David Wertheimer, executive director of Entertainment Technology Center at USC, says hackers operate a little like terrorists, forming small groups to do their deeds, but Tuesday’s arrests show they can be traced and arrested. Would-be hackers should take note of this: You can hide in cyberspace, but you also can be caught.

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[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

“I think this will ultimately hurt Apple,” said David Wertheimer, executive director of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California. “They created all this hope and promise with the iPad as the future of digital-publishing incarnate. Now, they’ve knocked it down with these restrictive rules, and I think that’s somewhat short-sighted.”

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The Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC@USC), has released details of a voluntary Interoperable Master File (IMF) specification that it hopes will help content creators and distributors streamline the handling of audio and video content as digital files. The organization, whose members include some of the biggest motion picture studios in the world, has been working independently for about two years to try to establish a “universal way” of receiving and processing content for different users, different media consumption platforms and different parts of the world.

Once standardized by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) — perhaps as early as mid-2011 — this Master File specification would help content creators save their files in various wrappers and compression formats that would make digitally encoded content immediately useable by others. It would also reduce the time and effort now required to create different versions of a single movie title to accommodate different language tracks, parental controls and various other unique elements that have cost the studios significantly.

The rather ambitious initiative to create a master file spec is not a new one. In fact, people like Clyde Smith, senior vice president Global Broadcast Technology and Standards at Turner Broadcasting System in Atlanta, sometimes cited as the “godfather of interoperability,” has been promoting the idea since at least 2002, through his work with the Material eXchange Format (MXF) within the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA). The organization previously released a similar yet slightly different spec called ASO2.

Building upon previous efforts
According to AMWA, MXF AS02 is a mastering tool that details use of the MXF toolkit to efficiently carry essence (pictures, sound and metadata) through the processes needed to create deliverables and versioning. As a media asset passes through a company (or companies) it can carry the essence and metadata with minimum data overheads.

Each initiative has built upon the one preceding it. However, with such a wide scope and a variety of organizations that all complete their workflows differently, it has taken many years to nail down a set of content creation variables that universally appeals to everyone who needs it.

“Our work kind of runs in parallel to what the ETC is now doing,” Smith said. “It takes a good year to document the use cases and workflows needed to overcome the challenges of interoperability and increase productivity. Do I wish it happened sooner? No doubt.”

The issue is close to Smith’s heart because his company has been dealing with hundreds of different program producers that deliver content in different ways — from a Fed Ex package to a digital file with dozens of metadata tags that have to be deciphered. So, establishing a standard way to ensure that content is properly ingested is critical to Turner’s operations. At the NAB convention in 2007, Smith, and a team of manufacturers along with Turner and AMWA staff, demonstrated the ASO2 format and got people’s attention.

Understanding that other organizations have been working on similar initiatives, David Wertheimer, CEO and executive director of the ETC, said the goal with the new IMF spec is to use as much existing technology and standards work as possible to reach a consensus sooner.

“We have no intention of reinventing wheels that already exist,” Wertheimer said. “There is a great body of work to build on, including what Clyde and team have done with ASO2, and our specification that we will deliver to SMPTE will build on many of these established standards and best practices.”

Some key differences
A key difference in the work at the ETC, he said, is that while they are leveraging some of the file wrapping methods (e.g., MXF), also used by AMWA, that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

“These wrappers offer great flexibility,” Wertheimer said, “but what we’re trying to do is, rather than create a generic wrapper that you can put anything into, we’re actually trying to do the reverse and say, ‘how can we leverage that capability but constrain what people put in them so that we can ensure that the receiver will be able to use what he or she was given?’ This way, when I hand you a package of files associated with a single piece of content, you know exactly what it is and how to use it in your operation, systems and workflows.

“Right now in the industry we have people creating masters but when they want to distribute them downstream [DVDs, mobile, iTunes, etc.], they have to create a new master package for every one of those platforms. It becomes completely unwieldy,” Wertheimer said, adding that he knows of some movie studio members that are storing 250 versions of the same film.

