SVGE Analysis: Virtual Reality brings the infinite seat closer to home

Sports Video Group 

http://svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/svge-analysis-virtual-reality-brings-the-infinite-seat-closer-to-home/

The possibility of an ‘infinite seat’ that a club, league or rights holder could sell any number of times has to be the holy grail of sports monetisation and Virtual Reality could be the answer. Next year is a watershed year for the nascent medium. Oculus launches its first consumer-ready headset in Q1, ahead of Sony’s Morpheus headset in Q2. HTC’s Vive could arrive before Christmas. VR’s potential is to deliver the most immersive live and at the venue experience yet to viewers. Technology is being developed to replicate the social ambience of sharing the game with friends.

The use of VR in sports can be broadly segmented into: 180° or 360° filming and live broadcast; training applications enabling players and coaches to repeatedly run specific scenarios; and immersive social networking. SVGEurope takes a look at leading technologies in each category:

1 Virtual Reality Broadcast

NextVR (NextVR.com) is in pole position to win contracts to stream live 360° content. Its system has been tested ringside, rinkside, pitch and trackside at NBA, NHL and NASCAR’s Xfinity and Sprint Cup series races typically to Gear VR headsets. With Fox Sports it streamed live VR of the US Open Golf 2015 and its cameras were at the Levi’s Stadium during a Man Utd v Barcelona pre-season match.

The company is nothing if not bullish, claiming to be uniquely “capable of transmitting live HD, three-dimensional virtual reality content over the internet.” Its rigs mount Red Epic cameras but the patented ingredient is the encoding of multiple feeds for online distribution, a technique devised during the days when co-founder DJ Roller was building a stereo 3D pipeline for James Cameron. Hollywood producer and owner of the Golden State Warriors and the LA Dodgers, Peter Guber, is a member of the advisory board.

Immersive Media (https://immersivemedia.com) has an end-to-end VR broadcasting system including its own designed of 360˚ spherical and panoramic cameras. The Hex is a six lens, 12MP spherical camera that captures video from more than 80% of the full 360° sphere. Alternatively, the Quattro is a budget 360˚ imager just 2.9 inches in height and weighing only 1.25 lbs. It houses four Sony ICX 724 CCD sensors recording 15fps. Data is transmitted through either Gigabit Cat 5E ethernet cable or fibre.

The turnkey imLive system stitches, encodes, and transports VR to broadcast backhaul, web and mobile platforms over CDNs from Akamai, Limelight, and MediaNova. Immersive Media’s imRecorder Base unit handles recording and encoding of multiple streams and playback functions. It also offers a cloud-based VR hosting platform with functions for encoding, video browsing and asset management plus players for a range of devices.

Singer Taylor Swift won an Emmy this year for ‘Outstanding Original Interactive Program’ filmed using IM’s technology; Brazilian soccer stars Neymar and Philippe Coutinho have featured in a 360-video Nike promo shot and post produced by Digital Domain using the kit.

3D-4U’s (http://www.3d-4u.com) VR experience is branded TwirlsMedia. Its technology captures multiple live 180°-360° fields of view and enables each viewer to determine a personalized view in realtime or as a replay. Users can navigate their own replays, watch a player, pan, zoom or tilt their view – live or on-demand. They can also share their viewpoints on a bespoke social media platform over tablets, TVs and smart phones.

The founders are Uma Jayaram, associate professor of Washington State University’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and her husband, Sankar Jayaram, also a WSU professor. Studying VR since the 1990s, they founded the VR and Computer Integrated Manufacturing Lab at WSU. It has been tested in the Amsterdam Arena during an Ajax and Twente soccer match in 2014; and for fans at the stadium of NFL side Jacksonville Jaguars, last November, with the feed made available over Wi-Fi.

There are numerous off-the-shelf VR rigs for capturing action, many – including Google’s Odyssey – bolting on GoPros. Targeting the top end of 360 video production are turnkey imaging systems. These include Fraunhofer HHI’s Institute Omnicam, used to record the 2014 FIFA World Cup; and models from Jaunt (juantvr.com) and Nokia.

The former’s system, dubbed Neo, has only just launched and is only available to select Jaunt partners (like Sky which is an investor and has tested VR on sports including boxing). Detailed specs are therefore a little hard to come by but include 16 large sensors capable of low-light performance with a 3D mode in which the stereo is mathematically created post-event. There are two models, one more suitable for outdoors work.

Nokia‘s much anticipated OZO (https://ozo.nokia.com) is due for imminent release. Its plush spherical design houses eight 2K x 2K lenses with global shutter to ensure that footage is optimally aligned, and 8 mics for spatial audio. It boasts technology intended for shooting VR in real-time, with a means to playback images (at low-resolution) on location without needing to pre-assemble a panorama in post.

2 Player Training and Performance Improvement

The San Francisco 49ers, Arizona Cardinals, Minnesota Vikings, Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets have all used StriVR Lab’s (http://strivrlabs.com/wp/) 360° VR tech for training this season. Designed by former Stanford Cardinal’s kicker Derek Belch while he was an assistant football coach at the University, StiVR can capture 360° views of each position on the football field (most typically that of a quarterback) for repeat scenarios of every offensive and defensive play. The package of Strivr equipment, including a 360-including camera costs around $250,000, Belch told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Co-founder Jeremy Bailenson is founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and the VP Product & Business Development is former Buffalo Bills quarterback Trent Edwards.

