IBC 2024: In Review Part 1 – Halls 0 to 4

The SVG and SVGE editorial teams were out in full force at IBC 2024, covering the biggest sports-technology news and delivering daily live roundups. Here is a look at the news from exhibitors in Halls 0-4.

Featured in this roundup are Appear, Backlight, Bridge Technologies, Broadcast Solutions, BT Media & Broadcast, Christy Media Solutions, Disguise, Dolby, EditShare, Evertz, Fraunhoffer, Harmonic, Imagine Communications, InSync, Intelsat, LucidLink, MainConcept, Media Links, Net Insight, Open Broadcast Systems, Panasonic Connect Europe, Sencore, Skyline Communications, Techex, TVN Live Production, Vislink, Wowza, and Xytech Systems.

Appear (Stand 1. B41) has updated its HEVC and AVC compression solutions in time for IBC 2024. Through its X Platform, Appear says, it can now deliver up to a 73% improvement in latency performance without compromising picture quality. Says Appear CTO Andy Rayner, “Our evolving temporal compression capabilities complement our JPEG XS solutions available in TR-07 and TR-08 formats. With full interoperability, all of these capabilities integrate seamlessly with Appear’s accelerated SRT technology, providing a complete toolkit for media transport with best-in-class protection and resilience.”

Backlight (Stand 1.D09) is one of the industry leaders at IBC 2024 in AI-driven automation and cloud-based asset-management innovation. The company’s Iconik smart media-management and collaboration hub has a bevy of new features. Among them is Automation Engine, a new no-code UI for building workflows and automating tasks centered on content discovery in media libraries. That includes facial recognition, summaries, and topic extraction through AI. Iconik also offers improvements in media review and collaboration with a new asset player and upgraded dynamic watermarking.

Bridge Technologies (Stand 1.A71) is demonstrating the recent integration of Cromorama’s leading colour-management system Orion-Convert into Bridge’s ST 2110 production probe, the VB440. According to the company, the integration will make it easier for broadcasters to ensure that their live sports productions maintain a consistent grade in both HDR and SDR, across all cameras in a single production or event. Another demo of interest to sports broadcasters features the VB440 and its range of production-monitoring features, which have been extended to include monitoring of ST 2110-31 and -41 sADM, enabling effective transmission of immersive audio in live, uncompressed production environments. The new capability follows on from incorporation of monitoring for Dolby’s full set of audio standards including Atmos.

Alongside a new OB truck for the Swiss Broadcasting Corp. and a radio truck for a Lithuanian broadcaster, systems integrator Broadcast Solutions (Stand O.A23) is discussing a new ST 2110 remote facility built for producing coverage of Danish Superliga football. Housed in a shopping mall in Copenhagen, the facility is part of the league’s move to produce all its 800 matches per year in-house. To do this, it partnered with DMC Production to form broadcast arm Matchday Production. Built around the Grass Valley Kahuna switcher, the facility houses four large-scale control rooms, with capacity for up to 40 cameras, and five smaller galleries. Broadcast Solutions also built four vehicles and four flypacks for the onsite facilities. The infrastructure, including Cisco IP switches and Riedel SDI routers, is managed by hi human interface, a control solution for media infrastructures developed by Broadcast Solutions.

Low latency is a major talking point for BT Media & Broadcast (Stand 0.A24). In a demo on its stand, a live camera feed of a Scaletric track is encoded and sent to the company’s London Switch, then beamed back to the stand in real time. The company is also showcasing its role in the IBC Accelerator project “Scalable Ultra-Low Latency Streaming for Premium Sports.” This POC project seeks to achieve 2-second latency and near-instant playback start via standard HTTP streaming technical stack and infrastructure. The company is also keen to talk about the benefits of Vena, its IP-native media platform for orchestration, monitoring, and control.

Christy Media Solutions (Stand.1C37) is looking to help attendees solve a critical issue: finding talent in an industry where job duties and skill sets vary greatly, often requiring a good deal of vetting in the selection process. Whether your organisation is big or small, international or local, and a broadcaster, manufacturer, facility, or just about any other industry segment, Christy Media offers bespoke hiring efforts as well as a database of 45,000 broadcast contacts. If you didn’t have a chance to swing by the stand in Hall 1, you can reach the company via email [email protected] or telephone (44) 1908 308770.

Disguise (Stand 3.B61) has unveiled its latest broadcast-product developments and is showcasing Emmy Award-winning creative services, highlighting cutting-edge projects and productions including the Olympics, UEFA Euro tournament, and the U.S. and Mexican elections. Partnering with InFiled, Samsung (with White Light), Roe Visual, and Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC), Disguise has a presence on multiple booths, demonstrating how its advanced solutions are driving the next generation of broadcast workflows. On the InFiled stand (3.B61), event-goers can witness the Disguise Porta graphics controller in action, enabling the playout of all graphics types, from motion graphics to LED, AR or even XR, all from a single easy-to-use interface.

