Transport Stream Monitoring
With continuously increasing amount of programming, Networks, Stations, Cable and IPTV operators are continually challenged to do more with less. Staff members need to assure an ever increasing array of high quality digital programming, handle broadening array of regulatory requests, while delivering an increasingly complex metadata (DVB subtitles, EIT/PSIP, interactivity) to leverage the new digital TV ecosystem. To do this, networks, stations and operators must be able to proactively monitor and quickly troubleshoot items from the details of MPEG metadata all the way down to the quality of the rendered content.
MPEG Transport Stream (TS) logging enables networks, broadcasters, Cable and IPTV operators to do more than ever before. With continuous logging of MPEG transport streams, monitoring program QoE (quality of experience), and the ability to seamlessly export and stream MPEG TS or low resolution proxies, the MPEG Transport Stream allows for efficient operation with WAN and enterprise wide clients.
By capturing the native Transport Stream at the handoff point, using ASI, 8VSB/OFDM, QAM or IP ensures isolation and ability to troubleshoot of all the issues at the final product level.
Network Bandwidth utilization and need for proxy
Logging the native MPEG Transport Stream greatly simplifies troubleshooting, chronic issues resolution, and regulatory proof of conformance. However, streaming the logged transport stream over wide-area networks (WAN) presents a challenge, The typical HD service is encoded at 8-12Mbps and some of the network to station hand-offs can reach 40Mbps. Streaming at these bit-rates over WAN would be impractical and would likely impose operational strain on the LAN bandwidth consumption as well. The need to create low bit-rate proxy of the TS becomes a mandatory feature for MPEG Transport Stream Loggers. Transcoded low bit-rate proxy for a typical program consumes 0.5-1Mbps for SD and 1-2Mbps for HD, sufficient for streaming within the WAN enterprise, delivering full frame-rate video streaming to remote locations.
Being connected over low bandwidth network doesn’t restrict the user to proxy viewing only; once the content of interest has been identified by streaming the proxy, the original TS version of the same content can be exported and saved locally for an unrestricted, full-resolution, full bit-rate viewing and analysis.
TS and proxy storage consideration
Another point to consider in regards to low bit-rate proxy is storage. While we continue to benefit from continuously decreasing cost of hard-disk drives, archiving MPEG Transport Stream for extended periods of time would still drive up the transport stream logger cost significantly. A single ATSC stream (19.38 Mbps) occupies 6.3TB over a period of 30 days. For a single 256QAM stream this storage would double. To balance the need for extended content retention with the cost of storage is to log the native transport stream for shorter period of time, while extending the storage of the low bit-rate proxy. For example, storing the transport stream for 7 days and proxy (1HD and 1SD) for 90 days would only require 3.4TB of storage; a 47% saving in storage, yet achieving retention of content for 90 days.
Segmenting content
Recording all of the content is by its nature chronologically structured, but without information such as an as-run log or electronic program guide (EPG), there is no way to know where programs begin and end. This knowledge is quite valuable in allowing the operator to segment content and/or sort it according to various criteria including not only type of program or program name, but also length of the program. Segments of similar duration often fall into similar categories. For example, segments of just 15 or 30 seconds most likely are commercials. The ability to identify and sort segments in this manner offers users a quick way of finding or isolating specific content.
Quality of Service (QoS) Monitoring
Sophisticated monitoring systems not only allow broadcasters to assure that material went to air as intended, but also to provide a valuable tool for evaluating the integrity and quality of the broadcast audio, video and metadata. Staff members can review aired material for on-air discrepancies, signal problems, and other issues that may interfere with the quality of the programming. Immediate access to any content that aired and the ability to access that content quickly significantly enhance the quality of broadcast productions.
Current monitoring technology can detect variety of false signals, reporting on errors and alerting the broadcaster via email or SNMP traps that something is wrong with the broadcast. Immediate detection of loss of audio, a blank or frozen screen (no motion detected), and loss of closed captioning helps minimize down time, thus preserving the integrity of the on-air product, meeting the expectations of viewers and advertisers, and protecting station or network revenues.
-Gary Learner, CTO
www.volicon.com
Transition to Digital
The digital broadcast logging and monitoring solutions deliver the power and capabilities of professional AV control rooms to ordinary desktop computers. Multiple channels of content are available on-demand, live or archived, from any desktop, where users can search, retrieve, view, analyze, annotate, share, and export video. A Web-based GUI turns mission-critical video broadcasts and analysis into work material to increase efficiency and streamline workflows.
