Making Remote Audio Post Workflows a Success With Re-Recording Mixer Karol Urban

copywritten for Sohonet

Karol Urban CAS MPSE (Grey’s Anatomy, Single Parents, New Girl, Station 19, Boomerang) re-recording mixer, has built a diverse list of mix credits spanning work on feature films, TV series (scripted and unscripted), TV movies, and documentaries and describes her job as “playing mind games with sound.” As a perpetual student of her craft, she enjoys exploring the power sound has to immersive the viewer in the narrative.

https://www.sohonet.com/2020/10/27/making-remote-audio-post-workflows-a-success-with-karol-urban/

The final stages of the creative process are often the most essential – and the ones at most risk of being lost when workflows are torn apart. Critical decisions are affected greatly when client and editor, colourist or dubbing mixer are tasked with making nuanced adjustments to the sound and picture without the ability to share the screen in front of them.

When COVID-19 threatened to terminate this social connection, Karol Urban MPSE and current president of Cinema Audio Society (CAS) was ready to plug it right back in.

“We already had an amazing workflow for remote approvals when the pandemic started,” Urban explains. “It was just a matter of taking the workflow we had used so successfully over a number of seasons for one client and offering it to everyone. [Sohonet] ClearView Flex has been absolutely fantastic.”

Urban is a hugely experienced and in-demand re-recording mixer for television and feature films. At Westwind Media in Burbank, she and Kurt Kassulke CAS had been using a remote approval system to help some clients overcome the logistical challenge of LA’s notorious traffic and maximize their productivity.

“I mixed New Girl and then Single Parents (both of which were done at Fox) and the executives expressed a preference to perform approvals remotely to save them time travelling over the hill from the Fox lot,” she says.

“Ultimately, we secured a ClearView Flex system and our engineering staff at Westwind crafted a superb workflow that allows us to stream high-quality video and audio to up to 30 users simultaneously.”

She notes, “We were using a different service previously but the satisfaction and reliability went through the roof when we went with ClearView Flex.”

 In fact, Urban used this remote approval workflow on each of the 45 episodes over two seasons of Single Parents for ABC. “The show was wonderful to work on,” she shares. “From PA to EP everyone involved was 100 per cent team-oriented. So much so that the EPs and editors would make an effort to come onto the dub stage in person at least once a season because we were part of their team.”

The system at Westwind Stage 3 is configured so that signals from the in-board talkback of its control surfaces are fed directly to the ClearView Flexbox. This enables Urban and Kassulke to chat with multiple users through a live stream while hearing the client’s notes and discussion through a conference call. 

“Our chief engineer Craig Holbrook did an incredible job streamlining this workflow. A technician oversees the session from the machine room to monitor for any technical concerns so if anybody does have any issue they are already sent a new link often before the client even notices. They are constantly monitoring the signals to make sure everyone can view the stream.”

Having perfected this system of remote approval for major broadcast network shows it was straightforward to pivot when the pandemic struck.

“Everyone needed to decrease their contact time overnight but ClearView Flex came to the rescue,” Urban says.

This wasn’t just for the shows she was working on either. Westwind began offering ClearView Flex as an option to other productions in the facility. It allowed Westwind to remain on the dub stage while strictly adhering to safety guidelines and ensuring that a quality product was delivered on deadline. 

“I work on a traditional two mixer dub stage. There is plenty of room for my co-mixer and I to work with at least 6 feet between us, even while sharing our board,” Urban explains.

“Usually, it’s just me and my mixing partner in the room and our engineering staff tries to remedy any technical issues and setup duties remotely. The machine core is in another space in the building so they rarely need to come in.  Sound Supervisors and Music Editors work remotely and fly in material via our secure server.”

She continues, “When the mix is ready to present, we allow a couple of EPs, writers, directors, or editors in the backfield if they would prefer to approve in person. This allows enough space for the recommended social distancing. Then we schedule a Clearview Flex review session with engineering if anyone prefers to weigh in remotely.”

By the end of March, nearly all producers, editors, and writers were remotely approving. Urban finished season 2 of Boomerang for BET (produced by Paramount TV Studios, Hillman Grad Productions, 606 Television and DeEtte Productions) and multiple episodes of S16 of Grey’s Anatomy (Shondaland Productions) for ABC using ClearView Flex.

When shut down became really tight and leaving home was discouraged for non-essential businesses, she was forced to remote work from home.

“I did not have ClearView Flex. I used another tech and I was not nearly as pleased. I was very excited to get my ClearView Flex back. There is a discernible difference in reliability and quality.”

To reduce her time in the studio, Urban has also been pre-dubbing at home. “My private studio is calibrated three ways to Sunday and is Atmos capable. I have temperature regulating iso racks for all my gear, an AVID S3 and Dock, JBLs, and a full complement of plug-ins, but it is not a dub stage. My room at Westwind is so beautifully balanced. It was natively constructed to be THX compliant and is currently Dolby Atmos certified. 

“I prefer to go there at a minimum for a final QC listen. Visiting the dub stage provides me with a chance to break the monotony of staring at the walls at home. The room has an isolated entrance to the outside and is routinely cleaned. It’s safe and I can run my files in that calibrated space… they also have ClearView Flex capabilities!”

When clients could no longer go into the studio and were all at home in full remote mode ClearView Flex proved its mettle. Urban says, “I’ve never had a complaint about quality of sound or picture.”

Now that production is gradually getting up and running, Urban predicts a deluge of work coming their way. Much of this will be completed using remote workflows and not just because of enforced social distancing.

