Suitcase TV has transformed their existing products to take on the demands of 3DTV for broadcasters. 3DTV has particularly captured the imagination of cinema-goers over the last 18 months with blockbuster releases such as Avatar (James Cameron, 2010) and the Six Nations Rugby, which was shown live across selected UK cinemas. But now, broadcasters want to bring the 3D experience into the home.
According to a BBC report*:
“…the picture looks promising with a survey showing around 3.4m 3DTV sets will be sold in the US this year.”
Now with the potential and capability for 3D shooting and transmission of the London Olympics this summer,
it is surely an exciting time for 3DTV.
Suitcase TV has taken it’s existing products such as Splice - for generating quick EDLs, ShotLogger - for effective shot logging and TrakStak - broadcast audio re-mapping, and have added new functionality for use within the 3D market.
From acquisition, Media Ingest can handle a range of delivery formats including MXF, QT MOV, and DPX as individual left/right files or can ‘unwrap’ an interlaced L/R mix combined file.
Built within the established MediaStor architecture, Suitcase TV’s storage systems now operate a fully tailored 3D infrastructure, housing files as individual essence or as combined files that includes all audio tracks with their L/R pair. With up to 64 mono audio tracks with L/R pair, this becomes ample for multi-language, surround-sound and multi-channel audio mixes, all using advanced browse capabilities.
As with the SD/HC versions of ShotLogger, Splice and TrakStak, the stereoscopic video is transcoded to ‘browse’resolution versions, to permit long-term online storage & remote access to content. Splice also has an ‘edit conform engine’ to allow publishing of high-resolution edits, making content ready for craft-editing system such as Avid and Final Cut; with options to publish to a variety of file formats.
Complete the workflow with the MediaXchange, by transcoding media to other formats compliant for playout; with compression types such as MPEG, MPEG-4 AVC, uncompressed (DPX), DNxHD and DV. Finally, export as separate L/R essences or as combined files.
Suitcase TV’s Technical Director, David Atkins comments:
“It was clear that 3D was going to be the future for the broadcast industry and we have worked hard to adapt out current product range to fulfil these new demands.”
* BBC Technology News 2010. 3D TV is being billed as possible industry saviour. [Online] (Updated 8th January 2010). Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8447432.stm
Did you know that it’s easy to keep your finger on the Suitcase TV pulse in a variety of ways?
And of course through the website at www.suitcasetv.com
Just take two typical types of data storage: the spinning disk or hard disk; and the tape library. Both these forms of storage were developed primarily for business use where the data consists of small parcels of information that is accessed in, more or less, random order by the user. The amount of data stored or retrieved each time tends to be quite low and so the bandwidth, or size of the aperture for getting data out of the box, can be quite small. However the speed of finding the correct data from the midst of the box has to be quite high.
Like a box of miscellaneous buttons – you may only need to take one out at a time but you have to be able to find the right one quickly. This requires some kind of indexing or filing system and limits the number of “hands in the box”.
Importantly, each frame is not accessed randomly, with media the data is contiguous. Each frame-worth of data is followed by another frame-worth of data, and at a steady rate, until the programme is finished. When streaming the media you cannot afford to lose frames, or change the order of the media or have uneven streaming rates. Streaming Media is the perfect application for a computer because it involves doing the same task 25 times a second until the end. But if the storage used for the media is the wrong size or has the wrong aperture or can’t work quickly enough then problems will ensue.
At Suitcase TV we have developed a range of intelligent storage devices and media management software that optimise both the storage and the processing of media. MediaStor is not just a storage solution, it is a media management concept. The TeraStor intelligent storage device uses both high capacity, high density spinning disk technology as well as quad-core processors for maximising the ability for onboard media processing.
MediaXchange, the media management software, assumes that you want maximum control of your media without having to know the intricacies of the file management structure that lies under the surface, or of the physical storage devices.
But spinning disk is not the only storage medium available and for some applications, such as disaster recovery or back-up, tape storage is preferred by many. Once again there is a marked difference in how tape storage works for business data and less well for media. For example, if you back up disk storage on to tape a common approach, employed by most suppliers of tape library middle ware, is to simply take a periodic snap shot of the data on the disk storage and pack it onto tape in a random order. This is a high risk, and very inefficient method of backing up media.
MediaStor Archivist assumes that you would want to back up all new media on the system as soon as possible and the moment a new piece of media is ingested and appears on the disk the Archivist commences building a back up of that media. The media components (video, multiple audio, subtitles etc.) are all gathered together and written to one tape, but, as one tape may be large enough for multiple programmes, to optimise the use of tape and minimise the number of times the robot has to move around, the “tape” copy is held as a virtual back up until such time as the tape can be filled by the contents of back up. If and when the archive copy of the programme needs to be restored to on-line, all components can be restored from one tape, or at most two.