The Cowboys, which signed a two-year deal with StriVR, have built a soundproof room in their video department for coaches and players to use the technology. Head coach Jason Garrett told Fortune.com that StriVR allows him to get closer detail on each player to asse for example where their eyes are looking. He says that being closer than the traditional video wide shot allows coaches to coach better.

Eon Sports VR’s (http://eonsportsvr.com) Sidekiq uses game-style graphics rather than video to similar end. It signed former baseball star Jason Giambi to present a training programme for hitting techniques delivered over the platform. EON, founded in 2013, also makes an American football simulator. Coaches create plays with a drag-and-drop interface and can assign a wide variety of animations to make the game seem more realistic. When an athlete is in VR they can view the game from third person point of view, first person point of view or ‘follow’ mode where the camera follows a certain player.

3 Immersive Social Networking

When Facebook acquired Oculus Rift in March 2014 speculation was that Mark Zuckerberg wanted to realise social VR. That dream may not be too far away from happening with several companies bidding to provide for the social experience of being at a stadium live.

AltspaceVR (altvr.com) recently upped its funding to $15.7 million on the premise of developing a VR chat room and communication platform that might be used to sell pay-per-view admission to virtual events such as esports. Founded in 2013 but only launching out of beta in June, investors include Chinese social media giant Tencent, Dolby Family Ventures, Comcast and Google. The software is designed to run on Oculus, Mac and PC, and can be equipped with a Leap Motion or Kinect motion sensor to bring users’ gestures into the virtual world.

After logging onto the system, users are represented as an avatar, and able to meet and talk to other avatars using VR headsets or a PC-based viewer. Developers are invited to build apps within Altspace via a new SDK. The platform has been gaining attention because of the unusual amount of time users have been spending in Altspace VR worlds – averaging around 30 minutes.

LiveLike (http://www.livelikevr.com – http://svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/svg-europe-analysis-livelike-promises-sports-virtual-reality-from-a-gopro/) takes a live feed from a wide-angle single camera in a stadium (which could even be a GoPro) and presents it inside a virtual VIP box with ceiling, floor, and walls to the left, right, and behind. Inside this luxury suite, users can invite friends who appear as avatars to watch the match together.

The full app launches in 2016. Founder and CEO Andre Lorenceau says the platform will eventually allow users to invite friends from Facebook directly into their suite. Each avatar will have a lip-synced voice that sounds like it’s coming from the couch next to you. Future in-game features will include a table hologram where stats can be mapped over NFL players.

Virtually Live‘s (www.virtuallylive.com) technology takes optically-tracked 3D or RFID data (gathered with STATS.com) and transposes it into a virtual stadium environment, in ‘substantially’ real time. “We believe people go to stadiums for the atmosphere, the social interaction, the sense of being there,” says CEO Tom Impalomeni. “We also believe stitched film for VR, while extremely impressive, is an arm’s length, often lonely experience. Fans are unable to engage with the people around them, which can cause fans to feel isolated, as if they are watching from behind a glass wall.”

Primary limitations include the accuracy and depth of 3D data gathered by cameras or sensors and the quality of the virtual reconstruction. Emotions are also difficult to capture using facial tracking and Virtually Live admit to a latency of about six seconds when rendering the event. There are also challenges dealing with multiple concurrent conversations between fans.

However, Impalomeni points to the rapid improvement of both sports tracking devices and graphics “such that virtual experiences are becoming photo-real,” he says. “The line between filmed and virtual broadcast is narrowing.”

Programmatic Advertising Takes Over TV

IBC

http://www.ibcce.org/page.cfm/action=library/libID=14/libEntryID=411/listID=2

Programmatic, data-driven advertising dominates digital media and it is taking over TV. The glue is big data about audiences used to deliver more effective, more targeted and relevant advertising.

“The TV ad sales business is largely unchanged for decades,” said Robert Ambrose, Strategy and Business Development Director at licensing and rights specialist FADEL at the IBC2015 Conference. “Orders still get faxed from time to time. It's a slow process made over long lunches. Now we're starting to see huge transformation.”

In contrast to TV ad sales which typically attempts to reach a broad demographic and socio-economic group, programmatic allows advertisers to be far more targeted.

“Ideally in programmatic you don't worry about demographics at all because you can target ads at specific individuals who actually want to buy a certain product,” explained Ambrose.

Total programmatic ad sales in the top five European markets accounted for $3.7 billion in 2015 or 36% of the current digital display business, growing to 47% or $6.5 billion in 2017.

However, Europe lags behind the U.S. where programmatic ad sales are valued at $15 billion today rising to $27.5 billion in 2017.

“This tells us that there's a huge opportunity in the European market to grow the business significantly - if we get this right,” said Ambrose.

One reason for the disparity is that in the U.S., data from set top boxes (STBs) and households have been aggregated and sold as a commodity by companies like Rentrak making addressable advertising products relatively easy to launch. In the UK and France, the market is divided among four or five STB providers but (with the exception of pay provider Sky AdSmart) these providers are not yet in a position to make data available. In Germany and the Netherlands the lack of installed STBs makes the market difficult to get off the ground.

