James Shepherd, CTO, InSync Technology, takes a look at how frame rate conversion can help broadcasters meet the ever-growing demand for high-quality content
By Contributor
Published: September 22, 2022
James Shepherd, CTO, InSync Technology, takes a look at how frame rate conversion can help broadcasters meet the ever-growing demand for high-quality content
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
Meeting the demand for perfect high-quality content is something all broadcasters have at the front of their minds, but nowhere more so than during live events, where anything less than the best fan experience is critical. Even the slightest jerky motion, pulsing, flickering, ghosting or other visible defects is unacceptable to fans and advertisers alike. Motion compensated frame rate conversion analyses adjacent frames, detects, and calculates the movement of objects within the scene, creating new frames with appropriate object placement and display timing while converting content from one frame rate to another.
The main use cases for frame rate/standards conversion are linear channels with ongoing demand, assets that need to be distributed to different markets in different formats, and events-based content such as live sports. While ongoing services are not always financially viable in cloud environments, it is in the latter case where we see the greatest degree of demand with significant spikes around major events, such as the Olympics or major golf and tennis tournaments. Due to its highly specialist nature, this demand also comes all at once.
For many areas of the broadcast chain, while the migration to cloud is the ultimate destination, we will not be there for a few years yet. The huge spikes in demand are what make motion compensated standards conversion for premium live sports an exception. Traditional hardware-based solutions are not well suited to these high-volume peaks; adding capacity not only means a huge cost outlay, but in most live environments, where space is at a premium, also requires additional footprint.
When we are talking multiple, concurrent sporting events, the issues are further compounded. As broadcasters meet demand for new services and drive to give sports fans the best possible experience, with multiple camera angles, etc., demand for frame rate conversion spirals even higher and hardware is just unable to keep up.
The cloud answers these demands very neatly, delivering a degree of agility and scalability that hardware simply cannot match. Cloud services eliminate the need for costly capex-based infrastructures and allow broadcasters the flexibility of paying only for what they actually use, as and when needed. Additionally, almost unlimited CPU processing power allows processing to be scaled rapidly and cost-efficiently.
Meeting pain points While customers are keen to sweat their investments as effectively as possible, their hardware is becoming more difficult to maintain. Added to the need for flexibility, the availability of high-quality motion compensated standards conversion in the cloud has come at a timely point, just as many existing hardware assets approach end of life. Broadcasters are now looking at how these assets will be replaced, and with what.
In parallel, with so much of the IP transport and delivery workflow now residing in the cloud, it is an enormous operational inconvenience to bring those IP streams back to an on-premise facility, where hardware decoders take them back to baseband SDI for conversion before being reencoded and pushed back to the cloud. This adds latency which in a live environment must be kept to the bare minimum; the last thing audiences and broadcasters want is for a critical piece of action to appear on social media first. Any additional encoding/decoding cycle also results in a quality impact for the end user.
These pain points were driving the industry to look for answers even before the pandemic, which has only taught us the vital importance of having flexible capability built into systems. We are also able to benefit from the fact that so much of the IP and cloud workflows have already been established. Until recently, motion compensated frame rate conversion has been the missing piece; we expect it will be plainer sailing for customers to make the transition here than in other operational areas.
Anything to do with motion compensated standards conversion has traditionally been the preserve of a handful of specialists and so has been waiting its turn to get focus from the industry at large.
A vital niche The main challenge is ensuring the teams that will be deploying the solution work with it; they need to go through the proof of concept (POC), and confirm they are happy that the necessary controls, monitoring, and backup provision are of an equivalent quality and stability to the previous hardware solutions before deployment.
Of all the processing that has moved to the cloud, motion compensated frame standards conversion remains one of the most demanding and unique, exceeding even the most advanced codecs in terms of complexity. As a result, a big part of our job as a technology partner is building awareness around the growth in complexity that server-based technology can address and solve. InSync brought the FrameFormer standards conversion software engine to market and demonstrated live IP motion compensated standards conversion using CPU-only technology in 2019.