“My favorite part of mixing is analyzing the script and moulding the narrative in group discussions on the dub stage but, in truth, budgets have got smaller, schedules have got tighter, and at the same time there’s been a trend to have more and more people in the room for reviews. And more perspectives naturally beget more discussion and requires more time.”

“While I miss having time to interact with people face to face, as far as productivity is concerned this forced isolation has assisted efficiency in some ways because my clients are asking themselves whether they need to be physically present or not. My creative teams have begun consolidating and pre-discussing notes.”

“People are prioritizing notes and prioritizing those who attend the mix. The result is a reduction in notes and less conflicting perspectives that need to be discussed and worked through.  This affords me more time to address noise and add nuance to my mix. What we’re learning from this process is to prioritize what is important and make ourselves more efficient and I believe as a result remote workflow may be here to stay.”

She concludes, “ClearView Flex has been a great solution. I know it’s key to our workflow moving forward. I’m excited about it. ClearView Flex has allowed us to expand our seats and make sure we respect everyone’s health. It is currently an essential element to our success.”

Vendor R&D: The innovator’s dilemma

IBC

The demand shock of Covid-19 continues to reverberate, but many technology suppliers see investing in R&D as the only way to fight back.

As the IABM’s most recent report put it, the pandemic has dropped a “digital bombshell” on the media industry. Most companies have had to bite the bullet to defend their positions and accelerate their move to software, IP and virtualised products accompanied by as-a-service business models. 

https://www.ibc.org/trends/vendor-randd-the-innovators-dilemma/6923.article

The impact is clear in the recent financial results of one of the industry’s stalwart engineers, Evertz. Its revenues for Q1 (May 1, 2020 – July 31, 2020) were down 46% versus the same period 2019. Trading in the US was especially challenged, with Evertz recording a 51% decline in revenues in the region.  

It’s a pattern being repeated – at least in those companies making public financial reports. Analyst Devonport estimates Grass Valley’s Q1 2020 revenue was down 41%; Avid and Harmonic also highlighted that their legacy products had suffered from a more pronounced decline in revenues, as reported by the IABM. 

IABM analysis shows that the pandemic has negatively influenced both software and hardware revenues on aggregate, as media technology budgets have generally declined. However, companies heavily reliant on hardware and legacy software have been impacted disproportionately more by the lockdown restrictions. 

Mo Goyal, senior director for international business development at Evertz, says: “A number of projects we were in discussions with at the beginning of the year were put on hold. After the initial urgency of pulling together solutions with operators working from home, the focus now is on the reality of having some team members in the facility and others working remotely. There’s been an acceleration of the shift to cloud services and those companies who were part of the IP transition found it easier.” 

Nonetheless, according to a Devonport study,  Evertz was able to grow its R&D spend in the face of a 46% decline in revenue. The Canadian government’s wage furlough scheme enabled the Ontario-based company to actually increase headcount in its R&D wing. 

“We are proud of continuing to invest in R&D,” says Goyal. “Early on in the pandemic we reached out to a number of key customers and asked them what their new challenges were. That helped us prioritise programs that we had been working on deploying, such as the DreamCatcher live production suite in the cloud. It was always on the roadmap, but it got accelerated. We have less focus on other technology because the shift means we have to get into more of a software mode, which was not in our roadmap at the beginning.” 

Sydney Lovely, CTO and general manager for networking at Grass Valley, declined to confirm Devonport’s estimate but comments: “We were in a period of transition and our business operation were very stable, but had we been 100% in or out of Belden we may have made more dramatic changes.” 

As the industry moves to remote productions for live events and remote collaboration for postproduction, many traditional suppliers are sitting on old technology stacks, many hardware based, and cannot pivot that quickly. 

Graham Sharp, CEO of Broadcast Pix, says: “Faced with declining revenue streams from traditional products, many companies have no choice but to cut costs. They are faced with the innovator’s dilemma: they must support their traditional products, maybe modifying them somewhat for the current environment to keep sales flowing, leaving no resources available to create new technology and products. Rather than adding more R&D resource, they are reducing it on the back of declining sales. 

“Meanwhile, with open source technology, it is relatively easy for a start-up, or small agile company to quickly and easily create innovative software-based products that serve the new world we live in.” 

Roadmap revision 
All twelve vendors replying to IBC365 for this article said that Covid-19 had barely impacted their business and/or that internal R&D was unaffected by the crisis. Of course, these respondents are understandably keen to promote their foresight in being ahead of the market when it comes to having product primed for softwarisation. 

Adam Leah, creative director at nxtedition says: “There has been no need to adjust our development roadmap or change our product as it was designed to work within the new requirements of broadcasters during this crisis. As a company everything we do is microservices, web technology and virtualisation.” 

While 44% of suppliers replying to the IABM’s recent census indicated their R&D would increase under the pandemic, that leaves a question mark over the rest. 

Henry Goodman, director of product development at Calrec, says: “More than ever, this is the time for manufacturers to work collaboratively, and any reductions in R&D across the industry will slow everyone down.”  

If not diverting extra cash into R&D, media technology suppliers are increasingly focused on speeding up the development of new products and platforms. Many vendors told the IABM that they have developed new products in a drastically shorter amount of time and on the back of pressing customer feedback.  

