Argosy – End-to-end integrity: is best of breed best?

Chris Smeeton – Co-owner, Argosy

In 2022, the IABM identified that the larger players in the vendor community were encouraging media tech customers to move to single-brand end-to-end or ‘glass-to-glass’ solutions.

On the surface the benefits seem obvious; communication is streamlined as you only need to deal with one supplier overall, interoperability shouldn’t be an issue as the equipment and platforms are the same brand, liability is solely with them, and there are potential cost savings on project management and resources.

However, the same Media Tech Spotlight report indicated that actual end users preferred best-of-breed solutions.

A systems perspective

For Argosy, with a customer base historically made up of system integrators and installers, the best-of-breed model has always prevailed, with integrators in particular attaching significant value to their independence. Having the freedom to select materials that are best suited to a particular application, rather than being locked in to products from a single vendor, gives them a level of flexibility and integrity that their Media & Entertainment industry customers hold in high regard.

We take the same approach. Over the course of 40 years, Argosy has built its reputation on supplying high quality products from a variety of market leading vendors. This requires approaching each product from a systems perspective; balancing quality with cost and availability, and keeping interoperability top of mind.

A particular cable, for example, must mate with a chosen connector and there should be commonality between tooling to save wiremen repeatedly purchasing new tooling each time they install a new cable style. It’s this level of thoughtfulness that end users appreciate.

Working closely with suppliers has also allowed us to specify small changes on particular products, ensuring this next-level interoperability, as well as consistency between batches in terms of form, fit and function; and even aesthetics, such as color matching cables for a more organized presentation in a riser.

Competitive prices can also be generated more effectively through creating economies of scale – sourcing multiple large orders at a discount from trusted suppliers – with the resulting savings being passed on to our customers.

Global and local supply chains

Over 40 years we have seen a trend of vendors shifting manufacturing from the UK or mainland Europe to further afield. When it’s done properly the move won’t compromise the quality of products, but without due diligence, standards can slip.

This is why we only partner with overseas suppliers that are fully committed to high quality; those who are ISO registered, have shown a history of maintaining Quality Assurance (QA) practices across their supply chain, and those who keep a tight handle on material choice, packaging standards and logistics. Strong vendor relationships and quality control practices are key to maintaining consistent product performance despite geographical shifts in manufacturing.

That said, our preference is still to source our products as close to home as possible, allowing us to visit the manufacturing premises and benefit from quicker and easier access to inventory, as opposed to waiting for a freight container to arrive from the other side of the world.

This strategy came into its own during the pandemic, avoiding the spiraling sea and air freight costs, which are only just starting to return to pre-pandemic levels.

Communication is key

With over 16,000 SKU codes in our product range, there are inevitably complications that arise and we have experienced difficulties with suppliers – for instance, when they have moved to a new operating system, experienced shortages of raw materials, or suffered a Covid outbreak.

Our approach is to work closely with them to resolve issues, monitor situations to ensure improvements are forthcoming, and keep our customers updated. Continuously assessing the life cycle of products and keeping that flow of information to and from manufacturer design and development teams ensures that products are updated in a timely manner, to meet the latest specifications.

The most important factor in a relationship with a vendor is open and honest communication. The sooner you know about an issue in a supply chain or a price increase, the sooner it can be mitigated or alternatives sought. Ultimately it’s about having the right products on the shelf when they’re needed most.

Many of Argosy’s supplier relationships have been established for decades, including Prysmian-Draka, Neutrik, Percon, Belden, Partex and BES, so we must be doing something right!

One size does not fit all

According to the IABM’s MediaTech spotlight, MediaTech best-of-breed buyers care more about innovation, interoperability & partnerships than any other factors. Control, customization and integration remain the top drivers of insourcing investment for media businesses, most of which still prefer best-of-breed solutions.

The message here is that open communication and collaboration between manufacturers, distributors, and system integrators helps to build processes that prioritize project-specific needs and deliver optimal value to the end customer. It turns out that one size doesn’t fit all.

also:

Accedo – Is AVOD really all the rage?

Alex Wilkinson, Head of Sales, EMEA & LatAm, Accedo

AVOD has garnered a lot of attention over the past few years, with some sources forecasting that its global market will reach over 71 billion USD by 2030; a significant increase compared to the 28 billion USD reported in 2023. Changes in user spending habits and a challenged microeconomic climate have certainly played a role in accelerating adoption but do ad-funded business models really deserve all the hype? Keen to understand the latest consumer trends and preferences, Accedo recently carried out a survey of 2,000 global consumers to assess the appetite for ad-funded versus subscription-based video streaming services, also examining what constitutes a good ad experience. The findings were somewhat surprising.

Paid video service subscriptions still dominate

While many video service providers are switching to AVOD models, or introducing ad-funded tiers to attract new audiences, it would appear that SVOD still dominates amongst consumers. On a global scale, the majority (28%) of respondents in our survey say that they are currently subscribing to two paid services, with another 21% reporting that they are using three. This may not sound that surprising but when looking at AVOD service adoption, the majority of respondents (37%) report to be using only one service, with a very low percentage (11%) stating that they have access to three. While recent news reports may make it seem as if consumers are moving in droves to ad-funded options, our survey indicates that this is not necessarily the case, with subscription models still having the highest rate of usage.

These findings could suggest that it is not enough for video service providers to base their entire customer acquisition and retention strategy on reducing subscription costs with ad-funded offerings. While flexible monetization models are key in attracting new audiences, as well as building affinity with existing users, media companies also need to identify new and innovative ways to engage audiences and reduce churn.

Ad-funded must mean cheaper

It likely does not come as a surprise, but a large proportion (42%) of users on a global scale expect a video service with ad breaks to be between 30% and 50% cheaper than subscription based alternatives. Attitudes shift slightly across age brackets, where only a third of respondents who are 54 or older expect ad-funded services to be reduced by that same amount – compared to 45% of those younger than 35. Interestingly, only 23% of global respondents expect an ad-funded service to be entirely free.

