InBroadcast
Object based broadcasting, cloud post production, ultra high frame rate cinema and entertainment on wheels
Cloud lift off
Cloud is coming of age lifting post production out of the restrictions of physical location. Long theorised, the technology is rapidly maturing. Late last year vfx house Untold Studios launched in Shoreditch as the world’s first cloud-based studio. It has Sohonet links for super-fast connectivity to AWS Cloud where all processing and rendering take place. From Linux-based workstations artists can open 3D design, animation, compositing and paint software. All storage, creative applications and processing takes place in the cloud.
“What we’re doing is putting technology back at the forefront of what a creative studio can be,” says Sam Reid, Head of Technology. “Instead of being a brake to the creativity of artists we want the technology to enable anything they want to do.”
The set-up enables the facility to ramp up or scale down really quickly just paying for the compute and storage it uses with no capex outlay.
As data demands have grown the pressure on finite on-premise storage space has grown. Companies like BASE Media Cloud offer facilities a managed way of outsourcing their requirements to the cloud. Aframe is in the business of facilitating cloud-based production. Forbidden Technologies has developed a cloud-based remote production suite based on its codec Blackbird and continues to develop browser-accessed editing tools. VFX tools developer Foundry markets a cloud-based pop-up vfx pipeline for smaller houses wanting to take on large projects.
Ultimately, it will be a matter of the virtual facility coming to the talent rather than the talent having to move to a central location. Vfx house Jellyfish has already armed itself for a bordered post-Brexit world by investing in a cloud-based infrastructure. In theory, artists could work from Paris or Berlin with all the material accessible and secured online.
“The technology has now evolved to a point where any filmmaker with any VFX project or theatrical, TV or spot editorial can call on the cloud to operate at scale when needed — and still stay affordable,” says Chuck Parker, Sohonet CEO. “The ability to collaborate in realtime with teams in multiple geographic locations is a reality that is altering the post production landscape for enterprises of all sizes.”
InCartainment
With connectivity for mobile phones saturated in many markets, attention is turning to joining everything online from self-driving cars to high-performing industrial robots.
The dual trends of 5G networks and the explosion in sensor-laden products are the enabling forces for what mobile operator’s lobby group GSMA calls ‘the era of Intelligent Connectivity’
This year the first consumer handsets with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 chip will be released. These will be capable of two-way Gigabit speeds, computer vision and neural network capabilities to support the surge of AI voice, gaming and extended reality experiences over 5G networks.
The telecom network is evolving and is quickly becoming integrated into every kind of industry. According to Ericsson’s November 2018 Mobility Report [https://www.ericsson.com/assets/local/mobility-report/documents/2018/ericsson-mobility-report-november-2018.pdf
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Ericsson Mobility Report | November 2018 Contents Articles 20 Making fixed wireless access a reality 24 Streaming video – from megabits to gigabytes
www.ericsson.com
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Connected vehicles are the current fastest growing connected vertical outside of phones. AT&T already has the most number of connected cars “in history” at 27 million, according to research firm Chetan Sharma Consulting.
The introduction of driverless cars over the next few decades is predicted to open up an infotainment market worth anywhere from $800 billion in 2035 to $7 trillion by 2050, according to Strategy Analytics. Computer, internet and consumer electronics companies are jockeying for a piece of the pie. None more so than Intel, which coined the term Passenger Economy for the explosive growth in yet-to-be-realised economic potential when today’s drivers become idle passengers.
Intel partnered with Warner Bros. to mock-up an autonomous BMW X5 with an experience based on the DC Comics universe. The vehicle’s interior was fitted with a large-screen TV and projectors spanning 270-degrees, mobile devices, sensory and haptic feedback, and immersive audio and lights to offer passengers a virtual ride moderated by Batman’s trusted butler, Alfred. Both companies have vowed to continue R&D on the vehicle at the Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood.
The future of in-cabin entertainment is a focus of Amazon and Samsung which are integrating their voice assistants into future car models. Other companies with automotive ambitions advancing AI-driven autopilot systems include Nvidia, LG and Microsoft.
Car manufacturers are wanting in on the game too. Audi is developing Holoride that enables VR experiences from the backseat. The tech is designed to solve the major hiccup in watching VR content while on the move - motion sickness.
