Nevion (Sony) has announced the latest upgrade to its Virtuoso software-defined media node. The enhancement is designed with the intention of further optimizing media transport by giving broadcasters more precise control over bandwidth and latency when using HEVC/H.265 compression, as the company has claimed in a statement.

A key component of Sony’s Networked Live offering, Nevion Virtuoso is used for live contribution, remote production, IP facilities, outside broadcast and Cloud connectivity. Its software-defined architecture enables media transport, processing and monitoring functions to be deployed and reconfigured as needs evolve.

The new release introduces audio compression alongside Virtuoso’s HEVC capability, with the intention of helping customers reduce overall transport bandwidth even further. This is particularly valuable in highly compressed HEVC workflows, where multiple channels of uncompressed audio can represent a significant share of the total payload.

By compressing audio as well as video, the solution enables more efficient use of constrained network capacity while maintaining the professional quality required for live production.The ¡audio compression is based on the widely adopted AAC-LC audio codec.

At the same time, Nevion is continuing to optimize the latency performance of Virtuoso HEVC. The platform already offers attractive encode-decode latency, and the recently introduced optimization mode provides the option to further reduce latency by approximately 40%. Development is underway to try to offer a true Ultra Low Latency solution, taking advantage of the advanced capabilities of the Sony chipset Virtuoso uses. In all modes, the codec has been developed to deliver pristine images.

Steve Hard, VP of Product Management for Virtuoso at Nevion, explains: “Live production workflows are increasingly diverse, and there is no single definition of optimized transport. For some applications, the priority is to reduce bandwidth as much as possible; for others, it is to minimize latency while preserving picture quality and reliability. With this latest Virtuoso upgrade, we are giving customers more options to tune HEVC transport to their real operational requirements”.

In addition to the transport optimization enhancements, the latest Virtuoso release also includes new operational improvements, including customer-defined “Inspect” views in the web interface.

The latest Virtuoso developments will be on show on the Sony booth (13.A10) at IBC 2026 in Amsterdam, 11-14 September.