This month, FEED takes on VR, looking at the practical applications and future potential of virtual reality and 360 video technology. We explore VR e-tourism, a start-up trying to create the iTunes of the VR world and how a sports broadcaster is innovating with VR and 360 content. Also in this issue, we discover the latest innovations in mobile video and how getting your viewers to swipe and tap can increase engagement and revenue
THE POWER OF VLOGGING ARCHIVING AT THE BFI
START-UP ALLEY TRIATHLON LIVE IBC REVIEW
PIRATE HUNT Sinking content thieves worldwide
3 WELCOME
TRY SOME FACE TIME
The biggest stars in the world right now are people you’ve never heard of. Actors, performers, and major athletes may be getting paid millions, but in terms of hours watched and influence on audiences, the real winners are the vloggers. While you're
really into Season 3 of that new Netflix series, your kids and their friends, and their friends’ friends, are watching people sitting in a room talking to camera. The vlogger (that’s “video blogger” for you still stuck in the 20th century) may be the first truly original video art form to have come out of the internet age. Built on a single person, talking directly - often confessionally - to an audiende of one, the vlog has become a means for people to connect, for ideas to be explored, and for products to be sold. Vlogging and its aspirations to authenticity and direct personal connection are becoming key elements of many companies' communications strategies. And vlogging isn’t just for YouTube (although “YouTuber” is the name vloggers on the platform have adopted) – you can start vlogging on any platform at any time. Check out our vlogger profiles in this issue and think how you or your organisation might benefit from a little honesty, a little direct communication, a little face time. This is also our anti-piracy issue. We investigate the weak points in the content pipeline that pirates try to exploit, and we talk with some of the industry's top pirate hunters. New sophisticated watermarking and monitoring technologies are helping to reduce piracy in the short term - but it's an arms race with dedicated, and industrialised, content thieves upping their game all the time.
EDITORIAL EDITOR Neal Romanek +44 (0) 1223 492246 nealromanek@bright-publishing.com
CONTRIBUTORS Ann-Marie Corvin Heather McLean Adrian Pennington Phil Rhodes CHIEF SUB EDITOR Beth Fletcher SENIOR SUB EDITOR Siobhan Godwood SUB EDITOR Felicity Evans
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DESIGN DESIGN DIRECTOR Andy Jennings DESIGN MANAGER Alan Gray DESIGNERS
NEAL ROMANEK, EDITOR nealromanek@bright-publishing.com @rabbitandcrow @nromanek
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06 NEWSFEED
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Dispatches from the world of online video
10 YOUR TAKE
Tech has supercharged video – and isn’t going to stop
12 STREAMPUNK
Top vloggers tell their secrets
38 GENIUS INTERVIEW The British Film Institute’s
Stephen McConnachie tells us how to digitise 100,000 titles
44 XTREME
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Behind the scenes at sports network Triathlon Live
50 OTT TV FILES
FilmStruck International’s high-class film streaming
60 START-UP ALLEY
Media start-ups from this year’s IBC Show
70 HAPPENING
FEED’s first IBC and the Nordic TV Summit
CONTENT SECURITY FOCUS 22 TECHFEED Fighting back against content pirates 28 ROUND TABLE Keeping your content safe from… them 66 FUTURESHOCK Exposing “fake news” with a new tool from the EU
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BREAKING NEWS FROM THE STREAMING SECTOR
Continuing its face-off against Amazon Web Services, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has launched ApsaraVideo for VOD on its Alibaba Cloud platform outside China for the first time. The platform offers a web-based management console and APIs, as well as software development kits for managing VOD platforms end- to-end, or integrating individual tools Alibaba Cloud is aiming to become a tools provider for broadcasters and media enterprises. European users will be offered the chance to access a full suite of tools including media transcoding, file storage and CDNs, as well as other services for creating, implementing and delivering digital media content. ALIBABA VOD TOOLS GO LIVE IN EUROPE into the customer’s own apps and services. Included in the Apsara platform is ApsaraVideo Live, a live- streaming platform for audio and video modelled on the company’s cloud-based real-time transcoding technology. ApsaraVideo Live provides high-definition and uninterrupted live audio and video services that are convenient and accessible, with low latency and high concurrency.
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7 NEWSFEED Updates & upgrades
YOUTUBE MOVES GAMING CONTENT
QUIBI JUMPS INTO THE STREAMING GAME app, YouTube channels would be better places for gamers and fans to engage. “After all, YouTube is where more than 200 million gamers come to engage with your favourite games and creators every day, watching over 50 billion hours of gaming content in the last 12 months alone”. The YouTube Gaming app will go dark in March 2019. YouTube is shutting down its gaming app and is porting the features over to a new online gaming channel. At the new page fans and players can watch personalised gaming videos, including streamed games and contributions from channel subscriptions. The company launched YouTube Gaming in 2015 as a standalone app for gamers. YouTube Gaming included features like Game Pages for better discoverability, Super Chat and Channel Memberships to help fans show support for their favourite creators, as well as a live-streaming platform based on gaming community feedback. In a blog post, the company said that, despite the success of the YouTube Gaming
Former Disney boss Jeffrey Katzenberg and ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman have dubbed their new online video start-up Quibi (short for “quick bites”) and are betting $1 billion that audiences are hungry for high-quality, short-form content. Previously dubbed NewTV, the new mobile-first company is developing series with with high-profile content creators such as Guillermo del Toro, Sam Raimi, Jason Blum (so horror is definitely high on the company’s priority list) and Antoine Fuqua. The platform is also in talks with the likes of Justin Timberlake and basketball star Kobe Bryant. Quibi aims to launch in late 2019 with a monthly subscription fee of around $5.
