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Trevor FrancisWorldwide Marketing Manager

Quantel LtdNewbury, UK

Shared HD workflows for Post and Broadcast

Trevor.francis@quantel.com

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Quantel’s principal markets

PostSports

DigitalIntermediate

(Film)

News

All require sharing of media and projects

Quantel delivers solutions to four principal market sectors: News, Sports, Post Production and Digital Intermediate for the film industry. All four require collaborative workflows to deliver the speed and efficiency required by profitable business.

Each of the four has forward-looking requirements to meet the changing demands of the industry. For broadcasters, some key technology drivers are High Definition, multi-platform delivery and the adoption of standardised IT components wherever possible.

For Film and Post Production, 3D stereoscopic is rapidly accelerating as the next must-have. The traditional Post industry is forced to re-invent itself as the capabilities of inexpensive software bring compositing, complex effects, animation and even colour correction to even the smallest production house.

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Quantel: teamworking on Avatar

Quantel is proud of its association with the production of Avatar: Every frame of the film as well as all the trailers and promotions have passed through LA post house Modern Video Film’s set of three Quantel Pablo Stereo3D systems. The work completed on Pablo includes conforming and Stereo3D checking, adjustment and quality control. Crucially, the Pablos have also handled all the Stereo3D English subtitling required for the Na'vi language used by some characters in the film.

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Production timescales

Film DI

Post

TV / Web

Months…. years

Weeks… months

Minutes

The production timescales around the branches of the industry vary enormously. Complex projects like Avatar may be months or even years in Post Production. For TV Post, lead times of many weeks or months are common. For live broadcasting it’s far more immediate, with Sport and News requiring a job to be completed in a handful of minutes – or less.

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File sizes

2k, 4k

1080i, 1080p

Compressed SD, HD

H264, Quicktime etc

The file sizes, file types, compression and wrapper formats are also diverse. For Film, 2k and 4k are normal. TV Post is rapidly heading upwards to 1080p –doubling the data rates for 1080i. Mainstream broadcasting may be predominantly still SD around the world, but the move to HD is accelerating rapidly, with 1080p moving up for Sport.

Much smaller files are in use both for the acquisition and distribution of content via the internet. With consumer HD cameras in daily use around the world, added to the millions of camera-equipped mobile telephones, we’re all now potential photo-journalists, so the broadcasters must be able to accept this content into their production and playout systems.

Most of us still watch TV on TV receivers, but the number using phones, computers and even games machines to screen content is growing fast. These are important outlets for the broadcasters. They have to provide files suited to these distribution channels.

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A solution for Film and high-end Post

Conforming, Grading, Effects, Compositing, Deliverables

• Up to 4K image sizes

• Uncompressed media

• Shared workflows

• 3D

To begin our discussion of shared workflow solutions, let’s look at a solution for Film and high-end Post Production. Typical workflows will include conforming, grading, effects, compositing and deliverables.

These are typically using uncompressed media files of up to 4K. So sharing these isn’t trivial. Copying and moving files of this size is enormously time-consuming and resource-hungry.

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A big SAN will fix it, right?

?The idea of enabling the various applications to share a common pool of storage using a SAN is a good one. No time is wasted when transferring between applications and as a consequence there is considerable operational flexibility about what happens and when. However, while SANs bring many benefits, there are many real-world issues that arise:

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Media Management

SAN

The non-workflow workflow diagram

Central Store

VFX VFX VFX VFX

Conform

Retouch

Retouch Colour

Online

Online

Scan Scan FilmRec

TapeOut

× Guaranteed playback?× Guaranteed playback?

