Bountiful business take-aways

AV Magazine

Tackle its massive territory, time zone differences and multiple languages and business opportunities in India abound.

https://www.avinteractive.com/features/territory-features/bountiful-business-take-aways-03-09-2019/

There may not be an AV market with more buzz than India. According to the IMF, the country has surpassed China in growth and is on track to overtake the UK in 2020, having surged past the French economy in 2018.

GDP is expected to reach $2.9 trillion in 2019, with services the fastest growing sector contributing 60 per cent to the total. A burgeoning middle class with rising income tend to be young, educated and with purchasing power.

In tandem, the local AV industry has shown remarkable growth. And according to figures from AVIXA, the Indian subcontinent is projected to increase by seven per cent a year until 2022 when it’s expected to overtake the Japanese market (second to China in APAC) to value $8.6bn by 2022.

“India has one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing AV markets in the world which keeps developing at an exponential rate,” says Valentina Zarivchatska, director of business development, CEE, APC, LATAM at videowall and display management solutions specialist VuWall. “This growth is driven by several factors such as domestic and foreign investments, overall strength of the Indian economy, and political stability.”

“Pro AV is now a fully recognised profession in India,” says Rishubh Nayar, national sales manager, enterprise, Christie India. “We have a number of industry colleagues training and upgrading themselves to be on par with their peers in the west in terms of skillsets. A growing number of industry players are obtaining CTS qualifications. The quality of installs has improved significantly as well, with SIs and consultants working together and pitching for projects where quality has become one of the biggest selling points. A lot of greenfield projects are now considering pro AV as an essential component from the initial construction bidding process.”

A sign of growth is InfoComm India which last year drew nearly 10,000 attendees, a 21 per cent rise year on year. Peerless-AV is among the first time exhibitors at this September’s edition. “Over the past three years, India has experienced huge growth from an economic and AV industry standpoint,” says Melinda Von Horvath, vice-president of sales and marketing. “This is largely due to an influx of multinationals from across the world setting up shop in the major metropolitan cities. The pro AV culture in India is changing owing to this influx and as the spending power, knowledge and willingness of end users to invest in quality, commercially robust solutions increases in parallel.”

National diversity
However, in a country made up of 29 different states and seven union territories, the market varies widely and requires a lot of patience and a long-term strategy to be successful.

“The main challenge for a non-Indian company developing a market strategy there is in establishing where exactly the opportunity is,” says Tom Rockwell, CSO, disguise. “The country is huge and opportunity is seemingly everywhere, however without a focused approach and thoughtful strategy it’s easy to get distracted.”

Instead of thinking of India as a single entity, it’s worth approaching each state as a separate country, often with its own language, cultural practices and preferences. Different regions have different industry clusters. Therefore, regional plans and good local research are essential.

“The potential opportunities are vast and the rewards could be great but you have to take into account such challenges as local cultural differences, distance from your HQ, time difference and competition from Indian made products as well as cheap Asian imports,” says Andy Lee, Datapath account manager, IMEA, CIS & ANZ. “You also have to be aware that there are not one or two major cities to cover, there are potentially five or six and cross-country travel can be challenging.”

Its vast geography means that a large infrastructure is needed to support deployments, “both in terms of installations, for making the solution functional at each site, and for maintenance and after sales service,” says Atul Jasra, business head (India), Philips Digital Signage Solutions and AOC Monitors. “The demand for value for money that is a generic part of Indian consumer buying behaviour can also make it more challenging to meet price expectations.”

Partners on the ground
Having people on the ground who can work directly with integrators every day is vital. Datapath works with local channel and OEM partners including the distributor, Mindstec. “Our partners cover a lot more ground than we could ourselves but we make the region a priority and visit regularly for training and meeting updates to assist them.”

VuWall, based in Canada and Germany, has also availed the services of Mindstec for rapid installation, 24/7 support and maintenance. Its HQ is in Bangalore, but most of the country’s territory is covered by a group of regional offices and local representatives in Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi.

VNS, the maker of GeoBox edge-blending and videowall solutions, finds that having just one distributor made it impossible to cover such a sophisticated market. It is hosting a booth at Infocomm India with the main purpose of finding more local partners (including distributors and resellers).

“One challenge with the market is that the decision-making process is really slow,” warns VNS CEO Steve Wang. “It’s normal for a project to be pending for more than a year. Another challenge concerns commercial credit. We have to be much more cautious in India than when doing business elsewhere. By this I mean the credit line on the whole pipeline, not only between us and distributors, but also distributors with resellers, and resellers with end-users. This is not always the case, but we do face greater challenges here.”

Jasra also warns of an increased lead time in project completion. “We still have a long way to go in terms of streamlining and shortening lead time, and the only way to overcome this is to fast track the tendering process in India.”

Sidharth Chhibber, director of Powersoft distributor Acoustic Arts suggests the Indian pro AV market in India is on the march because of the government’s focus on expanding infrastructure. “The market needs maturity in terms of higher quality products and still focuses mainly on lower to lower-mid segment product lines as India remains a largely price sensitive economy,” he says. “Standardisation of solutions is a big challenge as awareness is relatively low. We need more workshops, forums and engagement within the industry.”

Disguise handles local business through its London headquarters but is making a renewed effort to build a presence in India by appointing a distributor (ARK Infosolutions) to provide local support, training, stock, sales, marketing and finance.

“India can be a complex market for a non-Indian entity – with considerations of everything from BIS certification on hardware products, to local currency, local language, and cultural insight.”

“The challenge, especially for foreign companies, is understanding the bidding process and business culture within the various regions throughout the country as well as dealing with various languages and time zones,” says Zarivchatska.

Nonetheless, the business environment is extremely positive and the ecosystem that encourages the growth of pro AV is getting better by the day.

“Whilst budgets can be lower than much of the rest of the world, there is a passion for storytelling and the ‘show’ that outweighs the lack of resource,” describes Rockwell. “India’s market features businesses and individuals going over and above to produce something spectacular, and finding ingenious ways to do something that hasn’t been done before.”

