🏆

Press Release

Dynamic Media Facility & MXL: A Fundamental Architectural Step

Paderborn, August 30, 2026: The demands placed on modern media production keep growing: dynamic formats, variable data rates and the pressure to achieve high cost efficiency all call for flexible infrastructures. While classic setups depend on constantly exchanging video data between individual devices over physical or IP interfaces such as SDI and ST 2110, even for internal processing steps, the Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) in combination with the Media eXchange Layer (MXL) introduces a fundamental architectural step.

As a Software-Defined Video (SDV) solution built on Kubernetes, it decouples video processing from dedicated hardware. Established standards such as SDI and ST 2110 fully retain their role for external signal connectivity, while the internal data exchange between the processing functions takes place highly efficiently and directly within the software infrastructure.

From Static Hardware Standby to Dynamic Software Resilience

In traditional broadcast environments, safeguarding operations relies on substantial over-provisioning: dedicated hardware cards (FPGAs) and standby devices have to be kept available at all times to guarantee 1:1 or 1:N redundancy, capacity that ties up capital while sitting idle in regular operation and that is tied to the replacement cycles of the hardware.

The DMF architecture resolves this problem at its root:

• Hardware decoupling with a hybrid option: Instead of device-bound hardware, containerised software on standard servers (COTS) primarily handles signal processing. This does not rule out specialised compute at all: GPUs as well as existing FPGAs remain important building blocks of modern workflows.
• A call to broadcasters and technology providers: To ensure optimal integration, dedicated GPU and FPGA interfaces now need to be actively contributed to the MXL standard. Broadcasters and technology providers are explicitly invited to formulate their concrete use cases and requirements, so that these interfaces can be shaped for real-world practice.
• Elastic redundancy instead of idle hardware: Redundancy is orchestrated flexibly through Kubernetes. If an instance fails, the system automatically scales new workloads in real time. Permanently maintaining dedicated standby devices is no longer necessary.
• High interoperability & in-memory performance: Through the MXL SDK, software applications from different vendors exchange uncompressed media data directly via shared memory with extremely low latency. Broadcast customers thereby save a large share of the costly integration effort.

The Best of Both Worlds: An Efficient Hybrid Cloud Model

A key characteristic of the overall architecture is its intelligent hybrid cloud concept:

• Base load covered on premises: The 365-day base load stays cost-efficiently in your own local data center.
• Dynamic cloud scaling: Live events with extreme load peaks, such as sports coverage, are offloaded flexibly to the cloud.
• Bandwidth optimization & image quality: Thanks to the reduced bandwidth requirements of the intermediate format, the system combines top technical performance during the transfer to the cloud with significant savings. This guarantees the best possible conditions for outstanding distribution image quality at minimal infrastructure cost.

Cloud-Native Advantages at a Glance

• Maximum scalability: Container orchestration allows processing power to be adjusted dynamically to the production workload.
• Simplified maintenance: Continuous deployment and automated updates reduce downtime and administrative effort to a minimum.
• Sustainable investment protection: Unlike device-bound hardware, the software logic is not tied to fixed replacement cycles; continuous updates keep it permanently up to date.

Winner of the IBC2026 Innovation Awards

Current Implementation

The current version operates with Host Memory, delivering full IRIS denoising quality within the MXL pipeline.

About Wavelet Beam

Wavelet Beam is a leading specialist in GPU-accelerated video processing technologies. As an active contributor, Wavelet Beam helps shape forward-looking open-source initiatives and standards for software-defined media infrastructures.

A Leap in Efficiency with IRIS: Major Savings in Bandwidth and Bitrate

As a central building block in modern software-defined video pipelines, Wavelet Beam’s core technology IRIS comes into play. IRIS resolves one of the biggest bottlenecks in video distribution: disruptive image noise and grain:

• Precise noise management: IRIS separates unwanted noise from genuine image detail with high precision and lifts the signal out of the noise floor.
• Massive bitrate savings: By reducing erroneous motion vectors and visual disturbances, encoders have to process considerably less redundant data. This enables bitrate savings of up to 30 % and more, at the same or even improved perceived visual quality.
• Optimal distribution quality: Whether live broadcast, streaming or archive VOD: IRIS delivers clean master signals and creates the perfect basis for maximum compression efficiency along the delivery path.

Technical Background

MXL Workflow