Realizing Collaborative Film and Television Workflows

Metadata

Publisher: SMPTE — White Plains, NY, USA
Doc Type: Journal Article
Content Type: Original Research
Abbreviated Title: SMPTE Mot. Imag. J
Volume: 119, No. 4, pp. 39–44
Abstract: In film and television production and post-production, tasks are often outsourced to specialist providers. The complexity of doing this is one reason that the benefits promised through completely tapeless working has yet to be fully realized. This paper presents the approach of the U.K.-funded Multiple User Post-Production IT Services (MUPPITS) project in tackling this problem. The significant challenges to the media creation industry that led to the formation of the project are examined, and an architecture that will help overcome these challenges is proposed. This architecture makes use of collaborative middleware techniques that were originally created for other industries. Two specific scenarios for this approach are outlined, namely digital dailies and post-production rendering The project's work on developing demonstrators for these scenarios is also described.
Publication Date: 2010-05-01
DOI: 10.5594/J11381
ISSN: Print: 1545-0279 | Electronic: 2160-2492
Link: https://doi.org/10.5594/J11381
Author(s): Paul Walland
bio
Paul Walland joined the management team of IT Innovation in 2006, where he is principal investigator in a number of European and U.K. collaborative research projects. His experience ranges from pure and applied research to product development and innovation management in a wide range of U.K.-based commercial organizations. Before joining IT Innovation, Walland was Projects Group Manager responsible for collaborative project research at Snell & Wilcox Ltd., U.K., where he initiated and led a wide range of U.K. and European research projects in the field of digital video and multimedia, including the metadata and image-processing-based projects MetaVision, 3-D Intercam, and WorldScreen. Walland was a founding director of the Multimedia Virtual Centre of Excellence, steering board member, and vice-president of the European Digital Television Action Group (DigITAG), and active contributor to both DTG and DVB. He is currently a Steering Board Member of the European Networked Electronic Media Technology Platform and a member of the U.K. Digital Content Knowledge Network advisory group. He has chaired workshops, conferences, and working groups and published widely at international conferences and in technical journals. Walland has an Honors degree in pure and applied physics from Manchester University.
Steve Taylor
bio
Steve Taylor has worked on many Grid and SOA projects, including the FP5 GRIA project (2001–4) which began the GRIA middleware, the current version is available at www.gria.org. More recently, he has been working on the NextGRID (2004–7) and BREIN (2006–10) projects, with a focus on architecture, business modeling, trust and security, service-based computing, and Grid economics. In the U.K. MUPPITS project, he is responsible for the architecture of a media-centric combined storage, processing and tracking system for film productions. Taylor has a PhD in artificial intelligence.
Peter Brightwell
bio
Peter Brightwell is a senior R&D engineer with the BBC and a Chartered Engineer. He has significant experience in the technologies relevant to the changing world of television production, including file-based acquisition, networked delivery and asset management. This has included both research activity, and leading technical workstreams of BBC projects deploying new systems in program areas. He has also worked on projects related to sports innovation, including development of an award-winning graphics system used on a number of programs around the world. Brightwell has participated in SMPTE standards activity and led the development of the Media Dispatch Protocol (SMPTE 2032) for orchestrating delivery of large media files between organizations. He represents the BBC in EBU groups, addressing file-based and networked production.
Peter Wilson
bio
Peter Wilson After working for Portsmouth University, The Royal College of Art & Design and The National Film and Television School during the 1970s, Wilson moved to Sony and from mid 1985 to 1992 was responsible for Sony's HD strategy in Europe. This was a pioneering time and laid the foundation for HD digital production and digital cinema. Wilson facilitated the first HD multicamera music shoot, Genesis at Wembley in 1987 and the first uncompressed digital delivery to a cinema at IBC in 1988. In 1991, he joined Snell and Wilcox where he planned and managed more than 20 HDTV and large-screen display products. Wilson currently runs a consultancy, high-definition and digital cinema Ltd., is the director of the European Digital Cinema Forum Technical Support Group, and sits on various governmental and professional Committees, consulting on HDTV, digital cinema, and 3D.
Brendan Slamin
bio
Brendan Slamin is the director of the U.K. High-definition Forum, a cross-industry group that brings broadcasters, program makers, manufacturers, and retailers together as part of the larger U.K. Digital TV Group. He also leads the MUPPITS research project, which is developing a software management system for film and TV production and post-production. This is designed to provide seamless production control and management systems for use with file-based production operations. Slamin coordinated the BBCs early work in high-definition research and, as part of the research, was responsible for the making of many of the early HD program in the U.K. and across Europe. He was presented with the Judges' Award of the Royal Television Society for his part in this activity. He has been an assessor for projects in pan- European research program and also served as an appeal assessor of projects judged to have failed. Slamin is the author of one book and the editor of a second, both on the subject of high-definition. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and a Fellow of the Royal Television Society.
Roland Brown
bio
Roland Brown held the post of director of engineer at the Moving Picture Company (MPC), Soho, London, from 1985 to 2007. MPC specializes in digital visual effects for feature films and television commercials. Currently Brown is CEO of &&& Technology Limited and is a non-executive director at Quantel Ltd. and Imagineer Systems Ltd. His career has spanned four decades of major technological development, from being responsible for setting up commercial TV in South Africa, to working on every aspect of outside broadcasting and post- production. He is also the current president of the British Kinematograph Sound and Television Society (BKSTS) and chairman of the DTG Production Systems group, which focuses on HD research. Brown is also a member of ELBA's London Legacy 2020 committee. He is the external assessor for the post-graduate, digital post-production course and member of the advisory board at the National Film and Television School and a Partner in AndCubed LLP (A Technology Orientated Partnership).
Copyright: © 2010 Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Inc.

