Client News
Viacom International Media Networks deploys Hitomi MatchBox for 2019 MTV Europe Music Awards
Slough, UK, 19 November 2019 — Hitomi Broadcast, manufacturer of MatchBox, the industry’s leading audio video alignment technologies, today announced that Viacom International Media Networks Media and Technology Services (MTS) used MatchBox for the 2019 MTV Europe Music Awards in Seville, Spain, on 3 November.
Viacom International MTS deployed MatchBox’s sync toolbox for the red carpet, main award show, backstage, and after-show party feeds, televised on 100+ channels worldwide from the FIBES Conference and Exhibition Centre in Seville. Hosted by American singer, songwriter, and actress, Becky G, the show included a special headline performance, filmed by Viacom International the previous night at the MTV World Stage at Plaza de España in Seville, by ‘Best Rock’ nominee, Green Day.
Viacom International MTS Global Lead Systems Engineer for Studio and Production Technology, Matt Okotie, said, “Using MatchBox, I can sync signals in under a millisecond to ensure that before we go to air, lip sync is correct. This is crucial for any production, but particularly for a live, globally distributed event, so you have to be absolutely sure you get it right. That’s why I leave it to MatchBox. Basically, if MatchBox reads ‘zero’, you know that lip sync is perfect.”
Viacom International MTS used MatchBox to sync its 4K/UHD feed from Seville to London, and then on for a global sync to all the other MatchBox readers around the world.
According to Okotie, “We send the synced 4K/UHD feed to HQ in London, and then down convert that feed to HD and send both UHD & HD for onward distribution. Our MatchBox readers at Viacom and other global broadcast locations pick up both signals. That process is straightforward because MatchBox is backwards compatible with all of our existing technology; and as far as stability, it’s rock solid.”
MatchBox is a favourite of broadcasters worldwide for ensuring the timing of live news, sports, and events. It is a state-of-the-art toolkit that streamlines live broadcast synchronisation and, in addition to intuitive identing; rapid lip sync measurement; audio coherence; and video timing, MatchBox is also a 4K test pattern generator.
Hitomi Broadcast Director Russell Johnson said, “High profile events have emerged as a specialty for MatchBox. Getting lip sync wrong, perhaps most noticeable in live music, can be disastrous on multiple levels, but by deploying MatchBox sync generators and readers, the band can play on without consequence.”
Pixel Power software enhancements bring real-world efficiencies in integration & implementation
Cambridge, UK, 16 March 2020: To underline its strengths in moving users from legacy architectures to software-centric, fully virtualized solutions for multi-platform playout and graphics production, Pixel Power is launching major new versions of its core software technologies: Gallium Workflow Orchestration and StreamMaster Media Processing. Gallium 3.0 and StreamMaster 2.0 each add significant enhancements covering usability, operational efficiency and connectivity through widely recognised standards.
Through its functional-block architecture, the Gallium workflow orchestration platform allows system architects to build carefully tailored solutions to meet precise customer workflow requirements. Version 3.0 adds more than 50 enhancements with significant new functionality and usability improvements. That includes both live and file-based open and closed subtitling; audio watermarking; live, scheduled and delayed recording and scripted configurable triggering of external systems. In line with Pixel Power’s policy of supporting open systems in a flexible way, these triggers can use REST, UDP and XML based integrations.
Pixel Power’s media processing platform, StreamMaster, also sees a significant new version which adds capabilities that are driven by real-world requirements. StreamMaster 2.0 adds UHD support; uncompressed I/O over SMPTE ST-2110; OP47 and SMPTE 2031 subtitle insertion and flexible recording of the main output, input sources or clean feeds including playback whilst recording. As well as scalable multi-channel master control playout, Gallium and StreamMaster can readily be configured to produce fast turnaround live content for VOD distribution, for example for catch-up and time-delayed channels, while retaining the flexibility to change elements of the output such as advertising.
“It may be a well-used cliché, but we really do take active steps to understand in real depth what our customers will need, now and in the future.” said James Gilbert, CEO of Pixel Power. “We have recruited people for our professional services team who have worked for broadcasters around the world and who know precisely what is required to meet today’s commercial, creative and operational requirements.
“They work with our customers to ensure they are making the most of modern, software-defined technology to create the efficiencies and agility they demand,” Gilbert continued. “They also keep our development team on their toes, ensuring we can support the requirements of future content delivery systems.”
