BroadcastPro Middle East

Technology inTelligence for TV, film and radio

ROUNDUP

issue 11 | may 2011

PUBLICATION LICENSED BY IMPZ

ReviewPluralEyes tested

TeCH UPDATeCloud computing

iNTeRviewGrass Valley’s new CEO outlines 2011 plans

RAW POWEREmirati director Nujoom Alghanem unleashes the power of RED technology to tell the story of HamamaEmirati director Nujoom Alghanem unleashes the power of RED technology to tell the story of Hamama

Tel: +966 1 219 0888 Fax: +966 1 219 1888 P.O.Box 25560, Riyadh 11476, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

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STOP PRESS

Marcelle Aleid has been promoted to Deputy Director of Abu Dhabi Film Commission.

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Reports late last month about an announcement by the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority that analogue TV will be switched off in 2013 and replaced by Digital Terrestrial TV (if this is entirely accurate) in the country has sparked a huge debate within the industry. No doubt, in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the North African belt where satellite and IPTV penetration is perhaps a lot lower, DTT has been an attractive proposition.

In the UAE, however, where satellite penetration is quite high and where the use of broadband is on the rise, will the introduction of DTT — which will tentatively take at least five years if not longer to be available — be too late and the impact, too little?

DTT has a few advantages no doubt. It would mean that advertisers can reach targeted

audiences within the UAE, which has a fairly large cluster of expatriates from different parts of the Indian subcontinent, the East and Russia.

Estimates from the National Bureau of Statistics released last month show that the UAE’s population has risen exponentially and was at 8.26 million by mid 2010. Discounting the labour camps and other factors, we perhaps have about 800,000 to 1 million households in the country. Would that number be attractive to advertisers? If yes, then the question is how will the authorities make DTT more attractive to residents to woo them away from satellite TV or will they compel us to watch domestically-regulated television?

Until further clarification is available from the TRA, we’ll just have to wait and watch how this pans out.

www.broadcastprome.comSubscribe now

Vijaya Cherian, Senior Editor, BroadcastPro Middle East

Editor’s PickOSN claims it has had a 300% rise in subscribers in key Middle East countries. Page 6

The touching story of an Emirati woman with an extraordinary gift is brought to you by a team that explores the power of technology to tell it.Page 12

BroadcastPro ME has done some exciting video interviews with people at NAB and PALME.Watch them on www.broadcastprome.com

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Head OfficePO Box 13700Dubai, UAETel: +971 (0) 4 440 9100Fax: +971 (0) 4 447 2409 Printed byPrintwell Printing Press LLC

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Hamama TAkES CEnTRE STAgENujoom Alghanem’s Hamama wins Best Documentary at Gulf Film Festival

in this issue

MAY 2011

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20 viEWPOinT Al Jazeera’s Dr. Mohammed AlSharqawi

calls for IT and broadcast integration 22 REviEW Dubai-based editor Raul Skopecz takes PluralEyes through its paces 26 ulTRA SlOW AnD STEADY The power of ultra-slow motion cameras in live broadcast 32 inTERviEW Grass Valley’s new CEO outlines the company’s plans for 2011 34 TECH uPDATE Cloud Computing – Part II 38 nAB WRAP-uP We bring you the highlights from Vegas 48 guEST COluMn Disaster recovery is the need of the hour

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4 | www.broadcastprome.com | May 2011

Al Jazeera Children’s Channel has deployed a Neptune system from Pebble Beach Systems. The system is configured to control four channels and features a number of functions, including complex automatic workflows with ingest, playout, archiving and browse functionality.

The PBS system incorporates transcoding and encoding technology from IPV, allowing operators to select and browse multiple ingest streams. Both high and low resolution formats can be created simultaneously, and the operator can playback the low res clip whilst the recording is still in progress, allowing them to check content, add metadata and carry out rough cut edits using Neptune’s Razorfish application.

Speaking about the installation, PBS’ regional manager for the Middle East, Samir Isbaih, explained how Neptune’s automated workflow was devised to simplify the editing process: “If ingested material requires subsequent editing, for example, for a highlights package, the Razorfish operators are able to review content using low resolution proxies on their desktop PCs and can generate EDLs that trigger automatic workflows. The DIVArchive Content Storage Management

system from Front Porch Digital is instructed to load the corresponding high resolution material from the archive and the relevant partial files are restored to the server. The EDLs can be sent to editing systems to automatically generate new clips and these can be sent back to the server ready for playout. Neptune then sends an email to advise the edit operator that the new clip has been created and the job is completed.

“Once this is completed and the new high resolution clip is stored onto the server, Neptune’s transcoding engine automatically generates a low resolution version of the finished clip. Rhozet transcoding also generates multiple formats for other purposes, e.g. mobile and IPTV use.”

PBS also successfully migrated JCC’s legacy database, carrying all the relevant metadata and content across to the Neptune system.

In addition, a sophisticated API offers a high level of two-way integration with the traffic system from BTS. As well as receiving ingest jobs and metadata from the traffic system, Neptune continually monitors the system status and automatically updates the traffic system in real time.

TSL wiNS SkY NewS ARAbiA CONTRACTSky News Arabia, a joint venture between UK-based BSkyB and Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corporation (ADMIC), has contracted Television Systems Limited (TSL) to undertake the integration of a turnkey HD newsroom in Abu Dhabi.

The Abu Dhabi facility will be kitted out to run a 24/7 news channel, that is scheduled to launch in 2012. Sky News Arabia is also presently building an extension to one of twofour54’s studios to run its operations.

Speaking about the venture, Bevan Gibson, launch technical director for Sky News Arabia told BroadcastPro ME that the channel will have operations across the Middle East and North Africa region.

“We will have news bureaux across the Middle East. At the moment, our focus is to build a comprehensive HD facility in Abu Dhabi to run a 24/7 news channel,” Gibson stated.

TSL, Sony PSMEA and Qvest were the only SIs invited to bid for the project.

PROnEWS

RiCkY gHAi ExiTS ABu DHABi MEDiARicky Ghai stepped down as executive director of the Digital Media Group at Abu Dhabi Media on May 1. Ghai’s resignation follows the departure of other staff from the Digital Media Group.

Abu Dhabi Media has seen significant restructuring since the beginning of this year. Earlier this year, Ed Borgerding stepped down as CEO after a three-year stint with the company.

In the meantime, BroadcastPro ME has also learnt that Ayman Safadi, a former minister in Jordan and a former employee with Abu Dhabi Media, has now returned to work as consultant with the company’s board.

Total number of global pay TV subscribers to approach 1.4 billion by 2014 .

173 million Wi-Fi direct-enabled devices to ship in 2011. This growth will be led by desktop PCs, digital TVs, mobile phones, and notebook PCs.

Source: In-Stat

qATARi kiDS’ CHAnnEl ADOPTS nEPTunE

Ricky Ghai.


PROnEWS

Dubai Media Inc. (DMI) has begun the process of signing purchase orders for a list of equipment that it requires for undertaking a major archival project. The equipment will be procured by DMI and integrated by systems integrator Qvest Media.

The first of the purchase orders were signed at NAB by Hassan Chahine, DMI’s technology advisor at DMI.

The contract, which represents the second phase of the PBS installation at the site, will see DMI expand its Neptune automation system to bring a total of seven channels under its control.

Speaking about the project, Chahine told BroadcastPro ME: “We are planning to execute the archive project in phases to achieve immediate result and maintain a smooth change management process with people and workflows. Our first effort will be archiving all of the new material. This will be followed gradually by a content priority list. The first phase will maintain a large portion of the existing workflow (digitise, playout and log), and this is considered crucial to the success of this project.”

Chahine added that this strategy would also make employees more receptive to change.

“Often, it is the change management process that creates significant delays in deploying a new technology workflow in any organisation. So we will start with a system that requires minimum change. Then we will capitalise on our existing infrastructure and knowledge and gradually upgrade them. For instance, we will upgrade our existing Pebble Beach Neptune automation system to deliver our operational efficiencies and improve our on air production values. Our plan is to implement a fully automated file-based workflow and this phase moves us closer to that goal.”

According to Chahine, once these upgrades are in place, DMI will gradually include the library and all of the other components that need to be archived.

“In the background, we may also use an external service provider to archive our content,” he added.

The system, which will be installed and integrated by Qvest, comprises ingest, content management and playout, and will include interfaces to Harmonic Omneon video servers, Front Porch Digital’s DIVA, Vizrt graphics and Harris Broadcast Master traffic.

The UAE will switch off its analogue television network by 2013 and pave the way for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) in the country, according to the UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA).

The new channels, which will be similar to the ‘Freeview’ digital stations in the UK, will require an aerial and decoder box to watch. Other services could include pay-per-view and mobile video-on-demand.

Current frequencies employed for analogue terrestrial stations will be used for a new fourth-generation (4G) mobile network, the release stated.

Mohammed Al Ghanim, director general of the

Telecommunications Regulatory Authority stated that digital broadcasting will bring greater benefits “including quality, mobility, efficiency, and the ability to provide a better multimedia transmission.”

Presently, Saudi Arabia is the only country in the GCC that has a fairly extensive DTT network. Although other Arab countries such as Oman and Jordan have been exploring the potential of laying out the infrastructure for DTT, the UAE has previously never expressed the need for DTT owing to extensive satellite penetration in the country.

No further details were available at the time of going to press.

IPTV specialist Bridge Technologies has partnered with Dubai-based systems integrator Glocom, BroadcastPro ME has learnt.

According to the deal, Glocom will represent Bridge Technologies in the Middle East as its local partner.

Speaking about the partnership, Simen K. Frostad, CEO of Bridge Technologies told BroadcastPro ME: “We are very happy to have Glocom on board as our Middle East

representative and they are doing a good job of establishing our products and solutions in the Arab region. They have a longstanding history of understanding the broadcast and telecoms market and have been the key force in establishing some of the biggest and most successful projects in the region so I am very enthusiastic about having them on board and am looking forward to what we can do together in the future.”

DMi TO ROll OuT FiRST PHASE OF ARCHivAl PROjECT

uAE TO SWiTCH OFF AnAlOguE Tv BY 2013

BRiDgE PARTnERS WiTH glOCOM

From left: Philip Burnham, sales director and Simen K. Frostad, CEO of Bridge Technologies.

Tom Gittins, director of sales, PBS and Hassan Chahine, DMI tech advisor confirm the deal at NAB.


PROnEWS

From mid-March, viewers in Egypt have been able to access Orbit Showtime Network’s bouquet, after an agreement was concluded between OSN and the Egyptian authorities.

When Orbit and Showtime merged their operations in July 2009, subscribers to both networks across the Arab world with the exception of Egypt had access to bouquets from both operators.

