Field Generated and User Generated Content

How IP Network Connections Change the TimeToAir Process

Tom Ohanian, Chief Strategy Officer, Signiant

Making Media Move Introduction Can the use of the Internet redefine the notion of infield broadcasting? Can anyone with a cell phone or wireless card become a broadcaster? If the amount of people who can potentially cover a newsworthy event were to be able to coordinate their activities, what would that mean for event coverage? As everyone who has ever watched compelling news footage can attest, it is no longer pristine image quality that takes precedence over content as to whether or not the material will air. Today, more than ever, the race is on to get timely content ingested, reviewed, and distributed as quickly as possible. From Broadcast News to Breaking News There is an iconic moment in the 1987 film Broadcast News where actress Joan Cusack must deliver the videotape master of a justedited news story. What ensues is one of the funniest (and truest!) moments that is recognizable to anyone who has been in the broadcasting business. Cusack, undaunted, dodges everything from crowded halls to stationary water coolers as she rushes to get the tape into master control for airing. Finally, bruised and limping, she delivers the tape, makes the deadline, and then confidently strides away. Broadcast news indeed! Breaking news, as we have come to think of it, has typically been characterized by an interruption of regular programming in order to cover a live, unfolding event. Camera trucks are sent and live microwave shots are established. Naturally, there is some time delay involved between dispatching the trucks until the video feed becomes available. Of course, all that is now changing Capturing and Sending Images from the Field Today, the time element for putting images on the air is being dramatically affected by all forms of technology. The combination of portable cameras and stillimage and videocapable cell phones has created the possibility of a virtual extension of the broadcasting staff. The use of the open, public Internet along with these portable capture devices is rapidly augmenting and, ultimately, will redefine the definition of infield broadcasting. Today, anyone with a cell phone or a wireless card in a laptop can become a broadcaster. FieldGenerated versus UserGenerated Content There are usually two terms that are used, somewhat interchangeably, but for the purposes of this paper, it is helpful to refer to refer to fieldgenerated content (FGC) as being content that is created by professional staff members of an organization. Usergenerated content (UGC) will be used to describe content that is created by nonstaff memberstypically citizen journalists or

Making Media Move public persons who have happened upon news and event worthy occurrences. While the distinction may seem unnecessary, it is important to distinguish between the two groups. Further, from a system design aspect, it is important to provide certain features and functions specific to each group. These distinctions will be outlined within this paper. Timeliness vs. Quality Regardless of the quality of the images, frame rate, composition or how steady or shaky, the nature of the content and how compelling it is will win out over any technical consideration. Gone, forever, are the days of being sticklers for quality. It is not that quality has been forsaken or that it is not valued, but the competition for viewers has never been fiercer. Further, the screen type, size, and locations that people are viewing content on and at are undergoing rapid change. Each of these distribution and consumption channels must be serviced. And, those distribution channels must be served fast. With so many potential people able to capture breaking news, broadcasters must develop strategies to handle this infield generated content. Whether it is a hurricane in Louisiana, an earthquake in Pakistan, or a citizen journalist that has captured footage of an accident, viewers have demonstrated that they will go where the content is and will watch it whether it is provided to them on television, on a computer screen, or on a mobile handset. Getting Footage in From the Field If you are a News Director, journalist, reporter, or videographer, you are all sharing a common desire to bring the most relevant content in the timeliest fashion to your audience. Youre scheduled in the morning after its decided what major stories are going to be covered. Naturally, covering predetermined events are an important aspect of any broadcast organization. But, when the event is not scheduled, whenindeedit is something that is rapidly unfolding, the staff gets dispatched to cover it. What are some of the most relevant issues that arise in trying to ingest, review, and distribute infield generated content and how is that impacted when its not your staff but a pool of citizen journalists equipped with camcorders and cell phones? Content Submission, Security, and Acceleration How will fieldgenerated content be submitted? The most sensible approach is to provide a method for electronic submission. This can be done by creating a website which can be specifically branded for each organization in order to maintain station identity. This is especially important whether we are talking about a 16station group or a network comprised of 220 affiliates.

