Walter J., NAB isn't so far away now. Time to review a few FC dots...From IBC last Sept. Maybe some lines will get drawn from these points?
Open Q; If you read the text below one of the recurrent themes is Metadata. The content owners and broadcasters need this info. A criticism of FC is that it doesn't allow Metadata. Is this true? Any help from someone in the biz?
Bulldog, Oracle and Sun Launch Content BOSS Enterprise - Content Management Solution for Broadcasters, Interactive Broadcasters and Content Providers
Industry leaders' joint sales, support, and integration efforts make it easier to implement digital asset management
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 13, 1999-- The Bulldog Group Inc., Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL - news) and Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW - news), today announced Content BOSS, an integrated enterprise content management solution that enables media-rich organizations to reduce marketing and production costs. Content BOSS combines Bulldog's enterprise content management software and services, Oracle8i with Oracle interMedia, and Sun's servers and network storage. The Content BOSS agreement aligns marketing and sales efforts of the three companies, including joint sales training programs, events and marketing initiatives.
The Content BOSS solution makes it easy for broadcasters, interactive broadcasters and content providers to implement digital asset management, which is increasingly becoming a foundation for new business models in the media industry. Additionally, Content BOSS can be extended to handle the specialized media management requirements of content companies who are developing new digital services. With Content BOSS, organizations can streamline media cataloging, enabling secure electronic distribution across a wide range of platforms.
Future Content BOSS plans include technical integration development and support for future releases of Bulldog and Oracle on Sun platforms. In addition, a Sun Microsystems Finance program will enable content companies and other media-rich organizations to more easily implement a digital asset management strategy. Customers will be able to finance any combination of Content BOSS software, hardware and services from Sun and Bulldog through a single source. Benefits include the ability to phase implementation of the Content BOSS digital asset management solution, while building technology refresh and lower cost of ownership into the plan.
``The challenge for content companies is to be able to securely distribute their material on any platform including devices that haven't been invented yet. Because it is based on open industry standards like Sun's Java technology, in the future, Content BOSS will scale to enable any device on any network to access digital content from any application,' said Stephen McKenna, worldwide sales director, Entertainment and Media for Sun Microsystems. ``When combined with the new Sun StorEdge Media Central platform, we offer a path whereby content companies can position for tomorrow's business models -- today.'
``For a content management solution to meet the demands of a global enterprise requires a scalable, reliable, Internet-ready platform,' states Chuck Rozwat, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies. ``At the core of Content BOSS is Oracle8i, so it is incredibly reliable and fast. And with Oracle interMedia, all of an enterprise's media and commercial content is available to the Content BOSS solution. Content BOSS support for Oracle Video Server completes the offering for digital broadcasting and interactive television. Customers get an end-to-end system that enables their operations to run more efficiently and gives them a strategic advantage in exploiting their media assets.'
With Content BOSS, customers can expedite business decision-making through efficient distribution and delivery of media assets such as posters, trailers, and still photos. ``The market has challenged us to provide digital asset management solutions that are open, scalable, and robust, that meet their specialized needs, and are easy to purchase and implement. Bulldog's content management expertise, combined with Sun's scalable servers and robust storage systems, and the innovative and reliable Oracle8i platform, delivers what our customers demand,' said Chris Strachan, CEO of The Bulldog Group. ``Content BOSS facilitates creative collaboration, eliminates production redundancies, and positions businesses to take advantage of new e-commerce opportunities.'
Content BOSS A Proven Solution at Sony Pictures
Sony Pictures Entertainment recognized the need for an enterprise-wide digital asset management system and is currently implementing its program utilizing the BOSS system. ``We are firmly committed to developing and implementing a digital asset management (DAM) strategy and operating system at Sony Pictures,' stated Kenneth S. Williams, president, Sony Pictures Digital Studios Division. ``It is clear to us that entertainment companies will operate from digital platforms in the future so it is of great strategic value to our company to establish a DAM system. Partnering with strong companies such as Bulldog, Oracle and Sun to create our digital ready enterprise solution positions SPE for great flexibility and growth as our production and distribution operations continue to expand.'
siliconinvestor.com
We upgrade systems every six months," says Don Ecklund, VP of engineering for Sony Pictures Entertainment, a division of Sony Corp. that has produced more than 200 DVDs in its California studios. "So when we learned about storage area networks and what they can do, we moved right in and adopted them." The result, he says, was deep cuts in the time it takes to make a DVD and, thus, cuts in production costs.
