October 2009

Transcription

October 2009

TVBE_Oct P1_P3_P32_news
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Inside: Best of IBC, Reader Survey, Eurosport case study
TVBEUROPE
Europe’s television technology business magazine
HD first for Estonia
OB production
ERR/Eesti Rahvusringhääling
(Estonian Public Broadcasting)
was formed in June 2007 through
the merger of the country’s existing radio and television public
service broadcasting organisations. The television operation —
ETV — was started in July 1955
and is the oldest TV broadcaster
in Estonia. Currently, ERR provides
two TV and five radio channels
that are broadcast via terrestrial,
satellite, IP and cable networks
and on the web. The operational
base is located in the centre of the
capital, Tallinn.
Despite a lack of regular high
definition output, ERR has
recently taken delivery of its first
outside broadcast truck capable
of handling that format. “Indeed,
it is the first completely new
vehicle built for HD production
OCTOBER 2009 £5.00/€8.00/$10.00
www.tvbeurope.com
Evertz monitors and Grass Valley Kayak switcher feature in the truck’s gallery,
and the Lawo MC256 digital mixer, expandable to 48 faders, specified by ERR
in the Baltics,” explains Sander
Üksküla, R & D Manager for TV
Production Technology at ERR.
“There have been a few programmes that we produced in
HD. The biggest were live broadcasts from the 25th Estonian
Song Celebration and UEFA
Champions League play-off
match FK Ventspils vs FC Zürich
played in Latvia this year.”
He continues, “The OB van
market in the Baltic region is
small. There were only five smallto mid-sized vans in Estonia.
ERR had only one eight-camera
SD van which was built more
than 20 years ago and reequipped at 1997.”
As production demands
increased, it was apparent that
this vehicle couldn’t meet the
broadcaster’s needs. The choice at
the time was to continue producing programmes that fell short of
the station”s expectations or to
create high quality output by
renting OB van services from
Sweden or Finland. However,
Continued on page 32
Despite the recession, the pace
of innovation in the broadcast
industry remains high, and
IBC2009 saw hundreds of new
technology developments, all
the way along the production
chain from lens to viewer.
The best of these allow you to
achieve more, for less, or
answer problems you may not
have even recognised you had.
There was significant activity
in 3D production, and the whole
area of integrating TV with
the web and mobile has moved
from years of barely functioning
beta tests to real tools for
broadcasters. David Fox
followed up and distilled the
‘top 50’ Best of IBC2009
Editors’ Awards list from the
suggestions of our entire
combined IBC Daily and
TVBEurope editorial team at this
year’s show. Section starts
page 18. — Fergal Ringrose
Let’s talk about workflow
December 1 set for ‘The IT Broadcast Workflow’
Confirmed
speakers
for
TVBEurope’s brand new event,
The IT Broadcast Workflow conference, already include Ricki
Berg, technical manager, SBS
Broadcasting Networks; Darren
Breeze, director of Broadcast
Engineering, Discovery Communications; Gerrit Cornelis, development manager, MediaGeniX;
Bruce Devlin, chief technical officer, AmberFin; Israel Estaban,
technical director, Unitecnic
(Gol TV Barcelona); and John
Morgan, senior manager Broad-
cast IT, Turner Broadcasting
System Inc.
Names will be added and
moved around as we complete our
programme for the 1 December
event at the Royal College of
Physicians, Regents Park, London:
check www.broadcastworkflow.com
for updates and to book your place
at this unique event — which will
be chaired by Jeremy Bancroft,
director, Media Asset Capital.
The day will consist entirely of
end-user broadcasting case studies
from around Europe. There will be
By Fergal Ringrose
no flannel panels and no vendorcentric debates; the presentations
instead consist entirely of real world
digital workflow installations.
Israel Esteban will tell us about
the setting up and launching of Gol
Television, the new 24-hour sports
channel in Barcelona. From SBS,
Ricki Berg and Gerrit Cornelis
from MAM supplier MediaGeniX
will describe the planning of automatic workflows, connecting
suppliers and the marriage of IT
and broadcast. Turner Broadcast’s
Inventory Management Project
(BIM) has provided centralised
ingest and archive for a large multichannel operation — Senior
Manager John Morgan will bring it
to life for our audience.
AmberFin CTO Bruce Devlin
and a to-be-confirmed TVT
speaker will guide us through the
Continued on page 3
ONE Company. ONE Direction. The Future.
POWERING
ADVANC ED MEDIA WORKFLOWS
broadcast.harris.com
TVBE_FP
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TVBEU R O PE N E W S & A N A LY S I S
TwoFour54 open for business CONTENTS
By Chris Forrester
Twofour54’s stunning new Abu
Dhabi ‘intaj’ facility was opened last
month and promises to bring a fresh
approach to Middle East production
and post. Tony Orsten, CEO at
twofour54 (named after Abu Dhabi’s
24˚ North, 54˚ East geographic coordinates) said the studios were not
just to create extra hours of new
MENA content, important as that is.
“This launch introduces the final
component of twofour54’s content
creation community, which is
designed to facilitate the development of a sustainable media industry
in the MENA region.”
“We have in our region around
330 million people, 60% of whom are
under 25%,” Orsten explained,
adding that some 450 people had
already ‘graduated’ through the company’s ‘tadreeb’ training academy
helped by its partner organisations
such as the BBC and Thomson
Reuters. Orsten said that training was
the bedrock of what they were doing,
of people coming into media and for
present with us has a similar commitment to participation.”
At twofour54’s heart is a sixstudio complex, available on a wet or
dry basis, and complete with edit
suites, post production facilities,
sound, graphics, and all the other
elements expected by today’s
demanding producers. The six studios are headed by a 650sqm beast, a
pair of 280sqm spaces (both already
fully hired) and two 60sqm ‘babies’,
each fully equipped with Sony
HDC-1500 HDTV cameras, and the
sort of technical provision that would
make any studio manager green with
envy. “And not a tape machine in the
building,” said Orsten.
Twofour54 is also looking to tap
into the explosive growth of local
channels out of the region. Its nearneighbour Dubai is uplinking hundreds of channels onto Nilesat and
Arabsat. Twofour54 has anticipated
increased demand and pre-installed
encoding, multiplexing and encryption kit ready to handle DTH clients.
those already working but who wanted to improve their craft skills as well
as improving their understanding of
broadcasting. “This will lead to new
businesses here.”
But he stressed that buildings,
and facilities like those at
twofour54 were also important so
that programming could be made.
“We are a content creation community. Our media partners help make
that possible,” he explained. “Our
media partners, whether in the
shape of CNN, or the BBC or
Harper Collins, they take part in
our work and people like CNN, as
well as building their own facility
here, will also take our young people. They’ll be part of the training
process, taking interns into the system, from the region, and in order
to learn more. Every media partner
Starfish adds 30 channels
to TV4 regional programming
service. TV4 placed the contract for
the new system with Lanlink, which
represents Starfish in Sweden.
The new scalable system
involves a centralised operation at
TV4’s main transmission centre in
Stockholm, which will initially
serve 30 channels via four regional
DVB streams. The system is based
on standard PC server hardware
with generic video and ASI PC
cards. Starfish developed a number
of new software products to extend
its existing range of regional
insertion technology that process
MPEG encoded media including
Teletext and logo/clock insertion
within a totally file based workflow.
Jonas Collsioo, technical director at TV4 commented, “The new
Starfish Regional Insertion System
has resulted in significant cost savings and dramatically increased
functionality. It has allowed us to
offer a more regionalised service for
commercials and local news, with
reduced time to air.”
The IT workflow
a description of how Discovery set
up ‘factories’ to automate specific
processes to transcode, repurpose
and customise each asset allowing
consistent, hands-free processing.
More case studies will be added
as we complete our programme in
the next weeks. But we hope you
can see from the above that we are
aiming for something unique in
our market; a day of no-nonsense
case studies about the tapeless
workflow from leading players
around Europe. We hope you will
support our first IT Broadcast
Workflow conference.
By Fergal Ringrose
TV4 in Stockholm has launched
its new regionalised TV service
that delivers 30 channels with
unique commercial breaks and
news programming. TV4 is
Sweden’s most successful commercial TV channel and first
implemented a Starfish ad insertion system back in 2005.
The operational and commercial
success of this service led TV4 to propose an extended service covering 30
regions within Sweden with both
regionalised ad breaks and with the
addition of a regionalised news
Area wide mobile reception
By Fergal Ringrose
The field-approved TS4020 adds
to the award winning receiver solutions family offered by BMS. A
simple to configure switching unit
for cellular reception, the TS4020
is reliable, rugged, and offers cable
flexibility, facilitating the use of
various types and lengths.
The system also offers connectivity between single receive sites.
Supporting coaxial cable, fibre, IP
connection and digital microwave,
the ‘hands-free’ switch-over allows
city-wide digital ENG cellular
broadcast networks to be built without a helicopter requirement. This
reduces production cost enormously.
The unique TS4020 Transport
stream switch provides the user a
comprehensive solution. The TS4020
can receive up to four different ASI
streams, quickly compare them and
output the most suitable. Should the
ASI stream deteriorate, there is an
internal ASI switch, and will choose
the next best ASI signal without a glitch.
www.bms-inc.com
Continued from page 1
digitisation of new and archived
content at Television Versioning &
Translation, including the improvement of workflow efficiency with
cut-and-splice versioning tools,
network rendering capabilities and
video processing plus conversion.
From Discovery Communications,
Darren Breeze will enlighten us on
reducing the costs of delivering to
more than 10 VoD platforms with
14 different languages and eight
subtitle languages. Included will be
www.twofour54.com
www.starfish.tv
www.broadcastworkflow.com
1-6 News & Analysis
6 IBC business
Fergal Ringrose
analyses the business
environment at
IBC2009 ahead of our
formal IBC Wrap Up
next issue
8-16 Reader Survey
We are delighted to
bring you our brand
new Reader Survey,
thanks to your input
and our partnership
with Harris Broadcast
18-28 Best of IBC
What were the most
eye-catching 50
new products at IBC?
Find out in our unique
TVBEurope Best
of IBC2009
Editors’ Awards
30-44 The Workflow
30 We will rock you
Adrian Pennington
reports on the amazing
journey following
the discovery of 3D
footage of the Queen
of England from
the 1050s
34 Virtual at ZDF
Philip Stevens talks
to ZDF’s Dr Andreas
Bereczky and
Thorsten Garber
about a new virtual
studio installation
36 Full immersion
Mike Clark looks at the
leading edge of Italian
OB production, including
coverage of the recent
FINA World Swimming
Championships
38 Tapeless at QVC
Moving away from
Betacam to a
profoundly different
QSAAM system. User
case study from Paul
Murphy, director of
Technology, QVC
40 Studio entertainment
Kevin Hilton takes a look
at the giant shiny floor
studios at Fountain in
North London, and a
brand new Calrec Apollo
audio desk
42 Colorcode 3-D
Colorcode 3-D comes to
the fore: How a Danish
company came to be at
the centre of 3D. By
Adrian Pennington
44 New Arena truck
Philip Stevens talks to
outside broadcast
provider Arena
Television about its
latest investment
46 Business Case
A new business name
appeared on the scene
at the beginning of
last year: Nevion. Dick
Hobbs talks to CEO
Oddbjorn Bergem
47-54 News & Analysis
54 Eurosport insight
Innovation and
success with content
and technology blend.
Bob Charlton talks to
Eurosport Broadcast
Director Arnaud Simon
www.tvbeurope.com O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9
3
TVBE_Oct P4_news
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TVBEU R O PE N E W S & A N A LYS I S
NEWS
IN BRIEF
P2 to Romania
Digi Sport, the newest TV
platform of RCS & RDS in
Romania for live sports, has
purchased video cameras and
other technical equipment from
Panasonic. The technology
includes the portal professional
video camera HD P2 AG-HPX301E,
P2 AJ-PCD35E readers and P2
AJ-P2E032XG memory cards —
part of the newest E-Series. P2
Panasonic video cameras will be
used by Digi Sport for Romanian
League 1 as well as the Primera
Division, Bundesliga, Premier
League, Italia A Series, Moto GP,
NBA, handball and gymnastics.
The decision by Digi Sport to
choose Panasonic equipment
was mainly based on the
increasing requests for flexibility
and quicker workflow, as well as
for video quality and recording
facility. ”For Panasonic, Digi
Sport’s strategic decision to
adopt the P2 format is not only
viewed as an important contract
but it also, represents an
important commitment. We
believe that the satisfaction,
quality and reliability offered
through the P2 format will, in the
future, influence other Romanian
television channels to adopt the
same format,” said Eduard
Tronaru, Panasonic Romania.
www.panasonic.com
Screen helps Met Opera onto screens
Screen Subtitling Systems is
associated with this year’s IBC
International
Honour
for
Excellence Award winner, the
Metropolitan Opera. The award
was presented at the IBC2009
Awards Dinner and accepted by
Met Opera General Manager
Peter Gelb via satellite direct
from New York. In 2007, Screen
began working with All Mobile
Video and the Met Opera to produce a high quality multilanguage subtitling system to
extend live performances to audiences around the globe.
Using the latest Screen technology, the Met has been able to subtitle live HD performances in a
range of languages showing in
Inter BEE show hits 45
The ‘Japanese IBC’ takes place next month
With the support of the Japan
Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)
and the National Association of
Commercial Broadcasters in Japan
(NAB-J), the Japan Electronics
and Information Technology
Industries Association (JEITA
Chairman
Otsubo
Fumio,
Panasonic President) will hold the
Inter BEE 2009 audio and video
and communications broadcasting
equipment exhibition at Makuhari
Messe (Chiba City) for a period
of three days between November
18-20 2009.
Japan’s broadcasting and electronics industries have led the way
in creating cutting-edge broadcast
technologies, such as current core
media high definition television,
People on the move
ND SatCom for SNG
ND SatCom’s new Ka/Ku
Dualband SNG gives
broadcasters and SNG
operators the best of both
worlds: traditional transmission
in Ku-Band as well as a flexible
switch to the attractive
Ka-Band. For the full service
package, ND SatCom uses
satellite capacity of its mother
company SES ASTRA. The
service is a unique combination
of satellite capacity, an SNG
vehicle and an upgrade kit for
the satellite uplink. As
regulatory aspects have been
adapted, Ka-Band capacity is
now available for commercial
use. The system is ideally suited
for live newsgathering needs
and occasional use: “Content
producing and delivering
companies currently sail
against the wind of the harsh
economic environment and
dispose of tighter investment
budgets. Our system allows a
very cost-efficient usage of
Ka-Band capacities, and for
those operators and
broadcasters, who already have
a Ku-Band SNG fleet, the
upgrade kit is a flexible option
to save bandwidth or use it
more efficiently”, said Johann
Pohany, managing director &
CTO of ND SatCom.
www.ndsatcom.com
4
over 900 venues, in over 40 countries. The Met also uses a Screen
MSX subtitle monitoring system
to see multi-language subtitles
simultaneously. Met Opera TVGraphics Supervisor Deborah
Cavanaugh explained, “Screen’s
live multi-language technology has
united people around the world
into a single opera audience.”
Franck Facon,
Analog Way
Emmanuel Boureau,
Ateme
By Fergal Ringrose
Analog Way, celebrating its 20year anniversary, has appointed
Franck Facon as new worldwide
marketing and communication/
customer service director. Between
2002 and 2008, Facon was sales
manager for the French market at
Analog Way.
ARG ElectroDesign has
appointed Paul Higuera as its new
director of sales. Higuera joins
ARG to help expand the company’s international sales activities as
it prepares to roll out its new range
of MPEG compression products.
At Artel Video Systems, a
provider of video over fibre-optics,
Gary Schutte is the new vice
president of sales. His most recent
position was VP of sales for
the Central US with Harris
Corporation Broadcast Division.
Ateme, the French video compression technology specialist, has
appointed Emmanuel Boureau as
vice president of sales for the
EMEA region. Boureau joins
Ateme from Tandberg Television,
where he was responsible for
developing the company’s business
across the whole EMEA region,
Previously he spent eight years at
Harmonic, where he was
Klaus Graumann,
FOR-A Europe
European director of sales and
pre-sales.
Tor Karstensen has joined Bridge
Technologies as marketing and
design executive. Karstensen will
assume overall responsibility for the
visual identity and branding of
Bridge Technologies. Karstensen
has experience in visual branding
and online presence development for
clients including Sun Microsystems,
Deloitte, and Glaxo SmithKline.
Fairlight recently announced a
re-organisation of its corporate
structure, instigated by Fairlight
investor directors George Kepper,
Kenji Fukuda and Rodney Lowe.
Tino Fibaek, the man behind
Fairlight’s FPGA technology, has
taken over as general manager
from John Lancken, with responsibility for the company’s worldwide operations. Lancken has left
the company to pursue other interests. Senior development engineer
Gary Lamb takes over as R&D
manager, while Chris Pickard
becomes manufacturing manager.
Ken Barnsley has expanded his
role to direct worldwide sales and
marketing. He is assisted by
Andrew Bell, one of Fairlight’s
longest serving employees, as
marketing co-ordinator.
By Fergal Ringrose
as well as providing a diversity of
high quality content. Inter BEE,
which has been held 45 times since
its beginning in 1965, has achieved
great success, together with the
America’s NAB and Europe’s
IBC, in its role as a promoter of
broadcasting technology. As the
digital age continues to expand,
HDTV, which was developed and
FOR-A has expanded its
operations in Europe with
the appointment of Klaus
Graumann as business development manager in Germany,
reporting to FOR-A UK.
Well known in the broadcast
industry, Graumann creates a
direct contact for the German
broadcast industry that complements the existing services of
FOR-A’s local representative,
Penta Studiotechnik.
Harris Broadcast has appointed Olaf Brunswicker as regional
sales manager for Eastern Europe.
Based in Munich, Brunswicker
will be responsible for developing
partner, systems integrator and
customer relationships. He was
previously at Avid Technology.
RGB Networks has added
two new executives tasked with
developing and marketing video
solutions based on Internet
Protocol. Dr Yuval Fisher is
RGB’s new chief technology officer — and the company’s
European and Asia Pacific sales
organisations are now being
overseen by Rudi Polednik
in his role as senior director of
international sales. Previous to
RGB, Fisher and Polednik
worked together at Envivio.
Rosco has announced the
appointment
of
Matthias
Bohnenpoll as sales representative
for Germany. Bohnenpoll joins
Matthias Bohnenpoll,
Rosco Germany
Paul Gullett,
Snell
Mark Schubin, engineer-incharge at the Met Opera Media
Department, stated, “Screen
has been with us every step of
the way, even in the middle of
the night and on weekends.
Screen has always been
extremely responsive, no matter
what the question.”
www.screen.subtitling.com
promoted in Japan, has now
become a mission-critical broadcast media responsible for setting
worldwide trends.
Reaching record high figures
for domestic and foreign
exhibitors and visitors, last year’s
Inter Bee 2008 was a resounding
success. With hopes for recovery
increasing since last autumn following the bottoming out of the
world economic recession, Inter
BEE 2009 hopes to help further
promote a new digital age by once
again staging an exhibition that
showcases the latest technology.
www.inter-bee.com
Rosco with 10 years experience in
the entertainment industry.
Paul Gullett is Snell’s new global sales director. He joins Snell
having spent two-and-a-half years
at Tandberg running the company’s European sales organisation.
Prior to working with Tandberg,
Gullett spent 10 years at Sun
Microsystems in a variety of roles.
TransMedia Dynamics (TMD)
has appointed Paul Wilkins as solutions architect. Wilkins comes to
TMD from Ascent Media Systems:
previous to Ascent Media Wilkins
worked with Avid Technology,
Pinnacle Systems and Sony Broadcast in a range of system integration
and project management roles.
TSL recently announced a
multi-tier reorganisation of its
senior management team. Cofounder
David
MacGregor
becomes chairman, in order to
take an overview role within the
company. David Phillips moves
from CEO to managing director
and will continue to lead the overall management of the company.
David Webber joins TSL from
Red Bee Media as chief operating
officer. Julian Knight has been promoted to chief technology officer.
Chris Exelby and Rupert Bentley,
general manager of
TSL
Professional Products and TSL
finance director respectively, are
appointed as directors of TSL,
joining the above.
David Webber,
TSL COO
TVBE_FP
29/9/09
11:07
Page 1
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TVBE_Oct P6 flannel
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TVBEUROPE
Europe’s television technology business magazine
IBC business development
EDITORIAL
Editor Fergal Ringrose
tvbeurope@mediateam.ie
Media House, South County Business Park,
Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland
+3531 294 7783 Fax: +3531 294 7799
Editorial Consultant George Jarrett
Associate Editor David Fox
United States Correspondent
Ken Kerschbaumer
Contributors Mike Clark, David Davies,
Richard Dean, Chris Forrester, Carolyn Giardina,
Jonathan Higgins, Mark Hill, Dick Hobbs,
John Ive, Farah Jifri, Ian McMurray,
Ken Kerschbaumer, Heather McLean,
Bob Pank, Adrian Pennington, Nick Radlo,
Neal Romanek, Philip Stevens, Andy Stout,
Reinhard E Wagner
Digital Content Manager Tim Frost
Publisher Joe Hosken
ART & PRODUCTION
Group Production Editor Dawn Boultwood
Production Executive Phil Taylor
SALES
Group Sales Manager Steve Grice
steve.grice@ubm.com
+44 (0)20 7921 8307
UBM Ltd, Ludgate House,
245 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 9UR
Business Development Manager Alex Hall
alex.hall@ubm.com
+44 (0)20 7921 8305
US SALES
Michael Mitchell
Broadcast Media International, PO Box 44,
Greenlawn, New York, NY 11740
mjmitchell@broadcast-media.tv
+1 (631) 673 3199 Fax: +1 (631) 673 0072
JAPAN AND KOREA SALES
Sho Harihara
Sales & Project, Yukari Media Incorporated
sho@yukarimedia.com
+81 6 4790 2222 Fax: +81 6 4793 0800
CIRCULATION
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Free subscriptions
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© United Busienss Media Ltd 2009. All rights reserved. No part of this
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ISSN 1461-4197
6
IBC2009 Analysis
By Fergal Ringrose
At IBC last month one of our reporters on The IBC Daily, Bob
Charlton, spoke to Discovery Communications Executive Vice
President, Media Technology and Operations, John Honeycutt.
