10,000ppi microLED displays could be here soon

RedShark News

VR hasn’t exploded into everyone’s consciousness at quite the speed it was envisaged with everything from clunky, wired headgear to poor quality content being to blame. Global spend on VR and AR is reckoned by analyst IDC to be $18.8 billion this year rising at 77% a year until 2023 but such predictions factor in tech advances.

https://www.redsharknews.com/10000ppi-oled-displays-could-be-here-soon

One of those is better displays, the poverty of which has dogged VR experiences to date. Two new developments promise a fix to the ‘screen door effect’, the visibility of the black grid surrounding individual pixels which can look as if you’re seeing the world through a mesh. You get the same effect if you press your nose to the telly – and in VR that is effectively what you’re doing. 

One solution is to up the resolution. Researchers at Samsung and Standford University have come up with a new design for OLED displays that could deliver 10,000 pixels per inch (PPI) thereby wiping out visual artifact.

“We’ve taken advantage of the fact that, on the nanoscale, light can flow around objects like water,” said Mark Brongersma, who is a professor of materials science and engineering and senior author of the research paper. “The field of nanoscale photonics keeps bringing new surprises and now we’re starting to impact real technologies. Our designs worked really well for solar cells and now we have a chance to impact next generation displays.”

Brighter and better colour accuracy

In addition to having a super-massive pixel density the new ‘metaphotonic’ OLED displays would also be brighter and have better colour accuracy than existing ones, and they’d be much easier and cost-effective to produce as well.

The technology uses films to emit white light between reflective layers, one silver and another made of reflective metal with nano-sized corrugations. This ‘optical metasurface’ changes the reflective properties and allows specific colours to resonate through pixels. The design allows for much higher pixel densities than in the RGB OLEDs on smartphones, but doesn’t hurt brightness to the degree you see with white OLEDs in some TVs.

The design of the corrugations makes large-scale manufacturing viable. Samsung says it’s already working on a full-size display featuring 10,000PPI.

Meanwhile, separate developments are attempting to close the screen door by boosting light levels in OLED displays. Many worry that OLEDs won’t be able to reach the luminance levels needed for AR and VR applications, especially for the AR application with high ambient light. A paper (accessed via Insight Media) led by electronics manufacturer Kopin suggest that OLED microdisplays have the potential to reach the 30,000 nits level.

The paper outlines the four ways to create an AR image: DLP (digital light processing), LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon), a scanning RGB laser system or OLED microdisplays. LCOS and DLP solutions can use high brightness LEDs to achieve luminance more than 100,000 nits. However, these technologies have issues such as limited contrast ratios, colour breakup, slow operating speed, need for an illumination source, and complex/bulkier optics. Laser scanning has been implemented in the HoloLens 2, but there have been many reports of the very poor image quality. OLED microdisplays fabricate the OLED emitting layers on top of a CMOS silicon backplane to drive the pixels and offer the contrast and speed performance needed for AR / VR. However, the low luminance has been a serious concern.

Eliminating lag

Kopin goes on to explain that to eliminate motion lagging as well as to accommodate fast head movements for gaming applications, a common technique is to output light during part of the frame time. This is called duty cycle. Typical duty cycles used in VR headsets are only 10%, meaning a 1,000-nit display, must now output 10,000 nits for a very short period (the time period depends on the frame rate and gets shorter for higher frame rates). For AR applications, the luminance requirement will be even higher because of the bright ambient light level and the low efficiency of see-through optics. Typical office or home lighting can push the display luminance (before the optics) requirement to much higher than 10,000 nits.

Outdoor applications can push display luminance requirement much higher – perhaps more than 1 million nits would be needed. However, Kopin suggest that 30,000 nits for a microdisplay may satisfy many AR application needs with the use of higher efficiency see-through optics and in combination with photochromatic lenses to reduce the ambient light level.

“As a result, it makes sense to contemplate a path to 30,000 nits for an OLED microdisplay,” the paper concludes, “especially for high-ambient applications. However, only limited prototypes have been shown so far with many challenges remaining to fully commercialize a monolithic microLED display solution suitable for VR or AR applications.

Even if the display is improved, the big downside to this is squeezing the higher resolution data over mobile or fixed line broadband.

Ubiquitous 5G networks and devices are promised to sort this out, though there are murmurings that 5G may not be quite enough even as new specifications are rolled out. For some, a 6G is needed to finish what 5G started and there are already dates of 2026 pencilled in for a first draft 6G standard and a commercial rollout some time after the end of this decade.

Riding the 5G Wave

Streaming Media

Wireless telecommunications is one of the few industries to have thrived since the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the world. At a basic level, many of us resorted even more than before to using mobile devices to communicate with friends and family, stream video, or work from home. Government track-and-trace systems to curtail the virus are dependent on our reliance on mobile. More than that, though, 5G is seen as instrumental in leading economies out of the dire straits many are in.

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Riding-the-5G-Wave-143577.aspx

"To the extent there was any doubt about the importance of connectivity, that doubt has been completely erased," says Alex Rogers, EVP and president of Qualcomm Technology Licensing in a video interview on the company's blog. "While broadband has done well, you need connectivity that solves all the problems. You need it to be ubiquitous, reliable, you need throughput, speed, and security. You will see 5G become essential everywhere. It's going to be in very high demand."

Despite the pandemic and the recession it spurred, 5G is still on track to become the quickest generation of wireless cellular technology to be widely adopted. According to Omdia's projections, 5G will have nearly 2 billion subscribers by the end of 2024, 6 years into the cycle versus 8 for 4G LTE.

Globally, there are now 82 5G commercial networks, a number that's expected to reach 206 by the end of 2020, per TeleGeography. In addition, there are more than 100 commercial 5G device models available worldwide, according to the "Ericsson Mobility Report" from June 2020. Omdia projects that 5G connections will reach 238 million globally by the end of 2020, of which North America will account for 10 million, spanning seven network rollouts.

