Adrian Pennington - The Write Stuff

Friday, 14 October 2016

Boom time for UK studios

Broadcast

The impact of Brexit has, in the short term at least, increased demand for space as TV projects and feature films battle it out while studios expand capacity. http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/boom-time-for-uk-studios/5110280.article

The UK might be mired in economic uncertainty, but studios are confident that their recent boom can continue.

“To put it cynically, the exchange rate post-Brexit has done us a favour and, if anything, intensified the volume of enquiries, particularly from the US,” says Film London chief executive Adrian Wootton.

Since 2013, the UK has gone from having almost no alternative studio space to ramping up space at The Bottle Yard, the opening of Pinewood Cardiff and Church Fenton in Yorkshire – not to mention three new stages at Leavesden, multiple warehouse conversions like the one in Hayes for Tiger Aspect’s Fortitude, and additional stages coming on stream at Pinewood HQ and in Belfast.

“Production is cheaper than it was before,” says Wootton. “In truth, we’ve done really well to manage capacity, but we do want more, from London to Scotland, because we know the demand is there. I don’t think we’re tapped out in terms of demand or potential for more infrastructure.

“We’re being very proactive and aggressive about marketing UK studios.”

In November, two massive sound stages, comprising 66,000 sq ft, will open in Belfast.

Costing developer Belfast Harbour Commission £20m, the soundproofed North Foreshore Film Studios are bespoke builds, not retrofits of existing warehouses, and can be split for two entirely separate productions or joined to create one workspace.

High-speed internet pipe Project Kelvin provides access to the US east coast, for studios wanting to screen dailies.

“The UK reached a tipping point a few years ago where there just wasn’t enough bespoke stage space to keep pace with the rise in TV drama,” says Andrew Reid, head of production at NI Screen.

“The Harbour Commission has had the foresight and confidence to address that demand.”

Indeed, there are already plans to build a further 42,000 sq ft. “We’re investing more in training and bringing more people into the region to service anticipated new productions,” says Reid.

Belfast’s capacity is at its limit with Game Of Thrones installed in the eight acre (64,000 sq ft) Titanic Studios.

The latter has added another two sound stages of 21,000 sq ft, and there is also the Linen Mill half an hour to the south.

NI Screen also leases three studios at a former Britvic distribution hub, comprising 86,000 sq ft, to productions including Fox feature Morgan and BBC drama Mother And Other Strangers.

Studio owners almost universally report a boom that shows no signs of stopping.

Bristol’s Bottle Yard “has had its best business year yet”, according to site director Fiona Francombe.

Although Deal Or No Deal is no longer a fixture, shows including Company Pictures’ Starz drama The White Princess and Netflix and E4 co-pro Crazyhead are shot there.

Mammoth Screen’s Poldark shot series three in Tank House 1 and 2, with the entire production co-ordinated from the Yard’s offices.

“We’re looking to invest next year to bring more spaces into use,” says Francombe.

In East London, “business is busier than ever for occupation and future bookings”, reports 3 Mills head of studios Tom Avison.

While MasterChef cooks away on site, the main driver is high-end drama, notably series three of E!’s The Royals, for which 3 Mills has pencilled in further series.

In Manchester, The Space Project plans to double capacity by September next year.

Benefiting from a £14m investment from the City Council, Outer Space will include a 30,000 sq ft stage, 10,000 sq ft set construction workshops and 40,000 sq ft of business units.

This follows the first full trading year of drama hub The Space Project, whose productions included Cold Feet, The A Word and Houdini And Doyle.

“Netflix and Amazon have driven exponential growth in the amount of content the industry has to create, and someone has to create space in which that is made,” says founder Susan Woodward.

“We are gaining a reputation for repeat business – Dragon’s Den is signed for another run – and we’ve have had interest from American producers keen to locate outside London.”

Having been sold by Avesco to property developer Quintain in January, Fountain Studios (below) will close in December, taking with it one of the biggest fully equipped TV studios in the country.

But there was some solace this week when London mayor Sadiq Khan announced plans for the capital’s first major new TV and fi lm production studio in 25 years.

The London Local Enterprise Partnership and Barking and Dagenham Council are spending £80,000 putting together a business case for the proposed new Dagenham site, led by Film London, which they estimate could bring in more than £100m in UK spend and attract international productions.

Meanwhile, the new owner of Pinewood Group, US real estate firm Venus Grafton, paid £320m for the legendary brand and seems prepared to expand the business.

