Seeing progress: Cobalt Digital on IP, low-latency codec adoption and HDR

By Dr Ciro Noronha, Cobalt Digital CTO.

Since I wrote one of these for last year, and made some predictions, let’s first see how well my crystal ball worked. Here is what I predicted:

• Video contribution using open protocols (ie, RIST) would steadily increase during 2023. From my possibly biased point of view, I think I got that one right. I see a lot more activity around RIST, as evidenced by the comments during SVG’s TranSPORT conference in New York in October.
• Advanced low-latency codecs (such as ultra-low latency H.265) would see increased adoption in 2023. This was more wishful thinking. The use of simpler, low-latency codecs such as JPEG XS is indeed increasing, but less with H.265. Well, there is always 2024 for that.
• For large sports events, there would be an increased use of uncompressed video over IP using ST2110 in trucks for local production. Yes, I got that one right. The large trucks are moving to ST2110 instead of SDI. Hooking it all up is becoming easier; still not for the faint of heart but getting there.
• Increased adoption of low-latency distribution to consumers. This must happen to keep people happy. It is unclear to me how much progress happened in 2023. The solutions are available, it is just a ‘simple’ matter of deploying them.
• Increased adoption of HDR in live sports events. I got this one right. A lot of live sports production is being done in HDR. There is still work to be done to reach a wider audience, but that is on the cards.

What about the cloud? Or, more specifically, production in the cloud? Well, that’s happening, at least for smaller events, and it will continue to happen. Travel is nice (depending on where you are going and where you are staying), but home is nice too.

Since we are talking about the cloud and remote production, let’s start making some predictions for 2024. So, besides the actual production tools, what do we need for that? Note that this is not a comprehensive list, just the parts of it that I care about. Here is my list:

• Low-latency end-to-end reliable transport over the internet: We’re doing things at home, and the internet is what we got. So, I am going to double down on my prediction of wider usage of low‑latency advanced codecs as one of the components of this solution. You need these to bring the bit rates down to acceptable levels. However, as time goes on, they may become less necessary as available network capacity goes up. In fact, as the networks become faster and better, the transport protocols required for reliability become simpler.
• Multi-stream synchronisation: Every sports event has multiple cameras. If you are going to transport these cameras to a remote location, the playback must be synchronised, even if the latency is higher. This allows you to cut from camera to camera without any funny effects (ie, one camera showing the ball inside the goal already and another still showing the player kicking it…) 2024 will see the release of RIST TR-06-4 Part 4, which will provide an industry-standard way of doing something like this. With the availability of RIST TR-06-4 Part 4 users will no longer need to worry about adjusting the latency or using proprietary solutions.

Now, on to the ‘obvious easy predictions’; adoption of HDR for live sports production will continue to happen. The TVs are pretty much all in place already, you ‘just’ need to produce the right content and ‘just’ need to get it to them. It’s already happening on the streaming side, maybe the ATSC 3.0 people will get it going too. The other easy prediction is continued adoption of low-latency delivery to end‑users, because otherwise you don’t have the right experience.