 The number of 5G connections in North America will hit nearly 300 million by 2024, as LTE continues a slow but steady decline.

"Globally, 5G remains the fast-growing generation of wireless cellular technology ever, even as the world is gripped with a pandemic," says Chris Pearson, president of industry trade association 5G Americas. "In North America, we are seeing consistent, strong up­take of new 5G subscribers as new devices have been released that can take advantage of low-band and millimeter wave [mmWave] frequencies. At the same time, new network capabilities are being added." 

At the peak of the lockdown, mobile networks held up remarkably well to the strain of additional data traffic as work-from-home data usage spiked dramatically. For instance, AT&T reported a 22% increase in its core network traffic and a 30% increase in wireless voice minutes. The new combined T-Mobile/Sprint saw mobile hotspot usage spike 60%, while tethering was up 57% for T-Mobile and 70% for Sprint.

These increases in traffic seem to have persisted. OTT streaming has soared as we have stayed at home, while COVID-19 has forced a rise in working from home and the need for additional bandwidth. 

"Work from anywhere is going to be the new normal, not just from home," Rogers says. "Companies are already evaluating [how] to push the enterprise out to a wireless connected environment."

Nokia reports that peak traffic "normalizes" at 25%–30% above pre-pandemic levels and that aggregate traffic volumes continue to be more than 25% over pre-pandemic levels. A survey from IBM found that 54% of people want to continue working from home even after the pandemic has passed. 

"There is no doubt COVID-19 has had a huge impact on our industry, however, in the midst of the pandemic, Verizon has been able to maintain and, in some cases, accelerate its 5G deployment by being nimble, flexible, and downright scrappy," says Heidi Hemmer, VP of network engineering at Verizon. This has been possible by focusing efforts on 5G antenna attachments where social distancing has been easier to maintain and by taking advantage of the dramatic drop in road traffic to extend the company's hours of operation when working outside on fiber trenching and laying.

"Our engineers conducted virtual site walks with municipalities, providing pictures, videos, and access to our engineers remotely, and we worked with municipalities to deploy digital permitting solutions (to submit applications for licensing without entering an office)," says Hemmer.

So 5G has moved from hype to reality. None­theless, as GSMA pointed out in March, 4G is still king. Its "The Mobile Economy 2020" report finds that 4G will continue to grow, increasing to account for 56% of global connections by 2025.

In addition, consumer devices still lag behind 5G network rollout, curtailing usage. Most mobile devices in the market are not 5G-enabled, according to Ampere. In fact, there is not currently an iPhone model that supports 5G—despite 57% of U.S. internet users owning an Apple smartphone—as reported in Ampere's Q1 2020 consumer survey.

"Currently, devices which are 5G-enabled are also higher cost, which will also limit the short-term uptake and wider market uptake," says Ampere research manager Daniel Gadher. "However, as with any new tech when it first launches, prices will be high due to low economies of scale for manufacturing. With the network coverage having been scaled up nationwide, it will lead to greater scale, and prices of devices should come down, as long as consumer demand is there, supporting wider uptake."

NSA to SA

All operators initially launched non-standalone (NSA) network architectures, which combine 600-MHz 5G radio access networks (RAN) tied to 4G LTE equipment at the core. The next step is to migrate to standalone (SA) networks, which boast 5G in both RAN and the core.

In North America, the first to reach this mark is T-Mobile, fueled by its completion in April of the merger with Sprint, and in partnership with Cisco, Nokia, and Ericsson. T-Mobile says its new 5G SA network has been tested to deliver up to 40% lower latency and 20%–30% improvements in download and upload speeds over prior performance.

T-Mobile has passed AT&T to become the nation's second largest carrier and to claim the "5G coverage crown," boasting that its 5G network is more than two times larger than AT&T's and more than 10,000 times that of Verizon's.

In the near-term, T-Mobile explains that SA allows it to unleash its entire 600-MHz footprint for 5G unhindered by using mid-band LTE, with a signal that's able to cover hundreds of square miles from a single tower and go deeper into buildings than before. 

Verizon and AT&T suddenly find themselves playing catch-up—but not for long. Verizon plans to start moving traffic onto its new 5G SA core in the second half of this year, with full commercialization in 2021.

"Verizon was the first carrier in the world to launch a commercial 5G mobile network with a commercially available 5G-enabled smartphone in early April 2019," asserts Hemmer. "To date, we have launched our 5G Ultra Wideband network in parts of 36 cities using mmWave spectrum—a keenly differentiated experience from low-band 5G—and we plan to reach 60 markets this year. Our Dynamic Spectrum Sharing work is on track, which will pave the way for the most efficient use of spectrum to deploy the nationwide coverage layer of 5G on our other spectrum assets. We will launch 5G nationwide by the end of the year. 

"We have also completed successful trials of our 5G SA core. Built with a strategically different architecture of virtualization from the ground up, this will provide the foundation [that] a non-cloud native core simply will not support," says Hemmer.

"Our strategy of deploying 5G in both sub-6 (5G) and mmWave (5G+) spectrum bands will provide the best mix of speeds, latency, and coverage that are needed to enable revolutionary new capabilities to fuel 5G experiences," says Chris Sambar, AT&T's EVP of technology operations. "Our competitors are still working to provide that same mix, which for them could take months or even years. What we offer is available to consumers and businesses today, and we're not slowing down."

AT&T announced in its Q2 2020 financial results an additional $1 billion invested to purchase 5G spectrum, "showing its commitment to growing its 5G coverage nationwide," according to Gadher. "Typically, the major U.S. carriers have focused deployment in highly populated major cities, with rural deployment being slower."

3GPP Release 16 and SA

SA architectures are based on the latest release from the standardization body 3GPP. Release 16, finalized in March, paves the way for deployment of fully virtualized networks using 5G SA cores and the facilitation of edge computing, network slicing, and massive IoT.

