Just like telecommunications and audio before

it, video is undergoing an IP revolution. Where

previously video signals were transmitted using

satellite or terrestrial broadcasting techniques,

the adoption and continued advancement of high

speed broadband technologies has allowed video

to be packetized and sent over an I/P network with

limited or no impact to perceived video quality.

This in turn has led to a change in consumer

consumption habits, from scheduled broadcast to

video on demand (VOD) viewing.

This change in viewer habits has placed increasing

demands on service providers responsible for

providing Internet services. As video can be

replayed at any time and any place, the demand

for video is exponentially growing and service

providers face a two-pronged problem. The ﬁrst

part of this problem is how to minimize the trafﬁc

over the network such that quality and network

performance are not compromised. The second is

how to monetize the take up of video to pay for the

increased infrastructure costs.

Transcoding plays an essential part in the ﬁrst

problem. Efﬁcient transcoding ensures that each

video stream takes the minimum system resource

or bandwidth, without compromising perceived

quality. For example, transcoding ensures that the

resolution and frame rate transmitted matches

the target device; there is no point in sending

very high deﬁnition video (and audio) to a smaller

mobile phone. A smaller resolution could be sent

with no perceived loss of quality or diminishment

of viewer experience.

There are other trade offs to be made with

transcoding as well. For example, for seldom

watched video ﬁles it might make sense to

transcode to a target resolution only when

needed, as opposed to a commonly watched

video ﬁle in which it might make sense to store

multiple copies and avoid constant reprocessing.

The transcode-as-needed approach decreases

storage requirement, but increases processing

requirement.

nablet mediaEngine

SDK

Accelerated by Artesyn

Design Advantages

• Highly optimised, integrated media

transcode solution offering

• Industry leading CapEx and OpEx

per transcode

• Multi-format and resolution

support

• Based on industry standard PCIE

hardware

• Hardware agnostic object-oriented

C++ interface

• Plug-in interface to integrate

third party modules (DirectShow,

Media Foundation, QuickTime,

GStreamer, AviSynth etc.)

• 8-bit 4:2:0 GPU accelerated

transcoding

• 10-bit 4:20/4:2:2 HEVC GPU

accelerated encoding

• 10-bit 4:2:2 high quality software

based transcoding (nablet

CODECs)

• Smart rendering for MPEG-2

based video (like XDCAM or

XDCAM HD family of formats)

• Smart rendering for AVC-I and

X-AVC video

SOLUTION BRIEF

Artesyn and nablet Expertise

Artesyn has a long pedigree and expertise in IP connected computer

systems, originally developing telecommunications systems with IP

backbones. This work led to developing audio CODEC acceleration

engines and from there to video CODEC acceleration with IP

connectivity underpinning all of these products. Artesyn now has a

complete portfolio of transcoding solutions.

nablet has a long history in video transcoding and CODECs – the

founders of nablet were the founders of Main Concept. nablet is a

preferred supplier to a number of inﬂuential industry players and

have many years of expertise in developing and optimization CODEC

implementations.

Artesyn and nablet have collaborated to integrate the nablet

mediaEngine software development kit (SDK) with the Artesyn

SharpStreamer

™

line of acceleration add-in cards. You can use

this combined solution to put your video handling on the fast

track, whether you are involved in editing (news, cloud services),

workﬂow automation, transcoding, scene detection, object tracking,

logo detection or many more video applications. Based on Intel

architecture GPUs, the SharpStreamer/mediaEngine combination

provides ﬂexibility, quality and total cost of ownership (TCO)

optimization for visual cloud solutions, including hosting desktops and

workstations remotely or delivering video in the cloud.

nablet mediaEngine

Software Development Kit

The nablet mediaEngine software is a transcoder for live- and ﬁle-

based workﬂows that facilitates the encoding of video and audio

media to a variety of acquisition, editing, broadcast and web formats.

the mediaEngine SDK runs either stand-alone or within a multi-

node rendering farm controlled by third-party applications. It takes

advantage of graphics processing units (GPUs) incorporated in the

Artesyn SharpStreamer PCI Express card family and supports either

Windows or Linux operating systems. nablet mediaEngine software

has an integrated ultra-fast threading model that makes maximum use

of the given resources. Transcoding speed is maximized as the internal

nablet video CODECs are also optimized to the internal workﬂow.

Specially optimized encoders and decoders for speciﬁc formats,

such as XDCAM, give further advantage against standard multi-

purpose CODECs. mediaEngine software is designed to allow the

highest possible scalability to set up cluster- and cloud-based media

processing and high density transcoding solutions.

Time-critical ingest jobs that media companies face today are

optimized by using mediaEngine’s MXF while-function. It greatly

reduces latency by processing MXF ﬁles while reading or writing.

nablet mediaEngine software allows ﬁle based stitching and

transcoding using simple conﬁguration ﬁles, even with live ingest

into MXF. In addition, mediaEngine software takes full advantage of a

GPU-accelerated processing pipeline that includes Intel

Quick Sync

Video-based encoding and decoding, as well as other functions such

as scaling, inverse telecine, etc.

Performance Highlights

nablet mediaEngine software achieves the following impressive transcode densities on the Artesyn PCIE-7207-4-i5 SharpStreamer card.

MPEG2 —> H264 Transcode

Number of Simultaneously Transcoded Channels Per Card

Input/Output 3840x2160 1920x1080 1280x720 854x480 352x288 176x44

1920x1080 (30fps) 20 24 32 40 44

1280x720 (30fps) 36 40 60 68

854x480 (30fps) 56 104 132

352x288 (30fps) 104 132

176x144 (30fps) 156

H264 —> MPEG2 Transcode

Number of Simultaneously Transcoded Channels Per Card

Input/Output 3840x2160 1920x1080 1280x720 854x480 352x288 176x44

3840x2160 (30fps) 4 16 20 20 20 24

1920x1080 (30fps) 32 40 52 60 64

1280x720 (30fps) 60 64 84 96

854x480 (30fps) 84 104 120

352x288 (30fps) 132 140

176x144 (30fps) 156