Ground-to-cloud

Techex specialises in fully fledged video and audio ingress and egress solutions for tier one broadcasters, moving content smoothly from ground to Cloud and back, also known as GCCG. We provide reliable transport, seamless monitoring and protocol translation for baseband video such as SDI and ST 2110, and for mezzanine encoded formats including H.264, HEVC, JPEG XS and NDI.

These solutions connect event locations, production facilities and broadcast centres to private or public Cloud over WAN, the internet or global Cloud infrastructure.

tx edge is the cornerstone of our GCCG solutions. It accommodates a broad array of transport and encapsulation protocols, offers granular redundancy switching and content protection, and provides thorough monitoring of the IP transport, media payload and MPEG transport stream layers, so teams are alerted promptly to service issues, network degradation or changes in the underlying infrastructure.

Techex has a proven track record of combining best-in-class software and hardware from our technology partners with our own award-winning products, along with the expertise to select the right components for each customer.

A broadcaster operating redundant, geographically dispersed sites approached Techex to carry content from both locations into two public Cloud regions, while preserving end to end SMPTE ST 2022-7 switching all the way to the final device, whether that is a Cloud processing service or playout.

Site A and Site B encoders each output ST 2022-7 to two separate networks. Each site runs two clusters of tx edge nodes, an A path and a B path, which receive both the red and blue paths from both sites and perform seamless path protection switching for every feed. The healed output feeds the tx edge 2x1 switch, set on every node to prefer the Site A encoder output. Because tx edge preserves RTP headers through protocol transform and switching, every downstream device can take any two paths and switch between them with lightweight ST 2022-7 processes.

On premise, tx edge applies BISS 2 mode 1 payload encryption with rotating keys. The A path egresses over a direct Cloud interconnect and the B path over the internet, both using SRT with AES 256. In each Cloud region, tx edge performs SRT re-request and packet recovery, then fans out to monitoring and playout services. A final tx edge node runs as a container in the same compute as the playout engine, heals across both paths with ST 2022-7 and hands the clean stream to the playout process.

Return is the mirror image. The playout output is launched back over SRT as an ST 2022-7 pair to the regional distribution nodes, then on to the on premise tx edge at each site, which recovers packets and presents the healed content on the red and blue networks for local decode and onward distribution. Throughout, tx edge provides IP and MPEG transport stream monitoring with decode thumbnailing, and a TAG Video Systems MCM9000 acts as a continuous reference point performing more than 500 checks including full decode and analysis of the content.

A Cloud workflow is only as good as the transport underneath it and the evidence around it. Techex builds both, so you can extend the service life of on premise equipment while gaining the flexibility of Cloud processing.

Every ground-to-cloud design is assembled from the same proven building blocks, then tuned to your formats, your sites and your Cloud regions.