Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: So thanks for joining the broadcast post podcast today. In our episode today transitioning to the newsroom of Tomorrow, I'm thrilled to be joined by Ian McSpatten, the CTO at Arizona Public Media. With a career spanning several decades, Ian has witnessed firsthand the seismic shifts in broadcast technology. Today, we'll dive into his journey, explore the biblical transitions in newsroom technology, and get an insider's look at the cutting edge upgrades he's spearheading at Arizona Public Media. Ian, if you could give us an elevator pitch on your career as a newsroom engineer and technologist and tell us about the notable jobs you've had along the way and how you ended up at AZPM.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Certainly. Thanks for having me here today. I actually was fortunate enough to start in specifically local television news back in the eighties as the industry was migrating from older technology like typewriters to computers. So I helped install some of the first newsroom computers in the country and controllers for satellite issues. So Commodore 64s, IBM clones, some of the early personal computers that were machine drivers. I later got into managing systems news operations manager positions, upgrading systems as a systems integrator, and then designing them and deploying them over the years. So I've been fortunate enough to work in local television, national television and international. So I basically had a broad view of both the technology changes in the it side, but also the technology in the acquisition and distribution side as well.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: So you had a long and successful career broadcast engineering, it sounds like. And what were the key decisions or risks that got you to where you were today?
[00:01:47] Speaker B: I think always being inquisitive, being bold, trying to anticipate whats coming next. Ive certainly over the years have been fortunate enough to be working for organizations that had a long view of the technology and the business and also been allowed to entertain my pursuits. I actually launched the first Scripps station website back in the mid nineties before station groups had websites. And I remember my general manager saying, why would you do that? We don't want people turning away from our television set to look at a computer screen. And at the time I remember saying, I said, one day they're going to be looking here even more than they are on our screen.
Was I predicting the future? Maybe just a little bit. But I was fortunate enough to make a good guess in that case. And you should always feel empowered because nobody does have a crystal ball to know exactly where technologies are going.
When I was at Reuters, we deployed the first mobile video for news. So this was back in the mid two thousands where Asia and Europe had smartphones that actually displayed video. Back here in the US, they weren't there yet, but the Washington DC hub for writers television basically aggregated at a big transcode farm that basically transcoded content for view on mobile phones. One of my early findings was nobody knew in the States what it looked like, what we were creating for the end user. I bought one of the earliest ipods. It loaded our content up onto it and I showed it to the bureau chief and said, you might want to think about what we're transcoding and putting out there because these big scenes of crowds and lots of detail in those early encoding schema just look like blurs. It was like you need tight shots, big graphics, simplified video for the screens and the encoding technology for the day because it made a huge difference. Again, it was just not being afraid to question technology and or the implementation of it.
And when you are viewed as someone who takes those kinds of risks and can succeed at them, youll be given more opportunities down the road, right?
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Yeah, thats phenomenal. To be at the front edge of all that kind of graphic content and how we would handle it in a whole new monopoly of devices. Thats pretty and quite insightful. I would say that kind of leads to the next question about what would you say was the biggest issue or setback that you ran into in your career and how did it shape your approach to what you're doing now?
[00:04:26] Speaker B: I think it's not the technology decisions that can be the hardest sometimes or most disappointing. It's actually the personal choices you make in career moves or organizations you work for. I was working for ABC News, doing a lot of really fun stuff and left for a.com startup. Learned a lot during that period, but it eventually failed in early two thousands, which is why I'm not a millionaire and still working in television.
But I later made a similar mistake. After working for about five years at Reuters television, where I loved the opportunities to work, the group I was with left for more money to go work for the network and the projects just weren't as rewarding. So sometimes in the business you have so much opportunity and interesting paths to follow that again, whether it's predicting technology or predicting where you want to work or where you can contribute the most and enjoy, those are hard decisions to make and you will make mistakes and just don't be afraid of them because you pivot. Whether it's a technology hurdle in front of you or whether it's a personal career one, there will be other opportunities.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: So just stick to it and muscle through whatever it is that's in front.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Of you and enjoy it, too. You know, one of the things that I always found was some of the places where I may not have been paid the most or had the highest level position, I actually enjoyed the work the most. So it's finding that balance. I mean, you have to pay the bills, but you feel like you've made an impact or enjoying the type of work you're doing. You know, the first time I was put on the red carpet at the oscars, I had never thought of when I was in college as a computer science major that I would be doing that in a future role in television.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Sure.