× metadata incompatibility× metadata incompatibility

× lots of copies× lots of copies

× parent child deletion protection× parent child deletion protection

× inefficient use of storage× inefficient use of storage

SAN

Media Managers

× essence incompatibility× essence incompatibility

More Media Managers

× even more copies× even more copies

Formatconvert

Formatconvert

SAN

× creative changes× creative changes

SAN performance may not be adequate to support enough real time clients without imposing unrealistic limits such as leaving 50% of disk space free for internal mechanisms to guarantee performance.SAN performance under fault conditions, e.g. rebuilding failed disks may be an automatic process but it can impact the number of real-time concurrent usersProviding multiple streams of 2K and 4K remains a challenge in some systems. All the above make providing a mission critical shared environment almost impossible so local storage is often introduced where absolute reliability is required, i.e. client review, ingest and playout. Of course this adds inefficiency, increases costs and produces more copies of media to be managed.Applications may copy data to reorder it (edit it), this quickly leads to not only inefficient use of disk space but also adds a management overhead to manage all the copies of data.Different applications may support different file formats, resolutions, colour spaces or even bit-depths. These application-imposed limits mean media must be converted before it can be shared meaning new file conversion applications and more copies of data to be stored.Incompatible metadata between different applications and the inability to roundtrip dark metadata mean flexibility is lost when work moves between systems and external asset management needs to be introduced to track what happened where. This becomes a big overhead once the usual creative changes part way through the process start to occur.These issues are well understood by manufacturers of high-end edit systems and are the reason why close-coupled direct attach storage is still widely used in practice with SAN based solutions.

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NAS/SAN

LAN

Shared Workspace

Teamworking in Post

Audio

An ideal sharing infrastructure for post and DI would suffer from none of the above drawbacks. An ideal infrastructure would:

Provide deterministic performance for specified clients even at 4K when required without unnecessary overheads (no leave 50% free requirement)

• Provide guaranteed performance under severe fault conditions • Never copy media for re-ordering• Guaranteed fast access allows live ‘play’ of edits• Provide high bandwidth open ‘files and folders’ access to media in the

pool for clients not requiring deterministic access• Solve application file format, resolution, colour space and bit-depth

issues without requiring multiple copies of media• Keep track of media relationships • e.g. know which four layers in a composite relate through to the final

flattened result.• Provide facilities for storing and managing both open and dark

metadata• Scale to any extent

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Quantel ‘Dylan’ storage

High-speed accessFault toleranceNo-copy editingFrame-based media management

High Speed Access Dylan storage will support continual playout of real time 4K, i.e. over one GByte/second (GB/s) and also error-free dual 2K stereoscopic playback. The performance is maintained even with the disk over 90% full and irrespective of where the media is physically located on the disk media. The disk never requires defragmenting so all the bandwidth is available to the user at all times.Fault tolerance In addition to dual power supplies the storage provides auto-rebuild of hot swapped disks without compromising performance. Where required dual parity protection can be implemented to protect against the failure of a second disk in an array while another is rebuilding. Again this does not impact performance.No copy editing The disk is capable of playing out media in any order in real-time. It does not need to copy or move media in order to play out edited selections of shots. Multiple edited clips can refer to the same media. This technique makes storage incredibly efficient as the media only exists once on the disk irrespective of how many times it is used.Frame-based media management To implement no-copy editing requires a strong media management mechanism or inefficiencies are easily reintroduced. The media management tracks each usage of every frame, this ensures that long rushes are not locked from deletion simply because a few frames are used elsewhere in an edit and also that each user can safely delete unused material as the system will not delete frames if they are being used in other clips. Both the above mechanisms are completely transparent to the user, the storage manages the process without any user input allowing the user more creative (billable) time and to spend less (non-billable) time on media and disk management.

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NAS/SAN

LAN

‘GenePool’ Workspace

‘Genetic Engineering'

Audio

Genetic Engineering infrastructure allows multiple Quantel systems to share the same ‘GenePool’ workspace. This shared workspace replaces the direct attach storage. Each system accessing the pool retains exactly the same capabilities as it would have with direct attach storage – there are no compromises that have to be made to benefit from the shared infrastructure.

In order to increase reliability and minimise system components there is no storage controller required, each mainframe manages its own storage just as it does with direct attach workspace. Audio is stored in a separate disk array connected by fibre channel to each mainframe. New mechanisms are provided to ensure each system knows the current state of the free space so there is no risk of two systems attempting to write to the same free space. This inter-system communication takes place over the LAN whenever space needs to be allocated. This method also automatically provides fault tolerance should a mainframe becometemporarily unavailable.Due to the fibre channel topology each mainframe has access to the same disk bandwidth as it would have with direct attach storage so its performance remains unchanged. In the above diagram each system can reliably and deterministically play 4K (or could play for example Stereo3D) without any impact on the systems’ operation. So for example one system can be doing a client-attended grading session, another can be performing quality control and the third playing out a 4K stream as HDRGB to HDCAMSR for a high quality deliverable. There is only ever one copy of any particular media and each system can, in theory, have independent access to it.

