Tale about a peasant, or how to change dusty "aglitskie" chipset coders
I treat with great respect the historical processes in various forms of their manifestation. History is the greatest science, closely integrated into all spheres of human activity. An educated person from childhood forms a love for the history of the ancient world, his state, literature, scientific and technical, and industrial achievements. Throughout my entire adult life, I watched the historical course of events in the professional industry. Remember what television coders were 10 to 15 years ago? This is a hefty block of 4 - 6 units tall, they could build up all the hardware. With the development of electronics, the process of reducing the size of coders went down to one unit. In 2005-2007, they reached their historic lows - there were models with 4 HD programs per unit of cost space. These were the coders of foreign manufacturers. Then, a line of media processors based on Intel architecture was developed; their performance was several times higher than the solutions of standard chipsets based on which television coders were built.
As a result, we are now armed with coders with processing 10 to 15 HD programs that run on industrial servers. I think in a few years the world of television devices will change greatly under the influence of flexible elastic materials for electronics. Events from the past, to which you have a direct connection, wake a certain sadness at memory. Quite by chance, the idea was born to offer the reader our professional material in a fabulously humorous format, with the hope of your sense of humor. In this article we will talk about the capabilities of the television complex, built on the basis of the HPE server line of Moonshot Media Processing from HPE, and the specialized software of the Russian company Elecard.
Once there was a peasant Ivan, in the village of Rusaki. He had complete wealth, according to local standards he was known as a rich man, he did not deny himself anything, and the local people amused themselves with overseas attire. The farm he had is strong - a cattle full yard (he got from his grandfather), the production of his own television channels (he gave the test), yes, among other things, he owned multiservice networks and indulged in broadcasting video over IP, and on the Internet. The peasant family has a big one - girls, yes guys (seven on the benches) - the youth is moderately modern, fashionable and spoiled. As smartphones appeared in their pockets, and mobile gadgets in cards, so the man began to notice a sharp increase in video traffic in all his barns and hayloft. Sometimes kids come out in the evening for the outskirts, look at their WiFi and LTE-oriented devices, press the start button on you-tubes and other Tweagles at once, so the network load becomes quite uneven, and traffic from all wells rises. Our little man, though not left-handed, was a craftsman, but nevertheless, he did not slip away, and his nature did not offend him with savvy. Day after day, it is becoming increasingly obvious to him that the inheritance of the father-in-law to modernize the time is coming. Yes, and local courtyard consultants, grandmother analysts-wizards all repeat to him, according to the seniors, video on the Internet in the coming years will be fun main at the royal court.
')
For a peasant, it is important to preserve parity in the stream of technological evolution for their descendants. He wants the children of his educated villagers to grow up and be able to watch videos on a wide variety of devices, from smartphones to widescreen HD panels. I don’t know all the details about the ideas of the peasants, why he needed it in the middle of the country’s wilderness - maybe I wanted to give my daughters (on the sea, for example) quickly or more favorably to marry their son or Emel in the scientific and military work. It does not matter, the tale, however, is not about that. He understands firmly the old, his people's mind about the need to adapt his television station with modern OTT and IPTV services, although he lacks education to the full. For a long, short time, or a peasant, he was toiling with this difficult question, now no one of the people can remember. It has reached our days (as it should be “word of mouth”) only a legend that he saw a patron saint on the night of the holiday, when the girl did not weave braids in the morning and the rooster did not sing songs before dinner. The message in that message was clear, for the reader of the modern, and for the hero of ours the message is disturbing, opaque. It was predicted to change its dusty “Aglitsky” chipset coders (on ASICs and FPGAs built) to new universal CPU / GPU devices intended for encoding HD and UHD television content into serious widescreen formats (IPTV, DVB-T, DVB- S) suitable for networks of the state. The parting was given and the second was strict, the device, then, “the broadcast programs must be able to transcode into multi-profile streams with the horizontal and vertical resolution parameters to play on mobile devices (everyone there: smart, gadgets, and other evil overseas)) receiving video / audio data via the Internet using the HTTP protocol ”, as in the OTT now fashionable, simply.
The third condition, and at all seemed to the illiterate people the unbearable act, at that time a fantastic trend. The device must have a magically built-in property so that the video image on the IP quality output is perfect, and at a coding speed less - less (the head in a dream ached for overloaded networks), and everything else didn’t lag behind the real reportage. In general, the whole story is written according to the rules of the epic-classical: there is one problem, three conditions, and you can’t cope with it suddenly, a terrible retribution (remember the frog skin there, or imagine a daughter on a fantastic island on a visit to a monster) over three generations. Our hero screwed up for a minute, but did not lose his reason. He was steep in his temper; in the army of General Margelov, for many years he performed military feats, visited the Black Sea Peninsula, had no doubt of his own strength. Therefore, by the evening of the same day, a firm decision was made, sitting by the wattle fence, a strange coder, for a television station, a huge country, and despite our fears, to get our children to live better. Only, the coder Ivan was needed is not simple, but gold-soft, so that he can quickly turn on, just tune in and never break - well, if to say in folk, then the same clear device should be like a scarlet flower.
