Large streaming providers have deployed a dual growth strategy of reaching new audiences via Direct to Consumer (DTC) offerings sold to individual consumers and reaching these audiences seamlessly via sell-through on cable/telco and aggregation platforms. They can successfully execute this strategy through a substantial investment in homegrown solutions and custom integrations into telco/cable/aggregator platforms. Moreover, their investment is justifiable in the context of the extensive content library they own and the enormous global reach of services they can deliver.
More niche content owners are now faced with the challenge of executing a similar strategy with a vastly reduced budget – but how can they achieve this and remain competitive in the market? Do they follow the same strategy as the industry leading streamers?
Also, what does their streaming platform need to deliver in terms of consumer experience and how can they engage sports and event fans on the scale they need?
Since the advent of social media, most people have begun to appreciate how much - or how little - it is possible to say when writing with a very limited number of characters.
If you work writing synopses for Media and Entertainment metadata - the likelihood is you knew that already. The movie synopsis turns short-form writing into a fine art.
The standard length for a linear EPG (Electronic Program Guide) is 180 characters - not much longer than a single Tweet. Streaming platforms might give you 250 characters to work with. This is all the real estate that you have to sell this media to your audience and convince them to watch - a single sentence, two at most - and perhaps a couple of seconds before they make their decision or flip the channel. This is why you really need to make your synopses count!
Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) doesn’t look like many of the community colleges you’re used to. Their diverse student body occupies a large urban campus in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. Students choose between academic programs like architecture, culinary arts, mathematics, and manufacturing, with many more options available to kickstart their career or post-secondary education.
GRCC has relied on their video production department for over 40 years to provide technology support for instructors and students, enhance learning with programs and lecture series, produce marketing and instructional videos for school administration, and run two cable access channels: one for higher education and the other for K-12 schools. With decades of rich archival footage and a highly-skilled video production department, this school’s media team is always immersed in their work.
So much media has to be reigned in somehow, which is exactly why Grand Rapids Community College decided to reinvent the way they store and archive their media.
Long-Term LTO, A Long Time Coming
GRCC housed their vast and valuable video archive across “walls of tape” in a closet in their video production facility for many years. In the late 2000s, they switched to digital and started storing archived content on spinning disks. After one-too-many disk failures, it was time for a new video archival strategy.
“It’s a big deal to lose 500GB of content when one of those disks failed,” said Noah DeSmit, Video Production Coordinator at Grand Rapids Community College. “We’re so used to having everything we’ve ever shot at our disposal. We knew we needed to rethink the way we kept our media secure.”
When the academic institution invested in a longer-lasting, more centralized archival system with StorageDNA, another issue still persisted in their workflow. Their aging Avid Nexis and Avid ISIS servers offered no integration with their LTO archive solution, leaving their video editors burdened with an inefficient online and archive storage workflow.
DeSmit started searching for Avid ISIS and Avid Nexis alternatives that both enhanced his tape archiving experience with StorageDNA and supported his team’s video editing workflow.
A+ Storage and Archival Solution
“We needed three things: kick-ass storage, proxy generation, and a StorageDNA integration,” said DeSmit with confidence. “That’s what led us to EVO.”
Their A+ solution was none other than an EVO 16 Bay shared storage server. EVO includes the powerful and easy-to-use ShareBrowser media asset manager that integrates seamlessly with StorageDNA, plus the built-in Slingshot automations engine that generates proxy files on a recurring schedule set by the user. And yeah, it’s pretty kick-ass.
“I love all the customizable features EVO offers,” said DeSmit. “I really like that you can schedule when Slingshot indexes the server and works on proxy generation.”
“The ShareBrowser integration with StorageDNA works great,” he continued. “Our old footage is easily searchable in ShareBrowser. We preview the proxy files, find the exact clip we need, restore it, and bring it into our projects without hassle.”
This fully-optimized educational video production workflow relies heavily on EVO’s included suite of software tools—the brains behind the brawn. After all, a smart school like GRCC needs a smart server, too.
“We needed three things: kick-ass storage, proxy generation, and a StorageDNA integration. That’s what led us to EVO”
-Noah DeSmit, Video Production Coordinator at Grand Rapids Community College
Proxy Generation for Previewing Media
Why was proxy generation so crucial to DeSmit’s video storage decision? Without a proxy file to preview, it was near impossible to find archived footage without restoring an entire project. And if the clip they wanted wasn’t there, they would have to restore yet another project from the archive and hope they had guessed correctly this time around.
