SEATTLE—While citizens have had to spend much of the past year in place, broadcasters haven’t had that luxury. As a particularly news-filled 2020 gives way to an even busier 2021, well-equipped news production crews are on the constant hunt for gear that will help them cover the news while staying safe. 

LIGHTING

Strict observation of social distancing has had a particular effect on lighting for interviews according to Art Adams, cinema lens specialist at ARRI, who added that the company's new Orbiter is just the ticket for socially distanced interviews.

“Orbiter has the best color, and also gives you the best specs and flexibility,” he said. “It’s kind of a ‘Swiss Army Knife.’ You can use them for quick interviews, or for theatrical and motion picture effects, or for chasing the color of the sun.”

Because the Orbiter is a hard light, it’s necessary to soften its output. “Typically I might try to use Orbiter with a four-foot medium Chimera, even a six foot octagon, which is probably bigger than most people would carry,” Adams said. “You want to create a big, soft source. The smaller the light source is, the more the shadow matters. But the bigger the light is, the more forgiving it tends to be.”

Adams noted that sometimes shooting interviews is a volume business, where there’s no time to tweak lighting between sessions. “People come in, sit down, and 10 minutes later they leave, you don’t have any time in between,” he said. “So the softer the light source is, the better.”

Reporting during the pandemic is forcing ENG crews to spread further apart, according to Litepanels product manager Michael Herbert. “It’s making guys doing these interviews and doing the lighting setups for them, having an increasingly large need for adaptability,” he said. “You’ve got people sitting six or eight feet, or even more in other circumstances. It varies by state, by studio and by building almost.

“When redesigning a lot of our products with the output in mind, you want to have more than you need,” Herbert continued. “That way, if necessary, if you have to move your lights, if you have to move everything further apart, you can always crank the light up to compensate for that.

Litepanels had this in mind when developing the Astra, which looks like a typical panel light except for its Total Internal Reflection (TIR) lens system. TIR puts a lens on each individual LED.

“The lens grabs all the light coming off each LED and pushes it all forward within a 44-degree beam-angle,” Herbert said. "This means that from a relatively low power fixture, you get a really punchy light source.”

CAMERA SUPPORT

Keeping reporters and their subjects apart via social distancing has re-emphasized the importance of tripods when reporting in the field.

The pandemic has also accelerated the trend of the one-man-band reporter, according to David Sheppard, international sales, distribution and channel manager for Shotoku. “[Reporting] has been streamlined down to where one person has gone out with all the equipment, set it up and even done the interview as presenter,” he said. “And with Covid it’s kind of accelerated that trend.”

In response, Shotoku introduced two new lightweight tripods and fluid heads, the SX200 and SX260. “We’re the lightest in class with carbon fiber legs,” Sheppard said. “And it ships in its bag all assembled, so all you’ve got to do really is pop it out of the bag, put the camera on it, adjust the legs and you’re ready to go.”

The heads feature “Viscam drag” (the company’s continuously adjustable fluid drag system) on a stepped system for effortless and speedy drag selection, Sheppard added.

“We’ve engineered that feeling in these heads into the drag system that’s actually continuously adjustable,” he said. “It’s the same as our studio quality heads. There is no ‘1, 2, 3’... it’s infinitely adjustable. It’s got this nuanced control that people like.”

Jose Larios, sales manager for Libec Sales of America, said there’s been a lot of demand for quick deploying tripods, which led the company to redesign their T650 to the 650EX.

“It has a [sic] other features, including the sliding plate range,” Larios said. “You’re able to use the slide plate just like more professional video heads that allow you to counterbalance the weight by moving the camera back and forth.”

It’s also very quick to set up, Larios added. “You literally take it out of the bag; the pan handle is already attached to the head. When you deploy the tripod and head out of the carrying case, the head is already attached and a knob adjusts the pan handle into the position you want before using.”

Libec recently redesigned another of its quick deploying camera support system, yielding the TH-M monopod. “One upgrade is that the quick release can be attached and detached from the side,” Larios said. “And the new model allows the pole to be locked in not only a vertical position, but also on an angle.”

Kyle Dann, product manager at Vitec Production Solutions, part of Vitec Group plc, provided yet another reason to have a camera support system that’s easy to deploy. “Deployment speed is very important because it gives confidence if you’re quick and efficient in setting up the interview,” he said. “And saving time in setting up is important because it gives you more time to work on your lighting and get the interview done as quickly and efficiently as possible, while maintaining distance.”

Among Vitec's rapid deployment solutions is the Flowtec tripod and Sachtler aktiv head. “The SpeedSwap system delivers the fastest way to switch between tripod and slider and other support systems in seconds," Dann said.

POWER SUPPLIES

With fewer places to gather (particularly indoors) between live reports, news crews have also faced increasing challenges in maintaining charged power supplies.

“When Covid hit, we had an onrush of broadcast customers reaching out because they had to adapt to a relatively new workflow from an ENG standpoint,” said Steve Turner, product manager and senior manager of strategic relationships, Vitec Group plc. “What that meant was a lot of refreshing of old kits and ‘How can I make my life easier when I’m stuck in a news vehicle all day, without being able to go back to the station?’”

The company responded with the Anton Bauer Titon 240 battery, its highest capacity onboard battery, at 240Wh.

“Just for a ballpark estimate if your camera runs 25W—which is typical these days, even less—that’s about eight hours per battery,” Turner calculated. “So if you’re able to outfit a photographer with four batteries and a charger, then they are more than set for the day.

"All Titon lines now incorporate a smart USB, so it’s fully compatible with charging of cellphones, as well as the industry standard power tap for Anton/Bauer,” Turner added.

PAG takes a different path toward capacity through its PAGLINK technology, according to Bob Carr, sales director for PAG America. “Because of PAG’s linking technology, we can link up to eight 150Wh battery packs. So you’re talking about up to 1,200Wh of power.”

PAG battery packs are available in three sizes: 50, 99 and 150Wh. The first battery pack clips to the back of the camera, and one after another of the packs clip piggyback on to the one before it.

“You don’t have to put anything between batteries you want to link, just plug two or more batteries together,” Carr said. “The camera draws off the battery with the greatest charge. You always have the ability to hotswap as you shoot, so there’s no need to ever stop shooting.

“You could put a power hub in between any of the linked battery packs, which will allow you to have five more connection points,” Carr added. “They’re switchable so you can have five USBs, five V-taps, five LEMO two pins.”

New PAG batteries going forward will have the ability to be serviced and re-celled by major customers and regional offices.

Many reporters are now doing more of their planning and reporting from home or anywhere than at the station, forcing better preparation, according to Kevin Crawford, vice president for engineering at Frezzi.

To help news crews prep for longer workdays, Frezzi redesigned and retooled its FB240 240Wh battery pack.

“It’s designed to run all day without recharging, and has a power tap and an integrated USB tap to charge cellphones and other USB charged devices,” Crawford said. “They’re pulling other peripherals off of that FB240. It’s good to have that big bucket, because everybody’s going with LiveU's now, and all kinds of extra devices, so it’s good to have that big bucket.”

The new FB series of battery packs has a ruggedized case, which is serviceable and resistant to drops up to four feet, Crawford added. “That means if there ever is a problem, we could swap out the case. That’s a big thing. I think we’re the only ones in the industry to do that.”

WASHINGTON—The latest edition of Broadcast Engineering Extra offers an in-depth look at the latest news surrounding NextGen TV.

Here’s a quick glance at what’s in the issue:

ONE Media’s ATSC 3.0 Smartphone Becomes a Reality

ATSC 3.0 in smartphones has taken a big step forward with the delivery of Mark ONE production sample phones, a key part of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s strategy to ensure NextGen TV one day is an integral part of mobile phones and other devices.

The Core Message: ATSC 3.0 Can Fuel Cable Growth

Does the debut of NextGen TV mean it’s time for a “cable-broadcast technology refresh?”

The full issue is available online. You can subscribe to access the digital Broadcast Engineering Extra here. 

Pretty much everyone has been comfortable with the concept of streaming media for a while now, but the current global health crisis has forced everybody to become good at it—whether they’re tech savvy or not. As we rely on streaming platforms for more of our interactions, we are reminded that transmitting and receiving high-quality audio isn’t always the easiest thing, especially if we are hampered by fluctuating network conditions and services that weren’t designed to deliver enterprise-grade performance.

“High-quality audio in streaming really follows the same ground rules as production audio always has, which is good source equals good delivery,” said Dave Van Hoy, president, Advanced Systems Group, an AV design and integration firm headquartered in Emeryville, Calif. Because audio transmission requires less bandwidth than video, audio-only streaming is less challenging. “You’ve got to consider, 'How does sound go from being physical sound waves at its source to being electronic, and how does that then get transmitted?' If you can solve for that, then the chances are pretty good that you’re going to have a good audio experience.”

But synchronizing audio with streaming video is another matter. “It’s a much harder problem to solve for because oftentimes much of it is out of your control,” Van Hoy acknowledged. The issue becomes more complex when multiple participants in a livestream must interact—especially if the desired production values exceed the quality of an average conference call. “If I want to go beyond that, I would have to begin to apply more traditional broadcast production audio methodologies, including the idea of foldback, and being able to hear the program without latency.”