“Everybody is trying to think about how to make data a commodity,” says Sherlock.

The amount of programmatic ad sales for TV in Europe is too small to measure but in the U.S the figure is predicted (by Strategy Analytics) to be around 5% or $5 billion of all TV spend in two years time.

“From the rate of growth in the broader digital space and the pace of change in the U.S. It's clear that programmatic is becoming important to the TV industry as well,” said Ambrose.  

Channel 4 has been at the cutting edge of the transformation, building first party data about 12 million viewers and using that to deliver a better experience for audiences (such as personalised recommendations) and smarter commercial products. Earlier this year it launched Europe's first programmatic buying option, for digital platforms serviced by All 4.

“We live stream all our channels on PC, mobile and tablet and over the last six months we enabled insertion of individually targeted advertising into these live streams - therefore directly replacing the linear feed through IP delivered content,” explained Jonathan Lewis, Channel 4's Head of Digital and Partnership Innovation.

“We also allowed anonymised access to the Channel 4 database to brands like Burberry and Coke enabling them to deliver individually personalised video ad campaigns,” added Lewis, noting that both efforts were rewarded by an uplift in sales and in Coke's case, a Cannes Lion 2015.

This September, Channel 4 became the first European broadcaster to offer programmatic buying in live digital ad breaks. This is acting as a test ground for future linear programmatic trading.

“Buying broadcaster VOD inventory requires a real mind shift for clients and agencies compared to the way video has been bought programmatically in the past,” said Lewis. “Channel 4's private marketplace is moving programmatic buying from the small screen to the big screen and delivering multiple ads into ad breaks in an automated and data driven way. We are not funnelling and filtering inventory nor passing back unwanted impressions. That's the old way. We're now entering into a premium programming content world and the game has to evolve.”

Channel 4 doesn't yet enable realtime bidding but this is being looked at. The next step is to learn how data, connectivity and automation can play a part in dynamic ad insertion and programmatic trading to TV.

“There are two ways this may be enabled: either at the point of ad delivery or ad insertion,” explains Lewis

Sky's AdSm.art in the UK does this at the point of ad delivery via storage of assets on the STBs of its 10 million households. While Freeview and other UK TV platforms are keen to develop addressable data opportunities the development costs are high. That's why free to air broadcaster Channel 4 has taken a different approach.

“We believe in enabling dynamic ad insertion at the point of ad insertion,” said Lewis. “Our focus is to invest in a solution that delivers ad break scheduling and ad decisioning, potentially in realtime, and potentially using BARB and Channel 4 first party data. We believe this has greater value long term since it is less reliant on third party technology.”

He adds, “We are deliberately not referring to this as programmatic – but as automated ad allocation. It will be probably by ready by the end of 2016.”

Australian commercial broadcaster MCN (a joint venture between Foxtel and Fox Sports) has gone straight for the jugular, working with AOL to devise a means of selling and inserting dynamic ads for 85 linear TV channels combining STB and household level data with OzTam (similar to Nielsen) overnights and consumer purchase data. 

According to Lewis Sherlock, Commercial Director, EMEA, AOL Platforms, “MCN is able to move beyond the traditional TV metric of age and gender and target ads into different day parts and shows.”

MCN charges a 20% premium for the audience data it generates and advertisers by all accounts feel comfortable with that. Having launched in April, this data targeted approach accounts for 5% of MCN ad sales revenue this year, predicted to top 15% in 2016.

TF1 is undertaking a year of R&D with Orange to track the viewing of ads on TF1 channels with physical purchases  of product. It is doing so using connected objects such as the smartphone. The idea is to test and refine the efficiency of digital and TV advertising.

Declared Fabrice Mollier Deputy General Manager, Marketing Strategy & Innovation TF1 Publicité; “Data is the real revolution for advertising.”

Dubai: Not Built On Sand

AV Magazine

Preparations for World Expo 2020 and Smart City status have put Dubai’s mega-projects back on track with massive AV potential. http://www.avinteractive.com/features/dubai-not-built-on-sand-14-10-2015/

Where else but Dubai can you find Smart palm trees? Las Vegas possibly with which the desert playground is often compared. But not even Vegas can compete with the sheer ambition of the Emirate’s drive to be the world’s show, business and tourist capital.

“Some have labelled Dubai as New York on speed and rightly so,” remarks Jan Tarakji, general manager at Dubai-based Powersoft distributor, Pro Lab. “It is one of the most competitive and fast-paced markets in the world. The name of the game is bigger and better than the guys next door.”

Smart City status

Smart palm trees (see below) dovetail into the emirate’s hope to become the first in the region, if not the planet, to qualify for United Nations Smart City status and to prepare the state for hosting World Expo 2020. The Smart City project, launched in 2014 off the back of winning Expo 2020, intends to make more than 1,000 government services ‘go smart’, and to increase co-operation between the emirate and its residents by 2017.

A key part of the Expo 2020 and Smart City vision is environmental sustainability. The Dubai Municipality aims to transform eight per cent of the urban area into green and planted spaces by 2020. Consequently, green credentials have rocketed up the list of must-haves for AV technology.