Reflecting on what he’d seen around the show Honeycutt said,
“At IBC this year I see a maturity in thinking about how the
broadcast industry will progress through the next several years.
Today, I saw a phrase ‘business process management’ which I
think is a very adult description of how people are thinking.”
Honeycutt is responsible for Discovery’s global strategic media
technology planning and governance. Reflecting on industry
change and the topic of broadcast/IT convergence he said, “I feel
confident that the industry is thinking seriously: this is not merely a technology migration — it is a DNA migration focusing on
how our industry works.
“When people started to implement this, they realised it was
not about technology but rather process and they learned to be
more mature and progressive in their thinking before implementation. Several decades ago, when our industry was built on the
back of analogue tape machines it was a very different installation
model. Today, it is a much more sophisticated methodology,
which requires more sophisticated thought processes on how you
plan to use technology.
“I believe that the broadcast industry is progressing and it is
investing money and effort wisely. This way of thinking will propel us forward: we will spend the right money in the right areas.”
Those ideas of maturity, business process management and
serious commercial thinking were picked up in another interview
Bob Charlton conducted at the show, this time with Harris
Broadcast Communications President Tim Thorsteinson. He
said, “customers are looking for equipment that helps them get
channels to air more cost-effectively, to improve the quality of
their programming — all in a more pragmatic way than in the
past… IBC, as an event, is a very efficient way to reach your customers. The exhibition is very competitive — there’s lots of
choice. To me, the industry looks very vibrant. It has done a good
job of adjusting to a smaller core market.”
Thorsteinson added, “If you look at IBC, travel budgets have
been cut substantially, so if people have authority to travel they
will probably be buying something. This show is being attended
by people that will buy within the next six months, which makes
it a great show for us.”
The days of vendors expecting a show like IBC to deliver huge
new walk-up sales leads straight off the show floor are surely
gone. Equally, the days of visitors expecting to find a hero box
that will double their turnover hidden along the side aisles are
(sadly!) also past. Instead, it turns out IBC is a place to talk business and do business.
The IBC organisers did a good job of managing the expectations of both groupings this year. Total pre-show registrations
were 74,353, just 3% down on 2008. Total attendee numbers were
45,547, just 7% down — and with a new on-site badge issue system
introduced by IBC, that figure really was accurate. Of those 45,547
attendees, 30,708 were delegates and 14,839 were from the supply
side — with percentage of delegates slightly up and suppliers
slightly down (telling us exhibitors sent less staff to populate the
stands). With less stand space in 2009 than 2008, this meant visitors per square metre of exhibit space did not drop this year.
What did drop were confirmed orders — and that’s where the
worldwide economic recession rears its head. Let’s take a look at
the numbers. At the end of the 2007 show, a total of 19,200sqm
of stand space had been booked for 2008. At the end of the 2008
show, 25,200sqm of stand space had been booked for 2009. But at
the end of the 2009 show, just 16,500sqm of stand space had been
booked for 2010.
This is actually the bottom line. IBC2009 really was an outstanding show, full of innovation and change and business development. This is an exciting market and there was a genuine
vibrancy and dynamism to this year’s IBC.
But thanks to the tough trading conditions for everyone in 2009,
the exhibitors who pay for floor space have to go back to their CFO
and make a business case in order to attend IBC2010 — the sign-off
couldn’t be given in Amsterdam last month. This year, the big names
to pull out of IBC were Sony, Snell and Vizrt. Next year, there will
undoubtedly be other similar withdrawals — and there will be more
of them for sure — as CFOs make the bottom line decision to pull
out of NAB or IBC or both on simple cost grounds.
To the Editor
Limiting the damage
Sir,
Having worked in the sound business for
around 40 years, I’m quite looking forward
to retirement. Sadly, in common with a
number of colleagues from my generation
of sound engineers, I’ll be blighted in that
promised land not only by the poverty that
is common to that group but, more seriously,
by the tinnitus and hearing loss that years
of over exposure to sound brings to so
many in that profession, especially from the
baby boomer era.
Now, listening to music (or any performance sound for that matter) live or recorded
is a pleasure that I would not wish to deny to
anyone, neither would I wish to perpetrate a
‘health & safety gone mad’ myth; but as
someone who lives with the curse of tinnitus
on a daily basis I would urge caution in the
way in which that music is enjoyed.
It is now widely accepted that exposure
to any sound above a particular level can
have long term consequences and that those
employed in the entertainment industry are
in a particularly vulnerable position. It’s
odd, isn’t it, that the sounds we create for
entertainment should be classed, for the
purposes of damage assessment, in the
same league as industrial noise? But the fact
is that it’s the
level of sound,
not its content,
which generally defines what
will cause hearKennedy: Those in the
ing damage.
H a v i n g entertainment business
been associated are particularly vulnerable
with Canford
for nearly 30 of my 40 years in the sound
business, I have watched with interest as the
industry slowly came to realise the damage
that such an apparently enjoyable experience could be causing and the way in which
it has reacted. Whilst the heavy engineering,
mining and shipbuilding industries had
recognised the problems and implemented
basic protection technologies much earlier,
the entertainment sound and broadcast
industry have been behind the curve.
As has often been the case, the BBC
considered the issues ahead of many in the
industry and as early as the beginning of the
’80s introduced the concept of the ‘headphone limiter’. Spurred on by increased
awareness and, yes, regulation!, commercial
companies began to develop ever more
sophisticated hearing protection products
with selective attenuation and frequency
characteristics which can even be used by
professional musicians in live performance.
It is surprising, over 20 years after their
introduction, that headphone limiters are
resisted by quite such a large number of
practitioners. Yes, they can influence the
quality of the sound, yes, they can be expensive but they can limit overall level in a
robust way that avoids any user interference
and so can help in preventing long term over
exposure. It’s also the case that only a few
users need the ability to make quality assessments via headphones and the cost argument is ‘chicken and egg’ as the cost is influenced by the demand.
Canford will continue to further develop
the range of limited headphones, together
with offering a wider range of alternative
hearing protection products in the years to
come, based on the simple premise (and
from bitter experience) that, in the absence
of a cure, prevention is the best medicine.
Further helpful (and much more technical) information is available at:
www.dontlosethemusic.com/home/
www.hse.gov.uk/noise/index.htm
Yours etc.
Chas Kennedy
Chief executive
Canford Audio
TVBE_FP
29/5/09
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TVBE_Oct P8-16 Survey v3
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TVBEU R O PE N E W S & A N A LY S I S
TVBEurope Reader Survey 2009
in partnership with Harris Broadcast Communications Division
Would you like to know the answers to the following questions:
What are the twin drivers for the broadcast technology marketplace in 2009? Where is 3D on your horizon? How important is
1080p/50? What products are you most likely to purchase next
year? Who are you — where do you work? The industry is going
tapeless — but how much tape is still out there? What mix of HD
and SD do you operate? What are the most important factors
8
when buying systems and products? What’s going to impact your
business the most in 2009 and beyond? What are the outsourcing
trends? Which new workhorse production format would you
choose? What are the detailed imperatives in moving to tapeless
operation? What’s on your operational wish list for the future?
Turn over the page and read on! — Fergal Ringrose, Editor
TVBE_FP
12/10/09
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13/10/09
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Tapeless Workflows and HD Migration are top priorities
for broadcasters in an industry on the road to recovery
By Ian Collis, marketing director
EMEA of Harris Broadcast
Communications
What is your role in equipment purchasing? Do you... (tick one)
TVBEurope Reader
Survey 2009
The business issues
Who are you and
how do you purchase?
We asked those submitting the
survey to tell us their role in equipment purchasing. And as you can
see, almost 90% of respondents
either specify products to be purchased, approve/authorise the
purchase, research products for
purchase or allocate the funds.
Less than 10% of our survey
respondents answered ‘none of the
above’ or ‘no answer’.
Then we asked ‘What is the
nature of the organisation in which
you work?’. A healthy 32% of
respondents come from a TV
broadcast network/station/channel, followed by over 10% each
from post production houses, systems integrators and TV production companies. Around 5% of
respondents each work with equipment suppliers/dealers, educational/
government TV, playout and headend service providers, freelance
engineer/consultants and outside
broadcast providers. Very small
numbers came from audio
post/recording studios, satellite
networks, equipment rental,
and freelance craft/technicians.
Happily, ‘no answer’ or ‘other
answer’ again came in below 10%
in our survey, giving us a very good
representative spread of respondent across the business. Given
that a total of 427 people undertook our survey, we believe we can
claim the definitive survey into the
European broadcasting technology business environment in 2009.
What will you buy?
In our previous Reader Survey,
published in June 2007, we asked
the question ‘When evaluating
products/systems for purchase,
what importance to you attach to
the following factors?’ At that time,
the order of importance was
‘Technical specification’, followed
by ‘Vendor/supplier support and
service’, ‘Compatibility with other
products/systems’, ‘Ability to
achieve business goals’ and ‘Return
on investment’.
The broadcast industry has faced
tremendous difficulties over the
past year, and the results of this
comprehensive industry survey
indicate that broadcasters are rising to the challenge. Topics such
as tapeless workflows, high definition (both 1080i and 1080p)
and multiplatform delivery are
clearly at the forefront of everyone’s minds as broadcasters look
toward a positive future.
At a time when budgets are
tighter than ever, nearly 60% of
respondents in the survey said that
a fully tapeless environment is at
the top of their wish-list, and nearly a quarter stated they have
already transitioned to a tapeless
workflow. Reducing costs and
improving quality were cited as key
motivators for migrating to filebased workflows, and technology
solutions such as automation,
media asset management and tapeless storage — which enable content to move from capture to consumer in the most efficient way —
play a critical role in helping broadcasters achieve these objectives..
The ability to profit from allnew revenue opportunities further
bolsters the importance of tapeless
workflow. Survey results show
that mobile TV, IPTV and the
digital switchover are becoming
increasingly important, and an
automated workflow is crucial to
enabling the delivery of content to
many different channels. No matter what method of delivery is
chosen, linking all of the steps in
the content chain into a single,
streamlined process enables broadcasters to more efficiently and
affordably control all the stages of
content workflow management.
Smart media asset management
was also identified by respondents
as a key to success in today’s market, and Harris is committed to this
So how has the weight of
importance shifted in the last two
years? Our graph will show you
that all five factors are almost
equal now — but if you add the
Very Important and Important
categories together you can see
that Vendor/supplier support and
service is paramount, followed by
Ability to achieve business goals
and then Technical specification.
Further down the scale are
Compatibility with other products and lastly Return on investment. Did you ever imagine the
day would come when ‘technical
specification’ is listed third
amongst the factors for evaluation in equipment/systems purchase? This really emphasises the
growing trend amongst broadcasters and facilities to form partnerships with vendors; the desire
for a two-way, collaboration
10
Ian Collis: rising to the challenge
process in our approach to media
workflows — from ingest, sales &
scheduling through to delivery to
new platforms. Examples of this
commitment are evident across
our portfolio, including Harris
Automation, which is the most
widely deployed automation system in the world, and our Invenio
digital asset management, which
provides a platform to manage the
entire content lifecycle.
Also key to smart media asset
management is interoperability,
which is central to the Harris way
of working. Not only are we
heavily involved in industry standardisation efforts such as BXF,
we have also invested several million dollars into the Harris
Interoperability Lab in Toronto,
which focuses entirely on system
and solution verification.
It is clear from the survey that
high definition is top of mind for
today’s broadcaster, and those
who are investing in HD are keen
to protect their investment for the
move to 1080p — without breaking their budgets. Harris recognises this need. If Harris products
are not already 1080p-enabled,
then many include a software key
that allows customers to easily
make the switch to 3 Gbps without any further equipment investment — and without any significant engineering cost in doing so.
Harris 3Gbps solutions address
not only the capital cost of
purchasing future-proof equipment, but also the larger operational costs around the migration.
For example, our Platinum router
offers unique technology such as
audio embedding/de-embedding
or integrated fibre conversion
within the router itself, which
results in greatly reduced installation costs, along with less wiring,
lower power consumption and a
smaller footprint. This advanced
technology and unique feature-set
enable broadcasters to affordably
and efficiently meet the increased
demands of HD and 1080p
production — particularly in the
Outside Broadcast environment.
The key to overcoming these
challenging times is for broadcasters to invest in change wisely,
which means partnering with
manufacturers who understand
the critical issues not only of
today, but also of the future.
Harris is the only supplier that can
help broadcasters bridge the gap
between traditional broadcast
environments and IT environments through our server architecture, tight software control and
seamless integration among our
advanced media workflow solutions. The result is next-generation
technology that enables broadcasters to profit from emerging
business models — technology
such as Dynacast, which links linear broadcasting to the Internet
by allowing broadcasters to synchronise Web content with live or
pre-recorded programming.
Working with suppliers of solutions based on solid, future-proof
technology — which also enable
broadcasters to make money from
their existing assets and deliver
content to viewers at a lower cost
base — is essential to successfully
navigating an industry speeding
toward total media convergence.
Thank you for participating
in this survey and for your valued feedback.
When evaluating products/systems for purchase, what importance do
you attach to the following factors. (Please rate according to importance
1 = least important 5 = most important)
rather than a one-way buy-andsell relationship.
Are there other important buying factors in the process we asked,
to gather further response. The
answers were ‘competitive price,
‘cost and size’, ‘ease of operation’,
‘ease of use (low learning curve)’, ‘is
TVBE_FP
13/10/09
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TVBEurope Reader
Survey 2009
the company viable for the future?’,
‘number of trained users or operators’, ‘proven to work with other
vendors’, and ‘system design’.
In order to elicit buying trends,
we also asked you ‘What types of
equipment is your organisation
most likely to purchase/update in
the next 12 months (tick all that
apply). Five product categories
polled over 30% response: leading
the way is tapeless cameras, followed
by monitors, editing systems, camera lenses and test and measure.
And over 20% of you said your
organisation is likely to buy
archive/offline storage, networking
systems, monitoring & control, HD
upconverters, on-air video servers,
media asset management, graphics
and routing switchers in the next
12 months. Over 15% indicated
they were likely to purchase vision
mixers, audio equipment, camera
support and master control &
branding. Likely to purchase: but
will it really happen?
currently outsource?’ The results
point to a rapidly changing — and
fracturing — broadcast business.
A sizeable 30% say they currently
outsource Acquisition & Production, followed by 25% for
Contribution & Links in second
place. Playout & Delivery (which
one might have thought would top
the poll) comes a distant third at
20%, followed by Storage, System
Automation & Control, Audio
and then Test, QC & Monitoring.
The results speak of an evolving
business, where third parties
(including SIs) are taking on more
of the process and, equally importantly, more of the risk involved in
broadcast operation.
Looking specifically at the storage sector, we asked ‘Which tapeless storage brands (VTR replacements and servers) are used in your
facility?’. Avid came out on top at
30%, followed by Omneon and
Sony neck and neck at 20%, EVS
at 18% and then Thomson Grass
Valley, Panasonic, HewlettPackard and IBM. Granted,
‘Other Answers’ amounted to over
30%, and unfortunately we didn’t
capture this data — so this question can be viewed simply as a
snapshot of storage installations
among our respondents rather
than a definitive breakdown.
Acquisition &
Production
Going tapeless: but how
much tape is out there?
First up, we shouldn’t propose or
assume that being ‘totally tapeless’ is always desirable, or a necessary objective for every media
business. Our question, ‘how
much tape is still in your facility’
was designed to simply tell us
where the European broadcast
industry is now on the continuum
from tape-based to tapeless. It’s
one of the two most important
shifts in the business now: IT
workflow and HD broadcasting.
Tape is a practical and costeffective solution for many media
operations, and will remain so for
some time to come; that’s why we find
that ‘Mostly tape-based’ and ‘Tape
and digital mixture’ currently adds
up to nearly 70% of the business.
But would you have thought
that 25% of respondents would
tick the ‘We’re totally tapeless’ box?
That’s a pretty impressive figure,
and reaffirms our current editorial
focus on the file-based workflow.
What will really be interesting is to
see how those graphs change over
the next two years; do you think
they will reverse, so that ‘We’re
totally tapeless’ will be up to 70%
of respondents by 2011?
Which media formats
are used in your facility?
What aspect of the media landscape will make the biggest impact on your
business in 2009 and beyond? (tick all that apply)
Again, let’s not declare the death
of tape just yet. We know that
non-tape has overtaken tape-
The business is going tapeless; but how much tape is still in your facility? (tick one)
What media formats are used in your facility? (tick all that apply)
based camera purchase for the
first time in Europe in 2009 — see
The IBC Daily Sunday 13
September issue front cover —
but our survey shows videotape is
still at the heart of operations and
will remain so until the CFO has
amortised that investment.
Videotape is the most used format
in Europe at over 60%, followed
by removable hard drives, solid
state media and optical disks.
What’s the most used
video production format?
Assuming tape-based acquisition formats dominate operations (which they do), which
format is king? The answer is
clearly Digital Betacam, which
has been the industry workhorse
for over 15 years and remains so
today. The trusty DigiBeta
What’s going to impact
your business the most?
The question ‘What aspect of the
media landscape will make the
biggest impact on your business
in 2009 and beyond?’ was very
much a bottom line query from
our perspective. What is uppermost in your mind in relation to
where the business is going? The
answers are clear, with ‘Transition
to HD’ and ‘Tapeless production’
way out in front with over 50%
and over 40% respectively. These
are the twin peaks in our business
in 2009. They are followed by
‘IPTV’ with over 20% and
‘Digital Switchover’ with 15%.
Perhaps surprisingly, ‘Mobile TV’
and ‘Imperative for 360 delivery’
yield less than 10% each — so it
would seem that new platform
delivery is subsidiary to concerns
about the move to file-based high
definition output.
What are the
outsourcing trends?
The days when broadcasters controlled all aspects of the content
chain themselves — from acquisition to quality control — are long
gone, according to our 2009
Reader Survey. We asked you
‘What areas of the business do you
13
14/10/09
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TVBEurope Reader
Survey 2009
polled nearly 20% of our votes,
and was head and shoulders
above DVCAM in second place
and HDV in third — both with
over 10%. Dropping below that
mark, next in line is HDCAM,
followed closely by MPEG IMX
and XDCAM. Following that
trio is P2, followed by DVCPRO
50, XDCAM EX, HDCAM SR,
Beta SP, DVCPRO 25, DVCPRO
HD and Betacam. Bringing up
the rear in 2009 are Red,
Panasonic D-5, S-VHS and D-1.
Bet you didn’t know there were
that many formats still in use out
there! Businesses continue to use
workhorse equipment long after
the vendors tell us it is entirely
obsolete (hence we’re not at
all surprised to see Beta SP
still in the production mix).
Nevertheless, you can expect to
see a number of those video formats vanish from our industry
radar over the next two years.
Which ‘new’ workhorse
format would you choose?
Our next question was ‘If you
were to adopt a production
format now, which one would be
top of the list?’ (tick one).
Panasonic P2 HD takes the tape
at 22%, followed by XDCAM
at 20% and XDCAM EX at 8%
— but of course if you combine
those Sony varieties the
XDCAM format comes out on
top. DVCAM was next at 7% followed by DVCPRO at 6.5%.
Other formats receiving first
preference votes were Grass
Valley Infinity, JVC ProHD and
Ikegami GFCAM. Our followon question was, ‘When will all
your cameras (if you have
cameras) operate file-based
If you were to adopt a ‘workhorse’ production format now,
which one would be top of the list? (tick one)
capture?’ Mirroring the ‘We’re
totally tapeless’ answer in the
‘Going Tapeless’ question, a
strong 25% of respondents
replied ‘Already file-based capture’. These two answers combined indicate that 75% of
European broadcast operators
are currently on the hybrid road,
looking to extract the best from
their videotape legacy while
preparing for and adapting to
tapeless workflows and file
flows. As if to confirm that
impression, a further 30% of
respondents answered ‘Next purchase will be file-based only’, while
15% answered ‘Next purchase
will adopt most cost-effective
media, no matter what that is.’
imminent launch — it’s probably
on the shelf till 2010 at best…
The survey figures tell us that
just 10% of respondents operate
100% in high definition. 20%
operate totally in SD, and 65%
operate a ‘Mix of SD and HD’.
If 85% of the industry is not
operating fully in HD, then there
is still a long way to go in the HD
transition! Should we assume,
though, that the HD transition
means 100% transition to HD?
(Should we assume, equally, that
the tapeless transition means
100% transition to tapeless?) The
answer is probably Yes, to both,
based on a further assumption
that the CFO will no longer
allow videotape or SD purchases
to be made.
The other thing to note is that,
in Europe at least, the transition
to HD is a slow one. In our last
Reader Survey, conducted April
2007, 8% said they were already
fully high definition, 51% operated
Your current facilities; what mix of SD and HD do you have? (tick one)
High definition now
and into the future
What mix of SD and
HD do you operate?
Can any broadcast facility of any
kind afford to think they don’t or
won’t have to operate fully in high
definition — even if they don’t ‘go’
HD, in terms of delivery to the
home, in the foreseeable future?
Given the current economic climate, if you’re not operating an
HD broadcasting service already
you’re unlikely to be planning an
a mixed SD/HD environment and
41% remained in standard definition only. The move from SD to a
mixed environment is steady, but
there is no great leap into full HD
as yet in Europe.
What’s the story with
1080p 3G?
There’s more to the HD transition
than meets the eye. We asked the
question ‘Do you think it’s important to build 3Gbps 1080p/50 production headroom into your operation’? We asked because we really
weren’t sure whether this was considered by you to be (a) a pie-in-thesky luxury, (b) an avoidable vendordriven expense or (c) a necessary
upgrade that needs to be written
into forward budgets. Well, turns
out it’s the latter. An amazing 50%
of respondents replied ‘Yes, when
the time comes to upgrade’, along
with an impressive 15% saying ‘Yes
and we’ve already done so’. Really
surprising responses. True, 20% of
you said ‘Don’t think so, won’t need
that headroom’ and 5% said ‘No,
1080p is just a vendor device to
push up prices’. But that means
95% of you don’t think 1080p is just
a vendor device to push up prices!
That obliged us to add a followup, ‘Do you think you should pay
a premium when purchasing
3Gbps 1080p/50 HD equipment?’
Well that only washed with 15%
who said ‘Yes it’s higher spec so we
accept we’ll have to pay more’.
