HACKENSACK, N.J.—Actus Digital has announced that Meteo Consult has successfully deployed the Actus Digital solution for its television network, La Chaîne Météo.

Actus Digital is a LiveU company, and a leading provider of intelligent media monitoring and broadcast compliance platforms.

Meteo Consult is the private meteorological company in France and is part of the Figaro Group. It manages several services, including La Chaîne Météo, broadcast 24/7 on Canal+, multiple websites (lachainemeteo.com, meteoconsult.com, nautisme.com), numerous mobile applications (iOS and Android), as well as an interactive voice service.

Running a continuously updated 24/7 broadcast with a highly streamlined technical and on-air team, La Chaîne Météo required a reliable, automated solution to replace its legacy 15-year-old standard-definition system.

The newly deployed Actus platform has been seamlessly integrated into the network's Active Directory to securely connect with internal servers, and utilizes APIs for automated media extractions.

With the Actus Digital platform now operational, La Chaîne Météo will effortlessly fulfill its mandatory compliance recording requirements. Furthermore, the platform provides a critical new archiving capability for the network, generating a concatenated archive that automatically stores full news bulletins each time the edition is updated throughout the day.

"As a small, multi-skilled team managing a channel with continuously updated content seven days a week, we need reliable, automated systems that run smoothly behind the scenes,” explained Frank Jamois, head of TV Production at Meteo Consult. “Actus Digital perfectly answered our need to modernize our aging 15-year-old infrastructure. It provides us with a robust solution not only for mandatory compliance recording but also for the automatic archiving of our daily news bulletins, which we previously did not have."

Ariel Shukroun, Sales Director at Actus Digital added that “the Actus Intelligent Monitoring Platform is designed to go beyond basic compliance, giving lean production teams the automation, API integration, and reliability they need to focus on content creation rather than technical troubleshooting. We look forward to supporting La Chaîne Météo for years to come."

For more information, visit actusdigital.com.

As the broadcast industry expands to include more distribution partners with data-heavy workflows, the need for robust quality monitoring has never been greater. At the upcoming NAB Show 2026, Actus Digital is set to showcase major enhancements to its flagship Actus X platform, focusing on NextGen TV with A3SA encryption, sub-second browser-based interactive multiviewers, Alert Center updates, and AI-powered automation.

In the traditional broadcast world, the “compliance logger” was often a silent observer –a safety net tucked away in a server rack, recording feeds just in case there was an FCC inquiry or they needed to verify the air-check recording. Actus revolutionized a shift where the technology that once merely recorded history, is now being used to shape the present, and maintain quality through the chaos of modern content distribution.

Strengthening the Infrastructure: New Native ATSC 3.0 Monitoring with A3SA Encryption

As broadcasters rollout NextGen TV (ATSC 3.0), maintaining quality and compliance are primary concerns. Previously, monitoring these feeds was a fragmented process or not done at all. Actus X with built-in support for ATSC 3.0 with A3SA DRM encryption ensures that broadcasters can monitor encrypted NextGen TV services with the same depth, reliability, and compliance confidence they have long enjoyed in traditional broadcast environments. By decrypting and analyzing these feeds in real time, Actus X provides a seamless bridge between legacy over-the-air broadcasting and the future of television, including ATSC 3.0, FAST/CTV/OTT streaming partners, and modern baseband/2110 operation centers.

For station engineers, this means the era of “black box” monitoring is over. They gain the ability to decrypt and analyze their workflows for 3.0 and other distribution partners with the same confidence they’ve had for decades. This continuity and the ability to monitor all workflows on one intelligent monitoring platform ensures that as stations evolve, their operational integrity remains intact, allowing them to focus on the transition without fearing a loss of oversight or quality.

Actus Addresses FCC Requirements

While the shift to ATSC 3.0 introduces new technical complexities, fundamental regulatory requirements remain the same. The Actus platform is designed to handle compliance logging seamlessly across both standards, including regulatory documentation and “Proof of Compliance”.

Beyond just monitoring, Actus automates the “paperwork" side of broadcasting:

• Closed Captioning: Provides proof that captions were present and accurate, and alerts engineers when they are missing.
• Emergency Alert System (EAS): The system automatically logs all weekly and monthly EAS announcements.
• Efficient Reporting: With automated reporting, Actus makes quick work of generating and submitting reports and/or the associated media.

New Sub-Second, Interactive Browser-Based Multiviewer: Precision in the Moment

In the heat of a live broadcast, every second counts. A traditional multiviewer shows what is happening in the moment, but doesn’t always ‘catch’ issues that appear briefly. The introduction of the Actus sub-second monitoring via unlimited multiviewer layouts and MV heads changes the dynamic for on-air operations.

Not only is Live sub-second monitoring extended to Master Control multiviewers, but organization wide via standard networking on any HTML-5 browser. Monitor all of your feeds from any combination of formats or use the Penalty Box to give attention to just those in fault. In either case, Actus now provides global access with individual or grouped interactive controls.

Imagine a scenario where a Master Control Operator notices a slight sync issue across three different regional feeds or probe-points. Instead of toggling between systems, they can now quickly pause, rewind, and synchronize those feeds in a single browser window to review where issues entered a workflow, and which distribution points have been affected.This level of interactivity turns the multiviewer into a diagnostic tool. By identifying and resolving issues in real-time, stations minimize technical glitches that drive viewers away, maintaining optimal viewer experiences that protect the brand’s reputation.

Automating Quality Assurance Monitoring and Reporting: In an era where operators are managing more channels with fewer resources, manual monitoring and report generation is no longer sustainable.The Actus platform has one of the best and deepest toolsets for Quality Assurance monitoring. In addition to the extremely healthy set of parameters set to identify and alert on issues affecting audio, video, and metadata, the system also tracks additional issues of vital importance to broadcast engineers.

• SCTE messages are shown on the Multiviewer and captured for analysis with access to the JSON message data
• TR 101.290 and Transport Stream information identify P1, P2, and P3 errors
• NAVE watermarks show up on the Multiviewer and can be analyzed over time
• Loudness graphs and data can be reviewed, including a breakdown by AsRun Log

New at NAB, Actus will introduce Automatic Alert Reporting, which streamlines the oversight process. Broadcasters can now receive automated, customized alert summaries delivered directly to their inboxes. By filtering for the issues that matter most, the system eliminates “alarm fatigue” and ensures that critical errors are addressed immediately without the need for manual identification of which needs attention.

The shift toward automated, customized alert reporting changes the workflow from reactive to proactive.

Ultimately, every technical advancement in the Actus platform serves a singular purpose: to protect the connection between the broadcaster and the viewer. Whether it’s navigating the complexities of ATSC 3.0 encryption or silencing the noise of "alarm fatigue" through automated reporting, these tools bridge the gap between technical compliance and creative excellence. By allowing media professionals to work smarter and troubleshoot faster, Actus X empowers teams to focus on what they do best - telling the stories that matter - with the absolute confidence that their audience is receiving them exactly as intended.

About Actus Digital

Since 2005, and now in a bigger capacity as a LiveU company, Actus Digital has set the standard for intelligent media monitoring and compliance logging, trusted by broadcasters, media regulators, public sector organizations, and governments. With over 2,000 installations, Actus delivers a QA Compliance Logger enhanced with advanced solutions like Actus SW based multiviewer, Actus AI Media Insight for content analysis, Clip Factory Pro for content repurposing, OTT StreamWatch for OTT/FAST monitoring and Actus Remote post-STB Video monitoring (RVM). Each product can stand alone or be fully integrated into one unified platform.

Actus supports all broadcast video and streaming protocols and is available as a turnkey appliance, software/VM-based system, or SaaS. Headquartered globally with 24/7 support, Actus Digital, now a LiveU company, is accelerating innovation and delivering even greater value to customers. For more details, please visit actusdigital.com, or follow us on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or YouTube.

HACKENSACK, N.J.—Actus Digital, a LiveU company, will unveil major new enhancements to its Actus X Intelligent Monitoring Platform at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The latest release introduces powerful new capabilities that expand real-time monitoring, improve operational efficiency and further differentiate Actus X from legacy compliance solutions.

Actus X unifies real-time QA alerting, compliance logging and multiviewer monitoring with advanced clipping and AI-driven news analysis in a single, browser-based solution. The monitoring platform gives broadcasters greater control, deeper insight and measurable operational value.

At NAB, Actus X will unveil native support for next-generation monitoring standards, such as ATSC 3.0 with A3SA encryption and multiviewer enhancements that deliver real-time, browser-based monitoring with sub-second latency. The 3.0 monitoring with A3SA encryption support enables broadcasters to monitor NextGen TV services with the same depth, reliability and compliance confidence they expect from traditional broadcast environments.

Enhanced sub-second low-latency performance, combined with new interactive player controls, allows operators to synchronize, pause and replay multiple feeds simultaneously, making it easier to compare on-air coverage across channels and quickly investigate issues in real time.

Automated, customized alert summaries provide clear visibility into the issues that matter most, delivered directly to the inbox with no manual reporting required.

