A Video Studio Over Ethernet - Can it be done?

mikejz84 asks: "I am working on a design for a college campus TV station. Right now I am trying to find a way to do live events on campus. The link at most would be about a mile and a half. I was thinking microwave, but want something easier. Our campus has a gigabit ethernet backbone, I am wondering if there are any solutions for remote-to-studio links that would work over ethernet and still have very hight quality video? Idealy, I would like to have it where I can send straight DV across Ethernet Live."

Comments

You have problems? We have answers.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Right now I am trying to find a way to do live events on campus."

Mobile or fixed points?

"The link at most would be about a mile and a half. I was thinking microwave, but want something easier."

If you're thinking microwave then I'm thinking mobile. A licensed frequency band may be needed.

"Our campus has a gigabit ethernet backbone"

Who else is on this backbone?

"I am wondering if there are any solutions for remote-to-studio links that would work over ethernet and still have very hight quality video?"

Yes you can send DV video over ethernet.

"Idealy, I would like to have it where I can send straight DV across Ethernet Live."

Encapsulated DV, yes.

Firewire over Tcpip?

[bentfork]

I though a firewire over ip solution shouldn't be to hard to find. However when I did a google search I found a lot of dislexics out there really talking about "IP over Firewire". query

My guess is that this is what you are looking for DV Stream on IEEE1394 Encapsulated into IP

You may also want to look at The Comet Project if you are willing to buy some custom hardware (non english)

Re:Firewire over Tcpip?

[dissy]

Just a nitpick, but they are not dislexics at all.

IP over firewire and firewire over IP are two very very different things that serve different purposes.
IP over firewire fills the more common need (IP networking), and thus it is talked about more.

While firewire is indeed more than just the hardware layer, it is a protocol, its generally easier to encode your video into ANY other format and then send over IP than to use firewire over IP. This is why you almost never see it mentioned.
While this guy is indeed looking for this solution, do keep in mind that most common and lower end video hardware does not support firewire still, and even older but Very high end video hardware did not support it. When one spends $10k on a camera they arnt very quick to toss it for something new.

Three words - Q, O and S

[jgaynor]

Whatever solution you choose, the ONLY thing that will ensure good quality if you do run video over an IP network is QoS. While average load won't squash a tv-quality signal, little spikes here and there will. Quality of service standards will 'reserve' a portion of that backbone for your video. Low Latency Queuing (LLQ) QoS is probably your best bet if the video is time sensitive. Keep in mind, however, that even though you may have a gigabit backbone, your network edge probably hums to the tune of only 100Meg, with gigabit aggregation. Your video will be limited by this more than the backbone.

On a seperate note, your school (most likely) has dark fiber. When an institution trenches MILES Of fiber, they don't just pull a single strand through and then call it a day. That would be like building a 4 car garage to house your bicycle. They pull multiple bundles, each bundle containing over a dozen pairs. SOME of these pairs HAD to be allocated for video usage - talk to your physical plant people and light up some of that unused fiber. Once you terminate an unused strand it can be used for any purpose later, so even if your project is only temporary the school does not 'lose' said strand. You get your studio, higher-ups get the satisfaction of a slightly higher return on investment and the school paper can write a cheesy story about it.

I'll second on the VBricks

[Jjeff1]

I've installed the units from VBrick, they are in fact used by cable companies to do just what you are attempting. You might need to check with the network admins to look at QoS settings to make sure you get the best signal you can.

VideoLAN

[brendan_orr]

A possibility is VideoLAN which, while not able to send raw data across the network, can stream mpeg-1, -2, and -4, as well as other formats/codecs. For direct data streaming, netcat is a possibility. However, like stated in a brother post, the traffic on the network is an important aspect to consider.

These are "poor-man" methods, so the choice is up to you if you want to use these or a more professional method of streaming.

Re:VideoLAN

[sunya]

We have a setup working on VideoLan working with Kfir hardware encoders and Aminet 103s from Amino Commnuications (STB's) working with 2 MBits!! Each costs about USD 200.

depends

[hak1du]

It depends on what you mean by "very high quality" and "solution".

First of all, Gigabit Ethernet is plenty fast for even the highest quality video, so technically, there is no problem.

You may be able to get some black box with video in on one end and Ethernet out on the other, but it's likely to be pretty expensive.

The generic solution is to do it with computers. You need a real-time video capture card, a server computer, a streaming video server that accepts video from the card, a client computer, and a video decoder (that may be as simple as a regular graphics card with TV output). If we are talking about "high quality" at TV resolutions, there are lots and lots of solutions available for that.