Release 16 introduces enhanced ultra-reliable low-latency communication (eURLLC) to deliver millisecond latency, time-sensitive networking, and improvements to "high-power high-tower" transmissions for supporting higher mobility and better coverage of terrestrial TV. Also introduced in Release 16 is high-reliability 5G positioning, which enables a broad set of 5G IoT use cases, such as as­set tracking.

According to a recent Nevion global survey of broadcasters, 82% believe that cellular networks like 5G will eventually replace traditional broadcast distribution as the preferred way to access TV content. More than a third (37%) expect this to happen within 2 years.

Looking further out, 3GPP's Release 17 (due in summer 2021) includes enhancements to NR Broadcast and Multicast, a mixed mode for enabling dynamic switching between unicast and multicast, both in the downlink and the uplink. It will also feature 5G NR-Light, targeting new efficiencies for lower-complexity devices such as industrial cameras, higher-end wearables, and lower-tier smartphones.

Future Applications

Applications for 5G capabilities are gaining ground, although most remain experimental or theoretical. 5G Americas' Pearson suggests that 5G live streaming at sporting events or concerts could bring "instantaneous feedback from thousands of mobile device users around the world in new ways to bring a mobile crowd into the experience."

For individual consumers, Hemmer says Verizon's existing 5G Ultra Wideband running on mmWave spectrum has already achieved peak speeds of a gigabit or more, allowing n enhanced, immersive NFL experience at the Super Bowl; production partnerships with Disney; enhanced gaming with partners such as Bethesda Gaming; and more.

"Many of the use cases we are seeing emerge are with our business partners," Hemmer says. "Corning is implementing smart manufacturing solutions. We recently lit up the first 5G-enabled hospital with Verizon 5G with the VA at their hospital in Palo Alto and plan to test how 5G could enhance AR/VR applications for medical training [and] enable telemedicine and remote patient monitoring."

Ericsson president and CEO Börje Ekholm summed it up neatly in an online keynote: "While 4G gave us the app economy, 5G will be the greatest open innovation platform ever."

That is predicated on 5G SA cores, which T-Mobile declares to be the future of wireless connectivity, bringing 5G closer to reaching its true potential, with faster speeds, lower latency, and massive connectivity. "SA, especially when coupled with core network slicing in the future, will lead to an environment where transformative applications are made possible—things like connected self-driving vehicles, supercharged IoT, real-time translation … and things we haven't even dreamed of yet," according to T-Mobile. 

Yet not all 5G standalone cores are created equal. Hemmer says, "Not all cores are designed to be able to fully take advantage of the more robust technologies such as network slicing and Mobile Edge Compute. By building the Verizon 5G core with cloud-native containerized architecture, we will be able to achieve new levels of operational automation, flexibility, and adaptability."

In the interview with Qualcomm's Rogers, he says the defining difference between 4G and 5G is not throughput or capacity but (with the new 3GPP releases), a drive into verticals and different industries: "Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-X is not possible without standards. Smart buildings, smart cities, ports utilities, [and] other infrastructure connected through 5G and the management of these facilities will be revolutionized based on 5G.

"As you push computing to the edge of the network," Rogers adds, "you are going to see new form factors and XR, augmented and VR experiences using new devices we've never really seen before."

A 5G SA cloud-native virtualized core, in combination with built-in AI/machine learning, will enable the dynamic allocation of the appropriate resource (network slicing). It will also allow for automated network configuration changes, including the ability to scale up or scale down network function capacity to provide the right service levels and network resources needed for each use case.

For example, network slicing is expected to play an important role in providing guaranteed QoS, which is critically important in terms of bandwidth and latency and is required for high-value content production such as sports. Operators can take advantage of network slicing to offer differentiated network services for content production.

As deployment continues and the ecosystem builds up around the technology, video applications will evolve. Some use case examples provided by Verizon include rendering high-end gaming graphics on low-cost, portable devices; creating 360 degrees of sound for a headset, allowing the user to fully experience surround sound in a virtual, mobile environment; and developing dynamic 3D image recognition to overlay virtual information on real-world objects in near real time.

The world is going to need these capabilities as it digs itself out of the COVID-19-induced economic hole and builds a stronger economy. Indeed, telcos are expected to be pivotal in dri­ving the global economy forward as the world emerges from the initial phase of the pandemic.

"[Telcos] will be key in enabling a new digital society," says ABI Research. "Beyond the obvious conclusions that we are likely to see, including more remote working, more virtual meetings, and more virtual teams, … a raft of new solutions could accelerate GDP growth and all will require a robust level of support from the telco community."

 

Recreating the Edit Suite: How Post Teams Are Keeping Teamwork Alive While Collaborating Remotely

copywritten for AVID 

Filmmaking is a collaborative art. With the current remote work paradigm changing how the industry gets things done, many creatives are missing the easy collaboration and camaraderie they’re used to having in a face-to-face environment.

http://www.avidblogs.com/recreating-the-edit-suite-how-post-teams-are-keeping-teamwork-alive-while-collaborating-remotely/

Technology goes a long way toward bridging collaboration gaps in remote post-production workflows, but it’s hard to replicate the spontaneity of having everyone physically present. Even the sheer enjoyment of bonding over a project can get lost when your team is remote.

Since it’s going to be a while before you can stand over someone’s shoulder in the edit bay again, addressing the challenge of remote video editing collaboration will help to chart the course for the team’s cohesion and creative inspiration for the long term.

“We are an industry of creative storytellers, where creative communication is essential in producing a quality product,” says Jai Cave, technical operations director at UK post facility Envy.

As Tessa Treadway, VP of post at Film 45, puts it, “While technologies allow us to connect our media, our greatest challenge today is figuring out how to connect our minds.”

Here are some techniques editors are using to keep communication flowing freely across remote video editing workflows as they adapt to the industry’s new normal.

Highlight Remote Desktop Solutions

To keep editorial connected across a remote post-production workflow, collaboration systems allow teams to stream content to each other and discuss changes in real time.

