The Future of Film

Digital Studio

While most attention was focussed on the red carpet and the critical reception for movies in competition at the Cannes Film Festival some eyes were looking toward the future of film.

http://www.digitalstudiome.com/article-11147-the-future-of-film/
At Hewlett Packard this starts from envisaging how the world will look – and thus what computing needs might be - not just a few years hence but decades down the line.
HP works with sociologists and futurologists to predict the future based on macro socio-politico-economic trends and then uses these anchor points to guide HP’s long term roadmap.
Leading the whole effort is CTO Shane Wall who terms the sum of this vision ‘blended reality’. “The goal is to create experiences and applications that work seamlessly and where the technology disappears into the background.”
HP trains this vision on healthcare - for example in the potential to have an AI assisted brain command over prosthetic limbs for amputees; and for end to end digital manufacturing, notably just-in-time 3D printing using polymers and then metals.
The future of film and entertainment is a small subset of these global problem solving goals but nonetheless an intriguing one.
“Rapid urbanisation which will see over 60 megacities by 2050, will profoundly change where we live and how we live,” says Wall. “There will be demands on resources, how we get rid of waste. It will force us to look at problems and experiences in a different way.”
There will no longer be mega theatre complexes containing a dozen cinema screens, he predicted. Instead one might find single cinemas focused on the experiential shared experiences.
This was a theme taken up by Anish Mulani, President and COO of VFX and animation facility based Prana VFX house Prana Studios. Prana plans to reinvent the theatrical experience with massive screens encompassing entire theatres, animatronic dinosaurs, and actors performing live on stage.
“The whole canvas of the theatre will be used to tell a story,” he explained. “The moment you walk in, every wall will be covered with giant projection. There will be moving seating and sensory effects like wind and heat. Life size animatronic creatures and characters relevant to the story such as pirates, aliens and dinosaurs will be there with you.”
The giant size of the auditoria, with panoramic screens in excess of 40 metres, and display resolutions up to 24K - or 12 times that of 2K conventional exhibition - are also intended to attract audiences.
Prana Studio is also developing dome-style theatres featuring 180-degree field of view and reclining seats. “The seats would be able to change angle so that you could view a stage and see actors performing part of the story live as part of the overall experience,” he said.
“We imagine 25 or more sites worldwide within the next decade,” he said. “The main issue is the cost of rendering images at such extreme resolutions and in 3D that content will initially be short form.”
The proposals build on existing theme park projects at Universal Orlando’s Islands of Adventure ride, Skull Island: Reign of Kong – for which Prana created the six-minute movie in 24K resolution – and the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom attraction in China which features a curved screen 88 metres wide and 18 meters high – the world’s largest film screen. Prana created the short 5D experience that accompanies it.
“Cinema exhibition is moving toward ultra-scale large format experiences while conventional movie releases will be streamed for projection within people’s houses,” Mulani predicted.
Interactivity is a clear theme of media and entertainment 2050. “The emergence of the Gen Z population which are the first born who know nothing but being able to interact with content on devices seamlessly will impact how we make and view entertainment,” Wall said. 
Stories might exist as transmedia – with different parts of the same story experienced on different platforms and devices – often simultaneously.
Wall also pointed to “accelerated innovation” or a speeding up of Moore’s Law. “If smartphones today are 30 times more powerful than PCs were a decade ago then they will be 30 billion time more powerful still in three decade’s time.
“With VR we are operating at the equivalent of DOS 3.0 or punch cards,” he continued. “VR has limitations today. It separates us from what is out there. But the potential is for total body, total sensory immersion. We will be able to craft images using lightfields that capture every angle and nuance of light in a scene for us to reconstruct holographic moving images. These are the technologies which will become our clay [for creating art and new media].”
The VR short ‘Tree’ is an example of how artists and filmmakers are pushing boundaries with the technology. It puts the user in the position of a tree which grows from a seed to become one of the tallest in the forest.  “For us, smell is super important,” explains co-creator Winslow Porter of New Reality. “We developed custom scent tracks that are sequenced with the visuals to enhance the experience. It’s strange we are using organic molecules alongside such hi-tech.  Scent is associated with memories which we can trigger by tapping into the olfactory sense.
“VR can be impactful in ways we don’t fully understand right now but it will be able to change hearts and minds,” he added. “There is an obsession with simulating reality in VR when we should be looking to surreality. We can be a person from the past, or a lion or a pyramid.”
Winslow also forecast the end of linear narrative. “A director might be able to frame the shots and a cinematographer light them but we are entering an age when the viewer becomes the editor and the protagonist,” he said.  “When we have thousands of people participating in the experience what happens to narrative then – they could be building the world as they play and explore within it.”
That’s the near-future scenario sketched out in the novel Ready Player One and being adapted by Steven Spielberg in his forthcoming feature.
Keys to immersive content
The story’s concept of game-playing and education in a multi-verse of virtual worlds has become a must-read text at the Technicolor Experience Center where Marcie Jastrow, senior vice president, immersive media and head of the centre is helping to build a pipeline for immersive AR/VR and mixed reality content. There are six keys, she outlined. These include the need for high quality content, for social sharing experiences and for the user experience to be intuitive. Also on her list is “episodic cadence” which means a way to keep people coming back for more. “It has to be disruptive enough that it is different from current media and most important of all is the story. It has to entertain.”
Jastrow suggested that studios could soon sell VFX assets like characters and computer generated worlds as products to consumers for VR experiences. “Often when studios build these assets for a film they are simply archived and never used again,” she said. “What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality offers is the potential to use these assets again. What would it be like if rather than playing with a fluffy toy, you could gift your children one of those assets to play with and interact with in a VR or AR environment? It is all about extending the experience of the film through interaction.”
HP at the movies
HP tracks its association with the movie industry to 1938 when audio oscillators built by David Packard and Bill Hewlett were used by Walt Disney to produce stereophonic sound for Fantasia.
The compute brand has sponsored the Cannes Film Festival for several years but more importantly its hardware is installed at movie studios and VFX facilities including at Technicolor and DreamWorks.
“Roughly 50% of materials and devices in the world are designed on a HP work station,” claimed HP president personal systems, Ron Coughlin. “That’s why our motto is ‘keep reinventing’.”
HP’s EMEA director Nick Lazaridis candidly admitted that gaining visibility was the principal reason to have a presence at Cannes – but then that’s why everyone else comes here.
Its technology is onboard the International Space Station, Studio Liebeskind used its workstations to architect the Freedom Tower in New York and HP claims to be the number one computer provider for education around the world.
It launched the Sprout which chimes with its idea of blended reality. Combining a scanner, depth sensor, hi-resolution camera and projector into a single device, Sprout allows users to take physical items and merge them into a digital workspace. The system also delivers a collaboration platform, allowing users in multiple locations to collaborate on and manipulate a single piece of digital content in real-time.
The firm is also one of a number of companies making mixed reality headsets for Microsoft with Windows as the operating system.
Dreamworks VR tool
Dreamworks views VR as a production tool just now rather than a content media. “It used to be that storyboards were the only way we could vizualise films,” says Kate Swanborg, head of technology communications and strategic alliances, DreamWorks Animation. “Now we are using multiple different techniques including motion capture and VR – living storyboards – which allow directors to iterate in a 3D space.”
More prosaically, like other animation houses Dreamworks masters its films for distribution in 2K simply because doing so in 4K is still too expensive.
“Unlike live action, every single pixel is digitally rendered and there’s no real way to upscale it. It’s a huge time and money expense and it’s not clear we can could recoup the ROI on that.”
For just one feature animation, Dreamworks creates 350 TB of data which is managed on HP workstations souped up with multi-cores and Nvidia Quadra graphics processors and DreamColor displays. To highlight the challenge,  takes 80 million CPU hours to render one film which comprises half a billion files or 25 billion pixels. That doesn’t include archives.
As much as Dreamworks’ films are essentially data, each production team also physically prints every single asset including characters, environments and storyboard. “We pin them on the walls of our studio so that artists can immerse themselves in the tactile images,” she said. “That’s part of our process to determine if a scene is working.”
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another key area of interest for the future of film. Mulani suggested that AI would be used in Hollywood to read scripts. “AI will read, doctor and polish scripts. When AI becomes as powerful or more powerful than the human brain it will be able to analyse a script within minutes and give you ten different analysis of where it could be altered,” Mulani says.

