As broadcasters increasingly turn to remote production to bring viewers the best in live events such as sports, news, or music, capturing multi-source views of the same content and keeping live video and audio in sync while streaming over IP networks can be a considerable challenge. This is especially true when dealing with an unpredictable network like the internet where round trip times and bandwidth availability can continually fluctuate. Let’s take a deeper dive into these challenges and how Haivision solutions can help overcome them.
The Challenges of Keeping Live Video and Audio in Sync
In order to ensure that all video and audio streams are in sync with each other, broadcast and network engineers need to spend time to manually adjust the timing of each video decoder output. Typically, this is done using a test pattern device to calibrate audio channels with live video sources. This approach requires coordination between people at both the remote location and at the Master Control Room and can be very time-consuming. The more cameras and audio channels involved, the more complicated it becomes to synchronize everything, and the more time needed before going on air. Although with the right tools, this approach can be made to work, there is a much simpler and faster way.
What do Riot Games, Fox Sports, and Rural Media Group Have in Common?
They are all successfully leveraging Haivision’s low latency video streaming technology for flawless quality, multi-camera live remote production over the internet while saving time and money. Discover more about how Riot Games, Fox Sports, and Rural Media Group depend on Haivision products to power their remote production workflows.
Haivision Stream Sync: Synchronization Made Easy
Haivision’s Stream Sync solution automates and simplifies real-time frame alignment. Stream Sync is supported by the Makito X Series of video encoders and decoders, including the new Makito X4 encoder and decoder for 4K or quad-HD video. These Haivision devices are configured to achieve synchronized playout of multiple audio and video channels with single-frame accuracy.
Stream Sync continuously monitors the characteristics of both the streams and the network and applies the exact amount of buffering required to ensure smooth and synchronized playout across multiple feeds. This is done in real-time based on timestamps embedded in each stream from the remote Makito X or X4 encoders. For live production, this means that any camera can be used with any audio track, with no noticeable video hits or loss of lip-sync.
