For all the progress we’ve made in moving video over IP, there’s a critical part of the puzzle we’ve neglected: how we control and monitor the infrastructure behind it. When SMPTE ST 2110 hit the scene, it offered us a clean, efficient way to handle separate essences across IP networks.
Suddenly, SDI routers gave way to switches, and our baseband world began shifting toward software-defined, cloud-aware topologies. But while we focused heavily on video transport (rightly so at the time), the tools needed to configure, manage, and monitor those systems didn’t evolve in parallel. Instead, they fractured.
That’s the heart of the issue.
The unseen complexity beneath every workflow. Today, the average live production doesn’t rely on one vendor’s gear or services. We mix best-of-breed — or “customer-curated”— solutions. You might have a switcher from Vendor A, graphics from Vendor B, ingest from Vendor C, and transport from D, E, and F.
Sounds great in theory. But it’s a nightmare to configure in practice. There are over 200 different control protocols in the broadcast world (that I know of). That’s 200 unique ways to tell a device how to behave, each with different conventions, schemas, levels of maturity, and documentation.
There are over 200 different control protocols in the broadcast world (that I know of). That’s 200 unique ways to tell a device how to behave, each with different conventions, schemas, levels of maturity, and documentation.
You would never design a system like that intentionally. But here we are. And now that our production environments span across on-prem, hybrid, and public cloud, the complexity is beyond frustrating; It’s unscalable.
Why the Cloud Makes this Worse
The cloud makes life simpler in many cases. But it’s done the opposite for control and monitoring. When systems lived in racks, you could spend a few days with a screwdriver, a config file, and a patch panel. Once it was set up, you locked the door and left it alone for 5 years.
Now? With ephemeral cloud workflows, you’re spinning up a system for an event, tearing it down the next day, and spinning it up again next week with different parameters. Doing that ac 10 or 15 vendors, each with different control APIs or CLI tools, is not sustainable.
Enter ST 2138: A New Standard for a New Era
That’s why we brought together a group of vendors and broadcasters to create Catena—know known as SMPTE ST 2138: a collaborative, open standard for cross-vendor control and monitoring of broadcast infrastructure. This project was created through the open standards process within Open Services Alliance (OSA) and is now formalized in the SMPTE standards community.
Catena isn’t about pushing yet another proprietary interface into the mix. Quite the opposite. It’s about providing a common control plane; a way for production teams to configure, control, and monitor multi-vendor systems consistently, regardless of where they run.
It is open-source, secure-by-design, and pragmatically engineered to work with what already exists. It builds on lessons from other control ecosystems, but with an emphasis on ease of adoption, cloud compatibility, and developer-friendliness.
Real-World Impact
A unified control protocol might not sound sexy, but the downstream impact is massive:
- Faster system deployment: from weeks to hours.
- Operational consistency: fewer errors, faster troubleshooting.
- Lower total cost of ownership: less engineering overhead, less custom glue code.
- Security built in: with zero trust principles, not bolted on afterward.
For broadcasters under relentless cost pressure, and cloud-native producers who spin up 100+ live workflows a month, that’s transformative.
Time to Step Up
We’re not asking the industry to rip out and replace what it has already built. We’re inviting everyone to collaborate on something better: A control plane we can all rely on, regardless of platform, vendor, or format.
ST 2138 is headed into SMPTE’s Public CD process soon, making it openly available for review, feedback, and adoption.
Click here to review the draft and join the conversation.
This is the time to get involved. If this resonates, come help shape it. Don’t wait for others to define it for you. Because the future of live production isn’t just about moving video, it’s about controlling it simply, securely, and smartly.
