© 2013 Harmonic Inc. All rights reserved.
6
Electra 9200 Release 01, Rev A
Chapter 1
Introduction
This manual provides an overview of the Harmonic™ Electra™ 9200 series encoder platform. It
has the following chapters:
■
(this chapter), provides an overview of the Electra 9200 encoder.
■
Chapter 2, Installation and Startup
, describes how to start and use the standalone encoder web
GUI, SAG. It tells how to install new platform software, and gives an overview of licensing
requirements.
■
Chapter 3, Electra 9200 Encoding Tutorial
, includes a tutorial for encoder platform configuration on
the Electra 9200, with steps to configure end-to-end encoding for a service that includes SDI
input, encoding of one video and one audio, and output over an IP and/or ASI transport
■
Chapter 4, Creating a DiviTrack DTMX Pool
, shows how to create a pool and add two video streams
to the pool.
Product Overview
The Electra™ 9200 series of encoders provide flexible hardware platforms that support a wide
range of encoding needs including:
■
Multiple input types—SD and/or HD SDI for encoding
■
Support for multiple audio encoding adapters
■
Multiple output types—IP and ASI
The encoders support a range of use cases, including conversion between SD and HD formats,
conversion for IPTV, or cable time-shifting. This guide describes a basic end-to-end workflow for a
single service. The data flow discussed in this guide is: SDI Input—Encoding—IP or ASI Transport
Output.
DiviTrackMX™
The Electra 9200 provides standalone statistical multiplexing through DiviTrackMX (DTMX). Using
DTMX, the encoder generates up to eight variable bitrate (VBR) streams that are incorporated into
one constant bitrate (CBR) transport.
NOTE:
You can also configure and use DiviTrack on platforms managed by Harmonic NMX™. You can
create pools that are managed by a single encoder, and DiviTrack over IP pools that manage streams from
multiple devices in communication with a ProStream multiplexer.
When configuring DTMX, you supply a pool bitrate, the minimum and maximum bitrates for each
stream, and the stream priority. The encoder compares the complexity of each stream on a
frame-by-frame basis, considers the stream priority (if applicable), and assigns an appropriate bit
rate to each stream within the transport.
Chapter 4, Creating a DiviTrack DTMX Pool
shows how to create and configure a DTMX pool. For
information about DTMX, see the online help.
