Bryce Button:
Good morning. Hello, everyone, maybe it’s evening in your time zone. Great to be with you. I’m looking forward here… Let me share a screen because I’ve got a video and presentation to take you through, so let’s make sure we can actually get that up, and where’s that share. So off we go. So today we’re going to talk a little bit about Dante, but before we get going, we just put together a brand new video on the openGear ecosystem, which is always a great way of understanding exactly how these things come together. So, here we go.
Video:
openGear is an open architecture modular frame system supported by a diverse range of equipment manufacturers, including AJA. The platform offers the freedom to choose technology from a library of products to meet the needs of broadcast, production, live events, or distribution, while maintaining a compatible openGear frame infrastructure. It offers five key features, a common 2RU frame format, card density with the ability to configure tools for the job at hand. Shared Control and Configuration software in the form of free dashboard software, hot swappable cards however, in your range of conversion, transport and infrastructure needs for professional video and audio workflows, and network interface for remote control and configuration of all cards with the OGP openGear protocol. openGears is reliable, compact, and affordable refereeing format hosts a wide range of best of breed modular infrastructure solutions from AJA and is ideal for a wide range of uses from broadcast studios.
There’ll be truck implementations, facility integrations to houses of worship, corporate, medical, live event, flight packs, and much more. For critical broadcast and IP applications, AJA openGear converter cards provide the highest levels of quality and reliability for use in openGear frames, including the AJA, OG-X-FR. AJA offers cards for 12G SDI and HDMI conversion and transport fiber for long distance runs, scan conversion, and scaling. And now I keep based Dante and 12G-SDI audio embedding and disability. AJA has three decades of video conversion prowess merges with openGear, flexibility for the reliability and performance you expect, and the support and uptime that’s essential for professional installations and productions. Dependable after sales support is key, with openGear, it starts with a generous five-year warranty and includes a highly respected support team ready to answer any questions. To learn more about AJA openGear products, visit aja.com today.
Bryce Button:
So the world of Dante, AJA of course approached IP solutions from a range of tax. And in this particular case, when we looked at how do you integrate something into a rack frame environment with density is what it’s all about. Dante made a lot of sense. It’s a very easy to work with, it’s uncompressed audio, extremely low latency, and it can be used across your switch Ethernet networks using standard TCP/IP protocols. There are over 450 partner manufacturers within the world of Dante. It was something like 2,500 Dante products. So it’s designed to be pretty simple to work with. And that really helps with a lot of folks that might be a little nervous about dealing with networks and the rest. Not everybody is an IT specialist. So the point with the Dante card was to put together the 12G-SDI environment, which of course allows everything up to 4k in terms of video connectivity.
And then the height density of the Dante audio environment. So this is our OG-DANTE-12GAM card, which does the bridging backwards and forwards for embedding and disembedding. And we’ll see here that it basically allows you to go into an outer of a Dante audio IP network. We found so many environments where this is key and it gets to two SDI devices. So easy to embed, easy to disembed. There’s 64 channels per card, which means 32 channels input and 32 channels output, which is great for density. And this stuff works simultaneously. So of course you could be bringing in sources from cameras, mixes the rest, and then you can just embed it as well if you’ve got a mix on your SDI feed back out to Adventist system. And then of course with the openGear, the whole point is and why we joined it was to be able to be in a frame network environment that was open.
In the past, many of you all recall that there were proprietary control systems and the rest, and they really could get quite complicated. So we were very glad to join up openGear. And of course we have the OG-X-FR frame available and into which of course you place on your cards. So looking at the back, when it comes to AJA cards, you’re going to be able to fit up to 10 cards for openGear frame, which when it comes to Dante means you’ve got 640 channels in a single frame, so huge amount of density. And when it comes to the SDI side, two inputs and two outputs. So you can be simultaneously again kicking in an actual video feeds. When it comes to the network, there’s one gig ports and that’s one of the advantages of Dante.
