The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) has won the battle to establish the industry standard for the transport and management of video over IP, with rivals Evertz and Sony declaring that they will now drop their rival protocols.

One year ago, disparate groups of manufacturers had allied behind competing standards aimed at helping to shift TV production from SDI to IP.

But AIMS will now head into this month’s NAB trade show as the clear winner, with 70 manufacturers, broadcasters and other related parties backing its open standards-based approach.

“There is still some disparity in the industry but by weight of numbers, AIMS has won the argument,” said Tim Felstead, head of product marketing at SAM.

Evertz and Sony – both also members of AIMS – developed parallel strategies for video over IP technologies, branded ASPEN and the Network Media Interface (NMI) respectively.

But Nicolas Moreau, product marketing manager for IP live production and workflows at Sony, said that NMI will now be “dropped” in favour of the incoming SMPTE standard 2110 (ST 2110). Evertz is also throwing its weight behind ST 2110.

“The fundamental elements of ASPEN have been harmonized into ST 2110,” said Mo Goyal, director of product marketing. “All vendors are on the same page. The industry would like to see a standard we can interoperate around and as one of the major players, we’re leading the charge.”

ST 2110, which could be ratified as early as this summer, defines a means of transporting and synchronising audio, video and metadata. Unlike the existing SMPTE 2022-6 standard, which treats all the signals as one stream, each element in ST 2110 is split into separate components.

Benefits include greater flexibility and efficiency in managing audio streams, subtitles, and handling High Dynamic Range video.

Developed in tandem with ST 2110 is the Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS). Although not part of the standard, this method of enabling different IP devices to identify each other has garnered widespread support.

“We are committed to interoperability for IP live production and in that sense, the networking interface technology we used in the past will evolve into SMPTE 2110 and NMOS,” said Moreau. Sony will continue to support legacy NMI products, he added.

Products compatible with ST 2110 and NMOS are expected to debut at NAB, which runs from 22 to 27 April in Las Vegas.

 

 

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