http://www.ibc.org/page.cfm/action=library/libID=14/libEntryID=101/listID=2
As a sign of the revolution surging through the broadcast engineering industry, the IBC2015 Innovation Awards are dominated by breakthroughs in IP technology. Two thirds of the shortlisted projects commend remarkable achievements in innovating remote production using virtualised systems to reduce cost and usher in a new generation of content creation.
The annual Innovation Awards recognise outstanding collaboration between broadcasters, media enterprises and service providers with key technology partners in three main categories: Content Creation, Content Management and Content Delivery.
Two of America’s biggest broadcasters made the shortlist for the most innovative Content Management project, each pioneers of IP connectivity and software-defined video.
Disney/ABC Television Group has implemented a realtime IP distribution system for content around its New York distribution facility, based on 40 and 100 gigabit ethernet and handling uncompressed HD for more than 200 affiliated stations. The technology comes from AC Video Solutions, Arista, Imagine Communications and The Systems Group.
Earlier this year the Disney/ABC Television Group became the first major network to transition to a cloud playout solution for enhanced revenue generation, efficiency and flexibility.
“By leveraging evolving IP and cloud technologies we are able to move beyond what's currently possible with traditional proprietary 'Big Iron' broadcast infrastructures," said Vince Roberts, EVP, Global Operations and CTO, Disney/ABC Television Group. "IP solutions enable us to automate and deliver workflow processes and technologies to a more agile and scalable environment.”
A year ago ESPN opened the world's first large-scale, fully ethernet connected production facility. Digital Center 2 contains five studios, 16 edit suites and six control rooms which serve as the home of flagship show SportsCenter and ESPN’s NFL studio programming.
Built around a JPEG 2000–based IP routing core and almost entirely fibre-based connectivity, ESPN’s Bristol, CT, studio is designed to be a format-agnostic facility prepared to handle end-to-end 1080p production up to 4K and anything beyond.
“There are still pockets of baseband , but we were aiming for a format-agnostic facility that preps us for any media that is going to be coming — whether it be television, mobile, web-based, IP video, or anything else,” ESPN CTO/EVP Chuck Pagano told Sports Video Group. ESPN's in-house team was complemented by Arista Networks, Evertz and Vizrt.
The BBC is a finalist in the Content Creation category for arguably the first large-scale roll-out of broadcast technology as a service.
ViLoR (virtualised local radio) is an IP-based method for uniting the networking and distribution elements of all 39 local BBC radio stations. The idea is to replace the individual systems at a local level, where some of the kit is 30 years old, with common centralised equipment.
The corporation’s first virtual radio station went live last year at BBC Radio Northampton. Roll out across the entire BBC is planned by 2017.
“To the presenters and production teams the studios will appear much like traditional studios but with the underlying equipment and infrastructure moved to a central, shared, location,” explains the broadcaster. “Editorial teams will have full control over the play-out system and mixing desks, but the actual audio files will be stored, streamed, mixed and processed in a remote data centre, in real-time.”
Developed largely in-house, the project also draws on expertise at Atos, Broadcast Bionics, Cisco, Comrex, EM Computers, EMC2, Glensound Electronics, HP, IMI Mobile, Mayah, Microsoft, Oracle, Scisys, Technica del Arte, Telos Axia, VMWare, Vodafone and Vortex.
Maintaining audio files in the same format rather than a side benefit has improved audio quality. Other benefits include the integration of social media tools and audience skype calls; shared access to content and pop-up radio stations making it much easier for editorial teams to cover local events such as county shows or music festivals. Physical space, (i.e for power and cooling) is significantly reduced – down from a room the size of a double garage to almost zero.
“Updating stations using traditional technology on this scale is both expensive and slow, taking between six to eight months per station,” said the BBC. “By sharing infrastructure and equipment across multiple sites, the BBC could substantially reduce costs, and time to refresh a single station to roughly eight weeks.”
A fellow Content Creation finalist is UK facility Dock10 which is rewarded, along with Avid and The Netherlands' Limecraft, for its implementation of remote ingest service Field Dock.
This is a laptop based solution offering back-up of camera card media to portable hard drives, internet speed connection testing and a choice of workflows to send native or proxy formats to Dock10’s private cloud platform.
Head of Business Development Emma Riley explained: “Field Dock takes ingest into the 21st century and was developed to solve a problem we see our clients face every day – how to start their programme edit as soon as the shoot finishes. Adding remote edit platforms and flexible file transfers to the mix, we believe we offer a unique workflow solution that harnesses the true power of the internet for television producers.”
Also nominated is the National Basketball Association (NBA) which is working with a powerful replay centre, managed by software-defined networking at its central broadcast facility in Secaucus, New Jersey. The system provides NBA officials with review and decision-making during the game. It can manage fifteen simultaneous games – with nine camera angles at each game and 144 feeds in total. Cisco, Evertz, Samsung, The Systems Group and Zayo collaborated on this technology.
The Content Delivery category features Pac-12 Networks, the US sports cable and satellite network which is part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It broadcasts 850 live events a year for the conference of twelve west coast universities by remote or 'at home' production.
Using a conference-wide IP network, P12N is able to connect to on-campus athletic venues and transmit video, audio, tally lights and internal communications essentially turning the four studios at its San Francisco HQ into the traditional onsite OB truck. The venues could be as far as 2500km away but in this system, co-developed with Internet2, Nevion and T-Vips, the delay is less than a frame.
A 5.1 surround mix is also possible in the studios for every event and in some cases the on-air talent remains 'at home'. All of which greatly cuts down the number of crew and amount of kit conventionally required to telecast live events.
“That is a challenge for us in terms of finding crews, getting facilities and uplinks,” reported Jonathan Leess, SVP, Production Planning and Operations, P12N to Sports Video Group. “So this technology has allowed us to be incredibly efficient, use less people in the field, and use more people here in our studios. It obviously saves us a bunch of money but we don’t have to cut production quality.”
IP technology is a red hot trend engaging all corners of production and likely to feature in dozens of demonstrations on the IBC2015 and IBC Content Everywhere Europe show floor, as well as informing special exhibits at IBC Future Zone, IBC Technical Papers and conference sessions.
You can be the first to see the winners of the IBC Innovation Awards as they are unveiled at the Awards Ceremony on Sunday 13 September 2015, a spectacular event to which all IBC visitors are welcome.
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