We sat down with Paul Briscoe, TAG's chief architect, to talk about why TAG is developing MXL capabilities and what it means for broadcast operations directors navigating the complexity of IP workflows.

Q: Why did TAG decide to build MXL capabilities now?

Because our customers told us they'd hit a wall. And when that happens, you listen.

We've been in the room with broadcast engineers and ops directors through their SDI-to-IP transitions for years. They did everything right: they mastered ST 2110, got PTP timing under control, built out the infrastructure. And then they ran into a new problem: the complexity of 2110 itself became the ceiling.

Every time they wanted to add a workflow or move something to cloud, they were managing exponentially more timing constraints and engineering hours just to keep things running. The technology that was supposed to give them flexibility was now the thing limiting their growth. That's not only a technology problem, it's a business problem.

Q: What do 2110 operational challenges look like day-to-day?

Here's what we kept hearing: "We need to cover more events, but we don't have the engineering capacity to stand up another ST 2110 facility." Or: "We want to scale into cloud for certain productions, but the protocol conversions and timing challenges make it difficult to achieve."

One ops director told us they were burning 60% of their engineering time on commissioning and managing system complexity, not actually improving their workflows. That's the real cost. It's what you can't do because your team is buried in technical tasks that should be simpler.

Q: So how does MXL change that?

MXL takes the parts of ST 2110 that work really well, the formats, the capabilities, and strips out the complexity that's blocking people.

Instead of managing thousands of packets per frame with nanosecond-precision timing, media moves as straightforward memory-to-memory transfers. No PTP. No specialized UDP networks. And the same workflow runs on-prem or in the cloud without protocol gymnastics. For ops engineers, that means teams stop spending the majority of their time managing infrastructure and start spending it on work that actually drives value. That's the whole point.

Q: TAG is known as a monitoring company. Why get into transport layer technology?

We're a software company that specializes in monitoring, and because of that, we've had a front-row seat watching customers wrestle with IP workflow complexity for years.

Here's the thing: you can't monitor what you can't see, and you can't optimize what's technically constrained.

We're building MXL support into TAG's platform because monitoring needs to work seamlessly whether workflows are running on ST 2110, MXL, or any other format, on-prem or in the cloud. MXL also happens to eliminate a lot of the timing and interoperability issues that created monitoring gaps in traditional IP workflows. Our job is to make operations more efficient and workflows more reliable, regardless of transport technology.

Q: Where does an ops director start?

Start by finding where ST 2110 complexity is actually costing you.

Are deployment cycles dragging because your team is navigating integration challenges? Are cloud-hybrid workflows off the table because the complexity doesn't justify the business case? Those are the places where MXL delivers immediate value. You don't need to understand RDMA specs to make this decision. You need to understand whether eliminating PTP timing constraints or multicast networking would let you deploy faster or scale more efficiently. Then have a conversation with your infrastructure partners about how to architect for flexibility.

Q: What does MXL mean for broadcasters who are still mid-way through their ST 2110 journey, or haven't started yet?

Good news on both counts.

If you're mid-transition, nothing you've done is wasted. The video formats, audio, metadata, the fundamental constructs of 2110 are exactly what MXL moves. You're not ripping anything out. ST 2110 compatibility is fully retained, and TAG's platform already monitors both.

If you haven't started yet, you get to skip some of the hardest parts of the 2110 learning curve: the PTP domains, the specialized UDP networking, the timing dependencies that have kept IT departments at arm's length from broadcast infrastructure for years. MXL is built from an IT-centric viewpoint; RDMA and RoCE are standard IT services. That means your IT team can actually be part of this, which changes the economics and the operational model considerably.

Q: What should customers expect from TAG as MXL adoption grows?

The same thing they've always gotten from us: monitoring and multiviewing that works across whatever infrastructure they're running, with unified visibility that helps them operate more efficiently.

MXL support is already in TAG's platform. As customers deploy MXL-based workflows, whether that's in six months or two years, their monitoring keeps working and scales with them.

About TAG Video Systems: TAG Video Systems is the global leader in software-based integrated IP probing, monitoring, visualization and analytics solutions. TAG enables broadcasters, content creators, and service providers to streamline operations, cut through the complexity of IP media workflows, and keep infrastructures ahead of shifting technology and demand with Zero Friction agility. The TAG platform empowers users with innovative toolsets to ensure video quality, improve overall efficiency across all media workflows, and provides invaluable business and operational insights.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems said today it is collaborating with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), establishing OCI as a certified infrastructure platform for deploying the full TAG monitoring suite, and will feature the collaboration during the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.at any scale.

"Our goal is to empower users to deploy their workflows on any cloud platform they choose, seamlessly integrating into their specific cloud or hybrid environments," said Golan Simani, director of cloud and tech operations at TAG Video Systems. "By adding OCI support, we are reinforcing our commitment to staying ahead of the pace of change, continuously evolving to support the new infrastructures and technologies our customers need to succeed."

OCI offers a free egress tier and bandwidth pricing that represents a departure from standard hyperscaler rates. Combined with deterministic network performance and flexible compute built for always-on broadcast workloads, OCI is well-suited to being home to mission-critical monitoring at scale.

"OCI is purpose-built for the performance and cost requirements that media and entertainment organizations demand. Working together with TAG means broadcast teams can now get world-class monitoring and quality control without compromising on infrastructure economics,” said Kip Schauer, who is responsible for media partnerships at OCI Media Services.

TAG's Realtime Media Platform is now deployed and certified on OCI. Work is also underway to bring the full TAG product portfolio to the platform. Broadcasters working with OCI will be able to count on a fully supported, production-validated monitoring stack that integrates natively into their OCI-based workflows.

The TAG Realtime Media Platform on OCI offers:

• End-to-end IP-native signal visibility from ingest to playout on a cloud infrastructure designed for high-throughput media workloads.
• Scalable, flexible compute that adapts to the bursty, always-on nature of live broadcast without overprovisioning or cost surprises.
• A jointly supported deployment path, backed by TAG's integration expertise and OCI's enterprise infrastructure, for broadcasters migrating from legacy on-premises or alternative cloud environments.

See the joint TAG-OCI solution in NAB Show booth W2323.

More information is available on the TAG Video Systems and Oracle websites.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems has announced that it will unveil new capabilities across its IP-native Realtime Media Platform at NAB 2026 that will improve visibility into problems, make it easier to solve problems and reduce the number of tools needed to ensure quality control.

New releases include visual service health diagnostics, native audio monitoring, open SDK integrations, and expanded color analysis tools. Together, they give broadcast teams more visibility into their operations while reducing the standalone hardware and software required to run them.

Those improvements will move beyond traditional monitoring solutions that tell operators something is wrong and provide users with tools to show them exactly where to look for the problem and what to fix.

Lens, TAG’s newly announced visual service health analysis feature, organizes monitored sources into customizable visual hierarchies, by data center, content type, signal path, or any structure that matches how an operation works. Color-coded severity indicators show at a glance whether an issue is isolated or systemic, enabling root-cause analysis in seconds rather than minutes. Lens joins TAG’s existing suite of data visualization integrations, adding real-time workflow insight directly within the platform so operators can diagnose issues without switching to external dashboards.

TAG’s data integrations complement Lens by making monitoring data available to over 70 external destinations. Whether teams use Grafana, Elasticsearch, Splunk, or other platforms, TAG’s open data architecture means monitoring insights flow into the dashboards teams already use, so operational decisions are based on real data, not gut feel.

Expanded QC Station capabilities deepen that visibility at the stream level, with real-time waveforms, vectorscopes, histograms, and HDR validation across Rec.709, Rec.2020, and DCI-P3 color spaces, all accessible directly within the multiviewer mosaic.

Another major theme for the company at the show will be solutions that allow one platform to replace many tools.

More specifically, it noted that every capability announced at NAB 2026 replaces something that previously required standalone hardware or separate software.

QC Station’s color analysis replaces dedicated hardware analyzers and standalone test signal generators with a single software-based workflow. New native Dolby E decoding eliminates the need for dedicated external decoders, giving engineers real-time visibility into multi-channel audio program configurations directly within the same interface they use for video monitoring. Kantar watermark detection removes the need for separate watermark monitoring systems. This verifies watermark presence and integrity at every stage from live production through playout and distribution, ensuring measurement accuracy and contractual compliance.

TAG’s new Software Development Kits (SDKs) extend this consolidation beyond TAG’s own probing points. Third-party platforms can integrate directly with TAG’s monitoring infrastructure, aggregating data from multiple sources, including external and unsecured locations, into a single workspace. TAG and Witbe’s integration is a flagship example: Witbe’s real-device testing data and TAG’s in-network stream monitoring are brought together, giving operators a consolidated view of quality across the entire delivery chain.

On the infrastructure side, support for NVIDIA ConnectX-7 SmartNICs enables significantly higher stream density per COTS server, a direct path to lower cost-per-channel for large-scale uncompressed ST-2110 deployments.

TAG Video Systems said that visitors to Booth W2323 at NAB 2026 will see firsthand how these capabilities work together, with deep, end-to-end visibility across workflows and a platform built to scale as operations expand.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems has expanded its Media Control System (MCS) version 1.7.0 release with Lens, a visual service health analysis interface that organizes monitored video feeds into hierarchical groups and displays alarm distribution. The new capability provides operators with a centralized view of monitored assets and active alerts across large-scale broadcast operations.

TAG reported that Lens is designed to address a common operational challenge: When multiple feeds trigger alerts simultaneously, operators typically cross-reference data across separate monitoring tools to identify the root cause. Lens provides a unified view of all monitored assets and active alerts with color-coded severity indicators.

Lens organizes video streams into customizable hierarchies to help engineers pinpoint root causes quickly. Operations can structure their facilities by data center location ("US West" → "Rack 7" → specific encoders), content type ("Sports" → "Basketball" → individual game feeds), or signal path ("Playout" → "Contribution" → contributor name). Each feed can belong to multiple categories simultaneously, allowing operators to view the same feed through different operational perspectives.

When issues trigger, color-coded severity indicators appear at each hierarchy level, showing whether problems affect isolated feeds or entire categories. Engineers can expand nested hierarchies to drill from high-level overview to specific diagnostics, filter by severity thresholds, and efficiently trace which upstream or downstream systems connect to affected assets. By consolidating alarm data and system relationships into a single interface, Lens significantly reduces mean time to repair (MTTR)—operators can identify root causes in seconds rather than minutes, minimizing downtime across large-scale operations.

"Broadcast operations manage hundreds or thousands of channels across multiple data centers, with each channel having dozens of monitoring parameters," said Michael Demb, vice president of product strategy at TAG Video Systems. "When something goes wrong, every second of downtime matters. Lens gives operators a unified view of system health and lets them drill down from data center-wide to specific sources."

Lens is available now in TAG's Media Control System (MCS) version 1.7.0 and later. More information is available at https://tagvs.com/.

HINTERSCHMIDING and MUNICH, Germany—At MMO Managed Media Operations, our teams manage cloud-native live production and playout infrastructure across Europe. We specialize in stream ingest, signal monitoring and multiviewing for broadcast customers, handling everything from linear channels to event-based live coverage. Our workflows are built entirely in Amazon Web Services (AWS), using TAG’s platform across multiple use cases from signal acquisition to visual QC.

Our Business Needs
Our biggest challenge is maintaining signal quality and availability at scale without introducing operational complexity. We ingest dozens of contribution feeds from multiple customers (delivered via SRT) and monitor signal health throughout each signal’s life cycle, from preprocessing and metadata injection through packaging and final distribution.

In a cloud-native environment, we needed a solution that supports dynamic scaling, provides granular probing and alerting and enables real-time response. Our major pain point: the time-to-resolution when something goes wrong. We can’t afford to spend minutes determining if a problem is upstream, inside our infrastructure or downstream at the handoff point.

For deployment, we use TAG’s Realtime Monitoring Platform to monitor incoming and outgoing SRT contribution streams, plus intermediate handoffs, metadata overlays and packaging status. Everything is deployed 100% in the cloud, containerized and fully orchestrated in AWS.

TAG provides a unified view of signal health at every critical point. We can ingest contribution feeds, decode and display multiviewers for operational staff and create mosaic views for stakeholders across different functions. TAG’s open APIs integrate with our tools, and our infrastructure-as-code approach means TAG can be spun up or down quickly as needed.

In terms of use cases, we primarily support 24/7 playout and live-event ingest for multiple European broadcast customers. Our signal-acquisition team monitors all incoming SRT streams using TAG, with alerting tied to key thresholds (loss, jitter, decode errors). We can also visualize packaging and encoding stages downstream, ensuring signals are clean and synchronized before handoff.

More specifically, we get the signals via SRT from several customers, then send them to a partner that does distribution or playout. For one broadcaster, we created a special layout, the customer could connect from their side to TAG, and they could view it on their own.

TAG’s SRT support and ability to decode and visualize mosaic views in the same environment are key strengths. We leverage TAG’s layout editor to quickly create custom displays for different departments and events, from election night coverage to regional sports.

Operational Impact
Since deploying TAG, we’ve reduced time-to-visualize issues from several minutes to under 30 seconds. Operators rely on TAG’s mosaic displays to identify stream issues in real time and take immediate action. Our engineers appreciate the detailed metrics, which pinpoint whether issues stem from ingest, transcoding or handoff. Because everybody on the team is remote, it was important that it’s cloud-native. TAG helps us go deeper into the error and zoom into the signal.

TAG enables us to offer higher confidence and SLAs or standard-level agreements to broadcast customers. When a customer asks whether their feed is live and stable, we don’t jump between dashboards. We open TAG and see everything at a glance.

As for next steps, we plan to expand TAG’s footprint into more event-based workflows and integrate its data into our monitoring and ticketing systems. We’re also exploring deeper integration with scheduling metadata to automatically trigger layout changes based on time of day or event priority.

In short, TAG has become critical to our live operations and engineering workflows. It delivers confidence, speed and flexibility across highly dynamic cloud-native production environments. Most importantly, it allows us to focus on managing signals, not managing tools.

For more information, visit tagvs.com.

LONDON—Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins.

ITN’s newly built production control room, responsible for delivering daily news coverage across two newsrooms, delivers reduced latency and greater flexibility. Architected and delivered by Techex, the system combines the TAG Video Systems Realtime media platform with Matrox Video ConvertIP decoders, providing ITN with responsive, fully configurable monitoring within its new PCR.

“As longtime partners with TAG Video Systems, we were able to bring our experience to bear while designing this system using the TAG-Matrox Video integration,” John Treadwell, Techex senior strategic account manager for global accounts, said. “We worked closely with ITN to capture requirements, validate the design and deliver the project. That collaboration will continue as we support ITN in evolving the system now that it’s live.”

TAG’s Realtime media platform is a fully software-based system. It unifies probing, monitoring, visualization and analysis into a single platform. The platform’s adaptive architecture enables efficient load balancing, rapid mosaic generation and on-the-fly transcoding, all within the IP domain. ITN has harnessed its support for SMPTE ST 2110 and JPEG XS in the new PCR to provide a scalable, future-ready monitoring solution for live news production.

The deployment drives down multiviewer latency to between 1 and 1.5 frames, achieved through the Matrox ConvertIP ST 2110-HDMI interfaces driving the PCR’s 10 4K multiviewer displays.

“With TAG, we’ve been able to realize the agility of an all-IP monitoring workflow while retaining the low latency and reliability that operators are used to in traditional galleries,” James Wickes, lead media engineer at ITN Productions, said. “Matrox’s ConvertIP technology delivers that responsiveness on screen, and with Techex helping us bring the two together in a cohesive architecture, we’ve been able to future-proof our gallery and the production workflows that depend on it.”

The system’s low latency is made possible due to the Matrox ConvertIP decoders translating IP signals into native HDMI outputs with deterministic timing and no perceptible lag. Their ability to maintain consistent, frame-accurate synchronization across all 4K displays ensures the live feel operators rely on when cutting between sources.

“The Matrox ConvertIP family was designed exactly for projects like this. Seeing ITN achieve such low-latency multiviewer performance across multiple 4K displays is a great demonstration of how tight partnerships can bring immediacy and confidence back into IP-based control rooms,” said Daniel Maloney, technical marketing manager at Matrox Video.

TAG’s Operator Console enables ITN staff in the gallery to adapt multiviewer screens quickly to the current production. “ITN’s new gallery is a great example of how IP-native monitoring can reach full broadcast responsiveness,” said Paul Briscoe, TAG chief architect. “In a newsroom environment, the immediacy of information delivery, while retaining the flexibility of a software-defined system, is hugely validating. It demonstrates that an advanced, all-IP control room can meet the real-time demands that live production requires. Techex’s approach brought together the strengths of TAG and Matrox Video in a way that allowed ITN to focus purely on production rather than infrastructure.”

More information is available on the TAG, Matrox Video and Techex websites.

