Vubiquity: BaM Shortlist

Vubiquity: BaM Shortlist – Manage

With growing consumer demand for content across an increasing array of platforms, territories and languages, suppliers are creating and localizing massive amounts of new content and resurfacing existing libraries. This immense content volume requires high-quality metadata for accurate and compelling content description to power search, discovery and recommendation.

Vubiquity’s MetaVU, a cloud-based metadata platform, enables clients to adapt, create and aggregate their metadata using our innovative application. It provides a single point of integration, a significant database of existing metadata, and integration into other leading metadata enrichment sources.

MetaVU is primarily built around two key elements:

Metadata PaaS Management Module
Leveraging the powerful toolset we have built to solve ingest and normalization of metadata, from the diverse Content Suppliers we support, along with flexible hierarchical metadata management, and an industry-leading metadata distribution engine.
Metadata Enrichment Module
Enabling access to numerous third-party enrichment sources, inclusive of audience and critics ratings, robust parental guidance ratings and advisories, social data, tags to power recommendations and marketing, originated metadata, access to localized metadata and machine-learning derived tags to power search.

The key differentiator of MetaVU is that it can deliver to many different endpoints, supporting thousands of unique business rules for targeted transformations for clients to ingest. This in turn supports the eyeballs of nearly 1 billion aggregated customers.

MetaVU solves four industry metadata pain points…the NEED to:

Increase efficiency

MetaVU improves metadata delivery efficiency by reducing duplication of data entry from different entities, saving time and labor, and creates alternate versions for targeted exports to any destination in any format.

Improve User Experience

MetaVU eliminates data gaps through business rules and by reverting to various data sources and using automated field prioritization. MetaVU also originates metadata via the Vubiquity editorial team, or via a vast data enrichment partner network.

Ease Marketing Burden

MetaVU provides deeper insights through machine-learning derived tags, which enable markets to perform deeper searches to create more relevant promotions. MetaVU also accesses 3rd-party sources, such as parental control, box office and review data.

Enable Seamless Migration

MetaVU enables a hassle-free co-existence with existing toolsets and creates value to have title metadata in the MetaVU ecosystem. It eases metadata management, especially with bulk imports and updates via XLS, and provides access via UI and API.

The possibilities are endless, and this is just the beginning of MetaVU’s capacity to manage, aggregate and enrich metadata.

Mo-Sys bMR: a flexible route to LED content studios

Mo-Sys partnered with on-air graphics specialist Erizos Studios to develop bMR (broadcast mixed reality). This solution uniquely combines Erizos’ expertise in broadcast graphics and MOS based news/sports workflows, with Mo-Sys’ innovation in LED virtual studios and precision camera tracking. 

Equipped with virtual studio software licenses for green screen, Mo-Sys bMR makes it straightforward for broadcasters to migrate from their current green screen virtual studio and incumbent on-air graphics solutions to a futureproof alternative. With bMR, the process can take place in two stages where either the virtual studio or the on-air graphics are upgraded first.  In new studio build scenarios, both on-air graphics system and a LED virtual studio are installed at the same time.

Mo-Sys bMR’s on-air graphics system offers three ways of displaying templated data-fed graphics; standard 2D keyed graphics, keyed 3D graphics, or 3D ‘in-scene’ Unreal element graphics. The system conforms to MOS protocol and can be controlled by commonly available newsroom computer systems (NRCS) such as Octopus, ENPS, or other popular NRCS solutions. Based on web browser technology, bMR uses a fully redundant server/client architecture and is deployed as an on-premise rather than a cloud-based solution. 

bMR’s LED content server can drive any size/shape/pixel pitch LED virtual studio – so long as it is equipped with sufficient render nodes – with the base system able to drive an LED studio with up to 8million pixels. The system provides multi-camera switching capability up to UHD4K resolution, enabling multiple cameras to be used with an LED volume, where switching between cameras is orchestrated with the LED wall updating correctly. Set extensions with simultaneous augmented reality (AR) are also possible, with the lowest delay on the market between the Unreal graphics perspective displayed on the LED wall, and the camera’s actual position. 

