FRANKFURT, Germany—At the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas, Manifold Technologies will discuss its participation in NEP Platform, the new software orchestration system launched by NEP Group.

Manifold CLOUD—the company’s software-defined media processing platform—will be available as a deployable application within NEP Platform, enabling broadcasters and rights holders to instantiate manifold’s FPGA-accelerated multiviewer, UDX conversion, and graphics services on demand, across NEP’s global fleet of mobile units, flypacks, and facilities.

NEP Platform represents a fundamental shift in how live production infrastructure is deployed and managed. Rather than building fixed, dedicated systems per function, the platform provides an orchestration layer that deploys and runs trusted third-party broadcast software on shared commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) compute in modern IP environments. Approved application versions and configurations are validated for deployment, lifecycle actions—bring-up, scaling, tear-down - are automated, and telemetry provides real-time health, performance, and usage visibility.

For manifold, this integration is a natural alignment: manifold CLOUD was built on the principle that processing should be decoupled from proprietary hardware, running on COTS FPGA accelerator cards from multiple vendors. The platform delivers broadcast-grade services—multiviewers, UDX conversion and graphics insertion—with deterministic performance and subframe latency, combining the elasticity of cloud-native orchestration with the reliability that Tier One live production demands.

Within NEP Platform, manifold CLOUD joins a lineup of industry-leading media production specialists, and together their applications will be deployed and scaled dynamically, enabling production teams to configure the right setup for each event at the click of a button and adjust resources on demand.

The integration will be demonstrated at the NAB Show 2026 in NEP’s meeting space, N253, located in the North Hall Meeting Rooms, Level 2, as well as at manifold’s booth, which it shares with technology partner arkona (Booth C.1808). Visitors will interact with the NEP Platform user interface, select manifold from the application catalogue, and watch as the software is deployed onto shared COTS compute.

Once deployed, manifold appears as a virtual device within NEP’s TFC orchestration layer, where operators complete configuration and run a live workflow—demonstrating how software-defined processing can be instantiated in minutes, not days, and terminated just as quickly when the production ends.

manifold says the demonstration underscores a broader industry shift, and for manifold, NEP represents more than a distribution channel. Instead, they are a proving ground for software-defined, FPGA-accelerated production, highlighting how ‘software-first’ approaches grant immense amounts of operational flexibility, speed, power and adaptability, whilst maintaining the reliability and simplicity of traditional, fixed, single function, studio-rooted hardware approaches.

“Collaboration with our partners, including arkona and manifold, has been instrumental in turning the vision of NEP Platform into a practical reality,” said Dan Murphy, VP of NEP Platform. “Manifold’s FPGA-accelerated infrastructure harnesses the flexibility of COTS and software-defined processing capabilities with the power of hardware acceleration. This architecture combines deterministic performance with the scalability and agility modern productions demand. It is exactly this kind of partnership that enables us to deliver next-generation broadcast workflows for our customers worldwide.”

Aleksei Shevchenko, CEO and co-founder of manifold technologies, added: “NEP has always understood that the future of live production isn’t hardware or software alone - it’s how effectively both integrate. With NEP Platform, they’ve built the orchestration layer that makes that integration repeatable, scalable, and secure - and allows various service providers to come together and collaborate in order to offer a product which benefits the industry as a whole. We’re proud to be part of that vision and to have our technology available to NEP’s customers around the world”.

BURLINGTON, Mass.—At the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas, Avid will demo its new Avid Content Core running on AWS, providing a “cloud native” foundation for connected media workflows built on AWS for news organizations, broadcasters, studios, and streaming services.

At the same time, Avid said it is “renewing its focus” on Avid NEXIS and Avid Media Composer on AWS, which are already supporting large‑scale international productions, including working with Amazon MGM Studios to enable cloud-based Avid workflows on the global cloud platform.

Highlights will include:

• Cloud and hybrid production at scale – enabling teams to collaborate globally without compromising performance, location or security, powered by Avid NEXIS and Avid Content Core.
• Modern newsroom and post‑production workflows – delivering speed, flexibility, and resilience through Avid Content Core.
• A unified foundation for AI and automation – helping organizations extract greater value from their content via Avid Content Core.

Avid says its collaboration with AWS “reflects the MovieLabs 2030 Vision, where cloud, automation, security, and data form the backbone of modern storytelling.”

“Avid is the intelligence layer for professional media, combining proven workflow expertise with AI-powered automation and agentic capabilities,” said Wellford Dillard, Chief Executive Officer of Avid. “Through deep collaboration with AWS, we’re enabling organizations to connect their content, teams and workflows as one – driving faster production, greater creative flexibility, and more informed decision-making.”

Central to the strategic collaboration is a fresh emphasis on Avid NEXIS, the industry’s trusted shared media storage platform. Leveraging the Virtual File System (VFS), Avid NEXIS can expand from fixed, on-premises hardware into a software-defined, cloud-enabled environment that supports on-prem, cloud, and hybrid deployment and access.