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/.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems has earned a higher-rated Digital Product Passport (DPP) Committed to Sustainability badge and the Aclymate Climate Wise Silver Tier certification, recognizing its measurable progress and long-term commitment to Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG).

The DPP badge reflects TAG’s improved rating within the DPP Program and recognizes the company as part of a select group of media technology organizations committed to transparent sustainability practices, the company said.

The Aclymate Climate Wise certification highlights a year of verified carbon measurement, confirming that TAG has successfully established a comprehensive emissions baseline that includes office energy, travel, shipping, commuting and procurement, it said.

“This recognition reflects a year of progress where we successfully defined our ESG agenda and integrated it directly into our business strategy to empower our team,” said Danna Mann, vice president of marketing and ESG team lead at TAG Video Systems. “Our focus now is on the future: establishing actionable, data-based KPIs and refining our carbon footprint measurement to ensure our sustainability journey is robust, real, and strongly connected to business outcomes.”

TAG’s sustainability strategy is structured around five ESG pillars, it said. They include environmental impact of products, environmental impact of operations, customer satisfaction, employee engagement and product and data security.

The company introduced several new initiatives this year to align with this agenda, such as completing a verified carbon baseline for its operation, launching a new user community for knowledge accessibility and investing in ESG leadership training. Building on these achievements, TAG is setting a rigorous, data-driven agenda for 2026, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Monitoring audio and video content in today’s increasingly complex media environment requires more flexibility than ever. Fortunately, broadcasters’ adoption of IP and the cloud have brought that flexibility to a more reasonable integration level and price point.

As production environments evolve, the role of multiviewers continues to expand, according to Ketan Patel, product manager, multiviewer systems for Evertz. “Today’s multiviewers must handle a wide variety of signal types—compressed and uncompressed, IP and SDI—and operate seamlessly across both on-prem and cloud infrastructures,” he says.

With more operations adopting the SMPTE 2110 IP protocol, demand is increasing, Patel added. “Evertz has deployed over 600 SMPTE ST 2110 systems globally, many of which feature our high-density ev670-X30-HW-V2 modular platform and the ultra-high-density PREFEX multiviewer system.”

Michael Demb, vice president of product strategy for TAG, agreed that having flexibility across both cloud and on-prem is paramount in today’s multiviewer platforms.

“Multiviewers are evolving from passive displays into active operational hubs, central to how media teams manage software-defined workflows today,” he said. “As infrastructures decentralize and scale dynamically across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments, multiviewers like TAG’s are becoming the front line for real-time insight, signal integrity validation, and workflow control.”

Saving Money
Budgetary pressures are also driving broadcasters’ demands, and whether they’re deployed in a full-cloud scenario or hybrid on-prem, multiviewers are becoming more versatile, according to John Mailhot, senior vice president, product management, at Imagine Communications.

“Operational and cost efficiencies are top of mind in today’s dynamic production operations,” he said. “Whether signal processing is done in the cloud or on-prem, the multiviewer plays a critical role in enabling operations teams to make fast, informed, content-critical decisions.

“A robust multiviewer system allows operators to quickly identify and resolve issues in real time—ultimately enabling the team to manage more signals across more productions,” Mailhot added. “As a result, multiviewers will continue evolving from passive display systems to active enablers of efficient, scalable media operations.”

Erling Hedkvist, sales and business development for manifold, said his company’s platform can provide the best of both cloud and on-prem worlds.

“One of our big differentiators is that our customers get the flexibility of software and virtualization but with the performance of dedicated hardware that the live production industry demands,” he said. “This gives them subframe latency and uncompressed, high-quality processing but also a service-based architecture where they can spin services up and down on-demand and that is self-healing in case of an underlying hardware issue.”

Hedkvist touts the “secret sauce” of manifold’s cloud-based live production system: “The underlying design of manifold CLOUD is built around a shared memory architecture,” he said. “Media is first written into memory, allowing multiple services [such as multiviewers, format converters, color correctors and codecs] to access and process that data directly rather than relying on traditional signal paths. This architecture decouples processing from format and frame rate, as services work on pixel data in memory.”

Lower Latency
Monitoring live production often requires making split-second decisions, something that remains top of mind when dealing with latency. Suzana Brady, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Cobalt Digital, said that even though the company’s UltraBlue SW-MV multiviewer is implemented in software on a PC platform, “it was designed with latency in mind.”

“For baseband inputs, the latency is around three frames to a screen, and less than that for a streaming output,” she said. “Scalability is provided by the PC platform, from lower-cost units for simple multiviewers to large platforms for units with lots of inputs and heads. There is a full-featured modern API to ease integration in complex workflows.”

The importance of integrating software-based multiviewing into live production platforms has been demonstrated through the flexibility offered by the cloud and IP, according to Evertz’ Patel.

“All [Evertz] platforms are designed to be part of a unified system, enabling operators to build highly dense, format-agnostic monitoring solutions across 3G, UHD, compressed and uncompressed feeds,” Patel said. “Whether it’s for native IP, hybrid or SDI workflows, users can scale according to their operational requirements without compromising quality or latency.”

When it comes to the variety of high-resolution formats, including HDR, vendors have adopted a format-agnostic approach and upped their processing power.

Chris Scheck, head of marketing content for Lawo, says the efficiency of the company’s HOME Multiviewer—available as a standalone solution and as part of Lawo’s HOME Apps ecosystem—is architected to consume less power, making monitoring more efficient.

“In combination with a .edge Hyper-Density SDI/IP Gateway and Processing unit, which can simultaneously receive and output SDI signals and generate smaller-resolution versions of video input signals, the HOME Multi­viewer can be used in a so-called intelligent workflow that uses no more than the absolutely required amount of network bandwidth for each PiP [picture in picture], based on its size, thus ensuring that the input bandwidth never exceeds the output bandwidth,” Sheck said, adding that such proxies are important when operating in a bandwidth-
restricted environment.

“UHD streams, for instance, comprise a lot more data than is needed for a small PiP; not having to downscale such PiP footage therefore means that fewer CPU cores are needed to process the information,” he said. “The allocation of the relevant proxy to each PiP/tile is handled automatically while the multiviewer head is being configured with the intuitive theWALL app.”

New Features
While multiviewing continues to evolve, vendors are continually adding new features that take advantage of the flexibility offered by IP and the cloud.

At IBC this month, Mediaproxy is introducing Instant Replay for live incident review along with the ability to monitor HTML content directly within mosaic outputs. Designed to streamline the process of incident investigation, Instant Replay allows broadcast operators and engineers to instantly review incidents that occur during live broadcasts.

“Being able to have high-quality instant replay within our ecosystem of monitoring tools will significantly reduce the time it takes to investigate and clear on-air incidents,” says Erik Otto, Mediaproxy CEO. “The addition of HTML data panels in both our interactive server-side multiviewers further underline our commitment to solving real-world problems for customers today.”

Lawo is taking its HOME Video Monitor app out of the facility and making it more accessible to operators, according to Scheck.

“With its HOME Video Monitor app, Lawo is about to launch a solution that allows users to monitor video feeds on their laptops and mobile devices, which is extremely useful for busy operators who quickly need to check something on their way to a different location,” he says. “While this may not be a replacement for a full-blown multiviewer, it may be practical for certain workflows.”

What About AI?
Vendors are taking the same cautious approach towards implementing artificial intelligence into their multiviewing platforms as their customers are.

TAG is actively exploring the potential of adding AI as part of its long-term innovation road map. “We’re engaged in early-stage development to evaluate how technologies like Multimodal AI and agentic AI could support operational efficiency, simplify workflows, and enhance the monitoring experience,” Demb said, adding that “any future capabilities will be designed to augment—not replace—human decision-making, and to serve the real-world needs of our customers.”

There are no immediate plans for manifold to integrate AI into its multi­viewer line, the company says. In fact, “we recently signed a significant contract with a major U.K. broadcaster that explicitly prohibits the inclusion of AI in the deliverables,” Hedkvist says. “[This is] a clear sign that there’s still hesitation among Tier-1 customers when it comes to unsupervised AI in live production workflows.”

Scheck concurs that the jury is still out when it comes to adopting AI.

“Lawo’s HOME Multiviewer comes equipped with a flexible logic system for alarm and tally functions to allow users to catch errors in a timely fashion and remain in control,” he says. “Whether AI could play a part in this is certainly worth investigating, even though a deterministic approach based on algorithms and real-world experience may be hard to beat for some time to come.”

Scheck adds that some operators are taking multiviewing to another level.

“One of our customers now operates OB trucks that are no longer equipped with multiviewer walls; the screens have been replaced by Apple Vision Pro headsets,” he says. “From what we have heard, getting used to them was rather straightforward, and operators in those trucks like the thrill of working with flexible cutting-edge tools and increasingly consider multiviewer walls as somewhat ‘old-school.’ ”

Nevertheless, all the bells and whistles being added to multiviewers don’t take away the essential role of the technology, according to Cobalt’s Brady.

“We don’t see the fundamental role of multiviewers changing in live broadcast, their purpose has remained consistent since the early days of television,” she says. “What is changing is the scale, quality, and accessibility of multiviewing in modern, software-defined infrastructures.”

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems said it will show upgraded capabilities of its Realtime Media Platform that empower media companies to take control of their operations. reduce complexity, accelerate decision-making and ensure exceptional video quality at scale during IBC2025, set for Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

“Our focus at IBC is to show what happens when monitoring and data come together in real time,” Kevin Joyce, TAG’s zero-friction officer, said. “We’re not just displaying video—we’re delivering clarity, control, and the agility customers need to stay competitive.”

More specifically, visitors to its stand 1.C31 will experience enhanced QC tools including Waveform scopes and HDR test patterns, intuitive layout and tile control with TAG’s Operator Console, and real time integrations with partners like Witbe, Nevion, Techex and DataMiner that promote simplicity, increase responsiveness, and ensure exceptional video quality at scale, the company reported.

During the show, its booth will also feature four interactive demo pods, each controlled by TAG’s intuitive Operator Console. Each of these demo pods will enable visitors to explore real-world scenarios, including latency and HDR validation, audio issues, and error detection. Teams can switch layouts, interact with sources, and monitor signals in real time, all visualized across large wall monitors for a hands-on experience.

Visitors will also be able to see the capabilities of its Realtime Media Platform with new features that elevate both its integrated QC Station and Operator Console. These solutions allow engineers and operators to easily validate signal integrity, troubleshoot more efficiently, and maintain consistent quality across live and on-demand workflows.

During the show, TAG will also be unveiling:

• Waveform Scopes in QC Station—Operators can now visualize luminance and chrominance within a live mosaic using familiar scope views such as Waveforms, Histograms and Vectorscopes. These tools help ensure consistent brightness, color balance and signal levels across multiple sources, critical for live production and compliance monitoring. This addition deepens the diagnostic power of QC Station while keeping everything embedded in the platform.
• Channel Solo and Full Video Playback in Operator Console—two new functions give operators more hands-on control with the ability to isolate and listen to a single audio channel and play back full video streams for immediate review. These enhancements make the Operator Console even more effective for real-time troubleshooting, validation, and daily workflow confidence.

In addition, TAG will be offering demos with various technology partners. These integrations illustrate TAG’s commitment to openness and interoperability, enabling smarter decisions and better alignment between operations and business objectives, the company reported.

TAG described those demos as follows:

• “Witbe—Validate true viewer experience by combining TAG’s monitoring with automated testing from source to screen.
• “Techex—Leverage IP/cloud transport with TAG’s visualization layer for agile broadcast delivery.
• “Nevion—Streamline signal transport and orchestration via integrated workflows with Nevion’s VideoIPath.
• “Skyline DataMiner—Centralize operational insight by feeding TAG metrics into broader service management systems."

TAG Video Systems is the global leader in software-based integrated IP probing, monitoring, visualization and analytics solutions.

More information is available here.

NEW YORK and LONDON—DAZN deployed a live sports monitoring infrastructure to support its global broadcasts of the recently concluded FIFA Club World Cup 2025 built in partnership with Techex and TAG Video Systems.

Thirty-two of the most successful clubs from every continent competed in the soccer tournament, which spanned 63 matches. DAZN was the exclusive global broadcast partner. It delivered every match live and free to fans around the world.

With global rights to the tournament and with growing demand for the group’s other sports content around the world, DAZN required an infrastructure capable of supporting the complexity and pace of some of the world’s most high profile and dynamic sporting events. Working with Techex, DAZN built a new SMPTE ST 2110-based global master control room (MCR) in Leeds, UK.

The system provided centralized control over more than 5,000 unique video sources and 300 mosaic layouts. Once at its core data centers, the sources and layouts were seamlessly routed to DAZN’s operational hubs in Leeds, Northern Ireland and Hyderabad, which are powered by TAG’s Media Control System (MCS) and managed through a redundant central interface, This architecture reduced bandwidth use, eliminated infrastructure duplication and enabled any source to be routed to any operator or screen without reconfiguration, DAZN said.

"With the number of different feeds and variants required for DAZN’s broadcasting of the FIFA Club World Cup – on top of our usual workload – flexibility and scalability were the priority to ensure our master control room (MCR) was monitoring as effectively as possible. Our partnership with Techex and TAG has enabled DAZN to continue delivering an unparalleled entertainment experience to our users, supported by cutting-edge live sports infrastructure," said David Christmas, head of broadcast project engineering at DAZN.

Techex worked with DAZN’s project and operations teams on the system architecture and delivery, focusing on the continued development of DAZN’s orchestrated workflow deployments, using technologies such as tx edge to provide protection and monitoring of signals, optimizing signal quality and ensuring delivery, it said.

“We delivered a solution that’s technically sound, operator-friendly and built for DAZN’s evolving needs. We needed to address the immediate demand to build an infrastructure to cater for a tournament the size and scale of the FIFA Club World Cup 2025, whilst also considering DAZN’s future” said Richard Bailey, chief product and technology officer at Techex. “It’s a great example of partnership focused on real-world results.”

To further streamline operations, TAG developed a dedicated operator console, designed specifically for DAZN’s live transmission and MCR environments. The touch-compatible interface allowed operators to interact directly with the mosaic—switching feeds, validating ad markers, adjusting audio and managing alarms in real time. Its intuitive, role-based design minimized complexity and eliminated the need for engineering intervention for daily tasks, it said.

“This project gives DAZN the agility to deliver live sports coverage at global scale,” said Kevin Joyce, zero friction officer at TAG Video Systems. “Together with Techex, we’ve built a monitoring platform that enables smarter operations, faster response, and lower operational risk.”

More information is available on the DAZN, Techex and TAG Video Systems websites.

TAG Video Systems is working with Gencom Technology, a provider of media technology solutions across New Zealand, Australia, and the Pacific Islands, to provide monitoring solutions and technologies in the Oceania. region.

The two companies said that the combination of TAG’s Realtime Media Platform and Gencom’s deep regional expertise will allow them to deliver technical solutions and services offering enhanced visibility, operational agility, and control across modern media workflows.

“Oceania’s media sector is moving quickly toward IP and hybrid architectures,” said Paul Maroni, vice president of sales APAC at TAG Video Systems. “Gencom’s deep regional expertise makes them the ideal partner to help broadcasters future-proof their operations with TAG’s powerful and flexible platform.”

“Our clients need more than just monitoring—they need actionable insights, confidence in their operations, and responsive local support,” added Keith Bremner, director at Gencom Technology. “By combining TAG’s technology with Gencom’s engineering and service capabilities, we’re helping broadcasters enhance reliability and streamline operations from day one.”

The two companies reported that the partnership will help industry players in the region who are under increased pressure to boost efficiency, maintain uninterrupted service, and quickly adapt to changing demands from their customers.

TAG’s fully software-based platform addresses these challenges by empowering media organizations with the ability to probe, monitor, and analyze their entire media pipeline—from ingest through delivery — all within a single unified interface, the company reported.

With major broadcasters and service providers in the region already undertaking IP transformation projects, the collaboration between TAG and Gencom aims to help clients gain real time visibility into their operations, streamline IP workflows, and improve service quality so they can respond more quickly to change and scale with confidence as the industry continues to evolve, the companies said.

Gencom Technology is New Zealand’s leading provider of integrated technology solutions and professional services for the media industry.

TAG Video Systems provides oftware-based integrated IP probing, monitoring, visualization and analytics solutions.

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

NEW YORK —TAG Video Systems, a major provider of software-based IP media probing, monitoring, visualization, and analytics, and swXtch.io, a provider of cloud-based multicast networking, announced that they are collaborating to provide advanced cloud-based media monitoring for broadcasters and content creators.

As part of the collaboration, they are integrating swXtch.io’s unique cloud capabilities with TAG’s software-based multiviewer.

The combined solutions can monitor any IP stream, including 2110 and JPEG XS, with on-premises-level performance. This brings high-accuracy stream monitoring to workflows, simultaneously reducing costs and lowering latency while delivering real-time insights into stream health and quality.