Eduardo Martinez, director of technology at StreamGuys, a content delivery network (CDN) and streaming provider headquartered in Bayside, Calif., concedes that some broadcasters are constrained to using a laptop with software-based encoding, though he argues that this setup is not ideal. “In a perfect scenario, we like to see customers with dedicated appliances for streaming,” he said. “In our eyes, that [removes] a lot of the management headaches from a broadcaster’s perspective. You don’t have to worry about, if it’s a local PC [for example], somebody else messing with the encoding.” He added that there are solutions to suit a wide range of budgets. 

Martinez said that the development of dynamic stream splicing software—such as the Intraplex solution offered by StreamGuys partner Gates Air—helps to maintain quality audio when network conditions threaten to produce jitter and packet loss. “With [dynamic stream splicing], we’re able to offer extra resiliency at a network level because we’re able to send two streams—either over the same network or via two different internet service providers,” he explained. He points out that a growing number of audio products manufacturers offer solutions based on the SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) protocol. “It’s reliable because it’s a purpose-built protocol that allows users to combat things like jitter and packet loss on the network.”

This is significant, Martinez said, especially for broadcasters located in remote areas where network conditions are inconsistent. “[We work with] broadcasters in really remote areas like Alaska that make great use of these technologies because the networks can be a little bit unreliable at times,” he said. “Ensuring that you have those extra layers of redundancy on the ingest side of things ultimately ensures the robust transmission of audio.”

Another factor that has made streaming audio easier, according to Van Hoy, is the sophistication of modern mobile devices. He added that available tools don’t require content creators to be overly technical to produce programming. To address the challenges faced by those working from home, his company released remote production kits that facilitate production and streaming, including lighting, laptops, microphones and DSLR cameras with desktop tripods and prompters; the kits are configured with less-technical users in mind.

“Part of it is about giving people decent cameras and lights so they don’t look like they’re shooting in a cave, but the other part is making sure people are cognizant of audio, that they’re using a good microphone and that they’re aware of the acoustics of the space they’re in,” Van Hoy explained. “It’s helping people deal with their acoustic environments and their microphones so that the audio starts out good—because if it doesn’t start good, it never gets better. It can’t.”

TVU Networks, an IP video solutions developer headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., recently incorporated new audio mixer functionality into its TVU Producer 3.0 cloud production platform. The feature, which enables audio mixing to be done separately from video and graphics operation, allows for the monitoring of each video/audio production feed, adjustment of all audio input levels as well as master output, gain adjustments for each channel, channel assignment for each group for management of multiple sources and individual muting for each channel.

Paul Shen, CEO at TVU Networks, noted that the audio mixer feature facilitates the audio production process for crew members who are confined to working from home (and thus stuck with the limitations of their residential internet connections) but are still responsible for producing high-quality broadcasts. “They have proxy audio so they can hear and assess the quality of the production, and the full production is in the cloud in whatever broadcast quality is required,” he explained. “In audio mixing, one of the big challenges is ensuring that the quality is good without overburdening the infrastructure.” With the proxy approach, Shen said that high-quality audio can be achieved in low-bandwidth conditions.

While a great deal of collaboration, presentations, lectures and performances rely on both aural and visual communication, Van Hoy noted that achieving good-quality sound strengthens the message, no matter what it is. “You can have great content that’s audio-only. It is almost impossible to have great content that is video-only,” he said. “The little bit of effort it takes to make sure you are starting with good signals is important and will make a huge difference in your final product, whether it’s a Zoom call or a broadcast across the airwaves of an entire country. It’s impactful.”

The global market for esports—professional video game competitions—reached more than 450 million viewers globally last year according to data from market research firm NewZoo. As esports continues to attract more young fans—who are picking up a controller instead of a ball—revenues are also on the rise, and are forecast to grow from $1.1 billion last year to $1.8 in 2022, which is why it is being taken seriously as one of the fastest growing sports worldwide.

The past few years have even seen purpose-built esports facilities, including the HyperX Esports Arena in the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas and the Blizzard Arena on the Burbank Studios lot outside Los Angeles. To ensure that the broadcast competitions can match the level of the NFL or the Olympics in presentation, esports promoters are turning to broadcast production vendors, while also hiring the right talent to pull it all together.

"If I was in charge of an esports production company I'd try to hire two people," said Cameron Reed, business development manager for esports at Ross Video. "One is whoever produces ESPN's ‘GameDay’ and the other is whoever does ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and I'd put them in a room together."

The complexity of esports can't be understated, as each competition brings the challenges equal to that of the Super Bowl as well as its half time show. A major esports competition can be described as equal parts sporting event, rock concert and action movie all in one. 

"We're seeing more facilities being built up for these events, but others are repurposing multi-use facilities, and each comes with challenges," added Reed. "But the presentations all are the same, which is why we're seeing production teams that include a combination of old time TV veterans—typically the engineer and technical director—along with kids who really know the games."

LIGHTS, CAMERA, SO MUCH ACTION

Esports is unique from other sports in that the player/athlete isn't actually on a field but is rather static on a stage, while the "action" or gameplay occurs in a virtual/digital realm that is presented on massive monitors for the audience to view. While those players aren't often animated, the in-game action can be, in a word "intense," when  combined with lighting effects that add to the immersion. The result can be sensory overload.

"There are parallels to regular sports, but the rock concert analogy is very good," said Charles Conroy, vice president of gaming for The Switch, a production platform for live esports coverage. "There isn't an actual field, so there are no boundaries."

While this opens the ability to capture the action in unique ways, it also presents challenges. For Super Bowl LIV, Fox Sports deployed 70 manned and robotic cameras, along with 30-plus lock-off and POV units. Esports can often require even more cameras on the stage, the players, the audience and all the virtual cameras that capture the in-game experience.

"This is far more challenging than a regular sporting event," said Chris Merrill, director of product marketing at Grass Valley. "There is the stage lighting and the audience is in shadows so there are no common light levels, while the LEDs have flicker that results in a strobing due to the refresh rate. You need to have the right tools to manage all those levels and do so without a shader that is constantly trying to address it. It is in fact a similar problem to a rock concert."

Given that the most important visuals are what the players see, it would be easy to think that corners could be cut with the cameras in the actual arena but this is far from the case.

"Any lower end pro AV camera will pick up the strobing and there is no easy way to deal with it," added Merrill. "You need consistency as these events are broadcast all over the world. Esports has evolved from being on Twitch and other online gaming channels. It is now on Fox and ESPN and you need to meet their high level of standards."

Many of the facilities for esports weren't designed with such competitions, but more are being built—and can thus address many of these lighting and camera challenges.

"You will see more and more facilities built up over the next year," added Conroy. "Esports are now being taken very seriously by the audience, and this is why the production teams must treat it like any other live event.”

GAME CONTROL

Pulling all the various sources together involves its own magic, and this includes broadcast-quality switchers, comms and KVM tools. While these can too often be afterthoughts for smaller productions, for esports it can be crucial to have the right equipment to pull it together.

"We do think of the switcher as the backbone of the production," said Ross Video's Reed. "A powerful switcher and the right director are critical for the sole reason that—much like news—box effects are the name of the game."

Because it is impossible to cut away from the in-game action, having these effects can allow the viewers to see the player and/or crowd action. "It is like a boxing match," added Reed. "You have to keep the cameras trained on the action at all times—if you cut away from the action and miss that 'knockout' it could be career suicide."

The switcher can also make it easier for a production to utilize graphics presentations that include stats from the game in real time. "The game happens way too fast to have someone manually enter the stats," explained Reed. "You need to have automated triggers and automated data that can be retrieved quickly. I've seen events that are streamed in three languages, and with only one operator, we were able to take in data from the web API, and get the stats sent out to each feed."

While the "field" of play differs from other sports, the technical management of video distribution is basically the same, and this is where the KVM switch needs to handle high-end resolution, full frame rate accuracy and provide latency-free mouse movements.

"Gaming software producers and video editors count on our products to support both real-time and playback requirements," said Dan Holland, marketing manager for KVM provider IHSE USA in Cranbury, NJ. "IHSE is working with companies like EVS to create extenders that can be integrated in the live digital arena requiring frame rates up to 240fps while simultaneously synchronizing secondary outputs at 60fps for traditional broadcast and live-event streaming."

The new KVM extenders with 240 Hz to 60 Hz synchronized sequential frame rate conversion for esports events enable live screen display, broadcast and super slow-motion replay direct from gaming computers. Holland added, "In addition to super slo-mo action replay, the new devices enable direct broadcast of esports events via on-air transmission and online and social media distribution."

THE VIDEO GAME AUDIO EXPERIENCE

With esports it is all too easy to think about the "video" aspect as these are matches built around video games, but audio is certainly as important and can present even more challenges for these broadcast productions. The audio can include what the audience hears, what the players hear and notably what the production team hears. The result is the loudness of a rock concert and action movie, but with the added challenge of allowing for players to communicate with one another while not hearing the commentary, (which could sway their gameplay). 

"The noisy environment is certainly an issue," said Stephen Sandford, senior product manager for intercom provider Clear-Com. "Unlike other sports there needs to be comms for the gamers so they can hear teammates. But this also means high isolation headsets so that the other team doesn't hear this chatter."  

There is also the communications between the director and the crew, but at the same time the cameramen can't be totally isolated from the arena noise.

"The cameramen will have high isolation headsets with multiple channels, and with one ear open to the environment," added Sandford. "There is still a little bit of analog feeds, but most of it is digital these days and all of it will go through CAT-5 so there is no interference."

