Professional Networked Media
Ethernet AVB:
The next step in broadcast infrastructures
Jan Eveleens, CEO
jan.eveleens@axon.tv
www.axon.tv
Live Production as we know it
Key challenges in current infrastructures

(lack of) flexibility
 Topology (central router)
 Supporting new standards

Cabling
 Specific for our industry
 Dedicated
 one cable per signal (type)
 Uni-directional
 A LOT……
A typical example

Green-field installation (UK):
 157 x
 78 x
 410 x (!)
Analog audio distribution amplifiers
Digital audio distribution amplifiers
Analog CVBS distribution amplifiers
 Mostly for reference distribution
 1018 x (!)

Digital video (SDI) distribution amplifiers
Total required rackspace:
 93 x 4RU frames = 372 RU  approx. 10 x full-height 19” Racks !!!


Many, many kilometers of coax cable, thousands of BNC
connectors
And this just for reference and signal distribution……..
Live Production infrastructures: the next wave !
today
Ethernet
3 Gbps
HD-SDI
SDI
Composite
Why going Ethernet in Live Production (1) ?

Required link speed available now
40.000
10.000
Mbps
1.000
100
10
1
1989
1994
1999
VIDEO
2004
2009
2014
ETHERNET
 and affordable: A 10Gbps ethernet port is already cheaper than a 3Gbps
SDI I/O

Sheer size of ethernet industry drives innovation and cost erosion
 Ethernet switch market > $20B (10Gbps switch market already > $10B)
 Compare this to: total SDI router market: ~ $300M…… or even
total broadcast equipment market: ~$16B .
 Another interesting datapoint: revenu of Cisco (2012): $46B….
Strong Ethernet roadmap going forward

Ethernet (backbone) link speed expected to hit 1 Tbps (!) in the
next decade !!
Why going Ethernet in Live Production (2) ?



Allows distributed architectures
Full bi-directional/duplex connections
Multiple (different) signals multiplexed/transported on one
cable
 Video, audio, (meta) data, control, monitoring, etc
 Also supports standard ‘legacy’ traffice (files, emails, etc)

Drastically reduce cabling
 Save costs (cables, connectors, install), space and weight (!)
SDI
A central router
Central reference
with distribution
Already quite
some Ethernet
equipment
Many cables,
often in big
parallel bundles
9
AVB
10
AVB
Central reference
With no
additional
distribution
A distributed router
11
How to make Ethernet work for real-time applications
Audio Video Bridging (AVB)
12
Time Synchronization
Traffic Shaping
Bandwidth Reservation
Configuration
What are the key AVB standards ?

The key standards for AVB are:
 IEEE 802.1BA: Audio Video Bridging Systems
 IEEE 802.1AS: Timing and Synchronization for TimeSensitive Applications (gPTP),
 IEEE 802.1Qat: Stream Reservation Protocol (SRP),
 IEEE 802.1Qav: Forwarding and Queuing for Time-Sensitive
Streams (FQTSS)
 IEEE 1722: AVB payload transport layer protocol.
 IEEE 1722.1: AVB discovery, enumeration & control protocol
13
Typical characteristics of an AVB network

All nodes are fully synchronised to a (very stable) network clock
 Allows very accurate recovery of media clocks
 SDI can be recovered within broadcast quality jitter specifications
 Audio clock can be recovered maintaining phase relation

Low latency: typically 2ms overall network delay
 Allows for complex/distributed networks (multiple hops)


The network self-manages bandwidth reservation such that
links will never get overcommitted and/or packets are dropped
Uses multi-cast, so only one copy of each active source on any
given link or backbone
14
What can be transported with AVB ?
The following elements are part of IEEE 1722 transport protocol:
 PCM audio in various sample rates
 SDI video (with embedded video and audio)
 Raw, uncompressed video
 1080p video at ~2Gbps (!)

Time-sensitive data (eg ancillarily or metadata)

IEEE 1394 formats
 So this also enables transport of compressed (MPEG-TS) streams

RTP formats
15
A very important element: interoperability
Ensuring that AVB nodes talk to AVB nodes
AVnu Alliance
16
Who/what is AVnu Alliance

The AVnu Alliance is an industry forum dedicated to the
advancement of professional-quality audio video by
promoting the adoption of Audio Video Bridging (AVB).

The organization creates compliance test procedures
and certification processes that ensure
interoperability of networked AVB devices.

4 key markets:




Professional Audio
Professional Video
Consumer
Automotive
17
Founding Members of the AVnu Alliance
18
AVnu Alliance members
19
How real is Ethernet AVB ?

100Mbps, 1Gbps,10Gbps and 40Gbps Ethernet AVB switches
are shipping

Several professional AVB audio products on the market from
several vendors:
 Audio processors, audio consoles, speakers, etc
 Intercom systems

First broadcast quality AVB video products have started
shipping

AVnu certification process is up and running
20
Summarising the key benefits of Ethernet - AVB

Based on existing and open standards from a very reputable and
succesful standards body (IEEE)

Provides one framework for time-synchronised, real-time transport of
video, audio and data

Proven technology that is available now: large professional AVB audio
systems being deployed in the field

Interoperability is going to be taken care of: AVnu alliance

Plug-and play : no conflicts or fiddling with IP addresses, etc

Fool-proof: the network is self-managing, it does not rely on the skills of
network engineers or a (proprietery) software management layer.

Perfect co-existence (and reserved bandwidth for) with standard IP
traffic (eg. control, monitoring, etc)
21
Questions ?
More info can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Video_Bridging
www.avnu.org
www.axon.tv