VFX overtime concern swells union ranks

Screen Daily

EXCLUSIVE: UK union BECTU says membership has “skyrocketed” in recent months due to overtime conditions.

http://www.screendaily.com/news/production/vfx-overtime-concern-swells-union-ranks/5098295.article?blocktitle=LATEST-FILM-NEWS-HEADLINES&contentID=42422

Union BECTU says membership has “skyrocketed” among the UK’s film visual-effects community as a result of its recent campaign highlighting unpaid overtime.

The UK’s largest entertainment union reports that hundreds of artists have joined in the last two months, making the VFX sector its fastest growing membership chapter.

“This is a sign of the strength of feeling,” Paul Evans, BECTU national officer, told Screen in an interview for an upcoming feature on the UK’s VFX sector. “Our members don’t believe that their management are managing them well.”

BECTU claims that on average UK VFX workers do 1.5 hours of unpaid overtime per day.

“Normally it is hard to get people to join a union because VFX is such a dispersed workforce but overtime is a massive issue,” he said. “They believe overtime could be managed properly. The magic bullet could be overtime payment.”

Attention is concentrated on The Moving Picture Company (MPC), which recently worked on The Martian and Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but other leading Soho shops are in BECTU’s line of fire.

BECTU has amassed the 50 percent of workforce (around 65 members) it says it needs to solicit trade-union recognition at MPC’s compositing department. That would mean that legally BECTU could bargain collectively on behalf of those full-time employees on overtime pay.

Evans said membership is rising at facilities including Framestore and Double Negative and a 50 percent threshold at those companies could lead to demand for recognition in the new year.

“At the moment, management doesn’t care,” claimed Evans. “VFX employees are contracted to work 40 hours a week with overtime ‘to be expected from time to time’. But overtime is regularly required.

“People who work on location understand that there is no alternative to overtime. But there are alternatives in visual effects. Facilities could manage things in a way that arranges for cover and doesn’t overwork people.”

MPC, Framestore and Double Negative were contacted by Screen but none were available for comment.

Code of Practice

Facilities trade body UK Screen has previously criticised BECTU for publishing what it called misleading information in its February 2014 survey VFX Working Time Charter.

UK Screen CEO Sarah Mackey has pointed out that its VFX members created and sign up to the UK VFX Code of Practice which she believes to be the only CoP in existence in the global VFX market.

“In addition, VFX companies invest heavily in training the UK-based workforce and on making pathways into the industry more accessible,” said Mackey. “Ensuring the maintenance of a highly skilled talent pool and cutting-edge R&D is key to attracting a critical mass of high-profile VFX projects to the UK.”

Mackay also points to Creative Skillset’s 2014 Workforce Survey which reported that 91% of the UK VFX workforce have a permanent contract, compared with 70% of the creative media workforce, and that average income of the VFX workforce is £45,900, “significantly higher than the wider creative media industries workforce (£33,900) and the UK working population (£27,271)”.

There have been calls from prominent visual-effects artists in the US, such as Digital Domain co-founder Scott Ross, for the formation of a US national or international union for the VFX community.

This came in the wake of the 2013 bankruptcy of VFX shop Rhythm & Hues, which collapsed partly because of financial demands placed on it to complete Life Of Pi. The 2013 and 2014 Oscar ceremonies were picketed by members of the VFX community demanding worker rights.

High-pressure deadlines

A chief complaint is the last-minute changes and high-pressure deadlines placed on VFX suppliers by studios.

“Studios are aware that their actions have consequences but they are not looking to sting people out of pay,” commented VFX producer Barrie Hemsley (The Martian), who was also interviewed for Screen’s upcoming feature on the UK’s VFX sector.

“They do expect to get what they paid for, in time and at the right quality and they will demand changes to perfect the picture or improve its marketing. The problem is that when these conversations happen, those doing the work will inevitably suffer from unrealistic deadlines. No one is ever asked not to work late to change a shot – they just want to know if it is possible. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of vendors in post to manage this.”

Unlike other film departments, said Hemsley, visual effects has lacked effective union representation because its work crosses over so many disciplines.

“Visual effects begins at storyboard stage and is always the last to finish. VFX is involved in development and fixes across every aspect of production and because of that has never had a defined set of working conditions. For example, what constitutes a working day when a facility is in one timezone and a director in another?”

In May of this year, long-time film employment negotiations between BECTU and production trade body Pact ended in stalemate, with the union deciding to set new pay rates for its crew working on US inward investment features and productions in receipt of the UK tax break.

2015 Review: studios round-up

Broadcast 

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/2015-review-studios-round-up/5097820.article?blocktitle=2015-Review&contentID=44199

New studios were opened and existing spaces expanded as high-end TV and film tax credits continued to take effect, but Scotland looks to be missing out.

RISING DEMAND 

In the year to June 2015, spend on UK production was £1.2bn – down £350m on 2014 but up nearly £100m on 2012/13. Spend on high-end TV in the first six months of the year was £279m across 30 productions, including ITV’s Downton Abbey and Endeavour, BBC1’s War And Peace and BBC2’s The Dresser.

The government stoked the fire in April by dropping the minimum that high-end dramas have to spend in the UK to qualify for tax relief from 25% of their total budget to 10%. At the same time, it upped film tax breaks to 25% for all qualifying expenditure, rather than just the first £20m. Fuelled by tax credits, the UK has cemented its place as a world centre for film and TV production, and studios cannot build fast enough to keep pace with demand.

In March, Pinewood Group raised £30m to part-fund the £200m expansion of its Buckinghamshire site, greenlit at the end of 2014. Intended to address capacity constraints, the Pinewood Studios Development Framework will double the existing space through the addition of 323,000 sq ft of studios and stages, including three 40,000 sq ft studios. Phase one, costing £65m and comprising five stages totalling 170,000 sq ft, is expected to be completed early next year.

“Pleased to announce #StarWarsVIII will be filmed here in UK @Pinewood- Studios – great news for @starwars fans & our UK creative industries,” tweeted chancellor George Osborne, who also suggested LucasFilm would invest £100m and secure 3,000 jobs for the production.

Warner Bros-owned Leavesden Studios has a masterplan of its own, pumping millions into building three sound stages that will increase its capacity by a quarter. Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is being shot there.

Elstree Studios is mid-way through a construction project that will also increase the studio’s size by a quarter, and Belfast’s Titanic Studios has also expanded, with a £14m doubling of infrastructure to accommodate another two series of HBO’s Game Of Thrones.

But it isn’t just the most high-profile studio brands that are in demand. Marvel movie Doctor Strange began principal photography at Surrey’s Longcross Film Studios last month and will shoot until the new year.

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE 

“High-end TV drama is driving huge potential for growth in the nations and regions,” Iain Smith, British Film Commission chair and executive producer of Mad Max: Fury Road told Broadcast in August.

No more so than along the M62 corridor linking Leeds with Liverpool. In the summer, Screen Yorkshire allied with property investor Makin Enterprises to convert a former RAF base at Church Fenton into a studio facility, promptly enticing ITV drama Jericho to shoot there.