“It’s hard to compete with the magic and momentum of live collaboration,” says Brad Thomas, cofounder and COO of Evercast. “Having to pass content back and forth and wait for feedback puts a huge damper on the creative process. But under the right circumstances, it can be done.”

He explains that Evercast works with an ultra-low latency experience (a nearly imperceptible 200 milliseconds) to facilitate live collaboration on video content. The goal is to create a channel for “natural communication” that feels “just like you’re sitting in the same physical space, shoulder to shoulder.”

“Instead of having to upload and download files and pass notes back and forth, Evercast enables you to simply ‘hop into’ a virtual room from your Google Chrome browser and interact with your team while experiencing high quality video and audio from the editor’s workstation,” he says.

Lisa Bromwell, ACE, says she became used to treating desktop sharing app TeamViewer as a stand-in for her edit room while remotely finishing two episodes of Netflix drama Shadow and Bone.

“My lame joke was to call my assistant (Paul Alderman) and ask him to step into my ‘room’,” she says. “Once he was logged on, we could look at things together, talk about the cut, look at something in the source monitor, look at the timeline. While it is not ideal, it does approximate standing in the room together and talking over either technical or creative issues.”

Lead the Team by Example

Aside from providing reliable tech, production heads can improve remote editing collaboration by scheduling predictable group meetings and encouraging everyone to connect as questions arise.

“It’s easy to feel isolated and invisible when working remotely, so it’s crucial to have a ‘virtual office door’ to knock on at any time—via Slack, texting, or a simple phone call,” says Treadway. “We all need to be accessible to the team. I believe connection and camaraderie is created by the team, not the physical space we occupy.”

Treadway says it’s the leadership’s responsibility to provide effective communication tools, structure, and creative platforms to nurture this connection.

Film 45, the Santa Monica-based, Emmy Award-winning production and post company led by filmmaker Peter Berg, holds daily morning virtual meetings. There, the team distributes information, shares ideas and challenges, and reports on any personal or professional “wins.”

“This meeting becomes a daily rally, and we see how the team extends beyond our living rooms and into a full network of peers,” reports Treadway. “Slack has been an excellent tool for unscheduled communication for one-on-one or groups, and simulates impromptu conversations.”

Promote Softer Collaboration

It’s also possible to foster team spirit with more informal techniques. For Steve Mirkovich, ACE, patience and understanding is a must. He says, “As the lead editor on [Sony Pictures] feature Escape Room 2, I feel I need to be the cheerleader. I believe staying positive and keeping things in perspective will help us all to get through this very weird and challenging time.”

While editing the feature remotely, Mirkovich has spent a lot of time talking with director Adam Robitel using Zoom meetings and Evercast sessions. “Working remotely can sometimes be clunky and slow until bugs are worked out,” he cautions. “Patience and focus are key.”

For Bromwell, the lack of interpersonal communication is the hardest part about working from home. She makes a point of regularly talking with her assistant about things other than the job:

“Current events, his life, his dog . . . things that naturally come up when you see each other at the office but get oddly lost when you’re working remotely and the tendency is to keep the focus on the work.”

She adds that pre-COVID, the team on Shadow and Bone had a standing “whiskey hour” every Friday at 6 pm. They have continued that remotely as a Zoom whiskey hour.

“Erin Conley [assistant to showrunner Eric Heisserer] organizes it. It’s a nice way to chill and actually see the faces of the people you’re working with.”

At Film 45, everyone is encouraged to speak at the daily virtual meetings. “This is where we combine work questions with just being human,” says Treadway. “We celebrate birthdays, we show off our pets, we introduce our children when they inevitably walk into the meeting asking mom/dad a question.”

“We don’t ignore the fact that we’re working from home,” she emphasizes. “We integrate it into the process.”

The Productive Positives of Going Remote

With only internet traffic to contend with, remote working can in some cases be more productive and collaborative than going into the office. For example, having the team more available for video calls has flattened out geographical differences between studios.

“Putting aside time zone differences, meeting someone who works in another continent is now as easy as meeting one of our local colleagues,” says Michele Sciolette, CTO at Cinesite, on the studio’s site. “Even for quick unexpected meetings that would have normally required room bookings in multiple studios. Some members, particularly from our support teams, suggest that the lack of frequent interruptions is making them more productive.”

Jack Jones, technical director at London documentary specialist Roundtable, says their assist teams can work “flawlessly” by connecting to media and desktops in the facility over a virtual private network. “The assists are transcoding, ingesting rushes, or troubleshooting crashed machines. They can do all their jobs remotely without issue. In turn, that opens up the ability to have fewer staff members on site. Where physical space is restricted post-COVID, it makes sense to use the capacity you have for clients.”

Whether working with COVID conditions or in a post-pandemic world, it would be endlessly difficult to reverse the global experience of collaborative remote video editing—and doing so wouldn’t be worthwhile. “Working remotely can actually enhance creativity,” insists Thomas, “because it allows creatives to work wherever and whenever inspires them.” As remote video editing collaboration continues, post houses will have to continue to pivot and evolve their approach.

“One thing is certain,” Treadway says. “It’s the combination of tech and team that creates a successful remote environment.”

Making Remote Audio Post Workflows a Success With Re-Recording Mixer Karol Urban

copywritten for Sohonet

Karol Urban CAS MPSE (Grey’s Anatomy, Single Parents, New Girl, Station 19, Boomerang) re-recording mixer, has built a diverse list of mix credits spanning work on feature films, TV series (scripted and unscripted), TV movies, and documentaries and describes her job as “playing mind games with sound.” As a perpetual student of her craft, she enjoys exploring the power sound has to immersive the viewer in the narrative.

https://www.sohonet.com/2020/10/27/making-remote-audio-post-workflows-a-success-with-karol-urban/

The final stages of the creative process are often the most essential – and the ones at most risk of being lost when workflows are torn apart. Critical decisions are affected greatly when client and editor, colourist or dubbing mixer are tasked with making nuanced adjustments to the sound and picture without the ability to share the screen in front of them.