It doesn’t require 25 gauge or anything like that which can get very expensive. It’s simple one gigabit Ethernet ports, which of course means you can even plug in your laptop if you’re feeling that as an audio source and it provides redundancy. It’s controlled through the Ross dashboard software compatibility, you can see here in this image, you’re able to basically channel where you want the various audio tracks to go, embed them past any hack that you might have when it can configure and monitor your current performance as well. So this is obviously very flexible as it works on Windows, Mac or Linux so it doesn’t matter on your control system. And when it comes to working with the Dante controller software compatibility itself, it’s very easy. It’s basically a spreadsheet and you can name these channels as you’ve seen in this image. So where we have SDI one there you can say, well, that’s my camera one, but channel two to be camera two, whatever it needs to be. And with things like Dante you can even use iPhones and all sorts of things or sources.
So you can manage your Dante network very simply configure that channel routing, and it automatically registers your devices. So very simple interface for what can be pretty complex. So who needs this type of thing. And of course live events where you’ve got a lot of channels flying around, especially if it’s concerts, that type of thing, production facilities. When you’re trying to send and receive audio, as you saw invite to X presentation, there’s a great need for instance to have a lot of commentators on shows and you can bring them in and put them onto particular channels. Very helpful on set from taking embedded mics and mix outputs, and then send that off to the monitor with a feed for perhaps the director’s tent. But what are we going to have today as an example, a use case, is the house of worship environment.
Especially during this time period with COVID, you will find that a lot of the services in fact might even record some pretty complex audio going on during the week. Some churches are now going back. And again, you’re going to have a lot of audio streams coming off stage everything from the sermon to up to 10 people in a band, and then you want to be able to cut that around. So here’s an example we’re going to talk about. And for those that might be church production, we’ll actually be doing interview here with AJA and start at AVL, where they are going to be talking about how they’ve implemented this in real world practical sense. So you can look for that in the next few days. So here Strata, was challenged with needing to move around audio channels again to deal with the complexity of these services.
And in fact, houses of worship it was a unique environments to look at because you’ll often have overflow and they wanted to deliver the service to a secondary room or even a third room. So being able to move all of this around, they were trying to reduce the complexity, especially since a lot of the AV folks in these environments are often weekend warriors, and this is not their full-time job. So this gave us a clean way to embed the audio into their video, connect it to the Dante network, map the audio exactly where it needs to go. So it’s all max for that final delivery and maybe off to streaming and co-owners of course, and that’s the great thing about the OJi environment again, you can have our cards in there, you can have somebody else’s streaming card as you saw with Vtech and these things can all be integrated together.
So taking a look at an example here, this just gives you an example of mixing and matching equipment that’s out there today. For instance, you’ve got a bunch of camera sources. You can wrap that into one of our routers. That’s our 32, 32 12G there. You might be sending it off to a recorder, in this case a key pro ultra. And of course, sending the program feed off to your video switcher AJA is lucky to have a really large portfolio. So we have our own streaming products the healer that could be feeding that to the congregation sitting at home, there on the left, you see you got a little laptop that’s doing the routing and the connectivity with the Dante controller software on it. So this is all fairly flexible. And we’re trying to get a number of things done, keep pricing down for a lot of environments.
So being able to just use your local laptop, getting a different channels and then feeding the audio back out again on site, whether to the speakers there, or maybe you’ve got a front house to project, as I mentioned, you might have a display in a secondary room, so really nice and clean and all of this of course has been routed through the openGear frame. And again, you can have combined cards in there. So we’ve seen this expanding, we’ve seen a lot of use happening in the last year, of course, but then medical environments, where you’re having to do a lots of shared video as you bring hospitals and doctors and everybody together and they’re all remote. And so the addition here is you might need some FIDO optical fiber converters, AJA offers as you saw in the video great range of fiber connectivity, dealing with 12G, etcetera.
And the nice thing about FIDO, it’s always good to talk about fiber is it doesn’t just carry traditional video signals, but even raw data. So if you started to use sophisticated cameras that might be sending out rural signals, even those can be moved around and all of this can come together between us and all the other great manufacturers that are involved in the openGear environment. And that allows client stores to decide who do they want to go with for any particular solution they’re trying to mix and match. And I think when it comes to real world in environments, no two projects are exactly the same. So the ability to take a card out of a frame and replace it with another card, that’s going to give you a solution that you need that say SDI to HDMI, so many options there.
