Living Live with Ross Video: Recent Episodes
Ross Video
Welcome to Living Live with Ross Video, a look at the tech and the people shaping the future of live production.
Metadata is the data behind the data. It doesn’t always get its due, but it’s equally important – if not more. Metadata is at the top of the list for Chris Lennon, Director of Standard Strategy at Ross Video.
It’s so important, he wrote a book on it.
“Metadata is not the sexiest topic,” Lennon said. “I’m here to tell you that it can be.”
On this episode of Living Live! With Ross Video, host Tyler Kern talked to Lennon about his new book, “The Media Workflow Puzzle: How It All Fits Together,” co-written with Clyde Smith. The duo also dug into metadata and its importance in production. Everything flows out of production, and metadata is crucial to that process.
When you think of production workflow, metadata’s role is making sure things stay in order. Because it’s at the top of the chain in production, it must be correct, because everyone down the line is reliant on this information is correct.
“The whole metadata area has become critical to all media workflows all the way from top to bottom,” Lennon said. “At Ross Video, we’re focused on the top end of the chain where everything is created. It goes to the old axiom of, ‘Garbage in, garbage out,’ but nowhere is that truer than in metadata for media.”
The latest advances in broadcasting technology allow teams to create fully-virtual sets for their anchors. However, the biggest issue with virtual sets lay in their artificiality. But with the development of the ACID Camera, broadcasting teams can meld reality and virtual reality in novel and exciting ways.
For over a year now, companies and their employees have struggled to transition to a new style of work due to the coronavirus pandemic.
There are many moving pieces and cogs in a well-oiled production, but one of the most critical is the production switcher. As Ross Video CEO and President David Ross puts it, you can think of these key tools as real-time video editors of sorts.
Production switchers allow producers to select different audio and video sources, graphics and more, effectively crafting a “finished,” edited final production on the fly. For that reason, the person operating the switcher is just as important as the tool itself.
“It’s kind of like [a piano],” Ross said. “You’ve got a piano, but the piano player is an integral part of this, as well, because it’s a bit of an art to run [a production switcher]. … Every second counts and, if you press the wrong button, something very bad can happen.”
Ross Video has used that mindset to build a long history of expertise in production switcher development, aiming to empower producers and operators to achieve the best possible results without being inhibited by their tools.
“We have to remember we’re, in some ways, developing an artist’s tool,” Ross said. “A lot has to go into the human interface of that, as well as the technology.”
That development – and Ross’s position as an industry leader in switchers – goes back to Ross’s father, who designed an early production switcher while still in high school, eventually designed the first solid-state switcher and was one of the pioneers of chroma keying in a color other than blue, helping bring the now-iconic green screen to life.
Ross and Ross Video have upheld that tradition and built upon it, helping bring to market exciting innovations like digital video effects, high definition and other technological leaps that are propelling the art of production forward.
Across the world, efforts to take better care of our shared environment and to undo some of the damage that human industrialization and advancement have caused are underway – and Ross Video is getting in on the act.
On this episode of Ross Video’s Living Live podcast, Senior Vice President of Manufacturing and Services Jeff Poapst, joined host Tyler Kern to dive into environmental initiatives, green practices, sustainability efforts and more helping to shape our collective future.
Poapst said he first had his eyes opened to the impact we’re having on the environment decades ago.
“Back when I was in high school – and that was around the first oil shock or right after that – I developed a little bit of an interest in sustainable energy,” he said. “I did some research and a couple of high school projects on nuclear energy and wind. … It’s come a long way since then.”
However, the conversation has accelerated over the past decade, and Poapst and Ross Video believe it’s time for the entire broadcast industry to act and put its weight behind influencing our shared environment for the better.
In particular, Ross is working to build on a legacy of more than a decade of sustainability initiatives, including the development of products with smaller footprints, thorough management of the company’s supply chain and local sourcing, a switch to recyclable packaging, and more.
