In Broadcast - December 2020 - 19

19

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 10 - Issue 12 | InReview 2020

InReply

Recovery Will Be Faster
With Leapfrog Tech
cont'd...

Arsenal F.C. built a cloud video
production team with Blackbird
Pic: ©2020 Shutterstock, Inc.

responsible governance but it can
always go further. We are currently
analysing the environment savings
which can be made using a Blackbird
system and will share that soon. The
essential story for us is that Blackbird
needs a lot less bandwidth, storage
and processing power because of
the way the Blackbird codec works.
This adds up to significant capital
expenditure savings and ongoing
energy cost efficiencies.
AP: How rapidly has the industry
changed since 2019?
IMcD: This year, we've seen cloudbased remote collaboration go from
merely a 'nice to have' to a necessity.
The trend was already in play but
Covid-19 meant video production
teams had to pivot their workflows
to take advantage of the cloud's
scalability, flexibility and mobility.
Blackbird is a prime example of a
leapfrog technology which takes you
overnight from a company built for
today to one ready for anything the
future throws up. Next-generation has
come and gone.

AP: What other recent wins has
Blackbird had?
IMcD: Through 2020, we've been
there for media companies to move
out of the facility into safer remote
environments. When lockdown hit,
A+E Networks doubled its capacity
with Blackbird allowing all production
staff the ability to access and create
content from home. Blackbird was a
key part of Sky News Arabia's remote
collaborative workflow. Suddenly with
no live sports, Blackbird was used
as a remote tool by Arsenal F.C. and
Liverpool F.C to satisfy, excite and
fulfil the desires of the clubs' tens
of millions of fans. With production
staff at Riot Games in LA unable to
travel to their central facility they
rapidly pivoted to using Blackbird to
produce the world's most popular
esports tournaments remotely from
their homes. When live action sports
resumed with socially distanced

workflows, Australia's National Rugby
League used Blackbird to rapidly clip,
edit and publish match highlights to
social platforms within as little as 30
seconds.
In June, the National Hockey League
deployed Blackbird to provide remote
video production capabilities to assist
with the League's Return to Play Plan.
Resilience and freedom are concepts
that run through everything that
Blackbird do.
AP: How does Blackbird compare
in terms of cost to deploy and
run compared to rival editing and
production systems?
IMcD: We've commissioned a
comprehensive piece of research
which compares the total cost of
ownership (TCO) of Blackbird including
licence fees, end to end workflow,
bandwidth demands and processing
power on-prem or in cloud with

Sustainability - Blackbird are currently analysing environmental savings

Sky News Arabia
accelerates remote
collaborative cloud
workflows with Blackbird

competitive systems from Avid or
Adobe or users of systems like Teradici
which remote into an on-prem system.
We're excited to share and explain the
findings of the study with you soon.
AP: Should the industry be
concentrating more than it is on
sustainability?
IMcD: The industry is making great
strides in environmental and socially

What the industry needs is the
chance to rapidly catch up and outpace
the accelerant that the pandemic
has forced on businesses worldwide.
Producing exponentially more and
better content when having to work in
remote distributed workflows is hard if you don't have leapfrog tech.
AP: Thanks again for taking time
to talk to us.

Esports leader, Gfinity, increases fan engagement and content monetization with Blackbird

http://www.inbroadcast.com https://www.blackbird.video/news-articles/arsenal-broadband-ltd-selects-blackbird/ https://www.blackbird.video/case-studies/sky-news-arabia-accelerate-remote-collaborative-cloud-workflows/ http://www.inbroadcast.com/Remote_Working_Sees_Blackbird_Soar_Higher.asp https://www.blackbird.video/introduction/

In Broadcast - December 2020

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