Video: SRT – The Simple Solution for Your Remote and At-Home Workforce

SRT allows unreliable networks like the Internet to be used for reliable, encrypted video contribution. Created by Haivision and now an Open Source technology with an IETF draft spec, the alliance of SRT users continues to grow as the technology continues to develop and add features. Haivision are members of RIST which Kieran Kunhya spoke about in yesterday’s article.

Being open-source, SRT is widely deployed in across hundreds of manufacturers so there is a lot of choice, although Haivision do focus on their products in this video. The important part is in how the protocol works to keep the data intact which is dealt with in the second segment from Haivision’s Selwyn Jans. Lastly, we hear of some examples of real-world use cases to whet the appetite and start the thought process about how SRT could benefit you.

The fundamental aspect of SRT, as Selwyn explains, is that the packets are counted in at the remote end and if one packet is missing, it’s re-requested from the source. Whilst this is how normal file transfers work, using TCP, this has been optimised to ensure real-time media isn’t unduly delayed. TCP would acknowledge every single packet and the sender should take note when a packet acknowledgement doesn’t arrive. SRT is more efficient whereby acknowledgements are minimised, only re-requests which keeps overheads down. A buffer is set up in the destination so that there is still data available while we’re waiting for these packets to be resent. Depending on the network quality, we may need to have enough buffer to deal with several re-requests for the sane packet.

How SRT Works

Selwyn expands upon this re-request mechanism and looks the way SRT can be sent, or ‘pushed’, as well as working in as a ‘listener’ so that the sender waits to be contacted. before it starts sending any data. You can choose the best one to use to fit around your firewalls. Where there is a NAT firewall, SRT can always be sent out but receiving requests would need firewall modification. One of the benefits of SRT is its ability to be deployed anywhere, including in a home, quickly and easily so firewall changes would not be welcome. For a more in-depth description of SRT, check out this talk from SF Video Technology.

The last section features Corey Behnke from streaming company Live X talking about where they have been using SRT. Replacing satellite is one important use of SRT since in many places, there is sufficient bandwidth available to stream over the internet. Before technologies such as SRT, this was likely to lead to breakups on air, so satellite was the clear winner. Now, there’s money to be saved by not buying satellite space. Could ingress and egress is also a very important workflow for SRT, and similar protocols. The panelists explain how this works using as an example the Haivision Media Gateway, though other products such as Techex and Videoflow.

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Speakers

Marcus Schioler Marcus Schioler
Vice President, Product Marketing
Haivision
Selwyn Jans Selwyn Jans
Technical Video Engineer,
Haivision
Corey Behnke Corey Behnke
Producer & Co-Founder,
Live X

Video: 2019 What did I miss? – SRT

We’re looking at the most popular posts of 2019 now as The Broadcast Knowledge takes a break over the holiday season. Twitch’s Alex Converse had one of the most visited posts of the year in his video detailing how SRT works. It’s a great technical resource for developers and engineers wanting to understand more than just the highlights of SRT. Did it do well because it was Alex? Because the San Francisco’s Video Tech meet up is a well known part of Demuxed’s community for ‘engineers working with video’ or because its title? Any or all of these could be true and it wouldn’t invalidate it’s usefulness or its popularity. So if you haven’t already, read more about it here, or click play below.

Another SRT talk of interest this year you may want to catch up on was the IBC SRT Open Source Technical panel which looked at the general SRT features and looked at the pros and cons against SRT. The panel looked at a case study with Red Bee Media and South American broadcaster Globo and the use of RTP and SRT together. Read more detail here or click here to watch for free

Speaker

Alex Converse Alex Converse
Streaming Video Software Engineer,
Twitch

Video: IBC2019 SRT Open Source Technical Panel

SRT allows unreliable networks like the Internet to be used for reliable, encrypted video contribution. Created by Haivision and now an Open Source technology, the alliance of SRT users continues to grow as the technology continues to develop and add features. This panel, from IBC 2019, is an update on what’s new with SRT and how it’s being used daily in broadcast.

Marc Cymontowski starts with an overview of the new features of SRT, mentioning its active Github repository, pointing to recent advances in the encryption available, upcoming FEC and the beginnings of SMPTE ST 2022-7 like redundancy. He also takes a look at how SRT fares against RTMP, the venerable incumbent technology for contribution of streams over the internet. Official support for RTMP will be coming to an end next year, so there is much interest in what may replace it. Marc makes the case that for the same link, SRT tends to have a latency of a half to a third and also performs better at higher bitrates.

RTP, the Real-Time Transport Protocol, is an important feature when it comes to redundancy. By using RTP’s ability to stamp each packet, the receiver can take two identical RTP streams – say from two separate ISPs and fill in missing packets on one stream from the packets of the other stream. This is a very powerful way of ensuring reliability over the internet so Marc makes the point that using SRT doesn’t stop you using RTP.

Simen Frostad then takes to the stage to explain why Bridge Technologies has added SRT support and how the SRT Hub will be a very important step forward. Then it’s Leonardo Chaves’ turn who explains how broadcaster Globo is using SRT to transform its video workflows and reduce OPEX costs to one third satellite costs.

Steve Russell from Red Bee talks about how they use SRT to create new, or lower cost, circuits and services to their customers. They’re able to use the internet not only for contribution from events but also to safely get video in and out of the cloud.

With these use-cases in mind, the panel opens up to thirty minutes of wide-ranging technical and non-technical questions.

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Speakers

Brian Ring Brian Ring
SRT Evangelist,
Ring Digital
Simen Frostad Simen Frostad
Chairman & Co-Founder
Bridge Technologies
Steve Russell Steve Russell
Head of OTT & Media Management Portfolios,
Red Bee Media
Marc Cymontkowski Marc Cymontkowski
VP Engineering,
Haivision
Leonardo Chaves Leonardo Chaves
Exec. Manager of New Transmission Technologies,
Globo

Video: SRT – How the hot new UDP video protocol actually works under the hood

In the west, RTMP is seen as a dying protocol so the hunt is on for a replacement which can be as widely adopted but keep some of it’s best parts including relatively low latency. SRT is a protocol for Secure, Reliable Transport of streams over the internet so does this have a role to play and how does it work?

Alex Converse from Twitch picks up the gauntlet to dive deep into the workings of SRT to show how it compares to RTMP and specifically how it improves upon it.

RTMP fails in many ways, two to focus on are that the spec has stopped moving forward and it doesn’t work well over problematic networks. So Alex takes a few minutes to explain where SRT has come from, the importance of t being open source and how to get hold of the code and more information.

Now, Alex starts his dive into the detail reminding us about UDP, TS Packets and Ethernet MTUs has he goes down. We look at how SRT data packets are formed which helps explain some of the features and sets us up for a more focussed look.

SRT, as with other, similar protocols which create their resilience by retransmitting missing packets, need to use buffers in order to have a chance to send the missing data before it’s needed at the decoder. Alex takes us through how the sender and receiver buffers work to understand the behaviour in different situations.

Fundamental to the whole protocol is packet the packet acknowledgement and negative acknowledgements which feature heavily before we discuss handshaking as we start our ascent from the depths of the protocol. As much as acknowledgements provide the reliability, encryption provides the ‘secure’ in Secure Reliable Transport. We look at the approach taken to encryption and how it relates to current encryption for websites.

Finally, Alex answers a number of questions from the audience as he concludes this talk from the San Francisco Video Tech meet-up.

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Speaker

Alex Converse Alex Converse
Streaming Video Software Engineer,
Twitch