If you were lucky (or unlucky) enough to get to CES in Las Vegas this year, then you will know that UHD (Ultra High Definition TV) was the talking point of the show. By and large the staff on the booths were there to sell UHD TVs as pieces of furniture and few of them know the techno-commercial difficulties of putting great pictures onto those big, bright, curved(?) and really, really thin displays:
In my upcoming webinar on the 29th January I will be looking into the future and predicting some of the topics that I think will need to be addressed over the next few years if TV as we know it is to survive.
1. Interoperability
The number of screens and display devices is increasing. The amount of content available for viewing is going up but the number of viewers is not changing greatly. This means that we either have to extract more revenue from each user or reduce the cost of making that content. Having systems that don’t effectively inter-operate adds cost, wastes time and delivers no value so the consumer. Essence interoperability (video & audio) is gradually improving thanks to education campaigns (from AmberFin and others) as well as vendors with proprietary formats reverting to open standards because the cost of maintaining the proprietary formats is too great.
Metadata interoperability is the next BIG THING. Tune in to the webinar to discover the truth about essence interoperability and then imagine how much unnecessary cost exists in the broken metadata flows that exists between companies and between departments.
2. Interlace must die
UHD may be the next big thing, but just like HDTV it is going to have to show a lot of old content to be a success. Flick through the channels tonight and ask yourself “How much of the content was shot & displayed progressively”. On a conventional TV channel the answer is probably “none”. Showing progressive content on a progressive screen via an interlaced TV value chain is nuts. It reduces quality and increases bitrate. Anyone looking at some of the poor pictures shown at CES will recognise the signs of demonstrations conceived by marketers who did not understand the effects of interlace on an end to end chain.
Re-using old content involves up-scaling & deinterlacing existing content – 90% of which is interlaced. In the webinar, I’ll use AmberFin’s experience in making the world’s finest progressive pictures to explain why interlace is evil and what you can do about it.
3. Automating infrastructure
Reducing costs means spending money on the things that are important and balancing expenditure between what is important today and what is important tomorrow. There is no point in investing money in MAMs and Automation if your infrastructure won’t support it and give you the flexibility you need. You’ll end up redesigning your automation strategy forever. The folks behind xkcd.com explain this much more succinctly and cleverly than I could ever do.
In the webinar, I’ll explain the difference between different virtualization techniques and why they’re important.
4. Trust confidence & QC
More and more automation brings efficiency, cost savings and scale, but also means that a lot of the visibility of content is lost. Test and measurement give you the metrics to know about that content. Quality Control gives you decisions that can be used to change your Quality Assurance processes. These processes in turn allow your business to deliver media product that delivers the right technical quality for the creative quality your business is based on.
So here’s the crunch. The more you automate, the less you interact with the media, the more you have to trust the metadata and pre-existing knowledge about the media. How do you know it’s right? How do you know that the trust you have in that media is founded? For example. A stranger walks up to you in the street and offers you a glass of water. Would you drink it? Probably not. If that person was your favourite TV star with a camera crew filming you – would you drink it now? Probably? Trust means a lot in life and in business. I’ll explore more of this in the webinar.
5. Separating the pipe from the content
If, like me, you’re seeing more grey hair appearing on the barber’s floor with each visit then you may remember the good old days when the capture standard (PAL) was the same as the contribution standard (PAL) and the mixing desk standard (PAL) and the editing standard (PAL) and the playout standard (PAL) and the transmission standard (PAL). Today we could have capture format (RED), a contribution standard (Aspera FASP), a mixing desk standard (HDSDI), an editing standard (MXF DNxHD),a playout standard (XDCAM-HDSDI) and a transmission standard (DVB-T2) that are all different. The world is moving to IP. What does that mean? How does it behave?
A quick primer on the basics will be included in the webinar. Why not sign up below before it’s too late? Places are limited – I know it will be a good one.
Register for our next webinar on:
Wednesday 29th January at:
1pm GMT, 2pm CET, 8am EST, 5am PST
OR
5pm GMT, 6pm CET, 12pm EST, 9am PST
‘til next time.
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