It might have been one of the last on the list to migrate to the cloud, but motion compensated frame standards conversion is by no means least the technology is available and is working now. We have shown that we deliver a quality result across the full breadth of customers' content property, providing complex technology in a plug-and-play format. We have seen an incredible response from broadcasters to ou
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
02/07/2026
BLAST, a competitive entertainment company focused on esports, has announced more than $133 million in revenue for 2025, representing more than 40% year-over-ye...
02/07/2026
Riedel Communications has announced official SKAARHOJ panel support for SimplyLive production workflows, enabled through the SimplyLive 2.1 release. The integra...
02/07/2026
The Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic has deployed LiveU video-over-bond...
02/07/2026
Gravity Media USA has announced the appointment of Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development, effective July 1, 2026. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Bosto...
02/07/2026
TwelveLabs, a video intelligence company, has announced $100 million in Series B funding co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with participation from Amazon, Radic...
02/07/2026
The Pro Padel League (PPL) has announced a broadcast partnership with USA Sports that will air five PPL championship matches on CNBC during the 2026 season, the...
02/07/2026
LiveLike, a digital fan engagement platform, has announced eight confirmed FIFA ...
02/07/2026
Cobalt Digital has received Future's Best of Show Award, presented by AV Technology at InfoComm 2026, for its blueCORE family of standalone signal processor...
02/07/2026
Synamedia has announced the appointment of Dr. Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transition...
02/07/2026
The Esports Foundation (EF) and Sony Group Corporation have announced an expanded collaboration for the Esports World Cup 2026 (EWC), taking place in Paris, Fra...
02/07/2026
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. ( Z') has announced exclusive broadcast and digital rights for the Bundesliga in India for five years, beginning with the...
02/07/2026
NBCU brings together News, Sports, Local, and Telemundo for a 50+ camera live pr...
02/07/2026
Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, and Ben Wang appe...
02/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
02/07/2026
A new era in unmixing and spectral editing
The latest version of Steinberg's spectral audio-editing software has just arrived, building on the strength...
02/07/2026
Aims to simplify additive synthesis
Sine Machine is the debut launch from Melatonin, a Vienna-based developer who have spent the past six years creating wha...
02/07/2026
Products to remain fully active & supported
Following the news of Native Instruments joining the inMusic brand line-up, Academy and Emmy Award-winning visua...
02/07/2026
What you missed!
Last weekend, Saturday 27 June 2026, saw the debut of Sound On Sounds new GearExpo UK event, the largest dedicated pro-audio event to take ...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Following the successful launch of its inaugural APAC Mentoring Programme last month, the Rise AV APAC Regional Council will bring the conversation around mento...
02/07/2026
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Used to Shoot Director Takahisa Zeze's Cry Out
Brie Clayton July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Highly mobile camera supports tense and de...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions acquires BFE, expanding its lead in European broadcast, medi...
02/07/2026
Berklee Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's 250th Anniversar...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions GmbH, a leading systems integrator and provider of innovative solutions for the broadcast media industry, is acquiring BFE Studio und Medien...
02/07/2026
Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has extended the ingest facility at leading Brazilian sports company LiveMode, work...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia backs audience-led filmmaking with new insight-driven initiativ...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia refines guidelines for Narrative Content Development and Docume...
02/07/2026
Maxon Autograph: Introduction to working with Tables
Simon Ubsdell July 1, 2026
0 Comments
An overview of Autograph's ridiculously powerful tables...
02/07/2026
Boston Conservatory's Soir e Breaks Records to Fund Student Scholarships The event achieved 127 percent of its fundraising goal in an evening celebrating ...
02/07/2026
How Adam Rosenwach Pivoted from Music to Med Tech Without Missing a Beat What do the rehearsal room and the boardroom have in common? More than you might thin...
02/07/2026
Warner Bros. Discovery UK & Ireland backs Unacceptable for a second series on TL...
02/07/2026
Thursday 2 July 2026
Tea with Judi Dench returns to Sky Arts with legendary guest, Sir Ian McKellen
Sky today confirms Tea with Judi Dench will return this su...
James Shepherd, CTO, InSync Technology, takes a look at how frame rate conversion can help broadcasters meet the ever-growing demand for high-quality content
