Russell Trafford-Jones, Author at The Broadcast Knowledge

Webinar: AWS Insights – Content Creation, Distribution & Media Supply Chain

Posted on 29th May 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Webinar Date: Thursday May 30th 2019
Time: Duration 4 hours. 7am PT / 10am ET / 15:00 BST

AWS is synonymous with cloud computing so an insight into managing media on AWS is an insight into cloud computing in general. AWS is offering a 4-hour showcase of implementing content creation, distribution and your supply chain in the cloud.

The online event starts with a keynote on the motivations for moving your workflows into the cloud and how AWS meets them. After that, there are 3 tracks which track the 3 topics.

The complete list is available here. AWS Elemental dominates the distribution track explaining the use cases that can be met and going through the many in-cloud transcoding options.

The creation and supply chain tracks finish with a customer spotlight from FuseFX and Deluxe respectively. For anyone considering a move to the cloud for any part of their operation, these sessions should shed light on what is actually achievable and what is still wishful thinking.

Take a full look and register now!

Webinar: Crafting quality: Skills for successful UHD and HDR production

Posted on 28th May 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Webinar date: Thursday May 30th 2019
Time: 16:00 BST / 11 am EST / 8 am PDT

Experienced advice is on hand in this webinar for those producing in HDR and UHD. Productions are always trying to raise the quality of acquisition in order to deliver better quality to the viewers, to enhance creative possibilities and to maximise financial gain by future proofing their archives. But this push always brings challenges in production and the move to UHD and HDR is no different.

HDR and UHD are not synonymous, but often do go hand-in-hand. This is partly because the move to UHD is a move to improve quality, but time and again we hear the reasons that increasing resolution in and of itself is not always an improvement. Rather the ‘better pixels’ mantra seeks to improve quality through improving the video using a combination of resolution, frame-rate, HDR and Wide Colour Gamut (WCG). So when it’s possible, HDR and WCG are often combined with UHD.

In this webinar, we hear the challenges on the way to success met by director and producer Pamela Ann Berry and The Farm Group. Register to hear them share their tips and tricks for better UHD and HDR production.

Register now!

Speakers

	Pamela Ann Berry Director/producer
	Aidan Farrell Senior Colourist, The Farm Group, UK
	Pete Collins Head of Scripted Pipeline, The Farm Group, UK

Video: An Overview of the ISO Base Media File Format

Posted on 24th May 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

ISO BMFF a standardised MPEG media container developed from Apple’s Quicktime and is the basis for cutting edge low-latency streaming as much as it is for tried and trusted mp4 video files. Here we look into why we have it, what it’s used for and how it works.

ISO BMFF provides a structure to place around timed media streams whilst accommodating the metadata we need for professional workflows. Key to its continued utility is its extensible nature allowing additional abilities to be added as they are developed such as adding new codecs and metadata types.

ATSC 3.0’s streaming mechanism MMT is based on ISO BMFF as well as the low-latency streaming format CMAF which shows that despite being over 18 years old, the ISO BMFF container is still highly relevant.

Thomas Stockhammer is the Director of Technical Standards at Qualcomm. He explains the container format in structure and origin before explaining why it’s ideal for CMAF’s low-latency streaming use case, finishing off with a look at immersive media in ISO BMFF.

Watch now!

Speaker

Thomas Stockhammer
Director Technical Standards,
Qualcomm

Video: Performance Measurement Study of RIST

Posted on 23rd May 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

RIST solves a problem by transforming unmanaged networks into reliable paths for video contribution. This comes amidst increasing interest in using the public internet to contribute video and audio. This is partly because it is cheaper than dedicated data circuits, partly that the internet is increasingly accessible from many locations making it convenient, but also when feeding cloud-based streaming platforms, the internet is, by definition, part of the signal path.

Packet loss and packet delay are common on the internet and there are only two ways to compensate for them: One is to use Forward Error Correction (FEC) which will permanently increase your bandwidth by up to 25% so that your receiver can calculate which packets were missing and re-insert them. Or your receiver can ask for the packets to be sent again.
RIST joins a number of other protocols to use the re-request method of adding resilience to streams which has the benefit of only increasing the bandwidth needed when re-requests are needed.

In this talk, Ciro Noronha from Cobalt Digital, explains that RIST is an attempt to create an interoperable protocol for reliable live streaming – which works with any RTP stream. Protocols like SRT and Zixi are, to one extent or another, proprietary – although it should be noted that SRT is an open source protocol and hence should have a base-level of interoperability. RIST takes interoperability one stage further and is seeking to create a specification, the first of which is TR-06-1 also known as ‘Simple Profile’.

We then see the basics of how the protocol works and how it uses RTCP for singling. Further more RIST’s support for bonding is explored and the impact of packet reordering on stream performance.

The talk finishes with a look to what’s to come, in particular encryption, which is an important area that SRT currently offers over and above reliable transport.
Watch now!

To dig into SRT, check out this talk from Chris Michaels
For more on RIST, have a look at Kieran Kunhya’s talk and Rick Ackerman’s introduction to RIST.

Speaker