Online football-focused publisher Dugout expands to include leagues and federations

SVG Europe

Egypt is the number one country on social media for football. Bayern Munich has more Egyptian followers than Germans. It’s that type of insight which has persuaded dozens of the world’s leading soccer clubs to join Dugout, a digital publishing platform focused on football.
http://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/online-football-focused-publisher-dugout-expands-to-include-leagues-and-federations/
“Data is crucial to sports teams and sponsors,” says president and co-founder Elliot Richardson. “Without it and their spend is blind.”
Over 8 million users have joined the platform generating 13 million page views of lifestyle and behind-the-scenes access since the launch of Dugout.com at the end of November and release of an app in March.
A total of 42 clubs are on board, each with their own page on the site. The list includes A.C. Milan, Arsenal, Monaco, Barcelona, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, PSG, Corinthians Paulista and Real Madrid. Over 150 players have pages as well, including Gareth Bale, Alexis Sanchez and Neymar – even Pele.
Another 33 clubs are pending signature and Richardson reveals that three major European leagues and one European national federation are also poised to announce.
Players and clubs are ‘publishers’ according to Dugout – as are actual publishers like a broadcaster. Sky Sports has been involved for a while and is the seventh largest publisher on the site.
Senior executives of seven clubs – PSG, Bayern, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Juventus and Chelsea – are listed as directors of the UK-based company, but all the clubs are stakeholders, according to Richardson.
While free for users (“audience growth is much more important than monetisation in the initial phases,”) he says, Dugout will target them with advertising and has built its own programmatic ad stack across 21 exchanges.
Former Google and Buzzfeed executive, Kate Burns, has been brought on to drive the commercial side. Dugout is also working with brands including Allianz, Coca Cola and BetVictor to create ad-funded content.
Two examples, Touch and Wall Ball, involved 80 players from 16 clubs. For Touch, players competed to bring under control footballs fired at 80mph. Wallball was an even simpler idea: a competition to kick a ball against a wall using just one foot.
“Both showcase the amount of time we can mobilize with top players to achieve something that clubs couldn’t do themselves,” says Richardson. “We could overlay stats and rebrand elements of the creative, such as the wall, for different brands.
“All the teams are willing to create branded content in collaboration or individually. Dugout can become a central point for branded content. We can create geo-specific and group targeted content.”
In some senses the site would seem to compete with Facebook – but Richardson says part of its attraction is that every piece of social media distributed by its publisher-members also appears on Dugout.
“It creates quantity but we also use algorithms so that some of the content which doesn’t get seen on other platforms gets surfaced,” he says. “Fans will tend to follow just one club Facebook when they actually follow more than one club but don’t want their friends to see it. The fact that we haven’t got user-generated content, it is away from the clutter. We’re a publishing platform with social elements.”
It also has club archive content. Rather than just play this straight out Dugout’s editorial teams are repurposing clips to suit different markets and themes.
In addition, it has hundreds of pieces of exclusive content which it can publish ahead of other platforms. “Clubs and players are contracted to give a minimum amount of content [to us] a month,” he says.

App and Originals
The app includes a wealth of features including the ability for fans to create their own personalised experience by choosing clubs and players to follow and vertical video shot by players on their own phones.
Then there are Dugout Originals – branded content typically which Dugout creates and films. Touch and Wall Ball are examples.
Live streaming seems a logical move for this ambitious venture – but not yet, since it would impinge on the TV contracts of its stakeholders.
“If you go anywhere near live games there are all sorts of problems,” he says. “In any case, we get most traction pre- and post-game – not during being broadcast. We are interested in reaching fans for the other 22 hours of the day.”
That said, Dugout is about to launch live streaming to the site of select club summer tours – footage from drones, of tunnel cams, and other insights in and around the game. A video podcast will launch at the end of June.
It is expanding its languages – currently standing at eight (English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and Bahasa/Indonesian) – and plans to expand content versioning. “Editing content with a different tone or music will resonate more in different territories,” Richardson says.
It uses the Ooyla online video player and is hosted on AWS. The largest number of users are in the UK, followed by the US. 33 percent of users are returning “so we’re getting a good response back”.
“We’re trying to share best practice of what works in terms of content and technically with the clubs,” says Richardson. “We send out regular information about what worked best through social, and what works less well.”
Richardson’s own background is in business and finance rather than sports although he had links with Manchester City at the time of its takeover by Sheikh Mansour and Khaldoon Al Mubarak. Stemming from that experience and another working for Manchester United sponsor AON, he spotted an opportunity over three years ago to cultivate the data which he believed even these top clubs lacked.
“Our research pointed to an incredible overlap of fan bases. I was astonished at how dramatically lacking football clubs were in quality data to better engage their fanbase.”
Richardson saw a less ‘tribal’ fan emerging throughout global football. Fans now follow an average of 4.6 teams. Barcelona and Real Madrid are the seventh and eight most supported teams in the UK, he says.
“TV rights deals have created a huge fanbase for soccer clubs that may never visit the particular stadium or visit the team in person,” he says. “There are people growing up in Asia and even the U.S., who don’t necessarily have a particular club or team, but are starting to follow multiple teams in different leagues.”
It’s also interesting he says that younger people may learn about players through a computer game like FIFA, he says, and follow these players throughout their careers.
The research also found that fans now ‘support’ individual players, meaning that these stars help grow the global fan base of every team they play for during their career.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, for example, began his career in Malmo and went to some of the biggest teams in the world. Fans have stayed attached to him and they naturally pick up an affinity to the club he goes to play for. There’s no question that the fans follow the players everywhere. And those players and clubs are benefiting from each other’s social media reach.”
Is the Dugout model applicable to other sports? “It’s all about scale,” he says. “We have a lot of road left for us to run. We’ve got the major teams in Europe and Latin America but the game is global. We’ve enough on our plate with football for the next six months at least

DAI: The Future of ad delivery

Broadcast

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Dynamic Ad Insertion is shifting from client to server side as content owners seek to better monetize online video delivery.