When COVID-19 threatened to terminate this social connection, Karol Urban MPSE and current president of Cinema Audio Society (CAS) was ready to plug it right back in.

“We already had an amazing workflow for remote approvals when the pandemic started,” Urban explains. “It was just a matter of taking the workflow we had used so successfully over a number of seasons for one client and offering it to everyone. [Sohonet] ClearView Flex has been absolutely fantastic.”

Urban is a hugely experienced and in-demand re-recording mixer for television and feature films. At Westwind Media in Burbank, she and Kurt Kassulke CAS had been using a remote approval system to help some clients overcome the logistical challenge of LA’s notorious traffic and maximize their productivity.

“I mixed New Girl and then Single Parents (both of which were done at Fox) and the executives expressed a preference to perform approvals remotely to save them time travelling over the hill from the Fox lot,” she says.

“Ultimately, we secured a ClearView Flex system and our engineering staff at Westwind crafted a superb workflow that allows us to stream high-quality video and audio to up to 30 users simultaneously.”

She notes, “We were using a different service previously but the satisfaction and reliability went through the roof when we went with ClearView Flex.”

 In fact, Urban used this remote approval workflow on each of the 45 episodes over two seasons of Single Parents for ABC. “The show was wonderful to work on,” she shares. “From PA to EP everyone involved was 100 per cent team-oriented. So much so that the EPs and editors would make an effort to come onto the dub stage in person at least once a season because we were part of their team.”

The system at Westwind Stage 3 is configured so that signals from the in-board talkback of its control surfaces are fed directly to the ClearView Flexbox. This enables Urban and Kassulke to chat with multiple users through a live stream while hearing the client’s notes and discussion through a conference call. 

“Our chief engineer Craig Holbrook did an incredible job streamlining this workflow. A technician oversees the session from the machine room to monitor for any technical concerns so if anybody does have any issue they are already sent a new link often before the client even notices. They are constantly monitoring the signals to make sure everyone can view the stream.”

Having perfected this system of remote approval for major broadcast network shows it was straightforward to pivot when the pandemic struck.

“Everyone needed to decrease their contact time overnight but ClearView Flex came to the rescue,” Urban says.

This wasn’t just for the shows she was working on either. Westwind began offering ClearView Flex as an option to other productions in the facility. It allowed Westwind to remain on the dub stage while strictly adhering to safety guidelines and ensuring that a quality product was delivered on deadline. 

“I work on a traditional two mixer dub stage. There is plenty of room for my co-mixer and I to work with at least 6 feet between us, even while sharing our board,” Urban explains.

“Usually, it’s just me and my mixing partner in the room and our engineering staff tries to remedy any technical issues and setup duties remotely. The machine core is in another space in the building so they rarely need to come in.  Sound Supervisors and Music Editors work remotely and fly in material via our secure server.”

She continues, “When the mix is ready to present, we allow a couple of EPs, writers, directors, or editors in the backfield if they would prefer to approve in person. This allows enough space for the recommended social distancing. Then we schedule a Clearview Flex review session with engineering if anyone prefers to weigh in remotely.”

By the end of March, nearly all producers, editors, and writers were remotely approving. Urban finished season 2 of Boomerang for BET (produced by Paramount TV Studios, Hillman Grad Productions, 606 Television and DeEtte Productions) and multiple episodes of S16 of Grey’s Anatomy (Shondaland Productions) for ABC using ClearView Flex.

When shut down became really tight and leaving home was discouraged for non-essential businesses, she was forced to remote work from home.

“I did not have ClearView Flex. I used another tech and I was not nearly as pleased. I was very excited to get my ClearView Flex back. There is a discernible difference in reliability and quality.”

To reduce her time in the studio, Urban has also been pre-dubbing at home. “My private studio is calibrated three ways to Sunday and is Atmos capable. I have temperature regulating iso racks for all my gear, an AVID S3 and Dock, JBLs, and a full complement of plug-ins, but it is not a dub stage. My room at Westwind is so beautifully balanced. It was natively constructed to be THX compliant and is currently Dolby Atmos certified. 

“I prefer to go there at a minimum for a final QC listen. Visiting the dub stage provides me with a chance to break the monotony of staring at the walls at home. The room has an isolated entrance to the outside and is routinely cleaned. It’s safe and I can run my files in that calibrated space… they also have ClearView Flex capabilities!”

When clients could no longer go into the studio and were all at home in full remote mode ClearView Flex proved its mettle. Urban says, “I’ve never had a complaint about quality of sound or picture.”

Now that production is gradually getting up and running, Urban predicts a deluge of work coming their way. Much of this will be completed using remote workflows and not just because of enforced social distancing.

“My favorite part of mixing is analyzing the script and moulding the narrative in group discussions on the dub stage but, in truth, budgets have got smaller, schedules have got tighter, and at the same time there’s been a trend to have more and more people in the room for reviews. And more perspectives naturally beget more discussion and requires more time.”

“While I miss having time to interact with people face to face, as far as productivity is concerned this forced isolation has assisted efficiency in some ways because my clients are asking themselves whether they need to be physically present or not. My creative teams have begun consolidating and pre-discussing notes.”

“People are prioritizing notes and prioritizing those who attend the mix. The result is a reduction in notes and less conflicting perspectives that need to be discussed and worked through.  This affords me more time to address noise and add nuance to my mix. What we’re learning from this process is to prioritize what is important and make ourselves more efficient and I believe as a result remote workflow may be here to stay.”

She concludes, “ClearView Flex has been a great solution. I know it’s key to our workflow moving forward. I’m excited about it. ClearView Flex has allowed us to expand our seats and make sure we respect everyone’s health. It is currently an essential element to our success.”