Making Media Move Next, it is likely that you will want to prompt the submitter for some metadata such as a name, contact telephone number, and to check the required legal release. Users are then prompted to choose the file and then upload it. Figure 1 is an example of a submission page along with prompts for metadata and file transfer acceleration.

Figure. 1: A web page that is branded for a specific organization and prompts the user for metadata and provides for file transfer security and file transfer acceleration. Local Stations in Local Touch Even if we limit our scope to the U.S., we find that there are still 90 station groups, who range from 1 station (GH Broadcasting, Corpus Christi, Texas) to 60 stations (Ion Media Networks, West Palm Beach, Florida). Many of these station groups have already begun to create methods by which their journalists and Videographers as well as their viewers can upload content. While this process began with still photos sent via email by viewers, this practice now encompasses

Making Media Move getting video content from the field in a fast and efficient process. Local television stations are clearly in pursuit of their greatest assetbeing local. Today, it is not enough to be a major network affiliateit is critical to be locally relevant to the viewing community served. Faced with the challenges of remaining local, how can a news organization receive content that is especially timely but without having a news van on site? Whether it is a member of the public or a staff member, one of the critical enablers of using fieldgenerated content is mobilizing it over the public Internet. This is also one of the challenges that must be addressed. For example, today, reporters are shooting in the field, cutting together stories on laptops, and going to Internet cafes to upload content. In this scenario, there are two important issues: security concerns and TCP/IPbased transfers. Security Takes On An Even Greater Role In a filebased workflow centric world, security takes on a greater role than ever before. First, a secure transmission is highly desired and should be established between the page in the web browser and the web server. This can easily be accomplished by using Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). These techniques provide for data security and data integrity in transferring data over TCP/IP networks. Regardless of whether the data is a credit card number or data that represents a video file, protecting the data in flight by securing the connection (the wire) via encrypted datagram is easily accomplished. Also, if it is necessary to provide additional data protection or to prove that the data has not been tampered with, two methods can be employed. First, the payloadin this case, the datacan be encrypted using any number of encryption methodologies. One of the most common is AES at either 64,128, or 256bit key strength. Further, it may be required that the integrity of the data is protectedthat isthe actual bits must be verified as exactly the same from sender to receiver. One way of accomplishing this is to utilize a Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) that essentially assigns a fixsized bit string to random blocks of data. In this way, blocks of data that are sent can be compared on the receiving end. If the hash value has been changed, the integrity of the file has been hamperedeither through defects or due to tampering. This level of security can appear to be, perhaps, overdesigned for the topic being discussed, but imagine a news director receiving a video interview of a witness of a tragic international incident or of a lawyer receiving a video testimony from a witness who cannot travel to a courtroom: it will often be necessary to prove that the literal bits of the file have not been tampered with. As the Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry increasingly adopts and transforms to a completely filebased workflow, a secure and verifiable electronic affidavit and certified delivery equivalents are necessary.

Making Media Move Figure 2 shows the various security components and methods that can be employed in the transfer of digital files between sender and receiver.

Figure 2. Authentication, SHA1 hashing, and media encryption techniques used to establish data confidentiality and integrity. The submission of content using the public Internet also brings with it both file transfer and security issues. FTP (file transfer protocol) over TCP/IP and its positive acknowledgment requirement places a limit on how quickly content can be sent. It is also important to consider that use of the public Internet is an open and unsecured network that everyone is sharing. This means that content is in the clear and that there is also some level of communal sharing of the total available network bandwidth. There are, of course, several methods to accelerate the movement of content. One such implementation is in the form of a softwarebased WAN (wide area network) accelerator. By clicking on a button in the web page that engages this WAN acceleration technology, content can be uploaded approximately 60% faster over tradition methods such as FTP. WAN acceleration technology also favorably assists whenever considerable amounts of latency are introduced at the network level. Figure 3 shows the effects of latency on file transmission times.

