Home

Note: This is the Open Broadcast Encoder code wiki. There are a range of OBE sites for different user-groups:

Corporate

http://www.ob-encoder.com

Downloads Page

http://code.google.com/p/open-broadcast-encoder/

Technical wiki (e.g. STB compatibility)

http://wiki.obe.tv

Community Portal

http://ob-encoder.ning.com

Introduction

Open Broadcast Encoder is a fresh implementation of an open source decoder/encoder/transcoder/transmuxer. It is designed from the ground up to be both flexible and scalable enough for use in both 24/7 live streaming and offline operations. Open Broadcast Encoder aims to be compliant with all relevant broadcast industry standards and practices, with a special emphasis on quality and stability.

Open Broadcast Encoder is based on existing high-quality open source projects including x264, FFmpeg and libmpegts.

The project is divided into two subprojects that share core components: OBE-RT for real-time 24/7 operation and OBE-VoD when dealing with file-based workflows.

System Requirements OBE-Video on Demand

• Supported on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

Usage scenarios for OBE-VoD

• Existing File -> Demuxer -> Decoder/Filtering -> Encoder -> Muxer -> Save to File

OBE-Realtime Platform

• Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit / RedHat 6 64-bit (CentOS support postponed until newer kernel is included)
• Other Linux configurations may work but are unsupported
• HD/SD-SDI card for SDI input
• DVB card for DVB input
• ASI card for ASI input and/or output

More specific hardware information will be listed as support is added.

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Usage scenarios for OBE-RT

• Uncompressed SDI -> Filtering -> Encoder -> Muxer -> IP/ASI output
• Live Stream (IP or ASI) -> Demuxer -> Decoder/Filtering -> Encoder -> Muxer -> IP/ASI output

OBE-RT-TODO

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Planned Features

Input

Sources

• SDI and HD-SDI
  Embedded audio and correct VANC processing where possible
  4:2:2 sampling
• IP streams
  Raw UDP, RTP/UDP, MXF (multicast and unicast)
• DVB-ASI
  Passthrough or transcoding of H.264/MPEG-2 (SPTS and MPTS)
  ATSC PSIP
  Datacasting
• AES3
  PCM and all non-PCM embedded formats
• DVB-T/C/S
  Support for V4L2-DVB

Audio Formats
Passthrough or transcode

• AC-3 Audio
• "E-distribution audio"
  Commercially known as "Dolby E" - Contact kierank for more information about licensing.
• MPEG/MP2 Audio
  Includes 4x MP2 channels to simulate a 5.1+2.0 mix

Anciliary Streams

• DVD Subtitles (for VoD)
• DVB Subtitles
• DVB-TTX (Teletext)

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Output

Video Encoders

• x264 - H.264 AVC encoder (includes 10-bit mode for high-quality applications)
• x262 - MPEG-2 encoder (in development)

Statmux pools for both MPEG-2 and H.264 AVC (in development)
Speedcontrol to increase encoding complexity when CPU capacity is available (in development)

Video Filters

• 10-bit to 8-bit dithering
• 4:2:2 to 4:2:0 resampling using libswscale
• Filters via libavfilter
  Noise reduction, etc.
• Handling for 3DTV formats

Audio Encoders

• FFmpeg - AC-3/E-AC3 and AAC/HE-AAC
• Twolame - MP2

Audio Filters

• "E-distribution" to AC-3 metadata passthrough
• SMPTE 337M audio passthrough for AC-3 or MPEG audio

Subtitles/Captioning

• DVB subtitles
• CEA subtitles

Miscellaneous

• Active Format Description
  Insertion and passthrough
  
• VBI services

Muxers

• libmpegts - ATSC/CableLabs/DVB/ISDB compatible MPEG-2 Systems multiplexer
  • SMPTE 302M
  • LATM

Output Modules

• DVB-ASI
• SMPTE 310M
• SMPTE 2022
• Possibility for software DVB modulation
• UDP/IP & RTP/UDP/IP Multicast

Miscellaneous

Monitoring and Control

• SNMP
• LCD Display
  Likely using LCDproc or similar

User Interaction

• Command line interface
• Web-based interface
• GUI interface
• Integrated system benchmarks for determining viable real-time performance capabilities
• General system information
  Kernel version, CPU/memory usage, buffer sizes, etc.