Worship is an act that congregants partake in together – but, in the age of COVID-19, that gathering looks very different. Though two vaccines have received emergency approval in the United States and some areas may allow for in-person worship, much of the world’s congregating is still being done via remote means.
The pandemic has touched every corner of society, including live sporting events – but that hasn’t stopped the Drone Champions League from engaging in exciting eSports action.
The league opted to move its Drone Grand Prix Series to a completely virtual format, meaning competitors, officials, talent and fans all needed avenues to interact with and get the most out of the event, regardless of where they were in the world.
To make that happen, Ross Video’s virtual production division, Rocket Surgery, teamed up with ESL Gaming to convert the formerly physical, in-venue environment into a spectacular virtual event.
On this episode of Ross Living Live, Rocket Surgery Senior Designers and Virtual Production Specialists Terry Daily and Bo Cordle, as well as ESL Senior Global Manager, Procurement and Executive Producer, Special Events Simon Eicher, joined host Tyler Kern to outline how it all came together.
“Usually, they fly real drones, right?,” Eicher said. “They have a circuit of two years ongoing across the world already. But, luckily, they had expanded their strategy already in late 2019 and released a game, which pretty much simulates the real drone racing.”
This foresight proved invaluable in transitioning to a virtual format, a decision that was truly brought to life by Rocket Surgery and ESL. ESL helped craft the best possible format and strategy for recreating the physical event in a virtual setting, and Rocket Surgery built a bridge between the game the DCL had created and the technology solutions that would bring it to life virtually.
During trying times, relying on the media to deliver the latest news is more important than ever. Studio based news programs had no choice but to continue operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, but staff health and safety must remain a top priority. This is where robotics can be of service.
Karen Walker, Vice President of Camera Motion Systems, and Bruce Takasaki, Product Manager of Camera Motion System, at Ross Video sat down to discuss how robotics are being used to support social distancing efforts in studios. Walker and Takasaki bring 20 years of combined industry experience to the table and know first hand the ins and outs of how robotic and manual supports are used in studio applications.
“What we're seeing is a lot of people using robotics now because you can't have people in the studios. And the big advantage of using the robotics is it can be done remotely. So you don't need anyone in the studio. They can be remote driving the visual cortex from home,” Walker noted.
Takasaki explained that because many broadcasters can’t bring their staff into the studio anymore, robotics can allow them to plan an automated production. If adjustments need to be made, Ross Video’s Dashboard technology allows for making adjustments easily. “So with Dashboard, anywhere you are, you could log into a dashboard panel, connect up to the robots and make adjustments to the heads while you're doing the production and this has really been key to allowing people that do things from home,” Takasaki said.
When both safety and a quality production have to be balanced, robotics can provide solutions. Walker elaborated that being able to have full control of the camera equipment from home or a remote location minimizes risk when talent must appear in the studio, “Yet you can still have the most creative shots you possibly can. Whether, you know, the people are traditionally familiar with manual equipment. So you can still do that with robotics, and you can do that remotely.”
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Ross Director of Product Management Patrick Twomey to discuss an often-overlooked, yet extremely important piece of live production – graphics.
Graphics, Twomey said, are an integral part of providing a complete live production experience – while video and audio capabilities are critical and receive plenty of attention, graphics are a great way to provide information, clarity and more.
“One thing that’s always on the screen is the graphic,” Twomey said. “You have to make sure you know what you want to have shown and how you want it to appear.”
The key to successful graphic creation, Twomey said, is a simple one – preparation.
“The big part of what you’re trying to do is make sure that you can cleanly present information to the viewer,” he said. “If you know what type of content you want to present and how you want to present it, that’s goes a long way. If you’re not prepared, you’re going to be spitballing a lot of ideas.”