Subscribers in Egypt could not access the OSN network due to unexplained reasons from local service provider Cable Network Egypt (CNE).

As a result, on December

19, 2010, when OSN switched off its old platform, legal Showtime subscribers in Egypt lost their channels while Orbit subscribers had their package downgraded to the Arabic channels package Alfa.

With the deal confirmed last month, subscribers were upgraded to the new OSN package and received an HD decoder free of charge.

OSN’s success in Egypt and the recent launch of Saudi Home Cinema in the Kingdom has increased its subsciber base substantially, David Butorac, CEO of OSN told BroadcastPro ME.

“Since the closing of the platform on December 19th, 2010, we have seen a huge increase in sales numbers around the region. In some countries, sales have increased by more than 300%. Launching our line-up in Egypt has been a huge success with more than two-thirds of the existing base now enjoying Western and Arabic entertainment. We had the highest monthly sales in April since the merger almost two years ago. The introduction of Saudi Home Cinema is also proving hugely popular with our customers in KSA,” he said.

QveST MeDiA MOveS eQTiSADiA Tv TO kSA

Business channel Eqtisadia TV, which previously had its office in Dubai has relocated its headquarters to Saudi Arabia. Dubai-based systems integrator Qvest Media was contracted to relocate its studios from Dubai to Riyadh, and also extend the channel’s broadcasting infrastructure and production capacities in the Kingdom.

Qvest Media was responsible for the entire conceptional planning, dismantling the broadcasting infrastructure that was installed in Dubai, reinstalling it at its new headquarters and commissioning the equipment in Riyadh.

The studio facilities that were relocated included a fully equipped four-camera studio with associated picture and audio direction. In addition, an Avid iNews editorial system, Avid NewsCutter video editing workstations and Vizrt graphics systems were moved. A complete broadcast processing system consisting of a Harris Automation unit controlling a playout environment based on Omneon servers was also transferred.

A major challenge for Qvest Media was to reproduce the studio in Dubai 1:1 at the new location. To enable this, Qvest Media’s engineers analysed existing technical equipment and drew up detailed sequence plans for the project.

The new studio was then equipped with an additional green screen, providing the option of operating it as a virtual studio based on a three-camera system with Vizrt solutions.

TwOfOUR54 LOOkS TO ACQUiRe SAe UAeBroadcastPro ME has learnt that there are definite plans for twofour54 tadreeb, the training arm of twofour54, to acquire SAE Institute in the UAE although at the time of going to press, no information was available about negotiations being finalised on paper.

We also do not know if the acquisition will be limited to SAE in the UAE or extend to the Institute’s branches in other parts of the Middle East.

Both parties were not available for comment.

OSn BOuquET FinAllY AvAilABlE in EgYPT

“As of July 1, all MBC viewers will be able to enjoy upto seven of our current 10 channels in HD. Moreover, viewers can watch the channels for free. They will need to have a HD TV and they’ll need a Technosat HD set top box. However, once they have the equipment, they’ll be able to see most of MBC Group channels in High Definition quality.”

Sam Barnett, COO, MBC Group.Irshad Contractor, chairman of Technosat, looks on as Sam Barnett, COO of MBC Group, signs a deal confirming MBC’s HD offerings on Technosat STBs.

OSN’s CEO David Butorac addresses gathering in Egypt.

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PROnEWS

JCC launched SEEFOOD, an animated feature film, co-produced with Silver Ant animation studios at MIPTV 2011 in France last month. 35 animators worked on the project, which was in production for two years. SEEFOOD is expected to be released later this summer in theatres followed by DVD releases in English, Arabic and other languages.

The film follows the adventures of a bamboo shark named Pup. When human poachers steal egg sacks from his reef, he makes it his mission to save his brothers

and sisters no matter how impossible the task may seem.

His determination to make right what is wrong takes him above water into Man's world — a landscape fraught with beauty and danger. Afraid for Pup's safety, Julius, a big blue shark, embarks on his own quest to bring home his best pal.

The director of the film Goh Aun Hoe stated that “the journey with SEEFOOD was exciting yet rough given the challenges we faced on several fronts that are known to our industry”.

“Nevertheless, we have

learnt a great deal during these last two years, and we hope this movie will touch the heart of the audience around the world as it did for me, my partner and all our team members,” he added.

On an aside, Al Jazeera Children's Channel also secured multiple exclusive broadcast rights from India's DQ Entertainment to broadcast in Arabic three iconic DQE animated productions including The Jungle Book, New Adventures of Lassie and Mysteries and Feluda. The agreement is for five years.

Turner Broadcasting will rollout its UK preschool channel Cartoonito across Europe, the Middle East and Africa this September as part of its efforts to increase the brand’s distribution to 125 million homes in 112 territories.

Cartoonito is aimed at preschoolers aged three to six and their parents. In Turkey and the Middle East, the Cartoonito block will broadcast on Cartoon Network. It will be made up of flagship programming airing in all territories across EMEA and locally produced content.

Launching with a slate of strong and varied content, Turner Broadcasting has picked up the new series of Bananas in Pyjamas as one of its flagship debut shows.

Jelly Jamm, a new 3D animated series, will also be part of the debut lineup. A number of additional pan-EMEA preschool series are expected to be unveiled for 2012 in the coming months.

Michael Carrington, chief content officer, Turner Broadcasting said: “We’re incredibly excited to be making such a big splash in

the preschool market, with a full scale rollout of Cartoonito across EMEA. Whilst controller of CBeebies, I’d always admired Cartoonito from afar, and having the opportunity to extend this preschool brand across EMEA was one I couldn’t resist. Building on the success of the UK channel, and with two launch shows at the helm – Bananas in Pyjamas and Jelly Jamm – Cartoonito is set to delight audiences across EMEA as a hub of fun, funny and imaginative entertainment for preschoolers and their parents.”

OMANi PRODUCTiON HOUSe bAgS eigHT AwARDS AT US fiLM feSTOmani video production house KMA Productions won eight film awards at the Annual WorldFest-Houston Film Festival, the third oldest international film festival in North America and the oldest indie film/video festival in the world. The film fest was concluded on April 16.

The company won awards in four sub-categories of film and video production. It swept all four awards — platinum, gold, silver and bronze — in different categories including safety/first aid, employee communication, as well as training and recruitment/career sectors. The awards were received for its films on BankMuscat, titled BCP Mission GONU as well as for films made for PDO, MB Petroleum and Sohar Aluminium.

Sayyid Khalid bin Muhammed al Said, multimedia producer and proprietor of KMA Productions, stated that the awards have encouraged the company to think beyond providing “productions for our corporate clients” to creating “film productions that tell compelling international stories while featuring the beauty and culture of Oman”.

NewS CHANNeLS HAve HigHeST AD RATeSNews and Current Affairs channels have the highest average advertising rates amongst free-to-air satellite TV channels in the Arab World, according to Arab Advisors Group.

The report states that peak average advertising rates of free-to-air satellite News and Current Affairs channels in the Arab World reaches US$ 5,419 for a 30-second advertisement aired between 21:00 – 22:00 KSA.

The Arab Advisors’ report is based on its analysis of the advertising rates across 38 FTA satellite TV channels.

The average advertising rate for a particular time segment represents the mean advertising rate for a standard 30-second TV commercial spot (known as a TVC) in that time segment throughout the week.

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PROTREnDS

in the wake of the just completed nAB Show in las vegas, it is possible to assume that the industry is rapidly approaching the tipping point in cinematography where film will be all but abandoned and in its place, an all-electronic workflow will emerge taking us from conception to screens.

This was inevitable, but it has taken almost a half century since the idea first glimmered in the corridors of production, back in the 1960s. Being myself an early adopter of the Sony CV Portapak, I was the moderator of a panel held in 1970 which I called “Video is the answer, what’s the question?” and featuring a panel of film and video protagonists dueling over which was preferable. That video has won today is undisputable.

How this progressed, however, is pretty interesting. First, video was used as a mirroring device alongside dailies and called ‘video assist’ used to capture what was essentially a security master that would be instantly reviewable before film could possibly be developed.

Then came SMPTE time code and non-linear editing and that eroded the use of film editing tables like KEM and Steenbeck, giving way to Digital post. Probably the last phase has been to adopt the use of video cameras and camcorders. Among the first step in that direction was the deployment of those featuring 24 frames as a choice instead of 30 fps. But those early models lacked the sensitivity and latitude of image making that film stock offered, so they did not succeed completely. But, as HDTV proliferated and 3D started to make inroads, filmmakers demanded to have electronic alternatives for movie-making. Simultaneously, graphics and effects were increasingly becoming the exclusive province of computers and software programmes.

A variety of changes in the industry have forced the issue. Among them, that distribution, now called Digital Cinema, has transformed most theaters into electronic cinemas, bringing in the

Movie industry moving towards all-electronic cinematography

Douglas i. Sheer is CEO & Chief Analyst of DIS Consulting Corporation.

signals – instead of film cans – via satellite feeds to servers and video projectors. With video camcorders and cameras becoming so much more high resolution – HD giving way to 2K, then 4K and now 8K – the industry has plunged in to Digital Cinematography feet first.

Perhaps the latest, but by no means the exclusive solution, is the Sony F65 electronic cinema camera shown at the Las Vegas convention.

The F65 CineAlta Digital Motion Picture Camera builds upon the proven CineAlta platform, and represents the next generation technology from Sony for Digital Motion Picture acquisition. It’s the Industry’s first 8K 20M-Pixel CMOS imager. From this imager, the F65 will derive HD, 2K, True 4K resolution, and can go higher. It uses a 16-bit linear RAW output and adheres to 1.9:1 aspect ratio, DCI Projection standard (4096 x 2160 or 2048 x 1080). There is a choice of picture composition as needed: 1.85:1, 1.78:1, 1.66:1, 1.33:1, 2.35 spherical, 1.3x anamorphic, or 2x anamorphic cropped plus features a wide dynamic range, low S/N ratio, and high sensitivity, with optional SR-R4 on board SRMemory recorder. And, HD-SDI Monitoring outputs with viewing LUT’s are provided. The camera can shoot from 1 to 120 fps and offers 16 bit-RAW recording in SRMemory card although they are sold separately. With its normal ability to capture in 4K and its further ability to go up through 8K, the F65 is a true cinema product and its footage shows that.

Other well-known 4K cameras include: ARRI, Dalsa, RED, Phantom, Olympus, NEC, Panasonic, Canon, JVC and Hitachi. PRO

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RAW POWERDirector nujoom Alghanem and Alchemy Films exploit the power of the RED camera in production, and employ unconventional post production techniques to bring out the best in Hamama. Vijaya Cherian brings you the story behind the award-winning documentary


PROCOvER

The 2011 edition of the gulf Film Festival (gFF), a platform launched four years ago to give Arab filmmakers a more intimate space to screen their films and work with other local players, was a proud moment for the industry.