Corporate growth driving AV 
Most opportunities in India currently reside in the metropolitan cities such as Chennai, Mumbai, Deli, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad where pro AV is being designed and implemented. The trend towards rapid urbanisation means cities like these “have become technology hubs” and where corporate AV (occupying 40 per cent of all AV projects) is concentrated, reports Zarivchatska. “These demand high-quality AV solutions for various applications.”

The capital, Delhi, requires special attention due to the large amount of government projects including command and control set ups.

“Distributors and integrators have risen to the demand and become more professional as a result and standards have risen,” says Lee.

The transition from traditional, static signage to digital signage has been huge in India, especially in airports and hospitals and there’s a drive from corporate organisations to replace the consumer TVs in their conference and meeting rooms with professional AV products. “This is only set to increase with more government and multinational investment,” says Von Horvath.

“The challenge is reaching the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities like Jaipur and Agra that don’t have the same government support and therefore don’t have the spending power or logistical structure for new AV integration.”

Christie, though, says investment is increasingly flowing to these cities, where convention centres, entertainment and cultural amenities such as museums are being built.

“Pro AV is no longer applicable only to large cities and metropolitan areas,” says Nayar.

For example, it sold 51 units of its 25,000-lumen Crimson series LPs for an install at Kevadia in Gujarat. “Of course, there are challenges in areas such as infrastructure and connectivity, since these developing cities do not offer the convenience of a seamless installation and post-sales support compared to larger and more developed cities,” says Nayar.

The pro AV market as it relates to intercom is still at a fairly under-developed level, reports Clear-Com, although it is starting to see some interest from the corporate sector, convention and exhibition centres in the region.

Hans Chia, regional sales manager (South Asia Pacific), says: “Bringing professional intercom products, especially wireless devices, to such a massive market is an incredible business opportunity and equally a very challenging logistical and commercial task.”

Smart Cities, digital hub
The Smart Cities Mission is an ambitious urban renewal and retrofitting program to develop 100 cities across the country, making them citizen and environmentally friendly, economically strong and sustainable for future populations. When the program was announced in 2015 the Indian government backed it with a multi-billion dollar fund variously reported between $6bn and $15bn over the five years, with a host of extra funding for other urban transformation projects.

According to the government, the aim is to treat urbanisation as an opportunity rather than a problem – over 50 Indian cities now have over a million population. Each Smart City has a surveillance initiative involving deployment of products like displays and CCTV. Oracle, Nokia and Ericsson are among multi-nationals to land contracts. The Mission expects tangible results to be seen after 2022.

“Smart city projects all over the country will provide enormous potential for future growth in AV,” says Lee.

One example is for Smart City SASGUJ (Safe & Secure Gujarat) Projects, where more than 20 VuWall controllers are installed in 20 locations. The project includes the installation of a huge network of CCTV cameras in major cities to identify traffic rule offenders, detect crime and reduce illegal activities.

“With a strong focus on control rooms, the initiative to increase urbanisation throughout India is certainly driving demand for AV,” says Zarivchatska.

“India is experiencing a bigger and better data network, which is one of the cheapest in the world,” Jasra says. “The government has also taken the initiative to start a Digital India campaign, encouraging not only digital payments but also digital dissemination of information.”

Banking and Financial Services Inclusion (BFSI), which involves taking banking and financial services into rural areas of India, also includes the deployment of pro AV products.

“India’s education sector is expanding by the day and the installation of touch technology and interactive whiteboards for this vertical is increasing too,” says Jasra. “India’s position as a global software hub also helps us in the pro AV industry, as many software companies are creating user-friendly solutions, thereby increasing the use cases for deployment of products in various other verticals, including in retail, corporate (VC solutions) and hospitality.”

Massive opportunities lie in the fast-paced development of India as it transitions to the world’s technology hub.

“India is a very entrepreneurial community,” says Rockwell. “Foreign businesses wanting to be successful have a responsibility to provide a solid educational framework to cultivate the industry’s next generation. It’ll be these foundations that make India one of the world powers in pro AV technology in the future.”

The first step is all about rapport and relationship. “If you don’t know anyone it’ll be hard to establish credibility. Go visit, meet face to face, eat lunch, drink chai, and make friends!”

Bitmovin: Codec Complexity is a "Nuclear Bomb"

Streaming Media

Video streamers want "broadcast-like" latency but device and codec complexity is holding back the entire industry, finds a new report from the company. Among other findings: 20% of respondents don't use any video analytics.

http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/News/Featured-News/Bitmovin-Codec-Complexity-is-a-Nuclear-Bomb-133949.aspx

Low latency is emerging as a top focus area for 2020 to supplement the growing demand for live and interactive streaming experiences. But device complexity and codec inertia are hampering implementation, according to the results of Bitmovin's third annual Developer Report.

"There's a nuclear bomb going off in the complexity of the codec market for OTT," says Kieran Farr, VP of marketing at Bitmovin. "I think that will settle down as some [vendors] go out of business, and the rest will have to make money out of it. We are all going to have to deal with a multi-codec world."

Survey participants include representatives of OVPs, OTT providers, social media, publishers, cable and telcos, and broadcasters.

Almost half are planning to implement low-latency solutions in the next 2 years, as more emerging formats like interactive content demand increasingly "live-like" experiences.

Nearly a third of those surveyed expect latency of less than 1 second. A more "realistic and achievable goal," according to Bitmovin, is latency of less than 5 seconds (expected by half of respondents) at least in the short-term when it comes to scalable events.

"Service providers are looking for broadcast-like latency of between 5 and 10 seconds, in contrast to the de-facto online latency which is north of 30s," says Sean McCarthy, senior technical product marketing manager. "Thankfully, few people are looking for sub-second latency. For most sports events it's not realistic or necessary."

Even as demand rises for low latency, the industry is struggling to deliver it.

