Volicon Releases Version 5.0 of Observer®Latest Release of Industry-Leading Monitoring Solution Includes Robust Features for Video Quality of Service, Retrieval, and Publishing
Volicon today announced the release of Version 5.0 of the Observer®, the company’s award-winning broadcast monitoring and recording solution. Driven by customer input and requirements, the Observer 5.0 includes a range of new features designed to give operators greater flexibility and broader options in different content monitoring situations.
“In only three years, the Observer has become an indispensable tool for TV stations, cable programmers, MSOs, government and military entities, and businesses worldwide,” said Julius Perl, vice president of marketing at Volicon. “From the start, we have been committed to crafting a product that directly meets the needs of the market, and — as demonstrated by Version 5.0 — to perfecting it in response to our customers’ input.”
The Volicon Observer 5.0 enables users to capture, search and retrieve, review, analyze, and log video from an unlimited number of live and prerecorded channels, right from their own desktops. The Observer 5.0 brings new levels of efficiency to many critical broadcasting tasks, such as monitoring and troubleshooting transmissions, ensuring compliance, verifying advertising broadcasts, and tracking and analyzing viewer ratings and public relations information.
With Observer 5.0, Volicon is delivering powerful new functionality to support monitoring and recording of high-definition (HD) content. The system now enables operators to obtain closed captions from CEA-708 HD video streams through extraction of EIA-608 closed-caption data. Other new HD features include support for Dolby® 5.1 for SDI capture and support of bit rates higher than 3.0 Mbps to enable capture of high-quality HD video.
The new release includes advanced exporting functionality in the Observer’s Web interface, which was previously only available through purchase of the optional Content Export module. Now, users can export video and selected audio tracks with time code, banner overlays, and other features on an ad hoc basis, directly from the system’s web front-end. The Content Export module, which enables batch and scheduled exporting, now provides support for exporting of closed-captioning data.
In conjunction with Observer 5.0, Volicon is launching the Observer® QoE, a new quality assurance / quality-of-experience module. The new module makes the Observer the industry’s first video monitoring solution of its kind to provide an automated method for analyzing a video image to detect macroblocking, which has traditionally required human intervention to spot the on-screen anomalies.
Adding to the Observer 5.0’s ability to monitor and record multiple video channels automatically around the clock, the new Scheduled Recording module enables selective recording of specific channels within designated time periods. In addition to email alerts, Observer 5.0 now has the ability to generate alerts, triggered within Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) systems when SNMP traps are detected, including data about the fault and an embedded URL pointing directly to the offending clip.
With the Observer 5.0’s support of custom language names for audio tracks, users will now be able to give names of their choosing to multiple audio streams assigned to each video channel. For example, operators can assign a bundle of Spanish-language audio feeds with the tag “Spanish.” In addition, users can now perform closed-caption searches by time period, set individual quality-of-service thresholds for each type of alarm, and place channels in desired order in the user interface. Observer 5.0 also provides decibel-level approximation in the loudness meter for more accurate and useful live display of audio behavior, ranging from -40 to +2 dB in increments of 2 dB.
Volicon personnel will demonstrate the new features of the Observer 5.0 at the upcoming 2008 NAB Show at booth N2514 in the North Hall. In addition, the company will show beta functionality that will utilize GPI contact triggers as a method of alerting the Observer 5.0 to record a clip from a given channel. This feature, to be included in the upcoming Scheduled Recording module, will enable operators to tune to a specific channel and record it on demand in response to a triggered GPI contact.
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