Collaboration hasn’t always been a familiar currency in broadcast and pro-AV technology. The inherent competitiveness of such a forward-looking business has frequently meant that vendors and service providers have felt obliged to seek commercial advantage over common ground. But the challenges of moving successfully into the networked media era were so substantial that it’s arguable a sea-change was always destined to occur.

In fact, there are abundant examples of effective collaboration from the last decade or so as IP-based infrastructures have become more prevalent. An important contributory factor here is that broadcast and pro-AV have gradually converged, with an increasing crossover between the technologies and solutions being employed. 

But there are also plenty of industry-changing developments that would not have been possible without meaningful partnership. The AES67 audio interoperability standard and SMPTE ST 2110 media transport standards suite are two prominent examples, and the same applies to AMWA (Advanced Media Workflow Association) and its Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS).

An initiative that both synthesises existing specifications and standards, and expands upon them with extra features and functionality, NMOS draws on work from other well-established technology organisations, namely: the aforementioned SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), EBU (European Broadcasting Union), AES (Audio Engineering Society) and VSF (Video Services Forum).

In this article we’ll speak to a leading broadcaster and two prominent vendors to find out why they opted to collaborate so openly and contribute their thoughts and ideas to a set of specifications with the potential to benefit not just them, but the industry as a whole.

‘Building a Community’
Like all of the organizations featured here, the BBC has been involved in the development of NMOS since the project’s early days. Peter Brightwell is Lead Engineer at BBC Research and Development, heading up the corporation’s applied research on infrastructure for live video, as well as being a frequent contributor to industry work on interoperability and the transition to hybrid and cloud-based production. He has very good reason to recall the date of the first workshop of the AMWA Networked Media Incubator that went on to inform so many of the developments subsequently encompassed by NMOS.

“It was on Jan. 11 2016, the day after David Bowie died,” he says, although fortunately this sad event did not prove to be portentous for the incubator’s prospects. “In many ways, it was still early days for IP networked media—this was prior to the publication of ST 2110—although within BBC R&D we had already done quite a lot of work, including a show demo at the Commonwealth Games in 2014.”

Nonetheless, it was clear that a collegiate approach to something as monumental as the transition from SDI to IP was always going to be on the cards. Moreover, as time has gone by and the structures underpinning the various working and review groups have solidified, it’s a process that has become increasingly invaluable. "As much as anything else, it's about building a community and getting that cross-fertilisation of ideas. Having different groups coming together, sharing ideas, and realising that the way one group has done something could be useful over here, and so on,” suggests Brightwell.

Presently, there is what Brightwell terms a “two-phase approach” to specification activity. Phase one involves a “fairly light-touch, informal approach to get ideas about what we might want to do next. Using the incubator structure, we schedule informal calls for people who want to work together on a particular problem. They can then discuss the issue and ultimately put together a proposal for an actual specification activity. Once that is in place it can move into the second phase, which is formal agile specification activity incorporating more formal oversight.” As might be expected, regular calls between participants are deemed essential to maintaining progress in both phases.

Whilst a great deal of work is done remotely, physical workshops provide a welcome opportunity to brainstorm in person and strengthen relationships, and Brightwell estimates there have been a dozen of them—in locations as various as London, Montreal and Wuppertal—over the past eight years.

These gatherings can be especially useful in fine-tuning the agenda for a new specification “to focus on the areas that will be most beneficial to the people who are actively engaged. It also provides a space not just for discussion, but for people to demonstrate new ideas and features, so it’s really important on several levels.”

‘A Very Effective Mechanism’
The agility of the NMOS specification structure is also a recurring motif for Jed Deame, who is the founder and CEO of Nextera Video, a leading supplier of IP cores for video-over-IP. 

“We’re a leading provider of NMOS software, and we’ve been doing this for seven or eight years—from before the stage where any of the specs had been ratified,” he explains, adding that the company also provides a full OEM solution for adding ST 2110 to new or existing products. “Our mission in life is essentially to help manufacturers add 2110 and NMOS to their products quickly and easily, enabling them to accelerate development and time to market of their own solutions.”

