By the definition of business agility, we can ascertain that if anything, a successful business must constantly evolve and innovate, to keep a competitive edge. To maintain this pace of progress, many television companies face the dilemma of choosing the most flexible and long-lasting tools for managing their daily operations. Such choices can have a huge impact on their ability to not only organize and air their content, but to also generate good revenue to remain competitive.

This is where Broadcast Management Software (BMS) solutions come in, as they help to acquire and organize content libraries, schedule broadcasting and book advertisements into the broadcasted content. This very large and complex workflow often includes hundreds of employees, managing their respective tasks, with the aim to put together a complete playlist to broadcast to consumers. This puts a tremendous emphasis on precision and due diligence, as mistakes made here are potentially very costly, or alternatively result in suboptimal revenue generation.

As such, it is also the perfect environment for benefiting from automated workflow and constraint-based management systems, to prevent mistakes and optimize booking efficiency. This is the part of business agility that is crucial to success, as any mistake made sets you back, while your competitors storm forward. It also proves that to successfully evolve as a business, your choice of a management toolset is a crucial step. This is where integrated BMS solutions really shine, as they can be helpful to businesses, when utilized correctly. At the very least, they enhance and streamline the workflow of the TV station, and at their best, they automate large parts of it.

To verify such claims, one can look to the IABM “Media Tech Intelligence - Media Tech Trends” article (https://theiabm.org/manage-support-content-chain-trends/), which shows that NET investment outlook measured the Manage category as increasing by 13% from 2020 to 2021. Within this area, the Workflow orchestration category is the fastest growing area of investment for 2022 (at the time of writing this article, 22.08.2022) and Software development/ Consulting/ System Integration being second only to Cloud Computing.

Brief Summary:

MISTV® Mira is one such software solution for station management, concerned with workflow orchestration (among other things, but we shall stick to the topic at hand). We offer our clients a complete solution for Broadcast, Content and Advertising Sales management, aimed at client-specific needs regarding optimizing workflow. Through over three decades of experience, we have developed solutions that are fully customizable for numerous different markets and their specifics. This allowed us to release MISTV® Mira, a scalable and highly adjustable piece of software, that can accommodate small and large TV stations alike. Utilizing a module-oriented approach, we offer the users a clean and intuitive UX, requiring only simple training sessions to become familiar and efficient with the software. Thanks to the streamlined workflow and autobooking tool, you will be able to reduce costs on operations. The software is delivered as a SaaS license and as such is updated frequently and can be either centrally hosted or installed locally.

Workflow optimization:

To optimize the workflow of an entire television enterprise is no small task. In different countries and their broadcasting markets, there is a great deal of divergence in order of operations and their dependence on other tasks that need to be carried out beforehand. This is why we offer a highly configurable solution, to make it possible to adjust to said differences and take into account any special requirements that may arise.

The traditional steps of the whole process are as follows: Content ingest > database record > metadata control > Long-term planning > On-Air promotion > Daily plan > Advertisement booking > Postlog reconciliation.

This is a very simplified and optimistically linear version of a workflow that is usually managed by multiple facets of the company, usually running these operations independently towards the unified final outcome of obtaining content, broadcasting it and keeping records of all the properties associated with it. However, this has a major flaw in that the respective departments often need to wait for the completion of other departments’ previous tasks. This also often redundantly multiplies workload and data entered.

To optimize this branched-out workflow, we offer an all-in-one solution that helps you organize the content to be broadcasted, add all the metadata you require, and provide an overview of the daily plan (down to single frame precision) to be released. This also includes any services and integrations to upstream and downstream processes that come with airing the planned content. One of the major advantages of this solution is that it allows for the creation of an overarching structure, which means that all individual departments can contribute simultaneously, without the need to wait on one another, while maintaining the integrity of a preset plan.

Once implemented at a TV station, the users undergo training (besides introductory lectures before implementation) in operating MISTV® Mira in their respective fields of responsibility. Because the software can be adjusted via user profiles, there is no need to worry about an overly-complicated interface, as the user can see only the part of workflow they are responsible for, unless they require more (such as administrators). This simplifies the process and helps avoid any potential mishaps. The system guides users through the whole process, highlighting what is mandatory, by aggregating many of the atomic steps into less (and more automated) procedures, reducing the required effort for completing respective tasks, maintaining a high standard of accuracy by keeping the essentials in focus, while taking care of mundane tasks in the background. This also includes vital checks, such as warnings to soon expiring licenses with remaining runs that are in danger of expiring, preventing loss of returns.

