Control Group Blog

It’s been a gold medal month for CG’s clients.  While we can’t take credit for the accolades, we can live vicariously through these achievements.  These have been some of our favorite projects to work on and we agree with the judges: we think they’re pretty special too.

VH1 won a Broadcast Designers Association Gold award for their Beacon channel redesign! Check out the reel.

Walker Digital won the Gold medal at the Gaming Technology Summit.

And NEP Studios, who host the Daily Show and The Colbert Report at their Control Group-readied HD studios were nominated for a CIO 100 award from CIO Magazine.

Doing what you love, with great partners, and getting industry respect for it: what more could you ask for? What a great start to the summer! Congrats all.

Here is a series of recommendations, rants, and observations about why MSOs (the cable companies) will be sad in 2011, unless they innovate and invest.

Entertainment = Consumption + Interaction:

Internet-enabled TV will bring about some radical changes.  Nielsen’s Three Screen Report indicates that consumption of the moving image is increasing across all three screens: traditional TV, internet, and mobile. The interactivity of this “data” will surely change. Entertainment now equals both watching and interaction: checking out additional content online, playing games, or participating in ads as entertainment. 3D and gesture-based interactions will also redefine this blurring of the line between passive and active viewing over the next few years.

Ditch the “dumb” set-top:

Content models that rely on “captive audience” set-top box capture of viewing habits are outmoded as delivery systems, and deliver poor analytics and reporting compared with the information we can glean from a data-only model. If content owners rely on this information, why does the old model remain unchecked? The set-top box is largely a passive unit that doesn’t include an interface, platform, or APIs for allowing advertisers to interact directly with their target audience in real-time like the Web does. We have seen some recent (and awesome) successes with new methods of delivery: Hulu, Netflix, MLB, and on-demand efforts. However we are in an infancy of thinking about the possibilities of satellite, cable, and their antiquated set-tops, and how broadcast can recapture some of the money that migrated to online advertising.

This is an opportunity for direct access to consumers in their living rooms. The delivery method is there, there is already a large internet-enabled box in many living rooms: tuner, DVR, AppleTV, Slingbox, etc. MSOs already have the access to provide value-add applications to the experience, but what is preventing them from radically changing the intersection of TV, Internet, and advertising? They actually have had a better chance than anyone.

Develop a platform:

Imagine tying content delivery to analytics and advertising – a platform that delivers both choice and guidance to direct viewers to shows they like, and then targets accompanying ads based on more granular information and feedback. Visible World does last-mile ad insertion for parent company, Comcast, who acquired one of the big three: NBC.  A small wrinkle in this still-disputed merger is Sen. Kohl, who is asking for a divestiture of NBC’s holdings in Hulu, arguing that it potentially violates anti-trust.

But this is an amazing opportunity for MSOs to radically change the model for consumers and advertisers by providing a platform for interaction. MSOs have a chance to drive people back to their subscriptions — otherwise we will see a switch to online viewing, where advertisers can get a lot more feedback for their digital dimes, and consumers can have more choice, and augment their experiences.

The TV could supersede the MSO-provided set-top box as a platform:

Internet-enabled TVs or TVs with companion internet-enabled boxes will supersede the current MSO interface and platform. Federated search across Internet/DVR/broadcast is far more useful and less clunky than a remote-driven interface.  In addition, the ability to bring in dynamic web content — ads, additional content, or related information — should quickly reduce the three screens to just two.

When MSOs realize they are missing out on key advertising opportunities, we will see a rush to market with subscription- and licensed-content across the three screens. You would have thought that Hulu would have put the fear in them, but wait until Google TV takes their bite.  Their recent partnerships with TV manufacturer, Sony, ensures that this will be widely distributed to Best Buy, Walmart, etc. beyond the market reach of Roku, Slingboxes, of the world.

Prepare to lose ad revenue:

NBC Universal’s (current) CEO Jeff Zucker and his oft-quoted ‘trading analog dollars for digital pennies’ was revised last year to ‘digital dimes’ from the man himself. That is good news, especially for the multitudes of investors that entered into internet video ventures last year. Out of that gold-rush of investment though, there hasn’t been significant pay-dirt for many. Clearly the answer lies in uniting broadcast to the Internet, bringing the interactivity the web provides, in addition to the type of analytics that are possible. I predict Google TV will make more of an impact than Apple TV did to unite those advertising schemes, although watch out, Apple’s clearly got some plans a brewin‘.

