Take a Leap Into The Future of Mobile Journalism [Webinar Recording]

Take a Leap into the Future of Mobile Journalism [Webinar Recording]

Our foremost experts in television and news production are going to walk through many exciting portfolio enhancements and discuss some of the biggest disruptors in Mobile Journalism.

We will feature the MOJOPRO app, providing high-quality and affordable video and audio transmission and contributions from any mobile device ideal for Mobile Journalism. It encourages and empowers journalists to produce more video stories using their smartphones, in a quick, discreet, and flexible manner.

Jim Jachetta:                      Good morning, everyone. I’m Jim Jachetta, CTO of VidOvation, and today I’m joined by my good friend and colleague, Florian Kolmer. He is a sales director for the US for Haivision. He’s more than just a sales director. He’s a network engineer. He knows the Haivision product line inside and out. So, he’s not your typical sales guy, for sure. He designs systems, so Florian’s going to lay some knowledge on us today about mobile journalism. Tell us a little bit about what we’re going to talk about today, Florian. Welcome.

Florian Kolmer:                 So, thank you, Jim, for the introduction. So, the topic of today’s webinar is mobile journalism. So, especially during this time where everybody is staying at home or trying to be alone, alone in their normal life, daily life, alone in front of the camera, alone managing the camera, alone doing the production, basically.

Florian Kolmer:                 So, today’s webinar we explain all new solutions that are designed to do mobile journalism and one man crew journalism, as well. So, that’s the subject of today’s webinar. I will start with an introduction about what mobile journalism is, what it can do, what you can do with those the new technologies and products and then we will go a bit more technical about the MOJOPRO solutions by Haivision, which products we can provide, what the features they’re offering, how you can use them and then I will talk a bit more about very specific IT technology, which is behind it and which is making it much more reliable and high quality for broadcasters, proficient and production company prelaunch journalist compared to [inaudible 00:02:21] video apps for smartphones you can easily find on the marketplaces like Apple store or Google.

Jim Jachetta:                      Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, so Florian, I have a little poll, a little survey but I want to ask people, do they use MOJO now? Maybe define what that is first so people know where we’re coming from. If they’re not familiar with MOJO or the term mobile journalism, maybe speak to that, then I can put the poll up.

Florian Kolmer:                 Sure. Mobile journalism is a way of producing live and recorded video content in an easy, mobile and portable way using smartphone technologies. In most of the presentation I will show pictures with smartphones but of course it could be using tablets as well.

MOJOPRO Mobile Journalism Applications

Jim Jachetta:                      Okay, okay.

Florian Kolmer:                 [crosstalk 00:03:16] with tablets and smartphones, for example. Most of our users doing mobile journalism is synonymous of one man crew as well. It’s not necessarily monetary. You can still have a cameraman behind a smartphone but usually it’s a way to be alone in the feed and being both the technical guy managing the smartphone and the talent as well.

Jim Jachetta:                      Okay, okay. So I think you folks see that we put up the little survey, so please, we’d love to have your feedback if you can. That’d be great.

Florian Kolmer:                 Yeah, so it’s a quick question to know if you have been already using mobile journalism or if you’re planning to do so in the future or if it’s something you don’t plan at all maybe because it doesn’t fit your business and workflow or maybe because you think it’s not yet reliable enough and I hope at the end of this webinar you will be considering your position in that case as I will be introducing you new protocols and new products making this high quality and reliable for broadcast quality production.

Jim Jachetta:                      Okay, okay. So here’s some of the results. It looks the majority of the listeners are planning to use … They’re not using it now but they’re planning to use it in the future so Florian and I, we’d love to help you with that. People that are using it already, we’d love to hear from you about what’s working, what’s not working, how you use the technology and then as Florian said, those that have no plans, maybe we can help sway you to consider this type of technology or if you don’t want to do journalism from your cell phone we have the more traditional camera mounted units, backpack mounted units, rack mounted units so MOJO journalism is not the only thing Haivision does. Thank you, Florian. Thank you for sharing with us, folks, we appreciate that.

Florian Kolmer:                 Yeah right. This webinar is part of a season of webinar we are going to do almost every week introducing not only mobile journalism but new ways to produce live content for news, sports, entertainment, contribution and so on but this particular one today is about mobile journalism [inaudible 00:06:08] use of smartphones and especially the improvement in new smartphones model released [inaudible 00:06:14].

Florian Kolmer:                 What is exactly mobile journalism? Mobile journalism is being fully mobile, having your phone and some accessories and being able to produce live and recorded content from everywhere. The key advantage is, except the cost of course because you’re also saving on cost, but it’s also to be able the first on location so especially for news stations and especially 24/7 news, it’s always key to be the first on location and report before your competitors basically in a very efficient way. And also key thing about mobile journalism is also to be able to be more discreet and if you are especially covering some quite very long demonstrations, nowadays you can have more and more demonstrators and the public sometimes unfortunately, being against the journalists so using mobile journalism solutions allows you to get directly in the crowd without looking like a big TV crew with a standup camera and a full set of equipment.