Low latency requires encoders, packagers, CDNs, and video players to be updated to deliver end-to-end latency targets. Achieving this across multiple devices and platforms in a consistent manner takes the complexity to a whole other level, increasing time-to-market.

"The video streaming ecosystem is quite fragmented, complex, and hence slow to change," suggests McCarthy. "Updates of low-latency standards like CMAF to PC is straightforward but can't be done as easily across devices, particularly to smartphones, which have different or long cycles for updates. That mean this new technology is not available. Cross-device complexity is the main challenge facing video streaming providers."

Bitmovin, for example, doesn't support CMAF natively in iOS because of restrictions for use by Apple. 

"It's possible to do a lot of software decoding to get around, that but it's laborious," McCarthy says.

As expected, H.264/AVC remains by far the most-used codec (by 91%) but device manufacturers, browser vendors, and content distributers like Cisco, Mozilla, and YouTube have started implementing AV1 on larger scales. Bitmovin thinks AV1 is well-positioned to compete with HEVC and to succeed VP9 for open source use cases in 2020.

"Almost everyone is reliant on H.264 as the practical encoder of choice," says Farr. "As a vendor, naturally we want encoding to move forward but this should concern the whole industry. About 90% of devices can support a codec other than H.264 but they're not moving to VP9 or HEVC which renders talk of AV1 let alone MPEG5 and VVC redundant to say the least."

Bitmovin says broadcasters can make proven CDN cost savings up to 30% or more if they employ a multi-codec approach that leverages the capability of the device and optimises the bitrate ladder, but almost none are doing so.

"Issues around HEVC costs have deterred the market … but there's also inertia among broadcasters to make change and some confusion about the right approach [caused by market complexity]."

The survey also found software on-prem encoding remains a top choice with cloud encoding implementations increasing steadily, if slowly, at 2% year-on-year growth.

Hardware encoding implementations increased by 5% in 2019, per the report. The authors attribute this to an increase in live streaming workflows depending on SDI connections, "especially those demanding low latency applications."

Additionally, hardware encoders remain the preferred choice for simplifed setup and stream management, in particular among broadcasters who might be inclined to maximize the value of their investment while making a more cautious shift towards the cloud.

The free Google Analytics tool ranks as a top choice across respondents. This is usually implemented at the website level, and developers find it easy to extend collecting a few additional video related metrics.

Video buffering rate is the most-used performance metric, coming in at 36.5%.

Surprisingly, a fifth of survey participants responded that they do not use any video analytics products—potentially missing out on understanding the true ROI of their video content. The thinking is that integrating insightful analytics is complex and can be costly, with not many affordable solutions available. In addition, it is hard for decision makers to understand that analytics provide a ROI. 

"Adding another layer of complexity is the fact that developers are frequently tasked with solving all of these challenges and meeting business needs around content protection and monetization," asserts Bitmovin CEO Stefan Lederer. "In short, everyone is trying to figure out how to deliver video in the highest quality, the most cost-effective way, and at scale."

The survey took the views of 542 industry execs from 108 countries in July this year.

Has IBC Survived Its Identity Crisis?

Streaming Media

There have been doubts about the viability of the IBC Show in recent years. Attendee numbers have remained static at around 50,000; vendors tended to make their major annual product launches at NAB, leaving just "European debuts" to promote in Amsterdam; the conference failed to draw big-name speakers; and for a 6-day show it lagged terminally over the weekend.

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Post/Blog/Has-IBC-Survived-Its-Identity-Crisis-133864.aspx

In contrast, a comparatively new trade show focussed on corporate AV kit (Integrated Systems Europe) has grown so big that it’s had to decamp from the RAI to massive facilities in Barcelona.

Perhaps the biggest issue facing IBC was an identity crisis mirroring the existential one threatening the entire broadcast industry. What is the value of broadcasting equipment for a dwindling number of traditional customers when the world is shifting wholesale into commodity IT and workflows from the cloud? Could exhibitors justify the expense of a space on the show floor when all they were meeting were the same budget-starved clients? Its predominantly white, 50-something male demographic gave it an image problem.

IBC tinkered with the format. It attempted to take the brand overseas with pop-up trade events in Dubai to capture the Middle East dollar. Events in Brazil and Asia never got off the ground. It has had "hackathons" and video game zones to attract more millennials; it corralled mobile tech and cloud and then anything related to OTT into special zones.

I’d say IBC has turned things around or is at least in process of getting its identity back. Its heart remains in broadcast engineering—as befits show owners IET, IABM, IEEE BTS, and SMPTE—but a refined and editorially driven conference agenda is keeping the focus on global SVOD and the shifting sands of future technology like 8K UHD, content personalization, and codec battles. It’s successfully put more women front and centre of the conference and refreshed a staid examination of cinema technology.

Its silently dropped a day, down to five, which should intensify the show’s hustle and bustle. True, the most buzzing exhibition area will be Content Everywhere, home to companies in OTT, social, and streaming, rather than the faded glory of halls housing postproduction. But the real reason to attend IBC, the reason it should long continue at home in Amsterdam, is the unrivalled opportunity to network and check the temperature of the industry.

The broadcast industry may be tiny in comparison to consumer electronics or mobile, but it knows the value of a chat over a beer. Call that old school, but it’s still a pretty effective way to do business.

Blade Runner style holographic displays just got a step closer

RedShark News

The day when you can no longer distinguish real things from synthetic objects has come a step closer if you believe the claims coming out of Light Field Lab and more pertinently its latest investors.

https://www.redsharknews.com/technology/item/6605-blade-runner-style-holographic-displays-just-got-a-step-closer

The company which emerged from the ashes of camera maker Lytro is pinning its hopes on holographic technology as the future of display and its prototypes have proved convincing enough for multiple investors to weigh in with $28 million of funding.

The Californian outfit will use the funds to scale its display technology from prototype to product, enabling holographic objects to float in space without head-mounted accessories. The ultimate aim is a holographic TV and holographic cinematic experiences — the holodeck — where redirected walking techniques and haptic effects might be used to simulate touch.

