Matrox Video bills its Origin software-centric framework as “the Switzerland of live production,” and is expanding on its geography with the new Matrox Origin Fabric SDK.
As the media industry transitions from hardware setups to ones based on software, the need for scalable and interoperable solutions has arguably never been greater. Matrox has been pushing open source standards for some time and headlines its IBC exhibit with a software development platform for scaling production in the cloud.
“Origin is like Switzerland,” Francesco Scartozzi, VP Sales & Business Development tells RedShark News. “It's a fundamental technology that enables solutions. Effectively it gives us the ability to work with multiple vendors, which is what we've been doing for many, many years with IO cards under the hood.”
Matrox Origin is billed as a “software-centric live production framework.” It transforms rigid, hardware-bound processes into flexible workflows running on standard IT infrastructure, on-premises or in the cloud. According to Scartozzi, this allows broadcasters to scale productions of any size, centralise resources, and accelerate content turnaround while reducing costs.
“Budgets were coming down and broadcasters had to continue to create great content, but at scale. They began to rethink about what tools they we're using. They wanted to use the standard IT equipment, networking and graphics cards and to turn the PC into a very visible piece of gear.
“From a Matrox perspective, what they needed wasn't very far from what we've traditionally been doing. Somebody has to take a role in terms of the plumbing. It is in Matrox DNA to be the enabling technology. That's where Origin came from.
“We looked at the networking equipment, the GPUs and CPUs, and said, ‘We need something that makes IT components which were not built with video and broadcast in mind to become media aware’.
That means having to rethink how video is processed whilst respecting broadcast principles. It means asynchronous processing. It sounds geeky, but at the end of the day, all it means is to go as fast as possible.”
Origin effectively allows for connectivity and control of the transport layer across various workflows including live. The input to Origin could be ST 2110, SDI, or MPEG streams over SRT, it doesn’t matter.
“When somebody looks at Matrox, they see a hardware manufacturer, but with Origin the inputs could be from a Matrox card or from Ross or Chyron or anyone else. Once you're in Origin, the file is just information that needs to get processed as quickly as possible.”
What’s more, Origin aligns with the EBU-led Media eXchange Layer (MXL) project (announced earlier this year) which aims to establish an open framework for real-time media exchange.
“Origin actually predates MXL,” says Scartozzi. “The EBU looked at us and finally said ‘We need to create a common media exchange layer’. To Origin, MXL becomes another input.”
Matrox Origin Fabric, launched here at IBC, is a low-level SDK designed for developers to share content among media applications using the most efficient connections available. Scartozzi says it has already been tested.
The MXL project is collaboration between the EBU and North American counterpart NABA and the nonprofit Linux Foundation. Participating EBU members include BBC, SWR, SR, and CBC in Canada along with vendors on a steering committee Grass Valley, Riedel, Lawo, Nvidia, and AWS. Other vendors who support MXL are Appear, Intel, Telos Alliance, and, of course, Matrox.
“Traditional, single-purpose hardware creates further limitations on broadcasters, as it cannot be easily repurposed for new productions,” adds Scartozzi.
Add to this the reality of geographically distributed teams and equipment, concerns over reliability and fast uptime, and the growing demand for leaner, highly skilled crews, and the production environment has never been more complex.
“Despite these challenges, the opportunity is clear,” says Scartozzi. “Moving to software-centric, IT-based COTS infrastructure allows broadcasters to unlock flexibility, scalability, and efficiency across the entire production chain.”