Sony promotes news production for new generation audiences with Hive

The result of two decades of continuous innovation in network news production, the new Sony Media Backbone Hive platform promises to mark a turning point for networks and content creators when it comes to producing news with the greatest flexibility.

Beyond being a reference solutions provider, Sony is betting heavily on consolidating itself as a strategic partner when it comes to managing workflows in an avant-garde way. Its technology has helped almost three hundred broadcasters around the world to implement network production systems, including Telemadrid (Spain), SIC (Portugal), RAI (Italy), VRT (Belgium), Canal+ or TF1 (France), FujiTv or NHK (Japan), Tv Globo (Mexico), Televisa (Mexico) or Televisión Nacional in Chile.

In a new IP environment, the emergence of Sony Media Backbone Hive as heir to the popular Sonaps promises a before and after in the way in which producers and broadcasters (traditional and new) consider the way of producing, managing and distributing their content.

As two experts in Media Solutions at Sony, José Antonio Bolós and Héctor Sierra, underline to Panorama Audiovisual, news consumption is changing since more than 60% of the audience between 16 and 24 years old consume news online (in most cases on mobility). However, at the same time, 90% of the population over 55 years of age continues to consider television as their main source of news. “That is the key, since broadcasters seek to attract that audience that they are losing without losing what is their main source of business today,” says Bolós.

Sierra believes that the real challenge is developing the concept of the 'central kitchen'. "Broadcasters have gone through several stages. In the first stage, which occurred between 2008 and 2011, the traditional media approach prevailed, with the Internet occupying second place. Between 2012 and 2014, the traditional media was added as an addition to the Internet and mobile. Now, we are experiencing a large 'central kitchen' approach in which all the information is prepared in a large central kitchen to provide output to traditional media, the Internet and mobile without hierarchies and at any time."

Along with this line, mobile journalism is being developed, for which Sony is betting on MOJO technology that allows news to be created from the field, with live streaming in real time from the camera itself, and a new concept of live production over IP. On the other hand, in recent months Sony has taken giant steps in this line in order to allow the mixing of packages in a 100% IP environment with remote and offshore production. This is where data centers applied to broadcast will play a fundamental role since they will allow the flexible adaptation of infrastructure and human resources according to the different production needs at all times.

And today viewers do not wait patiently until prime time to watch the most important news of the day on television: by that time they have already seen an entry, blog or video from their smartphones. News is produced anywhere and at any time, so the real competition for the networks is anyone with an account on one of the social networks.

Designed for today's fast-paced new content creation landscape, the Sony Media Backbone Hive system builds on two decades of Sony innovation in news production, with the most popular solution being Sonaps, popular with broadcasters around the world. Sony has now taken the best of Sonaps and improved it, taking advantage of the resilience, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of Internet technologies and the latest IT trends.

Its advantages are faster processes, more creative production possibilities, as well as a positive change from previous systems that required greater capital investment to an operating model oriented towards opex, capable of considerably reducing the real cost of news production.

Media Backbone Hive coordinates all phases of this news workflow and provides powerful and intuitive applications for planning, ingesting, browsing, editing, publishing, playback, archiving and management functions.

Network production with Hive

As a networked production system for all media, Media Backbone Hive supports fast and efficient content creation for both the Internet, mobile applications, social networks and broadcast. Just as importantly, it provides seamless integration with the market's leading editorial and graphics platforms to ensure journalists and traders can continue working with the tools they are familiar with. Furthermore, while Sonaps was focused on conventional camera-based methods of ENG work, Hive takes into account the possibility of the news being recorded and viewed on a mobile phone or tablet.

Media Backbone Hive is Sony's latest all-media network production system with an advanced scalable platform based on Hyper Convergent Nodes technology. The sports and news production system provides comprehensive camera-to-file workflow and content management, with a host of customer benefits in terms of speed, ease of integration and unprecedented flexibility.

The heir to the popular Sonaps, Sony is now based on small nodes that include a database part, computing... in this way it is possible to add or subtract nodes depending on the size of the medium, information needs or organic growth.

In this way, capacity, bandwidth, and processing power for the entire system can be adjusted by adding or removing nodes at any time. Users will enjoy exceptional performance, with software upgrades and upgrades without costly system interruptions. And since resources can quickly scale up and down to meet changing needs and budgets, this makes it possible to have a truly cost-effective, dynamic pay-as-you-go approach to service delivery.