“As Dubai inches closer to world Smart City status, demand will grow for energy efficient AV solutions and there will be a large opportunity to meet this demand provided that manufacturers supply environmentally friendly products,” suggests Tarakji.

Opportunities around Smart City status include command and control functions and infrastructure for security and monitoring.  “AV technology is very high on the list of requirements when it comes to making government facilities into smart buildings,” says Mig Cardamone, marketing director, Sennheiser Middle East.

“Smart AV technology is a massive market as each government department has its own requirements,” says Steve Scorse, v-p EMEA, SiliconCore. “They’re all looking for high resolution, seamless large format displays as the hub of their systems.”

High demand

Digital signage is in high demand among Dubai clients wanting to keep connected with potential customers, passengers and guests during their stay. “There are exciting opportunities for digital signage in a wide range of Smart City outdoor environments,” confirms Gordon Dutch, md, Peerless-AV EMEA. “New fully-sealed displays are capable of withstanding high temperatures and harsh desert conditions, making them a viable option for any business wishing to make a lasting impression.”

And making an impression is the name of the game.  The pessimism that engulfed the UAE post-2008 has faded, replaced with an astonishing ramp-up of activity.

“If projects in Dubai were over-hyped in the past, now it is a real adopter of technology with a stronger local skills base and potential to finally realise its ambition,” reports Jamie Adkin, strategic sales manager, Adder.

“We’re again seeing announcements of mega-projects that Dubai had become renowned for, most of which have extensive AV requirements, but hopefully with a little more realism than was previously the case,” says Cardamone. “It remains to be seen whether all of these come to fruition but there is certainly a lot more activity in the pro-AV market here.”

The 2020 deadline has re-animated $12bn worth of mega-projects, say Deloitte. Among them: the world’s largest man-made adventure park (Dubai Design District and Wire World); the 400-hectare Dubai Safari Project; Legoland Dubai featuring 40 interactive rides; and Bollywood Parks Dubai.

“While technology is the primary driver of excess when it comes to the AV industry, scale is also an important driver when it comes to clients in Dubai,” says Tarakji. “Size matters in Dubai.”

Record breaker mall

The largest mall in the world (called Mall of The World) is a $6.8bn, 48 million sq ft temperature-controlled glass-domed development featuring Vegas casino-style streets modelled on Las Ramblas, Broadway, and Oxford Street. Naturally, it will house the world’s largest indoor theme park.

“The theme park and entertainment industries are going through a massive expansion phase,” says Holovis ceo Stuart Hetherington. Holovis is involved in three theme parks, seeing its business double in the region in a year. “The nature of this work is also diversifying, ranging from providing full turnkey e-ticket attractions to interactive dark rides and smaller systems for the Family Entertainment Centre market as well as the more conventional AV work.”

Hotels opening to cater for the influx of visitors include the InterContinental Dubai Marina, Palazzo Versace Dubai, and the Hard Rock Hotel Dubai Marina.

“Clients are looking for an impact from their AV solutions to stand out from the crowd,” says SiliconCore’s Scorse. “Projects in hotels, hospitality, transport and leisure are all geared towards tourism, so these need to make the right first impression and establish each place as a destination, rather than just provide a functional solution.”

“Clients look at AV technology as a facilitator to create this world class experience, and therefore they often demand the best that is available, from optimal screens to the best sounding audio systems,” says Jaffer Sadique, marketing and business development, Mediacast Systems.

Biggest and best

A reputation for delivering the ‘biggest and best’ projects has fostered “an environment of innovation and a can-do attitude that pushes the boundaries of AV technology,” says Cardamone. “The Smart City and Dubai Innovation Hub initiatives show it is striving for a leadership position by adopting the latest technologies. The government wants this to be a part of what Dubai is defined by.”

The city state’s dual paths of tourist mecca and business destination has seen visitor numbers rocket, dwarfing the resident population of 2.1 million. There are steady opportunities in education, medical and especially, municipal transportation, to serve them.

“Looking at Dubai from the outside in visitors may only see the touristic elements,” says Issa Makhamreh, sales director MEA, Navori. “But there are verticals in Dubai which are very advanced in AV with major projects in government, retail and transportation. Most of these fly well under the radar as they are deployed by local companies working closely with the end user from initial project design to handover.”

Dubai Metro is being expanded at a cost of $1.4bn to connect to the Expo 2020 site; the site itself features plans for an underground tube network to link the pavilions; and by 2018, Dubai International Airport will have upped capacity from 60 to 90 million passengers a year.

Residential doesn’t mean nondescript either. Under construction: the Arabian Nights-inspired Aladdin City with three towers connected by bridges; and the Union Oasis with 16,000 sq ft of residential, commercial and retail space, landscapes and streetscapes.

Healthcare

Healthcare is a growing industry throughout the UAE, with Dubai positioned as its hub. Dubai Healthcare City’s 120 clinics and hospitals and a new three million sq ft ‘wellness district’ are primed to attract 500,000 health tourists annually by 2020.  “While it may have taken time for Dubai to catch up compared to other markets in the world, the growth of healthcare and ICT have been significant,” says Sadique. “There are dedicated zones for these, such as Dubai Internet City and Dubai Silicon Oasis which are drivers of these segments, creating requirements for high-end solutions and for which AV is an indispensable part.”

