This new whitepaper from Intel® discusses the evolution of Ligos’ video compression expertise and the complementary benefits achieved through reliance on Intel architecture components. Read how the professional broadcast community gains the benefits of proven technology that delivers the quality of conventional broadcast equipment at comparable costs with significantly more flexibility and reduced total cost of ownership.
Click here to view white paper at www.intel.com.
New Architecture Enables Edit-in-Place, Play-in-Place Workflow
MAYNARD, Mass. (Sept. 1, 2004) – SeaChange International (Nasdaq: SEAC) today introduced the SeaChange MediaClient™ family of broadcast I/O subsystems, which embrace the Common Internet File System (CIFS) to enable television operators to store, package and distribute video more flexibly and cost-effectively than ever before. The first products in the MediaClient family are MPEG-2/DV-based video codecs designed to support recording, playout and workflow throughout the television enterprise regardless of video image format, file type or compression scheme.
“Support for multiple compression standards and file types is a necessity for today’s television enterprise,” said John Pittas, vice president, broadcast systems, SeaChange. “Coupled with the use of a centralized, high-performance content server and remote client workstations, CIFS will allow multiple editors and post-production suites to collaborate with each other through parallel access to all the stored media, thereby enabling parallel workflow in the various phases of today’s television production and distribution chain. The ability to record, edit-in-place and play-in-place is now a reality with our newest storage and I/O product introductions.”
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Ligos MPEG Encoder Integrated into Sony’s Unique Server-Based Network Production System for News and Sports
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - (August 24, 2004) : Ligos Corporation today announced that the latest version of their MediaRig™ Core has been integrated for MPEG encoding into Sony’s new Sonaps™ production system. Sonaps is a highly effective, all-digital server-based production solution that scales from smaller news operations to large central broadcast stations. MediaRig Core is a powerful SDK (Software Development Kit) that provides professional and broadcast video system developers the ability to add real-time broadcast MPEG encoding, transcoding and decoding functionality to their digital media systems.
“As a leader in server-based solutions for the newsroom environment, it was a logical step for us to create Sonaps based on the best technologies to make news operations faster, better, easier and more cost-effective,” said Yasukazu Suguri, General Manager, Contents Creation System Solutions Divisions, Sony Corporation Professional Solutions Network Company.
“It was precisely for innovative systems such as Sonaps that we have developed our enhanced MPEG encoding technology,” said Mark Koziol, President and CEO of Ligos Corporation. “MediaRig Core was designed from the ground up to enable professional and broadcast system developers to take advantage of the price and performance of general purpose platforms, and of the flexibility of software. At the same time, our focus on quality and reliability has given us a unique ability to meet the expectations of partners such as Sony, and we’re very excited to be working with them.”
Available for licensing through the Ligos Partner Program, MediaRig Core includes software components and an API (Application Programming Interface) that enable developers to add custom MPEG encoder and transcoder functionality into their systems. By using a host-based processing approach, MediaRig-enabled platforms can be easily updated as new technologies become important in the broadcast market. It supports multiple channel processing with built-in multiplexing, quality that exceeds that of many hardware encoders, and an I/O plug-in architecture that supports a variety of interfaces including UDP multicast. The latest version adds advanced tools such as dual pass for enhancing video quality, support for ATSC and DVB broadcast standards, and simultaneous output of high-quality streams and alternate format/bitrate proxy streams.
Broadcast and professional video system developers interested in previewing MediaRig Core are invited to visit Ligos at the IBC2004 Exhibition at the RAI in Amsterdam, September 10 - 14, 2004 at Stand 1.132.
About Ligos
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Ligos Corporation is a leading worldwide provider of software-based video processing technology. Since 1997, Ligos has been at the forefront of video compression, delivering real-time software codecs and video tools designed to run on standard platforms. For more information on Ligos Corporation, its products or licensing, visit www.ligos.com.
Ligos® and MediaRig™ are registered trademarks of Ligos Corporation. Sony, Sonaps and MPEG IMX are trademarks of Sony Corporation. All other trademarks product names, and/or trade names are used solely for the purpose of identification and belong to their respective holders. Copyright © Ligos Corporation 2004.
Accepted thinking has always been that only hardwarebased encoders, using Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), can deliver the processing power needed to compress video for real-time broadcasting. Software-based encoding might be able to cope with non real-time applications, where the general purpose processors found in the computing world have more time to perform the complex calculations required of compression standards like MPEG-2. But if you want live, broadcastquality pictures, you need hardware.
However, San Francisco-based Ligos Corporation is challenging these assumptions. The company, which is part-owned by Intel, has been demonstrating a PC-based MPEG-2 ATSC/DVB encoder that it claims can not only match the performance of hardware-based solutions, but provide better picture quality at equivalent bit rates.
MediaRig Encoder is a software programme, delivered on a CD with interface card, that runs on a Pentium 4 processor within an Intel Dual Xeon 2.4 GHz Personal Computer. It delivers MPEG-2 (MP@ML and 4:2:2P@ML) at constant or variable bit rates between 1.0 and 50Mbps, and can simultaneously encode dual video inputs, and output MPEG-2 transport streams to DVB-ASI, to file or to UDP multicast via IP.
According to George Mancuso, VP of broadcast business development at Ligos, the industry is changing. “Initially, after the MPEG-2 standard was released, the only effective way to do this [realtime encoding] was to use DSP-based technology.
“The performance and price of video DSPs has stayed relatively constant, but the performance of general processors has been increasing exponentially while prices have been decreasing exponentially. General processors have reached the point where they are on a par, or surpassing, what can be achieved on a DSP-based platform.”
Nick Flaherty, an analyst with California-based InsideChips.com, says the new generation of Intel processors have significant amounts of Digital Signal Processing that allow them to handle compression algorithms. “They are still general purpose processors, used in the vast majority of desktop PCs shipped today, and that is where cost benefits would come from.”
Robert Saint John, Ligos’ director of marketing, says his company achieved real-time MPEG encoding from live source in 1999. Since 2001 the focus has been on meeting the expectations of the broadcast market in terms of quality, features and reliability. “With more software optimisation and faster CPUs, we have been able to maintain the real-time feature, and add other necessary elements such as 422@ML and 4:2:2.”
Ligos claims its software/general purpose processor approach is more cost-effective than using DSPbased hardware encoders. But we spoke to encoding specialists (not necessarily independent ones!) who hotly dispute the assertion that software encoding is sufficient for real-time, professional broadcast environments.
Saint John declares: “MediaRig software absolutely performs realtime, low latency, broadcast-quality encoding from a live analogue or digital source. That is exactly what we were showing at IBC last September.
“We’ve certainly run into this argument before, but I think that it is based on impressions set by extremely slow, off-line transcoder software products in the mid-90s.”
Ligos points to tests it conducted, using the Tektronix PQA200 (which generates an objective picture quality rating) that showed that the MediaRig encoder “consistently meets or exceeds that of the leading DSP-based encoders in the market.”
“Regardless of other vendors’ opinions of the efficiency of general purpose CPUs, or the software that runs on them, they cannot argue the point that MPEG encoding algorithms and their resulting quality have no inherent advantage when processed by a DSP, an ASIC or an FPGA,” states Saint John.
“There is, however, a great dealof flexibility and price advantage that a general purpose CPU-based software encoder can bring to the market.”
As for PC-based reliability? Saint John admits: “I think there is an issue of confidence about the reliability of the PC itself to either take the place, or stand alongside, certain standard black boxes. But latest versions of Windows and XP PRO are incredibly reliable and not subject to the same kind of fears of two years ago. Most of the world runs on Windows-based server products, including the financial markets.”
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