The concept of Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) has been around for several years and is widely considered the future method of presenting ads to viewers of live, linear or VOD content delivered by cable or OTT. The main reason is that ads inserted into individual video streams on the fly, rather than baked in alongside the content, can generate more revenue by being regionalised and personalised.

First iterations of the software switched out ads within the set top box, or the client/player side. This has the disadvantage of potentially serving ads that are out of date while manually reediting and adding fresh ads is a costly exercise. Attempts to change the approach required significant changes to the hardware infrastructure or too much manual processing and therefore could not scale. It was also susceptible to ad blockers resulting in suspect analytics. 

“The profileration of devices and platforms make DAI on the client side a nightmare,” says Amagi, co-founder, KA Srinivasan. “At a time when viewing on mobile is increasing this means lot views are completely unmonetized.”

The industry is now intent on locating DAI in the network – or server side. The initiative is driven by OTT-only players like Netflix and by broadcasters like HBO which launch online-only services.

“Server side ad insertion is a process of modifying manifest files of the content stream to reference ad content during the breaks,” explains Jim Duval, Telestream’s DAI specialist. “This process defeats ad blockers, and because of HTTP/ABR delivery, can be scaled by adding disks and network connections. Efficiency in the manifest manipulation process is the key to making this work well at scale.”

Since the ads are stitched into the stream before it reaches the player, server-side DAI is important in attaining multi-platform reach. “That means far less work is needed on the part of app development teams to support the widest possible spectrum of platforms/devices than older client, or player, based solutions,” says Paul Davies, communications and marketing manager, YoSpace.

“The move to server side is new but accelerating,” reports Lionel Bringuier, director, product management at Elemental (part of AWS). “With server side there is no change in visual quality between regular content and ads whereas if you use client side your player has to download a MP4 from the ad agency, there will be some loading time (buffering) and different bit rates and aspect ratios in some cases.”

That principle applies to VOD as well as live. “Server side is the only elegant way to do ad insertion on live streams,” adds Bringuier. “Client side ad triggers are fine for VOD but not good for live sport where time outs (in U.S sports like basketball which lead to commercial breaks) are unscheduled and there is no ideal way to tell the ad-player to switch back to the sports event.”

STV were the first UK broadcaster to implement DAI in live channels online before the FIFA World Cup 2014. Now all the major UK broadcasters are on board.

“DAI is essential for any commercial broadcaster with online aspirations,” says Davies. “Audiences are watching more and more television online so live channels simply must be monetised to ensure a long-term business case.”

It’s even more important, he says, since the inventory opened up by DAI in live is often sold at a premium rate compared to advertising in VOD or catch-up.

Sports rights-holders commonly launch DAI ahead of a major event.  Seven Network in Australia did this for its Australian Open coverage at the start of the year.  “They ran 16 online channels for the event, one from each court, and were able to open up a huge amount of inventory they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to access,” reports Davies.

The complexities of targeting ads to specific viewers involves not only identifying the viewer, but then acquiring and delivering the ads in viewable formats for the device that they are using to view the stream. 

“The first step has been developing manifest manipulation services that respond to embedded triggers in the published stream,” says Duval. “The next step will likely be better and faster versions of that service that also has provisions for qualifying the content format for the viewer to optimise the experience.  Concurrent with these efforts are better and more reliable reporting of the viewer engagement for maximising monetisation.”

The latest version of Video Ad Serving Template (VAST 4.0), a standard for structuring ad tags that serve ads to video players provided some extensions for server side insertion but more work needs to be done.
While vendors claim DAI has already had significant impact on broadcaster revenues, they also admit the technology is still in the foothills in terms of potential.  Most broadcasters with DAI apply some form of targeting but not many have advanced to a level of hyper-targeting where they’re really making the most of the technology.

“The available data about consumer preferences is limited,” explains Srinivasan. “Deeper integration with data management platforms will improve targeting. Additionally, as users switch between devices, operators don’t have a reliable standardised way to track consumption habits unless you run a subscription-based platform.”
He Above that, he suggests that major brands, such as those selling fast moving consumer goods or cars, are more interested in broader demographic reach than individually addressable targeting.

This may be related to the ad creative. “The cost of creating high-end ad content is certainly an area that needs to be addressed if there’s to be a move towards fully addressable,” says Davies. “On the other side of the scale are the ads from local businesses, to which broadcast-grade standards need to apply at an affordable rate. A unified broadcast-standard approach will be needed on the ad stitching side, too, particularly around encoding and tracking when there is so much ad creative entering the system.” This is something Yospace says it’s discussing with ad platform Adstream at NAB.

Live streaming audiences will continue to grow, which means the opportunities to optimise yield through addressable advertising will also grow. Those opportunities will be supported by ever more advanced programmatic infrastructure (using machines to buy ads) and, possibly, though by no means certainly, widespread adoption of real-time bidding (virtually instantaneous buying and selling of online ad impressions).