Over the years, GFF has become the yardstick for us to gauge the progress of the local film industry. Since the inaugural edition of the festival, which showcased a slate of slack productions, we have seen much bolder themes, better execution and greater sophistication in local films. This year’s edition especially brought to light a documentary and a director that caught our attention for three special reasons.

For one, it is about an Emirati woman called the Doctor of Dhaid who has an incredible gift for healing people of their ailments. It does not just showcase the simple life of the protagonist but also reflects a side of Emirati culture that the public has rarely witnessed. Secondly, the director of the documentary, Nujoom Alghanem, brings greater maturity to her film than some of her younger counterparts and has a number of films to her credit. Thirdly, the technology that was used to shoot and edit this documentary made the audio-visual experience much more attractive to the audience.

Hamama was screened to a packed audience at GFF, and bagged the award for Best Documentary at the festival.

Co-produced by Alghanem’s Nahar Productions and Dubai-based Alchemy Films, the 64-minute film begins with an external shot of Hamama’s house that was taken during the day on a RED camera and graded to look as if it were filmed at night.

“The whole documentary was shot on the RED camera,” explains Nicholas Davidson, Director of Photography (DoP) and owner of Alchemy Films.

“This is the first time we have shot for over an hour on the RED. Normally, we use this camera for five-minute corporate films. Doing a whole hour was quite a challenge as we had a small crew and had to maintain all that data and back it up. But you couldn’t have got some of the shots we have for this documentary as easily, if it wasn’t for the RED. The opening scene is an example. We discussed doing a


PROCOvER

“day for night” grade instead of going to Dhaid and shooting at 3 in the morning. We changed the colour balance, dropped the contrast and removed some of the colour to make it look like a night shot. Actually, if you had shot this at night, you would not have seen any of this detail, just a black hole,” Davidson says.

Hamama is Alghanem’s first feature-length documentary. The 48-year-old director, who majored in cinema production from the US, has attempted two short documentaries in the past about the last local boatman at Dubai Creek and an eminent Emirati Sufi personality.

This documentary, however, was a coup for Alghanem as Hamama has previously refused any interviews. Once Alghanem managed to persuade the 90-something Emirati to tell her story, she had other challenges to address; chief among them being funding.

“This is a very costly business and funding was not easy to come by in the early days of my film career. It has got better though as people came to know me and my works,” explains Alghanem, who often works closely with her husband, researcher and scriptwriter Khalid Al Budoor on her films.

“A documentary requires many resources and a team of professionals at all stages of the process from pre-production to production and post. Otherwise, it’s not easy to make a high-quality film. Luckily, I met with Alchemy Films and this is my first experience with the RED camera. I have another documentary that was shot in a similar period of time but on High Definition and I’m editing this now. HD is not bad at all as a format but when I place my two documentaries side by side, I feel my HD footage looks almost a bit old fashioned,” she says, almost apologetically.

Shooting with the RED helped the crew in many ways as the social and time constraints were many, according to Alghanem.

“Because of Hamama’s old age and work, it was important we didn’t tire her out,” she says.

The team, therefore, decided to shoot with two cameras, explains Davidson.

“She is very old so on some days, we’d turn up and she’d be too tired and aching all over and another day, she’d be all fired up and rearing to go, making her own cheese and butter. So we’d have one camera on the crane and the other handheld so we didn’t have to reshoot close-ups. We also decided to shoot the whole film in 2K and that made close-ups easy to shoot as well,” he claims.

“Hamama is very old so on some days, we’d turn up and she’d be too tired and aching all over and another day, she’d be all fired up and rearing to go, making her own cheese and butter. So we’d have one camera on the crane and the other handheld so we didn’t have to reshoot close-ups. We also decided to shoot the whole film in 2K and that made close-ups easy to shoot as well”Nick Davidson, DoP and Owner, Alchemy films

AFTER

BEFORE

“Cracking the audio was the most difficult part ... Once we had the audio translated, it sort of became the backbone for the documentary, and the images just fell into place”Acen Rizvi, editor, Alchemy films

A “day for night” grade was applied to the opening shot to light up Hamama’s house appropriately and make it look like a night shot.

DoP Nick Davidson.

Editor Acen Rizvi.


PROCOvER

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Despite these efforts, the team took almost nine days to shoot the film but Alghanem points out that in the end, “it worked to our advantage because it broke the ice between the crew and Hamama”.

Although the film moves seamlessly from one shot to another, several techniques were applied to create the final output, according to Alchemy.

In some parts of the documentary, for instance, we see a tilted and blurry view when people walk into Hamama’s line of sight.

Davidson explains that this is deliberate. “Hamama is blind in one eye and has blurred vision

in the other so in post, we tried to create a tilt and shift, and blurry effect and that was quite effective because when people walk into her view in the film, we see it from her perspective and that creates a separation from how we would see the same thing. We also played with the colours in post, desaturating them or tweaking them because Hamama said the colours she sees are different.”

One aspect that posed a significant challenge at the editing table was Hamama’s Bedouin dialect, which even Emiratis had difficulty comprehending.

This was editor Acen Rizvi’s biggest challenge. “Cracking the audio was the most difficult part. Nujoom (the director) and her husband went through the audio painstakingly, listening to it for

hours on end. Nujoom tried to capture her protagonist’s light heartedness and her sense of humour, and retain the nuances of Hamama’s poetic style. As a poet herself, she manages that beautifully. Once we had the audio translated, it sort of became the backbone for the documentary, and the images just fell into place,” he says.

As the footage was shot on the RED, it was fed through RED Rocket and RED CineX and edited on Final Cut Pro.

Interestingly, the early part of the documentary was shot with the first RED sensor and then Alchemy, which has several RED kits at its Dubai facility, got a Red M-X upgrade.

“We shot the documentary essentially with two different cameras so the difference in quality and latitude was visibly different. What was a lot noisier on the old RED system was much cleaner with the Red M-X,” Davidson explains.

For Alchemy, this was also the first shoot they had done in “true documentary style”.

“We would turn up at Hamama’s house each morning, and wait and see how the day panned out. There was no set script. We were incredibly lucky one day. There’s this funny little shop in Dhaid that looks more like a run-down shack surrounded by chicken wire in the middle of a scrubland in Dhaid. It’s from

“The content of the film required that if a pin’s dropping, you should hear it. You want to hear everything unlike a TVC, where you want to get a cleaner track”Ron bagnulo, Sound Recordist


PROCOvER

where Hamama buys most of her traditional medicine. Out of the blue, in walked an Arab guy and called Hamama auntie and they had a really funny exchange. Apparently, she had cured him of cancer as a kid,” explains Davidson.

We also see the Doctor of Dhaid explain some of the herbal medicines and actually stop the tremors of a man suffering from Parkinson’s in the film.

“She was truly amazing. She knows when people are coming to visit her. She has some sort of a gift and sees visions. We never saw Hamama’s daughters though. They would disappear the moment we arrived as they did not want to be filmed,” says Davidson.

There were also other benefits to using the RED including the flexibility to work with different exposures to get the most attractive output.

“You can’t get all parts of a shot lit unless you bring along a lot of lights,” explains editor Rizvi.

“The alternative is to apply different exposures to a shot. As RED shoots RAW, we could do that. We could output a 200 ASA version of the scene, a 600 ASA version of it and other exposures and then matte them together. That way, you get the right exposures in different areas of the same shot. In the scene with the goat (above), for instance, you can see the goat and the detail around it although it’s a poorly-lit scene. You can play with the exposure in post to get that effect. That way, we could get away with using minimal lighting,” adds Rizvi.

Besides this, adding more depth of field helped to make a drab location look interesting, Davidson chips in.

The team also used slow motion in a few scenes. “Shooting in slow motion was another reason why

it was ideal to film in 2K. We also saved a huge amount of money because we didn’t have to store anything on tape,” Davidson adds.

Perhaps one element that was central to this documentary was the sound.

“It is the first time I have worked on this level where the sound is just as important as the picture. In this documentary, you can hear the rice bubbling and Hamama pouring out her coffee. The sound track is crucial while the music itself is minimal. Most of the sound has been recorded on the RED and it’s all synced sound so we had to be careful not to speak,” explains Davidson.

Credit for the sound goes to sound recordist Ron Bagnulo, who explains that he used an older technique called m/s recording for this documentary.

“I knew at the outset that this documentary was being made for the big screen so I had to record it for that purpose. And you have only one take. The content of the film required that if a pin’s dropping, you should hear it. You want to hear everything unlike a TVC, where you want to get a cleaner track. I couldn’t mic Hamama up because she had a burqa on and her voice was likely to get muffled; you’d have heard the rustle of her clothes as well. Here, a combination of the Shure VP88 microphone, the Sennheiser 40 and a little Sanken CS-1 short capsule served the purpose,” explains Bagnulo.

Technology apart, the protagonist touches a chord in our hearts with her slightly flippant, yet matter-of-fact way of talking, and we are treated to a glimpse of Emirati culture that is often off limits.

More importantly, the use of bold and unconventional technology such as the RED to film Hamama seems a fitting tribute to the protagonist, who is so steeped in tradition in her daily life and yet paradoxically, a maverick who resolutely follows the path she has chosen for herself. PRO

“HD is not bad at all as a format but when I place my two documentaries side by side, I feel my HD footage looks almost a bit old fashioned”Nujoom Alghanem, Director, Hamama

AFTER

BEFORE

Hamama, the protagonist.

Director Nujoom Alghanem won the award for the Best Documentary at the Gulf Film Fest.

The scenes on the left and above are examples of how the editor has worked with different exposures for different areas in post so as to light them appropriately. This was possible because the RED shoots RAW.


PROCOvER

A new science that calls for greater harmony between broadcast engineering and information technology has increasingly emerged in our industry. The introduction of many computerised broadcast systems such as vision mixers, video routers, multi-viewers, talkback systems as well as iPTv and RF solutions have made an understanding of iT an integral part of the modern broadcast makeup.

In the Middle East, there has been a limited understanding of this role.

No doubt, this region is relatively new in terms of broadcast and a pioneer such as Aljazeera Network Channel itself has only been in existence for the last 14 years. It is perhaps, one of the better examples of establishing technology specialisation in the region.

Based on several extensive interviews and surveys that were conducted with key engineers within broadcast and satellite for my thesis, I discovered that several

factors have hampered the region’s efforts to move forward and most of them exist at an organisational level.

For instance, there is very limited understanding of the importance of attending relevant exhibitions and conferences. Training and work-related seminars are almost minimal and there are limited associations such as Society of Broadcast Engineers in the USA to guide the industry forward.

