Evertz announced a number of new products, services and partnerships at a press conference ahead of the opening of the show, designed to help broadcasters manage, distribute and monetize content over an increasing array of services.

“Our customers not only want to know how they can integrate content cost-effectively and generate more content, but how they can monetize archives and keep audiences engaged,” said Mo Goyal, senior director for Evertz.

Among the highlights at its booth, Evertz is showing how its BRAVO Studio’s new “Highlight Factory” — where clips and stories are automatically created — uses AI to publish to Ease Live where users can pick their own highlights. The cloud will be a big focus for Evertz as it demos how its Mediator-X and OvertureRT-LIVE — available on Google Cloud — provide media companies enterprise-class and cloud-based playout and content management solutions. It is also showing its popular DreamCatcher platform operating in Google Cloud for ingest, playback, live editing and slow-motion replay. Evertz is also featuring evertz.io Stream, a streaming and playout SaaS for OTT, DTC and FAST services.

The company is celebrating the 75th anniversary of its Studer audio line, introducing Video PFL (Pre-Fade-Listen), a new feature for the Studer Vista that gives engineers enhanced capabilities, especially when working in a live environment.

TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2023 NAB Show?

MO GOYAL: The driving conversation at the 2023 NAB Show will be about content monetization. The industry continues to face challenges regarding consumers’ viewing habits. We’ve moved in a significant way from just linear television to multiple subscription services and free ad-support television (FAST) channels. But delivering these additional services can be costly.

The first shift has happened as media companies have consolidated facilities with IP. This has allowed them to pool resources more efficiently and create more content. Additionally, the adaptation of the cloud has enabled media companies to scale and address the content delivery to multiple platforms. 

The next challenge is audience engagement. Media companies will need to provide innovative solutions to engage the audience to keep them longer on their platforms, and returning to it. This can be done by using AR, VR or other technology to enhance the audience experience. For instance, we have our Ease Live platform that provides interactive overlays that has allowed our customers to add live game stats, watch parties and free-to-play games to engage the audience during a game.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

GOYAL: This is a hard question. We have a wide range of products that can fit the bill. I’ll narrow it down to a couple. First, we’re excited to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Studer Audio. We acquired the legendary brand in 2021 and have been diligently working on updating the core to support ST 2110 and integrate the Vista product line with MAGNUM-OS and VUE. This year will see the relaunch of the Studer brand under Evertz, to compete in the audio mixing console market.

Next, the continual development of our BRAVO Studio to help content creators produce more unique live content for their various platforms. For the NAB Show, we’ll showcase further integration with Studer for enhanced audio, intro the “Highlight Factory” where clips and stories are automatically created using AI technology, and publishing to Ease Live where users can pick their own highlights.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

GOYAL: In the case of BRAVO Studio, Studer and Ease Live it’s the integration from the edge device back to the production. The data we collect from user engagement (using Ease Live) can be fed back to the production team to create more personalized content for the end customer. In this case, BRAVO Studio uses the received metadata to curate specific highlights or clips and push back to the user via Ease Live interactive overlays. Essentially this gives users a unique collection of content based on their interactions.

TVT: NAB Show is celebrating its centennial this year. How many NAB Shows have you been to and do you have any particular standout memories of past shows?

GOYAL: Personally, this will be my 17th NAB. I still find it hard to believe that it’s been 17 years. The memories vary from our booth designs to the people that I’ve worked with, to the customers themselves. But, over the 17 years, the highlight was building our own data center in the middle of our booth and essentially assembling a broadcast facility using all IP. The entire booth demonstrations depended on this core working 100% and remaining up and running throughout the show. The power, the cooling and code updates were all challenges we had to meet because the NAB Show will always go on, with or without us. So, the push to get the full IP system running in time for the show was the most stressful, fulfilling and memorable NAB Show experiences I’ve had over the 17 years.

TVT: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trend at the 2016 NAB Show?

