How to protect against piracy

Broadcast

Cyber security is rising up the agenda for broadcasters and suppliers as high-profile breaches hit the headlines, but how serious is the risk and what can be done?
https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/home/how-to-protect-against-piracy/5121824.article

Piracy is an unfortunate fact of life for the TV industry, but direct hacks into production servers represent a worrying new trend. Leaked content available before its release date has even more value than movies or series that have already been launched.
Netflix has been hit by ransomware attacks and had files stolen. Although the SVoD site’s production subcontractor paid the requested amount, the hackers leaked episodes of hit series Orange Is The New Black anyway.
Other hackers allegedly breached Disney’s film production unit and claimed to have obtained a major movie, threatening to release it if the studio didn’t make a ransom payment.
Disney, working with the FBI, ultimately determined that no hack had taken place. However, the event pushed cyber security high up the company’s priority list.
Last month’s HBO attack appears the most sophisticated yet. The Time Warner-owned company was attacked from multiple points, including its employees’ Twitter feeds.
Hackers, who may have stolen as much as 1.5 terabytes of data, threatened to leak secrets from HBO’s biggest show, Game Of Thrones, with the warning: “Winter is coming – HBO is falling.”
“As more data is centralised into faster single systems, the opportunity for the hacker to strike gold becomes ever larger,” warns Jonathan Morgan, chief executive of storage vendor Object Matrix.
“Media companies face a plethora of rising dangers, from hackers, whether financially or politically motivated, and from internal breaches.”
DPP managing director Mark Harrison says cyber security is now at the top of board agendas: “There is a lot of anxiety about how you achieve it.”
Content thefts have tended to result in blackmail demands for money in exchange for not releasing the content.
However, the Sony hack of 2014, and breaches at organisations such as TalkTalk, CBS-owned Last.fm and US cable provider Comcast, show that internal data, such as emails and private consumer data, is just as much a target as the content itself.
“Consumer data is one of the biggest assets that service providers have,” says Nick Fitzgerald, chair of managed services provider TV2U. “This data is being treated with the same value as content, which has changed the game when it comes to security.”

As more types of devices – whether tablets, smartphones, consoles or internet-connected TV sets – are used to consume content as well as interact with core management systems, the security domain for providers has become much more complex.
“These additional access points offer enticing targets for adversaries seeking to exploit payment or other personal subscriber information,” says Christopher Schouten, senior director, product marketing, at content security specialist Nagra.
“Providers will need to expand their security focus from content encryption and piracy protection, to include their broader network and the core business systems where critical subscriber data is maintained.”
In an industry reluctant to divulge incidents of attack, quantifying the scale of the threat is tricky. Fitzgerald reckons more than a quarter of media organisations have experienced a cyber attack – “and that’s just the ones that admit it”.
“The threat is real and it’s growing bigger by the day, particularly when it comes to the impact on pay-TV revenues,” he says.
Research from PwC in July 2015 showed that the average cyber attack costs large UK companies more than £3m. For small organisations, it ranges from £75,200 to £310,800.
In June this year, US data protection research body the Ponemon Institute’s cross-industry study of several economies calculated the average consolidated cost of a data breach at £2.8m.
With the advent of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, those costs could be driven even higher.
It will allow sanctions including a fine of up to ¤10m (£9.2m) or 2% of a company’s annual worldwide turnover the preceding financial year (whichever is greater) and far exceeding the current maximum of £500,000.

