SMPTE 2017 Annual Technical Conference is around the corner and one of this year’s exciting gatherings. Here are four areas you can expect to dominate the event:
AI is Your New Best Friend
AI and ML are set to transform Media & Entertainment practice. Whether through metadata tagging, Quality Control, automated workflows, or audience intelligence, AI is going to be a critical tool for content creation and delivery. It’s not by chance that the SMPTE pre-conference symposium was dedicated entirely to AI & ML.
AI will also require the adoption of a new set of tools and semantics to deliver on its promises – Big Data tools to easily and systematically tag, store and retrieve content, and Fast Data technology to crunch data and gather insight. Expect to see some exciting development in that direction at the show, including in our booth #307.
New Standards and the Future of Broadcast
To keep pace with viewership moving to online streaming as well as the advances of 4K Ultra HD TVs and 4K content, the Advanced Television Systems Committee, Inc., (ATSCO) is finalizing the next broadcasting standard, ATSC 3.0.
ATSC 3.0 brings many dramatic changes. The first is the fact that it is cordless, and IP based. The second is that it will give a standardization of how to play Ultra HD (UHD) content over broadcast.
ATSC 3.0 is a big step towards the future, and it will have broad implications. For example, one of our customers saw an 8x increase in storage capacity requirements per hour of content when they went from HD to UHD. Our new standard of media will be rich with data and it’s not slowing down any time soon. This is why AI will need to be your new best friend if you want to keep up.
VR and Interactive Media
Broadcast standard ATSC 3.0 is also about mixed media such as second screen, or framework for new types of media. VR has taken over many major industry events and that’s a trend will continue at SMPTE 2017. VR will see an expansion to Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MXR).
Those who have huge amount of assets can finally make use of them, but also think about VR not only in the commercial sense but also in its possibilities for journalistic, medical and educations use cases. VR will change the way we live, work, play and navigate through the world.
Digital Transformation and Monetization of Data
The proliferation of digital transformation is both an opportunity and a challenge. There are boundless new ways to create and distribute content across platforms and devices, but it requires new strategies, next generation technologies and a data-centric thinking.
Companies need to adopt a Big Data mindset, with AI and ML as key technologies that are going to assist in monetizing content more efficiently and successfully. Joan Wrabetz shared some great insight about the key strategic changes production, broadcast and distribution companies need to make in order to start seeing value from their existing media assets.
What’s Hot from HGST and G-Technology®
We’ll be at SMPTE 2017 in booth #307 showing how we help media and entertainment professionals manage Big Data media archives, accelerate production workflows and move assets across cloud deployments.
You’ll be able to view our ActiveScale™ object storage solution that delivers petabyte-scale hybrid cloud storage with breakthrough economics for media archives and post-production workflows. You’ll also see how blockbuster studios like Illumination MacGuff (Minions, The Secret Life of Pets), and Sundance Institute leverage our solution to create, archive and tag content with an entire reference library online and accessible at all times.
We’ll also include G-Technology–branded solutions that enable real-time capture-and-editing workflows.
Something New at SMPTE 2017
One solution I’m particularly excited about is our partnership with Avalanche.io. With the onslaught of data metadata will be the foundation for any workflow, and it will only grow in importance. The Avalanche file browser uses the innovative C4 framework, and the C4 ID system, to uniquely identify every file everywhere regardless of filename or location. It allows you to see all your assets as a file system and easily move them between tiers.
Just last month Avalanche C4 File Management support was announced for the G-RACK™ 12 High-performance NAS system. At SMPTE 2017, you’ll be able to see how you can use Avalanche to build a seamless workflow between ActiveScale and G-RACK — high performance ingest meets seventeen 9’s of durability! And, you can manage and organize files wherever they are without having to move them in a single file navigator.
Speaking Session – Hybrid Cloud Workflows
Joan Wrabetz, Vice President of Marketing will share her insight about how media and entertainment companies are using the cloud to cost-effectively store all captured footage, accelerate production workflow, productivity and lower TCO.
You can catch her session, Leveraging Hybrid Cloud Workflows in Media and Entertainment, on Wednesday Oct. 25 at 9:30 a.m. in Salon 1.
Got questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out, or come find me on the exhibition floor.