The functional-block architecture that underpins Gallium and StreamMaster means that systems can run in the machine room, in the corporate data centre, in the cloud or in hybrid implementations.
Gilbert concluded, “You choose where you want to host it, based on your business requirements and the flexible, scalable licensing options we offer. Whatever deployment model you choose, we can architect a solution that will provide the same five nines or better reliability.”
GB Labs to introduce fully traceable analytics and single-step MHL support
Aldermaston, UK, 16 March 2020: GB Labs, the leader in intelligent storage solutions, has announced that the latest version of its Analytics Centre, a dashboard that runs seamlessly in GB Labs’ SPACE, ECHO, and VAULT intelligent storage devices, will now include full access traceability.
Of interest to everyone that requires storage, Analytics Centre continuously analyses how data handled by the storage system is being used. The display provides a highly accurate and easy-to-interpret look at crucial network and storage usage, including real-time speed and data consumption. With full traceability, file access history is logged giving a complete picture of data usage.
GB Labs CEO-CTO Dominic Harland said, “Analytics Centre gives GB Labs users the visibility they need to ensure their workflow is fully optimised at all times. It takes all the time-consuming, and often incorrect, guesswork out of blindly shopping for storage in hopes that it will improve a workflow.
“Analytics Centre automates the system analysis process with carefully designed algorithms that identify not just potential problems, but precisely where to find and fix them. Moreover, it now includes a significantly updated interface that includes full data logging and full, detailed tracking capabilities that we’re excited to demonstrate for the first time.”
GB Labs will also be organising virtual demonstrations of its Media Hash List (MHL) support. MHL is essentially designed to ensure that any copy is an exact replica of the original source media. This is of particular importance to OTT media streaming services that submit files on LTFS to various service providers.
Those service providers must demonstrate their ability to ingest data, checksum it, and produce an MHL report to establish that files are being properly delivered. Once checked and approved, the media streamer can then permit the service provider to use the media.
This process typically requires several steps with software provided by most vendors, but GB Labs software does it all in a single step. It automatically ingests files to a specific location; creates an MHL; does a checksum; and has the files ready to be returned for approval in an instant.
GB Labs will also feature the latest Dynamic Bandwidth Control, which allows an active intelligent use of available bandwidth, the latest CloakDR as well as new, workflow improvement features for its SPACE, ECHO and VAULT (S.E.V) range, and the latest CORE.4 and CORE.4 Lite OS for its S.E.V., FastNAS and EasyLTO ranges.
Harland added, “FastNAS in particular has really become the go-to for major organisations like Icon Media in Los Angeles, Kingdom Creative in the UK, The Viewmasters in Amsterdam, and many others in recent months. The capacity of our HDD range combined with the ultra-high data rates that our SSD range provides, all at an incredible price, has proven to be the ideal one-box storage platform.”
iSize Technologies to showcase BitSave v.2, the next-generation AI-powered Technology and SaaS Video Encoding Platform at NAB 2020
NAB 2020, April 19 - 22, Booth N5329 – iSize Technologies, the London-based deep-tech company specializing in deep learning for video delivery, will be showcasing BitSave v.2, the next-generation ‘precoder’ for perceptual optimization of video content prior to subsequent encoding, at NAB 2020. This is the first time iSize is exhibiting at NAB.
BitSave v.2 is a pixel-to-pixel neural-network solution that optimizes video frames before the pixels reach the video compression software according to the latest advances in perceptual quality metrics. It enhances details of the areas of each frame that affect the perceptual quality score of the content after encoding and attenuates details that are not important.
This is designed to optimally balance perceptual quality against encoding bitrate. The solution is data-driven, trained on large image and video datasets, with no hand-crafted parameters.
It incurs a single-frame latency, can be used with any third-party video encoder with no changes in the encoding pipeline, and can run in real-time for up to 4K resolution.
iSize Technologies CEO Sergio Grce said, “It is predicted that by the end of 2020, more than 82% of internet traffic will be taken up by video, with consumers increasingly investing in and consuming higher quality video content. In response to this fast-moving market, iSize develops innovative codec independent software solutions that allows data-heavy video content to be compressed to a fraction of its original size, meaning content can be streamed faster and at a better quality.”