It was in the late 2010s that Deame first began to take an interest in the NMOS project, having encountered difficulties in moving video packets between 2110 devices. 

“The amount of typing you had to do—answering questions like ‘what’s your port?’ and ‘what’s your video format?’—was immense, which also meant the level of frustration was pretty significant,” he recalls. “But then somebody said that once we have NMOS, all of this typing will go away and it’s going to be a ‘one-button-click’ operation. And that’s really the beauty of NMOS: it brings the simplicity and familiarity of cross-point routing to the IP world, whilst also taking it a step further with the addition of the NMOS registry, which provides plug and play discovery of all devices on the network.”

But it was once he started to attend NMOS ‘interop sessions’ and gain an awareness of the streamlined documentation and publication processes that the full value of the project became apparent. 

“It was all structured intentionally so there was a very agile mechanism for developing the specs,” observes Deame. “Each part was published to the web as soon as it had been discussed and received some initial approval. It wasn’t the longer, six-month-type cycle where you send everything out and wait for feedback from the industry.”

By contrast, the NMOS approach made "for a very iterative process. For example, with IS-04, which is the Discovery and Registration Specification, we were able to get a reference code to multiple vendors, have them review it, and then very quickly and efficiently put a basic set of specifications in place.” 

Deame is sure this phased approach also makes it easier for manufacturers to feel more positive about implementation: “When we eventually publish the final versions, as opposed to the drafts, it isn’t a case of ‘good luck, this should now work.’ Instead, it is more like ‘this has been fully interop tested by multiple vendors and is good to go.’ So that created a lot of confidence for manufacturers to adopt NMOS and build products against the specs because they knew they had already been thoroughly tested.”

Meanwhile, the Nextera commercial NMOS solution continues to evolve; currently, the company’s R&D team is working to add IS-11, which ensures Stream Compatibility Management by reporting supported AV formats to the controller, and IS-13, which facilitates easy identification of nodes and devices through Annotation & Labelling. 

Explaining the benefit of the Nextera solution over open-source code, Deame notes: “While it may be appealing to have a ‘free’ solution, it does require manufacturers to dedicate significant engineering resources to fully understand the code so they can integrate it with their products and maintain and evolve it without being dependent on the open-source developers outside of their control. The Nextera solution is turn-key, particularly when pre-integrated with our ST 2110 and/or IPMX FPGA IP Cores. There is no code to integrate; it works out of the box. We also provide direct, prioritised 24/7 support in case issues arise in development or in the field to ensure customer satisfaction.”

All of which serves to reconfirm Deame’s assertion that his company’s mission is to help manufacturers quickly and easily add NMOS to their own products—thereby freeing them up to “focus their internal resources on their own unique differentiators”.

‘A Community-Driven Forum’
Sony’s association with AMWA long precedes the development of NMOS, stretching back to the early 2010s and the publication of the AS-11 family of specifications devised to help media organizations migrate from linear to file-based workflows. But it was the arrival of IP as a serious force in the industry that led to the company having notable input to the NMOS specs.

Peter Sykes is Strategic Technology Development Manager at Sony Europe. “With the growing interest in the use of IP within live broadcast and media infrastructures from the mid-2010s onwards, Sony started to actively contribute to the development of the NMOS specifications (initially IS-04, IS-05 and IS-06) and hosted an AMWA NMOS interoperability workshop at its Basingstoke facility,” he says. “This was followed by Sony becoming a Principal member of AMWA in 2017.”

Sykes implies that AMWA’s worldwide membership drawn from media companies and their suppliers has provided a foundation for the for the “collaborative spirit” that has propelled NMOS to its current status.

