Contents

Chapter 1: The State of Video Transcoding
Chapter 2: The Raging Storm of Content
Chapter 3: A New Video Transcoding Strategy
Chapter 4: Why Video Transcoding is Essential for Successful Streaming
Chapter 5: Mastering Video Transcoding with Dalet AmberFin
Chapter 6: Taking the Next Steps Forward

From the Beginning: The State of Video Transcoding

Look back a decade and consider how far streaming has come as a technology, as a platform, and as a delivery method. 2011 does not seem that long ago, but streaming media was on the verge of completely disrupting the media industry. Today, there are consumers that only know streaming as their primary method of media delivery. While streaming media has completely changed how audiences consume media, the technology has created a new wave of challenges for content creators now looking to feature their productions across a variety of platforms from as expansive as a movie screen to as intimate as a smartphone. One of these challenges is transcoding. Now, instead of having a destination in mind and knowing which workflow to apply, content is being released across multiple platforms, each platform asking for its own set of parameters.

How do we navigate this brave new world?

To understand the challenges and demands of video transcoding, it is a good idea to understand the process from its most basic application. Raw digital video takes up a good amount of data which is why devices tend to compress the audio and video data into a format easy for storage purposes. Many of these formats you might recognize at a glance: M4V, MOV, or MP4. Video transcoding takes compressed video, restores it to a full, raw format, and then compresses it again into a format specific to a platform. At the beginning of this process, you would have video from a live broadcast in its most raw form. The data size of these files will appear somewhat daunting.

A video transcoder will take these gigantic files and compress them from their original format into smaller files that are more optimized for an editing suite like Adobe Premiere Pro®, or perhaps into a format optimized for streaming services. Video transcoding, now with the demand of the earlier-mentioned streaming services, is key in delivering content across numerous platforms, reaching the largest audience available.

The Raging Storm of Content

Presently, media production houses and studios are in the middle of a streaming and cloud technology revolution. Consumers are enjoying the luxury of consuming media from any location on a device of their choice. In Attest’s recent US Media Consumption Report 2021 study, several telling statistics showcased how streaming media has completely upended the industry.

• For the first time in the study’s history, more people were consuming media via streaming platforms (83%) than audiences watching live television (81%).
• Netflix continues to dominate the streaming video scene with 69.4 percent of those surveyed having an active subscription. 52 percent have Amazon Prime Video, which comes included with the Amazon Prime subscription, and nearly 37 percent now have Disney Plus. HBO Max, which the Attest survey categorized as “video on demand” as opposed to streaming, clocked in at 31.4 percent. Households with at least one child under the age of 18 in the house have higher rates of streaming subscriptions across the board.
• Podcasting is still enjoying a sharp upward trend, 56% of respondents listening and subscribing to podcasts. This is up from the 2020 study which reported 49% of respondents listening to podcasts.

With 83% of media being consumed via streaming to different devices, cloud services have also grown in their demand and application within the industry. There is also a very high demand to take existing workflows and upgrade them to cloud-based, elastic operations.

A New Video Transcoding Strategy: Applying a New Workflow to the Old

With so many changes in the industry, the process of post-production is in flux. No longer are we seeing “one size fits all” workflows, but each individual production offering their own unique needs. Instead of post-production workflows being pre-determined and tailored for one final destination, now there are multiple destinations for one project. Productions are expected to appear in a wide variety of formats, and therefore video transcoding is so important in this age of streaming media. With today’s standards continuing to be refined for existing platforms and redefined for new and emerging platforms, the video transcoding process requires something new.

As defined earlier, video transcoding takes media files (either video or audio), restores the media to its native, uncompressed format, and then re-encodes the content into a target format. A common video conversion process starts with an MOV file that is transcoded to an MP4 file using the H.264 codec. A reliable strategy to video transcoding will do everything to preserve the picture more effectively with better compression.

Depending on the strategy you decide to implement, whether you are using a computer running an open-source, command-line interface or a SaaS editing suite offering a more robust UI, video transcoding needs a computer with plenty of processing speed as this process is considered “computationally intensive” by media professionals. In short, video transcoding benefits from substantial hardware and system resources, like generous amounts of system RAM, graphics acceleration, and higher-end CPUs; but video transcoding can still tie up powerful desktop machines, sometimes for hours at a time depending on the running time of projects.