“We are thrilled to deepen our technical collaboration with TAG Video Systems,” said Patrick McCoy, head of product at swXtch.io. “Together, we are enabling broadcasters to embrace cloud adoption with confidence, unlocking unprecedented agility, efficiency, and innovation in media monitoring.”

“Our collaboration with swXtch.io is driven by a shared commitment to providing broadcasters with the most advanced and flexible tools for media monitoring,” added Michael Demb, vice president of product strategy at TAG Video Systems. “By combining our expertise, we empower customers with coherent, scalable, and cost-effective cloud and hybrid monitoring solutions.”

The two companies described the key benefits of the joint solution as follows:

• Optimized Cost Efficiency: Reduces bandwidth consumption and latency through streamlined multicast replication.
• Seamless Cloud Monitoring: Provides real-time, scalable, and reliable visibility into multiple streams.
• Broad Format Compatibility: Supports a diverse range of industry-standard formats and protocols.
• Enhanced Flexibility and Scalability: Empowers broadcasters to efficiently manage complex cloud-based workflows.

These capabilities were recently showcased at the AWS JPEG XS Interop event, where TAG's cloud-based multiviewer seamlessly monitored JPEG XS multicast streams originating from an on-premises network. The demonstration underscored the readiness of broadcasters to adopt cloud workflows without compromising on performance, cost, or flexibility.

For more information, visit TAG Video Systems and SwXtch.io.

NANTERRE, France—Witbe will highlight the latest in its post-device monitoring and automated testing technology for video service providers during the 2025 NAB Show, April 5-9, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The company will showcase its Virtual Network Operations Center (NOC) and advancements in its end-to-end monitoring technology that gives service providers full visibility into what their users see in real time in lab and field environments, Witbe said.

Witbe’s Virtual NOC offers real-time monitoring across any device type, including set top boxes, mobile apps and smart TVs, at the edge of the video service delivery path. It enables secure, intuitive we-based remote access to local test devices, real-time alerts, KPIs and automated test results, the company said.

The Virtual NOC also promotes collaboration by allowing all teams to work together efficiently without requiring individual test devices. Service providers can monitor real devices remotely, replicate viewer experiences, record and analyze video feeds, and quickly escalate issues to the right team for fast resolution, it said.

Fully integrated with Smartgate, it centralizes data and KPIs into clear, actionable dashboards, streamlining troubleshooting and decision-making, it said.

Witbe will also highlight its partnership with TAG Video Systems that combines the former’s real-device video quality automation with the latter’s real-time content matching and latency measurement, it said.

During the 2025 Super Bowl, the integration enabled comprehensive latency measurement, revealing instances where OTT streaming outperformed traditional broadcast latency. Witbe and TAG with showcase their partnership Monday, April 7, from 4:30 to 6 p.m., at the TAG booth (W1757), it said.

See Witbe at 2025 NAB Show booth W2459.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems and Harmonic have formed a strategic partnership to highlight the interoperability of TAG's Realtime Media Platform with Harmonic's VOS360 Media SaaS at the 2025 NAB Show, April 5-9, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

This companies’ collaboration offers broadcasters and content creators real-time visibility and control over their video workflows while unlocking cloud cost savings, they said.

Harmonic’s VOS360 Media SaaS is a comprehensive cloud-native solution that simplifies the creation, management and delivery of high-quality broadcast and streaming channels for linear, live and on-demand content.

By integrating TAG’s Realtime Media Platform, VOS360 Media users gain real-time visualization and deep monitoring across more than 500 parameters ensuring quality of service. The integration enables deep stream analysis from the media essence through template matching and transport, SCTE 35/104 ad insertion verification, advanced multiviewing and precise latency measurement from the VOS360 workflow, they said.

“This partnership provides a complete solution for today’s complex streaming environments,” said Golan Simani, director of cloud and tech operations at TAG. “Integrating our real-time monitoring and multiviewing platform with Harmonic’s VOS360 Media SaaS empowers users with the deep visibility and control needed to provide exceptional quality and maximize revenue.”

At the NAB Show, the companies will demonstrate a complete end-to-end streaming workflow: from live stream ingest through playout, transcoding, packaging, origin and server-side ad insertion to CDN distribution. TAG will monitor and visualize the entire process in real-time, from source to CDN return feed, measuring, analysing and displaying video and latency at each stage.

The demonstration will highlight SCTE-35 marker validation, real-time video visualization and comprehensive latency reporting using TAG’s unified platform. The specific workflow demonstrated will feature SRT cloud uplink and MPEG-DASH/HLS distribution. The cloud-agnostic nature of both TAG and Harmonic’s solutions allows for flexible deployment on any cloud or hybrid infrastructure, the companies said.

“We’re thrilled to partner with TAG to further enhance VOS360 Media SaaS with real-time multiviewer capability,” said Gil Rudge, senior vice president of products and Americas sales for video business at Harmonic. “This collaboration gives our customers a powerful toolset for real-time stream analysis, visualization and latency monitoring, enabling them to cost effectively deliver outstanding streaming experiences with confidence.”

See TAG Video Systems in 2025 NAB Show booth W1757 and Harmonic in booth W2821.

More information is available on the TAG Video Systems and Harmonic websites.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems has announced that during the 2025 NAB Show. it will showcase its advanced capabilities for end-to-end monitoring and visualization, with a special preview of the QC Station, a powerful addition to the company's QC Elements toolset.

Visitors to Booth W1757 during the show in Las Vegas between April 6 to 9, will see how the platform simplifies complex workflows while guaranteeing the highest video quality across all workflows.

The preview of the QC Station will show how the solution is designed to enhance video quality control across live production and distribution environments. In addition, QC Station integrates QC Elements, a powerful set of tools for real time, deep analysis of video streams. This enables engineers to monitor video quality in real time, validate content integrity, and ensure compliance with industry standards.

“Our presence at the NAB Show allows us to demonstrate not just our technology but our commitment to the industry by offering the most sophisticated monitoring and visualization tools on the market today. The addition of QC Station is no exception. It includes the high-end functionality that TAG is known for—giving engineers even more precision and control over video quality,” said Michael Demb, vice president of product strategy.

QC Station offers scope-like functionality for precise monitoring of luminance, chrominance, color volume, and HDR content. These advanced capabilities, available directly within TAG’s Media Control System (MCS), enable broadcasters to streamline troubleshooting, resolve quality issues faster, and ensure consistent video quality across their operations, the company reported.

In addition, TAG will be highlighting its Advanced User Management functionality enhanced with Access Groups and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to streamline and secure user access management. Implementing this role-based permissions feature ensures that only authorized personnel have access to sensitive systems and tools, leading to elevated security, increased operational efficiency and reduced human error.

Access Groups simplifies user access management by grouping MCS features, settings, and resources, enabling administrators to tailor permissions based on specific responsibilities. This feature is essential for large-scale operations, ensuring compliance and audit readiness while improving access control and system security.

In addition to the QC Station and Advanced User Management, TAG’s Realtime Media Platform will be demonstrated with the proven and award-winning features and tools broadcasters have come to rely on from TAG to ensure quality at scale. With support for cloud, hybrid, and on-premises workflows, the platform provides comprehensive monitoring and visualization across all major media formats and standards, enabling broadcasters to achieve seamless operations and monitor content integrity throughout every stage—whether in live production, playout, OTT, or traditional delivery.

The ability to monitor live streams, validate encoding parameters, and verify compliance allows broadcasters to maintain the highest-level standard of video quality. TAG’s solutions integrate real time diagnostics, quality measurement, and error detection, providing a flawless operational experience and enabling issues to be proactively addressed before they affect viewer experience.

More information is available here.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems and Witbe have formed a strategic partnership to elevate video monitoring and quality assurance across the entire over-the-top content-delivery chain.

The companies will combine TAG’s advanced monitoring, including its Content Matching technology, and Witbe’s Virtual NOC offering automated video monitoring on real devices. The combination enables an end-to-end monitoring solution that covers the entire video delivery path, from the source feed to the actual viewer experience across multiple devices and locations, TAG said.

“This partnership marks another milestone in TAG’s mission to deliver multi-app monitoring at scale through our Realtime Media Platform,” TAG Chief Growth Officer Ziv Mor said. “With Witbe’s unique user-device perspective, we’re closing the loop on end-to-end visibility. Our customers now have critical insight all the way to the viewer’s device, allowing them to track virtually every quality aspect, including latency, across the entire network from source to screen, and proactively address the ongoing demand for a better and seamless viewer experience.”

As part of their collaboration, TAG and Witbe joined forces to conduct a case study during the Super Bowl, demonstrating the strengths and value proposition of their partnership. The case study showcased their combined technologies in action, assessing both the network and the content delivered at the end-user level, TAG said.

This included monitoring app performance, initial buffering time and content matching to verify the stream’s integrity. The study also measured latency between the various streaming platforms, which would not be possible without visibility into the end-user stream, the companies said.

Together, the companies conducted comprehensive monitoring of the game as it streamed across several traditional cable providers and OTT services, providing insights into how major platforms handled the delivery of a seamless viewing experience during a high-profile live event, the companies said.

“At Witbe, we are constantly pushing the boundaries of monitoring and automated testing, so our customers can accurately measure the true quality of experience they deliver to their viewers,” Witbe CEO Mathieu Planche said. “Partnering with TAG allows us to solve two critical challenges for our customers: accurately measuring the end-to-end latency and ensuring the correct content reaches end-user devices.

“With our combined expertise, we can now not only provide content providers and broadcasters with the ability to measure the true quality of their services on real test devices but also gain insights into how their streams perform across the network,” Planche continued.

The combined solution monitors and enables visualization of the entire content delivery workflow; measures and compares latency across different platforms; accesses KPIs such as initial buffering time, video quality, macro blocking and app performance; and ensures the right content is streamed across the delivery path all the way to end-user devices, according to the companies. It also verifies content switching to detect any expected or unexpected changes, they said.

For the game, the combination collected real-time data on latency differences between OTT and traditional broadcast platforms; streaming performance under peak traffic conditions; visual and audio quality across networks and devices; real-time error detection and troubleshooting; and matching.

Results of the monitoring session are available on the Witbe and TAG Video Systems websites.

MUNICH—Broadcast technology is constantly evolving and staying ahead of the curve is one of the keys to our success at Munich Media Operations, a media-services company for sports, media and advertising; and MiTM, which provides consulting services, project management, system planning, integration and training to the broadcast industry.

Our mission has always been to embrace innovation and deliver cutting-edge solutions. One example of that innovation has been partnering with TAG Video Systems and deploying their Realtime Monitoring Platform. It has been a key differentiator, enabling seamless integration, unparalleled flexibility and efficiencies across all of our operations.

Managing Many Games
Before implementing TAG’s solution, we faced significant hurdles. Our previous system, while functional, required extensive manual configuration and often delivered unreliable results. It became clear we needed a more dependable and scalable solution, one that could adapt to the growing complexity of our workflows and provide actionable insights in real time.

At the heart of our operations is the efficient monitoring and management of high volumes of transport streams. With up to 40 concurrent games on a busy weekend and streams crossing multiple touchpoints, our previous monitoring system couldn’t keep pace with the increasing demands. We needed a solution that would address our immediate challenges and future-proof our infrastructure.

Industry peers we consulted with vouched for TAG’s robust capabilities and scalability. Early demonstrations highlighted TAG’s ability to handle diverse formats, such as SMPTE ST 2110 and NDI, while providing a cloud-based infrastructure that aligned perfectly with our vision. The flexibility TAG offered in deploying virtual instances on Amazon Web Services (AWS) was a key deciding factor.

From the outset, TAG impressed us with their responsiveness and understanding of our unique requirements. During the evaluation phase, the company worked closely with us to address initial concerns, ensuring a seamless transition to its platform.

TAG’s monitoring platform quickly became integral to our operations. We initially deployed 50 licenses, focusing on monitoring incoming feeds for our primary client, a major German telecom company. As our client base and operations expanded, so did our reliance on TAG. Today, we manage over 500 licenses, monitoring hundreds of streams with unmatched reliability and efficiency.

Monitoring in the Cloud
One standout feature has been TAG’s ability to centralize monitoring and visualization in the cloud. This capability has transformed our workflows, enabling us to operate remotely with minimal on-site requirements. For instance, operators can now monitor streams from anywhere, drastically reducing the need for complex physical setups.

TAG’s flexibility also extends to managing unique workflows. For Munich Media and MiTM, we developed a cloud-based solution where every signal crosses our system at least once. TAG’s platform allowed us to visualize, analyze, and alert operators of potential issues, ensuring efficiency in every part of the IP workflow.

Overall, the impact of TAG’s solution on our operations has been very positive because it grows with us: Whether monitoring 30 streams or 500, the system performs consistently, without bottlenecks. In addition, TAG’s cloud-based architecture enables rapid deployment and flexible remote operations—we can move from one production site to another seamlessly, using only monitors and an internet connection. It also provides operational efficiency with automated alerts and in-depth analysis allowing our operators to resolve issues quickly, minimizing downtime and improving service quality.

One noteworthy instance of TAG’s support came early in our partnership. A cultural difference in audio-channel configurations could have negatively impacted a critical live event. TAG’s team not only resolved the issue promptly but also provided detailed guidance to prevent future occurrences.

This level of dedication is just one of many examples of our close collaboration.

As the broadcast industry continues to evolve, we’re confident in our ability to adapt, innovate and lead. TAG solutions empower us to push boundaries, bringing flexibility, efficiency, and reliability to every project we undertake.

More information is available at tagvs.com.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas—12th Man Productions is the broadcast and production house for Texas A&M Athletics. We handle all in-venue video board productions for Texas A&M Athletics and as part of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), we are under contract with ESPN to provide and produce broadcasts of our games. With one of the largest football stadiums in the country and the largest in the SEC with over 100,000 fans, our responsibility to provide seamless productions is critical … and not just for football, as we produce 100-plus events a year for virtually every sport.

In my role as chief broadcast engineer, I oversee the technical side of live broadcasts, including the management of control rooms, equipment, and a team of 20 student engineers. At 12th Man Productions, we always try to push the boundaries when it comes to broadcast technology. One of the biggest shifts was our transition to an all-IP infrastructure, which began in 2018 when we integrated IP gateways between our venues and the central control room for video and audio transport. Fast forward to today, we’ve become a fully 2110 IP facility at our core, allowing us to scale, innovate, and increase efficiency across the board.

Pushing The Limits
Our first exposure to TAG Video Systems’ software-based IP monitoring solution came at the 2022 NAB Show, where we saw the possibilities of a system that was flexible, scalable, and able to process a range of signals. We immediately jumped at the chance to test it with a virtual instance on our existing hardware, as we were already heavily into virtualization.

We put TAG through its paces and found that, despite initial concerns, there was no noticeable latency compared to our baseband multiviewer. The system had the architecture we were looking for, was budget-friendly and was highly customizable. It was a no-brainer, and we deployed our system in June 2022.

Since that deployment, we’ve been pushing the limits of what TAG can do. Currently, our system features six MCMs running on Dell servers, controlled by the MCS software on a virtual machine. TAG is at the heart of our multiviewer system, handling 2110 and NDI sources for all four control rooms. As we’ve expanded, scaling the system has been seamless—we started with four MCMs and have since added two more, adapting as our needs have grown and as we realized what more we could do with TAG.

Transcoding NDI
One of those realizations came when we discovered TAG’s potential for transcoding IP signals. Initially deployed as a multiviewer, we soon realized we could transcode NDI sources into full-screen 2110 outputs. This has given us the flexibility to deploy NDI POV cameras at our sporting events, drastically reducing the complexity of our camera setups.

Now, instead of running multiple cables to each camera, a single Ethernet cable carries both power, video, and control with TAG handling the conversion to a 2110 source in our broadcast switcher. This same workflow has been applied to our graphics, where we have virtualized instances of Ross XPression that output NDI signals to TAG where it is converted to 2110 for all CGs used within our broadcasts.

The integration with Evertz DreamCatcher has also been a game-changer. Texas A&M was the first to adopt this integrated solution, which has proven invaluable for our production workflows. Timing is everything in our broadcasts, and TAG’s ability to overlay metadata from DreamCatcher has been critical. Our control-room staff now has access to timecodes, clip IDs, clip names and playlist names, all within the multiviewer, enhancing the precision and quality of our productions.

Another major highlight has been the support from TAG. Anytime I’ve reached out, the response has been swift and effective. The support team goes beyond troubleshooting—they also educate us further on the system. Every interaction with TAG has reaffirmed our decision to choose their solution, and if given the chance, I’d make the same choice again without hesitation.

More information is available here.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems, a major supplier of software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing and real-time visualization, said it has added several new members to its R&D team. 

TAG said the move reflects its deep commitment to developing and delivering precise solutions that keep customers ahead of the constantly evolving technology curve. 

The new R&D team members include a specialist in AI development and an expert in cloud-native applications. Others on the expanded team will focus on enhancing the user experience and ensuring customers optimize their TAG systems. 

