Techex Archives – The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: Remote Production in the Cloud for DR and the New Normal

Posted on 7th September 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

How does NDI fit into the recent refocussing of interest in working remotely, operating broadcast workflows remotely and moving workflows into the cloud? Whilst SRT and RIST have ignited imaginations over how to reliably ingest content into the cloud, an MPEG AVC/HEVC workflow doesn’t make sense due to the latencies. NDI is a technology with light compression with latencies low enough to make cloud workflows feel almost immediate.

Vizrt’s Ted Spruill and Jorge Dighero join moderator Russell Trafford-Jones to explore how the challenges the pandemic have thrown up and the practical ways in which NDI can meet many of the needs of cloud workflows. We saw in the talk Where can SMPTE ST 2110 and NDI co-exist? how NDI is a tool to get things done, just like ST 2110 and that both have their place in a broadcast facility. This video takes that as read looks at the practical abilities of NDI both in and out of the cloud.

Taking the of a demo and then extensive Q&A, this talk covers latency, running NDI in the cloud, networking considerations such as layer 2 and layer 3 networks, ease of discovery and routing, contribution into the cloud, use of SRT and RIST, comparison with JPEG XS, speed of deployment and much more!.

Click to watch this no-registration, free webast at SMPTE
Speakers

	Jorge Dighero Senior Solutions Architect, Vizrt
	Ted Spruill Sales Manager-US Group Stations, Vizrt
	Moderator:Russell Trafford-Jones Editor, TheBroadcastKnowledge.com Director of Education, Emerging Technologies, SMPTE Manager, Support & Services, Techex

Video: Online Streaming Primer

Posted on 31st January 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

A trip down memory lane for some, a great intro to the basics of streaming for others, this video from IET Media looks at the history of broadcasting and how that has moved over the years to online streaming posing the question whether, with so many people watching online, is that broad enough to now be considered broadcast?

The first of a series of talks from IET Media, the video starts by highlighting that the recording of video was only practical 20 years after the first television broadcasts then talks about how television has moved on to add colour, resolution and move to digital. The ability to record video is critical to almost all of our use of media today. Whilst film worked well as an archival medium, it didn’t work well, at scale, for recording of live broadcasts. So in the beginning, broadcasting from one, or a few, transmitters was all there was.

Russell Trafford-Jones, from IET Media, then discusses the advent of streaming from its predecessor as file-based music in portable players, through the rise of online radio and how this naturally evolved into the urge to stream video in much the same way.

Being a video from the IET video, Russell then looks at the technology behind getting video onto a network and over the internet. He talks about cutting the stream into chunks, i.e. small files, and how sending files can create a seamless stream of data. One key advantage of this method is Adaptive BitRate (ABR) meaning being able to change from one quality level, to another which typically means changing bitrate to adapt to changing network conditions.

Finishing by talking about the standards available for online streaming, this talk is a great introduction to streaming and an important part of anyone’s foundational understanding of broadcast and streaming.

Watch now!

This video 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

Russell Trafford-Jones
Exec Member, IET Media
Manager, Support & Services, Techex
Editor, The Broadcast Knowledge

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: Streaming Live Events: When it must be alright on the night

Posted on 20th September 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Live Streaming is an important part of not only online viewing, but increasingly of broadcast in general. It’s well documented that live programming is key to keeping linear broadcast’s tradition of ‘everyone watching at once’ which has been diluted – for both pros and cons – by non-linear viewing in recent years.

This panel, as part of IBC’s Content Everywhere, looks at the drivers behind live streaming, how it’s evolving and its future. Bringing together ultra-low-latency platform nanocosmos with managed service provider M2A Media and video player specialists Visual On, Editor of The Broadcast Knowledge, Russell Trafford-Jones starts the conversation asking what gamification is and how this plays in to live streaming.

nanocosmos’s Oliver Lietz explains how gamification is an increasing trend in terms of not only monetising existing content but is a genre in and of itself providing content which is either entirely a game or has a significant interactive element. With such services, it’s clear that latency needs to be almost zero so his company’s ability to deliver one-second latency is why he has experience in these projects.

We hear also from VisualOn’s Michael Jones who explains the low-latency service they were involved in delivering. Here, low-latency CMAF was used in conjunction with local synced-screen technology to ensure that not only was latency low, but second screen devices were not showing video any earlier/later than the main screen. The panel then discussed the importance of latency compared to synchronised viewing and where ultra-low latency was unnecessary.

Valentijn Siebrands from M2A talks about the ability to use live streaming and production in the cloud to deliver lower-cost sports events but also deliver new types of programming. Valentijn then takes us into the topic of analytics, underlining the importance of streaming analytics which reveal the health of your platform/infrastructure as much as the analytics which are most usually talked about; those which tell you the quality of experience your viewers are having and their activities on your app.

The talk concludes with a look to the future, talking about the key evolving technologies of the moment and how they will help us move forward between now and IBC’s Content Everywhere Hub in 2021.

Watch now!

Speakers

	Oliver Lietz CEO & Founder, nanocosmos
	Michael Jones Former SVP and Head of Business Development, VisualOn Inc
	Valentijn Siebrands Solutions Architect, M2A Media
	Russell Trafford-Jones – Moderator Manager, Support & Services – Techex Executive Member – IET Media Technical Network

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