In Broadcast - August 2020 - 30

30

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 10 - Issue 8 | August 2020

InForm

Elevating The Viewer
Experience With Next-Gen
Video Monitoring
With the explosion of OTT services and viewers' insatiable
demand for high-quality streaming video, ensuring top quality
of experience (QoE) has never been more critical for content
providers, writes Keith DesRosiers...

Q

oE has been brought into even
sharper focus in recent months,
with viewers everywhere logging
maximum screen time during the
current global health crisis.
In very broad terms, QoE is a gauge
of a viewer's delight or annoyance with
a particular streaming service, and it
can be affected by a range of technical
issues. Given that, what are the best
techniques for QoE monitoring, and
how can providers ensure that their
carefully crafted video product, often
obtained at a premium, is being
enjoyed to the max by viewers?
One of the most important tools
for OTT providers to ensure QoE on a
par with linear TV broadcasts - and
also meet quality-of-service and
compliance - is a robust video logging
and monitoring solution. The very
best of these, such as Digital Nirvana's
MonitorIQ, are able to record and
archive all video throughout the entire
media distribution chain from content
acquisition to actual transmission.
In this article, we'll take a closer
look at these capabilities and other
components that are propelling video
monitoring technology into a new era
of QoE.
Comprehensive and
Continuous Monitoring
To ensure optimal QoE, a
monitoring solution should record
video continuously from ingest to
multi-bitrate encoding and then final
delivery to a CDN. The system should
make it fast and easy for operators
at all levels to record, store, monitor,
analyse, and repurpose content. At the
same time, it should provide instant
and automatic alerting for anomalies
that might affect the user experience,
such as black frame, static frame,
audio loss, missing or faulty closed
captions, and momentary outages.
MonitorIQ's ability to record black
frames that indicate the time of

outages down to the microsecond
makes it unique in the field of
broadcast monitoring. Unlike other
solutions, which merely jump from
the instant video is lost to the instant
that it is restored, MonitorIQ enables
operators to insert black frames into
the recording that demonstrates the
exact length and impact of the outage
and then and then capture a clip of the
black-framed video. This "affidavit"
ability is critical for documenting
compliance and to mitigate any future
recurrences.
Another unique feature of MonitorIQ
is the ability to correlate underlying
analysis of the transport stream with
actual, viewer-detectable impairments
in the video. This is critical, since many
impairments such as black or static
frames have their root causes in errors
that occur at the transport-stream
level, such as packet loss, jitter, and
latency. MonitorIQ not only records
these events for later analysis, but the
system can be configured to trigger
transport stream analysis tools.
Instant Notification and
Automated Reporting
An important aspect of QoE is an
operator's ability to react quickly
when video anomalies occur - and that
requires a system that can generate
instant notifications to the devices and

apps on which operators rely, together
with clips of the video in question. In
addition to integrations with other
alerting systems such as SMPT,
MonitorIQ is able to send automatic
notifications not only to email but
to a wide range of communications
and messaging tools such as Slack or
WhatsApp.
In addition, MonitorIQ is able to
generate automated reports that
correlate anomalies within any
timeframe together with uptime
percentages. Without having to
initiate reports themselves, operators
can see at a glance when and where
errors occurred, broken out by audio,
video, metadata, and closed captions.
Reports also include hyperlinks
that enable operators to link back
to clips showing specific events. In
an upcoming version, MonitorIQ
will take QoE a step further with
alerting categorized according to
the seriousness and urgency of the
error, together with the elapsed time
the engineering department took to
resolve the problem.
AI-based Quality and Conformance
The correct appearance of closed
captions isn't just a regulatory
and compliance issue; it's also an
important aspect of QoE - since
the captions are critical for the

Monitoring Quality of Experience (QoE) across devices

enjoyment of a significant portion
of the audience. In an industry first,
MonitorIQ applies a cloud-based set
of AI and machine learning services to
verify that captions and subtitles meet
internal, industry, and government
requirements. In addition to regulatory
compliance and QoE, MonitorIQ's AI
and machine learning capabilities
come into play to ensure that content
conforms to specific captioning
standards for platforms such as Netflix,
Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Quibi.
The Ultimate Affidavit
for QoE and Beyond
By providing an accurate, up-tothe-minute record of the actual video
at transmission time, MonitorIQ is
a critical link in assessing content
quality and maintaining high QoE
standards. While it's tempting to think
of video logging and monitoring as
an engineering function, next-gen
systems like MonitorIQ can play a
much bigger role in a media enterprise
- bringing in many other key players
who can leverage the recorded video
and use it to collaborate on core
business functions. Sales teams, for
instance, can validate commercials
and confirm fulfilment of ad contracts.
Digital teams can access video for
repurposing to online platforms. And
executives can ensure that video
quality is measuring up to the brand
standards.
But in the end, QoE is all about
delighting
viewers,
maintaining
audience share, and creating audience
loyalty. In the highly competitive world
of OTT content, the winners will be
those who can provide consistently
top-quality content - and next-gen
monitoring is the key.

Keith DesRosiers is currently Director
of Sales Solutions at Digital Nirvana
and was a key architect of the Volicon
product line.
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.digitalnirvana.com http://www.digitalnirvana.com http://www.digitalnirvana.com
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