EBU

Video: How CBC/Radio-Canada Tested Media-over-IP Devices to Build its New Facility

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Moving video production to IP has been ongoing for over 5 years using both SMPTE ST 2022-6 and now ST-2110 but we’re still in the ‘Early Adopter’ phase, explains the Willem Vermost speaking at SMPTE 2019. Willem is the EBU topic lead for the transition to IP-based studios and he is tracking the upcoming projects with public broadcasters.

Willem talks about what’s motivating these Early Adopters. In general, he explains, they have a building move project and they are faced, as CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) was, with being the last to install an extensive SDI infrastructure – and be stuck with that for 7, 10 or more years to come – or the to be one of the first to use IP. Increasingly, they can’t justify the SDI workflow and IP, for all its risks and uncertainties, is the way forward.

CBC/Radio Canada needs to be ‘on air’ in 2020 so they put in a place a risk mitigation plan to test all the equipment before putting it in. Willem outlines what this test plan looks like and what it covers: AES67, ST 2110-40,-7, -30-, -20, EBU r148 security etc. Testing was also brought up by the BBC’s Mark Patrick when he discussed his work in bring in the BBC’s Cardiff Square building on-air. They found that automated testing was key in project delivery so that testing was quick and consistent to ensure that software/firmware patches were correctly accepted into the project.

Willem talks us through the EBU’s famous Technology Pyramid which shows to what extent each of the technologies on which media-over-IP requires has been defined and adopted by the industry. It shows that while the media aspect has been successfully deployed, there is a lot to do in, for example, security.

Difficulties arose due to different interpretations of standards. To aid in diagnosis of such issues, the LIST project has created a 2110 analysis tool and other related tools. This is created within the EBU and Willem highlights some key parts of what it does. He then shows how that connects in with the automated test programs and explains the underlying structure of how the software is built.

The talk finishes with mention of the JT-NM test plan, a summary and questions lead by Arista’s Gerard Phillips.

Watch now!
Speakers

Willem Vermost Willem Vermost
Senior IP Media Technology Architect
Topic Lead, Transition to IP-based Studios
EBU
Gerard Phillips Moderator: Gerard Phillips
Systems Engineer,
Arista

Video: User Requirements Beyond SMPTE ST 2110

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Work on ST 2110 continues although the main elements of it have been standardised for well over a year now, but many companies are thinking beyond ST 2110.

The EBU’s Willem Vermost presents the wider picture of next generation broadcast facilities charting the need and desires of public broadcasters in Europe. We look here at the need for many broadcasters to move buildings and the problems they face doing so – only one of them being implementing a ST 2110 infrastructure.

The talk then goes on to the problems that broadcasters face and the need for a way of working which defines some common approaches. This has arrived in the form if a document with the lengthy title JT-NM TR-1001-1:2018 which outlines many practical approaches to making ST 2110 work. Many are simple, such as using DHCP but without an agreed set of practices, incompatibilities will come in.

Willem talks about the interoperability tests for this, the results of which are publicly available rather than previous closed-door tests. And before rounding off the talk with questions, he looks at the increasingly well-known EBU Pyramid which shows the availability of different parts of the IP ecosystem; media transport being green, configuration and security being red.

For more information about JT-NM, look at this talk from SMPTE and Imagine Communication’s John Mailhot which covers it in much more detail.

Join Willem at IBC to find out more about ST 2110 at a panel from IET Media discussing ST 2110 and NDI. NDI provides video over IP and is more widely supported than ST 2110, yet major broadcasters seem blind to its benefits. Is this because NDI doesn’t meet the needs of these broadcasters or are there other reasons? What are the use cases where both can be used together?

Join Willem Vermost, The Broadcast Knowledge Editor Russell Trafford-Jones, Marc Risby CTO of Boxer and Liam Hayter from Newtek/NDI to find out more at IBC, IABM Theatre, Future Zone. Friday 13th 15:00-15:45.

Speaker

Willem Vermost Willem Vermost
Senior IP Media &Technology

Video: TR-1001 Replacing Video By Spreadsheet

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Here to kill the idea of SDNs – Spreadsheet Defined Networks – is TR-1001 which defines ways to implement IP-based media facilities avoiding some typical mistakes and easing the support burden.

From the JT-NM (Joint Taskforce – Networked Media), TR-1001 promises to be a very useful document for companies implementing ST-2110 or any video-over-IP network Explaining what’s in it is EEG’s Bill McLaughlin at the VSF’s IP Showcase at NAB.

This isn’t the first time we’ve written about TR-1001 at The Broadcast Knowledge. Previously, Imagine’s John Mailhot has dived in deep as part of a SMPTE standards webcast. Here, Bill takes a lighter approach to get over the main aims of the document and adds details about recent testing which happened across several vendors.

Bill looks at the typical issues that people find when initially implementing a system with ST-2110 devices and summarises the ways in which TR-1001 mitigates these problems. The aim here is to enable, at least in theory, many nodes to be configured in an automatic and self-documenting way.

Bill explains that TR-1001 covers timing, discovery and connection of devices plus some of configuration and monitoring. As we would expect, ST-2110 itself defines the media transport and also some of the timing. Work is still to be done to help TR-1001 address security aspects.

Speaker

Bill McLaughlin Bill McLaughlin
VP Product Development,
EEG Enterprises

Video: Network Automation Using Python and Google Sheets

Posted on by Adam K

“I’m lazy and I’m a master procrastinator.” If you sympathise, learn how to automate network configuration with some code and spreadsheets.

In this video, the EBU’s Ievgen Kostiukevych presents a simple way to automate basic operations on Arista switches working in a SMPTE ST 2110 environment. This is done with a Python script which retrieves parameters stored in Google Sheets and uses Arista’s eAPI to implement changes to the switch.

The Python script was created as a proof of concept for the EBU’s test lab where frequent changes of VLAN configuration on the switches were required. Google Sheets has been selected as a collaborative tool which allows multiple people to modify settings and keep track of changes at the same time. This approach makes repetitive tasks like adding or changing descriptions of the ports easier as well.

Functionality currently supported:

  • Creating VLANs and modyfying their descriptions based on the date in a Google Sheets
  • Changing access VLANs and interface descriptions for the ports based on the date in a Google Sheets
  • Reading interfaces status and the mac address table from the switch and writing the data to the spreadsheet

The script can be downloaded from GitHub.

Speaker

Ievgen Kostiukevych
Senior IP Media Technology Architect and Trainer
EBU