Protect to prosper - piracy in MENA

Digital Studio

At the end of last month (May 2017) German media company Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland shuttered its pay-TV channel RTL International, having failed to reach necessary subscriber levels despite only launching in January 2016.
http://www.digitalstudiome.com/article-11069-protect-to-prosper/#.Wa63y_yhKDc.twitter
It blamed the failure on illegal streaming sites. “First analyses clearly show that a major reason for this [lack of subscribers] is the success of globally acting piracy platforms streaming the broadcast signals of many domestic German channels over the internet illegally and in many cases free-of-charge,” explained Stefan Sporn, SVP International Distribution.
This is among the most drastic but far from the only impact of piracy which is surging in demand and wrecking the global market.
In MENA, over half of viewers in Egypt and in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) admitted to watching pirated video content, according to research carried out by security firm Irdeto.
TV content piracy and illicit downloads caused French rights-holders a $1.47 billion loss in 2016, with 13 million internet users involved in the practice, according to a study from EY consulting.
Pirate torrents remain highly popular, with Pirate Bay having 234.5 million visits in February 2017 alone.
Kodi, a legal set top box platform with over 35 million active users worldwide, is the latest to be hijacked by pirates forcing Sky and BT to take legal action in the UK.
Piracy has become such a big industry that it almost has to be looked at as competition, according to Rob Pinniger, associate director for content security, Virgin Media. Speaking at TV Connect in March, he added that pirate services are reaching scale and can even look like they’re legitimate, charging monthly subscription fees.
“It’s important that the TV industry unites to combat this form of piracy because it loses more than $90billion a year globally in revenue to this and other kinds of content theft,” advises Christopher Schouten, senior product marketing director at content protection and multiscreen systems firm Nagra.
Live sports most at risk
Piracy takes many forms, from key sharing of broadcast services to content sharing of live events and premium VOD titles over the net. A quarter of those surveyed in the GCC by Irdeto and 31 per cent in Egypt stated that they are most interested in watching pirated movies currently shown in cinemas.
The issue is particularly acute around the high value properties of live sports, more and more of which are pouring onto OTT platforms. Live sports were the second most popular illegal streamed content in GCC, with 23 per cent in Egypt.
Research by Sport Industry Group (SIG) into the viewing habits of the younger generation in particular, finds that piracy has become normalised among this generation while the take-up for traditional subscription services is far less than among older viewers.
According to the survey, 54 per cent of millennials have watched illegal streams of live sports and a third admit to regularly watching them, compared to only 4 per cent of over-35s.
Eighteen to 24-year-olds are also half as likely to have subscriptions to pay TV services such as Sky or BT Sport (12-24 per cent).
“Unless we are careful we will have a generation of young people who consider pirated sports content to be the norm,” said SIG chairman Nick Keller. “That’s a significant challenge not just for rights holders but the whole sector from sponsors and athletes to ticketholders.”
Millennials influencing change
Irdeto’s research into MENA also revealed that millennials are among the most likely to illegally consume content. Additionally, 20 per cent of 18-24 year-olds in the GCC and 23 per cent in Egypt pirate more than once a week.
The survey also uncovered an interesting shift that is occurring in the region regarding content consumption habits. While laptops remain the favourite device for consuming illegal video, mobile devices are growing in popularity. Of those surveyed, 33 per cent in the GCC and 35 per cent in Egypt stated that smartphones or tablets are their most frequently used devices to watch pirated video content.
“Millennials are influencing major changes in how consumers watch pirated video content in MENA,” said Khaled Al-Jamal, Irdeto’s director of sales. “This shift to mobile devices to consume pirated video content serves as a signal to the media industry that further innovation is required in MENA to meet consumer demand.”
The innovation he speaks of is a combination of offering affordable content with a comprehensive anti-piracy strategy.
However, there’s no guarantee even the first part of this will work. According to Ampere Analysis, most viewing of illegal streams is among people with low income (and therefore can’t afford to view) and/or who live with others (so that their control of the TV is limited).
“These are demographic issues rather than a fundamental business threat,” says Ampere Research director Richard Broughton. “Making multiplatform streams available is important for operators so that they can reach consumers on different devices.”
In addition, millennials may be more likely than older generations to use online-only services such as Sky’s Now TV but figures are still small, with only 5 per cent taking up the option (according to SIG’s survey). Meanwhile, only 2 per cent of respondents between 18-24 said they sourced their sports entertainment through clips on social media.
The study’s findings follow a crackdown on piracy by the English Premier League with the League determined to preserve its lucrative broadcast rights.
The EPL was granted a court order to stop matches being streamed for free on Kodi boxes. While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, its open-source nature means add-ons can be developed by third parties that make paid content illegally accessible.
This decision meant that the UK’s Internet Service Providers are obliged to shut down the source of illegal streams.
The Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) declared that the use of Kodi software to watch pirated streams was becoming an “epidemic” last September.
No silver bullet
According to Irdeto, Kodi boxes are particularly prevalent in the UK. It reported that 11 per cent of UK viewers who admitted to watching pirated streams said they did so via a Kodi box.
There is no silver bullet to resolve the problem. A first step is to secure the stream with encryption (and/or conditional access systems (CAS) in set-top boxes) and add digital rights management (DRM) to authenticate usage.
Video management platform Kaltura, for example, encrypts content as part of the ingest process or on the fly. Then it adds a Universal DRM which is integrated with Google Widevine, PlayReady and Apple Fairplay for content protection which Kaltura says will work regardless of the browser, device or platform being used.
“DRM makes sure that those watching content have relevant access rights,” says Arik Gaisler, Sr. director of product, infrastructure. “This is the approach taken by most pay TV broadcasters. “To overcome DRM it would need to be hacked in a deeper, sophisticated way.”
DRM and CAS do a good job of ensuring that only legitimate viewers can access content through paid services. But once the video is displayed, it is still vulnerable to re-streaming through numerous methods, including camcorder capture and screen-scraping in which data is copied in realtime and re-broadcast as a live stream.
“Traditional access control works up to the point where the customer starts watching the content,” argues Alistair Cameron, European sales director of content protection firm NexGuard. “From that point, all bets are off. Most pirates will pay for a subscription or will buy the pay per view.”
Illegal uploaders can turn a profitable business by selling ads around the site or in some cases selling a subscription service.
A report by the UK’s Digital Citizens Alliance estimated that in 2013, piracy websites generated $227million from advertising.
“Some sites are so professional even down to the small print of terms and conditions,” says Cameron.
By embedding an invisible forensic watermark (from firms like NexGuard or Verimatrix) in each video stream, content that is improperly re-distributed can be traced back to its source. “By knowing the source, immediate action can be taken to interrupt the pirate stream while the event is still going,” he says.
As further back-up, monitoring and analytics technologies are required. “HTML-based video players allow you to look at reference urls to get an idea of whether the content is being accessed in unusual places or whether stream volumes are in line with expectations or if you have a leakage,” says Mark Blair, VP, EMEA at video player developer Brightcove.
Once illegality is verified operators have some choices. Sending cease and desist notices works in some cases, legal action in others.
“The problem is that when people do take content down it will respawn quite quickly on a new website,” says Blair.
In the U.S. the Recording Industry Association of America is calling for the country’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to be updated. Currently, ISPs in the country that remove copyrighted content when alerted by rights holders get legal immunity or so-called safe harbour. But the RIAA and others including the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists say this process is not sufficient, as the pirated copy reappears instantly, requiring yet another takedown notice.
Instead they want the DMCA to demand a time window of days or even hours within which content must be removed.
The use of automated content identification technology could be a solution to prevent repeated uploading of pirated content. But it’s not so simple. Google, for example, said that, in January, more than 99 per cent of links it was asked to remove — 16.5 million URLs — weren’t even in its search index. YouTube filters content with its Content ID system, and Facebook, Dailymotion, SoundCloud and Twitch use Audible Magic, a copyright compliance service.
Irdeto argues that even all these measures are not enough. It calls for the media industry to educate consumers about the damage that piracy causes the content creation industry.
Its survey in MENA indicates that, of the respondents to its survey, 46 per cent in Egypt and 47 per cent in the GCC would stop or watch less pirated content if they understood the negative impact of piracy on the media industry.
“The amount of respondents who were unsure if it was illegal to download or stream pirated video content is around 33 per cent,” said Al-Jamal. “There is a clear knowledge gap in terms of the legality of piracy. This must be addressed through education on the illegal nature of piracy in order to reduce its impact on the content creation industry in MENA.”

