Inside dock10 – the UK’s leading television facility and media services company

Mark Senior

Chief Executive at dock10

We spoke to Mark Senior, Chief Executive at dock10, about how dock10 has grown into the UK’s leading television facility and media services company since it opened its doors in 2011, how it coped with the pandemic-induced lockdowns, and its future plans.

How did dock10 get its name?

dock10 is built on the site of the former Manchester Ship Canal docks. Construction of the canal began in November 1887, and it was dug largely by hand over the next six years being officially opened by Queen Victoria in May 1894. Construction of dock10’s facility began in 2007, and it was ready to go on air in January 2011. It was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, in March 2012. Our name, dock10, comes from the site plan of over 100 years ago that proudly states, "SITE OF FUTURE DOCK NO. 10" where it was envisaged that a new dock would be built alongside the existing Dock No. 9. Our facility is built on the same site - it may not be the shipping dock originally envisioned, but we are proud to call ourselves dock10.

Please give us a quick run-down of the history of dock10

The origins of dock10 lie in the BBC's plan to move key elements of its television operations, including BBC Children's and BBC Sport, outside of London to Salford Quays in Greater Manchester. Amid criticism that the BBC was too focused on producing content within the M25, Mark Thompson, the then Director-General of the BBC, was keen that the corporation should, in his own words, "serve and represent the whole country, not just its capital." This ambition, however, required a major television facility that could support the creation of world-class content outside of London – dock10.

Tell us about Media City and dock10’s responsibilities and facilities

Here at dock10 we have ten studios - eight television studios and two specialist audio studios - a total of more than 43,000 sq ft of studio space. This includes the UK’s largest multi-camera television studio at a massive 12,540 sq ft. Our award-winning post production facilities have over 50 edit suites, as well as sound, VFX and extensive media management capabilities. Media City also has a future-proof fibre network with over 20 global network providers, making it one of the best-connected sites in the world and perfect for the needs of broadcast and media.

What changes did you have to make as a result of the lockdowns and how many of them will stick for the future?

When the global pandemic prompted the lockdown in March 2020, we knew this was going to bring challenges for our customers and the way television was made. We remained open throughout the crisis and adapted quickly to support our customers. BBC Bitesize was on air in record time with the virtual set being designed and built from the homes of the design team in a matter of days – a feat that demonstrates the fantastic flexibility of our next generation virtual studio capability. We had also already been testing remote gallery production with the FA Cup and so when the lockdown’s travel restrictions came into force we were able to hit the ground running and keep live sport and events on-air. Other large-scale events, such as the Sports Personality of the Year, were broadcast from the studios with special Covid-safe working measures including temperature checks, one-way systems, Perspex screens and extra office space to support social distancing. Our media infrastructure comfortably supports remote working, and this enabled our post production team to offer customers the flexibility to work anywhere they wanted with remote editing and secure viewing.

We have a team of around 160 people and everybody who could work from home was asked to do so, keeping as much space free for our customers and visiting productions as possible. We are very lucky to have a large building which has meant that we have been able to host all of the visiting productions in a socially distanced and Covid-safe way.

In the light of changes you made during the pandemic, how different does dock10’s future look now compared with early 2020?

This year, we’re really looking forward to getting the team together to celebrate 10 years of dock10. It feels like only yesterday that it all started with a studio in the middle of the Media City building site! Today we are the UK’s leading television facility at the centre of a world-class media hub - we have come a very long way in the last 10 years. It’s interesting that the pandemic has really driven some significant changes in the way people work, with remote galleries, remote working and virtual studios all leaping forward years in just a few months. These big changes have been fully embraced by production and proven to work, so we think they are here to stay.

Tell us about your virtual studio capabilities and move into Esports events production

We took a different approach with our Virtual Studios, in that rather than building a small green box and having a fixed virtual studio, we have enabled all of our studios to be virtual on demand. The new capability has been very popular with productions looking for the ability to make regular set changes without the traditional build costs. This enables any size of production to add virtual elements, large or small, that can significantly enhance its look and feel - it can give a daytime show that Saturday night feel on a daytime budget. These advantages have seen us take bookings from a wide range of customers including sport, children’s television, entertainment, creative agencies and live events.

Esports has been very popular during lockdown, and we hosted a number of tournaments from our studios. What started as a small home-made broadcast with gamers sharing screens has become a global hit and dock10 is providing the studios and core infrastructure to bring broadcast quality production values to these events.

Any other new or developing business areas dock10 is looking towards?

dock10 is well known for providing world-class studios and post production to the broadcast industry and during lockdown we have been enabling live broadcasts, content creation and media management for a wide range of new customers. Our remote production capabilities have been very successful in the last 18 months, and we think this is going to take off even more in the future as organisations realise the advantages of remote galleries, remote edit and other remote production methods and seek to integrate them permanently into their ways of working.

Finally, will Brexit cause dock10 any issues?

The most direct impact we have felt to date has been around border issues, with some delays and uncertainty in getting technology supplies from overseas.

Enter Cloud 2.0

Jonathan Morgan

CEO, Object Matrix

Over the past decade the media industry has hailed the adoption of the cloud as a way of introducing new efficiencies, as well as improving content protection and business continuity. For many media companies so far, the cloud has been all about storage. But of course, storing content is far from the only thing the media industry does. In some ways, the current iteration of the cloud, let’s call it Cloud 1.0, is not built for the needs of complex media workflows and what comes next must address these concerns. So where is cloud today and where is it heading, and could Cloud 2.0 be on the horizon?

The Cloud Environment

The Cloud is not something necessarily new, it’s more of a technological evolution, but it needs to continue to evolve to offer the most value for media archives and workflows. Cloud 1.0 was never intended for media-specific use, it was born out of a need to deliver content to millions of people over the web. Currently, Cloud 1.0 represents a fragmented world of services, all operating within a framework that is still tied to this original consumer-driven infrastructure.