https://www.mo-sys.com/product/camera-tracking/virtual-production/bmr-broadcast-mixed-reality/

Grass Valley: LiveTouch X

LiveTouch X provides the professional replay performance required for live events with ultra-low latency from anywhere on the planet. Clips can be marked from live feeds and sent to production or playout in under a second! Industry standard highlights organization by Page, Bank, and Slot with clip numbering makes UI simple to navigate, with highlights and playlists available at a single button press.

Whether the system is in the public cloud or on-prem, its performance remains the same. LiveTouch X supports multiple ingest and playout channels in any format: 2110, 2022-6, SDI, RTMP, NDI, and SRT. Operators can sign in from any internet browser or easily connect existing LiveTouch panels to the system. Grass Valley’s AMPP platform enables a familiar work environment with multi-viewers, flow monitors, and access to any input or output.

LiveTouch X helps operators stay on top of the action. Since it is Always in Record (AiR), it’s easy to quickly scrub back to the exact moment for mark in. Integration with Framelight X also makes it easy to automate clip delivery to other production team members for editing and re-use so replay can stay focused on the game.

Deploying LiveTouch X is simple. No large CAPEX investment is required – in fact, its base package is free – and system owners pay only for what they use, spinning up operators and custom feature sets as required for a specific production.

CEDAR Audio: The CEDAR DNS 4 dialogue noise suppressor

There are many occasions when it’s expensive or even impossible to go back and ‘do it all again’. By providing the ability to suppress noise with minimal effort, near-zero latency and no unpleasant artefacts, the DNS 4 can be more than just a noise reduction unit; it speeds workflow and can save on costs.

Its original specification was born out of our customers’ requests for a dialogue noise suppressor that could receive two channels of audio and output the processed and original ‘iso’ sound of each. It was then just a short hop to make it a genuine 4-channel unit capable of receiving four audio channels and processing all four simultaneously. We also retained the DNS 2’s dual, ultra-low noise mic preamps, (which help to make the DNS 4 an ‘all in one’ box to sit between your microphones and your mixer/recorder or broadcast equipment), and designed a new front panel to provide the clearest and simplest readouts and controls that we could devise.

At just 185 x 130 x 45mm and weighing in at a very manageable 750g, the DNS 4 will drop into a kit bag just as easily as its predecessor. In addition, some units are already finding homes with broadcasters and smaller studios that benefit from the flexibility of a hardware unit that can be used in-house as well as in the field.

Operating it couldn’t be simpler because the DNS 4 incorporates CEDAR’s unique ‘Learn’ function. This machine learning algorithm determines the noise content of the audio in each channel from moment to moment, so there’s no need to capture fingerprints or set thresholds… or anything else. In most cases, all you need to do is adjust the amount of attenuation required to obtain optimal results.

As for the processing itself, the DNS 4 takes advantage of the latest developments in CEDAR’s Academy Award® and Emmy® winning DNS technology. This allows users to remove more noise than ever before without introducing the artefacts associated with traditional dehissers and denoisers. Consequently, voices retain their quality while the noise is pushed back to a degree that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. And all of this happens in a box that you drop into your pocket and power from a battery.

Accedo: Tata Play Binge Mobile App

Amidst India’s rapidly evolving video landscape it is becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to discover the content of their choice. Currently, in India there are many OTT apps, each with vast content libraries consumers have to download, register, subscribe, use and renew separately. Key features like content recommendations based on watching history, resume watching incomplete content etc are also specific to each app.

The Tata Play Binge Mobile App aggregates movies, web series, tv shows, live sports and other genres from 14+ OTT apps in a single mobile app; with a single login, subscription and interface. The Tata Play Binge App offers mass appeal with content available, whilst maintaining nuances for regional audiences.

