Broadcasters and established production facilities still have a significant investment in legacy SDI infrastructure. They cannot simply make an abrupt change and require some level of interoperability with any approach. As the lines blur between who creates what type of digital media content, many independent producers, business enterprises, educational institutions, and other organizations are skipping a whole generation of technology as they are already using IP for other operational aspects much like many areas of the developing world never used wired telephones and went right to using mobile communications.

IP has now become the last media standard, because IP has the capability to grow and scale in bandwidth, complexity, and installation type. If you build your media around IP, then you will never need a new standard again. This is not true of SDI or HDMI.

So as the general trend continues of migrating to IP-based transport of media, the discussion turns to what sorts of IP technologies to use. SMPTE 2110 has garnered attention with broadcasters and other mainstream production organizations, but faces hurdles for widespread adoption due to cost, complexity, and having specific hardware dependencies. There are emerging standards for Pro AV including HDBaseT-IP and SDVoE (Software Defined Video over Ethernet), but they are hardware-centric rather than software-centric, requiring separate hardware encoders and decoders to send and receive the AV streams and are backed by semiconductor manufacturers. The methods in such standards tend towards point-to-point connectivity and one-way distribution.

There is however a significant alternative. The standard with the biggest traction for video over IP is NDI®, (Network Device Interface) developed by NewTek. It is being implemented by thousands of software and hardware developers, and millions of users already. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, it is software, not hardware-based, so implementation is extremely flexible. NDI, including the software development kit (SDK), is royalty-free for users and software developers. Software in FPGA-based devices is licensed at modest fees. Most important though to many users is that NDI is simple and easy to use. 

NDI works with existing software applications, computer platforms, and network infrastructure. The lightweight, low overhead implementation of NDI makes it as simple as downloading a free NDI tool and seeing live video moving across the network with Windows, Mac and Linux software applications.

Because the origin of NDI is in live production, it has some very useful properties including managing large numbers of multiple streams and being fully bi-directional. NDI sources are created directly from an application or hardware product that supports NDI output. This saves on cost and complexity of installations, especially in applications where live production and distribution cross paths.

NDI enhances workflows with new capabilities including multiple source encoding of signals for viewing, hearing, mixing, recording, and editing. NDI offers retention of visual quality, frame accuracy, and source synchronization. Usual video formats such as 3G and 4K UHD are supported, but NDI is resolution, aspect ratio, and frame rate independent. Floating point audio processing starts at 16 channels and scales to virtually unlimited numbers. NDI provides 16-bit video color computations for image precision and quality. Highly efficient NDI streams and files contain video, proxy, key, audio, control, tally, custom metadata, and precision time stamp information.

NDI development continues along at a fast pace. The latest version, NDI 4, to be released in August 2019, provides a wealth of digital media production power with enhanced quality and efficiency of the codec for video at the top of the list. Other great additions impact discovery, transport, tools, and a major leap in media acquisition, capture, and recording.

Scalable recording with NDI is included with NewTek digital media production systems and the NDI Studio Monitor tool. NDI streams can now be converted into files that are managed, transferred, and stored in the same manner as any other type of media file. There is even ‘growing file’ support for users to start working with while media capture continues.

The NDI recording functionality is extended with each media stream being time-stamped during capture. With synchronized recordings and NewTek’s NDI Import plug-in for Adobe^®Creative Cloud^®, files are imported and available to start editing with synchronized media immediately.

NDI is an elegant solution that merges all stages of production from start to finish, live or not. In this new world, all production tasks and processes are united. From searching, reviewing, and packaging content, to live switching and replay, all the way to multi-cam editing, NDI offers a seamless and transparent technology to let all types of creatives tell their stories with video content.

Check out the full article HERE

Learn more about NewTek HERE

The last few years have been an exciting time for the broadcast industry. We’ve seen the rapid development and deployment of IP and COTS-based infrastructures introduce new workflows to streamline operations and reshape how we build facilities.

