SVG Sit-Down: Primestream's Claudio Lisman and Alan Dabul on New IP, Bonded-Cellular Recording Applications Solutions integrate multiple sources, multiple formats into production, management, delivery workflow By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor Thursday, December 19, 2019 - 7:00 am
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As the live-production and sports-broadcast industries have been transitioning from baseband to IP in recent years, Primestream has been developing new IP and bonded-cellular recording applications to serve evolving needs.
With Primestream's new IP Ingest App, users can easily capture streaming, camera, and broadcast sources - HLS, MPEG Dash, RTSP, NDI ProRes, and SMPTE 2022 streams - in single or multiple self-contained file formats and then transcode these feeds live into house formats - XDCAM, UHD, AVC, H.264, DNxHD, ProRes - to quickly integrate that content into a production, management, and delivery workflow. Users can preview live recordings inside a web browser and edit while capturing with a growing timeline and file.
Primestream also offers a complete IP Network Operations Center with recording, media-asset management, edit integration, publishing, and archiving under a single software solution. Their IP Network Operations Center allows users to monitor multiple NDI or HLS sources in a single monitor, as well as record, log, edit, and produce in real time.
Primestream has also embraced the increasing popularity of bonded cellular for live contribution. Although current traditional recording setup requires extensive hardware to ingest a bonded-cellular live transmission, Primestream's new Mobile2Air and Xchange workflow streamlines this process and reduces costs. Reporters and video contributors can instantly use their device to record, edit, add voiceover, log, and securely upload broadcast-quality content with embedded metadata. In addition, Primestream HLS and NDI capture via Ethernet enables advanced and optimized workflows, such as live edit during capture, real-time transcoding into preferred video codecs (XDCAM, AVC, H.264, ProRes), and logging incoming feed in real time.
In addition, Primestream has also been upping its artificial-intelligence game. Primestream stores AI data in its native format and presents the data in the Primestream Elastic Data Viewer, which can be customized to display any combination or sources and filters, dynamically altered, or display different types of results on a multi-track timeline against picture.
SVG sat down with Primestream CEO Claudio Lisman and Director of Product Alan Dabul to discuss why they see IP-based production as the future, how the company is embracing bonded-cellular contribution, its growing role in production, and additions to Primestream's portfolio of solutions to serve the evolving needs of sports-content creators.
Claudio Lisman, CEO, Primestream
Can you tell me a bit about the Primestream's new IP and bonded-cellular recording applications?
Lisman: I come from the compression world and have seen a major migration. Today, using compression and bonded-cellular devices, we can achieve better quality than we used to [achieve] with a truck and 7-meter antenna years ago. Up until now, the way bonded cellular has worked is, there is someone with a remote transmission device, the transmitted content is delivered to a receiver, and you have to pull all the SDI outputs off the receiver. You have to have a router and monitors to manage the video. Then you ingest the baseband [feeds], and, from there, you can finally start to edit and to manage your assets.
However, we have brought a simplified solution to the market. We can take multiple channels - IP, NDI, HLS, or RTSP - right from the Ethernet port of the receiver. We can monitor multiple sources without the use of video monitors or a routing switcher. And, while we are ingesting the stream, we are converting that stream in real time into house formats like AVC, H.264, XDCAM, DNXHD, or ProRes. We provide a growing file to the editor right on the spot without ever having to touch baseband video.
We are gaining a lot of traction right now because we can transcode IP sources live in real time, so that we can make those sources available in a production environment right away. That way, you can instantly start cutting highlights, publishing to social and so on without having to take the time to go back to baseband.
How are you integrating with bonded-cellular solutions like TVU and LiveU?
Lisman: You can have multiple LiveU or TVU receivers. LiveU produces an NDI stream, which we ingest directly into a network switch so that signal is available to the whole production environment as well as the master control without ever touching baseband. We call this an IP Network Operations Center. In a traditional baseband [configuration], you would need multiple routing inputs and outputs before you could even start production; in the case of TVU, we do the same utilizing as a source their HLS Ethernet present in the receiver unit.
And our logger interface works directly with IP, so you can see all the IP sources coming in, as well as all the different logging actions. In soccer, for example, you can click the offside button on our touchscreen logger, and it will automatically create metadata and a sub clip. You can have that become a highlight, and, by pressing another button, you can transcode to formats for social and digital publishing.
We have created an application that covers recording, logging, and publishing all based on an IP technology.
Alan Dabul, director of product, Primestream
On the product side of things, how has Primestream's technology roadmap over the past few years been building to this point?
Dabul: We have an entire unique framework for capture and for playback, and that's what this technology was built on