We put high emphasis on automatization of step-by-step processes for ease of use, increasing efficiency of procedures, reducing data input necessity, guided data entry for users (via templates and wizard-like processes), easy to use import and export functions supporting various commonly used formats (resulting in reduced workload and knowledge requirements per user), modular report creation from grids and  constrain based operations that reduce not only risk of human error in input, but also the need for intervention from out consultants. We also make sure to include the latest technologies in forms of .NET Framework, Oracle Plug-in databases, components and APIs. These factors combined, result in a system that is flexible for any market needs, fast (assuming all hardware specifications are up to par), easy to learn and intuitive, less demanding in terms of manpower, secure, low maintenance and comprehensive in terms of tying the entire workflow of multiple departments.

Summary:

In summary, we are providing the market with a solution that boosts enterprises’ content and management capabilities, while cutting costs on manpower in terms of time and money. These are achieved on multiple levels of TV station structure, by providing: a linearly unrestricted workflow for independent departments, automating simple tasks, constraint-based processes, avoidance of human error, reminders of license expirations, user tailored workspaces, streamlined workflow and 24/7 tech support with dedicated ticketing system.

Introduction

AV-over-IP, or the transport of audio, video and data over an IP network, has enabled a seismic shift in how broadcast equipment is built, deployed and used. We’re in a transition from capex to opex models in broadcast. Moving from specialised units for media processing, to high performance hardware platforms which can be repurposed on-the-fly to support single or multi-channel AV processing and routing, and on to virtualized media applications which can be provisioned and paid for only when you need them. But the AV-over-IP story needn’t stop there. It can also offer a way to expand your business into the world of pro AV. A separate entity to broadcast, pro AV covers a much larger available market (figures 1 & 2), including live events such as music performances, theatre, conferences etc., government, control rooms, education, high-end residential, retail signage and displays, and more. These trends are driving demand for adaptive computing solutions that provide the necessary flexibility to deploy and redeploy pro AV technology for a wide range of use-cases.

Figure 1 - Broadcast market (source: AMD Xilinx estimate)

Figure 2 - Pro AV market (source: AMD Xilinx estimate)

Other differences include the use of connectivity standards such as HDMI™, DisplayPort™ and HDBaseT™ rather than SDI. It’s a more cost-sensitive market and is also fragmented today with many manufacturers offering limited interoperability because they historically owned both ends of the AV link. The need for technical robustness and tight synchronization is there, but currently much less rigorous than broadcast. Generally, pro AV installers and users are adopting similar types of equipment to what you’re probably already building for broadcast.

The opportunity to expand

The pro AV market is undergoing a transformation and experiencing a shift to IP networking. Just like broadcast suffered through the times before SMPTE ST 2110 was chosen as the industry standard, the pro AV market has entered a frantic period of competitive positioning with various flavours of AV-over-IP standards and protocols such as IPMX, NDI®, SDVoE™ and Dante™. Each have pros and cons, and all claim to be the best. However, the widespread use of reprogrammable hardware such as FPGAs (field programmable gate array) and adaptive SoCs (system on a chip) and new software-only implementations means that equipment can adapt to different standards as needed, and bridge between them depending on use case.

As a broadcast supplier, it’s possible to take advantage of some of the cross-over technologies to expand the footprint into the larger pro AV space. For instance, IPMX (IP Media Experience) is an emerging networking standard from the AIMS Alliance, which is built on SMPTE ST 2110. It uses the same techniques as ST 2110 to packetize audio, video and data, JPEG XS as the main compression codec (for now), and NMOS (Network Media Open Specifications) for a standardized control plane. For pro AV, it adds extra functionality for handling HDMI features and offers PTP (precision timing protocol) and non-PTP methods for synchronization. Most organisations in the broadcast space probably already have, or are developing an ST 2110 system, so it’s not a huge stretch to adapt that platform to also support IPMX and be integrated into many pro AV systems requiring similar audio/video processing functionality. IPMX is of particular interest in pro AV right now because it is the only truly open standard – as well as being scalable and interoperable, it is entirely vendor-independent. This means that you can build your own implementation of IPMX without waiting for a particular manufacturer’s device to support it or being beholden to any changes made by a single company without having any control over it. It also means that IPMX can scale to support any resolution of AV and isn’t fixed to a single Ethernet bandwidth such as 1GbE or 10GbE.   

