RTVE brings together the industry in a workshop on production on IP environments

Spanish Radio Television organizes the Workshop 'Audiovisual production in IP technology', a meeting in which manufacturers, integrators and operators have participated to address broadcast production technology over IP as a changing element of the market.

Spanish Radio Television (RTVE) organized this Thursday in Prado del Rey (Madrid) the Workshop Audiovisual production in IP technology, at a time when RTVE is immersed in the design of new studies and, therefore, looking for technological solutions with a vision of the future. Given the technological change that IP production entails, and the approach of the different manufacturing and technology integration companies, this workshop is proposed as the first of a series of possible experiences.

All of them would be integrated under the corporate program RTVE Vision Promotes, with a view to the presentation of technology, practical cases, tests and challenges within a collaborative environment, which will allow RTVE to position itself in the technological leadership of the sector and as a public company, playing the role of market dynamizer.

One of the objectives of this workshop is to generate new signal transmission standards and opportunities to improve and simplify the operation, posing a challenge in the transformation of the current way of producing, as well as in the field of training and the profiles of the necessary professionals.

The day, which has included Esteban Mayoral, responsible for the RTVE Innovation Center, as host, has been inaugurated by the corporate general director of the Corporation, Enrique Alejo.

Alejo has pointed out that this conference aimed not only at RTVE professionals but at other industry players such as operators, integrators and manufacturers "aims to open channels to promote innovation and transformation of the audiovisual industry."

Enrique Alejo has said that one of the tasks of the Corporation "is to open channels to promote innovation and the transformation of the audiovisual industry, an industry that is in the midst of a period of maturity and consolidation, but that still has to evolve, and today is an example."

For Alejo, "production has been transformed and will be transformed further, we are moving towards a model in which post-production will be the most effective. This industry is evolving towards a model of greater collaboration between the entire production process, and all members of the ecosystem." To conclude, he highlighted that "with this transformation, those who win are the viewers, the audiences. In a short time, IP technology, to which we dedicate this meeting today, will be the one that all operators will use."

For its part, David Valcarce, director of operations at TVE, welcomed the participants in these sessions, inviting them to share success stories, opinions and success stories implemented based on IP technology.

Pere Vila, director of Technological Strategy and Digital Innovation at RTVE, has reviewed the different technological initiatives in which the Corporation is involved, such as the start-up accelerator Impulsa Visión, about to begin its fourth call; its presence in several European innovation projects in collaboration with Spanish companies such as Brainstorm or Telefónica; the Research Chairs promoted together with the Polytechnic University of Madrid, the University of Zaragoza, the Carlos III University or the University of Barcelona.

The IP from the point of view of Sony and TSA

On the part of Telefónica Audiovisual Services, José Luis García Cabrera y Pablo Sánchez Ávila; and of Sony, David Anaya, have shared the lessons learned in the design of the transition to IP in a real case developed in the last year.

Telefónica has been present in the main technological transformations such as the transition from analog to digital, from SD to HD or now 4K. Now the turn in innovation is for the IP. Video over IP has been used for contribution, security or transmission but now we are starting to talk about Live IP over the SMPTE 2110 protocol.

Pablo Sánchez recognizes that there are not many IP experiences on SMPTE 2110 that exist in the world and are usually limited to small islands, not complete production studios.

For his part, David Anaya recalled that Sony launched its IP live initiative in 2013, with large installations around the world, actively participating in all working groups and associations such as EBU/EBU, SMPTE, AES, AMWA, VSF, AIMS or JT-NM. This last association has been in charge of designing the roadmap for open interoperable media networks.

From the point of view of TSA as an integrator, “although not all that glitters is gold, now is the time to propose serious projects on the SMPTE2110 interface,” said Sánchez. “As for AES67, it does seem to be very clearly working for a long time with total reliability,” he acknowledged.

“When undertaking a project it is very important to know exactly what the client wants and what is the most efficient way to achieve it, dedicating a lot of time to the client understanding the new concept,” he acknowledged.

Among the “cons” of working with an IP video system, they have pointed out a greater initial investment, a certain fear and risk in being the first, lack of real feedback and ignorance of the new technology. In “the pros” they have noted greater flexibility, agnosticism in formats, ease of future expansions, optimization of spaces and consumption with possibilities of decentralization, cost savings and optimization of resources within the same network.