Telestream accelerated the debut of GLIM, which allows customers to play mezzanine and professional-grade media files over the internet in a browser; Broadcast Pix switched all development from its planned roadmap to creating StreamingPix which is the firm’s first streaming focused appliance. It is looking to hire more software engineers as a result. R&D spend has “gone up slightly” at Cinegy, according to Jan Weigner, company president and CTO, to deal with additional customer feature requests resulting from an increased remote and cloud focus and to bring roadmap features forward faster. 

Sony’s Smart Production solution, developed and trialled by Sony R&D teams in Basingstoke with German public broadcaster SWR, was a direct consequence of SWR’s need to find a new way of producing content with a reduced crew.  

John Stone, head of European professional engineering (EPE) at Sony, says: “In parallel, the timetable of some solutions, like our automated production tool with Norwegian broadcaster NRK [currently codenamed Metadata Wrangler], was not negatively impacted by Covid-19, as it was deployed as a cloud service.”  

Nor has MAM vendor Tedial witnessed any Covid-19 impact on its R&D. “Our tools have been hosted in the cloud for many years,” says CTO Julian Fernandez-Campon. “What we’ve done is reinforce remote production in the cloud and the use of cloud media services and hybrid cloud.” 

Daniel Lundstedt, sales and marketing at Intinor, says: “We’ve been very fortunate that even though some projects were delayed, and sports productions impacted, others fell into our lap. Our roadmap is created in close dialogue with our customers and due to COVID-19, both we and our customers have had more time for testing and planning.” 

Ciaran Doran, director of marketing, broadcast & media, Rohde & Schwarz, adds: “If anything, the crisis has encouraged us to speed up in the direction that we already set – software-defined platforms from studio production to playout, that are modular and configurable for the specific workflows required.” 

Grass Valley always earmarked April to launch its cloud-based Agile Media Processing Platform, but when the pandemic happened it changed a limited release into a more fully featured one. 

“We’d developed the initial application with Blizzard Entertainment but when they were shut down we pivoted our team to expand the solution from remote production to a fully decentralised one in which they could take feeds in from all around the world and produce and publish content using just a browser,” says Sydney Lovely. “Since then, our IP product lines have taken off like a rocket ship.”  

IP and SaaS warnings 
The crisis is widely understood to have forced the hands of media organisations and tech suppliers into accelerating direct to consumer offers and the cloud-based infrastructure to support it. 

“The broadcast industry is at a critical point with IP deployment starting to gain momentum,” says Goodman. 

Yet the crisis is in danger of knocking that off course. “We were surprised by a resurgence of interest in SDI,” says Goyal. “Companies are planning to make their next big investment in the transition to IP but the pandemic has put those investment dollars on hold. So, there’s an element of thinking ‘what can I get away with incrementally without having to do a complete overhaul whilst still being on an IP path long term’.” 

Grass Valley, which still chairs the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) it co-launched in 2015, concurs. “We’re seeing more hybrid approaches than green field sites,” says Lovely. “For some [clients] in the lower end of the market SDI is good enough and sticking with that. The upper quartile is all in for IP. It’s the middle sector who know they want to get to IP but can’t afford to get there where we are seeing some incremental SDI purchases.” 

The business continuity crisis has also accelerated media companies’ transition to as-a-service technology models.   

According to IABM, the transition has well-known financial implications for the supply side of the industry as companies moving from large and infrequent inflows of money to smaller and more regular payments, suffer from a painful and lengthy cashflow crunch. IABM research shows that this crunch has been exacerbated by the pandemic-induced shock on technology demand by forcing a move to subscriptions and on-demand billing. 

Simon Browne, VP product management at Clear-Com, says: “There is certainly a great deal of interest in looking for as-a-service solutions from vendors, but these soft products are far from easily managed. It requires a fully formed back office and maintenance methodology to be successful. Our own customer experience tells us that only a few customers are ready to handle the licenses and repetition of payments that fall out of this service approach.” 

“Managing this transition has its perils and very few suppliers in our industry have done it,” warns Sharp. “You have to cross the revenue ‘valley of death’ – convert permanent license orders to annual licences at 20% or 25% of the value. The business must be extremely well-funded to cross this chasm and I am not sure many in our industry are.” 

Trade show absence 
The loss of trade shows is also impacting the decades old R&D cycle. NAB and IBC forced development to hit a date. The IABM thinks their calendar absence has prompted suppliers to move to a more continuous delivery of technology solutions. 

David Ross, chairman and CEO, Ross Video, agrees. “If you let dates slide to the natural point where R&D wants to have it, you may release [product] much later than you [predicted]. So, I think it might slow down the pace of our industry but decrease the vapourware at the same time.” 

Weigner believes there’s no excuse not to plough the savings made by not marketing or exhibiting at trade shows into R&D. “The moment you cut down on R&D you have a problem which is not as easily solved as reduced tradeshow, marketing and other ongoing costs. As most tradeshows have been cancelled this should provide ample savings to make R&D cost reductions implausible – unless you really do not believe you have the right product or approach anymore.” 

Lovely believes the usefulness of trade shows as a marker for new product deadlines is outdated. “Instead of big bang hardware-oriented releases you are seeing these turn into software,” he says. “Companies like us are working more in collaboration with customers who are interested in seeing updates more frequently rather than having to wait for an upgrade.” 

Not all will survive  
If the health of a market can be measured by total R&D spend “any reduction in overall R&D would therefore show some stagnation and put innovation and end customer experience on hold,” says Browne. 

Business continuity has become a key priority for media companies.  “The requirement to connect creative teams with production tools, irrespective of location, has grown significantly over the past six months,” says Sony’s John Stone. “The transition to systems based on cloud, virtualisation, IP, remote production and subscription-based service models has accelerated, and these technologies are now featured within the overall product/solution/service portfolios from leading suppliers.” 

