Resources

Below is a curated list of available resources for broadcast operations.

Clocks & Studio Screens

• OnAirScreen – Cross-platform “OnAir Lamp” solution targeted for use in professional broadcast environments.
• PiClock – Customisable network based displays of clocks, on-air, mic live and other studio indicators.
• PiRSClock-Full – Radio Studio Clock with studio indicators for mics, telephones etc.

Codecs

• FLAC – Free Lossless Audio Coding, used by some broadcasters for audio exchange, storage.
• Lame – A high quality MPEG Audio Layer III (MP3) encoder.
• opencore-amr – Audio codecs extracted from Android Open Source Project, including AAC.
• Opus – A totally open, royalty-free, highly versatile audio codec.
• Turing Codec – An H.265/HEVC open source software encoder designed for fast and efficient video compression.
• TwoLame – An MPEG Audio Layer 2 (MP2) encoder.

Companion Screens

• dial-discovery-ios – A library for the discovery of devices via the DIAL protocol on the iOS platform.
• dvbcss-synckit-ios – iOS libraries for companion screen applications that are synchronised frame-accurately to a TV.
• dvbcss-synctiming – A system for measuring how accurately a TV or companion are synchronised.
• pydvbcss – Implementation of the DVB Companion Screens and Streams protocols for synchronised media playback.

Connected TVs

• Cross-Platform Authentication – CPA offers an open standard for associating any media device with an online identity.
• HbbPlayer – An HbbTV and W3C specifications compliant application that can playback media from a URL.
• TAL – The TV Application Layer (TAL) is an open source library for building applications for Connected TV devices.

Distributed Media Processing

• StormCV – Apache Storm + OpenCV = large scale distributed image and video analysis.

Documentation

• Kronekeeper – A web based application for recording and managing Krone frame records.

DVB & WiFi

• DTT 2 IP – Broadcast to IP conversion for Wifi indoor coverage.
• DVB Inspector – An open-source DVB analyzer.
• DVBlast – A simple and powerful MPEG-2/TS demux and streaming application.
• dvbshout – Tool to send DVB audio to a shoutcast server or a RTP stream.
• Opencaster – A free and open source MPEG2 transport stream data generator and packet manipulator.
• Project X – DVB demux tool.
• ts2mpa – Simple tool to extract MPEG Audio from a MPEG Transport Stream (TS).
• TSDuck – Extensible toolkit for MPEG/DVB transport streams testing, monitoring, integration, debugging, and more.
• WiFiBroadcast – Analog-like transmission of live video data.

Animation, Graphics & Video Playout

• Aurena – A network distributed media playback system.
• Blender – 3D creation suite supporting 3D modelling, animation, motion tracking, video editing, and more.
• CasparCG – A professional graphics and video play-out software, proven in 24/7 broadcasts since 2006.
• ffplayout – Python and FFmpeg based playout from folder or playlists.
• Macadam – Blackmagic Node.js bindings that support HTML/CSS (via Electron) and SVG (via Sevruga) graphics.
• Nebula – Media asset management and broadcast automation system.
• Open Playout Automation – A CasparCG-based MCR play-out system.
• ossia – A free and open-source intermedia sequencer.
• Sofie – TV Automation – MOS-driven automation system for news casts, with many libraries for e.g. device control.

Hybrid Radio

• RadioDNS for Node.js – Perform RadioDNS resolutions and service lookups in node.js.
• RadioDNS Manager – Platform to manage Hybrid Radio services, e.g. RadioVIS, RadioEPG and Service Following.
• RadioTag.js – RadioTag client library in JavaScript.
• RadioVIS Demo – RadioVIS client application in Python.
• RadioVIS Html Player – RadioVIS Player using WebSocket.
• RadioVIS Stomp Server – RadioVIS STOMP server written in node.js.

