Ravenna is a technology for

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

transport of

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound * Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum * Digital audio, representation of sou ...

and other media data over

IP network The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

s. Ravenna was introduced on September 10, 2010 at the

International Broadcasting Convention International Broadcasting Convention, more commonly known by its initials IBC, is an annual trade show, held in September at the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. IBC's tagline is “By the industry. For the ...

in Amsterdam. Ravenna can operate on most existing network infrastructures using standard networking technology. Performance and capacity scale with

network performance Network performance refers to measures of service quality of a network as seen by the customer. There are many different ways to measure the performance of a network, as each network is different in nature and design. Performance can also be model ...

. Ravenna is designed to match broadcasters' requirements for

low latency Latency, from a general point of view, is a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed. Lag, as it is known in gaming circles, refers to the latency between the input to a simulation and ...

, full signal transparency and high reliability. Fields of application include in-house signal distribution for broadcasting houses and other fixed installations, flexible setups at venues and live events,

outside broadcasting Outside broadcasting (OB) is the electronic field production (EFP) of television or radio programmes (typically to cover television news and sports television events) from a mobile remote broadcast television studio. Professional video camera ...

support, and inter-studio links across

wide area network A wide area network (WAN) is a telecommunications network that extends over a large geographic area. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits. Businesses, as well as schools and government entities, u ...

links and production facilities.

Standard protocols

Ravenna is an IP-based solution. As such it is based on protocol levels at or above layer 3 of the OSI reference model. All protocols and mechanisms used within Ravenna are based on widely deployed and established standards: * Streaming is based on the well-established RTP / RTCP protocols with payload formats defined by various RFCs (i.e. RFC 3550, RFC 3551 et al.). * Both

unicast Unicast is data transmission from a single sender (red) to a single receiver (green). Other devices on the network (yellow) do not participate in the communication. In computer networking, unicast is a one-to-one transmission from one point in ...

and

multicast In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused with ...

are supported on a per-stream basis. * Stream management and connection is achieved through SDP or

RTSP The Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) is an application-level network protocol designed for multiplexing and packetizing multimedia transport streams (such as interactive media, video and audio) over a suitable transport protocol. RTSP i ...

protocol. * QoS is based on

DiffServ Differentiated services or DiffServ is a computer networking architecture that specifies a mechanism for classifying and managing network traffic and providing quality of service (QoS) on modern IP networks. DiffServ can, for example, be used t ...

mechanism * Device configuration and discovery is executed through the use of

DHCP The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a cli ...

/ DNS services or zeroconf mechanisms. * Low-level device configuration is accomplished through independent web services via

protocol. * Time synchronization is maintained via Precision Time Protocol, PTPv2 (

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

1588-2008). * Stream redundancy is based on SMPTE ST 2022-7 standard.

Open technology

Ravenna is an open-technology standard without a proprietary

licensing A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

policy. A first-draft version of the Ravenna specification is publicly available. The development is jointly executed within the RAVENNA Partner Group under the leadership of ALC NetworX GmbH, Munich. Current Ravenna partners include: * 2wcom (Germany) * AEQ (Spain) * AETA (France) * Archwave (Switzerland) * AVT Audio Video Technologies GmbH (Germany) * Calrec (UK) * Digigram (France) * DirectOut (Germany) * Dolby (USA) *

Genelec Genelec Oy is a manufacturer of active loudspeaker systems based in Iisalmi, Finland. It designs and produces products especially for professional studio monitor, studio recording, mixing and mastering applications, broadcast, and movie producti ...

(Finland) * Infomedia (China) *

Lawo Lawo is an international company based in Rastatt, Germany, specializing in the manufacture of digital mixing consoles and other professional audio equipment. It was founded in 1970 by Peter Lawo, and is currently run by his son Philipp. The comp ...

(Germany) * Merging Technologies (Switzerland) * Neumann (Germany) * Orban (USA) * Qbit (Germany) * Riedel Communications (Germany) *

Ross Video Ross Video Ltd is a privately held Canadian company that designs and manufactures equipment for live event and video production. Ross Video's headquarters and manufacturing operations are located in Iroquois, Ontario, Canada, while their R&D lab ...

(Canada) *

Schoeps Schalltechnik Dr.-Ing. Schoeps GmbH, known as Schoeps Mikrofone, is a German manufacturer of professional studio condenser microphones for recording and broadcast. The privately owned company is based in Karlsruhe, south-west Germany, and was fo ...

(Germany) * SciSys (Germany) * Sonifex (UK) * Sound4 (France) *

The Telos Alliance Telos Alliance is an American corporation manufacturing audio products primarily for broadcast stations. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, the company is divided into six divisions: * Telos Systems manufactures talkshow systems, IP audio c ...

(USA) * WorldCast Systems (France) * and others

Standardization activities

Ravenna contributed to the

AES67 AES67 is a technical standard for audio over IP and audio over Ethernet (AoE) interoperability. The standard was developed by the Audio Engineering Society and first published in September 2013. It is a layer 3 protocol suite based on existing ...

standardization efforts. Ravenna is compatible with AES67 and all relevant mechanisms, protocols and formats used for synchronization, transport and payload mandated by AES67 are fully supported. Ravenna contributed to the

SMPTE 2110 SMPTE 2110 is a suite of standards from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) that describes how to send digital media over an IP network. SMPTE 2110 is intended to be used within broadcast production and distribution fac ...

standardization efforts. Ravenna is compatible with the audio parts SMPTE ST 2110-30 and -31.

Awards

Ravenna was a recipient of a

Technology & Engineering Emmy Award The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Enginee ...

in 2020 for Development of Synchronized multi-channel uncompressed audio transport over IP Network.

Notes

References

External links

* {{Digital audio and video protocols Digital audio Audio network protocols