Florian Kolmer:                 So it’s easier to be first on location. It’s easier to be on the move and follow whatever you are covering and it’s also allowing you to be considered as part of the crowd so it can be a demonstration, it can be a sports venue, an event and so on. But what’s key about mobile journalism, even if part of my and most of the presentation here will be technical about how to do it. The most important part of mobile journalism is journalism so even if it’s requiring the talent to be able to launch an app on a smartphone, make a few parameters and [inaudible 00:08:23], the largest part of the job is definitely a journalistic job. That’s key because even if myself, for example, I’m very aware about how to use those tools. I won’t be able to make a good news report as I’m not a [inaudible 00:08:42].

Jim Jachetta:                      Me neither. Well, also my camera operator skills are not the greatest. Little shaky, little jerky, right, but that’s why we need the professionals.

Florian Kolmer:                 Yeah. Most of our existing customers who have been deploying mobile journalism in the normal day workflow have been training their journalists not for journalistic skills but for the technical skills to be able to [inaudible 00:09:12] the system by themself. The app in [inaudible 00:09:18] on smartphones for MOJO are easy to use. What needs usually a training is to set up everything with accessories, can be an extended mic, a light and so on but also, to be aware that shooting from a phone is not the same as shooting from a camera in terms of hangers, watching the camera and so on.

Florian Kolmer:                 What you can use mobile journalism products for. I’ve been talking a bit about news report. You can see here, it’s [inaudible 00:09:56] set up on this picture about news reports in Paris but it’s not only designed for a news gathering. It can also be used for sports production. Let’s say you are covering a game, you have podcast cameras and production inside the venue, you have professional cameras interviewing players on stuff in the venue but then you want to add more content and have some [inaudible 00:10:23] contents with fans, for example, outside the venue. Then you can give smartphones and accessories to [inaudible 00:10:32] so they can just interview fans outside the stadium, provide some live large hanger outside the venue of streets, squares, whatsoever you are, to make the viewers feel that they are part of the event.

Florian Kolmer:                 It can be also for entertainment especially nowadays, we are having more and more production company for TV shoes or the guests talents need to stay at home so they want to leverage smartphones and internet connection at home to produce a show live with less disruption but more and more are thinking instead of moving all guests and crew and talents in a standout TV studio, they could [inaudible 00:11:29] to make that more and more remote.

Jim Jachetta:                      I imagine, Florian, too that a big trend right now is first responders so front line firefighters, law enforcement, they might have a mobile command vehicle that will come several hours after a main incident but in the first moments a first responder could take their phone and start filming. Some of our sports clients because production costs are expensive. One of our sports customers, they’ll use a more traditional backpack or camera mount unit as the primary feed and then four or five cell phones as secondary feeds or B-roll. So like you say, Florian, I see first responders, sports, so not just journalism. So it’s mobile sports, it’s mobile first responder. We’ll have to make an acronym for those as well.

Florian Kolmer:                 Yes, first responders is another use case which is not too many of them in this case but in order to have a high quality live video feed of the command center to be able to manage the team deployment in the field or for EMS and so on. Thanks to mobile journalism, it’s not only faster and cost effective and one man crew to be on site but it’s also easier and notice as I’ve been mentioning, you can get closer to your guests as well. You probably know when you are going to interview someone in the street. If you are using a broadcast camera with lights and so on, people might get shy and won’t react the same way as if you are producing and shooting with your smartphone because they are used to be taking picture or video with smartphones so they will feel more comfortable and you will be closer to them.

MOJO Mobile Journalism Accessories

Jim Jachetta:                      Yes, it’s less intimidating. It’s more casual, more casual.

Florian Kolmer:                 Right. Here are a few pictures about use cases of mobile journalism. The one at the bottom left is a newspaper in France and that’s a public article on the website in which they are showing all they are covering the elections, thanks to MOJOPRO applications. Then you can see on the right side, two workflows. The bottom right is using a standup tripod for a news report and I guess this one was a kind of demonstration because he’s in front of police operations here and the top right just carrying the camera in hand for news as well and that’s for original station, the southwest of France.

Florian Kolmer:                 That’s a way our customers are using MOJOPRO solutions. As you can see in those pictures and I have a few more to show you, most of the users are alone in front of the camera so that’s a big trend with mobile journalism, is also to feature a one man crew and this is giving you a big advantage because if you are covering events like elections, it means you will be able to deploy your crew and cover more locations or cover more events or if it’s for sports you will be able to produce more live content, interview more fans, more players, have more live video hangers from the venue and so on and this way you enrich your content and enriching your production will gather more viewers and more audience of course, which is key for you and most important.

