The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: P4 Tutorial

Posted on 4th March 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

P4 is a powerful programming language which runs on network switches themselves allowing realtime manipulation of the data traffic. In broadcast, this can be used to alter SMPTE 2110 video in real time as demonstrated by Thomas Edwards at the EBU Network Technology Seminar year and that can be seen in this short video. “This shows how even on an ethernet switch now, we can program it to make these switching decisions based on any header [including] the application layer of the broadcast data”

This video explains what P4 is and how it works taking us all the way from the core principles to ways of programming it and harnessing its power. Watching the beginning of the video is sufficient for most in order to get a feel for P4 and how it could be (and is) applied to broadcast.

The speakers, from Cisco and Barefoot Networks (who work with Thomas Edwards from Fox), cove these topics:

What is the Data plane
Software Defined Networking (SDN) & Openflow
Benefits of programming your own dataplane
Typical Applications of P4
Novel Applications
Basics of the P4 language
P4 Software tools

Watch now!

Speakers

	Antonin Bas Software Engineer, Barefoot Networks
	Andy Fingerhut Principal Engineer, Cisco Systems

Video: AMWA NMOS State of Play

Posted on 1st March 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

With all the talk of the SMPTE ST 2110 standards suite, it’s sometimes forgotten that it only deals with content. If you want a working system, you’ll need to do a few more things – find new devices on the network, work out what they can do, control them, guarantee the bandwidth and often deal with metadata that arrives separately like tallies.

This is what the AMWA NMOS specifications do. Peter Brightwell and Thomas Edwards have been heavily involved in creating them and in this video lead us through what each one does and how they are used.

Watch now!

Speakers

	Peter Brightwell Lead Engineer, BBC R&D
	Thomas Edwards VP Engineering & Development Fox NEO

Video: The state of advanced codecs; separating hype from reality

Posted on 28th February 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

There are a lot of codecs both new and old that are in use or vying to be the next big thing. Tom Vaughan helps us see what they really can achieve and where each one is useful.

Recorded at San Francisco Video Tech Meetup in September, this video starts with a look at a the ‘hype cycle’. Tom places each codec, from MPEG 2 to VVC on the curve before looking at what the barriers to adoption are.

Tom then looks at HEVC discussing which devices can receive it, which can create it, the streaming services which support it and where adoption is likely to be. Finally, HEVC discussion is complete without a look at the HEVC patent landscape Venn diagram.

The focus then shifts to the Alliance for Open Media and their AV1 codec, its patent status and technical progress to date. He then discusses the performance of AV1, HEVC and Beamr against each other.

Almost brand new out of the starting blocks is VVC from MPEG and the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF). Tom explains the aims of the forum and the VVC codec they are creating before taking questions from the floor.

Watch now!

Speaker

Tom Vaughan
VP Strategy,
Beamr

Webinar: Video Delivery Trends

Posted on 27th February 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Date: Thursday February 28th 2019, 10am PT / 1PM ET / 18:00 GMT

Streaming continues to grow, in amount streamed, in people consuming it and in importance within this and other industries. One things which has always been an enabler yet made streaming harder to deploy is its rapid evolution. Whilst this has been a boon for smaller, nimbler companies – both content producers and service providers – the streaming has now arrived at most companies in one way or another and this breadth of use-cases has kept streaming tech moving forward and showing no signs of abatement.

Some aspects are changing. For instance we are seeing the first patent-free MPEG standard proposals (EVC, which has basic patent-free functionality and a better performing patent-controlled profile) on the heels of AV1. We’re seeing low-latency efforts such as CMAF taking hold as an alternative to WebRTC. With CMAF being much closer to the ever popular HLS, this may well beat out WebRTC in deployments at the cost of a slightly higher, but much improved latency.

To bring all of this in to focus for 2019, Jason Thibeault from the Streaming Video Alliance is bringing together a panel of experts to look at the coming trends and to give us an idea of what to look out for, and how to make sense, of 2019’s year of video delivery.

Register now!

Speakers

	Guillaume Bichot Head of Exploration, Broadpeak
	Joshua Pressnell Chief Technology Officer, Penthera
	Pierre-Louis Theron CEO & Co-founder Streamroot
	Johan Bolin Chief Product & Technology Officer, Edgeware AB
	Steve Miller-Jones Vice President of Product Strategy Limelight Networks
	Moderator: Jason Thibeault Executive Director Streaming Video Alliance

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