Claudio Lisman´s technical lucidity

In his showcase, there are multiple awards and acknowledgements, including a PRODU Honorary Award for his career of more than 40 years dedicated to the technology industry. He has recently reached a new milestone in his career: He sold Primestream so its technology could evolve to the next level, and from a personal perspective—although he vividly says it is all the result of teamwork—he was received an Emmy for his team creative contributions to the industry. We are talking about Claudio Lisman, a curious man who has been able to move fearlessly along the paths of the industry in multiple directions.

Lisman uses the term ‘technical lucidity’ to explain in short, his and the joint creative processes that led him to present challenging proposals—that some believed hopeless and ahead of time—which however found a way to succeed with perseverance, discipline, commitment, a touch of stubbornness, and sometimes, going against the current.

After the world’s covid-19 break, Primestream Emmy nomination in the field of technology and engineering was postponed for a year, this allowed him, among other things, to better prepare the application form and to increase his understanding of the main criteria to be evaluated.

“They asked me to explain the impact the technology has made to the industry and how many users the solution had when introduced and how many are there today”.

He furthered that since 2003 he had great interest to develop a solution that enabled work remotely in the cloud. He had to wait some time, make some investments, and wait for the arrival of new developers to his team to shape the proposals that would address his initial questions.

“How do I make sure that someone who is not inside the same building can see a pre-edited video, can add metadata, can make comments so that the editor or producer has references and could make changes? How do we make that part of the production process happen?”.

He continues, “At that time the bandwidths were very limited. The network topology was not very strong”.

“The first thing we considered was how to generate a file in low resolution that was synchronized with the high resolution one, that is, that the video data that I have in low resolution… of 300 Kbps (for example) was synchronized with a file at 25 Mbit/s, so that when I gave an instruction to the file in low resolution, immediately that instruction appeared in the cloud, as well, in the high resolution file”.

The conclusion in the process was to work with a proxy, and thus synchronize both files, the local one in low resolution, and the one that was hosted in the cloud, in high resolution.

“Initially, we worked with Adobe and the first companies to use this solution were Yahoo with our partner ASG in California and Disney and Non-Stop with our partner BVS in Argentina. In the case of Disney and Non-Stop, they would make a craft program in Buenos Aires, and from there it synchronized with India, where voice over was done in several languages. In addition, the program required specific characters/actors in some countries, so many times images had to be replaced. With that work done from Buenos Aires, India, and some other countries, there was someone in Los Angeles in charge of reviewing everything and approving each region to download the file that corresponded to them. Obviously, these efforts made the solution gain a great deal of strength”.

We can say that at that time there were about 10 or 15 users.

“From there, the solution expanded. Yahoo Studios incorporated it to work between New York and Los Angeles. Then, Vice News, too, with something similar among London, NY, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Toronto. After that, the Albavision group also adopted the technology (…) And from there it began to gain strength. The ten initial users turned into thousands that are currently using a similar technology across the world”. The technical lucidity that led to this solution has been considered by other manufacturers, “each one of them adopted their own philosophy, but the idea, the first award for the technology at the NAB, was for us. After that, each one looked for the way to incorporate this idea to remain considered in the MAM market”.

And the final part of that criterion was resolved. “Currently, thousands of users have adopted the solution, with their variations and their particular characteristics from different software manufacturers,” added Lisman.

The story would be complete if life had no contexts. Reaching those peak points involves work, dedication “and awareness of teamwork. No person alone could do all of this. We had internal and external teams that made possible for everything we imagined coming to fruition”.

“Cisco, Albavision, Non-Stop, Disney… All of them collaborated extensively with our development, suggesting features, asking for functionalities and benefits. Their requirements made us focus on some aspects that we had left aside, and that is very important because these developments require a great deal of collaboration, interaction, exchange, testing. And we got all that from our user’s base.”.

Teams are key, undoubtedly, but curiosity and stubbornness are, too. “I don´t accept an ‘it’s impossible’. When someone tells me that, it’s as if they said to me, go ahead, think, plan, execute, and make it possible”.

Lisman goes back until 1998, when Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, invited him to Redmond to know the Inception of the new to be released Windows Media Player and the introduction of a more advance encoder. “I said, wow, this is going to be a hit in the future, the live and file over IP became very interesting. I discussed it with several friends, telling them it would serve to watch TV on the web… Who is going to do that? We already have TVs at home, some of them answered”.

