FAQs

Stagebox is designed for high quality productions where visually lossless compression is required. The CODEC of choice is AVCi 100, or technically known as H.264 High Profile, 4:2:2 10 bit. This is the CODEC standard described by the Digital Production Partnership (DPP), and the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) for all UK program delivery.

AVCi 100 is natively supported across all the major non-linear editors, and enables productions to have a single encoding profile from the camera all the way through to playout.

The main video encoding profile is set at 100Mb/s. This is part of the defining standard and is not user changeable. That said, as we know bandwidth is normally of a premium, for return vision a user might want to reduce the bandwidth allocated to the video. This is possible under the Media Stream Settings box and within the Video tab. By selecting “Optimized h.264” the user is able to set a bitrate.

Please note: this option should not be selected for any ‘on air video’. This mode should just be used for monitoring.

The total bandwidth is dependant on the complexity of the picture and how many audio channels you are using. The maximum bandwidth will be approximately 130Mbs.

This is dependant on a few factors such as what the network is doing and what is decoding the stream. Stagebox can run back to back, but that is not it’s primary design. Once on a network, the stream can be decoded by many different applications. Each will have different decoding times.

However, if timed back to back the latency of two Stageboxes is 4 fames.

Stagebox supports the majority of camera systems. It has a specific Sony Lanc ™ IO which enables many low cost cameras to be remotely controlled.

For professional broadcast ENG and System Cameras, Stagebox has a serial IO, which supports RS232, 422 and 485. This runs at all the different baud rates and major parity options which enables camera’s Remote Control Panels (RCP) to be carried as part of the system. This includes Sony’s 1500 series of camera’s and RCPs.

Stagebox uses approximately 30W. Depending on the form factor used, the Stagebox does have battery connectors and can either be mains powered and power the camera,or be sandwiched between a camera and a battery to power both the camera and also the Stagebox.

Stagebox has a few different modes, and these depend on what you want to achieve with your Stagebox link. As a default the Stagebox is fully bi-directional. That means every signal can be carried both ways, and decoded or encoded at each Stagebox. If however you wish to use the Media Stream Network Tools, to enable Stagebox to run on harsh networks, you can enable receive only and the additional computing power now made available (by not sending video) is used to reorder, and manage the receiving stream.

These modes are included as part of the product and are selectable via the Stagebox Configuration webpage.

No. Stagebox is a Media Streaming Device, and as such the receiving end can be as simple as VLC. You can use a second Stagebox if you need to break all the signals back to baseband, but that is a production decision.

No. Stagebox uses common IT Standards and is supported over all modern network equipment. (Reminder: the network must be Gigabit Ethernet, it will not work over 100Mb equipment)

Yes. The most fundamental design principles behind Stagebox is it dependency on IT standards. Stagebox is as much IT kit as it is Broadcast kit. Layer 2, Layer 3 networks – the Internet, Stagebox runs on them all!

Coming from the heritage of the BBC, it’s no surprise that sometimes the old ways are the best. Stagebox has an additional analogue audio stereo pair, this is really useful as it can be used on one leg for Talkback, and the other leg as IFB (Interruptible Fold Back – the presenters in ear piece). The talkback runs as a 4-wire system and so an additional belt pack or matrix is required.

Stagebox is controlled via its built-in Webpage. This is accessible anywhere on your network, and is also exposed via its own ad-hoc WIFI network. There are a number of system integrators building on its open API and as soon as we can release info, we will.