Pending council approval, Liverpool could soon open its first film studio. The £25m scheme, on the 4.5 acre site of a former Littlewoods warehouse, would create 900 full-time jobs and present a boon for a city that hosts more location shoots than anywhere outside London.

In the middle of this northern renaissance lie the existing facilities of Dock 10 in Salford and The Space Project to the east of Manchester, which housed Big Talk’s Houdini & Doyle for ITV, and Jellylegs Productions’ Sky 1 sitcom Rovers.

“We are already working in collaborative fashion and see each part of our offer combined under the banner of a northern powerhouse to rival London,” says The Space Project chief executive Sue Woodward.

The Space Project is now constructing a new 30,000 sq ft stage, reckoned by Woodward to be the biggest in the north of England. It is part of the wider 6.8 hectare Outer Space, which will include 55,000 sq ft of associated facilities, such as lighting storage, “to encourage the supply chain to come here and support productions”.

Producers of two feature films are reportedly interested in booking the site when it opens next year, and Big Talk is understood to have booked a return from spring 2016 for its revival of ITV comedy drama Cold Feet.

SCOTTISH AMBITION

Scotland may be the most cinematic part of the UK, with castles and dramatic landscapes – and no shortage of talent – but the absence of dedicated large-scale studio space is one saga it could do without.

Holyrood reported this year that Scotland saw just £30m of the £1bn revenue associated with the UK film industry. Scottish Greens culture spokeswoman Zara Kitson cited one example in The Scotsman: Doune Castle stood in for Winterfell in early episodes of Game Of Thrones, but when the show decamped to Belfast around £160m of revenue was lost to Scotland.

With the Scottish government hampered by EU rules about public subsidy, the frontrunner for several proposals tabled this year remains a private-sector initiative located outside Edinburgh. Developer PSL Land submitted plans in May for a film and television complex on an 86-acre site at Straiton, south of the city. It is estimated that the £135m development, expected to open in 2017, will create 600 jobs.

However, speaking to Broadcast in August, Creative Scotland director of film and media Natalie Usher said: “We can’t dictate the speed of progress, but it is positive.”

Challenged by MSPs on the progress of the project a month later, Creative Scotland chief executive Janet Archer couldn’t confirm that a studio would be in place within three years.

Nonetheless, Scottish production spend was a record £40m in 2013-14 and Creative Scotland successfully lobbied for a £1.75m development fund as an incentive to attract more international and UK work.

Recent features to shoot north of the border include Gillies Mackinnon’s remake of Ealing classic Whisky Galore!, Steven Spielberg’s The BFG and Guy Ritchie’s Knights Of The Roundtable: King Arthur. Major TV productions include returners Starz’s Outlander (Left Bank Pictures) and BBC Alba’s Gaelic drama series Bannan, plus BBC1 four-parter One Of Us (Two Brothers Pictures).

SPACE SQUEEZE 

The reopening of Wimbledon Studios in August did little to alleviate the problems caused by increased demand for TV facilities, given the permanent closure of key space at Teddington a year ago and on-going refurbishments at Riverside Studios and Television Centre.

That is, of course, good news for the likes of Fountain Studios in Middle sex, where managing director Mariana Spater reports consistent business through 2015, with bookings including The X Factor and Hungry Bear’s 1000 Heartbeats for ITV, and strong enquiries for early 2016.

Studios are responding to the increased workload not just by adding more stages, but by getting more from the space they already have.

At Elstree, BBC S&PP shot Celebrity Juice and Virtually Famous simultaneously, using multiple LED lighting positions on a grid to speed up turnaround.

“Whereas large-format shows like Strictly Come Dancing and The Voice UK are so massive they have to sit in the space for their entire run, we can record episodes of different panel and quiz shows on the same studio footprint,” says BBC S&PP commercial manager Meryl McLaren.

Celebro Media Studios in central London offers a highly automated set-up with three robotic cameras, “for broadcasters wanting to make a live programme with fewer personnel in a space that typically requires 20 people to operate it,” explains chief executive Wesley Dodd.

Salford’s Dock 10 mooted the possibility of shooting a panel show with locked-off 4K cameras and reframing the high-resolution shots in post to achieve similar cost-savings.

The ability to shoot in one location and vision-switch live or post-produce in another is also opening up options for producers and studios. Umbilically linked to Dock 10 by fast internet, The Space Project offered Dragon’s Den the extra space it needed while allowing the production to post at its previous home in MediaCityUK. “

Extending the fibre network across the M62 corridor, linking stages to post, will boost the entire region’s economy and make it easier for clients to rock up to the north, plug in and play,” says Woodward

2015 Review: technology round-up

Broadcast 

Drones were everywhere, IP foundations were laid and HDR took over from UHD as the industry buzzword - but VR generated the most excitement.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/2015-review-technology-round-up/5097832.article?blocktitle=2015-Review&contentID=44199

IP TRANSITION

The global transition to IP (the internet- based video transport protocol) made significant strides in 2015, underpinning every aspect of production and distribution, and forcing the stalwarts of broadcast manufacturing back to the drawing board.

In January, Imagine Communications (formerly Harris Broadcast) acquired multi-screen video delivery firm RGB Networks as part of a fast-tracked £132m re-engineering of its entire product line.

Quantel Snell also performed a reworking of its routers, switchers and encoders and, in September, rebranded as SAM (Snell Advanced Media) to distance itself from the era of proprietary hardware. Similarly, Avid stepped up its efforts to be more ‘open’ by allowing products from the likes of Apple and Adobe to use its shared storage system.

Avid chief executive and president Louis Hernandez Jr describes the move as “a big statement”.

“Why allow Apple and Adobe to use their NLE [non-linear editing] on Avid’s shared platform? Because the problem today for the industry is not the need for a better editor; it is the economics behind the entire workflow,” he says.

Few concepts illustrate the advantage of moving to IP better than cloud playout. In place of vast banks of machines requiring manual attention, software applications linked to data centres provide broadcasters with the ability to launch channels, insert targeted advertising or localise content as quickly as internet-only rivals.

“Instead of waiting a business-scrippling six months to get a channel to air, we can host processing in the Amazon cloud and launch in seconds,” says Jay Weigner, managing director of software provider Cinegy.

These changes were reflected at IBC in September, where it was calculated that the combined budget of 11 IT giants appearing at the show (among them Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, HP, IBM and Cisco) was five times that of the other 1,690 exhibitors combined.

“Rather than reinvent the wheel, it has become more cost-effective for broadcast companies to ride on the back of the IT industry’s investment in R&D,” says IABM director of technology John Ive.

To overcome the locked-in syndrome that has plagued the broadcast kit industry, vendors joined forces this year to show how video could be sent reliably over IP.

The EBU’s demonstration was a landmark in that regard. It corralled a dozen rival manufacturers to support its Sandbox LiveIP project, which implemented a working IP studio at Belgian broadcaster VRT.

“The IP studio gives us an opportunity to think of new ways of making content,” says EBU director, technology & innovation, Simon Fell. However, he warns that issues of interoperability, standardisation and latency of signals in a live environment are causing customers to hesitate and will need to be ironed out in 2016. “IP studios are in the pre-natal stage at this point.”