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NAS/SAN

LAN

Shared Workspace

Teamworking in Post

AudioFile SystemPresentation

‘Sam’ Movie

If the GenePool infrastructure only provided Quantel to Quantel sharing it would be a useful development for the post and DI pipeline but this is only half the story. As has already been stated Post, DI and Broadcast Creative Services today are about teamworking and the GenePoolinfrastructure integrates any system capable of working with media in standard file systems. A shared access product, Sam, provides open read/write access to media in the GenePool.

Using CIFS (Common Internet Filing System) third party applications, running Linux (2.6 Kernel) or Windows XP/Vista or Mac OSX can gain read/write access to media in the shared pool. There is no modification or special API required, any application that can access media over a network will be able to access the shared pool ‘out of the box’. The Sam CIFS server supports multiple simultaneous clients each accessing the media at the same time without blocking. Depending on configuration and the network Sam can deliver several hundred MB/s to support 3rd party applications. Of course any file i/o activity does not impact on the performance of the Quantel mainframes connected to the shared pool.

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Access to: flattened files and ingredientsStorage automatically tracks and manages media relationshipsVirtualise asset in different formats

Shared inventory view

Sam

The above four layer composite is presented not only as a flattened file but also as a series of ingredients. This allows 3rd party systems to not only access the media itself but also to access the history of how the media was created, all without any external media management system. This is a truly powerful environment for VFX or Broadcast Creative services.

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Disk interface

HighQualitySizing

ColorspaceYUV-RGBRGB-YUV601-709709-601

Bit DepthDynamicRounding

On truncation

DPXPacking

CIFSPresentation

N x2Gb FC

SharedWorkspace

Pool

File virtualisation

Sizing: high quality up or down-resColorspace: YUV to RGB, 601 to 709Bit depth: 16, 10 and 8 bit with dynamic roundingDPX handling: data packing/unpacking

A further aspect of Sam is to virtualize media, initially to different resolutions and a common RGB colorspace but in the future to different file formats and bit depths. For example a clip that contains media originally from Digital Betacam (SD 4:2:2) from film (2K 4:4:4) and from .r3D Red camera files, can be presented to the outside world as if it was all HD RGB in dpx, Tiff or non compressed Quicktime files. Sam uses purpose-built hardware to handle the computationally intensive conversions on-the-fly as the media is read by the 3rd party system.

As always, no new media is created on disk during these operations. Each application simply has access to the media in the format it needs it when it needs it without having to explicitly manage file conversions. How the clip is virtualised is controlled by modifying an associated XML file. A ‘distribute’ function on each workstation then allows media to be re-formatted and made available for third party systems without anyrendering – for example an HD clip can be made available in SD to a desktop application that cannot play back HD.

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Typical Post application

A VFX facility can use multiple desktop VFX systems each accessing media in the GenePool. Media does not have to be transferred to the desktop systems they can work direct on the media in the shared pool, this greatly simplifies media management and also makes it straightforward to see an overall view of the current state of the work in progress as all the media is one location and can be instantly conformed for viewing. Full history remains available and files are never flattened making changes much easier than today.

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Locking image qualities together

Work done on one file type reflected in othersFiles may be real or virtual

RequiresRobust identity modelVirtual filing system

This is crucial for a scalable broadcast workflow

Web Desktop SD HD

Everything we’ve discussed so far relies on a robust relationship between different qualities of media, whether those files are real or virtual. All Quantel solutions are built on an identity model, which is the subject of another paper [http://www.quantel.com/repository/files/whitepapers_tracking_media_assets.pdf] which provides this relationship.

This is critical to Quantel’s broadcast server workflow, where broadcast and proxy media are held side-by-side on the same storage.

