Why it's crucial to optimize the timing of signals in IP remote production posted: 20/04/2021
by Andy Rayner
IP remote production has gradually begun to revolutionize the economics and logistics of production by transforming the transmission of feeds across the globe, and this trend has only been accelerated by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. With an increasing number of production companies now able to utilize more cost-effective bandwidth over high-performance IP-based networks, fewer resources such as equipment and staff are needed on-site. Instead, resources in central facilities are fully utilized and higher efficiency is achieved.
It's all about timing
Timing is everything for live coverage. Popular events need to be shown in as close to real-time as possible to deliver the immediacy that makes them so compelling to viewers. This means its crucial to keep latency at its lowest possible level throughout the whole process, from lens to lens. But latency is most important in the actual production workflows, as people need make key decisions and communicate together remotely in real-time.
Ensuring the synchronization of video and audio signals is also key for timing. In a traditional outside broadcast production, this is comparatively easy to assure, as local timing is used on-site, and ready-produced composite feeds (combining synchronized video and audio, e.g. using SMPTE ST 2022-6) are returned to the central location. However, with remote production, timing needs to be reconciled between multiple, sometimes very distant, sites.
Dealing with the video compression juggling act
Higher transmission capacity is now possible due to decreased bandwidth costs, but challenges can still be presented by the increased number of feeds and the expanding quality of signals transmitted. 4K and HDR signals usually require video compression to ensure bandwidth requirements are kept to a minimum and costs kept low. Compression does however impact on latency.
H.265 and H.264 and other traditional codecs used for distribution and some contribution introduce high levels of latency that are too large for live remote production. JPEG 2000, while not resulting in as high a compression ratio, offers much lower latency, but that can still be too significant for remote production. However, a new candidate for video encoding, JPEG XS, is now gaining traction in remote production by enabling decent compression capabilities (similar to JPEG 2000) with a latency of a tiny fraction of a frame. This ensures optimum latency is maintained while not compromising on video quality. An early example of deployment was for the esport final of the League of Legends in Paris, which was remote-produced by Riot Games 9,000km away from the event at its base in Los Angeles!
The importance of signal synchronization
A long-established part of live production has been signal synchronization, and a local timing reference is distributed by equipment during an onsite project. IP remote production presents its own challenges as it involves multiple geographically diverse locations, namely the venue(s), a central production location and sometimes regional locations (for commentators or vox-pop for example). These locations need to be frequency-aligned through a GNSS reference and also phase-aligned, enabling any transit delays to be compensated for via appropriate buffering in the IP media edge at the location of central production.
SMPTE ST 2110 is able to define absolute time through the RTP timestamp, which is referenced to PTP. In contrast, SDI and AES3 can only implicitly convey relative time. Each essence therefore has a timestamp on the point of capture, so alignment can take place at any stage of the workflow with total certainty.
It remains the case however that many pieces of equipment do not honor the maintenance of origination timing with RTP timestamps, and production companies need to take this into account. However, a recent revision of SMPTE ST 2110-10 may be about to change all that, as this encourages the practice of maintaining origination timing through the production chain, and it is hoped that more manufacturers will adopt this approach moving forward.
Aligning time-domains
It used to be the case that live production involved the handling of signals in the same time-domain for production teams, with no noticeable delay between the camera, microphone and production gallery captures. Now, new technologies such as augmented reality has shown that live production chains can deal with delays and different time domains.
In terms of timing optimization, this means that solutions are now embracing delay as part of the balance in reducing transit bandwidth costs. By running the remote gallery production in the central location on proxy images (with reduced definition) in a delayed time domain, the full-resolution processing can remain onsite. The time-offset vision and audio controls from the gallery can then be applied retrospectively to buffered versions of the full resolution signals back at the origination site. Timing compensation can then account for transport and processing delays. Adopting this method removes the need for all full-resolution flows to be transported from the site to the central facilities, resulting in bandwidth and cost savings.
Taking the bigger picture into account
Careful consideration of several key factors can ultimately enable production companies to optimize all aspects of timing their signals to meet the required levels of operational efficiency in IP remote production. This is crucial to match the unique demands of live events. IP remote production can also be a smaller part of a bigger production process and presents a unique solution while lockdowns and social distancing measures remain across different countries. Distributed production allows studios,
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
29/04/2024
(L-R) Mark Gatiss and Polly Walker on set
Monday 29 April 2024 Further casting is now confirmed for Bookish (6x70), a brand-new drama created by Emmy Award-wi...
29/04/2024
A groundbreaking initiative offering training and mentoring to 30 women journali...
29/04/2024
Even though we've been doing this for over 40 years, a spark of excitement r...
29/04/2024
L3Harris is delivering manpack radios to U.S. Army CH-47 Chinooks as part of the Air-to-Ground Networking Radio program, providing seamless, resilient communica...
29/04/2024
He writes in Defense One: Despite the near-universal acknowledgement throughout the U.S. government and defense industrial base of the criticality of resilient ...
29/04/2024
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
29/04/2024
Codemill aims to revolutionize media workflow efficiency at this years NAB Show by introducing Just-In-Time (JIT) playback technology in Accurate.Video Validate...
29/04/2024
April 29, 2024
-- TF1 Chooses Broadpeak to Power Targeted Advertising for New...