Be that as it may, if a company is jumping onto that bandwagon only now, there is a lot of catching up to do, though Weigner says this depends a lot on what it is that you do: “Are you digging for gold yourself, getting paid for digging, or selling the shovels, or now - as a new business - providing the latest shovels right to the customers’ site, whenever needed, billed conveniently by the hour?” 

Compared to other, perhaps younger industries such as IT, broadcast is immature with a fragmented ecosystem composed of lots of little players.  

“Take multiviewers as one example,” says Lovely. “There are fifty companies making them. As an industry we are investing a lot of R&D in duplicate efforts. That’s not going to make sense in the long term. We need to focus spend on more specific functions. The industry was already on that path but COVID has accelerated it. The businesses that will win are those that are able to achieve that and drive efficiency… but there will be a shake-out of some who are less fit.” 

Doran agrees. “Any reduction in R&D across the industry will inevitably result in delayed deployments of exactly the sorts of technologies that would help broadcasters do what they more urgently need to do, which is to serve content differently to consumers who have also changed their consumption behaviour as a result of the crisis.  

“Not all companies will survive the pandemic,” he adds. “Some will face challenges that force short-term thinking at a time when broadcasters need rock solid partners who can serve them when, eventually, the recovery happens.” 

Why Quibi pulled the plug

 IBC

There’s nothing that excites the trade press more than media eating itself. Such is the fever surrounding Quibi, the U$1.75 billion pay-TV streaming to mobile platform that is being shut down so soon after launch.  

https://www.ibc.org/trends/why-quibi-pulled-the-plug/6920.article

Amid claims of executive hubris and schadenfreude at the misfortune of Hollywood king-has-lost-his-crown founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and Republican and eBay billionaire CEO Meg Whitman – the inquest will concentrate on why the industry’s major content owners deemed this a good bet in the first place.  

ITV and BBC Studios joined Disney, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, Viacom, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM and Lionsgate in the venture.  

To many observers it comes as absolutely no surprise that Quibi failed. Many were deeply sceptical from the outset that a demographic not used to paying for TV would shell $5 a month to watch five- to ten-minute bites on their mobile while queuing for a coffee.  

“Quibi tried to make a success of a couple of ideas that are still contentious,” says Nigel Walley, founder and MD of media strategy consultancy, Decipher.   

“Firstly, the idea that vertical video could work for narrative story telling in anything other than a niche way was unproven and not well supported – we weren’t believers in it. Secondly, the idea that people would pay for vertical video entertainment is a nonsense. Vertical video is not a premium experience – so again we’ve never believed. They were going to have to do something amazing with the content to succeed over those two challenges, but they didn’t. The quality of the content was really poor. It was a disaster from start to finish.” 

Quibi struggled to attract subscribers, with the Wall Street Journal reporting in June that the company was on track to hit fewer than 2 million of its original 7.4 million target. 

The most obvious reason for failure is Covid-19. Going full steam into the launch of a new streaming service was going to be hard in the face of existing and new OTT competition from the likes of Disney+, Netflix, Apple TV+ and HBO Max let alone for a model predicated on people going about their business as normal.  

This is one of the reasons given by Katzenberg and Whitman themselves. In a statement they blamed the “changed industry landscape and ongoing challenges” for the business’ inability to operate in the long-term.  

“For sure, timing didn’t help,” says PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore. “Standing out in a crowded and extremely competitive market was going to be a tall order especially with fierce rivals that have far greater credibility and unique storytelling. Credit for trying something novel but ultimately there is a reason why others hadn’t launched something similar previously.”  

Lockdown forced TV viewing upwards across linear as well as direct to consumer services but Quibi’s mobile-only play in this at home landscape was a mistake. The service could not be viewed on TV and did not even offer a tablet-optimised version.  

The app’s limitations did not end there. “There is no option to add multiple profiles, meaning the app is exclusively for one viewer, which makes its $7.99 [without ads] a month price tag seem even steeper,” according to GlobalData analyst Danyaal Rashid.  

It lacked the ability to share screenshots or clips on social media, which is an own goal in trying to score a youth audience, and it also lacked a breakout show, as AppleTV+ achieved with The Morning Show.  

Katzenberg certainly knew the value of having original, quality content – but it was clearly not the right mix to attract millennials away from viewing and sharing video on social media sites like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.  

Quibi launched with 50 titles – a mix of scripted and non-scripted food shows, sports and nature docs, plus news bulletins – but it is the narrative serials which were designed to capture headlines. The A-list of talent making drama originals included Liam Hemsworth, Ridley Scott, Doug Liman, Antoine Fuqua, Laurence Fishburne, Kevin Hart and Steven Spielberg.   

Quibi spent $1.1 billion on content paying $125,000 per minute for some shows and not without some success. It landed ten nominations in short-form categories at the Emmy’s with Antoine Fuqua drama #FreeRayshawn winning two for actors Laurence Fishburne and Jasmine Cephas Jones.    

Costs for talent and production value aside, the practicalities of producing video that would smoothly switch between horizontal and vertical positions was creating headaches for production teams.  

Cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt who shot Dummy, the first scripted show commissioned by Quibi to go into production, gave IBC365 a taste of the issues they were having to solve.  

She said, “How could you position a shot that wouldn’t either destroy both frames, or make one unusable? This was the main challenge for everybody to wrap their heads around.”

