IRVINE, Calif.—Teradek will launch its new Prism 877 4K HEVC encoder/decoder cards at the IBC 2024, Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

The cards allow users to switch between encoding and decoding modes on- demand, enabling them to customize their workflows on an event-by-event basis. With an optional license for simultaneous encode and decode processing, the 877 card can effectively double Prism Rack’s working capacity from nine to 18 bi-directional channels, Teradek said.

“The Prism 877 cards are a first in our segment of the market,” said Tyler Riddle, live streaming product manager at Teradek. “Teradek is one of the few companies offering a dedicated hardware device capable of seamless encode and decode switching, simplifying your setup by eliminating the need for single-purpose cards.”

The company also will demonstrate the Prism Mobile 5G and Ranger, live video solutions that have been streamlining mobile production workflows across the globe, at IBC 2024.

Launched earlier this year, Prism Mobile 5G is a video encoder and cellular distribution solution for sports broadcasters, news teams and live production crews. It provides the best possible cellular connectivity over public and private networks. The lightweight, compact solution allows camera operators to remain agile for longer while capturing action, the company said.

Since being introduced, Prism Mobile 5G has streamed content for NBA and NFL teams, NBC Universal and Fox. The solution seamlessly streams across remote terrain without a single drop, it said.

Ranger, a true zero-delay wireless video system for live events and broadcast, has been used for everything from commencement ceremonies to major league sports, delivering visually lossless IMAG over the newly opened and uncongested 6GHz frequencies. Available in the Mk II and Micro form factors, Ranger is designed to accommodate productions of any size and complexity. Both systems will be available for hands-on demos at IBC 2024. 

See Teradek at IBC 2024 Stand 13.A05.

More information is available on the company’s website.

BOSTON—Access Advance has announced that HEVC Advance Patent Pool Licensors have filed patent infringement proceedings against Roku for infringing patents essential to the HEVC/H.265 digital video coding standard (HEVC). 

According to the complaints, Roku offers video streaming devices which incorporate HEVC technology. 

Advance said that despite its long-term efforts to resolve patent infringements in good faith, Roku remained unwilling to voluntarily legalize its sales of HEVC capable products. In response, Advance Licensors filed suits that seek past royalties from Roku and an injunction against continuing infringement.

This news follows actions taken earlier this year in which Advance Licensors filed patent infringement proceedings against HP Inc. and ASUSTeK Computer Inc. for also infringing patents essential to the HEVC digital video coding standard.

The HEVC Advance Patent Pool allows companies to license patents essential to the HEVC Standard, including HEVC decoders and HEVC encoders for streaming on mobile and other connected devices, 4K televisions, and digital storage devices. 

Beginning in 2015, the pool has grown to 43 Licensors and over 23,000 patents, representing approximately 75-80% of all available HEVC-essential patents. The pool has attracted over 320 Licensees, including Dell, Google, LG, Microsoft, OPPO, Huawei, Panasonic, Sony, and Lenovo.

Access Advance LLC is an independent licensing administrator company formed to lead the development, administration, and management of patent pools for licensing essential patents of the most important standards-based video codec technologies. 

WASHINGTON D.C.—The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) is working on adding the Versatile Video Coding (VVC)  format as an option to High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) used by the ATSC 3.0 standard, it said today.

“ATSC 3.0 was designed from the ground up from a technical point of view to be evolvable,” said ATSC president Madeleine Noland during a March 13 phone interview. “The idea is that if down the road VVC becomes very prevalent in many, many devices, they [broadcasters] wouldn’t stop using HEVC for their content, but they might start putting out some new types of content with VVC.”

At the moment, VVC is being evaluated as an ATSC Candidate Standard that could be added to the full standard, joining HEVC as an encoding option. As a candidate, a standard is put out to ATSC members and the industry at large for comment. It is difficult to predict exactly when the membership might vote to make VVC part of the standard, but the candidate standard period is typically several months, not a year, she said.

“The Candidate Standard period lasts, basically, as long as the technology group thinks is necessary,” said Noland.

To place VVC into perspective, the codec produces an 84% savings in the number of bits needed to compress 1080p HD compared to the bits required by MPEG-2, the compression scheme used for ATSC 1.0. HEVC saves 75% compared to MPEG-2 for the same content, said Noland.

VVC bit savings could one day be used to make 8K delivery a reality for broadcasters. The codec’s efficiency could also free up additional bits for distribution of more channels as well as delivery of new 3.0 services, such as datacasting. “To be clear, there’s the possibility of 8K using HEVC. 8K is part of the HEVC standard that’s part of ATSC 3, but it’s a different flavor,” said Noland. “There’s a lot of facets to what it means to have 8K.”

The addition of VVC to the ATSC 3.0 standard brings the Next-Gen TV standard into alignment with other developments at home and around the world. 

“It’s very important for ATSC to stay ahead of the game. We sort of try to place our bets on the right horses, so to speak,” said Noland. “Looking at VVC and what's going on with it in the world today, that definitely seems like something ATSC should invest time into, and certainly we are excited to do that.”

“There are many other standards organizations that already have incorporated VVC. So, you could almost argue that ATSC was a late comer, so to speak. But the ARIB in Japan, DVB in Europe, CTA WAVE, DASH-IF, SBTVD Forum in Brazil and SCTE have all incorporated VVC into their standards. Again, some of this is more future-thinking, and some of this is applicable in the here and now. That's very much a market-by-market scenario.”

More information is available here. 

TEL AVIV, Israel—TAG Video Systems and Beamr Imaging have formed a technology partnership that will see TAG integrating the Beamr 5 HEVC encoder into its Realtime Media Performance platform.

The joint effort offers TAG users worldwide a workflow that optimizes the bandwidth required to transport UHD. It also provides them with support for end-to-end High Dynamic Range (HDR) content delivery, TAG said.

"Partnering with TAG, an industry leader in IP workflow monitoring and analytics, underscores the strength and innovation of our patented video compression technology," said Beamr CEO Sharon Carmel. "With Beamr's consistent achievement of up to 30% savings across varied content and support for key codecs like AVC and HEVC, this collaboration sets a new benchmark for video encoding, optimization and analysis, enhancing both our capabilities in delivering exceptional value to the industry."

By incorporating Beamr 5 HEVC encoder into TAG’s Realtime Media Performance platform, users benefit from the visual experience that comes from comprehensive integrated support for HDR and the elevated video quality of UHD and HDR without requiring additional, costly bandwidth, it said.

“TAG always seeks to provide our customers with tools to drive their business operations to the next level and solutions that maximize their resources and operating budgets,” said Kevin Joyce, TAG’s Zero Friction Officer. “Our partnership with Beamr fits perfectly into this strategy. We can now offer a better, more efficient way to get our customers to an end-to-end HDR workflow which also leads to expanded TAG services such as more visually vibrant Under Monitor Displays (UMDs) and alarms. This collaboration opens doors for greater, more inventive support and we’re delighted to do it with Beamr.”

More information is available on the TAG Video Systems and Beamr websites.

MOUNT OLIVE, N.J.—Vislink is demonstrating AeroLink, the latest addition to its next-generation Airborne Video Downlink System (AVDS), for the first time to the public at the ongoing HAI HELI-EXPO 2022 in Dallas, March 7-10.

“We are excited to announce the debut of AeroLink,” said Mickey Miller, Vislink CEO. “We designed it from the ground up to deliver the immediate, clear and reliable video communications that are essential requirements of public safety organizations, military and government agencies and news and sports broadcasters. AeroLink is truly a first-of-its-kind solution to provide outstanding video quality, secure, full-duplex, real-time connectivity, extensive operating ranges and flexible support for COFDM, MESH and bonded cellular/5G networks.”

AeroLink is an aircraft-based unit that offering an IP-based, fully bi-directional workflow and tight integration with other elements of the Vislink AVDS, including the company’s Quantum Receiver. It is a lightweight, full-featured 4K or 2 x 1080p 60 HEVC digital dual-encoding video downlink solution built to address the demanding requirements of airborne operations, the company said.

HEVC compression efficiency enables superior quality video with reduced bandwidth for seamless, extended geographical coverage. The dual-encoding system allows the transmission of multiple video services over the same signal. It provides bi-directional data transmission and includes an optional MANET (MESH) component as a node in an ad-hoc system, it said. 

AeroLink incorporates a 5G transceiver that may be used as part of the 5G public infrastructure to ensure low-latency, broadcast-quality transmissions. AeroLink includes key security features, such as advanced AES encryption and FIPS 140-2, and complies with all aircraft regulations, Vislink said.

“The combination of secure COFDM with public 5G or FirstNet connectivity enables the greatest agility for all first responders, newsgathering organizations and defense and first responder agencies. We are confident that it will set the standard in air-to-ground communications in demanding operating environments,” said Miller.

More information is available on the company’s website.

See Vislink at HAI HELI-EXPO 2022 booth 10160.

MADRID—As the push for 8K content continues, Spanish-based SAPEC has been testing UHD content compression techniques for encoding 8K resolution content with HEVC standards and existing hardware.

With a resolution of 7680x4320, 8K has four-times the number of pixels that 4K content does. While there are already UHD 8K TVs on the market, there are still challenges when dealing with 8K content throughout the entire transmission chain. To help with this, SAPEC is focusing on the compression of 8K content.

SAPEC believes that HEVC (H.265) compression is currently the best available option to compress 8K video. According to its first tests, the bitrate needed for 8K transmission when using HEVC is slightly more than double than that of 4K. This could exceed the maximum conditions of some live broadcast media infrastructures. SAPEC found that these required bitrate values can be reduced by applying different compression techniques offline.

SAPEC also looked at live or real-time compression of 8K video, where the compression speed must be equal to or greater than the rate of images per second. To address these challenges, SAPEC used spatial and temporal parallelization techniques offered by the HEVC standard.

Spatial parallelization divides the image into smaller fragments so they are processed in parallel, with the results of each fragment later received to form a single output stream. 

Temporal parallelization executes the work of compression of images that do not have dependencies between them at the same time. These sequences can also be divided into fragments corresponding to one or more group of pictures.

SAPEC has detailed the results of its tests in a technical article. 

DALLAS—Velos Media has announced that Technicolor has become a licensee of its HEVC patent portfolio. This portfolio provides licensees with patents for high-efficiency video coding from BlackBerry, Ericsson, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp and Sony.

The HEVC patents available in the portfolio work for TVs, digital video cameras and set-top boxes. They represent around 40% of the adopted contributions to the Main and Extension profiles of the HEVC standard, according to Velos.

Technicolor is now one of more than 35 licensees on the Velos Media platform. These licensees can now enable customers to enjoy richer video experiences, as well as other categories of HEVC capable products like smartphones, computers and cameras, per Velos.

For more information, visit www.velosmedia.com.  

The founder of the most widely used digital video standard of the 20th century says the group that developed it has closed up shop, adding that the standard is officially “dead,” killed off by the International Organization for Standardization, which he derided as a “feudal organization.”

Leonardo Chiariglione, founder of the Moving Pictures Experts Group, resigned from the organization—which he had led since founding the group in 1988—in June and made his thoughts known in a blog titled “A Future Without MPEG” last week. Among the reasons, Chiariglione cited was the way the ISO changed its methods in treating the standard, which is responsible for the widespread adoption of digital video over the past several decades. 

“What used to be the reference standards group driving close to 2% of the Gross World Product, i.e. $1.5 trillion, and affecting the daily lives of billions of people is now reduced to splinters” he said. “The radical innovation of putting in one committee all media components, copied by most standards bodies and companies, is gone. Now, ISO media standards are treated separately. Godspeed, when someone will need to put the pieces together.”

This doesn’t mean that MPEG no longer works, but rather further development of the standard is effectively dead. 

Chiariglione says that while holders of MPEG-2 IP (which became the de facto digital video standard for DTV worldwide) were “responsible” industry participants, holders of patents for succeeding standards—particularly HEVC—were not. 

“MPEG did not live happily after MPEG-2 because it saw that most MPEG-2 IP holders held IP on the following (video) coding standards and had difficulty adjusting to the internet video distribution paradigm,” he said. “Adding to that, the number of IP holders on HEVC has skyrocketed to ~45, 2/3 of which belong to one of the three existing patent pools and 1/3 belong to none.

“It should be no surprise that the HEVC standard has some use in broadcasting, but its use on the web is estimated to be at 12%,” he continued. “If one considers that broadcasting is a rich but declining market and video on the web is constantly rising, one understands that ISO standards will be gradually relegated to a more and more marginal market.”

Chiariglione added that efforts to evolve the licensing regime to a “royalty free” arrangement based on various flavors of MPEG standards following MPEG-2 came up short, again blaming the ISO.

“A company should not be forced to give away a patent for free, but ... ISO rules allow a company to prevent a no-license/free license standard from happening by simply making a cautionary ‘I may have patents that I am willing to license’ declaration,” he said.

Chiariglione also cites the new landscape that has taken hold over the past decade with new proprietary video codecs developed by Silicon Valley, like AV1, which was developed by Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix as part of the “Alliance for Open Media.”

When it announced the AV1 standard in 2015, AOM said that AV1 would have a royalty-free ecosystem; patent review process and legal defense fund; cutting edge technologies and collaborative open source development, Chiariglione said.

While he described MPEG-4 AVC as a very successful “generic” standard because it is used for broadcasting and online streaming as well, he had harsh words for HEVC.

“After seven years, MPEG-H HEVC patent holders could not get their acts together and propose a decently unified licence,” he said. “HEVC is used in broadcasting, however, use for streaming is limited at best.”

He says the death of MPEG was inevitable partly because of the influx of  competing standards from computer interests. 

“MPEG, with all its influence on the industry, was like a free city in the Middle Ages, ready to fall under the attack of powerful armies,” he said.

As for the future, he has hope for the recently adopted VVC standard, “if they get their act together and propose a decent licensing scheme,” but he fears that broken industry promises and ISO policies will bog things down. 