The UAE’s AV industry is projected to grow to $1.24bn by 2016 (from $700m in 2012) driven mostly by large infrastructure projects including, but not limited to, Expo 2020. Dubai is the AV industry’s regional hub with around 50 per cent ($550m) of the UAE’s AV market.

“AV companies here face new competition daily,” says Makhamreh. “It creates a major bidding war and companies need to lower the bottom line, in turn lowering profits and increasing the risk of failure.”

Tarakji reports “well established global players” that lacked a presence in Dubai but dominated the market between 2000 and 2010 “are being pushed out by extremely professional, nimble and highly competitive, locally based companies.” These are more in tune with client requirements and more importantly “are always available to serve their needs,” he says.

“Clients realise more than ever that they need to work with strong partners who have a local presence,” notes Vincent Philippo, Crestron’s UAE regional director. “Not a company from abroad, but someone who can assist them immediately when support is required.”

Peerless-AV has seen its ME business double since it opened a warehouse in the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone in January. “We’ve seen a very split business,” reports Dutch. “For the volume and entry level market, there is a very aggressively priced, low-end approach. For major projects, we’ve seen good demand for the ‘best of the best.”

Adder recently swapped its long-standing UAE distributor for UK-based control room furniture specialist Lund Halse and has seen enquiries take off. “They spend two to three weeks a month on the ground giving us increased visibility in the market,” explains Adkin.

The government market is huge in Dubai. “I would say the biggest sector in the UAE,” says Scorse. But the private sector is equally energetic. Either way, the keys to success are based on relationships.

“Word of mouth recommendation goes a long way in this market so there is no point biting off more than you can chew,” says Hetherington.

“In the Middle East it’s all about trust,” says Makhamreh. “Clients need a face to face interaction with vendors to gain their trust and assure their presence for after sales support.”

Adkin puts it succinctly: “Trust the people; trust the technology.”

All is not entirely rosy in this desert paradise. The long term decline of oil reserves is the economic imperative behind Dubai’s reinvention but recent sustained declines in petrodollars have eroded government coffers.

“The oil sector represents at least twenty nine per cent of the UAE’s GDP but the drop in the price of oil has impacted business revenues negatively during the first two quarters of 2015,” suggests Tarakji. “Projections vary, but if the trend continues, the period up to Expo 2020 will be turbulent for Dubai and more so for the rest of the UAE and the greater Gulf.”

Digital Media Will Explode Out of its Fixed Limits

IBC

The media world is on a cusp of change so profound that it will revolutionise our whole relationship with information and entertainment. This key message was infused throughout IBC2015 with deep implications across TV, mobile and cinema.

http://www.ibc.org/page.cfm/action=library/libID=14/libEntryID=119/listID=2

“We have reached an inflection point in how we all interact with digital media,” declared keynote speaker Mark Dickinson SVP & General Manager, Media Processing Group ARM. “Technology is about to enable us all to become more intimate with the digital world.”

Dickinson demonstrated an ARM R&D project as an insight into how we might interact with digital devices in the near future. A small image sensor could track a person's hand and enable the user to interact with a computer graphic world running on a laptop.

“I can move around and control my environment in a much more intuitive way than was ever possible before,” said Dickinson, adding that it was possible to put the technology into a mobile phone. Since ARM designs the microprocessors in 97% of mobile phones we can take this as read.

“We are on the cusp of a very different era,” he stated. “Mobile has revolutionised the way we consume content but content has so far been designed for fixed screens and simply digitised and made portable. This is just the first step. What is really exciting is the next step which will fundamentally change the ways we create content that work far more intimately with our digital environment.”

He said he believed this was not a threat to broadcasters, but an opportunity for content creators.

Filmmakers are making increased use of systems which allow them to shoot live action and see the results blended into CG environments in realtime on set or on location. A director like James Cameron might use an iPad as the viewfinder to compose scenes mixed with real and CG elements.

Such virtual cinematography is already merging the boundaries between production and post and is now being transposed to the consumer as virtual and augmented reality experiences.

ILM's experimental lab ILMxLab is testing with virtual reality, iPad and Oculus Rift-based technology to allow movie fans to enter a movie, interact and navigate through scenes.

“If we can allow directors to step into that world (‘Star Wars’, say, or ‘Jurassic Park’) the next move is to allow the audience to step in,” said Mohen Leo, ILM VFX Supervisor, at IBC. “Every time we create a ‘Star Wars’ project we create hundreds of digital models – characters and planets – which could be recombined into new stories in VR.”

ILM imagines a world where cinema becomes realtime and reactive, where audiences can virtually inhabit the worlds of their favourite characters and use them to tell their own tales, and where there will exist an interconnected universe of story experiences that let audiences immerse themselves to whatever degree they want.

“We are entering an age of immersive entertainment where it is possible to collapse the walls that have historically separated us from the story,” said Leo.

Perhaps the greatest paradigm busting application will be in broadcast. If adopted, technologies broadly described as object-oriented broadcasting, would shake the very foundations of televised media.

