Video and audio come in all shapes and sizes in modern production, from single phone cam footage to high quality 8k shooting for global live events. There are however some truisms that can apply whatever the production goals.

Monitoring and compliance come into play at all stages of production chains, not just at the last moment before delivery. While there are always budget pressures to keep costs low, it is often likely that cutting cost on monitoring during production processes may lead to expensive mistakes and the necessity for time consuming remediation.

In terms of types of monitoring, at various points in the production and delivery process, many tools and software-based solutions are available, from hand held analyzers to file-based QC, and also systems to monitor delivery streams in real-time.

Acquisition

A longstanding general rule of thumb for any production has been to shoot at the highest possible resolution that you can. Evidence for this can be seen in the many series from the past that are now being dug out of archives, resurrected, re-monetized and reshown on VOD and live channels. Some have stood the test of time well, and others, even when “up-rezed” are showing their age and lack of quality. For live events, many at time of writing are being shot in HDR, even though in many cases output to consumers is still in SDR. This processing step within the live environment can benefit from the use of monitoring tools, for one example, waveform comparisons at the acquisition stage can check what the SDR output might look like when processed further down the line.

So now, whether live or otherwise, ensuring acquisition happens at the highest possible technical quality is a feature of current productions that in the past would potentially have required huge and expensive resources to attain. The possibility to record and keep myriad takes, for editing and decision-making later, offers productions more creative flexibility than in the past. The availability of more reasonably priced storage solutions that can handle large video and audio files has made it possible to retain not only the “master” files, but also retain unused footage which could be used in the future. This may then be stored in deep archive storage, and if so, when transferring to archive, it is imperative to monitor and check that the process has not corrupted any data.

At this stage, having a good data wrangler is still more of a necessity than a “nice-to-have”. Attention to detail with network requirements and storage before embarking on a project at this stage will save much grief, time, and money. Across the world, we see everything from SDI to NDI, to SMPTE 2110 being used as standards for production and delivery. Monitoring capable of detailed testing to the relevant standards becomes a must in today’s complex environments.

As increased use of AI and automated systems comes into play, it becomes very difficult for human eyes and ears alone to pick up digital errors. Sophisticated monitoring at defined points in the shooting and acquisition process can give quick insight when things go wrong.  It is of course important not only to detect errors, but also to identify where errors have entered the process, before they can concatenate.

Distribution

Once acquisition has happened, if remote production is being used for live events, or files are being stored remotely, typically on cloud, it is advisable to have suitable network monitoring in place, and checks in place to see that no errors have occurred in transit. Once high-quality files are in safe storage locations, consideration should be given to what should be monitored during the grading, editing and potential transcoding processes. This is for both maintenance of quality and also compliance with any legal or technical requirements (such as accessibility, photosensitive epilepsy) required as part of delivery.

Compliance

Compliance regulations can differ between geographies and different media companies may also have specific requirements for program delivery that they publish. It is important to ensure that the latest regulations or standards are being used, and not older versions. As an example, in early 2025, European Accessibility regulations come into force, so subtitling and audio description will be required if delivering to European markets. While there are an increasing number of automated transcription and subtitling products available, many using AI, it is inadvisable to rely solely on these, and not put checks and monitoring systems in place to verify that they are correct. Checks should be made not only for correct language, but also for technical requirements, for example, to ensure that there is correct sizing, positioning and timing.

Production

Automated quality control at the grading and editing stage can save time picking up on video and audio quality errors that may have crept in. Modern QC systems can offer a huge number of video and audio quality checks, and can be set up to perform these either as part of an automated process, or can be used manually. 

Just as decisions can be taken about the quality to use at shooting, decisions can also be made about the level of quality control analysis and monitoring that takes place during the production processes.

Ideally, frequent and in-depth monitoring should take place, to prevent expensive mistakes, however it may be that a decision is taken, for example, to only monitor at conformance and metadata level, and not employ more in-depth checks, which may require time, and also implementation of full decoding of the file, however an in-depth check before final delivery is always advisable.

Transcoding

A consideration that runs through all of these operations is the need for transcoding. This is a complete subject in its own right, however at very high level, almost without exception, content will now be delivered in a huge variety of formats for different services across the globe.

Transcoding may be required at all stages of production, typically at ingest, (in general at that point it could be to an in-house mezzanine format), post editing, and also at output to the myriad media outlets from terrestrial broadcasting to streaming services and internet delivery. If errors occur at any of these points, these may not show up until too late…such as at transmission or upload. Fundamentally, transcoding is the digital-to-digital conversion of one encoded format, to another, and whatever the stage of production, consideration should be given to whether the transcode will result in lossless or lossy compression, as any lossy compression will result in degrees of generational loss. This is applicable even when re-encoding within the same format. Care should be taken to monitor and check not only the video, but also the audio and associated data.

Transcoding for delivery and output should be to the standard required, whether as a file delivery, or stream. A check at output to ensure that the media “left the building” correctly, is always advisable.

Delivery

Finally, monitoring during the delivery process is also key. While more traditional broadcast television and cable in the past largely had more control over delivery to home transmission, and visibility of any technical issues with their services, globally there are now multiple pathways and usually multiple third parties involved in delivery of media content.

With not only multiple streaming formats, but also delivery to multiple consumer devices being required, today’s delivery processes require much more sophisticated monitoring than hitherto. In most parts of the world, consumers have many choices in terms of the services to which they subscribe. Should there be any outages or decline in service quality, consumers have the ability to move between services very quickly and easily. Prevention of consumer churn in the streaming media market is of particular concern to service providers, and therefore, being able to very quickly identify at which stage in the delivery process errors have occurred is now vital. Monitoring at delivery points with suitable probes, using real-time analysis, can help to ensure that services are running correctly, and in many cases prevent potential consumer outages before they happen.

In addition, use of tools for analysis of end user consumer devices can contribute to early detection of geographical outages, particularly in the streaming markets. Monitoring at the end user device level can also contribute not only to technical monitoring information, but also analytics on content consumption and user behavior can be used as part of business strategy, and control of delivery mechanism expenditure.

Finally, monitoring at many points within the production process can possibly be seen as an annoyance and that it creates delay when production is under pressure to complete and deliver a project, however finding an error before critical points are reached can save not only time, but can also save the whole project from disaster!