NTT DATA NRT & NTT DATA Hyper Encoding Solutions

NTT DATA NRT & NTT DATA Hyper Encoding Solutions

Challenges & Trends Rapid technological evolution, content distribution challenges and users expectations are transforming the broadcasting industry. Quality and accessibility of the contents are the success factors in the battle for audience and the main drive for future change. Competing effectively in the OTT (Over The Top) arena and optimizing the quality and the efficiency of the distribution of the traditional channels are some of the main topics that broadcasters have to consider. Distinctive and high quality content which is always accessible, attracts a wider and loyal audience. Why NTT DATA? NTT DATA is a value-oriented and client-focused organization with a fundamental belief in long-term partnerships with its clients. NTT DATA s profound experience as system integrator in some of the largest telco and media companies worldwide, helps ensure the right approach for an effective deployment of its encoding products within the specific client s environment. NTT DATA combines local flexibility and agility with its centrally coordinated access to global resources so that its clients can benefit from local high-level expertise and high-quality competence. NTT DATA s approach Leveraging on industry experience, NTT DATA has developed and launched a disruptive video encoding solutions portfolio, designed to offer an unmatched quality/bitrate ratio. This portfolio includes two distinct products: NTT DATA NRT, a solution for near-real-time encoding that applies an innovative process and approach to the compression of linear channels. Through very accurate and multi-pass encoding, NRT ensures the same video quality of best-in-class live encoders with a bandwidth reduction of up to 40%. NTT DATA Hyper is a software for automated batch transcoding, built on an advanced grid computing architecture leveraging on innovative features such as perceptual-aware encoding and adaptive encoding. Hyper offers top class quality/bitrate ratios in AVC/HEVC ABR encoding up to 4K. The last Hyper release includes a new module called ice ( intelligent Cloud Encoding ). ice implements a unique patent-pending paradigm, designed to intelligently decouple external content ingestion from final transcoding with great benefits in terms of network usage and time-to-publish. 2

NTT DATA NRT 2.0 - Beyond linear encoding The solution NRT 2.0 is the latest version of the patent-pending ultra-efficient live encoder by NTT DATA. NRT (Near Real Time) Encoding is a video compression paradigm that applies off-line compression techniques to the live encoding of linear channels. The input signal (HD-SDI) is acquired, segmented, encoded, stitched and muxed to the output format. Segments encodings are distributed across multiple computing nodes (onpremises or private-cloud based grid) and processed in parallel. This paradigm enables the use of slow and accurate encoding techniques like multiple pass and NTT DATA s specific Adaptive Encoding techniques. NRT provides an encoding accuracy and performance out of reach for a common live encoder. The bitrate saving compared to the best-in-class live encoders can be up to 40%. To apply this compression techniques, NRT introduces a pre-defined and constant processing delay (not less than 5 minutes). It is designed for TV channels that do not broadcast live events, including timeshift channels. NRT supports both AVC and HEVC with resolutions up to 4K. It produces output in the MPEG-TS format for DVB-S/T broadcasting and optionally multi-bitrate HLS and DASH. What makes the solution innovative NRT 2.0 has three main distinctivie features compared with traditional live encoders. Accurate multi-pass live encoding Applying accurate multi-pass compression in live encoding, NRT 2.0 surpasses high-end live encoders in quality/bitrate ratio. NRT 2.0 is able to offer, at 4.5 Mbit/s, the same perceptual quality which is usually delivered at 8Mbit/s by a traditional live encoder (H.264 encoding, 1080i50). NRT Encoding focuses on broadcasters that operate on Cable, DVB-S/T, IPTV and intend to optimize the cost/efficiency of channels distribution. The NRT 2.0 Encoding solution is of great value especially in bandwidth constrained scenarios like DVB-T where every channel is valuable. Broadcasters usually have a wide portion of channels to which the NRT paradigm can be applied; for example channels that broadcast films, television series, documentaries, cartoons and in general pre-recorded material. Many broadcasters have 70-80% of channels with these characteristics and such broadcasters could consistently reduce the bandwidth used for delivery or increase the number of channels offered at their current overall capacity. Furthermore, the new multi-bitrates output option allows NRT 2.0 to be used for ultra-optimized IPTV, OTT and catch-up TV services. NRT architecture enables significant benefits also for 5k broadcasting. Its efficency allows to distribute 4k linear channel in AVC with a bitrate of 12-16 Mbit/s. 3

