Now that the virtual IBC 2020 has passed with hardly a whimper on the world broadcasting stage, paradoxically vendors, service providers and content producers are counting the indirect cost of the real event’s absence.
With the release of the core parts of the SMPTE ST 2110 suite, the confusion around different transport standards for audio and video over IP is settled. However, the adoption of these solutions for day-to-day use is still far from easy. While there are more and more pure IP facilities and OB trucks now in service, they take significant time to set up and are only practical when a single vendor interface is used.
As TV and movie production studios begin to slowly resume operations, they are doing so very carefully and with a number of government-mandated protocols for safe working in place. Some say these operational restrictions—limited crew, remote control when possible, non-essential personnel are not allowed—are significantly adding to the time it typically would take to complete a project. For starters, all shared equipment, microphones, and other TV production tools must be disinfected after each use.
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With the population of China approaching 1.4 billion, it’s perhaps no surprise that it is fast becoming the biggest market in the world for theatrical film exhibition, with the largest number of cinema screens of any single country. Directors such as Wong Kar-Wai and the stars of Chinese cinema – names like Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi – have long been enjoying international attention, but the grass roots of Chinese film and (particularly) TV production are less often encountered outside the country.
The consumer video market is growing fiercely competitive between content creators and content aggregators and OTT live and OTT VOD formats are growing increasingly fragmented. Consumers are benefiting from the tremendous choice of content and sources for that content while their tolerance for a negative Quality of Experience (QoE) continues to fall. Providers find themselves in the stark reality of having to balance getting to market faster, with greater unit cost efficiencies and with persistent QoE.
Once upon a time, the cause of data corruption would be accidental. A dropout on a tape or interference picked up on a cable would damage a few bits. Error correction was designed to deal with that.
When the pandemic began shutting down TV stations in the spring of this year, journalists and producers were left to figure out how to work from home and set up technical systems they were very unfamiliar with. In many cases panic set in.
TV test and measurement gear and instrument solutions also facilitate remote production and monitoring.
