September 2016
X-PLATFORM 35 is pleased to be part of this important initiative to provide media companies with the practical knowledge necessary for putting their live production facilities on a path towards the future .”
Imagine Communications , a founding member of AIMS and longterm member of Sony ’ s IP Live Alliance , has also recently announced the milestone of completing more than 25 IP-based customer installations .
The vision the company unveiled in 2013 — that of a software-based technology transformation of the media and entertainment industry — is today a reality , declares Charlie Vogt , Imagine Communications ’ CEO .
He explains : “ Our customers are increasingly recognising that evolving business models , fuelled by disruptive shifts in the way video is being consumed , require transformative change to gain the benefits of revenue growth , network flexibly , scale , cost-efficiency and a futureproof environment .”
In total , Imagine Communications ’ next-generation deployments now account for more than 50 IPbased channels and over 3,000 live production streams . To support the transition to next-generation architectures , the company is continuing to design and deliver products and solutions built for hybrid SDI-IP and pure IP environments . These , including the Platinum IP3 router and the EPIC multiviewer , are designed to facilitate the management , movement and monetisation of media over commerical-off-the-shelf ( COTS ) environments .
Regular visitors to the many broadcast exhibitions around the world may recall a familiar mantra — SDI must die . Insisting that this mantra is not without its merits , Jan Weigner , managing director and cofounder of Cinegy , describes to APB : “ The transition to IP , whether in part or in total , is inevitable . The so-called ‘ early adopters ’ are already highly successful and profitable , and are [ now ] veterans of IP-based broadcasting .”
Recognising that SDI will likely experience a “ slow death ”, he nevertheless dismisses how some broadcast facilities continue to cling onto SDI “ like a favourite childhood toy ”.
“ By all means , keep SDI — but perhaps store it in the loft with your first bike and training wheels ,” Weigner says , tongue-in-cheek .
“ Nostalgia has its warm and fuzzy place , but it ’ s better to use it to create content for a ‘ Nostalgia Channel ’, which you can quickly and painlessly get on air over IP .”
And Cinegy is a firm advocate that the technical transition to IP is not as arduous as some make it out to be . “ Do your homework and , most importantly , secure internal buy-in from the start , and the transition will be much smoother ,” Weigner advises .
Because IP represents a new way of working , the transition naturally can be disconcerting for some traditionalists , he acknowledges . “ However , what we and our customers have found time and again is that the learning curve is so short , and the benefits so readily apparent that , in hindsight , the only thing preventing broadcasters from making the change [ to IP ] sooner is that they didn ’ t know about it .”
The wildcard in the IP equation , Weigner adds , is the advent of 4K / UHD , which will prove almost impossible to process in an SDIonly world , he maintains . In the interim , a hybrid IP / SDI approach may offer short-term practicality for many , although a recent installation in Turkey may go some way in championing a transition to a full IP-based broadcasting and production workflow .
Towards the end of 2007 , Turkish broadcaster Dogan TV started the D-Smart pay-TV satellite platform . The initial technical blueprint , based on HD-SDI technology , consisted of SDI distribution and signal processing equipment , as well as “ very large ” SDI routers and multiviewers .
An evaluation of this SDI-based system design found it to be bulky , inflexible , costly and difficult to operate or maintain , reports Hasan Kiragi , director of broadcast operations at Dogan TV . Having worked with Cinegy on a number of ITbased broadcast solutions for filebased workflows , Dogan TV began to explore the possibility of moving broadcast-quality live video operations completely to IP .
Turkish broadcaster Dogan TV says it is the only national broadcaster in the world whose broadcasting and production workflows are fully IP-operated .
After completing a successful transition last year , Kiragi reflects : “ First , you have to get your signals on an IP domain . If you have a studio connected to the external world , its outputs should be sent on an IP domain and IP signals should be received on an SDI domain .
“ To achieve this , you need to replace your old equipment with new devices that are capable of live IP streaming , or you need to use gateways converting the SDI signal to IP and vice versa .”
The next step is just implementation , he says matter-of-factly . This involves choosing appropriate network switchers and building a reliable broadcast-capable network . For Dogan TV , two multicast networks work in parallel , so that each source to the system simultaneously pushes IP streams in both networks to each destination . Cinegy multiviewer , ingest and playout solutions are connected to both networks and simultaneously receive the multicast streams .
Kiragi , however , is quick to stress that “ if you have deployed an IP network , you don ’ t have an SDI signal anymore and you can ’ t patch it from some point to another point by just connecting BNC cables ”.
“ If something goes wrong in the network , you are stymied ,” he adds . “ That ’ s why we implemented parallel network switches from different brands . If one fails , we failover to the other one .”
Equally importantly , the learning curve was a short one for Dogan TV ’ s technicians and engineers — even those who may not have been too familiar with a softwarebased IT approach — because the software is “ so intuitive ”.
Kiragi elaborates : “ We also do not have to worry about live signals , neither as an input port number nor output port number for the routing . Nor do we have to lay down thousands of metres of video cables to carry the live signals . Instead , we can carry hundreds of live video signals on a single 10Gbps network port .”
Across Asia-Pacific , the concept of IP-based broadcasting can be particularly appealing and is already “ growing rapidly ”, suggests Cinegy ’ s Weigner .
“ With so many variants in cultural interests in the region , the ability to play to niche markets through hyper-localisation , as well as to major ones with more mainstream content , is a powerful argument for the flexibility of IP ,” he concludes .
Across Asia-Pacific , the concept of IP-based broadcasting can be particularly appealing and is already “ growing rapidly ”.
ASIA 2016
DVB Comes To Bangkok
29 November - 1 December
Conference + Exhibition
www . dvbasia . org