The EBU's virtual-production record sits in seminar slides

The stage

On 28 January 2021, at the EBU's Production Technology Seminar, three named specialists, Muki Kulhan of IBC, Marc Goodchild of Warner Media and Matthew McCartney of Sky, presented “CG animation, virtual production and real-time creative workflows,” archived on EBU Technology & Innovation's publications page. On 16 June 2021, at the EBU's Network Technology Seminar, Disguise employees Ed Plowman and Raed Al Tikriti presented “Virtual production – the new picture,” also catalogued there as a downloadable file.

What the documents establish

Both are presentation records from EBU member seminars, not an EBU-authored technical standard or recommendation. The second is explicitly vendor-delivered: two named Disguise staff presenting their own company's approach is a vendor case study, distinguishable from independent EBU guidance, even while it is catalogued on the EBU's own site. The same publications page lists ongoing interest in the topic, including a later entry on testing multi-camera LED-wall workflows and a seminar session on lessons learned at broadcaster VRT, which shows continuity of attention without a single consolidated guidance document defining a scope for virtual and augmented-reality studio production.

The department view

These seminars are aimed at broadcast engineering and technology-and-innovation staff inside public-service broadcasters, the EBU's membership base, evaluating virtual production for live and studio broadcast work, a different department context from a film or high-end-TV production's ICVFX volume crew. The documented trade-off is institutional: EBU's seminar programme surfaces vendor and member case studies for its broadcaster members to weigh, rather than issuing a recommendation those members are bound to follow.

What to check before you build

Editorially: do not cite “EBU guidance” on virtual production as binding on non-broadcast film or TV production, since the EBU serves public-service broadcasters and these records are seminar presentations, not standards; check whether a claimed EBU position traces to an EBU-authored report or, as with both documents here, to a member or vendor seminar slide deck; and check presentation dates, since 2021-era sessions may be superseded by the later ones the same page lists.

• Does the cited EBU material come from an EBU-authored report, or from a member or vendor seminar presentation?
• Is the presenting organization describing its own product, as Disguise did in the 2021 session, or an independent assessment?
• Has a later EBU seminar session superseded the specific 2021 material being cited?

The EBU's own published record of virtual-production engagement is a seminar catalogue naming specific companies and dates, not a technical standard, and should be cited as exactly that.