BOTHELL, Wash.—The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), the Video Services Forum (VSF), the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will hold the first official Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX) Product and Certification Event in January 2026.

The event, Jan. 19-23, 2026, at the EBU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, will give manufacturers the chance to complete formal certification of products built to the IPMX set of specifications for professional media over IP. Certified products will qualify to carry IPMX branding, indicating they are compliant with a verified set of transport and interoperability requirements, AIMS said.

The event in Geneva is the culmination of a series of technical sessions, plug fests and test-suite development activities overseen by AIMS, VSF and AMWA to establish a basis for certification.

“We’re deeply proud and excited to host this event along with our partners from VSF, AMWA, and EBU,” said Sam Recine, IPMX Pro AV Working Group chair at AIMS. “Certification is an essential step for any open standard that promises interoperability across vendors. This event is where IPMX moves from theory into practice. The products tested in Geneva will be the first to demonstrate verified compliance with the IPMX specifications.”

IPMX is a set of open standards and specifications designed to bring SMPTE ST 2110-based media transport and NMOS-based control to a broader range of markets, including Pro AV, live events, corporate media and education. IPMX adds essential features tailored for Pro AV workflows, including support for compressed video, simplified system timing, HDCP and system profiles to make deployment more practical and scalable, AIMS said.

More information is available on the AIMS website.

BOTHELL, Wash.—The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and the Video Services Forum (VSF) have released the full schedule for the IP Showcase on the Water presentation, taking place at IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

The one-day Sept. 14 event will be held on canal cruise boats launched from Strandzuid, near the convention center. Complimentary registration is now open to reserve a seat for any of the six one-hour cruises. Each cruise will accommodate up to 35 attendees and feature two 20-minute sessions from industry experts, for a total of 12 presentations. IP Showcase partners are also sponsoring the Flint Green Line, an industry initiative aimed at promoting more sustainable travel to IBC, the group said.

Top speakers from Appear, Alpha, Netgear, DirectOut, Nextera Video, Simplexity, Matrox Video, intoPIX, Lawo, Dolby Laboratories, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and Grass Valley will present.

The lineup includes:

• Session 1—Hybrid Live Production Workflows and Real-World ST 2110 Deployments.
• Session 2—IP Infrastructure for IPMX and ST 2110 Networks and PKI and TLS in IPMX and NMOS.
• Session 3—NMOS-Based Systems and the Evolution of NMOS for ST 2110 and IPMX.
• Session 4—Interoperability and Video Profiles and Codec Options in IPMX.
• Session 5—Aligning Flows and Channels and Real-World Dynamic Video and Audio Metadata Deployments.
• Session 6—The Dynamic Media Facility and Media eXchange Layer (MXL).

“At IBC2025, the IP Showcase on the Water gives attendees a front-row seat to the evolution of IP media workflows,” Andrew Starks, AIMS board member and director of product management at Macnica, said. “This year’s presentations highlight key trends shaping the future of our industry—from the growing impact of the dynamic media facility to the continued advancement of IPMX and NMOS. It’s an opportunity to see how open standards are delivering on their promise of greater interoperability, scalability, and long-term flexibility across broadcast and Pro AV environments.”

Boats will depart on the hour from Strandzuid, located near RAI Amsterdam at Europaplein 22, 1078 GZ Amsterdam.

AIMS, AMWA and the VSF are also sponsoring the Flint Green Line to IBC2025. Setting out from London’s St. Pancras Station on Thursday, Sept. 11, the Green Line offers IBC attendees a low-carbon direct route to Amsterdam.

Attendees can register for the IP Showcase on the Water here.

The current IP Showcase on the Water presentation schedule is available here.

More information on the Flint Green Line to IBC2025 is available here.

BOTHELL, Wash.—The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and the Video Services Forum (VSF) will once again present the IP Showcase in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center during the 2025 NAB Show, April 5-9.

The IP Showcase will focus on the convergence of broadcast and Pro AV technologies, with the IPMX open-interoperability framework for AV-over-IP taking center stage.

“The 2025 NAB Show marks a pivotal moment in the convergence of broadcast and Pro AV, and the IP Showcase will be instrumental in educating attendees on how IPMX is bridging the technological gap between these industries,” said Andrew Starks, a member of the AIMS board of directors and director of product management for Macnica.

“As broadcasters and AV professionals increasingly rely on shared IP-based infrastructures, IPMX provides an open-standards-based technology that enables seamless interoperability, high performance and scalability across diverse applications. With NAB’s growing focus on Pro AV, this year’s show offers the perfect platform to demonstrate how IPMX is driving innovation, breaking down barriers, and unifying the way we create, distribute and experience content. It’s going to be an amazing show, and we can’t wait to see everybody there.”

A core component of the IP Showcase will be the IP Showcase Theater where industry professionals will be giving presentations on a wide range of topics. Taking place on the Tech Chat Stage in the West Hall, the IP Showcase will feature 16 presentations.