Of course, few users would accept an ad-funded service to be priced at the same level as a subscription-based offering, but it is notable that less than a fourth expect it to be completely free of charge. This attitude could well be driven by the recent shift in service provision where many of the large and globally recognized video providers have launched ad-funded tiers which still come at a certain level of cost. It seems unlikely that smaller and less known industry players could have entered an already dense market with paid ad-funded offerings if the way had not already been paved by well-known brands having made moves to shift consumer expectation for the entire industry.

Getting the ad equation right can be tough

Across the globe, the primary concern regarding ad breaks in video services is that the same ads are repeated too often. Just over a quarter of respondents cite this as their main complaint, while a fifth say that they are more annoyed by ads that interrupt the program at the wrong time. Surprisingly, only 13% of users globally find the lack of relevance in ads to be the most irritating aspect which may suggest that providers of AVOD services cannot see targeted ad breaks as the only way to provide a good user experience. If our survey is anything to go by, consumers seem to lose patience if the ads are perceived as disrupting the main content – something which can be difficult for providers of these services to control.

So how can AVOD service providers balance on the thin line of providing a good user experience and an attractive proposition for advertisers? Most of these companies do have a say in the placement of ads – which seemingly is key for not annoying users – but have less control over whether or not the same ads are served to the same audience too often. Here, data should be leveraged to understand which ad placements have the least negative impact on the user experience. This will not only be important from a user retention perspective but also for providing advertisers with an attractive proposition where they have a chance to get in front of audiences at a time when they are the most engaged. And once again, the key lies in providing a compelling user experience in other aspects of the service so that customers leave it with a generally positive feeling – whether or not it comes with the presence of ads.

Is AVOD worth the hype?

2023 was a tough year for the video streaming industry and some studies point to global churn rates nearing the 50% mark. It may be easy to think that ad-funded models provide the answer to user acquisition and retention challenges but our research indicates that consumers are still using more SVOD than AVOD services. While introducing ad-funded offerings certainly can have many benefits (tackling churn can be one) lowering prices can rarely replace a steadfast focus on providing a stellar user experience. By taking a data-led and experimental approach to video service excellence, where focus is on understanding user behavior to build an impactful user experience, video service providers can both diversify revenue streams with the addition of new monetization models, while giving users many reasons to keep coming back for more.

Jigsaw 24 Media – Some hard truths about remote workflow security

Security. It’s the topic on everybody’s mind that nobody wants to talk about.

Media and entertainment companies have always struggled to stay one step ahead of security breaches, and the recent increase in remote workflows makes an already difficult task even more challenging. But when we reached out to production and post houses to find out about your approach to remote workflows and end-point security, we quickly discovered that the first rule of remote workflow security seems to be that you do not talk about remote workflow security. Because there’s a risk that sharing information about how you keep your content secure could be what puts your security at risk…and some of you are worried about revealing just how vulnerable your workflows are. When we did finally manage to convince a handful of post professionals and security specialists to break the silence, what they shared were some hard truths.

VPN doesn’t cut it anymore

Before the pandemic, virtual private networks were a popular way for off-site staff members to connect to their office network. So, when COVID forced post-production out of facilities and into private homes, a lot of media companies adopted VPNs as a quick fix to enable remote workflows. As accredited TPN assessor and Jigsaw24 consultant Phil Winterhalder explains “It got very scrappy in the first few months before companies like the Motion Picture Association and the TPN started to release do’s and don’ts to protect media security.” But VPNs are far from ideal solutions for media workflows – and not just because they’re inherently slow. “It’s considered a technology solution that just doesn’t give the business enough awareness, enough oversight or control, because once the VPN is established, you can transfer data more or less at your own will,” warns Winterhalder. Jigsaw24 Media’s head of innovation, Chris Bailey puts it more plainly, saying, “Providing access via a VPN is literally opening the floodgates to your subnet.”

Instead, Winterhalder and other information security experts recommend providing remote teams with thin or zero client devices and using pixel streaming or display protocols to access centrally stored files. The limited functionality of thin and zero devices means that users can’t download or screenshot content while pixel streaming, which both increases media workflow speeds and improves security because the media doesn’t move from the storage. “Pixel streaming literally means that the pixels are being sent to you over the internet and then your keyboard and mouse inputs are being sent back – what we’re not doing is sending the actual data,” says Winterhalder.

Security is every-one’s responsibility

There’s always been a push-pull dynamic between creative freedom and security in media and entertainment. In the past, getting the job done generally trumped everything else – even when the most stringent protocols appeared to be in place – like the ‘air gapped’ edit suites that were plugged back into the internet as soon as studio bosses’ backs were turned. What Bailey describes as the ‘security wild west’ hit its peak during COVID when, for many, any semblance of secure workflows went out the window in the name of keeping productions running. But the pendulum has swung, and it’s no longer a choice between security and being able to do your job, “Before COVID security for remote workflows was expensive and not very well understood. Now everything’s software defined, internet connections are faster and there are various solutions to choose from so, from a technology point of view, there is absolutely no excuse, and it really is time to grow up,” Bailey insists. He acknowledges that this might mean some level of inconvenience for users but believes the user experience shouldn’t be significantly compromised if the right solutions are implemented and end-point profiles are set up according to the use case.

It’s a fine balancing act according to Digital Orchard’s head of technology, Adam Shell, who describes the situation as “a question of keeping your systems flexible and secure and hitting all the guidelines that the studios give you while also allowing your staff to actually physically be able to do the job that they need to do.” For Chris Sarson, MD of The Collectv and Director of Creative Remote, the challenge is that the people who use these systems may be fantastic creative editors or producers, but they’re not necessarily the most technically skilled. Another issue is that production teams working under pressure can get frustrated when security protocols change regularly. “All we can do is make sure we’ve got clear information, clear guides and things like that,” says Sarson. “It’s about bringing our production partners, line producers, production managers and post supervisors on board and making them understand that we’ve all got to do what we can.”