Building bridges

IPMX is not the only way to use IP protocols to bridge the worlds of broadcast production and pro AV presentation and collaboration. NDI (Network Device Interface) is hugely popular in studio and remote production facilities because of its ease-of-use. In fact, NDI is already often used to ingest from broadcast PTZ cameras on location or within studios and easily stream them as a source over conferencing software such as Microsoft Teams® or Zoom. It’s used for live streaming from corporate events and for vloggers to stream e-sports commentary. NDI offers broadcast quality AV on any IP network (IPMX will tend to need its own network due to the higher bitrate needs currently), as it is highly compressed compared to IPMX, so it’s likely that both will coexist in various environments. Audinate’s Dante is another protocol widely used in the professional audio domain for both broadcast and pro AV, and is an example of how IP-based protocols can easily span both markets if they’re easy-to-use, offer low latency and high-quality AV.  

Whilst there are many competing standards and protocols vying for the same space in pro AV, the hardware involved remains constant and is found in most ST 2110 broadcast systems anyway. FPGAs and hardware reprogrammable SoCs offer the ability to switch functionality on-the-fly, support various baseband AV interfaces such as HDMI, DisplayPort and SDI, and Ethernet MACs for the all-important AV-over-IP interface. Most of the IP protocols discussed can target these devices (Figure 3 shows NDI and IPMX), so they can be programmed as needed, and potentially even form bridges between them. In most cases the real difference between the AV-over-IP protocols is the codec involved, so transcoders can be made to handle any incoming stream as needed.  

Figure 3 - NDI demo (top), IPMX demo from Nextera Video and Adeas (bottom),

Making the shift

Of course, the transition into pro AV isn’t simply a case of rebadging your product, but much of the technical development work has already been done – providing the opportunity to adopt one or many of the AV-over-IP protocols being considered in that market. A growing number of organisations in broadcast have successfully pivoted some of their product lines to move into the larger pro AV space, and the lines between the markets continue to blur, driven largely by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent shift to remote production, live streaming and collaboration. Solutions such as FPGAs and reprogrammable SoCs broadcast manufacturers use today have the capability to adapt should you want to expand your business into pro AV in a relatively low-risk way.  

Gone are the days of traditional content delivery technology. While in the past, content owners have had to rely on a chain of complex hardware to enable playout and control solutions, now, they are turning toward a cloud-based architecture to deliver content with greater simplicity, cost-efficiency, scalability and reliability.

Indeed, to thrive in today’s competitive streaming environment, cloud technology is an absolute necessity. As the industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, it demands not only more efficient workflows, but also more affordable ways to deliver high-quality content to audiences worldwide.

So how has the cloud impacted the media landscape and what benefits does it offer to broadcasters and streaming providers alike? Let’s take a look at a few of the ways cloud technology is revolutionizing playout for broadcast and OTT channels:

Flexibility alongside broadcast-grade quality

With the cloud, broadcasters and streamers can spin up/ down channels on the fly in just hours — allowing for rapid scaling in response to audience demand. Want to launch a pop-up channel around a live event? Done. Need to close a channel that’s not seeing adequate reach? Also done.

And this level of flexibility doesn’t mean sacrificing on quality. Not only does cloud enable content owners to deliver channels over satellite, fiber, or IP, it also ensures top-of-the-line playout for both 24x7 linear and VOD channels. Whether via Free-Ad Supported TV (FAST) platforms, native apps, or broadcast channels, organizations are able to efficiently deliver content, graphics, captions and metadata in up to UHD resolution, all while minimizing implementation and operational costs to enhance revenue.

Automated playout management

Unlike traditional playout systems, cloud technology enables automation for more effective playout management. Processes such as playlist generation, quality checks for configurable parameters, scheduling and monitoring no longer have to be manual, time-consuming efforts. With cloud-based automated processes, content owners have the ability to manage hundreds of feeds and scale up or down at will with ease.

