Antonio Arcidiacono, Director of Technology & Innovation, EBU
The M.A.R.S. strategy that we have been developing at EBU Technology & Innovation is a framework to ensure media infrastructure is adaptable, robust, and future-proof, both financially and environmentally – Multilayer, Anywhere, Resilient, and Sustainable. While our first white paper on M.A.R.S. focused on media distribution, the same principles are now being applied to media production, where we anticipate a major shift in how production facilities will operate.
The Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) is at the heart of this transformation. The continued exponential growth of computing power in the IT industry creates a significant opportunity for more agile, flexible, and cost-effective media production, fully aligned with our M.A.R.S. strategy:
- Multilayer: DMF allows seamless switching between local servers, private data centres, sovereign national clouds and public clouds. Thanks to standardized interfaces, all production elements – video, audio, metadata, scripts – are universally accessible and managed through a shared layer, regardless of where they are hosted.
- Anywhere: collaboration is enabled across geographies. Remote teams can edit and update content in real time or asynchronously, with changes synchronized automatically. This reduces errors, avoids duplication, and increases responsiveness while eliminating costly, custom-built sharing solutions.
- Resilient: with built-in support for both local and remote cloud environments, DMF provides system-level redundancy. If a failure occurs, another system can immediately take over. In the event of a crisis, operations can be relocated to other facilities or regions, ensuring business continuity and reliable delivery.
- Sustainable: DMF supports scalable infrastructure. When extra capacity is needed, like for big live events, resources can be ramped up temporarily, rather than maintaining idle capacity year-round. Indeed, idle resources can be shut down to save energy and reduce the need for cooling. This approach supports long-term sustainability and facilitates integration with emerging technologies.
Importantly, DMF also fosters innovation and collaboration. By moving live production into the IT domain, it becomes more accessible to new generations of engineers already familiar with IT systems. And moving into a more uniform server room filled with off-the-shelf servers instead of having specific boxes per function will simplify the physical maintenance of the production infrastructure, allowing more focus on creativity and content development.
And there’s more: as soon as the captured image has been moved from the lens into this type of infrastructure, we can leverage all the benefits of AI in live production, with services such as metadata generation, subtitling, translation, aiding sports commentary and much more.
European media cloud?
The resources used for DMF could be on-premises or in the cloud, even using resources from another EBU Member, assuming production schedules allow.
Workflows could also be redistributed to align with different time zones of partner organizations. Because these models are independent of physical infrastructure – dematerialized – scaling out to public cloud platforms is entirely feasible. All of this opens the door to long-term visions like a European media cloud, where resources would be shared at scale for mutual benefit.
In alignment with the M.A.R.S. strategy, DMF also strengthens the link between production and distribution. Once content is completed, it can be automatically adapted and distributed across platforms – broadcast, online, mobile, and satellite – within the same system. This ensures a consistent and high-quality viewer experience.
A central enabler of DMF is the Media eXchange Layer (MXL), a foundational layer for how media assets are exchanged between media functions. Implementing MXL will require coordinated efforts among the entire media community. We are proud to be working on this with the Linux Foundation and North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), paving the way for a more agile, open, and future- ready media ecosystem.
This article first appeared in the June 2025 issue of tech-i magazine.