Zixi, the industry leader for enabling cost-efficient and highly scalable live broadcast-quality video over any IP network or protocol and provider of the award-winning Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP), today announced the release of Zixi Edge Compute (ZEC) that brings high performance connectivity to the network edge, unlocking the full benefits of the SDVP. Designed to meet the rapidly evolving needs of live video distribution and supporting diverse delivery workflows with higher performance and greater uptime. ZEC is an edge video streaming system that is installed on-premises as a Zixi endpoint, replacing legacy Zixi Feeder and Zixi Receiver software.
ZEC is installed on infrastructure at the network edge, facilitating a high-performance connection to Zixi Broadcaster, and managing connections in and out. With ZEC, all sources and target destinations are connected with the market leading Zixi Protocol, continuously and dynamically optimizing video delivery to achieve ultra-low latency, reliability and security, dramatically more compute efficient than any alternative market solution and providing an average 50% reduction in transport stream egress costs. For customers that need the highest level of performance, resilience, security and visibility, ZEC connects any industry edge device with dedicated monitoring and mission critical reliability.
The next generation ZEC software offers a robust feature set and can be configured to function as a Zixi Feeder for contribution, as a Zixi Receiver for distribution, or as both a Feeder and Receiver. Additional local protocol support is available for workflows where you might otherwise use HLS, RTMP, RTSP, etc., to contribute from the local network over the public internet to the cloud. ZEC can ingest those streams on the local network and use the much more reliable and efficient Zixi protocol to contribute to the cloud. Similarly, if another protocol is needed on the receive side ZEC allows you to use the Zixi protocol to pull the stream down from the cloud, saving on egress cost, and then make the stream available in the other protocol on the local network. ZEC also provides protocol diversity along with richer API options for interoperable integrations and advanced telemetry and analytics with Zixi ZEN Master.
ZEC licensing can be upgraded to enable fixed or temporary provisioning for additional normalization and curation with the SDVP Broadcaster platform. Programmatic REST APIs allow for schedulable cloud infrastructure provisioning and ZEC provides agility to be commercially upgraded to a fully functional SDVP and allows Zixi Broadcaster to serve as an IPTV/OTT packager with transmuxing to HLS, LL DASH and RTMP to customer CDN origins for distribution. ZEC also future proofs any need for SCTE to out-cues and vice versa with any of the aforementioned protocols.
Highlights include:
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Communication with the Zixi Broadcaster using the Zixi Protocol, delivering unmatched performance and reliability
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Interface with a broad range of hardware/software encoders, cameras, IRDs and protocols
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Mediation of high performance, bandwidth optimized connectivity
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Content aware dynamic forward error correction
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ARM based processor support with multi-threaded compute optimized high density throughput
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Easy to use graphical interface and programmatic REST API
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Deployable on supported hardware at no charge, enabling unrivaled connection performance when sending and receiving live video
“Zixi continues to innovate the delivery of live video and support many more diverse workflows with higher performance and greater uptime,” said Tim Baldwin, VP Product, Zixi. “The release of ZEC provides our worldwide, market leading customers and partners the ability to deliver cutting edge, broadcast-quality live video deployments and new business models at reduced cost.”
