IBC 2023 in Review, Halls 7-8: AJA, Calrec, Chyron, EditShare, Lawo, LiveU, Rohde & Schwarz, SSL, Telestream, Telos Alliance, Teradek, and more
The SVG and SVGE editorial teams were out in full force at IBC 2023, covering the biggest sports-technology news and delivering daily live roundups. Here is a look at the news from exhibitors in Halls 7-8.
Featured in this roundup are Aeta Audio, AJA Video Systems, Audiotonix, BCE, Blackmagic,Calrec, Chyron, Dalet, Deltacast, Editshare, Eluvio, Genelec, JW Player, Lama, Lawo, LiveU, Matrox Video, Newsbridge, Q5X, Quantum, Rohde & Schwarz, RT Software, Salsa Sound, Sennheiser, Shure, SSL, Telestream, Telos Alliance, Teradek, Tinkerlist, and Wasabi Technologies.
Aeta Audio (Stand 8.F65) is showcasing Scoopyflex, which has a new docking station to increase the system’s flexibility. Said general manager Yann Vonarburg, “The new docking station is available, and we’re on the edge of having our new recording, playback, and editing features for Scoopyflex available as well. This all combined makes our small portable reporting unit, Scoopyflex, into a full commentary unit so users can have a few Scoopyflexes, a few docking stations, and use them interchangeably to be covered for every type of event.”
AJA Video Systems’ Nick Rashby
AJA Video Systems (Stand 7.C19) is highlighting new products and solutions: notably, KONA X and Desktop Software v17, HDR Image Analyzer 12G v3.0 Software, and add-ons to 12G-SDI openGear solutions. Compatible with new AJA Desktop Software v17 and with version 17 of the company’s world-class software-development kit (SDK), the KONA X four-lane PCIe 3.0 card offers ultra-low-latency video capture and playback for applications spanning M&E, live production, OEM development, and more. A 12G update to the popular HDR Image Analyzer HDR monitoring and analysis solution provides several new workflow capabilities to keep pace with evolving demands across live, on-set, QC, and postproduction environments. And AJA’s OG-12G-AM and OG-12G-AMA enable 16-channels (eight two-channel pairs) of AES/EBU and analog audio embedding/disembedding, respectively, and support 12G-SDI input and output up to 4K UHD. Overall, the company is working hard at keeping a consistent dialogue with their clients to ensure high-quality solutions that can solve the industry’s current challenges. “We’re continuing to talk to people and understand where our customers want to be in a year from now,” said Nick Rashby, president, AJA Video Systems. “That certainly means the adoption of more IP video throughout the industry at every level, so you’ll see more products from us in the future that help support [IP].”
Video interview AJA president Nick Rashby shares latest in 12G-SDI openGear, debuts KONA X
Audiotonix has announced that two of the companies under its umbrella, sister businesses Calrec (Stand 8.D60) and SSL (Stand 8.B81), are demonstrating the result of a joint development of a cloud-based processing block on the AWS stand (5.C90). Capitalising on their joint broadcast experience and DSP knowledge, both brands have spent time working with multiple broadcast clients across several PoC projects in the field to push the boundaries of cloud production. The resulting cloud-based processing engine will provide the backbone for future remote solutions for both manufacturers, with each brand developing its own commercial solutions with signature DSP sound and control. Said SSL director, product management, Tom Knowles, “Cloud production is going to give sports broadcasters additional ways to manage remote and distributed productions, allowing more events to be broadcast than they could traditionally do with onsite production.”
Video interview Calrec’s Dave Letson
BCE (Stand 8.B57) is introducing its Media-as-a-Service offer. The concept marks an important evolution for BCE, providing customers with a one-stop shop for all their media solutions, products, and services. Media-as-a-Service allows customers to build their own customised set of solutions that precisely match their project requirements. The goal of the new approach is to provide unparalleled flexibility and efficiency to its customers. BCE is showcasing its remote-production and gamification modules, featuring two cutting edge solutions: Holovox and fan engagement. Holovox is a remote voice-over solution that enables users to add one- or multiple-language voice-over streams to live productions from any location with an internet connection. Its cloud-based platform allows users to manage teams, control live audio and video streams, and seamlessly incorporate live translations and sign-language insertions.
