Show Me the Money: How Cybercriminals Target Streaming

NAB Show

The rapid expansion of connected home and personal devices using the Internet means cybercriminals’ opportunities have increased.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/show-me-the-money-how-cybercriminals-target-streaming/

As video streaming soars, criminals are following the money and they are stepping up their game. 

Pay TV broadcasters, sports franchises, Hollywood studios are looking to cash in on the seismic demand for viewing OTT on demand, but as M&E increasingly moves distribution online the frequency, severity and sophistication of cyberattacks puts streaming services under constant threat.

Indeed, cybersecurity has become a high-tech game where thieves innovate their attacks faster than most organizations can adapt their defenses.

Does that mean it could happen to you?  Alarmingly, a Verizon Media survey of streaming media service executives shows it probably already has. 

Half of the survey participants said security breaches had degraded their service’s user experience. A third had suffered a service outage, and 13% had content misappropriated.

Few respondents felt completely prepared for an attack of any description. Most consider themselves moderately prepared. Given the rapid evolution of cyberattack approaches is that good enough?

Vulnerabilities

The problem with streaming is that there are so many points of vulnerability for a criminal to exploit. In security parlance the ‘surface area’ is huge and expanding. Every point at which users access media is a potential weak spot.

For example, customer payment details, email addresses, physical addresses, names and passwords are a treasure trove difficult for hackers to resist. A large variety of supported client devices — laptops, connected TVs, mobile phones, consoles — provide a multiplicity of Achilles’ heels.

In 2020, the number of so-called API attacks grew rapidly. One cybersecurity software company saw a 40% increase in malicious API traffic during the third week of April 2020. Attackers were targeting a single weakness — a login API for an Android application.

Other types of attack include Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) which use artificial traffic to disrupt a site or service, making it inaccessible or slow to respond to legitimate users. Hackers may launch a DDoS simply to cause mischief or create a diversion for another attack or even aid a competitive service. The number of such attacks sized at least 100 Gbps grew an alarming 275% in the first half of 2020.

A favorite of hackers is Phishing, a type of attack which aims to trick users into unwittingly installing malware or revealing personal information such as credit card information. 

Verizon Media reports hackers stole 100 terabytes of data, including four unreleased Hollywood movies, by mining LinkedIn for information on an (unnamed) studio’s employees. Using this data, they selected employees and, posing as a work colleague, sent them emails containing malware.

Take Security to the Cloud

The report doesn’t just outline the problems. It has some security prescriptions too. These are already in play but Verizon Media contends that they need to be Fort Knoxed by moving defense into the cloud.

This makes sense given the increasing size, sophistication and duration of DDoS attacks. Shifting more of the solution into the cloud and CDNs provides the scale and simplicity needed to keep pace with changing DDoS attack strategies.

DDoS protection is often built into cloud provision from AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP for tasks such as compute, database and storage functions. However, specialized support usually requires a separate contract.

Another option is for streaming services to look to CDN providers for DDoS protection. Like cloud providers, CDNs can scale to handle the largest attacks and leverage their architecture to distribute protection throughout the delivery cloud. 

Firewalls

Another option is to get a Web application firewall (WAF). WAFs are deemed essential in eliminating application vulnerabilities that hackers exploit in DDoS, app, credential stuffing and phishing attacks. They protect servers by analyzing HTTP/HTTPS traffic and applying rules to conversations between the server and clients. 

However, user dissatisfaction and high failure rates reflect that WAFs are difficult to set up and require constant monitoring. They are also costly to buy and to maintain. Verizon Media’s answer to these issues is to use a cloud-based WAF solution which among other benefits is as-a-Service so there’s less on-prem maintenance.

Bot Management

Bot management is the third major weapon in the anti-cybercrime armory. Bots are useful for many things – they help keep support costs low by assisting users to self-diagnose problems. They also help Google, Bing, and Yahoo index the web. However, they’ve also become an indispensable tool for criminals.  Attackers use bots to orchestrate DDoS attacks and handle the massive number of login attempts required for credential stuffing attacks.

Bot management solutions integrated into a cloud or CDN service provider can come to the rescue, Verizon Media says. The cloud or CDN provider handles all aspects of the bot management solution for the service provider.

As content providers, streaming services and broadcasters migrate more activity to the cloud, many of these cloud-based protections will automatically follow.

The overriding strategy must be to use all these defences and more to combat attacks. Hopefully, you have already rolled out security solutions to handle the most common types of cyberattacks but if not this may provide food for thought.

