Intra- and inter-facility IP media production network TV-2
IP-based software defined network solution to connect two main production facilities in Norway.
In early 2017, TV 2 Norwegian based broadcaster, selected Nevion to provide the IP-based software defined network (SDN) solution to connect studios, control rooms and data-centers within and between the broadcaster’s two main production facilities.
Background
TV 2, the largest commercial television broadcaster in Norway, was planning to move to brand new production facilities in Norway’s second-largest city, Bergen, in August 2017. The broadcaster’s Oslo facilities also needed to be relocated in November 2017.
TV 2 wanted to avoid building a legacy SDI infrastructure in the new buildings so opted to take the leap to IP.
The requirements
The new facilities in Media City Bergen (MCB) needed to be IP-based, with an SDN core network for all live production and broadcast routing requirements, connecting a mix of existing baseband equipment and new standards-based native IP equipment.
The MCB facility is to be connected via IP to the new all-IP facility located in the Norwegian capital, Oslo (460km/290 miles away). A key objective of the project was to gain flexibility and efficiency in live production by enabling any control room to be used with any studio across both locations, and by sharing processing capabilities located in the data centers.
The solution
The solution provided by Nevion is the SDN IP media core network under the control of Nevion’s
orchestration software, VideoIPath. The software is used both for connection management and
monitoring.
The network at MCB is based on a distributed spine-leaf architecture, with Cisco Nexus 100G spine switches at the core and Nevion eMerge 10GE and 40GE switches deployed as redundant top or rack leaf switches.
Nevion Virtuoso software-driven media nodes are used to provide adaptation, processing and
monitoring of uncompressed and compressed signals for in-facility adaptation requirements.
Virtuoso also provides JPEG 2000 encoding and uncompressed transport between Bergen and
Oslo. High availability is ensured by using dual path network transport with SMPTE 2022-7 seamless IP protection switching (SIPS) for all media streams.
The PTO master-clock (PTP) is provided by Meinberg M1000.
This set-up enables any studio to be controlled from any studio production room, and processing and servers to be shared between the locations.
Benefits
With this solution, TV 2 has a platform that can evolve and grow to meet its needs. The solution is much more flexible, and reduces the impact of distances between the 2 locations by enabling resources (talent, equipment and locations) to be shared across both sites. This makes production more flexible, responsive and cost-effective.