Production Technology Seminar 2009 - EBU Technical

2 IT-based production and archives
Chairperson: Vieslaw Lodzikowski, TVP, Poland
Because broadcasters need to deliver richer content across a large number of delivery platforms,
production needs to meet new business requirements. Sharing resources and combining best of breed
market solutions is key. Will file-based production and new architectures fulfil their promises?
Service-oriented Architecture
2.1 File-based production: problem solved?
Giorgio Dimino, RAI Research Centre, Italy
The concept was introduced 10-12 years ago. The "EBU-SMPTE Task Force for Harmonized Standards
for the Exchange of Programme Material as Bit-streams" started to think of the future TV infrastructure
based on computer technology. It was a fundamental think tank, which gave birth to most of the
concepts and standards that we are using today: compression formats in TV production, file wrappers
(AAF,MXF), metadata (SMPTE dictionary, UMID), exchange of content as file (file transfer, streaming)…
It formulated the need for a level of "system management services" and for a "Reference Object Model
for System Management in order to insure interoperability in the longer term". Up to then, broadcast
infrastructure was based on audio/video interfaces and cabling. Now, with IT-based technologies,
interfacing is much more complex, you need more intelligence, formats and models. But at the time there
was not enough knowledge of the processes we factorised in the view of IT technology to be able to
build a sound model. The follow-up of this work was undertaken by several EBU projects [4], providing
clear advances.
Many broadcasters have implemented IT-based production islands (self-contained), but very few have
been able to integrate all of these islands into a coherent production system. The system organisation is
still video-centric in most cases, and sometimes it is even faster than trying to integrate the islands,
because of the lack of common interfaces. And even when the system integration is implemented, it is
based on proprietary solutions. That means that the technology migration, the extension of the system
and of the workflow is a challenge and is expensive. This is because, each time, you have to redo a part
of the system integration work. Especially when several manufacturers update their product
independently from each other and then apply the upgrade on one part, you have also to upgrade all the
others and perhaps rework the interfaces.
As an example, a very simplified scheme with different production islands [6], with different equipment of
different manufacturers designed at different times. When you want to interconnect them, you have to
define a custom interface at both ends. That may be not very efficient in many cases, because it was not
meant from the beginning, and sometimes simply because the formats do not match. So, it is difficult to
run the workflow around it. In some case, you want to use some resources that have been installed for
another similar facility, you want to put them together… and again you need a specific interface. And
when you get rid of one of the components, you probably have to rework the interface. So this is adding
cost and you never know where and when this story is going to end. We have also to keep in mind that
in the IT world nothing lasts more than a few years. It is not economical to keep running a system that is
older, because the maintenance costs are in many cases higher than rebuilding the system with updated
technologies…
Our vision is to:
� redefine integration as a pool of production resources interconnected over a network via standardized
interfaces
� implement workflows via a resource orchestrator that just calls resources and chain them, these
workflows being supported by management services
© EBU 2009 / Production Technology seminar / January 27 - 29, 2009
Reproduction prohibited without written permission of EBU TECHNICAL & EBU TRAINING
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