GRCC’s 16 Bay EVO video editing server
Proxy generation allows for lightweight preview files to exist in the asset management system so editors can easily find and preview specific clips before restoring a project from the LTO archive. Because EVO includes this feature, GRCC is able to transcode proxies without dedicating a separate piece of hardware to the task.
EVO’s built-in transcoder can be scheduled to create proxy files of online and archived footage at recurring intervals. GRCC chooses to generate their proxies outside of office hours so they have EVO’s full bandwidth for other tasks while school is in session.
These proxy video files are perfect for previewing their media, whether it lives on their EVO video server, an older legacy server, or on a shelf in the archive closet. In other words, EVO’s automatic proxy generation gives GRCC insight into their archive that didn’t exist before.
Masters of Media Management
Enabling access to decades of past media is fantastic, but all that media can be a chore for editors to search through without a capable media asset management system to keep it organized. ShareBrowser—EVO’s included media asset manager—helps users catalog, tag, comment, and share their media with authorized users, whether that be students, faculty, the video department, or others.
With their online and archive storage systems integrated, DeSmit’s team can preview decades of archived footage in the ShareBrowser asset management system, archive media to StorageDNA directly from ShareBrower, and even restore archived media directly from the ShareBrowser interface. The added ability to restore one or two clips—rather than a full project—from the archive was another major improvement for GRCC’s archiving and editing workflow.
DeSmit provided an example use case of the EVO shared storage and StorageDNA archive integration for education. “If a building on campus is being rededicated, the video team may want to produce a retrospective on the full history of that building, including clips of its original construction. With ShareBrowser, we could just search that building’s name and get all of the clips across decades’ worth of archived projects, preview them to see which clips we want to use, and then restore only the files we need for the video.”
To put it simply, GRCC’s 40-year archive is more accessible—and therefore, more useful—with ShareBrowser and StorageDNA.
ShareBrowser is available as an integrated panel inside Adobe Premiere Pro
Standing the Test of Time
Working with 4K Sony MXF for contemporary projects and managing LTO tape libraries full of various file formats was a burden on their old media storage infrastructure. That’s no longer the case for their production team.
“We work with all different kinds of files and codecs, and EVO handles it no problem,” said DeSmit. “Working with 4K footage, adding color correction, and compositing in Adobe After Effects is never an issue. EVO handles the hard work for us.”
In addition to changing up their codecs, GRCC uses multiple video editing software and creative applications as well. Using the ShareBrowser panel for Adobe Premiere Pro, DeSmit’s video editors can search through their entire media library—including their StorageDNA archives—without leaving Premiere Pro. And since EVO works with a variety of NLEs and creative applications, DeSmit’s video editing workflow remains smooth whether his team is cutting video on Premiere Pro or Avid Media Composer, animating in After Effects, or mixing music with Ableton Live.
Smarter Archive Solutions
The video department does a lot to serve the students, faculty, and staff at Grand Rapids Community College. All of their hard work creates a need for quality storage hardware, capable media archiving, and worthy software tools that can bridge the gap between the two.
With EVO shared storage, GRCC has found a simple and elegant solution for all of their future projects. The overall experience has been very positive for DeSmit, who worked alongside SNS support to perfect his department’s workflow.
“The support has been really great. They helped us fix any issues with our production workflows, even through the pandemic,” said DeSmit. “They are not just knowledgeable about fixing everything we need, but organized about when and how it would happen.”
With their EVO and StorageDNA workflow right where they want it, DeSmit is ready to keep building onto their amazing archive of campus footage, marketing, and broadcast television content. Looking toward that bright future, DeSmit added, “EVO gives GRCC the tools we need to make the next 40 years as impressive as the last.”
This blog first appeared on Broadcast Sport. View the original by clicking here.
Dhaval Ponda of Tata Communications discusses the huge growth potential in the world of esports
With the pandemic forcing sports players and broadcasters to work remotely, sports federations faced a significant challenge around how to engage with fans. One significant solution they’ve turned to is esports.
Esports and gaming have burst into the mainstream in recent years, transforming from a niche to a central form of entertainment around the world.
A recent report by Techtalks found that in 2020, while the esports industry was already worth $1.1 billion, its value is projected to increase up to at least $1.8 billion by 2022.
