Improve Phantom VEO 4K workflow by using 10Gbit network port

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A trained DIT can set-up a network connection and remote-control software for the Phantom VEO 4K which makes workflow significantly faster for location commercials or studio applications.

https://vmi.tv/training/useful-stuff/Using_the+_10Gbs_network_to_improve_the_Phantom_VEO_4K_workflow

The remarkable imaging qualities and 1000 fps 4K RAW capture of the Vision Research Phantom cameras are hard to beat (Phantom FLEX 4K and VEO 4K) but it is the data workflow after shooting to transfer your media to hard drive ready for edit which has always caused the most consternation.

This is an article about configuring and using the built-in 10Gbit ethernet interface of the Phantom VEO 4K to take advantage of the most efficient and fastest workflows from internal RAM to hard drive, which can be even more efficient than the workflow of the Phantom FLEX 4K.

Short bursts of filming create enormous file sizes and the capture process involves multiple stages – a workflow inherited from scientific image capture.

However, the introduction of 10Gbit ethernet (Phantom VEO 4K only) means that you now have a faster alternative to transferring to internal CFAST card with an appropriate PC/Mac* and makes the data workflow even more efficient than with the Phantom Flex 4K.

“Because of its legacy and because of the volume of data it’s recording, the Phantom is unconventional,” explains James Marsden, one of the UK’s leading Digital Intermediate Technicians and an expert in handling the Phantom’s workflow. “With most cameras, once you’ve shot a take, you can move on to another take or the next shot. With the Phantom you will typically trigger record after the action and then decide which part of the cached clip to keep.  Then you save the footage and that is the process that takes time.”

With most cameras, once you’ve shot a take, you can move on to another take or the next shot. With the Phantom you will typically trigger record after the action and then decide which part of the cached clip to keep.  Then you save the footage and that is the process that takes time

Both the original Phantom FLEX 4K and its more modern and compact brother Phantom VEO 4K are capable of recording 1000 fps in 4K using the same super-high speed internal memory. While the VEO’s reduced size and weight – and price - combined with its frugal power requirements make this a popular option for many productions, the data workflow post-capture, is different on both cameras.

The FLEX 4K uses a CineMag transfer, which docks to the camera and is very fast. It takes around 20 seconds to offload a take of about 55GB of RAM. But having transferred it to CineMag you will need to transfer again to offload to a hard drive on location.  Also, CineMags are very expensive at around £10,000 each, so spares are rarely an option.

In contrast the Phantom VEO 4K offloads internally to removable CFast-2 cards. These offer convenient large storage but the offload time is slower, so the regular route is to trim the clip in-camera and then transfer to the card, which might take 20-30 seconds for a short clip. You are then free to transfer the CFast-2 cards to a laptop in the evening with little inconvenience once the shoot has wrapped.

Whilst this is a sensible workflow, sometimes the entirety of the shot is demanded in order to save decision making until post and since downloading an entire take from VEO 4K to CFast might take 10 mins, the VEO offers a super-fast network port to speed things up. 

The VEO has an advantage over the FLEX as it incorporates a lightning-fast 10Gbit LAN port (a chargeable option when purchased and included as standard on all VMI Phantom VEO 4K cameras). 

Tether the camera to a PC/MAC with a fast enough SSD and transfer over 10Gbit ethernet and the VEO is actually faster than using the Flex and also means that you only need to transfer your media once, not twice as well.

Detailed explanation

The large data file sizes required to capture 4K RAW files meant that until now, Gigabit ethernet (1Gb/s) was simply too slow to make direct transfer from the camera to hard drive practical but the availability of the VEO 4K to transfer 10Gb transfer speeds to an appropriate PC/Mac means that transferring media is now five times faster than using internal CFAST cards.

This workflow is actually faster than using the CineMag system of the FLEX, since the data transfer only needs to be transferred once, rather than twice with the FLEX 4K workflow (once from internal RAM to Cinemag and then again from Cinemag to hard drive).

Marsden has looked at ways of speeding the workflow up for studio-type applications and found an elegant solution specific to the Phantom VEO 4K that not only permits extremely fast data downloads using the 10Gbit connection but also provides a more user-friendly means of controlling the camera itself.

Marsden explains, “Offloading the entire unedited 72GB data cache from the VEO to the built-in CFast-2 card takes about 10 minutes. But if you use the 10GB ethernet connection and a suitably fast hard drive (RAID or SSD with at least 400 MB/s read/write rate) then you can transfer the footage in just two minutes.”

Note that if you are using a laptop, then you will need a Thunderbolt port with appropriate 10Gbit ethernet adapter. It is really important that you find a compatible interface and check that it works with your hardware and the VEO 4K as well.

Marsden used a 2014 Macbook Pro Retina with AKiTiO Thunder2 10G Network Adapter supported by Phantom control software Seance 3 for Mac. [Akitio also make Thunderbolt 3 10Gb adapter but Marsden has not tested this].

Phantom’s Windows Software is free to download and Marsden has used this with a Boot camp Windows 10 install of the same Mac Book Pro and with the same adaptor.

