Mumbai: The second day of the Broadcast India Show at the Jio World Convention
Centre in Mumbai pulsated with the vibrant energy of the broadcast media and
infotainment sectors. In an industry where technology evolves at lightning speed, the
impact on broadcast and entertainment is profound. For over 30 years, the Broadcast India Show has served as an interactive platform, showcasing groundbreaking shifts in infotainment technology while connecting attendees with the innovators behind these marvels.
While exploring the booths, we were particularly drawn to x-dream-group, a full-service provider for the media industry as well as for any commercial or public organisation that utilises audiovisual media. Their clientele includes post-production facilities, broadcasters, telecom operators and public entities.
Indiantelevision.com’s Rohin Ramesh at the sidelines of this event, caught up with x-dream-group managing director Stefan Pfütze, who shared insights about his organisation with a beaming smile.
Edited excerpts
On brief overview of your organisation:
We are known as x-dream-group, which encompasses three distinct types of activities. One of these is x-media, our company that specialises in software integration, focusing on creating end-to-end solutions using products from other software providers. We are solely dedicated to software and do not engage in hardware manufacturing.
Through our work at x-dream-media, we've identified several established engineering companies that offer excellent products—many now in their second or third generation—but lack international market reach. To address this gap, we established an umbrella organisation called extreme distribution, which serves as a brand ambassador and master distributor for these companies. I am currently representing these various brands at Broadcast India.
On elaborating some of the productised solutions you have developed for your customers:
In our journey of development, we began with plugins for transcoders, which have become less relevant over time. From that foundation, we created a business called 1 GUI—a centralised user interface that integrates with various tools such as transcoders, ingest tools, quality control tools, workflow tools, and file transport tools. This interface serves as a cockpit for managing workflow and job queues.
Over time, we expanded our offerings by adding a workflow starter and a workflow layer. Our latest release is the broadcast suite, a desktop application designed for playback, recording, and multi-viewing—targeted at professional AV users and broadcasters in need of quality control and engineering solutions. While it may not function as a traditional video server in a server room, it provides similar capabilities on a desktop level.
Our flagship product, extreme fabric, is an end-to-end solution tailored for the media industry. Unlike our software integration approach, which involves customising ecosystems for clients, extreme fabric is a ready-to-go, pre-designed, pre-integrated, and pre-configured solution. Users can simply download and install it to establish a fully functional TV station.
This may sound ambitious, but our primary target customers are tier one broadcasters who seek custom solutions and want to collaborate closely with us. For tier two and tier three broadcasters, as well as clients from sectors like corporate, banking, insurance, and government, the need is different. These customers often lack broadcast engineering capabilities and require a ready-made solution. When we ask them about their production business processes, they often look at us in confusion—many have little understanding of the necessary workflows.
We showcase our capabilities on our website and at conferences and trade shows, aiming to enhance the overall process. This challenge is prevalent not only in emerging markets but also in regional TV stations, where organisations may have one or two knowledgeable individuals but lack the capacity to manage large integration projects. They require a more accessible solution. As I travel to various countries, I often hear the excuse that “it’s different in our country” regarding technology, habits, business processes, or even infrastructure. I believe that the challenges we face in the production and broadcast industry are universal whether in India, the Middle East, Europe or America.
On identifying and addressing the specific needs of your clients:
To identify and address the specific needs of our clients, we begin with clear demands. For example, when selling individual products, a customer may say they need software to integrate their central ingest desk with their newsroom and post-production systems. From there, we ask probing questions: “Do you also manage remote offices? What about live feeds or social media content?” This often leads to a realisation of additional needs they hadn’t considered.
When it comes to transcoding, some clients initially believe that open-source solutions are sufficient. However, as they aim for advanced features like 4K Ultra HD, HDR colour spaces, or delivery to professional platforms, they soon realise they must meet strict requirements, such as delivering certified ProRes formats to companies like Apple. This is where we step in to provide the necessary support.
Monetisation is another crucial area where we see demand for features like ad insertion, graphic overlays, audio track management, and subtitle management—more sophisticated needs than the basics. When we engage with clients, particularly during visits or trade shows, we often hear about inefficiencies in their workflows, such as the inconvenience of using USB devices to transfer content between departments. We can certainly improve these processes, especially for companies with distributed setups that include on-premises installations, cloud services, and multiple facilities across different cities.