Instead, 55% said ‘No, 1080p
equipment should cost the same as
regular HD kit’, while over 20%
replied ‘We’re holding off on 1080p
purchase for foreseeable future’.
What’s on your
operational wish list?
We picked out some of the leading ‘wish-list’ areas out there, and
asked our readers for a multiple
answer response — to see where
Do you think its important to build 3GBps 1080p/50 production
headroom into your operation? (tick one)
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TVBEurope Reader
Survey 2009
their priorities lie for the future.
The two top answers, to be ‘Fully
tapeless and file-based’ and
‘Fully HD through the chain’,
both with over 50%, allow us to
confirm our suppositions and
give us clear editorial direction
for the future. However,
‘Lowering energy consumption’
came in with 40%; that’s an area
that has received very little industry debate or discussion, a situation that needs to change for us
and for other industry discussion
platforms. And again 1080p
infrastructure is firmly on the
Is 3D a live issue yet?
In answer to the question Is 3D
TV on your horizon now?’ under
15% replied, ‘Yes we’re actively
researching the opportunities for
3D; 20% replied, ‘Yes we’re looking at the possibility but still a
long way off; just over 20%
replied, ‘Don’t know: it not something we’re considering’; and
nearly 40% said, ‘No, 3D is not
on our horizon at all’. The ‘No
Answer’ column came in at 5%. If
you put all that together you get,
perhaps surprisingly, an underwhelming view of 3D TV possibilities. Granted our survey was
conducted before IBC — where
3D was very much the hottest
debate topic at the show — but
the response would suggest we
conclude that no, 3D is not
Why do facilities want to work
in a tapeless environment — what
are the key drivers? We asked you
to grade a serious of statements
according to importance. If we
combine the ‘important’ and ‘very
important’ responses, the strongest
driver by far is ‘Ability to produce
better content faster’ — in fact a
full 50% of you gave this the highest mark. The second strongest column is ‘Cost savings in tape,
VTRs’, followed quite closely by
‘Breaking down old/outdated
working practices’. The fourth column, ‘Staff headcount reduction’,
came a long way behind, suggesting that organisations are looking
to release the working benefits of
tapeless rather than using that
transition upheaval as a reason or
excuse to reduce headcount.
With this question we also
gave respondents an open-ended
option to tell us other reasons for
moving to tapeless. This produced a lot of very interesting
feedback comment, among which
What is the key to a successful implementation of tapeless working? (Please
rank according to importance. 1 = not important 5 = very important)
metadata and ability to search
media’, ‘faster turnaround for
delivery’, ‘reducing and saving
time’, ‘reduction of maintenance
costs’, ‘replacing old equipment’,
‘serving customers who are tapeless’, ‘space saving’, ‘tape stock
One might have thought people issues would
come right at the top of the list — but they
don’t. Have we reached the tipping point where
convincing the workforce to accept tapeless
operation is no longer an issue?
Which of the following is on your operational wist list
for the future (tick all that apply)
European agenda, polling over
20% on the wish-list meter.
We also took the opportunity
of this Reader Survey to ask the
question, ‘Equipment manufacturers tell us that new LCD monitors are now (finally) good
enough to replace those Grade 1
CRT monitors. What’s your opinion?’ Well, it looks like the manufacturers still have some work to
do; well over 50% said ‘The gap is
closing but there’s still a gap’,
while roughly 12% said either
‘No, display performance is still
not there’ or ‘LCDs will never
replace the quality of CRTs’.
Nevertheless, a notable 25% of
you said ‘Yes the new LCDs are
good enough now — not an issue’.
For the monitor makers, it’s a case
of a lot done, but more to do…
16
was ‘archiving for the future’, collaborative workflow in post’,
‘compatibility with major stations in the area’, ‘data transfer
country to country’, ‘enhanced
near end of life’, ‘to be able to
connect to production houses’,
‘to be able to accept file delivery’
and ‘yes, files can be moved over
networks’. We would think that if
actually a live issue yet. Perhaps
that’s because bottom line survival is really the only industry
driver that really matters in 2009,
whereas 3D is perceived by
broadcasters as speculative,
intangible, distant, expensive, not
a money spinner? That’s not the
way Hollywood views 3D; but
then different rules and constraints apply to broadcasters.
More questions than answers on
3D, at this stage.
File-based operation
and MAM
Why move to tapeless?
For you, what is the imperative
in moving to tapeless in your
operation?
For you, what is the imperative in moving to tapeless in your operation?
(Please rank according to importance 1 = not important 5 = very important)
you’re looking to sell anyone the
benefits of tapeless, we’ve got
your definitive list of end-user
endorsements right here!
What’s the key to success
with tapeless workflows?
We also wanted to get a feel for
the successful implementation of
file-based operation, as well as
remaining barriers to its adoption. You can see from our graph
that most importance is clearly
assigned to ‘Smart media asset
management’ when it comes to
tapeless, followed closely by ‘Full
interoperability of equipment’.
Of lesser importance to our
respondents,
clearly,
are
‘Developing media managers for
the workflow’ and ‘Staff buy-in,
not imposed from above’.
Very interesting indeed: these
answers would suggest that staff
resistance or fear of change are not
the insurmountable barriers they
once were. One might have thought
people issues would come right at
the top of the list — but they don’t.
Have we reached the tipping point
where the tapeless workflow is so
pervasive that convincing the
workforce to accept its introduction is no longer an issue?
Our auxiliary question would
seem to strengthen that impression. We asked ‘What barriers are
still blocking the way to fully
tapeless operation?’ Again, ‘Full
equipment interoperability’ came
out way ahead with nearly 70%
listing it as ‘very important’ or
‘important’ (about an equal split).
In second place was ‘Finding
technical staff who understand
broadcast and IT’ — which is
clearly not the same as ‘staff buyin’. Of much lesser importance
was ‘Preventing the movement of
wrong media to wrong place at
wrong time’, and even less so for
‘Managing staff access to the
workflow/interface’. Again we
asked for further open-ended
comment, which yielded replies
such as ‘Cheap staff’, ‘demand
from clients’, ‘no money’, ‘not all
suppliers can deliver tapeless’,
‘ownership of the content trail’,
‘price’, ‘quality of pictures and
file editing eg layback of sound
mixes’ and ‘widely adopted HD
mezzanine format’.
TVBE_FP
5/10/09
10:06
Page 1
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TVBE_Oct P18-28 Best of 2009 v3
13/10/09
15:56
Page 18
TVBEU R O PE B E S T O F I B C 2 0 0 9 E D I T O R S ’ AWA R D S
Despite the recession, the pace of innovation in the broadcast industry remains high, and IBC2009 saw
hundreds of new technology developments, all the way along the production chain from lens to viewer.
The best of these allow you to achieve more, for less, or answer problems you may not have even recognised
you had. There was significant activity in 3D production, and the whole area of integrating TV with the web and
mobile has moved from years of barely functioning beta tests to real tools that broadcasters are investing in.
David Fox followed up and distilled our ‘top 50’ Best of IBC2009 Editors’ Awards list from the suggestions of our
entire combined IBC Daily and TVBEurope editorial team at this year’s show.
For-A/Brainstorm — VRCAM
Plug-in: This can deliver virtual
camera moves in a virtual set
without the need for position
sensors on the camera or tripod.
“We can just use a standard camera, locked off, with no sensors,”
said Ray Barnard, engineering
manager, For-A UK. “We use
Brainstorm software with a ForA control system to create the
illusion of a virtual studio.” It
saves on set up time and cost,
and the system can take up to
four cameras (of which one can
have sensors if you wish). Each
Better than botox: Relativity smoothes out grainy details in Super 16 film
Production + Post
Production Systems
Arri — Relativity: Super 16 is
unsuitable for HD production; its
grain is just too obvious, which is
why the film format has been generally rejected for HD production
by broadcasters. However, this
can be solved by Relativity, a
digital post production system
that can remove grain entirely,
reduce it, or add it, to match
different formats.
various formats and standards.
www.ensembledesigns.com
Euphonix — MC Color: This
compact, low cost controller for
colour grading is designed for use
with Apple’s Color 1.5 software
(part of Final Cut Studio). It
attaches to a Mac via Euphonix’
Ethernet EuCon control protocol
and has high resolution optical
trackballs, optical trackwheels,
touch-sensitive encoders and various programmable keys.
www.grassvalley.com
EVS makes play for the studio
with its touch-screen Insio
software, including on-screen
jog/shuttle wheel
review shots (while still recording), create clips, and add descriptive metadata, while offering a
high level of integration with post
production (Avid and Apple).
With EVS’ recent move into news
too (its new Xedio systems for
studio-based news and sports),
it now covers the complete range
of production.
www.evs.tv
www.euphonix.com
www.arri.com
Ensemble Designs — BrightEye
Mitto: Web video clips are
increasingly being used for TV
shows, and this small scan
onverter and up-/down-converter
will make it a simpler, higherquality process, outputting
even 3Gbps HD signals in
Grass Valley — K2 Dyno
Director: A scalable control
system for its K2 Dyno replay
equipment that makes operation
easier and quicker, and allows
one person to access and
collate the output of multiple
Dynos, making it particularly
suitable for compiling highlights
packages. It can be controlled
from the K2 Dyno shuttle
interface or via a touch-screen
(which can also access Grass
Valley switchers for transitions
and effects).
EVS — Insio: The sports replay
specialist has added near-live and
pre-recorded multi-camera studio
production to its repertoire with
its easy-to-use Insio multi-cam
ingest software. It has been
designed for fast turnaround
between shooting and editing,
and allows productions to quickly
Making web video look good: The BrightEye Mitto
For-A — FRC-8000 Frame Rate
Converter: A standards converter
that is particularly impressive at
handling difficult subjects, such as
fast-moving sports. It also scores
in how it deals with compression
artefacts and converting progressive formats. It costs about one
third less than its main competitor.
camera can have eight virtual
pre-set positions, with moves
between them.
www.for-a.com
www.for-a.com
Sensor sensibility: VRCAM removes the need for sensors on tripods or lenses
The FRC-8000: Gives standards conversion a sporting chance
Living the high light:
K2 Dyno Director
Making the grade more affordable: Euphonix’ new MC Color
Grass Valley — T2 iDDR: This
Intelligent Digital Disk Recorder
is designed principally for live
events and costs less than
€10,000. “But, at this price point,
I’m sure there will be lots of
broadcasters interested,” said
Grass Valley CTO, Ray Baldock
(pictured). It has full 1920x1080
support with up to 200Mbps,
4:2:2, I-frame recording, and
can record one HD channel
while playing out two HD
(1080p24/25/30,
1080i50/60,
720p50/60) or SD channels, and
18
13/10/09
16:30
Page 19
TVBEU R O PE B E S T O F I B C 2 0 0 9 E D I T O R S ’ AWA R D S
Infrastructure
Machine intelligence: Grass Valley’s T2 is affordable and flexible
Bryant Broadcast — intelligent
power panel: It can “give users
advance warning of possible
power supply failure” of any
device in a rack “so they can
replace it before it actually
fails”, and tracks how each
system performs over time,
Power ranger: Quill with Bryant’s
intelligent mains distributor,
controller and monitor
according to Simon Quill, technical manager. “You can do this
with expensive power analysis
equipment, but this comes as standard with our new mains unit.”
The programmable mains unit
goes at the top of a rack and distributes, controls and monitors
do transitions and effects. Two
channels can be locked together
for synchronised playback. It also
has all the main codecs and interfaces as AV users need to be able
to cope with any sort of file and
format, and has a large touchscreen for ease of use. Each
channel includes eight channels
of embedded audio, plus two
channels of AES/EBU and two
XLR connectors.
www.grassvalley.com
In Teragator: On-screen menus and
filters make it easy to find the
content you want
IPV — Teragator: This new relational metadata aggregation and
management engine, can find content on any database in the organisation, and will also intelligently
trawl the internet to identify appropriate clips and data. It will aggregate metadata sources and data
mining services to identify and
manage relational links between
assets and shows them on its graphical user interface.
www.ipv.com
Quantel opens the Gateway: Owen
demonstrates how Final Cut Pro can
be integrated with its sQ server
Quantel — Final Cut Pro
Gateway (sQ workflow integration): FCP users can now be
fully integrated with Quantel’s sQ
server. The sQ serves up virtualised QuickTime clips to FCP,
allowing full access to them, even
if they are still being recorded,
and allowing FCP to finish projects started on the journalist
desktop with Quantel’s Low Bit
Rate editors. “Then we use a
‘Publish to Quantel’ plug-in [in
FCP] to move only any new
frames to sQ, which makes it the
quickest possible way” to transfer
media, explained Steve Owen,
director of marketing. The resulting video can be played out
instantly from sQ in high or standard definition.
www.quantel.com
19
13/10/09
15:57
Page 20
TVBEU R O PE B E S T O F I B C 2 0 0 9 E D I T O R S’ AWA R D S
at the factory so you only buy the cross
points you need, so it is very cost effective.
If you need 9x22, you’d normally have to
buy 24x24, but now you just have to buy
the exact number of inputs and outputs
you need,” said Ian Prowse, director,
Vortex Communications (its distributor).
It is available with ST or optional LC connectors, and can cope with VGA,
3G/HD/SD-SDI, composite, component
and S-video, Gigabit Ethernet and more.
It works with both single mode and multimode fibre without needing separate
interface cards.
www.commspecial.com
www.vtx.co.uk
Configure skater: The Fiberlink Matrix OM32 fibre-optic router
Digital Rapids — MediaMesh: “It’s like an
email system for video,” which efficiently
delivers HD, SD or Digital Cinema content, with automation taking care of routine tasks, explained Wesley Thiessen,
product manager. Content can be taken
straight to broadcast, “and some broadcasters without direct HD equipment can
play it to air as HD. It gives you the full HD
file-based workflow you had in SD.” It uses
Digital Rapids C2 data delivery framework
for security, guaranteed delivery and speed,
using satellite or terrestrial IP-based networks. It is particularly useful for delivering commercials, or programming to
regional affiliates, and has straightforward
touch-screen control.
the power to all devices. It can also control power down in the event of mains
failure, to keep the UPS going as long as
possible. “It means the engineer can go
and find the problem rather than turning
off units to keep the system alive.” The 1in/12-out units will be available by year
end for about £700. There will also be 2in/10-out units with auto changeover
between two power supplies.
www.bryant-broadcast.co.uk
Communications Specialties — Fiberlink
Matrix OM-32: A fully-configurable,
SMPTE compliant (including 3G), 32x32
fibre-optic signal router that allows users
to configure the number of inputs and
outputs in any fashion. “It is configurable
why the AluLite series is half of the weight
of standard metal connectors.
www.fischerconnectors.ch
Lemo Connectors — Multishack: This
remote connection box will allow broadcasters to run up to six cameras in a remote
location (each more than 1km from the box
itself), and run power to the camera. It has
a dual redundant power supply that automatically switches should a generator cut
out. The waterproof box can be 10-15km
from the CCU, depending on the power
budget for the camera system, and is
designed to run on a military tactical cable
with 12 fibres in it that runs to the CCU
end, where a small box converts it to individual camera connections. “Because it’s a
single fibre cable, it doesn’t get hot, which
is very useful for skiing coverage as it doesn’t melt into the snow like ordinary cable,”
explained Philip Longhurst, Lemo’s fibre
optics R&D manager.
www.lemo.com
www.digital-rapids.com
Rapid response: Thiessen demonstrates the
MediaMesh touch-screen control interface
Out of the red and into the blue:
Telecast Fiber’s TeleCube modular interfaces
Fischer goes to extremes to make the
connection: The light-weight AluLite
Fischer Connectors — Extreme range of
connectors/AluLite: Its new range of
“extreme” products are able to withstand
ocean depths of 100m, crash tests, explosions, melting heat, vibrations, deep-freeze
temperatures, salt water spray, sand
storms, torrential rains, and rapid rivers.
These include its ultra-light AluLite connectors, the newly improved, waterproof
1051 Triax, and cable assemblies. In some
extreme environments, weight also matters
(such as on unmanned aerial vehicles,
where every 100g saved in weight increases
flight time by about one hour), which is
Telecast Fiber — TeleCube modular media
interface and Rattler 3G: The tiny red
(transmit) and blue (receive) BNC or fibre
optic i/o modules are designed to be fitted
by OEMs to their broadcast products
(Marshall is using them for its video monitors), especially for 3Gbps use. Telecast is
also using the TeleCube for its own Rattler
3G fibre-optic transport, which can be
used anywhere you need a long cable run.
www.telecast-fiber.com
3D
Element Technica — 3D rigs (Neutron/
Proton/Quasar): Three new 3D camera
kits that weigh and cost less, and promise
“to bring 3D acquisition down to the
Multishacked up: Longhurst with Lemo’s latest remote connection box
20
TVBE_FP 29/6/09 10:45 Page 1
#25504 TVB Europe Bob K ad:Layout 26/06/2009 09:52 Page 1
www.aja.com
“On every shoot, AJA helps me deliver
the highest quality.”
Bob Kertesz
Chief Technical Partner, BlueScreen LLC.
With a 30-year reputation for quality, Bob Kertesz
relies on AJA at the heart of his workflow.
As Chief Technical Partner at BlueScreen LLC., Kertesz specializes in
high-end compositing of live images. In fast-paced environments his
array of AJA converters and the FS1 ensure he can meet whatever
format and equipment challenges he faces. “A client shows up with an
HD tape for an SD project? No problem,” he explains. “He wants to
integrate 720p footage into a 1080i show? No problem. He brings a
camera with only component outputs and I need digital? No problem.”
HD/SD Audio/Video Frame Synchronizer and Converter
• SD/HD up/down conversion
• SD/SD aspect ratio conversion
• HD/HD cross conversion (720p/1080i)
• Dual HD/SD SDI Inputs and Outputs
• Component Analog HD/SD Input and Output
• Closed Caption Support
F S 1 .
B e c a u s e
i t
For a recent series of promotional spots for NBC’s Amercian Gladiators,
Kertesz created on-set pre-visualization compositing taking a feed from
a Vision Research Phantom HD Camera. “Because of the tight
turnaround time, and the talent involved, it was essential that we were
working with equipment that was reliable and fast. The camera didn’t
genlock, so we had to have an on-set solution to feed its footage into
the HD Ultimatte 11. The FS1 was essential for that purpose.”
Find out more about AJA products at - www.aja.com
m a t t e r s .
14/10/09
11:02
Page 22
with scrub scan. “It can record
two synchronised HD-SDI channels, and can play out 3D images
on a larger monitor. It overlays
the two independent channels,
and can record and playback synchronised or independently,”
explained Hal Reisiger, CEO. It
records onto 2.5-inch disk or solidstate drives using JPEG 2000.
A dual-channel system costs
$20,000, and one was sold at IBC
for use on a parachute jump with
as the mirror reduces light transmission and can cause aberrations,
“which means you can’t use mirrors to broadcast live because you
need to fix the aberrations in post.
But, the X3 allows you to use 3D
for live productions,” explained
Consuelo Pedregal Pérez, international sales manager. It costs from
€65,000 for a ready-to-use package, which can is upgradeable for
motion control.
www.kronomav.com
Making 3D as simple as 2D: Two
Red Ones in Element Technica’s
new 3D rig
simplicity of traditional 2D production.” They are configurable
into both beam splitter and
parallel camera platforms, and
are scaled to fit popular cameras
from the tiny SI-2K Mini
(Neutron) to full size Red
Ones with zoom lenses (Quasar).
The
machined
aluminium
rigs require no tools for camera
alignment or mounting. Alignment adjustments are made linearly in each of three axes, in
addition to pitch and roll. Rig
set-up takes about 10 minutes
instead of the up to an hour
required for traditional 3D rigs.
Dedicated motors for interocular and convergence control
are built in.
Synchronised recording: Reisiger with the new Dual Channel recorder
Micro rig for macro 3D: The tiny HD1200 camera has big potential says Lux
two cameras. It is well protected
as it comes in a Pelicase.
www.ffv.com
www.elementtechnica.com
Fast Forward Video — Dual
Channel 3D-capable portable
recorder: This compact recorder
has two channels of HD-SDI or
SD-SDI. It includes an HD display and a controller interface
Side-by-side: KronoMav’s StereoCam X3 and Consuelo Pedregal Pérez
KronoMav — StereoCam X3:
This stereo 3D rig is suitable for
live broadcasts and can carry up to
40kg of cameras. It has six motors
performing synchronised iris,
focus and zoom, plus a mechanical
system for separation and convergence. The side-by-side configuration is better than a mirror system,
Lux Media Plan — Tiny 3D rigs
with new HD1200 camera: It
showed two small 3D rigs, one for
macro photography, using 5mm
lenses and shooting as close as
10cm, the other with adjustable
bases for separation. A 3D rig
costs about €36,000 including the
two cameras, mechanical rig,
CCUs and lenses. The HD1200
“is one of the first real HD cameras that can do macro,” said
Friedel Lux, technical director
(pictured). It uses a 2/3-inch sensor with native 1080p/50 output
via co-ax to the CCU, which has
duallink HD-SDI outputs, plus
SDI, composite and analogue
component (all at once).
www.luxmediaplan.de
www.vivesta.com
info@vivesta.com
THANK YOU
for visiting us
at IBC 2009!
“When you’re in 3D, you need to
stay in 3D”: Nagravision’s Frank
Dreyer coming at ya…
MediaFlow 3.0
One content library, multi-channel
broadcast and VOD services.
Workflow automation
Media management
Rights and license managementt
VOD product management
Traffic & multi-channel scheduling
Delivery to multiple outlets
Vivesta Adv TVBE 181x60 v2.indd 1
22
22-09-2009 11:59:33
Nagravision — Nagra Media
Guide for 3D: This stereoscopic
user interface for 3D TV is built
on its traditional middleware for
2D (Nagra Media Guide —
Version 2, which is also new), but
is specifically built to be usable in
3D without adversely affecting
the 3D pictures it is being used
with. This is trickier than it might
seem and Nagravision has done a
lot of work with 3D production
house 3atlity to create elements
13/10/09
15:57
Page 23
Opera Software — Opera Devices
SDK 10: This Software Development
Kit can run on almost any TV or
mobile device. It is fully web-based
middleware, giving a graphical user
interface for any TV applications
(including widgets that can be re-used
on the web). German broadcasters
have already adopted it to create a
portal for catch-up and other services.
www.opera.com/tv
Rubberduck Media Lab —
Hosted mobile TV services: It has
put together a “very attractive”
business model for mobile operators and broadcasters, “because it
allows them to launch mobile TV
or video services without the
investment,” claimed Miguel
Silva, chief commercial officer.