“In both cases you need to know how to manually set-up the network connection,” he advises. “It is not plug and play. With drives it is never the connection standard it is drive speed which is important so the minimum is a two drive RAID like the Sony’s Pro RAID HDD with capacity ranging from 4TB to 12TB (£379.74 - £589.85).

The read/write Sony Pro RAID is about 400MB/s whether USB or Thunderbolt 2 is connected. Marsden says USB 3 tops out at about 600MB/s and USB-C/3.1 at 1200MB/s.

“The latter would get you a 2-minute download as this is the speed of the SSD in the Mac Book Pro,” he says.

An experienced DIT will be able to configure the set-up and workstation with a 10GBit adapter, such as Thunderbolt, and at the same time give operators full control over the camera with the VEO’s remote control unit.

The optional Phantom camera remote control unit (called Cameo PCT2+) allows the operator to access and control all the VEO’s functions including triggering start and stop, change frame rate, playback, choosing start and end stops, deleting clips and transferring media.

“The camera’s remote software is fully featured and gives you a full screen window for adjustments and for quickly top and tailing clips in order to reduce the data, which is not as easy from the camera’s monitor or viewfinder,” says Marsden. “That’s even more the case when the camera is difficult to access, perhaps rigged in on a jib, in a hide or on a gimbal. Amazingly, it is even possible to playback, trim and offload clips to the CFast-2 storage all wirelessly with the PCE2, so that potentially all of this can be done while the camera is mounted on a drone or crane.”

The VEO 4K has the form factor of a location camera, suitable for field use and designed for field acquisition and location transfer to internal CFast-2 card, which are not ideal conditions for using a PC/Mac for higher transfer speeds. 

In this case, convenience will trump speed of transfer. “However, trying to operate the Phantom like a normal camera is not really possible,” Marsden continues. “But under suitable conditions if you want to work as quickly as possible then the best method is run a 10Gig connection to a download station for speedy transfer speeds direct to disk and use the PCT2+ remote interface for camera control.

However, trying to operate the Phantom like a normal camera is not really possible but under suitable conditions if you want to work as quickly as possible then the best method is run a 10Gig connection to a download station for speedy transfer speeds direct to disk and use the PCT2+ remote interface for camera control.

It is important to gauge the type of shoot, quantity of data to be transferred, speed of shooting required and suitability for location DIT operation and then choose the most appropriate camera and data transfer method.

MWC 19: 5G Begins Rolling Out in 2019, But Look for 6G in 2030

Streaming Media

Operators may be lighting up 5G networks but this won’t flip a switch to sudden digital transformation. While Qualcomm suggested 5G (plus cloud and AI) will eventually be as commonplace as electricity, the benefits will be reached in stages. 2019 can be considered 5G 1.0.

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/MWC-19-5G-Begins-Rolling-Out-in-2019-But-Look-for-6G-in-2030-130203.aspx

“This is the ground floor of 5G,” said Pete Lau, CEO of Chinese handset brand OnePlus. “The first phase will be characterized by an evident increase in speed and new cloud functionality. 2021 to 2025 will see 5G, cloud, and AI enabling a whole new level of smart functionality in our lives. Then, from 2025 to 2030, the age of internet of things will be unleashed. That will be when we have truly burdenless digital experience.”

For Qualcomm the first phase of 5G is already happening. “It’s the transition to 5G-enabled smartphones and mobile devices,” said the chipmaker’s president Cristiano Amon.

Samsung S10 5G, LG V50 ThinQ, and Sony Xperia 1 are among flagship phones shipping soon and equipped with Qualcomm’s 5G-ready Snapdragon 855 processor.

“The second phase of the transition to 5G will be about taking the tech beyond phones to automotive, industrial, and enterprise sectors,” Amon said. “We’ll begin to get the full potential of unlimited data rates for mission-critical applications.”

Amon said he believes the transition will be faster “than everyone predicting right now.” Twenty operators in 60 markets will launch 5G services this year.

“As 5G gets fully deployed, unlimited computation, AI, and ML [machine learning] will make your mobile device a window to everything,” he stated. “The operating system will become less and less relevant and the app experience will take over.

“At that point connectivity to the cloud combined with AI will be a general technology platform for all society. People will just assume they are connected—like electricity.”

EE had a reality check. The U.K. mobile operator, owned by telco BT, aims to launch 5G this summer. “We’re working round the cloud just to get 5G launched,” said CEO Marc Allera. “We need to give customers a brilliant connection and with 4G on its own that is no longer possible.”

EE aims to build 5G into 10% of its network infrastructure but in locations where it will cover 30% of traffic. “We have to explain to consumer what 5G means and we have to price it right. I think it has to be priced at small premium for the benefits consumers get, but not so much it slows adoption down.”

Allera warned that 5G won’t be perfect: “If we wait for everything to be ready then we’ll be waiting forever. The only way is to get it out, to be first, be bold, and learn from success and failure.”

The sentiment was backed by Amon. “In the operator and chipset business every generation of network upgrade is an opportunity to separate winners from losers, and 5G will be unforgiving given the profound change it brings,” he said. “You are not going to know everything on launch but you do know the potential of the technology so you have to take risks, be fast, and be flexible.”

Operators and phone manufacturers need to get consumers to buy 5G smartphones and network subscriptions. A killer app could be the answer and multiplayer gaming is emerging as the best bet.