What’s more, cloud technology even enables automated dynamic ad insertions — selecting the optimal ads based on the viewer and the content they’re watching — as well as advanced graphics placements. With an automated process that incorporates graphics from media databases and playlists, along with asset metadata, into channel playouts, content owners can achieve dynamic effects, faster and more efficiently than ever.

End-to-end workflow functionality

Today, comprehensive end-to-end workflow functionality is a baseline for every media company to keep pace with their competition. Fortunately, cloud technology makes this possible, providing everything including seamless media ingest from multiple sources, content management, scheduling, playout, captions support, advanced graphics insertion, ad placement and monitoring — increasing efficiency while reducing complexity.

And, as content owners today need to serve a global audience, they must also be able to centrally manage multi-country feeds. This is, again, where cloud-based playout becomes a necessity — able to deliver content directly to operators using remotely managed cloud playout. In other words, cloud delivers media anytime and anywhere it’s needed, for ultimate efficiency.

Superior performance and reliability

One of the biggest benefits of cloud-based playout is its built-in reliability. Cloud solutions automatically back up media assets, so there’s no need to spend additional time or resources to ensure channels continue uninterrupted in the face of disruption. Effectively, the cloud is disaster-proof, enabling organizations to implement the right level of redundancy for them to make sure their channels never go down.

Regardless, disaster scenario or no, cloud guarantees a superior level of performance, offering low latencies and high-quality HD/UHD video. What’s more, many cloud solutions provide a unified dashboard for users to view all their data in one place, remotely, for improved monitoring, analysis and real-time decision making.

Competition for viewer attention has never been higher. The streaming wars are heating up and, with a possible recession on the way, media companies need to capitalize on every possible opportunity to capture and grow their reach — or get squeezed out of business. With the advantage of cloud-based playout and control solutions, broadcasters and streaming providers can not only offer rich, optimized content experiences and reliable, disaster-proof service at scale, they can also lower their cost of operation — and pass that savings on to their customers to help cement loyalty while boosting revenue.

Reach out to Amagi to see how Amagi CLOUDPORT, an award-winning cloud-based channel playout platform, can work for you:
cloudandme@amagi.com

Srini is a technology entrepreneur with 23+ years of experience in establishing and successfully scaling businesses. Srini co-founded Amagi in 2008 and established it as a global leader in SaaS for broadcast and streaming TV on the cloud. As the Chief Revenue Officer of Amagi, Srini is responsible for revenue growth, inclusive of sales & marketing.

Any business is striving to be more agile, reduce operational costs, optimize performance, and speed up processes, while understanding that business process automation eliminates the bottlenecks that lead to lost time and revenue.

One way to achieve this is to have as many automatic workflows as possible that not only allow faster results, better response time, and better accuracy but also save human capital and eliminate mistakes. Furthermore, the AI engine development in the last years has contributed significantly to workflow automation and intelligence, allowing cost reduction, productivity, availability, reliability, and better performance.

You may ask how a compliance and monitoring platform can make your business more agile.

The answer depends on the use cases and workflows the monitoring solution offers. Actus Digital is a good example.

Let us take a few examples and see the ways Actus Digital compliance and monitoring platform is assisting with these goals.

Creating the VOD library automatically

Creating VoD libraries can be a time-consuming process. It requires monitoring each and any program, removing all the ads by multiple marks in and marks out manually, adding logos, effects, metadata, selecting the subtitle, the audio languages, converting the content to the desired format, selecting the destination, etc. Many of these actions have to be done repeatedly, which is a time-consuming process, including the probability of possible errors. This is more extreme when there is a large volume of content to deal with that will require enormous manpower. An automated process, that is included in Actus Clip Factory PRO solution, eliminates the possibility of errors based on human restrictions, speeds up the process enormously, improves accuracy, and of course, lowers the operating costs. Furthermore, it improves the ability to be more competitive since your content will be ready on your VOD platform much faster.

AI provides flexible and powerful media and content monitoring

Searching, analyzing, and cataloging quickly and effectively a large volume of content and finding specific spoken topics or particular people, or being able to search for content in different languages all need the integration of different AI engines into the daily workflows. It is needed to identify trends that can be used for various reasons such as political, news, commercial, and scientific purposes.

