Content+Technology ASIA December 2021 by Content+Technology

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DECEMBER 2021

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SMPTE 2110 & NDI Virtualized and Cloud environments Broadcast Monitoring and OTT Analysis

Cover Story... page 30. IMAGE Copyright IOC/Matthew Jordan Smith. REGULARS 02 EDITOR’S WELCOME 03 NEWS+PEOPLE ASTRO’s Euan Smith - the

Agnostic Platform Approach; Qiyi Ramps Up 4K Production with Grass Valley; People on the Move.

FEATURES 10 CAMERAS & LIGHTING Fujinon Scores at MCG; NewDrone Safety Apps; Blonde Robot Partners with RED; Sony Unveils VENICE 2; Fujifilm Launches 4K Lens and Zoom Rate Demand Unit; Blackmagic URSA Broadcast G2; Full Frame Lenses from Cooke; 8K V-RAPTOR from RED; Hollyland COSMO C1 SDI/HDMI wireless link system.

12 SPORTSCASTING RTS Connects ICC Men’s T20 Cricket; EVS Signs FIFA World Cup Contract; NBL1 Shoots Hoops with LiveU; Ross Unveils XPression 10.5; Dream Chip Adds ND Filter-Holder.

15 NEWS OPERATIONS SBS Australia to

Launch Free-to-Air Multilingual News Channel; Pasifika TV Taps Into LiveU for Content Distribution; Vinten Weatherproof Robotic Pan and Tilt Head; Etere NDI PTZ Camera Control; Dalet’s Cloud-Native, Unified News Operations; Vizrt Out-of-the-Box Virtual Graphics; Avid Expands IP Content Sources.

18 MEDIA IN THE CLOUD The Impact of Self-

28 CONTENT+TECHNOLOGY ISSN 1448-9554 PP:255003/06831 Broadcastpapers Pty Ltd (ABN 34 095 653 277) PO Box 165 Surry Hills, NSW 2010, Australia www.broadcastpapers.com PUBLISHER: Phil Sandberg Tel +61 (0)2 4368 4569 Mob +61 (0)414 671 811 papers@broadcastpapers.com

serve Content Access; AJA Diskover Media Edition; Intertrust Consolidates DRM and Content Security; Signiant Boosts SaaS with Levels Beyond; EditShare Optimises Tech Stack, Remote Workflows; FUJIFILM and iRODS Partner on Archiving; and more.

ADVERTISING MANAGER: Adam Buick Mob +61 (0)413 007 144 adam@broadcastpapers.com PRODUCTION MANAGER: Lucy Salmon Mob +61(0)412 479 662 production@broadcastpapers.com DESIGN & LAYOUT Wide Open Media Mob +61 (0)419 225 348 www.wideopenmedia.com.au PRINTING: SOS Printing, Sydney

21 POST-PRODUCTION Unity Buys Weta

Technology; Netflix Buys Scanline VFX; Boris FX Unveils Sapphire and Continuum 2022; Maxon’s Trapcode Suite 17.1; Hedge Extends Avid Editing Workflows into the Cloud; Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve 17.4; Pomfort Integrates with Filmlight; Maxon Redshift for The Render Network; Cineware for Unreal Plugin.

24 AUDIO, RADIO, PODCASTING SEN Goes

Remote with AVC Across NZ; TASCAM Updates DA-6400 Digital Multitrack; Wohler Upgrades iAM-AUDIO PLUS Monitors; Vortex Multi-Channel IP Audio Codec with AES 67, NDI; Grass Valley, Telos Integrate Intercom.

28 CONTENT DELIVERY Ad Delivery,

Personalisation Come Alive for Seven and Mediacorp at Tokyo Games; Magna Provides Telkom Indonesia with Playout, MAM and Archiving; Vietnam’s VTV9 Boosts Playout with Etere; Caton Delivers Women’s Soccer for China’s Relevent Sports Group; Ross Revamps Video Servers; Imagine’s Selenio Adds Contribution and Branding.

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EDITOR’S WELCOME

Stream Me Up, Scotty! By Phil Sandberg

I WILL SAY from the outset that, while I have watched most of the Star Trek franchise, you won’t find me at any conventions sporting pointy ears or carrying a Klingon battle axe.

So, what is the answer? Obviously, streaming services want to keep their tier 1 content behind their paywalls to encourage subscriber sign-up, but there is also a limit to the number of services viewers are prepared to pay for.

However, I did share the disappointment of a great many Trekkies recently when, just days out from the debut of Season 4 of Star Trek: Discovery, franchise owner Paramount decided to pull the series from Netflix and restrict its accessibility to the Paramount+ streaming service. Prior to this move, the franchise was available in the U.S. on Paramount+ and, internationally, through Netflix. Because Paramount+’s international footprint is a fraction of Netflix’s, the move resulted in an own-goal of audience loss. This was compounded by the fact that, in a number of territories where Paramount+ is available, audiences were told the new Star Trek series wouldn’t be available until 2022.

Part of the solution to the accessibility problem is a single point of contact such as Amazon’s Streaming Partners Program - available to its Prime customers, or the “Netflix button” offered by pay TV operators Foxtel in Australia or Malaysia’s ASTRO (see page 4), as well as many connected TVs.

Rushing to negate this, parent company ViacomCBS made the series available to some European territories where its free Pluto TV service is available while bringing forward access to Paramount+ territories under a 50 percent off sign-up offer. It was an audience relationship fail, and one that highlighted the link between ease of access and lowering piracy.

If traditional pay TV companies are taking on some of the mantle of a telco, why not take it a step further by offering one-time access to third-party premium content? However, instead of a “video store in the cloud” pay-per-view approach such as that offered by Australian telco Telstra, why not a content data plan, a “Streaming Cap”, not unlike that applied to mobile phone data, but based on hours watched? In the short term, this might satisfy those who

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“Looks like I’ll be putting my pirate hat back on.”

Perhaps another part of the solution lies in the bundling of content AND technology, as outlined by ASTRO’s, Group COO and CEO TV, Euan Smith, whose plans include providing connectivity by acting as a broadband ISP to ASTRO customers (a move undertaken by Foxtel in Australia and many others). 22:00

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It’s stating the bleeding obvious to say that 2021 has been another challenging year, but the industry has made progress dealing with the obstacles thrown up by COVID-19. While this still has a way to play out, there is no doubt adaptation and innovation will continue.

The issue with this approach, however, is viewers still need to fork out the extra cash for a subscription to these “third-party” services, even if, in the case of Amazon or ASTRO, it is included in a single bill.

The overwhelmingly negative reaction of the move fell into two main threads: “I am not signing up to another streaming service just to watch one show!”

baulk at yet another sign-up, garner otherwise lost revenue for providers like Paramount+ (shared, of course, with the pay TV operators) and, in the longer term, actually attract new customers. It’s just a thought.

We look forward to sharing that journey with you throughout 2022. Phil Sandberg – Editor/Publisher papers@broadcastpapers.com +61(0)414671811

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ASTRO – When Agnostic is Not Sitting on the Fence With the recent addition of Netflix on Ultrabox, as well as the launch of the Sooka live/on-demand mobile streaming app, Malaysia’s ASTRO has well and truly embraced the ethos of giving viewers what they want, when they want it, where they want it. SPEAKING DURING the recent online AVIA Asia Video Summit, Euan Smith Group COO and CEO TV with ASTRO emphasised the company’s evolving philosophy. “Our job is just to make it really simple for the consumer whatever mode they want to consume it,” he said. “That’s the headline. “We, obviously, have a rich heritage in linear and the Astro brand has been moving into streaming for a number of years now, whether that was originally the GO product or the increase that we’ve got on the platform in terms of video-ondemand when we launched the Ultra Box and Ulti Box. And we did have a new baby, a baby daughter, Sooka, which is our OTT playing space, but we want to be transmission agnostic, we want to be technology agnostic. Our job is to put whatever content the consumer wants to watch in front of them in the simplest way possible. And for some people that’s linear and for some people that’s streaming. There’s an argument that says linear will always have a future because there’s a large heritage, older demographic in the field that’s just used to that, so it’s got many legs and many miles to run yet. And there is still such a thing as appointment to view TV, live sports, etc., as an example. But increasingly, what we’re seeing across the industry is this move to ondemand binge viewing on your terms.” Another trend of interest, says Smith, is the expansion of linear viewing to non-traditional platforms such as the company’s Sooka OTT app. “As on-demand grows we are seeing across our primary platform - the Ultra Box - people consuming more minutes on-demand than they would’ve in the past as that service builds, and as we aggregate OTT apps and we add more partners to there. “But let me give you the opposite point of view which is that in some extent because we’ve been driving live sports heavily within our new baby, Sooka, 70 per cent roughly of all of the viewing on that. We had some ridiculous numbers in terms of viewership; 70 per cent of that is actually under linear channels that sit inside the app, not on the underlying content. So, live badminton comes on in Malaysia and it’s all hands to the pump. I think we had almost two million, 1.94 million customers, I think in some way or form, who have watched a piece of content on Sooka. And that baby has only been born five

months ago. So, linear is not dead and ondemand is only adolescent.” As to a Pay TV company’s traditional role of aggregator, that too is evolving as established operators enter into agreements with new players. “Aggregation is in the DNA of a Pay TV company,” says Smith. “And it used to be that a Pay TV company would aggregate a bunch of channels. And all that’s happened actually is that the content and the great places where content is, is not just in the channels now. It’s also in the OTT players, the new guys on the market, and increasingly so as the digital boxes actually start to walk away from their linear channels which they’ve done recently. Our game as a Pay TV aggregator hasn’t really changed. It’s just about aggregating all that great content into one place, about making it super accessible, super easy to buy, super easy to find, super easy to search. And I honestly don’t think that that has changed.

“Our job

is just to make it

really simple for the

consumer whatever

mode they want to

“The other thing that we’re doing, back to the point of transmission agnostic, it doesn’t matter whether you want this thing through a broadband connection, or you have it over satellite play or, coming up, you’ll have it over 5G. Our job is just to make it really simple for you to aggregate it, to put it into a single bill. And that’s the kind of mission that we’re on at the moment with ASTRO.

consume it.

“We’ve been talking about it for a while, but we had these partnerships with the HBOs and iQiyis and the TVBs of the world to partner with their apps, so that customers can get single sign-in, etc. We’ve now actually integrated the Netflix app into the box which is a big deal for us, because now that we’ve cracked the technology that allows us to be servicing Netflix in our UI and on our home screen and starting to do some search and rec type stuff, now we’ve got the

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OWN THIS SPACE! 4

technology to do that we can do that with the other OTT partners in the space. If you go onto our UI right now, you’ll be able to get all the great things with Netflix and get into their content super easy through a remote-control button or off the UI. And you’ll see three slots which are Disney, iQiyi, TVB also coming soon because that’s the next game for us, is about how do we aggregate all these services so that they are available through the box in one simple place, so that you can have that simple bill. “And then the last point to that is that if you’ve aggregated absolutely everything and you’ve got everything in one place the next obvious extension which ASTRO isn’t the first player, but we’re making a big play in the space, is to bundle in the Broadband as well. So, to have a really compelling TV and broadband service which is the best value in the market just seems to be the right thing to do. “There’s a fatigue in finding content across all of these various different OTT streaming services. And I think people are getting bored of that, I think they’re getting fed up with that. I personally, find it just too hard to be honest, so you don’t do it. I think it’s also people talk about whether bundling is the right thing to do, or whether you should be able to buy everything together. “There’s a group of people that always will want to do the exercise and will want to actually pick everything as well, but most of us have lives to lead and are quite time-poor. And in that environment bundling just works for a bunch of people, so long may that continue. And the purpose of doing our aggregation, that we’re doing now, is to make that bundling concept super-easy so that people can get on with the rest of their lives.”

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NHK’s Masagaki Appointed as ABU President NHK EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT Masagaki Satoru has been elected to serve as the new President of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU). Mr Masagaki was born in 1960 in Sendai city, Japan and graduated from the Faculty of Political Science Economics of Waseda University. Since joining NHK in 1983 as news reporter, he has mainly covered political news. After serving as news editor for more than 10 years, he became Head of Political News Division in 2010, Editorial Controller News Department, Director of Osaka Station in 2015, Director of

News Department in 2016, and Director of Public Relations Department in 2017. He joined the NHK Executive Board as Senior Director in April 2019, and then assumed the post of Executive Vice President in April 2020. He will serve as ABU President through to the end of 2024. Commenting on his election, Satoru-san said, “Over the last decade, with expanded digitalisation and the use of the Internet, the broadcast industry was forced to confrot major upheavals. When we move into the post-COVID era, I promise to listen to the voices of all members, encourage more cooperation and

build the value of the Union. In doing so, I hope that the ABU will once again find itself back on a solid footing and moving full speed ahead. And to help our members remain competitive in this digital age and continue makinig contributions to society, I will do my utmost to make the Union a useful place to exchange knowledge and wisdom.” Visit https://www.abu.org.my

William Wong Joins Riedel as Sales Manager for SE Asia RIEDEL COMMUNICATIONS has announced the appointment of William Wong as the company’s regional sales manager for Southeast Asia. Wong joins the company with more than 20 years of experience in the broadcast video industry. He will be responsible for leading both direct and channel sales across the region. Wong joins Riedel having most recently served in roles as senior sales manager and regional

sales manager for Southeast Asia for EditShare UK. He earlier served in similar roles at Imagine Communications and Matrox Video. He began his career as a product manager for Matrox in Malaysia. Over his career, Wong has worked with leading media organizations across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines, and Vietnam, and he has worked closely with channel partners in managing sales, after-sales, and support of key

regional clients. Wong will be based in Singapore and reports directly to Simon Roehrs, Director APAC, at Riedel. Visit www.riedel.net

Qiyi’s Ramps Up 4K Production with Grass Valley IQIYI, THE CHINESE ONLINE video service, has chosen an end-to-end Grass Valley workflow to underpin its outside broadcasting (OB) van upgrade and drive 4K UHD content creation for its audiences. As part of its mission to produce and deliver enhanced content experiences for its over 100 million streaming subscribers, the Beijing-based media organisation has selected a suite of future-ready, IP-based live production solutions to support 4K UHD production of live entertainment shows. Building upon an established relationship with Grass Valley, iQiyi made its first strides towards bolstering its high-resolution production ability earlier this year with the purchase of a range of LDX86N cameras for its OB fleet, providing 4K UHD and HDR image capture. With the flexible and customizable acquisition capabilities in Grass Valley’s camera technology, iQiyi’s production team can effortlessly switch between HD and 4K UHD formats based on individual

event requirements. Grass Valley’s Karrera K-Frame production switcher provides multiformat support for iQiyi’s complex and changing production environments. The robust, end-to-end IP live production workflow is underpinned by GV Node, Grass Valley’s real-time routing and processing solution and the Densité 3+ FR4 signal processing frame. IQiyi has also selected the GV STRATUS toolset to upgrade and simplify its video production and content management workflows — essential for getting live content on-air in today’s multi-platform, multi-device environment. “Our subscribers are demanding more captivating streaming content — and they want to enjoy it in the highest quality possible,” said He Yi, Chief Engineer at iQiyi. “Our goal is to be at the forefront of content creation in China, and as a part of that, unlocking our 4K UHD

potential has been a key focus. Grass Valley was the clear choice to partner with, its technology portfolio provides a smooth and quick transition to IP-enabled workflows fit for the future of media production, and Grass Valley’s industry pedigree and expertise ensures we can trust them to provide reliable and highly-specialised solutions.” The sale was via Grass Valley Channel partner, Beijing Sailing Hightop. Visit www.grassvalley.com

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Moving in the iFast Lane with NDI and Ideal Systems

With COVID-19 making face-to-face contact difficult at best, many companies have been facing the challenge of keeping connected with customers and employees by repurposing their underutilised office spaces, especially boardrooms and other meeting areas. ONE SUCH COMPANY is iFast, a wealth management fintech platform headquartered and listed in Singapore which provides a comprehensive range of investment products and services to financial advisory firms, financial institutions, banks, internet companies, multinational companies, as well as retail and high net worth investors across Asia. Unable to hold its regular investor town halls or communicate with staff in person, iFast turned to APAC technology integrator Ideal Systems to enable it to reach out by using live video streaming from its offices in the Singapore CBD.

According to Fintan Mc Kiernan, Chief Executive Officer for Ideal Systems South East Asia, “iFast TV contacted us about turning their existing training room into a studio from which they could do live streaming. We’ve been building broadcast studios and TV studios for years. A lot of experience there, but this isn’t a broadcaster.

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“The idea that we could design them a studio using all the usual building blocks we use, while it would be easier, might not have suited their purposes. So, we were really looking at new technologies that can lower the barrier of entry for companies wanting to do professional video production.

“In a way, this fits our business because Ideal Systems now really has three divisions. We have our legacy business which is our broadcast systems integration business. And, then, over the last four

years we’ve been growing, rapidly, a professional AV business. And, of course, there is the cloud division as well.

“The professional AV business has seen a lot of tail-winds with the pandemic. There’s a huge move for a video conferencing and everybody’s putting in professional video conferencing into their meeting room. Meeting rooms, traditionally, had projectors or white boards. It’s now, suddenly, they want to interact with video boards that they can do Slack, and Zoom, and Teams, and Skype, and so on. “The solution we provided to iFast is almost a coming together of our broadcast and our AV business. It’s a new area, really, in one respect. It’s a COVID-catalysed drive for large companies to look at new ways of communication with their customers and their partners.” With some 10,000 agents and partners consuming its time sensitive financial news, iFast needed its new studio to be able to create live and ondemand content and publish it securely to its in-house iFast app.

At around 150 sqm (or 1500 square feet), the new 4K studio is optimised to suit operators who might not have a background in professional broadcast production. “We came to them and suggested the studio set up and the production environment that would give them super flexibility and a really good professional looking output to their app,” says Ideal’s Fintan Mc

Kiernan. “It was a significant investment. It leverages NDI technology and, to a certain extent, Newtek technology as well. Again, looking at what they’re trying to do, it’s not broadcast, it’s not 24/7 operation. But they are doing live and they’ve got full schedule. Again, broadcast equipment, because it’s a narrow market, tends to be quite expensive. Not using SDI equipment, and using NDI equipment, we could really see a massive reduction when we looked at building materials and architectures.

“This is a new wave of corporate communications, and it’s happened a lot. We’re getting a lot of enquiries for very similar types of studios at the moment. It’s also about using NDI rather than SDI or SMPTE 2110. With NDI, okay there’s a bit of compression there but you can use standard IT switches. We tested quite a number and they all worked. It was quite amazing, actually. We did a lot of testing behind this because we really wanted to make sure it all worked. We ended up using a Netgear switch as the core switch on the network. Again, super low cost by comparison to what it would have been if it was SMPTE 2110.” “Again, looking at the cost benefit, we talked about

what would be in the studio space – a central area for the cameras shooting out and we built four different sets. We designed a set which looks very like a standard television news anchor desk, formal background. We gave it a big video wall from Unilumin. The video wall’s five metres long, two metres high, so you can stand on front of the video wall and present financial charting and information, etc. Again, very television-like. Then we did another set which is more casual, has red brick wall background, a casual interview set. “Then, we put in a very large Chromakey set, for corporate video. It’s about eight metres long and three metres deep, give or take. That allows bigger panel discussions in a VR and AR space.”