This is predicated on moving processing power move to the edge (in cell towers closer to players), higher network capacity, and ultra-low latency.

“The impact that that can have on multi-player gaming and mobile access to console style performance will be exciting,” said Allera.

He predicted: “Watch out for new Netflix-style gaming subscription services.”

The wireless data speeds of 5G could be so great that eventually there will be no need for new games consoles at all, Amon suggested.

The Qualcomm boss also picked out video streaming at higher data rates as another game-changer. Indeed, Samsung’s S10 5G would be capable of downloading a full season of a TV show in minutes on launch in a few months time.

“Ninety-five percent of the time 4K video will be streamed at full bitrate over 5G,” Amon predicted. “That will change how we think about how consumer VOD and live. It’s a big challenge and opportunity for broadcasters when anyone with 4K cameras can become a broadcaster. Live virtual presence is the next step in the evolution of social networking.”

After 5G, 6G?

If all goes according to plan then 5G should be a roaring success—but there are contingency plans being put in place.

There are also plans being drawn up for a 6G network. Some observers have suggested that if 5G goes according to plan there will be no need for a 6G. Other suggest that something like 6G might be needed around 2030 to shore up the parts of 5G implementation that have yet to take root. There’s another group that believes that's another stage in the evolution of network technology and that such leaps happen roughly every decade.

“A new mobile generation appears every 10 years, and so 6G will emerge around 2030 to satisfy all the expectations not met with 5G, as well as new ones to be defined at a later stage,” explained Matti Latva-aho, the Academy Professor at the University of Oulu in Finland.

He was at MWC presenting 6Genesis, an eight-year €250 million ($284 million USD) research program to conceptualize 6G under the auspices of the University of Oulu's Centre for Wireless Communications.

Latva-aho explained that 6Genesis will develop fundamental technology components needed for 6G systems by researching areas including “wireless connectivity, distributed intelligent wireless computing, device and circuit technologies and implementations, and vertical applications and services.”

Th ITU, part of the United Nations, has a working group on the matter called Network 2030. The working assumption is that by then we’ll be dealing in terahertz radio frequencies, higher than those for 5G and conceivably capable of download speeds 1000 times faster than (mere) gigabit speeds.

So maybe President Trump’s much derided tweet last week that he’d like to see “5G and even 6G technology” deployed in the U.S. “as soon as possible” wasn’t so far off the mark after all.

MWC 19: Liberty Media Calls 5G a Pipe Dream Turned Bad Dream

Streaming Media

Amid the gung-ho promises for 5G’s money generating tsunami and epoch transforming potential there are also voices of concern about the basic business model.

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/MWC-19-Liberty-Media-Calls-5G-a-Pipe-Dream-Turned-Bad-Dream-130220.aspx

Giving a keynote at MWC 2019, Mike Fries, CEO and vice chair of pay TV operator Liberty Global, said, “5G was a pipe dream and now it’s become a bad dream for many operators.

“Operators are very nervous about figuring out how to make the economics work. But as a pay TV company with mobile a second and third business for us I am not worried.”

That’s because Fries identified the main driver for 5G on the consumer side as video “content, content, content.”

He said, “From our point of view we need to be aligned to YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix, as well as traditional content providers.”

He described AT&T’s swallowing of TimeWarner as “a defensive move to ensure they have access to content,” then added, “I don’t think you have to own it [be vertically integrated] to be successful.”

Fries defended the role of cable and fixed broadband networks—the infrastructure underpinning his company.

“5G will not replace fixed,” he asserted. “You will get 10Gb to 70Gb with 5G over mobile, but you will see 150Gb to 600Gb in the home. Yes, the ratio [of fixed to mobile] will come down a bit but consumers will want to use so much bandwidth in the home [it will mean] fixed is here to stay.”

Fries also took a shot at mobile operators in Europe suggesting that mobile businesses couldn’t afford to roll out 5G and that the market needed rationalizing.

“There are 450 operators in Europe selling mobile networks to consumers—that’s a million subs per operator,” he said. “In contrast there are just four [main operators] in the U.S. and only two in China. Fragmentation is a real challenge. There will be greater consolidation [in the European market] to enable capital allocation and most will need fixed connectivity to deliver end-to-end services—especially video—to the consumer.”

The 5G bill is expected by one analyst, the financial house Greensill, to top $2.7 trillion USD by the end of 2020.

“Most operators in Europe are nervous about capital outlay and uncertain of the business model,” Fries claimed. “There’s been ten straight years of shrinking revenue in mobile and the biggest issue has been price. Consumers, understandably, want more for less.”

He seized on research from Cisco that predict 400 million 5G subs worldwide by 2022 (5% of the total mobile connections) and over 28 billion machine-to-machine connections by the same timeframe.

“5G is not happening for the consumer [at first],” he said. “Most mobile operators will start with B2B options.”

There is wide industry consensus that the biggest piece of the 5G pie will not be consumer but in industrial and enterprise applications.

“For us the 5G business case stacks up on its own,” said Andy Penn, CEO at Australian telco Telstra. “It makes more sense for me to invest in 5G for the enterprise. Those use cases are starting to become clearer, but how we package the solution for customers is a trickier issue.”