Google TV offers the opportunity to sell ad’s within the interface, and provide targeted advertising, on the TV. Show me what you got MSO’s.

In Conclusion:

It is a rapidly changing world, and people have clearly shown that the TV, cable-tuner, and DVR do not have all the features people want. The cable companies who own the infrastructure and delivery method of video and data are being left out of this equation. Google has side-stepped around cable companies and the licensing issues — wisely I might add — and added a layer with enhancements that will allow them get deep into people’s living rooms, to collect data and provide a smarter ad platform. Things are going to get really interesting….

Check out the new ad campaign for the 2010 Cadillac CTS-V, with post production work done by one of our newest clients, The Lab. Post was done using Final Cut Pro, After Effects, and Maya, leveraging an infrastructure, render farm, and workflow that Control Group helped design, build, and support. We’re always astonished at what is possible when an incredibly creative firm gets their hands on the latest technology.

Colin (who has written some excellent posts on our blog) brought up an interesting question in the comments of my NAB report regarding storage requirements for 3D workflows. I found my response growing to blog post proportions, so here it is….

3D (stereoscopic) video does not always double the capture data for a couple of reasons, most notably because there are different capture methods, different post-production methods for processing the data, and different ways to project the data, all which can affect the data requirements at different points in the production, post-production, or delivery process.

Data requirements will be double at worst because there are (sometimes) two stereo video tracks, but since the cameras are capturing very similar information, one of the accepted standards for delivery is 2D+Delta compression for the MPEG format. Using this compression the image data is processed with an algorithm that removes redundant pixel data from the two video tracks. The amount of data is equal to one image plus whatever is different in the other image (the Delta). Using this compression, 3D video is usually roughly 40% larger than a single stream of HD video.

Some cameras, like Pace’s Fusion camera (above) which James Cameron used for Avatar, do shoot with two cameras side-by side, thus creating stereo video tracks and double the data for post (plus metadata). In this workflow, the two tracks are used to focus differently on objects in 3D space, dynamically changing the space between the cameras, and effectively using different z-depth focus to achieve the effect. This actually is not a new methodology, but using software algorithms to help determine focal length and automating what previously was manual can bring faster and more repeatable results. Another company, 3ality, is also providing similar functionality with different toolsets, including hardware that retrofits into 2D workflows. Interestingly enough, one of the major differences between them as 3D forerunners is that Pace is only a rentable technology solution, and 3ality cameras can be purchased. Two different positions.

When post is complete, there are some tricks that can be employed to reduce data for delivery including the 2D+Delta for transmission. For viewing the 3D data, there are a few different methods all which require different hardware (projectors, screens and potentially different methods of decoding).  Instead of using two projectors, some 3D can be projected using interleaved frames at a higher frequency through a polarized filter, i.e. one frame for the left eye, followed by one for the right. This is employed by RealD 3D and has by far the widest adoption in US theaters. Further, some theaters are equipped with active glasses technology, meaning that the glasses themselves ‘shutter’ either mechanically or using an LCD shutter linked wirelessly to the projection system for timing. I have heard these glasses are bulkier and heavier but better for certain situations.

3D workflow is particularly interesting to Control Group as an opportunity to help our clients design lean, optimized pipelines. This will impact our data stores, but why double data if it can be avoided? I think this is an opportunity for integrators like us to help productions, as well as the post-house, in evaluating these technologies and coming up with an appropriate blend of supporting technologies and workflows. Our goal is to build workflows that suit the business model and subject matter, as well as figure out how data is managed, archived, and stored. This is not the time to spend unnecessarily, but it is time to consider when and how this will affect our clients, and help them begin readiness preparations. We want to help our clients avoid turning down work because they haven’t put thought into these issues.

In conclusion, there are a variety of methods that a broadcaster or strategic consultant can invoke – some new, some old – to solve the technical issues. I think a lot of real challenges lie in the production of 3D content, such as the creative process of capturing a scene and the framing of the shots to take advantage of the magic of 3D. These are new processes and they involve re-educating producers, directors, cinematographers, camera operators, actors, and production designers.

The technology? No problem.

Whew! As always, NAB was quick, productive, and overwhelming – only this time it was in 3D!

