Industry Insights: Balancing real-time demands, cost in media orchestration

From automated playout to cloud-based content delivery, broadcasters are radically transforming how they manage and distribute media in an increasingly complex landscape.

In part one of this Industry Insights roundtable, we explore the evolving landscape of media orchestration and playout technologies. 

The discussion delves into how broadcasters can leverage automation and cloud-based solutions to streamline operations, manage complex workflows and ensure content delivery across multiple platforms. The conversation highlights benefits such as automation, improved resource management and adaptability to hybrid cloud environments.

Participants also examine challenges like integrating with legacy systems and balancing real-time demands with cost efficiencies. 

Industry Insights: The evolution and impact of advanced playout systems

Industry Insights: Opportunities and challenges with cloud-based content distribution

Key takeaways from the Industry Insights roundtable

• Automation enhances efficiency: Media orchestration automates tasks such as transcoding and content delivery, reducing errors and speeding up processes.
• Adaptability to diverse environments: The systems support on-prem, cloud, and hybrid workflows, offering flexibility to broadcasters transitioning between these environments.
• Optimized resource management: Advanced orchestration platforms adjust resource allocation dynamically, ensuring high-priority tasks receive the necessary computational power.
• Integration challenges: Implementing orchestration with legacy systems and ensuring metadata alignment can be complex but are critical for streamlined operations.
• Scalability ensures future readiness: Effective systems can scale to accommodate growing demands, enabling broadcasters to handle increasing volumes of content and endpoints.

How does media orchestration improve broadcast workflows?

Andy Warman, CTO for video, Imagine Communications: Effective media orchestration (file-based content, live streams, and associated metadata) ensures the right content is available in the right place(s) and right format(s) for delivery at the right time. This includes ensuring that content rights and embargoes, censorship, and other constraints that impact who can watch where, when and on what device(s) are met. This can be in the form of preprocessing file-based content to make it ready for consumption, or live processing to allow it to reach all desired endpoints.

Paul Schiller, product marketing manager, TAG Video Systems: Media orchestration enhances broadcast workflows by automating key processes and enabling dynamic resource management. For example, systems with adaptive monitoring can adjust the intensity of stream monitoring based on compute resource, ensuring high-priority streams are monitored frame-by-frame while less critical streams are managed with reduced CPU loads only monitoring at specific user-defined intervals. This optimizes system performance and reduces operational overhead, creating a more efficient monitoring workflows.

Tsviatko Jongov, product manager, MainConcept: If orchestration is designed well, it can amalgamate workflows across broadcast companies, making them more streamlined, saving both time and money. Orchestration gives more control of the media process from format unification, up to a multi-format enabled playout. Managing the workflow at this level offers more flexibility and control over the compatibility side in all steps of the chain.

Sean Bicknell, CRO, 7fivefive: Media orchestration platforms are designed to apply to any workflow instance, supporting companies that are moving from on-prem to cloud, or even hybrid scenarios. By implementing the right media orchestration platform, the broadcast workflow is made more efficient and streamlined, offering a complete overview within the customer’s own account to make editing and on-prem, hybrid or remote work much more straight forward than previously would be possible.

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James Cranfield, global VP of sales and partnerships, Cinedeck: Media orchestration improves workflows by automating tasks, reducing errors and enhancing collaboration across teams. By implementing media orchestration, broadcasters and content providers can speed up processes such as transcoding, delivery and ensuring content is ready for delivery faster.

Geoff Stedman, chief marketing officer, SDVI: Media orchestration, especially when combined with effective resource management, takes advantage of automated media processing to accelerate and scale broadcast workflows. Content will flow faster through a media supply chain, with increased capacity, when processing tasks are automated and managed by orchestration that can spin up the resources needed to meet demand at any time.

David Edwards, product manager, Net Insight: Broadcasters operate in a highly competitive and dynamic landscape. Modern broadcast systems are far from static. Orchestration is critical in empowering broadcasters to seamlessly configure, bring online and monitor new services with minimal effort. The best orchestration systems enable broadcasters to respond to the market needs, delivering efficient and profitable operations.

