TV is OTT

IBC

With the VoD market about to go into overdrive, the fundamental building blocks of OTT service provision have to match or exceed that of pay-TV.

https://www.ibc.org/publish/tv-is-ott/4337.article

“We are competing against giants – Google, Apple, Warner, Disney and Netflix,” warned Arnaud de Puyfontaine, CEO of French media group Vivendi last year. “If we don’t want to be swallowed by those big giants, we have to have a European agenda.”

De Puyfontaine will likely build on these themes when he delivers his keynote at IBC2019. Europe, he insists, needs to build strong cross-border champions in media and telecoms or else it will be swallowed up by competitors from across the Atlantic or China.

“We are not talking about 30 years from now. This is something that is going to play out in the next five years,” he added.

The traditional TV market structure continues to evolve from what was once nation-based TV services to truly global media groups, controlling all stages of the content value chain. Such changes, typified by the Disney-Fox merger and Comcast’s 2018 acquisition of Sky, have been brought about by competition from streaming giants Netflix and Amazon, permanently changing once-established audience viewing dynamics.

The on-demand market is moving into a period of ‘siloisation’, according to Ampere Analysis, where producer and distributor brands go direct to the consumer (DTC), at the same time restricting the amount of content they license to third-party services.

Social platforms are emerging as competitors of both TV and online streaming platforms for video audiences, driving investment in media partnerships and original content across Facebook Watch, YouTube, Twitter and Snap.

Such investments are at an early stage but reflect the demands of users who want higher quality video and greater content choice.

Peak pay-TV?Pay-TV revenues may have peaked. A recent Digital TV Research report predicts revenues across 138 countries will fall 14% to $177 billion in five years – the same level as 2010. Meanwhile, subscribers are paying for multiple SVOD bundles driving VoD in all forms to pass $10bn in 2022 in Europe alone, according to ITMedia Consulting.

The industry should be braced for push back. Ampere suggests that the dominant players – Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu – are already stretching people’s spending limits, risking viewer fatigue

That’s before the OTT landscape goes into overdrive. Disney+, AppleTV+ and BritBox are primed to launch alongside new services from AT&T, Comcast and the shortform premium content to mobile gamble of Quibi.

These are high stakes with billions of dollars on the table, yet exclusive content alone may not prove enough for the winning hand. Those looking for an edge will need to unlock the absolute best in user experience, and IBC2019 is where to find the keys.

Unlocking OTT at IBC2019“With the proliferation of DTC services, everyone will be fighting for eyeballs and this will impact consumer choice and what they can afford or are willing to pay for,” says Anthony Smith-Chaigneau, senior director product marketing at Nagra.

“The winners will be the ones who are equipped to ride this new wave with the right balance of technology (including data), content and commercial packaging.”

Nagra is set to address direct-to-consumer scenarios, super-aggregation (‘all your content in one place’) at IBC2019 and will explain how it allows for new routes to the consumer (using OpenTV Suite, Conax GO Live) underpinned by data-driven tools and techniques.

Many rights holders in sports and live events share a common appetite to explore DTC models. It’s a trend already set by some of the world’s biggest sports federations, such as the NBA and Formula One, and it is clear that others are keen to follow.

“A lot of rights owners simply do not have the experience, technical know-how, budget or time to bring content to the market through a D2C streaming service,” asserts Steve Russell, head of media management and OTT at Red Bee Media. “The strategic imperative is strong, and the appetite is there but the resources are not. The result is inertia.”

This is a double-edged sword of missed opportunity. Fans miss out on the opportunity to access more of their favourite sports, stars and live events. Rights owners miss out on the opportunity to develop a closer relationship with their fanbase, analysing data on viewing habits and the chance to develop new revenue streams through subscription, advertising and sponsorship.

Red Bee Media believes it’s able to turn the “D2C dilemma” on its head and provide a solution for rights owners of all sizes and levels of ambition. It will be showcasing its full stack of video services which, Russell says, “enables immediate and low-cost launches of D2C services with all the assurance, quality, trust and security that goes with a tier 1 service operator”.

As OTT expands into new and diverse areas such as esports and multi-tier sports, and local and specialised news, the need to reduce steps from content to market is essential.

Blackbird claims its cloud editing platform is unique in allowing users to go from live to published to OTT and social media in a matter of seconds.

“This, ‘make it in the cloud, keep it in the cloud’ philosophy offers savings in both time and infrastructure for sports and esports customers,” states CEO Ian McDonough.