Users can access a wide range of content including 20,000+ movies, 8000+ web series Live sports, Documentaries, Kids shows, and more, from the 14+ partner OTT apps. Content is available in over 10+ genres and 14+ languages, with regional being one of the key pillars for the India market.

Designed to maximize consumer convenience, the Binge app eliminates the need to download and subscribe to multiple OTT apps, offering everything in a single login, subscription, and interface with content from most apps opening inside the app, meaning users don’t have to download any other partner OTT apps. Users are offered further convenience with the ability to browse by apps, genres, languages, trending and continue watching rails. Furthermore, the app was designed to get the consumers to video playback in the fewest steps possible, keeping it simple to discover and navigate, whilst still showcasing the depth and breadth of content.

It has a seamless UI which takes a content-first approach and enables customers to focus on what to watch rather than where. It eases discovery further with a single universal voice-enabled search, which searches for content across all the partner apps and gives real-time results to the users.

Accedo was tasked with developing a highly customized user experience for the Binge app providing an end-to-end solution and acting as the prime system integrator. Accedo’s extensive front-end experience meant it was able to quickly develop an offering to realize Tata Play’s objectives.

Along with a wide range of free content, premium content watching starts at as low as Rs. 59. The intuitive pack selection journey clearly compares the various plans as well as bringing out the USP of each and gives the users flexibility to choose their preferred apps.

Vislink: 5G 4Live

Vislink 5G 4Live functions as a combined 5G network solution that integrates roaming camera 5G transmitters with a hybrid portable/private 5G network infrastructure. This provides production teams with a complete 5G private network deployment that is tailored to deliver high up-link bandwidth, low latency and uncontended connectivity at the edge.

The Vislink 5G 4Live solution was engineered for use at major events where live production organizations have traditionally deployed COFDM systems. It enables live production with full support for wireless cameras — providing complete freedom to roam and capture engagement-building footage — and the deployment of an onsite bi-directional all-IP 5G gateway at the event.

Vislink 5G 4Live incorporates a number of best-of-breed technologies in a completely integrated ecosystem, including:

The Vislink HCAM Module 5 is a 5G edge device that allows users of Vislink HCAM OFDM systems to migrate to 5G technology for deployments where 5G can enable new creativity and operational flexibility — while allowing a transition of service offerings at the pace that is right for them. It also maintains their ability to provide highest quality video, lowest latency and guaranteed RF robustness.
The LinkMatrix system and device management control application enables full management from remote locations using simple drag-and-drop operations, enabling greater working efficiencies for technical staff.
Mobile Viewpoint UltraLink-Air 5G encoders allow complete roaming camera flexibility to achieve real-time content capture while moving between globally available public cellular networks and private 5G networks, for low latency and guaranteed uncontended connectivity — even in high population density events.

Both Vislink and Mobile Viewpoint 5G wireless camera systems can simultaneously operate over the same 5G network to enable complete creativity for event production teams.

With the private 5G network smoothly bridging the gap between the camera and the production center, the Vislink 5G 4Live end-to-end system enables a step-change in remote production architectures. Content from both roaming and fixed cameras can be transported directly to the production center – whether an on-premise facility or as part of a migration to true cloud production architectures.

Link to our 5G4Live video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pvhPMcH39Q

Net Insight: Nimbra Media Pro App family with IP Media Trust Boundary

The Nimbra Media Pro App family is a new solution suite for safe, reliable and flexible IP media workflows. Purpose-built for professional media workflows, the app family uniquely combines networking and media processing in one, granting significant operational and cost benefits. Including our award-winning IP Media Trust Boundary, the new solutions also provide protected data services, video compression and interface conversion.

The Nimbra Media Pro App family with IP Media Trust Boundary allows media companies and service providers to build distributed IP media workflows that are class-leading in terms of safe and reliable operations. Without wasting resources like bandwidth, CPU and power consumption, all Media Pro Apps can always guarantee that every trusted media flow has the exact networking and media processing resources its needs.