How to protect against piracy

Broadcast

Cyber security is rising up the agenda for broadcasters and suppliers as high-profile breaches hit the headlines, but how serious is the risk and what can be done?
https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/home/how-to-protect-against-piracy/5121824.article

Piracy is an unfortunate fact of life for the TV industry, but direct hacks into production servers represent a worrying new trend. Leaked content available before its release date has even more value than movies or series that have already been launched.
Netflix has been hit by ransomware attacks and had files stolen. Although the SVoD site’s production subcontractor paid the requested amount, the hackers leaked episodes of hit series Orange Is The New Black anyway.
Other hackers allegedly breached Disney’s film production unit and claimed to have obtained a major movie, threatening to release it if the studio didn’t make a ransom payment.
Disney, working with the FBI, ultimately determined that no hack had taken place. However, the event pushed cyber security high up the company’s priority list.
Last month’s HBO attack appears the most sophisticated yet. The Time Warner-owned company was attacked from multiple points, including its employees’ Twitter feeds.
Hackers, who may have stolen as much as 1.5 terabytes of data, threatened to leak secrets from HBO’s biggest show, Game Of Thrones, with the warning: “Winter is coming – HBO is falling.”
“As more data is centralised into faster single systems, the opportunity for the hacker to strike gold becomes ever larger,” warns Jonathan Morgan, chief executive of storage vendor Object Matrix.
“Media companies face a plethora of rising dangers, from hackers, whether financially or politically motivated, and from internal breaches.”
DPP managing director Mark Harrison says cyber security is now at the top of board agendas: “There is a lot of anxiety about how you achieve it.”
Content thefts have tended to result in blackmail demands for money in exchange for not releasing the content.
However, the Sony hack of 2014, and breaches at organisations such as TalkTalk, CBS-owned Last.fm and US cable provider Comcast, show that internal data, such as emails and private consumer data, is just as much a target as the content itself.
“Consumer data is one of the biggest assets that service providers have,” says Nick Fitzgerald, chair of managed services provider TV2U. “This data is being treated with the same value as content, which has changed the game when it comes to security.”