“TAG Video Systems’ unwavering focus on customer satisfaction and innovation is reflected in the addition of these new team members,” Kevin Joyce, TAG’s Zer0 Friction officer, said. “By investing in top talent and expanding our team, we continue to strengthen the services we offer and enhance the customer experience. Please join us in welcoming Noa Pavel, Liad, Ella and Maxim to the TAG family. We look forward to their contributions and their participation in driving success for our customers worldwide.”

The new team members are as follows: 

• Noa Magrisso, AI Developer: Magrisso, a software and information systems engineer, has joined TAG as an AI developer, responsible for broadening the company’s AI capabilities. Magrisso, formerly an AI algorithm engineer at Intel, will ensure TAG’s platform incorporates the most cutting-edge AI technology available to maximize customers’ business potential and streamline their operational workflows.
• Pavel Rozentsvet, DevOps Engineer: Rozentsvet brings a significant skill set to TAG, encompassing specialization in cloud-native applications. He will collaborate with the Research & Development team to optimize processes, enhance efficiency and reduce development timelines. This investment in R&D underscores TAG's dedication to delivering innovative solutions that position customers at the forefront of industry advancements.
• Liad Bercovitch, Front-End Software Developer: TAG is ensuring customers experience seamless, intuitive interactions with all elements of the platform by appointing Bercovitch as a front-end software developer. Bercovitch will focus on enhancing the user experience of the TAG platform UI, improving the overall customer experience and ensuring continued customer satisfaction.
• Ella Maudy and Maxim Rybkin, QA Specialists: Rounding out the enhanced R&D team are Maudy and Rybkin, TAG’s newest QA Specialists. Maudy and Rybkin are responsible for ensuring each version of TAG's software releases are packed with new features, functionality, provide format support and work as planned. This attention to detail guarantees that TAG's customers experience the highest quality and can confidently expect the upgrades to function reliably and correctly.

TEL AVIV, Israel—TAG Video Systems will showcase new enhancements to its Realtime Media Performance platform during the 2024 NAB Show New York, Oct. 9-10, at the Javits Center in New York.

TAG will demonstrate the platform with capabilities designed to increase user confidence, maximize data utilization, simplify troubleshooting and improve efficiency. 

The enhancements include:

• QC Elements (Quality Control Elements), designed to enrich visualization and simplify troubleshooting. It enables many elements to be arranged on a multiviewer tile for a comprehensive view of critical technical data, giving engineers a built-in quality control station within the display. 

Engineers can tailor each tile with details about codecs, frame rates, resolutions, closed captions, audio channels and transport streams. The tool expedites the identification and analysis of technical issues, helping users achieve a high-level of IP workflow stability and ensure seamless quality of service at scale, the company said.

• Operator Console, an intuitive touch-panel console that provides a live, interactive view of the multiviewer output on any touch-controlled device. It brings a simplified, focused and intuitive approach to managing TAG multiviewers at any scale. Operators can effortlessly switch between layouts, modify tile content and isolate audio sources for verification. 

• Language Detection, an innovation that transforms how operators ensure quality and compliance across large-scale operations with multiple closed captions and language subtitles. The technology identifies the subtitles’ language and calculates and analyzes quality based on language-specific dictionaries. 

TAG will also show its Realtime Media Performance platform integrated with the Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) with advanced Quality of Service (QoS) tools to provide a comprehensive, real-time video quality assessment. This combination ensures objective quality assessments and technical performance metrics are continuously monitored, guaranteeing an exceptional viewer experience. 

The company’s new advanced user management (RBAC—Role-Based Access Control) functionality defines and assigns roles within an organization for strengthened security and reduced human error. Knowing that access is limited by specific outputs, sources or networks brings an additional measure of confidence to those managing multiple networks under the same TAG Media Control System (MCS).

TAG will also preview Group Lens, a function designed to simplify the monitoring and troubleshooting of massive media networks. Group Lens is an interactive visual tool that provides an at-a-glance overview of the entire network’s status on a single screen. 

See TAG Video Systems at 2024 NAB Show New York booth 659.

More information is available on the company’s website.

If you google “multiviewing,” a mere 847,000 search results pop up. TAG Video Systems is right up there, on the first page. Which is great. However, although TAG is known for its exceptional ultra-low latency multiviewer adaptable to every media workflow, multiviewing is only one small component of the TAG Realtime Media platform—a comprehensive toolset that manages and elevates media performance across operations at any scale, setting TAG in a class of its own. TAG’s unique differentiators enable broadcasters and media companies to unlock significant operational efficiency and flexibility, so we’ve picked a few, outlined below. If you’d like a more detailed description of all tools, features, functionalities, resources and integrations that TAG offers, just click on tagvs.com.

Content Matching

Content Matching is TAG’s unique and award-winning process that ensures content is delivered in real time to its intended destination without errors or discrepancies. Content Matching identifies potential issues and confirms signal integrity, leading to increased broadcaster confidence and a high-quality viewer experience.

Content Matching creates a unique fingerprint for video streams to match them across the entire media distribution path. It accurately identifies and correlates audio and video uniqueness regardless of the resolution, bitrate, or framerate, thus enabling a match between two or more points in the workflow. This technology notifies users when the first content inconsistency occurs allowing them to get to the root cause of problems faster and troubleshoot more efficiently. Workflow complexity is dramatically reduced, allowing operators to work more efficiently by reducing “eyes-on-glass” while ensuring consistent delivery of quality content.

Content Matching can be applied to the most requested applications including frame-accurate latency measurement, SCTE ad insertion, AV alignment and audio channel drift validation.

Integration of Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM)

TAG’s platform is designed to deliver an unparalleled viewer experience by combining advanced Quality of Experience (QoE) and Quality of Service (QoS) tools. Based on Content Matching Technology, TAG now supports straightforward, reference-based QoE measures like Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM), an industry-leading algorithm that mimics human visual perception to assess video quality in real time. SSIM is seamlessly integrated with TAG’s Content Matching technology allowing for precise comparisons between reference (e.g., source at acquisition) and other points along the workflow (e.g., before/after encoders/packagers). This standardized evaluation simplifies quality assurance across workflows, ensuring a consistent and high-quality viewer experience.

However, TAG’s commitment to quality goes beyond SSIM. The platform also includes comprehensive QoS features that monitor video and audio parameters, signal loss, jitter, latency, and compression artifacts. Together, these tools provide operators with a comprehensive view of stream quality, ensuring both visual and technical fidelity throughout the entire media workflow.

TAG Bridge

TAG Bridge solves two major problems. It helps reduce the bandwidth needed to deliver uncompressed video from the receiving device to a remote location for multiview generations, and it eliminates the need to process the same source multiple times.

This technology is designed to handle various transport methods, such as 2110 uncompressed video or compressed MPEG TS streams, and many others.

TAG’s Bridge removes the complexity of routing the same stream across multiple locations ensuring efficient resource use with minimal bandwidth and compute requirements. This proprietary technology enables an operator to receive a source once - including video, audio and metadata, analyze it for quality, compliance and errors, pre-scale it to the destination tile size and display it directly on any TAG system, anywhere, regardless of input source, size or format. Compute resources are drastically reduced, and a minimum amount of network bandwidth is consumed, freeing up capacity for the customer.

Managing HDR in Live Broadcasting

High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology is redefining the visual standards of television, offering unprecedented brightness, contrast, and color that dramatically enhance the viewing experience. Across Production, Playout or Distribution, multiple HDR formats are here to stay and co-exist for a while. All have different color volume characteristics, many formats include metadata, and SDR will be present in many places. All these need to be managed correctly end-to-end to ensure that the viewer’s TV makes the right choices in displaying them, and that they arrive with appropriate quality and accuracy. They may traverse many codecs and transports; they may incorporate multiple HDR formats in their composition and provide HDR and SDR versions for some time to come. Monitoring this complexity requires adaptive, flexible, and data-driven tools that provide a comprehensive view of all elements in real time, which can accommodate any combination of source characteristics and provide probing/monitoring /alarming, visualization and rich content data from network to essence in one solution.

TAG Video Systems empowers broadcasters with the tools they need to navigate the HDR transition without dependency on expensive, dedicated hardware. By enabling the integration of multiple HDR formats into a single HDR multiviewer mosaic, these solutions offer an accurate visualization of all sources regardless of type, full monitoring of all metadata and behavior. This allows broadcasters to ensure the highest quality standards while also exploring new opportunities for content monetization through enhanced viewer experiences.

Zero Friction® Licensing

TAG ‘s Zer0 Friction® is an agile licensing model that fits both CAPEX and OPEX budgets, unlocking a world of possibilities with every TAG functionality at your fingertips, in every application and workflow. Zer0 Friction allows dynamic sharing across functions, workflows, and locations maximizing efficiency and adaptability in real time. This level of flexibility ensures that customers can adapt quickly to changing requirements, using the same TAG license to visualize a production in one location today and monitor an OTT data point in a different location tomorrow.

Empowering Customers
TAG is known for its multiviewers, but that’s just a part of the TAG story. The TAG Realtime Media Platform empowers customers to adapt to the rapid changes in content delivery workflows while ensuring consistent quality and operational efficiency. TAG provides the tools to scale operations efficiently and adapt to new challenges. This article gives a summary of some of those tools, unique to TAG—but for more details visit tagvs.com.

TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2024 NAB Show New York?

PAUL SCHILLER: AI. Without a doubt. We see AI becoming more and more useful in many fields, including language engines, content analysis and image and data processing, which are all built on the same initial, basic tools, but with totally different hardware requirements. For data processing AI will analyze statistics and uncover problems. For image processing, it’s more than generating images, it’s also analyzing images.

At TAG, we are committed to maximizing our customers’ business potential and streamlining their operational workflows by incorporating the latest technology into our platform, and of course that includes AI. TAG is in the perfect position to optimize AI tools, and we’ve recently made a significant investment in R&D resources by adding Noa Magrisso, a dedicated AI Developer to the team. Noa has hit the ground running and is working on ways to broaden the company’s AI capabilities. This investment reflects our focus on innovation and ensuring TAG’s platform incorporates the most cutting-edge AI technology. Stay-tuned for updates.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

SCHILLER: TAG’s latest set of improvements reflect our mission to always provide customers with the tools that allow them to scale efficiently. At NAB Show NewYork we will be previewing our new advanced user management functionality that is structured to strengthen security and reduce human error. This user management component restricts, or permits, access to inputs, outputs, sources (or subsets of sources), and functionalities based on that person’s role in the workflow and the organization.

We will also be presenting a technology preview of Group Lens, an interactive visual tool that provides an at-a-glance overview of the entire network’s status, consolidating thousands of sources onto a single screen. A simple click on any group tile allows operators to effortlessly navigate through a structured hierarchy, filtering by various categories to pinpoint the exact source of the issue. This level of precision enables rapid, focused resolution, preventing minor glitches from escalating into major disruptions.

And we’ve also just introduced QC Elements (Quality Control Elements), a feature that enables a vast array of elements to be arranged on a tile for a comprehensive view of critical technical data, bringing engineers a built-in quality control station within the multiviewer display. Engineers can tailor the information presented on each tile, including details on codecs, frame rates, resolutions, closed captions, audio channels, transport streams and more, all of which will expedite the identification and analysis of technical issues, minimizing downtime and ensuring seamless content delivery.

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

SCHILLER: TAG really has only one product, our Realtime Media Performance platform, and it is consistently being enhanced with new features, functionalities, and enriched with partner integrations and support for emerging formats and protocols. Our mission is to provide customers with tools that give them the insight they need to intelligently grow their business by scaling efficiently as needs evolve, operate with the least amount of complexity possible, and keep them ahead of the pace of technology.

One of our major defining differentiators from any other monitoring and visualization solution is our Zer0 Friction customer experience. Zer0 Friction is an agile licensing model that fits both CAPEX and OPEX budgets and includes all TAG functionalities, in every application and workflow. With Zer0 Friction customers always have access to maximum asset utilization because licenses can be shared dynamically between functionalities, workflows and locations based on evolving needs. This level of flexibility ensures that customers can adapt quickly to changing requirements, using the same TAG license to visualize a production in one location today and monitor an OTT data point in a different location tomorrow.

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

SCHILLER: Trade shows are an opportunity to showcase our new technology to a live audience, gather responses and suggestions so we can finetune each feature and functionality according to market reactions. It also gives me, personally, an opportunity to check out other technology developments in the industry, so I’m reassured that TAG is on the right track with emerging trends. NAB Show New York, in particular, is a great show because it is in Manhattan, and convenient for the New York broadcast community to visit. I get to meet up with friends, colleagues, customers and prospects, all under one roof.

NEW YORK—STN, a major provider of content distribution services, has selected TAG Video Systems' Realtime Media Platform to ensure the performance and quality of services over its IP networks.

The agreement builds on the two company’s previous work together and is part of STN’s decision to move away from traditional SDI infrastructure and create a more innovative and agile infrastructure. To guarantee the success of this transition, STN turned to TAG, a trusted partner of IKOMG for over a decade and their proven Realtime Media Platform. 

The Realtime Media platform allows STN to probe, monitor, and visualize feeds in the playout and delivery environment, providing them with complete control and confidence in their new IP-based operations.

"We are excited to partner with TAG Video Systems in our transition to an all-IP infrastructure. The solution that TAG Video Systems provides will be more sufficient in all aspects then conventional SDI based monitoring systems." added Aleksander Šibila, vice president of engineering, STN. "TAG's Realtime Media Platform gives us the confidence and tools we need to ensure seamless content delivery for our customers. Their expertise and proven technology make them the ideal partner for this important step forward."

"We are thrilled to support STN in their journey towards a fully IP-based workflow," said Adi Itzhaki, vice president EMEA, TAG Video Systems. "Our Realtime Media Platform is designed to empower broadcasters with unparalleled visibility and control over their media operations. By leveraging our solution, STN can optimize their resources, streamline their teams, and ensure the highest quality of service for their customers." STN's decision to adopt TAG's technology showcases their commitment to innovation and staying at the forefront of the industry. With TAG's Realtime Media Platform, STN is well-positioned for continued success in the ever-evolving media landscape.

For more information, please https://tagvs.com. 

TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2024 NAB Show?

MICHAEL DEMB: Broadcast continues its fast-paced evolution from traditional delivery to streaming, with the shift to IP workflows in production and playout picking up speed. All that and more is driving our industry toward technologies that facilitate remote operations, interoperability, agility, sustainability cost-efficiency and scalability. These goals are achieved by using innovation and tools, such as AI, automation, and of course – the cloud. Cloud-based solutions unlock greater performance, increase content availability, and decrease operational costs through improved resource allocation and streamlined workflows. But the migration to the cloud comes with its own set of challenges, which include engaging personnel with appropriate experience, acquiring the proper resources and tools to ensure a smooth migration, re-architecting existing applications for a cloud environment, and, critically important – providing data security.

At NAB Show we expect to see vendors presenting built-in capabilities that optimize on-prem, cloud or hybrid workflows aimed at reducing operational costs and the risks inherent in our changing industry.

In addition to cloud migration, the move toward IP workflows further enhances the agility of broadcast companies, enabling them to respond quickly to changing market demands and reach wider audiences. Look for technologies that interoperate between numerous resources and vendors seamlessly and integrate with business intelligence and analytics tools such as open-source solutions to enable the well-informed decisions needed to build improved business strategies. Beyond interoperability between best-of-breed solutions, media companies will require the technology flexibility to enable new business models, such as FAST, to be able to align their businesses with new demands.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

DEMB: At the 2024 NAB Show, visitors to TAG's booth can explore the company's powerful monitoring and visualization capabilities. They'll see how TAG efficiently monitors operations of any size and delivers high-quality results at scale across various media workflows, whether in the cloud or on the ground. TAG will showcase solutions for real-time video visualization, data collection and more. Visitors can also learn about TAG's new technology developments and partner integrations.

TAG will demonstrate, in real time, how custom dashboards can be easily built and customized with well-known open toolsets like ElasticSearch, Kibana and Grafana to address any level of detail and show users how they can maximize the full extent of their data to gain invaluable insight from TAG’s Realtime Media Platform.

For the first time at a major industry event, TAG will demonstrate its recent integration with Amagi’s cloud solutions that highlight monitoring by exception capabilities and leverage TAG’s easy-to-use APIs. NAB Show attendees will also see support for TAG’s platform integrated into Skyline’s Dataminer media management platform for increased end-to-end visibility, automation and user control.

We will also preview a new Operator Interface that dramatically simplifies the operation teams’ access to TAG’s pre-defined functionalities and allows more intuitive control of the features required for day-to-day operation.

In addition, TAG will demonstrate its new support of advanced QoE measurement and new automatic tools to efficiently monitor subtitles, further enabling our customers to deliver incredible quality at scale.

