Evolution of video contribution and how to overcome challenges over internet

Posted by Samantha Robin on April 17th, 2019

Creating content is only the first step; you also have to deliver it to your audience spread across the whole world.

The term video contribution is used to refer to a service that transports videos from a source to the broadcaster’s studio or from a studio to an uplink center. Communication satellites orbiting the earth relay the programming to the viewer’s location, which is again received by a satellite dish for a direct–to- home transmission. For cable distribution, television programming is distributed to subscribers as radio frequencies through cables or as pulses via fiber optics.

Video Contribution over the Internet

A vast broadcast infrastructure is no longer a necessity; videos can be sent over for a fraction of the cost even to international audiences.Video contribution solutions have been traditionally achieved by satellite transmission. More and more broadcasters are now shifting to complete IP infrastructure for live production.

Traditionally, if a live match was being covered, a single live feed was sent by the production truck stationed outside the stadium back to the studio. Venues that facilitated live coverage would have permanent cables installed at a substantial cost. Satellite uplinks were availed if no video circuits were available. In some cases microwave links were used which brought about the issue of latency.

The situation changed as broadcasters began to rely upon IP networks for video contribution. Now a sufficient bandwidth was enough to transmit data over any carrier. The broadcasters were now being charged for only the amount of data carried and whole process began to be very cost effective.

Evolution of Video Contribution

Satellite links for video contribution are fast being replaced by high-bandwidth terrestrial networks. Fiber optics is used up to the access points. Robust IP access networks ensure that only good access points are required to carry data over the internet. The use of newer and better technological tools helps to maintain the quality of the stream.

The efficiency of video compression systems has been growing steadily. Also a choice of encoding options allows balance of quality, bandwidth, efficiency, and latency for a specific contribution.

Broadcasters and content owners can try out various network options to deliver seamless quality experience to the viewers, remaining within their budget.

Overcoming Challenges of the Internet

Live broadcast of sports, news, or events over the internet presents many challenging situations. It is expected that the video that is contributed to the studio will be of the highest quality and clarity, so that a quality production can be broadcast to the consumers. When data is transmitted over IP networks, an occasional data packet drop can be handled. IP networks were designed for complete deliveries, but not necessarily timely deliveries. A missed packet can be resent over the IP networks.

Broadcasters and distributors have always faced challenges contributing video over the internet. Loss of data packets while transmitting diminishes the quality of the video. New technologies have

been applied to overcome the difficulties and now broadcasters are reaping the huge benefits of the internet, namely its vast influence and reach while being cost effective. It is now possible to send a live video across to another part of the world while walking the streets of a remote town.

Even as the transition took place, broadcast and media companies had one pre-condition – the integrity of the content was not to be compromised at any point. A good quality contribution over IP depended upon good signal routing and mild compression of the videos. Data packets must be sent regularly and the decoder’s video buffer must be constantly fed. With MPEG, any lost data cannot be retrieved which results in a not so good end user experience. JPEG2000 was an ideal application with uncompressed packet delivery. Over time, several parallel feeds were being carried from the same event. The way an event was covered was completely transformed leading to more engagement of the audience as well as gaining more financial benefits from the event.

For streaming services, a single broadcast signal is compressed by hardware at individual headend - satellite, terrestrial or cable. The signal is transcoded for storage and live streamed on demand across various platforms. This is an expensive method requiring different devices at each headend.

Conclusion

Broadcasters and content owners will have to continuously take into account the evolving technologies and their own requirements before deciding on a mode of video contribution. But the holy grail of video contribution will remain a stimulating and quality content.