“Today’s content preparation systems have automated what was a very manual process so that the scale of DAI-enabled programming, DAI ad impressions and revenue growth is strong and consistent and a part of the business plan of most major content production networks,” reckons Duval. “It will likely be more so as the physical infrastructure converts to centralised IP which is far more capable of precise targeting.”

Much further away, but nonetheless a possibility using similar technologies, is dynamic insertion not just of ads but all video content to create a personalized streaming channel.
“It is very early days but the idea is to stitch linear or VOD content to create a playlist based on viewer preferences,” says Srinivasan.

“It’s technical possible but too expensive to implement just now,” says Bringuier. “Ad insertion is built around a stream of the same content – a football match for example. If you want to build a dynamic channel for every user there will be considerable scale to overcome.”

What they do:
Amagi: Claims expertise at delivering DAI for live streams and uses a patented watermarking technique for ad-detection and replacement which is “100% frame accurate”.

Telstream: Its ability to automate DAI stream conditioning for OTT delivery from live and recorded broadcast signals is claimed “unique”. Upcoming developments similarly automates server side live streaming. 

Yospace: Considers its primary focus to be stream manipulation, as opposed to other vendors which may consider “DAI as secondary to their efforts in encoders/packagers”. Also enables other functions like geo-based content blocking and automated live-to-VOD for catch-up viewing.

Elemental: Can offer full DAI via the video delivery platform Elemental Delta as well as integration with third party ad insertion services like Yospace.

Keeping up with 4K post

Broadcast

Extra storage and an efficient workflow are just two of the essential elements of an effective UHD post-production pipeline.

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While far from the norm, 4K UHD workflows often with a High Dynamic Range sheen are being commissioned with increasing regularity.

“We are ramping up our UHD content supply,” confirms Julia Barry, entertainment marketing director at Sky. “Our research shows that 4K is among the most popular features for Sky customers.”
She points to Sky drama like Tin Star, Riviera and Guerrilla as UHD shows with a HDR grade. “We are also talking to U.S studios and content partners about their plans for commissioning UHD and what the best ways are to acquire and post produce the format.”

It’s not just drama though. Documentaries and entertainment content are also being given a 4K upgrade. But what all UHD productions highlight are the preparations needed in both storage space and time built into the workflow to accommodate the four times more data.

Riviera
Archery Pictures and Primo Productions wanted to make the most of the light on location in Côte d’Azur-set thriller for Sky Atlantic making UHD and High Dynamic Range (HDR) a natural choice.
“We’ve worked with 4K since Wallander (2008), a show which did not demand a 4K master or deliverable,” says CEO David Klafkowski. “Most dramas we receive now are shot at higher than HD resolution and processed for mastering and delivery.”

The Farm’s involvement with on / near set dailies work on Riviera was mainly confined to pre-production technical discussions, with the data management and processing during the shoot taken care of by Digital Orchard.

Shot predominantly on Alexa at 3.2K, both the original camera and production audio were contained on RAID storage on set, along with LTO backup copies. At the end of each shoot block, each RAID was shipped to The Farm. Media required for conform and tracklay was then transferred to the facility’s internal nearline Isilon storage and online SAN. To maintain the security of the final deliverables on physical media, they were supplied on Apricorn's hardware encrypted drives.

Proxies were transcoded from the ARRI RAW files in DNxHD 36 for offline in Avid with conform to the original media in Resolve. The grade was made directly from the RAW files reduced to 10-bit space in Nucoda Film Master. The online, VFX and mastering was handled on an Autodesk Flame Premium by Clyde Kellet.

“The upscale was very slight from the 3.2K material and the combination of software used for both conform and visual effects work gave us very good results indeed,” explains The Farm’s workflow manager, Peter Collins.

Colourist Aidan Farrell, was keen for the grade to look as natural and cinematic as possible to take full advantage of the existing picture shot (for the first two of ten episodes) by DOP Laurie Rose.
“We decided the only way to achieve this vision both technically and creatively was to adopt a 16-bit ACES pipeline,” says Collins.  “This granted us a great deal of flexibility in the grade and online for both SDR and HDR, and ensured we retained as much latitude as possible from the recorded camera files through to the final masters.”

The HDR was approached as a separate grade from SDR. “ACES enable us to use the SDR grade as ‘milestone’ going into the HDR grade, without the existing grade being constrained to the smaller colour gamut,” he says.

“HDR, along with and other aspects of the UHD ecosystem such as HFR, are creative tools,” he adds. “Like all tools they can be misused. HDR should be considered from the beginning as an integral part of the character of the show, and how, and if, it can be used to better tell the story. It should never overshadow the content it is designed to accentuate.”

Captive

Netflix 8x 60 minute docu-drama Captive investigated hostage situations and negotiations around the world and made significant use of archive material to inform each ‘pulled from the headlines’ story.

Acquisition was predominantly on Sony F55 captured in XAVC at 23.98p and full 4K (4096 x 2160) and delivered to Molinare on drives. Over 600 hours of material (including archive) were ingest into the facility’s EMC Isilon storage cluster with a transcode made to DNxHD36 for offline. The total storage requirements were in excess of 16TB.

“We had eight suites running at time with each episode treated as a distinct standalone film with a different DOP, director and editor,” explains post production manager, Reiko Shimazaki.

The archive material was supplied in various formats and from all over world with different - frame rates, formats and as file or on tape. Interviews, drama reconstruction and footage taken from a drone were the only 4K sources.

 “We decided to standardise all the archive to HD 23.98p so that once all the archive pieces were selected we had a standarised set of compilation reels for cutting back into the edit,” explains Shimazaki. “These were upconverted to 4K during the conform in Flame.”

