The following is an article written by Jay Ankeney for The Broascast Bridge about Blackbird in June 2019:

Blackbird has developed new frame-accurate codecs and rendering technologies that are faster than real time. And it’s all done in the cloud.

This company that is riding the crest of some remarkable technology has changed its calling card, maybe not to many peoples’ surprise.

“What was known as Forbidden Technologies is henceforth to be called Blackbird,” Ian McDonough, CEO of Blackbird began our (for me) early morning interview direct from Wimbledon, in the south of London. “Not only is ‘Blackbird’ the name of our editing platform, it also evokes the image of a cloud, since the proper collective term for a flock of blackbirds is a ‘cloud’.”

If you’ve read my last article about these adventurous folk, “Forbidden Puts Frame Accurate Editing in the Cloud” (August 3, 2018), you will already know that the tiger they have by the tail is the ability to offer a codec and supporting software infrastructure that enables spot-on frame accurate editing in cloud-based projects.

With Blackbird you can edit on any platform that has access to the Internet and cloud-based storage.

For those of us editors who have lived in the MPEG world of long GOP (Group of Pictures) compression in which individual frames may or may not actually exist, this can be a revelatory experience.

As McDonough explained to me, that is why in order to sign up 14 post-production companies into their new Blackbird Productions Partnership Program (“BP3”) over the last five months, it took a bit of educational explaining.

“Their customers are mostly in the London market so far, dealing with large scale documentary and reality shows,” he said, “because our codec and the browser-based tools behind it are all about efficiency and cost savings.”

This approach is all SaaS (Software as a Service), and BP3 has already made inroads into U. S. markets by licensing this approach to post houses.

But they have a second arm aimed at live sports and live news.

“We are in 20 local news markets that are part of the Meredith Corporation,” he said, “and we are making rapid inroads into sports.”

Besides being involved with Madison Square Garden sports production, BP3 is also providing services to the Buffalo Bills where it is being used to produce content for both broadcast and social media.

Then just on June 19th, Blackbird announced it had signed “a significant six-figure, multi-year deal with A+E Networks”.

You may never catch the guy pedaling down Machu Pichu in front of you on your spin bike, but you’ll be chasing him in frame accurate video!

Its technology will be used to “deliver major productivity enhancements across A+E Networks’ business” including creating content highlights to social media channels.

But the goal of this article is not just to establish BP3’s marketing bona fides (heck, I’m not even mentioning that all the video home Peloton stationary spin bikers race after is produced using Blackbird), I really wanted to find out how they make the magic of frame accurate editing in the cloud a reality.

Fortunately, Stephen Streater, founder of the company and its R&D director since he invented the software, was excellent at explaining it.

We know that MPEG is used to get video onto your TV, and for that it is pretty good,” Streater began, “but it was never designed to do the things like navigation (i.e. jog/shuttle), smooth bi-directional playback and frame accurate positioning that we need. And the standard used in a browser, HTML-5 also has its limitations when applied to these tasks.”

So to develop Blackbird, he turned to a multi-paradigm-programming language called Javascript. (Author’s note-not be confused with the Java programming language or the Java software platform).

“Javascript traditionally was just for little things like drop-down menus,” Streater said, “but in 2017 they came out with a new version called WebAssembly, a technology standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that could also do audio and video.”

WebAssembly (abbreviated Wasm) works on all browsers. It is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine.

 

WebAssembly was originally geared for video gaming, which is why most modern browsers support it on desktop and mobile platforms.

But Streater designed his own codec for video that allowed him to play back 1080P imagery at very high frame rate in Javascript.

“That means up to 4 billion people already have browsers that can use our Blackbird codec to play back 1080P video with frame accuracy in Javascript,” Streater wound up. “That means they don’t need additional configuration, no installation, once they have a license they simply go to a Web page and run and edit their video.”

Once you have loaded the Blackbird editing application, it creates proxies of your video faster than real time so you don’t need to work on the hi rez version and you only store the material that will actually be used in the final version.

All rendering is done in the cloud, so you don’t have to pause the editing process to wait for it. Since the software is platform agnostic, you can monitor it from any platform be it desktop or mobile.

As a product that lives in the cloud, you know that collaboration is central to Blackbird’s workflow.

Some people are taking remote editing as an option.

Blackbird is raising cloud-based editing to the level of indispensable.

The post Blackbird No Longer Forbidden appeared first on Blackbird.

Cloud infrastructures have become more interesting to media companies because of their potential to cost-effectively, and rapidly, scale operations up or down. Also, within a cloud environment, organisations can use or offer customers services and functionality that they have not had access to before. Right now, cloud infrastructures are especially interesting to content owners who want to control how, when and where their media is published.

Many cloud migration strategies focus on moving existing hardware or software functions and services from on-premises deployments, to run partly or completely on cloud infrastructure. But some developers are pursuing a cloud-native approach instead. Digital Media World spoke to Stephen Streeter, Director of Video Technology for the Blackbird cloud editing and publishing platform, developed by Forbidden Technologies. Instead of working with existing functionality, Blackbird builds re-configurable workflow capabilities specifically for the cloud environment.

