IABM Technology and Trends Roadmap™

NEWLY UPDATED APRIL 2023

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Technology and Trends Roadmap content copyright IABM

Over the past few years our industry has seen a radical change in how both technology and trends are put to use. In some cases, such as cloud and remote production – sweeping changes occurred, yet others were put on the back burner. Hence this year’s version has been particularly difficult to connect all the dots within the industry. Certainly it created a lot of discussion, debates and controversy within the IABM Roadmap working group. Typically the working group is on-top of the current trends, however with so many changes happening, some of the sessions turned into mini-webinars to bring the rest of the group up to date. The cool part about this is that IABM now can disseminate the high-level reflections of the group in terms of plotting them on the technology adoption curve.

So the bottom line, it has been the COVID diversion in the industry that has forced this radical change, not only on technology itself, but also on trends resulting in changes in skills, career changes and work location adjustments.

It is clear that security is still taking a back seat, not due to technology, but mainly on the implementation and budget sides. So the group decided to focus on Security Workflows this year.

Notice we removed two groups, COVID and Collaboration. This isn’t to say these aren’t important now; we simply don’t need to focus on them as standalone items anymore. For example many applications and software updates are now including collaboration features – hence smoothing the way for the workforce to be remote and also work from home.

One of the debates the group had, do we keep Cloud or discreetly move the various functions of Cloud into each group individually. For example, playout in the cloud would go into the Delivery grouping. We quickly discovered that important trends such as microservices could become discounted, and additionally both the advantages/disadvantages of public/private off-prem cloud operations would not be highlighted. These are all areas that need serious consideration for both the business and the technical sides of operations.

The group also added in new groupings that have been around for some time, yet require more attention, these being Sustainability, Orchestration and Quality Control. Obviously Metaverse and Web 3.0 are on the chart now, more about those later.

Cloud Services

The vision of running everything in an off-prem cloud, whether public or private, still has limitations. These are typically overcome by using hybrid solutions. Sometimes even including dedicated hardware. The trend towards object storage is clear, which means this scalable solution is quickly becoming a commodity. This being said, for having such a solution being a commodity, it noticeably is not understood well and has mid-size companies hesitant due to cost models and lack of fully scalable storage across various platforms.

There is a constant cry for low latency, which is improving, however low latency is quickly meaningless for live events without deterministic delay specifications. Hence within production, many live events are still considered as early adopters whereas many other aspects of production are mature.

Uncertainties remain over the understanding of public cloud security, meaning not so much concern about hackers stealing content; this is more about users having the know-how to configure security and “is the content available when I need it?”.

Although a common interchange format between vendors is non-existent, this challenge is being worked upon. Some are using lack of interchange as a reason not to change/improve workflows. On a positive side, tools for camera to cloud exist with several cameras supporting this feature. Expect to see more adoption of camera to cloud rapidly.

Cloud Infrastructure

Whether the cloud is public, private or hybrid, we see that the infrastructure continues to move away from dedicated hardware to more virtualized edge computing.
We have had a strong leap beyond storage using Ethernet by using Thunderbolt 3, and Thunderbolt 4. There is a clear future using PCIexpress to transport uncompressed 4K and 8K video with super low-latency. By extending the PCI-e buss into the GPU pool, this has dramatically improved GPU-centric workloads.
There is a new technique that enables system resources to be instantly interconnected into physical servers and dynamically reconfigured as needed.

Initially cloud computing was mainly based on “lift & shift” models, and not adjusting workflows. Cloud-native takes full advantage of cloud computing and is surpassing lift & shift. Cloud-native, moreover, uses less power - hence cheaper and greener than lift & shift. Robust hyperscaler know-how is the key to balancing workloads. We are hearing more and more about microservices-based architectures, so having more open/defined APIs would be a huge advantage within our industry. Packages such as Terraform, Kubernetes (K8), or similar are becoming a must to assist with managing IaC (infrastructure as code). Looking at the adoption curve for Manage, media asset management is quite mature, whereas orchestration and having common microservices is not.

The cost and complexity of providing ground-cloud-ground connectivity in a secure, robust/redundant and affordable fashion is still lagging behind cloud infrastructure elements that are requiring more and more bandwidth requirements.