Given the immense number of viewing choices and the increased pervasiveness of pay OTT models, consumers are rapidly growing intolerant of quality issues.

“They are demanding quality levels which even exceed those provided within linear pay-TV solutions,” suggests, Chris Osika, CMO, Telestream. “Providers must have the ability to monitor extensively with granular visibility throughout the entire delivery lifecycle all the way to their viewers’ end devices.”

The vendor’s new live monitoring and analytics service enables users to deploy in the cloud and to integrate this level of video monitoring without needing to modify anything in their existing delivery chain.

Focus on retentionNew services entering the market are likely to entice consumers with free trials and aggressive introductory prices, but the long-term success of these services will depend more on customer retention than acquisition. When you consider that the marketing cost of new subscribers for Netflix in the US increased to nearly $200 in the past year, it becomes clear that retention is now equally, if not more important, than conversion.

Nor has the industry shaken off the menace of piracy, which worldwide hit 190 billion visits to illegal sites in 2018, according to Muso. TV is the most popular content for piracy and, given the fragmentation of content across multiple streaming services, perhaps this isn’t surprising. Almost 60% of all piracy visits are to unlicensed web streaming sites, mirroring trends in legal consumption, which is moving away from ownership to on-demand.Cleeng’s main IBC2019 innovation is its transition from a diagnostic to a predictive dashboard. Luc Bleylevens, senior product director, explains: “The relevant metrics are presented in the context of the retention journey. At the point that a visitor converts to a subscriber, the journey to keep them onboard begins. That context, plus the predictive analytics that we provide in each of the steps of the customer lifecycle, is an advantage for any broadcaster/publisher.”

Consumers expect access to a wide range of OTT services via app stores on their platforms. “For many operators, Android TV with Google Play Store is an ideal set-top box platform for offering broadcast and OTT services with ease,” says Andrew Bunten, SVP of content protection, Irdeto. “But operators must have the ability to stop pirate or malicious apps in order to deploy Android TV with confidence.”

Irdeto App Watch gives operators insights into app usage and control over piracy gateways such as Kodi. Its TraceMark for OTT is a watermarking solution that is claimed to be easy to integrate, robust against internet redistribution piracy and imperceptible to viewers.

As content repatriation occurs from Netflix to other OTT services there is a risk that users will have less of the content they want to watch, when they want to watch it and, by extension, says Ampere’s Richard Broughton, a genuine risk that usage of SVOD and catch-up services could begin to slump – something pirate operators will capitalise on.

8K moves up the agenda

IBC

We are currently in a transition from 1080p to UHD, so why is the industry intent on pushing 8K?

https://www.ibc.org/publish/8k-moves-up-the-agenda/4301.article

Danny Boyle’s latest film Yesterday is a crowd-pleasing romcom which features singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, yet this middle-of-the-road set-up belies the production’s high-tech credentials.

Cinematographer Christopher Ross recorded the whole picture in 8K resolution with some concert scenes rolling 17 8K cameras simultaneously.

“The additional overhead in shooting 8K provides a better quality master in 4K,” explains Ross, who used a similar technique on Boyle’s mini-series Trust about the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III. “It gives our VFX team extra information for compositing and it allows us to cover the full aspect ratio and idiosyncratic quirks of the [Panavision] lenses.”

The use of 8K for delivering a higher production value in TV drama or even mid-budget features is increasingly unremarkable. IBC2019 will feature a keynote from Warner Bros VP of technology Mike Zink who will stress this point.

Yet there is a cavernous gap between using the oversampling for archival or digital intermediate purposes and playing back 7640 x 4320 pixels at 60 or 120fps to consumers.

With 60% of Europe’s broadcasters yet to transition from SD and the bulk of the rest transmitting HD, according to Globecast figures, even 4K channels are limited in the extreme.

Japan’s NHK is the flagship barer for Super HiVision transmissions and while the Tokyo 2020 Olympics will provide a showcase, it is thought likely to remain pretty much alone in this regard for some time.

“We’ve developed our initial 8K products knowing that the Japanese market is where the immediate demand is, and feel the industry is watching how 8K develops there first,” says Craig Heffernan, technical sales director EMEA, Blackmagic Design.

In April, the 8K Association was formed to promote the format. Its members include Hisense, Panasonic, Samsung and TCL, and, arguably, it is display manufacturers that have the most to gain from pressing the 8K button so early. In a recent report, Strategy Analytics expects only 56 million homes globally to own an 8K TV by the end of 2025. Even the most mature market, the US, will have less than 10% penetration by then.

