As NAB Show New York prepares to return to the Javits Center, TV Tech caught up with Rafael Fonseca, vice president of product management at Artel. Attendees at the show can find Artel in booth 1925 with the company’s latest innovations.

TV Tech: What are you most looking forward to at NAB Show New York?

RAFAEL FONSECA: NAB Show New York is my favorite show. The quality of the visitors is parallel to none. I am looking forward to reconnecting with the industry, especially with the folks who normally attend NAB Show New York but don’t attend NAB Show in Las Vegas. We want to, as with every New York show, get a sense of where the industry is in terms of trends in technology like compression is, usage of cloud services, status of the migration to media over IP, and needs that we can supply.

TVT: What will be your company's most important product news?

FONSECA: We will feature products that simplify broadcasters’ shift to hybrid IP/SDI and all-IP operations. The SMART Multimedia Delivery Platform used in the DigiLink/InfinityLink product lines, now comes in an openGear form factor, the SMART Multimedia Delivery Platform in openGear® (SMART OG). SMART OG  brings even greater operational simplicity, flexibility, and scalability by offering four-channel, auto-sensing 12G/3G/HD/SD-SDI-over-IP supporting J2K and JPEG-XS.

To learn more about the Artel’s products, visit the company’s website.

Our industry has been talking about remote production for a while, and for good reason. The conventional live production model, in which a team and equipment are sent to the venue, can be costly in terms of both time and money. Travel is expensive not only because of transportation and lodging, but also because the human and technical resources are tied up all that time and unavailable for any other production. As a result, you’re limited in the frequency and number of events you can produce.

Remote production solves many of these issues. While you still send a team to the venue, you can keep specialized staff and equipment in a central location, available to support multiple events throughout the day. With the emergence of COVID-19, and the need to shift to distancing and remote work scenarios, the appeal of remote production has become even greater.

IP is a key enabler of remote production applications, as it supports transport of both audio and video, as well as the data, communications and control signals critical in the production environment. Oftentimes, the challenge lies in connecting two remote sites, each with its own media-over-IP infrastructure but lacking the IP switching and Precision Time Protocol (PTP) implementation essential to preserving timing and synchronization across both sites.

PTP specifies a methodology for synchronizing devices to a single shared clock across packet-based networks (using SMPTE ST 2110 and AES67), including Ethernet switches and IP routers. Creating a common time base for multiple AV sources, PTP enables synchronization of device clocks to within nanoseconds, even across a large network.

Because PTP is sensitive to delay, the best way to maintain synchronization across the transport network connecting two sites is to deploy PTP generators at each site. (Some facilities do continue to use SDI transport to sidestep this requirement, using IP solely for control, management and monitoring.)

The resulting topology would typically include a PTP generator, PTP-aware switching and IP transport at each site. The signal flow therefore would look like this: PTP Generator 1 — PTP-aware switching — IP transport — fiber — IP transport — PTP-aware switching — PTP Generator 2.

Connected to the PTP generators, the PTP Ethernet switches leverage internal timing circuitry to minimize time drift and maintain highly accurate timing synchronization. In the case of the PTP aware switches, integrated support for QoS and traffic management help to ensure signal reliability and integrity.

In this example, each PTP-aware switch could connect to an SDI-over-IP multifunction gateway, likely autosensing to support 3G, HD and SD, with an integrated non-blocking Layer 2/3 switch. Ideally the gateway attaches to the IP network without the need for external network elements.

The signal flow in this model is basic, and the components install simply. Even more important, synchronization is maintained across the two sites, ensuring proper handling of audio and video throughout live production. With this problem solved, production teams can focus their time and energy on other aspects of creating a great show using a collaborative remote workflow. The entire organization—and viewers too—benefit from this at-home production model, which increases not just efficiency, but also the expertise and technical resources that can be dedicated to multiple live broadcast events.

Rafael Fonseca is vice president of product management for Artel. 

With the advent of media over IP and the quest for better entertainment experiences, audio has finally taken on the prominent role in broadcast it deserves. You might even call it a next-generation audio revolution.

The industry’s embrace of immersive audio will have a tremendous impact on live broadcasts—and it’s already transforming the music, theater, movie, studio, entertainment music, studio and recording industries.