“There are many cases that could be highlighted, but a specific example of the fostering of more open collaboration was the establishment of the AMWA User Group consisting of broadcasters and systems integrators,” he says. “The User Group meets regularly and feeds information into the technical workgroups to identify areas that need changes or additions to make their workflows work better for them. Recently, the User Group asked for better labelling of resources in NMOS and this was addressed by the working groups, including through the publication of BCP-002-02 to ensure manufacturers use IS-04 tags in a consistent way to define manufacturer, product name, serial number, etc, of a media node.”

Another example of partnership, and one in which Sony played a leading role, was the development of the NMOS controller specification and test suite.

“These improved the guidance and testing available to help ensure that controllers are compliant with the NMOS specifications, which in turn helped to ensure better interoperability between solutions from different vendors," Sykes said. "The activity group included several end-users and vendors working collaboratively, and led to a new test badge for controllers at JT-NM Tested events.”

With media technology continuing to evolve at a remarkable rate, the impulse to collaborate in order to successfully address common challenges will remain undimmed. Citing the recent accelerated adoption of cloud, IP, remote and distributed production, Sykes says that technology leaders “face the often-difficult task of evolving and adapting their technical infrastructures to allow real-world business and production requirements to be met. [Therefore] an open, collaborative approach as identified is required, and this is where the NMOS project is set to continue to play a major role.”

Like the other contributors to this article, Sykes believes that effective collaboration and a forward-looking ethos will ensure the NMOS project remains relevant: “Identifying new areas where NMOS can be applied, continuing to gather and address workflow requirements from end-users, and continuing to communicate the benefits and widespread adoption of NMOS are all key to success.”

LAS VEGAS—Now in its eighth year, the IP Showcase has evolved into a must-see exhibit for anyone deploying IP technology. Over the years, AIMS and other major technical and standards organizations within the broadcast industry have taken advantage of large industry events like the NAB Show to highlight vendor products, technical presentations, and real-life case studies of IP deployments, while providing attendees with networking opportunities with access to the experts that make open IP standards a reality. 

As the NAB Show celebrates its 100th anniversary, we couldn’t be more excited to be there again, as well as welcoming our newest members—Megapixel VR and NETGEAR—to the IP Showcase.

Demonstrating Interoperability
In the beginning, the IP Showcase started out as a way to demonstrate to the industry that IP standards work and to highlight their interoperability. However, in listening to feedback from attendees on what they’re hoping to see and what they need from the Showcase, we quickly learned that there’s a lot of hunger out there for education on a wide range of topics. 

Part of this need is met by the IP Showcase Theater, where industry professionals give 20-minute presentations on case studies and other topics. As in previous years, this will be a centerpiece of the IP Showcase at the 2023 NAB Show. In addition, the “IP in Action” wall will be back, which will display additional information about different IP installations that have taken place. 

We’ll also have people on the ground to answer questions about today’s hot topics, such as ground-to-cloud, cloud-to-ground, and of course, the IPMX set of open standards and specifications for AV-over-IP deployments being developed by AIMS. 

There’s also been a lot of work going on with codecs in our various groups, and we’ll be there to educate people on the flurry of activity around standards over the last year, including work around JPEG XS, H.264, and EDID. In addition, the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) recently published its guide for implementing NMOS controllers, and its work on stream compatibility management is moving to the next phase of testing and interoperability. 

The Video Services Forum (VSF) has also released the first draft of TR-10-1 for system timing in IPMX—with revisions active and ongoing—and the HDCP Key Exchange Protocol draft specification. We’re expecting these to be popular topics of discussion at the show. 

Knowledge Sharing
Education is certainly at the forefront of attendees’ expectations for the IP Showcase; however, we’ve also learned that organizations and individual professionals aren’t strictly looking for information and insight, they are also eager to share ideas. 

So, this year at NAB Show, we decided we really wanted to emphasize the social aspect of the IP Showcase and provide attendees with the opportunity to get together and have these conversations. And we’re doing that with the introduction of a new element: the meetup section. This is going to be an open space with flexible seating, where attendees can come in and host conversations revolving around IP media systems that are important to them.