That kind of leads to one of our key questions here is, if you were to speak with a young engineer today, just starting out in the industry, what advice would you give them? What skills should they be focusing on? If you had to go back and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Learn from those who know, you know, join professional organizations, read the trades. I work with SIMD on their student chapter development and bringing folks that are studying engineering and media skills and it skills into the industry. And part of it comes from my own experiences. I was computer science major in college, and my senior year got a job at one of the local television stations, and they traded me for a week, threw me in a live microwave truck and said, here, go cover the sporting event at the local arena. I plugged in my microwave truck, went in, ate with the press, and then sat on the court and watched the game and said, I'm never going back to the basement to code after this.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Pretty good advice.
The newsroom itself in broadcast has evolved dramatically.
Have you seen these changes impact the way news is produced and delivered?
[00:07:14] Speaker B: I've seen it grow in such an amazing way, both in good and bad. You know, more content is being, more content is being produced by fewer people, and individuals are expected to be wordsmiths, editors, live shot technicians. You know, when I started, you had a writer, you had a producer, you had your talent, you had your photographer, you had an engineer, you had an editor. That all contributed to covering news in the field today, there's a lot of times a single individual is sent out with a camera and a laptop, and they're charged with getting the story, writing the content, editing the video, doing a live broadcast, posting on social media.
And I think nobody can ever be an expert in all those at once. I've been lucky enough to have positions ranging from chief photographer to chief engineer. I have a broad set of skill sets I've developed over many decades, but I certainly wouldn't have wanted to enter my first five or ten years in the business and expected to be really good at all five of those things. So it's the technology of what you can do. Now. When we used to send videographers out, they had $75,000 with a camera gear in the back of their news trucks.
Today, the quality of the cameras and even the phones enable the acquisition of content and the storytelling tools that weren't available or were prohibitively expensive years ago.
But again, it's leveraging that technology to produce more and better content, not necessarily what I think has happened in some corporate deployments, which is we can do with fewer people because the technology is doing the heavier load, which just means, again, I find the content maybe not be as good because having an individual try to do that many tasks can dilute the overall end product.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: I think you're right. We lose something when we don't have as big a team and we don't have as much creative insight from people that maybe aren't directly attached to the production of the newscast or the editorial piece in itself.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: And it's the partnership. When you have a reporter and a photographer and maybe a producer all contributing to a story, you've got better fact checking, you've got better overall concept. If there's a piece missing the who, what, when, where, why somebody notices and it's filled out, where again, it's added responsibility for the singular journalists to go out there and make sure that they have all those things.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So you've seen a lot of changes in the newsroom. You've seen a lot of challenging technologies come upon the industry.
What would you say was the most challenging transition that you've experienced, and how did it really change the workflow and output of the newsroom? And I realized you've talked about stuff from the streaming point of view in the very early days, to reduction in staff, to some of the automation, and it's this huge give and take. But is there anything that sticks out as being like the most challenging thing you've had to deal with and overcome?
[00:10:21] Speaker B: I think one of the biggest projects was at Reuters television in the mid two thousands where we went from linear to nonlinear. So it was tape recording. They were the America's hub for everything out of north and South America. So all content was fed up via satellite, recorded onto tape, edited with tape machines, and then fed out via satellite to the customer base. And when we went to an avid unity system, it was basically a big transition because not only were we able to record more, I had instead of a wall of BVW 75s, it was eight ingest decks into the avid system.
With that came the benefit of an interesting way of grabbing material that was instantly available to multiple people. Because you had the ability to go in there, different producers, the LATM producer and the Americas producer could pull content off at the same time, start editing their stories, where in the old days it was like you had the one tape and people were sharing it, who has the tape that I need? So the efficiencies greatly improved the workflow and the responsibility. The skill sets began to change.
They actually had let go a lot of their craft editors because they figured, well, we don't need editors because the actual reporters and producers now are editing. And they saw the quality of the edits drop because these were tremendous wordsmiths and journalists who had never spent time editing video before.
And they ended up bringing some of those back. So rough cuts were done by the journalists and then craft editors finished them off to make sure that they met the standards of the output. But that was a sea change in not only the use of technology, but also how the staff implemented it. Because if your staff isn't trained and prepped and have the right skill sets when you make a transition, you can hit some bumps.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt. That kind of brings us to the next phase.
We know you're working on a significant upgrade to your existing facilities. Can you tell us a little bit about the research you've been doing for this project and the key areas you're focusing on for this tremendous upgrade that you're engaged in?
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Yeah, this has been a long time coming for the organization. They've been planning a move and an upgrade for the better part of a decade, taking basically what has a facility that's existed for 50 years and saying, we want to build a new one that will be technically capable for the next 50 years. And what does that look like? Technology for 50 years in analog television pretty much stayed the same. In the last 20 years, it has changed from digital TV to HDTV to UHD, HDR to IP based video sources and AI that, you know, we can only guess what that might mean for production content, news distribution and, you know, consumer use in the future. So our goal was to try to design as future ready a facility as we could. It's all ip based for audio and video.
