In Broadcast - May 2012 - 26

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 8 - MAY 2012

InSTUDIO New Era Dawns In Live Production
Growing workﬂow complexity in the path to air is a theme that demands increasing ﬂexibility, discovers Adrian Pennington
If there was a single trend running throughout NAB it was exhibitors’ response to the profound changes being driven by rapidly changing consumption habits. This manifests itself in live production with increased demand for the production of multiple feeds, live streaming and the on-site production of highlight packages alongside the main linear TV feed. “Generally speaking, broadcasters have more content options and can be faster to air,” says Avid’s Director of Solutions Development, Kevin Usher. “This means segments that are more current, drawing from a richer store of media assets, and more options for content from remote sites or contributors.” “The live production area is a very healthy business at the moment,” says Joop Janssen, CEO, Vitec Videocom who cites growth in live coverage of theatre, opera and music events for live cinema distribution (and recorded programming). Vitec, through Vinten, supplies signiﬁcant numbers of pedestals to studios and theatre venues worldwide including the National Theatre in London. “We have a healthy rise in revenue’s year on year and with our nine brands we are winning market share of the competition,” added Janssen. Autocue International Sales Manager Paddy Taylor says: “Sport, reality, games, audience participation and news are more live and immediate than at any time in history, which presents ongoing challenges in terms of technology, reliability and availability.” The rise of the citizen journalist is perhaps the most notable development and having a profound impact on news production cycles and news agendas. “Providing quality video and communications using workﬂow transfer techniques reduces post-production and acquisition to server times considerably,” says Mark Anderson, Marketing Operations Manager, Vislink. “The move toward better 3G and ultimately 4G coverage, will make use of this technology even more widespread. It will be up to technology leaders to embrace this new era of newsgathering and production.” A central focus for Avid at NAB was news to help fuel the increase in live news production. “Broadcasters are taking content from consumers at live events such as the Arab spring, and want content for preediting before it goes out ‘live’,” says Usher. “Whether news or sports, ﬁlebased workﬂow, production asset management, and real-time shared storage make it much easier to work with and turn around higher resolution content,” he says. “Production asset management in particular is becoming a huge enabler of workﬂow speed because it not only makes it easier to ﬁnd assets, it keeps teams on the same page, enables producers and assists to do pre-editing and shorten project cycles, and it links different production systems

Adrian Pennington

26

IMOVIX AMP X10

EVS Xﬂy

together.” In sports there is increased demand for video content to be pushed out to fan’s in-stadia during a game. “Scoreboard highlights, promotions and classic clips can now be delivered in-stadium to enhance fans experience,” says Usher. “To make this happen, stadiums are investing in highquality, collaborative, media production tools.” Autocue’s Taylor suggests that in-venue entertainment is “rapidly becoming essential to the live sport experience. Sport management organisations, their marketing teams, and team owners are increasingly keen to generate and display content of many kinds that are designed to heighten the excitement and enhance the overall experience of attending a live competition,” he says. Brighton FC recently installed Autocue’s video server and management system at its new stadium. “With the ability to generate low resolution clips at the same time as the full resolution

media, producers can have smarter workﬂows, simultaneously creating web-ready ﬁles alongside their traditional broadcast media,” says Taylor. Cost consciousness and efficiency are paramount it seems, but not at the expense of performance. “Today’s technology needs to do more than allow for technology migrations, such as the transition from manual to automated workflows,” asserts Snell CEO Simon Derry. “It needs to allow broadcasters to do more with less budget, give them the ability to create, manage, and deliver content across multiple platforms, and to monetise their media assets.” Translating that widely accepted assessment into product is tricky, but at NAB Snell announced ICE, a new integrated playout platform with a “unique” content validation feature that analyses source material as soon as it is available to prevent impaired content from getting on-air. “This feature is critical
CONTINUED ON PAGE 28
http://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=hb_tab_home_top http://www.twitter.com/inbroadcast http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/inbroadcast/id468652679?mt=8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpzEatLsHdE&feature=youtube_gdata_player http://www.facebook.com/pages/InBroadcast-e-zine/226166444076212 http://WWW.INBROADCAST.COM http://vimeo.com/40291611 http://www.evs.tv/emea/product/xfly
In Broadcast - May 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - May 2012