Quibi’s streaming technology is designed so that when a viewer flips between the horizontal (16:9) and vertical (9:16), there is no buffering. It does that by streaming two versions of the same show simultaneously, with different aspect ratios and identical soundtrack. This means producers had to deliver two versions of the show and, going back up the chain, the cinematographer needed to consider how to shoot a scene once but frame it twice. All of that was added expense.  

Assets for grabs  
Quibi is now trying to find buyers for its content and technology assets and return some of its investor’s money.  

On the content side, Quibi’s failure to find a buyer for its business as a going concern foundered, according to the Wall Street Journal because unlike most services, Quibi allowed creators to own the non-mobile rights to the content it had funded.  

This might make an immediate sale to principally TV-centric streamers like Disney, Netflix or NBCU unlikely, while IP owners like Fuqua could cash in after the mobile-only rights expire.  

There is the added expense of formatting the content from vertical to horizontal to play back on TV screen. A 8 x 10-minute made for Quibi drama would need re-editing for longer form viewing. YouTube Premium might be the most natural home.  

More fundamentally, there’s the question whether younger audiences want to watch 10-minute-long shows on their phones.  

On the technology side, Quibi’s signature ‘Turnstyle’ screen feature, which allows viewers to switch between landscape and portrait viewing on mobile, remains mired in a legal battle over intellectual property. In an initial ruling, a U.S. Court ruled in favour of Quibi over interactive-video company Eko’s claim of patent infringement but the suit is ongoing.  

“It’s hard to see significant interest in this tech that is unproven and remains niche,” says Pescatore. “Nonetheless, big tech companies will be sniffing around and we shouldn’t rule out interest among consumer electronic providers. Samsung recently launched its own rotating screen The Sero. Others may want to follow suit.”  

With video streaming forecast to constitute 79% of all mobile network traffic by 2022, you can see how investors could be persuaded the platform had potential.  

The cratering of Quibi, pandemic not withstanding, will have the industry scratching its heads, especially in comparison to live social broadcasting platforms like Twitch which have rocketed under lockdown.  

 “At the end of the day it is all about content,” says Pescatore. “Quibi’s inability to create great stories in a way that connects with an audience led to its demise.”  

Katzenberg and Whitman bravely acknowledged this. Quibi failed they suggest “because the idea itself wasn’t strong enough to justify a standalone streaming service.”   

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5G's Future Is Broken. Here's Why We Need 6G

Streaming Media

Think 5G is going to deliver VR, AR even eXtended Reality experiences? What about 8K VR, 6DoF and volumetric video? Think again. Telcos, scientists, and governments have reset expectations on 5G and found it wanting.

https://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/5Gs-Future-Is-Broken.-Heres-Why-We-Need-6G-143447.aspx

"When you do a deep dive on road maps for XR and volumetric video and industrial IoT it very quickly points you to what is possible with 5G and that it won't be able to support longer terms roadmap of these use cases," says Alan Carlton, VP of InterDigital Europe. "6G must finish the work 5G set out to do."

5G isn't broken but nor is its design sufficient to follow through on its potential, he argues. Despite incredulity in some quarters not so long ago that a new generation would ever be needed after 5G, an international 6G standard is already on its way.

What is concerning from a telco point of view is that their ability to return the investment in 5G was predicated in part on selling new video-centric applications to consumers—VR, augmented and mixed reality, 4K streaming. While "entry level" versions of this will be possible, there will be a lot left on the table if 6G doesn't finish the job.

"You may say 'Wasn't all that supposed to be given to us by 5G?' but the truth of the matter is that 5G will only open the door on this roadmap of XR," Carlton says. "If you look at the baseline KPIs of 5G—the ambition is 100Mbps downlink and 50Mbps uplink as the average ubiquitous capability. The long-term roadmap of XR is to get to a truly pervasive everywhere experience. [To get there] you have to bump up those average experience data rates from gigabyte to multi gigabyte delivered to your devices."

According to Carlton, "Current generation 360° 4K video needs 10-50Mbps [to reach the consumer] and next generation 360° 8K needs 50-100Mbps. That is already more than 5G can deliver.

"Looking to the future of 6 Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) or free viewpoint video—technologies which are critical for full immersive experiences—this needs 200Mbps to 5Gbps. You can see how 5G will be challenged. You will get an XR experience on some level with 5G but the roadmap on XR and visual processing technology already breaks 5G in the future.

"In my view you will have great experiences of XR in industrial IoT private networking applications [running at 400Gbps over 5G] and decent entry level XR experiences for consumer purposes but to get the full immersive 'everywhere anytime' experience, then 5G is at least an order of magnitude short."

XR is not even the most demanding use case for video. Holography is the application usually mentioned as a futuristic use case but a conservative estimate of what holographic video needs is closer to a Terabyte in data rate.

"Holographic video is still very much at the end of the volumetric video roadmap. 6G plays a part to open the door to the roadmap in a way that 5G is fundamentally not designed to do."

Aside from being incapable of delivering enough data fast enough for applications like volumetric video, it is becoming apparent that 5G is simply not designed for the more ultra-precision real-time uses cases outlined in 5G scenarios (remote surgery, precision remote control of robotics in industry).

"What we [need] is not just an enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) service or a massive machine type communications (mMTC) service or an Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) service. In a nutshell with 6G we're going need eMBB ++, mMTC++, URLLC ++ and some sort of new service capability which is likely to be a fusion of physical and virtual technologies as manifest in things like ubiquitous deployment of XR capabilities in the world.

