[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome back to Broadcast to Post. I'm your host Michael Kammes. And today we're looking ahead at trends to watch in 2026 while reflecting back on the year that just passed. There's plenty of happening across the industry right now and we're going to break it down in a way that actually makes planning easier. Easier? If you work in broadcast, EV or post, you already know the pressure. Budgets are tighter, expectations are higher, technology is moving faster than ever. Tech like EV over IP is no longer a second class tech citizen. IP based production has gone from experimental to essential and AI is showing up in every workflow, invited or not, and in every room. System and workflow is just supposed to work right regardless of who's using it.
So our goal today is simple. Let's cut through the noise so you can plan for 2026 with clarity and confidence.
Now, before we dive in, a quick note on why Keycode Media is hosting this very important conversation. At Keycode Media, we design, build and support av, Broadcast and Post systems that are meant to run long after installation day.
Because we sit at the intersection of all of these three worlds, we see what tools hold up in real facilities, what vendors are actually shipping, and where teams hit friction as they move into IP, cloud and AI driven workflows. If your desk is stacked with RFPs, upgrade requests or vendor roadmaps that seem to change every quarter, our job is to help you turn that uncertainty into a clear integrated plan.
Something your team can thrive with. Something backed by real human support 24, 7 and something that avoids dead end technology.
Now let's walk through what we're covering today. First, we'll start with Broadcast and we'll sit down with Steve Dupay and talk about what we've learned from the broadcast projects we delivered in 2025.
Next, we'll shift into post production. Walter Villegas will join me to talk about how creative workflows continue to evolve. And after that we'll explore av, where Mike Cavanaugh and I will look at what changed this year in classrooms, government spaces and corporate environments. And finally, we'll bring together everyone for a roundtable with live Q and A. We'll compare what's changing across broadcast, post and av. We'll talk about what we've updated in our own design standards and recommendations.
And we'll share practical guidance on what to prioritize next year. And we'll take our questions live.
If you're planning an IP transition, evaluating AV over ip, rethinking your studios or control rooms, or even Modernizing your creative pipeline. You're in the right place. This is broadcast to post trends to watch in 2026. Let's get started.
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[00:04:37] Speaker B: So I think the biggest transition this year was the amount of adoption of cloud, native IP driven software defined broadcast infrastructure solutions as they become more and more available, more reliable, and as the cost starts to come down. We're seeing such a large adoption of those technologies now that everybody's kind of starting to get on board and realizes that that's where they need to be going forward.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: We hear from a lot of clients that IP based production is finally feeling real and actually achievable. What changes did you see this year that make adopting 2110 and IP workflows possible?
[00:05:11] Speaker B: I think it's awareness of the technology and of networking in general. There's a big push in the industry now to get their engineers trained on networking principles if they aren't already there.
It's a lot easier to train a broadcast engineer to be a network engineer than a network engineer to be a broadcast engineer. So we're seeing a lot of that movement and as a result of the confidence that's coming in to play, the number of systems that are online, people are starting to feel pretty comfortable about it. And I would almost say that we're now in the general adopter cycle.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: You mentioned kind of further education for these users and how does that kind of play into remote and cloud production evolving this year and where do you see it make the biggest impact on day to day broadcast operations?
[00:05:54] Speaker B: So that's a really good question. What's happening on the field systems is that they're actually getting simpler to operate and use. And with the move to 5G cellular and bonded cellular, all the technologies that are there now to support remote production work, the reporters are much more successful in getting their links to work out of the gate. A lot less troubleshooting. Things are behaving a whole lot better from all the vendors, HiVision, TVU, others.
It's just getting a whole lot simpler and more straightforward to use. The equipment itself is getting more reliable and the transport streams are getting much more reliable.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: So a little bit of inside baseball. We were going to record this a couple days ago, but because you've been so busy with broadcast projects this year, we had to postpone. So I think this is very timely because I did want to ask you what were the biggest lessons that Keycode learned and you learned especially in control rooms routing or multi viewer design this year?
[00:06:50] Speaker B: Preparation is key. Having the system well defined, having the user needs well articulated so that as you get into the integration portion, you're able to quickly deliver what the customer is looking for. Another thing that we do all the time now is we involve the customer whenever possible in part of the integration, the commissioning and troubleshooting the initial system so they become familiar with all these new features and capabilities and new methods of troubleshooting right from the get go.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Now, did you have a favorite broadcast project from this year that really highlights where the industry is going and if so, kind of what made it stand out for you?
[00:07:28] Speaker B: So it's one that's ongoing right now, and that's the Arizona Public Media project in Tucson. The thing that's kind of cool about that is we engaged the customer early on. We took them through a vetting process for all the key vendors for the solutions that they wanted. So they became really familiar with the solutions and now that we're integrating it, they're fine tuning things as we go along and it's making for a much smoother, much more successful project, if you will.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Speaking of successful projects, how do you think that what you're doing with The AZPM and the other projects this year. How has that kind of changed our approach to designing broadcast systems here at Keycode? What are we doing differently today that makes a meaningful difference in reliability or even flexibility?
[00:08:09] Speaker B: We're paying a lot more attention to the fine details, getting definitions down on what the IP infrastructure is going to look like, making sure that the configuration tables are well laid out for PTP timing. There are so many critical elements to make this work well that you've got to really do that planning ahead of time and get things nailed down. We used to be able to just, you know, plug and play a lot and kind of make it up as we go in some cases. But now we've learned that we got to be much more disciplined, we got to be much more thoughtful in how we prepare to go in. That makes the integration a whole lot smoother and in the end makes the customer a whole lot happier.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: I'm sure you've gotten this question as much as I have, and that's for clients who are planning upgrades in 2026. What do you think they should put at the top of their priority list, and what do you think they can safely postpone?