So, the peasant sold his peasant cow until autumn at a reasonable price, which, we note, served him faithfully for the last thirty years. He folded the accumulated coins into a bag, on a card currency account at the Rifefe Bank, and moved his feet to the nearest overseas port city of San Fuzisco. In their locality, the city was known as the center of progressive scientific and technical television thought over the past couple of decades. For seven weeks and days the peasant wandered there on the benches and desks, until the local traders vparili his trendy coder from the overseas company Harm. They made a long deal, praised all their goods in the office, sang marketing songs in chorus, even brought the peasant to the winery factory, hooked a magnet to his buttonhole, but forgot to show production facilities. In addition, local cunning merchants persuaded our traveler to buy and decoder them forged. Cunning, however, did not, and responsibly stated that the decoder was designed according to old-fashioned chipset patterns, but there is no other way, and it is not expected in the near future. By the way, on the label the country of origin was listed as the promised side. A decoder with a coder is an inseparable pair, like a needle thread, in the process of making serious television networks, both are in demand. For technical specialists, the topic is as smooth as an ice hill in the cold with a sled, not requiring explanation. We in the story onom need to recognize that Ivan the video engineer is a weak techie, he has other regalia. He honestly traded with people overseas that little thing that was his dream. What I was looking for in the first approximation, then our hero got it, after two months of wandering in foreign lands.
Ivan returned home exhausted. One device - a coder installed in the upper room in a red corner, and the second - a decoder fitted on the dovecot higher. He tied them up like strong reins - twisted pairs of ezernet, and on top laid IP channels nimble. As Ivan doesn’t beat (like a fish on ice), he doesn’t come out for him to pour video footage from one bucket to another, with the quality in a prophetic dream, through these devices overseas. For a month, he invited for a cup to discuss all this rural local authorities with this nepidal: the lord's groom, the royal servant, the priest and the priest, the grandmother, and only the bits and videos were as they were before. He called the technical support of the overseas company, wrote several times, how damned about th. He asked for help with a piece of iron, kindly, and talked about how difficult, long, the roads were for her. In the council, a malicious voice repeats vigorously, "first with a golden coin, you sweeten the efforts of the technical spouse." The result was his only answer: “Did you pay in advance our service support? Oh, no? Quite a man was saddened by buying his own, the attitude of local representatives to him - a foreign company, and most of all a testament sad for a mission unfulfilled before the descendants.
Fortunately for a peasant, the old man-sage ran through this village (he drove north to the north), so he told our Ivan to go to Moscow, and to go to Elecard for help. Say, believe me, the Russian land has not become scanty to give birth to smart people, scientists and engineers for the television industry. There they will definitely help you to figure it out! Since 1995, Elecard has been a recognized leader in the Russian industry in the development of software for encoding, decoding and instrumental analysis of video and audio signals. The company was one of the first to release the video codecs for the H.264 / AVC compression standard, and its MPEG-2 decoder is considered one of the best in the world. In recent years, Elecard has completed a number of developments in the field of H.265 / HEVC encoding, DASH streaming video and digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DVB-T / T2).
Once again, Ivan harnesses the horses ... Hurray! Spring! Having done a long sleigh ride, the peasant managed Moscow to look into his eyes. How difficult was his campaign, I will not write. He stands modestly on the porch (reception) at Elecard and shkryabaet bast shoes on the threshold. He is met by Count Kirillich. Having burst into tears at the count on the shoulder, the peasant told about his misfortune. Kirillich listened to the sufferer, reassured: "Nonsense, - let the old man give us time for two days." He himself writes an urgent dispatch to the city of Tomsk, in which the company has all the best gene pool - television intelligence, scientific brain (R & D), designer, technical support, and, of course, professional marketing and bargaining. And at the same time, the technical progress sheet (SRT) scribbling in the "those block" decree to shudder the TV channel, using peasant good. The guys made up their minds about the day and quickly learned everything from the overseas piece of iron, and told our hero the truth. This is a soft multi-format video coder that compresses broadcast video sources on the fly for subsequent transmission to an IP network. To restore the original stream, the above-mentioned decoder is used on the remote side. However, these devices do not do anything unique, revolutionary. These are coders - decoders with absolutely normal properties. In fact, their solution is based on a hardware industrial platform of a world-famous server manufacturer. And the software is written in ind or skim hands.
The guys from Elecard already talked about their unique devices and developments, either on purpose or by chance. The muzhik suffered for a long time without learning, for half an hour he comprehended all the basics of the science. The whole complex of oral and written knowledge, Elecard presented in his native Russian. The reliability of their decisions was confirmed by state certificates and honorary government awards. Moreover, they invited us to a demonstration of the operating complex at a well-known transatlantic company specializing in the provision of international television services. Elecard Company develops software for the following functionally complete devices for the professional digital television broadcasting market: coders and transcoders, Origin broadcast servers, decoders and client applications, control systems and SDK packages for developers, real-time quality analyzers for video assets and video streams . In the context of the whole story that happened to our hero, he was told in detail about the possibilities of the software packages:
CodecWorks is a multi-format (H.265 / HEVC, H.264 / AVC, MPEG-2, etc.) soft video encoder / transcoder designed to convert SD / HD / UHD media data in real time. The recoding process effectively uses industrial hardware resources and provides high quality output. The encoder supports any industrial interfaces: SD / HD-SDI, ASI, HDMI, Composite, IP / Ethernet and is successfully used to encode television signals in traditional broadcast television systems. At the exit, CodeWorks performs encoding of a video and audio source of a broadcast TV program or file into an IP multicast stream (MPEG-2 TS) with a selected for video / audio codec, bit rate and resolution. In OTT / Multiscreen solutions, CodecWorks can convert video and audio from a broadcast TV program into a set of several multicast streams synchronized with each other (MPEG-2 TS multibitrate streams) with a newly selected bitrate and resolution for video having the same content at the output. It is also possible to prepare streams in HLS or MPEG-DASH format for subsequent transfer to the Origin server.