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8 NEWSFEED Updates & upgrades
AUSTRALIA LAUNCHES FIRST 4K UHD SERVICE
The SportsPro OTT Summit will be held on 28 and 29 November in Madrid, Spain. The two-day long conference, hosted by SportsPro magazine, will offer 40 sessions centred on two key content streams: technology and strategy. The event includes a huge array of speakers, including representatives from Formula One, PGA Tour, Turner Sports, Olympic Channel, BT Sport, the NBA, YouTube, UEFA and Twitch. Sessions include “OTT vs Linear: new ways to package rights for multiple platforms”, “Driving fan tune- in and engagement in the OTT age”, “How eSports is conquering the mass media market”, and “Live streaming at carrying out extensive coverage and facilitating industry networking – so come and see us! For more information and registration visit: http://www. sportspro-ott.com OTT SPORTS WORLD HEADS TO MADRID the English Football League”. FEED will be at the summit,
Australian pay-TV operator Foxtel has launched the country’s first 4K UHD offering. Foxtel upgrade will be employing Harmonic’s Electra video processor for live UHD HEVC encoding, the ProStream X stream processor for scrambling and the RD9000 decoder. The Harmonic’s solution
“This is a significant technology breakthrough for Foxtel and will undeniably attract many new subscribers who are excited about the raw beauty of UHD,” said Tony Berthaud, Harmonic’s VP of Sales. “Our video processing solutions are at the heart of many UHD service offerings around the world, and we’re proud to be leading the charge for stunning video experiences.”
aims to maximise workflow efficiencies and ensure video quality at low bitrates.
MAGIC LEAP: THE GATHERING
Augmented reality company Magic Leap held L.E.A.P., its first developer conference, in Los Angeles this month. The opening keynote announced software updates for its new Magic Leap One headset and a vision for city-wide AR implementations. The new headset will feature the option to use two controllers, and starting in November will launch an Avatar chat feature that includes a multi-user virtual chat room. The company is also looking toward supporting a set of Javascript development tools called Magicscript and is working on a virtual AI assistant called Mica. Speakers included AT&T CEO John Donovan, Andy Serkis in his role as creative tech thought leader, Timoni West of the Imaginarium Studios and Robin Hunicke of Unity Technologies. The conference was split into two sections. The Design & Creative track included a talk from Weta Workshop, a round table on mixed reality design and a panel on large scale mixed reality implementations. The Technical track featured discussion on Magic Leap’s LuminOS operating system and high performance graphics optimisations.
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10 YOUR TAKE Deluxe
Tech has shifted the way we watch video. Content producers and distributors need to up their game AND KEEPS BREAKING IT HOW TECH BROKE THE VIDEO INDUSTRY –
have turned. The rise of online and mobile platforms paired with increasing on-demand, non-linear and cloud-based services has democratised the way content reaches audiences, putting the power in the consumers’ hands (literally). Today, content goes everywhere: it fits every screen, it travels to every region and is available at any time. Audiences have limitless options to find what they want, whenever and wherever they want it, forcing a shift in traditional entertainment models. The very idea of video entertainment has been disrupted – how that content gets to consumers will never be the same. The cost of entry for any content studio keen to compete in today’s media and entertainment space will be adopting technologies that seamlessly deliver content globally, while meeting viewers needs on a personal level.
have all played major roles in disrupting the long-established distributions models. The amount of content, the different entertainment platforms, the multitude of content types and the speed with which those can be delivered have all changed drastically in recent years. There are now more than 200 OTT services active in the US market alone, with more streaming services launching internationally – such as Netflix’s 190-country, 20+ language global footprint – and there are no signs of the industry slowing down. The ability to watch content on-demand and the rise of new choices are challenging the traditional and linear programming methods. The old guard is now being persuaded to embrace new technology, new types of content delivery and new audiences. In an effort to keep their heads above the stream, the industry is seeing a glut of M&A, new innovations and moonshots.