Shows with a very heavy archive content always present challenges in media management. “You have so many different media sources coming in and out of the facility. Media management needs to be well controlled.”

Netflix prefer to online from an ungraded master and is one of the deliverables it requires for futureproofing. “We had a sign off session with all pre-grade effects to make sure the client was happy with how the show looked before the grade started,” says Flame artist Gareth Parry.

Senior colourist Chris Rogers handled the grade in Baselight: “We looked to make it as cinematic as possible, avoiding TV documentary clichés. For example, with episode 1 (Prison Riot U.S.A.), we looked to emulate a kind of 'dirty 16mm film print’ and added lots of grain and diffusion with muted colours. Other episodes had a much cleaner feel with more natural colours, and with ep 5 (British Aid Workers, Chechnya), we used the grade to blur the lines between the drama and actuality.” 

Without Molinare’s investment in 4K storage infrastructure and key creative equipment servicing this project “could have been a very painful process,” says Shimazaki. “When you are working across a series of shows all at 4K and at the same time you need to make sure you’re well prepared for storage requirements.

“We planned very precisely the way we moved the shows through the post process and ensured the content was signed off at various points to keep the media moving to QC.”

Secrets of the Brain
Lambent Productions first UHD project entailed a “massive jump in storage” plus “added time in all the processing and backing up that goes along with it,” according to managing director Ollie Tait.
Fronted by neuroscientist Dr Jack Lewis and magician Pete Heat, the 10x 60’ series for TERN-owned fact ent channel Insight, used experiments and illusions to reveal the inner workings of the mind.
Since TERN’s remit for Insight is UHD the commission mandated a 4K deliverable. After the success of the first run last autumn, Lambent is now producing a second series for the broadcaster.
“The post workflow not too dissimilar to HD in that we produced low res proxies to edit before relinking to high res media,” explains Tait.
Both series are recorded using Sony PXW-FS7 XDCAM with Canon CN cine 17-120 zoom by self-shooting director Nathaniel Walters. The big change between series is that the frame rate has been increased from 25p to 50p.
“The biggest challenge has been managing the huge file sizes,” says Tait.
Some 31 TB of rushes are copied from SD cards to nearline server with the high-res media backed-up to LTO 5 tape. The tapes are transported to United, a post facility near Amsterdam which is the preferred partner of TERN. “It took about four hours to transfer 1.4 TB of data to tape so we had to send in batches,” says Tait.
Lambent hired a render farm running Adobe Media Encoder to process the raw media to low-res files for offline on Premiere in-house. For series One the proxies were 25p but since this encountered issues when conforming at United, series two is being cut at the higher 50p frame rate.
“We manage metadata religiously by paying detailed attention to the overall file structure,” says Tait. “The proxies and raw rushes need to be identical to one another for relink.”
Effects are added in offline and replicated online at United. “When it comes to the grade we learned that it pays not to be tricksy,” says Tait. “Part of the process with series One was stripping out a lot of the filmic and colour effects which we found can look a little cheap when played back on a 4K monitor. 4K 50p is unforgiving; the footage is already saturated, so we find it best to let the material speak for itself.”
Tait adds, “For a small company starting from no experience in 4K we have made a good looking piece of work on a very competitive tariff. We would not be afraid of using 4K again.”

Landscape Artist of the Year
Sky Arts added UHD to the palette of Storyvault Films’ painting competition in its second season. Although the format and workflow were a known quantity, managing significantly larger volumes of data required additional headroom in terms of time and storage capacity.
The multi-camera show is covered in six heats, a semi-final, final and a winner’s special with each 60-minute episode generating 5TB of rushes. Seven Sony F55 cameras were used handheld or shoulder-mounted while 10 Canon 5D DLSR’s were recording time-lapse photography of each artist’s canvas and the changing weather.

“It’s a big operation with six laptops running all the time during filming ingesting and backing up the cards to G-Raid and Lacie drives,” explains Storyvault unit manager Ali Brodie. “One copy is sent to Procam for backup onto LTO and the other goes to Sky.”

Procam supplied all the camera kit and have a secure LTO storage facility which the production used.

“The data is massive,” says Brodie. “You can’t guarantee that you’ll have time to back up all the media in one day so you have to increase the number of memory cards and drives for safety.”

Post was managed in house at Sky. “With four times more data than normal the main challenge was building enough time into the schedule from ingest to delivery to meet deadlines for QC and TX packaging to meet all our delivery platforms,” says post producer Vickie Mansell. “As the broadcaster, we had the advantage of being part of a wider team with clear lines of communication between both the production and post teams so were able to give a clear direction on timescales to manage expectations.”

The show was offlined in Avid media composer. Since Sky Post Production were evaluating UHD workflows the main ingest codec was Avid’s DNxHRHQX UHD codec. This created over 40TB of media. During the offline editors were supplied DNxHD 120 as their offline resolution.

The online and grade were completed in Avid Symphony v8.6 Avid 8.6 with DNXIO hardware by colourist Ben Whitney. The grading suite included a HP Z840 workstation and Sony’s BVMX300 UHD monitor.

“The intention was to enrich the colour with a filmic quality yet not to make it so glossy as to appear unreal,” says Brodie. “An HD version was down-converted from the primary UHD grade.”

While this 2016 run was Storyvault’s first UHD production it is due to shoot the next series of Portrait Artist of the Year for the channel in 4K and is already prepping a third run of Landscape in the format with both series due to be graded on Baselight.