Kern and Twomey also discussed some best practices for graphics creation, including sticking to the region of interest to keep graphic file sizes down, making a full-screen reference to make it simpler for designers to create consistent pieces, and working within native rendering tools like Ross Video’s XPression tools.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Ross Product Manager, Dashboard Amanda Holtstrom and Technical Product Manager, Dashboard James Peltzer.
Dashboard is Ross’s answer to the chaos of live production – with this free and open platform, users can build unique, tailored CustomPanels that help streamline their operation and provide a simple-to-use way to engage in beneficial facility control and monitoring.
“I think anyone that has to do live productions knows that, in the middle of an event or a moment, it’s important to limit the number of options you have available to you to make sure you don’t do the wrong thing,” Peltzer said. “You want to be able to choose from a reduced set of features and options that allow you to make sure what you’re doing is correct and reproducible.”
This need is only amplified, Holtstrom said, by the complexity of many live production environments.
Some of the key features of a solution like Dashboard are the ability to select the features that are most meaningful and critical to a producer during a production, allowing for the creation of presets that further streamline future workflows, scripting features, easy-to-understand visual logic, and more.
The eSports industry has seen exponential growth essentially overnight, with the popularity of this gaming-based entertainment ballooning to nearly match that of other professional sports.
The industry has branched out beyond streaming platforms and into in-person, full-fledged leagues and events that draw throngs of dedicated fans. To capitalize on this growth, eSports arenas and productions need to provide cutting-edge, top-notch experiences.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Ross Video[embed: www.rossvideo.com] eSports Business Development Manager Cameron Reed to discuss exactly how to bring those experiences to life. eSports are unique, Reed said, for the limitless potential for angles and viewpoints provided by in-game observers that offer unparalleled flexibility and movement.
“There’s really nothing limiting any angle a director could possibly choose or want to see, because it’s always accessible,” he said. “When you compare that to NASCAR or football or basketball, there really only are so many angles that, physically, are even possible, let alone something you would want to do from a production standpoint.”
eSports are also set apart by a unique ability for productions to automate the tools that, in more traditional workflows, need to be manually entered, such as statistics.
“In video games, it’s all just data,” Reed said.
By combining these unique capabilities with some traditional broadcast sensibilities, leveraging a unique mix of new-school professionals with deep knowledge of the subject matter and old-school professionals with the production chops, and a focus on letting the gamers tell the story they understand best, eSports productions can wow audiences for years to come.
And Ross Video’s end-to-end workflows and custom dashboards, which allow for the condensing of key production elements into a single button push and are easy to understand and operate, make that possible.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Ross Video President and Executive Producer, Ross Mobile Productions Mitch Rubenstein and Stephen Repass, General Manager, Ross Mobile Productions.
The trio dove into the explosion of remote production, examining the journey of the industry to its current height and providing insights about where it might be headed.
“Over the course of the last several years, anyone who follows the industry and it a sports fan realizes that the advent of new networks has really increased the appetite that viewers have had for our type of product,” Rubenstein said. “Whether it’s an OTT platform, a new cable network, anything coming from a school-based production – you’re seeing more and more content on the air, which means more and more need for companies like ours.”
Specifically, Repass said, the boom in digital-only platforms has created a need for lean, efficient workflows and productions that can avoid spending resources in the way the traditional broadcast giants do.
“You can’t do a 53-foot truck and come in and spend $60,000-$70,000 on a show that’s going to air on a digital platform,” he said.
Even the mobile nature of the audience and a lack of traditional “time slots” plays a role, Rubenstein said – instead of producing content for a certain window, there are now unlimited possibilities for content to air and be seen.
To meet these needs, Ross Mobile Productions offers powerful, consistent and cost-effective solutions in the form of full-service production packages and rental services involving much smaller vehicles and operations.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Gideon Ferber, Ross Video Director of Product Management and Business Development for Ross Virtual Solution, and Chris Mollomo, Ross Video Manager, Virtual Design Group, Ross Virtual Solution.
