Manipulating video to share with an audience is no longer the preserve of the established few, says Christian Dutilleux, CEO, Deltacast
It is a tradition in the TV broadcast market to consider that the world is in a permanent evolution and that all the actors have to make changes regularly. However, it is obvious for everyone that the market is now living a revolution, and no more an evolution.
In one word, manipulating videos to share with a significant set of viewers is no more reserved to a set of companies well established in the TV industry. It is an activity almost accessible to anybody.
The vertiginous increase of the amount of generated videos implies the strong involvement of major internet companies to manage issues such as storage and streaming, and obviously their solutions will be applicable to the high-end market segment that TV broadcast represents.
The message is clear and many actors are today quite reactive, with a series of very positive initiatives, addressing virtualisation and cloud for instance.
The way of consuming videos is also changing: zapping is no more reserved to people watching TV but is now a standard. The quality of the video production is far for being a significant feature for the majority of videos shared by people.
To make a buzz is much more important. Multiscreen, content anywhere, social networks are now usual words. Again, TV market actors react to this evolution, for instance with the development of low-cost production solutions, trying to play a role in other market segments.
Navigating change
A revolution is something complex. For a lot of TV broadcast companies, the question is no more to see how to adapt their products to make more money, but rather to find a new role in the new world that the revolution is creating.
Acquisitions and fusions are common in the TV market but their rhythm is accelerating and it is not always easy to understand the rationale of those moves. We now evolve without our traditional landmarks and have to navigate in uncertainty.
“We now evolve without our traditional landmarks and have to navigate in uncertainty”
Conversely, there are knowledge, culture and experience in the traditional TV market that have to be protected and exploited. So we have not to forget the past but rather to find a way to build the future on the basis of our strengths.
This implies creativity, significant resources and in most cases several iterations. This also implies new partnerships with companies that have started to address the technological aspects of the revolution some years ago and can provide guidelines and solution on which to rely.
Initiatives such as SMPTE 2022, TR-03, VC-2, Sony IP Live, NewTek NDI, Intopix TICO or Evertz Aspen demonstrate how key actors of the market are challenging the situation. That’s nice but not sufficient: we have to consider that new production workflows will emerge in the near future.
This content was published at IBC2016
The views expressed are those of the author.
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