While in an SDI environment the matrix was of defined size, under an SMPTE2110 interface it is possible to use a wireless matrix (router). The SDI world had dedicated equipment with a single signal, now there will be a tendency towards generic processors with different functions and multistream. Another big difference is that until now all the equipment was in a specific resource location (with a very static glue connected by copper), while in IP it will be possible to decentralize them (even in different production centers) with a pool of resources, eliminating bottlenecks and fiber optic cabling.

The great workhorse will be calculating the necessary bandwidth both now and thinking about the future. The networks are going to have higher performance so not just any router will work. We will need high-capacity switches that support protocols such as non-blocking, IGMPv3, PIM-SSM, PTP...

Switch manufacturers such as Arista, Cisco, Brocade or Juniper are already adapting their equipment to work with files with audiovisual content, tending towards a mix between IT network administrators and broadcast systems.

This will entail having professionals with one foot in the IT world and another in broadcasting, stated Pablo Sánchez. Regarding how the teams that make up the system communicate, he has highlighted the role of the orchestrator or in-house or third-party configurator capable of configuring teams and workflows. As for the control and monitoring system, it would not replace the orchestrator since it is in a higher layer bringing together all the elements of the system regardless of the manufacturer.

Demystifying the “cons” of the IP world

Justo Diaz, commercial director of Xeltec e Ignacio Gonzalez, sales director for Spain, Portugal, and Central and South America at Theirs, have reflected on the possibilities that remote production offers.

"Lawo offers IP-based solutions that respond today to the needs of broadcast. At the moment when IP technology implements the fundamental requirements of broadcast, IP will automatically provide for free everything it brings such as bandwidth, flexibility...", Díaz pointed out.

Ignacio González has shared real success stories “that speak for themselves to demystify the cons of the IP world.” One of these examples can be found in MotoGP by Dorna, which has been working with Lawo since 2013, accompanying the production company in new challenges such as the adoption of 5.1, automated audio production, the transition from the distribution of analog to digital signals towards Compound TV, or the design of a new master control room (MCR) with IP technology.

“The experience with video over IP with Dorna has allowed us to take on new projects such as the Olympic Games or the Belgian league, in the latter case connecting 24 stadiums over IP with complete remote audio and video production from Brussels thanks to several Lawo solutions under control of VSM technology.

Another example of success can be found in NEP Australia, which has already eliminated all coaxial cable in its production centers in Sydney and Melbourne, working the entire flow over fiber with equipment from Sony and Lawo with a very advanced concept of remote production from anywhere on this immense continent. Among its works on IP, the service it provides throughout the continent to Fox Sports stands out.

The most important thing when facing IP production is the control as well as the telemetry of switches and the entire network, González highlighted.

Camera-CCU connectivity

Ricardo Cuenca, PreSales Engineer at Crosspoint, has highlighted that one of the aspects that most marks a remote production is the camera and where we are going to locate the CCU, XCU in the case of Grass Valley (locally, next to the camera, or remotely, next to the control). At local XCU, we will have a connection from the camera to the XCU) by triax or fiber. At the CCU output we will now have a whole series of IP connectivity that will allow us under SMPTE 2110 and 2022-6 standards as well as conventional video and audio (monitored) outputs.

In IP transmission, bandwidth must be taken into account since it will determine the number of signals that we can transport; the latency of transport networks, their architectural design and QoS; the control layer for managing IP connections between the different equipment in the environment; Cuenca has stressed.

Cuenca has commented on some Grass Valley solutions for new IP environments such as Direct IP, a signal transport solution between the camera and

With this scheme, each camera and XCU have a unique IP on the network, the architecture is based on its own and reliable 10 Gb local IP network. COTS switches are used for the 10Gb LAN network.

The same control and technical staff can thus manage more productions, with easy growth by simply adding more cameras. In this flow there is no latency as there is no signal compression. The simplified control layer will be in charge of orchestrating all the elements.

With the new version of this Direc IP+ solution it is possible to adapt to low bandwidths with audio, intercom and video transport (compressed, in this case).

Grass Valley is developing a complete application with Netinsight (Nimbra) to provide a complete end-to-end and proven system. The solution is in the final stages of testing to have a working firmware version for the LDX cameras soon. In this case, the video signals between the camera and CCU would have no visible losses (seamless) at 160 Mbps for 1080i @J2K and 320Mbps for 1080p@J2K. The full compression and encoding speed would be approximately 100 msec.