Andy Rayner, CTO, Appear: Orchestration is an essential component of any broadcast workflow, be it an appliance or software-based or hybrid workflow. The term orchestration can cover a multiplicity of capabilities from basic control functions through to dynamic resource management. The level of orchestration required in a workflow is highly dependent on the architecture and scale of the solution.

What are the key features of effective media orchestration systems?

Klaus Weber, director of product marketing, Grass Valley: An effective media orchestration system offers a unified solution for the configuration, control, and monitoring of dynamic broadcast media networks, whether SDI, IP, or hybrid. The system’s architecture should be built on open standards and include features designed to simplify IP-based workflows. A key aspect is dynamic orchestration — the ability to create, configure, and modify systems in real-time, whether by adding or removing devices or simply renaming components.

Craig Wilson, product evangelist for broadcast and media, Avid: Open, well defined APIs, with the ability to easily connect to other systems as part of the production chain. Making sure that interfaces conform to industry standards so can be applied in many scenarios, as opposed to being designed for only a specific implementation.

Michael Demb, VP of product strategy, TAG Video Systems: Effective media orchestration systems combine flexibility, scalability, and real-time monitoring. Features like adaptive monitoring dynamically adjust resource usage based on the demands of different streams, while real-time alerts ensure issues are resolved before impacting viewers. The ability to scale across both cloud and hybrid environments also allows broadcasters to manage their operations efficiently as needs grow or change.

Sean Bicknell: A successful media orchestration system is designed to navigate and streamline the workflow process including those that are on-prem, hybrid and remote. A big part of media orchestration involves in-depth management of cost analysis and usage analysis data as well as real-time content management, a seamless view of all active workstations and features such as time management, cost-efficiency, automation and instant start-up.

James Cranfield: Media orchestration systems offer a plethora of benefits designed to streamline the entire broadcast workflow. These include centralised control, automation, scalability, compatibility with other tools, and real-time monitoring to streamline media production.

Geoff Stedman: Most orchestration systems simply manage tasks that have been pre-programmed into a standard workflow. The most effective orchestration systems take that several steps further by activating the media applications needed to perform the task, automatically provisioning the infrastructure needed to support those applications, and including decision logic that reacts to the results of each step to guide what happens next. These platforms operate autonomously and allow operators to work on an exception basis rather than having to manually touch every piece of content.

Aaron Kroger, product marketing lead, Dalet: An effective media orchestration system is most importantly flexible. Workflows, specifications, and distribution channels are constantly evolving and you need to be able to quickly adapt your existing orchestration workflows to accommodate. In addition to flexibility, scalability is also crucial, as the number of endpoints increases you need to be able to easily and cost effectively maintain your delivery velocity.

What challenges are associated with implementing media orchestration in broadcast workflows?

Craig Wilson: Often there is a desire to do too much too quickly, adding complexity to the initial stages of an implementation. Greater success can often be achieved by starting with smaller initial goals to build expertise and knowledge, before implementing more expansive workflows and realizing greater gains overall.

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Tsviatko Jongov: While the most important and vital aspects of media workflow orchestration is managing the transport, conversion and archival of the video and audio content viewers want to watch, you also need to consider metadata, which is sometimes an after-thought when designing and implementing modern media orchestration platforms. Increasingly metadata is used to enhance the viewing experience but getting it into the workflow in the right place at the right time can be challenging, particularly for broadcasters using legacy systems.

Sean Bicknell: Media orchestration can present several challenges, including scalability, real-time data processing and integration. However, some high-end media orchestration platforms that run within the customer’s own account prevent some of these issues from occurring, as they can manage and use the existing security and storage solutions already present in the software. Media orchestration is still evolving, and as the cloud adopts more features and integrations, so will our industry’s workflows.

James Cranfield: While media orchestration systems are key for streamlining the broadcast workflow, they can often present challenges. These challenges include integrating with legacy systems, managing costs, training teams on new technology, ensuring data security and maintaining compatibility across various platforms.

David Edwards: Building up an orchestration system requires good design and a clear definition of the system. But a good system has requirements that pull through from further down the chain — right through to individual components and products. It is critical that product APIs are well designed and well written; without that underlying quality, it can be more challenging to achieve the end design goals.