The trio tackled the sometimes-intimidating topic of rapidly advancing technology – though the sheer pace of today’s live production environment is overwhelming on its surface, paying careful attention to how these innovations can benefit your live productions can pay tremendous dividends.
And some of the most exciting, Ferber said, are new applications for virtual and augmented reality.
“We’re talking about virtual solutions, whether that’s virtual sets or augmented reality,” he said. “It used to be quite a hassle to build a set. Looking 10 to 15 years ago, it was extremely hard. Engines weren’t powerful enough. … Things have evolved and are much easier.”
In fact, Ferber said, the entire, end-to-end workflow is now relatively simple, offering live production operations a way to overcome traditional “too-expensive, too-complicated” thinking.
In the case of the virtualization of productions, Mollomo said the benefits are immediate and enormous.
“At the end of the day, you end up saving money, because you’re not having to maintain these hard pieces,” he said. “You’re able to have many different environments in one studio. You can pare down the amount of cameras you’re using, if you wish. There are a lot of advantages to a virtual studio.”
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Ross Marketing Product Manager, Asset Management and Storage Chris Kelly.
The duo explored the modern live production landscape, diving into how streamlining the end-to-end “news workflow” of a production can provide unmatched benefits in efficiency, production value, timeliness and more.
“News workflow,” Kelly said, is applicable to more than just news productions.
“We’ve been sort of stuck with this name of ‘news workflow,’ because we’ve been using some variation of it for 25 years or so,” he said. “A news workflow is where it was born from, but it really does have the ability to scale out to applications outside of a traditional news organization.”
Essentially, a news workflow refers to a setup where the planning occurs away from a control room that’s designed first and foremost for execution. Once the data is generated elsewhere, a rundown is built out from a technical perspective in the control room to best facilitate the actual production.
To take advantage of this kind of workflow, whether the final application is for a house of worship, corporate marketing production or any other of a number of use cases, team members must know their individual roles, ensure they have the tools they need to prepare and collaborate outside of the control room, and more.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Ross Video Director of Global Sports and Live Events.
Kern and Cottam centered their conversation on a key trend in the world of sports – the persistent growth and elevation of the in-home viewing experience, its impact on in-person, live sporting events, and how teams and leagues can elevate their fan experience and engagement strategies to wrestle control back from in-home options and innovations.
Specifically, Cottam highlighted how game day production at the event, itself, can bring fans back into arenas and stadiums across the globe.
“There’s a huge push to engage fans in that overall experience. … You’ve got your traditional production control room, where you’re cutting different cameras and showing different replays and things like that, (and) you’re showing statistics” he said. “And they would be different statistics and different camera shots (than) a typical broadcast would provide.”
Essentially, it’s critical to think about how staff can engineer a production specifically targeted at fans in the venue, then about how that production can be presented through cutting-edge LED displays and more.
The integration of more broadcast-centric equipment and AV solutions can also help, providing a cohesive, integrated system that provides consistency across productions and a simple way to ensure teams and stadiums are using cutting-edge technology to the best of their ability.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has become the world’s temporary new normal for doing business – and live productions aren’t excluded from that requirement.
With productions needing to go on as scheduled, but often having to be operated over great distance and through remote collaboration only, remote connectivity and workflows are more important than ever.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Ross Video Senior Solutions Architect Brandon Rhoda, Product Manager – Production Switchers Les O’Reilly and Product Manager – Overdrive Mike Paquin to discuss this shift to remote work and how, until the world’s productions can shift back to “normal” operation, productions can make the most of the situation.
Remote production, Rhoda said, comes down to three key factors.
“The first one is having the infrastructure to support it. You have to be able to access your equipment from home,” he said. “From there, you have to see and hear and communicate with everybody, so that’s really the second thing. And then the third one is understanding how you have to use your tools remotely, because you’re going to use them a little bit differently than you normally would.”
