Workflows

Video: 5G – Game-Changer Or Meh?

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

The 5G rollout has started in earnest in the UK, North America, Asia and many other regions. As with any new tech rollout, it takes time and currently centres on densely populated areas, but tests and trials are already underway in TV productions to find out whether 5G can actually help improve workflows. Burnt by the bandwidth collapse of 4G in densely populated locations, there’s hope amongst broadcasters that the higher throughput and bandwidth slicing will, this time, deliver the high bandwidth, reliable connectivity that the industry needs.

Jason Thibeault from the Streaming Video Alliance join’s Zixi’s Eric Bolten to talk to Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen who moderates this discussion on how well 5G is standing up to the hype. For a deeper look at 5G, including understanding the mix of low frequencies (as used in 2G, 3G and 4G) and high, Ultra Wide Band (UWB) frequencies referred to in this talk, check out our article which does a deep dive on 5G covering roll out of infrastructure and many of the technologies that make it work.

 

 

Eric starts by discussing trials he’s been working on in including one which delivered 8K at 100Mbps over 5G. He sees 5G as being very useful to productions whether on location or on set. He’s been working to test routers and determine the maximum throughput possible which we already know is in excess of 100Mbps, likely in the gigabits. Whilst rollouts have started and there’s plenty of advertising surrounding 5G, the saturation in the market of 5G-capable phones is simply not there but that’s no reason for broadcasters of film crews not to use it. 30 markets in the US are planning to be 5G enabled and all the major telcos in the UK are rolling the technology out which is already in around 200 cities and towns. It’s clear that 5G is seen as a strategic technology for governments and telcos alike.

Jason talks about 5G’s application in stadia because it solves problems for both the on-location viewers but also the production team themselves. One of the biggest benefits of 5G is the ultra-low-latency. Having 5G cameras keeps wireless video in the milliseconds using low-latency codecs like JPEG XS then delivery to fans within the stadium can also be within milliseconds meaning the longest delay in the whole system is the media workflow required for mixing the video, adding audio and graphics. The panel discusses how this can become a strong selling point for the venue itself. Even supporters who don’t go into the stadium itself can come to an adjacent location for good food, drinks a whole load of like-minded people, massive screens and a second-screen experience like nothing available at home. On top of all of that, on-site betting will be possible, enabled by the low latency.

Moving away from the stadium, North America has already seen some interest in linking the IP-native ATSC 3.0 broadcast network to the 5G network providing backhaul capabilities for telcos and benefits for broadcasters. If this is shown to be practical, it shows just how available IP will become in the medium-term future.

Jason summarises the near-term financial benefits in two ways: the opportunity for revenue generation by delivering better video quality and faster advertising but most significantly he sees getting rid of the need for satellite backhaul as being the biggest immediate cost saver for many broadcast companies. This won’t all be possible on day one, remembering that to get the major bandwidths, UWB 5G is needed which is subject to a slower roll-out. UWB uses high-frequency RF, 24Ghz and above, which has very little penetration and relies on line-of-sight links. This means that even a single wall can block the signal but those that can pick it up will get gigabits of throughput.

The panel concludes by answering a number of questions from the audience on 5G’s benefit over fibre to the home, the benefits of abstracting the network out of workflows and much more.

Watch now!
Speakers

Jason Thibeault Jason Thibeault
Executive Director,
Streaming Video Alliance
Eric Bolten Eric Bolten
VP of Business Development,
Zixi
Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen Moderator: Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen
Editor-in-Chief,
Streaming Media

Video: Football Production Technology: The Verdict

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones


Football coverage of the main game is always advancing, but this year there have been big changes in production as well as the continued drive to bring second screens mainstream. This conversation covers the state of the art of football production bringing together Mark Dennis of Sunset+Vine, Emili Planas from Mediapro and Tim Achberger from Sportcast in a conversation moderated by Sky Germany’s Alessandro Reitano for the SVG Europ Football Summit 2021.

The first topic discussed is the use of automation to drive highlights packages. Mark from S+V feels that for the tier 1 shows they do, human curation is still better but recognises that the creation of secondary and tertiary video from the event could benefit from AI packages. In fact, Mediapro is doing just this providing a file-based clips package while the match is ongoing. This helps broadcasters use clips quicker and also avoids post-match linear playouts. Tim suggests that AI has a role to play when dealing with 26 cameras and orchestrating the inputs and outputs of social media clips as well as providing specialised feeds. Sportcast are also using file delivery to facilitate secondary video streams during the match.

