Colibri, the codec for perfect quality and fast distribution of professional AV over IP

By Jon Jacobsen, Silex Insight

When you look to transition your AV distribution from dedicated cabling to IP networks, one of the considerations is quality. How much of the quality of your rich visual communication has to be sacrificed in order to run it over 1Gbit Ethernet cables? A new codec from Silex Insight gives a plain and simple answer: none. Your complex communication can be transported as crisply and lively as it was meant to be.

It has industry-leading performance, is incredibly efficient, and is packed with powerful features.

It covers all the requirements that you may have:

The need for a dedicated codec for Pro-AV

The professional audio-visual industry is still in full transition from the traditional cable transport to AV over IP. Compelling arguments for this switch are the versatile use of existing IP equipment, the resulting lower cost, richer routing options without need to invest in dedicated cabling, and the ability to transport your AV material almost anywhere.

This is one of the issues that may slow down the uptake of AV over IP: the availability of the right codecs to do the job.

Codecs are compression schemes that reduce the video bandwidth needed. They may be implemented in software or in dedicated hardware. We need such codecs because uncompressed video requires vastly more bandwidth than most standard IP equipment will provide. An uncompressed 4K video stream at 60 fps with full 4:4:4 chroma support, for example, requires 18 Gbps! That is far beyond the 1 Gbps capabilities of most of today’s IP networking equipment.

JPEG 2000, for example, is the reference codec for high quality and low latency compression of moving video. But it has a hard time preserving such high quality of complex graphical content in the main use case of professional AV: 4K60 over 1GbE.

What was until now missing from the codec menu was a codec for flawless distribution and delivery of high-quality complex graphical content, including text, spreadsheets and animations.

With flying colors: Colibri

The new Colibri codec from Silex Insight has been specially created to fill the gap to offer flawless distribution and delivery of high-quality complex graphical content.

Below is a comparison of the result of encoding graphical content with Colibri, JPEG 2000, and JPEG XS. For the 4K60 over 1GbE use case, Colibri is the clear winner. With a wider available bandwidth (2.5GbE), JPEG 2000 comes close to Colibri. But when taking into account an 8K quality, there’s no contender left for Colibri, even at 2.5GbE.

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What’s the recipe behind this achievement? Colibri is able to display a more detailed picture for those data that need it. As a result, the Colibri stream will deliver sharp detail where it is most needed.

Colibri has been optimized for what is to be the main use case of professional AV: the delivery of 4K60 quality over 1GbE and 2.5GbE lines. At the same time, it is future-proof and ready to support 8K AV streaming.

Zero latency

Besides impeccable image quality, the Colibri codec guarantees a near-zero latency of a mere 24 video lines. This corresponds to 180 microseconds in 4K60. Such imperceptible latency makes Colibri ideal for, such as KVM or control room applications.

Unique multiview capability

One feature of the Colibri codec is that it supports multiview display. This means that an unlimited number of high-quality streams can be merged and displayed together without quality loss.

In a world of collaboration, more and more applications require displaying different visual sources at the same time. Most of the solutions on the market only support a very limited number of such sources, and they often require extensive additional computation and memory resources.

Colibri recognizes no such limits. The secret is Colibri’s unique slice-based processing.

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Easy to integrate in your FPGA or ASIC

Codecs may run in software, but for the best and most constant result they work their magic inside the hardware fabric of an ASIC or FPGA. Silex Insight offers Colibri as a hardware IP block that offers both possibilities.

Our experts managed to translate its many features into a lightweight hardware block that is easy to integrate in your potential applications, be it a low-complexity ASIC or an FPGA.

As with all hardware blocks from Silex Insight, Colibri has been designed with easy implementation in mind. To that, we add extensive customer support delivered by our very own experts. Acknowledging that no two projects are the same, we’re also ready to discuss the requirements of your specific hardware to achieve the best performance-cost trade-off.

Colibri is a very light video codec - fits even the most cost-efficient FPGAs

VIPER: a transmitter and receiver solution with Colibri

In addition to the Colibri video codec, Silex Insight also offers the option of a 4K60fps AV over IP transmitter and receiver solution, called VIPER. VIPER is a complete solution for streaming high-quality audio and video over IP networks—a solution that features a combination of speed, quality, security, and flexibility. It is perfectly suited for the Colibri video codec, supporting multiview and zero latency audio/video over IP. It features high resolutions up to 4K/UHD over 1Gb, 2.5Gb or 10Gb Ethernet cable, and is available for shipping now.

The VIPER boards come in pairs, with a transmitter and receiver. In a typical professional AV setup, one board will encode the AV stream and stream it on the IP network, while on the receiving end one or more boards will receive and decode the AV to, for example, video conferencing and other real-time AV applications including surveillance, residential distribution, or digital signage and information boards in hotels, airports, or sports venues.

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Conclusion

Colibri is unique, delivering best-in-class crystal clear graphical content for AV over IP distribution over 1GbE. It builds on more than a decade of designing video codecs and we are entering a whole new era. It covers all the requirements of the ProAV market: zero latency, high quality, support for 8K, low resources/power, and support for multiview.

Colibri is easy to integrate and comes with excellent support. Not convinced yet? Contact us for a demonstration.

About Silex Insight

Silex Insight is a recognized market-leading independent supplier of Security IP solutions for embedded systems and custom OEM solutions for AVoIP/Video IP codec. The security platforms and solutions from Silex Insight include flexible and high-performance crypto-engines which are easy to integrate and an eSecure IP module that provides a complete security solution for all platforms. For custom OEM solutions for AVoIP/Video IP codec, Silex Insight provides high-end image and video compression solutions for distributing low latency, 4K HDR video over IP. Development take place at the headquarters near Brussels, Belgium.