LAWO’s Presentation at Broadcasting / Cinema / Pro AV 2024 Azerbaijan by Andreas Hilmer.
Andreas Hilmer: I’m Andreas Hilmer, Lawo’s Chief Marketing Officer. Besides that, I’m also engaged with the IABM, where I am still a member of the board and the Chair Emeritus. Additionally, I am involved in AIMS, where I serve as a board member and the CFO. So, you might have come across me not only in my role at Lawo.
For those unfamiliar with Lawo and what the company does: Lawo is a global technology partner with a long history of delivering innovative solutions for live media production workflows. Our expert team is passionate about enabling customers to create world-class content every single day. To achieve this, we have developed a unified approach that combines workflow management, control, physical I/O processing, and human interfaces into one platform.
This unified platform is also an open platform—it makes no sense for Lawo to develop a system limited to compatibility with only Lawo gear. Our platform is designed to integrate with any other solution in the market, using standards such as NMOS or the HOME API. Let’s take a closer look.
Firstly, we have HOME and VSM, which work hand in hand to provide management and control for your facility. It’s all about simplification—both for engineers on the management side and for end users.
In addition to this, we offer a range of audio and video stage boxes or gateways that provide physical I/O. At the core, there is the processing pillar, which enables both audio and video processing for your installation. All these processing and I/O devices require control, which is why we provide various human interfaces such as audio consoles, VSM control panels, soft UIs, and more.
Last but not least, Lawo offers professional services to help you build the best solutions.
Now, let’s return to today’s topic: Utilizing New Technologies To Achieve Better Workflows By Decoupling Software From Hardware.
What is the current situation for broadcasters, truck companies, and other broadcast service providers?
What I have realized is that many broadcasters find themselves caught in something I would call the “Broadcasters’ Bermuda Triangle.”
First, there is enormous economic pressure to produce more high-quality content with smaller budgets, which often means using less or cheaper equipment. Second, there is rapid technological progress, requiring broadcasters to keep up with constantly changing formats and standards, with multiple video and audio compression technologies coexisting. Lastly, there are ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) requirements that must be addressed due to governmental regulations. Even in countries where ESG and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are not yet prioritized, neglecting these considerations can still have significant economic consequences.
This is the current challenge broadcasters face. Before exploring ways to address these problems, let’s examine some straightforward facts.
Facts
- Processing equipment requires rack space, power, and cooling. Equipment that doesn’t exist saves more resources than even the most efficient equipment—because zero power consumption is always less than reduced power consumption.
- Processing equipment based on standardized hardware reduces the need for spare pooling. This is a simple and logical approach.
- Processing based on software platforms requires fewer physical devices to achieve N+1 redundancy. Again, this is an easy concept to agree with.
These basic facts illustrate the landscape of broadcast production today.
Now, let’s return to the current reality of broadcast infrastructure. There’s a second layer of complexity in today’s broadcast environments, which we will address shortly. But before moving on, I have a quick question for you.
Imagine your equipment room right now, at this very moment. How much of the gear in there is actively being used? Can you estimate a percentage? For those online or in the room, feel free to share your answer in the chat.
Typically, I hear responses like 50%, 40%, or 60%.
There’s a lot of gear, and I think we can all agree on this: a significant portion of it is permanently powered up, consuming rack space, electricity, and cooling, yet doing nothing except being ready to use at some point.
Let’s consider a single device. Take, for example, that pink device—a multiviewer. Do you know its specifications, specifically the maximum number of multiviewer heads it can serve? Now ask yourself: are you utilizing all those heads all the time? For each head, what is the maximum number of PIPs (picture-in-pictures) it can handle? Are you using them all? Are you taking advantage of all the overlay options this device provides?
I’m fairly certain some of you are using your multiviewer heads merely as quad splits, even though the device is capable of creating advanced, dynamic layouts with clocks and other overlays. All this unused processing power just sits there in your racks, idle.
This is the second reality of broadcast infrastructure today—a reality I once referred to as the “Pyramid of Waste.”
This highlights all the unused or wasted processing capacity sitting idle in our racks—equipment that takes up rack space, remains powered on constantly, and yet is not being utilized. Let’s face it: we are all accustomed to media production infrastructures where this unused processing is the norm. And, by the way, you purchased this equipment and invested heavily in it.
So, the question is: why?
The answer is quite simple. Up until now, this has been the most important tool in designing broadcast facility infrastructure—a crystal ball.
Yes, a crystal ball has essentially been the key tool for designing broadcast facilities because you’ve had to predict the future. You needed to answer questions about future signal formats, future processing needs, the future scale of your facility, and potential peak demands that might arise.
Current infrastructure design requires planning for the unknown using static tools.
But how can this be done differently?