According to video analytics platform Ooyala, there is widespread agreement that the media industry loses billions of dollars to piracy each year.
“What’s not in dispute is that the impact is greater the further up the supply chain the piracy occurs,” says Ooyala business development director, media logistics, Bea Alonso.
“A single end user sharing a Netflix password costs the company $10 per month – whereas a single download and illegal posting of pre-released content could cost a studio millions in lost revenue.”
There is no single solution for data security. Instead, all companies, from studios and broadcasters to their suppliers, are advised to implement layers of security – and to be more honest about their weak points in dealing with each other.
DPP’s Harrison reports that producers are starting to take the matter seriously by building security thinking into each production.
“That is a very significant change,” he says. “Since every production is different in terms of scale, location, budget, personnel and so on, it is a major commitment to tackle security each time.”
For its part, the DPP has issued a security checklist for suppliers. Another, shortly to be published, covers the protection of critical broadcast infrastructure.
“These are not standards but risk-assessment forms,” Harrison stresses. “They are devised to create the space for companies to discuss the issue honestly and to admit they don’t have this process yet but they are putting it in place. It’s about getting suppliers into a formal space so that they can demonstrate their commitment to security.”
Post houses and other suppliers demonstrating this will be badged with a special DPP logo. The first company names will be released at IBC this month.
“The best way to stop the bad guys from breaking in is to ensure that the systems are secure, using the latest, patched versions of the OS and vendor applications,” says Avid director of architecture Rob Gonsalves.
“Anti-virus software should be applied as standard on all systems,” he insists. “Firewalls should be deployed to block all access by default, and only open traffic to named endpoints with minimal access to ports.”
At operator level, security needs reinforcing, too.
“Where previously operators needed to ensure set-top boxes were hardened against tampering or piracy, consumers can now choose what type of device they use to interact with content and core business applications,” says Nagra’s Schouten.
“This moves operators from having a single, controlled point of entry into the home to needing multiple ways to control access to content and personal information.
”What’s more, these access points could potentially create openings for adversaries to move laterally into other business systems, so providers also need to harden defences around key business systems and data to monitor access and ensure that unauthorised activity is quickly identified and terminated.”
Implementing best practices for systems, infrastructure and assets is only half the story.
“Staff are a hugely important element and their understanding is paramount to a business’s security,” says Neil Bottrill, digital operations director at DMS, which provides localisation and distribution for Hollywood studios.
“We encourage staff to review what we do and they have the opportunity to give feedback if they feel we can improve security in any aspect of the business.”
Gonsalves backs this up: “Humans are often the weakest part of the security chain, so employee training is crucial to the prevention of attacks. Many cyber attacks start with easily disguised phishing emails, so employees should be briefed with the policies and practices they are expected to follow regarding internet safety, and what to do if a breach occurs.”
It is worth putting cyber crime in perspective. While an unauthorised script, tweet or leak of an episode makes headlines, the industry is by some accounts haemorrhaging revenue from illegal premium, often live, sports streams.
“Crime is happening on many levels, from sensitive customer data to original source content and denial of service, where a hacker swamps a service with fake requests so that the service goes down,” says Richard Brandon, chief marketing officer at content delivery network vendor Edgeware.
“Each of these could be very serious, but some accounts suggest that more people are watching pirated live shows – such as top-tier football – than are paying for it.
“Somebody who breaks in and steals an episode of Game Of Thrones is, in the long run, probably having nowhere near the impact on the industry of day-to-day piracy.

Evoking the beauty and power of Dunkirk with 65mm

PostPerspective

FotoKem worked to keep Christopher Nolan’s 65mm source natively photochemical and to provide the truest-to-film digital cinema version possible

http://postperspective.com/tag/dunkirk/

Tipped for Oscar glory, Christopher Nolan’s intense World War II masterpiece, Dunkirk, has pushed the boundaries further than any film before it. Having shot sequences of his previous films (including Interstellar) on IMAX, this time the director made the entire picture on 65mm negative. Approximately 75% of the film was captured on 65mm/15-perf IMAX (1.43:1) and the rest on 65mm/5-perf (2.2:1) on Panavision cameras.

Christopher Nolan on set.

