Best in class in-rack
audio and video broadcast monitors
audio and video broadcast monitors
Address
1280 San Luis Obispo Avenue, Hayward, CA 94544
Your Monitoring SurfaceTM
With the evolution of infrastructure and the incorporation of numerous technologies, broadcast facilities are now starting to resemble 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 resemblance.
The "Data Plane"
At a high level, 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, along 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 high-level 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, and peripherals 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 specific processing applications 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 viewed as the “Control Plane”.
Continuing with this perspective highlights the need to define a “Monitoring Plane”.
What is "Multilocation Scalable monitoringTM" ?
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 various points that need to be monitored across this fabric and processing as a “monitoring plane”. The ability to monitor signals at various points across points the fabric, as it flows through pre, and post processing functions is critical to obtaining a good understanding of the flow of signals and locating problems that might compromise a high pressure live production.
Multilocation Scalable monitoring perspective then, helps us realize that taking a well-structured approach to defining this monitoring plane would be invaluable in designing a system that caters to the actual 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 Your Monitoring SurfaceTM?
Continuing with the notion of abstracting Your Monitoring SurfaceTM, on the lines of “Control” and “Data” planes, we could list attributes that would be required for 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”.
