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Network Device Interface
Network Device Interface (NDI) is a software specification developed by the technology company NewTek. It enables high-definition video to be transmitted, received, and communicated over a computer network with low latency and high quality. This royalty-free specification supports frame-accurate switching, making it suitable for live video production environments.
NDI is designed to run over gigabit Ethernet with the NDI codec. It delivers 1080i high-definition video at variable data rates typically around 100 Mbit/s.
By default, NDI uses multicast DNS to advertise sources on a local area network, such that NDI receivers can automatically discover and offer those sources. It also supports two other discovery modes (NDI Access, NDI Discovery Server) that allow for operations across subnets and without multicast DNS. Sources are created using an arbitrarily selected TCP port from a range of ports on the NDI senders. When a source is requested, a TCP connection is established on the appropriate port with the NDI receiver connecting to the NDI sender. NDI 3.x has options to use UDP multicast or unicast with forward error correction (FEC) instead of TCP, and can load balance streams across multiple network interface controllers (NICs) without using link aggregation. NDI version 4.0 introduces the Multi-TCP transport.
NDI carries video, multichannel uncompressed audio,[citation needed] and metadata. Metadata messages can be sent in both directions allowing the sender and receiver to message one another over the connection with arbitrary metadata in XML form. This directional metadata system allows for functionality such as active tally information fed back to sources to understand that they are on-air. NDI also allows senders to determine the number of connected receivers, so they can skip unnecessary processing and network bandwidth utilisation when there are no NDI receiver clients connected. NDI Receivers can opt to connect to various combinations of streams, to support, for instance, audio-only or metadata-only connections where video is not required.
The NDI software development kit (SDK) is available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS, and has also been ported to iOS, tvOS, Android, Raspberry Pi, and FPGA.[citation needed] The Standard NDI SDK is available via a royalty-free proprietary license. The NDI Advanced SDK offers OEMs direct access to and from compressed data and other features, with a commercial license.
Other IP video protocols for use in professional video production (rather than IP video used for distribution to end users) include SMPTE 2022, SMPTE 2110, ASPEN (largely superseded by SMPTE 2110) and Sony NMI. There are clear differences in the technology used by these protocols.
NDI was publicly revealed by NewTek on 8 September 2015 and was demonstrated at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam that week. The first device shown using NDI was the NewTek TriCaster which delivered an NDI feed from each of its SDI inputs as well as four output feeds from its vision mixer. The TriCaster could also receive up to two NDI sources from other devices.
NewTek had previously created a predecessor of NDI called AirSend to get video from external devices into their TriCaster products. AirSend had been implemented by a number of character generator (CG) vendors including Vizrt and Chyron. In order to quickly bring these products into the NDI space, NewTek created a new driver to replace the existing AirSend driver, which could be installed on these existing AirSend-compatible devices, instantly converting them to NDI-compatible devices with no change required by the original CG vendors.
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Network Device Interface
Network Device Interface (NDI) is a software specification developed by the technology company NewTek. It enables high-definition video to be transmitted, received, and communicated over a computer network with low latency and high quality. This royalty-free specification supports frame-accurate switching, making it suitable for live video production environments.
NDI is designed to run over gigabit Ethernet with the NDI codec. It delivers 1080i high-definition video at variable data rates typically around 100 Mbit/s.
By default, NDI uses multicast DNS to advertise sources on a local area network, such that NDI receivers can automatically discover and offer those sources. It also supports two other discovery modes (NDI Access, NDI Discovery Server) that allow for operations across subnets and without multicast DNS. Sources are created using an arbitrarily selected TCP port from a range of ports on the NDI senders. When a source is requested, a TCP connection is established on the appropriate port with the NDI receiver connecting to the NDI sender. NDI 3.x has options to use UDP multicast or unicast with forward error correction (FEC) instead of TCP, and can load balance streams across multiple network interface controllers (NICs) without using link aggregation. NDI version 4.0 introduces the Multi-TCP transport.
NDI carries video, multichannel uncompressed audio,[citation needed] and metadata. Metadata messages can be sent in both directions allowing the sender and receiver to message one another over the connection with arbitrary metadata in XML form. This directional metadata system allows for functionality such as active tally information fed back to sources to understand that they are on-air. NDI also allows senders to determine the number of connected receivers, so they can skip unnecessary processing and network bandwidth utilisation when there are no NDI receiver clients connected. NDI Receivers can opt to connect to various combinations of streams, to support, for instance, audio-only or metadata-only connections where video is not required.
The NDI software development kit (SDK) is available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS, and has also been ported to iOS, tvOS, Android, Raspberry Pi, and FPGA.[citation needed] The Standard NDI SDK is available via a royalty-free proprietary license. The NDI Advanced SDK offers OEMs direct access to and from compressed data and other features, with a commercial license.
Other IP video protocols for use in professional video production (rather than IP video used for distribution to end users) include SMPTE 2022, SMPTE 2110, ASPEN (largely superseded by SMPTE 2110) and Sony NMI. There are clear differences in the technology used by these protocols.
NDI was publicly revealed by NewTek on 8 September 2015 and was demonstrated at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam that week. The first device shown using NDI was the NewTek TriCaster which delivered an NDI feed from each of its SDI inputs as well as four output feeds from its vision mixer. The TriCaster could also receive up to two NDI sources from other devices.
NewTek had previously created a predecessor of NDI called AirSend to get video from external devices into their TriCaster products. AirSend had been implemented by a number of character generator (CG) vendors including Vizrt and Chyron. In order to quickly bring these products into the NDI space, NewTek created a new driver to replace the existing AirSend driver, which could be installed on these existing AirSend-compatible devices, instantly converting them to NDI-compatible devices with no change required by the original CG vendors.