Regarding the infrastructure, itself, Rhoda said communication and coordination with IT departments, special attention to VPN services and their functionality, and more are critical.
While getting familiar with these new best practices and use cases for tools could require some retraining, the most important thing, O’Reilly said, is tackling latency and being unafraid to start small and scale up remote productions as your team becomes more familiar with what’s required.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Nigel Spratling, Vice President – Production Switchers and Servers.
In a live broadcast, the on-camera talent, graphics and more are front-and-center and top-of-mind. However, there’s a critical element helping tie everything together. Without innovative and efficient production switchers, productions can lag behind their full potential and engagement.
To stay ahead of the curve and provide switchers that meet and exceed customers’ needs, Spratling said Ross Video spends a lot of time talking to those on the frontline of live production to get a better idea of where current options may come up short.
“It’s a bit of a challenge, because everybody’s needs are a bit different,” he said. “Obviously, there are different verticals in live production. But the synergies between them all are very much the same. By listening and learning, then imparting that information back into the design team, that’s really the key.”
Traditionally, Spratling said, production switchers were mainly exclusive to large-scale, fixed-location productions. However, the evolution and innovation in live production and small, mobile production companies has driven a shift away from a “one-size-fits-all” switcher.
Spratling also said that scalable and future-ready switchers are a key factor in driving a successful purchase for any size live production company – if the switcher can’t keep up with the pace of innovation, it’s not worth the investment.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Ross Video[embed: www.rossvideo.com] Marketing Product Manager, Connectivity & Control Todd Riggs to discuss the ins and outs of decentralized IP and SDI routing.
While these aren’t new topics, a focus on IP transport topologies and a move to UHD and 4K productions have spurred a new look.
“Both of these things are stressing some equipment that we’ve had, traditionally, so we’re having to work around some of those issues within the equipment,” Riggs said. “But there’s also some promise with some of this that’s allowing us to explore different workflows.”
In the past, the way to build a large-scale router involved leveraging combiners, tie lines and more that could facilitate those bigger infrastructures.
As technological advancements were made, these large-scale routers shrunk down to a single chassis. However, even these infrastructures didn’t have the bandwidth required for today’s applications.
Now, with decentralized IP, unprecedented distributed models are able to be scaled to sizes that weren’t possible in the past.
However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, even for a frontier this promising.
“In fact, I would probably say that, for the majority of customers, a decentralized model probably doesn’t make sense,” Riggs said. “(That’s) simply because I don’t know people that have unlimited budgets, and cost is a factor. These models tend to be a bit more expensive up front just because of the way you build these out.”
Still, these decentralized models are helping shift workflows by providing scalability and ways to link multiple sites together in a much more efficient manner than single-frame models.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Jim Doyle, Ross Video Director of Creative Services.
Many TV stations deliver round-the-clock, well-produced live productions on Election Day – after all, it’s one of the biggest live production days of the year, and presidential races only heighten that interest.
But how can these stations ensure their offering is differentiated from the countless other options presented to viewers?
Ross Video’s Creative and Professional Services initiative, Rocket Surgery, gives TV stations a way to access innovative and cutting-edge solutions to captivate audiences and set productions apart.
Rocket Surgery offers graphic design in virtual reality and more, graphics integration with Ross Video platforms like XPression, virtual productions that leverage virtual reality and more, augmented reality and VR sets, and dashboard workflow design.
In election coverage, specifically, Doyle said preparation is perhaps the most critical factor.
“Primarily, preparation is important because, for a lot of TV stations, election coverage becomes their benchmark. It’s the thing that they measure their performance by,” he said. “Given that, if you’re a U.S. TV station, you know that you’re going to have a lot of viewers. … Why wouldn’t you plan ahead and plan early?
“Most of all, I like to start working with my customers as early as possible, so that we can come up with more creative ways to display your election data and your results data and really push the envelope.”