29/04/2024
LOS ANGELES Allen Media Group (AMG) has partnered with LG Electronics to bring 223 Local Now FAST channels to LG's free streaming service, LG Channels, avai...
29/04/2024
OTTAWA Ross Video has announced the introduction of Raiden, a data-driven weather graphics software that combines data gathering, processing, and visualization ...
29/04/2024
Panalux, a leading rental provider of lighting and power solutions for the motion-picture industry and part of Panavision's end-to-end service offerings for...
29/04/2024
Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, today announced that it has received a patent on its technology for dynamic autho...
29/04/2024
SDVI, the leading platform provider for cloud-native media supply chains, today announced that Rally Access Workstation, a fully managed solution for editing in...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, a premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality remote commenta...
29/04/2024
Glookast has chosen Jigsaw24 Media as the only UK channel partner to represent their portfolio of ingest and workflow optimisation products. The agreement, sign...
29/04/2024
Clear-Com played a pivotal role in the seamless coverage of the recent solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Leveraging its cutting-edge Eclipse HX Digital Matrix i...
29/04/2024
PlayBox Neo will promote its complete range of television channel management, graphic branding and playout solutions to EMEA region media content owners and bro...
29/04/2024
Lingo, RuPaul's word-twisting game show, returns for season two on CBS Friday, May 24. Two episodes air that night, and stream on Paramount Plus, too....
29/04/2024
ESPN and Amazon Prime Video are reportedly close to scoring television rights to the National Basketball Association, according to published reports....
29/04/2024
Judge Judy and Hot Bench, CBS Media Ventures' genre-leading court shows, have been renewed through the 2025-26 TV season in more than 95% of the country, Gr...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, an Irish-based premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality re...
29/04/2024
The awards celebrate the craft of behind-the-scenes TV talent and the best programmes of 2023
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: April 29, 2024
The awards cel...
29/04/2024
The team at Milk had to create and deliver the VFX and environment work for the royal residences featured in the drama from scratch
By Jenny Priestley
Publis...
29/04/2024
CEO Bob Bakish is expected to leave the company as early as today, with a new leadership committee likely to run the company on an interim basis
By Jenny Pries...
29/04/2024
Albena Ivanova, director, media and entertainment and strategic products at CHAOS talks to TVBEurope about her route into the industry
By TVBEurope Staff
Pub...
29/04/2024
The acquisition gives Grand Technix the opportunity to expand its footprint in the audio visual and broadcast technology sectors
By Jenny Priestley
Published...
29/04/2024
29 04 2024 - Media release Screen Australia announces James J. Robinson's debut feature First Light
First Light
Principal Photography is underway on Firs...
29/04/2024
Capitol Broadcasting recently became the inaugural company honored with inductio...
29/04/2024
April 29th, 2024 UNINTERRUPTED AND TRIBECA ENTERPRISES PARTNER FOR SECOND-ANNUA...
29/04/2024
Rebrand and refresh: SailGP talks bringing its graphics operations inhouse for a...
29/04/2024
Reflecting on a Storied Career: Sean McManus Looks Back While Keeping an Eye on ...
29/04/2024
Drones Take Flight Inside MSG: How Sky Candy Studios is Upping the Excitement fo...
29/04/2024
Back to All News
Netflix Announces a Diverse Lineup of Polish Titles to Debut i...
29/04/2024
Tonight on Smoke and Mirrors: Fanyana feels embarrassed about his sexual mishapDon't miss Monday, 29 April's riveting episode of South African soapie Sm...
29/04/2024
Talk about commitment. When startup SEA.AI, an NVIDIA Metropolis partner, set out to create a system that would use AI to scan the seas to enhance maritime safe...
28/04/2024
Mediahaus delivers the first SRT live-streaming sports production over 5G with U...
27/04/2024
On April 26, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher E. Kubasik joined CNBC's Mor...
27/04/2024
PORTLAND, Oregon Audinate Group Limited, the developer of the Dante AV-over-IP solution, announced significant new additions to Dante Connect, its cloud-based D...
27/04/2024
TORONTO Bell Media has launched 10 English and French-language FAST channels featuring entertainment, factual, news, and sports programming. The new free stream...
27/04/2024
An extensive new analysis of the news segments in the broadcast evening news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS has found that broadcasters devoted most of their...
27/04/2024
GERMANTOWN, Md. EchoStar's Hughes Network Systems has opened a new manufacturing facility and private 5G incubation center in Germantown, Maryland....
27/04/2024
Harry Pappas, one of three brothers who founded Pappas Telecasting Companies in 1971, died April 24. He was 78 years old....
27/04/2024
ATLANTA and LONDON Mexican telecommunications and broadcast company Televisa has selected Synamedia for an overhaul of its broadcast distribution....
27/04/2024
Participate in the Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this surve...
27/04/2024
SDVI Rally Access Workstation Earns Two Top Awards at 2024 NAB Show
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
SDVI, the leading platform provider for clo...
27/04/2024
Berklee's Music and Health Institute Launches Community Health Musician Cert...
27/04/2024
Charter Communications reported higher first-quarter profits despite continued cord-cutting and competition for broadband customers....
Why it's crucial to optimize the timing of signals in IP remote production posted: 20/04/2021 
