elemental_elemental 09/05/2014 12:05 Page 1
hifting demands in consumer
behaviour, portable devices,
streaming formats and
encoding standards have
raised the bar on what it takes to
compete effectively in the TV industry
and more broadly across the video
marketplace. Broadcasters and pay-TV
operators are accelerating their IPbased video services to compete more
effectively with over-the-top TV (OTT)
providers.
Keeping pace with these rapid changes in
S
allowing for the best architecture and
processor combination to be used for a
particular application, even if that
application changes over time. Support for
new services and video formats can be
integrated seamlessly through simple
software upgrades.
The Shift to Software in
Video Processing
Though fixed-function hardware may
continue to provide high performance and
good picture quality for specific applications
video providers can immediately respond to
changes in consumer demand. Support for
new features and standards can be added
through upgrades and API integration of
third-party software. Broadcasters and payTV operators who choose software-defined
video solutions don’t have to wait for new
custom video chips to be released to market,
they can continually update and enhance
their platform in line with increased
consumer demand and technology
advancements to create new revenue
generating video services. Ideally, a
Defining the Future of Video
technology and consumer demand is a
significant challenge to video providers.
Relying on traditional video processing
infrastructure is becoming increasingly
difficult and costly, yet video distributors
simply do not have the option of ignoring
demand for multiscreen video services as
they risk permanent loss of customers to
Internet-based OTT alternatives.
Within a highly fragmented technology
landscape, the return on investment of new
infrastructure purchases has become harder
to assess. Video providers who invest in
legacy technologies can find themselves
burdened with outdated equipment in need
of replacement. Choosing additional
infrastructure based on fixed-function
hardware might offer good performance
initially, but can be quickly surpassed by
more cost-effective software-based
approaches that keep pace with the
industry’s rate of change.
Software-defined video (SDV) solutions
offer a way around the trade-off between the
need for long-term investments in
technology for video delivery and the
expectation of short-term return on
investment. Thanks to Moore’s Law,
software running on general purpose
processors can now surpass task-specific
video processing equipment in terms of both
picture quality and performance while
simultaneously adapting to market change.
Software-defined video is an
infrastructure agnostic approach to
implementing flexible, scalable and easily
upgradable video architectures. Unlike
legacy solutions, this advancement allows
video providers to deploy software across an
optimal combination of dedicated and
virtualised resources in both private and
public data centres. A software-defined
approach frees video providers from the
constraints of dedicated equipment by
18 ADVANCED-TELEVISION.COM
Keith Wymbs, chief
marketing officer for
Elemental, suggests that
software-defined video
software-defined video processing solution
should support flexible deployment models
– whether dedicated appliances, standard
off-the-shelf servers or server blades for
datacenters, or within virtualized
environments. This not only ensures efficient
use of the underlying hardware, but also
faster system upgrades and service
deployments.
Driving Innovation with Software
solutions are leading the
way across ground and
cloud infrastructures.
such as standard definition TV over
traditional networks, long product life cycles
mean the technology has a low likelihood of
keeping pace with market changes. For video
processing tasks and broadcast workflows,
video providers need to evolve their systems
from dedicated hardware based on ASICS,
FPGAs and other custom chips to softwaredefined video solutions running on standard
off-the-shelf hardware.
With the flexibility inherent to software,
In the increasingly competitive video
landscape, video providers have continually
to innovate and enhance the customer
viewing experience by supporting new
standards such as 4K UHD TV. Softwaredefined video systems used to process
MPEG-2 video can offer a more seamless
migration path to H.264 and HEVC than
dedicated hardware equipment.
For example, Elemental software-defined
video solutions currently offer full frame rate
4K Ultra HD video encoding using the HEVC
codec, ensuring that customers will be able
to continually support new video
compression standards as they are adopted.
In some cases, advances developed for newer
codecs such as HEVC can also be applied to
previous codec generations. These may
include de-interlacing, scalar processing,
colour correction, noise filtering and other