NDI Joins AES70 Efforts as Latest Member of the OCA Alliance

The OCA Alliance, formed to promote the Open Control Architecture (OCA) according to the AES70 control and monitoring standard, announced NDI as a member to the trade association. NDI is now a de facto standard in audio, video, and metadata media networking, and a major update to its metadata capabilities was just announced, making the collaboration with the OCA Alliance even more pertinent. NDI has been adopted by more media organizations than any other IP standard, creating the industry’s largest ecosystem of compatible and enabled video products.
 
NDI originated from the Network Device Interface efforts developed by NewTek, and became a separate entity when NewTek was acquired by the Vizrt Group in 2019. During the global pandemic, NDI adoption exploded as users explored remote production capabilities and discovered that NDI allowed them to securely share NDI sources - particularly PTZ cameras - between remote sites anywhere in the world.

NDI is royalty-free and allows any network-connected product to communicate with each other over IP to transmit, encode, and receive multiple streams that are high quality, low latency, and frame-accurate. Because NDI is freely available, developers can easily integrate the protocol into their devices, applications, or existing systems. Specifically for audio, NDI Audio Direct provides a set of audio plugins that allow virtually any audio software application to take advantage of NDI, integrating NDI audio into software-based audio workflows.

Introduced in 2021, NDI 5 brought native support for macOS, iOS, tvOS, and iPadOS devices, as well as support for ARM-based devices, enabling billions of devices to use NDI. Users can now specify which network interface will be used by NDI, reducing potential conflicts with other protocols or applications, and NDI 5 made it easier to set up private NDI networks, ensuring streams or inputs are only accessible to authorized users.

"Joining the OCA Alliance marks a significant leap forward in the standardization strategy for metadata in NDI. It is also a tremendous pleasure to collaborate with such brilliant minds as the creators of AES70," says NDI Technical Director, Roberto Musso. "I look forward to the opportunity to publish the guidelines for AES70 over NDI soon." "The OCA Alliance is thrilled to welcome NDI to our membership," notes Ethan Wetzell, OCA Alliance Marketing Chair. "Not only is it a vote of confidence in the standard to have NDI participating, but it is also proof that AES70 is not just for audio — if it's connected, AES70 can help. We look forward to working with the team."

Coinciding with this announcement, NDI has launched a major update to its metadata capabilities, introducing new standards for SCTE, MIDI, DMX, and captioning, and unveiling the NDI Metadata Lab. This latest release expands the possibilities of metadata integration in live production and broadcast workflows, enabling smarter automation, remote control, and seamless interoperability.
 
Besides documenting some already known capabilities with the support of Vizrt, the new release also introduces four new official standard metadata elements, developed in collaboration with some of the most innovative brands in the NDI Ecosystem: support for broadcast standards CEA-708 & SCTE-104, with ToolsOnAir, the audio standard MIDI with LAMA, and the lighting control standard DMX, in partnership with SalrayWorks.  "One of the greatest advantages of IP video is not just the ability to transmit video over UTP cables, but the integration of advanced functionalities like seamless device connectivity, remote control, and firmware updates," says Geen Jung, CEO and Founder at SalrayWorks. "Over the years, NDI has consistently fostered an ecosystem that inspires innovation, which for SalrayWorks, has opened new possibilities in fields such as lighting and audio."

The success of these partnerships inspired the creation of a new initiative, the Metadata Lab. Any brands and developers can now submit their metadata proposal at ndi.video/metadata-lab. The NDI technical team will then review proposals and work together with creators to test and improve upon the submission. When ready, NDI will publish it as an official NDI Metadata standard in the ever-growing documentation.
www.ocaalliance.com
www.ndi.video