The integration with AI engines (offered by Actus AI module) such as speech-to-text, face recognition, and translation allows immediate audio and video analysis, crossing the boundaries of languages. For example, think about a process that requires speech-to-text. The result also has to be translated into another language. Such a task would require a different type of expertise, coordination between different systems, and time.

Not only can you search for specific topics or specific people, but you can also create your own list of relevant topics or information, be automatically alerted when relevant audio or video is aired, or have the relevant clips created automatically. It saves human resources; it is accurate and immediate, allowing you to immediately be exposed to the information you need and respond accordingly. When it comes to news monitoring, exporting content to the new media platforms on the spot, or learning about political trends, it is crucial to be fast exposed to the information.

Intelligent competitive analysis

Another example of AI-based automation is a more effective and fast competitive analysis. The ads are a major source of revenue for any TV network and the content owner. Therefore, the ads' sales teams are constantly striving to increase the ads' airtime and prove higher rating results. Using an AI for automatic ads detection (such as Actus Adwatch) allows you to automatically track the aired ads on your and competition channels and get automatic reports on ads aired at the competitive channels but not on yours. For example, get an automatic report in cases when specific ads are aired more times on your competitive channels. Getting this information manually is unrealistic as it will take endless manual work, will not be accurate, and more importantly, it will not allow fast response time and taking the necessary action.

To summarize: automation and AI integration reduce the necessary time, increase the production output, can work unattended 24 x 7, increase productivity and efficiency, eliminate human errors, improve accuracy, allow the creation of more complex workflows, save human resources, and bring faster results.

About Actus Digital (www.actusdigital.com)

Actus Digital is the world’s leading and global supplier of compliance logging, intelligent QA monitoring solutions addressing a multitude of requirements for media companies and business enterprises. Since 2005, hundreds of customers have chosen Actus Digital to help them affordably improve quality, comply with regulations, and automate the analysis and repurposing of content.

Reliable 24/7 content recording from a variety of inputs from baseband (like SDI, HDMI, etc.) to transport stream (including ATSC/ATSC 3.0 via antenna, IP, ASI, and QAM) and IP (such as SMPTE ST 2110, HLS, MPEG-DASH, and RTMP) with multiple audio and caption tracks allow Actus Digital customers to address both linear-broadcast and OTT needs.

Online and software-based multiviewers display any combination of channels with must-have compliance logging for things such as missing closed captions, DVB subtitles, and loudness violations. Additional engineering features for things like SCTE 35/104, NAVE detection, TS analysis, and many quality assurance alerts are all part of the standard Actus Digital platform.

Other advanced features including graphical ratings next to video competitive analysis, integrated playlist to as-run log discrepancy reporting, advanced clips creation for content repurposing and social media, and AI-enabled content detection and speech-to-text, address cross-organizational use cases. Actus Digital has offices in the USA, Europe, and Asia, ensuring worldwide 24/7 support.

Cloud and IP technology have been transforming the media industry, enabling new levels of innovation and revolutionizing traditional workflows. From remote and distributed production to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual and Extended Reality (VR/ER), cloud and IP empower media companies to deliver high-quality and powerful viewing experiences that engage audiences across platforms.

The media industry is highly competitive and diverse with players having different business needs and following their own innovation journey. To be truly impactful, innovation needs to stay relevant. This means the media world needs the flexibility to leverage on-premise and cloud workflows in a complementary way. Given the level of investment in innovation and the need to continue to utilize existing hardware, the future of broadcasting is hybrid.

In this hybrid broadcasting environment, media organizations must be ready to deliver compelling live viewing experiences overcoming the latency, synchronization, and security challenges.

Leveraging on-premise and cloud

When it comes to transitioning to IP and the cloud, there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach. Every media company has its own unique set of business and operational requirements that need to be met at the right pace for the transformation project to be successful. In addition, every industry player has its existing technology infrastructure and removing it altogether in favor of transitioning to cloud workflows is often unrealistic and costly.

