TORONTO—The ASPEN Community has announced that broadcast equipment provider Ikegami is the latest company to join the coalition. Featuring more than 30 manufacturers and end users, the ASPEN Community is a group that adopts the ASPEN framework for building IP facilities.

Adaptive Sample Picture Encapsulation (ASPEN) is a standards-based, open format that moves uncompressed UHD, 3G, HD and SD signals over MPEG-2 transport streams. ASPEN provides a framework for transporting separated video, audio and metadata as independent IP multicast streams.

The ASPEN standard was recently published by SMPTE.

Ikegami joins companies like Broadcast Pix, Edit Share, Evertz, For-A, Matrox, Neutrik, Ross Video, Sony and Vizrt as part of the ASPEN Community.

BURLINGTON, ONT.—Evertz is a well-known provider of broadcast technology and prominent exhibitor at the annual NAB Show. With the introduction of its ASPEN IP framework in 2015, the company has taken a leadership role in advancing IP standards for broadcasters. In advance of next week’s show in Las Vegas, TV Technology recently spoke with Romolo Magarelli, CEO of Evertz to discuss the show, the evolution and latest developments for ASPEN, and what IP technology holds for the future of broadcasting.

TV TECHNOLOGY:Can you briefly describe your background and your path to leadership at Evertz?

Romolo Magarelli

ROMOLO MAGARELLI: I joined Evertz almost 20 years ago from Leitch where I was the manager of hardware development. There was a small company of, I think, 14-15 people just probably 50 kilometers from where Leitch was that did timecode equipment and key code equipment. Mr. Evertz was retiring so a few of us purchased the company and built it up to where it is now. I think our staff is up to over 1,400 worldwide.

TVT:What will Evertz focus on at the NAB Show this year?

MAGARELLI: I’ll start with a quick history of the last four years because I think it's important. I think really the last four years have been a subtle, but purposeful march towards where we are today. At the 2013 NAB Show, we highlighted our whole booth having a transfer core based on 10 GB switched Ethernet through our smaller port fabrics—32 and 64 port fabric switches. In 2014, we introduced the world's largest switch fabric, a 46 TB 2,304 port 10-gig switch, EXE-VSR, with that being in control and all the appropriate gateways and monitoring tools with it, that's after we supplied it to the big “green field” production sports center in the northeast. Last year, we showed an expanded SDVN (software-defined video network) reach with an IP capability across all our product lines, whether it be play-out, replay, transcoding, contribution encoding, or transport, and even live production. We demonstrated all this with a bunch of our operational tools and monitoring tools and at that point we had already delivered over 15 real “at-scale” projects at that point.

This year we’ll show our second and third generation, some of our SDVN technologies and of course an ecosystem that expands beyond just us. You'll see that we're highlighting our standard independent support for our customers. In terms of encapsulation formats, we're going to show that we're supporting everything from SMPTE 2022, ASPEN of course, TR-03 a, and even [NewTek] NDI.

There's four areas that we're focusing on at the show: We're highlighting our strength and virtualization, whether it be on-premise, in a cloud or in a hybrid environment. We’ll also be reaffirming our leadership position in the whole IP and equipment space. We’re also showing a real broad range of 4K products and tools for UHD, and we're bringing big data analytics, where you’ll be able to monitor and do a better job of operating these large, complex systems that are floating out there now. Things are getting so complicated that we can't monitor them and determine where the issues are without actually taking some of these big data concepts and analytics to our industry.

We're introducing a big data analytics tool set called “InSITE” that provides deep visibility for large complex systems that involves any third-party devices or equipment and systems. One of the things we've noticed in some of the big IP installs, is that even though our user interfaces abstract all the detail of the IP technology,—there's a lot of complexity going on, particularly in large multivendor systems. I think different tool sets are needed for our customers to operate these things efficiently. InSITE is a tool set that from unstructured data collection provides the customer with system visibility of their distributed complex system and will provide needed metrics, baseline identification, and most importantly direction for root cause determination..

TVT:Since the past year since you introduced ASPEN, you've been announcing new companies that have been joined the ASPEN umbrella. Recently you announced NewTek NDI, which some in the industry have viewed as a competitor to ASPEN. How important it is to bring NewTek NDI into the Aspen fold? (Editor’s note: Evertz announced supportfor NewTek NDI after this interview was conducted).

