David Jorba of Disguise Discusses Innovations Shaping the Future of Live Production
We spoke with David Jorba, VP of Business Development/Broadcast at Disguise. As a key figure in the world of immersive media and live production technology, David has played a pivotal role in advancing Disguise’s cutting-edge solutions. In this exclusive interview, we'll explore Disguise’s latest innovations and how they are transforming the broadcast and live event landscape.
Can you share any case studies or success stories where your products have significantly enhanced broadcasting operations or content production?
Some of our recent customer project highlights include CCTV’s “Football Connections” - a special telecast where the Chinese broadcaster transported audiences from Beijing Live Hall, across Asia to Europe and the serene and beautiful Alps, while experiencing the excitement of the football matches up close. Disguise’s VX 4 media server and RX II render engine, allowed the team to achieve seamless and precise 4K scene rendering.
According to Hologram Jasmine Project Producer Zeng Xiao, “Disguise provides a richness of cases and industry standards that allow us to connect teams from different project phases. In addition, Disguise has a very detailed user manual and a highly active community ecosystem.”
Other standout recent projects include the NBA’s debut of a brand new interactive LED court during the All-Star Weekend (Feb 16 - 17) at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. This was powered by Disguise and bought a new dimension to the fan experience.
Disguise has powered various standout broadcasts including data-driven graphics for the Mexican elections covered by Televisa+. Disguise’s Chronos solution allowed the team to display data-driven graphics on a video wall.
According to Hologram Jasmine Project Producer Zeng Xiao, “Disguise provides a richness of cases and industry standards that allow us to connect teams from different project phases. In addition, Disguise has a very detailed user manual and a highly active community ecosystem.”
Other standout recent projects include the NBA’s debut of a brand new interactive LED court during the All-Star Weekend (Feb 16 - 17) at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. This was powered by Disguise and bought a new dimension to the fan experience.
Disguise has powered various standout broadcasts including data-driven graphics for the Mexican elections covered by Televisa+. Disguise’s Chronos solution allowed the team to display data-driven graphics on a video wall.
How do you anticipate the trends and developments in broadcasting technology influencing the industry in the next few years?
An ever-evolving industry trend that we are excited to be a part of is cloud production and distribution. Cloud-based workflows are becoming the norm in the broadcast industry. Cloud infrastructure offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, allowing broadcasters to streamline operations, collaborate remotely, and deliver content seamlessly across multiple channels and devices. Advanced, cloud-based production tools enable real-time collaboration among dispersed teams, accelerating content creation and delivery processes. Our suite of cloud-based broadcast tools, including Porta, Ipsum and Chronos, are all at the forefront of this trend, providing an integrated solution for content experience and graphics production, and our native integration with Unreal Engine means our tools are constantly evolving to support the latest UE release.
We also continue to see growth in the usage of real time content to support both audience interactivity and immersion, bringing the physical environment to life. Sports arenas are an exciting proof point of this, with projects like the NBA GlassCourt, a 27-million-pixel LED screen that sits beneath a glass surface with interactive graphics responding to player movements in real time. Debuted at the NBA All-Star Game earlier this year, the GlassCourt delivered another level of experience for those at home watching which resulted in a record breaking viewership of over 10 million people. This could not have been made possible without our Disguise GX 3 media servers, built to unlock the most complex generative content.
We also continue to see growth in the usage of real time content to support both audience interactivity and immersion, bringing the physical environment to life. Sports arenas are an exciting proof point of this, with projects like the NBA GlassCourt, a 27-million-pixel LED screen that sits beneath a glass surface with interactive graphics responding to player movements in real time. Debuted at the NBA All-Star Game earlier this year, the GlassCourt delivered another level of experience for those at home watching which resulted in a record breaking viewership of over 10 million people. This could not have been made possible without our Disguise GX 3 media servers, built to unlock the most complex generative content.
Please provide an overview of your company’s latest innovations and products that will be showcased at the International Broadcasting Conference?
Our highlight product development at IBC is the native integration between our Porta graphics controller and Unreal Engine Motion Design, enabling broadcasters to create motion graphics in Unreal in their traditional broadcast workflow.
Users can now control all their graphics types - AR, XR, Motion - through one single user interface and one single tool, reducing round tripping, feedback loops, while streamlining their and operations.