The company has previously talked of augmenting the holographic image with more senses, such as smell.

Last year it demoed a working prototype of a small display measuring 4 by 6 inches that’s capable of projecting 3D holograms. The aim is to build bigger, modular, versions which can be fitted together to create large format location-based entertainment venues.

The plan is to stack the panels together and stitch the images with hundreds of gigapixels of resolution. These 100+ foot wide screens could be placed on floors or ceilings and would project holographic images into a 3D space.

Later versions will be developed for the consumer market, the company confirmed.

This consumer roadmap is reflected in the latest round of investors which includes Samsung Ventures, Verizon Ventures, Comcast, NTT Docomo Ventures, HELLA Ventures and Liberty Global Ventures and follows securing $7 million in January last year.

Verizon, for example, seems excited about pairing its 5G network to deliver high bandwidth media.

Another investor, Taiwania Capital says holographic display technologies “are a new frontier in the display space. The team has created something that was once considered science fiction, but now exists in reality. This enables new business opportunities and unlocks digital environments that no one has seen before.”

Liberty Global reckons Light Field Lab’s displays are the most exciting new technology it has seen in the entertainment space to date. It wants to hook the tech with the industry’s top content creators “to accelerate holographic media distribution on next-generation networks.”

Light Field Lab is already working with rendering company OTOY to build out a content development pipeline for the technology.

Khosla Ventures, another investor, goes so far as to suggest that the Lab’s technology “is the first to shift the paradigm in the display space since the transition from black and white to colour.”

The company told Variety the most significant updates include improved brightness and detail, increased depth of the projected objects, lots of new video examples, as well as real-time and interactive holographic demonstrations.

Certainly, the ambitious roadmap for developing a commercial holographic display within the next couple of years seems on track.

The acid test will be whether the wait will be worth it.

8K TV: Why here, why now?

Cable Satellite International

Back in 2012 when the ITU-R enshrined UHD in two phases, 4K UHD was already seen as a stepping stone to 8K. UHD-2 was considered so far away that little other than resolution was considered in the specification. While the industry is some way from deploying 4K heads are turning towards what’s next. For some this is an unwelcome distraction from the practicalities of 4K transition, with possible risk of consumer confusion, others view it as the natural progression of an industry which has technological advance written in its DNA.

https://www.csimagazine.com/eblast/Digital_Editions/September2019/CSI-Digital-Edition-September2019.pdf

“It’s not unusual for a new technology to emerge and move forward while an earlier one is still being rolled out,” asserts Peter Siebert, DVB Head of Technology. “In this case, it’s relevant to note that 8K TV sets are not necessarily threats to 4K production and delivery, as they could bring improvements in image quality for lower resolution content through upscaling.”

“There will always be technology Luddites,” says Ben Schwarz, speaking as an independent expert, founder CTOi Consulting and communications chair of the Ultra HD Forum. “A devil's advocate would say that 4K is a distraction from HD deployment.”

For William Cooper, founder of consultancy Informitv, 8K represents a natural evolution of video resolution. “HD is now mainstream, 4K is already a reality and 8K is now a possibility,” he says. “Although there may be diminishing returns with each increase in resolution, if the objective is a representation of the highest fidelity, then 8K or beyond may be technologically inevitable.”

He points out that there are many dimensions to improving the fidelity of video reproduction. “Spatial resolution is one, the precision of each pixel is another, and temporal sampling is a further dimension,” he says. “Traditional television technology is compromised in all these dimensions, with plenty of room for improvement.”

The entire industry is now working to deploy 4K with HDR and NGA (Next Gen Audio), as a result of efforts that have cumulated over the last five years.

The Ultra HD Forum, at pains to put 8K on the back burner, recommends that the industry focuses on these added value services such as HDR with dynamic mapping, NGA and HFR for sports.

“The industry has yet to explore the right combination of resolutions, taking into account HDR, HFR and NGA,” notes Thierry Fautier, VP of Video Strategy at Harmonic and president of the Ultra HD Forum.

Rian Bester, who runs 4K channel Insight TV, agrees, “If you show a consumer 4K verses HD the difference is not that apparent but if you show them HDR verses non HDR or HFR verses non HFR - especially in fast moving content like sport - the difference is very apparent and there is no doubt as to the benefit. Those two aspects are far more valuable than going from 4K to 8K for current screen sizes.”

While no-one is suggesting 8K holds any benefit over mobile (and even telcos like BT Sport argue for HD HDR as optimum for handsets) the claim that you need to sit closer to the home screen to perceive the benefit needs re-examining.

Screen sizes are getting bigger – by about an inch a year according to some reports. What’s more, what we think of as a TV set, could be on verge of a radical format overhaul with MicroLED and rollable screens on the horizon.

“In the not too distant future we will have screens that are significantly bigger than currently and they will be multi-application devices like our phones,” Bester suggests. “For that reason, I don’t think people should get too hung up on the science of traditional viewing distance and screen size. This is completely changing.”

Cooper supports this, “The whole point of increasing resolution is that the pixel structure of the image should be imperceptible. It is a psychovisual effect that results in an image that appears to be more realistic.”

Will the tail wag the dog? This is perhaps the most voluble charge against 8K promotion especially since TV makers don’t always get it right (see stereoscopic 3D for details).

It is no coincidence that brands including Hisense, Panasonic, Samsung and TCL are primary backers of the 8K Association nor that Samsung, LG and Philips are partnering Japanese-owned Spanish streamer Rakuten TV’s plans to stream 8K content later this year, nor that Samsung and Sony are sponsoring 8K productions by Insight TV for marketing purposes.

“Although models are already available as low as $5000 they need to be five times cheaper, and up-scalers don't yet make all 4K or HD content shine at 8K,” notes Schwarz.

HDMI 2.1 is provisioned to support 8Kp120 and we are still in the interoperability phase.

The potential for consumer confusion could be high if misleading messages about near-term 8K content availability are made, which could result in 4K market destabilisation.