Actus has continued to expand real-time AI analysis, enabling delivery of multilingual speech-to-text, keyword detection, content summarization, facial recognition and advertisement identification, turning compliance monitoring into actionable intelligence for news, legal and digital teams.

Actus Remote Viewer Monitoring (RVM) centralizes monitoring how channels are received at remote sites, enabling broadcasters to verify on-air quality, detect issues early, and troubleshoot problems from the viewer’s perspective.

Actus will also present its roadmap for integrating its solutions with the LiveU IP-video EcoSystem, including a multiviewer with real-time quality control (QC) monitoring and alerts of live feeds coming from LiveU's field units and cloud-based solutions.

See Actus Digital at 2026 NAB Show booth N1740.

More information is on the company’s website.

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—WUFT-TV, a PBS member station operated by the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications, is both a vital public broadcaster and a training ground for future media professionals. We provide trusted news, educational content, PBS programming and critically important public-safety information from WUFT’s Florida Public Radio Emergency Network (FPREN), which provides hurricane and other significant safety information to the state. WUFT-TV’s service area extends from the Florida-Georgia state line to The Villages and coast to coast in North Florida.

The initial need we set out to address with Actus Digital, a LiveU company, was compliance. WUFT had relied on a memory card-based workflow for air check recording that left the station and university vulnerable, as we could not prove compliance during FCC inspections.

Proof of Compliance
When evaluating technology options, the Actus platform stood out for its comprehensive feature set—particularly its Compliance and Quality Assurance tools. The interactive multiviewer further solidified Actus as the clear choice. As an existing LiveU user station, we’re also excited about the potential for deeper integration in the future.

The Actus QA Compliance Logger has become the backbone of our compliance strategy. It reliably captures everything required to demonstrate FCC compliance, including recordings, closed captioning, CALM Act loudness monitoring and Emergency Alert System messages.

As our chief engineer, Larry Bornacelli, explained: “One of the worst things that can happen to a media property is getting fined by the FCC. Actus protects us by proving we are compliant for both TV and radio.”

Beyond compliance, Actus vastly improves our quality with effective QC monitoring. The Actus multiviewer, accessible anywhere, displays a real-time panorama of our over-the-air broadcast, HDMI set-top box returns and our radio station. It immediately identifies frozen video, missing captions, audio dropouts and other issues with visual/audible alerts on the multiviewer, while also routing notifications through Active Directory via email and SMS.

This integration means our engineers know instantly when there’s a problem and can quickly pinpoint the source of an issue, which dramatically shortens troubleshooting time. Additionally, transport stream analysis gives packet-level visibility into our broadcast, letting us assess latency, jitter and encoding errors.

The Actus system was installed in our technical center alongside our existing encoders and decoders, with Actus technical staff logging in remotely for the configuration. We were so eager that we started using it even before official training, and it quickly replaced several piecemeal systems. Integration with Active Directory simplified user management, and within days, our staff was actively using the system.

Ethan Magoc, interim director of the Innovation News Center at the College of Journalism and Communications, described the overall impact. “Actus is a professional, reliable, industry-standard system that allows our engineers to maintain the quality of our broadcast…while also enabling our students to train on the same state-of-the-art systems they will find in the market after graduation,” he said.

EAS Compliance
In addition, our Actus system plays a vital role in public safety, delivering undeniable proof that WUFT is meeting its FCC EAS obligations. Actus provides a clear timeline of events, supports post-event investigations and verifies performance with reports according to FPREN. This also applies to our BEACON 24-hour, AI-based alerting system, which allows us to deliver timely and accurate messages during hurricanes and other emergencies.

For WUFT, Actus has become an indispensable tool on many levels. It strengthens quality control, assures us of compliance and streamlines engineering operations across the broadcast chain.

Before Actus, we relied on multiple disparate systems. Now, one unified platform gives us a single point of access and confidence in our compliance and quality, across all media properties. With Actus, WUFT has the tools to meet our challenges head-on, confident we are maintaining standards, complying with regulations and continuing to lead our community as a trusted broadcaster and world-class teaching facility.

More information is available at http://actusdigital.com.

HACKENSACK, N.J.—Actus Digital today unveiled a new integration with Pikolo’s ITracker platform, which streamlines broadcast operations by unifying real-time channel monitoring with centralized operational data management and providing users with deeper insights and more efficient workflows.

With this integration, Actus automatically sends monitoring alerts directly to Pikolo Systems’ ITracker. The ITracker system, in turn, connects with Actus via API to provide a smooth, in-platform experience for users. This bidirectional data exchange minimizes manual operator input and ensures channel status and technical alerts are instantly available within ITracker’s centralized environment.

“Our mission is to make our QA Compliance Logger and monitoring a source of strategic value,” Actus Digital CEO Sima Levy said. “By partnering with Pikolo, we’re giving broadcasters a more connected, efficient, and insightful way to manage both technical performance and overall operations.”

Actus-generated alerts are now stored alongside all other operational data, including linear and digital, within ITracker’s comprehensive data store. This single source of truth (SSOT) enables broadcasters to track performance trends, identify recurring issues and make faster, data-driven decisions.

By combining monitoring capabilities of Actus with ITracker’s analytics and profiling tools, broadcasters benefit from operational efficiency, improved visibility into health and compliance from the same dashboard and actionable insights, the company said.

“Pikolo serves customers across all broadcast verticals, from single stations to multi-national networks,” said Vernon Omegah, vice president of technology at Pikolo Systems. “Integrating Actus’ monitoring data gives our clients richer business insights to drive operational excellence.”

Actus Digital is a LiveU company.

More information is on the Actus Digital website.

With the recent announcement of its acquisition of Actus Digital, LiveU is ready to expand its portfolio with a comprehensive range of intelligent monitoring and compliance tools that will help its customers realize faster and more efficient workflows, according to company executives.

In a recent interview with TV Tech, executives from Actus and LiveU talked about how the acquisition came about and what it means for LiveU’s customers and market focus.

Actus President Sima Levy noted that both Actus and LiveU customers in broadcast, as well as government and enterprise are looking for solutions that solve multiple issues.

“Customers want an end to end solution, but they also would like to have fewer vendors,” she said. “LiveU targets the exact same customers as we do, so now LiveU is able to offer more products to the exact same customers.

“Why is that good for the customers?” Levy added. “Number one, LiveU’s reputation means that it is committed to make Actus Digital the biggest and the strongest compliance and media monitoring solution in the market, supporting Actus with all of its resources in terms of products, innovation roadmap, and its global presence.”

Emphasis on QoE
Actus Digital, renowned for its intelligent monitoring and compliance platforms, used by premier broadcasters, governments and media agencies worldwide, brings powerful content analysis, Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring solutions, and advanced AI enabled tools that will complement the LiveU EcoSystem, delivering operational efficiency and advanced content analysis. The LiveU EcoSystem is a set of innovative IP-video solutions, that add efficiency and shorten workflows across the entire video production chain, including multi-cam 5G contribution encoders and cloud-based ingest, production and IP-video distribution solutions, making the two solution portfolios highly synergistic.

Steve Wind-Mozley, chief marketing officer for LiveU, noted that the two companies’ evolution ran in parallel as they both pioneered their respective technologies when they started out about two decades ago.

“LiveU invented video over bonded IP and Actus began to assemble a single-screen compliance logging and this concept of intelligent monitoring,” he said, adding that LiveU’s interest in Actus Digital came down to the customer experience.

“How can you find the value in content and deliver it to a user in a convenient way? That resonated quite loudly with us and our board, which is why we were excited to reach out and acquire the Actus business and technology.”

Levy added that the two companies were well familiar with each other before the acquisition was announced at the end of April.

“We have been talking to LiveU in the last two or three years because we did understand the integration and the power of both solutions and the customers having one monitoring platform for their LiveU streams, their broadcast streams, their OTT or any other stream in one single screen,” she said, adding that there was significant overlap in the two companies’ customer base.

“[LiveU] is in the markets that we target. It's exactly the same industry. It's amazing. We have many, many common customers,” she said.

The broadcast industry’s move to IP has had a major impact on how the companies approached today’s market, according to Wind-Mozley.

“One of the things that attracted us to Actus, is that, like LiveU, Actus is video agnostic,’ so we don't mind what type of protocol our customers are using—IP, SDI, SRT, LRT, NDI, 2110, or another, it doesn't really matter,” he said. “Actus has the ability to monitor any type of feed, so they're even more agnostic than LiveU is. So the ecosystem that we're building together is designed to be as open as possible, because we want our customers to have the choice to use the right tool at the right time.”

Design Customers
Although LiveU is in the process of integrating Actus’ platform into its product portfolio, Levy noted that they are already getting increased interest from their customers for a common multiviewer for their different type of feeds as well as implement Actus other capabilities on the LiveU content, such as AI options.

“There are several levels of integration—one is something we already do, and that started even before the acquisition where LiveU customers were coming to Actus asking, ‘we would like to monitor LiveU content within a platform like yours,’ she said. “That started a year and a half back, before we even discussed the M&A with LiveU. So that came from a market need.”

