A modern studio facility cannot function without a multiviewer, a device and product function that has come into its own in the past 20 years. Attempting to display today’s plethora of control room signals on individual monitors the old-fashioned way is unthinkable—only a properly configured multiviewer system can handle the task.

Multiviewers and large-screen displays are so economical and flexible that multiviewer technology is now often built into switchers. This makes assembling a simple control room faster than it was in the individual displays.

The twist today is that more signal types than ever are flowing through control rooms, and these disparate signals need to be displayed via the multiviewer system. Live video from cellphones? TikTok feeds? Drone shots? UHD? HDR? Every type of signal using every type of encoding and compression needs to be displayed.

“The requirements to handle these mixed signals are systemic—facilities need to be able to ingest, produce, transform, playout, and monitor signals that might originate in any of these formats,” said John Mailhot, CTO and director of infrastructure product management for Imagine Communications. “We approach this mix of signal types from a system design perspective, using intelligence in the broadcast control system to dynamically allocate transformation paths that conform the selected source to the requirements of the destination. This approach provides the most flexible workflow, as well as the best economics.” 

Every Imaginable Signal
In other words, making every multiviewer input capable of handling every imaginable type of signal gets unwieldy and expensive. There is a better way.

In anticipation of this growing trend towards mixed-format environments, Lawo’s HOME Multiviewer natively supports SMPTE ST2110, NDI, SRT, JPEG XS, H.265 and H.264, according to John Carter, senior product manager for media infrastructure at Lawo.

“Currently, each instance handles one of these formats,” he said. “For mixed sources and destinations involving ST2110, NDI and SRT streams, users have the option of inserting a HOME Stream Transcoder app before the Multiviewer to convert, say, SRT streams to ST2110 if this is the desirable format for a multiviewer head. This transcoding flexibility works in all directions and for all formats supported by the HOME Multiviewer app.”

Some multiviewer solutions leverage cloud computing to lower in-house energy and space demands.

“Evertz ev670-X30 hardware provides high-density signal monitoring for up to 64 3G ST2110 inputs with full audio, ancillary data and video monitoring. This uses less RU space, less power and less cooling,” said Ketan Patel, product manager for multiview systems at Evertz. 

“Evertz also provides a COTS-based sVIP product that allows compressed and uncompressed signal monitoring at high density, which can be deployed on an x86 platform with an accelerated PCI card. Evertz also offers cVIP, which is a cloud-based monitoring and visualization product that can be deployed in any public or private cloud, to allow signal monitoring of NDI, MPEG-2, H.264, H.265 and JPEG2000.”

What if There’s an Error?
A multiviewer system is, by necessity, filled with a variety of images, most of which are in some state of motion. With all that on-screen activity, it can be easy to miss if one of the signals disappears or gets scrambled in some fashion. 

Cobalt Digital has multiviewer options that help you keep track of dropouts, errors and loss-of-signal, said Ciro Noronha, CTO of Cobalt Digital. Noronha added that the company’s multiviewers can be configured with a range of options that include text overlays for arbitrary text, timecode, signal resolution, and even closed captioning. The systems can also add audio bars, a built-in router to simplify configuration, flexible inputs that can mix-and-match resolutions and frame rates, and tally insertion to indicate on-air signals or other status information.

“Cobalt’s baseband multiviewers are offered in the openGear form factor, so that they can be easily integrated with other devices in the same chassis, and benefit from the inherent openGear features such as hot-swappable cards, dual redundant hot-swappable power supplies, and the DashBoard control system,” Noronha said. “This flexibility is very important, since it allows the multiviewer to adapt to virtually any requirement.”

At the IBC Show next month, Cobalt will introduce its Ultra Blue multiviewer, with support for the more common compressed formats, with plans to add SMPTE ST 2110 inputs as well as other formats such as NDI in the future.

TAG Video Systems IP-based multiviewer line can be deployed with either a private or public cloud provider, such as AWS or Google Cloud. Through its RESTful API, the TAG Realtime Media Performance platform can be automated and integrated with third-party solutions and software-defined networking (SDN) controllers.

Only Pay for What You Need
With a cloud architecture, you can have nearly unlimited inputs. So how do you get only what you need? 

“You only pay for input licenses and have full access to all the product’s monitoring, probing, and display features,” said Robert Erickson, vice president for live production & sports at TAG Video Systems. “This means you can use any supported signal feed, resolution, compression, or transport format without worrying about paying for additional feature sets.”

Which raises the point: Should you consider a hardware-based multiviewer or software-based system? A lot depends on the complexity of your control room and the signals you deal with. A big-city broadcaster or a large sports arena will
have different needs than a cable distribution center.