This is why it’s unlikely to easily transcode 4K video to a quality HLS or DASH stream with a Chromebook.

Why Video Transcoding is Essential for Successful Streaming

Video transcoding is a key in making adaptive streaming successful for a project. This workflow is a step in preparing your content for a delivery protocol that can reach the widest possible number of display devices. In order to assure the best quality viewing experience for the project you’re working on, adaptive streaming is the preferred approach. Video transcoding is the essential step in moving your best content from the capture device to a high-quality streaming output such as HLS or DASH. These adaptive streaming formats are the best for reducing buffering and playback issues, delivering the sharpest possible picture continuously and with no interruptions.

Video transcoding in a streaming workflow takes a video asset from a capture device, and the incoming video and audio data encoded in a file or streaming format by the camera and then sent off to some sort of media processing software like Dalet AmberFin. The encoder will make sure whatever original data will be recompressed into a format suitable for internet streaming. Modern video encoders should also offer to create multiple stream renditions that transrate and transsize to different bitrates and resolutions. The final files are then sent to a media server to be packaged into an adaptive streaming format (like HLS) and served via HTTP over the “last mile” to viewers. As described, this will create multiple options for content delivery, from HD output on a smart TV or desktop to a suitable size for a tablet or smartphone screen.

Media and how it is being distributed continues to change and evolve, with new devices, applications, and input sources being introduced regularly. While new cameras like 4K POV cameras and even on-board smartphone cameras, new data feeds, and innovations in streaming improve the quality and variety of content being produced, they also inevitably create new challenges in content delivery.

Mastering Video Transcoding with Dalet AmberFin

With the global disruption of streaming services across the media industry, the ability to produce many content packages for a variety of platforms is essential. The sound strategy is one workflow yielding multiple files all optimized for a variety of delivery platforms from IMAX to smartphones. At Dalet, we offer Dalet AmberFin, a transcoder and workflow engine ready to meet these new demands for media conversions, available on-premises, in a Dalet-managed SaaS environment, or inside a personal, secure VPC.

Dalet AmberFin has been trusted by major media organizations to handle standards conversions for over a decade. As 4K resolution, HDR, and immersive audio are expected in modern media productions, regardless of the presentation platform, Dalet AmberFin offers video transcoding for all types of viewing screens while assuring the original image quality is preserved for audiences to experience as intended.

Whether it is a multi-tenant SaaS or single-tenant customer-managed VPC cloud environment, the Dalet AmberFin workflow engine offers complete control of on account of its API, a real benefit when Dalet focused creative options and solutions for cloud-based production studios. It is this forward-thinking strategy that allows Dalet AmberFin to quickly adapt to new and existing video transcoding workflows easily and efficiently.

Taking the Next Steps Forward: What’s Your Video Transcoding Strategy for Tomorrow?

While the need for a video transcoding strategy is abundantly clear, something else that remains clear is the disruption sparking the demand for this strategy is far from over. Now, media productions look to the next frontiers of engagement and interaction, inspired by the live streaming events that initiated the disruption to begin with. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are only the beginning, and are two new delivery methods that, while hardly new, are now becoming more and more accessible to the public.

When searching for your own next step forward in keeping your video transcoding workflows updated, efficient, and effective, consider Dalet AmberFin as the reliable solution to a uniquely powerful transcoding and media orchestration platform, perfect for ensuring that the right content is available at the highest quality, properly wrapped, and all as part of an automated and dependable process.

As the market and the media landscape continues to evolve after an incredible disruption, remote teams are now launching video transcoding strategies with implementation of Dalet AmberFin. Working with other solutions, such as the powerful, cloud-based media logistics, asset management and content production solution, Dalet Flex, content providers are achieving success with their media projects. The change, however, is far from done; and with so many options to consume media, it could appear daunting. It comes down to the video transcoding strategy in place, and how ready productions are for the new and incredible technologies coming that make their audiences part of the production itself.

The post Cracking the Code: Mastering Video Transcoding appeared first on Dalet.