A significant characteristic of Blackbird is its lack of many of the content interchange stages of traditional workflow automation. Raw materials – video, audio, graphics, stills – are only supplied to the platform through Blackbird‘s lightweight proprietary codec.

Going Cloud Native

Due to this codec, Blackbird‘s tools do not work on original content, but on low bitrate, bandwidth-efficient proxies. Blackbird manages the infrastructure and enables workflows for enriching, manipulating and delivering content using highly scalable publishing functions. It serves broadcast, social media, online and OTT destinations and viewers, and meanwhile, the owner can store and protect the content wherever they want.

“The cloud challenge has always been concerned with getting full-resolution video into the cloud and to work on it there. For a company with only average resources, that is expensive and impractical,” said Stephen. Blackbird‘s single piece of hardware, the Edge ingest server, is installed at the location where the original content resides. Selected content is placed on the server where the codec compresses and transcodes it into proxies that are uploaded to the platform as required – like a high-performance workstation on a lightweight connection of 2 mb/s.

“All users can then see the content and work on it with Blackbird‘s editing tools,” Stephen said. “Our two editing packages, Forte and Ascent (more details below), are built as cloud-native applications that avoid latency by completing all image processing tasks locally in the browser. We don’t have to wait for commands to reach the media, functions to complete in the cloud and results to be downloaded and finally displayed in the browser.

“Instead, the software has been designed with efficient, intuitive algorithms. When the editor selects the frames he or she wants to work on, Blackbird automatically downloads only the proxies for those frames and those immediately surrounding. Not only are the proxy frames light enough to download instantly, but because they now reside on the local hardware, no delay occurs for playback or processing.”

Efficiency and Speed

The Blackbird codec is optimised to work efficiently on software. It does not apply MPEG compression standards and file formats to media, which are optimised for hardware environments, but works through Javascript, which was developed to use as a scripting language for web clients.

The Blackbird proxies are used both for playback, without pre-rendering, and for editing. The original content is only involved at the point of publishing – even then it does not hold up operations because publishing proceeds directly from the Edge server where the content is being held, not the editor’s computer.

Stephen commented that the speed with which teams can publish video via the cloud is changing the broadcast landscape. Speed to market has always defined how competitive a broadcast company could be and, in turn, has traditionally been defined by expensive hardware. Now that the use of the internet and cloud services has altered the nature of the competition, the market has become fragmented. “Giant corporations, traditional broadcast outlets, plus the thousands of digital publishers trying to cut hardware costs to a minimum, can all compete. In fact, a company that does not have a hardware legacy, that is already prepared to run as a cloud-native business, has an edge,” he said.

Forte and Ascent

The Blackbird codec supports frames with a high degree of accuracy. This allows Forte’s navigation bar to also display and handle your media as individual frames, with timecodes, that you can access with precision. A logging system is included for adding metadata to customise searching and set up archiving later on. The non-linear editing tools are packaged into two applications. Forte is a full set of NLE tools, and Ascent is a simpler cutting and marking application for non-editors.

Editors have a working window, a viewing window that displays the edit as it is refined, and a timeline positioned below these two windows. They can look through the video, frame by frame if necessary, in exactly the same way that they would if the original media had been placed on the timeline in front of them. They can work on the audio and graphics tracks separately or together, and choose to display all or only one track. The trim modes available in the UI change depending on what the editor is trying to do. Users have access to many different fades, crossfades, fade-to-black and other transitions and effects, plus colour correction tools.

Ascent is a much simpler package for use by journalists, producers and other non-editorial members of the production who only need to make and review clips. When it comes to sharing between the team members, the only elements that are shared are the viewer, the editing tools and the page that will be published, which is also open for branding and advertising. In effect, everything, including all of the media, remains under the rights holder’s control.

Blackbird in Action

Looking at how different media companies use Blackbird illustrates the tools and how the video is handled. Von Johnson & Associates uses Blackbird to localise, produce and secure delivery of video content to television, feature film and international OTT platforms including Apple, Netflix and Amazon. Blackbird integrated directly into VJA’s existing media infrastructure and workflow, which uses a third-party facility management system to oversee existing operations.

They are able to process huge volumes of video content, including watermarking. Files can then be accessed and viewed within a few seconds via streaming from browser-based devices, anywhere in the world at any time – without fully downloading any files. In this case, the security advantages are especially important, as well as time and cost savings.

Blackbird is also fully integrated with Microsoft Azure Media Services, so that production teams can use the software platform running on Azure to turn live video into edited, enriched stories that are published through Blackbird and hosted on Azure. For example, sports broadcast and digital services supplier deltatre is using Blackbird through Azure to extend its OTT editing services for live and on-demand content for football, athletics, golf, rugby and cycling.

Atlas Digital uses Blackbird for post-production, dailies and secured delivery to TV, film and OTT clients. One of their specialities is customising efficient, secured video and audio finishing workflows for productions. Without having to download or upload completed work, the production team can use the Blackbird platform on a low bandwidth connection for review, annotation and approval within a minute of capture. Because Blackbird supports viewing and logging for up to 18 video sources and 36 audio channels, Atlas can supply live dailies concurrently to multiple locations, even as a growing file accommodating closed captioning.