LiveIP

Audio/Video over IP & Streaming

• butt – broadcast using this tool (butt) is an easy to use, multi OS streaming tool. It supports SHOUTcast and Icecast.
• Cool Mic – Android audio livestreaming Icecast source client app.
• DarkIce – Live audio streamer that records and encodes from an audio interface and sends to a streaming server.
• EBU LIST – Live IP Software Toolkit to assist EBU members in the implementation of IP based facilities.
• Icecast – Streaming media (audio/video) server which supports Ogg (Vorbis and Theora), Opus, WebM and MP3.
• IRIS Broadcast – A project founded in Sweden to publish Open Source software for professional radio broadcasts.
• Kamailio – Open SIP server, commonly used for Audio contribution over IP using SIP (EBU ACIP).
• See the NMOS list for the AMWA Networked Media Open Specifications and open source implementations and tools.
• OpenOB – Open Outside Broadcast project for radio contribution links and studio-transmitter links based on Opus.
• PJSIP – Open Source multimedia library implementing SIP, SDP, RTP, STUN, TURN, and ICE.
• trx – A simple toolset for broadcasting live audio from Linux.

Media Players

• Dash.js – A reference client implementation for the playback of MPEG DASH via Javascript and compliant browsers.
• GPAC – Multimedia player, packager and tools.
• IDJC – A GTK+ Shoutcast/Icecast client with two main media players.
• Kodi – A software media player and entertainment hub for digital media.
• Media4DPlayer – HTML5 player focused on accessibility.
• MPD – A flexible, powerful, server-side application for playing music.
• mpg123 – A fast console MPEG Audio Player and decoder library.
• Mixxx – A free, open source DJ software.
• Peaks.js – Browser-based audio waveform visualisation.
• rx-player – HTML5/Javascript video player that supports MPEG-DASH and SmoothStreaming.
• VLC – Simple, fast and powerful media player.

Metadata

• BMXlib – Library and utilities to read and write broadcasting media files. Primarily supports the MXF file format.
• EBUCore – The Github for maintenance of the EBUCore schema.
• jebu-core – Java port of EBU Tech 3293 EBU Core metadata, including the Audio Definition Model.
• libadm – Audio Definition Model (ITU-R BS.2076) handling C++11 library.
• libklvanc – C library for ancillary data extraction from SDI and SMPTE ST 2110-40 (CEA-708, AFD, SCTE-104, etc.).
• MAJ API – Pure Java library for reading and writing MXF and AAF files.
• SDPoker – CLI tool and library for testing SMPTE ST2110 SDP files.
• TV-Anytime – The TV-Anytime schema github maintenance page.

Monitoring & Quality Control

• BeaqleJS – A framework to create browser based listening tests for subjective audio quality assessment.
• Jack Meter – Text console based DPM (Digital Peak Meter) for JACK.
• JACK Meterbridge – A collection of graphical Audio meters for JACK (ballistics may be incorrect).
• Jmeters – A collection of graphical audio meters for JACK, including VU, PPM and EBU R 128 Loudness meters.
• LTC-tools – A collection of tools to handle Linear Timecode (LTC) and convert to MIDI Timecode (MTC).
• MediaConch – Implementation checker, policy checker, & reporter for Matroska, FFV1, & PCM.
• MediaInfo – A convenient unified display of the most relevant technical and tag data for video and audio files.
• MXF Inspect – A Windows tool to display the internal structure of an MXF (Material eXchange Format) file.
• Pi Audio Monitor – Audio Monitoring for Raspberry Pi, supports S/PDIF, AES3, AES67, Livewire and Ravenna.
• Photon – Implementation of the SMPTE Interoperable Master Format (IMF) standard.
• QCTools – Quality Control tools for video preservation to analyse digitized video files.
• Rotter – Recording of Transmissions / Audio Logger for JACK.
• silan – Audiofile silence analyzer.
• SilentJack – Dead-air / Silence detector for JACK.
• Sonic Visualiser – An application for viewing and analysing the contents of music audio files.
• VMAF – Perceptual video quality assessment based on multi-method fusion.
• Wisual – A web service for Visual Quality Assessment, which supports PSNR, SSIM, VQM, etc.