The studio’s PTZ cameras also output NDI and are Powered over Ethernet (PoE).

“It’s just a standard ethernetstyle cable,” says Mc Kiernan. “For people, who haven’t come from a broadcast background, it looks a lot more familiar than, ‘this is the SDI cable, this is the control cable, and then here’s the power block’, and all that. Really easy and it just plugs in. Our wall box looks more like an IT browser than a traditional studio wall

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and CEO of iFAST Corp. show off iFast TV’s newsdesk and LED video wall.

The iFast studio is also one of the first to make use of a native-NDI teleprompter from Telescript as well as an NDImonitor. Scripts are created in Microsoft Word and can power the automation functionality of the Tricaster. “When you’re creating your scripts,” says Fintan Mc Kiernan, “you can add a comment in Word such as the name of a person and then name an input as that person and it’ll pick that input up and switch to it. The teleprompter is the automation system.”

The iFast TV studio’s Chromakey set.

The nerve centre of iFast TV, powered by NDI and Newtek’s Tricaster TC2 Elite production switcher.

box as well because we’re just plugging in ethernet connectors.”

These are complemented by two camcorders which are used for off-site and exterior shoots. NDI converters from BirdDog enable them to be also used in the studio if needed.

All camera feeds are sent via NDI 5 to the studio’s Tricaster

TC2 Elite production switcher, a veritable video producer’s Swiss Army knife. The switcher handles camera control, including switching between cameras, Chromakey, and has a DVR for inserting small segments into programming. It also handles all of graphics, including lower thirds, and feeds video to the studio’s video wall.

“One thing that is really key for these productions now, especially still with major travel restrictions in place, is a lot of their interviews are done via video-conferencing and there is a call connect function in the Tricaster that allows you to bring in and manage Skype, Teams or Zoom callers. You can bring them up onto the LED video wall so that the talent and the presenter can have a live interview. That video wall can be just one person, or it could be a bank of a few people. They could literally be one from Zoom, one from Skype, one from Teams all having a chat with the presenter at the same time on the video wall. That’s all done in the Tricaster at the same time that it’s doing everything else as well. You can do the same in the Chroma set with the talent as either part of the set or like they’re on a virtual video wall. “I believe this is a trend,” concludes the Ideal Systems

“The solution we provided to iFast is almost a coming together of our broadcast and our AV business. It’s a new area, really, in one respect. South East Asia CEO. “I believe there’s a couple of trends here, actually. The first trend is the general trend of corporate communications. We’re seeing other companies. These guys are a fintech company, brokerage house. We’re seeing large property companies wanting to do live streaming and more almost, to a certain degree, launch their own channel if you like. How much of that is live or on-demand remains to be seen, but they’re looking for that higher production quality. “We’ve also built studios for universities here for remote learning. And, interestingly, that functionality for the teleprompter is a big bonus and we use a Tricaster, again, for those studios, for the universities. “They’re really automating that process of moving course text books into this, if you like, easier to consume format. It’s certainly easier having your lecturer present it to you with some graphics while streaming it. And, of course, this speaks at large to how video consumption has changed for the millennial generation and below.” Visit http://www.ifastcorp.com and www.idealsys.com

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Fintan Mc Kiernan, CEO of Ideal Systems Singapore and Mr Lim Chung Chun, Chairman

“Another big advantage of it,” says Mc Kiernan “is that we’re using the encoders. There are two on-board encoders, so we can encode on streams to their app via a CDN and we could, if needed, also stream natively to Facebook or YouTube. We broke out separate audio and we broke out lighting control, so there are a couple of other panels in the room. But, by and large, the Tricaster 2 Elite and the cameras, and everything else, is all 4K. In Singapore, we believe it’s the first 4K, endto-end studio that actually delivers 4K out of it to the consumer.”

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ACQUISITION

MKTG Sports + Entertainment With a total area of 11,265 square metres and the largest LED wall in Korea, VA Corporation’s new VA STUDIO HANAM provides state-of-the-art in-camera visual effects (ICVFX) facilities optimised for immersive content production.

JUST ONE OF A NEW CROP of virtual production facilities in South Korea, it was created in partnership with ARK Ventures Inc, and is powered by Brompton Technology LED processing, with 4K Tessera SX40 processors driving four large LED walls. The new facility offers a full spectrum of creative possibilities for content production, from films, drama, advertising, and gaming to XR broadcasts and live performances, allowing each production to be tailored to the specific needs and budget of the client. VA STUDIO HANAM includes three main facilities, all featuring cutting-edge technology provided by ARK Ventures, including ROE Visual LED screens and Brompton Tessera processing. With a floor area of 405sqm, the smallest is STUDIO A, which features two ROE Sapphire 1.5 LED walls driven by a Tessera S8 and two Tessera SX40, along with four Tessera XD 10G data distribution units. STUDIO B, meanwhile, has a floor area of 643sqm. Its large, curved LED wall is made up of ROE Black Pearl 2, driven by four Tessera SX40 and seven Tessera XD units. STUDIO C is Asia’s largest virtual studio with the biggest oval LED wall in Korea (53.5m wide x 8m high x 19m in diameter). It has a total floor area of 1,088sqm and a 360-degree LED studio which comprises ROE Black Pearl 2 with ROE Black Marble 4 for the floor. Ten Tessera SX40 power the LED volume and 26 Tessera XD 10G data distribution units deliver a flexible single box solution that addresses the challenges of such a complex LED display set up. Each studio is further equipped with ROE Carbon CB5 LED panels for additional light or side fill. All panels have been dynamically calibrated with Brompton’s Hydra measurement system, unlocking the full potential of the LEDs and enabling features such as Brompton High Dynamic Range (HDR). “Brompton processing has firmly established itself as the leader in LED processing for live performance and now for virtual production and XR infrastructures, too,” concludes David Oh, managing director/CTO at ARK Ventures. “It was a no-brainer for us to select Tessera for such a meaningful project and to utilise Brompton’s revolutionary Dynamic Calibration technology to make our LED panels Brompton HDR-ready. We are really excited to see the creative content production opportunities this highlevel processing technology will bring to the VA Corporation team.” Also part of a collaboration with ARK Ventures Inc is a new XR stage from South Korea’s NP studio which blurs the lines between the physical and virtual. Te studio’s impressive equipment inventory also features Brompton Tessera processors, ROE Visual LED screen, disguise media servers, as well as Sony camera systems and Seeder robotic cranes among other cutting-edge technologies, all running in sync. “NP is one of Korea’s most renowned specialists

in interactive immersive content, so we are thrilled to work with their team on the new innovative XR stage,” says David Oh, managing director/CTO at ARK Ventures. “Through this partnership, we managed to create a brand new XR content ecosystem that has already been in full use for productions like the online fan meeting on TikTok of South Korean variety TV VA Corporation’s new VA STUDIO HANAM. Show, ‘Running Man’, which was extremely successful!” factors that made the Xon Studios team choose our panels for their cutting-edge facility,” says The studio’s main 24m by 6m LED wall comprises Frank Ou, Sales Manager at AOTO Electronics. 576 panels of ROE Black Pearl BP2, with an “We worked closely with the Xon team to address additional 312 panels of ROE Black Marble BM4 multiple questions and supported them with creating an 18.89m by 7.92m LED floor. The everything related to the screen, structure complete XR stage is driven by five Tessera SX40 and installation. Our client also received great 4K LED processors and 11 Tessera XD 10G data support from various Brompton team members distribution units, offering stunning visuals and who all helped configure the LED volume so perfect in-camera results thanks to the latest that Xon Studios could make full use of Tessera Tessera software features like ShutterSync, features such as Dark Magic, Pure Tone, HFR+ HFR+, Frame Remapping, and 3D LUT import, and others.” which are specifically targeted at virtual production and XR applications. The final setup comprises a 100sqm LED volume made up of AOTO RM Series 2.3mm panels driven “With this impressive inventory of technology, by four 4K Tessera SX40 LED processing with NP studio has created an XR stage that truly eight Tessera XD 10G data distribution units. blurs the lines between physical and virtual worlds,” says Oh. “Brompton performs a vital role “When the new facility was opened, Xon within the overall setup. We keep using Tessera Studios deployed a competitor LED processing processors because they offer a plethora of solution. Shortly afterwards, and after seeing features that work incredibly well for our clients positive feedback from several award-winning and which they find essential for their day-to-day VFX houses globally that all used Brompton virtual production and XR workflows. Brompton processing for their creative VP and XR just works. Seamlessly. Efficiently. Every single immersive projects, the team decided to switch time!” to Tessera SX40, which is considered a gold standard in LED processing,” says Ou. Also pushing the boundaries of entertainment production is Xon Studios, one of South The studio has already been used for highKorea’s leading virtual production and XR stage profile projects with LG, Samsung, Munhwa studios offering creative solutions across film, Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), Volkswagen broadcast, animation, VFX, motion design, and Korea, and Netflix, with many more productions immersive entertainment. The cutting-edge planned for this year and beyond. facility originally made waves by becoming the According to Chan Hee Jung, Inster CEO/Xon first studio in Korea to incorporate mixed reality CTO, “Previously, while working with Netflix, (MR) technology, with the studio’s creative ideas we found it challenging to express colour for and execution becoming synonymous with HDR footage with the old system. Now, colour the future of visual entertainment. In strong reproduction and brightness are truly lifelike, collaboration with Inster contents group, which with the colour reproduced on the LED screen is leading the production of Korean dramas, Xon closely matching the colour displayed on Studios uses high-performing AOTO LED screens the actual monitor. With the help of Tessera and Brompton Tessera processing for its giant processors, we were also able to address LED volume as well as the latest UE, disguise, artifacts such as flickering and moiré, as well and Mo-Sys camera tracking to deliver its clients’ as take full advantage of many Tessera features creative vision. such as HFR+ which makes high speed shooting “Our AOTO panels’ refresh rate, scan rate and possible.” colour performance were some of the key Visit https://www.bromptontech.com

ACQUISITION & LIGHTING

Sony Unveils VENICE 2 Digital Cinema Camera

New VENICE 2 also features compact body design, internal X-OCN recording and ability to interchange sensors between models to further enhance its operability and versatility Paired with a newly-developed 8.6K (8640 x 5760) full-frame CMOS image sensor, the VENICE 2 offers excellent image quality with 16 stops of total latitude[i] to capture beautiful images with excellent colour separation and shadow detail. The camera also inherits its colour science from the original VENICE, which is highly regarded for its natural skin tones. The VENICE 2 8K CineAlta camera has a unique dual base ISO of 800/3200 which allows filmmakers to capture incredibly clean, film-like images under a wide range of lighting conditions. It supports everything from full-frame, full-frame anamorphic[ii] to Super35, all at a minimum of 4K resolution, resulting in an outstanding and versatile camera system for cinematographers and productions. The VENICE 2 maintains many of the features which made the original VENICE a success including Dual Base ISO, 8-stops built-in ND filters, compatibility with a wide range of lenses, including all PL mount and Sony’s native E-mount that enables adapters for a multitude of lenses.

The VENICE 2 was designed with a smaller and more lightweight body than the original VENICE while keeping its intuitive operability. Despite being 44mm smaller and approximately 10% lighter, the chassis of VENICE 2 allows X-OCN and Apple 4K ProRes 4444 and 422 HQ internal recording without the AXS-R7 recorder, offering advanced usability in a compact and lightweight body. User-selectable capture resolution of the 8.6K image sensor allow shooting in various modes including:  • 8.6K, 3:2, 30FPS, Full-Frame • 8.2K, 17:9, 60FPS, Full-Frame • 5.8K, 6:5 Anamorphic, 48FPS, Super35 • 5.8K, 17:9, 90FPS, Super35 For even more flexibility on-site, the chassis adds the unique feature of interchanging the image sensor block. The camera can be used with the 8.6K sensor as well as the original 6K sensor block[v]. The camera body automatically recognizes the change and will start-up without any firmware exchanges or reinstalls. In addition, the original 6K sensor will allow higher frame rates. Small, lightweight but solidly built, the VENICE 2 leverages new high-speed 6.6Gbps AXS card, the AXS-A1TS66 for 8K 60p recording. Existing

Fujifilm Launches 4K Lens and Zoom Rate Demand Unit FUJIFILM HAS LAUNCHED the “FUJINON UA107x8.4BESM-T45” (UA107x8.4), a 4K-compatible broadcast lens equipped with a new image-stabilisation mechanism and customisation capabilities, and the zoom rate demand unit “FUJINON ERD-50A-D01” (ERD-50A) featuring a large LCD panel. The UA107x8.4 is a 107x zoom model with a newly-redesigned imagestabilisation mechanism and makes 4K video-shooting easier than ever when combined with the ERD-50A.

AXS Memory Card Readers, including the AXSAR3 via Thunderbolt 3 interface, are compatible with the new media as well.   Other updates to the VENICE 2 include: 4K output with LUT applied; Improved 3D LUT processing to improve picture quality; EI changes directly applied to S-Log3 outputs; LUT/ASC-CDL control via Ethernet/Wi-Fi; Zoom to Fit (Full-Frame recording with 17:9/16:9 monitoring) operation; Ethernet connector position changed to Camera Assistant side; Lemo 2pin 12V output connector; and Internal microphone installed. The VENICE 2 camera with 8.6K image sensor is scheduled to start shipping in February 2022 and VENICE 2 camera with 6K image sensor in March 2022. In addition, the VENICE 2 6K can be used with the existing VENICE Extension System and a next-generation Extension System for VENICE 2 8K is planned to be released by early 2023. Visit https://pro.sony/new-cinealta

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The new UA107x8.4 is a 4K-compatible broadcast lens that offers an ultra-high 107x magnification zoom, covering the focal length range from 8.4 mm to 900 mm. Equipped with the newlyredesigned image-stabilisation mechanism with enhanced performance, the new lens can accurately correct image blurs caused by winds or shaking of the footing without any time lag, providing added stability in video shooting. It is newly equipped with a built-in LCD panel, which allows users to adjust shooting settings in detail.

unit that features a highly-visible LCD panel and a four-way operation button for intuitive and uncomplicated operability. When combined with a 4K-compatible broadcast zoom lens such as the UA107x8.4, the unit allows users to choose the zoom curve optimum to a given shooting scene out of 200 options. The unit also carries an AUX button, to which a frequently used function can be assigned, and comes with a display for checking shooting settings, including functions assigned to the AUX button and the on/off status of image stabilisation, whilst shooting video.

The ERD-50A, meanwhile, is a zoom rate demand

Visit https://www.fujifilm.com

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ACQUISITION

SONY HAS INTRODUCED VENICE 2, the addition to its line-up of high-end digital cinema cameras. The VENICE 2 builds upon the strength of the original VENICE with new features including a compact design, internal recording and the option for two different sensors: the newly developed full-frame 8.6K sensor or the original 6K VENICE sensor.  The VENICE 2 also inherits features from the original VENICE including colour science, Dual Base ISO and 8-stops of built-in ND filters.

ACQUISITION & LIGHTING

V-RAPTOR from RED Digital Cinema RED DIGITAL CINEMA has announced the V-RAPTOR camera featuring a multiformat 8K sensor (40.96mm x 21.60mm) with the ability to shoot 8K large format or 6K Super 35.

PROVIDING A COMPLETE SOLUTION for video streaming and cloud-sharing, Hollyland’s COSMO C1 SDI/HDMI wireless link system features real-time video monitoring at up to 300m line-of-sight, thanks to Hollyland’s new HEVO wireless transmission technology.

V-RAPTOR is the first entrant into the DSMC3 (Digital Stills and Motion Camera) ecosystem which builds on the lessons of RED’s DSMC1 and DSMC2 coupled with form factor and UI ideas from the RED Komodo. The V-RAPTOR 8K VV 35.4 Megapixel CMOS sensor measures 40.96 mm x 21.60 mm (Diagonal: 46.31 mm), features 8192 × 4320 effective pixels, and a dynamic range of 17+ stops. The camera comes with integrated RF mount with RF lens support, supports Canon EF lenses via compatible Canon RF to EF mount adapters, and accepts other Canon RF mount-based lens adaptors. It features maximum data rates of up to 800 MB/s using RED branded or other qualified CFexpress media cards. REDCODE RAW maximum frame rates available include; • 120 fps at 8K 17:9 (8192 x 4320), 150 fps at 8K 2.4:1 (8192 x 3456) • 140 fps at 7K 17:9 (7168 x 3780), 175 fps at 7K 2.4:1 (7168 x 3024) • 160 fps at 6K 17:9 (6144 x 3240), 200 fps at 6K 2.4:1 (6144 x 2592) • 192 fps at 5K 17:9 (5120 x 2700), 240 fps at 5K 2.4:1 (5120 x 2160) • 240 fps at 4K 17:9 (4096 x 2160), 300 fps at 4K 2.4:1 (4096 x 1728) • 320 fps at 3K 17:9 (3072 x 1620), 400 fps at 3K 2.4:1 (3072 x 1296) • 480 fps at 2K 17:9 (2048 x 1080), 600 fps at 2K 2.4:1 (2048 x 864) Available REDCODE settings include: • REDCODE HQ, MQ and LQ at 8K 17:9 (8192 x 4320) up to 60 fps • REDCODE LQ at 8K 17:9 (8192 x 4320) up to 120 fps

The V-RAPTOR comes in a 15.2cm x 10.78cm x 10.78cm (L x W x H) aluminium alloy housing weighing 1.82kg (without body cap and CFexpress card), and comes with integrated V-Lock battery interface optimised for Micro V-Lock Batteries. There is also a 11-17V via 6-pin DC input. The V-RAPTOR’s colour management features Image Processing Pipeline 2 (IPP2). It supports 33×33×33 3D LUTs, as well as import of CDLs.

According to Hollyland , the HEVO video encoding engine improves encoding efficiency up to 30% and includes antiinterference capabilities in the 5.1-5.8GHz spectrum, even in complex environments. The HEVO engine also provides the COSMO C1 with the optional capability of using high-speed Adaptive Frequency Hopping technology (AFH) – changing TX & RX frequency in only one one-thousandth of a second. HEVO also incorporates seamless packet re-transmission technologies for use in challenging physical and/or RF environments. Users can simultaneously run four COSMO C1 video transmission systems at one location without compromising on smooth video delivery.