To date, broadcast infrastructures were based on dedicated hardware for storage, databases, computing resources... "Growing in that structure was very difficult. However, now, with Hive and a series of applications that work against standard IT hardware, it is possible to adapt the structure as necessary," highlights Sierra.

"The standard IT hardware structure allows Media Backbone Hive to be conceived under a pay-as-you-go scheme in the cloud in a data center. Therefore, it is based on a more OPEX than CAPEX approach," says Bolós.

As it is a scalable, cloud-native and flexible proposal, Hive allows you to shorten the launch time of new services while gaining efficiency and creativity when reaching new audiences.

Hyper Convergent Node

Media Backbone Hive has been designed from the ground up by Sony as a broadcast production system based on high-end data center technologies. In addition, it has reinvented news production around an agile data center model based on the cloud and open source technologies, taking advantage of next-generation computing infrastructures that allow capacity to be expanded or reduced quickly as needs change.

This decentralized IT approach dramatically optimizes networks' workflows and content management strategies. It also means that media assets are no longer archived in expensive on-site storage but are immediately available to any user, whether on or off-site. Also, if there is a big story, such as an election or a natural disaster, it is easier to add more capabilities on the fly, without needing to stop the system.

At the core of Media Backbone Hive is our next-generation Hyper Convergent Node technology. By replacing the old independent “silos” for storage, processing and database resources, each of the nodes groups several applications into a single, highly scalable element capable of responding to the new challenges in agile news production.

Main features of Hive

• Streamlined camera-to-file production workflow
• Fully integrated solution for an efficient process from planning to publication
• Delivers web and mobile workflows that adapt to digital trends
• Set of recognized tools for journalists and users
• Scalable and functional dynamic pay-per-use system
• Ability to scale up or down to fit business requirements
• Adaptable and open solution with the possibility of expanding to new production areas

Sony's experience in Telemadrid

Sony has extensive experience in implementing network production systems. One of the world's leading facilities that has based its news production on Sonaps is the Madrid public broadcaster Telemadrid. The Japanese multinational has had a long relationship with Telemadrid since at the end of the 90s it installed its first production server and its first digital writing system with a personalized configuration.

With technology and service support from Sony, Telemadrid has created an optimized and tested workflow using NewsBase, and gradually incorporated new technologies such as XDCAM file production, HD broadcasting, multi-platform distribution and a rich metadata archiving system.

Telemadrid was the first regional channel to adopt a networking environment. After having used Sony's NewsBase system uninterruptedly for 15 years, at the end of 2014 the Madrid regional government put out to tender Sony the implementation of its Sonaps solution.

Sonaps' innovative ability to manage metadata, manage creative content quickly and its open interface were some of the aspects that the channel valued in order to drastically improve the speed, quality and creativity of audiovisual content, while reducing operating costs.

Furthermore, as the entire system was designed with open standard software and using standardized hardware, it allowed us to continue using existing third-party systems, avoiding the risks associated with traditional infrastructure projects. The implementation of Sonaps meant the launch of an authentic digital network production system with global management of all processes and an optimized workflow.

Integrated with XDCAM, Sonaps has allowed Telemadrid to achieve maximum speed and efficiency from ingest to broadcast. Being an open system, Sonaps is fully integrated with NRC (via MOS) and archiving systems (via “hot folder”), working hand in hand with solutions from ENPS, Harris, Tedial or Avid (iNews and Orad). In the latter case, for example, Sonaps allows the integration of Orad into the graphics line itself, so the user only has to select the template, drag it to the timeline and edit it. Later, you will decide if you want to include the graphic in the piece itself or generate an “unburned” parallel copy to use on other occasions.

During these almost two decades of close collaboration with Sony, Telemadrid has successfully faced two great challenges: the migration from SD to HD (HD 4:2:0, 1080i/59.94i, 50i, HDV and HD 4:2:2 50Mbps) and the precise management and control of an increasingly greater amount of metadata. One of the great advantages of using Sonaps in Telemadrid is precisely the intensive use of metadata from capture to archive.

Thanks to Sony technology, Telemadrid has achieved global management of all processes (end to end) in a fully managed environment in terms of planning, ingestion, production, broadcast and distribution with integration with third-party editing and filing systems and remote connection between systems.