Last week 主播大秀 R&D published a white paper, which you can read , explaining how we used our in-house IP Studio (Internet Protocol Studio) technology to provide broadcast coverage of the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
I’d like to tell you a little more about how 主播大秀 R&D is innovating with IP, how we produced Glasgow 2014, and where I think the ‘IP road’ will take the industry.
The software-based video production gallery in Glasgow
At present broadcasters rely on industry-specific technologies (such as SDI, a digital interface for video data) to transport content within production facilities. However, the speed and availability of IP networks has increased to the point at which they now offer a realistic alternative for the real-time movement of audio, video and other production data.
My team within 主播大秀 R&D is designing, building and testing technologies that use an IP network to provide a flexible live, post-production, and delivery platform. We call this project IP Studio. We believe that the adoption of IP-based broadcast systems can make broadcasting more efficient, and enable new forms of content, supported by rich metadata which is intimately linked to audio and video assets.
So what exactly is IP Studio?
It’s a combination of ideas and prototypes: we are developing a theoretical framework that consists of a data model for content (audio, video and metadata) alongside a set of logical components, APIs and technology recommendations. In parallel to this activity we are building software implementations of our designs, running on general purpose computing hardware, in order to experimentally test our theories. We are sharing the results of this work with the wider broadcast industry.
Glasgow 2014 was our most ambitious trial of the IP Studio ‘New Broadcasting System’ to date. The aim: to provide true IP-end-to-end coverage of the Commonwealth Games. This meant taking IP audio, video and metadata streams from a suite of cameras positioned in Glasgow competition venues, then using software-based production tools to cut between cameras and manage the system, culminating in the delivery of internet-ready streams of programme output.
However we weren’t happy to stop there. To test the flexibility of IP Studio we decided to separate our production staff into teams hundreds of miles apart: Vision and camera control was undertaken from a publically accessible exhibition space in the ; engineering operations were undertaken from 主播大秀 Quay House at Salford Quays; audio mixing and internet streaming was undertaken from 主播大秀 R&D’s Centre House lab in London.
The network that supported our Glasgow 2014 broadcasts
In a normal production the people undertaking these tasks would have been located in an outside broadcast truck parked next to a Games venue. IP technology enabled us to break with this tradition because we could send accurately timed audio, video and metadata from each venue camera to all our production sites. The end result was that money and time were saved.
We stepped up for one more challenge: the whole production was undertaken at Ultra-high-definition (UHD). That’s four times the resolution and twice the frame rate of the HD pictures the 主播大秀’s current broadcast chain supports. Providing there is enough bandwidth and processing power our framework can work flexibly at any resolution, even handling multiple resolutions at the same time.
One of the Ultra-high-definition cameras in action. The yellow optical fibre providing network connectivity to the venue is visible lower right.
We learned a great deal from taking IP Studio to Glasgow 2014. One of our most important findings was the way the complex network (a combination of links provided by , Virgin Media and 主播大秀 infrastructure) affected our ability to discover IP Studio resources (for example processing hosts, audio and video streams) positioned around the country. We have spent the last few months re-architecting the way this resource discovery system works, resulting in a design that is more flexible and robust.
So what does the future hold? We are working with bodies such as the to share and standardise the knowledge we have gained, and increasingly we will be encouraging broadcast equipment manufacturers to incorporate IP Studio technology into their products. We envision further production trials, investigating new content formats, user experiences and production techniques.
I’ll leave you with a few thoughts that I think are particularly exciting: How could the 主播大秀 deliver programmes that responsively adapt to your screen size (smartphone screens are much smaller than a television)? Or how could we provide you with to the time you have available? We need flexible, data-rich, production technologies. The only way is IP.