Another significant project category involves managing the business side of operations, particularly through media asset management systems. These systems serve as essential repositories, often involved in both the beginning and end of media business processes. Many vendors offer mini MAM systems for temporary storage, but we approach media management on a larger scale. We focus on publication strategies for marketing, advertising, and B2B or B2C content sales. For B2C, this includes video-on-demand portals, while our B2B offering, called the media market, enables broadcasters and content producers to sell their content online to a global audience.
Editing is also a critical aspect, where our goal is to manage the bridge between business processes and the editing suite. This includes project management, approval workflows, and remote editing capabilities. Our product portfolio consists of software solutions, allowing customers to select their own hardware, rather than being tied to specific storage systems.
Additionally, we have introduced a new component we refer to as "storytelling," which functions as a newsroom system. This terminology resonates with clients outside the media industry, making it more relatable. Our applications are designed to be cross-media, supporting not just TV but also radio, web, and social media. This means that our playout solutions are essentially a form of publication across multiple platforms.
When it comes to integrating these production systems, aside from editing challenges, we also face issues like ensuring compatibility between various tools and managing different workflows efficiently. We overcome these challenges through thorough assessments of client needs, providing tailored solutions that enhance their overall operations.
On some common challenges you face when integrating an isolated production system:
As software developers, it's natural for us to explore the APIs of various software solutions. Today, most applications typically offer RESTful APIs, though some might have soft APIs, database connections, or file-based integrations. About 99 per cent of software now utilises rest APIs, and when we integrate systems, we prefer this approach because it provides optimal control, monitoring, and failure handling when working with third-party software.
A common scenario I frequently encounter among system integrators and other vendors involves the use of watch folders. Many systems still rely on a chain of watch folders, where one application drops files into the watch folder of another. This approach is outdated and leads to significant operational overhead, particularly in process management and troubleshooting.
Another prevalent trend is the transition from on-premises solutions to cloud-based systems. For many of our projects related to publication, we emphasise a hosted approach. However, this doesn't necessarily mean a public cloud; it could involve dedicated or boutique hosting solutions with either physical servers or virtual machines. While public clouds often rely on virtual machines, they may not be cost-efficient for long-term engagements—though they can be suitable for short-term needs.
We are witnessing a shift from fully on-premises elements, such as archives and publication systems, to remote data centres. This transition is driven by improved network connections, enhanced security, and better hosting capabilities, including power supply and cooling. Offloading hardware management allows for 24/7 operations without constant oversight, which is a significant advantage of a hosted approach, whether private or public.
We support this trend through hybrid systems. For instance, high-resolution operations can remain on-premises, where the personnel and content are physically located, and archives may still reside on LTO tapes. Meanwhile, we can move the access components of the system to a hosted solution, connecting both sides to function as a single entity.
The challenge today is ensuring that these systems operate seamlessly together. Currently, the approach often results in a disruption; the inner system handles publishing to the outer system while the outer system feeds information back to the inner one. Unfortunately, these remain separate systems that do not behave as a unified business process, despite essentially being one.
On some upcoming trends:
Discussing trends can be challenging. We’ve seen fads like 3d technology, ultra hd, and hdr come and go. In hindsight, many of these were just hype—something everyone talked about but few actually implemented. Today, most television remains hd and sdr. However, AI is different; it’s here to stay. Currently, we see practical applications like transcriptions and translations being effectively utilised.
In our portfolio, we offer a product that provides live subtitling with translation capabilities. This tool is actively used in practice, and customers are willing to invest in it because it’s reasonably priced, making it a sensible option.
One trend I observe is the shift toward on-premises artificial intelligence. Many customers are often unaware of their options and feel compelled to rely on public cloud solutions simply because that’s what vendors are promoting. However, the same software can often be deployed on-premises, which can be advantageous. While it may be challenging to navigate training models and related complexities, the cost savings on data traffic, time, and hosting and processing fees can be substantial.
Artificial intelligence will also significantly impact storytelling in news, but I view this with some caution. There’s a common misconception that you can simply input a topic into an artificial intelligence and receive a well-formed story. In reality, we still need journalists and reporters in the field, gathering information and engaging with people. Artificial technology can assist in processing and shaping that information into a coherent story, but it cannot create news on its own. While artificial intelligence can generate lyrics or fiction, the essence of news relies on human insight and experience. Ultimately, it is the human mind that remains irreplaceable.
