Cloud playout

Video: Broadcast Playout Cloud Transformation

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Playout has been gradually moving to the cloud for a number of years now. Famously Discovery moved all of their thematic playout to the cloud in 2018 and many have done the same since. As we saw the other day, Sky Italia are now seeing ‘code as infrastructure’ whereby automated API calls launch the in-cloud infrastructure they need as part of their linear playout.

In this video, we hear from Matt Westrup from A+E EMEA on how they’ve moved their playout to the cloud with their partner Amagi. Running 30 channels in Europe, Matt explains that due to some business uncertainty with a partner company, the need for a DR facility was identified. Talking to Srinivasan KA from Amagi, they were able to create this using Amagi’s product portfolio based in AWS. Matt explains that after the DR facility was set up, they moved quickly to full mirroring and ultimately they flipped the switch and they announced they were now broadcasting from the cloud.

Srinivasan KA explains that many companies take a similar route when working in the cloud. Sometimes a cost-effective DR facility is all they need, however it’s easy to replicate all your workflows in the cloud and have that on standby. This can be done by keeping the content in the cloud evergreen, running automation but keeping the playout functions switched off to save money which can be quickly brought online as needed. Srinivasan KA looks at the high-level diagram of the A+E operation showing how S3 holds the content, goes through a workflow to the CPU-powered playout and then is handed off using direct connect to affiliates and telcos using Amagi’s POPs.

Matt comments that this was relatively easy to do from a business perspective “No-one was investing massively in fixed infrastructure” and they’ve found they have been faster to market with a speed they’ve “never experienced before.” Needless to say, the move to the cloud also came into its own and provided a seamless move work home working during the pandemic. And, looking more longterm, A+E will continue to benefit from not having to manage the physical datacentre/serber room infrastructure.

The video finishe swith an overview of Broadcast in AWS from Andy Kane. He covers the main drivers for broadcasters moving to the cloud such as business agility, a preference with some companies for increasing Opex spending, increased ease in experiementing with new technologies/ways of engaging with customers, using a remote workforce among others. Andy covers an example broadcast flow using MediaConnect for contribution, MediaLive Statmux for distibution, redundancy strategies and other building blocks such as TAG multiviewers.

Watch now!
From the AWS Media Insights Webcast Series
Speakers

Andy Kane Andy Kane
Principal AI/ML Specialist Solutions Architect (Languages),
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Matt Westrup Matt Westrup
VP Technology and Operations,
A+E EMEA
Srinivasan KA Srinivasan KA
Co-founder,
Amagi Corporation
Ian McPherson Ian McPherson
Partner Development Lead – Media & Entertainment,
Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Video: Broadcast Channel Origination as a Service: from Concept to Operational Implementation

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Playout out entire channels from the cloud helps to decrease the number of ingress and egress points to/from the cloud is a general way of maximising the value of cloud workflows.

This talk from the 2018 SMPTE conference is a case study of putting PBS channel origination in the cloud. John McCoskey starts by explaining the motivations and context prompting this move to the cloud – not least of these was Discovery’s move putting nearly all its channels in the cloud globally.

Ron Clifton then takes us through the typical system diagram for a channel both the traditional system and how that changes when implemented in the cloud. He discusses the technical abilities of what they have built including additional benefits and then goes on to discuss the PoC.

An interesting slide is Ron’s comparison of Cloud Connectivity Options where he compares the pros and cons (cost, jitter, security etc.) of the various types of connectivity into the cloud. This shows the trade offs – effectively business decisions – that need to be made when deploying.

The Q&A covers reliability of public cloud internal networks, frame accurate switching, latency, ASTC gateway locations, geo-diversity, systems monitoring and others.

Watch now!

Speakers

John McCoskey John McCoskey
Former Industry Lead Executive,
Eagle Hill Consulting
Ron Clifton Ron Clifton
President & Founder,
CliftonGroup

Video: Google Next 19 – Building a Next-Generation Streaming Platform with Sky

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Google Cloud, also called GCP – Google Cloud Platform, continues to invest in Media & Entertainment at a time when many broadcasters, having completed their first cloud projects, are considering ways to ensure they are not beholden to any one cloud provider.