For MSG (Madison Square Gardens) Networks, the media crew behind the Buffalo Sabres NHL ice hockey team in New York, speed is critical if they are to remain competitive within their role. They are using Blackbird to access, edit, add closed captions and publish video highlights of the Sabres’ matches to social media and TV for their international fans.

The Blackbird codec allows video to be frame-accurately viewed and edited 6 seconds after live from anywhere on bandwidth as low as 2Mbps. MSG’s video production teams also find that using tools in the cloud means they can avoid the potential technical points of failure that on-site hardware can cause.

The post Blackbird Takes Flight for Fast, Cloud Native Video Publishing appeared first on Blackbird.

In a year that saw exhibition attendee numbers slightly down on previous years, a solidified view on the value of cognitive services was on show. Our partner Microsoft announcing the general availability of their Media Indexer solution is a key measure that the value of the technology can be used to drive efficiencies and wide scale adoption. Besides the usual workflow optimizations of transcriptions, logo detection and other engine types were some other interesting use cases for AI and Machine Learning (ML). For instance, NHK demonstrated their colorization technology using a trained engine to turn historic footage from black and white into full colour. This is a great example of the use of technology to improve and enable new potential business for anyone with significant content archives.

Cloud adoption continues to be a growth topic with a number of delegates stating their “cloud first” approach to technology, for both flexibility and improved expenditure modelling in line with their businesses. Many of these conversations are being led by those hosting OTT or online streaming platforms who have reached the point that their businesses in live streaming have matured. They are now looking for additional ways to monetize content on demand.  Our demonstration on the Microsoft stand showed this use case – as used in live operations for US and UK sports highlights production by Deltatre.

The next interesting dynamic in the industry is that for those looking to fulfil the live to on-demand model is that the majority of technology and platform providers are unable to deliver cloud-based editing workflows. This is often due to limitations of browser-based technologies or a reliance on traditional software and storage solutions adding complexity or a need for a virtualization layer. In a cloud first model, pulling content back to ground in a traditional editing environment seems absurd to the new wave of technical leadership in the industry and hence Blackbird’s workflow structure was deemed timely and efficient.

During the show we announced the launch of our well anticipated JavaScript editor – Blackbird Forte – a fully featured cloud solution which does not rely on the limited browser capabilities provided. It is unique in its ability to perform, in real time, the depth of workflow that other technologies simply cannot handle.  The seamless transition to JavaScript permits a zero-configuration entry point to the power of Blackbird including full multitrack editing in real time. We also demonstrated the new Mac version of Blackbird Edge which is a true game-changer for remote video workflows – it enables rapid video editing, enriching and managing of video content on a variety of Mac devices anywhere there is data network.

IBC 2018 was a busy and rewarding investment for the Blackbird team with a very strong endorsement of the technology from the significant numbers of people that saw the product demonstrated during the show.

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IAN MCDONOUGH is the CEO of Blackbird, a cloud-based platform that allows users to quickly edit and publish video content from any browser remotely. Based in the U.K., the technology is helping companies cut workflow time, giving fans updates quicker than ever. The company recently produced all of the social media content for golf’s British Open with IMG. While many of its partners are in sports, media companies are also interested in Blackbird’s potential. SBD Global spoke with McDonough about the Blackbird experience and how it helps brands reach consumers faster.

On the Blackbird experience …

Ian McDonough: At the core of our IP we have Blackbird, which is a unique technology and the brainchild of STEPHEN STREATER. It is the only codec that has been designed for editing and manipulating video in the cloud. It is much more than that, as well. … What we’re offering is a work station experience in the cloud. You can have an experience that is just like a desktop experience on a work station — highly-responsive, frame accurate, completely fluid. All the advantages of having a desktop solution, with all the specifications within our own solution — but it’s in the cloud. It could be 8,000 miles away. Six seconds after a goal or a basket is scored, you can be working on that content in the cloud, from virtually any location in the world … with a 2mb bandwidth connection. You can do that from any piece of hardware, and any browser. We’re a very special and significant piece of technology for this time … It’s all about speed. … We also have an incredible speed to market. We have a customer, MSG Networks, which brought a workflow process down from 45 minutes to a 3-minute process using Blackbird technology. That is getting ice hockey goals out to their dotcom sites in record time. It’s a very exciting technology for the generation of sports fans who want to have their content immediately. We can talk about cost production [savings], but I’d much rather talk about how we are lightning quick. People tell us, ‘We can’t believe you are a cloud solution.’

On the esports market …

McDonough: It is a huge opportunity. We fit into that market quite nicely because we operate at 60 frames per second, whereas other solutions that operate in the cloud cannot match that. We have Gfinity in the U.K. that has been using us for more than a year now, and we recently signed with ESP out of Las Vegas. We recently provided all the social media clippings for the Fortnite event that was at the Bank of California Stadium in Los Angeles. For that, we had teams deployed in L.A., in North Carolina, in Cyprus and in London all editing content that was being produced out of that stadium. There were 50 gamers with 50 celebrities wearing point-of-view cameras creating content.

