Live Broadcast Recording Using OneFS for Google Cloud, Gallery SIENNA ND, and Adobe Premiere Pro
Fri, 07 Jan 2022 14:03:44 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
Here at Dell Technologies, we tested a cloud native real-time NDI ISO feed ingest workflow based on Gallery SIENNA, OneFS, and Adobe Premiere Pro, all running natively in Google Cloud.
TL; DR... it's awesome!
Mark Gilbert (CTO at Gallery SIENNA) had noticed there was a growing demand in the market for highly scalable, enterprise-grade file storage in the public cloud for ISO recording. So, we were excited to test this much-needed solution.
Sure, we could have just spun up a cloud-compute instance, created some SMB shares or NFS exports on it, and off you go. But then you quickly find that your ability to scale becomes an issue.
Arguably, the most critical part of any live broadcast is the bulk recording of ISO feeds, and as camera technology improves, recorded data is growing at an ever-increasing pace. Resolutions are increasing, frame rates are faster and internet connection pipes are getting larger.
This is where OneFS for Google Cloud steps in.
Remote production is now a must rather than a nice-to-have for every studio. The production world has had to adopt it, embrace it and buckle in for the ride. There are some great products out there to help businesses enable remote-production workflows. Gallery SIENNA is one of these products. It enables NDI-from-anywhere workflows that help to reduce utilization on over-contended connections.
You can purchase OneFS for Google Cloud through the Google Cloud Marketplace, attach it to a Gallery SIENNA Processing Engine via NFS export and start recording at the click of a button. In our testing, as soon as the recorders began writing, we were able to open and manipulate the files in Adobe Premiere Pro, which we connected to via SMB to prove out that multi-protocol worked too. This was all while the files were being recorded, and we could expand them in real-time in the timeline as they grow.
Infrastructure components (provisioned in Google Cloud):
- 1 x OneFS for Google Cloud
- 1 x Ubuntu VM
- Running Gallery SIENNA ND Processing Engine
- 1 x Windows 10 VM
- NDI Tools
- Adobe Premiere Pro
We used a SIENNA ND Processing Engine to generate six real-time record feeds, three of which were 3840p60 NDI and the other three of 1080p30 DNxHD 145
One of the great benefits of using Gallery SIENNA ND on Google Cloud is that our ingest could have come from anywhere. We could have used any internet-connected device that can reach the Google Cloud instance, be that a static connection in a purpose-built facility or a 4G/5G cell phone camera on the street with the NDI tools on it.
High-level workflow:
- Added a Signal Generator node (3840p60) into our SIENNA ND Processing Engine instance
- Used the SIENNA ND node-based architecture to add on a timecode burn and frame sync
- Added 3 x <NDI Recorder>
- Configured the recorders to write out to an NFS export on our OneFS for Google Cloud instance
- Added a StreamLink Test node (1080p30) into the same SIENNA ND Processing Engine instance
- Added timecode burn and frame sync nodes again
- Added 3 x <DNxHD 145 Recorder>
- Configured the recorders to write out to the same NFS export on our OneFS for Google Cloud instance
- Hit record on all recorders
Once the record was running, we added a "Media Picker" node and selected one of the files that we were recording. Then, we connected this growing file and one of the frame-sync outputs to a "multiviewer" node. We then watched both the live feed and chase play from disk as it was being laid down.
To cap it off, we also mounted one of the output paths using SMB from a Google Cloud hosted Windows 10 instance running Adobe Premiere Pro, and we were able to import, scrub and expand the files as they grew in real-time, allowing us to chase edit.
To find out more about the Dell Technologies offers for Media and Entertainment, feel free to get in touch by DM, or click here to find one of our experts in your time zone.
See the following links for more information about OneFS for Google Cloud and Gallery SIENNA.
Author: Andy Copeland