Dolby (Stand 3.B60) is showcasing its Dolby Vision Live production, which enables users to manipulate live data to correct and enhance the look and feel of a picture, just by encoding the metadata live. It is also talking about its dialogue-separation tool, which increases audio intelligibility by allowing the user to extract audio, decoupling dialogue from the main video content. Additionally, Dolby has unveiled a new range of cloud video products and solutions supporting real-time interactive streaming. This follows the company’s recent acquisition of Theo Technologies, a provider of high-quality video-streaming tools embraced by top sports, media, and entertainment companies worldwide. TheoAds’ pioneering ad insertion capability improves the quality, flexibility, and targeting of advertising within TheoPlayer. Also, the combined Dolby and Theo offering brings together Dolby Millicast, an ultra-low-latency streaming solution, transcoding powered by Dolby Hybrik.

EditShare (Stand 7.A35) has introduced the Ultimate EFS Series. Designed for scalability and flexibility, the next-gen storage platform offers collaborative workflows to sports teams and broadcasters. With 2RU, 3RU and 4RU form factors, plus a portable field unit, the Ultimate Series delivers the speed, security, and capacity crucial for the sports environment. Seamless integration with EditShare’s EFS, Flow, and MediaSilo tools ensures efficient content management, allowing sports-media professionals to focus on what they do best: telling compelling stories.

Evertz (Stand 2.B51) has plenty to offer the sports-production professional, starting with the further integration of DreamCatcher replay within the Bravo Studio. “It’s now a full-production area with both video and audio and all tied with not only a graphics interface but also a tactile interface,” says Mo Goyal, senior director, international business development, Evertz. “And one of the things we are demonstrating is Motion Plus, where we’re using AI technology to help us derive up to 8X super-slo-mo from a single frame camera and in near real time. You can clip it, drop it in the bin, and have a version of ready to play out almost immediately. You can also use it live but with a couple frames of latency.” To solve issues around PTP timing, the MIO-PTP analog timing module takes the GPS timing from the home broadcast plant and extends it across the WAN to the remote-production facility to have both facilities on the same reliable clock. Adds Goyal, “You can reduce the need for frame syncs because everything is timed to the house timing.”

Fraunhoffer (Stand 8.B40), always a hot-bed of cutting-edge audio technologies, is spotlighting MPEG-H audio. “It’s a next-generation audio system being used in Brazil and South Korea and currently in standardization in other countries for broadcast and streaming applications,” says Yannik Grewe, senior manager, media technologies and business development, Fraunhofer. “It has a number of benefits compared with other audio codecs, including compatibility with immersive sound and 5.1.4 with height speakers, which means a better experience. It also comes with audio objects that the user can interact with and define, like the commentators and the crowd. The third benefit is, those objects allow the viewer to decide if they want to increase the volume of the commentary without increasing the volume of everything else. Or they can switch off the commentary altogether and even have alternate tracks.” The demonstrations here give a sense of how the technology not only can be deployed through TVs and set-top boxes but also can make audio postproduction easier and simpler.

Centering sports discussions on live-streaming delivery and monetization, Harmonic (Stand 1.B20) highlights how its product portfolio helps broadcasters enjoy success on both sides of the equation. Here, the company is showing the latest with its XOS Advanced Media Processor and Spectrum X Media Server. The next generation of XOS media processor, according to the company, enables 50% more channel encoding and transcoding than the previous generation, and the Spectrum X media server doubles channel density for most workflows. Harmonic is also exploring how AI supports dynamic ad insertion workflows. Interesting potentials exist in a world where AI can be trained on the “flow” of a sports event and can offer opportunities to unobtrusively deploy ad inventory and leverage low-action moments in a game and avoid disrupting key highlights or live moments with pre- or mid-roll spots.

Imagine Communications (Stand 1.B73) is celebrating a milestone at IBC 2024: shipment of the 4,000th unit of its Selenio Network Processor (SNP). Applicable to both IP and SDI workflows, the SNP has been deployed by more than 280 customers in applications that include broadcast studios, mobile production units, and sports venues. A spokesperson confirms that sales in Europe have been particularly strong, with some customers buying as many as 150 units. Among those customers is sports- and entertainment-technology provider Deltatre, which deployed SNP as part of a SMPTE ST 2110 IP network for live graphics production on coverage of Italy’s Serie A. The network went live for the start of the 2024-25 season. New at IBC this year is the SNP-XL, which extends the SNP range to more SDI-intensive applications, including the need for high-density synchronising gateways.