For audio capture, there are integrated dual-channel digital mono microphones (uncompressed, 24-bit 48 kHz), and an integrated dual channel mic/line/+48V input via 5-pin Audio Port (uncompressed, 24-bit 48 kHz). Remote control includes Wi-Fi for camera control via an interchangeable dual band (2.4 GHz/5 GHz) antenna mounted to a female RPSMA connector; Genlock, Timecode-in, GPIO and Ctrl (RS-232) via the integrated 9-pin EXT Port; and Wired control via USB-C or Gigabit Ethernet (compatible USB-C to Ethernet adapter required) allowing remote camera control, live MJPEG preview video feed and remote media offload. Monitor outputs include: • Integrated dual 12G-SDI with 6G-SDI, 3G-SDI and 1.5G-SDI modes • 12G-SDI: Up to 4096 x 2160 4:2:2 for 60p

• REDCODE MQ and LQ at 6K 17:9 (6144 x 3240) up to 160 fps

• 3G-SDI: Up to 2048 x 1080 4:2:2 for 60p • 1.5G-SDI: Up to 2048 x 1080 4:2:2 for 30p, 25p, 24p

Full UVC (USB Video Capture) compatibility is also provided via a single USB-C connection to a computer for full 1080P60 HD live streaming or integration into social media feeds. No external video capture device is needed.

• 5K 17:9 (5120 x 2700), 2:1, 2.4:1, 16:9, 1:1

The RED CONTROL app for full camera controls and live preview, either wirelessly or wired via USB-C, for iOS or Android devices is also available.

The COSMO C1 supports HDMI and SDI connections on both TX and RX units, plus an SDI loop-out on the TX unit. It can work with any mainstream camera, monitor, or switcher. There are three power supply options: DC power via a 240VAC adaptor (provided), NP-F/L-series battery and power-capable USB-C port. A “low battery” indicator alerts users when 20 minutes of battery power is left.

• 4K 17:9 (4096 x 2160), 2:1, 2.4:1, 16:9, 1:1

Visit https://www.red.com

Visit www.hollyland.com.au

REDCODE RAW acquisition formats include: • 8K 17:9 (8192 x 4320), 2:1, 2.4:1, 16:9, 1:1 and Anamorphic 2x, 1.8x, 1.6x, 1.5x, 1.3x, 1.25x • 7K 17:9 (7168 x 3780), 2:1, 2.4:1, 16:9, 1:1 and Anamorphic 2x, 1.8x, 1.6x • 6K 17:9 (6144 x 3240), 2:1, 2.4:1, 16:9, 1:1 and Anamorphic 1.5x, 1.3x, 1.25x

ACQUISITION

• 2K 17:9 (2048 x 1080), 2:1, 2.4:1, 16:9, 1:1

• 6G-SDI: Up to 4096 x 2160 4:2:2 for 30p, 25p, 24p

• REDCODE HQ, MQ and LQ at 2K 17:9 (2048 x 1080) up to 480 fps

• 3K 17:9 (3072 x 1620), 2:1, 2.4:1, 16:9, 1:1

• REDCODE HQ, MQ and LQ at 6K 17:9 (6144 x 3240) up to 96 fps

• REDCODE HQ, MQ and LQ at 4K 17:9 (4096 x 2160) up to 240 fps

SDI/HDMI Wireless Link System

• SMPTE Timecode, HANC Metadata, 24-bit 48 kHz Audio Monitor options include: DSMC3 RED Touch 7.0” LCD; Wireless 1080p live preview video feed via 2.4Ghz/5Ghz Wi-Fi for framing; and integrated 2.4” LCD for camera control (no preview video).

ACQUISITION & LIGHTING

Blackmagic Unveils Next-Gen URSA Broadcast Camera and Viewfinder BLACKMAGIC DESIGN has announced the Blackmagic URSA Broadcast G2, a next generation professional broadcast camera with 6K digital film sensor that brings digital film quality to both traditional and online broadcasters. The advanced 6144 x 3456 digital film sensor provides exceptional low light performance with dual gain ISO of up to +36dB as well as 13 stops of dynamic range. Blackmagic URSA Broadcast G2 also includes H.265 and Blackmagic RAW file formats, Blackmagic generation 5 colour science, as well as a USB-C expansion port for external disk recording, and more. The Blackmagic URSA Broadcast G2’s “3 cameras in 1” design allows it to work as a 4K production camera, a 4K studio camera or a 6K digital film camera. Users can record to SD cards, UHS-II cards, CFast 2.0 cards or external USB disks, using file formats such as H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW. The 6K sensor features a resolution of 6144 x 3456. When using B4 lenses, users get a 4K window of the sensor for Ultra HD broadcast use. Then, if users change to a PL or EF lens mount, they can use the full 6K resolution of the sensor for digital film. The camera’s 13 stops of dynamic range mean more flexibility for colour correction. Robust low light performance allows users to shoot using ambient light or even moonlight. The Blackmagic URSA Broadcast G2 features gain from -12dB (100 ISO) up to +36dB (25,600 ISO) so it’s optimised to reduce grain and noise in images, while maintaining the full dynamic range of the sensor. The gain can be set via a camera switch, the LCD menu or remotely using the SDI remote camera control protocol. The URSA Broadcast G2 features a B4 broadcast lens mount that includes optics specifically designed to match the camera’s sensor. The B4 lens mount lets users use modern Ultra HD lenses or lower cost HD lenses. Users also get full electronic lens control to adjust focus, iris and zoom using the camera’s controls, or remotely. If users want to use alternative lenses, they can change the mount to PL, EF and more. URSA Broadcast G2 features high quality

neutral density (ND) filters that let users quickly reduce the amount of light entering the camera. The 1/4, 1/16th and 1/64th stop filters have been specifically designed to match the image sensor and colour science of URSA Broadcast G2, providing users with additional latitude and better colourimetry. This lets users use different combinations of aperture and shutter angle, in a wider range of situations. The IR filters have been designed to evenly filter both optical and IR wavelengths, eliminating IR contamination. Plus, the filter status on the LCD can be displayed as a fraction, number, or stop reduction. Optional zoom and focus demands allow users to use photography lenses for live production. The focus and zoom demands have USB-C connections so they control the lens via the camera’s electronic lens control. Each zoom and focus demand has two USB-C ports, so users can daisy chain them and then connect to the camera with a single USB connection. A shoulder mount kit, V-Lock battery plate and top handle are included with the URSA

Broadcast G2. Users also get a spare EF lens mount if they don’t own a B4 lens and would like to start out using a photography lens. An optional fibre converter can power the camera from 2km away via a single SMPTE fibre. The URSA Mini Recorder also gives the option to record to external SSDs. Lastly, Blackmagic Design has also announced a new studio viewfinder model, the Blackmagic URSA Viewfinder G2. Features include: integrated V-Lock mounting plate for quick setup; Bright 2000 nit, 7” display; detachable metal sunshade; large grip handles and variable tension pivot points; physical dials, knobs and customisable function buttons; large RGB LED tally indicator with clip-on perspex camera numbers; connects to SDI input and power from camera, so no extra cables or power supplies needed; and compatibility with Blackmagic SDI Control Protocol for full control of camera functions. Visit www.blackmagicdesign.com

New Full Frame Lenses from Cooke

The Varotal/i T2.9 zoom lenses cover all full frame sensors and are matched in resolution, colour and fall-off to the Cooke S7/i range, thus providing a complete suite of Cooke full frame spherical lenses. The focal lengths of the zoom lenses are 30-95mm and 85-215mm respectively. The mounts can be chosen as either PL or LPL at time of order. The Varotal/i zoom lenses include /i Technology

to record lens data. The lenses are designed for all shooting applications, including handheld and Steadicam. The Panchro/i Classic FF range offers full frame film makers the ability to capture the classic Panchro Look, as well as the Cooke Look, in their full frame productions. The focal lengths 18mm, 21mm, 27mm, 32mm, 35mm, 40mm, and 50mm have been specially redesigned to fill full frame image circles. The 65mm MACRO, 75mm, 100mm, 135mm and 152mm in the standard Panchro/i Classic range were already capable of filling a full frame image circle, so no optical or mechanical alterations have been made for these focal lengths. Additional FF scale covers are available for 65mm MACRO upwards if required to harmonise rental fleets.

The optics are designed to give maximum performance at full aperture with superior control of flare, distortion and spherical aberration. Cooke’s Academy Award-winning cam-style focus movement coupled with the added benefit of a large lens barrel diameter, allows for an increased number of focus markings, particularly at close focus. Every focus mark is individually calibrated and engraved on both sides of the focus barrel. Like the standard Panchro/i Classic prime lenses, the FF lenses are colour balanced, colour matched and compatible with all Cooke lenses. They also feature /i Technology. Visit https://www.cookeoptics.com

ACQUISITION

COOKE OPTICS HAS ANNOUNCED additions to its expanding range of Full Frame lenses. Two new Varotal/i FF zoom lenses bring leadingedge modern design and materials to this historic line of zoom lenses that were first seen in 1971, while the extensive Panchro/i Classic FF range offers the beloved vintage Speed Panchro look for full frame sensors.

SPORTSCASTING TVU Networks Pumps the Pedals for Indonesian Cycling Championship TVU Networks, the provider of cloud and IP-based live video solutions, has announced that the team at the Indonesia Cycling Federation (ICF) recently employed TVU One 4K HDR mobile transmitters on to live stream 4K coverage of this year’s National Championship, the Criterium Road Race, in Garut, West Java. THE BROADCAST TEAM from ICF transmitted audio and video from speeding motorbikes despite challenging technical conditions throughout the road race, thanks to TVU One’s patented Inverse StatMux Plus (IS+) technology. IS+ uses less data to achieve transmissions with virtually zero latency, down to 0.8 seconds - even when going live in 4K HDR from the back of a speeding motorcycle. The ICF team turned to TVU One for the 2021 Championship as well when it took its more traditional, pre-pandemic form of an eightstage race, opening with a tour of the Peninsular and ending 1115 km later with challenging ascents on the Indonesian mainland.

The quality of signal transmission, along with extensive range and ease of operation, were the biggest concerns for ICF and a major factor in the decision to purchase six TVU One mobile transmitters and two TVU receivers for a fast-action sport like competitive cycling. Local video production company Motoshoot Indonesia provided production services for the live event. “In some locations in Indonesia, there is only about 70% cell coverage, whether it’s 3G or 4G,” explained Motoshoot Indonesia Project Manager Hidayatullah Hadi, “yet the TVU One still gives us a stable 60fps picture.”

The TVU One mobile unit selects the strongest cellular network connection and simultaneously aggregates up to 12 data connections including 3G/4G, 5G LTE, WiFi, ethernet, satellite, and microwave. “In the past, with products from a competitive provider,” Hadi continued, “we experienced frequent image freezes in areas like Sumatra, Papua, Kalimantan, Sulawesi where there are poor network conditions. But when we record live video from cameras using the TVU One mobile transmitter, the video quality is still good and very stable, even when the available bandwidth is low, thanks to its H.265 chip.”

SPORTSCASTING

Ericsson & Ooredoo Bringing 5G to Football Fans at Qatar 2022

ERICSSON AND OOREDOO Qatar are partnering to ensure that hundreds of thousands of football fans from around the world will enjoy the best next-gen 5G connectivity experiences possible – inside several event stadiums and across the country – when Qatar hosts a “major global football tournament” from November to December 2022. The partners will provide network optimisation and event management and 5G connectivity in eight stadiums across six cities, as well as in dedicated fan zones, airports and places of attraction. The partnership will see Ericsson and Ooredoo Qatar managing 5G radio access network (RAN) operation performance across the network through Ericsson Managed Services solutions. Football fans will be able to enjoy the connectivity experience benefits even sooner as Ooredoo Qatar and Ericsson are also teaming up on event network management for a regional tournament in Qatar from 30 November to 18 December 2021. Ericsson and Ooredoo Qatar’s ongoing 5G-focused nationwide network modernization is enabling Ooredoo Qatar to swiftly deploy new technology towards the goal of nationwide 5G coverage. The strengthened Ericsson-powered RAN network will enable Ooredoo Qatar to offer and facilitate fan use cases based on enhanced mobile broadband, with very high network speeds, low latency and large data capacity. Fans will be able to enjoy highdefinition real-time interactivity and streaming experiences. Ericsson Radio System products and solutions have been used in stadiums in other parts of the world to boost connectivity and increase capacity, giving fans a superior ability to stream

TVU One’s H.265 hardware encoding chip delivers full broadcast quality 4K, 60fps HDR video at as low as 3Mbps (and 1080p60 HDR at as low as 800Kbps).

live from the sports venue in addition to interactive communication and social networking services. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulla Al Thani, Deputy Group Chief Executive Officer and Chief Executive Officer of Ooredoo Qatar says: “Expectations are running high for the major football tournament in Qatar in 2022, making it ever more important for us to leverage the full potential of 5G. As a global pioneer of the fifth-generation technology, we aim to deliver seamless experiences to visitors as well as spectators and provide a highly digital, immersive and intelligent Qatar 2022 tournament experience to our subscribers. We are thrilled to partner with Ericsson in demonstrating the best of cellular technology and ensuring a world-class immersive experience at the most anticipated sporting event in the Middle East.” Fadi Pharaon, President of Ericsson Middle East and Africa, says: “After equipping Qatar’s stadiums with the best-in-class Ericsson Radio System, we are thrilled to partner with Ooredoo to bring our sports event management and network operations expertise to Qatar. We look forward to power a fully 5G-enabled football tournament, leveraging the combination of extensive capacity, high speed and low latency that will enable us to deliver interactive, digital and immersive sporting experiences to football fans. Through our expertise and experience, we aspire to support our customers around the world to deliver exceptional, high-performance, digital and immersive fan experiences at major sporting events.” Visit www.ericsson.com

The TV One’s 4.5-hour battery life provides more time to go live, record, and transfer files for a wide range of live action and sporting events. Hadi said, “Fortunately, our local TVU Networks’ team is very responsive in helping us solve any unique problems we might face, to keep the video quality good and the picture stable even when the action speeds up under challenging conditions.” Visit www.tvunetworks.com

EVS Signs FIFA World Cup Contract EVS, THE PROVIDER OF of live live video technology for broadcast and new media productions, has announced it has signed a major contract with HBS AG in relation to the FIFA World Cup that will be held in Qatar from November 21 to December 18, 2022. EVS will deliver a turnkey solution consisting of all broadcast equipment and services required to provide Live Replay facilities for all the venues, including the International Broadcast Center (IBC). The broadcast equipment to be supplied by EVS includes the live production and replay solution LiveCeption as well as its live production asset management solution MediaCeption. All eight of Qatar’s FIFA World Cup 2022 stadiums have now been completed. The finishing touches were recently applied to Lusail Stadium – the 80,000-capacity venue that will host next year’s final on 18 December. Lusail is one of seven venues to have been built from scratch, while Khalifa International Stadium was extensively redeveloped in preparation for the 22nd edition of football’s flagship international tournament. Visit www.evs.com

SPORTSCASTING

Creating Efficiencies in Remote Production in Tokyo By Bevan Gibson, CTO, EMG EMG IS A LEADING global provider of broadcast services and media solutions for live sports, entertainment and events. The group combines unique expertise and experience to master the entire value chain, from image creation to distribution. A significant part of our business lies in covering major sporting events. Sports broadcasting has always driven technology development: viewers demand more cameras and more angles, more replays, more graphics and more resolution like 4K and HDR UHD. To stay ahead of the curve, we continuously strive for solutions that add value to the production yet deliver savings in costs and people. One way in which we do this is through the use of IP connectivity to centralise control and increase remote access.

transforms; video processing and audio shuffling; point multiviewers and much more. It also provides the interface to high-speed IP connectivity between units: up to 400 gigabit ethernet over fibre in the current version. As the industry moves towards higher resolutions, European broadcasters are

To this end, we have developed our IP fly-pack system, which we call diPloy. This is a completely modular production system, built into modular racks of varying sizes in dedicated 40-foot containers, which allows us to plug together the functionality we want for each particular job. By creating modules at the flight case level, we can physically place modules where they are required: some close to the action, some at any distance.

The heart of the event was the athletics stadium. This venue hosted the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as a full programme of track and field events. To cover all requirements, and to provide full redundancy for the opening ceremony, we built a total of eight similar control galleries. These were physically sited in the broadcast compound, some 500 metres from the stadium itself. The first requirement was to bring the outputs of cameras and microphones from within the stadium to the control rooms. This used a diPloy rack within the stadium, into which cameras and microphones were connected. Dark fibres then carried the uncompressed IP signals to the broadcast compound, where they were made available for production, via IP. Cameras were mainly 4K HDR UHD units, although some POV cameras worked at different resolutions. Connectivity was mainly IP, but the diPloy racks could also accept SDI inputs. At the control room end, while much of the switching was in the IP domain, we used existing replay servers - again with SDI outputs, which needed to be converted to SMPTE ST 2110 IP. The Great Workhorse of diPloy Critical for diPloy is the Selenio Network Processor (SNP) from Imagine Communications. The SNP is a powerful and compact appliance that uses software to provide a whole range of functionality. Each 1RU SNP has four independent processors, each with eight 3G processing paths with software “personalities” readily changed to do what you need at any moment. That includes SDI to IP conversion; up-, down- and cross-conversion and colour space

currently looking towards both 4K and HDR, while American channels want 1080p HD with high dynamic range colour. SNP incorporates these conversions so we can offer different outputs to different feeds simply and transparently. We can change what each processor path in each SNP can do with the click of a mouse. It is an excellent combination of power and flexibility, and we regard it as the great workhorse of diPloy.

One of the first major uses of diPloy was at a major multisports event held in Japan in the summer of 2021. We were responsible to the host

This summer in Tokyo, it was SNPs that converted incoming signals and multiplexed them onto fibre for delivery to multiple galleries, where more SNPs split the feeds out for production. It does this completely transparently and with virtually no latency. As far as the crew is concerned, the performance is just the same as having SDI cameras plugged into the tailboard of a truck.

broadcaster to

deliver much of the technical architecture

To build eight galleries in the stadium that would only be used for a small proportion of the multisport event would be highly inefficient. So we used further diPloy racks, again equipped with

SNPs, to cover events at other venues, to be produced from the stadium. The road cycling, for example, was based more than 100km away, but was successfully cut and mixed in one of the stadium galleries. SNPs in the diPloy racks at the venue multiplexed all the signals onto a high-bandwidth IP link. The coverage of the cycling also involved cameras on motorbikes, helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. The receivers for these were positioned to get the best live reception, and where necessary, further SNPs were used to connect the downlinks to the control room. The latency as the signals were converted, multiplexed and presented to the production switcher was so low that the director did not notice. The future for diPloy What this event gave us was a very demanding, very public proof of the diPloy concept, which successfully separates the source of signals from the production capabilities. Away from the four-yearly cycle of major events, this has huge potential for routine sports coverage. We have already built a diPloy-equipped control suite in our Dutch facility, and we are working on similar galleries in other major European cities. The object is to provide centralised production, which will deliver huge savings in budget and environmental impact. A conventional truck might cover three football matches in a week, within a relatively limited geography. But a diPloy control room could cover three football matches a day by simply routing the appropriate devices. Those games could be anywhere. The same director and production team could cover, say, two tier 1 football matches in a single shift: the afternoon game in Manchester; the evening game in Prague. Or a local director could be sitting in front of a production switcher panel continues p14 >>

SPORTSCASTING

One of the first major uses of diPloy was at a major multi-sports event held in Japan in the summer of 2021. We were responsible to the host broadcaster to deliver much of the technical architecture.

