“For us, any potential merger between SRT and RIST is trivial. We will support these two protocols in any way. But for customers, it would definitely be a good thing,” was the frank conclusion from Ronen Sadan, VP of Marketing and Products at VideoFlow, a supplier of IP-based software and hardware for the broadcast industry.
He was of course referring to Faultline’s scoop a few weeks ago about possible convergence between the groups driving adoption of Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) and Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST). Since then, we have been eager to hear opinions about what a common, open source, low latency standard would mean at various levels of the video technology stack – and the opportunities from increased interoperability that would come with such unification. In fact, it transpires that RIST Forum President Dr. Ciro Noronha, who first floated Faultline the idea of convergence to form SRT 2.0, admitted he borrowed the idea from VideoFlow’s co-founder and CTO Adi Rozenberg.
VideoFlow’s view is unique. The Israeli vendor is one of few supporting both SRT and RIST protocols side-by-side in its digital video gateway (DVG), built to bridge legacy interfaces and IP networks. Like these protocols, VideoFlow was founded on the idea of supporting video over IP with an expert eye for delivery over unmanaged or unstable links – applying FEC (forward error correction) to the resent packets which is proportional to the amount of loss, so that it adds the smallest amount of bandwidth overhead.
VideoFlow essentially develops add-ons for these deployment scenarios. “Some customers are fine with RIST on its own, but others want more – such as additional security, monitoring, capacity and reliability above and beyond these protocols,” said Sadan.
Supporting numerous protocols is a no-brainer from a business sense, which is partly why VideoFlow recently partnered with Zixi, the other notable gateway maker supporting both SRT and RIST in its gateways. Putting rivalries aside, VideoFlow recently integrated Zixi’s Zen Master software into its DVG stack, benefiting from a live video orchestration and telemetry control plane for broadcasting video over IP networks.
“We are moving from being direct competitors with Zixi to cooperating. VideoFlow has developed a gateway to connect with studios or customers supporting SRT on one side, and then on the other side connecting RIST or Zixi,” added Sadan.
Prompted as to whether buddying up with a primary competitor was perhaps reactive to the pandemic, Sadan assured Faultline this has been in the works for a while, with VideoFlow placing Zixi code in its portfolio to connect to AWS cloud infrastructure long before the coronavirus crisis took hold.
“We came up with the unique idea for creating a gateway connecting Zixi, SRT and RIST to fit with any type of network. I believe other companies will eventually do this too,” continued Sadan.
Despite Sadan’s earlier triviality comment, he added that SRT-RIST convergence would create cloud connectivity challenges as well as monetization struggles for the industry, which companies are still figuring out. For VideoFlow, packing protocols into one all-encompassing gateway with cloud connectivity is the answer, while pursuing partnerships to expand the IP video broadcast ecosystem.
Another recent VideoFlow move saw it win a reseller deal at Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark, involving the integration of VideoFlow’s software into Comark’s ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 offerings – centered around DTV transmitters, field equipment, and encoding systems.
Faultline was refreshed by Sadan’s shared skepticism for how big the ATSC 3.0 market will realistically be, as we expressed our frustrations over perpetually delayed commercial rollouts (pre-coronavirus). “There are still more questions than answers around ATSC 3.0. The market is driven by consumer TVs, content owners and there is plenty of politics involved too. The motivation for us is that ATSC 3.0 is IP-based, so we are working with our customers in ATSC 1.0 to establish a smooth pass towards ATSC 3.0, but we might not see launches this year, so maybe 2021,” he explained.
Eventually, we managed to scratch under the surface of VideoFlow’s new-found friendliness towards Zixi. “Zixi is focused on the cloud but is missing certain network elements and has problems with legacy devices, interfaces and some streaming solutions. Zixi has the same model as us, but is trying to brand itself as a software-only, cloud-based company. You will have to look really hard to find any hardware on the website, but it’s there,” said Sadan.