The super summer of sport, with Euro 2024 in Germany and both the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, helped InSync (Stand 2.C30) to further increase the number of live-broadcast frame-rate conversions completed by its products, which had already spiked by 300% in the 12 months to June. Much of this increase came through the use of FrameFormer, the company’s software-based standards converter. At IBC, InSync has announced that FrameFormer has been integrated into the Synamedia Virtual Digital Content Manager (vDCM) suite of cloud-based video-processing solutions. The FrameFormer technology will also enhance Synamedia’s Quortex Link for cloud-based video distribution. Also new for IBC, having been first shown at NAB 2024, is a dual-channel HD broadcast frame-rate converter for SMPTE 2110 workflows. The MCC-HD2 supports both HDR and SDR. The spec for the 1RU device includes NMOS IS0-4/05 as well at ST 2110-20/21/30/31/40.

Intelsat (Stand 1.C71) is promoting its next-generation solutions and how it ensures that customers get maximum value from its services. Among those solutions, the Intelsat Global Hybrid Video Distribution Network streamlines operations for users with integrated network connections to Intelsat’s global fleet of satellites, and IntelsatOne IP folds IP into the Intelsat Managed Media Network. Fully integrated into Intelsat’s hybrid terrestrial and satellite infrastructure, the workflow provides a new IP software video-management layer to an existing IP/MPLS network.

LucidLink (Stand 3.A63) is making a point to highlight new products. The latest is LucidLink 3.0, a next-gen storage workflow that assists in making the creative process even more streamlined. It will allow customers to tap into real-time collaboration and fast retrieval of media files with the utmost security. In addition, the company is debuting its latest integration of LucidLink Panel with Adobe After Effects. This partnership allows creatives to improve playback performance with greater efficiency.

Video and audio-codec provider MainConcept has expanded the availability of LCEVC with Wowza Streaming Engine developed by Wowza (Stands 4.A02, 4.B05). By adding LCEVC into Wowza Streaming Engine, which uses MainConcept codecs to encode or transcode to and from AVC/H.264 and HEVC/H.265, the two companies teams have been able to provide reduced bitrates by enhancing compression efficiency, significantly lowering encoding costs while retaining backward compliance with all sorts of legacy playback devices. Says Wowza CEO/Founder Dave Stubenvoll, “With Wowza Player now supporting LCEVC, customers can benefit from higher-quality streams and the flexibility to accommodate both legacy and future playback environments, all while reducing storage and delivery costs.”

Media Links (Stand 1.A37) is showing its complete IP ecosystem, including the ST 2110-enabled Xscend IP media platform. The technology is used to transport high-quality video, audio, and data signals over a managed and/or unmanaged IP network. Ideal for sports, the Xscend is designed for the network edge as a reconfigurable, evolvable, IP-migration gateway. It can support up to 128 contribution-quality media and data services in a 2RU footprint. The Media Links IP ecosystem also includes the ProMD-EMS network-management software, the MDX series of IP media switches, and MDP Series of IP media gateways. “We’re delivering carrier grade reliability and 100% IP standards compliancy,” says a Media Links spokesperson. Media Links technology was used by a major U.S. broadcaster during Paris 2024.

Net Insight (Stand 1.C48) is displaying the Nimbra 204, a network-edge streaming appliance well-suited to sports contribution over unmanaged internet networks. Suitable for both fixed and remote broadcast environments, the small-form device dovetails with Net Insight’s Nimbra Edge and Connect iT network-orchestration and device-management systems, providing an open-standards-based, cloud-agnostic solution that allows full “observability” and media awareness across a sports-contribution workflow. Nimbra 204 includes low-latency HEVC compression and 4:2:2 10-bit resolution. The company has also announced that the Nimbra 400 platform now features multichannel HEVC 4:2:2 video encoding and decoding.

Open Broadcast Systems (Stand 1.A40c) is discussing its 5G Flyaway, which launched at NAB 2024 and has since saved the Professional Squash Association from being grounded by a lack of connectivity at the German Open 2024. Built in collaboration with Zixi, the 5G bonding solution lets sports broadcasters reach fibre and satellite picture quality over cellular networks and deliver them as standard constant-bitrate MPEG transport streams. The Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway external weatherproof 5G directional router can be placed up to 100 metres (300 ft.) away. It delivers connectivity for sports broadcasters in areas of poor connectivity, such as beneath a stadium, as well as allowing the use of distant cell towers, keeping traffic separate from spectators. It is available with a global data plan using a SIM from Webbing, avoiding the need to swap SIM cards and providing an affordable pay-as-you-go data plan.

