LOS ANGELES—The Video Services Forum has announced that two major industry interoperability demonstrations of the latest technologies for transporting video and audio over IP networks will take place during VidTrans 2019, Feb. 26-28 at the Marina del Rey Marriott in Los Angeles.

The theme of this year’s conference is, “Delivering the Benefits of IP for Media Production” and will focus on the innovative types of IP networking and video technologies and their application both for long-haul video transport and for the production studio. In addition to technical sessions, the conference will also showcase some of the latest applications, technologies and products in its exhibit hall as well as provide abundant networking opportunities at our special events. The exhibition hall and interop will be open Tuesday and Wednesday, Feb. 26 & 27 and offers an opening night reception on Tuesday.

VidTrans19 will feature two important industry interoperability demonstrations:

RIST (Reliable Internet Stream Transport) technology will be demonstrated through the use of real-time, contribution-quality video streams exchanged over the public Internet between Marina del Rey and a number of remote locations around the world. The emphasis will be on multi-vendor interoperability using VSF TR-06-01 (published in October, 2018), with close to a dozen technology providers participating in the live demos, which will be conducted on-site and via the public Internet.

JPEG 2000 Ultra-Low Latency (J2K ULL) technology will also be demonstrated in a live network during VidTrans19. Four leading technology providers, Artel, Evertz, Grass Valley and Media Links, will feature compatible implementations of VSF TR-01:2018 (released this past June) in a live demonstration in the exhibit hall. This new version of the spec updates the widely-adopted TR-01 for new applications, including Ultra HD levels 1 and 2, HDR video and end-to-end latencies below 1 frame period for many implementations.

This year’s VidTrans conference will comprise two and a half days of informative technical sessions on the latest technologies for high-performance IP media networking. Industry experts will present technical papers on a wide variety of topics related to video networking, IP transport and IP production. Highlighting the conference will be two eagerly anticipated panel discussions: “Challenges and Solutions to the Rollout of 2110 Systems” and “Workflow Virtualization and Cloud-Based Systems – How to Design and Deliver”. The preliminary conference program is available on the VSF site.

VidTrans provides an ideal venue for television professionals to see the latest IP media technologies in person. This low-key conference, attended primarily by industry decision makers, offers a great opportunity to speak directly with key technology providers and users from around the world.

VidTrans19 Conference will also include a number of social networking events, providing attendees the opportunity to interact with colleagues and industry peers.

For more information about the conference, please visit vsf.tv for updates. 

NEW YORK—Public broadcaster WNET is coming up on the one-year anniversary of a successful remote production control deployment.

In early 2018, the station enabled remote control of WLIW in Plainview, Long Island, production via a JPEG 2000-based transport solution from Nevion. Since then, the company’s Virtuoso software-defined media node platform has been used to transport audio and video streams from the Plainview station to WNET’s New York City headquarters.

The system has proven to be reliable and agile “with no faults” since its rollout, said Frank Graybill, Director of Engineering, WNET.

Virtuoso seamlessly backhauls multiple camera and audio feeds from the WLIW studio to WNET’s Manhattan control room without requiring production personnel in Plainview.

This approach does away with the need for guests and staff to travel to the Manhattan studio to produce WLIW programming as well as eliminates the costs involved in building a staffed facility for these productions in Long Island, Nevion said.

Rather, WNET repurposed an existing WLIW studio and deployed the Nevion Virtuoso low-latency, high-quality transport with JPEG 2000 encoding for live remote production controlled in Manhattan.

This setup makes it possible for the broadcaster to conduct interviews on short notice, which allows WLIW to produce more timely, relevant content to tie into local breaking news stories.

“We have been thoroughly impressed with the Virtuoso solution. Its GUI is user-friendly, and the software is easy to understand, which allowed us to have the system up and running within a matter of hours,” said Graybill.

WNET purchased the Virtuoso solution from Dynamic Performance Technology, a Nevion certified business partner.

More information is available on the Nevion website; information on Dynamic Performance Technology is available on its website.

BRNO, CZECH REPUBLIC—Vizrt and Comprimato have come to agreement to make Comprimator’s JPEG2000 software encoder available on installed Viz Engines. This new integration will allow users to create JPEG2000 streams, including ones in Ultra HD, without additional hardware or external devices.

JPEG2000 is a codec that uses wavelet compression for efficiency and image quality. With its core design, the JPEG2000 allows Ultra HD resolution videos to be compressed without titling.

“Adding our compact software module to the Viz Engine means users can configure it for JPEG2000 streaming with no additional hardware: just the Nvidia graphics card in the PC,” said Jiri Matela, CEO of Comprimato.

Vizrt is a provider of real-time 3D graphics, studio automation, sports analysis and asset management tools.