ARRI takes the ALEXA SXT wireless

RedShark News

Cameras needing to be tethered to recording and control devices have always tied a director of photography down which is why ARRI’s move to make the ALEXA SXT the company’s first entirely wireless professional camera system is so interesting.
https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/4530-arri-takes-the-alexa-sxt-wireless

The venerable brand has integrated a low-latency HD video transmitter and a WiFi radio into the latest digital 35mm ALEXA SXT W model ("W" for Wireless, SXT for Super Xtended Technology). Having a video transmitter onboard makes the camera smaller and lighter than it would be with an external transmitter, and avoids the associated cable problems. Camera setup will be quicker, says ARRI, and productions will be able to move faster, freed of the necessity to route video cables.
The transmitter itself is devised by Amimon, most renowned for its Connex HD wireless box. The latency is not divulged but since we’re dealing with HD here (the camera upscales to 4K UHD in ProRes) Amimon’s broadcast applications operate with a delay of milliseconds.
According to ARRI’s ALEXA product manager, Marc Shipman-Mueller, the ALEXA SXT W is only the start of the company’s wireless capability. In fact, it is announcing a complete ARRI Wireless Video System (WVS), of which the SXT W is a part. Other pieces include a stand-alone video transmitter for use with other cameras such as the ALEXA Mini, and a separate video receiver.
The onboard wireless video system works with ALEXA SXT’s other radio-based offerings – the WiFi and ARRI’s proprietary camera and lens control system - to eliminate interference.
The integrated WiFi radio alone opens up a veritable box of delights including remote colour management and remote control via the ALEXA Web Remote. ARRI teases with the suggestion that further WiFi options are in the lab.
It’s worth noting that ARRI is retiring the ALEXA SXT Plus and ALEXA SXT Studio models in favour of the new arrival.
No word on price either, although the Plus version would cost you about the same as the new Range Rover Velar – around £80k and change. Presumably, the new version will be lighter too. The SXT Plus body with PL mount electronic viewfinder and all the trimmings came in at 8.4kg/ 18.6 lbs.

Game on for remote production

Broadcast

IP offers a way for OB firms to deliver additional services at little extra cost, but concerns remain around connectivity and its ability to cope with 4K content.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/game-on-for-remote-production/5116974.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957

The capability afforded by incoming IP-based technologies to relocate part or all of a live sport production away from the venue is proving increasingly attractive to broadcasters and sports producers.
Plugging in cameras at an event and controlling them over a fast fibre network can make more efficient use of technical and editorial resource.
“For the Football League matches we produce for Channel 5, it means that four or five producers can oversee 36 matches each Saturday,” says ITN Productions chief technology officer Bevan Gibson.
“One editor can work on up to four games and deliver edits 15-20 minutes after the final whistle.” “We can deliver this to the broadcaster far quicker than in the past by using economies of scale.”
ITN shoots single- and multicamera EFL matches and streams the video over IP to a data centre in south-east London. Editors at ITN’s Gray’s Inn Road HQ access those files remotely.
“You are able to create content from a smaller number of remote-controlled cameras and a reduced number of staff relatively cheaply,” says Gearhouse Broadcast systems integration manager Martin Paskin.
This approach can open up coverage of lower-tier football or rugby league matches and can be used by producers of premier events to clip up highlights for online distribution.
Gearhouse used Aperi Corporation’s software processors to trial remote production of a match at last year’s European Championships for Uefa. In the test, four UHD feeds were sent from Bordeaux for editing in Paris, more than 600km away.
“With an IP infrastructure, editorial teams have more control over which games they devote most attention to on a week-by-week basis, by upgrading facilities in stadia on the fly,” says Aperi chief executive Joop Janssen.
“They can decide to offer more 4K camera coverage or more slow-motion units, for example, without being tied to a traditional OB schedule determined weeks in advance.”
Remote production also affords an opportunity to generate more media from an event. According to server systems vendor EVS, just 10% of video recorded at a multi-camera event is typically used in the broadcast presentation.
New techniques afforded by the move to IP can unleash much more of this content, such as player cams, ref cams and replay angles. “IP enables broader delivery of media and better monetisation of content, such as social media repurposing, on top of the existing linear production,” says EVS senior vice-president of marketing Nicolas Bourdon.
The editorial, workflow and technical models for remote production, though, are still being worked through.
“One of the big discussions is around what needs to be done on site and what can be taken back centrally,” says Paskin. “This will differ depending on the broadcaster and event.”