IP Routing and Orchestration

Felix Trapiello, director of EVS in Spain, Portugal and sub-Saharan markets, and Dieter Backx, training & engineering consultant en EVS, han expuesto en esta jornada algunas de las soluciones diseñadas por el fabricante belga para infraestructuras IP.

Among them, S-Core Master stands out, an innovative routing system that responds to the new IP challenges. It is a solution that accepts multiple network topologies designed for broadcast and that allows managing an IP environment in a way familiar to the user, with the correct level of abstraction to manage live video and audio production.

The new system offers engineers better visibility into all endpoints within an IP-connected network that acts as its central orchestrator, ensuring media bandwidth delivery across the infrastructure.

S-Core Master offers complete orchestration of live IP flows using SDN control methods to manage latency-sensitive live media.

Backx has noted that as IP reaches greater deployment of virtualized services, the implementation of S-Core Master will allow users to deliver live streams wherever needed within a network.

This will remove operational obstacles from implementing new technologies and effectively creates a more efficient global workflow.

The system gives engineers better visibility into a network, as well as the ability to communicate with entire IP infrastructures at once, eliminating operational blockages, and also allows operators to monitor entire networks to ensure efficient delivery of live content over any infrastructure.

With support for NMOS and other APIs, S-Core Master integrates infrastructure and inventory management into the core of a network and provides more inherent flexibility in flow configuration.

Another of EVS's new solutions to respond to new IP environments is XT-Via, its new server presented at NAB that features improved internal connectivity with the XNet-VIA multimedia network. The new high-performance IP network connects all new EVS products and solutions, offering a simple and flexible way to quickly share live content from any part of the workflow. At the same time, XT-VIA ensures that existing tools and applications do not become inaccessible thanks to its internal compatibility with XNet SG-SDTI, EVS' existing content sharing network.

With the expansion of its internal bandwidth, the new server is designed to operate in workflows that support any resolution, whether 1080i, 1080p or UHD-4K, presenting a greater density of channels: six in UHD-4K and 12 in Full HD or HD, configurable in any I/O setup. And to allow users to benefit from live programming with improved resolution, the XT-VIA server also supports HDR workflows as standard.

IP production at RTVE

Jesus Garcia Romero, deputy director of engineering and support of studies and mobile units at RTVE, has presented an x-ray of remote production and IP technology in the Corporation. As for remote production, there has long been an IP audio network between the different sets of the Information Services, and experiences (non-IP) have also been carried out on the TVE sets at the London and Rio Olympic Games, as well as from the permanent links from the Madrid Stock Exchange and the State Lotteries and Betting facilities (ONLAE). In addition, with the Corporation's own design, Radio Nacional has an interesting self-production system with Panasonic cameras in its main studio in the Casa de la Radio in Prado del Rey.

García Romero has paraphrased Baltasar Gracián when he stated that "it is good wisdom to avoid trouble. Prudence avoids many."

Immersed in a strategic plan that plans to migrate all facilities to high definition, the IP presents RTVE with a new challenge towards which it will have to move steadily. "We have been able to verify that the standardization plan is being fulfilled, we have seen tests of interoperability between different subsystems, we verified that a lot of glue is eliminated and the cabling is simplified at the same time that the redundancy of the system is simplified, however we still observe some disadvantages such as the cost of the equipment and the hybrid installation; the professional reconversion of the broadcast to the IT; layer measurements and fault location; in addition to taking into account the concern for bandwidth; the reliability of the managed IP link; and, not least important, security against cyber attacks,” he assured.

In remote production, Spanish Television is about to start a pilot test that aims to connect the virtual set of studio B3 in Torresspaña with the new production control of studio 3 in Prado del Rey. Through a 10 Gbps IP network, the render engines will initially be sent from Torrespaña to Prado del Rey, and according to experiences in terms of latency, in a second phase the camera signals would be sent directly.

Looking to the future, TVE's objective is to take on a remote IP production from the Teatro Monumental (Orchestra and Choir), Teatro Real and La Bolsa.

The importance of consulting

Cesar Ona, director for Southern Europe at Qvest Media, highlighted that IP will open up new possibilities and workflows in relation to the cloud, remote productions, the possibility of live compression, and improvements in flows for high bit rate streams (especially considering high resolutions such as 4K and 8K). The weaknesses that Ona sees, on the other hand, are security and complexity.

When facing an IP media project, Qvest Media's methodology involves carrying out systematic tests and proofs of concept in the necessary areas in terms of orchestrators, bandwidth... in close collaboration with manufacturers to align the standards with the workflows defined by the client.