On what teams can expect from Blackbird …

McDonough: Most stadiums around the world have their own inhouse media companies. We are providing services to those teams to rapidly access their archive, to be able to rapidly cut live footage from the stadium to publish to their own outlets. Whether it be 24/7 sport channels or internet and digital sites and, of course, social media. One of the interesting things about Blackbird is, if you are publishing to social media, the quality of our codec is high enough that you can publish straight to social media without rendering. It’s extremely quick.

On global partners …

McDonough: Historically, it has been the U.K., but since I’ve come on board we’ve had a very big push for North America. It is not just a larger market, but it is a much more complex market than the U.K. We’re talking to the large West Coast tech giants, who are attracted to our codec, about how we can be a true cloud solution to their cloud customers. We are talking to the U.S. [TV] networks, we’re talking to the hundreds of sports and news networks across the country and we’re talking, of course, to the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of emerging publishers going straight to social. It’s a very nuanced and complex market, the U.S., that’s why it is so attractive to us.

On why companies should want to get involved …

McDonough: It is the speed. It is the flexibility. The fact that this can be used by any level of employee, you don’t have to be a professional editor to use our software — you can be a marketer, a social media publisher, a researcher. It is designed to be used by anyone, on any piece of hardware, on any browser, from anywhere.

On the focus on sports-based partnerships …

McDonough: There is a lot of emphasis put on live. We know we can edit so quickly after a live event and have that published so fast, so it is attractive to sports teams, sports broadcasters and sports rights holders. But we’re not limited to sports. Anything that requires fast turnaround. The news is an attractive area for us. For anything that requires people working remotely, we have a workflow based on localization — whereby content that needs to be localized to Netflix is put into our cloud and is dubbed or subtitled by people in those markets, could be China or Poland. They can dub or subtitle in those markets and the content never leaves the cloud.

On where Blackbird is heading …

McDonough: We are widely used in the B2B space. But where I really want it to go is the ability for billions of people to view media, sports and entertainment using the high-quality, highly-responsive Blackbird technology. We’ve started with B2B, but can see ourselves in a B2B2C arena, probably with partnerships with the big tech guys on the West Coast. What Stephen Streater has invented, I knew was special when I first joined. But after being here a year and speaking at length to people far more knowledgeable than myself, I know what we’ve got is unique and a standout product. So we really want to make everything we can of it.

The post Hangin’ With … Blackbird CEO Ian McDonough appeared first on Blackbird.

With the Blackbird codec from Forbidden Technologies, cloud-based editing can be as fast and accurate as a desktop NLE.

Forbidden Technologies has announced a new powerful codec called Blackbird, and according to their vp of products, Jeff Krebs, it is the first codec designed from the ground up to manipulate video in the cloud.

“What people describe as a proxy codec in the cloud is usually some derivative of H.264 which is very good technology for the playback experience,” Krebs said. “If the readers of The Broadcast Bridge will go to the Blackbird section of our Web site they can play with the codec and see how easy it is to frame accurately go backward and forward through the video clip they will find there.”

“The difference between our approach and that of other post production systems is that with Blackbird we transcode the high bit rate source material and only upload a much lighter proxy to the cloud along with its metadata,” Krebs explained. “That all goes into a directory or folder that only the client can access.”

That gives the editor a very fast proxy workflow.

“Then when it comes to conforming the final sequence, we know where all the source material resides, so we can composite the project’s master from just the material that is needed,” Krebs said. Every project is secure because only someone with the proper credentials can access that material.

To edit and finish the post production of a project, the company offers a choice of two SaaS (Software as a Service) programs, each of which can run on any platform: Mac, Windows, Linux or Android.

The first is Blackbird Forte, a full featured NLE that can run on any platform and, significantly, only requires 5 Mbps to upload material to the cloud, and 2 Mbps for download and playback. Then there is Blackbird Ascent, a simplified SaaS system designed for production personnel who do not have a lot of video editing experience. Actually, as Krebs told me, “You should not need to spend more than a minute learning it.”

The Forte timeline provides a thumbnail image of each frame, and if you zoom in on it with a right/click (Windows) or option/click (Mac) a video waveform, and motion and scene changes are exhibited through patented patterns in the display. Closed captioning, data modification, timing, position and compliance functions are also displayed.

Operators can select clips during live shows through easy-to-learn keyboard shortcuts and macros that anyone from production assistant to producer can master. Both systems are pre-configured for one-button social media, OTT, online or file-based delivery—whichever distribution format is required.

To view the original article, click here. 

The post Forbidden Puts Frame Accurate Editing in the Cloud appeared first on Blackbird.

Q: Would you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Forbidden Technologies and your cloud video product, Blackbird?

A: Blackbird is quite simply – the workstation experience in the cloud. It’s the brainchild of Forbidden Technologies’ Founder, Stephen Streater, who envisioned the vital need many organizations would have to transport video in an ultra-fast, lightweight, high quality way around the world at very low bandwidth. Blackbird is an ideal solution for many sectors such as news, sports and eSports where the rapid editing and distribution of video content to multiple platforms such as social media is now absolutely key.
The editing and manipulation functionality that we have built around the core Blackbird codec combine to create a unique cloud-native platform. It allows users to revolutionize the way they work with video, maximising the value of their video assets and increasing monetisation in what is a rapidly evolving broadcast and digital landscape.

