ITN Productions Launches Low-Latency IP Gallery

ITN Productions, an award-winning factual content producer, today launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins.

Responsible for delivering a leading public broadcaster's daily news coverage across two newsrooms, ITN’s newly built production control room (PCR) delivers reduced latency and greater flexibility to production teams. Architected and delivered by Techex, the system combines TAG’s Realtime Media Platform with Matrox ConvertIP decoders to provide responsive, fully configurable monitoring within ITN’s new Production Control Room (PCR).

John Treadwell, Senior Strategic Account Manager - Global Accounts at Techex commented: "As long-time partners with TAG Video Systems, we were able to bring our experience to bear while designing this system using the TAG–Matrox Video integration. We worked closely with ITN to capture requirements, validate the design, and deliver the project. That collaboration will continue as we support ITN in evolving the system now that it's live."

TAG's Realtime Media platform is a fully software-based system that unifies probing, monitoring, visualization, and analysis into one agile platform. Its adaptive architecture enables efficient load balancing, rapid mosaic generation, and on-the-fly transcoding, all within the IP domain. ITN has harnessed its support for SMPTE ST 2110 and JPEG XS in the new PCR to deliver a scalable, future-ready monitoring solution for live news production.

The deployment drives multi-viewer latency down to between 1 and 1.5 frames, achieved through the Matrox ConvertIP ST 2110 - HDMI interfaces driving the PCR’s ten 4K multiviewer displays.

"With TAG, we've been able to realise the agility of an all-IP monitoring workflow while retaining the low latency and reliability that operators are used to in traditional galleries," said James Wickes, Lead Media Engineer, ITN Productions. "Matrox's ConvertIP technology delivers that responsiveness on screen, and with Techex helping us bring the two together in a cohesive architecture, we've been able to future-proof our gallery and the production workflows that depend on it."

This latency is made possible via the Matrox ConvertIP decoders translating IP signals into native HDMI outputs with deterministic timing and no perceptible lag. Their ability to maintain consistent frame-accurate synchronisation across all ten 4K displays ensures the "live feel" that operators rely on when cutting between sources.

Daniel Maloney, Technical Marketing Manager at Matrox Video, added: "The Matrox ConvertIP family was designed exactly for projects like this. Seeing ITN achieve such low-latency multiviewer performance across multiple 4K displays is a great demonstration of how tight partnerships can bring immediacy and confidence back into IP-based control rooms."

Going beyond low-latency, TAG's Operator Console also allows people in the gallery to quickly adapt multiviewer screens to the current production, putting them in control of what they see. "ITN's new gallery is a great example of how IP-native monitoring can reach full broadcast responsiveness," explained TAG's Chief Architect Paul Briscoe. "In a newsroom environment, the immediacy of information delivery, while retaining the flexibility of a software-defined system, is hugely validating. It demonstrates that an advanced, all-IP control room can meet the real-time demands that live production requires. Techex's approach brought together the strengths of TAG and Matrox Video in a way that allowed ITN to focus purely on production rather than infrastructure."

With the new gallery on air, ITN now benefits from a more responsive, adaptable control environment than before that mirrors the immediacy of traditional baseband workflows while remaining entirely IP-native. The project is a compelling demonstration of close working partnerships and stands as proof that low-latency, standards-based monitoring and multi-viewing can be achieved without compromise.

www.itn.co.uk