[00:08:55] Speaker B: So that's kind of an interesting question because it splits across what you're going to touch in terms of changing your infrastructure. If you're going to change your core routing, if you need to go to a different format and, you know, high resolution, whether it's HDR or 4K, then you've really got to take a serious look at ip. The reason for that is the cost to change out that infrastructure. Just to go to 4k in SDI is going to be equal to what it's going to cost you to get into a baseline 2110 system. Going to the 2110 system, you now have flexibility of going a long ways forward. If you've already got an existing infrastructure that supports 4K or supports the.
The formats that you plan on using for the next five to 10 years, and you're going to upgrade cameras, you're going to upgrade switcher, something like that, then stay with that sdi. But it's getting to the point where if you're touching about 20 to 30% of the facility, it's time to make that change if you haven't already.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: That's an absolutely great rule of thumb I did want to also touch on. We are inundated with different technology on a daily basis, and some of it is good, some of it is meh.
But I'd love to have your input on what technology do you feel is kind of overhyped in broadcast right now?
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Overhyped?
Well, kind of some of the cloud based production. It's both a good thing and maybe not so good thing. What we find is that for very large customers, the cloud based production tools, this is where you're actually moving the infrastructure to the cloud.
That's great for very large customers, but not such a great solution for the smaller customers. We see some changes there with Lavo, for example, with their home system. GV AMP is starting to make some moves to get it down into an on prem type of service. But the key thing to be aware of here is that that familiarity with cloud based or microservices, more importantly based production is critical because that's the next wave that's coming. It's a bit overhyped right now, but it is coming and it's. It promises us to move away even more from purpose built devices and into COTS based servers that are running kubernetes file based microservices based workflows that you can enable you to recreate your workflow as needed on the fly.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: Steve, I absolutely love doing question and answer with you because you're concise, you're to the point and you leave no ambiguity. And I appreciate that immensely. And we're fortunate that we're going to do a roundtable Q and A at the end of this episode where you can give the same clarity to folks who are giving us questions during this live broadcast. So thanks, stick with us and we'll get to the roundtable Q and A in a few minutes.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Thanks.
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[email protected] all right, we're now going to shift into post production with our very own Walter Villegas. Post has had a pretty interesting year. Major headlines, big facility changes, a jump in AI adoption, and a lot of teams rethinking their workflows after moving deeper into the cloud, expanding remote collaboration and driving into MAM driven pipelines. So Walter, let's break down what you're seeing in the field and what teams should keep in mind as we head into 2026. So my first question, Walter, what stood out to you as the biggest post production headline in 2025. And why did it matter for the teams that Keycode Media supports?
[00:12:47] Speaker C: Yeah, so this year has been a tough year for media and entertainment post production.
A lot of jobs on hold, teams looking to see if their projects would get picked up. Right. And then a lot of acquisitions and mergers in our space.
So from that side, it's been a little difficult to say the least. But we're also seeing a large uptake in corporate and taking up video and really embracing it even further. So while we've seen a little bit of a, a shrinkage in terms of the, you know, in the media and entertainment specific, corporate side has really been growing and expanding on, on the use of video, both, both in post and then live as well.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Of the many projects we've worked on this year, what was some of the biggest lessons you've learned something you think that every team should know before heading into a 2026 upgrade?
[00:13:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I think everyone says it, right. So the untold cost of cloud. Right. And so I think that's.
And you think you know all the gotchas, but then you find another one. Right. Or you thought you knew all the rules, but then it's like, oh, well, in this particular case, this is.
That's a multiplier.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:02] Speaker C: So I think that's one of the, definitely the things that have really resonated, I think, hit home and gotcha. So we really tried to look at the lifecycle of the media and really work with our customers to figure out like, if we are going to move this asset to the cloud, do we ever need to do anything again? Do we expect to do anything with it again?
And then one of the other things too, that we're seeing that's interesting is all this metadata, all this information about the asset.
Well, where does that live as the asset goes through its life cycle and can we continue to access that information?
So these are all different things and new problems that we're talking about. Right. In terms of our space.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: So, Walter, you've worked on a lot of different projects this year. What was your favorite and what made it stand out from a workflow or design perspective?
[00:14:59] Speaker C: So, great question. So we are actively working with a large kitchen appliance manufacturer that is essentially using all of the tools that we have in place today that we would expect for large teams, multi site and multi departmental, both from the editorial to the marketing review and approval, and geographically dispersed.
So we're leveraging everything that we've learned and that we've been using in our approach to managing remote and dispersed workflows.
So in addition, they're really embracing AI and the use of AI in that particular use case.
So they're going to be leveraging some tools that we're excited to see the outcomes from.
Tools that are going to provide not.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Only.
[00:15:52] Speaker C: Assist in the editorial, but actually assist in the marketing elements and aspects of like how well you know, an asset can do and project its use case in real world.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: You mentioned earlier kind of the evolution of tools and I'd like to know how has your approach to designing post production workflows changed compared to just a few years ago?
[00:16:16] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. Actually I found myself even this year having a conversation with a customer that as the conversation went, and I never thought I'd say this, I was like, I don't think you need a man. I think what you need is something to help orchestrate and manage all of your media and other tools that can do that. And that's also because of how they're using the product, but also in terms of how other assisting products like mentioned tools from AI that can scan your media and help find assets. So you don't necessarily need to have everything in a single pane of glass because now you can almost speak to your volumes of data and get what you want.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: That brings up a good point. The things that you haven't really thought of that you do need to think of. And so my question to you is, if a team is planning a workflow infrastructure upgrade next year, what should be at the top of their priority list and what would you say can safely wait to till later on in the game?