Opera: Soon appearing on Oprah,
and anything else on TV
A new dimension for Steadicam
moves: Piffl shows off P+S
Technik’s latest 3D rig
like EPGs that can sit in the picture without blocking any 3D
effects in the content.
www.nagravision.com
P+S Technik — Steadicam
Mirror Rig: It showed a prototype lightweight 3D rig for use on
a stabilising system at IBC that
can be used with any lightweight
camera, and remain stable and
adjustable in any direction. The
mirror rig was shown on an
Artemis system with two EX3
camcorders. “It’s universal, so it
mounts to different stabilising
systems and you can attach different types of camera, up to Sony
HDW-750s. It can be used in regular and goofy mode [left handed],”
explained Marketing Manager,
Anna Piffl. “The adjustment of
the 3D effect is completely automated so it stays completely balanced.” It will be available by the
end of the year and has already
been sold to a US customer.
Ready to compete?
www.pstechnik.de
Web TV
Valentine: “We can get internet
video on TV cheaper and easier
than anyone else”
Miniweb Interactive — Media web
platform: Instead of web surfing, it
turns the broadband TV connection into a “media surfing experience,” as it concentrates on bringing the millions of online videos to
the TV. However, it aims to help
broadcasters retain viewers, prioritising content relevant to the particular programme people are
watching (with catch-up and VoD
services) or direct them initially to
other online content on the same
channel. Viewers can also buy content (but only have one payment
contact, for security and the
ability to buy with one click). It
means that “internet video is no
longer a threat. It’s a source of new
revenue,” said Ian Valentine,
founder and chief architect.
More Content
Greater Sensations
Better Control
New Dimensions
Sport Broadcasting is about pushing the limits. Broadcasters are continually faced with the challenge of delivering faster, better, and more content to millions of viewers.
For EVS the challenge is to make this possible.
With its XT[2] server, and its latest Live Slow Motion
applications for sports, such as live graphics, Ultra-Motion
HD replays, and Web-control, EVS takes
sports broadcasters to another level.
A re y o u re a d y t o c o m p e t e ?
Visit us at www.evs.tv
www.miniweb.tv
23
13/10/09
15:58
Page 24
they are ideal for 3D, because
they allow the interocular distance to be closer without using
a mirror rig.
www.abakus.co.uk
Rubberduck made a splash at IBC with a practical proposition for video on mobiles
“Broadcasters pay just a very low
operational fee and go on a revenue share with Rubberduck.” It
takes care of capture, encoding,
transcoding, content management and handset recognition.
Acquisition
www.rubberduckmedialab.com
Vidiator Technology — Time
Shifter: This is essentially a PVR
for mobile/internet services and is
claimed to be the first system to
allow users to do live pause and
play of content on a mobile
device (although it is done on the
network rather than the device).
It means that users can then
continue watching on another
mobile, a larger screen, such as a
laptop, or anything that supports
Flash or 3GPP.
www.vidiator.com
Mobile phones can be PVRs:
Vidiator’s Time Shifter
Small wonders: Dr Langley shows
off the new Abakus Mini-lenses
Abakus — HD Mini-lenses: This
new range of tiny lenses is
designed for small HD cameras
with single 2/3-inch sensors (such
as the LMP HD1100 or
Gigawave’s new camera). The
6mm, 9mm, 15mm and 25mm
versions “are all the same size
[22.8mm diameter and 32mm
long] and weight [32g], so that
they can be interchanged very
easily,” said Dr Kath Langley,
manufacturing director. The two
even wider angle lenses (3.5mm
and 4.5mm) are slightly bigger,
because they require larger
optics. “3.5mm is as wide as you
can go sensibly. You can’t go
that wide without having a big
front,” although big is relative as
it is still only about 4cm across.
Because the lenses are so small,
AJA Video Systems — Ki Pro
Portable Digital Disk Recorder:
If you edit on Final Cut Pro (as
half the broadcast market does) it
makes sense to acquire in the
most FCP-friendly format possible. The Ki Pro, which started
shipping just before IBC for
$3,995, records in full 10-bit 4:2:2
using Apple’s ProRes 422
(145Mbps) and ProRes 422 HQ
(220Mbps) codecs, and can get
the best out of even an old camcorder (such as a Betacam SP), as
it can also up- and down-convert,
scale and interpolate, anything
it captures using its HD-SDI,
HDMI, component and composite connections, usually bypassing
the camera’s built-in encoder. It
uses proprietary storage, “but we
do not overcharge,” promised
product marketing manager,
Bryce Button. A $265 250GB
pack is included, with 500GB
disks or solid-state drives available. It can be configured remotely
via a LAN or WiFi, “so you can
control it from an iPhone or iPod
Touch (which is useful if the camera is on a crane), or via a web
browser, so you can also control it
from a laptop.”
Shooting for post: AJA’s Bryce Button with the
new Ki Pro recorder/converter
www.aja.com
Coming over the horizon: Bradley’s Elipticam
Anton/Bauer — Dionic HC camera battery: Designed for high
current draw applications, including on-camera lighting, this battery can deliver up to 10 amps,
and has a capacity of 91 Watt-
hours, which means that it can
operate a 40W HD camcorder for
more than two hours. It has a
claimed 80% higher capability than
rival products. It is also very lightweight, weighing a lot less than its
lower capacity predecessors.
www.antonbauer.com
Amped up: Anton/Bauer’s
lightweight Dionic HC battery
Arri — Alexa camera series:
Digital cinematography at broadcast prices is the promise of Arri’s
second generation of digital cameras. The 35mm sensor has been
designed to meet the expectations
of filmmakers, with “best in
class” latitude and sensitivity,
excellent colour and image sharpness. Arri’s entry-level model will
be priced to compete with mainstream broadcast HD cameras
and the upcoming Red Epic, so
that even low-budget dramas can
be given a high-end look.
www.arri.com
The front end works, now for
the recorder: Arri’s sensor
demonstration at IBC
Bradley
Engineering
—
Elipticam: This new miniature
camera dome has been designed
for use in the tightest of locations,
such as on board a sailing dinghy,
where it can give a much wider
view of the action than a normal
dome camera because it uses an
elliptical movement, to allow it to
look below its own horizon.
Ordinary dome cameras “can’t tilt
down below the lip of the dome,
but our Elipticam gets around
that to offer an additional 30º of
tilt,” explained company Founder,
David Bradley. It is waterproof,
fully remote controlled (pan, tilt,
zoom, iris, engineering controls),
records HD on the boat, and can
do HD or SD for remote feeds. Its
first user is Extreme 40 yacht racing for live feeds to shore.
www.bradeng.com
24
13/10/09
15:59
Page 25
Easyrig — Easyrig 4 Vario: The
latest version of this camera support system is the one that rental
companies and freelances who
have to use a variety of cameras
have been waiting for. The new
carry arms can support cameras
weighing between 3.5kg and
10kg or 10kg to 18kg, with just
the twist of a knob. As with previous Easyrigs, it takes the
weight off your shoulders/arms
and allows you to hand-hold a
camera without backache and
achieve smooth, flowing moves.
one hot-shoe mount,” explained
Brian Woodford, director. The
brightly coloured blocks can
each take up to three accessories
at once, and you could put several on one camera. There is also a
Bloc party: Woodford with an EX3
fitted with several Hot-Blocs, a
Hot-Clamp, and its new solid-state
drive for Sony’s EX cameras
battery-powered version that
takes a standard Sony battery,
and has a four-pin Hirose connection (for wireless systems)
and a D-tap for lighting. And if
your camera doesn’t have a
hot shoe, the HC-1 Hot-Clamp
will wrap around the handle of
most camcorders and has its own
hot shoe.
www.hawkwoods.com
HDAVS — DataCam E2HD
HDC-680MP: This new broadcast HD camcorder is China’s first
serious entry into the market, and
won praise from IBC visitors that
tried it, especially for its handling
of skin tones. The shouldermounted model records I-frame
4:2:2 MPEG-2 at 100Mbps, from
www.easyrig.com
Weight lifter: Easyrig production
manager, Lars Öhman demonstrates
the new 4 Vario system
Gigawave — miniature camera/
controller for motorsport: It has
developed a tiny on-board HD
1080i camera, with a 2/3-inch
sensor and very wide angle lens
(3.5mm), plus a hand-held controller. “This is the first time
Gigawave has produced its own
cameras,” explained Marcoms
Manager, David Earl, and it has
tried to make it as easy as possible to control without disturbing
the race team. The new
Gigascope Handheld Telemetry
Unit that goes with it allows
Gigawave adopts racing line: Earl
with controller and camera
users to set up each camera without having to plug in to make
changes. It includes a low-power
microwave transmitter/receiver,
so that users can check the pictures. Race cars can have two or
three cameras, so the unit allows
you to switch them remotely.
www.gigawave.co.uk
Hawk-Woods — Hot-Bloc: “It’s
an accessory holder. It allows
you to mount wireless radios and
small portable lighting, all from
25
14/10/09
11:04
Page 26
be a high-speed CF card (300x or
faster) and users can only record
up to 50Mbps (HD or SD) I-frame
or Long GoP. A suitable 16GB CF
card is about a third of the price of
a similar (higher speed) GF PAK,
while 32GB and 64GB versions
are about half the price.
www.ikegami.de
Haruka Go, major account director, HDAVS, demonstrating the DataCam
Instant feedback: Mo-Sys 3D Inserter’s workflow
three 2/3-inch 2.3megapixel IT
CCDs made by Panasonic, and is
part of a line up of production
equipment that includes an editor.
The system is compatible with
MXF, Avid’s DNxHD editing format, and can also record MPEG2 IBP at 25-80Mbps, 4:2:0 SD. It
uses a new storage medium, E2,
either solid state or hard disk, or
both, as it can record to two of
either drive in mirror mode, for
security, or sequentially, for extra
long recording sessions (five hours
in HD with a 320GB disk). Drives
are hot-swappable, with recording
moving to the other drive, and can
be edited from directly.
Flash cards is welcome. With the
CF adapter, users can simply slot
in a CF Type I card, which can
then plug in to the camcorder.
There are limitations: it needs to
www.mrmoco.com
Mo-Sys — 3D Inserter: This
real-time compositor allows anyone doing blue- or green-screen
work to pre-visualise the computer graphic effects on location and
do the compositing as they are
filming. It means that cast and
crew can see how the end result
Light headed: Biggs demonstrates
the new SFH-30 motion control head
www.hdavs.cn
Ikegami — GF PAK CF adapter:
Standard solid-state memory
cards are always going to be
cheaper and easier to source than
proprietary formats, so Ikegami’s
move to open up its GFCAM
recording system to Compact
control rig can work with the
SFH-30 and is specifically
designed for stop motion. It is
slow, but lightweight and easy
to install, and cheap enough to
make it affordable for such
long-term projects.
Pak light: The GF PAK CF adapter
allows Ikegami’s GFCAMs to record
to Compact Flash cards
Mark Roberts Motion Control
— SFH-30 head and Animoko
rig: The new head is designed
for stop frame animation and
time lapse work with DSLR
cameras and camcorders of up
to 12kg. “It’s small, it’s very
lightweight, which makes it very
portable. We’re selling a lot to
individuals who are just starting
up or for use in difficult locations, such as up a mountain. It
can be taken in a backpack and
powered from batteries,” said
James Biggs, MRMC’s general
manager. The Animoko motion
Something old, something new: An Arri 16SR gets a new lease of life
will look as they are shooting any
effects, making it a lot simpler for
everyone to achieve the best
result. Any computer models
being used in a shot are loaded
prior to filming, so that users can
see the live action, already composited, in the digital environment. Once a shot is completed,
the time-coded pre-composition is
sent for offline editing and motion
and metadata goes to post production (where shots can be completed without manual tracking).
No Stress...
Opus - Ref. OPS300
Multi Layer Hi-Resolution Mixer Seamless
Switcher with 3 scalers allowing the display of up
to 6 layers: 3 live sources, 1 frame and 2 logos.
For Rental & Staging and High-End installations
ORCHESTRA - Ref. ORC50
Intuitive and Reliable Remote Controller for Rental
& Staging and Multi-Venues applications.
User-friendly control of the Di-VentiX II and the new
Opus Mixer Seamless Switchers
For more information, please visit our website or call us.
From Europe, Middle East and Africa
Analog Way France
• Phone: +33 (0)1 6447 1603
• Email: saleseuro@analogway.com
• Web Site: www.analogway.com
26
www.mo-sys.com
P+S Technik/Lux Media Plan
— 16digitalMag: A new digital
film magazine that will turn an
old Arriflex 16SR 16mm film
camera (up to an SRIII) into a
digital camera, as a direct
replacement for a film magazine. It has an N16-size 16:9 sensor and will record losslessly
compressed RAW HD and 2k to
HDD or SDD removable drives.
It will record up to 30fps in 2k
initially, but 75fps recording is
planned, and it will be available
early next year for under
€35,000. All Camera functions
remain untouched.
www.pstechnik.de
www.luxmediaplan.de
13/10/09
16:00
Page 27
Prompters
Autocue — Starter Series iPhone
Prompter: Users can slot an
iPhone into this new, low-cost
(£599) prompting kit and fit it to
their camcorder. It is the cheapest
of Autocue’s new Starter Series,
which is directly targeting lowcost competitors, such as
Prompter People, with prices
below £1,000.
www.autocue-qtv.com
Autoscript — LED prompter range:
It has become the first prompter
company to move its displays to
LED back lighting. “LEDs bring a
whole wealth of different improvements, not just new features, but
added reliability as they can cope
Prompting. There’s an app for that:
Frank Hyman, Autocue’s CEO with
the iPhone Prompter
with being knocked about, and you
get perfect coverage of light,”
explained Autoscript’s MD, Brian
Larter. It also halves power consumption, start up causes no power
spikes, blacks are blacker (giving
much better contrast), it lasts a lot
longer, and produces very little heat.
Autoscript’s complete range is now
Because the latest developments in the evolution of the mc² 66 are based on valuable
feedback from audio engineers worldwide, we would very much like to thank: Jens,
Could it be magic?: Granderath
gets to grips with the new
High-Low Turnstile
Panther — High-Low Turnstile:
This is “a Magic Arm for cameras”, according to Florian
Granderath, sales manager,
broadcast, as it can rotate, shift
the camera from side-to-side, rise
and lower and “you can always
leave the camera on and can
achieve any angle you want. It
means you don’t have to remove
the fluid head and camera to
move the camera off its centre
point. It can very quickly be
moved to being a low rig and you
can turn the camera upside down,
or any angle in between. It can
also be used as a high rig.”
Adjustments are made with a single Allen key or lever, and seat
movement is also independent, so
you can sit behind the camera
wherever it is.
www.panther.tv
Rudi, Mathias, Otto, Erik, Koen, Xiaopei, Giuseppe, Tómas, Anna, Bernhard, Mats,
Engelbert, Carsten, Mick, Salih, Zoltan, Matti, Ahmed, Dominik, Josef, Helmut, Felix,
Reinhard, Kunitaka, Walter, Jochen, Edmund, Gerhard, Maria, Pascal, Risto, Georges,
Alfred, Bruno, Seok Beom, Yong-Soo, Marko, Doug, Oldrich, Remco, Hubert, Askan,
David, Hans-Joachim, Kang Hoon, Fritz, Marc, Karl-Heinz, Pekka, Rolf, Sylvia, Franz,
Gregor, Alexander, Claudia, Abdelaziz, Jerzy, Keith, Marianna, Nils, Steffen, Patrik,
Taniguchi, Willi, Rudolf, Simon, Thomas, Bardo, Ernst, Anthony, Dieter, Jean-Paul,
Edgar, Igor, Bertold, Gottfried, Jan-Eike, Harald, Kazuyuki, Martin, Johannes, Björn,
Craig, Anton, Frank, Gábor, Yong-Seok, Stefano, Ties-Christian, Ullrich, Jacob, Flip,
Christoph, Gaëtan, Hans-Reinhold, Eckhard, Albrecht, Bettina, Eddy, Juha, Hideto,
Wilfried, Petra, Zhang, Steve, Jean-Philippe, Stefan, Ralf, Michele, Susumu, Riikka,
Yvonne, Vinnie, Yutaka, Anders, Clemens, Eighsyn, Georg, Janusz, Karin, Gerold,
Topaciuk, Daniel, Curt, Jan, Andreas, Dirk, Lars-Göran, Calvin, Joachim, Maximilian,
Mark, Sascha, Werner, Yinong, Laurent, Tsuyoshi, Kay, Jeroen, Mario, Robin, Max,
Roman, Ken, Daisuke, André, Burkhard, Axel, Bob, Oliver, Takeo, Jürgen, Maciej,
György, Hermann, Rainer, Stephan, Wolfgang, Hans, Jörg, Alwin, Chen Chen, Gernot,
Helge, Ben, Martin, Rüdiger, Per, Shinji, Winfried, Klaus, Christian, Markus, Volker,
Erich, Kari, Friedemann, Alois, Peter, Rolf-Rüdiger, Yuri, Olaf, Horst, Jose, Matthias,
Inflated values: The Inflatable
Airline Bag can keep a camera safe
from turbulence
Petrol — Inflatable Airline Bag
and Pillow Staybag: The new
inflatable camera bag will give
greater protection to camcorders
that have to be transported as
checked luggage, but when not in
use it folds into a small pouch. It
can take a full-sized broadcast
camera without disturbing the
viewfinder and lens. The Pillow
Staybag is a duffel-style camera
bag that can be used as support on
rocks or moving cars where you
can’t use a tripod. The bag has a
pillow, filled with hundreds of
small foam Steadi-balls, which
moulds itself to fit the camera,
and adjusts to the shape of whatever surface it is positioned on, to
prevent slipping. Four included
nylon straps and hooks anchor
the Staybag to a car.
Dietmar, Hans-Herrmann, Emil, Ole, Ulla, Ladislav, Ingbert, Tobias, Guido, Ian, Bernd,
Michael, Udo, Johann, Ulrich, Reiner, Seppo, Jay, Dennis, Barry, Fredrik, Kojiro, Paulo,
Elke, Thierry, Manfred, Erinn, Gerd, Hans-Jürgen, Tim, Raymond, Monika, Koos, Jorge,
Reinhold, Luigi, Norbert, Ryan, Manolo, Uwe, Bart, Tom, Herbert, Fred, Heike, Marcus,
Richard, Miran, Greg, Philipp, Toon, Karl, Roger,
Claudio, Friedrich, Tony, Ichirou, Antonio, Gerald,
Bruce, Robert, Erwin, Günter, Ralph, Alessandro,
Ludwig, Huub, Manuel, Carlos, Eric, Olav, Heinz,
Francis, Sven, Istvan, Wilhelm, Benjamin.
Inspired by your needs – the new mc² 66.
www.lawo.de
www.petrolbags.com
27
13/10/09
16:00
Page 28
than five minutes, making it easy to move
between studios and set up for OBs. For surround sound, where a room isn’t ideal, it will
delay the closest speakers to make it sound as
if they are perfectly positioned.
www.genelec.com
Optocore — SANE (Synchronous Audio
Network plus Ethernet): Instead of trying
to build an audio network on top of an
asynchronous Ethernet network, Optocore
has taken a synchronous audio network,
for guaranteed audio delivery, and put an
Ethernet layer on top of it. “Because the
platform has been developed with hardware from the ground up, we’ve been able
to reduce our end user costs drastically,
and by linking our Cat 5 technology with
our fibre optic technology, we can now provide massively scalable networks,” claimed
Martin Barbour, systems engineer.
www.optocore.com
LED to a bright future: Larter demonstrates
the new Miniscript portable prompter, which
uses its smallest LED display
Sounds right wherever it is: Jenflod with the
self-calibrating 8260A monitor
LED driven (5.6-, 8-, 13-, 15-, 17- and 19-inch
displays), and although LED displays are
more costly to manufacture than fluorescent
units, it is keeping its prices the same.
Sound Devices — 552 Production Mixer:
This 5-channel audio mixer has an integrated 2-track recorder (using SD memory
cards), yet weighs less than Sound Devices’
previous mixer. Users can have AES/EBU
digital outputs and record WAV or MP3,
up to 24-bit/96kHz.
The portable karesslite is an option for studio
or location
Several of the 60x30cm units can be mounted together for a bigger spread, it has full
dimming controls, including DMX, and its
beam-modifying optics give it more punch.
www.gekkotechnology.com
www.sounddevices.com
www.autoscript.tv
Audio
Genelec — 8260A: The three-way DSP audio
monitoring system has a new minimum distortion coaxial driver. “It’s has much, much
lower distortion and much flatter frequency
response on and off axis,” said Lars-Olaf
Jenflod, international sales manager. Its digital signal processing automatically calibrates
to the room it’s in, for stereo or 5.1, in less
Any colour you like, so long as its LED:
Amphlett basks in the light of his latest creation
The SANE solution: Barbour displays one of
Optocore’s new modules
The 552’s metalised carbon fibre casing
deflects interference and weighs less
Lighting
Gekko Technology — kedo: It outputs the
equivalent light of a 1kW tungsten Fresnel
lamp, but offers “a much wider spectrum than
a single-colour white LED,” said David
Amphlett, Gekko’s CEO. “It is a multichipped source with optical and thermal feedback, so it stays consistent both through the
dimming range and the ambient temperature.”
The kedo can produce a vast range of colours,
like choosing electronic gels, and be controlled
using DMX, its back panel or via USB from a
laptop. It will cost about £3,000 and comes
with a lumen guarantee of 20,000 hours.
www.gekkotechnology.com
Focus shifts to on-board light: The Dedolight mini
DLOB has flexible focusing and a flexible arm
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Dedo Weigert Film — mini DLOB LED oncamera light: The latest Dedolight has the
usual focusable, double aspheric optics.
What’s different is that it is an on-camera light,
using a single, high-power LED. It has a very
wide focusing range, from 4° to 56°, plus a
wide-angle flip-up diffuser for a 70° angle, covering the widest zoom. As we don’t shoot
round pictures, it widens the beam more horizontally than vertically (a ratio of 1:1.66). It
offers “smooth light distribution” in every
focusing position, plus “clean, sharp, singleedge barn door shadow or a very gentle light
and shadow transition” with the diffuser in
place. A front-end bayonet allows users to add
future attachments and light modifiers.