Five new sound stages, totalling 170,000 sq ft, opened in June, marking phase one of a wider £200m development.

The new owners will inject capital to kick-start the second phase of expansion, totalling a further 170,000 sq ft, and there’s a “masterplan” to redevelop the 80-year-old Shepperton site, says director of strategy Andrew Smith.

“Capacity has been constrained for many years and the UK has had to turn away business,” he says.

“Our five new purpose-built stages will allow Pinewood to accommodate two additional large inward-investment films this year.”

Films that may have shot in the UK but for a lack of space include Fox’s Alien: Covenant and Disney’s Thor: Ragnarok. Both rerouted to Australia.

Elstree will unwrap a 21,000 sq ft stage late next year, increasing site capacity by 30%, with a further 39,000 sq ft planned.

Strictly Come Dancing is lodged in Stage 2 and Netflix’s The Crown will be back at the end of the year.

“The studios are probably going through their most successful period ever, but there’s still a shortage of suitable stages in the M25 London area.

“That’s where most clients want to work, and where the majority of crew, cast and skills are,” says managing director Roger Morris.

“We already have clients who wish to use our new stage once it’s built, but more is needed.”

That’s where new space in Liverpool might come in.

Developer Capital & Centric is to build a £30m, 11,000 sq m studio near the city centre. The first phase of the project, including the soundstage, is likely to begin in early 2017, according to Liverpool Film Office, which says C&C will invite bids to run the studio.

Meanwhile, the Scottish government continues to mull the rubber-stamping of the £140m Pentland Studio development outside Edinburgh, which would bring considerably more purpose built stages to the nation.

A decision is expected within the next month and, if approved, PSL Land – the private company spearheading the studio and fi lm academy – could break ground on the 86-acre complex as early as February for opening in the first quarter of 2018.

Plans include five stages totalling 130,000 sq ft plus an exterior water stage.

The government has already approved a 30,000 sq ft extension at Wardpark, which is where Amazon and Starz’s Outlander is shot.

Two 50fthigh sound stages will bring space there to 78,000 sq ft, but the only other purpose-built unit in Scotland is a 5,000 sq ft stage on Stornaway.

Creative Scotland is also marketing 50,000 sq ft of converted space at the BBC’s Dumbarton Studios and an additional 435,000 sq ft of pop-up space at places like The Pyramids in Bathgate, Leith’s Pelamis Building, Glasgow’s West Way and Dundonald in Ayr, where ITV’s Loch Ness recently shot.

IMPACT OF BREXIT: SO FAR SO GOOD

“In the short- to mid-term, we’re as strong as we’ve ever been, but we need to find out what the government is going to do and then see what effect that has.”

Tom Avison, 3 Mills

“Most of our customers are domestic and there’s no sense of change yet. The biggest issue is uncertainty and that’s the one thing the industry doesn’t like.”

Fiona Francombe, Bottle Yard

“The biggest concern is the freedom of movement of labour. Some aspects of the industry, notably VFX, draw heavily on skilled labour from abroad. We can’t automatically fill the vacuum from the UK.”

Adrian Wootton, Film London

“Some clients have expressed concern about future investment and obviously the lack of production investment would affect studios. However, our business model is perhaps more resilient than some and we are confident we can weather any storm.”

Tuesday, 11 October 2016

Unified Remix Combats Ad Blockers

Streaming Media

Unified Remix is a software engine that creates a single stream from a playlist created by a call to an ad network, a rule set, or by CMS generation, preventing ad blockers from identifying ad server URLs.

Unified Streaming has launched Unified Remix, a solution to counteract ad blockers. Server-side ad insertion with Unified Remix can "significantly reduce lost impressions" claims Unified Streaming CTO Arjen Wagenaar.

http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/News/Featured-News/Unified-Remix-Combats-Ad-Blockers-114066.aspx

"Ad blockers are browser plugins that have been configured to block known ad server URLs," he explains. "They are designed to notice when a playlist is edited and manipulated. When a browser makes an ad request, the ad blocker will simulate an error from the ad server, thereby effectively blocking the ad. With our solution, even if there's a trailer at the beginning, a bumper at the end of the video, and a mid-roll, the player will see a single stream, not one stitched from different origins. When presented to a player the stream has a single origin and a single timeline and no discontinuity: there's no way for the player to differentiate between the main content and an ad bumper."