There’s no such thing as totally secure

Perhaps the hardest truth to accept about information security is reflected in the statement that ‘if someone wants to attack you, and they’ve got enough skills, they will get through your system. It doesn’t matter what security is in place.’ The fact that the interviewee who made that statement didn’t want to put their name to it demonstrates just how terrifying this prospect can be, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make it as difficult as possible for unauthorised people to access your content.

Sarson’s advice is to never stop working on security, “We’ve got to constantly keep investing, keep looking at ourselves and trying to see what we can improve,” he says. That means some security fundamentals on the user-side are non-negotiable, “You have to use two-factor authentication, even if that’s tricky for some people – end of,” he insists. There’s good reason for Sarson’s hard line on 2FA as Winterhalder confirms “In this industry it’s just considered mandatory; no studio is going to accept a remote access solution that doesn’t use two-factor authentication.”

If 2FA is pretty standard practice, zero trust methodology takes this principle to the next level. Winterhalder explains that zero trust means not assuming that you’re an authorised user – even if you get through the two-factor authentication process – and especially if there are any unusual circumstances. He says, “Zero trust is about building up a set of rules and conditions for access and not trusting you unless you meet those criteria. So, if you’re connecting on a Saturday when you normally only work during the week, or dial in from Germany instead of France, or use a different laptop, you may be denied access or have to complete additional verification processes.”

But one of the biggest security risks for remote workflows is the user. While organisations can control physical access in facilities, privacy regulations prevent companies from prescribing work setups in homes, so organisations like the TPN can only recommend best security practices for remote workflows. Many of these remote security protocols – like ensuring that your screen isn’t visible to other people or locking your device before stepping away – rely on user co-operation which can never be guaranteed. And that’s assuming that the user isn’t complicit in leaking your content, as Bailey points out, “remote security is always at risk of the user – if they’re not on site they can always point a phone at the screen and hit record.” This is where watermarking comes into play. Visible watermarks embedded in the media are often used to deter people from using copyrighted content while forensic watermarks are invisible and used to track where content leaks originate from.

Not all content needs the same level of protection

The good news is that not all content needs the same level of security. Bailey recommends implementing workflows that flux according to the content type and the associated risk level. As he puts it, there’s no point implementing the same protocols for Apple’s product launch material and Homes Under the Hammer. Digital Orchard adopts this tiered approach for their projects which range from dailies for high-end TV and studio shows to post-production for small independents. “Our dailies department is entirely air gapped so there’s no way you can access studio material without physically being in the building but the security specs for our post-production work are not nearly as restrictive,” says Shell. “It’s about being able to meet the level of demands from different clients and having the flexibility to move between those levels. We’d love to have remote access for everything but without an extremely knowledgeable and proactive IT team to manage that process we would open ourselves up to a considerable amount of risk.”

The concept of air gapping may not translate directly to remote workflows (which are inherently connected) but the principle does apply to how media companies should break down remote access to their network, according to Winterhalder. He describes how network hierarchies should be set up with the most untrusted network (the internet) at the top and each layer below that being increasingly secure – from your DMZ to corporate and production networks. “You should never be able to move directly from an untrusted network, like the internet, to a secure network where your content resides without using a broker or relay through a second connection,” says Winterhalder, explaining that breaking access down in this way creates something akin to an air gap and ensures that a security compromise should only affect the first layer before it’s caught. But network architecture of this nature is best left to the IT professionals and may not be necessary for every media company.

Someone has to pick up the bill for security

The main excuse for skimping on remote workflow security is cost – particularly when it comes to boutique post houses and the ‘race to the bottom’ for offline editing which can result in risky shortcuts. Shell describes the same dilemma faced by many media companies at Digital Orchard, “As we grow, we will need to employ or bring in outside consultation to look after security for our systems. But we will have to try and keep things simple so it can be managed by as few people as possible, because it’s not something that generates revenue.” On the other hand, Sarson is emphatic about the need for change in offline editing, “It’s very simple, security costs money. We have it with our policing and in day-to-day society – a certain amount of budget has to go towards security, and it’s the same for our media systems,” he insists. “If the content that we’re creating is really that valuable, then we need to put a proportional cost of the budget into security. That means that the price of offline cannot keep going down to almost nothing.”

While it’s unlikely that remote workflows will ever be 100% secure, end-point security has clearly come a long way in the last few years. And the technology keeps getting better. Get in touch with the Jigsaw24 Media team to chat about how we can help improve your remote workflow security.

Dejero – Resilience: a prerequisite in the world of content creation

Ivy Cuervo – Director, Brand and Communications, Dejero

Media & Entertainment professionals find themselves in some strange and sometimes unforgiving environments. The demand for new and high quality content is relentless; and consistently serving audiences with a diversity of new perspectives takes a certain level of resilience, both mental and physical.

Resilience is a prerequisite for the journalists who chase real-life stories, production crews that cover live events, and film and documentary creators whose ambition is to expose their audiences to perspectives and places they have never seen before.

The technology they rely on throughout their epic journeys needs to live up to their ambitions to produce great content, even in the face of challenging physical environments and circumstances. From jungles to mountaintops, from extreme heat to freezing cold climates, or even remote or disaster-struck locations; finding a network signal path to transmit their amazing content seems impossible.

Making the impossible possible

Renowned storm chaser, Reed Timmer and his crew, Team Dominator, were able to push the boundaries of live streaming and scientific data collection from inside tornadoes and hurricanes, with the help of Dejero’s resilient wireless technology.

This time last year in Spalding, Nebraska, Team Dominator captured a 55 mb pressure deficit with its microbarometer in what was described as the best tornado intercept in US history. Even with winds between 160 to 170 mph, inside the wedge tornado, Timmer was privy to uninterrupted internet connectivity, upheld by the resilient Dejero EnGo mobile video transmitter with GateWay Mode. The 2-in-1 unit uses Dejero’s Smart Blending Technology™ to aggregate multiple wireless broadband networks into a single service for uninterrupted connectivity.

