Synchronizing streams by timecodes Multi-camera production requires all streams to be in sync

SEI metadata NTP time sync support

Remote production often uses multiple cameras and encoders. Each camera delivers the stream with its own delay relative to other sources. So when they are combined together, the same object is shown at a different point in time from different angles. Thus all sources must be synchronized in a single time scale before being used further.

An industry-proven solution for this problem requires the following approach on both sender and receiver sides. All sources are set to use the same reference time, e.g. use the same NTP server.

• Each source inserts SEI timecode metadata into the content frames.
• Media server is set to have a certain delay for frames alignment.
• Server takes SEI timecode of each received frame and puts it on hold.
• All frames with the same SEI timecode are then sent out at the same time. This approach allows getting all frames from different sources and align then with each other by absolute time scale. 

Both H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC video codecs are supported for SEI metadata extraction.

Supported protocols: LRT/SRT/RTMP

Enabling the frame sync

• From the settings icon (1) -> Production (2) 
• Enable the frame sync and assign a buffer (3).

Ignore the SEI timecode on a specific input

This is usefull if you're receiving multiple feeds with SEI timecode but some of them are wrong or you do not want them all to be in sync. Some incorrect timecode may also induce an input restart in loop on the studio production.