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Figure 3. As network latency increases, file send times using FTP increases dramatically. Including both security and WAN acceleration technologies into the webbased upload process can also benefit from providing notification to both submitter and receiver that the content was uploaded and received. The field reporter then definitively knows that the content arrived, that the network connection can be closed, and can then move on to the next story and location. Bandwidth, Payload, and Latency In order to create a reliable system to receive FGC and UGC, it is necessary to understand the practical requirements with respect to the bandwidth that is available to the person attempting to upload content, the payload (the amount of data) and the latency of the IP network. These are important factors that must be taken into account in order for any submission system to actually operate. For example, it is a misconception that any IP network and transmission methodology will suffice in order to send content from the field into a facility. While it may appear that any network and protocol will work, there are simple and practical issues that must be understood. Often these are not taken into consideration. Lets explore some of the most common methods. It is, of course, quite common to simply attach a file to an email message. These transfers are typically accomplished using HTTP

Making Media Move (hypertext transfer protocol). While not limited to TCP/IP, HTTP is the method by which most emailbased transfers occur. This transfer mechanism uses a requestresponse method wherein the client (e.g. the person uploading the content) sends data to the server. Because of this request/response process, as the latency of the network increases, the ability to send data is directly related to the time that it takes for sent data to be acknowledged. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a very typical method of transferring files between systems and it, too, must operate according to TCP/IP constructs and is therefore susceptible to the same delay in the request/response process. As latency increases, the amount of data that can be sent decreases over time. Further, sent data is at risk unless there is some form of protection in place. A common approach of protecting sent data is via checkpointing. Without this, if a file is being sent via FTP and a loss of network connectivity occurs, the entire file must be resent. Checkpointing enables systems to stay in synchronization, typically using time intervals or data transferred intervals. The maximum amount of data lost would therefore be equated to the set time interval or set data amount between the systems. These settings are completely arbitrary; for example, a common checkpointing interval is 32 KBytes (kilobytes). How Much Network is Really Required? One of the most important factors to understand in architecting and implementing a solution for transferring FGC and UGC content is to understand all the variables that will potentially affect the user experience. Specifically, one must take into account the following: Amount of data to be sent Network link speed Network latency Transport protocol

The cumulative effects of these four items will indicate how long it will take to receive files from the field. However, a common misconception is that any network connection will suffice, because, while that may be conceptually true, in practical implementations there are simply minimal speeds that must be in place for a viable FGC/UGC solution to provide acceptable and timely results. Let us examine the real effects of latency on a practical set of data. In Figure 4, we are attempting to send two hours of DV 25 (Digital Video at 25 megabits/sec [mbits/sec]) material. Network connectivity is a robust 500 mbits/sec. The resulting file size is 20.9 gigabytes (GB). An examination of the graphs and accompanying tables clearly indicates the beneficial aspects of WAN acceleration and latency compensation technology.

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Figure 4. With a robust network of 500 mbits/sec, WAN acceleration demonstrates clear benefits over TCP transport. For example, note that as latency increases, there is minimal effect on completion times when using WAN acceleration. At zero latency, the 20.9 GB file will take six minutes to reach its destination. At 264 milliseconds (ms) latencytypically for an intercontinental linkonly an additional 34 seconds are required. Contrast this to using TCP as the transport protocol, shown in the lower table. With zero latency, delivery times via WAN acceleration or TCP are the same, at six minutes. However, note the increase in delivery time when latency increases between 40 72 ms (typical for a NY to LA link). At 264 ms, 28 hours are needed to send the file versus six minutes and 34 seconds using WAN acceleration. However, let us now examine the results on transfers when network connectivity is lessened. In Figure 5, note that we have decreased the amount of DV 25 content to be sent to only five minutes for a total of 894 MB. Further, note that the effect of network latency is no longer a key factor. The reason for this is that the network link is simply not large enough to

Making Media Move accommodate an increased amount of data packets that could be sent using WAN acceleration techniques.

Figure 5. Reducing the amount of data to be sent has no effect on transfer times with either WAN acceleration or standard TCP protocols because network connectivity is so low.

