NAB 2016: Imagine Communications Unveils Next-Gen Compression, Operational Management Platforms
Imagine Communication (N2502s), has introduced Selenio One, a unified software-based platform designed to empower today’s service providers and content distributors with the ability to control, manage, scale and evolve current and future compression operations and capabilities across multiple target applications. The company also unveiled EPIC, a next-generation operational management and orchestration platform designed to facilitate the seamless assimilation of IT-based environments into the broadcasting realm.
Selenio One
Selenio One Innovatively designed to handle a broad spectrum of compression activities and based on a modular software architecture that enables the platform to continuously scale and adapt to new business requirements, Selenio One provides media companies with the potential to consolidate all of their compression capabilities into a single, future-proof platform.
The latest addition to the market-leading Selenio family of processing and compression solutions, Selenio One is powered by Zenium™, the ground-breaking software framework that enables media companies to protect and extend their infrastructure investments through seamless and continual integration of new technologies and formats.
Today’s video service providers, including cable operators, telecommunications companies and satellite TV providers, are continuously seeking to perfect their linear and nonlinear workflows and improve the quality of their video content, while simultaneously optimizing the efficiency of their networks. Selenio One delivers a single, powerful solution that improves the channel-carrying capacity of their video delivery networks, freeing up precious bandwidth for high-speed Internet and other subscriber services.
”Increasing competitive and economic pressures require video service providers to fortify their infrastructures with next-generation software-based solutions that can replace multiple purpose-built platforms to deliver increased capacity and continuously evolve to accommodate future technology advances,” says Brick Eksten, Chief Product Officer, Imagine Communications. ”ImagineCommunications built Selenio One, which is powered by Zenium, from the ground up to meet the next-generation requirements of video service providers today and for years to come.”
By supporting the full spectrum of distribution technologies on a single platform, Selenio One provides an efficient transition platform for video service providers that are evolving their services to support hybrid distribution models. Initially shipping with support for MPEG-2 and H.264 transcoding and statistical multiplexing, the software-based solution is optimized to address the compression requirements of cable operators, IPTV and satellite TV providers.
Selenio One is deployed on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) compute platforms. The Linux-based Selenio One offers video service providers an array of features and capabilities, including market-leading H.264/MPEG-2 high video quality transcoding and software-based statistical multiplexing support.
The advanced statistical multiplexing capabilities of the platform make it possible to pack five MPEG-2 HD channels or 12 H.264 HD channels into a single QAM channel without degrading video quality. The next-generation encoding technology delivers operators an additional 15% savings in bitrate for constant bitrate (CBR) content delivery, assisting service providers in recovering bandwidth that can be utilized for additional revenue-generating services.
Selenio One is scheduled for commercial availability in June.
EPIC
The company also unveiled the EPIC Multiviewer (EPIC MV), an operational monitoring solution and the first product built on the EPIC platform.
The software-based and UHD-ready IP multiviewer is optimized for hybrid and high-powered production, acquisition, origination and distribution requirements, providing broadcasters and other media companies a single solution for SDI, IP and hybrid environments. Powered by Zenium™, the groundbreaking media processing platform from Imagine Communications, EPIC MV is designed to seamlessly scale and evolve to meet future monitoring requirements.
Today’s broadcast facilities are undergoing significant evolution. In addition to the need to create and distribute content across a broad set of formats to a wide range of platforms, broadcasters and other media companies are also addressing simultaneous technology transitions, including the evolution to higher resolutions and the migration of operations to more agile and versatile IP-based environments. The ongoing evolution of the broadcast plant has created the need for signal monitoring technology that is more scalable, flexible and multi-faceted than ever before.
The Imagine Communications EPIC MV establishes new benchmarks in versatility, scalability and adaptability. Capable of handling an array of formats — from production to multiscreen delivery — the next-generation monitoring solution empowers broadcasters, content distributors and other media companies with a single system for scaling their multiviewer capabilities to unprecedented levels. The software-based nature of the advanced monitoring system also guards against obsolescence, as the EPIC MV is able to seamlessly incorporate new formats and technologies as they are introduced into the market.
”We designed EPIC with a focus on both the current and future needs of today’s broadcasters and media companies,” said Brick Eksten, Chief Product Officer, Imagine Communications. ”The software-based nature of the platform will allow us to seamlessly blend operational monitoring and orchestration in a way that leverages the state of the art in enterprise-class IT solutions, while catering specifically to the needs of broadcasters, both now and in the future.”
EPIC MV, the first solution based on the new platform, is a fully integrated IP multiviewer with out-of-the-box support for displaying UHD signals. Its ability to handle both SDI and IP signals will help enable broadcasters to significantly simplify their monitoring environments, while at the same time unleashing unprecedented performance, scalability and adaptability to future technologies. Designed with rapidly evolving operational environments in mind, the EPIC MV was built to provide broadcasters, content distributors and other media companies with cutting-edge performance for years to come.
The new EPIC MV is powered by Zenium, the groundbreaking software framework that enables media companies to future-proof their infrastructure investments through seamless and continual integration of new technologies and formats.
EPIC MV delivers all of the features of the award-winning Platinum SX Hybrid and select features from Platinum SX-Pro multiviewers, while raising the bar for all-in-one monitoring solutions.
Advanced capabilities include:
- Delivery of exceptional Video Quality (VQ)
- Support for high-capacity SDI over IP, 3G-SDI and linear compressed IP sources
- Scaling to thousands of sources and hundreds of displays
- Support for UHD outputs and UHD-capable inputs
- Providing sophisticated monitoring-by-exception functionality
The new multiviewer runs on Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) servers and other standard commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) platforms, leveraging hardware-acceleration options to provide the density and performance required for facilities of any size. The system provides native support for MPEG2 and H.264/AVC compressed video streams delivered over IP-connected networks. Hardware acceleration provides advanced display processing, along withImagine Communications’ own pluggable input modules for high-capacity SDI over IP, and 3G-SDI baseband video reception.
EPIC MV builds on Imagine Communications’ rich history in operational monitoring and multi-image display technology, extending many of the features and capabilities of the company’s award-winning multiviewers to high-bandwidth monitoring in IP- and UHD-based environments.
Scheduled for commercial availability in June, EPIC MV will debut at NAB Show