Video interview Blackmagic Design’s Stuart Ashton offers a breakdown of the company’s big debuts
Calrec (Stand 8.D60) is here in Amsterdam with its full range of broadcast-audio solutions to help users focus on distributed production, remote production, remote working, virtualization, and IP. The company’s latest products, including the ImPulse1 IP engine and Argo Q and Argo S consoles, are on its stand along with the Remote Production Unit (RP1,) now with an extended DSP licence. ImPulse1 is designed for smaller, single-mixer applications and is offered with a DSP licence of 128 input channels without compromising its ST 2110 capability. With a small overall form factor of 2 x 1RU, it’s useful for compact installation sites, such as outside broadcast and flypack applications, where space is at a premium. Argo comes in two sizes; the larger Argo Q model has two mid-level rows of interchangeable panels; the compact Argo S has one mid-level row. Both feature a simple, intuitive, flexible IP-native surface with supercharged DSP, interchangeable panels, and configurable layouts.
Exhibiting at IBC for the first time since 2019, Chyron (Stand 7.A45) is highlighting live-production workflows for sports and news, featuring cloud-native all-in-one production tool Chyron LIVE. Shown in 1.5 beta version, the cloud-native, all-in-one live-production application is hosted on AWS, emphasizing security and improved user experience. Key elements of Chyron’s news portfolio are also being showcased in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). New product offerings include PRIME 4.9 with enhanced performance, PAINT 9.6 featuring multi-angle telestration, and the debut of Chyron WEATHER 2.0, promising versatile weather-data presentation and integration with its CAMIO newsroom system. According to Chyron, CAMIO 5.4 underlines the firm’s commitment to cloud production, offering a mixer-free workflow solution that drives various graphical elements, video walls, and camera cues.
Video interview Chyron’s Carol Bettencourt
Dalet’s Robin Kirchhoffer (left) and Aaron Kroger
Dalet (Stand 7.B45) has unveiled Dalet InStream, an elastic IP ingest SaaS solution that enables customers to dynamically scale ingest operations in a matter of seconds. Complementing the high-density Dalet Brio on-premises ingest and playout platform, the cloud-native Dalet InStream leverages the agility and performance of the cloud in a pay-per-use model. According to Dalet chief marking officer Robin Kirchhoffer, InStream improves efficiency, flexibility, and cost savings in the captur of sports, news, and other live events. InStream also seamlessly integrates across the Dalet ecosystem — Dalet Flex, Dalet Pyramid, and Dalet Galaxy 5 — enabling customers to schedule, record, access, edit, and deliver content from anywhere, faster than ever. In addition, the company is showcasing new features for its Dalet Cut web-based editor, which debuted at NAB 2023.
Deltacast DELTA-stadium
Deltacast (Stand 7.B12) is showing a new studio application for its DELTA-stadium solution. The DELTA-stadium turnkey system manages screens and LED ribbons from a single interface. When it is combined with Deltacast’s DELTA-cg graphic engine and Template Editor real-time graphic editor, projects can be designed and imported into DELTA-stadium while on-air. With the system well-established in stadiums around France — Monaco, Stasbourg, Lens, Lille, Nice, Olympique Lyonnaise, Stade de France and Toulouse — Deltacast is using IBC 2023 to demonstrate it in a new studio configuration.