This flexibility allows teams to:

• Run Avid NEXIS Cloud and Media Composer directly in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for full cloud-enabled post-production.
• Unify cloud-based Avid NEXIS storage with on-premises environments using Avid NEXIS | Remote for hybrid workflows.
• Combine AWS with Avid’s proven controls for media workflows with a shared security foundation.

Building on this collaboration, Amazon MGM Studios has worked with Avid on AWS to deploy Avid Media Composer and Avid NEXIS on AWS, enabling production teams to launch editorial environments globally in minutes and support distributed creative teams working seamlessly across multiple locations.

Avid will be in Booth N2226 in the North Hall of the LVCC.

Amagi will demo its cloud-based media production tools at the 2024 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 14-17. 

Amagi will be showcasing its Amagi LIVE broadcast and monetization solutions at its booth, designed to cater to the dynamic needs of news and sports broadcasters. 

Targeting the growing FAST market, the company will also demonstrate new features to its one-stop modular SaaS platform for FAST, including new ad units such as overlays, badges, and picture-in-picture squeezes.

Amagi will also highlight the latest improvements to its Amagi CLOUDPORT cloud-based broadcasting solution, designed to change live automation and dynamic playlist management. With its fully redundant synchronized live automation feature, broadcasters can confidently run premium live sports events with a single operator. This multiregion solution ensures exceptionally high reliability, guaranteeing uninterrupted broadcast experiences for viewers worldwide, Amagi said.

Additionally, Amagi will preview a version of CLOUDPORT’s dynamic playlists feature, which offers sub-second playlist updates in real time, catering to dynamic environments where changes in promos and ads occur frequently. 

Amagi will also participate on several panels during the show. Baskar Subramaniam, Co-Founder & CEO, Amagi will be on the panel "Streaming Investor Economics: Interest Rates, Consolidation, and Growth," while Dan Marshall, EVP of Global SaaS Sales, will participate in "The Opportunities and Challenges of Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST)." Prashant Chaudhary, Vice President, Product Management at Amagi, will dissect the intricacies of CTV ad measurement and cross-platform buying in "The Complex Business of CTV Ad Measurement, Metrics and Cross-Platform Buying" at the Streaming Summit. Additionally, Joe Ashba, Director of Solutions Architecture, Amagi will be sharing his experiences on "Migrating services from ground to cloud."

Amagi will be in booth W2120 in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. 

MONTREAL—Matrox Video has announced that during the 2023 NAB Show it will be unveiling a new disruptive technology that the company believes will change how developers and broadcasters handle tier 1 live production, both on premises and in the cloud.

The new approach is a software-only, asynchronous framework that runs on IT infrastructure. It can achieve highly scalable, responsive, low-latency, easy-to-control, and frame-accurate broadcast media facilities for both on-premises and cloud deployments. 

With this technology, Matrox Video said it has built the missing framework for compromise-free live cloud production that the industry believed would take another 10 years to accomplish. It is the foundation for the broadcast infrastructure of the future and creates new opportunities for broadcasters and developers.

Matrox Video will announce all the details at a press conference on April 16. The company will also offer demonstrations in its booth.

Richard Cartwright, technical leader from Matrox Video will take a deep dive into the new technology at the Broadcast Engineering & IT Conference during the NAB Show. The presentation "Software-Only Facilities Running on an Asynchronous Framework: A Better Approach for Live Cloud Productions" will take place on April 16 at 1:50 p.m. PST in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, Rooms W216-W218.

Attendees may also find out more about the new technology in the Matrox Theater, where AWS will join Matrox Video for several sessions throughout the show (all times are PST):

• Tier 1 Live Production in the Cloud: Making It a Reality Today. Speaker: Richard Cartwright, Technical Leader (Matrox Video). Times: Sunday, April 16 at 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m.; Monday, April 17 at 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.; Tuesday, April 18 at 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
• AWS Innovations: How Can Live TV Benefit From Moving to Cloud Infrastructure? AWS and Matrox Video Joint Presentation. Speakers: Noor Hassan, Senior Partner Solutions Architect, Broadcast (AWS); Richard Cartwright, Technical Leader (Matrox Video). Times: Monday, April 17 at noon; Tuesday, April 18 at 3 p.m.
• Is Tier 1 Live Production in the Cloud Really 10 Years Away? AWS and Matrox Video Panel. Speakers: Gregoire Rouyer, Global Partner Lead, Broadcast (AWS); Francesco Scartozzi, VP Sales and Business Development (Matrox Video) (Moderator); Richard Cartwright, Technical Leader (Matrox Video). Time: Sunday, April 16 at 3:30 p.m.

