Inside NDI 5’s ‘Quantum Leap’ with NDI President Michael Namatinia
By Adam Noyes
NDI 5 was announced by NewTek last month, with the promise of a ton of brand new features that improve live streaming and NDI based remote productions. As the industry anxiously waits for the release of NDI 5- you can join the waiting list now at NDI.tv– more and more information is being released on some of it’s capabilities.
Recently, avnetwork.com sat down with NDI company president, Michael Namatina to discuss some what’s new with NDI 5. Check out some highlights from their article, below.
According to Namatinia, NDI 5 was in development for two years. “We really wanted to create a release that would change the way NDI is seen within the world,” he said. “We are very close to our clients. We’re lucky that we have so many end users that we could have a back and forth, and most of these features are what our end users and our SDK users have been waiting for.”
This process yielded three chief features that set NDI 5 apart. The first is the expansion of the technology from local area networks to wide area networks. “NDI 5 breaks the limits of the local area network,” Namatinia said. “So that means that contribution can be not only within your small organization, but universities to universities, and corporations to corporations. It’s not just bringing in one guest like we’re doing here on Zoom, but it’s bringing in assets—all the assets from one area to another area to be able to combine them.”
The second chief feature is the incorporation of audio into the standard. “[Users] now have full control of the audio within the IP, which before they maybe would have to have a separate system,” Namatinia said. “Audio is kind of like this side problem in the production that you have to have separate equipment that has its own standard; it doesn’t fall into the regular standard. We’re also open to the rest of the IP audio platforms, so we can bring them in, but we can do all the work within NDI, and that’s another huge leap if you’re trying to do a production that’s always been separate.”