Connections

Several members of the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) are planning to exhibit at NAB Show New York, Oct. 17-18 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. More than 60 companies — including Google and Microsoft — will exhibit for the first time, and will provide a first look at new products and technologies through hands-on exhibits and demonstrations, according to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). Also among the 67 first-time exhibitors will be companies including ARRI, Bose and Primestream, NAB said.

MESA members exhibiting include Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elemental, Avid, Caringo, IBM Aspera, Ooyala, Qumulo, Thinklogical, Verizon Digital Media Services and Western Digital (MESA members can register for NAB Show New York for free here.

“The addition of these new exhibitors reflects NAB Show New York’s continued growth and uniqueness to the overall media, entertainment and technology industries,” Chris Brown, NAB EVP of conventions and business operations, said in a Sept. 18 news release. He added: “We have a great mix of companies and technology. It is balanced and dynamic, reflecting the industry’s most important innovations displayed by its most progressive players.”

Also new to the show floor is the Advanced TV Solutions Theater, which will feature television vendors, networks and distributors involved with the development and implementation of ATSC 3.0/Next Gen TV, Telco 5G and Gigabit Cable WiFi. Additionally, the returning Podcast Studio will showcase a new set of business-focused and popular New York-based podcasts as they record live.

Topics including an ATSC 3.0 update, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning, blockchain and over-the-top (OTT) streaming video trends will be discussed during the show’s extensive conference tracks by MESA members and other companies, Oct. 15-18.

The Core Program (open to all registrants) will run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 17-18 and includes a fireside chat with CBS Interactive COO and president Marc DeBevoise 11:30 am Oct. 17 at the Advanced TV Solutions Theater; “How Entrepreneurs Take Cool Ideas to Profitability” including Adobe director of immersive Chris Bobotis at 11:30 am Oct. 17 at the Presentation Theater; a session on the challenge of content monetization featuring Tim Jackson, Globecast SVP of sales and marketing for the Americas, at 4:30 pm Oct. 17 at the CM IP Theater; a “Panel Debate: Industry 2020 – What are the Biggest Trends Impacting Media and Entertainment and How Can You Gain a Competitive Advantage” with Globecast’s Jackson at 11 am Oct. 18 at Stage 3; “Keeping Pace with the Demand for Live Entertainment” with Ooyala chief revenue officer Steve Davis at 11:45 am Oct. 18 at Stage 3.

Also featured in the Core Program: “Setting a New Standard in Cross-Platform Identification: TAXI Complete” with Ad-ID executive director Harold Geller and Entertainment Identifier Registry Association (EIDR) executive director Will Kreth at 2 pm Oct. 18 at 3D11; “Panel Discussion: Are We in the Era of True Equality in Media?” including Ken Klaer, SVP of strategic infrastructure at Comcast Technology Solutions, at 2:30 pm Oct. 18 at the Advanced TV Solutions Theater; “Animation at the Speed of News” moderated by Victoria Nece, Adobe product manager for motion graphics and visual effects at 3 pm Oct. 18 at Stage 3; and “Increasing the Value of Video with AWS Media Services and Machine Learning” presented by Evan Statton, AWS Elemental principal specialized solutions architect, at 3:30 pm Oct. 18 at the CM IP Theater.

Meanwhile, the Streaming Summit, a two-day program focusing on best practices for packaging, distributing and monetizing online video, was added to NAB Show New York. The Streaming Summit, co-produced by Streaming Summit chairman Dan Rayburn, will be held Oct. 17-18 at Javits.

The Streaming Summit, first introduced at the 2018 NAB Show in Las Vegas, will address topics including ad insertion, live OTT services and cloud-based solutions. Presentations, round-table discussions and fireside chats will address trends and technologies that are having a direct impact on the continued development, proliferation and profitability of online video.

“We look forward to building on the success of the NAB Show Streaming Summit,” Chris Brown, NAB EVP of conventions and business operations, said in a news release, adding the Streaming Summit program is “critical for media companies looking to evaluate, upgrade and monetize their online video services and platforms.”

Pointing to all the new OTT services and live linear offerings available now, Rayburn said: “Content owners, broadcasters, publishers and distributors need the most up-to-date business insights and technical tips to get the most out of their video services. The Streaming Summit will showcase and address the current monetization models for video, the packaging and playback of content, and highlight the best technical implementations of the video stack.”

Also scheduled is a keynote interview of CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus 9:30 a.m. Oct. 17 during the TV2020: Monetizing the Future conference program at Javits. He’s expected to address topics ranging from competition for TV sports rights to the impact that widespread sports betting could have on TV sports broadcasts. TV2020 is a TVNewsCheck conference program that’s now in its third year at NAB Show New York.