Forbidden Technologies is the holding company and the developer of Blackbird.

Q: You’ve recently announced that TownNews.com has significantly expanded its partnership with Blackbird in the U.S. market; could you tell us something more?

A: The U.S. market is a very attractive one to us because of its size and willingness to embrace cutting-edge technologies and new ways of working. The U.S. is not just larger, its considerably richer and more nuanced. Over the past 12 months we’ve strongly focused on growing awareness of Blackbird in North America and have spent a considerable amount of time demonstrating our technology’s unique strengths to many leading media companies. Suffice to say that the response to Blackbird has been fantastic. Jaws drop when people see how Blackbird can dramatically increase their video workflow productivity and speed to market of video content. We had meetings all the way down the West Coast last week and the reactions were no different. This is quite simply a new invention and even the West Coast tech giants have not seen this technology before.

TownNews.com is one of the U.S.’s leading digital publishing and content management solutions providers providing over 1,700 newspaper, broadcast and magazine publications in the US with web, print, mobile and social media services and solutions. We signed a very exciting contract with them in June this year to integrate Blackbird into the media infrastructure of one their most prestigious new broadcast customers so that live news content can be seamlessly delivered to multiple platforms in towns and cities across 11 states. We’re working on other exciting projects with TownNews.com at the moment which we expect to come to fruition over the coming months.

This year we’ve also signed contracts and partnerships with other major U.S. companies including Veritone, the most exciting AI technology provider in the market, Our House Media in Toronto, ESP Gaming out of Las Vegas and are in the midst of some very interesting discussions with a whole host of other top media companies in the region.

Q: What makes your Blackbird platform unique?

A: Simply put, Blackbird is a ‘wow’ product – this is people’s first response when they see the technology demonstrated. No other technology, that we are aware of, can replicate the precision and responsiveness of a video workstation in the cloud. It has all the benefits of an on-premise solution combined with the multiple advantages of the cloud. Blackbird enables users to frame-accurately view and edit video 6 seconds after live with zero latency. This is the holy grail few thought possible. Hyper-fast frame-accurate navigation, playback and viewing of video in the cloud without any delays using bandwidth as low as 2Mb per second is now a reality with Blackbird.

Blackbird is a pure agnostic web-based platform and cloud-native application that requires no hardware investment. Media teams can access and edit video content via any browser using any device from anywhere in the world for easy, collaborative working – essentially Blackbird delivers complete freedom to media companies managing video content.

Nothing comes close to matching Blackbird’s power as a cloud video platform and this is why more and more media companies are adopting it seamlessly into their workflow infrastructures.

Q: Why is now the time for a technology solution like Blackbird?

A: When we first developed Blackbird we were probably a few years ahead of the curve because cloud technology was not mature in many sectors. Now it is. Accessing, editing and publishing video content in the cloud using Blackbird brings many compelling advantages over the traditional on-premise video management way of working. Such striking benefits include global collaboration between teams, dramatically improving the speed to market of video by editing content from anywhere and publishing it render free to the web.

By working in the cloud all the processing power needed to manage video is performed remotely – freeing businesses from the costs of investing in hugely expensive editing hardware and associated upgrade and maintenance expenses. Downloading and transferring huge volumes of video between workstations is also expensive, slow and frustrating. Working in the cloud on just the video content you need dramatically saves time and boosts productivity. Plus the nature of working in the cloud means that media teams can operate simultaneously on the same workflows and projects in real time.

So as you can see, the cloud provides many huge benefits to organizations that manage video content and Blackbird is perfectly placed to meet those needs.

Q: What are your plans for the future?

A: We are absolutely focused over the next 12 months on further raising the international profile of Blackbird so that media companies across all sectors can learn how this amazing technology can dramatically improve their video workflow, increasing productivity and reducing their costs significantly.

We’ve signed contracts with numerous organizations over the past 12 months in the news, sports and eSports sectors across North America, Europe and Asia and have many more exciting deals in the pipeline that we’re currently working on with some of the biggest names in the media industry.

To support our growth plans we’re looking at expanding our team in key markets as well as signing up more partners who can help us evangelise the remarkable strengths of Blackbird. We’re also close to releasing a number of very exciting new products within the Blackbird product line which will further strengthen its position as the only true video workstation in the cloud.

The post Blackbird Wows Global Media Industry By Delivering Workstation Experience In The Cloud appeared first on Blackbird.

Five years ago Deloitte predicted audio and video content demand would generate 89.3% of all consumer internet data traffic by 2018. A 60% increase from 29.3% in 2013. The news, media and entertainment (NME) industry has evolved over the last decade from traditionally involving couriers, physical tapes and reels of film, and bespoke technologies to complete the full production cycle through to delivery. Complex management overheads and a lack of visibility on the full process, made understanding the state of play very difficult to determine. In addition to this – the very specialised skills involved in each stage of the workflow.

