HUNT VALLEY, Md.—Sinclair has announced that Jeffrey Lewis, its chief compliance officer, will retire from the company effective May 4, 2026.

Since joining Sinclair in 2021, Lewis has overseen the Company's compliance programs and regulatory strategy, overseeing key regulatory areas including FCC, antitrust, privacy and corporate conduct.

David Gibber, executive vice president and chief legal officer of Sinclair, Inc., will assume the additional role of Chief Compliance Officer.

During his tenure, Lewis led comprehensive risk assessment efforts, using modern processes to identify and manage risk, and ensuring alignment between regulatory requirements and Sinclair's broader operational and growth objectives. He also took a leading role in helping Sinclair navigate its way through various consent decrees and regulatory investigations.

“Jeff has been an invaluable leader and trusted advisor, helping guide Sinclair through an evolving regulatory landscape with integrity, clarity and professionalism,” said Chris Ripley, president and CEO. “He has brought a thoughtful, forward-looking approach to compliance, ensuring we stay ahead of an increasingly complex regulatory environment while enabling the business to operate and grow with confidence. We are grateful for his many contributions and wish him all the best in his retirement.”

“It has been my honor to have served over the past several years as Sinclair’s first-ever officer dedicated exclusively to compliance,” Lewis said. “Every day, I have seen examples of our employees operating at the highest levels of ethics and integrity. Together, we have developed a compliance program that is second to none in our industry.”

LAS VEGAS—At Creative Technology, we deliver mission-critical monitoring and multi­viewing solutions for some of the world’s largest live events, from international product launches and corporate meetings to major tech conferences. Our workflows span on-premises compressed and uncompressed IP, OTT and remote production over public internet.

To keep pace with the speed and diversity of these productions, we needed a software platform that was flexible, scalable and capable of delivering high-quality, low-latency multiviewers for every team—on site or remote.

Today, the TAG Realtime Monitoring Platform from TAG Video Systems provides the scalable probing, monitoring and multiviewing backbone for our operators, engineers and directors. It’s helping us to reduce friction, accelerate deployment and gain complete confidence in every signal we manage.

TAG’s zero-friction model gives us the flexibility to scale in any direction, from a single server with dozens of sources to multiple servers handling smaller, dedicated workloads.

The Deployment
We initially deployed TAG to support our remote and virtual operations in the U.S. Since then, we’ve supported productions across Europe, Asia and South America. As the needs of each production can vary significantly, we were able to spin up and down environments without the overhead and limitations of fixed hardware—replacing traditional multiviewers with TAG’s IP-native software platform.

That flexibility made TAG an ideal fit across our use cases: Large-scale corporate, sports and entertainment events; complex workflows with tally, UMD control and data integration; and hybrid setups involving multiple networks and locations.

TAG’s orchestration layer allowed us to scale up quickly. Our network operations center (NOC) team handles layout adjustments and signal routing centrally, while field operators and directors get real-time, tailored views. Whether we’re running TAG on bare metal or in the cloud, the consistency and quality of experience are the same.

We use TAG everywhere we can—on prem or cloud, compressed or uncompressed, we just stand it up and go. It’s that flexible.

What stood out most during implementation was TAG’s simplicity and speed. We had new instances running in minutes—not days—and configuration was intuitive enough that multiple engineers across locations could operate in parallel.

We rely on TAG’s orchestration tools to manage layouts, swap sources, and deliver exact multiviews to various users without duplicate effort. Operators receive only what they need, and directors are seeing camera shading, tally indicators, and graphics timing in real time.

Our team also appreciates the operational independence TAG provides. We’re able to make multiview changes on the fly without touching routers or interrupting the production flow. “It’s not just the layout flexibility,” Sarah Wright, project engineer at Creative Technology said. “It’s the user interface, the orchestration. It’s brilliant.”

Operational Benefits
TAG has become a key part of our live production strategy. We can deploy, configure and reconfigure in minutes—giving us the ability to handle last-minute changes and multiple show formats.

Probing and multiviewing across video, audio and metadata lets us spot issues immediately and take corrective action. Layouts, tallies and source changes are handled remotely by our NOC, giving field teams what they need with zero disruption.

We can also scale up and down as required without having to worry about moving licenses around.

