Cost effective transport of video over long distances

John Golding

Author: John Golding

Published 1st May 2013

The transportation of live video and audio feeds over the internet has become a widely accepted technique. This has led to a bewildering number of products and techniques becoming available from simple PC plug in cards to very sophisticated encoder / decoder sets.

Of course each of these has its own place in the market, as there can be no one size fits all as application requirements vary considerably.

However, no matter what the application there are always four key factors that customers consider and manufacturers need to meet:

  1. Cost

  2. Simplicity

  3. Flexibility

  4. Reliability

The VS family of cost effective Encoders and Decoders from Marshall were designed to be suitable for a wide variety of applications.

These start with the videographer who wants to shoot video from weddings, local sport, news etc. and for it to be streamed so that it can be viewed by one or many using either PC or home display technology. At the other end of the spectrum we could have the broadcaster that requires a live high definition (HD) feed from a remote location and have the ability to control a camera or talk to the remote location by means of an audio backchannel.

Simplicity in set up and operation comes from the use of a web based GUI allowing all of the units on the network to be set up and includes a confidence monitoring capability. These set ups are stored within the units which then become virtually plug and play, therefore, the remote user can be up and running within minutes.

Flexibility is provided by the choice of:

  • Encoder inputs and Decoder outputs HDSDI, SDI, HDMI and Composite.

  • Multiple video formats up to 1080i all at varying frame rates with scaling and motion detection.

  • Encoding techniques with user choice of quality to match the bandwidth of the available network.

  • Support of various common network protocols.

  • Capable of Unicast (One to One) or Multicast (One to Many).

The diagram below is typical of a simple point to point (Unicast) configuration with a camera at a remote facility connected to a VS102 Encoder on a Local Area Network (LAN) with or without other devices (i.e. PC’s). This is then connected to a Router or Gateway to a Public IP Address over the Cloud to another Router or Gateway with its Unique Public IP Address to the local facilities internal Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN).

Although the diagram shows the use of a VS102 Decoder the actual IP Stream from the Encoder could be used direct by any PC or other compatible device. For instance the Decoder(s) could be a model from the range with HDMI connectivity directly feeding a monitor or projector in one of more locations.

This particular configuration is in use 24/7 streaming live HD video plus audio from South America to the UK using a VPN link. The output from the decoder is used as a live feed to a video server which overlays graphics and live text (as a ticker) providing an interactive service.

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