MORGAN FIUMI, CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER, DELUXE The old guard is being pushed to embrace new technology and new audiences
atching TV isn’t what it used to be. And making entertainment isn’t what it used to be either. What we refer to as the
supply chain of entertainment – the journey from production to the viewer – has been disrupted on many levels. In 2007, the year Netflix announced it would launch streaming video, content distribution models were mostly limited to cinema, paid TV programming, broadcast networks, physical disc and the more niche cable networks. Distribution tracks were fixed. Distributors held the power, and audiences didn’t have much freedom or flexibility in the matter – they could either watch TV, sit in a theatre, or go outside. Fast-forward 11 years and the tables
THE FOUR 'V'S Velocity, variability, variety and volume
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11 YOUR TAKE Deluxe
POWER TO THE PEOPLE Today, consumers are able to watch an entire season of their favourite series at any given time. If they want to watch on the go, they can use a DVR or download it to their tablet or smartphone. If they love live television, but don’t want the countless channels, they can purchase a skinny bundle that follows the same on-demand mentality of streaming services. And if there’s a game or other live event they just can’t miss, it’s likely to be streaming through a partnership with Facebook, Twitter, or some other platform. Look at this year’s FIFA World Cup tournament, for instance. According to Conviva, the tournament saw 393 million plays of matches successfully streamed during its first week via 59 million unique video streaming apps. Audiences simply have more options to fit their tastes, and those tastes have never been more diverse. JUGGLING AWORLD OF TASTES This digital disruption has been a boon to audiences: according to Cisco, by 2021, video traffic will be 82% of all consumer internet traffic, up from 73% in 2016. There's no question that delivering content globally will be a determining factor for the most successful distributors and content studios. The power of the typical consumer has drastically changed in the last few years. Audiences have more choice, and as has always been the case, consumer choice dictates business models. Successful platforms have embraced the global marketplace and international subscriber growth has fuelled stock prices, but it’s not enough to only have global reach – content has to be localised and also locally sourced. There will likely never be another generational defining comedy exported around the world in the same way that The Simpsons was. The new global audience has diverse tastes, and some otherwise savvy platforms have met stumbling blocks trying to force global audiences to buy into just American content. This new international landscape demands more than just delivering content – whether international or localised – in different places. To succeed, companies will instead need to create more local content to engage these different audiences, and we’re already seeing that in the success of recent German dramas and Korean comedies. There is no ‘universal’ audience, but rather each region has a different approach to the content they watch, and how they watch it. The only thing that seems to be universal is that audiences are shifting from pay-TV towards more technologically
THENEWGLOBAL AUDIENCEHASDIVERSE TASTES, ANDSOME OTHERWISE SAVVY PLATFORMSHAVEMET STUMBLINGBLOCKS TRYINGTOFORCEGLOBALAUDIENCESTOBUY INTO JUSTAMERICANCONTENT
advanced forms of distribution. In 2018, it’s estimated that the churn will eat into 7.2% of Comcast’s subscriber base and 4.8% of AT&T’s, ultimately ending more than 5 million cable subscriptions over the year. The consumer-driven technology shift in the industry is creating rapid change and pushing companies to embrace new ways of appealing to consumers. To reach wider audiences, content creators are increasingly advancing their digital delivery capabilities and leveraging them to ensure that their international and local content attracts large, loyal audiences. Shifting audience tastes means that businesses need to recalibrate their infrastructure to truly differentiate the customer experience for their users around the world. Success in that area lies in having a scalable, flexible and robust supply chain to provide customisation. DO IT ALL (OR NOTHING AT ALL) In the race to become both global and flexible, the lines between creator and distributor are becoming increasingly blurred, driving a new wave of mergers and acquisitions for companies to quickly gain scale and capability. The biggest distributors, content creators and OTTs (both large and small) are starting to do it all – technology, distribution and content creation – to capitalise on the new online and mobile pathways and to thrive in an increasingly competitive environment. Today’s most successful content creators are becoming more like distributors – increasingly advancing their IP delivery capabilities and leveraging them to take advantage of direct distribution technology. By harnessing new distribution methods and supplementing their existing content with local productions, the future of the industry lies in both reaching audiences everywhere and ensuring that they produce what those diverse audiences want to see. Global tech leaders are also bringing disruptive models to the market. Large players like Apple, Google and Amazon ushered in their own online streaming
devices to supplement their video streaming services – and are commissioning and creating original content as well. A small percentage of these companies produce movies, but most are primarily focused on serialised – scripted and unscripted – drama series, the leading drivers of non-linear, online viewing. To address global, diverse viewing habits, content needs to be available everywhere, leading to companies trying to do it all. THE WAY FORWARD If the last century in entertainment offers any lesson, it’s that investing in new technologies is the only way to stay on top of the changing trends of a demanding audience. And just as consumers have increasingly demanded flexibility when it comes to their content, the owners of that content should expect the same of their supply chain services. They will no longer have to send content through monolithic and separated systems, but rather leverage smarter supply chains that are adaptable, scalable and that provide greater insights along with the flexibility to move with the changes those insights demand. The challenge facing content owners today is adapting and developing the capability to deliver the right mix of global and local content worldwide, at high quality and the right price. Consumers have plenty of choices and can access content in multiple ways, and their ultimate decision will come down to ease of use and the ability to find content relevant to their tastes. Giving consumers both those things requires an infrastructure that can deliver globally as well as customise and create content on demand. Companies that stand out from the rest are utilising new technology to reach their global audience with a truly differentiated and quality customer experience.
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STREAMPUNK 12 Vlogging
THE VIDEO CONVERSATION Our guests in this month’s Streampunk, give us a peek into the world of vlogging, its variety, its creativity, and its power to connect
f online video is a cultural and social revolution, then video blogging – vlogging, that is – must be at the centre of it. Big OTT players like
Netflix and Amazon have produced TV on steroids, but it’s still just TV. Grassroots creators in the vlogosphere have, over the past decade, created a new video paradigm that has turned out to be more socially and culturally influential than anything Big Content has yet to launch.
