Almost Live from NAB: Vitec Brings HEVC/H.265 to the Field

[Note: This sponsored interview was recorded at NAB 2015.]

Not only is Vitec one of the first with HEVC/H.265 encoder, it's made that encoder small enough for remote teams shooting video in the field. At NAB, Eli Garten, Vitec's vice president of product management, explained the benefits.

"HEVC/H.265 is able to reduce up to 50 percent of the bandwidth compared to legacy H.264 applications," Garten said. "What Vitec really is bringing to the table is the ability to take HEVC from server rooms from the big chassis base computers, and activate this codec from the field by having a small, low-power, small footprint appliance that can save bandwidth, and increase video quality when you produce video at the field or on the move, and need to send it back to the headquarters."

While HEVC isn't used by mainstream content distributors just yet, it has already found a home with specific verticals.

"We are definitely the first to produce a field size unit so the demand is only starting. We've seen HEVC being used for contribution and for satellite transmission from the head ends in the past year, but it's definitely at its early stages," Garten explained. "There are specific verticals where HEVC becomes a critical technology, a game changer essentially, which is military, medical, as well as corporate for corporate communications. These customers are easier to tackle because their environments are fairly closed."

For more on Vitec's portable encoder, watch the interview below.

Eric:   Hi I'm Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, editor of Streaming Media magazine here with Eli Garten of Vitec. He's the VP of product management and we're here to talk about what Vitec is showing off at this year's NAB 2015 and you've got some pretty cool stuff as far as I've seen. Can you talk a little bit about what you're highlighting here?

Eli:      Absolutely. Thanks for having us. We have a very exciting NAB this year. We have our first and world first HEVC hardware portable encoder. We've worked tirelessly for the last three years to produce our own hardware based codec and we're featuring the codec inside a very nice form factor small, field ready appliance. MGW Ace.

Eric:               MGW Ace. How does the MGW Ace impact what producers are able to do with H.265?

Eli:      As everybody claims, HEVC/H.265 is able to reduce up to 50 percent of the bandwidth compared to legacy H.264 applications. What Vitec really is bringing to the table is the ability to take HEVC from server rooms from the big chassis base computers, and activate this codec from the field by having a small, low power, small footprint appliance that can save bandwidth, and increase video quality when you produce video at the field, or on the move, and need to send it back to the headquarters or the studios.

Eric:               What kind of producers and what kind of applications are a good fit and should be looking at the MGW Ace?

Eli:                  Any field broadcasting, news gathering, contributions from the field; any video, point-to-point streaming, that has very limited bandwidth links between the sending point and receive point where you want to achieve either higher quality or just the bit rate in order to squeeze in more services. Pretty much any field application can take advantage of HEVC this way.

Eric:   What sort of uptake are you seeing with HEVC right now? Is it still something that people have on the road map but aren't using? I assume this product wouldn’t be on the market or you wouldn't be introducing it now if there wasn't a demand for it today in the field.

Eli:                  We are definitely the first to produce a field size unit so the demand is only starting. We've seen HEVC being used for contribution and for satellite transmission from the head ends in the past year, but it's definitely at its early stages. The IRDs are only now starting to show up, so the receivers and the whole ecosystem has to adjust. There are specific verticals where HEVC becomes a critical technology, a game changer essentially; which is military, medical, as well as corporate for corporate communications. These customers are easier to tackle because their environments are fairly closed so they have control of both the sender side and the receive side. It's easier for them to adopt a HEVC work flow. But definitely on the broadcast side it's going to take some time. Still we are very excited about having the first portable encoder and we're looking forward to deploying it in the field and giving the customer the ability to save a significant amount of bandwidth.

Eric:               Right, right, excellent, excellent. That's the MGW Ace from Vitec. I've been speaking with Eli Garten, here at NAV 2015.

 

This article is Sponsored Content