Besides the activities around its new cloud production technology, Matrox Video will also demonstrate some of its other products that have become staples in many broadcast workflows:

• Monarch EDGE Encoders and Decoders — Monarch EDGE 4K/multiHD encoders and decoders help organizations produce more broadcast-quality content with fewer resources by transporting up to four synchronized camera feeds over the open internet and public/private cloud for SDI-based productions. They are purpose-built for delivering broadcast-quality remote productions from any location. Built-in features like tally and talkback eliminate the need to purchase extra equipment, saving money and installation time.
• ConvertIP SMPTE ST 2110 Converters — ConvertIP devices convert ST 2110 signals to HDMI or SDI. These fanless NMOS devices with PoE are 4K-ready and can be used in broadcast environments to support uncompressed and compressed (JPEG XS) workflows. Demonstrations will showcase subframe-latency transport, seamless switching, and NMOS-based routing.
• Extio 3 IP KVM extenders — Extio 3 IP KVM extenders facilitate remote access and connectivity for users in broadcast studios, control rooms, and OB vans by enabling secure, low-bit-rate, and glitch-free 4Kp60 4:4:4 and up to quad 1080p60 4:4:4 video extension and switching over LAN, WAN, or internet. Readily compatible with common 1 Gigabit Ethernet networks, Extio 3 IP KVM extenders create scalable and cost-effective KVM matrix switching environments using standard networking equipment and infrastructures so users can readily access multiple broadcast systems from any user station.
• Broadcast developer products — Matrox Video continues to expand its ST 2110 IP and 12G-SDI I/O cards within its developer product families and to enrich its hardware and software in response to 4K and 8K market requirements. The new DSX LE5 12G card provides 12G-capable relay bypass for up to four channels of 12G-SDI. The add-on DSX LE5 IP cards and X.mio5 ST 2110-22 cards with JPEG XS enable broadcasters to transport multiple channels of 4K and 8K ST 2110 video content within a 25GbE or even 10GbE pipeline. The advanced, ultra-low-latency support on both the X.mio5 and DSX LE5 12G-SDI and ST 2110 products further reduce latency with high-density and high-resolution video streams. This support gives applications more processing time by delivering the buffers earlier, thereby reducing total latency to as little as a one-frame delay, with stability. Furthermore, Matrox Video has migrated its feature-rich File IO support to the Linux platform in its latest software release so developers can build their systems across platforms.

Related sessions in the Matrox Theater will be:

• Matrox Video and GlobalM Case Study: How BBC Studios Leveraged the Cloud for Distribution of the Queen's Funeral. GlobalM and Matrox EDGE. Speakers: Paul Calleja, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder (GlobalM). Times: Sunday, April 16 at 2:30 p.m.; Tuesday, April 18 at 10 a.m.
• Extend the Reach of a Standard ST 2110 Network Using IPMX Workflows. IPMX and Matrox ConvertIP. Speaker: Sam Recine, VP of Sales, Americas and Asia-Pacific, AV/IT Group (Matrox Video). Times: Sunday, April 16 at 11 a.m.; Tuesday, April 18 at 2 p.m.

Finally, Matrox Video will host happy hour on Monday, April 17 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Booth N2121. NAB attendees are invited for drinks, light snacks, and networking.

More information about Matrox Video and its products is available at www.matrox.com/en/video.

Kiswe has launched its cloud-based Studio Switcher designed for media producers and broadcasters looking to move fully into the cloud to create live streams without purchasing traditional video production hardware.

“The shift toward streaming, along with viewers’ changing media consumption habits, has created demand for more content across more channels, even as competition has intensified,” said Kiswe CEO Glenn Booth. “Producers and broadcasters are being tasked to do more with less. Switcher Studio enables them to better allocate resources to innovate in new ways, while delivering high quality and engaging storytelling experiences their audiences will love.”

The Kiswe offering is a production suite of cloud-based solutions that covers the entire value chain of production and delivers output at massive scale, it said.

The Kiswe platform has been used to cover a variety of large events, including productions of BTS, Justin Bieber, Queen, the PGA Tour, the NBA and ESPN, it said.

The Kiswe Studio offers fast, proven, cost-effective remote production and livestreaming of premium video content via the cloud, it said.

The Cloud Switcher allows producers to switch between more than 10 high-quality sources, add mix effects and graphics and distribute the production across a wide selection of channels. Kiswe Studio also offers dedicated resources around the globe to ensure technical, product and operational excellence.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

MONTREAL—Matrox focused on how broadcasters can leverage best-practice tools and methodologies when taking on on-premise and cloud-based live production at the just-concluded IBC 2022.

The company showed its standalone SMPTE ST 2110 ConvertIP, which integrates and converts ST 2110 IP signals to enable broadcasters to monitor ST 2110-20 (uncompressed video transport) and ST 2110-22 (constant bit rate compressed video transport) sources on HDMI or SDI monitors.