Chapter 1: Evolution of Post-Production Workflows
Chapter 2: Mandating a New Post-Production Workflow Architecture
Chapter 3: How One Post House Scaled Operations to Capture New Business
Chapter 4: What It Takes to Evolve Your Post-Production Workflow
Chapter 5: Evolve or Perish: The Future of Post-Production Workflow

Evolution of Post-Production Workflows

The past two years have witnessed some incredible disruptions in the media industry. What was once considered “exciting new ground” for the future became something of an upheaval of broadcasting’s status quo. Nothing calls more urgently for change than the need to accommodate the realities of a decentralized work environment. Surging volumes of work orders, shorter turnarounds, new distribution outlets seeming to appear online in the blink of an eye, and both open source and proprietary formats have combined at an accelerating pace to outdate current, trusted post-production workflows.

Media producers are re-evaluating their post-production workflow for efficiency and productivity in order to remain relevant in this new market of video-on-demand. Many of these new workflows are built from the ground up to accommodate the complexities of content, optimized for a vast spectrum of platforms ranging from traditional television markets to streaming services, those services targeting a vast spectrum of devices ranging from smartphones to high-end home theater displays.

With content creators looking to new post-production workflows, the need for cloud-based solutions became evident. Working in the cloud affords great flexibility in workflow configurations.

Striving to Be Better: Mandating a New Post-Production Workflow Architecture

The reasons remote post-production capabilities are so vital to success are well documented. Several significant drivers, starting with the trend in remote workforce collaboration, are behind this need to change the standard workflows in the market.

1) The rise of remote work in post-production workflows calls for a cloud-based environment.

Hybrid combinations of centralized and remote contributions to post-production workflows are here to stay. Researcher FutureSource Consulting stressed the point in a recent report on trends in post-production: “As in many other industries, the seismic shift to remote operation at scale seen in the past year has caused a cultural shift in mindset to the reliability and openness of remote working. Many mission-critical applications must still remain on premise, but we expect to see technology providers continue to place strategic emphasis on developing their products to facilitate and support even more ambitious remote production workflows in the future.”

Producers need to engage their post-production staff with confidence whether they’re working in the same town or a continent apart. Their collective output will be on par with traditional single-location operations. A cloud-based platform can cover every aspect of the post-production process to ensure content is packaged in every required format with all relevant assets, metadata, language-accurate closed captions, and any remaining essential elements required for every type of distribution.

2) Distribution requirements are constantly in flux, driven by the unrelenting increase in Over-the-Top (OTT) video services.

Streamed video services, now topping 80% of households in at least five countries, including the U.K., Canada, the U.S., Sweden and Denmark, averages close to 29% of worldwide audiences. Considering the popularity of these services, OTT platforms such as Disney+, Apple TV+, and Netflix are on a projected course to hit 35% of media viewership by 2025. In the U.S., OTT penetration stands at 82% compared to 58% for legacy pay TV with the number of services, often including pay TV, averaging close to four per household.

Insatiable consumer appetites for more choices ensure there will be ever more OTT services for producers to target as distribution outlets. By one count, at least 11 OTT services worldwide have more than 30 million subscribers. And there are hundreds of new OTT services reaching niche audiences, which, on a global scale, are often too big to be ignored.

3) There is more original content entering post-production than ever before.

OTT providers became the driving force behind this surge of original movies, series, and documentaries, following Netflix’s success at employing original content as a major audience draw. By 2019 Netflix accounted for nearly a third of 1,178 U.S.-produced dramatic series, documentaries, and other original projects. Amazon Prime quickly followed suit, although at 314 hours of first-run content running worldwide in 2019 its output was dwarfed by the 2,500 hours produced by Netflix. This competitive impact triggered bigger commitments from other networks and studios as well, many of whom now depend on self-branded OTT.

4) The demand for live-streamed content is creating new opportunities for post-production workflows suited to providing cloud-based support for editing, transcoding, packaging, and quality control.

With online viewing of content taking hold, live-streamed video traffic is projected to exceed on-demand video traffic by 2023. Adding momentum to the phenomenon is the use of the internet to live-stream content that can’t be found on traditional broadcast TV.

Sport is the biggest contributor to this evolution. Much of the testing of post-production workflows applied to streaming content comes from the sports industry. Streaming the latest tries of a rugby final, the moment of “Lights Out” at the Turkish Grand Prix, or the grand slam hallmarking a World Series is simply a matter of augmenting packaging processes to reach new affiliates who win rights to existing broadcast productions. This has created a demand for low-cost, professional-caliber remote production capabilities.

