New integrations with the open-source Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol are about to make it easier for broadcasters to ingest live or file-based content for cloud-based production workflow without fiber or satellite links, according to members of the SRT Alliance.
Haivision SRT Hub interface
Haivision
In the run-up to IBC, Haivision, the original developer of SRT, announced the SRT Hub, a low-latency media routing service on Microsoft Azure designed to connect systems from any geographic location to cloud infrastructure, and released the SRT Hub SDK, allowing third-party integration. Integrated components providing IO with the SRT Hub cloud are known as “hublets,” and may include media-processing capabilities.
Haivision said vendors including Avid, Cinegy, Haivision, LightFlow, Microsoft, Telestream and Wowza Media Systems have signed onto the new SRT Hub Partner Program and will be demonstrating the first hublets at IBC 2019.
The SDK is available now from Haivision and will be distributed on GitHub “shortly,” the company said.
Ingest IP Media ‘from Anywhere’
Avid and Microsoft will offer a tech preview of on-premise and cloud-based workflows using SRT Hub along with Avid FastServe Stream to ingest IP-based SRT streams “from anywhere,” Avid and Haivision officials said.
The connections, which use the Microsoft Azure backbone to move content from the field to a broadcaster’s MediaCentral system, are said to be secure and extremely low-latency, free of buffering and other delays. SRT Hub uses the Microsoft IoT framework to communicate with edge devices including video encoders and gateways, Haivision said.
“IP has opened the door to mobile content creation and consumption, but guaranteeing quality for both creators and consumers has been a serious, ongoing challenge,” said Avid Director of Product Marketing Ray Thompson in a prepared statement. “By integrating SRT and Haivision SRT Hub, Avid will be able to deliver on the ability to get news, sports and live content from anywhere into MediaCentral and out to social media channels and broadcasts.”
The Avid tech preview will be demonstrated during IBC, which runs at the Amsterdam RAI from September 13–17.
Also at IBC, Wowza will debut its Wowza Hublet for SRT Hub, which will enable low-latency streaming “from any location to any device, anywhere,” according to a statement from Barry Owen, Wowza VP of solutions engineering.
And LightFlow will show what it called its second SRT Hublet as part of its LightFlow Suite. “We continue to enable the LightFlow Suite within Haivision SRT Hub, where customers are able to create live video streams with a three-second glass-to-glass latency, from broadcast contribution to massive delivery over the Internet,” said LightFlow CEO Miguel Serrano in a statement.
Haivision will present an “SRT Hub Technical Overview” at the IBC conference on Sunday, September 15 at 1:30 p.m. in Room G104. The session is free to attend, but advance registration (via the above link) is required.
SRT at IBC
Here’s Haivision’s own summary of SRT Hub activity at the show:
- Haivision (Hall 14 – 14.G27) will demonstrate intelligent cloud workflows and third-party integration with SRT Hub
- Microsoft (Hall 1 – 1.C27) will highlight SRT Hub for intelligent media routing across the global Azure network of datacenters and amongst the leading cloud solution partners in broadcast
- Avid (Hall 7 – 7.B55) will demonstrate how they can leverage SRT Hub to route live media across the Azure backbone and into FastServe for use in MediaCentral and Media Composer
- Telestream (Hall 7 – 7.C14, 7.C16) will show how their iQ Inspector and Optiq solutions can connect with SRT Hub to provide integrated stream monitoring and channel playout
- LightFlow by Epic Labs (Hall 14 – 14.A05) will show solutions using artificial intelligence to improve video QoE and save costs with content encoding optimization and multi-CDN management
- Wowza Media Systems (Hall 14, 14.E08) will demonstrate the Wowza Hublet for SRT Hub that works seamlessly with Wowza’s leading streaming cloud solutions
- SRT Hub will be presented in a panel discussion entitled “Broadcast Production in the Cloud with SRT Hub & Microsoft Azure” on Sunday, September 15 at 16:00 in G Corridor, room G104. Register to attend.