The software is a development of the Dutch company's Unified Origin module for industry standard webservers like Apache, Nginx, Microsoft IIS, and Lighttpd. The plugin allows a web server to ingest one format (HLS, MP4, fMP4) and to package it on the fly to all formats, including HbbTV and progressive. It supports standard DRM schemes like Adobe Access, AES, Marlin, FairPlay, PlayReady, and Widevine and is in use among CDNs, media organisations, and video subscription service companies.

Unified Remix is essentially a software engine that resolves a playlist created by a call into an ad network, a rule set, or by CMS generation. It creates a reference MP4 file for Unified Origin to use as source. Unified Origin then creates a single stream from the reference MP4.

"While a playlist may be created by a player in JavaScript or via a player plugin, it can just as readily be done completely on the server side, removing all decision logic from the player," explains Wagenaar. "With Unified Remix, the playlist is based on a general ruleset defined, for example, in a CMS or by consulting a recommendation system or an ad network. The ad choice can be based on individual characteristics originating in the player or by associating content with a specific channel – allowing for targeted channels.

The product supports many use-cases, such as live-to-VOD (separating live ingest from playout); live scheduling (rotating 24/7 playlists); pre-, mid-, post-roll (VoD); bumper for everyone (VOD and live); dynamic ad insertion VOD, and live dynamic ad replacement.

"Viewer information (e.g. session ID or cookie) can be used to personalise streams on any level," says Wagenaar. "From a personalised stream for every viewer to streams to groups of viewers (e.g. based on geolocation, subscription model) or even a single stream for all viewers (e.g. a bumper)."

A broadcaster wanting to serve catchup TV for live channels can create an archive-to-VOD (infinite live archive) which will dynamically change if the EPG changes. Creating a remixed stream opens new doors for content owners to monetize content but also offers new options for creating personalized streams of for instance live archives. Best of all, Unified Remix will create a stream that plays on all platforms in all formats and devices, and as such it provides a great multiplatform experience."

The product runs on an annual license per web server.

Amazon is Coming: Why Amazon will be big at IBC2017

IBC

Next month Amazon will unleash Clarkson, May and Hammond and the worldwide debut of The Grand Tour, the much anticipated new series from the former Top Gear team. You couldn’t get a more vocal or headline grabbing act with a ready-made global audience accumulated over many series by former masters BBC Worldwide.

http://www.ibc.org/hot-news/amazon-is-coming-why-amazon-will-be-big-at-ibc2017

It is an ideal show with which to herald Amazon’s arrival as a major TV player - if indeed it needed further trumpeting.

“The GAFA are coming,” warned WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell, in his IBC2016 Keynote, referring to the media ambitions of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.

He highlighted the e-commerce giant as the key one to watch. “While all the focus is on Google and Facebook, the big one coming is Amazon,” he warned.

WPP represents, by Sorrell’s reckoning, between a quarter and a third of the total advertising media services market. On behalf of its clients WPP will spend $5.5bn with Google and another $1.5bn with Facebook this year. He would welcome Amazon as a serious challenger.

“Google and Facebook account for 76% of ad growth,” he said. “We will be supportive of Snapchat, AOL/Yahoo and others [in their efforts to grow their share of digital advertising]. A duopoly is not what our clients want.”

However, Amazon will represent a serious threat to legacy media organisations since it has the deep pockets to spend on new exclusive content. It will also give Netflix, runaway SVOD leader, a run for its money.

Juniper’s Digital TV & Video: Network and OTT Strategies 2016-2021 report predicts that revenues from SVOD services including Netflix and Amazon are set to grow from US$14.6bn this year to US$34.6bn in 2021 as consumers in more countries move to non-linear video consumption.

The world’s largest online retailer has already doubled the amount it spends on content this year in an effort to attract more customers to Instant Video, part of its wider Prime service. Original content plays a key role in converting free trials to paying subscribers and driving consumers to Prime.

For example, the company’s German division looks set to pick up rights to the second instalment of hit drama Deutschland 83, after original broadcaster RTL declined to recommission. German TV trade site dwdl.de reports that Amazon may also top that with a third series, Deutschland 89.

Amazon is also recruiting a head of programme commissioning in London, signalling its willingness to invest millions in more British productions, according to a report in The Telegraph. The high-profile, London-based role will build on the eight series Amazon has so far commissioned in the UK, making it easier for British and European producers to deal with Amazon. Currently all its programme-making decisions are made in LA.

In order to differentiate itself from Netflix and Facebook and to prevent Apple getting in on the ground floor, Amazon is also believed to want to move into live sports.

A report from Bloomberg, suggests that the Seattle-based retailer is on the hunt for rights to a number of high profile sports events, including the French Open tennis championship, rugby and football games and basketball matches.