Spain-based, Japanese-owned streaming movie service Rakuten TV plans to add 8K content to its catalogue by the end of the year and has announced partnerships with TV-makers including LG and Philips. There’s no sense, though, of how much bandwidth that will require, although some of the latest displays do come with an auto-upscaling function to 8K.

Others view the increasing chatter around 8K as a distraction. The Ultra HD Forum, whose members include Fox, Sky and Sony Pictures, says 8K is promising but as far as it’s concerned it is focused entirely on promoting 4K.

However, Thierry Fautier, vice president of video strategy at Harmonic, and president-chair of the Ultra HD Forum, says: “8K will bring more immersive experiences compared to 4K, mainly through internet delivery. On the device side, TV manufacturers will bring 8K television sets to the market in 2019, so the industry needs to prepare to deliver this experience via the internet.”

There are many parallels with 8K in the still ongoing move to 4K, during which concerns such as high production cost, lack of content and questions over whether the additional resolution can even be seen were addressed and overcome.

Claus Pfeifer, head of technical sales, Sony Professional Europe, points out that “it is a fundamental part of our industry to always look out for the next big revolution. In that sense, it is unsurprising that visitors to IBC this year already have their eyes set on 8K.”

8K from AV to TVThere’s no stopping 8K-ready production kit coming to market, in part because vendors have their eye on corporate video not broadcast.

“Anyone in the industry involved in providing video on very large displays (venue/digital signage) should pay attention to 8K for the added resolution and clarity,” declares Brian Olson, vice president of product management, NewTek.

Its Network Device Interface IP video protocol is resolution, aspect ratio and frame rate independent with support for 8K video, plus 16-bit per pixel processing capable of handling HDR workflows. At IBC, NewTek will present NDI Version 4 with claimed significant improvements in speed and video quality. “NDI recordings are resolution independent for 8K production, support any number of audio channels, and include alpha channel for compositing,” Olson says.

Sony’s IBC exhibit includes 8K Bravia displays, a number of system cameras, switchers and servers capable of capturing content in 8K, plus its scalable Crystal LED system.

“The retail and fashion sectors as well as large event organisers, do require content that meets the highest resolution standards across a wide range of aspect ratios,” says Pfeifer.

Blackmagic Design notes the same trend. “What we see in Europe is that AV (corporate video) is driving 8K,” says Heffernan. “AV tends to be a marketplace that strives for greater resolution, and it drives that new technology around resolution for displays.”

That’s partly why it announced the Teranex Mini SDI to HDMI 8K HDR, which allows professional, colour accurate SDI monitoring on HDMI 8K screens. Likewise, the Atem Constellation switcher offers 8K DVE, standards conversion on every input, 8K SuperSource, 8K chroma key and 8K MultiView. “It allows our leading AV clients to move to 8K formats, but retain the creative control they already have with Atem for 4K video,” says Heffernan.

“Essentially, you’re buying a fully 4K capable product, and you can switch to 8K when you’re ready. It’s the exact same message as when we released our first 4K-capable product lines: you can buy for your existing production demands now, then move to the newer, emerging resolution when you need to.”

The format will also find a home in live production for techniques such as region of interest – extracting images from a higher resolution one. This was trialled by France Télévisions and multiple vendors at the Roland-Garros tennis tournament in Paris (pictured, opposite).

“We wanted to push the envelope on bandwidth by live streaming 8K and see how the 5G network would cope,” explains Jean-Pierre Casara, 5G innovation chief at mobile operator Orange. “We could use 5G for contribution of 8K split into four 4K channels upstream; we can zoom in and re-edit 8K content, use fixed 8K cameras and AI-tracking to follow the action and capture high-quality VR.”

Harmonic, which took part in the test, says it’s possible to deliver live, catch-up TV, and VoD content “in pristine 8K” to TVs and mobile devices over a 5G infrastructure.

At IBC, Harmonic will show the results of this with a direct connection to an 8K TV, 5G mobile devices and tablets, for personalised broadcast applications. Harmonic’s EyeQ content aware encoding might be further used to bring bitrates down to a more affordable level.

Pfeifer says: “While helping our customers with the transition to 4K, we see 8K as a couple of years away from becoming mainstream in most production areas in Europe.”

Given these benefits and the likely drop in cost per bit, the adoption of 8K seems inevitable, although one can debate if its introduction will be as fast as that of SD to HD. Even if you wanted one, you’d be hard pressed to find a HD TV on retail today while 4K production has become a de facto standard. Despite this, it seems 8K is a matter of when, not if.

