LONDON—Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins.
ITN’s newly built production control room, responsible for delivering daily news coverage across two newsrooms, delivers reduced latency and greater flexibility. Architected and delivered by Techex, the system combines the TAG Video Systems Realtime media platform with Matrox Video ConvertIP decoders, providing ITN with responsive, fully configurable monitoring within its new PCR.
“As long-time partners with TAG Video Systems, we were able to bring our experience to bear while designing this system using the TAG-Matrox Video integration,” John Treadwell, Techex senior strategic account manager for global accounts, said. “We worked closely with ITN to capture requirements, validate the design and deliver the project. That collaboration will continue as we support ITN in evolving the system now that it’s live.”
TAG’s Realtime media platform is a fully software-based system. It unifies probing, monitoring, visualization and analysis into a single platform. The platform’s adaptive architecture enables efficient load balancing, rapid mosaic generation and on-the-fly transcoding, all within the IP domain. ITN has harnessed its support for SMPTE ST 2110 and JPEG XS in the new PCR to provide a scalable, future-ready monitoring solution for live news production.
The deployment drives down multiviewer latency to between 1 and 1.5 frames, achieved through the Matrox ConvertIP ST 2110-HDMI interfaces driving the PCR’s 10 4K multiviewer displays.
“With TAG, we’ve been able to realize the agility of an all-IP monitoring workflow while retaining the low latency and reliability that operators are used to in traditional galleries,” James Wickes, lead media engineer at ITN Productions, said. “Matrox’s ConvertIP technology delivers that responsiveness on screen, and with Techex helping us bring the two together in a cohesive architecture, we’ve been able to future-proof our gallery and the production workflows that depend on it.”
The system’s low latency is made possible due to the Matrox ConvertIP decoders translating IP signals into native HDMI outputs with deterministic timing and no perceptible lag. Their ability to maintain consistent, frame-accurate synchronization across all 4K displays ensures the live feel operators rely on when cutting between sources.
“The Matrox ConvertIP family was designed exactly for projects like this. Seeing ITN achieve such low-latency multiviewer performance across multiple 4K displays is a great demonstration of how tight partnerships can bring immediacy and confidence back into IP-based control rooms,” said Daniel Maloney, technical marketing manager at Matrox Video.
TAG’s Operator Console enables ITN staff in the gallery to adapt multiviewer screens quickly to the current production. “ITN’s new gallery is a great example of how IP-native monitoring can reach full broadcast responsiveness,” said Paul Briscoe, TAG chief architect. “In a newsroom environment, the immediacy of information delivery, while retaining the flexibility of a software-defined system, is hugely validating. It demonstrates that an advanced, all-IP control room can meet the real-time demands that live production requires. Techex’s approach brought together the strengths of TAG and Matrox Video in a way that allowed ITN to focus purely on production rather than infrastructure.”
More information is available on the TAG, Matrox Video and Techex websites.
