If you're involved in media production technology — whether you’re a broadcaster planning your next equipment purchase, a manufacturer developing new products, or a systems integrator architecting systems for the future — knowing the industry’s preferences for control plane standards will help you make decisions that align with where the market is clearly moving. The results from a comprehensive survey conducted by AMWA and EBU reveal critical insights that could shape your technology decisions and strategic planning for years to come. The survey explored how professionals across our industry view control, which is defined as the ways users interact with and manage media devices, including hardware equipment and software applications.  With 97 responses representing 75 different organizations — including everything from small media companies to the largest, most prominent manufacturers, systems integrators, and broadcasters — these findings offer a representative snapshot of where your peers and competitors see the industry heading. One methodology note before diving into the data is that when there were multiple responses from the same company, those responses were aggregated to count as a single response per organization. For the purposes of this survey, Control is defined by the ways users interact with and manage Media Devices - including hardware equipment as well as software applications. Those interactions include: Dynamic Operations: Adjusting live operational parameters through user interfaces like knobs, faders, buttons, and selectors. Device Observation: Monitoring Device status and alarms via monitoring systems. Initial Configuration: Configuring static parameters to establish a Device's initial or default state. An Open Control Specification is the Priority When asked to rank what’s most important to respondents, the top choice was an open control specification. The overall ranking was the same for all categories of respondents.  Respondents were less interested in conforming to the same spec, or a limited number of control specs. Because the least popular response was that only some devices should have a control specification, that could be interpreted as the industry wanting all devices to be controllable. NMOS-Control is the Top Choice for Interoperability When asked how we can best achieve control interoperability, the most popular answer is NMOS-Control APIs (IS-12, BCP-008, MS-05, and IS-14). This was the top choice among all categories of respondents. The second most popular response in all categories was any open specification or API. Combined, the vast majority of survey respondents (74%) are clear in wanting an open solution.  Catena was only selected by 7% of manufacturer respondents as their choice for interoperability, but it wasn't a preferred option for end users or systems integrators. Open specifications for the purposes of this survey means: Publicly Available: It is freely accessible to anyone, typically without a charge for the document itself. This means it can be read, downloaded, and distributed by all interested parties. Well-Documented: The specification is comprehensive, clear, and unambiguous, providing all necessary details for multiple independent implementations to achieve interoperability. It avoids intentional secrets or ambiguities that would hinder implementation. Royalty-Free/Compensation-Free: There are no royalties or fees required to implement or use the technology described by the specification. This means that anyone can develop products or services based on the specification without paying licensing fees for intellectual property (like patents or copyrights) essential to its implementation. While certification for compliance might incur a fee, the core use of the specification for development remains free. Vendor-Neutral & Non-Discriminatory: It is not controlled by a single company or individual. Its development and maintenance typically involves a collaborative, consensus-driven process overseen by an association, standardization body or open-source framework, ensuring fair competition and preventing vendor lock-in. When asked about using NMOS Minimum Status Monitoring (NMOS BCP-008),  which defines an easy-to-follow traffic light system to monitor the health of IP media facilities, 75% of all respondents were very or somewhat interested. As you might expect, twice the number of end users are very interested in NMOS Minimum Status Monitoring compared to manufacturers, clearly showing that it is the end users who feel the pain trying to monitor faults in real-world multi-vendor installations.  For more about Minimum Status Reporting and how it could simplify your workflow, check out this 2.5-minute video .  Three out of Four Are Moving Toward Software Finally, when asked how prepared respondents are for a transition to software-based (or cloud-based) production, 76% say they are fully or partially prepared. Manufacturers are the most likely to indicate that they’re ready, with nearly half saying they are fully prepared. Among end users and systems integrators, 25% say they are in the early stages of preparation.  