By Michael Burns
What a difference three years make. Back at the RAI in Amsterdam for IBC, the trends and talking points of the last IBC (2019, for those not keeping up) seemed almost naive in their simplicity.
This year cloud was everywhere, spoken of not as a possibility but in terms of streamlining current virtualized operations and co-existing more efficiently with on-prem storage. Then there was streaming, bringing greater freedom and efficiency to editors and post workflows than ever before. Higher quality was another key topic, and not just in terms of resolution, but in how it enables smaller studios and markets — like corporate, sports and houses of worship — to gift their productions with “Hollywood-like” production values.
Of course, there was also virtual production, translocating the work of VFX artists from its traditional home in post to the entire filmmaking and broadcast workflow. Most of the early challenges were in the process of being solved.
Along with these important technical trends was the warm feeling of once again being with colleagues and friends in person.
L-R: Francis Crossman and Michael Cioni
While it would be impossible to cover it all in one article, here are some highlights…
At the Adobe stand, Premiere Pro senior product manager Francis Crossman and senior director of global innovation Michael Cioni were waxing lyrical about the integration of Frame.io technology into Adobe Creative Cloud (following Adobe’s acquisition of the cloud-based video collaboration platform in August 2021).
Cioni reported that its Camera to Cloud (C2C) technology was making a big impact. “We show people a camera going into Premiere Pro — I can do it with a phone, a cinema camera or a photo camera,” he said, adding that it’s a bit of a magic trick that people didn’t realize they could accomplish. “It gives the Adobe community the ability to connect cameras of all types into editing rooms, and to us that’s the future of Adobe Premiere. We’re focused on building that future out, making it stronger and deeper, and shows like IBC give us an opportunity to get feedback from people as they start to see it happening.”
Frame.io for Creative Cloud
One of the technologies on demo at the Adobe stand was the release of Frame.io for Creative Cloud, an integrated review and approval workflow inside of Premiere Pro and After Effects. It offers remote client feedback as frame-accurate comments in the Frame.io panel or as markers on the timeline.
“Adobe has over 100 partners exhibiting on the show floor,” said Crossman. “Being able to integrate with our open APIs means that we can connect all the dots that people need to get any kind of a cloud workflow working. So we have Camera to Cloud, and then we’ve got Team Projects in Premiere and After Effects, which allow you to edit collaboratively remotely. Then with a partner like LucidLink, you’ve got the storage sorted out. Add the review and approval of Frame.io, and, basically, we’ve got all the building blocks of a very compelling cloud-based workflow. That’s the main thing that we’ve been talking about at this show.”
HP/Teradici
HP was at IBC showing off its rackable solutions, including the Z2 Mini, a small-form-factor, high-performance desktop workstation; new ZBook mobile workstations including the Firefly, Studio and Fury models; and the Z4 and Z8 desktop workstations. There was also a headset for VR being used in a demo for volumetric video, one of several application areas that HP was highlighting.
“Z by HP is our line for the creative professional, and it has the performance needed to run applications like Blackmagic and Adobe and Avid,” said Brian Allen, manager, Global Z Workstation Product Team at HP. “They’re tested and certified and use pro graphics cards, so whether you need a desktop solution or rack solution or a mobile solution, you’re covered by Z by HP.
“We’ve also got our new remoting solution called HP Anyware,” he continued. “It’s the convergence of Teradici and ZCentral.”
Aiming to replace VPN file transfers, HP Anyware uses the PCoIP protocol to stream highly interactive desktop displays between virtually any host and end-user device without any data ever leaving the safety of the network. It evolved following last year’s acquisition of the Teradici remote access software, and HP has combined it with its own ZCentral Remote Boost sender software to create this new system.
“A lot of people are doing more [post production] in a rack or a data center; they’re not doing it on-prem,” Allen added. “They’re using solutions like HP Anyware to be able to remote into that, to be able to collaborate across multiple sites.”
According to Allen, the solutions on the stand were well-received. “We’re seeing more and more people going mobile. We’re seeing more and more people going within the data center,” he continued. “Being able to take the traditional desktop performance and put it on mobile or in the back end is nice. And there is a lot of interest around HP Anyware being able to offer that routing solution. During COVID, both HP and Teradici won Emmys for their work with remoting. Now those two solutions have been integrated into a single solution by HP, so there’s been a lot of excitement here.”