It also features the new Matrox Monarch EDGE encoder and decoder appliances, purpose-built devices for remote production (REMI) and contribution. They offer built-in tally and talkback, 4K and genlock support. Used together with the GlobalM cloud-based SRT streaming platform, which offers high-availability, scalable routing and monitoring, the cloud-based orchestration network provides a cost-effective approach to acquiring and sharing high-quality, low-latency contribution streams for REMI production, the company said. 

The company also showcased its Extio 3 IP KVM extenders, which facilitate remote access and connectivity for distributed production teams working off-site. They deliver secure, seamless and glitch-free 4Kp60 4:4:4 and up to quad 1080p60 4:4:4 video extension and switching support over IP. The KVMs also work over standard and existing one Gigabit Ethernet networks, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

OSLO, Norway—A new survey of broadcasters across the world has found that less than a three in ten (27%) see cloud adoption as a tech priority in their organizations—a lower figure than those naming 5G technology as a priority (34%). 

But almost 9 in 10 broadcasters (89%) said they intend to adopt cloud technologies in the next year, according to a new survey commissioned by Nevion that polled 250 senior technology decision makers within the broadcast industry across 10 regions. 

The survey also found a growing appetite for the use of cloud for specific applications, with nearly two thirds (63%) stating that they have already started applying it to post-production/file-based production.

The survey also highlighted a number of concerns about the suitability of using cloud for live production. Just under half (45%) of those polled had reservations about performance issues such as latency and a further 40% cited security concerns. 

For some organizations, the need for a broader shift in thinking is perceived as a challenge, with 39% stating that conservative attitudes towards cloud technologies within their company was the biggest barrier to adoption.

Overall, however, the survey found that senior technologists in broadcasting were seeing the benefits of cloud technologies and were embracing the idea of cloud-based technologies for live production. Over two thirds (71%) of the respondents said they believe all-public cloud environments for live production will be possible in the future.

“Our research confirms that cloud technology is generating a lot of interest in the broadcast industry,” said Olivier Suard, vice president of marketing at Nevion, a Sony company that provides virtualized media production technologies. “At the same time, however, it also shows that there are different levels of commitment being made by broadcasters and media companies to adopt the technology in the short and even medium term, especially in the case of live production.” 

“While some organizations are considering an all-Cloud approach, others are still choosing to stay with more traditional on-premise production, or are looking to move to a hybrid Cloud and ground solution,” Suard continued. “Regardless of the approach, Sony and Nevion are working together to ensure that broadcasters have the right mix for their business, creative and operational needs.”

Nevion commissioned the U.K. research house, OnePoll, to survey 250 senior technology decision makers within the broadcast industry on their attitudes to cloud adoption within their organization. The respondents came from 10 regions across the globe, including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, the Nordics, Spain, the UK and the U.S. 

The survey can be downloaded here. 

BURLINGTON, Mass.—Avid Technology and Amazon Studios have announced a three-year agreement to use Avid’s cloud-based editing and production technologies in the creation of Amazon  Studios’ expanding slate of more than 300 original movies and series. 

The agreement will allow creative teams working in the cloud to get the same experience and performance as an on-premises editorial bay—including collaborative workflows with shared storage and end-to-end media management—without the complexity and time required to set up and tear down traditional hardware, the companies said. 

This collaboration is also an important step forward for Amazon Studios’ vision of a globally scalable studio-in-the-cloud platform, which will eventually include Avid’s MediaCentral production platform. 

Avid and Amazon Studios expect to have cloud-based, production-ready solutions by fourth quarter 2022.

“Amazon Studios is prolific in its sheer output of original series and features that achieve the highest standard of creativity and quality,” said Jeff Rosica, chief executive officer and president of Avid. “By building their creative workflows around a complete set of Avid tools and platforms in the cloud, Amazon Studios is kicking off a new era of productivity and collaboration for their creative teams and contributors. Avid is delighted that our open technologies are being chosen by more customers who are innovating how content is produced in the cloud, on a global scale.”

Traditionally, editors need to access massive sets of media files that have traditionally been stored in the same location as the editing team. 

In collaboration with Avid, Amazon Studios will untether their editorial process to allow creative work to happen from almost anywhere, and centralize the editorial and content workflows in the cloud, the companies said. 

This collaboration will bring Avid’s Media Composer software tool and Avid NEXIS media storage solutions to editors and other content contributors wherever they are, supporting creative teams that are spread across the globe.

“We are on a journey to provide a best-in-class creative platform for our productions,” explained Ben Stanbury, worldwide head of technology for Amazon Studios. “Studio in the Cloud is our overarching vision for how we provide our creative teams with a cloud-based toolset that they can use wherever they are in the world. Avid is a central component of this vision, so we are thrilled to be starting this new partnership with them.”

By leveraging AWS and its global infrastructure, Amazon Studios will further centralize production assets in the cloud, creating a smoother, more unified production workflow, the companies said. Production and Post-Production teams will spend less time duplicating and transferring media to critical team members, allowing more time to be spent on high-value creative efforts. 