As more types of devices – whether tablets, smartphones, consoles or internet-connected TV sets – are used to consume content as well as interact with core management systems, the security domain for providers has become much more complex.
“These additional access points offer enticing targets for adversaries seeking to exploit payment or other personal subscriber information,” says Christopher Schouten, senior director, product marketing, at content security specialist Nagra.
“Providers will need to expand their security focus from content encryption and piracy protection, to include their broader network and the core business systems where critical subscriber data is maintained.”
In an industry reluctant to divulge incidents of attack, quantifying the scale of the threat is tricky. Fitzgerald reckons more than a quarter of media organisations have experienced a cyber attack – “and that’s just the ones that admit it”.
“The threat is real and it’s growing bigger by the day, particularly when it comes to the impact on pay-TV revenues,” he says.
Research from PwC in July 2015 showed that the average cyber attack costs large UK companies more than £3m. For small organisations, it ranges from £75,200 to £310,800.
In June this year, US data protection research body the Ponemon Institute’s cross-industry study of several economies calculated the average consolidated cost of a data breach at £2.8m.
With the advent of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, those costs could be driven even higher.
It will allow sanctions including a fine of up to ¤10m (£9.2m) or 2% of a company’s annual worldwide turnover the preceding financial year (whichever is greater) and far exceeding the current maximum of £500,000.

According to video analytics platform Ooyala, there is widespread agreement that the media industry loses billions of dollars to piracy each year.
“What’s not in dispute is that the impact is greater the further up the supply chain the piracy occurs,” says Ooyala business development director, media logistics, Bea Alonso.
“A single end user sharing a Netflix password costs the company $10 per month – whereas a single download and illegal posting of pre-released content could cost a studio millions in lost revenue.”
There is no single solution for data security. Instead, all companies, from studios and broadcasters to their suppliers, are advised to implement layers of security – and to be more honest about their weak points in dealing with each other.
DPP’s Harrison reports that producers are starting to take the matter seriously by building security thinking into each production.
“That is a very significant change,” he says. “Since every production is different in terms of scale, location, budget, personnel and so on, it is a major commitment to tackle security each time.”
For its part, the DPP has issued a security checklist for suppliers. Another, shortly to be published, covers the protection of critical broadcast infrastructure.
“These are not standards but risk-assessment forms,” Harrison stresses. “They are devised to create the space for companies to discuss the issue honestly and to admit they don’t have this process yet but they are putting it in place. It’s about getting suppliers into a formal space so that they can demonstrate their commitment to security.”
Post houses and other suppliers demonstrating this will be badged with a special DPP logo. The first company names will be released at IBC this month.
“The best way to stop the bad guys from breaking in is to ensure that the systems are secure, using the latest, patched versions of the OS and vendor applications,” says Avid director of architecture Rob Gonsalves.
“Anti-virus software should be applied as standard on all systems,” he insists. “Firewalls should be deployed to block all access by default, and only open traffic to named endpoints with minimal access to ports.”
At operator level, security needs reinforcing, too.
“Where previously operators needed to ensure set-top boxes were hardened against tampering or piracy, consumers can now choose what type of device they use to interact with content and core business applications,” says Nagra’s Schouten.
“This moves operators from having a single, controlled point of entry into the home to needing multiple ways to control access to content and personal information.
”What’s more, these access points could potentially create openings for adversaries to move laterally into other business systems, so providers also need to harden defences around key business systems and data to monitor access and ensure that unauthorised activity is quickly identified and terminated.”
Implementing best practices for systems, infrastructure and assets is only half the story.
“Staff are a hugely important element and their understanding is paramount to a business’s security,” says Neil Bottrill, digital operations director at DMS, which provides localisation and distribution for Hollywood studios.
“We encourage staff to review what we do and they have the opportunity to give feedback if they feel we can improve security in any aspect of the business.”
Gonsalves backs this up: “Humans are often the weakest part of the security chain, so employee training is crucial to the prevention of attacks. Many cyber attacks start with easily disguised phishing emails, so employees should be briefed with the policies and practices they are expected to follow regarding internet safety, and what to do if a breach occurs.”
It is worth putting cyber crime in perspective. While an unauthorised script, tweet or leak of an episode makes headlines, the industry is by some accounts haemorrhaging revenue from illegal premium, often live, sports streams.
“Crime is happening on many levels, from sensitive customer data to original source content and denial of service, where a hacker swamps a service with fake requests so that the service goes down,” says Richard Brandon, chief marketing officer at content delivery network vendor Edgeware.
“Each of these could be very serious, but some accounts suggest that more people are watching pirated live shows – such as top-tier football – than are paying for it.
“Somebody who breaks in and steals an episode of Game Of Thrones is, in the long run, probably having nowhere near the impact on the industry of day-to-day piracy.

Evoking the beauty and power of Dunkirk with 65mm

PostPerspective

FotoKem worked to keep Christopher Nolan’s 65mm source natively photochemical and to provide the truest-to-film digital cinema version possible

http://postperspective.com/tag/dunkirk/

Tipped for Oscar glory, Christopher Nolan’s intense World War II masterpiece, Dunkirk, has pushed the boundaries further than any film before it. Having shot sequences of his previous films (including Interstellar) on IMAX, this time the director made the entire picture on 65mm negative. Approximately 75% of the film was captured on 65mm/15-perf IMAX (1.43:1) and the rest on 65mm/5-perf (2.2:1) on Panavision cameras.

Christopher Nolan on set.