[00:17:26] Speaker C: So the most important, especially if you're doing an upgrade, is what codec and what specs you want to achieve and what are your goals in terms of performance. Because we're starting to see, and this is an ongoing trend, every time you tackle one codec you see you're foreseen with another one. And every time this new camera comes out, it has a whole new requirement or bandwidth that production teams want to shoot in that quality, they want to shoot at the best quality.
So bandwidth and performance is definitely a key aspect when you're upgrading or looking at building a new facility.
And so then the other elements too that we're really seeing a lot of is building multi use facilities. So not just video, but audio. Not just audio or video, but then also theatrical playback. Right. So Atmos viewing or Atmos mixing stages. So like they want to look at the facility being able to provide even more than what we typically have which was either a stereo room or 5.1, but now it's am I going to also do coloring or is that going to be in house or am I going to send it out? Am I going to do then atmos mixing? So those are all going to be very critical conversations that we have with our customers.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: You've mentioned a lot of different tech concepts, whether it's codecs or whether it's AI. But is there any workflow trend that feels, shall we say, maybe overstated or misunderstood going into next year?
[00:19:00] Speaker C: Well, that AI will do everything for us, I think.
Yeah, that's not the case. But at least as right now, I don't see that ever being something that happens. I don't imagine AI being as creative as our creatives are in our industry.
So that being said, I think that's the biggest one right now that we see.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: I think with my first question, you talked a bit about the cloud and how people are always realizing that there's other hidden costs that you hadn't taken into account.
So that might be the answer to this next question. But what is one mistake that you see teams repeating when they start adopting cloud or AI tools?
[00:19:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that cloud is cheaper.
And then obviously nothing beats tape. Tape is always the cheapest. Right? But then you don't want to, the tape has, you know, people think tape is old school technology, but Glacier really is tape anyway, it's just someone else's tape robot, not your robot.
Some might cringe at seeing shelves again with a bunch of tapes on them, but, but obviously nothing beats the, the, you know, the, the, the costs as, as far as like, you know, how effective that is in terms of terabytes. And then obviously you're seeing new LTO 10. Right. And you know, it was 30 terabytes two months ago, now it's a 40 terabyte tape coming out soon, still on LTO 10. So we're starting to see how, you know, technology and that's pretty exciting, right, because this, at least it's the first time I'm seeing where the tape growth like that without having to move from LTO 10 to LTO 11.
[00:20:35] Speaker D: Right.
[00:20:35] Speaker C: But I think that's one of the biggest things that we're seeing is, is where they want their data and then realizing that, that it might be not well positioned there. And, and that's also because of trying to reuse this content.
Right. Or trying to then do something else with it. Right. Well, you can't really, if it's on tape, you can't really edit. I Mean, at least not today. You cannot edit off tape.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: So what technology, Walter, surprised you most this year? Was it lto or was it something different?
[00:21:06] Speaker C: Was it lto? No, I can't. I would never say lto.
I think from an engineering perspective, I can't. I can't use that one. But interesting. That's a great question. Surprised me the most.
I think the speeds at which we're seeing NVME perform was really probably my biggest surprise in terms of how fast I have a particular customer that comes to mind and how fast and how much throughput we can push that one time, both reading and writing actively, which is a big struggle. Either some systems are designed to read, others to write, but to read and write.
And the throughputs that we were seeing, that was, I think, my biggest surprise. Not think that we would get to those numbers, which was over 20 gigabits a second. Gigabits or gigabytes? Gigabytes a second in a single chassis. So that was quite impressive.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Well, Walter, thank you so much for joining us for this segment and then taking my question and answer. I look forward to your answers during the live Q and A session coming up later on in this episode.
[00:22:20] Speaker C: Awesome. Thank you for having me. And I look forward to the questions.
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Count down the trusted team at KeyCode Media Book today at kicodemedia.com all right, let's now shift over to the AV world with our very own Mike Cavanaugh. It was a big year for av. Hybrid spaces are now the standard design requirement. AV over IP is moved fully into the mainstream and LED is, well, just about everywhere. Intelligent audio and video are no longer the extra bells and whistles that you need to shell out extra for. And this means customers across education, government and corporate spaces are rethinking how they build support and pay for the technology.
And at the same time, we saw big changes in product design, supply chain pressures, tariff impacts, and a real shift towards support models and managed services.
Mike, thanks for joining us. And let's get right down to it.
[00:23:49] Speaker D: Awesome. Thanks for having me. So pretty much when we look at it from Key Code Media's perspective, the year was really bifurcated. Probably first nine months was really driven by what's the tariff going to be and the changes based on the Liberation Day announcement in April.
And that was highly disruptive to people really trying to understand the budget. The ranges were all over the map. We had a scare in September where we thought tariffs in China were going to go up 100% and we actually chartered an airline to fly a big LED order over to bypass that point. And then the tariffs were never implemented. So there's a lot of just economic uncertainty based on pricing models and costs. But I'd say the last three months it's really as that stabilized as of today, it's really been driven around, you know, how AV and AI are able to integrate together.
And we found that to be very uniquely useful for both the corporate education and city government markets where for example, smart cameras with auto framing and auto tracking, speaker tracking, automated transcription, translation and real time meetings is a real enabler that is allowing AV to literally be a worldwide solution for corporations or for other governments trying to communicate or education.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: One of the things that we've talked about extensively and as we mentioned earlier in the intro, is that hybrid has become kind of the default expectation when designing newer AV facilities.
