IP Video Delivery in a 2021-22 Snapshot
- By Adrian Pennington
With 2021 in the rearview, we asked a cross section of executives to give us their perspective on the headline trends in IP Video Delivery and to cast ahead to how this is likely to evolve in technology and business - By Adrian Pennington.
TAG Video Systems, Kevin Joyce, Zer0 Friction Officer
“Not long ago, IP was just an emerging protocol, now it is the main form of delivery and widely embraced throughout the globe. In 2021, IP trends included migration to the cloud even as vendors and users alike explored its capabilities and limitations. This significant shift in operation merited a review of pricing methods and has resulted in a fundamental, and appealing, change in fee structures as well as a substantial increase in asset utilization in the media industry.
If the past two years taught us nothing else. They taught us that we must be flexible and prepared for the unpredictable. Agility and ability to pivot on a moment’s notice will be a top priority in 2022 as consumer demands continue to evolve and challenge vendors to develop technologies at an accelerated pace. Open, flexible solutions that enable rapid change, support growth and drive vendors to reach new levels of workflow agility and business enablement will continue to lead the market.”
Cerberus Tech, Chris Clarke, CEO
“Naturally, the impact of the pandemic has resulted in widespread interest in IP technology to futureproof content delivery infrastructure. Overall, there has been a significant increase in awareness of the benefits of broadcast IP, both in terms of the downstream cost-profile and the scalability of the cloud. There have been many more RFIs and RFPs with IP delivery sections, particularly for live sports events which have suffered from unpredictable scheduling in recent months. We’ve has also noted cautious approaches to 2110 deployments with major broadcasters - a trend set to become more widespread in 2022.
More customers state that they are looking for a multi-cloud solution for IP video delivery. Currently only one of the major cloud providers deploys media services and customers are in need of uniformity across the deployment. Moving forward, it seems likely that a significant number of customers will explore building their own services or actively look for partners that offer multi-cloud compatible infrastructure.”
Ateliere Creative Technologies, Arjun Ramamurthy, Global CTO
“In 2021, consumer viewing habits continued to change, with more content and viewing options available than ever. More people began watching content online after a show has aired to see the highlights only without having to sit through an entire program. And even if people did watch the first-run broadcast, they still want something that’s easily shareable with their social networks.
“It’s all about packaging and boiling down content into bite-sized pieces for people who want their water-cooler talk, or their Tik Tok shares. Content owners are increasingly turning to cloud-based platforms which support the assembly and delivery of these components to consumers while still allowing them to retain full creative control.
The traditional linear IP video delivery model will continue to evolve towards more componentized, just-in-time encoding and delivery. With a componentized model, we can deliver parts and pieces of content quickly and easily without requiring full programs in 30 different versions to be pre-formatted and then stored at a CDN site.
Everyone doesn’t always have the time or the interest to sit and watch a full programme. Instead, they want it componentised for consumption during their Uber ride or in an autonomous car: ‘I only have 10 minutes during this drive, this is the content I want to watch.’ This componentised content can be pushed to a user’s device if they’ve subscribed to a provider’s highlights or made available for them to retrieve it whenever they want.”
Cobalt Digital, Chris Shaw, COO
“There has been an increase in programming delivered over IP in both 2020 and 2021. News coverage, TV shows and films have accounted for the most significant growth, but the use of streaming services for video games, computers, podcasts, listening applications like audible books, and consumer-produced media has escalated substantially as well. And the pandemic made digital meeting applications a necessity to maintain business and social communications. Supporting all of these is an explosion of streaming technology that incorporates high speed and low latency capabilities to reward those spending time on social media, messaging services, and network TV with a superior viewing experience.
VR and AI are now adding to the possibilities with multiple levels of control providing the end user with the ability to select their own preferred view, audio reproduction and more. Moving forward this need will only grow. Data catching capabilities will enable providers to identify individual end-user preferences. We’re already seeing viewing habits tracked by streaming companies with online merchants identifying shopping and browsing behaviour and filling users’ screens with preferred products and entertainment choices. While we are still exploring this brand-new space, there appears to be no limits regarding what can be achieved over the next few years.”
Exterity, Colin Farquhar, SVP Sales
“In 2021, we’ve observed increased demand for secure distribution, which has encouraged us to focus on the expansion of Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) support across products. There’s also been greater interest surrounding enhanced codec capabilities, with partners looking to benefit from improved quality, reduced bitrates and robust content security as they integrate into new applications.