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Remote Production

COVID forced us to re-think many aspects of remote production. Remote collaboration and IP intercomms are prime examples of the enormous improvements. We have been using backhaul over the Internet for some time now and when used properly, it is quite resilient. Citizens Broadband Radio Service known as CBRS is ideal for 5G localized systems at sports venues. Setting up CBRS is also perfect for geographically sizable venues, such as cycling, for camera feeds, on-board personal cams, IFBs and general comms.

PTZ cameras have been around for years and have always been purchased for special purpose, newer models now have changeable lenses making them ideal for a vast array of events. We are seeing early adopters using multiple, fixed hi-res cameras at sporting venues. These coupled with specialized processing, including AI, auto-select a 16x9 area of interest that appears to be a tracking camera feed. AI is quite advanced, being used to assist in flagging and referee reviews of off-sides. Sound mixing also uses AI to analyze crowds and other sounds during events.

Mixed reality using studio LED walls makes remote productions appear seamless - more often than not; the viewer has no idea where the talent actually is. Newer OB Trucks are being built to handle both remote and local productions. Basically, having a control room on wheels that can be located anywhere there is good connectivity. Remote productions are mature for high-end venues in addition to Interactive gaming. Orchestration is a requirement to align activities and also share resources from different sites, such as storage, compute power and applications such as slo-mo.

Compute and Storage

The long established use of hard drives and LTOs is most prevalent in the archive storage landscape. LTO density continues to improve, which is both good and bad due to the risk of data loss because of higher density and cost of upgrading to new drives and tape replication. The industry is recognizing that media storage continues to be expensive. AI techniques are available assist storage de-duplication as well as large-scale content management.

New NVMe form factors (e.g. E3.S) allow higher storage throughput via PCI Express to transport uncompressed 4K and 8K video with super-low latency. This is exactly what production workstations need – whether they are tied into a local or remote cloud.

The trend of disaggregated Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (dHCI) is being put to the test via Apple's new M2 "System on Chip", whereas hardware vendors continue to design and fabricate discrete CPU, GPU, Network silicon.

PCIe continues to double the bus transfer rate with PCIe 7.0 running at 128 GT/s. Programmable network processors (DPUs) are adding compute power into the NIC for CPU offloading. This improves the use of VMs by not requiring packet processing for IP video.

SSDs continue to have higher density with writing 5 bits per cell (penta-level cell, PLC). PLC is getting to the point where it could replace storage on all edge platforms. With respect to SSD wearing out, QLC flash specs point out that all the media in the world would have to be written over a three year time span to wear out the cell, therefore wear out in pretty much all applications is no longer a concern.

The shift to ultra-low power (ULP) chips is proceeding, providing a balance between heat vs. speed, having large improvements in power management.

AI/ML- Analytics

Although Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are mature for closed captioning, script and data generation, many users are claiming mid- 90% accuracy. This is fine for many applications, however it does directly show there is often a lack of iterative learning.

AI is not widely used yet for QC and surveillance of networks, especially when it comes down to observing and reporting security issues. AI chatbots must be factored into new workflows especially on the creative side. AI video creation platforms are bleeding edge and many are finding this fascinating yet not ready for prime usage yet. The use of AI for corporate and creating short form advertising is underway. In sports AI is being used for player and ball tracking, off-side calls, sound mixing, etc.
The creation of deep-fakes with the assistance of AI is a worry. On the flip-side, expectantly AI may be able to aid in the recognition thereof. AI trends are starting to face ethical concerns i.e. sound editors using, for example using Respeacher without talent's permission.

ML systems leveraging complex language models will continue to improve interactive chat, and automated creation of editorial content, but also SPAM, Phishing and other security threats, including the building and drop of malicious code.

AI/ML for general publishing is mature, even commodity including running analytics to understand churn, whereas the use of AI for repurposing material for different types of publishing and screen size is early adopter.

Immersive and Imaging

LED wall virtual production by using gaming engines for volumetric productions is no longer bleeding edge. The end result is less fixing in post. Traditional studios are quickly adopting XR within their sets and production. XR techniques for parallel ads are mature in sports (this is where different content can be inserted over the ads on the sports field, increasing the value of ads for distinctive markets).

