Broadcast-quality video-over-IP company Zixi has announced an integration and partnership with MediaKind – a global leader in media technology and architect of the Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP) – that focuses on the acquisition and dynamic delivery of high-quality content that transports viewers towards extraordinary experiences.
MediaKind has integrated Zixi in the CE Mini contribution encoder, which is a cost-effective, low-power, small form factor device that enables TV service providers delivering broadcast-quality live video reliably over managed or unmanaged IP networks. Part of MediaKind’s leading end-to-end portfolio of contribution and direct-to-consumer video service distribution media solutions, it can connect to professional or pro-sumer cameras via SDI or HDMI interfaces, and provides MPEG-4 AVC or HEVC video encoding as well as a range of audio encoding options.
The CE Mini provides the compression performance expected from a MediaKind professional contribution encoder making it ideal for many live video contribution use cases and is particularly suited to delivering live video into public cloud instances or social media platforms. The CE Mini provides the video and audio compression together with the security and error protection required to provide a reliable contribution link.
With the increasing adoption of remote production and the use of cloud-based video production tools, many content creators must address the challenge of how to push high quality video and audio into the cloud over unmanaged IP links, reliably and at an acceptable latency. To overcome these issues, Zixi is natively integrated in, and standard on all MediaKind CE Mini encoders, able to stream to any deployed Zixi Broadcaster. Zixi ZEN Master is also integrated to enable users to manage large-scale configurations and orchestrate, analyse, monitor, alert and report on live video streams and devices across the Zixi Enabled Network of customers, integrated hardware and software applications, and platforms and service providers standardised on Zixi.
Low-latency error free transport over IP networks is critical to TV service providers contributing and delivering live video over unmanaged IP networks. The Zixi protocol is a resilient congestion and network-aware protocol that adjusts to varying network conditions and employs patented, dynamic Forward Error Correction techniques for error-free video transport over IP with 99.9999% uptime at minimal latency. It provides best-in-class security with DTLS and AES encryption, allows for protected multicast transport, provides bandwidth efficiency, and enables encoder back-pressure.
“With Zixi’s excellent reputation for delivering live, broadcast-quality video, our customers have asked that we integrate the SDVP,” said Boris Felts, head of products, MediaKind. “We are happy to partner with Zixi and deliver best-in-class solutions to the market that will allow our customers to seamlessly leverage proven architectures with market tested technology.”
“Some of the world’s biggest brands have been asking for the Zixi-integrated MediaKind offering,” said John Wastcoat, SVP alliances and marketing, Zixi. “This is a great first step in our partnership, and we look forward to expanded collaboration with incremental products later in the year.”