UAVS

The regulation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has attracted a lot of column inches and the number of drone-related incidents reported to police increased fourfold in 2015. One operator was fined £1,125 for filming a promotional video of a running event in Hyde Park without consent from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Witnesses testified that the drone flew 10 metres from pedestrians.

Such near misses, some with planes in mid-air, prompted the House of Lords to suggest in March that all commercial operators register their UAVs. In the US, where incidents have also multiplied, a database was mandated in October.

“Drones are becoming such an important creative tool for fi lm-makers in the UK that there needs to be a policy shift to address exactly who is licensed, who is rejected and who will police the industry,” argues film producer Kevin De La Noy.

Not that this is deterring producers from using the technology. UK indie True North bought a drone to capture footage for shows including Channel 4 property series Building The Dream. UAVs have also been used for sequences in ITV soap Emmer dale, and to capture action from the Henley Royal Regatta and golf ’s US Open and PGA tournaments.

Filming in crowded stadiums, however, remains too dangerous. “The risk of something going wrong means that no rights holder has the stomach for it,” says Sunset+Vine digital strategy director James Abraham.

VIRTUAL REALITY

The technology generating the most excitement this year was virtual reality, with experiments in 360-degree video ranging from sports to Strictly Come Dancing, in anticipation of consumer take-off as headgear like Facebook’s Oculus Rift and HTC Vive goes on sale.

In theory, VR gives viewers an unprecedented sense of presence within a story or event, with news coverage an unexpected beneficiary. BBC News Lab, for example, shot VR packages of the migrant crisis in Calais. “You get a voyeuristic sense of being present,” says BBC R&D’s Graham Thomas.

Al Jazeera Media Network, tech incubator for the Qatari broadcaster, filmed VR from Syrian refugee camps and a Cambodian children’s circus. It 3D prints its own rig, which is fitted with 14 GoPros. “By open-sourcing this design, we are encouraging indie producers to give it a shot,” says producer Ousama Itani.

Pay-TV companies are betting that live-streamed or on-demand 360- degree video will shore up or expand audiences. Having trialled the kit on shows like Penny Dreadful, Sky upped its investment in Silicon Valley VR developer Jaunt to £1.08m, part of a £42m round that also included The Walt Disney Company.

Last month, Comcast and Time Warner weighed into a £20m funding round for NextVR, which trialled live VR broad - casts of a Democratic presidential debate and the opening game of the US basketball season.

Comcast also backs AltspaceVR, a start-up that has devised a social media platform for the medium. In November, Google added VR support to YouTube, allowing viewers to upload or stream 360-degree video to be viewed on smartphones using its Google Cardboard headset.

VR production is a work in progress but the first generation of Heath Robinson-like camera contraptions are about to be superseded by a new round of professionally designed models such as Jaunt’s Neo, Google Odyssey and Nokia Ozu.

Augmented reality could also be one to watch in 2016, not least if Microsoft’s Hololens and Google-backed Magic Leap, a means of projecting 3D images directly onto the viewer’s retina, come to market. The latter was due to have been used by Framestore and presenter Brian Cox in a live astrological experience at July’s Manchester International Festival, but the technology wasn’t deemed ready.

HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE

Within a decade, there are predicted to be 1,000 UHD channels worldwide, but 4K pictures are not yet compelling enough for consumers to buy new sets or subscribe to UHD services. The answer, to which the industry turned its attention this year, is to supplement more pixels with higher frame rates for live action, a wider colour palette and, most importantly, higher dynamic range (HDR), which provides a greater contrast between the whitest whites and blackest blacks and delivers a highly visible picture enhancement.

Delegates to IBC’s many sessions on the topic were urged to think of it as akin to the introduction of colour 80 years ago. “It’s hard to believe unless you experience it,” says Pixar’s senior scientist Dominic Glynn, who supervised Inside Out, the first movie to be released in HDR. “We can show the audience colours they’ve never seen before.”

Post-producing content in UHD HDR for theatrical and home entertainment is relatively straightforward. In May, the UHD Blu-Ray specs were finalised, with Sony ready to release the first movies in the format early next year.

But broadcast UHD HDR doesn’t look like it will be resolved for another year. Capturing HDR is easy but there are differences of opinion over encoding the information and piping it to the TV set. The BBC is keen to ensure that a UHD HDR signal can be displayed not only by HDR-enabled TVs but in the vast majority of household sets with the standard dynamic range of HD. Since this approach arguably involves a compromise in quality, others are backing proposals from Dolby and Technicolor.

Lack of a standard prevented BT from including HDR in its UHD channel at launch. In September, BT TV managing director Delia Bushell said the broadcaster would introduce it within two years. Grass Valley, Technicolor and Sony have developed workable HDR acquisition for live broadcast but while outside broadcasters continue to test the technology for BT and Sky, none will invest in the kit until standards are in place.

2015 Review: outside broadcast round-up

Broadcast 

New tools helped make regular live UHD transmissions a reality, while IP networking advances brought remote production to the fore. 

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/2015-review-outside-broadcast-round-up/5097823.article?blocktitle=2015-Review&contentID=44199

AUGMENTED SERVICES

The number of companies solely engaged in supplying outside broadcast trucks continues to shrink, with the largest two players in the market diversifying into associated businesses.

“It is difficult to grow an OB company focused purely on outside broadcasting,” says Euro Media Group managing director Barry Johnstone. “Media management of content services is a key growth area for us.”

EMG, which owns the continent’s largest fleet of trucks, added British links expert Broadcast RF to its roster in May and, more significantly, French second-screen specialist Netco in September. Netco helped to deliver the mobile app and web player for the Fifa World Cup 2014 and, in March, inked a partnership with sports media service company Deltatre to offer a similar set of services to the wider sports broadcast market.

Rival NEP Visions was even busier on the acquisitions front. A year ago, the US group landed Dutch LED screen rental firm Faber Audiovisuals; in January, it added Irish post-production and OB provider Screen Scene; in March, it bought Swedish LED screen and mobile facility provider Mediatec Group; and in May, it swooped for Germany’s RecordLab and Belgium’s full-service facility Outside Broadcast.

Then, in June, it snapped up the Nether lands’ Consolidated Media Industries, which includes remote production systems and studios.

Visions was able to call on these new assets to cushion the loss of equipment when a fire destroyed its Bracknell HQ (pictured) last month.

“If companies don’t have a disaster recovery plan, they should get one, and if they have one, they should revisit it,” advises NEP major events director Brian Clark.

WORKFLOWS

The modus operandi of live event broadcasting is in transition, as IPbased transport, cloud collaboration and faster broadband links are making centralised, remote production feasible. While this has budget-saving potential for producers able to send fewer crew to venues, it may not be editorially desirable for the most prestigious occasions.

In any case, the technology has not yet matured enough for broadcasters to risk more than occasional elements of production.

