FRANKFURT, Germany—Software solutions provider manifold technologies has announced that its manifold CLOUD was selected by NEP Belgium to provide a signal processing and multiviewer solution for an annual international sporting event in Asia that was produced using a virtual OB setup.

“In January 2024, we deployed our new virtual OB concept for the first time,” explained Geert Thoelen, director of technology for NEP Belgium. “Virtual OB is a completely software driven and virtualized solution for live television production at the highest level. After careful evaluation we chose manifold CLOUD as our multiviewer and signal processing solution. The technology worked perfectly, and manifold CLOUD proved to be a reliable, well-developed product with enormous potential.”

The company explained that manifold CLOUD provides users with access to an on-demand pool of easily configurable functionality available as services through a single-sign-on web UI.  Developed to target Tier-1 live productions, manifold CLOUD can handle the most demanding live sports, entertainment and news productions while providing the benefits of scalability, resiliency, quick deployment, and unified control, the company said. 

The platform is designed to run on COTS FPGA acceleration cards from multiple manufacturers. Services are quickly created and configured on-demand within a private cloud environment and automatically assigned to an accelerator card.  Services are combined into production clusters that operate independently and simultaneously - each supporting an individual production, such as a sports event or news show.  In the event of a hardware or network failure, services are automatically restored on another accelerator card for maximum resiliency.

In addition, manifold CLOUD offers unparalleled scalability, automatic provisioning and inherent resiliency while supporting large, live uncompressed workflows with subframe latency with 90% less power consumption than CPU/GPU-based solutions, the company said. 

Added Thoelen, “manifold CLOUD has been a great addition to our tech stack. It complements the intuitive interface, scalability, technology agnostic approach that are integral to NEP’s proprietary broadcast control platform, TFC, and delivers tremendous value to our clients.”

MUNICH—NEP Belgium has taken delivery of core technology from Imagine Communications, including the company’s Platinum IP3 router, for a major refresh of its Unit 14 outside broadcast truck.

“Our Unit 14 still had many kilometers in it, but with a technology platform that was life-expired,” said Geert Thoelen, transitions manager at NEP Belgium.

“We wanted a solution that would fit into the existing space, would give us all the functionality we need today and be ready for the future, including increasing use of IP connectivity. And we could really only take the truck off the road for little more than a month earlier this year, so our partner had to be capable of moving swiftly to install and commission.”

Imagine and VP Media Solutions, its Belgian dealer and partner, were able to meet the tight deadline for the refurbishment, said Imagine.

The new Platinum IP3 router, which was delivered with a single 15RU chassis, offers high-density switching of HD-SDI signals and the capability to seamlessly integrate uncompressed video over IP, making it ready for a migration to IP connectivity, such as a move to Ultra HD signals, the company said.

The router installed in Unit 14 is also fitted with Platinum SX Pro multiviewer cards, which reduces the amount of rack space needed as well as power consumption. Overall system control is provided by Imagine’s Magellan SDN Orchestrator. It delivers unified operational interfaces in a hybrid environment, making the transition between SDI and software defined IP infrastructures easier.

“The small frame size fitted well into the truck, but what really made it the right choice for us was the integrated multiviewer,” Thoelen said. “The multiviewer is also much more flexible than our old monitoring setup. Unit 14 might do football Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then entertainment and concerts during the week, so we constantly need to change the configuration. We can set up as many PiPs as we need for whatever the director wants.”

The refresh of Unit 14 took five weeks. It returned in time to cover a Ladies of Soul concert in Amsterdam.

More information is available via Imagine Communications.