Staying close to the action

Not every producer wants to relocate all editorial to a centralised hub; many believe they can deliver a better product by being close to the action.
With the extra space made available in IP-centric trucks as a result of reduced cabling and hardware, additional room can be made for staff dedicated to producing content for social media.
“The production team could be in a more spacious OB van at the stadium to create a ‘wow’ factor for the game, but they will only operate user interfaces and control surfaces connected to kit at a production hub or a data centre,” says Janssen.
Gibson believes that whether a producer is watching in a remote studio in London or in a truck on site makes little difference. “The person making the editorial judgement is detached anyway, so to me, the location makes no odds.”
Outside broadcast suppliers must adapt too. “People are consuming more sport than ever before, but viewing much more on-demand and on mobile,” says Steve Knee, managing director of OB supplier CloudBass.
“For OB companies with a business model built around live production, that presents a challenge and an opportunity. The race to 4K is a red herring. What clients want is more content at less cost.” Much depends on bandwidth into and out of a venue. While some stadia are linked with high-speed fibre, they are the exception rather than the rule.
The more international the event, the more complex the connectivity becomes in terms of linking with local and national telecoms carriers.
“The tipping point [for widespread remote production] is connectivity,” says ITN Productions director of sport Alastair Waddington. “Resilient camera paths will make a big difference to the economics.”
In Australia, the NEP Group has built central control facilities in Sydney and Melbourne to enable multiple, concurrent OBs for Fox Sports’ AFL coverage. Cameras and microphones will be located at the venue, with most of the production team based at the hubs.
“This works well in Australia, where the distances between venues are so great – but the UK is less advanced,” says Rob Newton, engineering and technical director of NEP UK and Ireland. “We’ve done tests of varying complexity for horseracing, for example.
When multiple events happen simultaneously at different venues, remote production will be beneficial.”
Producers of major OBs will demand traditional large-scale scanners for the foreseeable future, not least because the cost of IP connectivity remains high. There is also the question of broadcaster confi dence in IP as the sole contribution mechanism.
“You can relocate all the virtual machines you like, but you have to build in redundancy,” says CTV chief technology officer Hamish Greig.
“You can’t guarantee that IP will get you a signal from the venue all of the time. Broadcasters can’t afford any blip, so why would you risk IP when you can get a satellite uplink at a lot less cost?
“We all see the benefits of remote production, but you can rarely get a 1Gb/s pipe from a venue at a decent price, let alone 100 Gb/s,” he adds. “The price of connectivity is not yet here to make IP production viable on a large scale.”
CTV produces golf tournament The Open for European Tour Productions and Sky Sports.
“We operate a dozen production streams, technical workflows and galleries for clients, employ 500 staff on site and operate 175 cameras of different types,” says Greig. “With today’s technology, no way is all that being taken back to base.”
If golf does not lend itself to remote production, other sports might. “As IP technologies develop, there will be a demarcation between sports taking advantage of it,” says Waddington. “Snooker is ideal for robotic cameras since it’s indoors in a small, controllable space.”
ITN will be expanding its remote production model out to the Bahamas this month for the IAAF World Relays.
As host broadcaster, it will produce the live feed on site and also provide digital highlights and social media content to editorial teams at Gray’s Inn Road.
“We will be trialling human telemetry from sensors worn by athletes, which could form part of a future host broadcast,” says Waddington. 4K uplift
OB suppliers report an uptick in interest in 4K, but expect migration will take longer than the move from SD to HD. The dial has only just tilted towards UHD production at the top end of sports properties. Consequently, those without a contract from Sky or BT are holding fire on upgrades.
“The message we get from clients is that unless the consumer is prepared to pay for an uplift to UHD, they want it cheaper,” says Knee.
“We keep a watching brief on UHD, but there isn’t a massive mainstream requirement anytime soon. Our challenge is to find new ways of bringing costs down.”
One way of doing this is to use smaller vehicles that reduce diesel bills. “There’s less need of riggers, you can be more agile in deployment of cabling and smaller trucks need less generating power, which saves money,” says Knee.
The leap to UHD is inextricably bound up with a move to IP. While end-to-end IP chains are being built, the protocols and technologies are developing rapidly, making suppliers cautious.
“4K technology is very difficult to engineer at the moment because manufacturers have not come up with a way of doing it consistently and reliably over IP,” says Knee.
The move to IP is considered such a risk that last year a number of US-based OB firms, including NEP Group and Game Creek Video, called on manufacturers to deliver new high-bandwidth 12 Gbps SDI (serial digital interface) equipment.
They wanted to make SDI over a single coax cable a viable alternative to the cumbersome use of 3 Gbps SDI signals to transport 4K. FOR-A is among the vendors that have brought out 12Gbps equipment since then. “Both Quad-SDI 4K and IP are very messy technologies just now,” says
Richard La Motte, director of Video Europe, which supplies ITN Productions with HD facilities for 60 EFL games a season and operates a dry hire division including rental of Arri Amira cameras.
“Because of our expertise in digital cinema and live events, we are developing a way of adapting the Amira for use in live UHD broadcast,” he says. Paskin also reports “a lot of nervousness” around IP from Gearhouse’s clients.
“We’re still waiting for reliable control, monitoring and fault-finding solutions, and there are debates about whether you need to have a qualified data centre engineers on site.”
The “green shoots of these solutions” are emerging, he says, but the technology is still very expensive. “While you can build an all-IP production operation today, it could take five years before this is as easy to build as an SDI one.”
NEP UK is building its last SDI trucks this year before a debut IP vehicle in 2018. CTV is also upgrading three of its existing mobile units to
UHD and planning its next new build to be its first with an IP core. “There’s no advantage for us in putting in IP just now for our current contracts and workflow,” says Greig.
Both suppliers are waiting until the industry agrees the SMPTE 2110 standard, which will make it possible to route audio feeds separately from video and make HDR workflows easier to manage. This is expected to be ratified in 2018.
Timeline is one supplier that is not waiting for SMPTE. Its 32-camera triple-expanding UHD2 is due on the road next month, and managing director Dan McDonnell says the fi rm greenlit the million-pound investment with no contract in place. Timeline’s main 4K client is BT Sport. “It will be, without doubt, the most advanced 4K truck on the market,” he says. “By plugging in 10 or more EVS additional machines at a venue, you wouldn’t have to call in another two or three large OB trucks. You can do the event with one. Moreover, since
UHD2 is stripped of a lot of the bulky hardware of a conventional vehicle, there is room for more production galleries for enhanced editorial.”