Nolan’s vision and passion for the true film experience was carried out by Burbank-based FotoKem  in what became the facility’s biggest and most complex large format project to date. In addition to the array of services that went into creating two 65mm master negatives and 70mm release prints in both 15p and 5p formats, FotoKem also provided the movie’s DCP deliverables based on in-house color science designed to match the film master. With the unique capability to project 70mm film (on a Century JJ projector) side by side with the digital projection of 65mm scans, FotoKem meticulously replicated the organic film look shot by Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC, NSC, FSF, and envisioned by Nolan.
In describing the large format film process, Andrew Oran, FotoKem’s VP of large format services, explains, “Hoyte was in contact with FotoKem’s Dan Muscarella (the movie’s color timer) throughout production, providing feedback on the 70mm contact and 35mm reduction dailies being screened on location. The pipeline was devised so that the IMAX (65mm/15p) footage was timed on a customized 65mm Colormaster by FotoKem color timer Kristen Zimmermann, under Muscarella’s supervision. Her timing lights were provided to IMAX Post, who used those for producing 35mm reduction prints. Those prints were screened in Los Angeles by IMAX, Muscarella and editorial, who in turn provided feedback to production on location. Prints and files travelled securely back and forth between FotoKem and IMAX throughout each day by in-house delivery personnel and via FotoKem’s proprietary globalDATA e-delivery platform.”
A similar route was taken for the Panavision (65mm/5p) footage — also under Muscarella’s keen eye — prior to FotoKem producing 70mm/5p contact daily prints. A set of both prints (35mm and 70mm) were transported for screening in a trailer on location 50,000 miles away in England, France (including shooting on Dunkirk beach itself) and The Netherlands. Traveling with editorial during principal photography was a 70mm projector on which editor Lee Smith, ACE, and Nolan could view dailies in 70mm/5 perf. A 35mm Arri LocPro was also used to watch reduction prints on location.
Oran adds, “Zimmermann also applied color timing lights to the 65mm/5p negatives for contact printing to 70mm at FotoKem. Ultimately, prints from every reel of film negative in both formats were screened by Dan at FotoKem before shipping to production. This way, Dan ensured that the color was as Nolan and Hoytema envisioned. Later, the goal for the DCP was to give the audience the same feel as if they were watching the film version.”
HD deliverables for editorial and studio viewing were created on a customized Millennium telecine. Warner Bros. and Nolan required the quality be high at this step of the process — which can be challenging for 65mm formats. To do this, FotoKem made improvements to the 65mm Millennium telecine machine’s optical and light path, and fed the scans through a custom keycode and metadata workflow in the company’s nextLAB media management platform. Scans for the film’s digital cinema mastering were done at 8K on FotoKem’s Imagica 65mm scanners.

Then, to produce the DCPs, FotoKem’s principal color scientist, Joseph Slomka, says, “We created color modeling tools using the negative, interpositive and print process to match the digital image to the film as precisely as technically possible. We sat down with film prints and verified that the modeling data matched a printed original negative in our DI suite with side by side projection.”

Walter Volpatto

This is where FotoKem colorist Walter Volpatto says he determined “how much” and “how close” to match the colors. “We did this by using a special machine — called a Harrahscope Minimax Comparator Projector, developed by Mark Harrah and on loan from the Walt Disney Studios — to project still IMAX frames on the screen,” Volpatto elaborates. “We did this for 400 images from the movie and looked at single frames of digital (projected from a Barco 4K DLP) versus film from Harrahscope, and compared, using the data created by the modeling tools.”
Volpatto worked mainly with RGB offsets in Resolve after each single frame verification to maintain a similarity to traditional color timing. “We also modified the DLP white point settings of the projector for purposes of maintaining the closest match,” he says. “Then, once all the tweaks were made with the stills, we moved to motion picture film reels. Everything described in the printer lights at the film stage were translated to digital based on modeling data.”
In addition to working with Dan (Muscarella) on the film screenings to see the quality he would need to match, Volpatto says that working on Interstellar also helped inform him how to approach this process. “It’s about getting the look that Nolan wants — I just had to replicate it with tremendous accuracy on Dunkirk.”Joseph Slomka
Aside from the standard DCP, two further digital masters were created for distribution including IMAX scans and digital IMAX distribution, and a Dolby Digital Cinema HDR Master from same source material.
“For the Dolby pass, we had to create another set of color science tools — that still represented Nolan’s vision — to exactly replicate the look of film to HDR,” says Slomka. “Because we had all the computer modeling tools used earlier in the process to identify how the film behaved, we were able to build on that for the HDR version.”
Adds Volpatto, “The whole pipeline was designed to preserve the original viewing experience of print film – everything had to integrate purely and unnoticeably. Having this film and color science knowledge here at FotoKem, it’s hard to see that anybody else could achieve what we did at this level.”

Dunkirk - interview with editor Lee Smith ACE

Cinema Editor

https://americancinemaeditors.org/dunkirk/

Dunkirk is the eagerly-anticipated passion project of auteur Christopher Nolan that tells the true story of the daring plan to rescue 400,000 Allied troops who were surrounded by Nazi soldiers in Northern France during World War II. Starring Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Hardy, the Warner Bros. release is produced by Nolan’s Syncopy. On the face of it this would seem the most conventional of the director’s projects to date, but it is told using a complex structure that mixes the time-scales of different participants. Dunkirk was a week-long experience for the soldiers stuck on the beach, a 24-hour event for those traveling to rescue them over the water and a mere one-hour flight from the south of England for British fighter pilots.
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“Each solider or civilian involved in this historic event might have a different version of the story, but they all share a will to survive and to simply find a way back home,” says Lee Smith, ACE, one of Nolan’s core team and familiar with juggling parallel narratives and juxtaposed timelines in work including The Prestige and Interstellar.
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Neither is the film exposition heavy. “This is a very different kind of war movie. It’s more of a suspense film in that it is predominantly a story of survival.” Although Dunkirk is deeply ingrained in British consciousness – the narrative is another instance of plucky Britannia snatching victory from the clutches of foreign invaders – it is less well known in North America and other parts of the world. It has featured on screen before but largely as a backdrop to drama including Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Atonement (2007).