Google’s commitment is evident in their still-recent appointment of ex-Discovery CTO John Honeycutt, this month’s announcement of Viacom’s Google Cloud adoption and the launch of their ‘deploy on any cloud platform’ service called Anthos (official site)

So it’s no surprise that, here, Google asked UK broadcaster Sky and their technology partner for the project, Harmonic Inc., to explain how they’ve been delivering channels in the cloud and cutting costs.

Melika Golkaram from Google Cloud sets the scene by explaining some of the benefits of Google Cloud for Media and Entertainment making it clear that, for them, M&E business isn’t simply a ‘nice to have’ on the side of being a cloud platform. Highlighting their investment in undersea cable and globally-distributed edge servers among the others, Melika hands over to Sky’s Jeff Webb to talk about how Sky have leveraged the platform.

Jeff explains some of the ways that Sky deals with live sports. Whilst sports require high quality video, low latency workflows and have high peak live-streaming audiences, they can also cyclical and left unused between events. High peak workload and long times of equipment left fallow play directly into the benefits of cloud. So we’re not surprised when Jeff says it halved the replacement cost of an ageing system, rather, we want to know more about how they did it.

The benefits that Sky saw revolve around fault healing, geographic resilience, devops, speed of deployment, improved monitoring including more options to leverage open source. Jeff describes these, and other, drivers before mentioning the importance of the ability to move this system between on-premise and different cloud providers.

Before handing over to Harmonic’s Moore Macauley, we’re shown the building blocks of the Sky Sports F1 channel in the cloud and discuss ways that fault healing happens. Moore then goes on to show how Harmonic harnessed their ‘VOS’ microservices platform which deals with ingest, compression, encryption, packaging and origin servers. Harmonic delivered this using GTK, Google Cloud’s Kubernetes deployment platform in multiple regions for fault testing, to allow for A/B testing and much more.

Let’s face it, even after all this time, it can still be tricky getting past the hype of cloud. Here we get a glimpse of a deployed-in-real-life system which not only gives an insight into how these services can (and do) work, but it also plots another point on the graph showing major broadcasters embracing cloud, each in their own way.

Watch now!

Speakers

Jeff Webb Jeff Webb
Principal Streaming, Architect
Sky
Moore Macauley Moore Macauley
Director, Product Architecture
Harmonic
Melika Golkram Melika Golkram
Customer Engineer,
Google Cloud Media

Webinar: Unlocking global success for channel operators and broadcasters

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Date: Tuesday 4th December, 2018. 16:00 GMT

Join IBC365 and Tata Communications to explore how organisations are using cloud playout to deploy a unified solution for both playout and distribution on a global basis, and why cloud is fast becoming the preferred option for many linear channel operators and broadcasters.

Cloud playout offers the potential for rapid channel launches, more efficient and resilient operations and a clear commercial model enabling linear channels to be more successful and profitable.

In this Webinar:

  • Explore cloud success stories, like Woohoo TV, Latin America’s first dedicated channel for sports, music and youth culture. It expanded rapidly into new markets in the U.S. without needing capital investment by deploying Tata Communications’ Cloud Master Control and Video Connect solutions.
  • Learn how Cloud Master Control delivers a future-ready virtualised IP environment powered by industry-leading technology vendors, enabling channel operators to scale rapidly from a single channel to a large-scale multi-channel operation, with complete flexibility and reliability.
  • Understand the business, technology and operational benefits and the crucial questions to ask before moving your channel playout operation to a cloud playout provider.

Register now!

Speakers

Jeremy Dujardin Jeremy Dujardin
CTO Media Services,
Tata Communications
Dhaval Ponda Dhaval Ponda
Global Sales Head Media Services,
Tata Communications