The broadcast, media and entertainment industry has been undergoing a lot of change in the past decade, but none has had a bigger impact than the advent of IP technology. First it made contribution more efficient; then, in the form of the internet, it transformed the way content was consumed; and finally, it simplified file-based production. Now, it is set to revolutionize live production. It’s been a long time coming, but IP is coming to the facilities.
In many ways, 2016 is year zero of live IP production. Of course, the industry has been talking about it for years as a logical evolution. As BBC Sports’ Charlie Cope put it neatly during a live debate March 2016: “We’re in a world where our contribution is on IP, our distribution is on IP, and there’s this chunk in the middle which is a baseband, heavy-lift workflow. That just doesn’t make sense”.
So we knew IP was coming, but for a long time, nothing was happening. Then, in the first half of 2015, things began to move – possibly as a result of the mounting pressure on broadcasters to do more with less. Belgian broadcaster VRT, as part of its Sandbox incubator of new technologies and with the support of the EBU, encouraged a number of industry vendors, including Nevion, to work together to explore whether a studio could be built around IP and IT technology. This was the start of the now multi-award-winning VRT-EBU LiveIP project, used during that live debate mentioned above. Within a year, that project went from an experiment using a simple one camera live recording of a short clip in the summer of 2015, to VRT using the set-up for live broadcasting on its children’s channel Ketnet over the summer of 2016. The trail blazing and seminal nature of this project really cannot be underestimated.
By the end of 2015, it was also clear that standards desperately needed to be agreed. The LiveIP project had made use of open IP standards available at the time, such as SMPTE 2022-6 (SDI over IP), AES67/RAVENNA, PTP and OpenFlow, but these were not universally accepted in the industry for use in studios. Some vendors were pushing their own proprietary “standards” and the industry was at risk of killing off some of the attraction of IP for broadcasters: ubiquity and openness. In December 2015, some leading lights in the industry founded the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) to further the use of open standard and interoperability in IP for broadcasters. By NAB 2016, the roadmap for standards endorsed by AIMS, including SMPTE 2022-6, TR-04, TR-03 and SMPTE 2110, was being supported by nearly all the leading vendors in the industry. By IBC 2016, it was clear that there was no viable alternative. The industry had rallied together to deliver the interoperability that broadcasters needed to leverage the benefits of IP.
So as we come to the end of 2016, we have proof that IP works in live production and an agreed plan for open standards – just as the industry is keener than ever to leverage IP and IT technology to achieve ”more with less”. Now, many broadcasters are now beginning to evaluate the technology in earnest.
That isn’t to say that every aspect of IP in the facilities is sorted. The standards roadmap is still a roadmap, even if rapid progress is being made. There is also some philosophical debate about the architecture to adopt.
Some advocate replicating the “centralized router” or “star network” approach used in the baseband world. Others are pointing out that the real benefits of IP can only be truly be realized with a “distributed network” as used in most other industries. As it happens, the former can be a stepping stone towards the latter, providing it is designed properly from the inception. But all these are not impediments to moving to IP now.
Realistically, the process for broadcasters should be incremental focusing on the network itself, ahead of the equipment. After all, that’s the part of the IP infrastructure that will deliver most of the benefits, including better remote production, equipment sharing and even virtualization. Besides, solutions exist now to connect baseband equipment to an IP network, so that investment can be leveraged easily.
In short, broadcasters can now start adopting IP and IT technology through the entire broadcast workflow. Not only will this make them more cost-effective and flexible, allowing them to fulfill the objective of doing more with far fewer resources, it also means they can be more competitive in a highly volatile market where customer experience is still key. Of course the transition won’t cure all ills, but in staged in a gradual, stable way, it can certainly change the landscape for the better.
Today at 5:37 am