Sandford also noted that intercoms can be the last thing people think about. "The show can't go on without the comms,” he said. “People soon realize the importance of a good set of comms."

For the audience watching at home sound is also crucial, and is an area where corners shouldn't be cut.

"If you put it on Twitch or YouTube that is one thing," said Chris Fichera, vice president of Group One Ltd., the U.S. distributor for audio solutions company Calrec. "If you want this on TV and Dolby is involved, it is a different level entirely. You have to start with a good engineer who understands gaming as well as broadcast. This includes those from live sound and bridges the gap."

PLUS: Esports Projected to Have Banner Year Despite Pandemic

The right equipment and the right person can be crucial to ensuring the audience at home doesn't miss an audio beat.

"The sound coming out of the actual venue is as important as the commentators," added Fichera. "I compare it to a basketball game, which is noisy with the music, the audience and the commentators. The sound from the court and players isn't as loud, so esports takes this up a notch with the game sounds. We've seen audio production evolve quickly, and as the sport grows the audio will be a key component that grows with it."

WASHINGTON—The November 2019 edition of Broadcast Engineering Extra, covering the major news from October’s SMPTE 2019 Annual Technical Conference, is now available for download.

Learn about the live, UHD interview with astronauts on the International Space Station, or what media creation may be like in 2030, as well as some of the latest technological advancements regarding AI and neural networks.

To read this month’s issue, and all future months, subscribe for the Broadcast Engineering Extra Digital Edition.

Part I

Even though news consumers are increasingly turning from conventional television to the internet for news, the good news is they’re also demanding more video. That gives video-savvy broadcasters an edge, online, over their newspaper competitors, who are also attempting to cope with digital disruption. The bad news is that legacy television newsgathering gear and workflow—whose origins date back to the 1970s—are ill-suited for producing video for web consumption. The cost is too high and the process too slow. Consumers want their news fast, on-demand (not linear), often live, and on a variety of screen sizes, especially small, mobile screens.

A mobile journalist covers the 2016 EHF EUro Championships in Poland.

The high cost of outdated video news production is unsustainable, especially online where monetizing is tough, where broadcast news providers are competing with cute kitty YouTube video and where social media behemoths like Google and Facebook are sucking revenue out of the ad-o-sphere.

ENG HAS RUN ITS COURSE

Broadcasters are burdened with expensive electronic news gathering technology—camcorders, edit bays and live trucks; with inefficient workflows and with the nearly obsolete, linear news show format. (We don’t even know if many younger viewers are willing to sit through a newscast because they’re not watching TV at all.)

Television journalism quality, especially at the local level, has been sinking steadily in the United States due to a variety of factors, among them, FCC deregulation, cable, then internet competition, media consolidation, agenda-driven ownership like Sinclair Broadcasting and the Great Recession.

Low-quality newscasts are not exactly viewer magnets, thus also less attractive for advertisers. Seemingly never-ending layoffs result in fewer boots on the ground, that is far fewer reporters to ferret out actual news. (The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts reporter employment will yet continue to drop, another 9 percent over the next decade). Journalism by police scanner and press release is too common. Some TV news practices insult viewers’ intelligence, such as ubiquitous, black-hole (aka dog-lick) liveshots.

It appears that no U.S. television news outlet has gone all-in, online. They use internet delivery to supplement, not replace legacy delivery methods. And they still rely on ENG-based systems and methods that were developed when broadcast licenses were licenses to print money.

It does not take a crystal ball to see where we’re heading. Key words describe the trends: “online,” “IP,” “video,” “live,” “on-demand,” “mobile,” “small screens,” “fast,” and “low cost.” News dissemination will continue moving in that direction, slowly if television station owners continue to resist change; faster if enough of them manage to wake up and accept reality. (How fast can conventional ENG equipment can be pried from cold, dead hands?)

News outlets could afford to hire more reporters, give more raises and get by with less ad revenue if video production costs were substantially reduced. Cheaper, faster and better video news production, by itself, won’t guarantee online financial success or reverse the journalism quality freefall. But it could help.

LOWER COST, HIGHER SPEED SMARTPHONE NEWSGATHERING

"It's the economy, stupid!" is the phrase campaign strategist James Carville coined when suggesting key messages for Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign.

"It's the economy, stupid!"

“It’s the workflow, stupid!” is good advice for any broadcast news manager trying to figure how to deploy new technologies, especially those involving video production and delivery. Technogies like smartphones replacing camcorders, edit bays and live trucks. And like IP delivery between the news scene and station, replacing microwave and satellite.

Many television stations already use smartphones and IP transmissions, but to a very limited extent. Perhaps worse, they impose outmoded ENG workflows onto smartphone newsgathering. That’s why, “it’s the workflow, stupid.”

One step at a time: First begin with a clean-sheet, internet-optimized workflow. Then add the tech to make it work. Just as the Bible advises against putting old wine in new bottles, new technologies should get optimal ways of using it.

Take, for example, this faster, cheaper web-delivery workflow:

Write, shoot, and edit (including voiceovers when applicable) in the field and transmit live reports and completed packages directly to the station, and on occasion even directly to news consumer’s viewing devices.

The key is in-field editing. Not at the station where editing usually takes place. In-station editing is the millstone hanging around legacy video production’s neck. It’s the main workflow obstacle blocking faster, cheaper production. Video editing for most stories needs to undergo a major shift to an earlier time and space, to the scenes where news is made.

The field-editing workflow element is not new to the television news industry. It’s been used, on occasion, ever since there were ENG vans with edit bays and microwave links to get edited video back to the station. Field editing is simply not a predominant practice.

One reason it’s been rare is that ENG and SNG trucks only appear at relatively few news scenes. Another is that with linear newscasts there’s usually time to return, write and edit. Few commercial station managers permit interrupting regular, paid programming for breaking news anyway. So, what’s the hurry?

The internet likes hurry. Online live and on-demand stories do not need to be delayed until there’s a regularly scheduled news show. Online news sites don’t have sponsored, non-news programming to interrupt.

What equipment and methods work best with that “new” workflow? Spoiler alert! It’s not ENG camcorders, edit bays and live trucks, nor is it field-to-station transmissions via microwave or satellite signals.

The best technology suited for that workflow is based on the device that’s right under the noses of television station owners and managers: the smartphone. It’s an off-the-shelf product that was not developed for mobile newsgathering as was the minicam in the 70s. Yet it’s a device the combines the shooting, editing and IP streaming of live and on-demand video in a single, inexpensive, easy-to-use, compact product. (Although smartphones are way cheaper than ENG tech, reporters still need to add rigs, lights, tripods, external mics and, when affordable, bonded cellular apps that boost bandwidth between the news scene and station.)

It takes more than the phones and related accessories to build a smartphone newsgathering infrastructure. It takes a blend of several concepts to make it work.

Key Video Newsgathering Infrastructure Components:

Smartphone newsgathering—Smartphones replace traditional ENG equipment like camcorders, edit bays and live trucks.

Video journalism—Video (film) journalists who report, shoot and edit replace most videographers and all video editors.

In-field editing—Most video is edited at or near the news scene and nearer the time of the news event. Field editing becomes the rule rather than the exception.

Field-to-newsroom (or direct to news consumer) streaming of live and edited video over IP—IP transmission replaces most if not all microwave and satellite field-to-station news video delivery. (Can be enhanced with bonded cellular technology.)

None of the four key components is new. What’s new is their being combined and prioritized over ENG. Smartphone should predominate until ENG is phased out completely.

Part II will look at smartphone journalism overseas and the impact of 5G.

Lynn Kenneth Packer is a freelance journalist and television news consultant. He has worked as reporter and a university adjunct instructor, and conducts newsgathering workshops.

CAGLIARI, ITALY—More than 100 of the best minds in the field of television engineering have gathered here for the 2017 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting (BMSB) conference. The June 7-9 event is designed to stimulate interchange of ideas in the areas of video content capture, processing and distribution technologies among all areas and levels, including industry professionals, broadcasters, content creators and distributors, academics and engineering students.

Maurizio Murroni

The conference got underway with a welcoming address from the assistant professor of communications at the University of Cagliari’s department of electrical and electronic engineering, Maurizio Murroni, who stated that his organization was pleased to both host the BMSB event and also the high attendance level at the conference, given the difficulties sometimes associated with long distance travel in today’s world.

“We are happy to host people and are proud of our traditions,” said Murroni. “We have been a bridge of communication for several centuries and this [the island of Sardinia] is a good place for a conference on communications.”

ATSC 3.0 IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Richard Chernock

Triveni Digital CTO Richard Chernock led off the technical proceedings with an update on the ATSC 3.0 digital television transmission standard, remarking that it was nearly complete.

“At the stage we’re at now, most of the standard is finished,” said Chernock, who is also chairman of the ATSC Technology Group. “We’re still tweaking a few elements, but the bottom line is that ATSC 3.0 is mostly competed.”

Chernock acknowledged the rollout of ATSC 3.0 in Korea and described some of the features embodied in the standard and how these will help broadcasters better serve their audiences. His presentation is one of several on the BMSB program agenda involving ATSC 3.0.

Chernock’s remarks were followed by a session from Alberto Messina, senior research engineer and research and development coordinator at Italy’s RAI television center for research and technological Innovation, on ways to make content more accessible to consumers.

