SMPTE Introduces Initial Catena Documents Launching Official Standardization of the Control Plane

At its quarterly SMPTE Technology Committee meetings, held June 1-3 in Tokyo at Imagica, SMPTE — the association for media professionals, technologists and engineers — introduced the initial documents defining the Catena control plane standard. The product of extensive work by SMPTE’s Rapid Industry Solutions Open Services Alliance group (RIS-OSA), the initial Catena documents (known as the ST 2138 suite) were introduced to the SMPTE Standards Community (and its 34CS Technology Committee that focuses on Media Systems Control and Services) to begin the official standardization process.

“Catena represents one of the most ambitious and essential standardization efforts SMPTE has undertaken in recent years,” said Chris Lennon, director of standards strategy for Ross Video and a SMPTE Fellow. “With media workflows now spanning on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments, the need for a unified, secure, and vendor-agnostic control plane is more urgent than ever. By introducing the initial Catena documents into the SMPTE Standards Community, we’re inviting the broader industry to help shape a solution that works for everyone, regardless of where their services reside or what platform they use.”

Hundreds of proprietary protocols are used today to control media devices, creating a control plane challenge across the media industry. In defining and standardizing Catena, SMPTE aims to provide the first and only standardized open-source solution to this challenge. In providing a vendor- and platform-agnostic solution, Catena offers a single secure protocol that is equally suited to controlling very small devices and microservices as it is to controlling the most complex physical devices and services in use by the media industry.

“One of the fundamental challenges facing our industry is managing devices and services across a fragmented infrastructure, and proprietary control protocols are simply not up to the task,” said Thomas Bause Mason, SMPTE director of standards development. “Catena offers a new model based on open standards, community-driven development, and a pragmatic path to implementation. Designed to address every device, service, and system in any environment, it offers the adaptable, future-proof approach we need.”

The initial suite of Catena documents introduced this week consists of:

ST 2138-00: Catena Overview

ST 2138-10: Catena Model

ST 2138-11: gRPC Connection Type

ST 2138-12: REST Connection Type

ST 2138-50: Catena Security

These documents are transitioning into SMPTE’s 34CS TC to begin the official standardization process. SMPTE has also stood up its Catena repository on GitHub, which includes interface files, schema, and other supporting resources. SMPTE’s plan is to advance these initial Catena documents to Public Committee Draft (PCD) status as soon as practical, then pause development to give implementers time to integrate Catena into their products and provide feedback. Following this implementation and review period, the documents will quickly move forward through the final standardization and approval stages.

“The industry has long needed a common control layer that actually reflects how we operate today — across clouds, platforms, and vendors,” said Stan Moote, CTO of IABM. “Catena offers a standards-based path forward that brings the transparency and scalability needed for smart, efficient resource management in distributed environments. It’s encouraging to see this kind of progress being made openly, with broad collaboration through SMPTE and engagement from IABM’s Control Plane Working Group, bringing the supplier community into the process.”

Anyone interested in getting involved in Catena or other SMPTE Standards initiatives can learn more by contacting svp@smpte.org.

Further work on Catena and on other crucial initiatives continues in SMPTE’s RIS-OSA. To get involved, industry professionals can contact Anthony Catalano at acatalano.org.

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