MAGARELLI: NewTek is a great company that deals with a totally different segment of the market and I think NDI has its place and it fits well for their particular market segment. They deemed it important to join ASPEN, and ASPEN is an open community so it's not like the community is going to say no to anybody who wants to join. I’m happy that they're joining, but we're really showing that there's going to be some simple bridges between the two from one space to the other, from the super high-end professional production works segment to the segment that they operate in.

TVT:What's your assessment to the reaction to ASPEN so far?

MAGARELLI: I think it's real exciting to see how many customers we've built up with these IP systems and our technology. When we first introduced the EXE-IP switches over 3 years ago, I think most customers—and most of the vendors for sure—thought we were crazy. Today I hear that others are developing some of their own switching solutions built in to their products, it’s all good. However, in reality we had developed solutions and technology that our customers needed. These customers didn't switch to IP for IP's sake. We're solving business problems for our customers for real business needs that the industry as a whole was probably four years away from solving.

Fast forward to today, we have over 50 large scale IP systems installed, and they're deployed across the globe. The key to these systems is that they're deployed at scale, tested, vetted, and executed. SMPTE’s publishing of ASPEN was vital for us. When you look at it as of today, the only other vetted approach was SMPTE 2022-6 as a standard, and that doesn't fit the bill for production.

The ASPEN community has about 40 members, it's large and growing. At the NAB Show there's going to be a separate booth Inter-op area, independent of Evertz.

TVT:What does SMPTE’s announcement that they have published ASPEN mean for its future?

MAGARELLI: The world is definitely going to be bigger than strictly Evertz. We had to make sure that ASPEN is understood as an open format and having it published just reaffirms that. I think there's a lot of marketing fluff suggesting that ASPEN was a closed and proprietary format , and blah, blah, blah, which was the furthest from the truth. I think this just slams that door shut. With respect to standardization, we support the work of VSF and SMPTE too. Evertz will support any standard or format that will allow our customers to execute and compete in the ever changing world! In fact we are demonstrating TR-03 at NAB this year in several products to show this. As far as TR-03 and it’s standardization efforts, we have recently provided some input to SMPTE providing a TR-03 profile that allows for simple harmonization between TR-03/ASPEN. Our customers will not wait , they need to deploy. Whether it be ASPEN, SMPTE2022, TR-03 once vetted, we are indifferent, however, it would be a great benefit to the industry to work the harmonization profile into the standard when there still is a chance. SMPTE is a due process organization, therefore I’m confident the correct decisions will be made for the industry.

TVT:You're not a member of AIMS (Alliance for IP Media Solutions). Would you join if asked?

MAGARELLI: I think if this “harmonization approach” is accepted in principle then yeah, I think we would. I think AIMS is more of a marketing and lobbying kind of community, but it's something we'd consider. If we're doing the right thing for the industry and making sure that there's a real simple unification between the two standards then yes, why wouldn't we?

TVT:Are you saying that AIMS is more hype than substance?

MAGARELLI: No, [but] AIMS is not a standards body and they're not producing standards; they're just marketing the standards. I think if they start playing with the technical stuff then it makes, basically what the VSF has done, moot. I think VSF is doing the technical stuff. When you're comparing ASPEN you've got to compare it to TR-03, and if we can harmonize some profiles between the two.

TVT: One of your competitors has been talking for several years now about the move away from dedicated boxes and dedicated equipment. Do you believe that we will eventually move away from dedicated equipment to all software-defined products?

MAGARELLI: I think it's going to be a hybrid for quite some time, but certainly there's a move, there's no question. If you look at our development over the last six to eight years, there has been a big shift. I'd say about 70 percent of our R&D is already spent in software development. Our goal is to develop technology and IP that we can target to anything, whether it be running on a blade server, dedicated hardware in a virtualized environment and not. I think there's going to be a hybrid of these environments for the foreseeable future, but definitely a lot more software-based solutions. In fact, we have a great Facility of the Future demonstration at NAB which highlights just this. It will show both on- and off- premise virtualized services that run on blade servers and as “on demand” instantiated hardware.

Evertz will be in Booth N1502 in the North Hall of the LVCC. 

