More than three decades after engineer John Abt founded AJA Video Systems, the company remains at the cutting edge of broadcast and media technology with a product range that includes converters, digital recorders, I/O technology, streaming solutions, colour management and analysis tools, and more. We recently had the chance to catch-up with AJA Senior Product Consultant Abe Abt about three key trends that he believes are currently transforming the Media & Entertainment (M&E) industry in Europe.
The first of these trends, IP video, requires little introduction at this point. Most broadcasters are at least some way along the transition from SDI to IP, while hybrid production environments are increasingly common. But what has been especially notable during the last 12 months is the increased availability of more powerful IP infrastructure solutions.
“The accessibility of higher-end 10 and 25GbE-capable switches with SFP connectivity is doing a lot to make IP standards, such as SMPTE ST 2110, more available to everyone,” confirms Abt. “A couple of years ago, you were only finding 25GbE equipment in the most high-end networks out there, but now it’s something that smaller facilities are able to invest in.”
The trend made IBC 2024 an ideal moment for AJA to launch KONA IP25, the company’s next-gen SMPTE ST 2110 IP video and audio I/O PCIe card with 10/25GbE SFP connectivity, multi-channel UltraHD support, and a host of other features designed to accommodate full and hybrid ST 2110 ecosystems, including support for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Streamlining adoption of the latest IP standards, KONA IP 25 is designed for a wide variety of settings and environments in broadcast, film, education, houses of worship, post-production and more.
The second trend concerns HDR and colour management, where Abt indicates that things are also moving “extremely fast.” Concurring that HDR adoption seems to have accelerated in multiple markets over the past 12 months, he says that “what’s happened with camera and display technology, with all of this expansion of the ability to display colours and the difference between colours, is an awesome thing. But it also means there’s a need for methods that ensure people can follow standards – such as the ACES (Academy Colour Encoding System) – all the way through the entire production.”
This is where the OG-ColorBox and a recent ColorBox update from AJA come in. Both devices deliver ultra-low latency, high-density 4K/UHD HDR wide colour gamut (WCG) video processing, extensive HDR/WCG conversion options, colour correction, and custom look-up table (LUT) processing for live production. They include the full colour pipeline from ACES, while there are also licensable upgrade options for a host of other advanced colour management workflows.
The third trend that Abt highlighted was data management. Whatever point an M&E organisation has reached in its technological journey, not one has escaped the huge increase in data requirements resulting from the explosion in content over the past few years. With new platforms and outlets being added regularly, it follows that data management needs are only becoming more significant and acute.
“Around 2019-2020, we noticed that the pace at which data – especially media data – was being generated was mind-boggling,” says Abt. “There were then huge spikes during the pandemic period, and it was thought that everyone being at home and generating and consuming data [was a big factor]. Subsequently, some people thought ‘it’s got to be much less now’ – but in fact, it’s actually estimated that 147 zettabytes of data, that’s 402 million terabytes per day, will be produced worldwide in 2024!”
Recognising that unstructured data – which often comprises large collections of files that are not stored in structured databases – made up a huge portion of that data surge, AJA partnered with Diskover Data to launch AJA Diskover Media Edition. With new plug-ins and a v2.3 software update announced at IBC 2024, Abt explains that it’s “essentially a global data management platform that allows you to take all of that unstructured data and index it based on the metadata within that data. It’s then possible to search easily through all of that data, report on it, figure out what your storage is doing, and better optimise your storage investment” – a critical factor given the overall backdrop of rising costs.
With data demands certain to carry on rising year-on-year for the foreseeable future, it’s a solution that Abt expects to resonate with an ever-greater range of end-users. “Already we have small post companies and VFX facilities using Diskover Media Edition, going all the way up to the biggest production companies that you can imagine,” he confirms.
For video overviews of some of the products discussed in this article, please visit:
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