TAG also lets each department—engineering, operations and technical directors­—get the view they need, how they need it. This makes us more efficient, responsive and more confident. TAG just works.

We enjoy working with the team at TAG and look forward to continuing our partnership. We’re exploring even deeper integrations with our telemetry and orchestration layers. We also see the potential to add advanced features like smart recording and content matching as our workflows evolve.

At Creative Technology, we’re committed to engineering the best solutions for our clients. TAG helps us do that—with less effort, more flexibility, and total confidence in our signal chain.

More information is available at https://tagvs.com/monitoring/.

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.

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.

Interra Systems will showcase new versions of its Orion monitoring and Baton QC platforms at the 2025 NAB Show, April 6-9 in Las Vegas.

The company will talk about new advances to its end-to-end video quality monitoring, content-aware quality control, advanced captioning, and in-depth video analysis tools. Harnessing the latest technologies, Interra Systems’ cutting-edge solutions enhance accuracy and efficiency, set new standards in QC and monitoring performance, and empower customers to optimize their workflows for peak video quality, the company said.

“We’ll be commemorating our 25-year anniversary at NAB 2025, where we'll present our latest innovations that enhance every aspect of media workflows,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems. “Our high-density, scalable solutions set industry benchmarks in media QC and monitoring, while our AI-driven tools demonstrate why global leaders in broadcasting and service provision rely on us to streamline workflows and deliver high-quality content faster."

Interra Systems will spotlight the Orion suite's latest capabilities, including a state-of-the-art multiviewer feature that transforms monitoring by enabling real-time visualization of multiple video and audio streams. This tool not only ensures seamless quality control and efficient workflow management but also allows operators to quickly verify alerts and resolve issues, thereby maintaining high broadcast integrity with greater accuracy and efficiency.

Alongside the multiviewer, Orion-OTT offers real-time monitoring of both linear and IP-based infrastructures and a comprehensive monitoring solution for live and VOD assets. Designed for flexible deployment across various environments and supporting an array of formats and protocols, the solution now features industry-first, all-frame decoding and deep-dive analysis for critical channels — significantly improving video quality checks and service playback.

In addition, the Orion suite now includes support for RHEL 8.10, Rocky 8.10, Dolby Atmos, IPv6, and more. The suite also boasts end-to-end ad insertion monitoring, which enhances workflow visibility from pretranscode to edge by comparing externally supplied ad scheduling information with actual DAI markers. Updates include closed caption availability reports, enhanced QoS and QoE scoring, comprehensive DRM integration, and flexibility in deployment models.

OCM, Interra Systems’ flagship video monitoring and management solution, provides quality tracing that monitors service quality and pinpoints issues across various stages of the video workflow. New features at the 2025 NAB Show will include advanced probe management and improved user group permissions, ensuring both efficient and secure video operations.

Interra Systems will also showcase Baton 9.2, now with enhanced autoscaling, enhanced video quality checks for 4K files, and new support for video quality, such as blank bars check and CIE color gamut check. It accommodates ITU-R BT.1702 2023 PSE video flash guidelines and contains algorithm improvements in QR code, freeze frames, duplicate frames, media offline, blockiness, defective pixels, video dropout, burnt-in text, shot transition, and more.

Baton 9.2 also supports Sony 360 Reality Audio, LZW compression in TIFF files, AV1 video format, BW64 audio, 24-bit LPCM audio in an MP4 container, sidecar Dolby Vision metadata files, an integrated Whisper model for audio language identification, and more. The latest Baton release also features significant installation process improvements for enhanced usability and resilience, along with UI support for dark/light themes, a new database manager tool, and enhanced diagnostics and alerts.

Interra Systems will also demonstrate advanced new updates to its award-winning Baton Captions solution — including caption placement as per scene change guidelines to avoid burnt-in text overlap and a host of QC and correction features. All of the updates take advantage of cutting-edge machine learning, automatic speech recognition, and natural language processing technology.

A new UI layout comes with many new features, including an integrated relay workflow service; vertical zoom on audio waveform; and intelligent caption segmentation during review, which enables automatic splitting, merging, and resegmentation based on properties such as row count and character count while adhering to clause boundaries and natural pauses.

Interra Systems will also demo its Vega platform for standards compliance, debugging, and stream interoperability assurance. The platform has been enhanced to support an extensive range of compression standards, including the latest in VVC, AV1, HEVC, MV-HEVC, AVS3, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, ATSC 3.0, and more.