Carlton continues, "The point is that all the talk of network slicing is a kind of brute force way of doing things. Having to deploy two or more network slices is fine for a limited number of deployments but to get to a massive scale it is not the most elegant architecture.  That's what people are now thinking."

The seeds of change already exist in 3GPP release 17. NT-Lite offers hybrid capability, a mix of URLLC and mMTC. "It is anticipated that we'll need something more to get us to a truly fully flexible system that is able to support all these hybrid services. This will necessitate a 6G evolution," he says.

While 5G networks have been designed to operate at extremely high frequencies in the millimeter-wave bands, 6G will exploit even higher-spectrum technologies. Exploration in this area is also revealing cracks in the 5G architecture.

"If we're going to get anywhere close to Gbps capabilities everywhere, the only way to go is up," he says. "We have push into new spectrum. The 3GPP has already tabled a work item to explore 72 Ghz spectrum bands and to support preliminary XR applications.

"But even when you start pushing 80Ghz or 100Ghz a fundamental problem begins to appear with the digital design of OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) methods. It is related to the underlying physics of dark silicon. There are already whispers and discussions among those exploring high level spectrum that we need to move to a more hybrid digital/analog type of design. There is a reasonable case that in going from 5G to 6G we will need a genuinely new radio design."

Another potential technology playing into 6G architectures is intelligent metasurfaces. Electromagnetic metasurfaces can be characterized as intelligent if they are able to perform multiple tuneable functions.

"This is proving quite promising in delivering a turbo boost to line speed and data rates," says Carlton. "It involves sticking a smart antenna in the radio channel that can manipulate Snell's law (a formula for light waves used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction). So, we are talking about introducing a whole new RAN element into the network which has not existed before."

Carlton describes this as "the final frontier of network softwarization—where we are literally able to turn the radio channel into a software programmable entity.

"The basic physics and material science for this technology is pretty mature, but we're only at the point of experimenting with it in the 5G era now. This technology has the potential to inject another break point down the line in the 5G Ran. It may be a necessary technology that emerges in full force in the 6G era."

6G has moved out of academia into forums and into the industrial research and consensus building phase.

InterDigital is one of the organisers of the 6G Symposium (an event which will bring together industry heavy weights such as AT&T, Facebook, Samsung, U.S. Department of Commerce and Verizon). It announced FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and NIST Director Walter Copan as speakers.

Other initiatives include the University of Oulu in Finland; a Sony, Intel and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), collaboration and another from Samsung and LG.

"All of these activities will likely converge into an ITU 2030 requirements type doc with standardization anticipated to start on 6G around 2025," he says. "You might see commercial launch of 6G from 2030 onwards."

All of which begs the question, why stop at 6G?

"I see the relationship between 5G and 6G as quite symbiotic. 5G lays the groundwork and 6G carries it over the line.  The only argument I can muster for a 7G is if we all want to have holographic wireless experiences. That would take crazy TB per-second data rates just do that over fibre. But maybe that will be the use case that drives us beyond 6G.

This new 4K 3D display from Sony is utterly mind blowing, and it's a real product

RedShark

Sony has debuted the latest attempt to make a glasses-free 3D display. The Spatial Reality Display (SR Display) costs $5000 and is being positioned squarely as a business tool for VFX production or industrial design rather than for consumers.  

https://www.redsharknews.com/this-new-4k-3d-display-from-sony-is-mind-blowing-and-its-a-real-product

The SR Display is a 15.6-inch 4K panel that includes both eye-tracking and embedded lenticular lens array so users can view 3D content with the naked eye.  

A beta tester for the display is The Mill, and it’s not one to risk its reputation on any old tat. So, when Dan Phillips, its executive producer of emerging technology says, “We’ve all seen holographic effects but this is one you can see with your own eyes,” it’s worth giving Sony the benefit of the doubt.  

“This isn’t just a clearer screen moving more pixels around – this is something new,” affirms Andrew Proctor, The Mill’s Creative director.  “You’re not defining a set frame but you’re given a window you find yourself leaning around. It starts the cogs in your brain about what can we do with this.”  

The Spatial Reality Display creates its 3D optical illusion by combining several technologies.   

It is based on a high-speed vision sensor which follows the exact eye position in space, on vertical, horizontal and depth axes simultaneously. The display monitors eye and head movement “down to the millisecond”, while rendering the image instantaneously, based on the location and position of the viewer’s eyes. Sony says this allows creators to interact with their designs “in a highly-realistic virtual, 3D environment, from any angle without glasses.”  

Additionally, Sony has written an original processing algorithm to display content in real-time. This allows the stereoscopic image to appear as smooth as real life, even if the viewer moves around.  

Also on board is a micro optical lens that divides the image into the left and right eyes allowing for autostereoscopic viewing.  

Sony is offering the display up to developers by way of a SDK. This is compatible with games renderers Unity and Unreal Engine and can be used to develop interactive applications in gaming, VR and CAD.   

Mike Fasulo, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics in the U.S said the tech would “advance an entirely new medium and experience for designers and creators everywhere.”  

For example, Sony suggest that in the automotive industry there is potential to integrate the product early on in the new vehicle design ideation process to improve the “tangible nature of the concepts themselves.”   

Indeed, Volkswagen has been testing the display and says it found it useful in multiple applications throughout the training, ideation and design process.  

Sony’s feature production arm Sony Pictures Entertainment also used the SR Display to help visualize characters and concepts in pre-visualization and 3D modelling.  