Topics will include a roadmap presentation for IPMX, which outlines key milestones, including the first product validation tests scheduled for Q3 2025, the control plane and the relationship between IPMX and AES67 and SMPTE 2110. Other topics to be explored include dynamic media facilities and cloud integration, live production, timing and synchronization and security in IP-based workflows, as well as case studies on media organization and facilities that have shifted to IP.

The IP Showcase will also feature an IPMX demo space in booth W2843, across the aisle from the Tech Chat Stage, where attendees will see live demonstrations of IPMX-ready products, including an NMOS controller and multiviewer and integrations with existing AV-over-IP technology.

A meeting space will be available in room W317 where training, standards-related meetings and other IPMX demonstrations will take place.

Visit the IPMX demo space in 2025 NAB Show booth W2843.

Visit the IP Showcase in the West Hall across from the IPMX demo space.

Visit the training space in Meeting Room W317.

More information is available on the AIMS, AMWA and VSF websites as well as the IP Showcase website.

Collaboration hasn’t always been a familiar currency in broadcast and pro-AV technology. The inherent competitiveness of such a forward-looking business has frequently meant that vendors and service providers have felt obliged to seek commercial advantage over common ground. But the challenges of moving successfully into the networked media era were so substantial that it’s arguable a sea-change was always destined to occur.

In fact, there are abundant examples of effective collaboration from the last decade or so as IP-based infrastructures have become more prevalent. An important contributory factor here is that broadcast and pro-AV have gradually converged, with an increasing crossover between the technologies and solutions being employed. 

But there are also plenty of industry-changing developments that would not have been possible without meaningful partnership. The AES67 audio interoperability standard and SMPTE ST 2110 media transport standards suite are two prominent examples, and the same applies to AMWA (Advanced Media Workflow Association) and its Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS).

An initiative that both synthesises existing specifications and standards, and expands upon them with extra features and functionality, NMOS draws on work from other well-established technology organisations, namely: the aforementioned SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), EBU (European Broadcasting Union), AES (Audio Engineering Society) and VSF (Video Services Forum).

In this article we’ll speak to a leading broadcaster and two prominent vendors to find out why they opted to collaborate so openly and contribute their thoughts and ideas to a set of specifications with the potential to benefit not just them, but the industry as a whole.

‘Building a Community’
Like all of the organizations featured here, the BBC has been involved in the development of NMOS since the project’s early days. Peter Brightwell is Lead Engineer at BBC Research and Development, heading up the corporation’s applied research on infrastructure for live video, as well as being a frequent contributor to industry work on interoperability and the transition to hybrid and cloud-based production. He has very good reason to recall the date of the first workshop of the AMWA Networked Media Incubator that went on to inform so many of the developments subsequently encompassed by NMOS.

“It was on Jan. 11 2016, the day after David Bowie died,” he says, although fortunately this sad event did not prove to be portentous for the incubator’s prospects. “In many ways, it was still early days for IP networked media—this was prior to the publication of ST 2110—although within BBC R&D we had already done quite a lot of work, including a show demo at the Commonwealth Games in 2014.”

Nonetheless, it was clear that a collegiate approach to something as monumental as the transition from SDI to IP was always going to be on the cards. Moreover, as time has gone by and the structures underpinning the various working and review groups have solidified, it’s a process that has become increasingly invaluable. "As much as anything else, it's about building a community and getting that cross-fertilisation of ideas. Having different groups coming together, sharing ideas, and realising that the way one group has done something could be useful over here, and so on,” suggests Brightwell.

Presently, there is what Brightwell terms a “two-phase approach” to specification activity. Phase one involves a “fairly light-touch, informal approach to get ideas about what we might want to do next. Using the incubator structure, we schedule informal calls for people who want to work together on a particular problem. They can then discuss the issue and ultimately put together a proposal for an actual specification activity. Once that is in place it can move into the second phase, which is formal agile specification activity incorporating more formal oversight.” As might be expected, regular calls between participants are deemed essential to maintaining progress in both phases.

Whilst a great deal of work is done remotely, physical workshops provide a welcome opportunity to brainstorm in person and strengthen relationships, and Brightwell estimates there have been a dozen of them—in locations as various as London, Montreal and Wuppertal—over the past eight years.

These gatherings can be especially useful in fine-tuning the agenda for a new specification “to focus on the areas that will be most beneficial to the people who are actively engaged. It also provides a space not just for discussion, but for people to demonstrate new ideas and features, so it’s really important on several levels.”

‘A Very Effective Mechanism’
The agility of the NMOS specification structure is also a recurring motif for Jed Deame, who is the founder and CEO of Nextera Video, a leading supplier of IP cores for video-over-IP. 

