Sourcing – In or Out? It is a long cyclic debate within any business – whether it’s better to build or buy. Such discussions revolve around business investments, where any spending must be weighted alongside the value of IPR ownership.
Josh Arensberg elected new Chair of the IABM Members’ Board
Josh Arensberg was elected Chair of the IABM Members’ Board in July this year. We asked him to share his vision for where he sees IABM – and our industry – heading.
Simplestream – Needle in a haystack: the challenge of normalizing metadata
The world of video content moves quickly. It’s in ceaseless motion, and this goes hand in hand with technological advancement. In this scenario, it becomes paramount for operators and distributors in the streaming space to create seamlessly functioning architectures. It’s all about tech stacks that must normalize workflows and bring together data from multiple existing services. Of course, this is far easier said than done as content owners wish to enhance their offering with a feed of growing requirements which platform operators have for their own streaming services. Progress is perpetual, think of ratings for movies and series, specific categories for niche programming, or even broadcast identifiers.
Densitron – Outsourcing can help companies refocus and build business agility
In an uncertain world, it pays for broadcast vendors to refocus their activities on what really makes them distinctive. And one way in which they can do that is to outsource some of their design, manufacturing and integration needs to a dedicated ODM provider, says Densitron’s SVP Product, Peter Semerak.
DW Innovation – Exploring Transparent Robustness for AI Powered Media Tools
Broadcasters and media companies continue to implement systems powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) across different workflows. While there is increasing awareness for AI components to be trustworthy in terms of transparency, explainability or fairness – when it comes to trust, aspects such as security and resilience are also important.
Birgit Gray from DW Innovation provides insight into the concept of AI Robustness and her cooperated work in the AI4Media project to make an AI component for one of DW’s media tools more robust and therefore more trusted.
Spectra Logic: Spectra Vail
Spectra Vail® is a distributed multi-cloud data management software that unifies and simplifies data access, usage and protection across on-premises storage, multiple clouds and storage platforms. For media organizations managing digital assets in a distributed workflow, Spectra Vail software allows users to leverage on-premises applications and native cloud services no matter where content is created or stored, fostering collaboration by providing universal access to data in a single namespace and automating digital asset placement across multiple clouds and sites.
Adapting Media Supply Chains to Content Demand
Consumers are spending more time streaming video content than ever before. The video on demand market was already valued at $53.96 billion in 2019 and a recent report projects that it will grow to $159.62 billion by 2027. Content producers and media companies are faced with the challenge of producing enough high-quality content to meet this ever-increasing demand.
Defense by Design: How Caching Enables Resilience
Business resilience depends on reliable cybersecurity, but relying only on traditional security tools can leave aspects of your business vulnerable. Resilience for digital business starts with high availability and scalability – guaranteeing performance and uptime for websites and apps, no matter what levels of traffic are thrown at them. This can be achieved with caching technologies.
The data domino effect
When designing a storage system for a production or post facility, it is easy to concentrate on capacity and throughput, and think that is all you need. However, a very real issue is data safety and how to guard against it. That is a particular problem in our industry of media production. Once you start considering the issues around data loss, the potential problems start to escalate: a real domino effect.
Securing broadcast synchronization against malicious attack
Synchronization is a fundamental requirement in all content generation and broadcast; used extensively both in SDI / HDI formats and in IP packet based systems. Synchronization signals are typically generated from equipment including sync pulse generators, master sync references, and for the IP format, Precision Timing Protocol (PTP) grandmaster clock generators. Most sync generators encapsulate a very accurate internal clock which is synchronised to an external reference, which for the vast majority of manufacturers is a GPS & GNSS satellite timing signal. Consequently sync generators are connected to an outside GNSS antenna via coaxial cable or fibre optic cable, like those supplied by ViaLite Communications.