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Gekko Technology — karesslite: This
practical, portable, versatile LED studio or
location light can be powered from one or
two V-Lock batteries (almost three hours
from two VL-175 batteries), or from mains.
Switching focus: Litepanels 1x1 Bi-Focus
Litepanels — 1x1 Bi-Focus: This all-in-one
spot/flood LED light boasts variable spot
and flood focusing. The 30x30cm square fixture is thin, portable, cool to touch, and uses
relatively little energy. It has two independent sets of daylight colour-balanced (5600k)
LED bulbs: one set of flood bulbs plus one
of spots. By fading between the two, users
can set variable flood or spot output. It has
1152 LED bulbs (twice the number of a
standard 1x1), so it has the same total light
output however it is set up. It runs on battery or AC, including an optional 1.75-hour
onboard battery pack.
www.litepanels.com
TVBE_FP
12/10/09
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TVBE_Oct P30-44 Workflow
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TVBEU R O PE T H E W O R K F L O W
3D production: We will rock you
Following the amazing discovery of original 3D footage of the Queen of England from the 1950s, Channel 4 embarked on a quest
to discover how this footage could be brought to television viewers in 2009. Adrian Pennington reports on the ensuing journey
Stereoscopic analysis
Channel 4’s intriguing decision to
experiment with 3DTV began
when commissioning editor,
Science David Glover learned of
the existence of stereoscopic film
of the Queen from the 1950s, during a meeting with Renegade
Pictures Producer Alan Hayling.
“I found that hard to believe,”
says Glover. “Unseen footage of
the Queen is rare enough but the
idea that there was 3D footage of
the Coronation itself sounded too
good to be true.”
Further investigation tracked
the film, Royal Review, to the
BFI archives where it was
gathering dust along with several other 3D reels documenting
life in Britain from the period.
It was shot by Arthur Wooster
and
his
company
Film
Partnership, whose chairman
was Richard Dimbleby.
“3D can be about flying
things out at a viewer or, as in
this case, it can act as if you were
looking through a window,” says
Glover. “It’s remarkable footage,
particularly if we could show it
in its original 3D form. The
question was, how could we
make this happen?”
In consultation with 3D
production
specialists
Can
Communicate Glover concluded
that the anaglyph 3D system
devised by ColorCode would
work since its viewers without
glasses would be able to view the
picture with little visible ghosting.
If the broadcaster was going to
mass distribute ColorCode’s
glasses it would be crazy to do so
for just two hours of programming: “We thought, why not have
fun with it and extend the programming across a week?”
Glover commissioned two
one-hour documentaries from
Renegade which would intersperse 3D archive footage with
new 3D film of the royal family
shot at events like a Buckingham
Palace garden party and the
ºDedication to 3D: Can Communicate Director Duncan Humphreys gets his suit thoroughly
drenched capturing 3D footage at Buckingham Palace
“Unseen footage of the Queen is rare enough but the
idea that there was 3D footage of the Coronation
itself sounded too good to be true” — Alan Hayling
“We had good access to the Queen at events but it’s hard to plot positions in advance:
in many ways it’s like shooting news footage,” says David Wooster
Highland Games. Footage shot
by Arena TV at an earlier royal
event is also being incorporated.
“A viewer’s eyes take time to
adjust to 3D and we didn’t want
to make it uncomfortable for
watching over long periods so
the 3D material will be cut with
2D footage of context and
interviews,” says Glover. An
onscreen icon is likely to prompt
people that a 3D sequence is
imminent. Objective Productions was also commissioned to
produce a Derren Brown magic
documentary. A compilation
programme of 3D archive film
clips is also scheduled.
No Limits…
… with BMS wireless links.
30
Can Communicate is working
with the BFI and both producers
to advise, supervise and post the
archived and 3D material as well
as restore the archive footage.
Subject to budget the intention
is to perform a 2K Spirit telecine
of the left and right eye 35mm
negative or print depending on
what is available. Then depending on the state of each film,
Can will carry out digital
restoration such as dust busting
and removing of larger blemishes.
These files will be imported into
Can’s Quantel iQ Pablo for 3D
correction and grading.
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16:26
Page 31
For the live action shoots Can
are primarily using P&S mirror
rigs but also its own side-by-side
Bolt and Calcutta rigs. “On one
shoot we used a mirror and sideby-side rig as we were looking to
shoot close up footage of the
Queen as well as wider shots
where the side by side rig work
better,” explains Can Communicate partner David Wooster,
who in a handy coincidence is
Arthur Wooster’s son.
“We had good access to the
Queen at events but it’s hard to
plot those positions in advance
and in many ways it’s like shooting news footage where you have
to be fleet of foot and you don’t
get a second chance. The rule of
thumb is that good 3D looks
good in ColorCode, bad 3D doesn’t. If you don’t do it properly it’s
not going to translate.”
According to Rob Coldstream, director of the royal documentaries, “The real challenge is
that you can’t zoom. You have to
pick a shot and stick to it. To
achieve that requires a huge
amount of planning, almost a
shot by shot storyboard based on
knowledge of where the Queen
will be and will walk to.”
“It’s a process of experimentation, learning the grammar of
3D,” Coldstream adds. “I’m with
one of the camera-ops viewing
the material with 3D glasses.
There’s also a stereographer guiding me, for example, if we get too
close to the subject.”
Acquisition is via Sony EX3
XDCAMs, partly for budget
considerations and also for the
smaller footprint afforded by
these camcorders. The cameras
are genlocked to ensure synchronisation of the two sources with
live monitoring via a Transvideo
3DView unit.
“In terms of workflow, we
were told by a number of people
that we could not shoot EX3 and
be able to edit one eye on an Avid
and then conform the cut
sequences via EDL into the
Quantel,” says Wooster. “In fact
we were thrown off one forum for
asking ‘such a stupid question’.
However we have solved this and
it is actually very simple and costeffective which was important on
a documentary project like this.
“Essentially we process all the
footage at Can, deliver left eye as
MXF files to Envy who are doing
the 2D edit of the programme
and at the same time send similar
files to Renegade so they can log
the footage. At the first cut stage
we check that there are no 3D
issues and produce an anaglyph
version of the cut sequences so
they can see how they work within the programme. Once the 3D
picture is locked we will carry out
the 3D correction and grade.
“We are doing all the
ColorCode encoding at Can
which means we can turn each 3D
sequence around as quickly as
possible. Once the 3D sequences
are encoded they are delivered
“The real challenge is that you can’t zoom.
You have to pick a shot and stick to it.
To achieve that requires a huge amount of
planning” — Rob Coldstream
back to Envy to be dropped into
the programme.
“We’ve got to pay particular
attention to managing data since
we’re trusting to SxS memory
cards and hard discs to capture and
store footage and if you get a mismatch in an early part of the
process it can be a huge problem to
finish downstream. Since both
streams, or EDLS, will look almost
identical it’s vital to ensure a robust
workflow and maintain the integrity of data throughout post.
Essentially we’re making
3DTV up at point when the mas-
ter copy goes to ColorCode for
conversion. C4 and ourselves are
not looking to produce a cinema
type 3D experience or even cutting edge 3D as the viewing technology is not there for TV to do
that right now. This is more of a
retro fun look at 3D.”
Channel 4’s 3D week is scheduled for a November TX.
31
13/10/09
15:09
Page 32
NEWS
IN BRIEF
Ark Tape and Disk
At IBC EditShare released two
new Ark models for creating
media backups and archives; Ark
Tape and Ark Disk. Ark Tape and
Ark Disk are workflow
engineered to automate file
migration to and from the awardwinning EditShare shared
storage solutions. Because Ark
solutions automatically
communicate with EditShare
shared storage solutions, media
spaces, project spaces and other
important data structures are
exchanged between systems. In
the event of a system failure,
EditShare Ark Disk can be
configured to operate as an
EditShare shared storage
system. EditShare Ark allows
EditShare users to create safety
backups during the editing
process, move media to lowercost storage when a project must
be put on hold or while it awaits
approval, and create long-term
archiving of entire projects or
selected media spaces.
www.editshare.com
Sequence of clips
Intelligent Assistance has
significantly updated its
Sequence Clip Reporter to
version 1.5, even though the
application has been available
for less than two months.
Sequence Clip Reporter takes
an XML export from your
finished, edited Final Cut Pro
Sequence and generates
usage reports as an Excel
spreadsheet on selected
video and/or audio tracks.
As well as all the features of
version 1 — Clip name,
Sequence start and end
times; source in and out and
durations, plus comment
fields — version 1.5 adds these
features: a completely revised
interface; video and audio
tracks are identified with
different coloured text
(settable) reports and can be
limited to specified audio and
video tracks.
www.theassistanteditor.com
High-def first
for Estonia
Continued from page
this was a problem as the market
prices for the services were considerably higher than in Estonia
and frequently beyond ERR”s
financial capabilities.
“We started to plan the building of a new OB van more than
five years ago, but it only became
financially possible in 2007,”
reports Üksküla. “Once it was
part of our investment plan, we
began the procurement procedure
under EU tender regulations.”
He continues, “This is a long
time investment to us and we
started the process a long time
before economic downturn. We
had comprehensive discussions
about the design of OB truck with
directors, producers and developmental engineers some time ago.
We analysed many design examples and agreed that the placement of seating in the production
control room must be sideways to
driving direction and that it must
accommodate at least eight operator positions in two rows.”
It was also specified that both
desks in production control
room must be movable forwards
and backwards.
high. The design incorporates a
patented full height, full length
expansion to one side. With equipment, the total weight is 34 tonnes.
According to Heil, the biggest
challenge was the timescale. ERR
placed the order in early
September 2008, needing the truck
to be available in June 2009.
Despite this relatively short time
scale, the completed vehicle was
delivered precisely on schedule.
“The truck is pre-cabled to support
up to 16 high definition cameras,”
declares Heil. “As delivered, it carries six Grass Valley LDK 8000
Elite HD cameras, one of which
can be used as a wireless camera.
We also supplied two LDK 8300
Super Slomo cameras.”
Although ERR is aware that
many modern trucks are capable
of handling more than 16 cameras, the station felt this was
sufficient number for its regular
productions. In reality, however,
more cameras could be accommodated, if necessary.
Gallery production is handled
with a Grass Valley Kayak HD
2.5 M/E production switcher with
an additional Kayak HD 1 M/E
control panel for secondary
production control. A Trinix
128x256 HD router controlled by
Jupiter control software and a
Grass Valley Andromeda facility
control system manage the signal
distribution in the van. In addition, GeckoFlex modular equipment provides for the necessary
conversions between HD and SD
signals and audio distribution.
Monitoring in the camera control section is handled by 17-inch
JVC professional multi-format
monitors, while the production
control room has Evertz multiviewers with 72 inputs and six
42-inch LCD displays. Elsewhere
the monitoring uses LCD screens
in conjunction with MCC modules
or fixed quad split multi-viewers
from Avitech. ERR specified that
the audio desk should be the Lawo
MC256 digital mixer equipped
Sander Üksküla: “Due to economic situation we do not expect there
will be any similar trucks in the Baltics for some years to come”
whole unit to tapeless, if that is
required for any production.”
In addition, two Inscriber
series graphics systems from
Harris are built into the truck.
The truck was supplied with all
operational systems including a
main Grass Valley Kayak HD 2.5
M/E production switcher, with
an additional Kayak HD 1 M/E
control panel for simultaneous
secondary production control.
When it came to selecting a
communications system, Riedel
was the preferred supplier. In all,
Riedel Communications delivered an Artist intercom installation, including an Artist 128
Mainframe with additional
MADI, AIO and GPIO cards, six
Artist 1000 control panels, nine
Artist 2000 control panels, a
CSX-11 commentator unit and
two Riedel RiFaces.
“The CSX-11 in conjunction
with an Artist 1000 control panel
offers digital audio quality for
commentator units over coax,”
There are many ways
to communicate
last-minute
schedule changes
32
maintains Christian Baumeister,
Riedel”s international sales manager. “In this way the commentator is directly integrated into the
Artist intercom matrix. No additional cabling is needed. All
Artists connectors are available
on the back of the CSX-11 unit,
offering the same functionality as
the Artist control panel.”
Sander Üksküla adds, “Audio
quality from the panels to Lawo
Equipping for HD
“We have already done some productions for
other companies in Estonia and Latvia and
hope to offer our services in other European
countries” — Sander Üksküla
As a result of the tender
process, the contract was awarded
to the Grass Valley OB Van competence centre in Weiterstadt,
Germany. “The choice of truck
was a Mercedes Benz Actros with
a trailer chassis,” states Wolfgang
Heil, manager of the Grass Valley
systems group outside broadcast
truck centre. “The coachwork
was undertaken by Krämer
Karosseriebau,
Groß-Gerau,
Germany. This is a well respected
company with whom Grass Valley
has worked on a number of major
outside broadcast truck projects.”
The dimensions of the vehicle
are 16m long x 2.5m wide x 4m
with 32 and expandable to 48 faders,
with a 1024 x 1024 matrix, control
unit, DSP core and stage box.
Heil says that the truck is
cabled to handle up to four Sony
XDCam HD422, three Sony
HDCam VTRs and three 6-channel
HD servers from EVS. “The design
of the truck with the installed
servers means that it is simple —
with some small modifications —
to convert the operation of the
audio system via MADI interface
is exceptional. The Director software used for configuring the system is logically built, easy to learn
and intuitive to use.”
Now that the truck has been
delivered, how does Üksküla see
the future? “Our main work for
the OB truck will originate from
ERR production projects, but not
exclusively. We have already done
some productions for other companies in Estonia and Latvia and
hope to offer our services in other
European countries.”
Indeed, Üksküla is very
confident about the prospects.
“We are optimistic for the
coming years because, most likely,
an increasingly number of productions will be demanded in
HD. We have waited long time
for an HD OB van in Estonia,
but due to present economic situation we do not expect that
there will be any similar trucks
available in the Baltics for some
years to come.”
Scheduling & content lifecycle
for linear & VOD broadcasters,
Telco’s & Platform Operators
MediaGeniX
TVBE_FP
2/10/09
15:42
Page 1
IBC thanks
everyone who
was part of the
IBC2009
experience
Actual attendees 45,547
Over 1,300 exhibitors
IBC2010
the content
creation
management
delivery
experience
Conference 9 - 13 September
Exhibition 10 - 14 September
RAI Amsterdam
be sure to be part of IBC2010, keep tabs at...
www.ibc.org
IBC Fifth Floor International Press Centre 76 Shoe Lane London EC4A 3JB UK Tel: +44 (0) 20 7832 4100 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7832 4130 Email: show@ibc.org
14/10/09
13:17
Page 34
Virtually new at ZDF
News production
Philip Stevens talks to ZDF’s Dr
Andreas Bereczky and Thorsten
Garber about the detailed planning
behind a virtual studio installation
at the German broadcaster — ahead
of its planned move to HD in
February 2010
German public broadcaster ZDF
has embarked on a €30 million
expansion plan that will enable it
to handle a more challenging mix
of complex programming. As part
of that project, the broadcaster
has recently started using two
new virtual studios at its facility
at Mainz.
The bigger studio — called N1
— occupies a floor space of
690m2, while the smaller N2 covers
340m2. The whole complex’s base
area is approximately 2600m2,
which also includes an open plan
and some single office rooms.
“Our decision for a virtual studio set up is mainly based on the
extended possibilities it offers in
programme production,” states
Dr Andreas Bereczky, executive
vice president Production and
Engineering. “In a virtual environment you can do so many
things that cannot be achieved in
a conventional studio set. In particular, you can bring 3D graphics
and models into the studio — and
that allows our presenters to interact with them and explain complex subjects and topics in a better way to the viewers.” Bereczky
believes that it is necessary in
today’s multifaceted world to use
these techniques of explanation
and story-telling to inspire —
especially the younger generation
— about events that are happening in a globalised world.
The new virtual sets are currently used exclusively for the
production of ZDF’s Heute news
strand programmes. However,
the plans call for the production
of daily and weekly magazines in
the facility. “As mentioned earlier, the reason for the decision for
the virtual studio set was made
in order to create better con-
34
Virtual studio: “The next step in development will be the switch-over from SD to HD. When this will happen depends on the
availability of native HD content from news agencies, the EBU and our own production facilities,” says Dr Andreas Bereczky
tent,” says Bereczky. “So, of
course, we want to extend these
new possibilities to all programmes which will be produced
in the new studio-complex. As a
result, it is not planned to shoot
any programmes in the facility
using conventional sets.”
The choice of camera in the
studio was Ikegami’s HDK-727P.
Although new cameras were purchased for the complex, the same
models are already in use in other
studios and ZDF’s OB units. Three
RoboKams from RTLeaders are
used in the new facility. As a result
of a tender in 2008, the station
installed two Snell Kahuna vision
mixers — one for each studio in the
new complex.
When it came to selecting the
virtual studio system, ZDF opted
for Vizrt. “We have used Vizrt in
several installations since 2003,
so we have a long experience
with this technology,” declares
Bereczky. A number of different
elements go to make up the system installed at Mainz. These
include, Content Pilot, Media
Sequencer Engine, Gateway, IO,
Engine, Artist, Graphic Hub,
Video Hub, and Virtual Studio.
“At the core of the system is
Viz Engine,” explains Thorsten
Garber, project manager for the
Vizrt installation at ZDF. “This
renders the graphic output for
the virtual studio. At ZDF, four
video inputs and two internal
clip channels are used. The output is fill plus key as to SDI
signals. The render engines also
process the tracking data provided by the camera through the
Viz IO. This element handles the
different tracking protocols and
converts them into an internal
format and broadcasts them to
all Viz Engines.”
The Graphic Hub is the central
storage for all graphic templaterelated items. This includes textures, audio, 3D geometries, fonts
and scenes. In addition, the Viz
Artist connects to this server during the creation of the elements in
the design process.
Controlling the Viz Engines
are the Content Pilot and
Mediasequencer. The Content
Pilot Clients provide the playlist
user interface to the operator.
Also,
the
Content
Pilot
Newsroom Component allows
access to the templates for the
journalists. These templates are
filled with content and stored
into a central database. In the
newsroom system, each story
retains links to these elements as
MOS objects.
Garber continues, “The
Video Hub stores up-to-date
content that includes stills and
clips. Through the Viz Content
Pilot Newsroom Component,
the journalists have access to
this content — which is imported automatically by using
drop folders. Automatic meta
data extraction for still images
allows an easy search without
manual work.”
He says that a great deal of
development work has taken place
over the past few years to improve
the workflow. “Being able to control multiple Viz Engines simultaneously and independently while
13/10/09
using Transition Logic is a powerful new feature. In addition, the
render performance has increased
with new graphic boards, which
enable better effects and much
improved de-interlacing of the
video inputs. This means it is possible to switch between original
video sources and fully Viz Engine
processed video signal without a
visible difference.”
16:26
Page 35
through the audio units via GPIs
— and allow, for example, night
time bulletins to be produced
without a full gallery crew.
Now that the new facility is
operational, ZDF is making plans
for future expansion. “From a
technical point of view the next
step in development will be the
switch-over from SD to HD resolution. When this will happen
depends mainly on the availability
of native HD content from news
agencies, the EBU and, of course,
our own production facilities. We
are just building a new play out
for our High Def channels. The
first HD playout should be ready
in February 2010, at which time
we will start regular HD broadcasting in Germany,” concludes
Andreas Bereczky.
ZDF presenter Steffen Seibert: Virtual studios enable presenters ‘to
interact and explain complex subjects in a better way to the viewers’
Really realtime
One of the most interesting challenges posed to Vizrt by ZDF was
the “real realtime” request. “In
the past, the Transition Logic was
used, for instance, for lower thirds
or full screen graphics,” declares
Thorsten Garber. “During the
play out of this type of graphics
the Viz Engine can use a video out
ring buffer of typically five
frames. This ring buffer prevents
frame drops during the command
execution. In a virtual studio environment a ring buffer cannot be
used. The delay had to be as short
as possible and had to be fixed.
Therefore all commands have to
be executed within one field.”
“In a virtual studio
environment a ring
buffer cannot be used.
The delay had to be as
short as possible and
had to be fixed”
He goes on to explain that as
the virtual set has to be rendered,
the command execution has to be
less than 8ms. As a result, a great
deal of optimisation has been
added to the system to achieve
such a fast command execution
and an improved prepare mechanism of the playlist.
Of course, virtual technology
is fine — but just how do presenters actually see what they are
explaining? “This is accomplished
by projecting by means of a beamer the image on to the green wall
in front of, or beside, them.”
Garber goes on, “ZDF has the
goal of being the leading news
supplier of Europe and to better
explain the background stories
behind the news. With this set up,
ZDF now has all possibilities for
the future to make a big step forward compared to competitors.”
For its audio requirements in
the new facility, the broadcaster
has installed two Lawo mc290 consoles. One is equipped with 56
faders, a router with 8000 crosspoints and 288 DSP channels. In
the event of an accident, a fully
redundant DSP card with 48 channels will take over immediately.
The second mc290 is similar,
but is provided with 40 faders.
Both units are linked and can use
the same signals for processing —
enabling a switch from one control room to the other to be made
at any time. ZDF required the
audio consoles to include a Videofollow-Audio function, meaning
the cameras can be controlled
35
14/10/09
11:13
Page 36
Italian production teams aim at utmost realism for viewers
Full-immersion sport action
OB production
Soccer is by far the sport with the
largest following in Italy, so a great
deal of time goes into ensuring viewers a high-impact immersive experience at home or in the countless venues that have installed maxi screens for
their clients. HD video and 5.1 audio
coverage is spreading, thanks to work
by companies such as SBP, a member
company of Mediacontech Group,
and Tuscan company Telerecord.
As well as the Champions League
matches in Milan, Turin and
Florence stadiums, Telerecord also
coverings Sunday basketball matches throughout Italy for SkySportHD.
