NBC Olympics, BBC, Supersport South Africa, ITV and ITN are just some of the names headlining TVBEurope’s IT Broadcast Workflow conference taking place on 13 June at BAFTA, London. The latest confirmed case study is ‘NBC Highlights Factory: Nonlinear content delivery through effective workflow automation for London 2012 Olympics’, supported by Gold Sponsor Sony. Fred Wood (pictured), head of Business Development for Sony Professional Solutions of America (PSA) Workflow and Content Management Solutions group, will discuss how Sony are working with NBC Universal to deliver Olympic footage to viewers in the US. In 2011 NBC Universal was awarded a $4.4 billion contract to televise the next four Olympic Games for US audiences. In order to maximise their return-on-investment, NBC Universal will be broadcasting content through a wide range of non-linear channels. The broadcaster is also keen to significantly reduce the ‘time to air’ for all content, as this will impact on their ability to generate advertising revenue. Working with Sony, NBC Universal will be able to honour its commitments without significantly increasing its costs, by using Sony’s Media Backbone Conductor (MBC), a SOA-based workflow and process automation platform. A case study on ‘Collaboration tools for News production – building the BBC Journalism Portal’ will be presented by Paul Visuri, consulting director, Sharepoint City, a Gold Sponsor of the event. The BBC has announced that as part of its response to the rapidly changing media environment it is creating the Journalism Portal: a flexible and ‘living’ web-based system for collaborative working that can change as the needs of the organisation change. The BBC’s aspiration is also for all the production tools a journalist needs for video, audio and web production to be integrated as lightweight web applications through the Portal. Visuri from Sharepoint City consultants will share insights and experiences from the development of Portal applications, including:+ Cutting through the complexities of systems and requirements involved+ Working with users to craft appealing, user-centric applications in record time+ Successes and challenges with the chosen technology. Also joining the programme is SuperSport, a South African group of television channels owned by Naspers and carried on the DStv satellite platform. Speaker Darren Munro, Systems Architecture engineer, Supersport, introduced by George Boath, director of Sales Enterprise EMEA, Telestream, will discuss the ‘Supersport Digital Delivery and Processing Project’. Munro will describe the project, which was built as a solution to:+ Receive digitised media files via IP file delivery methods from over 15 programme contributors+ Format transcode digitised media files to the preferred house format+ Convert associated metadata to the preferred house format+ Process media files, in a nonlinear methodology, in preparation for broadcast+ Deliver files and metadata to the existing MAM system. Another new addition to the programme is Bhavik Vyas, director of Cloud Services, Aspera, who will present on ‘Enabling the cloud for large-scale broadcast workflows with high-speed transport’. Cloud computing promises virtually unlimited, instant increases in compute, network, and storage resources, enabling digital media companies to scale their businesses on demand to unprecedented levels without prior investment. In this session, learn how high-speed transport technology and cloud infrastructures are powering high-availability media asset collection and delivery for one of the summer’s biggest pan-European sporting events. The presentation will cover the media contribution workflows from the geographically dispersed venues to a central broadcasting centre and the final delivery to worldwide broadcast partners using a combination of an online ordering system and an automated, on-demand file delivery solution hosted in the cloud. ITBW’s keynote will be a panel discussion led by Lesley Marr, senior operations director at ITFC. At ITFC, which provides content preparation and media access services to major broadcasters and content owners and distributors, Marr is responsible for the entire operation, strategically driving change to continually shape and develop the business around digital and file-based workflows. Marr joins a line-up of high profile speakers at ITBW, which include:•Conference chairman Jeremy Bancroft, director of Media Asset Capital•Steve Luck, senior team leader at ITN, introduced by Amit Patel, CEO & co-founder, Symbox•Luan Thompson, lead strategist for Content Management at ITV, introduced by Paula Bargery, VP Sales EMEA, AmberFin•Charlie Cope, technical executive for BBC Sport •Harold Vermeulen, VP, Media Playout Solution, Grass Valley Signiant has come onboard as the latest Silver Sponsor of the event, joining Blue Lucy Media, Digital Rapids, IABM training academy, MediaGeniX, Pebble Beach Systems and SGL. ITBW is Europe’s premier event charting the development and adaptation of file-based operations in European broadcasting organisations. Register now to attend this year’s ITBW conference at BAFTA. www.broadcastworkflow.com
