Every live streaming use case is unique, but there’s not a single broadcaster, streaming provider, or content creator today for whom cost savings isn’t at the top of their list of priorities. But how do you reduce costs without sacrificing quality, viewer experience, and scalability? One way is by using hardware acceleration to maximize throughput and offload tasks from CPU, decreasing both costs and energy consumption.
That’s why we’ve integrated the Norsk Media Server with the AMD Alveo MA35D Media Accelerator and SDK. First announced at NAB 2024, the partnership empowers media publishers to not only encode and transcode on hardware, but also use the MA35D to perform more complex tasks like video composition and transcription — and free up CPU for other functions.
“Our partnership with id3as is based on our shared goal of reducing operational costs and lowering the barrier to entry for live streaming,” says Mahmoud Al-Daccak, AMD’s Senior Director, Product Development Engineering — Datacenter Video Acceleration. “Whether on-prem or in the cloud, Norsk’s powerful media framework is well-suited for exposing the effectiveness of the Alveo MA35D media accelerator for a range of transcoding and streaming tasks where cost-effective scalability, quality, and low latency are important.”
“At the heart of Norsk’s value proposition is simplifying live streaming while empowering developers and non-developers alike to be more ambitious with what they deliver to their users. Not just simple ‘source in, ABR ladder out,’ but picture-in-picture, lower thirds and other graphic overlays, multiple audio tracks, transcription/translation, and more,” says id3as CEO Adrian Roe. “But those functions are compute-intensive, so it makes sense to leverage hardware acceleration, and since the AMD Alveo MA35D is purpose-built for high-density, ultra-low latency video processing, it’s perfect for getting the most out of Norsk’s extensive features and functionality.”
The MA35D delivers up to 32 streams at 1080p, 8 streams at 4Kp60, or even two 8Kp30 streams per card and supports AV1, H.265, and H.264. It can encode 4K at a maximum latency of 8 milliseconds, and 1080p60 at 2 milliseconds. And it achieves these high throughput levels with remarkably low power consumption — as low as 35 watts.
By combining Norsk with the MA35D, you can truly do more with less. Contact AMD to find out more about the Alveo MA35D, and click here to set up a demo to learn how Norsk can bring unmatched simplicity and reliability to your live streaming workflow