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

DEMB: TAG’s development emphasis is on simplifying the user experience and enabling media companies to maintain agility while delivering incredible quality. The new Operator Interface removes complexity from the operations environment by working with the direct view of the video output that they are already accustomed to seeing. There is no need for a mouse because a simple and intuitive touch interface precisely mirrors the multiviewer. In addition, operators don’t need all the configuration capabilities, only pre-defined customizable ones that align with their operational needs. TAG’s interface will provide that customization while maintaining operation simplicity as a top value.

The real technology difference, though, is the extent of capabilities, supported formats and variety of uses that are included in the same platform and are available to all our users thanks to our Zer0 Friction methodology. Zer0 Friction guarantees customers take full advantage of their TAG licenses and maximize their resources, creating more efficient operations.

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

DEMB: NAB Show is an event where people from the broadcast industry come together to see new ideas and technologies from various vendors. They can compare and evaluate these technologies to find the best ones to improve the quality of their viewers' experience and service. It's a great opportunity for colleagues, friends and customers to meet and learn from each other.

For the company, NAB Show is an opportunity to present TAG’s latest and greatest additions to our already outstanding platform. It gives us the chance to meet with customers, and prospects from all corners of the globe to show them the ‘next big thing’ in monitoring, visualization and data insight. With all due respect to Zoom and Teams, there really is no substitute for face-to-face contact.

Personally, for me NAB Show is more than working the booth, or an excuse to see old friends and colleagues. It gives me the opportunity to see emerging technologies and witness the evolving history of entertainment year after year.

In an era where change is the only constant in the media and entertainment landscape, standing still is equivalent to stepping back. Broadcasters and media companies don’t have the luxury of “wait and see;” they’ll be left in the dust. They must be agile and prepared for every geographical, technical, financial or operational transformation their viewers or the industry can throw at them. 

As the media industry evolves, the challenge lies in consistently delivering high-quality content. Solutions today need flexibility built in to purchase and operation models, enabling workflows to elevate and adapt content delivery systems efficiently. These software-based tools are key in adapting to industry shifts while ensuring outputs remain reliable and viewers get an unbeatable quality of experience.

Simplifying Complexity in IP Workflows  

The transition to IP-based workflows represents a significant leap forward but comes with a complexity that can be daunting. How can business models help reduce this complexity that is rooted in the technology itself? Media companies need comprehensive tools that span across their operations and can handle different requirements whether it is handling a wide variety of media formats and integrations or tackling different methods and objectives. Solutions today need to offer fluidity and allow media companies to achieve more with a single product while maintaining agility and the ability to adapt.

TAG’s Zero Friction approach makes all features and functionalities of the TAG realtime media platform available through a single, flexible license that provides the ability to monitor, visualize, record, process and perform deep analytics in real-time across various platforms and formats without the constraints of specific hardware, location or purpose. Everything required to deliver incredible quality without compromise is embodied within each license of this single platform. This approach breaks through traditional boundaries, allowing for licenses to be moved or shared along with a more fluid and adaptable workflow, and it reflects TAG's commitment to simplifying complexities inherent in IP workflows.

Adapting to Rapid Industry Changes 

In a domain driven by relentless innovation, 100% software hardware-agnostic solutions are required. Software provides an agile and scalable framework that enables media operations to keep pace with quick and constant change. Operationally, teams are always equipped with the latest tools and capabilities to effortlessly maintain quality based on the operation's needs at any point in time.

 Beyond regular upgrades enabled by software, better infrastructures are introduced as media companies choose software solutions that can easily switch to better hardware, newer cloud instances or flawless hybrid environments based on the evolving needs of the business. TAG’s Zero Friction approach enables users to enjoy new software developments and functionalities with no additional charges and seamlessly transition from on-prem to cloud and hybrid environments, all within the same platform, interface and license.

Business Enablement: Focusing on Core Business Goals  

Aligning the media workflow to business objectives is a challenging task, as technical and resource constraints create a path full of compromises. Vendors need to provide not only frictionless, comprehensive solutions, but also smart ones that enable media operations to achieve more within their limitations. Being a resource-heavy industry, enabling lighter, optimized and more sustainable media workflows is no longer optional.

TAG’s Zero Friction business model allows operations to match cost to their actual consumption and achieve 100% efficiency. Being able to use the platform’s variety of functionalities within the same license, share licenses between teams and locations and purchase in Capex or Opex, enables significant resource savings without compromising quality at any scale. Additionally, being able to optimize workflows based on TAG-collected data and insight allows media operations to make informed decisions about current and future changes. 

Wrapping Up 

Adopting Zero Friction® is about leading the way in a changing media landscape. This approach isn't just about choosing a licensing option; it's about ensuring that you can consistently deliver quality content and stay ahead of the pace of evolving content delivery workflows. It's about giving you the tools to scale your operations efficiently and adapt to new challenges. With Zero Friction®, you're ready for what's happening now and what comes next, driving your progress toward tangible results and sustained success. 

Schedule a meeting with TAG at NAB. 

About TAG Video Systems

TAG Video Systems is the global leader in software-based integrated IP probing, monitoring, visualization and analytics solutions. TAG enables broadcasters, content creators, and service providers to streamline operations, cut through the complexity of IP media workflows, and keep infrastructures ahead of shifting technology and demand with Zero Friction® agility. The TAG platform empowers users with innovative toolsets to ensure video quality, improve overall efficiency across all media workflows, and provides invaluable business and operational insights.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems has announced plans to show what the company is calling its “most far-reaching capabilities to date” during the 2024 NAB Show. 

During the show, TAG’s booth at W1655 will feature a comprehensive monitor wall that will showcase efficient, agile, and innovative solutions for all major media workflows. 

Highlights include new partner integrations, new intelligent language detection technology, added support for QoE measurements, an end-to-end HDR workflow, and a preview of an intuitive touch panel operator interface that cuts through the complexity of configuring and operating a system. These new technologies will enable TAG users to deliver incredible quality at scale with even more intuitive, automated, and accurate tools, the company said. 

NAB visitors to TAG’s Booth will also experience an interactive deep dive into the far-reaching potential of the Company’s monitoring and visualization capabilities. TAG will demonstrate, in real time, how dashboards can be easily built and customized with well-known open toolsets like Kibana, Grafana, and Kafka to address any level of detail. It will also show how users can maximize the full extent of their data and gain invaluable insight from TAG’s Realtime Media Platform, the company said. 

The company also reported that its end-to-end HDR workflow capabilities already extend beyond standard HDR visualization. During the show, it will be showing HDR up-conversion and down-conversion to facilitate combined SDR and HDR workflows. This increase in functionality supports deep real-time HDR end-to-end metadata monitoring providing users with a higher level of agility to achieve incredible HDR quality.

The company will also be showing a number of integrations with best-of-breed technology partners, including: 

• Amagi - TAG’s recent partnership with Amagi delivers more accurate and effective monitoring through TAG’s advanced all-software and cloud native technology. This integration, shown at a major industry event for the first time, implements TAG’s monitoring by exception capabilities and leverages its easy-to-use APIs to efficiently monitor and control a substantial number of channels enhancing the reliability of Amagi’s FAST and broadcast streams.
• Dataminer – NAB attendees will also see a demonstration that seamlessly incorporates support for TAG’s platform into Skyline’s Dataminer media management platform. This integration simplifies deployment and configuration and increases end-to-end visibility, automation, and user control of large-scale TAG installations. Operators benefit from simultaneous insight into the status of their infrastructure from Dataminer, along with insight into the health of their content and live streams from TAG.

Brand new for NAB 2024 is TAG’s operator interface preview. This new intuitive touch panel interface displays the live multiviewer output as an interactive minimized version on any touch-controlled device. Operators no longer need to waste valuable time searching menus but can access pre-defined, customizable configuration and operational functionality with just a tap on the mosaic, dramatically removing overall complexity and simplifying day-to-day tasks, the company reported. 

In this interface preview, operators will be able to instantly switch between multiple layouts on the entire multiviewer, or just one mosaic, should a change of event, operation or focus occur. Additionally, the operator can switch the content of a tile to a different source, a different channel, or a different stream by simply clicking on the tile. That control extends to audio, allowing the user to select one specific source and play its audio to verify a match, the company said. 

Based on TAG’s unique Content Matching Technology, the company now supports straightforward, perception based QoE measures like Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM). TAG users will be able to numerically compare the video quality before and after the encoder or between any two points in the workflow, and evaluate even the most complex, high-noise levels video based on the SSIM smart algorithm.

In addition it will show automatic subtitles quality monitoring at scale with TAG language detection.

This new TAG technology preview not only identifies the subtitles language but also calculates its quality with dictionary-defined precision. Users will be able to see the caption's language and accuracy based on the relevant language dictionary in percentages, and this will allow them to accurately evaluate quality and compliance without needing to look at the actual subtitles, reducing overall eyes-on-glass.

For more information, please visit https://tagvs.com.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems, a provider of software-based IP end-to-end monitoring, deep probing, logging, and real time visualization, has announced several new additions to its sales and technical teams. 

Robert Erickson has been promoted as TAG’s new Vice President of Sales Americas. Formerly vice president of live production & sports, Erickson has 25 years of experience. Mark Davis is now the Director of Sales – Americas. In his new role, Davis will focus on simplifying the growing complexities of customer workflows, ensuring they fully utilize TAG’s capabilities to enhance their operations. 

Richard Harvey has been promoted to Customer Success Team Lead – Americas and will ensure seamless onboarding and ongoing support for TAG customers. Additionally, TAG welcomes Viktor Rzesanke as a Technical Application Specialist. Rzesanke will be responsible for integrating TAG’s solutions into diverse broadcasting environments to not only enhance but simplify customers’ workflows and facilitate seamless interoperability and customization, the company said. 

NEW YORK—Amagi will add TAG Video Systems’ advanced monitoring platform to its suite of cloud SaaS offerings bringing monitoring capabilities to content owners publishing on FAST channels as well as those deploying on broadcast platforms.

TAG’s solution seamlessly integrates into Amagi cloud and SaaS technologies, expanding their scope of operations with support for new delivery protocols, enabling new business models and enriching Quality of Service (QoS) for customers, TAG said.

"Our collaboration with Amagi demonstrates the adaptability of the TAG platform, easily integrating sophisticated monitoring capabilities into a wide scope of formats and delivery protocols,” said Ziv Mor, TAG chief growth officer. “We're confident that our combined efforts will give Amagi’s customers the tools they need to keep up with the industry’s most advanced technologies, keep them ahead of the competition and drive their business strategies."

The initial launch of the integration leverages TAG’s APIs to allow Amagi to monitor a large number of streams for key customers, TAG said.

"We are excited to collaborate with TAG Video Systems, a true industry leader known for its excellence in real-time media performance monitoring,” said Srinivasan KA, Amagi co-founder and chief revenue officer. “This partnership aligns perfectly with our commitment to delivering the highest level of service to our customers. TAG’s advanced all-software and cloud native technology will allow us to offer our clients more accurate and reliable services. and exceed their expectations."

TAG and Amagi are poised to explore deeper integrations and develop solutions for the media industry, TAG said.

More information is available on the TAG website.

TEL AVIV—TAG Video Systems has announced that it is presenting its award-winning Content Matching technology at NAB Show New York. During the show TAG will also be demonstrating integration with Beamr’s 5 HEVC encoder, and showcasing its comprehensive toolset designed to maximize user’s own data to develop new, or improve, business opportunities. 

These latest advances are designed to provide a quicker, clearer, more complete picture of content health and status, add another layer of confidence for users, and enable content owners and broadcasters to offer a higher-quality viewer experience with full HDR visualization, the company reported. 

Visitors to NAB Show New York will see TAG’s Content Matching in action driven by its unique fingerprinting mechanism that identifies and detects similar content across two different streams regardless of resolution, bitrate, or framerate, to ensure correct and uninterrupted delivery. This new technology dramatically reduces workflow complexity and eyes-on-glass and enables media companies to deliver quality content with fewer resources and more confidence. 

TAG will also highlight its technical collaboration with Beamr that integrates the Beamr 5 HEVC encoder into TAG’s Realtime Media Performance platform. The solution optimizes the bandwidth required to transport UHD and supports end-to-end High Dynamic Range (HDR) to deliver a stunning viewer experience with full HDR visualization. 

In addition, during the NAB Show New York, TAG will demonstrate how easily custom dashboards and visualizations can be created to suit each user’s exact requirements.  

By combining TAG’s Multichannel Monitoring (MCM) system’s deep probing and analysis capabilities with the Company’s MCS data aggregation and management toolset, dashboard visualizations can be easily built with well-known open toolsets like Kibana, Grafana and Kafka to address any level of detail in any media workflow. Representative visualizations for various workflows and applications will showcase the depth and flexibility of displays enabled by the MCS, including application-specific functions such as MPEG-TS and OTT delivery, audio analysis, SCTE Triggers and more, the company said. 

For more information, please visit https://tagvs.com .

NEW YORK—FAST channel technology provider Amagi has announced a strategic alliance with TAG Video Systems to use TAG’s software-based, IP-native monitoring solutions to monitor FAST services provided by Amagi. 

"Channel monitoring is a cornerstone of successful broadcasting in today's digital age," stated Baskar Subramanian, CEO and Co-Founder, Amagi. "By integrating TAG Video Systems' advanced functionalities—from basic audio and video alerts and email notifications to comprehensive monitoring of more than 500 different possible error points and generation of advanced dashboards—we are significantly augmenting our existing monitoring capabilities. This partnership ensures that we not only monitor but also seamlessly control over 2,100 live 24x7 channels, enhancing the reliability of our FAST and broadcast streams."

Ziv Mor, Chief Growth Officer at TAG Video Systems, commented: "Our collaboration with Amagi marks a significant milestone in TAG's mission to integrate our industry-leading solutions across all broadcast applications. With the rapid growth of FAST digital linear services, this partnership highlights the adaptability and agility of the TAG Realtime Media Performance platform. We are confident that our combined efforts will empower Amagi and its customers to stay at the forefront of the industry transformation, leveraging advanced technologies to drive their business strategies. Amagi's extensive reach, combined with our innovative tools, will provide customers with an unmatched experience."

In addition to channel monitoring enhancements, Amagi will also integrate TAG's product capabilities into its suite of SaaS offerings, ensuring “that clients receive an all-encompassing solution tailored for modern broadcasting challenges,” the company said.

Subramanian further added: "The growth and value of live digital linear channels are undeniable. As these channels grow their reach, the demand from our clients to monitor and control these burgeoning revenue streams has intensified. TAG's cutting-edge products perfectly address this need, ensuring our clients remain at the pinnacle of digital broadcasting."

Amagi's global clients include ABS-CBN, AccuWeather, A+E Networks UK, beIN Sports, Cineverse, Cox Media Group, Crackle Plus, Fremantle, Gannett, Gusto TV, NBCUniversal, PAC-12, Tastemade and The Roku Channel, among others.

For more information about Amagi and its streaming TV solutions, visit www.amagi.com.

TEL AVIV, Israel—TAG Video Systems and Beamr Imaging have formed a technology partnership that will see TAG integrating the Beamr 5 HEVC encoder into its Realtime Media Performance platform.

The joint effort offers TAG users worldwide a workflow that optimizes the bandwidth required to transport UHD. It also provides them with support for end-to-end High Dynamic Range (HDR) content delivery, TAG said.

"Partnering with TAG, an industry leader in IP workflow monitoring and analytics, underscores the strength and innovation of our patented video compression technology," said Beamr CEO Sharon Carmel. "With Beamr's consistent achievement of up to 30% savings across varied content and support for key codecs like AVC and HEVC, this collaboration sets a new benchmark for video encoding, optimization and analysis, enhancing both our capabilities in delivering exceptional value to the industry."

By incorporating Beamr 5 HEVC encoder into TAG’s Realtime Media Performance platform, users benefit from the visual experience that comes from comprehensive integrated support for HDR and the elevated video quality of UHD and HDR without requiring additional, costly bandwidth, it said.

“TAG always seeks to provide our customers with tools to drive their business operations to the next level and solutions that maximize their resources and operating budgets,” said Kevin Joyce, TAG’s Zero Friction Officer. “Our partnership with Beamr fits perfectly into this strategy. We can now offer a better, more efficient way to get our customers to an end-to-end HDR workflow which also leads to expanded TAG services such as more visually vibrant Under Monitor Displays (UMDs) and alarms. This collaboration opens doors for greater, more inventive support and we’re delighted to do it with Beamr.”

More information is available on the TAG Video Systems and Beamr websites.

News of the death of TAG Video Systems’ chief strategy and cloud officer Peter Wharton has prompted an outpouring of condolences and laudatory comments about his technical contributions to the industry.