Nolan’s vision and passion for the true film experience was carried out by Burbank-based FotoKem  in what became the facility’s biggest and most complex large format project to date. In addition to the array of services that went into creating two 65mm master negatives and 70mm release prints in both 15p and 5p formats, FotoKem also provided the movie’s DCP deliverables based on in-house color science designed to match the film master. With the unique capability to project 70mm film (on a Century JJ projector) side by side with the digital projection of 65mm scans, FotoKem meticulously replicated the organic film look shot by Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC, NSC, FSF, and envisioned by Nolan.
In describing the large format film process, Andrew Oran, FotoKem’s VP of large format services, explains, “Hoyte was in contact with FotoKem’s Dan Muscarella (the movie’s color timer) throughout production, providing feedback on the 70mm contact and 35mm reduction dailies being screened on location. The pipeline was devised so that the IMAX (65mm/15p) footage was timed on a customized 65mm Colormaster by FotoKem color timer Kristen Zimmermann, under Muscarella’s supervision. Her timing lights were provided to IMAX Post, who used those for producing 35mm reduction prints. Those prints were screened in Los Angeles by IMAX, Muscarella and editorial, who in turn provided feedback to production on location. Prints and files travelled securely back and forth between FotoKem and IMAX throughout each day by in-house delivery personnel and via FotoKem’s proprietary globalDATA e-delivery platform.”
A similar route was taken for the Panavision (65mm/5p) footage — also under Muscarella’s keen eye — prior to FotoKem producing 70mm/5p contact daily prints. A set of both prints (35mm and 70mm) were transported for screening in a trailer on location 50,000 miles away in England, France (including shooting on Dunkirk beach itself) and The Netherlands. Traveling with editorial during principal photography was a 70mm projector on which editor Lee Smith, ACE, and Nolan could view dailies in 70mm/5 perf. A 35mm Arri LocPro was also used to watch reduction prints on location.
Oran adds, “Zimmermann also applied color timing lights to the 65mm/5p negatives for contact printing to 70mm at FotoKem. Ultimately, prints from every reel of film negative in both formats were screened by Dan at FotoKem before shipping to production. This way, Dan ensured that the color was as Nolan and Hoytema envisioned. Later, the goal for the DCP was to give the audience the same feel as if they were watching the film version.”
HD deliverables for editorial and studio viewing were created on a customized Millennium telecine. Warner Bros. and Nolan required the quality be high at this step of the process — which can be challenging for 65mm formats. To do this, FotoKem made improvements to the 65mm Millennium telecine machine’s optical and light path, and fed the scans through a custom keycode and metadata workflow in the company’s nextLAB media management platform. Scans for the film’s digital cinema mastering were done at 8K on FotoKem’s Imagica 65mm scanners.

Then, to produce the DCPs, FotoKem’s principal color scientist, Joseph Slomka, says, “We created color modeling tools using the negative, interpositive and print process to match the digital image to the film as precisely as technically possible. We sat down with film prints and verified that the modeling data matched a printed original negative in our DI suite with side by side projection.”

Walter Volpatto

This is where FotoKem colorist Walter Volpatto says he determined “how much” and “how close” to match the colors. “We did this by using a special machine — called a Harrahscope Minimax Comparator Projector, developed by Mark Harrah and on loan from the Walt Disney Studios — to project still IMAX frames on the screen,” Volpatto elaborates. “We did this for 400 images from the movie and looked at single frames of digital (projected from a Barco 4K DLP) versus film from Harrahscope, and compared, using the data created by the modeling tools.”
Volpatto worked mainly with RGB offsets in Resolve after each single frame verification to maintain a similarity to traditional color timing. “We also modified the DLP white point settings of the projector for purposes of maintaining the closest match,” he says. “Then, once all the tweaks were made with the stills, we moved to motion picture film reels. Everything described in the printer lights at the film stage were translated to digital based on modeling data.”
In addition to working with Dan (Muscarella) on the film screenings to see the quality he would need to match, Volpatto says that working on Interstellar also helped inform him how to approach this process. “It’s about getting the look that Nolan wants — I just had to replicate it with tremendous accuracy on Dunkirk.”Joseph Slomka
Aside from the standard DCP, two further digital masters were created for distribution including IMAX scans and digital IMAX distribution, and a Dolby Digital Cinema HDR Master from same source material.
“For the Dolby pass, we had to create another set of color science tools — that still represented Nolan’s vision — to exactly replicate the look of film to HDR,” says Slomka. “Because we had all the computer modeling tools used earlier in the process to identify how the film behaved, we were able to build on that for the HDR version.”
Adds Volpatto, “The whole pipeline was designed to preserve the original viewing experience of print film – everything had to integrate purely and unnoticeably. Having this film and color science knowledge here at FotoKem, it’s hard to see that anybody else could achieve what we did at this level.”

