NewTek Archives – The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: The State of NDI in 2021 & NDI Version 5

Posted on 28th June 2021 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Released in 2015, NDI is a royalty-free technology that implements low-latency video, audio, tally and control over gigabit networking. Since 2015, NDI has grown in popularity immensely and is now very widely used within AV, live streaming production and in cloud workflows. Developed by Newtek, now part of VizRT, it allows computers to easily push video from programs onto the local network whether from Teams or Skype, a video Editor, OBS or anything else. Many vendors have taken the NDI binaries and integrated them into their products.

On The Broadcast Knowledge we’ve explored how NDI compliments SMPTE’s ST 2110 suite of standards which primarly help move uncompressed payloads around a broadcast suite. In this panel put on by the IET at IBC we explored the benefits of 2110 and NDI to understand where the overlap lies. And for a deeper dive into NDI including some demos, we also featured this talk by SMPTE and VizRT.

In today’s video from Key Code Media, we hear from Newtek’s Dr. Andrew Cross, creator of NDI on what’s new in NDI’s latest release, 5.0. Jeff Sengpiehl from Key Code Media explains that NDI 5.0 brings with it improvements in multi-platform support including native support for Apple Silicon. 5.0 also includes plugins for any program to share its audio over NDI as well as a way of sharing a link to get someone to share their video and audio by NDI. Part of the big changes, though in this latest version is the addition of ‘reliable UDP’ and ‘NDI Bridge’. Based on Google’s QUIC this provides a way of sending NDI over lossy networks allowing for it to recover lost data and deal with network congestion. This ties in nicely with ‘NDI Bridge’ which allows two or three separate locations to share their NDI sources and destinations seamlessly. These additional features bring NDI outside of the LAN. Being a layer 2 protocol, it’s always been seen as a local protocol even when deployed in the cloud.

The majority of the video features Dr. Cross answering questions from Jeff and viewers. These questions include:
What are the pain points with audio? Is NDI Audio Direct a replacement for Dante? Maintaining synchronisation in multi-location systems. The significance of support for ARM chips, bidirectional use of NDI, NDI Bridge security, 10-bit colour support, NDI’s place in the ProAV market and the possibility of NDI becoming open source or a standard.

Watch now!
Speakers

	Andrew Cross Creator of NDI & President of Global Research and Development VizRT (NewTek/NDI)
	Moderator: Jeff Sengpiehl Chief Technologist Key Code Media

Video: Where can SMPTE 2110 and NDI co-exist?

Posted on 16th January 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

When are two video formats better than one? Broadcasters have long sought ‘best of breed’ systems matching equipment as close as possible to your ideal workflow. In this talk, we look getting the best of both compressed, low-latency and uncompressed video. NDI, a lightly compressed, ultra-low latency codec, allows full productions in visually lossless video with a field of latency. SMPTE’s ST-2110 allows full productions with uncompressed video and almost zero latency.

Bringing together the EBU’s Willem Vermost who paints a picture from the perspective of public broadcasters who are planning their moves into the IP realm, Marc Risby from UK distributor and integrator Boxer brings a more general view of the market’s interest and Will Waters who spent many years in Newtek, the company that invented NDI we hear the two approaches of compressed and uncompressed complement each other.

This panel took place just after the announcement that Newtek had been bought by VizRT, the graphics vendor, who sees a lot of benefit in being able to work in both types of workflow, for clients large and small and who have made Newtek its own entity under the VizRT umbrella to ensure continued focus.

A key differentiator of NDI is its focus on 1 gigabit networking. Its aim has always to enable ‘normal’ companies to be able to deploy IP video easily so they can rapidly benefit from the benefits that IP workflows bring over SDI or other baseband video technologies. A keystone in this strategy is to enable everything to happen on normal, 1Gbit switches which are prevalent in most companies today. Other key elements to the codec are: free, software development kit, bi-directionality, resolution-independent, audio sample-rate agnostic, tally support, auto-discovery and more.