TORONTO—ASPEN, an open framework developed by Evertz, that enables independent flows for video, audio, and metadata in an IP-based broadcast media facility, has been published by the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE). The ASPEN Community submitted the Adaptive Sample Picture Encapsulation as a Registered Disclosure Document (RDD 37) and then was passed by the Technology Committee Ballot with all affirmative votes, according to the ASPEN Community press release.

ASPEN is designed to expand MPEG-2 transport stream standard to include uncompressed UHD/3G/HD/SD video. The framework also utilizes open standards for transporting audio (SMPTE ST 302) and metadata (SMPTE ST 2038). It also uses SMPTE 2022-2 to encapsulate the transport streams into IP.

“The publication of the SMPTE RDD-37 reinforces our commitment to supporting open-formats in the IP transition,” said Mo Goyal, co-chair of the APSEN Community and director of product marketing for Evertz. “The publication of RDD-37 also enables the ASPEN Community to promote interoperability, and encourages others to participate, to provide the industry a comprehensive open format solution.”

Much of the ASPEN Community, which is a group of companies that support and utilize the ASPEN framework, plan to showcase how the framework works with their products at the 2016 NAB Show. Members of the ASPEN Community include AJA, Broadcast Pix, EditShare, Evertz, Ross Video, Tektronix, TVU Networks and Vizrt.

See Also:
Dec. 17, 2015
"All About ASPEN"
In our continuing series of articles examining the broadcast industry’s transition to IP, this week Broadcast Engineering Extra spoke with Mo Goyal, director of product marketing for Evertz, to discuss the latest progress on ASPEN, the company’s IP transport protocol which it introduced at the 2015 NAB Show and how broadcasters are managing the overall transition to IP.

3482TXE

BURLINGTON, ONTARIO—Based on the 3480TXE, Evertz has announced the launch of the 3482TXE software defined, hardware accelerated encoder. This new encoder adds support for ASPEN inputs/outputs and 4K HEVC encoding.

The Adaptive Sample Picture Encapsulation format provides a framework for transporting separated video, audio and metadata as independent IP multicast streams. With an all software stack with select hardware acceleration, the 3482TXE supports the ASPEN format and provides high video quality and density without compromising flexibility, according to Evertz.

TORONTO—Phabrix is the latest company to become a part of the ASPEN Community, a coalition who are working on the ASPEN Framework for building IP facilities.

Adaptive Sample Picture ENcapsulation is an open format that aims to meet real-world requirements of an IP-centric facility while leveraging MPEG2-TS standards. ASPEN provides a framework for transporting separated video, audio and metadata as independent IP multicast streams. The ASPEN Community, founded at IBC 2015, promotes the benefit of the ASPEN Framework through the integration and interoperability of the open format.

Phabrix joins a host of other companies as part of the ASPEN Community, including AJA, Broadcast Pix, ChyronHego, EditShare, Evertz, For-A, Hitachi, Leader Electronics, Matrox, NBC Sports Group, NEP, Neutrik, Ross Video, Sony, Time Warner Cable SportsNet, and Vizrt.

NEW YORK—The broadcast industry was built on standards, but in recent years that has changed due in part to the acceleration in digital technologies. Many vendors have opted to not wait for standards to be developed, resulting in incompatible technologies that require a workaround.

These concerns have led a group of broadcast and media industry suppliers, including Grass Valley, Imagine Communications, Lawo, Snell Advanced Media and Nevion to form the Alliance for IP Media Solutions. The new, independent trade association was founded to foster the adoption of industry standards that would help facilitate the broadcast and media industry’s transition from SDI to IP. The group’s efforts will be focused on promoting the adoption, standardization, development and refinement of open protocols for media over IP, with an initial emphasis on VSF TR-03 and TR-04, SMPTE 2022- 6 and AES67.

PROMOTE, NOT DEVELOP
As part of AIMS’ main charter, the coalition will promote an open standard in the marketplace for the interoperable exchange of uncompressed audio, video and ancillary data streams over an IP network infrastructure. However, AIMS is not in itself a new standards body, but rather a trade association that would work closely with the Video Services Forum (VSF), a 17-year old international association comprised of 74 service providers, users and manufacturers focused on interoperability, quality metrics and education for video networking technologies. VSF led the effort to develop the recently approved TR-3 video over IP standard (see “New Standard for Studio Video Over IP Approved,” November, 2015).