Florian Kolmer:                 As you may have seen on some of the previous pictures, none of the users with mobile journalism are using their smartphone alone. What you will need for mobile journalism is a bunch of accessories depending on what you are doing and producing so if it’s standup news, you might put your phone on a tripod. If you are mobile, you might need a smartphone stabilizer or gimbal. You will generally need an extended microphone to have better audio. You might need some additional lights especially if you are shooting in the dark and of course you will need a dedicated app on your phone like the MOJOPRO software app by Haivision. Most of the solutions and the one I’m showing here are working on any kind of smartphone so you can use your iPhone, Android phones and tablets as well.

Mobile Journalism Rig using Haivision MOJOPRO APP

Florian Kolmer:                 Here’s an example of different kind of accessories you can use along with the phone to make the video quality better and professional. What’s key when you’re producing from a phone is to have a stable picture so we need either a tripod, a gimbal, a grip to be able to produce a stable video picture. Then you can see some light as well. Some audio, you will need an extended mic, it can be a wireless one. If you are doing duplex interviews you will also need a [inaudible 00:17:38] as well to be able to have a return audio feed from the station pulling up there. Some additional lighting as well and here are some of the brands you can shop for this kind of accessory. So that’s really depending on each production workflow, what you need and also what your journalist and talent prefer to use as well. Most of CN users are usually choosing some of those accessories depending on the content and what they are used to.

Florian Kolmer:                 Let’s go a bit more about the MOJO core. The MOJO core is the core of your mobile journalism production. It’s the app for anyone in the US and Android device which will allow you to do mobile journalism. Here you have a screenshot of the main screen at [inaudible 00:18:43]. From this app you can do live video transmission, you can record content, you can [inaudible 00:18:51] any kind of material. You have an intercom solution as well for duplex intercom. You have [inaudible 00:19:00] I will explain more about this one and you can edit some video content as well. It means is a Swiss knife to produce your daily content as a journalist so you can do live records [inaudible 00:19:17] for example. You can record some content during the day. You can purge all your recorded files, your production you might have been doing and you have some editing capabilities so you can add the logo and so on. I will speak more about this later and push your [inaudible 00:19:36] to post production.

Florian Kolmer:                 The idea is to have all the features you might need in a single, easy to use app. Here you can see an example about the phone with a grip, lights and standout accessories. The MOJO core app is capable of sporting all kind of resolutions, frame heights for video and any bitrate for audio as well. It’s capable of converting video in [inaudible 00:20:13] bitrate to adjust to the [inaudible 00:20:16] from the lowest one on [inaudible 00:20:16] up to high quality to make it the best you can and all this with low latency as it’s key especially for [inaudible 00:20:26].

Florian Kolmer:                 Here you can see on the main screen when you are live, this is a professional app, so it doesn’t look like a normal video app for smartphones with a one button operation. It’s very easy to use but you have access to advanced features to do manual focus, white balance, zoom, ISO, you can display your grid as well. So you will find most of the main features you could have on a professional camera. Of course, you can leverage the fact that on many smartphones you know you have multiple cameras so you can choose between the back and front camera. That’s very convenient if you are interviewing guests as well so you can switch between shooting yourself and shooting your guest and you will take benefit of [inaudible 00:21:39] cameras on the latest iPhones and on [inaudible 00:21:42] phones as well from here. So you can select the camera from the interface here.

Florian Kolmer:                 Then you also have all the audio parameters you can adjust here. Sorry, hold on. This one is about video as well first. You can adjust manually your zoom, your setting, lights from the app as well.

MOJOPRO App Interface

Florian Kolmer:                 Next part is about audio. I’ve been mentioning earlier that most of the end users are using an external mic for a better audio channel as well so you can choose from the app if you want to use the internal mic, an external one, a Bluetooth mic as well so this is [inaudible 00:22:39] and you can of course adjust the audio of there from the interface, from the view out here. You can configure the audio bitrates and mode as well. So that’s an app offering advanced features for video and audio.

Florian Kolmer:                 Then it’s a one button operation basically as soon as you have been setting up everything the first time. You can just start and stop your live transmission and what’s key as well in this app is that you can do live and record at the same time. So that’s key especially if you are in a difficult [inaudible 00:23:17] and you have a low network [inaudible 00:23:21], you can still record the video and transmit it later onto the station.

Jim Jachetta:                      Now, I notice on this screen, Florian, you see the icon that shows you cellular and wifi. I guess you’ll come to that on the next slide.

Florian Kolmer:                 Yeah, I will come to that next. Just to finish with the interface. I’ve been talking about live and record and of course then you have a feature to forward your material to the station so you can record video clips in the app and then you can push them to the station. You will have a [inaudible 00:24:03] here in the app and it will forward your material to the station here.