Clearly cost is a major driver when it comes to selecting the storage platform for any computer system. General IT storage is now severely commoditised and presents a very tempting choice for broadcast and media companies, but buying the cheapest product is not always the most cost effective or efficient strategy for media storage.
The television industry has changed significantly over the last ten years. Huge leaps forward in technology, changes in regulation and increasing competition in nearly every part of the industry, have resulted in a vast range of television channels being available to the consumer 24/7.
TV is now available in may different formats and through many different providers via cable, satellite and still terrestrial broadcasts. As soon as the TV screen of a customer goes black because transmission has been interrupted, it is a potential loss of revenue to the service provider. The loss of revenue can ripple back up the transmission chain and eventually stops with the engineer who didn’t notice a problem with a TX server. For this reason, Suitcase TV has developed applications to automatically monitor both transmissions, on and off air, and system process and workflows.
Purple Monitoring, from Suitcase TV is a flexible system for monitoring broadcasts, on or off-air. It is suitable for most signal formats, including ASI, in either real time or sampling modes, to detect errors such as video-freeze, video black, video synch (analogue), audio silence and audio loudness.
The Purple Monitoring displays can be hosted on standard PC monitors, plasma displays or video walls and can be fully customised by the NOC engineer to display channel and audio & visual alarm information. These system provide vital information about the status of the channels being broadcast enabling engineers and manager to responds swiftly to faults and outages.
Aqua DashBoard, a new product from Suitcase TV, is a system process & workflow-monitoring tool. Initially only available as to run alongside the Suitcase TV MediaStor Media Asset Management System, DashBoard offers a customisable viewing portal of the system’s status, using graphical displays such as traffic light style indicators, and gauges. At a glance, the operator can detect whether systems are operating normally or if problems have been encountered. Unlike many network monitoring application that often use SNMP monitoring, DashBoard can report on every aspect of the system: Media Job Processing, Storage Monitoring, Application activity (including database activity), Hardware status, Network/bandwidth monitoring. DashBoard can also display trends as well as current status. For the future, DashBoard will be capable of sending text alerts and enable remote access using web browsers and mobile hand-held devices such as telephones.
The first development version of Aqua DashBoard was launched at IBC 2010 and will solely monitoring Suitcase TV MediaStor, but later versions will take on 3rd party monitoring.
Exporting subtitles, attaching scripts and documents, statistics viewer and track QC highlighting are all featured in the brand new release of Suitcase TV’s TrakStak. These features will improve productivity in audio production and quality control, prior to transmission.
TrakStak alleviates the need for an array of audio & video processing tools to perform simple lip-sync adjustments, multiple audio-track content reviewing and subtitle checks. TrakStak acts as a central component to any audio management or audio preparation processing chain, prior to transmission. The software, released a few years ago, has proved extremely successful, used internationally on a daily basis processing thousands of content hours in both automated and manual workflows.
http://www.suitcasetv.com/html/trakstak.html
Ever had the need to create multiple versions and formats of your live content in real-time? Suitcase TV’s latest technology advancement means you can do just that!
For many years, the ability to tag your pre-recorded content with as much metadata as you could possibly ever want or need has been available in ShotLogger. The principle is simple – tagging key events with timecode accuracy makes compiling a highlights package or promo quick and easy. In fast-turnaround situations, like live sports or news, it will put you ahead of your competition.
Now new ShotLogger ‘Live’ takes this process a huge step further, by tagging metadata against a live stream.
ShotLogger ‘Live’ enables operators to mark-up sensitive images and tag these for re-processing, such as deletion, blurring, pixelisation as well as any audio tracks which need bleeping. This process of redaction also enables content to be made broadcast ready for catch-up and VoD type broadcast.
MediaXchange renderer uses the captured live stream and pre-defined visual effect templates with the new metadata to publish the new content as little as 5 minutes after broadcast.
Your ‘re-purposed’ content is then available in multiple formats and to ready to publish to multiple locations.
With 1000s of additional hours of sports content being generated by the London Olympics, Paralympics and UEFA Euro 2012 this year, additional revenue generation and edit suite utilisation are paramount. Can you afford not to shotlog?
http://www.suitcasetv.com/html/shotlogger.html
By David Atkins, Technical Director – Suitcase TV Ltd
Cloud computing has been around a long time. I seem to remember right back in the 1980s the phrase “distributed processing” describing one, if not the first, evolutionary step towards the concept of the Cloud. I am not sure when it acquired the nomenclature “Cloud” but most people in IT have been aware of it probably for a decade or more. It seems that only recently has the idea caught on in a big way in media and broadcast.