CREATOR: CALUM MCSWIGGAN CHANNEL STARTED: 2013 CHANNEL URL: WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/USER/EATGAYLOVE SUBSCRIBERS: 82,477
How often do you post? I post videos roughly once a month.
that information to make informed and safe decisions. Some people just need to see a happy, openly gay man thriving to give them hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I think that’s why LGBT+ content does so well on the platform, and I’m so happy to contribute to that. What gear do you currently use to shoot, record, edit and distribute your channel? And how has your tech set-up evolved over time?
What do you post about and why? My channel is an LGBT+ lifestyle channel that focuses on issues that affect the LGBT+ community, queer culture, and sex education. I started creating this content when I realised that there were so few people doing it – LGBT+ inclusive sex education for instance still isn’t being taught in the majority of schools, and there are countless people out there who need
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13 STREAMPUNK Vlogging
PICKING PROJECTS A lot of opportunities have come Calum’s way, but he chooses projects carefully
How do you engage and interact with your audience? I always listen to the feedback I get from my audience. I read all my comments and respond to as many as possible. I think the secret to success on YouTube is to understand what your audience want. I always try to make my videos seem like a conversation. I ask my audience questions, and make them feel like they’re part of a dialogue. I’m also extremely active on other platforms like Instagram and Twitter and try to make my audience feel as involved in my life and the creative process as possible. Some of my audience have been around since I created my first video and they’ve very much been an integral part of the journey. Some of them have even featured in my videos over the years! Your most valuable vlogging tip? To always be authentically yourself – it’s so easy to try to copy your favourite creators and to be exactly like them, but that’s not what people want to see. People want to see who you are, they want to hear what you have to say, and if you’re just copying somebody else you’re not showing your true, authentic self.
I started my YouTube channel with nothing more than a £20 webcam and the photo/ video editing software that came with my computer. I used the money I earned from AdSense to improve my equipment over time. I currently film with a DSLR with an upgraded lens, two light boxes and an external zoom mic. I edit my videos with Final Cut Pro X and Premiere Pro and edit my thumbnails with Photoshop. Equipment is definitely important and massively helps to improve the quality of your content, but I always like to remind new creators that you don’t need expensive equipment to make a good video. So many successful creators started with webcams and some of the most watched videos in the world were filmed on iPhones. Have you been able to monetise your channel? Adverts are just a small part of my income on YouTube, the majority of my income comes from brand partnerships and opportunities that come off the back of having a successful YouTube channel.
I STARTED MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL WITH NOTHING MORE THAN A £20 WEBCAM AND THE PHOTO/VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE THAT CAME WITHMY COMPUTER A lot of different offers come through my inbox, but I always think it’s important to make sure I only work with the ones that are the right fit. Luckily I’ve got to work with some amazing brands and have done everything from promoting an LGBT+ charity clothing line to inviting my viewers to come to intimate private screenings of a new LGBT+ movie.
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STREAMPUNK 14 Vlogging
CREATOR: CARLY ROWENA CHANNEL STARTED: I SIGNED ON TO YOUTUBE IN 2011, BUT STARTED ADDING VIDEOS IN 2014 CHANNEL URL : WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/USER/CARLYROWENA SUBSCRIBERS: 414, 451
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15 STREAMPUNK Vlogging
I THINK YOUR CONTENT CHANGES LIKE THE SEASONS ,AND IF YOU ENGAGE WITH YOUR FOLLOWERS YOU’RE GOING TO BECOME MORE ANDMORE CREATIVE
MOVING ON UP Carly Rowena has upgraded her kit to produce better quality videos as her channel has grown
How often do you post? I aim to post twice a week: Thursdays at 5.30pm and Sundays at 6pm What do you post about and why? I consider myself to be a health and wellness vlogger with a little bit of daily life and sexy topics thrown in. In all honesty, I think your content changes like the seasons ,and if you engage with your followers you’re going to become more and more creative. What gear do you currently use to shoot, record, edit and distribute your channel? And how has your tech set-up evolved over time?
How do you engage and interact with your audience? Engaging with my followers is my favourite part of my job. The comments, likes, dislikes, emails are my only way of knowing if what I am putting out there is useful for people. It’s my feedback and without it I’d find YouTube such a soulless place to be. Your most valuable vlogging tip? Don’t try to be anyone else but you. There are so many people online that it can be hard to figure out who you should be when you pick up the camera. Try not to let yourself become too influenced by what others are doing. It’s your own personal uniqueness that makes people watch and follow you.
I film most of my videos on the Canon PowerShot G7X Mark II for ease, but create glossier videos on the Canon EOS 5D Mark III, and only use natural light from the window. I edit using Final Cut Pro and create thumbnails using Canva or PicMonkey. In 2014 I used to film my videos using the camera on my laptop (terrible!), then moved to my phone, to the Olympus Pen and now to my current set-up. Have you been able to monetise your channel? When I first started, I just used AdSense. I then signed to StyleHaul at around 20,000 subscribers and am now looking into my best option moving forward.