SKY TAKES F1 UHD

Sky’s coverage of all 20 races on the 2017 F1 calendar, plus practice and qualification sessions, will be in UHD for the first time.
Formula One Management (FOM), which controls broadcast rights and the production of televised feeds, will position and operate a new set of multiple UHD cameras trackside at each circuit.
With delays in transmitting 4K signals wirelessly still too great for broadcast, all radio cams remain HD, albeit upgraded from 1080i to 1080p/50.
Race footage is mixed in the FOM broadcast centre on-site, and the output is distributed to Sky’s HQ in Osterley over Tata Communications’ fire network.
Sky manages the encoding process at its master control room (MCR) using compression scheme HEVC. “This gives us the confidence to be able to distribute the UHD feed to other European rights partners,” says Sky Sports head of operations James Clement.
Sky will enhance its presentation with its own commentary and video before and after each race, in the paddock and pit lane. This kit is supplied in flyaway form by Gearhouse Broadcast.
Since the ENG cameras must work without cables (for health and safety reasons) these are also HD.
“The approach we take is in line with our Premier League coverage, where some radio elements will be upgraded in time,” says Clement.
The sport’s new owner, Liberty Global, is keen to innovate F1’s digital coverage, believing it is under-exploited.
But the focus this season appears to be on UHD.
For Sky, too, the priority is ensuring coverage of UHD on Sky Q, rather than revamping the second screen.
One of the sport’s global sponsors, Heineken, has also expressed interest in virtual reality potential.
Sky has post-produced VR short films, but accepts that live streaming is some way off. “We’re testing the whole experience of how 360, 180 or augmented video works,” says Clement. Once again, the EPL is Sky’s testing ground.
“There are specific challenges with F1, such as the sensation that a VR point of view can have when cars corner at 100kmph, so it’s likely we’ll want to deliver live VR around other sports first.”
Next to get the UHD treatment from Sky will be its roster of England cricket internationals, beginning this summer.

Edinburgh Festival trial for BBC Cognitus

Broadcast

The ability to incorporate UGC as part of a live UHD broadcast feed is under investigation at BBC R&D, with a trial planned for August.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/edinburgh-festival-trial-for-bbc-cognitus/5116938.article?blocktitle=Latest-News&contentID=1151

The Cognitus research project is looking at new production scenarios resulting from the merger of professionally produced Ultra High Definition (UHD) pictures with user-generated content (UGC) taken by the public on mobile devices and uploaded to the internet.
The technology could see video captured by spectators at a football match, concert or news event made available as part of a live feed.
The three-year project aims to produce a proof of concept to “demonstrate the power of social creativity in multimedia production”, according to video coding project leader Marta Mrak.
An early trial will be made at the Edinburgh Festival in August.
“We are selecting large-scale events because many people can capture content and angles that professional camera crews do not,” explained Mrak. “It could open up new editorial possibilities.”
Core research will centre on workflow and the compression required to match UGC with UHD content.
BBC R&D is leading the EU-funded collaboration. Other partners include Vitec, Arris, the Foundation for Research and Technology in Greece and the University of Lisbon

The Edit to double in size as demand grows in Brighton

Broadcast

Brighton post facility The Edit is to double in size as it seeks to capitalise on an influx of indies bringing work to the city.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/the-edit-to-double-in-size-as-demand-grows-in-brighton/5116936.article?blocktitle=Latest-News&contentID=1151

