Video Archives – Page 98 of 172 – The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: MPEG-5 EVC

Posted on 13th December 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

The MPEG-5: Essential Video Codec (EVC) promises to do what no MPEG standard has done before, deliver great improvements in compression and give assurances over patents. With a novel standardisation process, EVC provides a royalty-free base layer plus licensing details are provided upfront.

SMPTE 2019 saw Jonatan Samuelson take us through the details. Founder of Divideon and an editor of the evolving standard. Jonatan starts by explaining the codec landscape in terms of the new and recent codecs coming online showing how EVC differs including from it’s sister codec, VVC in parallel with which EVC is being developed.

Jonatan explains how the patents are being dealt with, comparing to HEVC, he shows that there is a much more simplified range of patent holders. But importantly, the codec has very granular tools to turn on and off separate tools so that you can exclude any that you don’t wish to use for licensing reasons. This is the first time this level of control has been possible. Along with the royalty-free base layer, this codec hopes to provide companies the control they need in order to safely use the codec with predictable costs and without legal challenges.

Target applications for EVC are realtime encoding, video conferencing but also newer ’emerging’ video formats such as 8K with HDR & WCG. To do this, Jonatan explains the different blocks that create the codec itself ahead of walking us through the results.

Watch now!
Speaker

Jonatan Samuelsson
Founder,
Divideon

Video: Investigating Media Over IP Multicast Hurdles in Containerized Platforms

Posted on 12th December 2019 by Adam K

As video infrastructures have converged with enterprise IT, they started incorporating technologies and methods typical for data centres. First came virtualisation allowing for COTS (Common Off The Shelf) components to be used. Then came the move towards cloud computing, taking advantage of scale economies.

However, these innovations did little to address the dependence on monolithic projects that impeded change and innovation. Early strategies for Video over IP were based on virtualised hardware and IP gateway cards. As the digital revolution took place with emergence of OTT players, the microservices based on containers have been developed. The aim was to shorten the cycle of software updates and enhancements.

Containers allow to insulate application software from underlying operating systems to remove the dependence on hardware and can be enhanced without changing the underlying operational fabrics. This provides the foundation for more loosely coupled and distributed microservices, where applications are broken into smaller, independent pieces that can be deployed and managed dynamically.

Modern containerized server software methods such as Docker are very popular in OTT and cloud solution, but not in SMPTE ST 2110 systems. In the video above, Greg Shay explains why.

Docker can package an application and its dependencies in a virtual container that can run on any Linux server. It uses the resource isolation features of the Linux kernel and a union-capable file system to allow containers to run within a single Linux instance, avoiding the overhead of starting and maintaining virtual machines. Docker can get more applications running on the same hardware than comparing with VMs, makes it easy for developers to quickly create ready-to-run containered applications and makes managing and deploying applications much easier.

However, currently there is a huge issue with using Docker for ST 2110 systems, because Docker containers do not work with Multicast traffic. The root of the multicast problem is the specific design of the way that the Linux kernel handles multicast routing. It is possible to wrap a VM around each Docker container just to achieve the independence of multicast network routing by emulating the full network interface, but this defeats capturing and delivering the behaviour of the containerized product in a self-contained software deliverable.

There is a quick and dirty partial shortcut which enable container to connect to all the networking resources of the Docker host machine, but it does not isolate containers into their own IP addresses and does not isolate containers to be able to use their own ports. You don’t really get a nice structure of ‘multiple products in multiple containers’, which defeats the purpose of containerized software.

You can see the slides here.

Watch now!

Speaker

Greg Shay
CTO
The Telos Alliance

Video: Networking Fundamentals

Posted on 11th December 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Date: Thursday 12th December, 1pm EST / 18:00 GMT

Networking is increasingly important throughout the broadcast chain. This recorded webcast picks out the fundamentals that underpin SMPTE ST 2110 and that help deliver video streaming services. We’ll piece them together and explain how they work, leaving you with more confidence in talking about and working with technologies such as multicast video and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS).

Wtach now!
Speaker

Russell Trafford-Jones
Editor, http://138.68.177.241
Manager, Support & Services, Techex

Video: Talk 2110

Posted on 9th December 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Is the industry successfully delivering what we need with SMPTE’s ST 2110 suite of standards? What are the benefits of IP and how can we tackle the difficulties?

In this panel from Broadcast Solutions’ Innovation Day, we hear from 5 vendors understanding their perspectives and plans for the future. Claus Pfeifer from Sony say they have now 60 sites up and running in IP. Lawo’s Phil Myers follows up saying “People know they have to go IP, it’s a matter of when they go IP.”

Whilst this is a positive start, the panel moves on to talking briefly about difficulties implementing SMPTE ST 2110. Jan Eveleens from Riedel points out many of the issues will go as we are waiting for technology to catch up regarding CPUs and bandwidth. We no longer have the same processing issues we used to for audio. Similarly with video, technology will improve and remove many of the challenges. Phil Myers feels that cloud implementation issues are not a large problem at the moment as he sees a move to bring equipment into private clouds rather than public. This way they are doing ‘remote production for buildings’.

After each vendor outlined their future plans for IP, Zoltan highlighted that IP allows NDI to co-exist with ST 2110. Many may want to use 2110 for high end sports, for others NDI fits well. Then panel felt that a concerning area of IP is the worry of how to fix problems. The knowledge level is different from country to country. So vendors not only need to work on education about IP, both for NDI and 2110, but they need to do this in a focussed way for the different markets.

As the panel comes towards the end, Claus feels that the industry started to talk too early about pure technology. “Did not discuss enough about the business benefits.” he explains such as remote production and more efficient use of equipment – avoiding ‘sleeping Capex’. Installing IP makes a lot of sense for large-scale systems. Recently broadcasters have been working at a scale requiring much more than 1024 squared routers roughly where SDI routers top out. But also, these large systems tend to have a life of over 10 years. Faced with SDI development, particularly in routers, is slowing down or stopping, for these long-lived systems it makes much more sense to use IP.

Watch now!
Speakers

	Jan Eveleens Director Business Development Video Solutions, Riedel
	Joachim Kuhnen Strategic Solution Manager EMEA Imagine Communications
	Zoltan Matula Regional Sales Manager Central Europe, Newtek
	Phil Myers Chief Technology Officer, Chair of the Advisory Board, Lawo
	Claus Pfeifer Head of Connected Content Acquisition – Media Solutions, Sony
	David Davies Moderator

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