Andy Rayner: One big challenge is the control APIs of all of the processing components (software or appliances) in the chain. The AMWA NMOS toolkit has come some way to providing a unified interface for the very basic control requirement of setting up connections. There are, however, many other elements of configuration needed on the components in the chain to complete a full configuration. There is further industry work underway, such as IS-12, which provides the potential for a more standard way of communicating a much richer set of information to and from these workflow components.

How are broadcasters integrating media orchestration tools to streamline operations?

Ian McPherson, global strategy leader for media and entertainment, games, and sports at Amazon Web Services: Broadcasters are leveraging media orchestration tools to scale the volume of content they ingest and process. For example, A+E used cloud-based orchestration to scale incoming content ingest and processing by 400% to meet volume demands and expanded delivery specifications (streaming, broadcast, FAST, and beyond). Other broadcasters like FOX leverage media orchestration and AI to automatically generate highlights and clips for in-broadcast replays or social media promotion.

Sean Bicknell: Many companies offering media orchestration are providing high-end, user-forward platforms to streamline broadcast operations from any starting point. As the industry evolves, technology vendors and content providers are continuing to focus on smoothing the transition process from on-prem to cloud; ensuring that any instance is managed as seamlessly as possible.

James Cranfield: Media orchestration tools are evolving day by day and are being integrated in new and innovative ways by broadcasters and content providers. Across the industry, cloud-based and hybrid workflows are being adopted, leveraging vendor solutions for automated workflows and enhancing collaboration through real-time editing.

Geoff Stedman: As broadcasters face increasing demand for their content, they are turning to automated processing guided by orchestration tools with integrated resource provisioning to help them meet tight delivery timelines. These intelligent platforms spin up the processing resources needed, along with activating the appropriate application for the task at hand, to handle every job that comes through the media supply chain. When finished, these platforms spin down the resources so that broadcasters are only paying for the work they have performed and are not paying for idle technical infrastructure.

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How does media orchestration contribute to seamless content delivery across platforms?

Ian McPherson: Cloud-based media orchestration ensures that content is properly formatted and packaged to meet the unique requirements of various platforms and end point destinations. Some AWS technologies help execute functions and automate portions of the media orchestration workflow, including content analysis, transformation, and delivery. Advanced orchestration tools and functions use artificial intelligence to streamline complex tasks, ranging from quality control to subtitling and localization, based on the rules and regulations for a given platform or geography.

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Andy Warman: There is an interplay between media orchestration and the delivery systems that enables content to reach target audiences. Media orchestration needs to be responsive not only to scheduled delivery of live linear services and availability of content for VOD, but also to changes that may happen for live events and content availability or changes and substitutions made in the run up to delivery.

Paul Schiller: By incorporating real-time analytics and monitoring capabilities, media orchestration systems ensure content is delivered seamlessly across platforms. When problems arise, features such as real-time, actionable alerts allow operators to intervene before viewers are affected. Systems can also integrate with cloud environments to manage distribution dynamically, ensuring smooth delivery across traditional broadcast and OTT platforms.

Geoff Stedman: Today’s content is very often destined for multiple delivery platforms, each with their own idiosyncrasies in terms of formats, composition, and metadata. Multiplying hundreds of destinations by the thousands of titles that need to be delivered yields a situation where the only way to meet demand is by having an intelligent orchestration platform that manages and automates the transformation needed to create every delivery package.

David Edwards: Broadcast operations are built around multiple pieces of equipment and workflows all coming together to operate as one. A well designed orchestration system forms the heart of that workflow and pulls together broadcast operations. But simplicity is the key. For the operations teams and for the business, being able to perform key operations and have key information through just a few clicks can be critical to achieving a smooth-running and responsive organization.

Aaron Kroger: Media orchestration through workflow automation ensures that content flows quickly, easily, and is properly formatted for any and all distribution platforms. It increases both speed and accuracy for seamless content delivery.

How can media orchestration improve efficiency in content management?

