23 TECHFEED Production in the Cloud
show would produce a ‘single dirty feed’, which might then have subtitles or dubbing added. In the cloud-based world, different tool sets can be added depending what the content plan is. Content can be customised in real time and for large-scale events “We’ve been doing acquisition and distribution at Zixi for a long time. A lot of producers, like esports companies, want to know how to spin things up and down quickly: how do you handle a live event, then quickly move on to the next one without a fixed infrastructure? They are still very much in single and secondary camera feeds, but ultimately they’re looking at multi-camera production,” explains Bolten. With some of these events, Zixi has been working in a ‘stream-to-store’ way. Rather than waiting for an event to finish and then producing highlights and clips, the set-up enables making real-time cuts and highlights during a show and pushing those out to social media while the show is airing – which becomes a critical part of
promoting an event and bringing in viewers in real time. “On social media, which people are continuously connected to, you need to take live events and, while they’re going on, be clipping and snipping highlights into social media formats to remind people they should be tuning in to that event. “We are getting to the point where we’re talking about tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of events per year. The content universe is expanding at an exponential rate,” Bolten points out. A large number of these events are streamed by new players – regional sports teams or niche interests who now have access to sophisticated production and distribution software, and are have small but very loyal audiences. “VOD is fine – you post a file and people can acquire it – but live production is a different exercise. You’re catering to different audiences, depending on the event, and these audiences will be using a
large range of devices in a large range of contexts, so being able to do content at a bespoke level is critical and that’s going to tie heavily into advertising dollars,” he adds. DANCING WITH THE AUDIENCE There is a vast increase in the amount of data that a cloud-based workflow yields, and this is likely to have repercussions not just for how audiences are built and retained, but for the production of content itself. Bolten says: “While the creative and production quality aspects are legitimate, we’re going to be getting more formulaic over time, in terms of trying to create the right content for the right audience. And in as close to real time as one can do so.” The speed and flexibility of the cloud, having instant access to computer and storage resources, and being able to plug and play different types of vendors and solutions on the fly also means the ability to respond directly to the audience – potentially in real time. That kind of deep engagement with the audience has the potential to increase subscription rates or give more value to sponsors and advertisers. With sponsors wanting to know more and more about how their message was delivered, a responsive cloud-centric environment adds a great deal of value to a piece of content. Bolten concludes: “We’re watching everybody under this universal pressure reduce production costs while increasing production value. It’s non-stop. And it’s something we’re continuing to work on.”
WE ARE GETTING TO THE POINTWHEREWE’RE TALKING ABOUT TENS OF THOUSANDS OR HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF EVENTS PER YEAR. THECONTENTUNIVERSE IS EXPANDINGATANEXPONENTIALRATE
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