“And here we don't need to do any integration—it's there and we are already doing that; Actus can ingest any type of video and audio, any protocol, any resolution, any format, into our platform,” she added.

As for further integration, Levy says the companies have already begun discussions with select customers to explore ways of integrating solutions that could lead to the development of new configurations of a combined system.

“We are talking to a few customers—and we have many shared customers who are coming to us and saying, ‘we would like to offer you some ideas for further integration,” Levy said. “I call them ‘design partners.’ We have already picked up three shared customers, both of ours and LiveU, and this is happening just now. All this M&A is so fresh, but it's already happening. We didn't plan to do that until early next year, but the industry is dictating the tempo here.”

Wind-Mozley noted the importance of having one solution in an easy to understand platform that can accelerate workflows for more efficient live production, adding that the Actus brand and team is still intact after the acquisition is completed.

“Actus remains the same,” he said, adding that “we already get more and more customers of LiveU that understand the integration and that we bring more value to the production, bringing monitoring in one screen.”

IBC Plans
Actus, which will be exhibiting in the LiveU booth at the IBC Show in September, will preview some upgrades to its Actus X platform. Actus X features next-generation Quality Assurance (QA) compliance logging, giving customers better access and control over alerts and threshold settings via its browser-based GUI; advanced multiviewer capabilities and AI-powered media insight.

Levy says the platform is designed to help customers expand the monetization potential of their content.

“We are not only providing mandatory compliance, we are turning the compliance and mandatory recording system into a kind of a business enabler,” she said. “We have a nice solution for clipping and content repurposing to social media that has nothing to do with compliance, but will help customers increase viewer engagement.”

“The punch of the Actus X goes much, much beyond compliance and monitoring,” she added,

Wind-Mozley says IBC will provide a stage to showcase LiveU’s role in increasing the integration of IP in live production.

”We will be unveiling what we're terming to be a ‘quantum leap’ in live production; and I don’t use that term lightly,” he said. “It's not even a revolution, this is something entirely new.

“Last time at NAB, we were excited to talk about and demonstrate LiveU IQ, our ability to use AI, eSIMs and dynamic switching to be able to do some pretty astonishing things in very contested, congested or very feeble remote network environments,” he added. “At IBC, we will be delivering the next chapter of that story, which will make live production much more accessible for many, many customers, and we're properly excited about that. We'll also be showcasing some very powerful add-on solutions that I kind of like to think really enhance the accessibility and the interoperability of what we call the LiveU ecosystem.”

LiveU and Actus will be Stand 7.C19 at the RAI Amsterdam during the 2025 IBC Show, Sept. 12-15.

HACKENSACK, N.J.—Actus Digital will demonstrate how broadcasters can transform compliance monitoring from a necessary expense into a strategic revenue driver at IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

The enhanced Actus X Intelligent Monitoring Platform debuts advanced AI capabilities and unified workflow tools that deliver measurable business value beyond traditional logging requirements without compromising on technical excellence, the company said.

“Compliance and QA monitoring has evolved from simple box-ticking to intelligent content analysis that drives real business outcomes,” Sima Levy, president and founder of Actus Digital, said.

“With Actus X, we continue to invest heavily in the core compliance logging and technical monitoring features our customers rely on—while extending the platform with powerful AI tools that support news, editorial, digital and legal teams,” Levy said. “This ensures broadcasters gain both operational efficiency and strategic insights from a single, unified system.”

Actus Digital will highlight:

• Comprehensive compliance logging, intelligent monitoring and new commercial opportunities: The Actus X platform is designed to help users be sure of their content quality, audience experience and compliance. At the same time, it delivers seamless opportunities to create more value from video.
• Intelligent alerting system: With enhanced centralized alerting systems delivering sophisticated, prioritized QoS and QoE monitoring, users can be sure of proactive quality assurance across multiple facilities, platforms and content types.
• Advanced multiviewer technology: The new, software-defined interactive multiviewer offers operators deeper metadata layers and faster contextual control. Flexibility and accessibility are assured with drag-and-drop layouts, penalty box functionality, on-screen alerts, delivered through browser-based technology without the need for separate hardware decoders.
• AI-driven content intelligence: Real-time AI analysis transforms live content monitoring, providing valuable instant insights. Intelligent solutions include multilingual speech-to-text transcription, content summarization, facial recognition, keyword detection and advertisement identification.
• Streamlined content repurposing: Powerful clipping tools enable rapid content adaptation for OTT, VOD and social-media distribution. Integrated branding and graphics capabilities accelerate digital workflow execution while maintaining brand consistency and fueling monetization.

LiveU closed the acquisition of Actus Digital in May.

See Actus Digital at IBC2025 (Stand 7.C19).

More information is available on the company’s website.

HACKENSACK, NJ—LiveU, a global provider of live IP-video contribution, production and distribution solutions, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Actus Digital’s business and technology. LiveU says the acquisition will significantly enhance its recording, monitoring and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities and “accelerate its mission to help customers improve operational effectiveness and create more value from video.”

Actus Digital, renowned for its intelligent monitoring and compliance platforms, used by premier broadcasters and media agencies worldwide, brings powerful content analysis, Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring solutions, and advanced AI enabled tools that will complement the LiveU EcoSystem, delivering workflow simplicity and operational efficiency, the company said. The LiveU EcoSystem is a set of innovative IP-video solutions, that add efficiency and shorten workflows across the entire video production chain, including multi-cam 5G contribution encoders and cloud-based ingest, production and IP-video distribution solutions, making the two solution portfolios highly synergistic.

"We are delighted to be welcoming Actus Digital to LiveU," said Samuel Wasserman, CEO and Co-founder of LiveU. "Their exceptional, market-leading monitoring platform and AI expertise, combined with our shared commitment to reliability, quality, and customer service will significantly strengthen our entire offering in line with our overall strategy.”

“The LiveU EcoSystem is IP-Positive, meaning it accepts all the major video protocols for maximum interoperability and ease of use for our customers. With Actus Digital, we can now give our customers the valuable ability to monitor and gain insights from all these different feeds in a single solution, so that they can always be sure of their LiveU experience,” he continued.

Sima Levy, President and Founder of Actus Digital, added: "Joining LiveU provides our customers with easy access to a comprehensive, high-reliability IP-video EcoSystem, backed by world-class support. Combining the LiveU EcoSystem with the Actus Intelligent Monitoring Platform delivers powerful new capabilities to our customers across radio, TV, OTT and the internet. In fact, more and more of our customers have asked for integration with LiveU and we’re excited to be able to combine our resources and expertise to serve them better.”

The Actus Digital brand and Sima’s role as president of the brand will continue, according to spokesperson for LiveU.

In the dynamic world of broadcast media, it is crucial to utilize efficient workflows to maintain quality while managing multiple formats, adapting to new industry standards, and staying compliant with regulations. Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud-based workflows have opened new doors for increased automation based on intelligence-driven content analysis.

With these challenges and opportunities in mind, Actus Digital announces Actus X, the tenth generation of its Intelligent Monitoring Platform that builds on the company’s expertise delivering real-time QA monitoring, advanced compliance logging, and AI-media insight systems to broadcasters, networks, MVPDs, and government agencies.

For those adding ATSC 3.0 now or in the future, Actus is the preferred monitoring solution. For over 20-years, Actus has always integrated support for the latest popular standards into their platform, so whether a broadcaster has ATSC 3.0 from day one or they want a system that will adapt to add or transition channels in the future… the same investment works for 1.0, 3.0, OTT/FAST Channels, 2110, literally any broadcast technology their organization may evolve to.

Advancing Quality Assurance and Compliance
Actus X offers a comprehensive approach to broadcast monitoring with a browser-based interface that allows users to set thresholds and categorize alerts into Problems, Errors, Quality of Experience (QoE), and Quality of Service (QoS), with dynamically adjusting notification workflows for more precise control and improved Quality Assurance.

Real-time monitoring with prioritized alerting ensures that broadcasters can quickly detect and respond to signal degradation, transmission errors, or compliance violations, minimizing disruptions and maintaining the highest on-air quality.

Actus MV Contains Ground-breaking Must-See-To-Appreciate Multiviewer Technology
Multiviewers have been fundamental in master control rooms for decades but are often hindered by rigid layouts and limited multiviewer-heads due to heavy processing requirements. Actus MV eliminates traditional multiviewer constraints with unlimited, easily-customized layouts and no-charge multiviewer heads. This is made possible by an engineering approach that minimizes resource requirements for multiviewer generation… and delivers access and control of the same or unique multiviewer configuration and views to each individual user.

Interactive multiviewer-wall capabilities allow clicking to hear any tile, rewinding from live within Penalty boxes, and stepping through round-robin probepoints/channel carousels. Advanced data-visualization shows SCTE trigger details, Nielsen SIDs, download bitrates for OTT streams, TS Analysis, Loudness data, and more. Actus MV flexibility supports all popular baseband/TV/OTT formats and enables smooth operation across any number of locations with unlimited access to any number of custom layouts.