According to the BBC, which is very energetic in researching the area, in the world of object-oriented broadcast, a programme is “like a multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle that is sent in pieces and can be reconstructed on-the-fly in a variety of ways just before the programme is presented to the viewer.” The solutions to the puzzle are provided by maps that tell the system where the pieces belong and how to combine them. Default versions of these maps are sent along with the jigsaw pieces. In some cases the map may be modified by the viewer to create a personalised experience. The map may also be modified by a system of sensors that perceives certain aspects of a user's relationship to their viewing or listening environment.

“I think the idea is profound and little understood,” said BBC CTO Matthew Postgate, also an IBC2015 speaker. “It is about moving the whole industry away from thinking of video and audio as hermetically sealed and toward an idea where we are no longer broadcasters but data-casters creating information and delivering a computer graphic model of reality. That opens up all sorts of creative questions around veracity and flexibility.”

The first iterations of what object-based media experience might be like will probably come from audio. In the US, two proposals to update the audio delivery of next-generation (Ultra HD, High Dynamic Range) broadcast are being considered by the Advanced Television Systems Committee in its forthcoming standard ATSC 3.0.

The competitors are Dolby, with its AC-4 technology, and an alliance of Fraunhofer IIS, Technicolor and Qualcomm which has developed MPEG-H.

Both groups promise greater interactivity and greater immersion, by letting viewers adjust the presence of various audio objects in the broadcast signal. This could include allowing the user to choose a language, bring an announcer’s voice out of the background for greater clarity, listen to a specific race car driver communicating with his pit crew, or the option of listening to either the home team or the visitor’s native broadcast mix depending on fan preference.

Object-based broadcasting is fuelling BBC research & development around immersive audio and video, including investigations using Oculus VR, and on mobile where video is pervasive. The technology relies on splitting AV into its component parts and in turn this relies on the infinite flexibility of sending data over IP.

Once that is achieved, media becomes another object with which the increasingly connected world can interact.

Postgate asserts, “Once you move to object-based broadcasting in a world of the internet of things there are fundamental questions about what role a media organisation plays.”

Future Sports Media Offers Sports Clip Action at the Speed of Twitter

Streaming Media Global 

Swedish company Future Sports Media aims to usurp the lock-in that hardware vendors like EVS have on the fast-turnaround sports market with a software only product that works over IP. http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/News/Featured-News/Future-Sports-Media-Offers-Sports-Clip-Action-at-the-Speed-of-Twitter-106941.aspx

LiveReplayer—a software-based live production client from Future Sports Media—has gained below-the-radar commercial use with customers including Swedish ice hockey league HockeyAllsvenskan, Norwegian production company OB Team, and Scandinavian sports broadcaster C More.

"Our philosophy is to design everything with extreme simplicity of use," says Future Sports Media co-founder and CEO Mats Vindefjärd. "A lot of products claim to be really simple to use. We think we have taken that simplicity several steps further and like to say we can teach anyone with no background to run a full live production on it in just five minutes."

Even though the technology could be applied to news, entertainment, or security applications, Vindefjärd says the company remains concentrated on sports.

The firm's first product for live video clip creation and publishing to mobile phones launched in 2009, but proved to be ahead of the market.

"We were way too early. Online user behaviour wasn't mature enough; there weren't good enough payment or distribution mechanisms, and smartphones were just coming to market," says Vindefjärd, who has an engineering and business development background at Telia, Nokia, and HP. Founder and chairman Stefan Felter has engineering and research experience at Nokia, Saab, and Ericsson.

The software runs on Mac only, a conscious choice stemming from the company's belief in the many technical benefits the Mac platform has over PC. It is not planning to support any other platforms at the moment, but that this may change in the future.

LiveReplayer works with any encoder that receives AV using HDMI, and is compatible with Mac OS X. SDI or HDMI input signals are connected to the Mac's Thunderbolt port via a converter unit from Blackmagic Design. Picture and sound is output from the Mac HDMI port to an external encoder.

Importantly, it will also support IP based inputs (from IP cameras and network streams). If there are multiple simultaneous inputs, the user may mix these different types of signals simultaneously. As an example, there could be one or more manned SDI-camera and one or more unmanned (cheap) fix-mount IP cameras feeding into LiveReplayer at the same time. One click then yields a replay clip from each of the connected signals so that, for example, a goal can be replayed from multiple camera angles.

"Lots of development is being done right now, and some very cool updates are scheduled for release within a few months, including a very potent streaming encoder integrated right into LiveReplayer," says Vindefjärd.

LiveReplayer is installed on standard consumer hardware, and not a traditional replay machine consisting of proprietary hardware, electronics, and mechanics, he explains. There are features for sports-specific graphics and sponsor branding.

The second product, which builds on the company’s original founding idea, is just launched. LiveReplays takes the clips created in LiveReplayer and enables one-click publication via Future Sports Media's private cloud within seconds of the live action to sites embedded with its player. Applications include video-based live reporting and second-screen solutions supporting user-selectable multiple camera angles and slow motion.

"Our clients can themselves, through a back office web interface, set the service up, invoke other types of sponsor messages, control where to publish or distribute clips from every respective event," says Vindefjärd. "This end-to-end approach provides many benefits over less integrated solutions, including extremely quick publishing plus full control over the content at the fingertips of the production crew in the field."