The largest and highest-profile OB of the year was the Rugby World Cup (11.6 million viewers for England v Wales on ITV was the largest rugby audience in the UK since the 2007 final). The action was captured by five trucks from Arena, with eight scanners from CTV, NEP Visions and Telegenic servicing the host feed. The RFU adopted a conservative approach to technology. No 4K footage of the tournament was captured, even for archive. However, an IP network was established to route comms, match data and Hawkeye angles for the Television Match Official (TMO) back to the International Broadcast Centre at Stockley Park. TMO decisions, foreign-language graphics and press conference translations were all performed remotely.

Meanwhile, ITN Productions emerged as a significant new player in sports production. It set up a half-way house between traditional and future OB workflows to deliver Channel 5’s Football League coverage.

In a break from the past, feeds from trucks at each ground were issued over ADI’s fibre network to ITN in London, removing tape entirely and speeding up turnaround.

ITN wants to base all production, including camera control and direction, either at Gray’s Inn Road or at a dedicated data centre, potentially as early as the 2016-17 season.

“If we can deliver remote production in a reliable and cost-effective way, we could produce more multi-camera coverage from more stadiums, rather than the single-camera coverage of the majority of the games,” explains ITN chief technology officer Bevan Gibson.

IP DELIVERY 

The cost-slashing advantages of routing live events over IP rather than satellite were graphically illustrated during the 7 May general election. The BBC, Sky and ITV employed varying degrees of IP delivery to enhance coverage from hard-to-access sites. Sky News was the most ambitious, sending 150 live streams of declaration results from LiveU cellular backpacks carried by student stringers back to its gallery in Osterley and onto YouTube.

“We considered doing 450 but thought that was too much of a stretch this time,” says Sky news technology development executive Chris Smith.

By 2020, it should be possible to stream all 650 parliamentary seats live online. However, warns BBC political programmes managing editor Sam Woodhouse: “A declaration lasts three minutes. Even if you broadcast them back to back it would take 32 hours, so there’s no prospect of getting even half of them on TV.”

LIVE ULTRA HD

There was speculation over Ultra HD live channels at the beginning of the year but it was not until August that BT broke cover with Europe’s first 4K channel. BT Sport Ultra HD kicked off with the Community Shield final between Arsenal and Chelsea.

“We’ve done about 30 UHD jobs in four months for BT, having done about three before August. So for us, UHD OB is a mainstream operation,” says Dan McDonnell, managing director of BT’s outside broadcast partner Timeline TV. “We’re doing at least one UHD OB a week. The biggest was the MotoGP at Silver stone in August, where we had 19 4K cameras including two 4K radio cameras.”

All eyes will be on Sky in 2016 as it swaps out existing set-top boxes for its UHD-tuned Sky Q unit. The broadcaster will want to make sure the market and the production technology are aligned before launching into UHD, having learned lessons from the 3D channel it quietly closed in June.

4K WORKFLOW

The technology to produce 4K live has moved from workarounds to a fully-fledged equipment chain. One significant development is the introduction by several major manufacturers of systems cameras carrying 2/3-inch chips, rather than large-format single sensors more suited for cinema. Long called for by OB firms, the 2/3-inch cameras allow outside broadcasters to continue to use their existing inventory of zoomable lenses, which maintain the characteristic depth of field of sports action.

Sony HDC-4300s were used for the 4K production of the Champions League Final in June and selected by Timeline to record BT Sport’s UHD output.

“You can now do 80% of a normal HD OB in UHD,” says McDonnell. “The cameras, lenses, matrix and vision mixers all slot into production very well, but items around the edge, like radio cams and super slow-motion, are still catching up.”

4K wireless camcorder solutions for touchline camera work are emerging. Broadcast RF married a Sony F55 with its own 4KRF system to claim the first UHD radio camera system for hire, based on a new HEVC/H.265 encoder from Vislink. BBC R&D’s design uses multiple-input/multiple-output techniques to halve the bandwidth required for UHD, and therefore reduce the cost for news and sports gathering.

“The big challenge is how to store and move content offsite, especially when you factor in high frame rates that increase the data, and to manage the data so that in future you can play it back,” says Clark.

8K ADVANCES

Just as 4K capture is already used by broadcasters to zoom into and resize pictures for HD output, so 8K cameras could soon be used for 4K output.

“One idea is to generate different viewpoints from a live 8K feed at a soccer match to give a viewer the sense of being a fan in a stadium,” Discovery chief technology officer John Honeycutt declared at IBC. “Using data at this volume, you are going far beyond a pretty picture and giving audiences real engagement.”

Discovery took full ownership of Eurosport in July (buying TF1 Group’s 49% stake for £345m), a month after winning European TV rights for the Olympic Games in a £922m four-year deal from 2018.

Japanese broadcaster NHK tested its 8K 22.2 surround-sound Super HiVision format at the Fifa Women’s World Cup this summer and plans to do the same at Super Bowl 50 in February. Hitachi and Ikegami launched 8K studio and handheld cameras but development is not confined to Japan. RED and Canon announced 8K cinestyle shooters; SAM’s Rio is sold as an 8K finishing platform; and Cinegy, V-Nova and Spin Digital demonstrated means of compressing the data into manageable sizes.

At IBC, NHK challenged visitors to examine a 12-inch OLED display replaying 8K pictures with a magnifying glass to spot any pixels. None of them could.

2015 Review: post-production round-up

Broadcast 

Post houses were in positive mood, with many taking on additional space, while consolidation continued in the VFX sector and the DPP set out its roadmap. http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/2015-review-post-production-round-up/5097824.article?blocktitle=2015-Review&contentID=44199

FACILITY GROWTH

The post community suffered fewer casualties than usual this year. One of the few facilities to get into difficulties was VTR North, which was sold in a pre-pack administration deal in November.

Signs of increased confidence in the sector could be read in the dramatic expansion at a number of broadcast facilities, although as UK Screen chief executive Sarah Mackey points out: “It’s not clear whether this is indicative of an industry in rude health, of one polarising between extremes, or of a zero-sum game.”

The Farm’s decision to exit Soho Square, its home since opening in 1998, was prompted by the landlord’s desire for redevelopment, but it gave the group a chance to relocate its headquarters into a space more than four times larger.

The 60-suite Newman Street building opens in January and will be linked to The Farm’s three other Soho facilities, plus operations in Manchester, Bristol and LA.

In September, Evolutions opened a £2m, 30-suite facility in Berwick Street to cater for overspill from its Sheraton Street and Great Pulteney Street sites, while Halo launched a 4K finishing facility opposite its Noel Street base, its fifth site in central London.

The summer also saw Manchester’s Flix move into a new £1m post operation at MediaCityUK, its second in Salford and fourth in the Manchester area.

Envy added real estate in the form of a Baselight, 15 offlines, a new studio and a Symphony, in part to post close-to-air Gogglebox. It is prepping the launch of another building, the firm’s sixth, into which it will move shortform work by June 2016.

DPP DIGITAL ROADMAP

Having devised and supervised implementation of a common file delivery standard in October 2014, the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) became a fee-paying organisation.

The controversial proposal was greeted with anger from some facilities, which complained that they had already borne the brunt of technological risk and provided valuable input to get the DPP’s scheme working. Many were also worried that a new DPP business model might confer competitive advantage to paying ‘partners’.