 

Blurred broadcast lines

AV Magazine

The dividing line between broadcast and AV has never been more blurred. The emergence of IP has acted as a great unifier in both broadcast and AV environments with crossovers in product, workflow and quality that render most production indistinguishable bar the purpose and funding of content.

https://www.avinteractive.com/features/technology/blurred-broadcast-lines-02-04-2021/

It wasn’t always this way. The broadcast world tended to look down on corporate video as the budget end of the market aspiring to ‘broadcast quality’ as the apex of achievement.

“Broadcast has traditionally been focused on generating the highest quality image and sound possible within somewhat rigid parameters to maintain consistency,” observes Liam Hayter, senior solutions architect at NewTek. “AV has been less rigid, often working with a wider range of source and device types.”

Advances in display and acquisition technology (think iPhone) have democratised production while uplifting consumer expectations of quality to raise the bar in AV. Conversely, intense pressures on costs have caused broadcast to look to AV for innovation.

Equipment overlap
“The move towards IP has revolutionised the approach and architecture of both broadcast and pro AV, with the main driver in broadcast being to reduce the cost of broadcast services, particularly in relation to remote production,” says Steve Purkess, head of sport and broadcast, Creative Technology.

IP may have opened the floodgates for the two verticals to merge but there has always been overlap. AV runs highly-produced content during live events that uses a lot of the same products as broadcast.

“When it comes to infrastructure for extending, switching, and managing performance media, the optimisations for these different workflows have focused on the needs of the respective markets,” says Samuel Racine vice-president, sales, AV/IT Group, Matrox. “Because broadcast and AV are both able to leverage the advances in performance media management over IP, there has been even more of an opportunity to cross-pollinate best practices.”

For Creative Technology, the integration of broadcast technologies into pro AV has been an ongoing process which only accelerated when it joined NEP Group.

“Broadcast equipment is however fairly defined in its purpose, working to specific aspect ratios and resolutions,” says Purkess. “Whereas pro AV equipment has a wider number of applications, several of which do not have an equivalent in broadcast so we also see an increase in hybrid solutions being delivered to live audiences in theatres, arenas and stadia.”

Spot the difference
A key difference between the sectors is target audience. “The end customers in broadcast have a commanding share of the conversation when it comes to insisting on protecting their investments and building the most useful long-term infrastructure solutions,” says Racine. “In pro AV, the market is much more diverse and customer power is distributed across a much broader and more diverse spectrum of users.”

The main distinction between AV and broadcast equipment may be as straightforward as the relationship between operational and capital expenditure. “In broadcast it may be natural to capex ‘static’ facilities (eg. TV and radio studios),” explains Kieran Walsh, director of application engineering, Audinate. “This would be paralleled with the need to have ‘core’ facilities in the traditional professional AV market, where boardrooms and huddle spaces are fairly static facilities.”

Corporate video kit
From an imaging perspective, however, corporate video kit is virtually identical to what may be found in a TV studio. “In both scenarios, when engaging an operational expense, it is likely that this will come with external personnel with particular skillsets,” says Walsh. “The mobility between a corporate award ceremony one day and a TV sports OB is the ‘spice of life’ for the freelance specialist and facilities provider, which will often use the same professional broadcast equipment in both applications.”

For higher end equipment capable of managing complex live video and audio demands, including support for higher resolution feeds and the ability to manage a high volume of sources, there is an even greater overlap between traditional broadcast and pro AV gear.

In response, broadcast technology vendors have developed versatile solutions that are suited for a range of production scenarios, from on-set and studio use, to in-venue, live environments, mobile trucks, online video communications, education and beyond.

“The difference is when you move into more niche areas of AV such as video conferencing or corporate,” says Darren Gosney, technical sales manager EMEA, Blackmagic Design. “Then the demands for AV become more defined around user interface and control. Video systems become a communication device and not a production-based technology. Here is where we see more specific product development and integration with other AV vendors.”

VC is a broadcast tool
The last year has seen many of these technologies become nigh on essential for business continuity in broadcasting. “We’ve had SkypeTX which is powerful and widely used in our product line for years,” says Hayter. “The pandemic has really pushed platforms like Zoom into mainstream adoption for broadcast.”

At the same time, video conferencing and live streaming are two areas benefitting from broadcast technology. The capabilities of devices such as PTZ cameras are one example as they improve image quality exceptionally.

Virtual or XR studios are a great example of pro AV technology being combined with broadcast technology. The studio technology (content servers and LED displays) are all pro AV applications but the broadcast technology is used for the capture, switching, IP encoding and distribution.

“We’ve seen this approach prove particularly successful during the periods of social distancing where corporate events were replaced with high quality streamed events,” says Purkess.

AJA has also seen an uptick in high-end LED displays used for broadcast virtual production. Bryce Button, director of product marketing, says: “For virtual production workflows, massive high-resolution LED walls allow display environments, sets, and background effects to be shot in realtime, effectively capturing the interaction between actors and backgrounds in-camera. Additionally, game engine technologies, like Unreal Engine and Unity, are serving up realtime graphics and virtual sets, providing a lot of value at low cost for cinematic and episodic production, as well as for online live award shows, sports programming, and much more.”