Taking a plunge into library music

Broadcast

Perceptions of production music are changing as TV becomes increasingly international and licensing of commercial tracks gets more complicated.

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Producers today are able to mix composed scores with commercial tracks and library music in a way that was inconceivable until recently. The reasons are simultaneously budgetary, creative and business-focused.

“A few years back, there was a perception that production music – derogatively called ‘stock music’ – lacked authenticity, but that is changing,” says Ali Johnson, creative director at Audio Network.

“The quality of the work written as library music is as good as tracks for commercial or chart release.”

Hip hop artist Clement Marfo, for instance, was brought to mainstream attention while at Warner/ChappellMusic when his single Champion featured on promos for the BBC’s Olympics coverage and the NFL SuperBowl on Sky Sports.

He’s now signed to Audio Network, which has just released his five-track EP Breath Of Fresh Air on Spotify and iTunes. “We are blurring the boundaries of library and commercial,” says Johnson.

Case study - The Great British Skinny Dip

For Channel 4’s look at naturism, director Victoria Silver wanted to strike a bold and warm rather than prurient and snide tone.

A jazz fan, her decision to use the genre was cemented on meeting John, one of the doc’s stars. “He embodied the free spirit of naturism,” she says. “It struck me that nudism and jazz are equally Marmite.”

With exec producer Kathy O’Neil of indie ZKK, Silver narrowed down a list of classic jazz tracks and secured clearances.

As the budget wouldn’t stretch to having the whole 60-minute piece scored, she also turned to library music.

“Historically, I’ve been sniffy about its use because when a version is created for international sale, it can get slathered with terrible music,” says Silver.

“Production music was once derided, but that’s changed. The libraries work with really good composers – and good composers want to give libraries their work.”

Alongside tracks from jazz legends Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck, Silver placed production music largely sourced from Universal PPM. “I wanted it to feel scored. The risk is that if you are pulling music from dozens of sources, it can feel like a mishmash of different cues,” she says.

“The challenge was to integrate the commercial and library seamlessly. It’s about doing the legwork, listening to tons of library music and finding a gem.”

Audio Network operates a non-MCPS library, meaning it is fully independent and can licence its 130,000 tracks to broadcasters and production directly.

“Producers are more savvy about music than they’ve ever been,” says Johnson. “Given the way we all consume music via services like Spotify, everyone is their own music supervisor in a way.”

Similarly, PRS For Music saw 50% growth in indie production music deals from its MCPS Production Music library from 2015 to 2016, according to director of broadcasting Andy Harrower.

Production music often comes into its own on international versions of shows, replacing commercial tracks for which rights might not be cleared outside of the country in which the show originally aired.

“Whereas clearance for catch-up or DVD in the UK used to be the main concern, producers now want worldwide clearance for all types of media,” says Universal Publishing Production Music head of sales and marketing Phil Stubbs.

“The trend towards a more all-encompassing rights model is part of the battle between broadcasters and producers for ownership of IP.”

Alex Marchant, joint founder of production music firm Deep East Music, notes that while producers once predominantly just needed to clear rights for a particular channel, now everything needs to be ready to go online – and therefore globally.

“Production music can be useful because it is hassle free, whereas commercial music comes with many more restrictions,” he says.

Rights clearance

Simon Pursehouse, director of music services at commercial music publisher Sentric Music, says: “For us, it’s about making sure copyrights are very transparent. If you’re working on 10-15 cues per episode, you may need to clear 150 tracks and each song might have a different publisher, sub-publisher and writer. If you don’t get clearance on even 1% of those rights, then you cannot use it.”

Sentric is often asked to buy rights for worldwide use upfront and in advance of production, rather than after the programme is made. This demand for one-size-fi ts-all coverage has led some emerging online platforms to demand that producers supply content with royalty-free music.

“The vast majority of music libraries, including ourselves, don’t operate this way and believe that writers/composers should be paid a royalty,” says Stubbs.

“We are a music company first and foremost, whereas others started as tech companies or stock photo agencies. That means we’re on point with trends, and we have access to world-renowned writers and composers.”

Case study - Clique

BBC Studios and Balloon Entertainment’s six-part BBC3 drama “needed something edgy and stripped-back to tell the story and help give the show distinction”, says Audio Network account manager Rebecca Thomas.

Music supervisor Alex Hancock sourced library tracks to assist main composer Matthew Simpson. “He was writing this incredible score, but under great time pressure, so we thought judicious use of production music could give him room to focus on the big, important pieces.”

Hancock searched Audio Network’s site for tracks related to ‘tension’ and sustained note instrumentals or ‘drones’, using several as beds and backgrounds, including a track described as ‘deep pulsing drone with gentle rhythm and ethnic FX elements’.

“The viewer should never notice when production music cues are used well, but they will notice if you take it away,” says Hancock.

Stubbs claims that Universal’s catalogue of more than half a million tracks, including heritage labels Bruton, Chappell and Atmosphere, is rivalled in size only by EMI.

UPPM also offers the BBC Orchestral Toolkit for producers to recreate a BBC custom music score sound from their own editing suite.

Meanwhile, Deep East Music’s eponymous flagship label “is at the more commercial end of what we offer”, says marketing and promotions director Yoly Cush.

Its other labels include the orchestral Scorched Score – “for when shows like Top Gear need a hard-hitting track” – and Zest, described as “a bright, fun and friendly” sound that might sit behind a voiceover.