In your opinion, how did this shift change the way organizations have approached room design and AV planning this year?
[00:25:35] Speaker D: Well, it really started with integration of either teams or zoom into into a system.
And you know, there's a little trick, both Extron and Crestron and the different players on how to do that, where you sort of have to standardize on one but have the flexibility to integrate systems so that any system can work within that environment. The part two really was the traditional conference room had one static camera and you had everybody who remote on team or zoom with their own panel. And then everyone in the conference room was sort of sitting around a table and they were a smaller part of the overall experience.
Now what AI has allowed it to do is literally, you know, a Sennheiser or share microphone in the ceiling can be synced to a PTZ camera that's able to track the voice across the way as well.
Crestron has an amazing technology with one beyond cameras that allows both tracking not just within one meeting, but you can have multiple different conference rooms track together so that there's inclusivity across the spaces for our clients.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: And a lot of the technology you just mentioned can also play very well with AV over ip and we've seen a lot of that this year. So AV over IP and new control platforms made a lot of progress this year in real projects. Where did you see the AV Over IP make the biggest difference.
[00:27:09] Speaker D: I mean I think everywhere because.
And to put perspective, Keycode Media started servicing post production. So we were dealing with multiple sans connected with Cat 6 connections for multiple streams of bandwidth who then went into broadcast with NDI and now AVI Over P allows the conferencing and AV market to be able to leverage the benefits of multi level one to many type tracks where you're now connected with a switch that can carry and move signal anywhere you want it to be as compared to really being limited with that serial SDI connection. So you know, we looked at it and in our intro into this world was working on a project with Santa Monica College on in 2018 where we helped them put one of the first NVX systems in.
And when Crestron had their awards in 2023 or 2022, we were one of the early innovators for MVX and we really leaned into the technology because we understood what IP can do to enable flexibility to route signals and not have as much cabling as well the ability to service and work off industry standard switches.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: So Mike, when you look back this past year across the major AV projects we've delivered this year, what was the biggest lesson that you learned especially around standardizing rooms or supporting large campuses?
[00:28:49] Speaker D: One is just really thinking about how each room needs to be and how you can control them and make it easy for professors, grad students who run presentations, or even students to be able to walk in and have a seamless experience that's intuitive, much like they're using an iPad or an Android phone.
You know, that really is at the end of the day making the system. And we've invested a lot on our side of hiring additional people that can code Crestron Extron Q sys and allowing for the ability to really have a customized experience for that client for that room.
The automation. There's been a huge trend in LED over LCD as the price points have really dropped down in the LED market, even with the tariff type situation. So those are some of the core trends we've seen. But the one that really excites us the most is just continuing ability to add the AI automation so that literally a corporation city council classroom can have full capability to use that beyond just conferencing, but use that content literally from a broadcast perspective.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: So do you have a favorite EV project from this year, Mike? Something that really shows where the industry is heading and how customer expectations have changed.
[00:30:18] Speaker D: A lot of it's just upping the game and taking advantage of prices and products that have become more cost effective.
It may seem a little bit different, but the audio side of an AV system is really critical.
We're working with a lot of colleges and even high schools that or put it in Myers speakers or by a community and they really want to feel the audio experience, especially on the sporting side where, you know, recruiting is becoming more critical and they want to showcase and one, one we did that, you know, is a gin in Palmdale at Palmdale Aerospace High School. It was just really well designed acoustically, the video, the automation and just really proud of what they were able to bring to the table and really showcase, you know, for the school and the students.
We're working on right now a project that we've mapped it out, done all the metrics and we're putting, you know, high level speakers that can be communicated, you know, securely, you know, through Bluetooth or even the control panel to at any instance play any song and just get the athletes really, really amped up and pumped up as well the fan experience while working with areas like latency across the field and ensuring that all the speakers are really synced together.
But the audio side of integration of video, as they say, video without audio is just surveillance.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: If we put the, put the tech to kind of the aside right now, how would you say that Kiko's media approach designing heavy systems has changed compared to just a few years ago.
What are we doing differently now? That's had the biggest impact on integration quality and of course support.
[00:32:20] Speaker D: One is, you know, as a company and we're in multiple states, you know, a registered contractor, California, it's C7, Washington 06, Oregon's different and having the standards for both, you know, being able to label fiber, being able to like cable and we still do SDI when needed. But we've really been leaning into, you know, a full IP experience because it just enables radically greater flexibility and expansion components through the system. So we really try to look at how can we make the system more collective as compared to just standalones that do not connect together, allowing for radically greater flexibility across the network.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Well, Mike, as always, thank you so much for your insight and your wrap up for this year. We'll see you back later in the program for some question and answer.
[00:33:16] Speaker D: Awesome. Thank you very much, Michael.
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All right, let's bring everyone back in for our roundtable discussion and I hope you all enjoyed the videos we just showed you. Now, before we get started, kikod Media's Vice President of av, Akmal Bastoris, is joining us to the on the roundtable to provide his perspective on av because our president Mike Kavanaugh is away doing Mike Kavanaugh things. So, gentlemen, we've covered broadcast, post and AV separately, but the real story heading into next year is how these worlds are converging, right? IP is everywhere, cloud is touching almost every single workflow and AI is starting to reshape expectations. We've also seen that budgets are tightening and customers across all of these markets are asking for solutions that are easier to use and easier to support and easier to scale. So this is our chance to compare notes and to look at what we're doing differently as a company and share what really matters for anyone planning upgrades next year. So let's start with networks and IP workflows. And I do want to remind everyone joining us on live Stream today to put your questions in chat and we'll address them on this podcast. So number one is networks and IP workflows. So if we start with networking, all three of you, well I should say two of you and then Mike Kavanaugh, all of you mentioned IP is touching everything in broadcast, AV and post production. So where are you seeing the biggest changes in how networks are being designed and the training required to support it. And Akmal, why don't we start with you?
