Following the 300 demos of the QTube world tour it was clear that some questions were being asked repeatedly by different clients. Here is our selection of key questions which arose during the product demos, but if you would like to know anything else or would like to arrange a demo please
contact the team.
What is the minimum internet bandwidth QTube will tolerate?
We’d recommend a decent internet connection of 1Mb/s up/download speed although we’ve frequently demonstrated the product successfully with real download speeds of 300-400 kb/s – this is well below most domestic connections. QTube has frequently been shown to work when YouTube does not.
Do we need a particularly powerful computer?
The QTube browser works in any browser which will support Silverlight – so just about any contemporary laptop, desktop or mobile computer will support the browser. QTube Edit is a Windows 7 PC application can run on a laptop PC.
Does QTube work in HD?
Like the sQ system, QTube is entirely transparent to SD and HD. Local and remote content of mixed image size and aspect ratio is handled automatically.
Is QTube still experimental and restricted to controlled demos?
QTube V1.0 was officially released on June 6th 2011. It is already in use by Quantel customers in North America, Europe and (soon), Asia.
What are the options for integrating Final Cut Pro and Avid?
QTube offers a route to editing Quantel content in any editor which will accept MXF OP1a media files – so that’s most broadcast-quality editors. Support for Quicktime is expected soon, so that’ll cover most of the rest. QTube browser does allow the download of quality media files – so a browser running on the host computer, can access a Quantel server, select and download full-res media files. This can include stills and wav audio files too.
What are the plans for releasing a more complex editor with enhanced editing functions (such as FX and titling)?
The most important goal for a radical new system like QTube is to get a functional, useful product working as soon as possible. This has been achieved with QTube, with a cuts-only video editor, local media ingest and comprehensive audio tools. The unique ability of QTube is to offer a mixed timeline of local and remote content. To allow effects of any kind, based on remote content, requires a process to allow the editor to specify the effect, see a credible display of the result and create the finished clip back in the home server. Quantel is evaluating the most efficient method to achieve this, probably by creating a ‘recipe’ for the finished timeline at the remote site – with a copy viewed in proxy media – and then have the full-quality timeline conformed and rendered in the home server. Quantel has the parts to create this workflow, it’s just going to take a little longer to build a scalable and robust practical solution.
Is QTube restricted to working with Quantel servers?
In V1.0, the answer is yes. However, QTube is engineered to be independent of the storage platform. So expect further announcements and developments.
How secure is QTube? Control of access; encryption of media while in transit; prevention of any cached media persisting and possibly “leaking”?
When considering internet security, there are three issue to consider; the three A’s:
- Authentication
- Authorisation
- Auditing
These may be summarised as:
- Who are you?
- What are you allowed to do?
- What did you do and when?
QTube products manage all three, by using commercial off the shelf (COTS) components. Quantel uses proven technologies adding value with the workflow we offer, we are not in the business of offering security products.
Quantel have chosen Microsoft IIS 7.5 as shipped with Windows Server 2008 R2 as the web server. The Microsoft Web server offers proven industrial strength security and scalability; half of the top ten busiest web sites in the world are running IIS. Microsoft IIS also offers the Smooth Streaming technology that QTube is built upon, so that most modern browsers and Apple mobile devices can work with QTube out of the box.
Let us consider a broadcaster who would like to lock down access to essence in the most robust and secure manner. Firstly the broadcaster should provision a DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) which is built by using 1 or more firewalls, with a single port configured for access to the QTube web server installation. The IIS Web Server is then configured with server certificates, and exposes HTTP over SSL/TLS (known as HTTPS) on the port designated for QTube support. IIS is configured to disallow HTTP over port 80, and Anonymous authentication is disabled.
The customer now has a choice. They might use basic authentication, and test the credentials of the users against the local Windows installation on the web servers themselves or against an Active Directory domain. However they might use Digest Authentication where they must map the users from an Active Directory domain. Either way, full AD with group policy can be used to authenticate users.
On the client side, certificates can be issued to each client, but users cannot login unless they can also supply a user name and password. In other words, QTube can enforce a mutual authentication scheme. In addition two tokens are required by a user to log in, the client certificate and the username password pair.
With this setup, both client and server can trust each other (SSL with certificates at both ends proves identity), all communication is encrypted (all HTTP traffic is carried over SSL – at whatever bit encryption the customer desires), so there can be no chance of man-in-the-middle or replay attacks. The user themselves needs to supply user name and password, so that a stolen laptop does not compromise the site security.
In this way all traffic, every picture or sound asset is fully encrypted. Every time the essence is streamed, it is encrypted differently, so that is no way to cache the essence anywhere on the internet, no internet device even knows it is video!
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Let us know if you have any other QTube questions - leave them below and we will answering them here.
For more information about QTube (including the QTube White Paper) visit the QTube product page.
To read our interview with Trevor Francis, Quantel’s Worldwide Marketing Manager for broadcast explaining QTube's development and future plans please visit the Quantel blog.
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Article first appeared at http://blog.quantel.eu/2011/07/spotlight-qtube-faq/.