Productions will also enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having their content, including camera raw files, protected by automatic processes that distribute data across several AWS Regions, the companies said.

LAS VEGAS—EditShare will unveil its new FLEX cloud solutions at its booth (N3008) at the 2022 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 24-27. 

FLEX targets current media trends, in particular, the migration to a “work anywhere” environment, with ready access to content wherever creative staff need to be. In adopting cloud storage and processing, it also meets the move towards an OpEx financial model, with the cloud hosting and storage fees flexing to reflect the level of business, the company said.

“EditShare began leading the industry's shift to the cloud a few years ago by expanding many of its existing core product capabilities—openness, interoperability and scale—to the cloud,” commented Stephen Tallamy, CTO, EditShare. “EditShare FLEX is the result of these investments and we’re excited to show the industry how it can greatly simplify how their teams may choose to work.”

FLEX includes three components:

FLEX Cloud Edit provides media asset management, high performance software-defined storage, and virtual workstations in the AWS cloud. FLEX provides a completely open hosting environment, so users can use whatever editing software they prefer.

FLEX Cloud Edit+ adds accelerated file transfer capabilities using the CloudDat transfer software from Data Expedition Inc. It also provides comprehensive workstation management using Teradici’s Cloud Access Manager, all tightly integrated into an intuitive, single-sign on EditShare environment.

FLEX Cloud Sync provides synchronization of content between local EFS arrays and archive storage with leading cloud providers. By automating backup to the cloud, EditShare FLEX Cloud Sync makes it easy to retire LTO tape libraries and gain the huge resilience and availability that major cloud providers offer. As necessary, a FLEX Cloud Edit system can be spun up using all of the content in a customer’s FLEX Cloud sync backup.

“We continually listen to what the industry is telling us, and this is a direct response to current demands,” said Tallamy. “With FLEX, our customers can maintain full control over their working environment and the security of their content, while gaining the huge benefits of remote working and editing-in-the-cloud.

“FLEX offers turnkey bundles that allow customers to get started quickly with a known configuration and pricing profile. Our professional services team can work with customers to tailor the system to exactly meet their needs,” Tallamy added. “The customer maintains operational oversight and budgetary control, with no over-provisioning so no over-paying.”

LAS VEGAS—Cinegy will demo its digital video processing, asset management, video compression and automation, and playout services tools at the 2022 NAB Show, April 23-27. Highlighted products will include Cinegy Air PRO, Cinegy Capture PRO, Cinegy Multiviewer, Cinegy Convert and Cinegy Archive, within which the Daniel2 codec is an integral part. 

In addition, Cinegy will highlight how it has optimized its entire product line to be 8K-ready and deployed in the cloud. One of the early adopters of the open source SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) protocol, Cinegy has SRT baked into all technology, including the license, which removes any concerns about whether users have the legal right, proper subscription, or adequate bandwidth to deploy the software the company said. 

 “The last two years have accelerated migration to technologies—such as the cloud—but customers still need to adopt these new ways of working in alignment with their unique strategic vision,said Jan Weigner, Managing Director at Cinegy. "We understand that every customer is at a different point on their journey, so our highly flexible approach means broadcasters can migrate all or parts of their workflow in a way that works for their business. NAB is something the whole industry is looking forward to and we are excited about meeting customers and partners face-to-face once again.”  

Demonstrations will cover:

• Cinegy Air PRO, which simplifies multichannel delivery, allowing customers to run many channels with flexibly configurable features from a single unit;  
• Cinegy Capture PRO for acquisition and transcode, allows operators to work with a rich client interface running anywhere on the network, and simultaneously generate all versions needed for archive, editing and remote working;  
• Cinegy Multiviewer, which runs as a service operating on commodity IT equipment and displays and analyzes signals from multiple sources, raising alerts for any detected signal problems;  
• Cinegy Convert—designed to function like a network-based print server—is ideal for performing repetitive export and conversion tasks by “printing” material to predefined formats and destinations to save time that can be applied to higher value creative tasks; 
• Cinegy Archive media asset management manages and delivers advanced logging and metadata accumulation over the entire lifecycle of the media assets, making these easily searchable and reusable, and saving time and money, and 
• Cinegy Daniel2, which plays professional quality 8K streams on affordable, commodity hardware or even a consumer-grade laptop. Now further optimized, the codec is ubiquitous through the software product range. 

Cinegy will be in Booth C3931. For more information about the NAB Show, visit nabshow.com/2022.

BOSTON—GBH is a Boston-based public media producer and broadcaster and the leading multiplatform creator for public media. We’re both a PBS and an NPR member station, as well as the producer of a significant amount of well known series including “Frontline,” “Nova,” “American Experience,” “Masterpiece” and “Antiques Roadshow.” As senior director of production technology I oversee our Production Group unit, which is responsible for GBH’s production and post-production.

