A Quick Wrap of the Global Content Conference

Content Insider – IBC Special

By Andy Marken

andy@markencom.com

Let’s see …  it’s a “little” bit breezy, a “little” bit cool and a “little” bit drizzly so it’s gotta be IBC in Amsterdam in September.

Nothing unusual for the Dutch stronghold other than it was hosting about 45K of the most senior creative content management/delivery executives from around the world for four days.

Show folks said attendance was down slightly from pre-pandemic days but you couldn’t tell it by the meeting/floor action or trying to catch dinner at any of the great Dutch bruin cafes.

It seemed like everyone was there to absorb as much as possible on innovations, new applications and how the industry and organizations are going to keep up with all of the advances, market opportunities and current world geopolitical environment.

Hey … it ain’t our fault!

Every year, we’re amazed at how rich and comprehensive the convention’s program is that Mike Crimp and his team put together and it makes it difficult to ensure you see what fantastic new technology is being introduced.

We didn’t even try to take it all in this year because that would require about five AI clones of yourself sitting in sessions and prowling the halls/stands.

It goes without saying that AI was everywhere and some meaningful and valuable specific applications are emerging, but there were times you wondered what, why and WTF.

We focused on those things that were addressing real needs, have staying power and direct value as well as a growing number of collaborative efforts with organizations joining forces to deliver valuable solutions to major challenges/issues/opportunities that really would/could shape the future of the industry.

Several sessions addressed the growing complexity and uncertainty of today’s content creation and distribution.

Allan McLennan, CEO of Padem Media Group, noted, “As we’ve heard in a number of sessions and on the floor,” we’re now able to work globally with multiple platforms –in LIVE IP Sports, new perspectives on content and software licensing, along with personalized programming in linear and streaming. This has improved the creation, development and distribution of enhanced and intelligent supply chains that had been making things overly complex and expensive.” 

He continued, saying, “The industry now has a better path to focus on ROI, which will streamline the activities and enable services and suppliers to bring costs under control and provide higher-quality deployments to meet the overall demand everywhere, which is vital in today’s environment.” 

Some of the solution and product announcements in areas such as cloud migration, AI integration, personalized user experiences, and content delivery that we saw at IBC will help major and minor players deliver better content to a more diverse audience … economically and reliably.

Viewing Tomorrow – Members of IBC’s IET Perfect Storm session included (1-r) Rob Koenen,
founder/CBO Tiledmedia; Krish Kumar, CEO Wowza, Karen Clark, CEO Telstra Broadcast Services and moderator Allan McLennan, chief executive of PADEM Media Group.

For example, during McLennan’s IET session – A perfect storm-from Peak TV to peak transformation – speakers explored the changes in both traditional broadcast and streaming.

The panelists discussed how new business models were placing increasing demands on production and content delivery and how organizations have to carefully select their AI implementation/integration opportunities and effectively test and manage the solutions before using them for programming and advertising.  

All of the C-level panelists agreed that the keys to the implementation were ensuring that copyrights were protected, the content was authentic and accurate, and guarding against misrepresentation and hallucinations.

“AI can be an exceptional tool in shaping content that engages the audience,” one of the speakers noted, “but care has to be taken that it is done in a responsive/responsible manner so it has to be implemented carefully and cautiously after extensive testing and comprehensive validation.”

There were a number of key sessions that explored the industry’s shifting business models and the transformational technology that is going to make it all possible.

Rethinking – Evan Shapiro, ESHAP Media Cartographer, encouraged traditional linear content
services to rethink the landscape and consider YouTube as an opportunity rather than as a
competition.

Even Evan Shapiro, Media Cartographer at ESHAP, probably surprised and frightened many in the audience during his session.  

“Traditional media companies aren’t on the verge of collapse,” he emphasized, “but all of the growth is going to the big tech platforms, and it represents trillions of dollars.”

“Five years ago, when everyone shifted to direct to consumer, we ceded 100 percent of control to the user and content owners/developers are never going to get it back.”

He told his audience that Netflix knows who its competition is and it’s not Amazon, Disney, WBD or Paramount. It has been–and is–YouTube.