“We aren’t going to be engaged in the development of standards and technologies,” said Steve Reynolds, CTO of Imagine Communications in Dallas. “The companies that make up this trade association have already been in the development of the technical standards that will help in this migration towards video over IP.”

As a result of this trade alliance, the partner companies will help take the standards to an open and transparent market and further ensure interoperability with products from different vendors. AIMS members support the move to open standards and the association is being supported by standards bodies including SMPTE and the EBU.

AIMS has said that it will endorse the work of the VSF and further noted that it will continue to lend support in the development of a standard approach to IP. To date more than 30 broadcast equipment manufacturers are actively testing and validating the VSF’s approach today.

Tim Felstead, head of product marketing at Snell Advanced MediaSPEED TO MARKET
Part of the reasoning behind AIMS has been that in the past it was all too common for SMPTE to approve a standard, but then vendors would “tweak” it to put their respective stamp on it. That era could be over as these competing companies are seeking to ensure a single standard as the industry moves from SDI to IP.

“It is a dangerous time for the industry as there could be multiple standards that lack interoperability due to different platforms,” warned Mike Cronk, senior vice president of strategic marketing for Grass Valley. “But it isn’t that the industry has moved too slowly, it is because the industry could have competing standards. That would be a ‘loselose’ for the broadcast industry.”

There is also the fact that as technology advances it is relatively easy to introduce a new standard, and the temptation do so could have dire consequences—because the best standard may not be the best.

“In the past it required a huge investment and competitors dropped off quickly,” said Tim Felstead, head of product marketing at Snell Advanced Media. “As a result, the deepest pockets won out.”

As the industry makes its transition to encoding video in data steams this has enabled the potential for competing standards to be developed.

“No one will realize these benefits of scale however if a standard is considered,” added Felstead. “It isn’t a reflection of an industry that is moving too slowly but suggests that the environment has changed dramatically. The AIMS group is here to illustrate that there are a lot of manufacturers trying to do the right thing for the industry and for our customers at large. Proprietary technology by a manufacturer isn’t the right thing to do.”

ENSURING INTEROPERABILITY
The key objective behind AIMS is thus to ensure interoperability of products and devices between manufacturers as the broadcast industry moves from SDI to IP.

“This is specifically to avoid the standards wars that we’ve enjoyed in the industry going back to tape machines,” said Felstead. “We’d like it if there was no competitive advantage in any one company’s hands. There is a lot of experimentation happening and that is a good thing in terms of how companies are testing systems right now.”

AIMS could ensure that a single unifying path to IP could be coming soon.

“This is also a way to show the market that a single standard may not be far off,” Cronk said. “This is the time to get the message to the industry to come together in 2016 and work towards something that can replace SDI.”

At the same time the different manufacturers believe that by creating a standard it will allow that interoperability while still ensuring healthy competition that brings choice to broadcasters.

“We need to have a common network, and this allows companies to compete, offer new services and grow the industry as a whole,” Cronk said.

EXISTING COMPETITION
However, while AIMS is about ensuring that the industry does work towards a standard, it is still about allowing the best technology to win out, including several new standards launched in 2015 by two broadcast vendors: Newtek NDI and Evertz ASPEN. Both companies tout their standards as open, with Evertz promoting ASPEN as a way to address the requirements of an IP-centric facility while also leveraging MPEG-2-transport standards, providing a framework for transporting separate video, audio, and metadata as independent IP multicast streams. The Burlington, Ontario- based company recently launched ASPEN Community as a hub for the growing number of broadcast vendors that have adopted the protocol.

Mo Goyal, director of product marketing for Evertz, described the formation of AIMS as “interesting” but said they were not approached to join the group, adding that “It’s a duplication of the VSF effort.”

Larry Thaler, president of media strategy firm Positive Flux, and a veteran broadcaster himself lamented the current scenario.

“Those who fail to learn from the past are apt to repeat their mistakes,” he said. “I fear we may be headed down the same long and winding road that audio over IP travelled until recent progress on AES- 67. Multiple competing video over IP standards would be a shame and the industry should encourage all the vendors to find a way to work together.”

Thaler added that the broadcast industry is facing a parallel to how audio standards in IP evolved 20 years ago.