Building upon this reliability principal, the Media Pro App family dramatically reduces the hazards with interconnecting IP equipment. The IP Media Trust Boundary guarantees a 100% strictly controlled boundary between different IP media and networking equipment whether that is in the studio LAN, the long-distance IP WAN or ground-to-cloud/cloud-to-ground interconnect.

Extending the Media Pro App’s core functionality is easy. Based on virtual function technology, the “personality” of the media workflow can be easily changed at any time, whether that requires integrating ST2110 and SDI equipment, reducing resource consumption with JPEG XS or protecting data-oriented workflows.

As a product line, the Nimbra Media Pro App family is a suite of software applications for the Nimbra 600 and Nimbra 1000 virtual function capable platforms. At present, ten Media Pro App options are available with core networking and Trust Boundary functionalities extended by additional processing options, including NMOS control. No other media or networking solutions combine the ability to perform networking and media processing in the same application. The applications are highly scalable and future proof, supporting media flows up to 100 Gbps with processing capacity scaling up to 1 200 Gbps.

Net Insight is a leader in IP network separation. Hundreds of networks use our IP media network overlay technologies. Now we are introducing an open and easy way to safely interconnect IP media and IP networks without any of the associated budget risks or complex operations. Net Insight’s Media Pro App family with IP Media Trust Boundary is now rolling out to IP Media service providers and IP-based content creation facilities around the world.

Techex: BaM Shortlist – Connect

MWEdge is a uniquely positioned software gateway product that brings reliable-transport protocols like SMPTE ST 2022-7, SRT, RIST and Zixi together with a broadcast toolset focused on tier 1 broadcasters who need to move live media with absolute reliability.

Already seeing wide adoption within multi-national broadcasters, MWEdge is used for workflows into, out of and within the cloud as part of on-air broadcast chains, as a firewall to traverse from one network to another and as a protocol gateway with advanced monitoring, service redundancy, and RTP passthrough.

One major new feature from 2022 is native NDI transport. This means absolutely transcoding-free movement of NDI streams into and out of the cloud but, crucially, while also protecting them with a combination of technologies to ensure delivery. MWEdge is able to combine RIST or SRT with SMPTE ST 2022-7. ST 2022-7 delivers two copies of the stream to the receiver to deal with path failure and RIST/SRT will fix any errors on one individual path. Naturally, MWEdge provides failover switching between feeds based on priority and configurable fault conditions which NDI streams also benefit from along with encryption for safe transport.

Telemetry is of major importance to top broadcasters who need real-time monitoring of feeds and who demand root cause analysis of significant events. MWEdge continuously takes a complete set of ETR 290 measurements from all inputs, logs these and also makes them available to Grafana, Dataminer, Splunk and other databases. MWEdge also analyses inter-packet arrival time (rolling average, max and min) which is a vital statistic for understanding problems within IP environments but which is missing from many products. Uniquely, MWEdge uses a web socket to push data to Dataminer to maximise efficiency, minimise latency and to allow for high volumes of data.

At Techex, we’ve been working with our customers for years to bring a remarkable breadth and depth of features which we feel set MWEdge apart during the current commoditisation of IP gateways. Increasingly, Techex is seeing major broadcasters working at scale with full API integration for Infrastructure as Code deployments, who need software on-premise as well as in the cloud with detailed monitoring at both ends of the link. It’s our customers we work with daily that demand absolutely robust, multi-path delivery of NDI, and high-security software with enterprise-level user management who have made the product what it is today.

Tedial: smartWork NoCode Media Integration Platform

Drawing on its long-standing IT innovation heritage, Tedial’s empowering non-technical users by delivering an easy-to-use toolset that distills complex workflows into simplified processes. Built with microservices and Kubernetes, Tedial’s award-winning, unique smartWork NoCode Media Integration Platform provides future-proofing and scalability and is designed with the NoCode paradigm to enhance flexibility and minimise risk in operations. Following Infrastructure as Code (IaC) it can be deployed on-premises, on any cloud or in a hybrid architecture for incredible flexibility.

