NewTek helped us get to compressed IP with NDI. Now they are providing a bridge to uncompressed IP with NC1 Studio I/O IP.

With all the committee and standardization work churning the broadcast production firmament, the transition to uncompressed IP-based production is still a moving target.

But at IBC 2015, NewTek gave us our first step to switching from a SDI (Serial Digital Interface) infrastructure to packetized IP using compressed signals by introducing their Network Device Interface (NDI). Their approach employed a bi-directional SDI/IP protocol that they gave away in a royalty-free SDK (Software Development Kit).

By transporting a compressed signal, NDI was an easy fit for the Gigabit Ethernet wiring that already existed in many facilities. Since then there have been 2400 independent downloads of the NDI SDK resulting in over 400 NDI-equipped professional products and up to 5 million consumer and pro-sumer pieces of equipment that are NDI-enabled.

Now, however, the SMPTE ST 2110 specification for uncompressed IP transport is about to be released sometime this summer and production facilities are going to need a gateway to get from their compressed IP signals to uncompressed studio IP infrastructure.

NewTek Connect Pro can serve a variety of video sources as NDI streams for a video production IP workflow, plus give you quality controls for the video streams it provides. The application’s capabilities go beyond the system on which it is installed, however. NewTek Connect Pro can also help you turn any available system or device in your production suite into a multiviewer on which you can monitor any of the available NDI streams present on the network.

Yes, you heard that right – you can leverage NewTek Connect Pro on one system from other systems or devices, to make them useful in your production workflow. This is because the application includes NDI Connect Webserver, which can be accessed by other systems and devices on the network. You can then use these to monitor NDI streams from any source on the network. This is not limited to the NDI streams that NewTek Connect Pro is serving.

The information you need is the IP address of the system on which NewTek Connect Pro is running. Then, from any system or device on the network, open a web browser, and enter the IP address on the address line. The NDI Connect Webserver page will open in your browser window. Default is a single viewport. To select from a number of available multiviewer monitor setups, click on the Display control button on the top right. This opens a selection panel with a variety of layouts. In the video, our presenter opens up an 8 monitor multiviewer layout. Click here to watch the tutorial and to read more.

In a new article, RedShark News examines three of the most important factors that IP workflow offers to video production.  The major emphasis is on how the workflow is able to carry multiple channels at high quality with one network cable as opposed to multiple video cables, one required for each video source.

We’d add a fourth: communication is bi-directional with an IP solution such as NDI….[continue reading on NewTek]

Read the article at RedShark News: Networks Do Miraculous Things with Video

In a previous Tip entry, 2-Minute Tutorial: How to Set Up NewTek™ Connect Pro for Media Playback, we showed how to set up NewTek Connect Pro and add its outputs to a switcher’s inputs. NewTek Connect Pro can be a source for any NDI-enabled production switcher, but there are some additional advantages when you use the application with a TriCaster, and we’ll show you those here. In many ways, using NewTek Connect Pro is like having four more DDRs for a TriCaster.

We start in the quad monitor view, so all four of our enabled NDI sources are displayed in the NewTek Connect Pro UI. We have an AutoPlay function that can be used with the TriCaster, and we can engage that for each of the sources by clicking the AutoPlay button on the Playback controls for each of the four monitors….[continue to full tutorial on NewTek]