In preparation for the infrastructure upgrade Viewmedia build a highly reliable, fully redundant, and scalable virtual computing cluster. The cluster was planned to be used in the new infrastructure. Viewmedia needed to evaluate different software solutions for linear and live channel reception and transcoding. Various solutions were tested including open source tools (ts-duck, ffmpeg, srt-live-transmit) and professional broadcast software for a channel transcoding from the leading industry vendors.
Open-source tools did not meet Viewmedia expectations. srt-live transmit command line tool provided only basic srt to udp conversion with no transcoding support or any required features like monitoring, remote management, reporting, watchdog, active/backup switch over and others. Command line tools like fmpeg and ts-duck turned out to be very flexible but failed to properly transcode streams with stable CBR output and consistent IAT. Moreover many other management features were missing.
Commercial software solutions were lacking in features or the costs were too high for the relevant services and markets.