IABM Adoption Trends reports annually track the adoption of specific emerging technologies within the broadcast and media sector.
M&E Tech Enabling Business In Turbulent Times
Anyone else feel like they’ve been on a whitewater raft the past year and a half? Constantly trying to read the current and watch out for the rocks and waterfalls? It seems that turbulent times have become the new normal, and all types of businesses, large and small, around the world have had to make changes to survive.
Mainconcept Goes GStreamer: Extended Codec Footprint
For almost 30 years, MainConcept® codecs have been renowned in the broadcast industry for excellent quality, impressive performance, and extensive feature sets. Since the 1990s, our components have been based on the proprietary MainConcept API (Application Programming Interface), which enables companies all over the world to integrate our codecs into their solutions. Now, we’ve also made it even simpler to use MainConcept’s best-in-class codec packages with direct integration into the GStreamer Media Framework to give you a complete encoding and transcoding pipeline.
XHE-AAC: A New Standard For The Audio & Video Streaming Experience
When people talk about Adaptive BitRate (ABR) streaming, the focus is usually on video with reference to quality and bandwidth, while audio typically plays only a minor role or is entirely neglected.
High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) Beta Program
It’s part of the MainConcept DNA to listen to our customers and look ahead. Our Beta program is one of the many ways we get input on products that are in development, so we can decide how best to serve the media & entertainment and broadcast industries along with others that use digital video. Our newest Beta program offering is now open for the HEIF/MIAF Ingest SDK and Viewer App.
Codecs Made Easy: MainConcept Transcoding SDK
MainConcept® maintains the largest codec video and audio library on the planet, and it can empower almost any use case and digital video workflow. However, not every company has the expertise needed to integrate and tune codecs to get the most out of them. Moreover, codecs are only one part of the equation—there is also the challenge of multiplexing and containers. This is why we developed the MainConcept Transcoding SDK—to simplify the adoption of codecs into digital video workflows. And, today, we released our latest version!
Encoding Time on Apple Computers: The M1 Revolution
Apple computers have a prolific history in video editing, having long been the choice of professionals and hobbyists. When Apple switched to Intel processors in 2006, image processing and video editing on macOS became even more popular, creating a demand for professional solutions for video production. In the beginning, Apple Final Cut Pro was the most commonly used professional Non-Linear Editing (NLE) solution, but slowly other companies, such as Adobe, Autodesk, Magix, Corel and Blackmagic, introduced their video-editing software products. Today there are dozens of choices from companies actively releasing new features and updates to make video editing on macOS a smooth experience, allowing for the creation of everything from quirky TikTok videos by hobbyists to award-winning movie masterpieces by production houses and studios.
LCEVC – increasing compression efficiency, lowering costs and reducing carbon footprint
We spoke with Guido Meardi, CEO and Co-Founder of V-Nova to understand the benefits of LCEVC video compression and what these could mean for users across Broadcast, Media & Entertainment.
The evolution of a regional TV and advertising system
This narrative begins in 2006. One of the more forward-thinking European broadcasters began the search for a system to take their single national feed, that was funded through traditional ad break advertising, and produce just over 30 variants of this channel. Every channel (regional feed) would now include some regional advertising content, replacing the national advertising breaks at specific times of the day. Starfish Technologies was awarded the contract to design and supply this system. It was implemented using SDI based technology located at each of the regional distribution hubs, the majority of which were unmanned. This system worked well and generated a significant additional revenue stream, so the broadcaster requested an ‘upgrade’ to this system that would also enable local news bulletins and late changing schedules to be inserted into every regional feed. These requirements were best implemented by moving to a centralised architecture and building a complete regional channel system located at its main transmission centre. The first centralised Starfish Technologies system went live in 2009 and again proved reliable, commercially rewarding and with the significant benefit of providing viewers with locally relevant news content.
Accelerating the Move to Remote & Virtualised Workflows
Over the last three decades, we’ve seen a shift from specialised units for various video and audio functions, to high performance hardware platforms which can be repurposed on-the-fly to support any AV processing, and now to virtualized media applications and microservices which can be spun up and deployed (and paid for) only when you need them.
