Next generation broadcast video with IP

Next generation broadcast video with IP 29 May 2015

The broadcast industry is migrating from SDI to IP. Done correctly, Paul Bosco, Vice President, Market Development at Cisco believes that IP can offer immediate cost-saving benefits by simplifying cabling, eliminating proprietary switching and transport devices and enabling a wide range of commercially available IP networking devices.

Longer term, IP migration within a comprehensive next generation secure integrated data center, network, and storage architecture will enable business agility to support new applications and use cases through emerging cloud technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Industry standard adoption, solution openness and third-party interoperability have been critical to Cisco's success leading IP transitions across multiple industries. Broadcaster and Production companies considering IP implementations should be asking their prospective suppliers tough questions about their IP products ability to support industry standards, interoperate with third-party subsystems and evolve as workflows expand.

There are three main catalysts for this migration:

Ever increasing video bit rate requirements. A single uncompressed HD 1080i video stream at 1.5 Gbps easily reaches the limits of a single SDI connection. UltraHD (4K, 8K) bit rates far exceed this and cannot be carried by existing infrastructure.

New standards are breaking down the industry's reliance on proprietary techniques and systems. Compliance with industry standards, such as the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE)-2022-1, 2022-6, and others, allows all parts of the system developed by different venders to interoperate, and assures that the system will meet quality of service and scale requirements.

10 Gigabit Ethernet maturity. The technology is widely available at commodity pricing. An ecosystem of compatible equipment exists. The interface is integrated into a wide range of devices. Further the industry has defined 40-Gigabit-per-second (Gbps), 100-Gbps and 250-Gbps Ethernet standards, ensuring a long future.

In addition to Cisco's longstanding participation in a broad array of networking standards bodies, Cisco has been an active contributor to several broadcast standards and working groups:

SMPTE-2059: Defining a broadcast industry specific profile of IEEE1588v2, also known as PTP (Precision Time Protocol).

VSF-SVIP: Defining requirements for a non SDI carriage of essence through an IP production system.

JT-NM: Joint Task Force Networked Media, a cross industry group seeking reference architectures for packet switched network based production environments.

We have been working with our industry partners to build interoperable IP-based systems that enable continuity of operation and seamless migration of workflows from legacy SDI to new IP infrastructures. We can successfully show interoperability of a typical studio control system, where all of the necessary production interfaces are carried over a single IP cable, including: Video, Audio, Intercom, Video return, Tally, LTC, Genlock and GPIO. Existing operator control surfaces drive routing of content to processing entities over a packet switched network in the same way that essence signals are today on the SDI infrastructure. From an editor, director, producer, or engineer's point of view, we achieve the same result: precision timely routing of content to processing function regardless of the physical infrastructure underneath.

Today's IT infrastructure is becoming more open with the evolution to Software Defined Networking (SDN). One of the advantages of an all IP environment is the ecosystem of standards and equipment driven by the much larger IT infrastructure. SDN enables highly scalable, secure and flexible network fabrics that provide agility to adapt to business needs. SDN along with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are designed to support the industry move to management automation, programmatic policy, and dynamic workload-anywhere models. SDN and NFV fabrics accomplish this with a combination of hardware, policy-based control systems, and software closely coupled to provide advantages not possible in other models.

With an end-to-end IP environment, defined by open/interoperable systems and industry standards, evolving workflows will become simpler. Metadata will eventually be able to flow directly from sources such as cameras directly to consumer devices. This will further blur the line between post-production and distribution networks, and shift a linear playout model to a more cloud-based asset delivery system with linear channel assembly at the edge. These use cases, and others we have not yet imagined, become possible in an open end-to-end IP environment.

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