AI-Driven Insights for Smarter Decision-Making
The role of Artificial Intelligence has expanded to play an important role in media monitoring. Actus X integrates AI-powered analysis to extract meaningful insights from content.

News teams can leverage the same investment made for engineering to analyze news coverage in real-time to monitor breaking stories and identify new advertisers, while government agencies can monitor live news and direct-camera footage to identify security threats and political narratives.

What Actus X Means for the Future of Broadcast Monitoring
Everyone is being asked to do more with less so broadcasters must invest in tools that simplify complexity and enhance efficiency, moving toward greater automation, cloud-based solutions, and AI-powered workflows.

Actus X is a value leader, providing affordable standalone appliances that piece together seamlessly and expand capabilities that extend value throughout an organization by utilizing any combination of this six-product platform.

It allows users to invest in one or several of the components they need today, with scalability to add additional features they may need in the future, including from: 1) Quality monitoring and compliance logging with QA Compliance Logger, 2) a flexible interactive Multiviewer in Actus MV, 3) OTT monitoring and analysis in OTT StreamWatch, 4) Clipping and content repurposing (with automation if desired) on Actus Clip Factory Pro, 5) Centralized post-STB monitoring with Actus RVM (Remote Video Monitoring), and 6) effective AI-powered content analysis with Actus AI Media Insight.

With the unveiling of Actus X at NAB 2025, Actus raises the bar and sets a new standard for intelligent broadcast monitoring.

About Actus Digital
Since 2005, Actus Digital intelligent monitoring systems have been trusted by broadcasters and those monitoring media. Beyond its renowned QA Compliance Logger, Actus offers: Actus MV (interactive multiviewer), Actus AI Media Insight (AI-powered content analysis), Clip Factory Pro (content repurposing for social/OTT/VOD), OTT StreamWatch (OTT monitoring), and Actus RVM (remote post-STB monitoring).

With over 2,000 installations worldwide, its browser-based platform serves broadcasters, regulators, and government agencies. Actus Digital provides turnkey on-premises, software/VM-based, and SaaS solutions, for traditional linear television broadcast as well as OTT/FAST/IPTV channels.

The platform monitors, analyzes, and records content 24/7 from any combination of any input types, including traditional inputs as well as the newest protocols, such as ATSC 3.0, SMPTE 2110/2022-6, and all popular streaming protocols. Actus has an open API and its systems are integrated with top technology partners worldwide, further extending Actus effectiveness and value.

Actus Digital ensures best-in-class service and prioritizes customer satisfaction with 24/7 support from offices in the US, Europe, UAE, and Asia.

BOSTON—Actus Digital will unveil Actus X, the 10^th generation of the company's Intelligent Monitoring Platform, during the 2025 NAB Show, April 6-9, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Actus X represents an advancement in the Actus MV multiviewer as well as its compliance logging and quality assurance tools. It also includes new capabilities for AI content analysis within Actus AI Media Insight, the company said.

“Actus X is the culmination of two decades of innovation in technical monitoring and compliance logging, delivering a comprehensive easy-to-use tool focused on making the lives of broadcast engineers easier,” said Ken Rubin, Actus senior vice president for the Americas.

Three key enhancements include:

• Next-generation Quality Assurance (QA) compliance logging: Actus X offers better access and control over alerts and threshold settings via its browser-based GUI. Alerts can now be categorized into Problems, Errors, Quality of Experience (QoE) and Quality of Service (QoS) issues with dynamically adjusting notification workflows for more precise control and improved Quality Assurance.
• Advanced multiviewer capabilities: Actus MV multiviewer upgrades include reduced latency, expanded data-overlay options, such as SCTE trigger details, Nielsen SID data, and TS analysis. These enhancements complement existing features, such as round-robin channel-cycling and penalty-box reporting. Actus MV supports unlimited mosaic-layouts and unlimited multiviewer-heads for unlimited simultaneous local and remote users.
• AI-powered media insight: Actus X also delivers content monitoring capabilities that expand the capabilities of the system to news teams and government agencies. It can rapidly extract valuable insights from programming aired on local/international news as well as direct-camera feeds. This enables users to identify, summarize and highlight breaking news and developing stories. Government users can monitor for potential security threats and political agendas.

See Actus Digital at 2025 NAB booth SL 3307.

More information is available on the company’s website.

TV Tech: What will be your most important product news at NAB Show?

Ken Rubin: Actus X is here! We have poured tons of energy and resources into enhancements for our 10th version of the Actus Intelligent Monitoring Platform. Each of the six standalone products have been energized with advanced new features while also improving ease-of-use and synergy with other applications.

Our core QA Compliance Logging product received organizational improvements with browser-GUI access to set alert thresholds locally or remotely, grouped by Problems, Errors, Quality of Experience (QoE) or Quality of Service (QoS) issues, adapting dynamically to changes in your workflow for precision monitoring.

Prioritization and notification levels enable engineering teams to easily share tasks related to curing issues. As always, Actus Alert Center tracks impairments with linearly-stored proof used for QA analysis and confident compliance.

Actus MV multiviewer, with unlimited numbers of layouts and interactivity, also received many upgrades, including reduced latency, carousel tiles and new data-overlay display options such as SCTE trigger info, Nielsen SID details and TS analysis. Deploying Actus probe points throughout complex baseband and IP workflows with returns from newer transmission standards such as ATSC 3.0, 2110/2022-6 and a variety of streaming formats enables engineers to more quickly discern the origin of issues to resolve them faster.

Combining Actus MV and Actus QA Compliance creates a dynamic powerhouse that distributes QoE/QoS alert notifications through multiviewer-embedded alarms, penalty-box entries and automated email, App, SNMP and SMS messages.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

KR: Actus X represents the pinnacle of our 20-year journey in developing the world’s best broadcast monitoring solution and builds on our proven track record while introducing significant innovations.

It provides industry-leading QA monitoring, compliance logging, and multiviewer capabilities for any combination of TV, radio and OTT inputs, with unique options to scale seamlessly to AI-powered content analysis. Clip Factory Pro empowers advanced clipping for content repurposing with AI-based automated clipping workflows publishing to social and VOD.

This multistaged deployment approach offers exceptional value for standalone appliances with flexible options to expand beyond technical monitoring and have one platform for multiple workflows and departments. Whether investing in an on-premises, VM-based, or SaaS solution, Actus Digital’s global support team provides the very best technical support, 24x7 across all time zones.

Many key benefits set Actus X apart, but quite simply Actus offers the best technical monitoring solution at surprisingly affordable prices that can be enhanced with extremely powerful AI-based news analysis and automated content repurposing capabilities.

For more specific advantages, I encourage TV Tech readers to stop by the Actus booth at NAB or schedule a private online demonstration.

TVT: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2025 NAB Show?

KR: There is no question AI will be the talk of the show again this year. Most AI aims to reduce manual work with automation resulting in reduced cost, some deliver better accuracy, and almost all speed-up results.

The AI that Actus has leveraged into our platform expands the technical monitoring capabilities of our platform, typically used for Quality Assurance and Compliance, and introduces tremendous content-monitoring capabilities that, for example, help News teams quickly derive insights from programming broadcasted from competitors on local and international channels; or assist Government agencies to monitor a variety of programming, mainly news or direct camera feeds, to identify possible threats and to become aware of political agendas.

Another use of Actus AI enables TV Stations or Networks to monitor competitors 24x7 to inform their Sales teams when new Advertisers enter their market, allowing them to reach out to them at the opportune time to capture a portion of their ad-spend and increase their sales and overall profit.

TVT: What is it about NAB Show that brings you back every year?

KR: Actus has a passion for developing solutions that really deliver value to our customers. There is no better place to show so many top industry leaders what we have proudly developed since the last NAB … and to survey them about their new requirements and how to make our offering even more compelling for them.

NAB is also the place where we check in with our many partners in person, both technology partnerships from where we have integrated Actus into many best-in-class tools, as well as sales channel partners that have helped Actus obtain top global sales for systems of this type, including the fastest sales growth in the Americas, four years in a row.

Nothing beats the excitement of NAB—we celebrate our successes and learn how we can be even better.

NAB 2025 is extra special for Actus, as we celebrate our 20th year and reveal capabilities within new Actus X.

LARGO, Fla.—For over 45-years, Christian Television Network (CTN) has pursued a vision to broadcast the gospel into every home in America and touch as many people as possible around the world. We have grown our broadcast-footprint to include 24 US on-air television stations, many cable stations, satellite broadcasting, including nationally with Dish and DirecTV, and internet streaming (including utilizing apps) even into the U.K. on Freeview.

We spread the message of hope in Jesus through a diverse array of content, including sermons, talk shows, music programs and family-oriented films, and cater to a wide demographic that seeks uplifting and educational programming, not just to entertain but also to educate and inspire their Christian faith.

We live by our motto to encourage our viewers to Enjoy Life While Considering Eternity in every facet of their lives.