Founder Giovanni Bertini explains
how to get the reality into TV sports
coverage: “As far as audio is
concerned, we cover HD sports
events in Dolby E, installed on three
of our trucks, including our flagship
For Rome, Severoni spec’d mainly
Sennheiser shotgun units, but also
Crown unidirectional boundary
units on springboards and AKGs at
starting blocks
OB 18HD (with 12 Sony HDC
portable cameras). And for important matches such as the Champions
League we normally field a dozen
shotgun mics for the effects, positioned round the pitch, five or six for
interviews and a Soundfield DSF-2
surround sound microphone.”
SBP Sales Project Manager
Simone De Lella continues, “As
well as two or three first division
soccer matches every week, we also
do a match in HD for SkySportHD
with from nine to 12 cameras, but
without doubt the most important
sports event for us this year was the
final of the Champions League,
where we fielded no less than 47
HD cameras for house broadcaster
Rai and Sky to cover the Barcelona
vs Manchester United match.
These included two goalcams, two
mounted on cranes, one on a spydercam support and a helicoptermounted Wescam System.”
SBP adds realistic audio to the
dramatic HD video coverage using
a large number of microphones
strategically positioned round the
pitch, a Soundfield mic and a
Dolby E and Pro Logic system.
The Rome firm also has exclusive
right to coverage of all F1
Powerboat World Championship
circuits and MotoGP races (for
which it is official supplier), using
one of its three HD truck for
European races and a flight-cased
24-camera set-up for further afield,
such as Indianapolis.
Broadcaster Rai and production company Frame led the production of the
(photo: La Presse)
2009 FINA World Swimming Championships in Rome
However, broadcast pros such as
Mauro Severoni also dedicate time to
ensuring the utmost audio reality for
the HD coverage of other disciplines,
as he explains, “Sound in top level
sports events is of fundamental
importance and microphone choice
and positioning must ensure the best
perception of the each specific sport’s
typical sounds — the physical exertion of tennis players’ slams, the roar
of a racing car, skis cutting through
the snow, etc. Crowd participation,
which transmits emotion to the athletes and viewers at home, is common
to them all, so is also very important.”
World swim meet
Severoni had the opportunity of
putting his philosophy into practice
at the 2009 FINA World
Swimming Championships in
Rome, for which host broadcaster
Rai and Italian production company Frame fielded an impressive
array of video and audio technology. Severoni (audio coordinator
with RAI’s OB Production
Management) designed the microphone set-up for the various venues
hosting swimming, diving, water
polo and synchronised swimming,
all covered in HD, using two
identical 12-camera RAI vans
and two from Frame (with 12 and
16 cameras).
Frame (also main contractor
at the 2008 World Cycling
Championships) called on the support of UK specialists Camera
Corps, who captured diving with a
gravity-powered vertical tracking
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SDI Embedded Audio
5.1 & 2.0 Audio Processing
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36
camera, plus four Hitachi HVHD-30 cameras in Camera Corps
underwater heads and a Polecam
rig with Fish-Face underwater
housing, for additional video.
For synchronised swimming,
poolside track, four underwater
pan/tilt heads and a Halibut
underwater track were installed.
Water Polo used CC’s poolside
track, a Halibut underwater track
and two Goalcam robotic housings with Toshiba IK-HD1 cameras. As well as 128 staffers, Frame
also provided a network of 24
channels of EVS and centralised
storage, able to provide clips and
highlights of the events covered by
them in real time.
Rai video engineer and CCU
operator Francesco Borsella says,
“This was my first outing with HD
technology and I didn’t find much
difference from the digital technology we were already using from a
hands-on point of view, but there’s
no doubt that the results are much
more ‘immersive’. The clear-cut
images enable to appreciate details
that otherwise go unnoticed, so in
a sport like swimming, with wellpositioned cameras fitted with the
correct lenses, viewers see the
expression on athletes’ faces,
almost feeling the effort going into
the contest.
“The same applies to other
sports, such as athletics for example,
where you can get really detailed
close-up coverage of contestants’
expressions, rather than their technical ability, which can be seen more
or less to the same extent with standard definition. Another aspect that
HD improves at sports events is of a
more cinematographic nature —
when there are wide shot of the
venue you can distinguish things better — for example picking out the
athlete you’re following in a race.”
For Rome, Severoni spec’d over
a hundred mics, mainly Sennheiser
shotgun units, but also Crown unidirectional boundary units on the
springboards and AKGs at the
starting blocks (the organisers
provided two Aquarian Audio
‘hydrophones’ for underwater coverage of the synchronised swimming). Viewers therefore had the
impression of actually being at the
poolside, hearing as well as seeing
flip turns, athletes’ noisy measured
strokes along the lanes, the frenetic
rush to the centre of the polo pool
and the swish (or slap!) of divers as
they entered the water.
In spite of the level of technology already applied to top sport
events, Bertini continues looking
to the future, announcing that
Telerecord has begun experimental
work in 3D with Rome’s DBW
Communication: “There’s a lot of
interest in 3D — which can already
be viewed at home. We were the first
here to shoot in 3D — for screening
at the event on LED screens. We
also covered a basketball game for
Sky’s in-house trials (Sky has been
successfully experimenting 3D
transmissions for some time) and
hope to start 3D broadcast experiments in the near future.”
TVBE_FP
12/10/09
14:15
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13/10/09
16:27
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Moving away from Betacam to a ‘profoundly different’ QSAAM system
Implementing tapeless
broadcasting at QVC UK
By Paul Murphy, director
of Technology, QVC UK
QVC UK is no ordinary television
channel. Not only do we broadcast 24 hours a day of which 17
hours are live, we are also a 24
hour retailer, with constantly
changing and evolving content
driven by customer calls and ultimately by product sales. In many
respects, QVC is like a news station. Content for the promotional
breaks is planned and scheduled
in advance but the live programming is unplanned and the director must be ready to make
changes at any moment.
In 2007 we began serious planning for a MAM and playout
solution that would fit with QVC’s
unique retail needs. We worked
with Marquis to document the
existing workflows and TSL
Systems to define a system that
would function in our retail television environment. However, in
Dec 2007 we were made aware
that QVC Japan had implemented
its own MAM project and it made
sense to look at this before developing our solution any further.
On visiting QVC Japan in
April 2008, we were presented
with a system called QSAAM
(QVC’s Server Automation and
used in both countries as a QVC
Enterprise solution.
Meanwhile, the London team
went about replicating QVC
Japan’s architecture and infrastructure using latest generation
servers and operating systems. By
October 2008 equipment orders
had been placed and NSD had
started the translation and coding
changes for the core QSAAM
application.
a base band video into the production SQ.
A hierarchical storage system
is in place with deep archive provided by Quantum Scalar i2000
fitted with 300 LTO-4 tape cartridges and 7TB of near on line
and staging storage provided by
HP MS2012 spinning discs.
QSAAM itself is a suite of 45
executables, developed in C, with
a MySQL database cluster at the
centre. QSAAM communicates
directly with the Quantel Quentin
database via CORBA and to the
Stornext file system for transfer
and management of all assets.
Another bespoke interface connects to the QVC show planning
the i2000 has a WM9 browse asset
made that becomes available to
every QSAAM user’s desktop.
Each WM9 is transcoded from
the original Quantel MPEG1
browse copy courtesy of a Rhozet
Carbon Coder driven by
QSAAM.
As soon as finished edited
media is published from an eQ
suite to the Production sQ server
it becomes known to QSAAM
immediately, allowing that new
asset to be linked to real product
or scheduled as interstitials. The
connection to the QVC UK product planning system means that
QSAAM has information on
when each and every product is
The QSAAM system
Paul Murphy: As QVC works on a
pounds per second basis with
regards to time on air, transition to
the new system had to be seamless
Asset Management) that had been
perfectly designed for QVC’s
needs by NSD Tokyo.
Having defined the workflows,
we were able to map out the
QSAAM functionality and define
the modifications required for the
UK. While the existing system
was a good fit, we did add new
functionality to allow on-the-spot
recording in the live galleries. We
worked closely with QVC Japan as
the resultant system would be
The UK is operating wholly at SD
IMX50, whereas Japan is HD
using DVCPRO 100. QSAAM
handles both SD and HD seamlessly. The UK system consists of
three Quantel eQ suites, four SQ
edit seats, four SQ cut seats and
six SQ seats linked to a Quantel
network of three SQ servers. Two
of the SQ servers are playout
devices, fitted with 110hrs storage
and six bi-directional ports, the
third is a production server for
post and ingest operations with
220hrs and sporting eight ports.
Acquisition is on Panasonic P2
cameras formatted at IMX50 with
a clear upgrade path to AVCi100
once HD working becomes a
requirement. Media is ingested as
files straight into an EQ seat, or as
QSAAM: ‘We took the approach that QSAAM would only handle the
planning, scheduling and play-out for the live TV platform’
system for the run down of all
products and scripts for the day.
This rundown order is updated
into QSAAM every half an hour.
Through a managed approval
workflow, every single approved
‘ready for air’ asset that has existed on QSAAM whether currently
residing on an sQ or deep within
due to air, ensuring that every
product-related asset is transferred to the play-out sQ systems
hours or even days ahead of air.
Rather than implementing a
dedicated multi-platform programme planning and scheduling
system, we took the approach
that QSAAM would only handle
the planning, scheduling and
play-out for the live TV platform.
Planning and scheduling tools
for other platforms were developed separately, exploiting the
central library of content. We
now access this library and publish media as required to other
platforms, such as the web and
interactive television.
Implementation and
installation
Enrich your news workflow
with the new Feature-Set.
EventCalendar
StoryBin
4More – Video Content Management
WebDistribution
OpenMedia – The advanced News Management
www.annova.tv
With budget approved and kit
ordered in October 2008, the
entire infrastructure was in place
by the end of February 2009 and
software delivered in first week of
March. Within one week NSD
had the system up and running
and we then had the luxury of
spending three months fine tuning
and testing before it went live on
the 14th July, four weeks ahead of
schedule and on budget.
Change Management: The
implementation of QSAAM profoundly affected the way people
carried out their jobs and altered
the entire workflow of the broadcast organisation. It was crucial to
get the studio operations crews
onboard early so that they would
champion the system and to
38
13/10/09
16:27
Page 39
Mediator delivers for Ascent
From transaction-based to managed service model
By Adrian Pennington
A year after installation at
Ascent Media’s London-based
European Transmission Centre
(ETC), Pharos’ Mediator content management platform is
delivering business savings.
According to Steven Samwell,
technical
director,
Ascent
Media, “Our customers saw a
huge benefit in moving from a
transactional-based model to a
managed service fee model.
Previously clients would pay separately for every single job from
ingest to playout. Mediator
allows us to offer a managed
service where the client is billed
one fee per month. That
approach significantly helps cus-
tomers reduce their media
administration overheads.”
Originally incorporated within
the ETC to serve the transmission
needs of broadcasters like Sony
and Disney, Mediator has enabled
Ascent to add VoD provider
Filmflex to its roster.
“One of the key reasons we
selected Mediator was that it
could service different types of
business
model,”
affirmed
Samwell. “It offers the flexibility
to increase or scale the system for
clients without escalating the cost.
Today we ingest content for Sony
for transmission but since the
assets we store for them are now
entirely browseable they can start
to publish content for platforms
like VoD, web and mobile. This
truly is ingest once at high quality
and repurpose many times to
maximise the value of your asset.”
At IBC Pharos unveiled a
range of workflow options to
increase the efficiency of content
preparation from Mediator.
Version 4.2 includes the ability to
ingest raw footage and rushes for
swift transference to editing platforms including Avid, FCP and
Quantel. Mediator can now
import metadata from third party editing systems, such as Avid
Interplay, for storage and later
use during editing. Pictured at
IBC, from left to right: Steven
Samwell, technical director
Ascent Media; Spencer Rodd,
technical director Pharos; and
www.pharos.com
Tapeless at
QVC UK
users’: director, assistant director,
promotions scheduler, coordinating producer, media manager and
chief editor. Each was given a
dummy version of QSAAM to
see how they would use and react
to it and learn how to make it
‘sing’. As they did this, engineering documented the new workflows in realtime.
Transition period/testing: As
QVC works on a pounds per
second basis with regards to time
on air, transition to the new system
had to be seamless. To carry out
detailed testing, QSAAM was
implemented in development
mode, allowing one gallery to run
with the test crew while the other
ran live programming. Engineering
had the challenge of ensuring that
QSAAM was available while maintaining the ability of both galleries
to run in ‘tape-based mode’.
The user experience: The transition went smoothly and
QSAAM has delivered exactly
what was required. Our entire
library of information and assets
can now be digitally stored and
when the producer and director
arrive in the control room, all the
television material we have available on products and brands for
that show are instantly accessible.
They are never more than three
touches away from putting a piece
of video to air.
The power of all this in driving sales performance is huge.
With all the information at our
fingertips, we can put our best
foot forward on every product
and brand. The producers and
directors can focus more on the
performance of the show and less
on the logistics of where the next
demo is coming from.
determine how they would interact with it on a day-to-day basis.
We started with a ‘discovery’
phase between February and
April 2009 involving ‘super-
Jonathan Smith, project manager Pharos
39
13/10/09
16:27
Page 40
That’s studio entertainment
High def and 5.1 flow into Fountain
Studio production
The names of film and television
studios have crept into the public
consciousness over the years:
think of Ealing comedies,
Hammer horror and the 007 stage
at Pinewood. Fountain Studios in
Wembley, north London has gone
through several names and owners, with a long list of credits from
both TV and cinema — but for a
large part of today’s viewing audience it is The X Factor studio, or
the Britain’s Got Talent studio,
depending on the time of year.
During the Susan Boyle media
frenzy earlier this year TV show business reporters reported earnestly
from outside Fountain Studios,
although it was never referred to by
By Kevin Hilton
its proper name. The facility is able to
accommodate these light entertainment (LE) monsters in its 40.59m x
27.86m studio space, which can be
divided into two separate studios by
a wall lowered from the ceiling.
The Wembley studios have
been upgraded several times since
Fountain took over the site in
1993. The jump to high definition
was made last year and at the end
of this summer 5.1 surround
sound capability was added when
the first Calrec Apollo digital
mixing console was installed in
the main sound control room
linked to the production galleries.
Fountain’s Technical Director
Chris Cooper says the combination
of HD video and 5.1 was his ultimate
aim for the studio. “We had been
looking at where HD was going for
Calrec Apollo at Fountain Studios: “We heard of the Apollo as a paper
design at IBC two years ago” says Technical Director Chris Cooper
The stage with The X Factor: Light entertainment ‘monsters’ can be
accommodated in Fountain’s giant 40.59m x 27.86m studio space
many years and at what kind of work
we were doing would require it,” he
says. “When the time seemed to us to
be right we went from no HD to full
HD in 12 to 18 months. The final
part of the jigsaw, the audio, has taken quite a while to finalise but now all
the pieces are in place.”
Ten Sony HDC-1500 cameras
are on the studio floor, with a Sony
8000 vision mixer in the gallery and
a (Snell) Pro-Bel Sirius for routing.
Studio lights are controlled from an
ETC Congo console but as far as
recording formats are concerned
Cooper says the company is “waiting to see how things go”. Both
HDCAM and its SR variant are
available, with, Cooper comments,
more demand for the latter.
Because of this slight state of flux
investment is not heavy in this area
right now. The ubiquitous EVS
media server is also part of the
equipment portfolio.
Towards digital channels
The Calrec Apollo was chosen after
assessing audio consoles on the
market and those that were in development. “We didn’t consider staying with analogue audio,” Cooper
explains. “The move to HD was
going to happen and we wanted to
have 5.1 capability to go with it, as
well as make the transition to digital
audio. We started looking around
for a new console a couple of years
ago, initially looking at all brands,
and heard of the Apollo as a paper
design two years ago at IBC.”
Cooper and his team liaised
with Calrec’s designers during the
development of the Apollo and
the production version contains
many features suggested by them.
“Specifically we wanted an assignable desk that could handle 5.1
easily and be simply configured,”
Cooper says. “A feature I like particularly is that all the faders are
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evenly spaced, with no gaps
between the blocks of faders.”
Because the desk is used by freelance sound supervisors, ease of
use and familiarity were priorities.
The Apollo replaces a Calrec S
Series desk and sits in the sound
control room, which has been
upgraded and re-furnished by
Munro Acoustics to make it better
suited for live 5.1 mixing. During
its launch at NAB 2009 the desk
was promoted as having twice the
processing power of Calrec’s
benchmark digital console, the
Alpha, thanks to the next generation of the Bluefin DSP platform.
Bluefin 2’s processing engine
operates at both 48kHz and
96kHz, giving the Apollo up to
1020 DSP channel paths and 128
program busses or 510 channel
processing paths and 64 program
busses respectively. Also featured
is the new version of the Hydra
network, which has 8192x8192
cross-point routers and accommodates analogue, AES, MADI,
SDI and Dolby E signals.
Fountain’s Managing Director
Mariana Spater says the decision
to invest in new technology is not
made based on merely improving
turnover. “Our investment in the
moves from SD to HD and analogue to digital was made so we
can stay in the game,” she comments, “not to make more money.
It was something we had to do and
in the last 12 months we’ve
brought in work that wouldn’t have
come here if we didn’t have HD.”
This has included productions
for Sky, which had not used the studio before, and several digital channels. The result has been a better
turnover than last year but Cooper
and Spater see this as a by-product
of providing what customers want
from broadcast facilities today.
Not everything produced at
Fountain Studios is in HD at the
moment. Similarly the amount of
5.1 audio will be relatively small
but Chris Cooper sees having
the capability to work in both is
vital in a competitive market.
“Broadcasters are not interested
in paying extra for HD but we are
seeing budgets rising for it,” he
says. “The demand for 5.1 will
also grow and we have worked
with it before, bringing in an OB
truck with a surround desk.”
While there are now dedicated
HD channels in the UK and the
number of TV sets on the market
able to receive it is increasing, 5.1
still has something of a minority
interest image. “There are only
tens of thousands of viewers at
home with systems to receive 5.1,
compared to millions still listening in stereo,” says Cooper, “so we
have to consider compatibility, as
well as archiving for surround
when it is more established.”
This approach will go a long
way to extending the Fountain
Studios’ tenure of the 83-year-old
studio centre, particularly as LE
shows make the transition to HD
and 5.1. Being almost universally
known as The X Factor studio is
probably a small price to pay.
TVBE_FP
29/9/09
11:13
Page 1
IABM 2009 Global Market Update
Order your copy NOW
www.theiabm.org/research
13/10/09
16:27
Page 42
NEWS
IN BRIEF
Canford 800
Canford has announced over
800 new product additions,
many launched at IBC and
PLASA with all available to view
via the recently revamped
website. New products include
beltpacks and powering units
for the Tecpro2 system, a new
ISDN Broadcast Contribution
unit, new versions of the unique
Level Limited Headphones that
help employers meet more
stringent new EU health and
safety legislation, many
additions to their already large
interconnection section
including the innovative
Universal Modular Connection
Panel system. This is the first
time that Canford has not
published a paper copy of the
catalogue to coincide with a
major raft of product launches.
www.canford.co.uk
Broadcast Bright Way
Bright Space Technologies has
recently been appointed as
authorised Analog Way
distributor for its Broadcast
Range of products in the United
Kingdom. The Analog Way AV
range of products will continue to
be available through AV
equipment supplier True Colours.
Bright Space will add Analog
Way’s Broadcast range of
products, including the Broad
Scan array of scan converters, to
the lines it distributes. Colin
Clarke, senior technical sales &
support manager for Bright
Space said, “We look forward to a
long and happy association with
Analog Way and to placing these
excellent solutions with the users
who will appreciate the quality,
design and ease of operability
offered”. Bright Space
Technologies was formed with the
desire to meet the requirements
of the AV & Broadcast trade, to
have a true set of values that
encompasses the challenges of
today’s convergence market.
www.analogway.com
ColorCode 3-D comes to the fore
How a Danish company came to at the centre of 3D
3D TV analysis
In February this year NBC broadcast a 3D Monsters v Aliens trailer
during Super Bowl XLIII with viewers encouraged to keep one of 130
million pairs of special glasses to
watch a 3D double episode of sci-fi
comedy Chuck the following night.
This autumn Channel 4 is airing a
week of films and documentaries
using the same technology from
Danish firm ColorCode 3-D Center.
As the hype surrounding 3DTV
hots up, and in the absence of any 3D
stereo system — at least until Sky
launches its service next year —
ColorCode 3-D has struck a rich vein.
According to inventor and
company CEO Svend B Sorensen,
“There is only one system at the
moment which can be viewed with or
without glasses over any TV set; that
works with standard media for use
with DVD, Blu-ray, digital projection, mobile or other devices. We
think we can fill out the gap until
everyone has fully up to date 3Dready TV’s which, and it’s only an
estimate, will be between 5-10 years.”
There are other anaglyph-style
3D systems, notably a version from
Germany’s Telcast Media (which
uses the optical effect Pulfrich), but
Sorensen stresses that his system is
not anaglyph and has a distinct
advantage in terms of the way it
renders full colorimetry.
“Anaglyph separates the left and
right eye images with coloured
lenses of red and green (or red/blue,
red/cyan or magenta/green) to
present the 3D effect. ColorCode
3-D is a spectrum analysis process
far more sophisticated than
anaglyph that comes much closer to
presenting full colour imagery.”
Sorensen has been working with
research in the field of stereoscopy
at the Technical University of
Denmark and has more than 20 years
of scientific and practical experience
in the field. Intrigued by the ‘Retinex’
colour theory conceptualised in 1971
by Edwin H Land, inventor of the
Polaroid instant camera, Sorensen
Constructing a 3D image: ‘The trick is to send all the colours to one eye
and only a grey scale image with 3D information to the other’
began devising means of working it
into a 3D system.
“Retinex proposes that by
using both a long wave and a short
wave filter you can generate all
colours except purple,” he
explains. “All anaglyph systems
suffer from a limited ability to
show colours. Classically one
colour channel will carry red and
the other green and blue (cyan)
which splits the colour spectrum
and the brain is simply not capable of resolving the channel into a
full colour spectrum. The trick is
to send all the colours to one eye
and only a grey scale image with
3D information to the other.”
The ColorCode 3-D system is
essentially the combination of a software-based algorithm (ColorCode
CX Pro) which encodes the left eye
and right eye image into one
ColorCode 3-D image, and a
ColorCodeViewer (glasses) containing amber and blue filters with complex spectral curves to separate the left
and right image contained in a
ColorCode 3-D image. In essence, the
colour information is conveyed
through the amber filter, and the parallax information — to perceive depth
— is conveyed through the blue filter.
