IP Production Forum: Tech Vendors Play rough Standards Waiting Game

The IP Production Forum took a close look at the various IP standards currently in the marketplace as well as the future harmonization around the SMPTE 2110 standard which promises to bring a new level of flexibility and compatibility to those looking to move beyond baseband for production needs.

SMPTE 2110 is well down the path but it is nowhere near the end, said Mo Goyal, Evertz, director of production marketing. It will be like when SDI first came out and was published. There were a lot of interoperability issues that needed to be fixed.

Hugo Gaggioni, CTO of Sony's Broadcast and Production Systems Division, was on hand to discuss Sony's NMI IP standard, something that the company developed quickly to meet the demand of customers who could not wait for the politically charged technical standards process to work itself out.

We have used NMI for many production trucks and studios and we are also an active participant in the 2110 standard, explained Gaggioni. And while 2110 is not around the corner we are actively participating. The result will be to satisfy the end user and with FPGA-based NMI we will be able to use a plug in to become 2110 compatible.

The goal of going IP, added Goyal, is to bring IP into a facility and then give the plant the cost savings, flexibility, and agility needed to respond to changing requirements more quickly than before. Evertz helped quicken that pace of change with ASPEN, an IP format the company created and soon shared with other equipment manufacturers so that customers could use IP-based equipment from different manufacturers without compatibility issues. ASPEN is based on MPEG-2 transport as well as JPEG-2000 lossless compression. Evertz is also committed to AIMS which will bring a new level of signal flexibility to IP transport.

One of the challenges is moving video, audio and metadata as separate entities and having that flexibility on top of IP makes it a lot more attractive, he said. And 2110 is the format everyone can rally behind and use a methodology across multiple vendors.

Gerhard Lang, Vizrt, chief engineering officer, said that Vizrt supports ASPEN, Newtek's NDI IP format, and 2110.

There are so many standards but the efforts of the AIMS Alliance allows us to see the light at the end of the tunnel for a standard so that we won't have to change our development plans on a constant basis, he added

David Tasker, Snell Advanced Media (SAM), head of product marketing, agreed adding that it also prevents the customer from getting railroaded down a single vendor path.

AIMS will give them the freedom to choose certain technologies, he said. And it's a collection of not just vendors but networks, broadcasters, truck companies, and consultants.

Will Waters, NewTek, director, product marketing and sales enablement, detailed NewTek's NDI format which was launched at IBC 2015 to bring enhanced workflow to NewTek users and futureproof their investment in NewTek products like the Tricaster.

It is software based and we have delivered as it has taken off quite significantly with 300-plus developers around the world, he added.

NewTek also supports ASPEN and is pledged to work with 2110 when it is ratified.

For many the move to IP is a first step to getting into the business of 4K content creation and distribution. An HD, signal for example, can move over a single 3 Gbps or 1.5 Gbps SDI cable. A 4K signal requires four times as much bandwidth and the only SDI solution involves taking the 4K signal and splitting it over four separate 3 Gbps SDI signals and then recombining them as one image. IP will allow a 4K signal to travel without needing to be split into four signals. Another option? The use of 12 Gbps SDI cables.

A massive installation would be crazy to use quad HD-SDI to move 4K, said Gaggioni. The use of 12 Gbps could be a solution for some but the transmission distance limit means it could work in the confinement of a truck but not in a large facility.

The plug-and-play nature of 12 Gbps could also make it attractive to those who don't require long cable runs and don't want to deal with understanding IP networking.

One of the issues facing the entire industry with respect to the move to IP is training. Goyal says the EBU and IABM are looking to teach IP networking to engineers and manufacturers but there is much work to be done.

It is a cultural change and what we need are organizations that can educate, educate, educate, he said.

Added Tasker: We have to find the people that understand how video flows through an IP switch and it is incumbent on organizations like AIMS, IABM, and the EBU to have tutorials to help.

LINK:	http://www.sportsvideo.org/2017/03/09/ip-production-forum-tech-vendors...
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