Last year at NAB-Video SAN Recorders VSR
Message 11275582
At NAB99, six different companies used off-the-shelf storage with SANergy to demonstrate VSRs including Vela Broadcast, Vibrint Technologies (Bedford, MA), Drastic Technologies (Toronto), Thomson Broadcast (Cergy-Pontoise, France), Videomedia (San Jose, CA), and Viewgraphics (Mountain View, CA).
And what do the broadcasters want at NAB in 2000?
Sorry for the long post. A couple things in highlights...
broadcastingcable.com
Date Posted: 2/18/2000
NAB 2000: Seller's Guide
Systems, more than products, are high on TV network shopping lists
By Andrew Bowser
Many network executives see the NAB convention, slated for April 10-13 in Las Vegas, as critical. With technologies in broadcasting, broadband and narrowband rapidly deployed, lead-time for sophisticated products and developments is shorter than ever.
Visits with TV executives suggest that, heading to the show, the networks have shifted focus away from the HD technology of recent years and toward systems for managing and repurposing, rather than creating, content. Video servers, asset managers and Web publishing tools are on many agendas.
Here is a peek at the technologies the TV networks are most interested in. The March 13 issue will take a look at what the major station groups will be shopping for.
CBS
Bob Ross
vice president, East Coast Operations, CBS
SHOPPING LIST:
MPEG-2 logo inserter, splicers
HDTV mastering gear
video servers
archival storage
Bob Ross' focus at NAB has shifted from the digital conversion of the network plant to seeking out tools that CBS needs to build an efficient broadcast-operations center.
As the network rolls out its long-awaited digital network distribution system to affiliates, Ross is in the market for MPEG products, mostly geared toward preparing material for transmission, which will allow insertion of bugs or other video into precompressed video data residing on servers.
"We have a lot of MPEG," Ross says. "We've made the decision to go with the Sony [BetaCam] SX format for our network newsgathering, which is MPEG. And our affiliate news feed system, CBS Newspath, is MPEG."
Several companies could provide logo inserters, bit-stream splicers and other MPEG-based products. Last year at NAB, Pro-Bel demonstrated a prototype logo inserter, and several other companies are talking about similar products, says Ross.
Digital studio cameras, playback and production equipment are not high on the network's list right now, with major construction on its Early Show studio completed. The Fifth Avenue studio is currently outfitted with Sony HD cameras using NTSC outputs. "We've built as much of the facility as we could for HD so that future conversion will be more easily accomplished," Ross explains.
CBS does require another HD edit room to complement its linear editing facility, which is mostly outfitted with Sony equipment, at CBS Television City in Los Angeles. How close manufacturers are to producing a nonlinear HD edit room is one question Ross hopes to get answered at NAB.
He's also looking to manufacturers that can provide good 1080i post-production equipment. Panasonic will be showing its DVCPRO HD offerings. Panasonic and Sony will also be talking about their HDTV tape decks--D-5 HD and HDCAM, respectively, which support both the 1080i/60 and 1080p/24 formats.
"I'm looking forward to seeing some more of the 24p equipment available," Ross says. "Twenty-four p is very interesting for us. Seventy percent of prime time is on film, so there's going to be some very good uses for 24p in the industry."
There's still more digital conversion work to be planned, although several CBS studios are full 601 component digital. Graphics are in 601 component, and there is a large 256 x 256 router--all in 601 component. There are still some islands of analog equipment with mono audio.
More digital upgrades are clearly in the offing. The network's 11-year-old library- management system, based on Sony hardware, is still working, but Ross is starting to plan for its replacement. "It's a mechanical system that's run the entire network very well," he explains. "We do not have a high error rate today. But it's costly to maintain, and won't last forever."
Ross says his ultimate goal is to install server systems that could store programs and commercials precompressed in MPEG, incorporate logo inserters that work with those servers, and create a flexible and efficient operation.