“Today the situation is very fragmented, as the signals come not only from satellite, but also [terrestrial] broadcasters and the Internet,” said Messina. “The problem is too much content; consumers are drowning in it. It’s difficult for them to find something they want to view. Our work is to make sure that every consumer’s needs are satisfied.”

Alberto Messina

Messina’s remarks provided a lead-in to three days of nearly continuous presentations accomplished in three separate tracks in order to handle the volume of the information exchange at the conference.

MULTITUDE OF TOPICS AND PRESENTATIONS

Topics on the agenda at this year’s BMSB event include video coding, light field imaging, signal processing and modulation technologies, the convergence of broadcast and broadband, use of increasingly higher frequencies in satellite communications, emergency alerting technologies, transmission system field trials, energy-saving and spectrum-conserving technologies, and more.

The 2017 BMSB event marks the 12th anniversary of the conference. It has been held in the United States, Korea, Japan, Spain, Belgium and England.

The 2011 tsunami that ravaged Japan was horrific. The loss of 16,000 lives was tragic and the Fukushima nuclear power plant destruction was devastating. This tragedy even had a profound impact on the television business. While the loss of Sony’s videotape manufacturing facility paled by comparison with other aspects of the disaster, it disrupted the worldwide television industry’s supply of its essential resource. This tragedy accelerated television’s move from tape to video file recording.

Despite numerous advantages of video files compared with videotape, three major U.K. broadcasters, BBC, ITV and Channel 4, were first to recognize and address a major void. Video files must be supplemented by metadata that would be associated with the video, stored with and traveling with the video, providing the data necessary for downstream equipment to meaningfully handle the video. The British broadcasters saw that the great diversity of emerging metadata formats was problematic, costly and inefficient. In 2011 these broadcasters formed the DPP, the Digital Production Partnership, for the purpose of developing a common video file format specification for the U.K. Driven by the videotape shortage resulting from Japan’s tsunami, they established a definitive date by which all program delivery to these U.K. broadcasters (a group which had grown) must conform to the new DPP video file format spec.

ADOPTION OF EXISTING TECHNICAL STANDARDS

Clyde Smith addresses delegates at the Toronto educational seminar.

In 2015, NABA’s Technical Committee (TC) saw the wisdom in the U.K. work and, with the concurrence of NABA’s Board of Directors, established a sub-committee to develop a common video file format for North America. Fox’s Clyde Smith chaired this group from the outset. The subcommittee was comprised of representatives: most national broadcasters, numerous technology companies and program production companies. The group’s approach was to not reinvent the wheel, but rather to evaluate and adopt existing technical standards upon which the NABA spec would be based. The committee also recognized the value in commonality with the results of the U.K.’s DPP work. The NABA committee began with the premise that the technical spec, while providing the efficiencies of standardization, would and could maintain the flexibility needed to meet the competitive business needs and strategies that differentiate industry participants.

The NABA- DPP technical specifications were created in conjunction with the Digital Production Partnership in response to requests from the major North American broadcasters to address interoperability issues in program delivery as files. These documents form a Standards-Based approach to specifying the technical requirements for the delivery of programming as files, delivered for on-air operations. The Standards-Based fulfillment of these technical requirements for file-based program interoperability is provided by citing a series of Standards, and then addressing the issues that frequently cause interoperability problems by specifically citing the appropriate modes and options supported by these standards, which are necessary to insure interoperability for broadcasters.

There are two Air Ready Master technical specifications; while they both utilize MXF, one was created for MPEG 2 codec-based files and another for AVC codec-based files. After one year of effort, the result was the NABA- DPP Common Video File Format Specification for Air Ready Masters. The version for broadcast delivery was completed in 2016 and the versions for Library Masters, in HD and UHD, and UHD Air Ready Masters, will be completed this year.

EDUCATING THE INDUSTRY

NABA has been encouraging broadcasters to adopt and plan for the implementation of the Common File Format and implement it at timing based upon each company’s individual technology replacement cycle. As of this writing, the NABA-DPP Spec has been adopted by CBS, Fox, PBS and CBC/Radio-Canada, as well as the U.K. broadcasters. Several others are expected to announce their plans in the coming months.

In late 2016, NABA recognized the need to educate a broader group of industry players—broadcasters, technology suppliers and the production community. A brochure was prepared for distribution and presentations were made at industry meetings like HPA and NAB. A digital copy of the brochure is available on the NABA website. Seminars were held throughout May in NY, LA, Atlanta and Toronto, where all in the television ecosystem were able to learn about the new spec and the benefits that will accrue to those who adopt it. NABA is continuing its effort to educate the industry so that production companies, technical services organizations and technology vendors can be prepared to meet broadcasters’ needs, so that all in the ecosystem can reap the benefits.

A recording of the seminar will be available on the NABA website soon as well.

The Common File Specification for North America is designed to simplify video file workflow by eliminating incompatibility, ambiguity and deviation. By providing clarity, compliance and commonality, the NABA-DPP Spec provides economic, workflow and staffing benefits by reducing the costs of operations, technology, quality control and rejections while increasing the volume needed to support today’s multiplatform workflows.

The process to develop, adopt and implement NABA’s Common File Specification for North America is an example of the benefit of broadcasters, producers and technology suppliers working together to solve common problems in a way that is helpful to all.

For more information on the NABA-DPP spec, visit here.

Reprinted by permission from NABA.

See also

DPP Releases Updated Program Delivery Specs

U.K. Broadcasters Just Say 'No' to Videotape

DPP, NABA Define Supplier Cybersecurity Requirements

Nine TV Groups Agree on Air-Ready File Delivery Specs

Clyde Smith Parses DPP Developments

DPP Is Ready to Roll

TV advertising has shown a surprising resilience to the massive paradigm shift driven by digital ubiquity, with annual ad spending predicted to hit $195B in 2017. But this financial boon is tenuous at best, as services like YouTube’s recently-announced streaming TV service position themselves as attractive and ad-less, if not ad-free, alternatives.

While streaming services can be credited with increasing cord-cutting, the TV advertising model can also be seen as a contributor to the format’s eventual decline, based on the reality that the commercial production process has stubbornly resisted change. The business operates the same as it always has: brands hire creative agencies who conceive of campaigns based on 30-second spots that are specifically designed for viewing on a television set. As the viewing public changes their consumption habits and OTT platforms have evolved, several clear problems with the current model have become apparent.

1. Television targeting misses the mark

As a mass medium, TV requires advertisers buy against content and broad standard audiences, not granular audiences. While an ad may hit the core target, it will also reach a large number of unintended viewers, which is wasted spend.

2. Channel-based ad placement is too broad

Whereas ad planners routinely customize the creative of their campaigns for different media such as TV, out-of-home and radio, they produce a limited number of creatives for each regardless of how many different audiences within each there may be. For example, Syfy and MSNBC may both be TV networks, but they have distinctly different audiences as well as distinctly different channel effects that change the message received by viewers.

3. The 30-second spot wastes resources

The advertising industry is still configured with TV as the apex channel and the 30-second spot as favored format. So brands will spend millions on ad production and more millions on air time, and that 30 seconds is totally unnecessary in an environment with short attention spans and DVR fast forward buttons.

On the plus side, emerging technologies place TV advertising on the brink of revolution. We now have the ability to make dynamic advertising that can be delivered via online and connected TV platforms (and soon with over the air broadcasting via ATSC 3.0, aka “Next Gen TV”), and the promise of personalization can be a reality. And consumers are far more likely to respond to a call to action that speaks to them. In fact, ads with dynamically customized creative can result in up to 70 percent greater viewing completion online.

So why don’t we have more personalized TV ads? Well, it’s that stubborn process of production that has put up a strident defense to what could drive increased efficiency and effectiveness.

1. Creative agencies and technology vendors need to work together

Currently, the push to dynamic video advertising is being driven by technology vendors, not ad creatives. If the two don’t begin working as partners, then creative agencies will likely struggle to justify their ongoing role beyond concept creation, else brand clients simply brush them out of the way.

2. CMOs need to understand that variation can happen without additional complexity

One of the biggest misconceptions driving concerns about dynamic video ads is the belief that producing multiple creative components for multiple ad variants of ads will multiply the production’s complexity. As long as you factor a multi-variant ad into a shoot from the storyboard stage, then a dynamic ad needn’t cost more than a single linear 30-second ad unit.

While a TV ad may require sign-off, all of the individual dynamic components don’t necessarily. Today, ads can be created incorporating snippets of premium content that have been rights-cleared well ahead of time.

3. Brands should learn that upgraded results don’t mean exponential costs

One of the most common fears of dynamic ad creation is: “If I have to produce 10 variants of an ad instead of just one, will my costs increase ten-fold?”

The answer is a firm “no.” Producing creative for the new era of delivery is a much simpler equation.

Brands shouldn’t have to cut costs in production to make dynamic add up; some of the best ads look and feel like the money spent on them. But it is typical for a dynamic creative production to cost roughly 10 percent more than a standard creative.

While any additional cost may not be music to the ears of the brand, in the end the benefits of increased ad efficiency and enhanced results must be weighed. Outcomes include longer watch times, higher interactive engagement, stronger brand resonance, and a greater likelihood of click-throughs from clickable videos—all of which can offset fears of added costs.

