Zixi Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP)
Zixi’s proprietary Software-Defined Video Platform or SDVP is the tight integration of four components that enable broadcast-quality live video workflows to be intelligently and centrally provisioned, deployed, managed, and monitored using software and integrated devices, regardless of the underlying network infrastructure. Employed by traditional broadcasters, OTT broadcast services, service providers to source, manage, and distribute live events and 24/7 live linear channels over any IP network, protocol, cloud provider, and/or edge device.
- Protocols & Containers – The SDVP accepts over 17 industry protocols and containers, advancing the market-leading Zixi protocol while adding additional value to tangential offerings from other vendors, standards, and open-sourced initiatives. Most customers rely on the Zixi protocol for transport as it is congestion and network-aware and can dynamically adjust to varying network conditions and employ forward error correction (FEC) techniques for error-free video delivery.
- Video Solutions Stack – Zixi’s Video Solutions Stack provides essential tools and core media processing functions for broadcast-quality transport that corrects for packet loss and jitter. Patented Hitless Failover techniques provide 99.9999%+ reliable transport between sources and receivers. The Video Solutions Stack also provides broadcasters with enhanced tools to streamline workflows including protocol switching, analytics, live 4K transcoding and repackaging, recording, time-shifted delivery, and auto-slating.
- Intelligent Data Platform – Zixi is constantly incorporating analytics, event correlation, AI and Machine Learning tools in its platform to aggregate a user’s historical and real-time metadata and present it back to them to help better predict downtime, content quality, trends, and more in the form of alerts, notifications, and background monitoring.
- ZEN Master – With Zixi’s ZEN Master control plane, cost-effectively manage and monitor complex deployments at scale and configure and orchestrate live broadcast channels across protocols and the Zixi Enabled Network. ZEN Master allows for control of the edge, network, and cloud with full telemetry visualization of network streams. It offers essential monitoring and management tools like workflow visualization, alerting, history, automation, scheduling, reporting, and root cause analysis across complex media supply chains.
Once users adopt the SDVP and install the software components, they can choose to send or receive live video streams using the Zixi protocol or one of the 16 supported protocols. With the SDVP, users can conduct protocol switching, handle up to 5Gb+ streams in 4K and now 8K video, and change stream parameters without stopping the stream. SDVP allows for high availability with high redundancy and can run on premise or on any cloud.
Users can take advantage of its Video Solutions Stack capabilities such as analytics, hitless failover and bonding across diverse ISPs to ensure high reliability and encrypt content with AES 256 encryption and DTLS for best-in-class security. The Video Solutions Stack’s unique, patented hitless failover techniques ensure reliability, and its robust analytics suite provides atomic-level telemetry on stream health that allows users to address any issues impacting QoS before the consumer’s QoE is affected. The analytics solution employs machine learning techniques to provide a real-time estimated PSNR (ePSNR) with no reference video required, helping the user determine if content providers are meeting SLAs for contribution stream quality.
ZEN Master integration allows remote access to the UIs of Zixi-integrated devices and software across the Zixi Enabled Network for optimal monitoring and control from one centralized control plane. With the ZEN Master control plane, users have extensive visibility into and control over workflows that go across Zixi-enabled multi-party supply chains, with the ability to leverage alerting, extensive history graphs, automated toolsets, and scheduling and reporting capabilities that abstract complexity to reduce engineering requirements and allow media organizations to leverage operational resources, providing democratized access with geographic agility.
The Zixi SDVP architecture shows how a live linear broadcast or event is ingested through Zixi Edge Compute (ZEC) or a Zixi embedded device at acquisition. ZEC encapsulates the stream in the Zixi transport protocol and delivers point to point or point to multi-point over standard IP connections to Zixi Broadcaster (ZB). Zixi Broadcaster can be deployed on premise or in the cloud with the ability to monitor streams anywhere along the path. For management, processing and larger scale distribution capabilities, Zixi can support complex production workflows for live events, including transcoding, recording, and more, all in a clustered environment that supports reliability and scalability. The stream is distributed through a CDN, OTT, or endpoint device, running Zixi to any device.