[00:35:34] Speaker E: So actually right now is not even only our trades, but right now IB is going to all the low voltage system because all the standard, all the industries going this route right now, which is an open standard that you can have all the applications. And also it proved like if you have one standard network people trained on this one, this one, it can be easy managed and also give you all the application you need.
So for AV right now I think the main thing that is added is the technology in few years started to enforce some protocols, stuff some switches, some consideration of the BOEs. Because right now most of the equipment are BOE. So we started to see a lot of different switches with different BOE budget.
So that's how technology is helping going on this direction.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: I think if I were to look at all the different verticals that mention video over ip. I think probably the one we hear it the most and talk the most about is in the broadcast realm. So Steve, maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit on what you're seeing are the biggest changes and how networks are being designed, plus the training required to support video over ip.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: Sure. Maybe a little bit background to bounce off from what Akmo just mentioned is the fact that years ago we used to be able to do higher speed transmissions over coax than the IT world could do. They have caught up and surpassed us so much now with what is capable there, primarily from the telecom and network interfacing sides. So now all of that technology is well advanced beyond what broadcast was doing and the cost of doing that are now coming down. And because that's almost 20 times the size of the market is broadcast, that's really driving it. So now we get to use all those cool tools that they develop, the costs are coming down and we're able to spread it a lot, a lot farther. The other part of it is it's actually somewhat easier to install than traditional analog lines coax, all that kind of stuff I can pull on a single pole, I can pull 12 to 24, 36 fibers, 48 fibers with what it would take to just pull a couple of 4694 or the, you know, the UHD cables in a plant. So that part's really easy. The third component that really impacts the whole vertical, the whole technology stack or maybe through a high end broadcast, is that even the low end manufacturers of networking gear are getting on board with the protocols necessary to support accurate timed media across the networks. So the training that is needed now is you gotta, you gotta know networking at all the layer levels. You've gotta know the protocols pretty well. You got to understand timing and you got to understand how it all stitches together in order to make it work.
So it's time for, if you haven't been trained on the networking aspect of it and you're a broadcast engineer or a Navy A1V1, time to get on board and get that education on networking.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: We've had several people in the chat give us or ask questions about cameras and automation. And I kind of wanted to switch gears towards that a little bit bit because during the interview process, these interviews that we played a few minutes ago, two folks, two of you brought up the concept of automated cameras. So I'd like to compare how they're being used.
So I'll ask the entire group here, what are the real world differences in use Cases and then expectations.
I'd love to have a couple of examples that are related to automation and cameras in classrooms versus major broadcast stations. And then as we talked in the pre show sports. So you want to tackle that one first, Steve?
[00:39:24] Speaker B: Sure.
The biggest thing that's happening with cameras is the technology that's able to be put in the camera head itself is radically increasing. We've seen huge capabilities in terms of what can be packed into a single FPGA chip inside the unit. So CCUs are actually not even necessary in most cases anymore.
Along with this, the image stabilization technology that has been developed by companies like Sony and others has gotten really good. So we can stabilize the image with the lens, we can stabilize the image using the chip, the imaging chip. And as a result we can at the, at the camera head, we can, we can make the image really good and compensate for flaws and slight movements in vibrations, those kinds of things. And we can now do a lot more color match and color blending to make the image look absolutely spectacular out of the gate.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: When these automated cameras are put into non broadcast facilities like classrooms, for example. Akmal, maybe you can speak to kind of what the expectations are and what the use cases are for automated cameras in the AV realm.
[00:40:34] Speaker E: Yes, sure. So an AV site and actually after COVID 19, when now all classroom is using the distant learning. Even right now it doesn't have to, but they're now used to have it as distant learning and incision learning.
So right now the cameras in every classroom or every room actually even conference room or any application has become almost as a must because they need to use it for virtual.
And this technology is really went to way more than what it was before COVID because right now based on the speaker tracking that we have a lot of application we are doing now. We don't have to have an operator to run the meeting. And this was a request for several years ago from some like council chambers, some people they saying we have a very few stuff. We don't have people that he can operate the cameras for us.
And even we did this one with some ways before which we set up the presets and we have the DSB to recall the presets based on the microphone.
But what's happening right now with different vendors they make different level of this speaker tracking which was different level of budget also. So I can mention like Crystal One beyond and vx. This is one of the highest technology I can see right now, which we are deploying now.
One of the largest training room in one of the Colleges and this one is combination between multi purpose room. It has a stage, it can be for meeting, configured for training and also it has a small table for production.
So using this system allows them to use this auto when they need to do. And also they have the same cameras connected through SDI to a blackmagic switcher so they can use production if needed. So I could see like this is going very fast, especially with the AI going Broward now and this one is going very fast. It's going to be, I think with AI this is going to be even a different level year after year.
[00:42:49] Speaker A: I'm actually glad you brought up AI because I wanted to ask Walter not only about AI but automation as well. And we've got a couple questions from the audience. So the first question Walter and I love that you said this during your interview is that you talked about there's, there's, there's a time this year when you actually told a client, I'm not really sure you need a map. So can you maybe elaborate on what use cases and what scenarios would kind of trigger that response that maybe I don't need immediate asset management system.
[00:43:19] Speaker C: Yeah. So yes, in that particular, you know, example, right. This customer has a very strong structure of what we would call file based. Right. So they exactly know how they're going to manage their media and their content.