 

 

Answering the question “What’s missing from the industry?”, Mark asks if they can get more data and then asks how can they show all data. His point is that there are still many opportunities to use data, like BT Sport’s current ability to show the speed of players. He feels this works best on the second screen, but also sees a place for increasing data available to fans in the stadium. Emili wants better data-driven content creation tools and ways to identify which data is relevant. Time agrees that data is important and, in common with Emili, says that the data feeds provide the basis of a lot of the AI workflows’ ability to classify and understand clips. He sees this as an important part of filtering through the 26 cameras to find the ones people actually want to see.

Alessandro explains he feels that focus is moving from the main 90 minutes to the surrounding storylines. Not in a way that detracts from the main game, but in a way that shows production is taking seriously the pre and post stories and harnessing technology to exploit the many avenues available to tell the stories and show footage that otherwise would have space to be seen.

The discussion turns to drones and other special camera systems asking how they fit in. Tim says that dromes have been seen as a good way to differentiate your product and without Covid restrictions, could be further exploited. Tim feels that special cameras should be used more in post and secondary footage wondering if there could be two world feeds, one which has a more traditional ‘Camera 1’ approach and another which much more progressively includes a lot of newer camera types. Emili follows on by talking bout Mediapro’s ‘Cinecam’ which uses a Sony Venice camera to switch between normal Steadicam footage during the match to a shallow depth-of-field DSLR style post-match which give the celebrations a different, more cinematic look with the focus leading the viewer to the action.

The panel finishes by discussing the role of 5G. Emili sees it as a benefit to production and a way to increase consumer viewing time. He sees opportunities for 5G to replace satellite and help move production into the cloud for tier 2 and 3 sports. Viewers at home may be able to watch matches in better quality and in stadiums the plans are to offer data-enriched services to fans so the can analyse what’s going on and have a better experience than at home. Mark at S+V sees network slicing as the key technology giving production the confidence that they will have the bandwidth they need on the day. 5G will reduce costs and he’s hoping he may be able to enhance remote production for staff at home whose internet isn’t great quality bringing more control and assuredness into their connectivity.

Watch now!
Speakers

Tim Achberger Tim Achberge
Sportcast,
Head of Innovation & Technology
Emili Planas Emili Planas
CTO and Operations Manager
Mediapro
Mark Dennis Mark Dennis
Director of Technical Operations
Sunset+Vine
Alessandro Reitano Moderator: Alessandro Reitano
SVP of Sports Production,
Sky Germany

Video Case Study: How BT Sport de-centralised its football production

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

We’ve all changed the way we work during the pandemic, some more than others. There’s nothing better than a real-life case study to learn from and to put your own experience into perspective. In this video, BT Sport and their technology provider Timeline TV take us through what they have and haven’t done to adapt.

Jamie Hindhaugh, COO of BT Sport explains that they didn’t see working at home as simply a decentralisation, but rather a centralisation of the technology to be used by a decentralised body of staff. This concept is similar to Discovery’s recent Eurosport IP transformation project which has all participating countries working from equipment in two datacentres. BT Sport managed to move from a model of two to three hundred people in the office daily to producing a live football talk show from presenters’ homes, broadcast staff also at home, in only 10 days. The workflow continued to be improved over the following 6 weeks at which point they felt they had migrated to an effective ‘at home’ workflow.

 

 

Speaking to the challenges, Dan McDonnell CEO of Timeline TV said that basic acquisition and distribution of equipment like laptops was tricky since everyone else was doing this, too. But once the equipment was in staff homes, they soon found out the problems moving out of a generator-backed broadcast facility. UPSes were distributed to those that needed them but Dan notes there was nothing they could do to help with the distraction of working with your children and/or pets.

Jamie comments that connectivity is very important and they are moving forward with a strategy called ‘working smart’ which is about giving the right tools to the right people. It’s about ensuring people are connected wherever they are and with BT Sport’s hubs around the country, they are actively looking to provide for a more diverse workforce.

BT Sport has a long history of using remote production, Dan points out which has driven BT Sport’s recent decision to move to IP in Stratford. Premiership games have changed from being a main and backup feed to needing 20 cameras coming into the building. This density of circuits in both HD and UHD has made SDI less and less practical. Jamie highlights the importance of their remote production heritage but adds that the pandemic meant remote production went way beyond normal remote productions now that scheduling and media workflows also has to be remote which would always have stayed in the building normally.

