New SDN media network designed for workflow efficiency

Nevion, the award-winning provider of virtualized media production solutions, and its German solution partner LOGIC media solutions GmbH, announced that PLAZAMEDIA, a Germany-based content solution provider, has picked Nevion equipment, software and services for its brand new IP-based broadcasting center located in Ismaning near Munich, Germany.

When PLAZAMEDIA decided to move to new 800m² premises, it was clear that IP technology was the only option to deliver the scalable and future-proof media network the company needed in its facilities. PLAZAMEDIA was particularly keen to leverage the potential of IP to transform workflows though infrastructure virtualization, i.e. being able to share studios, control rooms and productions resources (e.g. equipment) more easily.

To achieve this, PLAZAMEDIA opted for a spine-leaf, fully redundant, software-defined network (SDN), with Nevion eMerge as leaf switches, Nevion Virtuoso software-defined media nodes as SDI/IP gateways for video, audio and data, and Nevion VideoIPath as the orchestration and SDN control software. The spine switches are provided by Nevion partner Mellanox.

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Nevion VideoIPath is the engine of the media network, allowing connections between sources and destinations to be established both in an ad-hoc and scheduled manner, to support infrastructure virtualization in particular. For example, Nevion VideoIPath’s data routing control lets existing commentator-consoles share the back-end equipment via RS-232 over IP, in a way that was not possible until now with the point-to-point physical connectivity.

The NATing (network address translation) capability of Nevion eMerge switches allows Nevion VideoIPath to control media flows to and from any equipment, whether IP or SDI, without the need for specific drivers.

Nevion VideoIPath’s support for the Ember+ protocol also means that operators can manage connections in a production environment through existing and familiar Lawo VSM control panels, used until now for PLAZAMEDIA’s legacy SDI network.

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Hans Hasselbach, Nevion’s Chief Commercial Officer, explains: “Nevion and our partner LOGIC already had an excellent relationship with PLAZAMEDIA, having previously delivered a successful IP remote production solution for the company. However, we still needed to prove ourselves for this project, against fierce and local competition, so we are very pleased to have been chosen to deliver this exciting solution.”

In addition, the Nevion Virtuosos are being used for to provide essence-based adaptation (TR-04 then SMPTE ST 2110), processing, protections (SMPTE 2022-7) and monitoring of uncompressed video, audio and data in the facilities. In particular, PLAZAMEDIA has picked Nevion Virtuoso to provide the audio embedding/de-embedding, shuffling, switching, delay and gain functionality it needed for the new facilities.

“The IP facilities solution was delivered on time by Nevion services and LOGIC – despite a very tight schedule dictated by our move to the new premises – and we are pleased with its performance”, says Jens Friedrichs, chairman at PLAZAMEDIA. “We still have many ideas of how our workflows could be improved further, but we are confident that our new IP media network will be able to evolve to support these.”

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