The central element of the encoder is the “coding console” - a program that performs work on the construction of a coding scheme. Accepts and processes control commands from the manager, as well as monitoring license restrictions. When installing CodecWorks, you should pay attention to the version of the software package used, depending on the type of Windows / CentOS operating system running on the server. Only one encoding server can be installed in one operating system. As a nice bonus, Elecard allows you to install your software on some hypervisors, such as VMware's ESXi, which significantly reduces the cost of deploying IPTV / OTT headends in data centers with efficient use of their computing resources.
The table lists the CodecWorks features that may interest you further:
CodecWorks applications are managed and monitored using:
- a graphical user interface (GUI), CodecWorks Manager, which simultaneously manages the operation of several encoding consoles, performs configuration and launch of encoding schemes based on user actions, and also displays statistics. One manager can be used to manage multiple servers. The application window displays the available CodecWorks servers, and the encoding consoles running on them. Each console is designed to perform a separate task. The main window of the CodecWorks Manager program contains a list of servers available for management, and the coding consoles running on them. For each server and console, their status, startup time, processor load (%), and amount of memory (Mb) are displayed.
This is what the menu of coding parameters in the control section of the coding console looks like:
The Parameters command displays a tree-like list of schema parameters available for modification. Clicking on a parameter value puts it into edit mode. Click OK to save changes, Cancel to cancel . To facilitate the process of building a coding scheme, is the built-in template configurator.
- web interface, to call it you need to enter the IP address of the server in a web browser.
- from the command line, the console application cwManagerConsole.exe, one of the possible applications of automating operations using batch files.
- HTTP protocol , the dispatcher handles HTTP-POST requests to manage the encoding servers.
- SNMP protocol, the cwSnmpAgent.dll network agent implemented as an SNMP service allows you to manage the encryption server using any SNMP client.
When visually comparing, the quality of video output from CodecWorks and overseas representatives turned out to be an advantage on the Elecard side.The product demonstrated the highest possible quality of IPTV broadcast video, with a minimum bitrate per service, using several transcoding options (different output stream rates, codecs, and so on). In combination with the HPE MoonShot hardware platform, the most efficient solution is obtained (see below) on the software and hardware market in terms of implementing MPEG-2 / AVC / HEVC encoding processes. A rich set of functionality and ease of adding new options (soft-oriented product) allows broadcasters, content operators and service providers to respond quickly to the wishes of their customers.
The man was clearly pleased with the result and asked to show him an OTT solution.
The hardware and software complex, as part of the Elecard software and the HPE Moonshot platform, in addition to the usual transcoding, performs the functions of adaptive broadcasting and recording of content, as well as monitoring video quality and diagnosing a number of faults in the backbone networks. The architecture of the head stations provides support for the latest encoding formats (HEVC / H.265) and 4K / 8K / 16K resolutions. The operator is given the opportunity to create a scalable IPTV / OTT video processing system, to be flexible in terms of the composition of services and to ensure their reproduction on any screens for the customer. The Elecard complex consists of several elements:
The man had already read an article about this product and had long wanted to buy it for his farm.
Elecard CodecWorks and V-Cinema use redundancy to ensure the reliability of the coding systems. One backup server can duplicate several working encoding servers (model N + 1). Several backup servers can serve the same set of working servers (model N + M).
To work with Elecard CodecWorks and V-Cinema servers must meet the minimum requirements in accordance with the task. When choosing a server for performing coding tasks in real time, it should be remembered that processor performance can play a decisive role. Refer to the codec performance table on Elecard website for a rough estimate of requirements. Additional information is available on the company's website: www.elecard.ruTechnical assistance can be obtained from the technical support department by e-mail: tsup@elecard.ru .
It should be said that the man was visibly worried? when it comes to industrial servers. In the practice of his television, he used to use the device is already ready to work upon receipt from the factory.
The guys from Elecard intelligently explained the tactical and technical data and the composition of the HPE Moonshot Media Processing solution. Here are three main components:
The HPE Moonshot 1500 chassis includes the following integrated storage, cooling, power, and control subsystems, as well as network components:
The HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge with Intel Xeon E3-1284L v4 processors and Intel Iris Pro Graphics P6300 integrated graphics provides the highest performance for tasks such as video transcoding. It is equipped with a built-in GPU GPU, which provides graphics acceleration when processing various multimedia loads. The m710p server cartridge was used in the tests below.
HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge contains the following components:
For greater clarity, Ivan demonstrated the performance of an HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge cartridge on the example of transcoding real-world television programs with given parameters. For testing, selected IP multicast sources with the following parameters:
For Ivan it was important to make sure that the cartridge is able to transcode the broadcast program into multi-stream streams, with different resolution and bitrate parameters, suitable for OTT solutions. In order to please Ivan in his desire, we chose a transcoding template for a TV program at the output with the following parameters: frame rate - 25, codec - H.264, audio codec - AAC, container - TS / HLS, and also:
Literally 10-15 minutes later, as we started this task, we were able to evaluate the performance of a single HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge + Elecard CodecWorks for a given job:
Ivan drew attention to the numbers, highlighted in color in the table, and came to a complete delight. In order to dispel all doubts at the expense of HPE Moonshot, Ivan , specialists from Elecard promised him to help deploy the CodecWorks software on all the cartridges in the chassis. And taught how to do this work with their own hands. After just one hour, the man was able to assess the power of the transcoding platform in full:
According to the test results, Ivan made the following conclusions for himself:
Finally, at Elecard, the peasant was told that at the moment, using the latest HPE ProLiant m710x cartridge with Intel Xeon E3-1585Lv5 and IntelIris Pro Graphics P580 processors, 4K HEVC content transcoding can be performed, for clarity, here is a factory test card:
Ivan immediately got a new benefit: with HPE Moonshot and Elecard CodecWorks, you can implement modern UHD television services, and save money on server hardware by installing cartridges in existing chassis. The fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, all leaders have a friendly lesson.
On the road:
Quickly the fairy tale affects, yes for a long time the present is being done. Many difficult tests have befallen our hero in the campaign for a wonderful product. With honor, Vanya coped with the challenge that came to him in an unconventional way, from the power of the unknown. Especially worthy of us is the fact that he found the little thing needed in his native land, and Russian people were his help. Is it fair to call Russian devices (coders, decoders, and so on) if the equipment is assembled on the basis of import servers? The answer is simple: if you use Chinese ingredients to make sausage, and the recipe is written with your hand, will the product be Chinese? Here is a similar situation.
Of course, under the “Russian TV equipment” you should not understand that it is assembled entirely from domestic components. It is probably difficult to find a foreign manufacturer of electronic equipment with a 100% own production cycle. I will say more, all manufacturers of electronic devices in the television industry, there has been a trend of migration to industrial hardware computing systems. This is a general trend dictated by scientific and engineering achievements and economic considerations. It’s just the right time for successful software makers. They have now gained a certain independence in the choice of platform partners for the implementation of intellectual ideas invested in software. By the way, Elekard with a creative, in terms of creating software, was always in order.Well-known foreign companies often and with pleasure in past years offered to make joint interesting projects and contracts. As of today, Elecard devices fully comply with industrial requirements, brought to the stage of confident production and feel great in Russia and in world markets.
As a result, we are now armed with coders with processing 10 to 15 HD programs that run on industrial servers. I think in a few years the world of television devices will change greatly under the influence of flexible elastic materials for electronics. Events from the past, to which you have a direct connection, wake a certain sadness at memory. Quite by chance, the idea was born to offer the reader our professional material in a fabulously humorous format, with the hope of your sense of humor. In this article we will talk about the capabilities of the television complex, built on the basis of the HPE server line of Moonshot Media Processing from HPE, and the specialized software of the Russian company Elecard.
Once there was a peasant Ivan, in the village of Rusaki. He had complete wealth, according to local standards he was known as a rich man, he did not deny himself anything, and the local people amused themselves with overseas attire. The farm he had is strong - a cattle full yard (he got from his grandfather), the production of his own television channels (he gave the test), yes, among other things, he owned multiservice networks and indulged in broadcasting video over IP, and on the Internet. The peasant family has a big one - girls, yes guys (seven on the benches) - the youth is moderately modern, fashionable and spoiled. As smartphones appeared in their pockets, and mobile gadgets in cards, so the man began to notice a sharp increase in video traffic in all his barns and hayloft. Sometimes kids come out in the evening for the outskirts, look at their WiFi and LTE-oriented devices, press the start button on you-tubes and other Tweagles at once, so the network load becomes quite uneven, and traffic from all wells rises. Our little man, though not left-handed, was a craftsman, but nevertheless, he did not slip away, and his nature did not offend him with savvy. Day after day, it is becoming increasingly obvious to him that the inheritance of the father-in-law to modernize the time is coming. Yes, and local courtyard consultants, grandmother analysts-wizards all repeat to him, according to the seniors, video on the Internet in the coming years will be fun main at the royal court.
')
For a peasant, it is important to preserve parity in the stream of technological evolution for their descendants. He wants the children of his educated villagers to grow up and be able to watch videos on a wide variety of devices, from smartphones to widescreen HD panels. I don’t know all the details about the ideas of the peasants, why he needed it in the middle of the country’s wilderness - maybe I wanted to give my daughters (on the sea, for example) quickly or more favorably to marry their son or Emel in the scientific and military work. It does not matter, the tale, however, is not about that. He understands firmly the old, his people's mind about the need to adapt his television station with modern OTT and IPTV services, although he lacks education to the full. For a long, short time, or a peasant, he was toiling with this difficult question, now no one of the people can remember. It has reached our days (as it should be “word of mouth”) only a legend that he saw a patron saint on the night of the holiday, when the girl did not weave braids in the morning and the rooster did not sing songs before dinner. The message in that message was clear, for the reader of the modern, and for the hero of ours the message is disturbing, opaque. It was predicted to change its dusty “Aglitsky” chipset coders (on ASICs and FPGAs built) to new universal CPU / GPU devices intended for encoding HD and UHD television content into serious widescreen formats (IPTV, DVB-T, DVB- S) suitable for networks of the state. The parting was given and the second was strict, the device, then, “the broadcast programs must be able to transcode into multi-profile streams with the horizontal and vertical resolution parameters to play on mobile devices (everyone there: smart, gadgets, and other evil overseas)) receiving video / audio data via the Internet using the HTTP protocol ”, as in the OTT now fashionable, simply.