It needs to be flexible for editing and production platforms to accommodate whatever the industry will need next. It's hard to say whether VR will continue AR might become more important as a set component. Is AI acceptable in the content production arena, especially for news? And where would that work?
We talked to one of your folks earlier today, and they're using AI for a prompter voice recognition.
Really cool application. But would a news organization ever use an AI product for creation of content or distribution of content without a human eye validating it?
The design in the new facility is trying to leverage the base technologies of infrastructure. What makes sense that we can put in today with making sure that it has the capacity to accommodate, and this is data, it's electrical, it's air conditioning. What might be used in the future? Because even though we currently use a green screen VR set, which doesn't put off a lot of heat, obviously it's a green wall. If we were ever to move to an led screen based VR set and you've got 40 55 inch monitors putting off heat, there's significant power and cooling needs that need to be accommodated in that space. So all that went into the design of a new facility.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: It sounds like you're paying attention a lot for a 50 year lifespan to a lot of that infrastructure stuff that is critical to lay the foundation for you to be able to do the next generation of products as it evolves. And the pace at which it's evolving is just unbelievable. Is there anything else besides the infrastructure that you're looking at that you're most excited to implement? This part, maybe in the areas of automation, cameras, camera rigs, lighting, graphics, that type of thing?
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Probably all the above.
Really interesting. I did a panel at a recent Anita conference where we talked to three ctos at three PBS stations who each, over the last five years, deployed new facilities. The first one, about five years ago, was an HD based plant SDI. The second one, about three years ago, was a twelve g hybrid facility. 21 ten wasn't fully matured at the time, and ours is 21 ten. So within that five year period, the functionality has evolved and what that means for each of the plants, because there are certain IP based things that the SDI plant will never be able to do, nor will they be able to do UHD production, or certain things that the twelve g copper plant might be able to do. Our hopes were in choosing 21 ten as the underlying based network protocol to manage IP video throughout the facility. It buys us the most flexibility might want to be doing in the future, whether that is real high end HDR or video production, or things that we haven't even thought of doing yet on the audio side, it was very similar.
We wanted to be able to do Dolby Atmos mixing for audio and video. This comes as our organization is both radio and television stations. So we have not only NPR, but a classical and a jazz station. And the one thing we have not been able to do today is radio and music performances. We don't have the spaces, we don't have the acoustics or the equipment to really do it. So going into this new facility, that was one of the mandates was we have radio performance places, we have radio tracking places, we have audio mixing spaces that we want the new facility that we don't have and could never build in our existing plan.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: That's incredibly fascinating. A complete, holistic approach to the next generation of products and technologies that would enable the demands of the future of newsroom broadcasting as well as broadcasting in general. Tremendous effort there. Well, Ian, I really appreciate you spending some time with us here on our broadcast to post episode.
I know this was kind of a tough thing to get scheduled for you, and we appreciate your time with us and look forward to talking with you further on your project. Thanks very much.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: No worries. Happy to contribute.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Let's transition now to an interview with Mason Pierce, our vice president of broadcast engineering at Key Code Media. Mason has been at the forefront of helping major newsrooms transition to CPT 21 1012 g and automation workflows. With his expertise in system design, installation, testing, commissioning, training, and project completion, Mason has played a pivotal role in modernizing newsroom technology.
[00:18:08] Speaker C: Thanks for the intro, Steve.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: You bet. Appreciate you being here, and let's dive into this a little bit.
We just talked with Ian McSpadden about his long journey through newsroom technology over the last three decades. Now you're in the trenches designing and implementing the next wave of systems. What's the most disruptive advancement you've seen recently that's forcing you to rethink how you design newsrooms?
[00:18:33] Speaker C: Well, I think as we've all been feeling in the broadcast and even outside of the broadcast industry, the transition to IP is probably still the largest single disruptor that I see. As we approach design with various facilities, the question of whether going baseband versus IP is starting to dwindle away, although there's still some considerations that in some cases the baseband approach makes a lot of sense. But we're seeing a lot of folks make the transition as we see that the industry as a whole moving or is developing and implementing technology advancements in more of the IP realm versus the baseband realm.
A big departure of that is and it makes perfect sense. When you really look at the dollars and cents that go into this side of the world, broadcast is just a blip in the overall monetary scheme of technology.
