[chriscjcj]

Disclaimer... I am a director and not an engineer. I can only give you my relatively limited understanding....

> It looks like great support (Blackmagicdesign) for building a small broadcast studio from scratch tho.

Agreed!

> I could see BMD embracing this. There are lots of studios that are not commercial broadcast that could really use a system like this.

Also agreed. Black Magic definitely makes a lot of reasonably-priced and very capable gear. They're not a major player in the TV automation space, but perhaps with the help of Sofie, they could make inroads.

> Isn't one of the problems with hardware support is that hardware vendors have agreements with the competitors you listed?

That's not a topic I'm knowledgeable about. It is my understanding that most shops who have a particular vendor's automation platform will also have that vendor's hardware running at its core. In all the shops I've seen, the switcher that's controlled by the automation system is made by the same company. Or if its another vendor's product, it's sold and provisioned along with the automation system when its purchased. Other stuff like audio mixers, robo-cam products, clip players, and CG/graphics platforms can be from other vendors.

> Computers are fast enough now that once you can get the signals into a machine, many of the special functions that previously required dedicated hardware can now be run in software? With proper timing signal distribution of course.

> Seems like 12G SDI to SFP+ would enable server class machines to subsume most of the special function hardware.

For audio, I think that would be a relatively easy lift with technologies like Dante. However, in most TV stations, you're going to need to literally plug upwards of 100 HDSDI video cables into a piece of hardware so that those sources can be switched to on TV, mixed and keyed on multiple mixed-effects banks, and viewed on multiviewer screens in the control room. I don't know that a regular-ol' PC has what it takes to take in and simultaneously process that amount of video. But just because don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. ;-) Just haven't seen it yet.

[chgs]

Sofie drives the matrix (black magic videohub for small ones like the 120 squared, but ours are 1000+ which black magic won’t do), the audio mixers, the video mixers, the graphics and by machines (Caspar), etc. your mixers don’t need that many inputs - a typical one might be 24 or 32 inputs with a few ME banks.

All these devices use standard protocols, or it’s just a new plugin for sofie ti drive it.

Of course increasingly the industry is using 2110 on spine and leaf networks rather than SDI. I don’t know if there any COTS mixers aside from the vmix/obs level, I believe some 2110 controllers will provide video matrix style interfaces. Nmos seems challenged in this area from what I hear.

[claudex]

>For audio, I think that would be a relatively easy lift with technologies like Dante. However, in most TV stations, you're going to need to literally plug upwards of 100 HDSDI video cables into a piece of hardware

I don't know the TV stations requirements, but you can maybe have 10 interconnected servers that manage 10 HDSDI flux each (and can send them on another if required for processing) ?

[jpc0]

SMPTE-2110 is a route to look at, but it definitely isn’t cheap…