Software-defined production has been discussed mainly as an architecture for years. That is changing: broadcasters and media organisations want to know how these principles hold up in real production operations.
I wrote a feature for IAMT describing exactly that path – from architecture to practice.
The pressure is familiar
More output, more formats, shorter launch cycles, tight budgets. Live events create enormous peaks, and hybrid operating models increase the number of technologies that have to work together. Fixed production stacks, often sized for the exceptional case, fit that less and less well.
What is changing
The EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) provides the framework: mixing, replay, graphics, clipping, transcoding, monitoring and playout run as software-based media functions on shared infrastructure instead of dedicated systems. The Media eXchange Layer (MXL) provides the open exchange mechanism in between – video, audio and timing metadata move efficiently within the platform and enable interoperability between applications from different vendors.
Production functions are therefore no longer permanently bound to a device, a room or a workflow stack. They can be deployed, started, stopped, monitored and released as needed.
One platform, several productions
A studio production, a news operation and a large sports event have little in common in terms of workload. Classically that leads to separate technical stacks, each with its own capacity planning. The Qvest DMF Showcase demonstrates the other model: the same environment switches between vodcast, news and sports workflows, with the media functions configured for each.
Interoperability is the real test
Flexibility depends on interoperability. Moving production from proprietary hardware into a closed software ecosystem would swap one dependency for another. That is why the showcase is built multi-vendor: orchestration and lifecycle management, live video processing, audio processing, denoising, monitoring and multiviewing, networking – in one shared setup. MXL provides the foundation, Qvest’s open-source extension mxl-k8s the scaling across cluster nodes, go-mxl the integration into modern software stacks.
Operations remain operations
A flexible technical architecture still needs disciplined processes. Dynamically provisioned media functions demand monitoring, identity and access management, security, cost transparency, support processes and clear ownership.
That is why I argue for controlled adoption in the article: first a focused use case to validate architecture and interoperability, then a pilot under realistic conditions, then the first production.
The article
Patrick Steinert: “Qvest – Software-defined production in practice”, IAMT (IABM), 11 September 2026.
https://theiamt.org/news/2026/09/qvest-software-defined-production-in-practice/