NAB
Only a year ago, one of the biggest decisions for anyone
looking to implement, replace or upgrade part or all of their media supply
chain was where to put it — on-premise, in a private cloud, in the “public”
cloud, or some hybrid of the three. Today, for the majority of media
organizations, it is almost taken for granted that at least some of the
infrastructure and services will be cloud-based.
“What or how much is on-premise depends largely on legacy
storage or systems that need to remain operational,” says Karsten Schragmann,
the head of product management for Vidispine. “Cloud-based platforms are
already helping to reduce those start-up costs and diminish risk. With minimal
initial investment, systems can be spun up and, especially in integrating other
systems, sandbox and staging systems can be managed cost-effectively.”
Schragmann was one of a number of experts from vendors of
media assessment management technology examining the march to the cloud for a
two-part “Industry Insights” roundtable discussion hosted by NewcastStudio.
There are already excellent examples of existing
cloud-native supply chains, such as A+E Networks, Discovery, ViacomCBS and
WarnerMedia, embracing this journey to the cloud. They recognize that moving to
the cloud not only helps them become more efficient, but it gives them newfound
agility to pursue new opportunities much faster.
“Increasingly, broadcast supply chains will migrate to the
cloud, from ingest through delivery,” said Geoff Stedman, CMO for SDVI. “For
many, the goal is to push content directly into the cloud from the point of
ingest or acquisition, and never have it come back to the ground until it
reaches the viewer’s device. This kind of efficiency and agility will allow
broadcasters to scale the number of channels and services they can offer
dramatically.”
“It would allow content creators and distributors to focus
more on creative tasks: plan, produce, manage, package and distribute their
content quicker, helping them stay competitive in a content-hungry world,”
added Mathieu Zarouk, director of product strategy, Media Workflows at Dalet.
Hybrid storage environments are gaining traction, although a
large piece of the market will continue with on-prem storage for some time. MAM
workflows have to straddle them.
“With remote working now being so fundamental, it is
important for users to be able to execute their broadcast workflows regardless
of where they are working from, and regardless of where the media is located,”
said Camilla Powell, for Grass Valley. “Our larger customers, with multiple
production sites spread nationally and globally, benefit from the federated
view of all assets and the ability to use any content, wherever it was ingested
or created.”
Metadata still plays an essential role in content
organization and it is increasingly allied with algorithms to speed workflows
and optimize the supply chain.
“Media without metadata is close to useless,” Powell
answered. “Customers are demanding AI solutions to automate metadata creation
and enrichment, whether it is logging metadata, transcription services, facial
recognition, scene detection… the list is endless. These are rapidly becoming
must-have core feature expectations in a product as opposed to product
delighters.”
Russell Vijayan, head of business development for Digital
Nirvana said “Metadata enables memorialization of media assets,” and for that
reason, it is essential to ensure structured metadata is preserved.
“Technical, speech-based, or video-based, all have specific
use cases today and are widely used by AI engines for modeling and
recommending. This makes it essential for MAM systems to have a robust way of
generating, preserving, and retrieving content based on metadata tags,” he
said.
New and upcoming ultra-fast networks like 5G and Wi-Fi 6E
don’t just mean more data streaming from the cloud; they mean faster access to
the cloud from the point of content creation.
“Broadcasters are looking to these new technologies as
readily available gateways to the cloud, and reporters are already starting to
stream video live to air over 5G mobile networks,” said Bill Admans, COO at
Ateliere. “In dense environments like stadiums, Wi-Fi 6E means people will not
compete for bandwidth like they do today, which means new opportunities for
streaming content and delivering experiences during sports matches and other
events.”
As expected, the requirement to work from home has
accelerated the adoption of cloud-based infrastructures for content management
as organizations look for ways to enable collaboration between locations and to
reduce their reliance on on-site data centers.
“The requirement for remote working hasn’t changed our
approach as much as it has reinforced our view that leveraging cloud-based
workflows provides the most efficient access to content and applications for
people that may be located anywhere,” said Stedman.
Nor are media production workflows reverting back to
traditional models. “Over the past 18 months, MAM technology providers have
been forced to prioritize roadmap items, pushing collaboration, workflow,
remote visibility and discovery features to the top,” said Rick Young, head of
global products at LTN Global. “These new enhancements are a direct response to
the new normal where teams are not heading back to shared facilities but they
still need to collaborate with one another as if they were sitting in the same
cubicle or edit bay.”
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