AJA BRIDGE LIVE has quickly become a valued tool in live event production facilities, esports arenas, universities, houses of worship, and other professional AV environments around the world since its 2021 debut.
The versatile IP video workflow bridge has caught on in these settings, as live production workflows have grown more prolific and complex in nature.
Packaging a host of great features – from flexible I/O to simultaneous bidirectional encoding, decoding, and transcoding of UltraHD, HD, and SD sources and more – into a 1RU device, it streamlines multiple aspects of live production, from live video streaming through to remote production and collaboration, synchronous multi-channel contribution, and multi-bit rate/ format delivery.
AJA BRIDGE LIVE also supports many industry standard codecs including NDI, H.265, H.264 and H.262, as well as JPEG 2000, and JPEG XS via optional add-on licenses, as well as protocols like SRT, UDP, HLS, RTP, RTMP/S, and MPTS (input), in addition to MPEG-TS, NDI, AVC-TS, and Fragmented MP4 transport. Its metadata capabilities are unmatched with support for MPEG-2 ANC, SMPTE 2038, ad insertion markers (SCTE-35/SCTE-104), and closed captioning/subtitles (EIA-608/708, Line 21, H.264 SEI). As AJA customers around the world can attest, the advantages of BRIDGE LIVE are multifold, and unique to each environment and application. BCC Live, for instance, uses
BRIDGE Live nearly every weekend to support a broad range of encoding/decoding demands for live event productions. All of the U.S.- based production shop’s clients – including the IRONMAN Triathlon – work in different locations, each with different environments and deliverable requirements – be it 1080i or 1080p, 50 or 60 frames, SRT or another format. BRIDGE LIVE allows them to take in nearly any type of feed and send out whatever end format is required. They also leverage the device to send SCTE markers to customers more intuitively so they can trigger ads on their end. President Dave Downey said it’s helped them to cut their encoding/ decoding gear in half.
North American esports networking and production company BlackStar Group also taps the device in both its Ohio studio and on the road. Its team uses BRIDGE LIVE to send live esports competition feeds to multiple endpoints without incurring extra overhead. BlackStar Group Encoding Engineer Pat Marcoux described the low latency and multi-point sync that BRIDGE LIVE provides as fantastic in this respect.
Tokyo-based live production technology provider Nouvelle Vague Inc. has leaned on the device to enhance its simulcast workflow and support SRT and RTMP transmission in separate pipelines. Masayoshi Ikeda, VP and Representative Director at Nouvelle Vague, explained that BRIDGE LIVE allows his team to support increasing client demand for SRT while delivering high-quality content with stability to multiple platforms in an intuitive way. For the FHNW Academy of Art and Design at the FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, BRIDGE LIVE powers a majority of its department’s live productions. The university’s Head of Media and Broadcast Infrastructure Suresh Surenthiran noted that it allows his team of media engineers to easily manage four parallel HD video streams in different languages with a UI that is robust yet easy to navigate, and offers unprecedented redundancy and a solid power supply.
For more information on how BRIDGE LIVE and other IP video workflow solutions from AJA can enhance your next AV project or install, visit: www.aja.com/bridge-live.