“While it’s folly to think that the industry can stymie the natural technological progression of display technology, the industry does owe a responsibility to correctly inform consumers of the availability of native 8K content and when it will reach a reasonable critical mass,” says Matthew Goldman, SVP Technology, MediaKind. He believes 8K will only be available for occasional special events like the Olympics or World Cup over the next five years. “We all need to find a compromise between one part of our industry pushing 8K to sell more ‘better’ consumer TVs to increase profit versus another part of our industry pushing back to prevent undermining the wider marketplace for 4K content creation and consumption.”

There is a certain inevitability in cost reduction from TV sets to distribution bandwidth. “We know 8K TV sets will be affordable at some point in time, and that’s when consumers will adopt them at mass scale,” says Fautier. “Therefore, the industry needs to make sure it can offer attractive services for broadcast, live and on-demand streaming, as well as immersive experiences.”

Bester says Insight TV’s 8K experiments are not necessarily because to build up a library, “but because we want to understand where we need to adapt the workflow chain from production through to delivery.”

While there is equipment from cameras to finishing systems and video switchers capable of a full production chain the workflow is embryonic. Data volumes alone present a challenge and a cost.

Nonetheless, the industry is steadily moving toward capturing video at higher resolutions to enable pan, scan and zooming. Production costs for HD and 4K can be reduced by capturing in 8K using one camera and extracting the region of interest via AI.

For immersive experiences such as VR, it’s necessary to capture at 8K resolution and deliver the field of view to either an HD or 4K display. The benefit of 8K here, according to Fautier, is that it provides “an exceptional QoE in contrast to conventional VR approaches where the full frame is sent and the player up-samples the field of view, leading to a poor experience.”

In the same manner, for personalised broadcast, content can be captured in 8K for end-users to navigate the content (at lower resolution) on mobile devices.

“8K offers a more personalised experience with a high QoE compared to other approaches where the zoom leads to fuzzy picture,” says Fautier. This was demonstrated at the French Open with Harmonic encoding and Tiledmedia packaging.

The applications for ultra-high quality source material are not limited because of the production technology. The biggest bottleneck is distribution.

“Even if you look at a high resolution VR application, the problem is not displaying the picture it is getting the content to the consumer via download or streaming,” says Bester.

The only broadcast network capable of supporting 8K today is ARIB DTH (heavily subsidised by the Japanese government via state-run NHK). Neither ATSC or DVB have made any provision to support 8K. 

“In 2019, DTH is probably the only viable way to deliver 8K at scale [but] satellite distribution hasn't yet managed to ride the 4K wave successfully despite active promotion by the likes of SES or Eutelsat,” says Schwarz.

“As far as compression is concerned, the numbers circulating throughout the industry for bandwidth requirements vary. NHK’s commercial service uses 100Mbps, but recent trials with HEVC have shown live sports content at 85Mbps and VOD at 65Mbps.”

VVC promises to half those requirements in a few years. The proposed standard winding its way through MPEG “is the silver bullet” identified by Bester required to drive things forward “because whether the content is 4K or 8K, it really addresses the bottlenecks like CDN costs and bandwidth.”

Proofs of concept, by BBC R&D among others, show VVC being meaningfully more effective than HEVC with the goal of decreasing bitrate by half. But we will have to wait until 2020 when the MPEG specification is finalised and then 2022 to see it implemented in the first devices. 

“We also need to resolve the licensing model of VVC, and the MCIF is working hard toward that,” says Fautier.

Harmonic’s take is that 8K will start with DTH, “but very quickly we will see IP delivery to connected TVs and mobile devices,” though probably limited to 4K.

The codec is an important element, but high-speed broadband networks - fibre, DOCSIS 3.1, and 5G –“are the best fit to carry 8K content, even using the HEVC codec,” says Fautier.

For live applications at scale, multicast will likely be needed, with 5G FeMBMS (Further evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) an attractive solution (being trialled in Bavaria).

Globecast, which reports more than 60 percent of its customers in Europe still to make the transition to HD, identifies OTT as the preferred method for content delivery in new formats.

“That was true for 4K and will likely stay true for 8K,” says Juliet Walker, CMO. “That’s because you don’t need to wait for an industry-approved new interoperable tech standard for the signal transmission chain. Innovation comes fast on the internet and device/display vendors are quick to adopt new technologies to sell ‘boxes’.”

As with 4K, Walker thinks sports will lead the way in 8K, even while 4K rollout remains sluggish. Expect to see the first wave of 8K content produced at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, as well as VoD in 8K streamed to connected TVs in the same time frame.

That’s why, argues 8K Association and the UHD Forum, that it’s important to agree on a standard for 8K that includes support for IP delivery (VoD and live) across all type of networks, 5G included, on all devices (TVs to smartphones). Immersive applications being different from broadcast ones, will also require guidelines. 

The DVB for its part has completed a report into media formats beyond UHD-1 4K. “These formats have the potential to be commercially viable in the coming years,” says Siebert. The report was submitted to DVB’s Steering Board in July as an input document for potential future specification work.

The prevailing view, voiced by Antonio Corrado, CEO at video delivery network MainStreaming, is that “broadcasters won’t be able to justify the cost for a small niche audience that will be able to experience streaming in 8K until its wider adoption by device makers and consumers.”

Thomas Wrede, VP, New Technology & Standards, SES Video says the key ingredient is an effective business model. “We need an equation that encourages subscribers to pay for the quality of the content itself, and not just the screen they unboxed.”

To lay the groundwork for 8K the industry needs an aligned end-to-end ecosystem. Even with two organisations (the UHD Alliance and Ultra HD Forum), guiding 4K deployments, “it was not an easy process,” Fautier admits. “However, member companies have learned to work together, even if they compete in the marketplace. The same collaboration needs to exist for 8K, and the 8K Association is at the forefront to drive those efforts.”