According to Bloomberg, Amazon has hired Sports Illustrated Executive James DeLorenzo to lead its sports division as well as YouTube Executive Charlie Neiman to manage sports partnerships and business development.

Such a move would tally with the company’s acquisition of encoding specialist Elemental Technologies a year ago to give it the basis to launch a live OTT solution.

Much has been made of the use Netflix has made of analytics - rather than conventional TV demographics - to determine content commissions and serve targeted recommendations to consumers. Arguably, Amazon has even more data about consumption habits based on purchase behaviour. Plus, it can make use of data culled from VOD service Lovefilm and movie and TV database IMDB, both of which it owns.

Data based on behaviour is arguably more precise than demographics, the theory being that if you have all this consumption data, you can market the right show to the right customer. The more programming that is inside Amazon’s app, the longer people are going to spend with the site.

In a recent advert simultaneously promoting The Grand Tour and Amazon’s connected TV stick Fire, Jeremy Clarkson launches a fleet of drones - surely symbolic of a pre-Christmas deluge of new subscribers signing to Amazon’s TV package.

FPV drone racing profile to increase as barriers to live broadcast are broken down

SVG Europe

As a sport drone racing is still in its infancy but the combination of video game-style esports action and a millennial fanbase has enticed major broadcasters to invest. The problem is that the video feeds that are currently used to transmit the exciting first person view (FPV) from onboard the remote controlled craft is SD on an analogue frequency — making live broadcast tricky.

http://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/fpv-drone-racing-profile-to-increase-as-barriers-to-live-broadcast-are-broken-down/

Technology to be demoed live at CES in Las Vegas, January 2017 will showcase HD feeds streamed from multiple drones and taken straight to air. Forthcoming broadcast coverage however will be post produced. ESPN, Sky and ProSiebenSat.1 have all recently signed rights deals for the Drone Racing League (DRL) in which contestants race drones through empty malls, stadiums and subway tunnels. Eurosport is also in talks to show drone racing, according to chief executive Peter Hutton, speaking to Reuters.

Under the deals with the broadcasters, 10 hour-long episodes are being prerecorded, featuring six contestants and giving viewers a video feed from the cockpit.

“Drone races will be the Formula One of the future,” said Zeljko Karajica, who heads ProSiebenSat.1’s sports business 7Sports, in a statement. “It’s the perfect combination of physical racing, eSports and virtual reality.”

While aerial photography UAVs are designed to hover in place and carry a camera with a gimbal and GPS-assisted flight, racing drones are small, typically 250mm in size, and have front mounted cameras, usually configured in an H-style shape. These cameras operate in the analogue video transmission frequency 5.8Ghz with a resolution of 480-600 TVL lines. This signal returns to the base station or receiving device which feeds the goggles worn by pilots to see and control the drone in flight. The same feeds could be used for mixing into the broadcast or web stream — but will be SD. Boost the data and the latency can drop — and that’s lethal for drone racing.

“Even a delay of a couple of seconds is enough for piloting to become near impossible with crashes bound to happen,” says Marque Cornblatt, founder and CEO at Aerial Sports League (ASL). “The downside is that the signal is not pretty. It’s good enough to fly by but not to broadcast.”

Where ASL races have streamed live on the web the SD feeds are used in a quarter or third of the screen with graphics and statistics filling up the rest of the real estate. A further hazard is signal interference such as reflections of the signal off walls and metal (especially if flying indoors) and multi-pathing caused by conflicting signals from neighbouring drones.

Since, in many competitions to date, it is the pilot themselves who DIY the drones, including integrating the FPV cameras, one pilot’s set-up can inadvertently interfere with the signal of a competitor. There are no standards yet in this nascent sport.

Race ready with less breakup and no multi-pathing

However, drone racing producer FPV Live is on the cusp of introducing a digital HD technology “which will revolutionise our ability to broadcast live,” claims Todd Wahl, Co-Founder and Business Development. It is working with Israeli-based wireless links developer Amimon which has adapted the technology used in its Connex lightweight receiver/transmitter specifically for drone racing.

ProSight, released in June, includes a 720P HD camera, plus the transmitter and receiver. FPV Live has tested the unit on board eight competitor drones flying simultaneously at the MultiGP Championships in Muncie, Indiana in September.

“We’ve proved we can be race ready with little to no delay at a higher definition with less breakup and no multi-pathing,” says Chris Toombs, founder and technology manager at FTV Live. “It’s not exactly HD, it’s lower than 720p so we call it high quality rather than HD, but it’s certainly a better image than analogue.”