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Broadcast solution requirements

Teamworking in Post

Short timescalesLots of usersDifferent skills Range of file formatsDifferent sourcesMulti-platform outputSD, HD….3D?

News is only news if it’s current. So a solution must be capable of publishing content quickly. Sports highlighting has even faster reaction times.

In broadcast installations there’s typically a (relatively) large number of users, with different roles and skill-sets.

Incoming content will be in a wide variety of file formats, image sizes, frame-rates. Lots of sources will arrive at the same time and must be accommodated.

Outlets to TV, Web, Mobile must be provided – each with the rapid response required by news itself.

Most TV news broadcasting in the world is still SD and all broadcasters have legacy archives of SD content - but acquisition is turning rapidly to HD and must be handled efficiently.

It’s probably a fair prediction that 3D news is a way off, but sport will be there soon and other genres, like home shopping channels, can see the benefits.

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Shared workflow for live TV

Production

Journalists

ProducersEditors

GraphicsCameras

ManagersDirectors

Anchors

Sources Workflow Output

Let’s remind ourselves of the workflow requirements for live broadcasting:

Content comes from diverse sources; is processed by a cross-discipline team and output to a range of platforms. TV is still predominant, but outlets to fixed and mobile computers/ hand-held devices are growing rapidly.

The diagram shows a relationship between the different groups – they don’t act as an individuals, they’re a team. They need instant, uncontested access to the media. They need to be able to share their work within the groups and with the wider team.

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DesktopEditors

CraftEditors

DesktopEditorsDesktop

EditorsDesktopEditors

Collaborative working

Video

Dylanstorage

? Transcode

Broadcast FileProxy File

Database

Proxy files

Broadcast files

DesktopEditors

CraftEditors

Broadcast and Proxy files locked togetherLarge numbers of workstations with instant, uncontested accessCollaborative workflow

How do we make content available to large numbers of users distributed around a production facility?

The Quantel broadcast server is built around the same ‘Dylan’ storage described above.

Video ingest is fed to a dual encoder which simultaneously creates a broadcast-quality and proxy file, linked by a single ID. Both files are stored on the same storage with a separate database to hold both technical and essence metadata.

Client workstations are supported over gigabit Ethernet connections. Desktop editors working with proxy files; craft editors working with full-quality media. The Identity model guarantees a frame-accurate relationship between proxy and broadcast content.

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Make it fast

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Use an Identity model to represent every frame of stored media

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

3 4 5 6 7 8 A

Edits can be pointers to the stored frames

In Out

B C

Managed rendered sequences as ‘Deltas’ and add only these to the storage

Use these techniques to keep data copying and movement to a minimum

It is beyond the scope of this paper to cover the subject in exhaustive detail, but it is necessary to highlight the design background of a fast, responsive shared workflow solution.

We make a shared workflow solution fast and responsive by minimising the requirement to copy and move large media files.

Every incoming file – whether acquired as video or via a network connection – is split into individual frames. Each file is assigned a unique ID and each frame is indexed by counting from the start of the file. Thus, every frame can be referenced, as can every piece of metadata attached to a frame or range of frames.

Edit decisions can then be referred to those frames, allowing a simple subclip to be created by simply storing the In and Out frames.

In this way, edits based solely on server-held content are ready to play or export immediately with no new files created.

Any new sequences, like effects, transitions or keys, create what we call ‘Delta Frames’, the difference between the original media and the edited clip. Only these new frames are added to the storage. The database will register a logical clip which comprises the original file plus the deltas and use this information on playback or file export.

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SD and HD

SD sources

Auto size & ARC

SD output

HD sources

HD output

Held nativelyEdited togetherConverted on output as required

Editing

There are advantages to holding SD and HD content in native file format and resolution, notably efficiency of storage.

Editing workstations connected to the Quantel server may assemble a timeline of cuts, transitions or keys using any combination of SD and HD content. The edits are created and stored using the pointers plus ‘Delta’ method described above. Video ports and FTP export modules are configurable and may be formatted to be SD (4:3 or 16:9) or HD. Content is up or down rezzed on the fly during the playback / export process. File conversion and MXF wrapping is also applied live on export..

