Business

By Chris Tribbey

LAS VEGAS — Here’s a rundown of the latest news from Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) member companies out of the 2016 NAB Show:

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released a report that focused on a growing trend in video games: competitive gaming. The research firm found that at least 30% of survey respondents are aware of e-sports, and that there are more women than men playing competitively.

“According to PwC, 22% of women say they’re involved with e-sports versus 18% of men,” the report reads. “While the difference is relatively small, it indicates an early trend that women may be just as, if not more, engaged with e-sports than males. For viewing versus playing, men are playing slightly more than women, and men appear to watch from a competitive lens, while women appear to watch for enjoyment and for the social aspect of the viewing experience.”

For those who do play competitive, live video games, 42% said they play at least once a month, averaging 17.5 a days playing per year, and another 19 watching them. Seventy percent said they play in the home, vs. only 18% who said they play in-person at a live event. First-person shooters (62%) were by far the most popular genre, with fighting games coming in second (48%).

“The gaming community has fought long and hard for legitimacy in the sports world, especially considering it fills arenas and stadia, and has dedicated OTT networks,” PwC reported. “Agencies, advertisers, live event companies and sporting venues are just some of the businesses aligning with the gaming genre. The appeal to investors surpasses the game itself, relying heavily on the passionate audience who’s watching.

Azure

Azure Media Services (AMS) used the NAB Show to announce a new media analytics suite, support for Apple FairPlay and 360-degree video streaming. The company also announced new and expanded partnerships with Imagine Communications, Veritone, Signiant and VSN.

Azure Media Analytics is a collection of eight enterprise-ready speech and vision services that cover everything from motion detection to speech transcription, and deep indexed video search to content moderation.

“These capabilities have applications in a variety of industries including public safety, government, surveillance, retail, education, automotive, and more,” the company said in a statement. “Media Analytics is a key addition to the family of services that are offered under Azure Media Services umbrella.”

At NAB, Azure also showed off FairPlay streaming support under its Azure Media Services platform, allowing for the ability to stream premium content using the HTTP live streaming (HLS) protocol. FairPlay in Azure Media Services allows for easily encrypted video and the secure playback of content on iOS, Apple TV, and OS X devices.

Azure Media Services also announced it’s partnered up with VideoStitch to enable the creation of 360-degree live video streams. “With the successful launch of the live streaming and encoding platform, we have seen a wide range of use cases and scenarios being built out by our customers and partners,” the company said. “A recent hot topic on our forums and in our inboxes here on the Azure Media Services team has been 360-degree virtual reality streaming.”

Lastly, Azure announced Imagine Communications was bringing its video processing and distribution capabilities to Azure, Veritone was leveraging Azure Media Analytics to build its cognitive media platform, and Signiant announced integration with Azure Media Services. VSN also announced it was choosing Microsoft Azure as a preferred cloud partner.

5TH Kind

5th Kind used the NAB Show to announce it would make its digital asset management solution Core available on Microsoft Azure with Akamai content delivery network integration. Core offers secure organization, distribution and archive for media and content creators and production studios looking to manage any type of digital file.

“We are excited about the opportunities an integrated 5th Kind solution on Microsoft Azure will provide,” said 5th Kind CEO and founder Steve Cronan. “The scalable infrastructure of Microsoft Azure is a natural platform for our hybrid cloud digital asset management service, and with our Akamai CDN integration, it offers global access to customers managing large media files anywhere in the world.”

5th Kind currently offers asset management work for Marvel, Disney and Warner Bros., and workflow platform support for feature film and TV production companies. The Core application integration with Azure will allow content creators to streamline workflows and reduce infrastructure costs.

“Microsoft welcomes 5th Kind to Azure,” said Nicole Herskowitz, senior director of product marketing for Microsoft Azure. “We’re happy to take part in offering best-of-breed tools to a global customer base, and 5th Kind’s DAM on Azure is a great example an innovative solution to address key customer needs.”

Troy Snyder, VP of business development for Akamai, added: “In taking advantage of the scale and reach of the Akamai CDN, 5th Kind is offering a DAM solution that addresses the demanding requirements for global collaboration in the creative process. Akamai is pleased to work with 5th Kind in helping its customers manage and access critical content as quickly as and at the highest possible quality possible.”

EMC

EMC announced four new media workflow enhancements for TV and sports broadcasters, content delivery providers and content creators at the NAB Show, covering 4K, IP-based broadcast and multi-platform delivery.

“At EMC, we believe the media industry is all about creating and delivering great stories,” said Tom Burns, CTO of media and entertainment for EMC. “To help media companies accomplish this, we continue to challenge the status quo of storage and solutions by leveraging next generation IT technologies. Our goal is to give our customers and partners a simple-to-manage, future-proof foundation for their business and workflows so that they can continue to adapt and transform in this rapidly evolving industry.”

EMC is teaming up with Pixspan, Aspera and NVIDIA to bring uncompressed 4K workflows to IT infrastructures; Imagine Communications and EMC announced they would work together on live channel playout with the Versio solution; MXFserver’s software and EMC’s Isilon scale-out NAS will pair together to offer remote and collaborative editing; and Anevia and EMC are pairing to enable telco and media organizations to offer a cloud DVR service.

EMC also announced its 560-terabyte EMC Isilon NL 400 clusters will be used by NBC Olympics for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

“The flexibility and reliability of the EMC Isilon systems have provided NBC Olympics with a robust storage system which is extensible to meet the needs of today with an eye on tomorrow’s data growth,” said Timothy Canary, VP of engineering for NBC Sports Group. “We’re pleased with the agility of the product range as well as the architecture which allows seamless use across multiple continents. The vast technical support of the EMC and Presidio teams will be a key aspect of our mutual success for the Rio Olympics and beyond.”

Prime Focus

Prime Focus Technologies announced new functionality for its Clear Media ERP Suite, a new promo versioning automation module for Adobe Premiere Pro CC. The addition will help increase operational efficiency for broadcasters and promotional content creators, the company announced.

“Doing more with less while increasing profit margins through business efficiencies in this Digital Next era is critical,” said Ramki Sankaranarayanan, founder and CEO of Prime Focus Technologies. “The automation we are bringing in promo versioning will further aid in virtualizing content workflow and we are proud to offer our customers yet another way to transform themselves digitally.”

The added module provides an end-to-end workflow for promo creation, including work orders and seamless integration with Broadcast Management Software (BMS).

“In enabling such transformations, PFT has helped content enterprises cut 30% of operational costs and see efficiency gains of 40%,” the company said in a statement. PFT will showcase its new promo versioning automation, along with the expanded.