Mo Goyal

GOYAL:We anticipate that the three most significant technology trends at the NAB Show this year will be: Uncompressed Video Over IP, Ultra HD (4K) HDR and Cloud Services. With uncompressed video over IP, the discussion will be focused on the varying options that are available and what makes sense today. Throughout the Evertz booth this year, we will be highlighting Adaptive Sample Picture Encapsulation (ASPEN) and its interoperability with members of the ASPEN Community. ASPEN is an open-format, standards-based transport protocol, which offers a flexible method of transporting video, audio and data over a scalable IP network. Based on previous deployments and the maturity of the technology, we believe that ASPEN is the only viable choice to deploy IP in the live production environment today.

The topic of Ultra HD has been discussed at the NAB Show over the past two years, however, with the addition of high dynamic range (HDR) and wide color gamut (WCG), we expect Ultra HD services will excel this year. Both HDR and WCG create an immersive image, which will appeal to the end viewer. Hence, the increased interest from our customers to move from the proof-of-concept stage to a full-time Ultra HD channel as soon as possible.

This year, there will be more conversations around cloud services and the viability of it for our customers. Both public and private cloud services offer customers a way to provide content more effectively without the large capital expenditures in a physical infrastructure. We expect a lot of interest in this space, as customers have started to launch mainstream channels using cloud-based services.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

GOYAL: We will have a lot of product announcements around the major technology trends mentioned earlier. For uncompressed video over IP, we will be demonstrating the new features and capabilities of our Software Defined Video Networking (SDVN) solutions. One aspect is interoperability with other ASPEN Community members’ products and the other transporting uncompressed Ultra HD over IP. In each case MAGNUM, our SDVN orchestration and control software, is an important component of the demonstration. MAGNUM is the most advanced SDVN orchestration and control software on the market today, and it is the core of over 40+ global SDVN installations.

In addition to transporting uncompressed Ultra HD over IP, we will highlight other Ultra HD products, such as DreamCatcher for Ultra HD production, OVRT-LIVE-4K for integrated channel playout, and 3080UEP and 3482TXE for contribution and distribution compression of Ultra HD.

We will also be highlighting our cloud-based platforms for both media asset management and channel playout. Both Mediator-X and OVRT-LIVE-VM will demonstrate to our customers the viability and reliability of these services for their mainstream channels.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

GOYAL: At Evertz we always take an innovate approach to every new product or feature we introduce and our customers recognize this. This year we’ll continue to demonstrate this mindset with new features on products such as MAGNUM SDVN and OvertureRT LIVE platforms.

MAGNUM SDVN is the software control and orchestration layer for our leading SDVN solutions. Although having a large portfolio of media gateways and high-capacity switch fabrics is important, it is the control system that will win the business. MAGNUM SDVN really sets us apart from the competition. MAGNUM SDVN provides seamless (and complete) control of hybrid SDI IP facilities while maintaining a simple source, destination and take operation. This year, we’ve added new features (like topology and path view) that enable our customers (the broadcast engineers) to configure, manage and maintain the hybrid (or purely) IP solutions with tools that “look and feel” like their SDI world.

With the OvertureRT LIVE platform, we’ve created a completely virtual integrated channel playout called OVRT-LIVE-VM. The key differentiator from other products in the market is that the virtual platform offers the complete feature set of the physical version of OvetureRT LIVE. There’s no compromise or sacrifice of features. This is extremely important for media companies and playout service providers as they look for cost-effective private/public cloud service models for disaster recovery and short-term channels.

TVT: What is it about the NAB Show that brings you back every year?

GOYAL:The NAB Show is the biggest event for our industry. As manufacturers, we use the NAB Show as a major milestone for our product development process and it is the best platform to showcase new technologies that address today’s issues such as ASPEN and Ultra HD HDR. The show gives us the opportunity to engage customers for their feedback on our new product ideas and development. Lastly, it enables us to educate the industry on upcoming trends and the future of technology.

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

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

Mo Goyal

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

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

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

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

BEE: Have you submitted ASPEN to SMPTE for review?

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

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

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

BEE: Do you have any customers yet?

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

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

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

BEE: ASPEN is basically all software, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEE: Will Evertz join this alliance?

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

BEE: Were you approached to join?

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

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

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

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

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

BEE: What does ASPEN stand for?

GOYAL: Adaptive Sample Picture Encapsulation