Pipes are now Packets: What you really need to know about QC, monitoring and maintenance for IP

Leader Electronics addresses the realities of IP media facility management in an AIMS IP Showcase presentation at the NAB convention in Las Vegas, Monday April 25, 13:00 PST. Kevin Salvidge, Sales Engineering Manager for Leader Europe, will highlight the latest advances in test and measurement designed to ensure IP-based broadcast production systems achieve their full potential.

The transition from analog to SDI during the 1990s was a great step forward but demanded new tools to ensure the inherent advantages were retained right through the signal pipeline, Kevin Salvidge summarizes. SDI allowed audio and related data such as captions to be embedded into the video payload. New toolsets and new ways were created to supervise the SDI stream. The media industry is now embracing the transition from SDI to IP, based on robust network protocols that have been incorporated into the SMPTE 2110 suite of standards.

IP-based facilities retain the same objective as their SDI predecessors - to deliver high-quality programming to their customers. Traditional test and measurement routines like waveform, vectorscope and picture monitoring are still essential. Specific to IP is the need to monitor and analyze the new IP transport layer as well as the source video, audio and metadata.

All broadcast systems require a stable timing reference. IP timing is quite different from SDI timing. In IP we don't directly measure the physical layer jitter but instead the packet timing. With SMPTE 2110, the timing information has been removed from the underlying hardware layer. Distribution is asynchronous. Video images must of course be captured and displayed frame-accurately so it is essential to ensure that IP timing issues do not cause disruption.

Frequency-referenced and phase-referenced black burst and tri-level sync are replaced in the IP world by Precision Time Protocol. Monitoring the long-term performance of PTP is critical.

Leaders True Hybrid approach to test and measurement with instruments such as our ZEN Series LV5600 allows simultaneous display of SDI and IP measurements, ensuring each facility performs seamlessly throughout its transition from SDI to IP.

AIMS (https://aimsalliance.org/) is an industry consortium led by broadcast and ProAV engineers, technologists, visionaries, vendors and business executives dedicated to an open-standards approach that moves broadcast and media companies quickly and profitably from legacy systems to a virtualized, IP-based environment. AIMS' efforts build upon those of leading standards bodies such as the Video Services Forum (VSF), the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE), the European Broadcast Union (EBU), the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and the Audio Engineering Society (AES).

Leader Electronics (www.leader.co.jp/en) has earned a worldwide reputation for designing and manufacturing highly reliable, practical, and powerful test & measurement instruments. Leader products are specified for broadcast, production, post-production, research, product development, and service applications. Manufacturing quality is built in every step of the way. The Leader product range includes award-winning 3G/HD/SD SDI waveform monitors and rasterizers, all with customizable layouts. Among the available options are 8K, 4K-UHD, CIE color chart, HDR measurement, test pattern generation, eye and jitter measurement, closed-caption display, IP, and 12G/6G-SDI. Leader has helped many customers manage their transition from analog to digital, from SD to HD, from HD to 4K/UHD, from SDR to HDR, and from BT.709 to BT.2020 wide color gamut. Leader also provides SMPTE ST2022-7 and ST2110 support for the transition from SDI to IP.

LINK:	https://www.kitplus.com/news/Pipes_are_now_Packets__What_you_really_ne...
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