“We’re a leading provider of NMOS software, and we’ve been doing this for seven or eight years—from before the stage where any of the specs had been ratified,” he explains, adding that the company also provides a full OEM solution for adding ST 2110 to new or existing products. “Our mission in life is essentially to help manufacturers add 2110 and NMOS to their products quickly and easily, enabling them to accelerate development and time to market of their own solutions.”

It was in the late 2010s that Deame first began to take an interest in the NMOS project, having encountered difficulties in moving video packets between 2110 devices. 

“The amount of typing you had to do—answering questions like ‘what’s your port?’ and ‘what’s your video format?’—was immense, which also meant the level of frustration was pretty significant,” he recalls. “But then somebody said that once we have NMOS, all of this typing will go away and it’s going to be a ‘one-button-click’ operation. And that’s really the beauty of NMOS: it brings the simplicity and familiarity of cross-point routing to the IP world, whilst also taking it a step further with the addition of the NMOS registry, which provides plug and play discovery of all devices on the network.”

But it was once he started to attend NMOS ‘interop sessions’ and gain an awareness of the streamlined documentation and publication processes that the full value of the project became apparent. 

“It was all structured intentionally so there was a very agile mechanism for developing the specs,” observes Deame. “Each part was published to the web as soon as it had been discussed and received some initial approval. It wasn’t the longer, six-month-type cycle where you send everything out and wait for feedback from the industry.”

By contrast, the NMOS approach made "for a very iterative process. For example, with IS-04, which is the Discovery and Registration Specification, we were able to get a reference code to multiple vendors, have them review it, and then very quickly and efficiently put a basic set of specifications in place.” 

Deame is sure this phased approach also makes it easier for manufacturers to feel more positive about implementation: “When we eventually publish the final versions, as opposed to the drafts, it isn’t a case of ‘good luck, this should now work.’ Instead, it is more like ‘this has been fully interop tested by multiple vendors and is good to go.’ So that created a lot of confidence for manufacturers to adopt NMOS and build products against the specs because they knew they had already been thoroughly tested.”

Meanwhile, the Nextera commercial NMOS solution continues to evolve; currently, the company’s R&D team is working to add IS-11, which ensures Stream Compatibility Management by reporting supported AV formats to the controller, and IS-13, which facilitates easy identification of nodes and devices through Annotation & Labelling. 

Explaining the benefit of the Nextera solution over open-source code, Deame notes: “While it may be appealing to have a ‘free’ solution, it does require manufacturers to dedicate significant engineering resources to fully understand the code so they can integrate it with their products and maintain and evolve it without being dependent on the open-source developers outside of their control. The Nextera solution is turn-key, particularly when pre-integrated with our ST 2110 and/or IPMX FPGA IP Cores. There is no code to integrate; it works out of the box. We also provide direct, prioritised 24/7 support in case issues arise in development or in the field to ensure customer satisfaction.”

All of which serves to reconfirm Deame’s assertion that his company’s mission is to help manufacturers quickly and easily add NMOS to their own products—thereby freeing them up to “focus their internal resources on their own unique differentiators”.

‘A Community-Driven Forum’
Sony’s association with AMWA long precedes the development of NMOS, stretching back to the early 2010s and the publication of the AS-11 family of specifications devised to help media organizations migrate from linear to file-based workflows. But it was the arrival of IP as a serious force in the industry that led to the company having notable input to the NMOS specs.

Peter Sykes is Strategic Technology Development Manager at Sony Europe. “With the growing interest in the use of IP within live broadcast and media infrastructures from the mid-2010s onwards, Sony started to actively contribute to the development of the NMOS specifications (initially IS-04, IS-05 and IS-06) and hosted an AMWA NMOS interoperability workshop at its Basingstoke facility,” he says. “This was followed by Sony becoming a Principal member of AMWA in 2017.”

Sykes implies that AMWA’s worldwide membership drawn from media companies and their suppliers has provided a foundation for the for the “collaborative spirit” that has propelled NMOS to its current status.

“There are many cases that could be highlighted, but a specific example of the fostering of more open collaboration was the establishment of the AMWA User Group consisting of broadcasters and systems integrators,” he says. “The User Group meets regularly and feeds information into the technical workgroups to identify areas that need changes or additions to make their workflows work better for them. Recently, the User Group asked for better labelling of resources in NMOS and this was addressed by the working groups, including through the publication of BCP-002-02 to ensure manufacturers use IS-04 tags in a consistent way to define manufacturer, product name, serial number, etc, of a media node.”

Another example of partnership, and one in which Sony played a leading role, was the development of the NMOS controller specification and test suite.

“These improved the guidance and testing available to help ensure that controllers are compliant with the NMOS specifications, which in turn helped to ensure better interoperability between solutions from different vendors," Sykes said. "The activity group included several end-users and vendors working collaboratively, and led to a new test badge for controllers at JT-NM Tested events.”

