The business unit Future Applications and Media presented itself at Medientage 2019 in Munich, one of the most important German fairs for the media industry.
Find impressions of our presented solutions from past events below.
Munich, Germany
October 23, 2019 - October 25, 2019
FIFA World Cup Final on HbbTV
October 24, 2018 – October 26, 2018
We demonstrated our solution “Interactive 360° Video for HbbTV – immersive TV on all screens”.
October 24, 2017 – October 26, 2017
Get more information about our solutions:
The Interactive 360° Streaming Suite makes elements of 360° videos clickable and thus allows an interactive experience for the viewer. While the Cloud-based 360° Video Playout offers the optimal streaming solution by significantly reducing the required bitrate, the Interactive 360° Streaming Suite adds the storytelling feature to 360° videos.
The Interactive 360° Streaming Suite offers many options to the content creator to make an individual viewing experience possible and can be used on desktop as well as on mobile devices. It consists of a web based editor as well as cross-platform players (HbbTV, Web, mobile devices, HDMI sticks, etc.). The tool provides various pre-defined markers as well as customizable icons to tag different elements of the video to make them interactive. Markers can be sticked on static and moving elements in the video or on a fixed screen position.
Interaction elements allow for the dynamic display of overlays and supplementary information as well as to link to other video segments and resources.
For further information see 360° Video Playout.
The Cloud-based 360° Video Playout allows the viewing of high quality 360° videos on devices with constrained capabilities such as TV sets and HDMI stick devices. Usually the delivery of such video material consumes a large bitrate and results in a considerable processing load to perform the geometrical view projection and rendering. For example in order to achive a 4K FoV resolution, bit-rates of 200 – 300 Mbit/s is required to stream the complete 24K 360° video and it requires a few seconds to render the 4K FoV frame from the 24K equirectangular frames – which makes a smooth playback impossible even on modern devices with high processing and graphical computing capabilities. Field of View Adaptive Streaming addresses both aspects and reduces the required bit-rates and processing resources by rendering the field of view in the cloud in advance and by streaming only the selected field of view to the client. By doing so, many features which are applicable to classical videos can be also applied to the FOV videos for example: adaptive streaming using DASH and MSE, efficient delivery over existing CDNs and DRM Support over EME, and even Live Streaming scenarios. The solution also supports synchronization across multiple TVs and other devices (even mixed) so that a shared as well as an extended experience is possible.
Features and assets:
For further information see 360° Video Playout.
MPAT is an editor and CMS for the production of HbbTV applications, which allows content creators without specific technical skills to build interactive TV applications. It is based on the HbbTV Application Toolkit (HAT) and further developed in an EU funded project, coordinated by the Fraunhofer FOKUS’ Competence Center FAME and rbb (Germany) and Mediaset (Italy) as broadcast partners.
MPAT is based on the popular WordPress platform and adds HbbTV capabilities by means of themes and plug-ins. It offers the content creator three different navigation models, including the Slideflow navigation and a set of additional features. MPAT is available as a cloud service instance for immediate use and full scalability, covering the full range from small tests to multi-million viewership. Alternatively, it can also be installed by broadcasters on their local servers.
The German broadcaster rbb (Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg) used MPAT to build the HbbTV applications supporting the “Band Camp Berlin” series, the 25th anniversary edition of “Brandenburg Aktuell” and the “Täter, Opfer, Polizei” real-life crime series, which will premiere as a regular companion to the TV series at IFA 2017. Additionally, Mediaset used MPAT to explore the applicability for interactive advertisement and to show the suitability to create multiple apps applicable to different contexts and targeting different communication needs.
For further information see the MPAT project homepage.
Our solution enables dynamic ad insertion and flexible over-the-top streaming workflows including VoD-to-Live services across a multitude of devices and platforms via MPEG DASH, HLS and HbbTV. Dynamic digital video advertising can be integrated per user and in real time, in both traditional linear and on-demand content. Content manipulation and dynamic ad insertion is powered by the FOKUS components Manifest Stitcher and Aggregation Service, operating on manifest level in a highly flexible and scalable system architecture. Individual stream management and channel orchestration is available via the FOKUS Stream Scheduler.