CGI tech almost exclusive to cinema
Technologies that remain principally in the broadcast realm are few and far between. Prime examples include large OB facilities and satellite uplinks. “The principal preserve of broadcast or cinema-only technologies appears to be almost exclusively in the CGI space,” remarks Walsh. “While chromakey techniques are becoming a useful tool in enterprise conferencing, the kinds of glorious expositions of creative houses, such as Pixar, don’t seem to have an everyday application in AV.”

Conversely, from the common use of ‘touch screen’ displays and the utilisation of the MIDI API for hardware control, “the AV business has been catering for less well-trained users, ‘on a budget’ for many years,” contends Graham Sharp, Broadcast Pix CEO. “More broadly, video over IP driven by off-the-shelf hardware and associated lower costs have made high quality video available to everyone. Networked video, which pro AV started using before broadcast, has developed to become robust, highly scalable and operable and at a price that broadcasters can no longer afford to ignore.”

It is the networking glue which has been the huge driver between technology lines blurring. At the same time each industry still maintains different standards for content creation and delivery.

“Seamless interoperability between traditional broadcast and pro AV equipment is a desired end goal for both industries, with standards like NDI, ST 2110, DANTE audio, and more helping to bridge both for IP-based live video production,” says Button.
What’s being discussed on a bigger scale just now applies to the transition of performance media from high-performance digital baseband technologies (like SDI and HDMI) to high-performance digital technologies over internet protocol – AV-over-IP in the AV world and SMPTE 2110 in broadcast.

“End users from both worlds want the same thing,” argues Racine. “Cost-effective, highly reliable, useful infrastructures that can meet all the needs of today and can scale and morph as market requirements change tomorrow.”

New media over IP standard
Thanks to the efforts of SMPTE and multi-vendor promotional body AIMS (Alliance for IP Media Solutions) in galvanising broadcast around the open standard ST 2110, broadcasters are able to build new IP-based facilities using best of breed equipment from a whole range of vendors. In this regard, the AV community lags behind.

“SMPTE 2110 is an accomplishment that drew in end users, manufacturers, and all other stakeholders in products and services,” says Racine. “It may take longer, but this is inevitable in pro AV as well.”

Standardisation proposals
A proposal to standardise media over IP in the AV space is on the table. IPMX (Internet Protocol Media Experience) is being promoted by AIMS and adapted from ST 2110 specifically for pro AV needs. For example, adding a KVM-style extension that doesn’t require a separate control system.

“There have been a number of compressed IP protocols in use by the pro AV market for a while, some proprietary (NVX), and some more widely adopted (NDI, SDVoE),” says Sid Lobb, CT’s head of vision and integrated networks. “Each has their own advantages and disadvantages but importantly limit the types of equipment that will work with each other, and therefore the flexibility of solutions that can be offered. IPMX will offer integrators and AV companies much more flexibility.”

Racine thinks there is no way for pro AV to fully harness new developments like AI without the volume and scale of a standard.

“The market is too global and too fast for 500 pro AV companies to use their r&d budgets to re-invent the same proprietary implementations of AV infrastructure and AV edge devices in un-interoperable variants,” he says. “The inevitable pull from the market towards more useful infrastructures will nudge pro AV towards truly open standards.”

Full steam ahead: ProAV in China

AV Magazine

A pandemic wasn’t going to stop China’s economic juggernaut in its tracks. The pro AV market recovered in the second half of 2020 following the country’s successful efforts in containing Covid-19.

https://www.avinteractive.com/features/territory-features/full-steam-ahead-02-04-2021/

“It’s booming,” declares Edison, a senior manager of business development, at PSNI integrator, Saga Tech. “Along with China’s overall booming economy development, there continues to be strong growth in pro AV.”

Michael Bosworth, executive vice-president, enterprise at Christie says the Chinese government has been actively working towards increasing domestic demand and transforming the economy since re-opening, and links this to rising demand for pro AV projects in various sectors.

Latest AVIXA survey
These feelings are borne out by AVIXA’s latest survey which shows spending up 11 per cent to $61 billion in 2021. CAGR is charted to grow by 8.3 per cent through to 2025.

“With economists expecting high single digit growth rates in China’s GDP in 2021, pro AV naturally follows suit,” says Sean Wargo, AVIXA’s senior director of market intelligence.

The top areas for investment in 2021 identified by AVIXA are security/surveillance and life safety. China has ramped up infrastructure to provide health and safety guidelines stemming from the pandemic, Wargo notes. Symptom monitoring and other data collection components are a part of this.

