Lumen Technologies will use Evertz’ SCORPION Smart Media Processing Platform for its contribution network that connects to major stadiums in the US for live sports.
Lumen Technologies develops and supplies networking, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), edge cloud, security and collaboration services. Lumen’s Vyvx Broadcast Solutions, the company’s digital video transmission services, designs end-to-end digital transmission for live events and on-demand video.
Lumen Vyvx Broadcast services include IP video acquisition, distribution and delivery services that run on top of a fibre backbone and global edge network. They cover secure content transport supporting the major video broadcasting standards. Users can also develop custom connectivity based on their own combination of fibre and satellite to support their digital video transmission requirements, from contribution feed to playout. Provisioning, monitoring and managing services for full-stream control is done via the Vyvx online portal.
Lumen invested in the Evertz’ SCORPION Smart Media Processing Platform to upgrade its Vyvx features by enhancing its ability to support customers with multiple UHD and 1080p HDR video signals. Their team will be using SCORPION for its contribution network that connects to major stadiums in the US for live sports.
Evertz SCORPION Platform
“The SCORPION ecosystem has the range of media edge processing, networking integration, processing density and modularity that we need at all interfaces – video, audio, data and trunk – to allow us to efficiently deploy and operate high quality contribution services,” said David Robison, Principal Architect at Lumen. “For Vyvx customers it will mean lower latency, expanded interface options, and increased service throughput within a reduced space and power footprint.”
Evertz’ SCORPION is a flexible, versatile platform that can adapt to the evolving needs of Lumen’s customers. The platform is based on input and output modules (MIOs), which are a type of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) capable of combining format-agnostic processing, conversion and routing functions. They support any type of network transport, including dark fibre and managed IP networks.
The SCORPION MIO-BLADE-Z21, an FPGA-based compute module, contains licensable apps for media processing, conversion and codecs -- such as JPEG XS -- all of which introduce flexibility and agility at the network edge. With minimal disruption, Lumen is able to adapt to their customers’ requirements, now and in the future.
For network transport, the pluggable I/O allows flexibility at both the network and application layer. The SCORPION-SX18 supports dark fibre over CWDM, standards-based IP networking (including SMPTE ST 2110 and JPEG XS) using 10, 25, 40 or 100GbE interfaces. With the SCORPION MIO-XPS, a streaming H.264/HEVC encoder/decoder, Lumen’s users can optionally transport video, audio or data streams over the public Internet using SRT, RIST or Zixi protocols.
The SCOPRION system’s resources, connectivity and monitoring are managed by Evertz’ VistaLINK PRO and IRM orchestration and network management software. IRM (for Intelligent Resource Management) tools handle the orchestration, control and scheduling of the edge resources and network connectivity of the SCOPRION platform. All facility broadcast devices including router mappings can be modelled into a GUI. When assets are added to the IRM system, it allows dynamic configuration and routing.
VistaLINK PRO, a single interface to manage the entire operational system, monitors and generates real-time reporting and analysis on the system’s health. It has components for customising GUIs and dashboards, setting up a remote system with a web client, and configuration. www.evertz.com
