theibcdaily TV: It’s a messy business
By Mark Harrison, chair, The Digital Production Partnership
Hands up anyone who doesn’t want the activity of production to be creative. OK, that’s a no- show. So now we all agree we believe creativity is A Good Thing, what’s its defining characteristic? It’s messy. Very messy. Whoever heard of a creative person who wanted their programme to be like everyone else’s? Good creatives will, by definition, seize upon new techniques and technologies that give them an edge – that make their programmes distinctive.
For this simple reason it is an enormous mistake for any organisation or product to seek to standardise or constrain the production process. ‘Well they’ll just have to do what we tell them!’ is about the most futile exhortation any operations manager can make. But this fundamental characteristic of production – that it needs to be allowed to be messy if it is to deliver the creativity we all crave – carries with it an odd twist. Creatives are also by nature very conservative. Successful delivery of their labour of love is paramount, and to that end they will return again and again to the people, processes and rituals that have worked for them in the past.
It is hard to overstate the importance of the word trust in the production community. Combine this with the urge to do something new, and you can find yourself standing in an on- line suite trying to pick up the mess generated by the wrong people trying to wrangle a new technique.
In many ways that is simply the price (and it can often be expensive!) we have to pay. Creatives need the freedom to
create; they need a range of products, craft talent, and production facilities to enable them; and they are bound to make mistakes. But here comes the real paradox. Everything about what it takes to make great content seems to require diversity in the means of production; but it’s a diversity the industry can no longer afford. Major trade shows such as IBC and NAB can trick us into thinking broadcast technology is a major global industry. And true enough global media – in all senses of the word – is big business. But the broadcast technology part of it really isn’t – not compared to the consumer end of the media industry.
And furthermore, though they may not realise it, those media consumers really don’t want the broadcast technology industry to be big. Audiences have strong views about programmes, about channels and creative brands. They could not care less about the technology infrastructure and workflows that got those products to their living room, lap or palm. That’s why the whole process of content delivery needs to absorb as little cost as possible while causing the least trouble.
at once brilliantly messy, superstitious and constrained – as we make the fundamental shift in the means of production, from physical to file-based media. So however can we become a truly effective end-to- end digital industry that ensures creativity remains uninhibited, supplier choice remains rich, and yet background processes are more efficient and elegant? That, in a nutshell, is the challenge the UK’s Digital Production Partnership (DPP) is seeking to address. And what has been intriguing since the partnership came into existence just over four years ago is the enthusiasm with which colleagues from across the industry are joining with us to meet that challenge.
The DPP is led and paid for by three UK public service broadcasters – ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC. But the work it
Mark Harrison: Right now the whole TV industry in the UK is
working together to meet the 1 October file- delivery deadline
‘Delivery and Beyond’ session Saturday 13 September, RAI G102/3
DPP’s
most significant achievement has been to define a
undertakes is supported by all the UK broadcasters, as well as an impressive role call of the industry’s manufacturers, service providers, post production houses, production companies and consultancies.
Everything about what it takes to make great content seems to
require diversity in the means of production; but it’s a diversity the industry can no longer afford
Content commissioners and distributors would be inclined to agree with consumers: they’d rather spend their money on content acquisition and ownership than content delivery.
Inhibition and efficiency This is the lovably crazy and paradoxical world of television –
The DPP offers opportunities for colleagues from all these different sectors to come together to share perspectives, problems and best practice. Incredibly perhaps that opportunity did not exist before; and it is telling how much people value it.
Perhaps the Partnership’s Future television technologies Conference Tomorrow By Chris Forrester
This IBC Technical Stream session is produced in association with IEEE, and brought together by Triveni Digital chief science officer Rich Chernock. It promises to be a fascinating glimpse into how some giants of the industry see
16 theibcdaily
the future of television. Samsung’s Youngkwon Lim, a principal research engineer at the South Korean technology company (although based in the US) is perfectly qualified to address delegates given his background as a participant and chairman of many MPEG standards bodies. From 2000, he joined net&tv Inc. and has been leading the development of domestic and international
standards of DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting). He joined Samsung Research America in Dallas in 2012. He has been chairman of the Systems subgroup of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 MPEG since 2009. He is also serving as a chairman of ATSC Specialist Group on 3D-TV and its Specialist Group on Management & Protocols, which is developing the ATSC 3.0
common standard for file-
based programme delivery in the UK – and to bring that standard into practice by 1 October 2014. Right now the whole TV industry in the UK is working together to meet the file-delivery deadline in what we believe is the first pan- industry process change to happen in a single, coordinated, big-bang moment. The transition to HD has taken a decade; the move to file delivery is
happening in the space of a few months. More interesting still, the
creation of a single file-delivery standard has created a domino effect of coordinated,
collaborative change. The DPP has found itself working with industry colleagues to look at product compliance and interoperability; digital storage and connectivity; workflow best practice; and opportunities for
standard. His research interests include multimedia systems and convergence between digital broadcasting and internet. Also presenting is Dr Deep
Sen, director of Multimedia R&D Labs at Qualcomm, who leads Qualcomm’s 3D-Audio research team at their San Diego HQ. From 1994-2003, he was at Speech and Audio labs at AT&T Bell Laboratories, USA and from 2003-2011, he was a faculty member at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia. He has over 60 peer-reviewed publications. Dr Sen is a
further common standards – notably in that part of the television chain which benefits from simplicity, namely delivery, distribution and storage, rather than the part that thrives on diversity, namely production. These new conversations are
crossing the boundaries of public service and commercial. What has been exciting, and surprising, is that the DPP has discovered that the unspoken truth of TV – that the start of the production chain benefits from freedom, but the end of it benefits from constraint – is something everyone wants to shout out loud. Let’s not pretend making TV suddenly got easy. Nor should we pretend the DPP has all the answers. But the Partnership does seem to have started a conversation that pretty much everyone wants to take part in. And when we speak with one voice, the mess suddenly seems manageable.
member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), Audio Engineering Society (AES), a senior member of IEEE and an elected member of the IEEE Speech & Language Technical Committee.
13 September Emerald Room 08.00-10.00
Saturday
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