News & Events
Press Backgrounder
Digital Nirvana has served the Broadcast Media and Entertainment industry since 1996, providing knowledge management solutions and services designed to transform critical decision-making processes. The full product portfolio includes solutions for business intelligence and analytics, broadcast monitoring, video asset management, transcriptions and synchronization, learning management, and mobile applications development.
In the course of the company’s work with broadcasters, it became apparent that driving efficiencies and containing costs are top of mind business concerns. New online competitors are also pressuring broadcasters to deliver content to new locations in a range of formats. Digital Nirvana saw great potential to address both of these needs with a next-generation broadcast monitoring solution, and began work on an appliance-based platform that would deliver on that potential.
What We Are Announcing
The company is now introducing the following at IBC 2010:
- Support for DVB-ASI
- Digital Nirvana Collaborates with Evertz Microsystems for Enhanced SNMP Monitoring and Control
- Digital Nirvana expands its presence in Europe and has teamed up with French distributor LTRT
- Digital Nirvana expands its presence in Asia Pacific and has teamed up with Gencom Technology
MonitorIQ is an affordable, full-featured broadcast monitoring appliance that satisfies the full range of pre-production, production, and post-production needs of any size broadcast organization. The MonitorIQ BMS product allows multiple departments to monitor, record, store, search, stream, and repurpose broadcast content with ease.
To date, Digital Nirvana's MonitorIQ solutions have allowed broadcasters to monitor studio feeds with its HD-SDI system, as well as the final broadcast with its DVB/ATSC/QAM/NTSC/PAL system. The DVB-ASI MonitorIQ system will allow national and local television networks, in addition to cable and satellite broadcasters, to monitor the output of any encoder as well as the uplinks and downlinks so that they can quickly determine not just when failures occur, but also where that failure originated. In addition, the DVB-ASI MonitorIQ solution allows broadcast engineers to monitor several program streams on a transport flow and records the entire transport for later analysis.
Building upon the success of the original MonitorIQ BMS that was introduced at last year's NAB, MonitorIQ features the ability to search any text within a facility's As Run/Traffic logs and go directly to the video at that time, ingest overnight ratings and provide a hyperlink into the video for each of the data points. The overnight ratings are plotted against a graph making it easy to analyze performance against competitors.
The encoding can be set at broadcast bitrate, allowing the material to be re-edited with less generation loss. In addition, embedded metadata which is not broadcast, such as SMPTE time-code, can be maintained with recording. The HD-SDI interface is compatible with sources such as video cameras and recording equipment whose highest quality output is an HD-SDI output. The HD-SDI version can be used when a modulated version doesn't exist, or is difficult to obtain at the installed locations.
In addition, Digital Nirvana and Evertz® Microsystems, a worldwide leader in the design and manufacturing of television, satellite, cable and IPTV broadcast equipment, have worked to develop an enhanced interface for Digital Nirvana’s MonitorIQ Broadcast Monitoring System to support Evertz’s VistaLINK® PRO and VistaLINK® PRO PLUS SNMP monitoring and control software. This collaboration creates a distinct broadcast monitoring environment, offering users unprecedented information and control.
Controlling and monitoring loudness per industry-standard ITU-R BS.1770 is a crucial requirement for transmitting in compliance with ATSC Recommended Practice A/85 and the pending CALM Act legislation. The Linear Acoustic LQ-1000 Loudness Quality Monitor provides comprehensive loudness and peak level metering of up to eight channels of 5.1 surround and/or stereo AES or SDI audio in a simple cost-effective package. With this technology partnership, the LQ-1000 will connect with the Digital Nirvana MonitorIQ Broadcast Monitoring System, and send real-time ITU-standard loudness data on a continuous basis for logging and mapping of data with the broadcast content video by MonitorIQ.
The integration MonitorIQ BMS and AXESS platforms creates a uniquely insightful and intuitive management environment encompassing discrete device as well as third party systems management (both monitoring and control), digital transport stream monitoring and reporting, Nielsen® LPM® data monitoring and reporting, content recording, monitoring and reporting, along with facilities management as a cohesive integrated view into the entire broadcast enterprise from ingest to transmission/distribution.
The solution provides unprecedented functionality by providing quick and accurate identification and mapping of exceptions and discrepancies in the broadcast signal to the actual video content by leveraging AXESS's® ability to aggregate and present unlimited quantities of data from devices, remote sites, and third party systems into a customizable intuitive interface and Monitor IQ's® ability to record, monitor, clip, repurpose and distribute content (both HD and SD) for either internal or external purposes.