This broad compatibility reinforces Vega's role as a critical industry tool, Interra said. The platform's comprehensive capabilities enable media professionals to navigate the complexities of various video formats and standards with ease, ensuring high-quality content delivery across different platforms and devices.

Interra Systems will be in Booth W1921 in the West Hall of the LVCC.

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.

MELBOURNE, Australia—At the 2024 NAB Show, April 14-17 in Las Vegas, Mediaproxy, a global supplier of software-based IP compliance solutions, will showcase the latest version of its LogServer media compliance monitoring solution, which now provides comprehensive compliance, monitoring and analysis for ATSC 3.0 streams.

Mediaproxy says it has developed an advanced software-based technique for processing inhouse packager output (STLTP) and off-air transmission (DASH ROUTE) formats including decryption (A3SA). This allows engineers to easily and cost-effectively work with those new formats using LogServer’s familiar user interface technologies for review, monitoring and real-time analysis, the company said.

LogServer also conforms to the other main standards in use by broadcasters and streamers, including SMPTE ST 2110 and NMOS (Networked Media Open Specifications), for the transport of media over IP networks, and SCTE, which covers dynamic ad insertion. The newest version will be on display at the NAB Show, with demonstrations of cloud operation in addition to working with clustering decentralized systems on IP networks. Also on display will be the Monwall multiviewer, which, in conjunction with LogServer, provides next-generation multiviewing.

"NextGen ATSC 3.0 continues to grow as the new, future-proof standard and platform for IP-based broadcasting in the U.S.," comments Mediaproxy's chief executive, Erik Otto. "This year's NAB Show will be a showcase for both this important technology and Mediaproxy's elegant, powerful and yet cost-effective software-based solution for comprehensive ATSC 3.0 monitoring."

Mediaproxy will be in Booth W1322 in the West Hall.

VoiceInteraction will unveil v7.0 of its Product Suite at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 16-19. The company’s AI-driven Closed Captioning and Broadcast Compliance platforms combine proprietary Automatic Speech Recognition technology with carefully designed interfaces. 

Products showcased include Audimus.Media, VoiceInteraction’s flagship product for automatic closed captioning, which uses reliable speech recognition and the ability to handle market-specific requirements to offer high accuracy, great delivery, and caption reusability for VOD, the company said. Supporting any SDI or IP workflow, the platform also features automatic English-Spanish translation, for broadcasters reaching Hispanic audiences. With an intuitive web dashboard, Audimus.Media allows for a customized setup, control over every configured channel, access to specific features, event scheduling, and clip import into non-linear editors with fully synchronized captions.

Also on hand at the company’s booth is VoiceInteraction’s Media Monitoring System (MMS) platform, which helps TV stations reduce costs, maximize revenue, and increase viewer loyalty by seamlessly combining proprietary Speech Processing Technologies with AI algorithms and providing added features such as news segmentation from topic and keyword detection. MMS not only monitors every relevant QoS element with a multiviewer and configurable alert center, but it also incorporates analytics and metadata, allowing broadcasters to gain valuable insights into their network and competitors, the company said. 

VoiceInteraction’s new VP of Sales, Ken Dillard, will also mark his first NAB Show with the company. 

VoiceInteraction will be in Booth W2549 in the West Hall of the LVCC. 

MELBOURNE—Mediaproxy has announced that the outside broadcast and playout facilities group NEP is using Mediaproxy’s LogServer software for SMPTE ST 2110 recording at its Norwegian operation.

NEP Norway first began using Mediaproxy software in 2017, when it chose LogServer for its next generation compliance recording on the SDI channels distributed from its playout center. This replaced a custom-built system and when the company needed a logging system for new ST 2110 services, the decision was taken to expand the installation, which was facilitated by LogServer's easy software-based integration for uncompressed IP video sources, Mediaproxy reported. 

The new channel platform was installed in the second quarter of this year. 

In addition to compliance monitoring, the solution is also used to check problems on already-broadcast programs, while the As-run feature provides a record for advertisers of what has been sent to air.

NEP Norway technical manager Rune Olsen explained that the key benefits of LogServer included its ease of use, stability and excellent support from Mediaproxy. 

