
22 February 2021
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
By Lewis Kirkaldie, head of product management, Cinegy
The key elements for remote production and delivery have been in place for a while. The ability to handle high quality content in real time, on standard IT hardware on premises or in the cloud is well established.
But the individual elements of storage and processing do not make a workable system. The challenges brought about by the pandemic has called for the rapid rollout of solutions which work reliably and securely.
Technology has stepped up to that challenge. In particular, the maturity of two open standards - SRT and WebRTC - has made broadcast-quality contribution and distribution links practical.
SRT is the secure, reliable transport protocol, which pretty much says what it does. It is a means of transporting content over the public internet with low latency, minimising the effects of jitter and bandwidth changes. It is built on UDP, so is familiar to developers, and the SRT Alliance publishes an open source technology stack.
SRT uses dynamic stream management to get high quality at low latency, which needs two-way communication alongside the content. That means at least one party is directly internet connected, so it is good for contribution circuits to a broadcast centre or, indeed, to the cloud.
Cinegy has considerable experience in helping major players migrate to the cloud. Indeed, over the last few months we have helped a very large, very well-known US cable network migrate its primary playout to the cloud. As is so often the case with companies that have found the secret sauce they do not want their competitors to find out too much I cannot tell you which broadcaster, but you will have heard of them.
As I said, SRT is a great way to build contribution circuits over relatively low bandwidth. That is particularly important in cloud implementations, where getting the content in and out can be a big cost. At Cinegy we have found that demonstrating we can control bandwidth and therefore ingress and egress charges goes a long way to reassuring finance directors.
SRT is a powerful tool but it is not the solution for everyone, which is where WebRTC comes in. Again, the name tells the story: WebRTC provides real-time communications - including high quality video - from a web browser. It is part of HTML5 so it is available in all modern browsers, and can be built into bespoke applications. Perhaps the best-known tool which uses WebRTC is VMix, which is a complete and surprisingly sophisticated cloud-based production system. By using WebRTC it works peer-to-peer, so you can remote produce from anywhere.
The downside is that WebRTC will vary frame rate to ensure a constant video stream over the given bandwidth. Producers have no real control over what frame rate each contribution will appear as, but that apart it, too, has found a real place in live and as-live remote production. That the open standard - developed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and others - was ready to go in 2020 is a huge bonus.
Collaborative tools, of course, have been connected directly into production systems for some time. What we now have is the ability to develop new workflows which suit the new mood of social distancing. At Cinegy we have been working for some years with a major UK entertainment show (again I cannot name it, but it is very, very popular) which needs a large number of short video packages each week, for incorporation into the main live broadcast and for the spin-off shows. Editors access shared storage on Cinegy server racks and file the finished packages into the playout section.
The 2020 series had the same need for content, but social distancing meant that editors and producers worked from home as much as possible, rather than in the production offices. So we were called in to adapt the infrastructure for remote ingest and downloads. Most importantly, we had to develop the security protocols and management of firewalls which would allow the very sensitive content to be available for remote editing and review, at no risk of piracy.
I could quote many other applications, where proven web-connected broadcast tools are now being used in the heat of premium production. At least partly in response to the pandemic, you can now build practical remote production and
delivery pipelines, based on the latest open source tools, with a technology partner that understands the real issues of secure and cost-effective content flow.
Tags
remote production , IP workflows , cloud playout , broadcast automation , WebRTC , SRT , pandemic broadcasting , TVBEurope , Lewis Kirkaldie
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
09/10/2026
September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026
New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/09/2026
Manifold Technologies, developer of software-defined, FPGA-accelerated infrastructure for live production, has named Ryhaan Williams as Chief Commercial Officer...
21/09/2026
Studio Network Solutions (SNS) has won Best Journal Article at the 2026 IAMT Impact Awards for What Video Editors Need When Everything Is Changing Around Them,...
21/09/2026
Major League Wrestling (MLW) has announced a streaming distribution agreement with Tubi for its weekly series MLW FUSION. Beginning September 17, new episodes w...
21/09/2026
Disney Entertainment has announced that Adam Smith has been named Chairman, Direct-to-Consumer, with responsibility for Disney and Hulu including product, engi...
21/09/2026
United Airlines and DISH have announced an agreement to bring live professional ...
21/09/2026
SES and JioStar have announced a multi-year agreement under which SES will provide satellite distribution services for JioStar's television channel portfoli...