How VAR and other innovations will shake up Premier League 19/20

IBC

The new season of the English Premier League will kick off on Friday (9 August) but, having splashed out millions on the rights to show football’s most popular competition, broadcasters are facing several unique challenges.

https://www.ibc.org/create-and-produce/premier-league-var-true-view-cameras-and-piracy/4232.article

The 2019/20 season will see the League’s first deployment of Multi-perspective punditry, with three clubs having installed tech that could offer a unique view of the game if utilised correctly.

Only introduced towards the end of last season, Intel’s True View camera technology could provide another angle – or multi-angles – for BT Sport and Sky punditry.

The Emirates, Anfield and the Etihad Stadium are the three stadia to have installed the 38 x 5K cameras that ring the pitch (in a deal with Intel) and allow for footage to be viewed from any angle – including from a player’s perspective.

The system uses the UHD cameras to capture volumetric data which Intel servers then process to generate three-dimensional replays from every angle.

Intel describe this as recording the “height, width and depth of data to produce voxels” or pixels with volume.

One of the applications is a laser wall, described by Intel as ‘a virtual plane giving viewers a clear picture as to where players are positioned on the pitch’. Another function can freeze a moment in the match to let fans or analysts see the pitch from the eyes of a player.

Video Assistant Refereeing (VAR) made dramatic interventions in Tottenham’s Champions League semi-final victory over Manchester City as Raheem Sterling had a goal disallowed for an offside in the build-up, and was further used amid controversy during the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Arguably the biggest change to officiating ever, VAR will be in play for every match of the top flight campaign. It will be allowed to clarify decisions on ‘clear and obvious errors’ or ‘serious missed incidents’ relating to goals, penalties, straight red cards and cases of mistaken identity.

Preparations included offline trials across all 10 matches played simultaneously on the final day of last season.

The remote VAR operation is based at IMG Studios at Stockley Park, site of the production and distribution by PLP and IMG of all the Premier League’s international programming, including the broadcast of all 380 Premier League matches.

PLP has created graphics for display on giant screens at grounds to explain any VAR-related delay to a match, and any over-turned decision.

Additionally, if the VAR believes there’s a ‘definitive’ video-clip which helps explain an over-turned decision to fans, it will also be displayed. Fans at Anfield and Old Trafford may miss out however, due to a lack of big screen.

“For clubs which do not have giant screens in their stadium, VAR communications will be made via a combination of PA announcements and messages on scoreboards,” the Premier League said in a statement.

The PLP’s recently extended relationship with IMG until 2021-22 will also see 76 matches per season broadcast in 4K, more than 500 match promos, 50 pieces of short-form content and 40 hours of magazine shows produced per week.

PLP also provides satellite distribution and onsite services for all matches and programming and connectivity to all 20 Premier League grounds and training facilities via IMG Studios.

The head of the Professional Game Match Officials Mike Riley told Sky that the aim is to make VAR checks in under 30 seconds and, to reverse on field decision by around 90 seconds.

“Our challenge over time is to make that even less,” Riley said.

Piracy prevalentPremier League football clubs are losing up to £1 million per game in pitch-side advertising and kit sponsorship income due to illegal streaming, according to a report by anti-piracy specialist MUSO. Based on eight matches from last season, the report found each match had an average illegal audience of 7.1 million viewers, with more than one million of those from China. The other big markets for digital piracy are Vietnam, Kenya, India and Nigeria. The UK is 11th on the list.

Despite advances in technology, being able to detect pirated streams in real time and shut them down quickly can be difficult because many pirate sites do not operate out of a single IP address and are quick to restore access after a shutdown.

“With levels of 5G adoption expected to increase over the next few years, industry participants expect to see a rise in illicit streaming of content,” predicts a report published last month by Nagra and MTM.

According to Mark Mulready, VP – cybersecurity services at Irdeto, to combat piracy effectively, “rights holders need state-of-the-art anti-piracy technology, combined with proactive enforcement and investigative services aimed at identifying and prosecuting the parties and intermediaries involved in large commercial streaming piracy networks.”