Dan says that the perspective has changed from seeing production as either a ‘studio’ or ‘remote OB’ production to allowing either type of production to pick and choose the best combination of on-site roles and remote roles. Dan quips that they’ve been forced to ‘try them all’ and so have a good sense of which work well and which benefit from on-site team working.

Watch now!
Speakers

Dan McDonnell Dan McDonnell
CEO,
Timeline TV
Jamie Hindhaugh Jamie Hindhaugh
COO,
BT Sport
Heather McLean Moderator: Heather McLean
Editor,
SVG Europe

Video: Building Media Systems in the Cloud: The Cloud Migration Challenge

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Peter Wharton from TAG V.S. starts us on our journey to understanding how we can take real steps to deploying a project in the cloud. He outlines five steps starting with evaluation, building a knowledge base, building for scale, optimisation and finishing with ‘realising full cloud potential’. Peter says that the first step which he dubs ‘Will It Work?’ is about scoping out what you see cloud delivering to you; what is the future that the move to cloud will give you? You can then evaluate the activities in your organisation that are viable options to move to the cloud with the aim of finding quick, easy wins.

Peter’s next step in embracing the cloud in a company is to begin the transformation in earnest by owning the transformation and starting the move not through technical actions, but through the people. It’s a case of addressing the culture of your organisation, changing the lens through which people think and for the larger companies creating a ‘centre of excellence around cloud deployments. A big bottleneck for some organisations is siloing which is sometimes deliberate, sometimes intentional. When a broadcast workflow needs to go to the cloud, this can bring together many different parts of the company, often more than if it were on-prem, so Peter identifies ‘cross-functional leadership’ as an important step in starting the transformation. He also highlights cost modelling as an important factor at this stage. A clear understanding of the costs, and savings, that will be realised in the move is an important motivational factor, but should also be used to correctly set expectations. Not getting the modelling right at this stage can significantly weaken traction as the process continues. Peter talks about the importance of creating ‘key tenets’ of your migration.

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End-to-End Migration is the promise if you can bring your organisation along with you on this journey when you start looking at actually bringing full workflows into the cloud and deploying them in production. To do that, Peter suggests validating your solution when working at scale, finding ways of testing it way above the levels you need on day one. Another aspect is creating workflows that are cloud-first and translating your current workflows to the cloud rather than taking existing workflows and making the cloud follow the same procedures – to do so would be to miss out on much of the value of the cloud transition. This step will mark the start of you seeing the value of setting your key tenets but you should feel free to ‘break rules and make new ones’ as you adapt to your changing understanding.

The last two stages revolve around optimising and achieving the ‘full potential’ of the cloud. As such, this means taking what you’ve learnt to date and using that to remake your solutions in a better, more sustainable way. Doing this allows you to hone them to your needs but also introduce a more stable approach to implementation such as using an infrastructure-as-code philosophy. This is all topped off by the last stage which is adding cloud-only functionality to the workflows you’ve created such as using machine learning or scaling functions in ways that are seldom practical for on-prem solutions.

These steps are important for any organisation wanting to embrace the cloud, but Peter reminds us that it’s not just end users who are making the transition, vendors also are. Most technology suppliers have products that pre-date today’s cloud technologies and are having to make their own journey which can start with short-term fixes to ‘make it work’ and move their existing code to the cloud. They then will need to work on their pricing models and cloud security which Peter calls the ‘Make it Viable’ stage. It’s only then that they start to be able to leverage cloud capabilities such as scaling properly and if they are able to progress further they will become a cloud-native solution and fully cloud-optimised. However, these latter two steps can take a long time for some suppliers.

Peter finishes the video talking about the difference in perspective between legacy vendors and cloud-native vendors. For example, legacy vendors may still be thinking about site visits, whereas cloud-native vendors don’t need that. They will be charging using a subscription model, rather than large Capex pricing. Peter summarises his talk by underlining the need to set your vision, agree on your key tenets for migration, invest in the team, keep your teams accountable & small and seek partners that not only understand the cloud but that match your aims for the future.

Watch now!

Speakers

Peter Wharton Peter Wharton
Director of Corporate Strategy,
TAG V.S.