These surprisingly strong data points may indicate a self-selection bias among respondents to a survey about a Media Control Plane. However, we can safely conclude that our industry is well aware of this next major transition.  Conclusions As the industry transitions to software-based production, it’s clear there is a real need and desire for control plane interoperability. And an open control plane is the most-wanted approach, with NMOS- Control as the top choice, followed by any open specification. There’s also a lot of interest in using NMOS Minimum Status Reporting.  Want to find out more about NMOS-Control? Read this blog post: NMOS: What’s In It For You? Device Monitoring, Minimum Status Reporting, and More.   The AMWA and EBU survey shows that the industry wants an open media control plane to achieve interoperability. Your Input! Take 30 seconds and let us know if you’d like to attend a workshop, participate in a tested event, or something more: https://forms.gle/wFXi11DWnrNN1PAK7

If you’d like to quickly pinpoint 80-90% of the problems that are encountered in IP systems, you will want to read this part 2 blog post to find out how NMOS device monitoring – just one of the useful benefits covered below – can save you time, costs, and errors. See how NMOS Control and BCP-008 give you the minimum status reporting you need. If you haven’t read the first blog post, which covered NMOS Connect – discovery, registration, device management, and signal management – you can read part 1 here.   Generic Control Protocol There’s a part in NMOS that allows you to read, write, or send any kind of settings of any device. It’s an open generic layer where you can send and read all kinds of settings and it could replace a lot of legacy control protocols.  Editor’s note: This is part 2 of a blog post based on the 2024 NAB presentation of Stefan Ledergerber at Simplexity  in Zurich, Switzerland. You can view the full presentation NMOS: What’s In It For Me? on YouTube . Connect with Stefan on LinkedIn . NMOS specifies a generic control protocol that defines a certain rule set of how to communicate with each other. It is open to define what are called device models. If you’re a manufacturer, you can model all of your products and parts inside that spec. Any device model distinguishes between:  Properties , which are device settings. Methods , which execute a functionality, so for example, hitting a play button on a machine would be a method.  Notifications , so you can subscribe to certain elements that you are interested in knowing about, and then if a value changes, you would be notified from the device.   The last one, notifications, is very important. As you know, right now, many systems require you to pole, reading out values repeatedly in order to find out whether it has changed. That's not very efficient and doesn't scale very well across big installations.  Device Monitoring On the device monitoring side, AMWA members  are about to finish standardizing IP-related status reporting mechanisms. It's not just a question of whether you get access to information. It goes beyond that and it's about minimizing the amount of information you're actually sending across the world. Less is more. Because nothing is more boring than looking at a screen with hundreds of messages. And in many practical cases, people operating MCR get stormed with messages, and assume they’re not relevant so they start ignoring them. NMOS allows you to reduce the storm of messages down to what’s most important.  By looking at 3 simple domain statuses that follow the analogy of traffic lights, you could probably find 80-90% of the problems you encounter in an audio/video-over-IP system. These traffic lights could at least allow an operator to call the right person quickly and address issues more efficiently.  The NMOS Reporting domains are: Connectivity , which includes 2 traffic lights: physical link and packet level. This could be a link down or some of the links down, or packets missing, being late, or lost (on receivers) or transmission errors of any kind (on senders). Synchronization , so is the expected synchronization present? This includes issues like PTP unlock or grandmaster change. Stream Validation , which include issues with decoding the stream (on receivers) or invalid baseband signal to transmit (on senders). If these 3 status reports are supported in every end device, you will be able to find most of your problems and target them quickly.  