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IP-Based Media Production: Internet Protocol for Increased Productivity
2020 Accelerates the Move to IP-based Media Production Infrastructures
In recent years, upgrades in broadcast production technologies have started unveiling new opportunities for content creators, broadcasters and media companies to update production workflows with more format flexible, efficient and extensible tools. These new technologies are helping to fuel the “deliver more with less” expectation that we’re seeing as broadcast operations continue to face the common challenge of having to deliver more content of higher quality with fewer resources and geographically dispersed teams.
Many broadcasters began taking the initial steps away from SDI infrastructures towards IP-based media production infrastructures, especially in North America, and we saw a critical acceleration in 2020 as remote production requirements (“REMI”, “at home” style productions, etc.) became necessary workstyles in response to the worldwide pandemic and the guidelines for social distancing for staff.
The fundamental technical glue of our serial digital, SDI, based systems has been, in some cases, stretched to accommodate new media deliverables like UHD/4k, high(er) frame rate slo-mo, wide color gamut and HDR. With new requirements to “technically distance” parts of media production and new requirements for format flexibility, the attractiveness of moving to an IP infrastructure has been rapidly elevated.
Sony has been an active participant for many years in the IP standardization process for media production and has developed a full set of products described under the IP Live family of hardware and software components. Worldwide, over 120 IP systems featuring Sony IP-based components have been deployed in just the last several years, and our industry has quickly graduated past the “early adopter” stage out of necessity given the unprecedented challenges of the disruptive pandemic environment.
Sony’s IP Live platform services this transformation beginning with outside broadcast applications and continuing with full studio and distributed production applications, which leverage IP networks and technologies. The SDI core router now evolves into an IP network core, driven by standards and industry best practices to fulfill a modern, “best of breed” environment for media production systems.
Migration into an IP-based media production infrastructure begins with the notion of maintaining operational workflows that users are accustomed to while creating opportunities under the hood where the flexibility of IP creates efficiencies and enhancements to grow and expand media production pipelines. Diversified offers a portfolio of innovative solutions to help ease this transition to IP technologies while creating reliable infrastructures that define the backbone of technology to support business opportunities in the future.
Sony’s IP Live product family addresses the end-to-end infrastructure needs of IP with a full featured IP broadcast controller platform (Live System Manager), an extensive facility management platform for device automation and monitoring (Live Element Orchestrator) and has recently extended the eco-system with its acquisition of Nevion, a worldwide leader in SDN (software defined networking) for global network orchestration and monitoring.
Watch our recent webinar, “New Technology in the Live Production IP Landscape” >