“There was a war between the standards and they didn’t play well together,” he said. “The audio industry served as the perfect backdrop; vendors built systems that kept customers in an ecosystem but by not cooperating there was the disadvantage that customers saw that in those companies that did cooperate, they [the customer] had more choice. We don’t have the time for this repeat so it is urgent that the industry move toward a single standard.”

All three standards are built around openness, however, something that could play well for AIMS.

“This is going to allow the development of standards in an open and transparent market,” said Reynolds. “We want to ensure transparency and interoperability for our customer base; for TV producers and broadcasters to ensure that they have a multitude of solutions that provide for interoperability.”

As it is a trade body formed to support a standard, rather than develop one, the companies within AIMS agree that there is still the potential for the industry to see shakeups as well.

“It would be so much better that everyone could agree that there was significant overlap and they could adapt around one standard,” said Thaler.

Felstead adds, “if the market decides that it wants to adopt another standard who are we to argue?”

Also see...
January 12, 2016
“Video-Over-IP: AIMS, ASPEN Compared”
While both organizations support the idea that the future of video transport will use IP like protocols for switching and delivery, they differ in how they manage the important requirement of video synchronization.

December 17, 2015
“All About ASPEN”
Broadcast Engineering Extra spoke with Mo Goyal, director of product marketing for Evertz, to discuss the latest progress on ASPEN, the company’s IP transport protocol which it introduced at the 2015 NAB Show and how broadcasters are managing the overall transition to IP.

December 15, 2015
“ASPEN Framework From Evertz and Sony Deployed by NBC Sports”
A recent collaboration on an IP production framework from Evertz and Sony that is based on ASPEN technology will be deployed by NBC Sports starting in February 2016, the two companies announced.

December 14, 2015
“Broadcast Vendors Form IP Standards Group”
AIM’s mandate designed to promote and bring IP solutions to market that offer complete interoperability, are based on open standards, and integrate seamlessly into media workflow environments to foster industry innovation and efficiency.

November 6, 2015
“Evertz Launches Aspen Community Website”
ASPEN stands for Adaptive Sample Picture ENcapsulation and was developed as an open framework to build IP facilities.

LOS ANGELES— Happy New Year 2016! Well, I had thought to start the new year with a fresh topic, maybe something non-controversial such as high dynamic range or 8KTV. But as 2015 was wrapping up, new developments in IP transport of live uncompressed (or mezzanine compressed) video have compelled me to continue on with this theme of video-over-IP.

In my last few musings, I compared the real-time transport of video streams using IP standards, such as SMPTE 2022, versus the conventional use of serial digital interface over coax. In conclusion, while SDI is still relevant and has recently been upgraded to 12 Gbps rates, IP transport of video is an upcoming method proposed by many of the major equipment vendors. (See “12 Gb SDI Cost, Cables and Capabilities,” Dec. 9, 2015.)

In late 2015, there were announcements from two organizations promoting video-over-IP. One is called AIMS (Alliance for IP Media Solutions) and the other is called ASPEN (Adaptive Sample Picture Encapsulation). AIMS is supported by Imagine Communications, Grass Valley (Belden), Cisco, Arista Networks, Snell Advanced Media, EVS Broadcast among others. ASPEN is led by Evertz with support from For-A, Ross, Abekas, AJA Video Systems, ChryonHego, Hitachi, Sony, Tektronix, VizRT among others.

While both organizations support the idea that the future of video transport will use IP-like protocols for switching and delivery, they differ in how they manage the important requirement of video synchronization. AIMS builds on SMPTE 2022 (which, if you recall, came from the Video Services Forum) as a method to use standard IP packet distribution for live video. The core timing is derived from the use of IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol to generate RTP with RTMP timestamps. While SMPTE 2022-6 specifies the packetization of the whole SDI signal into packets, there are ongoing efforts in SMPTE to standardize the individual packetization of video, audio and associated data (VSF has standardized this approach in TR-04).

ASPEN builds on a proprietary method developed by Evertz, based on MPEG-2 Systems transport over IP. Currently documented via RDD 37 (Registered Disclosure Document) as well as SMPTE ST 302 and 2038. MPEG-2 Systems (ISO 13818-1) synchronize video and audio streams via an embedded system clock (27 MHz) using a 90 kHz counter as part of an adaptation header.

