Accelerating Smooth 4K Live Streaming Solution for Remote Production (REMI)

Introduction

4K/UHD broadcasting is increasing rapidly especially for sports and other live events. To provide a better service and improved experience for their sport fans, many broadcasters are looking to update their on-site production and streaming facilities. Others are turning to a new paradigm, that of Remote Production (REMI), a trend sure to be accelerated by the rollout of 5G mobile networks. In fact a recent study by the European Broadcasting Union found that an overwhelming majority of broadcasters will adopt 5G and that Remote Production was identified as the main use case. 

Naturally the focus is on event coverage, and often this is based in Outside Broadcast (OB) trucks. The general upgrade to 4K/UHD and beyond in local facilities and OB trucks brings challenges in the space, weight and power requirements for all the relevant live video encoding and streaming gear required, and for REMI applications, a further challenge is in efficient provision of multi-channel encoding. Advantech can help equipment makers and more adventurous system integrators to be successful by providing a range of commercial off the shelf encoding and streaming equipment that addresses these needs, offering high quality performance in a compact and low power way. This paper describes how.

Key Application Requirements

The focus is on providing broadcast quality 4K/UHD live contribution links from an OB van or a remote production rack back to the distribution hub or the central facility in the smallest footprint and using the least power. Some of the key challenges and requirements include:

• Live contribution: reliably encode and stream 4K at a solid 60fps using 4:2:2 chroma subsampling
• Good Compression: maximize quality for the limited available uplink bitrate using HEVC
• Limited Space: racks are normally only 600mm deep and compact size is required
• Minimize Power: always limited in mobile applications, both to source power to operate and to remove heat during operation
• Low Latency: as low as possible within other constraints

A typical use case results in a single or redundant programme uplink from an on-site production facility, but recently interest is growing in a new workflow using Remote Integration (REMI) Production. In this case, all the output from local cameras are individually sent to a central hub or, increasingly, a cloud based service where the coverage is then assembled. This simplifies the local production requirements at the cost of increasing the focus on multiple encoded uplink streams to support multiple channels. Since the uplink encoding is often the most computationally complex operation of the workflow, this simply puts even more reliance on accelerated encoding systems to address these needs.

How Advantech Can Help

Advantech’s Video Solutions Division offers a range of low power, high performance video capture and encoding accelerators that are particularly suitable for live production contribution applications. The acceleration products, under the VEGA family name, include modules boards and systems all capable of broadcast quality 4K/UHD live HEVC encoding at 60fps, many with 4:2:2 support, and all with low power, compact size and low latency.

Of particular benefit are:

VEGA-3311:
Single channel 4K/UHD or 4 x 1080p 60fps 10bit 4:2:2 capable HEVC/AVC encoder accelerator plug in board with a variety of direct video capture options including 4 x 3G SDI, 1 x 12G SDI or dual 10G Ethernet supporting SMPTE ST2110 ingress. As a PCIE plug-in card, VEGA-3311 can be used to add contribution grade HEVC or AVC encoding to existing equipment, or can be used along with Advantech’s flexible VEGA-7010 server to create multi-channel encoders for remote production applications. The VEGA-3311 offers a high degree of programmability via either a dedicated SDK or a simple-to-integrate FFMPEG plug-in, and even can act as an accelerator for the Wowza streaming engine.

VEGA-6301 / VEGA-6301M:
Ultra-compact all-in-one encoder application platform built on the same base 3G/12G SDI video capture capability and 4K/UHD 60fps 10bit 4:2:2 HEVC encoding functionality as VEGA-3311 with additionally an x86 processing subsystem for management interface, streaming protocol generation, and system control. With a sub-100W power consumption and ½ rack width dimensions, the VEGA-6301 offers a compelling performance density with easy integration. For applications requiring adjunct recording, the VEGA-6301M offers the same performance but with more internal storage and faster network interfaces in a marginally larger footprint.

VEGA-7010:
Highly flexible video server and video appliance platform offering unparalleled flexibility in a 1U short depth profile with 4 full height PCI Express slots and a server class Xeon E3 CPU supporting Intel QuickSync Video functionality for additional video processing. The VEGA-7010 can fit in 600mm racks such as those used in trucks or small equipment closets, offers redundant power supplies, robust cooling, and expandable storage. The VEGA-7010 can support up to four VEGA-3311 boards giving 4 x 4K/UHD live contribution channels per 1U appliance in under 300W total power consumption. With this level of performance, the server can efficiently offload heavy-lifting video processing tasks in live workflows and significantly improve density, scalability and cost of live UHD video solutions

MediaFlow Video Manager: 
MediaFlow is an additional software package that system integrators can use to deploy standalone video encoding or transcoding applications using VEGA-33xx series accelerators. It runs on the VEGA-7010 host under Linux, and allows quick deployment of the accelerated encoding functions together with appropriate encapsulation and streaming outputs.

VEGA-8300 8K family:
Where 4K isn’t quite enough, VEGA-8300E and 8300D are new all-in-one platforms supporting live UHD2/8K 60fps 10bit 4:2:2 HEVC contribution encoding and decoding. VEGA-8300 series are ready to use by system integrators as a result of collaboration between Advantech and software partner Spin Digital who provide optimized media playout software for the decoder, and web-based system management software for the encoder.