21/09/2026
The Detroit Red Wings have announced details for their inaugural season on Detro...
21/09/2026
Manifold Technologies has appointed Ryhaan Williams as Chief Commercial Officer for North America, effective October 1, 2026. Based in Jacksonville, Florida, Wi...
21/09/2026
Angels Broadcast Television (ABTV), the local television home of the Los Angeles...
21/09/2026
The 2026 US Open Tennis Championships marked a year of change with respect to TV...
21/09/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...
21/09/2026
Drum-tuning app now available on Android
RT60 describe their iDrumTune app as the world's most advanced, accurate and intelligent system for assisting ...
21/09/2026
Innovative multiband auto-panner introduced
SoundGhost's latest plug-in takes an innovative approach to auto-panning, and divides incoming signals into ...
21/09/2026
We check out the M5 Max-equipped model The same, but different. The new Mac Studio models feature M5 Max and M5 Ultra silicon, dramatically improving the perf...
21/09/2026
From Graphic Novel to 30-Minute Animated Film: What I Learned Building an AI-Ass...
21/09/2026
Liam Hopkins Builds Recording Studio with Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton September 20, 2026
0 Comments
Video complements audio production with music v...
21/09/2026
Indigenous screen organisations from Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia ...
21/09/2026
Physical AI is moving rapidly from research to large-scale deployment. By 2035, ABI Research projects an installed base of 49 million level 3-5 autonomous vehic...
21/09/2026
Today, Egypt's AI builders gathered in the Grand Egyptian Museum for a reception that highlighted the nation's rapidly growing AI ecosystem - spanning A...
21/09/2026
Every AI factory needs power and cooling that fit its computing architecture. As AI infrastructure expands, power, cooling, water, site and grid constraints are...
21/09/2026
RT celebrates Irish Sign Language Awareness Week 2026
Special programmes across RT television, radio and online, plus special initiatives
#ISL #IDSL #IWDP26...
21/09/2026
AI security is an engineering problem. That means defined security requirements,...
21/09/2026
Clean energy isn't hard to come by, but the pace of large-scale adoption has historically been slow due to bottlenecks - including out-of-date infrastructur...
20/09/2026
Piano-playing singer-songwriter competition returns for fourth year
Casio have officially revealed the list of 16 finalists who have earned their place in t...
20/09/2026
COW Jobs: Video Editor, Motion Designer - Remote, PT, 6 Months
Brie Clayton September 20, 2026
0 Comments
Video Editor + Motion Designer (Remote | PT ...
19/09/2026
Three new rackmount power conditioners introduced
Yorkville Sound have announce the upcoming launch of three new RPC rackmount power conditioners from ART P...
19/09/2026
September 15, 2026
AMSTERDAM, SEPTEMBER 2026 - Colorfront (colorfront.com), the Academy and Emmy Award-winning developer of high-performance cinema mastering, ...
19/09/2026
Two High-Profile Professional Sports Franchises Renew creative.space Contracts with DigitalGlue
NFL team and Major League Soccer Club cite ease of use, secure ...
19/09/2026
Limited Edition Audio releases VoxSplit Pro for overlapping dialogue separation ...
18/09/2026
IBC 2026 Tech Moves Beyond the Gloss and Into the Rack If you spent any time in the halls of the RAI this year, you noticed a clear shift in conversation. The c...
18/09/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
18/09/2026
Qvest has appointed Jens Miedek as Senior Vice President Sales, Media and Entertainment. Before joining Qvest, Miedek spent 16 years at Riedel Communications an...
18/09/2026
Fonn Group has acquired full ownership of everviz, a cloud-native platform for interactive charts, maps, and data-driven graphics, and will rebrand it as Teikna...
18/09/2026
Other World Computing (OWC) has announced the acquisition of OpenDrives, a provider of software-defined video and rich media storage management solutions. The a...
18/09/2026
Kaltura and Verimatrix have announced a partnership integrating Verimatrix's Digital Rights Management and security capabilities into Kaltura's Cloud TV...
18/09/2026
The sixth edition of the World Nomad Games combined traditional sports, large-scale cultural performances, and some decidedly modern broadcast technology. Held ...
18/09/2026
DAZN and Super League Basketball (SLB) have extended their partnership for the 2026-27 season. Every Championship, Cup, and Play-Off fixture will be available l...