Vivaro Media is using Appear’s X Platform to encode its live HD channel feeds from the Games in Santiago, preserving quality while rapidly scaling to handle an increasing number of cameras.
Vivaro Media, a specialist in global transport of live audiovisual content, is delivering a live media contribution from the upcoming 2023 Pan American Games, taking place in Santiago, Chile from 20 October to 5 November 2023. Responsible for encoding 10 live HD channels during the competition, the Vivaro Media team is deploying Appear’s X Platform for the project.
The X Platform’s power, space and operational efficiency was an important factor for Vivaro Media. By applying software-defined HEVC compression, the Appear X10 makes it possible to deliver the live HD channels from Santiago, while controlling energy consumption and reducing shipping costs and power usage. Meanwhile, quality and latency are not compromised. The X Platform’s density and flexibility help Vivaro Media to continuously encode its live feeds while rapidly scaling to handle an increasing number of camera feeds.
Carlos Jurado, Sales Engineering and Operations Senior Director at Vivaro Media, said, “The Pan American Games ranks among the top international major live sporting events. We needed a live contribution partner we could trust to handle high quality content encoding at scale. Our collaboration with Appear and its X Platform stand out in terms of efficiency and quality. The density of the X Platform means we can scale back our shipping costs, optimise on-site production space, and still assure the quality of the coverage.”
The platform directly blends industry standards such as HEVC/AVC, ST-2110, JPEG XS, Zixi and high-capacity SRT, with a range of processing, Network Address Translation (NAT) and firewall functions.
The X Platform includes Appear’s ECx110 modules for HEVC ultra-low latency encoding and decoding. It is one of the only compression systems available that carries out ultra-low latency, HD and UHD compression with SDI and ST-2110 uncompressed I/O, at scale and with 1RU or 2RU short-depth chassis options.
Appear has recently issued the new X Platform system software release 9. It brings enhanced audio processing capabilities for the AVC/HEVC encoder and decoder, and has an updated X Panel user interface and thumbnail confidence monitoring. With this streamlined view of the X panel, combined with specialised media processing and delivery implementations, configuration and fault monitoring become simpler.
Improved standards integration includes JPEG-XS with NMOS support, and the AVC/HEVC ST2110 encoder and decoder modules support ST2038 ancillary data and in-band PTP. Finally, to help protect users’ content revenue the AVC/HEVC transcoder now supports logo insertions and enables content watermarking applications. www.appear.net