Since the amber filter selected
for the colour channel blocks out
the colour blue there has been
incorporated a ‘controlled leak’ to
automatically trigger the brain to
obtain the rest of the blue spectrum from the other eye.
“It’s been fascinating to work
in this area, not least because it
shows the complexity of the
brain,” Sorensen says.
How to produce 3D
The encoding process is the last
step in the production chain
although Sorensen’s experience in
producing 3D stereos imaging is
worth noting. “There are maybe
half a dozen companies in the
world who truly understand how
to produce 3D,” he says.
“Naturally since the techniques are
currently niche there is much to
learn if a company is inexperienced. For example you have to
know the size on which your final
image will be displayed because the
parallax has to correspond to that
final image size. If you created 3D
for a 20-inch TV and you then
blow it up to a 10m wide screen the
stereo information will be either
extremely difficult or impossible to
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42
view. Always produce for the
By Adrian Pennington largest format the image will be
displayed on, since you can scale
down but not up.”
When the material for both
image sequences has been post
produced ColorCode 3-D will
review the files and smooth out
high contrasts or saturated
colours as necessary. Typically
ColorCode will perform this at its
Danish HQ with review and
approvals sent by hard drive and
fibre — but in the case of the
Channel 4 season the volume of
material and up-to-the-minute
deadlines has required the company to set up a base at London
producer Can Communicate to
oversee the project.
“High contrast scenes or
scenes in which the parallax (deviation) is too large will almost
always cause ‘ghosting’, an effect
in which the right eye can see some
of the left eye image or vice versa,
degrading the 3D effect and eventually causing eye fatigue or
headache,” Sorensen explains. “If
the scene contains a lot of detail
then sometimes the ghosting can
be hidden but if there are a few
distinct objects in a scene it will be
more apparent. We can reduce this
effect before encoding.”
Some very saturated colours can
result in ‘sheen’ (flickering) in which
the high contrasts in colour between
left and right eye images are too
strong for the brain to resolve. “If
you have very saturated reds it will
look very bright through the amber
filter but almost black through the
blue filter. Since red is a complimentary colour to blue, the blue filter will
cut it out. You can colour correct
yourself out of that problem.”
The stereo window — how much
of a scene there is experienced to
appear in front of the screen and
how much there is experienced to
appear behind — can also be adjusted at this stage. Without glasses a
ColorCode 3-D image appears
almost as an ordinary colour image
with a slightly increased contrast
and with distant or sharp edged
objects surrounded by faint haloes
of golden and bluish tints.
After establishing the company
in 2000, ColorCode 3-D was
deployed in the film 3D Mania, the
first of four IMAX films shown in
Dome cinemas, where the use of a
dual projector and giant silver
polarising screen wasn’t feasible
because of huge cost and technical
difficulties. It has also been used
extensively in medical and promotional applications, but its profile
has been raised considerably this
year due to the professional broadcast applications, of which there
are more in the pipeline.
“It took almost a year of negotiation, discussion and testing for
the Super Bowl commercial and
at least six months to prepare
everything for Channel 4,”
Sorensen says.
TVBE_FP
5/10/09
12:05
Page 1
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13/10/09
16:28
Page 44
Philip Stevens talks to the OB provider about its latest investment
New truck enters the Arena
OB truck build
At times of economic uncertainty,
some companies decide to rein in
their spending and conserve
funds. It is refreshing, therefore,
to hear of outside broadcast
provider, Arena Television, investing something like £2.4 million in
a new VT truck. So, why is Group
Managing Director, Richard
Yeowart, so upbeat?
“Most of our contracts are ongoing for at least the next three
years. This year, we picked up a
contract for 47 Sky Boxing events
per annum, Five’s football coverage for Sunset & Vine, Premier
League Productions world feeds
of UK Premier League football,
the Album Chart Show and
Autumnwatch for the BBC. We
are also looking at four significant
additional contracts at present,
so the outlook for Arena seems
quite healthy.”
In fact, this ability to handle a
mix of programme genres may
hold the key to Arena’s success.
“I’d say our output is around 60%
Sport, 25% Music and 15% other
work,” reports Yeowart.
The new vehicle — to be
known as VT7 — will be a clone
of Arena’s most recent truck VT6.
This previous vehicle was commissioned last December and is
believed to be the largest of its
kind in Europe. So, why did the
company opt for a similar design
rather than go for something new?
“We like to get truck design
right the first time, which is why
our larger OB units are all virtually identical. We always get input
from our clients when it comes to
truck layout, and there is no
doubt VT6 has been very well
received. It makes sense to copy
the design as there is nothing significant we really need to change.”
Arena Head of VT, David
Penfold, picks up the story. “With
VT6 we set out to build a truck
that would be as flexible as possible and would be a match for any
challenge a client could throw at
it. VT7 fills that same brief. That
said, we will make as many
improvements as we can and look
at new kit developments that have
occurred since VT6.”
The coachwork for the single
expanding side 17.5m articulated
vehicle was carried out by WHF
based in York, with the systems
integration done by E2E. This
additional truck will bring
Arena’s tally of dedicated Video
Tape vehicles to five.
More accommodation
“One motive for having a separate
vehicle for tape operations is the
sheer number of playbacks needed
TH
W T
O N
R E
G EV
“Its great – it gets bigger every year and this is much bigger than in
previous years – I see crowds of people, today is even more crowded
than yesterday !” Victor Belov, CTO, Comstar Direct, Russia
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Now in its 6th year
Main Gallery (and Main gallery 2): This panoramic view of VT6 shows the
main gallery area. This will be matched by VT7 once the build is complete
for today’s productions,” explains
Penfold. “However, that is not the
only reason. Our big scanners can
take six tape machines and six
6-channel EVS machines, or a
mixture of both. That represents
a lot of recording capability.
Nevertheless, when you have that
many machines on a job there tends
to be a fair number of production
crew as well as the VT operators —
all of whom have to be fitted in
somewhere. Having a large VT
truck can come into its own in this
instance. Furthermore, there is frequently a need to accommodate
edit suites in the truck as well.”
In all, there are up to 14 operator positions, plus a tape director
spot in the main body of the
truck. Several other positions are
available in the edit suites and the
engineering section.
Penfold reports that the number of tape machines is being
reduced all the time with more
and more clients going for EVS
replay machines and either Final
Cut Pro or Avid edit options. In
such cases, it is often only the
main programme archive recordings that are taken away from the
location on tape.
The tape equipment will comprise mostly Sony HDW-M2000
HDCAM
and
SRW-5500
recorders for high definition
and Sony DVW-A500 DigiBeta
recorders for SD. According to
Penfold Arena’s current HD
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output represents around 70% of
its commissions. “We opted for
EVS channels because they are
quick, easy to use and there is a
vast pool of good freelance operators who know how to use them.”
Penfold continues, “Our
choice for audio monitoring units
is Bel because we feel they offer a
variety of digital and analogue
input options and are extremely
user friendly.” Other equipment
includes Riedel comms units and
Snell Pro-Bel routers.
Nearly all the displays are
LCDs, with only a couple of CRT
Grade 1 monitors being used for
Engineering and Edit Suite monitoring. Arena feels that with technology moving on quite rapidly,
LCD screens are getting closer to
“glass” all the time. In addition, the
screens used on VT6 have a useful
In Monitor Display (IMD) feature
allowing visual confirmation of
what source is routed to them.
One of the reasons for investing
in VT7 was Arena’s success in
Richard Yeowart: “I think the next
big thing will be building trucks
that are 3D capable with all that
that entails”
winning football and darts coverage. With two different sports in
mind, are there any differences in
equipment specifications for each?
“The
main
distinction
between, say, a 20 camera football
and a 20 camera darts coverage is
the number of those sources that
will be used for replay purposes,”
explains Penfold. “On the football match, this would be pretty
much every camera whereas on
the darts it would be nearer to
half that number, meaning that
there would be fewer EVS replay
machines as a result. However,
there could be as many as three
different edit facilities on darts
compared to, maybe, only one on
football. It all depends what the
client wants to achieve.”
Once this project is completed,
what does David Penfold expect the
next major development in OB vehicles to involve? “I think the next big
thing will be building trucks that are
3D capable with all that that entails.
It will be very interesting.”
And from the management
side, Richard Yeowart is buoyant
about the situation at the
moment. He concludes, “I’m glad
I’m running Arena, as I think it’s
a tough market for the average
company right now.”
TVBE_FP
14/10/09
11:04
Page 1
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TVBE_Oct P46 Bus case
13/10/09
16:33
Page 46
TVBEU R O PE T H E B U S I N E S S C A S E
Transforming the data landscape
Business Case
A new business name appeared on
the scene at the beginning of last
year: Nevion. “What does it mean?
Absolutely nothing,” says CEO
Oddbjørn Bergem with refreshing
honesty. Dick Hobbs spoke to
him about the routing and
infrastructure business space
A very familiar name, Network
Electronics, specialist in routers
and communications infrastructure based in Norway, acquired a
California-based telecoms specialist, VPG, in a deal backed by
a private venture capital fund.
The decision was made to
rebrand both companies under
one banner.
“It is always risky, when you
have two well known brands, to
introduce a third,” Bergem admits.
“In our case, one plus one is more
than two. We can now bid for projects that no-one else can tackle.”
It is this ability to go for the big
projects, backed by a strong vision
of the future for communications,
that was behind the acquisition.
Network Electronics was known
for its routers, originally sold on
price, although with the development of the Flashlink range for
fibre transport they added technical leadership and, incidentally,
good green credentials.
VPG was a telco supplier, the
incumbent to top names like
Verizon and AT&T. Its expertise
was in network topographies: how
to get a lot of data from place to
place efficiently and securely. That
was the attraction for the Nevion
team, which sees video transport
over standard data bearers as
crucial for the future.
Oddbjørn Bergem: “Digital media can still be like the emperor’s new clothes — no-one yet dares to say when it is crap”
“There are three underlying
transport technologies for contribution: SDH/Sonet, dark fibre and
IP,” states Bergem. “There is still a
lot of scepticism about IP in
broadcast — packet transport is
still an issue for some customers —
but we believe we have the answers.
“A huge percentage of data
traffic will be video in the near
future,” he continues. “Telcos do
not necessarily understand this.
They guarantee no packet loss but
that the delay is half a second and
does that matter? Broadcasters
say yes, of course it does, but they
need someone to give them the
necessary IP capabilities.”
Part of the challenge for those
coming into the data communications business
from the broadcast world is the
barrage of standards, transport
layers and concepts. JPEG2000
or a flavour of
MPEG? SDH or
IP? Uncompressed
or visually lossless?
The Nevion
approach is to
abstract all those
decisions
with
technological
building blocks
communicating
in open standards
rather than using
proprietary formats. “You need
to be able to take
the output of
something into
the input of
something else,”
is how Bergem
Flashlink at the EU Parliament: “A huge percentage of
describes the simdata traffic will be video in the near future,” says Bergem ple thinking.
46
The company is very firmly
behind JPEG2000, for example.
“It is good for low compression
ratios. If your bandwidth is below
80Mbps you should consider
MPEG-4 instead — but used
right it is visually lossless.
represents, but US providers now
view the provision of capacity as
their business. So there are much
better deals available.
“This may lead towards
increased use of uncompressed
communication,”
he
adds.
“Our experience is that customers are getting
really annoyed with continuing annual fees when
they know they have paid for the equipment
years ago”
“It needs less power to compress and de-compress JPEG2000
than MPEG, so the investment in
Nevion hardware is significantly
less too,” he admits. “We can
do good JPEG2000 compression
in less than 20ms, then put it
into an MPEG transport stream
for convenience.
“Using building blocks to put
data into the stream, filling up
the bandwidth with data traffic,
is an idea we see broadcasters
getting,” he continues. “You can
build an SDH system, then just
replace one card to turn it into an
IP delivery system. That is the
way that the broadcast engineer
thinks: what you put in comes
out the other side, without
worrying too much about the
cable in between.”
Systems supply
By and large, the data transport
part of the deal, though, is still in
the hands of the telcos. Can they
provide the capacity at low latencies and — most important — an
affordable cost?
“The business model for selling bandwidth is changing,”
Bergem explains. “Europeans still
look at bandwidth in terms of the
number of telephone circuits it
“People will ask why they should
bother with the hassle of compression when you can get a
10Gbps circuit for just a little
more. New companies are entering the market for uncompressed
connectivity, pitching against
MPEG circuits.”
We are seeing this beginning to
happen, with new operators like
The Switch, with a business model
to rent connectivity by the byte.
Arqiva carries uncompressed HD
over The Switch as live data
streams from Europe to the US.
For now, though, most of the
available capacity tends to be
used for multiple services, which
needs careful data management
to get the most through the pipe
at any one time, particularly for
the big events. For the inauguration of President Obama in
January 2009 the bulk of the distribution — about 420 out of 480
services — was handled by a
Nevion Ventura video transport
platform, carrying the high definition pictures and sound to a
central hub then distributing
them, at different resolutions, to
broadcasters and news services
around the world.
No-one would argue that data
is the way forward for video
transport, and that the sector will
boom. But how can a company
with head offices and R&D centres in Sandefjord, Norway and
Oxnard, California succeed?
“It is like a marriage — if you
do not work hard at it then it will
fall apart,” Bergem admits. “It
takes good management and
good relationships. Communication is vital and travel is important: you cannot beat face-to-face
time. But there is no easy recipe.
“On the other hand, it gives us
increased resources,” he adds.
“We have doubled our spend on
R&D since the acquisition of
VPG, and because they are based
in California it is relatively easy to
find good staff. And so far we
have not lost a customer or an
employee because of the merger,
which I consider a success.”
There is much talk at the
moment of transformations in
the systems supply side of the
industry, with the recession
adding to structural changes in
the organisation of business, such
as the moves towards outsourcing. How does Bergem see the
state of play?
“I hear more and more that
equipment manufacturers will be
going out of business and everything becoming a service,” he
says. “But our experience is that
customers are getting really
annoyed with continuing annual
fees when they know they have
paid for the equipment years ago.
“Price does make a difference,” he continues. “And simplicity pays. Make it simple and reliable so customers do not need to
pay for continuing requirements.”
He makes it clear that the price
includes whole lifecycle costs, with
power consumption now near the
top of any decision-making
agenda. “Our Flashlink router
takes a quarter of the space of the
competition and uses an order of
magnitude less power. Talking
recently to a New York operation
about a new MCR router, they
realised that within two years they
will get their investment back just
in power savings.
“What kills a product?” asked
Bergem, answering “heat and
moving parts. So low power and
no fans is good design.”
Finally he returned to his
main point, the use of compression in delivering video content,
and how any chain is only as
good as the weakest link. “I invited some friends around to my
house to watch football,” he
recalls. “I have fibre to the home
bringing HD television, and a
high quality projector. But the
football looked rubbish — there
was some harsh MPEG-2 compression along with line. Digital
media can still be like the emperor’s new clothes — no-one yet
dares to say when it is crap.”
TVBE_Oct P47-53 news
13/10/09
16:39
Page 47
Taking the strain: Swedish manufacturer Easyrig has released a new version of its unique
camera support system. The Easyrig 4 Vario incorporates all the features of Easyrig Cinema 3
with the introduction of a gas absorber to allow variable tension adjustment. This provides the
versatility to handle a wider range of camcorder weights by simply turning a knob at the back of
the support arm. The Easyrig 4 Vario will be available in two different models to cover a range of
different weights: 4kg to 12kg and 10kg to 16kg. The concept of Easyrig remains the same on all
models — to relieve your back when filming, transferring most of the camera weight from your
shoulders to your hips. This reduces the static load on the neck and shoulder muscles, and
distributes it to other parts of the body. Easyrig inventor Johan said, ”We now have three
different Easyrig systems to accomodate all scenarios and fit within different budgets.”
DFT with
Cinevation
By Carolyn Giardina
At IBC DFT Digital Film
Technology and Cinevation
announced they have entered into
a strategic partnership that will
focus on sales and marketing, but
may be further expanded to
include other parts of the companies’ operations.
Together, DFT and Cinevation
offer products that service the digital intermediate, archiving and
restoration, and direct to print
applications. The pair believe the
new partnership positions them to
deliver complementary technology and products, as well as post
production workflows.
“Our strategic agreement with
Cinevation creates a powerful
partnership for creating value
within the industry,” said Stefan
Kramper, managing director of
DFT. “Together, we will provide
the post production industry with
enhanced, powerful and flexible
systems to improve ROI, image
quality and workflows.” Added
Cinevation CEO Bjørn Sæterøy:
“DFT Digital Film Technology
shares our commitment to delivering exceptional quality systems.”
www.dft-film.com
FCP to Quantel sQ
At IBC Quantel demonstrated complete integration of Apple’s Final
Cut Pro into the Quantel sQ server
News and Sports production environment. Final Cut Pro on Quantel
is shipping now. A new Quantel
Final Cut Pro Gateway enables
Final Cut Pro to be totally integrated into the sQ workflow in the same
way as Quantel’s own editors. All the
usual Quantel workflow benefits
and speed to playout are available
but now with Final Cut Pro — there
are no compromises. Workflow
advantages of the Quantel Final
Cut Pro integration are: ability to
edit expanding clips on Final Cut
Pro — editing of clips that are still
being recorded; finished edits are
published instantly — edits can be
played out the second they are finished; delta publishing — only new
frames created on Final Cut Pro are
moved to the sQ server; Final Cut
Pro can finish projects started on the
journalist desktop with Quantel
Low Bit Rate editors.
Tel. + 49 - 89 - 419 - 6710 · www.sono.de
www.productiongear.co.uk
Varying events, different venues, same demands: well-elaborated temporary broadcast solutions.
Layed out according to the technical requirements. Covered with a certain line-up of highperforming equipment, field-tested, reliable, user-friendly. Configured and supported by a team
with plenty of match practise. Knowing what to do: deliver and enable a professional performance.
For rent: full service.
www.quantel.com
47
TVBE_FP
14/10/09
10:52
Page 1
13/10/09
16:40
Page 49
Move from peak to loudness
“We look at the average loud-
EBU loudness spec for early 2010
By George Jarrett ness of one programme. It has to
Florian Camerer: “The competition switched up to 50kHz and the loudness war started”
P/Loud, the EBU’s largest project
group, is expected to finish its
work early in 2010 with the publication of five documents covering
its full loudness spec, practical
guidelines, metering, loudness
range, and distribution.
“Our main goal is to switch the
paradigm from peak to loudness,”
said Group Chairman Florian
Camerer from ORF at IBC last
month. “We are trying to record
the big blow of changing to loudness normalisation, but of course
you cannot get rid of peak totally.
“It is important to switch
because of all the differences in
broadcasting, both within channels during commercials play out
and between channels,” he added.
“The are similar groups to
P/Loud in the US, Australia and
Japan, and we have representatives
from all three within our membership of over 100 broadcasters and
vendors,” Camerer added.
P/Loud has based its work on
the ITU loudness measurement
standard 1770, which came
into effect three years ago. The
key elements are R2LB and
K-Weighting.
“It is a very simple weighing
curve. It is just a high pass with
a little shelving curve,” said
Camerer. “There are new issues
coming out under the heading
of LKFS — Loudness, K-Weighting, and Full Scale. Sound designers will be talking in future of
‘minis LKFS’.”
The promise is of a
new standard and a relative
element, but what guideline does
P/Loud follow?
be one number,” said Camerer.
“And the same number for every
programme in the future.
“Why did the peak crisis happen? In Europe we had peak
normalisation as standard, and
we had permitted a maximum
level,” he added. “We still have
peak and the standard quasi
peak meter has a reaction time
of 10ms. This means it misses
many peaks.”
At the same time peak has
ruled, we have had an understanding of FM modulation
with the equivalent of 30kHz of
FM deviation. “The maximum
on a TV channel is 50kHz, and
suddenly commercial broadcasters cut off the transients and
shifted from 30kHz to the top
of the range, making them
4dB louder,” said Camerer.
“Then all the competition
switched up to 50kHz and the
loudness war started.
“The situation is now unbearable for the consumer, so the
only way out is to abandon peak
and go to loudness. Multiple
vendors have implemented 1770,
and we are planning a road show
in Europe to popularise the
switch to loudness during 2010,”
he added.
Artemis gives power Xilinx demonstrates
problems the boot broadcast power
By David Fox
The latest special edition
Sachtler artemis stabilising system has a high capacity power
supply that can cope with even
the most power-hungry digital
cinema cameras, and avoids having to reboot the camera when
you change batteries.
“Red needs 110 Watts all the
time, so we have increased the
diameter of the [power] cable and
use special copper cable, so now
96% of the battery power reaches
the camera, which is a very low
voltage drop. It means we nearly
double the run time of the battery,” claimed artemis designer,
Curt Schaller.
The artemis EFP HD SE uses
hot swap electronics for changing
batteries without having to
reboot the camera, which can
take eight minutes for a Red One.
The electronics are made by
Anton/Bauer, but work with any
make of battery.
It automatically switches
between the two batteries (used
as counterbalance), and Schaller
believes it is much better than
using an electronic buffer, and
less likely to go wrong. The new
At IBC Xilinx held demonstrations of the latest developments in
serial connectivity that lower the
cost and power of serial digital
interfaces and enable the rapid
adoption of emerging DisplayPort
and Ethernet AVB protocols.
At the heart of these innovations is the Xilinx Broadcast
Connectivity Targeted Design
Platform that simplifies development of complete broadcast
audio and video interface solutions with support for SD, HD
and 3G-SDI standards in a single
programmable device.
“The new capabilities are
designed to enable faster time to
market and greater product differentiation of professional
broadcast systems,” said Ben
Runyan,
senior
manager,
Broadcast Marketing at Xilinx.
Based on the Xilinx Virtex-6 and
Spartan-6 FPGAs, Xilinx demonstrated the scalable performance of
its common platform approach for
broadcast audio, video and network
connectivity applications.
“Xilinx broadcast connectivity
platform is the first FPGA offering with low-cost, low-power
Inventor Curt Schaller
demonstrates latest model
high-capacity batteries are very
low weight, so having two adds
little weight.
