For the first time at MPTS this year, AJA showcased their brand new BRIDGE LIVE 3G-8 appliance, a high-density HD addition to the BRIDGE LIVE family which supports up to 8x bi-directional 3G-SDI I/O.
The BRIDGE LIVE family of products, BRIDGE LIVE and BRIDGE LIVE 3G-8, support the most widely used IP video compression schemes and transport protocols to solve your workflow needs. The BRIDGE LIVE family supports conversion to/from SDI to numerous IP video solutions and well as pure IP conversion and distribution workflows.
The BRIDGE LIVE family are broadcast quality, low latency turnkey systems for REMI, Synchronous Multi-Channel Video Contribution, Remote Collaboration, Direct to Audience Streaming, and Multi-Bitrate/Multi-Format Delivery via a wide range of IP video standards and/or SDI. New to the BRIDGE LIVE family is the BRIDGE LIVE 3G-8, a high-density HD version of BRIDGE LIVE, which supports up to 8x bi-directional 3G-SDI I/O.
BRIDGE LIVE and BRIDGE LIVE 3G-8 were developed as a collaboration between AJA and Comprimato to deliver the performance, reliability, and ease of use necessary for critical live encode, decode, or transcode needs. Equipped with either 12G-SDI I/O or 3G-SDI I/O with the power and flexibility to enable real time, bidirectional encoding, decoding, and transcoding for critical UltraHD or HD workflows, BRIDGE LIVE is an essential part of any modern video production toolkit. A compact and robust 1RU form factor, with redundant power supplies, and a three year warranty, means peace of mind even when dealing with the most demanding applications.
Whether facilitating remote production, interviews, live event streaming, synchronous multi-camera backhaul with HDR, cloud contribution, program return, confidence monitoring, collaborative production, or ABR ladder profiles to hand off for OTT packaging, BRIDGE LIVE ensures simultaneous, secure, and reliable workflows over purpose built dedicated lines or the public internet.
Simultaneous Bidirectional Encoding and Decoding
BRIDGE LIVE supports simultaneous bidirectional encoding and decoding from UltraHD (BRIDGE LIVE only), HD, and SD sources. Both models support up to UltraHD from IP-based sources.
For example, with a pair of BRIDGE LIVE systems, a broadcast facility can receive three incoming encoded camera sources from a remote location and decode them back into SDI for editing and production while simultaneously providing program return to the remote location. This example shows 4 channel capability on BRIDGE LIVE, while BRIDGE LIVE 3G-8 supports up to 8 HD channels.
Synchronous Multi-Channel Transport
BRIDGE LIVE and BRIDGE LIVE 3G-8 support independent SDI source inputs and maintains their synchronous relationship while transporting the content to end-point destinations.
This functionality can take place between a pair of BRIDGE LIVE units for a synchronous end-to-end SDI workflow, often referred to as SDI backhaul, or site-to-site SDI workflows.
BRIDGE LIVE’s synchronous multi-channel capability is also supported for cloud contribution, whereby a BRIDGE LIVE system can send signals to a cloud instance, thereby ensuring multi-source synchronicity for delivery to various CDNs, platforms, and cloud services as IP video.
Furthermore, Synchronous Multi-Channel Transport can be scaled up from a single BRIDGE LIVE pair to additional BRIDGE LIVE pairs to enable workflows where multiple BRIDGE LIVE systems can receive SDI and send to multiple BRIDGE LIVE systems outputting SDI, all in synchronicity.
HDR is also supported for end-to-end SDI workflows.
SRT Ready
SRT is an open source video transport protocol and technology stack that optimizes streaming performance across unpredictable networks with secure streams and easy firewall traversal, bringing the best quality live video over questionable networks.
The SRT Alliance is a collaborative community of industry leaders and developers striving to achieve lower latency internet video transport by continuously improving open source SRT.
Encryption built into the SRT protocol ensures secure streaming video content delivery with low latency and secure reliability.
Both models of BRIDGE LIVE support SRT v1.5.3, enabling redundant stream support over an ISP to ensure hitless delivery of the originating source.
Metadata, HDR, Timecode and Closed Captioning Support
BRIDGE LIVE and BRIDGE LIVE 3G-8 fully support Closed Captioning as well as additional metadata, which is often a neglected feature set with other encode/decode solutions.
BRIDGE LIVE and BRIDGE LIVE 3G-8 support:
- MPEG-2 ancillary packet support, SMPTE ST 2038
- SDR/HDR Transfer Characteristics, Colorimetry, Luminance via SDI
- SCTE-35/SCTE-104 Ad insertion markers
- CEA-608/CEA-708 Closed Captioning
- Timecode
- Embedding Closed Captioning/Subtitles into H.264 SEI messages
- Metadata pass-through
- Electronic Program Guide (EPG) on input
- SEI (supplemental enhancement information) timecode insertion