Transforming broadcast delivery realizing the software-defined channel White Paper There is no doubt that the nature of broadcasting is changing dramatically. Where once it was a single, common output to all, today content owners are expected to deliver in a number of formats and business models, to a large number of viewing devices. The rigid requirements of broadcast television demand that every frame of video is delivered on a real-time basis with absolute metronomic reliability. That is not going to go away, nobody wants to see a spinning wheel during a compelling live event whilst the video is buffering. So on the one hand we have to maintain traditional broadcast standards of availability and reliability, and on the other we have to develop a content factory approach to delivering multiple versions to multiple platforms. The IT industry has come to our rescue. Continuing development of computers in this context often referred to as COTS for commodity off the shelf hardware has achieved processing power fast enough to carry out much of the video processing required for broadcast quality service. Other branches of the IT industry have driven the need for high speed Ethernet connectivity with deterministic switching. Up to 100 gigabit Ethernet switches are now widely available and attractively affordable. The logical conclusion, therefore, is to build delivery systems based on COTS hardware, taking advantage of the economies of scale of the IT industry. This could operate in a broadcaster s premises, or in a data center environment. For pay as you go or short term usage such systems can be deployed in the public cloud. This paper looks at how this goal the software-defi ned channel is accomplished. It draws on SAM s experience in implementing a sophisticated, multi-channel softwaredefi ned solution implemented for and maintained at numerous international broadcasters. Audience expectations Consumers may not realize it, but while they could be forgiven for thinking that a broadcast channel is just another sort of video streaming, in reality it is much more complex for the broadcaster to achieve. The broadcast audience expects a seamless experience, with no black, freezes, silence or distortion. The output combines live and recorded programing, with commercials and promotional material, as well as station interstitials to fi ll the schedule. The content may come from different locations, and there may be multiple versions of what is billed as a single channel. An important part of the output is branding, through graphics and promos. As television moves to a multi-platform experience, then the channel stops being a number or a position in the EPG and becomes a brand which is accessed through a number of routes, the linear television channel being only one. In the USA the network/affi liate model delivers national programing, time-shifted where required, interspersed with local advertising. In a country as small as the UK, the leading commercial channel has close to 30 distinct regional services. Alongside the video and audio, the broadcaster is expected to maintain in synchronization a set of additional facilities and metadata, from subtitles/closed captions and EPG descriptions to parental control technology such as V-chip ratings. A playout facility will rarely be responsible just for a single channel. Increasingly, playout operations are being concentrated in specialist centers which may be responsible for tens or hundreds of channels, many of which will require regional variations and live intervention. As noted in the introduction, audiences also expect this to happen every time. Broadcast playout facilities based on traditional, bespoke hardware, routinely achieve 99.999% availability: fi ve nines. Any COTS-based IT solution must meet all these expectations as a minimum, not least on its broadcast outputs. Data Center IP-Based Broadcast Facilities Production Lines in Post News Graphics Completed Consumer Streams 4K HD SD PC Tablet Mobile 3 Light IP-Based Production Facilities 1 2 Fully virtualized media delivery 1
Creating a channel There are multiple steps in creating a channel, frequently involving disparate systems. One of the great advantages of moving towards a software-defi ned channel is that it potentially becomes simpler to integrate these steps and therefore, repetitive tasks and the risk of error can be minimized. The process starts with planning, which leads to a detailed schedule. This is brought together with the advertising sales and traffi c process into a playlist which is managed by the playout automation system for delivery. SAM provides industry-leading solutions for playout automation and delivery. Their architecture enables tight integration with third-party scheduling and traffi c solutions, including customers in-house systems. The key role of automation SAM s Morpheus automation platform is a well-proven system, regularly achieving and bettering fi ve nines reliability across hundreds of channels. It supports highly reactive programing such as live sports, and is designed for the challenges of multi-regional outputs. The system depends upon a multi-faceted resiliency model which brings together the best practices from the broadcast and IT industries. This includes fault tolerant hardware, real-time synchronization of both redundant systems and redundant playlists within a system, and sophisticated media management to eliminate single points of failure. There are several routes to integration with traffi c systems, but the most comprehensive, reactive and open solution uses the BXF standard. This is the integration standard used in many large systems implemented by SAM. One of the key requirements in such implementations is the ability for dynamic data interchange between traffi c and automation. This allows the traffi c system to make late changes to the commercials to be broadcast, having