SPORTSCASTING >> continued from p13

in a Czech facility, with the replay server team in Amsterdam and the audio supervisor in London. This allows us to address the pain points of remote sports production. For example, 3:00 p.m. on a winter Saturday could see multiple football and rugby matches, putting a great strain on the limited number of outside broadcast trucks. Being able to spread the load over multiple centralised production facilities means that not only are the football and rugby covered, resources are still available for hockey and handball. diPloy gives us a much higher utilisation of the equipment than if it spent more than 50% of its life powered down while a truck pounds up and down the autobahns of Europe. That means

SPORTSCASTING

Ross Releases PIERO V17.0

ROSS HAS ANNOUNCED the release of version 17.0 of PIERO, the sports graphics analysis solution that uses image recognition and state-of-the-art graphic overlays to augment sports content with visually engaging and informative effects. The latest version sees a significant update to the Virtual Presenter chromakeyer, which offers the same keying quality viewers would expect from a news studio and provides much sharper and cleaner edges when the presenter is closer to the camera. Also, camera tracking has been improved and this enables PIERO to better manage zoomed in shots where pitch or field lines may be much less visible. PIERO Touch – the touchscreen-compatible version of the solution – has also been given several improvements around customisation and dynamic new graphics effects. There’s easy-to-use pre-sets, clip loading, and on-the-fly colour correction for the screen. The PIERO user interface has also been given an improved and brighter Light theme, and the recently launched Down & Distance feature for American Football has also been improved to ensure greater accuracy and consistency. Version 17.0 also sees PIERO integrating with Ross Video’s Voyager rendering solution for virtual studio, augmented reality and extended reality applications. Based on the Unreal engine from Epic Games, Voyager sets new standards for photo-realistic graphics rendering, and this latest integration will enable content creators to introduce sport graphics directly into a virtual or augmented studio production. The Voyager plugin will enable operators to do things like change camera angles, move players on a team line-up, add spotlights or arrows, and if third-party data is available - heat maps, shots on goal or passes, for example – these can be manipulated as well. “We’re extremely excited by this new version which sees the important addition of integration with Voyager for AR/VS production environments,” notes Vincent Noyer, Director of Sports Graphics Analysis at Ross. “We know that our customers are always looking for new creative ways to keep their audiences engaged, and the ability to use sports graphics directly within an AR or VS environment will open up some amazing creative possibilities. I’m also very pleased to see so much direct customer feedback making its way into this release. It feels like only a very short time ago we were talking about the updates in version 16, and our customer base has expanded a great deal since then. This new release gives customers many additional features they asked for, and that’s a great testament to their engagement with us and the fantastic partnerships we have built with them.” Visit www.rossvideo.com

sophisticated production facilities are available at a lower cost, allowing broadcasters to offer high-quality coverage for second tier sports and niche events. We can build more comfortable production areas than can be fitted into a truck, with space for the team to relax between games. Spending more time doing the creative job and less time travelling also contributes to staff satisfaction. A huge reduction in the number of people and the amount of kit travelling to remote locations is also a demonstrable reduction in the carbon footprint. We have an excellent relationship with Imagine

Grass Valley, Broadcast Solutions Group Sign Enterprise Pricing Deal GRASS VALLEY ANNOUNCES IT has signed an enterprise pricing deal with leading outside broadcast (OB) truck manufacturing company and systems integrator Broadcast Solutions Group. The deal will see Broadcast Solutions commit to an investment of US$31 million over a five-year period to deliver on its strategic vision to develop missioncritical premium live content solutions for global media companies. The deal underlines Grass Valley’s mission to be the digital transformation partner of choice for the world’s leading creators and providers of premium live content. As part of its commitment to be at the cutting edge of cloud-based technologies, Broadcast Solutions Group’s Nordic Team will establish a new competence centre in Helsinki based on Grass Valley’s Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP) and build scalable, stateof-the-art Live Production Solutions. The companies are also working on the Grass Valley edition of IP OB Vans, known collectively as Streamline. These trucks support 12-24 camera set-ups and will be ready next year. With its Streamline series, Broadcast Solutions Group says it has transformed the manufacturing of an OB van from a highly complex and planning intensive project to a nearly “offthe-shelf” product. Visit www.grassvalley.com and https://broadcast-solutions.de

Communications on the SNP. It is good to work with a supplier who listens to what we are doing and what we need, and responds positively. We are very much looking forward to the implementation of JPEG XS in SNP, which will allow us to get even more signals down a fibre connection with minimal latency. SNP is a central part of our diPloy architecture - essentially the Swiss army knife of production, if you will, with different interchangeable personalities in a compact 1RU chassis; diPloy, we believe, is the future of live sports broadcasting. Visit www.imaginecommunications.com and www.euromediagroup.com

Red Bee Media Partners with Stats Perform ROSS HAS ANNOUNCED Global media services company Red Bee Media has partnered with Stats Perform, a leading provider of sports data and AI. Stats Perform’s sports data provides the foundation for predictive sports analysis used throughout various sports industries, including professional team performance, digital, media, broadcast and legal sports betting. “Working with Stats Perform enables us to add world-class, in-depth sports data and analytics to our metadata offering, making it easy for our customers to offer their viewers impactful sports media experiences in multiple ways,” said Jason Marchese, Head of Sales, Americas, Red Bee Media. “Linking our catalogue of enriched sports metadata and rich media content to the dynamic Stats Perform portfolio is a winning concept and we’re very happy to announce this partnership.” Through the partnership, customers are now able to provide enhanced end-user experiences with analytical and statistical sports data for live, linear, and on-demand content for electronic program guides (EPGs), mobile apps and other use cases. Stats Perform’s growing database of live analytical and statistical sports data includes highlights, score alerts and imagery from more than 4000 leagues and competitions globally. Through Red Bee’s platform, all this data is easily connected and tagged to any type of sports content, creating opportunities for delivering added value to fans across the world. With a wide range of use cases, Red Bee and Stats Perform will deliver its offering to multiple businesses, including telcos, broadcasters, news organizations, web sites and app developers. “Red Bee is an experienced provider of content discovery and metadata services in the global media industry and by joining forces we can expand our reach further,” said Wayne Ford, SVP, Americas Sales and Global Partners & Channels at Stats Perform. “Together we will be providing enhanced and exciting sports media experience to a global viewership.” Visit http://redbeemedia.com and https://www.statsperform.com

NEWS OPERTAIONS OPERATIONS SBS to Launch Free-to-Air Multilingual News Channel in 2022 SBS AUSTRALIA HAS ANNOUNCED that it will further expand its multilingual services in 2022, with the launch of a new free-to-air television channel providing news from around the world to Australian audiences. The new channel, to be called SBS WorldWatch, will feature an extensive line-up of bulletins from leading international broadcasters in more than 30 languages, and will also be the free-to air television home to new 30-minute Arabic and Mandarin language TV news programs, to be produced locally by SBS, and broadcast in prime time every weeknight. These new services – SBS ‫ يبرع‬News and SBS 中文News – will provide Australia’s large and diverse Arabic- and Mandarin-speaking communities with trusted coverage, context and insight into the major national and international stories of the day. Produced and presented by SBS journalists for an Australian audience, they will premiere on SBS On Demand in January ahead of the new channel launch. SBS says these new initiatives build on its commitment to providing comprehensive news and information across its network – in English, through SBS World News, and in more than 60 languages across SBS Radio services, podcasting, and digital platforms – and the multilingual services it has been delivering for more than 45 years. They follow the launch earlier this year of SBS 中文  - a dedicated digital service for Australia’s Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking communities. They also come in addition to SBS’s investment in a growing collection of current affairs, documentaries and dramas

available with subtitles in six languages on SBS On Demand (including Arabic and Simplified Chinese), where audiences can also login and navigate the platform in those languages. SBS Director of News and Current Affairs, Mandi Wicks, said that SBS’s plans for 2022 cement the network as the provider of the most comprehensive global news and current affairs offering for Australian audiences. “In 2022, we’re thrilled to be increasing our commitment to more multilingual news through a new, dedicated channel, as well as adding bespoke SBS news programs for two of the nation’s largest and fastest growing language groups, Arabic and Mandarin. Ensuring access to relevant, up-to-date news and information for all Australians promotes civic, cultural and social participation, which is at the heart of our purpose.”

to many of the television news bulletins in languages other than English from around the world currently broadcast on SBS and SBS VICELAND. SBS is also adding more bulletins to its already extensive collection, with all programs to be available on SBS On Demand. SBS WorldWatch will be SBS’s sixth free-toair television channel, joining SBS, National Indigenous Television (NITV), SBS VICELAND, SBS Food and SBS World Movies. Visit https://www.sbs.com.au/

When launched, the new free-to-air channel will become a destination for the SBS Arabic and SBS Mandarin TV news services, in addition

Weatherproof Robotic Pan and Tilt Head

With a maximum payload capacity of 90kg/200lb, the FHR-155E combines sophisticated software and mechanical engineering to enable accurate, smooth, and quiet camera movements in challenging openair environments. Designed to military specification for use in desert conditions, the IP65 rated FHR-155E is insulated against extreme temperatures with an operating range of 4°C to 50°C and features a remote-controlled wiper with optional jet wash for a clear field of view. The weatherproof camera enclosure is pressurized to prevent any dust being drawn into the

enclosure and is available with an optional Cooler Module that is independently regulated by an internal thermostatic control to maintain a constant optimum operating temperature. With IP network connectivity, camera operators can make intuitive and smooth pan-and-tilt movements remotely using the familiar Vinten HD-VRC control system used in studio robotics. The FHR-155E features a pan range of 359° and a tilt range of ±30° (±179° with extended cradle arm) and is designed to be near-silent when in motion — making it suitable for environments with noise limitations. Visit www.vinten.com

NEWS OPERATIONS

VINTEN HAS INTRODUCED the new FHR-155E — a robotic pan and tilt head designed to support full-size broadcast cameras and lenses as remote-controlled robotic devices in outdoor locations. The FHR-155E is designed for areas where it would be impractical to deploy a manual camera operator such as broadcast weather cameras, inaccessible areas of sports arenas or religious gatherings.

NEWS OPERATIONS

Cloud-Native, Unified News Operations DALET HAS ANNOUNCED general availability of its Dalet Pyramid cloud-native, unified news operations platform. Dalet Pyramid combines planning, content creation, asset and resource management, playout and multiplatform distribution into a single platform to enable production of fastbreaking, digital and live news, current affairs shows, and more. According to Raoul Cospen, Director of Product Strategy, News at Dalet, “The new agile architecture design facilitates collaboration at story-level with the industry’s first Storytelling 360 approach and enables a truly virtual newsroom. Just like all Dalet offerings, Dalet Pyramid is a cloud-agnostic solution that supports multiple cloud providers, including industry leader Amazon Web Services. It can also run in virtualised environments, offering unprecedented mobility that supports the industry’s continued pivot to solutions designed to support remote productions.”

The AI-powered Dalet Media Cortex, a standard offering at entry-level within Dalet Pyramid, provides a variety of speech-to-text features, including assisted captioning and translation, with AI services that automatically index or recommend content to news professionals and storytellers. Robust APIs and panels, such as Dalet Xtend for Adobe Creative Cloud, enable extensive custom integrations, allowing users to tailor their workflows according to their needs.

Dalet Pyramid’s web-based user interface makes it easy to onboard staff and freelancers quickly, reducing training time. Users can contribute, produce and manage the full news story lifecycle from anywhere using smartphones, tablets and laptops connected to basic internet. The underlying Dalet asset management and

Dalet Pyramid is available as a flexible, subscription-based solution which can run with a range of cloud providers, including AWS, onpremises, or a hybrid of both. Users looking for a SaaS option will benefit from having Dalet host, deploy and manage the solution, supporting the constant ebb and flow of resource fluctuations

NEWS OPERATIONS

without increasing their capital investment. Existing Dalet Galaxy five customers can migrate their license to a subscription and benefit from packaged Dalet Pyramid offerings that bring additional functionality to their newsroom. New capabilities include seamless remote contribution, multiplatform digital production and distribution, web-based editing, as well as planning and resource management. Fully compatible with Dalet Galaxy five, Dalet Pyramid introduces deployment flexibility without compromising on functionality. Visit www.dalet.com

Avid Expands IP Content Sources for Live Workflows

Out-of-the-Box Virtual Graphics

AVID HAS ANNOUNCED interoperability of Sony and TVU Networks IP-connected devices with MediaCentral | Stream to expand the pool of journalists, producers and other production resources who can contribute live streams from anywhere for news and remote live production workflows. MediaCentral | Stream is a rapidly deployed, software-only solution that immediately opens the MediaCentral platform to contributions over IP from sources anywhere using any device.

VIZRT HAS ANNOUNCED availability of a fully-equipped, virtual studio-in-a-box — XR Set Express. XR Set Express comes with pre-configured and pre-calibrated features enabling quick setup and instantaneous use.

With MediaCentral | Stream, production teams can ingest multiple incoming IP streams in on-premises and cloud-based scenarios without changes or interruptions to their existing workflows. Users can preview incoming IP streams, record them in productionready formats, or edit an incoming stream simultaneous with its recording to create stories for digital distribution and linear broadcast. With end-to-end encryption and authentication processes, teams achieve simple, secure and reliable contribution from any camera, encoder and mobile device running Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) or Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), including products from Sony and TVU Networks in addition to those from Haivision, Teradek, LiveU, and other thirdparties.

orchestration engine facilitates content flow from ingest through planning to distribution and archive.

“News and other live TV production teams can escalate volume and speed with reliable, secure IP content ingest from any device, anywhere, at any time through MediaCentral l Stream,” said

Raul Alba, Director of Solutions Marketing, Media and Cloud at Avid. “Avid’s customers continue to rely on Sony and TVU in the field and it’s crucial to boost productions with our seamless interoperability. We’re taking an open approach based on common protocols with a strategy to add more in the future, so customers can bring more content contributors into their live productions.” “We’re proud to play a key role in helping the industry’s most creative production teams simplify the many complex processes involved in remote IP contributions,” said Martin Lindsay, Product Manager at Sony. “With Sony’s network connected camcorders, RTMP streams can deliver content quickly and securely into the Avid MediaCentral | Stream environment.” “With Covid-19 still pervasive, we’ll surely be seeing more crews having to lend their talents remotely,” said Paul Shen, CEO at TVU Networks. “We believe that a data-driven media supply chain is what broadcasters need to be able to serve their audiences on all platforms. This integration allows TVU and Avid to not only reliably deliver raw material in real-time, but to deliver it with the metadata needed to really reinvent workflows for our clients.”

Features include a fully functional scene, ready to produce with Viz Arc control surface, a Panasonic UE100 PTZ, pre-configured hardware and software, and pre-calibrated lens and additional simplified lens settings. XR Set Express leverages Vizrt’s Virtual Studio capabilities alongside the connected workflows of the NDI IP-video standard. NDI is used to enable video, tracking data and full control of the Panasonic UE100 PTZ camera through a single cable connection. The Viz Arc control surface provides intuitive and flexible control for studio setup and configuration. Positioning of graphics, studio customisation, keyer auto-setting, pre-setting of desired camera positions, and more can be accomplished with a few clicks.

MediaCentral | Stream is available with a MediaCentral subscription.

The addition of a fully functional virtual scene, with its three main areas and pre-built AR graphics, provides users the ability to hit the ground running to tell engaging visual stories from day one. XR Set Express’ built-in flexibility allows users to still run any virtual studio created, in-house.

Visit www.avid.com

Visit www.vizrt.com

NEWS OPERATIONS

Newsbridge and x.news Partner on Brand Tracking and AI-Analysis

NEWSBRIDGE AND X.NEWS have teamed up to provide brands, governments and news organisations with a flexible, powerful News and Brand tracking solution leveraged by AI. The integrated solution combines two cloudnative services powered by AI: Newsbridge’s smart asset management platform and x.news’s monitoring, research and harvester platform. Optimised for speed, flexibility and accuracy, the tag-team technology empowers users with a simple means of monitoring and further analysing brand and or news topics aggregated from multiple informational sources. From logos, personalities, audio mentions, TV keywords, and more- a variety of asset types (video, image, text, audio) are all supported, ready to be enriched with additional metadata and immediately searchable via Multimodal Indexing AI, with builtin notifications. Newsbridge is a cloud-based platform for smart media asset management offering

Multimodal Indexing via Artificial Intelligence (AI) which takes into account facial, object and scene recognition with audio transcription and semantic context. Its end-uses include media logging, archiving, monetising, and investigative research. x.news is an AI-based live story research tool that monitoring different sources (news agencies, social media sites, web and internal sources) on one screen. x.news 3.0 enables the search within PDFs, internal IPTC/EXIF image libraries, emails and WhatsApp chats. With x.news, users are able to detect trends within collections, find, follow, collect and share all the latest information on relevant topics. From multilingual speech-to-text and face recognition to object, context and logo detection, the algorithm leverages megaenriched metadata to auto-index content for advanced search and retrieval. All this while providing a systematic media logging and

product placement analysis experience for users. After automatically monitoring and analysing desired content via x.news, this media material along with the script is then harvested into Newsbridge’s Media Hub where it is indexed via Multimodal AI technology, ready for semantic search and cross-analysis of the aforementioned elements. Once ingested to the Newsbridge platform, content is aggregated into AI-powered Collections, or ever-growing folders of content triggered by various modes of detection: face, logo, speech-to-text, objects etc., allow users to obtain immediate results where thier story, personality and brand appears with whom and in what context, working with content quicker and smarter. Visit https://www.x-news.eu and https://newsbridge.io

Avid Expands Third-Party NRCS Integration, Adds Disaster Recovery

Support for additional third-party NRCS ensures production teams can access the full power of MediaCentral including the ability to collaborate remotely, accelerate workflows and produce content faster for all outlets without having to change their newsroom system. MediaCentral’s ultra-fast search functionality lets teams find the content for stories they need when they need it and use the Media Composer video editing tool to produce content without leaving the NRCS interface. Multiplatform distribution capabilities enable them to get stories to followers and viewers faster while providing access to an end-to-end newsroom solution that enhances operations and can scale as content demand continues to grow. “Avid’s innovation strategy for newsrooms centers on driving more openness to help customers get more performance out of their infrastructure. By opening up MediaCentral to a wider range of newsrooms, we’re bringing

the platform’s extensive capabilities right to journalists’ fingertips,” said Raul Alba, Director of Product Management, Avid. “They can get started straight away - without extensive training, loss of productivity, or any complications associated with deploying a new NRCS - and gain the ability to create better content faster directly within the systems they already rely on.” “Integrating OpenMedia into the MediaCentral platform enables editorial teams to unify their news planning and production workflow with Avid’s state-of-the-art production platform for a seamless end-to-end user experience,” said Michael Pfitzner, Vice President of Newsroom Solutions at CGI. Avid has also extended its media production portfolio with the availability of MediaCentral | Sync, a secure backup solution available by subscription that protects television news organisations and other production environments against unexpected storage and database loss. MediaCentral | Sync enables disaster recovery and business continuity workflows by automatically replicating media and any associated metadata to a second production management system, minimising the risk of production delays by ensuring simple, efficient and reliable data backups.

