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Back in the fall of 2020, several months after private equity firm Black Dragon Capital completed its acquisition of Grass Valley, it became apparent to the company’s management team that it had an unpolished jewel in the GV portfolio that needed attention. Given the virtualization changes, cost cutting and high demand for new content occurring within the industry, customers who served as beta testers told them, “this AMPP thing is going to change the industry.”
New, in-cloud, pay-per-use business models offer new advantages to occasional REMI, field reporting, remote event production and similar content producers and distributors with a better business model to remain competitive and profitable without huge ongoing capital investments.
The pressure to extract more revenue from ever shrinking budgets, due to expensive content rights contracts, is causing Broadcasters to re-evaluate—and in many cases reduce—how they spend their money on production tools and infrastructure. Recognizing this, live production technology providers like Grass Valley are getting “creative” in how they sell their products and cloud-native systems.
With its core business in live sports production, Grass Valley has seen its revenue contract significantly over the past eight months but with a new integrated software-defined product roadmap, it looks to bounce back while “reducing the pain” of migrating to IP. This insight, and more, was revealed during a virtual press conference presented by company management in early October.
With each new remote production and IT-centric infrastructure implementation, camera manufacturers are learning more and more about what it takes for a camera to operate seamlessly on an all-IP network. With the right design, production companies can send less equipment to live events and camera operators can work from anywhere—even those with limited skills.
IronRoute is a cloud-based content distribution solution blending broadband, cellular (3G/4G/5G), and satellite connectivity from Intelsat’s global network. Dejero says its Smart Blending Technology combines all available network connections to create a virtual ‘network of networks’ with the necessary bandwidth to deliver broadcast-quality content.
FingerWorks Telestrators can make live sports multidimensional by enabling telestration in Virtual Reality.
Atomos is targeting aspiring filmmakers using the new generation of full frame mirrorless cameras with its Ninja V 4K HDR monitor/recorder, which now supports Apple’s ProRes RAW video format. Until now, RAW video has been the domain of dedicated cinema cameras that are either limited in features or priced far beyond the reach of most consumers.