Tim Ives ASC goes back to the future for Stranger Things 3

British Cinematographer

Netflix’s wildly-popular, horror fantasy series, Stranger Things, has returned for its third run, featuring aesthetic and technical differences that move the show into new territory.
https://britishcinematographer.co.uk/tim-ives-asc-goes-back-to-the-future-for-stranger-things-3/

Partnering since the first episode, with the show’s writers/directors – brothers Matt and Ross Duffer – was director of photography Tim Ives ASC. Together, the filmmaking team hit upon a vision for the drama that recalls the best moments of 1980s film culture, notably in movies from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin stable. Whilst E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and the work of Allen Daviau ASC in lighting and camera movement remained the core text for Ives, season three also referenced James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day(1991, DP Adam Greenberg ASC).

“Referencing the look of T2 gave us a tone that’s a little cooler at night, one where you see into the shadows instead of them being completely black,” says Ives, who was responsible for episodes 1, 2, 5 and 6, while Lachlan Milne took on episodes 3, 4, 7 and 8. “We wanted the details to be in the shadows and we wanted the contrast, but at the same time we didn’t want it to feel flat or over-lit.”

Tim Ives ASC

Set in 1985 when Back To The Future ruled the box office, season three’s storyline features construction of a new shopping mall presided over by the town’s corrupt mayor. Unsettling events build to the Fourth Of July fireworks celebrations.

As the storyline has progressed, the production has also evolved to take advantage of the latest Red camera technology.

“Red has played a big part on Stranger Things,” Ives explains. “Netflix asks for a 4K base but, when we started on the show in 2016, 4K was a relatively new format, and there weren’t that many camera options. I tested them all and found the combination of Red Dragon with Leica Summilux-C lenses to be very filmic, smooth and reminiscent of vintage Kodak stock 5293.”

“We knew we had a great look and a terrific story, but no one could have anticipated the enormous success of the show,” Ives says. “It went global quickly, so for season two we wanted to retain all the elements of its success whilst taking advantage of the advances in sensor technology. On the first season, we used the Dragon, which was base-rated at 800. For season two, we swapped to the Helium, which gave us far greater latitude in low-lit scenes. We shot 7K for a 6K extraction, which allowed some extra room for our large ensemble in action scenes and gave us more resolution for the VFX shots.

 “On season three, we used the Red Monstro and it is a gamechanger,” he declares. “What the Duffer Brothers were interested in was the opportunity of working with a large format. We did test other large-format cameras but the Monstro sensor blew us away. The lower light sensitivity was remarkable – there’s very little grain whatsoever, even at ASAs higher than previously reached.”

Season three’s storyline takes place during the summer and therefore has more scenes in open daylight than in previous episodes.

“This season is a rollercoaster ride,” Ives explains. “The kids are out of school and dressed in ‘80s fashion, which allowed for more colour saturation than previous seasons. Whilst Red gives us consistency across the seasons, we definitely wanted to keep it moody and mysterious at night. The Monstro sensor allowed me to do that whilst keeping a feeling of summertime abandon to the daytime exteriors. We still didn’t want to look too modern though, which is why the lenses were important to add softer, rounder edges. We also altered the LUT to be a little less murky. The intent was still to make the show look pre-digital and as filmic as possible.

“Moving to the Monstro, we took advantage of the fuller-frame large sensor. I hope the audience will subconsciously notice the difference. The larger format made our sets feel bigger and grander, the exteriors felt wider and the close ups feel bigger.”

Ives chose the Summilux-Cs for Leica Thalia large-format lenses to keep their established look and feel while still moving it forward.

“I shot T2.8 to T4 regularly. Even at T4 to T5.6 the image had the fall off I wanted and the bokeh is stunning. With the sensor shooting clean at higher ISOs, the stop doesn’t matter as much for lighting. Even at 800 ISO we were at a T4.0 and it was never a problem.”

With more visual effects than in previous seasons, season three moved to an 8K acquisition (8192 x 4320), with a 6:1 RedCode compression ratio and, as before, framed for a 2:1 aspect ratio, giving a slight letterbox presentation.

Ives says, “6:1 worked well for our pipeline with the amount of footage we sent, as well as offering strong picture quality for streaming.”

Colour science was managed in Red’s IPP2 pipeline using Gamma Curve LOG310, which is designed to precisely encode the full tonal range from the camera. EFILM colourist Skip Kimball once again worked with Ives to set the look.

“From our on-set feedback, Skip developed and continued to shape our LUT as we got deeper into the series’ dailies,” Ives says. “We shot for HDR but lit for SDR and then made sure the HDR pass didn’t see more than I want.”

Ultravioletto's Neural Mirror is literally a ghost in the machine!