“A star in our skies has gone supernova, our beloved friend Peter Wharton has passed on,” noted Paul Briscoe, chief architect at TAG Video Systems in a lengthy LinkedIn post. “I've had the incredible pleasure and privilege of knowing Peter initially through our varied SMPTE work over many years, and most recently working shoulder-to-shoulder with him in our roles at TAG. Peter was an amazing friend, generous, thoughtful and kind with a huge heart. He could be as objective or subjective as a situation called for, was persnickety on demand and always brought an enlightening and thought-provoking point of view to any conversation.”

“I miss him terribly,” Briscoe added, “but he succeeded in leaving a big mark on me, on the industry and on everyone he knew. It's this legacy that we carry with us, and I will forever use the `what would Peter do’ test to better understand things.”

Dozens of other comments on his career and his contributions to the industry can be viewed here. 

Wharton long and illustrious career included being named chief strategy and cloud officer of TAG in July of 2020 and being extremely active in SMPTE for many years. 

He was vice president of membership at SMPTE between Dec. 2017 and Dec. 2020 and produced SMPTE’s  "Bits By The Bay" Technical Conference with his SMPTE colleagues for the Washington D.C. Section for more than 20 years. 

He was also Secretary/Treasurer at SMPTE between 2013 and 2017 and was Governor, Eastern Region for SMPTE in 2013. 

Many more highlights from his career are available here. 

Wharton died on Tuesday, August 11 from cancer. 

TV Tech will post more information on Wharton’s passing as we get it. 

A modern studio facility cannot function without a multiviewer, a device and product function that has come into its own in the past 20 years. Attempting to display today’s plethora of control room signals on individual monitors the old-fashioned way is unthinkable—only a properly configured multiviewer system can handle the task.

Multiviewers and large-screen displays are so economical and flexible that multiviewer technology is now often built into switchers. This makes assembling a simple control room faster than it was in the individual displays.

The twist today is that more signal types than ever are flowing through control rooms, and these disparate signals need to be displayed via the multiviewer system. Live video from cellphones? TikTok feeds? Drone shots? UHD? HDR? Every type of signal using every type of encoding and compression needs to be displayed.

“The requirements to handle these mixed signals are systemic—facilities need to be able to ingest, produce, transform, playout, and monitor signals that might originate in any of these formats,” said John Mailhot, CTO and director of infrastructure product management for Imagine Communications. “We approach this mix of signal types from a system design perspective, using intelligence in the broadcast control system to dynamically allocate transformation paths that conform the selected source to the requirements of the destination. This approach provides the most flexible workflow, as well as the best economics.” 

Every Imaginable Signal
In other words, making every multiviewer input capable of handling every imaginable type of signal gets unwieldy and expensive. There is a better way.

In anticipation of this growing trend towards mixed-format environments, Lawo’s HOME Multiviewer natively supports SMPTE ST2110, NDI, SRT, JPEG XS, H.265 and H.264, according to John Carter, senior product manager for media infrastructure at Lawo.

“Currently, each instance handles one of these formats,” he said. “For mixed sources and destinations involving ST2110, NDI and SRT streams, users have the option of inserting a HOME Stream Transcoder app before the Multiviewer to convert, say, SRT streams to ST2110 if this is the desirable format for a multiviewer head. This transcoding flexibility works in all directions and for all formats supported by the HOME Multiviewer app.”

Some multiviewer solutions leverage cloud computing to lower in-house energy and space demands.

“Evertz ev670-X30 hardware provides high-density signal monitoring for up to 64 3G ST2110 inputs with full audio, ancillary data and video monitoring. This uses less RU space, less power and less cooling,” said Ketan Patel, product manager for multiview systems at Evertz. 

“Evertz also provides a COTS-based sVIP product that allows compressed and uncompressed signal monitoring at high density, which can be deployed on an x86 platform with an accelerated PCI card. Evertz also offers cVIP, which is a cloud-based monitoring and visualization product that can be deployed in any public or private cloud, to allow signal monitoring of NDI, MPEG-2, H.264, H.265 and JPEG2000.”

What if There’s an Error?
A multiviewer system is, by necessity, filled with a variety of images, most of which are in some state of motion. With all that on-screen activity, it can be easy to miss if one of the signals disappears or gets scrambled in some fashion. 

Cobalt Digital has multiviewer options that help you keep track of dropouts, errors and loss-of-signal, said Ciro Noronha, CTO of Cobalt Digital. Noronha added that the company’s multiviewers can be configured with a range of options that include text overlays for arbitrary text, timecode, signal resolution, and even closed captioning. The systems can also add audio bars, a built-in router to simplify configuration, flexible inputs that can mix-and-match resolutions and frame rates, and tally insertion to indicate on-air signals or other status information.

“Cobalt’s baseband multiviewers are offered in the openGear form factor, so that they can be easily integrated with other devices in the same chassis, and benefit from the inherent openGear features such as hot-swappable cards, dual redundant hot-swappable power supplies, and the DashBoard control system,” Noronha said. “This flexibility is very important, since it allows the multiviewer to adapt to virtually any requirement.”

At the IBC Show next month, Cobalt will introduce its Ultra Blue multiviewer, with support for the more common compressed formats, with plans to add SMPTE ST 2110 inputs as well as other formats such as NDI in the future.

TAG Video Systems IP-based multiviewer line can be deployed with either a private or public cloud provider, such as AWS or Google Cloud. Through its RESTful API, the TAG Realtime Media Performance platform can be automated and integrated with third-party solutions and software-defined networking (SDN) controllers.

Only Pay for What You Need
With a cloud architecture, you can have nearly unlimited inputs. So how do you get only what you need? 

“You only pay for input licenses and have full access to all the product’s monitoring, probing, and display features,” said Robert Erickson, vice president for live production & sports at TAG Video Systems. “This means you can use any supported signal feed, resolution, compression, or transport format without worrying about paying for additional feature sets.”

Which raises the point: Should you consider a hardware-based multiviewer or software-based system? A lot depends on the complexity of your control room and the signals you deal with. A big-city broadcaster or a large sports arena will
have different needs than a cable distribution center.

Manufacturers have their own ideas.

“Modern multiviewers should firstly be software-based to provide running in any environment,” said Eric Otto, CEO of Mediaproxy. “They should also provide support for all common broadcast source formats, including access to remote sources (IP, TSoIP, NDI, HLS) as well as local sources (SDI, ST 2110).”

Scaling in Size
If you run a smaller system, you don’t have the needs of a big arena, and there are solutions that make sense for your needs.

“Our Smart Display Module multiviewers use a small board that slots directly into an SDM-capable display,” said Thomas Tang, president of Apantac. “These SDM boards turn a standard display into a monitor with an embedded multiviewer.”  

SDM is an Intel standard, and it can support SDI, 12G SDI, NDI and other video formats.

Apantac makes a range of multiviewers from small to large. At the top of the line is the T# system. “The T# is our flagship multiviewer line, which supports up to 128 inputs and 16 outputs, as well as supporting many different input formats that can be mixed and matched in the same frame,” Tang said. “These formats include 12G, 3G, HD, SD-SDI, CVBS, HDMI 1.4, HDMI 2.0, H.264, and most recently NDI. Customers can freely mix and match with the formats they need, and any inputs can go to any outputs.”

Multiviewers are clearly the better way of monitoring video in control rooms. The benefits of multiviewers were so obvious and powerful that some big old-line manufacturers of video monitors rapidly disappeared from the industry. Anyone remember Conrac?

There are multiviewer solutions out there for any size and need, so plan what you need carefully. Of course, the display you choose is an important part of the multiviewer system, so plan to get one that works properly with your system.

SINGAPORE—IP network transport solution provider Caton Technology has announced a partnership with TAG Video Systems that makes TAG’s monitoring solutions available through the Caton Cloud Alliance, a program that encourages third parties to add value and functionality to live transmissions by tightly integrating with Caton Cloud via its APIs.

Caton will demonstrate how the TAG Video Systems multiviewers can be integrated to monitor audio and video quality at the destination, on stand 1.F36 at IBC 2023, RAI Amsterdam (September, 15 to 18).

Caton provides the Media XStream video transport service to broadcasters and users that includes connectivity through the Caton Cloud using AI-based intelligent routing, which provides unparalleled reliability of six nines or better.

As part of the service, Caton provides full visibility of the network metrics so engineers can see the paths and the capacities used. The new partnership with TAG will enhance those monitoring capabilities by offering a flexible multiviewer solution that can accept signals from multiple points and is cloud-native, Canton reported. 

It will also incorporate the new TAG Content Matching Technology, which provides a means of comparing any point in the workflow against a user-defined reference. The supervising engineer can see at a glance the audio and video quality at the receiver and be notified of any issues in the transmission, the companies said.

“With Caton Cloud, our customers can call up the highest quality transmission, from anywhere to anywhere, using the public internet,” said Michael Yang, senior vice president at Caton Technology. “We extend our services using published APIs, and through the Caton Cloud Alliance we make it very easy to integrate additional services upstream and downstream. Perceived signal quality is obviously of vital importance to our users, which is why we welcome TAG Video Systems as our first technology partner.”

“We have a comprehensive suite of solutions for monitoring, probing and data driven analytics, which further inform the visual and audible monitoring through our multiviewer displays and system UI,” added Michael Demb, vice president of product strategy at TAG Video Systems. “It is a natural fit for Caton and its transformational approach to IP content delivery, and we look forward to continuing collaboration and more business success.”

Caton Technology and TAG Video Systems are already working with broadcasters and content owners on implementing video and audio monitoring alongside network monitoring, as part of the service-based Media XStream offering. For more information visit catontechnology.com

TEL AVIV, Israel—TAG Video Systems will introduce to the European market an enriched version of its Realtime Media Performance monitoring and visualization platform during IBC 2023, Sept. 15-18, at the RAI Amsterdam.

Among the enhancements are elevated integration with Skyline Communications DataMiner for concentrated content insights and management capabilities, the company said.

The company will also make the official European debut of its Content Matching technology that automatically and accurately identifies and compares the content throughout the workflow, which gives users of the platform another layer of confidence. The company will show these new capabilities and display of dashboard visualizations that it’s incorporated into its Media Control System (MCS), it said. 

The heightened integration with Skyline Communications DataMiner adds a robust level of automation, control and orchestration to TAG’s MCS, a monitoring control and data aggregation engine. MCS enables media companies and content owners to manage monitoring for any scale and get the most out of monitoring data with advanced tools to visualize data and glean operational insights, the company said.

Seamlessly adding support for TAG’s MCS to Skyline DataMiner surfaces valuable media health insights and management capabilities on DataMiner’s dashboard and apps. Alarms from both solutions are visualized on the TAG advanced multiviewer display, it said.

TAG’s Content Matching technology is an intelligently engineered process that ensures content is delivered in real time to its intended destination without any errors or discrepancies. It helps identify potential issues and confirms signal integrity leading to increased broadcaster confidence and a high-quality viewer experience.

Content Matching detects similar content across two different streams to ensure correct and uninterrupted delivery. This is done by creating a unique fingerprint for each video frame and audio envelope and matching them across the entire media distribution path against a user-defined reference point. The technology reduces workflow complexity and eyes-on-glass and enables media companies to deliver quality content with fewer resources and more confidence, it said.

See TAG Video Systems at IBC 2023 Stand 1.C15.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—swXtch.io has announced that it will be working with several leading broadcast and IT brands at NAB Show 2023 to demonstrate five use cases showing how customers can quickly and efficiently realize the many business benefits that come with moving broadcast streams to the cloud.

swXtch.io and its cloudSwXtch platform will be featured in three booths (Microsoft, Evertz and TAG Video Systems), where representatives will demonstrate how cloudSwXtch enables such enterprise broadcast workflows as: 

• Channel Assembly and Distribution
• Network Path Redundancy
• Live Production with Precision Time Protocol (PTP)
• Remote Production Collaboration
• Cloud-Path Optimization with Multicast

“We are excited to show NAB attendees how they can use cloudSwXtch to quickly experience the many benefits that come with moving to the cloud,” said Brent Yates, CEO of swXtch.io. “These use-case demonstrations will show how businesses can efficiently manage large volumes of media workflows in ground-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud applications using mission-critical applications running in the cloud.”

Available on leading cloud platforms, including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and AWS, cloudSwXtch deploys as a virtual machine with functional and performance parity to bare metal networks. Customers can easily add advanced features to support enterprise broadcast applications. This includes multicast, uncompressed video distribution, dynamic ground-to-cloud bridging, SMPTE 2022-7 hitless merge, global mesh networking, protocol fanout, and more without software code changes on the media application. 

The demos include: 

• swXtch.io at the Microsoft booth (W1259). cloudSwXtch will participate in a multi-vendor demonstration with Cinnafilm, Drastic Technology, and Evertz. The demo will show how the protocol fanout capability of cloudSwXtch can bridge on-premises infrastructure with cloud platforms for live streams and allow cloud endpoints to dynamically request on-prem content. Cinnafilm’s Tachyon Live is integrated within the cloudSwXtch platform enabling live stream standards conversion, such as motion compensated frame rate conversion and up/down/cross conversion in the cloud.  swXtch.io will also show PTP clock synchronization, expanded management and monitoring capabilities for all cloud production workflows. Specifically, integrated PTP capabilities will provide the accurate timing for live switching and video/audio synchronization demanded by live production and playout applications.   
• swXtch.io at the Evertz booth (N2225). swXtch.io will demonstrate how media content creators can access the same features, systems, and processes in the cloud that a dedicated on-prem infrastructure might provide. The demo will highlight cloudSwXtch’s new ground-to-cloud, or “dynamic bridging,” concept for PTP distribution in the cloud, enabling creation of world-class content anywhere there is access to the cloud. With swXtch.io, Evertz is showing the ability to extend PTP (SMPTE ST 2059-2) across the cloud. Using a primary PTP clock source (Evertz 5700MSC-IP) on premise, cloudSwXtch can distribute the PTP signals across the cloud to resources in the cloud and/or remote locations as sources to boundary clocks. MAGNUM-OS monitors and analyzes this PTP flows for performance and reliability. This service is a game changer for remote production applications where a reference clock source may be difficult to obtain. In addition, Evertz has integrated to cloudSwXtch’s open API, providing cloud network health monitoring not previously available and streaming control from on-prem to the cloud.
• swXtch.io at the TAG Video Systems booth (W1542). A joint demonstration with TAG Video Systems will provide insight into how cloudSwXtch can enable a more dynamic monitoring approach as media moves through the cloud to multiple endpoints. That includes reliable QC and live signal monitoring with PTP synchronization of video and audio streams. Visitors will also see how cloudSwXtch supports “by-exception” monitoring, which alerts operators that specific problems have been detected in video and/or audio feeds that require attention. The cloudSwXtch wXcked Eye user interface, new for NAB, provides an advanced user interface with detailed data visualization of network performance. TAG Video Systems will connect to the cloudSwXtch API to unlock complementary video monitoring applications in local, national, and global mesh network configurations, including several public cloud service providers.  

Book NAB onsite meetings and booth tours with swXtch.io at https://www.swxtch.io/nab-2023/. 

TEL AVIV, Israel—TAG Video Systems will introduce dashboard visualizations for its Media Control System (MCS) to give users sharper, more targeted, application-specific monitoring capabilities at the 2023 NAB Show, April 15-19, in Las Vegas.

The company will also demonstrate its support for cloud-based workflows in applications ranging from live production through distribution based on real-life examples. TAG also will highlight its new partnership with Nevion and the benefits of integration with the VideoIPath and Virtuoso toolsets, it said.

The new dashboard visualizations offer a way to optimize and customize TAG monitoring to suite the exact requirements of users. Using TAG’s MultiChannel Monitoring (MCM) system’s deep probing and analysis capabilities combined with the MCS data aggregation and management toolset, dashboard visualizations can be easily built with well-known open toolsets, such as ELK and Grafana, to address any specific area of focus, it said.

With regard to Nevion, TAG will show its integration with VideoIPath and Virtuoso. The VideoIPath system orchestration and management platform combined with TAG’s rich and deep visualization and monitoring brings a solid foundation for building high-reliability and availability systems, it said.

Users benefit from the flexibility and control of the Nevion ecosystem combined with the pristine control room monitor wall experience of TAG’s MCM, backed by the operational confidence of the underlying TAG monitoring and notification safety net developed for today’s complex multi-point workflows, it said.

Combined with the robust signal processing and management of the Virtuoso platform, multi-format systems employing different signal and source types can be deployed, managed, and monitored, it said.

See TAG Video Systems at 2023 NAB Show booth W1542.

More information is available on the company’s website.

LONDON—M2A Media, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Videon, Singular.live, TAG Video Systems and Spalk have successfully demonstrated a first-of-its-kind, multi-vendor proof of concept showing how next-generation hybrid cloud technologies can improve traditional live broadcast workflows.

The demo, which occurred during the London-based roadshow, Connecting in the Cloud: Shaping the Future of Live Broadcast, used multiple live video sources, including a cloud hand-off from ATP Media, the global sales, broadcast production and distribution arm of the ATP Tour, and a live BT Sport feed acquired into AWS from BT Media & Broadcast in London. 