Everyone, everywhere, was talking about 3D: cameras, displays, production software, trucks, expertise, etc. The race for preparedness is on, and people will spend as pushy studios and producers want to be the first to do this or that with 3D. First sitcom, first sporting event, first documentary, first newscast, etc. The reality is that we are a ways off from wide-scale adoption, and showrooms and special screenings will be the place for 3D for the foreseeable future. We are in a similar catch-22 phase as a few years ago during the early days of HD production – 3D TVs are just coming onto the market and will drop down to reasonable consumer level prices within the next 2-3 yrs. Consumers are asking “do I buy a 3D TV when there is little to no programming?” while content creators are wondering “do I produce in 3D when there is little to no audience?”

Being an industry event though, it’s about more than bragging rights or audience – it’s about technical feasibility, practice, and logistics – all things which will change when 3D comes to our living room. DirecTV has announced that they will carry four 3D channels starting in June, including ESPN 3D and a dedicated 3D pay-per-view channel. And Cablevision dipped its toes into the 3D pool a few weeks ago with an MSG Network broadcast of a Rangers and Islanders hockey game live from Madison Square Garden.

After talking to a few industry experts who participated in the recent Masters in 3D, the challenges with 3D production are less technical than logistical: camera placement for example. While HD favors wide top-down shots for seeing all the action, 3D is most effective with close, ground-level cameras – imagine Phil Mickelson’s birdie putt as viewed from grass-level, just across the green, the ball rolling right toward you as he sinks it…

There were also lots of other things of interest: Falconstor’s HyperFS, CatDV asset management, Avid’s Java app for editing over the web, 3ality cameras, Adobe CS5, among many more. We were particularly excited by the potential of Active Storage’s Innerpool appliance for metadata. This PCI Express card contains on-board redundant solid-state drives, specifically engineered for storing metadata in an Xsan environment. This has the potential of being something of a game changer, allowing us to more efficiently configure the storage in our Xsan integrations, and giving our clients more bang for their buck when deploying new SAN solutions.

We had some great meetings with prospective clients, old and new friends, fellow consultants and vendors, and we’re excited about some emerging strategic opportunities. Our work in online video technology and web delivery combined with our broadcast infrastructure and workflow experience means we are ideally positioned to help organizations streamline and bring these workstreams closer together.

I wanted to add some thoughts to Chris’s post about Flash and HTML5. However I should preface this post by saying that HTML5 supporting video is really cool, both technically and because HTML5 is an open standard that anyone can implement for free. As we all know, for the last several years, Flash has been the de facto choice for online video delivery. Flash support on different platforms has been pretty good, but end users still don’t have total flexibility depending on their OS. Until recently, Flash on Linux has been about a version behind the release for Windows or OS X. Even now, Adobe only releases a player for x86, and the x86_64 version is unsupported beta software.

Everyone seems to be touting HTML5 video as the “open” alternative to the proprietary Flash plugin required for .flv playback in the browser. But how open is H.264, the codec that powers HTML5 video, and the current pick for encoding video for online delivery? Using H.264 as the codec behind HTML5 video sours things a bit for me. H.264 is encumbered by software patents; to develop or distribute a player or encoder for H.264 you might have to pay a licensing fee to MPEG-LA. Even though MPEG LA announced last week (PDF) that H.264 will remain fee-less for free internet video through 2016, this is not the same as being free or open. MPEG-LA can still go after people that produce the software to encode or decode H.264. And MPEG-LA is not just one organization, it’s a collection of patent holders that have their own agendas.

All this is a bit of a slap in the face to the open standards that power the web. Imagine if you had to pay a half million dollars to create or display JPEGs, GIFs, or HTML… The only people that would be able to afford to make software for the web would be huge companies. But what are our alternatives? Beyond Ogg Theora and Matroska, the pickings are slim. These codecs are open and free, but not necessarily better than H.264. Plus it would be next to impossible to compete with the marketing machine of Apple behind H.264.

Open and free standards have been what has made the Internet successful since its inception. I think it’s important that users understand this so that the Internet of the future cannot be controlled by corporations with enough cash to cover licensing fees.

There’s been much discussion and debate recently surrounding the iPad’s lack of Flash, which in turn has fueled discussion about the future of online video delivery. This week’s preview release of the HTML5-powered SublimeVideo player is seen by some as the beginning of the end for online video delivery in Flash player. As Senior Multimedia Development Consultant at Control Group, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the topic.