"It is necessary to clarify expectations with the client, and discuss alternatives. In short, for a complex installation we must always look for the best design with existing products that change month to month," he stated.

Ona has analyzed the success story of Sky Sports in Munich developed last summer. Sky was moving buildings and they requested that their new facilities have access to all the feeds from all the stadiums to do remote production of the Bundesliga. To achieve this, it was necessary to deploy a new technological infrastructure, even in 4K, that would allow special and remote operations of the Bundesliga, live broadcasting and playout. This is the installation of Riedel MediorNet largest in the world, upgradeable via software.

They are now involved in the TPC Metechno technology center in Zurich, which provides signals and playout to the Swiss public SRG SSR of all its channels SRF1, SRF2 and SRF Info. In a new building, an infrastructure prepared for Ultra High Definition has been deployed with sets, post-production, IP radio, live and post-produced online production.

Qvestmedia did a thorough initial consultation on the state of the technology. As César Ona has highlighted, they carried out, for example, tests with 6 orchestrator manufacturers that underwent 49 tests (basic, bandwidth management, switching behavior, audio/video management, redundancy, security, and communication with the manufacturer) making it evident that the development status of the different manufacturers is not the same due to the different degrees of switching due to the intrinsic characteristics of SMPTE 2110.

Based on all these tests, the specifications have been published and the installation will begin in September and will last one year.

César Ona always recommends in these cases of great technical complexity that the consultancy be put out to tender, work with the best of each brand (the result of calling for several specifications) and that the integrator develop scale tests before applying it in real environments.

Signal synchronization and analysis

Jorge de la Torre y Vicente Pla, of Abacanto Solutions, have presented their experiences regarding signal synchronization and analysis in IP production environments. Abacanto works with
instrumentation manufacturers such as Tektronix and also offer consulting services with a clear broadcat and IP profile.

Vicente Plá began his speech by categorically stating that "television is synchronous and IP does not have any type of synchrony. We will need to make this synchronous so that our television networks really work."

In this environment, it is key, in his opinion, that AV and IT engineers learn a common language to be able to communicate.

Plá has reviewed some important aspects when working in IP such as the type of IP addressing, the use of new tools such as Real Time Protcol (RTP) that identifies content, packet numbering, timestamps, error correction... He has also highlighted the importance of measurements on the video session, analyzing the different components that arrive through the cables at the level of clocks, sources, standards, errors, analyzing bandwidth...

Television synchronizations have to cross networks that are not synchronous, so tools such as grandmaster clock, master clock, slave clock, PTP Domain, BMCA (algorithms that constantly evaluate which is the best reference clock) will be necessary more than ever.

“To synchronize an asynchronous network, we are going to need protocols that measure the entire channel bidirectionally from the synchro generator,” he pointed out.

Finally, he commented that the SMPTE 2110 standard separates audio and video over independent IP, so they must be synchronized in reception. “We probably have a network for PTP distribution and another audiovisual network,” he acknowledges.

The Mediapro experience

David Vivas, CTO and director of Unitecnic in Madrid, has been in charge of introducing and Emili Planas, CTO of Mediapro, who shared with the participants in this conference the long experience of the audiovisual group in remote IP production.

Unitecnic was precisely in charge of designing and integrating the different remote production units with which Mediapro has been providing service to LaLiga for five years now.

Although Planas has recognized that the approach five years later based on technological evolution today would have been different, he has highlighted that Mediapro was a pioneer in the deployment of a network of
high quality for IP video transport and streaming between Mediapro headquarters and between its headquarters in Barcelona and the 42 Laliga stadiums of the 1st and 2nd division.

Although Mediapro had been transporting IP video signals for more than fourteen years, when they considered developing a project to make remote production possible, they started from these premises: simplicity, flexibility and security while offering equal or better operation and being economically sustainable.

In this last aspect, Planas recognizes that “remote production has nothing to do with low cost.”

Mediapro itself (production, production and operations) and its subsidiaries Eumóvil (mobile units), Unitecnic (engineering), Overon (networks and encoding) and Park Media (régies) were involved in this ambitious project.

Currently, in LaLiga coverage, Mediapro moves light vehicles (Remote OB Van, ROBV) to remote venues (stadiums) equipped only with cameras, microphones, and transmission equipment. Its signals are sent to Barcelona via IP where it is produced remotely from various production controls.