So, returning to the Broadcasters’ Bermuda Triangle: how can you, as a broadcaster, escape this and avoid building yet another “Pyramid of Waste”?
The only possible answer is to maximize the utilization of assets. This is the key lever to escape this uncomfortable triangle—better utilization combined with higher flexibility. What I’d like to introduce to you today is an alternative approach, made possible by modern software design.
Let’s take a simplified look at today’s live production infrastructure.
Looking at this picture, we can identify three distinct layers.
The bottom layer is the physical layer, where all your devices connect to the local network. This layer handles the connectivity of audio and video signals, such as SDI, analog audio, MADI, AES3, and so on.
Next, we have devices designed to control the infrastructure, including audio mixing consoles, control panels, or even touch screens with customized UIs. These devices are also connected to the local network and typically handle low-latency audio and video signals using uncompressed formats like SDI, ST 2110, AES67, or Ravenna.
What we increasingly observe with many of our customers is a growing reliance on connectivity to the public internet or the cloud. This allows content sharing across different sites and regions worldwide. However, streaming uncompressed audio and video signals directly from a local network to the public internet presents significant challenges. Secure gateways and technologies supporting various stream formats are essential to manage the complexities of unmanaged networks.
Therefore, we made a deliberate choice to adopt multiple streaming and transport standards in our products. Every audio and video processing block we develop supports both uncompressed and compressed transport standards, giving you the ultimate flexibility to use processing wherever and however you need it.
How to Build an Infrastructure That Allows for Maximum Asset Utilization
Step 1a: Decoupling Software from Hardware
Decoupling software from hardware enables the use of standard CPU compute, which can be utilized for any software-based processing application—whether it’s audio processing, video processing, or software-based UIs.
However, simply adopting software doesn’t solve the problem entirely. If the software is monolithic and not platform-based, the result is limited flexibility. Essentially, you’ve just moved a function from proprietary, FPGA-based hardware to standard compute hardware like a server. But this server, if running a single-purpose software application (e.g., a multiviewer), remains a “one-trick pony”—sitting in the rack, whether it’s used or not.
Step 1b: Scalable and Dynamic Software
The solution isn’t just lifting and shifting functions to software—it’s about leveraging modern software concepts like scalable, dynamic software to achieve better utilization of your investment in processing hardware.
All our new software developments leverage standardized, cloud-native technologies. Every component of the software we create is container-based, utilizing environments like Docker. Communication between all software and hardware devices is built on open protocols, such as NMOS. Monitoring, of course, is critical in IP-based installations, and our approach ensures seamless integration and reliability across all systems.
We store all telemetry data in a Prometheus database and visualize it using Grafana dashboards. Thanks to this cloud-native system design, you, as a broadcaster, have the flexibility to run our software on-premises, on your own servers, in your private cloud, or in the public cloud—the choice is entirely yours.
So, where do these containers come from? We have been building a growing library of containers, which is accessible through our platform. The beauty of this approach lies in the ability to maximize the reuse of elements across different teams and applications. These teams can consume functionality from the library without needing to reinvent the wheel for every single product.
This strategy not only reduces development time, increasing time-to-market efficiency, but also ensures that as the library expands, our capabilities grow alongside it.
Here, we can see the architecture of the processing software that runs on servers and nodes. Essentially, we split the server’s compute resources into slices, with each slice capable of running an app. An app is a collection of containers assembled to perform a specific function—for example, creating a quad split.
For a quad split, the app would consist of four receivers, four rescalers, a multiviewer compositor, and one sender. This approach achieves step one for technical elasticity: each app uses only the processing power necessary for the task at hand. A quad split, for instance, requires far less processing than a 36-PIP mosaic. Similarly, in audio, an audio mixer with 64 DSP channels consumes significantly less processing power than an audio core capable of handling 1,024 DSP channels. This flexible allocation ensures resources are used efficiently based on the specific requirements of each task.
This move to standard compute, combined with slicing and containerization, allows us to scale broadcast facilities horizontally by simply adding more compute resources. This level of scalability was not possible in the previous paradigm.
For example, consider a traditional video router. You had to define its size upfront, and you were locked into that choice. In contrast, with modern infrastructure based on servers and network switches, scaling is straightforward and flexible. As mentioned earlier, this compute can be on-premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid of the two. This flexibility has always been the ultimate goal of abstracting software from hardware.
Step Two: Commercial Elasticity
With this approach, you can spin up apps when you need them and stop them when they’re no longer required. This optimizes the use of available processing power—no more idle multiviewers sitting in the racks. However, to fully leverage the potential of this technical elasticity, the commercial licensing model must also adapt. Without this adjustment, while your hardware may be optimized and flexible, you’d still need a “crystal ball” to predict how many licenses you’ll need in the future. Otherwise, instead of idle equipment in the racks, you’ll end up with idle licenses sitting unused on the shelf.