Within any storage environment, protection, search and  movement of data is the main focus and for broadcasters and other media producers the sheer size of the data sets can be their biggest challenge. The scale of broadcasting assets exceeds most other sectors, and this intensifies the problem of transferring content between cloud services or stages within media workflows. Once large amounts of data have been stored this means that media organisations can often find themselves locked into cloud services, daunted by how overwhelming and costly a move would be.

Another challenge is that media companies need to use many different microservices for various sections of their workflow. But this can mean that content needs to be moved across services, and unexpected egress and data movement costs then begin to spiral. According to TVTechnology, one criticism levelled at big cloud companies is that “there is little or no opportunity to move data between different platforms or select specific tools from one supplier to use on another’s cloud.” For Cloud 2.0 to become a reality, this must change. We have after all been through this before - a dominant player creates lock-in around their ecosystem, but the community fights back against lock-in and potentially being exploited.

The Cost of Cloud 1.0

As AI capabilities advance, organisations are looking to capitalise on these tools to make the most of resources. Tools such as AI-based transcription services have the potential to maximise efficiencies, saving media organisations both time and money. However, if the footage is stored in the public cloud and a user wants to train AI databases, or say to transcode a 5PB archive, the content would need to be downloaded or moved to a transcode farm. To move or download a 5PB data set could cost a staggering $450,000. Once media production companies begin to move things around, they quickly realise that although it is their data, there is a charge to every time that they want to access it.

Currently the media industry is attempting to make this consumer-focused model of Cloud 1.0 appropriate for its business requirements. Unfortunately, Cloud 1.0 simply doesn’t do the job that media companies need it to do. Organisations are facing a toss-up between being able to store data on a tier where they can access it quickly (which comes at a cost) or storing data on a slower tier, making it more difficult to access. This is a choice they simply shouldn’t need to make.

What Should Cloud 2.0 Offer?

Moving forward, industry-focused cloud solutions will become commonplace and will take into account the impending “cloudification” of entire production workflows. Cloud 2.0 should be able to support the whole content management process, from ingesting live content into the cloud for editorial through to all re-versioning, distribution and archiving. This can make production processes much more efficient, as well as more robust from a business continuity perspective.

Media production is moving towards high levels of collaboration between multiple micro teams and between individuals and companies that can be based all around the world. Within live content production, cloud-based editing is becoming increasingly efficient, and even live content is both ingested and distributed via the Cloud. Cloud 2.0 will provide this as a service that joins up with other aspects of media workflows seamlessly, and without needing to move content in and out of tiers of storage.

A media-based business model for Cloud 2.0 must inevitably be set-up differently from a Cloud 1.0 B2C business model, for instance reducing and eliminating egress fees. Other areas to focus on are the demand from media organisations for less latency and higher bandwidth, and integrated media services (rather than bolt on additional complexities and costs). Cross-horizontal services which are provided by very large public cloud suppliers may not meet expectations, and this is where specifically aligned services will come to the fore.

Cloud 1.0 carried a lot of promise, and to some extent it did deliver. But now it’s time for the next stage of evolution. If it’s developed with the end user in mind, Cloud 2.0 will empower media producers with the freedom to create their best content yet.

Virtual Events – create an experience with cloud-based tools

Alex Humphries-French

Head of Marketing and Communications, Never.no

Put your hand up if you’re bored of virtual events! Most of you are sitting at your home desk with your hands held high. As restrictions slowly ease we’re seeing plans for more in-person and hybrid events in place for Q4, particularly with IBC and NAB on the move, and we’re all hoping that we’ll get to walk through the gates of a conference centre as soon as it’s safe to do so.

But things will never be the same. Whether it’s in-person, fully virtual or a mix, it’s important to engage and activate your attendees and delegates wherever they’re located. There are many opportunities to motivate participation and make a tradeshow or simple networking session an enjoyable experience. With plans in motion for virtual and hybrid events, let’s take a look at how organisers can connect with attendees more than ever before.

The ice-breaker

In the build up to your event arouse interest by asking attendees to send in and share their questions or comments aimed at a scheduled session or particular delegate. Use your social channels for the call to action and share responses live, or feature during the event to build engagement. Polls are a fantastic way to gauge opinion; run them on a particular topic and see if opinion changes following your live content - it will create a great debate and arm hosts with topical conversation.

Create multiple touchpoints

WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or similar, are excellent platforms to create a two-way conversation. Implement automated responses featuring sponsor links, promotions and supplemental information. Also, some attendees love to share their opinion publicly and can do that via public social channels, or live event platforms, but there’s a lot of value to cater for those that prefer a more intimate interaction. Cater for everyone across multiple platforms - you can even include that content during the event.

Share the experience

Include images, videos and reactions from your audience, and drive questions and topical points to your host’s display or tablet, so they can discuss. Your audience’s generated content overlayed into the live feed will enhance reactions and influence the conversation.

Voting and polls

The best way to make anyone interact and get involved is a vote or poll. People love influencing a live vote and impacting on the final result, generally offering opinion of a hot topic, or impacting on the direction of the narrative. Using a social engagement tool, you can run multiple polls across social and aggregate that data into a consolidated live result.

Fill the gap

There can be a lot of downtime during a conference, particularly in between sessions, so use that as an opportunity to share attendees live feedback sourced from social, or run clipped highlights for an immediate catch up. It will keep the conversation flowing and entice others to get involved.

Seeing is believing

It’s important to produce and deliver a broadcast-standard event. We’re all used to watching 4k, high production value content every day of our lives, so don't fall short with your event - your audience WILL switch off. Feature dynamic graphic overlays and live content, info and audience interaction, in the form of tickers, full-screen and L-graphics, to keep them captivated – just because it isn’t broadcast doesn’t mean you can’t recreate that standard and enhance live sessions.

