Introduction to Zixi Broadcaster

the zixi broadcaster is the central component in the zixi video network zixi broadcaster takes video streams from zixi edge compute, and can process the stream, enabling transcoding, transmuxing, recording, and distribution in multiple bit rates and protocols to any device anywhere the zixi broadcaster is an intelligent and versatile video distribution component that may reside on premise at a customers’ site, on the customer's cloud, or offered by zixi as a cloud service zixi broadcaster offers the following features robust content delivery over ip communicates with zixi edge compute over udp based, video optimized protocols on private and public ip networks for maximal quality at a predictable latency adaptive bit rate dynamically adjusts stream rate to adapt to changing network conditions, using unicast or multicast, to meet specific application requirements transcoding transcodes to a variety of different profiles and bit rates format conversion – supports internet protocols hls/mpeg dash/rtmp/flv/mpeg ts over http recording store streams as mpeg ts files time shifting – records the stream to delay its broadcasting secure and rapid file transfer – accelerated and secure file transfers delivered at wire speed and accelerated http delivery including optimized playback of hls over udp vod stored files can be accessed on demand in multiple formats clustering and load balancing – supports cluster architectures to provide continuous uptime transport stream analyzer – mpeg ts etsi tr 101 290 analyzer (priorities 1 and 2) content analysis analysis of the stream's audio and video content, including audio levels, audio silence detection, frozen video detection, and more monitoring captures network and content specific statistical information in real time supports many to many and any to any gateway platform between udp (unicast/multicast), zixi protected stream (unicast/multicast), rtmp, or other supported formats network bonding with hit less fail over – reunites divided streams coming from multiple network channels into a single stream, enabling simultaneous load balancing between multiple networks and ensuring high availability of the stream hitless failover hitless failover for inputs enables undisrupted streaming when switching from one source to another zixi's new hitless failover feature is based on the smpte 2022 7 standard, which specifies “seamless” or hitless failover between binary identical streams with synchronized rtp headers ifb support a monitoring and cueing system for one way communication from the director or assistant director to on air talent or a remote location ifb support has been implemented in zixi broadcaster pull and udp outputs, allowing the decoder with zixi edge compute to send audio back to the encoder with zixi edge compute aes stream encryption and decryption udp, file and rtmp input streams can be encrypted by zixi broadcaster using a fixed key (aes 128, aes 192, aes 256), which can be entered into the input settings or automatically generated zixi broadcaster can also decrypt contribution streams using a matching key, or securely forward encrypted streams without being able to see or analyze the traffic mpts demuxing mpts streams can be demuxed into single spts input streams for specific programs scte 35 scte 35 markers found in the source input will be used to segment the stream and the #ext x cue in/#ext x cue out tags will be added to the manifest low latency hls zixi broadcaster supports low latency hls delivery using chunked transfer encoding, which starts sending an http response as chunks of data when they are ready before the complete response is available chunked transfer encoding can be use with transport stream (ts) segments and with fragmented mp4 (fmp4), which is also called common media application format (cmaf) for low latency hls and dash, zixi broadcaster must be used as an origin server high performance networking – in the high performance networking mode, zixi bypasses the server’s operating system to allow for 2x to 3x performance gains for udp, rtp, zixi, and rist traffic the traffic does not go through the cpu or the os kernel it is handled directly by the zixi broadcaster, so in addition to the performance gains there is also no traffic limitations per port, no queue per port, no buffer errors, etc 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 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 seamless protocol switching between 17 protocols 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 hitless failover and analytics and bonding 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 control plane 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 sdvp architecture 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 zixi transport stream protocol zixi’s transport stream protocol is a content and network aware protocol that dynamically adjusts to varying network conditions and employs error correction techniques for error free video streaming over ip with minimum overhead to physical bandwidth, this dynamic mechanism provides low end to end latency, removes jitter, recovers and re orders packets, smooths video delivery and regenerates video to its original form, all in real time zixi delivers outstanding performance (at low predictable latency), superior reliability (no packet loss) and broadcast grade video quality (sd, hd, and uhd) with no tradeoffs to delay, resolution or stutter streaming from one zixi enabled device/server to another zixi enabled device/server protects the stream from quality degradations along the path it enables the streaming of high quality video over any distance, while overcoming the varying network