[by Walter Schoenknecht, TV TECHNOLOGY]

For many, references to “the cloud” are all too apt — an amorphous, poorly-defined fog that looks different to everyone who sees it.

But a cross-industry consortium has wrestled the cloud into submission to paint a vivid picture of the ways in which cloud storage will soon benefit content providers and consumers.

Monday’s NAB Show Super Session “Power to the Consumer! Here Comes UltraViolet!” assembled a cross-disciplinary team of interested parties to discuss Ultra- Violet, an initiative of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE).

The system, set to debut later this year, provides common paths, methods and tools for distribution of visual media across a range of devices, media and platforms.

Moderated by David Wertheimer, CEO of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California, the session attempted to define and describe the UltraViolet project, a collaboration among more than 60 players from different industries.

One of the first goals of UltraViolet, Wertheimer said, was to deliver content in the ways consumers are most comfortable with. Richard Berger, senior vice president of Global Digital Strategy at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, outlined UltraViolet’s cross-media underpinnings: physical products such as DVD and Blu-ray Disc and digitally-delivered streams and downloads. “The good thing about UltraViolet is that we have something for everybody,” he said.

Wertheimer said consumers still have great affection for physical media, whether to assuage fears of format compatibility or simply to maintain their movie collections. As a result, he said, “digital sell-through” was a difficult task for distributors.

Mark Teitell, general manager and executive director of DECE, UltraViolet’s parent consortium, said consumers also resisted being channeled to a single purchase outlet, preferring to select their retailer of choice. Many were worried that a digital purchase in one specific format might leave them “marooned” if the device or platform faded from public use.

Christopher Allen, Best Buy general manager, described the challenges UltraViolet faces. “There’s still a passion for the entertainment experience; there’s still a passion for collecting,” he said. “But how do you bring the best of that ownership model that people like, and blend that with the best that the Internet and technology can bring?”

Scott Fierstein, senior director for Interoperability Standards at Microsoft, described the “pillars” the consortium chose as the foundation for UltraViolet: interoperability between services and devices; a consistent, predictable usage model across platforms; and a strong visual identity — a logo — that implicitly guarantees compatibility for both devices and content.

Fierstein also said that creating an effective, platform-agnostic digital rights management (DRM) scheme was key. “I think this is the most innovative thing that came out of UltraViolet,” he said. “From the consumer’s perspective, the technology is truly transparent.”

Tim Dodd, media vice president and general manager at Neustar Media, described consumers’ perception of “the right” to move their physical media purchases into the cloud for portable viewing. “I think that, for a while, we’ll be in a hybrid physical/digital environment,” he said. Bill Wheaton, vice president for digital media at Akamai Technologies, said that unauthorized download of content was a concern, but that the benefits of UltraViolet were, in themselves, a deterrent.

See the original post here: http://nabshowdaily.com/2011/WednesdayEdition/119188

Sony introduced its SR memory platform, which aims to add file-based capabilities to its SR format.
Underscoring the HPA supersession theme of workflows, this platform enables a direct to edit native workflow of the SR codec, explained Sony marketing manager Peter Crithary.
The SR memory card can accommodate up to 1 TB of storage, and the product family includes an SR memory camcorder, a camera adapter, a transfer unit and a deck.
Sony recommends the system for any file-based production, including movies, TV and documentary work.
The line will be available in the summer; pricing has not been announced.

Each day at the Tech Retreat, Leon Silverman and Jerry Pierce conducted an informal attendee survey, generating sometimes surprising responses. Among the questions and answers:
–Is 3D in the home dead? roughly 80% of the audience raised their hands
–Cord cutting? Some, but not many, attendees have already done so.
–When will packaged media disappear from stores? Very few said within five years, and very few said within10 years.

The final Thursday session included a report on Disney’s restoration efforts, which to date have included over 200 titles, with roughly 70 in the past year.
The studio has been restoring its animated classic, as well as live action productions. Recent restorations included animated films such as Fantasia and Dumbo, as well as live action titles such as The Love Bug.
Titles in the pipeline include: Blackbeard’s Ghost, Quiz Show, Horse Whisperer and The Apple Dumpling Gang.

What is it? Where is it? Why should we use it?

Now that the ETC has launched the Hollywood Production in the Cloud effort, I though it might be a good idea to sit in on the HPA panel discussion titled Hollywood in the Cloud to hear first hand what the post-production community thinks of the cloud. The unanimous conclusion of the HPA panel was that the biggest impact the cloud can have on the Hollywood post-production community is to improve “collaboration.” This theme was also prevalent during the ETC’s “Hollywood Production in the Cloud” Round-Table discussion back in January. I think the HPA panelists were right on target with their assessment of collaboration. The panelists were very optimistic of the cloud’s potential while being pragmatic and understanding of the cloud’s limitations today. Pointing to an inhibitor to cloud adoption, the panelists concerns were bandwidth and latency. From the other direction, “mayhem in the market” is driving how content is marketed and distributed, and the “notion of any screen, anywhere, anytime is driving the need to get media out in the marketplace as fast as possible.” Distribution is migrating “from devices & packaged media, to integrated IP based TV sets to cloud services supporting edge-devices.” We used to have “one market – theatrical, with only one format – 35mm film. Now we have an exposition of digital formats,” which is close to exceeding the capacity of the studio to deliver. The exploding need for more storage and compute cycles is driving the need for internal clouds as well as external clouds as solution of choice. In 2005, a major post-production facility had about 50 TBytes of ingest and transcoding per year, now that is done on a daily basis. Looking at the cloud today, some could not “see how rendering can happen in the cloud,” while others already could see a clear path ahead.