Image sensors continue to improve however there are no new dramatic breakthroughs. RAW workflows are mature for high-end productions. 8K has slowed up for live due to COVID, hence higher resolutions have not been a priority. LUT (Look Up Table) based workflows are popular for live HDR. The use of immersive audio in live and studio production environments is not mature. There are newer aspects with camera and talent tracking algorithms. AI is supplementing super slo-mo.

Blockchain

The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA.org) is using blockchain to address the prevalence of misleading media online. This has the promise of having the ability to track and protect content provenance, which to the benefit of both consumers as well as businesses leveraging highly automated content supply chains.

Rights management efforts using blockchain are still considered as bleeding edge. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) using blockchain for broadcast viewer interactivity is in early adoption.

Inappropriately, blockchain is still incorrectly identified as being only used for crypto-currency.

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Secure Workflows

Security Frameworks and Standards (such as Zero Trust) exist however still not being broadly adopted in the Broadcast domain despite the fact this technology is mature. On the positive side, we are seeing both NMOS IS-10 and OAuth2 are becoming part of the RFP process. The hope is this will provide a wider understanding of secure workflow implementations, hence this will speed time to market of more secure, more interoperable, and more robust cloud-based services and systems.
The crucial foundation on a go forward basis is that security should be built around each workflow rather than a focus on only content and data.
Blockchain is starting to become part of the security fabric. The security of Cloud Architectures that dynamically pull containers and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) from third party repositories must be considered and appropriately mitigated. For example having dependence on the use of open source repositories, GitHub/BitBucket or similar, can have undetected flaws, open ports for testing that didn’t get removed, etc. - resulting in possible breaches.

Transport and Networking

The industry now has more than 20-years of experience moving live video, audio, and data over IP networks. Managing these streams on both provisioned and un-provisioned IP networks has evolved, having mature protection and redundancy schemes. The focus is now on managing and improving timing across networks.

With cloud being such an important aspect of our industry, best practices are now being established for handing content from ground to cloud, cloud to cloud, and cloud to ground within the VSF's GCCG working group. Whether moving content that is heavily compressed to only a few hundred kilobits or mezzanine/uncompressed content over 100/400GE bandwidths, they are both mature. AI is taking hold by assisting with multi-CDN optimization resulting in improved Quality of Service (QoS).

The monetization of transport is well understood, however there is a large gap when Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) comes into play.

Distribution and Delivery

QoS and QoE must become a concentrated effort to reduce churn. This is accomplished by having complete end-to-end data gathering whether it is hybrid on-premise or cloud video delivery architecture to assure accurate delivery. Solutions for real-time notifications of potential issues along with "drill down troubleshooting" tools are available and maturing quickly.

Developing areas include better tracking of advertising markers across delivery chains, higher ad fill rates, and improvement of viewer experience through localization and customization.

Distributing more and more feeds from a single event is becoming a requirement. As an example of having several camera feeds so the final delivery operator or even the end viewer can select the feeds they wish to view and hear. There is no prevailing format, metadata or rights management for this presently.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a new trend we have added to the roadmap this year as the industry is starting to move beyond "nice to have" to making it a requirement. Although this has been requested by very few end-users in the past, many are now requesting vendors to provide details such as power consumption, materials used, weight (for portable applications), cooling required, carbon footprint, etc. not only for on-prem but also cloud-based solutions.

Generally the use of data in the cloud and its carbon footprint is not clearly defined. The old adages that just because it's in the cloud it's green and just because it's on-prem means it's not green are outdated. As for running in the cloud, it is understood that cloud native is more efficient as opposed to "lift & shift".
Companies that are Green-washing, are being called-out, hard facts are becoming a requirement as carbon footprints are becoming part of the RFP process along with surcharges.

There is little balance yet between the costs of sustainability vs. profits. A good reference for case studies can be found at wearealbert.org along with various toolsets available at www.greenproductionguide.com.

Orchestration and QC

Workflows are becoming more and more complex; thereby they are prone to errors when there is too much manual operation. New automation and analytics tools are a must making this less manpower dependent hence reducing costs.