Florian Kolmer:                 How to make it reliable because you are fully aware if you are doing live using app like Facebook live or general public app on your smartphone, it’s going to work only if you have a reliable internet connection so you will need a reliable wifi or you will need a reliable 4G or you will need to be alone on 4G for this to be robust and that’s the core of the Haivision technology here. We have been integrating our [inaudible 00:24:49] into the app like in our professional out web based video [inaudible 00:24:55]. As you can see on this slide, we have been doing load of [inaudible 00:25:00] on iOS and Android so it’s possible to activate simultaneously the 4G mode and from your phone use the wifi. The idea is that you can [inaudible 00:25:11] on wifi of course especially for example if you are [inaudible 00:25:17] you can take benefit of the look at wifi as well but then if you are outside in the field you can take your [inaudible 00:25:24] you are using a [inaudible 00:25:25] 4G hotspot or a smartphone as a hotspot to bond two cellular connections together. [inaudible 00:25:33] for example, you can have a Verizon sim in your phone, carry a small AT&T router in your pocket or smartphone on AT&T and you can bond two cellular carriers simultaneously. That will give you more bandwidth of course and it will be much more reliable.

MOJOPRO Audio Controls

Florian Kolmer:                 On the other hand of the workflow, and that’s something I haven’t been mentioning yet so if you are not familiar with Haivision products, now I need to talk about a little bit more is the [inaudible 00:26:05]. To take benefit of this bonding technology you need a dedicated receiver at user end. This receiver is called [inaudible 00:26:14] as it’s not only a receiver, it’s a whole platform to receive, decode and distribute your live and recorded material. It can be used on premises if you are traditional broadcast or production environment and you need SDI into your production workflow, then it can be hosted in your studio or it can be hosted in the cloud if you just need IEP content, IEP feeds and if you are only working on social media.

Florian Kolmer:                 It’s the exact same solution and it’s offering the same features whereas it is on premises or in the cloud except of course the SDI out which is available only on [inaudible 00:26:57].

Jim Jachetta:                      Right, Haivision doesn’t have SDI out yet. The cloud has no SDI out.

Florian Kolmer:                 Okay, yeah. It will have NDI out, that’s very soon but that’s a topic of another webinar. From [inaudible 00:27:16] it’s key at least to speak a little bit about it because it’s a part of the workflow. From there you have a lot of features to decode, distribute and monitor your content like this [inaudible 00:27:30] feature allowing me to have multiple smartphones on a single stream of [inaudible 00:27:35].

Florian Kolmer:                 Why bonding multiple networks? As I’ve been mentioning if you are doing live with using a standout smartphone app for live video, you probably experienced video freezes, bad quality, macro blocks like in the picture on the left and that’s going to happen most of the time if you don’t have a [inaudible 00:28:04] and reliable connection. Using the Haivision bonding technology is going to provide not only more [inaudible 00:28:15] by bonding to connections but it’s also providing a more robust link.

Florian Kolmer:                 That’s what I will explain more in detail on this slide. This technology is called SST for safe streams transport. It’s a [inaudible 00:28:34] protocol we have been [inaudible 00:28:36] at Haivision for almost 12 years now and we just won two Emmy awards in a row in 2018 and 2019 for this particular technology. It’s a big move for live video production worldwide and it’s the first time you can have a really robust video transmission, professional quality over unmanaged IP networks and unreliable IP networks like [inaudible 00:29:07], like public wifi or public [inaudible 00:29:10] connections. The way the SST is working, it’s not only a bonding technology capable of bonding any kind of IP connections together but it’s also providing advanced mechanism like two dimension [inaudible 00:29:26] transmission [inaudible 00:29:28] ordering and also the key part of this technology is to be able to control the video [inaudible 00:29:36] to do viable bitrate [inaudible 00:29:38] to adjust in real time to the total bandwidth available on all your networkings.

Florian Kolmer:                 It’s also doing dynamic resolutions so it’s really robust from the lowest [inaudible 00:29:52] to the highest 10 megabyte [inaudible 00:29:56] and that’s a combination of all those features and capabilities which remains as robust. It’s not only [inaudible 00:30:05], not only the area IP mechanism, not [inaudible 00:30:09] which can make this robust. It’s a combination of all those together.

Jim Jachetta:                      So, Florian, a common question that we get is why not use SRT or WRIST? What are some of the differences?

Florian Kolmer:                 That’s a very good question, Jim, and I’m sure some of the people in the audience are asking the same thing. SRT and WRIST are other video transport protocols which are doing [inaudible 00:30:45] correction but they are much less robust in SST and they are working fine only [inaudible 00:30:55] connections, high speed and robust connection. They can cope with a few percent of [inaudible 00:31:03] but as the SST protocol here and [inaudible 00:31:07] is a much higher percentage, 20 percent, 30 percent of packet losses and the main reason and probably the primary reason is that SSTs doing bonding between multiple links. If you are using any kind of user IP protocols available on the market, they are relying on a single link so even if they are implementing some kind of [inaudible 00:31:32]. If this link is getting down or if the congestion of this link is increasing then there is no way to get a robust and reliable transmission. That’s the bonding part of the SST transport protocol which is definitely key.