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Making Media Move In the next example (Figure 6), the file size remains constant at 894 MB, but we have increased the network link to 1.5 mbits/sec. Again, note that there is no difference in the delivery times.

Figure 6. The effects of latency are negligible with T1 connectivity. The Tale of the Hotel Room Continuing to refer to Figure 6, note that, while theoretically the delivery times are equal between WAN acceleration and TCP, what occurs in the real world is often very different. The following example is indicative of what you are very likely to experience when using software based WAN acceleration. Enticingly, this example is titled the tale of the hotel room and is based on a true story.

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Making Media Move A person just finishes capturing an event and goes into a hotel lobby in Oslo, Norway. He tries to upload to a server in the United Kingdom using both FTP and Signiants Media Exchange application which includes softwarebased WAN acceleration technology. The hotel WIFI connection supports a 1 (one) megabit/second upload and download speed. There was over 150 ms of latency from Oslo to London over this network link. Using FTP, the file uploads at just 60 kilobits / second, despite the 1 megabit / second capability of the network. The file is then resent, this time using Media Exchange which includes WAN acceleration and uploads at 900 kilobits / second, or 15 times faster. This true tale clearly indicates that slower networks (e.g. 1 mbit/sec) can be of use when latency is a factor. In this case, theoretical speeds did not matter and a key factor in being able to take advantage of even limited bandwidth (in this case 1 mbit / second) with WAN acceleration is, indeed, possible and achievable. Now, as we increase the capacity of the network link, we begin to see the positive effects of WAN acceleration as latency reaches 72 ms and higher (Figure 7).

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Figure 7. As both network capacity and latency increase, we begin to see the increase in delivery times using TCP transport at the 72 ms level. As the capacity of the network increases to 100 mbits/sec, notable improvements occur at even 8 ms latency (Figure 8).

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Figure 8. With network connectivity at 100 mbits/sec, WAN acceleration delivers consistent results while we begin to see increasing delivery times using TCP transport at the 8 ms level. Finally, as the network capacity increases to 155.5 mbits/sec (OC3), we can clearly see the benefits of WAN acceleration (Figure 9).

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Figure 9. Here we see the classic flat lining of a consistent delivery time using WAN acceleration and the rapid reduction in sustained data transfer using TCP transport. Getting The File versus Not Getting It At All The preceding examples indicate that there is a level at which being able to upload content from the field is not affected by WAN acceleration techniques. As network capacity decreases and even as latency increases, the ability to utilize a network link to its complete capacity reaches a limit. Under these circumstances, it is critical that some form of checkpointing be implemented. Otherwise, a loss of network connectivityregardless of how momentary and as is often the case with data traffic using the Internetwill result in the need to resend the entire

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Making Media Move file. Obviously, this is counterproductive to getting any content that is perceived will be in high demand. Regulating of Upload and Download Speeds Further impacting the ability to upload (or download) content from the field is the extent to which the sender will have a sustained amount of bandwidth to utilize during the course of the transfer. If an organization has a dedicated link to the Internet which provides a guaranteed amount of mbits/sec, then that link can be apportioned according to the FGC / UGC needs. However, consider what could occur when content is being sent by either a professional staff member or by a citizen journalist over the open and insecure public Internet and utilizing connectivity to the Internet via an Internet Service Provider (ISP). This could be in many formats, naturallyperhaps mobile, cable modem, satelliteand so forth. However, when implementing a solution for FGC and UGC, it is important to consider that there have, indeed, been instances where an ISP may: Provide the agreedupon bandwidth for the length of the connection. Provide less than the agreeupon bandwidth for the length of the connection. Stepdown, that is, limit or regulate the transfer speed over a period of time.

