The broadcasting landscape is maturing into a hybrid, combining public cloud provision as a service with on premise processing, according to the demands of the application. Playout is very much moving to the public cloud, but in tandem with supporting analytics processes that may be executed on in-house systems.

There may be a need to incorporate real time visual monitoring, which can only be accurate if generated at the viewing device. Then any content provider serving multiple markets will need varying degrees of localization for captioning, subtitles, and compliance monitoring. Those functions may be best distributed, which might still be done in the cloud, but could involve on premise systems as well in a hybrid set up.

Indian video infrastructure provider Amagi underlines the importance of staying rooted in the core requirements of playout, whether or not they are implemented in the public cloud. The company recognizes 10 categories of playout function, starting with the obvious need for high video quality, frame accuracy, audio processing and dynamic graphics support.

The relative importance of these depends on content types, and geographical profile. High quality video always matters, but is even more critical at ultra-HD, when any drop in QoS would be most discernable. And another of Amagi’s categories, native captioning and subtitle support, is obviously less relevant for local stations, but absolutely critical for reaching audiences across linguistic borders, or even within the US when delivering English and Spanish versions of content.

By the same token, latency, one more of Amagi’s 10 categories, is always important but has become much more so in the case of live sports streaming. Defined as the delay between the event and its playout, high latency is detrimental to sports viewing, not so much because it matters being a minute or two behind live per se, but because the experience is ruined if, say, viewers hear of a goal being scored from their social media feed before it is played out on their TV.

Cloudification and automation of master control are recurring playout themes at the moment. At NAB2025, Florical Systems, ultimately at least part owned by the Denver-based iHeartRadio Group, will be promoting its master control automation software as being ready for public cloud deployment.  This is targeted particularly at large TV stations with regional sites in multiple time zones.

Florical does concede that centralization of master control based on a more traditional on-premises model still makes sense for legacy linear service providers, or any distributor still considering how to consolidate master control. “That is particularly true given the vastly improved capabilities of common-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware used in on-premises solutions,” said Shawn Maynard, Florical’s SVP and GM of automation.

The need to accommodate various forms of hybrid is also acknowledged by Telestream, another prominent vendor in the playout arena with its Vantage platform. “Vantage empowers customers to strategically navigate these challenges with a flexible platform that optimizes both infrastructure and workflows—on-premises, hybrid, and in the cloud—to achieve maximum performance, scalability, cost-efficiency, and monetization,” said Benjamin Desbois, Chief Growth and Strategy Officer, Telestream.”

Vendors are keen to parade prestigious customers and Amagi has sports broadcaster DAZN as a reference site. The two collaborated over the launch of 10 new DAZN channels, announced in May 2024. Now Amagi can show how it has helped DAZN embrace FAST for global sports distribution, expanding its audience reach beyond paying subscribers. That brings challenges of scale, with less certainty over capacity required and, if not set up correctly, longer deployment times for new channels.

FAST requires determining where to insert industry standard SCTE-35 markers for ad insertion, which is especially challenging for live sports. Here machine learning scores by automating and accelerating that process, so that ads can then be inserted on the fly for playout.

AI is rapidly encroaching on many other aspects of playout workflow, including personalization and decisions over the content itself. AI will ordain which ads are placed on an increasingly granular level, down to hyper-local ad insertion reaching down towards individual users.

Vendor Focus

Florical Systems (Booth N 2339) is a leading advocate of automated master control in the public cloud as the culmination of a process towards centralization that it has been tracing over 35 years in the field. The company now offers an integrated playout system called Acuitas in a modular design. 

The aim is to cover the whole field while allowing customers to pare the system back to the components they require, with support for the principal codecs and resolutions, covering both IP and SDI. The company argues that Acuitas reduces the need for external equipment by offering built-in automation, graphics, EAS, effects, conversion, and switching, among other features.

Florical’s Shawn Maynard, SVP and GM, noted that this trend towards consolidated workflows has been in train for over 10 years. “Some large station groups streamlined their master control workflows ago over a decade ago by consolidating playout and traffic functions, either in dedicated network operations centres or in one or more individual stations that served as a hub,” he said. This allowed common centralized hardware and personnel to support multiple channels.

“Today, many of the same groups are looking at the [public] cloud as the next step in their master control evolution, and some are already using the cloud to playout new diginets or OTT channels,” Maynard added.

Whether or not they embrace the cloud, broadcasters can now reap the benefits of investment in COTS hardware by big vendors like HP, Lenovo and Dell, he added.

