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