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STREAMPUNK 16 Vlogging
CREATOR: MYLES DYER CHANNEL STARTED: 2006 CHANNEL URL: WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/USER/BLADE376 SUBSCRIBERS: 48,753
How often do you post? I have been on a hiatus this year due to health reasons, but when in full flow I tend to post once a week. What do you post about and why? I create vlogs in which I tackle issues across three main themes: mental health and wellbeing, social commentary and futurism. What ties them all together is this desire to look at the human condition and identify how our value systems needs to evolve in these exponentially changing times. As someone who has lived and breathed YouTube for 12 years now, it became increasingly clear to me how online video is an excellent vehicle for instigating social change. I therefore feel a responsibility to share these experiences with the world to help those wishing to fight their own causes more effectively. What gear do you currently use to shoot, record, edit and distribute your channel? And how has your tech set-up evolved over time? When I began on YouTube, I would have a basic £30 Logitech webcam that sat on the top of my laptop. Editing was done using Pinnacle Studio on a Windows operating system. As I began investing in better cameras, and thus captured higher-quality footage, I switched to an iMac and used Final Cut Studio. I currently shoot my videos with a Canon EOS 70D DSLR, capture audio with a Rode Podcaster microphone and light my room with two box lights. Editing is conducted on Adobe Premiere Pro.
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17 STREAMPUNK Vlogging
STRONG VALUES Myles prioritises producing content that he truly believes in. He’s playing the long game
IT BECAME INCREASINGLY CLEAR TO ME HOW ONLINE VIDEO IS AN EXCELLENT VEHICLE FOR INSTIGATING SOCIAL CHANGE
Have you been able to monetise your channel?
you to build a brand and reputation that consumers can directly buy into and support. How do you engage and interact with your audience? It has changed over the years. It has primarily occurred through Twitter and Facebook, but also by referring to video comments in future editions. I’ve also been a big advocate of live streaming to directly interact with your supporters, which I’ve used on various platforms since 2006. Your most valuable vlogging tip? Play the long game – that means have vision, create content you truly believe in and be consistent in how often you post. If you follow that ethos, not only do you have the best chance of building an audience, but you’ll build one that matches the values and goals you hold dear.
I was one of the first adopters of YouTube’s Partnership program back in 2007, allowing me to run ads alongside my videos to earn Adsense revenue. As my audience grew it then allowed me to take up sponsorship opportunities where I was paid to create videos on particular subjects. However, although I never achieved the scale in viewership needed to be financially sustainable, my sole reason for posting on YouTube was because of all the priceless experiences it gave me, including travelling to events around the world and getting job offers because of my experience. More recently I have used the grassroots funding website Patreon where supporters can donate as little or as much as they’d like each month to support my efforts. This for me is the future of generating a sustainable income, because it requires
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18 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE Brightcove
REGULAR, PERSONAL, INTERACTIVE & AUTHENTIC Video content is becoming ever more elaborate – and more expensive. One of the best ways to reach an audience may be the simplest online video form there is – the vlog Words by Mark Blair, SVP International, Brightcove
log. It’s not the loveliest word. It evolved from ‘blog’ – which in turn evolved from ‘weblog’. And a weblog was, in the early
with immediate feedback via comments. Some bloggers became celebrities, attracting huge numbers of regular readers. Some became influential socially, culturally, politically. Some got book deals. Then networks got faster, and online video technologies, and the devices for accessing those technologies, exploded. Though there are more blogs than ever today, and text pages still dominate the web, the lingua franca in the online world is becoming video.
MARK BLAIR: A vlog may just transform the way your customers see you and, if you’re lucky, how you do business
days of the internet, one of the first types of content to be created, and consumed, on a wide scale. Blogs took what the early, slower internet was supremely good at, text, and allowed anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection to tell a story, relate the daily facts of their lives, and build an audience
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19 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE Brightcove
WHAT IS A VLOG? There are as many different vlogs as there are vloggers, but they all do tend to share some common characteristics. • Vlogs are posted regularly: Some vloggers post daily, some weekly, some monthly. But the regularity of vlog posts is key to the form. Audiences come to expect a rhythm of posting and if the vlogger isn’t delivering on schedule, they can quickly become disappointed, disillusioned, even angry. Vlogs can have a limited run too, around a topic or an event, for example. At the beginning of this year, the UK’s Barclaycard ran a video series for one month around the activity of blogger Giovanna Fletcher, posting a new video every day for 31 days on the company website about a new activity Fletcher had engaged in with the help of her card. An expert trying to educate or inform their audience around a specific topic might do vlog series limited to covering the topic. • Vlogs are personal: It may take an army to make a feature film, but it only takes one person to make a vlog. And, generally, the more people involved in a vlog’s production, the more it strays from the form. Vlogs are the only legitimately ‘first person’ form of filmmaking. A vlog may feature graphics, cutaways, b-roll, but it’s central subject, the one it will keep coming back to, is a close-up of the vlogger looking into camera – looking at us, talking to
IT MAY TAKE AN ARMY TO MAKE A FEATURE FILM, BUT IT ONLY TAKES ONE PERSON TO MAKE A VLOG
us. It’s this personal connection, where we are face to face with the creator that distinguishes the vlog from just about every other form of filmmaking. • Vlogs are interactive: Vlogs exist to communicate directly with an audience. While a scripted drama or news report might be laid out for an audience to draw its own conclusions or have its own private emotional experiences, vloggers – often vociferously – invite interaction. This might be requests for online comments or feedback, likes on social media platforms or calls to action to buy a product or support a cause. Because of this interaction, vlog content can be tailored to, or produced in response to, audience sentiment and feedback. The vlogger, interaction via comments, chat, email as well as through studying the viewer metrics available on their video platform, can create a literal dialogue with viewers, directly addressing their concerns, responding to their needs.