RedShark News

The falling green code which opens all The Matrix movies represents the encoded activity of the virtual reality environment (aka the Matrix). An earlier version of digital rain, to which the Wachowskis’ paid homage, is the 1995 manga classic Ghost in the Shell. The idea has now been given a fresh twist as an art exhibit and it’s arguably more sinister, less sci-fi than ever.

https://www.redsharknews.com/vr_and_ar/item/6538-ultravioletto-s-neural-mirror-is-literally-a-ghost-in-the-machine

Rome-based design studio Ultravioletto has built a mirror that uses AI and facial recognition software to create a ghostly anime of your digital self.

Stand in front of the Neural Mirror (an OLED panel with a reflective coating and a depth camera) and it scans your presence, then decodes what it can decipher about your likely gender, age, ethnicity and emotional state. The viewer is then presented with a strange three-dimensional interpretation of themselves formed from point clouds on the screen.

As you move your body, face and hands, the data doppelganger moves along with you. The programme’s own AI decides in what shapes and colours to compose the image, based on the captured data.

“The whole experience should be analysed as a data stream that flows between myself and my analogue reflection,” Ultravioletto’s art director Bruno Capezzuoli told Dezeen.

The installation includes a machine that prints the collected information as strings of JSON code onto a giant roll of paper.

In The Matrix, of course, Neo is fighting for humanity against the power of the AI-ruled system personified by Agent Smith. Our very essence as human beings is at stake if we submit our free will and our innermost thoughts (the ghost or soul) to the machine.

To underline the message that we should all contemplate how our very personal information is already no longer ours but a creature of Zuckerberg, Bezos and Page and Brin, Ultravioletto put the Mirror on display at a former church in Spoleto, an ancient city in Perugia.

“Artificial intelligence extracts all of our behaviours in a shady way then transforms them into a form of wealth for corporations,” Capezzuoli says.

Too right. It’s almost enough to make you believe in The One, provided you’ve not taken the blue pill first.

Premier League 2019: Amazon and HDR to debut

IBC

A traditional way of escaping the relatives over the festive season is to head to the pub and lap up some Boxing day Premier League action. This year, however, soccer fans may have to stay home, find a network hotspot to stream to their mobiles or hope that the local has signed to Amazon Prime.

https://www.ibc.org/create-and-produce/premier-league-2019-amazon-and-hdr-to-debut/4215.article

The US online retailer has bagged exclusive broadcasts of all Premier League matches on 26 and 27 December as well as those played midweek on 3-4 December for its Prime Video service. It’s one of many changes to the 2019 EPL season which kicks off August 09.

Amazon impactAmazon won rights to show 20 Premier League matches a season for three years, beginning with the 2019 season. BT Sport landed another similar package for £90m. Together the deals mark the first time a full round of matches will be shown live in the UK.

The streamer’s games include Manchester United versus Newcastle at Old Trafford (26 December) and the Merseyside derby (4 December) with coverage being produced by BT Sport and Sunset + Vine. Details of their presentation have been kept under wraps.

Amazon Prime members can watch the games for free, as well as weekly highlights of all Premier League games throughout the season. With other internet players like Facebook not tempted to bid for rights this time around, Amazon has a valuable and possibly bargain opportunity to test the market and see what audiences it can generate. For fans wanting to watch everything, though, it means an additional subscription.

The chief concern for Amazon from a technical point of view won’t be the studio and matchday coverage but distribution. Issue including buffering when switching between matches were reported during its live multi-court coverage of Wimbledon.

“Partnering with BT Sport and Sunset+Vine shows Amazon’s commitment to work more closely with the UK sports broadcasting market to deliver professionally produced content,” says Paolo Pescatore, analyst at PP Foresight. “However, it will have to encode and distribute the feed at a higher frame rate. Arguably a bigger concern is whether the UK fixed line infrastructure is equipped to distribute a stream at scale with low latency. Forging Prime Video distribution deals with providers such as BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media will help mitigate these issues.”

Right now, Amazon has around eight million Prime subscribers in the UK of which 25% are EPL fans.

“Amazon would also need to reassure the EPL that it can deliver the audiences necessary to support awareness of matches, and eyeballs for sponsors,” says Alexios Dimitropoulos, senior analyst, Ampere Analysis. “It needs to calculate and anticipate correctly the number of people who will join for the matches in order to avoid any problems and by delivering a seamless experience, prove to top rights organisations that they can be the distribution partner they need."

Considering Amazon’s global base and financial fire power, shelling out for further premium sports rights is within its capabilities but such rights tend to be geo-blocked. This means the same economies of scale which players in the non-sport market such as Netflix have been able to use, are largely unavailable.