Dunkirk - interview with editor Lee Smith ACE

Cinema Editor

https://americancinemaeditors.org/dunkirk/

Dunkirk is the eagerly-anticipated passion project of auteur Christopher Nolan that tells the true story of the daring plan to rescue 400,000 Allied troops who were surrounded by Nazi soldiers in Northern France during World War II. Starring Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Hardy, the Warner Bros. release is produced by Nolan’s Syncopy. On the face of it this would seem the most conventional of the director’s projects to date, but it is told using a complex structure that mixes the time-scales of different participants. Dunkirk was a week-long experience for the soldiers stuck on the beach, a 24-hour event for those traveling to rescue them over the water and a mere one-hour flight from the south of England for British fighter pilots.
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“Each solider or civilian involved in this historic event might have a different version of the story, but they all share a will to survive and to simply find a way back home,” says Lee Smith, ACE, one of Nolan’s core team and familiar with juggling parallel narratives and juxtaposed timelines in work including The Prestige and Interstellar.
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Neither is the film exposition heavy. “This is a very different kind of war movie. It’s more of a suspense film in that it is predominantly a story of survival.” Although Dunkirk is deeply ingrained in British consciousness – the narrative is another instance of plucky Britannia snatching victory from the clutches of foreign invaders – it is less well known in North America and other parts of the world. It has featured on screen before but largely as a backdrop to drama including Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Atonement (2007).

The fact that Smith was born in London helped him understand the culture of the characters but he was able to approach the story at some distance since his family had emigrated to Australia when he was very young. “Chris spoke about this project to me while I was working on Spectre,” says Smith. “When we started talking about it in earnest the film was already greenlit by Warner Bros. I knew of the events in 1940 but I didn’t know them in great detail and once I read the script (by Christopher Nolan) I realized this was one of the more remarkable and stirring stories of the war.” He adds, “Christopher was looking for a lot of emotion to come across in the story. The emotion comes from scenes of civilians performing extraordinary acts of courage in coming to the aid of the armed forces, without delay and without really stopping to contemplate the danger to them. “In a way, the story transcends any particular country or flag since we can all empathize and feel patriotic toward the sense of fellow countryfolk coming to our rescue.
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You can’t help but be captivated by the sheer scale of the evacuation.” Smith traveled with the unit for the entirety of the shoot, which began in May 2016 and lasted for four months, including at an aerodrome in the U.K., in Holland and on location at Dunkirk beach itself. “This was quite surreal, looking at all the actors, extras and war machines recreating what would have happened 76 years ago,” he says.
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Nolan is renowned for favoring film origination and with Dunkirk he pushed this even further. Having shot sequences of his previous films including Interstellar on Imax 70mm, this time the entire film was shot on 65mm negative. Seventy percent of the film was shot on Imax which is 65mm 15 perf (1.43:1). The rest was shot on 65mm 5 perf (2.2:1) on Panavision cameras. (The negative is 65mm. The print is 70mm.) “The Imax cameras give you more real estate which equates to the highest resolution for a film shoot,” says Smith. “Since the 5-perf cameras are quieter than the Imax cameras we used those to shoot the dialogue scenes.”
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It might stand to reason, much like shooting stereo 3D, that the pacing of a film needs to alter to accommodate greater visual immersion. Not so, according to Smith. “I’ve always been of the opinion, right back to The Dark Knight, that the cutting rhythm didn’t need to change just because you’ve introduced Imax,” he says. “We’ve done a lot of testing with the format to see what happens if you slow down or speed up cuts but I believe you don’t need to make any significant change. On Dunkirk we weren’t shooting for rapid cutting or fast action but to let the action unfold within the shot. You just go with the pacing required to tell that particular story.”
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Traveling with editorial during principal photography was a 70mm projector on which Smith and Nolan could view dailies in 70mm 5 perf. “This was glorious,” says Smith. “Most people don’t even get to watch dailies any more let alone have them projected.” Arguably the most challenging sequences for Smith and the crew were the aerial dogfights between Spitfires and the German Messerschmitts. “For all the planning you are at the mercy of the weather and what you can get on that day,” says Smith. “You have to cut as you shoot to make sure you have everything you need to tell the story. Since Dunkirk is being narrated visually rather than by heavy dialogue or voiceover, the aerial sequences had to push the narrative forward in an exciting and coherent way.”
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Having worked with Nolan on multiple projects, Smith says the pair have developed a shorthand when it comes to suggestions for coverage and assembly. Nonetheless, he says, the relationship “is supremely demanding because Nolan’s films are complicated in terms of structure even when they don’t look as if they are.” He adds, “The art is to bring the audience along with you every step of the way, so that it unfolds before you. In this case, there is no hiding from the overall outcome but as in any survival story the suspense lies in following which character will make it home and which will not.”