SST SafeStreams Transport Protocol

Florian Kolmer:                 As a broadcaster and production company, when you are doing live and producing live content, you can’t rely on a single unmanaged IP connection. That’s definitely a choice you should not make because you cannot provide a professional live content or production relying on a single project connection or a single public wifi from your local [inaudible 00:32:18].

Jim Jachetta:                      Well, I think people underestimate the difficulty in doing bonding and doing it properly. SRT or WRIST might have a simple failover mechanism. If one circuit goes down it fails over to another but the really challenging part is the cellular. Right, Florian? That the cellular is very unpredictable. Latencies change constantly throughput changes, bandwidth changes and WRIST and SRT are just not built to deal with that, correct?

Florian Kolmer:                 Yes, right. I think all our guests today are already aware about bonding technology and the difference between bonding and failover but just in case. Failover is completely different. It’s just an easy to use multiple sim cards but it’s just using a single sim at the same time. It won’t provide a higher bandwidth, it provide you with higher video quality and then when one link will fail, so time to recover on another sim will always generate a freeze in your video and even if it’s recovering well, when you are doing a professional broadcast production, you can’t afford to have freezes in your live feed.

Jim Jachetta:                      Right.

Florian Kolmer:                 So that’s why it’s always important to consider having all those mechanisms. You have a few bonding solution available on the market which are [inaudible 00:33:53] on the network side and then you plug whatever [inaudible 00:33:57] you can find on the market but it’s not going to work as good as with the SST protocol because here is the SST technology. The network part, the bonding part is also in real time communication with the video [inaudible 00:34:10]-

Haivision MOJOPRO Users

Jim Jachetta:                      Right.

Florian Kolmer:                 [crosstalk 00:34:13] resolution to the available bandwidth on the networks.

Jim Jachetta:                      Yeah, me and my team, we tell people that everyday. That Haivision is a closed system so like you said, Florian, a customer will be like, well I have a low cost encoder, I have a cradlepoint cellular device with a couple of modems, then I have a third vendors decoder. Those three appliances don’t talk to each other. It’s not a closed system so the SST, it really is … Part of SST is the coupling between the encoder, the SST and the decoder, right?

Florian Kolmer:                 Yeah, and that’s, all those parts together which are making this high quality unreliable and that’s the reason why we manage to [inaudible 00:35:06].

Jim Jachetta:                      Right, right, right.

Florian Kolmer:                 [crosstalk 00:35:10] all this together.

Jim Jachetta:                      Right.

Florian Kolmer:                 Not necessarily difficult to make a failover between two sim cards. It’s not necessarily difficult to make a [inaudible 00:35:21] transmission but it’s a combination on all those features, on unreliable networks because keep in mind that this is designed not only to be used on cellular when you are alone in your backyard. It’s really designed to be used on cellular when you are in a venue with thousands of people using their smartphones and that’s a big difference because if you are testing it at home or in your office with a good internet connection then of course it’s going to work fine and other solutions might be working okay as well but then if you are bringing it to your football game during the game, then if you don’t use this SST solution, it won’t probably be working at all.

Florian Kolmer:                 Most of this webinar is about the MOJO core and the smartphone part but as you have been clearly pointing out, Jim, is that it’s a closed system which needs a receiving hand as well. The other end, the receiving hand is called the streamer that I have been quickly mentioning during the introduction. This is your decoder and distribution platform. It’s an outware and all software based platform depending on your workflow which can be in your master control or in your studio environment or it can be hosted in the cloud as well. Just quickly, if you [inaudible 00:36:54] in your studio, it’s a a [inaudible 00:36:56] you just put in your server room. Then everything is managed with a web-based interface. You can see a small screenshot here.

Florian Kolmer:                 What is the streamer offering? It’s not only a decoder. It’s a full tranceiving platform so you can monitor, you can remotely control your smartphones, you can adjust all configuration from this web-based interface. Then it can be decode your video over STI. It can transcode your video for distribution. An example, let’s say your viable bitrate per minute from the smartphone, you need to a constant streaming bitrate output for your decoder or your social media. Those transporting capabilities are breaching the streamer solution. Then of course it can record any incoming feed as well. It can play back videos and what’s key, and I didn’t stop this but I should, is that with a single stream of appliance you can receive of up to 16 incoming live feeds so the screenshot is a bit small here but on the left hand side of the interface under UI, you got 16 input channels. If you are covering elections, for example, you can have 16 smartphones in the feed [inaudible 00:38:16] on a single streamer solution.

Florian Kolmer:                 It’s also capable of receiving any sub party IP feed so it can receive an MPEG GSP like a launch coder. It can receive RTMP or HLS from the internet and you can receive SRT as well from [inaudible 00:38:36].

Jim Jachetta:                      Yeah, I should mention, Florian, that Haivision is part of the SRT consortium and I think in the next webinar later in the series you’ll talk more about that. That SRT is so prominent that the latest version of the stream hub has SRT IP inputs and SRT IP outputs to interface with the rest of the world. NDI is coming. I believe WRIST is on the roadmap as well, right, Florian?

