With the growing interest in stereoscopic 3-D television, Grass Valley was quick to emphasize its expertise in video compression and content processing technologies at this year's NAB. The company demonstrated products targeted at transport applications for both backhaul (contribution links) and delivery to the home.
(See Broadcast Engineering TV's coverage of Grass Valley here.)
Speaking with Scott Murphy, he emphasized "[that] sports will be the likely driver for stereoscopic 3-D television." These high-end applications create the need for high reliability and quality contribution links from the remote site back to the studio.
Grass Valley is showing a new ViBE VA5004 contribution encoder with 3 Gb/s inputs. It simultaneously accepts both left and right views, and uses JPEG 2000 compression. By linking the compression engines, the system matches processing across the two channels.
For home delivery, the company is showing a new version of its ViBE encoder family, the ViBE EM3000. This encoder uses MPEG-4 HD compression and encodes the "side-by-side" stereoscopic signal for delivery of 3-D stereoscopic imagery to a standard set-top box.
I asked Scott Murphy what types of technology broadcasters were asking for. He said, "There is still a lot of HD build out that needs to be done. Not everyone is at the point of being able to create local HD newscasts."
The second technology broadcasters are looking for is efficiency products. "I don't know how much more cutting this industry can do," Murphy said. "Broadcasters need more money, which means new channels and outlets for their content."
To help broadcasters meet the need for more, faster, and higher quality, Murphy outlined the company's extended and powerful asset management and automated repurposing capabilities of its MediaFUSE content repurposing and multidistribution system. The product is now available as a standalone product called MediaFUSE FX. This solution will work for those facilities that do not have a fully featured Grass Valley Ignite integrated production system.
The MediaFUSE system consists of an end-to-end suite of automated tools that allow broadcasters to increase the amount of content available for Internet and mobile distribution while fully supporting the potential and profitability of repurposing and syndicating localized content to allow for targeted ads and specially formatted material.
"With MediaFUSE FX, content creators of all specialties now have available to them a powerful set of tools to allow for a quick turn of file-based content into formats that can be easily repurposed for alternate distribution", said Scott Matics, MediaFUSE product manager. "MediaFUSE FX does not just manage video content, but also text, still imagery, and a full range of metadata that creates content that is the most useful and most easily monetized for alternative distribution."
See the full line of Grass Valley products in the South Lower hall, SL 106.
