Learn What Makes the Lontra Motherboard from Flussonic so Special

In our previous blog post, we talked about how and why we built the Lontra motherboard for our new hardware transcoder. Among what we highlighted the most is the fact that our hardware, in addition to providing that exceptional and uninterrupted video quality that providers are always looking for, helps our customers to scale their businesses by removing the painful task of having to assemble all the components individually and by reducing the power consumption of the device by a factor of 10.

In this second article, we would like to talk in more detail about the technical benefits and why we made certain decisions when optimizing our new transcoder to the maximum.

Energy Optimization

Because each of the 9 Jetsons on our Lontra motherboard only fulfill video transcoding tasks, we managed to ensure that the power consumption of each of them does not exceed 11 watts, which means that in total our new hardware only consumes 100 watts and it doesn't get as hot as other solutions on the market. This translates into less need to cool the space where our transcoder is located and consequently in great savings for our clients in energy bills.

A System that Heals Itself

It is very common for other transcoders to get frozen if they start receiving data that is corrupted or that simply changes its format constantly. With the new Flussonic transcoder, thanks to the excellently distributed internal architecture, this problem is a thing of the past.

The Lontra motherboard contains 9 NVidia Jetson TX2 modules that are intended only to handle video transcoding tasks and each Jetson can process up to 8 linear FHD streams or up to 6 multi-bitrate streams. This means that our customers can configure the N + 1 redundancy scheme by assigning one or more Jetson modules as backups and configuring our failover mechanism.

Our software handles corrupt streams like no other and it is capable of restarting the transcoding session without losing a single frame. It heals itself!

Remote Control

Our motherboard is specially designed so that it can be quickly controlled remotely. This eliminates the need to have an entire team of professionals in charge of the hardware and makes it easier for any type of monitoring and maintenance to be carried out from any access point and from anywhere in the world.

This is a great added value in times of COVID-19 where the majority of operators must or prefer to work from home and be safe but still be able to remotely control, monitor and troubleshoot the hardware.

Seamless Source Switching

Most of the transcoders that exist today fail when the incoming video format suddenly changes and can freeze for a few seconds. Others will stay frozen indefinitely, even solutions that use the popular NVDEC engine.

Our transcoder, on the other hand, is constantly analyzing the incoming video frames and if the resolution, the codec or any other parameter changes, it starts a new parallel transcoding session for this new data. This way, the existing session is kept until the last frame is processed and then switch to the last session. This ensures that no frames are lost in the process.

Utility

It is very common that server racks are always a mess, with cables everywhere and it is almost impossible to know what is connected to what and to which port of the router the transcoder is connected.

We have ensured that our new transcoder can be used with tools, such as LLDP, so that users can find out which port our transcoder is connected to, even in software mode, without going into the server room.

Are you interested in getting more detailed information about this new product? Request a demo today and see our hardware transcoding device in action. Contact us at info@flussonic.com. A member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.