"The software has worked without a hitch from the get-go and Mediaproxy is very fast in responding to any questions we may have," he said. "The interface is also very easy and efficient to use. It just works and does the work it is supposed to do."

"We are very pleased to continue our association with NEP Norway, which has entered a new and exciting phase in its business development by expanding into SMPTE ST 2110," added Mediaproxy’s Rajesh Patel, vice president of sales and solutions for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). "Our company has been involved in the development of ST 2110 from the very start through our membership of AIMS. While it is now established and widely used in broadcasting, ST 2110 continues to be a leading edge technology that we at Mediaproxy are supporting through investment in engineering that allows us to fulfil customer demands for new technologies very quickly."

­

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.  

LONDON—Compliance monitoring and logging has always been a key part of the broadcast production and distribution process, albeit a niche, somewhat “background” one. Today its importance is growing in relation to the proliferation of TV channels and streaming services, with not only more programs to monitor but many more points along the chain to check as well.

The demands of both editorial/regulatory and technical compliance have put the onus on technology developers to produce systems that log and analyze more efficiently and comprehensively than before. Which explains why a relatively small, specialized but competitive market sector looks set to not only grow but also expand its reach along broadcast workflows and transmission paths.

THE VOLICON ‘MIGRATION’

With broadcast streams increasingly carried over uncompressed IP networks, broadcasters and OTT service providers alike are looking at the technologies available to ensure all regulatory requirements are met and technical quality is at its best. Business has also continued to adjust following Verizon Digital Media’s decision last year to discontinue the widely used Volicon Observer monitoring product.

Verizon bought Volicon in 2016 but decided to focus on “future solutions that better align with industry trends and market needs during the ongoing migration to IP and streaming video workflows,” when it made its announcement. To provide support for existing Observer customers, Verizon named SnapStream, a Houston-based provider of compliance monitoring software its official “Volicon transition partner.” After the announcement was made in April 2019, SnapStream reported that more than 100 Volicon users made the move to its support scheme. The second phase of the program came at the 2019 NAB Show New York with the launch of SnapStream Monitoring and Compliance, and there is now a full transition route, including settings, to SnapStream’s new “Moco” platform.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

As would be expected, the other compliance companies have been looking at the situation and developing their own migration paths for Observer users. Among these is Digital Nirvana, which is offering the option to switch to its MonitorIQ broadcast monitoring and compliance logging platform. An added incentive could be that Russell Wise, a cofounder of Volicon in 2004 who moved to Verizon following the acquisition, is now senior vice president of sales and marketing at Digital Nirvana.

Wise comments that the Volicon team—four of whom, including the user interface (UI) designer, moved with him to Digital Nirvana—”did a great job on the feature set” of Observer and that it was “a well-loved product.”

Wise acknowledges that users are now either replacing systems or considering their requirements. “Some networks are taking their time to make the decisions about replacing Volicon and a lot of the bigger broadcasters had the clout to have Verizon support it,” he said.

Wise adds that compliance is now moving from the main purpose of recording output to being able to scrutinize the logs to now using artificial intelligence and machine learning—which Digital Nirvana has been working with for seven years—and offering even more features, including producing transcripts.

A SINGLE SOLUTION

Actus Digital has also produced a migration path for Volicon, making it possible to play existing recordings through the Actus UI. Gary Learner, executive vice president of business development for the company observes that compliance and monitoring “is not a stale market” but is “constantly adapting” to changes in broadcasting.

“New regulations and amendments to existing ones are coming in, the industry is not dormant,” he said. “The customers are looking at the vendors to see who is quickest to respond so you have to be on your toes. There are big changes because of OTT and streaming but also with the move from parallel IT and broadcast infrastructures to just one IT infrastructure. This means broadcasters are now looking for a single solution.”

Erik Otto, chief executive of Mediaproxy, also sees the growing trend for one system that covers all functions, increasingly in file form.

“The overall trend today is for software-based compliance monitoring and logging systems,” he said. “There still may be some applications that call for dedicated hardware but generally the entire broadcast market is moving towards software and virtualization of operations.”

This, Otto adds, is a major advantage as broadcast facilities move from SDI to IP, a shift that usually comes with an increase in channels due to traditional broadcasters adding VOD. “There is always the possibility of problems when switching from one distribution system to another,” he said. “Compliance monitoring and QoE [Quality of Experience] technologies will be crucial for both the smooth running of services and maintaining the quality of the viewing experience.”

