Cinegy Proves Size Matters – Efficiency Equals CO2 Footprint

Showcases complete TV station in a Microlino electric Microcar

Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digital video processing, asset management, video compression and automation, and playout, is emphasizing at IBC2023 (15 – 18 September, Amsterdam RAI, stand 7.A01) that today’s media solutions must reflect environmental concerns while retaining rich functionality. Cinegy delivers on this promise through a software stack that is ultra optimized, which leads to very low energy consumption.

Drawing on the benefits of its partnership with Supermicro, Cinegy is demonstrating this by running a staggering 256 channels of HD playout using Cinegy Air software from a single 4RU server. With a power consumption of around 1500W, that equates to consumption of less than 6W for per complete playout channel, a huge reduction in carbon footprint.

An even more eye-catching display of the way Cinegy is delivering huge performance in a compact form is the Micro OBVAN demonstration: a complete four camera broadcast system fitted in the trunk of a Microlino car. The Microlino is a tiny electric town car, only 2.5m long and weighing just 500kg. Its trunk is a tiny 230 liters, yet Cinegy has put all the hardware and software for production and delivery into it, including 5G connectivity, drawing power from the Microlino’s traction batteries.

“Our goal when developing all our products has been to create high functionality in very compact software,” said Jan Weigner, managing director of Cinegy. “Delivering high performance with the minimum of processor resources makes for high availability systems in a low physical footprint, but it also means that the continuing costs of running the installation – including power and air conditioning – are also minimized.”

“We can all see the catastrophic damage that climate change has wrought,” he said, “and our very efficient software is playing its part in minimizing the carbon footprint.”

IBC2023 will see the introduction of enhanced functionality across all of Cinegy’s key products, including Cinegy Air multi-channel playout, Cinegy Multiviewer and Cinegy Capture for ingest. These continuing enhancements reflect the company’s continued close relationships with broadcasters and media enterprises around the world who rely on Cinegy software. The greatly enhanced subtitling capabilities in Cinegy Air, for example, were developed in response to a requirement from a major French broadcaster.

Cinegy will also be showing a useful new tool, Cinegize, which provides remote control of graphics and broadcast equipment. While there are a number of remote desktop tools on the market, Cinegy has led its development with the factors that are critical for broadcast applications: frame accuracy, color fidelity and low latency.

Cinegize can connect over any fabric, across a room or across the world. It is standards-based, so can use encapsulated data streams like SRT for remote connectivity, and for high bandwidth streams it can use the Cinegy Daniel2 codec providing very high quality, right up to lossless.

“We see Cinegize as a utility,” Weigner said, “which is why we are making it available free of charge. It is open, so you can use it to access any suitable software on any remote device, but we hope that in time users will recognize the need to organize and manage the content, which is where our solutions excel.

Inviting visitors to see Cinegy on stand 7.A01 at IBC2023, Weigner added “The media market grows ever more crowded and competitive. Our products are designed to scale with the user, whether that is the need to move from HD to 4k or even 8k, or the need to add more channels and sub-channels, or the need to link remote workers and locations with rapidly growing content stores.

“At IBC we look forward to talking these issues through with the many visitors from around the world,” he continued. “We are catching the visitor’s eye with demonstrations like the complete OBVAN in my Microlino, and a single box running 256 HD channels – or 64 Ultra HD, or eight 8k – but the importance of IBC is having the time to talk through solutions in detail, showing how we can match users’ expectations, on premises, in the cloud, and across multiple locations.”

Comprehensive information on all of Cinegy’s software systems can be found at cinegy.com