With ATSC 3.0 on the fast track to roll out, the future of tech-enabled television advertising is bright. The technology has been tested successfully in several markets, and a number of broadcasters and hardware companies showcased its diverse capabilities in the “NextGen TV Hub” at the NAB Show.

While it may take years for the full impact of ATSC 3.0 to be realized, every stakeholder in the game is expected to benefit. Over-the-air viewers will have OTT-style on-demand options. Advertisers can explore new realms of possibility for targeting and personalization along with a level of interactivity that only the web has supported to date. For broadcasters, the standard opens the door to the ever-growing amount of mobile-device based viewing along with higher revenues from this advertising that is more targeted, relevant and effective.

Ultimately, dynamic video advertising has the potential to revolutionize the video industry, as a whole, not just digital video. We just need everyone in the value chain to work together to ensure that the transformative tools and emerging technologies now at our disposal are implemented at scale and in a way we all benefit from the next era ahead.

Gil Becker is an accomplished advertising technology executive with nearly 20 years of experience leading operations and product development for high-tech companies. He is currently CEO of AnyClip. He can be reached at gil@anyclip.com.

This article is based on a presentation given at the 2016 IEEE Broadcast Symposium.

Broadcast television in 2016 still relies on the ATSC 1.0 standard that was state-of-the-art back in the early 2000s, when the industry was beginning its transition to DTV. Make no mistake: DTV was revolutionary, enabling sub-channels, multicasting, high-definition video and other options that improved the viewing experience. However, like many other technologies from that time—the flip phone, the analog VCR, the dial-up modem—DTV built on ATSC 1.0 now seems dated and its capabilities simply maxed out, particularly given the rapid change occurring in the rest of the world.

With UHD you get better clarity

In the modern digital era of smartphones, Wi-Fi, tablets and the Internet of Things, broadcast television based on ATSC 1.0 just can’t keep up. It can’t address consumers’ powerful desire for higher-resolution images, improved image quality, a better sound experience, and enhanced personalization and interactivity, as well as better accessibility and more robust emergency alert capabilities. Nor can it deliver the accurate audience measurement that media companies demand, or allow them to take advantage of the latest innovations in video compression.

ON DEMAND WORLD

The broadband industry already has shifted to “anytime, anywhere” delivery of content to consumers, who easily access video on their phones, tablets and computers. Broadcasters need to change too, or risk going the way of the dinosaur. Understanding this, hundreds of engineers have spent the past few years working on a new broadcast standard with the flexibility, interoperability and extensibility to serve as a robust platform for broadcast services well into the future. They have developed ATSC 3.0, a marriage of over-the-air broadcast and broadband that soon will open the door to a host of new opportunities.

With HDR you get better contrast

Because ATSC 3.0 breaks from the current practice of using MPEG-2 video compression and supports the H.265 HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) Main 10 Profile codec that can pack up to 50 percent more video data into fewer bits, it could allow broadcasters to transmit up to 25 Mbps within their existing 6 MHz of RF spectrum. With this significant jump from the 19.39 Mbps of ATSC 1.0 and 2.0., broadcasters will be free to embrace 4K UHD, HDR, enhanced HD, wide color gamut, scalable coding, and even 3D, should it ever come back around. The new standard also allows them to target small (HD) and large (UHD) screens and to control multiple selectable video components.

Of course, the move to ATSC 3.0 is not just about delivering better image quality and more channels; it’s about customization. Key audio features of the new standard play a major role in customization. While sound itself boasts improved azimuth, elevation and distance perspective, the use of channels and objects (or “elements”) with metadata allows for rendering at the decoder, with sound placed in the most accurate position the viewer’s sound system can support. This adaptability spans both fixed and mobile devices, and broadcasters can actually target different devices, setups and sound environments.

At the same time, broadcasters can use the standard’s support for object-based audio to give viewers the ability to choose and control audio channels. During a NASCAR race, for example, a viewer could select the pit crew radio channel for his or her favorite driver, and also adjust other audio channels to reduce crowd or background noise. In short, the viewer can control both the audio content and mix.

GETTING PERSONAL

ATSC 3.0 also introduces the application environment critical to personalization of digital content delivery and interaction with that content. On their computers and mobile devices, consumers already take for granted interactive abilities, such as voting and shopping, that are simply impossible with broadcast television’s one-way focus. Building on proven World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) technologies that power the internet, ATSC 3.0 enables broadcasters to offer a tailored and dynamic experience, complete with dynamic ad insertion, personalized graphics, and synchronization with second-screen applications. As a result, viewers enjoy the features and options they want, while advertisers enjoy the benefits of targeted ads and content (at a premium, of course), as well as more accurate audience measurement.

With wide color gamut you get richer colors

Improved accessibility functions give broadcasters far more effective tools for serving the hearing and visually impaired communities. For example, ATSC 3.0 supports robust audio and closed-caption transmission, even when video fails. Better overall audio quality yields improved audio intelligibility, and new capabilities such as track-specific volume control further improve the dialog and narrative intelligibility. In addition to closed captions and video descriptions, the standard’s feature set also includes closed signing and dialog enhancement.

ATSC 3.0 also gives broadcasters the chance to become a much more useful source of information for their communities in times of crisis. Using geo-targeted one-to-many emergency alerting capable of surviving a failure of the electric grid or cellular network, broadcast stations can become the source for local emergency information, complete with multilingual and accessible alerts. Rather than put a crawl in the lower third, run warning tones or refer viewers to another source, broadcasters could show weather radars, hurricane wind fields, evacuation routes, shelter locations and other information via rich media. With these capabilities, broadcasters are far better prepared to step up and serve the public during emergencies.

HYBRID DELIVERY

Because ATSC 3.0 supports hybrid broadcast/broadband delivery, broadcasters can develop and implement new models of content delivery. They have the option of delivering content in real time either via linear broadcast or streaming. They can deliver content in non-real time so that it is cached locally and available anytime for viewing. With the ability to use the internet as a back channel to the device, they can establish a complete loop with the consumer. In terms of data delivery, particularly to mobile devices, broadcasters maintain the advantages of highly efficient delivery of bits and the ability to send one signal to millions of consumers. Going forward, the possibilities with respect to data delivery services are tremendous.

Not one of the aforementioned functions or content delivery models is pinned to the ATSC 3.0 standard. The standard was carefully defined as a platform capable of enabling such functions and models, but it is up to broadcasters to decide how best to leverage this powerful platform to improve the television viewing experience, extend their reach, and address their own technical and business requirements.

Why do broadcasters need to make this change? Why do they need ATSC 3.0? And why now? Because the industry already has changed, and it will continue to move ahead—with or without broadcasters. Through changes in technology, business models and consumer behavior, the entertainment landscape has been permanently altered. ATSC 3.0 offers broadcasters a thoughtful path forward, keeping the future open and bright. It gives them a way to unite their conventional broadcast workflow with digital content creation and to be more efficient and effective in monetizing this content across multiple platforms. ATSC 3.0 affords broadcasters the opportunity to remain relevant and become meaningful players in the future of media and entertainment.

As vice president of technical operations for Cox Media Group in Atlanta, Dave Siegler manages Cox's technical operation groups across 14 broadcast TV stations, a cable TV station, 57 radio stations and eight daily newspapers. He's also vice chair of the ATSC board of directors, chair of the ATSC 3.0, personalization interactivity and interactivity implementation team, chair of NAB's television technology committee, and a member of IEEE BTS as well as many other industry bodies.

For more on ATSC 3.0, see TV Technology’sATSC 3.0 silo.

New World Symphony is a higher education music institution located in Miami Beach, Fla., in a six year-old, Frank Gehry-designed building. New World makes every attempt to lead in technology in relation to music, performances, and education.

This summer, New World Symphony will replace 12 internal cameras and robotics with 4K cameras and more advanced robotics.

The facility includes distance learning technology, an HD cable system, video editing and production, and large format projection. Part of the technology includes the ability to record concerts in full HD via 10 robotic cameras, two manual, and numerous miniature cameras. Some of these concerts are called “Wallcast” concerts where the output of the switcher is fed to three Christie 35,000 lumen projectors which display on a small portion on the front of the facility (measuring 100x60-feet) and supported with over 130 Meyer speakers for a true “in hall” experience... but from outside in our park.

TWO-PHASE PLAN FOR 4K
Just over a year ago the outside park projectors were replaced with 4K units, but the technology really wasn’t developed enough to do anything real with 4K. At this point, we decided that the technology is there to push the signal to 4K, so a two-phase plan is in place to try to accomplish this.

