FOR-A Americas to Shine at NAB New York with Flexible and Cost-Effective SDI-IP Live Production Workflow

FOR-A Americas will highlight its complete live production workflow at the NAB Show New York this year. The FOR-A workflow provides an intuitive system that easily scales with the customer from 3G-SDI and HD signals up to single-cable 12G-SDI. FOR-A’s software-defined solutions offer a seamless migration path for all flavors of IP and feature full support for SMPTE ST 2110 standards.   

“We’ve been very busy developing solutions that provide the greatest creative flexibility for our customers,” said Satoshi Kanemura, President, FOR-A Americas. “We don’t design anything without taking the pulse of our customers. In response to their feedback, FOR-A is focused on creating highly customizable SDI- to IP-based solutions with the power and features to produce dynamic content at a very accessible price point.”

At NAB New York, FOR-A will showcase two “bridge” technologies that enable a highly flexible SDI-to-IP live production workflow: the FA-1616 multi-channel processor and the SOAR-A Edge IP transport appliance.

With SMPTE ST 2110 and ST 2022 interfaces, the FOR-A FA-1616 multi-channel processor is an ideal gateway between SDI and IP as well as IP to IP and SDI to SDI. It provides frame synchronization for up to 32 channels, plus color correction and audio remapping, all in a compact 1RU form factor. Available expansion cards allow the selection of bitrates (12G/6G/3G/HD-SDI), video over IP (SMPTE ST 2110 with planned SMPTE ST2022 support), and audio I/O (embedded audio, AES/EBU, analog audio, MADI and Dante).

The FA-1616’s frame synchronizer also supports 4K/12G-SDI/High Dynamic Range/Wide Color Gamut and simultaneous processing of 4K UHD and HD video by using four channels together as a 4K processor. It is highly customizable for a variety of functions such as up/down/cross conversions, color corrections, and SDR/HDR conversion.

Like other products in the FOR-A line, the FA-1616 processor can be monitored and controlled via a web browser or Ember+ and monitored via SNMP networking protocol. A redundant power supply is standard on all models.

“A software-defined architecture is the perfect solution for a cost-effective migration from SDI to media-over-IP,” added Kanemura. “Adding new functionality through software means the customer can configure the system to their needs, without additional hardware investment. It also means that hybrid production, using a variety of signal formats, can be easily accomplished.”

FOR-A’s software-based live production platform, SOAR-A (Software Optimized Appliance Revolutionized by FOR-A), boasts an expandable IP-based architecture and supports the conversion and delivery of SD, HD, 4K and NDI^® to ST 2110 signals.

Powered by SipRadius, the compact (1U) SOAR-A Edge software-based encoder/decoder offers ultra-low latency, long-haul IP transport. An edge computer, it enables highly secure REMI production and gateway-free streaming. It boasts an expandable IP-based architecture and supports the conversion and delivery of SD, HD, 4K and NDI^® to SMPTE ST 2110 signals. It is compatible with WebRTC and utilizes RIST for the secure transport of multiple video, audio and data signals.

Connecting a remote camera location to the broadcast studio using SOAR-A Edge allows the user to transmit SDI/NDI/IP video channels configured as either Encode or Decode. Each RIST Tunnel can carry up to ten streams of multiplexed media and send to up to ten peers.

During NAB 2024, FOR-A introduced two new codecs for SOAR-A Edge – JPEG XS and AV1.

FOR-A will exhibit in booth #1009 during the show, which runs from October 9-10 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.