The fact that Smith was born in London helped him understand the culture of the characters but he was able to approach the story at some distance since his family had emigrated to Australia when he was very young. “Chris spoke about this project to me while I was working on Spectre,” says Smith. “When we started talking about it in earnest the film was already greenlit by Warner Bros. I knew of the events in 1940 but I didn’t know them in great detail and once I read the script (by Christopher Nolan) I realized this was one of the more remarkable and stirring stories of the war.” He adds, “Christopher was looking for a lot of emotion to come across in the story. The emotion comes from scenes of civilians performing extraordinary acts of courage in coming to the aid of the armed forces, without delay and without really stopping to contemplate the danger to them. “In a way, the story transcends any particular country or flag since we can all empathize and feel patriotic toward the sense of fellow countryfolk coming to our rescue.
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You can’t help but be captivated by the sheer scale of the evacuation.” Smith traveled with the unit for the entirety of the shoot, which began in May 2016 and lasted for four months, including at an aerodrome in the U.K., in Holland and on location at Dunkirk beach itself. “This was quite surreal, looking at all the actors, extras and war machines recreating what would have happened 76 years ago,” he says.
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Nolan is renowned for favoring film origination and with Dunkirk he pushed this even further. Having shot sequences of his previous films including Interstellar on Imax 70mm, this time the entire film was shot on 65mm negative. Seventy percent of the film was shot on Imax which is 65mm 15 perf (1.43:1). The rest was shot on 65mm 5 perf (2.2:1) on Panavision cameras. (The negative is 65mm. The print is 70mm.) “The Imax cameras give you more real estate which equates to the highest resolution for a film shoot,” says Smith. “Since the 5-perf cameras are quieter than the Imax cameras we used those to shoot the dialogue scenes.”
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It might stand to reason, much like shooting stereo 3D, that the pacing of a film needs to alter to accommodate greater visual immersion. Not so, according to Smith. “I’ve always been of the opinion, right back to The Dark Knight, that the cutting rhythm didn’t need to change just because you’ve introduced Imax,” he says. “We’ve done a lot of testing with the format to see what happens if you slow down or speed up cuts but I believe you don’t need to make any significant change. On Dunkirk we weren’t shooting for rapid cutting or fast action but to let the action unfold within the shot. You just go with the pacing required to tell that particular story.”
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Traveling with editorial during principal photography was a 70mm projector on which Smith and Nolan could view dailies in 70mm 5 perf. “This was glorious,” says Smith. “Most people don’t even get to watch dailies any more let alone have them projected.” Arguably the most challenging sequences for Smith and the crew were the aerial dogfights between Spitfires and the German Messerschmitts. “For all the planning you are at the mercy of the weather and what you can get on that day,” says Smith. “You have to cut as you shoot to make sure you have everything you need to tell the story. Since Dunkirk is being narrated visually rather than by heavy dialogue or voiceover, the aerial sequences had to push the narrative forward in an exciting and coherent way.”
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Having worked with Nolan on multiple projects, Smith says the pair have developed a shorthand when it comes to suggestions for coverage and assembly. Nonetheless, he says, the relationship “is supremely demanding because Nolan’s films are complicated in terms of structure even when they don’t look as if they are.” He adds, “The art is to bring the audience along with you every step of the way, so that it unfolds before you. In this case, there is no hiding from the overall outcome but as in any survival story the suspense lies in following which character will make it home and which will not.”

Dunkirk’s Large-Format Workflow

Associate editor John Lee was Smith’s right-hand man in organizing and prepping dailies from the labs. On location in France and the Netherlands, he and Smith prepped two Avids while back in L.A.; the team’s Avid assistants worked with an identical setup. Also in L.A., a complete film cutting room was set up for both 70mm and 35mm. For the U.K. shoot, they set up an Avid in a trailer on the airfield where the production was based for the aerial shoot. Each day the rushes were sent back to FotoKem in L.A. for processing.
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“We would strike a 70mm print from our 65mm 5-perf dailies then telecine our 70mm print and sync it in the Avid,” explains Lee. “The print would then be sent back to location with sync sound on a CD for playback on a Fostex DV40, which was attached to a 70mm projector that we sourced from Paris.” The production built screening rooms in France, the Netherlands and in a couple of locations in England. “Our 65mm 15-perf dailies (Imax) also went back to FotoKem for processing. The neg then traveled to Imax in Playa Vista where they shot a 35mm flat-reduction print. Our editorial department would log and prep the reduction print and send it back to location where we screened it on a 35mm Arri LocPro, which we’d set-up in a trailer.
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Because we mainly shot Imax, we could move this trailer easily to different locations to watch the reduction print.” After screening the reduction print we sent it back to Los Angeles for telecine and syncing. “With high-speed internet in our cutting rooms I sent the sound dailies to L.A. and they sent me the Avid bins and telecine media every day,” Lee says. “In post, the aim was to end up with a complete 70mm 5-perf version of the feature. To do this we had to turn each Imax shot (1.43:1) into a 5-perf shot (2.2:1). We did most of these optically at FotoKem. Our VFX department had to supply all Imax VFX shots in both formats.” Double Negative was the sole VFX house. Unlike most films that finish with a DI, the production cut two versions of the film: 5 perf and 15 perf. At press time, an additional anamorphic 35mm version of the film was scheduled to be produced optically.

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Drone racing ready to go live