The answer to this challenge is commercial elasticity, achieved through flexible, function-agnostic licensing.
We understand that our customers’ needs are dynamic, both in terms of capacity and functionality. Typically, there is a baseline need that remains constant, with occasional peaks that require additional resources.
Traditionally, many customers had to purchase licenses based on their peak usage, which often resulted in underutilized investments. Equipment and licenses would sit unused for much of the time, leading to inefficiencies.
This approach was fixed and inflexible, leaving customers unable to adapt when their requirements changed. While some suppliers have shifted to subscription-only offerings, this model doesn’t suit every use case and remains inefficient for constant usage scenarios.
Lawo introduced a model called Lawo Flex, an innovative commercial offering that combines traditional purchases of Lawo software technology with subscription packages. This model provides access to both current and future Lawo functionality on demand. Customers can customize the combination of purchases and subscriptions in any way that best suits their needs, offering maximum flexibility.
However, as I mentioned, this model fundamentally changes how you use Lawo solutions. Let me quickly explain how it works, as this principle applies not only to Lawo but to any solution where decoupling licenses from specific functions is key. The key to achieving real elasticity in your infrastructure—and maximizing the utilization of your investment—is to decouple the license from a specific function.
In a world of function agnostic licensing every product or function, for example, in Lawo’s Home and the Home apps would still have a perpetual license, and each function has a specific value in what we here call credits.
With Lawo Flex, you have two options:
- Perpetual Licenses:
You can purchase and own a perpetual license, which is locked to a specific product or function. For example, a license for a multiviewer will always remain a multiviewer license, and a license for an up/down/cross converter will always remain specific to that function.
- Credits:
Credits, on the other hand, offer a function-agnostic approach and work differently. Credits can be used to run certain configurations, such as a multiviewer. Once you’ve finished using the system and turn it off, the credits are not consumed—they are returned to your “wallet” and can be reused.
These credits allow for unparalleled flexibility. For example:
Instead of running a 1×16 multiviewer configuration, you could run four independent quad splits.
Alternatively, you could allocate credits to entirely different tasks, such as enabling licensable features like frameworks on the .edge hardware platform, or for stream transcoding to NDI or JPEG XS.
You can also add more credits for short-term needs, creating a flexible combination of tasks.
Credits are completely independent of specific functions, giving you access to every feature in HOME, including current and future additions. This now extends to MC² DSP, integrating audio and video workflows in an entirely new way.
With credits, the resources you purchase can be dynamically reallocated to different functions, offering full control and flexibility.
Imagine being able to adapt your investment to meet new requirements, whether those needs arise tomorrow or further into the future. Technology and workflows are constantly evolving, and this approach ensures you are prepared for these changes. In addition to providing functional independence, credits can also be allocated across different systems in various locations.
For example:
- Red represents purchased equipment and perpetual licenses.
- Gray indicates available compute power.
- Orange signifies flexible, assignable functionality through subscriptions.
This model allows any facility or truck to share licenses, enabling you to meet the unique demands of different productions. It also lets you quickly and flexibly reallocate assets across productions within seconds.
By doing so, you can:
- Minimize overall processing requirements.
- Reduce the “pyramid of waste.”
- Escape the Broadcasters’ Bermuda Triangle.
So, coming to the end of my presentation, let me quickly summarize what we went through together. We learned that there are some prerequisites you need to fulfill if you want to have a scalable, dynamic facility.
First, you need to decouple the software from the hardware—that’s step number one. You also need to adopt a software design based on scalable, dynamic principles, ensuring that every piece of software only uses the required processing at any given time.
We also clarified that software-based does not mean the same as platform-based software. Without a platform-based approach, it’s merely a “lift-and-shift” method, which doesn’t bring opportunities to save on the processing side.
Finally, you need both technical and commercial elasticity. If your licensing cannot replicate the flexibility achieved on the technical side, it won’t result in commercial benefits.
What is the result of this? You have an infrastructure that provides unlimited scalability and ensures the optimal utilization of processing resources, which are based on standard CPU servers. It also ensures the optimal utilization of your overall investment.
Summary of the Broadcasting / Cinema / Pro AV 2024 Conference in Azerbaijan
Beyond that, it delivers an infrastructure that is adaptable to any future requirements. You can scale it up, scale it down, change formats, and adapt to other evolving needs. Need more multiviewers? You spin them up. Need fewer? You stop them. Need a larger audio console or adjustments to your DSP? You adapt it as required.
This approach equips you with the tools to address the Pyramid of Waste and escape the Broadcasters’ Bermuda Triangle.