It is really driving those investments. It makes sense that broadcast and beyond outside of broadcast, but especially in broadcast, we're really starting to go away from the one trick pony type of equipment. This is a router. It routes video signals and it baseband ins and outs, et cetera, to do, hey now, I could buy a switch, and this switch could do a myriad of things, including routing all of my multicast flows, video, audio, ancillary, et cetera. So we're seeing that departure where instead of buying a piece of equipment that is specifically for this one purpose, you can buy a generic, you know, cots type switch or a Cots server. And now you can make that server via software do something that it didn't necessarily do the day before. So one day, let's say you're using it for like a live captioning tool. The next day you can be using it as a playout system, the next day you can be using it as x, Y or z, and it's just a network connection, so you can redefine it quickly and on the fly via software definition. There still is not to say that there's not broadcast specific hardware being created. We still rely, and will continue to rely heavily on processing gear that is specific for our industry, but we're seeing baseband connections come off of that type of equipment and being replaced by high bandwidth, hundred gig QSFP type connections and beyond, honestly. So I would say that's one of the biggest disruptors that I see as we move through designing and implementation of new systems. Is that IP and more leaning towards cots and just kind of open source it workflows. All the money is getting invested there. We're seeing a lot more advancements there, and even in FPGA's too, you can do a ton with really powerful FPGA's. That again can be software defined on the fly.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that coincides with the advancements in GPU's that are enabling a lot of the new kinds of services to come to the fore.
This change, if you will, is really dynamic in the industry. How do you see that as causing broadcast engineers and their teams to rethink everything they thought they knew about how to produce and engineer solutions in a newsroom?
[00:21:55] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. I mean, and I'm glad you asked that question that way, because there's aspects that I think that I didn't really touch on that are certainly disrupting as well. But really, I think from a staff perspective, whether you're just a broadcast engineer or a field technician type of individual all the way up to EIC's and directors and leadership. Beyond that, your teams and the team knowledge that you need to acquire is a lot different. You know, I can't remember the last time. Well, I've installed a one inch machine just a couple of weeks ago, but, you know, they're still out there. But I can't remember the last time we got a request for, hey, we need somebody to come in and take a look at this vt and, you know, refresh the head or whatever might need to happen on it. Right? That's way gone away. And now it's like, hey, I'm having a problem with my network. I need somebody to jump in and check a VLAn assignment or figure out why I'm having this issue. And that's a huge difference in under just understanding the technology. It's one thing to understand at that and it's totally different to understand what a switch is doing under the hood. So that's a big piece. That's, we thought we knew it all. We were getting really comfortable with baseband, really good at troubleshooting baseband and now it's all moving to transitioning to kind of network based. So that's a big one. Is your teams basically the learning curve around that IP based transition, how to troubleshoot IP, how to understand flows within IP and really be able to get down to the nitty gritty instead of just being able to throw a baseband onto a scope and take a look at the eye pattern or whatever it might be and troubleshoot from there.
That's a big change. The other piece of it and more. The enablement part of your question and something I think is another big disrupter is again, leveraging modern technology. AR VRXR has been a huge way that a huge disruption I think as well. It's taking brick and mortar studio spaces that have fixed look sets and all this expensive. Some people still have those folks on staff, but you'll have carpenters and you're changing things out. That doesn't really happen anymore. You build a set, that's the set. If you want to refresh the look, you're talking about a three to five year cycle before the budget comes back around to do a look refresh, where people are now investing more in the AR VRXR side of the world, where that set can change dramatically from day to day. And even from moment to moment if you have a breaking news or something happens, all of a sudden the entire look of the set changes and then you can immediately make it. So it's like that individual, whether that's an anchor or whatever it is, is in that environment.
