Introduction

The HEVC encoder compresses a raw video feed at it source and is a much better alternative to the H.264 standard codec. When compared with H.264, HEVC’s advantage is obvious as it allows for as much as 50% lower bandwidth consumption.

One of the challenges faced by today’s streaming services/applications whilst trying to expand their audience reach, however, is the fact that many devices still do not support HEVC and H.264 compression is more commonly available and supported. Streaming service providers are now using the transcoding process to address the aforementioned challenge; transcoding may seem ideal as it provides adaptive video/audio streams in real-time, it is, however, a compute-intensive process.

Requirements

A transcoding solution provider came to Lanner looking for hardware solutions that would enable the deployment of a GPU-accelerated network video solution intended for delivering 10-bit HEVC transcoding for multiple channels in IPTV Broadcasting, OTT, and live video streaming services; and the said hardware solutions must be capable of

  • compressing/encoding 4K 10-bit video source files without playback error and overblown file sizes for all streaming speeds
  • transcoding/converting HEVC format into other file formats (i.e., H.264), bitrates, and resolutions for device/OS compatibility
  • decoding/encoding simultaneously, and with multiple video inputs
  • Sustaining bottleneck-free performance and high throughput and CPU/GPU acceleration
  • adapting to all destination/end users’ network bandwidth and video resolution requests

Lanner Solution

Lanner’s NCA-5210 is a 1U network security and cloud computing system powered by the 7th generation Intel® Core™ processors (codenamed Kaby Lake) and is capable of delivering optimal computing performance. Two of its standout features are its rich I/O Ethernet connectivity and its NIC module slots for bandwidth expansions.

The NCA-5210’s capability as a network video service appliance is expanded with the NCS2-NV02, a swappable video transport add-on module for optimizing video transcoding for accelerated high-volume video delivery/streaming.

The NCS2-NV02, a power-efficient video transcoding module, features dual NVIDIA Jetson® TX2 Processors SoM (System-on-Module) and comes with onboard Intel i350-AM2 Ethernet controllers that enable GPU hardware-level transcoding for NCA-5210.

Benefits

A network video service environment set up using Lanner’s NCA-5210 and NCS2-NV02 delivers the following benefits:

1. Expanded audience reach

Not all end users have the same bandwidth or use the same devices, transcoding by way of a NCA-5210/NCS2-NV02 setup adapts the stream to fit end-user's resources. The hardware-accelerated GPU transcoding for H.265 (HEVC) and 10-Bit color formats not only accelerate but also improving streaming for any audience.

2. Highest quality playback

Various video renditions can be made available in different resolutions and bitrates, adapting to each end user’s resource; those with fast bandwidth will receive content in higher resolution and vice versa. The goal is to not only reducing video latency (buffering) but also to ensure continuous playbacks in the highest quality possible.

3. Multiple arrays of streams

The hardware-accelerated GPU transcoding solution takes a source stream of high-resolution and high-bitrate and transcodes it to an array of multiple streams at different resolutions and bitrates so that the server, by way of adaptive streaming, automatically selects and delivers the most suitable version of the stream to end-users.

Result/Conclusion

A network video service environment set up using Lanner’s NCA-5210 and NCS2-NV02 leverages competitive advantages from both a powerful network appliance and a capable GPU acceleration card, resulting in the successful deployment of streaming services/applications that fulfill the requirements of multichannel IPTV, OTT and live video streaming service providers by way of enabling agile, scalable and adaptive video transcoding performance.

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