In a video testimony, The Mill describe building a CG scene of a futuristic car landing on a roof using the display.  

“We had to pare down in terms of camera moves and animation,” explains Proctor. “The things you were trying to achieve with movement with the camera you end up doing with the asset itself. It’s a slight adjustment to storytelling.”  

Unlike the more ambitious holographic displays in development at places like Light Field Lab, Sony’s display is only capable of having 3D content viewed by one person at a time.  

Nonetheless, it more perhaps more important for what it says about the direction of travel. We are moving toward a time when the flat two-dimensional image/screen will be consigned to archaeology.  

The industry is constantly fuelling our desire for audio visual immersion including greater dynamic range, ultra-resolution and sensory fidelity to simulate our real-world input.  

The last wave of stereo 3D a decade ago was a valiant effort to bring us closer to the depth and presence we actually feel in the world around us that stumbled on the need for facial hardware.   

The desire for virtual visual and audio experiences that merge with the physical world will be manifest when the technology becomes fades into the background.   

By the time we get to that point, it’s likely that video and even spatial (three dimensional) video will have birthed a new visual language.  

As architect Keisuke Toyota  says, “This really feels like a step toward remotely communicating in shapes.”

 

Green shoots herald AV recovery

AV Magazine

Covid shifted perception within the French market, and businesses across the country are ready to accept pro AV solutions more than ever before.

https://www.avinteractive.com/features/territory-features/green-shoots-herald-av-recovery-18-10-2020/

As with every other industry in every country, the pandemic has created an unprecedented situation for the pro-AV market in France. Profound consequences – organisational, financial, economic – have compounded to “create a complicated and tense market, with many projects delayed or cancelled and, for smaller integrators, financial difficulties,” says Philips PDS sales director, Fabrice Penhoat.

He says Philips is in close contact with customers to help where it can. “Some are at risk of disappearing or being absorbed, especially those operating in highly competitive and/or already fragile markets. Many are adapting their business model to maximise the allocation of their resources, to minimise the negative impact of the crisis and to prepare for the resumption of activity.”That said, since emerging from lockdown in May, the market has begun to pick up. “There’s no doubt that pro-AV has been profoundly shaken by Covid-19, but our perception is that French AV is adapting to the new challenges and requests are rapidly evolving to reflect this,” says Cecilia Wills, country manager, Matrox. “We’ve seen enterprises, higher education institutions, and other organisations adapt to remote work infrastructures. That in itself is a remarkable achievement, and these have been able to maintain a high level of productivity with the majority of live video or recording sessions at ‘good enough’ video qualities.”

Peerless-AV’s local sales director, Gwenaelle Villette reports big projects coming through and that end users are making decisions quicker. “Pre-Covid this wasn’t so much the case.”

Noting demand for its Xtreme High Bright Outdoor Displays for stadiums and for standard LCD displays in retail and corporate markets, she says: “Users have a pressing need to communicate about the new rules and regulations to staff, customers and visitors across all verticals. Installation of displays and kiosks are more urgent than ever.”

Other respondents point to high demand for solutions in public settings to control social distancing and capacity management. “The next growth market we are starting to see is within retail,” says Laure Daniel, business unit director, Maverick AV Solutions, Tech Data Group. “Stores need more digital and IoT solutions to communicate health messaging to customers inside and outside of their stores in realtime.”

While many digital signage projects were delayed, Laurent Samama, senior business development manager, INFiLED says almost no project has been cancelled – “another very positive sign for the future of the industry. Some brands are taking the opportunity to re-design or renovate their flagship stores since customers are more reluctant to physically visit stores and prefer to buy online.”

A clear boom area is home and office digital solutions. The return to the office, lecture hall and on-site environments is now driving demands to improve the remote experience.

Sales of Peerless’ flat panel trolleys for video conferencing displays are “flying”; Maverick’s corporate video conference solutions sales have been “off the charts.” Sony’s French pro-AV is trading above last year’s numbers, “which has been a real achievement as we were not expecting such a fast recovery,” says Maxime Lemoine, segment and trade marketing manager.

“More generally, because there is no clear indication of when Covid will be over, most companies are implementing IP-enabled solutions adapted to their operational needs,” says Wills. “More than ever, these solutions need to be reliable, flexible, and provide high-quality content while allowing remote access to users that have limited bandwidth.”

The likely hybrid future of work which will balance office with remote participation requires enterprise level AV infrastructure. “Businesses now need to provide technical equipment to their employees to allow them to continue to successfully work remotely, rather than rely on meeting spaces within offices,” says Daniel.

“We’ve seen a one hundred per cent growth in business this summer, mainly from smart meeting spaces. Video conferencing solutions alone have increased fifteen per cent, with a demand for higher specification systems as everyone adapts to home working.”

Smaller footprints
Companies are likely to revert to smaller physical footprints and build out ‘digital offices’. “We’ve anticipated a major transformation of company real estate into gigantic collaboration spaces for a while,” says Sébastien Mari, CEO at PSNI Global Alliance member Wipple (one of the largest integrators in France). “Covid gave a huge boost to that trend. Many companies are rethinking the way they allocate square metres to employees in favour of a significant increase in common spaces, such as meeting and brainstorming rooms. Smart building technologies will soon be a standard to support employees at work.”

The crisis has also seen a surge in installs for surveillance and control rooms. Explains Drouadaine Francois, sales and account manager, France, Benelux and Maghreb, Datapath: “It will become even more important to communicate at the digital level, through screens, digital signage and installations with multiple screens and also with the control rooms. Many control rooms are required for firefighters, police, military and surveillance.”