“It is also the lowest-price
product in our range. If you want
to move to a bigger camera, you
can swap in a new module, so you
keep 80% of your first investment,” Schaller said. Users also
save on spare batteries.
www.sachtler.com
Ben Runyan: “Companies don’t
want to spend effort, time and
money on interfaces”
serial transceivers supporting HD
video for professional broadcast
applications,” said Runyan.
“SDI is ubiquitous throughout
the broadcast industry today.
Companies don’t want to spend
effort, time, and money on interfaces. Our broadcast connectivity
platform and DisplayPort IP simplify interface development, so
manufacturers can improve time
to market, lower implementation
costs, and focus on creating value
for their end customers.”
www.xilinx.com
49
13/10/09
16:40
Page 50
New Alfacam truck can take the heat
By David Fox
Alfacam has built the world’s largest
OB truck designed to cope with hot,
dusty, desert conditions. The €8.5
million 20-camera truck was built for
use in the Middle East, but the buyer
lost the contracts it was built to fulfil,
so it is now available for sale or hire.
It is based on the design of
Alfacam’s five existing big trucks, of
the type it used to cover the opening
of the Olympics in Beijing, but with
special dust protection, an anti-solar
roof, and 80kW of air conditioning,
“so that it can lower the temperature
30ºC compared to the outside air”,
which is vital when the temperature
can rise to more than 50ºC,
explained Gabriel Fehervari,
Chairman and CEO, Alfacam.
The truck can control up to 34
cameras and is fitted throughout
with Grass Valley technology:
Kayak HD 4.5ME vision mixer,
Trinix NXT 256x256 router, and
GeckoFlex signal processing.
Without the cameras, the basic
truck cost €4.5 million, but the cost
of cameras can double or triple that,
Gabriel Fehervari looks cool — but then
this truck has 80kW air conditioning
Barco prepares the IBC
ground for an NAB launch
ORDER YO
U
CATALOG
In effect, it has no competition,” according to Barco’s Steven Luys
By Ian McMurray
Barco used the opportunity
presented by IBC to expose
a planned product to potential
buyers in order to get feedback.
“We’re working towards availBulk Cables
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www.alfacam.com
the market,” he said, “because our
current flat panel products don’t fit
in a rack — whereas the 17-inch
form factor does. And 14-inch CRT
monitors are no longer available. In
effect, it has no competition.”
So what has the reaction to the
planned product been? “Very, very
positive,” Luys said. “People have
called it ‘cute’, they’ve commented
that it looks as if it would be up to
the job in terms of its ruggedness,
they like the fact that it’s full HD,
that it’s not very deep, and that
we’re carrying forward all the features from the 23-inch model.”
Barco has already received two
requests for beta testing. Luys
pointed out that LCD monitors
are now widely accepted by the
industry. Although there are
those for whom the CRT will never be replaceable, the availability
since 2007 of very high quality
panels, and Barco’s ability to
retain all the desirable features of
flat panel technology while replicating the strengths of CRT is
rapidly winning converts.
www.barco.com
Element Technica promises
to make 3D as simple as 2D
3D production traditionally
requires heavy, complicated equipment set up by a dedicated crew.
Now a new 3D camera kit from
Element Technica that weighs and
costs less, is promised “to bring 3D
acquisition down to the simplicity
of traditional 2D production.”
The Technica 3D systems are
configurable into both beam splitter and parallel camera platforms,
and the systems are scaled to fit
popular cameras from the tiny SI2K Mini a full size Red One, even
with zoom lenses. Camera and lens
controls are neatly integrated.
The camera rigs that hold pairs
of cameras and lenses in precise
alignment are made of machined
aluminium for optimum rigidity,
and (unlike other systems) require
no tools for camera alignment or
mounting. Alignment adjustments
are made linearly in each of three
axes, in addition to pitch and roll.
Rig set-up takes about 10 minutes
instead of the up to an hour
required for traditional 3D rigs.
Technica 3D systems are available in three sizes. The largest,
Quasar, is designed for full size
cameras, such as the Sony 1500 or
the Red One, equipped with prime
or zoom lenses. The mid-sized
Proton mounts box-style digital
cinema cameras such as the Scarlet,
Epic and the SI-2K. The Neutron is
designed for tiny 2/3-inch or 1/3-inch
imager cameras sporting C-mount
lenses such as the SI-2K Mini and
the Iconix. All three Technica 3D
systems can convert from parallel
to beamsplitter and back depending on the application.
Getting the right angle right: Two Red
Ones in Element Technica’s new 3D rig
To automate stereo calculation,
Element Technica has developed a
set of hardware/software tools that
will be available as add-in modules
for the core systems to enable the
director or DoP to control how
much or how little the subject
comes off of the screen, without
requiring complex calculations.
Interocular, convergence and
zoom, focus and iris control can be
coordinated through the company’s patented Stereo Assist feature.
www.elementtechnica.com
50
b88x255_090611.indd 1
ability around NAB 2010,”
said Steven Luys, Barco’s
market director for broadcast
and telecom.
The product in question is a 17inch monitor. “This fills a real gap in
mainly due to the expensive long
lenses required for sports. It did
its first job last month, covering
Brugge vs Shakhtar Donetsk in the
UEFA Europa League.
Fehervari is also about to
launch five new HD TV channels in
Belgium. Exqi will go on air in
November. “It will also be on the
internet and mobiles. We are trying
to make it as multiplatform as possible. The playout system is unique,
as it will use K2 servers with special
software, developed in house, to
repurpose content “as automatically as possible”, Depending on its
success, the software could emerge
as a product at IBC 2010.
11.06.2009
20:1
TVBE_FP
13/10/09
15:27
Page 1
Quality assured.
In today’s crowded markets, quality still makes its
mark.
The automated playout system from OASYS (formerly ON-AIR
Systems) provides the widest range of playout features available for
a PC-based system.
With modular and scalable software, you can create single or multichannel systems, from basic clip playing to full channel capabilities.
OASYS provides a complete workflow solution, or can be combined
easily with many third party software and hardware systems to create
integrated workflows, standby facilities or add-on channels.
We have over fifteen years of industry experience, but appreciate the
value of our customers’ feedback and constantly incorporate their
suggestions into our software.
Let us help make your TV channel stand
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13/10/09
16:41
Page 52
GlobeCast invests
€2m+ in football
By Ian McMurray
petition which runs from mid
August to May.
Up to eight games per night are
downlinked in HD from the Eutelsat
W2A and Eutelsat W3A satellites
using a wide range of new Tandberg
RX 1290 receivers across both sites.
In order to fulfil such a large capacity requirement, each feed is then
compressed, using new Tandberg E
5782 encoders, into four multiplexes
of two 31Mbt HD channels — to fit
within 36MHz satellite transponder
slots. English commentary mixes are
added to all games via ISDN.
For broadcast across the
Americas, GlobeCast converts
all eight games using new Snell
Alchemist frame-rate converters. Each feed is then uplinked
out of Brookman’s Park to two
Intelsat satellites for downlink
by rightsholders.
For Asia, two feeds are uplinked
out of Brookman’s Park to the
IS904 satellite and the other six out
of Satlink in Israel to the Asiasat 2
and Asisat 3 satellites for downlink
by rightsholders across the region.
Similarly for the UEFA Europa
League, GlobeCast and Satlink
provide downlink, capacity and
uplink services in SD for the early
stages and the same in HD for the
later stages of the competition.
GlobeCast has worked exclusively with UEFA for the delivery
of the Champions League into
Asia and the Americas since 1997.
New programmable key
switch with colour display
The simple click-fit mount
means no soldering is required and
a flex-tail cable connects the key to
the host system. The design of the
TFT128 ScreenKey has been created with low energy consumption
(3.3v, 53mA) in mind and also
delivers a low profile (16.7mm).
The key is optimised to minimise the bandwidth requirements
from a host controller. It offers two
operating modes — a High-level
command mode using simple command packets and a High-speed
mode delivering up to 10fps.
At IBC GlobeCast announced it
has renewed and significantly
expanded its contract with UEFA
in a deal to provide HD coverage of
the Champions League and HD
and SD coverage of the Europa
League to non-European rights
holders. As a result, GlobeCast has
made a significant investment of
more than €2million in HD
upgrades for its two UK sites.
For the UEFA Champions
League, GlobeCast has partnered with Israeli-based Satlink
to deliver all the games of
Europe’s most prestigious football competition in HD to 26
territories across the Americas
and Asia each night of the com-
By Farah Jifri
ScreenKeys has released its latest
programmable keyswitch system
in the form of the TFT128
ScreenKey. It has been designed to
display high-resolution graphics
and video and deliver significant
improvements in clarity, contrast
and viewing angles. Additional features include a full-colour 128x128
display with 65,536 colours per
pixel backlit by a white LED. A
Display-only version of the
TFT128 is also available.
TFT128 is controlled via a 4wire SPI interface and can be used
in either portrait or landscape
mode. It also offers seven lines of
text with nine characters as standard with the onboard font.
www.globecast.com
www.screenkeys.com
Telecast debuts TeleCube 3G
Telecast Fiber Systems announced
at IBC2009 its patent pending
TeleCube
Modular
Media
Interface (MMI) range of 3G
transmitter and receiver modules.
Developed specifically for OEM
applications, the TeleCube MMI
system offers broadcasters a flexible, cost-effective I/O solution for
distribution of HD-SDI signals via
fibre optics as well as copper cable.
“The TeleCube is a revolutionary product development for the
transport of 3Gbps signals over
copper or fibre,” said Eugene Baker,
Telecast CTO. “The options for I/O
configuration and the footprint and
scalability of the TeleCube modules
will enable manufacturers to provide
whatever format customers require
for their product transport.”
Combining a number of features such as lasers, detectors,
EQ, and line drivers and receivers
in a compact package, each
TeleCube MMI module allows a
single I/O port to be configured
as an input or output for either
fibre or copper.
Simply by plugging a TeleCube
onto any FPGA-based device,
engineers can instantly configure
the device for 3Gbps optical or
electrical input and/or output.
“For a range of applications
including HD monitors and displays, switchers and routers, cameras, and modular DAs, the
TeleCube modules help lower engineering design costs and improve
time-to-market for broadcast engineering solutions,” added Baker.
www.telecast-fiber.com
ViBE contributes to interviews
By David Fox
Grass Valley’s new ViBE VA5004
offers high-quality, low-latency
transmission for production and
contribution. It can output at up
to 500Mbps with less than 1ms
latency end-to-end, “making it
very practical in situations
requiring two-way conversations, such as sport or news,”
said Ray Baldock, Grass Valley’s
VP Marketing and Technology
at IBC.
It can do uncompressed SD
or use JPEG2000 compression
for SD or HD, while retaining
visual quality using 10-bit 4:2:2
sampling, and transmitting over
telecommunication links (Ethernet, IP, MPLS, and SDH) for a
fraction of the price of uncompressed transport. Up to four HD
signals can be transported using
gigabit Ethernet and JPEG 2000.
For managing telecommunications links, Grass Valley has
added a telecom extension to the
widely deployed XMS eXtensible
Management System.
For occasional contribution
circuits that are bitrate constrained, there is also the new
EM3100, which uses MPEG-4
AVC at lower bitrates (down
to 30Mbps at 4:2:2), but still
offers reasonably low latency
(350-850ms)
and
should
deliver higher quality picture at
30Mbps than existing MPEG-2
encoders offer at 50Mbps. It
can use IP or any of the common
transport standards, such as
ASI or DSB.
www.grassvalley.com
52
14/10/09
11:17
Page 53
Matte boxes go wide for cine style shooting
By David Fox
Chrosziel has added to its
MatteBox Series 450 for 1/3-inch
chip cameras with the €1,140
MB 450 R2 Super Wide. It has
two rotating filter stages for
4x5.65-inch filters, SunShade
with 130mm clamping, plus a
connector for 15mm support systems. It works unrestrictedly
from 3.3mm focal length. In its
lightweight SunShade version, it
can be used up to 16mm wide
angle on cameras with the 35mm
Academy format.
The new €1,600 MatteBox
456 Academy has up to three
rotating 5x5-inch filter stages
and allows the unrestricted use
of Cine and DigiCine lenses
from 14mm upwards. The filter
stages are designed to not rotate
each time the respective rear
stage is rotated.
There are two new follow
focus kits: the Studio Rig QF
Cine; and Studio Rig QF Video.
Both have a QuickFit connector
for 15mm rods and can use a
19mm adaptor. The QuickFit
connector slips onto the support
rods from below, so no need to
dismantle other accessories. They
cost €1,822.
To match JVC’s new GYHM100 camcorder, Chrosziel has
developed the €290 LightWeight
Support and a MatteBox Kit with
Light Prevention Ring. A kit of
both costs €1,315.
www.chrosziel.com
Shadey deal: Chrosziel’s MB 450 R2 Super Wide with SunShade on a Red One
Start your video over IP
engine.
New Gigabit Ethernet
solutions for DVB-ASI and
JPEG 2000 – compressed HD-SDI
nanoFlash
saves the day
Launched at IBC, the nanoFlash
HD/SD compact Flash recorder
is designed for mounting to a
Polecam rig or direct to a camera.
It can also be connected to any
HD-SDI source via BNC coax.
“The nanoFlash is the perfect
solution for truly portable digital
film, HD and SD video origination,” explained Polecam managing director Steffan Hewitt. “Both
the recorder and its compact Flash
storage media are very competitive
in comparison with traditional
tape-based video recorders.”
The device, which measures
107 x 94 x 36mm and weighs
400g, creates digital files for fast
transfer to industry-standard editing software. It is said to consume
a tenth the power of a typical hard
disk drive with practically no
maintenance cost. “Up to 160
minutes of 50Mbps video can be
accommodated on a pair of 32GB
cards,” added Hewitt. “Coming
soon will be the ability for operators to hot-swap cards seamlessly
which will provide effectively limitless recording time.”
Standards compliance, flexibility, scalability, visually lossless compression, low
latency, resilience, cost efficiency.
Do these sound like what you need to carry contribution-quality video to and from
your broadcast facility?
They’ll all be yours with a Ventura IP solution, winner of a 2009 Star award for
superior technology. The VS908 module aggregates eight ASI video streams onto a
single Gig-E link while supporting channel bit rates up to 213Mbps. Our VS901 JPEG
2000 SURGXFWVSURYLGHXQPDWFKHGÁH[LELOLW\DQGVFDODELOLW\IRU,3EDVHGFRQWULEXtion and primary distribution applications.
5HDOL]HWKHSURPLVHVRI,3YLGHRWUDQVSRUWZLWKHIÀFLHQWFDUULHUFODVV9HQWXUDSURGXFWV
from Nevion.
+47 33 48 99 99
sales@nevion.com
7KH$PHULFDV $VLD3DFLÀF Europe and Africa Middle East
www.polecam.com
53
TVBE_Oct P54 News
14/10/09
13:14
Page 54
AD
INDEX
21
26
AJA www.aja.com
Analog Way
www.analogway.com
38
Annova
www.annova.de
51
Anton Bauer
www.antonbauer.com
24
Argosy www.argosycable.com
42
ASL www.asl-inter.com
28
Ateme www.ateme.com
45
Autoscript www.autoscript.tv
5
Blackmagic
www.blackmagic-design.com
13
Blue Shape www.blueshape.net
3
Bridge Technologies
www.bridgetech.tv
17
Broadcast Centre Europe
www.bce.lu
20,30 Broadcast Microwave
Services
www.broadcast-microwaveservices.com
37
CVP www.creativevideo.co.uk
16
Dektec www.dektec.com
2
Digital Rapids
www.digital-rapids.com
34
DVS www.dvs.de
s54
ElQuip www.elquip.com
55
Evertz www.evertz.com
23
EVS www.evs.tv
25
For-A www.for-a.com
12
Fujinon www.fujinon.de
45
Gefen www.gefen.com
39
Glensound
www.glensound.com.uk
14
Hamlet www.hamlet.co.uk
1
Harris www.broadcast.harris.com
41
IABM www.iabm.org
33
IBC www.ibc.org
7
Ikegami www.ikegami.de
44
Informa www.informa.com
36
Juenger Audio
www.junger-audio.com
27
Lawo www.lawo.de
26
Linear Acoustic
www.linearacoustic.com
40
Link Research
www.linkres.co.uk
43
Logiways www.logiways.com
32
MediaGenix www.mediagenix.tv
15
Miranda www.miranda.com
52
Murraypro www.murraypro.com
53
Nevion www.nevion.com
11
Newtek www.newtek-europe.com
51
Oasys www.oasys.com
31
Omneon www.omneon.com
36,56 Playbox
www.playboxtechnology.com
10
Promter People
www.prompterpeople.com
35
Publitronic www.publitronic.de
19
Snell Group www.snellgroup.com
50
Sommer www.sommercable.com
47
Sono www.sono.de
Tiger
22
www.tiger-technology.com
49
9
29
22
54
TV One www.tvone.co.uk
TwoFour54
www.twofour54.com
Viewcast www.viewcast.com
Vivesta www.vivesta.com
Insight into technology change and market development at Eurosport
Innovation and success with
content and technology blend
Arnaud Simon is broadcast director
at Eurosport and Eurosport 2. Having
initially joined the broadcaster’s
programme finance department in
1994, Simon moved over to the
channel’s programming team to
develop its scheduling and content.
Bob Charlton spoke to him at IBC
about dynamics and drivers in the
European broadcast market
In 2004, Arnaud Simon oversaw
the creation and launch of the
Eurosport 2. After successfully
implementing the programming
strategy for the new channel he
was then appointed European
Programming Director for both
Eurosport and Eurosport 2.
In 2008, Simon became broadcast director: he has introduced
an open-minded and innovative
approach to the Group’s TV sports
strategy, bringing viewers new and
engaging sports and disciplines. He
has also launched new programme
formats in line with Eurosport’s
positioning as a leading sports
entertainment group.
Programme content and the
highest possible production values
are at the core of Arnaud Simon’s
being. Whilst he is aware that we
live in a dynamic technological
landscape he is still a strong advocate of a content driven broadcast
business model. “In the mid- to
long-term I strongly believe that
content is king and it is Eurosport’s
strong programming offer, featuring the top sports events which
draws viewers to our media platform,” explained Simon.
“Of course, this all happens
against a background of rapid
technological change — Eurosport
is in the race to integrate new technologies and to expand our digital
footprint, but our primary focus is
on providing sports fans the best
sports content on each of our
platforms and services — whether
it be TV, internet, mobile, catch-up,
or whatever.
Arnaud Simon: “Sports production
and broadcasting have made
incredible progress and have attracted
new audiences thanks to technology”
“We launched Eurosport HD
last year and this innovation has
already created an important
advantage for us. Our core brand
value of bringing the best sports
events worldwide on all devices is a
reputation that is valuable to us
and challenging to acquire. As the
reference in pan-European sports
media for the past 20 years, we
must make sure that we adapt our
strong content to all the emerging
platforms and technological standards. It was natural for us to be a
pioneer with HD!
“Our viewers want to watch the
US Tennis Open and the World
Athletics Championships in
Berlin. Being able to watch them in
HD is an added bonus — but it is
content that ultimately drives subscription decisions within a background of technological advances
and choices,” Simon explained.
When to launch HD
Having emphasised the contentdriven nature of Eurosport’s business model, Arnaud Simon is
swift to underline the beneficial
impact of the channel’s HD
launch. He reports that since last
year’s HD roll-out the channel
has acquired close to three million HD subscribers.
“We are satisfied with our HD
launches, we went to market at the
optimal time. Today, Eurosport HD
is in almost 3 million homes (in only
15 months). We believe that HD
offer is good both for viewers and for
operators and our model is successful. For viewers, HD offers them real
added value to their sports viewing
experience: crystal clear images with
amazing precision and great sound.
Once you watch sport in high definition, you can’t go back to SD. For
operators, HD proves to be an effective business model by proposing an
offer that increases customer loyalty
and value,” explains Simon.
Looking at the European
broadcast market more generally,
Arnaud believes that there exists
tremendous potential for new revenue generation in HDTV and other services such as catch-up TV. “In
August we launched our second
HD channel, Eurosport 2 HD,
which is now available in 20 territories in Northern and Eastern
Europe. The acquisition of
Budesliga football rights and the
successful launch of Eurosport
HD motivated us to launch another HD channel. This is a concrete
example of how content and technology together drive our business.”
Simon also explains that most
TV viewers still underestimate the
HD viewing experience. It is not
until they actually sit down and try
HD that they realise the ways in
which this technology can enhance
the home entertainment experience, especially when watching
live sports.
Bringing sport to
a new level
Arnaud Simon is a strong advocate
of HDTV and he also welcomes
other technological developments
such as 3DTV, although he
believes the latter has some way to
go. “Many families have just made
a major investment in acquiring a
large screen HDTV. Will they be
happy to make another major
investment so quickly — I’m not
sure,” he explains.
“Personally, I don’t believe the
technology is fully mature: from
the demonstrations I have seen I
remain to be convinced,” Simon
suggests. I believe that 3D needs
time to establish itself and it still
has a long way to go before it can
create mass market appeal.”
Despite this, Simon explains
that Eurosport is following
advances in 3D very closely and he
can see some applications where it
is already creating commercial
opportunities. “Eurosport, as a
reference in sports media, must
remain at the forefront of innovation, therefore we are following 3D
development very closely. When the
market and technology are ready,
Eurosport will also be ready!”
Despite his content driven
modus operandi, Simon recognises
that new technologies can add value
to sports programming.
“At Eurosport, we believe
that technology is bringing
sport to a new level. Thanks to
HD, improved on-air graphics,
realtime on screen results and
interactive TV applications, a
sporting event becomes more
engaging and more entertaining.
New advances in production are
also contributing to enhancing
the overall viewer experience.
Thanks to new caption technology and cameras, viewers can
experience sports events as if
they are in the heart of the
action. Sports production
and broadcasting have made
incredible progress and have
attracted new audiences thanks
to technology”.
“At the beginning of July, we
launched Eurosport’s first iPhone
application and already we have
more than 900,000 subscribers
downloading our application,”
confirmed Simon. “Our aim is that
Eurosport will be available for
everyone and on every platform.
But, I come back to the main point
— ultimately, it is the content
that attracts paying consumers.
Irrespective of technology, this is
the bedrock on which Eurosport’s
business success rests.”
TVBE_FP
29/9/09
11:13
Page 1
TVBE_FP
5/10/09
14:49
Page 1

October 2009

Transcription

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