QC CONCERNS

The new breed of broadcast infrastructures is bringing production/post-production facilities closer to the playout and distribution chains, which in turn are now more connected to consumer platforms. This means the quality control stage, at one time carried out by a third-party facility or a specialist department within the TV station, is being more influenced by monitoring and logging.

“Compliance is becoming an extremely critical part of the QC process,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems. “Broadcasters and video service providers have quite a bit of responsibility to take care of both editorial compliance and technical quality and that means the monitoring companies have to come up with solutions that work in the cloud and are able to be scaled.”

Anantharaman predicts that in the next two to five years there will be more companies in this market sector, possibly offering “interesting solutions” that will “blur the lines between collecting compliance data and audience experience data.” Such a move could already be in progress, with the recent announcement of LWKS, a new company set up to take over the QScan analytical quality control (AQC) software and Lightworks nonlinear editing system from EditShare.

QScan has previously been used primarily for QC during the post-production process but there are now plans to take it further towards the compliance stage. “The transmission chain is something we can approach,” says Daniel Roqués, worldwide product manager for QScan. “The OTT providers are working with files and they need to make sure their streamed output is QCed.”

Brick Eksten, formerly with Digital Rapids and Imagine Communications, recently joined Qligent as chief executive. He views compliance as something “that has to be done,” Quality of Service (QoS) as “what you want to do” and QoE as “what you need to do.”

To ensure all of these processes work properly, measurements have to be taken at the granular level: “TV is a big data environment, with a large volume of content,” he said. “But there are not many people looking at the big data, other than on the analytics side. If ATSC 3.0 is going to succeed, it will have to behave as an internet service, because we are all consumers.”

Like the other compliance developers, Qligent is working on ML, which, Eksten says, “will take an ever increasing role in how we think about media delivery.” This, he concludes, ties in with big data: “It will give a greater degree of automation and allow the control room operators to concentrate more on what matters. As well as giving more operational freedom, it will also raise the accuracy of the automated systems.”

With ever greater technological potential and an increasingly vibrant marketplace, compliance monitoring certainly looks like the sector to watch.

SAN DIEGO—Regulatory compliance was the original driver for content logging, and it continues to be an important use case today. However, over the years, content logging technology has become a valuable tool for a much wider array of applications to gather insights about broadcast content, provide valuable analytics, and collaborate across the media enterprise.

Allowing broadcasters to build an archive of aired content, logging solutions deliver a rich store of media and data for insights and intelligence about the aired product. Updates to current products allow broadcasters to address not only the latest compliance requirements, but also the demands of internal groups including sales, social media, and the executive team.

As broadcasters move to upgrade or replace end-of-life compliance products, they have the opportunity to take advantage of fundamental compliance logging functions, as well as next-generation capabilities that improve their efficiency in working with captured media.

THE ESSENTIALS

To meet regulatory and compliance requirements (i.e., closed captioning, loudness, and indecency/profanity/obscenity), broadcasters need an intuitive and complete solution for collecting information about aired content.

Recorded video is and always has been the ultimate affidavit of what was actually broadcast over the air, and it serves as proof that all applicable regulations and requirements are being met. What kind of basic functionality ensures that a broadcaster can leverage recorded content successfully?

Generally speaking, the essentials have remained the same, though formats and delivery mechanisms have changed. Native capture of content from any video source in the content chain has always been a must for quality assurance. It enables critical visibility into every link in the delivery chain and into every handoff. These days, however, the deployed solution must support many more formats: SDI, IP, ASI, 8VSB, HDMI, QAM, HLS, DASH, RTMP, and DVB-T/T2/S/S2.

The system also must capture compliance-related data such as subtitling and key calculated values, particularly those used for loudness, and accurately correlate it with video and audio content. Recorded content is much more useful if captured metadata also includes asrun logs, ratings data, Dolby metadata, and SCTE 35/104 ad insertion data.

A user-friendly interface and easy access to archived content and metadata both help users to work with the solution to do their jobs effectively, whether in engineering or another area of the business.

Finally, as with any system supporting broadcast operations, the compliance logging solution must be reliable, ensuring maximum uptime, and be readily scalable to support straightforward system expansion.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Together, all of the aforementioned essentials should serve as a baseline for a new or upgraded logging and monitoring solution. Next-generation products introduce features and capabilities that open the door to even greater efficiency and utility.

