No matter what industry one is working in, standardization and uniformity are very important to the success of a company or the industry as a whole. Within the entertainment industry, it has been noticed that there are a number of “standards” that just don’t seem to be standards anymore. Product compatibility is solely dependant upon the ability to sync data and equipment together, no matter what the age of the product.
One of the new technologies being developed within our industry is “Audio Video Bridging”, or “AVB”. AVB is a tool that allows multiple signals from multiple sources to be banded together and deliver high quality data. Changing from a once popular standard of or IEEE or MIDI, AVB will work with a number of everyday items for content routing. “Any existing network can be used for audio or video” says Bill Evans, writer to Front Of House Magazine in the article “AVB: Do We Actually Have An Audio Networking Standard?” It is further discussed within the article that AVB will also be compatible with the HiQ Net Control system, making integration to major systems that much better.
Standards are developed based around the speed at which data can be transferred between two pieces of gear. With the recent developments of IEEE 802, lower latency creates a much-needed bond for the delivery of audio and video paths to ensure proper presentation. The AVB network will allow gear such as digital processors, digital audio consoles, digital video processors (and virtually anything driven off of a digital Ethernet network), to communicate in a much more flawless fashion than before.
This technology will become one of the top methods of digital audio and video communications within a theatre world because of its ease of setup and its connectivity to old and new gear. Many theatres look to tools like this to prevent having to revamp an aged space, actually saving money in the long run. While this will be a benefit to thousands of users, there will still be those who wonder how this will effect the state of Ethernet communications for proprietary gear not using a standard bandwidth rate, but for that; “the new standard aims to pace traffic so that AV does not use up the entire bandwidth. 25% of the bandwidth is supposed to be reserved at all times for non-AV, standard Ethernet traffic” (EAVB, RoadieWorld 2009).
It will be a bright future in the development of digital synchronization in that there will be a demand for both new and old gear, giving sound companies and engineers the chance to utilize the many different capabilities of this industry.
References:
RoadieWorld (2009). Ethernet AVB (Audio Video Bridigng) – In Development. Retrieved August 19, 2009 from http://www.roadieworld.org/2009/05/ethernet-avb-audio-video-bridging-in-development/
External Links:
Boatright, Robert (2009). Understanding IEEE’s New Audio Video Bridging Standards. http://www.embedded.com/design/embeddeddsp/217201258
Audio/Video Bridging Task Group (2009). http://www.ieee802.org/1/pages/avbridges.html
Ethernet AVB Audio (2009).
http://www.xmos.com/applications/audio/ethernet-avb-audio
IEC 61883 Audio/Video Streams – IEEE 802 Networks (2007)
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1722/contributions/AVB-Transport-par-revision-0.04-2007-02-07.pdf
XLINX (2009). Ethernet AVB Endpoint FPGA Solution
Article can also be found at:
http://sites.google.com/site/wikitainment/faster-data-transfer-uniformity-prevails
http://www.xilinx.com/products/ipcenter/DO-DI-EAVB-EPT.htm
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