On top of these, every sender and receiver is indicating an “overall status,” as a summary of the 3 domain statuses. It takes the worst state of the 3 domains contained. By using a traffic light symbol again, this overall status could be indicated straight in your user interface. If every sender and receiver in use is indicating green, it will give you confidence that your IP system is working just fine. A yellow state would say that you should possibly check the system during the next break, but all audio/video signals are still perfectly fine. However, a red state on a sender or receiver should trigger immediate action, first by checking the 3 domain status lights, then by calling the expert on the respective domain. Minimum Status Reporting with NMOS BCP-008 Since this overall status is a summary, manufacturers are welcome to add more states to the 3 “minimum status” reports, as this AMWA initiative is called. The overall status would still take those extensions into account and indicate the worst of them. Initial Setup of Devices The third part of Device Settings and Monitoring is an initial setup of devices. These specs explain how you take the device out of the box and get it to a default setup. There's also a backup restore functionality that’s described. Network Security The fourth and final focus of NMOS is security. They describe the standard mechanisms IT uses:  Control encryption of commands using HTTPS Access authorization – how to use an authentication server How to handle certificates  None of this is news to IT folks, but there is a need for describing how to use it in the context of NMOS, and that’s what these specifications do.  So, as an overview, what’s in the web in the image above is what NMOS describes. It's basically everything. And most of it is ready and clearly defined. And yet, out of all of this, all that people are primarily familiar with IS-04 and IS-05. That’s what’s in the purple ovals.  Now in the next image, you can see the numbers that correspond to each function of NMOS. There's a whole channel of documents, best practices, and specifications on the NMOS website  that you can read. The documents are public, and even the meeting notes are public. Get started at https://specs.amwa.tv/nmos/ .  What’s In It For Me? So to sum up, if you’re an end user, NMOS can shorten your requirements engineering phase. You can leverage work done by others and actually use that work when you write your RFPs. You don't have to think it all through yourself.  With that being said, it is important to ask vendors for NMOS, but don't just write in your RFP, “It has to do NMOS.” That's just not enough. Now that you see everything that NMOS can do, you can appreciate why it’s important to get more specific with what you need.    Ultimately, it will help you build an open system with no vendor lock-in, and that will save you on costs. And if you’re a manufacturer, NMOS shortens your requirements engineering phase. You can also leverage work already by others – specifications, coding, and testing. You don't have to do that all yourself. You can become part of a complete solution rather than just offering products. And ultimately, all of these benefits add up to saving on costs, which means you can increase your profit.  If you’re surprised to find out that NMOS can save you time, costs, and many common problems and errors, you’re invited to find out even more by joining AMWA . As a member, you can take part in working groups and the NMOS community that provide a place for open technical discussions and consensus between a wide range of end users and suppliers. Join today and be a part of the future of NMOS.  Resources Download Download Download Info for Purchasers and decision-makers   Info for strategic technical people and details on business efficiencies   Info for those responsible for making everything work together, integrators, end users   Find out about IPMX and NMOS   Get started with NMOS here: Open source sender and receiver framework (GitHub) Want to start implementing NMOS Control in your products? See tutorials, info on IS-12, BCP-008, and more . Ready to join AMWA?

On the recent AMWA webinar: Getting Started with ST 2110? Here’s Why NMOS Should Be Part of Your Plan, the hosts, Willem Vermost of the EBU and Pedro Ferreira of Bisect answered common questions about NMOS like… Why NMOS is a suite, and not a single spec (much like ST 2110)  How (and why) to create your NMOS test bench Why NMOS uses existing internet technology How to choose between a proprietary control system and an open control system How RESTful interfaces and standard control mechanisms ensure that once you understand one NMOS API, all the rest feel familiar Check out the full recording of the webinar to get all the answers. When you watch, you'll find out about the tools, test-bench tips, and real-world reasons engineers rely on NMOS.  Using NMOS from the start in your ST 2110 set ups makes your day-to-day job so much easier.  Why? Because NMOS lets you automatically discover and connect devices, avoiding time-consuming manual setup. And going forward, it gives you vendor-neutral control of your system, so your workflows stay flexible and scalable. After you watch, if you’d like to find out more about how you can take advantage of all that NMOS has to offer to make it easier to run IP facilities, visit amwa.tv/nmos-getting-started Resources: Get started with NMOS here: Open source sender and receiver framework (GitHub) Want to start implementing NMOS Control in your products? See tutorials, info on IS-12, BCP-008, and more . Ready to join AMWA?