Multimedia content processing

• AvTranscoder – FFmpeg/LibAV-based high-level API to re-wrap or transcode media, with bindings for Java and Python.
• Beam Coder – Node.js native bindings to FFmpeg, with support for asynchronous processing via promises and streams.
• Bento4 – Full-featured MP4 format and MPEG DASH C++ class library and tools.
• Brave – Basic Real-time AV Editor – lets you preview, mix, and route live audio and video streams on the cloud.
• Codem-isoboxer A small browser-based MPEG-4 (ISOBMFF) parser.
• Dynamorse – IT swiss army knife – a Node-RED media pipeline builder, adding professional media processing nodes.
• EBU ADM Renderer – Reference implementation of the EBU ADM Renderer (EBU Tech 3388)
• FFmbc – FFmpeg customized for broadcast and professional usage.
• FFmpeg – A cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. Supports SMPTE ST 2110.
• Flowblade – A multitrack non-linear video editor.
• GStreamer – A library for constructing graphs of media-handling components.
• Kelvinadon – Node.JS pure Javascript module for streaming MXF files to and from JSON.
• KFR – Fast, modern C++ DSP framework, DFT/FFT, Audio resampling, FIR/IIR, Biquad, EBU R 128.
• L-SMASH – A rigidly spec-compliant ISOBMFF library, which has full DASH muxing support.
• LibAV – Open source audio and video processing tools.
• libbw64 – Header-only Broadcast Wave 64 (ITU-R BS.2088) C++11 library.
• libear – A C++11 library to render ADM content according to Recommendation ITU-R BS.2127.
• Libebur128 – A library that implements the EBU R 128 standard for loudness normalisation.
• Loudness Validator – A set of applications to analyse, visualise and correct the loudness.
• MP4Box.js – JavaScript library to process MP4 files in the browser (and in NodeJS).
• MXFLib – A multi-platform C++ library for reading and writing MXF files.
• OBS-Studio – Software for live streaming and screen recording.
• Open Broadcast Encoder – Broadcast encoder built from Open Source components.
• rgain – Tools and Python library to read, write and calculate Replay Gain.
• rtmp – Server implementation of Adobe’s RTMP 1.0 protocol in Go.
• Snowmix – Live Video Mixer.
• SoX – The Swiss Army knife of sound processing programs.
• TuttleOFX – An open source image processing framework based on OpenFX plugin standard.
• UPipe – Primarily designed to be the core of a multimedia player, transcoder or streamer.
• VideoContext – Experimental HTML5/WebGL library for creating interactive and responsive web videos.
• Voctomix – Customizable conference recording/mixing/streaming software based on Python and GStreamer.

Network & Storage Testing

• BBC Media Storage Meter – An application for the testing of network attached (professional media) storage.
• Fio – Flexible I/O Tester
• iPerf3 – The TCP, UDP and SCTP network bandwidth measurement tool.
• SMPTE 2110-20 Analyzer – Analyzer to inspect network packets generated in accordance with SMPTE ST 2110.

NMOS

The Networked Media Open Specifications are themselves open source.

• AMWA NMOS Testing Tool – Automated test suites for the AMWA NMOS family of specifications, as used in the JT-NM Tested programme
• BBC NMOS Joint Reference Implementation – A Vagrant provisioning to build 4 virtual machines, an IS-04/IS-05 Node, IS-04 Registry, BCP-003-02 Authorisation Server, and the NMOS Testing Tool.
• Easy-NMOS – A starter kit that allows the user to launch a simple NMOS setup with minimal installation steps, composed of three Docker containers: an NMOS Registry, a virtual NMOS Node, and the AMWA NMOS Testing Tool.
• nmos-cpp – An implementation of the AMWA Networked Media Open Specifications in C++, including an NMOS Registry and a toolkit and example of building an NMOS Node.
• nmos-js – A simple browser-based NMOS Client/Controller with an IS-04 Registry browser and IS-05 Connection Management.