In 2015, we started using Sony’s Ci media collaboration cloud platform as a way to streamline our operations and enhance collaboration among our production teams. Along with our IT/technology team we were looking for a solution that would be intuitive, secure, and easy to use and that’s what we found with Ci.

ONE PLATFORM FOR ALL

One of the things that GBH really appreciates about Sony’s Ci is that it is a single secure platform built on top of AWS where we can access our media safely and easily. The post-production group has an adage about the technologies we adopt—they have to be able to be utilized by a 17-year-old intern or a 70-year-old director/producer, and everyone in-between. It has to be robust technologically because we’re doing so much with it, but it also has to be really easy to use. We’ve found Ci to be a well-designed tool that people can learn how to use quickly and then leverage to increase their productivity.

Ci is used extensively throughout our organization in broadcast, distribution, stock footage licensing and wherever we need to share media. On the production side we use it for uploading, storing and sharing media, as well as reviewing and approving content. Before the pandemic necessitated virtual work, we were using Ci to enable our production companies to deliver captured and created content from around the world to our facilities in Boston. In essence, Sony’s Ci acts as a cloud-based central repository through which we can pass that media, safely and securely.  

VIRTUAL COLLABORATION

We also use Ci for review and approval of content across most of our brands, and for final approval of the color grading and final mix of programs. In the past, an EP or director/producer could step into an edit suite, work on a cut, and then step back out again, but the pandemic limits those options. We’ve used LiveSessions as one replacement for that interaction. Ci purpose-built this feature to meet our needs and it’s tailored to streamline the process. 

We also use LiveSession as a replacement for our in-suite final reviews. Typically, we’d have 5-15 people in a screening room, which hasn’t been possible over the past 18 months. Instead, the LiveSession feature enables us to have a high-quality, collaborative finishing session with anyone on the team from anywhere. That saves on travel and allows us to widen the circle of people who have visibility into the content.

Another beneficial element of Ci is its flexibility and scalability—one advantage of it being built on top of AWS. Each year we see an increase in our usage of Ci, and we know we’ll continue to create more media in the future, so as additional features and capabilities roll out we look forward to implementing them to increase the collaboration and productivity of our production teams at every level.

For more information on Sony Ci visit www.sonymcs.com.

COLUMBIA, Md.—LTN Global has signed a multi-year agreement with SportsGrid Inc, a 24-hour linear network covering fantasy sports and wagering, that will have LTN provide advanced cloud-based automation products to help with the live delivery of programming.

LTN’s suite of communication and production tools virtually integrates the functions for master control, which enables the SportsGrid production team to manage their live programming schedule. SportsGrid delivers its live streaming HLS video feed through a low-latency IP connection from the cloud. The LTN platform uses its low-latency transport network and cloud-based production infrastructure, which are managed and monitored using proprietary software to deliver the support service.

The range of LTN’s broadcast and digital services include full production and master control, as well as remote and virtual production support. LTN also has its end-to-end video content ecosystem to provide clients with ad enablement and metadata insertion, cloud-based routing of broadcast and digital content, and a multicast transport network.

LTN operates all of this out of its production facility in Kansas City, Mo.

“We needed to deploy a transformative platform to efficiently and effectively produce daily live video programming from our studios and remotely during the pandemic,” said Louis Maione, SportsGrid president and founder. “LTN provides SportsGrid with innovative visualization tools to configure, manage and monitor live programming at scale across industry standard and protocols.”

For more information, visit www.ltnglobal.com.  

Back from the COVID-19 hiatus, the production of live televised sports has contributed to a bit of normalcy for millions of fans left gameless and homebound by the pandemic.

But things are different. Cardboard cutouts populate seats around home plate and canned crowd noises punctuate touchdowns. Things, too, are different when it comes to how games are being produced during the pandemic, says Dhaval Ponda, global head, Media and Entertainment Services for Tata Communications.

The outbreak has simultaneously accelerated and altered REMI, or remote integrated production, driving producers not only to minimize crew at venues but also to push past centralized production to its virtualized equivalent that makes working from home possible, he says.

Ponda should know. Tata Communications offers a product portfolio that caters to broadcasters and sports authorities in need of live sports contribution and distribution services, cloud-based virtualized production workflows and end-to-end for Media & Entertainment tech services.    

In this interview, Ponda discusses the changes he has witnessed since the outbreak in how live events like sports are produced, the impact of COVID-19 on the uptake of a virtualized alternative to rolling OB trucks to venues and what’s likely to happen to live sports production once the pandemic has passed.

(An edited transcript.)

TVTechnology: Remote production has taken on a whole new—or perhaps more accurately stated expanded—meaning in television since the COVID-19 outbreak hit. What are the top technical challenges when it comes to producing live video when talent and crew are widely dispersed?

Dhaval Ponda: I would say there are a top three when it comes to technical challenges. The first one revolves around the workflow.