Sports Video Group Europe

First person view (FPV) racing of small quadcopters is shifting from hobby into mainstream sport by blending the digital and physical worlds in a way no esport or traditional racing league can match. That’s according to Nicholas Horbaczewski, CEO/founder of the Drone Racing League (DRL), which recently secured a $20 million investment led by Sky and Liberty Media (owner of Formula One). However, although there is limited live streaming, FPV racing is a strictly post-produced action until the economics stack up for it to go live.
http://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/drone-racing-ready-to-go-live/
Launched in January 2016 as the only global professional drone racing organization, DRL’s five races in the 2017 Allianz World Championship Season are broadcast on ESPN, and in more than 75 countries with partners including Sky Sports, ProSiebenSat.1, Disney XD and OSN.
According to Horbaczewski: “The end product is only possible with every aspect of media, event, competition, and production working together in a coordinated, optimised way. It is only through this comprehensive effort that we’ve been able to bring drone racing to the forefront of entertainment, and transform FPV-racing into a mainstream sport.”
DRL designs and manages the entire drone racing and broadcast ecosystem for its events – everything from the drones and courses to the timing and length of the races to the capture and presentation of the sport.
Racing quadcopters are small, fast and fly in all three dimensions, drastically increasing the challenge for camera operators (imagine trying to capture six golf balls driven at the same time in a wind storm). Since the sports world already has good access to many forms of racing, pure racing alone is not sufficient to engage a mainstream audience, reckons Horbaczewski. Therefore, DRL also capture the human and technology sides of each event to incorporate them into the final shows.
“While everyone can understand that the first drone to cross the finish line wins, presenting the race in a compelling way for mass audiences is a big challenge,” he says. “Post-producing our shows gives us tremendous flexibility to find the simplest, most engaging way to convey the competition to audiences largely unfamiliar with the unique aspects of drone racing. We already present a limited stream of the racing live to the small audiences we permit on site. We have the technical ability to develop a full network quality live broadcast of the sport with enough real-time information to engage mass audiences, but the economics of the sport do not yet justify the dramatically increased costs to do so. As soon as the world has enough true drone racing fans who care about real-time results, we’ll be prepared to deliver live broadcasts.”
Camera requirements
The production typically deploys 50 to 60 cameras per event. In the remote production truck, DRL use 8-12 Grass Valley LDK 8000 Elite or LDX 86 Universe UHD-HDR Cameras (2-4 on jibs). It typically deploys one cable or rail cam and one Grass Valley Hi Speed 6x Camera on a remote robotic head run through the truck. It brings 23 Marshall CV345-CSB POV Cameras to each event (10-12 on the cockpit and audience, 1-2 through the truck in obscure locations on the course, and the rest throughout the course recording locally). Five Varicam LTs are used for interviews, behind the scenes, and talent stand-ups. Another two RED Epics capture dramatic drone footage.
Each drone itself has two cameras: an SD low latency analogue HS1177 600TVL for pilot navigation, and a GoPro Session 5 for post production, both of which operate automatically with no remote controls. Finally, DRL deploy up to 10 GoPro Hero 4+/Black cameras on the course in unusual or otherwise precarious locations.
The manned cameras are routed to the truck via triax, SMPTE and fibre. The switcher is a GVG Kayenne Elite 3G K-Frame HD Production Center. For the house feeds, fibre is used and then converted as needed depending on the destination source in the gallery (HDMI/SDI).
Horbaczewski explains that the production record in four primary codec’s ranging from 4K down to HD resolutions. At any given event there are 16 to 22 cameras that run through the production truck and are recorded on SSD KiPro’s. Another 30+ unmanned POV style cameras supplement the course coverage. Those cameras are recorded either at the camera or brought back to multiple control points as dictated by the venue and camera positions. On top of this there are seven cinematic cameras providing a range of coverage all captured to in-camera cards and manually delivered to the media management station.
All this generates about 250 hours of footage a day. Figuring out how to transfer that much data each day was a challenge, especially to achieve a cost-effective solution, live and within the RF limitations, and ensure that the footage ends up with a proper level of redundancy and verification.
“Because of our broadcast timelines, we also have to proxy, catalogue and meta tag the footage in the field along with many of the other processes that would typically be handled in post,” he says. “This allows us to more effectively hit the ground running when the footage gets back to our post facility.”
Staff and storage 
To achieve this, the production uses three full time people and gear including: SNS EVO 8 Bay Short Depth Storage Server; 2x R3 Thunderbolt 3 Promise Pegasus RAIDs; 3 x MacBook Pros; Sonnet 10G NIC Cards; and various card readers for the different camera sources.
Depending on the size of the course there are 30-50 FX microphones throughout the venue. These are routed through the truck and then recorded on the various KiPros that are used for the video feeds of the manned truck cameras. Mics mounted to the POV cameras on the course and elsewhere are locally recorded at the camera. There are also 12-14 wireless microphones used on talent and drone pilots. These are recorded with ENG audio techs on portable multitrack recorders.
“While we produce a simplified live feed to the participants and small audiences we permit on-site, the big difference from conventional sports production is we’re filming primarily for post-production at this point,” says Horbaczewski. “We deliberately minimise staff in the production truck, delegating graphics, replays and highlights, and commentary to post-production. This is primarily a financial decision, but it also gives us a lot of time to analyse the racing to determine how to best present each competition in the most compelling way. We can adjust how many heats we present in each show, and how they’re distributed between commercial breaks. This allows us to work around races that aren’t as inherently compelling (such as someone leading from start to finish or lots of early crashes). We can also work in human and technology elements to enhance the competitive drama.”
The league’s key technical production partners include Ghost Hand Productions in Santa Cruz, CA, Lyon Video in Columbus, OH, Telegenic in Buckinghamshire, UK, NextGen RF Design in Waseca, MN, L3DFX in Bolingbrook, IL, Delicate Productions in Camarillo, CA.
Post-production starts with media management, proxy creation, and heat alignments (aligning all 50+ cameras on a single Adobe Premiere for each heat including before and after the racing). One team refines the live line-cut, incorporating all the additional cameras as appropriate, and selecting replays/highlights. Another team reviews, selects and organises the non-race content. A third team starts building the overarching story arcs for each show. A fourth team works on features and animations. And a fifth team starts building the graphics by hand (it’s still more economical than automation at this point).
“We then build rough versions of the shows with scratch tracks, refining and cutting to time as we go,” he says. “We do the final VO and refined edits before the formal sound mix and colour correction processes. This is always a multi-week process, with multiple shows at different stages throughout the process.”
4K challenges
Switching to 4K is primarily an economic question. 4K trucks are “drastically” more expensive than HD trucks, and the data management effort would have to expand significantly to handle the transfers within the available time on site. Swapping out 4K POV cameras is technically possible but expensive.
“That said, most of what we capture outside the racing is already in 4K,” says Horbaczewski. “Right now, there’s not an established financial incentive to provide a full 4K show.”
There are similarities in first person game-play with esports – and DRL is exploring esports’ nature and quantity of on-screen data.
“Going forward, we will continue to blur the lines between the real and the virtual to enhance viewer and participant engagement,” stresses Horbaczewski. “We are extremely interested in the opportunities for enhanced viewing experiences through the blending of digital and linear distribution.”
DRL has already developed a realistic FPV drone flight simulator and video game that was used to qualify one of its pilots. As RF technology, processing speeds, and multi-screen distribution improves, the integration of video game features into real racing will continue.
DRL has the technical ability to generate HD streaming and real-time highlights and graphics and it has RF and video technology in place to circumvent mobile phone, cellular and wifi interference. “We already use a remote production truck with the same capabilities for replays and highlights as other sports,” says Horbaczewski. “We are also well underway in developing real-time positioning of the drones on the course integrated into a database with APIs for scoring and analysis, along with a templated graphics system in the truck, which would be essential for engaging mass audiences live. We have the roadmap for all of this ready to go – once the economics justify it.”