Microsoft’s upgraded mixed-reality headgear HoloLens, unveiled in Barcelona, is not aimed at gamers, visual entertainment, office workers, or casual punters.

CEO Satya Nadella said that Microsoft is targeting use by large corporations in manufacturing, design, and remote training. Companies like Airbus, Bosch, Honeywell, and Saab are already test partners for Hololens 2 and may value the ability to speed product design or diagnose problems on an oil rig or production line with holographic imagery, saving the cost of physically sending technicians.

Cisco research suggests that more than 70% of revenues from 5G will be from the enterprise.

Cisco’s CEO Chuck Robbins declared, “This is going to be a transformative tech like no other we’ve ever seen. This is one tech that feels like the hype is going to be reflected in reality.”

Others, however, were more cautious.

“As an industry we are only just finalizing rollout of 4G,” Hatem Dowidar, CEO of Emirates telco Etisalat. “We have barely got 4G into emerging markets and we need to get return on investment before we rush into 5G which in any case has not even been allocated spectrum in many countries.

“All the industry’s energy is going to 5G,” added Dowidar. “But we need more sanity about using it.”

MWC 19: AR, VR, and 5G Create the Future of Online Entertainment

StreamingMedia

While much of the discussion around 5G is a heavyweight slog through business-to-business applications, there’s a lot fun to be had imagining what the combined developments in high-speed networks and machine vision can do for future media, information, and entertainment. We are at the low foothills of Ready Player One scenarios in which the online world merges with the real.

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=130175

Few companies are as ambitious with this vision of virtual and physical interaction as Magic Leap.

Speaking at MWC2019, Omar Khan, chief product officer, said he prefers to use the term “physical” rather than “real” world to describe what his company is up to.

“We see the harmonization of the digital and physical worlds at scale,” he said. “Humans interact using gesture, eye gaze, and voice with no friction. Our aim is to replicate that natural human interface with spatial computing.”

The Magic Leap One goggles are, in his words, “a spatial computing device” which among other things will “unbox the web”.

That’s shorthand for taking current two-dimensional web pages and turning them into 3D virtual objects or environments.

“There’s no reason not to turn the streets of your city into Gotham,” he said.

Spatial computing using AR googles, he said, would enable 3D communication and co-presence, turning any living space into a venue for entertainment

“When you bring people to places there’s a finite economy in terms of cost, travel, time. But when you bring places to people then it is infinite.”

The makers of AR game phenomenon Pokémon Go said they had purposely set out to get kids off the sofa and to play in the real world—albeit through the lens of a mobile screen.

“What excites us is the socially interactive nature to AR experiences,” said Phil Keslin, CTO at Niantic. “We have held AR events which attract thousands of people to participate with other people they have never met. I firmly believe creating those shared social experiences is key to making immersive gaming apps work.”

He claimed that Pokémon Go players have collectively walked over 22 billion kilometres while playing the game—the distance the earth travels around the sun over the course of 21 years.

Niantic hopes for more of the same mass participation when it launches its Harry Potter-themed AR title later this year.

Clues about the tech that has gone into Harry Potter: Wizards Unite can be deduced from Neon, a real-time multiplayer virtual dodgeball game Niantic introduced in prototype last year.

Niantic is also using machine learning to determine the depth of every pixel in a video frame, then using that to make virtual objects run behind real objects in real-time. The processing for this, Keslin said, is done almost entirely on the device.

“To enable large shared experiences you need better bandwidth and very low latency which is what 5G brings,” he said. “Mobile edge computing moves processing closer to the user and allows us to do compute intensive work such as arbitrating the real-time interactions of a thousand individuals.”

Immersive storytelling is the bread and butter of RYOT Lab, Verizon’s innovation hub for emerging technologies.

“5G is the post-smartphone era and you need to get ready for it now,” urged Mark Melling, head of RYOT Studio in Europe. “You can’t connect 5G globally today but you can connect up a small room.”

RYOT has built a 5G-networked studio where, among other things, it has trialled instant motion capture—the immediate translation of performance captured live into animation.

“That’s never been done before,” he claimed. “Imagine the future production of Avatarwhere it won’t take a month or a week to render every single frame. You can do it instantly.”

RYOT is also experimenting with holography. Subjects are captured in 3D volumetric video and viewable by a third-party wearing a HoloLens. Melling’s example was bringing together a U.S. customs agent with an immigrant for the better understanding of both.

“That’s one of the most controversial conversations you can have can have, but holographic presence challenges people to share the same space with another that they would never dare to do otherwise.”

The Tokyo Olympics in summer 2020 will be a showcase for 5G technologies, including their use in multi-camera video contribution links and 8K virtual reality—planned as live streams by telco NTT Docomo.

IOC President Thomas Bach told MWC2019, “Your adrenaline will be pumping as if you are leaping off the half pipe or feeling the G-force on the skeleton sled. In this respect VR and AR offer a completely new way to experience the magic of the Olympic Games.”

He hinted that the IOC is exploring ways that esports could be experienced using AR and VR. In tandem with Alibaba, Omega, and Intel, the organization is also enveloping Tokyo’s games venues with 5G to the cloud. “This will transform the Olympics for fans, venues, and athletes,” Bach said. “The technology will also help judge and referee events to arrive at better decision making. We may see digital judging of gymnastics in Tokyo.”