Distributed live encoding The new NRT 2.0 encoder extends the original live encoding technique of NRT by using distributed processing resources. NRT 2.0 acquires the video from HD-SDI, segments it and distributes encodings across multiple nodes in a grid computing environment (onpremises/private cloud) environment. The processing power that can be allocated on the encoding of a channel is several times higher than traditional live encoding and this enables an higher encoding efficiency. A unique, scalable computing infrastructure can be used to encode multiple channels in parallel with an efficient usage of resources and advanced fail-over configurations. The distributed, multi-channel encoding architecture also enables a further encoding optimization named deterministic bitrate allocation; conceptually similar to statistical muxing, it allows a dynamic allocation of bitrate according to the local channel complexity granting an overall aggregated constant bitrate in the whole MPTS stream. Adaptive live encoding NRT 2.0 analyses the video to calculate the best parameterization for each specific video segment. This is particularly useful at low bitrate and is enabled by default when encoding 1080i50 @ 3Mbit/s or below. The adaptive encoding techniques can work jointly with the deterministic bitrate allocation to maximize the quality/bitrate ratio of an entire MPTS. NRT uses adaptive perceptual aware encoding optimization to maximize the quality/bitrate ratio. Channel 1 Computing Layer Output Player Manager Layer Output Channel 2 SPTS Channel 3 Channel... Broadcast System/Playout Video HD-SDI-SD-SDI Audio PCM - Dolby E - PASS-through Subtitle OP47 Phisical Grid On Premise Virtualizated Grid MPTS HLS MPEG-2 Transport Stream over ASI and/or UDP/IP Job Queue Private Cloud Grid Player Queue Unicast/multicast streaming compliant with DVB, ATSC SPTS or MPTS format (up to 80Mbps overall bitrate) NRT 2.0: Functional Scheme 4

NTT DATA Hyper - VOD encoding to the max The solution NTT DATA Hyper is advanced software for automated batch transcoding of videos for OTT VoD services. It enables the creation of ultra-optimized, tailor-made encoding pipelines that leverage innovative features such as adaptive encoding techniques, advanced grid computing architecture and intelligent Cloud Encoding (ice, patent-pending). Built around a sophisticated hybrid cloud on-premises architecture, HYPER offers top-class quality/bitrate ratios in AVC/HEVC ABR encoding up to 4K. The ice option allows fast transfer and easy storage in the cloud of very big source files, such as those required by FullHD/4K encoding. What makes the solution innovative Hyper focuses on companies that want to maximize the efficiency of their OTT services, reduce the cost of distribution and enable 4K streaming. Maximizing quality/bitrate ratio and ABR streaming efficiency is NTT DATA s main commitment. Whether the client wants to save bandwidth without losing quality or wants to offer a FullHD / 4K streaming service accessible to the widest audience possible, Hyper can provide significant help. Its main innovative features are: Hybrid Grid Architecture Hyper is designed around an efficient hybrid grid architecture that allows high scalability and flexibility. Computational nodes can be allocated on the premises to handle constant demands and in the cloud to handle computing peaks. Furthermore, the processing can be configured to maximise throughput or to minimize the end-to-end encoding delay (useful for catch-up TV services). Adaptive Encoding Thanks to Adaptive Encoding strategies, NTT DATA Hyper can dynamically change encoding parameterizations according to content complexity. With this dynamic approach to encoding, the overall bandwidth consumption of a video streaming service can be reduced (30-40%) and the average user experience can be increased. Ultra optimized AVC NTT DATA has optimized AVC encoding to the maximum and it competes with current implementations of HEVC encoding. Using Adaptive Encoding and ultra-optimized AVC, Hyper can offer 1080p @ 2.5-3.5Mbit/s and 4K @ 10-14Mbit/s and a 1080p @ 1.5-2 Mbit/s specifically optimized for the retina display of Tablets. 5