This year’s TV2020 conference program will examine various issues facing the broadcasting industry, including the forecast for retransmission consent revenue, the impact of advanced advertising on spot TV and the investment case for technologies including Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure, cloud-enabled distribution, OTT platforms and AI-enabled news production.

Also featured in TV2020 will be a panel session on “Technology Shaping Business Models,” including Discovery Communications CTO John Honeycutt and Disney/ABC Television Group SVP of broadcast operations Brad Wall, 1:30 pm Oct. 17. They and other TV engineering executives will discuss the investment case for IP infrastructure, cloud-enabled distribution, OTT platforms, ATSC 3.0, personalized TV, AI-enabled news production and advanced ad tech.

In association with NAB Show New York, there will also be a new EdgeNext Summit, Oct. 15 at the Convene meeting space near Grand Central Station. It will focus on content distribution at the edge and sponsors for the event include AWS, Google and Verizon Digital Media Services. The summit will include two tracks and almost 50 speakers. The program is targeted at professionals involved with network operations and infrastructure, digital operations and distribution, software engineering, web development and content distribution.

The following is a summary of what MESA members plan to show and focus on at their NAB Show New York booths.

AWS/AWS Elemental

AWS Elemental is the listed exhibitor for NAB New York, but representatives from both AWS and AWS Elemental will be on hand, according to the company, which will be located in the Connected Media | IP pavilion on the show floor, booth N1261. In the booth, the company will be highlighting advanced approaches for media ingest, video processing and delivery, content monetization and machine learning-enhanced video utilizing AWS Media Services, it said.

Avid

At NAB Show New York booth N707, Avid will again tout the next-generation Maestro Engine real-time graphics and video hardware rendering platform for its Maestro Graphics product line. The next-gen Maestro Engine was recently unveiled by Avid at the IBC Show. (https://www.mesaonline.org/2018/09/14/ibc-2018-sony-launches-intelligent-media-services-avid-bows-next-gen-maestro-engine/)

Maestro Engine scales from HD and 1080p to Ultra High-Definition (UHD), supporting both Serial Digital Interface (SDI) and Video over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Avid said. With Maestro Engine, broadcasters can produce augmented reality, graphics, virtual studios and video wall content in the industry’s highest achievable quality, according to the company. As the successor to Avid HDVG, Maestro Engine enables broadcasters to introduce new production capabilities — including 3G, UHD, HDR and IP workflows — alongside their current HD/SD SDI workflows, with “minimal disruption,” the company said.

Available in two configurations — Maestro Engine and Maestro Engine 4K — the platform works with all Maestro graphics suite solutions, and provides performance, scalability and format support to meet and even surpass customers’ current and future broadcast requirements, according to Avid. Both SKUs will ship in the fourth quarter of 2018, Avid said.

Avid will also again tout the web-based version of its MediaCentral media production and management platform at NAB Show New York, along with: MediaCentral Editorial Management, a simple-to-deploy asset management tool that it said “accelerates collaboration among post production and broadcast teams through secure, reliable and easily configured media workflows”; Avid On Demand, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud services and solutions platform that provides media production capabilities on demand; the Avid NEXIS E5 NL high-density, on-premises nearline storage solution; the expanded Avid VENUE S6L family of live sound systems (shipping this month), with three new control surfaces, a new engine and two new I/O racks — all on a unified platform; an expanded Creative Tools Family that provides access to Avid’s Pro Tools, Media Composer and Sibelius software for creative users at any stage of their career and teams of any size; and the Maestro PowerWall display control and management solution that it said “puts the power” of UHD graphics into the hands of any TV broadcaster.

Caringo

Caringo is heading to NAB Show New York with an updated product suite that was “finely tuned for on-demand, distributed, content-driven use cases,” according to Adrian Herrera, VP of marketing. The offerings will include a new single server, S3-accessible storage appliance specifically designed for use by post-production houses, studios, broadcasters and small enterprises. With that appliance, “small-to-medium-sized content-driven organizations can keep assets within their firewall while still enabling S3 access and delivery,” Herrera told MESA. Caringo also enhanced its platform for large-scale deployments so that organizations including broadcast service providers, studios and large post-houses can move content faster, internally and externally, via S3 and NFS to Swarm object storage, he said. The company will be at booth N1117.

IBM Aspera

At booth N633, IBM Aspera will again tout the extensive set of product updates it introduced at the IBC Show that it said at the time were designed to provide faster, easier access to Aspera technology and to enable more customers than ever before to use Aspera’s industry-leading high-speed data transfer solutions.