The third possibilitystepping down the transfer speedcan have particularly damaging effects to the goal of getting content in from the field. If this occurs, the importance of robust autorestart of an interrupted transfer, checkpointing, and resumption of a transfer from the point of interruption become critical items to have implemented in the solution. It is therefore important for one to be cognizant of these network provider issues. Protocol Failover Depending upon how content is being sent to your organization, it may be necessary to offer the ability to automatically handle different protocol requirements. For example, lets say that a person uploading FGC is doing so using a corporate provided network link. This means that the person uploading the content has been granted the ability to use UDP (User Datagram Protocol) WAN acceleration. However, there are, indeed, cases where FGC and UGC cannot utilize WAN acceleration. This often occurs as a result of a corporate policy wherein UDPbased protocols are not allowed to function on the corporate network. It may also occur due to the presence of a firewall or web proxy server between the uploader and the server processing the incoming data. In these cases, it may not be possible to send (or, for that matter receive) content in an accelerated fashion. Instead, it may only be possible to send content via TCP or via HTTP protocols.

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Making Media Move In designing a system for processing FGC and UGC, one should employ the ability to automatically failover among transport protocols. In this manner, a transfer could be determined to begin as a UDP transfer and then automatically failover to TCP or to HTTP. Again, the key item is that the system should automatically provide this failover technology without human intervention. Shown in Figure 10 is a setup profile that indicates what automatic action should be taken as FGC and UGC transfers are processed. In this example, transfers are determined to begin as UDPbased and then will automatically failover to TCP and then to HTTP protocols.

Figure 10. An example of a protocol setup screen which indicates automatic failover from UDP to TCP to HTTP transport methods. Reviewing the Footage and Deciding What Happens Next Now imagine the situation at the news desk when content is electronically submitted either by citizen journalists or by staff members. By building a webbased submission and review system, the news director can be electronically notified that content has arrived and needs to be examined. This can be an email that arrives at the desktop or on a mobile device. Embedding a link to the media into the email notification allows the reviewer to review footage by invoking the proper media player. Next, decisions must be made. Is the content relevant? If yes, to whom? What needs to happen to the content? Can it be sent as raw video? Or, before it airs, does it need to be edited and packaged in some way? Should the packaged piece of content then go to the six US New England affiliates, the 13 midAtlantic US affiliates or to every affiliate? How is this file movement coordinated? In Figure 1, you will note that in the content reviewer page a menu item shows how content can be routed to very specific locations. Behind the scenes, a workflow automation routine has been designed to carry out these content movement orders.

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Making Media Move Viruses and Content Checking As anyone responsible for data integrity and corporate IT security will attest, it is important to interrogate any data that is being brought into the facility as a result of FGC and UGC endeavors. This may be as straightforward as temporarily quarantining the incoming content for an amount of time that it can be checked for viruses prior to being brought into the main network attached storage (NAS) in the facility. In addition, content type (format) and content naming conventions (what the file was labeled by the content uploader versus what the facility naming convention requires) are two common areas that often need to be addressed before the content can be utilized. The Importance of Workflow Automation Getting content in from the field is only one component of an entire workflow that must be accomplished. In fact, once content has been moved into either the newsroom or the production / postproduction facility, what ensues are multiple uses of the content that must be facilitated in the most efficient manner possible. All of the ensuing questions and decisions that occur the moment that the news director has reviewed a piece of fieldgenerated content and determined that it is newsworthy can benefit from workflow automation functionality. If the content needs to be routed to specific sets of affiliates, can it be done so automatically? Can the content be routed to a drop box or directly into, say, an affiliates playback server? What is the distribution system to facilitate this? Is it FTP? Do we need to accelerate these file transfers? Are we employing less expensive network connections and rather than using expensive satellite time, are we using the open, public Internet? Further, we mustnt forget that multiple distribution channels are critical and that the content will be needed by the development group in charge of placing the content on the web page and also must service the mobile partners. This content preparation processintelligent platform specific publishing, if you willcan all be automated. Resizing images, encoding, and distribution can all be part of a workflow automation set of routines. Figure 11 is an example of how a series of scripts can be linked together to form an automated workflow. In this example, at a specific timing interval a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) message is generated which initiates a file transfer which then deposits the file(s) into a specific folder destination and then initiates and delivers an email notification of the event.

