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Video, audio and metadata monitoring in the IP domain requires different parameter checking than is typically available from the mainstream monitoring tools found in IT. The contents of the data payload are less predictable and packet distribution more tightly defined leading to the need to use specialist media stream centric monitoring tools.
Television is still a niche industry, but nonetheless, one of the most powerful story telling mediums in existence. Whether reporting news events, delivering educational seminars, or product reviews, television still outperforms all other mediums in terms of its ability to communicate to mass audiences.
Timing accuracy has been a fundamental component of broadcast infrastructures for as long as we’ve transmitted television pictures and sound. The time invariant nature of frame sampling still requires us to provide timing references with sub microsecond accuracy.
Having a collection of PCs and MACs stacked under a desk to facilitate the multitude of operational requirements not only proves difficult to operate but challenges our modern ideas around security and makes maintenance almost impossible.
IP and COTS infrastructure designs are giving us the opportunity to think about broadcast systems in an entirely different manner. Although broadcast engineers have been designing studio facilities to be flexible from the earliest days of television, the addition of IP and COTS takes this to a new level allowing us to continually reallocate infrastructure components to make the best use of expensive resource.
For many years broadcasters have been working with static systems that are difficult to change and upgrade. Although we have video and audio routing, the often-tangled mess of jackfield patch-cords is testament to how flexible broadcast systems really need to be to meet the demands of modern program making.