Essentially, Doyle said, the more lead time, the greater the ability to leverage innovative technologies like augmented reality to tell an in-depth, engaging story that goes beyond traditional election coverage.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, host Tyler Kern was joined by Jenn Jarvis, Ross Video Product Manager for Editorial Workflows to discuss a familiar topic for anyone in the live production industry – adapting to abrupt changes and challenges.
It’s a mainstay for live productions of all kinds – when obstacles present themselves, there’s no time to panic. Instead, efficient, agile live productions adapt, moving forward and finding a solution.
But that’s easier said than done.
“I think most broadcasters have emergency plans in place, but most of the time those are specific to things they’ve experience before,” Jarvis said. “So, perhaps a natural disaster. … At least in our lifetime, we haven’t experienced something of this nature. So, it is exposing some weaknesses in some of the plans that we had previously built.
“What I think it’s really teaching everyone is that a lot of the plan that they’ve built to allow people to work outside the station or operate outside of a physical broadcast facility were really around their live talent.”
Instead of focusing in on that live talent, Jarvis said the contingency plans of the future will need to account for a way for everyone with a role in the news workflow to work remotely – and likely for a much longer period of time.
Best practices for ensuring that kind of preparation happens, Jarvis said, include special attention to efficient, future-proof and scalable workflows during normal operation that are more resilient, developing innovative communication strategies, shoring up remote accessibility, and more.
On this episode of Living Live with Ross Video, Director of Product Marketing, XPression Patrick Twomey and Director of Product Marketing, Virtual Solutions Gideon Ferber joined host Tyler Kern to discuss the upcoming presidential election and how video producers can best leverage their craft to deliver engaging coverage.
Twomey said that one of the biggest challenges facing election coverage is the uptick in what’s asked of crews that aren’t specifically focusing on that coverage.
“Generally, the resources available at a TV station in North America, or at least in the United States … are compartmentalized,” he said. “So, the same team that’s covering other current events and other stories in the market will be repurposed at the last second to cover elections. The graphics teams don’t have people dedicated to cutting out headshots and candidate information and logos.”
As opposed to pre-planning election coverage, Twomey said, many stations simply focus on regular coverage and programming until it’s time to step it up as the election draws near.
Though election coverage is critically important, this lack of attention beforehand, combined with a feeling that much of it can’t be planned in advance, regardless, holds that coverage back.
Fortunately, Twomey said, there’s a solution in the form of applying resources already available to many stations.
“A lot of broadcasters don’t even realize that some of the data tools are already in the building,” he said. “The same information that they use to drive their tickers, for example, on the bottom of the screen, whether it’s for school closings or headlines for the morning newscast. Usually, those same tools have some type of application for elections.”
Kern, Twomey and Ferber also discussed being flexible and proactive instead of reactionary, crafting storytelling with graphics, and more.
For live productions, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions when it comes to video. That is where Ross Video comes in. Jeff Moore, Executive VP & CMO of Ross Video, spoke with host Tyler Kern on the Living Live podcast to discuss the range of needs clients have for video in live production settings and how to determine the right connectivity solution.
Moore said there is a lot of confusion in the marketplace around IP vs. SDI and which solution is the right one to use for a customer. The answer, Moore said, centers on what a customer is trying to achieve. Customers use both systems, but a more common situation, Moore noted, is a hybrid use of both IP and SDI.
“The starting point,” Moore said, “is what are our customers trying to do.” The solutions generate from those initial discussions.
While it’s clear there are no hard and fast rules for deciding IP vs. SDI, Ross said IP is frequently a go-to for large-scale venues and operations, while SDI works best in small-to-medium-sized environments.
Costs also play a contributing factor in decision-making. IP may include additional overhead costs and might require on-site engineering expertise, while SDI could provide a simpler, more cost-effective solution for what a customer is trying to do.
“At the end of the day, it’s about the overall production’s goals and what the client is trying to achieve. That’s really what the driver is,” Moore said.