Advancements in file-based workflows across content capture, production, processing, and delivery have continued to involve a high degree of technical and operational complexity. Managing systems and operations whilst providing ‘seamless’ integration of each workflow stage is typically controlled by tightly orchestrated media asset management (MAM) solutions.

As the industry continues to evolve, the same challenges remain. In many cases, there are still struggles in attempting to address the ever-growing and evolving consumer demands. However, cloud adoption is on the rise following increased awareness of key benefits including scalability across the complete media supply chain. Scalability is a major concern stemming from the speed of growth and fragmentation of consumers across multiple delivery platforms – each of the platforms with their own requirements that have the potential to stretch existing workflows beyond capacity.

If you can imagine a factory working at capacity with the same amount of raw materials going in, but expectations of the quantity of completed product at the end of the production line increasing continuously. An end-to-end process can involve many people, teams, equipment, and infrastructure, all of which are limiting factors to the scales of economy and would need to continually adapt to spiraling delivery requirements- this is the fundamental challenge facing any ‘content factory’.

Many cloud migration strategies are based around moving existing technologies from traditional on-premises deployments to run partially or wholly on cloud infrastructure. Cloud infrastructure (private and public) can offer great flexibility and scalability but to go back to our concept of a ‘content factory’ – for greater scale or flexibility would you really just move your factory to another location on a larger site, or partially move to a new factory and then have all the challenges of continually moving raw materials, thereby potentially introducing additional delays in the end-to-end process?

With Blackbird, we already have the factory, a proven cloud video platform – and the supply chain capabilities to remove many of the content interchange stages of semi-automated traditional workflows. Raw materials – video, audio, graphics, and stills, are delivered to the platform using our lightweight Blackbird codec – our customers don’t need to worry about transporting or transferring all the original content to us, just a low bitrate, bandwidth efficient and high-performance representation. We manage the infrastructure and enable workflows for taking this content, enriching it, manipulating it and allow you to deliver it using a highly scalable publishing feature set which includes broadcast, social media, online and OTT.

The real benefit Blackbird brings is to provide additive workflow capabilities that don’t rely upon heavy lifting of high bitrate files. We provide the production and delivery tools to allow our customers to truly scale and adopt a cloud infrastructure without additional expertise or adding complexity.

The recent announcement of the expansion of TownNews.com Blackbird usage for multiple news organisations in the US is a great example of a shared infrastructure being used effectively. Incredibly fast end-to-end media supply chain from live source to destination delivery through the TownNews.com content management system (CMS) to online consumers enable a differentiated offering to their customers without changing their existing workflows and without the worry of logistics or integration complexity.

Adding cloud capabilities provides an opportunity to exploit common platforms and remove the constraints of a fixed facility workflow. Blackbird is the perfect companion to revolutionise media supply chains today.

Find out more, email info@blackbird.video

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Edge computing allows any device, including mobiles, servers, PCs and Macs to act as gateways between the physical world and cloud storage – running processes such as video transcoding and speech recognition as ‘close to the content’ as possible. This form of cloud computing is a breakthrough technology with direct benefits to the sports industry, ensuring professional sports athletes can maintain their competitive edge.

For the Americas Cup, the British yachting team utilized Edge technology which transmitted performance data through the cloud, leading Sir Ben Ainslie and the Oracle team to win the race. Capturing and analysing performance data and performing ‘virtual chase boat’ projects allowed for immediate changes where 350 data points were captured for analysis.

Edge also took the spotlight earlier this year at the Winter Olympics, with the US ski team utilising STRIVR’s 360-degree video to practice the Pyeongchang course over and over again. The ability to gain ‘mental access’, where physical presence was not possible, allowed the team to maximise their preparation. By uploading video content to the cloud, players and coaches were able to identify athletes’ weak spots and gauge the competition’s strategy.

Edge technology has other benefits as well for both video professionals and sports fans, since it works on the principle of combining outputs from new video technologies and overlaying data in the most appropriate and efficient location – delivering the game rapidly without time delays. Edge technology is cost-effective for multimedia and production teams on smaller budgets since it removes the expense required to move video content and data to the same physical location. Fans also benefit, gaining the ultimate viewing experience without concerns of technical glitches causing time delays and receive sports scores fast.

The advances in cloud and edge technology have blurred the lines between traditional broadcast and digital content delivery, allowing the games of minor sports teams to be accessible to fans at a much lower cost. Cloud Video and On-Demand, Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms have also made it possible for smaller leagues and individual teams to have their own channels. Tata Communications connected the Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit to its global network and today works with more than 20 broadcasters to bring motor racing to fans worldwide. Vice President of Global Marketing, Mehul Kapadia, said “The cloud is levelling the playing field between sports giants like F1 and smaller local series like the F4 British Championship. You only need a few cameras to capture the action; the rest of the production can be done easily and inexpensively in the cloud”. Major sports teams such as Real Madrid, have found that by embrace cloud technology, they can engage with their 450 million fans where only 3% are based in Spain. José Ángel Sánchez, CEO, Real Madrid, said, “Using Microsoft Cloud, we are building a way of understanding who our fans are, where they are, and what they want from us.”