Florian Kolmer:                 Right. That’s a good point, Jim, and a question which can be raised is, why is Haivision part of the SRT alliance and imaging SRT. After been explaining of [crosstalk 00:39:24].

Jim Jachetta:                      Right, right, right.

Florian Kolmer:                 Let me answer this one because it’s a very good question and I need to be clear on that. The SST technology and the Haivision technology and what we are working on is move live video over and manage networks and manage IP networks and it’s offering a perfect gateway between the managed world and the unmanaged world. If you are in a venue in your stadium you can just connect, wire your cameras to a switcher for example or you can receive in your production environment, an SRT feed or an NDI feed and it’s going to work fine if you’re on a private network or a dedicated internet connection. But then if you want to go public on solar networks or public wifi, which is giving you access to everywhere and being much more mobile and cost effective to you. Then you need to have this SST portal in between. It can be seen as a gateway between [crosstalk 00:40:31] networks.

Florian Kolmer:                 For example. You can get an SST or multiple SST live feeds from your feed and remote location into your station and then get SRT locally on your dedicated IP network, of course. And have SRT for distribution to social media, for example.

Jim Jachetta:                      So, I have some good questions, Florian. A common question we get is, and you kind of answered it already, why do I need the stream hub? Why can’t I take my phone or my field encoder and go directly to my generic IRD, my generic decoder?-

Florian Kolmer:                 That’s a good question.

Jim Jachetta:                      Yeah, we need the stream hub to … Right? Yeah, you kind of said it already.

Florian Kolmer:                 So, that’s a good question. The easy answer is because your IRD is not reporting SST yet.

Jim Jachetta:                      Right, right, right.

Florian Kolmer:                 That’s basically the point. As we start working with some third party companies like [inaudible 00:41:42] and some other companies to integrate our SST protocol directly into the solutions and then in that case it means you can stream straight from your phone to your production [inaudible 00:41:58]. That’s something we’re working on now to integrate the SST technology into a sub party workflow in your production environment.

Jim Jachetta:                      Yeah, so part of the magic of SST is Haivision is taking the IP video stream and putting it over up to eight cellular modems, land connections, wifi, 11 or 12 connections. Something needs to put those packets back together to bond everything back together and a generic IRD can’t do that so you need to hit an Haivision stream hub first. Then we can output generic IP, RTMP, SRT, RTSP, et cetera, to a generic RID.

Florian Kolmer:                 Right, and to explain a bit more because sometimes some of our end users are saying, okay but I can’t install this in my environment or I don’t want to take care about this part. This can be in the cloud. This can be provided as a transport service and invisible and then it’s providing IP streaming output using standard protocol. Thank you for the introduction on that, Jim, because that’s-

Jim Jachetta:                      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Florian Kolmer:                 … a part I wanted to explain. You got 16 input channels into your stream hub solution, you got SDI outputs if you got it on premises and you have IP streaming outputs up to 16 per stream hub reporting all standard protocols, so MPEG GS if you want to get it into your standard IUD for example and RTMP if you want to get it into Facebook or YouTube for example [crosstalk 00:43:48] RT decoder or SRT production workflow. We are working on implementing NGI as well to get into your production and if you don’t want to host the steam hub it can be hosted in the cloud. We are providing that as a service. We can pre configure it to get standard IP feedback into your workflow. So that would be-

Jim Jachetta:                      If you have SRT from the cloud, if you have a good internet connection in your master control, SRT is good enough to go from the cloud to your master control or many customers just use RTMP, something even without FEC or ARQ. If there’s a good internet connection it will work so there’s an application of SST is used from the field encoder or the mobile device from the field to get to the cloud or to get the master control but then the stream hub, because it’s transcoding … Here’s another important feature too. With bonded, we use HEVC but social media and older IRD don’t support HEVC yet so that’s a powerful feature you have too, Florian, the transcoding capability. Facebook live won’t take an HEVC signal. We have to transcode to H.264 correct?

Florian Kolmer:                 Facebook is supporting HEVC now but some of the social media are still relying on H.264 but you’re right. We need to explain that the stream hub is a full platform which can receive any feed and can output any standard protocol. So it’s [inaudible 00:45:44] here and we start having some users deploying the stream hub as a standard product for [inaudible 00:45:52] sharing and distribution but that’s a subject of another webinar we are planning-

Jim Jachetta:                      Yes, yes. We don’t want to spoil the surprise of some of the other webinars, right?

Florian Kolmer:                 No. That’s a stream hub and quickly because you saw that screenshot in one of the previous slides, as a stream hub can generate to [inaudible 00:46:11] as well so we can have a four by four [inaudible 00:46:13] view using the 16 input sharings. When I’ve been mentioning it can be in the cloud or it can be a physical hardware appliance on premises. That’s about the stream hub but we’ll have some other webinars little bit.

