Rancho Merang, California —Although “Innovation” and “Let the Sparks Fly” were the themes of the 2024 HPA Tech Retreat, many of the most insightful sessions involved looking back—whether it be a month, a year, or decades into the archives of the motion picture industry. Each presentation presented perspectives and predictions that would impact the television and video industries in the years and decades to come.
HPA President Seth Hallen summed up the importance of these times when he cited the overarching theme of the one-day sessions. He described artificial intelligence as a “fundamental transformative change” that is “different” from other technologies that have impacted media industries. “Don't be afraid of AI,” said Hallen, who serves as co-managing director of Light Iron. He urged the Hollywood Professionals audience to find ways to use artificial intelligence to “enhance the human touch” and explore “the ability to integrate these tools” into productions.
His support for AI was highlighted with reflective presentations chronicling recent industry developments.
For example, Mark Harrison, CEO of DPP, focused on the dominance of AI at CES (formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas in January. Digital maestro Marc Shubin also cited AI in his summary of industry-shaping developments for 2023. A panel of media archivists examined the value of AI as a tool for protecting and researching content. And Michelle Monson from Eluvio It recognized the role of artificial intelligence in building and maintaining trust throughout the production and distribution process.
Software — especially artificial intelligence — dominated CES
Mark Harrison, chief executive of the DPP, said AI was “finally a technology worth shouting about”. [Digital Production Partnership], an international network of media and technology developers, began its review of January's CES. After the pandemic downturn, CES is “exciting again,” Harrison said as he delved into a list of the best technologies expected from the massive show (smart homes, wearables, robotics, cars) described in more than 100 pages. A CES report just published by his company.
He described the market for consumer TV receivers as “as flat as its product.” The global market for such devices is now worth about $97 billion, and will decline to $96 billion by 2028. “And of course, these TVs are getting better and better every year, as the latest technology becomes cheaper, and is standardized.” He pointed out that content providers are already struggling to provide media with technical specifications that match the capabilities of the TVs on which this content is consumed.
Software is killing consumer electronics.”
Mark Harrison, DPP
Harrison, who founded DPP, previously held senior roles at the BBC and in independent production. His overarching take on CES was that “software is becoming more important than hardware” — a startling redirection for a trade show long known as a gizmo and gadget bazaar.
“Software is killing consumer electronics,” Harrison told the HPA audience.
One notable factor in the PDP's assessment was the “heat map,” which tracks the buzz and growth of innovative products in more than two dozen categories over the past fifteen years. The line of high-end displays has been cold for the past few years, and the smart TV path is almost frozen.
Harrison explained that the DPP saw temperatures in video technology as “modest” and decided that “we were in a period of pragmatism. The focus seemed to be on making existing technology work better for consumers and businesses alike, rather than hyping up new technology.”
The DPP report concludes that “our temperatures this year are the coldest on record,” which may indicate “actual maturity.” But the analysis also warns that “the picture is more complex.” He notes that the reason for the “feeling of disappointment” at CES stems from the lack of new technology this year, but then asks: “When something doesn't boil, does it cool or heat?” Harrison confirmed that something new may be brewing, but did not speculate on specific products or services to come.
As for AI, the No. 1 topic at CES, Harrison called it “a revolution hiding in plain sight,” though it is now “stranded on the shoulders of ‘big providers’ confident in their ability to deploy generative AI.” “. But he pointed to the “AI problem”: creativity requires investment, and expressed concern about the negative impact and fear of funders about the risks (political and other) associated with AI.
Shubin's intelligence
Earlier, Mark Shubin, who calls himself the “maestro of the HPA Tech Retreat” – in his summary of the main developments of 2023 – also acknowledged the AI onslaught, although he described 2023 as “the year of intellectual property”.
Emmy Award-winning Shubin, the longtime technology master for video production at the Metropolitan Opera, pointed to the evolving role of digital rights management (DRM) as an emerging barrier to home recording. He pointed to developments related to ATSC 3.0 that could enable broadcasters to prevent their signals from being recorded.
Shubin's wide-ranging summary of last year's developments included products such as the Sphere 18K Big Sky Camera, Canon's Metalens, the Apple Vision Pro (and the virtual reality category of headsets) as well as the emergence of quantum dots as a new photo and transmission feature.
Although he did not provide details on these products or predict their successes in the market, Shubin pointed out problems he saw with some streaming content, such as “dark screens.” He also noted that the many variations of AI — with all their benefits, obstacles, and hallucinations — will continue to play a larger role in the video production industry.
Digitizing archives: do it now
Looking back – with an emphasis on future values – a panel of media archivists explained in a curated presentation “Why now is the time to digitize your archive.” They explained that in 20 years, more than four million hours of TV and film content have been digitized, but the pace has accelerated, such that more than seven million hours were preserved last year, nearly double the total of the previous two decades. .
Panelists – representing a range of production expertise and TV and film industry history – included Karen Foreman, Global Partner for Media and Entertainment at Amazon Web Services (moderator); Heidi Shakespeare, CEO of Memnoon Archiving Services; Andrea Callas, Senior Vice President of Archives, Paramount Pictures, and Linda Tadic, Founder/CEO of Digital Bedrock.
“Content discovery has changed forever,” the panelists agreed, citing tools like OpenAI CLIP (Comparative Language and Image Pretraining). They described CLIP's multimodal AI model that combines knowledge of English concepts and semantic knowledge of images to power video semantic search, image classification, and other factors.
Participants cited the burdens of archiving, especially “obsolete technology,” which means unavailability of playback devices and archived files. They point out, for example, that most surviving videocassette recorders run on heads refurbished with parts taken from “donor machines,” thus reducing the equipment pool even further. Moreover, “knowledge obsolescence” is already beginning to appear as engineers “with the requisite skills approach retirement, and attracting younger generations poses a major challenge.”
Their side notes emphasized the often unexpected value of being able to track digital assets. For example, Tadek explained that when she worked at HBO during the first season of “The Sopranos,” no one really knew the series would become such a historic success. She recalled that “outtakes” from the first shows were deliberately destroyed – footage that would have become valuable after the series' eventual success.
Finally, they warn that “just because it is digital, does not mean it is preserved.”
They said: “Digital preservation requires constant care and management. There is no ‘store and discard’ method. Migration is essential to keeping your digital content alive.”
Managed digital preservation involves planning, policies and processes, the archivists insisted in their joint submission.
Building confidence
Michelle Munson, co-founder and CEO of Eluvio, described the vulnerabilities of digital content, including problems that can develop through “the combination of storage and presentation” — factors of the AI process. Berkeley, California-based Eluvio has developed the Content Fabric Protocol, an open and decentralized streaming, content distribution and storage network designed for the third generation Internet.
In HPA's presentation on “Content Authenticity and Provenance: Protocol vs. Workflow,” Munson acknowledged that storage formats can be “very hackneyed” and asserted that “the claims generator is outside the control loop.” It has supported the use of blockchain (which Eluvio supports) as a way to “take care of distribution across decentralized networks.”
Munson, who co-founded the Alliance for Content Source and Authenticity, explained that the C2PA specifications are intended to codify procedures and “establish trust” in digital distribution.