MediaCentral | Sync is a seamless addition for MediaCentral production infrastructures, making it an easy and secure solution that ensures broadcasters can be confident that their content is always safe and accessible. It provides flexible media and metadata backup options, allowing users to choose when and where to back up specific assets through a web-based user interface, giving assurance that technical operations can be maintained in any situation. In addition to being fully integrated with Avid NEXIS storage, users can connect MediaCentral | Sync to multiple MediaCentral | Production Management systems while maintaining existing workflows. “Downtime is simply not an option in today’s fast-paced, always-on production environments where having access to media in a timely manner is essential for success,” said Raul Alba, Director of Product Marketing - Media and Cloud, Avid. “Media organisations need confidence that, in the event of a disaster, their valuable content is safe and can be quickly restored without impacting production operations.” Visit www.avid.com and www.cgi.com/mediasolutions

NEWS OPERATIONS

AVID HAS ANNOUNCED the integration of its MediaCentral content platform with CGI’s OpenMedia, a complete solution for journalistic workflows. The move enables integration with the industry’s leading newsroom computer systems (NRCS) – including AP ENPS and Octopus.

MEDIA IN THE CLOUD Dalet Flexes Flex’s Muscles DALET HAS ANNOUNCEDwhat it says are significant new updates to Dalet Flex, its media logistics platform used by brands, sports, and media organisations to bring content to audiences. The release enhances Dalet Flex’s end-to-end functional coverage and continuity for content preparation, packaging, and delivery across traditional, digital and social platforms. “As the media ecosystem evolves, it becomes more complex and a real challenge to navigate for many,” states Mathieu Zarouk, Director Product Strategy, Media Workflows, Dalet. “Dalet Flex sits at the intersection, offering customers a single source of truth that enables them to effectively manage complex workflows and service license agreements (SLAs) that may involve multiple media packages going to a wide range of destinations. We continue to modernize our offerings, responding to industry and customers’ needs on mobility, flexibility, and agility. Our roadmap is focused on enabling users to efficiently power their multimedia content supply chains with high availability, resilience, quality, and security.” The underlying poly cloud-native Dalet Flex architecture offers unparalleled mobility for distributed workgroups and inherent agility to onboard new media formats, emerging technologies, and viewing platforms with ease. Its flexible SaaS and subscription-based business models give customers the ability to expand on the fly with greater transparency over costs and budgets. Enhanced Production Capabilities The updated FlexXTEND for Adobe Premiere Pro features a revamped user experience that makes

FlexMAM’s advanced search capabilities available to editors. Using FlexXTEND, users can trigger rendering of their Adobe Premiere Pro sequence on a remote Adobe Media Encoder, minimizing media movements and freeing up their local system for continued use. Ideal for storyboarding, content creators can organise sequences in Dalet Flex and easily share them with other Dalet Flex users or send them directly to Adobe Premiere Pro or Avid Media Composer for further editing. The latest Dalet FlexXTEND panel brings improved integration with Adobe Premiere Pro Improved Controlled Vocabulary and Search Controlled Vocabulary brings efficiencies to content categories and makes content even more searchable and easier to share. Permissions management on tags collections, thesaurus support, and taxonomy improvements help users dial in faster to the content they need for their productions. Additional search operations (for example “Contains,” “Start with” or “End with”) and user interface improvements make it easier for users to build and visualize even the most specific search queries. Users can now refine permissions for their searches to be visible to other users or groups, making collaboration easier.

Resource Allocation and Auto-Scaling Dalet Flex quotas allow admins to define concurrency limits on actions and workflows, offering yet another area in which productions can fine-tune processes for efficiency. Productions can optimize costs and efficiency by dynamically sizing their infrastructure to seamlessly support bursts in resource needs thanks to Kubernetes support for media processing services on Cloud infrastructure. On the Horizon Dalet says Flex customers can look forward to continued enhancements over the next six months including new reporting tools for billing and cloud consumption costs, as well as support for additional languages within FlexMAM. In 2022, additional functionality will include a brand-new mobile app for searching and managing content, as well as enhanced multitenanted SaaS offerings. Visit https://www.dalet.com

MEDIA IN THE CLOUD

Zixi Works with AWS for Advanced Monitoring

ZIXI, THE PROVIDER of solutions for enabling live broadcast-quality video over any internet protocol (IP), and architect of the softwaredefined video platform (SDVP), has announced that the company is building on its existing work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) by integrating AWS Cloud Digital Interface (CDI) and AWS Elemental Link. The incremental capabilities have been added to the ZEN Master live video orchestration and telemetry control plane that enables users to manage large-scale configuration and monitoring of the 300+ Zixi Enabled Network of devices and appliances.

centralised remote access to local, remote and cloud-based devices from a single screen.

The ZEN Master control plane makes it easy to manage inputs and outputs for hundreds of live video and Zixi streams at scale. With automatic configuration details for network resources and distribution targets, this video management software allows users to create new live channels and spin up required streams on the fly. ZEN Master simplifies management of broadcast streams across industry protocols whether signal paths are point-to-point, one-to-many, multicloud or multi-content delivery network (CDN). Featuring user configurable grids for monitoring systems and stream components at scale, the control plane enables multi-partner supply chains with graphical and email-based alerts and

“Zixi has had a long history with AWS that started with an API integration with AWS Elemental Live many years ago and continued with the work for AWS Elemental MediaConnect,” said John Wastcoat, SVP Alliances and Marketing, Zixi. “We are excited to offer our customers the capabilities that the API integration of Link and CDI in ZEN Master an even more powerful user experience.”

“ZEN Master reduces the complexity of livestream workflows with a set of virtual tools for configuring, orchestrating and monitoring delivery of live video at the individual channel and device level, or across an entire video content creation and distribution Enterprise.” said Greg Truax, head of Live Video Services at AWS Elemental. “With the ZEN Master SaaS offering running on AWS services, it was natural to extend our collaboration with Zixi for our mutual customers.”

With a tight application programming interface (API) integration ZEN Master adds workflow flexibility, layered stream health visibility, stream analysis across audio-video-network parameters with reporting and automation routines that enhance the robust stability of

the AWS Elemental MediaConnect service and the observability of the AWS infrastructure using Amazon CloudWatch data. ZEN Master already provides media companies and service providers visibility to multiple layers of telemetry with the architectural flexibility to orchestrate and interoperate with other systems and infrastructures at regional and global scale. AWS Elemental Link devices are available as a source for AWS Elemental MediaLive and shipped fully configured for AWS accounts, with ZEN Master configuring MediaLive to send streams to MediaConnect. AWS customers can manage high quality uncompressed live video using CDI flows transferred in real-time between software applications running on Amazon Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. Available directly from Zixi, as well as public and private sales through the AWS Marketplace, these incremental flows from ZEN Master in, out, and around new cloud environments further the interoperability of both software and hardware vendors in their production environment, at high bandwidth with low end to end latency. Visit https://zixi.com

MEDIA IN THE CLOUD

EditShare Optimises Technology Stack, Enhances Remote Workflow EDITSHARE HAS ANNOUNCED updates to its FLOW media asset management (MAM) and EFS shared storage systems which bring enterprise-level availability and redundancy to FLOW, and time-saving administrative features to EFS that provide smart shortcuts, system transparency, and automation. FLOW’s high availability is achieved by giving its central database multiple points of redundancy to mitigate against hardware or network failures that would affect MAM client accessibility during active productions. Consistent with this, FLOW’s services are scalable and presented as multi-instance, redundant elements within the overall system. The FLOW platform also has new Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve panel capabilities and proxy support that further simplify working remotely. Users can now exchange FLOW sequences directly with Adobe Premiere Pro and Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve thanks to the new FLOW Cuts List sequence import function.

Extended Metadata support lets team members add metadata information to sequences, including custom fields. This improves and enriches metadata associated with sequences. AirFLOW now shows sequence metadata in its user interface. Improved media relinking logic automatically imports and relinks Hi-Res source footage located within a project’s complex folder structure after completion of a proxy edit. In addition to standard streaming proxies, FLOW can now generate additional high quality ProRes Proxy and H.264 files. This simplifies relinking to complex clips with multichannel audio track layout in remote workflow scenarios.

The iRODS Consortium guides development and support of iRODS as free open-source software for data discovery, workflow automation, secure collaboration, and data virtualisation. The consortium is administered by RENCI, a research institute for applications of cyberinfrastructure located at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, USA. With this solution, FUJIFILM Object Archive becomes a deep tier archive storage target while iRODS provides a data management platform for users

EFS’ Control Maintenance Mode features new controls which allow maintenance users to manage files in certain media spaces while restricting other users to read-only access while Active Directory Single Sign On (ADSSO) enhancements enhance enterprise-level user management.

FLOW now fully supports the latest version of DNA Evolution by Storage DNA. Users can easily archive and restore FLOW assets from third-party LTO/LTFS and disk-based tiers.

Lastly, EditShare is deploying in-app guides and feedback messaging capabilities. As the company brings more and more features to the browser-based experience, its aim to guide these users to the new capabilities and solicit feedback directly within EFS Control and FLOW.

Meanwhile, EditShare Telemetry makes it

Visit https://editshare.com

FUJIFILM and iRODS Partner on Archive Solution FUJIFILM and the iRODS Consortium have announced a collaboration and integration creating a joint solution built upon FUJIFILM Object Archive software. The joint solution leverages the benefits of a tape storage tier, providing an automated archiving workflow for organisations that require storing large amounts of data.

easy for administrators to share Audit and Monitor data with EditShare’s secure network operations centre. Through Telemetry, EditShare can work with customers to ensure systems are running optimally through proactive monitoring and event alerting.

who produce massive amounts of research and analytics data. FUJIFILM Object Archive software has been tested with the iRODS S3 plugin and now fully supports the AMAZON S3 abstraction that iRODS provides. In addition to regular S3 compatibility, FUJIFILM and the iRODS Consortium worked together to add functionality to the iRODS S3 Resource Plugin. This new functionality will be available as part of the upcoming iRODS 4.2.11 release. Moving appropriate data to the tape tier provides the benefits of air-gap security and scalability while being very cost-effective and energy-efficient when compared to other storage media. Additionally, FUJIFILM Object Archive software supports the new, higher-capacity LTO-9 tape technology. Visit https://www.fujifilm.com.au

ATTO Support for LTO-9 ATTO TECHNOLOGY, INC., the provider of network, storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments, has announced support for LTO-9 tape technology across its product lines. Linear Tape-Open generation nine (LTO-9) technology improves upon the prior generation with more storage capacity and transfer speed. LTO-9 Ultrium tape stores up to 18TB uncompressed and 45TB compressed which is 50% greater capacity than LTO-8. Transfer speeds reach up to 400MB/s uncompressed and up to 1000MB/s compressed. LTO-9 drives are backward compatible with LTO-8 media. ATTO supports backup and archive processes end-to-end with a full range of connectivity solutions for every environment. Industryexclusive ATTO features and technologies allow for quicker and safer backups plus provide design flexibility otherwise unavailable to system designers. ATTO Advanced Data Streaming,

built into all ATTO HBAs, bridges and Thunderbolt devices, manages latency to provide controlled acceleration for smooth data streaming to maintain the highest consistent performance. When backing up data, write speed is the most important metric. ATTO SpeedWrite keeps paths between a host and ATTO XstreamCORE intelligent Bridge filled with data to boost write performance by up to 25% over a direct connect SAS HBA connection to tape drives. ATTO ThunderLink Thunderbolt adapters and ATTO ExpressSAS GT SAS HBAs deliver fast connections to LTO-9 SAS tape drives. Featuring a full range of port configurations and driver support, easy-to-use features, extensive industry qualifications and integrates with up to 16 tape drives per bridge. ATTO XstreamCORE intelligent Bridges enable the addition of direct-attached SAS tape to shared Ethernet networks, providing a flexible and easy way to scale and remotely share LTO-9 tape devices. Visit www.atto.com

CANTEMO, now part of Codemill, has announced the latest version of its flagship Media Asset Management Solution. Cantemo 5.1 features a new panel for Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as updates to the User Interface. Cantemo is a customisable,

modular, and scalable Media Asset Management platform. Integration with Adobe Premiere Pro CC enables post-production professionals to continue working in their familiar environment, with Cantemo working in the background on file management

tasks. Through the Cantemo integration, editors can directly access the functionality of Cantemo without leaving Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Cantemo 5.1 also features a number of User Interface enhancements, including edits to

the look and feel of pop-ups and thumbnails and aligning colours for status alerts. The media bin has been updated to enable entire collections to be moved simultaneously. Visit https://cantemo.com

MEDIA IN THE CLOUD

Cantemo 5.1

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MEDIA IN THE CLOUD

AJA Announces AJA Diskover Media Edition FOLLOWING THE ANNOUNCEMENT that it has taken a proactive equity stake in data analytics software developer Diskover Data, AJA Video Systems has launched AJA Diskover Media Edition. The new software is based on open-source roots and lets media and entertainment professionals (M&E) easily search, find, and analyse media asset data originating from on-premises, remote, and cloud storage – aggregating associated metadata into a unified global index. It also allows users to pinpoint misallocated resources saving companies time and expenditure by helping them to identify wasted storage space, ageing and unused files, data changes, and more. With AJA Diskover Media Edition, metadata can also be seamlessly harvested to add business context and insights to files to inform data decisions and business processes, and to streamline workflows. It includes custom plug-ins that address the specific needs of M&E professionals, regardless of the physical or virtual platforms utilised to store media content. AJA Diskover Media Edition further enables users to search across multiple platforms simultaneously, and discover and present data in a master index, while generating reports and cost analysis to a range of roles across productions or enterprises. Key highlights include: A single master index: Ensure that all files across cloud, remote, and on-premises storage are up to date, and that data access and rights can be easily controlled on a per-user level, with Diskover’s constant indexing and centrally located indexes. Snapshots in time: Tap into a history of indexes to easily compare storage over time and project

future growth demands, as well as identify areas of concern. Elasticsearch: Scale to any environment size and type with an opensource core that simplifies asset search and provides insights into associated storage costs. Easily integrate with external APIs and order management platforms. Tagging: Use tags to support workflow actions and approval processes, such as file deletion approval on an expired asset. Analysis: Advance media workflows and monetization efforts with access to robust technical metadata (i.e., codec, number of audio files, resolution, etc.) via a simple search. Gain insights that provide team members with indepth information about each asset and where it landed for more informed decision-making.

internet connection and easily deploy multiple indexers globally at other facilities, all reporting into one common platform and master index. Security: Read-only access to the file systems and a web-based UI not directly connected to the storage prevents file corruption, deletion, or unwanted changes to assets. Global asset overview: Provide remote teams and individuals with a global view of the assets for each given production, group of productions, or client – empowering their own relationship with the data.

Support for hybrid environments: Seamlessly run Diskover across on-premises storage solutions and cloud-based storage services.

Cost analysis tools: Make more informed datarelated decisions about time, resources, and investments to reduce operating costs.

An intuitive web-browser UI: Access AJA Diskover Media Edition from anywhere with an

Visit www.aja.com

Intertrust Consolidates DRM and Content Security SIGNIANT INC. Intertrust has united all of its media Digital Rights Management and content security products under a new, wholly-owned organisation called Intertrust Expressplay. ExpressPlay’s product line includes ExpressPlay DRM, a cloud-based multi-DRM service,

ExpressPlay XCA for broadcast TV security, ExpressPlay watermarking and anti-piracy services, and ExpressPlay offline DRM. Intertrust ExpressPlay is led by industry veteran Manas Mati who joined the company from Disney in 2017 and has been leading its

business efforts in India to date. According to Talal Shamoon, CEO, Intertrust Technologies, “Intertrust ExpressPlay is a new chapter in an epic journey that started in the late 1990s when we brought DRM to life for the entertainment industry. Today, we’re proud of our cloud-based ExpressPlay Media

Security Suite which, enhanced by a rich partner ecosystem, offers industry-leading robust protection and anti-piracy services optimised for both content rights owners and distributors of a wide variety of media types.” Visit www.expressplay.com

MEDIA IN THE CLOUD

Signiant Boosts SaaS with Levels Beyond

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SIGNIANT INC. has acquired Levels Beyond, the company behind the media workflow software suite known as Reach Engine. Levels Beyond’s talent and technology will be used to extend the functionality of Signiant’s SaaS platform, adding new capabilities for simplifying and modernising media workflows. The company also recently

acquired Lesspain Software to facilitate organising, finding, and interacting with media assets, and the Levels Beyond acquisition will now extend Signiant’s offerings to include a range of configurable workflow building blocks. According to Signiant Chief Solutions Officer, Mike Flathers, “By leveraging know-how from Levels Beyond and the power

of the Signiant SaaS platform, we can give customers what they’re asking for — which is a much lighter-weight, simpler, more productised approach to workflow implementation. The industry demands best-of-breed optionality and a high level of configurability, but complex oneoff deployments simply cannot deliver the necessary flexibility

and economies of scale. It will be great to have the Levels Beyond team at the table to help turn our vision into reality.” Key members of the Levels Beyond team will continue to be based in Denver, where Signiant will operate a development centre. Visit http://www.signiant.com

POST PRODUCTION Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve 17.4 BLACKMAGIC DESIGN has announced DaVinci Resolve 17.4 which transforms the speed of DaVinci Resolve to work up to five times faster on new Apple Mac models with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. With the speed increase, users can now play back, edit and grade 8K projects faster, and can work with up to 12 streams of 8K footage. DaVinci Resolve 17.4 also increases the decoding speed of 12K Blackmagic RAW files, making it over three times faster and H.265 rendering is also 1.5 times faster. Plus, DaVinci Neural Engine performance is up to four times faster, for real time facial recognition, object detection and smart reframing. Support for ProMotion 120Hz displays makes playback and editing smoother and HDR viewers are also supported on the new Apple MacBook HDR displays. DaVinci Resolve 17.4 also adds Dropbox Replay integration. Projects will flow smoothly from DaVinci Resolve Studio directly to Dropbox Replay for easy video review and approval. Frame accurate coloured markers, comments and annotations made in Dropbox Replay are almost instantaneously synced to the DaVinci Resolve timeline. Plus with a simple login, users will only have to sign in once. Other features include quick and easy render set up with dedicated Dropbox and Dropbox Replay pre-sets as well as automatic background uploads that are monitored for status and confirmed when complete.

page such as better functionality for position curves in the timeline, so users can more easily adjust the ease in and out points. This creates a more custom transition from one point to another when applying zoom or image position adjustments. Users will also now be able to use DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor to switch between cameras in multi-cam clips on the edit page making it faster to cut programs together. Additional support for asymmetrical trimming allows users to adjust a transition’s in-point without affecting its outpoint or vice versa, enabling them to fine tune work more quickly. With Fusion, users get additional support for languages with combined glyphs and those that may write right to left such as Arabic and Hebrew. Combined with improved vertical layouts, rotation and line direction when working with Text+, this will enable users to work in a wider range of languages and layouts.