“Our goal is to create a single intermediate or mezzanine-level package of files from which you could derive those 250 versions, but you store it once, send it once to everyone that needs it,” he said. “Those recipients can then transcode it into whatever format they need, but you as the content owner don’t have to go through all of that trouble and file management.”

Walt Disney rep leads the way
Under the direction of Howard Lukk, technical committee chairman and vice president of production technology for Walt Disney Studios, the ETC @ USC has been working at it about 18 months and now has an early draft for industry review and feedback.

“So far, so good,” Lukk said of the draft spec. “I think this is a tough problem to solve quickly, but the work we’re doing will go a long way and hopefully be used for many years to come.”

The draft has been available since September, and Lukk said several in the industry have already sent comments, many looking for clarification and raising some interesting points about the challenges of implementation.

“In general, the feedback has been very positive, and people are excited about the idea of having this kind of spec that would make everyone’s jobs a lot easier in terms of sharing files between content producers, post houses, distributors and anyone involved in the process,” Lukk said.

Movie studios and ETC member companies most closely involved with the IMF work include Paramount, Sony, Fox, NBC/Universal, Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures, which all have similar needs in their file-based workflows. Many of the members also oversee (own) broadcast television operations, such as Disney (ABC), Fox (Fox Broadcasting) and NBC. There’s no question that this spec is applicable to anyone who makes high-quality content and wants to get it in lots of different places without creating lots of versions.

Everyone shares the same workflow problems
“This is an issue that most everyone agrees is vitally important, but the biggest debate has revolved around what types of image resolutions we needed to include to satisfy the most general needs,” Lukk said. “Mezzanine-level compression and color space were also important issues to many members. I think we now have a pretty good consensus on most of the important elements of the IMF.”

Lukk said the work at AMWA has been incorporated into the new IMF spec, which accommodates ASO2-type wrapping for the core files. It also includes shims that allow for customization and variation among the various content providers and how they like to work individually.

“We fight for a balance all the time between universal interoperability through a highly-specific set of parameters, and flexibility, which is less restrictive and allows different organizations to handle content in slightly different ways. With this new IMF specification, we are trying to hit the middle ground. We leave some room for us here at Disney to do things a bit differently than what, say, Warner Bros. does with its content. But we will have a baseline that makes interoperability between us and our service providers and customers possible. That’s the key goal,” said Lukk.

Lukk said Disney has begun to do interoperability testing at its Burbank lot. The company’s ABC cable networks group is aware of the IMF work but has not been fully involved to this point. However, it’s clear the IMF will have significant benefits for sharing content between divisions within the Disney family.

“They’ve had to run a bit faster than we have in terms of delivering content on-air all the time, so [the ABC Station Group] is keeping track of what we’re doing,” Lukk said, “but at the same time they are looking at our work from a distance and saying, ‘when you get your work done on this, come back and talk to us.’”

Promising results
Turner’s Smith and his team have seen the ETC’s draft document and like what they see thus far.

“I’m hopeful that we can do something that is truly interoperable that is beyond the scope of what either one of us had originally envisioned,” Smith said.

Turner is currently making extensive use of the MXF ASO2 specification to develop up to 25 different elements for a single piece of content to accommodate its various domestic and international platforms.

“Thus far we’ve only done the simplest of implementations, but this grows in importance when you think about the emerging mandates that we must implement, based on the accessibility bill that President Obama signed into law and what that means in terms of the return of video description tracks and closed captioning across all broadband products,” Smith said. “When you start thinking about all of the interfaces that we now have and the ones we still need to establish and put in place, the repurposing of content gets to be a larger and larger portion of this issue.

“We started our work to solve problems only for our domestic and international content for television, but now as we begin to look at all of the alternative distribution platforms that have become available since we began our work, there’s still work that needs to be done, so groups like the ETC are filling the void nicely,” he said. “It forms a big part of our and everyone else’s ‘TV everywhere’ strategy.”

“I think it’s safe to say that many of our members are using the range of currently existing file wrappers and format compatibility tricks and still feel this is not a solved problem,” said the ETC’s Wertheimer. “As technology has gotten more sophisticated, we’re recognizing that there is a better way, and we’re working to find it.”