 “With so much music out there, we offer high-quality live instrumental recordings and carefully thought-through curations that stand out from the crowd,” says Cush. Pursehouse says Sentric’s job is to source the next big emerging artist and offer their music to producers before the artist has hit the mainstream.

“When we send music to our clients, it’s never just ‘here’s a bunch of tracks, I hope you like one of them’,” he says. “We also include bullet points on why that artist is right for the project.”

Based in Liverpool and with offices in London, New York, Amsterdam and Hamburg, the publisher holds the copyrights to half a million songs.

It can claim to have given indie producers tracks from Bastille, Circa Waves and Catfish & The Bottlemen “before they were household names”, giving them “the kudos that certain programme brands want so they can be associated with breaking the best new music the UK has to offer”.

Case study - Made in Chelsea

Commercial music is a signature of Monkey Kingdom’s long-running structured reality series, now on its 13th series on E4.

“First and foremost, we select tracks relevant to the story but, over time, Made In Chelsea has grown to be seen as a new-music discovery platform,” says music supervisor Andrea Madden.

The show has helped break artists including Asgeir, Cabbage and Secret Company by featuring their tracks and supporting them with Spotify playlists, social media tweets, a dedicated music page on the show’s website, branded soundtrack CDs and even gigs branded ‘Made in Chelsea presents…’.

Song recognition app Shazam rates it as one of the most ‘Shazam’d’ shows on TV. Each episode features around 20 tracks sourced from multiple libraries, including Sentric, or directly from a label.

“We seek unsigned indie music, typically electronic pop, that will pique the interest of our audience,” says Madden. “Each track is directed like a mini pop video and features quite prominently.”

How NewTek NDI supports SMPTE 2110 but also offers an alternate on-ramp to IP

RedShark News

RedShark News talked to NewTek just ahead of NAB for a status report on its Network Device Interface. With the industry rapidly collapsing around an SPMTE standards-based approach to IP, where does NDI fit in? In quite a lot of places it turns out.
https://www.redsharknews.com/ip-video/item/4522-newtek-ndi-supports-smpte-2110

 While most vendors seem to be rallying behind the SMPTE standards-based approach of AIMS, there is one company which appears an outlier. While claiming interoperability with and backing for SMPTE standards, NewTek continues to promote its Network Device Interface (NDI) as a parallel video over IP path. It’s pretty successful too, attracting a significant number of third parties including LiveU, Vizrt, Teradek, AJA, Matrox, Panasonic, Adobe, ChyronHego and Playbox to incorporate NDI support.
It’s royalty free and NewTek offers an SDK to vendors wanting to hook their products into it. What really marks NDI out is NewTek’s belief that the world is headed toward ubiquitous general purpose computer systems, not customised broadcast specific hardware.
NDI works over the standard GigE networks common in almost every facility, broadcaster or corporate enterprise. Most corporates have networks based on just 1GigE. While NewTek says NDI can take advantage of faster connections with higher bandwidth networks, these are not required for a company to get started in IP workflows using NDI.
NewTek’s NDI customers range from small indie producers to schools and churches, YouTube and Facebook streamers and corporates which are all increasingly looking to communicate with live video.
However, it also points to traditional broadcast networks and “very high visibility productions with viewers ranging into the billions” as NDI customers. These include Chinese state caster CCTV using NDI to create shows around the Chinese New Year.
It’s worth noting that the BBC too has a dual video over IP strategy where it is equipping major broadcast hubs with SMPTE standardised heavy duty broadcast kit, but is exploring alternative ways to live stream.
“We see NDI as a technology relevant to any video producer that needs to communicate, deliver, and receive ‘broadcast’ quality video,” says Will Waters, director product marketing & sales enablement.
It’s that ‘broadcast quality’ video (in Waters’ quotes, not ours) which highlights a major difference between AIMS/SMPTE and NDI.
The firm’s boss Andrew Cross has stated that NDI is compressed at “baseband quality”, similar to ProRes or DNxHD. NewTek’s pragmatic belief is that SDI will be better, at this stage, to transport uncompressed video around. However, a compressed version is good enough for streaming to the internet.

Compression has matured

“Compression is already a major part of broadcasting and video production at every level,” says Waters. “The technology around compression has matured significantly. As we move into higher resolution formats and deeper colour depths, compression is a very necessary and valuable tool to move video to be used in live production throughout the infrastructure.”
He continues: “Every live production that uses pre-packaged video clips or graphics uses some form of compression. NDI is pretty special in terms of compression as well. NDI is stable across multiple generations. It can be aware that the video frame has already been compressed and therefore there is no need to attempt compressing it again. This goes back to the benefits of using IP networks. Source devices understand how the video stream is used downstream and can respond accordingly. This will not be a concern to most producers. These days, it is more of a factor that compression is useful because the added cost of moving uncompressed video everywhere is just not sustainable.”
NewTek views NDI as a complementary technology to the efforts of AIMS and SMPTE. “Some large traditional broadcast operators require specific needs in the IP network such as uncompressed video, dealing with multiple essences and tagging metadata for existing workflows. AIMS and SMPTE are aimed at solving these problems,” explains Waters.
The company recently announced the NC1 I/O IP Studio Interface in the NewTek Connect line of products that supports SMPTE 2110.
“In this way, users of NDI do not have to worry about being locked to specific protocols, thus allowing them to always have the ability to pick best-of-breed products for their productions,” he asserts.
NewTek says it isn’t able to track every company that is using or has announced plans to use NDI in their products or organisations but the NDI SDK has been downloaded more than 2,000 times and 420 companies to date have indicated that they are creating commercial applications based on NDI.
“We often asked about the differences of NDI versus other IP technologies,” says Water. “Maybe people think there is a battle underway where one particular winner will prevail in the end. We see the industry in the midst of change being driven by viewer demand. Ultimately, as an industry, we will need to deliver more content in more places. A lot of that content will be tailored for the individual viewer with niche content and areas of interest.”
“Video production on IP is the only way that this becomes a reality. There will be many different sources of content. Much of that storytelling will come from producers that are independent or smaller in size or from traditional providers that dedicate resources to niche content for that individual viewing experience. Ultimately, the differences in IP formats will result in using the right tool for the task at hand.”