Remote workflow was also in the cards at Prime Focus Technologies as it announced a collaboration hub for its Clear Media ERP. A Clear panel in Premiere Pro brings integrated Zoom video conferencing for an over-the-shoulder collaborative experience while working with remote teams, enhanced editing workflows as well as a drawing tool that enables users to draw and annotate on the screen in real time. There’s also invite-only access to virtual workspaces, secured sharing sessions with registered users, audit trails and record-protected live video interactions.
LTO Program
Not everyone was moving to cloud though. On the LTO Program stand, complete with a pianist to bring some soothing music to the hubbub, partner companies announced an updated Linear Tape-Open (LTO) technology road map that extends the LTO Ultrium standard through 14 generations. The LTO Program, comprising Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), IBM and Quantum, plans tape capacities to double with each new generation (roughly every 2 ½ years), with LTO-14 to deliver up to 1,440TB (1.44PB) per tape, surpassing the capacity of current LTO-9 cartridges by 32 times.
“We have not only been growing in capacity but also in terms of hardware,” said Laura Loredo, worldwide senior product manager at HPE. “We just need to keep the balance between the capacity and the transfer rate.”
The stand had a lot of TV channels coming around looking to offload content from their disks. “With the cost of energy rising and companies wanting to become much greener, our drives use very little energy even when reading or writing – and our cartridges don’t use any power.
“People are going to the cloud, and I think that’s inevitable” she continued. “What they’re finding out is that it is very expensive if they have to read anything back. So what we are seeing is some people now beginning to source a copy on the cloud and keep a copy off-site and on-premises. Also, if you have a major disaster like ransomware, you have to recover all your data; if you have to read it back from the cloud, it will cost a fortune. So in some cases we’re seeing people combining cloud and LTO tape.”
Canon’s Aron Randhawa
On the Canon stand, where there were multiple new lenses, mirrorless cameras and an extensive virtual production setup in conjunction with Mo-Sys, the DP-V2730 4K HDR reference monitor was grabbing a lot of interest. With a 27-inch screen and 1,000 cd/m² full-screen peak brightness, the DP-V2730 offers an integrated suite of monitoring tools such as a waveform monitor, pixel value check, HDR/ SDR compare view and configurable false color. It features four-way SDI input switching and a remote control web UI.
“It’s essentially a hybrid,” said Aron Randhawa, product manager, Canon Europe. “It’s small enough to be used for high-end broadcast in TV studios, but it’s also large enough to be used in post production and filmmaking, whether that be color grading, editing or VFX.
“This reference monitor provides 1,000 nits brightness across the full screen, which is crucial,” he said. “We also have a huge array of monitoring tools available. The color gamut is incredibly wide – almost the size of Rec. 2020. So when it comes to imaging performance, we’re really proud to say this is cutting-edge, not only for Canon but for the industry.”
Analog Archives
Dutch firm Filmfabriek showed a couple of small-format film scanners: the HDS+, supporting the digitization of Super 8, 9.5mm or 16mm film, and the 8mm Pictor line. There was also a new, affordable Wetgate pump for the Pictor that’s used in the process of removing scratches from some old and damaged film.
FilmFabriek’s Bas Bakker
“Most of the film is damaged, and the scratches create vertical lines,” said Filmfabriek’s Bas Bakker. “Behind the scratch, there is still information. What we do is pump the fluid into sponges to fill up the scratches temporarily.”
When the film is scanned, the scratches disappear thanks to being filled, and by the time the film reaches the destination reel, the fluid has evaporated. “Nothing happens to the film. It’s just a temporary fix to fill in the scratch.”
Bakker said most people who want to digitize 8mm film go to transfer shops that have very old machines and deliver much poorer quality than the Pictor is capable of. “They are not aware that this is the quality you can achieve,” he added.
Bakker said most people who want to digitize 8mm film go to transfer shops that have very old machines and deliver much poorer quality than the Pictor is capable of. “They are not aware that this is the quality you can achieve,” he added.
In that case, hopefully more of the passing showgoers were also as curious about the tiny stand as I was.
“It’s an eye-catcher because it’s a little analog machine among all the computer and cloud solutions on the floor,” said Bakker.
The welcome return of IBC offered a broad snapshot of the industry at present and a peek into its future, but it was still capable of showing the charm of its past.
Scotland-based Michael Burns has been writing about the content creation and film and broadcast industries for over 25 years. He is a regular contributor, reviewer and editor for many industry magazines, trade show journals and media-focused websites.
