Malte Blumberg (ARD Online), Brid Dooley (RTÉ), Jouni Frilander (YLE)
This year’s EBU Production Technology Seminar (29-31 January in Geneva) will once again highlight technologies that might change the way media is produced, creating value and delivering efficiencies to the organizations that produce it.
Malte Blumberg, CTO of ARD Online, in his keynote to day 2 of the conference, will discuss the challenges of content supply chains that feed OTT services and linear broadcast at the same time, and how these challenges can be mitigated upstream.
Keynote speakers Jouni Frilander, Development Manager at Finnish broadcaster YLE, and Mika Rautiainen, CEO of start-up company Valossa, will frame the third day of the conference with reflections on AI technologies and where they can be leveraged to achieve some of the productivity gains and cost efficiencies promised by evangelists.
The value-driven transformation of broadcast organizations also forms the subject of a presentation by Brid Dooley, Head of Archives at RTÉ, who will be discussing how organization are learning to liquify and exploit the value of their archives and content pools.
The conference will be opened by Michael Zink, VP of Technology at Warner Bros, who will present reflections on how the appetite for more immersive experiences has shaped the way value is created, and how this appetite continues to drive technology trends and innovation.
Technologies in focus
A major theme of the conference will be SMPTE-ST2110-based IP production infrastructures and cloud-based production. The event will give an overview of the current status of interoperability in live IP and the shift to more cloud-based production, with user reports and propositions by key industry representatives.
The move from HD to UHD and HDR will form the topic of a panel discussion with senior industry representatives, who will be taking stock of the industry’s transition to better quality formats and discuss insights, user reports and emerging best practice.
Reports on the codecs race will shine a light on next generation video and audio codecs, in particular the relative merits of HEVC and its successors and competitors.
Cutting-edge technology demonstrations will give conference partipants a chance to inspect AI tools such as automatic subtitling, ST-2110-driven IP production infrastructures in action, Next Generation Audio (NGA), startup innovations, implementations of the Interoperable Master Format (IMF), and more. PTS attendees will also have a chance to participate in subjective tests of Higher Frame Rate (HFR) content.
PTS is topped off by a special large-scale screening of UHD-HDR-HFR content shot at the European Championships 2018, and David Attenborough’s latest nature documentary “Dynasties” in UHD-HDR with immersive sound.