And while we’re normally very selective about who can give presentations at the IP Showcase, we’re opening the meetup space to just about anybody who wants to have a conversation regarding anything related to AV-over-IP, SMPTE 2110, or even other proprietary protocols out there. As long as the topic is centered around IP media systems and making them work, anyone can host a conversation; they don’t need to belong to AIMS or any other organization. 

The reason for this inclusivity is that we envision this new section not only as a place to support our community of open-standards-based solutions, but to also hear from users in general. We want to find out what you’re doing in IP, the problems you’re facing, and your success stories. 

Sharing such information at the IP Showcase is a really exciting prospect, and we’re anticipating that a lot of smaller groups will want to take advantage of it. So, we’ve been casting a wide net for participants, sending out a sign-up sheet via social media and other outlets. All people have to do is fill out a form, and they’re given a time slot for their conversation.

We’ll also have industry experts come in to address groups that want to discuss certain topics. So, for example, if there’s a group that wants to discuss network convergence or issues they’re having when setting up IP systems, we’ll bring in experts from companies in our organization that specialize in those topics, and they’ll be available for those meetups. 

And finally, we’re opening up the space to groups that already meet within standards organizations over Zoom and elsewhere to have face-to-face meetings at the NAB Show. There are so many possibilities to use this new space as an educational opportunity, and we can’t wait to see what people do with it. It’s going to make the 2023 NAB Show 2023 one to remember, and we look forward to seeing everybody there.

Visit us during exhibit hours at Booth W2867 in the West Hall of the LVCC. 

Register for the 2023 NAB Show at nabshow.com/2023.

MONTREAL, Quebec — September 13, 2019 —Matrox® Video is pleased to announce that the Matrox X.mio5 Q25, Matrox X.mio3 IP, and Matrox DSX LE5 D25 SMPTE ST 2110 network interface controller (NIC) cards have all successfully passed the most recent Joint Task Force on Networked Media (JT-NM) Tested program for both the SMPTE ST 2110 standard and the NMOS/JT-NM TR-1001 specification. Matrox’s participation and technical contributions to the testing initiative represents a renewed commitment in maintaining the highest standard for multi-vendor interoperability in SMPTE ST 2110, IP-based deployments.

Returning to the IBC 2019 IP Showcase, the JT-NM Tested program offers prospective purchasers of IP-based equipment with greater, more documented insight into how vendor equipment aligns with open industry standards. The Matrox X.mio5 Q25, Matrox X.mio3 IP, and Matrox DSX LE5 D25 cards underwent the rigorous JT-NM testing program, with each of them seamlessly serving as reference sources for the SMPTE ST 2110 trial. For the NMOS/JT-NM TR-1001 trial, the same Matrox NICs demonstrated their built-in NMOS support with predictable, system-level connectivity for the TR-1001-1 technical recommendation. With built-in support for the NMOS IS-04 Device Discovery and Registration, NMOS IS-05 Device Connection Management, NMOS IS-09 System, LLDP, DHCP, and DNS-SD specifications, Matrox NICs completely abstract all low-level design work enabling OEMs to readily integrate their solutions into the ST 2110 network environment. 

Featured Matrox ST 2110 cards in the JT-NM Tested program: 

• Matrox X.mio5 Q25 ST 2110 quad 25 GbE NIC card for IP workflows from HD to 4K
• Matrox X.mio3 IP ST 2110 NIC card with multi-channel video I/O over 10 GbE plus onboard video processing
• Matrox DSX LE5 D25 ST 2110 dual 25 GbE NIC card for IP workflows from HD to 4K

“Matrox has been a long-time supporter of the SMPTE ST 2110 standard, and we are thrilled to continue this commitment through JT-NM’s IBC 2019 Tested program,” says Alberto Cieri, senior director of sales and marketing, Matrox Video. “Backed by our unique combination of IP know-how and broadcast expertise, Matrox NICs are built to offer the simplest path from SDI to ST 2110, while guaranteeing complete network interoperability and 24/7 reliability for next-generation ST 2110 workflows.”  