That's what's going on. And they're in the thick of it even though they're still just back at the home studio. And from an end user perspective, yeah, it might be obvious that they are in the home studio, but you feel like you're more involved with whatever that action is that's happening out in the world. So that's a huge game changer. And then also that kind of leads into flexibility, right. IP in general, you gain a lot of flexibility that you never really have. If we go back to that same statement of we're no longer making purpose built equipment as much so to speak, and we're starting to do hyper converged type equipment like Ross has been doing, et cetera and others that this box can do based on the personality you load into it or the software package that you're running on it is doing all these different things. So one piece of equipment, one investment can be, can become three different things which formerly were three different investments of a much higher dollar value. Right? So that's a huge, you know, game changer where, you know, I think if you asked an engineer 1020 years ago and said hey, can you imagine your router also being a production switcher? They'd be like, no way that, there's no way that would work. You have to do all these dbes and there's all this processing and effects and things like that. Well now it's very easy to do, right. So those are the types of things that I would say are like putting people on their heads is, it's a rapid change. It's definitely something that's really, I've seen a lot of doe struggle with, with their staffs, especially as staffs are aging up in a lot of these environments of like, okay, hey, now I have to teach them all this ip stuff and before they just plug something in and said, okay, it's plugged in, it's on this port. Like make it go right. And now they need to be much more responsible with, okay, cool. It's not live and on the network now what's happening with this traffic? Where is this multicast going? Where is this issue occurring within the network? Within various pieces of equipment, senders and receivers? Is this an nmos related issue? Is there something happening with the control aspect. Um, but it's all ip based. So that's a huge learning curve that's definitely throwing people through a loop. But I'm excited about it because it, it really gives way to the next generation of broadcast engineer, which is going to be more ip focused, which is going to be more ip centric. Um, and that's, you know, really exciting space to be because again, that's where all the investment is going. You look at the billions and billions of dollars that are being spent on AI and changing up chipsets so they're more AI specific with GPU's and CPU's embedded in the same systems working together to process those workloads. This is what the next generation of engineers is going to come up. Knowing and broadcast is doing a great job staying on the bandwagon, if you will, of where the technology is growing the fastest and leveraging that for good use.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm glad you made the point that the modern broadcast engineer can't just be a video guy or an audio guy or AR VrXR guy. He's got to kind of learn the whole thing now because the staffs are not growing, they're actually shrinking.
And which kind of leads into the next question with, with tools and automation.
That's kind of a buzzword that's getting into conversations we've had about not just the newsroom, computer systems and the rundown list, but it's getting into cameras, it's getting into teleprompters and all that other stuff. And the crews in the newsroom are shrinking more and more with everyone wearing more hats and even field personnel having to run their own systems, if you will. So what would you say has been the most game changing examples you've seen in action? We see GB, Stratus and other solutions similar to that have a real impact on the station. What have you seen that's been a real game changer?
[00:28:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, like the TV stratuses of the world, the ROS inceptions, the AP Z MP's, Sony's ELC, the list goes on and on. Right? I feel like that wave of automation introduction really started happening about a decade plus ago, and we've really seen significant buy in on that. I think the last time I looked, EMPS has 65,000 users across thousands of various broadcasting brands.
It's just massively.
It's penetrated the market for sure.
No one could even. I laugh because we've had a few projects recently where we have had aspects as we're rolling out where we have a hiccup with some part of their automation system, and then it's like, oh, crap, we have news in ten minutes, like, what are we going to do? And then all of a sudden you have to revert back to, like, a traditional control room where it's like you have a playback operator, you have TD, you have all these things, and everyone's scrambling and like, oh, God, what do we do? And it's because we've grown so reliant on those automation systems. Now, bear with me. Those were deployment in deployment type of workflows that we were trying to work out. Those systems are very, very solid. They're tried and true, and it's allowed the newsrooms of the world to really scale back the overhead on resources so they can reinvest that, regained capital into other aspects of their business, increasing their production values, being able to have more infield reporters, et cetera, et cetera. Right? Certainly the monetary gain is definitely being leveraged to up the quality of their productions and up the quality of the content that they're delivering to their viewers.
So I think that's been happening over the decade plus. That's been a transition that we've seen really take root in the industry.
Well, it's funny that you. So what's next? Right? That's the real curiosity piece, right? So AI, the hype is, everyone knows it, right? The hype around AI is always in our face. Chat GPT was like a huge push into the general understanding of AI and understanding what AI can actually do for us. I don't know. I think that that is the next big and exciting thing that's coming to us. I don't really believe that it's fully fledged there yet. We see it in aspects, right? We see it in small, little pieces. It's like, oh, hey, we have AI engines that will do closed caption creation. Cool. And a lot of those have been some homegrown, there's various manufacturers that have come up with their own homegrown algorithms. There's some algorithms that run in the cloud, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So there's pieces like that, or you and I were talking before the call, like shading, having skin tone, and things like that automatically shaded via AI so it looks correctly based off of not an operator sitting there trying to dial it in, but an automation tool doing that.
There's AI in these little nooks and crannies, but it hasn't pervasively like an automation system, like the traditional newsroom computer system type of buy in yet, because it's just little pieces here and there. There's nothing that's like going out there. And I would love to see down the road, like, AI is actually curating content that's happening in that region, in that area, and bringing it to the attention of producers and others, and then automatically generating script and blurbs. And here's the shots that you want, or here's the angles based off of the feeds you have available in your system. Right. That hasn't quite glued all together yet. Now, that's not to say it's not there, and that's another big piece is like, AI is still booming right now in like, back to the it side of the conversation. AI is still booming right now. So much investment is being poured into it again. Customized chip sets that are specific to AI workflows are still being developed.