someone is being honest with us, being straightforward, telling it like it is. And the regularity of a vlog post encourages the viewer to put together clues they get in the content about the vlogger’s life or business. The viewer becomes involved in the world of the vlogger. The truth is that social media itself has a distorting effect on the truth. Once we are in front of an audience, our natural inclinations towards self-aggrandisement, self-justification and good old-fashioned modesty start to eat away at our frankness. It takes some skill, and deliberate practice, to be genuinely honest with a camera pointed at you. Some vloggers spend a lot of time and effort crafting an online personality, or brand. These fronts might bear little resemblance to the truth when it comes to the vlogger’s real private life, but they can still be consistent and authentic when it comes to a brand’s goals and vision. If you don’t always want to bare all, at least be consistent. What’s important to remember is that amid the noise and confusion of the online world, customers are looking for someone who they can trust. A good vlog can help build trust. Start now.
• Vlogs are authentic: The success of vlogging as a form is due in large part to the belief that
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20 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE Brightcove
EFFECTIVE, STEADY VLOGGING CAN BRING A REGULAR AUDIENCE DIRECTLY TO YOUR PLATFORM OR WEBSITE
WHY VLOG? Professionals and businesses are coming to realise that the power of direct, personal, one-on-one video communication isn’t just for amateur enthusiasts. It’s actually a powerful tool for building engagement and communicating directly with your customers, clients, or fans. The vast majority of vloggers use existing social media platforms to host and distribute their content. These are ready-made tools, sometimes quite easy
and clients. Embedding video on your site, with an easily accessible call to action, can help bring your customers right into the heart of your business. Regular, personal, interactive and authentic. A vlog may just transform the way your customers see you and, if you’re lucky, how you do business.
to use, and they do favour the amateur. However, the regularity, intimacy and interactive power of the vlog is too precious a combination to be completely wasted on social media. Effective, steady vlogging can bring a regular audience directly to your platform or website. The form allows a personality from your organisation – the CEO, a specialist, an expert guest, even a trusted client – to repeatedly make contact with and build rapport with your stakeholders
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22 TECHFEED Content Protection
Words by Adrian Pennington Keep the PIRATES
It’s predicted that $52 billion in revenue will be lost to content piracy by the year 2022. The solution isn’t just technology – it’s also education and more user-friendly services
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23 TECHFEED Content Protection
his time last year the industry was on high alert. Hackers had breached Netflix, Disney and HBO, threatening to release
script details or entire shows to the web unless ransoms were paid. Even then, Game of Thrones season seven was pirated more than a billion times, according to one estimate. In recent months no such high-profile incident has occurred – or at least been made public. The industry would appear to have stemmed the tide. This could be partly due to the firepower being thrown at the problem. Analyst Ovum estimates that the spend on TV and video anti-piracy services will touch $1 billion worldwide by the end of 2018 – a rise of 75% on last year. Increasing adoption of these measures such as DRM, fingerprinting, watermarking, paywalls and tokenised authentication will see losses reduce 3%, it predicts, to 13% in 2018 of overall TV revenues. Even at 13%, the revenue expected to be lost this year by global online TV and video services (excluding film entertainment) amounts to $37.4 billion. A report from Digital TV Research forecasts the cost of lost revenue due to piracy will reach an $52 billion by 2022.
Piracy – euphemistically known as content redistribution – is rife in sports broadcasting, too. At the start of the World Cup this year, Saudi TV channel BeoutQ was alleged by FIFA to be illegally broadcasting the opening games. Viaccess-Orca research, across 17 first round matches, recorded over 1 million views of illegal streams via Periscope, 3.1 million via YouTube and 7.5 million via Facebook. It identified the same top five ISPs hosting the sites used for streaming: two in the Netherlands (NForce and Quasi), Private Layer in Switzerland, Marosnet in Russia and Contabo in Germany. These illegal streaming links were not stopped by tracking services used by rights owners or TV operators.
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24 TECHFEED Content Protection
Most of this piracy is the work of sophisticated, well-equipped organisations, using set-top boxes, Conditional Access (CA) technology and mainstream payment systems. But with a good screen and a good camera, anyone can create their own instant illegal streaming facility, redistributing content using Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, Twitch or other platforms and apps. Awareness is being raised on all fronts. Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon and Sky are among more than 30 studios and broadcasters to form the anti-piracy Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. Earlier this year it shut down Florida- based SET Broadcast, pending a lawsuit alleging content piracy and it has also initiated legal action against Kodi set- top box makers in Australia, the UK and the US for providing illicit access to copyrighted content.