Photo credit: NRL Pictures

More significantly, esports have moved well beyond niche status to reach a global fan base topping 800 million on its way to a billion by 2024. Game publishers, who began staging big esports events as a way to boost the popularity of their core products, are now capitalizing on esports streaming as a business in its own right, by staging more events for online distribution and augmenting productions with social networking, viewer-selected camera views and other features.

5) The variety of devices and platforms used for content consumption is adding ever more complexity to post-production workflows.

The way people are watching content now extends across smartphones, tablets, PCs, TVs. TV media players, game consoles and even internet-connected virtual reality (VR) head-mounted devices (HMDs). When streaming is in play, content must be transcoded and packaged into multiple adaptive bitrate (ABR) profiles for each type of device, and each platform — be it Twitter, Twitch, or TikTok — has specific needs for their own post-production. From presentation to codecs, preparing media for content distribution and consumption has become something of a challenge.

Increased consumption of streamed content on connected TVs has fueled a surge in 4K UHD and HDR formatting among OTT providers, which has created competitive pressure on cable and broadcast outlets to follow suit. Nearly all original content produced by Netflix and Amazon is now offered in UHD, much of it enhanced with HDR. As of mid-2018, Netflix said 30% of its subscribers worldwide had opted for its higher priced 4K/HDR service tier. Other global OTT providers of 4K and HDR-enhanced 4K content include Disney+, Hulu, Apple TV+, FandangoNOW, and YouTube.

Taking the First Step: How One Post House Scaled Operations to Capture New Business

Breaking away from the familiar is always challenging. Is the risk worth the reward? Changing post-production workflows you are familiar with, from media giants to independent post houses, can test the logistical limits of your projects. However, solutions do exist that can smooth the transition to cloud-based workflows. The crucial role Dalet plays in helping customers thrive in this new environment is illustrated by the London-based post-production company Smoke and Mirrors (S&M), now Tag Collective.

Tag Collective needed to find a cost-effective way to scale operations to better pursue business opportunities. This had to be done in the context of addressing ever more complex business rules for content quality control, effective transcoding and distribution while reducing administrative overhead, retiring aging legacy systems, and removing the bottlenecks imposed by tape-based operations. Implementation of an automated, intelligent task management was made possible thanks to Dalet Flex’s configurable post-production workflows. Data-driven workflows tied to over 100 scripted actions curtailed human error and duplication with a far more agile approach to executing changes, resulting in an average 85% reduction in project completion times.

What It Takes to Evolve Your Post-Production Workflow

This is but one example of how the new post-production workflow feels native with the Dalet Flex platform and integrated tools. Dalet Flex also offers freedom to create content supply chains perfectly matched to a studio’s or production house’s needs. Such adaptability is vital to updating post-production workflows, as seen in Dalet Flex and in the high-performance transcoding flexibility of Dalet AmberFin, a highly scalable, media processing platform for video/image, audio, and subtitle/caption processing. Eliminating the need to create multiple versions of content allows significant reductions in storage space and optimized management for multiple distribution outlets. This scalability is essential in meeting the tight time-to-market deadlines imposed with all types of video content entering post-production workflows, including non-linear as well as live programming.

Evolve or Perish: The Future of Post-Production Workflow

When searching for your own next step forward in updating your post-production workflow, Dalet Flex supports the automation and orchestration essential for successful post-production operations designed for the premium video marketplace. Dalet Flex can run on commodity appliances across any combination of private and public clouds to support workflows involving any combination of remote and centralized inputs. There’s no better way to accommodate today’s market and its remote team working behind-the-scenes in content delivery than with implementation of Dalet Flex, together with Dalet AmberFin. Success can be achieved for your media productions at minimal initial and ongoing operational costs compared to any other approach, ensuring customers will be able to reap the benefits for years to come.

The post Putting More Flow Into Your Post-Production Workflow appeared first on Dalet.

The broadcaster’s perspective was provided by Shane Tucker from UK broadcaster, Channel 4. The broadcaster does not produce content itself, however it does commission a great deal of content. Channel 4 is not alone in the UK commissioning market – together with the BBC and ITV, Shane explained how it identified the need for a joined up approach.