Extensive testing has shown its patent-pending AI features can make encoding up to 500% faster.
Since BitSave can be used alongside existing software, companies that have invested in compression software can use BitSave as an ‘add-on’ without having to shelve ongoing projects. The AI technology behind BitSave is fully codec independent, increasing the efficiency and performance of all the latest codec standards including AVC/H.264, HEVC/H.265, and VP9. This ensures seamless integration with existing media workflows.
BitSave is also unconstrained by standards because it produces a pixel output, which means it can use advanced neural networks and add multiple quality functions that cannot be achieved otherwise.
Ultimately, BitSave allows consumers to stream higher quality video, using less data or bandwidth, thus reducing the environmental impact of streaming. The devices used will also need to use less computing power to stream quality video, which means a longer battery life when watching content on the go.
Mo-Sys Transforms Remote Production and Virtual Studios
NAB 2020, 19-22 April, Las Vegas, Booths C5047 and N5333: Mo-Sys Engineering, a global leader in real time camera tracking and camera remote systems, will demonstrate how to remotely operate cameras on the other side of the world, without perceived delay, with the launch of TimeCam. The solution will be shown onsite with a link between Mo-Sys’s two points of presence at NAB, on booths C5047 and N5333 (Future Park). The two booths also allow Mo-Sys to reveal the latest in virtual studio and augmented reality: Unreal Unleashed.
TimeCam represents a triple benefit to production companies. First, there is the saving in cost and environmental impact in sending camera operators to site. Second, it means that the most in-demand operators can be much more productive, providing excellent coverage at a live event each day rather than losing time through travel. Third, it means that you can add cameras to your coverage without adding headcount: for instance, a downhill ski race might have eight cameras along the course, with one operator controlling cameras 1, 3, 5 and 7 and a second controlling 2, 4, 6 and 8.
“’Traditional’ remote production puts the control back at base, but still needs camera operators to travel to the location,” explained Mo-Sys CEO Michael Geissler. “By compensating for latency in transmission and compression/decoding, TimeCam means that operators too can stay at base and be much more productive by operating on several events, when normally they could only be on one.”
As well as unveiling TimeCam, Mo-Sys will also demonstrate its flagship virtual studio technology StarTracker, which uses a constellation of dots on the studio ceiling as a camera tracking system. This is now extensively used by many prestige broadcasters to provide the tracking for augmented reality studios and is increasingly being built-in to studio cameras.
Whereas most virtual studios use a proprietary graphics system which in turn uses the Unreal gaming engine from Epic Games, StarTracker Studio (in a 19” rack) now features the plug-in Mo-Sys VP which we like to call Unreal Unleashed, a direct interface between the camera tracking and the UE4 render engine. Through the plug-in, control is direct, and no other software layer is wrapped around the Unreal Engine allowing full access to the latest UE4 features.
At NAB, the complete system will be demonstrated as a turnkey package including the computer and video hardware. In a small, wheeled-rack cabinet there is sufficient power to render for 16 concurrent 4K cameras in real time, using just two render engines and one Ultimatte keyer.
“Both TimeCam and StarTracker with Unreal Unleashed are transformative technologies, capable of bringing new creativity and productivity to the broadcast and movie worlds, allowing sophisticated productions around the globe,” Geissler said.
Hitomi to host live demos showcasing their capabilities for near instant lip-sync alignment of mics and cameras at NAB.
NAB 2020, April 19 - 22, Booth SL5121 – Hitomi Broadcast, manufacturer of MatchBox, the industry’s leading audio video alignment toolbox, and the new MatchBox Glass app for near instant lip-sync alignment of mics and cameras, will be running live demos on its stand at NAB this year to showcase their capabilities for live broadcast.
MatchBox is already used by broadcasters worldwide to ensure the timing of live sports, news and events and now, when teamed with the use of the free iOS App, Matchbox Glass, it enables quick and reliable camera line-up into truck, remote production facility or in newsgathering applications. To use, an iPhone or iPad is simply held up in shot running the Glass App. This allows the MatchBox analyser to instantly verify camera and mic timing alignment. Glass reduces a time consuming and error-prone process to a matter of seconds.
