The Ease of NDI – NewTek’s Video Over IP for All
By Jim Bask
The ABCs of NDI – NewTek’s Video Over IP for Everyone
Phil Sandberg from Content-Technnology wrote this great article!
Announced by NewTek at IBC 2015, Network Device Interface (NDI) is an open protocol enabling IP video workflows across standard fixed and wireless Gigbit ethernet networks. NDI is a bi-directional standard that allows video systems to identify and communicate with one another over IP, and to encode, transmit, and receive multiple streams of broadcast-quality, low latency, frame-accurate video and audio in real time. The NDI encoding algorithm supports all video resolutions and frame rates up to 4K and beyond, as well as multi-channel, floating-point audio up to 16 channels and beyond. NDI also includes tools to implement video access and grouping, bi-directional metadata, tally, and more.
Support for the standard has come from the likes of Adobe Pro Video, AJT Systems, Archion, Autocue, Evertz, JVC Professional Video, LiveU, Panasonic, PlayBox, and Vaddio.
With IP-video platforms evolving around SMPTE 2022-6, VSF TR-03 and VSF TR-04 standards (backed by AIMS, the Alliance for IP Media Solutions) and the Evertz-backed ASPEN standard, where does Network Device Interface fit into the broader IP ecosystem?
According to Dr. Andrew Cross, President and CTO, NewTek, “The best way I can describe it is there are multiple IP standards. At the top of the pyramid, you have AIMS and ASPEN, which are the two 10 Gigabit video, high bandwidth, over 10 Gigabit ethernet. And, what we saw was a need to make something that’s accessible for everybody else who wants to do video. “If you think about it, once every office building anywhere in the developed world is wired for ethernet, it’s all going to be 1GigE. So, part of NewTek’s vision – and I think what’s going to happen in the industry – is that more and more people are going to want to do video but we want to enable them to work in the facility that they have, not need to rewire it, because the difference between a TV station and an office building is the TV station’s already wired for video. “What we’re focused on is making a solution that just works for people wanting to do it on regular 1GigE. So, I would say we’ve got AIMS and ASPEN at the top of the pyramid and our goal is to fill from them on down.” “If you take AIMS and ASPEN, while they really do serve the needs of broadcasters very, very well and I should say we’re collaborating with them, the problem is that the small guy in the basement is not going to be able to build something around them. So, that’s kind of the difference. [Read the full article here]