“Traditional wisdom says sharing content across other platforms could cannibalize your audience,” he commented, “but the opposite is true because YouTube is only a distribution tool, and it makes it easier for viewers to find your content.

“We’ve entered the ‘affinity economy,’ where content companies have to go directly to the audience wherever they are,” he said, “Right now, that’s social media and YouTube dominates the arena and people – especially young people – are watching it on the big screen in their living room.”

He probably could have added that for indie project creators/producers and second/third tier content distributors, YouTube, due to its reach, is also an economic method of helping to find an audience and monetizing their content.

But speaking of extending relationships and alliances, Netflix and Disney both announced agreements during IBC.

Netflix has quietly taken the lead in the collaborative approach with bundling agreements with MBC Group (MENA), TF1 in France, Canal+ in Africa, Binge in Australia and SK Broadband in South Korea.

At the same time, Disney+ entered a series of strategic alliances in Europe including Atresmedia in Spain, ITVX in the UK and ZDF in Germany.

Think Different – YouTube’s Justine Ryst (center) and Channel 4’s Grace Boswood (r) explained to moderator Sasha Quadri and the IBC audience how Channel 4 was leveraging YouTube’s extended audience to quickly and economically improve and extend their audience and improve their bottom-line.  

Interestingly, during the Better Together session, YouTube’s managing director Justine Ryst, emphasized, “We don’t commission.  We don’t own IP.  We don’t create it.  We have 2.5B global users who watch content and 700M of them connect to us on their TV; but to say we’re competitive to and cannibalizing TV is erroneous.  We’re actually extending their reach and the life of their content.”

On another note, she emphasized that YouTube provides a platform for Creators of all types (professionals and up-and-comers) to profitably develop an audience/following of folks who are watching what has evolved to be a new definition of TV.

We’re not sure, but she might be right that it may be a way for legacy services to reach a new, profitable audience, and it might – just might – be a profitable way for professional content creators to rapidly reach a global audience.

Of course, it would also help if her boss, Neal Mohan, YouTube’s CEO, would also quit pitching the idea that their Creators should be considered to win a few industry award statues, even if a few do have millions of followers and make lots of money.

But … who knows!

The sessions we attended were all great … full of facts/good information about how every corner of the industry can profitably meet viewer’s expectations.

As interesting/information packed as they were, we also had to make our way through the friendly crowd to see what was new and hot on the show floor.

Okay, we’ll only say it once (again) … AI was everywhere.

Because this is a global event and industry, one thing we noticed was there were a lot of well thought out and amazing localization and engagement tools too that were shown; and they are going to open up new opportunities for content creators to have their films/shows seen everywhere.

Camb.AI, Gaudio Lab, CaptionHub and Microsoft were just some of the products we saw on the show floor that theoretically will take the complexity and time out of localizing dubbing and subbing news, sports, films and shows to be enjoyed everywhere.

We’re perfectly happy to follow subtitles and enjoy the action in the native language, but with some of the AI-based tools, it is mindboggling to see the project translated and lip-synced in what feels like real-time.

Either way, it breaks down the barriers to sharing the best content that is out there for indie and content owners. 

Realtime Upscaling – Pixop’s Pixop Live is a new solution that meets the needs of live streaming events and content libraries by converting HD SDR content to UHD 4K in almost real-time with less than 600 ms latency.  

Latency has always been an issue for streamers (and we suppose everyone), especially when it comes to sports and live events (concerts, etc.), so we had to swing by checking out Pixop’s announcement in the Ultra HD Forums stand and neighboring Accelerator Innovation Zone.

Morten Kolle Christensen and his Danish team were demonstrating Pixop Live for the first time at IBC. It takes HD SDR signals from the field and almost instantly upscales them to UHD 4K for real-time processing and distribution with a latency of less than 600 ms.

The side-by-side demo was very impressive because it’s always that last little bit of the workflow video stream that is expensive and time-intensive to deliver, let alone level-set to a higher quality whether LIVE or from library.

Christensen explained how studios/streamers/networks with large libraries of shows/movies are interested in using Pixop Live to bring the content up to the quality standard viewers expect to see by making it fast, easy and economical to refresh the content in richer, more vibrant UHD 4K.