What SMPTE 2110 is exactly and why it matters for IP production

RedShark News

There has been a huge amount of activity in the area of IP standards in recent months, with the AIMS-championed SMPTE 2110 suddenly emerging very much as the front runner.

https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/4512-what-smpte-2110-is-and-why-it-matters-for-ip-productionThere may be a breakout of peace in Las Vegas this week as the industry talks about openness, harmonisation and compatibility. That’s in sharp contrast to the mood music this time last year and even at IBC 2016 where vendors were divided into different camps in a battle to control the very fabric of future production: IP. End users couldn’t or wouldn’t distinguish between AIMS, Sony, ASPEN or NewTek since they just wanted the industry to settle on one method of working and simply get on with it.

Well, as if by magic, the dust has settled and the winner by a landslide is AIMS. At NAB, all of the kerfuffle over competing video over IP protocols will almost seem like a fuss over nothing.

It’s a serious business, though, on which investment decisions and business success or failures will be made, so here is Red Shark’s potted guide to the prevailing video over IP standard SMPTE 2110.

And did we say winner by a landslide? Well, NewTek will have something to say about that — and they do. They talk to RedShark in another forthcoming post. In the meantime though...

SMPTE 2110

Having agreed on the on-ramp for video over IP in SMPTE 2022-6, the industry has turned its attention to augmenting the standard.

SMPTE 2110 may optimistically be ratified as a standard by late summer 2017, though some participants in the process think it will more likely be in 2018.

Like 2022-6, ST 2110 defines a transport and timing protocol for A/V and metadata but unlike 2022-6, the key concept is to split the signals into independent essences.

This approach is better suited for a production environment than a composite one as, for example, it makes audio processing much easier since no de-embedding or re-embedding is required.

ST 2110 is composed of a number of existing standards including AES67 for uncompressed audio, RTC 4175, which defines video and SMPTE 2059 for clock synchronisation.

Splitting the video out reduces both bandwidth and latency since processing can begin at the receiving end without waiting until the complete frame has arrived.

This, then, is the bald outline of SMPTE 2110. However, the picture is not complete without outlining developments in two related aspects.

1. Compression

ST 2110 defines the uncompressed transport of 3G HD-SDI over IP. AIMS members adhere to the idea that any compression at the heart of production, and especially the live environment, is a bad thing and perhaps an unnecessary one, given the pace of development in the wider IT industry where interfaces of 25G, 50G and 100G are being introduced. A 25G interface, for example, will handle 4K 60p.

However, AIMS does not rule out compression. In contribution links or a remote production application where bandwidth is currently too costly, having the option of compression is considered pragmatic.

Different AIMS members retain their own codec preference, although the differences between each codec are not so stark as to cause an irrevocable rift. Most vendors consider themselves agnostic. VC2, favoured by Lawo and SAM, for example, is already a published standard in SMPTE. Grass Valley and others back the TICO scheme. Another option is the Sony LLVC codec.

Stakeholders have their eyes on the near horizon where 4K 120p and 8K become an acquisition option and for which a lightweight mezzanine codec is likely to be needed.

A clue can be found at the JPEG committee (a joint working group of the International Standardization Organization / ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission / IEC). It is developing low-latency lightweight image coding system JPEG XS for which the baseline is TICO. JPEG XS is being designed to support increasing resolution (such as 8K) and higher frame rates in a cost-effective manner.

2. Registration and Discovery

To scale studio and facility systems it is necessary to have the ability to plug-in a device and make it known to the IP network and then have a common way for that device to describe all of the things it is capable of doing.

The work of AMWA’s Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS) protocol is significant here. Inside that is a registration and discovery mechanism IS-04, which, de facto, all AIMS members agree to support and incorporate into their product roadmap.

It will not, however, be part of SMPTE 2110. Industry groups hope that NMOS will be part of the overall solution for managed IP broadcast networks. AIMS believes it would be beneficial if a standardised stream definition comes together with a common mechanism of discovering and registering devices and connecting streams.

What should not be standardised, AIMS argues, is the control system for devices or networks. Device-level control is considered a ‘value add’ and a point of differentiation between suppliers. Standardising at this level would smother innovation, it is argued.

While NMOS will be an important step towards a simplification of the setup process for large-scale systems, a true IP network will involve more pieces than just NMOS and 2110. Managing and control will need to evolve from a strict replacement of traditional linearly wired environments (copper). This will still take the industry time to identify and to either standardise or agree on some common practices.

Attaining true virtualisation and remote production in the cloud is arguably less of a standardisation battle. Further developments will be more about finding the bandwidth and device processing power.

What happens to ASPEN and Sony NMI?

It’s worth stating that the similarities between ASPEN and also Sony Network Media Interface (NMI) were far more marked than the differences with the AIMS-SMPTE standards. Both Sony and Evertz (ASPEN’s promoter in chief) are AIMS members and participants in standards bodies like AMWA.