Porta does not use a specific plugin to control assets in UE. It uses the standard and default UE Remote Control Presets. This comes with every version of UE and removes the need for complex blueprints to build simple asset controls.
Some of our latest hardware releases from this year are also present on the show floor. These include:
- VX 3 and VX 2+ media servers: The latest additions to our flagship VX hardware range featuring the Nvidia RTX A4500 GPU, Intel Xeon 3.1Ghz CPU, 100Gb networking, in a ruggedised 4U chassis. With a choice of two or three 4K video outputs, these machines are built to power both pre-rendered and real-time video playback at an unmatched power per output.
- RX III real-time render node: The third generation in our real-time render node range, the RX III has been developed to render increasingly demanding and complex real-time content from your render engine of choice, thanks to its Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada GPU, allowing any industry to benefit from the magic of real-time scenes. Paired with our RenderStream bi-directional data transfer protocol, the RX III can scale content endlessly via cluster rendering, whilst ensuring seamless synchronization between your virtual scene and the physical LED. RenderStream and RX III also allow users to combine content from multiple engines into one project - a flexibility that no other rendering solution on the market provides.
All these solutions can be found in action on our partner INFiLED’s stand no 3.B61, powering data-driven real-time graphics on INFiLED’s state-of-the-art displays. A demo of the Porta and UE Motion Design integration for seamless content control will also be available from our Disguise experts located at the stand.
Additionally, our VX 4+ media server, equipped with our patented IP-VFC technology, will be enabling a full ST 2110 workflow from media server to LED screen on our partner ROE Visual’s stand no 7.B26. Our solutions have been used together to enable the first large-scale live broadcast event deploying a full video over IP stream for Eurovision 2024.
Users can now control all their graphics types - AR, XR, Motion - through one single user interface and one single tool, reducing round tripping, feedback loops, while streamlining their and operations.
Porta does not use a specific plugin to control assets in UE. It uses the standard and default UE Remote Control Presets. This comes with every version of UE and removes the need for complex blueprints to build simple asset controls.
Some of our latest hardware releases from this year are also present on the show floor. These include:
- VX 3 and VX 2+ media servers: The latest additions to our flagship VX hardware range featuring the Nvidia RTX A4500 GPU, Intel Xeon 3.1Ghz CPU, 100Gb networking, in a ruggedised 4U chassis. With a choice of two or three 4K video outputs, these machines are built to power both pre-rendered and real-time video playback at an unmatched power per output.
- RX III real-time render node: The third generation in our real-time render node range, the RX III has been developed to render increasingly demanding and complex real-time content from your render engine of choice, thanks to its Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada GPU, allowing any industry to benefit from the magic of real-time scenes. Paired with our RenderStream bi-directional data transfer protocol, the RX III can scale content endlessly via cluster rendering, whilst ensuring seamless synchronization between your virtual scene and the physical LED. RenderStream and RX III also allow users to combine content from multiple engines into one project - a flexibility that no other rendering solution on the market provides.
All these solutions can be found in action on our partner INFiLED’s stand no 3.B61, powering data-driven real-time graphics on INFiLED’s state-of-the-art displays. A demo of the Porta and UE Motion Design integration for seamless content control will also be available from our Disguise experts located at the stand.
Additionally, our VX 4+ media server, equipped with our patented IP-VFC technology, will be enabling a full ST 2110 workflow from media server to LED screen on our partner ROE Visual’s stand no 7.B26. Our solutions have been used together to enable the first large-scale live broadcast event deploying a full video over IP stream for Eurovision 2024.
In what ways do you believe your products can address the evolving needs of broadcasters and content creators?
Our Porta and Unreal Engine Motion Design integration has been one of the first to hit the market, being successfully deployed in beta last year by DAZN in their MotoGP Americas coverage. We believe this integration can address some long-standing challenges presented by traditional broadcast workflows including:
- The ability to build motion graphics quickly and efficiently and play them out with ease. With this integration, users will be able to move away from existing real-time motion graphics tools that limit creativity and the quality of their on-air look and use the same cutting-edge platform for all their graphics needs, from lower thirds, scoreboards and other 2D layer designs, to real-time 3D graphics, all controlled from a single interface.