For further information see FAMIUM DAI-Service.
October 25, 2016 – October 27, 2016
Solutions on Virtual Reality, HbbTV, DVB-T and HTML
Together with Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) we presented an 360° Video-/Audio-App for HbbTV. It is a further development of the Fraunhofer FOKUS Cloud-based 360° Video Playout for HbbTV.
Furthermore, we demonstrated the following solutions:
The Fraunhofer FOKUS Cloud-based 360° Video Playout for HbbTV for HbbTV makes it possible to watch 360° video content on low capability devices such as HbbTV. The videostream is rendered on server side what allows high quality 360° video live streaming with low latency.
The object-based audiorender by IRT converts data streams for different platforms, e.g. to the formats binaural, Stereo-Ton and 5.1-Surround. The combination of audio and video rendering enables high quality 360° Video-/Audio-experiences on HbbTV as well as on mobile devices.
The HbbTV 2.0 specification introduces a number of new features that support companion screens and improve the synchronization of broadcast and broadband content. The HbbTV 2.0 CS and Media Synchronization Framework by Fraunhofer FOKUS implements these features. It offers a set of modules and libraries that allow the viewer e.g. to watch additional content on companion screens or to personalize audio tracks on companion devices and choose from multiple camera perspectives.
The Silent TV-function enables multiple viewers in a room to watch a TV program silmultaneously in different languages. Viewers select their individual audio content on a companion screen and listen to the audio stream by headphones. The Silent TV-function with audio- and video-synchronization can be easily integrated in existing HbbTV applications.
Key technologies and standards:
Creating HbbTV apps made easy
The HbbTV Application Toolkit – HAT – presents a CMS for creation of HbbTV applications, which allows content creators without specific technical skills to build interactive TV applications and is developed by Fraunhofer FOKUS' Competence Center Future Applications and Media (FAME). So far HAT covers a simple themes collection which can be accessed through the editor UI. Here the content editor can choose from different layouts and designs regarding the background and color scheme. The layouts include basic modules, broadcast or IP-video, text, image and live blog. The live blog includes an external live blog coming via social media APIs. We see a great potential in the uptake of programme-related HbbTV apps creating new markets for developers and technology providers. HbbTV Application Toolkit Editor HAT provides an editor/CMS with a set of GUI templates that can be filled with text, images audio and video content via a responsive user interface for desktop and mobile devices alike. The content palette can be extended by customized modules, e.g. for display of social-media feeds. The toolkit includes a collection of templates and modules, allowing control of all application elements including broadcast source, IP video source, images, text, picture gallery, social media feeds, popups and overall application layout. When creating more than one page, a navigation menu is automatically generated.
Benefits
Cloud-based monitoring of DVB-T/T2 networks
Linked data for service quality and experience gain in DVB-T/T2 networks. Digital service broadcast suffers from misconfigurations at the source and dynamically changing signal propagation conditions. The lack of feedback leads to undisclosed service degradation and decreased experience. Selective professional monitoring is costly and often not enough to cover large areas.
Our Broadcast Probing System offers cloud-based continuous near real-time monitoring of broadcast networks by utilizing massively distributed low-cost probes. Controlled either individually or in groups the probes are securely instructed to execute scheduled jobs like scanning, tuning and transport stream inspection. The collected spatiotemporal data links RF characteristics and stream quality (e.g. Signal levels, TS packet errors), multiplexed tables (e.g. AIT/HbbTV, EIT/EPG) and AV dumps to allow for live analysis, evaluation and integration into monitoring environments
Features and assets:
October 21, 2015 – October 23, 2015
FAME exhibited the following solutions at the Medientage in Munich at the IRT (Institut für Rundfunktechnik) booth:
The Fraunhofer FOKUS Ad-Insertion Tools demonstrate standards-based dynamic ad-insertion techniques for HbbTV 2.0 and Over-the-Top delivery (OTT) via MPEG DASH and HTML5.
The solution allows for hybrid playout of Ad cue messages to both, broadcast and broadband world and supports conversion of SCTE35 to HbbTV and MPEG DASH specific events for ad signaling,
VAST and various ad types like display and video ads.
Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems