and here we are today transitioning every kind of signal into the all-IP technology .”
With ST 2110 providing a framework for the transport of both video and audio signals , it ’ s exactly what a modern broadcaster needs . ST 2110-20 manages uncompressed video signals and is a video-only evolution of SMPTE 2022-6 SDI-over-RTP stream , while ST 2110-30 is for audio transport and was based on the moreestablished AES67 .
“ Building something like this , once a signal or stream is on the network , you can basically send it to anywhere in your building ,” adds Dumont . “ You ’ re not limited by where your cabling goes . Wherever you have switches , your signal can go . So , it adds a lot of flexibility .”
CBC / Radio-Canada , of course , is as much focused on radio as it is television or digital broadcasting . On that side of things , project engineer Dai Dam notes that audio-over-IP has been around for a decade “ and why we are going over there ,” he notes , “ is the modularity . It is easy to add more devices or easy to add a new studio because everything is already in the same bucket . Like Patrice was saying , everything is there and you don ’ t need to have the old-fashioned DA or anything — it ’ s very modular . That ’ s where you see the most gain , is with the modularity and we can easily add and retrieve information . Also , the delegation ; if you want to delegate , for example , one control room can control multiple studios , and we can do this easily with a click . With [ Lawo ’ s ] VSM and everything , that control is much easier over IP . That ’ s why we implemented the IP technology . As early adopters of this new technology , in the long run it will provide savings compared to traditional , and it provides easy modularity and flexibility for the future .”
In the early phases of the project , a CBC / Radio-Canada delegation led by Director of Media Transport Architecture Félix Poulin and Senior Director of Core Systems Engineering François Legrand travelled to other major broadcast facilities in the U . S ., Europe , and Australia to assess their technological options and best approach . “ They were looking at many examples around the world and they learned a lot . What we are doing , we are pretty much the first multiplatform , large-scale production centre in the world trying to go all-IP ,” explains St-Pierre . “ Before , all of the other broadcasters were more attached to proprietary switching solutions or things like that . So , the way [ CBC / Radio-Canada ] wanted to do it is to work more in the IT world . So , the new facility is pretty much a data centre and we are not attached directly to any proprietary switching solution . That ’ s why we worked very hard with the industry to develop and push the ST 2110 standard .”
“ The idea for us was to use ‘ COTS ’ – commercial-off-the-shelf equipment ,” continues Dumont . “ So , we use IT switches , because IT is a much bigger industry than broadcast , so they sell and use a lot of switches , which means their volume is bigger and the price per bit transmitted is much lower than any proprietary technology . All this leads to a pace of technological innovation that simply cannot be matched by the broadcast industry . We wanted to leverage that and use what was developed by other businesses , and also to use open standards to ultimately not be attached to a specific vendor and have some standards that any of the vendors could work with and become interoperable .”
At that time , when CBC / Radio-Canada was taking ideas and lessons from other international broadcasters , the other facilities they were looking at were not IP-based from end to end . They were primarily partial-IP systems with a lot of legacy equipment included in the loop . “ But we ’ re talking many years ago , so these days we ’ ve worked really hard with many , many vendors across the last few years to develop and push on every aspect of a broadcast centre ; every type of equipment needed to have , in the end , an all-IP solution ,” notes St-Pierre . “ This was a huge task and the industry was not quite ready yet , but a lot of people got interested and jumped in . Obviously , we are not yet ‘ all IP ’ from end to end . We favoured the purchase of IP equipment , we worked with suppliers to develop IP products , and when this was not possible , we used gateways directly before or after legacy equipment in order to integrate them in the IP workflow . The broadcast industry should get up to speed in the next few years and IP solutions will continue to grow .”
As Dam noted earlier , Lawo ’ s VSM ( Virtual Studio Manager ) was chosen as the master IP control system . And in fact , he had been using VSM on the radio side in the old building for years . Given the scope of the new building ’ s operations , it was a crucial decision to get right . The broadcast facility hosts several production areas dedicated to radio , TV , and post-production activities , with dozens of studios , control rooms , editing and infographic workstations , and audio mixing suites . According to an announcement from Lawo released when the contract was finalized in 2018 , the new master control and playout room hosts around 40 TV channels , 40 digital channels , and 160 radio
TV STUDIO
channels in both French and English . At the time of the 2018 announcement , François Legrand praised VSM Studio for its ability to “ directly interface with true COTS networking equipment and deliver the advanced functionalities ” while providing “ feature-rich user interfaces that require no middleware , which simplifies the software stack and allows maintenance of the audio / video signal routing system over IP .”
In terms of hardware in the studios , all the consoles are also from Lawo , largely because they obviously work well with the VSM media controller and also met the technical requirements . There is a third-generation Lawo mc ² 56 console in each of the three entertainment studios ( used for FOH and monitor applications ) and four news-focused control rooms , and a third-generation Lawo mc ² 96 console in each of the two main entertainment control rooms .
When the TV consoles were selected , Dumont says the requirements included pristine sound quality , huge amounts of processing power , great ergonomics , true native ST 2110- 30 ( which is similar but not exactly the same as AES67 ) support , including for ST 2022-7 redundancy , be controllable using free and open standards ( Ember + support was mandatory due to the requirement of being compatible with VSM but NMOS IS-04 and IS-05 were very high on the wishlist ), and so on .
“ There were just not that many choices of consoles a couple of years back that were able to do ST 2110-30 with ST2022-7 redundancy , plus be able to be controlled by the broadcast controller that we had ,” he adds .
In terms of the intercom , Dumont explains that it is centralized and shared by the whole facility . “ It is composed of two Riedel Artist 1024 notes – mainly one for news and one for entertainment TV – that are trunked with each other ,” he says . “ The system also has trunks to a recovered RTS ADAM frame currently still in our old building that allows us to reach other cities running RTS intercoms through RVON cards and Trunkmaster . It is also used in the
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