Dunkirk’s Large-Format Workflow

Associate editor John Lee was Smith’s right-hand man in organizing and prepping dailies from the labs. On location in France and the Netherlands, he and Smith prepped two Avids while back in L.A.; the team’s Avid assistants worked with an identical setup. Also in L.A., a complete film cutting room was set up for both 70mm and 35mm. For the U.K. shoot, they set up an Avid in a trailer on the airfield where the production was based for the aerial shoot. Each day the rushes were sent back to FotoKem in L.A. for processing.
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“We would strike a 70mm print from our 65mm 5-perf dailies then telecine our 70mm print and sync it in the Avid,” explains Lee. “The print would then be sent back to location with sync sound on a CD for playback on a Fostex DV40, which was attached to a 70mm projector that we sourced from Paris.” The production built screening rooms in France, the Netherlands and in a couple of locations in England. “Our 65mm 15-perf dailies (Imax) also went back to FotoKem for processing. The neg then traveled to Imax in Playa Vista where they shot a 35mm flat-reduction print. Our editorial department would log and prep the reduction print and send it back to location where we screened it on a 35mm Arri LocPro, which we’d set-up in a trailer.
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Because we mainly shot Imax, we could move this trailer easily to different locations to watch the reduction print.” After screening the reduction print we sent it back to Los Angeles for telecine and syncing. “With high-speed internet in our cutting rooms I sent the sound dailies to L.A. and they sent me the Avid bins and telecine media every day,” Lee says. “In post, the aim was to end up with a complete 70mm 5-perf version of the feature. To do this we had to turn each Imax shot (1.43:1) into a 5-perf shot (2.2:1). We did most of these optically at FotoKem. Our VFX department had to supply all Imax VFX shots in both formats.” Double Negative was the sole VFX house. Unlike most films that finish with a DI, the production cut two versions of the film: 5 perf and 15 perf. At press time, an additional anamorphic 35mm version of the film was scheduled to be produced optically.

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Drone racing ready to go live