DPP – Strength Through a Unified Approach

The UK broadcasters that established DPP have a desire to establish the means for shared learning and best practice with other UK broadcasters. Also, if UK broadcasters are unified in their adoption of digital file-based workflows, they can exert a greater influence outside of the UK. Both of these opinions were confirmed by Shane Tucker in the webinar.

Another key advantage for our industry focuses on production companies. Major production companies supply several UK broadcasters and it will be a big benefit to them if we can standardize on one media interchange standard.

What Benefits Does DPP Bring to Channel 4?

To start with DPP just makes sense. This view was confirmed by Shane Tucker, who said in the Webinar that DPP represents a common file format based on established standards (MXF, SMPTE, EBU) and has been established in conjunction with major UK broadcasters, screen & production companies.

Furthermore, Shane highlighted that DPP offers a common descriptive metadata schema. It offers the ability to access, process and automate metadata within digital file-based workflows is so important. It creates improved efficiency associated with automated workflows between broadcasters and their trusted suppliers. It cuts down on the need for data re-entry and speeds up material transfer and processing from delivery to playout/CDN avoiding unnecessary transcoding.

Automated QC Workflows

Another advantage of DPP is the potential to capitalize on automatic QC workflows with the production company or facility. In the webinar, Shane Tucker pointed out that there is a strong likelihood that QC processes will have been performed at numerous stages in the workflow before the media file reaches Channel 4 so any further QC cycles are unnecessary.

Shane concluded his contribution to the webinar by highlighting a number of challenges that remain in the successful adoption of DPP, not least the support needed from equipment vendors. We recognize this and we’re straining every sinew in our efforts to support this fantastic UK initiative.

The post Digital Production Partnership (DPP) – A Broadcaster’s Perspective appeared first on Dalet.

1. Follow the Law

At the end of 2012 the FCC passed the 21st Century Communications Act. According to the new regulation, all video content that is broadcast on television in the United States with captions now also requires captions when it is distributed over Internet Protocol (IP). This includes all video content that is distributed on mobile smartphone apps, services like Hulu or Netflix, websites, YouTube, Internet-enabled televisions, DVD players, gaming consoles etc. And since failure to comply with regulations will result in fines, everyone is scrambling to find more efficient ways to deal with captions because, let’s be honest the traditional captioning workflows that go around the outside of the main workflow are simply too expensive and time consuming. 

2. But Don’t Always Believe What You’re Told

Captions in file-based workflows are a tricky issue. But whatever you do, don’t believe any bar-room expert who says “it’s simple and will just work”. Likewise don’t believe anyone who says it’s too complicated and can’t be done. In the file based domain, audio-visual workflows are getting increasingly more sophisticated with more formats, more resolution and more “manufacturing” of media rather than simple transcoding. It is possible to create simple workflows that produce complex captioning results – as long as you have the right software.

3. Don’t Think it’s Not Your Job

Unlike regulations for television, which puts regulations on the station and cable providers, the regulations for IP delivery put the major responsibility on the program owner. This means that if you own the copyrights to the material, you are responsible for providing captions and the program distributor, in turn, is required to make them accessible to the end user without degrading quality.

4. Think Mezzanine

As you already know, creating a Mezzanine file format to simplify the authoring of all your multi-platform deliverables has many advantages. The good news is that the same principles hold true with captions and subtitles. If you define a Mezzanine format from which all your deliverables can be authored and published, you’ll not only see a reduction in costs but you’ll also see a huge improvement on testability. 

5. You Don’t Need to Feel the Pain

We happen to believe that a complex workflow problem should not cause pain for everyone, except the person building the tool. At the end of the day, what you need is a system where you don’t really care about the input and output formats to the ingest, playback, QC or transcode systems. All you need to care about is that if you have captions at the input and they should still be there at the output. The mind-boggling minutia of caption transformations and synchronization with an audio-visual cut and splice job should not be your problem, it should be taken care of in the system.

The post 5 Things to Soothe Your Captioning Headache appeared first on Dalet.

