal Opera House’s Opus Arte music label and Sussex producers like Lambent Productions. It opened a Soho office for 3D finishing but Brighton is handling offlines for three Discovery 3D docs.
“We’ve gone through a tough couple of years but the number of productions being greenlit now is astonishing, so it looks like a very positive 2011,” says business development manager Susan Tunstall.
Facilities have tended to congregate in areas of BBC presence but, with FTP and fast broadband connections, this is increasingly unnecessary.
The founders of Nottingham graphics and animation boutique Bottle Top are ex-ITV and have regular clients in Manchester, London and Birmingham. “The launch of MediaCityUK has made London producers more aware that they can get the same quality of service outside the capital but pay less for it,” says creative director Anne Whiteley. “Sometimes we don’t even meet with clients but send work back and forth online. Your physical location is more and more irrelevant, since the bottom line for most companies is cost.”
MEDIACITYUK
A BOON FOR THE NORTH
The imminent opening of Media-CityUK should provide Manchester’s established facilities with additional work, although it is premature for them to be banking on business.
“There’s a lot of speculation about MediaCityUK but it’s too early to feel its impact or to gauge the type of work that may become available,” says Leo Casserly, managing director of Flix. “We’d consider relocating to Salford Quays depending on the signals we got from the BBC and Peel Media [which is launching a joint-venture post operation with SIS] about their post plans and how much work may overflow.”
Flix is on the BBC preferred suppliers list, has edited 150 films for The One Show and has finished high volumes of children’s animation.
“Because we’ve worked on a more national basis, we’re not as reliant on the local market as some facilities,” says Casserly. The house has just won its first drama, BBC North’s 6 x 30-minute series 32 Brinkman Street.
Sumners is the city’s long-form powerhouse and has already picked up a couple of BBC Childrens’ commissions, including Mr Bloom’s Nursery. This time next year, the facility will have moved from Oxford Road to maintain its proximity to the BBC at MediaCityUK. But managing director Andy Sumner is reluctant to predict a work bonanza: “The market will grow but we’ve yet to see how much will be tied up in guarantees to Peel Media. There has to be a credible post infrastructure to support the studios.”
Sumner runs editing agency SumTalent and says finding the appropriate freelancers for children’s work is challenging. “It can take weeks to find the right talent for a specifi c show but I’ve no doubt that when the BBC department officially opens, we’ll get an influx of editors looking for work.”
David Jackson, who owns graphics and finishing shop 422, says he’s “extremely excited” about the BBC’s move. “It’s fantastic for the region, which will step up to the plate and deliver.”
He has spent £400,000 on new kit, split between Manchester and its sister site 422 Glasgow, partly in expectation of a rise in demand for finishing work from MediaCity-UK. The equipment includes two Avid Nitris, Flame and Smoke, and a Lustre 4K suite.
“The BBC is putting in 50 desktop Final Cut Pros at MCUK, so we don’t believe the workfl ow model for offline is required in the northwest,” he says. “However, if producers want higher-end services, a grade or a more complex audio dub, then we represent quite an important offer.”
VFX and film editing specialist Editz says it is having a bumper year. It completed work on indie feature Best Laid Plans and has a number of commercials on its books. “Work in TV idents seems to have dried up but we’re constantly on the lookout for talented people,” says creative director Rob Pickard
Thursday 14 March 2013
Game on for Ultra-HD
Broadcast
With barriers to production beginning to be overcome, the 2014 World Cup final in Rio could be the first major event captured in 4K.
This time last year, few people were seriously considering live 4K, and the term Ultra-HD hadn’t moved beyond the chief engineers and academics who sit on standards bodies. Yet in a form 16 times the resolution of HD 1080i, not only is Ultra-HD concentrating the resources of broadcasters, satellite operators, OB suppliers and manufacturers, but the timetables for 4K broadcasts keep advancing.
Indeed, kick-off could be as soon as next summer, with the signs suggesting that, at the very least, the 2014 Fifa World Cup final will be captured in the format. “It’s highly probable,” says Benoit Fouchard, chief strategy officer at French compression specialist Ateme.
“There’s no doubt that at least one or two flagship games will be aired in 4K.” “There is no more prominent event than a World Cup if you are going to be pushing new technology, so it’s feasible we’ll see 4K live in 2014,” adds Futuresource Consulting head of broadcast equipment Adam Cox.
The barriers to production are beginning to be overcome and there’s no practical reason why Ultra-HD cannot be delivered live by satellite today (see box). Although there are significant gaps to address, the case for pioneering an Ultra-HD experience around the World Cup are compelling enough for Fifa to ensure it will happen. For a start, there’s the kudos Fifa would gain in breaking new production ground. Its track record in this regard includes sanctioning the first all-HD finals in 2006 and the capture and TX of 25 matches in 3D from South Africa 2010.