Engaging tools

Use cloud-based production and engagement tools like Bee-On to source social content, including polls and 3rd-party data and redisplay with your live overlays to create an active community that will organically enhance the overall experience for those involved. Feature your audience’s interaction live on your feed throughout and let them influence the narrative to make them feel part of your event. There’s a reason why engagement rates are so important for influencer and brand campaigns - a more engaged and active audience is more likely to buy into the value of your content, boosting revenue, retention, feedback and opportunities for event sponsors.

We’re seeing more virtual and hybrid events produced with cloud-based production and delivery tools to enhance the experience both for those attending in person and situated in remote locations. Event organisers have seen the power of virtual production techniques and tools that will boost participation and create more touchpoints to connect and interact with other members, delegates and hosts.

Our clients working within events see there’s a huge opportunity to feature attendees in the content and complement the narrative, creating topical discussion, impacting live debate, and sharing real-time experience. Looking ahead, we see hybrid, remotely produced events being the norm - creating more sponsorship opportunities, ticket sales, and capturing quality content for use beyond the event.

Not only is it more cost effective, but using a simple, yet effective end-to-end audience engagement strategy, featuring polls, competitions, personalised messaging, and putting the audience at the heart of the content, will create more opportunities for organisers to deliver a fantastic experience and even enhance revenue.

Clear thinking about cloud playout and the customer advantages

Chris Pulis

CTO, Globecast Americas

Cloud playout is not a new idea; it’s been discussed in our industry for at least a decade, including early attempts at creating and supplying solutions. But it’s only more recently that it has become a reality and it’s certainly an important part of the future. Globecast is leading the way.

What do we mean by cloud playout? We mean software playout deployed in the cloud: a virtualized playout system. At Globecast it can also mean the media supply chain, playout and distribution are all in the cloud, but we likely have to provide a playout solution that services numerous distribution methods and destinations, using both traditional and new models.

At Globecast, we have developed playout platforms that are entirely cloud based. As an example, we’ve been working with one of the largest, most, complex US cable network customers and we’re now fully supporting their playout (more news of this soon). We are very confident we can support the needs of broadcasters of all shapes and sizes, right up to the most demanding. Our customers quickly see the benefits of cloud playout.

The challenges for someone whose infrastructure is on premise is the inevitable technology refresh on a three-to-five-year cycle. Hardware does wear out; it can also become antiquated in terms of performance needs and in terms of additional delivery channels being added. Using cloud playout, nobody writes a check for new hardware and we’re able to keep customers using the most relevant, up-to-date technologies. For example, as new graphics cards are released and new graphics capabilities in the cloud are launched, we can pass along these advantages to customers who may want to increase the level of complexity of their on-air product by using multi-layer graphics. We simply need to turn them on.

If it’s virtualized, what we’re also able to do using infrastructure as code techniques -aka DevOps (more on that shortly) - we can migrate any existing cloud playout operation in a short period of time to the latest infrastructure with very little problem and it’s seamless to the customer. That’s how we can control costs and create opportunities. Time-to-market is significantly reduced too, of course.

When it comes to provisioning new services, once you have it all set up in the cloud, we can spin things up and down in orders of magnitude faster using an OPEX model. In many cases, customers are also only paying for the capacity they use and as a result works this better on their balance sheets.

Graphics have been a challenge since the dawn of cloud playout but this is also a hurdle we have been able to overcome. Graphics need a graphics engine, even in a software environment, to playout multi-layered compositions. This has to be done using a high-end GPU-based processing engine and this is part of the AWS infrastructure that we use. The level of complexity required determines the exact nature of the software that we deploy, tailored to each customer. There’s isn’t a channel on air that we can’t handle, not only in HD but UHD, too.

We work with partner vendors and service suppliers across this space and we have the infrastructure available, courtesy of our cloud infrastructure partnerships, to comprehensively test these solutions. We provide clear feedback, giving suppliers the opportunity to make any adaptations to suit our overall architecture. We have a comprehensive toolkit and we use whichever tools are most appropriate.

In terms of media processing, again this varies on a per-customer basis. As an example, with a major customer of ours, they have mastered content that they own, along with graphics, promos and commercials. All of this is stored in the cloud. We then use automation, with their schedule, to pull the necessary files into the processing pipeline that transcodes the content, sometimes including audio channel re-mapping, and then it’s staged for playout. It’s fully automated.

Our Orchestrator solution – a cloud MAM built in-house - is the glue between the customer’s schedule and the playout automation systems. It pairs the schedule that the customer creates from their traffic system with the media, then it moves that media and stages it for processing by the processing pipeline for playback. So media can be in an Amazon S3 bucket, for example, or it can even be in Glacier, which is the equivalent of an LTO tape in the cloud – or another high-performance storage tier - and Orchestrator keeps track of it. We’re not only talking about programming; we’re talking about commercials, graphics, snipes, ratings, icons, everything. The system is able to intelligently identify media conflicts in the schedule. If there’s a piece of media that’s missing, it escalates that to both the customer and our operations team, if necessary. Orchestrator also manages the media storage life cycle. When programs have played, if they’re not scheduled again quickly, they don’t stay sitting on the playout storage, filling it up, they’re deleted and then they’ll be brought back on when the time comes. This, again, keeps costs, like storage, down, both for Globecast and our customers.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the process of creating and managing cloud-based technologies using scripts – hence code – to do so. The script is then “read”, or accepted, by systems like AWS’ CloudFormation or the cloud-agnostic solution Terraform. The systems created using IaC can be as simple or as complex as required, i.e. entirely cloud-based complex playout infrastructure can be generated far faster and cost-effectively via this method. Changes to a service can be made very quickly and services can be duplicated in a very short time, usually a matter of minutes. We see DevOps and IaC as an integral part of our industry going forward and it’s something that’s increasingly important across what we do.

