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Global innovation takes centre stage


To underline the global reach of the IBC Innovation Awards, this year’s 10 finalists came from nine different countries. They represented the very best in collaboration as well as innovation. What marks out these awards


from simple technology prizes is that they honour successful projects. A broadcaster, network operator or facility has a pressing challenge, and it works closely with its technology partners to achieve a solution that meets its creative, technical and commercial requirements. Exceptional projects find their way to the IBC Innovation Award shortlist – and it is the end user that takes home the trophy. So it was with the first of last


night’s awards, for exceptional innovation in Content Creation. The winner was Park Road Post Production in Wellington, New Zealand. They were charged with the task of realising director Sir Peter Jackson’s vision for high frame rate 3D in The Hobbit Trilogy. The solution came in collaboration with technology partner SGO. “We wanted to create a complete pipeline, from rushes through dailies screenings and on to final online, stereo and colour grading,” said Park Road’s head of technology Phil Oatley. “SGO Mistika provided a


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said. “I am proud of the work that the Snell research team is doing into motion-compensated processing to support the higher frame rates needed to support 4K and beyond, as well as today’s wide range of mobile display devices.”


Head in the cloud One hot topic critical to IBC2013 is the cloud. But defining what it means, and what we can practically do with it in the big data world of electronic media, is tough. So a project which brings together academics, vendors and broadcasters to develop some practical solutions was bound to catch IBC’s eye. Vision Cloud is a European Commission FP7


platform that was flexible and robust – and so good that the film-makers never noticed that we were dealing with four times the data of a normal feature.”


While Park Road took the award,


there was high commendation from the judging panel, made up of editors and consultants from around the world, for BBC News & Sport and its coverage of last year’s Olympic Torch Relay. It used bonded cellular technology to get pictures back of every single torchbearer wherever they were on the 13,000km journey. Technology partners on this fascinating project were Antares, Bradley


Engineering, Cobham, LiveU and Mobile Viewpoint. Engrossing television drama starts with a solid script and production plan. But when you are making two top-rating, five nights a week primetime dramas, then you need help to keep track. ITV in the UK worked with Adobe to create Story, an application that is much more than just a collaborative script environment, but a complete production management system.


The fourth finalist in Content


Creation put the audience in the heat of the action. To add another dimension to its cricket coverage, Fox Sports in Australia put


research and innovation programme doing just that: creating practical and workable cloud solutions. Last night the team received an IBC Special Award for its efforts.


During the course of the project, the team developed a concept which needed a new name: the “storlet”. This is an application which runs in the cloud, near the data. It means that cloud users can drive workflows using metadata, without needing to move big files around which would create bottlenecks and delays. The Vision Cloud team includes Deutsche Welle and Italian national broadcaster RAI as media partners, with Engineering Ingeneria Informatica (Italy), France Telecom, IBM Haifa Research Lab, Institute of Communication and Computer


cameras on the helmets of the batsmen. Because they could not be encumbered with transmitters and battery packs, technology partner Globecast Australia came up with the clever idea of using low-power wireless HDMI from the batsmen, which had enough range to reach the umpires, who carried repeater transmitters as well as cameras of their own. Taking the IBC Innovation


Award for Content Management was Irish national broadcaster RTÉ and its File Acquisition and Server Technology project, FAST. As clever as the project was – using technology from TMD and implementation by Eurotek – the development plan saw real innovation, too. RTÉ created a steering group and gave them a small version of the kit they were going to use. They developed the system, built their super-user skills, and created a platform to show the board that the full investment would be justified. “It is a huge honour to receive


such a recognised award,” said RTÉ’s Gillian Byrne. “My thanks go to the super-users: their support, enthusiasm and engagement from the very beginning contributed to the success of the largest broadcast/IT project in RTÉ in recent years.”


Pushing RTÉ hard, and highly commended last night, were two other projects. T-2 in Slovenia is a market leader in IPTV, and wanted to find a seamless platform for delivery online, to mobiles and tablets, and to the growing number of smart TVs. The solution came in collaboration with Vision 247 and Fora.


In Belgium, RTBF wanted to get the most out of its news archive. The broadcaster felt that more responsive search algorithms would provide better results, so along with technology partners Perfect Memory and Memnon it developed Gems, a new semantic search engine. The third of the awards is for innovation in Content Delivery, which went to the Japan Commercial Broadcasters’ Association. It wanted a next generation contribution and distribution network across the country for uncompressed HD. The solution came in a very powerful IP network using multi- protocol label switching. “Thank you for selecting us as the winner of this esteemed IBC Innovation Award,” said Minoru Sonobe of JBA. “We have an innovative network that meets high-level demands from commercial broadcasters, the


result of our partnership with NTT Communications, Fujitsu and Juniper Networks. We would like to share our joy in receiving this award with them.”


Highly commended in the Content Delivery category was Abertis Telecom in Spain, which implemented a cloud-based multi- screen delivery platform, one of the first to use the MPEG-DASH specification. Technology partners were Harmonic and Nagra. The final presentation of the night went to the finalist with the shortest journey. Ziggo is a leading cable network in the Netherlands. Its challenge was an extensive installed base with a variety of set- top boxes, but a need to deliver the latest interactive tools. With technology partners led by ActiveVideo Networks and including Seachange, Samsung, Humax, Unitid and Webadvance, it put all the interactivity into the cloud where any legacy set-top box could access the full functionality.


For this bring-your-own-device


approach to cable television Ziggo also joined the pantheon of finalists in the IBC2013 Innovation Awards, a celebration of successful collaborations from around the world. View the full details at www.ibc.org/awards.


(Sweden) and the University of Messina (Italy). One of the project team, Alberto Messina of RAI, pointed out the differences that media applications need, compared with general purpose storage cloud solutions. “Vision Cloud integrates a set of functionalities which make it seamlessly usable in media production,” he said.


Professor David Crawford (left) presents the IBC Special Award to Hillel Koldoner and Eliot Salant from IBM and Alberto Messina from RAI


Systems (Greece), iTricity (Netherlands), SAP, Siemens, SNIA Europe (UK), Swedish Institute of


Computer Science, Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo (Spain), Telenor (Norway), Umeå University


“Among these, computational storage is certainly the most interesting,” he explained. “Through this, media engineers can implement highly efficient workflows.”


The IBC Special Award was


presented to Messina, along with Eliot Salant and Hillel Koldoner of IBM, by Professor David Crawford. View all the details at www.ibc.org/awards.


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