20
August 2018
Cloud is a
horizon within
broadcasters’
reach
VDMS manages digital
content for Grupo Clarín
Grupo Clarín, an Argentinian media
conglomerate, has utilised Verizon Digital
Media Services’ (VDMS) content delivery
network for the distribution of its digital
media properties. VDMS will provide
technology support to manage VoD traffic
for main websites, including Radio Mitre,
CIMECO, Artear and Clarín. The company also
delivered TyC Sports’ live stream of the 2018
FIFA World Cup. Damián Molinari, responsible
for the implementation of the new VoD
platform from Artear, Grupo Clarín’s audio-
visual division, commented: “VDMS’ content
delivery network’s performance, rich feature
set, flexibility and quality have exceeded our
goals. With consistent traffic growth, we now
have the ability to scale with ease, which has
never been more critical for the recent FIFA
World Cup stream.”
SpotX hires new
managing director
Marco Ruivenkamp is now managing director
of SpotX and smartclip, Benelux. Bringing with
him over 20 years of experience, Ruivenkamp
will play a key role in moving the merger
of the two companies forward, and the
continued growth of SpotX in the Netherlands,
Belgium and Luxembourg. Mike Shehan, CEO
and co-founder of SpotX, said: “Because of
his international background in programmatic
advertising, and in particular his knowledge
of the buyers and the agency landscape, he
is the right person to serve the customers of
SpotX and smartclip in several ways — besides
offering the best tools for programmatic
trading of video on cross-screen devices.”
Next Month @ X-Platform
Video Codecs and
Compression Systems
PANELLISTS
Chong Siew Loong
CTO
StarHub
Michael Cronk
Chairman,
Alliance for IP Media
Solutions (AIMS)
Peter Bithos
CEO, HOOQ
V
With the many functions and roles cloud can potentially play across many
different media applications across the broadcast chain, the technology is
poised to be a game-changer in shaping the future of the media industry,
as Josephine Tan discovers.
ideo distribution today is not solely re
stricted to within the country or region
where a broadcaster is licensed to oper
ate. Consumption patterns have changed,
especially when audiences are increasingly
streaming videos via the Internet. Through
streaming, content can be delivered to
audiences in almost any part of the world.
To support content distribution on
such a global scale, broadcasters and
service providers will require an infra
structure that empowers them to intro
duce innovations quickly, so as to adapt to
market dynamics and keep their audiences
captivated.
One technology that has been tapped
in having the potential to shape the future
of the broadcast and media industry is
cloud.
Bogdan Frusina, founder of Dejero,
tells APB: “The media industry has moved
to IT. Analogue barely exists in the in
dustry; nearly all content storage is in the
form of electronic files. We sit as part of
the IT industry now, taking advantage of
its economies-of-scale and, of course, the
ability to use the cloud.”
❝ [Cloud] will be
transformative,
because it will allow
smaller players
and new entrants
to the market to
grow really fast,
without having the
baggage of the big
broadcasters. ❞
— Bogdan Frusina,
Founder, Dejero
Claiming that cloud is the future,
Frusina explains that the technology
provides a scalable and flexible infra
structure that is achievable “without
large investment”. For instance, if a TV
network was to set up traditional data
storage — comparable to the cloud —
they might not be able to recoup their
investment.
The biggest driver for cloud adop
tion is the growing size of files, and
the increasing need for processing,
he says. “Content producers need to
store content from their archives to
their current productions. They want
to store it in the best possible quality,
so they are using high bitrate codecs,
and embracing 4K/Ultra HD (UHD)
and high dynamic range (HDR).
“At the same time, there is a need to
deliver this content to multiple users,
who each have different technical re
quirements — video and audio codecs,
wrappers, metadata, and more. Meet
ing all these demands, and ensuring
that each is in the correct format, must
be an automated process, ideally suited
to the cloud.”
The adoption of cloud also prompts
an alternate business model for media
businesses, which is to pay for the
functionality they need, Frusina sug
gests. “Operators are able to shut down
processes when they do not need
them, thus reducing costs on process
ing power that are not in use. To take
advantage of that, operators have to
make the operation of their cloud
functionality as simple as possible.”
Despite several advantages in
embracing the cloud, there are also
technical issues that operators have
to overcome before exploiting the
technology’s full potential.
He explains: “One of the biggest
technical concerns in media has always
been delay. Media companies must
have real-time precision, and would
like it to be with minimum latency.
That is why, even today, we cannot
run all our processes in commercial
off-the-shelf (COTS) CPUs and GPUs,
and still have to build FPGA-based
hardware to provide power.
“I see cloud companies adopting
a virtualised field-programmable gate
array (FPGA) solution to offer more
power. That will be an interesting
dynamic. At that point, I do not believe
there will be many functions we can
not then adopt in the cloud.”
The next limiting factor, according
to Frusina, is connectivity, because
there has not been a standard to man
age video inputs into the cloud while
running the workflows on a daily basis.
In order for the cloud to be successful,
the Internet connection is key, and is
the area where Dejero has been focus
ing on for the past decade.
“Dejero is in the business of pro
viding connectivity, using IP-based