IMMERSIVE AUDIO BECOMES A REALITY

Extending surround sound, which operates in a horizontal plane, to a three-dimensional audio experience (spatial audio), immersive audio gives creatives and engineers more freedom in conveying 

emotion and more powerful tools in adding perspective to what is being watched or heard. The intent is to immerse the audience from any—if not every—direction.

Immersive audio uses ambisonic signals that capture sound in the audio field from one or several points in space, creating “audio objects” that allow for mix adaptation for different types of sound systems. Enabling manipulation of the sound field or the selection of specific streams, audio objects open the door to creation of unique experiences, both by the production team and by listeners themselves. Flexibility and choice are the key.

With immersive audio, the viewer-listener can select specific audio objects for inclusion in the version of the broadcast they see and hear. Much like an additional camera feed option, such as a “goal cam” or “referee cam,” different audio feeds can be chosen to bring the listener into different parts of a game or other live experience. Viewer-listeners can alter their spatial position and thus gain a different perspective that adds greater realism and a sense of being in the midst of the action. Additional sound might be the feed from a mic’d-up player, or communications between a Formula 1 driver and crew, or just about any other audio element that can be captured during production.

ADDED SOURCES AND DATA INCREASE COMPLEXITY

Traditional sound fields today are stereo and surround sound: 5.1 and 7.1, with left, center, right, left surround, right surround and subwoofer/low-frequency effects. Immersive audio introduces two more layers—a height layer and top layer in addition to the surround sound base layer.

Audio objects have associated metadata that describes how the audio is going to be reproduced within the sound field. Describing the position, spread, motion characteristics and other rendering information, this data gives objects the independence essential to flexible placement according to position or via a specific speaker. 

In immersive audio implementations, broadcasters will find more audio flows to contend with and manage. As the format gains a foothold in production workflows, one key challenge will be to scale services, given the much greater potential for complexity than with convention stereo and surround formats.

The number of audio sources, flows and objects is higher with immersive audio than in a standard surround sound workflow, possibly requiring more comprehensive PTP network practices to maintain timing/synchronization integrity across the workflow. Primary considerations for infrastructure will be traffic and bandwidth management, QoS treatment and proper PTP network hierarchy treatment.

Looking at the challenge broadly, one response in terms of switching infrastructure is to integrate with automation, control and orchestration platforms, as these represent the intent of the workflow by means of control. Tackling infrastructure in more specific terms, broadcasters will need to implement PTP-aware managed IP switches that can expose northbound APIs for control and provisioning.

From a networking perspective, broadcasters might want to consider bundling audio sources and objects based on categories, such as location of the source, type of sound being “collected” and specific effects to be captured. With audio flows being managed as objects that can be moved around, it’s helpful when the underlying infrastructure can aggregate data in a way that makes sense to the human brain.

To maintain logical organization of flows and data, it is useful to work with a switching infrastructure that can manage this traffic adeptly, apply groupings by means of VLANs and guarantee that the proper QoS is applied. This is especially important in workflows where other types of traffic (e.g., intercom, metadata) ride the same infrastructure.

Artel’s AoIP, managed and PTP-enabled switches provide the level of traffic control/management and PTP functionality to support immersive workflows. The boundary clock function within the company’s Quarra family of switches provides a tool for sectionalizing the PTP network to achieve better performance. (Smart sectionalizing of the audio sources can prevent PTP grandmaster overload conditions). For live events in particular, broadcasters might consider deploying their networks in terms of which switches serve which sources.

ADVANCED IP SWITCHES SIMPLIFY ADOPTION

Immersive audio is still in relatively early stages of development, and no standard configuration has yet been adopted by the industry. Broadcasters have performed trials with 5.1.2, 5.1.4 and 7.1.4, with 5.1.4 apparently offering a superior 3D experience while enabling a manageable infrastructure transition. 

Whatever format they choose to adopt, broadcasters working with advanced IP switches can be confident in their ability to address challenges that come with managing more sources and data with efficiency, and with the accuracy essential to real-time media workflows.

Having more or less mastered the process of converting media to IP, broadcasters now can focus on the opportunities that arise as content is placed into a multilayer IP framework. Intelligence and power across this network open the door to greater innovation and the introduction of compelling new services. Of course, with great power and great intelligence come some challenges too.