Behaviors are changing dramatically, “wall postings have out paced email, millennial’s have a different expectation, we now are communicating with different metaphors driven by Facebook generation.” From the perspective of a cloud-service provider, the “studios should focus on how the cloud can cater to the end user.” This is a new viewpoint from the technology industry. The legacy approach was to provide manual services, but with the advent of the cloud, a self-service model is emerging built on automation. The true value of the cloud will be realized when an end-user can be working on “an application that runs without knowing if it is under my desk or in the cloud.” The good and bad is that “we are finally starting to see providers become focused on the Media & Entertainment industry, but we don’t have enough critical mass just yet.” Most vendors “don’t have a tight coupling of storage and compute necessary to support the unique demands of video transcoding.” While another panelist announced the effectiveness of their cloud-based editing, review and approval. They had to ensure that cloud-based “jog & shuttle” performed as well as it would if the “computer was under my desk.” From a “practical matter it doesn’t matter where it is as long as I can get it and it’s secure.” From a technology provider, “I am most interested in how the cloud impacts my engineering, we are not building anything that can’t be ported into the cloud. That’s a huge change for me as a vendor.” To change to a service model versus a product model is a difficult transition for technology vendors to traverse.

Public, private, internal, external, it will not be just one cloud model that fits perfectly for everything, the cloud will be a blending of approaches. The panel concluded on the theme that “there is a big difference between production, post, distribution, and there are many more problems production has to face with the cloud than in post and distribution.” That challenge will be addressed by the ETC’s “Hollywood Production in the Cloud” project. Stay tuned…

During Thursday’s panel on reference monitors, moderator Paul Chapman of Fotokem asked speakers to discuss HDR monitoring. “In our view as a post facility, that is scary as there are no standards,” Chapman said.
“The content creation community has got to decide whether to take control of the consumer viewing experience or let consumers do whatever they want to do,” warned Charles Poynton. “So far there has been virtually no contribution. … I would say get to work and think about that issue.”
Said Dolby’s Dave Schnuelle: “New cameras can capture enormous amounts of range, and the Academy is working on ACES to carry that range through the postproduction process. … We are working with the Academy on the Log ACES format/ACES HDR. We expect to show it at NAB.”

At HPA, Avid previewed the new versions of its editing line: Media Composer version 5.5, NewsCutter version 9.5 and Symphony version 5.5. Avid reported that new features include:
–Support for AJA Io Express input and output interface
–Avid PhraseFind powered by Nexidia phonetic searching add-on option
–Increased performance with Panasonic AVC-Intra material with the new Avid Nitris DX AVC-Intra video accelerator
–Native support for Sony HDCAM SR Lite
–Enhanced Smart Tool functionality for direct transition manipulation within the timeline
The new versions are slated for availability on March 8, and will be exhibited at the NAB Show in April. PhraseFind starts at $495, including one language of choice, with further language packs available for $149.

Sarnoff is working on developing 3D test patterns that explore possible 3D problems that could crop up from ecoding or display technologies.

An HPA Tech Retreat panel discussed the challenges that need to be addressed before the promise of file-based mastering can be realized. Some perspectives:

Brian Kenworthy, Deluxe Digital Studios
–“I think we are on the way. (We need to focus on) anything we can do to come up with standards—metadata, etc.”

Greg Head, Walt Disney Studios:
–“I think automated QC is the future”

Annie Chang, Walt Disney Studios:
–“We have been implementing a lot of QC, any time a file gets regenerated.”
–“The file based workflow has increased the amount of QC”
–There are fibre connections between Disney and vendors; Disney uses a system called Transfer Manager. “More speed is the key. We can always use more bandwidth.”

Timur Insepov, Sony DADC:
–“We’d like to make sure QC is low cost since it is done often. We can supplement automated QC.”
–“We hope for a (metadata) standard. Without that, we don’t think we can supply cost efficiency”

Dave Register, Laser Pacific:
–On a switch to file-based mastering: “It’s about bringing DI principles to the mastering process and getting over emotional issues.”
–On QC: “Finding DPX players that are reliable has been very challenging.”

SoliDDD has developed technologies that produce high quality auto-stereo imagery. The technology SoliDDD has developed is capable of producing auto-stereo still images with up to 24 views.

The HPA Tech Retreat attendees applauded the news that version 1.0 of the Interoperable Master Format, or IMF, will be published next week.
The IMF—whose draft was created by studio representatives and other stakeholders under the ETC@USC umbrella—is now the subject of a SMPTE working group with a goal of standardizing the format.
Chairing the SMPTE group is Annie Chang, vp postproduction technology at Walt Disney Studios. During the HPA session on interoperable mastering and interoperable media, she offered an overview of IMF, and she explained that there would be a basic level, supporting today’s needs; followed by an extended level, in an effort to future proof the format.
Citing the HPA discussions about the AMPAS work, she noted that IMF would be used upstream from IIF ACES.
Also during the panel, Brad Gilmer of the Advanced Media Workflow Association offered an overview of FIMS (Framework for Interoperable Media Services), an EBU/AMWA effort.
Via a recorded message, EBU’s Hans Hoffmann noted that FIMS aims to achieve interoperability at a time that the industry is moving toward software-based workflow. He suggested that this could result in flexible workflows with cost efficiencies and production efficiencies.
Said Gilmer of its development effort: “We want to be fast as there is a limited window to do this before there are tons of deployments.”
Participation in IMF and FIMS work was encouraged.