Mavric Your Monitoring Plane
Wohler Technologies have been engaged in creating products and technologies for monitoring of broadcast signals for 40+ years now. Over the years, we listened to our customers and innovated and adapted our products to help solve their problems with solutions that simultaneously advance usability and retain consistency in meeting expectations. In our recent conversations with customers, they guided us to step up and
provide them with “monitoring solutions” rather than singular monitoring products. With that unambiguous mandate in hand, we went back to the drawing board to try and abstract the entire gamut of challenges faced by our customer insofar as their signal monitoring needs are concerned. The result of our research is what we propose to call the “The Monitoring Plane“
With the evolution of infrastructure and the incorporation of numerous technologies, broadcast facilities are now starting to resemble a mix between traditional broadcast and IT infrastructure. The advent of IP technologies like ST 2110 and AoIP like AES67, Dante and Ravenna, coupled with software centric signal processing both on-premise as well as in the Cloud is accelerating this trend.
The "Data Plane"
Broadcast facilities started decades ago with Analog Audio and Composite Video technologies, that were complemented over time with digital baseband signals like 3G SDI for high-definition video and 16 channels of PCM audio, coupled with formats like MADI, AES3.
That evolution has now entered the packetized transport over IP era, with the introduction of ST2110, ST2022-6/7 and AoIP technologies. While there is a transition towards use of the newer IP technologies, earlier baseband continue to coexist and are not going away anytime soon. From a highlevel perspective, the fabric through which signals flow could also be identified as a heterogeneous “Data Plane”,
The "Control Plane"
This complex fabric of “data” (signal) transport across broadcast facilities has at its core switchers, peripherals, encoders and decoders that process signals pre or post switching. This core is now also evolving with IP technologies, enabling the use of tools that achieve routing and control in software that could be hosted locally or in the Cloud.
An additional dimension is the gradual integration of application specific processing programs that run entirely in software and could also be hosted in the Cloud. This requires signals to be uplinked into the Cloud for processing, and potentially downlinked back to on-premise locations prior to distribution. Orchestration, switching and processing functions across these workflows, with data flows across the Data Plane could be broadly viewed as the “Control Plane”.
Continuing with this perspective suggests the need to define a “Monitoring Plane”.
What is "The Monitoring Plane"?
In order to get a better understanding of the implications of monitoring a complex heterogenous data fabric coupled with a diverse set of tools for control and orchestration, it would be useful to view the data fabric, and various points across that fabric that need to be monitored as “the monitoring plane”.
The ability to monitor signals at various points across points a heterogenous fabric, as it flows through pre, and post processing functions to obtaining a good understanding of signal quality, metadata and formats is critical. Locating problems that might compromise a high pressure live production is of paramount importance.
The Monitoring Plane perspective helps us realize a well-defined and structured approach that is valuable in designing a system that caters to the needs of operators, managers and executives in the broadcast industry enabling them to meet KPA’s and related predetermined standards for QOS and QOE.
What are attributes of The Monitoring Plane™?
Continuing with the notion of abstracting The Monitoring Plane™, on the lines of “Control” and “Data” planes, we could list a set of attributes that would be required of an effective monitoring plane. One way to break the problem down while trying to understand these attributes, is to separate monitoring into the two broad areas of “signals to monitor”, and “unified operator interfaces for monitoring”.
Generally speaking, the following are attributes that would help define The Monitoring Plane:
- Signal Agnostic: Visual representation of monitored signals should ideally be consistent, independent of signal type, weather baseband or IP, compressed or uncompressed.
- Location Agnostic: The data fabric over which broadcast signals flow, can now span local facilities, remote trucks (OBV’s), Cloud infrastructure and also on-premise equipment. Ideally The Monitoring Plane should be able to provide a consistent monitoring experience, independent of where the signal originates or terminates.