With media technology continuing to evolve at a remarkable rate, the impulse to collaborate in order to successfully address common challenges will remain undimmed. Citing the recent accelerated adoption of cloud, IP, remote and distributed production, Sykes says that technology leaders “face the often-difficult task of evolving and adapting their technical infrastructures to allow real-world business and production requirements to be met. [Therefore] an open, collaborative approach as identified is required, and this is where the NMOS project is set to continue to play a major role.”

Like the other contributors to this article, Sykes believes that effective collaboration and a forward-looking ethos will ensure the NMOS project remains relevant: “Identifying new areas where NMOS can be applied, continuing to gather and address workflow requirements from end-users, and continuing to communicate the benefits and widespread adoption of NMOS are all key to success.”

The Joint Task Force on Networked Media (JT-NM) said it will enhance its JT-NM tested program, a standards testing effort that when validated will authorize vendors to display badges at their 2020 NAB Show booths attesting to their implementations of parts of SMPTE ST 2110, AMWA NMOS specifications and the JT-NM TR-1001-1.

The Joint Task Force will publish testing criteria. Vendors will perform testing at their own facilities. Standards validation of vendor test results will be confirmed at a testing event scheduled for the week of March 16, the task force said.

Overall testing results will be published in a catalog. Past catalogs are available online.

This round will include testing of broadcast controllers and registries. All vendors producing equipment using relevant portions of the standards to be tested are welcome to participate in the tested program, the task force said.

Participation in past events is not a prerequisite for participation in the program for the 2020 NAB Show.

The Joint Task Force is a consortium of industry organizations, including the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and the Video Services Forum (VSF).

More information about the testing and standards validation program is available by emailing Bob Ruhl. 

Given the effect and pervasiveness of IT in our personal and professional lives, it is encouraging to see that the media and entertainment industry’s transition to All-IP has steadily gathered pace. IP is an enabling technology and our industry’s adapting its use to our needs, responding to a number of challenges across contribution, live production and playout that we see today.

Consider the hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of pieces of equipment that are used by broadcasters worldwide. Then, offset that against other operators who are developing the use of IT protocols, interfaces and infrastructure—and therefore utilizing the maturity of perhaps a trillion pieces of equipment—and you can see there are better economies of scale that exist elsewhere. By moving away from broadcast-industry-specific architectures towards IP-based infrastructure and solutions, the media and entertainment industry can become more agile in their operations.

In other words, the reasons to migrate are compelling and have gone beyond applications such as OTT or real-time internet video delivery, and are now permeating across mission-critical use cases at fledgling start-ups and major international broadcasters.

For many, the catalyst has been the demand from consumers for content everywhere, which has ramped up increasingly in the last 10 years as we move towards a mobile-first environment. Bringing new OTT services to market has been a natural fit for IP transformation. Launching a new service on a software- and IP-centric infrastructure, supported by the cloud and microservices, now means a lead time measured in weeks and months and not years, as would be the case in the legacy world.

FLEXIBILITY AND ELASTICITY

In the application-specific integrated circuit history of broadcast technologies, when capacity is reached, it requires a major CAPEX expenditure and significant hardware upgrade. In a software and IP-centric world, capacity, performance and connectivity can all scale quickly, based on demand and then contract if required. This flexibility and elasticity matches the current commercial imperatives that broadcasters face when expanding their content reach, while at the same time, helps to build new revenue models that take advantage of IP-compatible concepts such as targeted and dynamic advertising and OTT-based subscription models.

At the closest edge of the wave, real innovators are adopting fully software-defined media workflows. This starts at the production level from studio cameras, to editing suites and progresses through content processing and distribution. The rationale is simple. Creating, managing and distributing content across a real-time, IP-based workflow with software as the controlling entity is much easier than the myriad transitional steps that are limited by custom-built hardware solutions. Today’s broadcasters can handle more content across a wider range of distribution paths with fewer staff than ever before.

Capacity and resiliency is assured through the ability to spin up more virtualized capacity—not just across media processing but for critical connectivity requirements through network function virtualizations. The transition to All-IP has also gone beyond arcane technical requirements. According to the highly regarded Devoncroft 2019 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), IP networking and content delivery is the top-ranked trend this year—overtaking multiplatform content, which has ranked as “the most commercially important trend to the global broadcast and media industry” for the last decade.

EMERGING STANDARDS

Although closely linked, the move to All-IP has been accelerated by the emergence of several industry standards that have concentrated the minds of key broadcasters and provided a viable route for adoption that overcomes the inherent risk aversion of the industry. The arrival of Society of Motion Picture Television Engineers (SMPTE) ST 2110 Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks suite of standards and SMPTE ST 2059 Broadcast Profile for IEEE Precision Time Protocol standards specify the carriage, synchronization and description of the spate of real-time delivery of elementary essence streams over IP. This is for the purpose of live production and encompasses video, audio, timecode, sync and ancillary data. Media and entertainment’s future lies in technology stacks, where the enormous amounts of data can be stored in the cloud. Through standards such as SMPTE ST 2110 and ST 2059, broadcasters now have not only a standardized route towards replacing serial digital interface (SDI) with IP, but also the opportunity to usher in a new wave of applications based on, and leveraged off, IT protocols and infrastructure.