So we really have enjoyed joining this alliance, so to speak, with openGear, our cards have very extensive warranties up to five years, which gives you a lot of flexibility and reliability. And for a card like this, that’s handling 64 channels of audio running around a standard $2,500 it really is quite affordable. So we introduced this card early in the year and now it’s really getting into wide deployment. So an interesting article this morning in fact on how the Dante card was being integrated into some sports environments. So it’s really up to you and your imagination is how you can really make all of this in together. So working with Dante, of course, it’s great. Working with partners AJA is a bridge building company, whether it comes to moving from one protocol to another, one type of connectivity to another, and of course working with all these great partners including Dante. So if you want to learn more and I think, let’s see if I can get that slide back.
Cindy Zuelsdorf:
And Bryce, I think your camera has frozen on you. So if you flip that off and back on, we might get to see you as well.
Bryce Button:
Okay.
Cindy Zuelsdorf:
Oh yes. And he’s back.
Bryce Button:
And I’m back. All right. I hope I wasn’t sitting there with my mouth open and gum running around.
All good. So yeah, the bottom line here is you can always follow us on one of the normal channels, but I’m going to try and get back a couple of slides since I ran away on me. The key thing I wanted to bring up was our solution pages and our solution pages and aja.com due to the current environments, we have indeed started running and to try to stop the video looks it is just on freeze mode today, but yes, we’ve introduced an and you remote solutions page to see. If you got an aja.com just look into solutions. And of course, cover openGear, but also offers a lot of great advice on how do you handle all disrupt all these remote workflows from something as simple as a call like this today, or going all the way up to production from onset sharing your video feeds, whether it’s through fiber, getting into the streaming environments. As we heard Richard talking about earlier and ensuring that you can continue to produce. I don’t know if we have any questions.
Cindy Zuelsdorf:
I have a question: I wanted to hear more about Dante and that seems a big reveal for AJA this year. And what caused you to want to jump into that area?
Bryce Button:
Well, we’re always looking at people’s workflows, as I mentioned, we’re involved in IP in a range of ways. ST 2110 of course, is for completely uncompressed video that it requires quite a lot of infrastructure, incredibly low latency. We then also looked at how can we use the public internet and our big concern there initially was security. So we work with a lots of large broadcasters, film productions, companies wanting to announce deal with internal communications. And so when we came out with this great product called BRIDGE LIVE, which supports HEVC, H.264, MPEG-4, better important component with it was SRT. So sit for those that don’t know the term stands for secure reliable transport. It’s low latency in comparison to a lot of streaming workflows, but it’s also encrypted. So that’s allowed folks to handle the onsite to remote facility communications securely can also be used for backhauling, and it’s not uncommon for a network to, of course, have trucks out there for sports and the rest, but you might be paying expensive satellite fees to backhaul video, and signals.
And when it’s costing a lot of money and things run long, it can be a little uncomfortable. So using the internet in that way has being ready, productive. So the next step from there is what about these huge audio needs? There’s… I think everybody’s gotten used to very sophisticated video audio delivery at this point, iPhones present us 4k with HDR for heaven sakes. So to be able to get that great density of sound around Dante has been around for a while. I haven’t played bass for instance, in a band we were all familiar with it. So that ability to move signals very easily handle, that density, but that missing connection was getting it into an outer SDI feeds.
So the ability to extract audio from the camera, if needed, if that’s coming off an SDI feed with audio already on camera, just embedded from there, put it into your Dante network. Again, the ability to handle multiple channels. We’ve worked for years with the Olympics. Paralympics is where I began with all that years ago. And of course you got the Olympic broadcast centers, and they’ve got to send out signals to countries all over the world, and you’re going to have all sorts of commentators and they really are remote.