There is some stuff at the market, but you see it in big data centers. These are the big players playing with this technology. And technology hasn't really filtered down yet into the nitty gritty workflows that we deal with on a day to day basis in broadcast. You still need producers, you still need these people engaging with these systems to help create that content. But I do see that as kind of the next wave of really infiltrating AI deeper into our broadcast workflows, and not just the, like, little pieces here and there that we're leveraging AI.
So I think that that's probably one of the single biggest disruptors that's coming down the road, or not necessarily disruptors, but something that's, it will be a disruptor, honestly. But something that's definitely going to start to really find its way deeper into a yemenite. Another one that I find interesting because we all talked about it again about a decade ago, was cloud everyone. Oh, the cloud. Everything's going to the cloud. Cloud this, cloud that. Well, it's like, well, we're like a decade later, and it's like, how much cloud production is really done? And yes, it's done. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, but you see it on the high end, you see it on some of the more basic streaming kind of ends. But we really don't see, like, I see cloud workflows. I would say it's like 20% to 30% of what we do. The rest of it is still in house, in studio, in facility, and gluing teams together. Sure. In cloud collaborative type workflows. Yeah, sure. But it's one of those things. And I think AI is going to have faster legs, if you will. They'd be the sprinter I would bet on as related to cloud. But AI will also help drive cloud into a deepen, deeper buy in because with AI, youll want to be doing more of that cloud based so you have more information available to the AI engine of whatever youre trying to leverage AI for.
I think that will actually help us with the deeper buy in of cloud. Again, not that we havent bought into cloud, but it wasnt as pervasive as I think everyones thought it was going to be. It certainly is integrated itself into our industry, but I don't think it's as deep as everyone's thought that it might have been.
I think that AI will help drive that even further and I think AI really is the thing that excites me the most. Whereas cloud, yeah, it's there. There's still things that we can expand on in cloud, but it's definitely to me, more exciting than that cloud transition we came upon.
I think the AI transition is going to really bring some really cool and interesting technology to the mixed. It just really hasn't even been conceived or thought of in the market at all.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: Sure.
We've got a few minutes left here. I've got six areas we've talked about the big items, AI, cloud, automation, et cetera.
I'd like to ask you about maybe six specific areas and get your take on what's going on with these solutions.
What should see the trends for them. Let's start with camera robotics, pedestals and camera tracking. What do you see happening there for sure?
[00:36:04] Speaker C: Right. So definitely a hot current trend. Robotics and studio has definitely been something that we've been doing more and more and more of one. It alleviates an operator, right. You can run a five camera studio with a single robo operator back in the control room and then have all these pre programmed shots and things like that. AI infiltrating into that.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:27] Speaker C: Maybe it can automatic or it can discern its own unique, interesting, creative shots that you might be able to choose to take things like that. So I think robotics is a huge piece that's really been in there. Camera tracking, of course, leveraging that with unreal engine, et cetera, to do your kind of augmented reality type environments. All those systems are very, very popular. It extends the usage of your studio space and allows you to leverage your studio in more ways than the traditional studio has been used. Right. So I think that that's definitely been a trend and has been a growing trend. We see that going into more and more client spaces. In fact, just behind me, I'm about to start installing some robotic heads on some of these camera pedestals. So that is definitely something I see that's a hot trend out there.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: What do you see happening with teleprompters? I mean, that's a do, kind of a traditional lower, kind of a boring one, right?
[00:37:22] Speaker C: No one likes to talk about prompting. It's like, what? Prompting? No, I think, you know, prompting has been, has kind of been a stale. Not stale. I don't want to offend any prompts, people out there, but, you know, a prompter was prompter, right? You had a controller, you would put your script in there, whether it came through your electro emps based system or whatnot. Like it's there. You have somebody running it through it. Cool. Now they have prompter systems that are leveraging AI type workflows that are basically actually tracking based off what the anchor or talent on air is saying, and then automatically moving that script forward for them, and then even introducing cues into that. So that way, if a talent on camera does a specific queue, the prompt will react in that particular way. So it's super cool workflows that, again, in an area that's not the sexiest, I guess you could say, of our industry. Again, prompting isn't one that always gets the limelight, but definitely seeing some really cool innovations from QScript, Autoscript. All the standard prompt players are starting to introduce these more automated type systems within their prompt environments, which is a really exciting thing to see and helps out a lot.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: Another key area that people don't really realize how complex it is, but how immersive it can be is the graphics. Whether it's data driven, augmented reality, virtual reality, or the weather sets, things have changed a lot there to help create a more immersive environment. What are you seeing trend wise there, and what's the adoption like with those new technologies?