Future Sports Media says several media publishing houses with large numbers of local and national newspapers, as well as regional TV channels, are ramping up their live production efforts and adding LiveReplayer and LiveReplays to the mix.

The system is designed to publish clips at pace with the live event on social media. An automatic Tweet function is planned to lure Twitter users to visit the channels.

"Before someone has the time to shout 'YEEEES 2-0!' on Twitter, there is a video clip of the goal already published in the club's or TV channel’s official channels," says Vindefjärd. "We will give clients the option to publish clips directly to social media feeds as well since this implies losing all or parts of the end-to-end control over content we place emphasis on promoting the client's 'own channels'."

Future Sports Media is privately held, has five permanent employees, and is preparing a financing round to close by Christmas.

"We are talking to major media houses which might have a hundred newspaper titles, or international organisations with multiple TV channels," says Vindefjärd. "We have maybe 15-20 of these cases in the pipeline. We expect a number of them to announce before the end of this year."

When in Roma: Spotlight on Panlight Italy

British Cinematographer 

In Roberto Jarratt's varied career spanning 60 years in the industry he has helped BBC Italy produce documentaries, acted as consultant to Lord Sidney Bernstein founder of Granada TV and been Managing Director for revered lighting specialist Mole Richardson Italia.

https://britishcinematographer.co.uk/panalight-italy/

Perhaps his most enduring achievement began in the early 1990s, following from the realisation that the Italian motion picture community faced a gap in the market for a high quality, new-technology-focused rental and service company.

With three young industry enthusiasts, Jarratt set about creating a modern rental company for the motion picture business. With himself as president, Panalight was born with its three original partners still heading the company: Carlo Loreti, managing director; Jarratt's son David as vice president and director of light & grip; and Roberto Schettini, vice president and camera director.

“The aim was to focus on the international market which was just beginning to show renewed interest in Italy at that time,” explains David Jarratt. “We were able to lead the company to the top of the European market by investment in technology research and development, combined with technical expertise.”

To establish an edge over other rental companies, Panalight immediately invested in the most advanced technology of the time – the ARRI 535 and 435 35mm cameras and the top-of-the-range film unit Moviecam developed by Fritz Gabriel Bauer – striking deals exclusive to Italy. In the lighting sector, Panalight offered the De Sisti and ARRI product range – again aiming for the top of the market – providing the full range of filters together with the Lee Colortran products. More recently, Panalight has concentrated investment in ARRI products strengthening collaboration with the German company.

“From the beginning, Panalight had the chance to supply important and large Italian-based productions which demanded more and more technological commitment,” explains Jarratt. These included The American (DP Martin Ruhe), The Passion (DP Luca Bigazzi), La Vita è Bella (Tonino Delli Colli), The English Patient (John Seale ACS ASC), The Talented Mr Ripley (John Seale ACS ASC), The Tourist (John Seale ACS ASC) and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (DP Robert D. Yeoman).

Over its 25-year history Panalight has established a strong relationship with Panavision. This stems back to the 1990s when, with Panavision's global chairman Bill Scott, Roberto Jarratt helped develop Panavision's business in Italy, Malta and Greece.

“Roberto always envisaged the importance of working jointly with Panavision and thanks to his insight, Panalight today can offer the very latest Panavision products,” says David Jarratt.

Headquartered a couple of miles from Cinecittà Studios in Rome, where they also have an office on the lot (Cinecittà Panalight) which serves as the studios' official kit supplier, Panalight maintains branches in Milan, serving the north of Italy, at Panalight Sudtirol in Bolzano and Panalight Apulia in Bari. Since 2011, a Maltese division offers full service to the island.

Last year was a record one for the company, attributed to the attractive tax incentives issued by Cinecittà Studios and the government's Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. The tax credits, which came into force last April, were intended to attract bigger budget Hollywood movies and to benefit domestic film and TV projects.

As a result, blockbuster productions such as Baltasar Kormakur's Everest (DP Salvatore Totino AIC ASC), The Man From UNCLE (DP John Mathieson BSC), Ben Hur (DP Oliver Wood) directed by Timor Bekmambetov, Zoolander 2 (DP Dan Mindel ASC BSC) and Giuseppe Tornatore's La Corrispondenza (DP Fabio Zamarion) were all based in Italy and all serviced by Panalight. The company further supplied equipment and services to Point Break (Ericson Core) and the Ron Howard-directed Inferno (Salvatore Totino AIC ASC). Last year, the company serviced Alice Rohrwacher's Le Meraviglie (DP Helene Louvart), which won the Grand Prix du Jury at the Cannes Festival.

Panalight's proven ability to win business is explained by its continued investment and smart eye for the latest equipment. “We've grown the company to the same technological level as any company in the US or UK,” says Jarratt. “But we have to keep vigilant. The market is increasingly competitive and always demanding higher-end new technologies.”

Aside from the full range of traditional film cameras, Panalight offers digital units from Blackmagic Design to the ARRI Alexa XT and Red Dragon, supported with a comprehensive lens inventory including vintage Anamorphics from Todd AO and Xtal to the recent modern Zeiss Master and Cooke Anamorphics.