We are changing the entire workflow. Instead of that team of between 40 and maybe 200 traveling to the venue, events are being produced out of a remote production hub. In the post-COVID world we are increasingly deploying that team in their homes.

This distributed workflow requires a different workflow in terms of how live content passes through.

The second challenge centers on virtualization of production equipment and hardware. Production teams are now relying on virtualized services, and that’s a big shift. The media industry has some work to do when it comes to embracing this virtualization of services.

Instead of going to a gallery, members of the production team are working from home, and they have to rely on the broadband at their particular location to access those virtual services.

The third aspect is mainly around the popularity of short-forms and features, which have relied on being at the venue. For example, a quick commentary and a highlight video of a certain event at a match is done locally from EVS hardware located on site.

So, these short-forms and features for a given event are also now being done remotely. That creates a different form of long-tail services, which are done slightly differently. The tools around that are all web-based and portal-based. Those are the three main challenges.

TVT: Let’s unpack that answer a little. You brought up REMI (remote integrated production) and you brought up cloud-based workflows. REMIi or at-home initially was based on a production center servicing sporting events taking place at multiple, dispersed venues. Are the production centers now giving way to the cloud? And, is there sufficient bandwidth to support this approach to live production with crew so widely dispersed?

DP: I think about two years ago, everyone spoke of remote production as going to a central location. Very quickly, as firms started moving to that central location and that model, they realized they were again hitting some of the usual issues that they had with personnel on site.

There’s an investment in real estate, and they are typically prime locations because your talent is going to be in Manhattan, London and so forth. There's a lot of CapEx involved with the same hardware you once had on site. So people started looking at a virtualized environment where the talent could work from anywhere.

This not only meant you did not need a central location, but you could also reach out to talent located anywhere. They no longer needed to travel to a particular venue to provide commentary or subtitling or whatever. It is now more distributed and moving towards a work-from-home environment.

TVT: This gets back to the bandwidth issue from home for these remote production crew members, right?

DP: It’s a challenge. How do we manage broadband quality that may not necessarily be enterprise grade? Another issue that’s particular to editors working from home using a laptop is they don't always have all of the tools and applications they have in a studio environment.

We have worked with the sports production community and sports federations as partners and what we have done is—purely from a video transport standpoint—we have worked with the right encoding mechanism to ensure that even a low-quality live video feed is made available to a particular individual who is working from home and he is still able to edit a live video feed. That is step No. 1.

We have also deployed remote production applications on the edge, and we have brought this particular edge infrastructure closer to individuals. This has made a massive impact. We have now deployed this underlying video infrastructure, which we own and operate, globally.

PLUS: Recreating the Sports Fan Experience Virtually

By bringing the production tools closer to the edge, we are actually removing the underlying network quality issue. And because this is a live feed and it is at the edge closer to wherever you are, you are able to edit a live feed in real time, and it is still being broadcast as if it were six months ago and it was being done in a studio.

TVT: What does that mean to move these resources closer to the edge? Does it mean you have placed datacenters at the edge running these virtualized production tools? And if that’s the case, how can you do that when production crews are so dispersed?

DP: You are absolutely right. Over the last 20 years, Tata Communications has invested close to $6 billion to create submarine cable system assets to use for global connectivity. Tata Communications is probably the largest single owner and operator of privately owned submarine cable capacity and hence the datacenters and cloud capacity that sits on top of that.

All of the hyper scalers like Amazon, Google, Microsoft [are] also key partners when it comes to deploying services on top of that. So, we already have the benefit of having a massive infrastructure at our disposal that is owned and operated by Tata Communications globally, and our video infrastructure sits on top of that.

About two years ago, we also deployed a low-latency video streaming service called VDN. It operates on a technology from Net Insight, which was later bought by [Amazon] Prime Video. This low-latency video streaming infrastructure was created to cater to low-latency sports viewing.

For example, if you're watching the NFL, usually you notice that it is slightly delayed on an iPad or a mobile device. The delay can be anywhere from about 20 seconds to a minute. That comes down to some protocols, which are legacy protocols like HLS that Apple always used for video streaming.

[VDN] uses UDP and brought that latency down to two or three seconds. This was deployed for global sports, and we use it currently for distribution of a number of Tier 1 properties for some of the world's largest OTT platforms.

To do that, for the video streaming to work, wherever your global audiences are located, we had to deploy this infrastructure with our datacenters on our edge anyway because a viewer could be located anywhere.

The distribution of this video infrastructure sort of followed that pattern, so we were quite lucky that we already had solved this problem for a different use case.

TVT: Once the COVID-19 pandemic passes, do you expect television production to return to its traditional on-site ways?

DP: What COVID has done is to bring forward a number of disruptions that would have taken 12 to 18 months. All of that is already being baked in. What I mean by that is workflows have already changed in the way production teams are structured, located and work together.

