July 2013 www.tvbeurope.com


“The cliché that ‘the great thing about standards is that there are so many of them’, is fully applicable here”


of non-HEVC-capable technology. While HEVC offers higher resolution at lower bandwidth, headwinds are making the timing of its adoption uncertain. These include adaptive streaming format support, consumer device support without greatly impacting battery life, as well as patent pool requirements and a licensing authority — like MPEGLA.


This discussion is ongoing primarily in regards to today’s TV Everywhere services going to HEVC. 4K is another dimension of HEVC and comes with its own challenges, the most important of which includes content produced in the 4K standard. Trow: We believe it will have a significant impact on content delivery. Harmonic’s ProMedia Live realtime and ProMedia Xpress file-based transcoders are HEVC ready, making it feasible for content providers to deliver next-generation services like Ultra HD or significantly reduce the operational cost of delivering OTT HD. Turner: The increased


bandwidth efficiency is of great interest to satellite operators and companies delivering HD OTT services. In addition, it is the enabler for practical 4K distribution. Without this increased bandwidth efficiency, 4K media is just too much of a bandwidth ‘hog’ to allow any kind of realistic business case to be built. Wymbs: The benefits of H.265 include the deployment of more channels over satellite, cable, and IPTV networks, a lowered cost of managed and unmanaged video distribution, widened reach for bandwidth- constrained mobile and IPTV operators and improved QOE of OTT services to match traditional broadcast delivery. We’ll know more about the impact of H.265 when mobile and internet HEVC trials take place later this year.


Is it practical to have one simple solution that could take video and audio from any source or format — whether that is a file or even a live stream — and send it seamlessly to other destinations?


Sassoli: That is certainly the goal and challenge being presented to vendors by video service providers. The difficulty lies in that, historically, different vendors have focused on improving the various elements of transcoding. As such, the risk is that an


integrated solution may sacrifice performance in certain areas. Also, the upgrade cycle for


‘legacy’ video compression equipment may not match that for adaptive streaming and new IP video initiatives. What’s needed is a convergence of IPTV and


multiscreen video delivery in the same transcoder, adapting the last mile with the appropriate packaging – be that DVB-C-S-T or IPTV or ABR to the end device. That’s what RGB does today. Trow: Yes, it is possible, but it wouldn’t respect workflow


TVBEurope 29 Forum Transcoding


techniques that are currently in use. The reason there are a different range of delivery mechanisms is that there are different video delivery environments. Relying on a single approach would be hugely disruptive to the existing infrastructure. Wymbs: Unification is a major aspiration and something that we focus on at Elemental. It’s difficult to get 100% of the way there on a global basis. For example, MPEG-DASH could collapse transport, but customisation of content will still happen at the edge.


A recent Frost and Sullivan white paper says ‘Put together, it’s clear that a new approach to media processing is warranted. Existing workflow solutions, which predominantly use fixed data flow paradigms, are not effectively solving the multi-platform delivery problem’. What new approach might answer that statement?


Devlin: Industry has spent the last 30 years changing from a push model of manufacturing to a pull model. A transcoder is merely a factory for manufacturing media. Organisations like AMWA, SMPTE and the DPP are defining delivery specifications. The next level is machine readable and machine testable delivery specifications. When machine readable, machine testable specifications are created then manufacturing content on demand for the specific application becomes an economic reality. Ferreira: Efforts like AMWA AS-02 and IMF are addressing this problem. Together with projects like FIMS, they can give us the solid foundation we need to ease the deployment of adaptable systems. Nann: The challenges described are ones that we


designed our Kayak workflow technology platform — which powers our transcoding solutions — to solve. Unlike workflow solutions that orchestrate between separate applications, Kayak — and thus our product offerings built upon it — features exceptionally fine-grained modularity with technologies and functions as building blocks, or components. Warehoused in a catalogue of components, these building blocks can be tied together into decision-based media processing flows in the exact order and combination desired by the user, rather than a rigid pre-defined structure. The visual design tools let users implement and automate exactly the processing pipeline they need, from basic video and audio processing to complex, multi-stage workflows. Turner: The conclusion in the report is valid beyond the


of tape. Operations are dealing with more and more devices and applications, each with their own interchange requirements. And multichannel distribution — the area that the F&S quote speaks about — has many channels, each of which has its own requirements for transcoding. We agree that fixed data flow


Owen Walker: “With file-based workflow becoming the norm and with so many formats available choosing the right one for the right job is a never-ending quest”


multi-platform delivery problem. It is also applicable through the entire content lifecycle. For instance, ingest is seeing increasingly more file formats being made available instead


paradigms are a thing of the past. Old ‘fixed data flow’ transcoding systems tend to have hundreds of ‘watch folders’ — meaning that operators have to make precise decisions about where to put media to get the desired outcome. In contrast, our Vantage workflow engine allows our users to design workflows that dynamically adapt to both incoming media and output requirements. This allows companies to automate the decision-making that was previously done by a human.


Compact Broadcast Console Broadcast Audio. This is SSL. C10HD sales@solidstatelogic.com :: Tel +44 (0) 1865 842300 www.solidstatelogic.com


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