With all the options and flexibility that IP-based infrastructures enable, additional complexity is also added to the system. On top of existing broadcast standards for transporting video over coax, such as SMPTE 292M, a plethora of emerging standards have been introduced into the marketplace that, although functionally solved a problem, generated large interoperability issues that inhibited growth and mass adoption.

With conflicting methods of transporting video over IP (NMI, SMPTE 2022-6, ASPEN and others), customers were hesitant to deploy IP solutions that were proprietary to a single vendor. Who wants to risk deploying a solution that might quickly be superseded by a more flexible emerging standard? With the work of industry associations like AIMS (Alliance for IP Media Solutions), we have seen the industry coalesce quickly behind SMPTE 2022-6 and the proposed SMPTE 2110 standard. Having a functional set of standards with which a broadcast or post production facility can deploy has allowed for the rapid adoption of IP infrastructures into workflows of all sizes. We have learned that with new technology comes risk, but with multiple vendors working toward a common goal, under a common set of standards, that risk can be mitigated.

The speed of technological innovation is one of the greatest strengths of migrating to a COTS infrastructure, but it also makes for one of the greatest challenges. Figure 1 is a generalized chart of the advancement of baseband data rates, compared to the advancement of IP switch data rates over time. When you compare that graph to Figure 2 , you see that COTS manufacturers have been pushing data rates higher and higher, to a point that is well beyond the requirements of the broadcast industry.

Just three years ago, 10GBbase and 40G aggregate data rates were the only cost-effective solution for transporting video. 10G was great for transporting 1080P and lower resolutions, but 4K UHD with its 12G data rate was challenging. The signal either had to be split across multiple physical interfaces or a light compression such as TICO (4:1) was required. With the emergence of 25G base data rate interfaces and 100G aggregate interfaces, an elegant path to transporting 4K UHD via IP is now available.

Using 25G on edge devices has led to some additional challenges in terms of network efficiency. 25G ports carry a significant cost premium compared to 10G ports. If a device, such as a camera running 1080p, uses a 25G port, you pay for a 25G port but only use a fraction of its capabilities. On one device that might not be a big issue, but with 20 cameras (or more for some facilities) the inefficiency of the design is multiplied significantly. If you scale that out to all devices on a system that only puts out one or two 3G signals, you have a large waste of CAPEX funds, allocated bandwidth, and physical switch space. Flow aggregators, such as Grass Valley’s GV Node, have been playing a larger part in delivering cost effective solutions that allow for aggregation of lower bandwidth signals onto larger aggregate data interfaces. For example, GV Node can take up to 144 3G bidirectional signals, which could easily be 72 10G connections taking up multiple network switches, and aggregate them into 12 40G connections, significantly lowering the physical layer IO count, and maximizing the bandwidth used on those connections. See Figure 3 .

With the physical layer issues considered, and a set of standards to deploy against, the issue of COTS switch compatibility was a hurdle that had to be addressed. Not all switches are the same.

Just because a switch manufacturer claims that it can transport 10G or 25G, does not mean it can handle full bandwidth, across all ports, all the time. Most switches are designed to transport data in a “best effort” manner, meaning that they will make their best effort to get the data to the destination on time. If it doesn’t get there, the switch will keep trying. That’s great for file-based workflows and using protocols that are designed to use high latency or buffered connections, but it’s a disaster for real time video production.

With real time video, we cannot simply accept that the data will be transmitted at a later time. The solution has to be designed so all source flows can switch to all destinations, at any time, without delay or buffering. Most switch manufacturers now have switches designed to do exactly that, but require special firmware, licenses, ASICs on the switches and control software. The first customers to deploy large scale COTS infrastructures bore the risk and learning curve that was required to find a functional solution. Now that we have many large scale deployments, the risk has been largely mitigated.

Today’s benefit in using COTS switches is simple: Multiple COTS switch manufacturers have deployed turnkey switch solutions that do not require the end user to know what firmware, licenses and ASIC’s are needed to meet customer requirements. The fully vetted COTS solution drastically simplifies the project’s design and installation phases. That makes life in an IP world that much easier.

By: Robert Erickson, IP Evangelist