In the talk, we discuss the pros and cons of this approach where interoperability is assured as everyone has to use the same receive and transmit code, against having a standard such as SMPTE ST-2110. SMPTE ST-2110 has the benefit of being uncompressed, assuring the broadcaster that they have captured the best possible quality of video, promises better management at scale, tighter integration into complex workflows, lower latency and the ability to treat the many different essences separately. Whilst we discuss many of the benefits of SMPTE ST-2110, you can get a more detailed overview from this presentation from the IP Showcase.

Watch now!

This panel was produced by IET Media, a technical network within the IET which runs events, talks and webinars for networking and education within the broadcast industry. More information

Speakers

	Willem Vermost At the time, Senior IP Media Technology Architect, EBU Now, Design and Engineering Manager, VRT
	Marc Risby CTO, Boxer Group
	Will Waters Formerly Vice President Of Worldwide Customer Success, Now Head of Global Product Management, VizRT
	Moderator: Russell Trafford-Jones Exec Member, IET Media Manager, Support & Services, Techex Editor, The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: Talk 2110

Posted on 9th December 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Is the industry successfully delivering what we need with SMPTE’s ST 2110 suite of standards? What are the benefits of IP and how can we tackle the difficulties?

In this panel from Broadcast Solutions’ Innovation Day, we hear from 5 vendors understanding their perspectives and plans for the future. Claus Pfeifer from Sony say they have now 60 sites up and running in IP. Lawo’s Phil Myers follows up saying “People know they have to go IP, it’s a matter of when they go IP.”

Whilst this is a positive start, the panel moves on to talking briefly about difficulties implementing SMPTE ST 2110. Jan Eveleens from Riedel points out many of the issues will go as we are waiting for technology to catch up regarding CPUs and bandwidth. We no longer have the same processing issues we used to for audio. Similarly with video, technology will improve and remove many of the challenges. Phil Myers feels that cloud implementation issues are not a large problem at the moment as he sees a move to bring equipment into private clouds rather than public. This way they are doing ‘remote production for buildings’.

After each vendor outlined their future plans for IP, Zoltan highlighted that IP allows NDI to co-exist with ST 2110. Many may want to use 2110 for high end sports, for others NDI fits well. Then panel felt that a concerning area of IP is the worry of how to fix problems. The knowledge level is different from country to country. So vendors not only need to work on education about IP, both for NDI and 2110, but they need to do this in a focussed way for the different markets.

As the panel comes towards the end, Claus feels that the industry started to talk too early about pure technology. “Did not discuss enough about the business benefits.” he explains such as remote production and more efficient use of equipment – avoiding ‘sleeping Capex’. Installing IP makes a lot of sense for large-scale systems. Recently broadcasters have been working at a scale requiring much more than 1024 squared routers roughly where SDI routers top out. But also, these large systems tend to have a life of over 10 years. Faced with SDI development, particularly in routers, is slowing down or stopping, for these long-lived systems it makes much more sense to use IP.

Watch now!
Speakers

	Jan Eveleens Director Business Development Video Solutions, Riedel
	Joachim Kuhnen Strategic Solution Manager EMEA Imagine Communications
	Zoltan Matula Regional Sales Manager Central Europe, Newtek
	Phil Myers Chief Technology Officer, Chair of the Advisory Board, Lawo
	Claus Pfeifer Head of Connected Content Acquisition – Media Solutions, Sony
	David Davies Moderator

Webinar: IP for Media Part 4 – Audio

Posted on 19th March 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Date: Thursday 21st March 2019
Time: 2PM EDT / 18:00 GMT

The fourth in the series of IP in broadcasting, Wes Simpson, NewTek and TV Technology are back, this time, to discuss using Audio over IP – specifically uncompressed audio over IP.

There are a number of proprietary systems like Dante, RAVENNA and others, but this webinar focusses on the standardised AES67 and the closely linked SMPTE ST 2110-30 standards.

Register here for this webinar and the previous IP ones which cover Security, Remote Production and the first ‘101’ session covering the basics of compressed and uncompressed IP for broadcasting.

Speakers

	Wes Simpson President, Telecom Product Consulting
	Will Waters Vice President of Customer Success, NewTek
	Tom Butts Content Director, TV Technology

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