The third condition, and at all seemed to the illiterate people the unbearable act, at that time a fantastic trend. The device must have a magically built-in property so that the video image on the IP quality output is perfect, and at a coding speed less - less (the head in a dream ached for overloaded networks), and everything else didn’t lag behind the real reportage. In general, the whole story is written according to the rules of the epic-classical: there is one problem, three conditions, and you can’t cope with it suddenly, a terrible retribution (remember the frog skin there, or imagine a daughter on a fantastic island on a visit to a monster) over three generations. Our hero screwed up for a minute, but did not lose his reason. He was steep in his temper; in the army of General Margelov, for many years he performed military feats, visited the Black Sea Peninsula, had no doubt of his own strength. Therefore, by the evening of the same day, a firm decision was made, sitting by the wattle fence, a strange coder, for a television station, a huge country, and despite our fears, to get our children to live better. Only, the coder Ivan was needed is not simple, but gold-soft, so that he can quickly turn on, just tune in and never break - well, if to say in folk, then the same clear device should be like a scarlet flower.
So, the peasant sold his peasant cow until autumn at a reasonable price, which, we note, served him faithfully for the last thirty years. He folded the accumulated coins into a bag, on a card currency account at the Rifefe Bank, and moved his feet to the nearest overseas port city of San Fuzisco. In their locality, the city was known as the center of progressive scientific and technical television thought over the past couple of decades. For seven weeks and days the peasant wandered there on the benches and desks, until the local traders vparili his trendy coder from the overseas company Harm. They made a long deal, praised all their goods in the office, sang marketing songs in chorus, even brought the peasant to the winery factory, hooked a magnet to his buttonhole, but forgot to show production facilities. In addition, local cunning merchants persuaded our traveler to buy and decoder them forged. Cunning, however, did not, and responsibly stated that the decoder was designed according to old-fashioned chipset patterns, but there is no other way, and it is not expected in the near future. By the way, on the label the country of origin was listed as the promised side. A decoder with a coder is an inseparable pair, like a needle thread, in the process of making serious television networks, both are in demand. For technical specialists, the topic is as smooth as an ice hill in the cold with a sled, not requiring explanation. We in the story onom need to recognize that Ivan the video engineer is a weak techie, he has other regalia. He honestly traded with people overseas that little thing that was his dream. What I was looking for in the first approximation, then our hero got it, after two months of wandering in foreign lands.
Ivan returned home exhausted. One device - a coder installed in the upper room in a red corner, and the second - a decoder fitted on the dovecot higher. He tied them up like strong reins - twisted pairs of ezernet, and on top laid IP channels nimble. As Ivan doesn’t beat (like a fish on ice), he doesn’t come out for him to pour video footage from one bucket to another, with the quality in a prophetic dream, through these devices overseas. For a month, he invited for a cup to discuss all this rural local authorities with this nepidal: the lord's groom, the royal servant, the priest and the priest, the grandmother, and only the bits and videos were as they were before. He called the technical support of the overseas company, wrote several times, how damned about th. He asked for help with a piece of iron, kindly, and talked about how difficult, long, the roads were for her. In the council, a malicious voice repeats vigorously, "first with a golden coin, you sweeten the efforts of the technical spouse." The result was his only answer: “Did you pay in advance our service support? Oh, no? Quite a man was saddened by buying his own, the attitude of local representatives to him - a foreign company, and most of all a testament sad for a mission unfulfilled before the descendants.
Fortunately for a peasant, the old man-sage ran through this village (he drove north to the north), so he told our Ivan to go to Moscow, and to go to Elecard for help. Say, believe me, the Russian land has not become scanty to give birth to smart people, scientists and engineers for the television industry. There they will definitely help you to figure it out! Since 1995, Elecard has been a recognized leader in the Russian industry in the development of software for encoding, decoding and instrumental analysis of video and audio signals. The company was one of the first to release the video codecs for the H.264 / AVC compression standard, and its MPEG-2 decoder is considered one of the best in the world. In recent years, Elecard has completed a number of developments in the field of H.265 / HEVC encoding, DASH streaming video and digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DVB-T / T2).
Once again, Ivan harnesses the horses ... Hurray! Spring! Having done a long sleigh ride, the peasant managed Moscow to look into his eyes. How difficult was his campaign, I will not write. He stands modestly on the porch (reception) at Elecard and shkryabaet bast shoes on the threshold. He is met by Count Kirillich. Having burst into tears at the count on the shoulder, the peasant told about his misfortune. Kirillich listened to the sufferer, reassured: "Nonsense, - let the old man give us time for two days." He himself writes an urgent dispatch to the city of Tomsk, in which the company has all the best gene pool - television intelligence, scientific brain (R & D), designer, technical support, and, of course, professional marketing and bargaining. And at the same time, the technical progress sheet (SRT) scribbling in the "those block" decree to shudder the TV channel, using peasant good. The guys made up their minds about the day and quickly learned everything from the overseas piece of iron, and told our hero the truth. This is a soft multi-format video coder that compresses broadcast video sources on the fly for subsequent transmission to an IP network. To restore the original stream, the above-mentioned decoder is used on the remote side. However, these devices do not do anything unique, revolutionary. These are coders - decoders with absolutely normal properties. In fact, their solution is based on a hardware industrial platform of a world-famous server manufacturer. And the software is written in ind or skim hands.