So all these kinds of environments and houses of worship as we looked at are just rich in terms of audio signals. And Dante is appealing because this is uncompressed audio. It’s very low bandwidth. And the ability, as I mentioned before to you and take audio and your own laptop and plug that in is great. I’ve been working with voiceover artists, for instance, on that video, you saw she’s out of LA, make it simple. IP is helpful for this thing, and to be able to feed it in and spit it back out. Dante is just a great way to go.
Cindy Zuelsdorf:
I loved hearing about the SRT applications, because as you said, people are making those decisions between public internet and the more traditional way that they did things before. So that makes a lot of sense.
Bryce Button:
Yeah. I think we’ve seen a lot of crossover and a lot of these systems have been mixed in there’s nothing wrong with that. Let people use what they want to use and give them as much control or as little control as they want. But I think for the biggest challenge in our industry has always been, how do you get a bunch of folks that are used to being creative, that love plugging in something where they can see it’s connected and then step into an IT environment they can feel intimidating when you’re first getting used to it. But the truth is all these different systems are trained to make this as simple as possible as you’ve done with openGear, we have a simple dashboard system that allows and works with everyone’s cards here. So that’s simplifies things Dante, as you saw from those screenshots that simplifies the routing. So that really is it, is getting our creatives within our vertical comfortable with moving between SDI, HDMI, IP. And so this is just one more offering. And as I’ve mentioned, we’re seeing some great uptake here. It’s very exciting.
Cindy Zuelsdorf:
Nice. Now we do have a question also about 2110, any chance of an ST 2110 version of the Dante card?
Bryce Button:
We don’t talk about future things ever.
Cindy Zuelsdorf:
It’s a rule for you, right?
Bryce Button:
Yes. But we like to hear that type of question because it validates thinking of course, again, you’ve the openGear environment with allowing certain amounts of connectivity backwards and forwards there, but that’s a great question. And of course we can look at those kinds of things going forward.
Cindy Zuelsdorf:
And another great question along the same lines or same category, any intentions to support AES67 in the RAVENNA protocol.
Bryce Button:
So yeah, AES67 is something that we will talk about internally. We’ve always had support for a range of AS type items. It’s not uncommon to us.
Cindy Zuelsdorf:
Another question here. Let me give this to you. Bryce asking if you have satellite broadcasting equipment for inset C-band.
Bryce Button:
Yeah, we don’t do direct stuff like that ourselves. Our cards and various items will show up since we have a very robust OEM program. A lot of our cards actually show up in other companies solutions. So we don’t do that directly, but we certainly are involved with others. So you might need to look to a third party and indeed there might be one of our cards sitting inside that solution.
Cindy Zuelsdorf:
All right. Any other closing thoughts on Dante or anything that’s happening with AJA right now?
Bryce Button:
Well, what I can share is that our growth in the openGear space has been very rapid and is continuing to grow. You can look forward to some more fighter, 12G cards coming up here in Q2. We’re also looking at moving more and more of our projects products, sorry to 12G-SDI. So whether those are SDI to HDMI converters, that kind of thing. Because we really have found 12G-SDI has been incredibly robust over the last couple of years and across our product lines, we’ve seen immense demand, not everyone’s going to be doing 4k, but as people progress. And there’s the fact that most cameras today are coming out in 4k. The ability to use single cable connectivity is really key, cuts out so much troubleshooting for folks that are dealing with trucks, moving to a single cable has got real financial consequences which are great.
You’re saving weight. You’re cutting down on fuel costs and it grows troubleshooting. All of us that are involved in live productions. No there’s nothing worse than the panic of a quadrant on the 4k signal sunny going flaky on you. So the ability to work with 2SI have a 12G infrastructure. It just simplifies everything. So our growth there will continue. And it’s also of course, got all the bandwidth for deep color workflows. We’ve been doing a lot more with 12-bit RGB and AJA has been a key leader in the HDR space with our FS-HDR, and other products over the last couple of years. And as we all know with HDR it keeps evolving. We’ve got some exciting updates coming there that involve a lot of the changes that are coming from groups like NBC universal and more. So it’s a really exciting environment. And you can look forward to seeing a lot more cards from us in the openGear space during the course of 2021.