See Matrox SMPTE ST 2110 NIC cards in action at IBC 2019 on Matrox stand B15, hall 7 and in the IP Showcase Future Zone in rooms E106-107. 

###

About Matrox Video

Matrox Video is a technology and market leader in the field of 4K, HD, and SD digital video hardware and software for accelerated H.264 encoding, realtime editing, audio/video input/output, streaming, A/V signal conversion, capture/playout servers, channel-in-a-box systems, and CGs. Matrox's Emmy award-winning technology powers a full range of multi-screen content creation and delivery platforms used by broadcasters, telcos, cable operators, post-production facilities, live event producers, videographers, and A/V professionals worldwide. Founded in 1976, Matrox is a privately held company headquartered in Montreal, Canada. For more information, visit www.matrox.com/video. 

Matrox Media Contact: 

Email: pr@matrox.com

Tel: +1 (514) 822-6000

Website: www.matrox.com

LOS ANGELES—The universe of AES67- compliant products has expanded over recent years and with the interoperability standard now published in the SMPTE 2110 standards suite has become the “Rosetta Stone” of audio-over-IP. But while digital mixing console system products were among the first to adopt AES67, to what extent are end-users networking compliant products? What barriers to adoption remain, and what can be done to promote more AES67 network implementations?

ALL IP

“In the TV market, AES67 interoperability is part of almost every client conversation,” said Martin Dyster, vice president of business development-TV, TV Solutions Group, The Telos Alliance. Proof that AES67 is ready for primetime can be seen at University of Notre Dame Martin Media Center, a benchmark for what is possible in an all-IP, multivendor environment, where his company supplied the console and routing pieces, Dyster said.

Across the campus-wide media production environment, says Dyster, “All video and audio are transported as IP from the cameras and mics to PCR, and in the case of the Telos Alliance Axia Fusion consoles, there’s not a physical router in sight. Everything is routed at switch level, so it truly is a system achieving what was intended with AoIP all along.”

The installation includes Evertz core video and control elements. “The interchange of around 450 AES67 streams between it and the audio production system is seamless,” Dyster says. “Other vendors in this installation include Riedel, who supplied an AES67-equipped Artist system. Other examples where we’ve connected at AES67 level include products like the Genelec 8340 IP monitors—but any AES67 compliant product should work fine.”

AOIP IS THE GOAL

Don Bird, vice president of Business Development and Marketing for Lawo North America, agrees that AES67 is a basic requirement in almost every customer project. “In some cases, as a natural subset of their request to deploy a complete ST2110-compliant infrastructure, but even in those projects involving an upgrade of existing facilities where AoIP is the goal and the rest of the production pipeline is going to be migrated to IP over time,” he says.

Lawo has been providing AES67 capabilities across distributed and remote production architectures as well as in local studio environments for some years now, according to Bird. “This is nothing new at this point, as customers clearly recognize the savings in cost, flexibility and efficiency of operation.”

Phil Owens, senior sales engineer, for Wheatstone in New Bern, N.C., has observed less enthusiasm for AES67 thus far. “Customers are primarily concerned with their central infrastructure,” he says. “AES67 tends to address add-ons, in most cases. This will change in the TV market as SMPTE 2110 and its audio component, SMPTE 2110-30, become more prevalent.”

Owens has primarily seen client interest in interfaces with a live sound component in a system, and interfaces with some AES67- or Dante-capable intercom systems. “And we have seen smaller local studio implementations, such as interfacing with Dante-equipped mic preamps via AES67,” he reports.

“We are currently working on two university projects that have an auditorium equipped with a Dante-equipped live sound board tied into their broadcast facility via AES67,” adds Owens. “Another university has expressed interest in interfacing a Wheatstone system with an RTS intercom using their Omneo protocol, which is in fact Dante; that will be an AES67 interface.”

Calrec Audio has supplied AoIP networks to several broadcasters for facility-wide installations, reports Dave Letson, the company’s vice president of sales. “More often, though, we are seeing pockets of deployment in POC or smaller applications, so the broadcaster or facility can cut their teeth and gain an understanding of SMPTE 2110 networks.”