[00:39:02] Speaker C: I feel like that's one of those pieces that you innovate or die if your program isn't enticing or engaging enough. There's so much, and this is where cloud has definitely helped us. There's so many data sources that you can grab from, that can drive real time interesting metrics and data into graphics packages that you can basically pull into your program visually in an interesting way that's going to engage a viewer. I mean, you look at, you think about viewers and what's happening. I've got two kids under three, and my three year old already knows how to run my cell phone better than I do, right? And he's looking for he. It's funny because I laugh because I'm like, I remember doing like puzzles and legos, right? And now it's like if he doesn't have like five or six different forms of information flooding him, then it's not enough. And it's like, oh, my God, like this. I would have, my brain would explode if I was exposed to this when I was your age. But our viewers are the same way. So being able to layer on and via graphics engines, cg generators, and doing more higher end graphics and even incorporating them into augmented reality type of environments really start. And in some cases there is a line, right? You can go too far where you're just overwhelming a viewer, but it's a really great way to, you have your crawls, you're getting your Twitter feeds, you're getting your weather bugs and things on the side. Like, all of these systems are really working together in concert. All while you have some talent in the field talking about the current incident or event that's happening in the local area, but you're getting all these stats and feeds and everything. In addition, you see that everywhere, even outside of our industry. You see that in web browsing and things like that. It's just everything is all in your face available. And that's the whole trick of it, is it's availability of information rapidly to your viewer. And that's what they've come to expect. And graphic systems have done a really great job of keeping up with that and being able to leverage more data input sources and intelligently, just in an automated way, process that information and display what's pertinent to your viewers with at ease. It's not something that you have to have this full time operator that's pruning and trying to grab this information and get it up there as fast as you can. It's an automated flow that these graphic systems are able to just generate all this stuff right on top of your program without the need for all of these various data comers or data analyzers who are deciding. Yep, this makes sense to get on there. So again, another way to reduce your overall staff resource expenditures, to be able to subscribe to more of these data resources or data pools, that you can actually bring this valuable information into your program.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Okay, we've touched a lot on IP based infrastructure. Is there anything else that you'd like to add to that? Or media management or remote contribution?
[00:42:05] Speaker C: I mean, IP, it's here, folks. It's not going anywhere.
Had so many conversations with DoE's BP levels that are like, okay, well do we go baseband? Do we go OIP? And again, it's here, it's working. We've deployed it in many places. Many or I mean almost all of the big players are all in some way, shape or form leveraging IP throughout their infrastructures. Don't shy away. It is definitely something that's here and here to stay.
Again, we're leveraging billions and billions of investment that our industry just can't simply muster and we're riding on the, on the coattails of that and it makes a lot of sense. So it's definitely something that's not going anywhere. Media management and remote contribution, it's just getting better, right? Especially as you layer in AI and you get more. I mean, I will laugh, I forget the exact term, but we were talking to a gentleman the other day about metadata and it's like, oh yeah, I remember now. Metadata tsunami. That's a Bryson Jones. I'll give you the shout out for that one with NSA. But it's like so much more metadata is going to be created with these AI workflows and with all that additional metadata and having AI engines actually process and be able to consume that in a rapid, immediate way to then parse down to exactly what you as a producer or end user are trying to get to is going to give you the fingertip or the world at your fingertips, right? So that kind of touches into medium the media management side of the world. Like that metadata tsunami is coming and we aren't even really prepared for it to be honest, in my opinion. And it's going to take a lot of different type of compute requirements. It's going to take a lot. We're going to have to leverage a lot of different types of systems that we haven't necessarily been comfortable or used frequently in our industry. But it's definitely something that's going to again, continue the buy in of AI, continue the buy in of those types of workflows and then remote contribution. It's just getting better. So it's like no longer are we doing all the microwave and things like that. We have 5g. There's better, easier, cheaper ways to get it done. Not saying that the microwave systems don't work, but those are costs inefficient. They require licensing based on frequency usage, et cetera, et cetera. So it's like now we're getting with the 5g capabilities and bonded cellular, et cetera, et cetera. We're getting better and better at being able to facilitate remote contribution. And I did notice on earlier, I think it was Douglas was commenting on our bonded cellular is reliable as satellite and fiber. Yeah, it's a fair statement, because not in all cases.
I can see where you're coming from that of like, okay, you're in a crowded environment, let's say a venue or a massive trade show or whatever effort might be going on, and you start to actually have bandwidth issues within even 5g environments. But it's so much better than it ever was. And it allows contribution where contribution previously was non existent. Right. So I think that's really what we're trying to say. Totally agree. A wire is always better. If you can get a wire to it, then awesome, you'll have much better luck in general. But what we are saying is we're seeing a much higher level of reliability on these remote collaboration type workflows than we've ever seen in the past. And it's just getting better and better as 5G continues to roll out and gets better as we go.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Sure, I think that's a really great point.
