If 2020 was a banner year for any business, that would undoubtedly be OTT. The global lockdown induced an unprecedented surge in OTT viewership resulting in a meteoric growth of subscribers, revenue, and investments into content creation/acquisition. While the heightened interest has been primarily COVID-led, it’s improbable the patronage will subside once the pandemic ends. Audience habits around content consumption have changed forever.
OTT businesses struggled to find content to retain the newly acquired and hungry for content eyeballs, with the slow down of traditional film and show production due to social distancing and lockdown. With no other option to feed their content supply chain, content owners and OTT/MVPDs turned their attention to catalog titles.
Mulan was the first tent pole to move to a streaming service (Disney+) during the pandemic. While films like Wonder Woman 84 and Tenet waited till December and were released in theatres, and James Bond’s No Time To Die moved its release to September 2021 for a global theatrical audience, others opted for the OTT route. Trolls World Tour broke streaming records as one of the first pandemic induced digital releases, and many followed: Borat 2, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Miss Juneteenth, Da 5 Bloods, Bad Boys for Life, and others went direct to OTT while some were available for home viewing within weeks of theatrical release.
However, monetizing library content has had its own set of challenges. The digital content ecosystem is marred by roadblocks like:
Multiple platforms
Metadata inconsistencies
Huge volume of content
Tight TAT, and
Multiple contributors working on disparate systems
Advanced metadata tagging critical for effective recommendations engine is a key requirement for the OTT experience to be engaging. With tens of thousands of titles on a platform, getting relevant content on a personalized basis quickly to the subscriber is table stakes.
An effective metadata strategy can unlock the power of catalog content. Metadata is the key to transform any audio-visual content into a dynamic asset. Tags have changed decision-making from days, weeks, and often months into a matter of seconds. Metadata is aimed at facilitating quick searches for specific content, making the quality of the tags used extremely important. Often, the same tags have different meanings, and there are multiple tags possible for the same concept, leading to inappropriate content connections and inefficient search functionality. Different inflections of the same word (like singular or plural) can contribute to difficulties during searches as well. Content owners need a comprehensive system that applies genre- and culture-specific expertise to the entire process of metadata creation.
While metadata management is generally considered a mundane and laborious task, new advances in AI and ML have made the process efficient, fast and error-free, and last but not least, with limited human intervention.
Advanced AI/ML tools help content owners and distributors reach a targeted audience to monetize their assets. A comprehensive AI/ML-powered Metadata Management Service covers metadata creation, normalization, and validation. However, most AI solutions have not been able to solve this comprehensively.
Metadata powered by AI should be Comprehensive, Contextual, Actionable, and Accurate.
Comprehensive: More tags per clip leveraging relevant engines + custom engines
Contextual: M&E domain knowledge; Instructional Learning; Special Purpose Engines
Actionable: Deliver type and form of the data that is usable by the downstream software
Accurate: Research to find the best engine(s) for a purpose; Multi-dimensional cues; Supplement detection with algorithms for frame accuracy, FPS correction, etc.
For AI/ML to deliver better results for M&E organizations, a tailored, bespoke model that embraces the unique data nuances is key. A consultative approach to AI/ML can help to understand the end-use of the content and appropriately build a custom cataloging taxonomy. Additionally, solution providers have to be open and committed to work with any AI/ML engine, have the data science talent pool to interpret the data and its subtle nuances, and tweak it to suit the needs of the enterprise’s content.
AI-generated metadata allows for advanced search, recommendations, and targeted advertising. It facilitates instantaneous search results for otherwise hard-to-find content. AI-powered metadata can future proof your invaluable content library for multiple monetization opportunities in a world of entertainment that is most certainly going to be OTT-led.
This week, Neil speaks to Matt Ashe – Regional Manager at Benchmark Broadcast Systems. Matt’s love for all things broadcasting and telecommunications started in the United States Air Force in 1986, and he has since gone on to accrue over 30 years of experience in helping media companies succeed on the global stage with the technology to back it up.
Read the Latest Research on How to Best Protect your App
With retail banks citing mobile banking as their top priority IT project based on Omdia’s ICT Enterprise Insights 2020/21 survey, financial apps are becoming the new normal. While mobile banking brings numerous opportunities, it also comes with application security challenges. The silos that exist between developers and core technology groups can lead to an incohesive process with mobile app shielding often falling through the cracks.