On an organisational level, structures are based on weak standards; daily tasks leave no time for strategic planning; the scarcity of specialised engineers force many satellite channels to bring engineers from all over the world; creative workers are restricted in favour of followers; vertical promotional opportunities are almost nil; employees are constantly harassed and promotions for employees are not based on international best practices. In order for the Middle East to keep up with technological advancements,

IT and Broadcast must integrateChanges at an organisational level are essential to making technological advancements within the region’s media houses, according to Mohammed AlSharqawi

the following factors should be given greater consideration.

Qualified personnel should be selected to lead technology departments and divisions.

• There should be greater focus on enhancing administrative, managerial, and technological awareness through intensive training and visits to comparable departments in other channels throughout the world as it helps to expand the mind and enirch their experiences.

• Openness to the world through attending exhibitions, conferences, lectures, and enrolling at engineering universities since that keeps the engineers, technicians, and other relevant workers connected and abreast of the latest advances in the world. Exhibitions also provide an ideal platform for acquiring technical knowledge and arriving at proper resolutions towards facilitating and developing their jobs and making the operators’ jobs easier.

An evaluation system must be followed in order to ensure compatibility of the organisation with the needs of the consumer or recipient

Broadcast engineers must attend classes in networks and various operating sytems

WORLDWIDE WORLDWIDEMIDDLE EAST MIDDLE EAST

DISAGREE AGREE STRONGLY AGREE DISAGREE AGREE STRONGLY AGREE DISAGREE AGREE STRONGLY AGREE DISAGREE AGREE STRONGLY AGREE


PROviEWPOinT

• Knowledge transfer to local engineers from hired international skill force is crucial.

• Motivating qualified personnel and encouraging them to provide initiatives, without regard to financial costs, in order to create creative and active generation is another must.

• Programmes on broadcast engineering, electronic and electrical engineering, computer engineering, and IT by means of adding basic classes from those fields (for example, by adding classes in networks, software development, and maintenance to engineering majors or adding classes in communication, electronics, and electrical ones to information technology majors). I also recommend the creation of a specialised major in engineering and technology of broadcast (this major will be the proper balance of courses in all engineering and computer schools), which will be a major field of study in the near future if it is given its deserved attention.

• Creation of a team (permanent group or any other form of administrative group as may fit the company/country) that is tasked with supervising what had been stated above; researching ways towards correcting problems that are pointed out as a result of this work and developing mechanisms to implement them; working on creating and applying plans for the future; and training in order to guarantee the continuity of those teams. PRO

Dr. Mohammed AlSharqawi is the Broadcast IT unit supervisor at Al Aljazeera Network.

News agencies are heading towards recognising the importance of broadcasting through new mobile media methods

(mobile telephone, internet etc.)

WORLDWIDE MIDDLE EAST

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PROREviEW

One of the most tedious parts of my job as an editor is the part where i have to sync to the picture the sound that comes from a different source.

It is a simple process, but it is time consuming, and unfortunately, time is something we never have on our side as editors. Almost always, it takes a lot longer than expected for different reasons: the sound recorder or the camera wasn’t rolling when the slate was clapped, the slate was named wrong (yes, that’s right. Happens all the time!) or there’s no audible slate announcement on the sound. If you feel my pain, then this article is for you.

Recently, I had the opportunity to download PluralEyes, a plug-in made by

Singular Software for Avid Media Composer. There are Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier and Sony Vegas versions as well. PluralEyes claims to provide users with valuable workflow automation features for managing multi-camera, multi-take, and dual-system audio productions quickly and efficiently. It analyses audio information and automatically synchronises corresponding video clips, saving video editors hours in post. With PluralEyes, there is no need for timecode, clappers, or any special production preparation, the company says.

For my first test, I used some RED material that was shot with proper clapper boards.

I began with one picture camera that had its own sound track, (in this case, the material coming from a RED camera but it can be Canon 5D or 7D as well), and one sound source with four audio tracks. It is a must to record a reference audio track on the camera, for PluralEyes to sync.

Recording with no mic attached to the camera, therefore, is not an option as PluralEyes aligns the sources by analysing the audio waveform. I was lucky with this test material, that the RED camera was getting a live feed into one of the audio channels. It is not always the case. The first thing I had to do before firing up PluralEyes was to create a timeline with all of the source material that I needed to sync.

Dubai-based editor Raul Skopecz gives us his view on PluralEyes, a workflow automation tool designed to automatically analyse media content and sync the audio and video clips, including HDSlR images, without timecode, clappers, or expensive equipment

Moving in sync


PROREviEW

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I put each source material on its own video and/or audio track/s. Once that was done, I exported an AAF file with “link to media” option selected. I opened PluralEyes (independent application) and loaded the AAF file.

HeRe ARe A few RADiO bUTTONS TO CHeCk:

CLiPS ARe CHRONOLOgiCALIf you know that your timeline has all the clips in a chronological order, you can enable this to make the sync easier and faster.

LeveL AUDiOIt is not the case with my sources, but sometimes the audio level (especialy on the guide track) might be too low, which will make it impossible for PluralEyes to do the sync. Enabling this option will tell PluralEyes to level the audio before attempting any analysis.

“Recording with no mic attached to the camera ... is not an option as PluralEyes aligns the sources by analysing the audio waveform”

USe MARkeRSYou can mark the separate clips on a similar sync point, and then with this option selected, PluralEyes will more likely sync it correctly.

TRY ReALLY HARDI guess the name is self explanatory.

Once I selected the appropriate radio buttons, I just clicked sync. For this particular test, the only selected button was “clips are chronological”. For this sequence that is longer than seven minutes and includes one video track and five sound tracks, it took around 20 seconds to process on an 8-core MacPro system. That’s actually quite impressive. PluralEyes will create for you a second aaf file so the only thing left for you to do is import it into Media Composer. Raul Skopecz edits primarily on Avid solutions.


PROREviEW

I conducted a second test with a sequence that used two different cameras that were recording at the same time, and had a separate audio source with four tracks of audio.

Once the sequence was prepared and the AAF exported, I loaded it to PluralEyes, and synced. It took about double the time, but with the same fantastic result.

Unfortunately I did not have any material with a continuous audio track, and on and off video tracks, to test it, but am confident the results would be just as good as the two different cases in which I

tested it. The speed of PluralEyes is based on the speed of your storage. The faster the storage, the faster your sync will be done. The application copies all of the audio files to the working directory while doing a sync, so make sure you set your working directory to the fastest HDD available in the system.

PluralEyes is a must-have application for anyone that spends at least a couple of hours a month synchronising various sources of sound. It is fast, and makes your life as an editor a lot easier.

However, this application is not without its challenges. PluralEyes, for

“The speed of PluralEyes is based on the speed of your storage. The faster the storage, the faster your sync will be done. The application copies all of the audio files to the working directory while doing a sync, so make sure you set your working directory to the fastest HDD available in the system”

CONS Inability to read sources from shared storage means I have to always duplicate the sound in my projects to local storage as well.

PROS Impressive sound syncing This is $149 well spent for anyone that’s dealing with dual system sound or with multiple cameras.

instance, does know how to deal with media files in a shared storage environment on the Mac.

When I tried to open a sequence (AAF) with media that is on the shared storage, I got an MXF_INVALID_FILE_PATH error. I’m not sure whether this is a bug or a missing feature but I would love to see it implemented in a future software release. I couldn’t test the Windows version to check if I’d get a similar error from there as well. PRO

Raul Skopecz is an editor, and runs Abis Studio, a post-production house in Dubai Media City.

These images show a project being synced and the final output in PluralEyes.

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PROCAMERA

ultra slow motion is not new to cinema but its adoption in live broadcast for greater analytical

detail has been more recent, says David Bourgeois

Slow motion has been a familiar feature of the visual medium for many decades, from its origins in cinematic use with film cameras, to its adoption by broadcasters using video cameras.

Filmmakers have long used slow-motion as a dramatic tool to add emphasis at points of dramatic climax, but in broadcasting, its main role has been to slow down the replay of some fast-moving action, most commonly in sports coverage. You could, therefore, characterise the typical cinematic use of slowmo as adding to the emotional impact, while in broadcasting, it tends to add an analytical dimension to the coverage.

ULTRA SLOW AND STEADY


PROCAMERA

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One factor that has played a big part in this difference has been the two camera technologies used in movies and in broadcast. Until recently, all movies were shot with film, and film cameras that can shoot at much higher frame rates than the standard 24fps have been available for some time. Movie directors, therefore, had access to a much wider range of slow-motion effects, from simply slowing the action a little or running it at half-speed, to showing it many times slower. Broadcast cameras were not designed to offer a big variation in frame rates, so directors and camera operators had to be satisfied with relatively limited

slowmo options – typically around 75fps being available on some makes of broadcast camera.

Researchers in science and industry were frequent users of slow-motion too, and until recently slow-motion cameras for scientific applications were film-based to achieve the very high frame rates required for analytical footage of extremely fast events in the field of ballistics or destruction-testing of metals, to give a couple of examples. And it is for scientific use that the first generations of ultra-slow-motion video cameras were developed, and with the advent of these cameras, there was at last the potential for broadcasters to add ultra-slow-motion to their toolkit. For a while, though, it remained only a potential development, since these ultra-slow-motion cameras were not designed for use in a broadcast context, were impractical to operate live, and delivered an image quality that did not meet the acceptable broadcast standards of the time.

“By ‘ultra slow-motion’, we mean frame rates typically between 500 and 2000fps. Compared to ‘ordinary’ broadcast slow motion of 75 to 180fps, ultra-slow motion opens up a dramatically different dimension of insight into the action”


PROCAMERA

With the latest generation of ultra-slow-motion cameras, and the availability of systems that provide completely integrated broadcast adaptations of them, producers and directors now have a new window on the action. Ultra-slow-motion is becoming part of the mainstream for broadcasters working in a live environment. At this point, for the sake of clarity, it’s worth reminding ourselves that by ‘ultra-slow-motion’ we mean frame rates typically between 500 and 2000fps. Compared to ‘ordinary’ broadcast slow motion of 75 to 180fps, ultra-slow-motion opens up a dramatically different dimension of insight into the action. Directors with access to ultra-slow-motion for live broadcasts tend to use it not just to show a slower version of what the other cameras saw, but to find completely different shots that add something entirely new to the coverage. Ultra-slow-motion can show details such as a baseball compressing and expanding like a jelly as it comes off the bat, or the otherwise imperceptible expressions of emotion on the face of a competitor straining for maximum performance.

These shots require careful planning, and a high degree of skill from operators.

