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4 TVBEurope Opinion


www.tvbeurope.com May 2013


“There’s a depth of all the technical issues that you have to address”


How do we shift broadcast infrastructure from SDI to IP?


By Fergal Ringrose


ONE OFthe most profound and far-reaching releases during NAB did not actually occur in Las Vegas, rather thousands of miles away in Geneva. The European Broadcasting Union, along with SMPTE and the Video Services Forum (VSF) announced they have formed a Joint Task Force on Networked Media (JT-NM) to stimulate new business opportunities through the exchange of professional media across networks, exploiting affordable IT-based technology. The Task Force will define a


strategy to develop a packet- based network infrastructure for the professional media industry. To achieve this it will bring together manufacturers, broadcasters, standards bodies and trade associations with the objective to create, store, transfer and stream professional media. The Task Force’s primary


objective is to ensure interoperability in packet-based systems (networking, equipment and software) for professional media. This will mean defining an agile, on-demand, packet-based network infrastructure that supports a variety of distributed,


“We need virtualised master


control, freeing us from complex and expensive baseband infrastructure. We need IP, which makes it easy. We need to see a major cost reduction,” he said. “Beyond that, ultimately, you’ll


get to format flexibility as well — to do 4K or HD or SD. You look at an HD-SDI PCI card, its $20,000. You look at a Gig E card at $200, one tenth the cost … and there’s the flexibility of remapping it into your infrastructure.” Asked to place the needs of


Clyde Smith, senior VP New Technologies Fox Networks (left) and Neil Maycock, chief architect & head of Business Development Snell, at NAB


broadcasters like Fox Networks in context with the announcement of the new EBU/SMPTE/VSF Task Force, Smith told TVBEurope, “The challenge for the Task Force is the lingering requirement for baseband video. The traditional hub and spoke model does not work in a networked environment. “The first issue is that of


latency,” he said. “There are solutions out there, but they’re all proprietary. That’s one issue; but there’s a string of issues associated with how do you set up the connections, map the connections and integrate it all? “The beauty of this is, when


NAB 2013: The EBU/SMPTE/VSF Task Force could have a profound impact on broadcast delegates at the show


“The challenge for the Task Force is the lingering requirement for baseband video. The traditional hub and spoke model does not work in a networked environment” Clyde Smith, Fox Networks


automated, professional media (file- and stream-based) workflows for local, regional and global standards-based production, supporting any format, to reduce cost of ownership and content time-to-market. The Task Force will take a leading role, coordinating the activities of its members and of constituent and allied organisations. It will adopt a three-phase approach to its Mission and Objectives: (1) define the business- driven use cases and requirements; (2) define the framework and reference architecture; (3) define and coordinate tasks required to realise the output of phases 1 and 2.


The JT-NM sprang from a meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on 18-19 March, at Turner Broadcasting System, between representatives of the EBU, SMPTE, VSF and the Advanced Media Work Flow Association (AMWA), as well as business technologists from major media and manufacturing companies. The meeting’s purpose was a user-directed discussion about the use of packetised networks in professional media applications.


Shifting that paradigm


At Snell’s NAB press conference, chief architect & head of Business Development Neil


Maycock announced that the company is partnering with Fox Networks on the investigation of virtualised playout models. Fox Networks’ senior vice president New Technologies Clyde Smith was a guest at the press conference and observed that (like most broadcasters) Fox faces the protracted headache of outmoded technology in automation and master control. “We want to reduce complexity


for staff; produce a resilient architecture; and install something future facing,” he said. “The next step — a virtualised master control infrastructure. Snell is partnering with us on this project.


you’re done, imagine you’ve got just one connection and now you’ve got your bi-directional video running in and out of the device, you’ve got synchronisation going in and out, you’ve got control, intercom and all of the other functionalities — and of course the complexity of plant reduction that you get, right? Other industries have it, but we don’t have it yet. “AES has made great progress in this dimension, with AES X192,” said Smith. “And whilst it’s not done yet, necessarily, it shows real strength. But in the video space there’s no equivalent. “There’s a depth of all the technical issues that you have to address. So what this group is doing is first off mapping out what are those technical complications, what do they need to focus on, how will that enable and empower the architectures of the future — and coming up with a set of requirements before they start setting the standards. And then they’ll focus on what they need to do in setting those standards.”


EDITORIAL Editorial Director Fergal Ringrose


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