Crown Media Family Networks is using the Volicon Observer TS (transport stream) digital video monitoring and logging system to monitor its Hallmark and Hallmark Movie channels. The Observer system facilitates remote review of live and aired content, rapid troubleshooting. It also simplifies critical tasks such as loudness and closed-caption compliance, NAVE ratings assurance, and traffic reconciliation. Crown Media also has installed an analog Observer system to give the company's programming department competitive monitoring capabilities.
The Observer makes it easy to review live and aired content over the network, so staff from engineering, traffic, business affairs,and other departments not only can locate and access the video they require, but also create their own clips. In addition, it provides managers 'quality of experience' alerts and logging that makes it easy to see trends. Perhaps most timely is its ability to capture and play back the loudness metadata that confirms compliance with the CALM Act.
The Observer TS allows Crown Media to log MPEG transport streams from the East Coast and West Coast Hallmark and Hallmark Movie channels continuously and to stream and export content to all stakeholders in the media enterprise. The Observer system captures, stores, and streams aired content and provides instant access to live and recorded content from an easy-to-use Web-based GUI. The system's quality of experience module provides real-time alarms for faulty video, audio and closed-captioning by issuing alerts via email/SNMP with a direct link to content and a master fault log.
Because Observer TS logs the full transport stream, users at Crown Media can go back as many as 10 days to examine and/or export content from the transport stream, or dial back as many as nine months if working with low bit-rate proxy content. DVR-like frame-accurate controls allow for easy content review, even over a WAN or the Crown Media LAN. Volicon's As-Run-Log Import module allows users to search and sort the as-run log via ID or commercial/program name for quick and easy ad verification with a direct link to video content.
The Observer supports monitoring of A/V content, including BS.1770-2 loudness and other correlations of data and video. Intuitive overlay controls provide continuous measurements that identify program loudness and loudness range, and high-visibility audio, video, and measurement graphs and data combine with fast, accurate access logged content to enable the export of an A/V affidavit with loudness data overlaid. Crown Media also takes advantage of Volicon's NAVE Decoding, Logging and Alerting Module, a ratings assurance tool that ensures proper transmission and delivery of NAVE codes to Nielsen monitoring equipment.
Newly installed for competitive monitoring, the analog Observer system at Crown Media will allow users to monitor multiple broadcasts, compare content and archive to local storage. Like the Observer TS system used in other departments, the four-channel analog system will enable quick location of desired broadcast material, creation of clips and delivery to other users for review.