His blog is available here: https://blog.chiariglione.org/a-future-without-mpeg/

BERLIN— Fraunhofer HHI has announced the approval of  the H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard, which it says reduces bandwidth needed for high resolution (4K and up) video by up to 50% compared to its predecessor, HEVC.

A result of collaboration among the world’s largest tech companies—Apple, Ericsson, Intel, Huawei, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Sony—boasts improved compression without compromising visual quality, according to Fraunhofer HHI. The new standard can provide efficient transmission and storage of all video resolutions from SD to HD up to 4K and 8K, while also supporting HDR video and omnidirectional 360-degree video.

“Because of the quantum leap in coding efficiency offered by H.266/VVC, the use of video will increase further worldwide,” said Benjamin Bross, head of the Video Coding Systems group at Fraunhofer HHI. “Moreover, the increased versatility of H.266/VVC makes its use more attractive for a broader range of applications related to the transmission and storage of video.”

Fraunhofer also announced plans to establish a uniform and transparent licensing model based on the FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) principle for the use of standard essential patents related to H.266/VVC. This has led to the founding of the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF), which includes more than 30 companies and organizations.

The new chips to use H.266/VVC are currently being designed, and Fraunhofer HHI is expected to publish the first software (for both encoder and decoder) to support H.266/VVC, by the fall according to Thomas Schierl, head of Video Coding and Analytics department at Fraunhofer HHI.

For more information, visit www.fraunhofer.de.  

LiveU has increased its collaboration with leading European partners on 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects, testing and validating content contribution and media production use cases over advanced 5G Release 16 testbeds. The projects’ goals are to provide the broadcast community and other verticals with insights into 5G performance in real-world scenarios. The projects are funded by Horizon 2020, the biggest EU Research and Innovation program.

LiveU is a technology and use case partner in 5G Tours and in 5G Solutions, where it also serves as the leader of the Leaving Lab project media working group. Both projects test and analyze 5G performance KPIs, including media use cases related to LiveU 5G bonding technology. Participants include some of the largest cellular operators and cellular equipment manufacturers, broadcasters, non-media verticals partners, as well as AI and other technology partners and researchers and academics.

The core 5G technologies being validated include network slicing, New Radio (NR), low latency, edge/cloud computing, SDN/VNF, service orchestration and more, bringing the 5G vision closer to realization. As part of these tests, LiveU’s field units are being used in live events, for example, the Turin festival where orchestral music in auditorium will be synchronized live with street players (5G-Tours) and the Patras festival where multiple cameras will be transmitted from a crowded street (5G-Solutions).

Baruch Altman, AVP Technologies and Projects, LiveU, said, “We’re delighted to be collaborating with some of the leading players in the European cellular and media ecosystem in these important 5G projects, contributing our industry-leading technology and real-world cellular and broadcast experience. Emerging 5G networks offer exciting opportunities for smart cellular bonding. The lessons learned from these 5G validation trials will be used in our products and bring immediate advantages to our customers. There’s no doubt that cellular bonding will continue to play an important role in live broadcasts as the wider deployment of 5G networks results in greater commercial use.”

The 5G-Solutions ICT-19 RIA project “5G Solutions for European Citizens” aims to prove and validate that 5G provides prominent industry verticals with ubiquitous access to a wide range of forward-looking services with orders of magnitude of improvement over 4G, thus bringing the 5G vision closer to realization. The project provides validation of more than 140 KPIs for 20 innovative and heterogeneous use cases that require 5G performance capabilities and that are expected to have a high future commercialization potential. (EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program grant no. 856691).

The 5G-Tours ICT-19 RIA project “SmarT mObility, media and e-health for toURists and citizenS” involves advanced 5G validation trials across multiple vertical industries, deploying full end-to-end trials to bring 5G to real users for thirteen representative use cases. The project will provide efficient and reliable close-to-commercial services for tourists, citizens and patients in three different types of cities: Rennes, Turin and Athens. (EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program grant no. 856950).

LiveU was previously involved in the 5G-XCast project, completed last year. The two-year collaborative project focused on devising, assessing and demonstrating a conceptually novel and forward-looking 5G network architecture for large scale immersive media delivery. LiveU’s wireless high-speed mobile broadband technology, Databridge, was used to enable the convergence of fixed and cellular networks. (EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program grant no 761498).

LiveU is Changing the Rules of the Live Broadcasting Game in the South Hall (Upper), booth #SU2615

LiveU is taking center court to demonstrate the latest IP technology poised to change the rules of the game for broadcasters, sports producers, and content creators. This year, visitors to the LiveU booth will be able to experience a live video production featuring a complete Wireless At-Home Production solution in the LiveU Courtside Studio. Attendees can immerse themselves in the dynamic live multi-cam basketball court and studio, shoot some hoops, and see how the entire production can be accomplished easily, affordably and in high quality using LiveU’s breakthrough IP video technology. The LiveU Courtside Studio will also host live streamed interviews with innovators in content production, plus some special surprise guests.  

From Contribution to Distribution 

LiveU will teach visitors about remote live video contribution with the company’s Wireless At-Home Production solution that includes everything customers need, including remote Tally Light and Return Video. Then they will see how major sports and news broadcasters including CBS, CNN, Cox Media Group, Fox Sports, Meredith Corporation, Quincy Media, and Sinclair Broadcast Group are curating their content with LiveU Matrix. For breaking news and live events, LiveU Matrix also enables live content to be shared easily and cost-effectively with multiple destinations and TV stations. We’ll even show how users can control their LiveU units from anywhere with LiveU Control app!

For the Love of the Game   

We will welcome the NBA, AT&T, and Ericsson to our Courtside Studio to share how they teamed up with LiveU to bring 5G to the NBA Summer League’s live production in 2019. The breakthrough testing was a slam dunk and introduced a completely new way for fans to experience the game.

LiveU continues to develop solutions that enhance live content, increase viewer engagement, uphold the highest quality video, and push the limits leveraging 5G, HEVC, and more!  

We’ll be making a breakthrough product announcement at NAB. This game-changing technology will impact how live video is acquired and produced remotely. 

LiveU has announced that one of Japan’s leading video streaming channels, AbemaTV, is implementing LiveU cellular bonding technology to produce its online news and entertainment business. AbemaTV is using over 20 LiveU field units, including the LU600 HEVC, combined with the LiveU Central cloud management platform to live stream shows and events from various venues and outdoor sites. On the ground support and service is provided by LiveU’s longstanding Japanese partner, Sanshin Electronics Company.

AbemaTV has been using LiveU since the start in 2016. The internet TV service chose LiveU for its high quality and reliability as well as its cost-effective receiver (LiveU Central) having tested several mobile bonding products. Today the channel broadcasts up to 20 channels for free, featuring original drama, news, sports, live contents and more.

A popular non-stop three-day live broadcast variety show in November 2017 used 12 LiveU units, representing the longest live streaming program to date. The channel also uses LiveU to cover the 7.2 hours live broadcast variety show, Shogi Games, also known as Japanese chess or the Game of Generals, a two-player strategy board game native to Japan, and golf contest.

Mr. Nobuteru Kondo, Live Streaming Delivery Technology Division of AbemaTV, said, “LiveU enables us to live stream in high-quality, wherever we want to go. We always aim to broadcast the latest trends in entertainment, and LiveU enables us to flexibly prepare for live streaming of urgent press conferences. We value the technology’s stability, compactness, and scalability so it can receive the number of channels we need.”

Yaal Eshel, General Manager, LiveU Asia, said, “We’re proud of our relationship with AbemaTV, helping them to grow their business with engaging live content. It’s great to see the creative ways that the technology is being used to enrich their programming, with LiveU being implemented as an end-to-end live broadcast solution.”

One of Asia’s leading live streaming platforms has turned to LiveU’s HEVC IP bonding technology to provide high-quality live video coverage of its events. 17 Live is using LiveU’s leading LU600 HEVC units to transmit live coverage of the events direct to their 17 Channel, turning fans into loyal, long-term customers with engaging live online content. The deal has been overseen by LiveU’s local partner in Taiwan, Maxlink, which also provides 24/7 service and support.

With over a million daily active users and over 30 million users in total, 17 Live is one of the most popular live streaming apps in Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. The app lets users share their daily moments via video streaming, and follow other streamers and friends. The platform also has a content revenue sharing model where users can share their content for effective monetization.

LiveU technology was chosen because of its quality and reliability even in challenging situations, such as crowded shopping malls, and ease of use.

Yaal Eshel, General Manager LiveU Asia, said, “We’re proud to be the vendor of choice for popular video streaming platforms, such as 17 Live. Using our technology, 17 Live has been able to grow its audience throughout Asia with entertaining and unique live content. With the huge unabating demand for live content, LiveU continues to play an active role in providing live coverage of news, sports and other events in the region, and worldwide.”

LiveU’s flagship LU600 HEVC solution delivers the highest video quality and bitrate in the market, fastest file transfer and lowest delay. 

Few could argue that MPEG-2 has not been a workhorse of professional media compression. Created in 1988, it helped to power the commercial success of DVD disc players and is still used daily by U.S. TV broadcasters as a vital –and mandated—part of their DTV transmission service.

But what if I told you H.264 Advanced Video Compression (AVC) will have a run that matches or exceeds that of MPEG-2? One that ensures AVC will be with us for the rest of our adult lives?

Perhaps, you are raising an eyebrow, smirking skeptically or simply saying to yourself “No way!” But keep an open mind and consider these three reasons why H.264 compression will be with us for a long, long time.

No. 1: Hitting the sweet spot. When you consider factors like processing power and cost, it’s hard to beat H.264 encoding. Sure, H.265, or High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), outshines AVC in terms of pure apples-to-apples compression.

A BBC Research & Development blog posting, “H.265/HEVC vs H.264/AVC: 50% Bit Savings Verified,” makes the case for HEVC in the title. The posting discusses subjective comparison testing of the two compression standards based on international recommendations for assessment of video quality.

“The overall average bit rate saving achieved by HEVC compared to AVC of the same subjective quality was found to be 59% as supposed to the 44% gain show with objective quality metrics,” the blog says. It also notes that bit rate savings were greater for larger picture sizes.

While impressive, the blog doesn’t address the cost of encoding. At this point in time, it’s not out of the ordinary for a professional quality HEVC encoder to cost four times as much as a comparable AVC encoder. Although HEVC encoders will likely drop in price with time, as do the vast majority of electronics, so too will AVC encoders.

Thus, in terms of bang for the buck, H.264 encoding occupies, and likely will continue to occupy, the compression sweet spot for a very long time.

No 2: Changing viewing habits. No one could argue that TV viewing hasn’t undergone a major transition. While the living room TV remains important, people now enthusiastically watch television, streaming entertainment and movies on their phones, tablets and laptops—something that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

Helping to fuel this transition is H.264 compression. Equally adept at powering video streaming on a Raspberry Pi-based IoT device, an iOS platform or Android device, H.264 unlocks a world of possibilities for reaching people with video where they want to consume it.

Further, because of its flexibility, H.264 can be used to simultaneously stream a high school or college basketball game at 360p or 480p while encoding a 720p or 1080p version to be edited later and uploaded to a YouTube channel.

Not only has H.264 evolved into a web delivery format, it is widely used in high-end cameras as one of many supported output formats. It’s also the fuel powering a variety of affordable, yet-powerful production setups used to produce everything from corporate and government events to video game tournaments and club sports—all of which nurture changing consumer viewing habits.

No. 3: Archiving. Perhaps the biggest reason H.264 will remain relevant for decades is its role as an archival format. It’s widespread use for archiving by universities alone ensures H.264 will be around a long time. But it’s also widely used for first-time digitization of content to be archived outside of academia.

All of that HD content shot over the past 20 years –whether 1080i or 1080p— is going to be with us for the rest of our lives regardless of the growing adoption of 4K and maybe 8K. As long as it is, H.264 will remain a vital compression format to archive that content, assuring its longevity one day will challenge and likely surpass that of MPEG-2 as a workhorse compression format.

LiveU’s location – Stand 3.B62

LiveU will present its portfolio of 5G-enabled solutions for live newsgathering and dynamic sports coverage for every type of event. Looking towards the 2020 games in Tokyo, LiveU is already gearing up to support hundreds of customers with its award-winning HEVC technology.

IBC highlights include:

· LiveU’s flagship LU600 4K HEVC portable transmission solution offers flawless video with extreme bandwidth efficiency. The LU600’s latest HEVC 4K-SDI edition facilitates professional 4Kp50/60 streaming for top-quality production, supporting VR and 360 applications.

· Our compact, robust LU300 HEVC unit for live streaming. At an attractive price-point, the LU300 HEVC solution is tailored to customers requiring a smaller field unit for high-quality video-on-the-go. Highly flexible, the LU300 can also serve as a standalone video encoder or be used as a LiveU DataBridge mobile hotspot for general connectivity in the field.

· The professional 1U 4K HEVC rackmount, LU610 4K HEVC for vehicles and fixed locations. This powerful encoder, based on LiveU’s LU600 4K HEVC technology, offers the perfect hybrid solution for SNG trucks, point-to-point and point-to-multipoint distribution.

We’ll be showcasing our latest Remote At-Home Production applications for sports and live event producers, including:

· Tally Light – bringing the ease of the live studio experience to the field, this important new tool enables field reporters to know instantly when they’re live on air via a red-light indicator connected to a LiveU unit.

· LiveU Graphics – an easy-to-use professional cloud production tool for adding dynamic graphics to live streams. Users can simply select from ready-to-use graphic templates or create their own design and stream directly to any social media or CDN.

· AV sync and support for up to 8 audio channels

· LiveU Control – enabling simple remote control of LiveU units via smartphones

With precision measurement of end-to-end delay, LiveU’s Remote At-Home Production allows more events to be covered with simplified logistics and reduced costs. Multi-camera live events can be produced from a centralized studio control room instead of costly on-site production and satellite trucks.

