VRT relies on Matrox's Monarch Edge in its remote production tests

Belgian television VRT continues to explore the possibilities of remote production with concert coverage. To carry it out, he relied on the Monarch Edge from Matrox.

The impact of Covid-19 made VRT will rethink their direct workflows. To adapt to the new situation, the broadcaster began a series of simulations to test remote production equipment and, ultimately, find new ways to share its stories.

VRT decided to use the pair of encoders and decoders Monarch Edge of Matrox for several of these coverages. The initial test consisted of broadcasting a concert from Ancienne Belgique, a contemporary music venue located in the historic center of Brussels.

Signals from two SDI cameras were input to the Monarch Edge 4:2:2 10-bit encoding device. In parallel, a stereo mix was sent from the sound desk using the encoder's balanced audio input. The solution transported these sources using the streaming protocol SRT at 1080i and 20 Mbps over the public Internet. The images arrived at VRT's production control room, also located in Brussels; being received by the Monarch decoding device. The decoded signals were sent as SDI and with embedded audio to the live production environment, where producers cut between the two cameras and added graphics.

New solutions for streaming

From the live production environment, two SDI video signals were fed into a second Monarch Edge encoder. One of these signals was a produced program signal that served as a return channel, while the other was a multiviewer composed of raw A and B camera signals.

The Monarch EDGE encoder transported these signals over the public Internet to Ancienne Belgique, again at 1080i and 20 Mbps. Back at Ancienne Belgique, another Edge decoded the two return signals, which could be viewed from several monitors in the room.

According to Floris Daelemans, production innovation researcher at VRT's Video Snackbar, the Monarch EDGE encoder and decoder pair were "exactly what the network needed" to deliver multi-camera video during its testing: "Matrox Monarch Edge has proven to be indispensable for our remote production testing. The combination of SRT connectivity and ultra-low-latency, lossless video encoding makes Monarch Edge a powerful tool that has enabled our live media production team to conduct testing with ease.”