12 TVBEurope News & Analysis NEWS INBRIEF
EditShare with Octopus EditShare has struck up a technology and distribution partnership with Octopus Newsroom. The new relationship expands EditShare’s support for MOS-compliant newsroom computer systems to include Octopus6, with integration benefits such as the ability to preview from within the newsroom client video asset proxies that are stored on the EditShare Media Asset Management system. In addition to deeper integration with EditShare’s broadcast servers, journalists can browse source material stored on the EditShare shared storage systems.
www.editshare.com www.octopus-news.com
SWR airs with Astra Studio 2
The Südwestrundfunk (SWR), a member of the German ARD consortium and the second largest broadcasting organisation within the ARD, is now on air with Aveco’s new studio automation solution, Astra Studio 2. SWR’s three production control rooms, which are all configured differently, can now control any of its four studios. “ASTRA Studio 2 is uniquely able to support the complex processes that we have in our virtual studio where we produce our news shows,” said Udo Fettig, SWR project manager.
www.aveco.com
Divine distribution Clear-Com has expanded its partnership with Optocore/ BroaMan and is now distributing the new BroaMan Divine V3R-FX-ICOM-SDI. Unveiled to the broadcast market for the first time at IBC, the new BroaMan Divine V3R-FX-ICOMSDI is described as ideal for any set-up that requires multiple feeds of high-quality audio, video, data and intercom. It provides scalable, protocol-independent routing, repeating, transport and distribution of multiple signals over optical fibre.
www.clear.com
IBC i-mediaflex Mobile IBC2012 will see the European launch of TMD’s i-mediaflex Mobile, a new app for the iPad, Android tablet and smartphone enabling users access to content from a handheld device, and add or update metadata. It is a web-enabled solution for asset and business process management, for both digital and analogue content. Also on show will be TMD’s Unified Media Services (UMS). The architecture and API enables external media services and devices, to be integrated on a single workflow bus. IBC Stand: 2.C58
www.tvbeurope.com August 2012
90% of the world’s data has been created in only the last two years
From gigabytes to terabytes: dealing with big data waves
David Wood, EBU, looks at industry challenges discussed at the SMPTE Forum
ALONG THEWest Coast of the US there is a phenomenon known as the sneaker wave: an unexpectedly large upsurge of water that can appear without warning and catch beach combers unaware. Some are merely knocked down; others are swept out to sea and need Baywatch to rescue them. The media and entertainment industries sit in the same metaphorical spot. Heading our way is a huge wave of digital data for programme production and delivery, growing in size every day like a latter-day scene from a Hollywood B movie. Because we will have the ability to capture every single shot and take, at increasingly and exponentially higher levels of quality, hold it in perpetuity, and distribute unique versions of the resulting content across an ever- growing array of platforms, we will need to handle storehouse upon storehouse of digital video and metadata created by broadcast and cinema production. The future clearly belongs to big data. To give us a clue about what’s coming, a report from IBM published last October stated that 90% of the world’s data has been created in only the last two years. So how is a media executive to plan for the future without being caught off guard by data growing at such a rapid pace? This question was one of many
forward-looking challenges considered by executive attendees from more than 80 global media, entertainment, and IT companies at the Forum on Emerging Media Technologies held recently in Geneva. Sponsored by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and produced in collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union, this symposium focused on the most important and innovative research taking place over the next 10-15 years, with a particular focus on the technologies likely to come to market within the next five years. Over the two-day symposium, it became clear that a significant part of coping successfully with waves of big data will require multiple, scalable storage systems at different points along the production chain, each tuned
technologically to provide the access speeds necessary to reliably complete a particular task.
Professional storytelling For content providers and distributors worried about their business models, the steadfast belief among the broadcast, broadband, and cinema executives is that entertainment programming will not be reduced to a near-endless stream of home movies; the future will not be one of cats playing pianos ad nauseum on YouTube. Professional storytelling and high-quality moving images will continue to carry the day, whether viewed on a screen in the theatre or in the home or on a TV, phone, and tablet simultaneously. There will always, always be a need by people for ‘laughter, tears, stories, and emotions.’ Yet each instance of image- quality improvement, from HD to 3D to 4K and beyond, carries an additional data load for content providers. The Super Hi-Vision (SHV) system originally developed by the Japanese public broadcaster NHK and now ITU-R UHDTV Level 2, for example, has much more than 16 times the resolution of today’s HD and 22.2 channels of audio to match the high-quality visual experience.
The ITU UHDTV specification
allows 120 images per second and 12 bits/sample. There is even talk of shooting at 300 or 600 pictures/ second. The data being amassed will be way off the end of today’s scales. In cinema too, there is growing interest in camera rates of 48fps. Further expanding these data loads is the reality that in an IT-based production world, professionals will want to record, and keep, as many scenes as possible to ensure that the final cut of a programme or movie matches the original vision of the creative time. These creative visionaries may
even find an unlikely ally in the management suite to keep all this data, as production executives will be reluctant to relinquish any scene that could one day be parlayed into a new commercial package or distribution agreement. By the way, don’t forget that we will also need as much metadata
David Wood: “Superior storytelling and image quality — things that the media and entertainment industries already know how to deliver — will light the path forward to business success provided we come to grips with storage”
as it takes to find each frame. As the saying goes, ”If you can’t find it — you ain’t got it!” So everything must be defined,
labeled, and stored in ways that make the greatest technical and business sense. To keep pace with these waves
of data, media executives need to start planning, now, to deploy scalable systems at multiple points along the production chain; scalable systems are those that you don’t have to throw away when you need more storage. What’s more, each of these systems should use the technology best suited for the task at hand. Solid-state storage, for example, would be a very good way to house production materials for near-term use given its fast access times and low transfer latencies. On the other hand, a tape-based storage system may be OK for media archives — as long as it could scale to meet an organisation’s projected needs.
Then there is the cloud Despite its design as a resource of theoretically infinite size and speed, the use of cloud-based infrastructures in production environments raises difficult, and as yet unsettled, issues. Chief among them is the security of a media company’s intellectual property: how can it be sure that all its content is absolutely safe, and won’t get misplaced or make its way onto a public server somewhere and have its value gutted overnight? Setting aside security concerns, cloud-based systems also raise
technology questions, such as those about retrieval times: while you might save money hosting materials in Greenland, how quickly can you transfer those monster clips to an edit suite in London? There are also communications-
related costs to consider. Most companies will pay private network operators for the privilege of moving data; if the current market is any guide, those payments will go up with increases in bandwidth and transfer speeds. What’s more, governments may look to new tariffs on network traffic as a source of additional revenue, adding to a company’s operating costs. The greatest point of
agreement was that superior storytelling and image quality — things that the media and entertainment industries already know how to deliver — will light the path forward to business success provided we come to grips with storage. There is similarly good news on
multiple technical fronts, not the least of which is the continued and rapid decline in scalable storage costs that will make capturing, producing, archiving, and distributing these stories that much easier. Deploying scalable systems at multiple points along the production chain affordably will enable media companies to bring their stories to more viewers cost-effectively — and, as important, prevent them from being caught unawares by waves of data already forming on the horizon.
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