Driving meaningful content, LiveU AI offers a story-centric AI service for global newsgathering. The complete service, powered by newsbridge, offers a comprehensive set of contribution and AI-based video indexing tools for enriching, searching and accessing live or file-based content. Operating within the LiveU Central cloud management platform, LiveU AI will enable editors to search and find their required footage faster than ever, easing their daily workload and making real-time production much more efficient.

We’ll also be demonstrating our new LiveU Central feature, Single Sign On (SSO) for secure user management, integrated with the customer’s active directory or Identity as a Service (IDaaS).

LiveU Matrix is LiveU’s next-generation IP video distribution platform, recently selected by CBS Newspath. Matrix provides a highly efficient content curation service, empowering newsroom managers to quickly and easily give hundreds of affiliates unparalleled access to live feeds from LiveU units in the field and other sources without any interruption, additional resources, or expensive fees. Matrix is also ideal for sports producers looking to live stream events easily and cost-effectively to multiple destinations and TV stations.

TV18 Broadcast Ltd., one of India’s most popular television broadcasting networks, has signed a multi-year lease agreement for more than a hundred units of LiveU’s flagship LU600 HEVC solution. The units are already stationed in various locations in over 20 Indian states to support TV18’s entire network of channels, including CNBC-TV18, CNBC Awaaz, CNBC Bazaar, CNN-News18, News18 India, New18 UP/Uttarakhand, New18 Bihar/Jharkhand, News18 Bangla, News18 Odia, News18 MP/Chhattisgarh, News18 Rajasthan, News18 Punjab/Haryana/HP, News18 Gujarati, News18 Assam/NE, News18 Kannada, News18 Tamilnadu, News18 Kerala, News18 Urdu and News18 Lokmat.

The TV18 group chose the reliability and stability of LiveU’s IP bonding technology to stay ahead in its newsgathering operations, upgrading their entire fleet of portable backpack solutions to HEVC. The deal was overseen by LiveU’s local partner, Lamhas, which provides 24/7 service and support throughout India.

Mr. S. Venkatraman, VP of Teleport and Newsgathering of TV18 said, “We operate the biggest news network in the country and have robust newsgathering systems. We have been using LiveU units for field newsgathering for the last six years. Exploring and identifying innovative solutions for capturing and transmission live video feeds have always been our focus. With HEVC being the industry standard for video compression, the transition from H.264 to H.265 was a logical step, coupled with the reliability offered by LiveU’s hardware-based encoding, even in low bandwidth regions. Having the latest technology at our disposal will give us an edge in the newsgathering process as well benefit us in the long run. We deployed LU600 units in the recently concluded General Election coverage in India and were satisfied with the field performance.”

“TV18 continuously works on network synergy to enhance our broadcast and digital operations across the country. Our collaboration with CNN provides us with the edge in obtaining visuals of international stories at the earliest possible time. We are actively working with LiveU’s Matrix platform for the sharing of live visuals between our broadcast centres,” continued Venkatraman. “We will be working closely with LiveU in our expansion process.”

Mr. Rajesh Sharma, VP of Technology and News Operations of TV18, added, “Support from partners and service providers is very critical to us while we manage highly intensive news operations. The size of our network, and our 24/7 newsgathering operations across the country, calls for a very proactive support system. We are satisfied with the relations and responses from M/S Lamhas and LiveU. We look forward to a long-term cooperation and business association with LiveU.”

“TV18 is one of our most esteemed customers and we were committed to ensure that all their stations were equipped with the latest cutting-edge technology. With over 100 units deployed across 20 states, this is a huge project. We believe that only LiveU and Lamhas are equipped to provide the resources and manpower needed to support its full implementation. We look forward to our continued success together,” said Mr. Ranjit Bhatti, Director of South Asia, LiveU Ltd.

Photo caption: (from L to R) Mr. S. Venkatraman, VP of Teleport & Newsgathering, TV18 with Mr. Ranjit Bhatti, Director at LiveU - South Asia

New Zealand’s leading free to air broadcaster, TVNZ, is upgrading its fleet of LiveU portable transmission units to LiveU’s LU300 HEVC and LU600 HEVC, ensuring the highest-quality live video performance. The deal has been overseen by LiveU’s long-term partner in the region, Pacific Live Media, which provides ongoing service and support.

The NZ broadcaster has been using LiveU since 2015 with multiple units deployed around the country as well as in New York, London and Sydney. The units have been used for all major news and sports events, including royal and state visits, covering political campaigns and elections, as well as the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Sydney, Rio Summer Games in 2016, and the recent yellow vest protests in France. The upgrades come in time for this September’s Rugby World Cup in Japan where LiveU will be used to cover all the action around the games and even serve as disaster recovery backups for the fiber transmission of the games themselves. TVNZ started looking at cellular bonded options at the 2012 Summer Games in London.  

Andrew Fernie, General Manager of Operations, News and Current Affairs for TVNZ, explained, “We had been interested in the technology for some time, but it really came to a head before the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England. After testing the equipment, we were impressed by LiveU’s LU200 small-form factor, ease of use and video quality and started spreading the units across the country. The catalyst for the major growth in pushing these units out were the changes we made to the newsgathering and news operations teams across the entire country. In 2017, we introduced a centralized editing model, taking all the contribution servers and combining them into a main content and production server in our main newsroom in Auckland. This meant that all the content could be streamed or sent via store and forward into the main server; we could then get all the content out to our linear and digital channels almost immediately. We were able to create a team of video journalists who could operate from the remotest regions using a small camera and a LiveU unit.”

Fernie continued, “LiveU has completely changed our business. enabling us to cover every story quickly and cost-efficiently with no need for SNG trucks. We can truly go anywhere with this system, even broadcasting live from the remotest Pacific islands using LiveU as the encoder combined with a Satellite IP system. In terms of future big events, TVNZ has secured the exclusive rights to broadcast the next America's Cup in 2021 and we’re already planning our LiveU deployment.”

Yaal Eshel, LiveU’s VP Sales, said, “This is an excellent example how TVNZ has transformed live newsgathering and sports coverage using small portable LiveU units for live streaming and advanced store and forward capabilities. We’re delighted that TVNZ is rolling out our latest HEVC technology and look forward to continuing our long relationship.”

LiveU is presenting its full range of live IP video uplink services and streaming solutions at BroadcastAsia2019, Suntec Singapore, 18-20 June 2019 (Stand 6D2-01).

MELBOURNE, Australia—A series of updates have been made to Mediaproxy’s LogServer IP-based logging, monitoring and analysis software that will allow for the platform to support 8K, HEVC and Transport Stream over IP signals. In addition, Mediaproxy has added social media video editing capabilities to the system.

With the updates to LogSever, Mediaproxy is adapting to the growing need for being able to handle 8K resolution, with delivery involving HEVC compression and TSoIP streams. The LogServer can now handle 8K signals by converting any input to a proxy resolution.

In addition, with the growing need for being connected to social media, Mediaproxy has extended its social media publishing features for LogServer to include advanced editing functionality, allowing for the creation of clips for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Dailymotion and Brightcove.

These changes are in addition to other updates for the LogServer platform in the last year, which includes OTT monitoring capability.

LiveU’s location – Stand 6D2-01

At BroadcastAsia2019, the Company will demonstrate the latest additions to its award-winning HEVC suite and IP live video management service offerings.

See also our LiveU Solo one-touch wireless video encoder live in action, in a portable live multi-cam production, demonstrated by our Thai partner, Smart Broadcast Solution. 

Highlights include: 

Hardware-based HEVC product suite 

LiveU’s flagship LU600 4K HEVC portable transmission solution offers flawless video quality for live news and sports coverage with extreme bandwidth efficiency. The company will present its new addition, the LU600 HEVC 4K-SDI, facilitating professional 4Kp50/60 streaming for top-quality production, supporting VR and 360 applications.

Also on show will be LiveU’s compact, robust LU300 HEVC field unit for on-the-go live streaming, and professional 1U HEVC rackmount, LU610 HEVC.  

LiveU Matrix & AI   

Matrix is LiveU’s next-generation IP video distribution platform, designed by broadcasters for broadcasters. Matrix provides a highly efficient content curation service, empowering newsroom managers to quickly and easily give hundreds of affiliates unparalleled access to live feeds from LiveU units in the field and other sources without any interruption, additional resources, or expensive fees. LiveU Matrix was recently selected by CBS Newspath to handle contribution and delivery of live content to its 200+ affiliates and seven global news bureaus. 

See a live demonstration of a new AI feature that enables broadcasters to search, identify, classify, and route objects and people. 

LiveU Central & AI 

LiveU will demonstrate LiveU AI, powered by Newsbridge, within its LiveU Central cloud management platform. This new feature offers broadcasters and publishers a comprehensive set of contribution and AI-based video indexing tools for enriching, searching and accessing their live or file-based content. Saving time and effort, the complete service enables editors to search and find their required footage faster than ever, easing their daily workload and making real-time production much more efficient.

PLANO, Texas—LiveU and AT&T this week announced they will conduct tests later this summer to evaluate the impact of 5G wireless on contribution of live broadcast video content using LiveU HEVC portable transmitters.

The tests, to be conducted at the AT&T Foundry in Plano, Texas, will examine speed, bandwidth and latency improvements made possible by 5G, said an AT&T spokesperson. AT&T engineers currently are planning the trial, including specific benchmarks for speed and latency; however, for the moment, further details about testing these attributes are not available.

LiveU LU600 HEVC units will be used for the trial, but as of this writing, the portable transmitters have not been delivered to AT&T.

It is assumed that the combination of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and the greater bandwidth available on a 5G wireless network will result in higher transfer speeds and lower latency for video contribution from the field, as well as enable future enhancements.

“We see 5G as a critical advancement for the broadcast industry, disrupting the way breaking news, live sports and other live events are produced,” said LiveU COO and co-founder Avi Cohen. “We anticipate the technology will bring more capabilities to our customers, such as multiple channels of audio, multi-camera productions from a single portable transmission solution, 4K streaming and high-quality video return.”

The trial is expected to teach AT&T how it “can help broadcasters increase production capabilities and expand possibilities for future innovations,” said AT&T Business CMO Mo Katibeh. “Just imagine the possibility of broadcasters being able to live stream breaking news in 8K or in an AR/VR 360 format over mobile 5G.”

At the moment, a 5G network is not yet live at the AT&T Foundry location in Plano, the AT&T spokesperson added.

LiveU and CBS Newspath have reached an agreement on a multi-year deal for LiveU Matrix to handle contribution and delivery of live content to its 200+ affiliates and seven global news bureaus. LiveU Matrix is a highly efficient content curation service that empowers newsroom managers to quickly and easily give hundreds of affiliates unparalleled access to live feeds from LiveU units in the field and other sources without any interruption, additional resources, or expensive fees.

“The change to LiveU Matrix is instrumental to our strategy of reducing our reliance on satellite and fiber technology, while affording us increased flexibility in our newsgathering and content sharing,” said Tim Gaughan, CBS News Vice President of News Services.

“LiveU Matrix also complements CBS Newspath’s current use of LiveU HEVC acquisition technology, giving them a complete, end-to-end HEVC solution that delivers exceptional quality, reduces bandwidth requirements and is managed through one simple interface,” said Avi Cohen, LiveU COO & Co-founder.

“HEVC was a prerequisite for this deployment. LiveU offered a one-stop-shop for hardware-based HEVC field encoding and IP video cloud management to distribute high-quality live feeds to our teams,” added Tom Fearing, CBS Newspath Director of Technical Operations. 

Matrix, a dynamic cloud platform, makes it simple to curate content through one interface. Users can easily search, filter, preview, and distribute live feeds. See a live demonstration of the powerful newsroom tool including tagging and metadata insertion and the AI feature that allows broadcasters to search, identify, classify, and route objects and people at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 8-11, 2019, South Hall Upper, Booth #SU4810. Visit https://get.liveu.tv/nab-2019/ for more information.

TVU Networks, the global technology and innovation leader in live IP solutions, will demonstrate the newest product updates for TVU MediaMind, its media supply chain platform, in the company’s booth (#C1707) at the annual NAB Show in April. TVU MediaMind’s story-centric workflow approach simplifies content creation, production and distribution while incorporating the latest integration and support for automation, AI, streaming, 4K and 5G.

“With the many, different ways media content is consumed today by viewers, broadcasters can no longer acquire, produce and distribute media for just TV. In fact, the way programs are created must completely change,” said Paul Shen, CEO, TVU Networks. “By automating and optimizing the media supply chain process, broadcasters can realize the benefits of taking raw content and re-using it across many platforms, programs and even organizations. TVU MediaMind allows anyone to create stories, wherever and however they want efficiently, effectively and without limits.”

For example, within content acquisition, the company will showcase a new 4K version of its TVU One mobile transmitter, which is the first cellular mobile unit with the ability to transmit Ultra-HD/4Kp60 HEVC content. “UHD/4Kp60 is a much more technically challenging resolution to achieve in a cellular mobile unit,” explained Shen. “However, using our patented IS+ transmission algorithm and advanced FEC technology, we were able to overcome these challenges and transmit video in full UHD/4K at 60 frames per second.”

Added Shen, “The TVU One 4K and our entire family of portable and rack-mount transmitters are also now 5G ready.”

Other TVU solutions receiving enhancements and updates that will be demonstrated at NAB include:

- TVU One TM1000, TVU’s flag-ship HEVC cellular 4G/LTE mobile transmitter

- TVU Anywhere, an app for capturing and streaming live video from anywhere

- TVU CAS (Contribution Automation Solution) with new automated workflow integration

- TVU Command Center for cloud-based centralized management of TVU devices and services

- TVU Grid, an IP-based video switching, routing and distribution solution

- TVU Producer for full-featured cloud-based live video production

- TVU Receivers and Transceivers for video decoding, distribution and management of TVU and IP video sources

- TVU Remote Production System, a cost-effective solution for live remote synchronized multi-camera production for news and sports

- TVU Router, a portable broadband Internet access point providing up to 200Mbps of untethered Internet connectivity

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—The television news business is all about getting the picture back from the field faster—faster than the competition, if possible. The latest tool to enable faster field video is the bonded cellular system that uses commercial mobile networks to carry video.