The DPP quickly dropped a proposal to introduce certification for post firms, but became a limited company and pressed ahead with charges, which vary from £1,000 to £4,000, depending on a facility’s turnover. By the end of November, it had enticed 48 paying members, but only six post firms.

“We have more paying members than anticipated by this stage,” says DPP managing director Mark Harrison. “The aim is to create a community that can sustain itself. The primary benefit is that a member gets to be part of an organisation that is gathering insight and shaping change into how we can create opportunities around digital production and distribution.”

The DPP’s 2016 roadmap includes a UHD standard deliverable; work with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on a common international programme mastering format; and, most intriguingly, exploration of internet-based production and distribution tools.

“We feel we are entering the biggest moment of potential change in how programmes are made for a decade,” says Harrison. “Production, even of high-profile, long-form programming, might involve web-based editing, cloud storage and finishing sourced from non-geo-specific services that might be identified and bought through a Go Compare-style web portal. The question is how far away this is.”

VFX CONSOLIDATION

Several facilities changed hands this year. Prime Focus UK re-emerged as Blue 2.0 in May and Molinare captured audio boutique Hackenbacker in July. But the biggest deal by some margin was Technicolor’s £190m swoop for The Mill.

Robin Shenfield co-founded the VFX house in 1990 and remains as chief executive, overseeing 800 employees across London, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

“Brands and advertisers are moving towards storytelling, whether that’s linear, directly through film or TV, or in segmented short moments,” says Tim Sarnoff, The Mill’s president, production services.

He points to virtual reality as a key market into which The Mill’s creative talent plays. “Everyone is underestimating how big VR is going to be,” he says. “And everyone is overestimating the speed at which it will happen. If you invest heavily in VR expecting a return tomorrow, you will be disappointed. But there is no scenario in which VR isn’t going to become a primary business line.”

Technicolor already owns London VFX studio MPC, Mr. X in Toronto and Mikros Image in Paris, and has the economy of scale it believes necessary to survive in VFX. It is not alone: in 2014, Double Negative merged with the VFX division of Prime Focus, and in July this year, Cinesite added Vancouver’s Image Engine, contributor of VFX for Jurassic World, to the CG feature animation facility it recently opened in Montreal, bringing 525 artists under one roof.

“A number of VFX facilities have not run their business well,” says Sarnoff of the pressures forcing this consolidation. “They have fooled people into thinking that they can produce good work at less than cost, and it squeezes those of us who know that you can’t make good work or maintain a healthy business by slashing budgets. Our philosophy is to create the highest-quality content in film, animation, TV and commercials – and we believe that comes with a premium.”

BBC CHARTER REVIEW: THE IMPACT ON POST

The impact of Charter Review on the BBC was the focus of attention at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in August and the RTS Cambridge Convention in September. It was left to UK Screen to register the potential longer-term impact of the process on the postproduction sector.

The facilities trade body took up the cause, responding to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and BBC Trust consultations in October, and arguing that the estimated 10% reduction in BBC funding would “hit facilities very hard”.

Reduced spending

It calculated that this could result in an annual £35m reduction in spend on post – equivalent to the total annual income of 10-15 boutique facilities. It also highlighted that post-production companies operate on very tight margins, while at the same time taking on significant risk in terms of investment in technology and skills development.

“For us, there has to be some element of ring-fencing around programme spend,” says UK Screen chief executive Sarah Mackey. “It’s not just a case of salami-slicing 10%; it’s the impact on post within individual programme budgets as well. For post, there’s a real risk that the actual cost burden will be higher.”

UK Screen’s submission to the DCMS claimed the cuts risked “causing instability in the sector as companies fail and jobs are lost”.

It also voiced concerns about the lack of detail currently available on the BBC’s plans for its commercial production business BBC Studios.

“There needs to be far greater consultation and transparency over this with all sectors, not just production,” says Mackey, citing the BBC’s in-house factual village and regional quotas as past examples of where the impact on independent post was examined only retrospectively.

“I don’t want to see more ‘inadvertent consequences’ resulting from a lack of any meaningful market impact assessment.”

Envy, which is not a UK Screen member, is less concerned. “If the cuts hit factual and light entertainment shows, that’s a worry, but I don’t believe the headline shows will be affected,” says managing director Dave Cadle.

Tips and tools for capturing the world in 360 degrees

Broadcast 

With the market for VR headsets expected to take off over the next five years, the pressure is on producers to understand how to tell stories in 360 degrees.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/tips-and-tools-for-capturing-the-world-in-360-degrees/5097703.article?blocktitle=Production-Feature&contentID=1169

“Think spherically,” is the advice from BBC R&D immersive and interactive content section leader Graham Thomas, whose team helped the broadcaster shoot news items, concerts and Strictly Come Dancing in VR.

“Since VR is frameless, there’s no convenient space in which to conceal all the paraphernalia of a shoot,” he says.

There are dozens of recording systems, ranging from the £260 360fly, which captures panoramas from a single lens, to rigs costing more than £100,000 that are aimed at Hollywood productions (see below for eight of the latest VR cameras and rigs).

But much of the difficulty of shooting 360-degree video is in getting the camera geometry right and syncing the frames and exposure.

“Always work back from the end result,” advises Solomon Rogers, founder of Rewind, which produced the Strictly VR experience.

“Resolution of the deliverable is one parameter. After that, you can work out what technical specifications you need to deliver on the required production value.

“Then it’s about the physical shape of the camera/rig. The cost of one over another is no determinant of quality.”

Many of the issues revolve around the process of digitally stitching together multiple videos.

“The best VR DPs are those from a post-production and compositing background,” says Lewis Smithingham, a cinematographer whose VR work includes a Discovery documentary.

“By understanding where the stitching lines might be, you can hide things [like lighting sources] on set and judge whether things can be fixed in post.”

SHOOTING VR: THINGS TO CONSIDER

Rig size

The greater the distance between the lenses, the greater the parallax, which means it will be harder to create a smooth video stitch in post.

In theory, rigs with smaller cameras, like GoPros, will make stitching easier than would be possible with larger cameras because the cameras are positioned more tightly together.

The trade-off is that GoPro sensors are not as high quality, so you have to decide whether sensor performance or post-production is more critical to your production or budget.

Camera alignment

The angle at which cameras are mounted has a bearing on output.

In some instances, stitching will be along the horizontal axis, while with others it will be vertical. Smithingham says that vertical is better for close-up work: “If the camera is positioned in a vertical orientation, I can centre subjects and know that they are not in the middle of a stitching line.”

Deadspots

Some systems claim to capture 360-degree video even though the manner in which the cameras are arrayed means either a top angle, a bottom or both may be missing. Google Odyssey is one of these.

This is not a problem and can even be desirable, because the deadspots can be fixed in post-production by painting plates from other areas of the video.

Resolution

The most common deliverable will be an equirectangular single video fi e, which has all the camera views joined together for editing on a platform like Adobe Premiere.

This will typically be 4K, although this resolution won’t be seen on small mobile phone screens.