Included will be the Aspera Streaming for Video solution, powered by FASPStream technology, which now offers a new ability to quickly and easily launch and monitor connections within a simple web-based user interface, the company said. It’s also showing the new Aspera Streaming for Video Connection Manager, which offers auto-discovery, management and monitoring of streaming devices to enable quick and easy live and near-live streaming globally over commodity internet, even when facing difficult network conditions.

New automation functionality within Aspera on Cloud, meanwhile, helps users quickly configure event-driven transfer workflows, the company said. Organizations can streamline content delivery workflows by allowing transfers to be triggered by an action such as a submission to a Shared Inbox or shared folder, or an application program interface (API) call, it said.

Built to revolutionize the way live and near-live high definition video is delivered, IBM Aspera Streaming for Video software can replace or minimize the use of expensive satellite and dedicated fiber with the timely delivery of any bit rate video over unmanaged public internet, the company said. The underlying FASPStream protocol can also be seamlessly embedded via a set of APIs that enable a new, broader set of IP network and cloud-based use cases and workflows.

Several IBM technologies have also been updated to include easy access to Aspera’s high-speed transfer capabilities. The latest, IBM Cloud Object Storage, allows users to leverage the Aspera high-speed transfer technology to ingest data to the IBM Cloud by simply clicking a button. Customers can add additional Cloud storage targets as well as sharing and collaboration functionality when they upgrade to an Aspera on Cloud subscription. Using IBM Aspera on Cloud, organizations can seamlessly access, send and share data stored across multiple clouds and on-premises data centers, the company said. Internal and external users collaborate over the data in a secure environment that tightly controls access to content and application functionality. Large files and data sets are transferred across storage environments using Aspera’s patented FASP protocol and Direct-to-Cloud technology.

Ooyala

At booth N851, Ooyala will be showcasing the latest features and enhancements to the Ooyala Flex Media Platform, including extended support for the Interoperable Master Format (IMF).

The Ooyala Flex Media Platform provides a unified framework that optimizes the entire content supply chain, which customers can customize to meet their specific needs. The platform leverages automation and AI to streamline video workflows and processes, connect teams and tools for greater collaboration, and enable richer metadata and analytics that power critical new insights and a single source of truth throughout the entire content supply chain.

With IMF support, customers of the Ooyala Flex Media Platform can “significantly reduce the costs and improve the efficiency of their multi-version, multi-platform distribution needs,” according to the company. IMF is a file-delivery standard created by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) that reduces the number of different versions of a video file required for distribution to viewers in different markets and on different platforms around the world. Prior to IMF, thousands of different versions of a widely distributed motion picture – reflecting various combinations of subtitles, metadata, audio, formatting and other features — would be required in order to support multiple-market-segment distribution.

The efficiencies offered by IMF – increasingly embraced by major studios and subscription video on demand (SVOD) services — have been estimated to achieve savings of 25% or more in storage and “versioning” costs, Ooyala said.

“Ooyala is precisely aligned with IMF’s goals, helping content creators and distributors streamline their operations to be more profitable,” Ooyala CEO Jonathan Huberman said in a recent news release. He added: “Unlike other technology partners, Ooyala provides end-to-end support for IMF across the entire content supply chain. And with seamless integration of existing tools into the Ooyala Flex Media Platform, we’re enabling IMF strategies for companies who would otherwise lack the necessary technology. The technology community has been listening to content providers, and we’re equipped to help them truly capitalize on global monetization opportunities.”

The Ooyala Flex Media Platform will enable an IMF workflow while still working with existing business-critical technologies. Among other features, the platform natively supports receipt of Interoperable Master Packages (IMPs) and transcodes them into renditions required for streaming to customer devices. Ooyala will provide clients IMF support across all stages of the content supply chain — addressing a range of IMF requirements from asset management through processing, distribution and digital playout.

Verizon Digital Media Services

Verizon Digital Media Services will showcase its Volicon Media Intelligence service at booth No. N924, it said. These services provide broadcasters and content providers with the ability to “respond quickly and efficiently to the need to proactively review, analyze and produce quality content,” VDMS said.

Company representatives will demonstrate the benefits of its media intelligence services, including the ability to monitor the entire OTT path. Showcased features will include:

• Monitoring QoS and QoE across multiple inputs
• Viewing the entire workflow
• Recording 24 x 7
• Proactively resolving issues
• Observing competitive programming
• Maintaining compliance
• Validating ad placement
• Delivering proof of performance
• Creating, repurposing and sharing content

Western Digital

Western Digital’s G-Technology and SanDisk brands will be represented at the show, according to the company. Other details weren’t immediately available, including what products will be showcased at its booth, N601.