UGC Going Mainstream

In one of my recent articles I talked about how UGC is appearing more and more and has become an accepted form of content.  Enter the current situation where the world is sharing a horrific experience, isolating us and changing how news is reported.  In addition, any new production has been put on hold until we are given “the coast is clear” signal and people are comfortable working together in person again.

It now appears like UGC has become the main form of production and programming.  Shows are being produced from the performers home with either their personal equipment or most likely phone or tablet and the operator is a family member.   Should be create new categories in the awards ceremonies on technical creativeness as well as content creativeness under these difficult and adverse  conditions.  

What about the next generation of phones, what new apps will be available, is it time to have better controls over the video and audio?   Can I do a multi-phone, I mean multi-camera switched program with a virtual audio mixer?   How can I put lower thirds on my video?   ?   What about out of band communications for intercom or will the question be – how many phones does it take to produce a show?

Overnight UGC went from fun video and breaking news to full on mainstream for anything.  Multi-location production is now based on video conferencing technology that has created some very exciting and interesting content.  How about the Beethoven piece by the Rotterdam Philharmonic performed while the musicians stay isolated?

NAB has shown a few vendors with accessories for phones and tablets that convert them into “studio” cameras. There are steady cam rigs, lighting kits, lens adapters, etc. One of the interesting things to wait for is how the phone manufacturers react to this.  They have been removing connections for external accessories.  Will IoT become the technology of choice for UGC production?   I know in my own home, we now have a green background and light so we can use the Zoom background feature for conferences. At a conference someone asked why they need a full size camera if their phone can do 8K. Well maybe phone and tablet 8K will be how it becomes mainstream. It will impact the MIMO vendors but otherwise the monitor manufacturers won’t have to wonder if any 8K will ever get produced. 

Just when we got SMTPE 2110 uncompressed sorted out, we moved to highly compressed UGC.  I am sure the RIST, NDI and SRT folks are salivating at this. Hmmm!!!!  I wonder what the vendors are thinking? Forget about whether SDI or SMPTE 2110 will be the format of choice.  The MPEG working group has been getting MPEG5 ready for prime time, and HTML5, ON2 and VPx are looking pretty good for live streaming. 

It will be interesting to see what happens at IBC (if there is an IBC) and UGC products.  

Moving to the Cloud

The other thing about the current use of UGC is its use of cloud and cloud based micro services.  If we are using phones and tablets, can cloud production be viable workflow?    There are certainly more and more cloud products for collaborative editing and graphics. Archive and some media management is moving to hybrid cloud solutions. There is a growing use of UGC and cloud in very interesting collaborative efforts to bring entertainment to the audiences that are isolated.  

Moving to the cloud will have an interesting impact with reference to on-premise hardware.   If new creation, production and distribution services start appearing as cloud offerings, this will drastically change design and engineering.

If we look at production, there’s remote, field and studio production.  Where does cloud fit in to each of these?  How much production and distribution equipment and technology are not really appropriate for cloud?  How do we integrate cloud content with not cloud content seamlessly? Is this done in the cloud and then distributed via cloud services. Media management and archive can be cloud based, particularly if it started in the cloud. 

One of the consistent complaints with cloud is the pricing models across all providers. How will the cloud providers support this in changing their business models and becoming more interoperable?  The disparity in pricing to put content in the cloud versus retrieving it from the cloud, streaming or moving between services is prohibitively expensive. 

Innovative UGC Production

There are a number of virtual concerts as well as packages being produced with remote participation from the performers and then production personnel capturing, editing and mixing.  Even more so with less graphics and special effects as a result of working from home, production values are morphing to few effects and just performance.  

Case Study

A recent iHeartRadio fundraising concert relied on performers having their instruments and enough knowledge to connect it to a computer, tablet or phone.  It was a true unplugged event!   In some cases a family member is the production operator holding the phone, tablet or computer to capture the moment.

And let’s look at the integration requirements and interoperability challenges with UGC and uncompressed production. ?  Is the program finalized by up converting UGC content or down converting high resolution content and producing the program in UGC resolution?

UGC - The new Normal

One thing I can say with a high level of confidence is that UGC is here to stay. And maybe just in time, with the Olympics planning all coverage in 8K and everyone wondering how to handle, if phones can do 8K, probably so can DSLRs and with the acceptance of UGC any K highly compressed, there’s no challenge to transmission, contribution and distribution. – See a Silver Lining!

The 2nd Edition of my book is out!