Whether focused on things like color correction, bandwidth, or availability of production or video processing resources, there are mature QC, provisioning, and orchestration offerings on the market today. The issue comes down to the complexities in different parts of the business. Eventually scheduling and rights management must lead the charge for interoperability and QC best practices.

Orchestration on the production side has the new concept of federation. This allows for hybrid systems at different sites to collaborate much more deeply with other systems to share, control, and connect resources.

On the publishing side, QC monitoring playout is quite mature and even mature with certain aspects of OTT, yet there are new techniques are underway for monitoring and improving CDNs.


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Gaming/Metaverse/Web3.0

This grouping is about interactivity; hence the push to take passive broadcast content and make it interactive to engage audiences is only in the experimental stage. It is clear that COVID paved the way for younger generations to hang out together online, consequently making the Metaverse an ideal vehicle to engage this generation with a different type of story telling, taking advantage of gaming platforms and newer production technologies.

Low latency, network speeds, edge computing, headsets, newer technical innovations and business strategy are all required to make the Metaverse real.
Media companies must learn, understand and respect the gaming world as this will help them to quickly gain newer viewers, which in turn will give them the all important brand recognition within an interactive space.

With the struggles of using AI/ML to regulate Web 2, this will be a larger challenge for Metaverse and Semantic Web (Web 3.0).
eSports is quite mature on the production side and often considered as no different than how any other unique sport is covered. The uniqueness is the fact that eSports is starting to include more Interactive options.

Summary

Throughout the building of the 2023 Roadmap on a global basis, it became clear that the terminology and language used within the industry is neither succinct nor clearly understood. The words “cloud” or “the cloud” raise many different thoughts, prejudices and different meanings among our peers. To some, cloud is playout, others distributed computing, and yet some only think of this as offsite public storage within our industry. Having an understanding of the BaM Content Chain® within each technology and trend category will assist you to clearly articulate your requirements and ideas in both the business and technical aspects of the industry to your peers.

Beyond sports and entertainment programming we still have a divide between streaming audiences and linear viewers, however linear viewers do have a clear understanding of on-demand, yet rarely have any interest in interacting with the media directly. The Metaverse and Web 3.0 isn’t just another go at 3DTV, it is real, yet far from being understood and profitable, however this is exactly the task to confront, taking the various technologies and trends, collaborating with partners and taking them to the next level within your distinct professions to grow both your business and your personal careers too.

As a final note for 2023/4, it is imperative to have a clear plan for both security and sustainability!

“One of the constantly moving challenges in our industry is not only keeping up with all the new technology trends, but also having a deep enough dive to understand what is truly relevant and not simply just a ‘fad’. Our industry pumps 25% of hard-earned revenue back into R&D - so every penny spent needs to be as close to a sure bet as possible. End-users also have a similar issue understanding which technology to bet on, what they can’t live without – the ‘must haves’ - and which will capture more market share for them, as well as providing a path of profitable growth. The Technology and Trends Roadmap will help address these fundamental business questions for everyone involved with broadcast and media technology"

Stan Moote, IABM CTO

“We see creative collaboration as central to success for our industry and we have launched a number of initiatives aimed at fostering this over the last 18 months. The Technology and Trends Roadmap is another large step forward in nurturing the partnerships that will drive all our futures. As with the BaM Content Chain®, it is also a ‘living’ concept that can provide a secure basis for business decisions not just now, but way into the coming years too."

Peter White, IABM CEO

Usage

IABM sees two main uses for creating and distributing a common industry roadmap:

  • Company Internal – A reference internally so both board members and executives have a common view of the industry. This gives the CTO a strong reference or ‘springboard’ to further add in their own company’s unique expertise to produce a company-specific roadmap which will typically map into company quarters/years. 
  • Company External – When presenting to customers and end-users, there is no starting point, no reference to begin. There is nothing worse than being in front of a customer having to waste half the meeting trying to explain your first graphic. Having a common industry roadmap may not provide 100% buy-in by every end-user, however it does give a common industry consensus that sets the stage for each vendor’s distinctive roadmap. This in turn becomes a key driver of strategic decision making for high-level plans that need to be articulated to end-users. IABM research shows how partnering is very important to growth and sales strategy.

Technology and Trends Roadmap content copyright IABM