Macnica Technology

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: A Frank Discussion of NMOS

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

What NMOS isn’t is almost as important as what NMOS actually is when it comes to defining a new project implementing SMPTE ST 2110. Written by AMWA, NMOS is a suite of open specifications which help control media flow hence the name: Network Media Open Specifications. Typically NMOS specifications are used alongside the ST 2110 standards but in this hype-free panel, we hear that 2110 isn’t the only application of NMOS.

AMWA Executive Director Brad Gilmer introduces this ‘frank’ panel with Imagine’s John Mailhot explaining the two meanings ‘NMOS’ has. The first is the name of the project we have just introduced in this article. The second is as shorthand for the two best-known specifications created by the project, IS-04 and IS-05. Together, these allow new devices to register their availability to the rest of the system and to receive instructions regarding sending media streams. There are plenty of other specifications which are explained in this talk of which two more are mentioned later in this video: IS-08 which manages audio channel mapping and IS-09 which allows new devices to get a global configuration to automatically find out facts like their PTP domain.

 

 

Security is “important and missing previously,” says Jed Deame from Nextera but explains that since NMOS is predominantly a specification for HTTP API calls, there is nothing to stop this from happening as HTTPS or another protocol as long as it provides both encryption and authorisation. The panel then explores the limits of the scope of NMOS. For security, its scope is to secure the NMOS control traffic, so doesn’t stretch to securing the media transport or, say, PTP. Furthermore, for NMOS as a whole, it’s important to remember it defines control and not more than control. Brad says, though, that even this scope is ambiguous as where does the concept of ‘control’ stop? Is a business management system control? What about scheduling of media? Triggering playback? There have to be limited.

Imagine Communications’ John Mailhot explores the idea of control asking how much automation, and hence NMOS-style control, can help realise one of the promises of IP which is to reduces costs by speeding up system changes. Previously, Brad and John explain, changing a studio from doing NFL to doing NHL may take up to a month of rewiring and reprogramming. Now that rewiring can be done in software, John contends that the main task is to make sure the NMOS is fully-fledged enough to allow interoperable enumeration, configuration and programming of links within the system. The current specifications are being reinforced by ‘modelling’ work whereby the internal logical blocks of equipment, say an RGB gain control, can be advertised to the network as a whole rather than simply advertising a single ‘black box’ like an encoder. Now it’s possible to explain what pre and post-processing is available.

Another important topic explored by NVIDIA’s Richard Hastie and Jeremy Nightingale from Macnica, is the use of NMOS specifications outside of ST 2110 installations. Richard says that NVIDIA is using NMOS in over 200 different locations. He emphasises its use for media whether that be HEVC, AV1 or 2110. As such, he envisages it being used by ‘Twitch streamers’ no doubt with the help of the 2110-over-WAN work which is ongoing to find ways to expose NMOS information over public networks. Jeremy’s interest is in IPMX for ProAV where ‘plug and play’ as well as security are two of the main features being designed into the package.

Lastly, there’s a call out to the tools available. Since NMOS is an open specification project, the tools are released as Open Source which companies being encouraged to use the codebase in products or for testing. Not only is there a reference client, but Sony and BBC have released an NMOS testing tool and EasyNMOS provides a containerised implementation of IS-04 and IS-05 for extremely quick deployments of the toolset.

Watch now!
Speakers

Brad Gilmer Brad Gilmer
Executive Director, Video Services Forum
Executive Director, Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA)
John Mailhot John Mailhot
CTO Networking & Infrastructure
Jed Deame Jed Deame
CEO,
Nextera Video
Richard Hastie Richard Hastie
Senior Sales Director,
NVIDIA
Jeremy Nightingale
President
Macnica Americas, Inc.

Video: What is IPMX? – The IPMX Stack

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

“The AV over IP market has really matured [giving us] great quality, low latency and the kind of stability and features that customers are looking for,” says Andrew Starks from Macnica Technology. If that’s the case, why do we need another standard by the name of IPMX? Intended to open up the AV-over-IP market and provide customers with a better deal, Andrew takes us through the motivations of AIMS, AMWA, VSF, SMPTE and the other organisations involved.

IPMX is a set of open standards and specifications which seek to bring a technology platform to the Pro AV industry on which all vendors can interoperate and innovate. Built on SMPTE’s ST 2110 suite of standards and the accompanying NMOS APIs from AMWA, IPMX adds essential capabilities such as HDMI, HDCP and USB support to create a complete and reliable foundation for AV events and installations.

 

 

Whilst there are a number of successful AV initiatives such as SDVoE, these are typically alliances built around a single-vendor hardware solution which is available to vendors in the alliance. This provides interoperability within that ecosystem but, explains Andrew, it prevents wider interoperability between vendors of different alliances. It also makes it hard to any vendor to innovate in the core feature set since that’s delivered from the single source relegating innovation to ‘plumbing’. For the vendors, at best, this means they have to contend with multiple, incompatible product lines and complicated support. Overall this results in a bad end user experience as they operate multiple islands which can have conflicting network requirements, i.e. 10GbE vs 1GbE.

IPMX can be implemented in software as well as hardware using compressed or uncompressed video with a focus on fully featured discovery as this has been identified as being as important as the ability to carry video. Timing has been made flexible such that it can operate with or without PTP which is one of a number of ways that it’s anticipated IPMX will be able to merge in with ST 2110 infrastructures.

Andrew finishes off his talk with a look at the tech stack of IPMX with layer 2 options from 1 to 100GbE connections supported on which RTP and PTP run. SMPTE’s ST 2110 standards feature heavily alongside a new standard for HDCP in 2110, a VSF spec for FEC and new specifications from AMWA for asynchronous control traffic like EDID, Serial, CEC, USB etc. Finally, there are the main APIs such as IS-04, -05 etc. as well as the application layer which uses OAuth2 for authenticating and has an RDS server for discovery. Lastly, there is a look at the JT-NM roadmap to see how the IPMX work will continue to advance throughout this year.

Watch now!
Speakers

Andrew Starks Andrew Starks
Director of Product Management,
Macnica America’s Inc.

Video: NMOS: The API for IPMX

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

IPMX promises a ‘plug and play’ out-of-the-box experience, but with uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 video and audio underneath. Given many tier 1 broadcasters have invested months or years implementing ST 2110. So how can IPMX deliver on its promise to the Pro-AV market?

Andrew Starks from Macnica presents this talk explaining how NMOS will fit into IPMX. Key to enabling a minimal config environment is the added mandatory specifications and standards within IPMX. For instance, while you can build an ST 2110 system without NMOS, that’s not an option for IPMX. The focus is on consistency and interoperability. Optional parts of IPMX cover HDCP carriage, USB, RS232 and IPV6. Many of the things often used within Pro-AV but may not be appropriate for low-cost, small use-cases.

Andrew gives an overview of IS-04 and IS-05 which allow for discovery and control of devices. He then looks at EDID and USB carriage and finishes by discussing why AMWA is choosing to use open specifications rather than creating standards.

Watch now!
Speakers

Andrew Starks Andrew Starks
Director of Product Management,
Macnica Technology,