In summary, there is a ton of work required to make 8K a reality. This is a multi-year effort, at least five to ten years depending on the application. The fear is that too much focus is put on classical broadcast, while IP is a low hanging fruit, at least to connected TVs and mobile devices and that the immersive experience is still the wild west and will take time to mature, likely in the 2022-2024 period.

“The next generation of video entertainment is based on several pillars of which a higher resolution is but one aspect,” says Schwarz. “I expect a paradigm change on the whole concept of resolution. Specific content will be produced at given resolutions. 8K will remain the upper limit until some new disruptive technology makes something akin to vector-based video a practical reality.”

By the same token, certain territories lagging now but unencumbered by legacy infrastructure in future, could see 8K leapfrog 4K in the same way that cellular did over DSL.

“This is why we shouldn’t get too hung up on the science,” Bester says. “Let us imagine you have an entire wall in your living room at 16K, if you go beyond that it will not make a difference. I think 16K is the top limit where the drive for higher resolutions will end.”

ends

IBC - Automation and 8K take centre stage

Broadcast 

Cloud and IP, content and metadata through to smart use of automation and AI, IBC2019 is all about the ‘supply chain’

p42: https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/digital-editions/broadcast-tech-september-2019/5142326.article#.XWlLptWF2IY.twitter

If recent IBCs and NABs are a guide then expect the trajectory of core postproduction tools to move further into the cloud enriched with time saving automation. The most common AI applications are facial and object recognition, speech to text and enhanced metadata tagging.

Avid’s ‘reimagined’ Media Composer is its biggest redesign in 15 years. it supports Netflix’s mastering and delivery requirements including the ACES (Academy Color Encoding System)

Tasks that previously took hours can now be done in minutes, claim Avid of a new distributed processing module. Avid NEXIS Cloudspaces effectively extends local offline storage into Microsoft Azure.  

Adobe is speeding workflow using AI. In After Effects, a new content-aware option automates removal of objects like boom mics, signs and even people from footage and fill in the pixels with neighbouring pixel data to complete the scene.

Blackmagic Design’s latest DaVinci Resolve features a cut page tool to speed editing of fast turnaround projects. An upper timeline shows the entire programme while a lower timeline on the same page shows the current work area to avoid users having to zoom in or out. An AI/ML Engine uses facial recognition to automatically sort and organise clips into bins based on people in the shot.

8K ecosystem widens

Indicators for 8K will be spread all over the floor at IBC2019. Both Avid and Resolve software can handle 8K finishing (Avid even claims 16K).

Indeed, it’s the new must-have appendage for vendors (see also AI). The greater data overhead can help render higher quality visual effects or deliver more information to the final image for cinematographers wanting to mix resolution, aspect ratios, and sensor size.

Drama, like mini-series Trust, are increasingly shot at higher than 4K resolutions and more general programming is following suit. 4K channel Insight TV is shooting some content in 8K, including segments of Car Crews with Supercar Blondie, starring social influencer and car nut Alex Hirschi.

Blackmagic Design identifies the corporate video comms market as early adopters. It announced a flurry of 8K capable solutions including the ATEM Constellation switcher earlier this year.

“What’s most important for us when we talk about an 8K product is that it’s inherently available for 4K as well,” explains Craig Heffernan, technical sales director EMEA. “It’s a future proof workflow that enables anyone to test or implement 8K workflows based around UHD budgets and planning, and allows us to provide a foundation to build tools for customers leading the industry into 8K content production.”

The format will also find a home in live production for techniques such as region of interest—extracting 4K or HD images from a single 8K one.

“The benefit is that 8K offers a more personalised experience with a high quality of experience compared to other approaches where the zoom leads to fuzzy picture,” says Thierry Fautier, vp, video strategy at Harmonic which will present results of its 8K over 5G demonstration at the French Open at IBC2019.

Full frame imaging

The crop of large-format digital cinema cameras and lenses continues to grow. Bigger and better sensors are becoming easier to produce - though price is still a factor. Full-frame sensors offer better depth of field control and image quality, particularly in low light situations.

An inexpensive new option is on verge of launch by lens maker Sigma. Touted as the world's smallest and lightest full frame mirrorless (i.e electronic shutter) camera, the Sigma fp will record 12-bit CinemaDNG raw in 24p 4K. It’s got the virtue of a point and shoot camera with the trappings of a cine quality imager and is compatible with Sigma and Panasonic lenses.

Rival options include Sony’s Alpha 7R IV, shipping around IBC for about U$3500 and capable of recording 4K up to 30p. Sony says the 61 Megapixel sensor makes it the highest-resolution full-frame camera it has ever introduced.

Look to Chinese vendor Z Cam for release (post IBC) of full frame 6K and 8K versions of its E2 modular cinema camera. The E2-S6 sports a 26MP Super35 CMOS sensor paired with either a Canon EF or ARRI PL mount. It can shoot UHD 4K 60p and will cost a budget friendly U$3,995.

Harmonising OTT and TV

A new initiative intended to standardise the delivery and presentation of broadband and broadcast delivered television is being put before the industry at IBC.

DVB-I, from cross industry consortium DVB, aims to do for OTT what it did for digital TV. Namely, to enable broadcasters to deploy common services across a wide range of devices and to enable manufacturers to save costs and offer a single consistent user experience for all video services.

“We are not early – but I don’t think we are too late,” says Peter MacAvock, DVB chair. “The OTT march is fully underway and DVB-I is designed to provide the type of standard and rigour to the OTT sphere that DVB brought to digital TV.”

Specifications include the integration of channel list so that all broadcast and IP services are discoverable and a low latency mode to ensure that the overall delay for live OTT channels is the equivalent to broadcast, potentially down to fractions of a second.

Silver bullet compression

Debate continues about the merits of codecs to succeed HEVC for streaming video with cost as much a consideration as compression quality.

The chief contenders are AV1, developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) and Versatile Video Coding (VVC), an MPEG-led standard.