Aligned with Movielabs’ 2030 Vision for Media Creation, smartWork removes time-consuming and complex configurations via a common UI that guarantees an optimal experience and easy access to applications, external systems (including legacy MAMs, PAMs and DAMs ensuring business continuity), and features self-validation. smartWork speeds up the digital transformation with benefits that include unprecedented flexibility, seamless and effortless integrations, reduced costs, enhanced team collaboration, improved profitability, greater agility, accelerated growth and dramatically shorter delivery times.

Built upon a common interface and a common data model, applications and systems are integrated within the platform as opposed to the platform integrated into the applications. This major change simplifies workflow design, as the workflows needn’t be aware of the specific APIs and the data models of each component, making it simple to swap integrations within an existing workflow. Also, a common workspace allows the applications to go to the media and not the media delivered to the applications.

Users without coding or deep technical knowledge (citizen developers) can easily build and manage content supply chains, which can include integrations of external third-party systems without vendor or specialist intervention. At IBC 2022, visitors to the Tedial stand said they were impressed by smartWork’s concept, particularly how the technology manages integrations and how one can be swapped for another in just a few clicks. They were also interested in how the media location is abstracted.

smartWork allows business continuity, which is extremely important, as broadcasters can keep their current systems in operation and migrate when required. They can also deploy content to multiple cloud services as well as on-prems to enable a real hybrid cloud to allow business continuity and business scale-up at their own pace, minimizing risk, maximizing ROI and reducing the total cost of ownership. Other companies in this space can deploy to the cloud (in some instances only one cloud service) or on-prems, but not in the same containerized way as smartWork.

Simplestream: Channel Studio

Simplestream’s Channel Studio lets OTT and streaming operators repurpose existing backlog of video-on-demand (VOD) assets and create virtual ‘live’ channels with optional server-side ad insertion, and/or on-screen graphic overlays. A seamless playback experience sits at the core of new opportunities for monetisation, with increased audience engagement and higher live viewing figures as a result. Channel Studio allows operators to distribute content anywhere, including leading FAST platforms.

Channel Studio is the easiest gateway to the creation of new channels, avoiding traditional scheduling software's complexity. A simple drag & drop, cloud-based interface simplifies channel creation workflows through building playlists. Operators can choose between creating single playlists, for each day, or creating sub-playlists, transforming short-form clips into longer programmes. Both can be edited and used numerous times to create 24/7 schedules. These playlists can be made up of videos and slates, displaying vital information and allowing users to create the perfect 1-hour programme.

Simplestream’s VOD2Live technology underpins Channel Studio, making it easy to encode and package the schedule in real-time. Channel Studio allows for video ingestion and validation from any third-party provider. Broadcasters, content owners, and media brands will be able to retain their existing OVP and avoid the migration of large backlogs of VOD content.

Operators can choose the most profitable advertising and promotion models. Pre-roll, mid-roll, or ad pods are all available with choices between server-side (SSAI) or client-side (CSAI) ad insertion. The product is pre-integrated with ad servers like Google Ad Manager, SpringServe, FreeWheel, SuperAwesome, and more. Custom tags can pass user and content metadata to the ad server for advanced targeting. Virtual channels can be configured to include only the markers, making them compatible with a variety of FAST platforms and business models.

On-screen, dynamic graphic overlays are leveraged by Virtual channels – powered by Channel Studio – to provide sales opportunities. Supporting operators in the teleshopping, sport, and news sectors, dynamic overlays create customised experiences by placing data-driven graphics on top of clean feeds, with various branding themes, animations, stock levels, tickers, and other content such as QR codes to increase sales opportunities.

Channel Studio can seamlessly distribute content to owned and operated sets of applications; Simplestream’s App Platform; or a growing collection of FAST platforms.

Vubiquity: BaM Shortlist – Manage