ice - intelligent Cloud Encoding The ice module was conceived and designed from quite a simple observation: to ensure an optimal quality at acceptable bitrate a transcoding system should be able to deal efficiently with high quality source files whose size can also reach several hundred GBs especially for 4K sources. To mitigate the stress on network connections, improve scalability of the encoding infrastructure and de-couple roles and responsibilities of content providers vs OTT/Media Service providers, NTT DATA has defined a new encoding paradigm based on an innovative approach comprising two different and separate steps. The patent-pending solution has been called ice (intelligent Cloud Encoding) because one of its possible application and value is to simplify and accelerate cloud transcoding overcoming the typical issue that in this case is the bandwidth required to move high quality big files into the cloud. With ice, the high quality sources are pre-processed (first step) by appliances positioned as near as possible to the production centers. A specific encoding mode called CPQ (Constant Perceived Quality) is used. This technique allows a controllable perceptual quality with high efficiency, unconstrained VBR encoding and is able to produce smart mezzanines an order of magnitude smaller than the sources. Therefore ice increases up to ten-times, the capability to transfer high quality videos across the Internet (for content acquisition or cloud encoding) but also to store/cache intermediate mezzanine files near the encoder for faster re-encoding/re-purposing of the library. The second step of encoding can be easily performed on premises as well as in the cloud. Hyper uses metadata produced by the first step to accelerate the final encoding, reconstruct part of the lost information from the original source and to apply specific adaptive encoding techniques. Transcoding Packaging Output ice Any Input File Smart Mezzanine for Cloud Content Analysis Adaptive Encoding In the Cloud OTT ABR Streaming HLS - SS - DASH On-Premise Hyper: Functional Scheme 6

Some of NTT DATA s main projects The encoding solution developed by NTT DATA for Sky Italy represents a major milestone for the broadcast industry. By applying an innovative process and approach to the compression of linear channels, it allows a significant reduction in the bandwidth required to transmit video content in linear mode. This will result in both a reduction of costs and an expansion of the offering to the customers. We are delighted by the solution developed together with NTT DATA. We have a track record of investing in new technologies and the potential applications for NTT DATA NRT are numerous, providing us with a significant competitive advantage over other operators. NRT Encoder is an extremely valuable project to Sky Italy. Massimo Bertolotti, Head of Innovation and Multimedia Distribution Sky Italy is using Hyper VOD for Sky s new on-demand service (on STBs), Sky Go s on-demand service (PC, Tablet and Smartphones) and Sky Online (PC, Tablet, Smartphones and Connected TV). NTT DATA has helped Sky to offer a high quality OTT experience. The use of Hyper for Sky Go and Sky Online allows us to provide our customers high quality VOD services. Massimo Bertolotti, Head of Innovation and Multimedia Distribution NTT DATA implemented Hyper to deliver La7 scatch-up service, allowing Italian viewers to experience digital broadcast quality through the web without delay or buffering, independently to the characteristics of their broadband connection. NTT DATA s solution has been the cornerstone to creating the La7 television channel, the first catch-up television on the Italian market, as we wanted it to be. Since we aimed to offer our viewers a full screen television experience on the web without bandwidth constraints, NTT DATA s Hyper allowed us to deliver excellent video quality with outstanding encoding efficiency. But, as we found out later during the process, it also delivered extraordinary compatibility features which made our contents ready to be deployed on almost every connected device that has come on the market in the last 4 years. Gianluca Visalli, Head of Multimedia La7 7

NTT DATA is a leading IT services provider and global innovation partner headquartered in Tokyo, with business operations in over 40 countries. Our emphasis is on long-term commitment, combining global reach with local intimacy to provide premier professional services varying from consulting and systems development to outsourcing. Ask the experts: Riccardo Ferrari, Senior Manager - Sales Mobile +39 3484013454, riccardo.ferrari@nttdata.com Stefano Crespi, Technical Head of Encoding Solutions Mobile +39 3483361266, stefano.crespi@nttdata.com NTT DATA Italia S.p.A. Viale Cassala 14A 20143 Milan, Italy Telephone +39 02 831251 www.nttdata.com/it Copyright 2014 NTT DATA Italia SpA 2014-09