Taking the heat

Built with aircraft-grade aluminum in a monocoque construction that’s lightweight and strong, and featuring polycarbonate ABS bumpers for additional protection, the EnGo was also put to the test in Asia when robust connectivity was needed for the live production of multiple and concurrent football games at geographically dispersed stadiums across Malaysia.

Here, the EnGo sent high quality, low latency video to the cloud by combining multiple network connections in real-time during the coverage of each match; from rural stadiums with patchy cell networks, to arenas in Kuala Lumpur where local networks become heavily congested.

Knowing that your chosen connectivity solution is resilient enough to perform just as well in the torrential rain of a monsoon as it is in the scorching temperatures and high humidity of the jungles, can’t be underestimated.

Plain sailing

In Europe, cloud video platform developers with Dazzl Inc. teamed up with Dejero to facilitate the uninterrupted coverage for French production company, Sea Events, as it live streamed the dramatic departures and arrivals of the annual off-shore Solitaire du Figaro race, which takes place over 1,830 miles across some of Europe’s roughest waters.

The production crew didn’t need to worry about the movement and positioning of the boat in order to gain the best viewpoints or signal – no matter how far away they were from the coast or even when crossing borders, because an EnGo was leveraging all available network connections. The combination of Dejero’s mobile transmitter and Dazzl’s cloud video platform enabled the production crew to easily access tools for live production, live clipping, rapid editing and video distribution from the various stages of the race between France, Ireland and Spain, all while maintaining reliable internet connectivity.

The EnGo mobile video transmitter has been deployed to M&E content creators around the world – its compact design and easy to use interface guarantees high quality live video streams no matter where it’s being used. It ensures ultra reliable transmission and reception even in adverse conditions.

Rock solid

Dejero’s resilient connectivity solutions have also kicked off a revolution in the film and commercial production industry, opening new possibilities when it comes to film location, lower production costs, and an increase in the reliability and speeds at which video and data is transferred.

With the Canadian Rockies as a backdrop, at the side of a snow-capped mountain, dynamic shots of driving, skiing and other active footage for a car commercial were streamed to creative and brand agency collaborators in different offsite locations. This was made possible with a Dejero EnGo mobile transmitter that transported camera feeds over a blend of cellular and satellite networks to the cinematic production client headquarters where the stream was sent on to various platforms, including Zoom for real-time, virtual collaboration.

By sending high-resolution, low latency, live video directly from set to the client, agency or other collaborators anywhere around the globe, creative direction and feedback can happen in real time and any changes can be made while the shoot is happening, saving time and preventing costly re-shoots.

Stern environments

i&u TV Produktion has been relying on Dejero EnGo mobile video transmitters and Dejero’s LivePlus mobile apps for a number of years to deliver breaking news to some of Germany’s largest TV stations and digital platforms, from extremely remote and hostile environments – most recently from war-torn Ukraine and the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. With Dejero, i&u teams can go live, even from the most remote parts of the world, and can immediately edit received material in their studios in Cologne, or watch the recorded content directly in the edit and request and receive missing shots in a matter of minutes.

For i&u’s weekly live magazine show, stern.TV, a Dejero CuePoint return video server provides low-latency, live video to on-air presenters, camera operators, and other production personnel in the field to help them stay synchronized with central production.

New horizons

Whether it’s delivered in the form of live news, events coverage, sports or weather reporting, or as documentaries, reality TV shows and film, feeding the appetite for engaging content requires resilience: of people and ideas, and especially of reliable user-friendly technology.

It’s time to open up new horizons. You can go anywhere, stream from anywhere, report from anywhere, film from anywhere with resilient connectivity for limitless creativity.

Amagi – Shielding your secrets using secure local vault

Sriram Krishnan – Senior Director, Security Engineering, Amagi

Shibly Meeran – Engineering Manager, Security, Amagi

Introduction

Exposure of credentials has emerged as a leading cause of data breaches across organizations. Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report reveals that external actors were involved in 83% of data breaches, with stolen credentials being exploited in 49% of these breaches. Furthermore, such breaches have severe consequences for businesses. According to IBM’s 2023 Cost of Data Breach Report, stolen or compromised credentials contributed to approximately 15% of data breaches, resulting in losses of $4.62 million.

“Keeping a Secret is Hard!” — a statement applicable to all aspects of life, especially in today’s digital world. In this cloud-native era, organizations encounter challenges in safeguarding secrets due to several factors:

Secrets are scattered across various systems and applications (e.g., Git, CI/CD systems, local machines, and cloud).
Often, these secrets are stored in unencrypted formats in these locations.
There are operational overheads in maintaining secrets, such as the need to rotate passwords in production systems, which may entail application downtime.
Many secret managers/vaults incur significant costs for organizations.
Organisations today may adopt a hybrid-cloud approach, which necessitates managing these secrets across multiple cloud environments. Scaling of these secret manager/vault solutions across the environment proves challenging.

In the current cloud-native landscape, the inadvertent exposure of secrets has become increasingly prevalent, as they are often stored in plain text across diverse environments. Because integrating traditional secrets manager solutions is a difficult process, developers often struggle to safeguard these secrets from source code repositories to the production environments. This article presents the solution Amagi has developed to overcome this challenge.

Context and challenges

Git repositories have become one of the main targets for attackers, as developers may push source code and configuration files with credentials in unencrypted format. This happens for two main reasons. First, the integration of a secret manager/vault requires substantial code modifications, thus hindering the developers from its implementation. Second, the process of securing secrets across various systems and applications demands prioritization and effort, which could potentially slow down their progress.

Additionally, the repositories housing such secrets are inadvertently made public. One can argue that if the repositories were private, these unencrypted secrets would be hard to compromise. However, there’s an uptick in the supply chain attacks that has led to the compromise of secrets in private Git repositories. To cite an example, the CodeCov supply chain attack breach allowed the threat actors to gain access to private Git repositories and further exploit applications using the obtained credentials.