The type of content has also changed dramatically. We see a lot of virtual racing, eSports, short-form feeds and videos being produced as a matter of everyday life. Finally, these disruptions have also proven to the industry that it is possible to work remotely and produce the same quality feed and enjoy the benefits of working from home, such as lower travel costs.

So, I don't see the industry reverting back entirely to a pre-COVID way of doing things because the financial and the operational savings and the benefits of a remote environment far outweigh whatever you would gain by reverting back to going to a venue.

Once things are back to normal, I'm sure many things probably will return to the way they were before, but in the case of sports production and other live productions—whether it is in terms of operations or how content is produced—things will have changed for good.

NEW YORK—The Switch is aiming to make remote production easier for live events organizers with the launch of a new cloud-based production-as-a-service solution.

MiMiC aims to give broadcasters, streaming services, rights holders and enterprises access to remote production capabilities for live and virtual events of all sizes. The solution combines both the cloud and The Switch’s global network for content distribution.

According to the company, MIMiC delivers the convenience of a complete end-to-end service, and is available as a flexible on-demand "as-a-Service" offering that includes remote IP-video contribution, production and clipping tools, and distribution.

All aspects of the production workflow, from editing and graphics creation, to comms and talk-back, are handled in the cloud. Key features include support for sports data feeds, contribution connectivity, contribution encoding equipment, program distribution and production staffing.

The Switch had initially planned to launch the solution later this summer, but Robert Szabo-Rowe, senior vice president of Product Management, told TVBEurope the current pandemic changed their thinking: “It’s fair to say that we have probably launched this about a month earlier than we were expecting because of the current COVID-19 situation. We have been working on this for quite a long time, this is probably six months of work or more as far as preparing the service for launch.”

Remote production as a concept and as a set of technological capabilities has of course been around for a number of years. The Switch’s president and CEO, Eric Cooney, believes the current pandemic has helped advance its adoption by broadcasters, event organizers and sports leagues. “People are asking, how can I travel less, how can I keep my people safe? Those requirements in a pandemic environment are better met in a remote production environment than in a traditional production services environment. So, we are seeing an increased demand for remote production as a consequence of COVID-19.

“Our view is that there are very clear both economic and operational advantages to a remote production service capability,” Cooney added. “And, I think informed by the experience of coronavirus, there are a number of folks, particularly at the tier one level, who are doing more in terms of remote production, out of necessity than perhaps they otherwise would have done.

“I think coming out of coronavirus with that experience under their belt in terms of quality, the cost and the performance, we’ll definitely see across the spectrum a greater comfort level with remote production services as just a viable part of the portfolio of choices that a rights holder has to bring their content to market.”

This article originally appeared on TVT's sister publication TVBEurope.

NEW YORK—Many ingredients go into building fan interest and loyalty, but among the most important is that special bond with a team or players that promotes a sense of personal investment in their successes and failures.

Central to that connection is communications—not simply the call and color of broadcast game coverage, but also the rapport nurtured through two-way fan interaction.

The Big East Conference earlier this year took a new step in that direction when it deployed a cloud-based video production platform from Graybo to promote fan interaction.

“We’re always looking to increase fan engagement through our live video production,” says Rick Gentile, senior associate commissioner, broadcasting, at the Big East Conference. “Grabyo’s interactive capabilities, specifically regarding Big East Shootaround and our other live shows, has helped grow overall engagement.”

The Graybo platform is used to create interactive shoulder content for the conference’s weekly Big East Shootaround, a digital-first production focused on men’s basketball. Men’s and women’s basketball content from around the conference and perspective given during the #BigEasthoops Q&A are integrated into the Big East Shootaround show.

The platform allows producers of live conference streams to add custom graphics and engage fans with tools like native polling and real-time data visualization driven by audience comments.

“Making the experience interactive with live content on social and digital platforms has been shown to increase engagement and drive more viewership for publishers,” says Graybo President Mike Kelley. “It allows fans to feel like they are part of the show when they see their questions appear in the show.”

“The Big East is trying to quickly evolve with the times in terms of trying to reach their fans in real time on these social platforms as well as their OTT services,” he says.

The platform also gives the conference the ability to go direct to fans, reaching them whenever they want without having to rely on a broadcast channel, says Kelley.

Graybo licenses its cloud-based video production platform using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. The platform allows organizations like the Big East Conference to manage video content, create real-time clips and highlights and produce and deliver live shows to multiple social channels as well as via their own websites and apps.

The IP-based Graybo Producer platform allows entire video productions to be done in the cloud. It supports switching of up to 10 different video feeds in real time as well as overlays of graphics and up to eight layers. Run from a web browser, the product also offers producers a comment moderation tool to screen fan input to make sure it is appropriate.

“Engaging sports fans in real-time across social channels is paramount to any college’s marketing and distribution strategy,” says Kelley. “As these fans look to access video across a variety of platforms and devices, this partnership will ensure the Big East’s content will be top of mind for them.”