White Paper - Media Servers: busting the myths

When any rental or production house looks into its inventory for something to play back media they'll probably be spoilt for choice.  And if they want to do anything with those signals there will be an armoury of mixers, scalers, effects units, interfaces and so on which will allow users to do just about anything with images from that source machine.  So why would anyone want to pick from the new generation of media servers?  VJs aren't professionals are they? Aren't servers just for eye candy? They're just for lighting guys aren't they? Just some of the myths which have evolved around this emerging technology in the few years they have been around.

However as these devices reach a new level of maturity where they can compete with, and often outperform,  a multitude of standalone boxes, new generation media servers might just spark a revolution in the AV market in the years ahead.

Making video a slave to the artist

Firstly, let's tackle one of the greatest mysteries associated with media servers: realtime video playback - is it a buzzphrase or legitimate feature?

The fundamental task for any media server is to deliver video and still images comparable to those delivered from alternative hard-drive or tape based playback devices.  However the key phrase for video from a media server is realtime.

Realtime is a nineties buzzword which has been misused and misunderstood for many years now.  But let's try and define it in the context of a media server.  When we think of video, we think of a piece of media with a finite length.  It has a beginning and end, and the traditional view is that it conveys some form of information or entertainment.  And generally, we see video as being in a fixed standard aspect ratio, which these days generally means a widescreen landscape view such as 16:9 or its other variations. You press play, you watch the screen, it ends.  Media servers can facilitate playback of such media but the revolution in scenic staging, driven predominantly by LED technology, has built a requirement for more flexibility, more response to changes especially in live events, and most importantly to cope with the unforeseen and the indefinable.

Let's try and illustrate this. Saturday night TV in most countries will now have a live family entertainment show with either a talent competition, or just good old variety.  In fact the old fashioned mix of singing, dancing and sketches has made a big comeback in this decade, but this isn't the same as the 1950s when variety first emerged from the music halls and on to our televisions.  No longer are physical scenic elements wheeled on or dropped in theatre-style.  No. Today's live entertainment show will have a set which is essentially a canvas for either LED display or projection to handle scene changes and moods in conjunction with lighting.  And this means that video becomes the medium of choice to put colour and textures into a show.  You can use the same analogy for theatre, rock 'n' roll and even corporate shows today.

But there's a big problem here with the aforementioned conventional video in live situations.
For decades lighting and sound professionals have stood in front of their respective desks and responded to the live action.  But once you play conventional video you dictate a finite length to the scene.  You instantly make the artist a slave to the video. Conventional video playback can't respond to a presenter changing script. It can't predict how fast or slow a live band will play.  It can't reflect unrehearsed colour changes thrown in by lighting.  

And here is the essence of realtime video.  Based predominately on seamless loops or media generated live plus the ability to colour, scale and effect on the fly, suddenly video becomes a slave to the artist.  This is the fundamental difference between a traditional video operator and the new breed of media server specialist.  A traditional video operator will play in a VT of fixed length during a corporate or live TV show.  A media server operator will sit watching the live action with his controller of choice ready to respond to the action unfolding before them.

Aren't media servers for VJs who aren't professionals?

Realtime media manipulation has its roots in the VJ community.  A DJ in a dance venue builds his set around the response of the crowd.  In the same way that this DJ will never play the same set twice, the VJ alongside him has to do the same, hence he needs realtime video manipulation.

This is the birthplace of realtime as we know it. One of the greatest misconceptions about VJs is that they are amateurs and don't understand the corporate or professional world.

From Green Hippo's perspective, we were assassinated by a large part of the VJ community on their forums for commercialising their art.  However a core set of individuals took what they learnt and applied it to the commercial world.  For example a man masquerading as Many2 on those VJ forums was in fact Luc Lavergne, a French Canadian who is now expert video consultant for Cirque Du Soleil, credited as ‘media guru' for shows such as Love, the Beatles tribute extravaganza in Las Vegas.  Similarly, projection design for AOL online broadcasts and Channel 4's T4 on the Beach annual music extravaganza are masterminded by Digital Insanity, a twin Visuals team of Richard Bagshaw and Kate Perring, who cut their teeth performing live VJ sets at dance events around the UK.

These are professional people who are now highly respected for what they have brought to the genre.  We see a lot of video operators now actively seeking the skills that these people invented.  VJ is the new cool in corporate world, albeit a decade after its birth underground.

And, as Lavergne pointed out recently, media servers owe an awful lot to the computer games market too.  Manipulation of images in realtime is the games industry's lifeblood and processing realtime images on the graphics card is what sets these devices apart from more conventional linear playback devices.  The rapid advances in video card technology allow the comparatively specialised server industry to capitalise on the fastest growing technology sector currently available.

