TVB Europe
The
transition to IP in live and studio environments is underway but the
evolution will be gradual not a big bang.
Despite
IP being routinely used in broadcast centres and mobile facilities
for functions like content management, browsing, metadata flows,
stats integrations and file movement, the live environment seems the
last area of the broadcast chain to adopt IP for end-to-end
workflows. The industry is now making a strategic initiative to close
the loop.
“Early
adopters like those in sports, with the financial means and the need
for ultra-fast and responsive live remote production are paving the
way for others,” says
Nicolas Bourdan, SVP Marketing, EVS.
Among
the pioneers are
NFL broadcaster ESPN which opened its Digital Center 2 facility last
summer housing a 9,000 sq ft studio,
six production control rooms, four audio rooms, 40 cameras and 16
edit suites all IP networked around a
Evertz routing core. In contrast to the performance of a
typical baseband router which can handle about a couple of thousand
signals at a time, ESPN’s setup allows it to handle up to 60,000
signals simultaneously over nearly 1100 miles of fibre optic cable
installed in the facility. It
won the IBC Innovation award for Content Management.
Another
well regarded reference site is America's Pac-12
Networks. It covers 850 sports events a year by sending the cameras,
mics and commentators to site but doing all production remotely,
using T-VIPS and Nevion links to transmit talkback and telemetry to
and from venues up to 2500km. Doing so saves an estimated $15000 per
game or $13m a year.
At
IBC, Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo claimed the first all-IP 4K
outside broadcast truck. The
unit, being
built for Rio 2016, will
be outfitted with Sony HDC-4300 cameras - IP connected through the
CCU, Sony's IP Live switcher and IP-ready monitors. The router will
be off-the-shelf IT kit.
“It
doesn't make any sense to create a brand new truck based on SDI any
more, so we are taking the chance to develop an IP-based OB truck for
sport,” explained Raymundo Barros, TV Globo's CTO.
Nonetheless,
there's
a general feeling that IP technologies inserted into live production
workflows at studios or venues need to mature. Live
is fraught with on-the-fly changes – a late breaking news story
with satellite link, for instance, or a director requiring a camera
alteration at a track and field event. The risk of on-air black holes
or a missing commercial makes for cautious adoption.
For
CTO's, the heart of the matter is whether trust in the deterministic,
virtually foolproof signal integrity of SDI can be matched by IP.
Will resolutions, frame rates and audio be synchronised all
of the time? And how is control over IP to be managed and monitored
by broadcast engineers unschooled in IT?
SMPTE
standard 2022-6 goes some way to address this. It is devised to
mirror SDI by synching video over IP in realtime, and provide
reassurance in workflow and operational monitoring for broadcast
engineers. Reproducing current SDI
workflows over IP is the first solution but
it does not unlock the full potential of IP by offering seamless
switching between AV and metadata streams. SMPTE, the EBU and others
are working on a new standard (2022-7) which may be published later
next year.
“When
properly implemented and managed, IP technologies for media
distribution can match the quality and latency standards required by
the broadcasting industry today,” stresses Bourdan. The
reality, though, is that if you want to deploy IP across the chain
you have to install a lot of conversion hardware. That’s due to the
broadcast equipment vendor's historic need for lock-in solutions and
it has to change.
“Interoperability
is the key, and adhering to industry standards is important to
ensuring success,” says Ewan Johnston, sales director at Trilogy.
“Customers will need to choose between those vendors who provide
standards-based systems, but who really still want to deliver
proprietary systems, and those who genuinely embrace the
standards-based approach and have open systems in their corporate
DNA.”
IBC
showed an industry prepared to make unprecedented technical
cooperation.
The EBU corralled
manufacturers Axon, EVS,
Genelec, Grass Valley, Nevion, Trilogy and Tektronix
to support its Sandbox LiveIP project which highlights
resource sharing, remote production and automation. It
implemented a IP studio at Belgium broadcaster VRT, replicated in
reduced scale on the IBC floor and is a
landmark achievement in interoperability by using SMPTE 2022-6/ AES67
and PTP to transport feeds over a software defined network.
“The
IP studio gives us an opportunity to think of new ways of making
content,” said Simon Fell, EBU director of technology &
innovation. “VRT has built a world that can work. Now,
manufacturers need to adopt new ways of interfacing their equipment
to that world and give us the flexibility we are looking for. At the
moment there is a lot of transcribing, re-packaging and re-streaming
going on to get things across the network.”
In
a conference session discussing the project, Geir Bordalen, head of
investment at Norway's NRK said, “It's not all hooked together and
that's one of the problems with interoperability. We need to work
hard on that and gain the benefits of working together.”
Panasonic
and Grass Valley, competitors at any other time, declared an IP-based
production partnership. Panasonic studio cameras including the
Varicam now have a built-in module for IP and were demonstrated
working with a Grass Valley K2 server sending 4K 50p via network
connection.
“Factors
such as codecs, synchronisation, identification, registration,
discovery and connection management are required for professional
networked media,” explained GV senior VP, strategic marketing, Mike
Cronk. “Each of them must be a common implementation for a truly
interoperable system.”
Sony
has amassed the support of twenty companies for its Live IP
production system. Among them is Evertz whose software-defined video
networking was shown working with Sony's Networked Media Interface
(NMI) at IBC. The NMI turns HD and UHD video, audio and metadata into
packets, transmits and clean-switches in realtime over standard
network infrastructures.
Collaboration
is also occurring between broadcast specialists and the IT industry.
As part of its multi-vendor IP4Live approach, at IBC EVS showed its
new
XiP gateway enabling I/O IP links to its live video server
demonstrated
multi-feed live remote production using Cisco’s standard IP
switches. SAM
(né
Quantel Snell) previously joined forces with with Cisco to
demonstrate
video
over IP.