FPV Live and Amimon plan on providing a live demo of a drone race streamed in HD at CES2017. Despite the challenges of maintaining a digital signal in FPV drone racing — like rapid maneuvering, obstacles and low flight, Amimon says ProSight provides zero-latency, HD streams.

“In digital you can have a really tight frequency position because of the encoding,” explains Toombs. “Each pilot’s goggles are plugged into the base station receiver and bound directly to a signal that can only be transmitted from that pilot’s drone.”

Aside from wireless issues, it’s also tricky covering such a fast paced sport where tiny drones are zipping around at 80-140MPH. “You would need professional camera-operators trained in drone racing to be able to track a drone in flight and directors also versed in drone racing to understand when to switch between wider coverage and first person views,” says Cornblatt.

He doesn’t believe drone racing is yet ready for broadcast primetime. “The real experience is more akin to watching or playing a video game but the current drone racing viewing formats are built around old school models like NASCAR and Formula 1. There’s no harm to that but I think the format needs to evolve and take cues from esports and video gaming culture.”

In particular, Cornblatt thinks that when AR and VR mature these technologies will converge with drone racing. “We’re doing some engineering projects to converge the worlds of gaming and drone racing,” reveals Cornblatt. “Being able to user-select a FVP camera angle and pilot for example seems like a natural to me.

“I definitely see ways we can bring the audience into drone racing and making them part of the experience. This could be as simple as using social media voting for a favourite pilot to give their drone a power boost, but we are also looking at other ways to involve an online audience. For example, can pro-pilots or even fans at home control a drone when they are not present at an event? Flying via the web yet racing in real space is a distinct possibility [widespread in the military] for incredible user interaction.”

Shortcut to serotonin and dopamine system

Self-described as “one part X-Games, one part NASCAR and one part Mixed Martial Arts, the ASL specialises in producing live events (such as Game of Drones) and has chapters in Las Vegas, Austin, Amsterdam and Shenzhen, China. ASL’s two day live event Drone Sports East at the World Maker Faire in New York last week drew 100,000 spectators.

“Drone racing is wildly popular among pilots, but the viewing audience has been slower to develop, primarily because the DIY underground culture of drone racing has not produced any events with the needs of an audience in mind,” says Cornblatt. “Aside from a few Youtube videos, few have experienced the thrill of a pilot strapping on FPV video goggles and experiencing an athlete’s out-of-body ‘flow state’”.

He describes this as “a shortcut” to the brain’s serotonin and dopamine system, which “acts as a drug for pilots who quickly become ‘addicted’ to the FPV flying experience.”

“This is great for the pilots,” he adds, but does nothing for the spectators, who are left watching tiny machines flying off in the distance – not particularly thrilling. “A real challenge is to create an event that will serve the live audience as well as those watching online.”

One way the ASL does this is to make the live event ‘theatrical’ by for instance having gates light up as drones pass through them; to project a mixed feed onto large screens on-site; and to install viewing stations with goggles at the event for fans to view the cockpit FPV.

“If you look at esports as a model then the audience online is growing well past 100 million (globally for 2015) but you can’t disregard the enormous popularity of the live esports event where audience numbers rival that of a Super Bowl. The same is happening in drone racing.”

More edgy and off the cuff than ESPN

FVP Live produces events such as Mega Drone X held underground at the Louisville Mega Caverns. Its broadcast setup features low cost prosumer cameras like the Canon G20 and small network based HD cams placed on gates or on a commentary position (usually featuring Joe Scully, race director at FPV Racing Events) and “the voice of FPV racing” according to Wahl.

FPV Live simulcasts to YouTube, the host organisation website and its own site, and is working to deliver feeds to Periscope and Facebook Live. It sees its audience as millennial. “These fans are are interested in this raw behind-the-scenes action rather than the slick and polished world of traditional broadcast. We are a little more edgy and off the cuff [than a ESPN],” says Wahl.

He elaborates, “Although we have a production sheet [schedule] we interact with our audience with live chat and have them influence the live production. They can ask questions of pilots or request different camera angles. Education is the biggest hurdle. Commentary and colour helps but we want to make fans based on information so we interview drone manufacturers about the technology. We want to make them feel they have the power to interact with us.”