The ETC @ USC’s Interoperable Master File (IMF) specification can be viewed online.

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“I want my Google TV!” That’s the operational mantra these days at the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC@USC). Funded in part by Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, and Warner Brothers—plus a number of equipment manufacturers and vendors—the ETC@USC serves as a dispassionate third-party evaluator of new entertainment technologies. That’s why the facility recently bought a Google TV set-top box and put it through its paces both by ETC@USC staff, USC students, and members of the general public.

Google TV browser

“At ETC@USC, our role is to think about and discover new entertainment technologies and usage paradigms,” said ETC@USC CEO and Executive Director David Wertheimer. “Helping the studios and our other member companies put in context Google’s entrance into the living room is what we do.”

THE BASICS

To “log onto” Google TV, the ETC@USC purchased a $400 Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Disc player with Google TV built-in. Branded as the NSZ-GT1, this box sits between the TV and the incoming broadcast signal feed; be it off-air, cable, or satellite. The NSZ-GT1 also connects to the user’s broadband Internet confection, either directly or via home network (wired or wireless).

“The Sony box is similar to Logitech’s version—the Logitech Revue—save for the fact that the NSZ-GT1 comes with the Blu-ray player; the Logitech does not,” said Bryan Gonzalez, ETC@USC’s Social & Digital Media Technology Labs Director. “With either Android OS-based box, you can surf the Web; access apps for NetFlix, Twitter, Pandora, and NBA Game Time; surf the Web and watch TV simultaneously; and use your HDTV as a giant digital picture frame.”

One thing you cannot do with Google TV is watch full Web-based episodes of TV shows from ABC, CBS and NBC. This is no technical issue: The Big Three networks are deliberately blocking Google TV access to these webcasts. The three networks are in “ongoing negotiations” to place their long-form content on Google TV, according to TV Technology sister publication, Broadcasting & Cable.

Online video service Hulu is also blocking Google TV access but is also in negotiations to bring onboard the Hulu Plus subscription service, according to the Wall Street Journal.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Before putting the set-top box in the ETC@USC lab—where it can be tested along with other web-based systems by researchers and consumers alike—Gonzalez set it up in his own home.

“The Sony NSZ-GT1 is fairly straightforward to install, in terms of instructions,” he tells TV Technology. “However, after spending 30-45 minutes configuring it, the box asked to download software updates. This I did; resulting in the system rebooting and requiring me to do the install all over again!”

Functionally, Sony’s Google TV system worked as advertised. Gonzalez was able to surf the Web while watching HDTV, access TV programs and music streams online, and generally enjoy the experienced of having both the Web and broadcast TV integrated into a single device. (The NSZ-GT1 comes with a QWERTY keyboard-equipped remote control, to support data entry.)

The Sony NSZ-GTI Blu-ray player with Google TV costs $399.99

His first impression? “Google TV is the type of technology that will appeal to the slightly tech-y consumer,” Gonzalez said. “Early adopters like myself already have separate Web-connected computers linked to their HDTVs. Google TV provides a similar experience, without the need to purchase and install a separate PC. That could appeal to a lot of consumers who want Web access in their living room, as long as it is easy to install.”

IMPLICATIONS FOR BROADASTERS

Wertheimer doesn’t foresee the Google/Big Three standoff continuing indefinitely. “The networks want consumers to view their shows, but need to be paid in some way that covers the costs of the shows being produced,” he says. “When Google and others providing programming can demonstrate a path or model, the networks will be all over it.”

Even when such a model is found, Wertheimer doesn’t expect conventional broadcasting to lose its pivotal money-making status for many years. “These things always take longer than anyone thinks,” he says. “I think broadcast TV will be alive and well for quite a long time, even as creators and distributors deliver on the viewer demand on new platforms.”

