Webinars and Podcasts

To enhance the overall viewing experience (for cinema, TV, games, AR/VR) the media industry is continuously striving to improve image quality. Currently the emphasis is on High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Colour Gamut (WCG) technologies, which yield images with greater contrast and more vivid colours. The uptake of these technologies, however, has been hampered by the significant challenge of understanding the science behind visual perception. This webinar, aimed at academia researchers as well as industry professionals, provides an insight into the science and methods for HDR and WCG. It presents the underlying principles and latest practical methods in a detailed and accessible way, highlighting how the use of vision models is a key element of all state-of-the-art methods for these emerging technologies. It discusses their impact on image processing research and applications, as well as open challenges and

future directions of research.

 

5G Opportunities for Content Production

 

Presenter: Dr. Ing, Maria Dolores Perez Guirao, Spectrum & Innovation Manager, Research & Innovation, Sennheiser Electronic GmbH & Co. KG

 

In the talk, Dr. Pérez Guirao summarizes the work conducted over the past two and a half years within 3GPP, EBU, and 5G-MAG working groups, for the development of 5G technology for content production.
First, Dr. Pérez Guirao discusses content production use cases and their potential requirements to 5G. Although most of the use cases discussed are already possible with existing technologies, they may see a successive migration to 5G as far as it is able to provide an added value (e.g. cost reduction, simplification of workflows, interoperability) to involved stakeholders. Further use cases, that may be first enabled by 5G, will also be discussed. Further, Dr. Pérez Guirao will resume the standardization activities initiated by the content production community in 3GPP Rel-17 as well as the 5G-MAG activities to accelerate standards development and adoption. To conclude the talk, Prof. Gomez-Barquero, as the project coordinator, will introduce the recently started 5G-RECORDS (https://5g-ppp.eu/5g-records/) project, an EU funded project which for the very first time brings together at a large scale the content production (PMSE) sector with the telecom sector.

 

 

Video Quality & QoE Assessment of High - Quality & Immersive Video - Tests, Models & Standardization

Presenter: Alexander Raake, Audiovisual Technology Group, Institute for Media Technology, Ilmenau University of Technology (TU Ilmenau), Germany

The talk summarizes work conducted by the author's group over the past five years and its context within the international standardization in ITU-T Study Group 12 and the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG). First, the talk discusses subjective test methods for high-quality and immersive video, including sensory evaluation for analytic video-quality assessment, especially addressing high-quality content production, the assessment of the suitability of content for coding- and transmission-related quality assessment, subjective test methods for video-quality and a more holistic QoE evaluation including presence and simulator sickness, as well as considerations on user-behavior tracking. Further, the talk presents modelling approaches for the automatic prediction of different aspects of quality and QoE, primarily focusing on so-called parametric models suitable for a light-weight service quality monitoring. The talk concludes with an outlook on ongoing activities also within the standardization groups the author is involved with.

 

Activity of Disseminating Japanese EWBS Technology

Presenter: Yasuji Sakaguchi   Co-Authors: Yasuo Takahashi & Seiji Sakuma

The Japanese digital terrestrial broadcasting system (ISDB-T) is adopted by 14 countries in Latin America. DiBEG extends technical support and cooperation to help the implementation of ISDB-T in those countries. EWBS (Emergency Warning Broadcast System) is one of the particular features of ISDB-T and expected to be introduced as a national communication system in case of emergency. The “EWBS Superimpose Dissemination System”, improved from the Japanese original version by adapting to local requirements in Latin America, has successfully been developed in Japan. Taking advantage of the robustness of the ISDB-T “One-seg” technology, making maximum use of the existing broadcasting network, this system realizes simple utilization and wide coverage with outstanding reliability. This system has already been introduced to some Latin American countries and highly evaluated. Japan continues technical cooperation so that EWBS can contribute to disaster prevention and mitigation in these ISDB-T adopting countries.