We partnered with research firm Omdia to outline the key factors to improve mobile app protection for financial services. Download a copy to learn more about:
How to best comply with privacy and financial services regulations
Key defensive techniques for protecting mobile app codes
In the days, not so long ago, when terrestrial television was pretty much the only game in town, technology limited us to just a handful of channels. That was eased by the first cable systems which could deliver a few more, but in many territories, cable was available to only a small part of the population so there was no commercial market for more channels.
That changed with the coming of satellite television at the beginning of the 1990s. First came analogue satellite using the D-Mac system, which made tens of channels widely available. Later came digital satellite delivery, and the market opened up to hundreds of channels. In cabled markets, the digital revolution also made huge amounts of content readily available.
This created a marketplace for content. Entrepreneurs could set up a channel by targeting an audience. There was a direct trade-off between quality – digital satellite and cable is sold by the bandwidth – against audience and therefore revenues. Niche channels could start off at a data rate of maybe 1 Mb/s until they either proved themselves so justified more bandwidth and better quality, or failed and could be dropped.
Connecting to network storage from off-site workstations and mobile devices
There have been a lot of changes to production workflows since 2020. Creative teams had to adjust to working from home, and in many cases this was done by spinning up (sometimes hastily) remote desktop utilities or a VPN server with little time for due diligence on how it would affect the team’s workflow.
For teams that are used to working in close proximity with shared resources, fast and sweeping workflow changes can make collaborating more difficult and create a disconnect between teams. While remote technologies should bridge those gaps and make collaboration easier, many unfortunately missed the mark.
It’s not all bad though. Far from it. Remote connectivity solutions were lifesavers for studios that would otherwise have shut down entirely. And these technologies have improved rapidly to meet the needs of the exponentially larger work-from-home community.
If you haven’t explored remote workflow tools for your creative media team yet, or if you jumped in a bit early and are rethinking your remote workers’ workflow, here are some key details about remote video editing with VPN services like SNS Cloud VPN, remote desktop software, and mobile devices.
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
A VPN, or virtual private network, can connect your team and collaborators to a device (or multiple devices) on the studio’s network from wherever they are, regardless of the server’s location. They can be online at home, hooked up to the airport WiFi, or working on a film set halfway around the globe. They simply log into the VPN from their off-site machine and they can access the media they need as if they were physically in the studio.
VPN technology has been around for many years, and it is a trusted tool in IT infrastructure planning. But when your creative team only needs access to their shared storage server, setting up a company-wide VPN can be a costly (and unnecessary) undertaking.
SNS Cloud VPN
To facilitate multi-location access to an in-studio EVO shared storage server without requiring weeks of IT resources, we created SNS Cloud VPN, the cloud-hosted virtual private network solution exclusively for EVO. We built the SNS Cloud VPN service to provide clients with remote access to EVO, as well as to connect to each other despite their physical location.
A key feature of SNS Cloud VPN is that it only connects team members to the EVO video editing server. This enables additional workflow benefits—like file transfers directly to a local or remote workstation—without exposing the entirety of the company’s network to off-site users. Less exposure means less risk.
Aside from the added security benefits of not exposing the internal network infrastructure with SNS Cloud VPN, this also means that only information meant for the private network traverses the VPN. Users’ regular internet connections stay active whether they are off-site or local, which can dramatically reduce oversaturation of data that may happen over standard VPNs. This is especially helpful when it comes to interacting with large video files on the network.
SNS Cloud VPN enables remote access to the EVO suite of software tools, including ShareBrowser media asset manager.
Proxy Editing with Nomad
Uploading and downloading high-resolution source media can be a bottleneck for remote editing. Using proxy files instead will minimize the required bandwidth for remote editorial, making it easier to get work done from anywhere. EVO shared storage servers include Nomad, a unique remote workflow utility that lets users easily retrieve auto-generated proxy files to their off-site workstations for a faster, more efficient remote editing workflow. Learn more about proxy editing with SNS Nomad.