For HTC founder and CEO Cher Wang, VR and AR “is the most immersive form of media and communication ever invented.”

She declared, “They will increasingly be blended for different applications. Recent advances in eye tracking will enhance the quality of content by optimizing VR performance; sensors will feed back contextual information about the user environment.”

Wang predicted 5G will deliver 10Gbs for data heavy applications like VR. “The world around us will be mapped out for contextual information,” she said. “AI will humanize our technology using facial recognition, gesture, biometrics, and voice control to interface with the virtual world. Blockchain will ensure our personal data world remains private unless we choose to share.”

She used the occasion to launch the HTC 5G Hub—an entertainment device running Android 9.0 Pie which also acts as a smart display and 5G hotspot for up to 20 users. It houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor and enables low-latency gaming and 4K video streaming (though the Hub’s own screen is strangely 720x1280). Compatible with the Sprint network, the device will likely run on other networks in the future. It is expected to integrate with Google Assistant.

Forget folding displays, 5G video streaming and cameras are the biggest focusses for mobile tech in 2019

RedShark News

Larger screens paired with 4K video recording and a first 21:9 4K OLED display are primed for an explosion in video to mobile.

https://www.redsharknews.com/technology/item/6175-forget-folding-displays-5g-video-streaming-and-cameras-are-the-biggest-focusses-for-mobile-tech-in-2019

Mobile phone makers expect us all to be using our mobile screens even more in future and particularly for streaming video. Many of the new flagship handsets are 5G, some are foldable, but all have multiple cameras as standard and all put the display centre stage.

5G equipped or foldable, if you’ve got the new Huawei then you’ve got both. That’s a step up from Samsung which just announced the Galaxy Fold in a 4G version only with 5G to come.

At the unveiling of the Mate X foldable 5G smartphone in Barcelona, the company’s Richard Yu took aim at the Samsung by claiming that the fold’s 4.6inch display (when folded) is too small and difficult to use. By contrast, the Mate X offers 6.6-inch front and 6.4-inch rear screens which folds out to a 8-inches.

Price

Huawei is promising availability in the summer and when it does it will come with its own mortgage: €2,229.

“There is so much new technology integrated here to make it possible so it is very expensive. Our engineers are trying to keep the cost down,” Yu explained.

Rather than the Qualcomm Snapcdragon chip, the Mate X is powered by Huawei’s own Kirin 980 processor paired with a 5G modem.

LG’s first 5G mobile, introduced at Mobile World Congress, is the V50 ThinQ. This isn’t exactly a folding screen but comes with an optional second 6.2 inch screen to double the viewing size for gaming Nintendo DS style and multitasking such as using Google maps while texting.

The South Korean firm said it had no plans to release a foldable screen, although it will eventually come out with one because it believes that is what everyone will be using in the future.

For now, it maintains that the best plan was to launch an add-on, which LG hinted will be a more affordable option than a foldable device.

With 5G it’s all about streaming in realtime for LG which is why it has added a YouTube into its camera. There’s a wide angle and zoom lens but the main camera is 12MP with a portrait mode which grabs depth information from the other cameras for bokeh effects. The bokeh extends to video too, so you can add some depth to those moving scenes too. Video is rated at 4K and with HDR.

To tackle challenges around battery life and heat dissipation the V50 has a Vapor Chamber to keep internal temperatures low and comes with a 4000mAh battery.

The screen is 6.4inches and is OLED while audio has been beefed up “to produce a superb stereo performance” in the company’s words. LG is also talking with operators all over the world about 5G partnerships.

The cheapest handset entry to 5G is from Chinese brand Xiaomi. It Mi Mix 3 5G costs just Euro600 and the company says it’s lining up partnerships with European operators including TIM, 3, Orange and Telefonica. The phone is equipped with dual 12MP rear cameras and dual 24MP and 2MP selfie cameras.

Multiple camera options are now the norm but HMD claims to have launched the world’s first smartphone with a 5-camera array. The Nokia 9 PureView (U$699) can simultaneously capture the image and fuse it together into one 12MP photo “with outstanding dynamic range and depth of field”.

Sony has put the priority on streaming video for its newest top of the range Android. The Xperia 1 features a 4K (3840 x 1644 resolution) 6.5-inch OLED display – the first to be fitted in a smartphone and precious enough to be protected behind Gorilla Glass. The screen is in 21:9 CinemaWide aspect ratio and what’s more you can record 4K HDR video at 24 frames per second also in the 21:9 format.

Sony said it wants to better show off movies on the handset and therefore eliminate the black bars that typically cut off the top and bottom of ultrawide films. Surround sound is been improved too. In partnership with Dolby it has added a mobile version of Dolby Atmos together with Sony’s Digital Sound Enhancement Engine.

The Xperia 1 has three cameras featuring 12MP sensors, including wide-angle and telephoto, a ‘BIONZ’ algorithm to snap bursts of 10 frames a second and a feature called Eye AF which will track your eyes. It’s not 5G and will probably cost around $1000.

