IABM Q2 Industry Journal | Article | Pg 50
Written by Miroslav Jeras, CTO at Pebble
While it is generally acknowledged that the broadcast industry roadmap leads to a fully IP-based infrastructure, there is still plenty of uncertainty regarding the exact route that will be taken to get there. Currently the industry can be characterised as being in an extended implementation phase which concurrently overlaps with the R&D efforts necessary to make IP workflows optimised throughout an organisation.
There are several areas of uncertainty surrounding IP deployments as a result, and one of the chief ones resides in IP assignment and the way that broadcast engineers can connect and disconnect devices to IP-based broadcast networks. This becomes a significant task in the move from SDI to IP, with several vital stages that have to be completed. Connecting devices to a switch might be relatively straightforward, but each device requires an IP address so that it’s visible to the network. Then, for each output on each device, a multicast address and a multicast port for video, for audio, and for ancillary data need to be allocated. Additionally, in an IP environment it’s also more difficult to lock and synchronise all these sources together, requiring PTP (precision time protocol) parameters to be set for each device.
This is why we developed Pebble Control; to solve these problems and to do it in an independent and cost-effective way that retains interoperability and does not require any lock in to a specific manufacturer’s ecosystem. As a result Pebble Control is a connection management system that assists in the transition to becoming a vendor-agnostic IP facility without the need to deploy a bespoke enterprise solution and get caught up in all the configuration, consultation, and potentially large expense that that process involves…
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