Cloud playout is a paradigm shift. There are customers that know they are ready to make the change, but even among those, many are still apprehensive. It’s vital for us to understand that dynamic and bring them along on the journey in order to help make that leap into a “new normal”. We help them understand how systems are virtualized in the cloud and how the process flow is different from on premise. One point that’s very important to make customers understand is all of the principles of redundancy still apply. Failover is central to the design of our cloud architectures, but we have to acquaint them with how this works in this new context.

Another key point is that we work with customers on how their content flows into the cloud environment and what opportunities there are for migrating their current processes as part of a cloud deployment. At Globecast what we can do, and what we recommend, is virtualize the customer’s content supply chain upstream from playout so that automation is driving much more of the ingest and content prep process that’s common in traditional, on-prem environments.

Cloud playout is the future, but as with all Globecast solutions, this is not a one-size-fits-all situation – far from it. We have developed strong partnerships alongside our market-leading experience to make cloud playout the reality it should be so our customers can realize the numerous, long-lasting benefits.

How to be a Successful Tech Leader

Ivanka Vassileva

CEO and Co-founder, PBT EU

Ivanka Vassileva is CEO and co-founder of systems integration specialist PBT EU, offering customised solutions to the broadcast, media, and AV language services industries. Products include the EXEcutor™ broadcast server line, subtitling platform SubtitleNEXT, and Profuz Digital’s business process management system LAPIS.

Ivanka is also co-founder of development company Profuz Digital and has grown both companies into competitive global entities that propel women into leadership roles.

Highly regarded for her integrity and passionate commitment to client service, Ivanka is one of many dynamic successful women leading the change in the technology sector.

The IABM Journal had the chance to get Ivanka’s perspective on how organisations in the industry can advocate for women, and men, in tech, resulting in attracting the best people to create a thriving culture that encourages and motivates.

She believes that tech is a fantastic industry for women and will improve if more women are working in engineering, development, and sales roles.

Work hard, stay humble, be kind: the secrets of a successful tech leader

What do you love about your work? 

I love to get stuck in early concerning complex issues that arise in our industry, and to have a solution ready before the rest of the market even realises the need for it. We evolve our products continuously to meet a variety of challenges. In my line of work, I make a concerted effort to get up to speed with new technologies fast, which I find energising.

What advice would you give to a woman getting started in her career in your industry?

I would advise them to be confident in their skills, to work hard and further develop them, but to be patient, as success doesn’t come in a day. Women have a lot of soft skills which can complement their knowledge. With perseverance, this combination can make them advance quickly in their career, even in this industry. In the media localization area, we see a lot of successful women and many hard-working successful professionals that are highly respected for what they do.

Tell us about a favourite book/show/podcast or film and why/how it inspires you.

I find historical books about people of integrity and of successful people inspiring. We can learn a lot from our predecessors and bring continuity to their work from our perspective and in our era. I prefer to watch movies revealing various characters and emotions humans can demonstrate in unexpected situations. It makes me believe that with all our weaknesses we can still be strong when required.

Where do you find support and inspiration? How important is networking and how do you expand your contacts?

I enjoy travelling and discovering new places, meeting different people, and understanding new cultures.

What are the most important characteristics of a good leader? What leadership traits are overrated?

A good leader is empathetic and a good listener. It’s important for leaders to strive to create an environment where people can be at their best. I also believe that good leaders have to lead by example and proactively follow the same rules and principles they expect from their fellows.

When it comes to leadership, aggressiveness is overrated. You don’t have to be aggressive to be a good leader, but you do have to be dynamic.

What’s the most effective way for women in IT media Tech to help other women in tech succeed?

Generally, representation of women as leaders is low. However, considering that research shows that companies with female leaders have reaped many benefits, this should help to change things. Women are regarded as effective leaders, especially with respect to employee engagement, collaboration, and customer insights. Diversity in management and on corporate boards helps to deliver better financial results for shareholders, companies, and in turn, customers too.

Advocating for women in their professional lives and pointing out how great they are to someone else is a great thing to do. It is great to be confident of one’s talents and skills but boasting about your achievements does not always sit well with many people. It is always positive to highlight when someone has achieved something – encouragement goes a long way and helps boost people’s morale and also helps to promote them within the industry to others.

How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?

From a young age, my parents instilled the importance of believing you can be whoever you want to be. This belief gave me a great deal of self-confidence. If you try to learn as much as you can, listen carefully and work diligently, you can be successful in whatever you set out to achieve.

How has your previous employment experience aided your success at PBT EU?

As I started out in my career, I learned more about the company’s clients’ business. This results in trusted relationships being established and shows you have an interest in how everything ties together. I was also working much harder than the rest of my colleagues and invested a lot of time in self-education. I wanted to know everything about the products we were offering, the clients’ profiles, the business culture, the market fit, and I wanted to get the full picture and to be competent in everything I committed myself to doing.

What have the highlights and challenges been so far at PBT EU throughout your career there?

We started out as a regional company specialising in PlayBox products, and soon understood that in order to be remarkable and independent, it was important to expand our portfolio, broaden our horizons across the globe and provide clients with a full range of reliable products and services that deliver results and meet specific requirements. It was challenging but also exciting to build a successful team from excellent high calibre professional individuals with various backgrounds and experiences.  The hard work and effort resulted in a highly productive and motivating environment where everyone contributes. We also enjoy what we do. When we think of innovative ideas to improve clients’ working lives, this sparks fresh enthusiasm, and our clients feel that too. It’s a rewarding process to know we are playing a role in solving our clients’ challenges.

Which other female and male leaders do you admire and why?

I have the same level of respect for everyone who is a respectable professional, if they put their heart into what they do. 

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in your career to date?

Do not be afraid to take risks. Understand the potential benefits and consequences and make a decision. If the decision is a win-win, ensure it is everyone’s success too. If it is not, learn from it, and move forward.