This isn’t only a tool for remote video editors; it’s a critical component of an entire multi-site production workflow. Collaborators—whether they be producers, marketing managers, or CEOs—can easily access media for review over the VPN, even if their headquarters is thousands of miles from the edit bay.
Whether you are using a traditional VPN or SNS Cloud VPN, a virtual private network service is one of the most secure and easiest ways to connect your remote employees to the media and projects they need to do their best remote work.
Remote Desktop Control
When it comes to remote workflows, some environments are more stringent than others about keeping all of their media on-site. When it’s not possible for your users to retrieve files from an off-site location and take them on-the-go, it’s a great time to look into remotely controlling a local workstation.
Using a remote desktop software such as TeamViewer or ZCentral Remote Boost, an off-site user can control their edit station in the office, which gives them immediate access to their network shares and workflow tools, and is likely more powerful than the setup they have at home. Their remote desktop connection links them back to the workstation and workflow they are comfortable with.
Like VPN services, remote desktop technology is not a new phenomenon. Tech support has used remote control software for years—decades even. But it recently found a new use case as video editors on their remote PC and Mac workstations needed to connect to their edit suite in the office to gain full access to their media, projects, and editing tools.
Hybrid Remote Desktop and VPN Workflow
Some multi-site editing teams opt to use remote desktop software as their sole remote editing technology. This is a good option for those who are unable to transport files outside of their highly secure facility, but it can hamper workflows that do allow employees to work with their media at home. For the latter, a joint VPN and remote desktop solution can be the perfect combination for a smooth and flexible remote video production workflow.
The VPN gives distanced collaborators access to their files and projects, so those with powerful at-home workstations can get work done with a simple VPN login. But, let’s face it—remote workstations are not always up to the task of replacing a full edit suite. Remote-controlling an editing workstation in the studio can help alleviate graphical limitations of the off-site workstation and other shortcomings of your team’s work-from-home infrastructure.
With a combination approach, collaborators with at-home workstations up for the task can connect to shared storage via VPN, while those with less powerful systems can connect to an individual workstation on-site over a remote desktop connection. Teams can also edit with proxy files downloaded over VPN on any remote workstation, then render locally via a remote desktop connection when a higher-powered machine is more essential.
Mobile Devices
Remote access is all about getting your projects to where you are, and nothing is with you more than your mobile device. Thankfully, VPN and remote desktop utilities aren’t solely limited to macOS and Windows. Android and iOS devices can connect to certain VPN services and can remotely control an on-prem workstation through mobile remote desktop applications.
SNS Cloud VPN allows cell phones and tablets to be authorized devices on the VPN, providing access to assets in the office or from another user on the VPN from any desktop or mobile device with internet connectivity.
You may be asking: Why would I want my mobile device to connect to my shared storage server? Remote video editing on a mobile device is not recommended, but accessing your shared storage server and/or your on-premise workstation through your iPhone or Android device can offer flexibility for smaller updates that don’t require a full workstation.
For example, if a user needs to verify the status of a file transfer, or wants to make a quick change on a workstation in the office, it can be frustrating to dig their laptop out of a bag and deal with startup time, login time, and connecting time. Using SNS Cloud VPN and a mobile remote client, a user could simply turn on the VPN connection from a mobile device in their pocket and log in.
EVO’s off-site capabilities are pivotal for workflows like distance education, news broadcasting, and much more.
What else could you do from your mobile device? Maybe you’ll review some video clips during a rain delay at a baseball game, or you could check if a file has been transferred yet. Or, as mobile devices continue their evolution into higher resolution cameras, maybe someday you’ll upload 8K footage directly from your phone to EVO shared storage over SNS Cloud VPN. The point is, mobile devices can be part of your remote workflow today, with lots of potential for more in the future.
There are many ways you can remotely access your on-premise shared storage server. A VPN connection like SNS Cloud VPN is a great option to keep your editors connected to their media and workflow tools without requiring both a remote and on-prem workstation. Remote desktop connections offer editors access to their on-prem workstation, which allows them access to shared storage as well as a more powerful machine than what they have at home.
And with a VPN solution combined with a remote desktop connection, there are virtually unlimited options for your creative team to collaborate from any device, anywhere in the world.
To learn more about remote editing options for your EVO shared storage server, contact SNS.