To me, this isn’t so much a debate about Flash/ActionScript 3 versus HTML5, but rather another win for HTML + Flash/AS3! It’s all about creativity as a developer. Bad coding leads to poor applications, proper coding leads to a proper experience. It is a common pitfall that most people think “HTML or Flash”. I see this as more power for the mixing of technologies, raising the cap on what can and can’t be done in a web browser.

Adobe’s technologies provide clear benefits to the end user, but also (and perhaps more importantly) the developer. As a developer, I can utilize the unique capabilities of the .flv format to protect content in some fashion or for metadata injection, all of which can be done on the fly and server-side, if implemented using Flash Media Server (FMS).  I’m also really excited about Flash Player 10.1 – it brings the ability to scale all the way from mobile to HD flavors, and will be available on smartphones and other Internet-connected mobile devices.

This is about more than just video delivery, it is the platform combined with the tools, and Adobe has been making tremendous strides in going open-source with them. Adobe is providing a cohesive environment that is deeply integrated with some of the best tools out there for content creation. HTML5 is just starting out, and the gap between the tools and technology is too immense to make it the competition. Flash has fantastic penetration and Adobe can rapidly evolve the technology. Remember, HTML5 still is not a standard – in fact we are looking at sometime in 2012 before we’ll see a final recommendation. These are cohesive technologies and they are here to stay for a very long time, which means plugins will be around for a long time too. Simply put,  plugin implementations have the potential to penetrate faster, and as history has shown they often do. Plugins forge the path, and the Web comes right behind them to standardize those paths.

If you want to better understand what the big picture is regarding Adobe and its technologies, I recommend reading a little bit about:

OpenScreenProject
Catalyst
SVG and FXG
Flex Data Services
RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol)
Binary Sockets

One of the unique things about how Control Group works is that our focus is much more involved than simply putting in a solution for a client and then moving on. We work with our clients to determine how they work, so we can design IT solutions that really fit their needs. Since we have partnerships with a variety of vendors, we work with our clients to arrive at the best solutions for their business. This means we do quite a bit of research and planning before we begin a project — and then a great deal of testing during and after we install new hardware or software.

I do some work on implementing storage systems for our clients, and we’ve found that different applications have different storage requirements. For example a video post production facility — like the facility at WWE — generally needs lots of disk space that is very good at reading and writing large files at high speeds. The storage here needs to provide good streaming throughput, because high quality video files generally have high bit rates, and are being stored or played back from the disk in real-time for ingesting, editing, or playout. If the storage system is not fast enough to read or write the file in real-time, frames will be dropped. This can cause unsatisfactory media files, programs to crash, or audio and video to become out of sync.

10,000 RPM SAS disks. That's some serious storage.

Suboptimal read/write performance can become a huge problem. When we put in a new system this is something we need to test. I usually do the test with a tool called lmdd.

lmdd comes from the lmbench tools which are provided by Bitmover for benchmarking systems. lmdd is great for testing streaming bandwidth. In most of our engagements with video, we install a Stornext or Xsan filesystem so we’ll run our tests against this. lmdd will probably work on any filesystem that you can mount on your Mac or Linux computer (Leave a comment if you need a version for Mac OS X, I have one compiled).  lmdd lets us verify exactly what the maximum number of megabytes per second we can push through the storage and point us to where we need to make changes to the hardware or software configuration. I use lmdd like this :

lmdd of=/path/to/test_file count=1g

lmdd if=/path/to/test_file

The first tests write performance and the second tests read performance. More information about the syntax is available in the manual page for lmdd. The results of the command from a server I was testing looked like this:

2147.4755 MB in 6.8003 secs, 315.7914 MB/sec

lmdd is great because it’s easy to read. This result shows I could write to the filesystem at 315 megabytes per second. That’s really fast! This is from a test with a server with a lot of RAM and a special filesystem that took advantage of that cache. When I run it on my Macbook, I get a result like this:

18342.6171 MB in 376.7685 secs, 48.6841 MB/sec

So the next time you’re interested in how your storage is performing give lmdd a shot and let me know how it goes. If you’re looking for more information about storage performance testing then stay tuned; I’ll be posting about testing storage with tools that benchmark small reads and writes next.