The real benefits and savings will come from greenfield builds that can implement the networking facilities from the get-go, Letson believes. Thus, some manufacturers have developed products, such as Calrec’s H2-IP Gateway devices, to bridge proprietary IP infrastructures and create hybrid networks.

That said, Calrec consoles are being networked with products such as Sonifex’s AES67-based monitor pre-hear products and Grass Valley routers, says Letson. “Calrec’s AoIP I/O solutions allow any piece of third-party equipment that is AES67 compatible to talk to Calrec’s I/O boxes and enter the [company’s proprietary] Hydra2 domain.”

BARRIERS TO ADOPTION

Manufacturers almost universally note that AES67’s lack of discovery, control and connection management, which were never part of the standard’s brief, are a barrier to adoption. Lawo’s Bird observes, “We offer a range of products that enable us to provide all-AES67 network infrastructures for our customers, so we don’t really encounter any barriers in that respect.”

“AES67 is an audio-only interface that has to be set up manually by entering a number of stream parameters at both the send and receive ends,” says Owens, “or ‘semi-manually’ by using an SAP utility to advertise those stream parameters to the various endpoints. Control—logic events—has yet to be addressed, although yet another standard, AES70, is a possible solution.”

Letson points to a recent survey by Grass Valley that indicates that IP adoption is slower than previously forecast. Two-thirds of respondents stated a preference for a hybrid approach, with cost a major concern when considering a move to IP. “Cost is obviously a barrier unless you are already planning to replace equipment,” he says, including the costs to deploy completely new infrastructure and train staff, and costs incurred through disruption.

“A fear of the unknown and a feeling that AoIP is brand new and unproven” also militate against wider or faster adoption, Dyster suggests.

The Networked Media Open Specification [NMOS] is currently being finalized. The IS-04 part of that spec addresses discovery, and the IS-05 part addresses connection management, according to Owens. “NMOS will make AES67 much easier to set up and use,” he said.

Calrec, like many other manufacturers, is developing a stream manager, Calrec Connect, which will allow complex network information to be displayed and streams to be created in a user-friendly manner, according to Letson. “This helps to reduce the burden of training needed,” he said.

Bird noted the importance of ongoing training in fostering adoption. “Through involvement in associations like AIMS and various technical recommendation groups and standards bodies we put great emphasis on education and awareness,” he said. “We encourage any customers interested in deploying an AES67 infrastructure to have open dialog with their consultants, integrators, and equipment providers to verify that all components specified are fully supporting the standard in an interoperable way.”

LOS ANGELES—Whether over standardized network protocols such as SMPTE ST2110 and AES67 or formats like Wheatstone’s WheatNet, Calrec’s Hydra2, RAVENNA, Audinate’s Dante, and others, audio mixing consoles are supporting remote television broadcast audio productions as they move in new directions. In sports broadcasts, especially, consoles are leveraging networks to implement a variety of applications, from at-home production to ensuring consistent audio quality at every connected mixer, to enabling remote control of, and set-up through, distant desks.

Glen Stilwell, audio operations manager for the PAC-12 Networks, which handles more than 450 at-home productions in a nine-month period each season, observed that IP audio networking is introducing efficiencies for remote broadcast operations. He hopes that new technology from console manufacturers will help him lower costs as the number of productions inevitably increases.

“With our development partners like Calrec, and their new RP1, we’re going to start eliminating the need to carry around big, heavy copper,” said Stilwell, who noted that all the schools in the conference have installed 10-Gig networks. The RP1 unit offers local DSP and an IP connection back to the plant where the mixer has full control of the remote inputs.

“We’re still precabling venues with copper mic cable, per season,” said Stilwell. “As we become more efficient and reduce personnel, we can’t spend the time to do that.” With devices such as the RP1, “We can put down either fiber or, over the long-term, build network drops in the field and just leave them forever,” he said.

