Video:Moving Master Control and Asset Management to the Cloud

Starting with a look at how playout has evolved to what it is today, Wesley Thiesson from Evertz Microsystems explains how Master Control and OTT MAM workflows can be improved by the cloud. He then finishes by a look at how far we can push MAM into the cloud, now and in the future.

Talking to SMPTE’s Philadelphia Section, Mr. Thiessen, Senior Solutions Architect, covers the following:

Part 1: Linear Master Control playout from the cloud. A brief history of the evolution of Master Control that makes moving to the cloud feasible. A review of the effects, requirements, possibilities and planning required to make this a reality, reviewing the use case of a facility running dozens of channels 24/7 from the cloud, with live events, time delay and rebroadcast.

Part 2: Feeding the machine. An overview of master control and OTT media prep (MAM) workflows enhanced and enabled in the cloud. Optimizing workflows to deliver your S3, D4 and other OTT content. In today’s OTT world every platform wants a different touch applied to the encoding, the packaging, and the metadata. Using the work completed for linear to drive packaging and ad insertion, along with metadata standardization and transformation, minimizes the effort to deliver multiple formats to multiple destinations.

Part 3: Full Tilt MAM. Bring MAM to your production suite. An overview of some challenges in production and solutions and tools in Cloud based MAM to ease the load. Enrich your production workflow with smart application of artificial intelligence tools, a look at the future that is already here.

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Mr. Thiessen is a graduate of the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology Broadcast Electronics program. When he started in live and post production with Umatic for offline, DVE’s that took ½ rack per channel and could heat your home, digital video was transmitted in parallel, archives had paper logs and reels on a shelf and telecines had flying spots.

He worked in archive management with Masstech for ten years, managing LTO (and other) libraries, before moving to product management with an encoding/ transcoding/ streaming video company. Five years ago, he joined Evertz. Wesley managed a Joint Master Control installation that encompassed everything from the Master Clock and IRDs to the ATSC encoder and all the SDI devices and file based workflows in between.

Most recently Wesley has been involved on the Solutions Architect team at Evertz with the first 24/7 multichannel broadcast master control project now playing all of Discovery Networks’ USA content from the Cloud, as well as major installations of Media Asset Management for international and domestic content delivery for broadcast and OTT delivery, streamlining automated delivery of more than 10,000 assets per month in nearly 100 formats and packages.

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Webinar: How to build your own CDN – SVT


Fredrik Widlund shares Swedish Television’s (SVT) experience building their own CDN in house.
Fredrik explains the rationale in building their own CDN and the experience they gained from doing it. Quality
Includes a Q&A which took pleace at Streaming Tech Sweden 2017, a tech-conference for the Streaming Tech Community. Streaming Tech Sweden has a no-sponsors policy to allow them to independently choose the topics and speakers they and the community find most important and relevant.

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Video: HOW TO: Building a More Robust Cloud Encoder With FFMPEG & More


A great ffmpeg how-to from Jan Ozer followed by cloud deployment advice from RealEyes Media.

Starting from some of the basics of the ffmpeg command line, working up to HLS packaging, Jan Ozer offers advanced alternatives along side the familiar commands.
By taking control of your own encoding and packaging, you can greatly reduce cost and maintain high adaptability and agility to meet your needs now and in the future. When working with cloud encoding, there are several transcoding and packaging options, and the APIs for these options will change over time. David Hassoun and Jun Heider, from RealEyes Mediatalk talk about how to build a more dynamic cloud encoder that can use the best tool for a specific job by decoupling the tools from the core application, as well as how to mix and match multiple operations concurrently on a single encoding task. Operations include WebVTT and AAC sidecar manifests, DASH assets, metadata, video quality, and stream muxing/demuxing. This session covers some of the strategies we’ve used to handle dynamic cloud encoding and packaging for live and VOD delivery.

This is talk from Streaming Media West 2017

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Video: Cinema Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow by Mark Schubin


An important reminder of the psychology and biology of watching films – it’s not just about technology.
As we approach the 125th anniversary of people paying to watch movies, Mark Schubin, who has been working in the field for 50 years, takes us on a journey from seemingly undirected early “actualities,” through a century of innovations, to some possible futures for the field. Can two people see completely different things in the same image? Why does a cinema viewer’s attire matter? Is there a correlation between ticket price and enjoyment?

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