Media servers are for lighting guys, aren't they?

There is no doubt the lighting fraternity latched on to the versatility of media servers early on.  Lighting people have to treat the whole stage as a canvas.  They might have obtuse projection angles, areas with no conventional aspect ratio or even floor or stair areas where non-linear surfaces are found.  Whilst early servers lacked the power to provide acceptable quality for show VTs, they made up for it with new controls to cope with the hostile environments encountered on a live set.  Because media servers are based on a computer and an operating system rather than chips and circuit boards, requests for solutions to tackle the lighting world's problems would be realised much more quickly than from more traditional circuit board based video sources.  So the media server rapidly became the lighting friendly video source of choice.

Lighting specialists saw video as a way of boosting their arsenal of colours from lamps by splashing in some moving video like super-gobos!  Rather than a way to show predetermined media the lighting world saw it as another place to dip their brush and paint new ideas onto the stage area. Because image quality and stability was still questionable in the early days, it was never going to be used to play in the opening VT at the next huge Blue Chip conference.  Add to this the fact that media servers offered DMX control early on whereas most video fraternity alternatives would facilitate the more familiar (to video folk) SMPTE timecode or RS232 protocols and it is clear why it might have been perceived as a lighting fixture more than a video device. 

However, with the advent of faster processing, and more importantly, quantum leaps in graphics card technology, media servers can now play back broadcast quality HD whilst still allowing realtime manipulation.  The multimillion selling boy band Take That has used Hippotizer Media servers on its last two stadium tours.  With media running amok over the mammoth stage set, all controlled by SMPTE from a ProTools audio source driving a timeline, there isn't any DMX or a lighting console in sight.  In fact screens programmer Richard Shipman, who is at the helm of media display on these tours, is a video man to the bone.  But by embracing media server technology on these and other tours, he now sees it as a worthwhile addition to his video equipment list and doesn't need to embrace lighting techniques to operate it unlike earlier server incarnations.  And companies like Seattle based Mode Studios headed up by Bob Bonniol and his wife Colleen, specialise in solutions often based around media server technology for everything from the biggest international corporate shows to no-holds barred rock and roll.

With multi-machine synchronisation and edge-blending capabilities along with multiple input options for live feeds, media servers are moving from the periphery of the technical grid towards the core.  Mixing capabilities allow it to be the centre of a production with the flexibility gained from the lighting fraternity now providing benefits for the video team too.

If media servers are so great, why aren't they more common?

Reading this article so far could well beg you to ask this question.  Why hasn't everyone ditched their mixers and hard drive players and begun buying into the new technology?  Well, it's a matter of training and education.  Media Servers are the product of several overlapping circles from lighting, video, projection design and VT post production techniques.  All are distinctly different disciplines.  Education still treats video acquisition and post production as pigeon-holed skills, let alone embracing scenic video as a genre, and media server knowledge is only just making into the curriculum.  The versatility and multi-tasking nature needed to enter this new generation of equipment is both its strength and its weakness.

Operating a server might require stealing working practices from occupations outside your current knowledge base.  Education is key for both newcomers and established technicians alike.  The limitless possibilities for new display hardware drives the market to seek out new solutions for its source machines.  The diversity of the applications for this "jack of all trades" genre means training courses are full of people hungry to push their chosen discipline to new levels.  Video professionals are hungry to squeeze in some LED batons reflecting the central VT, lighting operators want to cue VTs in PIPS, corporate-style from their DMX console.  Theme parks want to embrace the increased interactivity that realtime video can provide.  Lighting operators want to learn how to operate in an After Effects style without ever committing to a final render, letting them make changes on the fly right up to the wire.  Video designers have to embrace the lighting concept of "last takes precedence". Content creators want to render out layers in Adobe programs as individual media to allow fine tuning on site.

The good news is that this hunger for new levels of creativity is the driving force and is redefining many disciples and making people cross boundaries weakened by the ever overlapping circles media servers have created.

It's rare to see a revolution in this industry, but after seven years of media articles filled with the word "convergence", it is finally happening.  The advent of the media server will be recognised as a key moment in production history in the same way as non-linear editing or the advent of moving lights in the nineties.  Progress always comes at the price of adapting to that progress.  But it's happening now and it's going to change the way you work, whether you are a projection designer, video operator or lighting designer right down to the riggers. All hail to the new discipline of media servers!

Green Hippo Ltd
Contact: James Ross Heron
Tel: +44 (0) 203 301 4561  Fax: +44 (0) 208 889 9826
Website: www.green-hippo.com