The ideal solution should address the following requirements:

Ensure that a breach in Git does not lead to compromised secrets
Be developer-friendly, reducing operational overheads by
1. Enabling seamless integration without significant code changes
2. Facilitating secure sharing of secrets across different environments
3. Allowing effortless rotation of secrets as needed
Manage and secure secrets across various environments
Support the auditing of secrets used across systems and applications
Be secure, scalable, and cost-effective

Solution

As an organisation, Amagi encourages the development of and contribution to open-source projects. As part of this initiative, Amagi’s security engineering team set out to develop a secrets manager tool that addresses and goes beyond the three key points mentioned in the previous section: developer-friendliness, secure sharing and management of secrets, and auditing and overall security.

Secure Local Vault (SLV) is a developer- friendly CLI tool that adopts a secure and decentralized approach to store, manage and share the secrets right from the code repository across various environments. SLV is a free and open-source solution (https://github.com/amagioss/slv) targeted towards the developer and cybersecurity community to securely manage secrets. In this approach, secrets are stored in an encrypted form in Github repositories of the teams.

For now, here are the main benefits of this approach:

Compromises of Git repositories will not expose secrets as they are encrypted.
A developer-friendly solution that can be used without much hassle:
1. Command-line-based capabilities provide a simple and workable interface with a set of commands for users to manage secrets.
2. Secrets are stored and retrieved directly in the repository.
3. Integration is hassle-free as it is compatible with the following solutions:
  1. Key Management Service (AWS & GCP)
  2. Kubernetes

GitHub Actions

Terraform Provider

Users with access to the repository can write or update secrets but cannot view them.

Auditing secrets is easier, directly from the codebase.
The solution supports an asymmetric key-wrapping technique to protect secret keys.
A quantum safe algorithm (CRYSTALS-Kyber1024) has been implemented to provide immunity from “harvest now, decrypt later” style of attacks.

Conclusion

Safeguarding secrets is crucial for organizations, requiring constant vigilance and proactive security measures. In today’s cloud-centric environment, there’s a demand for innovative solutions that not only ensure security but also factor in cost, scalability, and developer efficiency. In this regard, SLV offers a comprehensive solution to address organizations’ security, scalability, and productivity needs. It introduces a fresh approach to protecting, storing, and sharing secrets.

Agama Technologies – Unify, simplify, and understand your data: how consolidation can streamline and empower your video services

Agama Technologies – Unify, simplify, and understand your data: how consolidation can streamline and empower your video services

In today’s dynamic video market, service providers have adapted and evolved their services in sync with the technology evolution in customer devices, mobility, and preferred ways to interact with entertainment content.

As a result of innovation and growth, some complexity and fragmentation have unavoidably occurred. For instance, IPTV over ABR services is run together with companion services on user-owned devices like connected TVs, phones and laptops – alongside value-added services, such as catch-up and start-over, live together with PVR, third-party AVOD, as well as targeted advertising.

An approach towards cost efficiency and high video performance

With the development of these services came an increased demand for observability and insights. This frequently resulted in fragmented observability and monitoring tools tailored to specific technologies and delivery platforms. Ownership and control of data can also be an issue, along with potential lock-in effects.

Agama strongly believes that this evolution represents a great opportunity for increased efficiency, lower cost and higher agility for service providers.

Using a single observability platform where every stakeholder has access to necessary data and insights on the video delivery performance, customer experience and behavior departments can drastically reduce the complexity in managing all their video services and lowering integration cost. With open interfaces to interoperate with external systems, the service provider can be sure any type of processing and integration can be done.

Navigating the challenges of fragmented data

There can often be large amounts of data from different systems in the forms of logs and events. Some of these systems are vendor solutions that expose logs and metrics, or ad-hoc solutions built in-house to solve specific problems as they have occurred.

The natural result is that metrics and definitions diverge, making a comprehensive and unified analysis difficult. Tracking video delivery and customer experiences across different technologies and platforms becomes a real challenge, requiring data to be normalized and separate integrations towards these systems to be built.

What consolidation can do

Let’s imagine a situation where you no longer need to manage and analyze data from a multitude of disparate systems, instead having a single top-level view. This unified visibility ensures that different teams can see service performance and customer experience in real-time. This helps them troubleshoot effectively and make data-driven decisions in their processes, resulting in improving user experiences for their subscribers.

Consolidation allows video providers to:

Reduce complexity and costs by eliminating the need for many different integrations and reducing training needs.
Increase efficiency with workflows and automated processes, freeing up valuable resources in the
Simplify the vendor interface by reducing the number of solutions deployed.
Have one single data source for all data, services, and network performance, enabling an understanding of the entire video delivery ecosystem, from content performance to device behavior.

This leads to greater efficiency, enabling teams to accomplish more by reducing unnecessary integration and data clean-up work.

In Operations, having the same system for both ABR delivered services and classical IPTV or Cable ensures that the customer experience comes front and center – ensuring that all work with the customer pushes in the direction of resolving any issues for them. With performance and quality metrics from active probes in the head-end and network, issues can be triangulated effectively with comparison of service quality from the customer device or app.

Product team, with the same integration, can leverage insights into customer behavior and engagement of all types of services for every platform. They can directly see usage and quality figures and collaborate between Ops and Product.

Customer Care team can benefit greatly from a unified data system, by helping support care agents to quickly understand customer experience for all kinds of services: OTT, IPTV or cable. It can benefit greatly from a unified data system, as agents can access comprehensive customer profiles, historical interactions, and real-time feedback.

By understanding audience demographics, content preferences, and engagement patterns, marketing and content teams can develop and deliver content that resonates with viewers, driving increased viewership and subscriber retention.

Summary

As presented in this article, there are many opportunities to create insights faster and more simply with a consolidated approach. By consolidating data from various sources, video service providers can streamline operations, align teams, and empower customers, ultimately delivering a superior service experience.

