AVW’s Partnership with Ferncast provides increased efficiency in DVB overheads
16 April 2021, Ferncast, Aachen, Germany
With the release of aixtream software version 2.1 we are offering an option to control the amount of overhead produced by our transport streams (TS) for DVB. By increasing the PES (Packetized Elementary Stream) duration, that is the time slice allocated to a particular stream, more audio frames can be aggregated before sending. This reduces the required amount of padding while modifying latency.
“We are happy to present you this efficient new feature as we are always striving to perfect our implementations and so we are looking forward to seeing these numbers improve further”, says Detlef Wiese, Ferncast CEO.
“The reduced amount of padding alters latency as an acceptable trade-off for minimising bandwidth requirements. This enables users to find increased efficiency in bandwidth requirements and lower operational costs”, says Murray Hunt, CEO AVW Group.
What is overhead in communication and encoding?
Overhead in computing refers to additional, indirect computation effort required for a specific task. This may include computation time, memory usage, bandwidth or other resources. In communication specifically, there is data transfer overhead, which refers to the various types of control and signalling data that is required for the payload to reach its destination.
Similarly, encoded audio has overhead data in addition to the audio signal. In the case of transport streams there is also overhead caused by padding. TS transport packages are 188 bytes, which is usually larger than the audio frame of most codecs. This means the rest of the package must be padded to fill out the 188 bytes. The exact amount of overhead can vary based on multiple factors, like the amount of additional data that is inserted (which may be very large in the case of overhead caused by processes like Forward Error Correction), the complexity of encoding and transport processes and the latency that the operator is willing to accept. In some transport protocols and methods, the packet size can also be adjusted, which is another way the overhead and latency can be affected.
Full technical information and White Paper is available on request from AVW. Email the Ferncast authorised Australia / New Zealand Distributor at sales@avw.com.au or sales@avw.co.nz
Ferncast: Ferncast is a team of top developers in digital media signal processing and systems engineering from Aachen, Germany. the Ferncast team develops new solutions to revolutionize the broadcasting industry. Ferncast develops streaming audio, radio streaming, audio transmission and audio solutions for professional broadcasters.
AVW: AVW Group is a major supplier of technical goods and services to the Broadcast, Pro Audio, AV and ICT industries in New Zealand, Australia, Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia. We pride ourselves on representing quality brands and strive to provide outstanding customer service and support.
