SMPTE®, the organization whose standards work has supported a century of advances in entertainment technology, announced the approval of the first standards within SMPTE ST 2110, Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks, a new standards suite that specifies the carriage, synchronization, and description of separate elementary essence streams over professional internet protocol (IP) networks in real-time for the purposes of live production, playout, and other professional media applications.
“Radically altering the way professional media streams can be handled, processed, and transmitted, SMPTE ST 2110 standards go beyond the replacement of SDI with IP to support the creation of an entirely new set of applications that leverage information technology (IT) protocols and infrastructure,” said SMPTE President Matthew Goldman, senior vice president of technology, TV and media, at Ericsson. “Our Drafting Group worked diligently to complete the first documents of this critical standards suite. The formal standardization of the SMPTE ST 2110 documents enables a broad range of media technology suppliers to move forward with manufacturing and meet the industry’s high demand for interoperable equipment based on the new suite of standards.”
With SMPTE ST 2110 standards, intrafacility traffic now can be all-IP, which means that organizations can rely on one common data-center infrastructure rather than two separate facilities for SDI and IP switching/routing. The foundation for the first SMPTE ST 2110 standards came from Video Services Forum (VSF) Technical Recommendation for Transport of Uncompressed Elementary Stream Media Over IP (TR-03), which VSF agreed to make available to SMPTE as a contribution toward the new suite of standards.
SMPTE ST 2110 standards make it possible to separately route and break away the essence streams — audio, video, and ancillary data. This advance simplifies, for example, the addition of captions, subtitles, and Teletext, as well as tasks such as the processing of multiple audio languages and types. Each essence flow may be routed separately and brought together again at the endpoint. Each of the component flows — audio, video, and ancillary data (there may be multiple streams of each type) — are synchronized, so the essence streams are co-timed to one another while remaining independent.
The new SMPTE ST 2110 standards are a primary focus of the IP Showcase at IBC2017, where SMPTE is joining with the Audio Engineering Society (AES), Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), European Broadcasting Union (EBU), IABM, Media Networking Alliance (MNA), and Video Services Forum (VSF) to support the event. The IP Showcase features the latest advances in IP technology for the professional media industries and demonstrates how SMPTE ST 2110 standards add value. Numerous interoperability demonstrations assist broadcast/IT engineers, CEOs, producers, and others in understanding how they can leverage the benefits of ST 2110 standards.
More information about SMPTE ST 2110 standards is available at www.smpte.org/st-2110. Industry members interested in participating in standards work can take part in the upcoming third-quarter SMPTE Technology Committee meetings, which will be hosted by Sky at its London headquarters from Sept. 20-23. More information about participating in the SMPTE Standards Community is available here: https://www.smpte.org/ standards-participation.
Further information about SMPTE and its standards work is available at www.smpte.org.
About SMPTE®
For more than a century, the people of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, or SMPTE (pronounced “simp-tee”), have sorted out the details of many significant advances in media and entertainment technology, from the introduction of “talkies” and color television to HD and UHD (4K, 8K) TV. Since its founding in 1916, SMPTE has received an Oscar® and multiple Emmy® Awards for its work in advancing moving-imagery engineering across the industry. SMPTE has developed thousands of standards, recommended practices, and engineering guidelines, more than 800 of which are currently in force today. SMPTE Time Code™ and the ubiquitous SMPTE Color Bars™ are just two examples of SMPTE’s notable work. As it enters its second century, SMPTE is shaping the next generation of standards and providing education for the industry to ensure interoperability as the industry evolves further into IT- and IP-based workflows.
SMPTE’s global membership today includes more than 7,000 members: motion-imaging executives, creatives, technologists, researchers, and students who volunteer their time and expertise to SMPTE’s standards development and educational initiatives. A partnership with the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) connects SMPTE and its membership with the businesses and individuals who support the creation and finishing of media content. Information on joining SMPTE is available at www.smpte.org/join.
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