For this reason, Smithingham says resolution will not be as important as colour depth or the rig’s basic stability until screen resolutions improve.

Shutter and frame rate

Ensures that the footage is optimally aligned and helps prevent visible stitching in the finished panoramic “A high frame is far better for a more naturalistic feel,” says Rewind’s Rogers, who recommends 50p/60p as minimum.

Power options

Having loads of cabling from the back of your rig will just add to the cost of rotoscoping in post,” advises Smithingham. “Any system with an internal battery pack will be a bonus.”

Use one camera

In a non-live, controlled environment, it can make sense to shoot single camera in one direction, then repeat in a different direction.

Two image sets may be enough to render 360-degree video when using wide-angle lenses. This means you can use larger sensor cameras with less of the stitching headache of multi-cam arrangements.

360 degrees in 3D

There is an argument that shooting 220 degrees rather than the full 360 is sufficient since that field of view mimics our own.

This is particularly true of a live event, where we are least likely to want to look behind us and away from the action.

Some systems shoot 360 in 3D, but achieving quality is not easy.

“Stereo 360 has all the errors of non-stereo VR multiplied by two,” says Rogers.

Monitoring

Not having a viewfinder, or being allowed to stand behind the camera, can be tricky. “How do you understand whether shots are correctly exposed?” asks BBC R&D’s Thomas.

GoPro’s app enables users to stream images from each individual camera. There are also solutions (Rewind, Radiant, NextVR, Nokia) that stitch the output in real-time for on-set monitoring or, potentially, live broadcast.

“The question is why you’d want to monitor VR because there’s no frame,” says Rogers. “The camera shoots everything around it.”

Smithingham agrees: “Trust the DP to do his or her job. After all, that’s what used to happen in the days of classic cinema.”

Google Odyssey

The 16-sensor cylindrical GoPro array is designed to work exclusively with Google’s VR platform, Jump. The design ensures that four of its 16 cameras are focused on one data point at any time so it can triangulate 3D video.

Specific metadata synchronised with the raw video is uploaded to Assembler, Google’s cloud-based processor, to aid stitching conversion.

Films can be published direct to YouTube or sent back to users for further artistic refinements. If you don’t fancy shelling out £10,000 to buy the Odyssey (which is limited to selected partners), Google provides free schematics for DIY 3D printing.

Headcase Cinema Camera

“The world’s highest-quality VR system,” according to maker Headcase, comprises 17 Codex Action Cams each housing a 2-3-inch chip with global shutter to capture 12-bit HD pictures with dynamic range of 11 stops.

The cameras are synchronised with common timecode and metadata to ease digital stitching. It’s available for hire through LA-based Radiant Images.

Radiant also offers a patent-pending rig that sits on a performer’s shoulders and rings 17 cameras around their head.

The Mobius provides 360-degree perspectives where the viewer is able to see the hands, arms and body of the performer. A freefall parachutist and pilot flying a fighter plane have filmed tests wearing it.

Sphericam

On sale from December, this Kickstarter- funded project arrays six 4K imagers with 90-degree wide-angle lenses and a global shutter into a lightweight (400g) Rubix Cube-style mould.

Bespoke stitching software unravels the images into navigable video in real-time. The £1,500 device will output 360 degrees at 60fps 4K resolution and is wi-fi -enabled, so could be used for live streaming.

Jaunt Neo

With the goal of creating high-end or ‘cinematic VR’, Jaunt has eschewed off-the-shelf solutions to develop a rig from scratch.

Detailed specs are still under wraps and Jaunt will only rent it to production partners such as Sky, which has invested more than £1m.

What is known is that Neo houses 16 large sensors capable of low-light performance, therefore reducing the need for artificial light sources.

It has an internal battery to remove cabling and a global shutter mechanism. Video can be shot in 3D using light-field, a technique that produces a stereo effect in post using depth maps.

There are two models: one for indoor events such as sport, the other for outdoors. The output is claimed to be up to 8K resolution per eye.

Freedom 360

Freedom 360 makes a variety of compact rigs for GoPros. Among them, the F360 Broadcaster is optimised for live streaming with a slightly limited 360-degree x 140-degree view.

The F360 Explorer (£440–£1,120) captures 360-degree × 180-degree from six GoPros in a mount which accommodates each camera’s waterproof housing for wet (not underwater) scenarios.

A BBC news team with the broadcaster’s R&D division used the rig to capture footage of a Calais migrant camp.

Nokia Ozo

Shipping at Christmas, Nokia’s design has been backed by Jaunt for production of cinematic VR.

The specifications claim it captures 3D 360-degree video from eight synchronised global shutter sensors along with three-dimensional audio.

Targeting Hollywood producers, the advantage of this system – which is expected to cost more than £70,000 – is its ability to shoot in real-time with software that enables live monitoring.

Nokia says Ozo will render lower resolution video for playback in just a few minutes.

360 Heros 3DH3Pro12H

360Heros is another popular maker of GoPro VR mounts. Some are intended for operation on drones; others can be worn by athletes.

As the mount, which costs £650, is 3D printed from one piece of nylon, it requires no screws.

The 3DH3Pro12H positions 12 GoPros in a horizontal orientation that captures 3D video at 140 degrees and 2D video on the top and bottom at 40 degrees.

This configuration outputs an 8K image and permits a shooting distance of four feet. The 3DH3Pro14H incorporates 14 GoPros to deliver full 360 video but requires a greater distance of six to seven feet from objects to avoid parallax issues.

360Heros also markets file management tool 360CamMan, which helps organise the data into left and right eye sets.

Panorics PX3

The Moscow-founded company’s 360-degree camera shoots spherical video for VR applications and can also live-stream footage over wi-fi.

It promises to capture 360- degree x 180-degree full sphere images at 3,000 x 1,500px resolution from three image sensors.

The company has also developed a holder and optical system that houses three GoPro Hero 4 cameras as an “affordable solution” for shooting spherical video at 5,800 x 2,580px resolution.

Panorics will begin taking orders for the PX3 in December, with the camera due to ship towards the beginning of 2016. At pre-order stage, it is priced at $2,000 (£1,320), rising to around $3,500 (£2,300).

Resistance Is Futile: How Broadcast and Cable Are Embracing IP

StreamingMedia Europe 

Broadcast is moving to an IP-first, software-defined video infrastructure, and in the process reducing costs and creating new editorial opportunities

http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Resistance-Is-Futile-How-Broadcast-and-Cable-Are-Embracing-IP-107879.aspx

While broadcasters are a long way from junking their digital terrestrial antennas, cable networks, and transponder space, they are embracing the internet to reach consumers. BT TV’s move to launch a 4K channel is predicated on its entrenched broadband infrastructure. HBO’s decision to risk severing established ties with cable by launching HBO Now is part of a tidal wave of OTT offerings from traditional media. U.K. satellite pay-TV giant Sky is another. It runs noncontract VOD service NOW TV and mobile offer Sky Go and uses Elemental software to deliver them.