When people talk about NMOS, what they typically mean is IS-04, discovery, and IS-05, registration.  But the reality is, NMOS does so much more... ​ If you don’t know what NMOS is capable of, you’re not asking manufacturers for it. And if you’re a manufacturer, you’re not building it into your new products. And that’s a lost opportunity, as we’ll discuss in this blog post, as well as the next. NMOS goes far beyond its well-known IS-04 and IS-05 protocols, offering a comprehensive suite of tools for managing IP-based media networks – from dynamic signal routing and device configuration to security and monitoring. This complete toolset can make it easier for you to handle resource management, signal connections, and system maintenance across your entire media infrastructure. NMOS: What's in it for me? ​             Editor’s note: This blog post is based on the 2024 NAB IPSHOWCASE presentation of Stefan Ledergerber at Simplexity in Zurich, Switzerland. You can view the full presentation NMOS: What’s In It For Me? above, or on YouTube .  ​ ​Let’s start by looking at a typical IP installation. To understand NMOS's full capabilities, consider this scenario: You’re doing dynamic signal management and you want to start switching the signals between A and B. You have to configure correct stream formats again and again, unless you keep them static. But you’re using IP because you want flexibility, right? So it has to be set up correctly. And by the way, the conventional device settings are not going to go away. You still need to do multi-viewer setup, mic preamp control, and so on. ​ Then you need to monitor your installation. You need to know whether it's working fine. And you want to be able to find faults very quickly. And you also want to be able to move or replace products, moving  them around within pools.    You want to keep a number of devices in a pool and just take them out and connect them somewhere because that's where you need the device right now. And if you do that, then you need to discover where you just connected them because otherwise, they're invisible and not controllable. And what you also need to do is make sure that a new device gets the correct basic setup. Last but not least, you need to constantly ensure that the security standards in your network are met. ​ So if you look at those scenarios and challenges, the question is, what can NMOS do for you in terms of what's defined in NMOS in these very practical situations?  ​ Resource Management ​ What does NMOS specify in terms of managing your resources? NMOS describes a central inventory system, which can work across subnets and across the whole infrastructure.  The centralized inventory system allows you to: find devices and their IP senders and receivers read out by spec what a certain sender or receiver is able to do and which format it supports see what you can connect to a sender or receiver, or what kind of format it’s able to generate look at which streams belong to each other, which is called natural grouping give a device a label or tags put in any kind of device description ​ There is one more thing in resource management beyond these core features. It's possible to read out the system-wide parameters you have decided to use. For instance, PTP domains. You can read that out via a special mechanism. ​ Signal Management ​ This is the more dynamic part of day-by-day operation. Let’s walk through an example of 2 AV devices. They may contain all kinds of things you want to control like:  baseband inputs and outputs a matrix in there to switch between these inputs and outputs and maybe others or into a sender or receiver metering data GPIOs thumbnails on the video side ​ NMOS is able to control those elements inside AV devices and connect them to other devices. Breaking this down, of course you have senders to receivers, but also more than that. NMOS also specifies how you select baseband inputs and feed them into a sender. It also specifies in which baseband outputs a receiver should be fed on a monogranularity of an audio channel. It also allows you to transfer GPIO.  ​ So signal management means connecting all kinds of signals from a sender to a receiver or from one device to another. What everyone knows is that NMOS can connect pre-configured senders to receivers. That means you can assign multicast addresses, making it possible to reach the point where these multicast addresses are not statically typed into a device. NMOS describes clearly how to assign to a sender a certain multicast address.  ​ The same goes for enabling and disabling senders and receivers. Maybe you want to stop the packets coming out. You can do that with NMOS. Think of it as a copy-paste of a transport file, so an STP file from a sender to a receiver.  ​ More than that, you can use any generic data source. For example, button press or audio levels, which are generating constantly changing values, and you can look at such a data source as a sender and connect that sender to a receiver. And it will transmit the constantly changing values almost as if it would be audio or video, but in a much lower bandwidth consumption.  ​ So using this kind of functionality, you can implement, for instance, generic control panels where button pushes are transmitted from one source to a destination, and then they react to that button push. So that's also something you can do with NMOS.   Another thing not a lot of people are aware of is that you can control the baseband matrix. You can set a baseband matrix and say which channels you want in your senders and receivers.  ​ Then there is stream compatibility management, which allows you to ask a sender what can you do? What kind of stream formats do you support? And you can ask a receiver what kind of stream formats can you receive? And then as a control system, you can choose the perfect match. It allows you to choose a certain stream format on a sender freely via a specified control command.  ​ So you may be able to do what the ProAV guys want to do with HDMI, which is just plug in and then it adjusts and finds out what's the best resolution. Via this mechanism, a control system could switch the stream format accordingly, so the receiver can actually receive it in the best possible resolution or quality.  ​ So that’s signal management and resource management. In part 2, we’ll delve into device settings and monitoring, and finally, security.   ​ If you’ve already found out one or two things that NMOS can do for you that you didn’t know before, you’re invited to find out even more by joining AMWA . As a member, you can take part in online forums that provide a place for open technical discussions and consensus between a wide range of end users and suppliers. Join today and be a part of the future of NMOS.  This is part one. See part two about NMOS Control, BCP-008, and minimum status reporting here.