From a quiet start a decade ago, bonded cellular and wireless IP video products have taken off to become a major component of local news infrastructure. These portable mobile systems are far cheaper and faster to set up than a microwave or satellite truck, and they can go places—even indoors—where a truck could never go.

Jim Jachetta, executive vice president and CTO for VidOvation, the distributor for Aviwest products in the U.S., discussed the affordability factor of bonded cellular for news operations.

“As new news agencies emerge or establish agencies downsize, bonded cellular will require a much lower capital investment when compared to building citywide microwave coverage,” Jachetta said. “In some cases, satellite makes sense when the cellular network is not available. The Aviwest PRO380 system bonds up to 12 connections including eight cellular, two LAN and two WiFi. The LAN connections offer bonding of cellular with an IP microwave or IP satellite connections.”

Although bonded cellular has become important in the newsgathering toolkit, mobile network speed and reliability today are not always there when needed by broadcasters.

“It is always advised to have a variety of tools in the toolbox,” said Edgar Shane, general manager of engineering for JVC Professional Video. “Although 4G speeds, coverage, and capacity increased dramatically over the last five years, there may be conditions where cellular towers become overloaded due to great numbers of users, and satellite or microwave may be needed as a backup plan. This is especially true for large gatherings. My favorite example is New Year’s Eve in Times Square, where only microwave, satellite, or licensed wireless connections can provide reliable video transport.”

Reliability is paramount to broadcasters, who don’t want to run the risk of a remote shot failing suddenly. That’s why some manufacturers are integrating multiple paths into their bonded cellular systems.

“Although use of cellular data connections is one aspect of our system, the Comrex LiveShot system is capable of aggregating any viable IP network connection to transmit audio and video data,” said Chris Crump, senior director of sales & marketing for Devens, Mass.-based Comrex. “As with all public data networks, there is really no guarantee that your shared data path will be completely available and without any contention for bandwidth.”

CAMERA-MOUNT OR BODY PACK?

At the camera end, bonded cellular systems generally come in two configurations: camera-mounted or a body pack in a knapsack or shoulder-strap carrying bag. The CloudPort, from DVEO. a San Diego-based provider of broadcast gear, is an eight-modem backpack system that can be preconfigured with SIMs for a specific market. The CloudPort includes 40 GB of built-in storage to provide a solid recording of a live remote event simultaneous to the live feed.

Comrex’s LiveShot is a highly compact bonded cellular system that attaches to the back of a camera, with a docking mount for the camera’s battery. This lets any ENG broadcast camera become a mobile origination point with minimal increase in weight or size.

Change is a constant in the cellular business and the current technology for mobile connections is 4G, which is capable of wireless connection speeds of 100 Mbps or even a bit higher. (I frequently check my cellular connection speed and have twice measured connections at greater than 100 Mbps.) That is easily fast enough for excellent-quality contribution feeds from a news remote, although such speeds aren’t common in my experience and they are subject to random change as other cellular customers place demands on the service. For this reason, professional bonded cellular systems link two or more cellular modems together across multiple carriers to ensure the best possible connection and speed.

GREATER RELIABILITY

At some point in 2019, 5G cellular services will start to come online, and this is expected to provide greater reliability and bandwidth for mobile networks. However, it will not guarantee that there will be a suitable connection every time one is needed.

“The [timing and impact of 5G] is a harder question to answer than you might think,” said Dan Pisarski, vice president of engineering for LiveU in Hackensack, N.J. “One reason is there is a lot of technology, very cool tech, that falls under the ‘5G’ logo. Carriers can implement parts of this technology and not others—some examples would include deploying 5G radios but not a 5G network core, or deploying 5G in only specific frequencies while supporting 4G LTE in others. This is made more complicated because carriers are anxious to use the 5G name and are labeling some technology that standards groups might have called LTE [such as LTE Advanced and LTE Pro] as ‘5G.’

“All that said, yes, broadcasters should start to see immediate improvements even with these hybrid deployments, including more stable streams, especially at lower delays,” he added.

Initial deployments of 5G will be for fixed wireless access equipment, according to Yvonne Monterroso, head of product management for Dejero. “This equipment will provide very high data rates but will not be small size or low power,” she said. “Dejero equipment will support connection to fixed wireless access equipment via Ethernet.”

Monterroso added that later deployments (5G NR) will offer low power and portability, but the chipsets and modems are not expected to be available until mid- to late-2020. Once available, Dejero will integrate and certify these modems into its products, she said.

Once 5G networks and gear are available, Monterroso said it will mean that regular cellular customers will demand more data and content, soaking up bandwidth that broadcasters might use. However, that will take some time.

“Since 5G will take some time to be deployed and coverage will be limited, we believe that blending multiple connections will offer a compelling advantage regarding reliability and throughput, especially in mobile and nomadic applications,” she said.

SUPPORT GROWS FOR 5G

Other companies plan to support 5G for bonded cellular video acquisition gear as well.

“Aviwest and VidOvation are ready for the rollout of the 5G cellular networks,” Jachetta said. “We already have a few customers using 5G cellular and we feel that 5G conductivity will help in crowded urban areas. 5G will offer higher bandwidths over much shorter distances making it ideal for live sports venues and crowded urban areas.”

However, Jachetta pointed out that it will take time—years, probably—for wireless carriers to fully roll out 5G technology and improve their data backhaul circuits before 5G can live up to its promise. For this reason, he expects that 4G will continue to be the workhorse technology in the near term.

“While 5G cellular connectivity will help in certain locations, there will still be a need for the longer-range and wider coverage capabilities of 4G technology,” he said.

In addition to mobile 4G networks and the promise of future 5G networks, there are other connectivity options available to improve the reliability of live field acquisition. Several companies support such options, including TVU Networks.

“TVU has 5G-ready solutions today,” said Matt McEwen, vice president of product management for the Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of broadcast technology. “Our system has never been reliant on just one type of network connection technology. In fact, our system today can already aggregate virtually any cellular technology alongside WiFi, satellite, IP microwave, wired connections, etc. Just connect the active link and it will be aggregated. We expect 5G to be the same—it will just be an additional network connection that can be aggregated.”

HIGH-EFFICIENCY CODING

Another recent technology is improving the efficiency and performance of bonded cellular links: HEVC, also known as MPEG-5.

“HEVC offers higher bandwidth efficiency with the same or better visual quality than MPEG-4 AVC,” said Ronan Poullaouec, chief technology officer for Aviwest. “Using HEVC, broadcasters can achieve a 50-percent bitrate savings compared with MPEG-4 AVC. For bonded cellular news feeds, better compression means a reduction in the bandwidth needed to transmit high-quality live videos… allowing broadcasters to transmit live videos in environments where it would not have been possible to send any video with the previous MPEG-4 AVC compression technology.”

Mike Savello, vice president of sales for LiveU, said HEVC allows broadcasters to operate in real-time with extreme low latency with the highest quality, even at very low bit rates.

“This is where LiveU’s HEVC solutions differ from software solutions where video quality may be sacrificed to keep the latency low or may be switched back to H.264 to save battery life,” Savello said. “LiveU encodes in HEVC all the time, providing longer battery life.”

All the experts agreed on a tip to improve the reliability of a bonded cellular connection if you are building a new news vehicle, especially if you will be using the vehicle when it’s moving.

“With everything else being equal, I recommend antennas, more antennas, and better antennas,” said JVC’s Shane. “JVC ProHD Bridge systems utilize high-gain, diversity MIMO 4G and Wi-Fi antennas to assure reliable reception under a variety of conditions.”

Others had similar advice, each tailored to that company’s product.

“Consider the best equipment to meet the need to have a rackmount in the vehicle and/or use a mobile transmitter,” said Dejero’s Monterroso. “The Dejero mobile transmitter can be mounted in a vehicle and connected to rooftop antennas for increased cellular network reception or live shots while driving. And it can quickly be dismounted and placed in a backpack or sling bag, or mounted on a camera for mobility while on location.”

There are several smartphone apps to help broadcasters figure out coverage and ensure the most reliable shot. Of course, the wireless companies themselves have some information on their coverage.

“All cellular data providers have coverage maps to show the availability of their services down to the street level,” said Comrex’s Crump. “It’s always a good idea to try to take a look at what’s available, time permitting, at the location of a planned broadcast. There are also bunches of apps out there for the purpose determining coverage at a specific location. 

"We like Open Signal and Sensorly, which provide cellular network availability data based on app user speed tests," Crump continued. "Most broadcasters that have been using IP video codecs are fairly aware of the fact that stadiums filled will 80,000 cell phones are not idea locations for an IP live shot…regardless of how many modems you are trying to use. However, in locations where local cell towers won’t be compromised, aggregating across multiple providers does tend to provide a greater degree of reliability.”

The category of mobile newsgathering products has been one of the fastest-growing segments in the broadcasting industry. Not only are these mobile products working alongside and sometimes replacing traditional backhaul methods such as microwave and satellite, the comparatively low cost of bonded cellular means that more news organizations can afford remote gear than ever.

And that is the real revolution at work in the newsgathering business—not only is bonded cellular usually cheaper and faster than the competition, it allows for video from a moving vehicle and in other circumstances that were never before possible.

Where will the revolution go next?

CHAMPAIGN, ILL.—Cobalt Digital has begun delivery of its 9992-ENC series HEVC H.265/H.264/MHEG-5 encoder for openGear frames.

The 9992-ENC, a dual-slot card, offers a variety of I/O options and extensive audio support for contribution, distribution, ENG, IPTV and OTT applications.

The base model supports MPEG-2 and H.264 (AVC) with low-latency 8- and 10-bit 4:2:0 encoding. Optional license keys offer H.265 (HEVC) support and 4:2:2 encoding.

The base model also offers 3G-SDI input supporting up to one 1080p60 signal; however, an upgrade that supports three more 1080p60 inputs or one 4Kp60 signal (four 3G-SDI or one 12G-SDI signal) is available.

Two independent ASI ports are available as outputs that can be interfaced directly to microwave modulators on ENG trucks. If licensed for multiple channels, an internal multiplexer can be used to build multi-program transport streams and direct individual encoders to either or both outputs.

Two Gigabit Ethernet ports support various protocols and stream replication with the same multiplexing capabilities as the ASI ports for distribution flexibility.

The encoder offers transport streams over standard UDP/RTP, RTMP and single profile HTTP live streaming (HLS), allowing it to be used for direct streaming to content delivery networks (CDNs).

Licenses for advanced protocols, such as SMPTE-2022 FEC and ARQ for packet loss protection, as well as RIST for reliable, low-latency contribution over the internet without the need for additional gateways, are available.

Audio support includes MPEG-1 Layer II, AAC-LC, HE-AAC (V1 and V2), Dolby Digital (AC-3), Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3) and 5.1 surround sound options.

More information is available on the Cobalt Digital website.

HACKENSACK, N.J.—Sinclair Broadcast Group is upgrading hundreds of portable transmission units to LiveU LU600 HEVC systems under the terms of a recently signed multi-year $20 million leasing agreement.

“This deal is a recognition of the value LiveU brings to our content operations,” said Del Parks, senior vice president and CTO for Sinclair. Sinclair will use the units for newsgathering operations. 

The station group immediately will upgrade units at 80 stations to the LiveU HEVC field units, the company’s flagship model offering higher efficiency, greater stability and better reliability.

Sinclair has been a LiveU customer since 2011. Upgrading its bonded IP solutions will help the broadcaster maintain a competitive edge in newsgathering, LiveU said.

The broadcaster also uses LiveU’s IP-based LiveU Matrix and LiveU vehicle solutions. LiveU Matrix allows Sinclair to share live content from news events across all of its broadcast and digital news platforms. The IP video cloud management tool enables stations across the group to view, manage and distribute live content using the internet.

The station group is also evaluating its ability to outfit field reporters and crews with LiveU’s LU-Smart app for smartphones. The app makes it possible to go live from virtually anywhere and contribute content to the studio where it can be edited and ultimately distributed according to LiveU.

DishTV, provider of direct-to-home satellite (DTH) service to viewers in India, will deploy the MediaKind AVP 4000 video processing platform to deliver content to more than 23.5 million subscribers.

“Through the deployment of MediaKind’s AVP technology, we can enable the highest video quality for our consumers alongside far greater bandwidth efficiencies, thus enabling us to cost-effectively deliver the next generation services to our subscribers,” said DishTV Group CEO Anil Dua.

The DTH service provider is replacing legacy D2H technology with the MediaKind headend compression technology to make evolution to traditional broadcast and multiscreen service possible. The deployment of MediaKind’s AVP 4000 encoder will be used to support delivery of both DishTV brands to customers.

Deploying the MediaKind solution will allow DishTV to unify control and management of its two headends in an orchestrated way and drive greater operational efficiency, the company said. The AVP 4000 also will enable DishTV to achieve greater bandwidth efficiency and deliver higher picture quality.

The encoder has a modular architecture that enables on-site upgrades, which reduces maintenance time and service interruptions. The AVP 4000 encodes MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and HEVC and makes a smooth upgrade to 4K UHDTV easy, the company said.

CLEVELAND—Video encoder developer ATEME today announced it is providing the HEVC encoder for the ATSC 3.0 test station being run by NAB and the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) in Cleveland.

The encoder, the software-based Titan solution, is enabling NAB and CTA to conduct tests of multi-channel HEVC encoding as well as advanced 3.0 features, such as UHD, high dynamic range (HDR), digital rights management (DRM), next-gen emergency warning, Scalable HEVC (SHVC) and digital ad insertion.

“ATEME is very committed to the ATSC broadcast industry, and we support several ATSC 3.0 field trials,” said Chad Hassler, VP North America for ATEME.