But they're very dispersed using a lot of different locations and a lot of different sites and different teams using different, even different platforms. So some cloud, some on prem and everything in between.
So really for that customer it was about managing and moving the media in an orchestration layer of being able to like manage, archive and restore to where they need.
So that's something that other tools can do better than just what a MAM would typically do. So mams are, you know, for the large part they do a lot of orchestration and a lot of movements, but then they also store a lot of metadata. But for this customer it was really more about being able to manage and move all of that content to and from all the different targets that they're looking for. Which, you know, it didn't make sense or didn't, it didn't, it didn't dovetail into saying, okay, a MAM is going to help you. Right? It actually I think a MAM would probably create more complexity and then generate the other thing of just the change management of using a MAM versus maintaining that file based workflow that they're accustomed to.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: I think an important point to bring up is that, you know, traditionally Asset management has been well, I need a way to find something, I need something to use discovery as we say, and then retrieve it. But I think we've seen over the past five, 10 years that it's been less about can I find it and can I then retrieve it. But it's what are the other automations that the asset management system can orchestrate that makes it kind of a glue tool, right? The tentacles that reach out to everything. And I think that's kind of a something that we have to educate clients on is that it's again not just about retrieving, it's about what can we automate to give you some more time back in your day. And I think that also ties into AI. So Walter, back to you to start with. Where have you seen AI really be used this year in kind of the post production realm?
[00:45:26] Speaker C: That's a great question. And so tying back to the example we mentioned before. So another, another tool that we're seeing AI be really powerful in for, for the production teams or any team to be quite honest.
Because we're seeing you know, this application being used also in corporate America. Right? So that is the use of AI to essentially evaluate all of your media and then, and then you can, instead of having media managers tagging your, your content, you're literally asking your content for do we have a shot of such and such person in the day or at night in New York or did they ever say the word, whatever the word is, right? Did they ever say the word New York?
And so these are, these are way above and beyond what you would ever really expect metadata to be able to gather in a mam. And so in these tools are running next to your file system and scanning it and providing you immediate access just as if you were having a conversation with a peer.
Like do you remember that photo shoot or do you remember that, that time, you know, that you know, and where is that content? Well now you, you literally had that conversation with the on prem AI. And so that's just one facet of it. But we're seeing AI across many different applications from, from, you know, assisting with coloring, from assisting with, with you know, doing rough cuts to, to.
I mean the sky's the limit. We're just every day there's like a new AI tool for a new, a new feature.
But the common theme is that all of these tool and all these AIs are just assisting the production teams to get their job done faster and then make them more efficient and give them more time to actually be, you know, Be creative in the actual final output versus, you know, detective looking for something right, looking for that right shot. So that's what we're seeing across a lot here and now in our vertical here.
[00:47:29] Speaker A: So in prepping for this episode, one of the questions we asked everyone was how has your design philosophy changed? What lessons have you learned in the past year that is changing or molding or tweaking how you go about designing a facility, a system? What are your philosophies on that? So I kind of wanted to ask each one of you, are you seeing more all in one boxes?
Instead of racks of servers, what are you seeing in that design phase? Is it disparate parts or are we seeing individual hardware or applications taking on more tasks? So Steve, why don't we start with you?
[00:48:05] Speaker B: Sure.
It's actually kind of a twofold process. We are seeing consolidation of functionality onto fewer and fewer boxes. And that's simply because the underlying hardware can certainly do more. And so it's easier to get things tied together and once they're in a box, then it's easier to manage media asset flow through them.
The media essence is what I should have said.
So the natural consolidation of functionality based on the power of the device. The other thing that's happening with it though is that a lot of the processes can now be duplicated. Instead of being an FPGA based solutions, they can be accomplished using GPUs. So, so we're seeing a huge move towards GPU based processing functionality, both so that you can do it in the cloud and still do it on prem and as a result, we're going to see an even greater transition into the COTS based server IP IT domain for lots of the other functionality. And as that continues to happen, and this really impacts the design of a media facility, now you got to make sure that you're putting in the right fabric, the right switch types to be able to expand that later on when this, all this new technology really comes to bear. We're pretty much in the, in the general adopter phase of IP and you know, with 2110 those kinds of technologies. But the next phase is kind of this dynamic media facility where you can buy one or you know, multiple high powered servers and then run containerized solutions on their microservices and select from which vendor, who, what process you want them to do and stitch them all together.
That is starting to happen. Right now you've got isolated companies like Grass that are doing amp lava with their home and everybody else EVS is getting into that game that's the convergent point. And if you don't build the facility to support that today, you're going to have a huge cost later on when you want to go to that new world.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: So it sounds to me, Steve, that where a lot of broadcast facilities, you're doing incremental upgrades, you're patching, you're adding on one note of this, one note of that. It seems to me that we're kind of at an inflection point where you have to look even longer term because this isn't something you could just bolt on.
It requires you to do a reconsideration of your entire workflow.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: That's correct. It used to be that we would say that if you were going to change, you know, 40, 50, 60% of the core infrastructure, that was the time to move to ip. That's coming down now. Until if you're, if you're touching 20, 30% of it, you probably need to start looking at making those, those wholesale changes. And it's, it's not just that that the older equipment is going to go away, because it's not. So there's going to be able to build traditional facilities for, for, you know, at least a decade or more.
But if you want to take advantage of the latest technologies that are going to deploy AI, not just in the large language model approach, but also in the, in the algorithmic approach on how do I, how do I get these processes better? How do I manage my resources, how do I scale up when I have a big production and scale back down and reduce my overall cost of ownership in order to get to those tools, you got to have a pretty strong IP infrastructure.