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

The limits of perception

AV Magazine

Director Ang Lee’s new film The current limits of projection technology can push frame rates up to 240 and even 480fps if resolution is reduced from 4K to 2K and 3D is neglected.

http://www.avinteractive.com/?s=mirage

The November theatrical release of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk has a groundswell of Awards buzz because of its unprecedented visual format of 4K resolution, 3D and a speed of 120 frames a second (fps - also denominated as 120p or 120Hz).

No major motion picture has ever been released at rates of 60 let alone 120, the nearest being Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, a 48fps 3D 4K film in 2012.

Nor is this some experimental sideshow. Its director is the two-time Oscar winner Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi) and the $50 million Sony Pictures distributed Iraq war drama stars Kristen Stewart and Vin Diesel.

Yet higher frame rates have been relatively common in proAV for decades - and demand is steadily increasing, according to Barco’s Maria Dahl Aagaard, strategic marketing manager, simulation.

“This is especially evident within the projection industry and several of the high end markets it serves such as simulation and high end visitor attraction,” she says. “Within these sectors HFR helps improve the viewing experience by providing smooth life like images and suppressed motion blur artefacts. Think fast jet and racing car simulators, roller coaster dark rides and also museum-based astronomy shows. These trends are filtering into other important market segments such as rental and staging and more mainstream AV as well.”

Historically, expectations have been much lower for the consumer market which has primarily been driven by the movie and TV industry where films have been shot in 24 fps - an artefact of Hollywood’s decision to accommodate the optical soundtrack 90 years ago.

Its shortcomings include blurry images - particularly noticeable in any fast action panned movements - and strobing - immediately apparent in stereoscopic, large-format movies.

For this reason HFR is widespread in theme park 3D and 4D attractions. “When you immerse an audience in front of a large screen the fast motion can create kinetosis (motion sickness),” explains Bryan Boehme, director of sales for location based entertainment, Christie. “Humans can perceive motion at 960fps so if we can bring rates up to 120 this smooths the image out.”

The current limits of projection technology can push frame rates up to 240 and even 480fps if resolution is reduced from 4K to 2K and 3D is neglected. “Resolution is actually perceived to be greater at higher frame rates,” says Boehme. “It’s like looking through a window in comparison to the representation of an image you get with 24fps.”

A problem: Making content at such extreme frame rates is barely practical. Ang Lee is pushing production boundaries his film which consumed 40 times as much data as a conventional film.

Moreover, to shunt the data through the projector fast enough some serious horsepower is required which is why Christie’s Mirage is one of a handful of machines capable of it. It can process data at 1.2 Gigapixels a second with a Trulife electronics processor and also uses Christie laser technology to throw 28fL (72000) on screen. Even then two of them are needed to show Lee’s picture at 120fps for both eyes.

Many cinema fans will argue for the textural aesthetics of 24fps and have criticised Jackson’s use of 48 on the basis that the picture looked too much like video.

That said, trends are changing “due to the exposure from home entertainment and visitor attraction venues. People are no longer willing to settle for second best,” says Aagaard.

PC’s have always had higher refresh rates than TV but the latest TV sets into retail are incorporating 120Hz. After broadcasters like BT and Sky have rolled out 4K and high dynamic range, Ultra HD services they will turn attention to upping speed from 50/60 to 100/120 to erase the motion blur which mars fast sports action.

Douglas Trumbull, the vfx whizz who pioneered HFR motion simulation ride films in the 1970s with Showscan, is back with a new system. Magi Pod is capable of playing back 4K, 3D and 60 (per eye) using a single Christie Mirage and a hemispherically curved Torus screen. Trumbull intends to pre-fabricate the 70-seater Pods for quick install into multiplex or amusement parks.

Shooting at 120 unlocks the ability for fine control in post over ‘the look’ of the material because the camera’s shutter angle is no longer locked in to the rushes. In effect it offers a new technical and creative tool: technical because from the 120 master a number of exhibition options (e.g 2K 3D 120fps, 4K 3D 60fps) can be derived; and creative because a filmmaker could select frame rates for different moments within the same same story much as they’d use focal length, lighting or colour.

The only thing dragging back HFR from going mainstream is cultural inertia. “When cavemen drew stick paintings on rock that was state of the art,” says Boehme. “Imagine if they could see a renaissance painting. It would look much more realistic but it would also be so alien to them. It will take a while for us all to get out of our comfort zone.”

