18 TVBEurope
www.tvbeurope.com August 2013
Data wrangling and data storage now have to be line items on a production budget
The focus is on virtualisation as Deluxe wanted Cinegy to help customers launch without the burden of investment in equipment. “At its heart, virtualisation technology is about money. Private broadcasters want to make money; public broadcasters want to prove they’ve spent money well. Lower downtime, easier management and increased utilisation. Managing monetary resources more efficiently. Don’t confuse this emphasis on money with being a reduction in creativity,” Kirkaldie remarked. Virtualisation allows
multiple services, possibly from multiple customer tenants, to share resources on a single physical machine. But with virtualising comes another problem — you need to break your addiction to cables, he pointed out. “Your virtual machine doesn’t have any cables going into it whatsoever. There’s no such thing as a virtual SDI cable. Ethernet has
Content exchange and catchup TV platform for Canal+
By Dick Hobbs
ONE OF the recurring themes of this year’s IT Broadcast Workflow was that the implementation of file-based systems has moved on from long-term projects and detailed development. Today we have more experience, allowing broadcasters to move very quickly to seize new commercial opportunities.
Michal Stanislawek: “Even though we’re running in a fully IP-based environment with files delivered to us we’ve seen a number of challenges with those files, an outcome of legacy systems/processes and, in some cases, poor housekeeping”
jobs to get the content processed and imported into the system. That includes content as well as metadata.” In addition, Portal enables users to import and process schedules with the ability to securely preview it from anywhere in the world using just a computer with a browser and an active internet connection.
us the elasticity to react and enhance the capacity of your system and the ability to put more files through the workflow in a timely manner.” Kirkaldie explained how virtualisation has helped Deluxe unlock the capability and viability to launch a platform like MediaCloud. “In addition to feeding content
“Everyone fell into the trough of disillusionment and felt that tapes were so much easier. We’re now climbing up the slope of enlightenment”
been virtualised but SDI is too specialised/niche. IP-based video signals become the only choice in this virtualised world. “Virtualising CPU and GPU capabilities is something the industry is working on and we’ve seen a lot of improvement and movement in 2013.” From the user end, Michal Stanislawek, technology director, Deluxe MediaCloud, explained the company’s cloud-based service platform. The four pillars of Deluxe MediaCloud include Portal for asset management and processing; Playout (feature rich software centric IP broadcast platform); PortaLive, the global master control room and Distribution for robust and secure stream delivery. Focusing on Portal,
Stanislawek described it as the main window into all of a customer’s assets giving visibility of any media content and associated metadata. This view includes all workflows and their respective states. “Using Portal, you can deliver your assets which will trigger import
But what are the challenges? Stanislawek said: “Even though we’re running in a fully IP-based environment with files delivered to us we’ve seen a number of challenges with those files, which is an outcome of legacy systems/processes and, in some cases, poor housekeeping. We’ve faced challenges with schedules around a lack of data for on air branding and secondary events. Where we’ve learned from all of these challenges, we’re trying to introduce automation into the system to allow for them to be handled. “Going forward, we’re also
working on extending our publishing capabilities to VoD. We developed Portal to orchestrate and gather all of the processes in one single common cloud to simplify the integration between all of those parts of the workflow and components, giving full visibility into the content and process.” Available in a fully virtualised environment with all applications and servers fully virtualised as well, Stanislawek added: “It gives
Charles Lesoil: “We could have bought any transcoder and any broadcast process management solution”
channels also needed to be available on multiple platforms as well as the free-to-air transmission. That, in turn, implies creating four different H.264 outputs, plus Apple HLS (a further four variants) as well as the MPEG-2 transport stream. Commercials had to be stripped
out of the captured content coming in as SDI. Graphics needed to be replaced and channel logos needed to be added.
Lewis Kirkaldie, Cinegy
into the system as files, we also need to get output from the system to let viewers see it. Since these systems are likely to be virtualised, we do need a way to do this without resorting to SDI cables.” Half a decade ago, Cinegy
realised that IP-based transport of broadcast quality video signals would make a huge amount of sense. “With careful control in the broadcast chain and the ability to remove a lot of broadcast chain complexity through innovations around CiaB, the cost of encode/decode cycles can be reduced quite drastically to enable professional grade software parts that allow customers to do all of this. “All of this combined allows
Deluxe to input and output between playout servers, Dolby encoders, subtitle generators and transport stream multiplexers without a single SDI lead. To get the benefits of this IP-connected flexible world, you do need to accept that SDI must die,” Kirkaldie concluded.
Nick Kayworth, sales manager Systems and Solutions EMEA, Telestream, introduces the Canal+ case study
Charles Lesoil of Canal+ described a typical project in the new era. The broadcaster, long- established and highly successful in pay-TV, seized an opportunity to create two new free-to-air channels, their first. The previous owners of the slots offered them for sale in April 2012. Canal+ concluded the commercial negotiations in July, received regulatory approval in September and needed to be on-air in December. This was happening at a time
when Canal+ was pursuing an aggressive multi-screen strategy as part of its revenue development plans. So the new
“We could have bought any
transcoder and any broadcast process management solution,” Lesoil said. “But we did not have the time. Virtualisation was the solution, and Telestream Pipeline and Vantage was capable of being implemented in a single box.” One of the fundamental
requirements was that content online should be available as a single file, but without commercials. “Users do not want to click on each part,” according to Lesoil. So live capture has to strip out the commercial breaks.
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