A surge in remote production has led to an even greater convergence of broadcast and ProAV workflows, helping globally dispersed teams collaborate and deliver high-end content to satisfy growing audience demand.
Seamless integration of broadcast technologies into existing ProAV infrastructures - and vice versa- requires flexible conversion solutions, enabling teams to move effortlessly between a variety of protocols, platforms and connectivity types.
Coming up later this month we will be releasing a 45 minute video on demand exploring how AJA's latest technology fuses broadcast and ProAV technologies into workflows that allows facilities to reap the benefits of both industries, while taking advantage of existing on-premises infrastructure.
While 3G SDI is still often standard across many facilities, outside broadcast trucks and live event production environments, NewTek’s NDI IP protocol is surging in popularity and has been widely adopted both across both broadcast and ProAV workflows. To accommodate widespread demand for remote production, a growing reliance on IP protocols like NDI is critical, offering low-latency, high-quality video and audio transport via standard ethernet, without the overhead of SMPTE 2110. NDI enables teams to distribute content using existing networks and bandwidth, while offering decoding and low GPU and CPU requirements for transmitting pristine video and audio signals.
Conversion solution
In response to a growing and previously unmet industry demand, AJA developed a powerful and reliable conversion solution to help teams work seamlessly between protocols as traditional broadcast and ProAV workflows continue to merge. In October 2021, AJA introduced BRIDGE NDI 3G, a revolutionary high-performance IRU device that powers high channel density conversion to and from SDi and NDI. BRIDGE NDI 3G solves the challenge of facilities seeking to leverage existing infrastructure while looking to a new NDI backbone for easily deployable IP video. The robust high-density IP video gateway device is a plug and play standalone solution. designed for simple integration into facility racks, DIT carts, fly packs and anywhere that high-quality ND conversion is required.
BRIDGE NDI 3G brings immense conversion power and flexibility and is fully controllable remotely for AV use and a wide range of other facilities needing high quality, efficient NDI encode and decode.
Dual 10GigE onboard NICs for NDI I/O and device control pack a punch in addition to high-density SDI connections for up to 16 channels of 3G-SDI I/O, offering up to four channels of 4k, 16 channels of HD or a mixture of simultaneous HD and 4K NDI encodes/decodes in a compact form factor.
The device boasts an intuitive interface and system administration screen that make it simple to get BRIDGE ND 3G up and running and configured quickly and securely. Using a standard web browser technicians, engineers, operators and producers can access the interface remotely to view and manage content, including local monitoring preferences. Operators are also able to freely browse, favourite, label and filter a large volume of NDI sources on the network as well as label any SDI inputs or outputs, and see all I/O activity at any given time.
BRIDGE NDI 3G can easily be used to convert SDI camera and playout sources into NDI streams, enabling simple integration into NDI supported workflows, including virtualised productions leveraging NDI-based switchers. Using a common network these sources can be located anywhere within a facility, allowing seamless integration of various production islands into a unified workflow. Conversely, NDI streams can be converted back into SDI ecosystems via BRIDGE NDI 3G's configurable I/O, allowing NDI signals to move back into SDI routing systems and traditional baseband workflows.
Device configuration and management are simple via a local interface, or remotely from a web browser interface or REST API. The rack-mountable appliance supports UYVY and UYVA 4:2:2 8-bit and P216 for NDI, and for SDI, YCbCr 4.2:2 10-bit. It simplifies the integration of graphics and/or 4K sources into workflows with one-click grouping controls for video and key, and for 4K via 3G I/O.
NDI added to BRIDGE LIVE
In addition to BRIDGE NDI 3G, AJA also recently added NDl to its BRIDGE LIVE multi-channel live video solution for remote production, contribution, collaboration, streaming and delivery. BRIDGE LIVE is a powerful streaming solution that makes it easy to move Ultra-HD or multi-channel HD video between uncompressed baseband SDI to and from a wide range of streaming and contribution codecs including H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC) and H.262 (MPEG-2 TS), as well as an option for JPEG 2000. In response to growing adoption of protocols and to help facilities seamlessly transition the BRIDGE LIVE v1.12 update introduces bi-directional NDI input, output, and transcode in addition to HLS output, video preview, and user interface updates for more intuitive configuration.
Bringing bi-directional ND I/O and HLS output to BRIDGE LIVE offers professionals broader hardware and software integration for streaming workflows and a simpler cost effective alternative to deploying large teams of personnel and resources at remote locations. Bi-directional NDI support makes it easy to encode SDl inputs for NDI output to the network and/or to receive NDI for outputting SDI. The ability to also transcode IP Video Streams to NDI and/or transcode NDI Inputs to IP Video Streams enables a host of new workflow possibilities. For example, BRIDGE LIVE can now sit at the edge of an NDl event or facility network enabling professionals to transport outbound NDI video as a streamable format and/or return the stream to NDI for use at a remote NDI production destination. As facilities look to make the move to IP AJA'S BRIDGE NDI 3G and BRIDGE LIVE gateway devices will aid in a seamless transition.
For more information on this or to discuss any AJA project call our technical sales team on 01582 469555.
About AJA Video Systems, Inc.
Since 1993, AJA Video has been a leading manufacturer of video interface technologies, converters, digital video recording solutions and professional cameras, bringing high-quality, cost-effective products to the professional, broadcast and post-production markets. AJA products are designed and manufactured at our facilities in Grass Valley, California, and sold through an extensive sales channel of resellers and systems integrators around the world.
For more information visit our AJA BRIDGE NDI page, check out the AJA website or contact