But broadcasters who go the extra mile to create them reap the benefits because they provide memorable moments with real impact on the audience.Here’s a brief guide to some key issues in using ultra-slow-motion for live broadcast:

• Plan your shots to give extra value. Ultra-slow-motion delivers dramatic footage, and views on the action that cannot be delivered any other way. Don’t waste the potential of the technology on shooting ‘ordinary’ slow motion.

• To really make ultra-slow-motion a part of your coverage, choose a system that is fully integrated for live broadcast and designed to be used by your own crew. There are ultra-slow-motion systems that are not fully integrated for broadcast and these are hired out with a specialist crew — or you’ll have a hard time getting them to work on your own. These are much harder to make an integral part of your broadcast coverage, and your use of ultra- slow-motion will be limited as a result.

• Ultra-slow-motion cameras nowadays provide an extra live signal beside the replay signal, and they’re capable of continuous recording at the same time as playing back a shot. This is important as you can grab as many replays as you want,

still monitor what’s happening live and get whatever more important action happens during that replay.

• A true ultra-slow-motion system should provide frame rates typically from 300fps up to 2000fps, with instant replay, and operating controls that are completely familiar to any broadcast live personnel.

• Choose the frame rate that you need: what you want to show in perfect sharpness is what will look blurred with standard cameras. It’s not necessary to shoot at the highest rate your camera is capable of: increase the frame rate to the point at which motion blur disappears — this is determined by the speed of the action. Increasing the frame rate further will not bring more details and will slow down the action unnecessarily which will affect the rhythm of live coverage and this isn’t a good thing, usually you want to keep a fast pace to keep the attention of the viewer.

• To film an athlete, typically 300fps will deliver good results, while for some ball sports between 1000fps and 2000fps can deliver stunning shots.

• The latest-generation cameras provide image quality that is accepted by most directors to use for live output at normal

“Directors with access to ultra slow-motion for live broadcasts tend to use it not just to show a slower version of what the other cameras saw, but to find completely different shots that add something entirely new to the coverage”


PROCAMERA

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from Vegas

speed, as well as for ultra-slow-motion sequences, so if you choose the right system you can use it for both, saving costs in the process.

• Use a highly-skilled camera operator on the ultra-slow-motion camera. They will need to deal with some restrictions that ordinary broadcast cameras don’t have, and in any case, the exceptional shots that ultra-slow-motion can deliver are likely to need a lot of creativity and a lot of skill to capture.

• Shoot short focus, not wide angle. Wide angle ultra-slow-motion shots can be very busy — and like not moving at all —, while tightly zoomed-in shots concentrate the eye on the minute detail that can’t be seen any other way.

• Ultra-slow-motion cameras need a lot of light — more than conventional broadcast cameras. Sensitivity of the systems has been increasing all the time though light levels and flickering in some night-time sports can still be a problem, and you will need to plan carefully for this.

• Owing to the need for high levels of light, the cameras often need to be operated with the iris wide open, leading to shallow depth of field – another reason for using a skilled camera operator: accurate focus is vital.

• To increase the depth of field, it may be possible to close the iris down by increasing the gain, but eventually this will introduce noise.

• You’re using a special camera with a

pool of other identical cameras: this special camera has different properties that will make it react and look differently than your other cameras in different lighting conditions: single high-speed CMOS sensor instead of 3-CCD sensors. Expect your video engineer to spend some time at every different venue to fine tune his settings according to the conditions and get the best color matching with your other cameras. A good video engineer will do wonders.

• Keep sensor and SMPTE optical fibers clean as these systems are more sensitive. Some simple good practices will get you trouble free.

• You’re shooting in 720p as opposed to 1080, the sensor image is smaller, so you can save one stop at least with an adapted extender, making 1200fps at 720p equivalent to 600fps at 1080.

• Onsider ultra-slow-motion is a creative tool. Some of the most intriguing shots come from shooting subjects that may not seem obvious at first: weightlifting, show jumping or other equestrian events and so on are not the fastest sports, but they yield exceptional ultra-slow-motion sequences.

• Thanks to multi-block non stop recording, you’ll get plenty of footage. Though only a small part of this might be used live, a lot of clips will look astonishing in highlights, advertisements and will be a very valuable reference for sports analysis programmes that cover the games of the week, or focus on a specific player.

In essence, a lot of these materials are ideal for post-game programmes. In these cases, they might even get some shots at very high frame rates to get some more artistic clips they can use specifically for this purpose

3D is outside the scope of this article but there is only one broadcast 3D slow-motion camera system in the industry presently. All of the other super-slow cameras don’t work in 3D. These special cameras, therefore, sometimes take the lead on other technologies that take a much longer time to develop.

David Bourgeois is project manager of I-MOVIX.

“Ultra-slow motion can show details such as a baseball compressing and expanding like a jelly as it comes off the bat, or the otherwise imperceptible expressions of emotion on the face of a competitor straining for maximum performance”


PROAv

PAlME Middle East, the region’s only trade event for professional Av, light and sound was held from April 26-28 at the Dubai international Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The show has become the centerpiece of a five-cornered industry showcase growing in significance with the expansion of the regional audio visual industry, which is said to be worth US $2 billion.

“This is now well established as a major event which has a key position in the global trade show circuit and provides the Middle East with its own unique industry forum,” claimed Eben Botha, exhibition manager, PALME Middle East.

Sony Professional Solutions Middle East participated for the first time at PALME this year. Sony PSMEA will look to focus its attention a bit more on the AV market, according to its head of Marketing Hidenori Taguchi.

“We have been trying to expand our business in emerging markets like this region. We are here to meet with systems integrators who will install our systems for customers.

high-quality images at up to 60 frames per second (fps) in a high-definition resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. According to Sony, HD video enhances videoconferencing with lifelike images for effective communication.

Sony also showcased the VSP-BZ10 digital media player, a professional signage solution with full HD video playback capability aimed at businesses who want presentation options to attract customers.

German firm LOBO used PALME Middle East to launch its new ‘sparks’ and ‘bliss’ laser systems. These systems are known to generate stunning effects at very low energy consumption and were used to create a multimedia 3D laser spectacle called Castillo Mystico, which attracted huge crowds to Europa Park, one of the world’s leading theme parks in Germany.

Some companies with interest in both the broadcast and AV side of the business such as NMK Electronics, Martin Professional, United Broadcast & Media Solutions, MediaCast along with Avid and Oasis Enterprises also had stands at the show.

Kuwait-based visual multi-media and

“We have been trying to expand our business in emerging markets ... We are here to meet with systems integrators...”Hidenori Taguchi, head of marketing, Sony PSMeA

BroadcastPro mE makes its rounds at the Middle East professional Av, light and sound show and looks at what’s hot in the market

PALME brings AV industry together

We are exhibiting installation projectors, 3D projectors, digital signage and video conferencing solutions,” he stated.

One solution that caught our eye was Sony’s PCS-XL55 HD visual communication system, which adopts the H.264 video codec. This enables efficient transmission of


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entertainment provider, Gemini Worldwide LLC, launched a 360° inflatable projection dome at PALME. Almost as big as a football pitch and 20 metres high, the Superdome can host as many as 4000 people.

Organisers at PALME also claim that the Middle East’s booming AV business is now focusing on the academic sector.

As younger generations grow increasingly tech savvy, educational institutions seem to be looking for more interactive learning technology solutions in the classroom.

Wavex Touch, a major manufacturer and distributor of high-end AV equipment, launched the Wavex Interactive Whiteboards, and the Wavex Interactive Classroom software, where teachers can remotely manage and control students’ PCs in a classroom.

Christie was at the show with its MicroTiles solution, which bagged the most Innovative New AV Product of the Year award at PALME. Christie MicroTiles are modular display tiles that can be stacked

and clustered like building blocks to create display walls of any shape or scale, using an entirely new, advanced optical design that produces unparalleled levels of brightness, contrast and colour reproduction.

Christie also showcased Nitro, a modular series of motorised moving yokes, that can provide up to 20,000 ANSI lumens of video projection. With the optional Xenon or LED lighting heads, the system can produce up to 50,000 lumens of lighting. Nitro Solutions can be installed at ground level or rigged to a truss, and are ideal for building projection, architectural lighting and cityscapes and live events such as concerts and theatre presentations.

Mitsubishi Electric showcased for the first time outside of Europe its 50” DLP Multi-Touch cube and 52” LCD dual-touch screen systems while Extron demonstrated new solutions for AV systems integration.

Although the latest figures were not available at the time of going to press, PALME Middle East claims that it is attracting 200 exhibitors and more than 6,500 visitors from 68 countries to the show now. PRO

BroadcastPro mE conducted brief interviews with a few key people at PAlME. To view our video interviews, go to www.broadcastprome.com.

Simon Short (l) and Dinos Drimakis (r) from Melody House.

Chicco Hiranandani at the NMK stand with Toufiq Yamouri from Canon.

Simon Smith and Mahesh Singh from Christie receive an award for MicroTiles from Kevan Jones (l).

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We hear you’ve already worked closely with the EMEA market? How do you view this region?Yes, my first exposure with EMEA was at Texas Instruments, where I was running our Middle East operations between 1985 and 1989. The Middle East is a region, where you can see a significant demarcation between the older economies and newer, emerging economies, and the last frontier is probably Africa itself. There are lots of positive signs around Africa. This market is really transforming itself for us from traditional markets like Western Europe, USA, Australia, Japan, where historically, we have held a very strong position. Now, we see greater potential in emerging markets such as the Middle East, Africa, China and Brazil, and need to invest more there.

Can we assume then that you have plans to invest more in the region?We are going through a transition right now. One of the internal priorities of the company is to dramatically increase our investments in the emerging markets.

We have an office in Dubai but it is relatively small now and whether we will expand that will depend on the amount of business we have won and will win in the future. However, I can say that the company has had the history of supporting the Middle East and Africa more from

Western Europe. Although this is not economically viable, this has helped to transfer knowledge to customers and so, it has worked very well. This will continue to the UAE but our ambition is to eventually have our specialists closer to the customer.

What percentage of the Middle East business contributes to the whole Grass Valley business?I do not know the exact number but it’s a significant part of our business.

You mentioned that Grass Valley will be undergoing a transformation?By that, we mean that the company, which has a very strong products heritage, will gradually become a company that will be a good solutions partner to the customer. That’s a big transformation in some regions in the way we address our customers and the way we build our relationship with them.

Internally, there will not be a massive transformation as it relates to our product developments, where we believe we have great engineers. There is a massive transformation taking place in the way we manage ourselves for the general administration as well. We have moved the company out from Technicolor so we need to build our departments in terms of finance, legal, HR and so on, which we are doing now.

What areas of the business are priority right now for Grass Valley? Our first priority is to have a strong service arm for the company. The service experience that customers get with Grass Valley is different from one place to another. In some areas, we act as systems integrators; in some other areas, we only sell our products. We are going to harmonise and industrialise our service capability on a global basis.

