Maintenance And Quality Control In A Broadcast Systems Environment

Once the system is up and running, maintenance is key to ensuring smooth operation, writes Tim Felstead, Head of Sales & Marketing, ATG Broadcast.

Experienced broadcast systems integrators, including my colleagues here at ATG Broadcast, ensure that reliability is built into their designs from the commencement of each project.
A key element is to ensure no single point of failure could take a channel off air.
This means providing redundancy at crucial elements in the entire signal chain. Modern equipment is more often highly reliable with very long mean-time-between-failure ratings. If a baseband source fails, whether for technical reasons or human error, automated out-of-tolerance sensors can be used to switch automatically between primary and backup feeds.
Large broadcast and playout organisations historically kept a small team of resident technicians in house to provide at least first-line maintenance for this baseband oriented environment.
If a problem became serious, a phone call to the product supplier would result in a site visit from an engineer, equipped to provide second-line support or to replace the defective device. However, this approach becomes more problematic when significant parts of the media chain are software and IP based systems. There often simply isn’t the expertise available in house to manage these newer systems; therefore a different approach is required.
IP-based QC
In today's IP-networked world, practically every element of a broadcast system can be interrogated remotely to check whether an issue is purely software related.
If it is, the necessary remedy can be made by the system integrator or source manufacturer back along the wire. ATG offers this as a service to clients. Test and measurement today is developing rapidly thanks to the use of file-based digital content management at practically every point in the broadcast production, post-production and studio-to-transmitter delivery chain.
Latest generation software such as VidCheck's VidChecker and VidFixer allow every programme, commercial, interstitial, even individual clips, to be checked at initial ingest or at any other point to ensure full conformance with predetermined technical standards. This is a far more efficient approach than expecting playout control staff to eyeball all or part of a file.
It is also potentially much more accurate since it eliminates inconsistencies between the alignment and performance of individual video display screens.
VidFixer takes automated file-based quality control a logical stage further by incorporating a wide range of correction features that ensure problems are not just brought to the attention of the relevant operator; they are actually repaired.

Careful design
Needless to say, the best way to avoid excessive reliance on problem-fixing is to ensure that they do not arise in the first place. At its most obvious, this means ensuring that live studio systems are correctly configured to achieve clean and legal signal feeds from camera to production switcher and so on. Beyond that, once signals are taken into the file based and IP domain, the emphasis needs to be on a correctly designed system that builds in appropriate levels of quality control throughout the chain. Reliance on a good signal going in is no guarantee of a good piece of content coming out.
A vital aspect of modern broadcast systems integration is to ensure that the file formats and transcoders employed will function seamlessly within an automated quality control environment. ATG Broadcast has worked closely with many companies such as AmberFin whose iCR Unified Quality Control system combines multiple tools for baseband checks during tape ingest, file-based post-ingest QC and direct operator-controlled QC.
As ever, the design of a reliable, easy to operate and easily expandable broadcast system requires careful evaluation of the various available technical options. Key decisions regarding the choice of hardware, software and infrastructure are made only after close consultation with customers, reflecting their workflow requirements and brand knowledge. ATG will use its Dan Technologies group wide experience in order to guide clients to sensible decisions such that the business objectives are realised in the most efficient manner. Often this does mean challenging clients' choices and advising on the benefits of automatic and human oriented quality processes. Money spent on operationally inefficient workflows or inappropriate brand choices can be wasted.

Full technical support
A key element of our role as a systems integrator is being able to also offer a full technical maintenance service for every installation we design. This gives our clients the freedom to concentrate on their core activities of content production, post-production and presentation.
Read the article in the online edition of here.
(IT/MH)