In this way, only a professional team limited to camera operators, sound technicians, technical manager, producer and editing team travel to the stadiums. The rest of the team such as director, video mixer, sound engineer, camera controls, replay operators and director work remotely from one of the six existing production controls in Barcelona.

The fact of having 42 stadiums connected and prepared for remote production and the use of five remote production units equipped with a total of 48 cameras has made it possible since the end of 2013 to now produce more than 1,100 LaLiga matches remotely. In terms of network, Mediapro works with 1 Tbps in a high-level and redundant managed private IP network.

Emili Planas has pointed out that, among other advantages, the use of ROBV vehicles compared to traditional mobile units allows Mediapro to go to the stadiums in a more agile, faster and ecological way (with significant energy and fuel savings).

Remote production allows for a more specialized, motivated production team with larger work spaces; better ability to integrate new procedures in new media, VOD, second screen projects...; better resolution times in case of technical problems in critical equipment during productions; more comfortable production environments, especially for audio, where the 5.1 setup is carried out more relaxed from a dedicated audio control; and, in addition, the life of the equipment is extended, also improving the time between maintenance.

Planas has also pointed out that Mediapro's remote production model is designed to be able to adapt to new coding techniques and the bandwidth available in connection networks, being able to operate with latency-free ocoding or with ultra-low latency (always less than 300 milliseconds) and a contribution quality of at least 10 bit 4:2:2

At this time, Mediapro builds its mobile units to work both locally and remotely based on two models: a standard type equipped with 12 cameras in remote configuration or 8 in local configuration; and a light type for 2nd division matches with 8 remote cameras and 4 in local configuration.

Network design

Aicox Solutions He attended this event with two of his partners: Arista y Harmonic. Ha sido Javier García, al frente del área de broadcast & IT en Aicox, el encargado de presentar a Miguel Cordón, Sales Manager de Arista; y Rubén Sevillano, director regional de ventas para Iberia en Harmonic.

Cordón highlighted that Arista designs and manufactures switches for different verticals, although he recalled that the company's beginnings were related to the financial sector, which shares a common characteristic with the media sector: the need to have very low latency.

For the media sector, Arista offers solutions for file processing (editing, rendering...), real time (broadcasting) and streaming/OTT. Additionally, it actively participates in major standardization organizations.

Cordón has reviewed the different network topologies (Layer 3 /ECMP, Hub /Spoke and Spline /Core) highlighting the characteristics of each one thinking about an average environment, although he has stressed that the type of network chosen is essential for “having flexible technology that responds to each challenge.”

“In the world of switching and IT, the important thing is not the hardware, but the software,” he stressed.

Using an SDN control layer at NAB 2018 in Las Vegas, Arista carried out an interesting demonstration integrating equipment from Lawo, EVS, Axon, SDNSquare, Nevion, Imagine, among other manufacturers, into the same network.

With this experience Arista demonstrated that they design switches with useful capabilities for media based on common protocols, scalable, with a reliable operating system, highly automatable and easily orchestrable. Furthermore, in its portfolio of solutions we can find a wide range of software tools that allow visibility in a real-time environment.

On behalf of Harmonic, Rubén Sevillano, has assured that "we can find in the sector on average three types of companies: those prepared to move to IP now; those that will do so in phases since the flows that the IP offers them cover all their needs; and those that are waiting to see what happens and, for the moment, SDI covers all their needs.

In any case, he stated, the IP offers flexibility and cost reduction. Furthermore, he has assured that "intelligence is in the software, the iron itself does not provide real value in most cases."

On the other hand, Sevillano has stressed that "all the functionalities of Harmonic products can be individualized by creating a common software layer so that these modules can be activated and deactivated according to needs and with a completely agnostic approach towards third parties."

In addition, he stated that if the industry on average looks at software, migrating to IP becomes essential. “SDI is not going to die tomorrow, but we must be prepared for IP, already considering IT infrastructures hosted in internal data centers or even in the cloud.”

For this reason, some of its solutions, such as the popular Spectrum servers, support both SDI and IP.

In this transition towards IP we find some success stories on the part of Harmonic such as RTL that has adopted Arista and Juniper switches; along with Spectrum X servers and Electra X encoders from Harmonic; or Tektronix SPG/PTP generators, among other equipment.

With experiences of this type "we have learned that the design phase is critical to well define the objectives, and that, in addition, we have to test, test and continue testing. We will have to reinvent ourselves from a stable broadcast world to an IT environment with new standards, requirements and specifications", concluded Sevillano.