The guys from Elecard already talked about their unique devices and developments, either on purpose or by chance. The muzhik suffered for a long time without learning, for half an hour he comprehended all the basics of the science. The whole complex of oral and written knowledge, Elecard presented in his native Russian. The reliability of their decisions was confirmed by state certificates and honorary government awards. Moreover, they invited us to a demonstration of the operating complex at a well-known transatlantic company specializing in the provision of international television services. Elecard Company develops software for the following functionally complete devices for the professional digital television broadcasting market: coders and transcoders, Origin broadcast servers, decoders and client applications, control systems and SDK packages for developers, real-time quality analyzers for video assets and video streams . In the context of the whole story that happened to our hero, he was told in detail about the possibilities of the software packages:
Elecard CodecWorks Encoder
CodecWorks is a multi-format (H.265 / HEVC, H.264 / AVC, MPEG-2, etc.) soft video encoder / transcoder designed to convert SD / HD / UHD media data in real time. The recoding process effectively uses industrial hardware resources and provides high quality output. The encoder supports any industrial interfaces: SD / HD-SDI, ASI, HDMI, Composite, IP / Ethernet and is successfully used to encode television signals in traditional broadcast television systems. At the exit, CodeWorks performs encoding of a video and audio source of a broadcast TV program or file into an IP multicast stream (MPEG-2 TS) with a selected for video / audio codec, bit rate and resolution. In OTT / Multiscreen solutions, CodecWorks can convert video and audio from a broadcast TV program into a set of several multicast streams synchronized with each other (MPEG-2 TS multibitrate streams) with a newly selected bitrate and resolution for video having the same content at the output. It is also possible to prepare streams in HLS or MPEG-DASH format for subsequent transfer to the Origin server.
The central element of the encoder is the “coding console” - a program that performs work on the construction of a coding scheme. Accepts and processes control commands from the manager, as well as monitoring license restrictions. When installing CodecWorks, you should pay attention to the version of the software package used, depending on the type of Windows / CentOS operating system running on the server. Only one encoding server can be installed in one operating system. As a nice bonus, Elecard allows you to install your software on some hypervisors, such as VMware's ESXi, which significantly reduces the cost of deploying IPTV / OTT headends in data centers with efficient use of their computing resources.
The table lists the CodecWorks features that may interest you further:
| Additional features | Multi-screen encoding of the input stream into several output (for adaptive streaming using Apple HLS, MPEG-DASH) Adaptive packaging and support for adaptive streaming in HLS and MPEG-DASH. HEVC / H.265 encoding support. UHD resolution support (4K). Support for Intel Quick Sync Video hardware acceleration. Flexible configuration of coding components to achieve compatibility with any playback devices. Interlacing / progressive encoding support for all output formats. Support for setting up I-Frame playlist (each chunk starts with frame I). Flexible GOP structure management for each output stream. The ability to use predefined profiles, as well as creating, editing and saving your own encoding profiles. Support for DVB remultiplexer functionality with the ability to block unnecessary PID at the output. The possibility of forwarding one or more elementary streams without transcoding. Ability to correctly process Multicast input streams with VBR and CBR bit rates. The ability to set the bitrate of the output TS streams in the CBR and VBR modes. Ability to add descriptors for service information tables. Generation of service PSI / SI information PAT, PMT, SDT. The ability to encode a single audio track using different codecs. |
| Device redundancy | The fast backup mechanism according to the N + M scheme (switching time to the backup server is less than 5 seconds). |
| Pre-processing video and audio streams | Change the resolution of video content (downscale / upscale) Cropping; Frame rate change Deinterlacing Noise suppression Color correction Sound volume level correction Change the frequency of the sound Logo overlay |
CodecWorks applications are managed and monitored using:
- a graphical user interface (GUI), CodecWorks Manager, which simultaneously manages the operation of several encoding consoles, performs configuration and launch of encoding schemes based on user actions, and also displays statistics. One manager can be used to manage multiple servers. The application window displays the available CodecWorks servers, and the encoding consoles running on them. Each console is designed to perform a separate task. The main window of the CodecWorks Manager program contains a list of servers available for management, and the coding consoles running on them. For each server and console, their status, startup time, processor load (%), and amount of memory (Mb) are displayed.
This is what the menu of coding parameters in the control section of the coding console looks like:
The Parameters command displays a tree-like list of schema parameters available for modification. Clicking on a parameter value puts it into edit mode. Click OK to save changes, Cancel to cancel . To facilitate the process of building a coding scheme, is the built-in template configurator.
- web interface, to call it you need to enter the IP address of the server in a web browser.
- from the command line, the console application cwManagerConsole.exe, one of the possible applications of automating operations using batch files.
- HTTP protocol , the dispatcher handles HTTP-POST requests to manage the encoding servers.
- SNMP protocol, the cwSnmpAgent.dll network agent implemented as an SNMP service allows you to manage the encryption server using any SNMP client.