Founder Dave Austin said demand is so great that Brighton could become a regional production hub on the scale of Bristol or Cardiff.
“Traditionally, indies would go to places like Bristol or Manchester to tick their regional spend, but I believe Brighton can compete on the same scale,” said Austin.
“There’s already a huge pool of TV talent here, many of whom are commuting to London.”
Outposts of Blast! Films and Blink Films have joined long established local producers Lambent Productions and Warner Bros-owned Ricochet in recent months. Others indies in town include Factory Films, Back2Back Productions, Seventh Art and creative agency Be The Fox.
“There’s a real buzz about the place as a result of more high-quality series being produced here. It really highlights the depth of local professional talent,” added Austin.
The Edit currently runs five Avid offlines on Nexis shared storage, a Blackmagic Design Resolve grading suite, Pro Tools audio and a QC department. Austin is planning to open another five suites by the end of the year.
He said: “We need to double in size because we’ve been turned down for jobs on the basis we were not big enough to accommodate a safety net of edit suites, if schedules over-ran. We want to build a shared-storage backbone capable of handling larger TV series, and that means moving to larger premises.”
Austin also aims to offer equity in the business to local talent in exchange for investment. “We’re talking about a facility that goes head-to-head with any decent Soho facility,” he said. “It would mean taking on a rock star colourist.”
He believes crowd-funding part of the finance could work because many local freelancers “share a vested interest” in a larger full-service house that would help
make Brighton even more attractive to producers as a regional base.
Austin intends to develop a  database of local editors, directors and production staff, which already numbers several hundred, as a free online resource to raise the city’s profile. “If a large Soho facility moves in, it will benefit everyone since it will cement
Brighton’s reputation,” he said.
The Edit recently housed the offline edit for Only The Best Productions’ BBC1 single Rio Ferdinand: Being Mum And Dad (pictured).
The company also did final post on Remarkable TV’s 15-part Animal Park and is working on Blink’s 1x 60’ The Truth About Stress (both BBC1).

Virtual assistants: The IoT trojan horse

Cable Satellite International

While consumers are latching onto Alexa as their voice-based search engine, operators are eyeing wider voice control of IoT devices in the smart homes.

http://www.csimagazine.com//eblast/Digital_Editions/April-2017/CSI-April-Digital-Edition-V1.pdf

With greatly improved voice recognition and the evolving ability to understand accents and natural language, operators are putting voice control on the fast track, initially for surf and serve of video content with a longer term strategy to make voice the de-facto UI for hooking up multiple devices and services in the smart home.

“2017 is the year of the voice assistant (VA),” declares Sylvain Thevenot, managing director at Netgem. “After the remote control, the interactive menu and the smartphone we think it’s time to move to the next level with voice.”

“This year will see voice come to the fore,” asserts TiVo’s senior director of international marketing, Charles Dawes. The world’s largest operators are at it too. Telefónica took to MWC 2017 to unveil a new digital assistant called Aura, the culmination of a two-year research project.

Aura works much like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, allowing customers to check on details of their Telefónica service, and ask for problems to be resolved or new features to be provided, using a voice interface on a mobile device.

The main reason for the latest interest in speech recognition is that the technology has advanced sufficiently to the point where it is usable. A glance back at the history of the technology finds IBM claiming error rates of 43% in 1995 advancing to 6-7% today. The goal, well within reach, is to achieve 4% which is the same error rate humans exhibit when understanding speech.

The challenge is creating software that can tell the difference between ‘pizza’ and ‘Pisa’, something that requires contextual knowledge of the differences. “In our tests, voice assistants work. They work in multiple languages and with different accents,” says Itai Tomer, head of cloud DVR, Ericsson. “The only problem we might encounter today is while watching TV with a friend or friends Alexa doesn’t necessarily know when you are referring to it.” For the success of voice supported UIs a number of aspects need consideration: the location of

the household to predetermine the language, for example, and the identity of each user in the household. “There are some pioneering examples in Switzerland [Swisscomm], where voice search is supported in German, all Swiss German dialects and French in order to allow a more engaging user experience,” reports Ferdinand Maier, CEO, ruwido. “In Switzerland where someone from the Italian-speaking part is married to a Swiss-German speaking person and living in the French-speaking region, the system has to be able to recognise three different languages, even if the household in terms of geo-localisation is French speaking.

Dialects and accent ID

“Accents can differ from one valley to the other, or one city to the other,” Maier adds. “This complexity illustrates the need to continuously improve recognition, and the more data that is gathered the better the results are.”

Futuresource makes the point that the performance of a voice UI is about more than the performance of the engine.  Form factor (usage of a VA-speaker device is considerably higher than on mobile phones); situation (usage in the car and home is much higher than on mobile devices) and other technical features associated with the device (eight long-range microphones and ability to use trigger words) are key for the hands-free smart-home application of Voice UI. Pay-TV technology developers routinely refer to Amazon Alexa despite the other major VAs using cloud-based AI to provide a voice-based interface - Google Assistant, Siri for IoS and Microsoft Cortana. “Amazon has made the Alexa API very easy to integrate and work with,” explains Tomer. “The barrier to entry is quite low.” Provided a device has a mic, internet connection and speaker a vendor can incorporate Alexa. Consumers don’t have to buy an Echo Dot.

