NAB Session Looks At New Forms Of Virtualization For Audio Production
At a recent SMPTE Australia show, Agile Broadcast helped Wheatstone set up a demonstration of its virtualized products.
Due to advances in IP content delivery and production crew collaboration, new virtual tools are augmenting the connected studio. Broadcasters are now able to customize studios and workflows with virtual interfaces that talk directly to anything that touches the IP audio network. They’re replacing hardware newsrooms with virtual mixers, mobilizing the studio using tablets and other virtual interfaces in the field, and scripting their own version of what broadcast looks and feels like.
At the 2018 NAB Show, on Saturday, April 7th at 1:30pm (North Hall - Meeting Room #N260), Wheatstone will host a technical session entitled “The Mission’s the Same – The Tools Have Changed,” which looks at the virtualization of the audio program production process. Chris Penny, Director, Agile Broadcast (Wheatstone’s Australian distributor in Bayswater, Victoria) will discuss various “smart strategies” for virtual production workflows.
Chris Penny, Director, Agile Broadcast.
Penny will spotlight new intelligent tools that can now query the network for information, and then act on it. He’ll provide examples of stations building workflows using widgets and how to augment existing studios using new virtual tools. He’ll also discuss changes in system platforms that are transforming the connected studio and will look at working examples of scripts and scripting tools now being used by broadcasters to create customized user interfaces, virtual environments and workflows.
One such virtual development platform is Wheatstone’s ScreenBuilder—a suite of task-specific applications like virtual faders, meters, labels, buttons, clocks, timers, and other widgets—that operators can use to customize control panels and touchscreens for control and monitoring. ScreenBuider is used to take advantage of existing IP audio infrastructures and transform how broadcasters manage workflows, share resources and adapt to change.
“Virtualization isn’t an entirely new concept,” Mr. Penny said. “Wheatstone has been virtualizing studio functions since the very early days of IP audio networking, and not just on the surface…but inside the network, too.”
Broadcasters are increasingly augmenting hardware and taking advantage of existing IP audio network infrastructure by using virtual development tools such as Wheatstone’s ScreenBuilder. Pictured is a virtual news desk on a tablet complete with RSS feeds for weather, stocks and news combined with a modified TS-4 Talent Station that has a cough button, talkback, mic input, cue speaker and headphone jack. Virtual editing interfaces such as this are replacing banks of news workstations in stations today.
Indeed, early AoIP adopters will recall Wheatstone’s Glass E virtual mixer for the laptop and the introduction of virtual mixers at every I/O point on the network with the launch of the WheatNet-IP audio network in 2008.
“Virtualizing resources instead of limiting them to fixed hardware makes sense for a whole host of reasons, foremost among them the scalability and flexibility of software,” Chris said. “So far, however, virtualization implementations haven't moved much beyond a software look-and-feel of the hardware it’s replacing.
“But what if you had your own virtual development platform with the smarts to do virtually anything you want to do in the studio?” he said. “What if you could determine what to put behind the glass, on a button, fader, meter, and optimize your workflow based on the status of devices on your network? How useful would it be to develop your own unique virtual studio that is built for you, and can evolve with you?”
During the session, Mr. Penny will also look at applying the same virtualization concept to hardware, making a studio console as dynamically changeable as any software interface.
“We can now take advantage of existing AoIP infrastructure such as WheatNet-IP using smart virtual development tools like ScreenBuilder to transform how broadcasters manage workflows, share resources, and adapt to change,” Mr. Penny said. “This is an exciting development in virtualization.”
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