[Read: NAB-CTA Team On ATSC 3.0 Test Lab]

For broadcasters considering their transition path from today’s ATSC 1.0 service to 3.0, the Titan encoder offers a “blink-of-an-eye” migration path to both Next-Gen TV using HEVC or SHVC encoding, the company sad.

The encoder supports the entire ATASC 3.0 ecosystem and is server-agnostic, capable of running on any private or public cloud whether on premise or off.

“We collaborated to implement our advanced technology in the Next-Gen TV test station and to seamlessly demonstrate the delivery of new broadcast services and the real-world capabilities of the new ATSC 3.0 standard,” said Dr. Mickael Raulet, director of research and innovations.

For comprehensive coverage on ATSC 3.0, visit TV Technology's ATSC3 silo.

ATLANTA—VITEC today announced its acquisition of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Telairity, a provider of H.264 encoding solutions. Terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

"Telairity customers have been asking for a compelling reason to upgrade their broadcast links,” said Matt McKee, formerly of Telairity and now VITEC director of broadcast sales. “VITEC HEVC solutions offer the highest levels of network efficiency, video quality, and reliability especially for Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG) and contribution applications."

VITEC’s MGW Ace encoder is powered by its own HEVC Gen2+ all-hardware compression chip. The encoder provides best-in-class HEVC video quality up to 4:2:2 10-bit and encoding latency as low as 10ms, the company said.

VITEC will be exhibiting in Booth 500 at the 2018 Government Video Expo, Nov. 28-29 in Washington, D.C. 

LONDON –Telestream has added support for V-Nova’s PERSEUS Plus codec to its Lightspeed Live video streaming system, which is used by numerous major operators and video service providers worldwide.

Telestream Lightspeed Live provides live multiscreen encoding, packaging and distribution in addition to multichannel video capture and processing. V-Nova’s PERSEUS Plus enables video to be transmitted at half the bitrate of existing h.264 solutions whilst improving picture quality, and the low complexity of PERSEUS Plus h.264 also increases encoding density by 2-3x when compared to HEVC. V-Nova says this can enable the delivery of live 4K content at up to 70 percent more efficiency when compared to current competitive codecs,

PERSEUS will be available in Lightspeed Live Stream from version 3.0.

“We have always been committed to ensuring our customers have access to the most innovative and advanced video delivery capabilities on the market,” said Scott Murray, vice president of Product Management at Telestream. “It is clear that V-Nova’s unique PERSEUS codec plays a key role in rolling out higher-quality and more efficient video services. We’re delighted to be able to offer PERSEUS to our customers.”

PALO ALTO, CA.—A new report from online video technology provider Bitmovin finds that in 2018 the H.264/AVC video codec has continued to dominate video encoding used by developers around the world while the use of H.265/HEVC has grown significantly from 2017 to the present.

In its second year, the “Video Developer Report 2018” draws on the responses of 456 survey developer submissions from more than 67 countries to paint a picture of the current state of video streaming technology and what will be important over the next year.

Besides video codec technology, the report presents findings on other key streaming technology, such as streaming formats, software vs. hardware encoding, audio-video format delivery popularity, native playback and OTT streaming device technology, ad architecture and other topics.

[Read: Can Video Compression Tame The Internet?]

As in 2017, the results reveal that nine out of 10 developers continue to use H.264/AVC, while the percentage saying they are using H.265/HEVC has climbed from 28 percent in 2017 to 42 percent this year. VP9 saw a slight 1 percentage point uptick in the 2018 total to 11 percent, and AV1 remained flat at 6 percent.

Future plans for codec use paint a different picture. In 2017, 40 percent of developers said they planned to use H.265/HEVC in the 12 months, while 36 percent said the same this year; 18 percent said their plans called for using VP9 last year, while 15 percent said they did this year.

AV1 recorded the biggest increase with 14 percent in 2017 saying the codec would be used in 12 months, while 29 percent said so in 2018.

Other highlights of the report include: 82 percent saying they are using the HLS streaming format, while 61 percent use MPEG-DASH; 43 percent saying they use hardware encoders, while 54 percent use on-prem software encoders, and 38 percent use a software encoder in the cloud; and 52 percent saying they use client-side ad insertion, 44 percent saying they use server-side ad insertion and 25 percent saying they use dynamic ad replacement.

The free report is available online from Bitmovin. Registration is required.

SOUTH BEND, IND.—Recently, the athletics department at the University of Notre Dame built a new campus-wide media production facility to cover athletics, as well as academia and other live events. Cellular bonding, specifically LiveU, became an important component to support high-quality content and delivery from anywhere on or off campus.

I joined University of Notre Dame from the Denver Broncos two years ago, where I led event productions. I had been a big proponent for IP-based live video and wanted to bring that same level of high-quality content and reliability to the renowned university. As executive producer of live events, I led the testing of technology to support live video via cellular bonded technology.

THAT WAS THEN...

In the past, the reliability wasn’t there. The university had some cellular bonded gear, but the live productions never got off the ground. Instead, the media crew captured content via a recorded device and sent it back to the production team for editing post-event. This was a cumbersome process. Part of this process involved the camera operator attempting to upload large video files while en route to the airport from the away game.

I told my colleagues, ‘LiveU is a different product. You’ll notice the technology’s ease of use right away.’

After taking a second look at cellular bonded technology and specifically LiveU this time, the university put their trust in the technology to reliably deliver live content to its broadcast and digital properties.

We chose to rent LiveU HEVC portable transmission units for the reliability factor. The unit boasted the highest video quality in low bandwidth situations, with no delay or signal issues during our live productions. Knowing you will always get a great signal was appealing.

Soon after, the University started implementing more LiveU gear into their productions and true live video became part of their normal routine.

WIRELESS AT-HOME PRODUCTION

The production leverages an end-to-end IP-based workflow which allows us to send only a reporter and camera operator on site and then pull in the live feeds, switch, edit, and distribute the live content from our South Bend studio.

Because of the cost savings and simplification of production enhanced by cloud-based production, we can create more live content and explore more opportunities off campus.

At home games, the university uses the LiveU portable transmission unit to produce the live post-game broadcast and the famous “Player Walk.” On the road, our team uses a LiveU to cover the onsite field reporter and the post-game press conference which are sent in real-time back to the South Bend facility for editing and production as part of the post-game show.

LiveU allows for more flexibility on the road. The operator can capture content and head back home while the work is being done in our South Bend studio.

Today, the University continues to push the envelope looking for new ways to leverage Wireless At-Home Production to capture, produce and distribute live events from interesting places—without infrastructure worries or astronomical production costs.

Longer term, we’re looking at sports facilities such as swimming and diving, where fiber is challenging. We are confident that LiveU will play a role in bringing this diverse coverage to a wider audience.

Mike Bonner is executive producer of live events for the University of Notre Dame Athletics Department. He can be reached atmbonner@nd.edu.

For more information, visitwww.liveu.comor call 877-88-LiveU (54838).

CHAMPAIGN, ILL.—At the 2018 NAB Show New York, Cobalt Digital will demonstrate the 9904-UDX-4K-12G UHD 12G/3G/HD/SD-SDI up/down/cross-converter, the company’s latest generation of advanced image and audio processors for the openGear platform. The base card provides quad 3G-SDI and 12G-SDI I/O with SDI muxing and demuxing and up/down/cross-conversion. Options include RGB color correction and SDR-to-HDR up-mapping via Technicolor’s HDR Intelligent Tone Management (ITM) processing.

Also on display will be Cobalt’s new 9971-MV18-4K series of openGear multiviewers. These support the latest signal types with a high-density modular design that can be expanded as required. The MV18 is equipped with 18 4K 12G-SDI auto-detect inputs, which the company says can be scaled as needed across a full 3840 x 2160 UHD raster output.

The 9992-ENC-4K-HEVC H.265 Streaming Encoder for openGear will be demonstrated. The platform supports quad 3G-SDI and 12G-SDI inputs and is also configurable as a multichannel encoder (up to four channels) for 1080p60 signals and below using MPEG-2, H.264 or HEVC, with all channels using the same compression standard.

The new Cobalt Digital OG-PC computer card is an x86 computer on an openGear card. The OG-PC takes advantage of the redundant power and cooling features of the openGear frame. The card’s modular form-factor saves on rack space by replacing bulky 1RU PCs.

Cobalt Digital will be on the show floor in booth N626.

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AMSTERDAM—LiveU will debut a new, compact HEVC solution at IBC2018, Sept. 14-18 at the RAI in Amsterdam. The LU300 HEVC field unit weighs two pounds, features three hours of battery life and can be operated in a side pouch or camera-mount configuration. It bonds up to six connections: two LTE-Advanced internal modems or two external modems, WiFi and LAN.

LU300 can operate locally or remotely, with extreme low latency at high quality and low bit rates, the company said. It can double as a standalone video encoder or a LiveU DataBridge mobile hotspot for connectivity in the field.

“With the LU300, we’ve taken the same professional-grade hardware HEVC encoding technology, and made it accessible to other verticals for their live streaming needs,” said Samuel Wasserman, LiveU CEO and co-founder.

LiveU will demonstrate its hardware at the Facebook Video Solutions Stand 14.C45.

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WATERLOO, Ontario — Dejero has announced that it will unveil a new, more powerful version of its EnGo mobile transmitter at IBC 2018 at RAI Amsterdam, Sept. 14–18.

The increase processing power gives broadcasters an advantage, especially when capturing high-motion news events and sports content, Dejero said.

[Read: Participate in Future’s 2018 IBC Best of Show Awards]

The unit, which benefits from an enhanced implementation of HEVC, also leverages the company’s auto-transport and adaptive bitrate encoding technology to deliver higher picture quality across a wider range of bitrates, it said.

With enhanced processing, EnGo can provide new dynamic content adaptation, which intelligently adjusts encoding based on how much motion is detected in the content being captured, the company said. As a result, broadcasters can transition from low-motion frames, such as talking heads, to high-motion content without creating compression artifacts or softening the image.

The latest EnGo can encode up to 20 Mbps and now supports 1080p 50/60.

Visit the company at IBC 2018 Stand 11.C15.

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LAS VEGAS—While the 2018 NAB Show may have seemed like a smorgasbord of ATSC 3.0 developments, one of the tastiest broadcast dishes being served up may have been in the Harmonic booth.

There the company gave broadcasters a sample of what can be done today with existing encoding and stat mux technology in support of Next-Gen TV.

Harmonic showed that it is possible to transmit eight Full HD 1080p60 HDR channels with the help of its HEVC encoding and stat mux technology in a 28 Mbps pool, which is well within the data-carrying capacity of one 6MHz channel. The achievement has a twofold benefit.

A TECHNOLOGICAL PATH FORWARD

First, it means broadcasters have a means of delivering more channels in higher quality over the air than they can today. The demo also subtly made the point that it may be in the best interest of broadcasters to target 1080p60 HDR as the high end of their OTA service. Harmonic did so by displaying its 1080p60 HDR HEVC-encoded and stat muxed channels on a commercially available set that up-resed the sources to 4K UHD HDR.

“When you look at it on a 4K TV, full screen, it’s gorgeous,” said Jean Macher, director of market development at Harmonic during an interview at the booth.

This approach will make broadcasters, viewers and CE manufacturers happy –broadcasters because they can preserve OTA bits and don’t have to undertake a forklift upgrade of their production operations to support 4K; consumers because they can see “gorgeous” images; and CE manufacturers because “they still get to sell their 4K TVs with 1080p60 HDR,” said Macher.

Second, the demo showed broadcasters that they have a technological path forward with a 1.0-to-3.0 transition in which channel-sharing, not simulcasting on a separate 6MHz assignment, will be the mechanism that puts Next-Gen TV on air while protecting legacy DTV viewers.

Indeed, Harmonic announced just prior to the opening of the NAB Show that it is supporting the efforts of the Pearl TV-led ATSC 3.0 Model Market project in Phoenix with its encoding and stat mux technology, which will enable such channel sharing.

[Read: Phoenix Model Market Launches Next Gen TV Broadcasts]

But what about the 28 Mbps throughput? Is that realistic for 3.0 service? As has been written about frequently, throughput is a bit of a squishy thing in 3.0 because unlike a 1.0 broadcast, Next-Gen TV gives broadcasters what’s metaphorically referred to as "knobs" to finetune transmitter output to their business model–for example trading off a bit of throughput for robustness.

“In an apples-to-apples comparison of 1.0 to 3.0, legacy DTV has a throughput of 19.39 Mbps while Next-Gen TV doing fixed services can deliver 24 to 28 Mbp/s of throughput with comparable CNR to ATSC 1.0,” said Macher. “That’s already better. However, over the past 20 years since 1.0 was finalized, receivers and antennas have improved a lot, so you can probably go with a higher capacity / less robust transmission and achieve about 32 Mbps of throughout. On-going ATSC 3.0 trials will play an important role in validating actual performances.”

Further, HEVC is only at the beginning of its life. “There is a huge improvement curve ahead of us,” said Macher.

EQUAL TREATMENT

The company also was showing advanced management capabilities for its stat mux for 3.0. An innovation it refers to as “Convergence” allows channel-sharing broadcasters to define their average bit rate to ensure each is treated fairly. “With this capability, you can have the instant quality of the stat mux together with the converging average bit rate,” Macher said.

Another was a feature called “Data Track,” which allows data other than video to be added to the stat mux pool. If that data isn’t available or necessary, more bandwidth is then available to video services, he said.

While greater throughput is important, it’s far from the only game changer associated with 3.0. For instance, Harmonic also highlighted the hybrid nature of the Next-Gen TV standard—that is how 3.0 is equally adept at leveraging over-the-air and over-the-top content delivery.

“One of the really cool things about 3.0 is it uses a lot of OTT mechanisms that have been in use for a long time,” Macher said.