For subtitling, DaVinci Resolve 17.4 includes automatic resizing of backgrounds and cursor placement when creating captions, as well as nested timeline subtitle tracks now autopopulating the main timeline to speed up creating captions.

DaVinci Resolve 17.4 adds greater support for automatic colour management, making it faster and simpler to set up projects. Additionally, this update adds support for ACES 1.3, including gamut compression, so users can now more accurately display wide gamut images to be certain they are getting the best representation of the source image.

There are also improvements to the edit

A new Resolve FX called custom mixer allows

users to combine effects and make adjustments to grades with finer control. Plus, a new 3D keyer adds the ability to make finer adjustments to the key and matte finesse settings to make it easier to create clean masks with more accurate keys and finer edges. For DaVinci Resolve Studio, there’s also a new film halation which will add the effect of a glow or light reflections around high contrast edges, giving images a more filmic look. Fairlight audio now has support for Steinberg VST3 audio plugins, giving access to more audio effects so users can create the perfect soundtrack. Plus, there are keyboard shortcuts or click and drag to reorder, move and duplicate effects in the Fairlight mixer, displays single sided audio transitions as fades and added support for multi-channel audio outputs. When finishing projects users can now export projects with YouTube video chapters, improved encode settings for the YouTube render preset and the ability to use hardware accelerated H.265 on Windows. Visit www.blackmagicdesign.com

Hedge Extends Avid Editing Workflows into the Cloud

Eliminating access gateways and the high-latency associated with cloud-media workflows, Postlab for Media Composer is intrinsically secure and doesn’t rely on slow and hard-to-configure VPNs, allowing editors to begin working immediately from anywhere, with no minimum requirement for an internet connection. Postlab keeps existing workspaces in sync and makes Avid’s useful Bin Locking feature work in the cloud so users can seamlessly collaborate on projects without overwriting each other’s work. Postlab for Media Composer features: IMMEDIATE ONBOARDING - Postlab has no

middleware, storage restrictions or other limiting factors. It’s a seamless transition from on-premise to cloud, with essential features and characteristics of your Nexis (or Avid compatible NAS/SAN) workflow intact. EDIT EVEN ON LIGHTWEIGHT CONNECTION - Postlab works with both fast and slow connections and where bandwidth is insufficient for real-time cloud operation, media files are prefetched and intelligently cached, so they’re available for immediate editing. Postlab’s Workspace feature also allows editors to cache a complete folder and its content locally, so only metadata and lock files require syncing, which is instantaneous. FAMILIAR WORKSPACE AND COLLABORATION Postlab for Media Composer extends Nexis and traditional Avid NAS/SAN storage workflows into the cloud, providing editors a familiar workspace, and capabilities like Bin Locking ensure that editors can collaborate without

overwriting important work - just as they’re used to. LOW CLOUD COSTS - Moving media files in and out of the cloud is often time-consuming and costly due to egress fees. Postlab for Media Composer cuts the costs along with the complexity of using the cloud through metadata and a “zero egress” policy; no hidden costs related to cloud storage. SCALABLE, WITHOUT VENDOR LOCK-IN - Payas-you-go based model allows facilities to pay a basic monthly fee and then add additional Postlab users as needed. Postlab for Media Composer works for all Avid Media Composer Ultimate editors, whether they’re working on-premise or from home, and supports all types of storage - an on-prem Nexis system, NAS or SAN - or no on-prem storage at all. Visit https://hedge.video/postlab-avid Visit www.aja.com/products/t-tap-pro

POST PRODUCTION

VIDEO SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Hedge has announced Postlab full support for Media Composer, a cloud-native solution to enable collaborative remote editing workflows for Avid editors. Postlab serves as an extension to an on-premise Nexis or other Avid-compatible NAS/SAN storage.

POST PRODUCTION

Trapcode Suite 17.1 MAXON HAS ANNOUNCED a new version of its Trapcode particle simulation and 3D effects suite for motion graphics and VFX. Trapcode Suite 17.1 contains workflow and performance enhancements, as well as several minor bug fixes for Particular. Performance Enhancements Include: • The ‘Create Null’ button now becomes ‘Unlink Null’ when a null has been created to allow for easier decoupling (if desired). • Undoing ‘Create Null’ is now a one step process.

• Improved performance for Fluid Dynamics during longer renders. • Improved Cinema 4D spline shape support, including the ability to emit from Edges in addition to Vertices.

• Improved system multiselect behaviour in the Designer to eliminate cases of unintentionally selecting multiple systems. • Custom system names are now reflected in the ‘Emit from

Parent System’ menu for child systems in the Designer. • Added After Effects beta as an install path. Visit https://www.maxon.net

Boris FX Unveils Sapphire and Continuum 2022 BORIS FX, THE DEVELOPER OF visual effects plugins, has announced updates to two of its flagship collections. According to the company, Sapphire 2022 and Continuum 2022 deliver the fastest workflows yet with Adobe Multi-Frame Rendering and native Apple M1 support, new creative effects and functionality, and timesaving tools for video editors, motion graphic designers, and visual effects artists. “We’re excited to follow our Mocha Pro 2022 release with the rollout of two more of the post-production community’s favourite toolkits. Sapphire 2022 and Continuum 2022 come packed with new effects and features to help editors and artists work at their best inside Adobe, Avid, and OFX workflows,” says Boris Yamnitsky, President & Founder, Boris FX. “Among the most anticipated new features are the addition of Adobe Photoshop as a host application to Sapphire (free to all Sapphire 2022 users) and the introduction of fluid dynamics to Continuum’s Particle Illusion which allows users to add organic flowing motion to 3D particle animations.” Sapphire adds Adobe Photoshop as a host application with a free add-on available to Sapphire 2022 users (new licences, subscriptions, and upgrade & support plans). Resolution independent, non-destructive, and supports up to 32-bit images, it includes 3000 pre-sets and a one-of-a-kind nodal-based effects compositor. Graphic designers can now seamlessly pass imagery designed with Sapphire in Photoshop directly to other team members using Sapphire regardless of the video host application.

POST PRODUCTION

The Sapphire ColorFuse effect allows users to create cinematic colour grades with a unique LUT effect. Choose from included Boris FX LUT pre-sets, combine up to three LUTs in different combinations and opacities to achieve custom looks, or upload .cube files. Colour representation is produced with OCIO standards.

Sapphire’s UltraZap adds Mocha splines to the effect, making it easy to create visual effects that can be tracked, traced, and rotoscoped for greater artistic control. Previously only available to After Effects users. Sapphire is available as a plugin with monthly/

annual subscription options, upgrade & support plans, and permanent licenses. Host application support includes Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, and OFX workflows such as Autodesk Flame, Blackmagic Resolve, and Foundry’s Nuke. (Operating systems: macOS, Win, Linux). Meanwhile, Boris FX Continuum 2022 includes Particle Illusion, now with fluid dynamics. Quickly add organic 3D particle motion to existing emitters or create complex liquid animations that flow and swirl like in the real world. There are over 20 professionally designed pre-sets. Multiple emitters and parameters can be saved as a single pre-set in the pre-set library. There are also up to 5x speed increases across all supported host applications. Continuum 2022 also delivers speed gains inside After Effects with Adobe Multi-Frame Rendering support, zippier workflows with native Apple M1 support, and faster overall performance with the addition of more fully GPU-accelerated effects (BCC+). The cinematography toolkit (BCC+ effects) adds 60 movie/TV-inspired colour grade pre-sets, including The Wizard of Oz, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Stranger Things, 50 optical glass texture gobo pre-sets, and integrated Mocha tracking. Six speedy blur effects with 80 pre0sets give editors and artists more ways to rack focus, apply distortions, spin, zoom, and more. Each blur effect is fully GPU-accelerated and features user-selectable speed/quality options such as

box, pyramid, and gaussian. Additionally, the BCC+Prism effect generates prismatic colour separation and includes pixel twist and smear options. An improved PixelChooser has been added to all BCC+ effects. It features full GPU-processing, an easy-to-use interface and allows users to combine multiple mask shapes with gradients and image mattes to isolate filtered pixels. Continuum is available as a plugin with monthly/ annual subscription options, upgrade & support plans, and permanent licenses. Host application support includes Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, and OFX workflows such as Blackmagic Resolve, Foundry’s Nuke, and VEGAS Pro. (Operating systems: macOS, Win). Visit www.borisfx.com

POST PRODUCTION

Unity Acquires Weta Technology, Engineering Team for US$1.625 Billion Unity, the platform for creating and operating interactive, real-time 3D (RT3D) content, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Weta Digital’s tools, pipeline, technology, and engineering talent. THE COMPANY SAYS the acquisition is designed to put Weta’s sophisticated visual effects (VFX) tools into the hands of millions of creators and artists around the world, and once integrated onto the Unity platform, “enable the next generation of RT3D creativity and shape the future of the metaverse”. Weta Digital will join Unity’s Create Solutions focused on the continual evolution of Weta Digital’s dozens of proprietary graphics and VFX tools, such as Manuka, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid, Barbershop, HighDef, CityBuilder, and many more. In the future, with Unity’s deep expertise in real-time, these world-class artist tools will be available to creators through an accessible cloudbased workflow. Weta Digital’s Academy AwardWinning VFX teams will continue to exist as a standalone entity known as WetaFX and is expected to become Unity’s largest customer in the Media and Entertainment space. WetaFX will still be under majority ownership by Sir Peter Jackson and helmed by CEO Prem Akkaraju. “Weta Digital’s tools created unlimited possibilities for us to bring to life the worlds and creatures that originally lived in our imaginations,” said Sir Peter Jackson, Chairman & Co-Founder, Weta Digital. “Together, Unity and Weta Digital can create a pathway for any artist, from any industry, to be able to leverage these incredibly creative and powerful tools. Offering aspiring creatives access to Weta Digital’s technology will be nothing short of game changing and Unity is

just the company to bring this vision to life.” With this transaction, Unity will acquire: • Weta’s engineering talent of 275 engineers that are known for architecting, building, and maintaining Weta Digital tools and core pipeline; • Dozens of industry-leading tools such as Manuka, Gazebo, Barbershop, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid, Koru, and more, all integrated seamlessly into Weta’s industrial strength production pipeline; • A foundational data platform for interoperable 3D art creation, making it easy for hundreds of artists to work seamlessly together; and • A library of thousands of assets that the WetaFX team will continue to accumulate as they create world class VFX in the years to come.

“Weta Digital’s sophistication is represented by dozens of tools that all build on the same, unified pipeline. Alone, each tool is uniquely powerful, but as a complete platform, they represent a quantum shift in our ability to make it easy for artists to bring their imagination to life and work together like never before,” said Marc Whitten, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Unity Create. “We are excited to work closely with WetaFX to continue to push the edge of the art of possible with these tools and to bring them to VFX, entertainment and, eventually, gaming and other artists as we evolve our pipeline for content creators.” Unity and Weta Digital say they are empowering the growing number of game developers, artists, and potentially millions of consumer creators with highly sophisticated content creation tools and a cloud-based Software

as a Service (SaaS) subscription model. Under the terms of the agreement, Unity will acquire Weta Digital for US$1.625B in a combination of cash and stock. Prem Akkaraju, who joined Weta Digital as CEO in early 2020 and is the creator of Weta’s cloud commercial service, will remain Chief Executive Officer of WetaFX. Joe Marks, Weta Chief Technology Officer, will join Unity as Chief Technology Officer of Weta Digital. The proposed acquisition is expected to close during Unity’s fourth quarter 2021 and is subject to customary closing conditions. The Raine Group served as exclusive financial advisor to Weta Digital. Visit www.unity.com and www.wetafx.co.nz

Netflix Acquires Scanline VFX infrastructure and workforce and continue to support the pioneering virtual production work of Scanline’s Eyeline Studios.

Netflix will invest in Scanline’s pipeline,

According to a Netflix statement, “We’ll also

In addition to working with Netflix, Scanline has done ground-breaking work on everything from Game of Thrones to Godzilla vs Kong and Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Going forward, the company will continue to operate as a standalone business and work with their variety of clients.

continue to rely on many other studios around the world for our VFX needs so we can continue to ensure that our creators have access to the world’s most innovative tech, and continue to bring the most compelling and cutting-edge storytelling to our members.” The acquisition, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, is expected to close in Q1, 2022. Visit www.netflix.com and https://www.scanlinevfx.com

POST PRODUCTION

STREAMING GIANT NETFLIX has announced the acquisition of Scanline VFX, known for its complex, photorealistic effects and expertise in virtual production, which was founded in 1989 and is now led by Stephan Trojansky, a trailblazing VFX Supervisor whose proprietary fluid rendering system Flowline won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 2008. The company has offices in Vancouver, Montreal, Los Angeles, London, Munich, Stuttgart, and Seoul.

AUDIO, RADIO RADIO, PODCAST AUDIO Digital soundwaves

SEN Goes Remote with AVC in NZ WHEN AUSTRALIA’S Sports Entertainment Network (SEN) launched into New Zealand earlier this year it faced the challenge of not only the COVID-19 pandemic, but of widely dispersed on-air talent. The AM/FM radio and online streaming operator turned to AVC Group to connect the voices of the new service to its studios in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington. According to Warrick Marais, Broadcast Engineer with AVC Group NZ, SEN’s requirements for remote production included the capability for talent to co-host and co-produce, as well as see each other via video for more natural interaction. It also needed to be seamless with low-latency across the country. Simulating one giant WAN, SDLAN connectivity, consisting of six independent end-points, is

capture footage for social media. There are also two monitors and a remote keyboard and mouse. On site installation takes less than 40 minutes.

AVC have built them to be pretty agile, they can have multiple different connections to them. Without overselling them, they’ve been good.

“There’s only one or two steps for the talent to do when the kit is booted up,” says Marais. “On the screen is an HTML5-based virtual mixing console. The most complicated part is an Audio Compass codec which transports the audio up and down the links. That’s an application that runs on the remote machine and all they have to do is hit the connect button on the application and that connects with the head-end in Auckland. Once that’s connected, the box is literally up and running.”

“All the stuff that we do out of Auckland is pretty much live, so all of these kits, 90 per cent of the time they’re live. But what we do when we’re not on air with the kits is we use them locally with Audacity on them and [Broadcast Bionics’] Phone Box and we record locally. The hosts can, with two clicks, set up an interview and record it locally, save the file and send it back to us.

While the kits can be self-hosted, a producer in Auckland is on hand to monitor aspects of the transmission such as audio levels so that hosts can concentrate

As well as a production hub, the Auckland studio serves as Master Control with RCS’ Zetta providing play-out. Advertising playout consists of two streams – Auckland and the rest of the country. Future plans include ad localisation for North and South

in Australia can hear our studio in Auckland, and they can dial in and select what they want to listen to.” Streaming to the SEN app is handled via a Streaming Guys’ server in Auckland, and one in Australia for redundancy. Josh Pearson says that despite trans-Tasman connections and remote production units across New Zealand, latency doesn’t pose a problem. “We’ve got a half-gig link between Australia and New Zealand which works really well for us, and all of our remote kits we’ve actually gone and put Spark corporate connections into New Zealand around everywhere. It keeps us connected really reasonably. We’ve got 4G backup on top of that as well just in case the network goes down. “For us, it’s part of having a computer there that runs everything. We’re running webcams and all the talent can see each other, we’ve got [Broadcast Bionics’] Phone Box clients. We still would have the screens and everything else there, so incorporating the Axia node and mixer via the web into all of this has made it a really streamlined, straightforward simple version for the guys to use. It’s one box they sit in front of and it does everything. “One of the reasons why we launched the network talent at home – we’ve got our breakfast team work from their homes, our mornings person works from his house, most of our weekends we work from our remote offices in other parts of the country.

AUDIO, RADIO, PODCAST

One of Sports Entertainment Network’s New Zealand-based remote production kits supplied by AVC Group.

provided by broadband operator Spark. On-air talent have each been supplied with a Telos Alliance-powered “one-button, studio-in-a-box” consisting of an 8RU rack case on wheels equipped with a PC, mixing console, headphone amps, headsets, a switch to connect to the network, a camera for hosts to interact with each other and another to

on delivering commentary. In the event of broadband network failure, each kit can be connected via a 4G modem. According to SEN IT, Engineering and Operations Director, Josh Pearson, “The remote studio kits have been a whole new experience. They’ve been fantastic. They’re quite reliable.

islands, as well as individual major cities such as Wellington and Christchurch. There is also capability for Australian and New Zealand operations to exchange programming. “We’ve got two-way links between all of our studios, so we can all connect and hear each other,” says Pearson. “Any of our studios

“It’s probably the only thing that’s actually made us go really well through COVID. Like we’re in lockdown now with our breakfast host who lives in Christchurch and he couldn’t fly in to Auckland Monday to Friday to broadcast for us. So, it’s worked out really well.” Visit https://www.sen.com.au and https://www.avc-group.net

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The latest Asia Video Industry Report 2022 has been released. The Report aims to provide a thorough review of the video industry in Asia today. Seccons include updates on the state of Policy and Piracy in market, Research Reports across mullple plaaorms in Asia Paciﬁc, as well as the latest insights on Content, Technology, Legal and Video Adverrsing. Visit www.avia.org to download your copy.

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The Asia Video Industry Report 2022 is now available.