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People make TV

Teamworking in Post

Different jobsDifferent skill-sets

Graduated application setViewingBasic cut editingNews editingCraft editing / effectsFinal Cut Pro

It’s important to recognise that TV is not made by technology; it’s made by people using technology.

Quantel offers a range of editing tools, targeted at the different tasks which make up TV production and the range of editing skills held by the operators.

So, a simple viewing and logging tool, with basic drag and drop editing capability.

A cuts-only editor, with sufficient functionality to start and finish a news or sports story. No video modifications in here, but audio tools including level controls and voice-over recording.

A news editor equipped for all but the most sophisticated features. Including tools to fix the kind of problems news people hit every day. Like disguising faces; fixing colour-balance errors or adjusting badly-exposed shots.

Finally, a full effects editor with independent storage and hardware processing.

In response to demand, Quantel have added Apple’s Final Cut Pro to the workflow.

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Headlines, teases, bumpers, LVOs

Packaged stories

Efficiency

What are the componentsof a typical News/Sports broadcast?

The design of our range of editing tools was considered alongside the real-life requirements of live TV production.

A news broadcast, for example contains many items of different lengths; different degrees of sophistication and different timescales.

Many items – like headline sequences, the stories voiced live by the anchor (known as LVO – Live Voice-Over- in some parts of the world) and the ‘tease’ items shown just before a commercial break – are short. These are perfectly suited to a simple drag and drop desktop workstation. The training requirement is minimal, so a producer can learn to use it alongside their scripting tools and take pressure off the craft editing resources.

Our Viewer or Cuts-only editor is also a perfect rough-cutting or ‘offline’ editor. Edits begun on the desktop may be accessed by the craft editors –including Final Cut Pro – for finishing.

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Efficiency

View View View

Cut Cut

Edit Edit

View, LogHeads, Opens, Bumpers, Review

LVO’s, simple edits

Package editing

Edit +Animations, features, promos

Edit

Jobs

View

Cut

Sharing and delegating

Editing S

kills

FCP

A hierarchy of editing tools can be used to ‘filter’ the jobs flowing from the production.

Some may be started and finished at the simplest level – like the headlines described above.

Others may be passed on to a higher level of competence for finishing.

This is an important contrast with the ‘traditional’ idea of an editing pool staffed entirely with trained editors with sophisticated workstations. This is extremely wasteful of resources. Our model allows for larger numbers of simpler, inexpensive workstations, with each contributing to the stream of tasks and leaving the craft facilities to dedicate themselves to high-quality productions. Thus, the quality of the output may be increased.

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Quantel sQ server workflow

File Transcode

RecordControl

Quantel sQ server

sQ ViewDesktop viewer

sQ CutDesktop editor

sQ EditNews editor

sQ Edit PlusCraft editor

Final Cut ProCraft editor

Project sharingENPS

PCR control

SD video

HD video

Playlist controlStatus feedback

File Output WWW

Proxy media

Broadcast media

Archive

Putting all this together – the shared workflow model is superficially very different from Post, with some common technical elements and design philosophy.

Content is acquired and stored on a common pool. A range of workstations – with a common project structure – is arranged around this storage.

Separate, less-agile storage may be used for mid- or long-term archiving, using an MXF file exchange to off-load and restore content.The shared storage in the server is designed to be scalable on three levels:• Numbers of clients• Number of Input/Output nodes• Quantity of on-line storage

Users may work with newsroom management tools, like ENPS, to build rundowns, write scripts etc. The rundowns may be linked to PCR playout using the MOS protocol.

Video playout may be specified to be SD, HD or both at the same time.

Separate FTP outputs may be scripted to deliver content in any file format, image size and wrapper, suitable for web or mobile distribution.

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Conclusion

Teamworking in Post

Quantel has shared workflow solutions tailored to the requirements of the Post and Broadcast usersQuantel philosophy is to empower creativity while keeping the engineering where it belongs – in the machine room

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Trevor FrancisWorldwide Marketing Manager

Quantel LtdNewbury, UK

Thank you