Service provider Big Blue Marble uses Net Insight’s Nimbra to establish long-distance media networking across ORF’s existing infrastructure, supporting ST 2110 video and audio workflows.
Public broadcaster ORF is Austria’s largest media provider, operating four national television, 12 radio channels and a number of different websites. Its main headquarters and studios are located in Vienna, supported by regional studios in Austria’s nine Federal Provinces, and maintains a team of correspondents dispersed worldwide who contribute to programming in all three media types.
ORF now operates on a new nationwide IP-based contribution network built by service provider Big Blue Marble, connecting the headquarters and one other production facility in Vienna, to all nine regional production studios. The decision to migrate to this new IP media network comes from the need to replace a legacy SDI-based infrastructure with a scalable, agile IP contribution solution.
Networking across ORF’s Existing Infrastructure
Supporting the ST 2110 workflows for video and audio over the new network are Nimbra 1000 and Nimbra 600 platforms from Net Insight, which include interoperability with SDI environments through integrated legacy conversion.
Nimbra is used to establish reliable broadcast grade long-distance media networking across ORF’s existing infrastructure, allowing management of different events and network monetisation. As requirements change, such as compression or bandwidth, reconfiguration can be handled remotely.
Furthermore, Nimbra’s timing-awareness means that different video feeds can be aligned in time on delivery, to ensure playout is synchronised for remote production, primary distribution and so on. IP based synchronisation using PTP can also be extended over wide area networks to support distributed or remote production from anywhere.
Video Quality with Reliable Delivery
To achieve the necessary video quality, which is a major focus for ORF, the systems’ key features include full NMOS-based control and orchestration, allowing their team to integrate media flow management with their existing control systems to make operation simpler and increase agility across production sites.
Nimbra can maintain lossless media transport over most infrastructure types, including public internet, using retransmission and protection techniques that manage network issues without impact on content. These techniques may also be combined with Net Insight’s enhanced switching that guarantees consistent latency and jitter over time.
“ORF’s modernisation project strengthens our ability to meet evolving production demands, while ensuring reliability and seamless integration across IP and SDI environments,” said Norbert Grill, CTO at Big Blue Marble. “Thanks to the joint support from Net Insight and our local partner TV-Connect, we’re able to deliver a robust solution across our entire national footprint.”
Scalability over a Large Network
Nimbra 1000 and 600 are both built for scalability and support for varied networks, including IP, wavelength systems and dark fibre. Nimbra 600 makes it very simple to manage large scale networks regardless of underlying infrastructure, for example setting up new services, increasing or reducing bandwidth on-demand and adding new locations or services to existing networks on command.
Nimbra 1000 is designed for all-IP services and all-IP networks, and is able to guarantee quality for live media events and to automate real-time provisioning. Scaling both switching and link capacities to a high level allows interconnection of studios and, with Nimbra’s virtualization architecture, one common 3RU hardware platform can be used for all of ORF’s media and network functions, deploying functions at any point in the network.
“This deployment is a good example of our strategic and focused investment in the growing IP-based media market,” said Andreas Eriksson, CEO of Net Insight. “It demonstartes our strong position in IP-based solutions and our ability to deliver high performance, scalable workflows that meet evolving customer demands.” netinsight.net