For broadcasters, a key advantage is no longer requiring two separate operations (staffing and infrastructure) for managing intra-facility traffic—SDI switches for professional media and IP/Ethernet switches for general data. Instead, facilities can rely on one common data center infrastructure. Alongside SMPTE standards, AMWA Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS) define IP-based media network control and management, such as Discovery & Registration, Device Connection Management, Network Control and Interoperable Security. The transition to All-IP for the media and entertainment industry was envisioned and championed by the Joint Task Force on Networked Media (JT-NM), which is comprised of four major industry organizations: Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), European Broadcasting Union (EBU), SMPTE and Video Services Forum (VSF).

As more vendors support these and other standards and specifications, the rate of customer adoption grows in tandem, leading to a virtuous circle which will help to alleviate one of the major obstacles in the way of All-IP transition—skills shortage. This is not insurmountable, and the broadcast industry has a good track record of attracting the best and the brightest—and the move to All-IP will hopefully mirror earlier technology shifts such as the move from analog to SDI in the late 1980’s.

SUMMARY

An All-IP broadcaster is no longer prefixed by the word “future”—it is a reality for the here and now. As legacy hardware reaches end-of-life, and as on-premises data centers run out of capacity, the logical upgrade path will be a move toward All-IP infrastructure and protocols, software defined media processing, virtualization and cloud-native solutions. The transition happening in the broadcast space in many ways mirrors the shift that telecoms providers and financial services organizations have embraced over the last decade, while the combination of commercial drivers and standards-based technologies is making the transition a far more orderly progression for the media and entertainment industry.

For those broadcasters just starting out on the journey, the ability to move through a hybrid adoption process—shifting discreet processes over to All-IP in a staged fashion—is also a compelling option, as is the use of Software-as-a-Service to limit the technical transition to more of a commercial decision. Over the next decade, the notion of a non-IP workflow will stand out as the exception and not the rule. By enabling production and content delivery providers to reduce time-to-market and benefit from more agile development environments, the realization of All-IP will provide the foundation for the media industry’s long-term future.

Matthew Goldman is the senior vice president of technology for MediaKind.

With SDI environments under pressure from the need to support higher resolutions and simultaneous delivery to all platforms, broadcasters and production companies are turning to open standards-based IP as their future-ready infrastructure. Not only does IP underpin the smarter workflows needed to meet fast-evolving consumer demands, it also is key in delivering the agility and scalability needed to handle a wide range of applications. From live sports production to fixed facilities, IP infrastructures bring the efficiency and OPEX-based operational models needed to build successful media businesses.

OPEN IP IS CENTRAL TO FUTURE-READY INFRASTRUCTURES

In today’s mediascape, content creators have a growing need for operational and business flexibility and IP allows them to spin up channels and services far more rapidly, providing a level of responsiveness that was previously unavailable.

The work on open standards-based IP interoperability by industry bodies like SMPTE, AIMS and AMWA has gone a long way towards addressing interoperability, price and the need for comparable functionality to SDI environments, contributing to the accelerated deployment of IP-based solutions. New specifications such as JT-NM TR-1001-1 promise to enable much more streamlined and straightforward configuration of SMPTE ST 2110-based systems, making the power of IP more accessible to smaller installations and facilities as well as large ones.

A wide range of products are now available from vendors that offer native IP connectivity—from cameras to production switchers, processing to multiviewers, routers and servers. Broadcasters and media organizations can flexibly select solutions from multiple vendors with the assurance that all products will be compatible with one another.

By deploying open standards-based IP infrastructures, broadcasters, outside broadcast (OB) companies and service providers can deliver the quality of service that clients have come to expect from SDI—with the added benefit of greater scalability and format flexibility. Major OB providers, such as Mobile TV Group (MTVG) have already deployed glass-to-glass open standards-based infrastructures for new trucks and this trend will continue.

THE HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE

Meeting consumer demand for more live content, while budgets remain static, means having to deliver first class content with greater efficiency. The real potential of IP lies in transforming the way production teams work—especially in the live production environment; it can open up smarter ways of working, regardless of where staff are located. Remote/at-home production is just one way that IP can radically shift broadcasters’ approach.

Using IP connections allows cameras and base stations to be separated by very long distances. Once signals are received in the production center, operators can match the cameras using operational control panels (OCPs) and switch the program as they would in a standard live production set-up.