Harmonic demoed the commonality of DASH in 3.0 OTA and OTT environments. “You can reuse all the innovation, all the proven mechanisms, including ad insertion that have been used and finetuned over the years,” said Macher. “It was a very good move on the part of ATSC.”

[Read: Harmonic Helps Boost KWHY-TV Channel Lineup]

For the demo, Harmonic used its VOS cloud-native media processing to create OTT multiscreen derivatives of an over-the-air channel supporting time-shifting, scrubbing, looping back and nDVR on-demand functionality.

While it might be beyond the reach of local broadcasters from a rights perspective to apply this OTT solution to their network and syndicated programming, news and other locally produced programs are great candidates for this treatment, he said.

Harmonic also conducted private showings of SHVC, scalable high-efficiency video coding for ATSC 3.0 in a meeting room at the booth. SHVC gives broadcasters even more flexibility in how they use their bits, allowing them, for example, to allocate fewer bits over the air and more over the top.

It does so by providing for a base layer and an enhancement layer to be encoded. The base layer, or lower version of a program, can be decoded by a standard HEVC decoder and the enhancement layer adds on to the base layer to enable full-quality video. It requires an SHVC decoder.

One use case could be preserving over-the-air bits and delivering the base layer of multiple channels for mobile reception while bringing those channels up to full quality in the home on the big screen with enhancement layers delivered over the top.

With such a Next-Gen TV focus, it’s not surprising that broadcasters hungry for a better understanding of what’s possible with 3.0, walked away from the Harmonic booth satiated.

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo. 

[Editor's Note: Stewart Wolpin is a TWICE contributor and HEVC analyst for Digital Technology Consulting.]

We're all familiar with format wars — VHS v. Beta, Blu-ray v. HD-DVD, even the 19th century's AC v. DC war of the currents. What you may not be familiar with is the current 4K video compression format war between HEVC (High-Efficient Video Coding, aka H.265), Google's VP9, and a new and potentially disruptive entrant, AV1 from the Alliance for Open Media(AOM).

The question is, is this format war too inside-baseball for most CE retailers and vendors to worry about?

"Device makers include media processors that decode multiple compression technologies," said Myra Moore, president of Digital Tech Consulting, "and it's in their best interest to make sure the most commonly used ones are included."

"[Vendors] will care because every additional codec they need to support adds to the development and [bill of materials] cost of a device," added John Luther, senior VP of technology for JW Player, a web video platform.

For more than a decade, the MPEG-based H.264 format has been pretty much the only HD video codec game in town. Nearly all devices that record or playback 1080 or 720 video include H.264.

[Read: ITU, ISO Prepare For Next-Gen Video Codec]

But 4K video is quickly becoming increasingly ubiquitous. 4K, however, with files four times the pixel size of standard HD, presents problems for both streaming and storage. HEVC shrinks 4K files to roughly nearly the same size as H.264 for HD files of similar length.

Creating the right 4K video codec presents varying challenges based on multiple factors, including:

• delivery platform: web browsers, streaming, broadcast;
• device: mobile, smart TV, set-top box (i.e. Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV), PC;
• technical variables: i.e. HDR, which H.264 can't handle; and
• economics: encoding, storage and royalty costs.

As a result, the 4K video codec market has splintered. "There is a tremendous amount of opportunity in this field," observed Paul MacDougall, solution architect for BitMovin, a Cloud-based video encoding service. "Many different people and organizations [are] trying to capitalize on that opportunity in whatever way they can."

[Read: To Be or Not to Be UHD-That is the Question]

HEVC has established itself as the de facto standard for most 4K content providers, and for all smart TVs and smartphones, including the iPhone. But VP9 is the 4K codec of choice for Android, Windows (but, oddly, not Internet Explorer) and YouTube, as well as browsers including Google's Chrome and Firefox. Most TV and smartphone chipsets include capabilities for both HEVC and VP9.

For hardware vendors, HEVC's primary headache is its confusing royalty structure, administered by three different patent groups — MPEG LA, HEVC Advance and Velos Media. VP9 and the pending AV1, however, promise to be royalty-free, but questions remain about their IP status.

"HEVC IP owners, particularly those in the Velos Media Pool, have created the worst case of self-inflicted FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt] in the history of technology," said Jan Ozer, author and codec consultant. "[Vendors] need to know everything about royalties for H.264/HEVC, plus IP rights relating to VP9/AV1. It's a huge expense."

AOM's AV1, whose backers include Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Netflix, promises to be superior to HEVC and VP9, and holds the most promise for becoming a single 4K codec standard — one day.

"AV1 won’t appear in hardware until 2020," Ozer reported. "That’s the next seismic event. Between then and now, we’ll learn a lot more about performance and IP status. It will be as an open-source alternative to HEVC in markets where HEVC doesn’t serve, like computer-based browser playback. Until 2020, all this discussion is just noise for CE retailers." 

This article originally appeared in TWICE.

NEW YORK--With giants such as Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft in its corner, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) has released the 1.0 version of AV1, a next-gen, royalty-free codec that claims to have a 30 percent bit-rate efficiency edge over current-gen technologies like VP9 and HEVC.

The consortium is releasing AV1 in the hopes that it will deliver improved bandwidth efficiencies amid the move to video formats with more pixels (like 4K and 8K), better pixels (High Dynamic Range and Wide Color Gamut), as well as the emergence of 360-degree video, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) apps and services that need to be smooth and are poised to ratchet up bit rate requirements on TV screens, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Though AV1, which is also claimed to have a 65% bandwidth savings over AVC/H.264, could eventually find itself a home inside set-top boxes and, perhaps even further out broadcast TV signals, it’s expected to initially find adoption on web browsers and other types of OTT streaming devices.

Though AV1, which is also claimed to have a 65% bandwidth savings over AVC/H.264, could eventually find itself a home inside set-top boxes and, perhaps even further out broadcast TV signals, it’s expected to initially find adoption on web browsers and other types of OTT streaming devices.

“Video is changing the way the internet is evolving,” Gabe Frost, the executive director and a founding board member of AOMedia and a principal engineering manager for Microsoft’s operating systems group, said in an interview.

Another chief aim for AV1 and its royalty-free model is to eliminate some of the pricing uncertainty that has enveloped codecs like HEVC, which has been saddled by multiple patent pools and little in the way of uniformity on rates.

The current codec market is “gummed up” due to the cost uncertainty, Frost said, and has likewise caused friction between technology innovators that those that want to charge for patented technologies that can help them.

AOMedia, launched in 2015, was formed with the core idea that the underlying video codec technology had become a commodity, and that a royalty-free model represented the best path forward.

“We all use it; it all gets baked into silicon,” Frost said.

The plan with AV1 then focused on how a new approach, despite being royalty-free, could still “create a viable business model to move the industry forward, with some certainty around the costs of producing these codecs,” he explained.

[Read: Report: HEVC Poised To Become Codec Of Choice]

While that idea was spawned by early meetings with Microsoft and Google, it later expanded to include several other in the ecosystem, including chipmakers, distributors, web services companies and video equipment makers that would be willing to provide their intellectual property under the royalty-free model.

Examples of founding members of AOMedia include Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix and Nvidia. Promoter members include Adobe, CableLabs, Bitmovin, Hulu, Vidyo, and Broadcom, among others.

Frost said every member company of AOMedia signs an agreement that licenses the essential technology that’s used in the final AV1 codec on a royalty-free basis. And those that implement it likewise sign a cross-patent license agreement that says they’re free to use AV1 at no cost, but that if they hold any essential patents, those are licensed to other AOMedia members on a royalty-free basis.

“We wanted to make sure we had a licensing infrastructure set up where we could create a durable, royalty-free ecosystem,” Frost said, noting that companies with patents used for codecs such as HEVC and H.264 are free to license those same patents under other terms, such as those that are governed by AV1.

The hope is that the model will accelerate the adoption cycle of VC1 and spark advancements across software, silicon, devices and connectivity and push the market forward for all stakeholders.

“Royalty-free doesn’t mean that people aren’t making money off the technology,” Frost said.

[Read: ITU, ISO Prepare For Next-Gen Video Codec]

As for near-term expectations, Frost said desktop browsers will start to support AV1 later this year, and see it start to show up on devices such as gaming consoles towards the end of 2018 or into 2019.

In a presentation about the release, AOMedia noted that AV1 would be “coming to a screen near you,” with examples that included Twitch, Facebook, Android, Amazon Prime Video, Chromebook, Chrome, Google Play, Netflix, Windows, Xbox One, Daydream (Google’s VR platform), Skype, and YouTube.

“It will be 2020 when we see it available on all new silicon that comes out,” Frost predicted.

Michelle Abraham, senior analyst, media and communications at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the buy-in among a wide number of companies and players gives AV1 a “good opportunity” to make waves in the video codec market.

She sees its greatest opportunity coming from video streaming and OTT, but doesn’t expect to see it widely used by broadcasters, who typically go with technologies that are tied to international standards bodies.

There’s also a question about whether the latency requirements of broadcasters will be suited to AV1, at least in its initial release.

AV1 will be getting some play at next month’s NAB show in Las Vegas, including demos on April 10 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the South Upper Hall Destination NXT Stage.

A panel is also slated for April 11 starting at 3:20 p.m. at the North Hall (N257) that will feature Microsoft’s Gabe Frost, Google’s Matt Frost, Intel’s Zach Hamm, Bitmovin’s Stefan Lederer, Microsoft’s David Rudin, and Netflix’s Mark Watson.

This article originally appeared in TV Technology sister publication, Multichannel News

BOSTON—HEVC Advance has eliminated the subscription and title-by-title content distribution categories from its patent license as a way to accelerate HEVC adoption and advance its use in OTA broadcasting, internet streaming, cable TV and satellite distribution, the independent licensing administrator said today.

HEVC Advance specified that it will immediately cease seeking royalty fees for non-physical HEVC content distribution, including internet streaming, cable TV, OTA broadcasting and satellite TV.

“By eliminating non-physical HEVC content distribution from our license, we are transforming to meet the needs of distributors looking to adopt HEVC and bring the incredible bandwidth savings and clarity of 4K UHD to consumers," said HEVC Advance CEO Pete Moller in a press release from organization.

[Report: HEVC Poised to Become Codec of Choice]

The licensing administrator also announced discounts for certain lower-priced connected home and other devices as well as other royalty reductions.

To learn more, visit the HEVC Advance website.

NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J.—Content distributors might play follow the leader after Apple made the announcement that in June 2017 that it would be using HEVC-encoded video to the HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) specification. In a survey conducted by Unisphere Research, and sponsored by Harmonic and Streaming Media, we could see a major deployment of the HEVC codec in the coming year.

The current landscape for HEVC among online content distributors—TV networks, content sites, commercial sites, SVODs and more—that responded revealed that 25 percent (25.1 to be exact) are currently distributing video encoded with HEVC. Those not using it are primarily using other codecs or content aware encoding and make the case that either H.264 is meeting their needs, or that they don’t understand the royalty scheme, among others.

Despite these reservations, the tide is shifting. Given a scale of one to five, with five labeled as “very strong effect,” 66.2 percent of respondents said Apple’s decision to include HEVC ranked either three, four or five.

In addition, asked at what is the soonest that they planned to deploy HEVC, 62.5 percent said that they had intentions to do so by the end of 2018. Only 27.9 percent said they had no plans at this time.

The survey did find that there is interest in other codecs by respondents, most notably AV1 and VP9. However, 53.8 percent of respondents said they do not plan on adding any new codecs.

To see the complete survey, click here.

SEATTLE—Since its introduction a decade ago, cellular-based liveshot gear has been steadily improving at bringing high-quality live news video and audio back to the studio. Some of that can be attributed to better 4G (and someday 5G) cellular network technology, as well as the availability of more cell towers. Individual equipment makers have made their own tweaks that have improved performance.

Mundo TV Morelos uses Comrex’s LiveShot to cover a peace march in Cuernavacas, Mexico.

ENCODING EFFICIENCY
And then there’s new encoding technology showing its face—HEVC/H.265—which promises a doubling of encoding efficiency.

“With the same bandwidth, we can do twice the quality of everything,” said Jon Landman, vice president of sales for Teradek, an Irvine, Calif.-based provider of wireless video technology.

Matt McEwen, vice president of product management at TVU Networks adds that “doubling of encoding efficiency also makes it possible to get a higher quality picture out of low bandwidth areas.” And since cellular network time is a pay-as-you go, bit-by-bit arrangement, for any given quality of video delivered back to the station, HEVC encoding cuts the cellular network costs in half.

LiveU has introduced a new version of its backpack platform, the LU600 that is the same form-factor as the company’s traditional LU500, according to Claudia Barbiero, vice president of marketing, Americas for the Hackensack, N.J.-based provider of cell-based ENG systems. She cited a variety of new features and benefits to the new product, including new software and the unit’s interface. “But the biggest news is that it's HEVC capable, with a dual encoding platform, where you can do H.265 and H.264.”

Barbiero said stations are finding more than just breaking news use for their portable liveshot gear. “They can get additional added value out of content for just the cost of sending a camera operator out with a LiveU backpack, to send back content and events [such as high school football games] that they normally wouldn’t do.” This new content could be sponsored on the station’s digital platform, outside their traditional broadcast.

Regarding the decoding of HEVC, Teradek’s Landman noted that H.265 is so new that stations don’t have it in their infrastructure yet. “What we are doing now is live transcoding in the cloud down to H.264, which will work with people’s existing decoders,” he said. “We will be rolling out a native H.265 decoder in Q3.”

He also said that because USB modems from cellular providers are becoming harder to find, “we developed our own modem, the Teradek Node, that plugs directly into the bond unit. It allows you to put in any U.S.- or European-based SIM chip. One of the advantages of us being able to develop our own modem is that we can tweak it to give us what I would say is extended performance.” In Teradek’s tests, where the Verizon UML 295 modem gave them 2 MBps on average, “our node gave us 8 MBps, a 4x increase.”