In tests earlier this year, BBC R&D found that compression gains from VVC far exceeded that of either HEVC and AV1 but at the cost of processing time. It also found that AOM has significantly reduced AV1’s computationally complexity.

VVC could cut bandwidth requirements in half over HEVC and is considered the silver bullet to make 4K and even 8K fly.

“For an economic broadcast of 8K television the industry needs VVC,” says Thomas Wrede, vp new technology & standards, SES Video.

However, there are question marks about the licence costs of AV1 and VVC which the Media Coding Industry Forum is working to clear up. In the interim, MPEG has fast-tracked development of MPEG-5 EVC as a royalty-free codec competing directly with AV1.

With the race to standardise EVC and VVC due next year, at the time AV1 is set to mature, there will likely be a photo finish.

Interoperability - more important than ever

Spme form of IP production tool can be found on most booths but there appear two competing systems: the ST 2110 family of standards and NewTek’s NDI.

“The reality is that we’re unlikely to have a single IP solution,” says Ian Wadgin, senior technology transfer manager, BBC R&D. “What we need is a way for the two systems to interoperate and pass content between them.”

A broadcaster may use ST 2110 in their studio environment but have NDI in their live news production workflows where more compressed workflows are important to deal with less than optimal connectivity.

The answer might lie in NMOS (Network Media Open Specifications) enabling an NDI source to appear on a ST 2110 matrix and vice versa.

Since NewTek was acquired by VizRT in the industry’s most dramatic M&A this year, eyes will be on this integration.

“Convergence of the two systems would be welcome and means that the right tool will be available for content producers whatever their requirements or budget,” Wadgin says.

Vox Pops

The entire value chain for 8K needs evolving. If you look at 8K cameras, particularly for ENG type applications, the selection is very limited. Not all post production tools are set up to deal with 8K. Then there’s storage. We’ve started producing projects in 8K, not necessarily to build up the library, but because we want to understand where we need to adapt the workflow chain from production through to delivery. Rian Bester, CEO, Insight TV

The next big thing promises to be shooting in ‘Full Frame’. However, the choice of cameras available to cinematographers is very slim and with the exception of DSLRs, all are very expensive with a gaping hole in the middle. We have a sneaking suspicion that some manufacturers will launch professional Full Frame cameras to make this new format available to the mainstream. Barry Bassett, managing director, VMI

As television continues its transformation into an era of universal IP delivery, the resilience and quality of experience of broadcast must be maintained. Understanding emerging developments in hardware and software, together with a view on how these might be implemented by the television device sector are critical if the viewer experience is to be protected, and industry and government are to derive the maximum economic and social value of the unique opportunity that lies ahead. Richard Lindsay-Davies, CEO, DTG

Having recently migrated our content to the public cloud, our IBC exam question is around how we use this opportunity to help our viewers discover even more UKTV content and to enjoy it when and where they want it. Simple but smart, nimble products that can easily plug in to our existing ecosystem will fit the bill nicely. Sinead Greenaway, CTOO, UKTV

Behind the scenes: The Lion King

IBC

The animated remake of the Disney classic employed a live-action film crew that could work inside virtual reality using traditional camera equipment to set up and execute shots in the animated world the same way they would be achieved in the real world.

https://www.ibc.org/create-and-produce/behind-the-scenes-the-lion-king/4407.article

For all its pioneering virtual production, the biggest breakthrough in The Lion King is its dedication to putting old fashioned filmmaking front and centre of the creative process.

“You can’t improve on 100 years of filming,” says Rob Legato, the production’s VFX Supervisor. “You start with the actors, you block out the scene, you select the lens, you compose and light the shot. If you shortcut that, it no longer feels like a movie.”

The Lion King, is of course, Disney’s remake of its 1994 animated smash and also a follow-up to The Jungle Book. It re-unites director Jon Favreau with the VFX team led by Legato and MPC VFX supervisor Adam Valdez.

Indeed, for Technicolor-owned MPC, the story began as early as October 2016, while still wrapping up work on The Jungle Book campaign and months before Legato and Valdez won the Best VFX Oscar. They began discussing how the pipeline and methodology could continue to evolve from The Jungle Book to take their next project to yet another level.

Unlike The Jungle Book, where actor Neel Sethi (Mowgli) was composited into photoreal CG backgrounds with equally life-like animated animals, this time the entire film would be generated in a computer but shot with all the qualities of a David Attenborough nature documentary.

“Once the decision was taken to treat the movie as if it were live action it has to be filmed with a live action intent,” Legato explains to IBC365. “That means there are creative choices that you make only in analogue. You don’t make them frame by frame, you make them by looking at it and changing your mind, on the spur of the moment, in response to what is happening in front of you. A live action movie is the sum total of the artistic choices of a director, a cinematographer, an editor and many more. You have to find a way of recreating those on a virtual stage.”

Having studied at film school and served as a VFX supervisor, VFX director of photography and second unit director on films like Scorsese’s The Aviator, The Departedand Shutter Island; and Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath and Cast Away, Legato observes that his best work has not been about creating fantastic worlds but about believable ones.

“From the Titanic sinking to Apollo 13 launching any success I have had is about trying to fool the eye into believing something that looks like any other part of the movie.”

Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel earned his spurs for director Francis Coppola’s camera department on The Godfather and Apocalypse Nowand has six Oscar nominations to his name, including The Right Stuff, The Natural and The Passion of the Christ. He worked with Legato on Titanic for which Legato also won an Oscar.

“Caleb is a fabulous artist but he has no experience of digital translation so my job was to navigate the mechanics of this for him,” explains Legato.

Essentially that meant providing an interface for Deschanel between the virtual world and the tools of conventional filmmaking in such a way that the DP could call and operate a shot just like any other movie.

“We don’t want to throw him to the wolves just because he doesn’t come from a digital background,” Legato says. “His intuition about what makes a shot work is essential so we did everything in our power to help his ideas translate.”

That’s not to suggest that the virtual production techniques advanced for The Lion Kingwere designed solely for Deschanel.