Radio Production

• Airtime – Radio management application for remote broadcast automation (via web-based schedule).
• Ardour – A digital audio workstation.
• Audacity – Cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds.
• AzuraCast – A self-hosted web radio management suite.
• LibreTime – Radio broadcast & automation platform (fork of Airtime).
• Liquidsoap – A Swiss army knife for multimedia streaming (documentation).
• OpenBroadcaster Open Source LPFM IPTV Broadcast Automation. Server and Player code here.
• RAAR – A ruby application to manage and browse an audio archive.
• Rivendell – Complete radio broadcast automation solution, translated to many languages and used worldwide.

Software-defined radio

• GNU Radio – A software development toolkit that provides signal processing blocks to implement software radios.
• Gqrx SDR – An open source software defined radio receiver (SDR).
• ODR-mmbTools – Fork of CRC-mmbTools. Adds live, DAB+, associated data, distributed infrastructure, SFN.
• rtl-sdr – Turns a Realtek RTL2832 based DVB dongle into a SDR receiver.
• welle.io – An open source DAB and DAB+ software defined radio (SDR) with support for airspy and rtlsdr.

Subtitling

• CCExtractor – A tool that analyzes video files and produces stand-alone subtitle files.
• EBU-TT-D Subtitling within dash.js – dash.js fork with EBU-TT-D subtitles in HTML/CSS overlay. Later added to dash.js.
• EBU-TT-D W3C XML Schema – Informative EBU-TT-D XML Schema to support the implementation of EBU Tech 3380.
• EBU-TT Live Interoperability Toolkit – Components for generating, testing and distributing EBU-TT Live subtitles.
• GStreamer TTML subtitling package – A means for GStreamer pipelines to parse and render EBU-TT-D (TTML) subtitles.
• imscJS – JavaScript library for rendering IMSC1 Text and Image Profile documents to HTML5.
• IRT EBU-TT-D Application Samples – EBU-TT-D sample files, PNG images and mp4 videos as rendering references.
• Subtitle Edit – An editor for subtitles.
• Subtitling Conversion Framework (SCF) – Modules for converting subtitle formats, incl. EBU STL and EBU-TT files.
• Timed Text Toolkit (ttt) – Tools that support/use the W3C Timed Text Markup Language (TTML).

Video Production

• MIDIMonster – Lightweight adapter tool for common show control protocols.
• MOS-connection – A JavaScript library for connection and MOS messaging either as MOS device or NRCS.
• Open Lighting Architecture (OLA) – Travel adaptor for the lighting industry, for interconnecting DMX-512, IP and USB.
• Q Light Controller+ (QLC+) – Cross-platform control of DMX or analogue lighting systems (heads, dimmers, etc.).
• Teleprompter – Web browser and standalone Electron app prompter.

Streaming

• Owncast – Selfhosted video streaming plattform (https://owncast.online/)
• Shoutcast – SHOUTcast DNAS is cross-platform proprietary software for streaming media over the Internet. The software, developed by Nullsoft, is available free of charge.
• Shoutca.st – cheap SHOUTcast and Icecast servers with some great extras including free streaming for non-profit organizations.

Blogs

• BBC News Labs – Open Source projects from BBC News Labs.
• BBC R&D – BBC Research and Development. Checkout the weekly notes.
• 3D CineCast – A curation about new media technologies.
• Canal+ – CANAL+ Open Source Community.
• IRT Lab – IRT blog posting developments and demos for all digital audiovisual media technology.
• The Netflix Tech Blog – A Netflix blog focused on technology and technology issues.
• Youtube Engineering and Developers Blog – What’s happening with engineering and developers at YouTube.