Magna Systems and Engineering has devised, developed and implemented a control and monitoring solution that is part of the English Premier League soccer being broadcast to Australian audiences across multiple platforms.
Explaining the multiple technology challenges that needed to be overcome Magna Systems group engineering manager Barry Pegg explained, “The incoming English Premier League (EPL) feed by Nevion Contribution Encoders is delivered to Australia by multiple redundant paths from Singapore. The feed is in the form of ten lots of 18Mbps Single Program Transport Stream (SPTS). The need was to supply a solution to allow not only failover of a channel but also switching of the individual streams from source to destination.”
With Magna’s help a workflow was devised whereby the ten SPTS from Singapore are routed to the input of a Nevion Video Delivery System which comprises the Nevion eMerge Video Router and Nevion NX 4600 gateway, located in two independent sites in Sydney and Melbourne.
Pegg continued, “This workflow provides a main and backup path of the SPTS feeds, that is replicated across the two sites. The eMerge Video Router is managed by the Nevion VideoIPath software, which has the ability to switch on a channel by channel basis to allow for input source selection to the output channel destination.”
The output of the NX 4600 is then provided for delivery to satellites and to MediaExcel HERO Live transcoders for OTT delivery.
Pegg added, “These end point customers will receive ten channels from both the Sydney exchange and the Melbourne exchange in an active active configuration. These delivered channels are selected and managed by the VideoIPath software.”
In addition, a clip server using Mediaware InStream Splice software is used as the emergency slate or clip source for the ten channels. The ten channels are then presented as an SPTS and delivered to the Nevion eMerge Router where they fall under the control of VideoIPath.
Magna Systems Senior Solution Specialist Tim Banner added, “If there is a loss of input on any or all of the incoming EPL feeds, then an emergency clip or slate is selected on any of the ten channels. This emergency source replacement is replicated at both Sydney and Melbourne exchanges. This also means each of the ten output channels on the SPTS can select as their source a channel or any of the backup sources.”
For IP monitoring Magna provided a TAG Video System solution. Here multiple channel displays on multiple screens are provided by decoding the SPTS stream from the Singapore feeds. In addition, post processing through the NX 4600 is also presented to the TAG system and main and redundant processed channels from both Sydney and Melbourne exchanges are also displayed.
Finally to complete the workflow and solution Magna installed and used BridgeTech IP probes for additional monitoring as Tim Banner concluded, “BridgeTech probes have the ability to monitor all SPTS streams, as well as those of the output of the MediaExcel contribution encoders for the OTT delivery. The BridgeTech probes also allow end-to- end monitoring of the unique profiles for each channel processed through the MediaExcel contribution encoder. This efficient and effective control and monitoring solution works extremely well for the English Premier League broadcasts.”
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