Object Based Broadcasting
Of all the technology initiatives that broadcasters are exploring the one with arguably the most profound impact is not UHD-HDR or virtual reality. It is the ability to slice and dice content into a personalised feed delivered just to you on-demand, with customised editorial, length and quality of experience that fits the device you are using and the environment where you watch. This is all underpinned by object-based delivery over an end-to-end IP acquisition-to-distribution chain.
BT Sport recently revealed that it is developing plans for OBB, a move that will enable it to offer viewers the chance to personalise and control some aspects of programme output such as the audio or graphics. Example applications include controlling stadium and crowd noise levels versus commentary, and, for blind or partially sighted viewers, allowing access to Audio Description of live sport.
By breaking down a piece of media (a frame, a piece of audio, an object in the frame) into separate ‘objects’, attaching meaning to them and describing how they can be rearranged, a programme can change to reflect the context of an individual viewer. The individual would, in effect, be allowed to curate their own programme.
The BBC imagines how audiences in 2022 might create their own personalised streams for Match of the Day, the weather forecast or even EastEnders. There could be interactive drama producers who use automatically marked-up rushes of actors to offer bespoke packages, and who have access to all camera streams (from the cloud), with rushes classified automatically from AI-powered transcription.
“It’s about moving the whole industry away from thinking of video and audio as being hermetically sealed, and towards a place where we are no longer broadcasters but datacasters,” explained the BBC’s CTO, Matthew Postgate.
The next step for object-based media pioneers is to find ways of making this concept scale, and making it infinitely repeatable and standardised. The BBC, for example, has devised a media composition protocol to help drive scale and standardisation.
There is a maze of complexities to solve. An object-based workflow will need to manage rights for new versions of content that are assembled from many existing content parts. Then there is the IP infrastructure needed to efficiently narrowcast different versions of, say, Match of the Day to millions of viewers at a time.
Despite the challenges, this is the way forward – content tailored just for me and you. The more sophisticated this becomes, the more personal the service will be, as the User Interface itself will be different for each individual.
High Frame Rates
The artistic merits of high frame rates have divided audiences and critics but some filmmakers are intent on breaking out of the arbitrary 24 frames a second speeds adopted to accommodate the synchronisation of sound reels a century ago.
While director James Cameron appears to be prepping his Avatar sequels in HFR, the format has a less likely champion in Ang Lee, maker of Brokeback Mountain. His previous film, Iraqi wartime drama Billy Lynn’s Long Half Time Walk, was a box office dud, but its production in 4K, stereo 3D and 120fps was unprecedented. So much so that it was only able to be shown in its full fat glory in five theatres (two in the US, two in China, one in Taiwan) outfitted with specially customised projection equipment.
Later this year Lee will release the sci-fi thriller Gemini Man which was also shot at 4K 3D and 120. The film’s cinematographer Dion Beebe suggests that HFR is “without question part of the future language of cinema” particularly tuned for younger audiences more used to seeing crystal clear images at 60 up to 240fps from computer gaming.
Lee is using the high frame rate largely because he wants to shoot natively in 3D – a brave move on its own considering how few filmmakers are doing this. The speed of playback erases the judder and blur inherent in capturing fast action stereoscopically or when panning the dual cameras.
HFR also lends the film a unique look that some describe as like a window on the world and another grand step toward immersion in the story. Others think that its ultra video quality is alienating and somehow removes us from the innate comfort of viewing a story as a sequence of flickering images on a screen.
Beebe describes the extreme clarity of Gemini Man’s visuals as “incredibly vivid and confronting” and talks of alternating the speed for different scenes to convey different story moods, much in the way one would light or compose a scene.
Special effects legend Douglas Trumbull as been trying to get HFR to go mainstream for decades and the format did find a niche as a short form attraction in theme parks. It could be that the technology has yet to find the right story. It wasn’t The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but it could be the super bright CGI space opera of Avatar or maybe the Mohammad Ali biopic that Lee plans for his next project.
HFR is the next stage of the roll out of UHD on TV. With high dynamic range coming in this year attention will turn to upping the frame rates to 60 then 120p which would be incredible for sports like soccer. Audiences would welcome that, but seem to have a problem suspending disbelief watching HFR narrative drama. Just as Cameron kick-started the entire 3D cinema craze with Avatar, my bet is that his sequels will also prompt exhibitors to buy into LED cinema screens which are capable of playing back 8K 120p and beyond.
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