Likewise, Matrox observes increased activity in this area. With its technology partner, Agelec, Matrox has deployed video wall solutions for the likes of RATP L4, SNCF Lyon Part Dieu/Toulouse Station and the Ministry of National Education, during lockdown.

The French market is also following the trend of IT/AV convergence. “It’s highly possible that larger IT businesses will eventually buy out the traditional AV players,” says Penhoat. “The market for corporate AV integration focuses mainly on meeting rooms, collaborative solutions, information sharing and video conferencing. Already a large growth area in France, demand will accelerate with the current situation.”

Indeed, UC adoption has “gone through the roof” in the last six months at Crestron. “All of us are coming out of this with experience with and a growing appreciation for the tools that allow a new way of working,” says regional sales director, Alain Solomon.

Distance learning
For obvious reasons the higher education and health sector are investing heavily. Mari says Wipple transformed 35 classrooms at Lille’s IESEG Business School from local learning to hybrid learning this summer, including to reach foreign students forced to educate abroad.

“Where some enterprises are still hesitant to see how business will evolve, it is much clearer to schools (and medical) that they have to invest and focus on remote collaboration and AV over IP projects,” says Solomon.

Sony points to technologies such as its beamforming microphone, AI-powered Edge Analytics, and PTZ cameras for supporting institutions with distance learning. Sony’s Education Business Developer for Europe, Philippe Remion has completed over 120 business meetings and seminars with universities and business schools to demo Sony’s solution for hybrid learning from his home, supported by a fully installed set-up.

“French culture has strong traditional roots, and can be slow to adapt to new technologies and opportunities – which is something we’ve seen in the pro-AV market for a number of years,” says Lemoine. “However, the lockdown period and the temporary shift to remote working and learning has encouraged many people to change their opinions on interactive solutions. The education sector is an example of this.”

Promethean’s head of sales, Jean-François Slonina notes a significant increase in ActivPanel enquiries in September. “It’s being used more than ever before to enable remote learning and working,” he says. “We’re also seeing opportunities in new sectors including heavy industry and manufacturing, as the ActivPanel will not only equip businesses with the tools to work from a distance where necessary, but also support visual management strategies to improve efficiencies within the production process.”

Vendors adapt
AV vendors have had to adapt their own business to support customers. Philips, for example, introduced PeopleCount a capacity management display option on its cloud-based hotel TV remote to help reduce the spread of Covid-19. It has rerouted budgets from marketing activities to a new InSync programme to support integrators and their customers.

Explains Penhoat: “This includes the enhanced meeting room functionality we’re bringing with our new B-Line and C-Line collaborative displays. This is something we’d already identified as a growing need, but no one could have foreseen the requirement for the virtual collaborative meetings we’re all now experiencing.”

TIG has put together specific product bundles aimed at helping integrators restart their sales. “Three of the most common areas we are seeing product innovation in is remote work, hotel environments, including restaurants and workplace,” says Christophe Malsot, director of hospitality, leisure and retail EMEA. “To support our integrators in the hotel sector we have proposed solutions that provide touchless interactions.

He continues: “We’ve offered special kits and prices to our dealers who wanted to provide their employees with Crestron products to train on and to install them inside their home. This was a great success and kept them ahead on the technical field.”

Centreville
France is a very centralised country with company HQs and vendor excellence centres based in Paris. Generally speaking, 60-70 per cent of AV activity is in the capital and the North-East. The second city (Lyon) has less than half of the sales potential of Paris, says Solomon. “In the South, there is less demand for corporate solutions. There, the focus lies more on hospitality and residential solutions, including yachting technology.”

Smaller cities including Lyon, Nantes, Dijon, Bordeaux and Montpellier are investing in Smart City projects. “Many are also seeing business districts dedicated to start-ups and innovative companies utilising new technologies,” says Lemoine. “Euratechnologies in Lille is a very good example of this. This innovation hub is now one of the most recognised in Europe and demonstrative of how the tech industry is helping to rejuvenate old industrial city districts.”

France has a notably fragmented market with few truly large dealers and many average size ones. “Very few AV dealers have experience with IT systems,” notes Solomon.

“The top sixty resellers cover sixty per cent of the market, so making sure that you are well known to them is essential,” advises Daniel who maintains that the rest of the share filters down to over 4,200 regional resellers which cover the SMB market.

Matrox says it’s vital to have relationships based on trust with partners and customers – perhaps more so than in some other markets in Europe. Those who have close and long-standing partnerships have been better placed to weather the challenges, such as a lack of face-to-face meetings, brought about by the pandemic.”

“The truth is that the French are known, among other things, for being be late,” says Mari. “There is no exception for AV – which makes our country reluctant to implement digital tools to support new ways of working.”

Le jeu commencement
With the Tokyo Olympics likely to be a muted affair if it goes ahead at all next year, Paris’ host of the Games in 2024 could be dynamite in terms of audience spectacle. Work has already begun.

“At this stage, from an AV perspective, it mainly involves the monitoring and management of sites under construction,” says Francois.

AV tenders have been delayed due to the pandemic but construction on a new 8,000 seater Arena La Chapelle begins in March.

“The Games will undoubtedly bring new business to the AV market – either through refresh campaigns of main stadiums or through infrastructure projects led by the French government and main regions,” says Samama.

The public sector is a huge contributor in France for all IT/AV solutions and continues to be so even in the wake of the Covid crisis.