Sports Video Group Europe

First person view (FPV) racing of small quadcopters is shifting from hobby into mainstream sport by blending the digital and physical worlds in a way no esport or traditional racing league can match. That’s according to Nicholas Horbaczewski, CEO/founder of the Drone Racing League (DRL), which recently secured a $20 million investment led by Sky and Liberty Media (owner of Formula One). However, although there is limited live streaming, FPV racing is a strictly post-produced action until the economics stack up for it to go live.
http://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/drone-racing-ready-to-go-live/
Launched in January 2016 as the only global professional drone racing organization, DRL’s five races in the 2017 Allianz World Championship Season are broadcast on ESPN, and in more than 75 countries with partners including Sky Sports, ProSiebenSat.1, Disney XD and OSN.
According to Horbaczewski: “The end product is only possible with every aspect of media, event, competition, and production working together in a coordinated, optimised way. It is only through this comprehensive effort that we’ve been able to bring drone racing to the forefront of entertainment, and transform FPV-racing into a mainstream sport.”
DRL designs and manages the entire drone racing and broadcast ecosystem for its events – everything from the drones and courses to the timing and length of the races to the capture and presentation of the sport.
Racing quadcopters are small, fast and fly in all three dimensions, drastically increasing the challenge for camera operators (imagine trying to capture six golf balls driven at the same time in a wind storm). Since the sports world already has good access to many forms of racing, pure racing alone is not sufficient to engage a mainstream audience, reckons Horbaczewski. Therefore, DRL also capture the human and technology sides of each event to incorporate them into the final shows.
“While everyone can understand that the first drone to cross the finish line wins, presenting the race in a compelling way for mass audiences is a big challenge,” he says. “Post-producing our shows gives us tremendous flexibility to find the simplest, most engaging way to convey the competition to audiences largely unfamiliar with the unique aspects of drone racing. We already present a limited stream of the racing live to the small audiences we permit on site. We have the technical ability to develop a full network quality live broadcast of the sport with enough real-time information to engage mass audiences, but the economics of the sport do not yet justify the dramatically increased costs to do so. As soon as the world has enough true drone racing fans who care about real-time results, we’ll be prepared to deliver live broadcasts.”
Camera requirements
The production typically deploys 50 to 60 cameras per event. In the remote production truck, DRL use 8-12 Grass Valley LDK 8000 Elite or LDX 86 Universe UHD-HDR Cameras (2-4 on jibs). It typically deploys one cable or rail cam and one Grass Valley Hi Speed 6x Camera on a remote robotic head run through the truck. It brings 23 Marshall CV345-CSB POV Cameras to each event (10-12 on the cockpit and audience, 1-2 through the truck in obscure locations on the course, and the rest throughout the course recording locally). Five Varicam LTs are used for interviews, behind the scenes, and talent stand-ups. Another two RED Epics capture dramatic drone footage.
Each drone itself has two cameras: an SD low latency analogue HS1177 600TVL for pilot navigation, and a GoPro Session 5 for post production, both of which operate automatically with no remote controls. Finally, DRL deploy up to 10 GoPro Hero 4+/Black cameras on the course in unusual or otherwise precarious locations.
The manned cameras are routed to the truck via triax, SMPTE and fibre. The switcher is a GVG Kayenne Elite 3G K-Frame HD Production Center. For the house feeds, fibre is used and then converted as needed depending on the destination source in the gallery (HDMI/SDI).
Horbaczewski explains that the production record in four primary codec’s ranging from 4K down to HD resolutions. At any given event there are 16 to 22 cameras that run through the production truck and are recorded on SSD KiPro’s. Another 30+ unmanned POV style cameras supplement the course coverage. Those cameras are recorded either at the camera or brought back to multiple control points as dictated by the venue and camera positions. On top of this there are seven cinematic cameras providing a range of coverage all captured to in-camera cards and manually delivered to the media management station.
All this generates about 250 hours of footage a day. Figuring out how to transfer that much data each day was a challenge, especially to achieve a cost-effective solution, live and within the RF limitations, and ensure that the footage ends up with a proper level of redundancy and verification.