“The crisis has quickened the pace of digitalisation, with government and healthcare services fortifying their command and control centres for contact tracing efforts,” says Bosworth. “As a result, control room solutions ranging from displays, image processors to video wall controllers have seen an uptick in demand.”

AVIXA also sees strong investment in learning solutions as China improves its education, and in digital signage thanks to improving retail and hospitality markets.

Cultural plan
One of the fastest growing sectors is night tourism, a global trend in which cities seek to entice tourists to stay overnight and enjoy skyline illuminations or bespoke lighting projects. Beijing’s Lantern Festival Light Show, and night tours along Shanghai’s Huangpu River, Chengdu’s Jinjiang River, and Wuhan’s Yangtze River are popular. “Night tourism has created a new cultural phenomenon, serving as a catalyst for further growth in cities that have started such attractions,” says Bosworth.

The Xinhua news agency reports that China’s top economic planner has allocated 5.7 billion yuan (US$814 million) to support project construction in the cultural tourism industry that was hard hit by Covid-19. Demand for AV solutions in venues such as science and technology museums is expected to rise. The new Hubei Science Museum in Wuhan, Hefei Science Museum, and Shanghai Planetarium are described by Christie as “excellent showpieces” of pro AV technologies.

Live events re-emerging
It’s not all boom though. Live events, which as good as closed down in February, are only now showing signs of recovery. “We are still in an unstable environment, so growth will be gradual but sustainable,” observes William Liu, sales director at Clear-Com distributor, Guangzhou Mindo.

The return to live events included InfoComm China in Beijing which attracted close to 31,000 visitors during its three-day run in September despite precautionary measures, such as mandatory mask-wearing and safe-distancing. While ISE is forced to hibernate with an all-digital version, LED China is set to take place in Shenzen this April alongside the debut of the A-V Intelligence Integrated System Exhibition. Show organiser China Entertainment Technology Association expects 50,000 people to physically attend. LED China 2020 held last September attracted more than 15,000 visitors.

AVIXA expects growth in this sector to return during 2021, though at a modest rate as attendance may still be reduced, and some event operators may choose to delay. Unlike the rest of the world, however, it expects the events sector to experience “true growth” over the peak set in 2019 by 2023, one year earlier than previously forecast. It currently predicts China’s live events market will grow eight per cent a year over the next five years.

Local language, local partner
Chinese professional AV has risen alongside recognition of the importance of integrated solutions but remains distinctively linked to cultural development. There’s a strong focus on storytelling, explains Christie’s regional sales director, April Qin: “AV solutions are widely used in large-scale projects across China that involve technologies such as digital projections, special lighting, water screens, audio and atmospheric effects to deliver a highly engaging and immersive experience. This is a major step-up from traditional presentation styles and elevates the overall audience experience.”

Recent projects that have infused culture and technology include the Dreams of Fairy Mountain multimedia spectacle in Changdao, Yinji Animal Kingdom in Zhengzhou, Guangwu Mountain Dreamscape outdoor show in Bazhong, Nianhua Bay light show in Wuxi, and Nanxun Old Town in Huzhou.

“Young Chinese are the trendsetting consumers in terms of fashion, esports and entertainment, as it is for all East and Southeast Asian countries,” notes Liu. “As such, the Chinese pro AV market needs to keep pace with its needs. They should be considered in any future system design.”

Working with local channel partners and distributors is a given in order to expand company footprints but there’s a stereotype that this always means close coordination or even a business pact with the Chinese state.

“If a project comes to a state owned or private corporate, AV business would generally be more market price based, but if it comes to a multinational then it’s quality based,” says Edison. “To build up reputation for international brands, I think the best way would be to work with local distributors who will have more experience.”

Christie manages its own Chinese language channels and social media (WeChat, Wiebo and LinkedIn China) to augment its presence. It also collaborates with local trade media partners for marcoms campaigns, as well as events such as speaking opportunities at industrial forums.

“AV businesses should continuously spend time and efforts to build and strengthen their own branding, and not rely on local partners to do so,” advises Bosworth.

City Brain
The scale of China’s urbanisation is staggering and offers huge opportunities for AV business. For instance, Shanghai is China’s international hub of finance and trade, innovation and technology, transportation and logistics but in recent years, Qin says, “the city is shifting towards a post-industrial economy and striving to develop industries such as electronic information, automobile, petrochemicals, fine steel and bio-medicine.”

Sports drive
Leaving aside ethical dilemmas about whether to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics, the event is intended to showcase China’s softer side just as the Beijing Summer games did in 2008. Christie was previously involved in the opening and closing ceremonies of the games in 2008 and looks forward to playing a similar role in this next extravaganza.