“M2A Media has a keen understanding of the value that cloud technology is bringing to the media and entertainment industry,” explained Marcus Box, CEO, M2A Media. “With this proof of concept, it was our aim to bring together leading innovators in the field to educate and to inspire the industry by presenting the technologies that are disrupting the broadcast landscape. We were delighted that the POC was so well received, and we look forward to future collaborations as we continue to disrupt and innovate.”

The purpose of the demonstration was to showcase the ease with which valuable live video can be contributed via the AWS cloud and transformed using progressive new cloud technologies, the companies said.

In addition to showing secure receipt and control of the live video streams, the workflow was augmented through a range of transformations including remotely switching from one source transport stream to another transport stream for B2B distribution, the addition and control of live graphics, live commentary, and the transformation to B2C streams and delivery to an AWS CloudFront for its onward journey to viewers and sports fans worldwide.

The Videon Compute Platform (VCP) played a key role in creating true hybrid:cloud live video architectures, bringing compute power to the origination of the video source and allowing for unique workflows in live sports, the companies said. 

The platform's native functions, including LiveEdge Core, sit on-premises and allow users to package streams in multiple formats, insert SCTE-35 ad markers, graphic overlays, UTC time codes, and user-defined KLV metadata into live video feeds. The addition of LiveEdge Compute enables developers to create and run powerful functions as docker containers on the platform, the companies said.  

In addition, the management layer, LiveEdge Cloud, provides remote health monitoring and management for entire fleets of VCP devices. This flexible architecture not only offers low latency, lowered end-to-end operating costs, stability, and security––but also the head room and extensibility for future heavy compute functions such as Machine Learning inferences––all wrapped up in a small form factor with low power consumption for energy-efficient operations, the companies reported. 

The orchestration of the AWS cloud for workflow flexibility and scalability was shown by M2A Media’s live IP transport product, M2A CONNECT. As well as offering visibility of workflows for dynamic public cloud resources, M2A’s user-interface rewards operations teams with levels of control and set-up previously only suited to engineers, it said. 

TAG Video Systems has become the de facto provider for video and data monitoring by offering products that are both comprehensive and configurable. The proof of concept demonstrated how TAG can be used to fully monitor and visualize a cloud workflow, and benefit from scalability, agility, and custom orchestration, it reported. 

Singular.live provides broadcast quality graphic templates, from creation to live control and automation via its web based HTML5 overlay platform. This control was shown in real-time, using a series of custom templates created for the event, it said. 

Spalk showcased how their Virtual Commentary Studio can allow broadcasters, production companies and rights holders to easily produce customized and localized broadcast feeds for specific markets whilst lowering the cost of entry to reach new market segments without sacrificing production quality, the company said. 

OSLO, Norway & TEL AVIV, Israel—Nevion and TAG Video Systems have partnered on an effort to simplify deployment of IP-based broadcast production solutions focused on integrating each other’s products and developing associated delivery and support services, the companies said this week.

The move formalizes and extends the relationship they have established over many joint projects for major broadcasters around the world, they said.

Nevion’s VideoIPath media orchestration platform is already integrated with TAG’s software-based IP multiviewer, which is part of the company’s Realtime Media Performance Platform. The integration enables the optimized routing of video signals across IP networks into the multiviewer, which also offers probing and monitoring capabilities. VideoIPath will continue to be enhanced to take advantage of the capabilities of TAG’s platform, they said.

Nevion’s Virtuoso software-defined media node also integrates with TAG’s multiviewer, using SMPTE ST 2110, JPEG 2000 and JPEG XS to provide video signals to the platform. The Nevion and TAG engineering teams are also cooperating on a best end-to-end solution in which Virtuoso is used as a reference node in TAG’s labs, they said.

The partnership will see Nevion strengthen its professional service and support capabilities to handle TAG’s platform more deeply to simplify deployment and use of the overall production solution, they said.

“The transition to IP workflows has greatly accelerated in the past two years,” said TAG zero friction officer Kevin Joyce. “To provide clients the greatest value to empower their business, technology providers like TAG and Nevion need to proactively join forces and unite their expertise. This partnership will not only help our customers reduce complexity but will also help enhance both companies’ solutions with the mutual goal to better support our media companies’ business.” 

Jan Helgesen, head of product and solutions at Nevion, framed the partnership in the context of an effort the company is making to advance the IP ecosystem for broadcast. “Nevion, together with its parent company Sony, have been developing an ecosystem of solutions, products, services and partnerships called Networked Live to enable broadcasters to enable mission critical live production from anywhere at any scale,” he said. “This ecosystem is deigned to make it easy for our customers to make the choices that are right for them. This partnership with TAG, which is built on very complementary offerings and years of working together, is therefore an important part of Networked Live.”

More information is available on the TAG Video Systems and Nevion websites. 

See Nevion at NAB Show booth C8101 and TAG Video Systems in booth W1672.

Tel Aviv, Israel—TAG Video Systems has expanded its global team with five new appointments. TAG’s Zer0 Friction Officer Kevin Joyce announced the additions to the team, who will be located in three different countries, noting they “represent the company’s commitment to providing the best support to its growing international customer base.”

Michael Demb joins TAG as vice president product strategy in Canada. He will be responsible for ensuring that TAG’s product development roadmap, priorities and resources are aligned with customers’ current needs. Demb was previously at Telestream where he rose from a service engineer to director, solution architecture, designing on-prem, cloud-based and hybrid workflows for major accounts.

Located in Israel, Hagit Michaeli takes on the role of technical product manager, working with the Product, Strategy & Marketing international teams to identify customer needs and develop strategies to meet their demands. Michaeli will explore technology trends and strategize how best to implement upgrades and improvements to TAG’s Realtime Media Performance platform. Previous work includes serving as a QA engineer, QA manager and CSM at Elbit Systems and at Operative.

Daniel Meyers and Richard Harvey will serve as technical applications specialists with the Customer Service Team, both based in the United States. Meyers and Harvey will ensure clients’ technical requirements are addressed and met will leverage their IP video expertise to streamline customer workflows.

Meyers began his career in broadcast as a master control operator at WFMZ-TV, joined Encompass Digital Media in 2008 where he worked his way up to broadcast engineer before joining Grass Valley in 2016 as a technical support engineer. He’ll be based in Los Angeles.

Harvey, a U.S. Navy veteran, was introduced to broadcast when he managed a Shipboard Information, Training and Entertainment system (SITE) and participated in one of the first Digital Satellite links with Navy Broadcast Services. Following his discharge, he served in sales and management roles for several tech companies including Fujitsu Network Communications, Interra, Vislink and EVS. He will be located in New York.

Paul Schiller joins TAG as a product marketing manager and will develop programs and campaigns to help clients optimize the benefits of their system and encourage vendor collaboration. Previously Schiller served as US and worldwide product management for Eastman Kodak, marketing manager for the Rochester Institute of Technology, and held director-level positions for Pitney Bowes (now Novitex) and Piksel. He will be located in New York.

TEL AVIV—TAG Video Systems has released a series of upgrades, enhancements and added support to its Realtime Media Monitoring Platform that are designed to improve the monitoring of live productions. 

The suite of live production tools has been incorporated into the recent version of the Company's MCM (Multichannel Monitoring System) and addresses all aspects of live production including cloud, hybrid and remote operation. 

The platform was recently selected by FOX Sports as its monitoring and visualization provider at the world’s greatest sporting event in Qatar.

“TAG is committed to providing our customers with the tools they need to stay successful in the highly competitive live production space,” stated Paul Briscoe, chief architect for TAG Video Systems. “Most of the improvements and enhancements to our platform are the result of close contact with our customers and our ability to provide them with what they need to cut through the complexity of these complicated workflows and keep them ahead of the curve when dealing with emerging formats and technologies. TAG’s platform offers the perfect solution for ensuring the integrity of a live application.”

Notable improvements to MCM, include:

• Comprehensive support added for JPEG-XS transport protocols. TAG set an industry first in 2021 by supporting JPEG-XS to allow live production in the cloud. Now that the format is gaining significant momentum, the Company has broadened support to include all three predominant transport protocols for JPEG XS stream reception and transmission by the MCM: TR-07 for MPEG-2 TS over IP, TR-08 for ST 2110-22, and now CDI for use in the Amazon cloud. Comprehensive support of JPEG XS allows customers to benefit from bandwidth reduction while maintaining an extremely high-quality level, critically important criteria in remote live contribution and production scenarios.
• TAG Bridge Technology provides path to bandwidth optimization. In 2022, TAG introduced its Bridge Technology. Bridge Technology with a super-efficient and economical architecture that enables an operator to receive a source once and display it directly on any TAG system. Once the stream is ingested, the TAG Bridge automatically optimizes the sizing, format and delivery protocol to fit any configuration of multiple recipients removing the complexity of routing the same stream to diverse locations. The economical reuse of redundant signal sources minimizes overall compute resource usage and allows bandwidth optimization in large systems while retaining the quality and low latency required for live applications.
• VLAN and LACP support. These two network services have become popular for managing network utilization and have recently become powerful tools for live IP systems. VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) enables the virtualization of multiple networks onto one physical network interface, maximizing use of high-bandwidth interfaces. TAG added support for VLAN that allows the MCM to combine, visualize and control various streams from different computer networks all on one interface. A singular point of control provides transparent economization, eases complexity, and simplifies network management. The MCM also now supports LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) which enables the use of multiple links for resiliency and provides load-balancing capability. 
• NMOS – added support for new BCP-002-01 specification. NMOS (Networked Media Open Specifications) is a family of open specifications that enable interoperability between media devices on an IP infrastructure. In addition to supporting NMOS IS-04, which deals with discovery and registration, and NMOS IS-05, which covers device connection management, TAG’s MCM now supports NMOS BCP-002-01. This new specification enables individual audio, video and metadata streams in ST 2110 - originating from different or unrelated sources - to be grouped and assembled automatically on the receiving end. Support for NMOS BCP-002-01, which works in the cloud or on-prem, allows the receiver to define and group elements of a live production, alleviating the time and complexity traditionally associated with assembling diverse sources required for a complete program.
• Precision Time Protocol (PTP) statistics visualization. The Precision Time Protocol (PTP) is used to synchronize clocks throughout a computer network with nanosecond accuracy and mandatory for 2110 systems. TAG’s functionality has increased to add visualization of PTP statistics directly on the multiviewer screen. This added capability allows the operator to view PTP data at a glance, providing a heightened level of confidence regarding the health of the system reference clock used for timing in a live production environment where precision timing counts.
• Plura Production Timer. The MCM now offers display of the Plura SPT timer family, including the multi-line MTD-ID desk panel display. This feature enables heads-up use of these devices in a live production environment by flexibly enabling their display on the multiviewer mosaic.
• UMD, Tally and Timers. The MCM’s rich capability of multi-UMD and Tally display has been expanded with additional visualization features enabling tallying of various aspects of UMD visualization in addition to the usual tally indicators. TAG has also incorporated a native timer functionality enabling use of precision timing elements in UMD / clock displays for any aspect of production timing.

DOHA, Qatar—TAG Video Systems is providing monitoring and visualization for Fox Sports as it covers the World Cup, Nov. 20-Dec. 18, the company said.

Fox Sports will present 64 World Cup matches live in the U.S. across Fox and FS1 with every match live streaming on the Fox Sports app and available for free on-demand as replays on Tubi.

The broadcaster selected TAG’s 100% IP software platform for all of its control rooms and operations multiviewers, monitoring the integrity of more than 1,200 sources driving more than 150 displays, TAG said.

The TAG monitoring and visualization platform is an integral part of a Fox Sports’ live-production system built in a different form factor. Built as two separate and redundant systems, Fox Sports’ joint event system is one of the largest transportable SMPTE ST 2110 live production flypacks in use. It can be quickly flown and setup between major events and allows Fox Sports to bypass intermodal transport by container ships.

“The key is the monitoring, being able to see everything coming in and going out and being able to QC it – that’s really the goal of the IBC as the central hub. It connects to the studio location; it connects to all the venues; it connects to our Los Angeles broadcast facility as well as our Tempe [Ariz.] broadcast facility,” said Kevin Callahan, vice president of field operations and engineering at Fox Sports.

The flypack system leverages IP and SMPTE ST 2110 technology, and relies on an all-fiber design that significantly reduces the size and weight of the kit. With a full control room, 40 tech core racks, and 10 venue racks, it travels fully pre-wired and was ready to go upon arrival in Doha. 

The 8-foot-tall tech core racks were built on top of shock-mounted airplane pallets. To fit in an airplane cargo hold, Callahan and Douglas McGee, consulting engineer for system design, came up with the idea of having custom racks that fold in half while fully wired to fit under the cargo hold height restrictions. 

The TAG multiviewer and monitoring platform enables Fox Sports operators to see everything in the ST-2110 IP workflow as well as JPEG-XS and UHD, which the broadcaster is using for transmission between the IBC and studio, venues and Fox Sports operations centers in Tempe and Los Angeles. In addition, a remote IT team will manage the entire network. As technology advances and new formats emerge, the system provides built-in room for growth to allow the broadcaster to keep pace with rapid changes in the industry, TAG said.

Using flypacks to transport live production systems may open doors to a whole new range of capabilities and reinvent how live production is done. The same systems can be transported from venue to venue, leading to an increase in familiarity and decrease in training time. Another advantage is the ability to add capabilities as workflows change, enhancing and improving the system, it said.

“Fox Sports tapped TAG for many reasons, not the least being our constantly evolving upgrades and improvements,” said TAG chief strategy officer Peter Wharton. “Since this system was built, we’ve launched numerous new features including our Bridge Technology that removes the complexity of routing the same stream to multiple locations with an ultra-efficient architecture. With a pure software solution on commodity hardware, TAG enables Fox to change and add to the system as their business needs evolve while saving capacity, resources and costs in the future, all without changing hardware.

“We worked seamlessly with Diversified, EVS and a number of other vendors to ensure that every one of Fox Sports’ financial and operational goals were met.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

TEL AVIV, Israel—TAG Video Systems has added new visualization resources to its flagship Multi-Channel Monitoring (MCM) system, enriching its Under Monitor Display (UMD) capabilities with expanded UMD and Tally functions, internal timers, and tight integration with a third-party series of production timing devices. 

The infusion of live data pulled from multiple sources and visualized in one place provides operators with a clear and quick timeline of the content’s health and lifecycle, the company said. The upgrades will be demonstrated at TAG’s Stand #1.C30 at IBC 2022 at the RAI Amsterdam, Sept. 9-13 along with its recently released and award-winning Monitoring Control System (MCS), and the Company’s new Bridge Technology.

TAG has expanded UMD capability to 8 UMDs per tile element with each UMD taking on roles that extend beyond the simple display of text. In addition to static or external (via API or TSL-5 protocol) text, internally derived metadata and other data can be displayed, including stream information such as service name, TSID, bitrate, resolution, colors pace, HDR format, timecode, codec, stream type, and VCHIP rating, to name a few. 

In addition to the usual ‘tally light’ indicators, many display attributes such as border, font, background, etc. can be customized for tally use as well. Operators can custom configure all Tallies and UMDs to reflect their preference for font attributes and display appearance, colors are specified as 24-bit, and user-provided JPG still images can be displayed as well.

The UMDs can now also deliver on-screen timers for production and playout timing applications along with their other display capabilities. Source data for UMDs, tallies and timers from different external sources can be integrated with related information to present operators with a ‘big picture” of the content’s journey. For example, tapping the UMD’s enhanced capabilities playout automation can deliver clip filenames and start / duration times from playout automation, with static text providing context. 

A playout-driven MCM timer has been added that counts down to the next event along with live stream-derived V-Chip rating and Closed Caption presence. Together, these offer a simple and effective visualization for channel behavior. All UMD, timer and tally functionality that is supported by the TSL-5 protocol is offered over that service, and all available functionality, including timers and metadata-driven display, is available through TAG’s rich JSON API.

TAG has also introduced integration with the popular Plura series of MTD production timing devices, offering on-screen visualization of local desk timer displays.

For an area of broadcast operations that changed little over the course of TV technology history, the monitoring display has experienced a rapid pace of development in a relatively short time period. From a passive monitor based on, first, the cathode ray tube and then LED or similar technologies that was able to only show one image at a time, it is now the multiviewer, showing multiple images at once. Not only that, it is able to perform more functions than just displaying pictures.

This has made multiviewers an increasingly crucial element of master control rooms (MCRs) at broadcast and playout centers, providing tools for compliance logging and checking, among other things. On top of these, as Ryan Wallenberg, vice president of engineering for Cobalt Digital, observes, the growing trend is for these units to accommodate a multitude of signal formats simultaneously. “More multiviewers are going hybrid, allowing for a mix of SDI, uncompressed IP SMPTE ST 2022-6/2110 and compressed MPEG2, H.264, HEVC, J2K and JPEG-XS,” he says.

