Bridge partners with Appear for IP-based production and distribution

On the back of their recent announcement of the new Integrated Services Monitoring (ISM) model, Bridge Technologies and Appear TV have created a setup which facilitates delivery and monitoring of data, uncompressed to compressed, from production to end user.

ISM seeks to bring together the Bridge Technologies portfolio of products into a turnkey, easy-to-install media monitoring system. It represents Bridge’s recognition of the increasingly merged and hybridised nature of the industry, where single entities may now operate on multiple layers of the broadcast and media cycle; from production through signal acquisition, contribution streams, picture archiving, OTT/streaming media, to traditional broadcast distribution with DTT or satellite.

The IP-based production and distribution setup – which would have also been demoed at NAB this year – is a tested proof of concept for a full-length monitoring solution from production to end user, using standards SDI, SPTS, MPTS and OTT. The setup has been fully tested with four cameras with SDI outputs feeding an IP network processor to seamlessly bridge SDI and IP networks.

The encapsulated SDI-IP signal is forwarded to the Appear X10 that encodes SDI into SPTS multicast and to the Appear ABR transcoder for conversion to HLS OTT and distribution. The Appear XC5000 carrier grade platform with built-in automatic routing of signals is also part of the setup for IP in/out distribution and RF transport.

Furthermore, the multicast service can then be monitored by Bridge´s multitude of IP Probes – including the VB330, VB220, RDW, NOMAD, VB120 and RF modules.

In this particular broadcast setup, the key to the way both technologies allow for delivery from the beginning of the production process to the end of the broadcast process is their ultra-low latency performance in the conversion of live SDI to SDI-IP.

This architecture allows for full motion, colour-accurate, ultra-low-latency video to be made available from any source to any application or user – anywhere in the world, be that a fixed studio, remote OB van or Headend environment, such that a geographically-dispersed team can work together on the same project.