The MatchBox Analyser tool is typically situated in a master control room, studio or OB vehicle. It looks and listens for the specific Hitomi video and audio signatures produced by the hardware MatchBox Generator or MatchBox Glass App. The measurement performed by the analyser is very fast - just a few seconds - and highly effective, vastly speeding up the process and ultimately helping to eliminate the headaches and frustrations of last-minute lip-sync issues.
Hitomi Broadcast Director Russell Johnson said, “Synchronisation is often one of the last items on a field production checklist and can happen right up to going live or on-air. Often, it can be discovered too late that there are sync issues, which can be costly and, at the very least, embarrassing to resolve at the last second.”
Complete with an intuitive identing feature, rapid measurement of lip sync, audio coherence, audio levels, phase inversions and video timing, MatchBox is also a 4K test pattern generator.
Johnson added, “We're going to have lots of live demonstrations on our stand at NAB so it’s well worth visiting us there! We'll be showing the MatchBox as it's used in a production facility. Plus our roving reporter will be doing a piece to camera. The lip-sync will deliberately be out and we'll use our Glass app to measure the latency errors and then correct it on demand and you'll be able to see right before your very eyes how the correction factors produce the perfect lip-sync timing. After all, seeing is believing!”
Cinegy bets all on SRT, brings 8K to everyone, and launches new, all-in-one TV Pack suite at NAB Show 2020
NAB 2020, April 19 - 22, Booth SL11216 – Cinegy, the global leader for cloud and on-premise broadcast software solutions, uses NAB 2020 to reinforce its strong support for Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) while at the same time making end-to-end workflows including for 8K and HDR, affordable. This fact is illustrated with its enhanced, new TV Pack solution for channel and studio-in-a-box applications.
Cinegy has long been a champion of SRT as it is essential for cloud operations and remote production providing inexpensive, secure delivery of IP video over the public Internet. SRT support is now an integral part of all Cinegy software products.
Cinegy Lewis Kirkaldie said, “SRT enables the development and deployment of many new applications, and makes the use of existing applications much easier because it eliminates any bandwidth limitations to using them. In effect, SRT opens the application floodgates.”
Cinegy will demonstrate the use of SRT-enabled Cinegy software at NAB, alongside the eye-popping demo of Cinegy 8K capabilities.
Cinegy Managing Director and CTO Jan Weigner said, “A lot of people still don’t understand that 8K is easy. Cinegy software has been handling 8K on standard laptops for years.
“What underpins this ability is our Daniel2 codec, which enables us to achieve compression technology and acceleration for 8K that is still unheard of anywhere else in the industry.”
Cinegy will also showcase TV Pack, a powerful, fully integrated channel and studio-in-a-box software solution that is priced at an affordable $4999.
TV Pack is an application suite that consists of Cinegy’s industry leading Cinegy Air PRO broadcast automation and playout software plus Cinegy Titler branding & CG, Cinegy Capture for video ingest, and Cinegy Multiviewer (named as a NAB Show Product of the Year in 2019), the revolutionary Cinegy Live PRO IP video switcher, ultra-modern transcoding with Cinegy Convert, and Cinegy Player, a vastly superior video player compared to the open source solutions commonly used.
Weigner added, “We are extremely proud of the extraordinary value we offer with the Cinegy TV Pack. It’s very powerful, yet easy to operate. If you wanted to, you could simultaneously run multiple TV Packs on one server, which a number of broadcasters worldwide have already discovered to their delight. And, of course, Cinegy TV Pack also has the numerous advantages of SRT baked into its core. It’s a total win-win-win package.”
All of Cinegy’s award-winning products and services can be found on Booth SL11216 during NAB 2020. More information can be found by visiting www.cinegy.com.
Intinor Demonstrates Unprecedented IP Contribution Capability
NAB 2020, April 19-22, NDI® Central Pavilion, Booth SL4711: Intinor, the leading developer of products and solutions for high quality video over the internet, will attend NAB2020 (Las Vegas Convention Center, 19 – 22 April) to showcase its uniquely powerful solutions to both combine as many as eight individual video feeds, and stream them synchronously across multiple internet paths. A strong supporter of NDI, Intinor will be co-exhibiting with NewTek on booth SL4711.
The Intinor solution creates a coherent video path over the public internet, using broadband (ethernet or Wifi), cellular (3G, 4G LTE or 5G) and Ka-band satellite as required to achieve the necessary bandwidth and resilience. What makes its solution unique is the use of forward error correction and ARQ (re-sending) in Intinor’s own transport protocol BRT™. This gives the transport stream very strong protection against lost packets – causing picture disruptions and freezes – while at the same time minimising latency, particularly important in sports.