As with 3D (which, incidentally, Fifa has yet to commit to), production teams may have to adjust the editorial practice – such as making fewer cuts – to accommodate the greater visual information of the 4K picture. While Fifa’s priority will be coverage in HD – even while the bulk of the tournament’s 3.2 billion TV viewers still watch in SD– the sports body will take its cue for Ultra-HD from 2014 rights holders and from Sony.
Among the former is TV Globo, the Brazilian pay-TV giant with exclusive domestic rights to the World Cup and shared rights to the 2016 Rio Olympics. It has been trialling Ultra-HD in anticipation of both events for two years, shooting the Rio carnival with Sony’s F65 camera in 2012 and 2013.
Interest may also come from French national broadcaster France Télévisions, which, with Ateme, GlobeCast and Orange, is part of 4EVER, a French government-backed scheme to investigate Ultra-HD. France Télévisions content, including the 2012 French Tennis Open, forms part of rolling test transmissions on the 4K channel of French satellite provider Eutelsat.
The Japanese government’s decision to bring forward the scheduled launch of a 4K service from 2016 to July 2014 is another significant pointer. It hopes consumer interest in the World Cup will translate into flat panel sales to boost the flagging fortunes of economic powerhouses Sony and Panasonic.
While most Ultra-HD TVs incorporate technology to upscale HD pictures to pseudo-4K resolutions, the logical conclusion to draw from the Japanese initiative is that some matches next summer will be produced and aired natively in 4K.
For Sony, on the other hand, Ultra- HD (the company prefers to badge it 4K) is vital to turning around a TV business that has lost money for eight consecutive years and contributed to the company’s mammoth £3.6bn loss in 2011.
Must-have experience
Having developed the widest range of 4K hardware on the market, from professional cameras to consumer displays, few vendors have as much to gain as Sony from promoting Ultra-HD as the new ‘must-have’ viewing experience.
2014 is also the last year of Sony’s eight-year, $305m (£203m) sponsorship of Fifa, and its professional services arm is the primary technical partner for Fifa’s host broadcaster HBS at next year’s tournament. Having spent millions to underwrite the separate 3D production in South Africa, a precedent has been set for a parallel experiment in 4K.
Sony is already supplying OB facilities to HBS, including 340 HD cameras, 48 switchers and 72 slo-mos, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to add a few of its new 4K PVM-X300 production monitors and F65 cameras, which have already been tested by Fox Sports, ESPN, Sky Deutschland, SIS LIVE and BSkyB.
However, the F65, and Sony’s 4K F5 and F55 camcorders, are designed for digital cinema and the technology has yet to fi lter through to the 2/3-inch systems or studio cameras necessary for live TV. With NAB around the corner, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Sony were to unveil a roadmap for such models.
There is another issue though. “There’s no industry standard interface that can handle the bandwidth of baseband 4K, although there are some workarounds, so the very fabric of an OB production isn’t in place yet,” says Cox. The industry is looking to bodies such as SMPTE and the DVB to develop this.
While the number of households with Ultra-HD TV sets capable of receiving the feed is expected to be minuscule (just 123,000 in the UK by 2016, predicts Futuresource), it could be that select matches from Brazil are beamed to cinemas – as happened with the 3D feed in 2010 – provided rights to air a 4K feed are in place.
This time around, Sony has an even greater vested interest since its 4K digital cinema projection system is installed in 14,000 screens worldwide. It also markets a 4K home projector.
Other parts of the Ultra-HD live production are becoming feasible. Japanese broadcaster SKY Perfect Jsat has trialled 4K at football matches using equipment from EVS, which will provide the core workflow, server and replay systems to HBS. Announcements from Fifa are believed to be imminent but while any portion of the World Cup shot in 4K would be a milestone, it will be a sideshow to the main coverage mixed from 34 cameras per match.
“It probably won’t be the most breathtaking experience for fans simply because there won’t be enough 4K cameras trained on the action,” says Fouchard. “The multiple camera angles, slow-motion replays and even the commentary teams with which viewers are familiar won’t be available to the 4K production next year.”
ULTRA-HD THE DISTRIBUTION CHALLENGE
Satellite broadcasters are best placed to meet the bandwidth demands of a 4K picture (3,840 x 2,160 pixels), four times that of 1080p – once considered the next step in broadcast quality.
Eutelsat’s test channel comprises four HD channels (QuadHD), where HD is compressed in MPEG4. If that were to launch commercially today, it would cost a broadcaster $2-3m (£1.3-2m) a year, compared with $400,000-500,000 a year for an HD channel.
Bandwidth constraints mean Japan’s 4K service will be delivered over dedicated communications satellites rather than commercial broadcast ones, which are planned to follow later.
What will make Ultra-HD commercially viable is the HEVC codec, ratifi ed by the ITU in January. It’s expected to reduce the amount of data to rates similar to the levels of the first HD channels.
Receiving Eutelsat’s QuadHD 4K broadcasts over existing Ultra- HD displays is only possible by routing the signal through four receivers – and even then the picture may not be synchronised.
