ßroadcastEnsineerin - AmericanRadioHistory.Com

DOWNLOAD
BEYONDTHE HEADLINES
without long -term investment. For
example, many media companies
have an extensive catalog of content,
but supporting the infrastructure
required to convert a video library
into new distribution formats can
be costly and inefficient. Using cloud
resources, broadcasters can enhance
offerings and extract unrealized revenue
to make archived video footage
available to customers on demand.
Overcoming challenges
While the cloud has been a hot
!- Actual
demand
- - - Elastic capacity
Predicted demand
Year 1 Year 2
Cloud resources
Ground infrastructure
Figure 2. General trend lines of an economically optimized video
processing system at the high end of the broadcast industry,
over time
topic, until recently, several obstacles
have put cloud transcoding out of
reach for many companies, particularly
those that process high volumes
of professional -quality video. The
good news is that these hurdles are
quickly disappearing.
First, until recently, the cost of
processing video in the cloud has
been prohibitive, especially for high -
volume production houses. Yet as
more providers such as Google, HP,
Rackspace and Amazon Web Services
(AWS) enter the market, competition
and increasing supply
are driving down
the price of cloud
resources. As these
providers continue
to grow, users will
benefit from economies
of scale, which
will make large -scale
video processing
even more affordable
in the cloud.
Second, the transfer
of data is a tremendous
challenge
Year3
for organizations
moving large, mez-
zanine- quality video
files. Yet this issue is
being addressed by
accelerated data delivery systems. For
example, Aspera and Signiant have
designed highly efficient transport
technologies that move data at maximum
speed, regardless of file size,
transfer distance or network conditions.
In addition, Amazon recently
introduced the Direct Connect service,
which makes it nearly as fast to
move data between an on- premise
facility and AWS as it is to move data
across a high -speed local network. Innovations
such as these help mitigate
data transfer bottlenecks.
Third, concerns about data center
outages and system failures have prevented
many media companies from
moving assets off -site. However, this issue
is ameliorated as the cloud matures
and vendors build more enterprise -
grade reliability. For example, most
established cloud vendors have built
redundancy measures into their services,
and replicate data and resources
across multiple geographic zones for
enhanced durability in case of outages.
Fourth, media executives are understandably
concerned about security.
In many cases, their video assets
fuel a multibillion -dollar business,
so they're leery about letting them
be processed off -site. However, as the
cloud becomes more widely adopted,
media companies are becoming
O
On -Line (Real Time)
o
Off -Line (Post Edit/Pop -On)
BCCS Inc.
BROADCAST CAPTIONING &
CONSULTING SERVICES INC.
www.closedcaptioning.com
o
Live Display (Roll -Up)
o
Timed Roll -Up
For inquiries contact:
Phone: 416.6961534
Toll Free: 1.8002966837
Fax: 416.421.7603
email: info @closedcaptioning.com
12 broadcastengineering.com I March 2013