Where can SMPTE 2110 and NDI co-exist?

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Our final look back at the most viewed articles of 2020 is a very prescient topic, that of live IP production. As we all know, this has very much come into focus during the pandemic. Those that already had an IP infrastructure found managing it remotely easier than those that needed to get in and move SDI cables when they needed to provision new video links. Moreover putting together live remote workflows is all the easier with video IP and traditionally the decision on whether to use SMPTE 2110 has been a case of whether you need to be in the cloud or not.

This article and video brought together Will Waters, an NDI expert from VizRT, Marc Risby from UK SI Boxer and Willem Vermost who was with the EBU. The conversation, pre-pandemic, focused on how to choose the video-over-IP technology which was best for you and really tried to find the ways in which broadcasters could benefit from both at the same time.

The Broadcast Knowledge Editor, Russell Trafford-Jones also moderated a SMPTE Webcast with VizRT going into the detail of NDI and how it can be deployed in the cloud.

Another important advance in 2020 was AWS’s release of CDI which is an implementation of SMPTE 2110 with enough proprietary adaptations to make it work within AWS. You can hear more about it in this video with David Griggs.

Click here to watch ‘Where can SMPTE 2110 and NDI co-exist?’

The New Video Codec Landscape – VVC, EVC, HEVC, LCEVC, AV1 and more

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

In the penultimate look back at the top articles of 2020, we recognise the continued focus on new codecs. Let’s not shy away from saying 2020 was generous giving us VVC, LCEVC and EVC from MPEG. AV1 was actually delivered in 2018 with an update (Errata 1) in 2019. However, the industry has avidly tracked the improved speeds of the encoder and decoder implementations.
Lastly, no codec discussion has much relevance without comparing to AV1, HEVC and VP9.

So with all these codecs spinning around it’s no surprise that one of the top views of 2020 was a video entitled “VVC, EVC, LCEVC, WTF? – An update on the next hot codecs from MPEG”. This video was from 2019 and since these have all been published now, this extensive roundup from SMPTE is a much better resource to understand these codecs in detail and in context with their predecessors.

Click here to read the article and watch the video.

The article explains many of the features of the new codecs: both how they work and also why there are three. Afterall, if VVC is so good, why release EVC? We learn that they optimise for different features such as computation, bitrate and patent licensing among other aspects.

Speakers

Sean McCarthy Sean McCarthy
Director, Video Strategy and Standards,
Dolby Laboratories
Walt Husak Walt Husak
Director, Image Technologies,
Dolby Laboratories

From WebRTC to RTMP

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Continuing our look at the most popular videos of 2020, in common with the previous post on SRT, today we look at replacing RTMP for ingest. This time, WebRTC is demonstrated as an option. With sub-second latency, WebRTC is a compelling replacement for RTMP.
 

 
Read what we said about it the first time in the original article, but you’ll see that Nick Chadwick from Mux takes us through the how RTMP works and where the gaps are as it’s phased out. He steps through the alternatives showing how even the low-latency delivery formats don’t fit the bill for contribution and shows how WebRTC can be a sub-second solution.

RIST and SRT saw significant and continued growth in use throughout 2020 as delivery formats and appear to be more commonly used than WebRTC, though that’s not to say that WebRTC isn’t continuing to grow within the broadcast community. SRT and RIST are both designed for contribution in that they actively manage packet loss, allow any codecs to be used and provide for other data to be sent, too. Overall, this tends to give them the edge, particularly for hardware products. But WebRTC’s wide availability on computers can be a bonus in some circumstances. Have a listen and come to your own conclusion.

Watch now!
Speaker

Nick Chadwick Nick Chadwick
Software Engineer,
Mux

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

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

It’s been a great year at The Broadcast Knowledge growing to over four thousand followers on social media and packing in 250 new articles. So what better time to look back at 2020’s most popular articles as we head into the new year?

It’s fair to say that SRT has seen a lot of interest this year. This was always going to be the case as top-tier broadcasters are now adopting a ‘code as infrastructure’ approach. whereby transmission chains, post-production and live-production workflows are generated via APIs in the cloud, ready for temporary or permanent use. Seen before as the perfect place to put your streaming service, the cloud is increasingly viewed as a viable option for nearly all parts of the production chain.

Getting video in and out of the cloud can be done without SRT, but SRT is a great option as it seamlessly corrects for missing packets which can get lost on the route. How it does this, is the topic of this talk from Alex Converse from Twitch. In the original article on this site, one of the highest-ranking this year, it’s also pitched as an RTMP replacement.

RTMP is still heavily used around the world and like many established technologies, there’s an element of ‘better the devil you know’ mixed in with a reality that much equipment out there will never be updated to do anything else. However, new equipment is being delivered with technologies such as SRT which means that getting from your encoder to the cloud, can now be done with less latency, with better reliability and with a wider choice of codecs than RTMP.

SRT, along with RIST, is helping transform the broadcast industry. To learn more, watch Alex’s video and then look at our other articles and videos on the topic.

Speaker

Alex Converse Alex Converse
Streaming Video Software Engineer,
Twitch