In the meantime, the ETC@USC will keep testing Google TV, Apple TV, and whatever other new technologies hit the market. “What Google TV is as a product is just the beginning,” Wertheimer said. “We try to think about how consumers might or might not take advantage of the capabilities of various devices to consume entertainment in new ways. We are especially interested in the intersection between social networking and entertainment—an area which is aided by devices like Google TV, and ultimately the apps that will be built upon platforms like it.”

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With digital files making tapes obsolete and new video platforms seeming to spring up every week, creating masters for all those platforms has become a thorny problem.

“In the old days, we’d have to make a master, put it on tape, store it on a shelf. But we’re trying to get away from making individual masters for all these distribution channels. We just can’t keep up anymore,” said Howard Lukk, Walt Disney Studios VP of digital production technology.

Lukk has been spearheading a volunteer team working on the Interoperable Master Format project for USC’s Entertainment Technology Center. Lukk said the IMF means to creating a single format that can be used to share masters among various facilities and to create deliverables for pretty much every viewing platform except cinemas.

“These things are always a no-brainer from a 10,000-foot level, but the devil is always in the details,” Lukk said.

In this case, he said, the difficulty is striking a balance between interoperability and flexibility. A strictly defined specification might have great interoperability, letting the master work on many devices and standards, but might not be able to adapt to future innovations.

After the better part of two years, the project is moving toward conclusion. Lukk hopes to have a specification that can be turned over in the spring to SMPTE, which would write standards implementing it for the industry.

The ETC has been so impressed with Lukk’s efforts that last month the org gave him its first Technology Leadership Award.

“Many industry initiatives that have been led by the ETC, such as the digital cinema lab or the 3D home lab or the IMF format, have been led largely by individuals from within the member companies,” David Wertheimer, executive director and CEO of the ETC, told Daily Variety.

Since the IMF is an especially important project for the ETC, Wertheimer said, “Howard was a natural choice for the first award.”

Most consumers have yet to upgrade their TVs to full 1080p hi-def, and U.S. broadcasters aren’t even transmitting in the format yet, but the next generations of super-sharp screens are in the pipeline. Stores already carry 3D TVs, Toshiba demonstrated 4K flatscreens at January’s consumer electronics show, and next up appears to be Super Hi-Vision, which offers 16 times the pixels of HD (7680 x 4320 to be precise). Radio Netherlands Worldwide reported the BBC transmitted a concert in the format to Tokyo, with Japan’s NHK providing the Super Hi-Vision technology. The RNW report said the Beeb intends to test Super Hi-Vision at the 2012 Olympics and NHK plans to be broadcasting in the format in 2020.

That would put some pressure on the the movie business to improve its capture and projection systems rather quickly or risk lagging behind television. Jim Cameron and others have been asking for higher frame rates. That might be a good place to start. On the other hand, since Super Hi-Vision has more resolution than 35mm film, it could become the standard for movies, too.

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Creating a more efficient process with digital files in post-production has earned Howard Lukk accolades from his colleagues in the entertainment industry.

Lukk, the vice president of digital production technology at Walt Disney Studios, received the first Technology Leadership Award from the Entertainment Technology Center @ USC for his work on the Interoperable Master Format project.

The project is easier to describe then the name may imply.

Simply put, Lukk and his team are creating standards for digital files that can be shared between content creators, studios, and post-production facilities to make one master copy of a film or television show rather than separate masters for distribution into theaters, television, downloads, and for mobile devices.

“With demands for faster content in more channels, we are trying to make the process of getting it out quicker,” Lukk said.

The master format project is just one of several the Entertainment Technology Center is working on. Other projects involve 3D in the home, entertainment and social media, and getting content out on multiple devices.

The center wanted to recognize the people working on these projects because while it is the ETC that gets the credit it is the people on the teams that make the results possible, said center CEO and Executive Director David Wertheimer.

“It is the individuals that make the difference,” Wertheimer said.

Lukk’s name was among the first brought up to receive the leadership award because the work on the master format project would create new efficiencies for the entire industry.

Lukk and others have been working on the master format project for about 18 months and look to finish by the spring.

Draft specifications have been given to the member companies of the ETC for their input and feedback and some suggestions will be incorporated into the revised specs, Lukk said.

