Adventures in Broadcasting, Part 2: Say Hi to Wi-Fi July 6^th 2015 - 08:19 AM

IP video over Wi-Fi provided a solid new signal transport solution at a fraction of most wireless link costs. Wi-Fi was easy. The challenge was finding available devices to convert camera HDMI into IP for Wi-Fi transport, and decoders to convert IP back to HDMI for the production switcher.

Adventures In Live Broadcast, Part 1 June 24^th 2015 - 08:03 AM

Anyone who says engineering live field production is a breeze isn’t serious.

HEVC—Decoded May 18^th 2015 - 08:07 AM

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is the latest and certainly an efficient compression standard targeted at today’s high pixel count images.

iStreamPlanet takes Zixi for IP Contribution April 6^th 2015 - 12:14 PM

US encoding vendor Zixi has been selected by iStreamPlanet for IP contribution to the latter’s Aventus live video encoding and multiscreen packaging service. iStreamPlanet is using Zixi’s live video transport software to provide ingest over unmanaged Internet connections, offering an IP-based alternative to traditional backhaul methods like satellite and…

On-Premises, In-Cloud or Hybrid – Where To Locate Transcoding January 28^th 2015 - 01:00 PM

One of the prevailing technology narratives across the industry is the wholesale transition of processes from dedicated machinery housed on site and managed internally to remotely located servers which offer greater scalability and efficiency. Yet the answer is rarely as simple as transitioning an entire process to the cloud, and…

Video ingest – a case to be made for professional tools December 8^th 2014 - 05:55 PM

With the continued drive within the broadcast environment for keeping costs down, better productivity and improved efficiencies, ensuring that the workforce has the tools to do their jobs properly is critical. As with other industries, broadcast finds itself in a state of flux, with several trends and changes impacting on…

Industry Reacts To HEVC License Fees October 31^st 2014 - 10:22 AM

When the MPEG LA licensing organization, released its final Patent Portfolio License fee structure for High Efficiency Video Coding (“HEVC License”) for using the technology behind the latest generation compression scheme, many in the industry were quite prepared and are now saying all is well…. although it took longer than many ha…

Understanding Compression Technology: Motion Estimation Part 2 September 1^st 2014 - 09:52 AM

Part 1 of this article covered multiple aspects of compression technology: macroblocks, DCT, quantization, and lossless compression. Part 2 will focus on motion estimation for P- and B-frames—after a review of lossless data compacting. Part 3 (next month) will detail the critical role of Predicted frames and Difference frames in maintaining image q…

The Essentials of Video Transcoding August 21^st 2014 - 03:47 PM

This paper gives an overview of the transcoding basics you’ll need to know in order to make informed decisions about implementing transcoding in your workflow. That involves explaining the elements of the various types of digital media files used for different purposes, how transcoding works upon those elements, what c…

HEVC Demystified: A Primer on the H.265 Video Codec August 21^st 2014 - 03:26 PM

The most recent non-proprietary video compression standard, High-Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC), also known as H.265, was placed into final draft for ratification in January 2013 and is expected to become the video standard of choice for the next decade. As with each generation of video compression technology before it, HEVC promises…