Hosts Philip Grossman, Mary Ann Seidler, Maria Kholodova.
Lawo HOME Apps: the server-based processing platform
Maria: Lawo has announced its server-based processing platform consisting of scalable broadcast and media production apps and microservices. The first four HOME Apps — Multiviewer, UDX Conversion with HDR processing, Stream Transcoder and Graphic Inserter — also further widen the pool of functionality. So Philip, how will broadcasters benefit from this?
Philip: Full disclosure, I used to work for a company called Imagine Communications and we developed a product called the Selenio Network Processor which was a hardware-based solution that did this in the IP realm. It’s actually taking a bit longer than I thought for others to adopt this. Lawo who has been primarily an audio powerhouse has moved into the video and routing side. The fact that they’ve been able to adopt these technologies onto cot-based coming-off-the-shelf hardware and all software bases is very interesting. I haven’t done a lot of research into this solution but I would assume that there’s a lot of GPU-based stuff in there. However, it does start to show how we are simplifying our production solutions through less expensive off-the-shelf multipurpose hardware. So I’m excited to see this!
Maria: Mary, what are your thoughts?
Mary: This is really interesting. I was reading a lot on Lawo this week and one of the things they are always promoting is a kind of mix-and-match or Lego-type scenario where you can buy a server and add any of their solutions to it because they understand that it may not have an as long shelf life as it used to or be as flexible as they have the ability to be produced. And in the long run, it’s so much better for customers because for instance, when a power supply dies, if this is just a regular server, chances are that you’ll be able to get it back up.
Philip: Interestingly, a lot of this is made possible because of our conversion to IP that sticking to backup servers is no longer a special SDI cable; it could be NDI-based or SMPTE 2110. So it allows us to start to utilize cots-based software again. And as Mary said, it makes it a lot cheaper and easier as you don’t have to buy this purpose-built piece of hardware that you may only use three hours a day to do one thing, and now all of a sudden you could flip it with the software and it does something else for another two hours a day and you flip the software again so that it does something else for another three hours a day. So, it really optimizes the financial model for your organization.
The live broadcast of the program “360 seconds. Broadcast News & Commentary” took place on April 10, 2023. Production – TKT1957 LLC.
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