What’s New in Avid | Stream IO
Sometimes it is not only the destination that is important, but the journey to get there, too. The media industry’s journey from SDI to IP, marks another important milestone along the way with the latest release of what’s new in Avid | Stream IO.
Launched in August 2023, Avid | Stream IO is an innovative ingest and playout solution, available through subscription. It has seen aggressive development since then through the addition of more codecs and formats, including UHD, small and large channel configurations to expand the flexibility of the solution to meet diverse needs within the industry, and a host of other updates.
But the launch of Avid | Stream IO 2024.10 – available on October 31, 2024 – delivers a new set of capabilities which are vitally important for that journey to the IP-based future of many media businesses.
Avid | Stream IO has supported SDI ingest since launch, and the new release now makes the solution IP capable. This is both for uncompressed IP (VoIP) through the SMPTE 2110 standard, and for compressed IP streams such as SRT and RTMP. It now represents the ideal bridge for customers who now have an SDI-based infrastructure and plan to update their systems to gain the flexibility which IP can bring in the future.
Avid Senior Manager of Video Servers and Graphics, Martin Appleton, says these developments highlight the flexibility which Avid | Stream IO offers.
“With the addition of IP-based ingest and playout to the solution, Avid | Stream IO provides customers confidence that we are there to support their transition from SDI to IP,” Appleton explains.
Martin Appleton, Avid Senior Manager of Video Servers and Graphics
Avid | Stream IO supports two, four, or eight channels of ingest and playout. It is a software-only solution which runs on COTS hardware. It fits easily into any customer MediaCentral environment with Avid NEXIS storage, and can also work with non-Avid storage, ingesting both OP-Atom and OP1a media.
Avid | Stream IO is capable of multi-resolution recordings, ingesting both high quality proxy and high-resolution media simultaneously for efficient post-production workflows, with editors and journalists able to begin editing within seconds of the start of the ingest process in applications such as the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX, Media Composer, or Adobe Premiere Pro.
It can be controlled through a web-based remote console, with the capability to create playlists. For ingest, it can be controlled by MediaCentral | Acquire in MediaCentral | Cloud UX and MediaCentral | Capture. For playout it can be controlled by MediaCentral | Command. In addition to these Avid controllers, it can also be controlled by a wide variety of third-party ingest and playout controllers and studio automation solutions through VDCP or the OCIP API.
What’s new in Avid | Stream IO:
- Uncompressed IP-based ingest and playout through SMPTE 2110
- Compressed IP-based ingest and playout through SRT and RTMP in supported hardware configurations
- Support for DNxHD 1080p 50 and 59.94
- Extended hardware support for Supermicro servers (in addition to qualified Dell and HP machines)
- Extended telemetry monitoring
- Extended OSD (on-screen display) parameters
“We know that many customers still have a large SDI infrastructure, and that is not going to go away overnight, so we are meeting the requirement to provide them with a solution that addresses the need for SDI today, plus they have an IP capable solution primed for the future,” Appleton says.
Craig Wilson
Craig Wilson is a newsroom specialist with over thirty years of experience in the broadcast industry. Craig has held various roles with Avid and is now the Global Media and Cloud Product Evangelist and host of the Making the Media podcast.