“What we’re trying to do is tap into our gut level response to things, our instantaneous art choice – what happens if I pan over here and then, if I move a light over this way, and put that rock there. Everything is designed to be done in real time, instinctively, instead of over thought and intellectualised.”

Virtual realityThe key production advance to achieve this is VR. Trialled on The Jungle Book, its extensive use here enabled the filmmakers to collaborate on shooting the movie at nearly every stage as if it were a live action.

Where Avatar broke ground by giving the filmmakers a window on the VFX world — they could see the CG environment in real time during production as if they were looking at it through the camera’s viewfinder — The Lion King inverts that idea by putting the filmmakers and their gear inside a game engine that renders the world of the film.

If that concept sounds a little hard to grasp, Legato explains that it’s not as sophisticated as it sounds.

“VR allows you to walk around the CG world like you would on a real set and put the camera where you want. The physicality of it helps you to psychologically root yourself. You know where the light goes, you know where the camera goes, you know where the actors are – and all of a sudden you start doing very natural camera work because you’re in an environment that you’re familiar with.

On a virtual stage dubbed the Volume in Playa Vista, LA, Favreau and his crew donned HTV Vive headsets to view 360-degree pre-built panoramas and pre-visualized animation.

Camera moves were choreographed using modified camera gear – cranes, dollies, Steadicam (even a virtual helicopter, operated by Favreau himself) – to allow the filmmakers to ‘touch’ their equipment with the motion tracked by sensors on the stage ceiling and simulated directly within the virtual world.

Effectively, they were making a rough version of the movie in real-time with graphics rendered using a customised version of the Unity game engine.

“Instead of designing a camera move as you would in previs on a computer, we lay dolly track down in the virtual environment,” says Legato. “If I want to dolly track from this rock to that tree the dolly has real grip and inertia and a pan and tilt wheel which is sending data back to the virtual environment. It’s not a facsimile. In that way you retain the imperfections, the accidents, the little idiosyncrasies that make human creative choices but which would never occur to you if you made it perfectly in digital.”

In other words, the storytelling instincts of artists with decades of experience making features is absolutely at the heart of this virtual production process.

“An amateur director can still put cut shots together but if they were given The Godfatherto make then they would make a very different movie. A Martin Scorsese directed film is very specific to his point of view. It is not arbitrary, it is very serious art. And that is what we are trying to do here.”

Pre-building the virtual worldIn order for any of this to work there was a major first stage which was pre-building the virtual environment.

The VFX team and core crew including production designer James Chinlund spent two weeks on safari in Kenya photographing vistas and data capturing foliage, the different species of plants and trees, and various lighting environments. They photographed 360-degree HDR images of the sky and the sun and built a huge library of these high-resolution images.

Back at MPC, the landscapes were modelled in Maya and, using a bespoke asset management system, integrated into Unity.

Working within the VR world, Favreau and Deschanel were able to explore the locations, effectively scouting for the places to shoot each scene.

Next, Favreau and animation supervisor Andy Jones would work out the mechanics of a scene – the rough blocking and approximate animation, again in VR.

“It just kept evolving and iterating until we get to something that we like,” says Legato. “We could all walk around in the virtual world together, and see things for the first time, look at things from different angles. You could be miles apart in the VR world but three feet apart on the stage but we could talk to each other and say ‘Why not take a look at what I am seeing?’ and we could all snap to their point of view.

“When that was done, Caleb would work with Sam Maniscalco (lead lighting artist) and they would light the scene for each shot.”

As with live action, the action was covered from different angles in order to provide a selection of takes for editorial. When editor Mark Livolsi had made his selections, the resulting shots were sent back to MPC along with the camera tracking data to finesse into final production quality.

Months of research went into character development. The final designs were sent to artists at MPC, who built them using new proprietary tools for improved simulation of muscles, skin and fur.

From 12,000 takes of photography, MPC delivered nearly 1500 shots (170,668 Frames or 119 minutes of final images) to Disney. 145 shots that got started were omitted in the process.“They perfected the nuances of performance and lit it to look absolutely photoreal but the creative choices of what we’re shooting has been already selected in this looser live action virtual space.”

Because they wouldn’t be involved in the film’s principal photography, The Lion King’shuman actors (including Donald Glover and Seth Rogan) were often asked to perform with each other in the Volume rather than simply reading script pages from a standing stationary position at a mic. Legato says the stage environment helped them deliver real, physical performances as references for the animators.

“We photographed with multiple Blackmagic Design cameras so the animators could see the intent of the actor,” said Legato. “But when they pause and they look and you see them thinking, you know that that’s what drives the performance. It’s much more informed than just voices only.”

The output from the cameras was routed over more Blackmagic gear so the team could watch playback or drop the footage directly into Avid for editorial.

“If we needed to throw an image onto a big screen so that the actors can get a sense of working with the pre-viz we could do that,” Legato says. “The Blackmagic kit was like a Swiss Army knife, a useful and necessary tool in this process, which fitted together whichever way we needed it.”

Da Vinci was used as a finishing tool and also to apply colour correction to the animation even before going through the Digital Intermediate process at MPC.

The main virtual camera was modelled on an ARRI Alexa 65 to enhance the film’s epic quality, paired with the Panavision 70 cinema lenses that were used on the reference trip in Africa.

But it is the tactility and authenticity of using actual camera devices and the instant feedback into the virtual environment which, Legato believes, gave them the ability to iterate the animation to a greater degree than ever before.

“I don’t know of anybody else doing it,” he says. “Even James Cameron isn’t shooting Avatar with VR in this way.”

The technology is already filtering into TV production, albeit the most high-end TV possible. Disney’s Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian, which is created by Favreau, is using a similar set up albeit with the Unreal games engine.

“The ability to see in advance what only can be imagined until fully constructed will create better and better films, plays, concerts, and television shows,” adds Legato. “What you can now preview with great detail can only make for more exciting and original artistic expressions. So, in short, the encouragement to explore will take the advantages of VR to the next level.”