Their argument all along was that it was right to introduce ASPEN or NMI for customers wanting to move to video over IP faster than standards bodies would allow.

They also argued that their approach was open and standards-based (which to a large extent it was). However, both have now fallen in line behind SMPTE 2110.

ASPEN will no longer be marketed beyond the introduction of ST 2110. Evertz says ASPEN’s aims coincide with that of 2110. It does expect a transition period during which time Evertz will assist customers who have adopted ASPEN to transfer over to 2110. Therefore, ASPEN will continue for a period for existing customers only.

Likewise, Sony will no longer actively market NMI. It says it is committed to interoperability for IP live production and in that sense, the networking interface technology which it has advocated in the past will evolve into SMPTE 2110 and NMOS.

Sony will, however, retain elements of NMI in its own video over IP solutions alongside SMPTE 2110 and NMOS. These include encryption technology for security and the LLVC codec.

So, everything is seemingly resolved and manufacturers will unveil a raft of 2110 supporting kit at NAB.

All of this, though, is aimed at the heavy lifting of traditional broadcast operations, broadcast studios and major live OBs but there is arguably a better option for anyone wanting to broadcast — or stream — straight to the internet to Facebook Live or Twitter.

That option could be NewTek’s Network Device Interface which could still be a major market disruptor. More on where it fits in to the brave new SMPTE 2110 world soon.

Gaming enters premier league

Broadcast
Can broadcasters tap into the content that’s attracting millennials?
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/gaming-enters-premier-league/5116967.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957

Sports, or competitive video gaming, has grown quietly over the past decade to amass a global audience of more than 260 million and is set to generate revenues of $1.1bn (£890m) by 2019, according to analyst Newzoo.
It’s the sort of fan base that prompted Gabriel Catrina, chief strategy officer of Modern Times Group (MTG), to state at last month’s Cable Congress show: “eSports is going to become the biggest sport in the world – bigger than soccer.”
Moreover, the chief demographic is millennials, the same group that, according to a recent study by Ampere Analysis, may be deserting live linear sport for other forms of content.
No wonder broadcasters like MTG, ESPN, Turner and Sky are attempting to tap into this market.
David Kangas, head of production and creative director at eSports network Ginx TV, believes the challenge lies in making content that has grown online on sites such as Twitch “palatable” to TV audiences, while reflecting existing fans’ engagement.
“eSports is very tribal,” he says. “A League of Legends die-hard fan will not be a Dota 2 fan. This rivalry is potentially quite toxic. We are trying to be Switzerland – to take the sting out of how different each eSport feels.”
He adds: “Marines blowing up terrorists [the premise of multiplayer, first-person shooter game CS:GO] might not sit comfortably in the lounge in the same way we watch the FA Cup final. Right away, the aesthetic is a big hurdle for a lot of people.”
Sky and ITV invested in Ginx “as an experiment”, says Kangas.
Sky has aired the Ginx TV channel since October. “Is this the emperor’s new clothes, or can eSports really thrive on TV?” he wonders. “The next 12 months will give everyone a real snapshot of what works and what does not.”
Games can last 10 minutes or 10 hours, and anything in between, making scheduling a headache.
 “We work with the tournament organisers and games publishers to bring some sort of consistency to start times,” says Kangas. “It is in their interest, since they want to use broadcast to extend their reach beyond the core online audience.”
Like a conventional sport producer, Ginx TV takes feeds of tournaments from producers like MTG-owned ESL and wraps its own commentary, analysis and interviews around it, either with a presence at the event or from its London studio. It airs live games, highlights packages and produces weekly live chat show The Bridge.
“We treat content like the Olympics,” says Kangas. “We get to the heart of the story, we build narratives and provide ‘guides for dummies’ so people can get up to speed on topics or gameplay.”
Millennial appeal
ESL UK managing director James Dean describes eSports production as a cross between a gameshow and a live sports event.
“You are looking at a fantasy environment, in which real players are competing for very high stakes in stadia in front of thousands of people,” he says. “This dynamic and vibrant mid-ground is what attracts millennials.”
However, eSports is a broad church, encompassing as many different types of games as the Olympics, but without the organisational structure of conventional sport.
“Because there is so much content, there is an opportunity to develop shorter formats for covering these events,” says Dean.  “That lends itself well to traditional broadcast.”
ESL is looking to co-develop a range of formats, from highlights packages to magazine shows, to serve a growing number of millennials “who still want to follow their passion but may have less time than they used to, as they get older”.
Production values have risen in line with budgets.
“A decade ago, we were using PC platforms and software mixing applications, but today our workflow and studios are on par with anything in broadcast,” says Dean.
ESL’s recent production of the Intel Extreme Masters event in Katowice, Poland, attracted 42 million viewers online.
“We used spider-cams in the stadium, multiple HD cameras, Ross video switchers and EVS replay servers,” says Dean.
“A key difference is that a large amount of content is in-game content. In-game camera-operators (or ‘observers’) control virtual cameras inside the game and capture data and angles for broadcast that the players can’t see.”
Observers are experts in the game who are able to understand game maps to judge when strategic points will occur.
There is a balance to be struck between enticing casual gamers or newcomers to eSports without deterring hardcore enthusiasts.
“It’s a culture that developed on PCs and second screens and there is a significant rump of fans who feel – rightly – that eSports is theirs,” says Kangas. “They don’t want to feel that there’s an industry behind it or for it to grow so big that it’s taken away from them.”