Editshare’s Stephen Tallamy
Having just last week merged with Shift Media, Editshare (Stand 7.A35) is showcasing the cloud-native-video-solutions provider’s products: MediaSilo, Wiredrive, and Screeners.com. Editshare chief technology officer Stephen Tallamy spoke about MediaSilo, a SaaS video-collaboration tool used by various sports leagues and federations, including Elite Wrestling and a major sports league in the U.S. Teams can share work-in-progress or finished content rapidly wherever team members are located, with just the relevant metadata, he noted: “They don’t always need markets, sub-clips, and so on. It allows teams to review and approve and tag content really easily.” Following the merger, the two firms will operate under the Editshare brand. Said Tallamy, “We can see a lot of fragmentation in the market, with customers needing to pull solutions together. We have been partnering with other companies to offer solutions, but our plan is to continue to grow and help with the lens to living-room workflow. With the Shift Media deal, we’re a huge way there now. We’re seeing a lot of customers looking for change, and Editshare has always been about choice — whether that’s cloud, on prem, or hybrid — via recurring revenue or capex. Our plan is to continue to meet customers where they want and with what they need.”
Eluvio Eluvio’s Content Fabric demo at IBC showed how it can help take FAST channel offerings to the next level by opening up a whole new level of personalised ad insertion to create better monetisation opportunities. The open and decentralised, streaming, content distribution, and storage network is built for the third generation Internet, delivering live streams with deterministic end-to-end latencies of two seconds globally to standard streaming clients (DASH/HLS over HTTP). It also provides a complete full-featured media stack to publish, store and deliver content at scale including personalisation, access control, content protection and proof of engagement.
“FAST has to be very efficient because the margins are low,” says Michelle Munson, Eluvio, co-founder and CEO. “You want to have a lot of channels with a lot of different insertions that drive real value to the user but you also need to be able to scale what gets inserted along with personalisation without trading one versus the other. And then there is a third aspect which is the profitability problem for the broadcaster as they don’t currently control the ads because they’re coming from third party platforms mostly. And we’ve been able to address those three problems.”
Genelec (Stand 8.A61) is unveiling the 9320A reference controller as a bridge to its new UNIO audio-monitoring-service platform. UNIO brings together all the benefits of Genelec Smart Active Monitors, GLM 5.0 calibration software, and Aural ID 2.0 technology to create seamless integration of professional in-room loudspeaker and headphone monitoring services. With flexible connectivity, a reference-grade headphone output, and tactile hardware control of Smart Active Monitors, GLM and Aural ID, the 9320A provides a compact hub for both static and mobile professional audio-monitoring applications. Said Genelec managing director Siamäk Naghian, “Audio professionals in music, broadcast, postproduction, and game audio are increasingly wanting the flexibility to work wherever and whenever they want, even if that sometimes involves unpredictable and challenging acoustic environments. To be able to switch instantly between well-calibrated in-room and headphone monitoring without any interruption in workflow is crucial to this way of working, and so we see UNIO and the 9320A as powerful tools in creating a truly next-generation reference-quality monitoring system.”
Video interview Genelec’s Andy Bensley on growth in professional audio monitoring
Lama (Stand 8.A80) is talking about Lama Connect, which enables users to embed up to 256 channels of audio into an NDI stream. The timing of NDI streams in Connect is stable and does not drift over time, according to the company. Said Lama CCO and co-founder Ewan Cameron: “Big broadcasters are actively looking at using NDI as an alternative to other streaming products. Whereas you used to be able to do 16 channels per stream [with the NDI protocol], we’ve changed that to 256 channels. This means broadcasters can now do complex mixes both in the cloud and on-premises using the NDI protocol for added flexibility, scalability, efficiency, and some cost savings. Lama is taking part in a seminar titled “Audio with NDI” at the Rai on Sunday 17 September at 3 p.m., Room G106.