A CEO’s job is 24/7 so I have to balance priorities while staying focused on our strategic goals. It’s important to be able to step back though to re-set your perspective from time to time.  I also believe very strongly in giving back to the community, and I am a passionate supporter of women’s health.

How has the Covid-19 Pandemic changed your clients’ working lives and have you got products that adapt to the situation for remote working for example?

The pandemic forced a large proportion of the broadcast workforce to work remotely.  It’s vital to be flexible at all times, to be able to offer integrated web-based multi-channel functionalities to ensure that customers can continue to operate their broadcasts without interruption.

Many of our clients that primarily work with freelancers in the translation and subtitling sector, worked remotely long before the Covid-19 pandemic though. However, other clients such as universities and production companies have had to adapt to virtual or online models where we have been able to assist through our flexible and adaptable technologies that enable remote working. 

We are in the fortunate position to support educational organisations with SubtitleNEXT licenses for remote working.

Portugal’s Jornal do Centro chose our Profuz LAPIS system to centralise their management processes and help manage news content, by providing journalists with access to all their content at all times from anywhere in the world.

What do you want PBT EU to accomplish in this year for 2021 after you bucked the trend with a successful 2020 despite the pandemic?

I am immensely proud that PBT EU is a client-focused team with a broad global footprint. As a result, our customers’ ongoing achievements fuels our success which makes for the solid relationships we value. In return we provide customers with vital tools to stay on top. We forewarn our clients that they need to be prepared not to leave upgrades too late, and risk being left behind by their competitors. We continue to deliver reliable and efficient solutions to remedy that risk.

What is your motto?

Work hard, stay humble, be kind.

Designing Virtual Media Supply Chains

Miroslav Jeras

CTO, Pebble

While it is generally acknowledged that the broadcast industry roadmap leads to a fully IP-based infrastructure, there is still plenty of uncertainty regarding the exact route that will be taken to get there. Currently the industry can be characterised as being in an extended implementation phase which concurrently overlaps with the R&D efforts necessary to make IP workflows optimised throughout an organisation.

There are several areas of uncertainty surrounding IP deployments as a result, and one of the chief ones resides in IP assignment and the way that broadcast engineers can connect and disconnect devices to IP-based broadcast networks. This becomes a significant task in the move from SDI to IP, with several vital stages that have to be completed. Connecting devices to a switch might be relatively straightforward, but each device requires an IP address so that it’s visible to the network. Then, for each output on each device, a multicast address and a multicast port for video, for audio, and for ancillary data need to be allocated. Additionally, in an IP environment it’s also more difficult to lock and synchronise all these sources together, requiring PTP (precision time protocol) parameters to be set for each device.

This is why we developed Pebble Control; to solve these problems and to do it in an independent and cost-effective way that retains interoperability and does not require any lock in to a specific manufacturer’s ecosystem. As a result Pebble Control is a connection management system that assists in the transition to becoming a vendor-agnostic IP facility without the need to deploy a bespoke enterprise solution and get caught up in all the configuration, consultation, and potentially large expense that that process involves.

This is a very natural progression for Pebble as a company. From our early pioneering playout systems we have always been champions for the power of automation with best of breed components and its ability to reduce operational complexity. With Pebble Control we are simply applying that philosophy to the problems of adding devices to an IP network.

Rather than go down a proprietary route, Pebble Control provides full support for the increasingly popular NMOS (Networked Media Open Specifications) suite of protocols that have been produced by the AMWA (Advanced Media Workflow Association) specifically to help IP workflow deployments. It also interfaces with NMOS-enabled devices from multiple vendors on the network. This allows for the crucial automatic discovery of devices, provides secure resource management, and gives immediate feedback and alerts if critical elements of the broadcast chain go offline.

There is also a new integration with VideoIPath, Nevion’s orchestration and SDN (software defined network) control software. This integration enables users to control SDNs, in addition to the traditional IGMP-based networks. Pebble Control can discover devices in the VideoIPath system and issue connection requests based on the user input. Furthermore, VideoIPath customers can now benefit from Pebble Control’s advanced features, such as its container logic concept.

Pebble Control operates on web-based UIs for maximum flexibility, especially when it comes to remote network configuration and monitoring. NMOS IS-07 software and hardware panels can be easily integrated to perform actions and display critical information, while Pebble’s own software panels provide configurable functionality and quick access to key features.

Provisioning the multicast settings for NMOS senders is easily done through a responsive tabular interface, while the ability to export and import configuration data means users can delegate and quickly restore settings. Full support for NMOS IS-05 v1.1, alongside the flexibility of defining custom logical views and containers, means connection management is a streamlined and focused experience analogous to connecting SDI signals. It has also been designed for security from the outset with a design approach that has embraced modern access control methodologies from the ground up. Authentication and granular authorisation through attribute-based workflows means broadcasters have the flexibility to shape user access as required.

Helping to ease deployment issues, it is also extremely scalable. The software can run on a single machine (physical or virtual), or on many networked machines. The database it uses is also scalable, allowing broadcasters to start with a simple test system — let’s say as simple as a camera and a monitor — and then scale that to a system with thousands of devices as they roll out a deployment.

Crucially, and acknowledging the very necessary role that hybrid deployments will have in the industry over the coming years, it also features legacy router emulation. By emulating legacy index-based matrices or routers, any I/O or container can be connected using the well-known SW-P-08 protocol, allowing Pebble Control to be remotely controlled in turn by systems that support this protocol (including Pebble Automation). Therefore, Pebble Control can enable any application – even those that are not IP-enabled – to make connections in an IP environment.

We’re also working hard on the support side to make sure deployment is as easy as possible, offering comprehensive online help and a series of tutorial videos. The result is that IP routing and switching is within the grasp of any broadcaster looking to make the transition, and, as long as the components they use to build out their ecosystem are NMOS-compliant, they can continue to use and specify the individual devices that best suit their business needs at all points in the chain.