Once again, we saw a continued ramping up of video consumption this year, which has boosted demand for transcoding and CDN interfacing to deliver content to more devices.
VITEC’s acquisition of Exterity made big news in the industry. We firmly believe this is a real positive for the market and our customers, and it has allowed us to expand our range of integrated products available. It’s an exciting time and we look forward to 2022 with optimism.
An issue making global headlines during these past 12 months has been that of climate change, emissions, and sustainability. VITEC has committed to changing the trajectory of its carbon footprint, and ‘net-zero’ has been a key focus. VITEC products now deliver more for less, with dedicated hardware optimising both performance and power consumption. This is a huge topic, and we expect to hear more about it from across the industry in 2022.”
MediaKind, Stuart Boorn, VP Product Management
“IP video adoption is increasing at pace. Whenever a customer is fitting out a production studio or building a contribution infrastructure, IP technology is always present. Broadcasters are enabling more of their services for live streaming, or even streaming-only for some services using technologies like HbbTV.
At MediaKind our deployments around SMPTE 2022 -5 and SMPTE ST 2110 with NMOS are becoming increasingly commonplace in the market. It’s not essential for every deployment but what was a technology discussion three years ago, is becoming standard infrastructure. Interoperability is much more reliable after the initial days of intensive interoperability sessions to ensure we could work with other vendors.
As the world of production and playout evolves to the cloud, the IP headend is following. Although this has extra dependencies on cloud costs, SaaS adoption and the rate of technology refresh, it is inevitable. This will lead to an acceleration in the adoption of IP across the entire video chain, from the headend to production and playout. Our challenge is to ensure our customers get the commercial and flexibility benefits of IP and cloud for live video as this technology adoption accelerates.”
Net Insight, Per Lindgren, CTO
“In 2021, we saw the media industry building on the innovation in remote and distributed production that was delivered in 2020. Over the last year, media companies continued to transform both technologically and culturally. Following the challenges of 2020, organizations embraced flexible production workflows that give them the agility and scalability to produce a bigger volume of content more efficiently.
Our customers tell us they want cutting-edge technology that transforms their business today and gets them ready for the future. They want to ensure business continuity under challenging circumstances and a remote and distributed production model can give them peace of mind.
In 2022, IP and cloud acceleration will continue. We’ll see more IP studios and the combination of high-end ST 2110 and NDI production environments. Remote and distributed production will continue to rise, enabling media companies to transition to OPEX, work with the best talent across the world, save on costs, and increase efficiencies. Viewers can also expect richer content experiences powered by 4K and AI-controlled autonomous cameras that bring consumers to the centre of action.
2020 was the year of challenges and transition, 2021 the year of recovery, and 2022 will be the year when media companies will embrace innovation and strategize about their future.”
Telestream, Luann Linnebur, Product Marketing and SMPTE Fellow
“During 2021 live OTT events have become possible through lower latency, increased reliability of delivery, and enhanced monitoring. In addition to OTT live delivery, content creation technologies have evolved. De-centralized production of content has become more common, allowing creatives broader choices, and lowering costs through shared use of production tools. The ability to validate and monitor content as it moves through production and LAN/WAN domains has helped to drive this adoption and will become even more important going forward.
Next year and beyond, we’ll see an increase in interoperable, bookable, cloud-based solutions. Content creators and service provers will continue to utilize hardware, virtualized or cloud native tools, and be able to manage and monitor them through common interfaces. As content is delivered, the need for a global view, in light of increased content viewing options, will mean an increase not only in the need to monitor and validate that the correct content ran when intended, but that the quality intended reaches the audience that has selected it, and that ad fill rates improve.
The OTT advertising market is in a period of sharp growth. US AVOD revenues will reportedly triple between 2020 and 2026 to $31bn. Through correlated data that looks at viewer experience along with content at every step in the delivery process, issues can be resolved before viewers seek alternate offerings and revenues can be improved through more targeted ad delivery and better proofs of performance. Visibility and quick issue resolution will be key to these complex new offerings.”
PlayBox Neo, Pavlin Rahnev, CEO
“Automated server-based playout continues to be the preferred mode of operation throughout the industry. A key driver is the need for maximum flexibility in where, when and how broadcasters choose to work.
Secure IP-based operation has long been a core feature of our technology, allowing easy control of the entire playout process regardless of physical distance. Our research shows that ingesting large amounts of incoming content streams is a significant challenge for many channel operators. The recently introduced PlayBox Neo Capture Suite speeds up the ingest workflow of television networks, post-production facilities and playout service-providers.