Keeping up with reality TV

IBC Executive Daily
p16 https://issuu.com/newbayeurope/docs/ibc2016_dailyex_friday_16_sept

If you want to keep up with the Kardashians, not just with their latest TV adventure but in any past episode and on social media too, then there's a service just for you.

hayu is much much more than this, of course. NBCUniversal International's all-reality subscription video on demand service contains 3000 episodes with 500 added a year, direct from the unscripted content creator behind The Real Housewives franchise, Made in Chelsea and The Millionaire Matchmaker.

“A key element for users is the speed at which can they view content on the service,” explains Hendrik McDermott, who captained the service to launch in March. “When the latest Kardashians episode airs in the US, fans have typically had to wait many days to watch it on TV whereas we get it just hours after the US broadcast.”

For avid reality TV fans this has the benefit of swerving spoilers. “When newspapers write eight stories a day about the Kardashians it's pretty hard to avoid details of what's happening in an episode. We are seeing Monday morning spikes in viewing, just hours after the shows are aired in the US, which seems to prove the concept.”

McDermott began his career as a business analyst at Rogers Media in Toronto, completed his MBA at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge and, as MD of KidsCo, led the business activities and growth opportunities of the children’s pay-TV channelacross Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. He joined NBCU in 2006, spending six years as a founding member of the international corporate development team with responsibility for all territories outside the US and Canada.

“SVOD is opening up new markets led by new consumption patterns,” he told IBC audiences, in a session at which hayu was presented as a case study to discuss 'The rise of Internet TV networks'. “We have to take our content where the demand is, which is anywhere, anytime viewing, and while this is driven by the younger generation we don't see this trend as exclusively about milliennials.”

With a rolling monthly subscription, McDermott is conscious that NBCU has to constantly innovate to retain consumers. “We know the service will not look the same in 12 months as it does now. We have to innovate keeping iterating compelling, new features.”

The service – which has now rolled out in the UK, Ireland and Australia – distinguishes itself with a comprehensive search function that identifies all material related to particular stars. Users can directly access the social media feeds of the shows' stars within hayu. Hundreds of specially made short-form content 'snippets' can be shared directly via fans’ social media accounts. The service also links to third-party news sites with relevant content for reality consumers, such as OK! and MailOnline.

“This is next-generation VOD,” says McDermott. “All the cast members of our series have Twitter or Instagram accounts which viewers can follow visually along with the broadcast and interact directly with them on social media. The news feeds are curated, not fed by an automatic news robot. We haven't seen this type of innovative integration on any other product.”

Saturday, 1 October 2016

The next evolution of VOD

Broadcast

Broadcasters are enhancing their online platforms with more exclusive content and greater personalisation, but improving consistency is their main priority.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/the-next-evolution-of-vod/5109904.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957

While video-on-demand isn’t a threat to the EPG just yet, online players are essential for broadcasters, who must continue to evolve the functionality and user experience. Yet getting the technical fundamentals right remains a priority.

“The online expectation is now the same as the broadcast expectation for consumers, but the market is struggling to deliver this,” says Mark Blair, vice-president, EMEA, at Brightcove.

As devices and platforms rise and fall in popularity, new player and advertising formats are rolled out and competition among platforms intensifies, consistency of service remains a challenge.

“Not all digital video players consistently get the basics right: ensuring the player is fast to load, set up to prevent buffering, adapted to every platform, stable and scalable so it doesn’t crash, and Flash- and HTML5-adaptable so viewers don’t get error screens on certain devices,” says Ooyala global director of sales development Sarah Kiefer.

BBC iPlayer is now available on more than 1,700 different connected devices.

“We’ve put a lot of work into developing a standard media player, balancing consistency of experience with optimising the presentation for the input mechanism and screen size,” says head of BBC iPlayer Dan Taylor-Watt.

“We do, though, need more collaboration between different providers in terms of driving a more consistent playback experience. There may also be more consolidation in terms of the number of different services available.”

The answer is not always in a content owner’s hands. Blair outlines what is needed: “Improved codecs to maximise bitrates, improved coding to make sure content is available in appropriate formats, and improved player implementation from CE vendors.”

According to ITV director of online and brands Paul Kanareck, UK broadcasters are “caught between the east and west” of Samsung and Sony and Apple and Google, all of which are trying to ‘own’ the living room. “It’s our job to make sure we remain prominent in all camps,” he says.

One way ITV does this is via Freeview Play, the subscription-free platform it shares with the BBC, Channel 5 and Channel 4.

“This is our collective attempt at presenting UK catch-up services to global manufacturers as a coherent category, so that we have scale in our conversations, and so they better understand the importance of adopting a local approach to reach local audiences, balanced with global content aggregators like Netflix,” says Kanareck.