Christensen noted that Pixop Live also fully supports NextGen TV standards, including Japan’s ISDB-Tb and Brazil’s TV 3.0/DTV initiative.

Centralized – Harmonic introduced their new hybrid centralized management system an IBC.

And speaking of working to improve sports enjoyment, Harmonic introduced their hybrid streaming solution.

The new system includes an AI-centralized management system that leverages an enhanced VOS360 and SaaS for streaming for improved UHD channel density and bandwidth efficacy for 5G content delivery.

AI has also been incorporated to add Multiview and low-latency features as well as automatic highlight generation and speech-to-text transcription. 

Top Performers – OWC introduced the new Thunderbolt 5 network dock (l) and Jellyfish S24server storage system.

Okay, we admit it, we’ve been impressed with OWC for years because they build some of the best prosumer products we’ve seen.

At this year’s IBC, they introduced the new Thunderbolt 5 Dual10GbE network dock that is probably one of the best and most versatile connectivity solutions we’ve seen.

The Thunderbolt dock has been around for a long time and the latest version is proof of their commitment to the content creation market including dual fully independent 10Gb/s ethernet ports, front-facing 2.5Gb/s ethernet port and about every connection a content creator or video production person would need.

We realize a lot of workflow and production is done in the cloud today and it’s “pretty reliable,” but there’s just something “comforting” about having a fully loaded SSD production server where you can see/touch it.

The new OWC Jellyfish S24 lets you load the unit up with as much high-performance, highly reliable Mercury Extreme Pro SSD (up to 384TB) you need to handle any project, including a blockbuster film.

Designed to work on a dual 100G ethernet backbone, it delivers superior sustained read/write performance with almost no latency to keep your production project on time and yes, we’re impressed.

Content, Business Management – With enhanced AI and agentic workflow capabilities, Avid introduced their new content data platform to eliminate siloed workflow, making it visible across the content organization.   

Avid keeps raising the bar for the content industry and the new content data platform that does away with siloed production areas and works across editorial, operational and business areas.

Optimizing AI and agentic workflows, it transforms content from static files to intelligent, connected and actionable data.

The scalable and intelligent solution helps streamline operations, optimize content value and keep pace with the audience’s constantly changing ideas of what they want/need to watch.

Buzzworthy – Blackmagic Design’s new Camera ProDock created a lot of buzz at IBC by mating full-featured production capabilities with the Apple iPhone 17.  

Blackmagic Design has always impressed us with their steadily improving line of cameras that cover almost every feature, capability and performance issue a filmmaker might have—all at a price that is unbelievably reasonable.

At IBC, the new Blackmagic Camera 9.8 was unveiled that supports Apple ProRes RAW, a new lower price for their 12K LF and 17K URSA cine camera kits and more.

In addition, because we can only guess that they want almost everyone on the production team to use Blackmagic hardware and solutions, they just keep improving DaVinci Resolve production solution with 20.1.1 that supports edit, color, VFX and more.  

We would say nothing they develop/deliver for content creation folks would surprise us but then they went and announced the new Blackmagic Camera ProDock.

If you’re one of those shooters who has been won over to use an iPhone as a full-featured production camera, you’ll be absolutely wowed by the new Camera ProDock.

The dock provides you with all of the professional camera connections you’ll need for the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.

It really does put all the power and performance at your fingertips whether you’re a YouTube creator or a seasoned professional.

All we can say is Grant Petty, Blackmagic’s CEO, and his team are insane … insanely committed to making life easier, better and less expensive for the content creation industry.

There was a lot we missed at this year’s IBC, but the show only lasted four days and there is only so much we could see in the packed halls…next year.

Off the Floor – While there was plenty to take in at this year’s IBC, visitors also had time to enjoy Amsterdam’s historic Bruin cafes and Dutch cuisine.

After all, only an idiot spends 100 percent of his/her time in the RAI Conference Center when Amsterdam has so many charming and colorful Bruin cafes complete with excellent food and excellent hospitality.

There’s always next year.

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 800 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.