"If we're airing our feed to the affiliates at 16 Mb/s with long GOP [an MPEG group of pictures suitable for manipulation] and I can store that on the server that way--splice it and drop the logo in what we need--I have eliminated a lot of switching and terminal equipment that's required to do it the old-fashioned, NTSC, analog way," Ross explains.
For the future, CBS will be looking toward a project in which to put a large server system for hard news. The network news division is using Sony BetaCam SX now, according to Ross.
Tied to that project is tackling the massive job of handling the CBS News archive, comprising millions of cassettes and films in various formats. Ross' ideal system is one that merges metadata collected in the field with the video and passes the merged data through the entire production process, archives it automatically, and returns thumbnails or low-res video of some kind for verification.
One problem is the absence of metadata standards, which have yet to be completed. Network execs are hesitant to jump headlong into a major project and find out six months into it that they have to change what they had planned to do.
Another concern is price. "We've been thinking about this for a year and a half, and we're continuing to ponder the question, looking for a solution," Ross says. "The longer you wait, the less costly the hard drives are, and the more capacity they have. So the prices on a large server system keep going down."
CNN
Gordon Castle
vice president of research and development, CNN
SHOPPING LIST:
video servers
MPEG acquisition, transmission and editing equipment
asset-management solutions
If the digital future is a destination, then the CNN networks have just started to make the journey, according to Gordon Castle, vice president of research and development.
Castle comes to NAB 2000 seeking the latest digital equipment to complement projects already underway, including an agreement signed in April 1999 with Sony and IBM to develop a $20 million complete management solution for CNN's digital assets.
"Some of what we are looking at this year is the same as what we were looking for last year," he says, "though some of the projects are slightly different.
CNN engineers are proceeding with plans to eliminate videotape, so video servers are a top priority. Four of CNN's networks are all server-based: Headline News (Grass Valley Group and Leitch), CNN/SI (Quantel), CNN en Espa¤ol (Quantel) and CNNfn (Avid). The main CNN network and CNN International both make limited use of servers, including Leitch and Grass Valley Group. "CNN is a fairly diverse and complex animal," Castle says. "It is not appropriate to apply the same solutions in every place."
Castle will be looking at large server systems that could be deployed to handle the 250 hours of material brought in each day via feeds and edited in about 40 different edit rooms--that's for the CNN flagship cable channel alone.
He will also be looking to see what various manufacturers have done with MPEG over the past year. "We have the notion that what we are building here is a digital, nonlinear, compressed production environment, and that compression is MPEG," Castle explains. "So we will be looking to see how they have progressed with that, and where we can fit it into our plant."
CNN has picked MPEG-based equipment because of the format's flexibility, its efficiency and its acceptance not only in broadcast but also in computer-related fields, says Castle.
Specific MPEG equipment that CNN will be looking for at NAB ranges from acquisition equipment (cameras and field recorders) to transmission (satellite uplink, multiplexers) gear, servers and editing equipment.
"We have decided what we want to build is an entire MPEG production facility," Castle says. "We want to stay in the compressed domain throughout production."
CNN currently maintains approximately 60 JPEG-based Avid editors. The desire is to continue nonlinear editing but integrate it with MPEG servers and storage systems, so MPEG editors will be a hot topic at NAB.
CNN has leveraged automation to improve efficiencies and change production work flow, and Castle expects to be looking at new automation options for future projects. Lately, CNN has been working with two automation vendors: Pro-Bel and Florical Systems. Headline News, for example, uses Pro-Bel automation to handle all playout of programming and will be using Florical for playout of commercials. But that doesn't rule out the possibility of specifying equipment from Louth, OmniBus Systems or others in the future.
"We are constantly looking at what's happening in the marketplace," Castle says. "As we look to future projects, we want to make sure we are up-to-date on what the best technology is."
Graphics, especially products that allow automated mapping using satellite imagery, will also be important this year, says Castle.
But probably the highest priority for CNN at NAB will be finding asset-management solutions. Last years' $20 million Sony-IBM agreement to digitize CNN's assets, change the production structure and make future distribution easier and more dynamic was just that--an agreement.
CNN spent the next six months in "phase zero" specifying the details of the system. Construction is slated to begin in March 2000. Sony equipment that has been specified includes the PetaSite for data storage; within five years, the system will store approximately 200,000 hours. In addition, a Sony MAV-70 server will be used for encoding.