“OTT is mainstream, no question,” says Joe Inzerillo, CTO of MLBAM, which powers HBO’s streaming service. BAM is being spun-off from Major League Baseball in order to take on more OTT contracts.

Broadcasters are moving to compete with the global scale, local reach, and rapid response of Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu. The transition to IP and software-defined video (SDV) infrastructure will eventually see them move from bricks and mortar to cloud-based content suppliers.

BBC CTO Matthew Postgate is responsible for changing the fabric of the corporation so fundamentally that the vision is for it to become a “datacaster,” not a broadcaster.

“Digital first is about what it feels like to work in a data-driven organization which competes with Netflix or Amazon in content,” Postgate says. “It’s about swapping out the network across all of our bureau to be more IP-centered. It’s about introducing more commodity IT equipment. All the time we are driving down cost and giving editorial more options.”

New Efficiencies and Opportunities

Outsourcing operational processes to private data centers offers broadcasters not just capex and real estate cost savings, but the strategic ability to flex up or down to launch new ventures, respond to short-term demand spikes with pop-up channels (e.g., around major sporting events), and change aspects of channels in real time. The goal is to spin up a channel in hours, not months, as is currently the case.

With processing, storage, and networking infrastructure as pooled resources rather than dedicated independent infrastructures, a software as a service (SaaS) model delivers economies of scale and replaces manual workflow with automation.

Virtualization removes the geographic dependencies that have previously limited video playout. No longer reliant on cost-prohibitive satellite bandwidth, broadcasters can achieve regionalization, localization, and even hyperlocalization of channel content. While internet-based media organizations have incredible opportunities to inject targeted advertising into programming, this is not yet the case for broadcast. That could change with IP.

Instead of storing assets on-prem in proprietary tape archives, a cloud-based approach enables broadcasters to alter content on demand and reformat it far more effectively to compete for VOD and multiscreen delivery.

Current versioning workflows can involve multiple organizations, located in different parts of the world. A software-defined network located in the cloud unites these processes and links ad sales, scheduling, traffic management, and video servers into a single workflow accessed from desktop browsers.

This vision has been in the works for over a decade. Nonlinear editing packages were untethered from turnkey computing hardware in the late ‘90s. The first file-based (XDCAM) camcorders arrived in 2003. The migration from tape to server-based systems continued with the proliferation of file-based workflows that now embrace all aspects of production.

Playout is becoming part of the equation. Tata Communications has just launched a global cloud-based playout service using a new software-only system from PlayBox Technologies called CloudAir. Its design includes the array of traditional on-prem-based hardware functions (ingest, source transcoding, quality control, MAM, production, post-production, subtitling, scheduling, and transmission) and can be operated in automated mode with the option of making schedule alterations or live inserts at any time in response to late-breaking news.

“The CloudAir platform is one of the most exciting new developments in broadcasting since the transition from tape-based to file-based content management and playout,” says Don Ash, managing partner at PlayBox Technologies. “This is a real game changer, with the potential to empower literally thousands of new program streams, quickly, easily, and very affordably.”

IP for transporting and contributing live video is well-established among broadcasters. News departments increasingly use IP to deliver feeds from more places than was possible with costly outside broadcast equipment.

During the U.K.’s May general election, Sky News claimed a Guinness World Record for contributing 138 concurrent live feeds from various constituencies over LiveU’s cloud to the web. (Bear in mind there are 650 parliamentary constituencies, so there’s some way to go.)

The BBC is also ramping its use of IP to contribute feeds from live events such as the Glastonbury Festival, increasing the available coverage. So IP has been part of the media value chain for some time, but not implemented in end-to-end workflows.

“When properly implemented and managed, IP technologies for media distribution match the quality and latency standards required by the broadcasting industry,” says Nicolas Bourdan, senior vice president of marketing at EVS, which makes servers for live production. “Early adopters like those in sports, with the financial means and the need for ultra-fast and responsive live remote production, are paving the way for others. But all-IP workflows are still quite a few years off. It’s just not practical at this point for most broadcasters.”

Roadblocks to Adoption

There are many reasons for this, including doubts about the triple-9s reliability of signals sent over IP, lack of interoperability between vendor systems, and a reluctance to invest until standards for 4K over IP are settled. Many broadcasters have only just migrated to file from tape, and don’t have the funds to make another leap yet. Some argue that the biggest source of inertia is the cultural impact of change.

There’s a general feeling that IP technologies need to mature, or that certain areas are more mature than others. In the former camp are live production workflows from studios or venues, which is solidly based on coaxial copper cables and serial digital interface, though heavyweight broadcast kit vendors, such as Sony and Grass Valley, are launching cameras, vision mixers (switchers), and routers with IP connectors to future-proof investment.

The heart of the matter is whether trust in the deterministic, virtually foolproof signal integrity of SDI can be matched by IP. Will resolutions, frame rates, and audio be synchronized all of the time? And how is control over IP to be managed and monitored by broadcast engineers unschooled in IT?

“IP networks were never intended for video,” says Alexander Sandstrom, strategic product manager at Net Insight. “The brittle, time-sensitive nature of video does not play well with the proven but lossy nature of IP—even less so on shared and unmanaged networks like the internet. The varying delay and constant packet loss of the internet play havoc with every video stream traversing it unprotected.”

Live production is fraught with on-the-fly changes—a late breaking news story with live link via satellite, for instance, or a camera alteration at a track and field event. The risk of on-air black holes or a missing commercial makes for cautious adoption.

Depending on which vendor you believe, real-time IP switching is either not yet possible, or already happening. Snell Advanced Media (formerly Quantel Snell) has reservations. “The control systems don’t [yet] exist,” says head of product marketing Tim Felstead. “Where SDI routers were very reliable with straightforward verification of what was happening, IP systems are more opaque. This creates a lack of confidence.”

Imagine Communications management, on the other hand, talks with certainty and points to perhaps the most high-profile reference site for broadcast over IP in the world just now, that of Disney ABC, which just happens to be based on Imagine products.

“Disney is showing the unlimited possibilities that virtualizing part or all of a network in the cloud can bring to this industry,” says Imagine CEO Charlie Vogt. “A lot of folks don’t realize Disney ABC is doing virtualized playout and automation for live linear programming.” Disney is not, however, producing live event coverage over IP.

Other first movers that are producing live sports from site to studio (though not necessarily from camera to mobile facility) include Pac-12 Networks, which uses T-VIPS and Nevion links to transmit talkback and telemetry to and from sports venues up to 2500km away, and ESPN’s Digital Center 2, which opened November 2014 built around a J2000-based Evertz router.

“The key is to migrate to IP at a [broadcaster’s] own pace and ensure they have the ability to evolve in a hybrid SDI-IP infrastructure,” Vogt says. “Many have made a huge investment in baseband and SDI. We need to help them to migrate to enable their new business models.”

Imagine’s key technology is the Magellan SDN Orchestrator, which provides control of all the company’s hybrid IP and baseband products. “The whole concept of a hybrid architecture is to have everything look and feel like a router because the operator needs to walk up to a control surface and do everything they need to in their day to day business,” says product manager Paul Greene. “They need to select the destination and the source and activate the file. Whether it’s in an IP or baseband domain—whether it’s HD or Ultra HD—the control system abstracts the original function from the underlying technology to make it all very familiar.”