 

5G Opportunities For Media Distribution

Presenter: Dr. Jordi J. Gimenez, Project Manager, 5G-MAG

3GPP technologies are being shaped to accommodate features and functionalities demanded by the media industry. Originally driven by the needs of mobile networks to accommodate the increasing consumption of multimedia content, the scope has broadened to offer solutions to different stakeholders - including media service providers, CDN providers, network operators - for the distribution of services to the end users. Enhancements to 5G include features to improve its ability to distribute media content and services, not only using unicast but also relying on multicast or broadcast, edge caching, virtualized media functions, network slicing or even the potential of using both terrestrial and satellite networks. A wide set of options that may create the framework for enhancing IP-based distribution of media content to users.

 

Network Resource Allocation System for QoE-Aware Delivery of Media Services in 5G Networks

Presenter: Roberto Viola, Research Associate at Digita Media Department, Vicomtech Foundation, Basque Research and Technology alliance (BRTA)

 

The explosion in the variety and volume of video services makes bandwidth and latency performance of networks more critical to the user experience.  To cope with the traffic demand and content provider's service level agreement (SLA), 5G telecommunication networks are expected to outperform current networks in terms of keyperformance indicators (KPIs).  Machine Learning (ML), Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are key technologies to enable dynamic network setup in 5G networks.  The webinar will overview these technologies and show results of a Network Resource Allocation System which exploits real time captured metrics to manage the network topology through the SDN Controller. 

 

Cybersecurity in the Broadcast Plant Environment: Beginners Guide to Becoming a "Gray Hat Hacker"

Presenter: Wayne Pecena, Associate Director of Educational Broadcast Services at Texas A&M University- Director of Engineering for Texas A&M Public Broadcasting Stations KAMU TV & FM

Beginners Guide to Becoming a “Gray Hat Hacker”  

The IP network has become an integral part of the broadcast technical plant and as a result, cybersecurity can’t be ignored. Cybersecurity is now an ongoing essential task for the broadcast engineer in the IT centric broadcast technical plant. This presentation will review popular cyber threats, best practice mitigation, and introduce penetration testing utilizing common “hacker” tools and techniques as a means to verify cybersecurity protections thought to be in place.

 

Technology for Reliable Transport Over Unreliable Networks- IP Audio in Broadcast Applications

Presenter: Derek Badala, Industry Veteran with 26 years of Pro Audio, Broadcast & MI experience

IP Audio Codec technology for reliable transport over unreliable networks is a class designed to educate attendees about the world of IP Audio Codecs for Broadcast Applications. This class will give attendees the foundations of IP Audio, IP Audio Transport over a LAN / WAN, as well as the keys to reliable audio transport for Broadcast-Critical applications.

 

The Apollo System for ATSC 3.0

Presenter: Gary Blievernicht, Director of Engineering for WKAR Television at Michigan State University 

Apollo PublicTV Platform, a NextGen TV accelerator platform for Public Broadcasters, launches a 3-in-1 solution that enables broadcasters to begin NextGen TV broadcasts today, on a pay-as-you-use model, requiring minimal investment.

NextGen Broadcasting (NGB) as a Service is a patent pending 3-in-1 solution from Apollo PublicTV Platform that leverages a station's existing ATSC 1.0 broadcast spectrum to launch ATSC 3.0 services.

 

Viable Deterministic 5G System Model

Presenter: Ling Ling Sun, Assistant General Manager Technology/Chief Technology Officer of NET (Nebraska's PBS & NPR Stations)

5G Broadcast Status and Overview: From LTE-Based Terrestrial Broadcast (FEMBMS) to Native Multicast Broadcast Support in the 5G New Radio and the 5G Core

The Next Three Innovations for Networked Radio

Presenter: Kirk Hamack, Telos Alliance, Partner & VP-Engineering South Seas Broadcasting Inc., Partner & Director of Engineering Delta Radio LLC.

Over half of all US radio facilities are using Audio over IP.  More are converting every day as AoIP technology offers undeniable advantages to all stakeholders. Broadcast engineers are consistently experiencing the serendipity associated with networked IP audio.  They're uncovering new capabilities and applications that were never available - or never convenient - with baseband analog or AES3 audio connections. This presentation exposes the ever-spiraling discovery and development cycle that drives these new capabilities and applications.