Diversified

Video: JT-NM ProAV Technology Roadmap for IPMX – Panel Discussion

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Building on our coverage of IPMX to date, we see that this push to create a standard for IP for the ProAV market has been growing in momentum. With activity now in AIMS, AMWA, VSF and SMPTE, it’s important to bring together the thinking and have a central strategy which is why the JT-NM have released a roadmap. This has started by defining what is meant by ProAV: “The market for audiovisual (AV) communication equipment used in professional, industrial, commercial, and retail environments as a means to communicate with people.” As is noted by today’s panel, this is a wide definition and helps us understand why this is such a different proposition compared to the related ST 2110 and NMOS work for the broadcast market. There are lots of silos in the Pro AV space with many solutions being developed to cater to just one or two. This makes requirements capture difficult and has led to the fragmentation seen to date and partly why strong manufactures tend to be the ones pushing the market in a certain direction in contrast to the broadcast market where strong, early adopters set the direction for vendors.

 

 

The roadmap itself sets the aims of IPMX, of instance that is secure from the start, it will scale and integrate with 2110/AMWA broadcast installations and be able to be a software only solution. Phase 1 of the roadmap identifies existing standards and specifications which underpin the three IPMX tenents of security, Media, Control. Identified are NMOS IS-10 for access authentication and encryption, relevant 2110 standards, NMOS IS-04,-05, -07 and capabilities to use EDIDs. Phase 2 then adds HDCP support, support for ProAV audio formats, enhanced control such as for audio mapping (IS-08), legacy camera control via RS-232 etc. and then phase 3 will bring in media compression for WAN links, error correction techniques and closed captioning & subtitling. For control, it will add USB HID and a training and certification scheme will be launched.

The panel concludes discussing how IPMX is very much at home with live production which, of course, should help it dovetail well into the broadcast space. IPMX is seen by the panel to simplify the implementation of a 2110-like infrastructure which should allow easier and quicker installations than 2110 which are seen as larger, higher risk projects. IPMX could, it’s suggested, be used as an initial step into IP for broadcasters who seek to understand what they need to do organizationally and technically to adopt IP ahead of perhaps developing 2110 systems. But the technology is seen as going both ways allowing broadcasters to more readily adopt compressed workflows (whether JPEG XS or otherwise) and allow Pro AV players to bring uncompressed workflows more easily into their productions for those that would benefit.

Watch now!
Speakers

Karl Paulsen Karl Paulsen
CTO,
Diversified
Andrew Starks Andrew Starks
Director of Product Management,
Macnica America’s Inc.

David Chiappini David Chiappini
Chair, Pro AV Working Group, AIMS
Executive Vice President, Research & Development,
Matrox Graphics Inc.
Richard M. Friedel Richard Friedel
Executive Vice President, Technology & Broadcast Strategy,
21st Century Fox

Video: Monolithic and Spine-Leaf Architectures

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

It’s hard to talk about SMPTE 2110 system design without hearing the term ‘spine and leaf’. It’s a fundamental decision that needs to be made early on in the project; how many switches will you use and how will they be interconnected? Deciding is not without accepting compromises, so what needs to be considered?

Chris Lapp from Diversified shares his experience in designing such systems. Monolithic design has a single switch at the centre of the network with everything connected directly to it. For redundancy, this is normally complemented by a separate, identical switch providing a second network. For networks which are likely to need to scale, monolithic designs can add a hurdle to expansion once they get full. Also, if there are many ‘low bandwidth’ devices, it may not be cost-effective to attach them. For instance, if your central switch has many 40Gbps ports, it’s a waste to use many to connect to 1Gbps devices such as audio endpoints.

The answer to these problems is spine and leaf. Chris explains that this is more resilient to failure and allows easy scaling whilst retaining a non-blocking network. These improvements come at a price, naturally. Firstly, it does cost more and secondly, there is. added complexity. In a large facility with endpoints spread out, spine and leaf may be the only sensible option. However, Chris explores a cheaper version of spine and leaf often called ‘hub and spoke’ or ‘hybrid’.

If you are interested in this topic, listen to last week’s video from Arista’s Gerard Philips which talked in more detail about network design covering the pros and cons of spine and leaf, control using IGMP and SDN, PTP design amongst other topics. Read more here.

Watch now!
Speakers

Chris Lapp Chris Lapp
Project Engineer, SME Routing
Diversified
Wes Simpson Wes Simpson
President, Telcom Product Consulting
Owner, LearnIPVideo.com

Video: Building Television Systems in a Time of Multiple Technology Transitions

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Major technology transitions can be hard to keep up with, and when you have a project requiring you decide which one to go with, it can seem unmanageable. This panel put together by SMPTE New York looks gives the view from System Integrators on how to make this work and cover their experience with a wide range of new technologies.

SMPTE ST 2110 is an entire paradigm shift

John Humphrey
John Turner kicked off explaining the reasoning for using SDI over SMPTE ST 2110 in some circumstances. For that project, his client had a fixed space so wouldn’t see the benefits of 2110 in terms of expansion. Their workflow already worked well in SDI and at the time, the costs of 2110 would have been higher. Overall, the project went with SDI, was successful and they are a happy customer. Karl Paulsen agreed that new technology shouldn’t be ‘for the sake of it’ and added that whilst individual products with a new technology may be stable, that’s not certain to be the case when interoperating within a whole system. As such, this puts the implementation time up meaning the incumbent technologies do tend to get chosen when time is at a premium.

Turning to 5G, Karl answered the question “what are the transformational technologies”. For some applications, for instance, back of the camera RF in a stadium, 5G is a major leap compared to microwave packs, but early on in a technology’s life, like we are with 5G, it’s a matter of working out where it does and where it doesn’t work well. In time, it will probably adapt to some of those other use cases that it wasn’t suited for initially. John Turner highlighted the elements that ATSC 3.0 transforms in a big way. From an RF perspective, its modulation is much stronger and more flexible, that it’s able to drive new business models.

John Mailhot’s view on the transformational challenge is ‘the people’. He puts forward the idea that the technical constraints of router size and max cable length, to name two examples, embedded themselves into the routines, assumptions and architectures that people embody in their work. With SMPTE ST-2110, most of these constraints are removed. This means you are a lot freer to work out the workflows the business wants. The challenge here is to have the imagination and fortitude to forge the right workflow without getting paralysed by choice.

“SMPTE ST 2110 is an entire paradigm shift”, John Humphrey

After responding to the moderator’s question on how much turmoil these transitions are causing, Mark Schubin summarises the situation by saying we need to work out which of the technologies is like a fridge (replacing previous technologies), a microwave (used as well as a conventional oven) and an induction cooker (requires change in cookware, little adoption). John Humphrey adds that ST 2110 is a technology which viewers don’t notice since the visual quality is the same. HDR, is the opposite so they need different approaches.

During the last 45 minutes, the panel took questions from the audience covering how to hire talent, the perspective of younger people on technology, programming specifically made for smartphones, ATSC 3.0 implementation, reliability of home internet, PTP and more.

Watch now!
Speakers

Mark Schubin Mark Schubin
Consultant & Explainer
John Humphrey John Humphrey
VP, Business Development,
Hitachi Kokusai Electric America Ltd.
Karl Paulsen Karl Paulsen
CTO,
Diversified
John Turner John Turner
Principal Engineer
Turner Engineering Inc.
John Mailhot John Mailhot
Systems Architect for IP Convergence
Imagine Communications