34 l July 2012
www.prosoundnewseurope.com
broadcastfeature MULTI-LANGUAGE LIVE BRIEFING FOR MICROSOFT
Red TX’s Red II features kit from Studer, Yamaha, Focusrite and more
bandwidth restrictions there is a solution that offers the best possible audio whatever the device, whether the viewer is sitting at home or on the move.” IP is the current buzz term in
just about all areas of life and business these days but it is particularly concentrating the minds of broadcasters. In the past five years several developers and service companies have appeared offering IP codecs and processors for live broadcasting, notably LiveU and Groovy Gecko. Craig Moehl is chief executive of Groovy Gecko and a director of its associate firm SatStream. The basis of both businesses is converting audio and video into IP streams for contributions and transmission. Moehl maintains that in IP
broadcast “audio is more important than video”. The reason, he explains, is that the human brain is more forgiving which a picture frame drops out but when the sound cuts or is distorted, the ear is not as accommodating, making the glitch much more of a problem. “Things become problematic when the audio stream stops so we’ve got to ensure that the audio stream is absolutely consistent,” Moehl says.
AT A GLANCE
AS THE original ethos of YouTube put it, anyone with a camera and a fast enough video processor can be a broadcaster. The web is now also a major platform for television stations to re-use programmes and a way for multinational
“The requirement for television bandwidth is not going to subside, it is going to grow and grow” David Furstenberg, NovelSat
To guarantee a more stable audio feed technology companies have in recent years moved away from older streaming protocols and media players to established technologies HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), which is the basis of the emerging MPEG DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) format. Moehl says AAC is part of this, giving scope for Dolby Digital
companies to get the corporate message out to the press and the public without the cost of hiring private circuits. Computer giant Microsoft used this outlet for its press briefing from the E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) games show in Los Angeles during June. The presentation was available live on Microsoft’s website, with a choice of seven languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, German and English). UK-based satellite to web facility SatStream worked on the webcast, taking the feed from LA at its premises in south London. Seven soundproof booths had
Plus to be used, although surround sound is not a major consideration in the new multi- platform/device consumer world quite yet. “There’s not a sufficient number of people demanding 5.1 yet,” says Moehl. “And if the devices you’re sending to can’t handle that or 7.1 and 9.1, what’s the point of using it?” From the front-end perspective, Tim Summerhayes, music mixer and a director of
been set up there for the translations, with each booth housing two translators. Listening to the English language presentation from the US on headphones, the translators were able to go live in their respective languages using a touch to talk button connected to a Bosch DCN-NG Idesk interpreter microphone unit. Feeds from each booth were sent to a six-channel DCN mixer before being processed through SatStream’s Smooth Stream units to create the primary signal, with single bit-rate devices for back-ups.
mobile studio operator Red TX, says that even if clients don’t need 5.1 today because of broadcaster requirements, they will in the future, so they work in surround as well as stereo. Red TX has worked in the growing digital cinema market, with live theatre productions as well as concerts relayed to cinemas across Europe and even internationally. But music TV remains the core of the company’s business, with
From there the streams went to the IP Content Distribution Network for global distribution. For what SatStream
director Craig Moehl describes as “belt and braces” security, each language track was also recorded on to one of six Marantz PMD560 solid-state recorders in case of any failure in the digital archive. The various Microsoft
websites across Europe streamed the conference live with English as the default language, with a choice of the other six from a menu.
the increase in demand for facilities leading to a second Red TX vehicle going on the road last year and the refurbishment of the original Red I truck earlier this year. Summerhayes says there is a difference in approach for cinema and TV sound, with the former working to a more rigid configuration because of the centre channel. Internet streaming is partly
Novelsat’s new NS3000 satellite modem
responsible for the increase in live music ‘broadcasting’, with more channels offering programmes, both online to computers and through connected TVs. Summerhayes says he was surprised at the sound quality coming back and feels the web is the future for music broadcasting. And if it isn’t the absolute
Miranda's iTX IT-based play-out system, designed for both large broadcasters and smaller facilities looking to lower costs and streamline operations
DTS HD Master Audio was designed to be scalable for multi-platform delivery, running from high efficiency modes to lossless
future for live broadcasting in general, it is certainly going to play an ever-increasing role. n
www.dolby.com www.dts.com www.groovygecko.com www.miranda.com www.novelsat.com www.red-tx.com www.sislive.tv
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