Technology like this has been made possible through advances in digital video compression and in the development of Internet-based tools. At one time the argument for tape-based monitoring was the low cost of tapes and ease of integrating VTRs into existing analog environments. Now, however, the cost of digital storage and infrastructure has dropped. It’s easier than ever to store video, and continuous improvements in storage technology have brought down storage costs, making it feasible to store digital data inexpensively over long periods of time.
Web-based work tools used over high-speed Internet connections now enable easy sharing and distribution of digital media to just about anywhere. Here, too, costs have dropped, and many companies already have access to the necessary network infrastructure needed to make digital media available to remote users.
Among the many benefits of monitoring broadcasts using digital media is that everything is instantaneous. Any queries or complaints about a particular broadcast or ad can be addressed instantly because data becomes available immediately, as soon as it’s recorded, not four or eight hours later. Users across a facility, or working remotely over a high-speed network, can access content simultaneously. Thus, media is available to any authorized user, anywhere, at any time following the broadcast.
Duplication of recorded media takes place much more rapidly in the digital environment, without the loss associated with VHS tape. Nonlinear or random access to content, as opposed to sequential access on tape, offers tremendous time savings in finding and accessing the desired portion of a media asset.
While digital loggers present many benefits over tape-based loggers and greatly improve the usability of such system, these loggers still fall short on several key features. Access to original broadcast content is not available, just the compressed, proxy version of the broadcast is stored and viewed over local or wide-area networks. Logging and monitoring of the many types of metadata present in today’s broadcast is often impossible, as some of this metadata only exists in the transport stream version of the broadcast.
With completion of the DTV rollout, the landscape for the broadcast logging and monitoring systems changes yet again, enabling implementation of new key features, increasing the value of such systems and extending its use across more disciplines within the broadcast infrastructure.
-Gary Learner, CTO
www.volicon.com
With baseband usage on the decline, Broadcasters and networks increasingly are recording the native ASI and IP MPEG transport stream and generating low-res proxies for viewing and subsequent troubleshooting. This paper examines continuous MPEG transport stream monitoring and its benefits in supporting compliance logging and air checks, allowing operators to increase logging channel density, and facilitating the inspection and export of transport stream efficiently over a WAN enterprise. The paper will touch on how transport stream monitoring simplifies access, storage, and use of both the content and metadata compressed within transport streams, as well as explains how the full-quality content logging possible with transport stream monitoring can not only speed resolution of customer complaints and reduce customer care costs, but also enable new use cases, such as repurposing high-resolution data, managing interactive content, and dial-norm reporting. Finally, the paper outlines the network efficient logging and monitoring workflow that supports these activities.
The Beginning of Broadcast Monitoring
Since the days of pure analog broadcast infrastructure, the broadcasters saw the need for logging and monitoring system for both, regulatory compliance and internal quality monitoring and assurance. The broadcasters used multiple VTR machines to record their own broadcasts and those of their competitors, a process that required the constant changing of tapes and acceptance of a relatively poor-quality recording. Beyond these issues were other problems including the limited shelf life of tape and the gradual degradation of video each time the tape is used.
The duplication of tape-based media for monitoring also is a cumbersome process. It’s a slow process, and the end result is never as good as the original. Furthermore, the content being copied is unavailable to other users until the duplication process is complete and the tape restored to the library.
The greatest limitation of the tape-based model, however, is in broadcasters’ ability to access and distribute recorded content. To find a specific piece of content on tape means going into the tape library, looking up a tape in the library catalog, tracking down that tape, and using a tape playback machine to scan for that content or move to the desired point in the broadcast. In some cases, this is like looking through the pages of a book, trying to find a passage without knowing where it is.
When recording to tape, the broadcaster doesn’t have access to that content until the tape is finished. If the broadcast is being recorded to an eight-hour tape, then it can take nearly that long to be able to provide internal quality control or external clients with verification of the content aired.