Amagi Systems (Booth W 1721) is centering on its Cloudport channel playout platform built to deliver linear channels over satellite, fibre, or IP. Like most other cloud playout offerings this is hosted on one of the big three hyperscaler platforms, in this case AWS. This makes it easier to ingest content from multiple live sources as required increasingly for new and sports streaming, while incorporating Digital Video Effects (DVE) and advanced graphics. 

The platform can automate playlist generation and quality checks for configurable parameters over the cloud. It can also simplify the workflow for production and master control operators, which can now synchronize on-screen graphics, digital video effects, and commercial breaks with minimal re-training.

Such rationalization of the workflow owes much to Amagi’s collaboration with Sony Group company Nevion, announced in December 2023. That brought together master control room (MCR) functionality embodied in Amagi’s Cloudport with the orchestration capabilities of Nevion VideoIPath. This reduced the need for technical expertise to integrate cloud-based MCR capabilities into ground-based production workflows.

Telestream (Booth W 1501) is showing several additions to its flagship Vantage platform at NAB2025, with enhancements for compliance, quality control, MAM, and archiving, as well as real time ingest as required by live sports broadcasters, especially in remote production. “As new business opportunities emerge, and economic pressures intensify, customers are increasingly driven to expand their content operations, adopt new standards and formats like IP and UHD, and find efficiencies in the [public] cloud,” said Benjamin Desbois, Chief Growth and Strategy Officer, Telestream. 

There are workflow updates on show at NAB2025 for automated caption creation, subtitles, metadata, and content summaries, incorporating newly developed AI capabilities to automate high-quality speech-to-text. There is tighter integration between Vantage and the firm’s archiving system, called Diva. Telestream has also enhanced integration between Vantage and various cloud-centric MAM systems such as Iconic. This enables customers to incorporate the latest MAM functionality into their content repository, improving accessibility, collaboration, and monetization.

The company seems most excited though by what looks like a late addition to its NAB2025 program, announcement of its Lightspeed Live Server range for playout. This has been purpose-built for live production, supporting SDI (3G/12G) and ST2110 (10/25G, SR/LR), in configurations of up to 8 channels in HD and 4 channels in UHD in a 1RU form factor. Features include playout of any format back-to-back, and customizable APIs for advanced integration, along with a 15TB-30TB SSD storage range.  This will not be available until June 2025, which is why perhaps it was not initially flagged.

Around The Show

There are plenty of vendors exhibiting playout technologies and products at the show this year beyond the three selected for specific description. Harmonic has one of the most comprehensive lineups spanning almost the whole video lifecycle, including playout, with enhancements to its VOS360 Media SaaS (Software as a Service). This now has JPEG XS support for live ingest, with lower encoding latency of UHD and HD content, while maintaining pristine video quality.

The company has also improved its XOS media processor by adding live and time-shift origin capabilities. This allows broadcasters to extract linear channels from any CDN in principle, eliminating the need for a separate origin server.

Another venerable vendor present is Pebble, celebrating its 25-year history of playout. This year the company will be showing the second version of its playout automation, which now includes a remote option featuring web-based monitoring and control. This enables secure monitoring and management of channels from inside or outside the normal transmission facilities.

Then Playbox Technology is focusing on integrated MPEG compliant transport streams and IP workflows in its Cosmos system, which has been developed in concert with various industry partners. Best known for its longstanding TV Channel in a Box, the company has been aligning playout with evolving viewer habits in the streaming era. The essence is to match scheduling with the increasingly fragmented viewing across multiple device formats.

Another regular at NAB is LTN Global, which will be talking about the challenge posed by FAST channels, which many existing playout tools struggle with because of the scale. LTN claims its approach reduces the time to launch new FAST channels from weeks to days, by automating content creation and easing integration through flexible APIs it has developed.

Conclusion

Automation and consolidation of master control in the public cloud are overarching playout themes this year, along with growing use of AI in personalization, and implementation of dynamic ad insertion, among other functions. Meeting the challenge of live sports and remote production is a regular theme, reflected in launches such as Telestream’s Lightspeed Live server. This area is still in progress, so we can expect more such launches at future events. 

Other articles in this NAB 2025 'Show Focus' series:

The Broadcast Bridge will be at the NAB Show – in the West Hall on booth W 3932. Please come and see us and share your thoughts on what we do and what you would like to see from us in the coming year.