Both proposed standards also include mezzanine compression to reduce internal bandwidth. AIMS uses TICO, a wavelet-based intraframe compression method (undergoing SMPTE standardization). ASPEN uses JPEG 2000, an ISO standard (15444-1). JPEG 2000 has a range of compression ratios from “mathematically lossless” 2:1, to a more aggressive visually lossless compression of 4:1 or higher.

What are the important considerations? First, SDI is still a valid approach, one which is standardized, well understood and is routinely used for video production. The second consideration is that each of the video-over-IP approaches uses different methods to encapsulate video, audio and data and to provide proper synchronization. Finally, video-over-IP methods have been demonstrated as workable and have been adopted by several notable video production facilities.

Will these two approaches be interoperable? Lets hope so, if only via the brute force method of converting to SDI and then re-packetizing. Clever solutions should evolve that can enable the interchange between AIMS and ASPEN encapsulated video and audio signals.

There is also uncertainty regarding the use of commercial off-the-shelf IP switches for transport of live video and audio signals. Which IP switches will support which protocol? And there are other considerations regarding IP distribution of video and audio streams such as routing optimization algorithms, directory services (what’s in which packet) and latency/bandwidth management.

So our wish for 2016? Let’s hope that all the promises of AIMS and ASPEN come to fruition.

Jim DeFilippis is CEO of TMS Consulting, Inc., in Los Angeles. See more of his contributions in the Author’s Archive.

Corridenda: Steve Reynolds, ​chief technology officer of Imagine Communications, has pointed out that AIMS is focused on un-compressed video and audio transport and routing, and while they have may eventually support compressed video on their roadmap, they have not selected TICO or any other mezzanine video compression method. Further the transport of audio is standardized using AES 67 with the use of SMPTE 2059 (IEEE 1588 PTP) as the common synchronization method. The primary documentation for AIMS encapsulation methodology is found in VSF TR-03 (component RFC 4175) and TR-04 (SMPTE 2022-6).

Mo Goyal, director of product marketing for Evertz, speaking on behalf of ASPEN, would like to clarify that ASPEN defines the mapping of uncompressed UHD/3G/HD/SD over MPEG-2 Transport Stream (ISO/IEC 13818-2) while SMPTE 2022-2 provides the mapping of TS to IP. Further, at this time ASPEN has not documented nor selected JPEG 2000 or any other mezzanine compression technology at this time for use of transport video over IP. ~ Jim D.

BURLINGTON, ONT.—In our continuing series of articles examining the broadcast industry’s transition to IP, this week Broadcast Engineering Extra spoke with Mo Goyal, director of product marketing for Evertz, to discuss the latest progress on ASPEN, the company’s IP transport protocol which it introduced at the 2015 NAB Show and how broadcasters are managing the overall transition to IP.

BROADCAST ENGINEERING EXTRA: What was the impetus for ASPEN? What prompted Evertz to develop this?

Mo Goyal

GOYAL: About three years ago, when we started looking at what the next trend was going to be, we looked at IP and 10Gig interfacing. Then we said that there was going to be this need for IP, 10Gig interfacing and such. As part of our road map for IP, we said, "OK, well if everything goes to IP and a 10Gig infrastructure, we need to look at production environments. As we worked with a key customer like ESPN, the environment that they were looking at was not just a simple SDI to IP mapping, there were some other things that needed to happen.

One of the things was the use of J2K within the facility, but then there was also the need to separate video, audio, and data. That's when we started looking at the foundations of ASPEN, where leveraging transport stream infrastructure—in the ecosystem that's available—to deliver separate video, audio, and data flows.

BEE: Why did you decide to base it on MPEG-2 Transport Streams?

GOYAL: MPEG-2 transport streams is a known entity that has existed for years, and will continue to exist. We use it to bring video/audio/data signals into a facility and to distribute video signals. There is a number of standards around MPEG-2 TS (IEC 13818-1, SMPTE ST 302 for audio, SMPTE ST 2038 for ANC data, and SMPTE 2022-2 for TS over IP). There is an inherent experience and knowledge base on transport streams. The one missing component was the ability to handle uncompressed video; that's really what ASPEN adds. It creates a framework to now carry uncompressed video over the TS. Because we have the available bandwidth, with 10Gig interfacing, it seemed to be the cleanest way to make that transition from SDI to IP.

BEE: Have you submitted ASPEN to SMPTE for review?