A hybrid broadcasting environment addresses these challenges efficiently by enabling media companies to benefit from their existing CAPEX investments for their core traffic needs, including 24/7 contribution and distribution for linear TV. Cloud workflows have a key role to play when media companies require additional networking capacity for occasional use. This includes the traffic peaks accompanying popular live events. This additional cloud-powered capacity brings the flexibility and scalability media organizations require to spin network resources up or down depending on actual needs rather than having to invest in infrastructure that is only used occasionally. Cloud workflows also allow broadcasters to replace satellite-driven content contribution and distribution. Sourcing additional capacity from the cloud allows media companies to overcome the limited C Band satellite bandwidth available to the media industry. Finally, a flexible and transparent cloud pricing structure means media organizations can benefit from the economics of the cloud and plan and manage their costs, knowing exactly when and what they will be charged for.

For this traffic mix to succeed and work seamlessly, industry players need the right media platform to enable a hybrid architecture that supports all types of traffic mixes — including core and occasional. The media platform needs to be open, flexible, and standards-based to support all on-premise data centers and cloud providers. In addition, the platform needs to be compatible with the full range of protocols available in the market, including RTMP, SRT, RIST, Zixi, and support protocol conversion as necessary.

The latency and time synchronization challenges

Latency and time synchronization are critical parameters in live cloud production to ensure high-quality video delivery and seamless viewing experiences. To put this in context, remote production has the most stringent latency requirements with the maximum latency being typically 100-150 milliseconds. For other live production workflows, the contribution latency needs to be below 1 second end-to-end, including encoding and decoding.

The media traffic is sensitive to jitter and requires the content to be sent and received with the same clock (pace). In addition, for high-tier live events (i.e., Tier 1 and 2) with multi-camera productions, synchronization is key to ensure frame alignment and compensate for any network delays. For this to happen, the source and destination nodes should use the same clock. However, in IP environments, transferring time can be challenging. To solve this problem, it is important to ensure clocks are configured correctly on both sides to avoid frame misalignment and overall poor quality.

Addressing security, IP domain management, and flow control

Network security, IP address domain management, and media-related flow control are key considerations when moving to end-to-end cloud production workflows. When moving to the cloud, media traffic switches between local and public IP networks and different IP address domains. Therefore, it’s important that media platforms are able to handle translations at edge points (for instance, when moving between the IP address domains of the venue, cloud, and studio).

All data, audio and video will enter the different domains over the same network links and ports. As a result, it’s crucial to ensure the type of IP media traffic can pass through these networks and which streams can go in and out of each network domain. It’s important to remember that even ‘secure’ IP media traffic can cause serious issues. If the content isn’t configured properly, it can flood the network and cause packet loss, jitter, and delay. Media companies need full control of content filtering in their IP media networks and services to ensure these types of vulnerabilities are eliminated.

Securing cloud workflows and IP media networks has typically relied on the combination of general-purpose, media-unaware firewalls and to a certain degree Network Address Translation (NAT) capabilities. However, these solutions are falling short as they don’t deliver the capabilities and performance required to handle the number of streams and data in large IP media networks.

An IP Media Trust Boundary supporting ST 2022 and ST 2110 workflows brings new levels of security married with unparalleled speed, low latency, and efficiency. The IP Media Trust Boundary automates traffic filtering of incoming and outgoing IP addresses and ports per stream and per core application. Through user-selectable metrics, media companies have the control to define which data and streams are allowed or blocked. This covers transferring content in mixed IP environments and between trusted and untrusted IP domains. The IP Media Trust Boundary does not simply bring unprecedented levels of security but also delivers flexibility and scalability. The NAT functionality allows for the removal and reapplication of the full IP layer, creating a tamper-proof seal while enabling the full reuse of IP addresses and dramatically simplifies the move between multicast and unicast networks and IP media devices.

A platform for a hybrid future

Cloud technology is revolutionizing how the media industry produces, handles, and distributes live content. The cloud brings the agility media organizations need to deliver the types of content consumers require on all the right platforms. However, the flexibility brought by the cloud should also be translated into how media companies transition to these innovative workflows — they need to be able to move on their terms and at their pace.

Hybrid workflows will dominate the media and broadcasting industries for the foreseeable future. To fully reap the benefits of cloud technology, media companies need the right synergies with their CAPEX investments as and when it makes sense. The success of hybrid broadcasting environments depends on overcoming the challenges of latency, time synchronization, and media-related flow control and security. An open and flexible cloud media platform provides the critical capabilities media companies require to define their own path to live cloud production workflows.