As the technical quality of content is raised to UHD and HDR, its value and therefore attractiveness to pirates has risen too. MovieLabs, which was formed by the Hollywood studios to set technical specifications for the distribution of premium content, identified watermarking as one of the key security mechanisms for securing 4K UHD content back in 2014. A forensic watermark, also called a digital watermark, is a sequence of characters or code embedded in a video to uniquely identify its originator and authorised user. Forensic watermarks can be repeated at random locations within the content to make them difficult to detect and remove. Last year, the Ultra HD Forum, a promotional body for UHD founded by Dolby, Harmonic, LG and Comcast, included forensic watermarking in its guidelines, and in August MovieLabs updated its own specs for systems to securely mark video both at the server and/or the client end. “There are a variety of use cases for watermarking, and different approaches are required for video-on-demand and live content, but the defining moment for watermarking has undoubtedly come with the rapid growth of 4K UHD content,” says Peter Cossack, VP of cybersecurity services at Irdeto. He expects that, over the coming year, rights owners will increasingly mandate watermarking and other anti-piracy requirements into their licensing contracts.
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25 TECHFEED Content Protection
Paul Hastings of watermarking tech specialist, Friend MTS, also reports some content owners writing into contracts a stipulation that broadcasters or service providers must be able to provide subscriber level watermarking for set-top boxes and OTT. Of course, particular focus on watermarking should not mean neglect of other security methods. “Operators ask if they still need to expend so much effort on secure chipsets,” says Cossack. “Well, yes, you do: if there is a weakness there, the pirates will go for it.”
Consumer education is required, too. Illegal streaming services are increasingly sophisticated, with slick websites and advertising, secure payment facilities and money-back guarantees to trick consumers into subscribing to an illegal service. Three-quarters of pirate streamer sites openly advertise payment methods including Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, according to a survey by Irdeto. It suggests more could be done by these brands. “If media organisations threaten to vote with their feet against payment platforms that enable piracy, it’ll be fascinating to see who blinks first,” suggests Mark Mulready an Irdeto cybersecurity expert. Cryptocurrencies, incidentally, only accounted for around 4% of payment method mentions on the sites it analysed. Of course, there are many people who knowingly head to an illegal streamer, the equivalent of getting the dodgy DVD with the xeroxed cover from a bloke down the pub. Some visit pirate sites in frustration with attempting to pay for and access a pay-per-view event, as happened en masse just ahead of the Mayweather vs McGregor boxing clash.
THE DEFINING MOMENT FOR
WATERMARKING HAS UNDOUBTEDLY COME WITH THE RAPID GROWTH OF 4K UHD CONTENT
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26 TECHFEED Content Protection
Many of us also think sh ring passwords for paid streaming services is, well, an okay thing to do. A study from Hill and Magid found that 35% of 18-30 years olds (yes you, millennials) share login credentials. US streamer Hulu loses $1.5 billion a year due to such nefarious activity, according to business management specialist, Cleeng. However, a study from Ampere Analysis suggests that password-sharing among Netflix users is not as problematic as most believe. Only one in ten users share Netflix passwords with their family or peers, it found. What this suggests, according to Cleeng, is that although account and credential sharing have risen, the most successful OTT services have happy customers. “In short, rather than focusing on locking people out, success will lie largely in encouraging loyalty and enticing fresh subscribers through a winning mix of incredible content, a flawless user experience and an innovative approach to the service,” the company advises.
The most sensible protection strategies apply layers of security mechanisms and close the loop by monitoring and then enforcing – in the courts if needs be – action against breaches. “The most effective approach to countering threats of piracy starts with education, then moves into rights expertise, with rights enforcement being the final step,” says Verimatrix CTO Petr Peterka. Experts candidly state that no device, content or data is ever 100% safe but a 360-degree security approach with constantly updated protection technologies will at least ensure theft is minimised.
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27 TECHFEED Content Protection
SMART HOME INVASION
THE MOST EFFECTIVE APPROACH TO COUNTERING THREATS OF PIRACY STARTS WITH EDUCATION
In the 2015 Michael Mann film Blackhat , a major breach of security is made on a supposedly failsafe international shipping port via a humble vending machine. In this story, Chris Hemsworth’s ex-CIA operative was behind the hack, but it won’t always be the good guys. You can be sure that criminals won’t target the weakest link, and right now there’s no place more vulnerable than the home, where all manner of seemingly innocuous appliances present a web of opportunity for house-jacking. Relying on technology such as gateways and sensors, smart home services allow us to do all sorts of convenient things like secure door and window locks, receive alerts for motion in the house or water leakage near fish tanks, check temperature, receive notifications of food expiry from the fridge and record the entire home through cameras. There will be three times as many devices connected to the internet by 2022 than there are humans, reckons Gartner Research – resulting in a flood of unsecured consumer devices in homes. Without any standard means of joining them all together, the multiplication of apps that control each device can end up compromising security. Into the breach have stepped utility companies, internet giants like Amazon and Google, CCTV specialists, telcos and pay-TV operators. They’re all offering
gateways to connect home owners conveniently with their range of smart home devices. The key is trust. Pay-TV providers are said to be in a decent position to capitalise on the smart home by building on the solid relationship they already have with customers. “A connected home is a very personal environment,” says Jim Phillipoff at Irdeto. “From cameras monitoring your door to nanny-cams taking care of your children, the risk of images ending up on the internet is too high. Everything has to be protected.” One security specialist points out that hacking kits and malware are available on forums for use by anyone who can follow a set of instructions. Unsurprisingly, we do care about securing where we live. Smart home products with strong safety features may command the highest prices at retail, found a recent PwC survey, but more of us are willing to spend that for safety. Hackers exploiting unsecured hybrid set top boxes may aim to install malware to take control of the STB, or as a platform for attacking other devices in the home. Pierre-Alexandre Bidard of Viaccess-Orca goes further. “The STB can become a weapon,” he says. “For example, it can be used to launch denial of service attacks on other organisations’ IT networks.” The home is not the target, but becomes the weakest link for attacks on enterprise networks.
