TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2024 NAB Show New York?
SPIRO PLAGAKIS: We anticipate that the industry’s shift toward IT- and IP-enabled technologies will continue as broadcasters look to implement the flexible, scalable and cost-efficient workflows critical to meeting modern media consumption habits and demand. It’s no secret that the biggest industry trend is how broadcast live production is moving to the cloud or making use of generic COTS IT equipment on-prem.
As a leader in promoting open standards such as SMPTE ST 2110 and IPMX to ensure interoperability and ease of integration, we have built this approach into our product roadmap to help ease broadcasters’ transition to IP workflows.
TVT: What will be your most important product news?
PLAGAKIS: At NAB Show New York, Matrox Video be showcasing a number of products that solve the daily challenges facing broadcasters and other content producers, including the Monarch EDGE encoder/decoder and the new Matrox Vion IP video gateway.
The Matrox Monarch EDGE encoder/decoder has evolved from a standout performer for remote production and contribution into a versatile choice addressing video transport and distribution workflows. New features in the Monarch EDGE version 2.08 release include reprogrammable I/O, encoder and decoder previews/thumbnails, SRT Connection bonding, custom PIDs and more.
The new Matrox Vion IP video gateway solves a common production problem of moving content from one IP video format to another. Matrox Vion transcodes between NDI6, NDIHX3, IPMX, ST 2110, SRT, RTSP and other formats and codecs, that boost productivity and enable new on-prem, cloud and hybrid IP-to-IP workflows. With support for HEVC, H.264, JPEG-XS and NDI codecs in 4:2:0, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 8/10-bit formats, plus optional SDI/HDMI inputs, the IP video gateway is ideal for demanding live production and collaboration applications. Whether you are looking to encode a source suitable for both on prem and cloud consumption, bridge islands of video productions, or harmonize all incoming streams to a mezzanine format—the powerful encoding, transcoding, transmuxing, scaling and color space conversion capabilities of the Matrox Vion Ex and NX can be an invaluable tool for any video professional.
TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?
PLAGAKIS: Firstly, IPMX is an emerging video-over-IP specification that provides many benefits over existing formats for certain pro-AV workflows. However, since it is only emerging, integrating this into existing environments with existing equipment often will require a gateway to perform a conversion. One example of this would be an NDI-based video production environment. IPMX content primarily destined for enterprise communications may want to be made available simultaneously for an NDI-based production. Conversely an NDI program output could be delivered to an IPMX routing and distribution environment. Next, our powerful H.264 and H.265 encoding capabilities allow low compression production formats like NDI6 or JPEG-XS over 2110-22 to be transcoded to cloud or internet friendly formats over SRT. A number of products on the market provide this functionality when signals are encoding from SDI or HDMI (including our own) but few if any video IP gateways offer this level of performance and flexibility in such a compact form factor.
TVT: What is it about the NAB Show New York that brings you back every year?
PLAGAKIS: NAB Show New York is a great way for us to connect with our East Coast customers and prospects. It gives us an opportunity to share our broad lineup of point-of-use products for IP infrastructure and remote operation with those who might not have made it to IBC in Amsterdam or NAB Show in Las Vegas.