Rather than acting as a like-for-like replacement for SDI, IP opens up new ways of working. Distributed production models, for instance “At-Home” production, allow the cameras to be located at the venue while directors may be on location with the vision mixer, other processing equipment and the rest of the crew in the production studio. IP also makes truly collaborative live production workflows a possibility, allowing production staff to work from any location, even if it’s their home. As smarter, more efficient workflows free staff to focus on higher-impact creative tasks, broadcasters and production companies can leverage the best talent—wherever they are in the world.

As well as bringing the majority of the live sports and event production infrastructure and workflow back to the home studio, this approach allows the same production team and on-screen talent to support multiple, back-to-back games in a day. While the cost savings and ability to ensure consistency across multiple productions is undeniably alluring, the reduction in environmental impact—from sending less kit and crew out on location—is significant and of growing importance to media companies.

THE IP FUTURE IS NOW

Now a maturing technology, price points are coming down and open standards-based IP is no longer a solution reserved for large facilities or premium events with big budgets. A growing number of strong use cases demonstrates that the benefits of IP extend beyond supporting new higher resolutions—without compromising on speed.

The full potential of open standards IP will come to light as it becomes embedded in broadcast and content production infrastructures. Rather than using a new technology to do things in the same way, customers are already beginning to look at how to create new and innovative workflows underpinned by scalable, agile IP infrastructures.

TORONTO, ON–PBS is adopting a technical specification that will help the network standardize on an HD delivery format for contributed content from North American programmers.

The specification, AMWA AS-11 X9: MXF Program Contribution - NABA DPP HD (AVC) was developed by the U.K.-based group DPP in collaboration with the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA) and the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA). The specification belongs to the AS-11 X family of air-ready master formats that define constrained media file formats for the delivery of finished media assets to a broadcaster or publisher.

“The adoption of AMWA AS-11 X9 by PBS is a significant moment for the industry, showing that a collaborative approach is essential to meeting the industry’s developing needs”, says Rowan de Pomerai, DPP Head of Delivery and Growth. “We, at the DPP, along with our colleagues at NABA and AMWA, are working closely with all of our members to ensure that each new specification addresses their business needs effectively.”

[Read: DPP is Ready to Roll]

AMWA AS-11 X9 uses a constrained version of the H.264 codec to offer significant benefits in picture bandwidth and fidelity for program distribution. The specification also supports audio carriage in both PCM and AAC format.

AMWA AS-11 X9 is one of the chosen delivery formats for PBS’s New Media Supply Chain and will be the subject of exhibits and sessions at PBS TechCon, taking place in Las Vegas April 3-5, ahead of the 2019 NAB Show.

“We see AS-11 X9 as a step toward ongoing PBS modernization efforts. The adoption of this specification is a key component to moving PBS away from legacy formats, processes and systems,” says Renard Jenkins, PBS Vice President of Operations, Engineering & Distribution. “The collaborative work of AMWA, DPP and NABA resulted in a format that should gain wide adoption throughout North America. We encourage vendors and broadcasters to consider its usefulness.”

Adoption of AMWA AS-11 X9 by other North American broadcasters is a key goal of this collaboration, alongside implementation by product vendors. In order to support this aim, the DPP Test Lab will launch its AMWA AS-11 X9 compliance testing program this month.

Products that pass the test program will be eligible to apply for a compliance certificate from AMWA, providing buyers and sellers with the confidence that DPP tested tools are technically compliant and interoperable. The DPP, NABA and AMWA will also work with their respective members to facilitate implementation.

“We are delighted that the AMWA AS-11 family continues to grow and show relevance across the globe”, says Brad Gilmer, AMWA Executive Director. “Its support in North America represents a significant step forward and promises to bring important business efficiencies to the media companies that adopt it.”

The DPP and its partners, including AMWA and NABA, continue to extend the AS-11 family. The next addition to the family will provide UHD delivery formats for both the European and North American markets.

LAS VEGAS--This year’s IP Showcase at NAB Show has announced a call for presentations for the event.

The IP Showcase is a joint venture between the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Society of Motion Picture and Technology Engineers (SMPTE), and the Video Services Forum (VSF).

The submission deadline for speaking proposals is Feb. 25. Speaking times are limited during the four-day exhibition; the selection committee is looking for the following types of presentations:

• Tutorial (basic, intermediate, advanced)

• Case study

• Panel discussion

• Market/business case analysis

• Point-of-view/advocacy

• Standards progress/update

Preference will be given to presentations related to the following technology areas on the Joint Task Force on Networked Media (JT-NM) Roadmap:

• AES67

• SMPTE ST 2110 suite of standards for Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks

• AMWA NMOS specifications such as IS-04, IS-05, IS-07, and IS-08

• Timing and synchronization using SMPTE ST 2059-1/2

• JT-NM TR-1001-1 framework for installing, configuring, and interconnecting equipment

More details and the submission form are available at the IP Showcase’s website.

