If anything was certain at 2022 NAB, it was television production is firmly planted in the cloud. From production to post-production, the cloud is now a dominant factor in the making of television and is in a constant state of refinement.
Sony C3 Portal[/caption]
Cloud computing got new capabilities as its use was accelerated during the pandemic. From Blackmagic Design’s new cloud collaborative workflow support for DaVinci Resolve 18 to Sony’s Ci and C3 Portal automated media clouds, cloud technology was found everywhere at the NAB show.
Streaming media using the cloud is expanding. For example, Cox Media Group announced the expansion of its digital streaming strategy in a deal with Amagi, a major player in cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV. The deal will power Cox’s streaming across connected TV, mobile, web and distribution as the company migrates, builds and launches a major expansion of its free digital streaming strategy.
Amagi Cloud Playback[/caption]
Even iPhones got into the act. FilMiC Pro — the most popular professional iPhone video production app — is now offering full support for Frame.io’s Camera-to-Cloud (C2C) service. It allows iPhone videographers to instantly upload low bandwidth, high quality proxies from on-set cameras to creative post-production teams anywhere in the world.
Evertz Microsystems showed new cloud products that support a significant shift away from CAPEX broadcast hardware to virtualized solutions that align OPEX with flexible workflows in the cloud.
The company continues to push the cloud transition by designing an end-to-end broadcast ecosystem that focusses on cloud-agnostic versions of major contribution and production elements within its workflow, while supporting both on-premise and distributed hardware.
A key element within Evertz’ cloud-based technology is providing a low-bandwidth cloud on-ramp option for contribution of high-quality video with ultra-low latency for production and streaming applications.
At NAB, Sony covered the whole gamut of television technology ranging from its new Venice 2 digital cinema camera and Crystal LED set walls for virtual production to cloud distribution and automation for global television production.
One Sony cloud system is the C3 Portal, a camera gateway service for news, commercials, reality shows and music videos that allows users to remotely manage an entire production workflow from anywhere in the world. The system can be scaled up from the smallest to largest users.
Sony’s C3 Portal stands for Camera, Connect, Cloud. Using the web-based system, cameras, wherever they are located, can be remotely adjusted from an engineering headquarters. A set of tools accelerates delivery of content to creative teams based throughout the world. Camera clips can be transferred to the cloud using a smartphone. Editors can remotely view and pull content from the cameras.
Sony at NAB showed live cameras in real time simultaneously from both Las Vegas and Japan. There is GPS capability to map camera locations; speech-to-text translation via artificial intelligence for word searches to find sound bites quickly; and automatic data tagging to help find the right clips quickly.
Blackmagic Cloud Store[/caption]
Though far from being new, cloud computing is being quickly refined and changed and is now found in mainstream television products and services from a wide range of manufacturers. For example, Blackmagic Design introduced a series of cloud storage devices for video with 10G Ethernet and HDMI status monitors ranging from build-your-own drive starting at $395 to a whopping 320TB custom-built cloud store for about $130,000.
Cloud computing is so complex since each manufacturer defines how it implements the secure processing and storing of high-value content on proprietary central servers in databases. It can take many forms and requires complex orchestration, storage and monitoring.
Originally, cloud services were focused on storage. Now, cloud providers offer hundreds of specific services ranging from computing, distribution, automatic and storage to consulting and management services.
A major trend is to take the computing hardware out of the production facility and connect it to a remote, software-centric cloud computing platform that can located anywhere. Scalability on the fly is also important to allow cloud-based content to be usable in a wide range of production ecosystems.
As with so many trends that occurred during the pandemic, cloud computing and virtual production stand to redefine television in major ways.