We hope that this has gotten you interested – if so, please contact johan.gorsjo@agama.tv for a discussion on how consolidation could benefit your organization or visit us @ IBC 2024 Stand 1.B53

Postudio – Driving new talent and inclusivity in post-production

Harish Prabhu, Founder, Postudio

Back in the 80s as a young boy, I witnessed what was the prevalent Business Model of the era – The Manufacturer Model – i.e. when necessity was the mother of invention. Busier families with less cooking time needed Instant noodles, pagers (yes, those antiquated things) when you needed to be reached urgently, Sony Walkman because you needed music when you walked/ exercised or were on long flights.

As we grew up, the insight reversed – invention drove necessity. Did I need transport on demand, grocery on demand, pretty much everything on demand? I’m not sure any consumer asked for Uber or felt they needed it. But here we are – Brands like Uber, Doordash, Deliveroo, and TaskRabbit are ‘necessities’ in today’s digital age.

One Industry that didn’t make this transition was the post-production industry. Till 2020 it worked exactly as it had in the 90s with a few hardware improvements and supply management interventions. The core work of Shoot > Upload > Edit in studios, storage on external devices, and a final, physical delivery pretty much stayed constant.

It was during Covid that we realized how antiquated the post-production industry actually was. With everyone in enforced homestays, we had to scramble to get bulky machines transported to far-flung editor homes all across Mumbai and figure out every possible communication and collaboration app like Dropbox, Google Cloud, Zoom, and then some just to try and carry on the basic work of Brief, Edit, Review, Storage and Dissemination. We compromised security, creative freedom, and peace of mind.

At this point, necessity once again became the mother of invention and the pandemic accelerated the need to upgrade the industry to the digital age and let every stakeholder enjoy the ‘freedom’ that this will entail. Because ultimately, whether necessity leads to invention or vice versa, the final outcome is ‘freedom of choice’ for the user.

At Postudio, we aimed for the stars: unprecedented creative freedom for every stakeholder on every front. Lockdown was a mess for the post-production space, it was a logistical nightmare, the collaboration was chaotic, and the whole process became frustrating. A realization dawned then that the industry is broken and has been for a long time. There were too many dependencies, and the workflow was not remote enough for the remote work era. There was not enough freedom. The limitations of the industry had been forcing people to work generally from one office or one building, which made them look for talent in the same city or relocate them there. All of this had to change, and I wanted to bring about that change.

In 2022, we worked with a production company, Creative Stew, that was making a docuseries in Singapore but wanted to work with people from several other regions. The wary producers wanted to avoid another lockdown situation and so decided to spread out their team to avoid any restrictions of a similar nature. They worked from five countries (and eight regions): Singapore, London, Thailand, Malaysia, and India (Mumbai, Kochi, Hyderabad, and Chennai). The production team would shoot in Singapore every day and upload dailies, so the editors from other regions could start previewing the footage and start creating. A few years ago, any producer would’ve preferred to avoid that undertaking. They’d rather choose to onboard a team from the same geographical region. The challenges of a diverse team, sitting in geographically distant locations would’ve been overwhelming. The answer is in the technology.

I have been part of this industry for nearly three decades and I’ve played a role directly or indirectly in every part of the content pipeline, from editing to setting up large-scale post-production pipelines, from developing the first-ever high-definition infrastructure to being the architect behind the largest video streaming platform in India, from founding the first cloud-native content supply chain platform to now building the first cloud-based post-production platform. I’ve experienced all the bottlenecks and obstacles this space has to offer and I wanted Postudio to be the solution to them all. One platform in the cloud to store assets, edit, color grade, design, work on audio and graphics, collaborate, and review. From cloud edit stations to real-time collab, from instant feedback loops to smooth communication channels, a unified solution with one clear mission in mind: freedom. Freedom from the technical challenges that bog one down, freedom from being confined to a rigid workspace, and freedom to work with a diverse group of people from anywhere. That is what gets you different perspectives, and refreshing ideas.

An all-round approach such as this would encourage a European director making a film on the indigenous peoples of New Zealand to work with editors from there. An Indian studio wanting to make a documentary on transgender women can work with an American director and a globally spread-out production team to get perspectives and stories from transwomen in different countries and what their life is like there. The motivation may differ from one team to another. Maybe some teams want to avoid pandemic-like situations, some may want to diversify their team to get a more accurate, authentic story, and maybe some want to outsource the work to manage costs better. But a solution that allows you to freely do so without being inundated with unnecessary hurdles encourages inclusivity. It may bring opportunities to editors outside of big cities like Mumbai, LA, and London. that they never would’ve gotten before. A freedom that creates growth, encourages new talent, builds a stronger community, and makes the whole industry more accessible and inclusive.

Pixotope – Educating the innovators: nurturing the next generation of talent in virtual production

Marcus Brodersen, Pixotope CEO

The world of media production is evolving at an unprecedented pace, bringing with it a variety of new opportunities and challenges. In particular, the adoption of virtual production technologies has skyrocketed, driven by groundbreaking use cases ranging from Hollywood blockbusters like The Mandalorian to immersive sports broadcasts, such as Nickelodeon’s “Nickified” NFL games. This surge has resulted in an increased demand for high-quality live VFX-heavy content that modern audiences have come to expect. At Pixotope, we are confident that virtual production has become a cornerstone of general media production. To enhance this vision, however, it is essential that there is the continued development of a workforce that is well-equipped and eager to embrace these advancements and nurturing the next generation of talent in virtual production is crucial. The rapid evolution of virtual production brings with it a demand for skilled professionals who can navigate and innovate within these advanced workflows. Right now, due to the exponential adoption and development of this technology, there is a talent shortage within the industry that poses a critical barrier to fully capitalizing on these advancements.

The skills gap in virtual production

Despite the excitement surrounding virtual production, there are substantial hurdles to overcome. The industry faces a severe shortage of skilled professionals adept in virtual production tools and workflows. This talent deficit is attributed to a combination of factors, including historically complex camera tracking, graphics integration, and the prohibitive cost of infrastructure and resources. Consequently, finding well-trained talent has become one of the most pressing issues in the sector.