Find content faster—Today’s logging and monitoring solutions give users consolidated access to content and metadata in a convenient and visually appealing interface with familiar media player controls. In addition to tools for finding, clipping, exporting, and analyzing audio and video with a minimum of clicks, newer interfaces provide immediate access to related metadata. Also leveraging metadata, powerful search capabilities across captured and user-generated data simplify and accelerate the process of finding specific content.

Better analytics for higher-quality content and ad delivery—Sophisticated analysis and reporting tools in next-generation compliance systems take quality and problem analysis to a new level. Giving broadcasters the ability to compare and dig more deeply into SCTE messages the system can facilitate more extensive analysis of ad insertion data and proof of ad delivery. In-depth transport stream analysis coupled with the ability to show an impact on QOE reduces the time spent on troubleshooting, and gives engineers a real-time understanding of errors and their impact on quality of experience.

Efficient storage options—One of the more significant additions to modern compliance logging and monitoring solutions is support for on-premise, cloud, or hybrid implementation. By extending storage into the datacenter/cloud while maintaining ready access to stored content, broadcasters can build more collaborative workflows and take better advantage of remote resources. Automated policy-based storage helps broadcasters optimize their use of local and remote storage, typically with a limited amount of near-term storage on a local SAN or NAS and a larger long-term archive in the cloud.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based microservices within the broadcast industry has matured to the point that they too can be a valuable addition to a logging and monitoring system. Running in the cloud as a layer atop the compliance system, microservices can be spun up as needed to complete specific tasks at scale. Processing tasks can include speech-to-text for closed-caption or transcript generation; assess closed-caption or Teletext conformance to streaming services’ standards; and harvest new insights from the stored video through face, logo, and image recognition; and ad detection and identification.

While legacy compliance logging and monitoring systems simply don’t offer the rich capabilities of modern systems, they still do many things right. The best next-generation solutions build on those successes and introduce new capabilities that soon will become essentials in their own right. Backed by a responsive and knowledgeable vendor, a new solution can empower the broadcaster to address compliance and regulatory requirements while leveraging captured content to support new projects and services.

Russell Wise is senior vice president of Digital Nirvana and was previously a top executive for Volicon and Verizon Digital Media Services.

QUINCY, Ill.—Quincy Media is among the leading local television groups in the United States, with stations nationwide from Arizona to New York, as well as two newspapers, two radio stations and digital media platforms. The TV operation involves 24 transmitters, 15 master control rooms, 19 production control rooms and a growing OTT presence simulcast alongside the main terrestrial broadcasts.

An operation of this scale requires comprehensive compliance monitoring in all senses of the term—technical faults, advertising data collection and complaints resolution. Because of this we chose to install a new logging system based on a suite of Mediaproxy products: LogServer TSoIP (Transport Stream over IP), OTT Logging and Monitoring and TS Monitoring/Analysis.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW

The need to replace an older monitoring system was one factor behind the upgrade, but there were many other considerations, both technical and operational. Particularly because the old system did not work if the terrestrial transmission went down due to a power outage or other reasons, we needed something that would continue recording no matter what and have 24-hour record capability.

This last feature was important because we have to be able to produce transmission recordings for reference and confirmation in case of queries or protests. If there are any complaints from viewers or advertisers, we need to be able to verify what actually went out. At certain times of the day some of our stations run unattended so having a comprehensive monitoring-recording system gives us the confidence that everything runs as expected. And if it doesn’t, we can go back and see why.

To find a suitable replacement our technical teams tested and demoed three to four different units. From these sessions the Mediaproxy systems emerged as offering all the necessary features. Mediaproxy seemed the most reliable and had an easy-to-use, intuitive interface. It also has 24-hour recording capability and can keep operating even if the transmission is interrupted.

Quincy Media always monitors off air, rather than from the direct output of the broadcast center. This means the compliance recording will show exactly what viewers see and reflect the actual fault. The Mediaproxy systems also have capacity for monitoring OTT—although this has not been implemented yet, we’re working with our OTT providers to find a place to monitor our streams without the need for us to pay a monthly fee to them. There’s also been some discussion about implementing the specific commercial insertion function for OTT. It’s not up and running yet but it’s not far off.