The issue isn't so much whether wire is better than wireless, it's can you get the wire and can it deliver the kinds of flexibility that you need to get the production done. So it's that kind of that return on investment or cost benefit analysis that has to be done in terms of being able to get what you need to get, as opposed to having the perfect method of delivering it. Some other questions we've got from our audience are thoughts about FPGA solutions within the SMPTe 2110 workflow. I think that means versus the CPU GPU, things that are going on and maybe where that steps headed, if you want to comment on that. And then I've got some.
[00:46:30] Speaker C: I was going to say Steve's honestly the better one to comment on that because that's just his world. But like, I love it. I mean, yes, CPU GPU, you can do a lot with that, but FPGA's are immensely powerful. They're small, they're compact, they're easy to put in different form factors of equipment. So FPGA's I don't think are going anywhere. I love the utilization and usage of them and they're just getting better and better. Right. So that's something that I don't think is going anywhere, and I'm glad. I hope it doesn't go anywhere. We see FPGA is embedded on all sorts of boards and all sorts of equipment throughout the workflows. Right? So I definitely think that the FPG side, especially leveraging 21 ten, being able to flash on new personalities, and I use the term personality, I'm probably stealing some manufacturers coin terminology, but software load of whatever that particular workflow demands at that particular moment, and then at the next moment being able to do a totally different set of demands and a totally different set of use cases with the same piece of equipment. That is powerful.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that, and I'm going to put on my former manufacturer VP hat for just a second on that. The real driver on it is the time of time to release a product in terms of product development to do a new FPGA board design, the turn is between twelve months to 18 months. It just takes a long time to get those done. If you're using a CPU GPU based approach, particularly with the number of teraflops that GPU's can do now, we're well over 50,000 teraflops per second on the high end GPU's.
It crushes that. So now I have a standard solution that I can put into a cpu, into a high end server, and I can develop new applications within weeks and have them released to the field, and I don't have to do a whole bunch of regression testing. So the time to market and time to improvement radically changes when we get into that cots based workflow. But FPGA's have a role to play, and they're right, they're not going to go away. That's why intel almost over a decade ago, bought Altera. This idea of a system on a chip is going to come to fruition and has in a lot of cases so that we can use the fast Fourier transform capabilities of an FPGA in conjunction with the vector translation capabilities of a GPU. So they both have a role to play. But the key thing for our industry, I think, is really centered around how fast we can get new workflows into the marketplace and solving problems in the field. So, excellent question. Another one we've got here from Paul Allen. Any thoughts about the type of computer chips that we can look forward to? Intel, AMD, Nvidia, et cetera? I think we just touched on that, but that's really the driver that is going to push us forward is what is really available, not in the broadcast world, but what the demand is in the AI world, in the finance market and healthcare market, and those areas that are really making the greatest use of the data centers and the servers. So it's a very bright future. I'm very optimistic about how fast things can change and how effective those changes can be. Any last thoughts that you might have? Masonde?
[00:50:03] Speaker C: You know, I was just going to dovetail onto your comments there from Paul's question of just like, yeah, I'm especially interested myself in watching as they're developing AI specific chipsets that are basically leveraging both cpu and GPU type technologies to actually put together something that's going to accelerate those types of workflows. Right. And Steve kind of nailed it. While I do profess love for FPGA's and everything amazing they can do eventually and as time continues to move forward and we continue to develop these tools and AI just starts taking over and hopefully not in a bad way, but that is going to be leveraging more of your cpu GPU type basis, right. So it's, that's where epic power will come from where a server again, it's so powerful when a server component can become 20 different things on the fly and thats something thats really going to shake up and has been shaking up our industry where youre spinning up and down microservices based on need leveraging resources that are generic enough that can be leveraged for a myriad of workflows versus trapping ourselves into a one trick pony piece of equipment. Yeah.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: Excellent. Well, thank you Mason. This wraps up todays episode of broadcast to post a huge thank you again to Ian McSpadden and to Mason Pierce for sharing their insights and experiences with us. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to broadcast to post on your favorite social media networks and stay updated with our latest content. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode. Have a great day.
[00:51:40] Speaker C: Thanks all.
[00:51:41] Speaker B: Thanks for watching broadcast. To follow us, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast to receive future episodes, follow key code Media on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram to receive news on additional AV broadcast and post production technology content. See you next time, folks.