[00:51:28] Speaker A: And Akbal, I'd like to ask the same question of you. Are you also seeing kind of a transition to dedicated hardware devices to sometimes ones that are containerized and they're running software applications in order to control these rooms. Are you seeing that move as well?
Yes.
[00:51:44] Speaker E: And actually before, maybe when we do designs, maybe six, seven years ago, when this is not just people are like today, we like to know from the client mostly what's the near future. Not only the near future, but also maybe up to 10 years, what's going to be his expansion for inputs and outputs? Because if I give him a metrics of 16 by 16, if you like to go after that and add and already full and like to go to number 17, he has to change the whole metrics switch. And this is a cost right now. I think lots of clients and a lot of engineers especially maybe engineer, understood that not only av, as I mentioned, AV and most of low voltage right now is all over ip. So usually right now they engage us very early because when they engage us early, this has become part of the infrastructure of the building which is going to be. Is being built or not a start building.
Because the cost for the client to build the infrastructure while we are in the rough end phase, while we are building, the building is being built is completely different than in the future. When you like to add all of this infrastructure, you need to know how many IDF you're going to have.
You need to prepare also what's the infrastructure you need between building. Like for example, one of the project we are working on is University is going to have multiple building right now they think a different way because they need to make sure they have enough bandwidth between the building. Because right now even if they're gonna have this EV or just whatever content going from building to building, they need to have enough bandwidth, can have that. So right now I think it's a big change and actually helping the client. He doesn't have to have a budget today to do all at once. He can start today. We can have a rack, we can have a switch, has 24 portals, 24 nodes. This 24 board can be 2000 nodes anytime. Just adding more equipment. That's why right now everyone prefer to go this route. Because I can make it 10 phases, I can make it seven phases. I can take it whatever I can, whatever budget is available, adding, adding, which I think this is something makes the client is very happy and also can work with the budget.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: And if there's one thing we all want, it's a happy client. So thank you for that. Akbar. What I wanted to then dovetail into something that I think a lot of people overlook. But it's mission critical when you are upgrading a facility or deploying a new facility. And that's cabling. Right. Whether it's Cat 6 or fiber structured wiring. So let's talk about what we saw in this past year.
So are we finally at the point where fiber is the default methodology for deploying cable or is it.
Let me rephrase it a little bit differently. Are we finally at the point where fiber is the default and it's not the upgrade? Steve, why don't we start with you?
[00:54:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say that wherever possible, if you're, if you're pulling cables, pulling fiber is, is, is the, is what people want to get to and want, want to be able to do the, the Cat 6, Cat 7 kind of cables, those they're still very prevalent because there, there are lots of cases from particularly for management networks where the cost of the fiber is not merited.
So a blend of fiber and CAT is necessary in a facility for budgetary purposes and it doesn't make sense to do a lot of that in Iraq.
So you got to be really kind of application specific about where it goes.
But the more uniform your approach is, the, the lower the cost of the overall infrastructure becomes and the easier to manage and maintain it it becomes.
[00:55:29] Speaker A: What type of fiber are you recommending at this point? What kind of speeds are you recommending?
[00:55:34] Speaker B: Well, that's really driven by the switches, right? We're the cost of 25 gig connections has come down so so much that that's kind of the preferred level for most of the interconnects. But now we have devices that have so much aggregation on them that we're using direct connect, you know, 100 gigabit links directly to the, to the spine switches or even into some of the leaves so that we can get large amounts of streams directly into the, into the spine.
So again, it kind of depends, but most of the, in most cases, you know, we're using single mode. There are occasions where multimode certainly can work better, but most of it we see as single mode high speed fiber capable of running at least to 100 if not being able to do 400, 200, 400, 800 gig capabilities going forward.
[00:56:30] Speaker C: Yeah, and in my side, I was just commented, the days of one gig clients and 10 gig uplinks are gone. Now we're going as far as 100 gig clients and 400 gig backbones with the storage and systems being multiples of 100 gig connections just to deal with the bandwidth of the media that they're working with.
[00:56:51] Speaker B: The nice part about that is that means that there's a reduction in the overall cable infrastructure number of fibers that are needed to accomplish the same task. That aggregation is really starting to come to fruition.
[00:57:04] Speaker A: So we've got some more questions from the audience and I'll ask these now. One of the big kind of Apple announcements, nerd announcements this year was the thoughts on the iPhone.
And the EPSTV team is wondering what our thoughts are on using the iPhone 17 and with the new dock, I believe that you can get from Blackmagic that implements GenLock, Timecode, etc. Have any of you seen that being implemented in post or broadcast or av?
[00:57:31] Speaker B: It's, it's, it's finding its way into broadcast quickly because of how many remotes are being done.
You don't realize it, but there's, there's a lot of stuff that comes back to you off from the cameras on an iPhone.
So with that capability where you, where you can sync it correctly and get it into a server for backhauling it into the studio, that's a real time saver, real cost savings, if you will, to be able to deploy with that type of technology as opposed to dragging out a large camera. So for quick captures, for field work, it's become a real asset in the broadcast field. Engineering work.
[00:58:13] Speaker A: Go ahead.
[00:58:13] Speaker C: I'm sorry, I was going to say for reality tv, I haven't seen it per se yet today, meaning, but I do know that during the pandemic everything was being shot on an iPhone, reality TV was being done through iPhone. So it's great to see that that's actually now out here because it's driven by that need.
And so I can only imagine that it's being purchased like candy at this moment.
[00:58:40] Speaker A: So Akmal, have any of our AV clients, have they been incorporating iPhones with a dock that provides GenLock or Timecode? Have you come across that at all?