GETTING RESULTS

Among the technical faults LogServer has been used to detect since the installation began in mid-July are: off-air signal problems, pictures appearing in black for too long, lost audio, issues with closed captions, equipment failure and operator error. We’re also using the system to log news broadcasts to ensure the correct music licensing clearances have been made and monitor competitors’ transmissions to see what advertising is being carried.

Each of Quincy Media’s local TV stations has its own, standalone monitoring setup. These are self-contained but they link together on an IT network so that any employee at any station within the group—whether in sales, engineering, administration or news—can see what is going on.

The feedback we’ve had from all departments has been positive, both about the ease of use and what the system can do. As a manager, I can watch any station from my desktop and I log into one of the systems at least once a day.

Brendan Ford started working in the broadcast industry in 1992 at WGEM TV, a Quincy Media Inc. property. During his career he has taken on roles in production, creative services and as a director/technical director for weekend newscasts. In 2015, Ford joined the QMI Corporate team as director of control room operations. He can be contacted atbford@quincymedia.com.

For more information, visitwww.mediaproxy.comor call 646-951-5051.

MELBOURNE, Australia—Illinois-based TV, radio and newspaper group Quincy Media is updating its monitoring and compliance operations, part of which will include the installation of MediaProxy’s LogServer compliance logging and off-air monitoring platform.

Quincy Media will use the LogServer system at all of its TV stations to log and monitor 138 off-air television services, as well as OTT streams. Qunicy’s specific setup will include the LogServer TSoIP, OTT Logging and Monitoring and TS Monitoring/Analysis systems; they will be deployed and supported by NFB Consulting.

Quincy Media owns television stations across nine states—Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Virginia and Wisconsin.

NEW YORK—Compliance monitoring has evolved over the past decade from simple broadcast logging to what is now a much broader range of applications that encompass monitoring, analysis and even revenue-generating functions for broadcasters, OTT providers and MVPD operators. Today’s digital tools have largely replaced the VHS long-play tape recorders to log transmissions, and other new technologies promise to only increase how broadcasters and others can utilize and even monetize what was once just compliance monitoring.

“The need for compliance loggers comes from the legal requirement to log all broadcasted content,” said Ken Frommert, president of ENCO, a Southfield, Mich.-based provider of broadcast technology systems. “This need, arising from the national telecom regulators, such as the FCC, did not change. However, the ever-increasing economic pressure on the same broadcasters, coupled with the fact the compliance loggers are an economic liability with no real business benefit, will necessarily force a technological evolution that will change the loggers into becoming economically beneficial.”

FROM BROADCAST TO OTT

Compliance monitoring is now at a massive transformational stage.

“To start, while compliance services have their roots in traditional broadcasting, we’re seeing the need for compliance services to not only cover broadcast, but also OTT content,” said Ariff Sidi, chief product officer for content delivery network provider Verizon Digital Media Services. “An increasing number of services now offer the ability to monitor OTT streams, and that trend will continue this year and beyond. We’ll see monitoring capabilities enhanced to cover the full path—from ingestion to delivery and through to the end user experience as well. Second, there will continue to be a major shift from compliance monitoring services being hardware-based to cloud-based.”

Even traditional compliance monitoring is now changing in terms of the content being monitored, the level of detail and even how long to store the results. Much of this wouldn’t have been possible just a few years ago.

“A simple studio-based ‘Air Recorder’ at the output of master control, keeping recordings for 30-90 days is insufficient,” said Ted Korte, COO of Qligent, a Melbourne, Fla.-based developer of broadcast monitoring and QoE technology. “More and more functions are either being outsourced or moved closer to the end user, and so should compliance monitoring. Having a number of monitoring points covering each of the delivery platforms, is a much more accurate representation of an audience and thus creates a more comprehensive compliance verification. Since new regulations are likely to evolve it is also a good practice to record all the associated metadata with the media and to record everything for extended periods of time to allow post verification analysis and audits.”

ORIGINS IN CALM

One of the key components of compliance monitoring is that audio levels are consistent as required by the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which barred TV commercials—as well as other content—from increasing in volume at commercial breaks. Since the introduction of CALM it has been mostly “all quiet” on the audio front as broadcasters have mostly complied, but new technologies would bring up similar issues.