This massive growth is supported by an equally impressive growth in the esports audience – from 120 million to 495 million over five years from 2015 to 2020.
With stadiums still functioning at limited seating capacity, traditional sporting federations may have to consider looking to esports and gaming at large to engage fans.
We have already seen traditional sports utilise the esports avenue to maintain cash flow during the pandemic. The F1 Virtual Grand Prix (pictured above) drew 3.2 million online viewers, with an estimated 1.2 million watching on TV. With this increased viewership, broadcasters and video players alike will begin to see esports content as part of the norm.
More so than before, consumers want choice. Esports as an extension of traditional sports is providing consumers more variety over what content they can consume.
The interest in esports has only just begun, and technology will play a central role in driving this further – creating seamless digital experiences no matter where people are or the device they are using, making it an increasingly accessible and instant form of content.
However, for organisations to increase their distribution of esports content, they need the right technology and infrastructure in place to support this.
Tata Communications has worked with media and entertainment company De Tune to help them deploy media cloud infrastructure on the edge, which made it possible to deliver content to all parties involved in production in a matter of seconds.
All editing and production were done on the cloud, at an increased speed. This agility in workflow meant that De Tune was able to keep up with the changing demands within the sector and this level of speed and agility will be needed for the coming years.
The pandemic has pushed the world to digitalise almost all industries – from the use of digital video solutions replicating a retail purchase, to remote production within the entertainment sector. In this blog Dhaval Ponda, Global Head, Media and Entertainment Services, Tata Communications, discusses the changing landscape of the sports and entertainment industry and the tech-enabled exciting times that lie ahead.
Lady Gaga, Alanis Morissette, Paul Mccartney, Taylor Swift, Celion Dion, Jennifer Lopez and Rolling Stones, a dream line-up for any music enthusiast! Well, this just came true last year, along with 100 other musicians jamming live from different corners of the world, giving an up-close-and-personal experience from their living rooms. Interestingly, the Rolling Stones even managed to play together from four separate locations at the same time. Now, that is a great example of paving the way for the digital evolution of the entertainment industry. It was spectacular to see the seamless broadcasting and cloud-based live editing which brought together worldwide talent on one virtual stage. The hero behind the curtains was undoubtedly the cloud!
Facilitating the lightning speed of up to 60 frames per second, cloud made it possible to edit the feeds live on a browser and distribute it on any device with a bandwidth of even 2Mbps. Further, promising the consumer a personalised content at their convenience in the new era of media and entertainment. Here’s a preview of more such exciting times ahead.
Online video streaming – the king of content
A few years back, if someone told us more than half of India’s population will no longer have a conventional cable or dish TV set-up, it would be hard to fathom. Well, this is the reality today! Our handphone has become the first tool to gain any and every form of content. A recent survey notes the OTT sector in India witnessed a 30% hike in the number of paid subscribers, from 22.2 million to 29.0 million between March and July 2020 alone. In fact, we are observing an incredible rise in the daily consumption of video content across age groups from 40 to 50 mins a day to nearly 190 mins a day.
Remote production: man of the match for live content
Live sports capture a big share of the entertainment industry. It’s not mere entertainment but a part of life and a passion for many. Therefore, it has been one industry that has been forced to evolve digitally at the pace of its fan’s digital adoption, interests, and changing habits.
“The increasing demand to witness the on-field bustle and for fans to cheer their favourite players like they are right next to them in the game has pushed the industry to progress to immersive, virtually augmented, and remotely produced forms of entertainment.”
The sporting federations that were not prepared for the year 2020 had to ramp up technology upgrades and infrastructure in a matter of weeks and months; which an earlier estimate had indicated was a few years down the line.
Historically, live events have been resource-intensive with hundreds of people such as engineers, editors, producers, and more required at the venue with a fleet of OB (Outside Broadcasting) vans to process the feeds captured from multiple cameras and share it with broadcasters with a lag of few minutes. The introduction of remote production technology now allows broadcasters to just send the cameras on the match location, with the production team back in office, working remotely, to analyse the feeds received from multiple locations and broadcast customised feeds in real-time, cutting down on the latency and the humongous cost.
Remote production is not a new concept, but in just last year, it became the unbeatable heroic technology to rescue sporting events, broadcasters, marketers, and the desperate fans worldwide by setting the field for the players with minimum contact and a skeleton crew on-ground.