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Figure 11. The creation of workflow: linking together scripts that perform specific tasks that can be sequenced together to create an automated process. Modeling Routine and Complex Workflows The ingest of content generated in the field and distributed to any number of venues and screen types (terrestrial, satellite, mobile, etc.) benefits greatly from tasks that can be sequenced and then can be automated. These workflows range from relatively simple tasks such as outlined in Figure 11 to routine tasks that fall into easily identifiable categories. Shown in Figure 12 are examples of categories that routinely need to be accomplished when media transactions occur. Transport is selfexplanatory. Aggregate refers to the need to aggregate content from one or from many sources (as would be the case with FGC or UGC). The reverse of Aggregate, of course would be an automatic Distribute mechanism. Embargo is an interesting capability as it refers to the distribution of content to one or more locations, but an imposed embargo of the content is applied until specific conditions are met (e.g date, time, etc.) and then content becomes available to the recipient. The Transport S3 workflow that is shown refers to the movement of content to an Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) cloud.

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Making Media Move Finally, the Apple FCP Transfer to iTunes shows how content can be automatically delivered from an Apple Final Cut editing application directly to the Apple iTunes servers for content ingest. By using a sophisticated workflow modeling engine (WME), content oriented tasks can be sequenced and be invoked to automatically and programmatically move content according to preset rules and policies that dictate when content should be moved, what bandwidth utilization should be applied, and so forth.

Figure 12. Various categories of workflows that represent routine tasks for an enterprise and which observe the rules and policies by which content flows to, from, and within an organization. From Aggregation to Delivery Workflow modeling systems must be flexible enough in order to accommodate and service the everchanging business models for todays media and entertainment industry. Further, relatively simple categories of workflows can be combined in order to create more complex workflows.

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Making Media Move For example, if we use the Aggregate workflow shown in Figure 12 and combine it with the multistep and multiprocess workflow shown in Figure 13, we would accomplish an endtoend AggregationtoDistribution result. In this case, our Aggregate template would be used to process ingest of FGC or UGC. As part of this aggregation cycle, the content is then delivered to a folder for ingest into an editing system. Once the editing is complete, a Signiant transport call is made and the newly edited content is then delivered to a multistage series of processes. These processes are contained in the foundational group which indicates two transcode operations and a transfer to a geographically separated editing system. The resulting files are then delivered via Signiant agent technology, FTP, and resolved to the target editing system. Finally, the workflow calls for automatic email notifications upon successful task completion, notifications if exceptions are encountered, and database updating.

Figure 13. A more complex workflow created using Signiants Workflow Modeling Engine. Shown are linked workflows with multiple processes, applications, and If, Else, and Exception actions. Editorial, transcoding, content database and multiple transport delivery protocols are all involved in this automated workflow. Evaluating Needs and Implementation A digital ingest, review, and distribution system to support fieldgenerated content should take into consideration three important areas: 1). A secure, WANaccelerated webbased upload and download capability. 2). An automated workflow framework to allow for flexibility of filebased workflows. 3). A centrally managed distribution system that provides routing, scheduling, network bandwidth utilization, auditing and reporting functionality. How much of your company bandwidth to use for any given transfer or set of transfers is, ultimately, a question of business priorities. Having proper controls to determine this is important.

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Making Media Move Figure 14 is an example of a dashboard view that provides realtime feedback of digital media transfers and bandwidth control functionality.

Figure 14. A dashboard view that shows digital media transfers, locations of site transfers, and a network bandwidth management tools. Conclusion In todays competitive broadcast and media environment, it is now a reality that anyone with a camera, a phone, and an Internet connection can be a broadcaster. But there is a wide range of activities that may occur from the moment that an event is captured to the time and places that it is viewed. Getting breaking news on the air means getting it on the air over many device and screen types and demands the implementation of a coordinated file ingest, review, processing, packaging and distribution methodology. The technologies to accomplish these tasks and to implement them have never been timelier. Signiant Content Distribution Management (CDM) software addresses these needs. Tom Ohanian is Chief Strategy Officer at Signiant. He is an Academy Award and twotime Emmy award recipient.

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