Adds Dimitropoulos: “The collaboration of players like Sky and BT [in EPL bidding] is one way for broadcast players to spread the risk of rights acquisitions and ensure that they can deliver reach that an OTT player might struggle to achieve.”

BT Sport majors on HDRAnother way for pay TV to keep Amazon, Facebook et al at arms’ length is to up the ante by offering games in 4K, HDR and Dolby Atmos sound – something BT Sport is doing for all games this season.

COO Jamie Hindaugh tells IBC365: “We’re launching BT Sport Ultimate which will deliver pictures and sound in UHD, HDR and - exclusively via BT TV – Dolby Atmos. Additionally, we will continue to expand the ways in which it is possible to access BT Sport. Finally, look out for more development around personalisation, where we’ll enable viewers to control some aspects of programmes such as audio or graphics.”

HDR is seen as a game changer by sports broadcasters. BT Sport’s format is HDR10 PQ which is considered better for mobile – and mobile is the telco’s primary target.The bulk of coverage in the UK remains with Sky Sports –128 games a season for three years costing £3.75bn - and BT Sport - 52 games deal paying £975m.

“When you consider the size of the mobile screen then adding 4K adds nothing [in terms of perceptual image quality,” underlines Hindhaugh. “Most of our perception of depth comes from contrast, not resolution.”

Arguably it will be the introduction of the full next generation 5G core network, enhanced device chipset capabilities, and increased availability of 5G-ready spectrum which will kick-start more exotic consumer applications.

BT’s mobile division EE has scheduled this rollout from 2022 with BT Sport putting AR sports experiences at the top of the list.

“The potential is huge for both at home and in stadia experiences,” confirms BT Sports director of mobile strategy Matt Stagg. “The ability to enhance sport is phenomenal by, for example, overlaying stats of players taking a penalty - live.”

Early AR experiences are imagined via smartphone but BT Sport is casting future interaction with live sports toward some form of lightweight glasses.

In addition, BT Sport is developing plans for what is often termed ‘object-based broadcasting’, which will enable viewers to personalise and control some aspects or objects of programmes, such as audio or graphics.

Spotify of sportsOutside of the UK, digital player DAZN holds exclusive EPL rights in Spain, Japan and in Canada.

DAZN takes the host feed produced by Premier League Productions (PLP) and makes it available both live and on-demand, something that will particularly accommodate viewers in Canada wanting to watch games in different time zones.

In Spain, the service launches with 235 live EPL games a season 2019-2021/22 with additional content including MotoGP.

“The advantage we have is sheer scale,” says EVP Rights, Matt Drew. “OTT has gone from simply being a facilitative technology to get additional content out there for a single sport, to being something which is reacting and stepping in to meet fans’ needs beyond traditional broadcasters.”

Service glitches dogged the streamer’s debut in Canada in 2017 with the NFL but it has been working to fix it.

“We’ve spent the last two years really focusing on the basics, making sure that when customers hit live, they get a live image and no buffering,” declares Pete Parmenter, SVP business dev at DAZN. “Live is very technically challenging. People do not watch throughout the day but watch when the game is on – tuning in a couple minutes before it begins. We’ve got to optimise our on-boarding and sign in processes to make sure we can bring as many people in as efficiently as possible.”

Having already likened itself to Netflix, DAZN now makes comparisons with the leading digital music disrupter with its focus on pick and mix multi-sport content.

“What Spotify is doing for music, DAZN is trying to do for sport,” Parmenter says.

Club OTT delivers to superfansDAZN has also struck a partnership with Premier League Champions Manchester City, the first time it has partnered with a single football club in this way. The deal saw DAZN produce and broadcast the EuroJapan Cup between City and Japanese side Yokohama F. Marinos on 27 July.

It comes as more clubs and leagues are looking at their own OTT offerings. In North America, all four major leagues have long operated their own streaming services. In Europe, Italy’s Serie A currently transmits live match action via its own OTT service and La Liga has followed suit (albeit without live La Liga games yet).

The EPL is reportedly mulling its own streaming platform, and Uefa, European soccer’s governing body, announced the launch of Uefa.tv in June. Franchise and club-owned OTT launches are accelerating, according to research by Nagra and MTM Analysis.

Nine of the top 25 football clubs by revenue in 2018 offered a paid OTT service including Newcastle, Liverpool and Chelsea. Perhaps the most significant debut to date is from champions Manchester City, which launched its Man City for TV offering, live-streaming the club’s pre-season friendlies and with plans to air Women’s and Academy games in the future.