There’s no vaccination for COVID Piracy but there is hope!

Mark Mulready

VP Cyber Services, Irdeto

The world, slowly but surely, is re-opening its tired eyes to what we called ‘normal’ before COVID-19 struck, shutting down everything and anything worldwide. Measures are being reworked and we’re able, in some locations, to return to normality by heading back to the office, going to the movies and resuming face to face contact.

The COVID-19 pandemic truly accelerated the Video Entertainment industry, in its totality, in two different directions. Not only did it catalyze digitalization and streaming services need for D2C, but it also increased the risks threatened by piracy and security issues. Circumstances have changed, and digitalization has increased. The entire value chain including production, postproduction, and distribution is now digital. This has been in development for a while, but COVID-19 accelerated the process with contact and face-to-face life being limited.

Piracy was not a new phenomenon when COVID-19 struck, we had always battled with nefarious pirates long before we entered a pandemic. When the coronavirus first took hold in early 2020, internet usage soared with lockdowns forcing us to drastically alter how we go about our daily lives. In the UK, internet service providers (ISPs) saw a double-digit increase in broadband usage in March, with BT claiming fixed network traffic jumped as much as 60%. Since then, it has become apparent that the level of disruption brought by COVID-19 would not be a passing inconvenience and would instead leave a lasting impact. Online activity has remained at levels once considered ‘peak’ but now considered ‘normal’. All this online activity also means more opportunity for cybercriminals to exploit our networks, our devices, and often our well-intentioned human nature too. Cybercriminals are smart and creative when it comes to inventing new threats and scams, and the world has seen criminal groups increasingly switching to COVID-19 themed traps for phishing, attempting to exploit general anxieties around the virus to their advantage. It was reported that significant cyberattacks against critical targets in Europe have doubled in the past year.

Operators must of course think about security and protection, but what must also be considered is the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of the platform. Security and protection come at a cost, and we understand that operators don’t have an independent budget to allocate to these services.

When it comes to protecting content from pirates, one must think like a pirate to outmaneuver the pirate.

One should think about how a pirate would look for the content, how the content would be pirated and if there are any weak links in the infrastructure. This means operators must take a smart approach in protecting and securing their valuable content. With this comes three other factors to consider: time to implement, cost to implement, and impact of the implementation. Let’s explore this further.

Security

If operators are looking to launch a new OTT service, the first step is to use a multi-DRM and content usage management solution. With this operators can eliminate the simple things. Then from here, things become a little more nuanced, such as managing credential sharing, which Netflix is homing in on. Password sharing violates Netflix's terms of service, which means it's technically illegal. To combat this from happening, Concurrent Stream management provides strong enforcement against this, meaning Susie can’t share her password with Amrita to watch the latest Rom-Com on Netflix. As well as this, operators can think about CDN tokenization, but unfortunately, we are seeing pirates leveraging this and using operator CDNs to deliver content they’ve pirated. Further steps operators can take include protecting the application the content is delivered from to secure themselves against either jailbroken or rooted phones. There are tools however to detect devices that have been jailbroken and can limit the use of the application. 

Operators can also add watermarking to their content so that it can be located more easily. Irdeto’s TraceMark™ supports different use cases, from tracking security weaknesses in distribution channels to identifying individual pirate sessions to disrupt unauthorized streams at the source. Whether you are trying to protect live or video-on-demand content or whether you deliver your content over Satellite or OTT platforms, Irdeto has a watermarking solution that is optimal for content protection needs.  

Reliability & Scalability

2020 was a breakout year for OTT plaforms where we saw explosive subscriber and usage growth. Consumers now turn to streaming services to get their fix for content. And with that comes the expectation of a high-quality and seamless streaming experience. Operators must ask themselves:  are my platforms up to the task to support my subscriber growth? Can we handle high-profile events such as live concerts, sports events, or online movie premieres? Can it support my global ambitions? Is a 99,999% Service Level Agreement enough these days?  All these questions need to be answered to ensure that consumers remain happy with the service they’ve subscribed to. Dissatisfaction may lead to consumers canceling their subscription to the service and your ambitious business plans may go up in smoke.

Efficiency

There has been and continues to be a large trend toward SaaS and Cloud solutions rather than license or on-premises implementations, as these solutions offer higher service levels and scalability. This means that service providers benefit from the scale that a company like Irdeto can offer. For example, Irdeto offers an industry-leading service, 99,999% SLA, and we serve over 2.7 billion DRM licenses monthly and that number only continues to grow. We’re able to help customers to benefit from our economies of scale and we’re able to be flexible when demand is required.  Irdeto can spread the peaks of demand out globally whereas an operator would have to size their operations for their own peaks, paying for idle capacity most of the time. Irdeto manages and invests in your infrastructure, all accompanied by our expert knowledge. We actively analyze the usage of our services to detect service abuse and will support our customers in addressing those issues.

So, what comes next?

We must all remain realistic in the fight against piracy – it will always be there. What we can advise is to ensure reasonable measures are taken to protect the content and that valuable content is encrypted as a preliminary stand against the pirates. We must remain vigilant, respond quickly, and continue to assess your network, your capabilities, your action plans and adding levels of security - as piracy evolves, so should your security solutions. Effective content protection requires 24×7 monitoring for rapid breach detection, notification, and takedown of illegal content. Having this additional layer of protection will provide peace of mind for rights holders and content owners that every measure is being taken to protect assets from illegal redistribution and protect their revenue. Every operator will have embark on a different journey in fighting piracy. What is needed is an incremental approach with a long-term partner that can advise you throughout this journey and has the tools and relationships to assess, protect, detect, take down along each step, and go the legal route to enforce if necessary.