“We have tackled head on the major challenge of video over the internet: the risk of lost packets,” said Roland Axelsson, CEO at Intinor. “IP is designed to get the data to the destination at all costs, however long it takes; video needs a complete new picture every 40 milliseconds. At Intinor, we have created BRT™ to virtually eliminate lost packets – and therefore picture and sound disruption – with minimal latency and minimal additional data overhead. The results are remarkable.”
The Intinor solution is primarily software, but the company offers a hardware product, Heimdall, which incorporates eight 3G or 4G modems in a 1U rack cabinet, which along with an Intinor Direkt router can multiplex up to eight camera feeds with associated audio into a single stream, which is then transmitted over multiple bonded networks for delivery to a central production base.
The Direkt series is fully NDI compliant, so sits transparently in an NDI architecture. To create an “all-IP-infrastructure” we are always looking to add more transport protocols to our mix. The latest additions are RTSP-pull and full SRT support.
“We have proven applications of our technology around the world, including with some of the major eSports players,” said Axlesson. “This is an excellent prospect for all media enterprises, from news to sports, looking to reduce its environmental footprint through remote production.”
Intinor products and solutions can be found on the NewTek booth at NAB2020, SL4711. It can also be seen at the pre-NAB event organised by the distributor JB&A, to be held in the Sahara Hotel on Friday and Saturday, 17 – 18 April.
Hollywood-based Icon Media selects GB Labs storage
Aldermaston, UK, 2 March 2020 - GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions for the media and entertainment industries, today announced that Icon Media, Hollywood, California, has installed GB Labs’ FastNAS F-8 Nitro shared storage system.
Aldermaston, UK, 2 March 2020 - GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions for the media and entertainment industries, today announced that Icon Media, Hollywood, California, has installed GB Labs’ FastNAS F-8 Nitro shared storage system.
Co-founded by CEO Jay Shetty and COO Alex Kushneir, Icon Media provides compelling, socially conscious content, deploying a wide range of in-house services from scripting, filming, directing, post-production; dynamic distribution; and social media management to maximise engagement and measure results.
According to Shetty, “Our mission in working with brands, publishing companies, authors, entertainers, entrepreneurs and thought-leaders is to create video content that has a positive impact on the world. In short, we want to make wisdom go viral.”
And it’s working. New York Times bestselling authors; peak performance leaders; conscientious start-ups and established players have all benefited from the Icon Media ethos. Shetty’s social media alone has more than 30 million followers, and content generated by Kushneir is responsible for more than 150 million views.
However, Icon Media’s success was causing growing pains that had to be addressed, primarily to deal with the volumes of content the company needed to ingest, store, and produce.
Icon Media COO Kushneir said, “In slightly less than two years, we grew from two people serving two clients to 28 people serving nearly 20 clients. I realised that I couldn’t keep buying boxes full of hard drives to keep pace with all the content we were handling. We needed a shared storage system that was fast, accessible, and organised but wasn’t going to cost an arm and a leg.”
On a recommendation from an existing employee with prior experience with GB Labs, Kushneir discovered GB Labs’ FastNAS F-8 Nitro server system, a compact, high performance NAS powered by GB Labs’ CORE.4 Lite OS. Sold by Los Angeles-based GB Labs partner RFX Inc, the system has the ability to effortlessly handle large capacities - in this case 96TB – and all at an attractive price point.
Kushneir said, “FastNAS F-8 Nitro met all of our criteria and more. It is indeed a very, very fast system that has made a huge difference to our workflow.
“In my view, any size of company will save time, money, and energy with GB Labs. I can’t imagine anyone doing what we do without a GB Labs storage system.”
GB Labs CEO-CTO Dominic Harland said, “We are delighted to contribute to Icon Media’s ongoing success. The benefits they are experiencing directly reflect our aims in designing and manufacturing the technology from the start and we look forward to growing alongside them in the future.”
Broadcast Beat Pre-NAB Skype Client Interviews
In this series of interviews, Ryan Salazar of Broadcast Beat talks to Manor Marketing Clients to find out more about them and their plans for NAB 2020.
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