Rick Ackermans

Video: RIST Unfiltered – Q&A Session

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

RIST is a protocol which allows for reliable streaming over lossy networks like the internet. Whilst many people know that much, they may not know more and may have questions. Today’s video aims to answer the most common questions. For a technical presentation of RIST, look no further than this talk and this article

Kieran Kunhya deals out the questions to the panel from the RIST Forum, RIST members and AWS. Asking:
Does RIST need 3rd party equipment?
Is there an open-source implementation of RIST?
Whether there are any RIST learning courses?
as well as why companies should use RIST over SRT.
RIST, we hear is based on RTP which is a very widely deployed technology for real-time media transport and is widely used for SMPTE 2022-2 and 6 streams, SMPTE 2110, AES67 and other audio protocols. So not only is it proven, but it’s also based on RFCs along with much of RIST. SRT, the panel says, is based on the UDT file transfer protocol which is not an RFC and wasn’t designed for live media transport although SRT does perform very well for live media.

“Why are there so many competitors in RIST?” is another common question which is answered by talking about the need for interoperability. Fostering widespread interoperability will grow the market for these products much more than it would with many smaller protocols. “What new traction is RIST getting?” is answered by David Griggs from AWS who says they are committed to the protocol and find that customers like the openness of the protocol and are thus willing to invest their time in creating workflows based on it. Adi Rozenberg lists many examples of customers who are using the technology today. You can hear David Griggs explain RIST from his perspective in this talk.

Other questions handled are the licence that RIST is available under and the open-source implementations, the latency involved in using RIST and whether it can carry NDI. Sergio explains that NDI is a TCP-based protocol so you can transmit it by extracting UDP out of it, using multicast or using a VizRT-tool for extracting the media without recompressing. Finally, the panel looks at how to join the RIST Activity Group in the VSF and the RIST Forum. They talk about the origin of RIST being in an open request to the industry from ESPN and what is coming in the upcoming Advanced Profile.

Watch now!
Speakers

Rick Ackermans Rick Ackermans
RIST AG Chair,
Director of RF & Transmission Engineering, CBS Television
David Griggs David Griggs
Senior Product Manager, Media Services,
AWS Elemental
Sergio Ammirata Sergio Ammirata
RIST AG Member,
Chief Science Officer, SipRadius
Adi Rozenberg Adi Rozenberg
RIST Forum Director
AG Member, Co-Founder & CTO, VideoFlow
Ciro Noronha Ciro Noronha
RIST Forum President and AG Member
EVP of Engineering, Cobalt Digital
Paul Atwell Paul Atwell
RIST Forum Director,
President, Media Transport Solutions
Wes Simpson Wes Simpson
RIST AG Co-Chair,
President & Founder, LearnIPvideo.com
Kieran Kunhya Kieran Kunhya
RIST Forum Director
Founder & CEO, Open Broadcast Systems

Video: RIST: What is the Future?

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Many see RIST as a new kid on the block, but they’ve worked quickly since their formation 3 years ago, having produced two specifications and now working on the third. RIST makes sending video over the internet reliable as it corrects for missing data. The protocol which, aims at multi-vendor interoperability, continues to gather interest with the RIST Forum now having over 80 companies.

“What does RIST do today” and “what’s next?” are the two questions Rick Ackermans, Chair of the RIST activity group at the VSF, is here to answer. Firstly, then, Rick looks at the documents already published, TR-06-1 and TR-06-2. Also known as the simple profile TR-06-01 has already received an update to allow for continuous measurement of the round trip time (RTT) of the link. Rick makes it clear that these are living specifications and the VSF won’t shy away from updating them when it helps keep the protocol relevant and responsive to the industry. TR-06-2 is the main profile which was released last year.

The simple and main profiles are summarised in this article and by Rick in the video. The simple profile provides a sender or receiver which can speak plain RTP and also run with high-performance packet recovery and seamless switching.

Main Profile brings in encryption and a powerful tool, GRE. As we wrote about last week, the idea of a tunnel is to hide complexity from the network infrastructure. Tunnelling allows for bidirectional data flow under one connection which is transparent to the network carrying the tunnel and to the endpoints. This enables a lot of flexibility. Not only does it allow for the connection to be set up in either direction, to suit whichever is easiest for firewall reasons, but it also allows generic data to be sent meaning you could send PTZ camera control data along with the video and audio.

But the highlight of this presentation is looking to the future and hearing about the advanced profile which is still in progress. Planned, though not promised, are features such as auto-configuration where a receiver works out many of the parameters of the link itself and dynamic reconfiguration where the sender and receiver respond to changing conditions of the link/network. Also in the works is a hybrid operation mode for satellites allowing and an internet connection to be used in addition to the satellite feed to receive and deliver re-requests.

Watch now!
Speakers

Rick Ackermans Rick Ackermans
Rist Activity Group Chair
Director of RF & Transmissions Engineering, CBS
Wes Simpson Wes Simpson
Co-Chair, RIST Activity Group,
Owner, LearnIPVideo.com