Media security is top of the list for broadcast executives. And the recent Sony Pictures hack illustrates that everyone is a potential target. John Watkinson looks at why cyber-attacks have become common, and what broadcasters, Hollywood and TV show makers can do to try and protect their investments.
OTT revenues are set to rocket to $42 billion by 2020, creating opportunities and threats in equal measure for media owners. As consumers are awash with great content on exciting new platforms, behind the scenes the logistics elements of the TV supply chain are creaking and starting to show their age: The old MAM architectures no longer appear to meet the new media management challenges.
Part 2 of the Digital Production Partnership’s guidelines for independent producers looking to refresh or create a file-based asset management policy examines where content should be kept and advice for organising a digital file.
As production company’s deliver more and more of their content to UK broadcasters as files, it is asking a great many questions about their company wide asset management policy. The Digital Production Partnership (DPP) is supporting indies with guidance on how to store master files and valuable rushes in a cost effective, well-organised and commercially useful way. Whether you’re designing your own in-house archive or paying someone else to store your material, the questions you’ll need to ask are the same. The following is part of the DPP’s guidance which works through some of those questions.
Don’t confuse YUV color space with RGB color space. The differences are critical for broadcast signals.
For contemporary cutting-edge audio infrastructure, many broadcasters continue to choose AES10 (ANSI S4.43-1991), a.k.a. MADI, to transport up to 64 channels of digital audio over a single coax or fiber optic cable.
In this look at the potential use of IT solutions in broadcast applications, John Watkinson turns to key issues of bandwidth, latency and compression.
Over the last 25 years developers have worked on producing specific networking systems for broadcast that can transport many channels of high quality audio in the most efficient and budget conscious way. Since the mid 1980s Ethernet has formed the basis of many networks, for both IT and audio. CobraNet is generally regarded within the industry as the first commercially successful digital audio over Ethernet system. It first appeared in 1996 and while largely seen as a live and installed sound tool it showed what networking technology could do. The growing interest in networking around the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries was reflected by the Audio Engineering Society (AES) organising a “moving audio” conference 14 years ago. This was at a time when, according to AES standards manager Mark Yonge chairing the Audio Networking Forum in London on 12 December, networks were a “new and novel idea”.