Looking further into the future, our focus must be on increased education of cybersecurity risks, through cross-industry collaboration, government, media support, and greater investment in tools to fight against modern threats. The new reality of the pandemic has exposed weaknesses in cybersecurity and more can be done to protect systems. 2020 highlighted the need for solid systems and how dialogue with industry partners and customers is necessary to find the right solutions. We have to adapt because the risks are high if we ignore them.  There may be no vaccine to cure content piracy, but there are steps we can take to mitigate the risks.

The Interoperability of Being

Jade Kurian

President and Co-Founder of latakoo

As ridiculous as it sounds, multiple people get a notification every time my cat, Raja, uses his smart litter robot and any time there is a sound in my hallway. I or someone else can act on those notifications with connected devices. Does Raja’s litter need to be changed or is he just tripping the system? The robot will tell us. Is there a package at my door? The camera will let us know. App makers connect us to our pets, our cars, our fridges, our shoes. We live in the age of connection and while broadcast has been slower to the trend, we’re now seeing a growing demand for interoperability and flexibility in the enterprise broadcast and media sector.

“For years, people sat on panels and said the NRCS (Newsroom Computer System) needed to be that interconnect. Everybody listened. Nobody did anything about it,” said Blake Russell, the Executive VP for Station Operations and Content Development at the Nexstar Media Group. Mr. Russell envisioned a world where multiple systems opened up secure endpoints to connect with the newsroom computer system. “That’s our NASA, our Mission Control,” he explained. Nexstar owns, operates or provides service to 199 television stations and their related signals reach approximately 62% of all U.S. television households.

Mr. Russell and Nexstar were among the first to push for this, but they are not alone. This has become a routine request from media clients. Recently a buyer said, “We really love having our video and transcriptions and metadata in latakoo, but I like that it also shows up in Avid.” latakoo’s backbone is built on agnostic collaboration. Our cloud infrastructure and API exist in such a way that we can provide secure connections to integration partners.

There’s a natural instinct for self-preservation: a catch in the throat, a protective fear that occurs when broadcast vendors talk about interoperability. No matter what customers want, it sounds suspiciously like we are being asked to build a bridge into our service that allows some other company to sell something to our customers that maybe we could have built and sold ourselves. Why give up business to an interloper? After all, this is not the consumer web. We support a niche industrial market that some of us have carefully developed, groomed and served for decades.

And when I say “we,” there are doubtlessly some tenured technology vendors who look at latakoo today and see an “interloper.” The reality is that whether we’re talking about new technology startups in a market or newly arrived immigrants to a country, the temptation once one has arrived and survived is to immediately turn around, close and bolt the door. Let’s build a wall, because we can clearly handle things from here. I can understand the trepidations here as I am both an immigrant and a startup technology founder, but we can’t let fear create handcuffs.

While the temptation is strong to create closed branded ecosystems with locked-in customers, there are at least two problems with this bar-the-door strategy. First, it is a guaranteed superhighway to mediocrity. And second, it does not serve the best interests of our customers. Truly free markets are scary precisely because they are not protected, and that means that some innovator (not interloper) can surprise and disrupt the market with a superior service or business model. That is also why free markets are awesome for customers. Innovators create the future through their imagination and skilled execution. Everyone benefits.

After Eliud Kipchoge, a personal hero and the Kenyan marathoner, ran his epic sub two-hour marathon, he said, “No human is limited.” His “why” resonated with the world, “The reason for running 1:59 is not the performance. The reason to run 1:59 is to tell that farmer that he is not limited; that teacher that she can produce good results in school; that engineer… that he can go to another project.” Kipchoge built a team of rivals to get it done, pacemakers who were among the world’s best distance runners. That’s how records get broken. And sometimes during the race, competitors discover they are faster when they collaborate.

For years, broadcast and media customers asked vendors to provide easy access to superior solutions under one umbrella. “We need to remove the level of complexity to use broadcast technologies and find out how we can all get along within the same environment,” said Mr. Russell. “You don’t need six things, each doing one element alone. You need one thing that can talk to everything and it has to be secure.”

Like almost every major station group in the United States today, the Nexstar Media Group grew quickly as it acquired other station groups. This created a communications challenge which the Nexstar team brought to latakoo. How does a station group operating in 100+ markets realize its potential economies of scale through real time communication and content sharing? Another station group simultaneously described the same scenario. We tackled the challenge and called our solution, Manifest.

At its heart, Manifest is a searchable index of assignments that allows users to quickly discover what is being produced that day throughout the company. Teams can search through a huge organization’s assignments by category, geographic region and precise search terms. They can follow developing stories they discover for updates and request that the content be delivered directly to them the moment a journalist turns in a story by sending the finished product through latakoo from the field to that reporter’s home station.

Like every other part of latakoo, Manifest can exist on its own or it can integrate into another asset management system. For Mr. Russell’s team, there’s no time to duplicate work by re-entering data in more than one place. Instead, the systems used by reporters need to synchronize so that the same information and content is available on every platform they use. Today, Manifest already seamlessly integrates with three of the world’s most used Newsroom Computer Systems as well as a custom assignments system, called Daybook, built and used by Nexstar.

This year, latakoo is participating in the roll out of another collaboration product that provides broadcasters the benefits of two companies, each doing what they do best. The Panasonic US team reached out to us earlier this year with a proposition. Their PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) cameras are in demand, and they’ve got low latency streaming video built right into the cameras. The challenge their customers face is easily setting up the necessary web systems to support the cameras. Could latakoo help? As a web- based software service provider, latakoo used the tools Panasonic baked into its cameras to easily discover the cameras on a LAN, to send the video to the cloud, to control the cameras from anywhere in the world and to direct the video stream to on-premise broadcast playout. Panasonic makes hardware solutions. latakoo makes software services. Marry the two and broadcasters receive the collaborative benefits of each company’s specialty skillset.

All of this is not to say that companies should ever walk away from the creation of any disruptive service or product they see fit to produce. The key is to go ahead and build the things you know are needed in the marketplace, but also negotiate an entry point for others to integrate. Vendors will do better if customers choose their service because it’s better and not because customers feel chained inside their matrix.