GOYAL: Yes. It's actually submitted as an RDD [Registered Disclosure Document]. It's been submitted to SMPTE and it's actually going through the balloting as we speak. It's going through the process of review by other members in SMPTE.

That's actually what the RDD process is and that's really where a number of other vendors have used in the past. It’s a way to get a proposal through a process and get it through a validation within SMPTE. It's an expedited process, without the full standard process, which could take a year or two but it still goes through a very similar process and validation.

It's not a rubber stamp; it's reviewed by members, voted, comments are provided, which are adopted. It then becomes a public document within the SMPTE space which means that anybody can implement it if they want and there are details on how to implement it. It's not proprietary.

BEE: Do you have any customers yet?

GOYAL: Yes. We have a number of customers: Game Creek, NEP Group, Time Warner Cable Sports and Discovery Communications are the current end users. (Editor’s note: NBC Sports announcedits deployment of ASPEN a day after this interview was conducted.) The ASPEN community has a number of vendors who are already on the committee. We're about to add a few others in the next week or two.

BEE: Were they existing Evertz customers that basically just moved over to ASPEN, basically?

GOYAL: Yes and no. Yes, they are adopting ASPEN because they see immediate benefits of IP and ASPEN.

BEE: ASPEN is basically all software, right?

GOYAL: It's an encapsulation format for uncompress video over MPEG-2 TS. It can be done in hardware, software or firmware. Today, it's implemented on Evertz hardware. We have a number of other partners that are part of the ASPEN community that are implementing to different form factors. ChyronHego and Vizrt are implementing it on their platform, whether it's software or through hardware means. We also have other vendors like Tektronix and PacketStorm that have implemented it, again, as combination of hardware and software.

BEE: What do you say to those customers who say they would rather wait for an industry agreed-upon standard?

GOYAL: There are customers that are trying to identify what the right choice is. To them, we say, "ASPEN has a great deal of traction. There's a growing community of 25-plus companies.” It’s being deployed today. We've got 20-plus installs of the technology over the last year and a half so they've been on air.

It's technology that is proven and is being used. ASPEN utilizes industry agreed on standards (IEC 13818-1, SMPTE ST 302 for audio, SMPTE ST 2038 for ANC data, and SMPTE 2022-2 for TS over IP) and completes the missing piece for uncompressed video over TS. To wait for that “ideal solution,” that could still be a couple years. There's still a lot of things that are being evaluated, whereas, at least with ASPEN, you're using a proven and common technology that works today that is open that people are using, versus wait, wait, wait.

If you wait, business conditions may change. It's one of those things where you have to make a decision. We believe strongly that IP is the right path, and that ASPEN is the most practical, most available technology that allows you to utilize IP today and future-proof yourself.

BEE: How does Aspen differ from other broadcast-based IP formats that are already available?

GOYAL: First and foremost you've got SMPTE 2022-6, which is the most common cited standard that's out there; it's been around for awhile. It's ideal for transport of video from point A to point B. What it's essentially doing is taking SDI, mapping it to an IP payload, and carrying it across. You'll get the video/audio data bundled into the SDI payload, and it gets sent across.

That’s great for transport applications. However, when you're into the production environment—which is really where IP is pushing towards for live events and such—your requirements are a little bit different. If I look at an SDI facility today, there is the need for audio embedders, de-embedders, an audio layer to separate those from the video. We can choose audio from one side and video from another and then merge them at the end. You need to have that flexibility in the production environment for video, audio, and even metadata layers being separated.

If we stick with the SMPTE 2022-6 we still need that existing infrastructure or that external infrastructure to separate it from the SDI payloads, which means that you really haven't leveraged IP; you’ve just made it a transport format to move from point A to point B. You still need to take it back SDI, then de-embed it or separate the video from audio in order to get the data that you want. From a practicality perspective, it's not ideal for the production environments.

Then you have Sony's Network Media Interface (NMI), which is essentially an adaptation of 2022-6, where it's still under single multicast but within that multicast, they separated the video, audio, and data. From the camera source, to server source, to the switchers, that information's already separated so that you don't need to have that external gear. It's a step forward from 2022-6 and it is designed for the live environment.

ASPEN builds upon that philosophy but basically separates video, audio, and data into separate streams and makes them a separate multicast so that I have complete flexibility of choosing through the switch fabric which stream I want—a video stream from one source, audio stream from another, and data from another source. Then I can send them to the destination. That's the flexibility that the production environment is used to. That's basically going back to the analog days in which you had a video level, audio level, and a data level.