conditions of the public internet, where the amount of network errors, packet loss, jitter and out of order packets fluctuate "every second" the zixi transport stream protocol can be also deployed on part of the path for example, from a zixi feeder to a zixi broadcaster (zixi protected path) and on to the end user through udp or rtmp in this case, the path that has challenging conditions (e g long distance or unstable wireless conditions) will be protected by zixi and then delivered on to the end user on a standard udp or rtmp protocol zixi’s transport stream technology includes the following features for ultimate quality and security network sensing dynamic de jitter mpeg specific optimizations z arq error recovery z fec dynamic content aware forward error correction active multi path error recovery adaptive bitrate over udp, unicast or multicast rate control and congestion avoidance 256 bit aes transport encryption supported protocols input zixi protected transport mpeg ts over udp and/or rtp with smpte 2022 rtmp pull from cdns and/or other sources rtmp push rtmps rtsp input rist (tr 06 1) ndi transport stream files from local file system srt (configured via zen master or zixi api) output zixi protected transport mpeg ts over udp and/or rtp with smpte 2022 rtmp and rtmps push to cdns and/or other media servers; apple http live streaming (hls) adobe http dynamic streaming (hds) flv over http (http pseudo streaming) mpeg dash (dash264 profile) shoutcast ndi transport stream files to local file system re multiplex output streams to strict cbr for extensive compatibility with integrated receiver decoders (irds) srt (configured via zen master or zixi api) transcoding options zixi broadcaster can transcode a single input stream using multiple profiles the transcoder supports the following options video decoding – mpeg2, h 264/avc, h 265/hevc, raw video encoding – mpeg2, h 264/avc, h 265/hevc, raw audio decoding – aac, mpeg 1 audio layer i / ii / iii, mpeg 2 audio layer i / ii / iii, ac 3 (dolby digital), opus for ac 3, which can contain up to six discrete channels of sound, the transcoder only supports the left and right channels and will ignore the other channels audio encoding – aac, aac he (high efficiency) and aac hev2; pass through (no encoding) – any audio codec (mpeg1/2 / aac / ac 3, e ac 3 (dolby digital plus), opus recording options live stream inputs can be stored as mpeg ts files to a local disk drive or mounted drive multicast options multicast streams can be received or be sent by the zixi broadcaster zixi broadcaster serves as a gateway between unicast and multicast streams, while allowing reliable streaming over multicast adaptive options zixi broadcaster can create an adaptive group, subsequently editing, recording, or playing it in conjunction with dash, hls, hds or zixi you can also set a pre roll video/screen that will be played before the live streaming begins vod options zixi broadcaster supports vod (video on demand) playback of stored files in multiple formats such as ts, mp4, hls, flv latency considerations latency defines the delay in which the video stream will be delivered to the endpoint this delay is essentially a buffer that is used for additional processing, thereby improving the quality of video stream the latency should be considered based on the importance of immediacy for example, if the video requires interaction (e g between a reporter in the field and an anchor in the studio), the latency should be set to a minimum so that the interaction does not suffer from any delay latency can vary from tens of milli seconds to several seconds zixi protocol can start providing benefit from one frame (30ms), while increasing the latency will provide more robustness for the error recovery billing codes billing codes are used to identify and differentiate traffic on a zixi broadcaster a billing code can be added to sources, which represent inputs to a broadcaster, and to targets, which represent outputs from a broadcaster when a billing code is added to a source or target, zixi can track the traffic on that broadcaster input or output separately from other inputs and outputs on the same broadcaster typical use cases for using billing codes are differentiating between clients if you are receiving video content from different contributing clients or sending video content to multiple external organizations, you can designate distinct billing codes for each of your clients you can then assign the client’s billing code to each source or target associated with that client your organization will then be able to bill each of their clients according to their usage charging only for billable usage when zixi traffic is sent between distinct organizations, situations may arise in which the usage of only one of those organizations is billable for example, if the contributor is using a zixi broadcaster to send outputs as if it were zec, then only the receiving organization should be billed for that traffic in that case, the receiving organization can request a billing code and assign it to their targets they can then ask the contributor to assign the identical billing code to each of the sources that they are sending in this way, zixi will know to bill only the organization that is receiving the traffic billing codes are created by zixi personnel on the zixi customer portal for a particular organization zixi can create multiple billing codes for an organization, enabling them to apply different codes to different traffic all billing codes are password protected if you would like to use billing codes in your workflows, please discuss it with your zixi representative adding a billing code to a stream will not restart the stream