Lawo’s (Stand 8.B90) HOME apps are taking centre stage at IBC 2023. HOME Multiviewer, HOME UDX Converter, HOME Stream Transcoder, and HOME Graphic Inserter harness the power of a flexible microservice architecture. They deliver processing capabilities with minimal compute power and energy consumption, allowing customers to adapt swiftly to changing requirements and budget conditions, according to Lawo. The apps support SMPTE ST 2110, SRT, JPEG XS, and NDI for increasingly mixed technology environments and can easily adapt to new format requirements as these become relevant. The apps run on standard servers on-premises, in remote data centres, or in the public cloud. Said Lawo Chief Marketing Officer Andreas Hilmer, “HOME apps provide the ultimate flexibility for broadcast infrastructure, allowing users to adjust to any last-minute changes without the need to have additional hardware with them. They can easily spin up or spin down an app; it’s the ultimate commercial flexibility.”
LiveU’s Ronen Artman
LiveU’s (Stand 7.B19) EcoSystem is at the center of its efforts at IBC 2023 through partnerships with numerous companies, including Dina/Mimir, Marquis, and Wolftech. The LiveU EcoSystem is highly adaptable and open to other IP protocols. It is built on LiveU’s LRT (LiveU Reliable Transport) protocol for low latency, high quality, and rock-solid resiliency. The company is presenting its EcoSystem across contribution, production, and distribution with its suite of IP-video solutions. As a whole, LiveU’s mission is to supply a full suite of offerings that cater to all of its clients’ needs. “When you put everything that’s included into our EcoSystem together, we’re providing an end-to-end solution for each of our customers,” says Ronen Artman, VP, marketing, LiveU. “While we’re still focusing on 5G solutions as our bread and butter, we want to change people’s perception of what we provide.” Also, the company is demonstrating the private 5G workflow used for the coronation of King Charles III.
Matrox Video (Stand 7.B15) is involved on multiple fronts at IBC 2023. On the live-production side, Matrox ORIGIN offers a native, IT-based approach to television production with scalable, low-latency, and frame-accurate broadcast operations for Tier 1 live television production. As for video conversion, Matrox ConvertIP is allowing users to see how they can reduce the cost of ownership, ease switching requirements, and gain baseband-monitoring flexibility and redundancy. The company is also deeply into remote production, including the Monarch EDGE 4K/multiHD encoder and genlockable decoders. These solutions permit workers to send as many as four synchronized SDI broadcast-quality camera feeds from any location over the open internet and/or public/private cloud.
Video interview Matrox’s David Shepherd
Newsbridge’s Frédéric Petitpont
Newsbridge (Stand 7.C30) is highlighting new features for its MXT-1 AI video-indexing technology, which launched in beta mode in April and is now being rolled out to broadcasters, TV channels, and sports rights holders. Capable of indexing more than 500 hours of video per minute, including metadata and descriptions, MXT-1 scooped up an IABM award here and is described as a “game-changer” for anyone working with live and archived media, sports, and entertainment content. Newsbridge co-founder and CEO Frédéric Petitpont provided a demonstration of some of the new features, including automatic media summaries and the ability to automatically create titles, descriptions, tags, and chapters to speed publishing to social and digital channels. MXT-1 also allows users to view descriptions and summaries in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Arabic, with more languages to be added.
Q5X (Stand 8.C92) is the place to go to check out microphones and transmitters that can be worn by athletes, but be sure to check out a new IFB system suitable for on-field interviews via consumer-grade earpieces taken to a new and more professional level. According to Q5X chairman and CEO Paul Johnson, there is both an in-ear and a behind-the-ear version with receiver and transmitter. “And we are working with Wavenet’s NESO 2.4 [in-the-canal hearing terminal], which is louder than other systems and virtually disappears once you put it on.”
Quantum’s Natasha Beckley (left) and Skip Levens
Quantum (Stand 7.C41) is offering preconfigured bundles to make it easier to purchase and deploy its ActiveScale Cold Storage S3-enabled object-storage solution. The solution, which is architected for both active and cold data sets and reduces cold storage costs by up to 60% (according to Quantum). With the massive amount of data that customers need to retain for business and compliance purposes, customers are using both public- and private-cloud resources to store and manage this data, driven by budget, frequency at which access to the data is needed, and data-protection requirements. According to Skip Levens, marketing director, M&E, ActiveScale allows customers to build their own cloud-storage resource to control costs and ensure fast, easy access to their data for compliance, analysis, and deeper insights.