It’s not the only sporting event on the horizon. An all-China version of the Olympics, the National Games, will be held in Xi’an this autumn. The Asian Games takes place in Hangzhou next year and will introduce cricket to Chinese audiences after the Olympic Council of Asia added it to the programme. 2023 also sees 10 Chinese cities host games for soccer’s AFC Asian Cup, for which seven new football-specific stadia are being constructed. One of these is the Pudong Stadium in Shanghai.

The southern port city of Guangzhou, which borders Hong Kong through the city of Shenzhen, is China’s centre of high-tech manufacturing. Hangzhou in Zhejiang province leads in Smart City development and has a ‘City Brain’ system designed by tech giant Alibaba which is headquartered in the city. In use since 2016, the ‘Brain’ is an AI intelligence system that uses big data and computing power to monitor, improve and fix traffic problems. Qin reports that it has successfully helped reduce traffic congestion by 15 per cent. The Chengdu Tianfu International Airport is among the major infrastructural projects in China that will see pro AV technologies playing a major role. Once completed this summer, the airport will have capacity for 90 million passengers, more than twice that of Chengdu’s other airport Shuangliu and making it the largest airport in China’s west region and the nation’s fourth largest.

Camera to cloud: What It’s Going to Take to Get Us There

NAB Amplify

A live camera to cloud production workflow was the climax of HPA Tech Retreat 2021 and demonstrated just how promising the technology is and also how far there is yet to go.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/camera-to-cloud-workflows-what-its-going-to-take-to-get-us-there/

“Where last year we showed camera to cloud as proof of concept, this year we’ve been working to make the system more robust for field cloud acquisition,” explained Michael Cioni, global SVP innovation for Frame.io at the event.

To make the point, Cioni was literally in a field, organising the live shoot of footage intended to be inserted into an updated version of last’s years HPA Tech Retreat experimental film The Lost Lederhosen. The entire workflow was taken live over the course of three hours from location into post including edit, VFX, audio and color treatments to final deliverable all in the cloud.

The demo shot using a RED Helium 8K camera which automatically triggered the capture of proxy files encoded in H.264 from a Teradek Cube 655. These files, included timecode and ‘hero’ metadata were transmitted instantly to Frame.io’s cloud platform. Simultaneously, audio captured to a Sound Devices 888 portable mixer-recorder was uploaded to cloud via a hotspot thrown by a Net Gear LTE modem. The audio files were uncompressed original .wav files timecode jammed with the camera proxy for synching in post.

Production company Origin Point was next in the chain and the demo showed without smoke and mirrors, the proxy files immediately available on an Adobe Premiere panel for the creative process to begin.

The demonstration, organised by studio owned thinktank MovieLabs, is a marker on the road to its vision to move production to the cloud by 2030.

“Many people walked away from last year’s Tech Retreat thinking 2020 is the new 2030,” said Leon Silverman, a Senior Advisor to groups including the HPA and MovieLabs. “While on the surface there is a lot of cloud capability, and a lot of work has been done in cloud connected collaborative production there is a lot of vital foundational work that needs to be to created before this vision becomes a practical reality.”

The HPA Supersession highlighted two huge gaps. The first is that while proxy video can be transmitted near instantly to the cloud, the higher bit rate 4K Original Camera Files (OCF) take some time to digest.

“OCF does not transmit from the camera today but this will change,” Cioni said. “By 2031 a media card will be as unfamiliar as arriving today on set with a DV cartridge or DAT tape. You won’t have removeable storage from the camera. Camera tech will transition to become transfer systems to the cloud. It will take a decade but the transition starts here.”

Another piece of the puzzle due for rapid change is mobile broadband. “As it stands to today, in most areas 5G is weaker than 4G,” Cioni said. “That’s a concern for now but 5G’s performance will skyrocket as it is rolled out. In the meantime, a cellular bonded device like (the one used bonds networks from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile) delivers great performance but we have to download. For some perspective, uploading 4K OCF to the cloud seemed unobtainable a few years ago and now we’re using cell phone technology to transmit it.”

The HPA demo had to download OCFs to a laptop connected wirelessly to the cellular bonded hotspot and then into the cloud.

The second leapfrog that needs to be made is the ability for a production to access media assets seamlessly regardless of which cloud it is stored on. This would fulfil MovieLabs’ principle of creative applications moving to the data and not the other way around.

Right now though, different facility and technology vendors have a preferred cloud partner. In the HPA model, Frame.io was used to hop between them.

