THE OFFICAL NEWSPAPER FROM IBC
20.12.2021 HEADING TO THE CLOUD IN 2022 BY ANDY STOUT
Greater adoption of remote production will in turn accelerate the shift of live workfl ows to the cloud, according to an IBC Digital panel tasked with examining the broadcast and media tech trends that will defi ne 2022. Unsurprisingly, having been accelerated by Covid, remote production fi gured strongly in the discussion among the technology leaders. As Gordon Castle, SVP for technology and operations in EMEA for Discovery, pointed out, cloud already plays a limited role, with cloud-based contribution used as backups to big events. “What’s going to happen next is that we’re going to move big media processing, vision mixers, communication systems and audio systems all into the cloud,” he said. “You can do all these things in the cloud today but not at the full scale you need for a big live production,” said Castle, stating that there are two key hurdles. One is handling the sheer complexity of a large-scale live event with multiple inputs, replays and complex audio mixing. The other is latency. “This is why contribution in the cloud is so important. Once the contribution is in the cloud, you’re not adding latency. The fi rst access you have is to audio and video and then you can process it directly in the cloud and distribute it on. That’s really the enabler.” Hurdles still remain to a native cloud contribution workfl ow, especially when it comes to the crucial fi rst-mile resiliency which is currently handled by multiple redundant
INSIDE
Streaming and sport Netfl ix on the power of partnerships, inside Pluto TV’s growth plans and how OBS embraced the cloud to deliver the Olympics
Pages 6 & 8 Launch lessons
How Discovery+ plotted its launch, insight into Starzplay’s global rollout and Johannes Larcher sets out HBO Max’s strategy for growth
Pages 10 & 11 Caretta Research’s Rob Ambrose (top, left) with Gordon Castle, Mike Davies and Anna Lockwood
paths. But the momentum in the industry to solve these problems is strong. “There’s not a broadcast or an event that we do that doesn’t have some cloud component or cloud element, and I think that will absolutely continue to grow in the future,” agreed Anna Lockwood, head of international at Telstra Broadcast Services. Meanwhile Mike Davies, SVP at Fox Sports, said that the network is doing 80% of its college football and 90% of its college basketball remotely.
“I would never have thought that was possible, and the other component that I think the cloud potentially will help
IBC Digital in 2022
More than 100 companies have taken part in IBC’s Accelerator Media Innovation Programme this year, with 40 of those organisations involved in three projects focused on 5G. Two of the Accelerators – 5G Location- Based eXtended Reality and 5G & Innovation in Live Workfl ows – were presented during sessions on IBC Digital last week and are now available on demand. The third, titled 5G for Remote Production in Live Sports, will be presented in January.
Ahead of two major global sporting events in 2022 – the FIFA World Cup in Qatar and the Winter Olympics in Beijing – this project, led by Al Jazeera Media Networks, has been putting current 5G capabilities for live sports content production to the test. This includes the development of fan engagement experiences, new contribution technologies and assessing new live remote production workfl ow architectures at the FIFA Arab Cup which recently took place in Doha, Qatar. Al Jazeera Media Networks executive director of technology and network
operations Ahmed Alfahad said: “We were particularly keen to unlock exciting new immersive experiences for fans as well as new creative production techniques for sports, news and events broadcasters. Working collaboratively with such a team of world-leading sports broadcasters, mobile networks and specialist production technology vendors to trial use cases at the FIFA Arab Cup this month, our learnings have been extensive, and we look forward to sharing some of the insights with IBC’s global audience of industry professionals.”
with is some of the ancillary assistance technologies that will aid us in producing live programming,” he said.
He also, though, sounded a note of caution about the prospects of achieving 100% cloud workfl ows. “I think that last 10% of development that’s needed for cloud to be used in live is going to take a little while. Live sports or live production is the torture test for all of these kinds of technologies, and I think that is going to be a steep climb.”
Watch the session on-demand on IBC Digital
Workfl ow Tours Join IBC’s Workfl ow Tours on creative production, content supply chain, live production and distribution with insight from leading vendors, practitioners and commentators
Pages 12 & 14
Product showcase The latest product news from the industry’s most innovative manufacturers and suppliers
Pages 34-70 Interviews
NEP chief executive Brian Sullivan, IBC award-winner and BBC Sport boss Barbara Slater and Sky Sports’ Inga Ruehl on sustainability and the ambition of net-zero
Pages 15-18
Technical Papers From 5G to facial recognition, IBC’s 2021 Technical Papers cover a range of future-facing topics with overviews of sessions and links to the recorded presentations inside
Pages 21-22
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