With NMOS, everything works together – ST 2110 equipment registration, discovery, and control. You know it’s all going to work well when you use the specifications. It gives you peace of mind. And if you’re using IPMX, NMOS is baked right in. Matt Robbins of Kitplus caught up with Cindy Zuelsdorf of AMWA to talk about why you're going to want NMOS to play a part in putting a 2110 system or facility together. Watch the 3-minute video. > > During the show, we spoke with someone who's built a lot of baseband stations over the years, and now he’s putting together a new facility that's all 2110. He shared how they're going to use NMOS in conjunction with 2110 to handle equipment registration, discovery, and control. He had confidence everything would work together, thanks to NMOS.   If you want to find out more about how you can use NMOS to make IP facilities easier to run, visit AMWA.tv/nmos-getting-started .  If you want to get involved in advancing NMOS, you can! NMOS is made by its users – customers, vendors, and manufacturers. It's all open, free, and made by the community. Visit AMWA.tv/join  to get involved in AMWA working groups or community forums.

One of the problems that operators often face in IP facilities is that when things go wrong, you’re suddenly awash with alarms. It takes a while to sort through and figure out what’s wrong. Meanwhile, if you lose a couple of ad breaks, you're talking about a major revenue loss. That’s why AMWA members and users have done a lot of work around simplifying minimum status reporting. Now you can use an NMOS traffic light graphic display that presents the most critical information, so you can quickly get back on the air. Watch the video to see a quick demo of how it works. >> Brad Gilmer of AMWA spoke with Matt Robbins from Kitplus at the AIMS IP Showcase booth at NAB 2025 about the simple graphic display of green, yellow, and red to represent device control on systems of up to thousands of senders and receivers. “If you have a whole segment of these devices that are showing yellow,” Brad explains, “Then very quickly somebody can look at it and say, ‘There must be something wrong in this area,’ and quickly can identify a failed piece of equipment.” If you want to find out how you can take advantage of all that NMOS has to offer to make it easier to run IP facilities, including this new control system, visit AMWA.tv/nmos-getting-started .

Come say hi and find out more about how NMOS enables connection, management, and control of your IP video and audio devices from different manufacturers – in a common eco-system and in an interoperable way. NMOS works whether you're using 2110 or IPMX, locally or in the cloud. Even if you use NMOS already, you’ll be able to check out what’s new… You’ll find NMOS at the IP Showcase / IPMX booth, W2843  in West Hall. Look for Stefan Ledergerber along with other AMWA community members at the NMOS demo station. Get a hands-on demo of: NMOS minimum status reporting NMOS open source sender receiver framework NMOS control Special thanks to these companies that are making the demo possible: Arista Bisect DirectOut Matrox Merging Technologies Pebble simplexity NMOS Talks and Training at NAB • Evolution of NMOS for ST 2110 and IPMX with Spencer Deame from Nextera Video, Sunday, April 6 at 3:00 PT, W2831 Theater 3 • What You Need to Know About NMOS in an IP World with Steve Holmes from Leader, Sunday, April 6 at 2:30 PT, W2831 Theater 3 •  AMWA: NMOS Discovery and Beyond with Felix Poulin from CBC and AMWA Board of Directors, and Cindy Zuelsdorf from AMWA, Presented with SBE Ennes Workshop (paid session) Media Over IP Essentials, Day 2, Saturday, April 5 at 1:45 PT, W224  • IPMX training sessions all day on Tuesday including a session on NMOS & IPMX with Stefan Ledergerber from simplexity, Tuesday, April 8 at 11:20 PT, W317  If you want to set up a time to meet at booth W2843 or you have any questions, set a time here or use the chat on the bottom right of this page. See you soon in Vegas! Brad, Cindy, and Tina P.S. Follow us on LinkedIn  for the latest in NMOS news and applications around enabling vendor-independent control of all your IP video and audio gear. ST 2110, IPMX, AES67...