“Because of our broadcast timelines, we also have to proxy, catalogue and meta tag the footage in the field along with many of the other processes that would typically be handled in post,” he says. “This allows us to more effectively hit the ground running when the footage gets back to our post facility.”
Staff and storage 
To achieve this, the production uses three full time people and gear including: SNS EVO 8 Bay Short Depth Storage Server; 2x R3 Thunderbolt 3 Promise Pegasus RAIDs; 3 x MacBook Pros; Sonnet 10G NIC Cards; and various card readers for the different camera sources.
Depending on the size of the course there are 30-50 FX microphones throughout the venue. These are routed through the truck and then recorded on the various KiPros that are used for the video feeds of the manned truck cameras. Mics mounted to the POV cameras on the course and elsewhere are locally recorded at the camera. There are also 12-14 wireless microphones used on talent and drone pilots. These are recorded with ENG audio techs on portable multitrack recorders.
“While we produce a simplified live feed to the participants and small audiences we permit on-site, the big difference from conventional sports production is we’re filming primarily for post-production at this point,” says Horbaczewski. “We deliberately minimise staff in the production truck, delegating graphics, replays and highlights, and commentary to post-production. This is primarily a financial decision, but it also gives us a lot of time to analyse the racing to determine how to best present each competition in the most compelling way. We can adjust how many heats we present in each show, and how they’re distributed between commercial breaks. This allows us to work around races that aren’t as inherently compelling (such as someone leading from start to finish or lots of early crashes). We can also work in human and technology elements to enhance the competitive drama.”
The league’s key technical production partners include Ghost Hand Productions in Santa Cruz, CA, Lyon Video in Columbus, OH, Telegenic in Buckinghamshire, UK, NextGen RF Design in Waseca, MN, L3DFX in Bolingbrook, IL, Delicate Productions in Camarillo, CA.
Post-production starts with media management, proxy creation, and heat alignments (aligning all 50+ cameras on a single Adobe Premiere for each heat including before and after the racing). One team refines the live line-cut, incorporating all the additional cameras as appropriate, and selecting replays/highlights. Another team reviews, selects and organises the non-race content. A third team starts building the overarching story arcs for each show. A fourth team works on features and animations. And a fifth team starts building the graphics by hand (it’s still more economical than automation at this point).
“We then build rough versions of the shows with scratch tracks, refining and cutting to time as we go,” he says. “We do the final VO and refined edits before the formal sound mix and colour correction processes. This is always a multi-week process, with multiple shows at different stages throughout the process.”
4K challenges
Switching to 4K is primarily an economic question. 4K trucks are “drastically” more expensive than HD trucks, and the data management effort would have to expand significantly to handle the transfers within the available time on site. Swapping out 4K POV cameras is technically possible but expensive.
“That said, most of what we capture outside the racing is already in 4K,” says Horbaczewski. “Right now, there’s not an established financial incentive to provide a full 4K show.”
There are similarities in first person game-play with esports – and DRL is exploring esports’ nature and quantity of on-screen data.
“Going forward, we will continue to blur the lines between the real and the virtual to enhance viewer and participant engagement,” stresses Horbaczewski. “We are extremely interested in the opportunities for enhanced viewing experiences through the blending of digital and linear distribution.”
DRL has already developed a realistic FPV drone flight simulator and video game that was used to qualify one of its pilots. As RF technology, processing speeds, and multi-screen distribution improves, the integration of video game features into real racing will continue.
DRL has the technical ability to generate HD streaming and real-time highlights and graphics and it has RF and video technology in place to circumvent mobile phone, cellular and wifi interference. “We already use a remote production truck with the same capabilities for replays and highlights as other sports,” says Horbaczewski. “We are also well underway in developing real-time positioning of the drones on the course integrated into a database with APIs for scoring and analysis, along with a templated graphics system in the truck, which would be essential for engaging mass audiences live. We have the roadmap for all of this ready to go – once the economics justify it.”