"We are trying to look at where the industry is going," Castle says. "It is not our goal to build a one-off system."
Specifically, he wants to buy "off-the-shelf" components that perhaps didn't even exist at NAB '99 and integrate them into the system, instead of reinventing it. "Industries tend to move faster the more customers there are," Castle says.
Discovery
Jay Schneider
vice president of production, operations and engineering services, Discovery Communications
SHOPPING LIST:
nonlinear editing gear
digital multiplexing equipment for satellite distribution
Web publishing technology
When Discovery Communications' Jay Schneider hits the NAB 2000 floor, he'll spend most of his time checking out the latest in HD acquisition and post-production, nonlinear editing, and digital statistical multiplexing equipment for satellite distribution.
For HD acquisition and post-production, Discovery is interested in the availability of portable equipment. Schneider, vice president of production, operations and engineering services, is particularly interested in what Sony is doing relative to 24p technology. "On the acquisition side," he says, "we are certainly looking at that."
The major reason Discovery is paying so much attention to 24p is that it has the potential to translate down to standard-def in both NTSC and PAL formats fairly seamlessly, according to Schneider. That's important because of Discovery's "borderless" programming reach: The network's content can be seen in 145 countries.
"We are looking for equipment that doesn't just do one thing but does a multitude of things," says Schneider, "so we can amortize that investment over a number of different processes."
Discovery is in the early stages of looking at portable digital cameras as well as stand-alone tape equipment. The network is not looking to create its own HD edit suites. However, the network does require the ability to view and log HD programming in-house and is also looking for ways to supply cameras to post-production partners currently tied into standard-def film or video production so that they can cost-effectively produce in HD.
Discovery already has a large commitment to nonlinear editing, using Avid's Symphony finishing system, Quantel's EditBox suite and a number of Avid Media Composers. The company is pleased with the systems' performance but is seeking improvements in storage capacity, processing horsepower and effects capability.
With the offline and online worlds continuing to migrate further towards a nonlinear environment, Schneider is interested in seeing the latest, not just from Avid but from Discreet Logic, Quantel and others on the NAB floor. "We do a great deal of both EDL [edit decision list] production and finishing work here, and we have found moving more and more toward the nonlinear domain is very efficient for the way we do business," Schneider says. "It's a big time-saver."
Cost is a driving factor in the move to nonlinear, as many vendors are building directly into online finishing devices like EditBox and Symphony a lot of tools that would be outboard products in a traditional linear finishing room. Thus, says Schneider, it may be much less expensive to put up a full-bandwidth, all-digital nonlinear editing room as opposed to an all-digital linear room.
Discovery is also in the market for cutting-edge Web streaming and publishing products. Jeff Craig, senior vice president for interactive technology and new-media development for Discovery.com, is looking for services and systems that create the architecture for delivery of integrated content--not only streaming linear video but also on-demand interactive TV content.
Discovery.com's chosen enterprise content-management system is Bulldog. Craig and colleagues are currently evaluating video-content-management systems that integrate with it. The online company is also evaluating methods for making video interactive and "clickable." One of the companies being checked out is Veon, although no vendor choices have been made yet.
The road to convergence will be long. Sharing video between online and cable, for example, still requires a conversion from standard digital video to Web-specific formats like QuickTime or Real Video, although Schneider expects that standards such as MPEG will allow for content creation that is exploitable over multiple formats. "Right now, there are high-quality video production formats that rely on CCIR 601 [component digital at 270 Mb/s], and then there are the Web tools that are highly compressed, bit-rate-reduced, and require conversion," he says. "I don't expect that to change this year."
What's here now, however, is statistical multiplexing for satellite distribution. Schneider, keen on exploiting satellite capacity to get maximum throughput at the highest quality, will be evaluating products from Scientific-Atlanta and Motorola--both of which have already supplied Discovery with some statistical multiplexing equipment--as well as from the NTL Group.
Just don't expect Schneider to whip out his checkbook. "As a show," he says, "NAB has become less and less of a focal point for decision-making and more and more of a research tool."