When visually comparing, the quality of video output from CodecWorks and overseas representatives turned out to be an advantage on the Elecard side.The product demonstrated the highest possible quality of IPTV broadcast video, with a minimum bitrate per service, using several transcoding options (different output stream rates, codecs, and so on). In combination with the HPE MoonShot hardware platform, the most efficient solution is obtained (see below) on the software and hardware market in terms of implementing MPEG-2 / AVC / HEVC encoding processes. A rich set of functionality and ease of adding new options (soft-oriented product) allows broadcasters, content operators and service providers to respond quickly to the wishes of their customers.
The man was clearly pleased with the result and asked to show him an OTT solution.
OTT solution based on Elecard V-Cinema
The hardware and software complex, as part of the Elecard software and the HPE Moonshot platform, in addition to the usual transcoding, performs the functions of adaptive broadcasting and recording of content, as well as monitoring video quality and diagnosing a number of faults in the backbone networks. The architecture of the head stations provides support for the latest encoding formats (HEVC / H.265) and 4K / 8K / 16K resolutions. The operator is given the opportunity to create a scalable IPTV / OTT video processing system, to be flexible in terms of the composition of services and to ensure their reproduction on any screens for the customer. The Elecard complex consists of several elements:
- Elecard CodecWorks Encoder, the transcoder we already know.
- Elecard V-Cinema, . HTTP/RTSP/UDP HLS (HTTP Live Streaming). Elecard V-Cinema (TimeShift) (VoD). HTTP QoS .
- Elecard SenSay, , , lock ontinuity, , EPSNR, , .
The man had already read an article about this product and had long wanted to buy it for his farm.
- Elecard Multistream Player, a player for visual and instrumental monitoring of video streams. The peasant had a pirated copy of this player. In the laboratory, he was shown how the real licensed product works. He immediately decided to introduce it at his head station of compression.
Elecard CodecWorks and V-Cinema use redundancy to ensure the reliability of the coding systems. One backup server can duplicate several working encoding servers (model N + 1). Several backup servers can serve the same set of working servers (model N + M).
To work with Elecard CodecWorks and V-Cinema servers must meet the minimum requirements in accordance with the task. When choosing a server for performing coding tasks in real time, it should be remembered that processor performance can play a decisive role. Refer to the codec performance table on Elecard website for a rough estimate of requirements. Additional information is available on the company's website: www.elecard.ruTechnical assistance can be obtained from the technical support department by e-mail: tsup@elecard.ru .
It should be said that the man was visibly worried? when it comes to industrial servers. In the practice of his television, he used to use the device is already ready to work upon receipt from the factory.
HPE Moonshot Media Processing
The guys from Elecard intelligently explained the tactical and technical data and the composition of the HPE Moonshot Media Processing solution. Here are three main components:
- Chassis HPE Moonshot system.
- HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge Cartridges.
- HPE ProLiant Server artridge utility software for initial configuration of the chassis, cartridges, I / O modules, network interfaces, storage devices, interaction with the HPE iLO control module located on each cartridge.
The HPE Moonshot 1500 chassis includes the following integrated storage, cooling, power, and control subsystems, as well as network components:
| Form factor | 4.3U, depth 900 mm |
| Compute Modules | To 45 server cartridges of hot connection. Cartridges can contain 1 or 4 physical servers (nodes). Each server is equipped with a dual-port network card. |
| Built-in switches | Ethernet- 1 10G, . - — 45 180, . 1 , 2 2 (HA). |
| . : 4 x 40G QSFP, 16 x 10G SFP+, 6 x 10G SFP+ 160G -. | |
| Nutrition | 4 Platinum (1200 1500 ) . : N, N+1 2N ( ). |
| 5 N+1. | |
| 1-45. | |
| Control | HPE Moonshot 1500 Chassis Management Module HPE Moonshot Command Line Interface (CLI), Graphical User Interface (GUI), Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) . , , (RESTful API) SNMP Trap. |
The HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge with Intel Xeon E3-1284L v4 processors and Intel Iris Pro Graphics P6300 integrated graphics provides the highest performance for tasks such as video transcoding. It is equipped with a built-in GPU GPU, which provides graphics acceleration when processing various multimedia loads. The m710p server cartridge was used in the tests below.
HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge contains the following components:
| CPU | Intel Xeon E3-1284L v4, 4 cores, 2.9 GHz (3.8 GHz in Single Core Turbo mode) with support for Hyper-threading 6 MB L3 cache; 128 MB L4 cache with a peak bandwidth of 50 GB / s. Graphics Intel Iris Pro Graphics P6300 GPU uses L3 and L4 cache to transfer data between the CPU cores and the GPUs. |
| RAM | 32 : 4 1600 MHz, DDR3 SO-DIMM ECC 8 25 / (8 ) |
| Network | 10GbE Mellanox CX3 RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) : 45 10 GbE 45 1Gb : 4 40GbE QSFP 16 10GbE SFP+ |
| SSD (M.2) 120, 240 480 | |
| Nutrition | — 72 . — 45-50 . |
| OS | Windows Server 2012 2012 R2, Windows 7 x64, 8.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 7.1, CentOS 6.7 7.2 Canonical Ubuntu 15.04 14.04.3 LTS SuSE Linux Enterprise 12 11 SP4 |
For greater clarity, Ivan demonstrated the performance of an HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge cartridge on the example of transcoding real-world television programs with given parameters. For testing, selected IP multicast sources with the following parameters:
| Input stream | Format | Resolution | Bit rate (Mbps) | Frame rate per second |
| 576i | AVC | 720x576 | 3 | 25 |
| 1080i | AVC | 1920x1080 | 18 | 25 |
For Ivan it was important to make sure that the cartridge is able to transcode the broadcast program into multi-stream streams, with different resolution and bitrate parameters, suitable for OTT solutions. In order to please Ivan in his desire, we chose a transcoding template for a TV program at the output with the following parameters: frame rate - 25, codec - H.264, audio codec - AAC, container - TS / HLS, and also:
| Test | Resolution | Average bit rate (Mbps) |
| IP IP (SD) | 720x404 | 2000 |
| IP IP (HD) | 1920 x 1080 | 8,000 |
| IP Multiscreen (SD) | ||
| Profile 1 | 312x176 | 300 |
| Profile 2 | 720x404 | 1100 |
| Profile 3 | 720x404 | 2000 |
| IP Multiscreen (HD) | ||
| Profile 1 | 426 x 240 | 300 |
| Profile 2 | 640 x 360 | 650 |
| Profile 3 | 1024 x 576 | 1200 |
| Profile 4 | 1280 x 720 | 2000 |
| Profile 5 | 1920 x 1080 | 4,000 |
| Profile 6 | 1920 x 1080 | 8,000 |
Literally 10-15 minutes later, as we started this task, we were able to evaluate the performance of a single HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge + Elecard CodecWorks for a given job:
| Inlet flow resolution | The number of simultaneously transcoded TV programs in one output profile | The number of transcoded multi-screen tv programs in multiple output profiles | Cartridge power consumption | |
| HPE ProLiant m710p Server Cartridge with GPU Acceleration | 576i @ 25FPS | 36 | 12 | 72W - maximum value per cartridge 50W - average |
| 1080i @ 25FPS | 14 | 2 |
Ivan drew attention to the numbers, highlighted in color in the table, and came to a complete delight. In order to dispel all doubts at the expense of HPE Moonshot, Ivan , specialists from Elecard promised him to help deploy the CodecWorks software on all the cartridges in the chassis. And taught how to do this work with their own hands. After just one hour, the man was able to assess the power of the transcoding platform in full:
| System | Inlet flow resolution | Number of transcoded programs per cartridge | Total number of transcoded programs on the Moonshot chassis | Number of transcoded programs / Unit | W / stream (typical) |
| HPE MoonShot with GPU acceleration | 576i @ 25FPS | 36 | 1620 | 377 | 1.4 |
| 1080i @ 25FPS | 14 | 630 | 147 | 3.6 |
According to the test results, Ivan made the following conclusions for himself:
- HP Moonshot Elecard CodecWorks 147 HD 1U 3,6 /. .
- 14 HD 1U, HP Moonshot + Elecard CodecWorks 11 .
- O HPE Moonshot Elecard CodecWorks 630 HD «» . , IP- .
- , HPE Moonshot 4.3 U .
- HP Moonshot , 1U.
- HP Moonshot , - , .
- HP Moonshot . HW .
- HP Moonshot (CAPEX OPEX) , 1 U .
Finally, at Elecard, the peasant was told that at the moment, using the latest HPE ProLiant m710x cartridge with Intel Xeon E3-1585Lv5 and IntelIris Pro Graphics P580 processors, 4K HEVC content transcoding can be performed, for clarity, here is a factory test card:
| Cartridge performance | The number of simultaneously transcoded channels (30 fps) | The number of simultaneously transcoded channels (50/60 fps) | |
| 1080p-to-1080p | AVC-to-HEVC | 6 | 3 |
| HEVC-to-HEVC | 6 | 3 | |
| 4K-to-4K | AVC-to-HEVC | one | one |
| HEVC-to-HEVC | one | one | |
Ivan immediately got a new benefit: with HPE Moonshot and Elecard CodecWorks, you can implement modern UHD television services, and save money on server hardware by installing cartridges in existing chassis. The fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, all leaders have a friendly lesson.
On the road:
Quickly the fairy tale affects, yes for a long time the present is being done. Many difficult tests have befallen our hero in the campaign for a wonderful product. With honor, Vanya coped with the challenge that came to him in an unconventional way, from the power of the unknown. Especially worthy of us is the fact that he found the little thing needed in his native land, and Russian people were his help. Is it fair to call Russian devices (coders, decoders, and so on) if the equipment is assembled on the basis of import servers? The answer is simple: if you use Chinese ingredients to make sausage, and the recipe is written with your hand, will the product be Chinese? Here is a similar situation.
Of course, under the “Russian TV equipment” you should not understand that it is assembled entirely from domestic components. It is probably difficult to find a foreign manufacturer of electronic equipment with a 100% own production cycle. I will say more, all manufacturers of electronic devices in the television industry, there has been a trend of migration to industrial hardware computing systems. This is a general trend dictated by scientific and engineering achievements and economic considerations. It’s just the right time for successful software makers. They have now gained a certain independence in the choice of platform partners for the implementation of intellectual ideas invested in software. By the way, Elekard with a creative, in terms of creating software, was always in order.Well-known foreign companies often and with pleasure in past years offered to make joint interesting projects and contracts. As of today, Elecard devices fully comply with industrial requirements, brought to the stage of confident production and feel great in Russia and in world markets.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/305944/
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