CTN operates three channels, including our primary CTN channel, which focuses on programming that helps viewers in their relationship with Jesus; CTNi, which is 24 hours of Christian programming in Spanish; and CTN Lifestyle, which includes family friendly syndicated programming, Christian talk shows (such as the 700 Club), movies, and Christian-themed entertainment programs. CTN also leases out dot channels on their OTA stations.

CENTRALIZING QUALITY CONTROL
Maintaining the highest quality standards as we continue to expand our TV stations, channels and distribution partners is an ever-increasing challenge.

Having the robust Actus QA Compliance Logger in our centralized Network Operation Center in Largo, Florida, has enabled us to maintain the highest quality standards. It provides visibility across all of our stations and eliminates the need for 24 hours of personnel at each.

One of the main benefits for us is that the platform alerts us to any quality issues that arise, such as audio dropouts, video freezing, or signal degradation … so that we can act swiftly to remedy it and ensure our viewers experience seamless programming.

Actus also provides us with insightful reports that allow us to assess our performance trends over time to proactively address potential issues before they escalate and maintain the consistent level of quality that our audience expects.

Not only does the Actus Multiviewer professionally display all of our channels across several large portrait-hung displays for our NOC engineering team to monitor live, but it also enables unlimited simultaneous users to log in remotely and access live or recorded content, as well as clip and share content when needed.

COMPLIANCE WITH FCC REGULATIONS
Another advantage of using the Actus system is its comprehensive compliance features. The FCC imposes strict regulations, requiring stations to meet specific standards such as maintaining closed captions and not violating the CALM Act, which demands similar volume between programming and commercials.

As a non-profit organization without unlimited funds for equipment, Actus was an affordable option to ensure we meet all regulatory requirements on a platform that also monitors broadcast performance. This dual role is crucial for us, given the expansive geographies in which we operate.

This streamlined Actus approach allows us to maintain consistent quality across all channels and provides us with peace of mind knowing that we are FCC-compliant. This not only protects our license but also strengthens our credibility with viewers and stakeholders.

STREAMLINING OPERATIONS
The integration of the Actus system has also streamlined our operational processes. The user-friendly interface allows our technical staff to easily navigate and utilize the system, reducing training time and increasing overall efficiency.

Additionally, the centralized monitoring capabilities reduce the complexity of our operations and facilitate better communication among team members. Everyone is on the same page, leading to faster resolutions and a more cohesive approach to broadcasting.

Actus has empowered us to make the corporate office a support hub for all our stations, streamlining our efforts and improving efficiency.

Our organization is truly excited to move forward with this advanced level of monitoring. It represents a significant step toward modernizing our operations and enhances our ability to excel in what we do.

The Actus system is a crucial piece that we’ve been needing and has become an integral part of our quality assurance strategy across all of our local television stations.

More information on Actus Digital is available here.

AKRON, Ohio—What began as one Christian station in the Cincinnati area has exploded into a large network of broadcast stations helping to bring the Gospel message to the world, 24x7x365. Using cutting-edge technology to provide the best in faith and family television, TCT has become a powerful voice for the Gospel with a mission to “Evangelize, Educate, Entertain, and Edify.”

Award-winning TCT Network programming is distributed to nearly 40 U.S. television stations, plus many satellite/cable TV providers and via OTT devices such as iOS, Android, Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Android TV, Tizen and Xbox One.

Raising the Bar on QC
At TCT, we strive to deliver high-quality Christian content to our viewers. However, as our network has grown, maintaining consistent quality and regulatory compliance has become increasingly complex. Actus Digital has been a game-changing solution that has revolutionized our approach to quality control and provides us with an unprecedented level of visibility across our entire network.

The Actus Multiviewer offers our NOC engineering team in Akron a real-time panorama of all of our channels nationwide, but the system’s flexibility also allows unlimited simultaneous users to access live and recorded content from anywhere at any time. This feature enables collaborative problem-solving that has proven invaluable for our geographically dispersed team.

Quality control is essential for broadcast success, and our Actus has equipped us with a powerful platform to maintain our high standards. The system’s real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities allow us to identify and address issues such as audio dropouts, video freezing, or signal degradation, almost instantaneously. This allows our team to spot irregularities quickly and efficiently, which reduces downtime and ensures our viewers enjoy uninterrupted, high-quality programming.

Streamlined Compliance
In the world of broadcasting, the FCC imposes rigorous regulations for several items including closed captioning, adherence to the CALM Act, and airing proper EAS tests and alerts.

Actus Digital has transformed our approach to compliance from a potential headache into a streamlined, automated process. The system’s comprehensive compliance logging features allow us to easily track and document our broadcast performance and ensure we’re meeting FCC requirements across all our stations.

The peace of mind this brings cannot be overstated. We know that we’re not just protecting our broadcast license but also reinforcing our credibility with viewers.

While quality control and compliance were our primary motivations for adopting Actus, we’ve discovered an unexpected benefit: improved operational efficiency. The system’s user-friendly interface has increased our team’s overall productivity and helps our team provide quick assistance to our viewers and programming partners.

The centralized monitoring capabilities have streamlined our operations, fostering better communication among team members. With everyone literally on the same page, we’ve seen faster problem resolution and a more cohesive approach to broadcasting across our entire network.

The Actus system has become an indispensable part of our quality assurance strategy, empowering us to maintain the best possible viewing experience across all our local stations. In the ever-evolving landscape of modern broadcasting, challenges are inevitable. But with Actus Digital, we’re confident in our ability to meet these challenges head-on.

At TCT, our mission has always been to spread the good news of salvation, hope, and faith through high-quality Christian programming. Thanks to Actus Digital, we’re now better equipped than ever to fulfill this mission, ensuring that our content not only reaches our viewers but does so with the clarity, consistency, and quality they deserve.

More information is available here.

Ryan, who spent nearly 15 years at Volicon where he was senior technical support manager, will serve as Actus senior technical support engineer. He will be instrumental in helping the company’s customers, offering hands-on technical support, Actus said.

“From our work together at Volicon, I already know John will be a huge asset to Actus,” said Actus Digital senior vice president Ken Rubin. “His extensive knowledge of how to support our systems within broadcast workflows will help us maintain our reputation for the best support in the industry, including to many Spanish-speaking customers.”

Sivian, who is serving as an Actus senior developer, has been a software engineer and led successful development teams for decades. He will focus on helping Actus innovate and customize its platform to meet specific customer requirements and support emerging technologies that will increase the value of its platform, the company said.

“Reuben’s experience strengthens our development team and allows us to be more agile in supporting advanced solutions for our customers,” said Rubin. “His ability to develop robust and innovative software will help Actus expand our offering and increase our value in broadcast workflows.”

The addition of Ryan and Sivan fortifies the company’s U.S. footprint and emphasizes its focus on delivering solutions that cater to the specific needs of U.S. broadcasters, including their support requirements, it said.

See Actus Digital at 2024 NAB New York Show booth 942.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Missed any of our recent product news? Here is TV Tech's weekly wrap-up of new products, services and deployments we published in our newsletter between August 19 to August 23. The stories are listed from the newest on Friday August 23, day by day back to our stories from Monday August 19.

Dish Business Launches News Evolve M2 Set Top Box for Hotels

Evolve M2 allows hoteliers, senior living facilities and others to update internal systems and tailor settings and apps available to guests on each property.

Nugen Audio to Celebrate 20th Anniversary at IBC 2024

From the outset, Nugen Audio has been fully focused on providing solutions to real-life problems and will be highlighting new solutions during the show.

PilotDesk and LG Ad Solutions Ink New Long-Term Ad Tech Deal

As part of the agreement, YieldPilot will optimize and streamline ad inventory with automated yield optimization for publishers.

Three Reasons Why Brazil’s TV 3.0 Decision Matters Here

What does the accomplishment mean to U.S. broadcasters grappling with the myriad of challenges the voluntary transition to 3.0 has created?

Multiple Trends Driving Dynamic KVM Market for M&E

With the industry’s move to IP, lower latency, more flexibility in the offing.

Revolutionizing Broadcast Production Models With Dante

Access to Dante in the cloud allows broadcasters to rethink how they approach audio production.

Evertz to Focus on Software Defined Video Networking at IBC 2024

Company’s SDVN solution targets media companies moving to IP or expanding all-IP infrastructures using SMPTE ST 2110 and NMOS.

Yospace To Showcase Dynamic Ad Insertion Developments At IBC 2024

The company’s technology powered delivery of 10 billion ads on four continents this summer.

SDVI to Feature Latest Rally Access Workstation Developments at IBC 2024

Rally enables anywhere, anytime access to hosted edit workstations and content in the cloud.

Actus Digital To Highlight Compliance, Monitoring Product Developments At IBC 2024

The company will showcase its technology and mark its 20th anniversary at the show.

Sony Electronics Unveils 4K Handheld Professional Camcorders with AI-Based Tools

The camcorders offer AI-based subject recognition autofocus, tracking, and auto framing.

RCN Colombia Leverages Zixi To Streamline Content Distribution To U.S. Affiliates

The Latin American broadcaster is using Zixi’s IP solution portfolio in place of satellite.