Florian Kolmer:                 So, that’s something important as well. If you are a large broadcaster or you have a large production environment and you are deploying hundreds of smartphones, then it can be difficult to configure all of them to install the MOJO core app on all of them so our MOJOPRO solution is compatible with MDM workflows. MDM stands for mobile device management and you’re probably aware about this technology if you are working in a large company and they are giving you company smartphones, you might be locked on your phone and not able to install the app you want or change the parameters as you want. That means your company phone is locked to a MDM system. That’s a bad part if you want to play with your phone but the good part of it is if you are deploying the MOJOPRO solution on a large feed of smartphones for all your journalists, freelancers and so on, you can benefit of this tool to deploy the app on all your smartphone in a row and deploy your configuration as well. This way, your end users won’t have to configure the smartphone app by themself but they won’t be able to change their parameters to something you don’t want. That’s MDM.

Florian Kolmer:                 Your options with the MOJOPRO. You can even, these are the basic deployments, set up the app from the store, you do the configuration menu the first time you run it and you are live. Or it can be deployed by your MDM system.

Florian Kolmer:                 That’s just a few example of companies using our MOJOPRO solution so it can be local station, as you can see [inaudible 00:48:32] in the US here, CHEK TV in Canada near Vancouver, a regional station and you have major stations in the world. You can see here France, Germany and Belgium, CNN in Brazil is massively relying on our MOJOPRO and you might have seen the news, some large news productions have been doing [inaudible 00:48:57] in America using smartphones and of course we do have other customers in Latin America, for example as well, you can see in Africa, in the Middle East and Asia. This solution is really used widely now for news, for entertainment, for sports production as well and it’s opening new gates for new kind of productions as well as I have been mentioning before.

Florian Kolmer:                 If you have been considering some of the answers we gave at the beginning during the introduction. If you have considering using MOJOPRO solution in your workflow, but you have been still hesitating about reliabilities or would be the quality, you can really consider it now because it’s being widely used by tier one TV stations. We have, for example, the public broadcaster in France now. They have been launching some station relying entirely on smartphones. They have trained all their journalists and all the live and recorded content is being done with smartphones. So-

Jim Jachetta:                      Well, I should mention too, Florian, you already said this. It may be redundant but if someone is concerned about reliability that recording button is very important that if you try to go live and master control says, hey that segment was a little choppy, you can push the recorded story near live, a few minutes after you shoot it it could be in master control ready to be aired.

Florian Kolmer:                 Right, right. That’s a good point as well. Yeah. Something I haven’t been mentioning during this webinar, but it’s key and we start seeing more and more production company doing that. You can do a multi camera production using only smartphones so we can view standup TV sets, you put multiple smartphones and you are doing switching remotely. That’s one production with multi camera smartphone, multi smartphones. What’s key in this use case if you are doing a multi camera remote production, you have a very important thing, the same thing with the standup camera and with smartphones. For remote production all your feeds need to arrive perfectly [inaudible 00:51:32] in your product feature if you want to switch between cameras and that’s a part of the SST protocol I haven’t been mentioning because it wasn’t the primary thing on this webinar but apart from the bonding [inaudible 00:51:45] the SST protocol is also providing a [inaudible 00:51:51] IP feature, which means all your live feeds from all your phones will be perfectly [inaudible 00:51:56] at the station and [inaudible 00:52:00].

Jim Jachetta:                      Yeah, we’ve found that some of our competitors claim they can do it. They’re anywhere from a dozen frames to many frames off that we’ve done some big projects with Turner Sports where we’ve brought 16 to 20 ISO camera feeds all the way from Europe, all the way from Paris to Atlanta and everything was frame accurate gen-lock and frame accurate lip sync with any other platform wasn’t possible. Even sports, the cameras are relatively static in a fixed position. We’re able to maintain the gen-lock in speeding police vehicles and keep the frame accurate gen-lock and lip sync even in challenging and changing environments.

Florian Kolmer:                 Right.

Jim Jachetta:                      And it’s-

Florian Kolmer:                 And that’s something here as well with the MOJOPRO solutions. We have been mostly showing standalone one camera solution and on workflow but of course you can do much smartphone production or news entertainment so if you have a remote studio or venue with two or three guests, you can just put multiple smartphones on a tripod and do remote production and switching with that. In this particular COVID-19 situation you can do that as well. If you are a news presenter from home you can of course have a single smartphone and a single point of view but you [inaudible 00:53:46] smartphones at home and your crew at the station remotely can switch from one phone to the other and they are perfectly gen-locked together so that’s a way to producing alone and to be confined at home [inaudible 00:54:04]. You can just steal all the smartphones from your children. No, you can’t do that. I’m joking.

Jim Jachetta:                      No, some of them … Jimmy Fallon’s talk show, he’s got his kids and his wife shooting him at home. They’re not producing that show live but they could. They could very well be live if they used Haivision technology.