Fox
Andrew Setos
executive vice president, News Corp.'s News Technology Group
SHOPPING LIST:
ATM-based telecom services
asset-management systems
computer-networking technology
Fox's Andy Setos is going into NAB 2000 seeking companion technology to the DTV equipment on which he focused at previous shows: digital gear that works with traditional network functions.
Fox's appetite for new and more sophisticated DTV products is expected only to increase over time. But, for NAB, Setos' interests lie elsewhere.
"I don't think there's any concern for the basic tools, at least in my company," he says. "They're available. They work more or less okay. And so that's sort of behind us now."
Indeed, the industry has come a long way from the days when NAB attendees couldn't even buy an STL (studio-to-transmitter link) if they wanted to. Now most key DTV elements are beyond the prototype stage and into the product stage, leaving buyers like Fox to spend time at NAB concentrating on new equipment that will allow the network to digitally record, store, edit and play back video.
Fox's quest to reduce its reliance on the videotape machine means the network's executives will be trolling NAB looking for computer technology that has the potential to change its TV facility--whether client-server architecture, high-speed network architecture, or storage hierarchies and asset management.
The network has taken some modest steps from synchronous streaming to file transfer but is looking to "change dramatically" over the course of the next year. Equipment to accomplish that is what Fox is seeking.
While Setos hesitates to name specific products, he acknowledges that he's in the market not only for server products but for services. "We're looking very closely at ATM [asynchronous transfer mode] products so that the high-speed network connects all these things, transcends the plant and goes wide-area, across the U.S. and into the world."
Already, the Fox Network Center is achieving some of those efficiencies. "For Malcolm in the Middle, they gave us a digital videotape, but, past that videotape, it's all file servers and high-speed networks," says Setos.
"While that's the entire network, it's a physically small application. What we would like to do is have all of our media be changed over--for instance, in post-production and in storage--to virtual files where no one is really handling materials," he notes. "They are logging them in, but there's no paper. And they are recording them, but there are no cartridges."
The exact nature of an appropriate assetmanagement system could be fleshed out at NAB. The solution, Setos says, lies somewhere between a "gussied-up inventory-control system" and a grand solution that can tell you "which frame of which picture of which episodic played in what part of the world to what audience, and how much they paid for it.
To reduce costs, networks can't afford to spring for custom solutions in each application. There is the feeling among some network execs that promising, truly out-of-the-box solutions might be making their debut at NAB this year. "We're sort of where we were last year with digital television elements," Setos says. "But it's probably going to take longer to get those solutions done than building the discrete components for digital TV."
Servers have come a long way from the first basic IBM systems unveiled on the floor of NAB nearly a decade ago to the Grass Valley Profile servers Fox employs. Manufacturers may finally be delivering on "one of the great unfulfilled promises" of the industry. But Setos still sees a glaring gap between what he wants to buy and the capability of today's server technology. That's what is holding up purchases of robotic tape-based systems and other complementary tools.
What Setos and others are looking for are good, broad-scale, integrated network solutions. "Because after all, the TV marketplace--and I'm using TV in the broadest sense--overloads the traditional network technologies applied for the desktop and even heavy industrial use. They're talking megabits a second, and we're talking gigabits, plural, a second," says Setos. "Because of that, there is a gap in performance."
Fox currently uses Fibre Channel network equipment to deliver a payload of about one-half gigabit per second, which is adequate for very small areas of activity but not generically. Because of that, network-operations folks don't expect a computer network topology to replace conventional X-Y routing switchers any time soon. We need more bandwidth- Where's the 2 G spec
"We see that coming, but not today," Setos says. "Of course, hopefully, we'll be pleasantly surprised, and someone will have that at NAB."
HBO
Bob Zitter
senior vice president of technology operations, HBO
SHOPPING LIST:
video servers
automation and archiving software
networking technologies
HBO's Bob Zitter goes into NAB 2000 with most of his major purchases for the year already completed, having placed large equipment orders for its major production studio rebuilding. That leaves him with plenty of time to research servers and software for the network's highly automated network-origination facility in Hauppauge, N.Y.
"We're moving more and more from videotape to video servers," Zitter explains. "One of the things that we're interested in is how we can come up with better interfacing between our servers and the automation systems."