NAB Studio Deploys Unytalk Live Interactive Webcast Solution

The studio is using the solution to produce and broadcast interactive content.

You Can Now Smell Your TV Programs for Just $180

Elevated Perceptions has launched “MovieScent,” an AI-powered device that the company says releases real-time scents based on events and environments within movies, TV shows, televised sporting events and streams.

Chyron To Feature Latest Enhancements for PRIME, PAINT and LIVE At IBC 2024

The company will show a new Chyron PRIME playout workflow that simplifies operation.

Mo-Sys To Feature MoViewer Multi-Camera Virtual Production Preview Solution At IBC 2024

MoViewer eliminates the need for per-camera render nodes.

BOSTON, Mass.—Actus Digital will showcase its enhanced compliance and monitoring suite at IBC 2024, Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center, and will mark the occasion with a celebration of its 20th anniversary.

The company will show the Actus QA Compliance Logger, which monitors for loudness compliance, SCTE 35/104, closed captions/subtitles, multiple audio languages, NAVE, EAS and EPG. It also provides metadata extraction.

QA Compliance Logger supports every industry input, including newer protocols like ATSC 3.0 in the U.S., SMPTE ST 2110, NMOS and online streaming formats, such as HLS, MPEG-DASH and SRT. All these inputs are seamlessly integrated into a single system and user interface, the company said.

The solution integrates external metadata, such as as-run logs and schedules, providing detailed discrepancy reports for complete accuracy and compliance, it said.

Actus QA Compliance Logger extends beyond traditional compliance with enhanced QA alerts for audio and video issues, missing SCTE markers, loudness discrepancies, and absent metadata. Its interactive, software-based multiviewer eliminates the need for additional hardware.

Actus AI Media Insight enhances recording, monitoring and clipping capabilities with advanced AI-based insights on the content, such as transcription, translation, summarization, highlights, ad detection, facial recognition, PG rating and content decency, it said.

Users can search for any spoken content, receive keyword alerts for relevant topics and get summaries and highlights of programs in any language with a single mouse click. This reduces time-consuming processes and manual work and delivers results with relevant information more quickly. The transcription capability also allows easy export of clips with subtitles to social or VOD platforms in any language, the company said.

Actus AI Media Insight is not limited to specific AI engines. Instead, it integrates the best available engines for each type of analysis. It is available both as a cloud-based and on-premises option.

The company also show its Intelligent Monitoring Platform, which allows its QA Compliance Logger for compliance logging/quality monitoring; Clip Factory Pro for advanced clipping and content repurposing; OTT StreamWatch for OTT Monitoring; and Actus RVM for remote post-STB monitoring to function as standalones or to be integrated on-premise, as a virtual machine (VM) or a SaaS solution, it said.

See Actus Digital at IBC 2024 Stand 7.C21.

More information is available on the company’s website.

BOSTON, Mass.—At NAB Show New York, Actus Digital has announced that it will showcase a wide range of products and new technologies that include a new browser-based multiviewer with enhanced penalty box and monitoring-by-exception features, as well as new OTT monitoring capabilities and advanced content monitoring with AI-driven video and audio analysis.

“NAB Show New York is one of the key exhibitions for us,” explained Actus senior vice president Ken Rubin. “The show serves as an essential platform, enabling us to showcase our innovations, meet our large customer base in the US, hear from our customers about future transformations and needs, for us to be able to adopt these in our coming versions. NAB also allows us to connect with industry leaders and stay at the forefront of the media and entertainment landscape.”

Actus’ OTT monitoring solution, OTT StreamWatch guarantees around-the-clock quality assurance and integrates compliance logging, thorough OTT stream monitoring, and aircheck recording for native HLS and other OTT ABR streams. 

It’s adaptable for standalone deployment or seamless integration into the Actus Intelligent Monitoring Platform, offering customers a centralized interface for enhanced convenience, the company said. 

The platform offers essential AI-driven features that greatly boost efficiency, accuracy, and insight extraction from audio and video data. Actus Digital’s AI-powered broadcast monitoring provides broadcasters with information on all audio and video content, automated alerts, and a holistic view of channels, eliminating the need for manual checks. The platform further streamlines information distribution through advanced editing and export options, personalized metadata, and automated translations, facilitating quick and informed decision-making for broadcasters, the company said. 

Another highlight for the Show is remote video monitoring (RVM) within the Actus Intelligent Monitoring Platform. Designed as a quality assurance solution for multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), Actus RVM enables MVPDs to troubleshoot audio and video issues in real time, verify timing and accuracy of regional ad-insertion, and to access hundreds of post-Set Top Box channels across geographically dispersed headends and hub sites.

Attendees can schedule a meeting here.  

BOSTON—Actus Digital has appointed Janis Jekabsons as vice president of sales in Europe, bringing more than a decade of broadcast industry experience to the position. He will focus on raising the visibility of the company’s monitoring and compliance solutions among European broadcasters.

In a company statement, CEO Sima Levy said Jekabsons’ “strong technical expertise, thorough understanding of broadcast systems, innate knowledge of our customers' requirements, and vision of where the industry is headed will be instrumental to helping us expand and better serve media companies throughout Europe."

Prior to joining Actus Digital, Jekabsons served as presales solutions architect for Grass Valley's networking and IP infrastructure team. During his decade-long tenure at Grass Valley, he held customer-facing roles both in integrated playout custom development projects and in project engineering. He holds dual Bachelor of Science degrees: one in computer science, engineering, automation and control; and the second in robotics with AI 

Jekabsons said media companies need intelligent solutions for improving OTT and broadcast workflow efficiency. "Actus Digital is leading the charge for innovation with its AI-based media monitoring platform. I'm excited to share how Actus Digital's platform can unleash greater workflow efficiency and cost savings for our European broadcast customers."

BOSTON—Actus Digital will introduce version 8.5 of its Intelligent Monitoring Platform at NAB Show New York.

The company says the platform can be “leveraged throughout a station or organization that unifies what were previously silos of technology into a shared resources not just for engineering but also for news, ad sales, digital repurposing, competitive research and management.”

In addition to the tool set for engineers that now includes OTT QoS/QoE analysis and low-latency, browser-based multiviewers to bring together broadcast and OTT quality control, Actus version 8.5 now offers tools for other areas as well.

TV news teams can improve programming and ratings by showing ratings graphs next to content from competitors, send keyword alerts when competitors have “breaking news,” and provide collaborative bookmarking and note sharing for news, program and talent development.

With Actus AdWatch users can generate lead lists, perform competitive ad analysis and improve sales pitches with demographic ratings can increase revenue. Actus Clip Factory Pro for fast manual and/or automated clip-editing and social media publishing can help digital media teams be “first to digital” according to the company.

MVPDs can troubleshoot audio-video issues in real time and verify timing and accuracy of regional ad-insertion with Actus Remote Video Monitoring (RVM). And users of Actus Light-MAM can create and enrich metadata with automated data extraction and AI-based metadata generation to create Actus asset libraries from scratch and/or integrate with existing MAM systems.

Actus Digital’s Intelligent Monitoring Platform v8.5 will be demonstrated in booth 925.

BOSTON—Actus Digital will showcase expanded workflows and enhancements to its AI-based, intelligent compliance and monitoring platform at IBC 2021 in Amsterdam, Dec. 3-6.

The next generation of the platform includes extensive metadata integration for live and recorded content. Advanced search options, optimized content management and categorization, quicker, more accurate content clipping, concatenation and sharing are also new. Using the new capabilities, media companies can automate and semi-automate publishing high-quality video content, the company said.

The company also will highlight new technical-alert reports, additional automated clipping tools and improvements to Actus AdWatch, its solution for automatic ad detection. AdWatch now offers an internal report generator, simplifying the process and generating comparisons to ads that run on competitive channels, it said.

The Actus Digital platform is available as a turnkey on-premises appliance, software that can be deployed on virtual machines or private or public clouds and in hybrid environments.

More information is available on the Actus Digital website.

See Actus Digital at IBC 2021 in Amsterdam, Dec. 3-6, in Stand 7.B27.

BOSTON—Actus Digital has hired Ken Rubin as senior vice president for the Americas. Having Rubin on board will strengthen the company’s ability to introduce its solutions to more organizations throughout the Americas. 

In a press statement Actus Digital CEO Sima Levy said Rubin’s technical expertise, industry experience and understanding of broadcast workflows make him the ideal choice for the position and will lead to Actus Digital’s continued success.

Throughout his 30-year career, Rubin has led the sales and marketing teams of a number of streaming and digital media companies. As a founding sales partner at Volicon, he was responsible for acquiring the company’s largest clients and delivered top sales performance for nearly 10 years before they were ultimately sold to Verizon. Rubin also served in sales leadership roles for Telestream, Grass Valley, and Avid, consistently performing at the highest levels and earning industry accolades along the way.

BOSTON—Actus Digital is getting into the weather business, announcing that it has provided The Weather Channel with its broadcast monitoring platform to ensure the TV networks video and audio quality comply with industry requirements for both linear and OTT channels.