3D depth sensing or time-of-flight sensors are also being added to a host of mobile devices (first pioneered by the iPhoneX in 2017). Right now, use of 3D cameras are limited to biometric authentication, personal security and mobile payment verification. Future applications will include things like 3D scanning and interactive gaming and entertainment.

Huawei Chairman Has a Message for Trump: There Are No Back Doors

Streaming Media

Huawei as launched a staunch—and cheeky—defence of the embattled Chinese telco equipment maker’s alleged espionage agenda.

In a message targeted at the White House, given at MWC 2019, Huawei deputy chairman Guo Ping said, “I understand Trump when he said that the U.S. needs powerful, faster, and smarter 5G. Huawei is far head of the game when it comes to 5G. For the best technology and greater security—choose Huawei.”

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Huawei-Chairman-Has-a-Message-for-Trump-There-Are-No-Back-Doors-130169.aspx

Guo explicitly addressed claims that his company's infrastructure comes with a path back to Beijing.

“Huawei has not and will never plant back doors,” he stated. “Huawei has a strong track record in security for three decades. The U.S. security accusation [about] our 5G has no evidence. Nothing."

He added, “The irony is that the U.S. Cloud Act allows their entities to access data cross borders.”

The act compels U.S.-based technology companies via warrant or subpoena to provide requested data stored on servers regardless of whether the data are stored in the U.S. or on foreign soil.

It’s the same charge levelled at the Chinese firm.

Guo claimed that Huawei is leading the rollout of 5G globally and backed up his argument with a number of statistics.

Last year, Huawei invested more than $15 billion in technology. It claimed to be the first company able to deploy 5G networks at scale, to deliver 14Gbps per 5G sector and boost 5G speeds using fibre up to 200Gbps, four times greater than any competitor.

“We are leading in 5G but we understand innovation is nothing without security,” he said. “Who is the most trustworthy of them all? It’s a very important question and if you don’t understand that [then] you can go ask Edward Snowden.”

Putting the ball back into the court of network carriers rather than tech vendors he said trust would come only through unified standards and clear regulations.

He continued: “We cannot use prisms, crystal balls, or politics to manage cyber security. It’s a challenge we all share.”

The industry standards body 3GPP was created with the support of many government security agencies.

“Government and mobile operators should work together to agree how this assurance testing and certification regime will be,” he said.

Huawei has received wider industry backing. In Barcelona, Vodafone CEO Nick Read said that cutting the number of major network suppliers to two from three would damage the industry.

“[It would lead] to a massive swap of equipment, be hugely disruptive to national infrastructure consumers and very, very expensive,” he said. “It will delay 5G in Europe for probably two years. It structurally disadvantages Europe.”

Turkish mobile operator Turkcell has also come out in support, saying Huawei is "a reliable business partner and the partnership is set to continue." Turkcell added that the "problem is not just about personal data privacy, it's also about just 'a couple of global companies' desire to stay in power”.

Ciaran Martin, CEO of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre also recently clarified its position saying the issues with Huawei are not the firm’s links to China but wider issues of telco security.

“These problems are about the standard of cyber security; they are not indicators of hostile activity by China," Martin said.

Guo also said that Huawei is investing to make 5G simpler to install and more efficient to run.

“While the industry’s networks are 21st century, the network operation and maintenance is still in the 18th century,” he said. “Globally, 70% of network faults are from human limitations.”

Huawei is using AI embedded in its chips to build intelligent networks that would, among other things, reduce network issues and reduce power costs for carriers, he added.

Apple's Marzipan will be a very important change to how apps for Apple devices are made

RedShark News

Apple is going to great lengths to simplify the app creation process across its devices.

https://www.redsharknews.com/technology/item/6173-apple-s-marzipan-will-be-a-very-important-change-to-how-apps-for-apple-devices-are-made

Apple may have had its reputation for innovation stolen by Samsung following the Korean firm’s launch of a whole new category of foldable computing device, but that may be because Cupertino is concentrating its firepower on software.

The firm has been an eternity, it seems, in launching into the video streaming space but this appears to be coming to a head when, as is widely expected, it launches an SVOD service this Easter.

As part of that, Apple is also reportedly on the verge of rolling out a project to make app development for iPad, Macs and iPhones far easier. It is also rumoured to be designing and manufacturing its own chips, ditching Intel in the process.

The goal of the software initiative, code-named ‘Marzipan’ is to make it possible to write a single piece of code capable of running apps on mobile or desktop interfaces. Consolidating iOS code for iPads into applications for macOS and vice-a-versa is expected to save developers time and incentivise the creation of far more apps - all of which should then generate more money for Apple.

Marzipan will be fully functional by 2021, but Apple will begin partially rolling it out in 2019, according to report by Bloomberg. Apple’s developer conference in June is reckoned to be the target date.

Later this year, reports Bloomberg, Apple plans to let developers port their iPad apps to Macs via a new SDK. Developers will still need to submit separate versions of the app to Apple’s iOS and Mac App Stores, but the new kit will mean they don’t have to write the underlying software code twice.

By 2021, the goal is that Marzipan should be able enable code for a single app that will work on, no conversion needed. This would effectively merge the iOS and macOS App Stores into a single software marketplace.

iOS and macOS won't merge

Despite the app merger plan, Apple has said it won’t combine iOS and macOS into a single operating system.