“Integration is so easy that we are seeing the good, bad and ugly of applications,” says Thevenot. “It reminds me of the early days of mobile app stores where most apps were useless, 10% generate value and only really 1% are used by the mass market.” Of the 1 percent with genuine value, Thevenot says these are applications which are not trying to replace “what someone could do with a touchscreen or remote control.”

These are “useful but not good enough,” he says. “Is it useful to ask for a weather forecast so you don’t have to open your phone? Yes, but it won’t change people’s lives. Moving a level beyond this is where the benefits become very interesting.” Vendors are starting from the premise that consumers will adopt voice control because acting hands-free simply makes life easier.

“It replaces the need to type,” says Tomer. “People are used to managing their TV experience with a very limited set of icons or buttons. Voice commands for ‘volume up’, ‘volume down’, for example, mean they don’t even have to search for ‘search’ by clicking through the interface or and the painful experience of typing letter by letter.”

Nagra believes we’re en-route to “flawless interaction” with our smart devices. “Simple voice commands like ‘Go to CNN’ work, though there is certainly more work to be done to get UIs and artificial intelligence fully integrated,” says Anthony Smith-Chaigneau, senior director, product marketing. “To do this will require steps to enable conversations with and between TVs and STBs that go beyond simply commanding a machine to delivering a full AI-based user experience.”

Command control

While voice UIs aren’t at the levels that we see in sci-fi movies, where full conversations are possible, the industry is moving beyond basic command functions, toward more sophisticated capabilities for navigation and discovery. “Simplifying the experience is the first step to changing the discovery experience and giving people access to more channels, more content,” says Dawes.

Netgem has partnered with Amazon to create an environment where client services and content libraries connect to Alexa. Thevenot describes three layers of interaction possible in its new on-premises hardware SoundBox. “The first layer replaces what you do with a remote by voice commands. In fairness, this is not much smarter than having a remote on your mobile phone.” The second layer adds more value by performing improved search and recommendation in the cloud via Netgem Home Platform. It is the third layer which whets his appetite. “This is where we can deploy cool features – things you couldn’t do otherwise.”

An example: when a user sees an actor in a film but can’t quite place their name the voice UI is able to call on face recognition linked to the Cloud to deliver the answer. “You could do it today with a manual internet search but it takes time. This way is much easier and one of a range of possibilities for voice UI.” While not yet at the stage “where it can understand sarcasm”, in Dawes’ view the AI is on its way to be a TV pal you can consult with.

“It’s about facilitating a Q&A process where you are able to start off very broadly and be able to narrow down to find the content you want since the system comes back with intelligent responses,” he says. A search could begin with the command ‘Show me all the James Bond films’ and from that to ‘Show me the older ones without Roger Moore’. “The system would start to understand what ‘old’ means compared to ‘new’. It would also file away knowledge about your personal choices so each time you use the system its responses are more fine-tuned.” Holding a string of responses to questions in one’s head could be an issue, though. Given this limitation and the ability for humans to process dense information from multiple (visual/audio/ haptic) sources simultaneously mean voice is logically a conduit to more complex UIs.

Voice and visuals

It’s why vendors are trialling ways of supporting voice information with visuals and why VA speakers, including Echo, are expected to launch with touchscreens this year. “Voice may become ubiquitous but voice alone will not be the complete UI. Keeping interaction with the voice assistant is preferable so long as the responses are short and snappy and typically list not more than five options,” says Thevenot.

“Another option is to talk to the voice service through your phone and have the results displayed on the screen.” “Voice has limitations when it comes to browsing – because we can only absorb voice in a linear fashion, unlike with our eyes,” says Futuresource senior analyst Simon Bryant. “A combination of voice and visual aids would make sense.”

The migration of certain functionality to voice will certainly be a key feature for many operators in future, however, it is unlikely to completely replace a physical remote (or perhaps gesture control?). “For example, browsing through content/ channels to choose what to watch will be more effective with physical buttons than continuously using voice commands - particularly in linear channel environments which still take the majority of viewing time,” observes Bryant.

According to ruwido, voice can be seen as a fantastic supplementing interaction mechanism, but in combination with high quality button-based input or more natural interaction mechanisms, such as organic haptics.

“Voice is great for searching for known content, or for example for user identification or personalisation,” says Maier. “But for surfing channels or for turning the volume up or down, continuous input is more comfortable to use than to shout at your TV ‘volume up, volume down’. We see multimodal input devices, which fuse different interaction mechanisms, as the future for a more natural TV interaction.”

The pay-TV opportunity

In a piece of serendipity for which revenue starved pay-TV operators may thank their lucky stars, it turns out that they are in prime position to take advantage of the possibilities voice may open in the home.

“The TV has been part of the living room for decades and is the gateway for the Internet of Things,” says Tomer. “Why have one remote for TV and another for air conditioning? If a consumer can use the same UI to manage all their devices that is surely preferable. Introducing new IoT devices to the network then becomes frictionless.