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28 ROUND TABLE Content Security
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THIS MONTH’S FEED ROUND TABLE GUESTS ARE:
29 ROUND TABLE Content Security
UFOM: Now that we have your signed NDAs, may we introduce ourselves… We are UFOM, a private institution dedicated to the study of the UFO phenomenon, with one of the world’s largest archives of UFO-related material. It includes film and video going back over a century, some of which has never been seen by the public (we recently purchased what we believe is the first motion picture film of a UFO, shot by Thomas Edison from his back lawn in 1902). We have also been aggressively acquiring rights to UFO- related content from individuals and institutions around the world. UFOM has launched an OTT video platform, Channel 115. We want to fully control our content and the monetisation of it, so we have a few questions for you. Our first question: We have been digitising our film material in the DPX format. The resulting files are very large and currently stored on servers in our basement, mirrored on a server in another locked basement across town. What steps would you recommend we take to protect these archives from competitor organisations, content pirates and, of course, government operatives? ABDUL HAKIM, DPP: As an organisation you have to assess the risks to the content and take appropriate actions based on the level of risk you’re willing to accept for the business. You want to assess each asset and give it a value classification and treat it accordingly. For highly sensitive information and content, you want to put in controls that restrict access only to authorised and trusted personnel. You don’t want Joe Bloggs turning up at your office and having full access to the archives, able to log in without any credentials to browse the data. Having a system in place that is very granular in terms of prescribing specific individuals’ specific roles can reduce the likelihood of someone unauthorised entering the system. Typically these system also log access, so in case of a breach, you can identify the source of the breach by looking at the logs. It enables that investigation. There are other technical solutions you could employ. If something is extremely high value, very sensitive you may consider employing encryption at rest. On the particular server the content is stored on, the information is scrambled, and in order to access it you need a key to decrypt it. Even if someone wants to physically steal the servers, they would still need a key.
RICHARDBRANDON,EDGEWARE Richard Brandon is CMO of Edgeware, specialising in bringing the company’s technology solutions to market by providing company strategy, technology positioning, go-to-market models and marketing. He will oversee global marketing strategies and further develop Edgeware’s expertise in its mission to make TV amazing again. Prior to joining Edgeware, Brandon was vice president of worldwide marketing at Juniper Networks. Previous roles include CMO at Intune Networks, CMO at MLL Telecom and his role in product management of network services at British Telecom.
It’s great the content is being backed up in the basement in another location. So you’re providing some geographic resilience. Depending on funding available, you may wish to extend that resilience to a third site, adopting cloud-based solutions or securing a location in another country that you have some control over and renting space out in a data centre. NEIL SHARPE, FRIEND MTS: Protecting content on servers is essential, and there are many layers of security required, including physical security such as restricted access, as well as encrypting the content at rest so it cannot be readily accessed. UFOM: Via Channel 115, our subscribers can watch our own produced content (documentaries and lectures), and selections from our archive, as well as other third party UFO programming we have licensed. What are the best techniques and tools to prevent theft and unauthorised restreaming of our OTT content? RICHARD BRANDON, EDGEWARE: Watermarking content is the best way to protect it. Research suggests that even knowing that a programme stream is
ABDULHAKIM,DPP Abdul Hakim is the Programme Delivery Manager at the Digital Production Partnership. The DPP is a membership- based, not-for-profit company, founded by UK broadcasters ITV, BBC and Channel 4 and represents the interests of the whole media supply chain. Hakim looks after the DPP’s “Committed to Security” programme which establishes best practices around cybersecurity for media industry tech vendors. Previously he has worked as a Technology Manager for BBC World Service, delivering connectivity solutions for its international bureaus.
THERE ARE MANY LAYERS OF SECURITY REQUIRED
NEILSHARPE,FRIENDMTS Neil Sharpe is Director of Production Marketing for Friend MTS. He has deep experience across the broadcast and digital media industry, spanning both live production and video delivery. He has contributed to the success of start-ups and major video technology businesses. Sharpe has had a long career in the broadcast tech sector, with key marketing positions at Phabrix, V-Nova, and Grass Valley.
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