IPL 2020 delivered from home
IPL 2020, is one of the most successful case studies of remote production getting cloudified. It surely brightened every Indian cricket fans’ day with superior video quality resolution, real-time delivery in nine different languages with cutting edge, ultra-low latency solution.
“By virtualising the entire environment and using media orchestration on the cloud, teams could create cloud-based content workflows that aided content creators and stakeholders to manage the video production chain end-to-end remotely from their homes.”
Another remote production miracle that broke traditional and geographic inhibitions, was the warm-welcome given to NC Dinos and Samsung Lions of South Korea by American baseball fans, watching the league in English commentary past their bedtime. Certainly, a cue for the sports fraternity and digital media companies to expand their footprints globally due to the growing demand for regional programming in non-native geographies.
eSports and cloud gaming – the future of interactive entertainment
The quest for original sports content has led to the proliferation of eSports and cloud gaming for action-hungry fans across the world, especially India. It is heartening to see that Indian gamers today constitute for 15% of the global gamer community. This is a testament of the digital penetration in the country, replicating the change in consumer perception towards sport and gaming. It further draws attention on the need for bridging the fan experience gaps through a platform that is unimaginably interactive, engaging, and real-time. Although the gaming industry has started strengthening the roots in the country, it still needs the right monetisation and publishing support. Seamless user experience and additional unique content outside the game are going to be crucial factors for promoting and building the community.
Exciting times ahead
“Migrating to the cloud is the top priority of an industry that has immense possibilities.”
As it enables remote teams to integrate and automate their usual tasks such as file delivery, frame-accurate editing, transcoding videos for OTT platforms, seamlessly in virtual environments – without having to transfer feeds between physical workstations.
The movement to UHD, 4K, 3600 VR, and other rich formats has commenced, leading to a dire need for fibre-based video networks for uncompressed video contribution. Indian entertainment industry is recognising the digital behaviour of audiences and moving fast to build a right ecosystem from infrastructure to app experience to offer viewers a seamless and secured experience.
To know more about how Tata Communications is playing a vital role in the transforming the Media industry and how you can benefit from same, click here
We need to cut down our script – it’s just too long. So it’s time for a red pen and some ruthless cutting.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing progress on our project to compare the RED KOMODO, RED DSMC2 MONSTRO 8K, and RED RANGER GEMINI 5K to, well, each other. And we’ll be sharing insights into the post production process with both RED and LaCie – demystifying how it all really works. Spoiler alert: post production with RED is a lot easier that you might think.
Tell us how you use RED and we’ll automatically enter you into a draw to win a LaCie Rugged Pro SSD: https://bit.ly/REDSurvey21
Our film experiment needs some ground rules so that we can fairly compare our three cameras: the RED KOMODO 6K, RED DSMC2 MONSTRO 8K, and RED RANGER GEMINI 5K. Let’s set them in place. And stick to them!
Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing progress on our project to compare the RED KOMODO, RED DSMC2 MONSTRO 8K, and RED RANGER GEMINI 5K to, well, each other. And we’ll be sharing insights into the post production process with both RED and LaCie – demystifying how it all really works. Spoiler alert: post production with RED is a lot easier that you might think.
Tell us how you use RED and we’ll automatically enter you into a draw to win a LaCie Rugged Pro SSD: https://bit.ly/REDSurvey21
Introducing The Four Eighths Project with RED and LaCie
We’re making a film! A short film. A very short film. And we’re doing it in three different ways with three different cameras to showcase just what’s possible with RED’s range and LaCie drives for post production.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing progress on our project to compare the RED KOMODO, RED DSMC2 MONSTRO 8K, and RED RANGER GEMINI 5K to, well, each other. And we’ll be sharing insights into the post production process with both RED and LaCie – demystifying how it all really works. Spoiler alert: post production with RED is a lot easier that you might think.
Tell us how you use RED and we’ll automatically enter you into a draw to win a LaCie Rugged Pro SSD: https://bit.ly/REDSurvey21
We are joined by Andreas Eriksson, Head of Telstra Broadcast Services to hear more about their recent acquisition of MediaCloud and how this will help them to expand their global broadcast operations.
Andreas also tells us about the benefits that this will bring to the wider industry and both companies customer base.