I was recently having a conversation with a friend and we both laughed when we thought back to the first five hundred megabyte hard drives that we had owned. Back then, the half-gigabyte drive was ridiculously expensive and physically huge. We both thought that it would be impossible to fill these drives up.

This of course was not the case. Now you’re lucky if an application can be installed in less than 500 MB, and as hard disk sizes grow, we find new ways to fill them up with applications, documents, and media. Digital files have become the most valued assets for most of our customers, so the organization, storage, and archiving of data is a serious concern.

I find that the best way to evaluate storage technologies solutions for our clients is to step back and take a look at the problems the client is looking to solve and the priorities dictated by their business needs. Usually, our clients’ storage needs require a combination of performance, reliability, disaster recovery, scalability, and manageability. Fortunately technology has stepped up to the challenge to handle the increased need for larger, faster, and more reliable storage.

Storage networking is a general term that encompasses many different technologies that provide excellent solutions to modern storage problems. A storage area network (SAN) is an architecture in which storage devices are connected in a high-speed, dedicated network and are presented to computers that are part of the same network. Using storage networking, we can accommodate our clients’ performance and reliability needs: by abstracting groups of hard drives as logical units (LUNs) we can stripe data across disks to increase speed and add redundancy by storing parity on the disks. This configuration will allow us to rebuild the LUN when a disk fails, without causing downtime or data loss.

Example SAN Configuration for Final Cut Pro Editing

A storage network abstracts the underlying hardware that provides storage services, providing some great advantages for disaster recovery. When we add tape libraries to a SAN we can make backups quickly and efficiently without slowing down the network or computers on it. We can also connect a SAN to another SAN that’s in a different building or even a different state. This allows us to easily replicate data to a secondary location so our clients can be up and running quickly if there is some kind of catastrophe in the data center.

Even the largest SANs will eventually get filled up with data. What happens when it’s time to increase capacity? With traditional storage, the system is shut down, new equipment is installed, and the data is migrated. This typically involves downtime and runs the risk of data loss if something goes wrong. With a SAN expansion is no problem. Since the storage services are abstracted from the storage hardware it’s easy to add capacity or replace older equipment, in many cases involving no downtime.

A SAN also provides centralized management for storage: administrators can look in one place to see the status of all storage in a data center.  This allows businesses to evaluate storage health and utilization, which can prevent problems and help plan for future growth.

As data becomes a more and more important part of business strategy, it becomes critical for businesses to have larger, faster, and more reliable storage services to keep things operating smoothly. Storage networking is a core component of these strategies. I’ll continue posting about our thoughts and experiences with SAN solutions, and try to shed some light on the storage ecosystem as new technologies emerge.

Last week, I wrote about leveraging Final Cut Server as the core of a platform for asset management, approvals, and delivery. I wanted to append that post with some recent thinking and findings.

First, a quick discussion of semantics:

When you ingest a media file into Final Cut Server, it creates an asset. This asset is actually a collection of files, including the original media file, or primary representation. If the file being uploaded is a graphics or video file, Final Cut Server creates additional representations: a poster frame and a thumbnail. These are used to represent the asset’s media within Final Cut Server. If the file being uploaded is a video asset, a clip proxy representation is also generated, used for viewing the file within Final Cut Server.  This representation is created by transcoding the primary representation file to a lower-resolution codec.

Asset Representations in Final Cut Server

So a video asset is actually a container that’s made up of a bunch of files. This is pretty cool, and it’s mostly transparent to the end-user in Final Cut Server. However, while these representations are customizable (codecs, quality, etc), they all generated on ingest. Final Cut Server doesn’t currently support a way to create a new representation of an asset on-the-fly and have that representation become part of the asset container.

I’m struggling with this limitation as I explore Final Cut Server/Episode Engine integration. It would be ideal if I could setup Episode integration via a Final Cut Server copy response to an Episode watch folder, and have the resulting transcoded file copied back into Final Cut Server and made a representation of the original asset. Right now there’s no way to do this, so instead we are only able to re-ingest the new transcoded file as a new asset. And there is no relationship between this new asset and the original asset from which it was created.

Frustrating, but we’re thinking about ways around this. More to come as our tests and thinking solidifies. More info on Episode Engine/Final Cut Server integration in this pdf from Telestream’s website.