M+E Daily

NEW YORK — The transition to video over Internet Protocol (IP) and the rapidly expanding use of cloud-based services stand to bring significant benefits to media workflow, but there continue to be many challenges on both fronts.

That’s according to comments made by media and technology company executives speaking at Quantum’s Impact of IP & Cloud on Media Workflow conference in New York Nov. 17.

In the case of the transition to IP-based media, one challenge has been the lack of an industry standard, Gary Olson, principal of media technology consulting company GHO Group, said, pointing out that some companies have started using their own networking protocols. What stands to help is the completion and adoption of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) 2110 standard to transport audio and video over IP networks, he said, joking that’s “coming soon to a theater near you.” He predicted that, “all of these formats, at some point, will get settled out.”

There is “sort of a natural evolution in all things and certainly in technology, and IP is that next evolution” for media workflow, Jim DeFilippis, president of Technology Made Simple, said. But he added: “We’re trying to fit, you know, the camel through the eye of the needle, and it’s not going to be easy and it’s going to take time – and it doesn’t help that we’ve got competing ways to do it, right? But we’ll figure it out.”

DeFilippis went on to say: “We have not achieved interoperability on any of the IP” standards, although there is interoperability on the Serial Digital Interface (SDI) standard for digital video transmission that’s been around since 1989 at up to 12 GHz. He predicted “it’ll take three years for the IP to be sorted out” and “it’s going to start getting better in 18 months.” Another challenge is that there’s a “plethora of file formats and the fact that even from the same manufacturer they [are] not compatible with each other,” he said.

The ability to support distribution direct to consumers, meanwhile, is one of the benefits to using cloud-based services for media workflows, Eric Pohl, CTO of National Teleconsultants, said.

“File-based workflows are probably the easiest to move to the cloud,” Manuel De Pena, senior field operations director-Eastern Region at Amazon Web Services division Elemental, said. E

lemental developed several software-based solutions for multiscreen content delivery of video including 4K content. “We’re talking to customers today that are looking to move linear [content] into the cloud. They’re not moving their top programming. They’re not moving their crown jewels to the cloud yet,” De Pena said. He added that “part of the challenge is feeling comfortable” that what’s being handled via the cloud is “as reliable” as video delivery handled on-premises by a company.

There is skepticism among some people in the industry that existing cloud facilities aren’t well-equipped to handle formats such as high bit-rate video at a high rate of reliability. But De Pena said progress is being made on that front, pointing out that some customers are using 4K and High Dynamic Range (HDR) video in the cloud. But it’s indeed more complicated to deliver such content via the cloud, he said, noting that “redundant capabilities,” for example, are required to handle it.

The main advantages to using a cloud service include the fact that users can access their content anywhere they are and on any device, Geoff Stedman, Quantum SVP of marketing and scale-out storage solutions, said. Cloud services also offer “infinite scalability,” he said, noting “it can grow as big as you want it to grow.”

Although most of the talk around cloud services tends to be about public cloud services, he said private cloud services can also “fit into a media workflow.” Private cloud services include both those owned and operated by an enterprise company itself, as well as those provided by service providers but dedicated to one company’s usage rather than being shared by multiple users like a public cloud, he said. There’s also hybrid clouds that blend together elements of private and public clouds, he said, telling the conference “that’s actually going to be the primary deployment model in most cases.”

Using the cloud for media workflows will continue to improve, he predicted. “It’s all going to change. It’s all going to get better and faster,” while latency will continue to decline, he said, adding: “The things that are holding us back right now from really deploying the cloud end to end are going to get solved.”