Anyone on the hunt for storage without the fear of downtime will want to check out Rohde & Schwarz’s (Stand 7.B21) SpyCerNode Two. it has a layer of IP technology called VSA (Virtual Storage Access) and eliminates downtime for users connected through a VSA appliance or client, says Rohde & Schwarz VP, broadcast and media, Erik Balladares. “We are also showing a new control panel for our Pixel Power product line which helps with automation,” he adds. “And, on the studio content-ingest side, Venice is an eight-channel server that will be transitioning over to software in the future. That will support all the various workflows for studio ingest, including VTR emulation and ingest for archives, where people are still getting things off tape.”
Video interview JW Player creator and co-founder Jeroen Wijering shares growing options in streaming video delivery
Making its debut at IBC 2023 is RT Software’s (Stand 7.B18) Tactic v7.0 sports-analysis telestrator. The new Player Drag and Infill feature, an AI-enabled upgrade of a previously manual process, lets users drag a player across the pitch to illustrate the pros and cons of alternative positions. It builds on the success of AI Automatic Pitch Calibration and AI Player Tracking. The company is also offering a live AR demonstration on its stand, with Canon’s latest CR-N500 PTZ camera delivering live feeds into the graphics engine. Visitors will also be able to trial an advanced preview of the new web frontend being developed for Swift CG. It builds on the success of the live-production tool, Swift Live, typically used in studio environments to trigger live graphics to air. Swift Live will be running to show visitors how its flexible interface can make controlling live show graphics easier for gallery operators. The company is also underlining its commitment to interoperability by participating in demonstrations on other vendor’s stands: Matrox and Grass Valley.
Salsa Sound (Stand 8.B77d) is demonstrating MixAir 3.0, the biggest update to MixAir since its first release. Among the features of the new version are NDI and SRT over IP simultaneous with normal channel-based and next-generation formats. Said Ben Shirley, co-founder/director, Salsa Sound and associate professor, audio technology, University of Salford, “It’s an easy interface to connect to. It’ll sit anywhere you want in the broadcast chain. We’re demonstrating the full broadcast chain here, including mixing multiple simultaneous sports to audio over IP. Also,” Shirley added, “we can now do more with next-generation audio formats. We showed the integration of MPEG-H last year in a real-time workflow; this year, we’ve enhanced our capability in object-based authoring still further. Come and see us!”
Sennheiser (Stand 8.C47), Neumann, Dear Reality, and Merging Technologies are demonstrating state-of-the art immersive-production workflows as well as exciting solutions for audio capture, monitoring, and processing. In the immersive presentation zone, powered by a 5.1.4 Neumann monitor setup with nine KH 150 monitor loudspeakers and two KH 750 DSP subwoofers, attendees will be able to get hands-on with the Dolby Atmos and immersive-broadcast workflows facilitated by the products of Merging Technologies, the newest member of the Sennheiser Group. The company will show its Anubis, Hapi, Pyramix, and Ovation solutions integrated in typical broadcast workflows. In addition to its new Dolby Atmos-certified monitoring package, Merging Technologies will show a brand-new interpretation solution.
Shure (Stand 8.C68) is discussing the MVX2U digital audio interface, a single-channel XLR-to-USB solution designed to eliminate barriers to achieving professional-level audio. Compact and discrete, the MVX2U’s integrated software provides access to the ShurePlus Motiv desktop app for any XLR microphone, with little to no setup, and delivers up to +60 dB of clean gain. “The MVX2U is the most convenient and powerful solution for users looking to convert their XLR microphones to USB at this price,” noted Sean Sullivan, associate director, global product management, Shure. “The integrated software is designed to be approachable to anyone — experienced professionals and those just starting their audio journey.” Also on exhibit is the Q5X Player Mic, which is used by the NFL, NBA, NHL, and many other sports to bring the sound of the players to fans at home.