The shift of the broadcast industry toward digital operations has allowed for the introduction of new technologies, which in turn offer much greater functionality than earlier analog systems.
www.volicon.com
-Gary Learner, CTO
Scripps Media to Standardize on Volicon Observer® Enterprise TS Monitoring Across All 13 Stations
Scripps Media is standardizing on the Observer® TS (transport stream) digital video monitoring and logging system across all 13 of its stations. Each Scripps Media station will use an Observer system for CALM Act compliance, ad verification, quality of experience (QoE), NAVE monitoring, and ratings analysis. E.W. Scripps headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, will leverage the Volicon systems for centralized monitoring, giving company executives the ability to monitor news, programming, graphics, and general performance of all stations from multiple large-screen displays.
“After looking at all the major players in the digital video monitoring field, we found that the Volicon Observer TS best met the requirements of our station engineers,” said Mike Doback, Vice President of Engineering at Scripps Media. “In addition to supporting quality control, legal compliance, and executive oversight of all our stations, the Volicon system gives us the opportunity to address all of these tasks from within a single solution.”
Observer TS enables networks and broadcasters to increase logging density, accommodate high-resolution content repurposing, directly monitor native MPEG ASI/IP handoffs, and inspect and export transport streams — all while operating efficiently over a LAN or WAN. By using Observer TS for compliance logging and air checks, operators can easily extract flexible MPEG metadata and troubleshoot the MPEG transport stream live or from the Observer log.
With two configurable logs — either the high-bit rate native ASI content or the low-bit rate proxy for remote viewing — logging and monitoring with the Observer TS supports an extremely network-efficient workflow. The system also makes complete stream, search, analyze, clip, and publish functionality available from within the versatile Web-based Observer user interface.
Further information about Volicon and the company’s Observer digital video monitoring and logging products is available at www.volicon.com.
At NAB we announced the release of the New Observer® digital video monitoring and logging system, a complete solution that incorporates the many advances of the new Observer 7.0 software release, a more powerful processing platform, and five inputs for ASI logging and another four for QAM/8VSB monitoring. The New Observer makes all of these features and capabilities available in a single solution that addresses a broad range of use cases — competition monitoring, cable feed and over-the-air monitoring, closed-captioning and loudness compliance, and NAVE monitoring — at a remarkably low price point.
“The new utility afforded by our 7.0 software release, along with improvements in computing, storage, and capture technologies, allows us to offer the robust New Observer package at a compelling value for broadcast stations,” said Andrew Sachs, vice president of product management at Volicon. “For those stations that haven’t yet adopted logging systems, the New Observer system is the best reason yet for making the shift.”
The New Observer system allows users to record (log) five ATSC/ASI inputs continuously, as well as monitor the A/V content for BS.1770-2 loudness, NAVE, and other correlations of data and video that are critical both for quality of experience (QoE), compliance, and accurate Nielsen ratings. Volicon has packed the New Observer system’s 1-RU chassis with four 8VSB/QAM inputs, as well, to facilitate both return-feed monitoring and competitive monitoring of in-market stations.
Because the New Observer logs the full transport stream, users are able to go back an hour, a day, a week, or a month to examine and/or export content. Low bit-rate proxies (WMV or H.264), DVR-like frame-accurate controls, and an intuitive interface on both PC and Mac® systems support easy content review, even when Observer is operating over an enterprise network or WAN. The system’s logging, review, and export capabilities allow operators to troubleshoot problems quickly and distinguish customers' issues in their network from issues with the service handoff. Users can stream and export content remotely to all stakeholders in the media enterprise, or they can access live and recorded video, as well as monitoring data, via iPhone® and iPad® devices.
The New Observer system integrates easily into existing broadcast infrastructure, thanks to open system APIs. Volicon’s patented Virtual Media Network (VMN) technology provides a unique architecture that facilitates seamless and efficient streaming throughout the organization, optimized video logging and monitoring, centralized management, and efficient expansion and scalability from small to large deployments.
In addition to providing the station-complete version of the New Observer, Volicon offers an even less expensive ASI-only entry-level model for those broadcasters looking for a simple, affordable way to get into digital monitoring and logging.
Transport Stream and Next Generation Logging
May 9, 2012
1PM, EST
With a continuously increasing amount of programming, cable, satellite, broadcast, and IPTV operators are challenged to do more with less. Today, they must be able to proactively monitor and quickly troubleshoot items from the details of MPEG metadata all the way down to the quality of the rendered content.