Florian Kolmer:                 Right. That’s one thing you can achieve with the MOJOPRO app. Just to finish with a few books. If you are interested, of course you can get in touch with Jim and myself and we’ll be pleased to give you more information but if you have time to spend you can find some literature. There’s quite a lot of literature about mobile journalism now, social media and storytelling. That’s a few example of books you can find in the market.

Jim Jachetta:                      So, oh continue, Florian. I have a question. You can finish up and then I’ll ask.

Florian Kolmer:                 Okay. Yeah, well that’s the last slide and we can go on for questions. Just quickly, that’s two of my colleagues so I’m the sales director in charge of the US Haivision. Rowan on the left, is our CTO and one of the co-founder and Samuel is one of our senior product manager especially in charge of MOJOPRO solutions, for example and you are welcome to get in touch with them directly if you want more information as well and if you have any question.

Jim Jachetta:                      Very good, very good. One, I think we talked about this yesterday, Florian. Yeah, you see Haivision contact. Here’s VidOvation’s contact information. You can call our New York or California offices, drop us an email. I think today’s webinar maybe, Florian, was more about going live. That if you’re … Sometimes your workflow is to send a fully produced video clip to production, to master control so I think maybe we miss some of those features that a very powerful part of the MOJOPRO app is the ability to do a voiceover. You can record, bring up a recorded file and be like, well the audio’s kind of muddled or you’re doing a B-roll shot and you want to speak over it. You can do a voice over. You can add your corporate logo, put your little bug in the corner of the feed and then you can even put some simple text over it. Is there something else that I’m forgetting? I think those … If you’re not going live that could be very powerful.

Florian Kolmer:                 Yeah, that’s the main features. You’re right. We haven’t been mentioning that a lot during this webinar and that much [inaudible 00:57:11] but the idea is that you can of course do live record for [inaudible 00:57:15] but you can also video editing with logos, graphics, banners, [inaudible 00:57:21] voice over, you can adjust your part, you can have multiple clips, crop them, put some preroll banners so the idea is that during your normal working day as a journalist, you can record interviews of people, you can produce your news report and then you can do a live on air. [crosstalk 00:57:47].

Jim Jachetta:                      Okay, okay, okay. Anybody have any questions? Let me see. I’ve been answering the questions as they come. There was one good question about how’s the software work? Is it hardware based? I answered this question myself. The MOJOPRO is a software app but the rest of the field unit portfolio, whether it’s the pro, the camera mounted unit or the backpack unit or the air, the smaller unit, the belt, the shoulder mount or the belt unit or the HE 4K encoder or the rack family of rack mounting coders. Those are all hardware based and then the stream hub software is Lynx based. Maybe talk about how it’s dockerized, Florian. Typically we provide it on a super micro server or in the cloud on AWS or VMware. Maybe speak a little bit to some of the stream hub configurations.

Florian Kolmer:                 That’s a subject of one of our other webinar but I can make a quick introduction on this. I’ve been mentioning that the stream hub technology can be integrated in a sub party workflow. That’s not only in starting a software in a virtualized platform in the cloud. We are provide this stream of technology as a [inaudible 00:59:22] container so if you are familiar with [inaudible 00:59:25] technology it helps you to integrate a piece of software into your existing environment and it’s highly scalable.

Jim Jachetta:                      Okay, okay, okay. That’s … You’re integrating with third party workflows and that’s how you do it that you had this docker or you add this software module to this other vendors workflow and now it adds SST and it adds the Haivision workflow to these other vendors workflows. I think you mentioned a few of them. I don’t know if maybe we’ll talk more about it in other webinars but some of the companies that Haivision is partnering with already?

Florian Kolmer:                 Yeah, but that’s definitely a subject of another webinar because then-

Jim Jachetta:                      Okay, okay. We don’t want to … If you haven’t done so already there’s three more webinars. Please register for those. There was a common question about how do I get a recording. Anyone who was registered, we will email you a copy of today’s webinar, the video content and we’ll have the content available in our blog for you to register to download but if you are already registered, you’ll get all the content for sure.

Florian Kolmer:                 Right. Of course if have any question you can just get in touch with Jim or myself and we will be pleased to answer. We can also schedule a conference call with you to give you more information and a technical solution for your particular requirements. Just [crosstalk 01:01:22] if you want my contact details you can just give me a call or send me an email as well as Jim [inaudible 01:01:30].

Jim Jachetta:                      We have a webinar the next two Wednesdays. Wednesday the 13th at the same time, 10:00 Pacific, 1:00 Eastern on the 13th and the 20th and then we skip the 27th because that’s a holiday week and then we’re back June 3rd with the final of the four webinars so there’s a lot of good information we will be covering. We foreshadowed some of that so thank you all very much for attending today. We hope you are all staying safe, staying healthy, maybe we’ll see you at NAB New York. Hopefully that trade show won’t be canceled but we can do a go to meeting and we can do a virtual meeting. Florian will join us from France and we hope to see you in person sometime soon. So thank you so much, Florian, for sharing your knowledge with us today. Thank you everyone for attending. Have a great day. Thank you.

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