“Commercial loudness has been an issue since the 1980s, but finally modern audio systems really made it noticeable,” said William T. Hayes, director of engineering for Iowa Public Television and president of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society. “Today the issue is how people consume content in other ways, and these services don’t follow the rules set in place by CALM. The major streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Video are pretty good, but then you can instantly tell that YouTube videos and others aren’t CALM-compliant.”

For audio compliance, self-regulation could be one solution, but new technology at the consumer level might also solve the issue.

“The reality is that everyone who has a service that provides video and audio knows they need to do something,” Hayes added. “But self-regulating may not solve all the issues. However, smart TVs could be made to automatically adjust volume to a consistent level.”

FULL STREAM AHEAD

In a recently released white paper, Mediaproxy, a provider of compliance, monitoring and analysis technology noted that as the industry has to deal with an increasing number of transmission platforms that span from traditional broadcasts to OTT logging and monitoring paradigms have also shifted.

“It’s become apparent that with an increase in scale, the tools have to extend in versatility. Making sure that the right content is transmitted at the right place and time across the different outputs is paramount. Loggers are hence expected to have advanced video analysis features like content and source matching” said Erik Otto, Mediaproxy president. "However, this also means that OTT providers will have to address challenges, as streaming doesn’t fit in very well with traditional compliance monitoring."

“Linear and nonlinear streaming is very different as to how it is delivered and consumed, making end-to-end visibility and control much more complex,” said Korte at Qligent. “Streaming is changing all the usual points of reference such as primetime, demographics, DMAs, and even the definition of ‘live’.’’ All this new technology and opportunity will also invite new regulations regarding privacy and data protection [end users], fraud [i.e. advertising], piracy [i.e. rights], ratings [social media], etc. from multiple government agencies as well as vendor/service provider SLAs.”

Yet, unlike in a traditional broadcast, which typically has one version of content delivered to all viewers and with differences often the result of local market requirements, OTT could enable content providers to deliver innumerable discrete streams delivered to users—differentiated by region, device, preference or other factors.

“This same ‘one-to-one’ approach can be applied to compliance monitoring systems, too,” added Sidi. “In addition to monitoring the entire cloud workflow, it can check streams by region or other critical factors.”

The downside for content providers is that these opportunities could require more work.

“Budgets haven’t gone up,” and companies are not hiring replacements when employees leave, according to Hiren Hindocha, CEO of Digital Nirvana. “However today’s new compliance monitoring tools can address those requirements.”

AI AND MACHINE LEARNING

Technology could certainly play a major role in this evolution of monitoring and logging, and could take advantage of artificial intelligence or machine learning, which could more easily manage the influx of “Big Data” that is created at a near constant rate.

“The big trend is mixing technical compliance with content compliance,” said ENCO’s Frommert. “The way we see things, the loggers are producing enormous amounts of video data. This ‘Big Data’ is just sitting there for months until it is deleted and replaced by newer data, with no effective use. The use of Big Data technologies is gradually enriching the value of these video records and adding a number of useful functions.”

This, in turn could change compliance monitoring from something required and which can be costly, into a potential revenue stream instead.

Compliance tools are required by law, and thus become an expense for broadcasters, Hayes said, who added that today, AI can turn compliance into a value add instead.

“AI can analyze your audio for CALM compliance, but could also make it easier to ensure that closed captioning makes sense, including that the right version of a word is used. But it can also turn it into a profit center as it becomes a service, whether that is a tool for viewers to find content, or for those in commercial broadcasting so that advertisers and vendors can track their results.”

This could include automated detection of commercial ad spots, which could replace what has been a manually intensive work.

“This technology [AI] can scan many channels and provide very accurate affidavit reports on the number of ad spots,” added Frommert. “Similarly, the ads watching technology can also analyze competing channels and provide comparisons channel to channel on the number of ads sold and aired.”

AI could further automatically create captions and subtitles via speech recognition technology, while also utilizing rich metadata for searching and organizing the vast archives of video, which are stored on-premise or in the cloud.

“This can make it easier for people to find the content they want, as it is needs to be available to whomsoever, whenever they want it,” said Hindocha. “Metadata is really ripe for AI and machine learning, as it can help the viewer decide whether they want to consume that content. Metadata, as a side of the logging, helps you slice and dice the variety of content that is out there.”