Since HBO makes good use of its Louth automation system, Zitter will probably be talking to Harris, which bought Louth in January, to find out what the new owners' plans are for the product line. Likewise, he'll visit the Grass Valley Group booth to talk about the former Tektronix VND product line.
In the studio space, HBO is interested in strategies to better connect workstations, local storage and archival storage in the production environment so that the various pieces can work more like a system. Zitter says he's not likely to find solutions as well-developed as the news systems that have been marketed for years now. "We know these are not so much products that you put in your bag and walk home from Las Vegas with, but that's what we're focusing on."
HBO's recent studio-equipment purchases, which have not been announced yet, were designed to accommodate its increased schedule of original programming, such as Inside the NFL and the recently announced Bob Costas show slated for 2001. HBO is also considering introducing some shows produced outside the network.
The network's origination facility pumps out 20 standard-def HBO and Cinemax feeds and two network high-def feeds, along with originating other networks, such as Comedy Central. In addition, the facility is the locus for packaging, digital compression and satellite transmission of 48 networks for Time Warner Cable's AthenaTV digital satellite feed. In sum, the facility transmits approximately 80 networks, 24 hours a day.
HBO's robotic operation includes more than 30 Sony Flexicarts that play out network programming and Grass Valley Profile servers that handle interstitials and time-zone delay. The facility has a Pluto hi-def server. A typical control room operates eight networks with playout using the Louth automation system, while master control handles overall monitoring and radio-frequency signal management.
What the large operation needs in order to be more efficient, says Zitter, is a network for its servers. An interstitial programming server, for example, could interface with the network-program-schedule software and learn where promos need to be sub-distributed, so that each control room could have every spot needed within the coming 24 hours.
The problem, says Zitter, is that no one has ever really built an automated system interface to move, cache and archive content in a way that meets HBO's needs. The network has been working out possible development strategies, both in-house and with outside vendors.
Noticeably absent from Zitter's NAB agenda is any serious consideration of HD- equipment purchase. HBO has bought all it needs right now for hi-def, including a raft of Panasonic D-5 HD VTRs, three HD Smart-Cart automation systems and two Philips Spirit telecines. "I'm hoping that everyone else who has chosen to follow rather than lead uses NAB as an opportunity to join the bandwagon," Zitter says. "As I've said publicly before, we're doing so much HDTV programming that we're not ready to expand it yet until the base of viewers grows."
HBO's high-def feeds, carried by DirecTV and EchoStar along with Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems, are showing between 50% and 60% of film products in true HDTV, with the rest upconverted. The network still has not started producing any original HDTV programming but plans to in the future.
One major obstacle in the way of rolling out original HD programming--besides the limited consumer demand for the service--is the lack of HDTV post-production equipment geared toward high-end production. "I think there has been some progress made, and I'm hoping to see at NAB that there will be more," Zitter says. "But some of the equipment that high-end producers use is maybe some of the last product that would be developed."
MSNBC
Mel Weidner
vice president of technical operations, MSNBC
SHOPPING LIST:
tapeless newsroom systems
asset-management systems
MPEG-2 encoders
For MSNBC's Mel Weidner, NAB 2000 will be a fact-finding mission to identify a server-based system that supports acquisition, editing, playback and archiving--even though he's not quite ready to chuck the network's traditional tape machines.
"Although we have met with multiple [server] vendors and seen their product offerings, we are not yet comfortable that any of those offerings are ready for prime time," Weidner says. "So we will continue to research."
MSNBC's plant, which has a 601 serial digital component infrastructure, uses tape machines based on the Sony Betacam SP format, outfitted with encoders and decoders on either side. When the plant was built, Beta SP was chosen because of the paucity of economically feasible disk-based systems and its compatibility with NBC News.
Before NAB '99, Weidner challenged his staffers to come up with a game plan to move into a digital, tapeless environment.
"We still haven't found any particular solution that meets our needs in all areas," Weidner says. "It's not an easy thing."
The cost of tape vs. disk space is not the only issue, according to Director of Engineering Chris Lizza. "The key is to be able to treat the video as files," he says, "and to have all the associated metadata with the video material preserved, so that it can be passed around the plant, modified, changed and retrieved from whatever stage in the production process it happens to be in."
Among the syste |