“We believe if telcos start to push the smart home they will take subscribers with them. One reason is the brand trust that telco and cable operators have with subscribers. They are already delivering a service and can provide smart home controls as part of the package.”

Getting consumers to buy into smart home devices for lighting, heating, security and other functions has been fragmentary to date. Voice controlled virtual assistants could be the catalyst for change.

“The increasing number of connected devices in the home don’t tend talk to teach other,” says Tomer. “Voice can provide the glue between all these elements.” An example is speaker system Sonos integration of Alexa control.

Netgem’s SoundBox aims to converge voice control on a user’s video and music content but has other IoT applications in its sights. Tomer suggests there are at least 16 systems that operators have in place today that can be adapted for smart home services. These include control of security or baby monitoring cameras – or anything to do with video, content encryption and streaming – which an operator could bolt onto existing channel packages. Explains Tomer ,“If I can schedule TV content to record in the future I can use the same back-end scheduler for consumer control of heating or when the clothes dryer starts. With these tools, telcos are well equipped to be leaders in smart home.” All of this opens up a debate about how much data consumers may be willing to part with for perceived benefit or service discounts.

Privacy concerns

Tomer doesn’t think subscribers will care too much. “If the TV knows by watching you when you fall asleep so it shuts down, or analyses your behaviour to ‘see’ when you are bored and suggests another programme, or automatically pauses if you step away from the couch - these could be perceived as beneficial in exchange.”

 Indeed, Ericsson has developed such a feature but has yet to release it because of concerns about privacy invasion. “In 3-5 years the whole notion of violating privacy will fade.” The hold up? “Nobody wants to be the first to record constantly.”

Research from Parks Associates shows that a quarter of U.S. broadband households are willing to share data from a smart home product in exchange for technical support benefits, such as warranty information, product updates, or tips on how to better use the product. Nonetheless, it’s up to pay-TV providers to consider the legal ramifications and management of collected data to ensure it is stored and used correctly.

“When they can prove to consumers that the collection is safe and reasonable, and that voice control can deliver real benefits, we’ll likely see significant growth in take up of voice control services by subscribers,” says Smith-Chaigneau.

California-based audio recognition company SoundHound, which raised $75 million to build speech recognition AI-based platform, Houndify, says it will not “own the users or the data” of developers that build apps or devices using its technology. “We don’t have an agenda to hijack your product,” says CEO Keyvan Mohajer. “If you use Amazon, you lose your brand, your users. You have to ask your user to log into their Amazon account, they have to call on Alexa, and all the data belongs to them.”

With speech set to become the primary communication interface between the user and connected devices, the wider business issue is ownership of the end-user. It’s a battle which is as disruptive to the to the existing TV value chain as much for TV OEMs as well as MVPDs. Could content recommendation specialists, for example, be usurped by dominant virtual assistant / data aggregators like Amazon?

“In the short term it’s a threat because search and discovery is based on visual stimuli on mobile/PC devices (banners and EPGs),” finds Futuresource’s Bryant. “Longer term we expect voice and visual UI’s to integrate.” According to Maier, VAs aren’t replacing recommendation engines, but collaborating with it. “VAs help the user to achieve a specific task in an effortless way,” he says. “The user asks the VA to recommend content, by talking to it and not using a graphical user interface.”

“Realistically, VAs will most likely need to operate alongside existing recommendation services so users can choose the way they access content in a manner that works best for them,” finds Smith-Chaigneau.

Who owns the data?

For example, [AT&T-owned] DirecTV is using Alexa as the UI while retaining the existing logic of recommendations based on their library from the ContentWise platform. What about TV makers whose margins are already as thin as their bezels? Sony for one is introducing Google Assistant into its new line of smart TVs.

“Sony knows very well that, in the long term, integrating Google Assistant into their TVs may be a deal with the devil,” says Joel Espelien, senior advisor for analysts The Diffusion Group. “Nevertheless, Sony’s business model (along with its competitive vulnerability in the TV market) leaves the company little choice.”

Espelien suggests that TV makers could coalesce around Google as the de facto default search engine, the benefit being that it creates a level playing field for search. However, such a move is unlikely given it would “essentially be handing Google the keys to the $70bn U.S TV advertising market.”

They could integrate their own voice technology – such as using Nuance which currently supports a number of pay TV operators. However, it’s fair to assume the companies with access to the most data and best AI capabilities will improve more than those without. More likely is an approach which acknowledges that the big four (Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Google) will dominate the market and so OEMs and MSVPs will align with one or more of them accordingly – letting the consumer decide which VA they favour.

However, virtual assistants are a “threat and concern” for some service providers if they decide just to use Amazon’s [or Google’s] full vertical suite of services from voice recognition to active search and recommendation prioritising their Amazon video, according to Thevenot.

Amazon has thought ahead – ensuring that iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, My5 and other content providers with apps available on Amazon’s Fire TV can provide direct recommendations to users through an app- or service-specific recommendation carousel.

