Aquila Live Broadcast Datasheet.pdf
Aquila Live Broadcast
Aquila Live Broadcast is the latest solution from MediaKind for broadcast compression headends, and is built on over 25 years heritage in providing such solutions. It is based around MediaKind’s software encoder for live linear broadcast applications. It also includes MediaKind's transport stream multiplexer / scrambler.
Key Features
- Maintaining picture quality at the lowest bitrates, whether using MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC or HEVC
- SD, HD, 1080P or UHD services, including support for High Dynamic Range
- Rich subtitles management including ingest of DVB subtitles, teletext and closed caption and their translations for each format
Single Solution for All Infrastructures
Aquila Live Broadcast can be deployed in a number of different ways:
- MediaKind reference hardware
- Dedicated data center hardware
- Private Cloud infrastructure
- Public Cloud deployment
Through integral industry and technology partner integrations, Aquila Live Broadcast provides a complete content delivery solution.
Main Content
Aquila Live Broadcast from MediaKind is a broadcasting headend solution which enables broadcasters to minimize costs whilst maintaining picture quality. It can also help improve operational efficiency, and provides a straightforward evolutionary path to all IP workflows, and deployment in private and public cloud.
Video Compression Performance
Video quality or compression performance is at the heart of Aquila Live Broadcast. It allows headend operators to reduce the bit-rate required for each of their services whilst maintaining the picture quality. This can provide significant savings in transmission costs, or allow new services such as UHD channels to be launched within existing transmission network capacity. MediaKind’s video algorithm team continually strive to improve the compression performance, not only on the latest codecs such as HEVC but also on MPEG-4 AVC and MPEG-2. After all, the majority of TV services in the world are still encoded using MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.
Operational Excellence
Operational excellence is important and it helps provide the 99.999% reliability or better, that consumers expect. With the ever increasing pace of change, areas such as ease of operation, maintenance, upgrade, and the flexibility to easily expand a system in scale or functionality are increasingly important.
Deployment Options
Aquila can be deployed as software only, running on standard COTS servers (which can optionally be supplied by MediaKind) or running on cloud instances whether they be private data centers or public cloud instances.
Ultimately this means everyone can access the benefits offered by Aquila today in the deployment model that suits their needs today, but with a clear evolutionary route to all IP workflows, and even cloud deployment in the future.
The ability to deploy in cloud environments can enable easy solution software upgrades, easy scaling, and a degree of independence from hardware lifecycles. Additionally, deployment in the public cloud makes it possible to scale the solution for events, to test at scale without impacting the on air system, and to provide a disaster recovery system in the cloud.
Aquila can provide a low risk upgrade path to operators with existing appliance based systems.
Aquila ensures you get the best Total Cost of Ownership and Quality of Experience by leveraging technologies such as:
- Configuration management and control is included via the MediaKind Hub (public cloud), MediaKind Controller, or optionally by nCompass Control (purchased separately).
- Statistical Multiplexing ensuring that the best picture quality can be delivered in the minimum bandwidth.
- Hardware accelerated live encoding which delivers low power, high density, and great quality encoding via our optional plugin card.
- AI Compression Technology (ACT) delivers the best possible quality with available compute with real time content analysis codec optimisation.
Input
| Aquila Live Broadcast Software deployment | |
|---|---|
| Compressed input | Type: IP (IGMPv3-based redundancy and dual multicast redundancy), Dual source redundancy (active/active & active/passive modes), Pro-MPEG FEC support, Secure reliable Transport (SRT) ASI inputs (188/204 byte) (max 8 per server) for transport stream multiplexing with redundancy support Monitoring: ETR290, Packet loss statistics Protocols: MPEG-2TS (MPTS & SPTS), RTMP Codec: JPEG-XS, MPEG-2, H.264, HEVC-MPEG-1LII, Dolby Digital (AC-3), Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC3), AAC, HEAAC v1 and v2, Dolby E (baseband input only) Data rate: SD/HD up to 50 Mbps, UHD up to 80 Mbps |