With the shift to IP, all elements of the network—from endpoints to the core of the network—have become intelligent and addressable. Cameras, receivers, displays, software—every element has a name that can be used to identify and refer to it, classify its capabilities and allow it to be authenticated so that it can use services in the network.

Broadcasters working in the IP realm therefore need to establish robust management layers that not only control intelligent elements across the network, but also apply some rules with regard to the movement of content and data. To ensure all of these exchanges take place as they should, broadcasters also need to be able to monitor systems and data across the network.

THE DIFFERENCE FROM SDI

When dealing with content in the SDI world, broadcasters enjoyed fairly straightforward monitoring. The signal was contained in a cable, and it stayed in there. Now, though, as soon as content gets into the network, it hits the switch along with numerous other flows. Although they are routed as independent IP traffic, different flows can very easily get mixed if problems occur along the network. Such problems are often difficult to trace, and broadcasters need specific monitoring tools in order to pinpoint problems associated with IP networking or other elements.

Along with media flows being carried over the network, there are timing flows, as well, with synchronization using PTP being carried through. These timing flows require tools that tap into the flow and extract information that confirms the health of the flow. Broadcasters must address these types of management and monitoring challenges across the whole framework, using highly intelligent layers to assess the well-being of the network.

Authentication and security are critical concerns as IP-based cameras, sources and receivers are deployed in large quantities. To reduce their vulnerability to distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS) and similar malicious acts, broadcasters will need to create “walled gardens” and implement safeguards to protect from these and from other rogue entities.

With these challenges in hand, broadcasters can take advantage of a powerful multilayer IP framework to explore new opportunities. In terms of facilities, broadcasters can move away from purpose-built infrastructure and thereby reduce cost while taking advantage of developments coming from the larger network community. In terms of staffing and operations, the ability to control content (audio and video) and data flows independently allows broadcasters to realize greater operational efficiencies. Depending on the needs of the application, they can send audio, video and metadata to the facility and people who can most cost-effectively process that content.

THE POWER OF METADATA

In production and broadcasting, IP allows for more extensive analysis and richer viewing options. For a high-profile sports broadcast being shown around the world, IP makes it easy to replace a French- or English-language audio flow with a Greek, Spanish or Japanese flow. Metadata from the broadcast can be leveraged to support in game-analysis, as well as archiving and searches within just minutes of the event.

Just name the sport, and data is being used to help talent convey the strategy behind player choices and the skills that are required of players, whether it’s a golfer’s club head speed or launch angle on the golf ball or the revolutions on a baseball thrown or a soccer ball kicked. Consumers’ thirst for that kind of information will never be quenched, and IP makes it easier for broadcasters to offer more data and better analysis.

IP also supports greater viewer autonomy in selecting the feeds or angles they get to watch. Right now the technical director calls the shots, but in the long term, broadcasters will take advantage of the IP framework to give viewers the ability to select shots of interest. Looking even further ahead, adoption of artificial intelligence will open up amazing capabilities in terms of archiving and recalling specific content.

These are just a few of the significant ways in which content delivery and consumption will evolve as the broadcast industry embraces an IP-based framework. Obviously, it’s not a done deal, but vendors continue to work on solutions that address concerns across monitoring, security, service assurance and availability. The opportunities vastly outweigh the nontrivial challenges the industry faces in migrating to IP. And, when the whole IP framework has been put in place, the possibilities will be endless.

Rafael Fonseca is vice president and director, product management for Artel. 

WESTFORD, MASS.—Rafael Fonseca is joining Artel Video Systems as its new vice president and director of product management, the company announced via a press release. “Rafael’s strength in developing comprehensive product portfolios will be critical to Artel’s growth,” said Mike Rizzo, president and CEO of Artel.

Rafael Fonseca

Fonseca comes to Artel with experience in various product management roles that required him to identify market requirements, manage product evolution, and develop product positioning in support of sales, marketing and business development. He previously worked for Cedar Point Communications as vice president of product management, marketing and sales engineering, as well as a technical team member at Bell Laboratories.

Artel Video Systems is a provider of IP and fiber-based media transport systems.