In conclusion, the introduction of Edge computing into sports has lowered the barriers for smaller sports teams to experiment with innovative technologies. Edge computing has helped simplify video production and distribution, at a lower cost. Teams and sports professionals have the advantage of extending their online presence, reaching a global audience with a lower cost digital strategy.

Our Blackbird Edge is a cloud-native solution which can run on multiple platforms including servers, public cloud services (AWS and Azure), in virtual machines and Mac OS X operating systems. It is fundamentally a software conduit to cloud workflows for our applications and Blackbird cloud video platform. Edge manages the referencing of content and creation of lightweight Blackbird proxy video. It provides Ascent and Forte users with conforming and render capabilities required to publish video content across multiple platforms based on user edit instructions.

Find out more about Blackbird Edge, email us at edge@blackbird.video

References

Davis.M. (2018, February) Winter Olympics: US skiers use VR goggles & brain zapping headphones. [ONLINE] Available at : https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-olympics/42572433 [Accessed 24 May 2018].

Orton-Jones, C. (2017, March) Cloud giving sports teams the competitive edge – Competitors in a wide range of sports are benefiting from the advantage cloud computing can bring. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.raconteur.net/technology/cloud-giving-sports-teams-the-competitive-edge. [Accessed 24 May 2018].

Miah, A., 2017. #Sports 20.0 #TransformingSportsforaDigitalWorld. 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Pickup, O. (2018, January) Three major ways cloud is transforming sport – Sports organisations are using the cloud, on and off the field of play, to achieve record goals and reach a growing worldwide audience.[ONLINE] Available at : https://www.raconteur.net/technology/three-major-ways-cloud-transforming-sport [Accessed 24 May 2018].

Unknown (2016, March) Real Madrid brings the stadium closer to 450 million fans around the globe, with the Microsoft Cloud.https://customers.microsoft.com/de-de/story/real-madrid-brings-the-stadium-closer-to-450-million-f. [Accessed 24 May 2018].

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Blackbird will be exhibiting at The SVG College Summit, Booth 218 to showcase the Blackbird cloud video platform. Video content can be created, edited, produced and delivered rapidly, for the ultimate fan experience. Blackbird improves workflow efficiencies, leaving you to work on telling the story ! Visit our booth for a Blackbird demonstration, and see why National Leagues use Blackbird – the power is in the performance.

Our Blackbird consultant, Richie Murray will be speaking on the panel discussion at 10:50 on Thursday, May 31st – “Mid-Major Magic:  How “Smaller” Video Teams Pav a Road to Video Success.

Visit Blackbird on Booth 218, or email svg@blackbird.video to set up your meeting, today.

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Very much a MIP man in his ‘content sales’ years with BBC Worldwide, Turner, and Viacom, Ian McDonough enjoyed a sensational NAB debut thanks to the popularity of Blackbird Ascent and Forte, and some clever edge technology involving Mac computers.

As CEO of Blackbird (formerly Forbidden Technologies), McDonough wanted to run ahead of consumer content viewing trends, and before he joined Forbidden to quickly re-launch it, he talked a lot about software that had been developed over 18 years.

“I found it absolutely astounding, mind-blowing, that what Stephen Streater had designed in the year 2000 is still today the only cloud-native codec for video editing,” he says.

Pointing out that codecs derived from H.264 and H.265 are principally playback tools, and not suitable for manipulation, he adds: “They are not designed for fast turnaround content – editing very quickly, and then publishing very fast. My guiding light was that the whole industry will be much more telling with the content that is fast turnaround.”

This involves anyone, and not just video cutting professionals. And consequently Forbidden needed a new ID.

“I thought this was something extremely special because I had not heard of such amazing technology before. I wanted to be the person that took it out to be commercially successful,” says McDonough. “The codec is what differentiates us, and I felt we had not elevated that point enough. I really like the name Blackbird. It is cool, and I wanted to get behind a point of differentiation and to take it to another area.”

Reappraisal of the company was important, because when technology companies have been around for a while the industry tends to think things have moved on.

“We are very much of the time, in fact ahead of the curve,” says McDonough.

He moved onto identifying the critical challenges the business formerly known as broadcasting is facing.

He says: “The industry is morphing very quickly. There are a number of critical issues and the first is the massive fragmentation. The audience for the amount of video available is much larger and mass volume, but the audience for each piece of video is that much smaller because the audience has been fragmented, and cost becomes such a key area.

“The world has moved very much away from having a fixed cost, particular bespoke workstation model with software that is on premise, to a rental model, where people want to hire software from the cloud that can be played on any device or workstation. And the editing is done by professional people that don’t naturally have to be highly-skilled craft editors,” he adds. “Every second counts now in terms of getting content out to the consumer, and the other cost is rights.”

We are living in a content gold rush, and Blackbird Media Proxy is quite a tool. “It can be created extremely quickly from content, only five seconds behind live. It brings it down by about 90 per cent when compared with other codecs, so we are very much part of the story: content can be edited anywhere in the world right behind live, and published at that rate as well. The costs are down and Blackbird Proxy is making turn round incredibly fast,” says McDonough.