Panasonic Connect Europe (Stand 2.G102) has extended NDI support to its 4K Integrated PTZ cameras (AW-UE40W/K, AW-UE50W/K, AW-HE145, and AW-UE 150W/K). The upgrades, which previously required a paid licence, will be made available via a free firmware update between December 2024 and April 2025, after which the models will ship with NDI pre-activated. The upgrade will activate NDI functionality as a standard feature in more than 80,000 units currently in use.

Sencore (Stand 1.F72) is showing off how it is enhancing broadcast contribution, content distribution, and monitoring of broadcast-quality services. The company’s internet distribution solution is helping broadcasters and streamers use the public internet in lieu of fiber or satellite via SRT. The Centra Gateway platform — along with edge devices like the SCP 2110, Impulse, and Omnihub — enable end users to rapidly deploy systems using the internet as the main infrastructure. With that comes flexibility and efficiency at cost. There’s also no shortage of encoders at the stand. Sencore’s AFN-1000 is the company’s top flight encoder for 4K 4:2:2 10-bit–quality video. It pairs with the MRD 7000 decoder for broadcast contribution. Sencore’s VideoBridge provides engineers and operators with its finest monitoring tools. The company has also partnered with Showfer at this show, welcoming it to its stand to share content-management and -distribution solutions.

As was the case at NAB 2024, Skyline Communications (Stand 1.A57) is using IBC 2024 to showcase dataminer.MediaOps, its platform for simplifying and automating operations across the media supply chain. Built on Skyline’s DataMiner platform, dataminer.MediaOps can be run on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid setup. It enables the management of technical resources, personnel, and satellite-transponder slots; allows planning of functions facilitating production and news events across various platforms; and includes tools for infrastructure provisioning, intelligent monitoring, and comprehensive reporting on resource utilisation and billing.

Techex (Stand 3.B44) is demonstrating solutions focused on helping broadcasters. Designed for hybrid and pure-cloud software workflows, tx darwin offers secure and flexible live media processing, transport, and monitoring micro-service–based platform to solve key requirements within critical contribution, mezzanine, and distribution workflows. It is also chatting about tx edge, a software gateway providing protection and monitoring for broadcast content between facilities, ingress to and egress from the cloud, and between other software transformation processes. It offers a comprehensive array of protocol options for both content ingest and egress, along with numerous possibilities for traffic manipulation within the IP domain. It is also talking about transport-stream splicing, an innovative technology that can be spun up and down in the cloud as required.

Germany-based OB provider TVN Live Production (Stand 0.A17) has partnered with Sony for the latest addition to its fleet of trucks. The new Ü8 truck – on display in the outside exhibits area — features four Sony MLS-X1 switchers, allowing two control rooms in the truck to be used independently and enabling TVN to handle two separate, simultaneous productions in one OB van. Says TVN CTO Christoph Moll, “We have the option of the independent use of each of the switchers, but, for really large UHD productions requiring up to 200 UHD inputs, we can combine all four units on board the TVN-OB8 to one large mixer. This gives us maximum flexibility.” The Ü8 truck debuted during the European Football Championship in June and July.

Vislink’s (Stand 1.C32) latest wireless transmitters, the DragonFly V and INCAM-GV, are having their European debuts at IBC 2024. The DragonFly V, a miniature HEVC HDR COFDM transmitter, is designed to deliver real-time, high-quality video from point-of-view (PoV) cameras, UAVs, and body-worn devices. The INCAM-GV, available in both RF and 5G versions, integrates with Grass Valley LDX 100 Series live-production cameras. The HEVC 4K UHD, HDR-ready wireless system enables full broadcast-quality encoding with resolutions up to 4K UHD. Also on the Vislink stand is a demo of a VR camera system used onboard fully autonomous race cars competing in the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL): an 8K ultra-high-resolution camera from IO Industries is mounted on a real A2RL racing car and operated via Vislink RF equipment.

Xytech Systems (Stand 4.C10) is spotlighting its recently announced merger with Fabric, which is intended to offer organisations struggling with resource and data management a better solution. Xytech CEO John O’Connor says the merger will offer a media–supply-chain solution that provides quick access and management of data and resources with minimal manual intervention. He cites Fabric’s media–supply-chain and metadata-management solutions as a complement to Xytech’s resource-management tools. Adds Fabric CEO Rob Delf, “Our customers will benefit from an integrated platform that not only delivers superior performance and reliability but also drives operational efficiency and significant cost savings driven by modern, data-driven architecture, setting a new standard for the industry’s future.”