I call this the interoperability of being.

Jade Kurian is President and Co-Founder of latakoo, provider of an end-to-end solution for fast, secure transfer and delivery of large files. Jade has more than 20 years experience in all facets of broadcasting and broadcast technology. She is also an operational expert, having managed staff and coordinated crews while traveling the world. Jade is a patent holder for some of the technology built at latakoo. Under her leadership, latakoo has grown to serve companies around the world including television stations, production companies and marketing firms.

AI-Based Closed-Captioning Solution for New Streaming Platform Requirements

In the past couple of years, consumers’ insatiable and growing demand has increased content consumption over streaming media. We have witnessed a barrage of new players launching streaming services into the market. Recent examples include the launch of Quibi and Peacock in April 2020, and HBO Max is planning to expand into Latin America by June 2021. The increasing demand has left content creators and owners to scramble for new or repurposed content for these platforms while meeting the platform’s standards in video and corresponding metadata. This critical metadata includes closed captions and, as is the case with video, closed captions must meet standards and style guides mandated by individual streaming platforms.

The tremendous growth in content consumption and the widespread acceptance of closed captions beyond the hearing-impaired community have driven up the output volume required of captioners and introduced the need to provide captions that can be used on different platforms.

One of our clients, a leading U.S.-based mobile video platform content producer headquartered in California, faced a similar challenge. They were obligated to include closed captions in line with the platform’s standards and style guidelines for all their content.

The client assessed Digital Nirvana’s Trance, an AI-driven, cloud-based, enterprise-grade solution for transcription, captioning, and translation to find a solution to these challenges. There are a lot of impressive closed captioning applications in the market. What makes Digital Nirvana’s Trance different? While the basic functionality of other applications may be similar, Trance is unique in that it is offered via the MediaServiceIQ platform; the gateway to Digital Nirvana’s suite of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities. The platform makes accessible Trance’s collection of sophisticated yet straightforward AI modules. These modules simplify captioning for the user and support an evolving captioning and processing workflow. Be it automatic speech-to-text content, automatic caption generation based on style guides, or translation, each aspect has been designed to reduce the effort involved to create the output.

Because it is an enterprise-grade application, Trance comes with an orchestration layer that enables easy project management, automatic assignment of tasks to users, and a holistic view of day-to-day operations. Combining these future-ready functionalities with superior ease of use, Trance was the customer’s top choice.

Digital Nirvana’s solution enhances efficiencies by using various AI modules to address the needs of transcription, caption generation, and translation based on the target streaming platform’s style guide preference, enabling users to confirm compliance with output requirements automatically. Once media is ingested, a speech-to-text output is automatically generated and then displayed alongside the video in the user interface as a time-synced transcript. The operator can quickly review and correct the transcript, then convert it to closed captions based on the profile set, e.g., Netflix, Quibi, Prime, etc.

This process enables adherence to character count, line count, text frame, gaps, maximum words per minute, and more. Once the initial review is completed, the content is displayed in a captioning professional window. Users can review it along with the video and confirm how the content appears on platforms.

Once the caption review is completed, the user can automatically generate translation in the same window alongside the video and source-language closed captions. This feature eliminates the need to recheck conformance on style-guide-based parameters and allows users to review automatic translations in line with the source language captions.

Trance also has a built-in caption conformance module that helps users repurpose existing captions, correct them, and reformat them to comply with new streaming media requirements. This feature generates time-synced alerts on any nonconformance so the user can easily navigate to the occurrence and review. After completing caption generation or repurposing using caption conformance, users can download caption output formats based on the profile set, including customized WebVTT or TTML formats suitable for various streaming platforms. Users can also choose to download multiple forms that are in conformance with different broadcast and streaming platforms.

Not just this client, all our clients have leveraged the following key features of cloud-based Trance to accelerate their captioning process:

Web User Interface: Trance provides a simple and intuitive UI with user-specific access and customizations. Users can access work items through an easy-to-use dashboard and can even customize keyboard shortcuts.

Transcription Page: Our solution is enabled with advanced speech-to-text (STT) engines equipped to handle various content types. The advanced speech-to-text (STT) engines of Trance allow users to color-code for easy identification of low-confidence text and enable easy navigation within the edit area with interactive text. Users can also import existing scripts.

Automatic Formatting (Presets): Trance presets enable Natural Language Processing (NLP) based on grammar and proper nouns. These presets can be customized technical parameters to accommodate various styles and create multiple presets under one account for various projects.

Pro Captioning Page: The Trance pro captioning page provides the functionality to view, edit automatically formatted captions, sync automatically to the video, generate alerts on nonconformance with preset guidelines, and import existing closed-caption sidecar files.

Text Localization/Translations: Trance supports translation into 100+ languages. Users can copy the formatting of the source or create a new preset for each language. A dual-pane display allows them to view source language text alongside translations.

24/7 support: Digital Nirvana’s experience, backed by a worldwide support team, ensures that our customers get application-level availability, security, comprehensive visibility, and quick responses.

Digital Nirvana’s Trance is an easy-to-use, web-based application for the generation of transcripts, closed captions/subtitles, and translations for content localization. Purpose-built for media and entertainment operators, the solution empowers users to unlock the power of AI with no significant upfront capital expense or in-house expertise. Our adaptive technology is designed to handle future industry standards, while our open API architecture makes integration with existing workflows seamless and easy. Our solutions empower broadcasters and independent content producers to enhance content value, meet regulatory captioning requirements, and prepare content for publishing to different distribution channels. It offers an interface through which customers can submit their job requests and access customized, flexible services that fit their business needs.

To know more about how Digital Nirvana’s AI-driven solutions can accelerate your captioning workflows, write to us at marketing@digital-nirvana.com.