Test Your Video Engineering Knowledge

I recently had the need to test prospective employees for an assistant video engineer position. Searching for some sort of test via the web didn’t help, so I created the following to gauge what my job candidates knew and understood. The last question relates to the need for engineers who understand good customer service. All of the candidates were told about this book and how I felt, so I figured it would be a good way to know who took it to heart. 1. Your Name? (note… if you miss this question, no need to continue!) 2. What is a video patch bay typically used for? In a standard two-row configuration, what sources are on the top row and what are on the bottom? 3. What is this and what does it represent?4. What two sorts of connections are typically needed between a TV camera and traditional broadcast switcher (one which does not have frame syncs) as a bare minimum? 5. What is the current aspect ratio of a TV picture? 6. What is the difference between 1080i and 720p? 7. What is the difference between 4K and UHD? 8. What is a frame sync used for and what is the difference between a frame sync and proc amp? 9. What kind of settings might you find on a frame sync like an AJA FS1 or FS2? 10. How might you sync the output of a computer before feeding it to a video switcher? Are there any other special considerations? 11. What is an audio embedder and de-embedder when it comes to HD video? Are there typically any settings to this equipment? 12. What is lip-sync error? 13. What would you use a waveform monitor and vectorscope for? 14. What do Iris and Pedestal control? (What do they affect?) 15. What is a TDR and how is it used? 16. Name some differences between single mode fiber and multi-mode fiber? 17. What precautions should you take when working with fiber optics? 18. What is Program, Preview, and M/E and where might you see it? 19. What is a terminator? What is the impedance of SDI/digital video? 20. What is the difference between digital audio unbalanced and balanced? 21. What are the bit rates of SDI video, of HDSDI, and of 4K video? 22. What is a multi-image display and how is it used? 23. Name as many types “video outputs” (the physical connections) on computers you can (both Mac & PC)? 24. What is a balun and how is it used? 25. What is the name of the main character in “Raving Fan: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service” and what is the award called?

Phase one takes place this summer which will include replacing 12 internal cameras and robotics with 4K cameras and more advanced robotics. We are currently evaluating cameras from major players in the industry but the decision on who to go with isn’t easy.

Here’s what I’m seeing with cameras: There seems to be two general varieties of 4K cameras, those which use numerous HD or better chipsets to create the 4K image, and those with a new 4K chipset. There’s a lot of debate between a “real 4K chip” and combining other “nearly 4K” chipsets, but if you base your decision on picture quality, most people won’t know the difference. We actually recorded images using a 4K recorder and dumped it (as 4K) into Adobe Premiere, then electronically magnified the image with test charts and were surprised to see the “non-true 4K” chips were showing much greater detail on test charts! Visually, different camera manufacturers have their own unique “paint job” (visual look), but that then seems to fall under “preference,” and most cameras can be painted any way you want them to look.

QUIET, PLEASE
In addition to the camera’s video output quality, New World is unique in the sense that the cameras must be dead quiet. One caveat to 4K (and I’m sure 8K) is the amount of processing power generates significant heat. Most 4K cameras appear to have cooling fans, but these can be switched off in an indoor environment (like our performance hall). This same “acoustic consideration” is actually more critical to the robotic system for camera movements. Any robotic system must pass muster with our audio director; it’s not just the loudness but even the actual “pitch” of the sound generated.

One of the most difficult aspects of “bleeding edge technology” is the current real lack of standardization on for signal transport. Will it be quad link BNC (four individual cables with 3G BNC connectors), like the first generation? Will it be IP and over some form of Cat6 with a RJ45? Fiber? Could it be dual-link 6G on two BNC’s, or even another single form of 12G connection to handle 4K/UHD? With no present standard defined on format or connector, 4K’s delivery method remains to be seen. Of course, new technology has often required defined standards and unfortunately 4K is no different.

We began evaluating robotic systems at the 2015 NAB Show and were really surprised that a few major player demos were far from what were expected (disappointing). With any robotic system, the idea is to do the same or better as you could with a live camera operator. In at least one demo, the camera shook, bounced, and did anything but perform smoothly (and that included going to a second set-up robotic system which performed the same). One feature we’re putting emphasis on having is multiple targeted shots within the same recall. Our present system limits us to the shot start point and end point only, but advanced shot composition requires a key-frame editing system where multiple shots are plotted and carried out through robotic animation with a “natural human feel” to the motion. But some we’re evaluating actually target numerous points for all movements including lens functions. All in all, the improvement in camera robotics in the past six years is phenomenal in many respects.

Phase two of our 4K project will include a completely new tech core comprised of eight racks. There are many considerations at play when working in a concert hall, most notably is noise! The HVAC system for the racks, their location, the impact to the performance hall, and heat output is at the top of the list. As the building is relatively new, power is less of a concern (though certainly weighing in). In addition to the tech core, a new 4K switcher and 4K recording/playback will be added.

In most cases for us, 4K will require the replacement of a lot of gear. One place I plan to “recycle” will be our multi-image display system, which will continue to be used for HD monitoring of the 4K signals, but supplemented with 4K preview and program monitors.

LONDON—Is your broadcasting organization capable of handling more than a million data points every five minutes across your IT infrastructure?

That’s how much network traffic is happening in BBC Online—and BBC Online is just one service our Future Media Group (FM) has to monitor to keep our IT infrastructure up and running. We’re using unified network monitoring to keep tabs on a vast hybrid IT network comprising a network operations center and 60 product groups. That’s 3,000 on-premise devices, and 2,000 in the cloud.

Every second of every day we’re dealing with 3,000 metrics that must be analyzed to make sure our infrastructure is working to deliver online digital services with the flawless performance audiences expect.

ONE MILLION DATA POINTS EVERY FIVE MINUTES

As most of you are probably aware, the BBC has a very wide range of broadcast services. We offer our broadcast and online audiences with nine national television channels, plus regional programming, 10 national radio stations, 40 local radio stations and an extensive web site. Globally, BBC World Service broadcasts on television, radio and online, providing news in 27 languages. BBC Worldwide and other commercial ventures complement our vast media portfolio.

Across that spectrum of services, it’s the BBC Future Media Group’s job to ensure that all digital media services perform without a stumble. (Those digital services include BBC Online, BBC Red Button and BBC iPlayer, as well as digital coverage of important ad hoc and live events, such as the Olympics and elections.)

It’s a tall order. BBC Online generates approximately one million data points every five minutes. As I said at the outset, we monitor 5,000 devices in a hybrid IT infrastructure, half on-premises with the remainder hosted in Amazon Web Services.

Keeping track of all our network activity is an essential part of a broadcast technologist’s job these days. People are consuming more and more of their news and entertainment online, and consumers have extremely high expectations for digital experience delivery. They have very little patience for issues with page loads, streaming media errors, or latency in general.

The BBC is committed to delivering an exceptional customer experience. To that end, the entire organization has been increasingly adopting continuous delivery and DevOps across its groups, as well as moving much of its infrastructure and services to public cloud. 

Our success in that effort, however, meant addressing some old ways of handling network monitoring that weren’t quite meeting modern infrastructure requirements.

THE OLD WAY: FIXED MONITORING BY LOCATION

Like many large media organizations, BBC’s infrastructure is dispersed, and our monitoring systems were set up for specific locations in the infrastructure. That’s far from ideal. Some of these monitoring tools were sitting on individual PCs, which would frequently crash.

Our NOC team was forced to constantly monitor multiple dashboards from different consoles. In this kind of dispersed environment, it can be very difficult for NOC team members to identify action items and act on them quickly.

With more than 60 product teams, the NOC needed a solution that could monitor output across the distinct services, and also easily integrate into DevOps workflows, to ensure maximal monitoring coverage within a single pane of glass.

That was my vision: To have a single dashboard so our NOC team can pick up incidents quickly. Without it, the BBC was susceptible to delivering a degraded customer experience, which would in turn risk damaging our brand’s reputation for reliable service.

The solution was unified network monitoring. Several companies provide flavors of unified network monitoring, and we settled on a system provided by Zenoss. We now have improved and streamlined our monitoring through a single dashboard. As a result, we have contributed direct value to the organization, in terms of both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. In addition, we have moved approximately 50 percent of their operations to the cloud, and network monitoring has definitely helped make the transition smoother and more orderly.

THE BENEFITS OF OPEN SOURCE UNIFIED MONITORING

There are three main reasons to look to a dedicated, open source unified network monitoring solution: Scalability, flexibility, and value.

Scalability:The rapid changes in broadcast technology means we are now monitoring considerably more data than ever before, with a 24/7 feed to our NOC. That requires software-defined IT operations that can scale as data points continue to grow. Unified network monitoring allows us to monitor 3,000 metrics and 20 separate events every second.

Flexibility:At the BBC, we have an agile, dynamic business model. We work quickly, and we innovate frequently. Our centralized NOC team needed a solution that would intrinsically fit within the fast-paced DevOps workflows of each product group. We were able to create custom tools within the network monitoring environment to automate application monitoring and to add dashboarding functionality for specific internal stakeholders. Because of this flexibility the system now enjoys wide adoption and use among our monitoring team, product groups, operations teams and senior management.

Value:The BBC is a public service broadcaster, supported by taxes paid by U.K. households. Financial accountability and consistent quality of service are absolutely essential to our way of doing business.

Unified network monitoring directly benefits the BBC because it makes it easy to capture and analyze network performance data. We can detect incidents in both infrastructure and applications, so we can move quickly to find a root cause and take action to bring the service back up. But we don’t have to pay for analyzing volumes of unnecessary data, because unified network monitoring allows us to “triage” problem situations, focusing on the things we need to fix. That’s an extremely cost-effective way of maintaining our network.

As new technologies enter the broadcast environment, it puts an added burden on your network infrastructure—a burden that cannot affect the reliability of the network or the speed with which you conduct transactions with your audience. Unified network monitoring relieves you of that burden, creating the kind of flawless customer experience that’s essential to any broadcaster’s reputation.

Shani Mashhood is head of monitoring for the BBC. She can be reached atshani.mashhood@bbc.co.uk

The concept for object-based broadcasting has been around for more than 20 years, and the technology to deliver it is tantalizingly close. Chances are that you will see some form of it on your home TV in the next few years, and it will certainly be a factor for video you watch on mobile devices and computers.

