Delivery over Energy-Efficient Processing and Transcoding in Edge Computing (DEEPTEC) is a two-year collaborative project supported by the Images & Réseaux team (the competitive cluster for digital innovation in the Pays de la Loire and Brittany regions), funded by the Brittany region and the Metropole of Rennes.

This innovative consortium will demonstrate that combining the greater capacity and reliability of 5G technology with evolving media distribution techniques; the latest compression technologies; and high-performance, cloud-based architectures can reduce the expense of deploying broadcast resources, including on-site crews, high-frequency systems, and OB trucks, while improving quality of experience (QoE) for end users.

Nicolas Dhollande, research and innovation manager at AVIWEST, said, “We are eager to collaborate with the IETR and TDF to pave the way for a new green standard of live production that will help broadcasters and production companies to dramatically reduce environmental impacts, costs, and logistical burdens for organizing events.”

AVIWEST is providing DEEPTEC with the company’s latest transmission technologies: the new PRO460-5G bonded cellular transmitter, its Safe Stream Transport technology, and its SaaS StreamHub receiver deployed in Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC). The convergence between 5G and MEC is a game-changer that will allow reliable live remote production with 4K and UHD multicamera systems. With the involvement of the French research institute IETR, the consortium relies on artificial intelligence assets to optimize video transcoding in the cloud. This provides viewers with the best video quality and the lowest latency, ensuring a high QoE with a lower carbon footprint.

Wassim Hamidouche, senior lecturer at the IETR, said, “Cloud computing, 5G, and artificial intelligence offer us a great opportunity to develop sustainable video-streaming solutions that enable a very high quality of experience while preserving the planet’s resources.”

TDF, as a network operator, brings expertise to the project with a fully virtualized, energy-centric headend solution capable of switching between broadcast and broadband delivery based on the audience, content, and/or client strategy.

Naty Sidaty, audiovisual innovation and standardization expert at TDF, said, “This project fits perfectly into TDF's roadmap for modernization of the DTT platform by developing an energy-centric headend solution for achieving scalable and efficient delivery of linear services over broadcast and broadband networks.”