Grass Valley: mission, expand creativity

Grass Valley CTO Karl Schubert pulls out his crystal ball in this Tribune to anticipate that broadcasters and media companies around the world will continue the industry-wide migration to Internet Protocol (IP) and file-based infrastructures, and that manufacturers will support this initiative with an increasing number of software and networking platforms.

When Karl Schubert, CTO of Grass Valley, looking into the next year and beyond, sees that broadcasters and media companies around the world will continue the industry-wide migration to Internet Protocol (IP) and file-based infrastructures, and that manufacturers will support this initiative with an increasing number of software and networking platforms, allowing users to work collaboratively and much more efficiently. The coming year will be filled with significant innovations at Grass Valley, with a focus on optimizing connected workflow.

“The advantage of software is that it allows us to get closer to doing what creatives want to do,” he said. "At the end of the day, that's what being a technology provider is all about. The closer you are to the hardware, the further you are from the creative process. When we talk to customers about their creative goals, we show them how we can help them do the same work they do today, with less physical technology in front of them. They are immediately interested. Who wouldn't? As a company, Grass Valley is working hard to drive creativity. The tools don't define the task, but the other way around. That's how we're going to keep our customers and help them to migrate towards the best alternative, which allows them to increase their productivity and realize their business and creative objectives.

Achieving that in the coming years is a challenge that Schubert has taken on with enthusiasm and with the understanding that budgets are limited in many cases, so the transition to digital workflow could happen slower than some might expect. This is very true, he said, in emerging countries like China and South America, where many broadcast and production facilities are just converting their operations from standard definition to high definition.

“There are still many opportunities to migrate customers through the digital transition, in the least painful way possible,” he said. “Our goal in 2103 is to accelerate the transition as much as possible, in an affordable and future-ready way.”

Con este fin, Schubert actualmente lidera varios equipos R&D en Grass Valley, enfocados en la adición de nuevos niveles de capacidad, en forma de aplicaciones de software, a través de soluciones de producción en vivo de Grass Valley y plataformas de edición no lineal en red.

“I think we've gotten to a point where the costs are right and the performance is there, so you can use off-the-shelf hardware and application-specific software to do most of the things you used to do on custom hardware and proprietary gateware,” Schubert said. "However, there is a limit to this. There will always be a need for specialized hardware for some parts of a facility and for the live production chain, where FPGA chips and real-time processing cannot be replaced. But, the amount of dedicated hardware required is becoming smaller. That is good news for our customers."

However, he cautions, software can't do everything.

“There will always be something that creatives want to do that we won't be able to do fast enough with the CPU/GPU combination,” Schubert said. "However, as CPUs and GPUs get faster, it will be possible to meet today's requirements with software, and perform more advanced processing with hardware. I believe there will be a continued move of features to the combined CPU/GPU platform."

For Grass Valley, software-based products are faster to market and can be improved with new versions on an ongoing basis, all to the customer's benefit. Once a product line has established itself in software, it is also more profitable, in the long run.

“In order to get us closer to doing what creatives want to do, Grass Valley has already begun to migrate from using traditional tools alone to a combination of traditional tools and software interfaces that control them,” says Schubert. "What we're doing now at Grass Valley are product lines that don't require large infrastructure commitments. Our customers say they want technology whereby the infrastructure (having to deploy multiple servers, for example) doesn't get in the way, but actually makes it easier to accomplish a specific task they're trying to accomplish."

Schubert says he is focused on offering the same flexibility that virtualization has brought to the IT world. He refers to it as an “abstracted infrastructure,” whereby the user does not care where their video server, router, or video switch is located, as long as they have access to the content.

"If you are able to execute a function from anywhere on your network, you now have enormous flexibility. The infrastructure (physical systems) should not be the thing that prevents you from doing the work you need to do."

IT offers a new freedom

In 2013, Grass Valley will incorporate this IT-centric concept into its current portfolio of solutions, at all levels, from cameras to switchers, servers, editing systems, signal management and distribution. This includes the ability to “return to the camera what the camera is sending us,” Schubert said. "We can use fiber optic and IP networks to locate cameras remotely. This approach will allow creatives to have an evolving vision of what they would like to see (with us as viewers) and realize it just moments later. We also see that over time, OB (outdoor broadcast) trucks are being built smaller, to fit smaller spaces and more limited budgets. This means that a production company could send a smaller truck to the location, and have many of the production tools located remotely, but accessible and controlled from inside the truck.

“This mobility is essential to offer creatives new ways to do the same thing they have been doing for many years,” he said.

The company's new LDX Series cameras are designed to allow continuous software updates. The company is preparing to launch a new service that handles specific Grass Valley licensing capabilities based on user needs: by function, by time, or set of cameras. This core service would allow a customer to activate a function for a specific event, during field work, and then turn it off when finished.

“This is a great thing and is made possible by Grass Valley's new approach, in a software-centric model,” Schubert said.