TVU Networks’ TVU One video streaming platform

PROGRESSIVE DOWNLOADS
TVU Networks’ new TVU Router is a software option that can be enabled on any of its uplink products according to McEwen. “Essentially it allows the user to not only use the device for live video streaming, but also [provides] an option to switch it into a mode where it will provide high-speed internet access, using the aggregated link, from anywhere.” For example, an operator could send file footage from the newsroom to a news crew out in the field for editing into a newscast package.

Among the new features in the TVU’s most recent software update is “progressive downloads.” “If a news crew goes out and is acquiring content for a story, and they’ve got their camera connected to a TVU ONE, [in to recording the video to an SSD on the field unit,] we start transmitting that mirrored copy of the content as a file back to the studio,” McEwen said. Back at the studio this can be used as B-roll, or as promo material touting the day’s lead story. This goes on in the background, so the news crew can concentrate on covering the story in the field.

According to Bill Nardi, vice president, broadcast integration at Dejero in Waterloo, ONT., the company’s new EnGo Vehicle Mount Kit provides optimum antenna deployment for both in-vehicle and out in the field use. “We developed a vehicle mount where you slide the transmitter into it, and put on two clips that are attached to external antennas on the roof.

“But then when you get to your location, you can pop off the antenna leads, put [the transmitter] on the back of the camera or bag, and you’re off and running” with mobile antennas.

He said Dejero NewsBook for Mac is gaining popularity with solo videojournalists, international correspondents and field reporters who need to travel with minimal equipment. “You can use the laptop’s camera or use a converter for an outboard camera,” he said. “It works with the edit software, where it allows you to make your laptop a one-stop-shop.”

CROSSLOCK QUARANTINE
Chris Crump, senior director of sales for Comrex in Deven, Mass., said that the company’s Liveshot portable units are being used for more than just newsgathering. “People are using it for flash studios, remote news bureaus, and for distributing program material from station to station,” he said. “It’s especially valuable where people need two-way audio and video.”

For both news liveshot and other video distribution, Crump said the key to their system is its “CrossLock” technology, “which is actually monitoring all of the devices that are attached to the network stack.” An example of its usefulness is “if a modem becomes unusable, it can actually quarantine it so it doesn’t affect the performance of the other devices. And if it becomes usable again, CrossLock will bring it back into the multiple bonding arrangement.

“It’s a very sophisticated mechanism that’s actually monitoring all those channels, load balancing them as one becomes unusable and retransmitting lost packets to make sure that all the audio and video bits get all the way through to the other side,” Crump added.

Persistent Systems, a relative newcomer to the cellular ENG market, brought its newsgathering liveshot technology over from its Department of Defense business, according to Jim Ocon, vice president of business development for the New York-based company. “[In the last year] we’ve made concrete improvements on our onboard video encoding,” he said. “And we’ve made improvements to our waveform that have allowed for really good performance in the unlicensed ISM band.” Radios on BAS channels and upper C-Band are due out soon.

A new embedded module is sized down to the degree that allows a drone or other small-payload device to carry a transmitting radio with much of the same functionality as its standard radios.

Ocon made a novel suggestion for use of Persistent’s radios: “With the repack, a lot of stations are being shuffled out to new channels and frequencies. Our equipment can be used as a temporary STL or TSL. They’re high throughput, high bandwidth radios that are encrypted.” Once the new links are in place, the Persistent radios can be hand-me-downed to the news department.

Click on image to enlarge.

BOSTON

—HEVC Advance said that Samsung Electronics has become both a licensor and licensee of the HEVC Advance HEVC/H.265 Licensing Program.

As a licensor, Samsung will make its essential patents available through the HEVC Advance patent pool and gain access to “a portfolio of patents essential to implementing the HEVC/H.265 video compression standard.” HEVC compression handles 4K video for broadband distribution systems and is the video codec defined in the emerging ATSC 3.0 over-the-air TV transmission standard. Samsung plans to use the codec in its 4KTVs and Galaxy smartphones. Samsung appears to be the first major consumer electronics maker to sign on through HEVC Advance, according to the patent pooler’s

website

.

HEVC Advance started accepting licensing requests in January of 2016. It announced the

royalty-free program

for streaming content last November, after throwing the industry a curveball with a fee structure that called for 0.5 percent of revenues on HEVC-compressed content, which could have cost Netflix upward of $100 million a year, according to

Dan Rayburn

, principal analyst for Frost & Sullivan. At the time, MPEG-LA also was licensing HEVC, but primarily for equipment. The industry pushed back on the streaming royalties and HEVC Advance acquiesced by eliminating fees “on HEVC functionality implemented in application layer software downloaded to mobile devices or personal computers after the initial sale of the device, where the HEVC encoding or decoding is fully executed in software on a general purpose CPU. Examples of the types of software within the policy include browsers, media players and various software applications.”

HEVC Advance’s North American

fee structures

on HEVC main profile now comprise 40 cents per mobile device—smartphones, tablets, laptops—plus 10 cents on any single profile extension or 25 cents for all three, with a $30 million annual cap for all mobile devices and a $20 million cap for mobile devices minus smartphones. For 4KTVs, the main profile per-device fee is $1.20, plus another 30 cents for an additional profile or 75 cents for all three, with a $20 million annual cap. Set-top boxes, game consoles, Blu-Ray players, desktop PCs, non-4KTVs, software, surveillance cameras, video conferencing equipment, medical imaging gear and digital signage are all under an 80 cent fee for the main profile, 20 cents for one additional profile and 50 cents for al three, with a $20 million annual cap.

Content distribution fees remain, with those for material free to consumers waived. Subscription video services incur a monthly per-subscriber fee of half a cent for the rest of 2017; 1.5 cents for 2018-19; and 2.5 cents for 2020 and beyond, with a $2.5 million annual cap. On-demand and digitally stored titles are 2.5 cents with a $2.5 million cap.

Also see....
Sept. 24, 2015

“

HEVC Advance Reconsiders Royalty Structure

”

Alternative codecs gained attention, including Google’s VP9 and a new one from Cisco called “Thor,” intended as a royalty-free alternative to HEVC.

PLANO, TEXAS—Velos Media is providing access to advanced video coding technology, specifically High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), with its new independent licensing platform. Using the license will allow companies to pick between standard-essential HEVC patents from the likes of Ericsson, Panasonic, Qualcomm Inc., Sharp and Sony.

HEVC, also known as H.265, is designed to deliver high-quality images with less download time and need for buffering than previous video technologies.

The license provided through this Velos Media platform covers all HEVC standard-essential patents within the members’ current portfolio, including future patents granted from currently pending applications and future filings by a member during the term of the license.

“We’re streamlining the patent licensing process by offering a single license to end user product companies that manufacture or sell HEVC-enabled devices, thereby creating a solution for them and patent holders alike,” said Kasim Alfalahi, co-founder of the Marconi Group, which will support the Velos Media licensing platform. 

SEATTLE—Though the majority of video work is not done in ultra high definition yet, there are certainly plenty of solutions for acquiring and post producing in 4K. More problematic is delivering such material. If one uses the same compression codec for 4K that’s being used for good old HD video, it takes more or less four times the bitrate. When viewed by the accounts payable department, that’s four times the money to deliver UHD video.

Fortunately, forward-lookers got to work years ago on High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). HEVC is also known as H.265 by the ISO/IEC (Telecommunication Standardization Sector) group and as MPEG-H Part 2 by the ISO/IEC MPEG (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission Moving Picture Experts Group). Those organizations were co-developers of HEVC, the first version of which was completed and published in 2013.

CHOOSING A PATH
“Customers have been interested in HEVC, evaluating HEVC as a possible replacement for current encoders that are either doing MPEG-2 or H.264,” said Abdulla Merei, director of compression systems for Evertz in Burlington, Ont. (MPEG-2 and H.264 aka MPEG-4 are long established encoding standards that provide less compression than HEVC.)

At the 2016 IBC Show, Harmonic introduced its EyeQ software codec which brings down the bit rate of H.264 by 50 percent. Encoder makers put a lot of time and study into picking and choosing the path to HEVC encoding. “We’ve implemented and selected the codec that had the best throughput and quality and best compromise, and we’ve integrated this codec so that we can support HEVC-transcoded output,” said Matthieu Fasani, senior product manager of France-based Dalet Digital Media Systems.

Imagine Communications’ Chief Product Officer Brick Eksten said they shop for best of breed for targeted requirements. “Our philosophy on codecs, especially in the early days of any new codec, is that there’s going to be multiple vendors of technology that have specialized in different areas,” he said. “For instance, they may have focused on performance speed over quality, or vice versa. Some will have focused on live versus file, for instance.”

Telestream has integrated H.265 into its products for quite some time now, according to Paul Turner, vice president of enterprise products for the Grass Valley, Calif. -based company. “It’s been through customer demand… for the end user it’s really the only viable distribution method for getting UHD content distributed out to customers. H.264’s perfectly capable of dealing with 4K. It’s just nowhere as efficient as H.265.”

However, there’s not a big rush away from H.264, said Thierry Fautier, vice-president of video strategy at Harmonic. Harmonic does have HEVC-capable products in the market, but at the IBC Show, the San Jose, Calif.-based company introduced a new software codec called EyeQ, which brings down the bitrate of H.264 by 50 percent. “That kind of makes HEVC obsolete at this stage,” Fautier said.

Brick Ekstein, chief product officer for Imagine CommunicationsSOFTWARE DEFINED
When encoders first hit the market many NABs ago, they were black boxes that contained each vendor’s special brew of hardware and software. Over the years, that has changed to software-defined systems, where much of the hardware is what the high-tech world calls COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) products. The economy of scale of the IT market has driven down the price of these servers and such.

Chuck Meyer, chief technical officer of production at Grass Valley, pointed to a pair of paths: software-based vs. dedicated hardware in the form of an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). “These things present certain tradeoffs in terms of power consumption or what kind of product can be built in terms of cost… in terms of upgradability,” he said. Upgradeability is important, Meyer added, because the H.265 codec is going to change. “Even MPEG-2 has had constant tweaks and improvements into the profiles,” he said, “the same for H.264.”

Customers rightly want to know how they get from H.264 solutions to H.265-capable equipment without sending their existing equipment off to the landfill. That is complicated by the fact that codecs are written to function in the hardware of the day. For instance, RAM was very expensive while MPEG-2 was being developed; so MPEG-2 can be encoded and decoded with relatively little RAM in the hardware.

By the time H.264 was being written, RAM was much cheaper and could be delivered in a much more dense form. H.264 requires more RAM to function, which made it difficult to use the AVC codec in hardware developed for MPEG-2. Fast forward to the requirements for HEVC coding, and the same factors are repeating themselves in upgrading legacy encoding equipment.

The modular nature of an encoding system, however, can allow upgrading pieces and parts without junking the whole system. Besides cost savings, this also means a familiar user interface and workflow can be retained.

In a half dozen or so years, this same story will be written about the successor to HEVC. But that’s then, and HEVC is now.

Meanwhile the nearly completed ATSC 3.0 standard has designated HEVC for encoding 4K content, so expect increased interest in HEVC-capable gear in the next several years as broadcasters deploy the next-gen TV standard.

STOCKHOLM—Ericsson and BT Media are teaming up for a pair of projects involving augmented reality and a HEVC 4K broadcast.

First, BT Sport is Ericsson’s first client for its PIERO Augmented Reality software system per its press release. The PIERO AR system launched in April and is designed to enable broadcasters to overlay 3D graphics in real-time during live studio productions and games. The graphics can be created by either a system operator or presenter using a tablet device. The graphics are then projected onto the studio floor in 3D. BT Sport has also signed up to use PIERO sports graphics software, another part of the PIERO product suite, for rugby broadcasts.

Also, Ericsson, with BT Media and BT Sports is demonstrating a live example of a high efficiency video coding (HEVC) contribution link used in the delivery of 4K UHDTV during IBC2016. BT Sport will use the technology to broadcast live rugby matches through BT news link trucks. Ericsson is contributing its encoding/decoding technology that supports HEVC and removes the need for AVC quadrant based HDTV contribution. The signal from BT M&B will be sent to Ericsson’s Playout Center in the Netherlands, and then broadcast live to both Ericsson and BT’s booths at IBC2016.

AMSTERDAM— At the IBC Show, Vitec will debut its MGW Ace Decoder, a compact, professional-grade HEVC/H.265 decoder. Combined with the MGW Ace Encoder, the company says the appliances will provide the industry's first entirely portable, hardware-based, end-to-end 4:2:2 HEVC solution, delivering reliable, error-free, low-latency, and bandwidth-efficient streams suitable for IPTV, broadcast, and point-to-point applications. 

The MGW Ace Decoder delivers broadcast-quality decoding of HEVC streams up to 1080p60 4:2:2 10-bit. Connectivity options for the single-channel HEVC decoder include 12G-SDI, HDMI 2.0, separate SD-SDI, and composite outputs, which can be activated simultaneously. Targeting broadcast setups, the appliance offers two pairs of audio decode, carried over SDI/HDMI as well as separate analog balanced or unbalanced stereo audio and digital AES outputs. Feeds can be received from two configurable Ethernet ports to match any network topology.

Pro-MPEG and Zixi technologies are integrated into the decoder, offering one- and two-way error-correction protocols for broadcasting artifact-free over public networks securely and reliably. For point-to-point applications, when paired with MGW Ace Encoder, the solution provides a bandwidth-efficient, artifact-free video streaming solution over any network including the Internet. 

Its flexible FPGA architecture supports ongoing video improvements up to 4K60p, offering a “powerful future-proof solution,” the company said. "The MGW Ace Decoder is designed to support bandwidth-efficient H.265 streams, as well as legacy H.264 streams and up to 4K60p format in the near future, ensuring our customers can stay ahead of the game," said Richard Bernard, product manager at VITEC. 