“At the time I was streaming at 56 and 112 Kbit/s for live and 300 Kbit/s as VOD files at very low resolutions. It was nothing… But I knew it was a matter of time before it would happen and today most people watch video on social media and the Internet. TV still has its influence, but when you see what has happened with video streaming…”, I believe we have moved from the RF Tuner to the IP Tuner.

And there is more.

“I had a phone, a very old one, with a one-inch screen, and I said to myself ‛I am going to broadcast video to a cell phone’. People told me ‘What for? What benefit does that have?’. And I told them: imagine, you’re on the subway, you’re there waiting for your child at school, and you want to watch something”. They told me ‛That’s not going to work’”.

“It was a huge challenge. I couldn’t send the entire video live because there were many interruptions. So, we implemented pre-buffering and sent five seconds chunks at a time. it worked”

TV on board

Since the field of compressed video transmission via Satellite and Microwaves were one of my main backgrounds in engineering expertise, and mobile video was then the big challenge, In1987 I took an idea to the captain of Norwegian Cruise Line, NCL. “How about a 16-foot gyro-stabilized antenna so people on the cruise ship can watch TV?” The first answer was “What do I want that for?”—For people to watch TV I responded”.

He explained: If people go to watch TV, they won’t consume at bars, they won’t go to the casinos, to the shows.

I said: “Yes, there are going to be people in their cabins. But I asked him… When the Super Bowl, or the NBA finals or other main sports events take place… How many people take your cruises? … Do you lose any passengers?

Yes, of course, people want to stay home, throw parties.

How much lower is the attendance to your cruise? —We almost loose 10 or 20% of our regular customers the captain responded

“That’s when I told him: I’ll implement this gyro-stabilized antenna system for the amount of revenue that you lose during those events and we’ll set it up, and then you’ll have your first Super Bowl on board while cruising”.

“You know what? … You’re right… Let’s see if it works.

“We set up the antenna. At first it didn’t work. We checked it and made certain modifications to the Gyro’s rotation speed until the signal came in and locked… Let’s try it out. The captain said, let’s go for a ride… it was just the crew and us on a huge over 1000’ length ship… The signal remained locked, we went back to the port and the captain accepted the technology and signed [the contract]”.

“After, the fleet captain at Carnival got in touch. We equipped their fleet as well”.

And then, DIRECTV was born.

“When DIRECTV came out in 1994, I went to talk to them, asked them if they would allow me to design and market a scale down solution. This time the antenna would be 19 inches. and we achieved the stabilization with very small gyroscopes from a manufacturer of military electronic gear. The idea was that the pitch and rolls of the sea would not affect the reception by the antenna. Today there must be thousands of units of these antennas deployed, the original prototype was implemented by me and my then team”.

Technical lucidity in fullness

The sale of Primestream’s technology was a key point. Claudio Lisman has undergone a period of necessary transition, but without halting his curiosity or his inventiveness. He is aware of the step he has taken, and above all, of the steps he will take in the future.

“Ross Video has taken our technology proposition to the next level. There were less than 50 of us at Primestream, and they had almost 1000 employees. These solutions are now in the best place possible”.

Now, he is busy with other things. Nanosatellite technologies and the vast possibilities offered by drones are part of his daily study, which he complements with a couple of readings that have become his personal reunion: Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, that talks about the history of humanity, which is very important in this time of crisis, to help us realize how we got here, and “Hear Yourself”, by Prem Rawat, a fantastic book about knowing oneself and how to gain clarity in your life.

PRODU and its importance

Awards and recognitions are as important as the sense that the recipient grants them. In 2018, PRODU gave its honorary award to Claudio Lisman. “I remember when they called me. It was an acknowledgement from a media that has a great reach. PRODU is one of the information leaders in our industry. It is prestigious for anyone to receive the PRODU award”.

Lisman says “I like how they analyze proposals as a beneficial solution for the industry. I think it is a very important award. In the US there are many awards… but there are not too many awards that acknowledge companies, technology, and engineers in Latin America, and that is where PRODU plays a key role”.

“I am a romantic too, because in addition all these awards allow you to have an emotional effect. The companies that receive it, do it with great joy. This year I will be there as a jury for PRODU, a new experience for me, and I know that I will enjoy it very much”.