BEE: What was your reaction to this week’s announcement of the formation of the Alliance for IP Media Solutions?

GOYAL: It was interesting. We know that it's really the community of vendors that are also looking at TR-03—which is the exercise that's being done through VSF (Video Services Forum) right now—which we're a party of as well. That's a long-term project that's starting to figure out how to sell the solution. It is interesting why the group was formed as it appears to mirror efforts that exist. Which, again, it's a VSF effort that has a number of participants on it, including us.

BEE: Will Evertz join this alliance?

GOYAL: That's something that we're looking at, but this is the relatively new information that they had officially formed an alliance.

BEE: Were you approached to join?

GOYAL: We were not. That's why we see it as an interesting exercise. It's a duplication of the VSF effort. We'll see as it develops, what impact they bring and what they're proposing. There's a great deal of similarities between the efforts in TR-03 and ASPEN. It's all being taken from an IP-only approach. We think there are significant benefits of taking the transport stream approach simply because it's a known quantity, a known infrastructure that's existed in the broadcast space for years, and it's quickly adaptable. We're still seeing what other additional benefits can be seen from 03 that can be offered above and beyond what ASPEN offers today.

BEE: One of the members of the alliance released a report this week that predicted it would take 10 years for broadcasters to complete the transition to IP. Do you agree with that assessment?

GOYAL: To be completely over IT, yeah. I think it's a transition that's happening right now. I think that we will start to see a significant high percentage of it within the next five years—I think 10 years is a long view.

BEE: You also have to define what “transition” means.

GOYAL: Exactly. I think right now, when we look at our current customer base, we see people are already making that transition to IP. When we look at the major players, they've already started that transition. It's really when the rest of the industry falls in suit when they're ready, I guess, and it makes financial sense for them.

BEE: What does ASPEN stand for?

GOYAL: Adaptive Sample Picture Encapsulation

TORONTO—A recent collaboration on an IP production framework from Evertz and Sony that is based on ASPEN technology will be deployed by NBC Sports starting in February 2016, the two companies announced. The framework will provide separated video, audio and metadata IP flows for NBC Sports’ HD productions.

With an IP facility based on ASPEN, NBC Sports can house video, audio and metadata to be on individual IP multicast streams, offering control over sending specific video and audio signals to particular destinations without embedding or de-embedding devices. ASPEN also maximizes bandwidth utilization on 10 GbE interfaces.

The core of the facility is Evertz’ Software Defined Video Networking system, including the EXE40-VSR high capacity switch, 570IPG media gateways and 3067VIP10G multiviewers. Sony contributed IP enabled products.

NBC Sports, Evertz and Sony are all members of the ASPEN Community, which intends to provide an open framework for building IP-based media facilities.

Evertz introduced ASPEN, which stands for “Adaptive Sample Picture ENcapsulation,” last April at the NAB Show. The concept was rolled out as a “robust transport format for uncompressed video on its 570IPG Media IP Gateway module,” and was described as a “key format within Evertz' Software Defined Video Networking solution.” By September, ASPEN had been submitted to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers for publication as a Registered Disclosure Document (RDD 37). Collaborators included Abekas, ChryonHego, Discovery Communications, Game Creek Video, Hitachi Kokusai, NEP, PacketStorm, Ross Video, Sony, Tektronix, Time Warner Cable SportsNet and Vizrt.

The ASPEN Website was launched last month, and Macnica Americas, Matrox Video, i-Movix and For-A have since joined.

YOKOHAMA, JAPAN—Test and measurement equipment provider Leader Electronics has announced that its future products will support the ASPEN protocol. By adhering to these protocols, the company ensures that its hardware and software systems conform to the IP-based data-exchange formats increasingly being used in broadcast television, radio and audio industries.

The Advanced Sample Picture ENcapsulation protocol was developed by a number of broadcast organizations to meet real-world requirements of an IP-centric facility while implementing proven MPEG-2 transport streams. It offers a format for encapsulating uncompressed UHD/3G/HD/SD over MPEG-2 transport streams. When combined with existing SMPTE standards, ASPEN provides broadcasters with a flexible method of transporting video, audio and data over scalable IP networks.