V-Nova, AWS Elemental Collaborate on Contribution Via Commercial Internet

(Image credit: V-Nova)

LONDON—V-Nova and Amazon Web Services are collaborating on a contribution solution for sports, entertainment and other content that sidesteps the need for costly leased connections by leveraging SMPTE VC-6 encoding that can achieve a bitrate savings of up to 70% when compared to JPEG 2000, V-Nova said.

By combining V-Nova’s P.Link SMPTE VC-6-based compression with AWS Elemental’s MediaConnect and AWS Direct Connect, it is possible to avoid a costly choice faced when contributing premium sports and entertainment via dark fiber backbones: the expense associated with dedicated connections capable of supporting the bandwidth requirements of low-latency contribution encoders. Similarly, it is no longer necessary to turn to lower-quality, higher-latency encoders to address the problem, V-Nova said.

“The significant cost of dedicated leased connectivity is one of a number of key barriers to the rollout of more live UHD channels and richer remote-production setups,” said Guido Meardi, CEO and co-founder, V-Nova.

“The combination of SMPTE VC-6 encoding and the on-demand flexibility of AWS increases the feasibility of these services and help to satisfy the ever-growing consumer appetite for premium video experiences,” he added.

P.Link offers Intra-frame low latencies and quality equivalent to a JPEG 2000 alternative at as much as a 70% bitrate savings. Testing has revealed excellent low-latency transport of feeds, including 4Kp60 at less than 200Mbps between London and Sydney, the company said.

Relying on AWS for transport enables mission-critical one-to-one or one-to-many links that are easy to set up, cost-effective and available on-demand. Additionally, SMPTE VC-6 encoding also reduces processing power, thus enabling higher-density and lower operating costs, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website

Phil Kurz

Phil Kurz is a contributing editor to TV Tech. He has written about TV and video technology for more than 30 years and served as editor of three leading industry magazines. He earned a Bachelor of Journalism and a Master’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.