To elaborate, in the HPA demo media was uploaded first to AWS on the U.S East Coast then accessed from two further cloud regions. Avid instances of Media Composer and Protools sharing the same Nexis storage running on Microsoft Azure on the U.S west coast was required by Skywalker Sound.  Adobe Premiere was used by Origin Point as a virtual workstation provided by Bebop running on a Google instance located in Amsterdam. Another Google instance in the LA region was uses for VFX (Mr Wolf) and color conform (at Light Iron)

“The workflow essentially means logging into one cloud, downloading the media and uploading it back to Frame.io to pass onto the next stage in the pipe,” said Mark Turner Program Director, Production Technology, MovieLabs.

“It’s hardly efficient and generated a lot of egress but we have made it work without using hard drives.”

Data movement throws up many of the same problems as experienced when physically moving media between facilities, he explained. There’s more chance to introduce errors, media loss or loss of metadata plus it introduces delay. There’s also a chance of confusion - both human and machine - when you move anything, a risk of version duplication and greater gaps in security. When most cloud providers on most tiers of storage charge for egress any data movement incurs a fee.

“The 2030 vision avoids these problems because there is a single source of truth,” Turner said. “We expect workflow to continue to span multiple cloud infrastructure and we encourage that choice -- but the crucial point is that sharing work across various clouds should be seamless so it acts like one big cloud.”

MovieLabs may have called its vision 2030 but fully expects the industry to rally round and exceed those expectations.

“There are parts of it we can do today and parts that with cooperation we can do much sooner we think. We should be thinking not 2030 but how can we get it to 2025 or 2022?”

Common visual language

As the industry coalesces around cloud, MovieLabs also thinks it a good idea to have a common language to be able to communicate ideas.

“We’re trying to do is come up with a language to express workflow and communicate that to other people,” explained Jim Helman, MovieLabs co-founder and CTO. “This would be used by our member studios and by the industry to do workflow diagrams, dashboards and app development. We will make sure the language is open, flexible and has all the resources needed for widespread adoption.”

MovieLabs’ visual language is a set of shapes, lines, and icons to describe the key concepts of the 2030 vision for film and tv production. The four basic concepts include participants (an actor, a cameraperson or director), task, (filming, setting up some lighting, writing a script), asset (original camera files, script or stills for reference) and context (what it is that is happening - given shot or take for example). The visual language also expresses the relationships between these groups by way of arrows.

It’s not a million miles away from any workflow diagram on any powerpoint but MovieLabs aims to simplify and unify the iconography to make understanding workflows by different parties consistent and easier.

Of course, some systems at a higher level but be general while others will be specific to projects or divisions within projects. That’s why MovieLabs is talking about multiple connected ontologies rather than a single all-encompassing one.

Ongoing work includes creating a sound asset terminology to support a sound file naming specification; and camera metadata mapping so that there can be some consistency in searching camera files in databases.

Common security framework

Traditionally, production workflows happen on a facilities infrastructure or on hybrid cloud controlled by the facility and secured by a secure perimeter. When production moves to the cloud, this becomes a cloud resource shared outside of the facility infrastructure and by everyone working on productions.

“This means workflows happen outside of secure perimeter,” warned Spencer Stephens SVP Production Technology & Security at MovieLabs. “You could attempt to throw a secure perimeter around the cloud and every vendor and person working in it - but that would be extraordinarily complex and complexity is the enemy of security.”

Movielabs’ conclusion is that production in the cloud requires a new approach. Among its principles is that security should be intrinsic to workflow not an add-on. It must be designed to secure cloud-based workflows not the infrastructure it runs on (i.e assets are secured, not the storage it lives on).

“Our model describes an authenticated participant carrying out an authorised task on a trusted device using an approved application to a protected asset,” Stephens explains. “It’s a zero-trust architecture. It does not require the infrastructure to be secure and it protects the integrity of the workflow. Nothing can take part in any workflow unless authenticated and no-one can take part in a particular workflow unless authorised to do so. All users, devices, software everything must be authenticated before it they can join the production.

“It is also scalable. A Hollywood movie might turn the dial up to 10 and want individual assets to be encrypted while a reality TV show might be content with security at 3 and use access controlled. It’s really down to a matter of risk tolerance.”

Virtual production meets cloud

Cloud-enabled virtual production was another major plank of the HPA agenda.

“Everything in the future is going to be previs, techvis and virtual production,” said Erik Weaver, a Sr. Consultant Entertainment Technology Center @ USC. “Understanding things like a virtual camera will be a critical component to a cinematographer in the future. They will want to be able to see the magic angle they’ll potentially get on set which is different from not being able to visualize anything with a green screen.”

Solstice Studios CTO Edward Churchward, said, “Over the last year, we’ve seen a real reduction in the cost level. Many small productions on lower budgets are now able to avail themselves of virtual production efficiencies.”

Finished pixel virtual set finishing

Camera tracking specialist Mo-Sys discussed a workflow that delivers higher graphics quality combined with a real-time virtual production workflow. Technology such as games engines combined with cloud means onset finishing or finished pixel rendering is possible onset, nullifying the guesswork of on set by fixing in post, but also eliminating much of traditional post altogether.

