Broadcasters at a crossroads

In the broadcast and media industry, being able to respond quickly to evolving requirements, factors and environments is key. The lockdowns that swept the world during the Covid-19 pandemic confirmed this imperative to adapt, with many companies swiftly adjusting their broadcast infrastructures with remote and/or virtual workflows in order to stay afloat.

These recent events have prompted a profound mindset shift. Media companies have grown less fearful of trying new ways of working and implementing new production workflows. Driven by their need for more flexibility, they have accelerated their move away from traditional setups, where resources are mainly centralized and provisioned for peak demand, towards more distributed and scalable ecosystems. The cloud is also becoming more prevalent, as broadcasters have learned to overcome their initial hesitancy and embrace the opportunities this technology provides beyond the well-known OTT and VOD applications.

Yes, the cloud is gaining momentum, but hardware still has its place within broadcast infrastructures.  In fact, on-premises devices and applications remain essential for many real-time operations in which deterministic SLAs and high-quality live workflows are required. Budgetary considerations are also important: a full cloud setup, given a certain volume, may not always be the most effective way to respond to a high-quality production.

So how can broadcasters keep pace and make confident decisions in today’s transforming landscape?

Balanced Computing: striking the right balance

For EVS, it’s about striking the right balance. Together with our customers we work on identifying the right combinations of hardware and software, and then selecting the deployment environment that best suits their needs - whether that’s in edge, private or public cloud or on-premises. This architectural philosophy, which we call Balanced Computing, gives us the flexibility to respond to more use cases in a more efficient way. In recent years, we’ve aligned our portfolio to this philosophy, to give broadcasters and media companies the power to adapt their setups to any production requirement and to help them stay relevant in the future.  

As an example, we’re seeing a rising demand of our cloud-based solutions and services, as a way to complement existing on premises infrastructures. This is especially the case for productions of major international events that continue to rely on EVS’ live production server structure (the robust XT-VIA and the more recent software-defined XS-NEO) to ensure high-quality content ingest but who also want to take advantage of the cloud to roll out parts of their broadcast processes in a highly flexible and scalable way.

Widely appreciated for its storytelling capabilities, the XtraMotion service can be activated on demand to generate super slow-motion replays from any camera while meeting the strictest quality and turnaround requirements. EVS operators can seamlessly clip any content from any camera, render it to super slow-motion and play it back on air within seconds for added wow factor. While XtraMotion can be entirely deployed in the cloud, production teams can also choose to run it on-premise, if they face limited connectivity in a venue or if they really want to enjoy an ultra-low latency access to the EVS SaaS offering.

These big event productions can also benefit from deploying their delivery functions in the cloud as proven by EVS’ MediaHub SaaS content platform. Designed to empower highly collaborative workflows, Mediahub is well suited for big events as it allows rights owners to distribute content quickly and efficiently to rights-holders, who can simply ‘click and collect’ the assets they need, from any location. This feature combined with many embedded functions, gives content owners the possibility to enable virtual IBC new generation services for their diverse community of rights holders. At the same time, they can facilitate access to historical archive footage for additional monetizing opportunities.

Furthermore, Mediahub can be integrated with popular cloud edit provider suites, providing a seamless working experience regardless of where the footage is stored, whether it’s at a remote location or a cloud bucket.

Conclusion

In demand for greater agility, many companies are on a mission to redefine their business models with cloud technologies. Yes, the cloud allows for flexible workflows, but legacy hardware infrastructures are still relevant in today’s landscape and intelligent decisions need to be made in terms of what should be used and where should it be deployed - this implies that EVS is required to offer both CAPEX and flexible OPEX solutions. By taking into account technical or business requirements, as well as budgetary considerations, EVS’ Balanced Computing approach allows broadcasters and media companies to swiftly adapt, improve and extend their workflows and embrace innovative tools without any disruption to their current infrastructures.