Ahead of launch of its new streaming video platform Apple wants to simplify mobile video viewing by housing content in one app instead of forcing users to launch separate apps for each service.

Content from PBS, Lions Gate, Showtime and Viacom but not Netflix are expected to be offered on the platform. Apple also has a deal with Oprah Winfrey and director Steven Spielberg and has spent U$1 billion on original content.

Plans to start transitioning some Macs to its own chips is a part of the overall strategy. It would allow Apple to more tightly integrate new hardware and software and potentially result in systems with better battery life.

Using its own main chips would make Apple the only major PC maker to use its own processors, according to Bloomberg. Dell, HP, Lenovo and Asustek all use Intel chips.

MWC 19: 5G Operators Promise the Moon But Won’t Shoulder the Cost

Streaming Media

All sorts of promises are being made for 5G from underpinning tremendous worldwide economic growth to erasing the digital divide and therefore bringing millions of people out of poverty, but network operators are still putting a gun to government heads.

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/MWC-19-5G-Operators-Promise-the-Moon-But-Wont-Shoulder-the-Cost-130139.aspx

Their beef is that while they continue to pour billions of dollars into the infrastructure to drive the digital future, they are concerned about making their money back and want governments to ease back on regulation by making it cheaper for them to buy spectrum.

“Intelligent connectivity will bring significant economic and social benefits, but not if operators are burdened with debt,” warned Mats Granryd, director general of influential mobile operator’s trade body GSMA at Mobile World Congress. “So, the message for governments is don’t get short-term greedy to kill the long-term goose.”

A new GSMA report calculates that mobile operators worldwide are currently investing around $160 billion a year on expanding and upgrading their networks, “despite regulatory and competitive pressures.”

Stephane Richard, chair and CEO of Orange, said, “We have to invest massively in very fast fixed broadband and 5G mobile while facing real concerns about getting return on investment in the context of increasing regulatory pressures. There has always been scepticism about the industry’s capacity to generate value [from 4G and 5G] and increasing regulator pressure means very low growth.”

Vodafone CEO Nick Read took aim at Europe’s regulators, in particular, for hindering rollout of 5G—although he admitted that mobile operators only had themselves to blame.

“As an industry we have been too protectionist,” he said. “We don’t collaborate well enough and in terms of customer need we are not fast enough. For example, we were protectionist around text messaging revenues and let OTT players move in to take over the rich messaging space.”

He added, “Because operators didn’t move to address such issues it prompted regulators to moderate us and in Europe this ended up fragmenting spectrum and in turn reducing coverage and network performance.”

China Telecom said that 5G is costing three times more than any previous network rollout.

Singtel Mobile’s group CEO Cua Sock Koong said that the telco expects its annual revenue growth to shrink from 5% to 1% at the same time as it is investing billions of dollars on spectrum and infrastructure to enable this growth in traffic.

“Mobile data traffic will be four times as high in 2025 than it is today but revenue growth is stagnating,” she said. “Connectivity is saturated.”

With two thirds of the world connected to a mobile service and over 100% of users connected in some markets like Korea, the revenue from hooking someone up to the internet is marginal at best.

Singtel’s solution—in common with other operators—is to focus on “intelligent connectivity.” This is an industry-identified trend based on 5G, IoT, AI and big data.

“We’ve talked about this for years,” Koong said. “What has changed is that these technologies are now working together and the impact they will have is profound.”

Operators are moving into adjacent markets including streaming entertainment but with greater revenue opportunities in robotics, analytics, automotive, medicine, and smart cities.

“It is critical to move from just connectivity to intelligent connectivity,” urged Granryd. “The best way is to imagineer right now on 4G. If you direct your business needs to these opportunities operators will be first in line when the 5G lights turn green.”

Korean telco KT is already commercializing 5G. It has launched a VR/AR games platform served from the cloud over 5G. CEO and chair Chang-Gyu Hwang said the company was ready for mobile live personal broadcasting and 4K, 8K, and holographic streaming. It has a "5G factory as a service" pay-as-you-go network for Korean manufacturers to automate production line processes using cloud-based machine vision. It has brought latency down to just 5ms and is securing data over 5G with blockchain.

According to the GSMA’s report, the fifth generation network is on track to account for 15% (1.4 billion) of global mobile connections by 2025, as the number of network launches and compatible devices ramps up this year. The report reveals that a further 16 major markets worldwide will switch on commercial 5G networks this year, following on from the first 5G launches in South Korea and the U.S. in 2018.

By 2025, 5G is forecast to account for around 30% of connections in markets such as China and Europe, and around half of the total in the U.S. The number of global IoT connections will triple to 25 billion by 2025, while global IoT revenue will quadruple to $1.1 trillion, the report forecasts.

Looking further ahead, it is forecast that 5G will contribute $2.2 trillion to the global economy over the next 15 years, with key sectors such as manufacturing, utilities, and professional and financial services benefitting the most from the new technology.

Data “is like a dignity”

The amount of global data in existence by 2025 will be 160 zetabytes—the equivalent to 18 million years of streaming Netflix in HD. It’s a kind of meaningless statistic, but it prompted Telefonica’s chair and CEO Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallette Lopez to question the nature of data.