EVS
was arguably the busiest vendor in highlighting its open,
standards-based credentials. “What we're talking about is the last
frontier for IP,” said Johan Vounckx, SVP innovation and
technology. “IP4Live will lead and guide customers to real cost and
flexibility benefits.”
The
Belgium firm was part of Gearhouse Broadcast's demonstration of VoIP
remote production in which the EVS DYVI switcher on Gearhouse's booth
was shown cutting together 4K camera signals from the Hitachi stand.
It was an upgraded version of the group's demo in June which routed
HD over IP.
“This
is
a proof of concept in the migration from HD to 4K and highlights the
benefits that remote production through IP infrastructures allow
broadcasters,” said Kevin Fitzgerald, head of systems and product
sales at Gearhouse.
EVS
(yes them again) further allied with Imagine Communications to
forge what Imagine CEO Charlie Vogt called a “market-ready”
package for IP live production.
“We
are aggressively going after the live news and sports market,” he
declared. The solution marries EVS' slo-motion and instant replay
servers with Imagine's Selenio processor and Magellan
multichannel management software.
A
fly in the ointment in all this cross-vendor sharing is the lack of
standards (or the proliferation of them). This is notably the case
for compression
and in particular for 4K/UHD which requires implementation of a
particularly low latency scheme. Options include the
open source VC2 JPEG2000 and Sony's Low Latency Video Codec which it
is promoting as a successor to SDI because of the lead Sony took in
making SDI the industry standard.
Too many codecs at different points would prove costly to licence so
the unification of tools using them will require a very open approach
between manufacturers.
Imagine
has put its
weight behind J2K and expects others to follow.
“The evolution of standards will accelerate around successful
technologies being deployed by the largest global companies,” said
Vogt. “DirecTV, Disney ABC, Fox Networks are all adopting
SMPTE-2022 and J2K so you will see smaller companies begin to adopt
those.”
Sony
Europe's head of workflow and IT Niall Duffy made a similar point,
suggesting that the de-facto standard will be the one that gains most
market acceptance the quickest. “All vendors are keen to make the
IP transition happen. There is concern that we have to wait until
every single standard in the pipeline has been ratified which will be
far too late for the IP revolution to happen as it should.”
Many
vendors have their eggs in more than one basket. EVS and Imagine
support J2K but have also backed the TICO Alliance joining Grass
Valley,
Matrox,
Tektronix, Deltacast and others. IntoPix, the company which devised
the mezzanine compression is submitting a draft to SMPTE. “We
wanted to make it a standard for enabling interoperability and to be
open, so we've been discussing ways of using it across the studio IP
and SDI sector with first adopters,” said product marketing
manager, Jean-Baptiste Lorent. It is working on a preliminary spec
for 8K over 12Gb SDI or over 10Gb internet using TICO.
Interoperability
is also the focus of the AMWA Networked Media Incubator (NMI),
launched at IBC. “This is about getting a group working together
around IP for media,” said AMWA executive Brad Gilmer. “Then we
get the people who make the products and incite them to work
together.”
BBC
R&D will lead the initiative with Ericsson, SAM, Telestream,
Cinegy, Dalet, Sony and others. “Interoperability does not mean
trading down on 'best of breed,'” said Gilmer. “Media clients and
systems integrators want to pick and choose the best option to make a
solution work. Interoperability is the key enabler of best of breed.”
Vendors
are at least united in giving customer's an on-ramp to the IP
transition, one that protects existing
investments.
Broadcasters
will want to sweat their installed assets of copper cabled cameras,
vision mixers, monitors and routers while judging the right time to
re-equip. Manufacturers on the other hand, including Sony, SAM, Grass
Valley and Panasonic, have reworked their product lines to fit IP
interfaces side by side with SDI connectors and are encouraging sales
today to future-proof investment.
“Our
hybrid IP and baseband strategy enables broadcasters to invest in
the systems that they need to grow their businesses now, in the
certainty that they can transition to IP when their needs dictate,”
explained SAM's EVP Marketing Neil Maycock.
Imagine's
product
manager for the Magellan SDN Orchestrator Paul Greene explains,
“The
whole concept of a hybrid architecture is to have everything look and
feel like a router because the operator needs to walk up to a control
surface and do everything they need to in their day to day business.
They need to select the destination and the source and activate the
file. Whether it's in an IP or baseband domain – whether it's HD or
Ultra HD – the control system abstracts the original function from
the underlying technology to make it all very familiar.”
The
tipping point may come as broadcasters time their adoption of IP with
a move to 4K. The economic argument is simple: a 10
Gbps Ethernet cable can transmit much more efficiently and cost
effectively than traditional cabling.
“Every
point where you might have a camera really needs to have a 10Gb
switch,” says TSL managing director, Chris Exelby. “A busy area
on a network might be the video mixer on a live production, which
would certainly require a 40Gb or even a 100Gb switch. This is
neither commonplace nor inexpensive technology.”
Technology
is moving extremely quickly. Imagine says it is already testing pipes
of
40GbE and 100GbE. Costs are high, but Moore's Law dictates that
capacity will expand while costs reduce.
“Right
now IP
studios are in the pre-natal stage at this point,” said Fell of the
EBU. “It is still not fully born, but they are coming.”
The
risk of not agreeing open technologies and standards is that the IT
industry will sweep in and take control. Al Jazeera CTO Mohamed
Abuagla calculated that the combined budget of the 11 IT giants
exhibiting at IBC (Microsoft,
Oracle, Amazon, HP, IBM and Cisco among them) was
five times that of all the other exhibitors combined. “And these
guys have a vision,” he said. “They will buy everything up in the
next five years and start again.
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