Mix and Match
The ability to mix and match formats also extends to image quality and resolution. Wallenberg adds that new viewing systems can accept both HDR and SDR, with the capacity to convert to a common format for mixing SDR, HLG, PQ and SLOG3 and then switch to the required monitor format. “There is still lots of demand for 3G signal monitoring but with UHD output for higher quality output vs. 1080p output resolutions,” he comments. “UHD for inputs is more common in Europe and China than in the U.S.”

Today, it is unlikely that people are able to buy a display that is not UHD, according to John Mailhot, CTO for networking products at Imagine Communications. “In a mobile there’s usually a requirement that they have to do UHD but it often involves a trade-off,” he says. “It could be having fewer replays if they are working in UHD. The vehicle will be set up differently for different events with varying workflows and probably not run everything in UHD.”

Something that Mailhot considers is becoming the minimum requirement—”table stakes” in his words—is 1080p but in HDR. “I think there’s going to be an interesting amount of broadcasters who produce that as their primary format and then turn it into 1080i or SDI or other things for distribution. UHD is four times the bandwidth but adding HDR to an existing workflow is a much easier lift and arguably more impactful. In the multiviewer world we’re really starting to see people asking about HDR more than they used to.”

Flexibility is Key
Ketan Patel, product manager of multiviewer solutions at Evertz, observes that customers are now looking for three main things in multiviewers: density, format flexibility and advanced features.

“Density of solution in terms of rack space and power are key for applications like OB trucks,” he says. “The number of inputs and outputs per RU is a metric everyone is trying to maximize. Unfortunately, we don’t have one format or standard across the broadcast chain, so flexibility is a big issue with all facilities.

“Ideally, people want to have a singular platform that can monitor the incoming contribution feeds, the production/in-facility signal flows and the distribution feeds,” Patel added. “Monitoring is then visually showing the video and audio bars, the health of the video, the audio and key items such as SCTE triggers.”

Because of this, Patel continues, multiviewers are no longer merely for visualizing video/audio/data sources as multi-images on displays; they’re real-time probes for those sources.

“The probes are also not just concerned with the video/audio/data but also the transport protocols and bandwidth,” he said. “This synergy has become more important as facilities have many more signals to monitor and not enough eyeballs to watch them all. 

“We developed the concept of monitoring by exception when customers found their operational staff were fatigued looking at hundreds of images for potential alarms,” he added. “With our ‘penalty box’ feature we can designate an area/display where only signals that have alarms appear so operators can focus on resolving those issues.”

Paul Briscoe, chief architect for TAG Video Systems, agrees that “monitoring hundreds or thousands of channels with human eyeballs is unreasonable,” which explains why probing, monitoring analysis, alarming and logging have become the norm.

“Visualization is still important,” he says, “and our Adaptive Monitoring allows any number of channels to be monitored but only those needing eyes on them in penalty boxes to be visualized.”

Move to IP and Cloud
A trend that Briscoe says TAG is also following is towards “pure software/IP-based monitoring platforms,” which will lead to the cloud. “That enables deployment in ground, cloud or hybrid scenarios on a global basis,” he explains. “Such a capability is almost infinitely scalable. Another important trend is integration with third-party systems, so we support open standards to enable orchestration and control interoperation with the widest array of other systems.”

At Lawo, Senior Product Manager of Media Infrastructure Stephan Türkay says the company is “absolutely moving to a cloud future,” with IP-based multiviewers being a prime candidate for that transition.

“Operational staff require multiviewers to be as low latency as possible,” he comments, “which can be tricky to achieve in an off-premise cloud deployment. We anticipate there to be an application-specific mix of deployments—on and off premise—as well as software and hardware technology to host the multiviewer function.”

Türkay adds that with the shift of traditional workflows for both production and playout to the cloud, there is the growing need to monitor signals as natively as possible. “Customers want to avoid the costly transcoding and transport costs of bringing signals back to the broadcast facility for monitoring using a traditional multiviewer,” he says.

While the general perception is that multiviewers will be installed in galleries or MCRs and cover the whole wall, Darren Gosney, technical sales manager for EMEA at Blackmagic Design, observes there is a growing realization that standalone screens can be placed anywhere in a broadcast or playout center.

“If they feature loop-throughs of each of their inputs, they can be located anywhere in the production chain,” he explains. This means different departments can each have a dedicated configurable unit in their space and the signals can be passed through to other parts of the facility, even being re-clocked to extend the signal distance further.``

Certainly a move on from the inert, dumb screens of the past.

SYDNEY—Foxtel and Magna Systems and Engineering have deployed an IP monitoring solution from TAG Video Systems that the companies are calling the largest solution of its kind in the southern hemisphere and one of the top ten globally. 

In 2020 Foxtel started a project to exit an aging television center facility at Macquarie Park. The plan involved migrating their entire technology platform across two sites in Sydney to an all-IP platform encompassing video routing, satellite, OTT and more. 

After more than 12 months of market research, testing and trialing various vendor IP monitoring solutions, Foxtel chose a solution from TAG Video Systems for all their IP monitoring requirements. 

This TAG monitoring solution, supplied by Magna Systems & Engineering, is the largest solution of its kind in the southern hemisphere and in the top ten solutions of its kind globally, the companies said. 

Foxtel head of broadcast engineering and projects, Matthew Carter, explained that “We wanted to be able to not only view pictures on monitors but provide a real time probe of those signals across the full workflow to provide a full end-to-end view of the video workflow across all formats and encoding types. The TAG solution does all of this and more.”

Starting with an RFI in 2020, progressing to an extensive RFP in 2021 and followed by a POC, the TAG solution ticked all the boxes for Foxtel’s new multiviewing and monitoring for all of their IP sources across multiple sites, the companies said. 

The TAG solution is now monitoring over 2,000 sources across multiple sites with all types of IP signals including uncompressed HD and UHD, compressed HD and UHD, OTT - HLS, CMAF and DASH including DRM, NDI and any combination of these signals can be monitored on just one server. TAG is also a software solution running entirely on COTS hardware.

When the RFP was concluded Foxtel also opted for the latest DELL R650 server with dual ConnectX6 200GE cards. Each server is capable of monitoring up to 128 uncompressed SMPTE ST2110 HD inputs with -7 seamless switching protection.

“We specifically purchased the TAG IP monitoring solution for its ability to decode and monitor across multi-formatsa,” Carter said. “It is still the only tool out there that can do this within the same appliance at scale. We were also very impressed with Magna who supported us from start to finish. They understood our requirements and worked closely with my team to provide the solution that fitted our needs. Magna have been on hand all along the way to help with any issues and to work with TAG on any request we have had.”

The new TAG IP solution is used across the entire Foxtel platform, from the ingest of the signal from playout or third parties, pre-compression and post compression. It is also used across multiple departments including MCR, Presentation and Foxtel’s Service Assurance teams across two sites under one control environment.  

“With the introduction of the MCS controller management, control of the TAG platform has become much simpler,” Carter continued. “At the beginning of the journey this tool wasn’t even a reality to the customer but working closely alongside TAG and Magna we have helped shape the product and continue to do so.”

A great example is how Foxtel uses the TAG solution comes in the form of the monitoring of their event-based OTT streams. Using the fully open API Foxtel have integrated this into their resource scheduling platform to provide operators with verification of customer delivery. Foxtel’s automation system, in turn, then supplies TAG with the necessary CDN details associated with an event to start decoding and probing. This now means that the once cumbersome workflows of checking a physical device for the event start are no longer required as there is now a continued monitoring of the stream from start to finish, the companies said. 

"When Foxtel and Magna approached TAG with this ambitious and forward-looking project, they presented a very clear challenge,” vice president of sales at TAG Video Systems, Adi Itzhaki, said. “Beyond transitioning to all IP, Foxtel needed to monitor multiple workflows and formats across multiple sites at high scale. TAG's MCM is the perfect fit for these requirements with deep realtime monitoring across the entire chain along with the MCS control and analysis layer. With TAG and Magna, Foxtel managed to get a single point view of their workflow, while staying agile and aligning delivery to their evolving business requirements.”

“TAG are the market leaders in the IP monitoring space," Carter added. "There is very little out there that can do what the TAG does on the same hardware, such as decoding multiformat streams all on one appliance. Using the TAG IP solution gives Foxtel an edge as it is a software-based solution so we can move away from dedicated hardware that become a technical debt over time. As improvements are made in OTS hardware Foxtel, TAG and Magna will move with them. The other edge we have is down to our long working relationship with Magna and in turn, Magna’s excellent relationship with TAG. It is these key relationships that enable us to work so closely with them and makes this a true partnership.”

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Sports has selected TAG Video Systems to provide OTT monitoring and multiviewing for its production of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games, from Beijing, China, February 2–20, 2022. 

The announcement was made today by Chris Connolly, vice president of transmission engineering and operations, NBC Olympics, and Kevin Joyce, zero friction officer for TAG Video Systems.

NBC Sports is using TAG Video Systems’ MCM MultiChannel software-based monitoring and multiviewing solution for complete end-to-end monitoring of their video network, delivering ultra-low latency of uncompressed ST 2110 and JPEG-XS signals in Beijing for live production, monitoring and probing of the transport between the host nation and the United States, and monitoring of the broadcasts over the Peacock OTT platform and CDNs. 

In addition, TAG enables NBC Sports to visualize the signals in real-time across the entire network, including UHD signals ensuring the consumer’s high-quality experience.

“Once again, TAG was the obvious choice to help us guarantee the highest quality production is reaching our viewers,” said Connolly. “TAG’s active monitoring systems ensure us real-time data throughout multiple points within our network to deliver every minute of Olympic action to viewers across the U.S.”

TEL AVIV, Israel—TAG Video Systems has added support for the Network Device Interface (NDI) 5 and Secure, Reliable Transport (SRT) protocols, the company said today.

NDI is a real-time, low latency IP video network technology that enables TAG customers to build IP-based video networks and realize many of the benefits of uncompressed video IP networks without the associated complications, expense and performance requirements, the company said

With support for NDI 5, the latest version of NDI, TAG customers can automatically discover and connect to a wide range of NDI sources from cameras and switchers to PCs, phones, tablets and video conferencing applications, such as Skype, it said.

Using NDI, TAG customers can capture the output from PCs making it simple to add websites, PC UIs and video conference participants as tiles on a TAG mosaic. TAG also enables NDI as an output format, providing an inexpensive, low-latency and high-quality connection to display devices, it said.

SRT is an open-source transport protocol originally developed by Haivision that allows for robust transmission of high-quality, high-bandwidth video signals over public internet, unmanaged networks and WANs and similar networks with unpredictable performance without loss or impairments, the company said.

With minimal latency, SRT can assure transport of signals across these networks with no loss of quality while also providing encryption to protect content during transit. With support for SRT, TAG customers can acquire signals from distant sources and transmit multiviewer mosaics to distant viewers, even at-home remote workers with SRT plugins for desktop monitoring, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2021 NAB Show?

KEVIN JOYCE: I think the events of the past 18 months will continue to drive technology toward remote operations and live production in the cloud. Which also leads us to streaming and OTT. We were well on our way there, but COVID-19 accelerated the journey.

Another big trend is anything to do with esports. It’s amazing how this has taken off, and manufacturers and service providers must be sure their technology can be adapted/utilized in this sector.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

JOYCE: We are consistently adding features and functionalities to our monitoring and visualization platform, plus we’re always adding support for the emerging technologies and formats that are driving the industry further into the cloud for live and remote production, and post production as well.

At the NAB Show we will be showing the platform enhanced with support for several additional protocols. First, we’re excited to announce support for AWS Cloud Digital Interface (AWS CDI), a highly reliable, extremely low-latency network technology for transporting high-bitrate uncompressed video, such as ST 2110 or JPEG XS, inside the AWS Cloud. This is especially important to our clients that need to create an ecosystem or a workflow to implement production or post-production environments on the cloud.

We will also be demonstrating support for SRT (Secure Reliable Transport), a secure, reliable, low-latency open source means of delivering content over unpredictable, unreliable networks like the public internet.

And we will be showing the platform with support for NDI 5 (Network Device Interface) for the first time. NDI 5 is the latest version of the widely implemented royalty-free, software-defined IP standard that enables any device in any location to connect. Content can be transmitted over a computer network in a high-quality, low-latency, frame accurate manner, regardless of where it originates—in a physical studio, in the cloud or in a remote production facility. 

In addition to all the support enhancements the shining gem of the show will be our new monitoring control system, an outgrowth of our Zer0 Friction philosophy that is focused on providing customers with the most agile, practical and valuable business model possible. This new future-proof tool serves a dual purpose. First it allows users to easily manage multiple instances or physical servers as one logical system—clustering a large number of servers that are running a large number of channels—all at the same time. The second is its openness, which leads to an unprecedented learning experience and opens opportunities for vast improvements. Our system gives users the ability to leverage best in breed tools in the market to collect and analyze information, learn from it and evolve based on that knowledge. The new TAG Monitoring Control System collects the data from the different probing points of the workflow and connects it to external database, statistics and graphic UI tools such as Elasticsearch and Kibana. With this knowledge in their pocket, there is no limit to what our users can learn about their workflow. It’s something they need to confidently move into the future armed with access to the highest level and most useful information possible.

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

JOYCE: Our platform is unique in the industry. Founded in 2008, TAG is the first monitoring and multiviewer solution to be 100% SW, 100% IP operating on 100% COTS and in the cloud.

Another industry first, though, and one that sets us miles apart from anything else available on the market is our Zer0 Friction business strategy, and in turn the new monitoring control system I just described. Zer0 Friction is the next generation approach to deploy, operate and acquire broadcast technology and take it to the next level. TAG’s unique ability to handle both compressed and uncompressed formats and support all major industry standards such as SMPTE 2110, 2022-6/7, JPEG 2000, MPEG TS, DASH, HLS, CMAF and even JPEG XS allows it to be applied to all four major broadcast applications: Live production, Playout/Master Control, Distribution and OTT.  Clients reap the benefits of being able to manage the software across applications and locations for stunning operational agility and maximum asset utilization.

With Zer0 Friction customers aren’t restricted in how they use TAG’s multi-functional applications, where they use them across their ecosystem, or when they use them. Broadcasters can use a multiviewer for live production in London and then apply the same license to probe for errors in an OTT facility in New York. As the industry transitions to cloud based IP workflows, clients will find they are unrestricted operationally and financially to deliver the best possible content to consumers. The approach is an industry first and is leading the way to how broadcast applications will be deployed in the future. 

In addition to all that, we want to be sure our clients are comfortable and confident, so we offer a zero-commitment trial of the TAG system to ensure 100% satisfaction before they buy.

TVT: How has the Covid pandemic affected your company's business over the past year and half and how will it impact how you exhibit at this year's show?

JOYCE: We didn’t see it coming, but we were ready for it. Since we are a 100% software only company, TAG’s technology is deployed quickly with customers up and running in minutes. We, and they in turn, weren’t impacted by equipment shortages and delivery delays. They didn’t need a member of the TAG team onsite, in fact, they didn’t even need to be onsite. The system could be operated remotely, support is handled remotely, and all software upgrades are delivered remotely on a continuous basis. 

TEL AVIV—To help capitalize on its global growth, TAG Video Systems has expanded its international team with the appointment of three more professionals, hiring Eitan Dvir as VP of customer success, Nir Cang as director of technical operations, and Chris Welsh as product specialist.

“We’re delighted to add three more to the TAG team; all extremely experienced and all dedicated to delivering the definitive level of customer service,” explained Kevin Joyce, zer0 friction officer at TAG. “Eitan will ensure customers leverage all the benefits TAG offers, Nir will provide support for the sales team’s efforts, and the addition of Chris fortifies TAG’s commitment to excellence in the Americas.”

Eitan Dvir joins TAG with a proven track record earned from leading operations that resulted in successful client implementations. In his new role, Dvir’s  primary objective is to prioritize customer satisfaction and deliver on the TAG “Zer0 Friction” philosophy. He will work closely with the global sales team to define current and future customer workflows, identify and eliminate obstacles to customer satisfaction and lead the company in implementing data driven improvement initiatives.  Dvir is based in Israel.

Nir Cang began his career as a sound engineer and comes to TAG following nearly eleven years with Dalet Digital Media Systems where he transitioned from QA engineer to Project Engineer to Presales Technical Consultant. At TAG, Cang is concentrating on pre-sales activities with a special focus on OTT.  He is based in Israel, but his extensive experience working in Asia will be playing an instrumental role in  the company’s expansion in Asia, specifically in the OTT market.

Chris Welsh, an industry veteran of nearly 20 years, joins TAG from Rogers Media and is based in Ontario, Canada, Welsh will determine, develop and design technology solutions, specifically those that relate to IP, and target the challenges inherent in the vast and rapidly evolving region. He will also be responsible for supplying pre-sales and customer support as well as technical training.