The power of diversity in driving innovation

The need for diverse perspectives cannot be overstated. Diversity fosters creativity and innovation, leading to unique solutions and groundbreaking production techniques. Diverse teams bring various approaches to problem-solving, ultimately enriching the production process and delivering exceptional results. For the virtual production industry to thrive, it is essential to attract talent from all backgrounds and genders, harnessing the potential of this multitude of viewpoints.

Commitment to education and access

Recognizing the urgent need to bridge the skills gap, innovative programs are emerging to make virtual production accessible to all creatives. At Pixotope we launched the Pixotope Education Program: a community-focused initiative that aims to prepare the next generation of virtual production talent by providing educational institutions and students with access to Pixotope’s cutting-edge software and a network of industry experts. By doing so, we aim to foster an inclusive environment where students can gain hands-on experience and learn the skills required for a successful career in virtual production. If we can invest in education and training today, we ensure that there is a pipeline of talent equipped to meet the future needs of the industry.

Hands-on experience and industry connections

Direct access to industry-grade tools is essential to help students prepare for real-world production environments, equipping them with the tools and expertise needed to succeed. The Pixotope Education Program also emphasizes building a global community by connecting students with industry professionals, offering invaluable insights and mentorship. Building and encouraging networks like this sets talent up with support that extends beyond graduation, ensuring direct connections for future careers, as well as enabling a way for learning and growth to continue as students transition into that workforce.

At Pixotope, our main aim is to democratize virtual production and make it accessible for all creators, and therefore many of our tools are built with this philosophy in mind. In particular, the introduction of Pixotope Pocket, a mobile version of Pixotope’s studio software, was created to provide students with access to high-quality, affordable equipment. Students can use their mobile phone camera to shoot footage while Pixotope Pocket takes care of the camera tracking, allowing students to create, manipulate, and experience virtual environments on the go, without the need for access to expensive or complex setups. This portability ensures that learning can continue outside the classroom, offering flexibility and promoting continual engagement with the software.

Overcoming challenges

Of course, the path to training new talent in virtual production is not without its challenges. There is often uncertainty about the specific needs of the talent pipeline. Addressing this requires engaging in extensive dialogues with industry stakeholders, including educators, professionals, and students, to verify assumptions and gather crucial insights. For example, one of the unique aspects of the Pixotope Education Program is its adaptable structure. Instead of dictating a fixed curriculum, the program engages in ongoing conversations with educational institutions to understand their specific needs and how best to support them. Understanding these diverse perspectives is essential for creating tailored solutions that effectively support new talent. This flexibility also allows students from diverse academic backgrounds, ranging from Digital Media and Animation to Journalism and Gaming, to benefit from the program. Ultimately, ongoing collaboration and adaptation are necessary to ensure that the knowledge and offering remain relevant and impactful, providing the skills and opportunities required for aspiring professionals to thrive in the evolving virtual production industry.

Practical Steps for Industry-Wide Change

Ultimately, empowering the next generation of virtual production professionals is an investment in the continued growth and success of the industry, ensuring it remains dynamic, competitive, and forward-thinking. The Pixotope Education Program is just an example of how broader industry involvement is essential to nurture this next generation. By addressing the skills gap, fostering diversity, and creating supportive educational environments, we can ensure that the industry is well-equipped to meet the demands of the future. Lasting change requires collaborative efforts across the industry and together, we can pave the way for a more inclusive, innovative, and vibrant virtual production landscape.

Moments Lab – Diversity and Inclusion to fuel Innovation in the media, entertainment, and broadcast industry

Morgane Dalbergue, Technical Recruiter, Moments Lab

In recent years, we have seen businesses across many sectors re-evaluate their workplace to create a more diverse and inclusive environment for everyone. This initiative is crucial for all industries, and the media, entertainment, and broadcast industry is no exception. Historically a male-dominated space, it remains unbalanced to this day. However, change is happening, and there is cause for hope as the industry looks to become more diverse in terms of gender, disability, ethnicity, and more. Encouraging this shift is vital to creating and maintaining an environment where everyone feels valued, included, and represented. By fostering diversity and inclusion, companies in the media, entertainment, and broadcast sector can not only enrich teams with a variety of perspectives and experiences, but also create a more equitable and welcoming workplace for all.

There are several reasons why a more diverse and inclusive workplace is critical for fueling growth, and multiple ways in which businesses in the media, entertainment, and broadcast space can implement this in their company cultures. Here are just a few examples:

Why Diversity and Inclusion matter

The evidence is clear: diverse teams consistently outperform homogenous ones, and in an industry defined by innovation, this fact is more pertinent than ever. A recent McKinsey research report found that companies with diverse leadership teams continue to be associated with higher financial returns. In 2023, those companies in the top quartile of ethnic representation had a 39% greater likelihood for financial outperformance.

To drive creativity and innovation to their fullest extent and minimize biases, the media, entertainment, and broadcast industry requires a diverse array of perspectives and backgrounds. Remaining within ‘comfortable’, familiar circles risks creating an insular bubble that fails to adequately reflect the complexities of our world and its rich diversity.

This imperative for diversity becomes even more pronounced as the use of multimodal AI becomes ubiquitous. It is essential to have a team representing varied perspectives to effectively train and evolve the AI, ensuring that critical criteria such as skin color, educational background, disabilities, and more, are not overlooked. By embracing diversity, companies involved in media, entertainment, and broadcasting can enhance their teams’ performance while also ensuring that products are truly inclusive and reflective of the multi-faceted world we live in.

Strategies for Improving Diversity and Inclusion

There are several ways companies can foster a more diverse and inclusive workplace. One solution is pushing the needle on equal pay. By keeping an employee salary grid based on market data and re-evaluating it each year, companies can work toward eradicating potential pay gaps and ensuring consistently fair remuneration.

