Ross Video and NDI are forming a strategic partnership on NDI Advanced that upgrades Ross’ existing NDI support across its portfolio extending video connectivity, flexibility and workflows.
Ross Video and NDI have announced a strategic partnership in which Ross will upgrade its existing support for the NDI standard across its portfolio by licensing a wider connectivity package called NDI Advanced that extends video connectivity, flexibility and workflow efficiency.
“Ross Video has supported the NDI standard for many years,” said Jeff Moore, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Ross Video. “We have found NDI to be extremely useful and look forward to supporting enhanced versions of NDI and NDI connectivity as it evolves.” Ross will use this collaboration to incorporate the most recent AV networking features of NDI across its portfolio.
Advancing the Standard
The proprietary NDI connectivity standard supports a range of video codecs and enables direct interoperability for devices and software across standard IP network infrastructures. NDI Advanced includes all features of the NDI standard such as automatic device discovery, bi-directional remote control and embedded metadata streaming, and then adds other functionality that gives product developers options for customising the connectivity for their own applications.
For instance for hardware developers, NDI connectivity can be integrated directly into the hardware layer of devices using reference designs and packages specialised for different product categories. Packages are available for cameras, displays, encoders/ decoders and other FPGA-based devices. Optimised designs exist now for the most common FPGAs, including AMD Xilinx and Intel Altera.
NDI Advanced can be integrated in a software layer for extended flexibility. The NDI connectivity specifications are compatible with commonly used desktop and mobile platforms. For cloud environments, NDI’s hardware-agnostic, network-ready connectivity can be integrated into cloud platforms or video services that need to scale effectively in real-time.
Customisation and Control
The Advanced version of the NDI SDK allows developers to control sending and receiving of all the NDI formats – NDI High Bandwidth, NDI HX and in particular NDI HX3. HX3 compresses video to support low-latency delivery at minimal bitrates while maintaining a visually lossless result. Connection settings can be specified for each sender, finder and receiver.
Other specifications users have control over are KVM support, alpha channel and memory allocation. Genlock and AV sync APIs are available.
NDI Advanced users also have access to the NDI Certified program, which is a way for developers to guarantee their products for interoperability. Products certified by the NDI team receive a badge showing the NDI formats they support.
Ross Video will incorporate NDI Advanced features across much of its portfolio, including the XPression graphics system and Ultrix hyperconverged routing and processing platform. It will also be a part of Ross’ PTZ broadcast video cameras, Media I/O capture and playout, softGear Streaming Gateway, Vision[Ai]ry Ft facial tracking and recognition, the PIERO sports graphics analysis system and DashBoard production and facility control. www.rossvideo.com
By Sean Young