We are joined by Ronen Artman, Vice President, Marketing at LiveU to hear more about their recent acquisition by private equity firm Carlyle and what it means for the company.
We also hear how this is the 2nd time they have been acquired in 2 years and that their value has doubled in this time and what this shows us about demand for video content in this time. Ronan also tells us about LiveU’s recent acquisition of Garland Partners, how this came about and what it means for the company and the industry.
Finally, we hear about some of the recent high profile events that have been covered using LiveU and why people who are looking to capture and deliver video easily, cheaply and more importantly at high quality, would chose to use LiveU.
MOG and BCP have been working together for many years now in a joint mission to design and supply a wide range of solutions for the media and entertainment industry on the Polish market.
This time, the goal was to provide an efficient video recording scheduler with a router control solution for POLSAT – one of the largest media companies in Central Europe.
MOG’s mediaSCHEDULER, a micro-service from the MAM4PRO product line was the chosen product to match Polsat’s requirements, with a few customizations designed to achieve their goal. Read the Full Case Study below.
The Partner
Established on the Polish market since 1997, BCP Sp. z o.o. is a distributor of professional audio and video equipment that sells both individual devices as well as integrated sets. In its range of customers are the major television station, production studios and post-production, and other reputable institutions of the Country, because of the quality of service they offer. With almost 20 years of experience, BCP has the exact knowledge of the needs of the audio-visual market in Poland.
The Customer
Telewizja Polsat sp. z o.o. is the largest terrestrial commercial broadcaster in Poland, established in 1992. It belongs to the Grupa Cyfrowy Polsat S.A., with 38 own channels, and one of the main providers of digital multichannel television in Poland. It is the 4th largest digital platform in Europe and the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. The service is distributed over the Hotbird satellite and includes a mix of free to air and encrypted channels for 4,5 million of subscribers.
The Challenge
As a key player in the Polish Television Industry, Polsat is used to record hundreds of hours’ worth of content a week, often managing multiple productions at the time. In order to maintain workflow continuity, they required a solution that would allow the scheduling and control of all their recording jobs in a unified interface, to be accessed anytime, anywhere.
Additionally, Polsat was also looking for a more efficient and cost-effective way to automatically control its legacy Grass Valley Jupiter Routers, and its multiple recording servers (16 channels), with extra backup redundancy in case of critical failure.
The Solution
For this project, MOG and BCP sought to develop a custom solution that would give Polsat the flexibility they needed when working with multiple third-party hardware.
MAM4PRO’s mediaSCHEDULER was adapted to match those needs and was deployed in a single, high-density and high-performance Xpress R2 Server, with two individual nodes: node one would have Scheduling Automation of current HD-SDI Feed Recordings; Automation Control of current HD-SDI Router (Grassvalley Trinix 5122, CM4000 Router Control with Jupiter v8.0.1 P2) and Automation Control of current HD-SDI Recorders. The second node would serve as a backup, in case of a failure on any of the components of the Active Main Server, by replicating the current database. (Cold Standby).
In conclusion, the deployment on MOG XPRESS R-2 High-density and high-performance server (with two nodes in a box) allowed for an optimal combination of a multi-channel recording scheduler with router control, and extra redundancy that allows for higher flexibility and workflow continuity. 4PRO mediaSCHEDULER is a micro-service software from the MAM4PRO product line, that efficiently unifies in a single rollout view all ingest activities, while enabling quick access of the media while manages all ingest processes.
This custom build was standardized and is now a part of MOG’s range of solutions for the Broadcast and Media Industry.
This week, we speak to David Griggs from The Walt Disney Company. Neil and David discuss the lifespan of linear television, how too much choice is baffling on-demand video customers, and what David envisions for the future of our industry. Enjoy!
Next time you turn on your television to watch the news, download your favourite episode on your set-top box or stream that must-see programme to your iPhone, ask yourself: how does that content reach my device?
That is what we do. We are the ones behind the scenes. We work 24/7 on behalf of big-brand TV channels and help deliver their content to your favourite device, through satellite, broadcast, internet and apps. We combine the latest technology with the smartest people. We prepare, manage and deliver content through broadcast, satellite, OTT and social platforms for TV channels and content owners.