AUDIO, RADIO, PODCAST

TASCAM Updates DA-6400 Digital Multitrack Recorder/Player TASCAM HAS INTRODUCED the V3.0 update for the DA-6400 Series 64-Channel Digital Multitrack Recorder/Player. As a 64-track recorder utilising an internal TASCAM developed SSD and hot-swappable drive caddy, the DA-6400 is suitable for live recording, event capture, as a backup solution for use with DAWs, as well as being a suitable multi-channel playback choice for theme parks, theatres, and a variety of installations. The new V3.0 update enhances multi-channel audio playback, provides a more intuitive interface for achieving maximum performance, adds ABS Time Mode display, smooth switching to the playlist entry edit screen via an external keyboard, and more. The V3.0 software update adds nine new functions that improve the overall usability of multi-playback audio, including shorter production time of content production, and a more intuitive interface to prevent accidental settings and operation. For a quick view and reference, the addition of Contrast support for the display time counter improves visibility of take names in the home screen. Similarly, the playback setting state of the auto ready and theatre play functions can now be displayed on the home screen, providing instant verification of the current setting. Another important update is the addition of an ABS time display. For more intuitive operation, holding down the STOP button and pressing the REWIND button allows for an easy jump to the first take. For instant access to the playlist edit mode, pressing the F5 key on an external keyboard is now available, resulting in smooth switching to the playlist entry edit (ADJUST) screen. Equally notable, the ability to switch between the entry number/time counter and display/time mode on the playlist entry edit (ADJUST) screen is now available. A Mark point setting lock function has been added to prevent undesired mark points during production and, in the event they are not required, pop-up messages during mark point setting and setting lock can be turned off. Further, the display name of the mark

point matches the current time on the Edit Playlist Entry (ADJUST) screen. As a result, verification can be seen from either menu. The V3.0 update dramatically improves overall operation. For the purpose of monitoring and controlling each individual track, the operation of the individual mode on the input monitor screen and rec function screen has been improved. The DA-6400 supports simultaneous recording/playback of 64 channels at 48kHz/24-bit or 32 channels at 96kHz/24-bit Hi-Res audio. Of note, the DA-6400’s Cascade function facilitates the use of two DA-6400 units—enabling playback and recording of up to 128 channels simultaneously. To ensure the utmost performance, the DA-6400 records to a TASCAM developed 2.5-inch 240GB SSD that is pre-installed into the TASCAM AK-CC25 storage caddy, which can be hotswapped for easy delivery to clients. This caddy is also equipped with a USB 3.0 port for rapid transfer of data to DAW systems. With its two I/O slots, the DA-6400 has an expanding list of I/O cards to enable maximum performance in a wide range of applications. These include two MADI options (IF-MA64/EX and IF-MA64/BN), Dante (IF-DA64), and AES/EBU (IF-AE16) for multichannel operation—enabling use with nearly any pro audio equipment using the latest digital I/O networks via coaxial, optical, or over CAT5. This versatility makes the DA6400 the ideal backup recording system for synchronized capture with Pro Tools systems. Further, the DA-6400 includes SMPTE LTC timecode I/O for location synchronization, a parallel remote-control input, and an RS-422 9-pin serial remote control port. Firmware updates take place via the USB port. With support of Gigabit Ethernet for file

transfer, remote control, and monitoring over a network, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), plus SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol) for updating its internal clock over a network, the 1RU DA-6400 offers exceptional operational flexibility. Video reference (NTSC/PAL blackburst signals and HDTV Tri-level signals) plus word clock Input, Output, and Thru are also supported. Version 3 adds to the previous version 2 updates. The V2 and V2.20 updates included a Theatre Play function. This allows the addition of marks to be set for starting and ending points on each take—making it possible to trigger a marked playback range of multiple takes, in order. In addition to conventional playback operations, both serial and parallel external control can be used to send play triggers. Another noteworthy addition to V2 was the Playlist Function. This makes it possible to assign takes to a list in the order one prefers, change the playback order, and non-destructively set playback ranges of every audio entry—without affecting the audio files. Additionally, loading and writing flash start playlist files is supported. After a take from the playlist ends (when Auto Ready is enabled), the DA-6400 automatically jumps to and pauses at the beginning of the next start point. In addition to the aforementioned upgrades, users will also appreciate the TASCAM DA6400 Control remote control app for use with the Apple iPad. Further, the DA-6400 now records in Broadcast WAV format, which includes timecode information in the data file. This added capability makes both file searches and importing files from Pro Tools quick and easy. Visit https://tascam.com

Wohler Upgrades iAM-AUDIO PLUS Monitors

AUDIO, RADIO, PODCAST

WOHLER TECHNOLOGIES, the manufacturer of video, audio and data monitoring solutions, has released an updated iAMAUDIO monitor that contains several improvements.

The new iAM-AUDIO-1 PLUS and AUDIO-2 PLUS units add two 3G-SDI inputs on BNC and a looped output of the selected SDI input, while retaining an SFP slot for additional SDI, 2110, or 2022. The unit depth has also been reduced by two inches

to five and one-half inches, meeting all shallow-depth requirements. A fourth rotary encoder has been added to the front panel to further allow a mix of touch controls and mechanical controls for ease of use. While other functional aspects remain the same, including the ability to license AES, MADI, additional custom mix output routing and Dolby processing, the audio over IP option card

offers monitoring of either Dante or Ravenna and includes monitoring of 2110-30. Primary and secondary RJ-45 Ethernet ports on the card enable hitless (redundant) 2022-7 monitoring. Also available is an analog option card, offering a further 8 balanced inputs and outputs on DB-25 connectors, as well as a TOSLINK (SPDIF) connector. API’s, remote GUI’s and network ports remain standard on both units.

“The evolution of our iAM-AUDIO products adds many of the features and benefits already available on our iVAM range and now standardizes the available options across our audio and AV monitors. Adding the SDI inputs back via BNC was a consistent customer ask that we’re happy to have resolved with this updated unit,” says Kim Templeman-Holmes, VP of Sales & Marketing. Visit www.wohler.com

AUDIO, RADIO, PODCAST

Grass Valley, Telos Integrate Intercom with Cloud Production IN PARTNERSHIP WITH the Telos Alliance, Grass Valley has released Telos Infinity VIP (Virtual Intercom Platform) on GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform), a professional intercom solution for cloud-based media production workflows. Infinity VIP on AMPP supports essential intercom functionality that is already well known to production professionals, including partylines, IFBs, groups and peer-to-peer communication. This new cloud-based production

functionality is being beta-tested by All Mobile Video (AMV) and will be live with an AMV customer later in the year. Telos Infinity VIP on AMPP is a native SaaS solution tightly integrated from both an operational and commercial standpoint for a frictionless experience. The Infinity VIP on AMPP cloud server and virtual panel apps are available from the AMPP app store and deploy in the same way as any AMPP application.

With Infinity VIP on AMPP, operators supporting live productions from anywhere can access the application from any connected browser. The microphone and speakers from the connected phone, tablet, or computer allow operators to communicate with team members, while using the same device for performing their job functions using other AMPP-enabled solutions such as switching, audio mixing, replay, routing, and

monitoring. Usage monitoring is consolidated with other AMPP applications to provide a single billing experience. While providing the latest in flexible user interfaces, this new intercom solution also provides cloud connection for existing intercom hardware, providing all the benefits of a new cloud-enabled system while retaining existing intercom infrastructure and workflows. Visit www.grassvalley.com

Multi-Channel IP Audio Codec with AES 67, NDI CALLME-TXR uses Vortex’s CallMe “codec engine” to provide, in a single 1-U rackmount enclosure, up to 16x Stereo/Dual Mono CallMe IP Audio Codecs. The entry level CallMe-TXR has dual CallMe-T capability with 4x balanced linelevel audio inputs, 4x balanced line-level audio outputs, USB Audio connectivity plus a front panel headphone socket for local monitoring. It also provides native AES67 and NDI support as standard for integration into larger systems. Additional CallMe-T instances can be added at any time up to the maximum of 16x two-channel CallMe-T codecs in the same 1-U enclosure. Front panel control and the in-built web interface allow routing of any of the Codec channels to both the front panel headphone monitoring and the analogue audio inputs/outputs. USB ports allow connection of an external soundcard, USB Headset, Keyboard or Keypad to provide quick-dial and direct-entry SIP connection capability – all features that are available with the well-

liked desktop CallMe-T codec. In-built AES67 and NDI support for networked audio provides seamless integration with a huge range of third-party hardware and software products whilst Zoom compatibility lets an individual CallMe-TXR Codec join a Zoom call, taking the highest-possible quality audio direct from the Zoom Server. DTMF support lets individual CallMe codecs operate as a “SIP/VoIP hybrid” providing compatibility with numerous audio-conferencing services including Amazon Chime. CallMe-T has Opus, G.711 and G.722 algorithms and cabled connectivity only but at half the size, it is half the price of its nearest competitors. More recently, CallMe-T’s capabilities have been enhanced to allow connection of a USB Headset, Mixer or Soundcard for home studio use as well as a USB Keypad to provide quick-dial and direct-entry SIP connection capability. SmartStream lets users select which audio channel (left, right or both) streams to

which destination - up to 8 at the same time including providing the capability for a single CallMe-T hardware unit to behave as two separate mono IP Codecs to two different destinations at the same time. The latest updates include video stream support so that CallMe-T can join a Zoom call to provide the highest-quality audio possible straight from the Zoom server and DTMF support that lets it operate as a “SIP VoIP Hybrid”. Meanwhile, Vortex has also announced CallMe-G which provides IP Audio connectivity for Glensound ISDN Mixers With Opus, G.722 and G.711 algorithms, balanced analogue dual mono and USB audio connectivity, desktop CallMeTs have been used especially for Sports Reporting alongside Glensound ISDN Mixers, providing them with IP Audio connectivity and at a sensible price. The request to provide CallMe-T with the capability to operate as two separate mono IP Codecs to two

different destinations at the same time, especially useful for Sports Roundups where it avoids the need to take along a second codec, brought SmartStream that lets users select which audio channel (left, right or both) streams to which destination or destinations. Whilst the two-box- solution plainly works, following a number of requests from major broadcast users, Vortex has now integrated CallMe-T functionality within the Glensound ISDN Mixer to provide it with IP audio connectivity without losing ISDN and other existing capabilities. As a low-cost retro -fit, CallMe-G includes a replacement back panel plus the codec board for inside the unit and adds an RJ45 ethernet connector plus a USB socket that allows the use of a Wi-Fi or 4G modem for mobile connectivity. Dialling is still using the Glensound keypad which can access the ISDN terminal adaptor plus CallMe-T’s Quick-Dial memories and direct IP and SIP addresses. https://vtx.uk/

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Solid State Logic (SSL) has launched its latest desktop mixing console, BiG SiX. Based on the Solid State Logic SiX desktop mixer and incorporating feedback from artists, producers and engineers to create the next step in SSL hybrid production, BiG SiX is a 16 channel studio grade mixing console that combines features and technologies from legendary large-format SSL consoles with full USB integration, additional processing and advanced routing capabilities. The console’s SuperAnalogue design delivers the punch, clarity, and ultra-low distortion from the company’s 9000 consoles, along with a new 16 channel AD/DA USB interface. Also included is an ‘Essential Version’ of the SSL G-Comp Bus Compressor, now with the ‘Auto’ release feature, channel dynamics processing and a three-band EQ based on the iconic SSL 4000E console. BiG SiX’s comprehensive monitoring section features full source matrix feeding two independent headphone outputs, along with an 18-channel

analogue summing at mixdown capability. In addition to 16 channels of high performance 96 Khz / 24-bit USB conversion which the user can reroute to External Inputs, Stereo Cues and Pre/ Post Fader options, BiG SiX also features fully balanced insert points on all SuperAnalogueTM inputs, full size 100 mm SSL console grade faders, Mix Bus Inject for cascading additional SiX and BiG SiX, dual independent headphone outputs and much more. As well as offering four SuperAnalogueTM Mic/Line/Hi-z inputs with polarity switch, the four Stereo Inputs can be individually switched to dual mono, adding further recording flexibility. Key features include: · Four SuperAnalogueTM ‘Money Channels’ with Mic / Line level input / Hi-Z / phantom power / HPF / Polarity switch / classic SSL Channel Dynamics / updated three-band EQ (based on SSL E Series) / fully balanced insert point

· Four stereo inputs featuring dual mono switching and wide gain range · Built in 16-channel high quality USB AD/DA converters (96 Khz / 24-bit) with advanced routing capabilities · Three compressor flavors: Classic SSL channel dynamics, Listen Mic Compressor and Essential version of G-Comp Bus Compressor now featuring ‘Auto’ release · 100 mm studio grade faders · Professional LED meters with fast and accurate peak response · Two independent headphone outputs · Comprehensive monitoring section · Two stereo cue feeds · Up to 18 inputs at mixdown · Mix Bus inject for cascading additional SiX/BiG SiX consoles Visit www.solidstatelogic.com

AUDIO, RADIO, PODCAST

Solid State Logic Desktop Mixer

CONTENT DELIVERY Terrestrial, Mobile, Broadband

Magna Provides Telkom Indonesia with Playout, MAM and Archiving TELKOM INDONESIA is an Indonesian multinational telecommunications conglomerate with major businesses in broadcasting, multimedia, telephony, internet and data communications. After privatisation in 1995, Telkom Indonesia became the nation’s largest telecommunication service provider by subscribers. Recently, as part of their continued expansion the company issued an RFP for a multi-channel playout system as part of a new master control room build. After an extensive evaluation process, Magna Systems & Engineering was chosen as the successful tenderer for their new expansion project. Telkom Indonesia’s Head of Usee TV Master Control Room, Yosh Ramadhanul (pictured), said, “We use the new comprehensive solution from Magna for ingest, QC, on air and archiving. Magna successfully integrated our existing BMS to our new MAM and MCR, so the system runs seamlessly and we are very happy with the end-to-end MAM and MCR as one single solution that Magna provided. Also, Magna’s team has extensive knowledge of the various products we need and use and Magna always provides the very best support.” Explaining how the new system came to be Magna Systems Jakarta-based Senior Pre-Sales Engineer, Maulana Alamsyah, said, “This was a major RFP which included requirements for multi-channel playout, media asset management, routers, infrastructure and archiving. Telkom Indonesia wanted to significantly expand their news, kids and sports channels so this new playout solution was critical to their expansion plans.” Despite the many challenges of working

in a Covid world, including full remote installation, integration and commissioning of software, Magna supplied and installed an Imagine Versio multi-channel playout solution, Imagine routers and DAs, Masstech archiving and VizRT media asset management (MAM). Alamsyah continued, “Telkom Indonesia’s existing playout system was a basic solution Head of Usee TV Master Control Room, Yosh Ramadhanul, in Telkom Indonesia’s without a great deal of new master control room with playout, MAM and archiving solution supplied and functionality. The new installed by Magna Systems and Engineering. solution we installed now ready to go on air. The new system also enables gives them DVE, advanced graphics, advanced audio processing and, the MCR operator to create DVE and graphics as overall, a next generation and state of the art required.” playout system. As a result, they now have the With the new playout system performing features and capability to enhance their channel effectively and seamlessly the playlist is also presentation and include MAM and archiving into automatically monitored and sent to the a streamlined efficient workflow.” Broadcast Management System (BMS) for an The new solution supplied by Magna helps additional layer of efficiency. Telkom Indonesia control all aspects of their workflow from traffic, to creating assets for TVCs, through planning, the creation of a channel playlist and final playout.”

Alamsyah added, “All data and metadata is now submitted automatically to the MAM and MCR. If there are any errors or discrepancies the system will automatically alert the operator who can then amend the issue. The MAM pushes the clips to the Versio playout system whilst the operator does the final checks to make sure the content is

Maulana Alamsyah concluded, “With the new playout, MAM and archiving solution all data and metadata is now automatically updated in realtime. This includes all information contained in the traffic playout workflow. As a channel playout system, the new solution installed at Telkom Indonesia is an incredibly smooth, seamless and efficient process.” Visit www.magnasys.tv

CONTENT DELIVERY

Vietnam’s VTV9 Boosts Playout with Etere

VIETNAM’S NATIONAL national television broadcaster, VTV9, has boosted its playout and distribution efficiencies with Etere playout technology that streamlines and integrates with the end-to-end workflow including automation, graphics, master control and media asset management.

their playout operation with smart customization functionalities and workflow automation. In addition, Etere Automation features real-time device control for an integrated management.

Etere has extended its long-running relationship with Vietnam’s national television broadcaster, VTV, with a fully redundant playout automation setup for VTV9. The channel screens curated content for TV viewers in Southern Vietnam. The installation helps the station to streamline its playout automation workflows and achieve new efficiencies in its daily operation. The Etere Ecosystem framework also provides opportunities for future upgrades without disruptions to the daily operations, making it a system that would match the needs of the station even as it evolves.

• Start and end points on videos are stored on the system database

Pivotal to the installation is the Etere Automation which allows VTV9 to manage

Key Features of Etere Automation include:

• Ingest jobs can be automated to reduce manual work • Live recordings are supported and these can be manually triggered or pre-scheduled • Play while recording is supported on every device • Full redundancy • Runs independently from the Etere SQL Server for a fault-tolerant performance Etere Automation is a module in the Etere Ecosystem software-defined framework

which integrates and facilitates the flow of information between the different departments of a broadcaster. It is an open system that allows third-party software to be incorporated easily. Etere Automation integrates with VTV in-house software as well as its third-party master control, graphics and Media Asset Management, through the use of API. Etere also provides a high level of security and fault-tolerance to protect critical media data. Visit https://www.etere.com

CONTENT DELIVERY

Caton Delivers Women’s Soccer for China’s Relevent Sports Group CATON TECHNOLOGY, the developer of IP network transport solutions, provided high performance, low latency delivery of games in the 2021 Women’s International Champions Cup (WICC) to audiences in China. Caton used its CatonNet Video Platform (CVP) to establish a bespoke transmission path from the event’s world media hub in London to Hong Kong and Sina Weibo. Relevent Sports Group (RSG) is one of the most influential privately-owned international soccer companies, with a focus on growing the popularity of the sport in North America and Asia. The WICC, developed by RSG, brought together four championship-winning teams from around the world: Olympique Lyonnais, Houston Dash and FC Barcelona joined hosts Portland Thorns for the tournament in Portland’s Providence Park. Portland Thorns beat Olympique Lyonnais 1-0 in the final to be crowned the 2021 WICC Champions. The competition has a substantial following in China, and RSG was keen to offer fans a premium experience, particularly for viewing over social media. RSG also required high-level monitoring and security to prevent content piracy, and Caton provided the solution. The CatonNet Video Platform provides broadcast-grade media transmission services with points of presence in more than 60 countries. For the WICC it established a path from BT Tower in London to Hong Kong and the Sina Weibo platform for onward distribution into mainland China. The circuits used Caton Transport Protocols

(CTP) which provide highly reliable transmission, using proprietary algorithms and dynamic forward error correction to assure quality, performance and reliability. CVP also provides near real-time transcoding, ensuring bitrate and format compatibility when transmissions are fed to Sina Weibo. CVP’s inherent multi-layer security architecture assured the utmost security for piracy prevention. Transmission tunnels are AES-265 encrypted, and streams and data are individually sliced and encapsulated with CTP’s proprietary technologies. “The WICC is already hugely popular, and we are keen to bring the WICC to wider audiences and contribute to the growth of women’s football globally,” said Matt Kontos, Managing Director of the ICC. “Providing timely delivery onto the social media networks audiences use is a central part of that drive. Caton demonstrated to us how they could supply social media-ready and mobile-friendly services which still retained the excitement of being live. On match days, they delivered exactly what they promised.” Jason Ho, senior business development director at Caton Technology, added “Content owners, producers and sports federations are

increasingly looking to manage their intellectual property all the way to consumers, so there is a fast-growing demand for secure, low-latency, high quality transmission paths. CVP not only reaches all the major markets around the world, it also adds value to the transmission by providing transcoding on the fly, so streams arrive at the content distribution networks ready for immediate delivery.” As well as the CatonNet Video Platform which provides guaranteed bandwidth between its very large numbers of points of presence, Caton also leverages Caton Transport Protocols to provide high-quality, high-reliability services from endto-end, using the open internet where required for last mile connectivity.

