Case Studies: CIMA Co., Ltd.

― Mr. Akira Sakamoto, Chief Technical Director, CIMA Co., Ltd.

Challenge

• Conventional event-specific switchers are unable to keep up with the growing demands for compositing and other advanced production as well as the widening range of video materials being used at large events and corporate ceremonies.

Solutions

• KAIROS meets the needs for advanced video production and delivery by adopting a multi-layered approach that accepts as many mixing effects (MEs) and keys as a GPU allows.

Background

IT/IP platform "KAIROS" for advanced production and operation

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, large conferences, academic meetings and corporate ceremonies increasingly began to be held both online and in person. It is now common at conferences for greetings and questions to be conducted live, but for video presentations to be created in advance to present or distribute during the event. Conventional hardware switchers limit the number of useable layers as well as materials that can be synthesized, placing burdens on operators who must handle a growing range of content. Panasonic's IT/IP platform "KAIROS" is designed to accommodate these increasing production and operational needs.

Why choose Panasonic products?

Technology expected to evolve rapidly

The customer elected to introduce the system not only to enhance their production and operational capabilities, but also to adapt to emerging trends. According to Mr. Akira Sakamoto of CIMA’s Project Promotion Office, "We believe that adopting the latest technologies enables us to provide our customers with better service. We always want to be an early adopter. As global infrastructure becomes more sophisticated, we expect the design concept of IT/IP platform "KAIROS" to become an indispensable tool for staging events and corporate ceremonies.”

Benefits

Advanced pre-production to meet diverse needs

KAIROS effortlessly handles video-production tasks that are beyond the capacity of conventional hardware switchers, such as the creation of scenes incorporating rich effects. Mr. Akira Sakamoto of CIMA’s Project Promotion Office says, “Demands for high-quality video at events and ceremonies have never been greater. In view of the extra-high resolution of modern LED big screens and projectors, we receive many requests to produce stage backgrounds implemented in 4K video. Thanks to KAIROS we can respond to such expectations by fully leveraging GPU capacity for extensive pre-production, including content selection, transitions and layer composition implemented with unconstrained MEs and keys. Initially, we were unsure about the benefits we could deliver with our new IP switcher, but such concerns have proven to be unfounded because we now offer customers a much wider range of production capabilities.”

Kairos Creator for scene editing by assistants

During rehearsals or actual performances, Kairos Creator makes it easy for an assistant to add or edit content and then return the finished product while the operator continues to handle overall switching. Mr. Eiichiro Kiriyama of CIMA's Sales Planning Division explains, "Until now, a single person was responsible for both preparation and operation, but now the work can be shared, which is a huge advantage. In the past, for instance, if a picture-in-picture (PiP) needed to be resized during a rehearsal, we had to stop the rehearsal each time. But with KAIROS, the rehearsal can continue uninterrupted while an assistant uses KAIROS Creator to edit and then return the content. This even can be done remotely. As a result, we can respond to clients’ requests much more easily within allotted timeframes.”

System overview

Future prospects

IP connectivity for advanced content creation and delivery

As events and corporate ceremonies become increasingly sophisticated with the incorporation of IP, the KAIROS IP switcher will give us a competitive advantage. For large events that we used to manage entirely onsite, for example, we can dispatch junior personnel while expert technicians provide backup support remotely. We also have adopted Panasonic's IoT cloud platform—Media Bridge—for live distribution, file recording/production, and equipment/content management, so we expect to realize even greater capabilities as the system becomes even more sophisticated with large-scale IP connectivity.