- A big blocker to adopting Unreal Engine in traditional broadcast is that it’s a real-time engine and not well suited for industry specific workflows. While the core of the engine features a general collection of creative tools, it hasn’t included any features that unlocked the power of the engine within specific broadcast workflows. Unreal Engine Motion Design finally overcomes this blocker and, thanks to its native integration with Porta, users can finally create, manage and control motion graphics in their traditional broadcast workflow.
Another key challenge our solutions have tackled is the move towards more video over IP workflows in production. Broadcast studios are increasingly looking to adopt end-to-end ST 2110 workflows as latest state-of-the-art cameras are being designed to output ST 2110 to vision mixers. To address this, we have developed the IP video format conversion card (IP-VFC), a patented technology that connects to our VX and GX media servers to allow them to output 4K video content over IP with minimal latency, removing the need to do any conversion using external devices downstream. This saves time, space, and costs, whilst catering to the ever-growing demand for high-quality broadcast content.
- The ability to build motion graphics quickly and efficiently and play them out with ease. With this integration, users will be able to move away from existing real-time motion graphics tools that limit creativity and the quality of their on-air look and use the same cutting-edge platform for all their graphics needs, from lower thirds, scoreboards and other 2D layer designs, to real-time 3D graphics, all controlled from a single interface.
- A big blocker to adopting Unreal Engine in traditional broadcast is that it’s a real-time engine and not well suited for industry specific workflows. While the core of the engine features a general collection of creative tools, it hasn’t included any features that unlocked the power of the engine within specific broadcast workflows. Unreal Engine Motion Design finally overcomes this blocker and, thanks to its native integration with Porta, users can finally create, manage and control motion graphics in their traditional broadcast workflow.
Another key challenge our solutions have tackled is the move towards more video over IP workflows in production. Broadcast studios are increasingly looking to adopt end-to-end ST 2110 workflows as latest state-of-the-art cameras are being designed to output ST 2110 to vision mixers. To address this, we have developed the IP video format conversion card (IP-VFC), a patented technology that connects to our VX and GX media servers to allow them to output 4K video content over IP with minimal latency, removing the need to do any conversion using external devices downstream. This saves time, space, and costs, whilst catering to the ever-growing demand for high-quality broadcast content.
How does your company approach sustainability and environmental responsibility in the design and manufacturing of your products?
As hardware manufacturers, we recycle our redundant media servers, promising customers to repair and service servers until parts run out. We conduct supply chain management practices that ensure little to no 'extra or unnecessary' material on hand. We have modified the design of our servers - making our systems modular so they have 95% component cross-use.
We are part of research projects and currently utilise System Management Controller (SMC MK I/ II) to help us and our customers build up reviews of their power usage. This is being expanded to provide better remote monitoring and control of server fleets.
Our main hardware supplier has ISO 140001 accreditation. The contract manufacturer is self-sustainable using solar power to run its manufacturing site so the use of fossil fuels is minimised. Our operations department also combines orders and optimises workflows to reduce global shipping requirements. We conduct ongoing environment reviews to ensure best practices.
We are part of research projects and currently utilise System Management Controller (SMC MK I/ II) to help us and our customers build up reviews of their power usage. This is being expanded to provide better remote monitoring and control of server fleets.
Our main hardware supplier has ISO 140001 accreditation. The contract manufacturer is self-sustainable using solar power to run its manufacturing site so the use of fossil fuels is minimised. Our operations department also combines orders and optimises workflows to reduce global shipping requirements. We conduct ongoing environment reviews to ensure best practices.
Where can we find you (booth number) at the show and keep up with you (URL, social media handles?)
We will be co-exhibitors on INFiLED’s stand 3.B61.
Our solutions are also powering a number of other partner stands including:
- ROE Visual 7.B26
- Samsung 9.A03
- MRMC 11.C28
Our solutions are also powering a number of other partner stands including:
- ROE Visual 7.B26
- Samsung 9.A03
- MRMC 11.C28
Featured Booths
- AJA: 2.G105a, 7.B19
- Adobe: 13.D501, 7.B35
- ARRI: 12.F21
- Atomos: 11.D25
- Blackmagic Design: 6.MS5, 7.C49
- Canon Europe: 10.HR, 11.C40, 11.C41
- Fujifilm: 12.B20
- Avid: 7.B59, 7.R101
- CoreSWX: 12.C55
- LiveU: 7.C19
- Marshall Electronics: 11.A17
- OWC: 7.A60
- Quantum: 7.B55
- Sony: 13.A10, 13.D201