“Realtime rendering is so good it is often good enough for finishing,” said Mike Grieve, Commercial Director at Mo-Sys. “Removing post production compositing from the pipeline in order to save time and money is surely the key driver to using virtual production.”

But there’s a dilemma. “As good as the graphics systems are they are still governed by time, quality and cost,” he said. “How do you increase virtual graphic quality without substantially increasing the cost on set or delaying delivery by using post-production.”

The Mo-Sys solution is a dual workflow where graphics are rendered once on set in realtime and again in the cloud using full quality keys and composites before returning the results back to set within a few minutes for review.

“We are not a post killer,” insisted Grieve. “It will leave post to focus on the creative task not repetitive tasks that should be automated.”

What production ends up with is a final pixel virtual production workflow combined with a post workflow to improve onset quality without incurring extra cost and time.

Uren added that the pipeline will offer the flexibility of deciding if the render is required in five minutes or five hours. “We have a working prototype on the bench and are in the process of deploying it to the cloud,” he said.

This process works with blue and green screen where extracting the key is straightforward but applying this dual render to a LED volume where you are shooting final pixels is not only not easy – “it’s currently not possible to create a simultaneous key while shooting a full composite shot,” said Grieve.

“But we’re working on it for 2022.”

 

Streaming Provides Bust and Boom for Cable Ops

NAB Amplify

During a year in which streaming to the home broke new records it seems cable operators have found a way to come out on top. Counterintuitively, some cable operators have actually expanded their margins with a broadband-first strategy, even as cord-cutting accelerated.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/streaming-provides-bust-and-boom-for-cable-ops/

“On the surface, cord cutting seems like a major headwind for cable operators, as conventional wisdom suggests that when a service bundle begins to fracture, voluntary churn increases,” said Jeff Johnston, lead communications economist with CoBank. “But in reality, this was not necessarily the case, particularly for operators that saw this trend coming and successfully implemented a broadband-first strategy.”

Denver-headquartered CoBank is at first glance the unlikely author of a report on video streaming. It bills itself as a $159 billion cooperative bank serving mainly farmers and ranchers across rural America. It also provides financial services to communications providers in all 50 states – and that’s where cable cos come in.

Several indicators suggest the connected TV phenomenon could rocket even further this year, which should help improve margins for cable operators who embrace this trend, according to its new Knowledge Exchange report. 

Major media companies have started to prioritize their streaming services. Warner Bros. is now simultaneously releasing movies in theaters and on its streaming service HBO Max, and Disney has reorganized its business around producing and distributing streaming content.

Disney Plus has amassed over 100 million subscribers and expects that number to grow to 230 million-260 million by 2024. Apple TV Plus also saw tremendous growth in 2020 as did AT&T’s HBO Max and Comcast’s Peacock service.

“Broadband margins are healthy, and consumers need a reliable high-speed data connection to watch streaming video. Many operators have been able to successfully thread the needle between cord cutting and growing margins.”

On the broadband side, Comcast announced that it experienced two years’ worth of network traffic growth in just four months. And despite the increase in video conferencing applications like Zoom, video streaming drove the lion’s share of the increase in traffic.

According to CoBank, these trends represent opportunities for broadband providers. 

“Video margins are thin at best for small rural operators, which means they should embrace a broadband-first model,” it advises. “Broadband margins are healthy, and consumers need a reliable high-speed data connection to watch streaming video. Many operators have been able to successfully thread the needle between cord cutting and growing margins.”

One of them is Cable One, quoted in the report. With its residential video revenues in decline, its residential broadband revenues have increased 17% per year since 2015.

“Smaller rural operators should pay close attention to how Cable One deemphasized its video service and adopted a broadband-first strategy. By doing so, it was able to leverage the strength of its network and retain a high percentage of broadband customers.”

It’s a tricky business operation to manage and it remains to be seen if cable cos can amass monthly broadband subscribers at a faster rate and at the same level of margin than they are shedding households paying for annual subs. Certainly, not all will survive.

 

M&E Must Reach the “Singularity” to Survive

NAB Amplify

The axiom “we’re all software companies now” is true now more than ever for the media and entertainment industry. With cinema chains locked out of business thanks to COVID-19, many exhibitors and the studios that supply them have had to adapt to branded digital offerings.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/me-must-reach-the-singularity-to-survive/

While media companies, as in every other industry, were forced to scrabble for digital solutions for business continuity and remote staff-client communications this past year, the need to leverage technology isn’t temporary.

Rather, M&E must become technology-driven organizations, as they continuously explore new ways to disrupt with end-to-end entertainment experiences.