Its lighting roster, features new LED lighting fixtures, like the Cineo and ARRI Skypanel, as well as the 'M' series which grips to a special Technocrane and 3-axis stabilised remote head like the Flight Head V.

Significant investments in the last two years have been made in a Scorpio Arm, a controlled motorised arm for filming on a Mercedes driving up to 150kmh, and the Panaranger, for mounting on a Polaris Ranger Crew 800 jeep.

These gyrostabilised pursuit systems and remote heads are operated by PanaTeam, a crew of qualified professionals who “represent one of the few top teams in Europe able to produce first class results with this kind of system,” says Jarratt.

Sister company Cinetecnica provides gear for transportation, from grip trucks and trailers to motor home and generators.

Despite adopting these latest technologies, Panalight has also taken another important step in traditional equipment when this year it become the Italian seller for Kodak Film stock.

“This is a prestigious commitment which will ensure continued availability for unique shooting choices,” says Jarratt. “It is the experience and passion of our staff that allows Panalight to meet any technical and creative requirements and to achieve the best possible solution for every budget.”

SVGE Analysis: BBC reinforces esports’ mainstream appeal with League of Legends

Sports Video Group Europe http://svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/svge-analysis-bbc-reinforces-esports-mainstream-appeal-with-league-of-legends/ The urgent need to chase the millennial is leading broadcasters to belatedly attempt to capture a share of the online phenomenon esports. The BBC is the latest to jump on the bandwagon and it’s a canny move designed to shore-up the youth audience for its soon to be online-only service BBC Three (the TV channel closes January).

Beginning October 15, the broadcaster will live stream professional video gaming for the first time. It will cover four days of action from Wembley Arena of the League of Legends World Championships quarter final. The semi-finals of the tournament, for which teams are competing for a prize pool of £1.387 million, will be held in Brussels and the final in Berlin on 31 October.

BBC Three online coverage will be hosted by video game personality Julia Hardy and Radio 1 DJ Dev Griffin and feature interviews with competing players and fans. The production is being handled by BBC Sport’s digital team and will mix live with pre-recorded video inserts, text, audio and social commentary.

Mainstream media has belatedly woken up to the entertainment’s potential. ESPN, which has dabbled in live streaming esports events in recent years — notably the championship final of Dota 2 on ESPN 3 in 2013 – recently signalled its intent to beef up coverage by creating the new role of esports editor. The job requires proficiency in League of Legends, Call of Duty, DotA 2, StarCraft 2, Hearthstone, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and more. ESPN notes that it is important for editors to know and understand the fantasy and gambling scenes surrounding these titles.

And no wonder. According to ESPN, 3.7 billion hours were spent watching or playing esports worldwide in 2014, and 89 million people are regular enthusiasts. The League of Legends final of 2014 was watched by 27m people online, according to ESPN, beating the final round of The Masters (25m) and only below that of SuperBowl XLVIII at 112m. Another esports final, Dota2, gained fourth place in 2014’s online viewing rankings with 20m ahead of the NBA finals (15.5m).

Any debate about whether professional video gaming should be classified as a sport seems redundant in the face of its growing popularity among an audience that is not just young and digital but global. That demographic is drawing big brand sponsorship from the likes of Red Bull, Nissan, Coke and Logitech.

In August, YouTube launched YouTube Gaming, a dedicated app and website to go head to head with Amazon’s Twitch. Amazon acquired Twitch in 2014 for close to a billion dollars, beating Google to the prize. Twitch now has around 55 million monthly viewers and over 1.5 million channel creators. According to The Guardian 10,000 of these were earning money from advertising by the end of 2014.

YouTube Gaming will feature 25,000 games, each with their own page alongside channels from game publishers and YouTube creators. There is a strong emphasis on live streaming.

“On top of existing features like high frame rate streaming at 60fps, DVR, and automatically converting your stream into a YouTube video, we’re redesigning our system so that you no longer need to schedule a live event ahead of time,” explained YouTube Gaming product manager Alan Joyce in a blog. “We’re also creating a single link you can share for all your streams.”

Some of YouTube’s biggest stars are gamers. Dan ‘The Diamond Minecart’ Middleton has 379m monthly views and 7.7m subscribers and earned $7.4m in 2014. PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg) famed for his ‘Let’s Play’ walkthroughs with commentary, has 291m monthly views and 38.9m subscribers; Markiplier has 252m monthly views and 9.1m subscribers.

Production of the broadcasts are also growing in quality. Native digital content from within the games are ripe for streaming. On top of that, POV cameras capture shots of the gamers (their facial expression and hand movements); wider positions show the venue’s spectators watching talent on giant screens and replay systems are available to the live show’s producer. Mics on the gamers can pick up their reactions and commentary and VTs of player personalities can be inserted pre-show or during the show.

Vision mixers commonly used in outside broadcasts compile graphics, audio mixing and special effects with the stream published to social media and converted to H.264 for distributing online. All of the feeds can be controlled remotely over IP, which Red Bull Media House does from the dedicated esports studio it opened at its US headquarters.

Of the many other esports platforms, one gaining more attention than most is Hitbox. It launched at the end of 2014, has attracted around six million viewers, and want to target streaming to 4K displays.