GLENDALE, CA.—National TeleConsultants (NTC) has joined the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), a nonprofit industry group working to foster the adoption of open standards for moving from SDI- to IP-based media networks.

NTC provides strategic technology and operations consulting, engineering design, software development, and systems integration to the media and entertainment industry. Clients rely on NTC's industry expertise to select, customize, develop, and deploy innovative advanced technology solutions. 

AIMS comprises broadcast and media companies and technology suppliers working together to promote industry standards for transmitting video, audio, and ancillary information over IP infrastructure in professional applications, as well as products based on those standards.

"Open standards developed by SMPTE, AES, EBU, and AMWA and promoted by AIMS are an important foundation for the transition to all-IP workflows in television production and distribution," said Ken Long, NTC principal consultant, who led an NTC team that provided systems-integration support for the IP Showcase interoperability demonstration at the 2018 NAB Show and who will represent NTC in the AIMS Technical Working Group. "We believe strongly in the AIMS roadmap, which seeks to tie all those standards together into a single system that benefits all of us."

NTC is expanding its participation in industry-wide activities to accelerate the IP transition.

"We see IP technology as fundamental to our clients' efforts to meet increasing audience expectations for technical quality while improving flexibility and reducing costs," said Laurie Morse, head of corporate strategy at NTC. "That's why we found it so important to be a part of the charge toward an all-IP world."

The Digital Production Partnership (DPP), the media industry’s international business network, has released AMWA AS-11 X1 - MXF Programme Contribution DPP UHD, a new technical specification for broadcasters delivering UHD programming to BBC’s iPlayer platform starting in 2019.

The new standard is based on earlier standard—AMWA AS-11 UK DPP v1.1—which the DPP worked with the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA)—to develop for air-ready masters for all major UK broadcasters. The new update—AMWA AS-11 X1—brings UHD delivery to the AMWA AS-11 family of air-ready master formats. It has been written with the DPP’s international membership in mind and is designed for global implementation.

“The publication of AS-11 X1 is a significant moment for the industry, showing that the DPP and its partners continue to be responsive to the industry’s developing needs”, says Rowan de Pomerai, DPP Head of Delivery and Growth. “UHD is ready to become mainstream and its deployment is often being driven by online and OTT platforms first. We’ve worked closely with our Members to ensure that our new specification meets these needs, as well as those of linear broadcast.”

[Read: New Tech Spec For Broadcast, Online To Power Global Content Exchange Of Media]

The AMWA AS-11 family of specifications define constrained media file formats for the delivery of finished media assets to a broadcaster or publisher. In order to facilitate automated workflows, AS-11 specifications have been developed as block based, machine readable specifications.

“We are delighted to continue our close working relationship with the DPP, providing specialist expertise on the use of technology standards to complement the DPP’s understanding of the business problem.” says Brad Gilmer, Executive Director of the AMWA. “It is very rewarding to see the early work on AS-11 for the UK being used as a basis for broader adoption across the industry.”

AMWA work closely with the DPP Compliance Lab as the sole body to run a compliance testing program for all AMWA AS-11 specifications. The DPP Lab will accept products for AS-11 X1 conformance testing from early November this year.

Products that pass the test program are eligible to apply for a compliance certificate from AMWA, which will provide buyers and sellers with the confidence that DPP tested tools are technically compliant and interoperable.

AMWA AS-11 X1 - MXF Programme Contribution DPP UHD specification is first targeted at UHD deliveries to the BBC iPlayer in 2019. The DPP and its partners, including AMWA and the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), continue to extend the AS-11 family. The next additions to the family will be AMWA AS-11 X8 and X9, which will provide HD delivery formats for the North American market.

AMSTERDAM—The IP Showcase will return to the IBC for the third year in a row, according to several broadcast technical and standards organizations.

The Audio Engineering Society (AES), Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), and Video Services Forum (VSF) will again host the IP Showcase at the annual IBC Show in Amsterdam, Sept. 14-18.

The Showcase, which started out as the “IP Interoperability Zone” at the 2016 IBC Show, will feature vendors and broadcasters who will provide instructional and case-study presentations and an array of IP-based product demonstrations highlighting the benefits of, and momentum behind, the broadcast industry’s move to standards-based IP infrastructure for real-time professional media applications.

[Read: IP Showcase Returns To IBC2017]

Organizers say the event has been instrumental in helping the industry to galvanize behind the standards-based approach to IP. This is the first IBC show since the publication of documents within the SMPTE ST 2110 Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks suite of standards, the foundational standards for essence-based transmission of video, audio, and metadata.

“The broadcast industry reached a crossroads when it faced the choice of pursuing a standards-based approach to IP or pursuing multiple alternatives and directions,” said Brad Gilmer, executive director of the IP Showcase. “Almost unanimously, the industry chose the standards-based approach, uniting behind SMPTE ST 2110/ST 2059, AES67, and AMWA IS-04/IS-05. As we move from watching the progress of the early adopters into seeing how the industry as a whole will move into the IP transition, the IP Showcase is more important than ever.”