Next-episode cueing and autoplay is increasingly prevalent. On iPlayer, 90% of users have chased one episode with another. “What happens when there’s no next episode?” asks All 4 head of product Sarah Milton. “Onward journeys are a big area for us.”

Options include reminding users what’s in their watch list, or presenting a set of recommendations or trailers for related shows. “We could set a link in a trailer which, when clicked, will add the show to their watch list,” Milton says.

As VoD services reduce reliance on catch-up and offer more exclusive content, there will be fewer natural prompts from linear TV.

“The automatic download of episodes or series to mobile, and the redownload of an expired item for viewing offline, all make for a better user experience,” says Milton.

Downloads to mobiles, especially of long-form content, are dogged by connectivity issues, but this should be erased when 5G networks are rolled out from 2020.

Voice control

Many smart TV apps lack the sophistication of mobile user interfaces and cater to a viewer who controls the experience with a remote or their phone rather than directly with their fi ngertips.

As a result, suggests Kiefer: “In the mid to longer term, we’ll start to see more experimentation with voice control, bringing functionality like that of Amazon’s Echo system, which is currently only available in the US.”

Ostmodern co-founder and chief executive Thomas Williams predicts the death of the conventional remote. “Talking to your telly feels uncomfortable, but gesture and voice is improving.

There will be a lot more cross-platform management of content controlled from an individual’s mobile device,” he says.

All 4’s UI focus is on how to create a simple spatial navigation “which is consistent in the use of vertical and horizontal axis”, says Milton.

“It needs to be incredibly intuitive for a user to navigate to the next step and get back again. We think doing this using ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘right’, ‘left’ and ‘ok’ keys will keep the experience straightforward and enable a user to keep their eye on screen without having to look down.”

“Whether you’re trying to change behaviour or keep up with it, when you are mass market, simplicity is the overriding theme,” says Kanareck. “The less friction there is, the easier things will get adopted.”

The BBC’s focus is on greater visual isation. iPlayer already supports Picture in Picture on iOS, allowing users to write an email at the same time as they catch up on EastEnders.

Coming soon, visual thumbnails will appear for every few seconds of video as users scrub along the timeline.

The ability to return to the beginning of a linear stream is believed to be high on viewer wishlists and will become standard in the mid- to long-term as live video is increasingly blended with digital video services.

BBC iPlayer introduced the function several years ago and a third of users watching live streams now jump back to the start. Having made live TV streaming central to its ITV Hub relaunch last year, ITV says it now accounts for 30% of views. ITV and All 4 will debut live restart soon.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity is in sport, where live restart and other PVR staples like bookmarks of key action are already available on sport-specific players from Deltatre (used by Uefa) and EVS (deployed by Sky Sports). This functionality will be improved further with the elimination of the inherent time delay between an internet stream and the broadcast signal.

“OTT live experiences have always been a poor relation to linear TV,” says Williams. “Buffering of the OTT stream means that TV will always beat an OTT simulcast by between 30 seconds and several minutes.”

Technology from Swedish developer Net Insight is claimed to have overcome this by frame-accurately timing both the TV and second-screen signals, and could be introduced by Sky Sports for its Formula 1 coverage next season.

It’s not confined to sport: this breakthrough could be applied to music or talent shows. “It means that editorial teams no longer have to think about how a single feed is going to be piped to TV as a lean-back experience,” says Williams.

“Now they can look at all content sources – camera angles or in-game data – and begin to present to all screens as one platform.”

Digital video services will go beyond broad recommendations based on what’s popular or trending to create personalised, channel-like experiences for each user.

“Players will increasingly make use of detailed analytics about viewer habits and preferences to decide which content to make and buy and how to format it,” says Kiefer. “Those insights can encourage riskier commissioning choices now that niche audiences that might not have been picked up with panel-based measurement can be identified and better catered to.”

The move to more analytics-based decisions will have an impact on all elements of digital video services, from user interfaces to content presentation, payment models and advertising frequency.

“Recommendations will become more sophisticated, but we will need to strike a balance between an algorithmic use of data and a human editorial voice,” says Milton, who cites Spotify as an example. “There shouldn’t be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach,” confirms Kanareck.

“If you don’t watch soaps, you shouldn’t see Emmerdale when you land on ITV Hub.”

The power of social media

As social platforms focus so heavily on video, it is becoming trickier for digital video services to know whether they are best viewed as Broadcasters are enhancing their online platforms with more exclusive content and greater personalisation, but improving consistency is their main priority