Walking the Walk
Sony’s Media Backbone Hive is now being deployed across Europe. Cloud-based news and sport production is no longer just a nice idea – it is a practical reality writes Dave Hedley.
Media Backbone Hive, the cloud-native production system
If you attend a lot of broadcast industry trade shows you will be familiar with what I am about to say.
For the last five years or so, many vendors, developers, integrators and media companies have talked enthusiastically about using the cloud to improve production workflows, particularly for news and sport. They make positive noises about flexibility, scalability and the benefits of an OPEX payment model. They cite the ability to have a global workforce collaborating remotely using a central hub. They highlight the removal of silos and eradication of work duplication.
It all sounds great in principal but a lot of it is diagrams, hypotheticals and – let’s be honest, vapour. They are talking the talk but they cannot walk the walk.
Not anymore. Thanks to Media Backbone Hive, the cloud-native production system, it is now practical and possible to use the cloud for news and sport coverage and there are media companies in Europe doing that right now.
Both proof of concept and full installations of Hive were communicated during IBC. And a complete off-premise cloud-based ‘pop up’ production environment was used to make and distribute content live from inside the RAI in Amsterdam. The only thing housed locally was the crew and the PCs. Everything else was safely implemented in the cloud.
Locarno Film Festival
Hive was used by Swisscom in August during the Locarno Film Festival 2017, capturing and distributing coverage of the excitement on the red carpet and backstage.
In previous years, Sony has provided Swisscom with some live streaming tools in the cloud that were used for the festival coverage but this year a full Hive was implemented in a private cloud to create a ‘pop up’ or ‘on demand’ production service.
Swisscom placed Hive at the heart of its workflow. Camera footage was transferred to the cloud wirelessly using 4G mobile networks from where it was either switched live or packages were recorded and clipped up. Both live and edited content was then distributed, again from the cloud, to big screens around the festival, to social media and to a designated Content Delivery Network (CDN). Hive provided the central production management and tools for editing, audio, graphics and metadata.
Thanks to Hive’s open APIs, virtual desktops running thin client versions of Adobe CC Premiere Pro were used for craft editing.
According to the producers, this cloud-based set-up saved them up to 30% on the cost of production as it required less crew and kit and there were no satellite fees. It was also described as user-friendly and was praised for having a short set-up time.
The Locarno Film Festival set-up is a great example of how a ‘pop up’ production environment can be created using Hive. It is also proof that cloud production is real.
IBC 2017
At IBC 2017 Sony demonstrated a fully operational cloud-based news operation that will see Hive installed in Open Telekom Cloud (OTC), the European service operated by Deutsche Telekom-owned T Systems. OTC works just like other, perhaps better known, American cloud services but operates under European laws, rather than US ones.
For Sony’s Hive operation at IBC, everything was be housed off premise, in OTC. Carefully chosen student operators recorded footage and uploaded it to the cloud where it was made available to editors using both Hive’s own cutting tools and thin clients running virtual desktop versions of Adobe Premiere Pro.
XDCAM air
XDCAM Air, also housed in the cloud, was used for ingest and connect to the remote browser-based Hive editor, the virtual craft editors and a web content manager. Mobile Journalists (Mojos) using smartphones and Video Journalists (VJs) with laptops could also feed into this set-up using FTP or via a direct upload to Hive.
With the appropriate metadata added, the IBC operation additionally made use of the NewsMLG2 codec, allowing content to be linked and exchanged with an Avid Interplay production asset management system and an electronic newsroom production system based 400 miles away in London.
Once packaged up, content was published to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms, directly from the Hive implementation in OTC.
Sony was not be the only company using the Hive system during IBC.
The IRT (Institut für Rundfunktechnik), based in Munich, responsible for the research and standardisation of broadcasting technology for the public service broadcasters of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. During IBC, the IRT was also be connected to Hive, and had access to the same footage as Sony. They too made use of MoJos, edit packages using virtual desktop think clients and published to social media platforms. Additionally, IRT linked to an MXF analyser hosted by Microsoft Azure.
A third company, the communications technology vendor Huawei, also fed into the same cloud operation from their stand, again making use of thin clients and browser editing.
This ‘pop up’ cloud-based set-up at IBC demonstrated that cloud-based news and sport production is possible across multiple locations and remote operations, connected and delivered from certified data centres. This is not vapour: it is completely practical.
Conclusion
Cloud-based production promises a huge number of benefits, from scalability and collaborative workflows to OPEX pricing. But it won’t work for every broadcaster or media company. Using the cloud only makes sense if it complements the business model.
The cost of cloud storage and bandwidth can be high, and that can be a barrier. But, equally, the cost of operating an on premise news production system in a major European city may be doubly so.
What is important at this juncture is that cloud-based news and sport production is a viable option. The technology works. Sony has proved that.
By implementing Hive in the cloud, news and sport coverage can be created quickly and effectively, removing silos, increasing collaboration and streamlining workflows.
At long last, when it comes to cloud-based production, it is now possible to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
