Media broadcast is grossly underdeveloped in Kenya. Even with the seemingly sophistication of media broadcast in Europe and America, the Kenyan media experience is quite poor. This is due to the limited competition incumbents face that new players must aggressively work against to get a piece of the cake. Setting up a TV/radio production and transmission facility may seem like a daunting task but worry no more. This post talks about bringing together a cost effective, space efficient and future proofed broadcast facility that may be just what you need to set yourself up! Specifically, it outlines the general workflow of the entire system and the hardware and software that can be used for smooth operation.
Introduction
A TV facility system integration project involves several stakeholders. From the owners to the day-to-day users. Special attention is required to fully capture their requirements and desires. The need to do is to properly plan your implementation of their ideas. Fortunately, I’ve been exposed to what this entails and can give recommendations. Broadcast equipment is quite expensive, you’re well advised to be selective.
To start, have your considerations in mind:
- Available budget
- Deadlines and schedules
- Available skilled labor
- Available inputs and desired outputs
Let’s imagine a scenario in which the budget is constrained, the timelines are short and the labor limited. However, this does not cap the stakeholders’ dreams, for they often fantasize about an ideal glorious future. The customer is always right. Thus, we consider, as much as possible, the maximum number of inputs and outputs that can be sustained by our system.
Our goal now becomes to provide a reliable, inexpensive, fully operational production and transmission system that is also future-proof.
Hardware Setup
To start off, understand the standards in use. In Kenya, SD (720×576) is the standard for DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television). SD will be our video output for DVB-T transmission. No such limitations exist with IP output streams and as such we can output full HD.
Capturing physical video inputs can be done through SDI, HDMI, composite or component interfaces. We’ll mostly be dealing with SD-SDI sources in Kenya. However, since most hardware supports up to 3G-SDI (1080p60), future upgrades to HD is not a problem.
Audio formats comprise of analog audio (Left, right) and digital audio (AES 3), MADI (Multichannel Audio Digital Interface) or audio over ethernet (AoE). This may be captured by an audio sound card.
IP capture is the most versatile and friendly, as a variety of compression formats are commonly supported for input: AVC/H.264 Video, AAC Audio, MPEG-2 Video, MPEG-2 Transport Stream and MPEG Layer I/II/III audio. This can all be received over UDP, RTP and HLS protocols.
In a TV studio, the core hardware is the playout engine and clients. This can just be a Windows (7+) PC with the playout software. It is the add-in cards that matter. The cards may be:
- Video capture/playback cards
- Audio cards
- Video encoder (GPU) cards
- Network interface cards
PC Setup
To have all this in one system would be quite a stretch, we may need to separate the playout clients and the streaming server for more efficiency and scaling.
Having a separate playout client and encoding/streaming server is important because of these reasons:
- Playout clients and live graphics generators are graphics intensive apps thus the PCs in use need external GPUs (graphics processing units). GPUs basically offer very high core counts (200+) at low processing speeds (~1 MHz). Efficient GPUs include the NVIDIA GeForce and Quadro cards.
- Encoding video is typically an extremely CPU intensive task. Especially if we want to encode multiple output streams. One could do well with an i7 7700K (4 cores @ 4.2 GHz) for one output stream. To support more streams beyond that multi-core processors are required. Intel Xeon and AMD Threadripper go up to 16 cores @ 3.4GHz.
After this we can add broadcast specific hardware to our system.
Capture and Playback
Video can be captured either as a physical stream, using SDI/HDMI capture cards like Figure 1, or as an IP stream, using NIC cards. Popular capture cards are offered by Blackmagic Design and Magewell. These cards are designed to work with a multitude of different applications across Mac, Windows and Linux workstations. The BNC ports are bi-directional such the the cards can support capture and playback.
Audio requires professional grade hardware as, just as we’ve discussed before, it is critical in broadcast. Sound cards are required to get the audio into the system and for output too. At the very least (going cheap) an external/USB sound card may be used. PCI sound cards are more expensive but much more reliable. Popular sound cards are offered by Focusrite and AudioScience.
NIC cards support a wide number of features. Video and audio can be captured and streamed using streaming network protocols. Commonly, HTTP Live (HLS), UDP, RTP, RTSP, HTTP and RTMP (pushed from Flash server) protocols can be captured or streamed through IP infrastructure.
Applications In Use
The heart of any broadcast facility starts with the playout software. In the past, I discussed how to best choose the right playout for you.
Playout system is an industry term used to describe the equipment, software and/or processes—typically within some kind of broadcast environment—responsible for “playing” source media and converting or rendering it into a form which may be “put to air”, or presented, for external use.
OtsAV.com
Just to mention, popular automation and playout systems that I have worked with include Cinegy Air, AVRA, DirEttore, VPlay and ImediaTouch.
While a playout software may be useful to you sometimes all you want is recording and encoding or streaming software. Luckily, as the Internet becomes richer so does the availability of free open source broadcast software. I will talk about 2!
Butt: Broadcast Using This Tool
This is a free audio streaming software that runs on Mac, Windows and Linux OS. It captures audio from your audio device and streams to a SHOUTcast or Icecast server. Butt and SHOUTcast are very popular platforms used for the now popular Internet radio.
OBS: Open Broadcaster Software
Yet another solution with an acronym, OBS is the most popular video streaming and recording software. It is used by streamers mostly on YouTube, Facebook Live and Twitch, and supports even more video sites. OBS lets you stream to your CDN (content delivery network) of choice too! OBS, developed by Hugh Bailey is a fully open source software that allows developers to fully customize and add features to it. This is provided for free on their Github repository.
Finally…
At this point you may be ready to switch on the big red button on your facility at some large corporate office or even bedsitter flat, however there’s more to consider. For truly great output, editing systems must be in place. A good workflow checklist may have:
- Editing software – Common ones are DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro X, Media Composer and Premiere Pro
- Acquisition equipment – You’ll definately need cameras, mics and proper lighting
- Visual Effects and Graphics software – Popular VFX suites are Fusion, Nuke and After Effects
- Audio post production software – Some include Acid, Adobe Audition and Audacity. I actually found a great list for these
- Video switching software/hardware – Software include OBS and vMix, hardware video switchers include Datavideo and Atem panel
- Multiview monitoring software – Monitor your output streams in one place (if more than one)
My work here is done. It’s now up to you to give the people what they want, that is rich, high quality content. A large market exists in Kenya and a carefully researched target market is always available. Let’s talk more about such setups if you have any views on this. Entertainment should not just be about the already established, new opportunities are constantly being uncovered by people everyday. Will you be one of them?