Vendor R&D: The innovator’s dilemma

IBC

The demand shock of Covid-19 continues to reverberate, but many technology suppliers see investing in R&D as the only way to fight back.

As the IABM’s most recent report put it, the pandemic has dropped a “digital bombshell” on the media industry. Most companies have had to bite the bullet to defend their positions and accelerate their move to software, IP and virtualised products accompanied by as-a-service business models. 

https://www.ibc.org/trends/vendor-randd-the-innovators-dilemma/6923.article

The impact is clear in the recent financial results of one of the industry’s stalwart engineers, Evertz. Its revenues for Q1 (May 1, 2020 – July 31, 2020) were down 46% versus the same period 2019. Trading in the US was especially challenged, with Evertz recording a 51% decline in revenues in the region.  

It’s a pattern being repeated – at least in those companies making public financial reports. Analyst Devonport estimates Grass Valley’s Q1 2020 revenue was down 41%; Avid and Harmonic also highlighted that their legacy products had suffered from a more pronounced decline in revenues, as reported by the IABM. 

IABM analysis shows that the pandemic has negatively influenced both software and hardware revenues on aggregate, as media technology budgets have generally declined. However, companies heavily reliant on hardware and legacy software have been impacted disproportionately more by the lockdown restrictions. 

Mo Goyal, senior director for international business development at Evertz, says: “A number of projects we were in discussions with at the beginning of the year were put on hold. After the initial urgency of pulling together solutions with operators working from home, the focus now is on the reality of having some team members in the facility and others working remotely. There’s been an acceleration of the shift to cloud services and those companies who were part of the IP transition found it easier.” 

Nonetheless, according to a Devonport study,  Evertz was able to grow its R&D spend in the face of a 46% decline in revenue. The Canadian government’s wage furlough scheme enabled the Ontario-based company to actually increase headcount in its R&D wing. 

“We are proud of continuing to invest in R&D,” says Goyal. “Early on in the pandemic we reached out to a number of key customers and asked them what their new challenges were. That helped us prioritise programs that we had been working on deploying, such as the DreamCatcher live production suite in the cloud. It was always on the roadmap, but it got accelerated. We have less focus on other technology because the shift means we have to get into more of a software mode, which was not in our roadmap at the beginning.” 

Sydney Lovely, CTO and general manager for networking at Grass Valley, declined to confirm Devonport’s estimate but comments: “We were in a period of transition and our business operation were very stable, but had we been 100% in or out of Belden we may have made more dramatic changes.” 

As the industry moves to remote productions for live events and remote collaboration for postproduction, many traditional suppliers are sitting on old technology stacks, many hardware based, and cannot pivot that quickly. 

Graham Sharp, CEO of Broadcast Pix, says: “Faced with declining revenue streams from traditional products, many companies have no choice but to cut costs. They are faced with the innovator’s dilemma: they must support their traditional products, maybe modifying them somewhat for the current environment to keep sales flowing, leaving no resources available to create new technology and products. Rather than adding more R&D resource, they are reducing it on the back of declining sales. 

“Meanwhile, with open source technology, it is relatively easy for a start-up, or small agile company to quickly and easily create innovative software-based products that serve the new world we live in.” 

Roadmap revision 
All twelve vendors replying to IBC365 for this article said that Covid-19 had barely impacted their business and/or that internal R&D was unaffected by the crisis. Of course, these respondents are understandably keen to promote their foresight in being ahead of the market when it comes to having product primed for softwarisation. 

Adam Leah, creative director at nxtedition says: “There has been no need to adjust our development roadmap or change our product as it was designed to work within the new requirements of broadcasters during this crisis. As a company everything we do is microservices, web technology and virtualisation.” 

While 44% of suppliers replying to the IABM’s recent census indicated their R&D would increase under the pandemic, that leaves a question mark over the rest. 

Henry Goodman, director of product development at Calrec, says: “More than ever, this is the time for manufacturers to work collaboratively, and any reductions in R&D across the industry will slow everyone down.”  

If not diverting extra cash into R&D, media technology suppliers are increasingly focused on speeding up the development of new products and platforms. Many vendors told the IABM that they have developed new products in a drastically shorter amount of time and on the back of pressing customer feedback.  

Telestream accelerated the debut of GLIM, which allows customers to play mezzanine and professional-grade media files over the internet in a browser; Broadcast Pix switched all development from its planned roadmap to creating StreamingPix which is the firm’s first streaming focused appliance. It is looking to hire more software engineers as a result. R&D spend has “gone up slightly” at Cinegy, according to Jan Weigner, company president and CTO, to deal with additional customer feature requests resulting from an increased remote and cloud focus and to bring roadmap features forward faster. 

Sony’s Smart Production solution, developed and trialled by Sony R&D teams in Basingstoke with German public broadcaster SWR, was a direct consequence of SWR’s need to find a new way of producing content with a reduced crew.  

John Stone, head of European professional engineering (EPE) at Sony, says: “In parallel, the timetable of some solutions, like our automated production tool with Norwegian broadcaster NRK [currently codenamed Metadata Wrangler], was not negatively impacted by Covid-19, as it was deployed as a cloud service.”  

Nor has MAM vendor Tedial witnessed any Covid-19 impact on its R&D. “Our tools have been hosted in the cloud for many years,” says CTO Julian Fernandez-Campon. “What we’ve done is reinforce remote production in the cloud and the use of cloud media services and hybrid cloud.” 

Daniel Lundstedt, sales and marketing at Intinor, says: “We’ve been very fortunate that even though some projects were delayed, and sports productions impacted, others fell into our lap. Our roadmap is created in close dialogue with our customers and due to COVID-19, both we and our customers have had more time for testing and planning.” 

Ciaran Doran, director of marketing, broadcast & media, Rohde & Schwarz, adds: “If anything, the crisis has encouraged us to speed up in the direction that we already set – software-defined platforms from studio production to playout, that are modular and configurable for the specific workflows required.” 