“The closed eco-system of pay-TV that’s been in place to protect content and control rights is transitioning,” says Bryant. This is particularly so as a rising number of operators no longer have exclusive content, instead partnering with best-inclass video services such as Netflix. This, says the analyst, has the potential to extend into voice. Android TV has already begun to appear in a number of operator’s systems, therefore the migration to using third party voice control is a viable option and would significantly reduce investment costs.

“Potentially this reduces the operator’s control of the consumer (and control of data) but is counterbalanced by the potential reduction in churn such a proposition would offer,” he says. “Both CE vendors and pay-TV providers considering whether to integrate Amazon/ Google/Apple in their devices will not find it easy to give up a key component of their UI to a third party, especially if that company happens to be a competitor (as an OTT and/or device vendor). As VA’s improve and become more life-like, voice will undoubtedly become an important brand differentiator for tech and non-tech brands.”

Battle for the end-user

Consumers will presumably prefer one rather than multiple virtual assistants listening to them so accommodation will have to be found between developers of VAs on the one hand and operators looking to move into home automation. “I would assume it’s in the interests of all parties to concentrate on core competence and partnership,” says Tomer, pointing out that Amazon doesn’t have call centres should anything go wrong with Alexa but MSO’s, of course, do. With Comscore predicting that by 2020, 200 billion voice searches will be done per month, advances such as voice (and fingerprint) biometrics and improved contextual understanding will have huge implications.

“The holy grail is natural language and communication which requires context and retention,” says Bryant. “To have a ‘normal conversation’ the VA will need to know who they are speaking to, the history with that person, who, what, where, why and when.” What interests ruwido’s Maier is the concept of continuous recognition. Based on the device used (eg, the remote control) the system will be able to identify the user without requiring to speak or sign in, he suggests. It will be done the moment the user is holding the remote or the user starts interacting with the system.

“From a technical viewpoint, AI platforms need to evolve to be able to support as much input data as possible. Beyond today’s standard information like text or voice, we need to incorporate electrical signals or more complex patterns like gestures, that can be handled within milliseconds (and do not require computation in the cloud). So, the next tendency in terms of technology will be decentralisation and computation on small devices that are connected via the IoT.

Emotional intelligence

There are a variety of other measurements that could be used such as heart pulse, skin conductance, humidity, temperature to guage a consumer’s emotional response to content and products marketed to them. Understanding and influencing consumers’ emotion is increasingly considered a vital ingredient for business success. But according to Forrester, what is surprising is how emotion has been so poorly measured and incorporated into experience design and core operations. Toyota’s new concept car called Yui will measure the driver’s emotions ultimately building a relationship with them.

“It goes beyond just driving patterns and schedules, making use of multiple technologies to measure emotion, mapped against where and when the driver travels in the world,” says the car firm. Understanding and using this level of personal behaviour requires a greater degree of private data sharing and security.

“If a material of a device is ‘locally’ intelligent, like measuring your pulse (without the need to store or transmit that data in the cloud) privacy might be less of a concern than if a voice biometric identification is lost in the cloud and a user then loses the ability to use that form of identification,” says Maier. “Data has to be shared in a secure way and it has to be clear to the user if this data is shared, with whom, and how and where data is stored. Being honest about these strategies and making them transparent will help to develop trust towards the system. With trust, using biometric data becomes more sensible, especially if the user can measure what the immediate benefit is. Currently, though, the policies are not at a stage that allows that trading – it is more an all or nothing principle.”

FilmLight announces free Baselight STUDENT edition

RedShark News

https://www.redsharknews.com/post/item/4518-filmlight-announces-free-baselight-student-editionGrading used to be called a dark art – and not just because rock star colourists beavered away in windowless suites on extremely expensive hardware. Grading still retains a cache as a craft to entice producers to place more of their routine work within a facility. Talk of ‘vignettes’ and interpreting a client’s vague direction have given colourist’s clout. Well, the last vestiges of this mystery may be stripped away with a new initiative designed to train those wanting to become a professional colourist.

At NAB, FilmLight will preview Baselight STUDENT, a software-only macOS application for training Baselight colourists and assistants. It’s free too, although anyone keen must register and be eligible to become a part of the Baselight Learning Programme to obtain a licence.

“We’ve had growing requests from freelance colourists and creative artists for this product,” explains FilmLight founder and CEO, Steve Chapman. “We don’t just want to hand out a free piece of software and walk away. We want to work with training institutions and creatives to make sure that they have the right resources and support to achieve their goals.”

Baselight STUDENT is described as a fully functional version of FilmLight’s Baselight software – with GPU rendering. This includes support for an optional control surface, like FilmLight’s Slate panel, and even SDI monitoring for a full grading suite experience. 

The principle limitation is that the application is restricted to render out only H.264 movies or JPEG images. With no watermarking, this means that Baselight STUDENT can be used to create academic-year projects within the limitation of the delivery formats.

“Along with conform capability, colour space handling, format editing and the ability to render both image sequences and movie files, this also makes the application the ideal tool to learn how to start a career as a professional colourist assistant,” suggests Chapman.