The Actus Digital broadcast monitoring system supports mandatory compliance features like SCTE-104/35, loudness, closed captions and NAVE while providing The Weather Channel with real-time alerts on a host of A/V impairments. The platform is also integrated with The Weather Channel’s automation system, which expands content search and navigation and allows the broadcaster to track the loudness of each asset. OKTA sign-on is fully integrated into the system as well for security and user authentication.

With the Actus Digital system, The Weather Channel can now record content at high bitrates and resolutions, which allows for the exporting and editing of high-quality clips.

"Performing tasks beyond mere compliance, the Actus Digital platform serves our broadcast monitoring needs now and will support us in the future with enhanced new workflows for content repurposing and AI integration,” said Michael Smereski, vice president of Broadcast Engineering at The Weather Channel.

For more information, visit www.actusdigital.com.  

BOSTON—Actus Digital is building up its North American sales team, announcing the hiring of Ken Dillard as vice president of sales and marketing, North America. Dillard will be tasked with securing new strategic partnerships, maintaining customer relationships and expanding sales in North America, per Actus Digital.

“We see tremendous potential in the U.S., and Ken’s deep industry knowledge and impeccable reputation will prove to be invaluable in forming strong partnerships with our customers, helping us continue to provide first-class products and services on a local level,” said Gary Learner, executive vice president of business development at Actus Digital.

Dillard, who has more than 30 years of experience in the broadcast industry, joins Actus Digital after having served as the vice president of sales for North America at TVU Networks and as director of sales at Dejero Labs.

For more information, visit www.actusdigital.com.  

BOSTON—Actus Digital was the choice for Colombian TV network Caracol when it came to deploying a new broadcast monitor platform for compliance, logging and other tasks needed to comply with industry regulations.

With the Actus Digital monitoring platform, Caracol is able to record and monitor audio and video streams from any input, helping to ensure compliance with closed caption, teletext, subtitle, audio track and loudness requirements. 

The monitoring system records video from various inputs in full HD, allowing Caracol to export high-resolution clips. It also includes Actus Clip Factory, a workflow for creating, editing and exporting clips to social media, OTT platforms, the web, FTP or any other destination.

Caracol is also utilizing the Actus Digital platform for audience measurement analysis via the Actus Digital Rating Analyzer, which provides an interactive graphical presentation of rating data.

“Actus Digital’s monitoring platform provides us with extensive functionalities for compliance and beyond—from HD clips editing and exporting to advanced rating analysis,” said Jorge Pinilla, director of broadcast at Caracol. “We particularly appreciate the simple and intuitive user interface that enables anyone in our facility, not just our professional video editors, to turn around clips from any workstation.”

For more information, visit www.actusdigital.com.  

BOSTON—Actus Digital said it will continue supporting Volicon Observer monitoring systems to ensure the content of broadcasters complies with regulatory requirements.

"Many broadcasters were taken by surprise when the Volicon Observer monitoring system was discontinued," said Gary Learner, executive vice president, business development at Actus Digital. "Initially, Verizon extended support for Volicon systems through SnapStream, but the agreement expired after June 2020, leaving many media companies in a difficult position.”

“Actus Digital will continue supporting Volicon customers, many of whom have shrinking budgets due to COVID-19 and aren't ready to invest in a next-generation monitoring system," he said.

Actus Digital offers comprehensive support plans for Volicon's Observer monitoring system, since Volicon end of life was declared in 2019. The support team at Actus Digital features former engineering experts and chief executives from Volicon, including Learner, who previously was Volicon's chief technology officer. By providing Volicon users with expertise in media compliance and monitoring and the company’s knowledge of the existing system, Actus Digital assures business continuity and a seamless transition for customers, the company said.

Actus Digital also offers a multitier transition path to its media monitoring solution. Users of Volicon’s outdated software can easily replace it with Actus Digital's solution while leveraging their existing hardware and allowing seamless access to Volicon's recorded content.

Actus Digital's software ensures a smooth evolution and keeps video feeds on air without requiring any servers to be replaced or moved and without losing access to Volicon's recorded content, it said. 

For Volicon system users who are ready to change, Actus Digital offers a turnkey, plug-and-play compliance and monitoring system with an advanced feature set, supporting compliance and advanced capabilities, such as clips for social media, AI options like automatic ad detection and speech-to-text functionality, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

BOSTON—Actus Digital has announced that it has hired Gary Learner to the role of executive vice president of business development.

In his new role, Learner will be responsible for expanding Actus Digital’s global footprint and ensuring a smooth transition for new customers, per the company’s announcement.

Learner was the co-founder and chief technology officer of Volicon and has more than 20 years of experience in the broadcast and media industries.

“When Volicon announced that it would no longer be making or supporting its monitoring systems, we started to see a wave of new customers looking for a replacement,” said Sima Levy, CEO of Actus Digital. “Gary’s expertise in media compliance and monitoring will assure a seamless transition for these customers while also giving us the capacity to manage the burgeoning global demand for our platform, which is the most comprehensive on the market.”

For more information, visit www.actusdigital.com.  

Traditionally, compliance solutions have been used by broadcasters and media operators for recording, monitoring and maintaining compliance with mandatory requirements, such as loudness regulations, SCTE standards and closed caption rules. 

But over the last few years, the definition of compliance solutions has started to evolve. As the market changes and broadcasters look for new ways to maximize workflow efficiency, compliance solutions are handling an even greater range of tasks. 

EXPANDING YOUR FEATURE SET IS COST-SAVING

Beyond helping broadcasters comply with regulations, they need a solution that can perform tasks such as quality assurance, video analysis, advanced clips creation for social, OTT monitoring, multiviewer capabilities, automatic clipping, keywords alerts, ads detection and more. Being able to perform all of these tasks from a single platform, broadcasters can achieve ROI. Performing multiple tasks from one platform also saves costs, reduces rack space, maintenance and training.

A feature that has become especially useful for broadcasters is fast content turnaround for repurposing on social media, web and OTT platforms. By having a compliance platform that also performs clips editing, adding metadata, as well as automation clips options, broadcasters can replace the old legacy editing systems typically used for clips creation to save costs, increase operational efficiency and speed up their workflow.

Broadcasters are also now relying on compliance solutions to check the quality of service of the aired content. Being able to receive real-time alerts regarding any issues related to audio, video, loudness, closed captions and subtitles, broadcasters can respond to quality of service issues faster than ever. 

There’s also a growing trend to use compliance solutions to perform program rating analysis as well as competitive analysis. In doing so, broadcasters can improve future program planning and enhance the content to boost ratings.

DEPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY IS KEY TO ADAPTING CHANGE

Compliance solutions are embracing multiple tasks and supporting multiple deployment environments, such as on-premise, virtualization, cloud and hybrid. Having this flexibility allows broadcasters to select the deployment type that best fits their business model and current market requirements. They can seamlessly switch between deployment environments, as needed. 

THE FUTURE OF MEDIA COMPLIANCE IS AI

AI (artificial intelligence) is the future of compliance solutions, speeding up workflows even further by allowing media companies to automatically tag, organize and categorize video recordings for retrieval of relevant content and clips creation for social media outlets and the web. AI saves hours of manual labor, making what used to be complex tasks instantaneous.

Through the power of AI, media companies can more intelligently monitor and search for content, finding content based on spoken words, text that appears in video content, specific faces and ads that have been aired. 

Over the last several years, there’s been a wave of compliance solutions reaching their end of life. Choosing a compliance solution, with flexible deployment options, AI features and the capability to perform a wide range of tasks will help your media business grow and keep evolving. 

Sima Levy is the CEO of Actus Digital.

LAS VEGAS—Actus Digital has created a large, all-in-one media intelligence platform that resides entirely in its latest compliance platform, which will be part of its booth at the 2020 NAB Show. 

Offering a range of services for users that include compliance, quality-of-service assurance, technical monitoring, content repurposing, rating and competitive analysis tools, AI options and more, the Actus Digital platform offers an approach for monitoring and supporting multiple deployment environments, including on-premises, virtualization, the cloud and hybrid combinations.

“We have enhanced the Actus Digital intelligent media platform to include more functionality, additional AI options and extended automation related to compliance, clips creation and export capabilities for social media, with intelligent content monitoring and analysis,” said Raphael Renous, CTO at Actus Digital. “Having all these capabilities on one integrated platform gives customers the freedom to choose what makes the most sense for their business today and easily add features in the future.”

Among the new updates that Actus Digital has added is a new TS analysis solution for in-depth evaluation of transport streams, with the ability to detect ETR 101 290 priority 1, 2, 3 errors; track MPEG sections and tables; and display TS statistics in real time. It also features enhanced SCTE support, with the ability to compare multichannel SCTE messages and display live or archived SCTE messages, smart filtering for better monitoring, SCTE alerts and the power to extract SCTE-35 and SCTE-104 for presentation on interactive graphical timelines.

NAB Show attendees will be able to book one-on-one demos of the Actus Digital platform at the company’s booth, SU13910.