That’s the contention of IT services provider Softtek. Writing in the MESA journal, the firm’s Jorge Zarur argues, “The current demand of information and entertainment requires strategic planning thinking, not just as a standalone exercise, but in terms of enabling core capabilities to rapidly respond to ongoing market disruptions.”

But it’s more than that. In order to thrive in future, M&E organizations must achieve a sort of singularity: “the fusion of technology in the form of AI, automation, big data, biometrics and apps, with the traditional operations of the industry such as logistics, financial systems, supply chain and HR platforms.”

IT cost optimization is at the forefront of many companies’ cash preservation activities. Interestingly enough, Softtek says savings from optimizing IT assets pales in comparison to optimizing business processes using AI, machine learning and robotic process automation. This includes companies operating theme parks, cinema complexes, or large gaming operations.

Zarur also suggests that some M&E executives “dreamed of touchless, end-to-end, app-based entertainment systems” that would enable their customers to have a big screen experience at home complete with sound, lighting, popcorn, soda, and movie reviews. 

For one unnamed “large cineplex operation” Softtex did just this. During the pandemic it enabled box office titles to be streamed to living rooms and combined this with UberEats delivery of food to augment the ‘moviegoing at home’ experience.

“A huge effort was made to accelerate and adapt content based on restrictions in over 20 countries,” Zarur says.

The common theme can be summarized as the need to be ready for the unexpected. Being prepped for the future requires organizations to rapidly adjust to unexpected situations, to protect their business and that of their clients and rapidly capitalize on new market demands and opportunities.

 

Research: Pandemic Won’t Burst Streaming Bubble

NAB Amplify

With traffic on major streaming sites 21% up on pre-pandemic levels new data suggests the bubble won’t burst. There are permanent lifestyle changes in place of which a sustained larger appetite for streamed content is one.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/research-pandemic-wont-burst-streaming-bubble/

According to Verizon’s Look Forward Study, a clear majority (82%) of American streaming TV users expect to be spending at least if not more time, viewing online this time 2022 when presumably the pandemic is under control.

Almost six in 10 respondents said they’ve been spending at least three hours a day watching streamed content, and almost half (47%) said they’ve subscribed to a new streaming service during the pandemic.

A majority of Americans (62%) say they still have a cable or satellite subscription, though 23% said they have cut the cord and among millennials, 21% said they have never subscribed to an online VOD service.

While there is no final verdict on American’s preference to binge watch versus watch episodic content, Gen Z certainly prefers to binge (47%).

While these findings chime with other reports of the inexorable rise of streaming, American’s are not the world’s largest binge watchers- at least of Netflix shows.

A report by Comparitech charts how much content the average person in each country consumes on Netflix and suggests that South Americans take the crown. The nation with the biggest binge-watchers is Peru where Netflix users consume an average of 115,300 minutes (1,922 hours or 80 days) – 52% more than average. And they are closely followed by Argentinians who have binged an average of 110,459 minutes of Netflix since opening their account. Other top countries include Chile, Mexico, and Colombia, all of which have consumed over 100,000 minutes on average.

In contrast, the majority of European countries are more ‘casual’ viewers of Netflix. UK, Australia, and Canada watch slightly more Netflix than the average viewer (67,796 minutes equivalent to 1,130 hours or 47 days).

Mobile Gaming up, Video Conferencing Rockets

The Verizon report also looked at gaming and finds that mobile gaming really took off during the pandemic. Nearly half of Americans (per the survey) have bought or downloaded a mobile game during the pandemic; while over a third report doing the same for a computer or console game. Online gaming occupies at least three hours a week for 31% of respondents although an equal number suggest they were spending more time doing so in the early months of lockdown than they are now.

Newer technology may get the headlines about record data usage, but the old fashioned telephone call spiked during and after lockdowns. As the pandemic first took hold, Verizon network data showed phone calls increase by 20% as people were connecting more over the phone than in person. That percentage has remained steady with current phone calls coming in at almost 19% above pre-pandemic times. Today the duration of those calls also remains significantly higher, with people talking almost 29% longer on calls. The strongest increase in reported usage is for video calls, up to 26% for friends and 31% for immediate family.

 When it came to video streaming for work, another new normal, Verizon said use of video conferencing was up a “remarkable” 2872% above pre-pandemic levels, with traffic across VPNs up 91%. The survey data suggests that many employees who have acclimated to remote work are not in a rush to go back to an office full-time. In fact, half agree that they would consider changing jobs to continue remote or hybrid work.

Verizon said, “This shift in worker preference has one major implication: the reliability of networks is even more important today and going forward as workers are increasingly able to work from places other.”

The online poll was conducted by Morning Consult during March, among a national weighted sample of 3,000 adults in the U.S.