Problems Addressed
Broadcasting stations are supported by generalized information technology such as systems that support financial and business management, as well as specialized systems unique to the production and delivery of broadcast content. A critical element is the ability to monitor, record, store, search, compare, and repurpose broadcast content. Today, most broadcast organizations rely on a mix of incompatible, isolated systems and manual methods to fulfill these needs:
- Broadcast operations staff must monitor live broadcast signals to detect and respond to any transmission problems as they occur, such as signal problems, loss of audio or video, loudness levels, black or static screen, or loss of closed captions. This monitoring often relies on visual observation and manual problem logging. Broadcasters are also required to create continuous real-time recordings or airchecks and maintain these recordings for significant periods for legal or business purposes.
- Sales departments must ensure quality delivery of advertising, be proactive in detecting when technical problems have interfered with fulfillment of paid advertising, and be able to provide evidence that ads sold were actually broadcast. Sales staff typically review exception logs created by broadcast operations to identify problems that occurred during scheduled broadcast of local ads, then locate and check the actual transmission recordings. Because airchecks on tape, DVDs, or most PC-based systems are not easily searchable, this is a very time-consuming process.
- News departments generally have independent systems for recording their own broadcast news content. This content is often maintained for many years, frequently on tape. Not only does this require a large amount of storage space, but also results in a very time-consuming process to locate desired content stored in the archive. This content is also repurposed to create on-air promos, clips for the station’s Web site, and podcasts – typically with special-purpose systems.
- Station management must be confident they can demonstrate regulatory compliance in response to requests by the FCC or other officials. The ability to compare program ratings and advertising revenue with that of competitors is also a powerful asset in maintaining and increasing market share. These comparisons are frequently achieved by subscribing to fee-based services.
Other enterprises that monitor and search broadcast content also share many of the same needs. Since some of these organizations monitor a very large number of stations, scalability and efficiency of operation are critical. This customer segment demands low total cost of ownership combined with fast, sophisticated search and retrieval capabilities.
Key Benefits
MonitorIQ BMS
MonitorIQ BMS replaces multiple systems used by different groups within the broadcast operation with a single, general-purpose broadcast monitoring “appliance”. Each appliance incorporates a multi-channel recorder, one to four built-in intelligent tuners, and customizable storage. This single system combines the functionality of signal monitor, aircheck logging system, news recording system, and special-purpose content-repurposing systems – and can also provide functionality to replace externally purchased competitive tracking services.
With included adapters for the most popular broadcast business systems, MonitorIQ BMS integrates and streamlines workflows to automate previously manual interfaces and tasks, while the ability to ingest ratings and advertising rate data makes competitive analysis easy to do in-house. This relieves operations staff, sales, and news departments from tedious, labor-intensive chores and allows them to focus on more valuable activities.
The central Web-based interface makes it easy to remotely set up recording schedules or search for content, regardless of media location or number of appliances on the network. Staff can access recorded content or schedule recordings from any location, at the station or remotely.
MonitorIQ BMS recording schedules can be created by time blocks, by channels, or by episodes. Closed captions are captured in text format, and recorded programming is encoded on-the-fly so it can be viewed within seconds. Content is easy to retrieve, with searching on closed captions, by program, by dates, or by channel. Advanced full-text keyword search, Boolean logic, and filtering by date and channel are available. By interfacing to networked storage, extensive archive files can be searched quickly using the same, flexible user interface.
Unique Features
Among the unique features delivered by Digital Nirvana’s monitoring solutions:
- Fully HD-ready, able to record, retrieve, and repurpose HD recorded content.
- Between one and four built-in intelligent tuners require only a single signal input and can automatically record up to four DTV channels – including all subchannels on a single DTV channel – simultaneously.
- No license limit on number of clients supported.
- Format flexibility of output – not just Windows Media, MonitorIQ offers output in many formats, including Flash, MPG-2, MPG-4, and H.264 as a configurable option.
- Web-ready, new-media-ready, and mobile-ready so content can be repurposed for use on Web sites, portable media players, and any mobile Internet device.
Contact
Ned Chini
events@digital-nivana.com
Ph: 510-226-9000, x707
North America (Headquarters)
Digital Nirvana, Inc.
39899 Balentine Dr, Ste 200
Newark, CA 94560
Ph: 510-226-9000
Fax: 510-217-2337
|