checked that the required commercials are available and online. Ultimately this means that advertising sales can be made very close to the commercial break without risking on-air failures. This is a clear commercial advantage, allowing sales operations to get the maximum revenue for every single spot in the inventory. While many broadcasters talk about this functionality at SAM we call it Commercial Hot List Morpheus remains the only commercial implementation that can do this at scale. Full Master Control ICE provides all the functions you would expect of a traditional master control switcher Media Validation Validate all content on arrival and quarantine any invalid material to prevent on air problems Commercial Hotlist Make playlist changes 2 seconds before air with confidence RSS/XML Text Crawls Multiple text players can be supplied from external feeds - configurable for speed and direction Integrated playout Multiple DSKs and DVEs Can be independently controlled and fed by any internal or external source Watermarking Monitor viewing figures with the most popular audience measurement systems Multi-format Video Support Comprehensive support of industry standard codecs and wrappers Loudness Control Automatically assess & adjust audio to conform to loudness standards such as the calm act Functional complexity in playout systems Advanced 3D Graphics Use the built in functionality of ICE to create stunning on air effects Dolby E Support Dolby E encoding and decoding, validated and authorized by Dolby Labs Closed Captions & Subtitles Support for multiple formats and languages as well as up and down scaling for SD/HD Local, NAS or SAN Storage Use your choice of storage from local to SAN streaming or network attached storage. While Morpheus and just a few other automation systems can control discrete equipment in a traditional environment - such as servers, switchers and graphics devices - the software defi ned channel demands playout from some form of COTS hardware. A number of vendors already offer channel in a box playout systems, often based on standard PCs. These tend to offer little more than video playback with some simple computer graphics. While these are suitable for some channels, to deliver a premium channel requires a different approach. The SAM ICE system takes a more holistic approach, and is the only product on the market with a feature set complete enough to originate a premium broadcast channel from a single device. ICE realizes a broadcast channel in software, running on standard IT platforms, so is inherently ready for the software defi ned channel. IT technology has advanced to the point where all but the most demanding, live rendered graphics can be accommodated in CPU on a SAM playout system, with these complex graphics alone requiring virtual GPU technology. 2
One should keep in mind that data centers were originally designed for other applications than broadcasting; banking, website hosting, document management the list is endless. In each case it is no problem at all to use general purpose CPU s on Virtual Machine implementations and enable the seamless and apparently limitless upscale and downscale of resources required by the customer. The commercial model of data centers is therefore predicated on high utilization of their resources and the flexible management of customer demand; if those customers demand dedicated hardware the data center business model is somewhat damaged and flexibility lost. Today ICE SDC can achieve the exact same rich feature set of ICE in a COTS based datacenter producing IP outputs with the same quality and reliability as SDI, allowing this flexibility to be realized. The software-defined channel It is clear that the migration of a broadcast channel to a data center environment is still highly desirable. It has the capability of driving significant cost reduction, and it provides a single processing environment in which all the other channel variants can be derived from the broadcast output. The dynamic nature of the data center means that it also facilitates launch of new services like event based or pop-up channels. Additional services can be built around major sporting events, for example, then taken down afterwards with little capital requirement. In this case the pop-up channels are likely to be very high profile, so would need the highest quality and reliability standards. To get to the point where the software-defined channel is suitable for full data center implementation, we need to achieve two key requirements: first, channel automation and playout must be realized as a set of pure software services that can run on COTS infrastructure. second, the ability to send and receive content to and from these software services, in extremely high quality (either uncompressed or lightly compressed) over commoditized IP networks into the data center, and as a compressed transport stream for delivery. The first is effectively the definition of a software-defined channel, but it cannot exist in isolation so the second requirement, of connectivity, is needed. Note that this is significantly different from the previous generation of software playout solutions which use IT servers tailored for broadcast applications, including video processing hardware alongside the generic GPU resources, and baseband video I/O. The location of processing off site with big fat pipes to company locations is not a concept alien to the broadcasting fraternity. However the scalability, high utilization and flexibility will be lost, and some of the attractiveness of data center implementations along with it. We have real world implementations of such systems at large scale today. Roadmap We are at a point of realization in the delivery of software defined television channels. In its industry leading work, SAM already offers all of the requirements of broadcast channels in the cloud with ICE SDC (Software