Combined with the MGW Ace Encoder, the decoder is the ideal turnkey HEVC solution for delivering bandwidth-efficient H.265 streams for broadcasters, houses of worship, corporate IT, military units, and government agencies, reducing operational expenses and extending the reach of video services to remote destinations with bandwidth constraints. As part of the compact portable design, VITEC also offers a rackmount option to integrate the appliance into a 1U 19-inch rack.

VITEC will demonstrate the MGW Ace Decoder and MGW Ace Encoder portable solution, as well as the MGW Ace Decoder paired with the MGW Vision Encoder enabling 4K60p 4:2:2 point-to-point streaming at IBC2016 on stand 7.G16. 

MONTREAL—Enterprise video and streaming technology provider Haivision had debuted the Makito X HEVC video encoder. The new system, which is designed for low latency video backhaul and transmission applications, expands the Makito X H.264 capabilities with dual-channel HEVC encoding and increases the quality of IP video streaming.

The Makito X HEVC has all the core features of the Makito X, including dual 3G-SDI inputs, support for up to 1080p60 HD video, multi bit rate streaming, KLV metadata support and networking capabilities like traffic shaping and optimized bandwidth performance. The new encoder also comes with Haivision’s Secure Reliable Transport technology for video delivery over public internet and firewall traversal. The unit is compatible with HEVC broadcast decoders, set-top boxes, soft players, Haivision HEVC/H.264 transcoders, and the Haivision Media Gateway.

Haivision is offering the Makito X HEVC as a compact appliance or within a 1U or 4U rack mount chassis to support up to six HEVC channels per rack unit. The company will also offer upgrade programs for customers to access the HEVC streaming technology without disrupting H.264 workflows.

BOSTON—HEVC Advance, the patent pool formed to administer licenses for the High Efficiency Video Codec, is rethinking its controversial fee structure, the CEO said Wednesday. Peter Moller made the statement in an announcement about chipmaker MediaTek joining the pool.

“We have received significant market feedback, particularly on content fees, and will adjust fees to support widespread use of HEVC,” he said.

The message follows a seven-month trajectory in which HEVC Advance launched and announced a fee structure that called for 0.5 percent of revenues on content compressed with HEVC.

Both events were met with aversion by anyone using or preparing to use HEVC for 4K streaming, including Netflix. Dan Rayburn, principal analyst for Frost & Sullivan, noted the 0.5 revenue streaming fee was to be retroactive, and include “all content services that get revenue from advertising, subscription and pay-per-view.” The terms, he said would cost Netflix, for example, more than $100 million a year.

The mere appearance of HEVC Advanced created market confusion in that MPEG-LA was already licensing the codec—but that group focused on equipment. When HEVC Advanced extended the licensing terms to content streamers, they balked.

John Carmack, chief technology officer of Oculus VR, tapped out of encoding with HEVC.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Intel, Cisco, Mozilla and Netflix formed their own codec group, the Alliance for Open Media, intended to “create a new, open royalty-free video codec specification based on the contributions of members, along with binding specifications for media format, content encryption and adaptive streaming.”

Alternative codecs gained attention, including Google’s VP9 and a new one from Cisco called “Thor,” intended as a royalty-free alternative to HEVC.

Rayburn, meanwhile, called on affected companies to reject HEVC Advance’s licensing terms, which would be opened for implementation Oct. 1.

“There is no rational business case to agree to their terms, especially when there are no details on which patents will be included or what technologies they cover,” Rayburn said. “And considering the patents are only just starting to be independently evaluated this month, there is no way to know the validity of any of the patents in the pool.”

There were no specifics about how the fee structure would be adjusted in this week’s announcement from HEVC Advance, just that it is “actively soliciting input from market participants and considering adjustments to arrive at a royalty structure that enables continued and rapid adoption of HEVC and brings the associated benefits to stakeholders within the media and technology industries.”

See…
December 4, 2014
 “HEVC vs. VP9: Which Will Win?”

SUNNYVALE, CALIF.—Vitec has unveiled the latest version of its IPTV transcoding platform, the MGW Prism. The new version adds HEVC (H.265) transcoding and a redesigned management interface with clustering support.

MGW Prism

The MGW Prism is able to transcode video streams to H.264 or HEVC SD/HD streams for delivery to CDNs, remote locations, or other IPTV viewers using less bandwidth. The system can also generate up to 16 profiles per video source and a combiner for generating adaptive bit rate streams using containers like Apple HTTP Live Streaming, Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming, and MPEG-DASH without having to offload to external servers.

The Prism also features KLV 0601/STANAG 4609 metadata pass-through, which allows satellite companies to ingest IP streams from airborne vehicles and relay them with lower bit rates using H.265 or H.264, while retaining metadata on the output stream.

VITEC, a provider of video encoding and streaming technology, demonstrated the new MGW Prism at IBC 2015.

Mark Senecal, manager of product management for compression, Imagine Communications

PHOENIX— From SD to UHD, the High Efficiency Video Coding codec also known as H.265 is predicted to change the media viewing landscape in 2015. After being formally adopted as a video compression standard in 2014 and showcased as the UHD enabler at the Consumer Electronics Show, the use of HEVC in both software and hardware could possibly make the biggest impact of any new TV technology in coming months.

“HEVC will bring not only more pixels but better ones,” said Keith Wymbs, chief marketing officer at Elemental Technologies, a Portland, Ore.-based developer of video processing technology. He is referring to the fact that the HEVC standard allows for not only greater resolution, but more color depth and a faster frame rate. All of these elements can mean big improvements in the video experience.

The improvements that HEVC will bring will not only benefit UHD viewers, but those using SD and HD content as well. Mark Senecal, manager of product management for compression for Imagine Communications in Dallas, explains that by leveraging the compression efficiencies of the new codec, low bandwidth viewers who once could only get 480p streams can now get 720p over the same delivery path. “If you look at companies doing a pure OTT play, ones that do SD can now deliver HD, which is a more compelling offering,” he said.

Bringing the improved viewing experience home will rely on companies leveraging the new codec to deliver content over existing distribution systems. “For HEVC distribution it is about economizing bandwidth,” says Ian Trow, senior director of emerging technology and strategy at Harmonic in San Jose, Calif. “Use of HEVC has a direct cost savings in distribution, whether satellite or Internet delivery.” He says that at CES there was a huge emphasis on replicating what Netflix and Sony had done in terms of a UHD VOD service model using HEVC.

Shawn Carnahan, Telestream CTO
MAKING BETTER PICTURES
Not since the AVC (H.264) codec helped enable the transition from SD to HD, has a technology come along that promises both cost savings and viewing experience improvement.

“The big advantage of HEVC as we see it is getting better quality content to the user,” explains Imagine’s Senecal. He says that his company is excited about UHD enabling technologies and that they also see better quality content revolving around more and better HD as well as the improved viewing experience of 4K images. “HEVC is the next generation of compression technologies which has not only advantages for UHD but regular HD, and in some cases SD as well,” said Matthew Goldman, senior vice president of TV compression for Ericsson and executive vice president of The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

“High dynamic range is one of the hottest topics in the industry,” says Goldman. Greater HDR means brighter colors and more contrast between lights and darks. He explains that the higher resolution of UHD is best experienced on certain size screens from a certain distance, “but higher dynamic range is always visible even when resolution may not be.” The use of HEVC may benefit all resolutions by providing more HDR, which will improve the viewing experience over current SD and HD color spaces that due to current standards present far less color and contrast than the human eye can perceive.

For sports enthusiasts higher frame rate video increases the detail and can eliminate the blurring of fast moving scenes. “HEVC can support higher frame rates in addition to resolution and color gamut,” adds Goldman. This could pave the way for a more immersive sports viewing experience. Though HEVC is not a SMPTE standard, the organization is working on the standards that complete its implementation into the broadcast ecosystem.

THE BANDWIDTH WIN
“In many ways HEVC will empower 4K delivery much as H.264 kicked off the HD delivery model,” Senecal said. The often 4x multiple of data and file sizes associated with 4K production can make both transmission and storage of the assets a challenge.

Harmonic’s Electra-X Targets UHD Encoding

SAN JOSE, CALIF.—Harmonic is expanding its Electra media processing product line with the introduction of Electra X, targeting broadcast and multiscreen content delivery. Harmonic says it’s the world’s first encoder family to support graphics, branding, and playout functionalities, as well as superior video quality and full-frame UHD live encoding.

Harmonic Electra X
Powered by the Harmonic PURE Compression Engine, Electra X appliance-based media processors boost video compression efficiency across a range of formats and codecs—including MPEG-2, AVC, and HEVC codecs—over CBR, VBR, and ABR encoding schemes to support devices from handhelds to UHDTV. The product launch initially encompasses two products, the Electra X2 (HD) and Electra X3 (UHD). The Electra X2 integrates real-time SD and HD encoding, high-quality graphics, branding, and playout functionality in a 1RU appliance. The Electra X3 advanced media processor uses Harmonic’s PURE compression engine to deliver real-time UHD formats up to 2160p60 (HEVC Main 10 profile).

“From a storage perspective it’s been a challenge getting 4K material compressed to a manageable size until very recently,” said Trow. “And for HEVC, 4K distribution has been all about economizing bandwidth. This has a direct cost savings in distribution, whether satellite or Internet delivery.”

Netflix and Sony led the way with their proprietary methods of delivering 4K to home via OTT services, and DirecTV has now entered the field by utilizing a satellite delivery method by partnering with Elemental Technologies and Samsung to create their end-to-end delivery model. Netflix and DirecTV, which want to draw more customers in by offering 4K content, both rely heavily on the compression efficiencies of the HEVC codec.

HARDWARE VERSUS SOFTWARE
Compressing large files as cost effective and as efficiently as possible is one challenge for getting UHD material to home. This is where HEVC can leverage its 30–50 percent efficiency over H.264 to provide the right transmission and file size numbers to make storage and distribution of UHD material a reality. To implement the use of HEVC compression there are different techniques, each with its own benefits. These range from hardware solutions and software-based ones to hybrid models utilizing the flexibility and processing of both.

Telestream uses a GPU model in its Vantage transcoders to leverage the power of high-end video cards. Processors by companies like NVIDIA were developed for gaming and animation, but are also leveraged for the computationally heavy compression needs of HEVC. Other companies such as Elemental, Harmonic—which just introduced its Elextra-X platform targeting UHD (see sidebar)—and Imagine Communications’ SelenioFlex line also use a software- and GPUbased platform that they feel allows them to remain flexible and not become too hardware dependant. “Softwarebased systems allow scalability, which means less hardware sitting around idle,” says Imagine’s Senecal about the ability to leverage “virtualization” in the compression space. Wymbs at Elemental agrees, “Uncertainty will drive the market towards the flexibility of software solutions,” he said.

Sony’s XAVC Picks up Where HEVC Leaves Off

There are many proprietary recording formats being used by RED, Canon and ARRI to record their RAW UHD media. These files are huge and create a slow and expensive digital cinema workflow. Other camera manufacturers are choosing a compressed format that is easy to edit right out of the camera.

Sony’s F5/F55 camera platform uses XAVC to record 4K files to Sony SxS cards.
“Sony’s latest compression technology for HD and 4K applications employs use of MPEG4/AVC also known as H.264 and implemented in a single ASIC at the highest Profile and Level configuration permitted by the MPEG4 standard (P/L 5.2).” says Hugo Gaggioni, CTO for Sony Electronics’ Professional Solutions of America. “XAVC is the commercial name that Sony uses to call this implementation, both in hardware and in software.”

Panasonic has chosen AVC Ultra 4K, and Sony XAVC as their 4K editable H.264 camera native codecs. These two codecs both utilize ASICs to enable real time recording compression of 4K images into recordable file formats written to media in the camera. Sony’s full line of 4K cameras which include the F-55, F-5 and new FS-7, all use XAVC to record 4K files to Sony SxS cards. Their cameras also offer the ability to record regular 2K HD files simultaneously to SD cards.

Ian MacSpadden

One of the most efficient ways of performing compression is through the use of dedicated chips called ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). Fujitsu demonstrated one at CES that was designed for HEVC. ASICs can provide a powerful and low-cost solution to encoding and decoding. Each of these technologies will have a role in completing the HEVC and UHD ecosystems. With both GPU and softwarebased compressors encoding material and ASICs in receiving devices quickly decoding the media, the HEVC and UHD workflows may be fully realized.

ROOM FOR MANY CODECS

Shawn Carnahan CTO for Telestream in Nevada City, Calif., thinks “HEVC is a good tool, but is not the overly hyped solution that it is made out to be.” Carnahan explains that the 30–50 percent compression numbers are valid, but not at every resolution all the time. “It’s not going to replace H.264 any more than H.264 replaced MPEG-2.” He points out that most TVs today still have MPEG-2 based tuners and H.264 decoders embedded. Only the newest models feature the new HEVC decoding.

Senecal returns to the argument about content. “It’s all about the availability of UHD content,” he said, adding that most 4K content now is in the form of produced assets, which means that linear distribution (live) won’t happen for some time. “Initial deployment will be in the set, as it is the easiest way to do it,” says Carnahan. Currently there are several external challenges, like only the latest HDMI cables supporting 4K. “The next step will be more outboard devices that are 4K capable and that can talk to the 4K sets,” Carnahan said.

Trow thinks HEVC will be a big topic at this year’s NAB Show, with broadcasters and OTT delivery companies looking for future hybrid models that offer both live and VOD functionality.

With the ATSC 3.0 standard still a year or two away, some broadcasters like Sinclair Broadcast Group have already become inpatient and have moved forward to test their own versions of higher compression technologies to deliver more channels and better quality content. “Whether right or wrong, they are pushing the industry towards a standard that will be flexible,” said Goldman. “They want to most efficiently use their bandwidth.”

In the near-term, the use of HVEC will be most active in the TV manufacturing and VOD service world, where broadcasters and content providers scramble to acquire HD and UHD assets and develop profitable distribution chains featuring higher resolution media with more vivid colors.