The 2020 NAB Show runs from April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

BOSTON—Media monitoring system provider Actus Digital has brought on Jay Gedanken to serve as its new vice president of business development for the U.S. Gedanken will be tasked with helping to boost Actus Digital’s footprint in the U.S. market through new sales channels and increased revenue growth.

Gedanken comes to Actus with more than 35 years of experience in broadcast technology sales, technical support, marketing and project management. His past experience includes time as the vice president at Scopus Video Networks, including being the founder of its North American operation. He has also held sales and management positions at Visionetics, Optibase, Adtec and Sencore.

“We continue to increase the scale of our U.S. office as a result of growing sales and activities, and hiring Jay will keep us on track,” said Sima Levy, Actus Digital’s CEO. “Leveraging his experience in broadcast sales, Actus Digital will continue to build on its 15-plus years of providing superior compliance and media monitoring solutions that solve many of the critical problems facing broadcasters today in one platform.”

“I am excited to join Actus Digital’s growing enterprise of respected industry professionals and add to their vast knowledge and experience in broadcast solutions,” added Gedanken.

For more information, visit www.actusdigital.com.

Traditionally, broadcasters and media operators have relied on automated systems for recording, monitoring and to maintain compliance with mandatory requirements, such as loudness regulations, SCTE standards and closed caption rules. In recent years, compliance solutions have evolved significantly, allowing broadcasters to support a larger variety of video inputs and a growing number of OTT formats. But some compliance solutions go way beyond this.

Today, as broadcasters and TV networks look to further improve the efficiency of their workflow and save costs, artificial intelligence (AI)-based compliance and monitoring is having a major impact on the industry. The role of compliance systems extends beyond technical compliance (i.e., audio and video quality checks and alerts, loudness checks, detection of missing closed captions), which are more considered as technical monitoring, to include content analysis as well as automated content analysis.

ADVANTAGES OF AI COMPLIANCE AND MONITORING

Today’s media companies are dealing with a massive amount of content and data. Being able to quickly analyze data, find relevant content and turn that content into engaging clips is critical for broadcasters to increase viewer engagement, support content that is aired on TV and build their brands.

An intelligent, data-driven platform can dramatically speed up broadcasters’ workflows by allowing media companies to automatically tag, organize and categorize video recordings to enable rapid retrieval of relevant content and clips creation for social media outlets and the web. Processes that used to require hours of manual labor are now completely instantaneous.

AI-based solutions also allow media companies to more intelligently monitor and search for content beyond the channel name, date/time, extracted metadata (i.e., as run/EPG, closed caption) and any extracted or manually entered metadata. Broadcasters can search for spoken words, text that appears in video content, specific faces and ads that have been aired. In addition to searching, they can be automatically alerted any time relevant data appears within the audio or video.

How is this useful? Let’s say a broadcaster wants to automatically generate clips every time the word “football” is said. Assuming the monitoring platform includes a workflow for clips creation, AI enables ultra-fast clips turnaround, saving broadcasters valuable time and money. There’s no need for human resources to monitor or search: the information will pop up and clips can be done automatically. This process is extremely accurate, ensuring that they do not miss any relevant content.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN AN AI MONITORING SYSTEM

The best AI-based monitoring systems offer broadcasters a single, integrated solution for compliance, clips creation and quality of service monitoring. Not long ago, each of these tasks required a different piece of equipment, from different vendors. Being able to perform a wide range of tasks from one platform not only saves costs, rack space, maintenance and training, it also benefits broadcasters from a pre-integration standpoint. Hence, it’s important to look for a monitoring system that supports a wide range of capabilities, beyond standard compliance requirements.

It’s also essential to choose a media monitoring platform that supports multiple deployment environments, including on-premise, virtualization, cloud and hybrid. This gives broadcasters the most flexibility, allowing them to select the model that fits their business the best. Nowadays, the AI capabilities of monitoring systems are exclusively cloud-based to enable transparent AI engine upgrades and continuous advancements. Hosted in the cloud, the AI engine keeps learning, and no training is needed, which are benefits that on-premises and VM systems simply cannot offer.

CONCLUSION

Having a unified platform for all broadcast requirements—from broadcast recording to monitoring, compliance, clips creation and exporting to OTT, social media, analysis, quality assurance—makes the most financial sense for media companies. By adding AI to the mix, broadcasters can further streamline their operations and drive monetization.

Raphael Renous is CTO and R&D Manager at Actus Digital. He is responsible for the technical specification and implementation of Actus Digital’s Actus system, including designing the video recording engine and specializing in software architecture and application of new technologies.

Previously, Raphael held a number of important positions at Microsoft, including lead program manager of its Distributed Systems Group. While at Microsoft, he successfully led the integration of the transaction functionality across products within Microsoft. Raphael has a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in computer science.

AMSTERDAM—Touting it as a cross-organizational platform that has benefits for operations, marketing and research, and new media departments of broadcasters and media companies, Actus Digital will arrive on the IBC 2019 show floor with an updated version of its intelligent compliance platform.

Enhancements made to this intelligent media platform include more functionality, additional AI options and extended automation related to compliance, clips creation and exporting to social media, as well as content monitoring and analysis. The system is designed to provide monitoring and support for multiple deployment environments, including on-premises, virtualization, the cloud and hybrid combinations.

Another product that is part of the Actus Digital show lineup is its Clip Factory clips creation workflow. The unit features a web browser interface for creating and automatically or manually exporting clips, enabling content repurposing anywhere, anytime from any device.

In addition, attendees can get a closer, hands-on look at Actus Digital’s latest products by scheduling a one-on-one meeting with Actus Digital experts.

IBC 2019 will take place from Sept. 13-17 in Amsterdam. Actus Digital will be located at booth 3.C69.

BRUSSELS—Eyeing to repurpose its television content for republishing online, India news network Aajtak has brought in Actus Digital to provide a clip creation workflow. The tool provided by Actus Digital was its Actus Clip Factory platform, which records all Aajtak IP transport streams and publish clips from the TV broadcast to the Aajtak website quickly after airing.

The Actus Clip Factory is designed for broadcast linear recording and live clips creation for social media and OTT. The workflow includes record, extract, edit, transcode and delivering capabilities. In addition to its promise of quick delivery, Clip Factory can add any metadata, overlays, graphics, pre/post roll, transcode the clips to any format and distribute the clips to any destination. Clip creation workflow can be done manually or automatically.

According to Actus CTO Raphael Renous, Aajtak is using the Actus Clip Factory to create more than 10,000 clips per month.

BRUSSELS—Actus Digital will take up a spot in the Innovation Zone at the 2018 HPA Tech Retreat to showcase its latest improvements of its Clip Factory system, which handles broadcast to OTT clip creation and publishing.

Clip Factory ingests live broadcast content and enables immediate clipping, editing, transcoding and publishing to OTT and social platform of choice. It also expedites and automates the process and reduces time-to-OTT availability. Clip Factory automatically identifies and marks beginnings and ends of ad breaks and programming boundaries and enables simple and frame-accurate inclusion/exclusion of each segment.

The 2018 HPA Tech Retreat will take place from Feb. 20-22 in Palm Springs, Calif.

BRUSSELS—Journalists, members of the South Australian Parliament and their assistants have been required to be able to monitor sessions of parliament, search or create video clips. To satisfy this new requirement, Actus Digital has been installed.

The Actus system is capable of recording video streams using SDI HD cameras, allows users to monitor content and create, edit and distribute video clips. The Actus platform receives the live streams from the SDI HD cameras in low and high quality resolutions. Users can monitor live or recorded content and search for specific content from the Actus user interface. Actus can be accessed from the site or from remote locations.

The Actus Clip Factory is a tool for viewers to edit the videos, add metadata and create clips in low resolution. When the clips are ready, they can be distributed in high resolution directly from Actus to OTT, web portals, social media or other platforms. Each group of users can create and export clips to specific destinations.

The Actus Digital system was installed by Techtel Australia.

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—Beligum-based broadcast compliance monitoring provider Actus Digital is heading to North America with the help of Enco. The two companies have announced a new partnership that will see Enco handle the North American distribution for Actus’ media intelligence platform.

Actus-View

The Actus platform is a recording and compliance system designed to ensure broadcasters meet regulatory requirements including closed captioning and audio loudness limits. Among the features of the platform is the Actus-View application, which provides broadcast video logging and compliance monitoring through a HTML5, web-based user interface. Using Actus-View, operators can record and monitor channels, create clips, retrieve recordings and send captured media to editing and media asset management systems from the system that is accessible through connected workstations, tablets or mobile devices.

The deal also covers the Actus Clip-Factory, a platform that provides an integrated solution for repurposing broadcast content into video clips for web and mobile viewing, OTT, VoD, catch-up TV and social media. Clip-Factory combines video recording, content extraction, editing, metadata application, transcoding and delivery management.

In addition to the Enco sales team managing North American distribution for the Actus platform, Enco will also provide its customer service capabilities to Actus users.

Enco is expected to feature the Actus-View and Actus Clip-Factory at its NAB Show booth, N2024.