Nigel Booth
Q. What broad technology trends do you think will be front-and-centre at IBC20010?
I believe the current themes will continue from NAB, possibly with more focus on automating processes for the repurposing of content, servicing more online and mobile audiences and new platforms such as the iPad. Better metadata technology, such as semantic tagging will be on the increase due to the realization of the currency of metadata; for example using more accurate logging to automatically drive consumer byte size content creation and publishing.
Q. Any thoughts on how the current economic climate will affect the show?
A great question and one that is almost impossible to judge at the moment, what I can say is optimism is slowly returning, we are seeing an increase in broadcasters budgeting for the coming quarters but projects are still being delayed and moving to the right. If you are in sales you will know that forecasting has never been so difficult.
Q. What's new that you will show at IBC2010 and that broadcasters should look for there?
We will be showing the production version of our Teragator product which is a semantic search and discovery tool. It allows you to find available assets by related semantics (meaning). For example and from a sample database, imagine you are interested in looking for all assets you own with all the countries where say, President Reagan visited. With Teragator you simply select "Reagan" and "Countries" from the available list (Ontology) and it finds all the matches. Using even an advanced "search" would require you to guess all the possibilities, resulting in potentially many individual searches. It also aggregates multiple data sources without physically combining them, Teragator mines the data from disparate sources processing the data for the semantics, including live feeds such as an RSS feed and builds a virtual data store with a uniform view of the union of these data and semantic matches (items with a related meaning). The technology allows you to discover the relevance of your assets and has huge benefits in applications such as in news, archive and research. For example, aggregate business metrics such as ratings, along with available assets, and see the opportunities to improve revenues.
Q. How is your new product offering different from what's available on the market?
Most search tools list results based on keywords or at best predefined faceted requests. Teragator explores the data for you and presents you with the options and thus eliminating your reliance on memory and spelling skills! Teragator allows you to easily switch to different views of the data, thus helping you understand what is available as well as visualizing the results and relationships. By presenting business metrics and even statistical data from many sources across the operation, alongside the assets, it quickly uplifts the ability for collaboration with informed decisions on processes and services.
Q. Where are you based, and how many employees do you have? Anything else we should know about your company?
We are based in Cambridge, the company was formed some years ago out of a research project at the university and our principle engineers are specialists in image processing, IT based networking, and operating systems. The business was founded on providing advanced production browse technologies to a number of broadcast manufacturers including Avid, Pebble Beach, Thomson, TMD and Broadcasters including Turner and the BBC. In recent years we have expanded our range with direct sell products, including Curator that leverages the power of our browse solutions in file based workflows.
Q. How many years have you been going to the IBC show and what's your fondest memory? What's your favorite restaurant or pub?
Too many years staying up all night at the Metropole bar only to leave and find our stand blown away on the beach front….but that was Brighton some years ago
Q. 3D – Hope or Hype or In Between, or wait and see?
Of course the 3D theme will continue – whatever that means! Companies will be keen to fettle something relevant into their presentations. Current 3D as I see it is really done from a technical perspective, the main issues surround production, camera positions and viewing angles and of course on-air graphics.