The BBC performed this test using a variety of objects, including the presenter, subtitles, background map, weather/rain overlays, weather icons, day/time and calendar/reminder information. The size and location of the objects differs depending on the viewing device. Object-based broadcasting treats the on-screen and audio components as objects, delivering them as-needed/where-needed depending on the device used to view the broadcast. A simple example would be an onscreen “bug” identifying the broadcaster—it might be sized and positioned in one location on a big-screen TV, and sized and positioned differently for viewing on a cell phone.

“We see object-based broadcasting as a means of giving the consumer and broadcaster greater control over what’s rendered on the device,” said Nandhu Nandhakumar, Ph.D., senior vice president at the LG Technology Center of America. “The control can also be in the broadcaster’s hands, like with certain types of personalization, such as targeted ads. Other uses of object-based broadcasting can include interactivity, personalized graphic overlays, and alternate audio, video or caption tracks.”

PERSONALIZED AND TARGETED
LG is a major manufacturer of both in-home televisions and mobile devices, as well as an important player in the development of the nascent ATSC 3.0 standard. It has been involved in some early object-based broadcasts that were available on cable systems across the U.S.

“LG already has deployed TVs with interactive features where the data elements associated with interactivity are personalized and targeted,” Nandhakumar said. “The triggers for interactivity are extracted from the content, and based on the user profile shared with the interactive service, personalized data elements are delivered to specific users for rendering on the TV. Interactive services have been periodically available on a trial basis on various LG smart TV models for a few years—based on various business arrangements with program providers, such as Showtime, SyFy and Pearl TV.”

Object-based broadcasting was first fleshed out decades ago, with much initial development at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. In the mid-1990s, V. Michael Bove, professor of media technology at MIT’s Media Lab, studied the available compression technology and determined that not all content was treated equally.

“Transform-based compression algorithms like JPEG and MPEG (and wavelet-based ones as well) are optimized for camera imagery at the expense of graphical patterns,” Bove said in a 1995 article in TV Technology. “In the case of motion-compensated coders and scrolling titles (or stationary text over a camera pan), the inefficiency is worsened by the lack of any notion of background and foreground: The encoder is spending its bit-budget constantly retransmitting information about occluded and revealed regions of the image.”

Bove and his colleagues described what’s now called object-based broadcasting as a way to permit optimal image quality for both background and foreground items using the available coding, while consuming minimal additional bandwidth. MIT’s Media Lab went on to get patents on the technology, which were eventually sold to Tandberg Television and subsequently to Ericsson. Bove said that he’s not aware that Ericsson is using these patents.

BBC PIONEERING WORK
One broadcaster actively testing object-based broadcasting is the BBC. “The BBC has been using the term object-based broadcasting for a number of years,” said Matthew Brooks, senior BBC R&D engineer. “Generally, when we talk about object-based broadcasting, our objects are the assets we use to compose experiences for our audience, whether they are radio programs, television programs or interactive applications. These objects range from the familiar—video clips, audio clips, captions, stills—to the unfamiliar, like a data stream representing the speed of a racing car.

How a traditional broadcast is made today.

“In traditional broadcasting, we package up those objects before they get to the audience, and deliver a video to them,” Brooks said. “This is straightforward, but the content of the video is inflexible. “With object-based broadcasting, we deliver the individual objects to everyone, along with information describing the ways in which they can be reassembled. The audience’s devices can then use that information to reassemble the objects into a flexible experience.”

The combination of the internet, cellular mobile networks and smart TVs means that some form of object-based broadcasting can be done today, and the BBC has dipped its toes into these waters.

“Object-based broadcasting can be delivered over IP today—we delivered a variable-length radio program in this manner in 2015, and we’ve made a number of very different object-based prototypes, which we’re using to inform our work on a unified object-based broadcasting model,” Brooks said. “There’s a lot of work to do before we can achieve this technically, alongside building an understanding of what impact object-based broadcasting has for audiences and production teams.”

How an object-based broadcast could be created.

The BBC is also considering how to implement object-based techniques into its over-the-air television broadcasting. “There’s a couple of approaches we could take here,” Brooks said. “Firstly, we side-load some content over IP to augment the broadcast experience. This could either be done pre-broadcast, or in a just-in-time manner. Secondly, we can always render object-based experiences down to pre-tailored traditional broadcast experiences—useful for both over-the-air broadcasting, and delivering to ‘thin client’ devices that don’t have the processing power to assemble object-based experiences in real time.”

LG is already working on incorporating the transmission of various broadcast components (objects) into its viewing devices, and expects that ATSC 3.0 will be a good fit for hybrid OTA-IP presentations.

“In the case of ATSC 3.0, it’s designed as a hybrid broadcast/broadband system,” Nandhakumar said. “So a broadcaster could deliver main video, audio and caption tracks via broadcast, then deliver alternate components via broadband. The presence of the alternate components is signaled in the broadcast stream so that the receiving device can offer the alternates to the viewer. Targeted content insertion is another example of how broadcast and broadband can work together in ATSC 3.0. In this case, a ‘mainstream’ ad can be delivered in the broadcast and a targeted ad delivered via broadband can be spliced in for certain audiences.”

There’s much yet to do regarding object-based broadcasting, not the least of which is developing standards for consumer products on the receiving side that are compatible with the encoding done at the transmission end. However, the proliferation of smart TVs gives manufacturers an increasingly attractive way to combine both OTA and IP delivery right in front of the viewer.

The tools at the receiving end are becoming common. How long will it be before a way is hammered out to deliver content that leverages the strengths of both these delivery systems?

MERIDEN, CONN.—North American broadcasters are reviewing all their equipment and operations in preparation for the spectrum repack. Selecting antenna technology may be one of the most important decisions they face, affecting everything from installation and maintenance costs, to their ability to meet switchover deadlines and perhaps most importantly, quality of service through the transition and well afterwards.

Approximately 90 percent of antennas currently installed in the U.S. market are narrowband “slotted pole” or pylon antennas, most of which will need to be replaced in order to make frequency changes when new channels are assigned.

Sutro Tower, Broadband Slot Antenna

That’s because narrowband antennas are limited to single-channel operation. During manufacturing, slots are cut to exact dimensions prescribed by the operating channel. Once that is done, radiation characteristics and operating frequency are locked in, so reconfiguring radiation patterns or polarization ratios in the field is impossible.

Pylon antenna components and manufacturing specifications are also channel-dependent, so they can’t be ordered until the new channels are known. That makes it impossible to get ahead of the curve and execute a timely installation and transition. Switchover schedules will be strained by a known shortage of qualified installers—and as always, time is money—so early equipment purchases will help alleviate a host of ills. Plus, the FCC will reimburse broadcasters purchasing antennas before the auction, incentivizing early preparation.

GOING BROADBAND
Broadband antenna systems offer the flexibility to install early, ahead of the labor crunch, and make frequency changes later on when final channels are known. Designed to operate on any frequency in a given broadcast band, these frequency-agile antenna systems can be designed to allow reconfiguration of the radiation characteristics in the field after installation. Broadcasters located in international border regions can use this feature to optimize coverage and comply with interference protection constraints.

Broadband antennas using variable polarization technology (VPT) offer even greater advantages: they can be used by multiple broadcasters to share costly site infrastructure and significantly reduce operating costs.

There are three main types of broadband UHF antennas with the flexibility to accommodate the repack – broadband slot antenna (SBB), broadband pylon alternative antennas and broadband master panel (PEP) antennas. Each has its own set of pros and cons.

Broadband Slot Antenna—SBBs feature reduced wind load and fewer interconnections inside the antenna. They include antennas with wide cardioid, narrow cardioid and skull radiation pattern characteristics.

Because of wide bandwidth, low wind load, and good null fill performance, SBBs are ideal for temporary antenna use. At different times during the repack program, an SBBcould operate on the original channel, an interim channel, and the final channel, allowing flexibility in the sequence of upgrade events.

Low Wind Load, Broadband Pylon Antenna Photo credit: Jim Stenberg, American Tower

Broadband Pylon Alternative Antenna—Broadband pylon alternative antennas offer better performance compared to SBBs and less wind load than master panel antennas. They also provide flexible polarization configuration options including circular, elliptical, horizontal and vertical polarization. Upgrade capability for future MIMO or MISO operation is available. This antenna type is a good solution for a single station seeking the channel independence and flexibility of broadband or the ability to upgrade to EP, CP or MIMO transmission.

A broadband pylon alternative antenna could be shared by two full-power stations to reduce costs and tower loading. It could even be configured so that each station can independently define its own polarization ratio.

Broadband Master Panel Antennas—Broadband master panel antennas offer increased flexibility in attainable power ratings, radiation pattern configurations, redundancy, polarization options and future upgrade capability for MIMO or MISO.

High Power Wrap-Around Antenna with Variable Polarization Technology

Master antennas are particularly appropriate for repack and digital switchover (DSO) programs in regions where weather can have a major impact on scheduling, as their installation requires minimal tower work. UHF and VHF master antenna systems with Variable Polarization are currently being installed at the top of One World Trade Center in Manhattan.

