ST 2022-7

Video: The Good and the Ugly – IP Studio Production Case Study

Posted on by Adam K

What’s implementing SMPTE ST-2110 like in real life? How would you design your network and what were the problems? In this case study Ammar Latif from Cisco Systems presents the architecture, best practices and lessons learned they gleaned in this live IP broadcast production facility project designed for a major US broadcaster. Based on SMPTE ST-2110 standard, it spanned five studios and two control rooms. The central part of this project was a dual Spine-Leaf IP fabric with bandwidth equivalent of a 10,000 x 10,000 HD SDI router with a fully non-blocking multicast architecture. The routing system was based on Grass Valley Convergent broadcast controller and a Cisco DCNM media controller.

As the project was commissioned in 2018, the AMWA IS-04 and IS-05 specifications providing an inter-operable mechanism for routing media around SMPTE 2110 network were not yet available. Multicast flow subscription was based on a combination of IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) and PIM (Protocol Independent Multicast) protocols. While PIM is very efficient and mature, it lacks the ability to use bandwidth as a parameter when setting up a flow path. Ammar explains how Non-Blocking Multicast (NBM) developed by Cisco brings bandwidth awareness to PIM by signalling a type of data (video, audio or metadata).

The talk continues by discussing PTP distribution & monitoring, SMPTE 2022-7 seamless protection switching and remote site production. Ammar also lets us see how the user interfaces on the Cisco DCNM media controller were designed which include a visualisation of multicast flow, network topology and link saturation of ports.

You can find the slides here.

Watch now!

Speaker

Ammar Latif
Principal Architect,
Cisco Systems

Webinar: IP 101 – Redundancy in an IP environment

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Date: Tomorrow, Wednesday December 11th, 9am CET and 5pm CET.

Axon’s series of webinars looking stepping through broadcasting in IP from the very beginnings has been working up through the topics and now comes to managing redundancy within an IP architecture.

Led by Peter Schut, CTO of Axon, he looks at SMPTE ST 2022-7 which is the standard method of seamless switching allowing redundancy in the paths and the streams. But, of course, there are many other ways of creating redundant IP systems including managing redundancy at the network level as well as the device level.

This webinar happens at two times. Once in the morning for europe and once in the afternoon.

Register now and choose your session!

Speaker

Peter Schut Peter Schut
CTO,
Axon

Video: IP Test and Measurement for ST 2110 Systems

Posted on by Adam K

As the transition to IP-based transport for video, audio, and data continues. The early adopters have already demonstrated the operational and commercial benefits of COTS IP infrastructure and SMPTE ST 2110 video-over-IP standard suite becomes mature now. However, configuration and troubleshooting of IP systems requires a completely new skillset. Broadcast engineers need to gain an understanding of the technology and the new techniques required to monitor these signals.

In this video Kevin Salvidge from Leader shows what test and measurement tools you need to ensure you continue to deliver the same quality of service that can be achieved with SDI systems.

Kevin looks at the main differences between traditional and IP systems which stem as much from a move from synchronous to asynchronous infrastructure as the way you measure how well the system is working.

The following topics are covered:

  • Frame Check Sequence (FCS), Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)
  • Packet jitter measurement (avoiding buffer underrun)
  • Monitoring ST 2022-7 path delay between the two feeds
  • PTP synchronization (offset and delay graphs, synchronisation accuracy)
  • Checking that video, audio and ANC signals are synchronised with PTP and RTP timing measurement
  • Packet Header Information looking at MAC, IP, UDP, RTP as well as the payload
  • SFP Information (10/25 Gb, multimode / single mode etc.)
  • IP Event Log e.g. Grand Master change
  • Hybrid IP and SDI Video and Audio Test and Measurement

You can see the slides here.

Watch now!

Speaker

Kevin Salvidge
European Regional Development Manager
Leader

Video: Transporting ST 2110 Over WAN

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Is SMPTE ST 2110 suitable for inter-site connectivity over the WAN? As ST 2110 continues to mature and the first facilities are going live bringing 2110 into daily use, there are a number of challenges still to be overcome and moving a large number of essence flows long distances and between PTP time domains is one of them.

Nevion’s Andy Rayner presents the work the VSF is doing to recommend transport of ST 2110 over WAN outlining where they have got to and what has been recommended to date.

The talk starts with SMPTE 2022-7 seamless protection which is recommended for dealing with path breaks. For compensating for transmission errors, FEC is recommended and Andy explains the parameters needed.

Key to the inter-site transport is trunking whereby the individual essences are mixed down to one flow. This has a number of advantages: Reducing the number of flows makes life simpler for service providers, all essences will now share the same signal path from site to site and it FEC protection can be more efficiently applied.

The trunks are made using GRE – Generic Routing Encapsulation – which is a pre-existing IT standard for grouping lots of traffic into a single tunnel whilst preserving the data inside. This then appears at the other end of the trunk with the same IP information as if nothing had happened. Andy looks at the extra encapsulation headers needed to make this work and goes on to discuss payload lengths as we need to keep them short so as not to result in fragmented packets.

Timing, as ever, is important meaning that the recommendation is to align all essences before sending them in to the trunk, though Andy looks at alternatives. Also of key concern is compression as there will be times when uncompressed video is simply too high a bandwidth to be carried on the WAN. JPEG 2000 and, now, JPEG XS are available for this task.

Andy covers timing, discovery, control, security and conversion to and from 2022-6 before finishing the talk by taking questions.

Watch now!
Speaker

Andy Rayner Andy Rayner
Chief Technologist,
Nevion