The first priority, therefore, is to offer greater customer support anywhere in the world and this requires a lot of work. We recently hired a new head of services from HP as part of these efforts.

The next step would be to offer our professional services to customers as consultants or developers of their solutions. We do not necessarily have to build anything for the customer but we could help them with the transformation of their business model from traditional solutions to a more file-based architecture where there are a lot of workflows.

Customer support is a complete architecture internally, which means we have to look at the way we set up our call centres, the tools our people are using, the way our products are designed and the service factor. It’s really a holistic chain that we are reviewing right now.

BroadcastPro mE caught up with Alain Andreoli, the new CEO of grass valley, at nAB to find out more about the company’s plans for 2011

Customer service is key: Alain Andreoli


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We are also going to put more and more emphasis on software. This year, at NAB, for instance, we announced a very important product called STRATUS.

We need to help customers bridge the gap while they are assembling their workflows. We need to give them a kind of a backbone for them to manage their file-based operations. This is also a priority behind services and over time, we will have more and more software engineers.

Beyond that, we intend to continue to be a very strong player in cameras, switchers, routers and so on.

We also intend to look more at vertical markets although we can’t disclose anything further at this point.

“Customer support is a complete architecture internally, which means we have to look at the way we set up our call centres, the tools our people are using, the way our products are designed and the service factor. It’s really a holistic chain that we are reviewing right now.”

As CEO, what are some of the challenges you see ahead of you?Managing the speed of the transformation and maintaining the balance between the stability of what we have and the value of our existing business and relationship with the destination point and how quickly we can get there. Managing the speed and how many things you can do at a given time and once you believe you have done enough of transforming one sector, how to move on to tackling the next.

It is all about prioritising the issues at hand and working on them one by one.

In this chain, the first one is the company’s infrastructure so that is like the DNA, which we have been centralising in San Francisco and the second one is improving our service business. Once these two are done, we have more to address moving forward.

Have you given yourself a timeframe to undertake this transition?We will reach profitability this year. It’s really a step-by-step process of getting the company to be a strong pioneer in the transformation and improvement of the broadcast industry.

Do you think the tsunami that hit Japan will impact the broadcast industry?I hope there will be none. I hope our Japanese competitors and our own operations in Japan catch up. Japan has always had a promising future as the largest provider of products and solutions for this market.

In Japan, we have a good business and have more than 100 engineers developing products for us.

For us, it’s a very important market. With regards to any product disruption based on whatever may happen, things are in a bit of flux right now. I think everyone in the technology industry as a whole is trying to understand the implications of the disaster and which components are going to be short or not. So far, we have not had any short supply. We do not know what will happen in the next few months. Whenever we have evidence that we really have need for allocations of products given the lack of some critical components, we will inform the market about it.

Will there be an impact? Probably, but we do not know enough to make decisions at this point. PRO


PROinTERviEW

Cloud Computing - II

last month, we looked at the history of cloud computing and where it has come from, the importance of server virtualisation, hypervisors and virtual machine managers (vMMs). These technologies, as they have matured, have made the use of virtual servers indistinguishable from the real thing to end users and software alike.

Virtual servers form the backbone of modern cloud computing platforms. For example, many of the popular software services in use today by both consumers and businesses run on virtual or cloud-based platforms often without the end user even being aware of this fact.

It is this ubiquitous, connected nature of cloud computing that makes it so powerful; applications, once tied to the corporate network or requiring complicated installation on an end user’s computer, can now offer their services to those same users without any of these previous restrictions. Let’s consider in more detail how these cloud or virtual services are provisioned, created and maintained.

“Many of the key cloud providers have now developed data centre automation systems that allow automatic start up, shut down and movement of running virtual servers based on rules, scripts and load balancing algorithms”

There are a number of companies and organisations involved in the provisioning of cloud-based services and virtualisation platforms. As the technology has progressed over the second part of the last decade, so has the need to move virtual machines from one platform to another. Virtual machines (VMs) are just software and as such can be encapsulated in a single file. That file can contain not only the virtual representation of the physical hardware itself but also, a fully

installed operating system, service packs, applications, tweaks and everything else to make a given application work. This encapsulation of the virtual hardware, OS and installed applications is known as a Virtual Appliance. In the early days of virtualisation, each vendor of VM software had their own format for how a Virtual Appliance was represented and stored. However, in recent years, some standardisation efforts have improved this situation allowing virtual machines or appliances created on one platform to be moved and deployed on another. The open virtual format (OVF) and open virtual appliance (OVA) standards were jointly proposed by many of the major vendors of virtualisation software such as VMWare, Xen, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Dell and IBM. Version 1.1.0 of the standards was issued by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) in January 2010.

With the introduction of standards for the interchange of virtual machines and appliances, work on the platforms that support them has been able to move ahead at a faster pace. Support within the Virtual Machine Managers

We outlined the history of cloud computing and the technologies on which it depends last month. in this issue, andrew Davies explores the current technologies that can provide cloud services to businesses


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(VMM) for clever features, such as the ability to take a currently running physical machine and take a virtual image of it, have increased the ease with which IT managers have been able to deploy virtualised environments for their 24x7 core applications. Known as a P2V conversion (physical to virtual), it is also possible to do the reverse with a V2P (Virtual to Physical) conversion allowing a previously virtual machine to be deployed on physical hardware if required. Another standard that has proved useful, though not originally developed to support virtual or cloud platforms, is a liveCD.

LiveCDs are specially formatted CD-ROMs or DVDs that contain a master boot record (MBR). This allows a computer, virtual or physical, to boot directly from this type of storage without the need for complex installations allowing a kind of appliance to be created. The big advantage of a liveCD is that it can be used in both virtual and physical machines alike. In virtual machines that exist in a cloud or which are remote from where you are accessing the user interface, an ISO 9001 compatible disk image can be used. This allows a CD or DVD with an MBR to be imaged as a

“Today, if you work for a large corporation with a significant IT department provisioning IT services for a large workforce, there is a .... high probability that ... some of your IT services are being provided through virtualised servers, cloud based platforms or some form of appliance”

single file which has the ability to be mounted by an Operating System as if it’s a physical CD loaded in a drive. In fact, using this technique, even computers with no CD or DVD drive can use liveCDs. Many cloud computing platforms provide network drives pre-loaded with liveCDs for many of the most popular server operating systems such as Linux and Windows Server.

JEOSOne interesting component of many popular virtual appliances is the use of JEOS (pronounced juice) or Just Enough Operating System. Favouring modular operating systems such as Linux and Windows Embedded, a JEOS is a cut down operating system that only contains just the modules required to carry out a specific task. By cutting out unnecessary modules, such as the graphical user interface leaving just the Command Line Interface (CLI), the size of the OS can be reduced to a minimum. It’s not just the size of the OS which can be reduced, the complexity and statistical chance of bugs is also greatly reduced. A JEOS is a very useful building block for making simple self contained appliances with predictable performance, boot up times and small, portable distribution images.

Using the concept of a self contained appliance, an IT professional can quickly provision services for his enterprise with predictable, repeatable results. In the past, to create an email server, an IT manager would need to purchase a server, have it physically installed, provision power, network, cooling etc for it. Once installed, the process of installing and patching the OS would begin which could take several days. Only once a good solid OS was installed could the actual application install begin which depending on the complexity may take several extra days. Configuration of the application and migration to the production environment may take even longer. Using a virtual appliance running on a cloud based platform, an IT manager can simply deploy the new server as a single encapsulated file and boot it instantly. Today, these virtual appliances can actually be purchased as pre-built systems from companies such as JumpBox where with a credit card, it’s possible to simply go online and order a new web server or email server and have it instantly deployed on your favourite cloud platform such as Amazon EC2. Contrast this process of around two minutes with the 10 days required in our previous example.

Leading on from this, many of the key cloud providers have now developed data centre automation systems that allow


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automatic start up, shut down and movement of running virtual servers based on rules, scripts and load balancing algorithms. This allows a cloud-based application to automatically start additional servers when the load becomes high. This technique is used to great effect by Amazon as its scale its active servers to match the current demand for its services.

Using the above techniques, there is no reason why a broadcaster cannot provision relevant media services in a similar way. Take, for example, the modern channel-in-a-box solution offered by a number of broadcast vendors today. Many of these products run on a simple, unmodified x86 based server platform with only an additional baseband IO card differentiating them from off-the-shelf server products. Some of these channel-in-a-box solutions can now carry out the MPEG2 DVB compliant Transport Stream (TS) encoding in software and output the result as a UDP/IP or RTP/IP low bit rate stream through a standard Network Interface Controller (NIC).

The advantage of this software encoding is that the baseband IO card, traditionally not possible to virtualise, is no longer required and the channel-in-a-box software can be easily turned into a virtual appliance. As a virtual appliance, additional channels

The above figure shows the layers of a cloud computing system.

CLIENTL5The end user usually interacts with the cloud and cloud-based services such as SaaS and PaaS offerings via a web browser. The browser becomes the client. However, sometimes the user may be completely unaware that they are using a web browser as the browser may be skinned to look different

Several very succesful applications are already sold using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Examples would be salesforce.com, googledocs and ZohoCreator. Saas solutions are often build on PaaS systems to allow fast scalability as more and more users join the service.

APPLICATIIONL4

Cloud platforms are often sold using the Platform as a Service model (Paas). A cloud platform often provides a simplified web front end which allows cloud infrastructure to be provisioned automatically. However, complicated scripting is also possible. Billing is usually based on time or resources consumed

PLATFORML3

Usually sitting directly on the “bare metal” of the server in the place of a traditional OS this software layer provides the environment in which virtual machines can exist. This layer often provides the tools to create, start, stop and pause virtual machines.

INFRASTRUCTUREL2

The physical element of the cloud. This would usually be physical servers in a data centre. There are a number of companies that can provide stand-alone layer 1 services but it is more common for these servies to be bundled with other higher level layers.

SERVERL1

could be provisioned with relative ease and on cloud-based servers removing the need for in-house equipment, power and cooling.

For a disaster recovery (DR) scenario, data centre automation could ensure that the cloud-based DR channels were only activated (and paid for) when the DR site was required in an emergency. Data Centre automation can also be used to move services from one cloud host to another. This can be used to make use of cheaper overnight power or to simply diversify the hosting of services during crises such as those recently witnessed in the Middle East. With advanced techniques available on certain cloud platforms, it is even possible to move servers that are currently running without the end user being aware of the change.

Today, there are many different providers offering various services that together create the possibility of cloud based services. It can be helpful to think about a cloud-based platform as a number of layers in the same way that we often use layers to conceptualise networks. Some vendors provide a product that sits in a single layer of the cloud stack while others produce products that sit across several layers.

