At NAB 2024, Blackmagic has democratized SMPTE 2110 with palindromic PTP (Precision Time Protocol) for global microsecond accuracy synchronization in about 15 new hardware products. (We can think of PTP as a «precise genlock without any need for subcarrier».) Even though Blackmagic did not explicitly say it in is 2:12 duration video announcement for NAB 2024 (2 hours and 12 minutes embedded ahead), I suspect that Blackmagic likely chose to embrace and democratize SMPTE 2110 with palindromic PTP over NewTek’s acclaimed NDI (covered in many past articles-but now an independent company at NDI.video) because of the palindromic PTP advantage not present natively in NDI (despite a great proposal from Sienna). Blackmagic applied its new open standard códec (Blackmagic IP 10) without any licensing fee to make allow live high framerate 4K UHD fit with inexpensive 10G Ethernet on CAT-6 (category 6) cables with automatic setup (when connecting directly) and PoE (power over Ethernet). If my count is correct, Blackmagic introduced ≈15 new hardware products (many including SMPTE 2110 support with palindromic PTP support) covered separately in ProVideo Coalition, in addition to updating its software and camera firmware to make some existing Blackmagic cameras become native SMPTE 2110 devices. The new Blackmagic announced products and updates range from free to U$14,995. If you are unfamiliar with the SMPTE 2110 protocol, ahead you’ll find the details.

SMPTE 2110 is a suite of standards from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) that describes how to send digital media over an IP network.

SMPTE 2110 is intended to be used within broadcast production and distribution facilities where quality and flexibility are more important than bandwidth efficiency.

History

SMPTE 2110 was based on the TR-03 and TR-04 work published by the Video Services Forum on 12 November 2015. The first four parts of SMPTE 2110, -10, -20, -21 and -30, were published by SMPTE on 27 November 2017. Other parts, including recommended practices, were added later, and several parts were updated in 2022.

Standard

SMPTE 2110 is specified in several parts:

• ST 2110-10 – System architecture and synchronization: essences, RTP, SDP and PTP
• ST 2110-20 – Uncompressed video transport, based on SMPTE 2022-6
• ST 2110-21 – Traffic shaping and network delivery timing
• ST 2110-22 – Constant Bit-Rate Compressed Video transport
• ST 2110-30 – Audio transport, based on AES67
• ST 2110-31 – Transport of AES3 formatted audio
• ST 2110-40 – Transport of ancillary data
• ST 2110-43 – Transport of Timed Text Markup Language for captions and subtitles in systems conforming to SMPTE ST 2110-10.

ST 2110-10: System architecture and synchronization

There are several important features of ST 2110-10:

• Individual audio, video and ancillary data tracks or clips are carried as separate individual streams. These streams are referred to as “essences”, e.g., a 5.1 JPEG mp4 clip could have 9 essences: a video essence, 6 separate audio essences, and two closed caption essences, English and Chinese.
• Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is used to transmit streaming essences.
• Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is used to manage the connection and distribution of RTP streams including IP multicast one-to-many distribution.
• Precision Time Protocol (PTP) provides global microsecond accuracy timing of all essences. Synchronization is based on SMPTE 2059.

ST 2110-20: Uncompressed video transport

SMPTE 2110-20 defines the key requirements for transporting uncompressed video essence and is built on the IETF RFC 4175, RTP Payload Format for Uncompressed Video.

ST 2110-21: Transmission timing

SMPTE 2110-21 defines three classes of devices based on their transmission timing behavior: NL (for Narrow Linear), N (for Narrow), and W (for Wide). NL senders transmit at a constant bit rate. N senders may suspend transmission during the vertical blanking interval. W senders are intended to support software implementations of 2110 and adhere to less rigorous transmission timing requirements. A type W receiver should be able to receive from any type of sender.

ST 2110-22: Constant bit-rate compressed video transport

SMPTE 2110-22 defines the key requirements for transporting compressed video essence. The compression standard needs to provide a constant bitrate, a defined RTP payload and low latency to satisfy the needs of Live production. The majority of the SMPTE 2110-22 implementations uses the JPEG XS lightweight low latency compression standard  created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group to answer the requirements of the SMPTE 2110 standard. The JPEG XS codec has only a few video lines of latency in software and hardware implementations, which is less than 1 millisecond. SMPTE 2110-22 is used as an alternative to uncompressed video (SMPTE 2110-20) in live production environment. SMPTE 2110-22 is indeed very suitable to use less bandwidth in local live IP production, remote production, contribution or cloud-based production.

Recommended practices

The 2110 suite also includes SMPTE Recommended Practices:

• RP 2110-23, Single Video Essence Transport over Multiple ST 2110-20 Streams
• RP 2110-24, Special Considerations for Standard Definition Video Using SMPTE ST 2110-20
• RP 2110-25, Professional Media over Managed IP Networks: Measurement Practices

Source: Wikipedia

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FTC disclosure

Neither Blackmagic or NewTek has paid for this article. Both companies have sent Allan Tépper devices and NFR software to facilitate reviews. Some of the manufacturers listed above have contracted Tépper and/or TecnoTur LLC to carry out consulting and/or translations/localizations/transcreations. So far, none of the manufacturers listed above is/are sponsors of the TecnoTur, BeyondPodcasting, CapicúaFM or TuSaludSecreta programs, although they are welcome to do so, and some are, may be (or may have been) sponsors of ProVideo Coalition magazine. Some links to third parties listed in this article and/or on this web page may indirectly benefit TecnoTur LLC via affiliate programs. Allan Tépper’s opinions are his own. Allan Tépper is not liable for misuse or misunderstanding of information he shares.