SMPTE 2110 and Live Streaming Production

Learn more about live streaming production at Streaming Media East 2022.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Corey Behnke: SMPTE 2110--okay, I'm going to nerd out here--was released in 2017. People, it's 2021! And in 2017, this idiot right here thought that NAB in April was going to have SMPTE 2110 cameras. So what SMPTE 2110 does is two really huge things. One, it gets precision time protocol (which is actually SMPTE 2059), which is the first time since like 1957 or something we've changed timecode protocol, which is incredible. The timecode we've all been using is 60, 70 years old. It's awesome. But by having precision time protocol and adding the new standard SMPTE 2110, we're able to have uncompressed video over IP.

So you might say, "Hey, why is that different than NDI?" What NewTek did--brilliantly, by the way--is they came out with an IP standard of their own. The only thing they didn't add--and they're actually adopting this very fast--was QoS (quality of service) and quality control, which SMPTE, by adding the PTP standard, added.

So the thought was, everybody would move to IP using SMPTE 2110 Now I I've talked to many software developers who are like, "SMPTE 2110--I would never do that." And so I'm an idiot, and I like to do things that I think are going to be the standard. And SMPTE has been the standard since before we were all born. SMPTE was the way forward. The Society of Motion, Picture and Television Engineers created these standards, and SMPTE 2110 is pretty awesome.

What it does is, it allows you to put everything on an IP network. Right now, ours is on a 100-gig Mellanox switch. And so we have to convert our SDI or NDI and our SRT into the SMPTE 2110 uncompressed standard. Now, what that does is it does the things that you love about NDI and SRT. You can duplicate and replicate and mirror your streams. So now, if I put a stream here, I don't need a DA. I don't need a multiviewer. I can get that stream and send it anywhere that I want.

So it has all the features of NDI. It's just an uncompressed format. Now it's very, very expensive. And I don't recommend anybody go down that path unless you have a broadcast facility that demands it. But it's really freaking cool. And I don't think it's dead. We're slowly moving SDI away from there. I think you're going to be in a world where you have NDI, SRT, and SMPTE 2110 living and existing peacefully together.