Receiving 4K broadcasts compressed in HEVC requires broadcaster investment in new set-top boxes. Deloitte says these would need larger hard drives to cope with bigger fi le sizes. Set-top boxes might need about 4TBs of storage, though by 2015, harddisk storage prices may have fallen to about $15 per TB.
Broadcom announced a 4K HEVC decoding chip at CES. This supports up to 24Hz and could soon be available in prototype STBs.
4K is not only a matter of spatial resolution. Fast-paced sports shot in 4K have been demonstrated to produce a blurring visual effect at 25Hz. The solution is to increase the frame rate of capture and display to a minimum of 60fps. While there are Ultra-HD sets capable of refreshing at 120Hz and higher, these will only accept HD content at such frame rates by interpolating the frames (where the native frame rate is halved). “Nobody wants to do less than 60fps for sport, but no one can do more at this stage,” says Benoit Fouchard of compression specialist Ateme.
The Ultra-HD specifi cation includes provision for even higher resolutions, such as Japanese broadcaster NHK’s 8K Super Hi- Vision – under investigation for a decade. The impetus behind 4K broadcasts has prompted it to step up plans for a domestic launch over satellite from 2020 to 2016, timed for the Rio Games.
Wednesday 13 March 2013
Connecting with the future
Televisual
In the March issue of Televisual is an eight-page special report about the changing face of programme distribution, which outlines the creative and financial benefits of embracing a fully digital workflow.
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Tuesday 12 March 2013
MPEG-DASH: Struggling for Adoption?
MPEG-DASH, and particularly the DASH264 spec, will help standardize and unify online video delivery, but the move to embrace has been slower going than the hype might suggest
http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=88298
Monday 11 March 2013
Deltatre and Elemental Target Multi-Screen Sports Delivery
Companies partner to offer a turnkey digital video solution for sports rights holders and broadcasters
Monday 4 March 2013
TV Globo uses 4K daily, hints at Ultra-HD World Cup
TVB Europe
Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo has given the clearest indication yet that elements of the FIFA World Cup 2014 will be captured in Ultra-HD. It is also using 4K for visual effects in its soaps on a daily basis.
José Marino, journalism and sports engineering director, TV Globo, said: “High definition, which was the paradigm just a couple of years ago, has now been surpassed by UHDTV, and content production and distribution must keep up. It is important that we show our viewers what UHDTV is all about, that they experience it and want to have it in their homes. Brazilians love football, and so the World Cup is the perfect occasion with the perfect content to show this technology.”
The broadcaster has been investigating Ultra-HD for at least two years, producing 2x nine hours of the 2012 Rio Carnival in 4K (sequences shot in 4K RAW were shown at NAB2012) and following that up with more Carnival coverage using Sony F65s this year.
Latin America's biggest network has also just completed its first 4K drama and is regularly using 4K cameras for visual effects in its telenovellas.
The dramatic feature O Tempo e o Vento (The Time and The Wind), directed by Jayme Monjardim and lensed by Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC was shot using a pair of F65s, a set of Zeiss Master Primes and an Angenieux Optima Zoom, and followed the 16-bit 4K ACES workflow. Post production was shared between TV Globo and Sony Pictures' Colorworks in LA.
The period drama which charts the histories of two families in South Brazil over 200 years up to the 1940s, will receive a theatrical release in early 2014 before being re-edited into a mini-series for broadcast.
“We understand that the TV industry is evolving and that somehow and somewhere in the future Brazil will have a 4K distribution system,” explained Raymundo Barros, entertainment engineering director (pictured).
“TV Globo produces around 2,500 hours of content a year across entertainment, drama, docs and music programmes and some are released into movie theatres first before airing on TV. For these, a 4K strategy makes a lot of sense.
“4K also makes huge sense for visual effects in our telenovellas,” Barros said. He explained how the department is shooting high-resolution sequences using three paired F65s as backplates onto which actors shot on blue screen are comped in post. “For example, it is very difficult logistically for actors and crew to set up discrete shots on Copa Cobana beach so what we do is take three F65s and shoot a large plate of 12k x 2K resolution [using a picture stitching application developed in house] and take this back to our post centre for compositing in Flame and Nuke.
He clarifies: “The final resolution of the plates are more like 9K x 2K but it provides very rich detail into which I can pan, zoom and tilt for final composite.”
It's likely that more special projects – such as the feature film – will also be acquired 4K although the production schedule for the telenovellas is too tight, he said, for these to be shot in 4K.
“We've just finished trialling the Canon C500 and think that because of its small form factor this camera would be a great option for backplate post production because several of them can be aligned much closer to each other” than using F65s.
“There are similar challenges with 4K to the ones we faced with HD – namely that with props, set construction, wardrobe and make up; we have to take a lot more care but the shoot itself doesn't need to alter that much.”
Adrian Pennington
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