SMPTE Publishes ST 2110 for Media Over Managed IP Networks
SMPTE has announced the publication 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 IP networks in real-time for the purposes of live production, playout and other professional media applications.
Documents now available in the SMPTE digital library at library.smpte.org, are SMPTE ST 2110-10/-20/-30 which address system concerns and uncompressed video and audio streams, and SMPTE ST 2110-21 specifying traffic shaping and delivery timing of uncompressed video.
"Professional media is a challenging field because of its real-time nature and demanding quality-of-service requirements, both of which consumers may take for granted," said SMPTE President Matthew Goldman, who is senior vice president of technology, TV and media at Ericsson. "The standardization of SMPTE ST 2110 documents gives broadcasters, producers, and media technology suppliers the tools needed to meet these requirements while working in an IP environment."
With SMPTE ST 2110 standards, traffic within a facility can now be all-IP, which means that organizations can rely on one common data centre infrastructure rather than two separate facilities for SDI and IP switching and routing. The foundation for the first SMPTE ST 2110 standards came from the 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 - which is useful because it simplifies, for example, the addition of captions, subtitles and teletext, and 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) - is synchronized, so the essence streams are co-timed to one another while remaining independent.
The new SMPTE ST 2110 standard suite was a focus of the IP Showcase at SMPTE 2017, where various interoperability demonstrations showed the advantages of using it. SMPTE is currently developing a dedicated course on ST 2110 for its Virtual Classroom which will be offered beginning in February 2018. Currently SMPTE's Internetworking, Routing & Switching Programs courses, as well as the Essentials of IP Media Transport for Broadcasters, help to provide a solid foundation in networking.
More information about SMPTE ST 2110 standards is available at www.smpte.org/st-2110. www.smpte.org