There is a new feature button on LDX cameras called “PickMe,” which allows a camera operator to tell the director that they have an important shot. This feature allows the camera operator to tag their shot so that the director is alerted in the production truck, but the tagged metadata can also remain along with the recorded content, after the event has ended. The camera operator can also mark clips, which can be sent directly to the Internet, to offer viewers at home an alternative view of the action (or a different take on a news story). Once again, the operator's creativity is expanded. This has never been possible before.

“We are designing the next generation of systems for mobile production, based on the direction the industry is taking,” Schubert said. "With distributed nonlinear production, the people working on a particular project don't need to all be in the same place. Five years from now, when cloud computing becomes truly useful to our industry, it will be the usual way to do remote production. Doing so makes practical and business sense."

Redefining non-linear production

Schubert points out that with Grass Valley's Media Stratus Workflow App, it acts as a workflow manager and provides a common interface for creative people, who don't want to be burdened by technology. This platform is helping to change the way people think about non-linear production, promoting the idea that content can be developed and distributed by multiple people working simultaneously, from different locations. This allows collaboration teams to create all types of content for different distribution platforms.

“In the old days, linear production required a single person to edit everything,” Schubert continues. "That consumed a lot of time and resources. Now content is stored digitally and many people can work on a network. They can collaborate on the same file and be much more productive. There are really no limits to how a program or a single piece of content is put together or distributed."

“Over the past 50 years, Grass Valley has developed and marketed a wide variety of new technologies, but television shows generally continue to be made the same way they always were,” he said. "What we are talking about today in Grass Valley is changing the way TV is made. This goes back to what we call the 'new era of non-linear production.' “Today’s professionals come from a wide variety of backgrounds and not just traditional broadcast, so the tools they need have to be flexible.”

Making a Difference (Connected)

“In 2013, Grass Valley will continue to develop the same robust, reliable systems the industry has come to depend on,” Schubert says, but it is also trying to shift mentalities away from what has always been done.

“We want people to imagine a future where they have more freedom, and where they can launch new services and more channels quickly and cost-effectively,” he said. "We're still going to make big production switchers, routers and everything else, but these traditional tools will integrate seamlessly with newer software tools, which bring more capability, in the same or even smaller footprints. Doing this system-wide product retooling has taken (and will continue to take) a lot of R&D investment on Grass Valley's part, but we know it's worth preserving our customers' future."

“The idea of ​​this new path is that we need to connect the new things we are developing with our current systems,” he said. "For example, you can buy an entry-level Kayenne switcher today, and then add new features and capabilities in software to enhance that product and preserve your investment. It's really about giving customers more for their money and allowing them to decide when to upgrade. That's the way to remain competitive as a technology provider."

Karl Schubert

Technology Director at Grass Valley

Although he has spent a lot of time designing and building IT-centric infrastructures, Karl Schubert's video background is truly impressive. In 1992, working at IBM, he led a team that created and distributed one of the first video server systems: IBM's MediaStreamer. This occurred around the same time that Tektronix was working on its Profile video server (now part of the Grass Valley portfolio), but, according to Schubert, this server was originally designed only for commercial insertion, while the MediaStreamer could work with files, broadcast content, run playlists and much more. The product worked with all automation systems of the time (including Alamar and Louth), and the server was developed in conjunction with a file system, so that it could deliver files and streams of variable content, over standard baseband or an ATM computer network (AAL-5). At that time the MediaStreamer was sold to a number of broadcasters, including Rogers Cable (Canada), Dow Jones News Retrieval (USA), TF-1 (France) and Turner Broadcasting (USA).

After IBM, Schubert moved to Dell Computer, where he worked as chief technology officer and started its well-known storage division (design, development and distribution of the first commercial SAN networks). He still holds some of the first patents for video streaming server systems, storage area networks and advanced RAID algorithms.

In 2002, at Austin Ventures, he created a group to replace the standalone digital video recorders (DVRs) used by cable companies. At the time, DVRs had many problems with disk failures, which represented significant operating expenses for cable companies ($50 per visit to replace one box on each truck). Schubert and his team came up with a way to replace DVRs with centralized servers for large metropolitan areas.

Schubert created a new company to develop these “DVR network systems” and worked with Jim Chiddox, at Time Warner, as part of the company's “Maestro” project, to design and prototype these systems.

“At that time we realized that it was a little early to implement such forward-thinking technology,” he said, adding that when costs became too high and the economics changed, the Maestro project was shut down. Schubert and his team showed that it was possible to do it, but that it was not worth further investment at that time. "We could lower the cost of the product, but the cost of transmitting files over a network was too expensive. In fact, in 2003, I told Jim Chiddox that it wouldn't be viable until at least 2012. And here we are today, with implementations affordable for everyone."

Schubert values ​​his new role at Grass Valley and looks forward to developing many new and exciting products, and literally making a difference in the day-to-day work lives of broadcast and production professionals.

“Three times in my career I have had the opportunity to make a real difference,” he said. "One of them was when I was working in operating systems, the second was when I worked in storage area networks, and now in video production and management in Grass Valley. This is the most exciting, because it's something I've wanted to do twice before, but it was too early and the technology wasn't advanced enough for it to happen. Now is finally the right time."