Arrowing in on audiences

Broadcast

Advertising is becoming more data-driven and targeted as broadcasters continue to branch out into OTT in a bid to combat the decline in ad revenues.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/arrowing-in-on-audiences/5120584.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957

The shift to addressable or targeted advertising is considered vital to ensure that broadcasters are able to compete effectively with internet-based platforms that are increasing ad revenue at their expense.
The 8% fall in advertising in the first six months of the year at ITV bears out advertising giant GroupM’s lower-than-expected growth prospects for the UK ad market.
The WPP-owned agency attributes a slump in TV investment to a 3% drop in overall ad spend in 2017 and also predicts a 10% drop year-on-year in commercial TV impressions among 16-24 yearolds – the lowest volume since the arrival of Sky Digital in 1998.
Both ITV and GroupM blame the economic and political uncertainty surrounding Brexit and the June general election, but there are more profound structural forces at play.
From the ‘one-to-many’ approach of traditional broadcast, brands and advertisers are itching to move to one-to- one conversations with defined audiences, from which the direct impact of engagement can be measured. The technique is thought to command higher unit prices (between 200% and 300%), enable better monetisation of inventories and boost viewer satisfaction by serving them more relevant ads.
Solutions that span delivery across Freeview and live streaming are being considered.
“The challenge will be combining a granular targeting model with a broader targeting model and avoiding wasted advertising space,” says James Grant, director, partner management at ad management software vendor Freewheel.
“Flagging a new car to the Jones family in Northampton is excellent targeting, but what does the rest of the country see in that particular ad slot? If the industry can align and build a scalable targeting model then there is a significant opportunity.”
Sky has built the poster child of addressable advertising with its AdSmart ad delivery technology that spans set-top boxes (STBs), OTT and multiscreen.
Of the 1,100 advertisers attracted since 2013, 73% are either new to Sky or new to TV. AdSmart delivers a 75% return rate, and channel-switching during a targeted advert reportedly reduces by 48%.
Ads are shown when the target audience is watching (whatever and whenever) and isn’t dependent on a programme or a pre-defined schedule.
Graeme Hutcheson, director of digital and Sky AdSmart, says the opportunity is “massive” for both “the hundreds and thousands of SMEs across the country that are yet to tap into the effectiveness of TV”, and major brands who can use their customer data and creativity to better engage key audience groups.
“OTT has the potential to expand the pool of targetable homes beyond Sky households to younger audiences who use streaming services or non-subscription TV offerings,” explains Hutcheson.
Viewer access
The recent deal between Sky and Virgin Media to integrate AdSmart into Virgin STBs gives the two companies access to 30 million viewers in the UK and Ireland and sufficient combined scale to compete with social media networks. Facebook has around 35 million UK users.
Far from throwing the baby out with the bathwater, however, broadcasters and advertisers continue to believe in TV’s brand-building power. They argue that if, for example, Mercedes launches a range of cars, the initial goal is mainly to convey an image and raise awareness for which TV’s mass reach is unsurpassed.
“Combining the virtues of broadcast and OTT to deliver a hybrid solution geared for personalised advertising is considered the ultimate goal,” suggests Kai-Christian Borchers, managing director at multiscreen software provider 3 Screen Solutions.
“If a service provider could deliver ads via OTT and weave these into the broadcast stream, the result would be a powerful personalised advertising capability. Advertisers would command higher fees because they would have a far greater understanding of the actual reach of the message.”
Another key benefit for advertisers is that linear addressable campaigns do not have to be planned, executed and reported in isolation.
According to Hutcheson, a combined digital and broadcast approach means advertisers “will be able to use TV to serve a different part of their marketing task, from increasing frequency to hard-to-reach audiences, to targeting ads at homes using first or third-party data that was historically reserved for digital, and bringing even more accountability to a trusted and familiar environment.” That’s a dig at platforms like Google and Facebook, which have had their fingers burnt by automatic placement of adverts alongside inappropriate content.
GroupM downgraded its expectations for digital ad spend in the UK this year from 15% to 11% after seeing some large advertisers pause investment.
“A big focus for advertisers is being in a trusted environment,” confirms Jakob Nielsen, GroupM’s addressable TV lead. “There’s a backlash against unmoderated UGC sites by clients whose ads were served in un-brand safe environments. It’s not easy to solve, given the way they’ve built their businesses, but it’s very important for them to figure it out.”
According to Adam Smith, GroupM’s futures director, the ‘costper- view’ culture engendered by digital video, “which prizes price above safety and quality, has fortunately not yet knocked off TV’s crown as the medium with the best-value cost per impression.”
Measurement is by some way the biggest stumbling block to a unified ad trading environment, with advertisers reluctant to invest wholeheartedly in targeted advertising without a metric that accurately compares across platforms.
Although, as Kate Bulkley pointed out in Broadcast, audience measurements used by the TV and digital communities are becoming “less distinct” – particularly with the launch of super-aggregator apps like Amazon Channels, which includes ITV Hub and Discovery channels like Eurosport – Barb’s integration of multi-screen views is not moving quickly enough for some.
“We ideally need Barb to move a lot quicker on Project Dovetail,” urges Nielsen. “Measuring OTT and linear is a massive issue.”
For commercial broadcasters, the need to address targeted ads is more pressing than for pay-TV operators, where subscriptions comprise the bulk of revenue.
ITV is reportedly set to introduce it within the year but Channel 4 and STV are driving this charge. Both oblige viewers to register to see premium and on-demand content they would not otherwise have access to.
That’s important since broadcasters, including ITV, will need to meet strict privacy issues ahead of next year’s pan-European data privacy reforms as ads would be targeted using a person’s IP address, post code or other deterministic data.
The Scottish commercial broadcaster was the first in the UK to use digital ad insertion across live simulcast programmes and it recently went a stage further by offering to trade the same inventory programmatically (automatically).
For targeted advertising to gain true scale, though, a unified measurement may not be enough. The haphazard introduction of the technique has led to the deployment of different proprietary technologies. The DVB, champion of Europe’s free-to-air broadcasters, believes it has a solution. It is attempting to harmonise addressable technologies by building on interactive TV software HbbTV 2.0.
“We need some kind of standard where there are multiple proprietary solutions,” says Thierry Fautier, who co-chairs the DVB’s Targeted Advertising Study Mission Group.
“If I am an advertiser or a campaign manager and I want to place ads across all the different platforms, it is going to be a nightmare. Advertisers want a seamless integration across all the screens and, more importantly, across all the delivery networks.”
Industry standard
As well as benefiting free-to-air broadcasters, the DVB argues that standardisation would make it easier for pay-TV operators to deploy targeted advertising. Fautier points to the advantages of streamlining back-office requirements across OTT, broadcast and service provider platforms.
“We think technology vendors will also be able to scale more easily with a standard,” he says.
The current HbbTV specification, on which Freeview Play is based, can support insertion of advertising over IP into broadcast streams, but doing so accurately is a key technical challenge.
Nonetheless, the DVB believes a standard can be delivered by early 2019 and could even go global.
Regardless, Nielsen predicts that up to half of all ads will be addressable by 2022. “The next five years will see more changes from a TV ad planning perspective than we’ve seen in the past 50,” he says.