Manufacturers have their own ideas.

“Modern multiviewers should firstly be software-based to provide running in any environment,” said Eric Otto, CEO of Mediaproxy. “They should also provide support for all common broadcast source formats, including access to remote sources (IP, TSoIP, NDI, HLS) as well as local sources (SDI, ST 2110).”

Scaling in Size
If you run a smaller system, you don’t have the needs of a big arena, and there are solutions that make sense for your needs.

“Our Smart Display Module multiviewers use a small board that slots directly into an SDM-capable display,” said Thomas Tang, president of Apantac. “These SDM boards turn a standard display into a monitor with an embedded multiviewer.”  

SDM is an Intel standard, and it can support SDI, 12G SDI, NDI and other video formats.

Apantac makes a range of multiviewers from small to large. At the top of the line is the T# system. “The T# is our flagship multiviewer line, which supports up to 128 inputs and 16 outputs, as well as supporting many different input formats that can be mixed and matched in the same frame,” Tang said. “These formats include 12G, 3G, HD, SD-SDI, CVBS, HDMI 1.4, HDMI 2.0, H.264, and most recently NDI. Customers can freely mix and match with the formats they need, and any inputs can go to any outputs.”

Multiviewers are clearly the better way of monitoring video in control rooms. The benefits of multiviewers were so obvious and powerful that some big old-line manufacturers of video monitors rapidly disappeared from the industry. Anyone remember Conrac?

There are multiviewer solutions out there for any size and need, so plan what you need carefully. Of course, the display you choose is an important part of the multiviewer system, so plan to get one that works properly with your system.

Displays are essential for many tasks in a video production workflow. They can be deployed at signal sources, in control rooms, in operations centers and at distribution hubs to support a variety of production personnel. To handle commonly-used signal formats such as 4K SDI, SMPTE ST 2110, and NDI, displays need several different types of external conversion boxes. These adapters need to be connected with input and output cables, supplied with power, configured, and mounted somewhere unobtrusive. End users and system integrators alike need a simple, clean remedy for this headache.

The smart new solution for this challenge is the Intel Smart Display Module (SDM) platform and technology. These modules plug directly into compatible displays produced by a variety of big-name manufacturers. Because they draw power from the display, and deliver their signals directly via an internal PCI-E connector, these modules eliminate the need for external power or external mounting enclosures. Each module provides a native connector for a given signal type, including RJ-45 for NDI and 75-ohm BNC for 4K SDI. Apantac has now released a collection of SDM interfaces based on the Intel SDM platform to support a broad range of broadcast and AV applications.

Join Thomas Tang, Founder and CEO of Apantac in this lively Q+A video hosted by Wes Simpson, Founder of LearnIPvideo.com and contributing editor for TV Technology. Hear first-hand how SDM modules are transforming the market for broadcast and AV monitors by eliminating the need to deploy different monitors and standalone extension and connection solutions for each application with the use of Apantac’s. SDM Receivers for 12G UHD, HDBaseT, AV over IP and NDI. Learn about the exciting new potential to deploy monitors that are in 4K today and 8K in the near future. 

About Apantac LLC
Apantac LLC (www.apantac.com) is a leading designer and developer of high quality and cost effective multiviewers, video walls, matrices, extenders, openGear solutions and signal processing equipment. The Apantac product line has been specifically designed to provide users with flexible and innovative technology solutions for the broadcast and ProAV industries.

Apantac was founded in 2008 and is a privately held company with its headquarters located in Portland, Oregon, USA.

For more information about Apantac’s products & services please visit: www.apantac.com.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Rapid-fire changes in the television industry in the past 15 years have made multiviewers an essential component in virtually all studios. Of course, nothing stands still for long, and as workflows, processes and standards change, so too change how multiviewers work.

With the acceptance of IP video and the SMPTE 2110 along with other related standards, multiviewers are now starting to show up with full IP video capability. That said, most facilities today do not have media distribution via SMPTE 2110 networks, so there is still a good market for multiviewers that accept signals the old-fashioned way: SDI and HDMI.

HIGHER RESOLUTIONS

In addition to the new IP video transport standard, there is an increasing need for multiviewers to work with 4K/Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160-pixel) video.

“Our largest model, the MultiView 16, has 16 independent 6G-SDI inputs so customers can connect any combination of SD, HD or Ultra HD sources and monitor them all simultaneously on a single display,” said Bob Caniglia, director of sales for North America for Blackmagic Design. “It has router-style controls on the front panel, along with the LCD and spin knob, which lets you adjust settings, route sources to different views, add overlays and more. Output can be set to a 2x2, 3x3 or 4x4 grid, and you can solo any source full-screen.”