“Some companies would say data powers information into factories and that it’s a form of capital, others that people give data away free in return for services, that it is an infinite resource and that all the value is in the algorithm. We disagree. Data is like dignity. It has its own value.”

He called for a new bill of rights “one that lays down the digital future for all citizens”—taking account of whether consumers are in control of the value exchange of their data.

Minority Report for real: HoloLens 2 is AR on an industrial scale

Redshark News

Microsoft has unveiled HoloLens 2, an upgraded version of the mixed-reality headgear and the nearest thing yet to being able to interact Minority Report style with the dimensional internet. But this is not aimed at gamers, visual entertainment, office workers or casual punters. This is a hardcore piece of computing for industry which takes AR very seriously indeed.

https://www.redsharknews.com/vr_and_ar/item/6172-minority-report-for-real-hololens-2-is-ar-on-an-industrial-scale

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the launch event in Barcelona that it was targeting use by large corporations in manufacturing, design, training and even warfare. Actually he didn’t mention war or that the firm has already drawn the ire of some of its own employees by selling an arsenal of HoloLens 2 kit to the US military.

Like Google, Facebook and noisy start-up Magic Leap, Microsoft thinks of AR as the next level of computing, one that frees us from being tethered to hardware and that opens up a spatial dimension to interfacing with the matrix.

“This new medium is just the beginning of experiencing what's possible when you connect the digital world to the physical world to transform how we work, learn and play," Nadella said.

So, let’s run down the key advances.

More comfortable: Had to be really didn’t it? Each iteration will get lighter, and more discrete. Although, a few ounces lighter the principal reason for an allegedly more comfortable experience (Microsoft said it is three times more comfortable) is that some of the system’s weight has been shifted to the back of the head. Unlike Magic Leap One, the H2 doesn’t need its processing to be worn in a belt pack, so it’s still more bulky than its nearest rival, but the ergonomics of the new design are winning some plaudits even if it has been likened to wearing a welder’s helmet. Maybe that’s the point?

Flip-up visor: Like a welder’s helmet you can make eye contact with a real human and then flip the glass down again for more virtual/reality fusion.

Double the field of view: The original HoloLens had a 34-degree diagonal FOV; the new version has been upped to a 52-degree diagonal FOV. In addition, resolution has leapt from 720p to the equivalent of 2K per eye. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 processor an on-board custom AI holographic co-processor.

Connects to Azure: Microsoft has never been a hardware company and it isn’t about to change now. HoloLens 2 is built to be a cloud connected device and not just into its own Azure cloud but via Azure to connect users of Android and Apple devices. It would mean a user could generate a hologram in one place and have it shared by users on multiple devices.

SDK for app developers: Microsoft is rolling out a number of Dynamics 365 branded apps for HoloLens. They include Dynamics 365 Product Visualize for showcasing products in 3D, Remote Assist for helping visualise product or system repair issues (as mundane or as practical as fixing a lift in a skyscraper) and a coming Dynamics 365 Guides application for 3D training at scale. Those that have tried this out liken the experience to a floating Lego manual for reality. Which sounds like it’s fun and easy and satisfying to me. Better than say a floating Ikea manual for reality.

Retina tracking extraordinare: Here’s where it gets even more interesting. Internal cameras will track your eyes and recognise where you're looking so you don't even have to move your head at all. That’s not new of course, but Microsoft has given this the most full-bloodied representation yet. Eye tracking measures your eye movement and uses it to interact with virtual objects. For example, this means you can read a news story on a holographic browser, and the page will scroll for you. There are incredible uses here for communication by the physically disabled when all you need to pick, point and alter objects are your eyes.

HoloLens 2 will also track your hands without any additional controllers. It means you can walk up to a virtual object in HoloLens 2 and manipulate it (push, hit, squash it) with your hands. Microsoft calls it articulated hand gestures which means you can pick up a hologram and move it in space. You can imagine all sorts of ways of interacting with virtual objects including text, photographs and video with this alliance of eye movement and physical gesture. It may eventually become as second nature as scrolling with a mouse or typing on a keyboard.

Eye-tracking is also used for biometric security, too. The HoloLens 2 has iris scanning via Windows Hello, so users can instantly log in to Windows and launch their personal account or remember personal headset preferences.

Brain-wave tracking: Microsoft’s AR chief Alex Kipman said the HoloLens 2's eye-tracking cameras could also measure your emotions via tiny eye changes. CNET reports that at Microsoft's Human Factors Lab in Redmond Virginia, they are testing an EEG-sensing headpiece to measure brainwave activity. "We didn't necessarily use this much on HoloLens, but we see this as an opportunity ... we're using it on some other things,” says the Microsoft spokesperson cryptically.

Shipping: Second half of this year.

Costs $3,500: A pricetag which reflects its target industrial market. Microsoft is also offering HoloLens 2 as a bundle for three years along with a subscription to its Dynamics 365 packages. Companies like Airbus, Bosch, Honeywell and Saab are already test partners for HoloLens 2 and may value the ability to speed product design or diagnose problems on an oil rig or production line with holographic imagery and save the cost of physically sending technicians. Magic Leap One goggles aren’t much cheaper at U$2,295 – but they are cheaper.