Arrowing in on audiences

Broadcast

Advertising is becoming more data-driven and targeted as broadcasters continue to branch out into OTT in a bid to combat the decline in ad revenues.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/arrowing-in-on-audiences/5120584.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957

The shift to addressable or targeted advertising is considered vital to ensure that broadcasters are able to compete effectively with internet-based platforms that are increasing ad revenue at their expense.
The 8% fall in advertising in the first six months of the year at ITV bears out advertising giant GroupM’s lower-than-expected growth prospects for the UK ad market.
The WPP-owned agency attributes a slump in TV investment to a 3% drop in overall ad spend in 2017 and also predicts a 10% drop year-on-year in commercial TV impressions among 16-24 yearolds – the lowest volume since the arrival of Sky Digital in 1998.
Both ITV and GroupM blame the economic and political uncertainty surrounding Brexit and the June general election, but there are more profound structural forces at play.
From the ‘one-to-many’ approach of traditional broadcast, brands and advertisers are itching to move to one-to- one conversations with defined audiences, from which the direct impact of engagement can be measured. The technique is thought to command higher unit prices (between 200% and 300%), enable better monetisation of inventories and boost viewer satisfaction by serving them more relevant ads.
Solutions that span delivery across Freeview and live streaming are being considered.
“The challenge will be combining a granular targeting model with a broader targeting model and avoiding wasted advertising space,” says James Grant, director, partner management at ad management software vendor Freewheel.
“Flagging a new car to the Jones family in Northampton is excellent targeting, but what does the rest of the country see in that particular ad slot? If the industry can align and build a scalable targeting model then there is a significant opportunity.”
Sky has built the poster child of addressable advertising with its AdSmart ad delivery technology that spans set-top boxes (STBs), OTT and multiscreen.
Of the 1,100 advertisers attracted since 2013, 73% are either new to Sky or new to TV. AdSmart delivers a 75% return rate, and channel-switching during a targeted advert reportedly reduces by 48%.
Ads are shown when the target audience is watching (whatever and whenever) and isn’t dependent on a programme or a pre-defined schedule.
Graeme Hutcheson, director of digital and Sky AdSmart, says the opportunity is “massive” for both “the hundreds and thousands of SMEs across the country that are yet to tap into the effectiveness of TV”, and major brands who can use their customer data and creativity to better engage key audience groups.
“OTT has the potential to expand the pool of targetable homes beyond Sky households to younger audiences who use streaming services or non-subscription TV offerings,” explains Hutcheson.
Viewer access
The recent deal between Sky and Virgin Media to integrate AdSmart into Virgin STBs gives the two companies access to 30 million viewers in the UK and Ireland and sufficient combined scale to compete with social media networks. Facebook has around 35 million UK users.
Far from throwing the baby out with the bathwater, however, broadcasters and advertisers continue to believe in TV’s brand-building power. They argue that if, for example, Mercedes launches a range of cars, the initial goal is mainly to convey an image and raise awareness for which TV’s mass reach is unsurpassed.
“Combining the virtues of broadcast and OTT to deliver a hybrid solution geared for personalised advertising is considered the ultimate goal,” suggests Kai-Christian Borchers, managing director at multiscreen software provider 3 Screen Solutions.
“If a service provider could deliver ads via OTT and weave these into the broadcast stream, the result would be a powerful personalised advertising capability. Advertisers would command higher fees because they would have a far greater understanding of the actual reach of the message.”
Another key benefit for advertisers is that linear addressable campaigns do not have to be planned, executed and reported in isolation.
According to Hutcheson, a combined digital and broadcast approach means advertisers “will be able to use TV to serve a different part of their marketing task, from increasing frequency to hard-to-reach audiences, to targeting ads at homes using first or third-party data that was historically reserved for digital, and bringing even more accountability to a trusted and familiar environment.” That’s a dig at platforms like Google and Facebook, which have had their fingers burnt by automatic placement of adverts alongside inappropriate content.
GroupM downgraded its expectations for digital ad spend in the UK this year from 15% to 11% after seeing some large advertisers pause investment.
“A big focus for advertisers is being in a trusted environment,” confirms Jakob Nielsen, GroupM’s addressable TV lead. “There’s a backlash against unmoderated UGC sites by clients whose ads were served in un-brand safe environments. It’s not easy to solve, given the way they’ve built their businesses, but it’s very important for them to figure it out.”
According to Adam Smith, GroupM’s futures director, the ‘costper- view’ culture engendered by digital video, “which prizes price above safety and quality, has fortunately not yet knocked off TV’s crown as the medium with the best-value cost per impression.”
Measurement is by some way the biggest stumbling block to a unified ad trading environment, with advertisers reluctant to invest wholeheartedly in targeted advertising without a metric that accurately compares across platforms.
Although, as Kate Bulkley pointed out in Broadcast, audience measurements used by the TV and digital communities are becoming “less distinct” – particularly with the launch of super-aggregator apps like Amazon Channels, which includes ITV Hub and Discovery channels like Eurosport – Barb’s integration of multi-screen views is not moving quickly enough for some.
“We ideally need Barb to move a lot quicker on Project Dovetail,” urges Nielsen. “Measuring OTT and linear is a massive issue.”
For commercial broadcasters, the need to address targeted ads is more pressing than for pay-TV operators, where subscriptions comprise the bulk of revenue.
ITV is reportedly set to introduce it within the year but Channel 4 and STV are driving this charge. Both oblige viewers to register to see premium and on-demand content they would not otherwise have access to.
That’s important since broadcasters, including ITV, will need to meet strict privacy issues ahead of next year’s pan-European data privacy reforms as ads would be targeted using a person’s IP address, post code or other deterministic data.
The Scottish commercial broadcaster was the first in the UK to use digital ad insertion across live simulcast programmes and it recently went a stage further by offering to trade the same inventory programmatically (automatically).
For targeted advertising to gain true scale, though, a unified measurement may not be enough. The haphazard introduction of the technique has led to the deployment of different proprietary technologies. The DVB, champion of Europe’s free-to-air broadcasters, believes it has a solution. It is attempting to harmonise addressable technologies by building on interactive TV software HbbTV 2.0.
“We need some kind of standard where there are multiple proprietary solutions,” says Thierry Fautier, who co-chairs the DVB’s Targeted Advertising Study Mission Group.
“If I am an advertiser or a campaign manager and I want to place ads across all the different platforms, it is going to be a nightmare. Advertisers want a seamless integration across all the screens and, more importantly, across all the delivery networks.”
Industry standard
As well as benefiting free-to-air broadcasters, the DVB argues that standardisation would make it easier for pay-TV operators to deploy targeted advertising. Fautier points to the advantages of streamlining back-office requirements across OTT, broadcast and service provider platforms.
“We think technology vendors will also be able to scale more easily with a standard,” he says.
The current HbbTV specification, on which Freeview Play is based, can support insertion of advertising over IP into broadcast streams, but doing so accurately is a key technical challenge.
Nonetheless, the DVB believes a standard can be delivered by early 2019 and could even go global.
Regardless, Nielsen predicts that up to half of all ads will be addressable by 2022. “The next five years will see more changes from a TV ad planning perspective than we’ve seen in the past 50,” he says.