In Broadcast - NABSHOW 2016 - 27


27

www.inbroadcast.com | NAB SHOW 16-21 April 2016 | InShow Guide

Transition to IP with Open
Standard VC-2 Codec
By Jean-Marie Cloquet,
Video Product Manager

Barco Silex's VC-2 provides many advantages to the
broadcast market...

B

roadcast contribution facilities
are now moving away from SDI
to the more flexible and scalable IP
network. At the same time, video
experience will continue to improve
through higher resolution, frame
rate and colour depth, increasing the
video bandwidth. The lightweight
VC-2 HQ video compression (SMPTE
2042 standard) is the logical answer
to reduce the infrastructure cost
resulting from the uncompressed
video bitrate. VC-2 HQ achieves a
compression ratio up to four times
without any compromise on the image
quality.
There are currently two ongoing
trends regarding IP transport. The
first one is to directly map the SDI

payload to networking packets
according to the SMPTE 2022
standards. The second one, according
to the VSF TR-03, consists of a simple
encapsulation of each video/audio
stream individually to RTP packets.
The VC-2 codec has the advantage
of being useable in both scenarios.
The SMPTE 2022 mapping is directly
supported by the existing SMPTE 2047
standard, while the VSF TR-03 RTP
mapping for VC-2 is already drafted in
an RFC document proposed at IETF.
The VC-2 video codec is a real
opportunity for the broadcast
market. It is an open standard ready
for adoption. Anyone requiring
lightweight compression in their
product development has the choice

to either implement it themselves,
or integrate one of the VC-2
libraries available on the market in
order to get a faster time to market.
The recently released open source
implementation of VC-2 is a real-time
software solution to encode or decode
a video stream on a usual CPU-based
platform. This software library is
directly downloadable from the
collaborative Github website under
the VC2HQEncode and VC2HQDecode
projects. It didn't take long before
these libraries were integrated into
the common FFmpeg package. To be
complete, a GStreamer plugin is also
available for the RTP mapping of the
VC-2 codestream.
VC-2, being an open standard,
provides many advantages to the
broadcast market. It guarantees
competitiveness of the available
solutions on the market and avoids
arbitrary pricing. It will also reduce
the chance of being locked to a
specific vendor. The adoption of the

The OEM Viper
board supporting
4K HDMI over IP
with VC-2 codec

VC-2 codec is made easy, as anyone
can start developing a product at
lower cost, or even implementing
open
source
libraries.
These
advantages guarantee a safe longterm choice for VC-2 as a codec for the
IP-based transport in the broadcast
market.
For those looking for a more
integrated solution, Barco Silex has
announced the new Viper boards. The
Viper boards enable 4K HDMI audio
and video transport over IP, thanks
to the VC-2 open standard. The Viper
product is available as an OEM module
that accelerates the prototyping and
development of your own product.
This is yet another reason to start
using the VC-2 codec.
For further information, see www.
barco-silex.com
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.barco-silex.com/ http://www.barco-silex.com http://nab16.mapyourshow.com/7_0/exhibitor/exhibitor-details.cfm?ExhID=2119 http://www.barco-silex.com/ http://www.barco-silex.com/
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