Bibliographic Reference(s)

1. Multiple User Post-Production IT Services project , www.muppits.org.uk . EXTERNAL
2. SOA definition at www.service-architecture.com/web-services/articles/serviceoriented_architecture_soa_definition.html . EXTERNAL
3. Gridipedia article on Service Level Agreements : www.gridipedia.eu/slaarticle.html . EXTERNAL
4. SIMDAT project : www.simdat.org/about_simdat.html . EXTERNAL
5. GRIA : Service Oriented Collaborations for Industry and Commerce, www.gria.org . EXTERNAL
6. BBC, Ingex project, ingex.sourceforge.net . EXTERNAL
7. Cunningham S. de Nier P. , “File-based Production: Making It Work In Practice,” Proc. International Broadcasting Convention, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Sept. 2007 . EXTERNAL
8. SMPTE 390M-Television , “Material Exchange Format (MXF) Specialized Operational Pattern Atom (Simplified Representation of a Single Item) , www.smpte.org . EXTERNAL
9. SMPTE 2032–1–2007 , “Media Dispatch Protocol (MDP—Protocol Specification,” www.smpte.org . EXTERNAL

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Paul Walland, Steve Taylor, Peter Brightwell, Peter Wilson, Brendan Slamin, and Roland Brown; Realizing Collaborative Film and Television Workflows, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 119, Issue: 4, 2010); SMPTE, 2010. Available at https://doi.org/10.5594/J11381

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Paul Walland, Steve Taylor, Peter Brightwell, Peter Wilson, Brendan Slamin, and Roland Brown; Realizing Collaborative Film and Television Workflows, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 119, Issue: 4, 2010); SMPTE, 2010. Available at https://doi.org/10.5594/J11381

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<span class="citation">Paul Walland, Steve Taylor, Peter Brightwell, Peter Wilson, Brendan Slamin, and Roland Brown; <cite>Realizing Collaborative Film and Television Workflows</cite>, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 119, Issue: 4, 2010); SMPTE, 2010. Available at <a href="https://doi.org/10.5594/J11381" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://doi.org/10.5594/J11381</a></span>

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Paul Walland, Steve Taylor, Peter Brightwell, Peter Wilson, Brendan Slamin, and Roland Brown; <cite id="bib-10-5594-j11381">Realizing Collaborative Film and Television Workflows</cite>, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 119, Issue: 4, 2010); SMPTE, 2010
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