The enhancement provides media companies with a clear path to technical and business benefits by ensuring integrity of compressed and uncompressed SCTE signals throughout the entire workflow along with protection of revenue generating advertising streams.

The addition of SCTE 104 support enables TAG’s Realtime Media Performance Platform to read, monitor, and verify insertion trigger placement within uncompressed video streams during live production, playout and delivery of network program feeds. The enhanced functionality supplements the system’s already robust ability for broadcasters to confidently monitor SCTE 35 insertion triggers downstream within compressed video delivery platforms.

“Making support for SCTE available on the TAG Platform is a classic example of TAG’s Zer0 Friction philosophy,” explains Paul Briscoe, Chief Architect for TAG. “TAG provides one system with the technology to see SCTE triggers throughout the entire workflow which minimizes challenges and removes complexity. Uncompressed signals that had been monitored upstream can now be correlated from the very highest point of insertion in your system so monitoring can be achieved throughout the entire downstream workflow.”

In addition to the technical and operational benefits the functionality provides the broadcasters a better revenue protection method. “SCTE triggers are the signals that digitally notify the downstream equipment to insert content, such as advertisements or local programming,” added Briscoe “Since advertisements are the primary source of revenue for broadcasters, ensuring that commercials are inserted correctly is beyond critical. Monitoring SCTE, the mechanism that delivers content insertion, adds another layer of confidence and allows the team to concentrate on other tasks.”

TAG will be demonstrating its support of SCTE at NAB 2022 along with support for compressed and uncompressed formats, including MPEG TS, JPEG- XS, CDI, NDI, JPEG2000, SMPTE 2110, SMPTE 2022-6/7, MPEG-DASH, HLS, and more.