CULVER CITY, CALIF.—The march toward a multiplatform digital future is well on its way, but what form it will eventually take is still up for debate. VFX Technologies, a provider of computer rentals and tech services, got a peek at one possibilitywhen it was hired by AMV Digital Media, an online broadcast, managed and production services company, to provide a custom solution to capture broadcast feeds at the Emmys.
Sarote Tabcum
The digital side of its Emmy production consisted of providing connectivity help between the production trucks and teams from IMDb, Amazon and the TV Academy to transcode and use fresh media as web content on their sites and social media profiles. With the VFX systems, editors were able to cut together footage from real-time cues and events to keep up with the live broadcast. “Our system tied everything together and provided a high-speed, 10GB fiber backbone between the two locations and to the editing,” said Sarote Tabcum, founder of VFX Technologies.
According to Tabcum, this was VFX’s first project where it provided editing support for a live production. The company has worked with other companies with a more digital focus in recent years, and Tabcum believes that these types of productions are only going to become more frequent.
“I see digital media is taking off at a very fast speed and the demand is there,” he explained. The ability for multiple broadcasters to share the same content instantly among their own social media accounts is a big shift from the past traditions of a single broadcaster having primary access to content. This new accessibility also allows broadcasters to quickly edit and make the content their own.
For VFX, and other companies like it, this means that they will have to quickly adjust to this new capability and others that could emerge down the road. “We’re at the forefront of any new technology and it’s our job to know how best to utilize that for our clients,” said Tabcum. This includes the shift to IP that is underway and will change the infrastructure of how baseband, video and broadcast delivers video signals.
Tabcum found the experience at the Emmy broadcast to be a positive one for his company, because it set them up to be an ally to companies looking to do similar digital experiments in the future. “We want to be a very solid stepping stone for many of these clients that are testing the waters and as these projects come live I hope they will rely on our expertise so they don’t have to be a Guinea pig,” he said.
