Dean Wadsworth, Head of Technology stops by to tell us about how 10 Shake is leading the way when it comes to its use of Cloud technology.
How long have you and the team been working on the technology behind 10 Shake?
The project kick off meeting was at the beginning of June, but all the design work began in earnest from middle of June.
10 Shake is the first channel to use of “Cloud” technology for Playout in Australia. Can you tell us about how it works?
Rather than building and owning Playout infrastructure to facilitate 10Shake, Network 10 in conjunction with ViacomCBS have accessed from Amazon Web Service (AWS) on-demand computing services (Cloud) including computer processing power, storage and networking to replace the physical hardware. Software from playout vendor Evertz is put onto the system for users to access and control the playout of the 10 Shake channels. A fundamental concept behind cloud computing is that the location of the service, and many of the details such as the hardware or operating system on which it is running, are largely irrelevant to the user.
For 10 Shake there are several locations across the world accessing AWS Cloud services. The ViacomCBS content library is in Amsterdam, the content processing operation is located in New York and the Playout control facility is slightly north of New York and is controlling cloud playout systems in both New York and Dublin, Ireland. This is all delivered to us via cloud networking technology for Free to air transmission and live streaming on 10Play.
How will the “Cloud” technology make running 10 Shake more streamlined?
By hosting the new channel on the public cloud, we are saving on playout hardware costs and by remotely accessing the library content in the cloud we remove manual processes and eliminate the local storage requirement normally associated with bringing the content into 10 for preparation before it goes to air. The delivery process is streamlined, as the content is located in the same region as the cloud playout facility and is automatically staged up under instruction from the playout system.
Do you think the use of “Cloud” technology for 10 Shake is an indication of how we’ll broadcast TV in the future?
Cloud-based video solutions for services like Playout are seen as a promising way to achieve this flexibility and easy scalability – the idea being that using Cloud Playout will allow media companies to launch “pop-up channels” faster, deliver traditional and OTT content more efficiently, and ensure they have a low-cost, reliable disaster recovery strategy in place.
For example, if there is a major sports tournament or live event that a broadcaster wants to cover for a short amount of time, it can quickly and cost-effectively launch a new channel. Once the event is over, the channel can instantly be taken off the service line up or from the digital platform. Managing content via the Cloud also provides broadcasters with the opportunity to be more agile, expand reach and better monetize video content.