Defined Channel). This means that broadcasters can now plan for a managed transition to SDC, through a staged program of technology and operational change. SAM is working with many customers on their migration strategy towards a software-defined channel and IP future. Typically, these projects are broken down into three distinct phases: automation, playout and video over IP networks. Automation For a number of years, the SAM Morpheus automation platform has been possible to implement as a pure software solution in a virtual machine environment so can be run today in a data center or cloud. This is a proven solution among multiple customers. The full functionality of Morpheus is available for Traditional playout devices, ICE Channel-in-a Box and ICE SDC solutions, across the range of broadcasting models. That makes it an ideal foundation for a transition strategy. This of course ensures a strong and predictable return on investment. Perhaps even more importantly, it means that the moves towards the software defined channel will be zerohours training for many staff. The operations and operational control will remain exactly the same, whether the automation processing or the content are local, in a data center or in the cloud. The new Morpheus UX is web based and allows greater flexibility and agility in operations than ever before, condensing operational viewing space into the optimal environment for the job at hand. Again, this is a natural fit for the processingbased distributed core model of the data center. 3
Playout SAM has devoted considerable resources over the years to the development of high quality image processing in software. A number of software products are already available and are in distinct contrast to conventional broadcast image processing devices which occupy power and rack space whether you are using them or not. As we have seen, ICE SDC provides the functionality of a television channel today, and advances in IT technology allow full quality and services to be delivered purely in software. So, this element can join Morpheus in provision of the true software defi ned channel today. Video over IP The key advantage of the move to data centers is that it allows broadcasters to take advantage of the much greater R&D spending power of the IT industry in technology advancement to allow further development of our solutions. For this reason, SAM has formed partnerships with a number of manufacturers of network infrastructure to tackle the challenges of video over IP. This means that broadcasters can obtain the maximum benefit from COTS IT equipment without compromising broadcast quality. Such an architecture brings new opportunities. As we have seen, it allows us to create new channels almost instantaneously: the software will be available in the data center, so all that is needed is to spin up a new instance utilizing standard IT orchestration and deployment tools. As ever, for this approach to work there has to be a set of agreed standards. Without it, interconnection will be impossible, and the added burden of individual integration layers will destroy the economic benefit. Standards When thinking about broadcast channel playout, there are two distinct applications of video over IP, and each requires a different approach. The fi rst is around contribution feeds, which are typically live feeds from events or studios which have to be inserted into the playout process. Here the primary requirements are low latency so that the live pictures remain very close to live, coupled with high quality. The preferred method here is an uncompressed feed which is simply encapsulated into IP for transport. SMPTE standard 2022-6 is generally being adopted for this purpose in early stages with SMPTE-2110 expected to take precedence on ratifi cation. The second application is the output of the playout process, which will ultimately be delivered to the consumer or to other parts of the organization in remote locations. Here bandwidth requirements dominate, H.264 is typically used today. The objective of software defi ned channel virtualization The choices here come down to the balance of bandwidth against processing. Uncompressed places the lightest load on the CPU resources; heavy compression in a complex codec such as H.264 consumes more CPU but reduces the distribution bandwidth costs. SAM has implementations in both compressed and uncompressed IP in ICE SDC within the software defi ned channel. 4
Conclusion It is inevitable that the broadcast industry will migrate towards software-defi ned video, implemented in virtualized processes whether in an external data center, cloud or within the broadcaster s datacenter facility. It creates cost effi ciencies through the use of COTS hardware and the IT industry s continuing investment in R&D, and it allows media companies to develop large-scale content factories to deliver media to multiple platforms. Within this migration, consideration has to be made for the broadcast output, which will remain the principal source of revenue for broadcasters and content owners for many years to come. Even for premium broadcast services today, the transition to software-defined channels in data centers has become a reality, with large scale deployments of hundreds of channels. The pace of developments in the IT industry means that software defined channel platform footprint becomes ever smaller, more flexible and with more functionality. SAM is providing a practical route for broadcasters to make the transition to software-defined channels, through a combination of innovative technology and products today, and advanced research for tomorrow. The SAM approach delivers the all-important confidence factor for broadcasters: It provides continuity of operations and protection of investment through the transition, and will ultimately ensure a flexible infrastructure and standards based interoperability. 5