Nuria Tarre, CMO at the football club, gives an indication of the ambition: “By becoming a central hub for Manchester City content, we want to push the boundaries in technology and sports consumption and provide an immersive entertainment experience for our loyal fanbase, wherever they are.”

Synthesising photoreal humans has now been made easier than ever before

RedShark News

VFX simulations, especially of photoreal digital humans, involve painstaking scanning, modelling, texturing and lighting, but the latest technologies might soon allow anyone to generate high-fidelity 3D avatars out of a single picture and create animations in real-time.

https://www.redsharknews.com/vr_and_ar/item/6531-synthesising-photoreal-humans-has-now-been-made-easier-than-ever-before

Motion capture, for example, has been a highly expensive exercise requiring specialised hardware, suits, trackers, controlled studio environments and an army of experts to make it all work.

New artificial intelligence and machine learning tools are changing all of that. Among the latest developments is an innovation in facial tracking that is claimed to not just speed production but deliver even greater fidelity.

Unleashed at computer graphics show Siggraph, the proof of concept is a joint venture of French software developer Dynamixyz and Pixelgun Studios, a Californian 3D high-end scanning agency.

Dynamixyz core technology is a markerless tracking software called Performer that uses machine learning to annotate key poses of an actor simply from a video of them performing. An animator then takes over to tweak the data to fit a new CG actor or creature.

VFX facility Framestore used Performer to animate Smart Hulk shots in Avengers: Endgame.

Adding in Pixelgun’s scanning process replaces the annotation step and is claimed to be far more accurate since it comes from the specific facial information of the actor included in the scans.

Until relatively recently, facial scanned data which gives information on geometry and textures like wrinkles was once very hard to collect. Even the larger studios weren’t equipped and the budgets involved were very high. Scanning technology has since evolved to become more accessible and affordable and many studios have developed pipelines to include photogrammetry or 3D scanning.

The Dynamixyz / Pixelgun solution scanned data with textures covering 80 expressions taken from 63 cameras trained on the head for expression capture, and 145 cameras trained on the subject for body capture. The data is then extracted automatically and put onto a digital model, eliminating the need for an animator.

“With these images generated as if they were taken with a Head-Mounted Camera and geometry information, we were able to build a tracking profile as if it had been annotated manually,” explained Vincent Barrielle, R&D engineer. “It brings higher precision as it has been generated with very high-quality scans. It also gives the opportunity to have a high volume of expressions”.

As lighting conditions are key when training the tracking, manual annotation is still required for two to three frames extracted from the production shots to retrieve the correct illumination pattern.

The technology is still in R&D, but the companies plan on making it available next year.

“We think other companies may have already developed such workflows in-house, as a tailor-made solution, not as a packaged software,” says Nicolas Stoiber head of R&D and CTO of Dynamixyz. “We make technologies accessible and usable for the whole industry.”

Also at Siggraph, the LA-based studio ICVR is showing their digital human project - a photorealistic 3D human being created from hundreds of 3D scans in partnership with The Scan Truck. One of the most impressive applications being shown is the ability for an actor to drive the model real-time in Unreal Engine through a combination of Dynamixyz facial tracking software and an XSens motion-capture suit.

Seattle-based motion capture facility Mocap Now demonstrated a real-time playback of full body (Optitrack), face (Dynamixyz again) and finger (Stretchsense) live and realtime into Unreal Engine.

Data, of course, is the foundational element. Whether that’s in a character sim and animation workflow, a render pipeline or project planning, innovations like these are granting the capability to implement ML systems that are able to add to the quality of work and the predictability of output.

RADiCAL, for example, can record video of an actor, even from a smartphone, upload it to the Cloud where the firm’s AI will send back motion-captured animation of the movements. The latest version promises 20x faster processing and a dramatic increase in the range of motion from athletic to combat.

San Francisco’s DeepMotion also uses AI to re-target and post-process motion-capture data. Its cloud application, Neuron, allows developers to upload and train their own 3D characters — choosing from hundreds of interactive motions available via an online library. The service is also claimed to free up time for artists to focus on the more expressive details of an animation.

Pinscreen is working on algorithms capable of building a photo-realistic 3D animatable avatar based on just a single still image. Its facial simulation AI tool is based on Generative Adversarial Networks, a technique for creating new, believable 2D and 3D imagery from a dataset of millions of real 2D photo inputs.