The company says it will initially talk to participants to assess their individual needs and then provide them with a free licence for the appropriate length of time, along with practice material they can use to get up to speed.

“We’ve reached pretty far with our team of in-house trainers but it just isn’t physically possible for everyone to access face-to-face training with FilmLight product specialists,” says Chapman.

FilmLight will also develop regular video tutorials and webinars for members of the Baselight Learning Programme.

While the skills of top colourists are not in doubt and remain as in-demand as ever to retain the vision of the DP and director from set to screen, grading tech itself has become commoditised. Blackmagic Design has led the charge, introducing entry level versions of Da Vinci Resolve for free a couple of years ago.

Cultivating an army of Baselight users is one way FilmLight can fight back.

It will also be hoping to entice users with version 5.0 software for its flagship Baselight system which covers all Baselight Editions, to Daylight and the new on-set application, Prelight.

V 5.0 introduces Base Grade for accurately mimicking the way the eye sees colour and adds new features such as paint, perspective tracking, warping, depth keying and relighting for more VFX-oriented workflows.

How to quality control for HDR

Broadcast Bridge

What are the impacts of High Dynamic Range on the Quality Control process? Given the confusion in the industry surrounding the different formats, the impact is greater than you’d think and still being worked through. The Broadcast Bridge took the advice of leading QC tools developers.
https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/8256/how-to-quality-control-for-hdr

HDR, of course, all starts with filming in the correct format and flows from there: material needs to be high dynamic range (10-bits is the minimum but realistically 12-bits), wide colour gamut, the right colour transform, and in some cases: provision of data about the display device used for mastering, maximum content lightness level (MaxCLL) and maximum average frame light level (MaxFALL).
In general, the earlier in a workflow you can set-up and check HDR the better. In particular, HDR set-up at acquisition is important and can be complex in situations where there are a mix of cameras with different specifications and characteristics are being used.
Following acquisition, post production offers the next best opportunities to adjust for HDR and color balance.
Some of these parameters can only be calculated when the content is finished (after editing and grading) so the final check for HDR compliance can only be at the end when the file is ready for delivery, as HDR can require that this metadata is inserted into the media file (depending upon the format).
According to Thomas Dove, Director of Technology, QC Products,  Telestream, most people in the broadcast industry have an overall understanding of what HDR means and can recite the buzzwords, “however actual implementation and generation of HDR content is truly understood by very few and there is hardly any HDR content available right now.”
This is for four reasons, believes Dove. Firstly, HDR requires new concepts to be understood - and some aspects of these new concepts are perhaps counterintuitive, particularly during post production (as just one example: increasing overall brightness of a scene may have zero effect on the scene as the display device will limit this).
HDR production is not well understood, he says. “The theory is fine but what are the actual practices that must be adopted on-set for filming and viewing rushes.
Thirdly the post production is actually a lot more complex - it really requires thorough understanding of colour spaces and grading and needs different grades for HDR and SDR.”
Lastly, the tools are just not there yet. Currently there is no single post production software which can be used to take camera footage and produce an HDR compliant output.
“This now requires the use of at least three different software packages just to produce a graded HDR output with the correct metadata, and the most commonly-used NLE software does not provide all the tools required for HDR media file production. There is only one professional monitor feasible to use for HDR grading and this costs well over $30,000; there are only a few software packages that will calculate MaxFALL and MaxCLL (and not the ones that might be expected). This situation will doubtless improve in 6 months time, but this is where we are now.”
Tektronix agrees that there’s a degree of confusion about the various HDR standards and how these interact with the various characteristics of available cameras.
For example, says Ian Valentine, Director Business Development, Video Test at Tektronix, the PQ gamma curve has been used extensively in packaged consumer products (e.g. Blu-ray) and only works with PQ compatible displays. HLG (Hybrid Log-gamma) is used for live production and is Rec. 709 compatible. HLG can be used with a standard display but for best results you’ll need a display that supports HLG.
“Since there are so many HDR standards (HDR10/HLG/PQ/Dolby Vision, etc.) what often becomes critical is the OETF (optical electrical transfer function) which will ultimately govern the appearance of the image on the screen. Multiple OETFs have to be managed in mastering and post production for consistency in color and scene matching where multiple cameras have been used in acquisition. This is an important area of focus for Tektronix.”
Indeed, Tektronix WFM8300 waveform monitors and rasterizers include a series of special HDR graticules that allow users to correctly set camera white points and adjust specular highlights to create stunning looking content.
One of the key graticules is specifically setup for 18% grey (20NITS) and 90% reflective white (100NITS) for easy adjustments to correct grey and white points of content which is essential in HDR application, explains Dove. Other HDR capabilities include support for both SMPTE ST 2084 standard and HLG as per ARIB ST B-67 standard. HDR capabilities can easily be added to the existing WFM / WVR8000 series products with the purchase of Option PROD (a field upgradeable software-only option).