Visit www.catontechnology.com

Tolka Deploys TCAS TV Content Protection for APAC Gaming Broadcaster TOLKA, THE DEVELOPER of content protection and ad insertion solutions, has announced the completion of a television content protection system for one of southeast Asia’s largest gaming broadcasters. The new installation is based on TCAS for Contribution, a newly developed version of the Tolka Conditional Access System. It replaces the network’s thirdparty signal content protection technology which had been hacked and was being retransmitted across multiple audience regions. “Secure transmission is important for all subscription-based broadcast networks, especially in the gaming sector,” comments Tolka’s business development manager, Alex Day. “The hacked platform had been using encryption algorithms originally developed to protect microwave feeds sent from TV

reporters’ newsgathering vehicles back to their studio headquarters. The newly installed TCAS for Contribution gives channel operators independent control of each contribution feed server. Multiple feeds can be sent to each decryption module, ensuring flexibility and the added protection of delivery channel redundancy.” TCAS can be deployed by TV broadcasters as a primary conditional access system or used in simulcrypt applications. TCAS for Contribution is one of four versions available, the others being TCAS for DVB, TCAS for IPTV, and TCAS for Apps. TCAS for DVB, TCAS for IPTV are both hardware based and use a Tolka-specific secure chipset. TCAS for Apps is software based and can run on generic CPUs. The software version is updated regularly to maintain its effectiveness

against evolving security threats. Broadcasters and TV operators gain the ability to expand their services, offer more convenient payment methods and achieve greater control over content ownership. TCAS integrates easily into existing broadcast and IPTV service-provider infrastructure to support IP, terrestrial, cable, satellite, mobile and hybrid networks without interrupting subscriber services. It can be operated in conjunction with multi-room and multi-screen environments, sending encrypted content to multiple devices within a home network and delivering content to multiple network services. For mobile or tablet devices, TCAS acts through a central subscription in the home to monitor content viewing from multiple devices. Visit www.tolka.tv

SIX DIGITAL TV programme channels in Hong Kong have made the move to new transmitting frequencies following a campaign by the HK Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA) urging property owners and managers to reconfigure common antenna broadcast distribution (CABD) systems.

The six digital TV programme channels have been moved to the 500 MHz band. They are Jade 81 of Television Broadcasts Limited, ViuTVsix

96 and ViuTV 99 of HK Television Entertainment Company Limited, and RTHK TV 31, RTHK TV 32 and RTHK TV 33 of Radio Television Hong Kong. The transmitting frequencies of other digital TV programme channels (i.e. 76, 77, 82, 83, 84 and 85) remain unchanged. The channels previously occupied transmission frequencies in the 600/700 MHz bands. Following the switch off of analogue television services on 30 November 2020, the spectrum

has been cleared for high value-added mobile telecommunications services including 5G, enhancing network capacity and coverage, and relieving currently congested indoor mobile telecommunications hotspots (such as MTR stations). The HK Government plans to assign the relevant spectrum by the end of this year. Visit https://www.ofca.gov.hk

CONTENT DELIVERY

Frequency Move for Hong Kong Channels

CONTENT DELIVERY

Ad Delivery, Personalisation Come Alive for Tokyo Games FOR SOME MEDIA COMPANIES, at least, the recent Tokyo Olympic Games marked an inflection point for cross-platform convergence of both audiences and advertisers. Singapore-based Mediacorp’s coverage of the Tokyo Games included 14 live streaming channels (up from four for the Rio games) and one FTA channel. On-demand content was also made available via connected TVs, mobile and desktop apps, and YouTube. The result, reportedly, was that 50% of the Singaporean population consumed Olympic content on the Mediacorp Olympic Network. Australia’s Seven West Media, meanwhile, reached over 20 million viewers across its broadcasting and digital platforms with 44 percent of that audience consuming across both broadcast and digital. Some 2.6 million watched the 7plus streaming platform exclusively. 7Plus carried some 43 channels on the platform with 41 of those were exclusive to 7plus and two simulcast with Seven’s FTA broadcast channels. Overall, Seven delivered 4.7 billion minutes of coverage during the course of the 17 days of the Games.

CONTENT DELIVERY

Of course, Olympic Games provide an opportunity for any rights holder to increase advertising revenue and audience reach, but what the Tokyo Games provided for these APAC media companies, in particular, was the opportunity to not only grow individual relationships with their respective audiences, but also deliver a single point of purchase for media buyers across multiple platforms.

Speaking during the recent AVIA Asia Video Summit, Head of Programmatic Sales for Seven West Media, Luke Smith, said, “From a 7 perspective, when we went in, we weren’t selling broadcast or we weren’t selling digital. We were selling 7 and that coverage of the Olympics. I

really feel as though we hit the inflection point in the market for audiences and how they consume their media, but also for advertisers and how they’re going to be able to reach those audiences. “As opposed to previous Commonwealth Games and Winter Olympics that we’ve covered in the past where it was there’d be a digital add on, that’s no longer the case. Where we’re getting digital briefs, where we’re talking about, well actually, there’s broadcast opportunities, when traditionally it was always here’s a broadcast brief and we’ve got digital opportunities. I think there’s that opportunity that we can provide brands to be able to reach audiences in different ways. Certainly, from a measurement perspective, the Tokyo Games presented the Australian market a really unique opportunity with the launch of [audience measurement system] VOZ, which is Virtual Australia, and having that view of audiences across both broadcast and digital.”

As well as cross-platform audience measurement, the Games provided both broadcasters with the opportunity to cut out the middle man and engage directly with those audiences.

According to Jennifer Chase, VP Sales, Solutions and Operations with Mediacorp, “Having a very audience-centric approach is important,

and just distributing that content out across all the multiple platforms where we know the consumers or the audience is going to be. For us, we’re very lucky, we have integrated program ratings which we work with SG TAM on. There is a combined panel across the both mobile panel as well as a TV panel. It helps us understand what is that one plus reach that we’ve achieved across FTA as well as the digital channels that we have, whether that be livestreaming or on-demand. It also gives us a very good understanding of how the audiences are behaving. Yes, the marketers and agencies are very excited by that because it’s a very robust solution, and it answers that question of measurement across platforms.” As well as cross-platform audience measurement, the Games provided both broadcasters with the opportunity to cut out the middle man and engage directly with those audiences. “From a 7 perspective, Tokyo presented a really unique opportunity for us to be able to scale up first-party data,” said Luke Smith. “An event such as the Olympics really offered us an opportunity to create a value exchange. Forty three channels to be able to stream in terms of which sports you wanted to watch - there’s a value exchange there, and what we took that as was an opportunity to be able to scale the number of log ins that we have. We increased our user registrations over the course of the Games by 44 percent, and now all our users on 7plus provide us email, they provide age, gender, and also postcode. That means we’ve now got over 10 million email addresses. “As a business, I suppose there’s two advantages of that is that we’ve now got a one to one relationship with 10 million Australians, so we’re able to tailor the content according to those audiences and let them know about new content

CONTENT DELIVERY

“We’re really big on driving single sign on, and we also used it as a great opportunity to drive single sign on during the Olympics,” added Mediacorp’s Jennifer Chase. “For us, we increased our single sign on by about 300,000 which we were pretty happy with. Outside of that, I think the other KPI we looked at is our underlying role as a national media network. For us, it was about rallying communities around Team Singapore. It was rallying the communities around sport and just playing that role of being able to deliver quality sports content to the audiences. At the end of the day, we delivered that content to 800 homes in Singapore, so we definitely achieved on that. I think the other thing for us is the engagement. So, of those single sign on users that we had, not only the new ones that we got, but all of the single sign on users that we had for the Olympics, on average they consumed about 17 hours of the Olympics, so they were definitely engaged.” When it comes to bringing audiences and advertisers together, both media organisations seem closer to the holy grail of the “omnichannel” but there are still barriers to overcome. “We had multiple approaches,” said Jennifer Chase. “From a direct point of view, it was very Omnichannel in how we went to market because, for us, it’s about reaching audiences on every single platform and maximising the reach for the advertisers. We had multiple sponsorship opportunities from a multi platform point of view - whether it’s the opening or closing ceremonies, the medal tallies, things like that. But we also had Omnichannel spot-buy available as well. We also had some digital only packages available, and the reason that we had that is that we knew that when you’re streaming 14 live channels, we also knew that we would have a lot of scale on the digital side. It was a very multi pronged approach. Direct, obviously, was the first drive. Programmatic was also really important when you’ve got such a huge amount of inventory. We also looked at what is the sold element, but we also opened it up to PMPs (private marketplaces) as well on the programmatic side to increase the fill rate.” “Typically, 75 percent of what we do, in terms of how brands engage on 7plus, is run programmatically,” added Seven’s Luke Smith. “It was interesting the Games are actually a bit of a flip on that. The vast majority of our activity was run converged, so it was broadcasting and digital campaigns being booked by brands at the one time. I think there was an element from brands that they needed to make sure that they got in there, and that they didn’t miss the opportunities in terms of Gold Medal moments. But we had PG, Programmatic Guaranteed, available regardless of the level that you wanted to be able to buy at. Then towards, I think, in the two to three weeks in the lead up to the Games when there was a lot of investment from brands in the Games, but we wanted to be able to open that up to brands that might not have had some of those big budgets. We went down the IOA, Invite Only option path, and it was a biddable environment. What we actually found was that, in that biddable environment, we actually found that brands that had missed out or had waited were

actually paying CPMs that were higher than that of some of the direct campaigns. What you’ve also found is that some traders were actually starting during the Games, starting to be quite smart about how they were accessing the activity, and they were holding back on budget and looking to increase those bids later in the evening when all the audiences came in. It was an interesting two weeks as to how traders were certainly trying to navigate their way around against the intricacies of live sport.” The intricacies of live sport also made their presence felt on the delivery of advertising during the Games, particularly when it came to elastic event running schedules, and keeping up with the production of highlight packages.

“We increased our user registrations over the course of the Games by 44 percent, and now all our users on 7plus provide us email, they provide age, gender, and also postcode. That means we’ve now got over 10 million email addresses.

According to Jennifer Chase, “When you’re converting livestreaming to VOD, there were two different elements. There was, obviously, the Catch up and then there was the highlights and the clips. From the Catch up point of view, it could be a stream that would go for maybe an hour, maybe two hours, depending on what the Catch up is. But then you have to wait for that ingestion period as well, so you have to allow for that time. But when it came to the highlights, it was very manual in terms of what we were doing; and, I think, from our point of view, the pain point was that we would’ve liked to have got more clippings out because there was an audience demand for people wanting to catch up on those specific events, and that takes a lot of resource and we allocated more resource to that, but we couldn’t be quick enough. “One of the learnings for us and, particularly, as we go into Beijing, as we go into the other events we’ve got for next year, like the SEA Games here in the region, is that we want to automate that more, so we’re looking at different AI technologies, for example, in terms of how we can automate that. Some of the challenges behind that is that, from a machine learning point of view, some sports are easier than others, like football, I think, and basketball, much easier, but swimming is a lot more complicated.

For us here in Singapore, the top three sports are badminton, table tennis and swimming. We’re still looking at those solutions in terms of how do we automate more, get more clippings up, because obviously that certainly satisfies an audience need. We can then get it up on the meWATCH site as well as YouTube. “It goes without saying that VOD is certainly easier for brands to be able to connect in that environment,” added Luke Smith. “There’s more time to be able to do that versus live where there’s a lot happening in a very short space in time to be able to make sure that we can line all those impressions up within a pod (multiple ads sequenced together, played back-to-back within a single ad break). I think we’ve come a long way. We’ve spent the last four years honing and trialling new things to make sure that we can get to perfection, but there’s always room for improvement. I think livestreaming and SSAI (server-side ad insertion) and how we can line that demand up, there’s certainly avenues that we can do that. I think the ad experience for audiences, a big thing for 7 is our EAVE philosophy which is Enhanced Advertiser and Viewing Experience, so we’re big on that. “At the moment, we’re testing out a product with Magnite around unified decisioning which the aim is to be able to solve that where we’ll ensure that we don’t have back to backs because we know that that’s not great for brands or audiences; that we’ll be able to have better pod optimisation, so in terms of durations that will run in there, as well as making sure it’s more of a broadcast like experience, preventing ad clash. “I just want to build on the SSAI side of things because that was a pain point for us for the midstream insertion, purely because the schedule kept changing so much, because when you do SSAI in live sports, it’s very different to doing it for one of our live entertainment events because the ad markers don’t normally change; so one of the challenges that we had was because the EPG kept changing so dramatically or so much, we just found that affected probably about 50 percent of our SSAI. I think, in the end, we ended up just switching that off just to make sure that we kept the audiences happy because it was about user experience. But you’ve also got to be quite careful that the ads don’t actually go over the content because you’ve also got a rights issue that you need to deal with as well. I think, moving forward, we’re just looking from our own perspective because it was our first deployment that we’ll be looking more at automating that process to make that a lot easier for the next time around.”

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that’s coming up at 7plus. Also, brands are able to capitalise on that really rich addressable targeting opportunities across all our content, moving forward. That was certainly a big opportunity that we’ve been able to capitalise on, certainly since the Games.

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Ross Revamps Video Servers ROSS HAS ANNOUNCED a refresh of its Video Server solutions range, with new functionality being added to the Mira, Tria and Kiva products. Under the new banner of ‘Production, Presentation & Replay’, the revised range now boasts a variety of additional features and ‘available as standard’ upgrades. Every video server product is now updated with an ‘As Run Logging and Log Report Creator’ feature that makes it quick and easy to provide clients with a CSV or PDF file from logs that have verified content playout for billing confirmation purposes. The flagship Mira+ replay server is updated to support 24 frames per second and ‘true 60p’ frame rates. The high frame rate ‘super slow-motion’ feature — previously available as an option — is now added to all Mira+ models as standard, as is one Mira Control Surface. The compact Mira Express model gets a storage upgrade to 76 hours — double the previous capacity — and a brand-new model is being unveiled with over 152 hours of total storage — four times the original capacity! A new powerful clip networking feature is also added to Mira Express as standard, enabling replay operators to playout clips from another Mira Express across a local network.

The Tria+ multi-channel production server is updated to support a variety of additional frame rates, and the compact Tria Express Duet production server also benefits from the clip networking feature mentioned above — offering important efficiency advantages to workflows in which multiple Tria Express Duet video servers are used. Rounding out the feature updates, the Kiva+ presentation server has a new sibling, with this new model supporting three PGM/PVW playout channel pairs — the original models support one or two channel pairs. Also new in Kiva is the ability to undock the ‘Channel tab’ for each channel pair in the Kiva Presenter app so that each channel pair can be positioned on its own computer display. “We’ve spent a great deal of time listening to our

customers throughout the pandemic,” notes Douglas Johnson, Product Manager for Video Servers at Ross, “and we’ve heard the need for greater efficiency and even more value. Our revamped range of video server solutions directly addresses these needs with enhanced feature sets, improved ease of use and even better return on investment. Ross is committed to helping customers overcome their creative, business, and technical challenges, and these updates and changes do precisely that!”

Visit www.rossvideo.com/video-servers

Imagine’s Selenio Adds Contribution and Branding DEPLOYED IN BOTH IP and SDI broadcast workflows, Imagine Communications’ Selenio Network Processor (SNP) has added an array of new software features that drive further efficiencies in production, playout and distribution architectures. Imagine’s SNP is a proven and popular video and audio processor platform. Its softwarebased architecture allows it to deliver all the functionality of a traditional modular processor chassis, but in an infinitely flexible, instantly reconfigurable form. The latest major software releases add several important new software capabilities, including JPEG XS encoding and decoding; an automated changeover switch (ACO); an advanced keyer (DSK); and additional audio management capabilities. These new personalities can be enabled on any SNP in the field, and all take advantage of the core processing of the SNP, including the ability to easily combine HD and UHD, SDR and HDR, and SDI and IP connectivity. “Imagine is renowned for its modular video processing products,” said John Mailhot, CTO Networking and Infrastructure at Imagine Communications. “SNP is a software equivalent, with the huge advantages that you can plug in SDI or IP, you can add functionality by licensing the software, and you can switch between personalities quickly - so a processor chain can be an audio shuffler and up-mixer for one show, and a production multiviewer the next. JPEG XS is a transformational codec, offering visually lossless production and contribution quality, at very low latency (less than a frame), and

typical compression ratios between 5:1 and 20:1. The result is an ideal means of communicating between facilities or between remote production sites and a broadcast center; it can also be used as an on-ramp and off-ramp to cloud-based production, with significant savings in bandwidth cost. The JPEG XS codec will be available as an SNP software personality at resolutions up to UHD/4K (and HDR). The user can tailor the bitsper-pixel (coding rate) for the specifics of the application; Imagine is also working with leading cloud providers to create ground-to-cloud connections. Available in the latest SNP release is an automatic changeover switch (ACO), which uses contentaware metrics to determine the health of each feed, in terms of video presence and quality, caption presence, and audio presence, audio levels, and more. The ACO function switches seamlessly between A and B feeds to maintain a consistent on-air output. As well as automated operation, users can take manual control of changeovers. With the Imagine CCSP protocol, which is supported by every control system in the industry, this ACO functionality can be integrated into any project straight away. A downstream keyer (DSK) is also being added to SNP’s capabilities. This offers four layers of keying and supports UHD/4K and HDR, using external and internal keys. The feature supports graphics sequencing and animations, and it uses SNP core functionality to allow mixed IP and SDI inputs and outputs. Coupled with the ability to make A/B transitions and leveraging SNP’s existing dual-UHD conversion personality, the

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result is a powerful master control switcher with the ability to up- and down-convert mixed format content into a consistent UHD presentation with UHD graphics. The latest SNP release adds support for up to 16 audio channels within each audio stream (across all personalities). Imagine has also upgraded the SNP’s audio shuffling and remapping capabilities to allow more complex audio channel mapping amongst the MADI, embedded, and IP inputs and outputs. In addition, the latest release brings significant enhancements to the SNP-MV production multiviewer personality, including caption/ subtitle rendering and a large set of new onscreen indicators and alarms. Each 1RU SNP contains four independent processing chains, which can run completely separate features or can be ganged to add capacity: the SNP-MV multiviewer, for example, can put nine PiPs on two UHD screens using one chain, or up to 36 PiPs across two UHD screens (portrait or landscape) by combining the chains. Visit https://www.imaginecommunications.com

ANNOUNCING THE NEXT

ABU DIGITAL BROADCASTING SYMPOSIUM

ABU DBS 2022 22-24 MARCH 2022 A VIRTUAL EVENT

To sponsor, contact dbs@abu.org.my

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