Grass Valley always earmarked April to launch its cloud-based Agile Media Processing Platform, but when the pandemic happened it changed a limited release into a more fully featured one. 

“We’d developed the initial application with Blizzard Entertainment but when they were shut down we pivoted our team to expand the solution from remote production to a fully decentralised one in which they could take feeds in from all around the world and produce and publish content using just a browser,” says Sydney Lovely. “Since then, our IP product lines have taken off like a rocket ship.”  

IP and SaaS warnings 
The crisis is widely understood to have forced the hands of media organisations and tech suppliers into accelerating direct to consumer offers and the cloud-based infrastructure to support it. 

“The broadcast industry is at a critical point with IP deployment starting to gain momentum,” says Goodman. 

Yet the crisis is in danger of knocking that off course. “We were surprised by a resurgence of interest in SDI,” says Goyal. “Companies are planning to make their next big investment in the transition to IP but the pandemic has put those investment dollars on hold. So, there’s an element of thinking ‘what can I get away with incrementally without having to do a complete overhaul whilst still being on an IP path long term’.” 

Grass Valley, which still chairs the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) it co-launched in 2015, concurs. “We’re seeing more hybrid approaches than green field sites,” says Lovely. “For some [clients] in the lower end of the market SDI is good enough and sticking with that. The upper quartile is all in for IP. It’s the middle sector who know they want to get to IP but can’t afford to get there where we are seeing some incremental SDI purchases.” 

The business continuity crisis has also accelerated media companies’ transition to as-a-service technology models.   

According to IABM, the transition has well-known financial implications for the supply side of the industry as companies moving from large and infrequent inflows of money to smaller and more regular payments, suffer from a painful and lengthy cashflow crunch. IABM research shows that this crunch has been exacerbated by the pandemic-induced shock on technology demand by forcing a move to subscriptions and on-demand billing. 

Simon Browne, VP product management at Clear-Com, says: “There is certainly a great deal of interest in looking for as-a-service solutions from vendors, but these soft products are far from easily managed. It requires a fully formed back office and maintenance methodology to be successful. Our own customer experience tells us that only a few customers are ready to handle the licenses and repetition of payments that fall out of this service approach.” 

“Managing this transition has its perils and very few suppliers in our industry have done it,” warns Sharp. “You have to cross the revenue ‘valley of death’ – convert permanent license orders to annual licences at 20% or 25% of the value. The business must be extremely well-funded to cross this chasm and I am not sure many in our industry are.” 

Trade show absence 
The loss of trade shows is also impacting the decades old R&D cycle. NAB and IBC forced development to hit a date. The IABM thinks their calendar absence has prompted suppliers to move to a more continuous delivery of technology solutions. 

David Ross, chairman and CEO, Ross Video, agrees. “If you let dates slide to the natural point where R&D wants to have it, you may release [product] much later than you [predicted]. So, I think it might slow down the pace of our industry but decrease the vapourware at the same time.” 

Weigner believes there’s no excuse not to plough the savings made by not marketing or exhibiting at trade shows into R&D. “The moment you cut down on R&D you have a problem which is not as easily solved as reduced tradeshow, marketing and other ongoing costs. As most tradeshows have been cancelled this should provide ample savings to make R&D cost reductions implausible – unless you really do not believe you have the right product or approach anymore.” 

Lovely believes the usefulness of trade shows as a marker for new product deadlines is outdated. “Instead of big bang hardware-oriented releases you are seeing these turn into software,” he says. “Companies like us are working more in collaboration with customers who are interested in seeing updates more frequently rather than having to wait for an upgrade.” 

Not all will survive  
If the health of a market can be measured by total R&D spend “any reduction in overall R&D would therefore show some stagnation and put innovation and end customer experience on hold,” says Browne. 

Business continuity has become a key priority for media companies.  “The requirement to connect creative teams with production tools, irrespective of location, has grown significantly over the past six months,” says Sony’s John Stone. “The transition to systems based on cloud, virtualisation, IP, remote production and subscription-based service models has accelerated, and these technologies are now featured within the overall product/solution/service portfolios from leading suppliers.” 

Be that as it may, if a company is jumping onto that bandwagon only now, there is a lot of catching up to do, though Weigner says this depends a lot on what it is that you do: “Are you digging for gold yourself, getting paid for digging, or selling the shovels, or now - as a new business - providing the latest shovels right to the customers’ site, whenever needed, billed conveniently by the hour?” 

Compared to other, perhaps younger industries such as IT, broadcast is immature with a fragmented ecosystem composed of lots of little players.  

“Take multiviewers as one example,” says Lovely. “There are fifty companies making them. As an industry we are investing a lot of R&D in duplicate efforts. That’s not going to make sense in the long term. We need to focus spend on more specific functions. The industry was already on that path but COVID has accelerated it. The businesses that will win are those that are able to achieve that and drive efficiency… but there will be a shake-out of some who are less fit.” 

Doran agrees. “Any reduction in R&D across the industry will inevitably result in delayed deployments of exactly the sorts of technologies that would help broadcasters do what they more urgently need to do, which is to serve content differently to consumers who have also changed their consumption behaviour as a result of the crisis.  

“Not all companies will survive the pandemic,” he adds. “Some will face challenges that force short-term thinking at a time when broadcasters need rock solid partners who can serve them when, eventually, the recovery happens.” 

Why Quibi pulled the plug

 IBC

There’s nothing that excites the trade press more than media eating itself. Such is the fever surrounding Quibi, the U$1.75 billion pay-TV streaming to mobile platform that is being shut down so soon after launch.  

https://www.ibc.org/trends/why-quibi-pulled-the-plug/6920.article

Amid claims of executive hubris and schadenfreude at the misfortune of Hollywood king-has-lost-his-crown founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and Republican and eBay billionaire CEO Meg Whitman – the inquest will concentrate on why the industry’s major content owners deemed this a good bet in the first place.  