Interoperability Is Key

This speaks to the element of change management that may be making some broadcasters risk-averse. CTOs are wary of ripping out a working SDI infrastructure and replacing it with a technology for which new expertise is required.

Moving into the unknown—or lesser known— is always fraught with challenges, but often the perception outweighs the actual risks,” Bourdan says. “IP requires a different mindset and significantly, a different skill set, from the engineers working with it. Getting over the hump to deploy and train will be the most difficult.”

SMPTE standard 2022-6 goes some way to address this. It is devised to mirror SDI by synching video over IP in a real-time environment, but it does not unlock the full potential of IP by offering seamless switching between AV and metadata streams. SMPTE and others are working on this, but a new standard is not likely until mid-to-late 2016.

Matters become even more complicated when it comes to 4K. While many greenfield facilities or new outside broadcast scanners are being planned with an IP routing core, some companies are holding out until 4K-over-IP standards (such as working with HDR) are agreed upon.

Working in 4K also requires low-latency compression. Due to the different compression schemes available (TICO Alliance, JPEG2000, open source VC2, Sony’s LLVC and, possibly, V-Nova’s Perseus), this too will require a very open approach between vendors.

However, technology is moving extremely quickly. Pipes of 40GbE and 100GbE are already emerging and Imagine is already testing them internally. Costs are high, but Moore’s Law dictates that capacity will expand while costs decrease.

Meanwhile, there are several demonstrations of live IP showcasing cross-vendor solutions to the IP live puzzle. Systems integrator Guardhouse Broadcast has devised a remote production workflow linking solutions from Hitachi, Riedel, and EVS. The EBU has corralled potential rivals to support its Sandbox LiveIP project, implemented an IP studio at Belgium broadcaster VRT. Participants include Axon EVS, Genelec, Grass Valley, Nevion, Trilogy, and Tektronix.

“Interoperability is the key, and adhering to industry standards is important to ensuring success,” says Ewan Johnston, sales director at intercoms vendor Trilogy. “Customers will need to choose between those vendors who provide standards-based systems, but who really still want to deliver proprietary systems, and those who genuinely embrace the standards-based approach and have open systems in their corporate DNA.”

Gartner predicts that the SDV market will top $10 billion by 2018. It concludes that the benefits of software that have pervaded the IT industry are about to have the same impact on the video industry. Elemental Technologies points out that there will be 15 billion to 20 billion IP-connected screens in use in the next 5 years, a factor that CEO Sam Blackman says “exposes the fact that dedicated hardware can no longer keep pace with changing market dynamics.”

Yet the broadcast industry is inherently conservative. It is also a fraction of the size of the IT market. Sony is only ending production of VTRs this year. According to Futuresource Consulting, 13 percent of professionals still use tape.

“Some organizations are still reliant on tape for production, never mind that a lot of their archive still resides on analog tape,” says Adam Fry, deputy VP of Sony Professional, which is on a drive to market the digitization solutions of storage specialist Memnon, which it acquired earlier this year.

Dependent on public money at a time of belt tightening, the BBC is under economic constraint. “We take strategic opportunities to invest as [areas] become end of life,” Postgate says. “I think we’ll have a large amount of IP activity in 5 years, but in reality the transition from SDI will take a number of years.”

At this point, the focus is on the economic and business transformational benefits of IP, and the editorial possibilities have barely been explored. Remote production delivers cost benefits and the possibility to carry more angles on an event, opening up more personalised content and coverage of niche news, sports, and other live events.

There’s a more visionary concept, being led by BBC R&D. Object-based broadcasting deconstructs video and audio into component parts, mixing them in real time and reconstituting them in a way that makes best use of the consumer’s device and their viewing context.

“I think the idea is profound and little understood,” Postgate says. “Once you move to object-based broadcasting delivered as assets to a smart home connected to the internet of things there are huge creative opportunities and fundamental questions about what role a media organization plays.”

BT’s Hybrid SDI to IP Ultra HD Launch

U.K. telco BT launched Europe’s first live Ultra HD channel on Aug. 2, based on a distribution infrastructure several steps ahead of the technology used in production.

The content is mainly live sports transported over the telco’s Infinity branded fibre-optic broadband to U.K. homes that have upgraded to the package and which own a Ultra HD TV. BT paid £897 million (about $1.3 billion) for exclusive 2015-2018 UEFA Champions League rights and is paying £7.6 million (about $11.83 million) every time it airs an English Premier League game.

This distribution network gives BT first mover advantage over its satellite-based pay TV rival Sky, which (at time of writing) has yet to announce a 4K service. Its BT Sport TV channels are available in more than 5.2 million homes.

However, BT refuses to put a figure on the required bitrates suitable to view its Ultra HD channel and the “Ultra HD” branding disguises the its true nature to a degree.

The resolution might be 4K, but other attributes associated with an Ultra HD spec are not currently available. The frame rate is 50p, with tests being made to increase this up to 100p over time. More significantly, the color space is rec.709, not rec.2020 of Ultra HD. It is not carrying High Dynamic Range, although once again tests to incorporate HDR along the camera chain to final display are being conducted by BT’s outside broadcast suppliers.

This is no criticism of BT, which has pioneered a well-received product in a short period of time, and there’s no doubt that the telco-turned-broadcaster will continue to push the bar.

Fact is, to achieve first mover status, it has compromised on production because the technology is not ready. The outside broadcast production to studio is a standard workflow, albeit as a 3G-SDI chain.

“IP live is not yet ready,” BT Sport COO Jamie Hindaugh says. “We are looking at IP and attributes like HDR, and how that integrates into 4K. Our focus is on being trailblazers and staying out in front.”

BT commissioned Timeline TV to build a mobile facility for its 4K production. This includes IP-ready kits such as a Snell Advanced Media Kahuna vision mixer, Snell Advanced Media Sirius router, and Sony 4300 two-thirds-inch systems cameras that carry an IP interface.

A prime economic consideration for all outside broadcasters and their customers is that facilities and workflow need to accommodate HD and 4K production simultaneously.

It’s still unclear how this is achieved editorially. As with 3D broadcasting, 4K live requires fewer camera angles and fewer cuts because of the higher fidelity immersion, so a way must be found of maintaining the production values of multi-camera HD from a largely 4K original. This includes picture stitching two or more 4K cameras and zooming into the image to take HD cut outs or reframing a single 4K image for HD.

Playout is outsourced to Ericsson-owned Red Bee Media and handled in a traditional way. Red Bee CTO Steve Plunkett is an advocate of playout in the cloud, but hasn’t taken Red Bee down that route yet.

“The components of a broadcast publishing chain are evolving towards deployment in the cloud and public cloud environments are also offering more deterministic performance than previously,” he says. “Both seem to be on a path of convergence, which is a good thing. The true broadcast cloud seems to be on the horizon, but its distance is not yet clear.”

This article appears in the November/December 2015 issue of Streaming Media magazine as “Resistance Is Futile.”