AJA Video Systems is feeling bullish about its latest range of products that address signal flow management. Notable among these is the IP25-R about which senior product consultant, Abe Apt says, “I’m stoked!”
Costing sub $4000, the IP25-R is an IBC show launch. The device de-encapsulates SMPTE ST 2110 video, audio, and ancillary data with frame-accurate sync for output to baseband 12G-SDI and HDMI 2.0 devices.
“This is basically designed to be the new monitoring converter at high-end facilities running network IP video,” Apt says.
One cool thing is the low latency of the processing AJA is taking with its IP connectivity. Apt demonstrated a scenario with sources going in and out of AJA cards and to monitors running the signal through multiple processes with the timecodes matched.
“We can set the buffering to just 10 milliseconds or even 150 microseconds and then your delay is measured by a single line and way less than a frame. That’s pretty unheard of for this kind of complex IP workflow style. We're pretty stoked on that feature.”
The IP25-R includes dual 10/25GbE network ports, two HDMI 2.0 outputs, and four 12G-SDI BNC outputs, and delivers low-latency video up to 4K DCI (4096x2160p60) with HDR metadata handling.
“It’s super flexible,” he said. “You can do four channels of HD or two channels of Ultra HD, depending on colour spaces and bit depths, or a single channel of full fat 4K. Any video coming in via network connections can then be routed to any one of the unit’s outputs.
“It could be routed to multiple outputs or a combination. So you could have two channels of HD coming in and routed to HDMI outputs or a single channel of 4K coming in at the same time and coming out of one of the SDI ports.”
It can work with control applications from Riedel, Ross Video or Grass Valley and others. “The goal of all of our 2110 products is to essentially make it an open system because 2110 can be kind of scary for some people,” Apt says. “Managing all these new network standards from UDP and RTMP and RTSP and PTP – well it’s just a bunch of scary acronyms really. We really simplify it to the point where our interface is designed to be understood by anyone not grounded in IT.”
The IP25-R, like all of AJA’s newer, more powerful converters, is fitted into the same “rock solid” chassis. “I mean, you can run it over with a truck and it would just fine,” he says. “Just the amount of power you can put into this thing is much greater than a smaller mini converter because these are all active air (as opposed to passive air) cooling.
Also, they're silent. You could have this thing right next to you in a control room or studio and you wouldn’t hear a thing.”
That holds true for the UDC 4K, dubbed “the most powerful mini converter AJA has ever built” by Apt and another show launch.
It provides 12G-SDI/HDMI 2.0 conversion, 4K/UltraHD/2K/HD scaling, frame rate conversion, and frame synchronisation.
“It’s a Swiss Army knife type of tool. There's not a lot it doesn't do.”
In a departure from the norm for AJA it features a local user interface with menus for adjusting every single parameter. “You have HDMI input and SDI input. You can go get SDI in and have HDMI out. You can go SDI in and have four SDI outs. You can even have an SDI signal loop out of four outputs, but have it come out of the HDMI process. So it’s an up, down and cross converter.
“What’s unique for this type of converter is that it communicates with whatever monitor it’s hooked up to and sets itself to that resolution. That includes computer monitors too. This saves you from having to adjust your monitor based on what the box is actually outputting. All this is based on customer requests.”
The UDC 4K costs less than $1600 and AJA is taking orders now.
Finally, the latest Bridge Live 12G-4 is also the most powerful one of these boxes AJA has done. “We've upgraded the CPU, the GPU to a more modern motherboard and improved chipset.
The main difference between this $17,999 unit and the original Bridge Live is it will do four channels of UHD. It has 4x bi-directional 12G-SDI ports provide encoding, decoding, and transcoding between SDI and IP codecs/protocols including H.264, H.265, NDI, SRT, RTMP, and HLS. It supports applications including multichannel transport, streaming, remote production, and distribution encoding.
“The Bridge Live family are becoming remote productive powerhouses. Live events with minimal staffing means you’re basically just setting up cameras and they all run something like Bridge Live for encoding in various formats. It allows people to bring smaller productions to a larger audience with ease and we're seeing it in use from high school sports to smaller sports leagues.
“Plus, it's huge in corporate AV. Just imagine locking down a couple cameras in a big conference room and filming your CEO with a combined projector feed and presentations. It all goes into a Bridge Live then to some central hub for processing and mixing before distribution. It is just a massively convenient tool.”