ITV and BBC Studios joined Disney, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, Viacom, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM and Lionsgate in the venture.  

To many observers it comes as absolutely no surprise that Quibi failed. Many were deeply sceptical from the outset that a demographic not used to paying for TV would shell $5 a month to watch five- to ten-minute bites on their mobile while queuing for a coffee.  

“Quibi tried to make a success of a couple of ideas that are still contentious,” says Nigel Walley, founder and MD of media strategy consultancy, Decipher.   

“Firstly, the idea that vertical video could work for narrative story telling in anything other than a niche way was unproven and not well supported – we weren’t believers in it. Secondly, the idea that people would pay for vertical video entertainment is a nonsense. Vertical video is not a premium experience – so again we’ve never believed. They were going to have to do something amazing with the content to succeed over those two challenges, but they didn’t. The quality of the content was really poor. It was a disaster from start to finish.” 

Quibi struggled to attract subscribers, with the Wall Street Journal reporting in June that the company was on track to hit fewer than 2 million of its original 7.4 million target. 

The most obvious reason for failure is Covid-19. Going full steam into the launch of a new streaming service was going to be hard in the face of existing and new OTT competition from the likes of Disney+, Netflix, Apple TV+ and HBO Max let alone for a model predicated on people going about their business as normal.  

This is one of the reasons given by Katzenberg and Whitman themselves. In a statement they blamed the “changed industry landscape and ongoing challenges” for the business’ inability to operate in the long-term.  

“For sure, timing didn’t help,” says PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore. “Standing out in a crowded and extremely competitive market was going to be a tall order especially with fierce rivals that have far greater credibility and unique storytelling. Credit for trying something novel but ultimately there is a reason why others hadn’t launched something similar previously.”  

Lockdown forced TV viewing upwards across linear as well as direct to consumer services but Quibi’s mobile-only play in this at home landscape was a mistake. The service could not be viewed on TV and did not even offer a tablet-optimised version.  

The app’s limitations did not end there. “There is no option to add multiple profiles, meaning the app is exclusively for one viewer, which makes its $7.99 [without ads] a month price tag seem even steeper,” according to GlobalData analyst Danyaal Rashid.  

It lacked the ability to share screenshots or clips on social media, which is an own goal in trying to score a youth audience, and it also lacked a breakout show, as AppleTV+ achieved with The Morning Show.  

Katzenberg certainly knew the value of having original, quality content – but it was clearly not the right mix to attract millennials away from viewing and sharing video on social media sites like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.  

Quibi launched with 50 titles – a mix of scripted and non-scripted food shows, sports and nature docs, plus news bulletins – but it is the narrative serials which were designed to capture headlines. The A-list of talent making drama originals included Liam Hemsworth, Ridley Scott, Doug Liman, Antoine Fuqua, Laurence Fishburne, Kevin Hart and Steven Spielberg.   

Quibi spent $1.1 billion on content paying $125,000 per minute for some shows and not without some success. It landed ten nominations in short-form categories at the Emmy’s with Antoine Fuqua drama #FreeRayshawn winning two for actors Laurence Fishburne and Jasmine Cephas Jones.    

Costs for talent and production value aside, the practicalities of producing video that would smoothly switch between horizontal and vertical positions was creating headaches for production teams.  

Cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt who shot Dummy, the first scripted show commissioned by Quibi to go into production, gave IBC365 a taste of the issues they were having to solve.  

She said, “How could you position a shot that wouldn’t either destroy both frames, or make one unusable? This was the main challenge for everybody to wrap their heads around.”

Quibi’s streaming technology is designed so that when a viewer flips between the horizontal (16:9) and vertical (9:16), there is no buffering. It does that by streaming two versions of the same show simultaneously, with different aspect ratios and identical soundtrack. This means producers had to deliver two versions of the show and, going back up the chain, the cinematographer needed to consider how to shoot a scene once but frame it twice. All of that was added expense.  

Assets for grabs  
Quibi is now trying to find buyers for its content and technology assets and return some of its investor’s money.  

On the content side, Quibi’s failure to find a buyer for its business as a going concern foundered, according to the Wall Street Journal because unlike most services, Quibi allowed creators to own the non-mobile rights to the content it had funded.  

This might make an immediate sale to principally TV-centric streamers like Disney, Netflix or NBCU unlikely, while IP owners like Fuqua could cash in after the mobile-only rights expire.  

There is the added expense of formatting the content from vertical to horizontal to play back on TV screen. A 8 x 10-minute made for Quibi drama would need re-editing for longer form viewing. YouTube Premium might be the most natural home.  

More fundamentally, there’s the question whether younger audiences want to watch 10-minute-long shows on their phones.  

On the technology side, Quibi’s signature ‘Turnstyle’ screen feature, which allows viewers to switch between landscape and portrait viewing on mobile, remains mired in a legal battle over intellectual property. In an initial ruling, a U.S. Court ruled in favour of Quibi over interactive-video company Eko’s claim of patent infringement but the suit is ongoing.  

“It’s hard to see significant interest in this tech that is unproven and remains niche,” says Pescatore. “Nonetheless, big tech companies will be sniffing around and we shouldn’t rule out interest among consumer electronic providers. Samsung recently launched its own rotating screen The Sero. Others may want to follow suit.”  

With video streaming forecast to constitute 79% of all mobile network traffic by 2022, you can see how investors could be persuaded the platform had potential.  

The cratering of Quibi, pandemic not withstanding, will have the industry scratching its heads, especially in comparison to live social broadcasting platforms like Twitch which have rocketed under lockdown.  

 “At the end of the day it is all about content,” says Pescatore. “Quibi’s inability to create great stories in a way that connects with an audience led to its demise.”  

Katzenberg and Whitman bravely acknowledged this. Quibi failed they suggest “because the idea itself wasn’t strong enough to justify a standalone streaming service.”   

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