According to Chris Waddington (pictured), NewTek’s director of sales east, EMEA, there is a great deal of talk about IP, but it is mostly focused on the future. “That’s not for us, we are not looking at five to ten years, we are looking at right now.”
NewTek’s latest innovation is NDI (Network Device Interface), an open standard for live IP workflows. “This is a revolutionary new solution for sending media over IP protocol,” explains Waddington. “What’s more it is freely available, with no royalty payments or licence fees.”
NDI enables a number of sources to be connected to NewTek Tricaster production centres. This means, for example, that multiple cameras covering an event can be routed to difference production teams who can create their own programmes without interfering with their colleagues.
“It also enables a mixture of sources using different formats to be included in a single programme output. And because there is low latency, even mixing baseband with IP, there is no delay. That also means that a user can migrate to IP over time, allowing the use of mixed sources to be utilised during the changeover period.”
He continues, “Our IP workflow allows us to send audio and video over today’s networks. All you need is NDI and a IGB Ethernet connection. In fact, all the Tricasters being used at BVE are all connected using such a link.”
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