Klaus Weber: As the demand for new content grows, media organizations must develop strategies to enhance the efficiency of content production, from creation to distribution. By streamlining the content creation process, facilitating collaboration among globally distributed teams, and building systems that dynamically adapt to demand, media organizations can achieve significant cost savings while increasing content output. Media orchestration plays a key role in this effort by ensuring efficient monitoring and accurate distribution of material.

Tsviatko Jongov: The biggest area of gain from a well-designed orchestration process will be time. You can remove time consuming legacy operational processes, design the process to have files and data in the right place at the right time, meaning areas like edit are never waiting. This then naturally brings cost savings and allows higher throughput.

Sean Bicknell: Much of the broadcast and media workflow has been on-prem and hardware-based for decades. Media orchestration tools are driving towards a workflow where this is not needed, and instead provides an efficient, user-friendly and seamless interface for use in any instance of the cloud. Media orchestration platforms allow for quick deployment of workstations with easily managed cost and usage analysis features that can be integrated in any cloud scenario.

Aaron Kroger: Efficiency is easily gained through automation and orchestration. This involves reducing the number of touchpoints and bottlenecks, ensuring your content is delivered faster. Additional efficiencies can also be gained by utilizing on demand/just in time deliveries ensuring you are making only the files you need, when you need them.

Andy Rayner: Management of any resources, be they media assets or production tools, is necessary. Scale is a key element here; to manage anything at scale requires compute-based organization, which is what orchestration is providing.

What strategies help broadcasters manage complex media workflows?

Sam Peterson, COO, Bitcentral: Managing complex media workflows in today’s broadcasting environment requires not only advanced technology solutions but also purposeful partnerships. The ability to integrate multiple systems—from content acquisition and storage to playout and distribution—is critical for streamlining operations, and can significantly reduce complexity for their teams and end-users. This becomes especially important in the current remote-focused landscape, where decentralized production teams need unified, seamless solutions that enable collaboration from anywhere.

Ian McPherson: The first is simplifying the media orchestration workflow to leverage the power of the cloud and minimize the content transfer between workstations and external vendors. Additionally, broadcasters are taking advantage of the increasing ease and reduced costs of creating descriptive metadata using AI/ML, allowing them to easily analyze and search content and automate some workflow functions like quality control (QC), subtitling, and localization. Together, these developments reduce a host of media management workflow complexities.

Craig Wilson: Defining clear use cases is a must. Being clear on what the end state is, and how that is going to be achieved, is critical to project success. Ill-defined workflows or use cases can derail a project significantly impact confidence in achieving the end goal.

Rick Young, SVP and head of global products, LTN: The days of only control room personnel driving playout and channel creation are long gone. Editorial teams, producers, interns are now needed to serve the demand of driving non-stop new content into complex fragmented audiences. Efficiency and scale is possible but only when working with partners that are looking to solve problems with a different mindset.

Benjamin Shirley, product manager for broadcast, MainConcept: By breaking the system down into smaller less complicated pieces it can help broadcasters manage complex media workflows. This is where microservices and cloud infrastructure help and allow a well-designed media workflow to natively fit and dynamically scale.

James Cranfield: As media workflows get more complex, so must the strategies that broadcasters are using to help manage them. Broadcasters are using phased implementation with modular system designs, powered automation and real-time monitoring to streamline operations while maintaining flexibility.

Geoff Stedman: By applying supply chain thinking and techniques to complex media workflows, broadcasters can create an optimized media supply chain that enables them to achieve efficiency and agility in their media operations. By using a strong cloud automation and orchestration platform, users can automate both the provisioning of cloud infrastructure as well as the applications needed for each individual task. With such a platform, operators are able to move to exception-based handling of media content, thereby increasing capacity and reducing manual touchpoints.

Stephane Cloirec, VP for video appliances and software product management, Harmonic: The complexity of media workflows keeps increasing, driven by the request for new video and audio formats such as HDR and NGA as well as the need to produce for more delivery networks, including traditional broadcast, MVPDs and streaming. By continuously integrating new features to support evolving formats and platforms, next-generation playout systems enable broadcasters to address emerging workflows while driving down their infrastructure costs.

Industry Insights: The evolution and impact of advanced playout systems

Industry Insights: Opportunities and challenges with cloud-based content distribution