Solid State Logic (Stand 8.B81) has launched the Tempest Control App for System T. TCA allows the user to run software from a physical console on a computer or virtual machine to directly control the Tempest Processing Engine. It can be used in many scenarios: for instance, to build a flypack with an IO to send to a venue, controlled directly from a console in a broadcast centre, or to use as backup for an existing surface for additional redundancy. Said SSL broadcast product manager Bernie Carpenter, “We’re excited about the additional flexibility this brings to the System T platform, with software-only control that allows us to better add use cases, such as remote production, automated news, or [applications] anywhere you might not want large physical control surfaces.”
Telestream’s Charlie Dunn
Enabling remote production, aiding with HDR/SDR workflows, and helping organisations use the cloud to scale up for events are among the trends that Telestream (Stand 7.B11) is responding to. Said Telestream chief product officer Charlie Dunn, “We think JPEG XS will continue to have growth and help in those areas. Because of the nature of sport, doing things in the cloud makes sense: [for example,] spinning up infrastructure for a three- or four-week tournament lends itself to cloud. Also, for sport, a lot of activity is focused on turning around highlights swiftly,” he added, “and that’s efficiently done with our tools. Remote production will make covering more of the smaller events possible, and, again, the cloud provides the perfect opportunity for that. A lot of people are replacing satellite and dark fibre with SRT; our tools allow for monitoring when that content leaves and arrives at venues, and we can also do cloud native monitoring, thanks to our IneoQuest portfolio.”
Telos Alliance (Stand 8.C45) is demonstrating the Infinity VIP App. First shown at NAB 2023, the app is part of the firm’s strategy to offer virtual audio solutions as part of its growing virtual ecosystem. Available for download from the Google Play and Apple App Store, the app mirrors the HTML5 browser-based VIP panel offering with functionality to support peer-to-peer comms, groups, partylines – all the elements users might expect in a matrix intercom but in a virtualised form with no central matrix core.
Teradek (Stand 7.C10) is showing off the Prism Mobile Backpack, a 5G solution for 4K HDR video contribution from the field. Featuring Teradek’s Prism Mobile 4K bonded-cellular encoder for high-speed connectivity, it makes streaming on location easier and more reliable than ever. Effective scenarios where this solution would be appropriate include sports events where traditional Wi-Fi isn’t available. Broadcasters are provided access to multiple capabilities: the feeding of live video to headquarters or directly to a designated destination over 6X 5G/LTE modems; swapping modems, encoders, and batteries to meet the demands of any event; uploading recordings from the field directly to camera-to-cloud platforms; distributing live feeds from Teradek’s Core Cloud platform.
Tinkerlist (7.D08) Tinkerlist introduced its CUEZ cloud-based rundown management system at IBC2023. This launch marks a significant shift in rundown creation and broadcasting automation in live studio shows, news, sports, esports and other live events in the media industry, according to the company. CUEZ unifies scripts, rundowns, assets, content and technical notes into a single, accessible platform, enabling production teams, both in technical and editorial roles, to collaborate effortlessly from anywhere, anytime, directly in the rundown.
Erik Hauters, founder of TinkerList.tv, explained: “As a director, I envisioned an environment where not only all participants of the editorial team and production crew can collaboratively create and adapt content during all stages of television production, but we also take media production to a whole new level by automating manual process as much as possible. Through an innovative, cloud-based approach, we aim to seamlessly integrate and sync all devices with your rundown via an open API. This ushers in a new way of working, where your workflow dictates what devices are being used, not the other way around.”
Wasabi Technologies (Stand 7.D34) is previewing a new integration with GrayMeta Curio that will harness the power of AI to create more-personalized sports-fan experiences with hyper-specific detail. The solution transforms cumbersome media archives into highly indexed and searchable Smart Buckets, allowing digital teams to easily find and deliver customized content to audiences exactly when needed. Liverpool Football Club will look to deploy the new integration in an effort to more easily access its archive and better engage with fans.