PLAYING TOGETHER

But even with networking infrastructures in place, setting up AES67 streams between devices from different manufacturers is not yet as easy as it could be. Even using a common discovery protocol like mDNS/Bonjour, it’s currently necessary to log into a device using one brand’s web UI and create an AES67 stream, then switch to another brand’s web UI, log in, find that stream, and register to receive it.

According to Pete Walker, senior product manager for Calrec several companies are working on the problem—indeed, there is already a solution in the works. “NMOS [Networked Media Open Specifications] is going to take it to the next level,” Walker said. “You can use a central piece of software to control all your devices.” The initial NMOS tool will be IS-04, managing device discovery.

Walker says the protocol is still developing and Calrec doesn’t want to have to wait for it. “Calrec and others are looking at implementing cross-platform control systems, software that discovers all the devices on the network,” he said.

Calrec’s solution, “Connect,” will identify media streams and devices on the network regardless of their registration or discovery protocol. “You can filter, search, then drag and drop devices and interconnect them,” he said. “It visually represents all your streams and workflows.”

At this year’s three-part U.S. Open (Women’s, Senior’s, and Men’s) for Fox Sports, Senior Audio Engineer Dana Kirkpatrick leveraged Calrec’s Hydra2 network to QC the very large number of audio channels coming from the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club course in Southampton, New York. “We were feeding the router and six Calrec Brio consoles in the iso, two digital feature groups, and feeding another Brio, as well as a submix console, a Calrec Apollo,” Kirkpatrick said. “And I was creating two MADI streams for the world.”

The huge network enabled Kirkpatrick to achieve consistency across the attached consoles, he said. “The idea was that I would take everything from the golf course into the Calrec Artemis [in Game Creek’s Maverick remote truck] and EQ and distribute it. When the wind kicked up, I could adjust EQ and it would globally pass to all the mixers, so that the final product had the same EQ and the same gain structure.”

DOLBY ATMOS

Although some features need to be beefed up or even added to meet new production demands, the current generation of mixing console technology has enabled broadcasters in Europe to regularly generate programming, specifically for premium customers, in the Dolby Atmos immersive audio format for the past year or so. In the U.K., for example, all live Premier League soccer matches on Sky Sports, including a double-or even tripleheader on Sundays, have been produced in Dolby Atmos, as well as 5.1, since the start of the season in August 2017.

At a recent month-long competition hosted at multiple sports venues, U.K.-based freelance sound supervisor Pete Mercer produced both a Dolby Atmos mix and a 5.1 mix in a control room at the International Broadcast Center. For each event, Mercer received discrete feeds from the mixer in the remote stadium, including the outputs from a Schoeps 3D microphone suspended above the field of play, created a Dolby Atmos 5.1.4 mix plus six objects on a Lawo mc²96 console, and returned that mix to the competition location for encoding. He and his colleague, Felix Krückels, Lawo’s director of business development, in a second control room on a second mc²96, each mixed one or two games per competition day, Mercer reported.

The two mc²96 consoles were on the same network as the Lawo mc²56 (for stereo production) and mc²36 (for multifeeds) consoles at the competition’s 12 venues. “We could connect via a PC and Lawo MXGui software to check settings, re-patch signals, and even line up by ourselves,” he said. All audio was sent between the venues in each city and the IBC via Lawo’s Commentary system using Ravenna, according to Mercer.

Any console that supports multiple 5.1 buses may be used for Dolby Atmos immersive mixing. In Mercer’s case, the height component had no LFE or center channel information, so was, in effect, a 4.0 bus.

Mercer could monitor the 5.1.4 mix for the UHD feed via Dolby’s DP590 unit. But loudness metering of immersive mixes is still a work in progress and not yet available in consoles. However, said Mercer, “Having a separate value for the 5.1 and the 4.0 height was extremely helpful to make sure the height detail wasn’t too prominent or distant in the mix, especially when mixing extra elements into the 5.1 that didn’t appear in the 4.0 height.”