Today, if you work for a large corporation with a significant IT department provisioning IT services for a large workforce, there is a

very high probability that at least some of your IT services are being provided through virtualised servers, cloud based platforms or some form of appliance. These are mature products that are in constant day to day use for some of the world’s biggest organisations.

However, the question remains whether this technology can provide a useful contribution to the broadcast technology industry. Already today, several broadcast vendors are marketing solutions based on these technologies.

In our next issue, we will look at these technologies and how they may develop over the next few years to provide an important component in the way we architect and deploy future broadcast platforms. These technologies have the potential to change the face of broadcast technology forever and empower broadcasters to provision additional services quicker and at a lower cost than at any time in the past. However, to take advantage of these technologies, a next generation of systems integration is required. Integration at the network and software interface level will become an important differentiator of systems integrators in the future. PRO

Andrew Davies is business development manager at TSL Middle East.


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NAB2011 wrap-up

bROADCAST, THe NexT fRONTieR fOR 3D3D took centre stage at the 2011 NAB show where keynote speakers James Cameron and cinematographer Vince Pace announced their new venture, the Cameron-Pace Group.

They discussed the need for broadcasters to embrace 3D technology and described broadcast as the platform that would take 3D to the next level and make it popular in households.

“Broadcasting is the future of 3D,” commented Cameron, predicting that in as little as two years, “everything will be produced in 3D, and 2D versions will be extracted from that.”

“In order for 3D to work right, the worlds of 2D and 3D must combine on the production front,” he added.

nAB was a lot busier this year than previous years. BroadcastPro mE brings you the highlights

Through the Cameron-Pace group, the duo aim to develop, sell and lease 3D production technology to broadcasters as well as filmmakers and game manufacturers.

Exhibits on the trade floor included new 3D technology in transmission, content posting and editing, as well as newer and more manageable camera rigs. A 3D film making master class was also conducted at the show.

“3D has definitely been a highlight this year,” Chris Brown, executive vice president of NAB Conventions & Business Operations told BroadcastPro ME.

“There is a fair bit of new 3D product introduction. It’s nice to see the production side catching up with the feature film content side. It speaks to the fact that a lot of companies continue to invest in 3D,” he added.

MAkiNg THe CUTThere were quite a few launches on the post production side. Adobe’s After Effects CS5.5 and related solutions in the Production Premium CS5.5 suite were impressive. The new Production Premium suite delivers improved performance, workflow enhancements as well as new powerful audio editing capabilities. Adobe’s powerful Mercury Playback Engine has better GPU hardware support for laptops; its graphics cards are also supported now. From creating storyboards to transcoding and delivering the final product in multiple formats, this suite can do it all.

Apple made its presence felt at the User Group Supermeet with a preview of Final Cut Pro X, the next version of FCP. The new version will be launched through the

At the EVS stand.

At the Miranda press conference.

Harris Morris, President, Broadcast Communications at the Harris press conference.


PROnAB

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Fast, Not Furious

See us at Booth SL 106K2_Dyno_Broadcast_Pro_5.2.11.indd 1 5/3/11 11:53 AM

Mac App Store in June and be available at a retail price of $299.

According to Marco Solorio, owner of One River Media: “One of the big anticipations for this year’s NAB was the update to Final Cut Pro and the rest of Final Cut Studio suite of apps.”

Final Cut Pro X features a redesigned interface, 64-bit memory addressing, multi-processor support, background rendering, GPU rendering, use of more than 4GB RAM and real-time native format video processing.

NewTek introduced TriCaster 850 EXTREME, an advancement that blurs the lines between live and post production and will change the way an integrated live production system is defined. TriCaster 850 EXTREME includes proprietary NewTek IsoCorder multi-track recording technology, which provides the ability to record up to eight channels of video from either inputs or outputs. TriCaster 850 EXTREME offers important additional benefits, such as direct support for any Apple AirPlay-enabled app or device, plus EQ and compressor/limiter capabilities on every audio input and output.

Autodesk also showcased its recently launched 2012 Digital Entertainment Creation software for animation, visual effects, editorial finishing and colour grading for commercial, film and broadcast postproduction.

bROADeR-CASTiNgOne of the new introductions at NAB this year was broader-casting. This super session titled Connected TV: Smart Devices, Smart Strategies was well attended.

Online content and the distribution of content across a range of media platforms was also discussed at the Media Business conference by speakers including Bill Bradford of Fox Digital Media and Brandon Lucas of Black Entertainment TV.

Ways to monetise the new TV ecosystem through smartphones, game consoles, tablets and flat screens as well as opportunities in mobile marketing and branded entertainment on television were all part of the conference focus. Strategies to reach young connected audiences on the platform of their choice and social media community management were also on the agenda. Other challenges in contemporary broadcasting were also discussed at the event.

The Broadcast Management Conference covered cutting-edge sales and marketing strategies, digital integration solutions as well as effective leadership strategies and training ideas. The discussion was led by Mary Hart of Entertainment Tonight and Marcy Carsey of the Carsey Werner Company.

The Broadcast Engineering Conference also saw industry experts discuss the latest developments in smart TV technologies, digital radio and Mobile TV.

THe fUTUReThis year, 92,708 people attended the show; four per cent more than in 2010.

“Our objective is to grow and it’s nice to be back after a couple of tougher years,” stated Chris Brown who has already begun work for 2012.

“We want to put more emphasis on syndication content buying. We want to have additional screenings, particularly screenings of new content and international content, India being a big piece of that equation. Match making activities will be important too, with the folks that can buy and distribute content,” he added. PRO

NAb was well worth the long trek, as all of the expected visitors and more from the Middle East came to our stand. There was a keen interest to learn more about our range of fibre products and the new features of TRACS2. 3D and enhanced audio processing were the mantras repeated almost everywhere. But without a doubt, NAB 2011 was driven by a tangible positive mood, and leads and projects being exchanged. We have booked our stand for 2012, and look forward to hosting our overseas customers in America next year.

Mark barkey, Me sales manager, Axon

“we came away from NAb impressed by how 3D could be found almost everywhere on the show floor. It seemed like everyone had a 3D offer, from production companies to post-production and distribution. 3D is becoming mainstream in the broadcasting industry and this shows the commitment toward its success.”

Richard Laberge, executive vP & CMO, Sensio

Geert-Jan Gussen and Mark Barkey of Axon Digital Design.

“we had a 20% increase in visitors to our booth over the previous year, and a 30% increase in international visitors. We had a high number of Middle East customers, which reflects the improved economic situation in the region. In addition, all of us at Front Porch Digital appreciated the excitement generated by the new Archive eXchange Format (AXF), which we are confident will become the global, open, and portable standard for archiving and preservation of all file-based content.”

Rino Petricola, MD, front Porch Digital


PROnAB



Fast, Not Furious


gRASS vALLeY STRATUSGrass Valley launched a new, tightly

integrated modular software platform that supports every part of the content creation and distribution lifecycle through a common graphical user interface. The new STRATUS media workflow application suite leverages a highly scalable service oriented architecture (SOA) to help all types of programme producers and providers streamline their workflows.

The STRATUS platform, which is designed to ingest, manage, edit, and playout assets stored on Grass Valley K2 Summit or K2 Solo servers, or a Grass Valley K2 storage area network (SAN), allows producers and managers to make specific tasks fast and easy to perform by virtually any pre-authorised member of their staff.

For customers, this means they can grow their individualised STRATUS platform and add new functionality, as their business requires, without the

need for expensive hardware boxes or complicated, costly, and time-consuming system upgrades — as all software is pushed from servers to PC clients. STRATUS can be easily deployed alongside an enterprise asset management system or as a replacement for it.

Unlike a typical collaborative workflow solution, the Grass Valley STRATUS architecture provides individual tools to perform various job-specific tasks while at the same time helping management to better organise its staff by providing secure access to their content in a variety of IT-centric ways. It also allows staff members to reconfigure and build their own workspace, no matter what job they are doing at that time. They can also save those personalised attributes so that when they come back to their job — no matter where they are logging in from — they will see their screen set-up with the tools they have requested. Due to a series of Web-enabled tools, users

“NAb 2011 has been a great show for I-MOVIX, with a significant increase of the traffic to our booth and qualified visitors. In terms of audience, there were fewer onlookers and a lot more decision makers from key broadcast actors (TV networks, broadcast service providers, etc). We also experienced that the SprintCam ultra slow motion technology and the solutions we are providing were already well known by our visitors.”

Laurent Renard, CeO of i-MOvix.

“what really impressed me about NAb this year was the energy, the innovation, and the attendance. The attendance was just great. We saw a large turnout not just from the U.S., but internationally as well. I’m very encouraged, in fact excited, by the buoyancy that we’re seeing from our customers, our partners, and a lot of the attendees. Regarding technology trends, two things caught my eye. One is the continued push to file-based workflows and the increased efficiencies provided by these workflows, and second, the growing importance of mobile and multiscreen applications. It’s hard to overstate the importance of these applications.”

Patrick Harshman, president and CeO of Harmonic, inc.

Show Highlights

At the Grass Valley stand and inset, Alain Andreoli, new CEO at the press conference.


PROnAB



Fast, Not Furious


can also access the platform over the Internet and take advantage of “cloud-type” remote access capabilities.

STRATUS initially will track assets stored on a K2 media server but Grass Valley plans to add a number of third-party plug-ins, devices, and assets that can be tracked and integrated into the STRATUS platform. It will be instantly compatible, via plug-ins, with all newsroom computer systems and many asset management software platforms.

The first Windows version of the new Grass Valley STRATUS was demonstrated at the NAB Show and will be commercially available in June 2011.

SONY f65 CiNeALTA CAMeRA

Sony has launched F65, the next generation of its CineAlta camera, which claims to raise the bar in the quest for the 65mm film look. The camera includes an 8K image sensor, with approximately 20 megapixels, thereby, offering higher image fidelity than other cameras in the market.

The 8K CMOS sensor can run up to maximum 120Fps. This sensor performance combined with 16 bit RAW output makes the F65 the first image capture system designed from the ground up to support the Academy IIF-ACES, Image Interchange Framework, Academy Colour Encoding Specification.

The F65 has also been designed for multiple production applications,

including 3D rigs and Steadicam, and will offer a compact and lightweight detachable camera T-head for these configurations. In addition, an optional mechanical rotary shutter will be available for completely eliminating motion artefacts that are inherent with other CMOS sensor technology.

A dockable SR memory recorder – model SR-R4 – attaches to the camera to record directly onto an SR memory card of 256 GB, 512 GB or 1TB capacity with data security and sustained throughput of 5 Gbps. The recorder will enable ultra high speed recording of 16-bit RAW data.

A 1TB memory card recording at 24 fps will store 50 minutes of footage in 4K 16 bit RAW.

