5G-RECORDS & AMWA
14th April 2021
Professional media production will in the future require more flexibility over where and how its operations are provided. This may mean working across multiple types of network, including 5G, wired, cloud-based and home networks. While each network has its own specific control technologies, a number of common areas exist across the production, so this task aims to define and develop a layer above the 5G infrastructure that provides the following functions: Discovery of media devices, Connection of media devices, Operational control and monitoring of media devices, Synchronisation of media and data flows, Authentication and authorization, Resource management and provisioning. One of the tasks of the 5G-RECORDS project is to design and implement a “layer” that should allow a consistent approach to operational controls using NMOS (Networked Media Open Specifications).
This is a family of specifications produced by the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), related to networked media for professional applications. They were created to help enable automation in live IP-based architectures through control plane APIs that are built on typical patterns used for web services (REST, publish-subscribe). NMOS specs are increasingly being adopted for applications using SMPTE ST 2110, and are part of the EBU’s Technology Pyramid for Media Nodes (Tech 3371). The most relevant NMOS specs to this task are as follows:
- AMWA IS-04 allows media nodes (i.e. networked media devices) to register themselves, along with what they are (or are capable of) sending or receiving, and allows control applications to query this information.
- AMWA IS-05 allows control applications to set up and remove connections between media nodes.
- AMWA IS-07 provides a publish-and-subscribe channel for sending time-based events such as tally information.
- AMWA IS-08 specifies how to handle audio channels in NMOS APIs.
- The AMWA BCP-003 suite of specifications (including IS-10) covers secure communication and authorisation of NMOS APIs.
The aim of the AMWA & 5G-RECORDS joint meeting was to share the work 5G-RECORDS is doing, in particular, on the NMOS operational control layer and to get an update on NMOS’s status & roadmap to identify potential areas of collaboration.