According to a reputable article Cloud computing is defined as “virtualisation plus storage, software and infrastructure as services”. The Virtualisation bit means that the user doesn’t actually know the physical location of any of the data or where it is processed. The user observes a virtual representation of a file structure at best. The system deals with moving the data around, processing and making it available to the user as necessary.
For some, storage as a service is a good business model, not just because it makes economic sense but because it gives them the flexibility to expand and contract the amount of storage required by the business and therefore enhances their responsiveness to the market. For storing full resolution content by the PetaByte it does not necessarily provide the best model. A combination of self-owned storage and cloud storage can present the best model for content where only browse or low-resolution copies are held in the cloud.
Software as a service is gaining ground with several providers gaining market share. However none have yet truly addressed the issues associated with streaming video reliably to the desktop over a public network. Security of content is a significant problem and truly agnostic web streaming engines have not yet made it to market but are probably on their way.
Infrastructure advances continue apace making it relatively commonplace to have bandwidth in the region of 4 to 10 Mbs – more than enough to make cloud computing a viable option.
It is all these things that make Suitcase TV a good place to go for people considering cloud-based media solutions. We began with the concept of virtualised storage systems eight years ago when we first designed MediaStor – both a storage device and a virtualised file system. MediaStor has the ability to be both inside a private and secure broadcast LAN and part of the Cloud using MediaStor edge-servers. Automated processing and workflow tools enable remote users to manage the high-res content by working with streaming browse from the MediaStor browse server without ever caching a copy of the content locally – thereby addressing a major security issue with your high value assets.
Web-enabled editing and other functionality is available at the desktop using the Aqua suite of products or, alternatively, integrated with professional editing suites, such as Avid, using AquaDuct.
These days there’s no reason not to build your own cloud or hop on to someone else’s with Suitcase TV.
Aqua ShotLogger, as its name describes, logs shots. It is designed for the fast logging of shots and creating quick metadata tags. Annotating the media content, the metadata makes the video’s relevance greater, and enhances opportunities to re-use the content with faster identification of key events, clips and interest points. Whether tagging the day’s rushes, or a live sporting event, Aqua ShotLogger enables instantaneous metadata annotation within a user-friendly GUI environment.
Aqua ShotLogger has new features for capture, key frame display, browse and remote working. In the last fortnight, ShotLogger has been used perform remote tagging over a distance of more than 5,000 miles, from the user in Los Angeles to the company’s server in the UK, with excellent results. ShotLogger has a customisable keyword pad where tags are pre-defined and can be “colour-coded” for easy and fast recognition. Keywords can be structured within templates that fit the content providing both speed and consistency in the tagging process. From live news broadcasts to party political debates, sport and music, ShotLogger can cater for all events.
ShotLogger is ideal for swift compliance labelling, identifying cautions, such as swear words, nudity, violence, strobe lighting, which previously would have been carried out by hand and on paper, making future access to the information difficult. Taking a non-paper-based approach, allows the user to tag the event on the timeline synchronised with the video content with the timecode for reference. The beauty of this system is that it allows multi-user and multi-region access to the tagged content, saving hours when it comes to re-editing to make the programme compliant. Suitcase TV customers have commented that ShotLogger has considerably sped up their programme production, demonstrating that by knowing where the important events were in the rushes, that these could be pulled out of the TeraBytes of footage to make the edit.
For more information contact Suitcase TV Ltd. Phone, +44 (0)1473 258251, email: sales@suitcasetv.com or visit the website at www.suitcasetv.com
Aqua Splice joins together your media, users and your edit suites, without tape. Where Aqua Splice excels is in its ability to generate EDLs that reduce time spent in full editing facilities. This increased cost effectiveness is vital in the modern broadcast environment and the current economic climate. Splice is compatible with most video formats to produce rough cuts of your content, whether it is previously shot material or live content for a fast turnaround programme. The intuitive GUI is easy to use, with familiar navigation tools including a ‘clip in clip out’ selection process, making it quick and easy to identify the required segments of content. Once the EDL has been created the virtual edit sequence can be viewed prior to publishing. Splice will work with full resolution media or with low resolution “browse” copies. The user also has the ability to choose the format and resolution of the media before it is published.
As a web-enabled editing platform, Splice can permit multiple users from almost anywhere in the world to edit the material in a protected environment. As the content is streamed to a remote workstation without local caching simple edits can be created without risk of content piracy.
Jules Swain, Sales Manager at Suitcase TV says: “The current economic climate has had an impact on all those within the broadcast industry, with this in mind Suitcase TV realised that there was a need for making a more cost-effective editing facility ”
Splice also has the additional benefit of working in conjunction with Suitcase TV’s ShotLogger, allowing the user to search previously logged events and making Aqua Splice the perfect addition to your workflow.
For more information please contact sales@suitcasetv.com or visit www.suitcasetv.com