| Baseband input (optional hardware required) | 3G/HD/SD-SDI(max 16 per server) SDI over IP (SMPTE ST2022-6) SMPTE ST2110-20 uncompressed video up to UHD resolution SMPTE ST2110-30/31: uncompressed audio SMPTE ST2110-40: data (VITC/Time code, AFD/BAR, Closed captioning, OP-47 Teletext, SMPTE2031 Teletext) All SMPTE ST2110 essences can be input as ST2022-7 NMOS IS-04 and NMOS IS-05 support |
Pre-Processing
| Aquila Live Broadcast Software deployment | |
|---|---|
| Aspect ratio | WSS, AFD, Video index |
| Metadata | SCTE-104, SCTE-35, IA608/708 Closed Caption, SCTE-20, DVB Teletext, DVB-VBI, SCTE-27, OP47, SMPTE2031, VITC, SMPTE2038, ARIBB24 |
| Image settings | Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue, Gamma, Temperature |
| Enhancement filters | Video: De-interlacing, Cropping, Letter boxing, Stretching, SD and HD Cross-scaling, 3:2 Pull down, MCTF, Deblocking filter, Spatial Denoising filter, Cross Talk filter, Sharpening, Diamond filter Audio: Automatic loudness control (A/85), Audio gain adjustment, Mute |
| Image overlays | Image insertion on input loss |
Video Encoding
| Software deployment | Appliance deployment | as a Service deployment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Video codec | HEVC Main 10, HEVC Main Profile, H.264 Baseline/Main/High profile, MPEG-2 HDR: HDR10, HLG10, PQ10 | ||
| Rate control | CBR, VBR, Statistical Multiplexing, ACT | ||
| Data rate | From 100 kbps to 60 Mbps (1) | ||
| Resolutions | Progressive: from QCIF to UHD, up to 60 fps Interlaced: 480i, 576i, 720i and 1080i | ||
| Templates | Channel templates creation and management Default profiles templates for SD, HD & UHD services | ||
| Hardware Acceleration | QSV/SG1 encoding up to UHD, H.264, HEVC, MPEG-2 |
(1) Depends on codec and resolution
Audio Encoding
| Software deployment | |
|---|---|
| Audio channels per service | Up to 8 stereo pairs. Radio Channels |
| Audio encoding | MPEG-4/MPEG-2 AAC, AAC 5.1, HE-AAC v1 & v2, HE-AAC 5.1, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, Windows Media Audio/Audio Pro, Transcode to Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) |
| Pass-through | MPEG1LII, AC-3, Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC3) 5.1-ch or stereo, Dolby E |
| Data rate | From 4.75 kbps to 320 kbps (from 64 to 1024 kbps for DD+) |
Metadata
| Software deployment | |
|---|---|
| Subtitles pass-through and translation | EIA 608/708 Closed Caption, SCTE-20, DVB Teletext, DVB Subtitles, SCTE-27, ARIB B24 |
| Ad insertion | EBIF/EISS/AIT, SCTE-35 pass-through |
| Nielsen | Watermark extraction for multi-screen devices |
Multiplexing
| Software deployment | |
|---|---|
| Inputs and outputs | IP (UDP or RTP) input and output of MPEG Transport Streams ASI input (188/204 byte) and output (188 byte) (max 8 per server, optional hardware required) RTP re-ordering IGMP V3 redundancy Input bit-rate monitoring and CC error detection SMPTE 2022-1 FEC on input and output |
| Processing | Full re-multiplexing support including real-time PSI regeneration and dynamic rules-based pass-through of descriptors PID re-mapping SI/PSI generation/re-generation and insertion from external source Statistical multiplexing bit-rate allocation for MediaKind software encoder Bitrate policing Input Content Extraction |
| Content protection | DVB-CSA V1, V2 scrambling AES-128 scrambling BISS Mode 0, 1, 2 |
Monitoring & Control
| Software deployment | Appliance deployment | as a Service deployment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control interface | Up to 2 IP ports, monitoring and control ports (primary and spare) through API & GUI | API & GUI access is provided by MediaKind | |
| Control and system protocols | REST, HTTP, NTP, FTP, IGMPv2/v3, SNMPv2/3c | ||
| High availability | Support both 1+1 and N+M redundancy schemes Service synchronization on encoder and packager | High availability managed by MediaKind based on agreed uptime | |
| Content replacement | SCTE-35 in-band / ESAM out-of-band Triggers: Time signal, Splice-out/Splice-in, Alternate command, or manually triggered from GUI | ||
| Licensing | Centralized floating license | Appliance node locked license | Pay per use: hourly or monthly |
Infrastructure
| Software deployment | |
|---|---|
| Servers | MediaKind referenced HW IT Datacenter based on COTS servers (DELL, HP, Cisco) Private and public clouds |
| Option boards | NICs, ASI (multiplexing option boards) |
| Blueprint deployment | Centralized management and licensing (3x) with processing servers for channels transcoding |
| Appliance deployment | as a Service deployment | |
|---|---|---|
| Aquila Appliances (G9 1057, G9 1027, & M2) | MediaKind selected cloud infrastructure | |
| (only), and SDI (encoding only) | ||
| Centralized management with control over the different processing appliances | Per channel deployment managed by MediaKind |