It’s Gonna Get Harder…

It was already enough of a challenge when you simply had to finish a television show and make sure it had a set of captions. Now, you also have to provide accessibility wherever the content is going to end up: online, on mobile devices, on different standards and frame rates of television. And because the CEA 608 standard used in North America, while similar, is not the same as that used elsewhere, you have to think about export versions, too!

And then have you thought about what happens when you are creating a compliance edit, a cut which includes some censorship changes? It could be for an overseas broadcaster, or for an airline version. The right captions have to be removed, and if the dialogue is bleeped or redubbed, you want to make sure the offensive language does not appear in the captions.

If you are preparing deliverables for international distribution as well as the home market, then you may well have to handle different caption files for each country (even English is different in the UK and Australia!) and the same level of intelligent processing will need to be applied to each file. You can appreciate the need for automation.

…Before it Gets Easier

It goes without saying that captions need careful tracking through the workflows to ensure the files remain accurate, consistent, and ready to go when the content is published. One way to manage this level of complexity is to handle captions the way you handle video and audio: ingest and transcode to a house standard, the mezzanine; track the captions with all the other elements needed to finish and package; and transcode to the output standard. While the theory sounds straightforward, the implementation remains complex.

The key, then, is to use a platform that has the intelligence to be able to do all that management and processing and let technology do the heavy lifting. For a service you have to provide but which will never make anyone – post house or production company – any money, the idea that it can be delivered at a manageable cost and with little or no manual intervention sounds good, don’t you think?

The post Captioning in Post – How to Ease the Pain appeared first on Dalet.

The hosts have made every possible effort to provide world class TV production facilities – for both domestic and international viewing audiences. The goal is to create a modern broadcasting complex that will provide TV, radio, Internet and photographic coverage of the XXII Winter Games and the XI Winter Paralympic Games in Sochi.

In preparation for this event, Panorama has trained over 1,500 TV specialists from all over Russia in 27 TV specialties with TV production specialists from Russia and other countries working as instructors.

Fit for purpose – providing media as consumers want it 

Without doubt, the hosts have invested heavily to make sure that the best HDTV pictures are available from the Sochi Games and this strategy has been many years in the planning. However, recent years have witnessed the inexorable rise of multi-screen distribution. Without doubt, eyes will be fixed on Sochi for the duration of the Games but how people watch those pictures will vary greatly from HDTV in their homes to tablets and smartphones on the move.

The broadcasters that stand to benefit the most from this global event are those that have the best media distribution strategy. Who has the best platform for converting (or transcoding) the media into forms that are fit for purpose across the broadest range of viewing devices.

And who has the most secure means of checking that their media is of the highest quality from the moment it enters their file-based workflows. Since without this assurance, sooner or later toxic media files will enter their workflow and create serious damage to their production systems, maybe even knocking them off-line at critical viewing times.

And finally, who has woken up to the fact that all these facilities need not cost a King’s ransom? It is possible to create a platform which uses the same software and technologies and can be scaled up from an initial proof of concept to the most sophisticated and large-scale multi node network without the need for any external orchestration.

iCR – Intelligent Content Repurposing 

This is just what we have developed at AmberFin with our iCR (intelligent Content Re-Purposing) software platform – a file-based media ingest, transcoding and quality control solution. Our business is intelligent media conversion, solving file-based workflow challenges for broadcasters, sports organizations, post-production houses and other media content owners. Scalable, agile and efficient, the iCR Platform brings true innovation and cost-effectiveness to the demands of multi-platform delivery, enabling users to deal with high volumes and true-to-source high quality pictures at the same time, all with exclusive slim-file technology.

Unique to the iCR Platform, our approach to Quality Control, known as Unified Quality Control (UQC), introduces a QC mark that brings a new level of trust to media assets. UQC combines automated processes that integrate third party verification tools with a human touch, enabling more efficient and effective decision-making and new levels of confidence in the file creation and transformation processes.

At IBC last year, we introduced a series a new enterprise-class features and functions to iCR that mean that our solution is not only technically advanced but also represents the market’s most affordable and scalable solution. We’re proud that we have customers worldwide that will be using the iCR platform to support their sophisticated multi-platform distribution strategies at the Sochi Games.

The post Is Your Multi-Screen Transcode Strategy Ready for Sochi? appeared first on Dalet.