We have also expanded the feature set of our server-based AirBox Neo-20 modular playout system. Suitable for on-premises or IP-linked remote control, AirBox Neo-20 allows playlist scheduling to be performed weeks ahead of actual transmission.
“We see a strong trend towards hybrid combinations of server-based and cloud-based playout. Our Cloud2TV offering forms a robust platform for secure MAM and archiving, accessible by accredited personnel anywhere in the world. Cloud2TV is fully compatible with existing PlayBox Neo solutions and can be used to extend their capabilities and functionality. The only hardware an operator requires is an internet-linked desktop or mobile computer. Control is via an intuitive web-based interface with administrator-adjustable rights assignment, TV channel management, action-logging and notifications.”
LiveU, Ronen Artman, VP Marketing
“LiveU has seen tremendous growth across the IP bonding space in 2021, a space that’s increasingly broad as adoption of our technology spreads to all corners of the industry. It’s across the sports sector that we’ve seen particularly spectacular increase in use. This is not only for dynamic, value-add additional material - now we’re seeing rising use for main feeds across top tier sports.
It’s clear that real-time, or close to real-time, cloud services will continue to grow in use and complexity, enabling end-to-end, cloud-based workflows. LiveU is very active in the development of these services, either via tightly integrated solutions with key industry partners like Avid, Blackbird, Grabyo, Grass Valley and Vizrt, or through ongoing internal solution development, with the recent launch of orchestration platform Air Control one example. It’s now not a question of whether it can be done but how best it can be done. This also applies across remote production. Our technology and the industry are ready. Now it’s up to our imaginations.”
Zixi, John Wastcoat, SVP Strategic Alliances and Marketing
“Live IP video adoption is rapidly accelerating with all major broadcasters pivoting away from satellite with stated dates for entiretransition plans.
The drivers have been virtualization and the desire and necessity to operate remotely, the regionalisation and localisation of content, rapidly evolving monetization opportunities, C-Band capacity migrating to 5G as well as hybrid network workflows over Internet in the cloud and on fibre. The associated low risk with Opex is allowing for the test of services without the worry about long-term losses.
Looking ahead: Real-world deployments of 5G in B2B television use cases will increase. The high bandwidth, ultra-low latency wireless network providing universal edge will enable mobile consumers to create and receive 4K live content, as well as mobile-to-CDN workflows.
Like other verticals, M&E is adopting AI and ML to overcome data overload and realize autonomous broadcast operations. There have been too many false alarms in a network where it is hard to tell what is and is not important but with new tools broadcasters can visualize all the data so that a human can understand and be provided a better root cause analysis to understand the true causes of instability and failure. These analytics deliver predictive maintenance that is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier, as well as improving confidence in new configurations.”
Ai-Media, Bill McLaughlin, Chief Product Officer
“EEG and Ai-Media provide captioning tools and service across a giant range of customer installation footprints, from the largest international broadcasters to portable A/V setups. Video production in IP has become the norm at the deep end of the pool, with most of the new installations to support OTT channels or uplift to UHD emphasizing SMPTE 2110, flexible virtualization, and software-driven control though APIs. Interestingly, the smallest customers we talk to are also very likely to be using IP standards because they work cloud natively - they expect to work in the compressed IP standards like MPEG-TS, SRT, or RTMP, because that’s what makes it possible to do inexpensive and low-setup events, and to emphasize remote production as much as possible. The middle of the market like local broadcast is the most likely to still be on SDI interconnect, but that’s probably going to be evolving in the next few years too.
When it comes to captioning and subtitling, most content producers just want it to be simple. With the EEG software production products, either Alta for on-prem and self-hosted private cloud, or Falcon for SaaS, we can caption to every major IP video standard.
The data is injected into the IP streams in the familiar broadcast delivery formats for ATSC or DVB television; streaming and OTT platforms usually are best covered with the CEA-708 (ATSC) standard, but we support many others too. The Alta and Falcon products are very simple to connect to our Smart Lexi automatic live captioning service, and they also provide easy and secure access to remote human captioners from Ai-Media or hundreds of other global partners. What this means is that the customer is covered for both very conventional and very innovative caption creation workflows, and there’s complete operational continuity whether the installation is based on hardware, on-prem virtualization, or public cloud.”