- Consistent Media Analysis: A consistent way to view video and listen to audio signals being monitored across a heterogenous fabric provides a predictable operator experience, focusing their attention on the task of monitoring, rather than having to worry about specific monitoring tools and mapping signals across those tools to obtain a consistent view.
- Audio Loudness: The ability to monitor parameters like audio loudness across signal types, can again help improve consistency of the monitoring experience. Visual representation of audio loudness can help quickly diagnose audio level problems in particular when there is a transfer of signals across varying underlying data fabrics, and potentially across broadcasters and service providers, as they link signals with each other.
- Signal Metadata: A clear context specific visual representation of signal metadata, again independent of signal types is an important attribute to consider. This might mean CC information in the VANC section of an SDI signal, or IP packet losses and delays for a ST2110 signal. The monitoring plane should ideally present signal metadata as it relates to the signal being monitored, separate from a unified representation of the “media” portion of the signal like video, audio and loudness.
- Automated Alerting: To help scale up operator productivity, on important attribute of The Monitoring Plane would be to help move in the direction of “monitoring-by-exception”, meaning that the operator’s attention should ideally be drawn towards monitoring only when there is an exception that demands that attention. As a result, the ability to alert the operator in the event of a deviation, weather in signal metadata or the media portion of the signal is extremely important.
- Vendor Agnostic: Yet another important attribute of The Monitoring Plane is the need to be able to use “open industry standard” tools to monitor signals, without having to resort to vendor specific applications, that prevent a broad interconnected consistent monitoring experience for operators.
- Open Standards: The Monitoring Plane is a big idea, and not something that any single industry vendor can hope to solve single handedly. It is therefore important, that realizations of the Monitoring Plane use open industry standards, that can enable various industry players to integrate and connect across other vendors’ applications, with a shared goal of solving customer problems.
Wohler's Approach
Having done all the groundwork on researching the problem space and proposing a generalized set of principles to solve our customers’ problems with regards to broadcast signal monitoring, Wohler have built a product that we see as a starting point in this journey towards realizing a comprehensive Monitoring Plane.
Wohler recently launched “MAVRIC”, which is an abbreviation for “Multichannel, Audio and Video Remote Indication and Control”. MAVRIC was recently awarded the Best of Show at IBC2024, as a recognition of the fact that it breaks new ground in the area of broadcast signal monitoring.
MAVRIC provides for three core function, Remote Monitoring, Automated Alerting and Integrated Conferencing. MAVRIC uses a simple architecture, where our in-rack gear supplemented by openGear monitor-on-a-card hardware are used to realize “probes”. These “probes” connect into our Cloudbased application that is accessed using a standard web browser. The Cloud based application enables monitoring of signals connected to probes that could be located anywhere in the world, and presents a consistent view of signals, entirely independent of the signal type – baseband or IP.
Further, probes stream encoded audio and video into the Cloud, enabling operators to see live video and listen to audio from the probes. Media streaming infrastructure for MAVRIC can be deployed on-premise, should the customer require media signals to remain in-network.
The software application is complemented by an Android/iOS mobile app, freely downloadable from the App/Play store. The system can be set up to fire alerts for preconfigured conditions, that are then paged to the mobile app, helping customers realize a true “monitoring-by-exception” paradigm. The mobile app also includes a built in “conferencing” function that allows operator groups to quickly connect “in-context” to drive resolution to problems as they occur. The system is designed to be secure, configurable and horizontally scalable to rapidly expand per customer requirements. Wohler continues to innovate in the area of launching new “probe types”, with an SRT probe on the horizon for launch at IBC2025.
We are also working with partners specializing in building control surface products, by enabling them to complete a rapid, lightweight integration of MAVRIC probes into their control surface. That enables customers to have monitoring integrated into their control surface for rapid cross checking of signal orchestration. We will be demonstrating this integration at NAB 2025 in Las Vegas
Please visit Wohler Technologies at booth #N939 at NAB 2025 for more information.