The past decade has seen massive changes in how we produce media. The workflows and underlying infrastructure we use have evolved, opening new possibilities to create content more quickly and efficiently. One of the core elements of that infrastructure is the manner in which we move media from place to place. These media transports were once few and simple, their evolution slow, and as new transports emerged, they fell neatly in line with established ways of doing things.
However, with IP-based media transports, content producers are now offered numerous choices, unlocking new capabilities and revealing new pitfalls. Furthermore, with web, media streaming and social media all-embracing rich media content, it can be difficult to sift through the myriad IP media transports and make the best choice for your broadcast environment.
Different standards for different use cases
The first thing to consider when choosing an IP transport is to determine what it will be used for and in what environment. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so narrow your scope to solving a particular problem or addressing a specific production need. In many cases you may require multiple different approaches for different parts of your infrastructure.
Breaking this down a bit, we can roughly group IP transports into a few broad categories:
- In-facility production. This is usually restricted to a single building or small campus over a high-reliability network. This carries media that is directly used in live production activities. Key criteria are low-latency and high quality.
- Remote media transport. In this use case, there is a need to carry media over longer distances and may involve interconnect that is less reliable, including the public Internet. This would be used for transport of media to and from remote sites, between production facilities or the cloud. Latency and bitrate are somewhat important here, but reliability is the key consideration.
- Media Distribution. In this use case, media is packaged for final delivery to an audience. Key factors for this scenario are scalability and bandwidth optimisation.
In-facility production
Delving deeper into the transport choices available for in-facility production, we can further refine our choices by contrasting compressed vs. uncompressed standards. Uncompressed media offers the ultimate in low-latency and pristine quality. These solutions are usually built on a structured approach which facilitates good scalability, signal management, redundancy, and diagnostics. However, its dependence on datacentre-class structured networks requires an in-depth knowledge of advanced networking and carries a high price tag.
For smaller installations, lower-cost and simpler solutions, such as NDI, are a great choice. They sacrifice some quality and latency but can be deployed on much simpler networks. For smaller systems, this gains many of the benefits of uncompressed solutions, without the need for complex technical ability and budget. However, these solutions do sacrifice some of the scalability and resilience found in the more structured approaches.
But compressed transports can nicely compliment more structured installations (such as ST 2110 or SDI), by offering an easy-to-deploy and affordable utility transport for specific use cases alongside a primary installation. For example, distribution of media to conference rooms, management offices or mobile devices can be easily achieved with a lower bandwidth transport delivered over existing IT infrastructure. Similarly, it can be easier to deliver feeds from hard-to-reach locations such as conference rooms, atriums or exterior positions, where compact IP-based PTZ cameras are installed. It may also make sense to use native IP streaming capabilities in software applications (such as editing, graphics or weather); applications can be deployed on lower-cost PCs or laptops, rather than more expensive dedicated hardware.
Remote media transport
Remote media transport standards are designed to reliably and securely deliver content over larger distances. This may be from venue to studio, between production facilities or to and from cloud. They can offer features such as redundancy, ARQ (automatic repeat requests) and FEC (forward error-correction) to improve the resilience of unreliable networks. The current standards have enabled latency of these transports to come down, and support true remote production, while optimising bandwidth to provide quality media over public Internet and cellular networks.
Don’t forget about control
Although our focus has been on the capabilities of transport standards as they deliver media, building your solution will also need to consider management and interoperability. Some standards have well-defined management and control layers defined, while others either have limited or vendor-specific solutions. This may impact how you can administer and enable day-to-day operations of your facility. Your technology choices may be constrained by workflow and control system choices.
Choosing the best solution
Your facility probably has many competing needs, and you will likely need to consider more than one transport solution. Pick the right tool for the job and design your system to bridge the differing media types where it makes sense. Also, don’t discount SDI; it is well-proven, simple to deploy and attractively priced. The best solution could be a hybrid of IP and SDI transports.
The accompanying white paper outlines the most popular standards currently in use in professional and broadcast media production today. It can help answer some questions about specific standards and help you weigh the pros and cons of each as you consider your next project.