AviD iNTeRPLAY CeNTRAL

Avid’s Interplay Central demonstrates Avid’s Integrated Media Enterprise in action, enabling businesses to improve processes, increase revenues, and compete more effectively. Designed to accommodate a wide array of workflows, Interplay Central delivers next-generation workflow tools for on-the-go media professionals through both web- and mobile-based apps. With an open user-interface, Interplay Central allows individuals in different media production functions to access the tools they need to complete tasks with greater visibility to

“This year’s NAb show went very well for SENCORE, and we had a lot of interest in our TXS 3453 Transcoder and SMD 989 Modulator. We had a good flow of traffic to our booth and felt a renewed sense of optimism among many of the attendees. We saw a lot of new and significant changes with regards to multiscreen, multiformat video delivery along with video ‘in a cloud’ technologies. Companies are looking for content delivery solutions that utilise the latest standards – such as MPEG4 and DVB S2 – to reduce operational expenses and meet their goals of providing multiscreen delivery.”

Thomas Stingley, executive vP of sales and marketing, SeNCORe.

exhibiting for the first time under our own brand name has been a great success for us at NAB this year. Unlike the shows we do in Europe we still get the classic question: “so what do you guys do?” The question reflects the generalist nature of NAB and the understandable lack of Bridgetech brand awareness. Walking around the show it seemed well attended.We are looking forward to experiencing the same success next year.

Philip burnham, Sales Director, bridge Technologies

Gary Greenfield, CEO of Avid addresses the media at NAB.


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we started this year’s show with a bigger booth (20% larger than the previous year) and new colours. The show was a success for EVS. We saw an increase of 14% of EMEA visitors compared to last year. We managed to successfully introduce our new 8-channel XT3 production server and demonstrate our increasing involvement in integrated solutions. Visitors expressed a particular interest in Xedio Flash, our news production package in a short rack, and the XFly portable NAS storage case with 8TB of storage in a lunchbox-sized package. Many visitors also requested further information on our OpenCube solutions after attending our MXF File Mastering Tour in March.

verlaine Sebastien, Marketing Manager eMeA, evS

NAb this year exceeded all my expectations. We got outstanding attention for our sophisticated interactive TV everywhere solutions. Where else could we have 50+ great meetings with leading broadcasters of the world, all in three days? In addition we got to catch up face to face with our good partners.

Helge Høibraaten, CTO vimond Media Solutions www.vimond.com

“NAb brought new technologies and this year’ challenge was getting video everywhere on any device. At the Haivision booth, these challenges were addressed with new products like the Kraken transcoder for delivering groomed and secure HD video across the network and partnerships creating the Zixi Ready Makito encoder for HD video transmission over the Public Internet. This year’s show was exciting and busy.”

eric batangan, business Development & Marketing, Haivision

assets, team collaboration, and workflow agility. First available to users through both a lightweight, intuitive web-based portal and a mobile app, Interplay Central represents the latest evolution of Avid’s Interplay family of solutions.

Using a laptop or desktop computer connected to the web, a range of staff members can sign into the Interplay Central portal and access self-contained persona “panes” that are designed for tasks associated with different parts of the media production process. The Interplay Central Mobile app will empower users to browse, create and edit content directly from anywhere even when users are offline or out of network range. Content changes made by users who are working with Interplay Central Mobile in offline mode will be reflected in projects as soon as they have regained network connectivity.

The first version of Interplay Central is planned for release in Q2 2011, and will deliver story-centric workflow capabilities to news organisations of any size.

bLACkMAgiC DeSigN ULTRASTUDiO SDi

UltraStudio SDI from Blackmagic Design is the world’s smallest SDI capture and playback solution with HDMI monitoring for USB 3.0 computers and sells for $395. UltraStudio SDI includes a built in HDMI 1.4 output for low cost local monitoring using a low cost TV as a broadcast monitor. It also includes genlock and RS-422 deck control. UltraStudio SDI features built in USB 3.0 for a high speed 4.8 Gb/s connection that’s up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0 or FireWire.

It features super low jitter 3 Gb/s SDI connections plus the latest HDMI 1.4 output for local monitoring. You get both compressed and uncompressed video capture and playback in the highest 10-bit 4:2:2 YUV quality.

Richard Mcfeely

Richard Craig-McGFeely, senior VP of corporate sales, KIT digital.

From left: Ken Eckardtb and Mike Purnell from Argosy.


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DAYANg D3-Cg The Dayang D3-CG character

generator provides broadcasters and post-production facilities with the tools they need to create graphics, titles and animation, including real-time letter-by-letter motion-path manipulation. With fast graphics creation, a multi-layer environment, and comprehensive media management capabilities, the Dayang D3-CG meets the needs of today’s live broadcasting, therefore making it an ideal choice for superior SD/HD real-time graphic playout

It includes various templates and effects for sports, weather forecast, news, entertainment, elections, finance, and live events. Key features include comprehensive integrated functionality for live broadcast;

Visual elements that can be individually controlled while messages and pages are being changed; exclusive preview mode for security; dual-channel configuration with PVM/PGM play mode; individual control for each channel; unlimited number of layers per channel; drag-and-drop 3D object creation; multiple adjustable parameters for 3D objects; powerful text effects and more. The solution is being distributed by Dubai-based distributor United Broadcast & Media Solutions (UBMS).

evS xeDiO fLASHEVS introduced Xedio Flash, an

integrated hardware & software system offering all-in-one newsroom capabilities for small and regional newsrooms. Xedio Flash is a turnkey newsroom production system that fits into a single 16RU rack, including ingest, production, editing, storage and playout modules and it is optimised for fast production with edit while ingest and playout with no rendering. It includes a full format agnostic platform with native support of multiple SD/HD codec (including XDCAM, Avid DNxHD, Apple ProRES)and ability to mix SD/HD files on the same timeline. It boasts an open architecture and seamless file exchange with third-party craft editors and MOS Gateway for data exchange with NRCS.

ACTiveSANActive Storage conducted its

first-ever, live demonstrations of ActiveSAN, the high-performance metadata controller appliance for Xsan and StorNext networks. ActiveSAN systems will ship in matched metadata controller pairs for high-availability – two 1U ActiveSAN appliances, ready to use, out of the box – fully configured and optimised with the highest quality components available. ActiveSAN systems are designed to meet the needs and budgets of any-sized Xsan and StorNext deployment. It is a fully integrated Metadata Controller solution comprising the Intel Xeon server-based appliance that features a straightforward design for easy installation and serviceability. ActiveSAN utilises an enterprise-hardened Linux operating system and the Quantum StorNext SAN file system.

The installation and management of the appliance is designed for rapid deployment utilising a single administration utility that provides setup for server and file system parameters. The Active Storage designed native Mac OS X User Interface and Management Suite were designed for ease of use in deployment and management of the Operating System and StorNext. ActiveSAN will be available with Dubai-based distributor MediaCast.

Video Highlights from NAB on www.broadcastprome.com

Thomson Video Networks has broken away completely from Technicolor. See our video interview with Crystele Trevisan on www.broadcastprome.com

Bridge Technologies confirmed that it has partnered with Dubai systems integrator Glocom to undertake projects in the Middle East.

The importance of archival by Martin Bennett, Image Systems (formerly called Digital Vision).

ActiveSAN.


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PROguEST

The recent events in various countries across the MEnA region have highlighted major concerns for Tv broadcasters who have been exposed to unpredictable situations and disruptions to their broadcasting signals and other aspects of their operations. These disruptions created significant difficulties for communications and information gathering, especially for news channels, but have equally affected all types of TV channels. Signals on various satellite platforms were completely cut off or encountered continuous disruptions, forcing millions of viewers across the Arab world to change satellite frequencies on a daily basis.

Broadcasters had to look for alternative production and broadcasting bases in more stable countries within the region to ensure continuity of operations. This situation is another reminder of just how important it is for every broadcaster, regardless of size, to put in place proper business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

In today’s business environment, interruptions increasingly threaten the survival or at least the competitive edge of companies that are unable to recover quickly. Broadcasters strive to provide quality content to their audiences, but a disaster can leave them powerless to communicate with viewers and promote their advertisers. A solution to this is the implementation of a practised, comprehensive disaster recovery plan that will enable a broadcaster to protect its brand, keep services on-air, and get back up and running fast.

Media companies should constantly assess where they are vulnerable and consider man-made and natural disasters and equipment failures. Broadcasters need to

Failing to Prepare: Preparing to Failtake appropriate measures to prevent loss of service and expedite rapid recovery ensuring the reliability, security and robustness of the broadcast operations in such situations.

For example, a vulnerability assessment would consider the physical security at key facilities, system redundancies and the diversity of geographic distribution. As satellites are the predominant means of signal distribution for broadcast media in the region, the vulnerability of the satellite infrastructure should also be examined and reinforced. Alternative signal distribution means that commercial communication satellites (e.g. internet and data networks) should be considered as a last-resort backup, even if technical signal quality is degraded under emergency conditions. Redundant communications (with external news services and remote news teams, backup and alternative signal feeds and redundant signal paths to satellite and terrestrial transmission sites) must also be considered.

Most disaster recovery plans are built with the worst-case-scenario in mind. However, the reality is that most interruptions are not force majeure events. A comprehensive recovery plan should also take into consideration “minor” interruptions. There are several critical functions that enable a business to run efficiently; identifying and prioritising these functions is integral to resuming operations following a disaster.

The truth of the matter is that developing continuity and disaster recovery plans is just not sufficient. A few organisations in the region have invested in continuity plans for parts of their operations; however, most of them are not revised or activated. The

serious disconnect between developing the plan and failing to execute it is the major issue that most organisations fail to address. For an effective continuity and disaster recovery plan, they need to be continuously maintained, updated, and most importantly regularly practised. Disaster recovery is an operational problem, as much as it is a technology problem and the priorities have to be defined carefully.

Service providers — satellite operators and broadcasters — in the region should work together to develop prevention plans and to improve the redundancies in their interconnections. There will be an extra cost of building continuity and disaster recovery plans including redundant and diverse infrastructures, but the damage to the business and image of the TV channel and the risk of losing viewers at times of crisis and major events may be irreversible.

During a major disaster, everyone will fight for the same resources: when a major power outage occurs everyone will be looking for a generator, in the case of satellite interference, everyone will be looking for “cleaner” space segments, and SNG trucks and flyaways are invaluable sought-after assets in cases of major breaking news events.

Forward planning is the key to success for a successful recovery plan and broadcasters should be prepared to handle the worst case scenarios, which usually come when you least expect them.

As Winston Churchill once famously said: “Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning”. PRO

Hasan R. Sayed Hasan is the head of twofour54 intaj

BroadcastPro Middle East

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