Blackmagic Design’s MultiView 16 and MultiView 4 (a four-input model) feature remote control via IP using the included Mac and Windows software. MultiView 16 also features remote control via IP using Blackmagic Videohub hardware control panels. In addition, MultiView 4 supports power over Ethernet (PoE+), which can be used to remotely power the device.

[Read: NAB Show Product Review — Signal Processing & Analysis]

Likewise, For-A uses IP control to permit fast reconfiguring of its multiviewers and integration with the company’s switcher line.

“Having the switcher, router and multiviewers in combination allows the operator to maintain consistent source naming and tally information between all subsystems,” said Bob Peterson, product specialist for For-A Corporation of America. “The switcher can also map its program buttons to directly control the router’s crosspoints, which makes configuration of 4K UHD easier. All our multiviewers can tightly integrate with For-A switchers.”

Peterson said that all For-A multiviewers use IP networks as the primary method of layout and control. Some of the company’s multiviewers have hardware control panels, and all For-A multiviewers have web GUIs for basic control functions and can stream screen output and error information over IP for logging purposes.

“The publication of SMPTE ST 2110, as well as ongoing work by industry bodies such as AIMS and AMWA, has now given our customers the confidence to invest in IP solutions.” — Martin Jolicoeur, Grass Valley

FULL-BORE IP VIDEO

Going all-in with IP video is not hard to find among multiviewer manufacturers.

“The publication of SMPTE ST 2110, as well as ongoing work by industry bodies such as AIMS and AMWA, has now given our customers the confidence to invest in IP solutions,” said Martin Jolicoeur, director product line management for Grass Valley. “We are committed to helping our customers make the transition to IP at a pace that suits their business and operational needs, whether that’s getting them IP-ready or going all-IP.”

Jolicoeur said that Grass Valley customers can futureproof while still maintaining their current SDI environment using the company’s Kaleido-Modular-X, which allows them to upgrade to full IP when needed. The addition of an IP input card supports monitoring of SMPTE 2022-6 video-over-IP using dual 10 GigE IP inputs.

Jolicoeur said that the Kaleido IP multiviewer-native IP solution delivers the highest number of simultaneous video and audio decodes in the industry, with an unlimited number of audio decodes (stereo and 5.1) per program. It also supports SMPTE ST 2110 and 2022-6, DVB MPEG TS and OTT monitoring of streaming formats.

Also falling into the full-bore IP video category is the Apantac T-Sharp, which allows IP inputs such as H.264 and ST 2022/2010. The T-Sharp and other Apantac multiviewers can decode incoming streams and display the video signals as part of the multiviewer’s output. Apantac multiviewers support formats from analog video to SD/HD/3G/12G, HDMI, 2022/2010 and H.264 as inputs.

In addition to its broad support of IP video, Apantac’s multiviewers have IP control capability that is manufacturer agnostic.

“Apantac multiviewers allow IP control using not only Apantac’s own software, they also allow all popular control systems such as Crestron and AMX,” said Thomas Tang, president of Apantac in Portland, Ore. “IP control also allows the multiviewer to communicate with third-party products such as production switchers and routers for dynamic names and tallies.”

CLEAN SHEET

If you are a manufacturer and want to create a multiviewer line in 2018, where do you start on your clean-sheet design? In the case of Lawo, you head right for IP.

“As we don’t have any SDI-legacy [multiviewers], our products are developed as true IP-native products,” said Andreas Hilmer, director marketing and communications for the Germany-based company. “Our multiviewers … are true IP multiviewers with 10/40GB network connectivity, plus additional SDI IO if needed, running on Lawo’s V__matrix software-defined processing blades. All our products are based on IP technology using open standards in line with the AIMS roadmap, such as ST2110, SMPTE2022-6/-6 and AES67.”

In conversations with engineers tasked with making IP video work in their facilities, I’ve been told that SDI was still the way to go for maximum reliability and a trouble-free out-of-the-box experience. However, that was before SMPTE 2110 and related standards were finalized. With strong standards supporting IP video, it looks like many manufacturers are getting the product out there, ready for the demand that they expect will follow.

There are many other aspects to multiviewers that need to be researched before you decide to commit to a specific product. IP video is just one of many recent developments to make it all the way through standards creation to manufactured products, giving engineers more flexibility and choice in system design and operations. IP video — as implemented in multiviewers and other products — is now mainstream.

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