During this 45 minute presentation, Andrew Sachs, VP of Product Management will discuss how monitoring and logging the native MPEG transport stream greatly simplifies troubleshooting, chronic issue resolution, and regulatory proof of conformance. He will conclude with the advancements in logging, review, and export capabilities.
During this presentation, participants will learn:
- The benefits of logging the whole transport stream
- The benefits of moving away from baseband-based monitoring
- How logging and monitoring the transport stream enhances broadcast verification, analysis, quality of experience and repurposing
- How to cost effectively streamline broadcast operations with transport stream monitoring and logging
Live Webinar - Register Here: Transport Stream and Next Generation Logging
Register for our upcoming webinar:
The Benefits of Mobile Access On The Go – Anywhere, Anytime
April 25, 2012
1pm EST
Volicon’s newest solution for accessing logged content on iPad, iPhone and Android interfaces, Observer Mobile is designed exclusively for mobile engineering and executive content reviews on-the-go. Through intuitive tools, Mobile can be used to play live or previously recorded content, quickly navigate or scrub to any timeframe of the aired clip, sub-clip sections out of the recorded stream, and share content via email with members on the Observer network. Observer Mobile provides greater flexibility, portability and immediate 24 x 7 access to the channels that operators need to monitor – anywhere, anytime.
During this 30 minute presentation, Andrew Sachs will discuss the many benefits and features of Observer Mobile and conclude with a Q/A session.
From this presentation, participants will learn:
- The benefits of instant access to final broadcast product
- How compliance can more easily be achieved
- How communication and quality of experience can be improved
Today we announced the release of the NAVE (Nielsen Audio Video Encoder) Decoding, Logging, and Alerting module for our Observer® digital video monitoring and logging product range. This new ratings assurance tool enables broadcasters or networks to ensure proper transmission and delivery of NAVE codes to Nielsen monitoring equipment and, in turn, ensure ratings credit for advertisements.
Our Observer product line helps stations and networks to ensure and demonstrate the integrity of their on-air product, and this new module extends this assurance to include the NAVE codes through which broadcasters receive ratings data.The NAVE Decoding, Logging, and Alerting module allows the broadcaster to be immediately notified of discrepancies, avoiding any gap in ratings credits. It is available as a software module on the Observer systems, providing the broadcaster with additional value for their investment in Volicon.
Unlike expensive stand-alone equipment, Volicon’s NAVE Decoding, Logging, and Alerting module affordably logs NAVE IDs (SIDs) along with the broadcast content. This facilitates effective troubleshooting, as well as cost-effective monitoring of cable, satellite, and IPTV provider return feeds to ensure delivery of codes to the consumer environment. With this convenient addition to their Observer systems, broadcasters and networks can now ensure the accurate generation and delivery of NAVE ID codes.
For more information, please visit volicon's website
Andrew Sachs, VP of Product Management was recently interviewed by Butch Stearns of the Pulse Network for NAB about loudness and compliance in broadcast monitoring:
View At:
Solutions for Compliance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NazyjUyazkc
How to Get, and Stay, in Compliance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsbTkjDc-FQ
Handling Loudness Monitoring on a Global Scale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxn4Yvb-zhw
Enforcing Compliance with Loudness Legislation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVAHtONL9TQ
Specific Measures for Compliance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ej75EFJAUs
Volicon Extends Worldwide Presence With Appointment of Kelvin Ko as Sales Director, Asia Pacific
Volicon has appointed Kelvin Ko as the company’s new sales director for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Based in Hong Kong, Ko will be responsible for overseeing APAC sales strategy and implementation, as well as regional distribution for the full line of Volicon Observer® digital video monitoring and logging systems.
“Kelvin’s outstanding record in high-technology sales and marketing, and in the broadcast, cable and telecom markets in particular, makes him a great fit for Volicon. The fact that he has spent nearly 15 years of his 24-year career in Asia-Pacific and understands the business, cultural, and political elements of this market exceptionally well makes him a great asset to Volicon as we continue to expand our presence worldwide.” – Russell Wise, VP Sales
Ko has held senior sales and marketing positions with a number of well know companies in the broadcast and cable space including Ineoquest, Cisco, Leitch, and Harmonic
Ko, who holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, is fluent in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. He will work out of offices in Kowloon.