MULTIPLE SHARED SITES
Two separate sites can be used to attain very high redundancy, equipping each site with a broadband master antenna and a set of transmitters. This makes it possible to switch off an entire site for simplified upgrade or maintenance without compromising system performance. Major cities around the world have used this approach to simplify repack procedures.

On a smaller scale, two stations can share multiple sites if each station installs a low wind load SBB and a backup transmitter at the alternate station’s site.

ANTENNA POLARIZATION OPTIONS

Broadband Cylinder Antenna with Variable Polarization Technology

VPT is important in the mobile broadcast market and for terrestrial broadcasters competing with satellite, cable and cellular networks. Both broadband pylon alternative antennas and broadband master antennas can be configured to permit future polarization ratio changes through simple modifications; and to allow independent polarization ratios for each channel when broadcasters share the antenna.

The same system can allow independent MIMO/MISO transmission. For example, one broadcaster could transmit horizontal polarization; another could transmit circular polarization, another elliptical polarization and another MIMO. This flexibility gives broadcasters at a shared site independent polarization control and the ability to independently upgrade to MIMO as future requirements dictate.

CONCLUSION
The spectrum auction and repack of frequencies offers an unparalleled opportunity to take advantage of new antenna technologies. By adopting variable polarization options, broadcasters can secure service to both fixed and mobile audiences. In choosing the most flexible antenna type, they can order antennas ahead of frequency allocation, install early, and satisfy loyal viewers with continued transmissions throughout the process. 

LAS VEGAS—In an exclusive interview at the NAB Show, Jae-You Choi, vice minister of Science, Information & Communications Technology and Future Planning for Korea, discussed the country’s plan to transition to UHD television broadcasting and also for providing 4K coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games to be held in Pyeongchang. He disclosed that experimental broadcastsare already underway, and that regular UHD transmissions would begin early next year in Seoul and these will be expanded to other regions of the nation at a fairly rapid pace.

Vice Minister Jae-You Choi

“We are preparing to launch the world’s first terrestrial UHD service in February 2017,” said Choi, speaking through an interpreter. “We will start service in the Seoul metropolitan area and the surrounding areas and then expand that service into [cities near] the Olympic venues, and in 2021 we will launch a nationwide service. The plan is to provide coverage to 77 percent of the country by the end of 2017.”

ATSC 3.0 USED IN DEMOS, BUT NO OFFICIAL DECISION YET

Choi noted that UHD has been available in Korea since 2014 via cable, IPTV and satellite distribution services, and that, while no government decision has been made to adopt a particular transmission standard, ATSC 3.0 is currently being used for these demonstrations. (Korea launched its current DTV service in 2001 with the ATSC 1.0 transmission standard.)

Choi pointed to the demos that took place at the Korean Pavilion at the NAB Show that will show how UHD will look over ATSC 3.0. “In June this year, after reviewing all the overall circumstances in the domestic situation, we are going to decide the terrestrial broadcast standards for UHD television,” he said.

Asked about plans for getting the Korean public used to the idea of 4K TV service, Choi said that there is already a campaign in place to do this with announcements about the launch of ultra high-definition service being made by television broadcasters.

“In Korea there has been established a group or association of electronics makers and broadcasters called ‘DTV Korea,’ to launch a full-scale publicity campaign,” he said.

The Vice Minister added that he expected the government will set up a program to help existing HDTV owners transition from the ATSC 1.0 transmissions now used to the new broadcast standard via set-top boxes or similar devices.

“When we were transitioning to digital TV in 2012, the government provided set-top boxes for viewers who did not have digital receivers,” said Choi. “As for the UHD transition, while we haven’t set up any detailed plans yet, I believe there is the possibility of a similar situation. There may be a special law enacted to support the transition in this way.”

When asked about a cut-off date for conventional high-definition broadcasting, the Vice Minister said this will likely happen in 10 years or so, but a complete timeline is not in place yet.

“In December of 2015 the government set up the launch plan for UHD, but we haven’t gotten into the details of a termination for regular HD service,” said Choi. “We are going to set up measures to prevent any kind of discrimination against regular HD viewers. We are planning to end regular broadcasts in about 10 years, but no firm date has been established.”

MAJOR COMMITMENT TO KOREA’S UHD FUTURE

Choi observed that the move to UHD is being heavily supported both by the government and private broadcasters.

“As for the Korean government, our policy direction is that UHD is a very important part of our next-generation broadcast industry,” he said. “We believe that the most important part is to have quality content in UHD and we set up public-private partnership funding to support the creation of content and also to implement policies for UHD technology. We do not yet have any plans or mandates in place that would force broadcasters to create UHD content or air it, but we do have a kind of consultation body with various stakeholders to set policy for UHD, so we are talking about this. And from the Korean terrestrial broadcasters’ side, they have already made commitments to the Korean government that they will invest about (U.S.) $5.9 billion to create UHD content and improve facilities to make UHD programing available.”

READYING FOR THE OLYMPICS

When asked about the number of Korean homes that will be watching the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games in UHD, the Vice Minister stated that this should be significant, citing a report from a study group that predicted some 180 million UHDTV sets in homes globally by the end of 2018, with more than 10 percent of these in Korea.

“In Korea it is predicted that there will be 1.91 million UHDTV sets in homes; this is significantly higher than the global average,” he said.

Choi noted that in connection with the Winter Games 4K telecasts, the Korean government will suggest to the host broadcaster, OBS (Olympic Broadcasting System), to create UHD programs with popular events to be shown in real-time. A special “UHD Broadcasting Equipment Experience Studio” will also be open to allow broadcasters visiting from other countries to learn more about what is involved in getting ready for 4K broadcasting.

“I hope that you will have the chance to come to Korea and experience this,” said Choi.

See also:

TV Technology’s ATSC3 silo.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—The old adage in sports is that defense wins championships, but streaming giant Akamai wants to play both sides of the field. The company—one of the world’s largest content delivery network service providers— recently built a Broadcast Operations Command Center at its Cambridge, Mass., location that is designed to play both offense and defense, providing real-time monitoring of OTT content, pro-active troubleshooting, and issue detection and resolution. The overall goal, according to Akamai’s Director of Media Operations Matt Azzarto, is to make the distribution of online content “greater than or equal to the TV experience” for the end user and content providers.

Azzarto joined Akamai about six months ago after a decade at NBC Universal in its broadcast operation center and network origination center. When he joined, Akamai was already working on the development of its BOCC facility with what he described as “considerable momentum.” With Azzarto on board, the project progressed from a cubicle space to an operation center in 100 days. Along the way he hired a team of 20 staffers, some with backgrounds in traditional broadcast, others with networking skillsets. “We’re bringing together what I call your ‘next-gen operations and support team’ for media distribution,” said Azzarto, “specifically addressing the OTT challenges that broadcasters are facing today.”

SET-UP

Akamai's BOCC Facility

The BOCC facility is currently in beta, with all 20 staffers working with the system simultaneously. However, as Azzarto points out, they hope to expand in the future so that they can have three to five staffers in the facility on shifts 24/7 to effectively monitor and address potential issues before they become larger problems. This proactive response differs from Akamai’s previous, more defensive, set-up, which could only react to issues when customers who deal with live event streaming and linear channels complained.

In addition to the extra manpower, the new BOCC now features “BOSS,” (broadcast operating support system), a primarily Akamai-designed toolset that gauges performance and identifies potential issues and where in the workflow they may affect quality or performance. Some of these tools—and the BOCC system overall—are based on Akamai’s Network Operations Command Center (NOCC). While the BOSS is new, the BOCC also uses tools like Akamai’s Monocle and Alert Messaging System, which originally came from the NOCC. The BOCC uses these tools to redefine the alerts to be media specific, according to Azzarto. “We’re looking at different components from encoder through entry point through mid-tier through archiver and end-to-end user; all the way through the workflow at a component level we’re monitoring with custom alerts and then we’re reacting to those alerts,” he said.

“The idea is detect an issue before it becomes an outage,” Azzarto explained. “The ultimate goal is to maintain that uptime, maintain that availability. And then beyond that it’s to improve it. How do we reduce start-up time for your player? How do we reduce re-buffering on the player side? How do we reduce latency through the network? How do we increase the bitrates that you’re able to provide? Those are the things that we are focusing on with this team.”

EXPANDING THE SYSTEM

Azzarto and his team already put the system through its paces during television’s biggest annual event, as part of CBS’ support team for its Super Bowl 50 broadcast. Azzarto described it as a good experience to see what the team could provision in the tools and what they could do from a pro-active monitoring standpoint. Akamai hopes to use the BOCC for similar large events, in which case it could scale up its support team anywhere from 30-50 people to help monitor. Between 20-30 staffers were on hand to work the Super Bowl broadcast.

While the new facility is primarily focused on the OTT, live linear market right now, Azzarto and his team plan to include an on-demand component for phase two. Akamai is also hoping to expand its BOCC services with a second location most likely outside the U.S., according to Azzarto. Although no location has been determined, the two facilities should be able to share relevant information with each other.

“Suffice to say what we are trying to do is open up this ‘black box’ of the CDN for our media customers and say ‘here is what’s happening at a component level,’” said Azzarto. “For me, it’s similar to what we would do within our team in a broadcast environment: Looking at what we would call a ‘channel chain,’ or everything from the control room through to the encoder to the uplink. We would look at everything at a component level and try to alert and respond to those issues in real-time. We’re trying to take a similar kind of approach, just do it across the CDN.”