Ip Era in Tv Production Industry

According to Goldman (2018), we are on the verge of a revolution in how professional media facilities handle audio, video and ancillary data. While this shift — from serial digital interface (SDI) to Internet protocol (IP) — is just as monumental and as significant as the industry’s transition from tape to file-based operations, it can be seamless if engineers plan out the transition carefully. For the past several decades, the professional media industry has used different variants of SDI to move around high-quality real-time video.

Limitations of Current Media Infrastructure

However, industry-specific interfaces, protocols and infrastructure limit effectiveness in addressing the challenges of modern media production and distribution, including scalability and complexity concerns. Since the development of SDI those many years ago, we have entered the information technology (IT) age. Because computers are ubiquitous and hundreds of billions of devices are in use worldwide, it has become possible to realise significant economies of scale in working with IT technology. By moving away from the industry-specific interfaces, protocols, and infrastructure of SDI and towards IP, and leveraging off the more scalable and cost-effective interfaces, protocols and infrastructure of IT, professional media facilities have the freedom and agility to rapidly deploy new solutions and quickly realise new capabilities that can simplify operations, reduce costs and improve their competitive potential.

Advantages of Transitioning to IP

Top six reasons for moving to all-IP:

Enhancing Flexibility in Video Production

To enhance the flexibility and agility of the video plant, with “video” meaning professional media, including video, audio and ancillary data.

Compatibility with Modern Network Infrastructure

To enable compatibility with network interfaces on COTS Ethernet switches and COTS servers.

Stream Management Capabilities

To achieve the flexible association of streams into desired groups of media.

Network-Based Device Discovery

To establish network-based registration and discovery of devices, streams and media capabilities.

Increased Density over Connections

To realise much greater density than was possible with SDI, over an inherently bidirectional connection.

Standardisation Across Formats

To create a standard suite that is agnostic to the specific video and audio formats that are being carried on it, and which uses the same carriage mechanism regardless of resolution, bit depth, frame rate, number of channels, and so on.

We are now beginning to see implementation solutions for doing just that — going all-IP all at once. The viability of this approach has become evident through a series of interoperability demon¬strations for professional media over IP. SMPTE is one of eight sponsors of what is known as the IP Showcase, a multi-vendor interoperability demonstration that first took place at IBC 2016 and has continued at key trade shows, including the SMPTE 2017 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition, with standing-room-only crowds for presentations related to the IP migration.