SMPTE introduces Catena control plane standard for media systems

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has introduced the initial documents for Catena, an open-source control plane standard, during its quarterly Technology Committee meetings held June 1-3 in Tokyo at Imagica.

Developed by the SMPTE Rapid Industry Solutions Open Services Alliance (RIS-OSA), Catena is described as a single, secure, vendor- and platform-agnostic protocol for controlling media devices and services across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. The initial suite of documents, designated as the ST 2138 series, has been submitted to SMPTE’s 34CS Technology Committee, which focuses on media systems control and services.

“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. He emphasized the need for unified protocols as media workflows grow more complex and diverse.

Currently, the media industry uses hundreds of proprietary control protocols, which SMPTE aims to consolidate with the Catena standard. According to Thomas Bause Mason, SMPTE’s director of standards development, Catena is designed for adaptability and is capable of managing both microservices and complex physical devices.

The documents introduced include:

• 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 resources are hosted on a GitHub repository containing interface files, schema, and other materials. SMPTE plans to advance the documents to Public Committee Draft status, followed by an implementation and feedback period before final standardization.

Stan Moote, chief technology officer of IABM, stated that Catena reflects current operational needs and praised the collaborative approach involving the IABM Control Plane Working Group and other stakeholders.

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