The IP Showcase will feature equipment displays and product demonstrations that emphasize everything industry vendors have achieved in support of IP standards and specifications. The displays will showcase the benefits IP can bring to an operation and will comprise equipment from an estimated 50 vendors — one of the most massive assemblies of interoperable IP products ever. Displays will highlight the benefits of IP signal transport and focus on SMPTE ST 2110-10/20/21/30/31/40, the SMPTE ST 2059 Broadcast Profile for IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP), AES67, and AMWA IS-04/IS-05.

The IP Showcase Theatre will provide an education resource of information about the phases of IP adoption. Vendors, broadcasters, service providers, and integrators alike will highlight their solutions to technical challenges related to the transition from SDI to IP. Choosing from a full slate of presentations on IP technology and installations, professionals ranging from broadcast/IT engineers and CEOs to TV producers can learn how to unlock the full potential of using IP for real-time professional media.

The IP Showcase will take place in rooms E106 and E107 at RAI Amsterdam during the show. More information is available at www.ipshowcase.org.

MADISON, WIS—The Advanced Media Workflow Association launches the AMWA Labs initiative. This will complement its existing Networked Media Incubator project.

Initially, AMWA Labs will explore what the group referred to as a “cloud-fit” approach to Networked Media, employing data center and streaming technologies.

It provides a learning opportunity and an unconstrained environment to consider how discovery, transport and compression will work, while taking into consideration security for media content from the beginning and throughout the entire production and distribution process.

The output of this short exploratory project will provide valuable input to the Networked Media Incubator project which concentrates on practical implementations and the development of the Networked Media Open Specifications.

Over the coming weeks, AMWA Labs will share its thinking and request comment from AMWA members via the AMWA Basecamp, in the run-up to NAB 2017.

“Effective communication with both end users and their suppliers are needed to make an activity of this type possible - and that’s one of our strengths.” said Brad Gilmer, AMWA executive director. “Our goal is to further expand the NMOS toolbox to satisfy the rapidly evolving business needs of the media industry.”

The AMWA is a participant in the Joint Task force on Networked Media (JT-NM) and to be working closely with other trade associations to provide a joined-up approach for this technology development.

LONDON—A trio of changes were announced by the Advanced Media Workflow Association for “AS-11, MXF for Contribution” media file format. The new changes include the addition of a UHD version for the U.K. Digital Production Partnership, three new international versions, and migration of specifications to a new rules based format.

AS-11 DPP helps deliver finished programs to media companies within the U.K. With UHD becoming a necessary element of broadcast, a new set of requirements from the DPP has been created as well as the publication of a new specification for the delivery of UHD programs.

AMWA has also created three new specifications for the delivery of finished programs in Nordic countries, Australia and New Zealand. With these new AS-11 specifications, AMWA has unveiled a new naming convention. AS-11 X1 is U.K. DPP UHD; AS-11 X2 is for HD Intra; AS-11 X3 is for HD Long GOP at European frame rates, initially for Nordic countries; AS-11 X4 is for HD Long GOP at U.S. frame rates, initially for Nordic countries; and currently in development is AS-11 X7 for SD D10 for Australia and New Zealand.

Previous AMWA specifications were text based, but these new specifications are being published in a new rules based format. The new specifications are machine readable, based on building blocks or rules for each of the video and audio elements that are then combined into the final specification. Future specifications will be added as necessary, but AMWA’s aim is to minimize the total number when possible.

In addition, AS-11 specifications are now being published on GitHub as code and moved through different maturity levels, going from “works in progress” to “proposed specification” to “specifications.” The new specifications announced above are currently works in progress.

LONDON—With a number of companies and organizations looking to develop a standard for IP-based systems, the Advanced Media Workflow Association launched the first Networked Media Incubator in London on Monday, Jan. 11, with the event running till Friday, Jan. 15. With more than 14 different organizations contributing throughout the week, the goal of the NMI is for companies to come together to help build a framework for IP-based media systems.

Participants work together during the first Networked Media Incubator

Among the participants for this first workshop are Atos, AMWA, Avid, BBC, EBU, Embrionix, Harmonic, InSync Technology, Mellanox Technologies, Nevion, Panasonic, Snell Advanced Media, Streampunk Media and Suitcase TV. There is also a group of participating companies that were not able to be present for Phase 1; those companies include: Aperi, Axon Digital Design, Barco Silex, Cinegy, Dalet, Encompass Digital Media, Ericsson, Evertz, EVS, Fox, Imagine Communications, Lawo Technologies, Matrox, MOG and Telestream.

No date is currently set for Phase 2 of the NMI, but it is currently accepting new participants. To find out more, click here.