AN AI INTERFACE FOR THE EDITING SOLUTION

At NAB visitors could assess Blackbird Ascent and Blackbird Forte.

“The first by definition is the entry level product, designed for non-editing professionals working in the media industry that come from other departments. Forte is a full editor, with 18 video tracks and 36 audio tracks. There are 18 different camera positions that you can edit from that one suite,” says McDonough. Explaining the ‘five seconds behind live’ values, he adds: “If you want the video to be one minute, it could be edited one minute and five seconds behind live. If you wanted it to be 10 minutes of video, it is that plus five seconds behind live.”

Interoperability is a vital byword around the business. “We can operate with virtually any system out there, and we very much encourage any organisation that wants to move down the line of cloud editing to seriously look at taking on a package like Blackbird within their system,” says McDonough. “For emerging publishers working direct to social media we could be an end-to-end solution, and for those more traditional players with legacy systems going back generations, we can be very much the cloud enablers. They can bring Blackbird Proxy and our other tools into their stack and have all the benefits of the cloud.”

HDR and AI are two hot technology areas that play well with Blackbird.

“We can edit and conform against 4K and HDR and we can proxy from that with no problems,” says McDonough. “AI is something we have looked at in a lot of detail, in terms of how we create an AI interface for the editing solution. We have talked to one group in particular about how we integrate that, but it was not there for NAB. It is an absolute priority for the roadmap this year.

“One of the key things for AI as a use case for us is for looking at archive – building AI in modules,” he continues. “In a sports archive for instance you could go and look at every Diego Maradona goal, and then use the Blackbird software to proxy to these huge volumes, and scan through very quickly.”

CREATED USING PSYCHOLOGY

Making archives searchable is a key element of the Blackbird roadmap. And for when AI is used to bring forward content, the Blackbird software allows the user to see where the cuts and clips reside within a large amount of content.

“This is used a lot with reality programmes in post production, so it means there is a human involved even if the AI software lets an erroneous piece of content get through to the final edit,” explains McDonough. “Our Proxy has been honed and crafted rather than just programmed. It was created using psychology – using how people imagine they see colour. So it is a perception model, and it is also used as elements of AI.

“We have created a very high quality low bandwidth codec through understanding how the human eye and brain work together. The codec informs what the next colour along should be, based upon learning. There are elements of AI in there as well,” he adds.

NAB was fertile ground for talking about partnerships with other vendors. “Yes,” agrees McDonough. “We are looking at how Blackbird could fit into an OEM model, where we would be the original engineering model. So we would be right into the systems of other, larger companies that are rolling out across hundreds of news and sports networks.

“It is an area where we have had some fruitful conversations, and this is an opportunity that gets us quite excited,” he continues.

Dr Stephen Streater, Blackbird R&D director and part owner of the company, started the codec development after he sold Eidos in 2000. Streater completed a PhD at Cambridge on the use of AI video in self-guided missiles, and then decided to create the world’s best video compression codec.

“Over 18 years he has honed it (many versions) to what we have today. I take the tool sets and our software for demo purposes in the US and the clients have seen nothing like it still,” says McDonough. “Our customer base is far and wide, but one of the key things I have done since joining the business is to really push it towards the US market. That market is just bigger, and also significantly more complex: there are hundreds of local and regional news and sports networks and then the national networks. “That means our software solution has a much larger addressable market, and those companies are much more willing to do something new with a new technology.”

MORE THAN EIGHT MILLION HOURS

A customer like Madison Square Garden Networks is proof of the pudding. “They have used our software for two years, and have been nominated for an Emmy for the workflow that uses our software. It is a workflow that edits the New York Nicks and New York Rangers (basketball and Ice hockey) feeds, and they can add closed-captions to their digital output with incredible speed and accuracy,” explains McDonough. “More than eight million hours of content has now been processed through our software.”

This impressive volume is helped by credits from UEFA and the European Golf Tour. He adds: “It is used on the most valuable sports content in the world, and the reason the software is so incredibly fluid and frictionless is because we use edge technology. You have a computer that sits very close to the cloud, very close to the high bit rate: it is able to process the high bit rate and upload it to the cloud very quickly.”

Edge technology is being talked about as a major innovation and caused a great deal of chat at NAB.

“We have been using it for several years and it is very much part of our key infrastructure. It is why our Proxy can be made so quickly,” says McDonough. “In addition to Blackbird Ascent – our entry level easy clipper – and the full tool set in Blackbird Forte, we have the innovation of Mac OS ingest. This is a very new thing with a Mac computer acting as our edge server. You can ingest that high bit rate content and crate the Blackbird Proxy from a Mac as opposed to using a Linux box.”

This is a big deal because users do not need to buy specific and unique hardware, and it again opens up the addressable market for Blackbird, which has recently finished moving its model from Java to JavaScript.

“The difference is night and day in terms of who can use it. There is no download required for JavaScript and you can effectively edit from any web browser, which again increases the addressable audience and adds to the number of people attracted by our software,” McDonough concludes.

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