Steve Holmes

Video: Migrating to IP – Top Questions from Broadcasters

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones


Moving to IP can be difficult. For some, it’s about knowing where to even start. For others, it’s a matter of understanding some of the details which is the purpose of this talk from Leader US which looks at the top questions that Leader’s heard from its customer base:

  • How do we look at it?
  • How do we test it?
  • How is the data sent?
  • What is PTP?
  • How do we control it?
  • What is NMOS?
  • What are the standards involved?

These questions, and more, are covered in this webinar.

Steve Holmes from Lader Us details the IP relevant basics starting with the motivations: weight, cost, scale, density, and independent essences. We can then move on to the next questions covering RTP itself and how 2022-6 was built upon it. SMPTE ST 2022-6 splits up a regular SDI signal into sections and encapsulates them, uncompressed. This is one big difference from SMPTE ST 2110 where all essences are sent separately. For some, this is not a benefit, but for general broadcast workflows, it can sometimes be tricky getting them into alignment and some workflows are aimed at delivering an incoming bundle of PIDs so being able to separate them is a backward step.

With this groundwork laid, Steve explains how seamless redundancy works with SMPTE 2022-7 going on to then describe the difficulty of keeping jitter low and the importance of sender profiles in ST 2110. Steve finishes this section with a discussion of NMOS specifications such as IS-05 and IS-06. The session ends with a Q&A.

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Speaker

Steve Holmes Steve Holmes
Freelance consultant

Video: Intro to 4K Video & HDR

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

With all the talk of IP, you’d be wrong to think SDI is dead. 12G for 4K is alive and well in many places, so there’s plenty of appetite to understand how it works and how to diagnose problems.

In this double-header, Steve Holmes from Tektronix takes us through the ins and outs of HDR and also SDI for HDR at the SMPTE SF section.

Steve starts with his eye on the SMPTE standards for UHD SDI video looking at video resolutions and seeing that a UHD picture can be made up of 4 HD pictures which gives rise to two well-known formats ‘Quad split’ and ‘2SI’ (2 Sample Interleave).

Colour is the next focus and a discussion on the different colour spaces that UHD is delivered with (spoiler: they’re all in use), what these look like on the vectorscope and look at the different primaries. Finishing up with a roundup and a look at interlink timing, there’s a short break before hitting the next topic…HDR

High Dynamic Range is an important technology which is still gaining adoption and is often provided in 4K programmes. Steve defines the two places HDR is important; in the acquisition and the display of the video then provides a handy lookup table of terms such as HDR, WCG, PQ, HDR10, DMCVT and more.

Steve gives us a primer on what HDR is in terms of brightness ‘NITS’, how these relate to real life and how we talk about it with respect to the displays. We then look at HDR on the waveform monitor and look at features of waveform monitors which allow engineers to visualise and check HDR such as false colour.

The topic of gamma, EOTFs and colour spaces comes up next and is well-explained building on what came earlier. Before the final demo and Q&A, Steve talks about different ways to grade pictures when working in HDR.

A great intro to the topics at hand – just like Steve’s last one: Uncompressed Video over IP & PTP Timing

Watch now!

Speakers

Steve Holmes Steve Holmes
Former Senior Applications Engineer,
Tektronix

Video: Uncompressed Video over IP & PTP Timing

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

PTP and uncompressed video go hand in hand so this primer on ST 2022 and ST 2110 followed by a PTP deep dive is a great way to gain your footing in the uncompressed world.

In the longest video yet on The Broadcast Knowledge, Steve Holmes on behalf of Tektronix delivers two talks and a practical demo for the SMPTE San Francisco section where he introduces the reasons for and solutions to uncompressed video and goes through the key standards and technologies from ST 2022, those being -6 video and -7 seamless switching plus the major parts of ST 2110, those being timing, video, audio and metadata.

After that, at the 47 minute mark, Steve introduces the need for PTP by reference to black and burst, and goes on to explain how SMPTE’s ST2059 brings PTP into the broadcast domain and helps us synchronise uncompressed essences. He covered how PTP actually works, boundary clocks, Grandmaster/Master/Slave clocks and everything else you need to understand the system,

This video finishes with plenty of questions plus a look at the GUI of measurement equipment showing PTP in real life.

Watch now!
Speaker

Steve Holmes Steve Holmes
Senior Applications Engineer,
Tektronix