[00:58:49] Speaker E: I did not hear about it yet.
[00:58:52] Speaker A: Then I guess it's not being used that much in av.
That totally works.
Walter, we have a question for you and that's for post production.
You talked about AI metadata tagging and how we used to have bloggers that would do it, but now we have AI that can give you that kind of semantic or contextual search. So what tools are you finding can do this on prem and if you can be specific with products and manufacturers.
[00:59:19] Speaker C: So the one that I was referring to that is Cara 1. And so that's a product that is an on prem solution. So it actually doesn't require you to send any of your media or any low res proxies up to another service and then back down. So that is a tool that is a, that is server based and, and all of its, you know, everything runs local to it. So and then you can scale, based on how much content you have and how much media you're bringing in, you can scale from a single server to multiple servers to, to kind of deal with that load as it, as it, you know, ingest, so to speak, all of your media into that contextual, you know, conversation where you can ask for a tranquil moment and it will give you, you know, any scene with that shares tranquility.
[01:00:07] Speaker A: I, I did want to comment. We talked a little bit earlier about the statement you said during the interview about you know, I you recommended a client didn't eat a ma', am, but I would almost push back that if you're looking to go all in on AI, you kind of need an asset management system because an asset management system is usually the, as they call the single pane of glass, right? It's the glass that you're looking through to find content. And by utilizing AI on your content, if an asset management system is holding your content, then why not feed it to AI, but the other on premises in tandem with that? Aside from Cara1, we also see asset management systems. Axle is one of them, where they have certain models that can run on premises like transcription and such, where you don't have to use the cloud. So it really comes down to what the asset management system provider is saying they can interact with and is it something they've built or are they using a third party?
If we transition a little, a little bit. We have a question from Kara that they think that so many of us are now thinking that with the implementation of our professional production jobs now being taught in high school, do you see the impact of what we're educating about today going away with TikTok?
Let's start with you, Akbal. What do you think?
[01:01:22] Speaker E: I think that's true and I think this is going very fast, more than anyone think because how easy they can just to have that in just a few seconds, few minutes he can have a content. This is, yes, this is going very fast that I can see that it can be replaced.
[01:01:39] Speaker A: And Walter, are you seeing that as well? I know Carol was asking about professional production jobs, but are you also seeing that in the post realm where how folks edit, how folks expect to access media has been changed and impacted by what they see on TikTok or social media versus the traditional education that they would find in higher education?
[01:02:03] Speaker C: I don't actually, I think, you know, it's funny because I think the entry into social media is sometimes, you know, just shoot it and post it but then once they start to gather, gather a following, then quality and, and, and providing a, a well, you know, structured and, and presented media whether even if it's 10 seconds or 30 seconds. So, so you, you, you know, I, I believe you start to see the introduction, right, of once it starts to grow in scale that it starts to get more professional looking. Right. And so it brings back all those things that you're learning in school, but it doesn't always start that way. Right.
[01:02:43] Speaker A: And Steve, what about you? Are you, are you finding that some of the expectations from Folks pursuing a career in broadcast has changed because of social media.
[01:02:54] Speaker B: It has, but I have a little bit different spin on it. What, what we're seeing is that there's more content being created now than ever before.
There was a kind of a complaint in the broadcast domain that, you know, things were kind of going backwards. The image quality was getting worse on, blah, blah, blah. You know, we kind of took a big step backwards with how easy it was to produce it. What's happening now is the toolkit is getting so sophisticated and making it so much easier for people with creative capabilities to get involved in doing the whole process that what you're able to accomplish now is far more, is far greater in terms of image quality, production value than it has ever been before. And it's getting, it's making it so that the creatives can stay in the creative domain far more rather than spending a bunch of time with the technology.
As a result, the overall production value is improving.
You just have to learn a few more tools. But the ease of use of so much of this stuff is getting so much better that it's certainly accessible. So I don't see jobs going away as much as jobs improving and being consolidated. So if you're good at what you do, if you like to be on the creative aspect of it, the tools are just going to keep getting better. If you're on the engineering side of it, what you're capable of doing and managing and monitoring is getting far, far greater. So you can do more with maybe less.
[01:04:20] Speaker A: So I'd like each of you to put your product manager hats on. We have a question.
The question is what changes are needed in today's desktop and mobile workstation designs to support tomorrow's workflows? Walter, you want to tackle that?
[01:04:37] Speaker C: Interesting question. So I wouldn't say that there's anything that actually needs to change in our desktops and mobile workstation designs, because what we're seeing, well, at least what I'm seeing, right, is that the cloud services, and we talked about it earlier too, with, you know, containerization or kubernetes and things of that nature, that is all coming on prem. So you're starting to see storage solutions that offer, you know, your, your ability to have, you know, your, your containers right on your same storage, so that, so that the storage or that the services are right next to or sitting together with the, with the media, right, with the asset.
And so, and so at the end of the day, what that really means, right from a, from when you look at it, from a desktop or mobile perspective is that all of the services that are key to like what you're doing, all of the heavy lifting is happening in the background, not necessarily on your on your computer themselves.
[01:05:37] Speaker A: So unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today's episode of Broadcast. To post. A huge thank you to all of you for taking the time to join us today, both in the audience and here at Key Code. And also, since it's the end of the year, I want to give a big shout out to the crew that puts this together monthly. Chase Baker, the TD extraordinaire at KeyCode Media and of the VP of Marketing Matt McLain, who produces and promotes all of these episodes. And for those of you watching, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow Key Code Media on your favorite social media channels. And again, my name is Michael Kammes and we'll see you in 2026.
Thanks for watching Broadcast to post.
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