Those specifications will then be turned over to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers to create a standard for the entire industry.

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Los Angeles – The Entertainment Technology Center at University of Southern California (ETC@USC) today announced its appointment of Bob Lambert as ETC Chairman Emeritus and Special Adviser to the Board. The Entertainment Technology Center is a multi-industry consortium pioneering new initiatives in the consumer and professional realms. Engaged and active with ETC’s board for the past decade, among other roles Bob served terms as ETC Board Chairman and as CEO pro tem, while also serving as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Technology Strategy for The Walt Disney Company.

“Bob is a visionary for our industry, and an exceptional supporter and driver of inter-industry projects and of USC’s efforts in entertainment and technology,” cited ETC CEO and Executive Director David Wertheimer. The ETC Board and I are delighted to have his continued involvement and support.”

Bob serves on several for-profit and non-profit boards of directors. In addition to being a veteran of twenty-five years as a senior executive of The Walt Disney Company, he has advised MPAA, MovieLabs, DCI LLC, AFI, and other organizations and technology start-ups. He will continue efforts on new ETC initiatives and sponsorships, working with Wertheimer.

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LOS ANGELES, CA–(Marketwire – August 31, 2010) –  The Entertainment Technology Center @ USC (ETC@USC), www.etcenter.org, announced that it is seeking broad multi-industry feedback for the Interoperable Master Format (IMF) draft specification. Over the last year, the ETC@USC has hosted the IMF project seeking to develop a voluntary specification for an interoperable set of master files (and associated metadata) to enable the interchange and automated creation of downstream distribution packages within the motion picture and television production and post-production industries. The participants in the IMF project, which include Disney, Fox, NBC/Universal, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Warner Bros., will create a specification that can be proposed to SMPTE with the intention of initiating a formal standards-setting process. The goal is to create an interoperable, high-quality set of master files suitable for a variety of distribution packages that can be used to output an arbitrary number of versions for varying screen sizes, resolutions, bit rates, codecs, service providers, etc.

As part of the process of developing the specification, the participants in the IMF project are very interested in receiving commentary and feedback on the proposed specification and its contents from companies and individuals within the motion picture and television production and post-production industries, technology providers and manufacturers, and anyone else who may use or be affected by the IMF specifications under development. Many interested industry technology and solution providers have already provided feedback on the draft, and ETC is now looking to widen the net throughout the motion picture and television post-production and distribution industries.

“A meaningful and implementable IMF specification is essential to helping content creators and distributors take advantage of ever-increasing opportunities and platforms. We have reached a critical milestone in this project where we want and need input from a variety of potential adopters of the IMF format. This will allow us to refine the draft specification before it is turned over to SMPTE for potential standardization,” said David Wertheimer, CEO and Executive Director of the Entertainment Technology Center @ USC.

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LOS ANGELES (September 21, 2010) –The Entertainment Technology Center at University of Southern California (ETC@USC) has appointed Bob Lambert as ETC Chairman Emeritus and Special Advisor to the Board.   The Entertainment Technology Center is a multi-industry consortium pioneering new initiatives in the consumer and professional realms.  Engaged and active with ETC’s board for the past decade, among other roles Bob served terms as ETC Board chairman and as CEO pro tem, while also serving as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Technology Strategy for The Walt Disney Company.

“Bob is a visionary for our industry, and an exceptional supporter and driver of inter-industry projects and of USC’s efforts in entertainment and technology,” Cited ETC CEO and executive director David Wertheimer.   The ETC Board and I are delighted to have his continued involvement and support.”

Bob serves on several for-profit and non-profit boards of directors.  In addition to being a veteran of twenty-five years as a senior executive of The Walt Disney Company, he has advised MPAA, MovieLabs, DCI LLC, AFI, and other organizations and technology start-ups.  He will continue efforts on new ETC initiatives and sponsorships, working with Wertheimer.

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For more information contact:
Shana Starr / Tiffany Massey
LFPR (for ETC@USC)
949.502.7750 x 209/218
shanas@lf-pr.com / tiffanym@lf-pr.com