Video—For here or to Go?: Using Compression and Packetization in Television Production Facilities

There is considerable discussion today about the compression and packetization of video signals for broadcast distribution and emission. This paper however concentrates on the next candidate area for these techniques: broadcast-grade production, and highlights the economic and technical advantages they will bring into this area. Some of the issues may be easier to resolve than in broadcast emission, because the interconnection network will be more under the control of the user. Other issues will be harder, because of more stringent quality requirements. — Standards must be chosen now before multiple, incompatible formats proliferate; the criteria are being defined in working groups within SMPTE and will be discussed here. The layered approach of the telecommunications world promises durable, yet upgradable standards, and can be tackled with a “shopping list” philosophy, allowing the production industry to choose outside technologies that satisfy its unique technical needs, yet are in wide enough use elsewhere to offer significant economies of scale. — The speed of advance of higher speed networking technology will obsolete small incremental upgrades very quickly, so careful planning is needed in new plant design to prevent this trap and ensure that production facilities benefit from the rapid inward migration of ever-faster and more flexible signal distribution schemes, such as ATM. — The next ten years will see a change away from “home-brewed” interconnection methods and toward “imported” technologies, but the broadcast production industry will have to assert its own requirements very strongly to make these alternatives succeed. A successful outcome will be the integration of compressed, uncompressed, real-time and non-real time video traffic within a common interconnection medium.

Published

1995-02

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00825

ISBN

978-1-61482-922-5