Actively inviting minorities and underrepresented individuals to pursue opportunities in the tech sector is also important. Company executives must take decisive action to facilitate this, implementing measures such as inclusive job offers and recruitment strategies — i.e. blind applications — accessible application processes, and managerial training. By proactively removing barriers, the media, entertainment, and broadcast industry can cultivate a more equitable and bias-free workforce.

Furthermore, embracing a genuine remote work culture is key, as it not only alleviates stress for working mothers — who, historically, have not had the adequate support in place for a work-family balance — but also provides individuals with disabilities a more accommodating work setup, free from the challenges of commuting, or unwelcoming or inaccessible office environments. Moreover, initiatives like menstrual leave are essential in acknowledging and accepting the needs of individuals who menstruate, breaking down societal taboos surrounding this, particularly in regions like France where such taboos are pronounced.

Additionally, taking concrete action to support working mothers so that they can continue to thrive in their careers is essential in promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Supporting initiatives such as teleworking, paid maternity and paternity leave, and adopting working times and meeting hours that don’t exclude parent employees from participating in important company meetings and decisions go a long way to make workers feel valued, and demonstrate that the needs of the business can be met just as well — if not better — when employees’ needs are met first. Likewise, it’s also important to conduct regular management training to increase support skills and discrimination awareness on the issue of parenthood and related leave.

The future is bright With DEI initiatives

The media, entertainment, and broadcast industry is still a long way from reaching balance, especially from a gender equality standpoint. For example, at Moments Lab, we have noticed that 98% of job applicants for technical roles such as solutions architect, senior front-end engineer, and machine learning engineer are male. For marketing, HR, and sales roles, the ratio is a little more even at about a 66% male, 34% female. This is small but noteworthy evidence that more needs to be done. Thankfully, the industry continues to push for this balance, with more companies taking note and having greater awareness of what they can do to address the current lack of diversity.

To continue this trajectory of success and expansion, prioritizing diversity and inclusion is paramount. Ultimately, companies must embrace talent from diverse backgrounds, beyond their immediate sectors. Investing in transferable skills, establishing comprehensive training programs, and implementing specialized bootcamps for newcomers are proactive measures that will attract fresh talent to the field. By nurturing a wider pool of specialists, the industry can cultivate a rich workforce, encompassing individuals from various gender identities, disabilities, non-binary orientations, and diverse cultural backgrounds. This inclusive approach will not only enrich the sector but also works on a personal level and paves the way for a more equitable and dynamic future.

Mediaproxy’s Erik Otto on diversity, team-building and “securing your future growth”

Recruiting the finest potential talents from the greatest range of backgrounds is really a ‘no-brainer’ when it comes to building a winning team, suggests the CEO of compliance software innovator Mediaproxy

It’s now more than 20 years since Mediaproxy was founded, and since that time we have become a global leader in software-based IP compliance solutions. But although diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) have assumed a greater industry profile in recent years, they’ve always been important priorities for us. Let me explain why.

It’s my belief that, as a company, you should always foster DEI. For a start, there is a surfeit of evidence to show that diversity brings a wealth of benefits to any team. Just read a few business books or interviews with major company founders or CEOs. Again and again, they will provide examples of how a diverse workforce has increased the range of expertise and influx of new ideas into a business.

By contrast, it’s clear that if you have a workforce where everyone is fundamentally of the same perspective and opinion, it’s very easy to get locked onto a particular pathway and end up becoming resistant to change. As we all know, that can easily be the death-knell of a business, especially one involved in a perpetually-evolving sector like media technology, where nothing ever stays the same for too long.

I’ve always been a firm believer in diversity and inclusion personally, so it’s not been a challenge to bring that emphasis to the way that Mediaproxy is run. At the same time, though, it’s been very satisfying to witness positive changes occurring more generally in the industry and wider world. Just think about the way in which awareness of the Paralympics has developed over the last decade, and the improved profile for people with disabilities in the media. Not only is it evidently long overdue that they have access to the same range of opportunities, it’s also by this kind of inclusion that people who may harbor prejudices can come to realize that they are completely unsubstantiated.

Moreover, in a period where divisions are being fueled again by some areas of politics and social media, the ability to access a wide range of perspectives is really important for the health of society, too.

‘Actively seeking diversity’

As a company we are always on the lookout for new talent, and in fact barely a week goes by without me interviewing a potential recruit. Finding good young engineers is part of the lifeblood of our company, so you absolutely need to reach out to the widest range of backgrounds if you are going to put together the best possible team. We are always actively seeking diversity and I am very proud of what we have achieved at Mediaproxy.

Of course, every company is a work in progress. In particular, I would like for there to be more women on our engineering team. For a long time it was very difficult to find female candidates who were interested in these roles. I am sure this is down in no small part to a failure of the educational system to present engineering as an option to females at school and college. It’s definitely been an issue in Australia, our home country, where access to media technology training as a whole is still much more limited than it needs to be.

That said, I do believe that things are slowly improving, especially on the software development side where there has definitely been a rise in female candidates in the last few years. I hope that, in the future, more prime movers in our field will reach out to schools and colleges to ensure that women perceive media technology not just as a viable career route, but a really exciting and rewarding one, too.

One potential obstacle I see on the horizon concerns the use of AI in recruitment. I am sure many of us have read reports about some of the earlier AI models, which were not trained in a way that is representative of society. My impression is that this is now improving and training models are increasingly based around a fairly level and diverse set of parameters, which is obviously welcome, but it’s something we need to keep watching closely as AI is still developing so rapidly – and sometimes in unpredictable ways.

Ultimately, we are an R&D-driven company. Everything we want to achieve is predicated on maintaining a commitment to innovation, keeping our customers satisfied, and working to add extra features and capabilities that will bring them value. To do that we need the most gifted people, which means reaching out to the largest potential pool of talent. Pursuing diversity and inclusion is therefore a big part of securing your future growth and the only logical pathway for a forward-looking company to take.

Argosy – End-to-end integrity: is best of breed best?