Audinate's AV-over-IP transport. Started as Dante audio (the dominant pro-audio networked-audio standard), extended to networked video. Competes with SDVoE for low-latency AV-over-IP at the operator-control tier.
What it is
Dante AV is the video extension of Audinate's Dante audio transport. Dante audio has been the dominant standard for networked pro audio since the late 2000s — present in every major mixing console, every recording studio I/O box, most live- sound rigs. Dante AV adds video onto the same network fabric, encoded with either JPEG 2000 or H.264 / H.265 depending on the endpoint, with the Dante-style discovery and routing applied to the video flows.
What Dante AV brings that others don't
- Audio is first-class, not an afterthought. Most AV-over-IP standards treat audio as a side payload on the video transport. Dante AV inherits the full Dante audio routing layer — separate flow management for audio channels, sample-accurate sync, the existing Dante Controller software for patch and routing.
- Coexistence with installed Dante audio. The same physical network and the same management workflow as the audio side. For facilities already on Dante, this lowers integration friction substantially.
- Pre-existing operator mental model. The AV staff already knows Dante's tooling and terminology — the video pieces install into the same model with no parallel training track.
Where Dante AV doesn't fit
- Broadcast facilities with ST 2110. SMPTE ST 2110 is the broadcast default; Dante AV does not interoperate cleanly with ST 2110-30 audio on the same facility. Picking one means not picking the other.
- Open-standard tender language. Dante is a commercial protocol owned by Audinate, with licensed silicon at every endpoint. Tenders specifying "open standards only" rule it out the same way they rule out SDVoE.
- Massive scale-out. Dante's network model is excellent up to several hundred endpoints on a tuned switch fabric. Beyond that the operational tooling gets thin.
Practical positioning
Dante AV wins in higher-education AV, houses of worship, mid-size corporate AV — anywhere the audio side was already specified as Dante and adding video onto the same fabric saves a parallel network. It loses in broadcast (ST 2110), in mission-critical control rooms with open-standard tenders (IPMX), and in environments where the sub-frame latency story matters more than the audio integration story (SDVoE).